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THE
REVEREND JAMES ALLEN (1632-1710), son of a clergyman in Hampshire, England,
came over to this country in 1662. He was the Minister of the First Church in
Boston for forty-two years. A graduate of Oxford University, he served as a
Fellow of Harvard College from 1692 to 1707. Mr. Allen became one of the
largest land-owners in the community, his holdings including a large portion of
the present West End in Boston. His homestead (being part of a tract of
eighteen acres bequeathed to him in 1671 by James Penn, Ruling Elder of his
Church) was on the east corner of Beacon and Somerset Streets.1 And there he lived in a two-storied stone
house built by himself, and “maintained the style of a gentleman.” His barn
occupied the corner abovementioned; and the house was placed about seventy feet
to the eastward, on Beacon Street.
On March
12, 1705, Mr. Allen deeded the property, including “the Mansion-House, with the
land, members and appurtenances thereof,” to his son, Jeremiah Allen, who
became Treasurer of the Province in 1715. On the latter’s death in 1741, the
estate passed to his son, of the same name (d. 1755), and later was inherited
by his grandson, James Allen, of the fourth generation from the emigrant
ancestor.2 On December 20, 1799, the latter sold the homestead to
his brother, Jeremiah, who held the office of High Sheriff of Suffolk County.
After being in the possession of members of the Allen family for nearly one
hundred and forty years, the demesne was sold by James Allen, January 8, 1810,
to David Hinckley, a Boston merchant, who took down the old stone house. And
during or about the year 1814 he built a large double granite mansion on the premises,
and occupied the westerly, corner portion, which fronted on Somerset Street.
This mansion was at that time considered to be the finest dwelling-house in the
town.3 It was elaborately furnished, and filled with beautiful works
of art, together with many costly statues and mirrors.4 The progress
of its building was interrupted by the War of 1812; and the venture must have
been an expensive one at that time, when the cost of materials was high. The
window glass and cornices were said to have been imported.
This
mansion was the scene of a tragic occurrence in July, 1820. Miss Anne Hinckley,
daughter of David Hinckley, had taken a course of lessons in modern languages
under the guidance of a young Neapolitan named Pietro Perodi, who had served in
the Italian army, and who had arrived in Boston some three years before. Here
he obtained the entrée of polite society, and had won the affection of Miss
Hinckley. Their engagement had been formally announced, when it was discovered
that he had made false representations regarding his antecedents. This fact,
and her father’s strong opposition, caused the lady to break the engagement.
Unable to regain her confidence, Perodi became desperate. Repairing to the
Hinckley home, he ran up to her chamber, where she was engaged with a
dressmaker; and there, in her presence, he ended his life by the thrust of a
dagger. Such is one account of the melancholy affair. A correspondent, Syphax
Tertius, in a communication to the “Boston Transcript,” February 20, 1873,
stated that the scene of the tragedy was the house of a friend, Mrs. Elizabeth
Davis, who kept a boarding-school at Number Three Somerset Place, now Allston
Street, in the immediate neighborhood of the Hinckley residence. According to
the above authority Miss Hinckley had fled to Mrs. Davis’s school, to avoid
Perodi.
On Mr.
Hinckley’s death in 1825, the property was inherited by his daughter. Not long
after she married an Englishman named William Gill Hodgkinson. On April 25,
1839, the estate was bought by the Honorable Benjamin Crowninshield, a former
Secretary of the Navy of the United States, for $38,500. He and the members of
his family occupied the corner house on Somerset Street until his death in
1851.
In the
following year this house was acquired by the members of the Somerset Club, and
was occupied by them for about twenty years. In 1872, or thereabout, the Club
bought the Sears mansion, at Forty-Three Beacon Street, built by David Sears in
1819. Its site is a part of the former large estate of John Singleton Copley,
the distinguished American painter. The original mansion formed the western
half of the present structure, and its entrance opened on a courtyard. Later,
Mr. Sears built another house adjoining, on the east; the older dwelling being
enlarged, and both forming the present double, swell-front edifice, facing the
Common. The decorative carvings of the marble tablets, above the bow-windows
are the handiwork of Solomon Willard, the architect of Bunker Hill Monument.5
In the rear of the old Copley domicile was a barn, which was used as a
temporary hospital, where some of the wounded British officers were cared for
after the Battle of Bunker Hill.
The
easterly portion of his estate, including the land, and “the large, elegant
stone house and other buildings thereon standing,” was sold by Mr. Hinckley,
December 20, 1820, to Benjamin Wiggin, Gentleman, for forty thousand dollars.
In 1825
the ownership passed to Joseph Peabody, Esq., of Salem, who gave it to his
daughter as a wedding present, at the time of her marriage to John L. Gardner,
Senior, an enterprising young merchant in the East India trade. The house was
the birthplace of his son, of the same name, whose widow occupies the
well-known Italian palace in the Fenway region.
The Hinckley house was the residence of the Gardners for many years, and they retained possession of the property until 1871, when the American Congregational Association bought both portions of the original mansion for $292,000. In 1904 the whole edifice was removed, and a new building was erected and occupied by the Houghton & Dutton Company.
1 Gleaner
Articles, No. 11.
2 Gleaner
Articles, No. 33.
3 The
Memorial History of Boston, IV, 59.
4 A full description of the interior of this house is given in some unpublished Reminiscences of Mrs. J. Mason Warren.
5 History
of the Somerset Club.
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