About Connections: Love it or hate it, history is a map. Those who hate history think it irrelevant; many who love history think it escapism. In truth, history is the clearest road map to how we got here: America in the 21st century.
On the page reproduced above, there are three glaring mistakes, and therefore, it is impossible to say that the following tale is true in all its particulars. However, as with all the tales in “Old Paths and Legends,” a travel guide written in 1905, it is entertaining. So, here goes.
Judge Edmund Quincy came to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1633 as a Justice to the General Court, that is, as a representative of the King.
He established his household in Braintree. There he installed his wife and 10 children – only 4 of whom survived to adulthood. Through his wife and four offspring the Adams, Wendell, and Quincy families were united into the power base of early American education and politics.
Just after his wife’s death in August of 1737, Edmund was called to serve as a commissioner in the matter of the boundary line between Massachusetts and New Hampshire, requiring him to travel to London. In 1738, he fell victim to smallpox and died. His body was buried in Bunhill Fields, a cemetery in North London. He was 55. Quincy was eulogized as “the best of fathers and friends.”
His daughter was now an orphan and the only child remaining in the Braintree house. Born in 1709, Dorothy was the youngest of the judge’s children. She married at 29, a few months after her father’s death. When she did, Boston Gazette described Dorothy as “an agreeable young Gentlewoman, with a handsome Estate,” making it clear to the 18th century reading public that the damsel of Braintree was marrying down. Indeed, she married a man from the merchant class. However, her daughter married Oliver Wendell, and in the first year of the Revolutionary War, her niece and namesake married John Hancock, making Mr. John and Mrs. Dorothy Quincy Hancock the first power couple of the new nation.
Through the Damsel of Braintree, the great families of the burgeoning nation, political and social, were born. Her great grandson, Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894), wrote the poem “Dorothy Q,” an ode to the portrait reproduced here. It is family legend that the portrait was cut through by the saber of an “angry Redcoat.”
Holmes wrote: “…amused himself by stabbing poor Dorothy … as near the right eye as his swordsmanship would serve him to do it.” In a note added to the poem, he wrote: “The canvas of the painting was so much decayed that it had to be replaced by a new one, in doing which the rapier thrust was of course filled up.”
It is interesting that Berkshire — such small, out-of-the-way place — attracted, housed, and nourished so many early American persons of note: educators, politicians, judges, and soldiers. Interestingly, this tale is a strand in understanding how that came about.
In compensation for losing her father, the King granted 1,000 acres to “the dainty maid of Braintree — the damsel Dorothy Q.” To stake out the land, a surveyor was dispatched “to the land between Indian Town (Stockbridge) and the Honorable Jacob Wendell’s Town (Pittsfield).” That is, dispatched to what would be Lenox.
“Wherefore in 1739 out of Northampton rode surveyor Timothy Dwight across the wilderness trails and down over the bridle path through Pontoosuck (field of the winter deer) to lay out the Quincy track.”
From 1739–2021, Lenox is referred to as “the land between.” Since post-World War II, Tanglewood has been inaccurately placed in Lenox. (Before WWII, folks knew where Tanglewood was in Stockbridge). In 2021, for the first time, Tanglewood is not identified as being in Lenox but in “the land between” Lenox and Stockbridge. The rewording could be characterized as a political decision. That is, it is still factually incorrect, but socially acceptable. (The grounds of Tanglewood are entirely in Stockbridge. Approximately the first 10 feet of the West Street parking lot are in Lenox).
The facts of the Damsel of Braintree story are apparently correct. The three mistakes on the page opposite were:
It says Mr. Ward invited Hawthorne to Lenox after he lost his job in Salem. Samuel Ward built Highwood in Stockbridge. By the time Hawthorne arrived, Ward, in Boston, had rented Highwood to Caroline Sturgis Tappan. Tappan invited Sophia Hawthorne to Stockbridge. They were both attendees of Margaret Fuller’s Conversations. Tappan offered a farmhouse she owned for a low rent. In the alternative, she offered they live with her family at Highwood. Hawthorne told Sophia he preferred separate quarters and opted for the “Little Red Shanty.”
It says Jenny Lind was married at Mr. Ward’s house, Highwood in Lenox. Lind was married at Ward’s house on Louisburg Square in Boston.
Hawthorne’s “Little Red Shanty,” Tappan’s farmhouse, is in Stockbridge, not Lenox.
Katherine Abbott, author of “Old Paths and Legends,” was a better at storytelling than geography.
