Thomas Crehore was a native of Dorchester and born in 1769. At the age of thirty-two he bought the land on which he built his factory and house. The industry continued there (in Milton Lower Mills, on the Neponset River, I believe) until 1846, when the factory was burned down. Mr. Crehore died in the same year, leaving a large estate.
The Crehores and John Cogan were not the only Kelts who were business pioneers here in the early days. The first paper manufactured in America was made in Dorchester and three Irishmen, while not actually starting it, may be said to have been among the founders and promoters of the industry (their predecessors having for only a short time conducted it). These were Capt. James Boies, Jeremiah Smith and Hugh McLean. Cullen in his Story of the Irish in Boston, says: “If to Mr. Smith belonged the credit of being the first individual paper manufacturer, to others of his countrymen is due the fact that the Neponset River was made by them the basis of paper manufacturing in the North American colonies.”
Boies was born in Ireland in 1702 and died in Milton at the age of ninety-six years. He was with General Wolfe in the battle on the Plains of Abraham. By direction of General Washington, Captain Boies directed the work of transporting the fagots, in which 300 teams were engaged, that were used in fortifying Dorchester Heights, following which event the British evacuated Boston. Boies was one of a committee of three which drew up instructions for the representatives of the town of Milton, wherein it was voted that the colony would support the Continental Congress with their lives and their fortunes in the event of hostilities with England.
Jeremiah Smith was a native of Ireland and born in 1705. At the age of twenty-one he came to Boston and in 1737 removed to Milton. In that year he became superintendent of a paper industry started by some men, including Thomas Hancock, a few years before. Four years later he was its owner. He carried on the business until 1775, when he retired, after amassing a fortune.
Smith was an intimate friend of Governor Hutchinson and also of Governor Hancock, at whose hospitable board the wits of the day were wont to gather. Smith was seldom absent on such occasions, and if he were blessed with the characteristic Keltic wit, as presumably he was, he must have added largely to the entertainment of Hancock and his guests.
Hugh McLean, the third of the trio, was born in Ireland in 1724. He married a daughter of Boies and while in partnership with him became wealthy. He died in Milton at the age of seventy-five.
Col. John C. Linehan, in his work The Irish Scots and the “Scotch-Irish,” says: “Massachusetts had received, before the Revolution, a fair proportion of the Irish, for which the race has received but little credit. * * * The chronicles of the town of Boston, Mass., are full of enactments to keep the Irish out, but it was found to be impossible. They would come despite the prejudice, for Massachusetts was the most progressive of the colonies, and these people, or many of them, being artisans, spinners, weavers, shoemakers, ropemakers, etc., their labor became welcome, and a compromise was made by obliging those of them who were well-to-do to furnish bonds for their poorer countrymen and women, to the end that they would not become public charges.”
And again: “As early as 1780 and 1790 John Sullivan, Patrick Connor and Michael Carney were associated in the manufacture of paper at Dorchester, Mass.”
Properly speaking, I should not quote this statement in my paper, as the dates mentioned are later than the limit of time with which my subject treats; but I deemed it fitting to do so as being supplementary to those facts given about the other three Kelts engaged in the business.
Among the chaplains of the French fleet which assisted the Americans in the Revolution was Abbe Robin. He wrote a series of letters to a friend describing his travels in this country; the first, dated in Boston, contained this paragraph: