Part 2

On 17 June 1825, the cornerstone of the monument was laid with impressive ceremonies. As the colorful procession marched up Bunker Hill to the stirring rendition of “Yankee Doodle” by the drummer of Colonel William Prescott’s regiment, who, 50 years before, had been in the battle, the rear of the procession was just starting from distant Boston Common. The little Boston of over a century ago was crowded with visitors who had come from places as remote as South Carolina by stagecoach, sailing vessel, or on foot, to hear the great speech of Daniel Webster, President of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, and America’s first orator of the day. Years earlier, Chaplain Joseph Thaxter had paid the last offices to dying soldiers in the battle; now, he invoked God’s blessing on the young American republic, as 40 veterans of the battle sat in a place of honor.

The most important visitor, of course, was General Lafayette, who, as a good Mason, spread the mortar on the stone when it was laid by Most Worshipful Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, John Abbot. As the battle’s only monument up to this date had been erected by the Masons, it was considered appropriate that the permanent monument should have its cornerstone laid with the Masonic ceremony. A little later, this procedure was sharply criticized during the Antimasonic period, which occurred before the monument was finished.[6]

[6] Joseph Warren, the outstanding hero of the battle, was Grand Master of Freemasons for North America.

Many of the spectators knew that the cornerstone records would later have to be moved, for the plans of the monument were hardly started. Now, the box with its old newspapers, Continental currency, and other data is within a stone at the monument’s northeast corner, and the original cornerstone stands in the center of the foundation.

With his usual generosity, Daniel Webster presented the copyright of his famous speech to the Bunker Hill Monument Association. The copyright was sold for $600, which was the second largest single contribution up to that date.

_The Leading Character_

Solomon Willard, architect and superintendent of the Bunker Hill Monument, developed the methods for the quarrying, dressing, transporting, and erecting the huge stones of the monument that started granite on its way to becoming a principal material for massive structures in America for half a century, until reinforced concrete took over. (Today, granite is used extensively as a protective facing for concrete, for highway curbing, and for memorials.)

It is impressive to note the universal respect for the integrity and ability of this early American architect which all the records of the monument stress. In the drama of the building of the Bunker Hill Monument, he played the leading part, and his character resembled the sturdy structure which he designed in detail and erected. During his 18 years of service in the construction of his masterpiece, the Bunker Hill Monument, he would accept no recompense except for his expenses, deeming it his duty to work without pay on such a patriotic venture. He was also a substantial contributor to the building fund.

A self-educated man, who had learned architecture with sufficient thoroughness to become a teacher in the subject, he had also become proficient in the various sciences. Starting as a carpenter, Willard had proved both his craftsmanship and artistry by becoming an adept carver of ships’ figureheads and models, including a model of the Capitol at Washington.

At the time the monument was begun, Willard was one of the leading architects of Boston. Typical of an architect’s versatility, he had played an important part in the change from the heating of buildings by wood-burning fireplaces and Franklin stoves, to hot-air furnaces, using either wood or coal. As an expert in furnace heat, he was called in for advice in the design of the heating system of America’s most important building, when the President demanded that the national Capitol should have adequate heat.

Appointed in October, 1825, to the combined position of architect and superintendent, Willard spent the following winter on the plans, models, and computations required to develop the construction details, from the over-all dimensions of the Baldwin Report. During these preliminary steps, Willard experimented with a promising machine for dressing the stones. The selection of the Bunker Hill Quarry in Quincy, Mass., was made after Willard had made a careful search for suitable stone, in which he was said to have walked 300 miles. The right to quarry, at Quincy, sufficient granite for the monument was purchased for $325. Part of the amount to be provided by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was to have been supplied by the cost of the dressing of the stone (then called “hammering”) by the convicts of nearby Charlestown State Prison. The convicts, however, were obviously not sufficiently independent to work on this shrine of independence, so this procedure was not adopted.

_Up-To-Date Quarry (Circa 1825–1843)_

From various old American and English records of masonry construction, it is possible to construct an account of how the stones for the Bunker Hill Monument must have been quarried and dressed. The old names are used for the tools and methods, and the modern mason will find many of these old descriptions quite familiar.

The hornblende granite of the Quincy region was (and is) of very uniform texture and varies only in color, from gray to dark gray. In Quincy, Willard would find that both “sheet” and “boulder” quarry formations occurred: the joints in the ledge of the sheet areas making the granite appear as if stratified, and hence more easily removed; but the huge, rounded boulders in the other areas, measuring up to 40 feet across, had no joints. Rows of holes were drilled by hand (at least 25 years would elapse before practical power-rock drills became available) and large blocks loosened from the ledge or boulder, probably by wedges, possibly by light blasts of gunpowder. At this stage the quarried block was called “quarry-pitched.” Stone of the smaller size for the monument was split from these blocks along lines of holes in which wedges were driven. These were probably of the plug-and-feather type, in which an iron wedge with an acute angle is fitted between two semicircular iron feathers, which taper in the opposite direction to that of the wedge, and thus fit the hole drilled in the stone, nicely. Granite has no cleavage planes, like slate; but a routine of smart taps on the plugs, back and forth along the line, soon splits the stone along a fairly smooth face. Two lewises (an ancient device), attached at about the quarter points of the top of the stone, were used to lift it. Three members make the lewis: a flat center bar with an eye at the top, the center bar being flanked by two wedge-shaped side pieces which are thicker at the bottom of the hole, and these also have eyes at the top. The wedges are inserted first, then the center bar slipped between; thereafter any lifting pull on the three bars is bound to expand the lewis to fill the hole and lift the stone, for the hole is drilled wider at the bottom than at the top.

