ANCE 0¥ OLD" \N1> CHURCHES T e< If "''li ^ "*i ^ ^' i^^V '^IB^^^ j| H" no-^ DAVfD L. LOW ^ 169 SOUTH MAIN STREET ^ ATTLESORO, MA86J ] THE ROMANCE OF OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES Little Filgrimages Series Among the Men Who Have Written Famous Books, First Series By E. F. Uarkitis Among the Men Who Have Written Famous Books, Second Series By E. F. Harkins Among the Women Who Have Written Famous Books By E. F. Harkins and C. H. L. Johnston Literary Boston of To-Day By Helen M. Winsloiv The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees By Mary C. Crawford The Romance of Old New England Ch urches By Mary C. Crauford L. C. PAGE & COMPANY 200 Summer Street, Boston, Mass. DAVID L. LOW ^ 169 SOUTH MAIN STREET ^^^ ATTLEBORO, MASS. THE REVEKEXD ARTHLU BROWNE From the portrait by Copley (Seepa(/eS2) 4^ 4^ 4^ * ^ ^ ^ Hittk ^tlgrtmages %])t Romance of autfjot of " ffi^e Bomance of ©lU Neto ffinglantt Booftrtea," ttc. ^Uunixnttti r|* Bodton H. €. page $^ (^ommnig Mlittttiiii 4 4 4 ^ ^ ^ Copyright, igoj by L. G. Page y Company (^Incorporated) All rights res^ved Published August, ig03 Colonial ^rrsa Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Slmonds & Co. Boston, Mass., U. S. A. Krterent) pjjtlo WaoTixnU Sprague AND ?^arrictt SlppUton, HIS WIFK, WHO THE ONE AS INSPIRING PREACHER, THE OTHER AS SYMPATHETIC COMRADE HAVE HELPED ME UNSPEAKABLY, THIS BOOK IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED Spires whose silent JingefS point to Heaven. — Wordsworth. Respect for sacred things and sacred places is in- separable from good breeding. — Washington Irving. If keeping holy the seventh day were only a human institution, it would be the best method that could have been thought of for the polishing and civilizing of manhind. Sunday clears atvay the rust of the whole week. — Addison. Of right and ivrong he taught Truths as refined as ever Athens heard ; And (^strange to tell /) he practised u'hat he preached. — John A rmstrong. Puritanism, believing itself quick with the seed of religious liberty, laid, without knotving it, the egg of democracy. — Lowell. CONTENTS Page Foreword vii A Pre-Revolutionary Belle 11 The Wooing of Esther Edwards 44 A Colonial Friar Laurence 79 Courtship According to Samuel Sewall 99 John Eliot and His Indians 130 Parson Smith's Daughter Abigail 167 East Apthorp and His Parish Troubles 208 A Famous Tory Wit and Divine 243 When a French Exile Was Boston's Bishop 260 The Lost Prince at Longmeadow 283 The Ostracism of an Abolitionist 323 The Ideal Minister of the American Gospel 347 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Page The Reverend Arthur Browne (^See page 82^ Frontispiece The present home of the Second Church in Hartford (1825) 14 The tablet over the grave of Eliza- beth Whitman 33 The Reverend Jonathan Edwards 46 Old church at Pepperell, dedicated March 8, 1770, by Parson Emerson 60 Parson Emerson's house, Pepperell, Mass. 66 St. John's Church, Portsmouth, N. H. (1807). The first church, built on the same site, was erected in 1732 82 The Old South Church, Boston, Mass. 100 Staircase in Coventry Hall, York, Me. 107 Old church on the site where John Eliot preached 130 John Eliot preaching to the Indians 146 The birthplace of John Adams, Quincy, Mass. 170 The birthplace of John Quincy Adams, Quincy, Mass. 174 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Page The old stone temple, where the two presidents and their wives are buried 206 Exterior and interior views of King's Chapel, Boston, Mass. 208 St. Michael's Church, Marblehead, Mass. (1715) 214 Christ's Church and "The Bishop's Palace," Cambridge, Mass. 220 The Reverend Mather Byles 244 St. Patrick's Church, Damariscotta Mills, Me. (1807). Church of the Holy Cross, Franklin St., Boston, Mass. (1803). Two churches built by Bishop Cheverus 260 Bishop Cheverus 280 The Old Church on the Green, Long- meadow, Mass. 283 Deacon Ely's house, Longmeadow, Mass. 286 The Dauphin of France (Louis XVII.) = The Reverend Eleazer Williams 310 The Reverend Joshua Young's church, Burlington, Vt. 323 John Brown's home, North Elba, N. Y. 326 The Reverend Joshua Young 332 John Brown, and his grave at North Elba, N. Y. 343 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Page The Reverend Phillips Brooks 347 Old Trinity Church, Summer Street, Boston, after the great Boston fire 360 The present Trinity Church, Boston, Mass. 362 The house on Clarendon Street, where Phillips Brooks lived and died 368 Interior view of Trinity Church 370 FOREWOf^D rHIS little volume does not offer a history of the old churches in New England. Interesting and valuable as such a work would prove, far be it from me to attempt to write it. Nor does it seek to present an account of the noble and enduring influence of that splendid body of New England clergy who, before and during the Revolutionary War, rendered such signal service to American freedom. Another and more gifted pen would be needed adequately to record their glorious deeds. The present work is much less ambitious; it merely aims to give the story side of those old vii FOREWORD meeting-houses and ministers whose names and aspects are more or less familiar to the general reader. If ministers' sons and daughters also have a place here it is because they were bound to be in such a work. And if once or twice space is given to churches and preachers who can- not lay claim to even the one hundred and fifty years of life which passes in this country for antiquity, it is because they seemed to me really to belong in the narrative. My hope is that the book, while it re- iterates the well-known fact that early New England sheltered under its hiunble parsonage roofs many of the greatest men and women our country has produced, may make clear as well the truth that these parsons were not prigs. It will abun- dantly have attained its purpose if it shows that colour and adventure, pure passion viii FOEEWORD and sweet, true love may as often be found in the life story of the Christian minister as in that of the dashing hero of swash- buckling romance. It but remains to acknowledge with gratitude the help of those many kind friends from far and near who have aided in the preparation of the manuscript, and especially to thank Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Company, by permission of, and special arrangement with, whom the selec- tions from the letters of John and Abigail Adams are used.. Also I have to thank the Reverend A. V. G. Allen, who kindly granted the privilege of here incorporating a generous portion of the correspondence first published in his " Life and Letters of Phillips Brooks." I might add, in explanation of the change of base which readers of " The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees " ix FOREWORD may observe in the chapter, " The Lost Prince at Longmeadow," that another care- ful examination of all the evidence has led me to change the opinion ventured in the first book concerning the validity of the Reverend Eleazer Williams's claims to the throne of France. m. c. c. Charlestown, Massachusetts, 1903. THE ROMANCE OF OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES A PRE-REVOLUTIONAKY BELLE « This humble stone, In memory of Elizabeth Whitman, Is inscribed by her weeping friends, to whom she Endeared herself By uncommon tenderness and affection. Endowed with superior acquirements, she was Still more distinguished By humility and benevolence. Let candour throw a veil over her frailties, for Great was het charity to others. 11 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES She sustained the last painful scene Far from every friend, And exhibited an example of calm resignation. Her departure was on the 25th of July, 1788, In the 37th year of her age. The tears of strangers watered her grave." ^^NE could scarcely find a romance I J more inextricably interwoven with the lives of eighteenth-century New England ministers than that of the woman to whom this stone still stands (though sadly worn) in the old burying-ground at Peabody, near Salem. A mystery for many years, the inscription — and the traditions to which it gave rise — is believed by many to have furnished Hawthorne with the in- spiration for the central character in his " Scarlet Letter." Only within the last dozen or so years have we come to know quite certainly that the heroine of the suggestive tablet was the daughter of a well-known Hartford clergyman, and 8 12 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES descendant through her mother from that Stanley renowned as the friend of William Shakespeare. In a novel called " The Coquette," first published in 1800, by Mrs. Hannah Foster, wife of a minister at Brighton, Massachu- setts, the facts of Elizabeth Whitman's curiously checkered career were so enter- tainingly distorted, and the character of the heroine, called "Eliza Wharton" throughout the book, so maliciously mis- represented, that the novel ran through endless editions, and was in its day second only in interest to the well-known stories of " Clarissa Harlowe " and " Charlotte Temple." In style the three books are in- deed very similar, and the character of the seducer of " Eliza Wharton " is undoubt- edly modelled upon that of the Lovelace in Richardson's novel. But the book, as has been said, is notoriously careless of the 13 OLD Is^EW ENGLAND CHURCHES facts in Elizabeth Whitman's life, and its author, though a kinswoman of the girl whose sad story she essays to tell, has put the worst possible construction upon every incident in a career which, full to the brim as it is of mystery, one yet cannot examine and believe sinful. On her mother's side, as already stated, Elizabeth Whitman was akin to Thomas Stanley, who, when he came to Hartford in 1636, brought with him some curious old Stanley silver and the tradition that he was a descendant of Shakespeare's friend. This Stanley rose to be one of the governor's assistants. And it was his great-grandson, Nathaniel Stanley, treas- urer of the Colony of Connecticut, who, in 1750, gave his daughter Abigail in mar- riage at Hartford to the Reverend El- nathan Whitman, pastor of the Second Church, and one of the fellows of the Cor- 14 THK J'KKsKNl HOMK ( ) 1 ' THE SKCONO CUirKCH IN HARTFOKI) (1825) OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES poration of Yale College, — a man dis- tinguished for scholarly traits, the love of rare manuscripts and forgotten books, and whose library at the time of its de- struction in 1831 had been for years the envy of our large universities. Thus Elizabeth Whitman, inheriting all the grace and culture of the Stanley blood, was born into the best society of her State and time. Her mother was a woman of rare intelligence, and of great beauty, her father a man of prominent and significant character ; and his family was not of mean origin, for Trumbull, the poet, Wadsworth, the wealthy benefactor of Hartford, Jona- than Edwards, the distinguished theolo- gian, and Joseph Buckminster, afterward renowned as a Puritan preacher of parts, were all his kin. Very early Elizabeth, being beautiful, lively, and intelligent, attracted to her side 15 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES the most distinguished youths of the col- lege and the State. She attended the Hart- ford Dancing Assembly — whose routs began at 6 p. m. — and was a belle in every sense of the word. Her first accepted lover was the Reverend Joseph Howe, of Church Green in Boston, a young man of rare talents, who had been driven from his charge in Massachusetts by the out- break of the Revolution, and had taken refuge with a party of friends at Norwich, Connecticut. Here his health failed, and as the state of Boston made it impossible for him to return, Elizabeth's father in- vited him to Hartford. At once he pro- ceeded to fall in love with the beautiful daughter of the house. The match seems, however, to have been made more by the parents of the young lady than by her own wish. But when her lover's never vigorous health gave way under the rigours of a 16 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES New England winter, she nursed him with tenderness, and for some time after his death mourned him sincerely. A far more serious grief to her was her father's death, which soon followed, and which entailed for the three daughters and the one young son of the house considerable deprivation on account of poverty. The family should have been wealthy, but William Stanley, Mrs. Whitman's brother, had been persuaded to leave his large property to the Second Church, and so it came to pass that the wife and children of the old minister were seriously em- barrassed by the loss of their father's salary. It was perhaps for this reason that Elizabeth was again urged to marry, and soon became the betrothed of her cousin, the Reverend Joseph Buckminster, whose name and memory is an illuminated page 17 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHUKCHES in the history of New England Congrega- tionalism. Young Buekminster was born at Rutland, Massachusetts, in 1751. He was the son of a Puritan clergyman and of a Puritan clergyman's daughter. Even in youth the tenets of Calvinism seemed to him of all-absorbing interest, and while an undergraduate at Yale College, — a stage of life usually given to lighter mat- ters, — he experienced " conversion " of the most thoroughgoing and soul-trying type. Certainly a man of this mould could have had little in his nature to attract the love of so high-strung and ardent a maiden as Elizabeth Whitman. But she met him soon after her father's death, while on a visit to the family of the president of Yale College, and he pleaded his suit with all the earnestness of a deeply sincere nature. The result was that she made up her mind 18 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES to accept his hand in spite of many friends who counselled her against the step. Buck- minster was a teacher at YaJe at this time, — he had been graduated in 1770, — and the companion, though he could scarcely have been tlie friend, of Aaron Burr and Pierrepont Edwards, both of whom were connections of the fair Elizabeth. Pos- sibly it was the very goodness of Buck- minster, strongly contrasted as it must have been with the lives of these others, that drew from the minister's daughter that sweet aifection she undoubtedly gave him. Unfortunately, however, there was deeply seated in this man's nature a ter- rible tendency to hypochondria, from which any girl of healthful and cheerful disposition might well shrink. That Eliza- beth Whitman was repelled by this trait in her lover there is small doubt. Moreover, 19 OLD NEW EXGLA^^I) CHURCHES she must have felt that marriage with him would bind her to a narrow field of duty and demand of her a degi*ee of self-remm- ciation quite fatal to her best develop- ment. In those days marriage with a strong man from whom one differed in one's views of things always meant that the wife's personality must perish. It was while discussing the pros and cons of this alliance with Pierrepont Edwards, her cousin, — a man whose personal char- acter was, however, as far as possible re- moved from that of his distinguished father, Jonathan Edwards, the theologian, — that Mr. Buckminster one summer's afternoon surprised Elizabeth in the arbour of the house at New Haven where she was staying as guest, and dealt her an unmanly blow. The tutor had come for his final answer, and finding his fiancee in confi- dential intercourse with a man whom he 20 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES hated and distrusted, lie retreated in a fit of terrible anger but without speaking a single word. After waiting a reasonable time Eliza- beth wrote to Mr. Buckminster, who seems in the meantime to have accepted a call to Portsmouth, N. H., to tell him the subject of her conversation with her cousin on that fateful day. And she added that she had intended her answer to his suit to be " Yes." The minister's reply was the announcement of his approaching marriage to the daughter of the Reverend Mr. Stevens, of Kittery, near Portsmouth. Naturally Elizabeth said no more. Buclaninster was in 1779 ordained clergyman of the North Church in the old town by the sea. There, three years later, he brought home his wife, and May 26, 1784, his first son — a brilliant lad even in his early youth — was bom. Mrs. 21 OLD NEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES Buckminster appears to have been a ladj of very elegant and cultivated mind, but she died when her child was very young and so disappears from view. No such peaceful end was, however, to crown Elizabeth Whitman's life. On the contrary, this flower of our Revolutionary New England was to be ruthlessly tram- pled upon by a fate which has visited few other women so harshly. Not that the loss of her lovers was a blow from which her buoyant nature could not recover. Her letters at this period of her life are those of a light-hearted, fanciful, and altogether healthful woman. One dated May 10, 1779, — the year of Buckminster's heart- less desertion, and addressed to a young poet friend, — reads as follows : " I have spent the evening in company before walking half a mile. It is now one o'clock. Judge, then, if I can pretend to 22 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES find fault with you at present? No, really: I am too tired and too good- humoured; but for your encouragement I will tell you that I have a sheet full of hints and sketches in that way which I have taken down when I felt most disposed to be severe, and I intend to work them into a sort of satire at the first oppor- tunity." [She herself wrote good verse.] " I heard last night from Mr. Dwight that he will soon take a journey to camp. He will certainly either go or return by way of New Haven, so you will be able to consult him yourself. I fervently wish you may, for I know of no person so capa- ble of advising you. I shall depend upon seeing you before you set out on your tour." The " Mr. Dwight " so pleasantly referred to here was the honoured presi- dent of Yale, busy about this time in alter- ing Watts's Hymns with Joel Barlow, the 23 OLD XEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES good friend to whom this letter is ad- dressed. This young man was the husband of Ruth Baldwin, with whom Elizabeth had recently been on a visit. The only authen- tic Elizabeth Whitman letters in existence are those merely friendly ones addressed to the Barlows during this period of our heroine's life, between her twenty-ninth and thirty-second year. She had firet met Joel Barlow and Ruth Baldwin, to whom the poet was even then engaged to be mar- ried, at a Christmas party in New Haven in 1778. At a game of forfeits, Joel and Elizabeth were ordered to play the part of man and wife for the whole evening. This game they carried out with great spirit, adopting the nine Muses as their children. Melpomene, Barlow's favourite because he was already well-knoAATi as a poet, is caricatured in the correspondence 24 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES which followed between the two friends as " Quammeny," and his wife is constantly called in the letters his " second wife," a playful allusion on Elizabeth Whitman's part to the Christmas party game. Because of his jioverty young Barlow had not been welcomed as a suitor by his bride's family, and the result of this was that he married Miss Baldwin while she was away upon a visit, an offence which remained for many years unforgiven by the Baldwins. In this unpleasantness the pair had the keenest sympathy and interest of Elizabeth Whitman, and at the very time when she was supposed to be broken- heartedly lamenting Buckminster's deser- tion, she was really interesting herself in the crockery and furniture of the Bar- low establishment. The letters that tell us this were discovered long after both Barlow and Elizabeth had passed away, 25 OLD NEW EIs^GLAND CHURCHES tied together in a packet labelled " Bessie Whitman's Letters " in the handwriting of her correspondent, by Mrs. Caroline H. Dall, a distant cousin of Elizabeth Whit- man, and the one writer who has inter- ested herself in defending the fair fame of the beautiful girl.^ The Barlows never had any children, but Mrs. Barlow ultimately adopted as her own her stepsister, twenty years younger than herself, — an exquisite creature who enjoyed the distinction of being sought in marriage by General Lafayette. It is at the next stage of the story that the real tragedy of Elizabeth Whitman's life begins to dawn. She has now reached the age of thirty-six, and, so far as her friends and family know, she is still un- married. Yet in the background of her 'See "The Romance of the Association," by Mrs. Dall. 26 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES life hovered an unknown man. That she had linked her fate to that of some one who hesitated to acknowledge her publicly is the only charitable solution of her story's mystery. Mrs. Dall believes that her life had been joined to that of a French officer — probably a man of rank — stationed at Newport, and that the records of the mar- riage, performed by a Catholic priest, per- ished long ago in fire. But of this Eliz- abeth's kindred and friends knew nothing. And the neighbours made unpleasant re- marks. One visitor, her cousin, Jeremiah Wadsworth, was often seen about this time leaving her society at what was called " un- seemly hours," and in May, 1788, she was reported to have changed at the bank a large quantity of foreign gold. To add to the murkiness of the situation her health faltered, and her spirits were often sadly depressed. 27 OLD XEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES Then there came from Mrs. Henry Hill, of Boston, an invitation to visit her, which, in view of Elizabeth's debility and the com- ments of the gossips, was very eagerly ac- cepted. So at midday in the spring of 1788 the still beautiful young woman left her home for what proved to be forever. But the stage-coach did not carry her to her friend's house, as her people believed it would. That she took this conveyance has always been known, but where she left it has remained a mystery. In a letter just received from Mrs. Dall I have, how- ever, learned that Elizabeth Whitman's alighting-place was at Killingly, forty- seven miles east of her Hartford home. There she told her story to Mr. Howe, the clergyman of the place, — the brother of that Reverend Joseph Howe to whom she had once been engaged and whom she had tenderly nursed until death claimed him. 28 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES Both Mr. Howe and his wife were friends of Elizabeth's dead father, and they were very glad indeed to aid her in her sad predicament. She undoubtedly convinced them that it was necessary to keep her marriage secret. And so loyal were they to their promise then made to her, that only at this late day, more than one hun- dred years afterward, does the fact of her visit come out, told to Mrs. Dall by their own granddaughter, and by Mrs. Dall — herself an old lady now — passed over to me. But Elizabeth could not stop at Kil- lingly. She must hasten on to the sleepy little town of Danvers, which was to wit- ness the tragic last act of her life. Appar- ently she had arranged to meet her hus- band at this obscure place. We have long known that it was from Watertown that our heroine drove in a hired vehicle to Danvers. How she reached 29 OLD NEW EIs^GLAND CHUECHES Watertown was not so clear. But it is now divulged that Mr. and Mrs. Howe drove her in their own carriage so far on her way, a touching service indeed for these good Connecticut folk to render a forlorn woman who, save for death, had been their sister. It was a bright June day in 1788 which brought to the old Bell Tavern in Danvers a sweet and gracious woman who registered as Mrs. Walker and said she would stay until her husband came. And then the weeks went by as Elizabeth Whitman waited. Meanwhile Mrs. Hill watched anxiously for a guest who did not come, and down in Hartford the poor widowed mother patiently endured the anguish of her child's disappearance and the scandal that people insisted on making out of it. Gentle and graceful in all that she did, the stranger was soon the admired of all 30 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES admirers in the little village. She would sit at the south window of her chamber for days at a time watching, ever watching, for some one who came not, whiling away the long hours of the languorous summer mornings with the guitar and her indus- trious needle. Some of that wondrous skill in sewing which Hawthorne makes one of the attributes of Hester Prynne, the lady of the Bell Tavern certainly possessed. And this skill in needlework, together with her pleasing ways, soon made her a favour- ite with the women of the town, who, though they were of the strict Puritanical type and faith, sympathized deeply with her as she posted and received letters from one she called her husband and fashioned dainty little garments with her clever needle. But she kept forever locked in her heart whatever tale she might have told. 31 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES Erequently she walked from her lodgings to the tranquil Peabody graveyard to muse and silently weep. And the weeks slipped into months. Then one day Elizabeth wrote with chalk the letters E. W. before the door of the inn, but these were erased by some children playing there during the afternoon. At dusk a soldierly-looking man rode by, studied the door, and, failing to note the erased chalk-marks, passed on. As he turned a distant corner, Elizabeth caught sight of him, and, crying, " I am undone," fainted. A few days later she died of consump- tion, into which she had lapsed after the birth of a dead child. When asked on her death-bed if her friends might not be sent for, she replied that she should soon go to them. Privately, however, she added to one who waited on her that her death was wisely ordered and was the easiest 32 'r^^v^ ' '^a^. •^ ■-.>r^>:- OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES solution of many problems. She insisted that her wedding-ring he hnried with her, and died expressing a living trust in God's love and mercy. It was only by a brief paragraph in the Boston Chronicle that her friends and family learned of her sad and obscure end. Her funeral was the largest that had ever occurred in the town, the Danvers villagers turning out in great numbers for the ceremony. She was tenderly laid to rest in the beautiful burying-ground she had so often visited, and a few weeks after her death an unknown man erected over her grave a sandstone tablet bearing the inscription we have given. And year after year a mysterious lady and gentleman used to come regularly to Danvers, leave their horse at the tavern to be cared for, walk to the grave, stay there for awhile, return to the tavern to dine, and then go away 33 OLD NEW EIsTGLAND CHURCHES as quietly and mysteriously as they had come. Every year at the same time they appeared, growing older and sadder each season till both were white-haired and bent. The villagers, though extremely curious about these sad pilgrims, never knew who they were, for they gave no name and no one thought of demanding one. Subse- quently, however, it developed that they were Elizabeth's sister Abigail and that young brother of whom the dead woman had once written thus affectionately to Mr. Barlow: " Do you know, I think my brother im- proves greatly under your auspices? Let me bespeak your kind attention to him. Form his taste, if you can, to those things you yourself admire, to books and study. Besides, the improving of these afford rational amusement to the mind. These are safe pleasures ; but, oh, what deceitful 34 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES ones lurk in the world to catch the unwary ! My poor boy will be particularly disposed to be led astray by these, unless his friends protect him. He is uncommonly influenced by the company he keeps." Surely no grown woman who would write in this noble strain of a young brother could her- self have fallen into evil ways as do " the unwary." This " young brother " was known in his later years as an antiquarian, an habitue of the Hartford Athenaeum. His sister's tragic death had sobered his gay spirits, for it dealt him a blow from which he could never recover. Abigail lived to extreme old age and never married. All that is really knowm of Elizabeth Whitman's life has now been carefully told. But in the story, " Eliza Wharton ; or, The Coquette," we have what has come to be regarded as her history. The book was published soon after the last act of the 35 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES tragedy it is supposed to rehearse had been played out, and an utterly specious value given to its disclosures by the fact that it was written by the wife of Elizabeth's cousin. In the book Elizabeth, or Eliza, as we must now call her, is represented as a provincial belle, weary of the restraints of poverty and of the narrow parsonage life to which she had been born. After the death of her first lover, Mr. Howe, — which is made to follow that of her father, though it really preceded it, — she is sent to New Haven in search of gaiety and di- version. Here it is that she is made to meet for the first time " Major Sanford." He, the " villain " of the story, is readily recognized as Elizabeth Whitman's cousin, Pierrepont Edwards. What the scandal- mongering public, which seized eagerly upon countless editions of this crudely sen- sational novel, quite failed to realize as 36 OLD NEW ENGLAIS^D CHURCHES they read the story, was that Elizabeth had known her cousin as a family man ever since he was nineteen, — some eighteen years. So any such deception as the book elaborates would have been quite impossi- ble. In the story the heroine's inquiries into " Sanford's " habits and character pique him into a desire to work her undoing. He therefore makes desperate love to her, and in the midst of his courtship marries an- other woman for money, and, when mar- ried, moves into Eliza's neighbourhood for the express purpose of insulting her with his attentions. " The Coquette " version has it that Eliza ultimately fell victim to the passion of this cousin, and so places upon the jeal- ousy of Buckminster the worst possible construction. After her fiance's surrender of her, Eliza is — in the novel — plunged 37 OLD XEW ENGLAXD CHURCHES into dejection and despair, and her letters — in the novel — are made to show her, at this time, full of terrible self-reproach. At that very moment, however, she was in reality cheerful and light-hearted, as we have seen from the correspondence with her friend Mr. Barlow. As the day of her fatal departure draws near, the novel represents her confessing her guilt, confiding in her friend, and writ- ing to her mother. But no confession passed her lips, and no confidence, of which we know, was ever given. Concerning her departure, too, the book is maliciously un- truthful, for it represents her as carried away at night by her seducer, unknown to those who loved her, when, as a matter of fact, she went off in the regular stage- coach at high noon with everybody's warm approval. This whole story might, indeed, have 38 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES been written by a Boccaccio without genius, so sentimental, heated, and unsavoury is its general tone. The letters from the vil- lain to the heroine whom he is tempting are modelled very closely upon those of Lovelace, and Buckminster (called " Mr. Boyer " in the book), the very last person on earth to delight in sentimental talk and to countenance the intrigues with which he is associated, is drawn an overbearing as well as an underbred prig. Just here it is interesting to learn of the fashion in which this so-called " wronged lover " really received the book that would have defended him. An old lady, who was his parishioner in Ports- mouth, is responsible for the statement that the minister would never allow anybody to blame Elizabeth Whitman in his presence. " I can tell you, too," she said once to Mrs. Call, " what happened in this very 39 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES room. Just after the book was published, Mr. Buckminster came to call on my mother. She was not quite ready to re- ceive him, and probably forgot that a fresh copy of the novel, just arrived from Bos- ton, lay upon the table. " When she came down, she found the doctor thrusting something under the coals upon the hearth. As he turned round to greet her with flaming eyes, she saw some leather covers curling in the blaze. ' Madam,' said he, pointing to the spot, ' there lies your book. It ought never to have been written, and it shall never be read, — at least, not in my parish. Bid the ladies take notice, wherever I find a copy I shall treat it in the same way,' and so saying, he stalked out of the room." Elizabeth Whitman's effects, carefully examined after her death, failed utterly to throw any light upon the unknown hus- 40 OLD IS^EW EXGLAT\TD GHUKCHES band for whom she was supposed to be waiting in the old Bell Tavern. But this letter, written when she was near her end, gives us a hint of her distraught state of mind, in which, however, there was still womanly forgiveness. " Must I die alone ? Shall I never see you more ? I know that you will come, but you will come too late. This, I fear, is my last ability. Tears fall so fast I know not how to write. Why did you leave me in such distress ? But I will not reproach you. All that was dear I forsook for you, but do not regret it. May God forgive in both what was amiss. When I go from here, I will leave you some way to find me. If I die, will you come and drop a tear over my grave ? " Some verses, written about the same time, conclude with this quatrain, her swan-song : 41 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHUKCHES '< Oh, thou, for whose dear sake I bear A doom so dreadful, so severe, May happy fates thy footsteps guide, And o'er thy peaceful home preside." Thus we leave the story of Elizabeth Whitman. Though many people have searched, none have been able to find — even in the course of a century during which hundreds of old attics have yielded up long-hidden secrets — any further papers bearing upon the facts of her strange fate. The identity of the unknown man still remains a haunting literary mys- tery. Many there are who say he was a nobleman, unwilling, after Elizabeth's death, to expose himself to bootless com- ment by stating the fact and manner of his clandestine marriage. For that there was a marriage all who have sympathetically explored the strange tale insist. So to-day the lovers of Peabody plight 42 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES their troth over the grave of this beautiful woman and swear to be faithful unto death even as she was. And on the stone so strangely put up to her there remains legi- ble only this single last line: " The tears of strangers watered her grave." 