OCCASIONAL PAPERS 
 ON THE HISTORY OF 
 BOSTON COLLEGE 
 
 BOSTON COLLEGE 
 AND 
 
 THE LAWRENCE FAMILY 
 
 Rev. Charles F. Donovan, S.J. 
 University Historian 
 February 1 998 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2016 
 
 https://archive.org/details/bostoncollegelawOOdono 
 
nil 
 
 The Chestnut Hill property that Father Thomas I. Gasson, S.J., 
 thirteenth president of Boston College, purchased in December 
 1907, had belonged in the nineteenth century to a distinguished 
 member of the Lawrence family, Amos Adams Lawrence. If that 
 accident of ownership were the only relationship between the 
 Lawrences and Boston College, there would hardly be a need for an 
 essay on the subject. But the connection between Boston College and 
 the Lawrences — particularly Amos Lawrence — is important in the 
 University’s history and deserves remembering. 
 
 Amos Lawrence’s father is called one of the first merchant princes 
 of Massachusetts. He and a brother established cotton and woolen 
 factories in Lawrence, a town that took their name. In the year 1814 
 the elder Lawrence and his wife, Sarah, became the parents of a son, 
 named Amos after his father and Adams after his maternal grand- 
 father. The date of birth may not have had special meaning to the 
 family, but Amos Adams was born on July 31, the feast of St. Ignatius, 
 founder of the Society of Jesus. Thus, that birth date may have been 
 an omen of the benign connection between the infant and the Jesuits 
 who, some decades later, would come to Boston to establish a college. 
 
 Amos Adams’ father and his uncle, Abbott Lawrence, set a splen- 
 did example of enlightened philanthropy as their manufacturing 
 business prospered, and they no doubt influenced the values of 
 young Lawrence. In 1835, when a senior at Harvard, Amos soberly set 
 down his personal philosophy:^ 
 
 My present design is to be a merchant, not a plodding, narrow- 
 minded one pent up in a city, with my mind always on the count- 
 ing-room. . . . My advantages for becoming rich are great: if I 
 have mercantile tact enough to carry on the immense though 
 safe machine which my father and uncle have put in operation, 
 it will turn out gold to me as fast as I could wish: and to be rich 
 would be my delight. I consider it an oyster-like dulness, and not 
 a pious or enlightened way of thinking, that makes some despise 
 riches. If anyone has any love for his fellow creatures, any love of 
 the worthy respect of his neighborhood, he will be willing and 
 
glad to be rich. ... A good man will willingly endure the labor of 
 taking care of his property for the sake of others whom he can 
 so much benefit from it, but his thoughts and fears will not be 
 perpetually on the alert that he may not lose a dollar and may 
 not make all he can. 
 
 .After graduation Amos indeed became rich, first as a selling agent for 
 leading textile mills in Massachusetts and later by owning mills of his 
 own. As we shall see, he matched and perhaps surpassed his father in 
 philanthropy. 
 
 During a trip to Europe in 1840, Amos Lawrence spent some time 
 in Ireland. Despite that “feeling at home” in England “which a com- 
 mon blood and language create in every intelligent American, 
 Lawrence was scathing about British mistreatment of the Irish — and 
 this six years before the gruesome famine. In a letter to his father, he 
 wrote: 
 
 The country of Ireland is in many parts beautiful, but of the 
 wretchedness and suffering of the people, one who has not seen 
 it can hardly form an idea. . . . One is surprised and incensed at 
 the supineness of the English Parliament and people, as well as 
 the Irish nobility and proprietors [that is, the British-imposed 
 overlords], in not feeling more for these 7,000,000 of their 
 fellow-beings [reduced to half that number within a decade], 
 and at their love of power, which impels them to hold under tax- 
 ation a countiy suffering to such an extremity. 
 
 And then Lawrence, whose ancestors had fought in the American 
 revolution only sixty-five years earlier, added: “To be a Radical is nat- 
 ural enough when one sees such an abuse of power, and to hope for a 
 revolution or war which will overthrow this system of government is 
 not unreasonable in the Irish. 
 
 Abuse of alcohol was rampant in Ireland, and at the time of 
 Lawrence’s visit a priest. Father Theobald Mathew, was an effective 
 apostle of temperance. Lawrence displayed remarkable religious sen- 
 sitivity in attending one of Father Mathew’s temperance services and 
 in his reverent report of it to his father. In a passage of the letter, 
 immediately following the part quoted above criticizing English treat- 
 ment of the Irish, Amos wrote:"^ 
 
 But the most singular thing is the temperance revolution, and 
 the wonder of the age is Father Mathew. I have heard and seen 
 him very' satisfactorily, and think with his audience that it was 
 the greatest spectacle I have ever witnessed. Today I sat very 
 near him by means of Father O’Reilly, and not only saw the 
 
 [ 2 ] 
 
whole, but took notes of all his sermon, which was excellent. He 
 is a good-looking man about forty-five, florid face, curly black 
 hair, and a Roman nose, with a good-humored expression. He 
 was rather late, owing to the pressure of the people, but when 
 he stepped upon the platform, every voice was hushed and all 
 eyes fixed on him. If he had been an angel from heaven he 
 would not have commanded more attention. I never saw any- 
 thing like it before. The band of music played a hymn, during 
 which he stood leaning on the altar, looking over the immense 
 concourse, without seeming to feel any awkwardness or any 
 desire to make a display. His dress was a white robe with gold 
 around the neck and on the streamers in front, and his whole 
 appearance was elegant and pleasing. . . . After the hymn he 
 stood out more in front, and delivered his text and sermon, 
 without book or notes. This was sensible and suited to the audi- 
 ence, who showed their approbation by frequent responses and 
 prayers at the end of the sentences. This lasted half an hour, 
 during which I do not think there was a dry eye in the whole 
 assembly, and many were sobbing aloud. I could not tell why, 
 except for the excitement. 
 
