has been more careful of its street nomenclature, in the lower part of the old Dutch town, than Boston, or the towns in its vicinity. Witness, as examples, Wall Street, Canal Street and the Bowery.

To him, therefore, the President said, it seemed most desirable that some radical measure of reform should be introduced, and steps taken to preserve what yet remained to Massachusetts of its historic and really interesting local and street nomenclature. The Society could in this matter hardly proceed too soon or too energetically.

He therefore suggested that the draft introduced by Mr. Mead should be referred to the Council, with instructions to prepare a formal Memorial based thereon, for immediate presentation to His Honor the Mayor; and also to take such steps as seemed proper and expedient to bring the matter before the Great and General Court at its next session. There would, however, be ample time for this in the autumn, before the beginning of the next legislative year, after the excitement incidental to a presidential election had been allowed time in which to subside.

The disposition of the matter suggested by the President was acceptable to Mr. Mead; and the memorial was referred to the Council, with instructions.

C. F. ADAMS submitted the following:

In the issue of the "Boston Evening Transcript" for Saturday, June 6, 1908,1 there appeared a series of paragraphs, under the head of "The Listener," relating to a recent visit by the Trustees and others, to the Farm and Trades School on Thompson's Island, in Boston Harbor. As expressed in the first paragraph, the occasion was the "immemorial, yearly inspection of the Farm School."

In one of these paragraphs, the writer, referring to the school, and to the fact that it was formerly considered reformatory in character, adds:

It is no longer an "asylum." . . . The old stigma is . . completely gone, there are no more bad boys at the Farm School than there are Indians at Squantum or Fore River, where on the trip when he took in Thompson's Island Captain Standish killed a couple of men and a boy

1 Part two, p. 8/1.

because he wanted their cabin to pass the night in, a little incident of that period which corresponds to boy-gunners' feats with the feathered tribes inhabiting the coves along the shore.

That this statement, so far as Captain Miles Standish is concerned, excited surprise in my mind is a mild form of expression. For a moment I could not imagine what the writer had got hold of, or how the tolerably familiar facts connected with Miles Standish's single historical visit to Thompson's Island, as recounted by Edward Winslow in Mourt's Relation, could be distorted so beyond possible recognition.

Gradually, however, it dawned upon me that the writer had confused the incidents of two separate visits of Standish to Boston Harbor, that to Thompson's Island, on the 29th and 30th of September, 1621,1 and that to Wessagusset, or what is now Weymouth, on Thursday, the 6th of April, 1623,1 an interval of something like eighteen months having elapsed between the two. Though great injustice is done the Plymouth Colony's Captain in the extract quoted, yet I doubt if it excited even a passing notice in the mind of any one but myself; nor should I call attention to it here had it not been suggestive of another communication also printed in the Transcript, though now some fourteen years ago. Of this quite forgotten communication I at the time took note, as relating to a locality and subject in which I felt an interest; and both of which are historical.

But, recurring for a moment to Captain Miles Standish, I have myself, in a book entitled "Three Episodes of Massachusetts History," published some sixteen years ago, given a detailed account of these two visits of the Plymouth settlers to what was then known as the Massachusetts Bay. So I will not now repeat myself. For present purposes it is sufficient to say that Miles Standish's acquaintance with Thompson's Island was made in the way and at the time described in Mourt's Relation, that is, on Wednesday and Thursday, 29th and 30th September, 1621.1 The visit was one of exploration only, and altogether peaceful in character. In the course of it no natives were molested, ill-used or in any way maltreated, much less killed; and the party in due time returned

1 New style. See 1 Collections, viii. 267-270; T. Prince, Annals, 131. 2 i. 13-15; 90-93.

to Plymouth filled with admiration of the region they had visited.

Wholly different in purpose was the trip to Wessagusset, on that portion of what is now Weymouth 1 lying on the Fore River, and, until dug and dredged away some twenty years ago, designated on the maps as Hunt's Hill Point. This visitation for a visitation in the scriptural sense of the word it strictly was occurred in April, 1623; and the party from Plymouth composing it now came, not as explorers, but distinctly bent on an errand of death. Proposing to suppress at the outset what bade fair to develop into a general Indian war on all European settlers, Standish and his companions headed, not for Thompson's Island, then called Trevore,2 but for the more southern waters of Boston Bay; and there at Wessagusset, they, two days later, on April 6, precipitated the only hand-to-hand conflict with the savages in which, so far as the record shows, Standish ever took part. He did not then, as "The Listener" asserts, kill "a couple of men and a boy because he wanted their cabin to pass the night in," but he, so to speak, knifed to death Pecksuot and Wituwamat, the two most aggressive of the Indian braves, afterward hanging a boy, and, next day, killing or wounding yet others. Something of a massacre, the conflict was none the less provoked by the savages; and, for the whites, it was necessary as a measure of self-preservation. But the story has been often told, both in verse and prose, and there is no occasion now to repeat it.

It was, however, this later expedition and its results which "The Listener" seems to have had vaguely in mind, and to have confused with the incidents of the earlier and peaceful visit to Thompson's Island. Of little consequence in themselves, it is none the less to be hoped these erroneous statements will not become legendary among the masters and pupils of what we are told by "The Listener" is now officially designated as "The Farm and Trades School," for it so chances. that both Thompson's Island and Squantum possess a real

1 2 Proceedings vii. 24-28.