43 THE WOOING OF ESTHER EDWARDS OPECULATIONS as to the differ- il ence in history which might have resulted from a woman's acceptance of one lover instead of another are always of interest. Particularly is this true when the child of the woman in question turns out to be so curious, so fascinating, and so enigmatic a character as Aaron Burr. Heredity certainly played strange tricks on itself in the history of the family from which Aaron Burr sprang. We have seen in the story of Elizabeth Whitman that Pierrepont Edwards, son of Jonathan Edwards, the theologian, and Sarah Pierre- 44 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES pont, the heavenly-minded one, was very far indeed from being a child of grace. And the moral lapses of Aaron Burr, born of a high-minded father and a singularly spiritual mother, are too well-known to need more than a passing mention here. The only conclusion to be reached, as one surveys the life of Hamilton's slayer, is that his sad and early bereavement (he was an orphan from childhood) left him so young without a parent's loving direc- tion that one should always pity and never condemn him. Burr's grandfather — Jonathan Ed- wards, renowned to this day as the first American author to achieve a European reputation as well as because he is a great theologian — offers to those interested in biography one of the most charming of subjects. It is a source of regret that there is not more to be known of the man 45 OLD XEW e:ntgland chueches himself. The few things that we do know, however, are full of beauty and poetic charm. Born in East Windsor, Connecti- cut, just two hundred years ago (October 5, 1T03), the only son of the pastor of the Congregational Church of that place, Jon- athan entered Yale College when only thirteen years of age. After graduation he spent two years in his theological stud- ies, and in 1722, when but nineteen years old, was licensed to preach. For a few months he presided over a small Presby- terian church in New York City, but things were not favourable in the New York of that day to the faith of a Jon- athan Edwards, so he soon returned to New Haven to complete his studies. Then there came into the man's life that affection which has caused him to be so often likened to Dante. For he gained the love of Sarah Pierrepont, of 46 THK RKVEKK.NI) JONATHAN' KDWAKDS OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES whom, when she was a young girl of thir- teen, he wrote this exquisite description: " They say that there is a young lady in New Haven who is beloved of that great Being who made and rules the world, and there are certain seasons in which this great Being, in some way or other invisi- ble, comes to her and fills her mind with exceeding sweet delight, and that she hardly cares for anything except to medi- tate on Him ; that she expects after awhile to be raised up out of the world and caught up into heaven; being assured that He loves her too well to let her remain at a distance from Him always. There she is to dwell with Him and be ravished with His love and delight forever. Therefore, if you present all the world before her, with the richest of its treasures, she cares not for it, and is unmindful of any pain or affliction. She has a strange sweetness 47 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES in her mind and singular purity in her affections ; is most just and conscientious in all her conduct ; and you could not per- suade her to do anything wrong or sinful if you would give her all the world, lest she should offend this great Being. She is of a wonderful calmness and universal benevolence of mind ; especially after this great God has manifested Himself to her mind. She will sometimes go about from place to place singing sweetly; and seems to be always full of joy and pleasure, and no one knows for what. She loves to be alone, walking in the fields and groves, and seems to have some one invisible al- ways conversing with her." Small wonder that this inspired bit has been compared to Dante's rhapsody on his first sight of Beatrice, — then also a young girl like Sarah Pierrepont : " Her dress on that day was a most noble colour, a 48 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES subdued and goodly crimson, girdled and adorned in such sort as best suited with her very tender age. At that moment, I say most truly, that the spirit of life, which hath its dwelling in the secretest chamber of the heart, began to tremble so violently that the least pulses of my body shook therewith, and in trembling it said these words, ' Behold the deity, which is stronger than I, who coming to me will rule within me.' " While under the spell of his holy love for " the young lady in New Haven," Jon- athan Edwards was invited to become col- league pastor at Northampton, Massachu- setts, with his grandfather, the Reverend Solomon Stoddard. And on the fifteenth of February, 1727, when he was a little more than twenty-three years of age, he took up his duty in that important Massachusetts towTi. The next spring he went back to 49 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES New Haven to be married to his lovely Sarah, now a girl of seventeen, and as pronounced in her beauty as in her spirit- uality. The Northampton in which this young couple now assumed an important social po- sition stood at the time they came to the town high among the settlements of the State. Nearly one-half the area of the prov- ince of Massachusetts lay within the bor- ders of the county of which it was the capi- tal. Many office-holders and professional men of local distinction were settled there, wealth was being frugally gathered, culture and refinement prevailed, and the nucleus of that aristocracy which still survives was being formed. Naturally, in a village of this kind the institution of most impor- tance was the church, — only one, it is to be noted, and that the parish over which 50 OLD NEW E:NGLAND CHURCHES the young and spiritually enthusiastic Jonathan Edwards had come to officiate. " This place," said Edwards, in writing to a friend, " was preeminently, in the respect of conversions, a city set on a hill. People at a distance . . . have been ready to look upon Northampton as a kind of heaven upon earth." And what had been begun under Mr. Stoddard was continued during Mr. Edwards's pastorate, and was celebrated in his writings until the to^vn be- came famous as the centre of that mighty religious phenomena known in history as the " Great Awakening." In spite of its previous periodic at- tacks of religious fervour, the town needed, it was soon discovered, a clarion call back to the necessity of pure life and moral soundness. Edwards and his wife, " en- dowed with strange sweetness in her mind and singular purity in her affections," 51 OLD XEW ENGLAND CHURCHES were indeed a providential people for this crisis, and they worked a veritable moral revolution in I^ew England and affected a most significant change in the town. In the first revival after the new minister's coming, " upwards of fifty persons above forty years of age, ten above ninety, nearly thirty between ten and fourteen, and one of four, became the subjects of the renew- ing grace of God." Such large numbers of converts were duly received into the church that it numbered at one time about six hundred and twenty members, and in- cluded almost the entire adult population. These persons, " with other subjects of grace, in the county of Hampshire, near the banks of the river Connecticut, were turned from a formal, cold, and careless profession of Christianity to the lively exercise of every Christian grace, and the powerful practice of our holy religion," 52 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES according to the documents of the time. And this statement one quite readily ac- cepts, for while Jonathan Edwards's theol- ogy had very often the dark and gloomy colouring peculiar to his time, his preach- ing was marked by dignity, grace, pa- tience, and a compassion truly Christlike. Probably it was chiefly his manner, how- ever, which made him what he is confessed to have been, the greatest preacher of his age. " His eyes," says one in writing of him, " were seeing things of which he talked, and not the people to whom he spoke. He was calm and pale, he had the form of an ascetic; rapt and serious in look, it was his habit to lean upon the pulpit with marvellous eyes alight, a face illuminate from within, earnest, confident, authoritative, with nothing in his vesture or manner priestly except that his heart 53 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES was touched with the feeling of our in- firmities." In his earnest spiritual quest, Edwards — again like Dante — was constantly guided by the influence of the woman he loved. The marriage with Sarah Pierre- pont was in every sense an ideal one. As one studies the life and writings of Ed- wards one sees evidence on every hand that in the bewilderment of the " Great Awak- ening," the preacher depended greatly on the character and testimony of his wife- To him was not vouchsafed experience of those wonderful visions of which others boasted, and, according to his own state- ment, it was only in the spiritual exalta- tion of his wife that he found confirmation of the truth. Thus after describing the inner moods of the working of the divine grace as she had known it, and giving to the world her religious confessiong, he 54 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES exclaims, " This could have been no other than the peace of God which passeth all understanding, — the joy of belief which though unspeakable is full of glory." Of the beautiful family life of the Ed- wardses we catch several charming glimpses from the diary of the Reverend Joseph Emerson, of East Pepperell, Massa- chusetts. Ten children, a fair proportion of them girls, had come to bless the union of these two rarely idealistic spirits, and with one of these the Reverend Joseph Emerson fell desperately in love, when in the course of a return journey after Yale Commencement he stayed for a few days at Northampton. Under date of Septem- ber lY, 1748, we find in Mr. Emerson's journal this, his first reference to the fam- ily of his beloved one : "In Wethersfield we met with Mr. Edwards, of Northamp- ton, and concluded to go home with him 55 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES the beginning of the next week by the leave of Providence. We stopped and dined at Hartford, and called at Windsor upon Mr. Edwards, father to Mr. Edwards of Northampton, where we were overper- siiaded to tarry over the Sabbath. " Sat. 18. Mr. Edwards of Northamp- ton preached a. m. from 1 Tim. 6: 19. I preached p. m. Very courteously treated here. " Tues. 20. Arrived at Northampton before night. '* Wed. 21. Spent the day very pleas- antly: the most agreeable family I was ever acquainted with: much of the pres- ence of God here. " Thurs. 22. We set out for home : Mr. Edwards was so kind as to accompany us over Connecticut River, and bring us on our way: we took our leave of him. He is certainly a great man. 56 OLD NEW ENGLAA^D CHURCHES "Sat. 24. Sat out on our journey: dined at Colonel Willard's at Lancaster; got home to Groton a little after sunset. I have had a very pleasant journey: have not met with any difficulty in travelling above three hundred miles. God's name be praised ! " Sat. Oct. 1. I wrote two letters in the forenoon, one to Mr. Edwards of Northampton, the other to his second daughter, a very desirable person to whom 1 purpose by Divine leave to make my ad- dresses. May the Lord direct me in so important an affair ! " What answer Mr. Emerson received to his letters the diary does not tell, but one fancies that it was not altogether encour- aging. Yet on the principle that faint heart ne'er won fair lady, we find the Pepperell minister soon setting out again for Northampton to plead in person his 57 OLD NEW ENGLAI^D CHURCHES suit with the girl, then only fifteen years old, who had captivated his fancy. The diary reads: " Mon. Nov. 7. Sat out some Time be- fore Day on a Journey to Northampton to visit Mistress Esther Edw^ards to treat of Marriage: got to Worcester comfort- ably, tho' something stormy: lodged at Mr. Goodwin's. " Tues. 8. Had a pleasant Day to ride in ; got to Cold springs in the Evening : lodged at Mr. Billing's the Minister, where I was very comfortably entertained. " Wed. 9. Got safe to Northampton : obtained the Liberty of the House : in the Evening heard Mr. Searle preach at an House in the Neighbourhood from, by Grace are ye saved. " Thurs. 10. I spent chief of the Day with Mistress Esther, in whose Company 58 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES the more I am, the greater value I have for her. " Frid. 11. The Young Lady being obliged to be from Home, I spent the Day in copying off something remarkable Mr. Edwards hath lately received from Scot- land. Spent the Evening with Mistress Esther. " Sat. 12. Spent part of the Day upon the business I came about. " Mon. 14. I could not obtain from the Young Lady the Least Encouragement to come again : the chief Objection she makes is her Youth, which I hope will be removed in Time. I hope the disappointment will be sanctified to me and that the Lord will by his providence order it so that this shall be my Companion for Life. I think I have followed Providence not gone before it." Yet this Reverend Joseph Emerson was not a lover to be despised. He himself 59 OLD XEW EXGLAl^D CHURCHES came of a priestly family, and one of his line afterward made Concord as famous as Jonathan Edwards had made North- ampton. Though but twenty-four at the time he went forth in the hope of bringing home Esther Edwards as his bride, he had already been to Louisburg as chaplain of Sir William Pepperell's expedition, and had preached for some time in the town he had caused to be named in honour of that doughty warrior. That his love for Esther Edwards, then a maiden of fifteen, had in it something of the exaltation to be observed in her father's love for her mother we cannot doubt. Certainly it was only after repeated rebuffs from the girl and strenuous struggles with himself that this country parson ceased to press his suit, and reluctantly gave up for all time whatever hope he may have cherished that Esther Edwards would tell him " yes." 60 OLl> CIUKCH AT I'KPPKHKI.L, DKDK A TF.l) MAKCH 8, 1770. HY PARSON KMKKSON OLD NEW ENGLAIs'D CHURCHES The entries in the diary continue for many months to dwell upon the desire of this godly youth's heart. " Thurs. ISTov. 17. I came home to my lodgings. ... I was considerably melan- choly under my Disappointment at N^orth- ampton; concluded notwithstanding, by Leave of Providence to make another trial in the Spring. " Sat. 19. So discomposed I could not study. I could not have thought that what I have lately met with would have had this effect. The Lord hath put me in a very good school. I hope I shall profit by it. " Sat. 20. Much more composed. I endeavoured to roll off my burden upon the Lord, and He sustained me. I preached all day from They that are whole need not a physician but they that are sick. " Mon. Dec. 5. I -^vrote two letters to 61 OLD NEW ENGLAiq^D CHURCHES Northampton, one to dear Mistress Esther Edwards, who I find ingrosseth too many of my Tho'ts, yet some glimmering of Hope supported my Spirits. " Frid. 23. I was this day so pressed down under the weight of some peculiar Burdens both of a Temporal and Spiritual Nature, that I could not fix my mind to do anything at all in the forenoon. In the afternoon I attended a private Meeting at Mr. Samuel Eiske's, read a Sermon out of Dr. Watts. "Sat. 24. Melancholy all day: it seems to be growing upon me. I read a little, but chief of the Day sat meditating on my Troubles. Evening my Burden somewhat lightened. Oh ! that I could be thankful: for it almost unfits me for the Service of God or man ! " Sat. 25. Preached all Day from They 62 I OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES that be whole need not a physician, but they that be sick. " Mon. 26. Went out to divert myself, and visited several of the Neighbours. " Sat. Jan. 1, 1749. I preached all day from Commit thy way unto the Lord : trust also in him. An extreme cold day, very few people at meeting. " Sat. 7. Studied all day. Being bur- dened so much this week, I could not get prepared for the Sabbath until in the Evening. " Sat. 28. Very much out of order. " Sabbath 29. Preached all Day from Yea, all who will live Godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer Persecution. Much in- disposed all Day. » " Mon. 30. My illness seems to increase upon me. " Tues. 31. Something better through Mercy: was able to do a little writing. 63 OLD XEW ENGLAND CHURCHES "Wed. Feb. 1. Something better: wrot« two Letters to ISTorthampton. " Tiies. 21. I read all the forenoon: afternoon wrote a Letter to Northampton to send to Mr. Isaac Parker who designs to set out for there tomorrow. Spent the Evening with the Committee who came up from Town to lay out the Common about our Meeting (house). " Sat. 25. This day being the Anniver- sary of my Ordination I devoted to East- ing and Prayer. I was obliged to study some not being prepared for Tomorrow. I endeavoured to lay low before God for my many sins, and the many aggravations of 'em. Especially for the short Comings of the Year past. An awful breach of Vows and Promises. I solemnly renewed my Covenant and made Resolutions and Promises. I hoped in the strength of Christ that I would live better, that I 64 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES would watch more against sin, and espe- cially against the sin which dost most easily beset me : I pleaded for Strength to perform all Duties of my General and Par- ticular Calling. Oh Lord hear my Prayers, accept my Humiliation, and give me Strength to keep my Vows for Jesus' sake. Amen and Amen. " Sat. March 11. Eead something, re- ceived a Letter from Mrs, Sarah Edwards who entirely discourages me from taking a Journey again there to visit her Sister who is so near my Heart. I am disap- pointed : the Lord teach me to profit : may I be resigned. " Tues. 21. Very much out of order. I have a constant faintness at my stomach, more weak this Spring than usual. " Wed. 22. Able to study some. " Mon. 27. My weakness increases upon 65 OLD yEW EXGLA^D CHURCHES me, so I am obliged to leave Pastoral Visits for a Time. " Sabbath, April 2. I was obliged to preach old Sermons all Day. " Mon. 3. Rode over to Lancaster. I find riding a service to me under my present Weakness," And so with a capitalized Weakness that " still continues," ends this interesting old journal found in the Reverend Joseph Emerson's house long after his death, and by one of his descendants now loaned to me. It is not to be supposed, however, that while this good youth was suffering thus severely from the pangs of disappointed love, things were altogether easy and happy in that family which occupied his thoughts. Mrs. Edwards's journal about this date betrays occasional apprehensions. For though the church at Northampton 66 OLD NEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES was undoubtedly very proud of its gifted pastor and crowds still hung upon his lips, there was brewing just at this time one of those curious church dissensions to be condoned only after the lapse of so many years that one can see both sides of the controversy. Up to the year 1744 Mr. Edwards retained a firm hold upon the confidence and affections of his people. During that year was sown the seed that ripened into hostility and ultimately led to his dismissal. He learned that a number of the younger members of his church had in their pos- session licentious books, and he felt that this was a case for discipline. So he pre- pared and preached a sermon against the sin of light reading, and, after the service, informing the church of what he knew, a committee was appointed to cooperate with the pastor in investigating the hidden sore. 67 OLD XEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES The rub came when the extent of the evil was ascertained, and it was found that the sons and daughters of many of the most respectable families in the place were im- plicated. Xaturally, those young people whom Mr. Edwards would have dismissed from the congregation of the righteous be- cause of the lapse involved in reading the ■questionable books, became, at this stage, disaffected toward the pastor. And not less naturally their parents sympathized with them. Thus it was that the after ministry of Mr. Edwards was attended with but little success. The occasion of rupture came, however, when Mr. Edwards opposed the prevailing custom of admitting to the communion all baptized persons. His grandfather had taught — and this example was widely fol- lowed in the vicinity of Northampton — that the Lord's Supper was a channel of 68 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES converting grace. But this high sacra- mentarian view Edwards had distrusted from the beginning, and now after years of study he became firmly convinced that he must refuse the sacred elements to those who would not make a confession of reli- gion. For several years, therefore, there was dissension in the church, and on June 22, 1750, an ecclesiastical council decided by a majority of one that the pastoral rela- tion which had lasted twenty-three years must be severed. Jonathan Edwards was dismissed. Himself, his wife, and his ten children were suddenly deprived of the means of living, and that under circum- stances that made it unlikely that he would be again able to practise his profession. Yet that Edwards's position was theologi- cally sound there can be no doubt. Cer- tainly, the practice of later years may be held tx) have vindicated him. 69 OLD XEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES To the humble post of missionary to the Indians at Stockbridge, this, the greatest living preacher of his day, now cheerfully turned. He had been offered a church in Scotland, but declined the call, prefer- ring to write out in the quiet of the woods the doctrinal works that besieged his brain. So poor was he at this time that he could with difficulty procure the paper necessary to the perpetuation of his thoughts, and parts of his famous " Treatise on the Will " were written on the backs of old letters and on the blank pages of pam- phlets. His wife, still beautiful and still saintly, aided by his daughters, all of whom were abundantly gifted, eked out the family income by making lace and paint- ing fans which were sent to Boston for sale. Esther was at this time eighteen years of age, very lovely to look upon as well 70 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES as highly talented. Plenty of young men besides the Reverend Joseph Emerson had already sought her hand in marriage, but it was not until two years after the family removed to Stockbridge that there came riding to the door of her hmnble home a lover who touched her heart. The man who sought her out in the hut on the edge of the wilderness was one of the most re- novmed and brilliant members of her father's profession. He stayed only three days — this Reverend Aaron Burr — but he made himself so agreeable to Esther Edwards during his visit that after his departure the maiden made no more lace and painted no more fans for the Boston ladies. Rather was she on love-letters and wedding-clothes intent. This Aaron Burr was not one of those grim-looking persons whose portraits form the repelling frontispieces to the religious 71 OLD XEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES books of the pre-Revoliitionary period, but a gentleman whose style and manner would have graced a court. He had been born at Fairfield, Connecticut, in 1716, and so was thirty-seven when he first met the woman of his choice. For years a school- master and an author, as well as the pastor of a church in Xewark, Xew Jersey, he had lately been appointed the first presi- dent of Princeton College. He is described as a man small of stature, very handsome, with clear, dark eyes of a soft lustre, — quite unlike the piercing orbs of his son, — a figure compactly foi-med but some- what slender, and with the bearing of a prince. The fascinating manner and lofty style of Mr. Burr are frequently mentioned in the letters of the period. From one of these letters, indeed, we get this very in- teresting account of his courtship : ''In the latter part of May the president (of 72 OLD NEW E^TGLAND CHURCHES Princeton College) took a. journey into New England, and during his absence he made a visit of but three days to the Rev- erend Mr. Edwards's daughter at Stock- bridge; in which short time, though he had no acquaintance with her nor had ever seen the lady these six years, I suppose he accomplished his whole design ; for it was not above a fortnight after his return here before he sent a young fellow (who came out of college last fall) into New England to conduct her and her mother down here. They came to town on Saturday evening, the twenty-seventh, and on the Monday evening following, the nuptial ceremonies were celebrated between Mr, Burr and the young lady. As I have yet no manner of acquaintance with her, I cannot describe to you her qualifications and properties. How- ever, they say she is a very valuable lady. I think her a person of great beauty, 73 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES though I must say she is rather too young (being twenty -one years of age) for the president." Two weeks later this cheerful gossip of a sophomore writes again on the en- grossing subject : " I can't omit acquaint- ing you that our president enjoys all the happiness the married state can afford. I am sure when he was in the condition of celibacy the pleasure of his life bore no comparison to that he now possesses. From the little acquaintance I have with his lady I think her a woman of very good sense, of a genteel and virtuous education, amiable in her person, of great affability and agreeableness in conversation, and a very excellent economist. These qualifi- cations may help you to form some idea of the person who liv^ in the sincerest mutual affections with Mr. Burr." When Aaron Burr, 2nd, was born (Feb- 74 OLD ^"EW ENGLAND CHURCHES niary 6, 1756), the assembly building at Princeton was so nearly completed that the College of New Jersey was able to add a local habitation to its well-earned name. To Princeton, therefore, the president and his family removed late in the year 1756, and it was from this place that Esther Burr wrote this significant description of Aaron, then thirteen months old : " Aaron is a little dirty, noisy boy, very different from Sally almost in everything. He be- gins to talk a little; is very sly and mis- chievous. He has more sprightliness than Sally, and most say he is handsome, but not so good tempered. He is veiy resolute, and requires a good governor to bring him to terms." That very good governor, his father, who might have made such a difference in the life of this second Aaron Burr, was only a few months later taken out of the world 76 OLD NEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES at the early age of forty-two. The labour of establishing Princeton on a firm foun- dation had been too much for him, and so it came about that Esther Burr was, when scarcely twenty-five, left a widow with two young children, one three and the other less than two years old. Her heart- broken letters to her father written about this time show very clearly how terribly she suffered in her bereavement, and fore- shadow her own early death. Scarcely had Edwards been inaugurated presi- dent of the College of New Jersey to succeed the lamented husband, when both he and Mrs. Burr died of smallpox. In the fall of the same year Jonathan Ed- wards's widow, who had gone to Philadel- phia with the intention of conveying little Aaron Burr and his sister Sarah to her own home, there to bring them up in care- ful, godly fashion, was seized with a dread 76 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES disease and herself passed to the bourne from which no traveller returns. Thus within a period of thirteen months these children were of father, mother, and grand- parents all bereft. And there was left in the wide world absolutely no one whose chief concern it could be to see that they received no detriment. A thing almost as beautiful as Jonathan Edwards's youthful rhapsody concerning his child-wife, was his death-bed message to her, — the one woman of his life. It was noticed by those attending him that he said but little. There were none of the raptures peculiar to the " saint of God," no allusions to his books, to the labours of his life, or to the fortunes of the Church. But he spoke to his daughter words thus recorded : " Give my kindest love to my dear wife, and tell her that 17 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES the uncommon union which has so long subsisted between us has been of such a nature as I trust is spiritual, and therefore will continue forever." 78 A COLONIAL FEIAR LAURENCE y^NY one who should expect to find y~m the life of a mission minister in colonial days altogether prosaic and barren of romance would be greatly astonished upon dipping into the history of the Reverend Arthur Browne, first rec- tor of St. John's Church, Portsmouth, N. H. This parish, alive and prosperous to-day, has been in existence ever since 1732, when right on the present site the " English Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts " started its first mission in Portsmouth. In Mr. Browne, " a man of real culture, unpretentious good- ness, and eminent worth," was soon found 79 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES a leader well fitted for his task. More- over, Mr. Browne was theologically able as well as quite unusually democratic in his views for one of his time and station. Being born an Irishman and educated at Trinity College, Dublin, was a good be- ginning in those days for colonial life in an aristocratic American centre. This Reverend Arthur Browne students and lovers of romance will remember it was who performed the marriage ceremony between Governor Benning Wentworth and Martha Hilton, the aged magistrate's pretty housemaid. This union was sol- emnized much against the good rector's will, but he disliked the match because of the disparity between the ages of the con- tracting parties rather than because of the difference in their rank. In the old record- book, which visitors to the church may still examine, the entry of the marriage 80 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES in Mr. Browne's own hand is distinguished by no flourish, but has a cramped square inch of room, just like that given to every other couple in a day when paper was scarce and high. Longfellow has immortalized in his charming poem the tale of this interesting alliance. Young Martha Hilton, idling along the street, ragged and barefoot, was one day rebuked by her mistress of the Stavers' Inn, only to elicit from the maid a toss of the head and the reply that she would yet ride in her own chariot, sur- rounded by pomp and splendour. Not very long after it began to look as if Martha's idle prophecy would indeed come true. For upon the death of Gov- ernor Wentworth's first wife the girl had gone as housekeeper to the beautiful man- sion still standing at Little Harbour ^ and 1 See " Romance of Old New England Roof trees." 81 OLD XEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES now occupied bj Mr. Templeman Coolidge, who has recently been able by an artistic arrangement of antique furniture to intro- duce into the ancient interior something of the atmosphere of old-time splen- dour and luxui-y which characterized the place in the old days. The portrait of Strafford dictating to his secretary just before his execution, the rare Copley, the green damask-covered furniture, and the sedan-chair were then items sufficiently magnificent, it appears, to tempt Martha Hilton, young and beautiful, into mar- riage with a man almost old enough to be her grandfather. This historic event occurred on the six- tieth anniversary of Governor Went- worth's birth. The dinner had been a su- perb one, the food and wine capital, and the Reverend Arthur Browne was, of course, among the guests, for in those days church 82 ^^I^^K^flSEH ■ ^Hl ^ 1 ^|H 1 HH ~ "'"^■\5lf^H|i ^■f ^^1^1 v j^J^^H n ^K«l 1 ^^HB jm ^ ■y^ilSs '^''^^ST ^s s^Pv90< ^ -m 1 i-J^ «^fc 1^ M A' %v '•?' ^ ^ ..A ^ ^j > _ Jii ,, -3 R% \ i ^^1 H Cj^^I^^I^(3^^9 1 HI iihm - ^ ^^IH OLD ^TEW E^N^GLA^TD CHURCHES and state were never far apart, even on occasions when each heartily disapproved of the other. The grand coup came at the ending of the feast. At a call from a servant, Martha Hilton, now grown to a lovely woman, slipped unnoticed into the room while her lord, "... rising from his chair, Played slightly with his ruffles, then looked down, And said unto the Rev. Artliur Browne : ' This is my birthday ; it shall likewise be My wedding-day ; and you shall marry me ! ' " Nor did the hesitation of the rector avail, for the impatient governor pro- ceeded to " command as chief magistrate," to the end that the priest could but — "... read the service loud and clear : ' Dearly beloved, we are gathered here.' And so on to the end. At his command On the fourth finger of her fair left hand The Governor placed the ring; and that was all : Martha was Lady Wentworth of the Hall ! " 83 OLD JTEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES The date of this interesting event was March 15, 1760, and so it is recorded in the parish register, where the second mar- riage of the beautiful Martha is also duly set down. For Governor Wentworth did not live long after his romantic espousal, and with what appeared to many most unseemly haste Martha took unto herself a new husband, none other than Michael Wentworth, the governor's brother, then a retired officer in the British army. At this wedding also the Rev. Arthur BroAvne officiated. The first rector of St. John's has indeed come down to us as the Friar Laurence of not a few romantic marriages, among them one striking in the extreme. Colonel Theo- dore Atkinson, Jr., son of that Colonel Theodore whose bread is still served to Portsmouth's poor (of which unique cus- tom more anon) had married a cousin, 84 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES whose earlier affections had been placed on John Wentworth, Governor of New Hamp- shire when the Revolution broke out. In his youth John Wentworth went to England, and it was during his absence that his sweetheart took young Atkinson as her husband. But two years previous to the date one finds set down as the death of Mr. Atkinson, the young Wentworth, now a man, returned. And, what was more, he came back clothed with the dig- nity of " Governor of the colony and Sur- veyor of the woods of North America! " The windows of this governor's house could be seen from those of Colonel At- kinson, and the gossips of history tell us that signals were often exchanged between the two old sweethearts. Whether or not this is true, Mrs. Atkinson had certainly not forgotten her former lover; for just ten days after her husband's funeral, at 85 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES which the venerable Arthur Browne had duly and decorously officiated, his services were again required by the lady, but this time in a happier capacity. Mr. Charles Brewster, a local historian of the town, has in his " Rambles About Portsmouth " thus described the funeral and the ensuing oc- casion upon which the Atkinson baked meats did second service : " The widow was arrayed for the colo- nel's burial service in the dark habiliments of mourning, which we presume elicited an immense shower of tears, as the fount was soon exhausted. The next day the mourner appears in her pew at church as a widow. But that w^as the last Sab- bath of the widow. On Monday morning there was a new call for the services of the milliner; the unbecoming black must be laid aside, and brighter colours, as be- 86 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHUKCHES comes a governor's bride, must take its place." Rather curiously the bill for the bride- groom's apparel at that hasty wedding in Queen's Chapel (this building the prede- cessor on the same site of the present church) has come down to us. It follows : £ To pair of white silk stocking breeches 1 To white silk coat, uuliued .... 2 To a white corded silk waistcoat . . To a rich gold lace To gold button and loop, hat recocked, etc To three yards queue ribbon .... This union of two old sweethearts had unpleasant results for the Reverend Arthur Browne. It may be that he was excited beyond his wont by the despatch with which the late Mrs. Atkinson had consoled herself. Or perhaps he was soliloquizing on the strange turns that confront one in life, and wondering what might happen 87 s. d. 18 14 5 12 2 1 3 OLD XEW EXGLAXD CHUKCHES next. Be that as it may, he wandered absent-mindedly down the steps after the wedding ceremony, and, falling, broke his arm. Before leaving the subject of the Atkin- sons' connection with old St. John's, mention should be made of the curious cus- tom made possible in this church by the elder Colonel Theodore's legacy for doling out a portion of bread each Sunday to the poor of the parish. Even in this twentieth century, twelve loaves of bread, known as " the dole," are thus given away every Sunday after the morning service. This bread is placed always on the baptismal font, at the right of the chancel, and cov- ered with " a fair linen napkin," from which place the Reverend Henry E. Hovey, present rector of St. John's, distributes it. This font is probably the very oldest object in the building. It is made of por- 88 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES phyritic marble of a dull brownish gray, finely veined. It was taken by Colonel John Mason from the French in 1758, at the capture of Senegal, and is undoubtedly African. The tradition is that it had been taken by the French from some heathen temple, and was very old at the time of its capture. Colonel Mason's daughters presented it to Queen's Chapel in 1761. Only in one other church of this country, and that an old parish in Virginia, is the ancient custom of doling out a portion of bread each Sunday to the poor of the parish still kept up. From the income of Colonel Atkinson's bequest about $6,000 has already been expended for this charity, and the original fund remains unimpaired. One other story of romantic interest is connected with this old parish. This, as recorded by Mr. Brewster, runs: " Nicholas Rousselet was a man of good 89 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES exterior, and when dressed in the official consular costume, which he wore on public days, a person to attract attention. Of his first acquaintance with Miss Moffatt we have no account, but tradition says that it was in the Episcoj^al church during service hour that the most important crisis in the courtship transpired. " Sitting with her in her father's pew, Mr. Rousselet handed Miss Katherine the Bible, in which he had marked in the first verse of the second epistle of St. John, the words, ' L^nto the elect lady,' and the fifth verse entire, ' And now I beseech thee, lady, not as though I wrote a new com- mandment unto thee, but that which we had from the beginning, that we love one another.' Miss Katherine, fully compre- hending the appeal, turned down a leaf in the first chapter of Ruth, beginning with verse sixteen, ' Whither thou goest, I 90 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people will be my people, and thy God, my God. Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried ; the Lord do so to me and more also, if aught but death part thee from me.' " During Washington's famous visit to New Hampshire, in 1789, just after his inauguration, he went to service at the old Queen's Chapel Parish, now St. John's, and in his diary for that day, November 1, 1789, he wrote : " Attended by the Pres- ident of the State (General Sullivan), Mr. Langdon, and the marshal, I went in the forenoon to the Episcopal Church under the incumbency of Mr. Ogden." Tradition tells us that the President was arrayed on this occasion in an ele- gant complete suit of black velvet, with brilliant buckles. He occupied the old governor's pew, which was framed in red 91 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHUKCHES plush curtains, with a heavy wooden can- opy over it, bearing the royal arms. In this pew were the two chairs given the parish by Queen Caroline, in whose honour the chapel had been named, and who had presented the parish at the same time with a Bible, prayer-books, and silver service for the communion-table, which last bears the royal arms and is in use at the present day. Trinity Church, New York, and Trinity in Boston were other parishes sim- ilarly remembered by gifts of communion silver at this time. One of these Queen chairs was occupied that Sunday in November, 1789, by the very man who was most responsible for the overthrow of England's power in the New World. And when, less than a score of years afterward, the Chapel was burned (1806), and only one of the two original chairs in the governor's pew remained, tra- 92 OLD NEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES dition patriotically declared that the sur- vivor was the one in which the Father of His Country sat. In 1791 the parish was incorporated as St. John's, and in 1807 the new church took the same name. It is interesting to learn that Trinity Church, Boston, con- tributed $1,000 toward the erection of the new building in its need. One of the unfortunate accidents of the fire of 1806 was the cracking of the his- toric bell which had begun its career by ringing out peals from the belfry of a French Catholic cathedral in Louisburg, but which had been brought to Portsmouth by doughty Colonel Pepperell, of Kittery, just across the river, after his triumphant capture of the defiant French fortress. But the bell was not beyond repair, and after being recast by Paul Revere, clearly rang forth its tidings of gaiety and gloom 93 OLD XEW ENGLAND CHURCHES for many years. Finally, however, the constant clanging of the tongue so wore upon the metal that in the summer of 1896 the old relic had once again to be taken down and sent to Boston. This time the Blake Bell Company, successors to the Paul Revere Company tliat had done the same work ninety years before, east the relic. Inscribed on the enduring metal of the new-old bell are now these words from the pen of one of the Wentworths, with whose history the church must be forever linked : " From St. John's steeple I call the people On holy days To prayer and praise." And on the rim, besides the motto : " Vox ego sum vitse, voco vos, orate, venite," are the words, " My mouth shall show forth Thy praise." 94 OLD J^EW ENGLAND CHURCHES Any account of St. John's parish at Portsmouth which should neglect to state that the old Brattle organ, although not used in the church itself, is one of the corporation's most cherished possessions, would necessarily be incomplete. This " instrument " was purchased for the allied chapel in 1836 by Dr. Charles Bur- roughs, the first settled pastor of St. John's after the rebuilding of the church. It was originally the property of Mr. Thomas Brattle, one of the founders of the old Brattle Street Church in Boston. Mr. Brattle, who was an enthusiastic musician, imported the organ from London in 1713. At his death it was left by will to the Brattle Street Church — " given and de- voted to the praise and glory of God in said church, if they shall accept thereof and within a year after my decease pro- cure a sober person that can play skilfully 95 OLD XEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES thereon with a loud noise." The will fur- ther provided that the organ should go to King's Chapel if not accepted according to the first provision. The non-compliance of the Brattle Street Church with the condition of the gift would, therefore, seem to have been the gain of King's Chapel, and after remain- ing unpacked in the tower for some eight months, it was used there until 1756. Then it was sold to St. Paul's Church, in Xew- buryport, where it was in constant use for eighty years. In 1836, as has been said, it was purchased by Doctor Bur- roughs for St. John's Chapel, and it is still used in this edifice on State Street, Portsmouth. The case is new, but the old wind-chest and most of the pipes of the original organ remain, and some of the notes are even now of unusual sweetness. According to the " Annals of King's 96 OLD XEW EIs^GLAXD CHURCHES Chapel," this was *' the first organ that ever pealed to the glory of God in this country." Yet even more interesting than the old church and its chapel on State Street is the parish burying-gronnd of St. John's. Here rest the remains of the highest and noblest men and women in N^ew Hamp- shire's colonial annals. For all who served in public position or exercised authority by appointment or permission of the Crown felt in duty bound in those early days to worship at an English church. And from there they were buried. The Wentworths' tomb is in the centre of the yard, and here, linked with his governor's family in death as in life, repose to-day the remains of the Reverend Arthur Browne, who, in 1773, soon after the death of his aged wife, Mary, — whom 97 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES he had married in his native Drogheda when he was only her father's curate, — cheerfully laid down his happy, well- spent life. COURTSHIP ACCORDING TO SAMUEL SEWALL rHERE is almost no story of early New England life that one can- not connect with the Old Sonth Meeting-House in Boston. The thing that perplexes is which to choose. For the building has been the scene of many great historical crises, during which affairs have been guided by some of the foremost men in the annals of our country. Its site is also famous as that of the home of Governor John Winthrop, and it was here that the governor died March 26, 1649. Subsequent to this event the land was owned by Madam Mary Norton (wife of 99 OLD NEW EJ^GLAND CHURCHES Reverend John Norton), who gave it in trust for ever " for the erecting of a house for their assembling themselves together publiquely to worship God." The first meeting-house on the spot was a little cedar one, erected in 1669, This stood until 1729, when it was removed to make way for the present structure of brick, built by Joshua Blanchard and dedicated April 26, 1730. In the pres- ent building it was some years later (Nov- ember 27, 1773) that a meeting of five thousand citizens decided that the odious tea should not land ; and a few weeks after- ward, on December 16th, seven thousand men sat in the church until after candle- light, and, when the messengers returned from Governor Hutchinson at Milton with the word that that official refused redress, a body of them raised the war-whoop at the door and, disguised as savages, rushed 100 THK OLI> SOUl'll ( IM ItCH, JJOSION, MASS. OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES from the sacred edifice to GrijSin's Wharf, there to celebrate the Great American Tea Party. Yet it is not of the history of the Old South Meeting-House that I mean to write, for many people have done that interest- ingly and well. Rather do I choose to twine about the walls of this old building the clinging ivy of one man's life-story, the man selected being Judge Samuel Sewall, the noblest Roman of them all, who, in 1696, stood up manfully in his pew at this church while his confession of wrong in accepting " spectral evidence " during the witchcraft trials at Salem * was read aloud by one of the ministers. It is always of Sewall that I think when I go to the Old South Church — though I know perfectly well that he made his con- fession in the old cedar meeting-house 1 See " Romance of Old New England Roof trees." 