the great men of that period, comparatively few now remain among us; and any thing that they can relate of their personal knowledge of bygone scenes and circumstances in our history cannot but be interesting:—
“I remember John Andrews, his trim dress, and white-top boots, and powdered hair. He was small of stature. When I knew him, he occupied a beautiful estate at the northerly corner of Winter and Tremont (then Common) Streets,—an antique wooden house in the midst of a delightful garden, extending down Winter Street, and in rear to what is now Hamilton Place. This house was once occupied by Sir Francis Bernard, probably till the year of his recall, 1769. My mother once pointed out to me the chamber she occupied when she made a visit to the Bernards. At a later period, this estate was occupied by Earl Percy.
“In the first Boston directory ever published (1789) is this entry: ‘Breck, Samuel, Esq., Merchant, Common Street.’
“He is the gentleman named above, and was then the owner of this house. He complained of Boston taxes, and, removing to Philadelphia, sold the estate to John Andrews. . . .
“In the letter of April 11, 1776, not long after the evacuation, Mr. Andrews speaks of entertaining General Washington, &c., at dinner. Mr. Andrews then lived, as his son Henry Andrews tells me, in School Street, in a house occupied afterwards by Dr. John Warren, brother of Joseph, and father of the late John C. Warren, M.D. That house, as I well recollect, stood next above Joshua Brackett's tavern, at the sign of Cromwell's Head, upon the site where Palmer's fruit-shop now stands."
Referring to this entertainment of General Washington, Mr. Breck says:—
“The last time I saw my uncle in Boston, when he was eighty years old, he related with pride this fact to me.”
Mr. Andrews was elected a selectman of Boston in 1785, and continued in that office until 1790, when he declined to serve longer.
It only remains for me to add, that such passages of the correspondence as have been considered rather too free-spoken
