f^ / ^1 » I 7 . .-^. 'i .U&; Given By ^ c \ THE GARY LETTERS EDITED AT THE REQUEST OF THE FAMILY BY C. G. C. E ^Cu-RTis, AAks, Ca-r^l(M G/\"R3>^r/E'R CC/\'WiY)] CAMBRIDGE 5^rintcti at tljc i!t\3cr^itie ^re^^ M DCCC XCI L \ ^ - •* TREFACE wm the letters which make this volume tf. ^iV arranging K attention has not always been to dates, as I paid ^L ^^ /// some places it seemed to me that a better idea would be given of t/je writers by letting a succes- sion of letters follow from t/je same person. My chief wish Jms been to make tJje characters of the former gen- eration clear to their descendants ; and as I learned from these letters to know those wJjom I had never seen, I hope that I may succeed in wljat I have under- taken. As the work has gone on I have regretted very much that some one had not thougJjt of the plan while those were still living who could have answered the questions I would have liked so much to ask. The series of letters by Miss Margaret G. Gary were written at the request of her two nephews, George Blankern Gary and Edward Montague Gary, and to these are added extracts from a series of articles written by her for a children's magazine. But as both letters and magazine articles were written after my aunt was IV PREFA CE seventy years old, they are naturally fragmentary recol- lections. I have preceded them by a slight genealogical sketch, arranged from the family tree ; and following this are such anecdotes and recollections as I have been able to gather together. c. G. c. CONTENTS I. Letters from Miss Margaret G. Gary. To her Nephew, George Blankern Gary / To her Nephew, Edward M. Gary ^8 II. Diary of Mrs. Margaret Graves Gary ; Letters from Grenada, 1779-1791. Diary of Margaret Graves, Wife of Samuel Gary, Esq., Mother of Samuel Gary 59 Letters from Grenada 64 III. Mrs. Gary's Letters from Ghelsea . 1791-1796. Letters from Mrs. Gary to her Son in Grenada, in the Years 1791-1793 8^ IV. Letters from Mrs. Gary to her Son Sam ; Mr. Gary to his Wife from the West Indies ; Lucius Gary to his Mother, 1796-1798 116 Letters from Lucius Gary to his Mother 1 37 V. Letters from Mrs. Gary, Lucius Gary, and Miss Otis, 1800-181^ 1^8 . / Miss Harriet Otis's Recollections of Ghelsea . .. 9 / VI. Letters from Miss Gary, Mrs. Gary, and William Gary, 181^-1819 207 VI CONTENTS s VU. Miss Anne M. Gary's Canada Journal ; Miss Otis' Saratoga Journal, iSig 247 Journal written by Miss Harriet Otis during a l^isit to Saratoga 269 yill. Various Letters, 1819-1827 282 Appendix 327 INTRODUCTION Y grandfather, Samuel Car}', was the son of Samuel Gary and Margaret Graves. On his father's side, he was descended from William Gary, of Bristol, England, who was sheriff of Bristol in 1532 and mayor of Bristol in 1546. William Gary's grandson of the same name held the same offices in 1599 and 161 1. James Gary, son of Wil- liam last mentioned, married Eleanor Hawkins, emigrated to America in 1639, and landed in Gharlestown, where he drew a grant of land and died in 1681. His wife died in 1697, and both are buried in the old burying-ground of Gharlestown. James Gary's great-grandson, Samuel Gary, was born in November 29, 1713; entered Harvard Gollege 1731 ; was married to Margaret, daughter of Thomas Graves, of Gharlestown, December 24, 1741, and died December 8, 1769. The great-grandparents of Margaret Graves were Thomas Graves and Katherine, daughter of the widow Goitmore. Thomas Graves was born June 6, 1605, at Ratcliffe, in the parish of Stepney and county of Middlesex, England, and was baptized at the Ghurch of St. Dunstan, in that parish, June i6th of the same year. He came early to viii INTRODUCTION America, was made freeman in 1640, owned land both in Woburn and in Charlestown, and with his wife was ad- mitted to the church in 1639. Previous to his arrival in this country Mr. Graves had been a sea-captain, and after his settlement here he pursued this course of life. During the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, while on a mercantile voyage, he signalized himself in an engagement with a Dutch privateer, which he captured. The owners of the vessel presented him with a silver punch-bowl, still pre- served at Ashford Hall in and Cromwell England ; pro- moted him to the command of a ship-of-war, with the title of rear admiral. He died in 1681, and was buried in Charlestown. Thomas, the grandson of Thomas and Katherine Graves, married, first, Sybil Avery, who was the mother of his children, and, for his