101 OLD XEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES which preceded this brick structure — and that he died just before the present build- ing was dedicated. But I can fancy how excited he must have gi'own in his old age over the elaborate preparations neces- sary to the erection of so fine a church as this so long ago as 1730, and I like to think of the things he must have written down somewhere about the undertaking, — in accordance with his lifelong habit of diary-keeping. Moreover, when all is said, it was this very place that Sewall fre- quented and this very spot which he hal- lowed by that noble confession and by the sternly kept fast days that followed. Tlie letters " S. S." on the stone at the north- west comer may be held to do him fitting reverence for these brave acts. Here, too, it was that he was wont to come with his blooming wife Hannah, the daughter of Captain John Hull, Mintmaster, and here 102 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES that he used to listen with scarcely con- cealed pride to the sermons of " son Joseph," of which his famous diary says so much. It was likewise here that as an old man he cast sheep's eyes at the women " in the Fore Seat " eligible to gladden his desolate hearth. And while walking home from worship in this place it was that he weighed, as we shall see, the comparative merits of the ladies in question. In Hawthorne's fascinating accoimt of Samuel Sewall's first courtship occurs this important sentence : " The mintmaster was especially pleased with his new son-in-law because he had courted Miss Betsy out of pure love and had said nothing at all about her portion." It is good for us to remember that passage when we read the stories of Judge Sewall's later courtships. For the fact that the first marriage was one of purely romantic love — even if Sewall 103 OLD XEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES did get his wife's weight in pine-tree shil- lings when he got her — rather takes the taint of the sordid from the later episodes. There is no need to tell at length the pretty story of Betsy Hull, for it has become a part of American tradition. John Hull, we all remember, had been made mint- master of the colony and had grown very rich. Then one day a fine young man, Samuel Sewall by name, came courting his daughter, and, meeting the require- ments of the situation as to character and education, was readily given the consent of the fair one's fond father. This father had replied to the ardent youth's suit, as a bluff parent of the period well enough might, " Take her, but you'll find her a heav;^' enough burden." " Yet when the wedding ceremony was over," according to the tale of the Great American Romancer, " the bridegroom was given a surprise which 104 OLD KEW EIvTGLAND CHURCHES made him rejoice indeed that the new Mrs. Sewall was a plmnp young woman. '' Captain Hull whispered a word or two to his men servants, who immediately went out and soon returned, lugging in a large pair of scales. They were such a pair as wholesale merchants use for weigh- ing bulky commodities ; and quite a bulky commodity was now to be weighed in them. " ' Daughter Betsy,' said the mintmas- ter, ' get into one side of these scales.' " Miss Betsy — or Mrs. Sewall, as we must now call her — did as she was bid like a dutiful daughter without any ques- tion of the why and wherefore. But what her father could mean unless to make her husband pay for her by the pound (in which case she would have been a dear bargain), she had not the least idea. " ' And now,' said honest John Hull to the servants, ' bring that box hither.' 105 OLD XEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES " The box to which the mintmaster pointed was a huge square iron-bound oaken chest; . . . The servants tugged with might and main, but could not lift this enormous receptacle, and w^ere finally obliged to drag it across the floor. Cap- tain Hull then took a key from his girdle, unlocked the chest, and lifted its ponder- ous lid. Behold ! it was full to the brim of bright pine-tree shillings fresh from the mint ; . . . Then the servants, at Cap- tain Hull's command, heaped double hand- fuls of shillings into one side of the scales while Betsy remained in the other. " ' There, son Sewall ! ' cried the honest mintmaster, when the weights balanced, ' take those shillings for my daughter's portion. Use her kindly and thank Heaven for her. It is not every wife that is worth her weight in silver.' " Well might Father Hull give to young 106 STAIUCASE IX fOVKNTRY HALL, YORK, ME. I OLD N^EW EXGLAXD CHURCHES Sewall this fortune in pine-tree silver. For the youth was one of the most promis- ing in all the colony, and at Harvard, as in the life of Boston Town, had already made a bit of a name for himself. He came, too, of stock wont to succeed in life. His family were distinguished Coventry folk, and father and son of them had for genera- tions been mayors of the quaint and beau- tiful city. Coventry Hall, still standing at York, Maine, is modelled after the old home in England. Samuel Sewall himself had been born in Bishopstoke, England, but had early come to this coimtry with his parents, and had been brought up in Newbury. In due time he went to the college at Cambridge, and from that in- stitution he received his bachelor's degree in 1667. In a letter written to his son when Joseph was a grown man Samuel Sewall speaks thus of his college com- 107, OLD XEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES mencement: " In 1674 I took my second degree, and Mrs. Hannah Hull, my dear wife, your honoured mother, was invited by Doctor Hoar and his lady (her kins- folk) to be with them awhile at Cam- bridge. She saw me when I took my de- gree and set her affection on me, though I knew nothing of it until after our mar- riage, which was February 28, 1675 — 76. Governor Bradstreet married us." How the youthful parson (for Samuel Sewall had preached a little before his marriage, though he entered public life soon after that event) conducted his first courtship we have no knowledge. Prob- ably at this stage of his life he confided to his beloved one rather than to his diary his fervid emotions. There is in- deed a notable lack of entries about the time of the marriage, and it is only after he has become a good and solicitous hus- 108 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES band that every detail of his and his wife's life is put down in the quaint old pages of this book, — which shows us better than does any other document extant the real social life of the time. The births of the many little children that came to the proud parents, the details of the husband's wonderful trip abroad, which occupied most of the year 1688, and the circuit journeys for the discharge of his judicial duties, are all constantly re- ferred to in this volume. And there we can follow, too, the differences in the light- hearted bridegroom as the years went past that changed him into the merciless perse- cutor of the witches. Then there came a time when child after child bom to Hannah and Samuel Sewall died in convulsions. The diary abounds in references to the illnesses of these little sufferers (who, strangely enough, were one 109 OLD XEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES after another called '' Hiillie " for the good mintmaster grandfather), Judge Sewall seeming to feel that the judgment of Heaven was being visited upon his children because he had sent innocent little ones to death during the Salem trials. So in January, 1696, he put up his " bill " in the Old South Meeting-House, and stood with bowed head while it was read. Dur- ing the remainder of his life he spent one day annually in fasting, meditation, and prayer in remembrance of his sin. After this the tide of his life turned for awhile; on September 16, 1713, he had the great joy of seeing his dear son Joseph, a fine youth of twenty-five years, ordained as the colleague at the Old South Church of Minister Ebenezer Pemberton. The satisfaction the portly and successful father took in the sermons of this minister son inspire some of the most satisfying 110 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES pages of the diary, and one likes very much to think of Judge Sewall at this stage of his life, going to the old meeting- house with his dear wife Hannah on his arm, to hear " our son Joseph put up a fine prayer," or " preach a stirring word." Then came the blow of the man's life, a blow from which he never fully recov- ered. For I cannot believe that the rather self-conscious old gentleman forever tak- ing his own emotional temperature, so to speak, is Samuel Sewall at his best. But I readily enough forgive him his incessant self-analysis, inasmuch as by reason of it we get the only authentic picture we pos- sess of the way in which the middle-aged wooings of colonial days were conducted. Judge Sewall's wife Hannah died Oc- tober 19, 171 Y. She had been for some time in a decline, aggravated, probably, by some sort of malarial fever; as far 111 OLD ^^EW EXGLA^^D CHURCHES back as July 3d her husband notes that he has been kept from commencement by his wife's being taken very sick the night before. " This is the second year of niy absence from that solemnity." So with the usual Puritan solemnities of prayer and fast, the household waited on this exemplary wife and mother, mak- ing her exit. " About a quarter of an hour past four, my dear wife expired in the afternoon, whereby the chamber was filled with a flood of tears. God is teach- ing me a new lesson — to lead a widower's life. Lord help me to learn, and be a sun and shield to me, now so much of my com- fort and defence are taken away." I^ext day he writes: " I go to the public worship forenoon and afternoon. My son has much ado to read the note I put up, being overwhelmed with tears." 112 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES Sewall was sincere with all his great loving heart in his sorrow for this wife of his youth and strong manhood, and he kept her memory in love till his death's day in spite of repeated wooings to argue the contrary. But it was expected, with the rigour of a law in the Puritan land, that widows and widowers should remarry. They all did it, and not to do it was a social offence. Apparently they all helped each other to do it, and for a man in Judge Sewall's social station, there was no chance of escape. Nor, truth to say, did Sewall try to find one. Accordingly, we soon read of his attentions to Mrs. Dennison, — who refused him because he wanted too liberal a settlement, — to Mrs. Tilly, another blooming widow, and even to other ladies of name and position. Mrs. Tilly was his final choice, however, and on October 29, 1719, these two were mar- 113 OLD NEW EI^GLAI^D CHURCHES ried, with the usual Puritan festivities, by the judge's son, Mr. Joseph Sewall. The judge was now chief justice of Massa- chusetts, and had been two long years a widower. Xot to make further mention of a lady who, though his wife, seems to us to have been hardly more than a shadow in Sewall's real life, albeit she was an ex- emplary woman, it may be noted that she died suddenly May 26, 1720. Sewall's opinion of this wife is in a letter : " She, my wife, carries it very tenderly, and is very helpful to me, my children, and grandchildren." After Mrs. Tilly's funeral there is no record of any marital movement on Sewall's part until October 1st — four months only of mourning now ! — when he writes : " Saturday I dine at Mr. Stoddard's ; 114 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES from thence I went to Madam Winthrop's jnst at three. Spake to her, saying, my lov- ing wife died so soon and so suddenly, 'twas hardly convenient (seemly) for me to think of marrying again ; however I came to this resolution that I would not make any court to any person without first consulting with her. [Madam Winthrop.] Had a pleasant discourse about seven single per- sons sitting in the Eore Seat [of the Old South Meeting-House] Septt. 29 [the Sun- day before], viz. Madam Kebecca Dudley, Catharine Winthrop [the lady before him], Bridget Usher, Deliverance Legg, Rebecca Loyd, Lydia Colman, Elizabeth Belling- ham. She propounded one and another for me: but none would do, said Mrs. Loyd was about her age." This conference with Mrs. Winthrop was the first of the many in this the most entertaining colonial courtship of which 115 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES we have record. Sewall was now sixtv- nine and the lady fifty-six, twice married before and with grown-up children. " Octr. 2. Evening. Waited on Madam Winthrop again ; 'twas a little while be- fore she came in. Her daughter Noyes being there alone with me, I said I hoped my waiting on her mother would not be disagreeable to her. She answered she should not be against that that might be for her comfort. By and by came in Mr. Airs, chaplain of the Castle, and hanged up his hat, which I was a little startled at, it seeming as if he was to lodge there. At last Madam Winthrop came too. After a considerable time I went up to her and said, if it might not be inconvenient I wished to speak with her. She assented and spake of going into another room ; but Mr. Airs and Mrs. Noyes presently rose up and went out, leaving us there alone. 116 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHUKCHES Then I ushered in discourse from the names in the Fore Seat; at last I prayed that Katharine (Madam Winthrop) might be the person assigned for me. She in- stantly took it up in the way of denial, as if she had catched at an opportunity to so do it, saying, she could not do it before she was asked. Said that it was her mind, unless she should change it, which she believed she could not — could not leave her children. I expressed my sorrow that she should do it so speedily, prayed her consideration, and asked her when I should wait on her again. She saying no time, I mentioned that day Sen- night. Gave her Mr. Willard's ' Fountain Opened,' with the little print and verses; saying I hoped if we did well read that book, we should meet together hereafter, if we did not now. She took the book and put it in her pocket. Took leave. 117 OLD XEW ENGLAND CHURCHES Oct. 5. Midweek. Although I had ap- pointed to wait upon her, Madam Win- throp, next Monday, yet I went from my Cousin's Sewall's thither about next Mon- day about 3. The nurse told me Madam dined abroad at her daughter Noyes, they went to go out together. Gave Kate€ a penny and a kiss and came away." " Oct. 6. A little after 6 p. m. I went to Madam Winthrop's. She was not within. I gave the maid 2s. ; Juno, who brought in wood, Is. After the nurse came in, I gave her 18d. having no other small bill. After a while Dr. Xoyes came in with his mother and quickly after his wife. They sat talking, I think, till 8 o'clock. I said I feared I might be some interruption to their business. Dr. Noyes replied presently. They feared they might be some interruption to MY business and went away. Madam seemed 118 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES to harp upon the same string, must take care of her children, could not leave that house and neighbourhood, etc. I gave her a piece of Mr. Belcher's cake and ginger- bread wrapped up in a clean piece of paper. My daughter Judith I said waa gone from me and I was more lonesome, — might help to for^vard one another in our journey to Canaan. I took leave about nine o'clock." " October 11th. I write a few lines to Madam Winthrop to this purpose: Madam : — These wait on you with Mr. Mayhew's sermon and an account of the state of the Indians of Martha's Vineyard. I thank you for your unmerited favours of yesterday [she had given him wine mar- malade, etc.], and hoped to have the happi- ness of waiting on you tomorrow before eight o'clock afternoon. I praye God to keep you and give you a joyful entrance 119 OLD NEW EJS^GLAND CHURCHES upon the 229th year of Christopher Co- lumbus, his discovery, and take leave, to add. Madam, your humble serv't. " s. s." " Sent this day by Deacon Green." " Oct. 12. In the little room Madam Winthrop was full of work behind a stand. Mrs. Cotton came in and stood. Madam pointed to her to set me a chair. Her countenance looked dark and lowering. At last the work [black stuff of silk] was taken away. I got my chair in place, had some converse, but [she] very cold and in- different to what [she] was before. [I] Asked [her] to acquit me of rudeness if I drew off her glove. Enquiring the reason I told her 'twas great odds between han- dling a dead goat and a living lady. Got it off! I told her I had one petition to ask of her: to wit, to change her answer. She insisted on her negative. I gave her 130 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES Dr. Preston's ' The Church's Marriages and the Church's Carriage/ which cost me 6s. Sarah filled a glass of wine, she drank to me, I to her. She sent Juno home with me with a good lantern. I gave her 6d., and bade her thank her mis- tress. In some of our discourse I told her [Madam Winthrop] the reason why I came every other night was lest I should drink too deep draughts of pleasure. She talked of Canary, [I said] her kisses were to me better than the best Canary." Sam- uel Sewall at sixty -nine evidently knew how to act the gallant. " Oct. 17. In the evening I visited Madam Winthrop, who treated me cour- teously, but not in clean linen as some- times. She said she did not know whether I would come again or no. [He had been five days absent!] I asked her how she could impute inconstancy to me. Give her 121 OLD XEW EXGLAND CHURCHES this day's Gazette. Hear David Geoffry's (her little grandson) say the Lord's Prayer and some other portions of the Scriptures. Juno came home with me." " Oct. 18. Visited Madam Mico who came to me in a splendid dress. I said, It may be you have heard of my visiting Madam Winthrop, her sister. She an- swered, Her sister had told her of it. If her sister were for it [the match] she should not hinder it. I gave her Mr. Holmes' sermon. She gave me a glass of Canary. Entertained me with good dis- course and a respective remembrance of my first wife. I took leave." This is the lady who, some suggest, would have listened to Sewall's suit more patiently than did her sister. " The splendid dress " in which Sewall notes she came to him, certainly gives one a hint of interest on her part. 122 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHUKCHES " Oct. 19. Visited Madam Winthrop. Sarah told me she was at Mrs. Walley's. Would not come home till late. Was ready to go home, but said if I knew she was there I would go thither. I went and found her with Mr. Walley and his wife in the little room below. At seven o'clock I mentioned going home; at eight I put on my coat and quickly waited on her home. Was courteous to me, but took occasion to speak to me earnestly about my keeping a coach. I said 'twould cost £100 per annum. She said 'twould cost but £46." " Oct. 20. Madam Winthrop not being at lecture, I went thither first ; found her very serene with her daughter Noyes, etc. She drank to me, and I to Mrs. Noyes. After awhile prayed the favour to speak with her. She took one of the candles and went into the best room, closed the shutters, 123 OLD XEW EXGLAND CHURCHES and sat down upon the couch. She spoke something of my needing a wig. I took my leave." " Oct. 21. My Son [the parson] and I pray for one another in the old chamber, more especially respecting my courtship. At six o'clock I go to Madam Winthrops. Sarah told me her mistress had gone out, but did not tell me whither she went. She presently ordered me a fire ; so I went in having Dr. Sibb's ' Bowells ' with me to read. [This was a book on 'The Dis- covery of the Union between Christ and the Church.']. A while after nine, Madam came in. I mentioned something of the lateness ; she bantered me and said I was later. I asked her when our pro- ceedings should be made public. She said they were like to be no more public than they were already. Offered me no wine that I remember. I rose up at eleven 124 OLD NEW EIs^GLAND CHURCHES o'clock to come away, saying that I would put on my coat. She offered not to help me. I prayed that Juno might light me home, she opened the shutter and said was pretty light abroad ; Juno was weary and gone to bed. So I came home by star- light as well as I could. Jehovah Jirah. The Lord reigneth." " Oct. 24. As to my periwig I told her my best and greatest friend (I could not possibly have a greater) began to find me with hair before I was bom and had con- tinued to do so ever since, and I could not find it in my heart to go to another. She gave me a dram of black cherry brandy and lump of the sugar that was in it." " Nov. 4. I asked Madam what fashion necklace I shall present her with. She said none at all. I asked her whereabouts we left off last time; mentioned what I had offered to give her [as a settlement] ; 125 OLD Is^EW E^^GLAXD CHUECHES asked her what she would give me. She said she could not change her condition, and had said so from the beginning." " 'Nov. 7. I went to Madam Winthrop ; found her rocking her little Katie in the cradle. She set me an armed chair and a cushion. Gave her the remnants of my almonds. She did not eat of them as be- fore, but laid them away. Asked if she remained of the same mind still. She said thereabouts. I told her I loved her, and was so fond as to think that she loved me. The fire was come to one short brand beside the block, which brand was set up on end; at last it fell to pieces, and no recruit was made. She gave me a glass of wine. I did not bid her draw off her glove, as sometime I had done. Her dress was not so clean as sometime it had been. The Lord reigneth." And so with the one black brand on a 126 OLD NEW EXGLAND CHURCHES fireless hearth the curtain falls on Sewall's courtship of Madam Winthrop. Soon after he married Mrs. Gibbs. The rocks on which Sewall's matri- monial venture here split apparently were several. He would not agree to set up a coach, claiming he could not afford it, nor wear a periwig, as Madam wished ; he had tried to drive a close-fisted bargain in the marriage settlement, and perhaps had sought to meddle with the status of her slaves. Above all, the lady was, as she said, averse to separation from her kin and grandchildren. So this court- ship lapsed, apparently with no ill-will on either side. There are entries in the diary later on which look like willingness on Madam Winthrop's part to leave the door just a trifle ajar ; but Sewall went another way. There is one entry, however, of the few more concerning her, made on the 127 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES Lord's Day, December 6, 1724, which quaintly illustrates the man and the times : " At the Lord's Supper [in the Old South Meeting-House] Deacon Cheekily delivered the cup first to Madam Winthrop and then gave me a tankard. 'Twas hu- miliation to me and I think put me to the hlush to have this injustice done by a Jus- tice. May all be sanctified." In this precedency of the cup to Madam Winthrop, Sewall evidently saw a slight to his magistracy. " June 15, 1725. I accompanied my son [the minister] to Madam Winthrop. She was abed about ten, morning. [Slie was evidently in her last sickness.] I told her I found my son coming to her and took the opportunity to come with him. She thanked me kindly and enquired how Madam Sewall [her successor was already established] did. Asked my son 128 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES to go to prayer. At coming I said, I kiss your hand, Madam. She desired me to pray that God would lift up upon her the light of his countenance." The last three entries touching Madam Winthrop are these: " Monday, Aug. 2d. Mrs. Catharine Winthrop, relict of the Hono. Waitstill Winthrop, Esq., died M. 61." Her fomier wooer, who was one of her bearers at the funeral, notes : " [She] will be much missed." And after the funeral the old man made a wedding call, " and had good bride-cake, good wine. Burgundy and Canary, good beer, oranges, and pears." So to the very end — he died January 1, 1730, aged eighty — Samuel Sewall enjoyed himself. His career serves indeed to make clear, as does no other chronicle that has come down to us, that a Puritan church-member was not of ne- cessity a long-faced killjoy. 129 JOHN ELIOT AND HIS INDIANS #■ Z\^HEN Dean Stanley came to §^m^ this country and was asked what places would be of most interest to him, he said : " I want to see the place where the Pilgrims landed and where the Apostle Eliot preached." Our picture shows us the latter — not the same church, of course, but the same site, and itself one of the best surviving examples of the famous New England Meeting- House. Like John Harvard, the founder of the University, John Eliot, the Apostle to the Indians, was educated at Cambridge, England. The birthplace of this remark- able man was the town of Nasing, in 130 1 OI.1) rUlKCH ON THK SITK WIIKRK JOHN ELIOT PKEACHKD OLD ^EW EN'GLAND CHUECHES Essex, and the year of his coming into the world, 1604. As early as during his student life it is recorded that Eliot had a partiality for philological inquiries, and was an acute grammarian, a turn of mind, we may suppose, which afterward had its influence in stimulating and directing his labours on the language of the Indians. Upon leaving the university, young Eliot engaged in school-teaching. This profes- sion bore early in the seventeenth century the stigma of trade, and, like other trades in England, was looked down upon. Cot- ton Mather, Eliot's first biographer, labours hard to prove to us that his subject is not to be despised because he once pur- sued the calling of a teacher — and suc- ceeds in being very amusing in this un- necessary defence. Eliot, however, early felt stirring within hira the desire to leave teaching for the 131 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES work of a minister of the gospel. In these circumstances, and because he saw that only by self-exile could a parson of his persuasion escape the searching tyranny of Laud, he turned his thoughts to the new western world, where a refuge had already been found by many ministers of whom England had rendered herself unworthy. Thus it came about that on the third of November, 1631, our young parson Eliot arrived in Boston on the good ship Lyon, the same bark upon which the wife and children of Governor Winthrop came over. Mr. Eliot was now twenty-seven years of age, and, though no picture of him at this age is extant, there is reason to be- lieve that he must have looked much as he does in the popular paintings and prints, grave, but gentle rather than Puritanically grim, beardless, and lacking, of course, the wig against which he all his life inveighed. 132 OLD IS^EW ENGLAND CHURCHES 'No sooner had he landed than he found a field of usefulness, and was called to the work upon which his heart was set. When he left England a considerable number of his friends in the old country, who loved him and sympathized in his views, had thought of following him to America, and to them he had given his word that, if they carried that plan into effect, and should arrive in ISTew England before he had formed a regular pastoral connection with any other church, he would be their minister and devote him- self to their service. The next year they came to claim the fulfilment of this pledge, and though Boston strove earnestly to ob- tain Eliot's services, he was true to his bargain, and on the fifth of November, 1632, he began his life tenure of the pas- torate of the church at Roxbury. One other pledge Eliot had made in his 133 OLD XEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES native land. This was an engagement of marriage with a beautiful, sweet-natured English girl, Ann Mountford by name, who seems to have been in every way worthy of his lifelong affection. She, too, followed Eliot to JS'ew England, and their union was consummated in October, 1632. Thus John Eliot was, within a year after his first landing in Boston, happily settled in the world, — the vigorous husband of a charming woman, and the gifted and respected head of a thriving church. Doubtless there came to him at this time of his life many a temptation to pursue the even tenor of his pastoral career, and enjoy, as a man of his nature would have enjoyed, the sweet domesticity of a well- kept home. If he had yielded to this temp- tation, we should have classed him to-day with Higginson and Phillips, with Cotton and Shepard, with Bradford and Win- 134 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES throp, as worthy workers in the upbuilding of the Massachusetts Colony. But he would not then have towered, as he does now, above all his contemporaries and above all other preachers ever settled in New England (except, perhaps, the Abbe Cheverus), as a man with the exaltation to see the vision of Indian conversion and the steadfast courage to give his life to that vision's realization. When our fathers came to the western world they found the wilderness peopled by a race which could not fail to be objects of strong interest apart from any friendly or hostile relations. They had just arrived from a country abounding in all the re- finements of the old world ; they were suddenly brought into the neighbourhood of a people exhibiting the peculiai-ities of one of the rudest forms of savage life. But until John Eliot came — and even 135 OLD XEW EIS^GLAJs^D CHURCHES after he came — there was no thought on the part of the community at large to share with the Indians they encountered on every side the blessings of the gospel and of civilization. Our fathers treated the red men as allies, they treated them as enemies, they sometimes treated them as the beasts of the forest. But whether beasts or men, they always held them to be aliens — not merely aliens in blood and in language, but aliens from that universal empire of God, of which all human races are part. If Eliot's experience with the Indians proves anything, — and I believe it proves much, — it proves that such treatment as he bestowed upon them, had it been ably seconded by all his contempo- raries, and energetically extended by those who came after him, would have availed to make the Indian a strong and integral part of our national life. At this late 136 OLD ^^EW ENGLA:^rD CHURCHES date, after a lapse of nearly three cen- turies, there would then have been no " Indian problem." And we, as a people, would not have to blush as we do now for our treatment of this sturdy son of the western continent. If Eliot's fellow ministers had given to Eliot's Indians one tithe — aye, one hundredth — of the time that they gave to their theological quarrels, the historian would have had very much less to apologize for in the annals of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In one of these famous church agita- tions Eliot himself, to be sure, was in- volved. He was one of the witnesses, we are informed, against Mrs. Hutchinson in the synod which met at Cambridge in November, 1637, and condemned that strongly intellectual, but rather too self- sufficient lady.^ In one other non-Indian 1 See " Romance of Old New England Roof trees." 137 OLD XEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES enterprise — but this a creditable one — Mr. Eliot was also engaged about this time. For the first book printed in Xorth America, the Bay Psalm Book, was versi- fied by Eliot, Welde, and Mather. To return to our Indians. Much dis- cussion and no little variety of statement has been current respecting the religion of the red men. Winslow fell at first into the mistake of saying that they had no religion whatever, but this opinion observa- tion obliged him very soon to change. " Whereas," says he, " myself and others in former letters wrote, that the Indians about us are a people without any religion, or knowledge of any God, we therein erred, though we could then gather no better." As a matter of fact, the religion of the Indians in its general features resembled that of other uncivilized peoples. They recognized the divine power in forms suit- 138 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES able to their rude conceptions. The devel- opments of this sentiment resembled in some degree the polytheism of ancient times. Each part or manifestation of na- ture was supposed to have its peculiar, subordinate god. There was the sun-god, the moon-god, and so of many other things. It is interesting here to compare the views on religion of such of the American Indians as are still in a native condition with the views of Eliot's red men. Miss Alice Fletcher, holder of the Thaw Fellow- ship at the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, who knows more about the American Indian of to-day than almost any other living man or woman, tells me that the Indian's religion has been about as little understood as his use of the totem pole. He believes as we do, she says, in a great overruling power. This power, however, cannot, he feels, come near man 139 OLD NEW EiS^GLAND CHURCHES save to give him breath. But there are lesser powers, like the wind, and the thunder, and these again have other inter- mediaries. The nearest approach to the Indians' idea is to be found in that highest conception of the Christian religion, the Immanence of God. In the power of evil the Indian has not much belief. It is man, in his idea, who works mischief. One other element, and that a very im- portant one, entered into the Indians with whom Eliot had to deal. This was some- thing in the nature of a priesthood found among the New England Indians, an order of men and women called Powaws, the common office of whom was to cure diseases by means of herbs, roots, exorcisms, and magical incantations. This cross between a priest and a juggler was ultimately to present a formidable obstacle to the spread of Christianity ; " for," said the Indian, 140 OLD NEW EI^GLAND CHURCHES *' if we once pray to God we must abandon our Powaws, and then, when we are sick and wounded, who shall heal our mal- adies ? " Eliot's strong faith in the nobility and necessity of his work was sufficient, how- ever, to overcome in large measure even this obstacle, and as soon as his hands were sufficiently held up by the General Court of Massachusetts, he set himself to the task which Bishop Lake, of England, had declared " nothing but old age " prevented him from going to America to do. Eliot believed strongly that the Indians were the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel, and his interest in their salvation was naturally greatly stimulated by this belief. But back of all theological ardour was the good man's honest and devoted desire to help these people he found all about him. To this end he set himself to the tremen- 141 OLD NEW EXGLAjSTD CHURCHES dous task of learning the Indians' lan- guage. " There is," he says, in a letter written in 1648, " an Indian living with Mr. Richard Calicott, of Dorchester, who was taken in the Peqiiot Wars, though belong- ing to Long Island; this Indian is in- genious, can read ; and I taught him to write, which he quickly learnt. He was the first man that I made use of to teach me words and to be my Interpreter." This man Eliot took into his family, and by constant intercourse with him soon became sufficiently conversant with the vocabulary and construction of the language to trans- late the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, and several passages of Scripture into the Indian tongue, besides being able to compose exhortations and prayers in the new language. Eliot's contemporaries well appreciated the difficulty of this, his 142 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES acquirement, for Cotton Mather remarks that the " Indian language must have been growing in unintelligibility ever since the confusion at Babel." Nothing but the sustaining influence of an exalted purpose, one is convinced, could have carried Eliot through the task of learning such a tongue. In the annals of literary industry it is related of Cato that he acquired Greek at an advanced age, and of Dr. Johnson that he studied Dutch a few years before his death. But neither of these feats can compare in arduousness and nobility of design with John Eliot's acquisition of the Indian language, that he might through this means become Apostle to a neglected people. Mr. Eliot's first visit to the Indians was on the twenty-eighth of October, 1646, at a place afterward called Nonantum (a part of Newton, Massachusetts), a spot 143 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES which has the honour of being the first on which a civilized and Christian settle- ment of Indians was effected within the English colonies of North America. At a short distance from the wigwams this day of Eliot's first visit, he and his party were met by Waban, a leading man among the Indians at that place, and were wel- comed wath English salutations. The English of the occasion was presumably furnished by Waban's son, who had some time before been placed at school in Ded- ham, whence he had now come to attend the meeting. The Indians assembled in Waban's wigwam, and thither Mr. Eliot and his friends were conducted. When the com- pany were all collected and quiet, a re- ligious service w^as begun with an English prayer. The minister from Roxbury then began his sermon, taking his text from 144 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES Ezekiel 37 : 9 and 10 : " Say unto the wind, son of man, Thus saith the Lord God ; . . . Come from the four winds, breath, and breathe upon these slain that they may live. So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came unto them, and they lived and stood up upon their feet an exceeding great army." Now a very fortunate happening was con- nected, as it turned out, with the selection of this text, though Mr. Eliot afterward said that he had no thought, when choosing the Scriptural basis for his discourse, that the Indian word for wind was Waban. It was, however, as if he had said, " Say to Waban," and again, " I said to Waban." Naturally the simple Indians took it as especially pleasant that their leader should seem to be commissioned by the white man's Holy Book to do the work he had already begun. 