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The Quincy Mansion, Quincy, Massachusetts: Edmund

Edmund Quincy, who succeeded to Coddington's house, probably would have been banished if he had not died before the decree could be pronounced. For a season his widow, Judith, lived in the house, which, from that time, became known as the Quincy Mansion.

With her were the children, Edmund and Judith.

Judith, who married at twenty, and became the mother of Hannah (Betsy) Hull, whose dowry, when she became the bride of Judge Samuel Sewell, was her weight in pine-tree shillings, the gift of her father, the master of the colony's mint. Florence Royce Davis has written of the wedding: "Then the great scales were brought, amid laughter and jest, And Betsy was called to step in and be weighed; But a silence fell over each wondering guest When the mint-master opened a ponderous chest And a fortune of shillings displayed. "By handfuls the silver was poured in one side Till it weighed from the floor blushing Betsy, the bride; And the mint-master called: 'Prithee, Sewell, my son, The horses are saddled, the wedding is done; Behold the bride's portion; and know all your days Your wife is well worth every shilling she weighs."

IN THE LAND OF THE PILGRIMS Edmund Quincy married at twenty-one, and became the next occupant of the mansion. During his long life there were welcomed to the hospitable roof many of those whose words and deeds prepared the way for the liberty that was to come to the country within a century.