the adjoining state of Connecticut a governor also, in the person of his son and namesake. Other colonial dignitaries have their names associated with this enterprise. In 1678 Samuel Appleton became a proprietor. There is a bronze tablet fastened to the perpendicular face of a rocky cliff upon Catamount Hill, which was within the territory of the iron company, which bears this legend:

"Appleton's Pulpit.

In September, 1687, from this rock tradition asserts that, resisting the tyranny of Sir Edmund Andros, Major Samuel Appleton of Ipswich spoke to the people in behalf of those principles which later were embodied in the Declaration of Independence."

Major Samuel Appleton was commander of the Massachusetts forces in the Indian war, and later one of the witchcraft judges. Queer mix-up in his composition there must have been. Above the ferry a dam was built across the river, higher even than the present dam, which flows several hundred acres and furnishes water-power for several woolen mills. It is estimated that the company owned about three thousand acres of iron mill land. The works were in active operation in 1643, and from frequent mention in the colonial records and by the liberal rights, privileges, and exemptions granted them by the general court, seem to have been anxiously nourished as the leading or only manufacturing industry for quite a number of years. Governor Winthrop, under date of August 4, 1649, writes to his son: "The iron work goeth on with more hope. It yields now about seven tons per week, but is most out of that brown earth which lies under the bog mine." In another letter, September 30, he says: "The furnace runs eight tons per week and their bar iron is as good as Spanish." As an example of the prolix phraseology of the colonial days, and as a specimen of the liberality of the general court in favor of a foreign plant, space may be given to the following reply to a petition of the undertakers of the iron works presented October 15, 1645:

"1. It is granted and by this court ordered, that the undertakers, their agents and assigns, are hereby granted the sole privilege and benefit of making iron and managing of all iron mines and works that are now, or shall be discovered and found out, or hereafter shall be in this jurisdiction, for the term of twenty-one years from the former grant : Provided that the said adventurers, their agents or assigns, do within three years from the former date use their best endeavors to their utmost skill to perfect so many of the said works that the inhabitants of this jurisdiction be furnished with bar iron of all sorts for their use, not exceeding twenty pounds per ton. Provided, also, that it shall be in the liberty of any within this jurisdiction to be adventurers with the undertakers, that by the last day of this October they being in their adventures, not less in one man's name than fifty pounds, with allowance to the adventurers for the stock of one thousand pounds, by them already disbursed.

2. The court doth hereby further grant to the said undertakers, their agents and assigns, in all places of waste and lands not appropriated to any town or person, that the said undertakers, their agents and assigns, at all times during the said term of twentyone years, shall and may freely, and at their own discretion, have and take all manner of wood and timber, to be converted into coals, or any other uses for the service of the undertakers, as also all manner of earth, stones, turf, clay, and other materials for buildings and reparation of their works, forges, mills, or houses built or to be built, or for making or molding any manner of guns, pots, and all other cast-iron ware, and for converting wood into charcoal, and also to get, dig, and carry away of all manner of stone iron ore and wood of all sorts, and any other material or things of use for their works; and it is hereby also granted to the said undertakers, their agents or assigns, that they shall have free liberty to make all convenient ways and passages, as also all manner of dams, water-courses, sluices, ponds for water, in all waste grounds, or other conveyances to, from, and for the service of the said works built or to be built not appropriated to any town or person, during such time as the said works shall continue: Provided, if by any pond, sluice, dam, or any other work (though in land appropriated) they should spoil or any ways prejudice the land appropriated to any town or person, the said undertakers shall make due and just satisfaction.

3. Also the court doth hereby further grant to the said adventurers, their agents or assigns, in all the grounds that are or shall be appropriated, that the said adventurers, their agents or assigns, shall have free liberty at all times during the term to dig, get, carry away all manner of stone or iron ore, and to make and use all convenient ways and sluices, water-courses, pools, dams, ponds for water, and other conveniences, to, from and for the service of the said works through all the said grounds, that are or hereafter shall be appropriated (except houses, orchards, not exceeding three acres, and yards), giving such due and full recompense for the same to the owners thereof, for the time being, as three indifferent men shall adjudge whereof, one to be appointed by the said court at the next general meeting after the undertakers, their agents or assigns, shall make or use any of the said ways or water-courses or other particulars therein mentioned for the services aforesaid, and one other by the owner of the land for the time being, and the third by the undertakers or adventurers.

4. The court hereby do further grant unto the said adventurers, and to their heirs and assigns forever, so much land now or hereafter to be in this jurisdiction as aforesaid, as shall contain in six places three miles square in each place, or so much in quantity as containeth three miles square, not exceeding four miles in length, to be set out in such places and parcels as the said undertakers or their agents shall make choice of, not being already appropriated as aforesaid, upon which said land the said adventurers shall have free liberty, and hereby do undertake that within the said term of (twenty-one) years, to search, set out, and find convenient places, within the said compass of land, for the building and setting up of six forges, or furnaces, and not blomaries only, or so many more as they shall have occasion for, the making of iron as aforesaid, which they shall (the iron stone and other materials appearing proper and fit for the making of iron as aforesaid) build and set up within the term aforesaid, provided that the court may grant a plantation in any place where the court doth think meet, the undertakers or their agents there residing having first notice thereof, and not making choice of the same for part of the land to be set out and granted to them, for the design of planting the said iron works and making iron as aforesaid.

5. And it is further granted and ordered that what quantity of iron of all sorts and qualities the said adventurers, their agents or assigns, shall make more than the inhabitants shall have need or use of for their service to be bought and paid for by the said inhabitants as aforesaid, they shall have free liberty to transport the same by shipping to other ports or places of the world, and to make sale thereof, in what way and place the said adventurers shall please, for their best advantage: Provided they sell it not to any person or state in actual hostility with us.