 He then retired, and the meeting adjourned to a large open 
 place, called the Battery, on the outskirts of the town. Here on 
 the rising ground he addressed them more particularly on the 
 subject of temperance, and administered the pledge; the rush to 
 take this was almost fearful, so that one or two hundred citizen 
 constables were obliged to lay about them with their poles, to 
 prevent being overthrown. . . . For a long distance around, the 
 hills were covered with people dressed in their best clothes 
 (which are not very good) . The women with their white caps and 
 bright red cloaks gave a gay appearance to the whole. But the 
 most striking feature in the scene was the sick; these were 
 brought in carts and in litters, and were laid about everywhere 
 upon the grass; their friends were lifting some up on their shoul- 
 ders, that the sight of the Father might cure them; some were 
 too weak to hold up their heads, and made a ghastly appearance 
 as they were raised up to the light; some seemed in the last stage, 
 and required all the attention of their relations. It was a touching 
 scene to see the eager anxiety of the mothers and sisters, and to 
 hear their prayers for their sons, husbands, and fathers. One was 
 carried back to the times of the Apostles, and could hardly real- 
 ize that he was not listening to some inspired person. 
 
 After seeing the administering of the pledge (which is kept 
 much more sacredly than in the United States), I went around 
 
 [ 3 ] 
 
Amos Adams Lawrence (1814-1886), one of the signers of the 1853 
 petition supporting Father McElroy. In 1862 he acquired the Chestnut 
 Hill property that was to become the campus of Boston College in the 
 next century. 
 
 to hear the conversation of the people, and to ascertain if pos- 
 sible how they were affected. “It is indeed wonderful,” said a 
 country proprietor named O’Ferren, with whom I became 
 acquainted, “how these cures take place; the only encourage- 
 ment Father Mathew has ever given these poor invalids is that 
 
 [ 4 ] 
 
he will pray for them, and yet they believe he can cure by his 
 word or touch, and I know of two boys who were made well in an 
 hour after taking hold of his robe.” Seeing three decent looking 
 men talking together, I asked if any person had been cured 
 today. “I know only one,” said the man, “but I presume there are 
 more.” “Have you seen this person?” said I. “Seen him! and 
 haven’t I seen him these three years every day, and never knew 
 him to walk a step and isn’t he there now jumping about with 
 them boys yonder?” There was no resisting such evidence as 
 this, and as the boy disappeared into the crowd I had no oppor- 
 tunity of disbelieving. I asked a poor woman, who had brought 
 her son ten miles on her back, if she noticed any change in him. 
 “Not yet,” she said; “if it’s God’s will, he will be cured; we cannot 
 have all we ask for. I hope Father Mathew’s prayers may prevail, 
 or at least the sight of such an inspired man may do him good.” 
 More than a million adults have taken the pledge; and it is very 
 seldom broken. . . . 
 
 For a Boston Yankee, Lawrence proved by his reactions to this visit to 
 Ireland that he was both open-minded and tender-hearted. 
 
 The year 1842 was significant for both the future Boston College 
 and Amos Adams Lawrence. In that year the founder of Boston 
 College, Father John McElroy, was invited by Boston’s bishop, 
 Benedict Fenwick, to give a retreat to the priests of the diocese. 
 During the retreat, McElroy lived at the bishop’s house, and he later 
 recorded that on that occasion he talked with the bishop about a 
 Jesuit college in Boston and found him receptive to the idea.^ Also in 
 1842, Amos Lawrence experienced two of the major events in his life: 
 In March he married Sarah Elizabeth Appleton, daughter of William 
 Appleton, a wealthy merchant and banker; and in May he and Sarah 
 were received into the Episcopal church, confirmed by Bishop Griswold. 
 
 A few words are in order here both about Harvard and Unitarian- 
 ism in the nineteenth century to provide the context of Amos Law- 
 rence’s support of Father John McElroy in his efforts to found a 
 Catholic college in Boston. In the New Catholic Encyclopedia, 
 Unitarianism is described by our own Father John Willis, professor 
 emeritus of the History Department, as a religious community that 
 neither demanded nor sought doctrinal conformity. “Deeds not 
 creeds” was its motto. It had much in common with the rationalism 
 and skepticism of eighteenth century “enlightenment.” Willis cites 
 American historian Charles Beard as noting that “Jefferson, Paine, 
 John Adams, Washington, Franklin and lesser lights [among leaders 
 of the young republic] may be reckoned among the Unitarians or the 
 Deists.” Harvard and its divinity school were under the sway of 
 
 [5] 
 
William Appleton, Amos Lawrence’s father-in-law, 
 one of the twenty-five distinguished Bostonians 
 who signed the petition in support of Father 
 McElroy. {Crayon drawing by Cheney in 1843.) 
 
 Unitarians for much of the nineteenth century. To many orthodox 
 Protestants, Unitarianism was apostasy. In a history of Amherst 
 College, for example, an Amherst alumnus explained why the people 
 of the region established the college in 1821: They wanted a college 
 “not so far west as Williams and not so far towards Plato as 
 Cambridge.’’^ Cambridge, of course, meant Harvard, and Plato was 
 cited as a noble but non-Christian thinker. 
 
 Being tolerant of — indeed enthusiastic about — differences of 
 opinion, the Unitarians were likely to shun sectarian bickering and 
 the rampant anti-Catholicism and anti-popery of the Protestant 
 Know-Nothing movement of the nineteenth century that greeted 
 Father McElroy in his first efforts to start a college in Boston. Amos 
 Lawrence’s son wrote of his father: “A mixed education in Unitarian- 
 ism and Orthodoxy is not usually conducive to a settled faith, and it is 
 more likely to lead to argument than to piety. Mr. Lawrence had 
 passed through the argumentative phase, and as a result had written, 
 
 [ 6 ] 
 
Edward Everett, United States senator and former president of 
 Harvard, who signed the petition supporting Father McElroy. 
 
 ‘Would that I had a Creed,’ but that deep and sincere faith that was 
 found in the Unitarianism as well as the Orthodoxy of that day was 
 Mr. Lawrence’s by inheritance, education, and conviction. His devo- 
 tional spirit had sent him to the Prayer Book, which led him into 
 closer sympathy with the Episcopal Church.”’^ And led him to conver- 
 sion, as previously mentioned, and to having a son and biographer 
 who became Episcopal bishop of Massachusetts. 
 
