The Cambridge of eighteen hundred and ninety-six: a picture of the city and its industries fifty years after its incorporation
Arthur Gilman, Ed.

‘ [271] thereto, to be kept and used for finding, as soon as may be, persons drowned.’ The boat continued to demand a portion of the attention of the society at its meetings until 1830, after which date—fourteen years from its first appearance—it disappears from the records. It had been found in 1817 that the town was not willing to pay the entire cost of the boat, and it was voted that ‘William Hilliard, Esq., and Cap'n Samuel Child be a committee to procure a suitable boat and appendages to the same,’ with authority to ‘draw upon the Treasurer for such sum as may be necessary, in addition to the sum provided by the Selectmen.’ In August, 1818, this committee reported that the object had been accomplished by means of contributions of twenty-five dollars each from the town and Harvard College, and certain additional sums from those benevolent personages, ‘individuals of the town.’ Thus, after two years of negotiation, the boat had been prepared for its work of ‘finding, as soon as may be, persons drowned.’ By 1825, however, after seven years of usefulness, as we must suppose, it was discovered that ‘the boat’ needed repairs, and the trustees were requested to put it in order ‘as soon as may be, and to keep it in order, and place it in such situation as shall be safe and convenient of access when there may be occasion to use it in the service of the Society.’ A year later the trustees made a report on the expediency of repairing the boat, and we can only guess that they had discovered that its condition had placed it beyond the desirability of repairs, for the society, after adjourning for a month, perhaps in order that the members might make personal examination of the boat, voted to appropriate fifty dollars for an entirely new one. It was not so easy, however, to provide suitable care for the boat, and in August, 1829, a committee of three prominent citizens was appointed to provide the quarters, which seem still to be unsecured. This committee reported that the best method would be to contract with Mr. Emery Willard to care for the boat. The advice of the committee was adopted, and the boat seems thereafter to have been kept by Mr. Willard. It passes from the records at least, and was no longer a cause for solicitude.

The society seems to have been the original Cambridge board of health, and in 1817 it commissioned William Hilliard, Esq., ‘to enquire concerning, and to apply to the Selectmen to cause to be removed, any nuisances which endanger the health of the town.’