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 iLllViiLlI
 
 Timothy Flint 
 
 Pioneer, Missionary, Author, Editor 
 
 1780-1840 
 
 The story of his life among the Pioneers and Fron- 
 tiersmen in the Ohio and Mississippi Valley 
 and in New England and the South 
 
 By 
 
 JOHN ERVIN KIRKPATRICK, ph.d., hartford 
 
 CLEVELAND, OHIO 
 
 THE ARTHUR H. CLARK COMPANY 
 
 I q I I 
 
 92T80
 
 COPYRIGHT, 191 1, BY 
 
 JOHN ERVIN KIRKPATRICK
 
 F 
 
 To My Wife 
 
 in acknowledgment of her help and inspiration 
 
 in the preparation of this volume
 
 ■^ 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 
 Preface 
 
 Introduction 
 
 I Youth and Education .... 
 
 II The early Ministry in New England . 
 fj III The Mission to the Far West 
 
 V IV Itinerating in the Ohio Valley 
 VVf* V The Journey down the Mississippi and So 
 jouRN IN St. Louis .... 
 
 VI St. Charles and surrounding Regions . 
 
 VII On the Great River and the Arkansas 
 
 VIII Preaching and Farming in Missouri 
 
 IX Florida and New Orleans 
 
 X The Home on the Red River 
 
 XI A NEW Lease of Life .... 
 
 XII Literary Work in Cincinnati 
 
 XIII New England and New York 
 
 XIV Travels in Foreign Countries 
 
 XV Louisiana and the last Days 
 
 XVI Literary Traits and Estimates 
 
 XVII Personal and Religious Characteristics 
 Appendix A -Itinerary of Timothy Flint 
 Appendix B - Flint's Letter of Resignation to the Mis- 
 sionary Society of Connecticut .... 
 
 Appendix C - Micah P. Flint's "Lines, on Passing the 
 Grave of my Sister" ...... 
 
 Appendix D - The Family Prayer of Timothy Flint 
 Appendix E - The Being of a God 
 
 Bibliography 
 
 Index 
 
 1 
 
 3 
 
 15 
 17 
 21 
 
 35 
 51 
 65 
 
 83 
 
 lOI 
 
 117 
 
 131 
 149 
 
 163 
 173 
 185 
 203 
 217 
 229 
 249 
 267 
 289 
 
 291 
 
 297 
 301 
 302 
 305 
 319
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 The Flint Homestead, Alexandria, Louisiana Frontispiece 
 
 Built by Emeline Flint Thomas, about 1840 
 
 Birthplace of Timothy Flint, North Reading, 
 
 Massachusetts 23 
 
 Burned about 1900 
 
 The Parsonage at Lunenburg, Massachusetts . 37 
 
 Slightly altered in recent years 
 
 Home of General Harrison, North Bend, Ohio . 73 
 
 From the original oil-painting 
 
 Presbyterian Church, St. Charles, Missouri . 143 
 
 Built about 1819 
 
 Timothy Flint's Monument, Harmony Grove Cem- 
 etery, Salem, Massachusetts .... 245
 
 He painted on his glowing page, 
 
 The peerless valle)' of the West ; 
 That shall in every coming age, 
 
 His genius and his toil attest. 
 
 But wouldst thou, gentle pilgrim, know 
 What worth, what love, endeared the man? 
 
 This the lone hearts that miss him, show 
 Better than storied marble can. 
 
 — James Flint, d.d.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 A large amount of material and that for a period for 
 this study, where I had almost nothing else, came from 
 Mr. Flint's grandchildren, Mrs. Emeline Flint Seip 
 of Alexandria, Louisiana, and James Timothy Flint 
 of Nashville, Tennessee. Family letters, photographs, 
 newspapers and traditions -everything which could 
 in any way aid me - have been freely and gladly put at 
 my disposal. With them I have shared the pain in 
 thinking of the treasures that v^ere destroyed by the 
 Union army in Alexandria, which burned the library 
 of James Timothy Flint Sr. This was a very large 
 and rare collection of books that was hardly equaled 
 by any private collection in the south. It contained 
 also most of Timothy Flint's collection of books and 
 some of the manuscripts which he left at the time of his 
 death. A more recent and unavoidable accident, the 
 Galveston flood of 1900, destroyed a number of the 
 books and papers of Timothy Flint which were in the 
 possession of his grandchildren. The only portrait 
 of Mr. Flint, which is known to have been in existence, 
 was destroyed at that time. 
 
 I am under special obligations to the librarians of 
 Hartford Theological Seminary, Yale University, and 
 Harvard University for their aid in procuring books 
 and manuscripts which could not have been obtained 
 otherwise. The Essex Institute at Salem, the Amer-
 
 i6 PREFACE 
 
 ican Antiquarian Society of Worcester, the Boston 
 Public Library, and the Congregational Libraries of 
 Hartford, Connecticut, and Boston, I have found rich 
 and generous with their manuscript collections. The 
 librarians of Reading, North Reading, and Lunen- 
 burg, Massachusetts, the local historians in these 
 places, and indeed in almost every place that I have 
 had occasion to visit or address have been most willing 
 and generous in the aid they have given me in my 
 researches. 
 
 I desire also to express my obligations to Professor 
 Samuel Simpson, PH.D., of Hartford Theological 
 Seminary for valuable suggestions after reading my 
 manuscript, and to the Robert Clarke Company for 
 
 / permission to use material from W. H. Venable's Lit- 
 
 ' erary Beginnings in the Ohio Fa/ley. 
 
 John E. Kirkpatrick. 
 Hartford, Connecticut, May i, 1908.
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 A very helpful introduction to the study of our 
 frontier in the early national periods and to the life and 
 institutions of our great west may be gained from an 
 acquaintance with the ministers, teachers, and writers 
 of those regions and times. As the pioneer ministers 
 were usually teachers, and often writers as well, they 
 may be of especial importance. Indeed they were 
 men who touched the simple and plastic society very 
 widely and vitally and they turned their hands to all 
 kinds of service. Just as in former ages and in early 
 stages of society the men of the religious orders were 
 the natural leaders so it proved to be in the march of 
 American civilization beyond the AUeghanies. Such 
 a man was Timothy Flint, pioneer, missionary, 
 teacher, author. First he served in New England, 
 his native land. For the major portion of his active 
 years he became a resident of several places in the 
 Ohio and Mississippi Valleys. His residence in these 
 regions and his acquaintance with them was unusually 
 extended and intimate. To speak of him only as a 
 minister it seems fair to say that there was no more 
 significant man who crossed into the great western 
 valleys in the first quarter of the nineteenth century or 
 who lived there, than Timothy Flint. 
 
 Among the "itinerants," the clerical order largely 
 peculiar to the Methodists, having many of the feat-
 
 i8 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 ures of the preaching orders of the Middle Ages, and 
 so marvelously adapted to the crude and critical con- 
 ditions of the frontier society, none was more striking 
 or t\'pical than Peter Cartwright. Among the strict 
 Calvinists, represented most purely by the Baptist 
 bodies, the most significant man was John Mason 
 Peck. Among the Arminianized Presbyterians, was 
 Finis Ewing as leader of the Cumberland Presbytery. 
 Corresponding to William EUery Channing in New 
 England, was Alexander Campbell in the wTSt, anx- 
 ious to revise the Calvinistic scheme, or seeking rather 
 to substitute for it another system founded more nearly 
 as he thought upon the Bible. Representing the me- 
 diating and eclectic school of Calvinism in the west 
 was Timothy Flint. He was almost alone in his theolo- 
 gy, and was barely tolerated by the Old School Pres- 
 byterians. With Lyman Beecher, the New School 
 Presbyterians, or the Congregationalists, all of whom 
 came later into the west, Timothy Flint might have 
 been quite at home. 
 
 While in his w^estern missionary work Mr. Flint 
 was a Presbyterian. In New" England he had re- 
 mained w^ith the orthodox, though taking little part in 
 ecclesiastical afifairs. In later life he found his spir- 
 itual affinities, both w^est and east among the Unita- 
 rians, in which body most of his classmates and many of 
 his early ministerial brethren were finally numbered. 
 Yet it is quite clear that Flint never counted himself 
 as a Unitarian, nor was he willing to be counted as 
 such. 
 
 Among all the western ministers and missionaries of 
 the period Timothy Flint was the one who, while a
 
 INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 part of the life, was best able to rise above it and view 
 it with a critical yet kindly eye. Added to this power 
 was the ability and will to record what he saw, as did 
 none among his contemporaries. There were plenty 
 of journals, memoirs, and missionary reports from 
 these early ministers. There were literar}'' produc- 
 tions of all kinds, but no other missionary of that pe- 
 riod can compare with him, judged by historical and 
 literar}' standards. Indeed as a historian and littera- 
 teur, Mr. Flint had no superior among the men who 
 lived with him the pioneer life, and who rose far 
 enough above the discouragements of the age to make 
 a literary beginning in the great middle west. He 
 may at least be compared -not altogether unfavor- 
 ably- in fiction, history, and poetry, with our leading 
 American writers in the first third of the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 There is also a magnetism and charm in the char- 
 acter of Mr. Flint which strongly attracts all who 
 come into touch with him through his writings. 
 
 He should also be recognized because of the message 
 which he has for our day. His message is: against 
 sectarianism, the dominance of creed, against dema- 
 gogism in politics, commercial absorption and greed, 
 against jingoism and war. His is a plea for the opti- 
 mistic outlook upon the future of mankind on the 
 earth and in the world beyond. 
 
 Not three quarters of a century have passed since 
 Timothy Flint died. But he is remembered only by 
 relatives, some of the older people in the several 
 places where he lived, and by a few scholars who deal 
 with the records of his times. At Yale University I
 
 20 INTRODUCTION 
 
 find but one man among several professors in the 
 English and historical departments who know any- 
 thing of his life or work. I shall count it time well 
 employed and work well repaid if this study helps to 
 rescue the memory of Timothy Flint from the obliv- 
 ion that it so little deserves and which the world can 
 so ill aftord.
 
 I. YOUTH AND EDUCATION 
 
 On a Lord's day, the twenty-third of July, 1780, and 
 on the twelfth day after his birth, a child was carried 
 to the meeting house of the North Parish, Reading, 
 Massachusetts, that he might be given the ancient rite 
 of baptism/ The name given him was Timothy. 
 His parents were William and Martha Kimball 
 Flint. The child was born in a house standing on a 
 slight hill on the south of the Ipswich River valley 
 and a half mile south of the meeting house hill on the 
 opposite side of the river. The farm where he was 
 born was for one hundred, twenty-five years the home 
 of the Flints. It continued so until the death of 
 Timothy's father in 1828. The house where he was 
 born stood until the early years of the present century 
 when it was burned. William Flint," the father of 
 Timothy, was the son of a William,^ and the grandson 
 of a William. 
 
 This first William,^ in North Reading, had inher- 
 ited part of his father's homestead. His father, 
 Thomas, had settled about 1700 on what was, as has 
 
 ^ North Reading Parish Records. Mr. Flint's birth date is not given in 
 these records but July n is the accepted date and is probably correct. 
 
 - Born 1737, died 1828. Different dates are given in the parish records 
 for William Flint's birth and death. I have used the most probable ones. 
 These dates and those of the next three notes are from the parish records 
 and the Flint Genealogies. 
 
 ^ Born 1714, died 1790. 
 
 * Born 1685, died 1736.
 
 22 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 been said, the Flint homestead for more than a cen- 
 tury. This Thomas ' was born in Salem, Massachu- 
 setts, where his father William had settled about 1638, 
 coming from England where he was born, 1603, and 
 dying in Salem, 1672. The William Flint who came 
 from England owned a farm in a section now a part of 
 Salem. The narrow and crooked street, called Flint 
 Street, which runs through the western part of this 
 queer old town w'ith its three story houses, is commonly 
 said to date back to the Flint Farm. Thomas Flint 
 had nine children, all born in Salem, so that it must 
 have been rather late in his life that he settled at North 
 Reading. His second son, named Timothy, was born 
 in 1680, just one hundred years earlier than the man 
 in whom we are interested. The fact that this name 
 is very uncommon in the Flint annals, and the even 
 date suggest the probability that our Timothy was 
 named for this great uncle.^ 
 
 The Flints were not only early in the Reading set- 
 tlement but they have also had from the first, a part in 
 the Second or North Parish Church. Four of their 
 names appear in the first list of members, 1720. It is 
 the common saying in North Reading that from that 
 time until the present the old, and the succeeding 
 Trinitarian or orthodox, church has not been without 
 a Flint among its deacons." 
 
 ^ Born 1644 or 1645, died 1721. 
 
 ^ For full account, see the "Flint Farail)'," in Mrs. Harriet R. Cooke's 
 Dri'ver Family, 291-307. 
 
 ' See North Reading Union Congregational Church Manual. 
 
 In the early days of this parish it was known as the "North Precinct 
 Congregation." The present church, the Union Congregational, has in- 
 herited the parish records but its name does not go back of 1836. See notes 
 17 and 18.
 
 Birthplace of Timothy Flint, North Read- 
 ing, Massachusetts 
 
 Burned about 1900
 
 YOUTH AND EDUCATION 25 
 
 The Timothy of our story was the fifth child in a 
 family of nine. Judging by his later painful expe- 
 riences in farming it would seem that he was called 
 upon for very little work on his father's farm. He 
 was not physically strong and was early sent to school. 
 
 From his familiarity with Salem and the sea, and 
 from a number of references made in his later life, to 
 Doctor Prince, of the First Church, Salem, it seems 
 probable that Timothy spent part of his childhood 
 and school days at Salem. He seems to have been 
 almost as much at home there as in North Reading. 
 Speaking, in 1828, of the First Church in Salem, he 
 says that he had spent his boyhood days there. Speak- 
 ing of the sea he says : "Many of the hours of my boy- 
 hood were nurtured in its chill and healthful waters." * 
 
 One of the memorable events of his boyhood, which 
 was to have a determining influence on his later course 
 of life, was the departure of the emigrants, from Essex 
 and Middlesex Counties, for "Marietta on the Ohio." 
 Among the forty-seven men who made up this com- 
 pany was an uncle of Timothy, Hezekiah Flint.^ 
 Writing thirty years later of this early experience 
 he says of the second emigrant party that he remem- 
 bered the black canvas covering of the wagon: 
 "the white and large lettering in capitals To Marietta 
 on the Ohio.'''' He remembered the food, which even 
 then, the thought of such a distant expedition, fur- 
 nished to his imagination. Some twenty emigrants 
 
 ** IVestern Monthly Revieiv, vol. i, 317, 372. 
 
 ^Hezekiah Flint moved to Cincinnati from Marietta some time before the 
 year of his death, 1811. His son of the same name continued to live in that 
 city and was an honored citizen when Timothy made his home there. See 
 also Julia P. Cutler's Life and Times of Ephraim Cutler ^ 203, note.
 
 a6 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 accompanied this wagon. The Reverend Doctor 
 Manassch Cutler he thinks, had the direction of this 
 band of emigrants. He tells us that the good Doctor 
 Cutler left an enemy behind in the person of the late 
 learned and eccentric Doctor Bently of Salem, Mass- 
 achusetts. Doctor Bently was a contributor to a local 
 paper and took vengeance upon Doctor Cutler by 
 writing doggerel verses about him and his enterprise. 
 The young Timothy's imagination was not so much 
 occupied with visions of the far away Ohio but that 
 he learned the verses and could repeat them when he 
 was near fifty years of age.^" 
 
 Marvelous stories about the fertility of the new 
 country would be told by the returning travelers at one 
 time. Again the tide would turn and harrowing ac- 
 counts of suffering, danger, and death would be told 
 to deter the intending emigrants. All would tend to 
 make the boy decide to see some day for himself. 
 Concerning the stories he tells us: 
 
 The wags of the day exercised their wit, in circulating carica- 
 tured and exaggerated editions of the stories of the first adven- 
 turers, that there were springs of brandy; flax, that bore little 
 pieces of cloth on the stems; enormous pumpkins and melons, and 
 the like. Accounts the most horrible were added of hoop snakes 
 of such deadly malignity, that a sting, which they bore in their 
 tails, when it punctured the bark of a green tree, instantly caused 
 its leaves to become sear, and the tree to die. Stories of Indian 
 massacres and barbarities were related in all their horrors.^^ 
 
 There are many reflections of Timothy's childhood 
 and its surroundings in his writings. In 1828 he 
 went he says, 
 
 ^° Flint, Timothy. A condensed Geography and History of the Western 
 States, of the Mississippi Valley, vol. ii, 362, 263. 
 ^^ — Idein, vol. ii, 263.
 
 YOUTH AND EDUCATION 27 
 
 To view once more the final resting place 
 Of my forefathers, . . . 
 
 and to see the 
 
 . . . natal vale 
 Whose trodden bounds were once my world. 
 
 It was then, resting upon his father's newly made 
 grave that he says : 
 
 Fond memory dwells 
 On the blithe morning of my youthful j'ears, 
 When I pursu'd thee midst the new-mown hay, 
 And chased the scared lark, that soar'd in song; 
 Or when the darkling, wind-borne, murky cloud 
 In thunder burst, clung closely to thy side. 
 And now I rest me on my father's grave. 
 Where has elaps'd the long, long, weary dream, 
 Since, as a child, behind thy longer stride 
 I gaily tripp'd? ^- 
 
 There is a description of a spring day when he was a 
 school boy of ten. The winter had been unusually 
 long and severe. He says: 
 
 The vast masses of snow were beginning to melt. The birds 
 of prey, shut up in their retreats during the bitter winter, sailed 
 forth in the mild clear blue. The blue bird whistled; and my 
 heart expanded with joy and delight unknown, in the same de- 
 gree, before or since. The place where these thoughts, comprising 
 my youthful anticipations, hopes and visions occurred, will never 
 be obliterated from my mind, while memory holds her seat.^^ 
 
 "The meadows and the flower fring'd stream" of 
 his native place were the fond delight of his memory 
 after he had wandered far amidst nature's greater 
 works. Of this memory and his love of nature he 
 
 12 "On revisiting the Churchyard of My Native Place" in Ji'estern 
 Monthly Re-vietv, vol. ii, 210, 211. 
 
 1' Flint, Timothy. The Art of Being Happy: From the French of Droz. 
 'Sur L'Art D'Etre Heiireux;' in a series of letters from a Father to his 
 Children: luith Comments and Observations, 286.
 
 28 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 Speaks in his introduction to his Lecture upon Nat- 
 ural History.'' Still more of Mr. Flint's love for 
 nature and of the romantic spirit of his youth is hinted 
 at when he makes Francis Berrian explain his dream- 
 ing habits to his Mexican friends by telling them of 
 his delight in spending hours in the rain and storm, 
 sitting by the Atlantic in his boyhood, that when his 
 relatives remonstrated with him for his exposure of 
 himself and for his melancholy habits, it w^as in vain 
 that he told them that such hours w^ere the happiest of 
 his life. While telling of this trait in his hero, the 
 author remarks of him, that he was fully in sympathy 
 with Rousseau, w^hen he speaks of lying on his back in 
 a skiff floating on a lake at the will of the winds. To 
 gaze into the heavens under such circumstances and to 
 give wings to his soul was the keenest delight of Fran- 
 cis Berrian and doubtless of Francis Berrian's creator 
 also.'' 
 
 The minister of a Massachusetts church, even after 
 the Revolution, was a great man among his parish- 
 ioners in almost all instances; when he served one 
 church, as Reverend Eliab Stone did the North Read- 
 ingchurch, formore than three score years, 1761-1822, 
 he became a power in the lives of his parishioners that 
 is little known in these days of the itinerant. Into Mr. 
 Stone's parish during the school days of Timothy and 
 his cousin James, "David Everett, a school master from 
 Dartmouth college," came to the central school of 
 North Reading, and "created a thirst for knowledge 
 
 ^* Flint, Timothy. Lectures upon Natural History, Geology, Chemistry, 
 the application of Steam and interesting Discoveries in the Arts, p. A'iii. 
 
 ^^ Flint, Timothy. Francis Berrian, or the Mexican Patriot, vol. i, 130, 
 >3i-
 
 YOUTH AND EDUCATION 29 
 
 which distinguished that generation from all that pre- 
 ceded and that have since been born there." The in- 
 fluence of this teacher together with that of the min- 
 ister and his son Micah, a tutor in Harvard College 
 and later a minister, made what Dr. James Flint 
 thought might not ''unfitly be called the Augustan age 
 of scholarship and learning in North Reading." 
 ''The result of the impulse given to the youthful mind 
 of the place was, that five individuals of that small 
 parish and two from the West Parish were simulta- 
 neously members, six of Harvard, and one of Dart- 
 mouth college."'^ 
 
 The school was in the building across the green 
 from the meeting house. This building had once 
 been the meeting house and was removed from that 
 site in 1752 to make room for its successor. This old 
 schoolhouse was used later for a grocery store and 
 then for a carpenter shop. It was still standing in 
 1903. The meeting house of Timothy's time and that 
 of his cousin and friend, James, was removed in 1829 
 for a new building, which still stands, being owned by 
 the town and the Universalist Society^' and used for 
 school and lodge purposes.^* 
 
 In the Western Monthly Review we have Flint's 
 
 ^^ Flint, James. Historical Address, delivered at the Bi-Centennial Cele- 
 bration of the Incorporation of old Toivn of Reading, May 29, 1844, 38-4i- 
 
 1^ In the early part of the nineteenth century, the Universalist church 
 succeeded to the propertj' of the old Parish Church in North Reading. The 
 Unitarian Churches usually fell heir to the Parish Church in most of the 
 eastern Massachusetts parishes where there was a division between the 
 liberal and orthodox parties. In North Reading the orthodox partj^ organized 
 the Union Congregational Church in 1836. 
 
 1^ See George W. Hinman's "History" in Semi-Centennial Souvenir of 
 North Reading, 1853-1903.
 
 30 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 description of the village church and minister of his 
 youth : 
 
 Our village had but one church, and he who occupied it, was 
 as an angel in the golden candlestick, a man of real and deep rev- 
 erence, living in the hearts and affections of the people, his goings 
 out and comings in, noted, not for calumnious scrutiny, but from 
 filial veneration. Those were not the days of the reign of a 
 hundred angry and polemic sects. Religion was understood to 
 be a matter of practise and good feeling; and the theories by which 
 good men became religious were little investigated, the people 
 being more concerned to gather good fruit, than to search out 
 the elementary principles of its origin and development. 
 
 This picture has added color from the keen regret 
 of Mr. Flint, writing in 1829 or 1830, when he said, 
 ''The same village now has its rival spires of temples 
 dedicated in form to the Prince of Peace. . . " ^^ 
 
 In one of the stories we have more of Flint's early 
 experiences in the village church: 
 
 I see my father at the head, and my mother and the rest of the 
 family, according to their ages, following each other's steps 
 through those delightful meadows, as we went up to the house 
 of God in company. I see even now the brilliance of the 
 meadow-pink, and I seem to hear the note of the lark, startled 
 and soaring from our path. There is the slow and limpid 
 stream, in which I have angled and bathed a thousand times. 
 There was the hum of the bees on the fragrant, white balls of 
 the meadow button-wood, which formed an impervious tangle 
 on the verge of the stream. Each of the boys had his nosegay 
 of pond lilies, with their brilliant white and yellow cups, their 
 exquisite and ambrosial fragrance, and their long and twined 
 stems. Each of the girls had her bonnet and breast decked with 
 a shower of roses. Well, too, do I remember the venerable 
 minister, with his huge white wig, his earnest voice, and an 
 authority, at once patriarchal and familiar. The small and 
 
 19 Jf'gstern Monthly Reviei'.; vol. iii, 369.
 
 YOUTH AND EDUCATION 31 
 
 rustic church was filled to overflowing with those, who had 
 there received baptism, and who expected to repose with their 
 fathers in the adjoining consecrated enclosure. And there, op- 
 posite to the church, was the village schoolhouse, one of those 
 thousand nurseries of New England's greatness. Dear remem- 
 brances! How often ye visit my di-eams in the desolate land 
 of the stranger.-" 
 
 There is no record of Timothy's name among the 
 confirmed members of the North Reading Church. 
 He left home for school at fifteen years of age and it is 
 likely that his formal church relations began after 
 that time. 
 
 The Harvard Class Book for the Class of 1800 '' 
 says that Timothy fitted for college under David 
 Everett in the North Reading Grammar School and at^ 
 Phillips Academy, Andover. From the Bio graphically 
 Catalogue of the Academy we learn that he was a stu-' 
 dent there in 1795. He entered Harvard in 1796 and 
 graduated with his class in 1800. His old pastor, andj 
 the pastor's son also, were Harvard men, and it was aj 
 natural step for him to go to Cambridge. His most 
 intimate friend, his cousin James Flint, was two years 
 behind him at Harvard, though one year his senior. 
 He mentions him later as his college friend as well as 
 the friend of his boyhood. The class historian has an 
 entry about Timothy that was never finished: 
 ^'Chummed with ." 
 
 In the Massachusetts Historical Society's Proceed- 
 ings'^ it is said that he was a member of a company 
 which gave a Greek play, at time of graduation. We 
 
 •^Francis Berrian, vol. i, 15, i6. 
 
 21 Manuscript in Library of Harvard University. 
 
 2- Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, first series, vol. x, 52.
 
 j2 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 know from later remarks in his own writings that he 
 was unusually devoted to the classics and to French. 
 But it is rather strange that we have no direct word 
 from Flint in all the mass of his writings about his 
 experiences at Harvard. One feels however, that 
 when Mr. Flint is describing Francis Berrian's im- 
 pressions at Harvard there is enough of his own expe- 
 rience inwrought, to give us a fair understanding of 
 what that period of his life contributed to the future 
 man. He says: 
 
 Of the character that I formed, of the impressions that I 
 received at that rich and noble institution, I am not, perhaps, an 
 adequate judge. . . The arrangements of that important in- 
 stitution are abundantly calculated to call forth emulation, but 
 I saw that emulation too often accompanied with the baseness of 
 envy. I well remember, that here I first felt the "whip of 
 scorpions," of disappointed ambition and mortified pride. My 
 fellow students sometimes received marks of approbation which 
 were denied rae, and which, I had an inward conviction, be- 
 longed to me, as justly as to them. My inward tortures were 
 increased by making the discovery, that I was actually beginning 
 to be envious. It was a most self-abasing scrutiny, that taught 
 me this. I made a great efifort, and I flatter myself, that I tore 
 up this pernicious branch by the roots, and cast it from me for- 
 ever.-* 
 
 Mr. Flintwouldhavebeen very far from saying this 
 last thing about himself, but to the friends of his later 
 years and the unbiased judgment of the historian it 
 seems like an unveiling of the early struggles which 
 produced the rarely unselfish and generous soul of the 
 missionary and author. 
 
 There is also a description of what must have been 
 Timothy Flint's early habits as a student, in the same 
 passage as quoted above when he describes Francis 
 
 -'•' Fraticis Berrian, vol. i, 17.
 
 YOUTH AND EDUCATION 33 
 
 Berrian as being in his college days, of sedentary habit, 
 reading incessantly, and devouring everything that 
 came in his way. The reading he calls ill arranged, 
 judged by the better scholars. He was given to 
 dreaming with his eyes open. Of him Mr. Flint says 
 that he delved into the deepest mysteries of life and 
 "investigated with a tormenting eagerness the evi- 
 dences for an eventful hereafter." This last is a 
 marked trait of the later life of Mr. Flint. Francis 
 Berrian read also the unbelieving wits and historians; 
 but he antidoted them with works of the immortals 
 who have written on revealed and natural religion. 
 From these he came to the gospel. He says: "I 
 placed before my mind the simple grandeur of Him 
 of Calvary." "I was deeply struck with the tender 
 and afifectionate spirit of the apostles." This con- 
 verse with the gospel served to curb the ambition 
 for greatness which was strong within him and gave 
 to him as an ideal for life, that which should be the 
 most quiet. Even the pillar saints of the early church 
 appealed to him for emulation in spirit. At his 
 graduation, Timothy Flint tells us of his hero, that he 
 was extravagantly fond of books of voyages and of 
 travels. He disliked the cities and delighted to im- 
 agine himself in the position of Robinson Crusoe. 
 Again he dreamed of himself with his father's family 
 located in the boundless prairies of the west; and again 
 floating down from the "head-spring of the Missouri 
 to the ocean," or about to follow "the intrepid Clark 
 and Mackenzie over the Rocky Mountains to the 
 Western sea." "* All this must have been a part of Mr. 
 Flint's own college life. 
 