second wife, the widow of Edward Watts, of Chelsea. A third wife survived him, Phoebe, widow of Leonard Vassall, of Boston. Margaret, the daugh- ter of Sybil Avery, married Samuel Cary, the son of Samuel Cary and Mary Foster. It was through Mrs. Watts that the Chelsea farm came into the Cary family, and in endeavoring to make this clear I was led to look for details concerning Governor Bellingham's will in Samuel Sewall's Letter Book, pub- lished by the Massachusetts Historical Society. I give in the Appendix ^ a long note found in the Letter Book, but the simple facts are these : Governor Bellingham's son Sam- uel, a widower with one daughter, married in London a widow named Elizabeth Savage. He had inherited from his father estates in Chelsea, then called Winnisimmet,^ and, by mutual consent, this property was put in trust ^ 1 See Appendix, note I Note 2. INTRODUCTION ix for Mr. and Mrs. Bellingham, and at her death was to will to devisee go by whomever she made her ; or, failing any will, to her next of kin. Mrs. Bellingham died at sea, and, her will being decided to be invalid, the estate passed to her sister, Mrs. Watts, who afterwards married Thomas Graves, of Charlestown. Mrs. Watts left her prop- erty of three hundred and sixty-five acres in Chelsea to her step-daughter Margaret Graves. The Charlestown estate was left to Katherine Graves, who married James Russell, and was the great-grandmother of James Russell Lowell. Samuel and Margaret Cary had three sons : Samuel, born at married to Sarah of Charlestown, 1742 ; Gray, daughter Ellis and Sarah died at Gray Tyler ; Chelsea, August, 181 2. Jonathan, who died at sea, unmarried, Thomas, born 1745; settled at Newburyport as a clergyman, and died in 1808. His son Samuel was colleague of Dr. James Freeman at King's Chapel, in Boston. My gi indfather, Samuel Cary, graduated from Harvard College, and, receiving from his father one thousand pounds sailed for the West Indies, where he went into business at St. Kitts, on the island of Grenada. LETTERS FROM MISS MARGARET G. GARY TO HER NEPHEW, GEORGE BLANKERN GARY Jamiary 23, 1843. PEAR GEORGE, — I feel verv desirous of conformins: to your request in writing down all the circumstances which to our ancestors and if I fall have reached me relating ; short of your expectations, you must attribute it not to want of inclination, but to the heedlessness of youth, \vhich, occu- pied with present scenes, fails to pay that attention to the anec- dotes of age which would lay up an increasing fund for the benefit of others, and c Iso to the forgetfulness of age, which has already come over but what I can do I and forthwith. me \ will, begin The old story of three brothers coming from England — Bristol in this instance — was exemplified in our line. One settled in New England, one went to the South, the third I don't know where to establish but have the that uncle Thomas ; you genealogy my was so solicitous to draw up from memoranda he had collected and entered into the blank pages of his family Bible, which is, I think, in the possession of my brother, Mr. T. G. Gary, so I need not trouble myself on that subject, but begin with my great-grandfather, of whom I never heard much but that he married twice. Two of his sons, who had owned ropewalks in Boston, after a while settled in Nantucket, — Edward and Nathaniel. The first had a large the second lived a but a family ; bachelor, adopted young lady by the name of Russell, — a relation, I believe a niece, — and she married a cousin, one of Edward's sons. They were married in Charlestown, at Mrs. Cordis's, who was, I think, a sister of the bride, and one of the old gentlemen came to Charlestown with the young couple, and they all three passed a day at Chelsea, my father 2 THE GARY LETTERS and mother having been at the wedduig. It was a very pleasant day. The old gentleman was tall and slender, and very gentle- manly in his manners. It must have been about the year 1792, for a daughter of this young couple visited us in 1810 or 18 11, a fine girl of about sixteen. She is still living at Nantucket, a widow, with one or two children. Her husband was a physician, Dr. (Mor- I to the ton ?). am pretty sure it was Nathaniel who came see young people married, for we had much discussion in the family about naming your father Nathaniel when he made his appearance among us, but hearing of the old gentleman's death put by the intended compliment, for which I was very glad at the time.