1736. The first lot of ten acres is assigned to heirs of James Penn, who was a selectman of the town. Samuel Eliot, grandfather of President Eliot, had a one half acre lot; one half acre lot belonged to heirs of Rev. James Allen. Then came the twenty acre pasture of James Bowdoin. Having reached the summit of the hill we come to the Hancock pasture, comprising about five and one half acres. This became the capitol lot, and also the reservoir lot which is now covered by the State House extension. Following Beacon Street and descending towards Charles River we come to Benjamin Joy's two acre pasture, which he bought for a residence, desiring to get a dwelling in the country, as being more healthy than a town residence. Then came the twenty acre pasture of John Singleton Copley, the painter. It extended for one third of a mile on Beacon Street. Other owners are mentioned as having shares of the westerly slope of the hill. The highest point of Beacon Hill was about one hundred and thirtyeight feet above the level of the sea, while the entire hill was a most commanding site. The people of the town seem very early to have regarded it as among the natural objects to be preserved and transmitted to their descendants in its original form. But, as is frequently the case when there are several owners to an ornamental tract, it was found very difficult to control it. As early as 1764, Thomas Hodson, who owned a small portion of the land on the north side of the hill, believed he had a right. to dig away the gravel to any extent he pleased, by so doing jeopardizing the very existence of this famous eminence. The Selectmen tried to dissuade the selfish fellow from removing the earth, but their efforts were unavailing and the subject was brought into town meeting and a committee was raised "to take Thomas Hodson and his digging gravel into consideration." Thomas Hancock and James Otis were of the committee. They soon reported that Hodson would continue his work of destruction, and had already dug to such extent that the hill was in danger of being destroyed, and what was even more exasperating, there was no prospect of the town being able to buy him off. The matter was carried to the General Court, but without favorable results, and Hodson went on filling his purse from the sale of gravel used. to fill up the dock. Although these unfortunate encroachments had been made upon the hill, the summit remained in its completeness, and served as a very convenient point of observation during the hostile engagements of the Revolution on Massachusetts soil. Anxious wives and children of the patriots, with equally anxious Tories, witnessed the termination of the reckless and murderous raid upon Lexington and Concord, and were also permitted to behold the grand and terrible scene, which so soon followed it, upon the heights of Charlestown, while the smoke from the burning town rolled over the river. A letter dated June 18, 1775, contains this statement, "I saw a great part of it from Beacon Hill." After the Revolutionary war, the citizens of Boston, regardless of the "THE NEW STATE HOUSE," FROM SNOW'S "HISTORY OF BOSTON" THE PRESENT BEACON MONUMENT disgraceful manner in which Beacon Hill had been marred, were possessed of sufficient sentiment to prompt them to erect a memorial in place of the old Beacon. We almost pause to wonder at the selection of the spot for the memorial, in view of what had been done in the way of injury to the hill, and the prospective destruction foreshadowed in the report of the town's committee who labored in vain with Thomas Hodson. The building of monuments was at that time a new enterprise in the Province, and the services of a competent architect were in demand and happily found in a son of Boston,Charles Bulfinch. The town directory issued in 1789 presents his name as "gentleman, Marlborough Street." He had but recently returned from several years of travel and study abroad, married, and settled down to his life work. Young Bulfinch had been familiar with Beacon Hill and steep that was "A grassy hemisphere, so one could with difficulty mount its sides, descending with a perfectly regular curve to the streets on the south, west, and north. On the east it had been encroached upon, and the contour broken. Just opposite the end of Coolidge Avenue, on Derne Street, there was a flight of wooden steps, ten or fifteen in number, leading part way up the hili. After that we had to climb the rest of the way by the aid of the foot-holes that had been worn in the surface, along a wide path worn bare by the feet, to the top; where there was also a space of some fifty feet square, worn bare of sod. . . Descending by the south side one followed a similarly rough gravel path to another flight of steps leading down to the level of Mt. Vernon Street. . . . The sport of batting ball up the hill and meeting it on the descent was played by some; but it was not so easy a game as one would at first suppose, on account of the difficulty of maintaining one's footing on the hillside, which was so steep as to require some skill even to stand erect on it." The mind of the young architect must have been charged with sublime impressions of the grand monuments seen abroad, and he was ready to grasp the opportunity to meet the demands of his fellows in supplying a monument for the hill, |