 ^* Francis Berrian, vol. i, 17-20.
 
 34 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 It is probable that Timothy Flint had decided to 
 enter the ministry while in college. Dr. James Flint 
 says, that he began the study of theology immediately 
 after graduation. The Harvard Class Book for the 
 Class of iSoo informs us that he taught an academy 
 for one year at Cohasset, and preached for a time at 
 Marblehead. It is probable that he spent the first 
 year after graduation in teaching, and in the study of 
 theology. At Cohasset, Reverend Jacob Flint ( Har- 
 vard. 1 794) , Timothy's cousin and an older brother of 
 Dr. James Flint, was pastor from January, 1798 until 
 October, 1835. The only item of interest which we 
 have concerning Timothy's short time at Marblehead, 
 was that here, July 12, 1802, he married his wife, 
 Abigail Hubbard, daughter of Reverend Ebenezer 
 Hubbard and a relative of Joseph Peabody." Pea- 
 body was a wealthy Salem shipping merchant who 
 was always to follow Mr. Flint with deep interest and, 
 in the hours of the family's extreme need, with sub- 
 stantial aid. 
 
 Having had two years for the study of theology and 
 some little experience in preaching, the young man 
 was ready before he had reached his twenty-second 
 birthday, for a settlement. This opportunity was 
 offered to him in the parish of Lunenburg, then a part 
 of the town of Fitchburg, and forty miles northwest 
 of Boston. 
 
 ^'^ For items in this paragraph see Encyclopedia Americana: Supplemen- 
 tary Volume, 270, 271 ; Bigelow, E. V. Narrative History of Cohasset, 506 ; 
 and Cohasset Toii>n Records. 
 
 The date of Abigail Hubbard's baptism is Oct. 9, 1785.
 
 11. THE EARLY MINISTRY IN NEW 
 ENGLAND 
 
 As a candidate for the pastorate Mr. Flint was en- 
 gaged at Lunenburg for four Sabbaths, "i8th April 
 to 9th May, 1802, inclusive." Services were to begin 
 at half past ten o'clock in the morning and at half past 
 one in the afternoon. Then he was engaged for one 
 more Sabbath. After his fifth Sabbath with them a 
 town warrant was issued, May sixteenth, in order that 
 the town might give Mr. Flint a call. On the tenth 
 of May the town had concurred with the church -by 
 the selectmen probably- and was ready thus far for the 
 formal call. But there was a long squabble about the 
 settlement and salary. The call was "reconsidered" 
 and renewed. During this time Mr. Flint it seems 
 was on the field and supplying the pulpit.'*^ 
 
 The call, as finally agreed upon, offered Mr. Flint 
 *'one thousand dollars for his comfortable settlement 
 and an annual salary of four hundred dollars." The 
 opening of his ministerial career upon so troubled a 
 sea proved a prophecy for the future. 
 
 "On his acceptance" continues the town historian," 
 
 -<' Letter of J. A. Litchfield, Lunenburg, Mass., Feb. 10, 1908, in the 
 Boston Public Library. 
 
 -" Cunningham, CJeorge A. .-/ History of the Tozun of Lunenburg in 
 Massachusetts, from the Original Grant, Dec. 7, ///p (-1875), 136-140. 
 Manuscript in the Lunenburg Town Librar3% Mr. Cunningham died in 
 1875 and had not completed his work at that time.
 
 36 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 "the town chose a committee to decorate the pulpit and 
 secure the galleries at a cost of one hundred dollars. 
 Another was appointed to entertain the council which 
 was invited to meet on the sixth of October for the 
 ordination of the young minister." We have very 
 brief record of this notable event, but with the prepar- 
 ations of the town, the number of ministers and 
 churches invited, it ought to have been, and doubtless 
 was, a great occasion for the people of the parish and 
 for the young candidate. The North Church of 
 Salem, Reverend Dr. Barnard, pastor, at a meeting 
 after church. Lord's day evening, September twenty- 
 fifth, "declined to send their elder and delegate to the 
 ordination council of Timothy Flint at Lunenburg," "^ 
 but Doctor Prince and the old First Church would not 
 treat them so. The North Reading Church voted on 
 September t\venty-sixth, to send as delegates two dea- 
 cons and two lay delegates, one of the latter being the 
 father of the candidate."^ The old pastor. Reverend 
 Eliab Stone, preached the sermon which was printed 
 and sent to every family in the parish of Lunenburg. 
 Reverend Jacob Flint of Cohasset was invited and 
 also Reverend Mr. BuUard of Fitchburg, whose son, 
 Judge Bullard, was to have a large place in Timothy's 
 life in the southwest. 
 
 The town historian"" tells us that Mr. Flint was in 
 ill health much of the time during his tw^elve year pas- 
 torate, and that there was "a good deal of difficulty in 
 collecting his salary." At the request of Mr. Flint 
 the town voted, November 20, 1809, "that there shall 
 
 28 Salem North Church Records in Essex Institute, Salem. 
 
 29 North Reading [Mass.] Church Records. 
 20 Cunningham, op. cit.
 
 The Parsonage at Lunenburg, Massachusetts 
 
 Slightly altered in recent years
 
 EARLY MINISTRY IN NEW ENGLAND 39 
 
 be but one service each Lord's day." This looks as 
 though it was a concession to the pastor's physical 
 weakness. It was not, however, entirely gracious. 
 
 Dr. James Flint tells us that Mr. Flint carried 
 on a little farming- the "ministerial lot" of those times 
 gave encouragement in this direction -and cultivated 
 a taste for letters and chemistry. This latter taste 
 seems to have been one of several causes of trouble. 
 Some of his more ignorant parishioners thought that 
 the minister's devotion to his laboratory was a sign of 
 some secret and sinful end. To this would be added 
 their suspicions of disloyalty to the government which 
 the "rabid" democrat felt sure was in the breast of the 
 federalist. The charge of counterfeiting was made 
 and it seemed so serious to the pastor that he prose- 
 cuted and obtained judgment against his persecutor.^^ 
 This of course did not quiet the troubled waters of the 
 parish life. 
 
 The Harvard class historian tells us of another inci- 
 dent, presumably in the late years of the Lunenburg 
 pastorate, which was one of the unsettling influences. 
 A young man of the town, who bore the reputation of 
 a reprobate, died. Mr. Flint began his funeral ser- 
 vice by reading one of Doctor Watts's hymns, be- 
 ginning: 
 
 My. thoughts on awful subjects roll, 
 
 Damnation, and the dead. 
 
 The audience was so shocked, and especially the rel- 
 atives of the deceased, that they never forgave the 
 minister. 
 
 Mr. Flint's plain speaking and dealing at this pe- 
 riod of his life is quite marked. It is perhaps one of the 
 
 21 Timothj' Flint, in Harvard Class Book for the Class of iSoo. 
 
 
 7 y n
 
 40 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 reasons for his classmate's remark"'" that at this period 
 he was little versed in human nature or gifted in social 
 intercourse. A couple of stories, apropos, are pre- 
 served for us in notes in the Lunenburg Library copy 
 of the Recollections of the last ten years, passed in 
 occasional Residence and Journeyings in the Vnlley of 
 the Mississippi. These notes were made by Luther G. 
 Howard, a grandson of one of Mr. Flint's deacons, 
 now living in Reading, Massachusetts. He says: 
 
 At one time Mr. Flint exchanged with the Ashby minister. 
 My grandfather and Mr. Taylor went up to Ashby to hear him 
 preach. He would not speak to them, being displeased at their 
 leaving their own church to follow him. 
 
 At another time one of Mr. Flint's neighbors called on him 
 and told him what some of the people were saying about him. 
 When the man left the house, the minister accompanied him to 
 the gate and pointing to a place beside the fence said, "When you 
 have another load to dump, leave it there and don't bring it into 
 the house. "^ 
 
 Mr. Flint was "School Committee" for three dif- 
 ferent years and for the last two years of his pastorate 
 he was a trustee of Lawrence Academy at Groton. 
 He is charged by the town historian ^^ with being care- 
 less in his records. He made return of marriages 
 performed, only about once in three years and then did 
 not give the dates. The birth dates of his own chil- 
 dren are not recorded and the baptisms of only two of 
 the three that were born to him here: Micah Pea- 
 body, baptised July 3, 1803, Emeline Hubbard, bap- 
 tised June 30, 1805. Ebenezer Hubbard, according 
 to family records, was born January 19, 1808. 
 
 The earliest sermon that we have by Mr. Flint is 
 
 ^2 Harvard Class Book for the Class of iSoo. 
 33 Cunningham, op. (it.
 
 EARLY MINISTRY IN NEW ENGLAND 41 
 
 that preached at the ordination of his friend, Ebenezer 
 Hubbard, Mrs. Flint's brother, to the Second Church 
 and Society in Newbui-y, May 11, 1808. It is 
 much longer than his other sermons and addresses 
 preserved in print. It gives the impression of being 
 too conscious of the occasion. In consequence it is 
 formal and a little pedantic. It is lacking in the 
 passionate and human interest that usually character- 
 izes his expression. His theme is the motive to 
 and the manner of the gospel ministry. He takes 
 a wide range over the field of practical theology. 
 There are no incidents or stories to illustrate, only 
 passing references to the parables. There is very 
 little of the flowing rhetoric so common in his writ- 
 ings. There is hardly a suggestion that looks in the 
 direction of the heresies and controversies of the times. 
 There is often a clear consciousness of the deeper 
 meanings of the forms being observed and a desire that 
 his hearers shall realize that the things which they 
 now behold are evanescent.^* 
 
 During this pastorate Mr. Flint published a sermon 
 on Immortality. This was always a favorite theme. 
 Mr. W. D. Gallagher says this sermon was written 
 when Flint was about twenty-one years of age." No 
 copy of this sermon has been found. 
 
 The town historian, Mr. Cunningham in his His- 
 tory of Lunenburg has preserved the Covenant which 
 was "adopted and used by Mr. Flint" in Lunenburg. 
 
 '■^* Flint, Timothy. Sermon at the Ordinatio7i of Re-v. E. Hubbard. 
 
 ^^ Cincinnati Mirror, vol. iii, 37. In an article on Flint, Mr. Gallagher 
 says, "The last work, we believe, which he published before the Ten Years' 
 Residence was one entitled Arguments natural, moral and religious, for the 
 Immortality of tlie Soul, written about the time of attaining to his majority."
 
 42 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 It is given here as an indication of the undogmatic and 
 evangelical tendency of the man: 
 
 You believe in One Supreme Eternal God, and you devote 
 yourself to him in an everlasting covenant. 
 
 You believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son of 
 God, and you rely on him alone for Salvation. 
 
 You believe in the Holy Spirit, the Sanctifier and Comforter, 
 and the necessity of His Holy influence to your Salvation. 
 
 You receive the Holy Scriptures as the rule of your Faith and 
 Conduct, and you promise to obey the Will of God, therein made 
 known ; and to submit yourself to the government and discipline 
 of Christ in this church so long as Providence shall continue you 
 among us. 
 
 This you covenant and promise. 
 
 Then follows the pledge of fellowship on the part of 
 the church. There is no creed used. It would seem 
 to indicate the position which Mr. Flint always en- 
 deavored to hold, of standing by the universal stand- 
 ards of the church and avoiding all sectarian creeds 
 and forms. 
 
 There is another sermon of Mr. Flint which was 
 preached at Leominster, Massachusetts, on the Lord's 
 day, January i, 1815, which shows the same practical 
 tendency. He is not at all concerned with theology, 
 but very much with the practical issues of every day 
 life. He takes account of the unusual number of 
 deaths in the parish during the previous year. There 
 had been fifty, which numbered also their minister 
 who had served them for fifty years.^® 
 
 Early in the year 18 14, Mr. Flint requested an in- 
 crease of salary. The matter had been discussed 
 before, and the minister felt very strongly that he was 
 
 36 Flint, Timothy. A Sermon delivered in Leominster at the Commence- 
 ment of the Year, Lord's Day, Jan. I, 1815.
 
 EARLY MINISTRY IN NEW ENGLAND 43 
 
 not being justly treated in this regard. That he had a 
 party in the parish of like opinion is indicated by the 
 fact that his successor, Reverend David Damon, was 
 settled on a six hundred dollar salary, instead of the 
 four hundred paid Mr. Flint. But there was such 
 hostility to Mr. Flint that when the question of increas- 
 ing his salary came up in town meeting, the decision 
 was against him. On the seventh of April, Mr. Flint 
 addressed a letter to his constituency asking for a dis- 
 missal and giving his reasons for doing so. He says 
 he might have given many, but they would excite use- 
 less and unavailing irritation. He wished to part in 
 love and in prayer for their growth in grace. He is 
 compelled to give some reasons however to justify so 
 extreme a step on his part. He is convinced that 
 under existing circumstances he can do no further 
 good in the parish, and this conviction has undermined 
 his health. His support is not sufficient for his needs 
 and in consequence he is unduly tempted by his de- 
 pendent condition "to be timid in rebuking the evil, or 
 so slavish through fear of offending, as to treat the holy 
 and the vile alike." From most of the people he had 
 during his twelve years among them, "in the morning 
 and prime of his life" received proofs of kindness and 
 affection which would endure while memory re- 
 mained to him. "Though separated here . . . 
 we shall soon be together again in a world where there 
 is no slander." Again in closing his rather lengthy 
 letter he says: "While with a feeble constitution and 
 miserable health, I embark once more, with my fam- 
 ily, upon a stormy world, I ask an interest in your
 
 44 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 prayers that I may be guided into all truth and 
 duty.""' 
 
 A glimpse i)t the Lunenburg pastor's experience 
 with late comers to church and his other trials also, are 
 set forth in the story of Arthur C/enning:'' In George 
 Mason, tlw Young BacksicooJsman ; or "Don't give 
 up the Ship,"' which is the most autobiographic of 
 Mr. Flint's stories, there is, with a few changes of 
 figures and names, much of the author's Lunenburg 
 experiences put into a picture which must have been 
 taken out of his diary rather than evolved from his 
 imagination. He says: 
 
 Few of my readers would coniprehend«the peculiar trials of a 
 minister in such a place, or would be able to understand the com- 
 plication of minute difficulties and vexations, which, during a 
 ministry of sixteen years, in a countrj- village, had broken down 
 his health and spirits, and finally induced him to ask a dismission 
 from his people, and to move to this distant and unknown country. 
 His parish comprehended every shade of opinion in religion and 
 politics. Embittered parties and eternal disputations were the 
 consequence. In attempting to keep clear of all, the pastor be- 
 came embroiled with all. Both himself and his wife had been 
 reared delicately. The salary Mas small, and the family increas- 
 ing. He became poor, and obnoxious both to the religious and 
 political parties; and after sixteen years of the prime of his life 
 spent among them, admitting, the while, that he was exemplary, 
 of good feeling, learned and eloquent, they refused him in town 
 meeting, a request to add something to his salary. In disgust 
 he asked a dismission, and it was granted. . . In the progress 
 of his vexations in his parish, he had become, perhaps I ought to 
 say, unreasonably disgusted with the condition of a minister in 
 that country. . . He had been accustomed for years to allow 
 his thoughts to expatiate in fabricating the romance of pastoral 
 
 '" Cunningham, o/>. cit., 136-140. 
 
 "^ Flint, Timothy. The Life arid AdveJitjms of Arthur Cleniilng, vol. 
 ii, 146-14.8.
 
 EARLY MINISTRY IN NEW ENGLAND 45 
 
 enjoyments and pursuits. By accident the romances of Imlay and 
 Chateaubriand, and other writers equally historical, presenting 
 such illusive pictures of the southern and western country, had 
 fallen into his hands. During the long winter evenings, 
 
 When fast came down the snow, 
 And keenly o'er the wide heath the bitter blast did blow, 
 
 this romance of freedom from the vexations of a minister's life, 
 and the miseries of political and religious altercation in a pop- 
 ulous village, and escape from the inclement climate, to a country 
 where he might find health, freedom, solitude, rich land, and 
 independence, formed in his imagination. Once formed there, 
 all his reading and reasonings, all the opposing arguments, all the 
 remonstrances of his friends and each renewed vexation, embel- 
 lished his romance, and confirmed liis purpose. His wife, at first, 
 argued gently against the plan ; but she loved her husband, and his 
 oft repeated, and eloquently painted views of his romance, finally 
 presented it to her mind as a reality. ^'^ 
 
 Mr. Flint at Lunenburg, was beyond the zone of 
 active theological disturbances. The Trinitarian 
 Party here did not separate from the old parish until 
 1835. Political difficulties far more than religious 
 disturbed him in these years. There are some indi- 
 cations, however, that he was not without his troubles, 
 and his part in the theological tempests of the time. 
 In the dedication of his Recollections^'' to Dr. James 
 Flint, he mentions as an indication of the strength of 
 their friendship, that it has survived the "still more 
 fatal influence of differing opinion." Doctor Flint 
 was an early and avowed Unitarian. It is significant 
 too, not only of troubles but of the peace loving man, 
 
 "9 See pages 15-16. 
 
 *o Flint, Timothy. Recollections of the Icift ten years, passed in occasioiral 
 Residences and Jonrneyings in the Valley of the Mississippi, from Pittsburg 
 and the Missouri, to the Gulf of Mexico, and from Florida to the Spanish 
 frontier; in a scries of Letters to the Rev. James Flint, of Salem, Massaclin- 
 setts, I, line 9.
 
 46 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 that in all his years at Lunenburg Mr. Flint was not 
 once a delegate to the Massachusetts General Asso- 
 ciation/' These disturbances were doubtless in the 
 way of a settlement in New England and a factor in 
 driving him to the far west where he fondly hoped 
 to escape from theological controversies. 
 
 Two more items are given by the Lunenburg 
 records as presented in the Lunenburg manuscript 
 history by Mr. Cunningham, and then they are silent 
 as to Mr. Flint and his affairs. A council was held 
 June 6, 1 8 14, which dismissed the pastor. On Sep- 
 tember 3, 1 81 5, one month before the westward jour- 
 ney began, Mr. and Mrs. Flint were dismissed from 
 the membership of the Lunenburg church to the 
 church in Salem. This was, of course, the First 
 Church, and it is probable that they remained mem- 
 bers of this church during their wanderings in the 
 west and until they were settled in Cincinnati. They 
 do not appear to have lived in Salem. Their home 
 was in Lunenburg from the time Mr. Flint resigned 
 the pastorate there until they began the western jour- 
 ney-some fifteen months later. 
 
 On the twenty-fifth of November, 18 14, there is a 
 letter of Mr. Flint written from Lunenburg to Rev- 
 erend Mr. Lowell, Boston. This was most likely, 
 Reverend Chas. Lowell, father of James Russell 
 Lowell, and a classmate of Flint. He was then pastor 
 of the West Church, Boston. Mr. Lowell had writ- 
 ten Flint about some family history connected with 
 Lunenburg and did not know that Flint had resigned 
 
 41 Massachusetts General Association. Minutes. See also letter of Wm. 
 H. Cobb, Boston, Jan. 4, 1908, in the Library of Harvard Universit}'.
 
 EARLY MINISTRY IN NEW ENGLAND 47 
 
 the pastorate there. Mr. Flint informs him of this 
 
 fact and explains it to him by writing: 
 
 My people were democratic, and the mania of democracy al- 
 ways ran high here. It rendered the last years of my residence 
 here very uncomfortable. Starvation and insult exhausted my 
 health. It has been convalescing, since I left here. I have been em- 
 ployed, as I observed, the past summer and autumn on a mission 
 [for the Massachusetts Society for promoting Christian Knowl- 
 edge] to the county of Rockingham in N.H. I am now here, and 
 unemployed. I contemplate taking a school. I presume you 
 have a surfeit of applications to recommend applicants for a 
 school. Could I obtain a small private school, I could at least 
 promise fidelity. Perhaps I might add, that in former time, I 
 had reputation, as an instructor. If you would take the trouble 
 to enquire, whether any such school might be had in Boston, or 
 the vicinity, you would confer a great favor upon, dear sir, yours 
 affectionately T. Flint.''^ 
 
 In the Account of the Massachusetts Society for 
 promoting Christian Knowledge,*^ there are extracts 
 from the journal of Mr. Flint, made during this mis- 
 sion in New Hampshire, to which he refers in his 
 letter to Reverend Mr. Lowell: "Sept. 5, Implored 
 God for strength, and heart to be faithful ; and set out 
 to commence missionary labors." He spent three 
 weeks at Kingston and six weeks at Raymond. These 
 places had pastorless churches, decadent from sec- 
 tarian divisions and other causes. He preached thir- 
 ty-one times in the nine weeks, administered the sacra- 
 ment twice, baptized two children, instructed and 
 
 *2 This letter which is in the Boston Public Library, manuscript depart- 
 ment, has an interesting endorsement evidently made by Charles Lowell, as 
 follows: "From Timothy Flint author of several works relating to the 
 Valley of the Mississippi, etc., my class mate and friend. C. L." 
 
 "Lived afterwards in Cincinnati. C. L." 
 
 ^^ See pages 53, 54, 64, first note, 66.
 
 48 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 catechised individually two hundred and forty chil- 
 dren, and prayed with ten sick. 
 
 It is not surprising that he did not remain with this 
 society. Its Account shows a strangely sectarian view 
 of its work as a missionary society. The "congrega- 
 tional church" [spelled with a small "c"] is the "reg- 
 ular order." Baptists of all sorts, Methodists, Uni- 
 versalists, "'Christyans or Smithites" are all regarded 
 as sectarians and their errors and ignorance are fully 
 described. They are all regarded with the barely 
 tolerant air of the "churchman" of all ages. Still 
 further, this society felt concerned for the evil done 
 by those who held to high Calvinism even though they 
 were of the "regular order." A reading of this old 
 missionary report w^ould prove an excellent tonic for 
 persons depressed by the present day denomination- 
 alism." 
 
 After this date Mr. Flint held a second commission 
 from the Massachusetts Society for promoting Chris- 
 tian Knowledge, and received a third commission in 
 May, which however he did not use.*^ He is said to 
 
 ** One of the missionary reports, and not at all peculiar, which is reported 
 in the Account as evidence of the helpful character of the society's work runs 
 as follows: "A few Calvinistic Baptists and Freewillers are of upright and 
 unblamable character; but very few of the latter. As a body, they may be 
 considered, as the scum of the earth the filth of creation. Lying, drunkenness, 
 uncleanness, sabbathbreaking, fraud, and theft may be found among them, 
 without close scrutiny; they are the prominent feature of their devotees, 
 especially of the Christyans {^sic^ or Smithites. The Methodists are better 
 in some respects ; for, when they can no longer hide the abominable wicked- 
 ness of their adherents, they will shut them out of their societies; and such 
 generally attach themselves to the Smithites, and are cordially received. The 
 Smithites, Freewillers, and Methodists, though opposed to each ether, and 
 always quarreling; yet thej' perfectly agree, when there is any wall to pull 
 down (as they call it) or, in other words, a congregational church to destroy," 
 
 71- 
 
 *^ Letter of Timothy Flint to Rev. Abel Flint, secretary of the Missionary
 
 EARLY MINISTRY IN NEW ENGLAND 49 
 
 have labored in Massachusetts. His work under the 
 second commission was probably in the western part 
 ot the state and in New York, where the society had a 
 mission in Essex County. The home scene of Arthur 
 Clenning is located in New York, near Lake George, 
 and might indicate a visit by Mr. Flint to this section. 
 Another indication of the scene of his labors at this 
 time is a remark in the Recollections when speaking 
 of the wildness of the western Indians, and comparing 
 them with the eastern people of that race. He says: 
 "I had, as you know, traveled in the northern parts of 
 the United States, and had seen the Indians of Canada 
 and New York."'"' 
 
 Society of Connecticut, written from Lunenburg, Jan. 23, 1815, and found in 
 the archives of the societj', Congregational House, Hartford. 
 ^* Flint, Timoth}^ Recollections of the Last Ten Years, 93.
 
 III. THE MISSION TO THE FAR WEST 
 
 The next word, recorded concerning Timothy Flint 
 after his New Year's sermon at Leominster, is spoken 
 by him at the same place on the Fourth of July in the 
 year 1815. It is an oration delivered before the Wash- 
 ington Benevolent Society of Lancaster and Sterling 
 and of Leominster and Fitchburg. It was printed 
 soon after, the Society requesting Mr. Flint to furnish 
 a copy for the press. It is one of the important papers 
 pertaining to Mr. Flint, because it is the only 
 political document we have in the early period of his 
 life and because it was spoken at a time when political 
 passions were strong in New England. This Society 
 before which he spoke was a political club holding 
 to the Federal ideas. Mr. Flint himself was a Fed-^ 
 eralist, who, as we have seen, had found it uncom- 
 fortable to live in a Democratic community. But 
 there is very little of a partisan nature in this ad- 
 dress, and nothing of bitterness. 
 
 In his review of the Revolutionary period, the days 
 of the Confederation, the Constitutional Convention 
 and the administration of Washington, Mr, Flint is 
 enthusiastic and laudatory. For the successors of 
 Washington, he has little praise and much mild criti- 
 cism. Of the French influence he is jealous. For the 
 future of the nation he is very hopeful. Concerning 
 New England he is eloquent, reminding us strongly of
 
 52 TIMOTHY' FLINT 
 
 the famous eulogy of Massachusetts by Daniel Web- 
 ster in his "Reply to Hayne." It is in a more tender 
 and personal key but it has the same sustained elo- 
 quence. If it had been fortunate enough to have got- 
 ten into the school readers '" and books of declamation, 
 it might have become immortalized. He said: 
 
 New England, land of my forefathers, whose habits are so 
 congenial, whose associations are so dear to mj' heart, "when I 
 forget thee," or cease to speak of thee with filial veneration, "may 
 my right hand forget her cunning." New England - I delight 
 to see her small but frequent farms, owned by enlightened, inde- 
 pendent and virtuous land-holders. I delight more in the verdure 
 and the harvests, won by laborious cultivation from native rough- 
 ness and sterility, than in the indolent exuberance of nature. I 
 love her frequent hills and dales, and the transparent beauty and 
 the pleasant murmur of her rapid hill-streams ; and would not 
 exchange them for the creeping and marshy creeks, that wind 
 lazily through an uninteresting and boundless plain. I admire 
 the firm enclosures of her farms, of materials as durable and 
 everlasting as I wish her prosperity to be. I admire her frequent 
 and neat schoolhouses, and the courteous bow of her clean and 
 healthy children flocking to them. And most of all, I admire 
 her temples, the crowning ornaments of her villages; and, from 
 the multitudes directing their steps to them on the Sabbath, I 
 discern, that here publick sentiment still sanctifies the Sabbath 
 of our God. And near that glorious emblem of the law, justice 
 and order, of industry and temperance, during this life, and of a 
 happy immortality beyond it, the village church, I survey with 
 solemn pleasure the church-yard, seen at the same view, and asso- 
 ciating its repose with the immortal hopes of the temple, where 
 the virtuous "forefathers of our hamlets sleep." *^ 
 
 In this address is something of provincialism when 
 he declaims against the party politics of the times for 
 
 *^ Mr. Flint's article on the effects of gambling was published in at least 
 one edition of McGuffey's Eclectic Readers. See AVxy Fifth Eclectic Reader 
 (Cincinnati, 1866). 
 
 ^* Oration before the H'ashingtoii Benevolent Society, July 4, 1815.
 