With Solomon Willard’s well-rendered isometric drawing of each stone for a guide, the stonecutter dressed it, first selecting the best face for the “bed” (bottom) and hammered it to a plane surface, determined by shallow channels (chisel drafts) cut diagonally across the stone.

From this surface, the stonecutter laid out the other faces, including the “build” (top), by his good mason’s square or template. The texture of the visible face was “tooled,” that is, the marks of the chisel remained visible. Quincy granite is a quality product, taking a high polish, but the builders of the Bunker Hill Monument desired no polish on their monument. Today, the surface of the monument shows faint, well-weathered lines, like those produced by the modern bushhammer, which has a head made of several thin steel plates bolted together, each sharpened to a cutting edge. In England during the period, flat iron bars with rough edges were in use to saw softer stone than granite, and at Quincy, Willard experimented with dressing machines. The conclusion may be drawn, however, that the stones which we now see on the monument were undoubtedly shaped to their present dimensions by hand.

Today, 110 years after its capstone was put in place, the Bunker Hill Monument stands as an impressive testimonial to the conservative judgment of its designer, Loammi Baldwin, and the painstaking fidelity of the man who supervised its construction, Solomon Willard. An engineer familiar with its maintenance states that there is no evidence of settlement, and that a check by surveyor’s transit revealed no signs of misalignment. Its joints occasionally need pointing, the last pointing being performed about 20 years ago. Various iron or steel members of the observation chamber have had to be replaced. Its lightning rod has been in place for many years, but there is no readily available record to check whether the monument has ever been struck by lightning. With their empirical methods of design and their crude, mostly hand-operated, construction apparatus, our forebears built a sturdy structure, which, barring an earthquake, should last for centuries.

_The Granite Railway_

On 7 October 1826, the first railroad in America started operation. This was the horse-operated Granite Railway, built to transport the stones for the Bunker Hill Monument from the quarry in Quincy down to the Neponset River, a distance of nearly three miles. The track and cars of the railroad had been designed and built by a young engineer of 28, Gridley Bryant, whose Granite Railway project started him on a long career of achievement in the invention of equipment that played a major part in the rapid and successful development of the American railroad system.

Ample precedent for the Granite Railway existed in England, where, since the reign of Charles II, wooden tracks, sometimes armored with iron plates, had been used as runways for coal cars from the pits to the nearest waterway. Within five years of the start of the Granite Railway, similar systems are recorded in the states of Pennsylvania, South Carolina, New York, and Maryland. At first, the motive power for these lines was supplied by gravity, stationary engines, or horses, but soon tiny steam locomotives were tried. Thus, in the year 1829, Peter Cooper built the famous _Tom Thumb_, a successful locomotive which used rifle barrels for flues. In the same year the _Stourbridge Lion_, “the first locomotive that ever turned a driving wheel on a railroad on the Western Continent,”[7] was brought by sailing vessel from England and started operation in Pennsylvania. The American steam railroad system was thus well under way by the time the lower courses of the monument were being raised.

[7] _Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution_, 1889.

Bryant later described his railroad as having stone sleepers laid across the track, 8 feet apart. Upon these, were placed wooden rails, 6 inches thick and 12 inches high (replaced by stone within a few years). Spiked on top of these were iron plates, 3 inches wide by ¼ inch thick. However, at road crossings, stone rails were used, with 4-inch by ½-inch iron plates bolted on top. This “permanent” construction was also used on the double-track, inclined plane at the quarry. (Well-preserved vestiges of this “permanent” construction are visible today at the rise to the Bunker Hill Quarry.) Here, an endless chain allowed the loaded, descending cars to pull up the empty ascending ones.

The standard gauge of American railroads is now 4 feet, 8½ inches, measured between railheads, a standard adopted after many years of confusion before the present gauge dimension was adopted. Although Bryant described his track gauge as 5 feet, this dimension was measured between the “bearing points” of the wheels on the tracks. If the bearing points are assumed to be the center of the treads of the wheels, his gauge is found to match closely the present standard gauge. This track gauge agrees with that adopted by the famous English railroad engineer, George Stephenson, at about the same time, after he had measured scores of carts used by his farmer neighbors. Possibly, both Stephenson and Bryant knew that their selected gauge had a very early beginning; for some historians suggest that the English carts were originally made to fit the ruts cut in the roads of Britain by the Roman chariots, many centuries earlier, during the Roman occupation of Britain.

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, 6½ 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. (Some time would elapse in railroad progress before the wheels would be fixed to, and revolve with, the axles in journals.)

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.[8]

[8] For more data on the Granite Railway and Gridley Bryant, _see_: Charles B. Stuart, _Civil and Military Engineers of America_ (New York: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., 1871); and _The First Railroad in America_ (Boston: Privately printed for Granite Railway Company, 1926).

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 (the monument) was transported from the quarry on a railroad to the wharf in Quincy (actually located in Milton) 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.”[9] 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.

[9] George E. Ellis, _History of the Battle of Bunker’s (Breed’s) Hill_ (Boston: Lockwood, Brooks and Company, 1875).

_Beacon for Mariners_

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 (today he is still so listed). 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 $1.00 each, the total was small. Now, although the maximum sum ever raised at a Boston fair was $3,000, 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.[10] 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 $0.25.

[10] She was editor of _Godey’s Lady’s Book_ for 30 years, and is credited with promoting the establishment of the last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day.