Chamberlain, Mellen. A Documentary History of Chelsea including the Boston Precincts of Winnisimmet, Rumney Marsh, and Pullen Point, 1624-1824 (2 volume set). Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1908. First Edition. [9515]
Two volumes in maroon cloth, 9 3/4 x 6 1/2 inches, bindings fine, clean, and tight. Vol. I. xliv, 668 clean pp., 13 plates & maps, some folding; Vol. II. (xii.), 793 clean pp., comprehensive index, frontis & 2 additional plates. Media rate as quoted at checkout; Priority or International orders will require extra postage. Very good. Hardcover.
A comprehensive history of these towns, which were part of Boston until 1739. Chelsea, Revere, Winthrop, Winnisimmet, Rumney Marsh, and Pullen Point are all included.
"For a hundred years these outlying communities, though parts of Boston and subject to its municipal control, had lives and interests not quite the same as those of the principal settlement, from which they were separated by more than a mile of water, the confluence of the Mystic and Charles rivers." - vol. i. p. 1.
Includes historical accounts of many of the families of the area. Vol. ii. to a large degree is taken up with the Revolutionary War, as well as particular accounts of the churches.
Mellen Chamberlain (1821-1900), b. Pembroke, NH; d. Chelsea, MA. Chamberlain was a lawyer and an historian, an avid collector of books and autographs, and for twelve years the Librarian of the Boston Public Library. He amassed one of the most extensive private collections of manuscripts in America, which he donated to the BPL. After receiving his education at Dartmouth College and the Harvard Law School he opened a law practice in Boston (1849), and made his home in Chelsea, where he lived for 51 years. In addition to his practice and his collecting, he served as a state representative, a state senator, as an associate justice of the Municipal Court of Boston, and as chief justice of that court. At the end of his final term as chief justice (1878), he was chosen librarian-in-chief at the Boston Public Library.
His literary output includes chapters in Justin Winsor's Memorial History of Boston (1881); Narrative and Critical History of America (1888); Two biographies of John Adams (1884 & 1898); The Authentication of the Declaration of Independence (1885); The Journals of Captain Henry Dearborn, 1775-83 (1886-7); and The Constitutional Relations of the American Colonies to the English Government at the Commencement of the American Revolution (1887).