 THE MISSION TO THE FAR WEST 53 
 
 shutting out New England from the sea. This he 
 thought, together with false pictures of "palaces, and 
 paradises, and spontaneous wealth, in the West" was 
 driving the hardy sons of New England beyond the 
 mountains until, he says: 
 
 Our dwellings, our school-houses and churches will have 
 mouldered to ruins ; our grave-yards be overrun with shrub-oaks ; 
 and but here and there a wretched hermit, true to his paternal 
 soil, to tell the tale of other times. 
 
 The emigrants that have gone to the far west and 
 south will feel, he thinks, that: 
 
 They live in a state of estrangedness and exile from all that is 
 dear to them, and dream incessantly of their native hills and 
 valleys.*^ 
 
 There is nothing provincial, however, in Mr. Flint's 
 outlook when he speaks of Napoleon, escaped from his 
 island in the Mediterranean, as: "The restless dis- 
 turber of the nations . . . consistent but in one 
 thing, and that thing perpetual inconsistency."^" 
 
 Though he is lamenting over the desolation of New 
 England by the great western movement that was then 
 gathering such headway; though he is pitying the 
 expatriated sons of New England as they are spread 
 abroad over the uninteresting and boundless plains, 
 and dreaming incessantly of their native hills and val- 
 leys, still we are hardly surprised that he is about to 
 join the men who, "their wives and little ones loaded 
 into waggons, the funeral procession of New Eng- 
 land, advanced, 'with measured step and slow,' to- 
 wards the Alleghany hills.""' 
 
 *" Oration before the H'ash'ington Benevolent Society, 19, 20. 
 ^^ — Idem, 22. 
 ^' — Idem, 19.
 
 54 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 A letter dated Lunenburg, July 23, 18 15, addressed 
 to Reverend Abel Flint, secretary of the Missionary 
 Society of Connecticut,"'" reveals the workaday life of 
 Air. Flint far better than his Leominster oration. He 
 had been considered by the Society as a candidate for a 
 western mission. An offer was extended to him 
 through Doctor Morse."^^ Mr. Flint says in this let- 
 ter: 
 
 I have long contemplated a removal with my family to the 
 west\vard, under an impression, that a milder climate would be 
 beneficial to my health. An object, which I have had more 
 especially in view, has been to establish in some central place a 
 religious publication, like our religious monthly papers; except 
 that it should more particularly vindicate our literature, charities 
 and institutions. 
 
 He believes strongly in the importance of this enter- 
 prise, but appeals to the "better judgment" of the sec- 
 retary as to its practicability. He desired the society 
 to give him a commission to preach in the Kentucky 
 and Ohio River regions until such time as he should 
 become acquainted and establish himself there for the 
 carrying out of his special plan. He says he has the 
 testimony of the Massachusetts Society for promoting 
 Christian Knowledge, that his labors have been as 
 great as any other of their agents, in spite of his feeble 
 health, and that he now holds a third commission from 
 that society, given to him the last May, which he has 
 not used. He proposes to accept the offer of the Con- 
 necticut Missionary Society, though the compensa- 
 tion is to be less than that of the Massachusetts Society, 
 
 ^- In Congregational House, Hartford, archives of the Society. 
 
 ^3 Thi8 was probabh' Reverend Dr. Jedidiah Morse, 1761-1826, at this 
 time secretary of the Mass. Soc. for promoting Christian Knowledge, and one 
 of the founders of Andover Theological Seminarv.
 
 THE MISSION TO THE FAR WEST 55 
 
 if he may be allowed to take his family with him and 
 be credited with sufficient time in which to reach his 
 field. It is interesting to note that among the refer- 
 ences that he offers to furnish, are some from the 
 "most respectable orthodox clergy of this region."^* 
 
 The appointment was made for the states of Ohio 
 and Kentucky. He was commissioned to visit such 
 settlements in these states as he should think proper.^^ 
 
 In a letter written the fifteenth of August, also from 
 Lunenburg, Mr. Flint accepts the appointment of the 
 Missionary Society of Connecticut, shrinking from 
 the idea of so much responsibility, but "having taken 
 the best view of duty." In this letter he says further: 
 
 I propose to commence my journey in patriarchal style, taking 
 my wife and three children with me. May I go with the sim- 
 plicity of heart, the confidence in God, and the submission to his 
 will, of a patriarch. Should I go with such feelings, though it 
 be to a strange and distant land, and not knowing, "whither I 
 go," He will protect me, and make us useful, and suffer us to 
 want nothing, that is necessary for us. 
 
 In a month's time he expected to be in Hartford on 
 his westward journey. He did not, however, reach 
 Hartford as early as he had planned. He spent the 
 Sabbath, the first of October, there. 
 
 With the beginning of the trip westward, the Recol- 
 lections commence. The missionary letters, preserved 
 in the Congregational Library of Hartford, are also 
 full, and the process of selection and exclusion is em- 
 barrassing. Mr. Flint sees so many people and things 
 that are strange to us as they were to him, and he 
 
 ^■♦Letter of Timothy Flint, Leominster, July 23, 1815. 
 ^^ Seventeertt/t Annual Narrative of Missionary Service (Hartford, iii6), 
 «5.
 
 56 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 writes about them so entertainingly, that one is loath 
 to pass by much that can not be put into these pages. 
 The family was embarked in a two horse wagon, 
 with such of their household effects as they were able 
 to carry. On the fourth of October they left the ''land 
 of their fathers" and the next day crossed the Hudson 
 at Fishkill. On Sabbath, October eighth, they were 
 at Newton, Sussex County, New Jersey. Mr. Flint 
 preached in the Presbyterian Church and "Had much 
 conversation respecting the deplorable destitution of 
 the means of religious instruction in that vicinity." 
 Minister and missionary were agreed that there was 
 no part of the country more in need of missionaries. 
 Bibles, and tracts than that between Newton and the 
 Wyoming Country, and Newburg on the Hudson and 
 Easton on the Delaware. But this was only the first 
 needy region that our missionary family was to dis- 
 cover. Every day of the long journey west, brought 
 them new experiences of religious destitution, moral 
 decay in consequence, of fields white for the harvest 
 and no laborers in view. The first missionary letter"® 
 is full of these trying experiences, and reports constant 
 distributions of tracts and Bibles, and ministries such 
 as a Christian missionary delighted to give even to the 
 stranger. In this letter there is a summary of mission- 
 ary work performed on the western journey: 
 
 Arrived at this place [Cincinnati] the last of November, 
 through many fatigues, exposures and dangers. . . I have 
 not preached, as often as I could have wished, owing to the im- 
 possibility of doing it, while a passenger in a boat, as I have been 
 the last ten days of my journey. On the Sabbath I have uniform- 
 ly collected the boat's crew, and had divine service ; and have had 
 
 ''Letter of Timothy Flint, Cincinnati, Dec. 5, 1815.
 
 THE MISSION TO THE FAR WEST 57 
 
 the satisfaction to see them attentive, and the profanity diminish- 
 ing among them. I have in a great number of instances addressed 
 the boatmen - perhaps the most abandoned race of men in any 
 country, that professes to be Xn. . . Since I have been here, I 
 have been almost every day engaged in some public religious 
 exercise. I have arranged three, or four missionary stations in 
 large villages, in this vicinity, where I hope to labor through the 
 winter. 
 
 Newport, Kentucky, and "White-water, 20 miles 
 
 from this," are named as two of his stations. 
 
 The story of the journey westward must not be 
 
 passed by without sharing the experience of the family 
 
 as it is told in the Recollections. 
 
 Towards the latter part of the month [October, 181 5] we 
 began to ascend the Alleghany hills. In our slow mode of travel- 
 ing we had had them in view several day^s. With their intermin- 
 able blue outline, stretching hill beyond hill, and interposing to 
 the imagination of such travelers as we Avere, a barrier to return 
 almost as impassable as the grave, it may easily be imagined with 
 what interest we contemplated them. . . Occasional samples 
 of the people and the country bejond those hills, not at all cal- 
 culated to soothe our feelings, or to throw pleasing associations 
 over our contemplated residence beyond them, had frequently 
 met us. The people on our route constantly designated them by 
 the appellation of "back-woodsmen," and we heard these men 
 uniformly calling their baggage "plunder." The wolf, the bear, 
 and the bald eagle, were the most frequent emblems in the tavern- 
 signs, near the acclivities of these mountains. The bald eagle 
 itself was soaring in the blue of the atmosphere, high above the 
 summits of the first ridge, and its shrill and savage cries were 
 sufHciently loud to reach our ears.^'^ 
 
 There were many "compagnons de voyage" from 
 New England, "poor, active, parsimonious, inquisi- 
 tive" and like themselves more fully convinced of the 
 
 ^^ Flint. Recollections, 6.
 
 58 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 superiority of their nativ^e region the farther they trav- 
 eled away from it. He says of their experience before 
 they began to descend the hills to the west: 
 
 . . . It will readily be conceived that a family which had 
 been reared in seclusion, such as ours, would be likely to drop 
 some "natural tears," and to take a long and anxious look at the 
 land, which contained all their ties and charities. We tried to 
 comfort each other, as we steadily contemplated the blue summits 
 that were just before us, that we had a world in which "to choose 
 our place of rest, and Providence our guide." But we had al- 
 ready wandered far enough from home, to admit the full truth of 
 the exclamation of Attala: "Happy they, who have not seen the 
 smoke of the stranger's fire." ^^ 
 
 This touch of homesickness is only the first of very 
 many that they are to sufifer in the coming years of 
 their wanderings. In the first letter to the Mission- 
 ary Society of Connecticut, Mr. Flint adds a note to 
 the secretary saying that he is so burdened with the 
 heavy traveling expenses, and with the religious con- 
 ditions that he finds, that he will not continue his 
 mission longer than six months, and then return with 
 his family to his native state. But we hear no more 
 of this plan after the first letter.^" 
 
 They pressed on towards Pittsburg on one of the 
 great lines of travel, passing hundreds of w^agons. Of 
 these wagons he says: "Many of them had broken 
 axles and wheels, and in more than one place it was 
 pointed out to us, that teams had plunged down the 
 precipice and had perished." In descending the 
 ridges many places were so narrow that two carriages 
 could not pass. The rule in such places was that a 
 
 59 Flint. Recollections, 7. 
 
 ^° Letter of Timothy Flint, Cincinnati, Dec. 5, 1815.
 
 THE MISSION TO THE FAR WEST 59 
 
 hoFH should be blown or a messenger be sent ahead 
 to keep the road clear."" 
 
 The teamsters were an entirely new type to this New 
 England clergyman. He says of them : "They seemed 
 to me to be more rude, profane and selfish, than either 
 sailors, boatmen, or hunters, to whose modes of living 
 theirs is the most assimilated." They were for the 
 most part drunken and little disposed to assist each 
 other. Yet even here there were exceptions. He 
 learned of a sort of brotherhood among them, sworn 
 to stand by each other in the hour of need. Mr. Flint 
 remarks that he often dropped among these profane 
 wagonmen, as if by accident, "that impressive tract, 
 the 'Swearer's Prayer'." Then he would note the 
 effects as they read, some assenting thoughtfully, oth- 
 ers merely smiling, and others again growling approv- 
 al very much as Indians do at a council when they 
 give reluctant assent to proposed terms.^" 
 
 They met great droves of cattle and swine being 
 driven from the Ohio country to Philadelphia, and 
 these seemed rough and shaggy like wolves. The 
 name of the place from which they came, "Mad Riv- 
 er" seemed to add something to their wild appear- 
 ance.^^ 
 
 While they were having all the hardships of their 
 fellow travelers, the missionary was too much of a 
 philosopher not to notice closely and to enjoy the hu- 
 man nature about him. A stage coach is broken down 
 and the passengers sit about drenched in the rain. 
 Their different behaviors are commented upon. A 
 German Lutheran minister and his family are jour- 
 
 ^^ Flint. Recollections, 3. ^^ — Idem, 8, 9. '^^ — Idem, 9.
 
 6o TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 neying in their direction. He is going to the "Big 
 Miami." He had constantly in his mouth when 
 traveling, a pipe, 
 
 In form much like tiiat musical instrument called a serpent, in 
 which the smoke circulated through many circumvolutions, and 
 finally reached his mouth through a silver mouth-piece. He rode 
 a huge Pennsylvania horse, apparently with no consciousness of 
 want of feeling for his wife and children, who. for the most part, 
 trudged along beside their waggon on foot. 
 
 The plain diet of this family as they sat at table 
 apart in the inns, consisting of "boiled potatoes, sour 
 milk, and mush," excited the pity of the Yankee chil- 
 dren, as their more substantial fare excited the longing 
 looks of the young Germans.*'^ 
 
 The landscape in West Pennsylvania reminded 
 them very much of New England ; but not so the "tall, 
 hardy, lank-looking race of men," a mixture of Scotch, 
 Irish and Germans, who spoke a "singular and rather 
 ludicrous dialect."**^ 
 
 Arriving at Pittsburg, the new world is fully en- 
 tered upon. Its vast number and variety of river craft 
 is most striking to the eastern eye. From this point 
 they proceeded by boat. They sold their team and 
 wagon at a large sacrifice and found they must pay 
 exorbitant prices for everything they bought. They 
 were not favorably impressed in any way with this 
 thriving and ambitious city, but they took some com- 
 fort on being assured that there was less of outbreaking 
 evil than in earlier times. 
 
 It is not necessary to follow the family at length in 
 this first stage of a river journey. It is to be often 
 repeated during the next ten years and one becomes 
 
 *** Flint. Recollections, 9-11. *^^ — Idem, 12.
 
 THE MISSION TO THE FAR WEST 6i 
 
 gradually familiar with it. It is needful to remem- 
 ber however, that the river travel, life, and influences 
 occupied a place in the early western civilization that, 
 in this day of railroads, can in no adequate measure be 
 appreciated. 
 
 The hardships of the entire journey from the east 
 were great. Mishaps and accidents were not a few. 
 At Pittsburg, a heavy and rapidly driven coach had 
 collided with their lighter conveyance to the great 
 distress of the latter but fortunately without much 
 harm to its occupants. The river journey was the most 
 hazardous. The water was low and they had to wait 
 for a boat. The expense of travel by steamboats, 
 even if one had been available at this time of the year, 
 was too heavy for the slender missionary income. It 
 was only four years after the time when the first steam- 
 boat had been seen upon the Ohio. Early in Novem- 
 ber, they took passage on a crazy Kentucky flatboat, 
 owned by a Yankee trader, and loaded with "factory 
 cottons and cutlery." It was a perfect day when they 
 embarked at one o'clock in the afternoon. The Flints 
 were greatly enjoying the beautiful scenery, the novel 
 experience and the agreeable change in their method 
 of travel. The Massachusetts trader was indulging 
 golden dreams when suddenly the flatboat, instead of 
 floating gently along, as its ov^ner and passengers had 
 expected, was whirled and tossed about in a manner 
 altogether alarming. The helpless craft was carried 
 swiftly through a chute, now it stuck on a bar, and now 
 it was dashed upon the rocks of "Dead Man's Riffle" 
 and almost capsized. The children shrieked, and the 
 cotton stufifs and hardware fell from the shelves and
 
 62 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 almost buried Mrs. Flint. The scared Yankee trader 
 and his reverend first mate, in their confusion, forgot 
 to resort to the oars, but tried to save themselves by 
 consulting the Navigator, a guide descriptive of the 
 Ohio and Mississippi.*^" 
 
 The reader will not wonder that by the time they 
 reached Beaver, the family forsook the risky flatboat, 
 and bought a large skiff. But the exposure in the open 
 boat resulted in the lung fever for Mr. Flint and sick- 
 ness for the whole family. At Wheeling they were 
 forced to stop and take lodgings in a house filled with 
 other invalid travelers. Sick, neglected, in a strange 
 place, they helped one another as well as they could, 
 but were so homesick that their eyes filled with tears 
 at the mere mention of home. The people of these 
 stopping places on the river were so accustomed to 
 large numbers of sick and dying strangers among them 
 that they had become hardened and indifferent." 
 
 One of the things that Mr. Flint noticed and felt 
 keenly was that the ministry in this section had nothing 
 of the kindly hospitality toward their traveling breth- 
 ren, which made life so agreeable to the ministerial 
 traveler in New England. At Pittsburg he had been 
 introduced to a minister whose house impressed him 
 with the wealth and opulence of the owner but not 
 with his hospitality. The only entertainment they 
 found on this first journey was at the public places, at 
 high rates. In Pittsburg they paid double for accom- 
 modations as compared with Boston.^^ 
 
 After their recovery at Wheeling they embarked 
 in a "keel boat," one of the fastest and most graceful 
 
 *=« Flint. Recollections, 19, 20. ^- — Idem, 21-26. ^^ — Idem, 18.
 
 THE MISSION TO THE FAR WEST 63 
 
 craft of the period. They reached Marietta in safety 
 after a few days and, for the first time since leaving 
 home, were among friends. Mr. Flint had letters to 
 General Putnam here and writes about the pleasure of 
 their stay at this place. 
 
 You can imagine the rapidity of discourse, the attempt of two 
 or three to narrate their adventures at the same time, and the 
 many pleasant circumstances attending the renewal of long sus- 
 pended intercourse with congenial society.®^ 
 
 Near the end of November, Flint purchased "a 
 Kentucky flat, of forty tons burthen" and descended 
 the river in company with several passengers besides 
 his own family, to Cincinnati. On this last section 
 of their journey, which occupied but a few days, they 
 had their first intimate experience with a Kentuckian. 
 He was a fine healthy-looking fellow with a young 
 wife, two or three negro slaves and two children. He 
 was a very profane man but agreed to omit his usual 
 oaths out of respect for Mr. Flint as a minister. The 
 wife was hopeful that Mr. Flint might cure him of 
 his folly and make him religious like "all his rela- 
 tives." The Kentuckian nettled the New England 
 children by exaggerated stories about Yankees who 
 sold "pit-coal, indigo, and wooden nutmegs." He 
 usually followed his anecdotes by a song with the 
 chorus: 
 
 They will put pine-tops in their whisky. 
 And then they call it gin.'^" 
 
 Stories at the expense of the Yankees they found 
 very common. Mr. Flint thought that not even the 
 poor Irish had so many stories invented for them and 
 put into their mouths. He takes these stories serious- 
 
 6 '^ Flint. Recollections, 29, 30. ''^ — Idem, 34-36>
 
 64 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 ly enough to explain that the Yankees were often made 
 scape goats of, for people who had never been near 
 New England. He thought also that the superior 
 acuteness of the Yankee had made many a block-head 
 from other sections try "to shine his hour, as a wise 
 man," and assume "this terrific name."^^ 
 
 At Cincinnati the Flints found their cousins. Heze- 
 kiah Flint Jr., son of the man who had emigrated with 
 the first Ohio company and whom the eight year old 
 Timothy had followed with longing eyes, had moved 
 to Cincinnati several years before this time. This 
 cousin had been in the west for above twenty-five years, 
 and his experience would be invaluable for the intro- 
 duction of the missionary family to their new life and 
 work. At Cincinnati they settled for the winter, here 
 to get their bearings, and to determine whether to go 
 on in the new, w^ild, and strange w^ay, or to return to 
 the land of their fathers. 
 
 The family, notwithstanding the fact that they had 
 been raised in a small New England village, and were 
 quiet and shrinking in the presence of strangers, 
 seemed to have so adapted themselves in a short time 
 to the western ways, that they soon came to be at home 
 in their new world. 
 
 ^1 Flint. Recollections, 32.
 
 IV. ITINERATING IN THE OHIO VALLEY 
 
 The missionary family took a house and settled in 
 Cincinnati for the winter. They found in this new city, 
 but twenty-five years removed from the wilderness, 
 many things to surprise them. It had eight or nine 
 thousand people, Mr. Flint said, 
 
 . . . Handsome streets, a number of churches, one a very 
 large one, a very spacious building for a Lancastrian school, and 
 other public buildings, and two commodious market-houses. On 
 the opposite shore rose a considerable village ; an arsenal of brick, 
 some handsome mansions, and one or two countrj'^-seats, that rose 
 still further in the distance. The buildings on each side were 
 placed in positions, that displayed them to the best possible advan- 
 tage, on gentle slopes rising gradually from the shores of the river. 
 
 Mr. Flint contrasts the free and rapid growth of this 
 city with that of St. Petersburg which was reared by 
 "a great and intelligent despot" who said, '' 'let there 
 be a city' and a city arose upon a Golgotha, upon piles 
 of human bones and skulls that gave consistency to a 
 morass." He is too true an American not to be proud 
 of this difference and he is prophet enough to see that 
 at no distant day the banks of the Ohio will become a 
 continuous village, and this section in a single century 
 become almost as populous as Europe. He was im- 
 pressed with the abundance of vegetables, meats, 
 game, and fish, and indeed, all the market supplies of 
 an eastern city. He found provisions cheaper here, 
 but the total expense of maintaining a family was much
 
 66 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 larger than in Massachusetts. He asserts a few years 
 later, concerning the seven hundred thousand people 
 of Ohio, that there are not the same number of people 
 anywhere else on the globe so well clothed and fed as 
 are they/' 
 
 He found in this city much sufifering among the 
 strangers and emigrants. He says: "It seemed to 
 have been their impression, that if once they could 
 arrive at the land of milk and honey, supplies would 
 come of course." Many suffered and died and were 
 buried by charit}\ He gives an incident of a family 
 from Maine. The family was large and crowded 
 into one room. Flint continues: 
 
 The husband and father was dying and expired while I was 
 there. The wife was sick in the same bed, and either from terror 
 or exhaustion, uttered not a word during the whole scene. Three 
 children were sick of fevers. If you add that they were in the 
 house of a poor man and had spent their last dollar, you can fill 
 out the picture of their misery. 
 
 Mr. Flint thought that the government ought to do 
 something to regulate the stream of migration and 
 that there ought to be more help from voluntary socie- 
 ties and from churches -the Methodists being the only 
 body that cared for their people in such circum- 
 stances, and they did it with commendable zeal and 
 liberality.''^ 
 
 The missionary was pleased to discover that the 
 moral conditions of society at Cincinnati, considering 
 its age and the materials of which it had been made, 
 was "astonishingly regular and correct." There were 
 many societies for diffusion of religious knowledge, 
 instruction, and charity. The ladies had formed a 
 
 ^2 Flint. Recollections, 38-40. "" — Idem, 41,
 
 ITINERATING IN THE OHIO VALLEY 67 
 
 bible and charitable society. The members were 
 highly respectable and their work showed genuine 
 benevolence/* 
 
 He found the people of the city showing a laudable 
 desire to belong to some religious society. At the 
 time of his arrival the Methodists appeared to be in 
 the lead. They were strongly marked with the pecul- 
 iarities of their sect. They had a number of lay 
 preachers, some of them among the wealthiest people 
 of the town. These preachers were the leaders of par- 
 tisans and sects with unhappy results. They had more 
 esprit du corps than other sects and were disposed 
 to use it in aid of political and other projects marked 
 out in conclave by their leaders.'" 
 
 Mr. Flint attended a meeting of Presbytery which 
 was called for the settlement of disputes.'^ He says: 
 
 The ministers took the attitude, and made the long speeches 
 of lawj'ers. . . Thej' availed themselves of the same vehement 
 action, and pouring out a great deal of rather vapid declamation, 
 proceeded to settle points, that seemed to me of very little import- 
 ance. The whole scene presented, it may be, a sufficient modicum 
 of talent for the bar, but manifested much want of the appro- 
 priate temper. 
 
 The press began at this time to teem with polemical 
 religious pamphlets. He remembered the first phrase 
 of one of them was, "It beats the devil." But he 
 thought the religious disputes of all ages were like 
 these of the western city, though possibly not quite so 
 coarsely expressed." 
 
 '■* Flint. Recollections, 47. 
 "^ — Idem, 45, 46. 
 
 "'^ It is to be remembered that the New England clergymen count them- 
 selves Presbyterians v.hen in the west at this period. 
 '^^ Flint. Recollections, 46. See also 69.
 
 68 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 One of the reasons, that made Ohio seem not inap- 
 propriately called the "Yankee state" Mr. Flint says, 
 was that it had not only the same desire for schools, 
 psalmody, settling ministers, and religious worship, 
 but, "the same disposition to dogmatize, to settle, not 
 only their own faith, but that of their neighbor, and 
 to stand resolutely, and dispute fiercely, for the slight- 
 est shade of difference of religious opinions."'^ 
 
 It was during this winter that Mr. Flint made his 
 first acquaintance with a new sect, called the "Cum- 
 berland Presbyterians." He could not give accurately 
 the shades of difference which distinguished them 
 from the older body of Presbyterians. "They describe 
 themselves," he says, "in point of speculation, to agree 
 with the Arminians." In the manner of their preach- 
 ing, and especially as to vociferousness they copied the 
 Methodists but outdid their model. In culture they 
 were inferior to the Methodists, so far as he had heard 
 them. In common with new sects they seemed to have 
 the juvenile ardor and desire to make proselytes. He 
 was interested in their movement to build a school 
 where "the rough timber, which they work into the 
 sanctuary, may be hewed with the 'axe of the proph- 
 ets'."" 
 
 He found the ministers of the region, men of con- 
 siderable talent and readiness, the latter quality being 
 promoted by the invariable habit of extemporaneous 
 speaking. They were also, usually men of enlight- 
 ened zeal and entire sanctity of general character. He 
 noted some peculiarities in the style of preaching in 
 this region, which had been influenced by the pre- 
 
 "s Flint. Recollections, 44, 45. "9 — Idem, 75. 
 
 m
 
 ITINERATING IN THE OHIO VALLEY 69 
 
 ponderance of Methodists and the more sensitive char- 
 acter of the south. He says: 
 
 They did not much affect discussion, but ran at once into the 
 declamatory. Sometimes these flights were elevated, but much 
 oftener not well sustained. For the speaking, the whole was, for 
 the most part, moulded in one form. They commenced the para- 
 graph in a moderate tone, gradually elevating the voice with each 
 period, and closing it with the greatest exertion, and the highest 
 pitch of the voice. They then affected, or it seemed like affecta- 
 tion, to let the voice down to the original modulation, in order 
 to run it up to the same pitch again. *^ 
 
 Mr. Flint was pleased to think there was a growing 
 change of taste, especially in the cities, in the matter 
 of pulpit oratory. Two or three well trained and 
 eloquent young clergymen from the north, had passed 
 through Ohio and Kentucky, had preached frequent- 
 ly, and had been highly popular. These men, and 
 the finer culture that was rapidly spreading from the 
 schools, was working a radical change. Mr. Flint 
 wTote*^^ to the Missionary Society of Connecticut that 
 the character and reputation of an eastern missionary, 
 even though he was under some suspicion as to his 
 theological soundness, was almost too high for the 
 advantage of the missionary when he came to preach 
 before the expectant people. 
 
 This popularity of the New England preacher 
 would seem to be illustrated in Mr. Flint's first win- 
 ter's work, and during other periods also. In Ken- 
 tucky he often had large and enthusiastic audiences 
 and was several times pressed to remain for a second 
 night or until a Sunday when more people might hear 
 
 *^ Flint. Recollections, 47. 
 
 ^' Letter of Timothy Flint, Cincinnati, March 20, i8r6.
 
 70 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 him.*" He was however, often conscious of the strong 
 prejudice that had been much increased in this section 
 by the attitude of New England during the war of 
 1 8 1 2, but everywhere he found that a man of reputable 
 appearance was treated with courtesy, and the "Yan- 
 kee" was no exception." 
 
 Among the several professions that Mr. Flint char- 
 acterizes is that of the law. In Ohio the lawyer was 
 generally democratic, while in the opposite state he 
 was a dandy. "The language of the bar was in many 
 instances an amusing compound of Yankee dialect, 
 southern peculiarity, and Irish blarney." "Him" 
 and "me" said this or that, "I done it" and similar 
 phrases were common, while the figures of speech 
 were taken from the measuring and location of land 
 purchases, the navigation of the rivers, and other local 
 interests.^* 
 
 Whatever lack of taste and culture Mr. Flint found 
 in the western world, at the bar, in the pulpit and in 
 the press, it was not, he thought, from a lack of tal- 
 ent. He found that here were the most ardent and 
 powerful minds, allured by speculation and adventure. 
 The lack of taste so much displayed in public, came 
 rather from the always common disposition of the in- 
 competent to make themselves prominent and vis- 
 ible.«^ 
 
 We have much in the Recollections about the nat- 
 ural scenery of the region through which Mr. Flint 
 traveled. Added to his love of nature, and the keen 
 interest excited by novelty, there seems to have been 
 
 82 Letter, op. cit. «* — Idem, 51. 
 
 83 Flint. Recollections, 69, 70. ^•"' — Idem, 49.
 
 ITINERATING IN THE OHIO VALLEY 71 
 
 a purpose to learn and remember all that he could in 
 order to use it for the printed page. There is much 
 said about the state of society and there are many in- 
 teresting comparisons made. He did not think the 
 people of Ohio were mostly from New England but 
 he thought the institutions of that section were very 
 much in the ascendency, and also that Ohio was the 
 last state toward the west where that would be true. 
 He says: "The prevalent modes of living, of society, 
 of instruction, of association for any public object, of 
 thinking, and enjoying, among the middle classes, 
 struck me, generally, to be copies of the New England 
 pattern." Mr. Flint had not visited "New Connecti- 
 cut" at this time and is speaking of the Ohio River 
 region of the state. The more dense population, the 
 small farms, the villages, and even the face of the 
 country, in some ways, reminded the New Englander 
 of his own country.^* 
 
 One of the most interesting men that Mr. Flint met 
 in these first months was General Harrison. He 
 records in both the Recollections and the missionary 
 letters, his impressions of and the benefactions re- 
 ceived from this man who was then well known as the 
 hero of an Indian war. He lived at North Bend, 
 Ohio, seventeen miles below Cincinnati on the Ohio 
 River. "On a fine farm," says Flint "in the midst of 
 the woods, his house was open to all the neighbors, 
 who entered without ceremony, and were admitted to 
 assume a footing of entire equality." His table was 
 "loaded with abundance and with substantial good 
 cheer, especially with the dififerent kinds of game." 
 
 8^ Flint. Recollectio7is, 44, 45.
 
 72 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 It was like old English hospitality. The general's 
 personal appearance was not at first preposessing. 
 Mr. Flint describes him as: 
 
 A small, and rathfr sallow looking; man. . . But he grows 
 upon the eye and upon more intimate acquaintance. There is 
 something imposing in the dignified simplicity of his manners. 
 In the utter want of all show, and insignia, and trappings, there 
 is something, w^hich finely comports WMth the severe plainness of 
 republicanism. . . There is a great deal of ardor and vivacity 
 in his manner. He h.is a copious fund of that eloquence which 
 is fitted for the camp and for gaining partisans.*'^ 
 
 Mr. Flint thought that he had generally been 
 underrated as a commander. It is interesting to note 
 that among the amounts collected by Mr. Flint on his 
 field, and reported to the Missionary Society, is five 
 dollars from General Harrison, presented to Mrs. 
 Flint, December 17, 1815.^^ But the general ren- 
 dered his cause much more substantial aid than this 
 by the opening of his house for public worship, by 
 hospitality to the missionary when on his tours, and by 
 hospitality to his family party when they were jour- 
 neying to St. Louis. Here also Mr. Flint organized 
 one of the two churches which were the fruit of his 
 first winter's work, the other being at Newport, Ken- 
 tucky. During this winter General Harrison urged 
 Mr. Flint to settle in his community as the minister.*^ 
 He had similar invitations from Dayton, Ohio, and 
 Lexington, Kentucky. 
 
 In March, after a very severe winter, which the 
 westerners said had been caused by the unusually 
 large number of Yankees who had arrived the pre- 
 
 *^ Flint. RecoUeciions, 50. 
 
 88 Item reported in the letter of July 2, 1816, written from St. Louis, 
 
 89— Idem.
 
 ITINERATING IN THE OHIO VALLEY 75 
 
 ceding months, Mr. Flint took a three hundred mile 
 circuit through Indiana and Kentucky, being gone 
 twenty-two days and preaching seventeen times, as he 
 reports to his Society."" In Indiana he was contin- 
 ually coming upon new^ cabins in the forests along the 
 Ohio River. He draws an interesting picture of the 
 evolution of the cabin into the frame house, and the 
 brick mansion; the family meanwhile aspiring to rise 
 in the financial, social, and cultural world. "^ There 
 were many settlers from New England, the question 
 of forming a state government was warm, and the 
 slavery issue was being keenly agitated. There was 
 fear expressed by the southern element that it might 
 be a Yankee state like Ohio.^" 
 
 Vincennes, then the principal place in the state, was 
 visited by the missionary, and also Vevay. In the 
 latter place he was interested in the colony of Swiss 
 and their attempt to plant great vineyards in the for- 
 ests. He admired the colonists very much and com- 
 ments on their intermarriage with the Kentuckians. 
 He crossed into Kentucky at the mouth of the river of 
 that name, in company with an educated young Ger- 
 man as his traveling companion. This German was 
 able to see the advantages and disadvantages of the 
 new country, and especially the opportunities it of- 
 fered for the poor of his own country.^" 
 
 In Kentucky he found the people living easily and 
 in plenty. The young natives seemed to him the 
 largest people he had ever seen. The villages were 
 
 ^•'Letter of Timothy Flint, Cincinnati, March 20, 1816. 
 ^^ Flint. Recollect'to7ts, 53. 
 ^- — Idem, 56, 57. 
 93 — Idem, 58, 60.
 
 76 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 full of people who had nothing to do. Everywhere 
 there were striking marks of rustic opulence. The 
 public houses were full of well dressed boarders, 
 travelers and strangers. The meals were served up 
 with much display, and the lady hostess was conducted 
 by some dandy to her chair at the head of the table, 
 which was regarded as a post of honor, and which she 
 filled with suitable dignity. 
 
 I felt grieved to see so many fine young men exempted from 
 labor, having no liberal studies and pursuits to fill up their time, 
 and falling almost, of course, into the prevailing vices of the 
 West - gambling and intemperance. . . The parents lament- 
 ed the fact, and the children were ready more frankly to confess 
 the charge, than to reform.^* 
 
 Mr. Flint found the people of Kentucky more en- 
 thusiastic and national than any other western people 
 and looking with disdain upon the people of the 
 younger states. He tells an anecdote, said to be 
 familiar to every westerner, about a Methodist 
 preacher from Kentucky preaching in a neighboring 
 state. He was trying to describe heaven. Failing in 
 adjectives and similies he said: "In short, my breth- 
 ren to say all in one word, Heaven is a Kentuck of a 
 place." ^= 
 
 In consequence of this feeling and of the age and 
 wealth of Kentucky, Mr. Flint found that in all the 
 neighboring states the Kentuckians claimed and often 
 received a preeminence in official and social circles, 
 which gave them a marked influence upon the entire 
 western world. He cautioned the thoughtful people 
 of the state against the common and acknowledged 
 evils that he had pointed out to them as being danger- 
 s'* Flint. Recollections, 62. ^5 — Idem, 63, 64.
 
 ITINERATING IN THE OHIO VALLEY 77 
 
 ous not only to themselves and their descendants, but 
 to wide regions, soon to be great and influential states. 
 He concludes: 
 
 Upon none of the western states is the obligation to labor for 
 
 the disciplining, purifying, and, if I may so say, of redeeming the 
 
 young, so solemnly imposed, as upon this.^" 
 
 Mr. Clay had just returned from Ghent, where he 
 had been a member of the Peace Commission, when 
 our missionary visited Lexington. Out of consider- 
 ation for the statesman's fatigue from receiving a large 
 number of callers after his return, he did not join the 
 procession but remarks approvingly of Mr. Clay as a 
 statesman and a man of true culture though he may 
 not have had the usual advantages in that direction. 
 He regrets that so man}'^ young men pride themselves 
 on their not having a classical education and imagin- 
 ing that they are following the great statesman's ex- 
 ample. "For the one prize so obtained, there would 
 be a thousand blanks."'''' 
 
 "Lexington is a singularly neat and pleasant town," 
 he thinks. Not so large or flourishing as Cincinnati, 
 but justly claiming to be the "Athens of the West," 
 while its larger rival can only be the Corinth. Mr. 
 Flint pays high compliment to the Transylvania Uni- 
 versity at Lexington, and to its head, Doctor Blythe 
 who, he regrets, is bitterly opposed by the conservative 
 religionists. The signs of general culture which he 
 found in the homes were largely traceable, he thought, 
 to this and similar institutions.""* 
 
 In his missionary work during the four months of 
 his residence in Cincinnati Mr. Flint followed the 
 plan of "that sagacious society, the Methodists." He 
 
 »8 Flint. Recollections, 72. ^'' — Icfrm, 77. ^^ — IJern, 67, 68.
 
 78 TlAlOriiV FLINT 
 
 arranged a circuit at several points resulting, as before 
 indicated, in two permanent churches. He was ap- 
 palled by the paganism and ignorance that he found 
 in the new and remote regions and in the river settle- 
 ments, the better classes of settlers being more on the 
 upper waters of the lateral streams/'" 
 
 He organized several "societies for the suppression 
 of intemperance and Sabbath breaking, the crying sins 
 of the country." He found twenty-three families 
 within three miles of General Harrison's place with- 
 out a complete copy of the Bible, and his supply was 
 speedily exhausted. The people had very little read- 
 ing matter and had poor reading habits compared 
 with New England people. His tracts were de- 
 voured eagerly. He had almost given ofifense in dol- 
 ing out the few he had for distribution. These, he 
 thought, were the most effective tools the missionary 
 could use. He says he found "the taste, the singing 
 and the selections that prevailed here, to the last de- 
 gree bad." He had prepared a collection of "slow, 
 sweet, and solemn music" selected from European 
 books and changed into the patent note form. He 
 was fearful that the expense of printing, which was 
 high there, would prevent his publishing the selec- 
 tions which he thought would do something to add to 
 the attractions and solemnity of psalmody, in that 
 section."^ 
 
 The question of support was a most difficult and 
 trying one to Mr. Flint. His salary from the Mis- 
 sionary Society of Connecticut was twenty-five dollars 
 per month, with no allowance for expenses and with 
 
 "^Letter of Timothy Flint, Cincinnati, Jan. i8, i8i6. 
 1"" Letter of Feb. 12, 1816.
 
 ITINERATING IN THE OHIO VALLEY 79 
 
 all receipts from the field deducted from this meager 
 amount. In January of 1816, he wrote to the secre- 
 tary that his salary very little more than covered half 
 of his living expenses and asked that he might have 
 his collections in addition to his salary from the so- 
 ciety. This was apparently granted to him after- 
 wards and was a favor shown to few others at that time. 
 Mr. Flint found that expenses were very high in many 
 ways and that he had little gain from the hospitality 
 of the people among whom he preached such as an 
 unmarried man would have had. He was soon plan- 
 ning to settle in a large center where he might get a 
 more adequate support from church and school work. 
 He found that the people in the country places had no 
 thought of any obligation to support the gospel. He 
 could not urge the matter without injury to his work. 
 He was at times so much straitened that he decided 
 to give up his mission and go into some work where 
 he could support his family'"' He received during 
 his three weeks tour in Kentucky, fifty-one dollars and 
 fifty cents in unsolicited gifts. For the four months 
 in the Ohio Valley he reported sixty-six dollars and 
 twenty-five cents received "' from the field and in addi- 
 tion to his salary. In the later letters written this first 
 winter, the burden had lifted a little and he apolo- 
 gized to the secretary of the society for the anxiety he 
 had shown earlier."^ 
 
 1"! Letter of Jan. 18, i8i6. 
 
 ^"2 Letter of Timothy Flint, St. Louis, July 2, 1816. Flint had instruc- 
 tions to limit his letters to one sheet. In many cases he found that difficult 
 and sometimes cross lines his letters. In this letter he adds an e itra sheet and 
 gives a financial report of his work up to this date. It is one of the two or 
 three most important missionary letters. 
 
 i<>3 Letter of Timothy Flint, Cincinnati, March 20, 1816.
 
 8o riMOTH^ FJ.INT 
 
 But a feeling that there was a still greater need of 
 his work on the Mississippi where there was no organ- 
 ized mission work, the hope of establishing himself in 
 a central place like St. Louis, and a letter from Mr. 
 Stephen Hempstead •■ of the latter place, decided him 
 to go on to this region. Accordingly he asked for a 
 transfer of his commission to "the Illinois territory 
 and the course of the Mississippi." There he hoped 
 to be ''the founder of the first branch of the Pres. 
 church in St. Louis and the Miss. Territory." This 
 decision was reached and arrangements made to go 
 before he knew that the society had sent another man 
 to that region - the Reverend Salmon Giddings. Mr. 
 Flint thought, however, there would be room for both 
 of tJiem! He had been invited to settle both at Ver- 
 sailles and Frankfort but had declined, in part because 
 there was an academy connected with a pastoral 
 charge of more than one church, and he did not feel 
 physically able for the undertakings."* One might 
 be led to suspect that Mr. Flint was beginning to be 
 infected with the same migratory spirit which he 
 charges upon the Kentuckians, when he says of them : 
 
 * Mr. Flint had written to Stephen Henapstead on Dec. 29, 1815, as 
 follows: "Seeing in Messrs. Mills and Smith's Journal, of their missionary 
 tour into your country, your name given as a fit character, to whom to send 
 bibles for distribution, I have inferred from that circumstance, that you 
 were interested in the concerns of religion in general. 
 
 "I am a missionary' from the Presbyterian church of Connecticut, sent to 
 labor where there appears the best prospect of doing good. I am at present 
 laboring in this vicinitj', but have had thought of visiting St. Louis in the 
 spring." He inquires also about the prospects for missionary work, the 
 attitude of the people and the heakhfulness of the climate. See Letter in 
 collection of Missouri Historical Society. Copy in Harvard University 
 Library. 
 
 1"* Letter of Timothy Flint, Cincinnati, March 2c, iSi'i.
 
 ITINERATING IN THE OHIO VALLEY 8i 
 
 "Though they have good houses they might almost as 
 well, like the Tartars, dwell in tents." He wanted to 
 see what was in the west. Living was cheaper ! Op- 
 portunities greater! The rainbow descended on the 
 Mississippi!
 
 V. THE JOURNEY DOWN THE MISSISSIP- 
 PI AND SOJOURN IN ST. LOUIS 
 
 For the journey down the Ohio and up the Missis- 
 sippi, Mr. Flint purchased a keelboat about ninety 
 feet in length and of seventeen tons burden. At that 
 time there was but one steamboat which went up the 
 Mississippi above the Ohio and it was unsafe. Their 
 boat was heavily loaded, having at first several pas- 
 sengers besides Mr. Flint's family, and a considerable 
 stock of merchandise, about seven thousand dollars 
 worth, which belonged principally to a brother of 
 Mr. Flint. This merchandise was intended for the 
 establishment in the new country, of a business for this 
 brother and Micah P., the oldest son of the mission- 
 ary.^""* 
 
 Many friends had been gained in Cincinnati. 
 Shortly before his departure, the Female Charitable 
 Association had invited him to preach a sermon for 
 them and had given him twenty dollars for his mis- 
 sion. ^°*^ These and other friends accompanied the 
 family to their boat to see them off, after having made 
 many kind provisions for their comfort upon the long 
 journey. The breaking of ties here was a foretaste of 
 similar experiences that came to them many times in 
 
 10= Letter of Timothy Flint, St. Charles, June 4, 1818. See also letter of 
 Giddings, St. Louis, March 2, 1818. 
 ioG_ Idem, St. Louis, July 2, 1816.
 
 84 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 the succeeding years and led Mr. Flint to say that he 
 found gloomy thoughts connected with every effort to 
 form new acquaintances, which however pleasant, are 
 so transient and frail.'" 
 
 The date given in the Recollections for the depar- 
 ture from Cincinnati is April twelfth, and for the 
 arrival at St. Louis, May twenty-fourth, while the let- 
 ter written to the Connecticut Society, July second, 
 from St. Louis gives the dates as April fifteenth and 
 May thirteenth. In view of the time that had elapsed 
 before Mr. Flint wrote the Recollections, some ten 
 years, and then far from his books and papers while 
 on a visit in Massachusetts, and also in view of the fact 
 that most of his journals and papers had been de- 
 stroyed by a cyclone in Arkansas,^"* there need be no 
 hesitation in accepting the dates in the letters in pref- 
 erence to those in the printed pages of his book, re- 
 gretting only that the revised copy of this book is lost. 
 
 The first two hours of the journey down the river 
 were most delightful, but for the threatening thunder 
 clouds gathering in the west. The storm broke upon 
 them so severely and suddenly that they could not 
 make the shore and they were compelled to weather it 
 in the open river, their heavily laden boat taking in 
 considerable water, and all on board being thor- 
 oughly frightened. Even the grim ^'patron" of the boat 
 looked serious though he had been many years on the 
 river and many times wrecked. Because of the 
 storm they landed at General Harrison's place the 
 first evening and continued there a couple of days, 
 being most hospitably entertained by him and enjoy- 
 
 10' Flint Recollections, io. ^^^ — Idem,^.
 
 SOJOURN IN ST. LOUIS 85 
 
 ing the thorough work that a skilled tutor was doing 
 with his children.'"* 
 
 Mr. Flint thinks they would have turned back after 
 this inauspicious beginning of their voyage if they 
 had been in the least superstitious or if they could at 
 all have foreseen even a part of what was to befall 
 them. It was on the second day of the trip down the 
 river and at Lawrenceburg, that the eleven year old 
 daughter Emeline, playing about the boat with some 
 child of the village, fell into the river and would 
 have been drowned but for the help of a stranger.''" 
 
 They reached the Mississippi in ten days' time, hav- 
 ing picked up a boat's crew of ten or a dozen men at 
 "Shawnoe-town." This place is described as "an un- 
 pleasant looking village, that had but just emerged 
 from an inundation, before our arriving there.'"" 
 The boat's crew had agreed that they would neither 
 swear nor become intoxicated while they were in the 
 service of the minister. This agreement was so well 
 kept, that they earned the title of "the civil boat's 
 crew" from people on the shores and from other boat- 
 men, who were surprised by not receiving from them 
 the customary abuse and profanity."' This agree- 
 ment could not, however, relieve the owner of the boat 
 from the necessity of providing the crew with the 
 customary "refreshments," or, as Flint says, "the us- 
 ual compliment." 
 
 On the twenty-fifth of April"' their boat drifted 
 
 109 Flint. Recollections, 83. 
 
 ii»— Idem, 83. 
 
 iix — ldem. 
 
 112 Letter of Timothy Flint, St. Louis, July 2, 1816. 
 
 11;: _ Uem.
 
 86 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 into the turbid, chalk-like waters of the Mississippi 
 and was made last to the young willows on the shore 
 while the crew prepared for the toilsome and perilous 
 ascent of the river. The family was distressed by 
 what they saw of an attempt to build a city at the 
 junction of the two great rivers. All they found of 
 the ambitious city of Cairo was floating on a great flat 
 boat "a hundred feet in length, in which were fam- 
 ilies, liquor-shops, drunken men and women, and all 
 the miserable appendages of such a place." '"* 
 
 The Mississippi opened to them a new world. It 
 was to them as to most of the American people of that 
 time, the "ultima Thule-a limit almost to the range 
 of thought." The forests had seldom resounded, ex- 
 cept with the cry of wild beasts, the echo of thunder, 
 or the crash of undermined trees, falling into the 
 flood. The sense of newness, combined with the 
 sense of novelty. They "beheld everything as though 
 the water, the plants, the trees of the Mississippi, 
 would be different from the same things elsewhere." 
 This led Mr. Flint to say when writing ten years later, 
 
 Perhaps the first half day that we passed in ascending the river 
 under every favorable omen, was the happiest period that we ever 
 experienced, as it respects mere physical enjoj-ment. 
 
 In this connection he remarks : 
 
 I have been astonished, at r. subsequent passing this same por- 
 tion of the river, and then too under pleasant circumstances, how 
 much of the zest and enjo\-ment of such scenes are taken away 
 with their noveIt>'.^^^ 
 
 "Under such circumstances," says Mr. Flint, "this 
 novel and fresh scene revived those delightful images 
 of youth, the spring-time of existence, which are most 
 
 "Splint. RecollectJons, %e. ^^^ — Idem, ii, ^o, 91.
 
 SOJOURN IN ST. LOUIS 87 
 
 fondly cherished and longest remembered." Charm- 
 ing scenery, delightful air, cheering sunshine, and the 
 majestic view of the Father of Waters, pouring his 
 flood between wonderful shores, filled all of the en- 
 thusiastic and poetic family with ecstasy. They 
 seemed to float as in a delicious dream. The "huge 
 sized cotton-woods" waved in strange loveliness. 
 Great flocks of wild ducks and other game birds rose 
 in airy flights from the reeds and were hardly fright- 
 ened by the discharge of their guns. There were 
 herds of deer seen now and then bounding through the 
 distant thickets. Everything united to captivate the 
 senses and to excite the fancy. The pungent odor of 
 the willow flowers, which the voyagers crushed in 
 their hands as they grasped the overhanging boughs 
 to aid the northward motion of their boat, raised in 
 their minds mythological ideas of "nectar and am- 
 brosia." ^^'^ 
 
 However, even this stage of the journey was not all 
 pleasure. The severe and dangerous toil of working 
 up the river, beset as it was with snags, "sawyers," 
 wreck heaps and rocks, soon exhausted the physical 
 energies and led to depression of spirits. They were 
 more than once half a day struggling with all the 
 force of crew and passengers in order to drag their 
 heavily laden boat past a single rapid or difficult place 
 in the river. At best they wxre only creeping up 
 stream and making about twelve miles a day."^ 
 
 The night season brought not only rest but a change 
 of scene as well. All hands encamped on the shore. 
 Some favorable spot was selected, camp fires built, 
 
 116 Flint. Recollections, 88-90. ^^~ — Idem, 92, 93.
 
 88 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 supper cooked and couches prepared for the welcome 
 repose of night. But before rest, came the social hour 
 of the camp. The almost invariable rule was that the 
 owner of the boat must furnish for this hour the usual 
 rations of whiskey. Mr. Flint probably could not 
 have resisted this custom even if he would have done 
 so. Some of the boatmen in Mr. Flint's crew had 
 been hunters in the upper world of the Missouri. 
 Others had been "above the falls of St. Anthony" on 
 the Mississippi. Some had been in Canada. Still 
 others had wandered south to the Gulf of Mexico, on 
 the Red River and into the Spanish country. There 
 were stories of river and forest, of war and hunt, of 
 Spaniard and Frenchman. There were tales of dusky 
 loves that no feature of romance might be wanting, 
 Mr. Flint says, and he thought the stories would have 
 made tolerable romances if they had been "tricked 
 out in the dress of modern description." ^^^ 
 
 "Shawnoe Indians" prowled about the night en- 
 campment and were such objects of terror to the fam- 
 ily they received little "pleasure from the spectacle." 
 These did not have the "tame and subdued counte- 
 nance of the northern Indians" with whom Flint had 
 become acquainted when traveling in those regions. ^^^ 
 Desperadoes, in outlandish attire, armed with dirks, 
 and smelling desperately of bad liquors -"a race of 
 men placed on the extreme limits of order and civili- 
 zation"- invaded the camp. Not unfrequently some 
 lawless wretch, minus one eye, was pointed out to 
 Flint as a victim of the "gougers" thumb. But the 
 clergyman was assured that no "gentleman" w^as in 
 
 11^ Flint. Recollections, 94, 95. ii9— Idem, ^^.
 
 SOJOURN IN ST. LOUIS 89 
 
 danger of being gouged. This was "a surgical oper- 
 ation" which they thought "only proper to be prac- 
 tised upon black-guards, and their equals." ''" 
 
 Two methods of locomotion were employed, in 
 propelling a boat up stream when poles and oars did 
 not answer: towing and "bush-whacking." A tow- 
 line or "cordelle" of great length was carried by every 
 boat. One of these long ropes was used after the 
 manner of a cable on a canal-boat, to pull the boat up 
 stream by the muscle of man. The "hands" would 
 toil along the bank tugging at the "cordelle." When 
 they came to the mouth of a tributary, they either 
 swam across, holding fast to the line, or used a yawl to 
 carry the rope across. When they were impeded by 
 a bluff, it was necessary to "warp" or cross the river 
 to the low ground on the other side. "Bush-whack- 
 ing" was the practice of pulling the boat up by taking 
 hold of overhanging trees. 
 
 Crossing the river often brought no relief from their 
 difficulties. When the current was unusually swift 
 or the ground marshy on the bank, the long rope was 
 carried far ahead and attached to a windlass. The 
 boat and the boatmen were exposed to constant perils. 
 Mr. Flint remarks that he had never taken a trip on 
 the river without seeing the recent wrecks of boats, 
 and the red shirted bodies of drowned boatmen float- 
 ing in the river. Their boat was several times in 
 extreme danger from the high current and from fall- 
 ing trees along the banks. The family often walked 
 on the shore when the danger was considerable. Once 
 while the helmsman talked with a girl on shore he 
 
 120 Flint. Recollections, 98.
 
 90 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 ran on to a snag or "sawyer," which penetrated the 
 bow of their boat and nearly cost them their cargo if 
 not their lives.'"' 
 
 In the first missionary letter from St. Louis/" Mr. 
 Flint tells that he made most of his way on foot as the 
 boat toiled painfully up the river, and that he could 
 walk faster than the boat traveled. He entered the 
 cabins of the few settlers and endeavored to learn the 
 moral and religious condition of the people. The 
 first settlement of any importance was the old town of 
 Ste. Genevieve where there was some little progress 
 and comfort. Below this he found the people with- 
 out an exception destitute of the Scriptures and all 
 religious advantages. He found little opportunity 
 to preach during the ascent of the Mississippi but he 
 distributed much religious literature and made known 
 the name of missionary, which before they had never 
 heard. At Ste. Genevieve they came for the first 
 time upon the French mode of constructing houses 
 and forming a village. He says : 
 
 The greater proportion of the houses have mud walls, whitened 
 with lime, which have much the most pleasant appearance at a 
 distance. Their modes of building, enclosing, and managing, 
 are very unlike those of the American. Here the French is the 
 predominant language. Traces, too, of their regard for their 
 worship begin to be seen. You see the Catholic church. On the 
 ridges of the houses, or over the gates, you frequendy see the 
 wooden cross.^^* 
 
 He held an evening service at Ste. Genevieve and 
 had a large audience principally of Catholics, in spite 
 of their priest's opposition to Protestantism, which 
 
 ^21 Flint. Recollections, 91, 97. 
 
 "2 July 2, 1816. 
 
 12' Flint. Recollections, 100.
 
 SOJOURN IN ST. LOUIS 91 
 
 had recently been revealed by his order that all 
 the New Testaments sent in by the bible societies, 
 should be burned. Mr. Flint had such a cordial re- 
 ception and invitation to settle here that he was much 
 inclined to do so, though he decided that he would at 
 least go on to St. Louis and confer with Mr. Giddings 
 before he made his final location. He stopped at 
 Herculaneum, half way to St. Louis, and had a cordial 
 reception there also.^'* 
 
 Mr. Giddings had reached St. Louis via the north- 
 ern route on the sixth of April, a few weeks before 
 Mr. Flint's arrival. '"" The latter says in his first let- 
 ter from St. Louis : 
 
 We arrived here the 13th of May. Mr. Giddings had left 
 the ground, despairing of usefulness, and having received from 
 the people the most pointed neglect. My reception was also cold. 
 Mr. G. Blackburn ^-^ had recently been here, and had made 
 engagements to fix himself here in the autumn. He evidently 
 considered the mission, as standing in his way. He had made use 
 of detraction, intrigue, and every engine, that he could move, to 
 prejudice the mission.^-' He alternately lashed the eastern peo- 
 
 124 Letter of Timothy Flint, St. Louis, July 2, 1816. 
 
 1-^ Norton, Augustus T. History of the Presbyterian Churcli in Illinois, 
 
 21, 33 ff-. 37, 5-- 
 
 ^-" Reverend Dr. Gideon Blackburn, 1772-1838, a well known and leading 
 Presbyterian minister of Tennessee. His character is very partially and un- 
 fairly presented in this letter. Mr. Flint does him justice later in his 
 Recollections, 183, 184. This letter gives us a fair picture of the not unusual 
 estrangement between the Middle State or Western Presbyterians and the 
 New England Presbyterians or Congregationalists as they were called later. 
 See further on these points Norton's History of the Presbyterian Church in 
 Illinois. See also Rev. Abel Flint's letter to Mr. Hempstead (Hartford, April 
 30, 1818), in which reference is made to Dr. Blackburn's attack on Rev. Abel 
 Flint and New England clergymen. 
 
