Old Boston Taverns and Tavern Clubs

by Samuel Adams Drake

All three questions were based on a statement printed in the souvenir of the Hancock Tavern, reading as follows:

On the south side of Faneuil Hall is a passageway through which one may pass into Merchants’ row. It is Corn court, a name known to few of the present day, but in the days gone by as familiar as the Corn market, with which it was connected. In the center of this court stands the oldest tavern in New England. It was opened March 4, 1634, by Samuel Cole. It was surrounded by spacious grounds, which commanded a view of the harbor and its shipping, for at that time the tide covered the spot where Faneuil Hall now stands. It was a popular resort from the beginning, and was frequented by many foreigners of note.

The seeming authority for these statements and others, connecting it with pre-revolutionary events, said Mr. McGlenen, appears in Rambles in Old Boston by the Rev. E. G. Porter, pages 67 and 68, evidently based on a newspaper article written by William Brazier Duggan, M.D., in the Quincy Patriot for August 28, 1852, and to a novel entitled The Brigantine by one Ingraham, referring to legendary lore. None of these statements can be confirmed. The confusion has been caused by the statement made many years ago and reprinted as a note in the Book of Possessions, Vol. II, Boston Town Records, that somewhere near the water front Samuel Cole kept an inn; but Letchford’s Note Book, the Town Records, and the Suffolk Deeds prove to the contrary.

Samuel Cole’s Inn was kept by him from 1634 to 1638, when he sold out by order of the Colony Court. He purchased a residence near the town dock seven years later. It adjoined the Hancock Tavern lot, and was bounded on the west by the lot originally in the ownership of Isaac Gross, whose son Clement kept the Three Mariners, an ale house which stood west of Pierse’s Alley (Change Avenue) and east of the Sun Tavern.

It is impossible to connect the Hancock Tavern with any pre-Revolutionary event. It was a small house, as described in the Direct Tax of 1798, of two stories, of two rooms each, built of wood, with twelve windows, value $1200. It was first licensed in 1790, and the earliest reference found in print is in the advertisement for the sale of lemons by John Duggan, in the Columbian Centinel in 1794.

As to Cole’s Inn, from the records of the Massachusetts Bay Colony Court, it appears that Samuel Cole kept the first inn or ordinary within the town of Boston. In 1638 the court gave him liberty to sell his house for an inn. This he did, disposing of it to Robert Sedgwick of Charlestown, as shown in Letchford’s Note Book. The town records show that in 1638 Edward Hutchinson, Samuel Cole, Robert Turner, Richard Hutchinson, William Parker, and Richard Brackett were ordered to make a cartway near Mr. Hutchinson’s house, which definitely locates Samuel Cole on the old highway leading to Roxbury, i.e. Washington Street (Town Records, Vol. II, Rec. Com. Report, p. 38).

The Book of Possessions shows in the same report that Valentine Hill had one house and garden bounded with the street on the east, meeting house and Richard Truesdale on the north, Capt. Robert Sedgwick on the south, and the prison yard west.

Major Robert Sedgwick’s house and garden bounded with Thomas Clarke, Robert Turner and the street on the east, Mr. Hutchinson on the south, Valentine Hill on the north, and Henry Messinger west.

Valentine Hill granted, March 20, 1645, to William Davies, his house and garden bounded on the south with the ordinary now in the possession of James Pen (Suffolk Deeds, Vol. I, p. 60). This presumably is Cole’s Inn, then in the possession of Robert Sedgwick, and occupied by James Pen.

The question of Cole’s residence was easily settled by Mr. McGlenen, when he read from deeds showing that in 1645 Valentine Hill sold to Samuel Cole a lot of land near the town dock. Samuel Cole died in 1666, and in his will left his house and lot to his daughter Elizabeth and son John. This property is on the corner of Change Avenue and Faneuil Hall Square, and is now occupied by W. W. Rawson as a seed store.