6. It is further granted and ordered that the said undertakers and agents and servants shall, from the date of their presents, have and enjoy all liberties and immunities whatsoever, present or to come, equal with any in this jurisdiction, according to the laws and orders thereof, for the time being, and according to the rights and privileges of the churches.

7. It is also granted that the undertakers and adventurers, together with their agents, servants, and assigns, shall be and are hereby free from all taxes, assessments, contributions, and other public charges whatsoever for so much of their stock or goods as shall be employed in and about the said iron works, for and during the term of (twenty-one) years yet to come from the date of their presents.

8. It is also hereby further granted and ordered that all such clerks and workmen as miners, founders, finers, hammer-men, and colliers, necessarily employed or to be employed in and about the said works, built or to be built, for any of the services thereof, shall from time to time during the term of (twenty-one) years be and hereby are absolutely freed and discharged of and from all ordinary trainings, watchings, etc., but that every person at all times be furnished with arms, powder, shot, etc., according to order of court.

9. Lastly: It is ordered by the court, that in all places where any iron work is set up, remote from a church or congregation, unto which they cannot conveniently come, that the undertakers shall provide some good means whereby their families may be instructed in the knowledge of God, by such as the court or standing council shall approve of."

It is only fair to say that this spirit of the authorities was not altogether in harmony with the settlers in the neighborhood, who evidently looked upon the scheme as not entirely in the interest of the planters. Hence innumerable lawsuits and vexations. The bog ore was largely taken from the meadows of the farms of Mr. Adam Hawkes, two miles north of the works. Mr. Hawkes furnished the ore, and he was also the persistent plaintiff in many suits against the company for flowing his lands. It is an interesting fact that while the Puritans abandoned all the mother country restrictions concerning the conveyance of land, these fields that became the property of Adam Hawkes, and the site where he built his first house-about 1630-have never been alienated from his family, but are still occupied by his lineal descendants and are yet in the same name. This tenacity of holding is an English trait, but it is rare even in New England to witness a land tenure so long unbroken.

A ledge at Nahant contains iron. Some of this "rock iron" was

smelted at our foundry. These iron works flourished as all enterprises did in England and the colonies so long as the commonwealth and Cromwell lived. Then they went on after a fashion in the hands of private individuals during the reigns of Charles II. and James II., or till the revolution of 1688, when New England commenced a freer life, and the iron works were of no further public concern. The works embraced a blastfurnace or "foundry" and a refining forge. The term "foundry” was then a synonym for furnace, castings being made directly from the furnace. It has been claimed that the many lawsuits in which the company became involved with the land-owners in consequence of flowage had much to do with the discontinuance of the works. A more reasonable assumption is that better iron and more of it was discovered elsewhere, and that the supply in this region was exhausted. The art, however, had gained a foothold in the new world, and the craftsmen with their deft hands and teeming brains were ready for broader scope-for Pittsburg, for Wilmington, and now for Sheffield, Alabama. It seems that the Puritan intellect in the early days was not, as the vulgar suppose, devoted entirely to witchcraft and the biue laws, but then as now was first in the field of invention and material progress.

That we have not lagged behind in these times is illustrated to the wonder of strangers with the lighting of the heavens nightly above this very spot by the brilliant "search light" which Professor Thomson displays from the Thomson-Houston Electric Company's Lynn factory. The inventions of to-day are the germination of good seed planted in the beginning of New England.

Nathan M. Hawkes

LYNN, MASS.

A RELIC OF BRADDOCK'S FIELD

The latest treasure or relic of the historic ground on which General Braddock suffered his disastrous defeat has recently been brought to light in the form of the original deed for a tract of land called "Braddock's Field."

On this famous field where the Father of his Country appeared in battle as an aid-de-camp of that self-confident and arrogant general, there have been relics without number unearthed, and venerable citizens have from time to time gained possession of these as opportunity afforded. Sometimes it would be a savage's tomahawk, then again a Frenchman's rifle or a British saber. All are held in sacred keeping by their possessors, perhaps to the more forcibly impress upon the minds of the rising generation that here the greatest slaughter of the war between the French and British colonists occurred, and General Braddock, that ill-starred British officer, himself was slain-a victim of his own overweening confidence in the invincibility of British regulars. Could Washington come back and view the ground, he would probably be astonished to see acres of manufactories and furnaces where once the stalwart oak sheltered the treacherous savage, and the remainder clear and verdant fields where cattle range in safety and peace.

The deed for this tract of land was executed March 4, 1791, nearly a century ago, and was patented by the commonwealth of Pennsylvania to George Wallace, Esq. The purchase, which comprised three hundred and twenty-eight acres of land, was conveyed to Mr. Wallace by George Thompson for an allowance of less than half a dollar an acre. One hundred years or more ago Mr. Wallace resided where Mr. Allen Kirkpatrick now lives, which place after being vacated by the former was converted into and for many years afterward known as the "Old Female Seminary." It finally came into the possession of Mr. George Bell, the father of Mrs. Allen Kirkpatrick. Mr. Wallace is said to have been an eminent lawyer, and he it was who so hospitably entertained General Lafayette when the illustrious Frenchman in passing this point stopped to luncheon at the old headquarters.

The deed later fell into the hands of Mr. A. F. Martheus of Avalon, Pennsylvania, under just what circumstances he is unable to tell. Mr. Andrew Carnegie, hearing that Mr. Martheus was in possession of it,