ical
associations, carved the grasshopper which still holds its place over
Faneuil Hall, and also the gilded Indian,[2] who, with his bow bent and
arrow on the string, so long kept watch and ward over the Province
House, the stately residence of the royal Governors of Massachusetts."[3]
This writer repeatedly spells the name wrong. His name was Drowne, not
Droune.[4] In "Drowne's Wooden Image," Hawthorne makes his Shem Drowne a
wood-carver, plain and simple: "He became noted for carving ornamental
pump heads, and wooden urns for gate posts, and decorations, more
grotesque than fanciful, for mantle pieces." "He followed his business
industriously for many years, acquired a competence, and in the latter
part of his life attained to a dignified station in the church, being
remembered in records and traditions as Deacon Drowne, the carver," and
he connects him with the real Shem Drowne of history, only by speaking
of him this once as "Deacon Drowne," and saying: "One of his
productions, an Indian Chief, gilded all over, stood during the better
part of a century on the cupola of the Province House, bedazzling the
eyes of those who looked upward, like an angel of the sun;" plainly
indicating that he thought the Indian was carved from wood, instead of
being made, as it was, of hammered copper.

The real Shem Drowne was not a wood-carver; no authority for such a
statement can be found. His trade is given as that of a "tin plate
worker,"[5] and a "cunning artificer" in metal;[6] nowhere as a
wood-carver. He was born in Kittery, Maine, in 1683. His father was
Leonard Drowne, who came from the west of England to Kittery, where he
carried on the ship building business until 1692, when, on account of
the French and Indian wars, he removed his family to Boston, where he
died, a few years after, and his grave is in the old Copp's Hill Burying
Ground.[7] At Boston Shem Browne established himself in his trade. He
was elected a deacon of the First Baptist Church, in 1721. He was "often
employed in Town affairs, especially in the management of
Fortifications."[8]

He married Catherine Clark, one of the heirs of Nicholas Bavison, of
Charlestown, who was a purchaser in the "Pemaquid Patent," or grant of
the Plymouth Company, of some twelve thousand acres, to Messrs.
Aldsworth and Elbridge of Bristol, England, made in 1631. Becoming
interested in the claim of his wife, as one of the heirs, in 1735, he
was appointed agent and attorney of th