another committee to prepare and draw up a true and full account of those Tryals and what preceded them;" and Dr. Young was of the committee appointed for this purpose.1 On 7 May, 1771, he was chairman of a committee to consider the petition of Jacob Emmons for compensation for land taken "to make a new Street or widen the same [Paddy's Alley] leading from Ann Street to Middle [Hanover] Street."2 At a meeting of the Selectmen in September, 1771, Dr. Tho Young apply'd in behalf of M" Wells & M Wright for liberty to exhibit the likeness of the late M: Whitefield &c. in Wax Work at Concert Hall.3 On 18 August, 1772, Thomas Young, of Boston, physician, for £216.6.8 purchased of John Newell of Boston, cooper, a dwelling house and land on the southerly side of Wing's Lane, now Elm Street, only a few rods distant from Faneuil Hall and from the house of his friend Dr. Joseph Warren in Hanover Street. It 1 Boston Record Commissioners' Reports, xviii. 49–51. 2 Ibid. xviii. 53, 54. 8 Ibid. xxiii. 97. Patience (Lovell) Wright (1725-1785), wife of Joseph Wright of Bordentown, New Jersey, was "a lady of uncommon talent [who] made herself famous for likenesses in wax, in the cities of her native country ... [and] was enabled to seek more extensive fame, and more splendid fortune in the metropolis of Great Britain... [where] her work was considered of an extraordinary kind" (Dunlap, History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States, 1834, i. 132). Her only son Joseph, a pupil of West, was a successful portrait painter, modeller in clay, and die sinker in England, France and the United States, and in 1784 he painted a portrait of Washington for the Count de Solms (ibid. i. 313). Her elder daughter, who married an American by the name of Platt, inherited something of her mother's talent and made herself known in New York, about 1787, by her modelling in wax (ibid. i. 134). "Her younger daughter married Hopner, the rival of Stuart and Lawrence as a portrait painter" (ibid. i. 135, 312). In the summer of 1784 Abigail Adams "went to see the celebrated Mrs. Wright" at her studio in London, and in a letter to her sister Mrs. Cranch, she gives an amusing description of her visit and of the artist's personality (Letters of Mrs. Adams, 1840, ii. 32, 33). Mrs. Wells, mentioned in the text, was a sister of Mrs. Wright. She practised her art in Philadelphia, where John Adams visited her in the spring of 1777. "There is genius as well as taste and art discovered in this exhibition [of wax-work]. But I must confess the whole scene was disagreeable to me " (Letters of John Adams, addressed to his Wife, 1841, i. 223, 224). 4 Suffolk Deeds, cxxii. 5. Judge John Saffin-1710 HANOVER SCALE OF FEET 100 BRATTLE (Formerly Coopers Alley) STREET CORNHIL NORTH BENDALLS LANE NORTH MARKET STREET EXCHANGE HALL SQ. BITE TAVERN DEVONSHIRE STREET CHANGE STREET AVE J.H. EDMONDS, DEL. |