 It was in this religious climate that Bishop Eenwick’s successor. 
 Bishop John Eitzpatrick, persuaded the Jesuit provincial in Baltimore 
 
 [ 7 ] 
 
William Prescott, noted historian, who signed the petition sup- 
 porting Father McElroy. The photograph is of a stained glass 
 representation of Prescott, one of six American historians hon- 
 ored in a window of the chancellor’s office in Bapst Library. 
 {Photograph by Gary Gilbert.) 
 
 to send Father John McElroy with two other Jesuits in 1847 to take 
 over St. Mary’s Church in the North End. McElroy was then 65 years 
 old and had already had a distinguished career as pastor, preacher, 
 advisor to bishops, and most recently as chaplain to the American 
 Aimy in the Mexican War, an appointment requested by President 
 Polk himself. As soon as he was settled in Boston, and with the 
 bishop’s blessing, McElroy began collecting from both the Irish immi- 
 grants and better-established Bostonians money for a church that 
 would help support a college. By March 1853 he was able to purchase 
 a piece of land that had been the site of the city jail, that Jail having 
 been replaced by the imposing but never charming Charles Street 
 jail. But a group of 925 Protestant citizens, whom McElroy called 
 “Know-Nothings” in his diary, protested the sale on a legal technical- 
 
 [ 8 ] 
 
ity. It was in response to this clearly anti-Catholic protest that a 
 counter-petition favoring Father McElroy’s purchase of the property 
 was submitted to the city. In numbers the favorable petition could not 
 compare to the negative petition, but although only 25 names were 
 on the pro-McElroy document, they included some of the most influ- 
 ential and respected men of Boston. A few of the most prominent 
 were Edward Everett, former Harvard president, former governor, 
 and U.S. senator at the time of the petition; Rufus Choate, former 
 congressman and U. S. senator; Robert Winthrop, former speaker of 
 the U.S. House of Representatives; John Collins Warren, dean of 
 Harvard Medical School; George Ticknor, Harvard professor and 
 leader of Boston society; and William Prescott, noted historian of 
 Spain and Mexico. But the petitioners of most significance for this 
 essay were four members of the Lawrence family: Amos Adams 
 Lawrence, later to own the original part of Boston College’s Chestnut 
 Hill campus; two uncles, Abbott and Samuel Lawrence; and William 
 Appleton, Amos’ father-in-law. 
 
 There is no documentary evidence of which the writer is aware as 
 to who was the mover behind the petition in support of Father 
 McElroy. One might speculate that with four members of the 
 Lawrence family signing the petition, one of them might have been 
 the organizer of the generous gesture to counter bigotry’s nay. But 
 despite the moral weight of “the McElroy twenty-five,’’ bigotry carried 
 the day. The various city bodies debated, deferred, re-debated, and 
 ultimately defeated Father McElroy’s cause, and not until three years 
 later, in July 1857, did he receive city clearance for the purchase of 
 land in the South End, where Boston College was finally located. 
 
 While Amos Lawrence spent some time in the early 1850s trying to 
 help solve the travail of Father McElroy, he had on his mind a moral 
 and political problem of vaster dimensions — namely, slavery. The 
 idea of armed conflict to solve the problem hovered over the country 
 like an ominous cloud, but in the years before the Civil War, earnest 
 citizens sought democratic and pacific ways at least to contain slavery 
 to the states where it already existed. To this end, Amos Lawrence 
 became a leading figure in promoting an operation called the New 
 England Emigrant Aid Company, whose purpose was to facilitate the 
 moving of anti-slave citizens from New England to Kansas and 
 Nebraska, areas which were already being settled by emigrants from 
 slave states. Other similar organizations in the Midwest and Far West 
 came into being. The result was that anti-slavery sentiment eventually 
 prevailed in Kansas. 
 
 Amos Lawrence was treasurer of the New England Emigrant Aid 
 Company, and in that position he put some of his own money into 
 
 [ 9 ] 
 
The house Amos Lawrence built in 1851 in the Longwood section of Brook- 
 line in his search for a more “rural” atmosphere that that of his previous res- 
 idence in Boston’s Pemberton Square. 
 
 insuring the success of the effort. In recognition of his contributions, 
 one area of Kansas where many New England people settled adopted 
 the name Lawrence. Amos Lawrence donated $10,000 for a college in 
 the town. No action to establish a college was taken before the war 
 erupted, but at war’s end, when Kansas legislators were about to start 
 a state university, they chose Lawrence as its location because of the 
 gift from Amos Lawrence, ready to be used. Amos Lawrence also 
 endowed Lawrence College (now Lawrence University) in the state of 
 Wisconsin in a town named Appleton, for Lawrence’s father-in-law. 
 
 In his private life, Amos Lawrence was property hunting at the 
 same time as Father McElroy. The Lawrence family had lived for gen- 
 eradons in bucolic Groton, and Amos had spent happy years there as 
 a youth. Not surprisingly, he felt pent up in Boston, where he lived in 
 Pemberton Square, with a family that eventually included seven 
 children. In 1851 Lawrence purchased about a hundred acres of land 
 in Brookline, only two miles from the center of Boston. On his new 
 property stood a house called the “Cottage Farm,” which gave its 
 name for many years to the bridge now known as the Boston 
 University Bridge. Lawrence built a stone house (also dubbed 
 
 [ 10 ] 
 
Cottage Farm) in the English cottage style, which was his home until 
 his death.^ Lawrence’s property was what is now known as the Long- 
 wood section of Brookline. 
 
 In the biography of his father, Bishop Lawrence described the 
 development of the Brookline property:^ 
 
 From the first day that he moved to Longwood, in 1851, he 
 joined with his brother in laying out their tract of land, plandng 
 trees, opening up roads, and building houses; so that within a 
 few years the Cottage Farm was covered with a cluster of stone 
 and brick cottages, which, hidden behind trees and hedges, 
 gave it the appearance of a private park. And as the first object 
 was the creation of a pleasant neighborhood, the houses were 
 always filled with families who joined with each other in making 
 a delightful and refined community. 
 
