Old Boston Taverns and Tavern ClubsDrake, Samuel Adams
History
Old Boston Taverns and Tavern Clubs
Drake, Samuel Adams
Boston (Mass.) -- Social life and customs; Clubs -- Massachusetts -- Boston; Taverns (Inns) -- Massachusetts -- Boston
Henry Deering died in 1717, and was buried with his wife on the same day.
He had been a man greatly interested in public affairs. In 1707 he had
proposed the erection of a building for the custody of the town's records;
at the same time he proposed a wharf at the foot of the street, now State
Street, then extending only as far as Merchants' Row. This was soon built
as "Boston Pier" or "Long Wharf." He also presented a memorial for the
"Preventing Disolation by Fire" in the town.
In the division of Deering's estate in 1720 the dwelling house in the
occupation of Samuel Tyley, known by the name of the _Golden Ball_, with
privilege in the passage on the south and in the well, was given his
daughter Mary, the wife of William Wilson. Mrs. Wilson, in her will drawn
up in 1729, then a widow, devised the house to her namesake and niece,
Mary, daughter of her brother, Capt. Henry Deering. At the time of Mrs.
Wilson's death in 1753 her niece was the wife of John Gooch, whom she
married in 1736. Samuel Tyley died in 1722, while still the landlord of
the _Golden Ball_.
The next landlord of whom we have knowledge was William Patten, who had
taken the _Green Dragon_ in 1714. In 1733 he was host at the _Golden
Ball_, where he stayed till 1736, when he took the inn on West Street,
opposite the schoolhouse, and next to the estate later known as the
_Washington Gardens_.
He was succeeded by Humphrey Scarlett, who died January 4, 1739-40, aged
forty-six, and is buried on Copp's Hill with his first wife Mehitable
(Pierce) Scarlett. He married as a second wife Mary Wentworth. By the
first wife he had a daughter Mary (b. 1719), who married Jedediah Lincoln,
Jr., and by the second wife a son named Humphrey. When the son was a year
old, in 1735, two negro servants of Scarlett, by name Yaw and Caesar, were
indicted for attempting to poison the family one morning at breakfast, by
putting ratsbane or arsenic in the chocolate. Four months after Scarlett's
death his widow married William Ireland.
Richard Gridley, born in Boston in 1710, was apprenticed to Theodore
Atkinson, merchant, and later became a gauger. In 1735 he kept a tavern on
Common Street, now Tremont Street. Here by order of the General Court he
entertained four Indians, chiefs of the Pigwacket tribe, at an expense of
£40 "for drinks, tobacco, victuals, and dressing." Five pounds of this was
for extra trouble. The Committee thought the charges extravagant and cut
him down to £33 for their entertainment from June 28 to July 9. In 1738 he
took the _Golden Ball_. His fame in later years, at Louisburg and
elsewhere, as an engineer and artillery officer is well known.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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