 ^-" The mission in Missouri that was founded by the Missionary Society 
 of Connecticut was the result in good part of the visit of Samuel J. Mills to 
 St. Louis in the fall of 1814. Sec Thomas C. Richards's Samuel J. Mills,
 
 92 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 pie, eastern institutions, and especially eastern missionaries, repre- 
 senting, that only such were sent out, as could find no employ 
 even in that land of dullness. He even brought forward the 
 Hartford Convention. A warning was inserted in the news- 
 papers, intimating that our object was to disseminate the politics 
 of Osgood and Parish.^'® The Americans of influence are gener- 
 ally Tennesseeans and Kentuckians, sufficiently disposed to cherish 
 prejudices against eastern people. From this variety of concur- 
 ring causes, I found almost every heart closed against us. Our 
 situation, the while, was by no means enviable. You know, that 
 my whole family is slender. We had come in the boat 900 miles, 
 had been wet and scorched, and harassed by mosquitoes and wood 
 ticks, and had been suffering not a few hardships, privations and 
 fatigues. No house was open to us, nor was even a hovel to 
 shelter us to be hired. There seemed to be no asylum but either 
 the hot, leaky, and filthy boat, or the wilderness. I dispatched a 
 messenger to St. Charles, 20 miles up the Missouri, but every 
 avenue seemed closed up there also. On Sunday Mr. Hemp- 
 sted, and Mr. Giddings, who had heard of our arrival, visited 
 us, and we were once more cheered with the sight of Xn friends. 
 I went from the boat to divine service, and we had a very full 
 audience, I went out to Mr. Hempsted's farm and we prayed to- 
 gether, and sung that fine hymn, the meeting of Xn friends, and 
 our communion together was sweet. Mr. Giddings declined 
 preaching here any longer. The field was unoccupied, and prov- 
 idence seemed to have rendered it necessary for me to fix here. 
 
 With the help of Mr. Hempstead and a young man 
 from Massachusetts, a Mr. Sawyer, Timothy Flint 
 found a two room log hut for which he had to pay 
 
 Missionary, Pathfinder, Pioneer and Promoter, 153, 154. Also letter of 
 Samuel J. Mills to the Missionary Society of Connecticut, St. Louis, Nov. 7, 
 1814; and letter of Flint to Hempstead, Cincinnati, March 11, 1816. 
 
 129 Probably David Osgood, 1747-1822, and Elijah Parish, 1762-1825. 
 The former was a distinguished preacher of Massachusetts. He was a 
 zealous Federalist and some of his political sermons attracted considerable 
 notice. Parish was also a Massachusetts minister and greatly interested in 
 politics. His election sermon in 18 10 criticised the government so severely 
 that the legislature refused to publish it.
 
 SOJOURN IN ST. LOUIS 93 
 
 twelve dollars per month. They lived five days in 
 the boat on the river. While in the harbor they had 
 not failed to be interested in the strange craft and 
 people from all sections of the western world. 
 
 In a few weeks' time, Mr. Flint found his audiences 
 growing and the people softening to kindness. He 
 felt that there was a good prospect of overcoming 
 prejudice and establishing a religious society. He 
 did some preaching during the summer at St. Charles 
 and other points. He also took hold of a school 
 which Mr. Sawyer had started and which was about 
 to fail because of local prejudice and the timidity of 
 the teacher. The school was conducted jointly by 
 Mr. Flint and Mr. Sawyer. It must have been suc- 
 cessful from the number of Catholic children who 
 were in attendance and who remained for the religious 
 exercises conducted by the teachers.^"" Financially 
 the school must have been successful for Mr. Flint 
 received one hundred and twenty dollars as his share 
 of profits for the summer. Judged by the same stand- 
 ard his church work, for less than four months, was 
 successful -one hundred and four dollars having been 
 raised for him by subscription."^ 
 
 Mr. Flint confessed that he was anxious to establish 
 his school and mission so firmly that when Doctor 
 Blackburn arrived in the fall with his teachers and 
 preachers, he would find the ground in St. Louis fully 
 occupied. One year later, however, Mr. Flint writes 
 that they have united their forces and are working in 
 harmony. He says: "We are most happily agreed 
 
 130 Letter of Timothy Flint, St. Louis, July 2, 1816, 
 
 131 Letter of Oct. 10, 1816.
 
 94 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 in sentiment ami in the distribution of our labors." 
 The third Thursday in November, 1817, they were 
 to form a Presbytery at St. Louis in connection with 
 the ^^'est Tennessee Synod. The Presbytery was 
 composed of the t\vo New Englanders, Giddings and 
 Flint, Mr. Mathews, a Pennsylvania Presbyterian, 
 and Mr. Donnell, a pupil of Doctor Blaclvburn.'^"" 
 Mr. Donnell was later settled over his church in the 
 "mine district.'' southwest of St. Louis. ^"^ The only 
 criticism that Mr. Flint makes on the candidate was 
 that he had the measles. It was most likely the first 
 Protestant ordination or installation service in that 
 part of the world. ^"* If Doctor Blackburn himself had 
 located in St. Louis as he intended, it is not likely that 
 this early and happy union would have been effected. 
 
 It was only six weeks after his arrival in St. Louis 
 that Mr. Flint reported himself so busy with school, 
 pastoral duties, funerals, and preaching tours in the 
 country that he had little time to write and was at the 
 limit of his strength. He found the burden of preach- 
 ing much heavier here than in the east. He says: 
 
 Extreme caution is necessary in this abandoned country even 
 in the manner of performing public duty. I should not dare 
 under any circumstances to use notes. The eastern missionaries, 
 who have done it have very much prejudiced their cause. The 
 people here have a vast deal of effrontery, and Avill not pardon 
 
 ^^- Letter of Nov. i, 1817. See furt'ner concerning the misunderstanding 
 between Mr. Flint and Doctor Blackburn in the letter of the former to Mr. 
 Hempstead from St. Charles, Nov., 1816. 
 
 133 — Idem, St. Charles, May 4, 1818. Flint says of this district: "I 
 saw in the excursion and in the many families, that I entered in the mine 
 district far more encouraging appearances, than I have noted elsewhere in 
 this country. There are many respectable and serious families from Con- 
 necticut. You will fancj', that we were most cordially received." 
 
 1'^ Flint. Recollections, 127.
 
 SOJOURN IN ST. LOUIS 95 
 
 modesty in anyone. A frothy and turgid kind of ready eloquence 
 is characteristic of every class of public speaker. I have broken 
 over all early habits, and have triumphed over extreme reluctance, 
 and against my own taste and feelings, have become all things to 
 all people, as far, as I possibly could. They think, that were I 
 not extremely feeble, I should be almost, except my eastern bonds, 
 as a Kentuckian.^"' 
 
 Contrary to his hopes he found living expenses here 
 higher than in Cincinnati and was still perplexed by 
 this matter. He was encouraged, however, when he 
 looked back over the long and expensive way that he 
 had come, for it seems almost as if the ravens had pro- 
 vided.^^' 
 
 The business of his brother, in which Mr. Flint 
 had invested about one thousand dollars, did not he 
 says occupy any of his time. He was not usually in 
 the store more than once a week. It proved not only 
 an unsuccessful business but the occasion of much 
 criticism later. It was, very possibly, an occasion of 
 hostility to his ministry at this time.^"^^ 
 
 During the first summer Mr. Flint distributed one 
 hundred and fifty Bibles, part of them French. He 
 observed that he often found during his travels large 
 deposits of Bibles in the hands of public men, who 
 had agreed to act as officers of the societies formed by 
 Mr. Mills, lying unused, while there were many fam- 
 ilies all about without a copy of the Sacred Book. He 
 thought political men poor agents for such work.^^* 
 
 Toward the close of his work in St. Louis he held a 
 communion service, the first Protestant service of the 
 
 1"'' Letter of Timothy Flint, St. Louis, July 2, iSi6. 
 ^"^ — Idem. 
 
 1^^ Letter written from St. Charles, June 4, iRi3. 
 1"* Letter from St. Louis, July 2, 1816.
 
 96 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 kind there. The people were from all states and 
 sects and each one thought that his way of conducting 
 the ceremony ought to be adopted and was scandalized 
 that so much concession should be made to others. 
 Mr. Flint thought when writing nine years later ^^^ 
 that this occasion had brought out in an unusual way 
 people's attachment to form. It was, however, a very 
 solemn and affecting service and he thought marked 
 the beginning of a religious profession for some of the 
 younger people."" 
 
 In this connection, Mr. Flint's remarks about the 
 sects beyond the Mississippi are interesting to notice. 
 He says : 
 
 At one point you meet with a respectable Methodist, and 
 begin to feel an attachment for the profession. He next meets 
 you with harmony and cooperation on his lips, and the next thing 
 you hear, is, that you are charged with being a fierce Calvinist, 
 and that you preached that "hell is paved with infants' skulls." 
 While, perhaps the society, with which you are connected, hear 
 from an opposite quarter and from a pretended friend, that in 
 such a sermon you departed from the dicta of the great master, 
 and are leading the people to the gulph [sici of Arminianism. 
 The Baptists are as exclusive as in the older regions. Even 
 among our own brethren [It is always to be remembered that 
 the New England missionaries at this time are Presbyterians as 
 soon as they cross the Alleghany mountains, and by a process 
 much simpler and less difficult than such crossing.], it is well 
 known, that there is some feeling of a questionable nature, some 
 rivalry between the pupils, the doctors, and schools, of Andover 
 and Princeton. 
 
 He mentions besides the usual sects the followers of 
 Elias Smith and speaks of numerous other would-be- 
 founders of sects. The people in general are fully 
 
 1^^ Flint. Recollections, 112. 
 
 "0 Letter of Timothy Flint, St. Charles, Oct. 10, 1816.
 
 SOJOURN IN ST. LOUIS 97 
 
 persuaded that they have done their full duty toward 
 a preacher when they have listened to what he has 
 to say.''' 
 
 The western missionary's life, he thinks, is as hard 
 and dangerous, as the foreign. He laments, that when 
 the former falls, as he so often does, he is unrecorded, 
 though he "who falls in a foreign land, is lamented as 
 a hero and a martyr. Provision is made for his fam- 
 ily, and the enthusiasm and regret of romantic sensi- 
 bility attach to his memory." '*^ 
 
 Mr. Flint removed to St. Charles early in Sep- 
 tember. He found that he could not continue his 
 school and his missionary work, and he preferred to 
 give up the former. St. Charles was a much more 
 central location for the circuit of preaching points 
 which he visited, especially up the Missouri River. 
 He thought that at this point where the great rivers 
 were but four miles apart would be the center of pop- 
 ulation rather than at St. Louis. It was then the polit- 
 ical center of the territory. He also mentions as one 
 of the reasons for his leaving St. Louis that the people 
 there, while they attended his service in good numbers 
 and from the country regions round about were for 
 the most part young men and women on whom all 
 instruction and exhortation seemed wasted. There 
 was, too, "the Catholic mummery," the ridiculousness 
 of which was only exceeded by the heedlessness with 
 which it was witnessed by the Catholics themselves. 
 Duels were continually occurring and all was confu- 
 sion and uproar. It seemed as though even the senti- 
 ment of a God was universally erased, and the wick- 
 
 '*! Flint. Recollections, 114, 115. 1*2 — Idem, 115.
 
 q8 timothy flint 
 
 edness of the place threw a continual gloom over his 
 mind which he felt he was not able to bear. He had 
 not lived in St. Charles and it at least looked better in 
 these respects besides having the advantages above 
 named. ""* 
 
 In later days and in more philosophic moments Mr. 
 Flint speaks more favorably of the Roman Catholics, 
 of sectarianism, and even of the moral conditions of 
 this new country. But what is recorded in this chap- 
 ter is out of the immediate and bitter experience of 
 the man in the midst of conditions which in a moral 
 and social way is described by other missionaries and 
 travelers in not very different terms. ^** 
 
 Mr. Giddings took up the work of the school and 
 pulpit in St. Louis upon Mr. Flint's departure, and 
 thought he saw signs of improvement above what he 
 had first found. He was sufficiently encouraged to 
 try to carry on the work unless Doctor Blackburn 
 should undertake it or make it impracticable for him 
 to continue. At any rate Mr. Giddings "" was the mis- 
 
 1*3 Letter of Timothy Flint, St. Charles, Oct. lo, i8i6. 
 
 1** See especially Rufus Babcock's Memoirs of John Mason Peck (Phil- 
 adelphia, 1864), 85-88. 
 
 1*5 Letter of Salmon Giddings to the Missionary Society of Connecticut, 
 St. Louis, Sept. 20, 1818. 
 
 Mr. Giddings in this letter gives an interesting report of the Presbyterian 
 churches in Missouri territory-. 
 
 When Formed 
 
 Concord Ch., Bellevievv Aug. 3, 1816 
 Bonhome Oct 18, i3i6 
 
 St. Louis Nov. 15, 1817 
 
 Union Church of Rich- 
 mond & Dry Creek Apl. 17, 1818 
 Church of Buffaloe May, i8iS 
 
 Church of St. Charles Aug. 29, 18 18 
 
 No. of 
 
 No. 
 
 No. 
 
 Present 
 
 Baptized 
 
 Members 
 
 Re- 
 
 Re- 
 
 No. 
 
 
 
 When 
 
 moved 
 
 ceived 
 
 
 AdulU 
 
 Infants 
 
 Formed 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 27 
 
 8 
 
 21 
 
 40 
 
 I 
 
 12 
 
 16 
 
 5 
 
 4 
 
 15 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 10 
 
 
 S 
 
 IS 
 
 I 
 
 2 
 
 7 
 
 
 
 7 
 
 
 
 14 
 
 
 
 14 
 
 
 
 9 
 
 
 
 9 
 

 
 SOJOURN IN ST. LOUIS 99 
 
 sionary there for a number of years, and organized 
 the First Presbyterian Church, November 15, 18 17. 
 In all accounts the writer has seen, Giddings is spoken 
 of as the first resident pastor in St. Louis. With how 
 much justice this claim is made can only be judged 
 when we consider Mr. Flint's reports to the Mission- 
 ary Society of Connecticut. Unfortunately, Mr. 
 Giddings's reports for 1816 and 1817 are missing 
 from the files of the society.
 
 VI. ST. CHARLES AND SURROUNDING 
 REGIONS 
 
 Mr. Flint made his home in or near St. Charles, 
 Missouri, for four years. Three of these years, 1816- 
 18 19, were spent in missionary and ministerial work. 
 The last year, 1821-1822, was spent on a farm near 
 St. Charles. At present the missionary period only 
 is of interest. 
 
 For this time we have a greater abundance of ma- 
 terial than for any other of his life, except possibly, the 
 Cincinnati years, 1827-1833. One hundred pages of 
 the Recollections are devoted to his work, experience, 
 and observations here; there are six letters written to 
 the Missionary Society by Mr. Flint from St. Charles, 
 and three letters written to the same society at this time 
 by Reverend Salmon Giddings, which largely con- 
 cern Mr. Flint. 
 
 This period is important in the life of the eastern 
 minister and his family for it marks the notable and 
 painful process of physical and social acclimatization, 
 which all had to undergo ; a process which often meant 
 death on one hand and moral disaster on the other, to a 
 fearfully large per cent of the western home seekers. 
 A few months after his arrival we notice Mr. Flint 
 flattering himself that he had so far adapted himself 
 to the western ways, as to be almost "like a Kentuck-
 
 I02 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 ian." In this he finds himself later painfully disap- 
 pointed. 
 
 This period is important again because of Mr, 
 Flint's fully recorded experiences in the new and 
 formative society of which he was a part. It is full 
 of significance for the historian and the student of so- 
 ciety. We can do no more than mention some of the 
 things that seem most significant from this point of 
 view, since they are not vital to the life story of Tim- 
 othy Flint. 
 
 Mr. Flint traveled constantly and widely in his mis- 
 sionary work at this time, going frequently along the 
 main lines of travel, fifty and one hundred miles from 
 his home. He was always keenly alive to all that was 
 to be seen and heard. These experiences were not lost 
 or greatly changed by time. It has been of much in- 
 terest to the writer to compare the reports made to the 
 Missionary Society of Connecticut and the impres- 
 sions of the same conditions as they are recorded in the 
 Recollections and written several years later and un- 
 der very different circumstances. There is a difference 
 of course but it is easily accounted for and it does not 
 argue against the accuracy and finality of Mr. Flint's 
 judgment upon men and affairs. 
 
 Of those things of general interest in the experi- 
 ences and records of Mr. Flint for this period, the 
 most noticeable is the emigration of the times. At St. 
 Charles in the fall of 1817, there was an average of one 
 hundred people every day coming to the town, or 
 passing to near-by points. Nearly all wxre poor and 
 not one family in fifty had a Bible.'*" He remarks on 
 
 i-*"* Letter of Timothy Flint, St. Charles, Nov. i, 1817.
 
 MINISTRY AT ST. CHARLES 103 
 
 the fads which seized the moving streams of people 
 to go to a certain point for a few months, as the Boon's 
 Lick, on the Missouri, only to branch off in a few 
 months to Salt River.''' He speaks of the instability 
 of the population -no one felt settled enough to build 
 a good house, plant an orchard, or aid in building 
 church or school.'**^ He is concerned with the effect 
 of the new comers on the old and settled French so- 
 ciet}^ There, all the vices had indeed found lodging, 
 but the people were quiet and inoffensive in their sins. 
 But with the flood of newcomers all gates were swept 
 away. A movement, that was well under way for the 
 erection of a meeting house in St. Charles and for se- 
 curing a churchyard, was dissipated by the inrush of 
 strangers. The revelry of the dance and drinking 
 places continued on the Sabbath day until the minister 
 reported the condition to the grand jury. The jury 
 acted and checked the disgrace. But the revelers - 
 and only a fev^^ heads of families did not have a part in 
 it- were so offended with the disturber of their pleas- 
 ures that they soon found means of displacing him."^ 
 The different classes of frontiersmen, emigrants, 
 and village people are noted and commented upon at 
 length. Mr. Flint had a wide experience with the 
 Indians in these years, both by visiting them in their 
 villages, and in seeing great councils gather at St. 
 Charles for conference with the government agents, 
 and for trading purposes. They came from the west 
 as far as the Rocky Mountains. He was greatly in- 
 terested in these native peoples and made a close study 
 
 '^" Flint. Recollections, 203, 204. 
 
 ^■'^ — Idem, 204, 206. 
 
 1*3 Letters of Timothy Flint, St. Charles, Aug. 3, 1817, and June 4, 1818.
 
 I04 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 of them.*"*" The intermarriage of the French and In- 
 — ^<^dians, with its results, is commented upon/'^ 
 
 The methods of laying out, advertising, and selling 
 real estate, farms, and town sites is noticed/" This 
 description seems quite modern to residents of the re- 
 cent west and to the present day investors of the older 
 states who have been tempted to buy western property. 
 He discusses the American habit of "puffing" and es- 
 pecially its western development as it aflfects the news- 
 papers, schools, and general culture/^' The crudity 
 and the cruelty of society is commented upon, causing 
 on the one hand, an entire disregard of literature 
 among people who are so busy with merely physi- 
 cal things; and on the other hand, as shown in the 
 constant dueling and frequent murders/'* These 
 conditions together w ith rowdyism and the violation 
 of the Sabbath, Mr. Flint thought, were quite visibly 
 and immediately affected by the gathering of the best 
 elements into a religious society, under the leadership 
 of competent ministers. He wished that eastern 
 people, who talk about the felicity of a country with- 
 out institutions of religion, might have an opportun- 
 ity such as he had to experience that imagined 
 felicit>\''' 
 
 Mr. Flint at this time, and in all his writings upon 
 the west, brings to mind a fact largely forgotten about 
 the westward movemxent of populations, namely, the 
 
 1^'^ See his Recollections, 135-164. Also the Indian JVars, the Geography 
 and History, Daniel Boon and the Shoshonee Valley. 
 i''! Flint. Recollections, 131, 163. 
 ^^^ — Idem, 130. 
 i5a_ Idem, 185-188. 
 154 — Idem, 178-183. 
 ^'*'' Letter of Timothy Flint, St. Charles, Nov. i, 1817
 
 MINISTRY AT ST. CHARLES 105 
 
 enormous cost in human suffering and life. His de- 
 scription of the "seasoning" fevers which invariably 
 overtook the emigrant of w^hatever age or physical 
 condition, brings to realization the price that v^as paid 
 in making the west to blossom and to build up its civi- 
 lization. Mr. Flint shows his subtle power of analysis 
 and portraiture in describing the highly wrought men- 
 tal states, conditioned by fever and delirium. For ^■' 
 two months, August and September, 1818, he was him- 
 self in the supposedly fatal grip of the seasoning fever. 
 It was one of those states of delirium when the mind 
 is abnormally acute. He could repeat verses which 
 were impossible for him under normal conditions. 
 All the foreign languages he had studied he could 
 use with surprising facility. All care and concern 
 for life had passed and he felt as though in a dream 
 world. The first symptoms of returning strength and 
 recall to earth were distressing. The spiritual exhil- 
 eration and renewal which remained with him during 
 and after convalescence, show the fine religious and 
 moral balance of his character and in a measure ac- 
 count for the noble mastery of the very trying episode 
 noticed in the closing paragraphs of this chapter.^^*^ .^ 
 Still one other thing of general interest is more I 
 closely related to this period of his western experience 
 than to any other -the mounds and other relics of the 
 prehistoric American races. In many directions of 
 his travels he noted these curious ancient formations, 
 speculated on their age and uses, and took advantage 
 of evety -opportunity to examine the contents of the 
 mounds, ancient settlements and cemeteries. Near 
 
 15® Flint. Recollections, 132-135.
 
 io6 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 St. Charles he believed there had once been a very 
 dense population as he believed there would be again. 
 ^^'hile on a journey up the Illinois River he was inter- 
 ested in the mounds in the Cahokia prairie. His son 
 Micah probably accompanied his father at this time 
 for he wrote a poem on these mounds, dated March 
 19, 1825, which Mr. Flint included in the Recollec- 
 tions.^"' Just back of the house on his farm below 
 St. Charles at Point Prairie or the Mamelle there 
 were two of these artificial mounds. While digging 
 a ditch in this vicinit^^, the Flints discovered some in- 
 teresting relics which he describes, together with relics 
 found near St. Louis at the time of his residence 
 there.^'^* 
 
 Mr. Flint was always interested in the bar and gives 
 us his impressions of several leading lawyers of the 
 territory.'^** There were two sessions of the legislature 
 at St. Charles during his residence there. He says 
 of the legislators: 
 
 Some of them were neither Solons nor Solomons. Indeed, in 
 the western country and elsewhere in America, they do not believe 
 in the maxim, "ex quolibet," etc. ; almost any timber can be 
 worked into the political ship. Some boys invented a very toler- 
 able pasquinade. It was labelled on the plastering around the 
 speaker's chair. "Missouri, forgive them. The}' know not what 
 they do." . . I was here [i.e. in the state. He was in Jack- 
 son in 1 82 1 when Missouri became a state] when the state of 
 Missouri passed from its territorial character to that of a state. 
 The slave question was discussed with a great deal of asperitj', 
 and no person from the northern states, unless his sentiments 
 
 ^^" Flint. Recollections, 167-169. 
 
 ^■^s Flint. History and Geography of the Mississippi Valley, vol. i, 126- 
 129; Recollections, 164-174. 
 
 1S9 Flint. Recollections, 184, 185.
 
 MINISTRY AT ST. CHARLES 107 
 
 were unequivocally expressed, had any hope of being elected to 
 the convention, that formed the constitution. The constitution 
 was well enough, except in its stupid interdiction of ministers 
 from being eligible to any office in the state, and in some other 
 trifling enactions equally barbarous.^*"' 
 
 Of preachers as he met them at this time, he says: 
 "Of the itinerant preachers, I did not hear one who 
 approached to mediocrity. They may have been pious 
 men, but, for the most part, they defy all criticism." 
 He several times speaks of a minister in St. Louis, 
 who was for a time popular as an orator, and who 
 made great pretense of learning and as a teacher. He 
 does not name him but it was probably John Mason 
 Peck that was in mind. Mr. Flint's estimate of this 
 pioneer,^**^ if it be he, is not as high as the present gen- 
 eration would rate him, judging him by his life work. 
 
 The Reverend Dr. Blackburn, who figured so con- 
 siderably in the anticipations of Mr. Flint and his 
 companion, Mr. Giddings, is spoken of, as one of the 
 western type of preachers. He says: 
 
 I heard the Rev. Dr. B. the favorite orator of Tennessee, 
 preach. I would not wish to laud him in the same affected strain, 
 with the encomiums of the blind minister of Virginia. But he is 
 certainly an extraordinary man in his way. His first appearance 
 is against him, indicating a rough and uncouth man. He uses 
 many low words, and images and illustrations in bad taste. But 
 perhaps, when you are getting tired, almost disgusted, everything 
 is reversed in a moment. He flashes upon j^ou. You catch his 
 ej'e and you follow him ; he bursts upon you in a glow of feeling 
 
 160 pjiiif RecoUeclions, 214, 215. 
 
 T»i — Idem, 183. 
 
 Mr. Peck speaks more plainly and even less justly of Mr. Flint. He says 
 that his sermons while good and sometimes eloquent were borrowed from 
 published sources such as Burder's Village Sermons. See Houck's History 
 of Missouri, vol. iii, 229, 230.
 
 io8 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 and pathos, leaving you not sufficiently cool to criticise. We 
 may affect to decry the talent of movin<; the inmost affections. 
 After all, I am inclined to think it the most important qualifi- 
 cation, which a minister can possess. He possesses this in an 
 eminent degree. He has the electric eye, the thrilling tones, the 
 unction, the feeling, the universal language of passion and nature, 
 which is equally understood and felt by all people. He has evi- 
 dently been richly endowed by nature ; but his endowments owe 
 little to discipline or education. '^- 
 
 Rather a generous criticism, is it not, of a man who 
 had warned the people as Doctor Blackburn had done 
 in St. Louis, against "the New England emissaries of 
 ^,the Hartford Convention." 
 
 He adds a word about the New England preachers : 
 there are a few of them, "plain men, of sound instruc- 
 tion and good sense, who are respected for these quali- 
 fications, but are not popular as orators.""^ 
 
 We must turn now to things more intimately con- 
 nected with Mr. Flint. Among the earliest difficul- 
 ties in the new work at St. Charles was that of finding 
 a place to live. Rent, Mr. Giddings says, cost the 
 Flint family twelve to twenty dollars per month. His 
 total income from his professional labors for the two 
 full years of service here was considerably under four 
 hundred dollars annually. During his first year in 
 the territory, he lived in six different houses. Then 
 he was driven out of a comfortable cottage, by a "pow- 
 erful Kentuckian with a host of negroes," into a thir- 
 teen by fourteen foot log hut with a ground floor, and 
 Mrs. Flint's school for young ladies was broken up. 
 It was at this time that the family set about to secure a 
 house of their own, as a measure of economy and neces- 
 
 162 Flint. Recollections, 183, 184. 
 
 163 _ J^t;fn^ ig^.
 