 Thus, though he may not have thought of it in these terms, in moving 
 out of the heart of Boston Amos Lawrence had not only provided 
 himself with a quiet, semi-rural residence, but at the same time he 
 and his brother became real estate developers, creating a “refined 
 community” around them. But the very development of his property 
 caused Amos Lawrence once again to long for open space. This is the 
 way his son described the next property acquisition:^^ 
 
 In 1862 Mr. Lawrence anticipated the approach of Boston, 
 which is now [at Lawrence’s invitation] converting Cottage 
 Farm into city streets, and bought a farm of over 100 acres about 
 three miles further out of town, on a part of the tract formerly 
 occupied by the chief Waban and his tribe. It was an unrealized 
 dream that he might retire [Lawrence was 48 when he pur- 
 chased the future site of Boston College] to Waban Farm as 
 Boston approached Longwood. But the city soon took a large 
 slice of his tract for the bed of the “Lawrence Basin” of the 
 Chestnut Hill Reservoir, and thus deprived it of its bucolic 
 aspect. However for twenty years this place was his autumn 
 home, and to it he rode almost every day in the year, superin- 
 tending the plowing, sowing, and reaping, planting nurseries 
 and fruit-trees, pruning and grafting, overseeing the dairy, and 
 giving play to his taste for farming and country life which his 
 ancestry from Wisset, England to Groton had cultivated from 
 necessity. 
 
 The above paragraph, brief as it is, is crammed with insights into 
 Lawrence’s tastes and his relationship to the farm that became the 
 University’s campus. One concludes from the end of the cited para- 
 
[ 12] 
 
 A photograph of Amos Lawrence’s house at Chestnut Hill taken “about 1870” according to Amos’s 
 son, Bishop William Lawrence. This is one of the two photos of the Lawrence property Bishop 
 Lawrence sent to Father Louis Gallagher. The view is from Beacon Street. The house was located 
 about where Gasson Hall now stands. 
 
[ 13 ] 
 
 The second photograph of the Lawrence Chestnut Hill farm presented to Boston College by Bishop 
 William Lawrence. The photo was taken from the hill across Commonwealth Avenue from the cam- 
 pus. It shows Lawrence’s barns and the reservoir made from his land and acquired by Boston 
 College in 1949. Note how undeveloped the property was along Beacon Street opposite the 
 Lawrence farm. 
 
graph that Lawrence purchased a commercial farm that embraced a 
 variety of operations — fruits, vegetables, and dairy — and simply 
 kept it going. The Lawrence family spent the fall months there in the 
 original farmhouse. In other seasons, Amos visited the farm daily by 
 horse. (He was a horseman all his life.) 
 
 Although currently a district of Newton in the western part of the 
 city bears the name Waban, the Lawrence family believed that their 
 property once was owned by Chief Waban; hence they called their 
 “countiT” home the Waban Farm. Bishop Lawrence intimates in the 
 beginning of the paragraph that his father planned to spend his latter 
 days at the farm. Because its “bucolic aspect” was lost when the lower 
 part of the property became a back-up body of water for the Chestnut 
 Hill Reservoir, however, the elder Lawrence’s retirement to the 
 Waban Farm remained “an unrealized dream.” We will see later the 
 significance for Boston College of Lawrence’s reluctant decision to 
 sell the eastern part of his property. 
 
 In 1864, the year that Boston College accepted its first students, 
 Lawrence purchased a home in Nahant. His diary noted on July 17:“ 
 “We moved to Nahant, to our new house on the rocks, and are all well 
 pleased with it. The addition which I have made to it has a good 
 piazza all around both stories, and the sea view is excellent.” With 
 HeniT Wadsworth Longfellow’s summer home on one side of him 
 and Oliver Wendell Holmes’ on the other, and with other interesting 
 neighbors around him, Lawrence enjoyed his Nahant residence, 
 which provided him with a lively society as well as a pleasing ocean 
 environment. 
 
 Lawrence’s Newton and Nahant purchases were made during the 
 great war between the states, a fact that might indicate a less than 
 total concern about or commitment to the nation’s tragic convulsion. 
 But when Lawrence’s daily expressions of anguish and prayer about 
 the war are considered, the real estate acquisitions simply indicate 
 how life went on in the midst of the cataclysm and potential disaster. 
 Boston College itself was an example of the anomalous coexistence of 
 war and business as usual. Although the college buildings and the 
 supporting Church of the Immaculate Conception were completed 
 before the war erupted, their construction in the years 1857 to 1860 
 showed that Father McElroy and the Jesuits courageously went for- 
 ward with their plans, even though the country was on the brink of 
 war. And then in 1863, with the conflict raging, the Commonwealth 
 granted the College a charter, and the following year, with the war at 
 its climax, Boston College opened. 
 
 No College catalog was printed until 1868, with the war over, so we 
 do not have that kind of public document which might have referred 
 
In Bishop Lawrence’s autobiography, he includes this photograph of his 
 father, with a caption, “Amos A. Lawrence at Nahant.” And below that, a 
 second line in quotation marks: “Over fifty years on horseback.” The quote 
 was undoubtedly from Amos Lawrence, an enthusiastic horseman. 
 
 to the war. It is surprising, however, that in the few surviving early 
 Boston College documents there is no reference to the war. The con- 
 flict ended in April 1865, during the first year of the College’s exis- 
 tence. Of course there was no graduation, but it was decided that 
 there should be a display of student talent at the end of the academic 
 year. A two-day “exhibition” was held in late June. The first evening 
 there were oral examinations on most of the studies covered during 
 the year, plus music and declamations. The second evening there was 
 a presentation of a sacred drama, Joseph and His Brethren, followed by 
 the distribution of academic prizes. We can only speculate whether. 
 
 [ 15 ] 
 
had the war sdll raged, there would have been acknowledgement of 
 its horror. But the exhibition made no reference to the recent disas- 
 trous conflict, unless one declamation on the subject of patriotism 
 was intended as an affirmation of the Union cause. 
 
