s, from Harvard
College. In 1774, Melvill married Priscilla, daughter of John Scollay, a
prominent Boston merchant. He had been selected by General Warren as one
of his aids, just before the fall of the latter at Bunker's Hill, and
was successively captain and major in Colonel Thomas Crafts's regiment
of artillery, raised for the defence of the State. When, soon after the
evacuation of the town, in March, 1776, the British fleet was driven
from Boston harbor, Captain Melvill discharged the first guns at the
hostile ships, from his battery, at Nantasket. He afterwards served in
the Rhode Island campaigns of 1777 and 1779. After the war, he was naval
officer of the port of Boston, in 1786-89, and through the influence of
his friend, Samuel Adams, was, in the latter year, appointed inspector
under the United States Government, a post which he held until made
naval officer, in 1811. President Jackson removed him from this office
in 1829, after which period he was a member of the Massachusetts House
of Representatives. From 1779 to 1825, he was one of the firewards of
Boston, and on retiring from his forty-seven years' service, was made
the recipient of a silver pitcher as a testimonial of the appreciation
of his services, by his associates. Major Melvill's long and honorable
connection with the Boston Fire Department began in the good old times,
when the firewards carried staves, tipped at the end with a brass flame,
and marshalled the bystanders into lines for passing buckets of water to
the scene of conflagration. One of the town engines was named "Melvill,"
in honor of the major, whose death was finally caused by over-fatigue at
a fire near his house. He was a Democrat, and a firm friend of
Samuel Adams, of whom he had a small portrait, by Copley, now at
Harvard University. At the time of his death, he was president of the
Massachusetts Charitable Society. Major Melvill was a man of sound
judgment and strict integrity. He is still remembered by our older
citizens as the last to wear, in Boston, a cocked hat and small
clothes--the costume of the Revolution. Herman Melville, a grandson, has
attained popularity as an author. The front door of Major Melvill's
residence, which formerly stood near the easterly corner of Green and
Staniford Streets, now does similar duty for the house at the corner of
Bartlett and Lambert Streets, Roxbury. The accompanying portrait is from
an oil painting in the possession of his grand-daughter,