HANNAH ADAMS.
This follows an oil portrait by Alexander in the cabinet of the American Antiquarian Society at Worcester. Hannah Adams was born at Medfield, in 1755, and died at Brookline, Mass., Nov. 15, 1831; and she was the first person interred at Mount Auburn.
It is the fourth and last published volume of Dr. Palfrey’s History of New England (Boston, 1875) which comes within the period of the present chapter, bringing the story, however, down only to 1741, but a continuation is promised from a MS. left by the author, and edited by General F. W. Palfrey, his son, which will complete the historian’s plan by continuing the narrative to the opening of the war of independence. This fourth volume is amply fortified with references and notes, in excess of the limitations which governed the earlier ones. The author says in his preface that he may be thought in this respect “to have gone excessively into details, and I cannot dispute [he adds] the justness of the criticism; such at present is the uncontrollable tendency of my mind.”
JOHN GORHAM PALFREY.
The editor is indebted to Gen. F. W. Palfrey for the excellent photograph after which this engraving is made.
In 1866 Dr. Palfrey published a popular abridgment of his first three volumes in two smaller ones. These were reissued in August, 1872, with a third, and in 1873 with a fourth, which completed the abridgment of his larger work, and carried the story from the accession of Shirley to power down to the opening of the military history of the American Revolution. In this admirably concise form, reissued in 1884, with a thorough index, the work of the chief historian of New England is known as A compendious History of New England from the Discovery by Europeans to the first general Congress of the Anglo-American Colonies,—the last summarized chapter in the work not being recognized in the title.[347]
Massachusetts.—For this as well as for the period embraced in the third volume of the present history,[348] Thomas Hutchinson’s History of Massachusetts Bay is of the highest importance. Hutchinson says that he was impelled to write the history of the colony from observing the repeated destruction of ancient records in Boston by fire, and he complains that the descendants of some of the first settlers will neither use themselves nor let others use the papers which have descended to them. He seems, however, to have had the use of the papers of the elder Elisha Cooke. He acknowledges the service which the Mather library, begun by Increase Mather, and in Hutchinson’s time owned by Samuel Mather, who had married Hutchinson’s sister, was to him.
While Hutchinson’s continuation of the story beyond 1749 was as yet unknown, George Richards Minot planned to take up the narrative and carry it on. Minot’s Continuation of the History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay from 1748 shows that he made use of the files in the state house as well as their condition then permitted, but he was conscious of the assistance which he might have had, and did not possess, from the papers in the English archives. His first volume was printed in 1798; and he died before his second volume was published, in 1803, which had brought the record down to 1765, but stopped abruptly.[349] Grahame (iii. 446) calls the work “creditable to the sense and talent of its author,” but considers “his style frequently careless, and even slovenly and ungrammatical.” His contemporaries viewed his literary manner much more favorably, and were inclined to give him a considerable share in placing our native historical literature upon a scholarly basis. More painstaking research, with a careful recording of authorities, characterizes the only other History of Massachusetts of importance, that by John S. Barry, whose second volume is given to the period now under consideration,—a work, however, destitute of commensurate literary skill, or its abundant learning would give it greater reputation. Haliburton, in chapters 2 and 3 of book iii. of The Rule and Misrule of the English in America, traces in a summary way the turbulent politics of the province of Massachusetts during its long struggle against the royal prerogative. Emory Washburn’s Sketches of the judicial history of Massachusetts from 1630 to the revolution in 1775, Boston, 1840, contains biographical notices of the judges of Massachusetts, and traces the relations of the study of the law to the progress of political events. William Henry Whitmore’s Massachusetts civil list for the colonial and provincial records, 1630-1774, Albany, 1870, is a list of the names and dates of appointment of all the civil officers constituted by authority of the charters or the local government. The general histories of Maine (during this period a part of Massachusetts) have been sufficiently characterized in another place.[350]
Connecticut.—The History of Connecticut, by Benjamin Trumbull, becomes not of less value as it approaches his own time. Grahame (ii. 165) says of him that he is “always distinguished by the accuracy of his statements, but not less distinguished by his partiality for his own people,” and Palfrey (iv. 226) avers that with all “his gravity Trumbull had a tendency for sensational traditions,” and both are right. He had not brought the story down later than 1713, in the volume published at Hartford in 1797. He says that he availed himself of the material which the ancient ministers and other principal gentlemen of Connecticut had communicated to Thomas Prince, when that writer was engaged upon his Chronological Hist. of New England; and in this collection, he adds, “important information was found, which could have been obtained from no other source.” Trumbull’s first volume was reprinted at New Haven in 1818, with a portrait of the author, together with a second volume, bringing the story down to 1764.