10 ELIZABETH GARY AGASSIZ 



Temple Place, known as "the Court," presented condi- 

 tions altogether typical of the Boston of that period. On the 

 opposite side of the street from the Gary dwelling two other 

 married daughters of Colonel Perkins lived, Mrs. William 

 H. Gardiner and Mrs. Samuel Cabot. "Grandchildren in 

 Temple Place were commonplace facts," Mrs. Agassiz's 

 sister, Mrs. Charles P. Curtis, says in her Memories, a fam- 

 ily manuscript from which there will be frequent occasion 

 to quote below. There were twenty-one all told, eight 

 Cabots, six Gardiners and seven Carys Mary (Mrs. 

 Cornelius Conway Felton), Elizabeth (Mrs. Louis Agas- 

 siz), Thomas, Caroline (Mrs. Charles P. Curtis), Sarah, 

 Emma and Richard. The Perkins connection, accord- 

 ingly, may be said to have dominated the Court, and the 

 constant intercourse and intimacy between the sisters and 

 their children kept the family feeling strong and the tradi- 

 tions unbroken. Such a gathering of a clan into a single 

 limited district was in complete accordance with the Boston 

 custom of those days, when families had the habit of con- 

 gregating in one street and not only claimed it as their own, 

 but also looked somewhat askance upon the unblest world 

 without. "I dare say they are wrong; they do not live in 

 Temple Place," Mr. Cary used to remark with a little 

 twinkle in his eye, when the opinions of outsiders were 

 called into question by his daughters. A picture of the 

 family environment in Temple Place has been left by 

 Miss Emma Cary among the papers mentioned in the 

 Preface. 



The house of our grandfather in Temple Place was 

 an attractive house in the solid style of that day with 

 a heavy stone portico and stone steps leading up to 



