Read Ebook: Of Yankee granite by Cameron Edward Herbert Lawrence John Silsbee Author Of Introduction Etc

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 82 lines and 13054 words, and 2 pages

On the day when the railroad started operation, 16 tons of granite from the Bunker Hill Quarry, and loaded on three "wagons," were easily pulled by one horse, once started. Bryant's first car had flanged wheels, 6 1/2 feet in diameter, from the axles of which a platform was hung to carry the granite. This platform was lowered to receive the load and then raised by an ingenious gearing device.

Naturally, Bryant based the design of his early railroad cars upon the construction of the horse-drawn wagons of his day. Like the wagons, his cars had to be flexible if they were to keep on the track when passing over the two curves of the otherwise straight Granite Railway. In his description of another of his cars appear the road wagon terms--bolsters, truck, and center kingpin, to allow a swiveling motion. Rigidly bolted to cross timbers beneath the truck were two iron axletrees, on which revolved cast-iron wheels.

In early American railroad development Bryant is credited with the invention of the eight-wheel car, the turntable, switch, turnout, and many other improvements. In 1832, he had invented and used in the building of the United States Bank at Boston, his portable derrick, "used in every city and village in the country wherever there was a stone building to erect." Others profited from Bryant's amazing ingenuity. Although the Supreme Court of the United States decided in his favor in his most important invention, the eight-wheeled car, he did not collect, and he died poor.

In the fine saga of the Bunker Hill Monument, the Granite Railway plays a prominent part. The demand of the monument for granite definitely inspired Bryant to conceive the idea of America's first railroad, and to design pioneer equipment that contributed hugely to the subsequent progress of America's great railroad system. The accurate account of the building of the monument, however, has to record the fact that the railroad was not so great a benefit as anticipated. In the short distance of 12 miles there was too much loading and unloading. Willard freely expressed his annoyance at these hindrances. That he took action is indicated in the following quotation from an apparently authentic source: "The stone used for the foundation and for the first forty feet of the structure was transported from the quarry on a railroad to the wharf in Quincy where it was put into flat-bottomed boats, towed by steam-power to the wharf in Charlestown, and then raised to the Hill by teams moving upon an inclined plane. The repeated transfer of the stones, necessary in this mode of conveyance, being attended with delay, liability to accident, and a defacing of the blocks, was abandoned after the fortieth foot was laid, and the materials were transported by teams directly from the quarry to the hill." This account fails to tell how the teams got up and down the steep hill at the quarry: the 84-foot rise at an angle of 15 degrees. Clever Bryant must have used his endless chain to drag the empty teams up, and to brake the loaded ones down.

In the noisy grogshops on the streets leading to the Boston waterfront, in the sail lofts on what is now Commercial Street, and at the tall desks of the counting rooms of State Street, those who got their living from the sea eagerly discussed the progress of the monument in Charlestown. It was to be their beacon, and when the many frigates, packets, sloops, and schooners had safely passed the danger spots of the lower harbor, the monument would welcome them to the busy inner port of Boston, then much livelier than it is today. But progress proved to be slow. Naturally the stones broken from the Quincy ledges and boulders were not always of the dimensions planned by Willard for the lower courses; many were of sizes needed for the upper courses. Economical Willard dressed the stones as they came out; setting aside those which could not be erected for some time; and the piles of such stones grew larger at Quincy and on the ground about the monument, while the monument itself rose at a snail's pace. A more spectacular progress was needed for a project that was started on a shoestring, and depended on more and still more public contributions. The building fund dwindled to such a low sum that in February, 1829, work had to be suspended for lack of funds to pay the wages of quarrymen, stonecutters, derrickmen, blacksmiths, and teamsters, and the cost of the good hay for the hard-working horses and oxen of the project. But 14 courses had been laid--to a height of 37 feet, 4 inches. The sailors were disappointed, and a poetess said:

But where's the pile they said would rise, Throwing its shadows o'er the wave,-- Lifting its forehead to the skies-- A Beacon far o'er land and sea, Signal and Seal of Liberty.

A lottery to secure more building funds was next proposed. It was not unusual to allow lotteries in this period--churches, turnpikes, bridges, and even Harvard College--had received such grants. Public sentiment in Massachusetts, however, was beginning to consider lotteries a vicious practice and the director of the Bunker Hill Monument Association voted against one.