145 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHUKCHES The scene at this first "Preaching" is one of the most interesting and significant in American history, worthy, certainly, of the devotion and best work of any painter. Our Massachusetts artist, H. O. Walker, has chosen to give us, in the mural decoration here reproduced, seven figures, some of them standing and some sitting on the ground. The younger red men are nude with the exception of breech-clouts. The old men and the squaws wear blankets of dull red or dull green. The braves, of which there are several fine types, tall and well formed, with a proud bearing, have feather head-dresses. Their weapons are not conspicuously displayed. Most of them are phlegmatic as to expression. At the left of the preacher is a brave with an unusually showy feather head-dress, standing near the trunk of a tree ; and two or three other figures are seated on the 146 JOHN KLIOT PRKACHING TO THP: INDIANS From the painting by H. O. Walker OLD NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES ground. Eliot himself, standing on a ledge somewhat higher than the level which his audience occupies, is dressed in severe dark gray from head to foot, and is bareheaded. His form is silhouetted against the foam- ing waters of the river just beyond him. His feet are wide apart, and both arms ai'e extended in an easy gesture of exhortation, the palms of the hands turned upwards. The deep earnestness of the preacher is made sufficiently evident by his pose and the movement of his figure, as well as by the grave and ardent expression of his countenance. The whole group is framed, as it were, by the stems of sturdy trees, the foliage of which, touched by the red and gold of autumn, indicates the sea- son — October. Here, then, was our gifted scholar, educated amidst the classic shades of an English university, exiled from his native land for conscience' sake, a man 147 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES of high distinction in the chnrches of New England, standing among the Indians of the forest communicating Christian knowl- edge. The figure of speech employed in the original narrative of this visit, states that he was " breaking the alabaster box of precious ointment in the dark and gloomy habitations of the unclean." The matter of that first sermon, which lasted an hour and a quarter, is of decided interest. Mr. Eliot repeated the Ten Commandments with brief comments, and set forth the fearful consequences of violat- ing them, with special applications to the condition of his audience. He spoke of the creation and fall of man, the great- ness of God, the means of salvation by Jesus Christ, the happiness of faithful believers, and the final misery of the wicked, adding such persuasions to re- pentance as he supposed might touch his 148 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES hearers' hearts. A fairly comprehensive survey of Christian doctrine, it would seem to us. When the sermon was ended, Mr. Eliot asked the Indians whether they understood what he had said. Many voices at once answered in the affirmative. They were then requested to propose any questions Avhich might have occurred to them in connection with the discourse. To this invitation they responded promptly, some of their queries being amusing in the ex- treme, and some of such a nature as must have probed the consciences of the English. This part of the conference occupied an- other hour and three quarters, at the end of which time the Indians affinned that they were not weary, and requested their visitors to come again. They expressed a wish to build a town and live together, and Mr. Eliot bade them farewell only 149 OLD NEW EXGLAXD CHUECHES after he had promised to intercede for them with the Court. After this manner was the most heroic ministry in American annals inaugurated. A fortnight later Mr. Eliot and his friends repeated their visit to Waban. This meeting was more numerous than the former, and was attended by many chil- dren, to encourage whom, Winthrop pleas- antly records, Eliot from time to time pro- duced apples and cakes from his pockets. After the sermon there were questions as before, and the meeting closed with a prayer in the Indian language. During the devotional exercise one of the assembly was deeply affected even to tears, a strik- ing illustration, as Converse Francis points out, of Madame de Stael's fine remark, that " To pray together in whatever language and according to whatever ritual, is the most affecting bond of hope and s}Tnpathv 150 OLD XEW ENGLAND CHURCHES which man can contract on earth." The whole afternoon was spent in this second visit; and as nightfall approached, Mr. Eliot and his friends cheerfully mounted their horses and returned home. On the twenty-sixth of November and on the ninth of December other meetings with the In- dians were held at Nonantum, conferences which decided Mr. Eliot to make strenuous endeavours to procure schools for his pro- teges, and to help them in all other possible ways to civilization and self-respect. He himself had been a teacher of youth, and it was his favourite and well-kno-wn opinion that no permanent good effect could be produced by efforts for the spiritual wel- fare of the red men unless civilization and social improvement should accompany such efforts. He now aimed to soften, and gradually to abolish, their savage mode of life, by 151 OLD KEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES bringing them together under some social arrangement. Therefore, with Waban as their head, the Indians formed the plan of a settlement in a grant of land thej had received, naming the town Xonantum, which signifies in English rejoicing, " be- cause," says " The Day-Breaking of the Gospell," " they hearing the word and seeking to know God, the English did re- joy ce at it, and God did re Joyce at it, which pleased them much ; and therefore that is the name of their town." iS[ot an art of domestic culture was neg- lected by Eliot in the upbuilding of this interesting community. I^ot a detail did he fail to consider, not a tool did he neglect to provide, not a want did he disdain to supply. " Like Prometheus in the legend, he not only brought down the fire from heaven, but he used it to lead men out of the wood into the farm and village, 152 OLD NEW EXGLA^^D CHURCHES and taught his devoted converts how to live as well as how to die, substituting industry for sloth, the plough for the dart, the cloth for the skin, and the steady plenty and comforts of home for the alternate starvation and repletion of the wilder- ness." Curious moral questions came to him to be solved, along with spiritual and eco- nomic problems. The Indians had been, it seems, exceedingly addicted to gambling, and one of their queries was whether they were bound to pay gaming debts incurred before they were " praying Indians." Mr. Eliot's fashion of extricating himself from this dilemma strikes one as highly ingenious. He first talked with the cred- itor, urging upon him the sinfulness of gaming, and telling him that, having been guilty in this respect, he ought to be will- ing to give up half his claim. He then 153 OLD NEW EXGLAND CHURCHES talked with a debtor, reminding him that, though he had sinned in gaming, he had promised payment, and to violate his obli- gation would be only a further sin ; cer- tainly he should be willing to offer half. Which he usually was, having gained re- lease from the other half. With the com- promise thus obtained both parties were thoroughly satisfied, and more than ever after that were they disposed to think Mr. Eliot a wise wonder-worker. It was, however, Natick rather than Nonantum which was destined to be the site of Eliot's most successful colony. This place was chosen because he wished the new Indian town to be more remote from the English than would have been possible at Newton. Besides, Nonantum did not afford room enough for his purpose. He wanted a tract of land where the Indians could be gathered into a large society, 154 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES furnished with instruction of various kinds, given a form of government, and encouraged to industry, agriculture, the trades, fishing, dressing flax, and planting orchards. He wished to make the experi- ment under the most favourable circum- stances, because he intended to found such a town as might be an example for imita- tion in future attempts of the same kind, — a model for all the subsequent commu- nities of Christian Indians that might be collected. So, in 1651, the "praying In- dians " came together and laid the founda- tion of a town on the banks of Charles River, about eighteen miles in a south- westera direction from Boston. The place was called Natick, which signifies a place of hills. Thither the Nonantum Indians removed. The new settlement was to occupy both sides of the Charles River, and one of the 155 OLD XEW ENGLAND CHURCHES first industries undertaken was the build- ing over the stream of a foot-bridge eighty feet long and nine feet high in the middle. The town was laid out in three streets, two on one side and one on the other side of the river. Lots of land were measured and divided, apple-trees were planted, and the business of the sowing season be- gun. A house-lot was assigned to each family, a circular fort, palisaded with trees, was built, and a large building in the English style erected. The lower part of this was to be used for public worship on the Sabbath and for a schoolroom on other days, while the upper apartment was appropriated as a storehouse and a part of it divided off for Mr, Eliot's own accommodation when he must stay over night at the settlement. The government of this town was largely determined by the Indians themselves, and so well did 156 OLD ^EW EXGLAND CHURCHES they observe their own statutes, that for the most peace as well as prosperity reigned. The next summer another great forward step was determined upon. A church of " praying Indians " was instituted. The manner of this was interesting, A day of fasting and prayer was appointed, the names of the Indians who were to present their confessions sent to the churches in the vicinity, and a large body of people brought together to listen to these state- ments of religious views and feeling. The confessions were fully written down by Mr. Eliot, who designed them, with an account of the meeting itself, for the in- formation of the London Society for Prop- agating the Gospel. The resulting tract, entitled " Tears of Repentance," was ad- dressed, when printed, to General Crom- well, and was prefaced with a rather 157 OLD NEW ENGLAXD CHURCHES perfervid personal tribute to the Lord Pro- tector. Some of the confessions in this tract charm one by reason of their hon- esty. One Indian acknowledged that he first became a " praying Indian," not be- cause he understood or cared for religion, but because he loved the English and wished them to love him. This impulse of feeling brought him into a state of mind which resulted in deep and abiding conviction. Further tracts were also sent over to the London Society, but it was not until 1660 that an Indian church was finally formed among the natives of Xorth America, i^o particular account of the proceedings on this historic occasion have come down to us. We only know that Mr. Eliot baptized the catechumens and then administered the Lord's Supper. Thus was laid at Natick the foimdations 158 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES of the first civil and ecclesiastical commu- nity of Christian Indians. Eliot's greatest accomplishment was, however, to come. From the beginning of his Indian labours he had had in view a translation of the entire Scriptures into the Indian tongue. To this end he had been intent upon obtaining the best assist- ance he could command in his acquirement of the language. As far back as 1649, in a letter dated July 8th, he had written to Winslow of his desire " to translate some parts of the Scriptures " for the Indians. He considered it as an undertaking de- manding the most scrupulous and con- scientious care. " I look at it," he said, " as a sacred and holy work, to be regarded with much fear, care, and reverence." The sole cause of delay all these years had been a lack of the funds necessary to the printing of this translation. But 159 OLD XEW EXGLA^vTD CHTJECHES a corporation in England now interested itself in the undertaking, and at their ex- pense the iSTew Testament in the Indian language was published, September, 1661, soon after the restoration of Charles the Second. Two years later the Old Tes- tament was likewise published, and to the complete Bible thus resulting was added a catechism, and a translation into Indian of the Old Bay Psalm Book. A copy of the whole work, elegantly bound, was sent to Charles the Second, prefaced by a dedication written with nobility and grace. In this the Commissioners of the United Colonies present their profuse thanks to the king for his royal favour in renew- ing the charter of the corporation and thus defeating the attempts of its enemies. They assure his Majesty that though New England has not, like the Spanish colo- nies of South America, gold and silver 160 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES with which to enrich the mother country, yet they rejoiced to send to the land of their fathers the Bible in the language of the natives, among whom the gospel had been planted and propagated, believing this to be " as much better than gold as the souls of men are worth more than the whole world." Thus was the Apostle's toil at last crowned with a result which must indeed have gladdened the good man's heart. The Indians had now the whole Bible in a familiar tongue. Not content with preach- ing to them in their own language, Eliot had brought them the religious store most highly prized in all the world for warning, for instruction, for encouragement, for pleasure. He might reasonably have ex- pected his converts to come to the book. But he did not. Instead, though it was an Herculean task, he took the book to them. 161 OLD NEW EIsTGLAlSTD CHURCHES This Indian version of the Scripture was the first Bible ever printed on the conti- nent of America. For about twenty years the initial im- pression of the Indian Bible sufficed. Then in 1680 another edition of the New Testament was published, and in 1685 a second edition of the Old Testament appeared which, bound with the latest im- pression of the New Testament, constituted the second edition of the whole Bible, though there was an interval of five years between the times at which the two testa- ments respectively appeared. The whole impression was two thousand copies, and in the printing of it the participation of a Christian native, one James [of] Graf- ton, was notable. The second edition of Eliot's translation of the Scriptures was the last. The printer never was, and probably never will be, again called to 162 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES set his types for those words so strange and uncouth to our ears. But it is under- stood that the late Bishop Whipple found Eliot's Bible of great use in instructing the Indians of the Northwest, inasmuch as all the Algonquin tribes speak a kindred language. This Book of Eliot's is, however, more than a book. When we take the old dark volume into our hands, though we under- stand not the tongue in which it is written, it speaks to us in another and very beau- tiful language of the affection which a devoted man cherished for the souls of his fellow men, and supplies a singularly con- vincing document of such human love as fainted in no effort to bring light to those that sat in darkness. Scarcely less useful if decidedly less romantic than his Indian labours was Eliot's pastoral career. Few men could 163 OLD ^TEW E^TGLAI^D CHURCHES have carried on through the length of a lifetime so successfullj as did he two distinctly different courses of service. His ministry in Roxbury was never neg- lected because he was Apostle to the In- dians. His church, like his colony, was well ordered. And of his services to the education of American youth we have to- day an enduring monument in the Rox- bury Latin School which he founded. Mr. Eliot's wife, as has been said, was a woman of many virtues, distinguished alike for gentle piety and cheerful use- fulness. Their life together was a long and very happy one, and when, March 24, 1687, she died at the age of eighty-four, her loss smote heavily on the heart of her venerable husband. She who had been bound to him by the strong ties of early love, who had been his solace amidst the ar- duous toil of his mission, and the soul-sick- 164 OLD XEW ENGLA^^D CHURCHES ening delays of his translation, had fallen by his side, and he had no wish to live longer. One who was present at Mrs. Eliot's funeral tells us that the Apostle stood with tears fast flowing over the coffin of her whom he had so long loved, and to the concourse of people there gathered said, sadly : '' Here lies my dear, faithful, pious, prudent, prayerful wife ; I shall go to her, but she shall not return to me." None the less, Mr. Eliot continued to preach as long as his strength lasted. With slow and feeble steps he ascended the hill on which his church was situated, a hill which is still rather trying to climb. The last sermon which he delivered was a clear and edifying exposition of the eighty- third psalm, and the date of this October 17, 1688. He died May 20, 1690, aged eighty-six years, painfully whispering, " Welcome joy ! " 165 OLD NEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES To the last the Indians were his chief interest. Among his farewell speeches is recorded this : " There is a cloud, a dark cloud, upon the work of the gospel among the poor Indians. The Lord revive and prosper that work, and grant it may live when I am dead. It is a work which I have been doing much and long about." John Eliot lies interred in the Eustis Street Burying-Ground, about ten min- utes' walk from the church over which he so efficiently and faithfully ministered. His Bible can be found only here and there in a museum or library. But his story is among the best-known because one of the sweetest of all the romantic tales in our country's history. And Xonantum and ISTatick will ever be names of beautiful moral meaning in the chronicles of !N^ew England. 166 PARSON SMITH'S DAUGHTER ABIGAIL rHE life of Abigail Adams empha- sizes very impressively the truth that in early New England the clergy and their families represented the gentry of the period. Abigail's father was all his life a poor minister. Called from his parish in Charlestown to take charge in August, 1734, of the First Church at Weymouth, his salary at the new parish was only £160 a year, in ad- dition to which the parish munificently settled upon him later the sum of £300, " the latter to be paid £100 annually for three years, all in bills of credit." But if 167 OLD XEW ENGLAND CHURCHES there was not a large income, there was a great deal of solid learning and quiet culture in the little Weymouth home w^here was born, November 11, 1744, the beauti- ful and intelligent girl who was to become the wife of one President of the United States, and the mother of another. As a young girl Abigail Smith did not enjoy great advantages. Had her health been better she might have availed herself of such limited educational opportunities as were open to girls of her day, but, deli- cate as she was, her parents thought it best not to send her away to school. In a letter written in 1817, the year before her death, she says, speaking of her own deficiencies : " My early education did not partake of the abundant opportunities which the present days offer, and which even our common country schools now afford. I never was sent to any school. 168 OLD NEW E.NTGLAND CHURCHES I was always sick. Female education in the best families went no further than writing and arithmetic; in some few and rare instances, music and dancing." That the parson's sprightly daughter failed to make the most, however, of such chances of cultivation as did come her way, one cannot for a moment believe after reading her remarkable letters. She seems to have had a decidedly assimilative mind, and to have been very well able to obtain from intercourse with men and women of attainments whatever they might have to give. Her grandmother, Mrs. John Quincy, Abigail tells us, was one of her most valued teachers. This lady, the daughter of the Reverend John ISTorton, must certainly have had a truly wonderful mind. In the year 1Y95, Mrs. Adams tells her own daughter of the excellent lessons she received from her grandmother at a 169 OLD XEW EXGLAXD CHUKCHES very early period of life. " I frequently think they made a more durable irnpres- sion upon my mind than those which I received from my own parents. ... I love and revere her memory; her lively, cheerful disposition animated all around her, while she edified all by her unaffected piety." Again, in another letter to the same person in 1808, she said : " I cherish her memory ^vith holy veneration, whose maxims I have treasured up, whose virtues live in my remembrance ; happy if I could say they have been transplanted into my life." It was probably at one of the pleasant social gatherings at Grandmother Quincy's hospitable mansion that x^bigail first met John Adams, the son of a Braintree farmer, who had been born in the quaint old house now in the care of the Quincy Daughters of the Revolution, had been 170 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES sent to Harvard College, had supported himself by school-teaching while studying law in Worcester, and had now returned to Braintree, full of ambition and buoyant manliness, for a short stay preparatory to practising his profession. An illuminat- ing glimpse of the young Adams of this period is afforded by this sample record in his diary : " Rose at sunrise, un- pitched a load of hay, and translated two more Leaves of Justinian." He was so- cially inclined, too, this clever young law- yer-in-the-germ, and with his farm chores and his study he mingled a liberal allow- ance of chat and tea and jolly visiting at the various Quincy homesteads near his farm. To two of the Quincy sisters he had indeed been greatly attracted before ever he met their cousin Abigail Smith. But these tender emotions were only the fore- runners of the deep and sincere affection in OLD XEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES of his life, which was to spring into being early in the sixties of the eighteenth cen- tury, and to grow into a sturdy prop for his manhood and old age. To John Adams, the farmer's son, mar- riage with Abigail Smith, the minister's daughter, meant, of course, a decided step upward in the social scale, — clever and gifted as the young man was universally acknowledged to be. In the Weymouth parish, indeed, it was felt that Abigail was not doing so well as she ought in the choice of a husband, and opinions to this effect were freely circulated among the church busybodies at the time of the marriage, October 25, 1764. John's profession, for one thing, was urged against hira. Accord- ing to Puritan ethics, the vocation of a lawyer was unnecessary and unsanctifie<3. This feeling of his congregation explains a sermon preached by Abigail's father, the 172 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES Reverend William Smith, just after the marriage of his second daughter. He was a good bit of a wag, this Weymouth par- son, and when his eldest daughter had married Richard Cranch, of whom every- body approved, he had preached upon the text: "And Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her." Now, immediately after the mar- riage of Abigail, he outdid himself and rebuked his parishioners in one clever stroke by delivering a fine sermon from the text, " For John came neither eating bread nor drinking wine ; . . . and ye say, He hath a devil." Whether the Weymouth people felt themselves properly rebuked for their cold- ness to John Adams by this Scriptural attack, we do not know, but certain it is that the young couple began very happily just then their life in the little house close 173 OLD XEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES to the one where John had been born, and very soon had friends in plenty flocking to their doors. The scene of their happy married life is now reverently preserved in many of its antique appointments by the Quincy Historical Society, and is the resort each year of hundreds of pious pilgrims, who delight in the noble simplicity of the ven- erable old house " where Independence began," and where, July 11, 1767, the little son who was to be Massachusetts' second President, first drew breath. The very next day after the baby came, good Parson Wibard was called in, and the little child was baptized, as was the practice of the times. In accordance with the request of Grandmother Smith, the boy was named for her father, the aged John Quincy, who then lay dying in his home at Mt. Wollaston near by. Long 174 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES afterward President John Qiiincy Adams wrote of this transaction : " It was filial tenderness that gave the name. It was the name of one passing from earth to immor- tality. These have been among the strong- est links of my attachment to tlie name of Qiiincy, and have been to me through life a perpetual admonition to do nothing unworthy of it." At the time of the little John Quincy's birth, Mrs. Adams was the serene young woman of our picture, lovely, lovable, and carefully domestic. It was indeed a very quiet, happy life which she passed dur- ing these years of her early married life. Her husband, to be sure, was not with her so constantly as she would have wished, for he was obliged to go about from place to place, following the circuit, after the custom of lawyers of his time, and even when not away from Massachusetts he 175 OLD iS^EW EA^GLAXD CHUECHES practised in Boston, coming to his '' still calm happy Braintree " only for the over- Sundays. The pathos of these enforced absences from her husband colours all Abi- gail Adams's letters. Again and again she writes of her suffering because removed from the man to whom she had given her heart. And he, scarcely less, bewails con- stantly the tumultuous conditions which made necessary' a life very little domestic. All this, however, is brought out best in the documents themselves. Among the first of the letters from this devoted wife available to students, is that dated Braintree, August 15, 1774, sent to Mr. Adams, who, in company with the other delegates, had set out to attend the Continental Congress at Philadelphia. The lofty tone of the missive is most im- pressive : " I was much gratified upon the return of some of your friends from Water- 176 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES to"svii, who gave me an account of your social dinner and friendly parting. May your return merit and meet with the grateful acknowledgment of every well- wisher to their country. Your task is difficult and important. Heaven direct and prosper you. ... I shall reckon over every week as they pass and rejoice at every Saturday evening. . . . Our little ones [other babies had come to play with son John] send their duty to their papa, and that which at all times and in all places evei'more attends you is the most affection- ate regard of your Abigail Adams." Four days later she writes : " The great distance between us makes the time appear very long to me. It seems already a month since you left me. The great anxiety I feel for my country, for you, and for our family renders the day tedious and the night unpleasant. The rocks and quick- 177 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES sands appear upon every side. What course you can or will take is all wrapped in the bosom of futurity. Uncertainty and expectation leave the mind great scope. Did ever any kingdom or state regain its liberty, when once it was invaded, without bloodshed ? I cannot think of it without horror. Yet we are told that all the mis- fortunes of Sparta were occasioned by their too great solicitude for present tranquillity, and from an excessive love of peace, they neglected the means of making it sure and lasting. ... I have taken a great fond- ness for reading Rollins's ' Ancient His- tory ' since you left me. I am determined to go through with it if possible in these my days of solitude. I find great pleasure and entertainment, and I have persuaded Johnny [the future President] to read me a page or two every day. . . . The first of September or the month of September may 178 OLD NEW EI^GLAT^D CHURCHES be of as much importance to Great Britain as the Ides of March were to Caesar. I long impatiently to have you upon the stage of action." The action, however, of that September was in Boston rather than in Philadelphia, as the Massachusetts city was besieged by the enemy. One can scarcely fancy the terrible anxiety to which the absent hus- band must have been prey when the news of Boston's bombardment reached him. From Philadelphia, September 8, 1774, he writes : " When I shall be at home I can't say, but if there is distress and danger in Boston, pray invite our friends, as many as possible, to take asylum with you." A little later his letter runs: " My babes are never out of my mind nor absent from my heart." The horrible uncertainty of the mails is again and again the theme of the corre- 179 OLD ^EW EXGLAXD CHURCHES spondence between these wedded lovers, and one's sympathy is keenly aroused by such a letter as this of Abigail's, dated Braintree, September 14, 1774: "Five weeks have passed, and not one line have I received. I would rather give a dollar for a letter by the post, though the conse- quence should be that I ate but one meal a day these three weeks to come. Every one I see is inquiring after you, when did I hear. All my intelligence is collected from the newspaper, and I can only reply that I saw by that, you arrived such a day. . . . This town appears as high as you can well imagine, and if necessary would soon be in arras. Xot a Tory but hides his head." The contrast at this time between condi- tions in Massachusetts and those in Penn- sylvania is very well illustrated by two paragraphs from lettors written then by 180 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES John Adams to his wife. One of these urges upon her the greatest possible atten- tion to the mickles that make the muckle. " Frugality, my dear, frugality, economy, parsimony, must be our refuge. I hope the ladies are every day diminishing their or- naments, and the gentlemen too. Let us eat potatoes and drink water." The other extract runs : "I shall be killed with kind- ness in this place. We go to Congress at nine, and there we stay most earnestly engaged in debates upon the most abstruse mysteries of state, until three in the after- noon; then we adjourn, and go to dine with some of the nobles of Pennsylvania at four o'clock, and feast upon ten thou- sand delicacies, and sit drinking Madeira, claret, and Burgundy till six or seven." Just before leaving this " perpetual round of feasting," which occupied per- force so large a share of his first visit to 181 OLD XEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES Philadelphia, Mr. Adams received two letters which must greatly have delighted his home-loving heart. One of these was written by his seven-year-old son, John Qnincy Adams, and runs as follows: " October 13, 1774. Sir, — I have been trying ever since you went away to learn to write you a letter. I shall make poor work of it ; but, sir, mamma says you will accept my endeavours, and that my duty to you may be expressed in poor writing as w^ell as good. I hope I grow a better boy, and that you will have no occasion to be ashamed of me when you return. Mr. Thaxter says I learn my books well. He is a very good master. I read my books to mamma. We all long to see you. I am, sir, your dutiful son, John Quincy Adams." The other letter is one of very wonderful beauty, reflecting as it does the loving wife's unselfish determination to 182 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES surrender all that she holds most dear should her country require the sacrifice. Its date is October 16, 1774, and it begins: **' My much-loved friend, — I dare not ex- press to you, at three hundred miles dis- tance, how ardently I long for your return. I have some very miserly wishes, and can- not consent to your spending one hour in town, till at least I have had you twelve. The idea plays about my heart, unnerves my hand, whilst I write; awak- ens all the tender sentiments that years have increased and matured, and which, when with me, every day was dispensing to you. The whole collected stock of ten weeks' absence knows not how to brook any longer restraint, but will break forth and flow through my pen. May the like sensations enter thy breast, and (spite of all the weighty cares of state) mingle them- selves with those I wish to communicate; 183 OLD NEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES for in giving them utterance, I have felt more sincere pleasure than I have known since the tenth of August, the day you went away. Many have been the anxious hours I have spent since that day; the threatening aspect of our public affairs, the complicated distress of this province, the arduous and perplexed business in which you are engaged, have all conspired to agitate my bosom with fears and appre- hensions to which I have heretofore been a stranger; and, far from thinking the scene closed, it looks as though the cur- tain was but just drawn, and only the first scene of the infernal plot disclosed. And whether the end will be tragical. Heaven alone knows. You cannot be, nor do I wish to see you, an inactive spectator ; but if the sword be drawn, I bid adieu to all domestic felicity, and look forward to that country where there are neither wars nor 184 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHUKCHES rumors of war in a firm belief that, through the mercy of its King, we shall both rejoice there together." As it fell out, however, John Adams was never to bear arms for his country. His services to the new republic are second to none, but their form was always diplo- matic rather than military. Even in the preliminary skirmishes he had no part, for, after passing the winter of 1774 - 75 in Braintree, he set out again for Congress, and thus was absent from Massachusetts even on the eventful Lexington and Bunker Hill occasions. To this latter incident we owe one of Abigail's most picturesque let- ters, that written on Sunday, June 18, 1775. It begins: "The day — perhaps the decisive day — is come, on which the fate of America depends. My bursting heart must find vent at my pen. I have just heard that our dear friend, Dr. War- 185 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES ren, is no more, but fell gloriously fighting for his country; saying, Better to die honourably in the field than ignominiously hang upon the gallows. Great is our loss. He has distinguished himself in every en- gagement, by his courage and fortitude, by animating the soldiers, and leading them on by his own example. * The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; but the God of Israel is He that gives strength and power unto His people. Trust to Him at all times, ye people, pour out your hearts before Him; God is a refuge for us.' Charlestown is laid in ashes. The battle began upon our intrench- ments upon Bunker's Hill, Saturday morn- ing about three o'clock, and has not ceased yet, and it is now three o'clock Sabbath afternoon. It is expected they will come out over the Neck to-night, and a dreadful battle must ensue. Almighty God, cover 186 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES the heads of our countrymen, and be a shield to our dear friends ! How many have fallen we know not. The constant roar of the cannon is so distressing that we cannot eat, drink, or sleep. May we be supported and sustained in the dreadful conflict. I shall tarry here till it is thought unsafe by my friends; and then I have secured myself a retreat at your brother's who has kindly offered me a part of his house." To this there came back promptly from Philadelphia the following : " June 27th. This moment received two letters from you. Courage, my dear. We shall be supported in life or comforted in death. I rejoice that my countrymen be- have so bravely, though not so skilfully conducted as I could wish. I hope the defect will be remedied by the new model- ling of the army. My love everywhere." The femininity of Abigail crops out 187 OLD XEW ENGLAIs^D CHURCHES deliciouslj in some of her letters, but she is never petty nor unreasonable. July 5, 1775, she writes : " I have received a good deal of paper from you. I wish it had been more covered; the writing is very scant yet I must not grumble. I know your time is not yours nor mine. Your labors must be great and your mouth closed ; but all you may communicate, I beg you would. There is a pleasure," she adds, naively, " I know not whence it arises, nor can I stop now to find out, but I say there is a degree of pleasure in being able to tell news, especially any that so nearly concerns us, as all your proceed- ings do. I should have been more par- ticular, but I thought you knew everything that passed here. The present state of the inhabitants of Boston is that of the most abject slaves, under the most cruel and despotic tyrants. Among many in- 188 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES stances I could mention, let me relate one. Upon the seventeenth of June, printed hand-bills were posted up at the comers of the streets, and upon houses, forbid- ding any inhabitants to go upon their houses, or upon any eminence, on pain of death; the inhabitants dared not to look out of their houses, nor to be heard or seen to ask a question. " I would not have you be distressed about me. Danger, they say, makes people valiant. Hitherto I have been distressed but not dismayed. I have felt for my country and her sons. I have bled with them and for them. Not all the havoc and devastation they have made has wounded me like the death of Warren. We want him in the Senate ; we want him in his profession; we want him in the field. We mourn for the citizen, the sen- ator, the physician, and the warrior. May 189 OLD Is^EW ENGLAND CHURCHES we have others raised up in his room. . . . I wish I could come and see you. I never suffer myself to think you are about re- turning soon. Can it, will it be ? May I ask, may I wish for it ? When once I expect you, the time will crawl till I see you. It is eleven o'clock at night. With thoughts of thee do I close my eyes. Angels guard and protect thee; and may a safe return erelong bless thy Portia." Almost all Abigail's Revolutionary letters are signed by this not inappropriate pseu- donym. That the statesman off in Philadelphia fully appreciated the pluck of his devoted wife is shown in many of his replies, but in none more prettily than in this : " It gives me more pleasure than I can express to learn that you sustain with so much for- titude the shocks and terrors of the times. You are really brave, my dear. You are 100 OLD ^EW EXGLA^^D CHURCHES a heroine, and you have reason to be. For the worst that can happen can do you no harai. A soul as pure, as benevo- lent, as virtuous and pious as yours, has nothing to fear, but everything to hope and expect from the last of human evils." Very frequently in her letters to Phila- delphia Mrs. Adams had inquired concern- ing Doctor Franklin's share in the deliber- ations. These queries elicited the following reply, dated July 23, 1775: "Doctor Franklin has been very constant in his at- tendance on Congress from the beginning. His conduct has been composed and grave, and in the opinion of many gentlemen very reserved. He has not assumed anything, nor affected to take the lead; but has seemed to choose that the Congress should pursue their own principles and sentiments and adopt their own plans. Yet he has not been backward; has been very useful on 191 OLD XEW exgla:n'd churches many occasions, and discovered a dispo- sition entirely American. He does not hes- itate at our boldest methods, but rather seems to think us too irresolute and back- ward. He thinks us at present in an odd state, neither in peace nor war, neither de- pendent nor independent; but he thinks that we shall soon assume a character more decisive. He thinks that we have the power of preserving ourselves; and that even if we should be driven to the dis- agreeable necessity of assuming a total in- dependency, and set up a separate state, we can maintain it. . . . This letter must be secret, my dear ; — at least communi- cated with great discretion." Evidently John understood that a woman's secret is always shared with her dearest friends. The defection of Doctor Church ^ is the topic of several excited paragraphs in 1 See " Romance of Old New England Roof trees." 