Colonel James G. Montrésor, the father of Colonel John Montrésor, was thrice married, first to John’s mother, Mary Haswell. There were several sons by the first marriage, including, besides John, James, who was a lieutenant in the Navy, and Henry, who also followed a military or naval career. ↩
Chichester lies distant from Portsmouth seventeen and one-half miles. Portsmouth then as now was the chief naval arsenal of England, its fortifications being the most important in Great Britain. Its harbor lies close to Spithead, where 1,000 ships of the line, sheltered by the Isle of Wight, could safely ride. Here, in 1782, was lost the Royal George, of 108 guns, with nearly one thousand men on board—a disaster now remembered mainly because it was the subject of Cowper’s familiar poem beginning—
“Toll for the brave!
The brave that are no more!
All sunk beneath the wave,
Fast by their native shore!”
The war preparations here indicated were those which followed the Boston Tea Party of December, 1773. General Gage, having been sent to Boston as Governor of Massachusetts and the Port Bill having been passed by Parilament, reinforcements were being dispatched to America in support of vigorous measures against the rebellious colonists. ↩
Writers, not knowing that Colonel Montrésor in 1774 was already married to Miss Frances Tucker, have been led into taking Julia Franklin for a real person, identifying her with the family from which Franklin Square got its name. ↩
Attempts made in several directions to trace the authorship of these lines to some well-known poet or hymn writer have not succeeded. Mrs. Rowson may have written them herself.
Some of the later editions do not contain the first stanza of this poem, the omission of which must have been due to carelessness rather than design, inasmuch as the reader is left without knowledge of the noun to which the pronoun “thy” refers in the line “In vain thy glories bid me rise.” ↩
Many editions have had for this chapter the interpolated title, “A Benevolent Visit.” ↩
It will be observed here that Mrs. Rowson gives to Montraville the same Christian name that was borne by Montrésor. ↩
So printed, instead of St. Eustatia, as on a previous page. ↩
Heading omitted from late editions. ↩
These lines are Goldsmith’s. ↩
The identity of the house which Charlotte was now leaving with a house shown on the Ratzen map has already been referred to in the Introduction. It is interesting to note further than in Watson’s “Annals,” published in 1846, its location is given as what was then No. 24 Bowery, the edifice being described as “a low wooden house.” Watson gives Dr. John W. Francis, the author of “Old New York,” as his authority for the statement that Charlotte lived in this house. Dr. Francis, at the time when Watson wrote, was 57 years old, and had spent his life in New York, where he was born in 1789.
The Bowery at that point is now accessible from the west, not only by Pell Street, but by another street, called Doyers, which turns northerly and soon enters Pell, thus making a small triangular block bounded by Doyers, Pell, and the Bowery. Within this enclosure originally stood the two houses shown on the Ratzen map, Charlotte’s house being subsequently removed to the northwest corner of Pell and the Bowery, where, as already stated, it was known as “The Old Tree House.” ↩
In attempts heretofore made to establish the identity of this house, two famous Colonial homes have been brought into the discussion—the Franklin and the Walton. The former was perhaps first suggested in consequence of its name, but, as already pointed out, the Julia Franklin episode in “Charlotte Temple” never occurred in real life.
The Franklin house stood at the northwest corner of Franklin Square and Cherry Street, the site being now overshadowed by one of the arches of the approach to the Brooklyn Bridge. It was built in 1770, and few, if any, private houses in America at that time, were more imposing. During Washington’s residence in New York as President, beginning in 1789, it was his first home.
The Walton house, of which the Franklin house was a rival, stood a little further south on Pearl Street, near Franklin Square, and had been built twenty years earlier, when no home in America was quite its equal in architectural splendor or in furnishings. Its owner, William Walton, was a commercial magnate who, in the late Colonial times, entertained with such exceptional munificence, that his expenditures were cited in Parliament as evidence of the ability of people in the Colonies to bear the burden of the Stamp Tax. ↩
By mistake this chapter is numbered XXXVII in the first American edition. ↩
These stood upon the highway which was long known as Chatham Street. It is now that part of Park Row which extends from Brooklyn Bridge to Chatham Square. ↩
Colonel Montrésor, it will be recalled, sailed from New York with his family in the autumn of 1778, never to return.
Mrs. Rowson, in “Lucy Temple,” says Colonel Franklin (that is, Montraville) “returned to his own country, which he had left nine years before a captain of artillery, with little besides his pay, an honorable descent, and fair character, to receive the thanks of royalty for his intrepidity [an honor which, as a matter of fact, Colonel Montrésor is known to have received], and to dash into the world of splendor and