 MINISTRY AT ST. CHARLES 109 
 
 sity, after having moved four times in a year/"* Upon 
 this house the minister labored with his own hands 
 during the week, to the scandal of some of his southern 
 neighbors."^ In the new cottage the school was re- 
 sumed. Some of their most pleasant experiences 
 and friendships came through their schools.'"" 
 
 Bible and tract distribution continued to be an im-^ 
 portant part of his work. He apparently thought it 
 even more effective than preaching. He gives some 
 incidents of its efifectiveness. He had as high as twen- 
 ty calls in one day for Bibles. He thought five hun- 
 dred would not satisfy the demands."^ Mr. Giddings 
 had a similar experience. Mr. Flint had at this time 
 published his collection of hymns. He was teaching 
 the people to sing them, being usually his own chor- 
 ister as all western ministers were at that time. He 
 occasionally opened a preaching point at some new 
 place, nearby or as far as forty miles up the Missouri, 
 and again thirty miles up the Mississippi, at Cuivre. 
 At this latter point seven persons wished to form a 
 church society and a like number at St. Charles wished 
 to take the same step. Mr. Flint discouraged this 
 move, thinking the numbers too small and their indi- 
 vidual character unfit for so important an undertak- 
 ing. He did urge however, the building of churches 
 or meeting houses."^ This cautious disposition is one 
 of the charges later against Mr. Flint- as showing in- 
 competency. He reports audiences at all points as 
 
 i«* Letter of Timothy Flint, St. Charles, Nov. i, 1817. 
 
 J«= Letter of Jan. 4, 1818. 
 
 ^^^ Flint. Recollections, 194-197. 
 
 167 Letter of Timothy Flint, St. Charles, April 15, 1817. 
 
 '^^'^ Idem. Also letters of Aug. 3, 18x7 and June 4, 1818.
 
 no TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 growing during the First year, and it would seem that 
 he was always regarded in this section as an eloquent 
 and able preacher. Mr. Giddings so regarded him. 
 In the second year Flint says, that to speak accurately 
 he must say that his audiences are not growing, except 
 at Bonhomc, where a church was organized October 
 1 8, i8i6.^"" He was compelled to say also that moral 
 conditions were no better. He felt that there had 
 been too much coloring of missionary reports in order 
 to suit the eastern constituency of the society. There 
 were occasional cases of seriousness which he reported 
 from time to time but the burden of sin seemed to bear 
 down with crushing force at this period. 
 
 During part of his St. Charles labors he turned pe- 
 destrian, both from motives of economy and health. 
 He w^alked eighty miles in one week, and in seven 
 weeks crossed the Missouri sixteen times. One year 
 he did not receive more than enough money south of 
 the river to pay his ferriage. It was ahvays danger- 
 ous and many people lost their lives in crossing this 
 river, yet he came to love the muddy stream so much 
 that when he returned to it after an absence of two 
 years he wrote some of his most interesting lines upon 
 it.^^" 
 
 He was continually occupied from daw^n until ten 
 at night. His frail wife w^as not less driven with her 
 school and home duties. Many of his business letters, 
 and letters to his friends were written on a plank in 
 some cabin during his journeys in the country.^" He 
 
 1^^ Letter of Salmon Giddings, Sept. 20, 1818; a!«o of Timoihy Flint. 
 May 4, 1818. 
 
 I'^o Flint. Recollections, 289-391. 
 
 I'l Letter of Timothy Flint, April 15, 1S17.
 
 MINISTRY AT ST. CHARLES in 
 
 had often been lost on the prairies, and again he had 
 been charmed with the glory of the prairie fires, as 
 seen in the distance at night. 
 
 In spite of his philosophy, breadth, and geniality, 
 the evils about him, and the burdens upon him, to- 
 gether with his natural disposition for plain speech, 
 and his New England notion of the ministry, led the 
 missionary to such pointed condemnation of the open 
 sins of his village and to take such steps against them, 
 that during the second year of his residence, he had 
 almost the entire community hostile to him. Even his 
 friends at other places and his fellow ministers joined 
 in the condemnation."' He says he did not then speak 
 French well enough to preach in it but that he could 
 and did use it to reprove and warn. He declares that 
 Hindustan can not be more heathen than is their vil- 
 lage, and it is not worse than others. In his letter of 
 April 15, 1817, he gives the following picture of moral 
 conditions: 
 
 The sinners are most of them the worst of all - Gospel sin- 
 ners - who have relinquished, and lost all, that they once had, or 
 knew, or heard in a more favored country. The sick have no 
 guidance - the dying no voice of prayer. The dead are carried 
 unhonored, and almost unmourned to their long home. There is 
 not to my knowledge a consecrated American burial ground in 
 the whole territory'. I tremble for the influence of the general 
 example upon my family and myself; and I am here feeble, and 
 alone to contend for the cause of the blessed Redeemer. When 
 my own heart is discouraged and cold, and these periods return 
 too often, I am ready to imagine, that there is in the very atmos- 
 phere, which w^e respire here, a moral miasma fatal to religious 
 sensibility. As for natural sensibility, I am sure there is little 
 here. The people have all broken the tenderest ties in coming 
 
 ^"2 Letters of S. Giddings, St. Louis, Jan. 5, March 21, and May 23, i8i8.
 
 112 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 here. They have all witnessed great trials, and difficulties in 
 passing these wide wildernesses. They have witnessed the dread- 
 ful atrcKities of the savages. They have to struggle with the 
 obstacles peculiar to a new country, and scenes of suffering, which 
 make the hardest eastern heart thrill, produce here no impression. 
 
 A man who could feel and write in this strain would 
 be sure to do some preaching, which would go close 
 home. So strongly does he feel that he is doing no 
 good that he writes in August of this year that he 
 must soon cease to take any money from the society. 
 He thinks it is consecrated money and should not be 
 wasted where it is in no way appreciated. It was 
 at this time that he attacked the Sunday balls. The 
 first day he preached here, there had been a horse race 
 which started ofif just as he rode up to the preaching 
 place, and but a few yards away.'" But the Sunday 
 balls as a new and regular thing were more than he 
 could stand. He wrote to the secretary of the Mis- 
 sionary Society of Connecticut that he had threatened 
 to report the offenders to the grand jury. Later he 
 did so and they were punished by authority of the 
 law. This extreme measure together with some other 
 grievances against Mr. Flint brought his labors to a 
 close. 
 
 The whole story is told in three of Mr. Giddings's, 
 letters to the Missionary Society of Connecticut."* 
 It is a painful story, even as read in these almost cen- 
 tury old letters. They are ungenerous letters, reflect- 
 ing on the judgment of a good man. gone more 
 than three quarters of a century to his reward. Had 
 
 1^3 Flint. Recollections, 125. 
 
 1^* See note 172. See also letter of Rev. Abel Flint (Hartford, April 
 30, i8i8), to Mr. Hempstead. The latter had reported some of Mr. Flint's 
 difficulties to the Missionary Society of Connecticut.
 
 MINISTRY AT ST. CHARLES 113 
 
 it not been for his full reporting of the matter to the 
 Missionary Society, we should have been in ignorance 
 of any special difficulties in Mr. Flint's life at this 
 time, or of the part which Mr. Giddings had in the 
 matter, a part which clearly led to Flint's resignation 
 of his mission. This result was not expected nor de- 
 sired by Mr. Giddings.''" Although he was younger 
 than Mr. Flint, had thirteen or fourteen years less 
 experience in the ministry, and had gone west later 
 than Mr. Flint, Mr. Giddings constituted himself, 
 apparently, the head of the mission. In this capacity, 
 it appears that he had reported to Reverend Abel 
 Flint, secretary of the Missionary Society of Connec- 
 ticut, late in 18 17, that there were damaging rumors 
 afloat concerning Mr. Flint. The secretary asked for 
 particulars. Mr. Giddings had not expected to have 
 his remarks about his neighbor taken so seriously and 
 he was reluctant about going into details. However, 
 this request led Giddings to report, January 5, 1818, 
 that the rumors had grown and that the people were 
 universally prejudiced against Mr. Flint. For rea- 
 sons which Giddings names but which charity 
 forbids us to mention he did not at this time make a 
 detailed statement. In March, however,"* he made 
 
 ^^° Salmon Giddings, 1782-1828, was a native of Hartford, Conn., grad- 
 uated at Williams College, T811, and at Andover Theological Seminary, 1814. 
 He was tutor for one year at Williams after his theological course and then 
 went to St. Louis under the Missionary Society of Connecticut, arriving a 
 few weeks before the Flint family. He seems to have been a plain, honest, 
 plodding man of ordinary abilities, not physically strong but faithful and 
 largely efficient in the new world where his few years of work were accom- 
 plished. On Giddings's life and work see Augustus T. Norton's History 
 of the Presbyterian Church in the State of Illinois, 21, 33 fl., 37, 52. J. E. 
 Roy's "Salmon Giddings" in Neio Englander (New Haven, 1874), vol. 
 xxxiii, 513-532. 
 
 1^*5 Letter of S. Giddings, St. Louis, March 21, 1818.
 
 114 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 a particuhir statement. The charges against Mr. 
 Flint summed up by the writer after he had investi- 
 gated them are: ''He is a Speculator, Avaricious, 
 Immoral and of course, not a Christian." Mr. Gid- 
 dings says further in this letter that he has investigated 
 many of the worst reports, traced them to their origin, 
 '*and found them to be the oflspring of malice and 
 without foundation, or at least very little to make any 
 of them from." 
 
 Two months later ^'^ Mr. Giddings reports that 
 there is not nearly so much talk, feeling has subsided 
 and that the better class of people have restored Mr. 
 Flint in their good opinion. He thinks that the talk 
 will blow over entirely and he hopes that Mr. Flint 
 may be retained in the mission. He is very uncom- 
 fortable over his part in the affair and adds a closely 
 written note, and a cross line postscript to explain 
 himself. But it was too late to recall what he had 
 said and done. It seems to have been the mistake of 
 an honest but overofficious and inexperienced man, 
 zealous for the success of the common w'ork. 
 
 The grounds for all the charges had been, Mr. 
 Flint's plain speaking, his rebuking of outbreaking 
 sins, his connection with a business enterprise at St. 
 Louis, his endeavors to extricate himself from the debt 
 that had resulted from his business failure and his 
 family expenses, and especially his purchase and loca- 
 tion of a land claim on an island above the town, where 
 the people had long been accustomed to get their 
 wood supply at the expense of the government. Here, 
 when he forbade the removal of timber, Mr. Flint ran 
 squarely against the age long and instinctive belief of 
 
 3^7 Letter of May 23, 181S.
 
 MINISTRY AT ST. CHARLES 115 
 
 European peoples that public lands are Commons and 
 that any public or private interference with these 
 rights should be resented vigorously. He speedily 
 disposed of this claim and re-located'"* below the 
 town at Point Prairie. 
 
 Mr. Flint did not know until the third of June that 
 his difficulties had been reported to the Society. He 
 probably heard of it from Mr. Giddings while he was 
 at St. Louis where he had regular preaching appoint- 
 ments, on days when Mr. Giddings was absent. Mr. 
 Flint does not connect his fellow missioner with the 
 reports, but lays the responsibility on a Mr. Beebe 
 who had lately been in Hartford. The letter* in 
 which Mr. Flint resigns his mission and reviews his 
 work with the society, and in which he refers briefly 
 to the charges made against him, is in many ways the 
 best now extant. 
 
 Judged by this letter and by his remarks in his Rec- 
 ollections several years later, Mr. Flint did not give 
 Mr. Giddings the slightest occasion to confirm his 
 notion that he was a man of quick or uncontrolled 
 temper.''^ Mr. Flint declared that he had loved Mr. 
 Giddings, that he had put his pride under and yielded 
 to his judgment in matters pertaining to the mission 
 and that he had taken the place assigned to him -that 
 of a subordinate. Mr. Giddings letters also show 
 that this was the relationship between them. Mr. 
 Flint makes no elaborate attempt to defend or explain 
 himself and takes a dignified and grateful leave of the 
 Missionary Society.^*" 
 
 i'** Mr. Gidding's letter of March 21, 1818. 
 
 * See Appendix B. 
 
 170 Letter of Jan. 5, 1818. 
 
 180 Letter of Timothy Flint, June 4, 1818.
 
 VII. ON THE GREAT RIVER AND THE 
 ARKANSAS 
 
 Very soon after he resigned his mission in June, 
 1818, Mr. Flint was taken ill and had the long sick- 
 ness to which reference has already been made. He 
 was unconscious for thirty days.^^^ Mr. Giddings 
 visited him at the end of August and says: 
 
 Mr. Flint has a severe turn of sickness. For about four days 
 the physicians did not think he would live from one day to an- 
 other. His life was despaired of. He is mending or was the last 
 I heard from him. I saw him about two days after his fever 
 abated. He appeared much resigned, and said he thought he had 
 enjoyed much of the presence of God during his sickness but 
 appeared confident that he should not recover.^**-' 
 
 In this letter, Mr. Giddings reports that they had 
 organized a church at St. Charles on the twenty-ninth 
 of August, two days after their Presbytery met. He 
 named the eight people who formed the church and 
 remarks that the step had the entire approbation of 
 Mr. Flint. He says also that the people of the St. 
 Charles church told him, at the time their church was 
 formed, that they would no longer consider them- 
 selves under Mr. Flint's care.'^' It appears however, 
 that the local prejudice against Mr. Flint was rapidly 
 passing, and that it was a case of "Ill-will" and "Pre- 
 
 181 Letter of Timothy Flint, St. Charles, Jan. 15, 1822. 
 
 182 Letter of S. Giddings, St. Louis, Sept. 20, i8i8. 
 is.'i — Idem,
 
 ii8 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 judice" pouring dirt on "Mr. Goodman.'' It seems 
 most probable that Mr. Flint continued to preach in 
 St. Charles, after his recovery and until he left for the 
 south. While he was preparing to go down the Mis- 
 sissippi, a subscription for him, as pastor of the church, 
 was started and so liberally supported, that he says it 
 would have induced him, together w^ith other con- 
 siderations, to have remained in St. Charles, had he 
 known it in time.'"* 
 
 St. Charles was one of the places which had strong 
 attractions for Mr. Flint. There was a high bench 
 above the town, looking far over the valley and 
 prairie, and a favorite place of meditation. He had 
 often thought to finish his career here, and had found 
 the place where he hoped his ashes would rest. There 
 were some very warm friends in the community and 
 the place had become home to the wanderers.^^^ 
 
 Mr. Flint had for several months been in corres- 
 pondence with people in the south about church and 
 school work. As early as August, 1817, he had an 
 invitation from "Rapide on Red river." He had 
 also at this time an invitation to go to Alabama, and 
 another to go to Washington,^.neaiuNatG45ez^:J\lissis- 
 ^si£pi. Two things were pulling him, the hope of 
 adequate support, and a populous "country in a reli- 
 gious point of view unexplored. "^'^^ This last place 
 was finally decided upon, but the journey could not 
 
 ^** Flint. Recollections, 215, 216. 
 
 ^** — Idem. Also letter from St. Charles, Jan. 15, 1822. 
 
 Bryan and Rose's Pioneer Families of Missouri has an interesting and 
 complimentary sketch of Mr. Flint which seems to be made from local tra- 
 ditions. It speaks of his opening a farm on the Marais Croche Lake where 
 he raised cotton and made wine from wild grapes. 
 
 ^s*" Letter of Timothy Flint, St. Charles, Aug. 3, 1817.
 
 RIVER JOURNEYS 119 
 
 begin in the fall of 1818 as they had intended, because 
 of the sickness and slow recovery of Mr. Flint. 
 
 In April, 1819, they were ready to depart for the 
 low country. It was a "solemn leave" that they took 
 of their home and friends.'" Three years' residence 
 in a new community go farther toward the making of 
 a home than double that time can do in an older so- 
 ciety. And this family was a home-loving one, though 
 they were never to know a place as their own, while 
 Mr. Flint lived, for more than a few years at a time. 
 
 The family embarked upon a very large keelboat 
 with an ignorant patron. They met with disaster 
 upon disaster from the first of their journey. Only a 
 few miles down the river, at Bellefountaine, they ran 
 aground, and were extricated by the help of a file of 
 soldiers from the garrison. At the mouth of the Mis- 
 souri they were carried among the sawyers and nar- 
 rowly escaped wreck. We were he says, "like to be 
 sunk in the harbor at St. Louis by a leak in the bottom 
 of our boat, which commenced in a dark and stormy 
 night." Opposite "Flour Island" they were struck 
 by an unusually severe storm which wrecked, in their 
 sight, two other boats and drowned the occupants. 
 Their boat was old and frail and its escape at this time, 
 and a few days later "opposite the middle Chickasaw 
 blufif," when it was caught in an eddy of the swollen 
 river and almost broken in two, seemed miraculous. 
 In this eddy a few days earlier a boat had been broken 
 and wrecked. They were witnesses of a fourth 
 wreck before they had reached the mouth of the Ar- 
 kansas, five hundred miles down the Mississippi. It 
 
 1*'^ Letter of Jan. 15, 1822.
 
 120 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 was again proving itself the "wicked- river" as the 
 boatmen called it/"" 
 
 On the fifth of May they reached the White River 
 in Arkansas. Mr. Flint says of this event in his Rec- 
 ollections: 
 
 We were swept round by the strong current of the Mississippi 
 in our keel-boat between two green islands covered with rushes 
 and cotton-wood trees, into a small bay which received the waters 
 of White River. This is all a region of deep and universal inun- 
 dation. There was from six to ten feet water over all the bot- 
 toms ; and we had a wide display of that spectacle so common in 
 the spring on the Mississippi, a dense forest of the largest trees, 
 vocal with the song of birds, matted with every species of tangled 
 vegetation, and harboring in great numbers the turkey-buzzard, 
 and some species of eagles ; and all this vegetation apparently ris- 
 ing from the bosom of dark and discolored waters. I have never 
 seen a deeper forest except of evergreens. 
 
 The waters of the White River were so clear that 
 they could see the great catfishes among the smaller 
 fishes of all kinds. But no baited hook could tempt 
 them."" 
 
 From the White River they soon passed by a cross 
 channel to the Arkansas River. They had planned to 
 go up this river to the "Post" some fifty miles distant 
 by water, and leave a consignment of tracts and Bibles 
 which they had for the new territory. They were 
 met at the point where they struck the Arkansas River, 
 or near there, by some prominent people of the "Post" 
 who persuaded them to try this place as a location for 
 their mission. Mrs. Flint was sick at the time and 
 they had enough of experience in these new regions 
 to know that it would be well to go to the south by 
 
 is^ Flint. Recollections, 217-219, also letter frcin St. Charles, Jan. 15, 1822. 
 ^^^ Flint. Recollections, 252-354.
 
 RIVER JOURNEYS 121 
 
 stages/"'' So it was decided to spend at least the first 
 summer at the "Post" before continuing to Natchez. 
 
 Mr. Flint noticed that the Arkansas River marked 
 the border of a new climate.'"' The river itself 
 interested him greatly. He speaks of its reddish 
 waters, the narrow strips of land which formed the 
 banks on either side and through which, during the 
 high waters, the river poured at frequent intervals 
 into the swamps and lagoons which flanked it. These 
 bayous and lagoons he found conforming to the curves 
 of the river, and when they were full during the spring 
 floods, they had a current moving with the river. 
 They were often thirty miles in width. In summer 
 they were covered with a great lily-like flower, the 
 leaves of which completely covered the water in many 
 places. Great forests stretched over most of these 
 flooded regions.'"" 
 
 The curves or bends in this river, which it has in 
 common with other rivers of the region, were features 
 of much interest and speculation to Mr. Flint. He 
 thought their regularity must be the result of some 
 unknown law.'"^ The upper regions of the river, 
 which however, he did not visit since he did not go, 
 so far as can be discovered, more than one hundred 
 miles above the "Post," were also places of much inter- 
 est to him. He had studied the reports of travelers 
 about the habits of the river in its upper courses, how 
 it issues from the mountains a clear and rapid stream, 
 and upon the plains loses itself in the sands. 
 
 19" Letter of Timothy Flint, St. Charles, Jan. 15, 1822. 
 "1 Flint. Recollections, 256. 
 
 192 _ i^ejj,^ 256, 264 ff. 
 
 193 _ i^ern, 264, 265.
 
 \ 
 
 122 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 His prophecy about these sandy plains through 
 which the Arkansas flows is interesting in view of the 
 late developments in that region. Here where the 
 river loses itself in the burning and shifting sands he 
 thinks the buffalo, elk, and bear will range until they 
 "will in ages to come be the resorts of shepherds." ^°* 
 ''Providence," he thinks, ''seems to have provided that 
 men can hardly subsist among them." Here on these 
 vast and sandy plains will be for ages the "Syrtes of 
 America." '^^ In the midst of these sandy regions are 
 now some of the most valuable and productive lands 
 of the whole country, yielding not merely the wild 
 grape of which Mr. Flint had heard more than we 
 now know, but fruits of many kinds, sugar beets, 
 melons, and vegetables, besides many farm products, 
 in an amazing abundance, while the entire region had 
 long been occupied by the cattle men with their vast 
 herds before it was used by the farmer. Mr. Flint 
 occasionally indulged in prophecy and in some in- 
 stances he has come surprisingly near the facts as they 
 have been realized in history.^^^ In the case of the 
 upper Arkansas regions he has gone farther astray 
 than is usual with him. 
 
 The cypress tree attracted his special notice among 
 the trees of the lower Arkansas countPy^ It consti- 
 tuted a vast proportion of the swamp forests, growing 
 always in water, covered with a thick coat of green, 
 buff, velvet-like matter, while the trees themselves 
 were covered with long moss, or "Spanish beard." 
 
 19* Flint. Recollections, 268. 
 
 ^*" — Idem, 255, 256. 
 
 i9« See Western Monthly Revievi, vol. i, 255-263.
 
 RIVER JOURNEYS 123 
 
 Concerning the effect of these forests on the observer 
 he says : 
 
 No prospect on earth can be more gloomj'. The poetic Styx 
 or Acheron had not a greater union of dismal circumstances. 
 Well may the cypress have been esteemed a funereal and lugu- 
 brious tree.^®^ 
 
 The **Post" of Arkansas [Arkansas Post], they 
 found a rough frontier settlement on a narrow ridge 
 of land rising out of the Arkansas. In front of it was 
 the river and at the back a swamp which was tribu- 
 tary to the White River thirty miles distant. This 
 ridge was but six hundred yards wide and about ten 
 feet above high water. The entire population of the 
 territory, which was only about ten thousand at this 
 time, was settled at a few points along the rivers. ^''^ 
 
 Mr. Flint was in Arkansas only five months and did 
 not have the opportunities for travel that he had in 
 Missouri, but in this short time he visited several 
 points up and down the Arkansas River, and, appar- 
 ently, the higher country to the north."' 
 
 He found the territorial legislature enacting "what 
 they would call 'the blue laws' of old Virginia," and 
 on the succeeding Sabbath the legislators and judges 
 would fall to their usual vocation of gambling 
 throughout the day.'"" 
 
 He says of the inhabitants : 
 
 The people of this region are certainly more rough and un- 
 tamed than those of the state of Missouri, or of the more north- 
 ern and western regions. But yet, even the inhabitants here were 
 far from deserving the character that has generally been given to 
 
 197 Flint. Recollections, 261-263. '»^— Idem, 265-267. 
 
 198 _ [jgj„^ 2^, 265. 200 _ j^gj„^ 269.
 
 124 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 the best of the population of these countries. The redeeming 
 influence of American feelings, laws, and institutions, was suflS- 
 ciently infused into the new government to carry it into quiet 
 effect throughout the country.-"' 
 
 Mr. Flint thought there was no other country which 
 could show such bigotry and enthusiasm, run to such 
 glaring absurdity. He visited and studied carefully 
 a sect known as the "Pilgrims" which had started in 
 Lower Canada and come to the end of its course, with 
 but six persons left, near the "Post" in Arkansas. 
 They had been going southwest to find the New 
 Jerusalem, and at this point had found the fever which 
 had put an end to their search for the Heavenly City 
 on earth. Their principle was the forsaking of the 
 world. Their practice was never to change their 
 clothes, wash themselves, or follow an occupation. 
 Their chant, when entering a village was, "Praise 
 God, repent, fast, pray." Mr. Flint's description of 
 the sect extends through several pages of the Recol- 
 lections^ and is worth the notice of students of reli- 
 gious fads."°" 
 
 Mr. Flint's experience in preaching here was one of 
 the most tr^'^ing he was ever called upon to endure in 
 his capacity as a minister. The services were held in 
 the Court House. There were no religious habits, 
 and he felt that his few sermons had but little efifect. 
 Some emotion was visible, but he felt that his mission 
 was like that of the itinerants, and that both his and 
 their work was like the fire that passes over a stubble 
 field, lightly, and which in a few days leaves no sign 
 of its presence.""^ 
 
 -"1 Flint. Recollections, 269, 270. 203 — Idem, 274. 
 
 -"- — Idem, 275-280.
 
 RIVER JOURNEYS 125 
 
 At this time Mr. Flint was preaching in French, 
 though his pronunciation was defective, because most 
 of his audience was of that nation. He says of these 
 hearers: 
 
 The French people generally came to the place of worship, 
 arrayed in their ball -dresses, and went directly from worship to 
 the ball. A billiard-room was near, and parts of my audience 
 sometimes came in for a moment, and after listening to a few sen- 
 tences, returned to their billiards. ^°* 
 
 This last experience he had at other places as well. 
 
 While he was one hundred miles up the river, prob- 
 ably at the Mulberry settlement, in July, his family 
 was taken sick with the epidemic fever of the country. 
 All of them were seized except Mr. Flint. A negro 
 child died in his family. His hired negro servant 
 was taken sick and he could get no one else. The only 
 doctor they could trust, a member of his family at the 
 time, was sick also. Mrs. Flint and Micah were so 
 ill as to be thought hopeless. There were a great 
 many deaths all about them. For sixty days Mr. 
 Flint says, he was nurse, physician, and house- 
 keeper.^°^ 
 
 It was at this time that they suffered from a hurri- 
 cane. His journal and other manuscripts were lost. 
 He says: 
 
 This manuscript, together with many others, was blown away 
 in a hurricane which occurred on the Arkansas, in which every 
 part of the house where we resided was penetrated by the wind 
 and rain ; and in which the suffering and danger of a sick family 
 precluded anxiety' upon any other score.^°® 
 
 It was during this summer too, that the family ex- 
 
 2"* Flint. Recollections, 274. 
 
 2*^^ — Idem, 271, 272. Also letter from St. Charles, Jan. 15, 1822. 
 
 20« Flint. Recollections, 4,
 
 i2t. TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 perienced drenching rain and thunder storms for 
 thirty-six days in succession.'"' 
 
 Added to these larger afflictions was a lesser one 
 ; that ought not to be entirely overlooked, and will not 
 ' be by any one who has had anything of a similar ex- 
 \ perience. It was the pest of mosquitoes. The 
 ^ natives had grown somewhat accustomed to it though 
 they excused their heavy drinking by the necessity 
 ; they were under of thus gaining relief from the miser- 
 ies caused by this pest. They called the reverie or 
 the insensibility of drunkenness "a musquitoe dose." 
 The Flints could not eat a meal at their table all that 
 summer without first kindling a fire under the table, 
 out of the most offensive materials. Of his expe- 
 riences at night Flint says: 
 
 I slept under a ver)' close mosquito curtain. I would soon be- 
 come oppressed for want of breath under the curtain, and when I 
 drew it up and attempted to inhale a little of the damp and sultry 
 atmosphere, the mosquitoes would instantly settle on my face in 
 such numbers that I was soon obliged to retreat behind my curtain 
 again. Thus passed those dreadful nights, amidst the groans of 
 my family, calls for medicine and drink, suffocation behind my 
 curtain, or the agony of mosquito stings, as soon as I was exposed 
 to the air.-"* 
 
 Mr. Flint tells us in the letter to the Missionary So- 
 ciet\', that under the conditions of their summer in 
 Arkansas the entire family came to have an aversion 
 to the low country and thought only of getting back to 
 the north. As early as possible, and while Mrs. Flint 
 had still to be carried, they took boat and started to 
 return to St. Charles, in the early part of October, 
 1 819. Boatmen often failed them and Mr. Flint was 
 
 -°~ Flint. A condensed Geography and History, vol. I, 582. 
 -^^ Flint. Recollections, 272, 273.
 