192 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES x^bigail's letters the following fall. Mrs. Adams writes, October 9, 1775 : " You have doubtless heard of the villany of one who has professed himself a patriot. But let not that man be trusted who can violate private faith and cancel solemn covenants, who can leap over moral law and laugh at Christianity. How is he to be bound whom neither honour nor conscience holds ? " A few days later she writes again : " \Vliat are your thoughts with re- gard to Doctor Church ? Had you much knowledge of him? I think you had not intimate acquaintance with him. It is a matter of great speculation w^hat will be his punishment; the people are much enraged against him ; if he is set at lib- erty, even after he has received a severe punishment, I do not think he will be safe. He will be despised and detested by every one, and many suspicions will remain in 193 OLD XEW EXGLA^^D CHURCHES the minds of people in regard to oiia* rulers ; they are for supposing this person is not sincere and that one they have jeal- ousy of." John Adams's reply to his wife's comments reflect the sturdy honesty of the man : " The unaccountable event which you allude to has reached this place and occasioned a fall. I would be glad, however, that the worst construction might not be put. Let him have fair play; though I doubt. The man who violates private faith, cancels solemn obligations, whom neither honour nor conscience holds, shall never be knowingly trusted by me. Had I known, when I first voted for a Director of an Hospital what I heard after- ward, when I was down, I would not have voted as I did. Open, barefaced immoral- ity ought not to be so countenanced." Abigail, as is usual with a woman, has, however, the last word on the subject, and 194 OLD XEW E^^GLAXD CHURCHES " improves " the occasion by an ethical ex- ordium : " I have been led to think that he who neglects his duty to his Maker may well be expected to be deficient and in- sincere in his duty toward the public. Even suppose him to possess a large share of what is called honour and public spirit, yet do not these men by their bad example, by a loose immoral conduct, corrupt the minds of youth, vitiate the morals of the age and thus injure the public more than they can compensate by intrepidity, gen- erosity, and honour ? Let revenge or ambi- tion, pride, lust, or profit tempt these men to a base and vile action, you may as well hope to bind up a hungry tiger with a cobAveb as to hold such debauched patriots in the visionary chains of decency, or to charm them with the intellectual beauty of truth and reason." In many of the letters Abigail addresses 195 OLD XEW e:n^gland chueches John as " her dearest friend/' and always in this unique correspondence there is a charming exchange of opinions concerning books and things. Thus, surrounded bv household cares though she was, we find the parson's daughter quoting Shakespeare to her absent husband, and he, though op- pressed with politics, dropping in turn into Latin verse when that form best expressed his meaning. On one of these latter occa- sions Abigail observes, with delightful naturalness : " I smiled at your couplet of Latin, Your daughter may be able to con- strue it, as she has already made some considerable proficiency in her accidence; but her mamma was obliged to get it trans- lated." In the same letter she calls for Lord Chesterfield's Letters, which she has lately heard highly commended. A day or two later she playfully writes : " In the new code of laws which I suppose it will 196 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Re- member all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies," she threatens, " we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or repre- sentation." Here, though in jest, spoke our first woman siiffragist ! Chesterfield's Letters, however, were not to be hers. " They are a chequered set," the husband in Philadelphia writes. " You would not choose to have them in your library. They are like Congreve's plays, stained with libertine morals and base principles. ... As to your extraordinary code of laws, I cannot but laugh. We have 197 OLD XEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES been told that our struggle has loosened the bonds of government everj^vhere; that children and apprentices were disobedient ; that schools and colleges were grown tur- bulent; that Indians slighted their guar- dians, and negroes grew insolent to their masters. But jour letter was the first inforaiation that another tribe, more nu- merous and powerful than all the rest, were grown discontented. This is rather too coarse a compliment, but you are so saucy, I won't blot it out. Depend upon it, we know better than to repeal our masculine systems. In practice, you know, we are the subjects. We have only the name of masters, and rather than give up this which would completely subject us to the despotism of the petticoat, I hope General Washington and all our brave heroes would fight; I am sure every good politi- cian would plot," 198 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES So the letters go on, sometimes playful, often historical, and every now and again fairly throbbing with the passionate long- ing of husband and wife to be together. In the middle of March, 1177, John writes: " The spring advances very rap- idly and all nature will soon be clothed in her gayest robes, reviving in my longing imagination my little fami and its dear inhabitants. What pleasure has not this vile war deprived me of ? I want to wan- der in my meadows, to ramble over my mountains, and to sit in solitude, or with her who has all my heart, by the side of the brooks. The pride and pomp of war, the continual sound of drums and fife as well played as any in the world, the pranc- ings and tramplings of the Light Horse, numbers of which are paraded in the streets every day, have no charms for me. I long for rural and domestic scenes, for 199 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES the warbling of birds and the prattling of my children. . . ." July 8, 1777: " Xext month completes three years I have been devoted to the service of liberty. A slavery it has been to me, whatever the world may think of it. . . . The loss of property affects me little. All other hard things I despise, but the loss of your com- pany and that of my dear babes, for so long a time, I consider as a loss of so much solid happiness. The tender social feel- ings of my heart, which have distressed me beyond all utterance in my most busy active scenes, as well as in the numerous hours of melancholy solitude, are known only to God and my o^vn soul. How often have I seen my dearest friend a widow, and her charming prattlers orphans ex- posed to all the influence of unfeeling, im- pious tyrants! Yet I can appeal to my final Judge, the horrid vision has never 200 OLD NEW EXGLAIs^D CHURCHES for one moment shaken the resolution of mj heart." The indomitable patience, the steady persistence of John Adams's statesman- ship at Philadelphia, were quite equalled by Abigail's display of heroic virtues at home. Wisely she ordered the affairs of the household, and saw to the cultivation of the little farm. Over the education of her children she had a watchful eye, and under her care the boy John Quincy early developed conspicuous manliness. The little fellow, when barely nine years old, had fearlessly assumed the duty of " post- rider," going on horseback unattended over the eleven long miles of country road which stretch between his home at Brain- tree (now named Quincy Adams after him) and Boston to fetch and carry the remarkable letters of his remarkable parents. 201 OLD XEW E^'GLAXD CHUKCHES But now Mistress Abigail is to lose the boy as well as his father. Hardly had the statesman returned from Philadelphia in the fall of '77 than there came the news of his appointment to the Court of France. To all the little family this further separa- tion meant a cruel blow. And after delib- eration it was decided that the man child be taken with papa for the sake of the voyage and the education of travel. This wrung the mother's heart, but there is no thought of shirking, for is not a needy country calling its statesman-son to council ? It is during the loneliness of the eighteen months which followed the departure of father and son from the beach at Mount Wollaston Farm, close to Norton Quincy's house, that Abigail Adams's letters show for the first time that streak of jealousy which proves her to have been but yet a woman. Because her husband has not 202 OLD yEW EKGLA N^D CHURCHES been so lavish of tenderness as in the Philadelphia correspondence, she reproves him for " inattention." His answer must, hov^ever, have amply soothed her hurt, " For heaven's sake, my dear, don't in- dulge a thought that it is possible for me to neglect or forget all that is dear to me in this world. It is impossible for me to write as I did in America. What should I write ? It is not safe to write anything that one is not willing should go into all the ne\vspapers of the world. I never know what conveyance is safe. God knows I don't spend my time in idleness, or in gazing at curiosities. I never wrote more letters, however empty they may have been. ... It would be an easy thing for me to ruin you and your children by an indiscreet letter, and what is more, it would be easy to throw our country into convulsions. For God's sake never re- 203 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES proach me again with not writing. ... If I were to tell you all the tenderness of my heart I should do nothing but write to you." John Adams's whole life, in truth, was at this period devoted to the service of the da^ATiing republic. When he returned to Braintree August 2, 1779, after an ab- sence of a year and a half, he was only one week on his peaceful farm before he was sent to draw up the Constitution of Massachusetts, and from that Convention he was obliged again to go abroad, this time to assist in the negotiations for peace. It is pleasant to know that, soon after this, when he was at the Court of St. James as our first minister, Mrs. Adams was able to join him. Thus the Weymouth parson's daughter is seen a matronly beauty of forty, against a background wholly new. From a life of the utmost retirement in a 204 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHUKCHES small and quiet country town, she is sud- denly transferred to the busy and bustling scenes of the wealthiest city of Europe. Never had an American woman been in like position, for she was the first repre- sentative of her sex from the United States at the Court of Great Britain. She passed with grace, none the less, through the ordinary form of presentation at court, and until her husband's return lived be- comingly the ceremonious life necessitated by her position. Very glad, however, was she to come back again to America, and gladder still, later on, after serving as ^' first lady " in the White Hoiise, to take up her residence once more in " still, calm, happy Braintree." There she and her hus- band spent the remainder of their days, honoured by their townspeople, and sought out by the most eminent men of Europe and America. 205 OLD XEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES Parson Smith served in the Weymouth parish up to the very time when he died, September 17, 1783, a hoary-headed old man of almost eighty. His church is no longer standing; it seems to have been the fashion to pull down the meeting-house and build a new one whenever the finances of the community warranted the expendi- ture. But one very interesting temple survives to link the Adamses with our narrative, and that is the imposing edifice provided by John Adams in his will and finished in 1828. Under its portico the remains of the statesman-President and those of his " beloved and only wife " Abi- gail, who had died some eight years before him, were eventually entombed. Their sarcophagi rest in a square chamber solidly walled with granite and closed with iron doors, and in a similar room adjoining lies the dust of John Quincy Adams beside 206 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES that of his wife. Quite lately, in response to urgent demand, the building has been thrown open on certain days to the crowds of historical pilgrims who annually flock to Quincy that they may see the spot sacred to the memory of this greatest of American households. 207 EAST APTHORP AND HIS PARISH TROUBLES ' jyEAVTlYTJL old Christ Church, M~\ in Cambridge, may be said to be the godchild, after a fashion, of King's Chapel in Boston. For it was by the rector of the old parish, good Doctor Caner, that, almost one hundred and fifty years ago, this letter was drawn up and sent to the famous Society for the Propa- gation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, the body then in charge of the entire mis- sionary activity of the Church of Eng- land. 1 Note : The data for this chapter was found prin- cipally in "History of Christ Church," Cambridge (1893), by Samuel F. Batchelder. 208 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHUKCHES " To the Revd. Dr. Bearcroft, Secretary to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts: " Boston, 5 April, 1759. " Reverend Sir ; " We the subscribers, for ourselves, and in the name and at the desire of a consid- erable number of families professing the Church of England at Cambridge, Water- town, and places adjacent, humbly beg leave to represent to the Society the diffi- culties we labour under in regard to the means of public worship, and to entreat their charitable assistance. There is no church nearer to us than Boston, which is from some of us eight, from others ten and twelve miles distant; unless, for shortening the way, we submit to the in- conveniences of crossing a large ferry, which in stormy weather, and in the winter 209 OLD ^^EW ENGLAND CHURCHES season especially, is very troublesome and sometimes impracticable. The Society will easily conceive the difficulty of conveying whole families to a place of public wor- ship at such a distance, and attended by such obstructions. To remedy this, we have agreed to build a Church at Cam- bridge, which, as it is in the centre, may indifferently serve the neighbouring places, of Charlestown, Watertown, and New- towne ; besides providing for the young Gentlemen who are students at the College here, many of whom, as they have been brought up in the Church of England, are desirous of attending the worship of it. We have also made application to Mr. Apthorp, for whom we have a great esteem, and who is willing to undertake the care of such a church, on supposition we can procure him an honourable support. It is 210 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES for this purpose, we have presumed to apply to the Society, being sensible that without this kind assistance our attempt would be frustrate. For our parts, we purpose and promise, for ourselves and in behalf of those we represent, to provide a Parsonage house and a Glebe, and to pay annually to M"" Apthorp twenty pounds sterling, if the Society shall think proper to countenance our design, & assist us with such farther provision as may enable him to settle among us. We shall indeed be ready to comply with any farther instructions the Society shall please to communicate, within the compass of our ability; and shall make such authentic instruments for accomplishing what we propose, as the Society shall intimate to be proper. Humbly begging a favourable answer to our request, to take leave to 211' OLD Js^EW EXGLAXI) CHURCHES profess that we are, Rev. Sir, the Societies' and your most humble servants, " Heney Vassal, ' John Vassal, ' Thomas Oliver, ' Robert Temple, ' Joseph Lee, ' Ralph Inman, ' David Phips, ' James Apthorp." Hardly was this petition started on its long voyage across the Atlantic before the promoters of the enterprise, without wait- ing for the result of their request, began their building subscription. One of the most liberal gifts came from the rector- elect, the young East Apthorp, who con- tributed to the fund his salary until he should enter into active service, — a gift which, with the increase soon allowed by 212 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES the English mission, amounted, for the two and a half years which must intervene before the church should be ready for occupancy, to over one hundred and twenty-five pounds. East Apthorp was at this time a youth of twenty-six, " ardent, impulsive, inex- perienced, confiding, of sensitive feelings and high spirit." He had been born in Brighton, then known as Little Cambridge, his father being Charles Apthorp, a well- known Boston merchant. Young East as a lad attended the Boston Latin School, whence he proceeded to the English Cam- bridge to complete his education. The death of his father at the close of the year 1Y58 recalled him to his native land, and shortly after his return he married Eliza- beth, the daughter of Judge Foster Hutch- inson. Thus well educated, well born, and well settled in life, this young man was 213 OLD XEW ENGLAND CHURCHES held to be an ideal rector for the new church. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (established by King William III. on the sixteenth of June, 1701), had promptly acceded to the request of the Cambridge petitioners. Al- though it was already supporting in Massa- chusetts King's Chapel, Christ Church, and Trinity in Boston, St. Michael's at Marblehead, St. Peter's at Salem, St. Paul's at Newburyport, St. Thomas's at Taunton, St. Paul's at Hopkinton, Christ Church at Braintree (now Quincy), and St. Andrew's at Scituate, it cheerfully added the Cambridge enterprise to its list, and appointed as rector the choice of the Cambridge people, with a salary allowance from them of fifty pounds sterling per annum. In the architect appointed to draw up 214 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHUKCHES plans for the church, the little group of Cambridge gentlemen were very happy. For they chose Mr. Peter Harrison, then of Newport, Rhode Island, who, ten years before, had designed King's Chapel in Boston. Mr. Harrison had probably been induced to come to this country by Bishop Berkeley,^ whose story is bound up with old Trinity, Newport, and he had brought with him the best traditions of Sir Chris- topher Wren, who was, at this period, the leading architectural spirit of England. He is believed to have worked in the old country upon the palace of the Duke of Marlborough, at Woodstock, and upon other similarly imposing piles. His de- sign for Christ Church has been pro- nounced a real advance over King's Chapel. Erom its first erection the edifice has been considered by connoisseurs in 1 See " Romance of Old New England Roof trees." 215 OLD :new exglaxd churches architecture one of the best constructed churches in New England. In general appearance it is not greatly changed to-day from the original design, and its beauty of line and stateliness of aspect has inspired many a poet, not the least of them Oliver Wendell Holmes, who wrote : " Our ancient church ! its lofty tower, Beneath the loftier spire, Is shadowed when the sunset hour Clothes the tall shaft in fire ; It sinks beyond the distant eye Long ere the glittering vane, High wheeling in the western sky. Has faded o'er the plain." The comer-stone of the church seems to have been laid rather more than a year after the subscription was begun. On this occasion, a stately ceremony, doubt- less, Sir Francis Bernard, Bart., the re- cently appointed governor of the province of Massachusetts Bay, was present. The 216 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES stone bore the following inscription, prob- ably from the pen of the learned Mr. Apthorp : " Deo. ^terno. Patri. Filio. Spiritvi. S. Hanc. ^dem. Sub. Avspiciis. Illustriss. Societatis. Promovendo. Evaiigelio. In. Partibus. Transmarinis. Institutso. Consecrabant. Cantabrigiensis. Ecclesise. Anglicanae. Filii. In. Christianse. Fidei. et. Charitatis. Incrementvm A. D. MDCCLX. Provinciam. Procurante. V. CI. Francisco. Bernardo." ^ 1 Under the guidance of the most venerable Soci- ety founded for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts, the inhabitants of Cambridge, members of the Church of England, dedicated this house of worship to the Eternal God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for the increase of Christian faith and charity, in the year of our Lord 1760, the Honourable Francis Bernard being governor of the province. 217 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES The opening service of the church was held on October 15, 1761, a large and not altogether enthusiastic congregation being present. For in the pews might have been noticed an astonishing proportion of the old Orthodox inhabitants of Cambridge, who had come out full of curiosity and distrust to witness the initial proceedings of an organization that had brought into their midst the very elements of popery and confusion from which their forefathers had thought to free themselves forever. Cambridge had gotten on for almost one hundred and thirty years with the stern creed, the bare meeting-house, and the un- comfortable doctrine of the dissenters, and it felt itself doing very well. So many silent scoffers, one may be sure, were seated in Christ Church on the day of that first service. The sermon was " On the Con- stitution of a Christian Church," and the 218 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES ruddy-faced, strenuous young rector de- livered it with great unction from the picturesque wine-glass pulpit, to rows of high, square box pews, well filled by gen- tlemen in cocked hats, laced coats, and white silk stockings, accompanied by ladies in flowered silks, high-heeled shoes, and all the other outward and visible signs of the fashion of 1761. If he noticed the unbending outsiders he gave no sign, for he was very happy. And then, having removed his vestments and received the congratulations of the proprietors, who paid him the delicate compliment of requesting that he print his discourse. Dr. East Apthorp walked joy- ously out of the church, across the Com- mon, to his own comfortable and well- kept home. For while the church had been in process of erection the young clergy- man had built himself the stately mansion 219 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHUKCHES of Georgian architecture which is to-day still standing (10 Linden Street), and which is known all over Cambridge as " the Bishop's Palace," even under its modern disguise of Apthorp Hall, a college dormitory. Only by the addition of a deforming third story (built when Mr. John Borland came in possession of the house, the better to accommodate his do- mestic slaves), is the building changed on the exterior from its original appearance. The interested visitor may yet enter its wide hall with the elaborate staircase balustrade, may yet admire the stately proportions of its rooms, and the wealth of hand-carving on cornice and mantel, may yet gaze in astonishment at the intri- cate patterns of the quaint delft tiles in the fireplace where Doctor Apthorp warmed his hands after his homeward walk that long-ago Sunday. 220 (,'iiKisTs (urncii and "Thk iushoi's pai,ack. OAMIJKIIXiK, MASS. OLD NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES To-day these signs of wealth and taste excite only our admiration, but a hundred and forty years ago their principal effect was to increase most unpleasantly the dis- trust with which the establishment of a Church of England Society in Cambridge had from the first been regarded. It was believed in all sincerity that the Episco- palians would now endeavour to impose their form of faith upon the very people who had come over to the new country to escape such traditions. To the Reverend Dr. Jonathan Mayhew it was plain that " a certain superb edifice near Harvard College was even from the foundation de- signed for the palace of one of the humble successors of the Apostles." And those were days when people said very plainly what they thought. Thus it came to pass that very soon, un- der stress of the attacks, both open and cov- 221 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES ert, which were aimed at him, the face of the young rector of Christ Church became lined with anxiety. He began to realize what had been the meaning of his old college chum, the Bishop of Bristol, when he wrote him : " I need not urge to you the consideration of the situation in which an Episcopal clergpiian finds himself in your parts, and of the great circumspec- tion which it requires." Mr. Apthorp, in his innocent desire to add still another noble specimen of colonial architecture to the buildings already in Cambridge, had been very far from " circumspect," as it proved. He soon found popular feel- ing running so high that he was moved to publish his views on the Establishment in a pamphlet entitled " Considerations on the Institution and Conduct of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel." And this step was his undoing. 222 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES As has ever been the case, the challenge was eagerly met by the controversialists spoiling for a fight. Doctor Mayhew pub- lished an acrimonious reply, and the war of the pamphlets raged fiercely on. Doctor Apthorp, who has come down to us as a most mild and Christian gentleman, suffered very keenly during this contro- versy. The position in which he had been placed was a singularly trying one; " though actuated by the best motives," to use his own words, " and a desire to do such service as he could to the Church of England and his country, he had sustained as rude a storm as perhaps ever beat upon a person of his station." The end of it all came soon. In a press notice of the time one reads : " Boston, Sept. 13th, 1764. (Thurs.) Monday last sailed from hence the Hannah, Captain Robert Jarvis, for London, in which the 223 OLD Is^EW EXGLAXD CHURCHES Rev. Mr. East Apthorp, Missionary for Cambridge, . . . and several other per- sons went passengers." The alleged excuse for this summary re- treat was the settlement of urgent private affairs in England, but shortly after reaching London Mr. Apthorp resigned his Cambridge mission and took up residence for the remainder of his life in a land where bishops were respected rather than ridiculed. In his adopted country he re- ceived the recognition his talents deserved, was appointed Vicar of Croydon, and in 1790 was actually offered a bishopric — Kildare — which he, however, refused on account of his failing health. His last years were spent in his university home, the English Cambridge, and he lies buried in the chapel of Jesus College, with the following inscription composed by him- self upon his tombstone : 224 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES " East Apthorp, S. T. P., Hujus coUegii nuper alumnus et socius, JEdis Cathedralis S'ti Pauli prebendarius. Decessit in fide die XVI. Aprilis. MDCCCXVI. iEtatis LXXXIV. Expectans misericordiam Domini Nostri Jesu Ciiristi In vitam seternam." ^ The bitter and distrustful feeling against Episcopacy somewhat subsided after Mr. Apthorp's departure from Cam- bridge, but for three years Christ Church had no settled rector. Then in June, 1767, the Reverend Winwood Serjeant ar- rived in Cambridge and took charge of the mission. It was during his happy eight years of ministry that the William and Mary communion service, still in use, was presented to the church by Governor *East Apthorp, professor of divinity, a former graduate and fellow of this college, prebend of St. Paul's Cathedral. Departed in the faith April 16, 1816, aged 84, looking for the mercy of Our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. 225 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES Hutchinson, the successor of Governor Ber- nard. But these peaceful days were not long to last, for the clouds of the American Revolution had already begun to loom large. In a letter dated March 12, ITT-t, Mr. Serjeant writes : " The populace are almost daily engaged in riots and tumults. On the 7th inst. they made a second de- struction of thirty chests of tea. Political commotions run extremely high in Boston ; if not suppressed soon, the whole province is in danger of being thrown into anarchy and confusion." Three months later: " Boston is in a terrible situation, and will be much more so if they do not submit to government before fall ; the poor will be most miserably distressed and the town will be absolutely ruined." This must have been one of Mr. Ser- jeant's last letters as rector of Christ Church, for his ministry soon came to an 226 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES untimely end. Already the proprietors of the church had found Cambridge too hot for them, Major John Vassal, John Bor- land (the purchaser of the " Bishop's Palace"), and others of the Tory aristo- crats having early in the summer aban- doned their homes and sought in Boston the protection of the King's forces. Thomas Oliver, to be sure, remained till September, and left his home (now Elm- wood, the James Russell Lowell place) only when an armed mob appeared in front of the house and wrung from him his resignation as president of the council. But after that he, too, sought perforce the hospitality of General Gage. While we have no actual proof that the Reverend Mr. Serjeant was subjected to violence while in Cambridge, a letter written (probably from Newbury port) in the August of 1775 would indicate that 227 OLD XEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES his house also had been attacked : ^' Fam- ilies, however inoffensive," he writes, " sus- pected to retain any loyal principles, were treated with the utmost insolence and rigour. I was obliged to retreat with my family fifty miles into the country to Kingston, in New Hampshire, where I was in hopes of meeting with a peaceful retirement among rural peasants, but my hopes were soon disappointed. The rest- less spirit of fanaticism renders unintelli- gent minds more licentious and ferocious. I found it necessary to remove to Xew- bury, where I hoped to be protected from the insults of the common people. I have lost not less than £300 in household fur- niture and books destroyed and pillaged." All the rest of the Serjeants' family his- tory is, indeed, sad and pitiable. But it is not exceptional. The Episcopal clergy frequently suffered much in Revolutionary 228 OLD IS^EW ENGLAND CHURCHES times because of their loyalty to the mother country. With the history of Cambridge during, as well as before, the Revolution, the Christ Church parish is intimately bound up. " The Bishop's Palace " served both as headquarters and barracks for General Putnam and his Connecticut troops till about the time of the Battle of Bunker Hill, and after the surrender of Saratoga it became the residence of Burgoyne. As for the church itself, it supplied quarters for Captain John Chester's Connecticut troops, soldiers who blithely melted into rebel bullets the Tory organ pipes, and felt themselves quite at liberty to do as they would with other more sacred churchly relics presented by the English Establishment. Yet Christ Church was to acquire one share of Revolutionary prestige more in 229 OLD XEW ENGLAXI) CHURCHES keeping with its divine origin. For here it was that on New Year's Eve, 1775, General Washington held service, Colonel William Palfrey reading the prayers. Washington, like most Southerners of his day, was a good churchman, but during the first months of his stay in Cambridge he had worshipped, partly from policy and partly from necessity, in the " meet- ing-house " then under the care of Doctor Appleton. In the middle of December, however, Mrs. Washington arrived in Cambridge, and very soon orders were given to prepare the church for divine service, hasty repairs being made, tradi- tion tells us, at the expense (with a kind of fine irony) of Judge Lee, the only Tory proprietor whose loyalty to George III. was of sufficiently mild a brand to render his continued residence in Cambridge without danger. 230 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES The courteous white-haired sexton, who for many years now has been the guardian of Christ Church, points out with pride, for the benefit of visitors, the exact spot which the General and Mrs. Washington hallowed by their presence, that eventful Sunday in 1775. The pew which suc- ceeds the old pew is opposite the third pillar from the door as one enters, and to it still clings, of course, an odour of sanc- tity. And properly enough, too. That American must indeed be dead of soul who is not thrilled at the thought that Washing- ton prayed in that very spot for the liberty Ave now enjoy. In a letter to his wife. Colonel William Palfrey, the acting clergyman at that New Year's service, thus described his per- formance of the office that fell to him : " What think you of my turning par- gori? I yesterday, at the request of Mrs, 231 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES \Vashington, performed divine service at the church at Cambridge, " There was present the General and Lady, Mrs. Gates, Mrs. Custis, and a number of others, and they were pleased to compliment me on my performance. I made a form of prayer, instead of the prayer for the king, which was much ap- proved. " I gave it to Mrs. Washington at her desire, and did not keep a copy, but will get one and send it to you." The prayer, which was undoubtedly pre- pared with a view to use as a substitute for the petitions in behalf of the king, incorporated in all Church of England services, was as follows : " Oh Lord our Heavenly Father, high and mighty, King of kings and Lord of lords, who hast made of one blood all the nations upon earth, and whose common bounty is lib- 232 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES erallj bestowed upon thj unworthy crea- tures; most heartily we beseech Thee to look down with mercy upon his Majesty George the Third. Open his eyes and enlighten his understanding, that he may pursue the true interest of the people over whom thou and thy Providence hast placed him. Remove far from him all wicked, corrupt men and evil counsellors, that his throne may be established in jus- tice and righteousness; and so replenish him with the grace of thy Holy Spirit that he may incline to thy will and walk in thy way. " Have pity, O most merciful Father, upon the distresses of the inhabitants of this western world. To that end we humbly pray Thee to bless the Continental Congress. Preside over their councils, and may they be led to such measures as tend to thy glory, to the advancement of thy 233 OLD XEW ENGLAND CHUECHES true religion, and to the happiness and prosperity of thy people. We also pray thee to bless our provincial assemblies, magistrates, and all in subordinate places of power and trust. Be with thy servant, the commander-in-chief of the American forces. Afford him thy presence in all his undertakings ; strengthen him that he may vanquish and overcome all his enemies; and grant that we may in due time be re- stored to the enjoyment of those inesti- mable blessings we have been deprived of by the devices of cruel and bloodthirsty men, for the sake of thy son, Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen." Of other services which Washington at- tended in Christ Church, record is lacking. There has always been a tradition that he worshipped there regularly, but it is quite probable that in tactful concession to the views of the main body of th^ army, he 234 ii OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES attended instead the services at the " meet- ing-house," there to listen to the Reverend Mr. Leonard's preaching to the troops. Rather curiously, it was after the real storm and stress period of Cambridge had passed, and after the church had ceased to be a barracks, that the main damage to the building was done. It has been said that General Burgoyne occupied " the Bishop's Palace." This was, of course, after his capitulation on October 17, 1777, at the time when the British and Hessian troops, forty-two hundred strong, were assigned to Cambridge as their prison ground.^ The artillery of the captured troops was parked on the Common at this crisis, in front of Christ Church, and the barracks built for the besiegers of Boston were now occupied by her vanquished foes. Naturally, there was a great deal of dis- 1 See "Romance of Old New England Roof trees." 