The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1915-01-10

IN the colonies from lIle OuNStt.
floaters coming and going merely lent
variety and picturesqueness-or brought
temporary trouble-to the sober streets.
Up to the Revolution the population re-
manned homogeneous, with the domi-
mating influences distinctively of Eng
lsh lineage. When with the Revolution
the English yoke was thrown off and
the Customers" tore down every en-
blem of royalty and every sign of
Tory and burned them in a huge bon
fire in front Of the Old State House
and afterward renamed King street
state" and Queen street Court" they
could not blot out its English mark.
And we'll into the nineteenth century,
when in 1922 Boston emerged from a
town 10 a city. the population was still
"singularly homogeneous; IL came to
cityhood slowly and somewhat re-
luctantly after repeated attempts, the
first early in the colony period. Ed
mund Quincy in his fascinating life Of
his distinguished father. Josiah Quincy,
writing OF the municipality in 1928 dur
ing josiah Quincy's first admnistra-
tion as Mayor-he was the city's Sec
ond Mayor-observes: THE great Irish
and German emigration had not then
set in. The city was eminently English
in it's character and appearance. and
probably no town Of its size in England
| had a population OF such unmiXed Eng
| lish descent as the Boston Of that day.
1t was Angls ipsis Anglior-more Eng
| fish than the English themselves. The
| Inhabitants of New England at that
time were descended, with scarcely any
| admiXture of foreign blood, from the
Puritan emigration of the seventeenth
| century"
This complexion remained unfair
| nished for a decade or so longer. The
infusion OF foreign elements that
| changed il began about the latter
eighteen-thirties and the early forties,
with the development of large New
| England industries, Of which Boston
was the financial centre-the building
Of canals, turnpikes, railroads, fac
tories; the expansion of commerce with
the advent of steamships. 1t came rap
| idly, too this change in complexion,
when fairly begun. Lemuel Shattuck's
census of Boston for 1S45, a local clas-
sic in it's way, disclosed a state of af-
fairs which astOnishcd the self-satisfled
Bostonlan Of that day in its demonstra-
| ton that the native born comprised
only a little more than onc-third Of the
|
grants from other places in the United
states or from foreign countries"
| Within the next half century the pro-
! portion had become one-third Of for
| eiGn birth, and another third of for
| eign parentage. Yet withal, the old
English likeness was not shattered; Il
was but dimmed
AS the founders and settlers brought
with them all their beloved old home
| characteristics and would transplant
! them, as was possible, in their new
| home, so we ind their earliest crooked
! little streets with Old London names.
! So the earlier social life, grim though
| II was with its PuritaniCal tinge is seen
to have been old English in a smaller
and narrower way. SO were the man.
ners and customs The taverns were
| named for old London inns. The shop
signs repeated old London symbols.
And to-day, as We ramble about the
| shadowy precincts OF the Colony Town,
we chance deectably here and there
upon a twisting street yet holding its
first given London Name Londonlike
old court, byway, or alley; a LondOnish
| foot passage making short cut between
thoroughfares an arched way through
buildings in old London style. So, too
we find yet lingering, though long since
! in disguise, an old London fashioned
underground passage or two between
courts or one time habitations sugges-
tive OF smuggling days and OF romance
Such is that grim underground pas
sage between old Province court and
Harvard place issuing on Washington
street opposite the old South Meetinp
House, which starts in the court near
n plumbing shop and runs alongside tn,
huge granite foundations OF the real
wall Of the old Province House, seat OF