On a certain occasion he was taking a sleigh-ride with his family, and in one of the adjacent towns met a gentleman with his turn-out in a narrow and drifted part of the road, where some difficulty occurred in passing each other. Colonel Ansart suggested to him that he should not have driven into such a place when he saw him coming. The man denied that he saw the colonel, and told him he lied. Colonel Ansart seized his pistol to punish him for his insolence, when his wife interfered, an explanation followed, and it was ascertained that both gentlemen were from Dracut. One was deacon of the church, and the other "inspector-general of artillery." Of course the pistols were put up, as the deacon didn't wish to be shot, and the colonel wouldn't tell a lie.
In his prime, our hero stood six feet high in his boots, and weighed two hundred pounds. He died in Dracut, May 28, 1804, at the age of sixty-two years.
Mrs. Ansart was born in Boston, and witnessed the battle of Bunker Hill, and often described the appearance of the British soldiers as they marched along past her residence, both in going to the battle and in returning. She was thirteen years of age, and recollected it perfectly. She said they were grand as they passed along the streets of Boston toward Charlestown. The officers were elegantly dressed and were in great spirits, thinking it was only a pleasant little enterprise to go over to Charlestown and drive those Yankees out of their fort; but when they returned it was a sad sight. The dead and dying were carried through the streets pale and ghastly and covered with blood. She said the people witnessed the battle from the houses in Boston, and as regiment after regiment was swept down by the terrible fire of the Americans, they said that the British were feigning to be frightened and falling down for sport; but when they saw that they did not get up again, and when the dead and wounded were [pg 389] brought back to Boston, the reality began to be made known, and that little frolic of taking the fort was really an ugly job, and hard to accomplish.
Mrs. Ansart died in Dracut at the age of eighty-six years, January 27, 1849. She retained her mental and physical faculties to a great degree till within a short time before her death. She was accustomed to walk to church, a distance of one mile, when she was eighty years of age. Colonel and Mrs. Ansart were both buried in Woodbine Cemetery, in the part of Lowell which belonged to Dracut at the time of their interment.
BEACON HILL BEFORE THE HOUSES.
BY DAVID M. BALFOUR.
The visitor to the dome of the Capitol of the State, as he looks out from its lantern and beholds spread immediately beneath his feet a semi-circular space, whose radius does not exceed a quarter of a mile, covered with upward of two thousand dwelling-houses, churches, hotels, and other public edifices, does not in all probability ask himself the question: "What did this place look like before there was any house here?" When Lieutenant-Colonel George Washington visited Boston in 1756, on business connected with the French war, and lodged at the Cromwell's Head Tavern, a building which is still standing on the north side of School Street, upon the site of No. 13, where Mrs. Harrington now deals out coffee and "mince"-pie to her customers, Beacon Hill was a collection of pastures, owned by thirteen proprietors, in lots containing from a half to twenty acres each. The southwesterly slope of the prominence is designated upon the old maps as "Copley Hill."
We will now endeavor to describe the appearance of the hill, at the commencement of the American Revolution, with the beacon on its top, from which it took its name, consisting of a tall mast sixty feet in height, erected in 1635, with an iron crane projecting from its side, supporting an iron pot. The mast was placed on cross-timbers, with a stone foundation, supported by braces, and provided with cross-sticks serving as a ladder for ascending to the crane. It remained until 1776, when it was destroyed by the British; but was replaced in 1790 by a monument, inclosed in a space six rods square, where it remained until 1811. It was surmounted by an eagle, which now surmounts the speaker's desk in the hall of the House of Representatives, and had tablets upon its four sides with inscriptions commemorative of Revolutionary events. It stood nearly opposite the southeast corner of the reservoir lot, upon the site of No. 82 Temple Street, and its foundation was sixty feet higher up in the air than the present level of that street. The lot was sold, in 1811, for the miserable pittance of eighty cents per square foot!
Starting upon our pedestrian tour from the corner of Tremont and Beacon Streets, where now stands the Albion, was an acre lot owned by the heirs of James Penn, a selectman of the town, and a ruling elder in the First Church, which stood in State Street upon the site of Brazer's Building. The parsonage stood opposite, [pg 390] upon the site of the Merchants Bank Building, and extended with its garden to Dock Square, the water flowing up nearly to the base of the Samuel Adams statue. Next comes a half-acre lot owned by Samuel Eliot, grandfather of President Eliot of Harvard University. Then follows a second half-acre lot owned by the heirs of the Reverend James Allen, fifth minister of the First Church, who, in his day, as will be shown in the sequel, owned a larger portion of the surface of Boston than any other man, being owner of thirty-seven of the seven hundred acres which inclosed the territory of the town. His name is perpetuated in the street of that name bounding the Massachusetts General Hospital grounds. Somerset Street was laid out through it. The Congregational House, Jacob Sleeper Hall, and Boston University Building, which occupies the former site of the First Baptist Church, under the pastorship of the Reverend Rollin H. Neale, stand upon it. Next comes Governor James Bowdoin's two-acre pasture, extending from the last-named street to Mount Vernon Street, and northerly to Allston Street; the upper part of Bowdoin Street and Ashburton Place were laid out through it; the Church of Notre Dame des Victoires, formerly Freeman-place Chapel, built by the Second Church, under the pastoral care of the Reverend Chandler Robbins, and afterwards occupied by the First Presbyterian Church, the Church of the Disciples, the Brattle-square Church, the Old South Church, and the First Reformed Episcopal Church; so that the entire theological gamut has resounded from its walls; the Swedenborgian Church, over which the Reverend Thomas Worcester presided for a long series of years, also stands upon it. Having reached the summit of the hill, we come abreast of the five-and-a-half-acre pasture of Governor John Hancock, the first signer of the immortal Declaration of American Independence, extending from Mount Vernon Street to Joy Street, and northerly to Derne Street, embracing the Capitol lot, and also the reservoir lot, for which last two he paid, in 1752, the modest sum of eleven hundred dollars! It is now worth a thousand times as much. For the remainder of his possessions in that vicinity he paid nine hundred dollars more. The upper part of Mount Vernon Street, the upper part of Hancock Street, and Derne Street, were laid out through it. Then, descending the hill, comes Benjamin Joy's two-acre pasture, extending from Joy Street to Walnut Street, and extending northerly to Pinckney Street; forty-seven dwelling-houses now standing upon it. Mr. Joy paid two thousand dollars for it. At the time of its purchase he was desirous of getting a house in the country, as being more healthy than a town-residence, and he selected this localty as "being country enough for him." The upper part of Joy Street was laid out through it. Now follows the valuable twenty-acre pasture of John Singleton Copley, the eminent historical painter, one of whose productions (Charles the First demanding in the House of Commons the arrest of the five impeached members) is now in the art-room of the Public Library. It extended for a third of a mile on Beacon Street, from Walnut Street to Beaver Street, and northerly to Pinckney Street, which he purchased in lots at prices ranging from fifty to seventy dollars per acre. Walnut, Spruce, a part of Charles, River, Brimmer, Branch Avenue, Byron Avenue, [pg 392] Lime, and Chestnut Streets, Louisburg Square, the lower parts of Mount Vernon and Pinckney Streets, and the southerly part of West Cedar Street, have been laid out through it. Copley left Boston, in 1774, for England, and never returned to his native land. He wrote to his agent in Boston, Gardner Greene (whose mansion subsequently stood upon the enclosure in Pemberton Square, surrounded by a garden of two and a quarter acres, for which he paid thirty-three thousand dollars), to sell the twenty-acre pasture for the best price which could be obtained. After a delay of some time he sold it, in 1796, for eighteen thousand four hundred and fifty dollars; equivalent to nine hundred dollars per acre, or two cents per square foot. It is a singular fact that a record title to only two and a half of the twenty acres could be found. It was purchased by the Mount Vernon Proprietors, consisting of Jonathan Mason, three tenths; Harrison Gray Otis, three tenths; Benjamin Joy, two tenths; and Henry Jackson, two tenths. The barberry bushes speedily disappeared after the Copley sale. The southerly part of Charles Street was laid out through it. And the first railroad in the United States was here employed. It was gravitation in principle. An inclined plane was laid from the top of the hill, and the dirt-cars slid down, emptying their loads into the water at the foot and drawing the empty cars upward. The apex of the hill was in the rear of the Capitol near the junction of Mount Vernon and Temple Streets, and was about sixty feet above the present level of that locality, and about even with the roof of the Capitol. The level at the corner of Bowdoin Street and Ashburton Place has been reduced about thirty feet, and at the northeast corner of the reservoir lot about twenty feet, and Louisburg Square about fifteen feet. The contents of the excavations were used to fill up Charles Street as far north as Cambridge Street, the parade-ground on the Common, and the Leverett-street jail lands. The territory thus conveyed now embraces some of the finest residences in the city. The Somerset Club-house, the Church of the Advent, and the First African Church, built in 1807 by the congregation worshiping with the Reverend Daniel Sharp, stand upon it.