At this time, Amos Lawrence was a member of the building committee--a wealthy philanthropist of Boston, whose religion seemed to be fixed on two ideals, one of which was his charities. Unlike that of a few good ministers of the time, who had preached against giving funds for the monument because they felt their various charities should come first, Lawrence deemed the completion of the Bunker Hill Monument of first importance. This project became his other obsession. He enlisted the aid of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanics Association in the campaign for funds. Started in 1795 by Paul Revere, and others, to promote a better understanding between master mechanics and their apprentices, this society had become influential; its membership embraced mechanics, manufacturers, and such honorary members as Ex-President Adams, Daniel Webster, and Edward Everett. Amos Lawrence had picked upon a well-managed organization for assistance; its executives were shrewd financiers and they knew how to get things done. The president of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanics Association became in perpetuity the first vice-president of the Bunker Hill Monument Association . Thereafter, the Mechanics Association took an active part in the promotion and construction of the monument. It made a careful estimate of the cost to complete the monument and, much to Solomon Willard's disgust, raised his allowance for contingencies. Both associations decided to be satisfied when the monument had reached the height of 159 feet, 6 inches--about two-thirds of the height previously determined upon.

Work was resumed on 17 June 1834, and continued until funds again gave out, when the monument was 32 courses high, 85 feet; now imposing enough for quite the good mariners of busy Boston harbor to take notice of. It was the year 1835, and the country was headed for a severe financial depression--a bad sign for those who sought contributions for any but the most practical of objectives. In this emergency, the women of New England again became active in the raising of funds.

In the summer of 1840, a common greeting of the women of Massachusetts was: "What are you doing for the Fair?" Those who knit stockings, crocheted in worsted of various colors, who were skilled in embroidered work, or who were merely good at plain sewing strove industriously to get ready for the Fair that was to earn money for the Bunker Hill Monument. Ten years earlier, the women of New England had made a noble effort to secure funds for the monument, but as the contributions from females and children had been limited to a maximum of .00 each, the total was small. Now, although the maximum sum ever raised at a Boston fair was ,000, they felt that a sizable sum could be realized in a fair in Quincy Hall, near Faneuil Hall. Despite the criticism that "women were stepping out of their sphere," Sarah J. Hale, the leading spirit in this remarkable effort, persisted. Quincy Hall was 382 feet long by 47 feet wide, and it was crowded with the 43 tables of things to sell, when the seven-day fair started in September, 1840. A Whig Convention, in this year of a presidential election, undoubtedly helped to increase the attendance at this very successful fair. The price of admission on the first day was double that of the remaining days, which was [CO].25.

Contractor James Sullivan Savage would have no trouble finding good men for the ticklish job of raising and setting the heavy stones of the higher courses of the monument; able sailors, who would take a shore job for a change. Maritime Boston was full of these good riggers, who were used to dizzy heights, and to whom the half hitches, square knots, guys, slings, and tag lines would be easy. Up to this time the monument had been built by day labor, not by contract. Now, Savage had taken a contract to finish the monument for ,800, from the elevation of 85 feet to the top. He was well trained in masonry, for he had worked on the job since the start under Willard, whose rigid ideas would not let him take a contract himself for profit on such a patriotic project, but who agreed to superintend the work of Savage to the finish. Savage had the traits of a good contractor--energy, resourcefulness, honesty--and the sense that knew how each detail must be executed toward the end of producing a job to be proud of.

Savage replaced the one-horse capstan of the hoist by a six-horsepower steam engine, an innovation that speeded up progress. The steam engine as a prime mover in land and water transportation had become well established, and its use to drive textile machinery had proved successful. Steam power in the construction industry, however, was a novelty. Shouts and wigwag signals from the setting gang at the top to the engineer on the ground were replaced by a bell-wire signaling system. This must have been a pull bell, for many years would pass before electric bells came into common use.

Joseph Henry had developed the electromagnet at about the time of the laying of the lower courses of the monument, and, a few months after its dedication, Morse would operate the first telegraph line between Washington and Baltimore, but the transmission of electric currents by insulated wires even for a few score feet was still too new to receive serious attention on a construction job.

