Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 9.djvu/232

 210 Beacon Hill Before the Houses.

Beacon Hill was as cheap as public ward compelled by the town to fence

documents. Ministers are enjoined not in his vacant land, he conveyed back

to be worldly minded, and not to be to the town, for thirty pounds, all but

given to filthy lucre. But the Reverend the six-acre lot at the corner of Beacon

James Allen would furnish an excellent and Spruce Streets, and extending

pattern for a modern real-estate specu- westerly to Charles River, and northerly

lator. In addition to his pasture to Pinckney Street, where he lived

on the south side of Cambridge Street, until 1635, when he removed to Rhode

he had also a twenty-acre pasture on Island, and founded the town which

the north side of that street, between bears his name.

Chambers Street and Charles River, It will thus be perceived that the extending to Poplar Street, for which he portion of Beacon Hill, included be- paid one hundred and forty pounds, tween Beacon Street, Beaver Street, New-England currency, equivalent to Cambridge Street, Bowdoin Square, four hundred and sbcty-seven dollars. Court Street, Tremont Row, and Tre- equal to twenty-three dollars per acre, mont Street, containing about seventy- He was thus the proprietor of all the three acres, was sold, less than a century territory from Pinckney Street to Poplar ago, at prices ranging from twenty- two Street, between Joy Street and Chambers to nine hundred dollars per acre, aggre- Street on the east, and Grove Street gating less than thirty thousand dollars, and Charles River on the west ; for It now comprises the ninth ward of the which he paid the magnificent sum of city of Boston, and contains within its nine hundred and sixty-seven dollars ! limits a real estate valuation of sixteen It was called "Allen's Farm." The millions of dollars. Its name and fame Capitol lot, containing ninety -five are associated with important events thousand square feet. Was bought by and men prominent in Amepcan annals, the town of Boston of John Hancock Upon its slopes have dwelt Josiah (who, though a devoted patriot to the Quincy, of ante - Revolutionary fame, American cause, yet in all his busi- and his son and namesake of civic ness transactions had an eye to profit), fame ; and also his grandson and name- for the sum of thirteen thousand sake, and Edmund, equally distin- three hundred and thirty-three dollars ; guished ; Lemuel Shaw, Robert G. only twenty times as much as he gave Shaw, Daniel Webster, Abbott Law- for it ! The town afterward conveyed it rence, Samuel, Nathan, and William to the Commonwealth for five shillings, Appleton, Samuel T. Armstrong, Mrs. upon condition that it should be used Harrison Gray Otis, J. Lothrop Motley, for a Capitol. In 1846, the city of William H. Prescott, Charles Sumner, Boston paid one hundred and forty-five John A. Andrew, John C. Warren, Mrs. thousand one hundred and seven dollars Sarah J. Hale, Lyman Beecher, William for the reservoir lot containing thirty- E. Channing, and Hosea Ballou. La- seven thousand four hundred and eighty- fayette made it his temporary home in eight square feet. In 1633, the town 1824, and Kossuth in 1852. During the granted to William Blackstone fifty acres present century, the laws of Massachu- of land wherever he might select. He setts have been enacted upon and pro- accordingly selected upon the south- mulgated from its summit, and will westerly slope of Beacon Hill, which probably continue so to be for ages included the Common. Being after- to come.

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