Identifier: statestreetbrief00stat_0 (find matches)
Title: State Street : a brief account of a Boston way
Year: 1906 (1900s)
Authors: State Street Trust Company (Boston, Mass.)
Subjects: Streets
Publisher: Boston, Mass. : Printed for the State Street Trust Company
Contributing Library: Boston Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Public Library

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6, when the lines of cer-tain streets were fixed and had by popular con-sent been named, State Street was known asMarket Street. THE FIRST CHURCH OF BOSTON. ACROSS the way from the market-place in1632, on the site since occupied by Brazers^ Building, stood the first meeting-house,later dignified as the First Church. It was a rudebut substantial building, with walls of mud andthatched roof. Its first pastor, the Rev. JohnWilson, lived on his farm, on the opposite side ofMarket Street; and his colleague was the redoubt-able John Cotton, formerly the pastor of old St.Botolphs, Boston, England. Services were heldunder the trees previous to its erection. Themeeting-house had become too small in 1639, andin 1640 a new one was erected on the site of thelate Joy Building. The second meeting-housewas destroyed in the conflagration of 1711, thegreatest of the eight great fires that Boston hadthen experienced, but was rebuilt. General Wash-ington with all his troops, after the siege of Boston, 3
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STATE STREET attended services at the First Church, and thenadjourned to the Bunch of Grapes Tavern to re-fresh the body. THE BIBLE, THE ROD, AND APRISONER. IN those early days of rigid lives the Bible andthe rod were often inseparable. The whipping-post and the stocks, therefore, stood on MarketStreet, almost in front of the door of the FirstChurch; and great was the impartiality with whichjustice, at least, was then dealt out. The firstprisoner, for instance, of the stocks was the car-penter, Edward Palmer, who built them in 1639.The town fathers were incensed at his exorbitantbill for their construction, and they laid theirstrong hands upon him, and he forthwith spent anhour as a prisoner of his own creation and as a for-bidding example to like grasping merchants withwhom the early town may have been afflicted.These instruments of punishment were, in lateryears, put on wheels, and were moved from placeto place. The stocks in 1801 were located nearChange Avenue. Public whipping was

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