18. My son returned from Springfield.

19. Mr. Penniman, his new Wife and her sister, with his daughter arrived from Boston, on their way to Albany. First warm day this spring.

20. Mr. Penniman, &c., proceeded on to Albany.

21. Supreme Court.

22. My brother Joshua,' came from Lancaster. Mr. Mycall.

23. My brother returned. Some company to dine. 24. Dug up garden yesterday.

26. Rainbow at 6 'clock this morning. Rain, growing

season.

28. Went to Boston, with Han. Frazier and Levi in coachee and opened house in Boston to meet Directors of Turnpike.

29. Attended directors' meeting turnpike.

30. Attended turnpike directory. 3 horses killed by lightning in a stage from Portland, a barn struck and burnt by lightning at Cohassett. Heavy shower of hail at Newton. Dined with Mr. John Andrews. The lightning on the 30th struck a house in Roxbury.-A vessel also at Boston.

1 Joshua Thomas was bred to a trade in West Cambridge and after being engaged in business there and in Brighton, he removed to Lancaster after the evacuation of Boston, and soon after came to Worcester, and was employed by his brother as a post-rider. Just before the close of the Revolution he returned to Lancaster, and bought a farm adjoining Bolton. He was twice married, first to Mary Twing, of Brighton, and then to Mary, daughter of John Armstrong, of Boston. [Born, Boston, 3 March, 1745. Died, Lancaster, 4 February, 1831.]

2 John Andrews, a brother of Ebenezer T. Andrews, was a hardware merchant in Boston. He lived at this time on the estate at the northerly corner of Winter and Tremont streets, which had been formerly occupied by Sir Francis Bernard, and Earl Percy. He afterwards removed to Jamaica Plain, where he died in 1821.

May, 1807.

Boston.

2. Paid Calender & Jenkins 50 dols.

3. Sat 1st time in pew No. 25, which I purchased in Christ Church. Dined with Mr. Wm. Andrews.

4. Isa. & Eliza came from Worcester. Met with Committee on accounts of Turnpike Directors. Received a new commission as a Justice of Peace for the County of Worcester for another seven years dated Jan. 30th 1807. 5. Miss W. dined with us. Turnpike directors.

7. Turnpike directors met at Vila's. Paid Mr. Frothingham 100 dols, towards Coachee. Dined at Vila's with T. directors. Paid yesterday 100 dollars towards Pew in Christ church. Mr. Parsons put in teeth for Eliza 16 dols.

8. Isa. & Miss Weld dined with me.

11. Went to Theatre.

12. Walked nearly all round Boston.

13. Levi carried out Misses Weld, Miss Bass, etc. Went to theatre.

14. Rev. Mr. Bancroft lodged with us in Boston.

16. Rode out.

20. Theatre.

21. Subscribed to the Atheneum' as a Proprietor.

The "Boston Athenæum" was an outgrowth of the Anthology Club, an association of gentlemen for literary purposes which had been formed by Rev. William Emerson in 1804. In that year they began to publish a periodical called the Monthly Anthology or Magazine of Polite Literature.

In 1806, it established a reading room, which proved so successful that a library was added, under the management of a board of trustees. The first rooms were

23. Levi went to Worcester with Mary Armstrong in the Coachee.

25. Mrs. Thomas, Isa's wife, Mary Rebecca, Parson Bancroft & Mary S. came from Worcester with Levi in Coachee. I went to Framingham to meet them.

27. Election.

28. Eliza went to Lynn with Mr. Payson. Attended a Grand Encampment of K. T. James Sullivan1 declared to be chosen Governor.

29. This day I became a Member of the Charitable Fire Society.-Attended the members to Church.—Several pieces of Musick performed. Luther Richardson, Esq

in Joy's buildings, on the west corner of Congress and Water streets, and then in Scollay's building on Tremont street.

After the incorporation of the Athenæum in February, 1807, it occupied three rooms in the old wooden building, covered with rough cast, next north from the King's Chapel burying-ground, which had formerly been occupied by the rectors of King's Chapel. The first room was the news or reading room; the second contained the library of the Athenæum and the American Academy; and the third the private library of John Quincy Adams.

The corporation organized 7 April, 1807, with Theophilus Parsons for its first President. Mr. Thomas's name appears on the list of the original subscribers.

1 Mr. Sullivan had been prominent in the public life of Massachusetts since the beginning of the Revolution, holding many important offices, and from 1790 to this time had been attorney-general. He was the first democratic governor of the state, and his election, which closed an exciting campaign, was considered a great triumph by the friends of Jefferson. Party spirit had been increasing rapidly for some time and the newspapers had been unusually bitter and virulent, Governor Strong being represented as an enemy to liberty, and Mr. Sullivan as opposed to order and virtue, and destitute of moral principle. Over 81,000 votes were cast, of which Mr. Sullivan received 42,000, and, as in 1806, there was a democratic majority in both branches of the legislature. His administration was characterized by a candor and impartiality which, while it disappointed many of his supporters, who expected to find him more of a party politician, won for him the respect of both parties. He was re-elected in 1808, and died during his second term of office, 10 December, of that year.

2 The Massachusetts Charitable Fire Society was incorporated in 1794. "for the purpose of relieving such as may suffer by fire, and of stimulating genius to useful discoveries tending to secure the lives and property of their fellow men from destruction by that element." In addition to giving this relief, a committee was appointed annually to examine and award premiums for engines and inventions which came within the object of the society.

delivered an oration. Governor Sullivan and Lieut. Gov'. Lincoln 1 were this day first sworn into Office. I was present.

1

The first constitution of the society required that annually, on the last Wednesday in May, a public discourse, expressive of the advantages arising from charitable institutions, shall be delivered before the Society, by some person to be appointed by the Government for that purpose, at which time a collection shall be made for the benefit of the Society's fund."

At the conclusion of the annual meetings, which were held in the Court House or the Old State House, the members marched in procession to King's Chapel where the exercises were held.

1 Levi Lincoln, the third son of Enoch and Rachel Fearing Lincoln of Hingham, Mass., was apprenticed to an ironsmith, but his love of study induced him to relinquish this trade, and after six months of preparation he entered Harvard and was graduated in the class of 1772. Happening to be present in court while John Adams was pleading, he was so carried away by his eloquence that he changed his original intention of entering the ministry, and studied law with Daniel Farnham in Newburyport for about a year, and then entered the office of Joseph Hawley in Northampton. He marched to Cambridge with the minute-men as a volunteer in 1775, and soon after was admitted to the bar in Hampshire County, and immediately opened an office in Worcester. The greater part of the leading men of the county were Tories, and when the courts were re-opened in 1775, after having been closed a year, only two lawyers remained: John Sprague of Lancaster and Joshua Upham of Brookfield. A wide field was thus opened to him in his profession and he soon acquired a large practice. He was undoubtedly the head of the county bar, from the close of the Revolution to the beginning of the century; was retained in every case of importance; and for many years constantly attended the courts in Middlesex and Hampshire.

But his professional duties did not prevent him from taking an active part in public affairs. In 1775 he was appointed Clerk of the Court of Common Pleas for the County of Worcester and was Judge of Probate from January, 1777, to 1781. In 1779 he was special commissioner to prosecute the government claims against the large estates of the refugees, under the absentee act, and commissioner to hasten the payment of the Continental tax. He was a delegate to the Massachusetts Convention for forming the state constitution in 1780. The next year he was elected by the General Court a representative to the Continental Congress, but declined the election. In 1783 the degree of barrister at law was conferred on him by the Supreme Court, an honor conferred on only one other member of the county bar after the Revolution-Judge Sprague of Lancaster. In 1796 he was a representative to the General Court and in the following year was in the state senate. In the autumn of 1800, in spite of his democratic principles, he succeeded Dwight Foster as representative to the Seventh Congress. He took his seat 4 March, 1801, but the next day was appointed by Jefferson, Attorney General of the United States and was provisional Secretary of State until the arrival of Madison at Washington in the following May. A few days after his appointment, Albert Gallatin, before his own appointment as Secretary of the Treasury, wrote of the two Massachusetts members of the Cabinet, General Dearborn the Secretary of

30. Mr. Bancroft & Mrs. Thomas, jun'. went to Worcester. Rode out with Mrs. T. in the afternoon.

War and Mr. Lincoln: "Mr. Lincoln is a good lawyer, a fine scholar, a man of great discretion and sound judgment, and of the mildest and most amiable manners. He has never, I should think from his manners, been out of his own state, or mixed much with the world, except on business. Both are men of 1776, sound and decided Republicans; both are men of the strictest integrity; and both, but Mr. Lincoln principally, have a great weight of character to the Eastward with both parties."

He retained this office until December, 1804, when, unwilling to be separated longer from his family, he sent his resignation to Mr. Jefferson, who replied: "I received last night your letter, proposing to resign your office; and I received it with real affliction. It would have been my greatest happiness, to have kept together to the end of my term our executive family; for our harmony and cordiality have really made us but as one family. Yet, I am a father, and have been a husband. I know the sacred duties which these relations impose; the feelings they inspire; and that they are not to be resisted by a warm heart. I yield, therefore, to your wishes. You carry with you, my entire approbation of your official conduct, my thanks for your services, my regrets on losing them, and my affectionate friendship."

In 1806 and 1810 Mr. Lincoln was a member of the council of Massachusetts. In 1807 and 1808 he was lieutenant-governor of the state, and on the death of Governor Sullivan, 10 December, 1808, became acting governor. The next year he was a candidate for the same office, but was defeated by Christopher Gore, the Federal candidate.

In 1811, on appointing him an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Madison wrote to him: "You will see by the commission which will be forwarded from the Department of State, that I have taken the liberty of nominating you to the Senate as successor to Judge Cushing, notwithstanding your remonstrances against a recall into the national service. I was induced to this step, not only by my personal wishes, but by those of others, between whom and yourself exists all the reciprocal respect that can add weight to them, and particularly by their persuading themselves, that your patriotism would acquiesce in an appointment, however contrary it might be to your previous inclinations. I venture to flatter myself that in this we may not be disappointed: and that, in every event, you will regard the liberty I have taken in imposing the dilemma upon you, with the indulgence due to my motives, and to the great esteem and sincere friendship of which I pray you to accept my renewed assurances.” Weakness of sight which resulted temporarily in almost total blindness, compelled him to decline this honor.

In 1782 Mr. Lincoln bought of John Hancock his estate on Lincoln street, where he lived for the remainder of his life. He married 25 November, 1781, Martha, daughter of Daniel and Rebecca Salisbury Waldo.

[Born, Hingham, 15 May, 1749.

Died, Worcester, 14 April, 1820.]