As its lighter stones would be easier to handle, the granite inner cone around which the stairs wind was erected a few courses ahead of the walls of the monument. It thus served as a support for the derrick which raised the heavier wall stones. Through apertures in the hollow walls of the newel, a heavy beam was passed, upon which the derrick was set.

It is interesting to compare our modern hoisting derrick with the apparatus used to raise the stones for the monument. The derrick of today consists of a guyed, vertical mast, an adjustable boom hinged to the base of the mast, with boom falls, and hoist falls, each with their cables and pulleys, or blocks. At the base of the mast, a bull ring serves to turn the mast by power. The whole combination is called the derrick. When we get accustomed to the old English or American custom of calling the mast the post or derrick, and the boom either the gaff or derrick, a little study enables us to comprehend how the monument was built.

The lower courses were raised by the "Holmes Hoisting Apparatus," designed by a practical seaman of Boston. This device could command a circle 100 feet in diameter. Except that it had no bull ring to turn the mast, it appears much like the derrick of today. With steam power available for the upper courses, Savage seems to have modified the boom of Holmes to serve as a nearly horizontal "lever," on which a "wheel carriage" drew the stone inward, to its desired position for placement. In other words, apparently, the boom became today's monorail. A somewhat obscure, English description of the means used to hoist masonry 100 years ago, tells of two devices. One was a "movable derrick crane," with a vertical post, supported by two timber backstays, and a movable hinged "jib or derrick," which could be today's boom. This assembly, of course, corresponded to today's stiff-leg derrick, in which the back guys are replaced by timber members. The other English device for raising stones was practically exactly like today's traveling crane, and that was the name it went by in England, 100 years ago.

Our construction forebears of over a century ago had to use ropes and chains for all purposes; there were no wire ropes. About the time Savage set his first stone, John A. Roebling was making the first American wire rope cable, in a largely outdoor plant located on a level meadow on his farm in Saxonburg, Pa. Wire rope had real advantages in construction work, because of its superior strength and its much less stretch under load. A crude sketch, dated 1837, shows that the derrick for the monument was guyed by chains, which attached to the top of the mast and passed over timber brackets at the staging level, and thence vertically down to weights at the ground. In his long length, the stretching and shrinking of a rope under rain, load, and temperature changes would be difficult to control.

Every four courses of the wall stones the derrick was raised, perhaps by unshipping the boom and using it as a lesser mast to raise the mast proper. Square timber sticks were then beginning to be used for staging, instead of the round trunks of small trees and saplings previously used. A sketch of the monument shows a squared timber stage for pointing the joints. Such a stage could be much more easily erected, and was more reliable than the round sticks, tied at the joints by cords.

On paper, Willard had performed the painstaking task of dimensioning every stone, each with its top a little narrower than its bottom , so that the true taper of the obelisk would be maintained. To set the stone to line was the chore of the erecting force. On the top of the stone already in place lime mortar was spread, enriched with hydraulic cement, and with a sprinkling of iron filings.

Temporary wooden wedges would be placed at the corners of the stone already in place, to support the heavy new stone until the mortar had hardened. When the ponderous stone had been speedily raised from the ground to a level a few inches above the mortar, the engine would be stopped; the derrick adjusted to right or left, and in or out, until the stone was very closely in line. Next, riggers would push on the bridle chain which attached to the two lewises in the stone's top surface, guiding it to its true position in its gentle descent as the engine lowered it the few inches needed to bed it. A tiny fraction of an inch "out-of-line" would be serious, for such errors if repeated, or if not compensating, would visibly throw the monument out of line. On a light stage high above the ground, bracing themselves against gusts of wind, the riggers would be intent on the necessity for such accuracy, but not forgetting their own safety, for no careless workman could work for Savage. They would remember that, while laying the last stone of the 12th course, at the southwest corner, one man had been pushed off .

Happily, the good riggers raised their monument, course by course, to the top. They were under a boss who knew his trade, and he was making money--the sign of content on any construction project.

The practical riggers would not be disturbed at the proposal, advanced when the monument neared its top, that the apex be modified to form a platform to accommodate visitors. Aesthetic Bostonians were much disturbed at this proposal. Happily, the Bunker Hill Monument Association voted down this architectural atrocity.