235 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES order among the demoralized and idle Hes- sians, and, as a result of this, one pecul- iarly unhappy incident occurred. This was the shooting, in June, 1778, of Lieu- tenant Richard Brown of the Twenty-first Regiment (one of the English prisoners), by a stupid sentry. Brown was driving do\\Ti Prospect Hill, Somerville, and had lost control of his horses, when a raw country lad, standing guard at the foot of the slope, challenged him to halt and show his pass. Inasmuch as it was impossible to do this, Brown merely pointed to his sword (which he retained by the terms of the surrender as one of Burgoyne's officers), to indicate his rank and privilege. At this, the sentry, whether ignorantly or wilfully will never be known, ran up to the carriage and shot the Englishman through the head. The affair caused great excitement, and the 236 OLD NEW ENGLAOT) CHURCHES unfortunate lieutenant's funeral, on June 19tli, was the one service ever held in Christ Church in which English officers and soldiers, German officers, and not a few Americans prayed to God together. Lieutenant Brown, according to a contem- porary account, was " entombed in the church at Cambridge with all military honours," his coffin being added, it is be- lieved, to the nine Vassal caskets which occupy the vault beneath the church. It was on the occasion of this funeral, and because of the indignation aroused by the incident related, that the most severe dam- age that the building received during the war was done. Ensign Anbury, an eye- witness to the affair, tells us in his " Trav- els " : " I cannot pass over the littleness of mind and the pitiful resentment of the Americans in a very trifling circumstance 237 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES [for] during the time the service was per- forming over the body [at the tomb in the cellar?] the Americans seized the oppor- tunity of the church being open, which had been shut since the commencement of hostilities, to plunder, ransack, and deface everything they could lay their hands on, destroying the pulpit, reading-desk, and communion-table, and, ascending the or- gan loft, destroyed the bellows and broke all the pipes of a very handsome instru- ment." Thus, in a burst of fury which certainly reflects little credit upon the in- nate reverence of the Cambridge patriots, ended the Tory term of Christ Church. The building was now little better than a ruin, and the congregation was as com- pletely shattered as the church. All through the eighties the edifice remained desolate and neglected, but in 1790 it was reopened by the Reverend Doctor Parker, 238 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES of Trinity, Boston, his sermon (July 14th) being on the text, " Now, therefore, ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fel- low citizens with the saints and the house- hold of God; and are built up upon the foundations of the Apostles and the Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone ; in whom all the build- ing fitly framed together groweth into a holy temple in the Lord." In the prayer used on this occasion remembrance was made of the fact that he who was now supreme civil authority had fifteen years ago, when newly invested with highest milita^-y honours, prayed for his country in Christ Church. It was not, however, until another quar- ter-century had elapsed that Christ Church really recovered from the blow of the Tory dissolution. Then (in 1824) a committee was appointed by the Diocese of Massa- 239 OLD yEW EyGLA:N^D CHTJECHES chusetts to solicit subscriptions for repair- ing the building. By their exertions up- wards of three thousand dollars were ob- tained, of which three hundred were given by Harvard College, many of the Episcopal undergraduates of which (then, as now) attended service in the quaint old edifice. During the summer and autumn of the following year the church was thoroughly repaired, and a number of changes made in its interior. Xo long and prosperous terais of rectorship are, however, to be noted until the Reverend ISTicholas Hop- pin, D. D., assumed, in 1839, the charge of the parish. Mr. Hoppin served faith- fully and acceptably for no less than thirty-five years, during which time the church was enlarged, and its work greatly strengthened. It was during Mr. Hoppin's time, too, that the one hundredth anniver- sary of the opening of the church was 240 OLD NEW EN"GLA:N'D CHURCHES celebrated with much ceremony. The day (October 15, 1861) was a remarkably fine one, and fifty clergymen, as well as an immense congregation, were present to lis- ten to the fine historical sermon preached by the rector. On that glad occasion the peal of the Harvard Chime, presented to the church by a committee of University graduates, first rang out on the still Cambridge air. These chimes are operated from the ring- ing-room in the second story of the tower, where the old-fashioned system of a frame, into which the ends of the bell-ropes lead, is in use. There are thirteen bells in the set, and each bears in Latin a portion of the " Gloria in Excelsis." From the outset the Chime has been regarded as a common object of interest and enjoyment for the whole city, and because of its in- timate connection with the University, it 241 OLD XEW EXGLAXD CHUKCHES has been rung, not alone on church days, but also on all festivals and special occa- sions of the college. Thus the music of Christ's sweet-toned bells has for more than forty years now been associated in the minds of Cambridge students with all that is most beautiful in the life of their Alma Mater, and through this medium the oldest institution in Cambridge has become identified with the oldest church. 242 A FAMOUS TORY WIT AND DIVINE rHE Hollis Street Church is now the Hollis Street Theatre. But the exterior walls of the building are the same as those put up in 1810 when the third meeting-house was here erected on the site which, since 1732, had been the church " at the south part of Boston." The original house of worship was dedicated by the Reverend Doctor Sewall, of the Old South Church, and the first minister settled there was the Rev- erend Mather Byles, a Tory wit and scholar. Doctor Byles's salary began at £3 10s. a week, but it was gradually in- creased from year to year until, in 1757, 243 OLD IsTEW E^GLA^TD CHURCHES it reached £11 per week. So for more than forty-four years he served his people acceptably. Then the Revolution dawned, and in the crisis resulting Doctor Byles's course was such as to bring him into marked disfavour. He was therefore tried in the church, the specific offences in- stanced against him by his parishioners being: " (1) His associating and spend- ing a considerable portion of his time with the officers of the British army, having them frequently at his house, and lending them his glasses for the purpose of view- ing the works erected for our defence; (2) That he treated the public calamity with lightness; (3) Meeting before and after service with a number of our invet- erate enemies at a certain place in King Street called Tory Hall; (4) That he prayed in public that America might sub- mit to grate Britain." 244 THE KKVF.REXD MATIIKK HYLES OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES The Tory doctor was dismissed August 14, 17Y6, and in the following May was denounced at town meeting. Being there convicted as a man " inimical to Amer- ica," he was sentenced to imprisonment with his family in a guard-ship, and con- demned to be sent in forty days to Eng- land. The sentence was afteinvard com- muted to confinement in his own house, and a sentinel was placed before his door. Very amusing stories have come down to us of this imprisonment of Doctor Byles, " the great Boston wit." At one time during his imprisonment in his own residence at the corner of Nassau and Tremont Streets, he required, we read, to have an errand performed. No one was at home for the time being and so, inter- viewing the sentinel, he asked permission to absent himself for a little while. But this permission was not granted. There^ 245 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES upon he requested the sentinel to do the errand for him, offering to do the duty of guard until he should return. This favour being granted, Doctor Byles shouldered a musket and for half an hour or more marched back and forth before his own door, greatly to the amusement of his neighbours. After a time the guard was withdrawn, and again replaced. Alluding to this fact. Doctor Byles observed that he had been " guarded, regarded, and disre- garded." When the British finally left Boston, and the people returned from the towns round about where they had taken refuge, they began, of course, to put things to rights. Then it was that the Hollis Street Society " prepared to deal with Doctor Byles," and, calling a meeting of the male members, sent for that clergyman. The scene was rather a desolate one. Nothing 246 OLD NEW ENGLAI^D CHURCHES was left in the church, which had been used as a barracks, but the pulpit and stove. The brethren assembled in one of the galleries and awaited with some trepi- dation the doctor's appearance. Soon he entered, arrayed, we are told, in " ample flowing robes and bands, a full bush wig, newly powdered, sur- mounted by a large three-cornered hat." With long strides he mounted the pulpit, hung his hat on a nail, and took his seat, saying, " If ye have aught to say, say on." Far up in the gallery a little man, with a small voice, arose to prefer charges against the doctor. " Louder, louder ! " exclaimed the latter, and again he re- peated, " Louder ! " After listening for some time to the charges, he exclaimed, "False! False! and the Hollis Street people know that it is false ! " and, seizing his hat, he rose and departed, leaving the 247 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES brethren to settle the affairs in the best way they could. In spite of the fact that Doctor Byles and his family remained Tories till their dying days, the gifted minister and wit was not disregarded by all his patriot friends. In his later years Franklin, who had been one of his youthful companions, renewed his intimacy with him. Almost the latest writing preserved from the doc- tor's pen is indeed the following brief letter to the Great American Philosopher : " Boston, 14th May, 1787. " Sir : — It is a long time since I had the pleasure of writing to you by Mrs. Edward Church, to thank you for your kindly mention of me in a letter that I find was transmitted to the University of Aberdeen [this institution had, in 1765, conferred on Doctor Byles the degree of 248 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES D. D.]. I doubt not whether you ever received it, I seize this opportunity of employing my daughter to repeat the thanks which (but under great weakness by old age and a palsy) I aimed to express in that letter. Your Excellency is now the man that I early expected to see you; I congratulate my country on having pro- duced a Franklin, and can only add, I wish to meet you where complete felicity and we shall be forever united. I am, my dear and early friend, your most affec- tionate and humble servant, " M. Byles." Doctor Byles enjoyed, too, the distinc- tion of a correspondence with Pope, his letters to that celebrated writer evincing a keen appreciation for his works. A very beautiful copy of Pope's Odyssey came to the doctor as a result of this admiration. 249 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES This sturdy old Tory's ruling passion for the hon mot was strong even in death. It is related of him that just before he ex- pired (July 5, 1788) his intimate friend, Bishop Bowker, called to see him ; and as he entered the room and approached the bedside of the dying man, the doctor by lifting his finger signified that he wished him to bend over and place his ear near to his lips. This the bishop accordingly did. Then Doctor Byles whispered, " I have almost got to that land where there are no bishops." Llis friend, who seems to have been quite his match, replied quickly, " I hoped, doctor, that you were going to the Shepherd and Bishop of Souk." The story seems almost ill-timed, but it certainly reveals a serenity that not even the shadow of death could disturb. Doctor Byles left a son and two daughters. This son, — another Tory of 250 OLD XEW ENGLAND CHURCHES course, — got into trouble during the Rev- olution with his church also, that church being none other than the Old North on Salem Street, from which the lanterns were hung on the eve of the nineteenth of April. This second Mather Byles, graduated at Harvard in 1751, had been duly ordained a Congregational clergyman like his father, and was for some time pastor of the church in New London, Con- necticut. But in 1768 he became an Epis- copalian, and was called to Boston, where he was rector of Christ Church until just previous to the Revolution. Thus for a term of years Doctor Mather Byles, Sr., a Congregational minister, presided over the Hollis Street Church, while Doctor Mather Byles, Jr., his son, preached the opposing creed at the other end of the town. Doctor Byles's two daughters, Catherine 251 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES and Mary, never married, and they contin- ued to the end of their life to reside in the old family mansion on Nassau Street, and to cherish their Tory predilections. Their house was filled with antique curiosities and memorials of bygone days. They took a special delight in "drinking their tea off a table at which Franklin had partaken of the same beverage." " Blowing their fire with a bellows two hundred years old," was another source of great satisfaction to them ; and they seemed to live for years amidst recollections of the happy past. From a curious old volume, " Sketches of History, Life, and Manners in the United States. By a Traveller," we get this en- tertaining description of a visit paid in 1823 to the Misses Byles: " I sought them out and found them in an old decayed wooden house at the foot of a Mall [Common]. The house (which 252 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES must have seen a century at least) stood in a luxuriant grass plat, with two beauti- ful horse-chestnut-trees growing near the door : the whole was enclosed by a decayed wooden paling, which communicated with tlie street by a small gate with a wooden latch. Upon opening the gate I was within a few steps of the door; but by the looks of the house, the old rotten step at the door, the grass growing through it, not a trace of human footstep to be seen, and the silence that pervaded the moulder- ing mansion before me — I imagined it could be no other than a deserted house. I knocked at the door, however, and an elderly female opened it immediately; I inquired for the ladies of the house; she replied that she was one of them, and that her sister was sick. Upon my saying some- thing about my paying my respects to them, she very coldly invited me to walk 253 OLD NEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES in. The house looked something better inside. . . . Among the three or four old chairs in the parlour was one which ap- peared to be the monarch of the rest. It was curiously carved, wholly of wood, with a straight high back, upon which was mounted the English crown, supported by two cherubim. This chair of state is carefully placed under the portrait of their father. . . . " Miss Byles appeared to be about seventy-five years of age. ... I drew a few sentences from her, the amount of which went to show that she was a warm lover of the British crown and government, and that she despised the country she was in. She said the Americans had her father, herself, and her sister up in the time of the Revolutionary War, treated them ill, imprisoned her father, and sus- pended him from preaching; came very 254 OLD NEW ENGLAJ^D CHURCHES near sending the whole of them off to England just because her father prayed for the king! . . ." On the accession to the throne of William IV., one of the sisters, who had known the sailor king, during the Revolution, addressed to him a congratulatory epistle, assuring him that the " family of Doctor Byles never had renounced and never would renounce their allegiance to the British crown." The elder sister died in 1835, the younger, Mary, in 1837. It had long been one of the comforts of these forlorn spinsters that not a creature in the States would be any better off for what they left behind them. This indeed proved to be the case, for their modest little estate passed, as they had carefully arranged it should, into the possession of relations in the Prov- inces. The history of Boston, it seems to me, affords few more pathetic and pictur- 255 OLD KEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES esqiie bits than the little glimpse given us by the " Traveller " above quoted, of these prim old ladies, cultured and polished, though somewhat eccentric, cherishing for sixty years after the public denunciation of their father as a Tory the political prejudices for which he had suffered. One other minister of the Hollis Street Church, the Reverend John Pierpont, poet, Abolitionist, and divine, — the grand- father of -John Pierpont Morgan, — is conspicuous in the history of the parish as a pastor possessed of opinions he re- fused to abandon. Mr. Pierpont came to the church in 1818, and for fifteen years was a very popular pastor. Then he, too, began to develop views — anti-slavery ones — to which a portion of his parish was bitterly opposed. He was invited to resign, but declined. A sharp corre- spondence between him and the standing 256 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES committee of the church ensued, the matter being finally referred to an ecclesiastical council, which, after hearing the charges against Mr. Pierpont, dismissed them and exonerated him. Meanwhile, his salary was withheld, and he sued the society :£or it. It was only after he had obtained judg- ment in the Supreme Court and secured payment of his claim that he voluntarily resigned, and the warfare ended. This was in 1845. Until 1859 Mr. Pierpont was engaged in the regular ministry over various Unitarian cluirches, but when the war broke out in 1861, he became chaplain to the Massachusetts regiment. His in- creasing infirmities compelled him to re- tire, however, and the rest of his life was employed in the Treasury Department at Washington, arranging its decisions, a work for which he was well fitted, because he had been bred a barrister and had aban- 257 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES doned the profession only when compelled to the step by scruples of conscience. Mr. Pierpont's hymns combine in a remarkable way terseness and tenderness. One of these, written for the opening of the In- dependent Congregational Church, in Bar- ton Square, Salem, Massachusetts, Decem- ber 7, 1824, is very well known both in this country and England: " O Thou, to whom in ancient time The lyre of Hebrew bards was strung ; Whom kings adored in songs sublime, And prophets praised with glowing tongue ; " Not now on Zion's height alone, Thy favoured worshippers may dwell, Nor where at sultry noon Thy Son Sat weary, by the patriarch's well : " From every place below the skies, The grateful song, the fervent prayer, The incense of the heart, may rise To heaven, and find acceptance there. 258 OLD NEW EXGLAN"D CHURCHES " To Thee shall age with snowy hair, And strength and beauty, bend the knee ; And childhood lisp with reverent air. Its praises and its prayers to Thee. " O Thou, to whom, in ancient time, The lyre of prophet-bards was strung, — To Thee, at last, in every clime, Shall temples rise and praise be sung." 259 WHEN A EKEXCH EXILE WAS BOSTON'S BISHOP JUST one hundred years ago (Sep- tember 29, 1803) the first Cath- olic temple in the city of Boston was erected on Eranklin Street, and five years later, in 1808, St. Patrick's Church, tlie first Catholic meeting-house in the State of Maine, was built at Damaris- cotta Mills. The fact that both these edi- fices came into being through the efforts of one man, a French exile, who was after- wards a prince of the Church, renders their history of decided interest. The country church, much of the material for which was brought from Europe, is still standing 260 OLD NEW EIs^GLAND CHURCHES midway between Damariscotta Mills and the village. Originally the pews here were only rough benches hewn from the trees of the forest, but now the furnishings are modern. As for the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, the modern successor, though on a different site, of the first Catholic church in Boston, — it covers more than an acre of ground and is generally called one of the most imposing church buildings in "New England. Only the personality of Bishop Cheverus and the faith of the Church he so loved connect these two widely dissimilar structures. The career of John Louis Anne Magda- len Lefebvre de Cheverus, — to give his name in full, — born at Mayenne, France, January 28, 1768, is full to the brim of colour and interest. Bred up in a very pious household and early sent to the col- lege of his native place, he received, when 261 OLD NEW EN^GLAXD CHURCHES only twelve, the tonsure at Mayenne, and began his studies for the priesthood. Meanwhile the troubles of the French Revolution were beginning to cast their shadow before. When M, de Cheverus was ordained, December 8, 1790, — in the tw^enty-third year of his age, — it was at great personal risk. For to accept holy orders at that time was to court persecu- tion, confiscation, imprisonment, and mar- tyrdom from the fierce tyrants rising up in France to destroy both church and state, and deluge the fairest of lands in the blood of its noblest citizens. Undaunted, however, by the calamities that were hastening upon his country and his relig- ion, the young priest repaired at once, after taking orders, to his native city, and assumed the public exercise of the holy ministry as assistant to his uncle, the ven- erable Cure de Cheverus. At the same 262 £ OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES time he received from the Bishop of Mans the honour of being a canon in his cathe- dral. Soon, however, he was called upon to take the oath of the Revolution, which, he firmly resisted, and, resigning his place, exercised the holy ministry in private. Thus his father's house became at once his prison and his chapel. But he was not destined to remain long in the little town he called home, for, making his escape in the June of 1792, he proceeded to Paris. Naturally, the lynx-eyed mem- bers of the Committee of Vigilance speed- ily found him out in that troubled centre, and made his life a far from comfortable one. Then was passed the resolution of the twenty-sixth of August, which condemned to banishment those priests who had not taken the constitutional oath. This was M. de Cheverus's opportunity. The mas- 263 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES sacres of the second and third of Septem- ber had already taken place, and he had gone free only by being concealed for sev- eral days in his own chamber. The decree of banishment seemed to him, therefore, almost a providential means of escape, and, disguising himself, he sailed as speedily as possible for England, where, though a stranger in a strange land, he soon found friends and a means of support as teacher of French and mathematics in a boarding- school. Here, through the necessary inter- course with his pupils, he acquired a good knowledge of English, and was thus quite ready to accept the invitation which came to him in 1795, to share with the Abbe Matignon, then officiating at Boston, labour in that new and fruitful vineyard. To M. de Cheverus this call to a foreign field, which embraced all New England and the Indian tribes of Penobscot and 264 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES Passamaquoddy, offered a glorious oppor- tunity to do the work he so loved. He therefore made over his patrimony to his brothers and sisters in France, and sailed at once for the new world. " On the third of April, 1Y96," says the chronicler, " he arrived safely at Boston, where he was received by M. Matignon as an angel sent from heaven to his aid." Naturally the Boston of that day was inclined to be none too cordial to these exiled French priests. The English colo- nists had brought with them to the new country all the religious prejudices of their native land, and Massachusetts had long been filled with men of a great va- riety of religious sects which, though in doctrine differing widely from each other, were united on one point, hatred of all things Catholic. Never were such minis- ters weary of declaiming against the 265 OLD XEW ENGLAXD CHURCHES Church of Rome, v/hich they represented as an impure assemblage of idolaters, and condemned as the new Babylon in the Apocalypse. To found a Catholic church in a country where such a state of feeling existed seemed almost a hopeless enterprise. But M. Matignon and M. Cheverus happily hit upon the one and only way of gaining ground, — that of exhibiting lives so gen- uinely Christlike that men must perforce honour the religion they ser%"ed. " A new and touching sight was then witnessed in Boston," we read ; " two men, examples of every virtue, living together as brothers, without distinction of property, with no difference of purpose or of will; always ready to yield to each other, to anticipate each other in rendering most polite and delicate attentions; possessing in truth but one heart and one soul ; filled with the 266 OLD I^^EW E^^GLA^D CHURCHES same desire, that of doing good ; the same inclinations, those which pointed to vir- tue; and the same love of whatever is good, upright, and charitable." The Bos- ton MontJily Magazine, in its issue for June, 1825, said, in speaking of them: " Those who witness the manner in which Abbe Matignon and Abbe Cheverus live, will never forget the refinement and ele- vation of tbeir friendship; it surpasses those attachments which delight us in clas- sical story, and equals the lovely union of the son of Saul and the minstrel of Israel." One story will illustrate the effect of such living. After M. Cheverus had been in Boston for a year, a Protestant came to him and said, very frankly : " Sir, I have studied you closely for a whole year; I have watched all your steps and observed all your actions; I did not believe that a minister of your religion could be a good 267 OLD NEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES man. I come to make you the reparation which honour demands. I declare to you, that I esteem and venerate you, as the most virtuous man that I have ever known." The universal confidence which M. Cheverus had inspired soon brought him into new and inconceivably multiplied re- lations. Protestant ladies from the highest ranks of society came to open their hearts to him and ask his advice. One of these having said to him one day that it was the doctrine of confession which more than anything else would to her prove an insuperable obstacle to the acceptance of the Catholic religion, M. Cheverus replied, with his delightful smile : " Madam, you really have not so great a repugnance to confession as you think; on the contrary, you seem to have experienced its necessity and its value, since, for a long time, you have confessed to me without knowing it. 268 OLD NEW EI^GLAND CHURCHES Confession is nothing more than just such disclosures of the troubles of conscience as you have been pleased to make to me in order to receive my advice." This remarkable visitor from overseas was early able to perceive that if the re- ligion he represented were to obtain in Boston the respect he believed should be accorded it, the Catholic clergy, besides living Apostolic lives, must be as well versed in what the world called learning as in sacred knowledge. For himself, therefore, he zealously pursued those studies ever held in high honour in Boston. He made himself master of the arrange- ment, construction, and etymology of the English language, he read all the most distinguished works that language has pro- duced, and he further kept himself au courant with the modern literatures of other lands. An attentive and discriminat- 269 OLD NEW ENGLAIs^D CHUECHES ing observer of society, he had been quick to remark the high estimation in which human learning and those who possessed it were held in the city of his adoption, and the general taste for literary acquirements even among women. Accordingly, he so cultivated himself that the extent and variety of his information soon conne<3ted him with all the learned men of Boston, the literary societies of the city sought him as a member, and it is very interesting to learn that he was a powerful instrument, with the other leading Bostonians of the day, in founding the Boston Athenaeum, to which he even gave many books from his ovm library. The account given by his biographer, J. Huen-Dubourg, — from whose enthu- siastic " Life " most of our facts are drawn, — of the good bishop's mis- sionary journeys among the Indians in the 270 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES Penobscot and Passamaquoddy regions, is full of interest and colour. M. Cheverus found these people, we learn, almost wholly admirable. In one place they had kept intact for fifty years the faith de- livered to them by the Jesuits who first brought Christianity to their section. M. Cheverus discovered these natives by chance one Sunday morning singing the well-known chant associated with the royal mass of Dumont, and at the sight of the black gown all the assemblage uttered cries of joy and delight, ran to meet him, called him father, and placed him on a bearskin, their seat of honour. Soon he learned the language of the tribe, and became their highly esteemed spiritual leader. Thus it was that he built the church between Newcastle and Damaris- cotta to which reference has already been made. 271 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES One very remarkable anecdote of these Indian converts has come down to us. Soon after the death of Louis XVI. — who was led to the scaffold by his own sub- jects, and in the presence of sixty thousand of them sacrificed to the revolutionary frenzy — the news of the sad affair was brought to the Indians by some English travellers. The red men could not credit the story. The French missionaries who had preached to them, and M. Cheverus, himself, whom they so respected, had rep- resented to them that France contained a people honourable and generous, an idea not to be reconciled in their minds with the extraordinary tale of the English travel- lers. One of the native chiefs, therefore, sought the truth from their spiritual head : " Father," he began, " we know you do not lie; tell us, then, how this is. The Eng- lish say that the French have put their 272 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES king to death ; this is impossible ; it must be to make us hate the French that they broach this falsehood." M. Chevenis, greatly embarrassed how to answer this question, tried to explain that it was not the French nation, but rather some mad men who had temporarily gotten the upper hand, who put the king to death, adding that all France disowned the Revolutionists, and regarded their crime with the deep horror and execration that it deserved. Still the Indians were unappeased. " Ah, my father," replied the chief, much moved, " but I no longer love the French since this is true. It was not enough to disclaim this crime; they ought to have thrown themselves between the king and his assassins and have died rather than suffered his person to be touched. Why, father," he added, " it is as if one should come to kill you while 273 OLD XEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES among us and we should allow you to be killed. Should we not then be guilty ? We are better than the French ; for we would all be killed to save you." To the very end of his stay in Boston M. Cheverus, both as priest and bishop, \\as accorded the most remarkable honours. At the dinners to which he was invited, and where sometimes thirty ministers of various sects would be present, he was always asked to say the blessing, which he did, making the sign of the cross and pro- nouncing the customary prayers of the Catholic Church. When President John Adams visited Boston and was tendered a magnificent banquet by the city, M. Che- verus was placed at one side of the dis- tinguished guest. The President was greatly impressed by this mark of respect paid to a Catholic priest in a city where, only a few years before, all of the hated 274 OLD XEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES belief had been treated with scorn. He remarked, therefore, to M. Cheveriis that he was as astonished to see him, a Cath- olic priest, there occupying the place of honour on his right, as to reflect that he himself was being honoured in Boston as President of the United States. The first subscriber to the Catholic church which M. Cheverus soon built on Franklin Street, Boston, opposite old Theatre Alley, it is interesting to note, was President Adams. With this name at the head of the list, subscriptions naturally came in very read- ily, and on the twenty-ninth of September, 1803, the building was dedicated by Bishop Carroll, of Baltimore, under the name of the Church of the Holy Cross. On November 1, 1810, the abbe was raised to the dignity of a bishop in the cathedral at Baltimore by Archbishop Car- roll. But this increase of power made no 275 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES difference whatever in the style of the good man's life. It is said that he even continued to split his fire-wood himself. And, as before, his ministrations to his beloved Indians went on. Only with difficulty, however, was he able to remain thus humbly in the New England of his adoption. When Archbishop Carroll died in 1815, great pressure was brought to bear upon Bishop Cheverus to induce him to take the higher office. He replied, how- ever, that the church at Boston needed him most, which was indeed the truth, for after the death of his good old friend, Abbe Matignon, in 1818, the place he had to fill was bigger than ever. But the happy relation between Boston and Bishop Cheverus could not go on in- definitely. His health had become sadly impaired by his rigorous life and the severe New England wintei-s, a fact which 276 OLD NEW engla:n'd churches all his friends observed with great sorrow and which caused one of them — a French ambassador to the United States just re- turning to his own country — to apprise Louis XVIII. of Bishop Cheverus's great worth, and to ask that monarch to recall the exile to his native See of Montauban. This was accordingly done, — to the great distress of the Bishop of Boston. With what grace he could, he declined the king's kind offer, and there went to Paris with his letter a petition in which more than two hundred Protestants, as well as the body of Catholics in Boston, begged that their bishop be permitted to remain with them. " If the removal can be referred to the principle of usefulness," they wrote, " we may safely assume that in no place nor under any circumstances can Bishop Cheverus be situated where his influence, 277 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES whether spiritual, moral, or social, can be so extensive as where he now is." All this, however, was of non-avail. By return mail the king commanded Bishop Cheverus to return to France and there take charge of the Diocese of Montauban. Evasion was no longer possible. To leave Boston was to the good bishop like partial death, but the physicians had just de- clared that his health could not endure another winter in this severe climate, so the recall was perhaps providential after all. The bishop himself regarded the day of his departure as the day of his death. Before it arrived, therefore, he wished, according to his own expression, " to exe- cute his will." The church, the episcopal residence, and the convent which he had built, he be- queathed, therefore, to the diocese. All the rest of his possessions he distributed 278 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES among his ecclesiastics, his friends, and the poor. As he had come to Boston a poor man, he chose to depart poor, with no other wealth than the same trunk which he had brought with him twenty-seven years before. The universal regret ex- pressed at his departure is indicated by this quotation from the Boston Commer- cial Gazette [Protestant] of September 22, 1823: " This worthy dignitary of the Roman Catholic Church has been with us nearly thirty years, and during this period he has enjoyed the confidence and respect of all classes of people. The amenity of his manners as a gentleman, his accom- plishments as a scholar, his tolerant dis- position as a religious teacher, and his pure and apostolic life, have been our theme of praise ever since we have known him. We regret his departure as a public loss." This description of Bishop Cheverus as 279 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES General Oliver remembered him in Boston seems very happy : " The last time I saw him was as he passed up Franklin Street clad in a black suit, with buckled shoes, stockings, small clothes, long vest and full coat of the fashion of the day, all of black, his face beaming with thoughtful kind- ness, and his whole bearing that of a dig- nified and saintly minister of good." To this may well be added a few sentences written by Doctor Channing : " We have seen [in the metropolis of New England] a sublime example of Christian virtue in a Catholic bishop. We have observed this man declining in great degree the society of the cultivated and refined that he might be the friend of the ignorant and friend- less; leaving the circles of polished life^ which he would have graced, for the mean- est hovels ; bearing with a father's sympa- thy the burdens and sorrows of his large 280 "l^ BISHOP CHKVERUS er OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES spiritual family; charging himself alike with their temporal and spiritual concerns ; and L ver discovering, by the faintest in- dication, that he felt his fine mind de- graded by his seemingly humble office. This good man, bent on his errands of mercy, was seen in our streets under the most burning sun of smnmer and the fiercest storms of winter, as if armed against the elements by the power of char- ity. He has left us; but not to be for- gotten." The bishop embarked from New York, October 1, 1823, and in his native land was received with all possible honour and joy. Through the trying Revolution of 1830 he bore himself with such dignity as not to forfeit the respect even of those who differed from him, and soon after- wards he was elevated, upon the suggestion of the king, to a place in the College of 281 OLD XEW ENGLAXD CHURCHES Cardinals. He accordingly received the red hat February 1, 183G. In this exalted position he lived only a short four months, for on Sunday, July 7, 1836, after oflBciat- ing at several churches of his episcopal city, he sank down in the evening with utter prostration from an attack which was the beginning of his short last illness. So it is as the Bishop of Boston rather than as a Prince of the Church that his- tory to-day remembers him. Plenty of prelates have been imposing cardinals, but New England has had only one Bishop Chevenis. I a J/ L WtrL.i 1^ •■■^^ :'C,-^f^"%^ ?" ■^n ■.:V'. '• rcr THE LOST PRINCE AT LONGMEADOW rHE first meeting-house to be built at Longineadow, a beautiful old town on the Connecticut River, not far from Springfield, Massachusetts, was erected in 1714, and that same year the Reverend Stephen Williams, who had been taken captive with his father's family in the sack of Deerfield,^ was ordained minister of the parish. For sixty years he served the community here, his round of parish duties being interrupted only by work as chaplain in the Louisburg expedition of 1745, and on other occasions, 1 See " Romance of Old New England Rooftrees." 