Part 4

"They hurry from out the forgotten past, Through the gathered mist of years, From the halls of memory, dim and vast, Where they have buried lain in the shadows cast By recent joys or fears."

More than three hundred years ago the poet Drummond wrote: "It is a great spur to virtue to look back on the worth of our line. In this is the memory of the dead preserved with the living, being more firm and honorable that an epitaph, and the living know that band that tieth them to others."

Footnotes

The Jamaica Plain Aqueduct Company was incorporated in 1795, and was the first systematic water system that the city of Boston had. It extended from the Pond to Fort Hill, and had about forty-five miles of pipes, made of white pine logs, nearly a foot and one half in diameter, with a bore of five and three quarters inches. The average daily supply was about 400,000 gallons. In excavating for the Subway, several specimens of the old wooden pipes have been unearthed in a good state of preservation.--From a recent number of the Boston Transcript. The first dwelling, built in 1633, was a simple log house, and was burned three or four years later.

An historical sketch of the First Church in Roxbury, by Dr. De Normandie.

One of the old omnibuses was very long, and named Osceola, for an Indian chief, a representation of whom was painted on the side.

At the time to which we refer, postage was regulated by distance. Thus, 6 1/4, 12 1/2, 16 3/4, and even 25 cents, were sometimes necessary.

For the origin of this peculiar name, see the incident which gave rise to it described in Drake's Town of Roxbury.

Dr. Thomas Gray's Half-Century Sermon.

Dr. Thomas Gray was born in Boston, March 16 1772, and graduated at Harvard College in 1790. He married a daughter of Rev. Samuel Stillman, D., pastor of the First Baptist Church in Boston, by whom he was prepared for the ministry, and entered the pastorate at Jamaica Plain, April 22, 1792. His mother, Mrs. Abigail May, widow of Moses Brewer, was then living in the old homestead, and died April 24, 1849, aged 80 years. Perkins Street, known in early days as Connecticut Lane, was named for William Perkins, who came to Roxbury in 1632. Within our recollection, a very small, old house, on the opposite side of the street, almost hidden from view by shrubbery and trees, was the humble home of old Simeon Giles, a Negro, who made a precarious living by wood-chopping and like service for the neighbors. He was the son of old Peter, who was a slave of Governor Adams, valued and kindly treated, and who lived to number one hundred years. Long, long ago their tired bodies were laid at rest in the little graveyard on the hill.

Whitcomb: Annals and Reminiscences of Jamaica Plain