Thomas Melvill or Thomas Melville (1751-1832) of Boston, Massachusetts, was a merchant, member of the Sons of Liberty, participant in the Boston Tea Party, a major in the American Revolution, a longtime fireman in the Boston Fire Department, state legislator, and paternal grandfather of writer Herman Melville.[1]
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Born in Boston to Scottish-born merchant[2][3] Allan Melvill (d.1761) and Jean Cargill, Thomas Melvill attended New Jersey College. In July 1773 he was awarded an honorary MA degree by Harvard College.[4] He married Priscilla Scollay in 1774.[5] Friends included Samuel Adams.[6]
"When the citizens of Boston began to evince a determination to resist the arbitrary, offensive and onerous exactions of the British government, Melvill was conspicuous among the ardent and gallant young men of the capital, for his zeal and intrepidity, during that momentous advent of ... national independence."[7] He participated in the Boston Tea Party, "that immortal band which in December, 1773, in presence of the Royal fleet, boarded the tea ships in Boston harbor, and threw their rich cargoes into the ocean."[8] In March 1776 when "the British fleet was driven from Boston harbor, Captain Melvill discharged the first guns at the hostile ships, from his battery, at Nantasket."[9] During the war he "served in the Rhode Island campaigns of 1777 and 1779."[10]
After the war he worked as a "naval officer" (1786-1820),[12][13] and "surveyor and port inspector of excise" (ca.1796) at the customhouse on State Street.[14][15] "When the custom house was established in Boston, in 1786, he was appointed surveyor; in 1789 was made inspector, and ... in 1814, he was appointed naval officer of the port."[16]
He served as a town fireward (1779-1825);[17][18] an incorporator of Boston's Scots Charitable Society (1786);[19][20] a founder of the Massachusetts General Hospital (est.1811);[21] and president of the Massachusetts Charitable Society (ca.1825-1826);[22] "He was in the state legislature in 1832."[23]
Melvill lived in Boston's West End "in an old wooden house on the south side of Green Street, between Staniford Street and Bowdoin Square. ... It was a wooden house of two stories."[24]
In 1830, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. published a poem entitled "The Last Leaf", which was inspired in part by Melvill, "the last of the cocked hats." Holmes would later write that Melvill had reminded him of "a withered leaf which has held to its stem through the storms of autumn and winter, and finds itself still clinging to its bough while the new growths of spring are bursting their buds and spreading their foliage all around it."[25]
Melvill's portrait was painted by Francis Alexander in the 1780s. It is now in the collection of the Bostonian Society, along with a portrait attributed to Benjamin Blyth,[26] and the tricorn hat "said to have been worn by Major Melvill at the Boston Massacre."[27]
Excerpt from "The Last Leaf" by O.W. Holmes, Sr. (1830)
... I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here;
But the old three-cornered hat,
And the breeches, and all that,
Are so queer!
And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring,
Let them smile, as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling.