How Boston Got it's Name from an Old English Town

The Beaver
1629 - 1634

 

On June 1, while still at sea, Richard Steele’s wife, Mary, goes into labor. Arbella shoots off a piece to stay the Jewel sailing ahead of them. A midwife ferried over from Jewel delivers Mary’s child safely, but within days of landing at Salem, the baby is dead. – One month later, Richard and Mary sail back to England, never to return to America.
 

Five days after the landfall, Nat Steele goes with Isaac Johnson in one of two exploratory parties to Massachusetts Bay. Thomas is in the second boat with Governor Winthrop. – On the voyage from England, Thomas catches the eye of the governor and will in time join Winthrop’s inner circle. – Winthrop’s party rounds Shawmut and heads up the Mystic River. Isaac Johnson orders his boatmen to pull directly for the cove on the north of the peninsula.

 

At the ancient landing place, the solitary Englishman who lives at Shawmut comes to greet them, a tall, thin figure in shabby black clothes. William Blaxton joyfully embraces his friend, Isaac Johnson, who was a fellow student at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. After taking their degrees, both went to Peterborough, where they were made deacon and priest. A month before coming to New England, William attended the wedding of Isaac and Lady Arbella.
 

Striding briskly from one end of Shawmut to the other, William takes Isaac and his party on a tour of his estate. (The entire peninsula is his by a grant under the old New England Council patent.) At the pond below his house, William introduces the newcomers to Chitanawoo and her people, who continue to provide most of the reverend’s material needs.

The Indians prepare a feast of lobsters and venison for the visitors, who sit down to dinner in Blaxton’s house. No sooner do they fall to, than they hear a tremendous hubbub outside, making them grab their weapons.

Blackstone's ("Blaxton") House, artist impression, Edwin Whitefield 1889

 

Twelve Massachusett warriors stand there, and at their head a stocky, powerfully-built fellow in a renegade’s dress. The man wears deerskin leggings and moccasins, a Spanish cuirass and a battered French helmet. He has sword and snaphance but his weapon of choice is an Indian war club he carries, its crescent shaft embellished with mother of pearl. – He is twenty-five-year-old Adam Trane, come from the interior where he went to trade for furs. Standing next to Adam is Jacques Petit, only sixteen but already a giant like his father, half-French, half-Indian.

That night, while Johnson sleeps in the reverend’s house, Nat and the others camp below the stars. Their bivouac is under the spreading branches of a great elm, one of few trees on the meadow below the hill. Nat sits up late with Adam, listening to tales that include a report of “Merry Mount.” Thomas Morton is once more in residence at his trading post; now biding his time to see what mis-rule the newest band of saints will bring to Mine Host.

Great Elm on Boston Common, 1886,  Bacon's Dictionary

Nat and Johnson spend two days exploring the 780-acre peninsula, impressed by the headland’s strong natural defenses, especially the Neck where a land-based assault can be repelled at the narrows. Equally impressed, too, by excellent springs at Blaxton’s house and elsewhere.
 

Just before they leave, Isaac and Nat are with Blaxton on the shelf of land, where the village of Sha-um-ut stood before the Great Sickness.

 

“When will you return to Trimontaine?” William asks.

 

"Trimontaine" - 1836, Samuel Lancaster Gerry/James Burt /Bostonian Society

“Tri-mon-taine . . .?” Isaac repeats. He looks at the men setting the shallop’s sails. “The boat helper’s place . . .” he muses.

William knows immediately what’s on Isaac’s mind. “St. Botolph’s Town.”

“Yes, my friend, not French ‘Trimontaine’ – English ‘Boston.’”

“Lady Arbella will like that,” William says, knowing Arbella’s delight in Old Bostonstown.

“If only she was here to give her blessing.”

“Pray it won’t be long before she’s well.”

“God grant it, William. I will bring Arbella to our new Boston.”

St. Botolplh's Church, Boston, England - LOC/ppmsc.08031

 

Imgining Boston - 21