John Pigeon Retires to the Country

John Pigeon (1725-1800) was a prominent Boston merchant specializing in dry goods, meaning cloth and clothing.

Pigeon married Jane Dumaresq, from a wealthy Huguenot family, in 1752. He was an Anglican, a warden of Christ Church in the North End.

In the 1750s Pigeon ran notices in the Boston News-Letter and Boston Evening-Post announcing what people could buy “At his Shop near Doctor [John] Clark’s” on Fish Street in the North End. These were long advertisements in small (italic) type listing a broad assortment of cloths with now-unfamiliar names, subtle variations on types of handkerchiefs, and garments of many sorts.

As was typical at the time, Pigeon didn’t confine himself to one line. He also offered “Cheshire cheese, starch, best London pipes,…Philadelphia flour, rice, English west-india rum, New-England cheese, indigo, sugars, cocoa, coffee, whale-bone and turpentine.”

In 1762 Pigeon shifted his business. The 25 October Evening-Post stated:

This is to give Public Notice, That the Underwriters at Mr. John Welsh’s Insurance Office, North-End of Boston, have removed a little further to the Northward, to a New Insurance Office, just opened by Mr. John Pigeon, where he lately kept Shop; and where constant Attendance will be given by said Pigeon, to any Gentleman that will favour him with their Business, and the Business transacted with the greatest Dispatch and Fidelity.

Going into the insurance business didn’t mean Pigeon got out of shopkeeping entirely, however. On 18 Feb 1765 he advertised that “At the Insurance-Office in Fish-Street” people could buy “A small Parcel of choice CYDER, Anchors, Deck and Sheathing Nails, and English GOODS at the cheapest Rate.” On 30 September he offered a schooner, “80 or 90 Tons, nine Months old”; a sloop; salt; fish; anchors; and shoes, as well as those “English GOODS.”

Pigeon showed other signs of prosperity, admirable and regrettable. He was elected one of Boston’s wardens, responsible for enforcing the Sabbath. He was also a slave owner. In 1753 his servants Manuel and Dinah got married. In 1763 Pigeon advertised for the return of another slave named Zangoe, “a middling sized Fellow, about 28 Years old, speaks broken English, but can talk pretty good French.”

Because Pigeon sold so many things, possibly on behalf of others, it’s not clear whether the “convenient Dwelling House with a Shop” that he offered on 29 Sept 1766 was his own. That property came with “a good large Yard and Garden, a Barn, Warehouse and Wharf, situate in Boston, near the Hay-Market,” plus three people, “Two Negro Men and one Negro Woman.”

By 1768, Pigeon had moved out to Newton. In May he asked readers of the Boston News-Letter and Boston Chronicle to alert him to any debts he still owed through “Mr. Nathaniel Barber, at the Insurance Office.” He was by then “but seldom in Boston.” Pigeon had retired to the life of a country gentleman.

Pigeon bought a house and land in Newton in 1769, then 60 acres and another house in 1770, and the house shown above in 1773. It’s possible he was moving around, but he also had two young sons—Henry and John, Jr.—to set up eventually. So maybe those other properties were meant for them.

Newton had no Anglican church for the family. The Pigeons took in John Marrett (1741-1813), a 1763 graduate of Harvard College, probably as a tutor for those boys. After trying for other pulpits, Marrett was installed in 1773 at the Woburn parish that became Burlington. He was a Congregationalist, and it seems significant that John Pigeon, Jr., went to the Presbyterian college at Princeton in May 1773 rather than Harvard, which was closer and more welcoming for Anglicans.

In January 1774, Newton’s town meeting named John Pigeon to its new committee of correspondence, headed by Edward Durant. That September, Pigeon chaired the committee to instruct the town’s representatives to the Massachusetts General Court, including Durant. He joined those men in the first Massachusetts Provincial Congress the following month.

At the congress, one of Pigeon’s committee assignments was assessing the financial losses caused by the Boston Port Bill. His familiarity with Boston business suited him for that. On 29 October, he was also elected to the congress’s crucial committee of safety. Four days later, at that committee’s first meeting, he was chosen clerk. That put John Pigeon right in the middle of Massachusetts’s preparations for war.

TOMORROW: Pigeon as commissary.

Visiting the Durant-Kenrick House on Film, 28 Feb.

On Thursday, 28 February, at 7:00 P.M., Historic Newton and the Newton Free Library are sponsoring a free showing of the documentary “The Durant-Kenrick Homestead: A House of Many Stories.” The event description says:

Built in 1734 and continuously occupied for nearly 275 years, the Durant-Kenrick House is Newton’s connection to many of the pivotal events of American history. This new documentary by award-winning historical documentarian Joe Hunter tells the story of the house and its occupants. Through the stories of the house’s residents, we wrestle with the fundamental questions they spent their lives answering: What is liberty? What is our responsibility to defend it? Who is a citizen?

Following the showing, Historic Newton Director Cindy Stone and other project representatives will offer more insight into the history of the house and discuss its current transformation into an educational center.

I wrote about the history of this house back in April 2012. It seems significant not because what happened there affected lots of other people but because its “many stories” reflect important trends and shifts in early American life. The movie will be shown at the Newton library, at the corner of Homer and Walnut Streets.

Howe Explores the Durant-Kenrick House in Newton, 12 Apr.

On Thursday, 12 April, Historic Newton will sponsor a free lecture by Jeffery Howe, Professor of Fine Arts at Boston College, about the city’s Durant-Kenrick House. Howe created this digital archive of American architecture that I’ve periodically dived into.

The Durant-Kenrick House was built in 1732 by a blacksmith and merchant named Edward Durant (1695-1740), who moved out from Boston with his family and enslaved servants to enjoy the life of a country gentleman. Howe’s talk, titled “A New Refinement: the Durant-Kenrick House in the Context of Colonial Housing,” will examine it as a sign of domestic trends:

At its construction in 1734, the Durant-Kenrick house represented an important new stage in the evolution of colonial architecture, falling between the simplicity of 17th-century building and the social aspirations of later Georgian mansions.

During the Revolutionary War the house was the home of the merchant’s son, also named Edward Durant (1715–1782). He was a Harvard graduate and local political leader, moderating Newton town meetings and serving as selectman and legislator. Durant’s son Thomas was a militia lieutenant in 1775, and his son Edward became a doctor, serving as a regimental surgeon and dying on a privateer.

Edward Durant also provided space in his house for a grammar school in the early 1760s. Old Massachusetts law required towns of a certain size to have such a school to prepare boys for careers in the ministry, but rural towns usually tried to avoid the expense of an extra building for only a few scholars.

All that said, the site’s major importance came in the early republic after it passed to the Kenrick family, who developed the largest nursery in New England. The Kenricks supplied American estate owners with fruit trees, ornamental trees, and flowering plants, and eventually currants and currant wine.

The Fiske Center for Archaeological Research at the University of Massachusetts–Boston has been excavating the Durant-Kenrick site, with periodic reports. Carl M. Cohen has also tracked activity at the house since its owners donated it Historic Newton (a city agency) in 2010.

Howe’s talk will begin at 7:00 P.M. in the Newton Free Library’s auditorium. It’s free and open to the public.