 RIVER JOURNEYS 127 
 
 obliged to handle the boat with the help of his three 
 children who still had the ague and were sick every 
 other day.""" Near the mouth of the Arkansas, at St. 
 Francis, they stopped with Mr. Phillips, an acquaint- 
 ance, who pressed them to remain with him until the 
 river should be higher next spring. At this season it 
 was so low that there were almost no boats upon the 
 river, all steamboats being laid up. Mr. Flint de- 
 sired to stay but Mrs. Flint and the family were so 
 anxious to leave the country that it was decided to go 
 Qn.=^° 
 
 As this was to be the saddest journey of all that this 
 long suffering family experienced, it will be quite in 
 place to notice its joys. It was a beautiful fall. 
 Nature was at her best, most wild and beautiful. The 
 paroxysms of ague, when they were passed, left a kind 
 of poetic excitement, not unlike that produced by 
 opium, and making one capable of a high degree of 
 enjoyment. Mr. Flint gives us a picture of one of 
 these nights : 
 
 Then, when we were made fast in a cove on the wide sand-bar ; 
 when the moon, with her circumference broadened and reddened 
 by the haze and smoke of Indian summer, rose, and diffused, as 
 Chateaubriand so beautifully says, the "great secret of melancholy 
 over these ancient forests ;" after our evening prayers, and the fa- 
 vorite hymn, "The day is past and gone," etc. I have spent 
 hours in traversing the sand-bars entirely alone.-^^ 
 
 Progress up the river was very slow. They had not 
 gone far before their two "hands" fell ill and left Mr. 
 Flint and the two boys, to drag the six ton boat up the 
 river. Some days the boys were sick with the ague 
 
 -0" Letter ox Timothy Flint, St. Charles, Jan. 15, 1832. 
 21° Flint. Recollections, 283. 
 211 — Idem, 285.
 
 128 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 and the father toiled alone at the cordelle. The 
 boat would lodge on sandbars and he would have to go 
 into the water and push it off though the ice was at 
 times strong enough along the shore to bear his 
 weight."'" They toiled at one place for two or three 
 days and were about to lay by for the winter when a 
 fortunate wind aided them with their sail to go on. 
 They exhausted their provisions, and were at the point 
 of hunger when they sighted a boat loaded with flour 
 and pork. They were compelled to pay thirty dollars 
 for a barrel of each, the boatmen discovering and tak- 
 ing advantage of their plight."'"' 
 
 When they had accomplished two hundred miles of 
 their journey up the Mississippi, and were "opposite 
 the second Chickasaw blufif," at a point called "Rare 
 Paths" and thirty miles from human habitation, on the 
 twenty-sixth of November, there occurred the most 
 touching incident that is possible in the experience of 
 a Christian family. Mr. Flint tells the story at length 
 in the Recollections,'^* and more briefly but with a few 
 additional details in his letter to the Missionary So- 
 ciety."'^ Flint says: 
 
 At ten in the morning we perceived indications of a severe 
 approaching storm. The air was oppressively sultry. Brassy 
 clouds were visible upon all quarters of the sky. Distant thun- 
 der was heard. We were upon a wide sandbar far from any 
 house. Opposite to us was a vast cypress swamp. At this pe- 
 riod, and in this place, Mrs. F. was taken in travail. My children, 
 wrapped in blankets, laid themselves down on the sand-bar. I 
 secured the boat in every possible w^ay against the danger of being 
 
 -1- Letter of Timothy Flint, St. Charles, Jan. 15, 1822. 
 
 213 Flint. Recollections, 285, 286. 
 
 214 See pages 286-288. 
 212 Jan. 15, 1822.
 
 RIVER JOURNEYS 129 
 
 driven by the storm into the river. At eleven the storm burst 
 upon us in all its fury. Mrs. F. had been salivated during her 
 fever, and had not yet been able to leave her couch. I was alone 
 with her in this dreadful situation. Hail, and wind, and 
 thunder, and rain in torrents poured upon us. I was in terror, 
 lest the wind would drive my boat, notwithstanding all her fas- 
 tenings, into the river. No imagination can reach what I en- 
 dured. [Nothing left but God, and He appeared for us. - 
 Letter.] The only alleviating circumstance was her perfect 
 tranquillity. She knew that the hour of sorrow, and expected that 
 of death, was come. She was so perfectly calm, spoke with such 
 tranquil assurance about the future, and about the dear ones that 
 were at this moment, " 'biding the pelting of the pitiless storm" 
 on the sand-bar, that I became calm myself. A little after twelve 
 the wind burst in the roof of my boat, and let in the glare of the 
 lightning, and the torrents of rain upon my poor wife. I could 
 really have expostulated with the elements in the language of the 
 poor old Lear. I had wrapped my wife in blankets, ready to be 
 carried to the shelter of the forest, in case of the driving of my 
 boat into the river. About four the fury of the storm began to 
 subside. At five the sun in his descending glory burst from the 
 dark masses of the receding clouds. At eleven in the evening 
 Mrs. F. was safely delivered of a female infant, and, notwith- 
 standing all, did well. The babe, from preceding circumstances, 
 was feeble and sickly, and I saw could not survive. At midnight 
 we had raised a blazing fire. The children came into the boat. 
 Supper was prepared, and we surely must have been ungrateful 
 not to have sung a hymn of deliverance. There can be but one 
 trial more for me that can surpass the agony of that day, and there 
 can never be on this earth a happier period than those midnight 
 hours. The babe stayed with us but two days and a half, and 
 expired. The children, poor things, laid it deeply to heart, and 
 raised a loud lament. We were, as I have remarked, far away 
 from all human aid and sympathy, and left alone with God. We 
 deposited the body of our lost babe - laid in a small trunk for a 
 coffin - in a grave amidst the rushes, there to await the resurrec- 
 tion of the dead. The prayer made on the occasion by the father.
 
 ijo TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 with the children for concourse and mourners, if not eloquent, 
 was, to us at least, deeply affecting. 
 
 The grave was made on a high bank, opposite to 
 "the second Chickasaw bluff," a rude memorial was 
 raised on the spot and the place became sacred in the 
 memories of the devoted family. Micah, some years 
 later, wrote "Lines on Passing the Grave of My Sis- 
 ter." It was published in the Western Monthly Re- 
 vieii\'^^ and will be found in Appendix C. 
 
 -^6 See vol. i, 651-653.
 
 VIII. PREACHING AND FARMING IN 
 MISSOURI 
 
 After the pathetic incident related at the close of the 
 last chapter, the Flint family proceeded on their pain- 
 ful and sorrowful journey up the river. They were 
 fortunate enough to secure two men to aid them at this 
 time, but after two weeks more of travel, when they 
 had reached the southern line of Missouri, the ice be- 
 gan to hinder them, and the weather grew severe. 
 These difficulties together with the fact that their boat, 
 though it drew but thirty inches of water, was contin- 
 ually striking on the sand bars, led them to land at 
 New Madrid, with the intention of completing their 
 journey by land.^'' But St. Charles was still more 
 than two hundred miles distant, they were yet feeble 
 from their recent sicknesses, and the season and region 
 most unfavorable for such a journey to be undertaken 
 by a family. 
 
 This village of New Madrid was not so wretched 
 and abandoned a place as Mr. Flint had expected to 
 find it. There were some rare people there, who, 
 when the Flints came to know them and to experience 
 their kindliness and hospitality, were remembered 
 ever after as among their choicest friends. This was 
 not only for their work's sake toward the strangers but 
 for their intrinsic worth of character. This place 
 
 217 Flint. Recollections, 219, 220, 288.
 
 132 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 had in past years been the scene of several serious at- 
 tempts under the Spanish rule, to found a strong col- 
 ony. There were some prominent French and Amer- 
 ican families located here as a result of such an attempt 
 by a General Morgan of New Jersey. An elderly 
 lady, Mrs. Gray, gave the family a part of her house 
 and here they lived for the winter, from the middle of 
 December, when they arrived, until the spring or early 
 summer.'^^ 
 
 There were several congenial families here, and 
 with their help Mr. Flint began religious services, 
 which he considered quite successful, and especially 
 so as far as the Catholics were concerned. A Sunday 
 School was formed apparently at this time, and was 
 continued under the care of Mrs. Gray for several 
 years, though Mr. Flint speaks of her as having seen 
 seventy winters. "^^ It would seem that there were 
 those here who desired to have Mr. Flint settle as their 
 minister and that a subscription was raised for that 
 purpose. However, the people failed to pay what 
 they promised and the minister moved on after a few 
 months, to the county town, Jackson, some fift>^ miles 
 up the river."° 
 
 In New Madrid, Mr. Flint experienced, he says: 
 "a harrowing degree of interest, in the disappoint- 
 ments and sufiferings of these original adventurers," 
 many of whom had been reared in all the tenderness 
 of opulence and plenty, and were from highly culti- 
 vated and distinguished French families."^ 
 
 21** Flint. Recollections, 220, 221. 
 
 -^'■* — Idem, 220, 228. 
 
 --0 Letter of Timothy Flint, St. Charles, Jan. 15, 1822. 
 
 --1 Flint. Recollections, 221.
 
 PREACHING AND FARMING IN MISSOURI 133 
 
 There was also another local interest at this place 
 upon which he dwells at much length, namely, the 
 great earthquakes which had occurred seven years 
 before his arrival there, that is, in 1 8 1 2. This disaster 
 had almost a morbid interest for Mr. Flint as it had of 
 course, for many of those who witnessed it. The 
 original shocks had occurred in two series of concus- 
 sions. At one time the movement of the earth was 
 vertical. At another time it was horizontal. There 
 were great chasms opened in the earth running from 
 northeast to southwest. Hundreds of these were 
 still visible when Mr. Flint was there. The earth 
 had seemed to burst in other places. Such were the 
 phenomena near New Madrid on the Mississippi 
 River. The result was that the waters were thrown 
 back into the bayous, many boats were wrecked, and 
 others were landed there and abandoned with their 
 cargoes, by their owners. Provisions, in consequence 
 lost almost all value in the New Madrid district. The 
 bed of the river was changed at different points. 
 Lakes were made and unmade. For a distance of 
 three hundred miles below New Madrid the face of 
 the country was changed in many striking ways. The 
 cemetery on a high point of land overlooking the river 
 at New Madrid had been cast into the river. The 
 town had been largely depopulated, and many houses, 
 with orchards and farms were still abandoned at the 
 time even of Mr. Flint's visit. No buildings had been 
 erected after the earthquakes except the lightest 
 kind.'" 
 
 As the people grew more experienced with the dan- 
 
 --- Flint. Recollections, 222-228.
 
 134 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 gers, a unique plan of deliverance from the opening 
 chasms in the earth, was hit upon. The tallest trees 
 were felled to the northwest and the southeast, at 
 right angles to the direction in which the chasms 
 opened. When the earthquake premonitions were 
 heard, the people hurried to their felled trees. Mr. 
 Flint says, that by this means all were saved though 
 openings often occurred under the tree trunks on 
 which the people were mounted."^ 
 
 The government came to the aid of the stricken 
 people and allowed them to locate on public lands in 
 other sections in place of ruined or abandoned farms 
 in the devastated district."'* 
 
 Several strange phenomena are reported by Mr. 
 Flint. There were said to have been continued and 
 vivid flashes of lightning in the western sky on per- 
 fectly clear nights, in the intervals between the earth- 
 quake shocks. There were at such times, subterra- 
 nean thunders. The worst of these was thought to 
 have been on the night in which the fatal earthquakes 
 at Caracas, Venezuela, occurred. Birds and animals 
 were said to have fled in terror to the people for pro- 
 tection. Where the earth burst, water, sand, and pit- 
 coal were hurled in great volumes as high as the tops 
 of the trees."^ 
 
 Occasional shocks had been felt during the seven 
 years. While they sat by Mrs. Gray's winter fire, he 
 says: 
 
 We were not unfrequently interrupted for a moment by the 
 
 ^^^ Flint. RecollectioTts, 226. 
 
 224 — Idem, 227. Letter of 8. Giddings, St. Louis, March 21, 1818. 
 
 iic — Idem, 223, 224.
 
 PREACHING AND FARMING IN MISSOURI 135 
 
 distant and hollow thunder of the approaching earthquake. An 
 awe, a slight paleness passed over every countenance. The nar- 
 rative was suspended for a moment, and resumed. '*•* 
 
 Little is told about the year or more, that the Flint 
 family spent in Jackson, Missouri.* He was engaged 
 in preaching and did much traveling. There was 
 considerable talk among the German people for whom 
 he preached a part or all of this time about liberal pay, 
 but after he had left that section and returned to St. 
 Charles he said that he had received nothing but 
 promises for his services as minister. He and the 
 family earned their living by their labor and had 
 managed to keep out of debt."' From references that 
 he makes to German pupils, though he does not say 
 where he had them, and from the fact that the school 
 was always so closely related to their missionary work 
 and so sure a means of helping to make a living, it is 
 altogether likely that this was a part of their work 
 here. It is also likely that some farming was done. 
 The oldest son was in his eighteenth year and the sec- 
 ond son, Hubbard, was twelve or thirteen years old at 
 this time. 
 
 Flint says about his time spent in Jackson that it was 
 "more devoid of interest, or of attachment, or comfort, 
 or utility, than in any other part of the country." He 
 says : 
 
 The people are extremely rough. Their country is a fine 
 range for all species of sectarians, furnishing the sort of people in 
 abundance, who are ignorant, bigoted, and think, by devotion to 
 
 --'■' Flint. RecollertioTis, 229. 
 
 * For this period in Flint's travels see Hoiick's History of Missouri, vol. 
 iii, 232. 
 
 22' Letter of Timothy Flint, St. Cliarle?, Jan. 15, 1822.
 
 1 3b TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 some favored preacher or sect, to atone for the want of morals 
 and decency, and everything that appertains to the spirit of 
 Christianity.--* 
 
 It is of this section that Mr. Flint speaks especially 
 when he makes one of his most interesting remarks on 
 the religious character of the western people. He 
 says: 
 
 They are anxious to collect a great many people and preachers, 
 and achieve, if the expression may be allowed, a great deal of 
 religion at once, that they may lie by, and be exempt from its rules 
 and duties until the regular recurrence of the period for replen- 
 ishing the stock. Hence we witness the melancholy aspect of 
 much appearance and seeming, frequent meetings, spasms, cries, 
 fallings, faintings, and, what I imagine will be a new aspect of 
 religious feeling to most of my readers, the religious laugh. 
 Nothing is more common at these scenes, than to see the more 
 forward people on these occasions indulging in what seemed to 
 me an idiot and spasmodic laugh, and when I asked what it meant, 
 I was told it was the holy laugh ! Preposterous as the term may 
 seem to my readers, the phrase "holy laugh" is so familiar to me, 
 as no longer to excite surprise. But in these same regions, and 
 among these same people, morals, genuine tenderness of heart, 
 and capacity to be guided either by reason, persuasion, or the 
 uniform dictates of the gospel, was an affecting desideratum.--® 
 
 The scene of Mr. Flint's George Mason is prob- 
 ably laid here in Missouri, rather than in Mississippi, 
 where he has located it in the story. He never resided 
 in the latter state. The trying experiences of the 
 New England minister's family under the name of 
 the Masons must tell much of what the Flints felt and 
 suffered keenly from, in the rude society of Jackson, 
 and other places as well. Mr. Flint would not give 
 expression to it in his letters or in his Recollections. 
 It was a part of the many things that he withheld not 
 
 228 Flint. Recollections, 232. 229 __ Jdem, 238, 239.
 
 PREACHING AND FARMING IN MISSOURI 137 
 
 "blazoning" them even to his f riends."^" In the story 
 of George Mason we see how the poverty of the New 
 England family is despised by the rich planters, how 
 their modesty and reticence is taken for pride, and 
 how their unwillingness to conform to the rude reli- 
 gious and social customs of their neighbors leads to 
 their ostracism and even persecution. The sons of 
 the two wealthiest planters fall in love with the twelve 
 year old daughter of the New England family and in 
 their frontier way proceeded to woo her despite the 
 protests of mother and daughter, that she was only a 
 child. [Mr. Flint's daughter Emeline was about fif- 
 teen when they lived in Jackson.] In the south that 
 age was considered quite old enough for courtship and 
 marriage. The author remarks that he had fre- 
 quently seen mothers but fourteen years of age. 
 
 While at Jackson, Mr. Flint was much interested 
 in the nearby German settlement on the Whitewater 
 River. These people were from Pennsylvania, 
 North Carolina, and Germany direct. They were 
 settled in the forests and very much isolated both by 
 their habits and location. Flint thought they had 
 preserved their nationality better even than their 
 countrymen in Pennsylvania. Indeed he remarks l 
 about this time that he thinks all the Europeans, and 
 the Anglo-Americans as well, are far more devoted to 
 their national and state habits after they have once lost 
 themselves in this new world. Much of the infelicity 
 of society in the new country he says came from this 
 clannishness, aggravated by the strange surroundings \ 
 and the latent homesickness of the people."^^ He has 
 
 230 Letter of Timothy Flint, St. Charles, Jan. 15, 1822. 
 
 231 Flint. Recollections, 244.
 
 138 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 no fear but that this marked trait of the early western 
 society will pass and all will be proud to be a part of 
 the nation that is soon to be a recognized power in the 
 family of nations.""*' 
 
 The Germans, he considered the most prosperous 
 class of people in the west. The French seemed to 
 him the least so. The very appearance of many of 
 them, "spare, thin, sallow, and tanned, with their flesh 
 adhering to their bones, and apparently dried to the 
 consistency of parchment" was in striking and elo- 
 quent contrast to the "large, stout, and ruddy-looking 
 men and women," in the German settlements, x^s a 
 race the French did not rise above indigence, while 
 the Germans were generally independent and often 
 rich. Everything about their farms had the appear- 
 ance of permanence and strength. Their cattle and 
 horses were large. He said : 
 
 They spend Htde, and when they sell will receive nothing in 
 pay but specie. Every stroke counts towards improvement. 
 Their wives have no taste for parties and tea. Silent, unwearied 
 labor, and the rearing of their children, are their only pursuits ; 
 and in a few years they are comparatively rich. 
 
 The French were "a poor race of hunters, crowded 
 in villages with mud hovels, fond of conversation and 
 coffee." Next to the Germans in prosperity were the 
 Anglo-Americans, then the Scotch, while the direct 
 emigrants from England were only more successful 
 than the French."^ 
 
 Mr. Flint found his German parishioners anxious 
 for religious instruction and devoted to the German 
 ideals of honesty and industry, though they had one 
 great weakness. He says : 
 
 232 Flint. Recollections, 252. ^ss — Idem, 237.
 
 PREACHING AND FARMING IN MISSOURI 139 
 
 But almost every farmer has his distillery, and the pernicious 
 poison, whiskey, dribbles from the corn ; and in their curious dia- 
 lect, they told me, that wlu'le they wanted religion, and their chil- 
 dren baptized, and a minister as exemplary as possible, he must 
 allow the honest Dutch, as they call themselves, to partake of the 
 native beverage. And they undertook to prove that the swearing 
 and drunkenness of a Dutchman was not so bad as that of an 
 American. One of them was reproved for his intemperance and 
 profaneness, and it was remarked that he had been zealous and 
 i very strict in his religious profession in Carolina. "Never 
 mind," said he, "this is a bad countrj' for religion. I know that I 
 have lost him," he continued, "but never mind, by and by the 
 good breacher," as he phrased it, "will come along, and 1 shall 
 pick him all up again.-"* 
 
 These people had brought a minister named Wei- 
 berg with them to the country. He was an educated 
 man but a notorious drunkard. Says Mr. Flint: 
 
 The earnest manner in which he performed divine service in 
 their own ritual [the Lutheran] and in their own language, car- 
 ried away all their affections. . . After service he would get 
 drunk, and as often happens among them, was quarrelsome. 
 They claimed indulgence to get drunk themselves, but were not 
 quite so clear in allowing their minister the same privilege. 
 
 When the time came to pay their subscriptions they 
 refused on the ground of his failing. Three succes- 
 sive years he sued for and recovered his salary. And 
 
 To reinstate himself in their good will, it was only necessary for 
 him to take them when a sufficient quantity of whiskey had opened 
 their phlegmatic natures to sensibility, and then give them a vehe- 
 ment discourse, as they phrased it. in the pure old Dutch, and give 
 them a German hymn of his own manufacture, for he was a poet, 
 too, and the subscription paper was once more brought forward. 
 They who had lost their suit and had been most fnveterate in 
 their dislike, were thawed out, and crowded about the paper 
 either to sign their name or make their mark.-^^ 
 
 23* Flint. Recollections, 233. 235 — Idem, 334, 335.
 
 140 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 But the Reverend Herr Weiberg had finally been 
 banished to a neighboring German colony and the 
 Yankee ''Breacher" was in his place. 
 
 He occasionally returned to Germany as it was called, to taste 
 their whiskey and cider. . . He came to the house of Madam 
 Ballinger, where I usually stayed when among them. "Well," 
 said he, "I judge you will now get good fast, now that you have a 
 Yankee breacher. Does he know one word of Dutch?" "Very 
 little, I suppose," she replied ; but in order to vindicate her preach- 
 er, she added, "but he knows French," etc., and she went on 
 giving my knowledge of various languages, according to her own 
 fancy: "And, mein Gott, what I tinks much good, he does not 
 drink one trop of whiskey!" ^^^ 
 
 Mr. Flint says further about his German congre- 
 gation, 
 
 I had the good fortune to be very acceptable to this people, 
 although I could not smoke, drink whiskey, nor talk German. 
 They made various efforts to fix my family among them. And, 
 as the highest expression of good will, they told me that they 
 would do more than they had done for Weiberg.-^^ 
 
 Whether it was because the "Yankee breacher" 
 
 236 The funeral customs of these German people may be of interest. 
 Flint says — "I attended a funeral, where there were a great number of them 
 present. After I had performed such services as I was used to perform on 
 such occasions, a most venerable looking old man, of the name of Nycswinger, 
 with a silver beard that flowed down his chin, came forward and asked me 
 if I were willing that he should perform some of their peculiar rites. I of 
 course wished to hear them. He opened a very ancient version of Luther's 
 hymns, and they began to sing in German, so loud that the woods echoed 
 the strain; and 3et there was something affecting in the singing of these 
 ancient people, carrying one of their brethren to his long home, in the use 
 of the language and rites which they had brought with them over the sea 
 from the 'fader land,' a word which often occurred in their hymn. It was a 
 long, loud, and mournful air, which they sung as they bore the body along. 
 The words 'mein Gott,' 'mein broder,' and 'fader land,' died away in the 
 distant woods. Remembrances and associations rushed upon me, and I shall 
 long remember that funeral hymn." ~ Recollections, 235, 236. 
 
 237 Flint. Recollections, 236.
 
 PREACHING AND FARMING IN MISSOURI 141 
 
 could not meet them in more of their social customs, 
 whether it was because he would not pursue Weiberg's 
 method of collecting his salary and renewing the sub- 
 scriptions, is not known. It is clear, however, that the 
 promises and efforts amounted to nothing; and early 
 in September, 1821, after spending almost two years 
 in southern Missouri, the family started overland for 
 St. Charles."* 
 
 On this one hundred and fifty mile journey they 
 probably had some heavy conveyance which would 
 carry their household effects and the mother and in- 
 fant. For, during this summer, a fifth child (the 
 fourth to live) was born to them, on June 8, 1821, at 
 Jackson. He was named James Timothy."^ Their 
 "Joseph" Mr. Flint calls him. He was to be their 
 comfort indeed in after years. 
 
 This journey to St. Charles would lead them by a 
 way that was not as strange as all their former paths 
 in a new country. There would be friends and ac- 
 quaintances at Ste. Genevieve. There were the 
 Hempsteads and many others at St. Louis. The jour- 
 ney was leisurely for they did not reach St. Charles 
 until about the middle of October."*** 
 
 Their former farm home below St. Charles had 
 been sold when they left in the spring of 18 19. Still 
 they felt that there they were at home. Mr. Flint 
 says in the letter to the Missionary Society, January 
 15, 1822, that their welcome had been very cordial 
 from their former friends in St. Charles, and that he 
 
 238 Letter of Timothy Flint, St. Charles, Jan. 15, 1822. 
 
 239 Family Records. Manuscripts in Boston Public Library and Library 
 of Harvard University. 
 
 240 Letter of Timothy Flint, St. Charles, Jan. 15, 1822.
 
 U2 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 had obtained a perpetual lease on a farm four miles 
 from St. Charles, having ''determined to farm for 
 subsistence, and to preach altogether gratis." This 
 farm must have been below the village and near where 
 their former home had been. In the Recollec- 
 tions,''' he makes acknowledgment of special indebt- 
 edness to two families who lived below St. Charles at 
 the "Point." 
 
 The letter continues : 
 
 We began w ith some degree of cheerfulness to build our cabin, 
 where we expected to end our days. The second day of our 
 labor, we were all struck in one day with the dreadful fever of the 
 country. We were penniless and homeless. For more than 30 
 days, all consciousness and remembrance was lost to mc. The 
 neighbors took Mrs. F. and me to one house, our daughter was 
 carried to another. Mrs. F. had an infant and it was taken from 
 the breast, and carried to another place. My two boys had but a 
 slight attack, and went to another place. The first of January' 
 we were all re-assembled in the cabin, where v/e now live, but all 
 afflicted with the ague, which has now followed me sevent}' days. 
 
 The Recollections adds some details to the story of 
 this sad homecoming. In the height of his fever, cir- 
 cumstances made it necessary for Mr. Flint to be re- 
 moved from the house where he w^as taken sick. 
 While he was unable to raise himself in bed, he was 
 moved in a carriage to a house six miles distant. He 
 writes: 
 
 Sick as we were and probable as the prospect was, that some of 
 us would add the trouble of funeral rites and duties to the labor 
 and cares of nursing us, they never remitted their kindness for a 
 moment. 
 
 He is not permitted to name these friends, but as 
 he looks back upon those dreary days, writing a few 
 
 2*1 Page 190.
 
 > 
 
 n 
 
 H 
 
 n
 
 PREACHING AND FARMING IN MISSOURI 145 
 
 years later, probably in Salem, or perhaps at the pa- 
 rental home in North Reading, he says: 
 
 How often, when flunking of these families, to whom we owe 
 so much, have I remembered Gray's beautiful verses - "Full 
 many a gem," etc.^*" 
 
 By the first of the year, 1822, the cabin had been 
 completed, and probably much earlier for the two 
 boys, as we have seen, w^ere not seriously ill. There 
 was another trouble, however, for the missionary let- 
 ter says: 
 
 We are now for the first time in debt. [He probably means 
 debt as a result of living expenses and sickness.] I have no appar- 
 ent means of payment - for I am utterly incapable of assisting my 
 family, and Mrs. Flint has the ague sometimes many days in suc- 
 cession. Under these circumstances, we are discouraged with the 
 country. Our industry, we think, would avail us more in a 
 healthier climate. The people of St. Charles have shown great 
 kindness, but our situation is still sufficiently wretched. We 
 seem to have no prospect here, but to wear out with continual 
 fever and ague. Our friends at the eastward propose to assist us 
 in some small degree, to return to Mass. Perhaps your society, 
 which assisted us to come here, will compassionate our case, and 
 join our friends in aiding us to return. Any of the Missionaries 
 here will inform you that instead of blazoning our misfortunes, 
 we have kept the greater part of them back. Perhaps your 
 society will think it as meritorious, to assist a distressed, and worn 
 out family to revisit their friends - as to fit the fresh Miss, out.-*^ 
 
 Mr. Flint was an honorable and independent man, 
 and his putting aside his pride to write the above letter 
 would not be the least of his sufferings. He would 
 not have done it at all but for the helpless family, 
 which he was not then able to do anything for, and 
 for which he seemed unlikely to be able to provide 
 
 242 Page 191. 
 
 2^"^ Letter of Timothy Flint, St. Charles, Jan. 15, 1823.
 