 The one recorded mention of the conflict by someone at Boston 
 College during the war years was in a letter from Father John Bapst, 
 the College’s first president, to Father General Pieter Beckx in Rome 
 in FebruaiT 1865, only two months before Lee’s surrender and the 
 war’s end. Bapst wrote: “The Civil War, which rages so furiously, 
 makes everything uncertain and precarious. Before the end of the 
 war, so it is feared, there will be famine, want and great distress. . . . 
 Since in the past God’s mercy has aided us so, we have reason to hope 
 that He will not fail us in the tribulations that await us.”^‘^ 
 
 Father Bapst was born in Switzerland in 1816. (Thus he was two 
 years younger than .\mos Lawrence.) In 1830, shortly after his ordi- 
 nation as a Jesuit, he was missioned to Maine to care for Indians. 
 There he faced the daunting task of learning both English and the 
 Penobscot language. He spent thirteen arduous years in Maine. With 
 such a limited contact with national events, Bapst may well have been 
 more pessimistic in February 1865 than more sophisticated northern- 
 ers. But then, the war had dragged on so long and tragically that 
 Bapst’s FebruaiT views may have been common after the avalanches 
 of unhappy war news. 
 
 In any case, from the war’s beginning, Amos Lawrence’s diary (in 
 excerpts provided in his son’s biography) expressed grave concern, 
 desperation, and grief, tempered by faith in God. On the last day of 
 1860 he wrote: “A sad ending of one year in the history of my country; 
 I fear, the last year of our happy union. With the war three years old, 
 the diaiT recorded: “1864 May 8. Sunday . . . Severe fighting, but no 
 great victoiy Eight thousand wounded and sent to the rear of Meade’s 
 army. Spare us, O God, from defeat. Give us victor). Give us peace. 
 “May 11. The battle still raging in Virginia. Grant gains ground. Major 
 General Sedgwick killed. May God give us the victory and confound 
 the enemy.’’’^ “May 12. Mary’s [his daughter] wedding. . . . The fight- 
 ing continues. Very bloody, very desperate at times. General Stevenson 
 of Boston killed; a good officer. May the Lord of Hosts give our brave 
 army the victory. He alone can do it. June 21. Wounded men are seen 
 everywhere; in the streets, on the railroad cars, at the railroad station. 
 Some badly maimed. Certainly there never were so many maimed 
 men in one nation before, and the graves! And the sorrowing hearts! 
 O God, how long?”^^’ 
 
 After the Emancipation Proclamation in January 1862, Governor 
 John Andrews (whose signature was placed on the Boston College 
 
charter in April 1863) on February 9, 1863, invited Amos Lawrence to 
 serve on a committee to advise and consult with the governor in the 
 organizing and recruiting of a colored regiment of volunteers. 
 Lawrence wrote on May 28th that the 54th Regiment, the first full 
 colored regiment in the country, marched to Boston Common. He 
 described its leader. Colonel Robert G. Shaw, as “youthful, handsome, 
 sensible, determined, a model for a hero.” Lawrence wrote: 
 
 All Boston turned out to see the first regiment of negroes that 
 had ever been raised in the Northern States. The officers are all 
 educated gentlemen, and Shaw rode with Lieutenant-Colonel 
 Hallowell (whose arm was still in a sling) at the head of the 
 column. He was splendid. 1 stationed myself outside the window 
 on a projection of one of the stone stores on Franklin Street, 
 and as they came up playing and the people cheering from the 
 street, and from the houses, with flags flaunting, it was indeed a 
 grand and novel sight. The troops marched beautifully. When 
 Shaw and his staff came opposite, 1 hailed him and bid him 
 adieu. He raised his hat to me, and waved it toward me twice, at 
 the same time speaking to Hallowell, who did the same. May 
 God bless these dear youths. May God save our country from its 
 foes. May God help this government to crush rebellion, and to 
 crush with it — slavery. Would to God, would to God, I could 
 fight these battles for these young men. 
 
 The Lawrence household was religious. William Lawrence recalls 
 the daily routine during his childhood: 
 
 Every morning we went to father’s or mother’s dressing-room to 
 say our prayers, then came breakfast and family prayers which 
 the servants, who were always Protestants [that is, not Irish], 
 attended. After breakfast we were off to school, and father on 
 his horse for Harvard College [Lawrence was treasurer of the 
 College from 1857 to 1860], or Boston. On Sundays we started 
 at quarter before nine for Sunday School. Mother followed in 
 the big coach and we met at church, filling two pews, and then 
 came home to cold roast beef, baked potatoes, and a cold pie or 
 pudding; for the servants were given a day of rest. In the after- 
 noon father drove the older of us to church while mother stayed 
 home to read to the younger children. 
 
 Lawrence may not have wanted Catholics as family servants, yet he 
 was concerned for the religious welfare of his Catholic factory work- 
 ers. As early as 1843 he recorded, “Went to see the Bishop [Benedict 
 Fenwick] this week about sending a Roman Catholic clergyman down 
 
to Salmon Falls [on the border of New Hampshire and Maine] to 
 look after the spiritual interests of the girls, of whom one third are 
 Irish. And family benevolence toward Irish Catholics was not lim- 
 ited to the head of the Lawrence household. The official history of 
 the Archdiocese of Boston noted that in the post-Civil War era, 
 Boston “swarmed” with Irish “working-out girls,” many of whom had 
 no friends in the city and so, in case of sickness or unemployment, 
 might find themselves in a troubling situation. To deal with this prob- 
 lem, a few Catholic young ladies in 1866 founded a “home for sick 
 and friendless servant girls” in three rented rooms. “Their under- 
 taking aroused the sympathy of wealthy Protestants, from whom 
 generous contributions were soon forthcoming (the subscription list 
 is studded with such names as those of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 
 Mrs. Samuel Gridley Howe, or Mrs. Amos Lawrence). 
 
 Lawrence’s father died in 1853. After the Longwood property was 
 purchased and developed by Amos and his brother William, in 1867 
 they built the Episcopal Church of Our Savior on Monmouth Street 
 in Brookline in their father’s memor\'. Also in 1867 Lawrence joined a 
 board to determine the location of a proposed Episcopal Theological 
 School. His son William, the future Episcopal bishop, wrote that his 
 father saw a long-desired opportunity to bring a more positive reli- 
 gious element into the neighborhood of Harvard College:^‘^ 
 
 The religious influences at Cambridge had been a source of anx- 
 iety to him, and he had always felt that the identification of a 
 Unitarian Dirinity School with the college was a positive injury to 
 both, and as a member of the corporation he had urged some 
 change. When, therefore, the question of a site for the Theo- 
 logical School was raised, and when some of Mr. Reed’s [the 
 principal donor] friends advised strongly against Cambridge on 
 account of its Unitarian and negative religious influence, Mr. 
 Lawrence joined with others in pressing the establishment of the 
 site in Cambridge, and as near the college as possible. They felt 
 convinced (and experience has justified their conviction) that 
 the contact with the university life would be an advantage to the 
 school, and that the school and its chapel might exert a positive 
 influence on the life of the university. 
 
 The decision was made to locate the Episcopal Theological School in 
 Cambridge. Amos Lawrence underwrote the cost of one of the build- 
 ings on the new campus, a student residence now known as Lawrence 
 Hall. 
 
 Amos Lawrence died in 1886 in his seventy-second year. Many 
 Boston College people believe that, 21 years later, Eather Gasson pur- 
 
chased the “Waban” farm from the Lawrence family. At some point 
 between Amos Lawrence’s death and Gasson’s search for a new cam- 
 pus, however, the Chestnut Hill property was sold, and Gasson had to 
 buy four parcels: one owned by E.S. Eldridge on Commonwealth 
 Avenue, an adjoining parcel owned by the Provident Institute of 
 Savings, a third tract owned by Henry J. Shaw and the Mt. Auburn 
 Cemetery Association, and a fourth parcel on Beacon and South 
 Street (now College Road) owned by the Massachusetts Hospital Life 
 Insurance Company. 
 
 Fortunately, a granddaughter of Amos Lawrence, Bishop William 
 Lawrence’s daughter, Marian, kept a diary as a child and left a brief 
 glimpse of the Lawrence farmhouse in the years immediately after 
 her grandfather’s death. Perhaps an introductory paragraph from 
 Marian Peabody’s autobiography about the grandfather’s Cottage 
 Farm may set the stage for the Chestnut Hill reference:*^"^ 
 
 My grandfather and grandmother [Amos and Sarah] Lawrence 
 lived at Cottage Farm, which is now the Longwood section of 
 Brookline. My grandfather named his place Cottage Farm and 
 the railroad took the name as its station. The bridge now known 
 as Boston University Bridge was called the Cottage Farm Bridge. 
 After the Civil War, a large library with deeply recessed windows 
 was built onto the Longwood house, and in the stone around 
 the windows were cut the names of the battles of the war — they 
 are still there, though the house has been moved into a corner 
 of the old place and the rest cut up into many house lots. Here 
 we often stayed and always came for Thanksgiving and Christ- 
 mas parties. 
 
 Grandpa also had a farm at Chestnut Hill overlooking the 
 reservoir. It was the land now occupied by Boston College but 
 was then beautiful farming land with an old farmhouse on it. My 
 grandparents went there to stay between seasons, but in my day 
 it was more often occupied by a newly married aunt and uncle. 
 Aunt Susie Loring had the family dinner there on Thanksgiving 
 in 1887: [There follows an excerpt from Marian Peabody’s diary 
 that was included in the book.] 
 
 “In the morning we went to church. P.M. we played 
 Prisoner’s Base on Hawthorne Street. In the evening we 
 went to the Farm to dinner. Seventeen were there. First 
 course, raw oysters; second course, thick and thin soups; 
 third course, two kinds of fish; fourth, patties; fifth, turkey, 
 cranberries, celery, potato and peas; sixth, ducks, rice 
 birds and salads; seventh, plum pudding, four kinds of pie. 
 
 [ 19 ] 
 
wine jelly and Charlotte Russe; eighth, ice cream and 
 cocoanut cakes; ninth, fruit and candy. In the middle of 
 dinner Amos [her brother] had to run up and down the 
 stairs so that he could eat some more, and he took off his 
 vest, it got so tight.” 
 
 Thanksgiving 1887 was the second Thanksgiving after Amos 
 Lawrence’s death, and we can assume that the nine-course dinner 
 menu condnued a culinary tradition set by the original paterfamilias 
 of the Lawrence Farm. 
 
 In December 1907 the Lawrence Farm (minus the piece that Amos 
 Lawrence reluctantly allowed to become a small reservoir next to 
 the Chestnut Hill Reservoir) was the property of Boston College. 
 Through four presidencies — those of Fathers Gasson, Lyons, Devlin, 
 and Dolan — perhaps not much thought was given to the Lawrence 
 family. Then, in January 1934, Father Louis Gallagher, who succeeded 
 Father James Dolan as president in 1932, received a gracious letter 
 from Episcopal Bishop William Lawrence. This is the same William 
 Lawrence, son of Amos, whose 1888 Life of Amos A. Lawrence vje have 
 been quoting. In 1924 Bishop Lawrence was in retirement at age 85. 
 He wrote:*^^ 
 
 My Dear Dr. Gallagher, 
 
 I take pleasure in sending through you to Boston College these 
 two ph otographs of the site of the College taken about 1870. In 1862 
 or 3 my father, A mos A. Lawrence, bought about one hundred acres 
 of land of which the College site is noiu about the centre. About 
 1866-7 the City of Boston took the low land for the Reservoir, that 
 part now called the “Lower Basin. ” It was then a farm and we 
 passed several months in each year in the house which stood where the 
 College now is. This view was taken from near Beacon Street. The 
 view below is taken from the slope of Waban Hill. The road in the 
 foreground is now widened to Commonwealth Avenue; the stone wall 
 and stone bam were built by my father; Chestnut Hill is beyond. 
 Wild rabbits ran through the grove and our cherry orchard where I 
 ate my fill of cherries is at the point where the Athletic Field noiv is. 
 