2 Named by Standish from William Trevore, one of the party who visited the island, September 29, 1621 (new style). See C. F. Adams, Three Episodes, i. 14, and New England Historical and Genealogical Register, ix. 248.

3 Weymouth Historical Society, Publications, iii. 118-123.

historic interest; and for that reason, and not merely in order to set right "The Listener" of the Transcript, I propose here to resurrect and reprint the long communication I have referred to as having appeared in "Answers to Queries" in the Transcript of Saturday, November 10, 1894. The initials, "E. T. H.," appended, are probably those of Elizabeth Taylor Horton; but the facts stated deserve to be preserved in some place more accessible than the files of a newspaper. There buried, in our Proceedings they will always be accessible, at least to the investigator. I will merely add that reference will also be found to Thompson's Island in our recently published Chamberlain's "History of Chelsea," 2 and in the privately printed volume of Lynde family diaries, that family having been for a long time proprietors of Thompson Island.3

THOMPSON'S ISLAND AND SQUANTUM. Thompson's Island: An ancient tradition says, that in 1619 Thompson examined the harbor islands, in company with Masconomo, the sagamore of Agawam (who made an affidavit to this effect), seeking a proper place to establish his trading-post; and chose the island which still bears his name, because it had a small river and a harbor for boats. In 1620 Myles Standish came hither with William Trevour, a sailor of the Mayflower, and named it Island Trevour, reporting, "and then no Natives there inhabiting, neither was there any sign of any that had been there that I could perceive, nor of many, many yeares after." Trevour made affidavit that he took possession in the name of David Thompson, gentleman of London; who, indeed, soon afterwards secured a grant of the locality. What is now New Hampshire received its first colonists in the spring of 1623 when David Thompson with a small company began at Odiorne's Point, in what is now Rye, a settlement for a fishing and trading post. It took the name Piscataqua (Indian, and means a branching of the river) from the river on which it was located. Here Thompson built a large and strong house which he surrounded with a high palisade, for there were no other white men nearer than fifty miles by land or water. He was not, however, a hermit in his loneliness and seclusion. His neighbors soon began to pay him friendly visits. One of the first to seek his hospitality was the once prosperous

1 Wife of Henry A. Horton, of Martinez, California. She died at Lane Hospital, San Francisco, March 10, 1900.

2 i. 14.

3 F. E. Oliver, Diaries of Benjamin Lynde and of Benjamin Lynde, Jr. (Boston, 1880), 32n. The island was conveyed by John Paine to Simon Lynde, August 31, 1666, for £312.7. It was given by him to Benjamin Lynde, and remained in the hands of descendants for more than one hundred years.

patron of the Pilgrims, Mr. Thomas Weston, who now came a miserable fugitive in rags. Myles Standish was another visitor. He had come seeking help, for a long continued drought was threatening the Pilgrims with famine. Thompson generously gave the Plymouth captain what he could spare, and then went back with him to Plymouth. Six years after Thompson built his house Captain John Mason took a patent in his own name for all the country lying between the Merrimack and Piscataqua as far back as sixty miles from the coast. To this tract the name of New Hampshire (for Hampshire, a shire of England) was given in honor of Mason's home in England. Thompson removed to Boston Bay in 1626. The house built by Thompson was subsequently known as Mason's Hall. Part of the walls, with the great chimney-stack rising out of the ruins, stood for many years, but now not one stone remains upon another to show where the first house in New Hampshire was built. But quite near the homestead are a few sunken, unlettered headstones which are supposed to mark the graves of some of the early settlers. In 1626 David Thompson established on the island which bears his name one of the first permanent settlements in the harbor, antedating Boston by several years. It was a trading-post, where the Indians exchanged their beaver-furs and fish for the trinkets of civilization; and the same proprietor had a similar place on the Kennebec. The island was taken possession of as vacuum domicilium, to which no man had claim; and its advantages were vicinity to the sea, good anchorage under the lee of Castle Island, and vicinity to the Neponset Indians. Blackstone testified that he knew "ould Mr. Thompson," who chose this place for settlement because "there is a harbor in the island for a boat which none of the rest of the islands had."

The Scottish island lord took a deep and kindly interest in his Indian neighbors concerning whom he had peculiar theories. In conversation with Morton of Merry Mount and his mysterious neighbor, Sir Christopher Gardiner, he maintained a belief that they were descended from the scattered Trojans after such time as Brutus left Latium." But he drove sharp bargains with them and piled up many a bale of peltries in his little castle of logs. Near by were Morton, and the Wessagusset colonists, and other isolated settlers, the unwitting pioneers of a great company. It was of these that Prince wrote:

To the southeast, near Thompson's Island, live some few Planters more. These were the first Planters of these Parts, having some small Trade with the natives, for Bear Skins which moved them to make their abode in these places, and are found of some help to the new colony.

Thompson was a Scottish gentleman; a traveller and scholar as well, and had been the London agent of Sir Ferdinando Gorges' company,