283 OLD NEW EIs^GLAND CHURCHES and by his missionary interests in the Indians. This last concern of his had arisen very largely from his solicitude for the children of his sister Eunice, who, it will be remembered, had steadily refused to return with her family to Xew England and to the faith of her fathers, preferring the Roman Catholic religion and an In- dian chief. To Stephen Williams, as to all the rest of the family, this apostasy on Eunice's part was a deep and abiding sorrow. So it was, perhaps, that he might com- pensate in a measure for his sister's " error " that the minister of Long- meadow laboured so zealously to cultivate the virtues of Protestant Christianity in the little town to which he had been called. In June, 1767, the " old church on the green " of our picture was begun by him, and the work of building the 284 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES same was steadily carried on under his superintendence until, in April, 1769, this meeting-house was dedicated. Then Ste- phen Williams was gathered to his fathers, being buried in the summer of 1772 from the church he had struggled to achieve. His chosen successor was the Reverend Richard S. Storrs, Doctor Will- iams's grandnephcAV. And during Doctor Storrs's ministry it was that quite another Williams came to Longmeadow, and, by his connection with the town and its meet-, ing-house, furnished an excuse for the introduction here of a Longmeadow chapter. For the romance of the Reverend Eleazer Williams, believed by many to be Louis XVII. of France, is far and away the strangest and most fascinating story in all New England history. If you search the Longmeadow town records you will find repeatedly men- 285 OLD XEW ekgla:n^d chtjeches tioned there the name of Deacon Xathan- iel Ely, who figures in the local history as agent in the " Important Business " of making Longmeadow " the oldest child of the state." [The precinct was the first to be incorporated as a town after the sign- ing of the Treaty of Peace, September 3, 1783.] Deacon Ely had married the grand- niece of Eunice Williams, and he was a worthy and intelligent, though uneducated, man. Until he was thirty years of age he had worked on his farm and enjoyed uninterrupted health. Then his whole family was suddenly attacked with sick- ness, and his mother and three children swept at once to the grave. He likewise was very ill at tliis time, and he vowed that if he recovered, " his future life, health, property, and evervtliing dear on earth should be consecrated to God." For this reason, as well as because he was 286 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES greatly interested in the conversion of the Indians, he early offered to bring up the children of his squaw kinswoman. Always, however, his offers had been refused. Llis surprise was therefore quite as great as his delight when, in 1800, Thomas Will- iams, Eunice's grandson, brought to him his two boys, Eleazer and John, to be educated. It has come down to us in local tra- dition that from the first the Longmeadow folk noted the curious difference both in appearance and in mental aptitude between these lads. John, the younger, only seven, was every whit an Indian. He stayed in Longmeadow a few years, and then went back to his own people scarcely changed at all by his contact with civiliza- tion. Eleazer, however, exhibited no Indian characteristics. Neither in form, feature, nor bearing, was he in the least 287 OLD KEW ENGLAND CHUECHES a red man. He was eager for study, and by 1810, in spite of repeated illnesses, had read six books of the ^Eneid, several ora- tions of Cicero, was going through the T^ew Testament in Greek, and was anxious to begin Hebrew. This precocity may be held to indicate previous culture. Indeed, Mr. Ely, as well as others in the village, seems to have been early informed that Eleazer was an adopted and not a real son of his Indian parents. People gener- ally believed the boy to be the son of some French Canadian family of standing. Al- ways the deacon used to say, however, that Eleazer Williams was born to be a great man, and that he intended to give him an education to prepare him for his rightful station. It was in 1800, as we have said, that Eleazer "Williams arrived at Long- meadow; in 1803 he began to follow the 288 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES example of Deacon Ely and to keep a journal. This practice he continued with occasional short interruptions for the rest of his life, and from the resulting journal it is that we get the most interesting light obtainable upon the development of his character. This record shows that from the outset civilized life was natural to him. There is every token that education came to him as a recovery. The religious strain in the lad was, however, marked from the first; as early as the year 1802 he was greatly affected by a sermon preached in the old meeting- house by Mr. Storrs in the course of a great revival. His conversion at this time was hailed by his friends with great re- joicing, as the object of his education was to prepare him for missionary work. In pursuance of this high end Mr. Ely began the next year to beg money in Eleazer's 289 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES I behalf from certain local missionary so- cieties. That it was in 1803 that the deacon first made such applications is be- lieved to be significant. For when the lad was converted to Protestantism, it is surmised, the remittances for his support were no longer forthcoming. In 1804 Thomas Williams and his wife visited the two boys at Longmeadow, and the great contrast between Eleazer and his reputed relatives awakened anew the cu- riosity and interest of the neighbourhood. In May of the same year, Mr. Ely, being in Boston with Eleazer, made application to the Legislature for pecuniary assistance in carrying on the boy's education, and he received a grant of three hundred and fifty dollars to help fit the lad for missionary duty among the Indians. Even thus early, it will be perceived, there was a very gen- eral feeling that this boy was an unusual 290 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES person raised up for a great work. Yet the degrees by which he was removed from liis Longmeadow friends had not up to this time been even suspected. Perhaps it was first in the May of 1806, when Mr. Ely and Eleazer, being in Bos- ton, attended the Catholic church of the Abbe Chevenis, that there broke upon the boy's consciousness a hint that he might be really very different from those among whom he lived. Deacon Ely must have been a particularly good example of the close-mouthed Puritan. He gave as his excuse for attending the church in question his love of music, but that he should have gone at all to the service of a communion to which he was by birth and training bitterly opposed, is remarkable. And that he should have stayed afterwards to talk with the priest about Eleazer, is to be accounted for only in one way. Unfor- 291 OLD NEW ENGLATnTD CHUKCHES tiinately, no record of the conversation with Bishop Cheverus has come down to us in Deacon Ely's journal, a diary so painstaking in its description of every-day fann work and commonplace happenings that one must believe its silence concerning this quite unusual incident to have been intentional. We do know, however, that Eleazer was introduced to the Abbe Che- verus as an Indian youth studying for the ministry. And we know further that the good abbe, though his interest in Indian missions was tremendously keen, did 7iot question his caller concerning his life in the forest, or his desires to be of spiritual aid to the red men. On the contrary, he quite ignored this obvious topic, and asked the boy about the practice of the Indians in adopting French children, and whether he had ever heard of a boy being brought from France and left among them. The Abbe 292 OLD ^^EW ENGLAND CHURCHES Cheverus was himself a devoted Loyalist, an exile from France, as we have already seen, because of his political adherence to the cause of the martyred king. There seems little doubt that he suspected Deacon Ely's handsome charge to be none other than the Dauphin of France. It is now generally admitted by even the most cautious students of history that there exists abundant and very strong evi- dence in favour of the theory that the Dauphin Louis XVII. did not die in the Temple. The physicians acknowledged, soon after the event, that they could not testify to the identity of the dead child with the Dauphin; several other persons in the Temple positively asserted that the child who died was not the Dauphin ; the police were ordered to arrest on the high- ways of France any persons travelling with a child of the Dauphin's age, as 293 OLD XEW EXGLAXD CHUKCHES there had been an escape from the Temple ; the royal family rejected at once the heart of the child who died in the Temple; the name of the Dauphin was omitted in the religious services ordered by Louis XVIII. in remembrance of the royal victims of the Revolution ; the grave supposed to contain the body of the Dauphin, in the Cemetery of St. Marguerite, was utterly neglected; the Duchess d'Angouleme as- serted on her death-bed that her brother was not dead, and demanded that he be found and restored to his heritage. Along with all these facts are to be placed the interesting links in the chain by which a wholly disinterested historian, the Eev- erend John H. Hanson, was able to pro- claim in Putnam's Magazine for Feb- ruary, 1853, his astounding story that Louis XVII. of France had been found in the person of the Reverend Eleazer 294 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES Williams, at that time a devoted mission- ary to the Indians, living in Green Bay, Wisconsin. In 1795, we learn, a family of French refugees, consisting of a gentleman and lady and two children, a girl and a boy, arrived in Albany, New York, and stayed there for a short time. The adult couple were called Monsieur and Madame de Jardin, but they did not appear to be husband and wife, the man acting rather as attendant upon the other members of the family. The boy, apparently about ten years old, was called Monsieur Louis, and the curious thing about him was that he did not seem to notice any one nor to be aware of what was passing around him. Still it was perfectly obvious to all who saw the little family that Monsieur Louis was regarded as the important member of the group. Several ladies who could speak 295 OLD XEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES Erench called upon Madame de Jardin, and to one of these she confided that she had been maid of honour to Marie Antoi- nette, and was separated from her on the terrace of the palace before the imprison- ment in the Temple. In speaking of affairs in France Madame de Jardin be- came much agitated, and with tears streaming down her cheeks she played and sang the Marseillaise. After a time the de Jardin family left Albany, and their new acquaintances never heard of them again. Very soon after their disappear- ance two Frenchmen, one of them a Cath- olic priest, having in charge a sickly and apparently imbecile boy, came to Ticon- deroga, near Lake George, and left the boy in charge of an Iroquois chief, a half- breed, named Thomas Williams, whose grandmother was the Eunice Williams of the Deerfield raid. A haK-breed Indian 296 OLD NEW EA^GLAXD CHURCHES chief, who witnessed the transfer, heard the two strangers tell Thomas Williams that the imbecile boy was Frendi by birth. While there is, of course, no positive proof that the Monsieur Louis of the Albany family was the same boy left with Thomas Williams, the circumstantial evidence pointing to their identity is strong. For some time the health of the adopted lad was extremely delicate, but an outdoor life, plain food, and the simple remedies furnished by his Indian protectors proved admirable means for the upbuilding of his impaired physique. His intellect, however, continued deranged until, during one of his annual excursions to Lake George, where Thomas Williams went each year to hunt, he fell from a high rock into the water and cut his head severely against a stone beneath the surface. He was taken up insensible, and had no recol- 297 OLD NEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES lection afterwards of the accident ; but the shock awakened his benumbed faculties, and his mind resumed its normal activity, though his memories of the past were still spasmodic and confused. The same half- breed chief who saw the boy when he was brought to Williams, was a witness also of this accident and of its happv effect. Scarcely had Eleazer attained the con- dition in which impressions and people must have stamped themselves with partic- ular clearness upon his memory than he was visited by two strangers, one of whom was a Frenchman, elegantly dressed, and wearing powdered hair. This man em- braced the lad tenderly, wept over him, talked earnestly to him with tears and en- dearments, and tried very hard to make him understand what he had to say. Elea- zer, however, could no longer follow a con- versation in French, though when he had 298 OLD :NtEW ENGLAiS^D CHURCHES been brought to the Indians French was the language that he spoke. The next day the two strangers came again, the splendid gentleman in the ruffled shirt calling the little lad " imuvre gargon/' and examining with care the traces on his knees and ankles of what one must believe to be the tumors from which the child had suffered terribly during his con- finement in the loathsome Temple under the care of the brutal Simon. When the stranger went away he gave the boy a gold piece, Thomas Williams, however, was anxious only to know whether Eleazer understood what the gentlemen had said to him. Upon being assured by his foster- son that the whole proceeding was utterly incomprehensible to him, he seemed greatly relieved. A few days after this visit Eleazer, who slept in the same room with his re- 209 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES puted parents, overheard Thomas Williams urging his wife to give her consent to a request which had been made to them to allow two of their boys to be sent away from home for education. She objected on religious grounds, but finally said : " If you want to, you may send away the strange boy; means have been put into your hands for his education; but John I cannot part with." This remark made Eleazer suspect that he did not really be- long to the family, but the impression soon passed away, as such impressions do from the minds of children. The sensation which the coming of the boys produced in the quiet village of Long- meadow we have already seen. Every- where Eleazer was called " the plausible boy," by reason of his charming and grace- ful manners. In his chat with the other lads he used sometimes to tell them that 300 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES he remembered noble edifices, beautiful gardens, gorgeously furnished apartments, ladies and gentlemen in splendid attire, troops on parade, and he himself lying on a rich carpet with his head on a lady's silk dress. Other images of painful form likewise thronged his mind. Once he spoke of the scars on his forehead, and said the sight of them in the glass always brought up distressing thoughts upon which he could not bear to dwell. The death in 1808 of Mr. Ely, Eleazer's first friend and benefactor, was a great grief to the lad. But it served to bring abruptly to a close the first scene of his civilized life in America. For he had now made friends for himself on all sides, and had quite determined to be a mission- ary to the people among whom he had been placed as a child. He remained at Mans- field and Longmeadow, therefore, only 301 OLD ^EW EIs^GLA^D CHURCHES till December 22, 1809, when he was put under the tuition of the Reverend Enoch Hale, of Westhampton, Massachusetts, with whom he stayed till the month of August, 1812, though during a great por- tion of this time he was absent on journeys to various places, engaged in surveying the missionary field. His equipment for the work which he had elected was in many ways remarkable, and on the breaking out of the War of 1812 he was speedily recog- nized by the American government as the person best fitted to prevent the Indians from taking up arms against the United States, and was accordingly appointed General Superintendent of the northern Indian Department with a secret corps of army scouts and rangers under his com- mand. In this capacity he served very effectively. But when peace was estab- lished he devoted himself again to the 302 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES study of theology, and after mature de- liberation resolved to join the ministry of the Protestant Episcopal Church in- stead of remaining in the Congregational communion with which he had been so long connected. This change in his opinions and purposes, while it did not cause any hard feeling among his early friends, greatly hampered him financially, because he was now, of course, forbidden by delicacy to accept any of the missionary funds heretofore placed at his disposal by the Congregational bodies. All his life, however, he continued to be interested in the old church at Longmeadow, where he had first embraced the Christian faith. Miss Julia Bliss, of that town, writes me that she distinctly remembers hearing him preach there once, and was greatly im- pressed by his courtliness of manner, as 303 OLD NEW EXGLAND CHURCHES well as by his able discharge of the clerical function. In July, 1822, Eleazer Williams re- moved from Xew York to Green Bay, Wisconsin, where land had been provided for an Indian settlement. And in this remote place it was that the Prince de Join- ville, eldest son of King Louis Philippe, sought him out when he came to America in 1841, and made the extraordinary dis- closure that gives us our romance. One of the prince's first inquiries upon setting foot in the country was whether a man named Eleazer Williams lived among the Indians of Northern Xew York. After considerable investigation he learned that the person he was seeking was an Epis- copal missionary at Green Bay, Wisconsin, and for further information he was ad- vised to consult Mr. Thomas Ogden, a 304 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES prominent Episcopalian of New York City. At the request of the prince Mr. Ogden wrote to Mr. Williams (who was then at Hogansburg, New York, engaged with several other persons upon important busi- ness connected with Indian affairs), and told him that the Prince de Joinville was in the country and wished to see him be- fore returning to France. A meeting was thereupon appointed at Green Bay, and Mr. Williams left his business unfinished and started directly for the West, while the prince took the route through Canada, leaving Boston, where he was being enter- tained, very suddenl}' and mysteriously to pursue the journey. Naturally, Mr. Will- iams was greatly surprised at the sum- mons to meet the prince, but he supposed the visitor wished to consult him concern- ing Indian affairs, upon which he was a 305 OLD NEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES recognized authority, and he therefore made all haste to keep the appointment. He had expected to meet the prince at Green Bay; but on arriving at Mackinac he heard that the royal party was expected there that day, and he decided, therefore, to connect at once with his distinguished visitor. Soon the steamer came in sight, salutes were exchanged, flags were dis- played, and crowds gathered, — as they always have and probably always will in this inconsistent democracy, — for the purpose of gazing upon a representative of royalty. On landing, the prince and his retinue went to visit the famous rocks about half a mile from the town, and the steamer waited for them. But while they were gone, the captain sought out Mr. Williams, assuring him once more that the prince was very anxious to see him. The two then embarked on the same vessel, 306 OLD NEW EIsTGLAND CHURCHES and in due time Mr. Williams was brought face to face with the Prince de Joinville. On seeing the missionary, the scion of the King of France started with involun- tary surprise ; his manner betrayed great agitation of feeling; he turned pale, his lip quivered, and it was only by the ex- ercise of tremendous self-control, half a dozen onlookers testified later, that he was able to greet the supposed Indian with conventional civility. Mr. Williams was greatly surprised and mystified by the prince's manner, the more so when he was invited to take the seat of honour at the private table of the royal party. This distinction he however declined, and it was not until the afternoon that the acquaint- ance was resumed. All that day and the next the two talked about the relations between France and America at the time of the Revolution, and about the sad fate 307 OLD NEW EXGLAXD CHUECHES of Louis XVI. On arriving at Green Bay, the prince invited Mr. Williams to accompany him to his hotel, but the mis- sionary excused himself, saying that he must go to his o-^ti home. [He had mar- ried, some twenty years before, a wife of French extraction, by whom he now had several children.] Before leaving Mr. Williams promised, however, to return in the evening, — so urgent had the visitor been, — and thus no time was lost in get- ting to the matter of importance in hand. When Mr. Williams came back to the hotel the prince received him alone in his chamber, and at once opened the interview by saying that he had a communication of vital interest to both to make, but that since the matter deeply concerned several other people, he must, before going fur- ther, receive the missionary's promise that the secret he was about to divulge should 308 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES not be revealed. At first Mr. Williams objected to pledging himself without know- ing the nature of the information he was to receive. But after some discussion he consented to sign his name to an agree- ment not to repeat what the prince was going to tell him, provided that no harm to other persons should follow from his silence. This being done, the prince told him at once that he was not a native of Amer- ica, but was born in Europe, a son of a king. He further presented a document written on parchment in double columns of French and English, which he invited Mr. Williams to read. He then left the room. Scarcely knowing whether his eyes made out aright the mystifying words, the missionary then perused the imposing doc- ument spread before him, an official paper 309 OLD Is^EW EXGLAXD CHURCHES from which he learned that he was himself the son of Louis XVI. and rightful King of France under the title of Louis XVII. He learned also — and this must have burned itself torturingly into his reeling brain — that he was requested to abdicate all his rights and titles in favour of the reigTiing king, receiving instead a princely establishment, either in France or in America, together with the restoration of the private property of the royal family, confiscated during the Revolution, or fallen afterwards into other hands. Long and painful were the hours which the simple, conscientious Christian minis- ter passed alone in that hotel room at Green Bay, going over his duty to his family and to himself as he faced that astonishing parchment. Very clearly he saw that the prince's father was indeed, as he said, the choice of the people 310 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES of France, and, therefore, in all prob- ability, rightful king. Likewise unmis- takable was the fact that he, Eleazer Will- iams, could never by himself prove the truth that the parchment asserted. Yet, on the other hand, he could not consent of his own free will to barter whatever in- herent rights he might have in the throne of France. After earnest thought, there- fore, he made known to the prince his irre- vocable choice of truth and honour. He told the visitor from overseas that he would not for any consideration whatever give up his own rights and sacrifice the interests of his family. He told him fur- ther that, as he had placed him in the position of a superior, he must assume that position and express his indignation at the conduct of the Orleans family, one of whose members was guilty of the death of the murdered king, while another 311 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES wished to deprive him of his inherited rights. When Mr. Williams declared his superiority in rank, the prince stood in respectful silence. The next day the sub- ject was resumed, but Mr. Williams gave the same answer. As the prince went away, he said to the missionary : " Though we part, I hope we part as friends." For seven years then the matter slum- bered. Mr. Williams made no attempt whatever to bring his claim to the atten- tion of the public, nor did he talk to any of his many friends about the subject of the prince's visit. Only to the pages of his journal did he confide the thoughts which haunted and distressed him. The pressing duties of active life soon cast into the background those few hours of awakened feeling which seemed in the ret- rospect like a bewildering romance, and, but for the startling intelligence communi- 312 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES cated to him in 1848 from the death-bed of one Bellanger, the whole matter might never have come to the ear of the public. But Bellanger asserted as a dying con- fession that he had assisted in the escape of the Dauphin from the Temple, had brought him to America, placed him among the Indians, and that he [the Dauphin] was now a missionary to the Oneidas, under the name of Eleazer Will- iams. A Boston newspaper, the Chrono- type, got hold of the matter, and pub- lished a communication on the subject, April 18, 1848. From this slight beginning the news gradually spread, exciting occasional dis- cussion but not creating general interest until, in the autumn of 1851, the Rev- erend John Hanson, an Episcopal clergy- man, happened to see an article in a New York daily paper wherein it was stated 313 OLD Is^EW ENGLAND CHURCHES that there were strong reasons for believ- ing that Eleazer Williams was indeed the son of Louis XVI., one of the reasons being his remarkable resemblance to the Bourbon family. Mr. Hanson's curiosity was at once awakened by this, and he re- solved to make further, investigations. Soon afterwards he accidentally met Mr Williams w^hile travelling, and by his sympathetic interest in the man and his ability to make him see that the very terms of his promise to the Prince de Joinville left him free to disclose the sub- stance of the interview, won from the now almost distraught clergyman the whole curious story. The tale of Mr. Hanson's search for additional evidence that Eleazer Williams was indeed Louis XVIL supplies one of the most interesting volumes the last cen- tury has produced. This clergyman seems 314 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES to have recognized from the first Mr. Williams's unfitness to cope with the dif- ficulties of the question. On this account he himself determined to do everything in his power to bring the truth of the matter to light. In 1853, as has been said, he embodied his researches in an article pub- lished in the February number of Put- nam's Magazine, and entitled, " Have We a Bourbon among Us ? " This paper created immediate and widespread interest among readers on both sides of the water. A marked copy was, of course, sent to the Prince de Joinville, and, as was to be expected, that nobleman denied the whole story. In spite of the witness of several trustworthy persons, he alleged that he had not sought out the Reverend Eleazer Will- iams, asserted that he had met him only by chance, and stated further that what conversation he had had with him was alto- 315 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES gether devoted to Indian matters. The reader who cares to follow the details of this very interesting controversy is referred to the volume " The Lost Prince," written by Mr. Hanson and published by the Put- nams in 1854. For still further infor- mation one may see that very readable book, ''The Story of Louis XVII. of France," written by Elizabeth E. Evans, who is herself one of the Williams family. Affidavits from physicians to show that Eleazer Williams had about him none of the physical traits of the Indian, but pos- sessed many of those accredited to the Bourbons, of his foster-mother to prove that he was indeed an adopted child, of men who witnessed the Prince de Join- ville's agitated recognition of Eleazer Williams, of Frenchmen who asserted that they were fully persuaded that this man was the lost Dauphin, of two eminent por- 316 OLD l^EW ENGLAND CHURCHES trait painters, Chevalier Fagnani and Mr. Muller, who had painted the Bourbon kings, are all given in this very interesting work. Fagnani first saw Williams in a crowded room, and, after observing him for some time, replied to the question, " Well, what do you think of this being a Bourbon?" "I don't think at all; T know ! " That the Dauphin was indeed brought to America seems now to be very well established. So eminent a man as Citizen Genet said of the matter as early as the year 1818, in the course of an evening party, where his remarks were overheard by several trustworthy wit- nesses : " Gentlemen, the Dauphin of France is not dead, but was brought to America." M. Genet further informed the company that he had believed the Dauphin was in Western New York. One cannot indeed carefully examine 317 OLD NEW EXGLAI^D CHURCHES the evidence without being convinced of the truth of Eleazer Williams's high claims. It is impossible to believe that this man could have romanced to the ex- tent that the circumstances must have necessitated. Moreover, he never once tried to make capital out of his story. Further, the mental as well as^the physical characteristics of Mr. Williams curiously correspond with those the Dauphin would probably have exhibited had he been alive and in such a position after a complicated career. Those who remem- ber Mr. Williams at Longmeadow bear constant testimony to his charm of manner, his interesting conversation, and his un- usual courtliness of address. But they further say that his judgment in matters of self-interest was weak. Though fluent and eloquent in diction, his ideas were not always well assorted. And he seemed 318 OLD NEW ENGLAN^D CHUKCHES to have no proper sense, as a man with that horrible childhood in the Temple might very well not have had, of the steps necessary to establish his identity. The traces of that fatal blight which fell upon his infancy became more and more perceptible as the years passed, and though he had been a brilliant and prom- ising youth, he was only fairly successful in middle age. This was not at all to be wondered at, for after the revelation of his birth Eleazer Williams seemed to have no rightful place among his fellow men. Ignored by his royal kin across the sea, regarded as an impostor by many of his brother-ministers, separated from his supposed Indian relatives through their recognition of his alien ancestry, unfitted alike for the position to which he was born and for the work which circumstances had imposed upon him, — 319 OLD Is'EW ENGLAND CHURCHES surely few human beings have occupied a more anomalous place in society. If this mystery of the Bourbon prince had come to light in 1903 instead of fifty years ago, it would probably have met with a far different reception. Certainly one cannot believe that we of to-day would suffer the rightful heir to a foreign throne to pour out his life in missionary service without paying him even the stipend that such service ordinarily commands. But this is what happened to Elea^er Williams. Though he had rendered very valuable aid to the country in its Indian troubles, his contributions to the solution of that tremendous problem were never properly appreciated. And though there is no question whatever of his simple, sincere, lifelong devotion to the cause of Christ, he never received an adequate salary or the cordial cooperation of his fellow min- 320 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHUKCHES isters. He died August 28, 1858, at Ho- gansburg, New York, — where for four years he had been spending the greater part of his time, engaged in missionary work, while his family remained at their home on Fox River, Green Bay, — the same Mr, Hanson who had so zealously exploited his cause having here built a house for his use. The house has now been turned into the Epiccopal parsonage of the place. His grave in the cemetery at Hogansburg is marked by a headstone erected by his son, and bearing his name and the date of his death. The true story of the two puzzling lives here traced will probably always remain an unsolved historical puzzle. But to those who are inclined to follow their intuitions and their sympathies rather than to be eter- nally skeptical of things, it is sufficiently 321 OLD NEW EXGLAND CHURCHES clear that the young man who was '' con- verted " in the old Longmeadow church in 1802 was indeed none other than Louis XVII. of France. 322 V TIIK KKVKKKND JOSHUA YOUNO'S CHURCH, BURLINGTON, VT. THE OSTRACISM OF AIT ABOLITIONIST rllOSE of us born in New England since the Civil War have so care- fully been taught that the North was ever Abolitionist in its attitude, that it is with not a little shock that we learn of such a case of persecution for opinion's sake as that of the Reverend Joshua Young, D. D., who was driven from his parish at Burlington, Vermont, because he officiated at John Brown's funeral. Doctor Young is still living in a pleas- ant little town near Boston, and one day he intends to tell in full the story of his relation to the Abolition movement. Mean- 323 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES while, I give the account of this minister's connection with John Brown as he him- self, a serene white-haired octogenarian, with vivid recollections of the past, re- cently gave it to me. At first I found him rather reluctant to open anew the old wound of his social ostracism because of sympathy with the cause of the blacks. " They are rather ashamed now up in Burlington at the way I was treated," he said, " so why go over it all again ? " But when I told him that the rising gen- eration would not and could not believe that New England had ever failed to live up to the lofty anti-slavery sentiments with which we have been taught to asso- ciate her, imless the details of such stories as these are made more clear, his interest in a modern rehearsal of the half-century old drama was enkindled, and he speedily brought out his " John Brown Book " — 324 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES one of the most significant scrap-books it has ever been mj privilege to examine — the better to retrace with me the various steps that led to his forced resignation of his charge as pastor of the Congregational Unitarian Church, at Burlington. " From the beginning," said Mr. Young, " I was an Abolitionist. As early as mj college days (I was graduated from Bow- doin with the class of '45) I had given my sympathies to the cause of the blacks. And always I admired John Brown as the noblest of men. But the ministry was the work to which I had decided to devote myself, and so, after leaving the Harvard Divinity School in '48, I went at once to what was then known as the New North Church, on Hanover Street, there succeed- ing as pastor Francis Parkman. This building is still standing, but it is now a Roman Catholic Church. 325 OLD XEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES "In 1850, after the fugitive slave law •was passed, obliging the return of slaves who had escaped to free States, I wit- nessed the shameful rendition of Anthony Burns in accordance with that law, and I saw Thomas Symmes similarly sent back into servitude. For eleven years I was a member of a vigilance committee, and I sheltered many escaping slaves in my house on Unity Street in the Xorth End. By this I made myself liable to a fine of one thousand dollars or imprisonment. The house was the second on the right of Unity Street from Charter Street, and the slaves well knew that if they coitM get to me I would help them. And it was just the same at Burlington, where I was known as station keeper of the underground railway to Canada, " At Burlington I was not far, of course, from Xorth Elba, where John 326 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES Brown's family had, in 1849, been settled on a farm by the sturdy Abolitionist. If you've read any life of John Brown, you must know how pure was his devotion to the cause for which he died, and how strong was the grip his personality and example had upon the spirits of young Abolitionists. He himself had been in- tended for the ministry, you remember, and all his life long he was a religious man, filled with the spirit of the Old Testament desire to right the wrongs of the oppressed even at the cost of his o^^m and his opponents' lives. In his family life he was Puritan and patriarchal, con- ducting family worship, ruling his chil- dren finnly, instructing them at his knee and singing hymns to them, not at all the kind of man, you see, that his enemies make him out. Though he was head- strong, he was humane and kind, and 327 OLD WEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES Frank Sanborn, of Concord, who knew him well, even tells of seeing him weep at a perfonnance of Schubert's ' Sere- nade.' This, and the fact that he taught a singing-school for a time at Xorth Elba, shows whether he was or was not the brutal creature his enemies believed.'* But here let us review — as I was obliged to before I could fully appreciate Doctor Young's interesting story — some of the facts of John Brown's life. This and a glimpse into his cabin at Xorth Elba will help us to get into the spirit of the narrative. Up in that rough Adi- rondack home of his. Brown's favourite books numbered not only the " Pilgrim's Progress," but a " Life of N'apoleon," not only Baxter's " Saint's Rest," but the " Life of Oliver Cromwell." His daughter has told us that though he loved all of the Bible he cared especially for the story 328 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES of Gideon. This sheds light upon subse- quent events. Undoubtedly he aspired to do for the blacks what Gideon did for the children of Israel. Brown's ideal seemed first to express itself in definite action when, in Septem- ber, 1855, he went to Kansas, whither his sons had preceded him. To his wife and children at North Elba he wrote pictur- esque accounts of his journey, and in one of the letters there is a tender allusion to the skill with which Oliver, the young son who had accompanied him, brings down the chickens used for meat, as the party travels in their rude caravan wagon. Brown's purpose in making this journey was, of course, to try to establish an anti instead of a pro-slavery majority in Kan- sas. Contrary to the pledge of the Mis- souri Compromise, the Kansas-Nebraska Bill provided that the question of slavery 329 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES in that State should be determined by those who should settle there. Conse- quently it was a rush to see which side should colonize first. The Emigrant Aid Company, of New England, was sending many settlers into Kansas with the object of outnumbering and outvoting the pro- slavery settlers, and over these John Brown acted as a kind of captain and leader. The Free State people were at first altogether inclined to be quiet and law- abiding, but the Missourians became so high-handed in their acts, and so delib- erately rode across the line into the Terri- tory to vote fraudulently, to shoot and to rob, that the New England friends of the settlers from the North soon began to send down rifles, the better to advance the cause they had so near their hearts. Brown bestirred himself promptly 330 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES against the Missourian invaders, and in December, 1855, was made captain of a band organized to resist a raid on the Free State town of Lawrence. On this first occasion the raiders were repulsed, one of Brown's men being killed. It was not, however, until the next spring that Brown struck his stinging blow at the raiding Missourians. His own life and that of all his followers was in danger, and it seemed to him that it was absolutely necessaiy to show fight to the men who were terrorizing the neigh- bourhood. So, getting together a small party, he went, on the night of May 2i, to the shores of Pottawatomie Creek, and calling the pro-slavery leaders out of their beds, he directed the execution of five of them. This fearful deed sent a thrill of horror through the entire country. But Brown 001 ool OLD :ntew e^tgland churches seems not to have had the smallest doubt that he was directed by Providence in his act. There is a story that, after the terri- ble night, he called his followers and his captives together for divine worship in his camp, and raised to heaven in fervent invocation hands to which still clung the dried blood of his victims. His son dis- credits this — at least, the " dried blood " part. Evidently Doctor Young, however, wished to be assured that Brown did not personally partake in this awful piece of work, for one of the most interesting auto- graph letters to be seen in his " Brown " book is the following, obviously in reply to an inquiry of his : " I^OETH Elba, N. Y., Dec. 27, 1859. " The Reverend Joshua Young — Dear Sir: — Your letter to my mother was 332 THE KKVERKNl) Jt)SllUA YOUNG OLD NEW EliGLAND CHURCHES received to-night. You wished me to give you the facts in regard to the Pottawatomie execution or murder, and whether my father was a participator in the act. I was one of his company at the time of the homicides, and was never away from him one hour at a time after we took up arms in Kansas. Therefore I say posi- tively that he was not a participator in the deed. " Although I should think none the less of him if he had been, for it was the grandest thing that was ever done in Kan- sas. It was all that saved the Territory from being run over with drunken land pirates from the Southern States. That was the first act in the history of our country that proved to the demon of slavery that there was as much room to give blows as to take them. It was done to save life and strike terror through their 333 OLD ^^EW EXGLAXD CHUECHES wicked ranks. I should like to write you more about it, but I have not time now. We all feel very grateful to you for your kindness to us. Yours respectfully, " Salmon Bkown." Terrible as the deed undoubtedly was, it seems to be quite true that it was this that saved Kansas to the free States, for Browm's men, a mere handful, were soon able to do deeds out of all proportion to their strength — witness the battle at Osawatomie. And ere long it was recog- nized that slaves could not be held in Kansas. After that the climax came on apace. John Brown's daring plan to raid Har- per's Ferry was first disclosed to his JsTorthern friends February 22, 1858, at the house of Gerrit Smith, in Peterboro, Xew York. Frank Sanborn, of Concord, 334 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES and Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higgin- son were both present at this conference, and they used every possible argument to dissuade Brown from his desperate and obviously ill-fated undertaking. Hour after hour the men talked and contended, Brown answering volubly every objection presented. When they protested that it was utterly hopeless to undertake so vast a work as war with the whole South upon such slender means, the in- domitable captain replied : " If God be for us, who can be against us ? " In truth, it seemed to be John Brown's rebellion. So, promising to raise what money they could to help, the Massachusetts Abolition- ists returned home. And Brown, after a brief visit to the family at North Elba, went to Canada to enlist the support of the negroes who had taken refuge there. 