On Saturday, 23 July 1842, several hundred of our early rising Bostonian ancestors rose earlier than usual to arrive at the monument at 6:00 A.M. On the ground at the base, they studied the capstone; a small stone pyramid, three feet, six inches high, stoutly lashed to the derrick hook, and with an American flag at the top. Standing on the capstone, firmly grasping the hoisting rope, Colonel Charles R. Carnes waited for the signal to hoist. When the clock struck six, a signal gun was fired, and the capstone, bearing the good colonel, started up. In 16 minutes it had reached the top; at 6:30 A.M. it had been bedded, and a national salute announced to all Boston that the Bunker Hill Monument was completed.

Seven years later , two Harvard professors checked with elaborate apparatus, paid for by members of the Bunker Hill Monument Association and the Massachusetts Charitable Association, the famous experiment of Foucault which used a long pendulum to prove the daily rotation of the earth. Suspended in the newel by an annealed wire, 210 feet long, the oscillations of a pointer, attached to a 31-pound British cannon ball relic of the battle, were observed; and its plane of swing was seen to revolve during the day from right to left of the observer. A sudden shower on a previously bright day complicated the experiment, until Professor Eben N. Horsford discovered the reason. Cooled by the rain the monument's exposed face contracted; its apex moved correspondingly and carried the point of suspension of the pendulum with it. As observed years later on the Washington Monument, Horsford deduced that the side of an obelisk, exposed to the hot sun, expanded, and that its apex followed the sun in the sun's travel from east to west. Such motion is tiny, and the ingenuity of the apparatus to observe it was notable. The path of the orbit of the bob, registering both the earth's rotation and the effect of varying heat on the monument's sides, was described as an irregular ellipse with major axis of one-half an inch.

Two hundred thousand persons visit Bunker Hill every year. Of these visitors 20,000 pay their [CO].10, and presumably climb the 294 granite steps to the top. Very few Bostonians are among these visitors. They are of various types: honeymooners and casual tourists, whose list of the sights to be seen in historic Boston includes the monument, and historically minded youngsters, one of whom was recently caught in a heated argument with his father as to where the order was to "wait 'til you can see the whites of their eyes." Surely, the stout young man who recently lugged 25 pounds to the top--his young daughter--was not typical.

Estimate of custodian from a review of his register, 1951.

Many years ago, the Association voted to hold patriotic exercises every year at the monument, and this resolution has been faithfully fulfilled. The annual ceremonies today are very different from those of the earlier years; they have followed the varying pattern in which American citizens have celebrated their national anniversaries during the more than a century since the monument was dedicated in 1843. They were solemn occasions during the earlier years. In what better spot could the Yankees of the trying days of the Civil War compare their convictions with those who fought for similar principles than at the monument, as they listened to the stirring eloquence of their War Governor, John A. Andrew. In later years the holiday spirit took over, with a fireman's muster to please the older folk, while the youngsters of Greater Boston made Bunker Hill Day on 17 June a parallel in firecracker noise and casualties to fingers and eyesight, to the Fourth of July, of which it was a preview. Today, Bunker Hill Day is a huge neighborhood festival, with block parties and a skillfully routed parade which seems to pass every house on the hill. They who enjoy things most are the children of working people, not of the wealthy families that once lived in the sightly dwellings of Bunker Hill. Each boy or girl can give a visitor the story of the battle in detail, and recite the precise dimensions of the monument. These children would rarely answer to the old names: Prescott, Warren, Putnam, or similar Yankee names. They are mostly of second or third generation European families: proud Americans, fortunate to live near the site of one of America's most famous historical shrines. Their festival is a heartening occasion to witness, for it is American democracy at its best.

Through it all the monument rises above its unadorned settings; except that the crown of the hill has been removed, it could still be the New England hilltop farm on which the battle was fought. The obelisk rises in the simplicity of its straight lines and clean angles, with no curves, and with the somber gray of its harsh-textured masonry unrelieved by any greenery of foundation shrubbery. The rugged monument is symbolic of the stern spirit of those who fought in the battle, and of the determination of those who solved the problem of building this massive memorial to them, in the pioneer days of American architecture and engineering.

Transcriber's Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet