MEMBERS DECEASED. Members who have died since the last volume of the Proceedings was issued, March 27, 1885. PROCEEDINGS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. THE MARCH MEETING, 1885. HE stated monthly meeting was held on Thursday, the 12th instant, at No. 30 Tremont Street, Boston; and the President, the Hon. ROBERT C. WINTHROP, was warmly welcomed as he again occupied the chair. The record of the last meeting by the Recording Secretary was read and approved. The gifts to the Library during the past month were reported by the Librarian. The PRESIDENT then addressed the Society as follows: I was in doubt, Gentlemen, until almost the last moment, whether I could be here this afternoon. Our long iron stairway presents a formidable impediment to my still feeble limbs. The March winds and snows were even a more serious consideration to one not yet entirely free from aches and ails. But when I remembered that illness had already kept me away from this chair for three or four months, and that haply I should be in the way of occupying it, as your President, only once more after to-day, I could not resist the impulse, even at some risk, to make my appearance. I come, however, without any formal introductory Paper, and must trust to my friend Dr. Ellis to whom we are already so much indebted, and to whom I owe a special acknowledgment for making my place good, if not more than good, for so many months- to supplement anything that I may be able to say, either as to the living or the dead. The dead, alas! claim our first notice this afternoon, as too often heretofore. Since our last monthly meeting we have lost two notable names from our Resident roll, that of Johr C. Phillips and that of George Henry Preble. The death of Mr. Phillips at the early age of forty-six is a subject for real sorrow in our community. With our own Society he had been associated but a few years. A lineal descendant of the Rev. George Phillips, the famous Puritan minister of Watertown in 1630,-the companion and friend of Governor Winthrop, who came over with Winthrop and the Charter, and catechised and preached on board the "Arbella " on the voyage, - he could not fail to take an interest in the earliest history of Massachusetts. I remember his showing me, with pride, an original autograph sermon of that distinguished ancestor and excellent man, when I was visiting him in his beautiful library some years ago. I believe he had other Phillips manuscripts, which we may hope will not be wholly lost to our Collections hereafter. An His later lineage, too, was of a kind to make him observant of whatever contributed to the honor and welfare of our Commonwealth. His family name is associated, as we know, with some of our most celebrated academies and institutions. dover and Exeter owe their famous schools to the bounty and beneficence of the Phillipses. The Observatory of Harvard University was principally endowed by one of the same name and blood. The statues which adorn our squares are, many of them, from a Phillips Fund. He himself had given the generous sum of twenty-five thousand dollars to the Phillips Academy at Andover at their centennial celebration in 1878, and an equal amount to the Phillips Exeter Academy on a similar occasion. And it is within my own knowledge that he had supplied most important and liberal pecuniary and personal aid to other institutions, at moments of special need. I was associated with him as one of the Trustees of the Peabody Museum of Archæology and Ethnology at Cambridge, of which he has been the Treasurer for several years past, and to which he has rendered valuable service. I was associated with him, also, in the management of the new Children's Hospital, of whose board he was the Vice-President at his death, and of which he had been a most efficient and liberal supporter. A graduate of Harvard in the class of 1858, there are those here who can bear witness to his character as a student, as well as to his worth as a man, better than myself; but I cannot but feel that our community has sustained a great loss in his early death, for which I desire to record my personal sorrow. Of Admiral Preble, Dr. Ellis has a peculiar right to speak, as he was one of his parishioners in Charlestown for many years, and always an intimate friend. He was an officer in our Navy for half a century, and had seen much service in peace and in war. He did not wholly escape the injustices which resulted from suspicions and jealousies during our late civil struggle; but he was vindicated by a Court of Inquiry, or Court-martial, and no shadow rests on his long and honorable record. Meantime his contributions to History have been numerous and important. His "Flag of the United States and other National Flags," in a volume of eight hundred octavo pages, with many illustrations, is a work of the highest interest, full of patriotic incident, and exhibiting great research. His more recent "Chronological History of the Origin and Development of Steam Navigation," in nearly five hundred octavo pages, has also much valuable matter, which can hardly be found anywhere else in so convenient and condensed a form. In sending me a copy of this volume last summer, he spoke of having been forced, by the impatience of the publishers, to issue it without the opportunity of correcting and completing it as he desired. But it is a highly creditable volume, and exhibits great interest in the subject as well as a thorough acquaintance with all its details. I forbear, however, from dwelling longer on his works or his career, in the assurance that they will be dealt with more worthily by others. I cannot fail to remember, however, that on one of his last visits to me at Brookline last autumn, when I was already somewhat of an invalid, he left with me for examination a magnificently bound volume which proved to contain my orations at Bunker Hill and at Yorktown in 1881, which he had been at the personal cost and labor of illustrating sumptuously with portraits and engravings of the men and the scenes to which the orations referred, and |