Consult: Dr. Winsor's exhaustive and scholarly Memorial History of Boston, Including Suffolk County, 4 vols. (Boston, 1880-81); also Quincy, A Municipal History of the Town and City of Boston, from 1630 to 1830 (Boston, 1852); Hale, Historic Boston and Its Neighborhood (New York, 1898); Drake, History and Antiquities of Boston, from 1630 to 1670 (Boston, 1854); Drake, Old Landmarks and Historic Personages of Boston (Boston, 1900); and Lodge, “Boston,” in the Historic Towns Series (London, 1891); Sprague, Government of Boston: Its Rise and Development (Boston, 1890); Directory of the Charitable and Beneficent Organizations of Boston (Boston, 1899); “The Completion of the Boston Subway and New Arrangements of Street Cars,” in Railroad Gazette, No. XXX. (New York, 1898).
BOSTON, Thomas (1677-1732). A Scottish
divine and author, born at Dunse (Berwickshire).
He was educated at the University of
Edinburgh (M.A., 1694), and in 1699 was
ordained to the Presbyterian ministry and
appointed to the parish of Simprin. In 1701 he
was clerk of synod, and in 1707 became pastor
of Ettriek (Selkirkshire). It was through his
reading and recommendation to friends of the
treatise The Marrow of Modern Divinity that
the well-known Marrow controversy (q.v.) was
instituted. He wrote Human Nature in its
Fourfold State (1720), a strongly Calvinistic
work, frequently reprinted, and a popular sermon
styled The Crook in the Lot (1863).
Consult: His Memoirs (1776) and the Whole
Works (ed. by S. McMillan, London, 1854).
BOSTON ART SCHOOL. This school, organized in 1876, is the most important school of design in Boston. The course includes drawing and painting from life and casts, anatomy, modeling, and perspective. The student has also the benefit of the Museum for copying purposes. There are two valuable scholarships—the Paige traveling scholarship for two years, and the Longfellow traveling scholarship for three years. Besides these there are ten scholarships of free tuition awarded each year. The annual prizes are the Sears prizes of $50 each for a drawing from a cast, the nude, and a portrait in oils; and the Thayer prize of $150, in three parts of fifty dollars each, for work in decorative design. The fee is from $90 to $125 for three terms.
BOSTON COLLEGE. A Roman Catholic
institution under the direction of the Fathers
of the Society of Jesus. It was chartered in
1863, and opened in Boston, Mass. There are
fifteen founded scholarships; the value of the
buildings and grounds is placed at $537,800;
and the annual income from tuition fees at
$16,000. The college faculty in 1901 numbered
19 and the students 205; at the same time the
number of students in the allied preparatory
school was 247. The library contains 43,000
volumes. The college course is four years, leading
to the degree of A.B.
BOSTONIANS, The. A novel by Henry
James (1886).
BOSTON MASSACRE, The. After the quartering of British troops in Boston (1768), there was continual friction between the soldiery and the people. Several minor riots occurred early in 1770, and the trouble culminated on March 5, when seven soldiers under Captain Preston, who were being pelted with snowballs and stones by fifty or sixty of the populace, headed by one Crispus Attucks (q.v.), fired into the crowd, killing three and wounding seven more, of whom two died. This act infuriated the Boston people, who met in mass-meeting and compelled the withdrawal to Castle Island (March 12) of the two regiments of troops. The seven soldiers, with Captain Preston, were tried for murder in October and November, were defended by John Adams and Josiah Quincy, and were finally acquitted, though two of them were declared guilty of manslaughter and received light punishments. There is much difference of opinion with respect to the ‘Massacre,’ some writers regarding it as a lawless affair discreditable to the people and the soldiers alike and without any great historical significance; others, as the “first act in the drama of the Revolution.” In 1816 John Adams wrote: “Not the Battle of Lexington or Bunker Hill, not the surrender of Burgoyne or Cornwallis, were more important events in American history than the battle of King Street on the 5th of March, 1770.” The day was annually connnemorated in Boston until 1783, and in 1888 a monument was erected to the memory of the ten victims. Consult: Kidder, History of the Boston Massacre (Albany, 1870); and Winsor, Memorial History of Boston, Vol. III. (Boston, 1880-81).
BOSTON PORT BILL. A bill passed by the British Parliament, and signed by the King in March, 1774, to punish the people of Boston for their destruction of tea in Boston Harbor, December 16, 1773. (See Boston.) It was to go into effect on June 1 and provided for the virtual closure of Boston Harbor to commerce, for the removal of the seat of government to Salem, and for the supplanting of Boston by Marblehead as a port of entry, until the people of Boston should indemnify the owners of the property destroyed and fulfill other specified conditions. This, the greatest encroachment yet made by Parliament upon the liberties of the colonists, aroused an instant and widespread feeling of indignation and alarm. Assurances of sympathy and support were immediately sent to the people of Boston by the legislatures and committees of correspondence of other Colonies, and by many town meetings, and June 1 was widely observed as a day of fasting and prayer, bells being tolled, flags placed at half-mast, and houses draped in mourning. Material aid was also given from all quarters, food-supplies being sent from as far as South Carolina. Non-importation agreements were everywhere urged, pamphlets and broadsides were issued, and finally a general congress—the first Continental Congress—was called to discuss this and other obnoxious acts passed in the same year, and to devise measures for relief. Consult Frothingham, Rise of the Republic (Boston, 1872); and, for text of the bill, Pickering, Statutes at Large, Vol. XXX. (London, 1842).
BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA. One of the finest orchestras in the United States. Ever since the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, the works of the great instrumental masters had been performed by amateur orchestras. In 1881 Mr. Henry L. Higginson established a per-
