OF THE Massachusetts Historical Society. THIRD SERIES.-VOL. I. 1907, 1908. Published at the Charge of the Waterston Publishing Fund. PREFACE. THE minutes of twelve stated meetings of the Society, from April 1907, to June, 1908, both included, are comprised in this volume of the Proceedings. Those of the first three, April, May, and June, 1907, were prepared by CHARLES C. SMITH, before his resignation on October 1, 1907, as Editor of the Society's publications; Julius H. Tuttle, as acting editor, prepared the minutes of the remaining nine meetings and supervised their passage through the press. Mr. SMITH served as Editor for nearly eighteen years; also, during the same period, he was the working member of the Publishing Committee. A recognition of his services appears in the following pages, part of the proceedings of the November meeting. Mr. SMITH was also a member of publishing committees, from 1867 to 1882, and from 1889 to 1907, more than thirty-two years altogether; the longest record of such service in the history of the Society. His associate member of the committee, the Rev. Dr. MCKENZIE, served upon it for more than twenty-four years, the longest continuous service. The following are among the original communications in this volume: an Address by the PRESIDENT at the 187273 unveiling in the Dowse Library, at the June meeting, 1907, of the bust of Robert C. Winthrop, President of the Society from 1855 to 1885, a companion to the bust of James Savage, President from 1841 to 1855, unveiled at the April meeting, 1906; a paper on President Lincoln's offer of a military command, in 1861, to Garibaldi; also one on the visits of Miles Standish to Boston Harbor in 1621 and 1623: a paper by Mr. MEAD protesting against the proposed change of name of Maverick Square, East Boston, eliciting another paper, by the PRESIDENT, on the disregard of historical associations in the changes of names of streets and squares in Boston: a paper on the Separation of Maine from Massachusetts by Mr. STANWOOD: one by JOHN D. LONG on a Reference to W. H. Seward in Schurz's Reminiscences, which, at a later meeting, elicited a Memorandum by the PRESIDENT on the same subject: a paper by Mr. MEAD on John Cotton's Farewell Sermon to Winthrop's Company at Southampton: one by Mr. MATTHEWS on Documents in a file of the Boston NewsLetter (1711-1715) in the Boston Athenæum: a communication by Dr. GREEN exposing the author of a forged letter, said to have been written by Cotton Mather, in 1682, to John Higginson. This volume also contains some hitherto unpublished documents relating to American history, communicated by WORTHINGTON C. FORD: Letters of James Cheetham, an English radical, who escaped to this country in 1798; letters which passed between Edward Everett and John McLean, in 1828, relating to the use of patronage in |