 Boston College with its beautiful group of buildings has given 
 a grace and a Benediction to my boyhood haunts. 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 William Laxvrence. 
 
 Rev. L.J. Gallagher, S.J. 
 President 
 
 [ 20 ] 
 
Bishop William Lawrence, son of Amos Lawrence and 
 author of his father’s biography. In 1934 he presented the 
 then president of Boston College, Father Louis Gallagher, 
 with two 1870 photographs of the Chestnut Hill site of 
 Boston College. 
 
 In 1934 the “beautiful group of buildings” Bishop Lawrence 
 alluded to were Gasson Hall, St. Mary’s Hall, Devlin Hall, and Bapst 
 Library — the original architectural gems. The athletic field, where 
 he says cherry trees grew, is the Alumni Field dedicated in 1915, on 
 what students now call the Dust Bowl. 
 
 The two interesting photographs of the Lawrence family’s Chestnut 
 Hill farm are precious for giving Boston College visual evidence of the 
 site of the campus in the late nineteenth century. The photographs 
 had been in the family’s possession since 1870. Why were they given to 
 
 [21 ] 
 
A watercolor painting called “Reservoir from Waban Farm,” by Hetty Lawrence Cunningham, Amos 
 Lawrence’s daughter. The painting is dated 1884, two years before Amos’s death. The artist’s daughter, 
 Mrs. John T. Coolidge, presented it to Boston College. It is reproduced here courtesy of the Boston 
 College McMullen Museum of Art. {Photograph by Gary Gilbert.) 
 
the College in 1934? It could be that Bishop Lawrence, in retirement, 
 was going through family records and possessions, as people often do 
 as they grow older, to distribute among grandchildren, grandnieces, 
 and grandnephews, relics of family history. Coming across the farm 
 photos, he may have thought they would mean more to Boston 
 College than to any of the Lawrence clan in 1934. 
 
 But there may be, speculatively, another explanation of the 
 Bishop’s kind letter and presentation to Father Gallagher. In the late 
 1960s Father Gallagher wrote a manuscript, largely biographical, 
 whose focus was on his experiences in Russia at the inception of the 
 Communist takeover, during 1921 to 1923, as a diplomatic represen- 
 tative of the Vatican and, unofficially, of the U.S. State Department. 
 Toward the end of the document, as a sort of postscript, he devoted 
 fifteen pages to his presidency of Boston College from 1932 to 1937. 
 The second paragraph of this section introduces the then president 
 of Harvard, A. Lawrence Lowell. Father Gallagher wrote: 
 
 In the dubious days of the early ‘30’s, perhaps the most experi- 
 enced as well as the most sagacious authority on the question of 
 the American college presidency was A. Lawrence Lowell, the 
 President of Harvard College. He retired in 1933, after twenty- 
 four years in office, and for one just going into the office of 
 college president it was a decided privilege to make the acquain- 
 tance of this erudite and amiable gentleman. The first invitation 
 I received as new President of Boston College was a request 
 from Harvard to attend a dinner given in honor of a visiting 
 Don from Oxford. The invitation closed with the words, “We 
 hope your first official visit as President of Boston College will 
 be made to Harvard,” and it was, in early January of 1932. This 
 visit was also the occasion of first acquaintance with the venera- 
 ble President of America’s oldest university. 
 
 Lowell’s invitation was certainly a gracious and perhaps ecumenical 
 gesture to a new president of a neighboring college. Evidently Father 
 Gallagher’s urbane and genial manner impressed Lowell at that first 
 meeting, because a personal — not just institutional — relationship 
 developed between the veteran and the beginning president. Father 
 Gallagher’s account continued: “At several later meetings in his house 
 at Harvard and at his home on Marlboro Street in Boston, after his 
 retirement, it was surprising to learn how interested he was in the 
 Society of Jesus and in the growth and progress of Boston College. 
 
 President Lowell and Bishop Lawrence were related, for Lowell’s 
 mother was the daughter of Abbott Lawrence, brother of the bishop’s 
 grandfather. The Lawrences were a close-knit clan, and it is very likely 
 
 [ 23 ] 
 
that the retired Harvard president spoke to the retired bishop about 
 the interesting new president at Boston College, and this may have 
 moved the bishop to write his cordial letter to Father Gallagher. 
 Whatever prompted Bishop Lawrence to send Father Gallagher the 
 1870 photographs of the site of the Boston College campus, both the 
 Episcopal bishop and Harvard’s president demonstrated friendly 
 courtesy to the Boston College president. 
 
 The final chapter in the Boston College-Lawrence family story is 
 the reclamation of the eastern section of Amos Lawrence’s original 
 property, the land beneath the water of the small reservoir. First, we 
 here put in print for the first time the events leading to Boston 
 College’s acquisition of that reservoir. Joseph McKenney of the class 
 of 1927, captain of the football team and later football coach for a few 
 years, served two five-year terms (1938 to 1948) on the Metropolitan 
 District Commission, which had jurisdiction over the Chestnut Hill 
 Reservoir and the small back-up reservoir adjoining the Boston 
 College campus. In response to a letter from the author about the cir- 
 cumstances surrounding the University’s acquisition of the reservoir, 
 McKenney visited him and gave the following explanation. During 
 World War II, Tufts University was seeking the establishment of a 
 Naval ROTC unit, although it had no body of water of its own on or 
 near its campus. Because the presence of such water would enhance 
 its petition for a Naval ROTC unit. Tufts approached the Metro- 
 politan District Commission about use of the old Medford Hillside 
 Resen'oir. Investigation showed that the reservoir was inactive, so the 
 MDC chairman brought the matter to the Commission and received 
 approval for Tufts’ use of the reservoir. 
 
 After the meeting, Joe McKenney told the chairman that he 
 thought the Commission had made the correct decision. He added 
 that he hoped, should a Chestnut Hill reservoir become inactive, a 
 similar arrangement could be made with Boston College. The chair- 
 man said he was agreeable, and they shook hands on it. 
 
