lutionists. The dormitories were speedily filled to overflowing with troops; but Holden seems at first to have served as a sort of general utility room. Courts-martial were sometimes convened there, for which its arrangements were not ill-adapted.[1] Later, as the demand for quarters increased, it too was taken for a barrack, and 160 men were somehow packed away in it. Details are lacking, but as all the buildings suffered severely at the hands of their high-spirited and ill-disciplined occupants, there seems no reason to doubt that “the north chapel,” as it was then called, lost at this stage much of its interior beauty. Being of no immediate use after the departure of the army, it was left neglected in the general repairs that followed the return of the collegians to Cambridge; the only attention it appears to have received was a set of heavy wooden shutters over the windows, which were probably nearly all broken. Any restorations, indeed, appeared to be quite hopeless; and in the second “Account of Damages” to the College by the troops occurs the entry: “Holden Chapel so much damaged as to be unfit for Use.”[2]
- ↑ The MS. Orderly Book of Learned’s regiment, preserved by the American Antiquarian Society of Worcester, gives an order on August 16, 1778, for a court-martial to sit “in the Colage Chapple.” Another curious entry occurs in Fargo’s Orderly Book, July 27, 1775, for a court of enquiry to sit “in the tuters Chamber,” on “Mr. Benjamin Whiting now a prisoner in the Colege.” Connecticut Historical Society Collections, vii, 67.
- ↑ April 6, 1777. Harvard College Papers, ii, 44.