335 OLD ^TEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES Then he took up a residence in Virginia, and elaborated his plans for the raid. In all the world's history there is re- corded nothing more audacious than this determination of Brown's to precipitate war upon the slave States by seizing the United States arsenal at Harper's Ferry. It w^as a desperate and a fatal step from the start. Brown's own sons disapproved of it, and all his followers tried to turn him from it. But at this stage, if not before, the Abolitionist was a fanatic, de- termined to die if need be in the cause he had espoused. It is asserted that Brown preached to a band of simple be- lievers in the little Dunker Chapel just before starting out on his raid. And then he and his handful of men silently and swiftly captured one of the arsenal build- ings. A picturesque incident of the raid was 336 OLD NEW ENGLAI^D CHURCHES the way in which Brown took possession of a famous sword captured with Colonel Lewis Washington, a descendant of George Washington's brother. This sword was one which Frederick the Great, of Prussia, had sent as a gift to General George Wash- ington, and which Lewis Washington had inherited. Brown took it and carried it proudly until he was himself made a prisoner. So effectively did his manner make its impress upon Colonel Washing- ton that that gentleman had at first no doubt at all that the wearer of his an- cestral sword was the important head of a large force instead of a trebly outlawed leader of scarcely a score of men. All the morning of October 17th there was scattered fighting, the militia having promptly, of course, come to arrest the unknown white man called " Captain Smith " who was attempting to stir up a 337 OLD >s^EW EXGLAXD CHURCHES negro insurrection. Finally, having lost manj of his men, Brown barricaded him- self in the engine-house, all the time, as he directed the men, giving them orders •not to shoot when they could possibly avoid it. His last words to his men, before leaving on this desperate errand, indicate, indeed, as nothing else does, the spirit in which the attempt was made : " And now, gentlemen, let me press one thing on your minds. You all know how dear life is to you, and how dear your lives are to your friends ; and in remembering that, consider that the lives of others are as dear to them as yours are to you. Do not, therefore, take the life of any man if you can possibly avoid it; but if it is necessary to take life in order to save your own, then make sure work of it." Of course the arrival by train from Washington of a company of United 338 OLD XEW ENGLAND CHUECHES States marines, headed by Colonel Robert Lee and Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart, both of them afterwards famous as Confederate generals, quite settled the question of fighting. Moreover, scarcely any of Brown's men were by this time alive. Stuart it was who, coming into the engine- house with a light under a flag of truce to parley, exclaimed, on seeing Brown : " Why, aren't you old Osawatomie Brown, of Kansas, whom I once had there as my prisoner ? " " Yes," said Bro^^Ti, " but you did not keep me." This was the first intimation that the Harper's Ferry people had of Brown's identity. Arrest, trial, and conviction for " trea- son and conspiring and advising with slaves and others to rebel, and of murder in the first degree," followed swiftly after Harper's Ferry. Only six days were neces- 339 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES sary to bring in the verdict of conviction. All the way through the prisoner was calm and self-possessed, and refused to plead to insanity, which, when his lawyer urged it for him, he called " a miserable device." Very often, indeed, he said to those about him : " I think that my great object will be nearer its accomplishment by my death than by my life." He was hanged at Charlestown, Vir- ginia, December 2, 1858, his last recorded act as he went to the gallows being a tender kiss bestowed upon a negro child. He would have no religious services at the execution, because all the available clerg\'men were pro-slavery men. The day of the execution. Doctor Young recalls, meetings were held for and against Brown's cause all over the country. The excitement ran very high, and so turbulent was the popular feeling that the mayor of 340 OLD NEW Ej^GLAIST) CHURCHES Philadelphia would not give Mrs. Brown permission to let the body, which had been given over to her, receive undertaking at- tention in that place. Here it was that the false casket episode was enacted. " That happened in this way," said Doctor Young, when I asked him about this part of the funeral journey. " Only the swiftest possible passage of the body through Philadelphia could ensure peace, the mayor believed. But the mob was there. So to divert them a tool-box in the car was substituted for the coffin, a deerskin thrown over it, and policemen called to bear it to a waiting cart. These officers removed their hats and reverently bore the box on their shoulders out from the car to the cart. Of course, when the cart started off the crowd followed. Then the true coffin was taken to another station 341 OLD XEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES and sent on through to Xew York, the entire trip taking five days. " As soon as I learned that the body was to be brought to Brown's home for interment, I said to my wife : ' I shall go over to that funeral.' " ' Joshua,' she replied, ' is it wise ? ' " ' It may not be wise,' I answered, ' but I am going, just the same.' " An Abolitionist friend, Mr. Bigelow, a young man like myself, agreed to set out with me. It was our intention to join the funeral party at Vergennes, fifteen or twenty miles from Burlington. But we arrived there too late to connect with their train, and we had to go on all night as best we could through a terrible winter storm. We reached North Elba about nine o'clock in the morning, having had nothing to eat for more than twenty-four hours. " The burial was at one o'clock, and, 342 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES though I had come as an Abolitionist friend and admirer of John Brown, rather than as a clergyman, it happened that I was the only minister there. I was told that it would greatly please the family if I should perform the last rites and make a prayer. This I did. " Wendell Phillips was looking after Mrs. Brown, who, very naturally, quite broke down when the remains had been escorted from the rough cabin house to the grave near the great bowlder beside which Brown had asked to be buried, and as she stood there, sobbing and overcome with her grief, I whispered to her for consolation that sublime text from St. Paul : ' I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day.' 343 OLD NEW EXGLAXD CHUECHES " When I took up the Burlington paper the next day, I found myself attacked with terrible fierceness for using this text over John Brown's body. And this was but the beginning of the veritable perse- cution I experienced. Six of the most prominent families of my parish retired at once from the church, and it looked as if my professional prospects were to be ruined for life. " One of the most cutting snubs I re- ceived was at a social function, a recep- tion to a bride, to which Mrs. Young and I had been invited before the funeral. Quite naturally, when I saw a group of ladies with whom I had been on inti- mate terms, as a popular pastor is on inti- mate terms with the prominent women in his congregation, I stepped up to them and made some pleasant remark or other. " Quick as a flash they turned away 344 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES from me without speaking. At first I hardly knew what to make of it. But I soon saw that the coldness of the assembly was for my benefit, and, as quickly as we could, Mrs. Young and I went home. The treatment we received at that reception was but a hint of what was to follow. Door after door to homes where we had been welcome guests were shut against us. My parishioners cut me on the street. The feeling was that I had disgraced myself and the church and all my fellow ministers by officiating at the funeral of one whom they regarded as a felon and a traitor. It would seem as if a clergyman should be immune wherever he might have per- formed the sacred rites of his holy office, but business interests were imperilled by the slave insurrections, and politically as well as commercially the excitement ran very high. 345 OLD XEW ENGLAND CHURCHES " It was soon necessary for me to leave Burlington. While I was not actually driven out of my parish, I was ostracized socially, and made to feel that, for the good of the church, I must go. I was thirty-six when I left the parish in Bur- lington, and went out into the world, not knowing whither. For a time it seemed as if I must give up the ministry, but eventually I was called to another charge, and since my life has gone on as smoothly as most lives do. My ' persecution,' as people call it, is only interesting (if it has interest) as a side-light upon New England character in the early '60's, and as an example of what may come into the life of an honest minister." 346 THK KKV^:KE^■I> I'lIlLI.irs HUOOKS THE IDEAL MINISTER OF THE AMERICAX GOSPEL /T was Oliver Wendell Holmes who said of Phillips Brooks, '' I believe he is to stand as the ideal minister of the American gospel, — which is the old world gospel, shaped, as all gospels are, by their interpreters, by the influences of our American civilization." This mas- terly interpretation of Brooks's life was made when he was in the height of his career as rector of Trinity Church. To the parish as well as to the minister, there- fore, may well enough be accorded the credit of powerful formative influence in the evolution of latter-day American Christianity. 34:7 OLD NEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES The history of the first edifice called Trinity Church began in 1728. In the April of that year steps were taken toward the formation of a third Episcopal church in Boston " by reason that the chapel (King's Chapel) is full, and no pews to be bought by newcomers." Land was accordingly purchased at the corner of Summer and Hawley Streets, and it was arranged that a church should be built thereon " most conducing to the decent and regular performance of divine service according to the rubrick of the Common Prayer-Book used by the Church of Eng- land as by law established." The move- ment developed slowly, and it was six years before the corner-stone of the pro- posed building was laid, though the church was soon organized under the name of Trinity Church, and services were begun. On April 15, 1734, however, sufficient 348 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES subscriptions having been secured, the cor- ner-stone was laid by the Reverend Roger Price, of King's Chapel, as commissary of the Bishop of London. Then without further delay the building was erected, a wooden structure ninety by sixty feet, and thirty feet high. On August 15, 1735, the house was opened for worship, the Reverend Addington Davenport, brother- in-lay of Peter Faneuil, being chosen first rector. The parish seems to have become speed- ily prosperous. After the death of Mr. Davenport, the Reverend William Hooper, who had been pastor of the West Congre- gational Church (now the West Church Library), was chosen to be the rector. Mr. Hooper had left the Congregationalists be- cause of his desire to enlist in a church of greater breadth than was the West Church of tliat date, and his ordination was made 349 OLD XEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES especially impressive from the fact that he went to England for it. In 1747 he came back in full orders, took charge of the parish immediately, and retained it for twenty years — till, in 1767, he fell sud- denly dead as he was walking in his garden. Trinity Church alone, it is worth noting, stood for the Episcopacy in Boston during the Revolutionary War; it was always open for worship, keeping alight the en- dangered fire of the old faith. To be sure, the rector, Doctor William Walter, fled to Xova Scotia when Boston was evac- uated by the British, but Doctor Samuel Parker, who had been his assistant, nobly filled the place left vacant, and by his calm and dignified behaviour made possi- ble the holding of the hated Church of England service even in those troublous Revolutionary times. Doctor Parker had 350 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES the tact to omit the prayers for the king, concluding that " it would be more for the interest and cause of Episcopacy, and the least evil of the two, to omit a part of the liturgy, than to shut up the church." And this good sense it was which saved the Episcopacy to post-Eevolutionary Bos- tonians. When General Washington was in Boston, in 1789, to pass the Sabbath, he went to Trinity Church in the forenoon to hear Doctor Parker preach. In 1804 this faithful rector was chosen Bishop of Massachusetts. He died the same year. But before his death another ministry, which was destined to be long and influential in the history of Trinity, had begim, for John Sylvester Gardiner, who had been chosen assistant minister in 1792, was then made rector. He served for twenty-five years, in the course of which the Anthology Club, which grew into what 351 OLD XEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES is now the Boston Athenaeum, was organ- ized in his home. He was succeeded by Doctor Doane. But the time had come when the old church building, which had stood almost a hundred years, no longer satisfied the people. The proprietors, therefore, voted, in 1828, to take down the venerable struc- ture and to build a new one. This second church, known to-day as Old Trinity, was finally consecrated by Bishop Griswold, November 11, 1829. Doctor Hopkins, Doctor Wainright, Doctor Watson, Bishop Clark, Doctor John Cotton Smith, Doctor Mercer, Doctor Potter (now Bishop Potter, of !N'ew York), and Bishop Eastman, were the succeeding rectors who antedated Phil- lips Brooks as ministers here. It was on Sunday, October 31, 1869, that America's greatest preacher began his ministry in Boston. The new rector 352 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES brought with him from Philadelphia, where he had been serving under Doctor Vinton, tremendous enthusiasm for his work, and very soon Trinity Church was crowded to the doors by those who came from far and near to " hear Phillips Brooks preach." The new rector was but thirty-three, a bachelor, and in the height of that manly beauty which men, as well as women, have ever so greatly admired. From the first, of course, the young ladies of old Trinity Church made the minister very welcome to their homes, as is the fashion of young ladies toward ministers. But neither then nor at any future time was the name of Phillips Brooks linked with that of any woman. To be sure, vague rumours of a romance left behind in Philadelphia fol- lowed him throughout his life, and helped those who needed help to account for his 853 OLD X£W EXGLAXD CHURCHES continued celibacy. The fact patent to all, however, was that he gave always to Trinity Church the single-hearted devotion another might have given to a wife. From the beginning of his rectorate Boston seemed in a fair way to go mad over the young preacher. Soon Trinity Church had exceeding diflBculty in looking after the throngs that came. The sexton, Mr, Dillon, strove in vain to meet an emer- gency so wholly unlike anything he had hitherto known in his long administration. He tried to sort the people who presented themselves for admission. " Dillon once came to me in the vestry-room," said Mr. Brooks, in speaking of the matter to a friend, " to tell me of a method he had devised to reduce the numbers who sought admittance to the church. ' When a young man and a young woman come together, I separate them,' he explained, and he 354 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES expected me to approve the fiendish plan!" The journalists of the day found this new preacher exceedingly good " copy." One of them writes as follows of a Sunday service : " The old building seems the fit- ting place of worship for the solid men of Boston. There is an air of ancient re- spectability about it. . . . The deep, roomy pews, thoughtfully padded, seem adjusted for sleeping, and though seven can sit comfortably in them, if you humbly ask for the fifth seat in some of them, be- ware of the lofty look and high-bred scorn which seems to say, ' Are not the galleries free to negro servants and strangers? ... I shall have to let you in, I suppose. Take that prayer-book and keep quiet; service has begun. Don't you see Mr. Brooks ? ' " Yes, we do see the Reverend Phillips 355 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHUKCHES Brooks, a tall, stout, powerfully built man, with smooth, boyish face and very near- sighted eyes, which, nevertheless, by the help of glasses, seem to search you out in whatever dark corner you may be hidden. He is reading the service with a thin voice and rapid, breathless, almost stuttering de- livery, and yet with a certain impulsive and pleading earnestness that carries even Congregationalists onto their knees, and takes them to the throne of grace." The young people, especially of the more cultivated class, ran after Mr. Brooks as no Boston minister before or since has ever been run after. Without being able to analyze it, all his hearers felt the man's magnetism. Very soon the preacher rose to the place of foremost citizen of Boston, his native town. His presence at every civic solemnity or function seemed indis- pensable to its completeness. Often the 356 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHUHCHES boy in the man was greatly amused at the deference paid to him ; and often he would drop, almost perforce, from the pedestal upon which adoring Bostonians had placed him. It is related that in February, 1871, when he was present at the meeting in Music Hall, which ultimately resulted in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, he spoke with singular ingenuousness of what he had gained as a boy in the Boston Latin School from the old room which contained the wonderful casts of the Laocoon and Apollo, and this simple speech doubtless helped very greatly in the erection of the fine building in Copley Square. One of Mr. Brooks's boyhood ideals had been to be a famous lecturer. But now that he was a man he would have none of any profession except the preacher's. Mr. Redpath, of the famous New England Lyceum, wished to conduct a lecture course 357 OLD NEW EXGLAXD CHURCHES for him as much as the editor of the Atlantic Monthly wished to make him a literary man. But both invitations he de- clined. Whatever he did from the time of his coming to Boston he did as a preacher. One of his letters speaks very beauti- fully of his joy in this work: " The old round of parish duties which I have gone to afresh every autumn for twelve years has opened again, and I have been rather surprised at myself to find that I take it up with just as much interest as ever, I suppose that other men feel it of their occupations, but I can hardly imagine that any other profession can be as interesting as mine. I am more and more glad I am a parson." (September 25, 1871.) Mr. Brooks's occasional comments on Boston institutions were very amusing. Under date May 30, 1872, he writes: "I 358 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES am getting up a sermon for the Ancient and Honourable Artillery Company, one of the queer old Puritan organizations before which every Boston minister preaches sometime in his career, and is not thoroughly initiated without." At the time of the Peace Jubilee, he writes : " It is a terrible week in Boston. The Jubilee is going on with flash and bang all the time. It's wonderful what a row this Jubilee is making. I like to see a crowd, and expect to enjoy this very much, but it is all very funny and sensational — and the primness and classicism of Boston turns up its stiff nose at it." When the new rector first came to Bos- ton, he took rooms at 34 Mt. Vernon Street, but because of scanty sunlight he soon transferred himself to the Hotel Kempton, on Berkeley Street, where he entertained an increasing host of friends. S59 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES For some time before this (1872) there had been thought of a new and larger Trinity. Under date of June 11th we find the preacher writing: "We have chosen Richardson, of New York, for our church architect — the best of all competi- tors by all means. He will give us some- thing strong and good." So when the church on Summer Street was well-nigh destroyed in the Boston fire, the catastro- phe was hardly so appalling as it would otherwise have been. But to Trinity's rector it was none the less a good deal of a blow, as we see from his letters of that period : " The fire began about eight o'clock Saturday evening," he wrote to a friend, November 12, 1872, " and hour after hour it went on growing worse and worse. Street after street went like paper. There were sights so splendid and awful as I never dreamed of, and now the desola- 360 OLD TRINITY CHURCH, SUMMER STREET, BOSTON, AFTER THE GREAT BOSTON FIRE OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES tion is bewildering. There was hard work enough to do all night, and though much was lost, something was saved. Old Trinity seemed safe all night, but toward morning the fire swept into her rear, and there was no chance. She went at four in the morn- ing. I saw her well afire, inside and out, carried off some books and robes, and left her. She went majestically, and her great tower stands now as solid as ever, a most picturesque and stately ruin. She died in dignity. I did not know how much I liked the great gloomy old thing till I saw her windows bursting and the flame running along the old high pews. " I feel that it was better for the church to go so than to be torn down stone by stone. Of course, our immediate incon- venience is great, and we shall live in much discomfort for the next two years. We have engaged the Lowell Institute, a lec- 361 OLD XEW ENGLAND CHURCHES ture-hall that seats a thousand people, and shall begin service there next Sunday." And according to the journals of the day his sermon in Huntington Hall the follow- ing Sabbath was full of an onward and upward sweep, of life through death — the lesson of the fire. The erection of the new Trinity Church was a matter very near Brooks's heart. During his next few summer vacations abroad his thoughts hovered constantly over the work that was to result in the noble edifice on Copley Square with which his name must be forever linked. To Mr. Robert Treat Paine, one of his letters about this time confides his intense interest in the work: "TouEs, France, Aug. 4, 1874. " Dear Bob : — And how's the new church ? I dreamed of it when I wrote 362 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES to you from London, and now I dream of it again, slowly rising, course on course. I shouldn't wonder if the robing-room were done up to the eaves, but I would give much to step out of the hotel and look in the gorgeous moonlight at that blessed lot on the Back Bay." And again, " How many things I have coveted for the new church. There was a big mosaic at Salviati's that would glorify our chapel." It is probable that the supreme beauty of Trinity Church is due very largely to this constant thought of its rector con- cerning it. Mr. Brooks was not an archi- tect, but he had travelled much and made himself very familiar with historic churches in the countries he had visited. His desire to combine with whatever should have place in a Protestant church 363 OLD NEW ENGLAA^D CHURCHES all that was of human and enduring sig- nificance in the earlier methods of Chris- tian architecture resulted in the imposing structure that marks the highest attain- ment of American church architecture. In- side as well as out the endeavour was to secure the best our country could produce. Decorated by artists, as distinguished from artisans, the church was indeed a noble whole when, February 9, 1877, it was consecrated by the Bishop of the Diocese. In a letter to Mr. Paine written the day after the consecration, Mr. Brooks ex- pressed with exquisite tenderness his feel- ing for the new Trinity : ''I wish I could tell you, my dear Bob, something of what yesterday was to me, and of how my deep gratitude and love to you mingled with the feeling of every hour. May God bless you, is all that I can say. The church would not be standing there, the beautiful 364' OLD NEW EI^GLAND CHURCHES and stately thing that it is, except for your tireless devotion. . . . Many, many happy years are before us if God wills, and when we leave the great dear thing to those that come after us, we shall be near one another, I am sure, in the better life. . . . P. B." The rector of the new church had now returned to Boston to live in a fashion befitting his station. His father and mother had given up their house on Han- cock Street, and had gone to North An- dover to reside in the old Phillips home- stead, where they had been married fifty- four years before. Their son had tried hard to persuade them to stay with him, but they preferred their own home, and he himself now set up housekeeping at 175 Marlborough Street, taking into his employment the servants who had lived with his mother. The next summer we find him at a house 365 OLD IS^EW ENGLAIsTD CHURCHES in Hingham, from which quiet little town he goes to Boston every Sunday to preach. '' I never had such a profoundly quiet summer as I am having now," he writes to a friend. " I am here in a queer little cottage on an obscure back bay of Boston harbour, where there is nothing to do, or, at least, where I do nothing, no sailing, no fishing, no riding, no walking. Noth- ing in the world but plenty of books and time and tobacco." Phillips Brooks's first call to a bishopric came when he was fifty. His former home, Philadelphia, then did its best to win him back in this higher capacity, but he would not listen to the plea. His love for Boston seems indeed to have so grown with his growth that the thought of leaving the place where the strong work of his young manhood had been put in was positively painful to him. From California he writes 366 OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES Mr. Paine, under date of June 1, 1886: "... I have had a lot of correspondence about that episcopate in Pennsylvania. There was no moment when I thought of going. How could I, so long as I dared to believe that you all still wanted me to stay in Boston ? Will you tell me honestly and truly and like a friend when you think it is best for me to go away ? " Ere long, however, came the call to be Bishop of Massachusetts, a call not to be gainsaid. All the important newspapers had for a long time been naming Mr. Brooks in this capacity, and again and again it was said that only his election could put the Epis- copal Church where it should be in New England life. The convention met on the twenty-ninth of April. Mr. Brooks was not present, but the moment the vote had been taken there was a rush from the hall where the con- 367 OLD Ts^EW EXGLAXD CHUECHES vention was sitting to the study of the Trinity Church rectory, on Clarendon Street, to tell him the news. He heard it, however, without elation. For he realized that this was the beginning of the end. His letters no longer have the joyous note of boyishness. Being a bishop seems from the first to have weighed upon his spirits. Meanwhile, however, all the world sent congratulations; he was hailed as bishop, not only of the Protestant Episcopal Church, but of Massachusetts. A letter from James Kussell Lowell shows well the feeling: "Dear Doctoe Beooks: — Though I do not belong to the flock which will be guided by your crook, I cannot help writing a line to say how proud I am of our bishop. Faithfully yours, " J. E. Lowell." 368 t a a 'i 2 >5 « i OLD NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES That the newly chosen bishop looked forward with no little dread to the new life one soon sees in his letters. To Mr, Paine he writes from North Andover, August 17, 1891: "My dear Bob Paine : — There are six weeks before the awful day comes which sends me bishoping to the far confines of the State. I dread the pageant of that day, but it will soon be over." And to Mr. Newton, rector of the church at Pittsfield : "It will break the shock a little to have one of my earliest visits to your church, and will let me feel as if I had not wholly said good-bye to the old life. You don't know how I cling to it." The consecration of Bishop Brooks, October 14, 1891, was a State and civic as well as an ecclesiastical event. Long before the hour of service Copley Square was crowded with people anxious to share 369 OLD NEW EXGLAJs^D CHURCHES in some measure in the great affair. Only on the sad day of his funeral, a little over two years later, did a larger throng ever gather in that Boston square. The end came quickly. A short two years of full life as Bishop of Massachu- setts, and then a cold, a brief illness, and the passing of his spirit. His last public address was at the Woodland Park Hotel, Newton, on the occasion of a choir festival. Five days after he was dead. The funeral was held, of course, in the Trinity he had helped to build and had loved as few men love anything. From eight o'clock people of all classes thronged the church to look for the last time upon his peaceful face. The whole city was in mourning. The stock exchange and all the shops were closed. When the service within the church was over another was said in the square for the vast crowd of people who com- 370 OLD NEW ENGLATs^D CHUKCHES pletely filled the open space. Han'^ard men then bore the body to the hearse, and the procession to Mt. Auburn by way of the bishop's Alma Mater began. Of memorials to Massachusetts's bishop there are many in and about Boston, but the recent announcement that the great St. Gaudens statue of the preacher is to be architecturally connected with Trinity Church proves that this $100,000 statue, the funds for which were given by all the people of the country, will be his final and supreme memorial. And fittingly. For above and beyond all the other things that Phillips Brooks was, he was rector of Trinity, — Preacher to the People in that house of God he had in so true and high a sense builded for Boston. THE END. 371 INDEX Adams, Abigail, 167, 206. Adams, John, 204, 206, 274. Adams, John Quincy, 175, 182, 201, 206. Allen, A. V. G., ix. Anbury, Ensign, 237. Ancient and Honourable Artillery Company, 359. Anthology Club, 351. Appleton, Doctor, 230. Apthorp, Charles, 213. Apthorp, East, 210, 212, 213, 221, 223, 224, 225. Apthorp. James, 212. Atkinson. Col. Theodore, 84, 88. Atlantic Monthly, 358. Baldwin, Ruth. 24. Barlow. Joel. 23, 25, 26, 34, 38. Batchelder, Samuel P., 208. Bay Psalm Book. 138, 160. Bearcroft, Rev. Doctor, 209. Bellanger, 313. Berkeley, Bishop, 215. Bernard, Sir Francis, 216, 226. Bigelow, Mr., 342. '• Bishop's Palace," 220, 227, 229. Blshop.stoke, England, 107. Blake Bell Company, 94. Bliss. Julia, 303. Borland, John, 220. Boston Athenaeum, 352. Boston Chrnntcle, 33. Bowdoln College, 325. Bradstreet. Governor, 108. Brnintree. 170. 205. Brattle organ, 95. Brattle, Thomas, 95, 373 INDEX Brewster. Charles, 86. 89. Bristol, The Bishop of, 222. Brooks, Phillips, .347. Brown, John. 324, 327, 331, 335, 339. Brown, Lieut. Richard, 236, 237. Brown, Mrs. John, 343. Brown, Oliver, 329. Brown, Salmon. 334. Browne, Rev. Arthur, 79, 82, 83, 86, 87, 97. Buckminster, Rev. Joseph, 17, 19, 21, 22. 25, 39. 40. Hunkers Hill. 1S6. Burgoyne, 229, 235. Burlington. Vt., 323, 326, 346. Burns, Anthony, 326. Burr, Rev. Aaron, 71. Burr, Aaron, 19, 44. 74, 75. Burroughs, Dr. Charles, 95. Byles, Rev. Mather. 243, 245, 249, 255. Byles, Mather, Jr., 251. Byles, The Misses, 252. Calicott, Richard. 142. Caner, Doctor, 208. Carroll, Bishop. 275. Channing, Doctor, 280. Charlestown. Va., 340. Cheekily, 128. Chester. Capt. John, 229. Cheverus. Bishop. 261. 264. 274, 276, 279. 2S2, 291. Christ Church, Boston. 214, 251. Christ Church, Braintree. 214. Christ Church. Cambridge, 208, 242. Chromotype, 313. Church. Doctor, 192. Clark, Bishop, 352. Concord. Mass.. 60. Coolidge. Templeman. 82. Court of St. James. 204. Coventry Hall, 107. Cromwell, 157. Custis. Mrs.. 000. Dall, Mrs. Caroline H., 26. 27, 28, 29, 39. Damariscotta Mills. 260. D'Angoulfime, Duchess. 294. Dante, 46, 54. Danvers, 29, 30, 33. Davenport, Rev. Addington, 349. Deerfield, Mass., 283. Dennlson, Mrs., 113. Doane, Doctor, 352. Dwight. President, 23. IDastman, Bishop. 352. East Pepperell, Mass.. 55, 374t IXDEX East Windsor, Conn., 46, 56. Edwards. Esther, 58. 62, 70, 75. 76. Edwards, Rev. Jonathan, 20, 45, 70, 76, 77. Edwards, Pierrepont, 19, 36, 44. Eliot, John, 130, 131, 133, 150, 166. Ely, Deacon Nathaniel, 286, 288, 291, 301. Emerson, Rev. Joseph, 55. Emigrant Aid Company, 330. Evans, Elizabeth E., 316. Fagnanl, Chevalier, 317. Fairfield, Conn., 72. Faneuil, Peter. 349. Fiske, Samuel, 62. Fletcher, Alice, 139. Foster, Mrs. Hannah, 13. Francis, Converse, 150. Franklin, Doctor, 191, 248, 252. Frederick the Great, 337. Gardiner, John Sylvester, 351. Gates, Mrs., 232. Genet, Citizen, 317. Glbbs, Mrs., 127. Grafton, James, 162. " Great Awakening " at Northampton, 51. 54. Green Bay, Wisconsin. 295, 304, 308, 310. Griswold, i?ishop, 352. Groton, Mass., 57. Hale. Rev. Enoch. 302. Hanson. Rev. John H.. 294. 313, 321. Harper's Ferry, 334, 336, 339. Harrison. Peter. 215. Hartford. 12, 14, 16, 30 ; Athenaeum, 35 ; Dancing Assembly. 16. Hawthorne, 12, 31, 103. Higginson. T. W., 335. Hill, Mrs. Henry. 28. 30. Hilton. Martha. 80. 81, 82. Hoar, Doctor, 108. Hogansburg, N. Y.. 321. Hollis Street Church, 243. Hollis Street Theatre, 243. Holmes. Oliver Wendell, 347. Holy Cross Cathedral, 261. Hooper, Rev. Wm., 349. Hopkins. Doctor. 352. Hoppin, Rev. Nicholas, 240. Hovey, Rev. Henry B., 88. Howe, Rev. Joseph, 16, 28. Huen-Dubourg, J., 270. Hull, Captain John, 102, 106. Hull, Hannah, 108, 111. Hutchinson, Governor, 100, 226. 375 II^DEX Hutchinson, Judge Foster, 213. Hutchinson, Mrs., 137. Inman, Ralph, 212. Jardin, Madame de, 295. Jolnville, Prince de, 304, 307, 310, 315. Kansas-Nebraska Bill, 329. Kllllngly, Conn., 28, 29. King William III., 214. King's Chapel, 96, 208, 215, 348. Kingston, N. H., 228. Kittery, Me., 21, 9:1 Lafayette, General, 26. Lake, Bishop, 14. Lancaster, Mass., 57. Laud, Archbishop, 132. Lawrence, 331. Lee, Col. Robert, 339. Lee, Joseph, 212. 230. Leonard, Rev. Mr., 235. Longfellow, 81. Longmeadow, 283. Louis XVL, 272, 308, 310, 314. Louis XVI L, 28.^>. 293, 294, 310, 314. Louis XVIII., 277, 294. Loulsburg Expedition, 283. Lowell, James Russell, 368. Lyon, The good ship, 132. Mackinac, 306. Marie Antoinette, 296. Mason. Col. John, 89. Mather, Cotton, 131, 143. Matignon. Abb6, 264, 276. Mayhew, Dr. Jonathan, 221, 223. Mercer. Doctor, 352. Mico. Madam, 122. Moffatt. Miss, 90. Montauban, 277. Mountford, Ann, 134. Mt. Auburn, 371. Muller, M., portrait painter, 317. Nasiug, 130. Natlck, 154, 158. Newbury. 107. New Haven, 24. New London,' Conn., 251. Newport, R. I., 215. Newton, Rev. Mr., 369. Nonantum, 143, 151, 152. North Church. Portsmouth. N. H., 21. Northampton, Mass., 49, 50. North Elba, 328, 329, 333. 342. Norton, Rev. Jobo, 100, 169. 376 INDEX Norwich, Conn., 16. Ogden, Mr., 91. Ogden, Thomas, 304. Old South Meeting-House, 99. Old Trinity, 352, 361. Oliver, General, 280. Oliver, Thomas, 212, 227. Osawatomie, 334. Paine, Robert Treat, 362, 364, 367, 369. Palfrey, Col. Wm., 230, 231. Parker, Rev. Dr., 238, 350. Parkman, Francis, 325. Peabody burying-ground, 12, 32, 42. Peace Jubilee, 359. Pemberton, Rev. Ebenezer, 110. Pepperell, Sir William, 60, 93. Peterboro, N. Y., 334. Phillips, Wendell, 343. Phips, David, 212. Pierpont, Rev. John, 256. Pierrepont, Sarah, 44. Pope, 249. Portsmouth, N. H., 21. Pottawatomie Creek, 331. Potter, Bishop, 352. Price, Rev. Roger, 349. Princeton, 75. Prynne, Hester, 31. Putnam, General, 229. Putnam's Magazine, 294, 315. Quincy Daughters of the Revolution, 170. Quincy Historical Society, 174. Quincy, Mrs. John, 169. Queen Caroline, 92. Queen's Chapel, 87. 89. 91. Redpath Lecture Bureau, 357. Revere. Paul, 93. Richardson, architect, 360. Richardson, 13. " Romance of Old New England Rooftrees," Ix., 81, 101, 137, 192, 215, 235, 283. Rousselet, Nicholas, 89. Rutland, Mass., 18. Sanborn, Prank, 328, 3.34. " Sandford, Major," 36. Saratoga, 229. " Scarlet Letter," 12. Second Church, Hartford, Conn., 14, 17. Serjeant, Rev. Winwood. 225, 226, 227, 228. Sewall, Judge Samuel, 101. Sewall, Rev. Joseph, 107, 110, 114, 243. Smith, Gerrltt, 334. 577 INDEX Smith, Dr. John Cotton. 352. Smith, Kev. William, 173, 206. Springfield. Mass.. 283. St. Andrew's Church, Scituate, 214. St. Gaudens. 371. St. John's Churth. Portsmouth, N. H., 79. 93, 95. St. Michael's Church, Marblehead, 214. St. Patrick's Church. 2«0. St. Paul's Church. Newburyport, 96, 214. St. Peter's Church. Salem. 214. St. Thomas's Church. Taunton. 214. Stael. Madame de, 150. Stanley, Dean, 130. Stanley, William, 17. Stavers Inn, 81. Stevens. Miss. 21. Stocicbridge, 70. 71. Stoddard, Rev. Solomon, 49. Storrs, Rev. Richard S., 285. 289. Stuart. Lieut. J. E. B.. 339. Sullivan, (ieneral, 91. Symmes, Thomas. 326. Temple, Robert, 212. " The Coquette," 13, 37. "The Lost Prince," 316. " The Romance of the Association," 26. Tieonderoga, 296. Tilly. Mrs.. 113. Trinity Church, Boston, 93, 214, 238. 348, 350. Trinity Church. Newport, R. I., 215. Trinity College, Dublin, 80. Trumbull. 15. Vassal. John. 212. 227. Vassal, Henry, 212. Vergennes. 342. Vinton, Doctor, 353. Waban, 145, 152. Wadsworth, Jeremiah. 27. Wainwright, Doctor, 352. Walter. Dr. Wm.. 350. W'arren. Doctor. 186, 189. W'ashington. Col. Lewis. 337. Washington. General, 91, 230, 231, 234, 337, 351. Watson. Doctor, 352. Wentworth. Gov. Benning. 80. 81. Wentworth. John, 85. West Congregational Church. Boston, 349. Westhampton. Mass.. 302. Wethersfleld, Conn., 55. Weymouth. 167. Whipple. Bishop. 163. 378 INDEX Whitman, Elizabeth (Eliza Wharton), 11, 13, 14, 15, 18, 25, 26, 28. 40, 42. Whitman, Rev. Elnathan, 14. Wibard, Parson, 174. Willard, Colonel, of Lancaster, Mass., 57. Williams, Rev. Eleazar (Dauphin), x., 285, 288, 295, 298, 313, 315, 319. Williams. Eunice, 284, 286. Williams, John, 287, 300. Williams, Rev. Stephen, 283, 285. Williams, Thomas, 287, 290, 296, 297, 300. Winslow, 138, 159. Winthrop. Governor. 132. Winthrop, Madame. 115, 116, 121, 123, 126. Woodland Park Hotel. 370. Woodstock. 215. Wren, Sir Christopher, 215. Yale College, 15. 18. 46, 55. Young, Rev. Joshua, 323, 340. 379 p n,', il THE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW. UC SOUTHtRN RIGIONAL LIBRARY I AGILITY AA 000 907 043 4