 In 1948 the chairman called McKenney to tell him that the small 
 reservoir near Boston College had been declared inactive and 
 reminded him of their agreement about transferring it to Boston 
 College. The trustees of the university were at first puzzled as to what 
 would be done with the reservoir, but they did agree to purchase it for 
 a reasonable sum. And, of course, that purchase has proved to be 
 almost Boston College’s version of Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase. 
 
 And where does Amos Lawrence fit into the story of Boston 
 College’s regaining the lower part of Lawrence’s original property? 
 When Lawrence reluctantly sold that tract of land for the reservoir, he 
 may have unknowingly saved it for Boston College by putting it under _ 
 
 [ 24 ] 
 
water for 82 years. Early in the twentieth century, as streetcars ran to 
 the Boston city limits, Bostonians began to move to new homes in the 
 suburbs, commuting to work in the city. The Boston streetcars ended 
 at Lake Street, and the property adjacent to transportation would 
 have been the most prized for residential development. This is not 
 merely speculation: The University has copies of developers’ plans for 
 homes on the central campus from Commonwealth Avenue to the 
 location of Fulton Hall, with streets laid out and named, and the 
 number of houses indicated. The date on that development map is 
 1907, the very year that Father Gasson purchased the Chestnut Hill 
 property. Had the lower campus not been under water, it is highly 
 likely that that area would have been developed before Gasson was 
 president. 
 
 Amos Lawrence’s son. Bishop William Lawrence, graciously wrote to 
 Father Gallagher that Boston College has given a grace and benedic- 
 tion to his boyhood haunts. In reviewing the relations of the Lawrences 
 to Boston College, it is properly concluded that the Lawrences, often 
 overtly, sometimes unknowingly, have been a blessing and a boon to 
 Boston College. It is in recognition of their presence and their kind- 
 nesses that the Office of Publications and Print Marketing, at 122 
 College Road, proudly bears the name Lawrence House. 
 
 [ 25 ] 
 
ENDNOTES 
 
 1. William Lawrence, Life of Amos A. Lawrence (Boston; Houghton, Mifflin 
 and Company, 1888), pp. 23-24. 
 
 2. Ibid., p. 38. 
 
 3. Ibid., pp. 43—44. 
 
 4. Ibid., pp. 44-48. 
 
 5. Gilbert J. Garraghan, S.J., “Origins of Boston College, 1842-1869,” 
 Thought, 17 (December 1942), p. 640. 
 
 6. Thomas H. LeDuc, Piety and Intellect at Amheist College, 1865-1912 (New 
 York: Columbia University Press, 1946), p. 5. 
 
 7. Life of Amos A. Lawrence, p. 55. 
 
 8. Ibid., p. 60. 
 
 9. Ibid., p. 216. 
 
 10. Ibid., p.2\1. 
 
 11. Ibid., p. 195. 
 
 12. Father Bapst to Father Beckx, February 16, 1865. Father Gilbert J. 
 Garraghan, S.J., cites this letter from the Jesuit General Archives in Rome in 
 an article in Thought nmg 2 iz\ne, December 1942, p. 655. Garraghan ’s article is 
 entitled “Origins of Boston College, 1842-1869.” 
 
 13. Life of Amos A. Lawrence, p. 165. 
 
 14. Ibid., p. 193. 
 
 15. Ibid., p. 193. 
 
 16. Ibid., p. 194. 
 
 17. Ibid., p. 189. 
 
 18. Ibid., p. 190. 
 
 19. William Lawrence, D.D., Memories of a Happy Life (Boston: Houghton 
 Mifflin Company, 1926), p. 27. 
 
 20. Life of Amos A. Lawrence, p. 53. 
 
 21. Robert H. Lord, John E, Sexton, and Edward T. Harrington, History of 
 the Archdiocese of Boston (Boston: The Pilot Publishing Company, 1945), Vol. 3, 
 p. 371. 
 
 22. Life of Amos A. Lawrence, pp. 241-242. 
 
 23. Charles F. Donovan, S.J., David R. Dunigan, S.J., and Paul A. 
 FitzGerald, S.J., History of Boston College: From the Beginnings to 1990 (Chestnut 
 Hill, Mass.: The University Press of Boston College, 1990), p. 118. 
 
 24. Marian Lawrence Peabody, To Be Young Was Very Heaven (Boston: 
 Houghton Mifflin Company, 1967), p. 9. 
 
 25. Boston College Archives. 
 
 26. The Boston College Archives has a typescript of Father Gallagher’s 
 proposed book. Recollections of a Jesuit Cossack, which had been submitted to 
 the Archdiocesan Chancery Office for clearance for publication. The 
 Imprimatur v/dis granted in July 1971, but the author died the following August 
 and his recollections have not been published. The cited passages are on 
 pages 184 and 185 of the typescript. 
 
 [ 26 ] 
 
27. The closeness of the Lawrences and related families is illustrated by a 
 passage from Amos Lawrence’s granddaughter’s autobiography, To Be Young 
 Was Very Heaven (p. 361). Marian Lawrence, the granddaughter, wrote of her 
 keeping company with Harold Peabody for a period of time and notes, “At 
 last on Christmas Harold and I became engaged. It must have been the 
 Christmas spirit.” Then she quotes her diary for that day: “Dec. 25, 1905. 
 Grandpa Peabody had five children. Jack, Cotty, Frank, Martha, and George. 
 Jack, Frank, and Martha all married Lawrences, and Cotty married his first 
 cousin, Fanny Peabody; George was the only one who married out of the fam- 
 ily. . . . When the second generation began to marry, Marian married her first 
 cousin, Jim Lawrence, and so we were the fifth such combination without any 
 break, and what then was the use of fighting fate?” 
 
 Photographs provided by the Boston College 
 Archives, except as noted in the captions. Photo- 
 graphic reproductions by Gary Gilbert, Boston 
 College Office of Communications. 
 
 [ 27 ] 
 
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