 140 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 in that section. Certainly none will dare to charge 
 him with anything of the pauper spirit in this instance 
 until they have entered into some sympathy with the 
 desperate situation in which his family was at this 
 time placed. 
 
 Hear him a little farther, though one shrinks from 
 making public even at this day what cost a brother, 
 as this cost Mr. Flint. He writes: 
 
 You can easily conceive the strong repugnance, which I feel at 
 making a proposal so humiliating to our natural feelings. But 
 I may say with the catholic church, "e profundis exclamavi." 
 
 I have looked upon my family, and all pride has sunk within 
 me. The view of their condition has wrung from me this pro- 
 posal. I have traveled farther - and have suffered more, and 
 have preached as much - as any Miss, in the country. Should 
 your society see fit to remit me something in aid of my returning 
 next fall, I may, perhaps, see you, and thank you and them in per- 
 son. At any rate you will not censure this my proposal until you 
 have placed yourselves in my situation in fancy, in an open cabin, 
 one or the other still groaning with the ague - and no resource, 
 but the casual kindness of a few friends, whom the frequent view 
 of similar cases has rendered callous to them. 
 
 I am persuaded, my dear Sir [Reverend Abel Flint, secretary 
 of the Missionary Society of Connecticut] that you will give our 
 case a kind and considerate hearing, and that your delicacy will 
 not expose our case, except there be some prospect of some assist- 
 ance. Should I survive my present complaint, of which I some- 
 times doubt, it is doubtful, if I shall ever be able to preach again, 
 though my friends seem anxious, that I should resume my labors 
 here. But whether I recover, or not, whether your society aid 
 me, or not, I am resigned, I am, and shall be personally your 
 affectionate friend, and hum. serv. T. Flint. 
 
 One feels that the appeal to the Missionary Society 
 of Connecticut was just and proper. It would not 
 seem that anyone who contributed to the funds of the
 
 PREACHING AND FARMING IN MISSOURI 147 
 
 society at that time would have objected to such use of 
 the money when they knew even a small part of the 
 story. But a careful and repeated study of the So- 
 ciety's list of disbursements for the year 1822'" and 
 of the six thousand three hundred, four dollars and 
 sixty-six and one-half cents disbursed by order of the 
 trustees, not one cent went to the Flint family though 
 there were three other missionaries in the new state 
 of Missouri who received a total of four hundred, 
 eighty-five dollars. It ought to be said, however, 
 that aid may very possibly have been sent to Mr. Flint 
 from constituents of the society and through its influ- 
 ence. Such items, probably, would not be officially 
 reported. 
 
 2ii Tiventy-Fourtli Annual Narrative of Missions (Hartford, 1823) 
 has a statement of the funds for the year 1822.
 
 IX. FLORIDA AND NEW ORLEANS 
 
 Whether or not Mr. Flint served the St. Charles 
 church as minister after his recovery in the w^inter of 
 1822, and until his departure in October of that year, 
 we are not informed. It is altogether likely that he 
 preached for them at least a part of the time. He 
 and the boys devoted themselves to their farm during 
 the spring and summer.'" 
 
 It is quite probable that during this year Mr. 
 Flint was doing something with his pen, hoping thus 
 to help gain a living and do his part of the world's 
 work. His George Mason very likely chronicles 
 something of this year's experiences, as for instance 
 when Mr. Mason is represented as working on a book 
 which he had expected to find time and inspiration 
 to finish, here in his Arcadia. But with the work 
 of clearing a little garden spot in the forest. 
 
 The father's hands were one blister. . . The severe toil, 
 too, caused Mr. Mason rheumatic pains and sleepless nights. He 
 found, moreover, when stormj' weather confined him to the 
 house, that a body full of the pains of exhausting labor, would not 
 allow scope to his thoughts, when he sat down to his great work 
 with his pen. Unremitting toil, in such a frame, blunts the sen- 
 sibilities, suspends the exercise of the imagination and fancy, and 
 after a fruitless effort to stir up his thoughts, he was compelled to 
 admit, that severe labor and writing are incompatible.^^V 
 
 ~*^ Flint. Recollections, 291. 
 
 -^" Flint, Timoth}-. George Mason, the Young Backivoodsman, 32.
 
 I50 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 It would not be surprising to learn that George 
 Mason was written during this year of the second resi- 
 dence in St. Charles. It would have been more pos- 
 sible than in the busy Cincinnati years just before it 
 was published. 
 
 Mr. Flint tells us that they took leave of their friends 
 in St. Charles at this time -the last they were to see of 
 this place of their wanderings -after a sacramental 
 meeting, being he says, "accompanied by the prayers 
 and tears of many friends, not without corresponding 
 tears of our own.""** 
 
 When they were preparing to depart from St. 
 Charles, they had all, apparently, recovered their 
 health. Their prospects for a living, and for useful- 
 ness were not, however, sufficiently bright to encour- 
 age them to stay in this section of the west. It was 
 with the help of eastern friends that they had prepared 
 to return to New England, via the Mississippi and the 
 Atlantic. 
 
 Mr. Flint makes a delicate and warm expression of 
 his obligations to the two friends, who, at this period 
 came to his rescue. He "would tell all" if it were not 
 for the feelings of his family. His friend. Dr. James 
 Flint, who settled in 1821 as pastor of the East Church, 
 Salem, was one of the friends, and the other we have 
 no doubt, was Joseph Peabody, the Salem merchant.'" 
 
 The journey down the Mississippi was begun the 
 fourth of October, 1822, in company with Mr. Wil- 
 liam Postell, of St. Charles, who had joined Mr. Flint 
 
 -*^ Flint. Recollections, 217. 
 
 ''^ — Idem, 291, 292. See also the Dedications of the Recollections and 
 the Geograplty and History.
 
 FLORIDA AND NEW ORLEANS 151 
 
 in building a flatboat and fitting it up for the use of 
 a family. Two days after they had taken leave of the 
 St. Charles friends, they left the quiet retreat on the 
 prairie below the town. But before they had gotten 
 out of the Missouri they lodged on a sand bar which 
 held them for four days and until they had unloaded 
 their boat. They were not ready to go on until the end 
 of the week. They tied up at St. Louis for the Sab- 
 bath. Mr. Flint says of this occasion at St. Louis, 
 "I preached to a very serious audience, a farewell dis- 
 course. Many circumstances concurred to give solem- 
 nity to this parting." Such partings are always times 
 for reviewing the past. It would not be difficult to 
 enter into some of the concurring circumstances which 
 made this occasion so solemn for people and minis- 
 ter.=='° 
 
 After the first mishap on the sandbar in the Mis- 
 souri, this journey was prosperous all the long way to 
 N ew Orleans. As far as the Arkansas there was noth- 
 ing of the charm of novelty which was always so keen 
 with Mr. Flint. There was much of sadness associ- 
 ated with every rapid place in the river and especially 
 with one particular point "opposite the second Chick- 
 asaw blufif." 
 
 After they have passed below the Arkansas, Mr. 
 Flint begins in his Recollections a history of the settle- 
 ments which they pass, the new aspects of the vegetable 
 world as it growls more tropical, the different appear- 
 ance of the forests, and especially the difference in the 
 character of the settlements with their increasing num- 
 ber of negro huts and villages about the great planta- 
 
 -^° Flint. Recollections, 217, 219.
 
 152 TIM(rrHV FLINT 
 
 rion buildings. .Much of this material must be val- 
 uable for the historian of this period and section. 
 
 At Warrenton, Mississippi, just below where Vicks- 
 burg now stands, they came to the first village of any 
 size below New Madrid, Missouri. Here they 
 stopped for a day or two and made inquiries about the 
 religious life and interests of the place. Though 
 there were a hundred good residences and many brick 
 store buildings in the place, he could find but one per- 
 son who was known as a professor of religion. He 
 says: 
 
 I was directed to a young lady, whose husband had something 
 of the appearance of a dandy, and who answered my inquiries 
 about the profession of his wife, with a shrug, and a half-sup- 
 pressed smile, informing me that she was a Methodist, but would 
 be glad to converse with any person who wore the garb and 
 appearance of a minister. He gave me clearly to understand that 
 it was no affair of his and that I must converse with her alone. 
 She spoke discouragingly about the willingness of the people to 
 assemble for public worship. I retired, considering it a hopeless 
 attempt, and intending to pass on without any public exercise. 
 But in the course of the evening a number of the citizens came on 
 board, offering their houses and wishing to have public worship. 
 There was a full house and apparently an attentive audience. 
 
 Thev left this place the next morning after hearing 
 many regrets expressed by the people that in so con- 
 siderable and prosperous a place there should be so 
 little public spirit and so little religious feeling, as to 
 have no place of public worship. '^^ 
 
 Natchez they found a romantically situated place 
 which the inhabitants called a city. It was the prin- 
 cipal cotton-shipping point of the region. At some 
 seasons a thousand boats could be seen at the landing. 
 
 -■"■'i Flint. RecolUct'tons, 294, 295.
 
 FLORIDA AND NEW ORLEANS 153 
 
 The lower part of the town, "under the hill," was a 
 repulsive place, the center of all that was vile from 
 the upper and lower country, ''the refuse of the 
 world." Of the houses in this section of Natchez, 
 Mr. Flint says: "The fiddle screaks jargon from 
 these fauctbus orciy The other part of the town on a 
 bluf¥ three hundred feet high, showed a rich country 
 round about, and it contained many handsome public 
 buildings, on wide streets, with the appearance of 
 comfort and opulence. There was a Baptist, a Meth- 
 odist and a Presbyterian church,'^' the latter with a 
 large building and society. Mr. Flint had no books at 
 hand as he wrote and estimated the population of 
 Natchez at seven or eight thousand. He notes also 
 that though the town was clean and the air seemingly 
 pure they had repeated and severe visits of the yellow 
 fever.'"*^ 
 
 One hundred and fifty miles above New Orleans 
 they came to the levee on the west side of the river. 
 Another began a little lower on the east side and each 
 continued to New Orleans. They were struck by the 
 high state of cultivation which obtained on the nar- 
 row strip of coast land on each side of the river and 
 lying under the levee. This coast land was usually 
 about two miles wide, bounded at the back by the 
 swamps and forests, conforming to the shape of the 
 
 '^''- Flint. Recollect!orr.r, 295. For the origin of this and other Presbyte- 
 rian churches in the vicinitj-, see J. G. Jones's A Concise History of the In- 
 troduction of Protestantism into Mississippi and the Southivfst, 225-238. Mr. 
 Jones says the first Protestant church in this section, and so far as the writer 
 can learn it was the first church with a settled pastor west of the Alleghany 
 Mountains, was a Congregational church at Kingston, Miss. It was formed 
 by Reverend Samuel Swayze, and a colony from New Jersey in 1872 or 1873. 
 
 -^3 Flint. Recollections, 295, 296.
 
 154 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 river, and very rich. Sounds heard from the houses 
 below them seemed to come from beneath the river. 
 The houses and grounds were very beautiful and Mr. 
 Flint thought that no other section of the Union, not 
 even the banks of the Delaware could compare for 
 fertility' and productiveness with this section. Among 
 the noblest of the plantations that they saw was that 
 of General Hampton, "one of the questionable heroes 
 of the late war," Mr. Flint thinks.''* 
 
 In all this marvelously rich and beautiful section of 
 country, with its dense population, Mr. Flint was 
 pained to find no Protestant church, though the eye 
 was cheered by the sight of a Catholic spire every six 
 or seven miles. He thought it hardly necessary to go 
 to Hindustan to find whole regions destitute of even 
 the forms of Christian worship. At Baton Rouge 
 they admired the United States barracks which Mr. 
 Flint thought as commodious as any in the whole 
 country. The two or three companies of troops were 
 under high discipline. There was a beautiful white 
 monument on the grounds, erected in honor of some 
 officers of the garrison who had died there, but the 
 inscription on it seemed to Mr. Flint a reproach in a 
 professedly Christian country. As he remembered 
 the verse it w^as: 
 
 Like bubbles on a sea of matter borne, 
 We rise, we burst, and to that sea return."^^ 
 
 We are not told just when the Flint party reached 
 New Orleans, but it was probably some time in No- 
 vember and in the healthiest season. Their health 
 must have been so much improved and the country so 
 
 -^* Flint. Recollections, 297, 3(X). -^^ — Idem, 299, 300.
 
 FLORIDA AND NEW ORLEANS 155 
 
 attractive in various ways that they were in no hurry 
 to proceed to New England and so complete the long 
 journey they had begun. In January of that winter, 
 Mr. Flint tells us that he ascended the river on a 
 steamboat as far as Baton Rouge. He does not tell 
 us the object of this trip but devotes a page or two of 
 the Recollections to what he saw at that time.^^^ They 
 spent about four months in New Orleans during the 
 first winter's residence there and at New Year's time 
 were enjoying peas in bloom, daffodils, and roses. ^^^ 
 Mr. Flint spent part of the time gathering material 
 for his Geography and History in the French manu- 
 scripts in the archives of state."^^ 
 
 The Flints had friends in the south to welcome 
 them. These, with new and influential ones, desired 
 to locate them permanently in this section of the coun- 
 try. In this way they became interested in Coving- 
 ton, thirty-five miles north of New Orleans, and across 
 Lake Pontchartrain. Mr. Flint repeatedly calls this 
 section West Florida although it was then, and had 
 been since 18 10, claimed by the United States as a 
 part of Louisiana. In 1812, it was made a part of the 
 state of Louisiana, and in 1819 and 1821, all possible 
 claim of Spain upon it had been surrendered to the 
 United States.''' 
 
 On a stormy March evening they embarked on a 
 steamer that was to carry them across this broad and 
 shallow lake for the scene of their new labors. So 
 low were its shores and so wide its shallow waters that 
 
 "^^ In the year 1823; pages 299, 300. 
 
 257 ff^estern Monthly Revieiv, vol. iii, 633. 
 
 -^^ — Idem, vol. i, opposite 128. Also Geography and History, vol. i, 13. 
 
 259 Channing, E. The Jeffersonian System, map, opp. 14.2.
 
 156 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 in its center it was difficult or even impossible to see 
 land, though it was only thirty miles wide. When 
 the water was rough the surf broke far in the forests 
 so low was the shore. When it was calm there was a 
 covering over the water like paint of various hues 
 shifting and changing, and showing the most singular 
 sport of this kind that could be imagined. There 
 were great herds of cattle feeding in the swamps in 
 winter and ranging in the grasses of the pine w^oods 
 during the summer. These pines gave them a home- 
 like feeling for they had seen none in the whole two 
 thousand miles of their travels on the "Nile of the 
 West." Mr. Flint was interested in the relics of the 
 long history of the Floridas, and in the contrasts of 
 soil, climate, and people compared with other sections 
 in which he had lived. The shipping on the bayous 
 and lakes he found very important, but the sailors were 
 the most abandoned of their class, being the refuse 
 from the sea and larger rivers. The native people he 
 thought were more shiftless and degraded than in oth- 
 er places, being generally denominated Bogues and 
 calling themselves "rosin heels." ^^^ 
 
 Mr. Flint had charge of two churches here, the one 
 in Madisonville on the north shore of the lake, a 
 summer resort for New^ Orleans people, and the other 
 at Covington. This latter place was six miles inland, 
 the county town in St. Tammany County, and the head 
 of river navigation toward the Mississippi Territory. 
 There w^as a school here which Mr. Flint conducted 
 in addition to his duties as a minister. Only two 
 things which seemed worthy of note occurred in his 
 
 *^o Flint. Recollections, 315-319.
 
 FLORIDA AND NEW ORLEANS 157 
 
 work here. Contrary to the rule in this section, the 
 people were united, and punctual in their attendance 
 on religious worship.""' Another occurrence in the 
 time of their residence here was a severe storm, long 
 remembered, in the fall of 1823. Mr. Flint compares 
 it with a great storm in New England, in the fall of 
 1815, just as he was leaving the Atlantic section, and 
 thinks the latter was the more severe.^"" 
 
 Health seems to have been good in West Florida, 
 but they returned to New Orleans after seven or eight 
 months in the fall of 1823, thinking possibly to locate 
 permanently in that city. This question was a matter 
 of "painful solicitude." Many friends assured them 
 that they were now well enough acclimated to make it 
 safe for them to stay in the city through the summer. 
 Fear of the consequence of such an attempt, and the 
 probability that they would be compelled to leave ev- 
 ery summer, decided them, when the opportunity 
 came, to go to Alexandria in the same state.'"^ Noth- 
 ing is said of returning to the north. They seemed 
 I to be here to stay. The great business prosperity of 
 I the country had made it possible for the family to 
 I become independent and comfortable in a short time. 
 The country had many attractions, while the need for 
 the teacher and preacher was great. 
 
 Before going to the Red River country, with them, 
 it would be well to look at New Orleans as it was in 
 Mr. Flint's time, not so much for the sake of acquaint- 
 ance with the old city, but because it will be an aid 
 
 -•^1 Flint. Recollections, 318. 
 
 262 ff^estern Monthly Rfvieiv, vol. iii, 634. 
 
 ~^^ Flint. Recollections, 219, 220.
 
 158 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 in the study of Timothy Flint to have followed him 
 here in his meditations and observations. 
 
 Viewed on a bright January morning, New 
 Orleans had a unique and fantastic appearance, more 
 like European cities than any other in the United 
 States, he was told. There was a large and handsome 
 brick Presbyterian church building and a good socie- 
 ty, which had had "the brilliant and pious Larned" ^" 
 as pastor, and now had a very able man. There was a 
 large and well conducted hospital, a cathedral and a 
 female orphan asylum. Concerning this latter insti- 
 tution, Mr. Flint remarks that the inmates attended 
 first the Presbyterian and then the Catholic church 
 and that it was founded by a Mr. Poydras, a man 
 unique in that time and section for his charities. '"^ 
 This was probably Mr. Flint's first experience in a 
 cathedral-like building and he seems to have spent 
 many hours within its quiet walls. It stood in the 
 midst of the city's noise but its walls were so thick that 
 all was quiet within. The dead buried beneath the 
 pavement, the figures of the saints, the dim light, the 
 unalterable repose and perpetual tranquillity of the 
 place, made it a haven and a benediction to Mr. Flint. 
 He could not but compare it with the brilliant, highly 
 finished and strongly lighted interiors of the Protes- 
 tant churches, to the disadvantage of the latter.^^® 
 
 -^^ Flint. Recollections, 302-304. About Larned, 69, 350. 
 
 Reverend Sylvester Larned, born at Pittsfield, Mass., Aug. 31, 1796, 
 graduated at Middlebury College, 1813. He studied theology at Princeton 
 and was ordained to the Presbyterian ministry in 1817. He went out as a 
 missionary in 1817 to New Orleans. He was distinguished as an eloquent 
 and powerful preacher. He died of yellow fever in New Orleans, Aug. 31, 
 1820. See Life and Eloquence of the Rev. S. Larned, by R. R. Gurley. 
 
 205 Flint. Recollections, 305, 306. 
 
 2«6 — Idem, 304.
 
 FLORIDA AND NEW ORLEANS 159 
 
 Mr. Flint took careful note of the moral conditions 
 of the city. He did not believe, as was generally 
 reported, that it was worse than other large cities of 
 the country. There was a very efficient police system 
 and there was no complaint of the law's delays. There 
 were certain sections of the city and certain houses so 
 bad and having such an aspect of "beastliness and deg- 
 radation, as to render them utterly unbearable^ But 
 Mr. Flint thought it was possible that these places 
 rendered the same service to the city as the "Helotes, 
 to the Spartan children." There was more of a babel 
 of tongues here than anywhere else, and as seen and 
 heard in the market place it was an experience not to 
 be forgotten. The French were the same gay and 
 light people everywhere. Their great, brilliant, and 
 gaudy theater was crowded on Sundays. But as in- 
 dication that not all the people of the city had the same 
 mind about Sunday amusements, Mr. Flint tells us 
 that he noticed, one Sunday morning, large theater 
 bills posted about the city, announcing the play for 
 that evening. He says: 
 
 Towards evening of the same Sabbath I observed that 
 a paper of the same dimensions, and the same type, but in 
 English, was everywhere posted directly under the French bill. 
 It contained appropriate texts from the Scriptures, and was 
 headed with these words ; "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it 
 holy," and mentioning that there would be divine service at a 
 place that was named, in the evening.^"^ 
 
 There were many societies and unions whose mis- 
 sion it was to pour salt into the city's fountains. There 
 was "apparently much excitement of religious feel- 
 ing." During the second winter of his residence, Mr. 
 
 287 Flint. Recollections, 307, 309.
 
 i6o TIMOTHV FLINT 
 
 Flint took an active part in a lecture course which was 
 conducted by the ministers of the city."'" 
 
 Next to the vice of the city the saddest side of its life, 
 to Mr. Flint, was the awful sickness and mortality. 
 The hearse was busy night and day. In the summer 
 of 1822 the destroying angel had seemed to carry a 
 "besom" and there were two thousand recorded deaths 
 beside multitudes unnoted. The poor Catholic-Irish 
 and the northern young men suffered most. The lat- 
 ter, he thought, had but one chance in two of surviving 
 the first fever season.'"^ 
 V- Sin and sickness filled the cemeteries. Part of the 
 dread of burial there, came from the fact that for a 
 large part of the year the water filled all graves that 
 were not built above ground. The Catholic cemetery 
 was full of graves and monuments, one wall being 
 formed by contiguous monuments in two tiers. It 
 was here that Mr. Flint delighted to wander on moon- 
 light evenings, meditating on the transient dream of 
 life, and the vanity of the search for w^ealth which 
 brought so many from every clime, to end their days 
 in this place."" 
 
 Two inscriptions in this cemeter\^ were impressed 
 upon his memory. One was on a handsome slab in 
 the upper tier, and in gilt letters, // moruit victimc 
 d'honneur. From this pitiable eulogy of the duel he 
 turned with pleasure to a simple stone erected by a 
 master for his black servant, with its eulogy of the 
 long, faithful, and affectionate service of the slave. 
 He turns from these cities "of the living" telling us 
 that in the Protestant cemetery he had seen, a great 
 
 2(38 piint. Recollections, 311, 319. -'^^ — Idem, 311. -''^ — Idem, 312.
 
 FLORIDA AND NEW ORLEANS i6i 
 
 number of the names of young men from Salem, Bos- 
 ton, and all New England, who had died in the prime 
 of their life "du fievre jaune."'"^ 
 
 Mr. Flint had a keen appreciation of the great com- 
 mercial advantages of New Orleans. He thought its 
 location was unrivaled by any other city in the world 
 and that it far surpassed New York in this respect. 
 With a clergyman from the north he estimated the 
 number of boats along the river front at between 
 twelve and fifteen hundred. With the unlimited ca- 
 pacity for productiveness in the upper country, the 
 trade of which at that time all came down the river, 
 and the products of all climes finding their way thith- 
 er by the sea, Mr. Flint could hardly imagine the 
 future of this city."" 
 
 -""^ Flint. Recollections, 312, 313. -'- — Idem, 301, 308.
 
 X. THE HOME ON THE RED RIVER 
 
 Not New England, but Louisiana, was to become* 
 the home of Timothy Flint's family. At Alexandria, 
 on the Red River, some two hundred miles above New 
 Orleans, this family took deep root, even before the 
 death of its head in 1840. All connection with the 
 land of its birth was lost after a few years and it be- 
 came an integral part of the Southland. There many 
 of its members are found today. 
 
 Not far from the beginning of the year 1824, the 
 removal took place and under conditions far more 
 comfortable than any of the previous travels of this 
 family. The steamer Spartan was chartered to carry 
 them and a few other passengers. They made a speedy 
 and delightful trip to their new home."^ 
 
 The waters of the Red River were not unlike those 
 of the Arkansas and deserved their name. The chan- 
 nel was in most places narrow and deep, though very 
 sinuous. Shoals of alligators were seen crossing the 
 stream, "as though logs had found the power of loco- 
 motion." Alexandria was found to be a pleasant vil- 
 lage, one hundred and fifty miles by river, above the 
 Mississippi, though but one third that distance in a 
 right line. It was on a perfectly smooth plain, car- 
 peted with the richest verdure, which sank away into 
 the cypress swamps a few miles back from the river. 
 
 273 Flint. Recollections, 320, 321.
 
 154 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 On the opposite and eastern bank of the river, the pine 
 bluffs came near. The white houses with their piazzas, 
 showed themselves under the beautiful china and ca- 
 talpa trees. The music of the falls just above the 
 village, reminded them of the distant roar of the At- 
 lantic, and lulled them pleasantly to sleep. '^^ 
 
 Alexandria was in the center of one of the most 
 important cotton districts of the south. It was the 
 seat of justice for the parish of Rapide. There were 
 bankers, lawyers, doctors, and editors enough but the 
 country was new and the state of literary culture was 
 very low. The college^ over which Mr. Flint pre- 
 sided, was in a huge but rather ugly building. It had 
 absorbed great sums of money, and was still supported 
 generously by the state and by its patrons. There 
 were large numbers of students, many of them board- 
 ing with the principal. The work was elementary 
 but none the less laborious. Three Presbyterian min- 
 isters had already laid their ashes here, one of them 
 the Reverend Mr. Hull having died just before Mr. 
 Flint took charge of the seminary and church."*" 
 
 Mr. Flint found his work very pleasant but exact- 
 ing for a man of such limited strength as his. The 
 preaching demanded was of the highly emotional type. 
 He was very much isolated as to fellowship, the nearest 
 minister with whom he could exchange being at 
 Natchez, two hundred and fifty miles distant by river. 
 The roads were much nearer but impassable most of 
 the year. There were only three Baptist churches in 
 the state, and Mr. Flint's church was the only one of 
 its order in that part of the state. The Methodists 
 
 -•■•Flint. RecoUerlions, 322, 323. -"•' — Idem, 323.
 
 THE HOME ON THE RED RIVER 165 
 
 were at work with their usual zeal; but their hostility 
 to slavery limited them very much in their immediate 
 sphere of influence. There were many Catholic 
 churches. The religious and social conditions seemed 
 hopeful to Mr. Flint, there being some things that 
 he would like to have seen transferred to the more 
 serious people of the north.^^" 
 
 Mr. Flint sa3'^s the first year in Alexandria passed 
 very pleasantly "in the discharge of uniform duties." 
 His society was small but embraced some of the most 
 amiable families that he had anywhere met. The 
 people were very attentive to his ministry.'" 
 
 It was here that Mr. Flint met Judge Henry Bul- 
 lard, who became one of his most intimate and valued 
 friends. We have already noticed that the father of 
 this man, Reverend John BuUard of Fitchburg, Mass- 
 achusetts, was a neighbor and friend of Mr. Flint, 
 when he was at Lunenburg. The judge was eight 
 years younger than Mr. Flint, but he was a Harvard 
 man, 1807, ^^^ ^^ every way congenial.^" Mr. Flint 
 says about him in the Recollections :"^ 
 
 If any one would know the value of a companion, bred In the 
 same region, formed to similar habits, versed in all kinds of liter- 
 ature, a scholar, a gentleman, and a man capable of sincere and 
 ardent friendship, let him wander without such a friend ten 
 years in the wilderness of the West, and then, where such a thing 
 was least expected, let him find such a friend. 
 
 In the preface to Francis Berrian, Mr. Flint pays 
 a warm tribute to the friendship of Bullard. He also 
 
 '-'•^ Flint. Recollections, 340, 341. 
 
 2^'^ — Idem, 353. ' 
 
 -"•* See Harvard Class Book for the Class of iSo/, in Hansard Library, 
 manuscripts department. 
 2'" Page 353.
 
 i66 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 says that this story grew out of conversations with the 
 judge and that he is indebted to him for much of the 
 material in it: "You well know, that no inconsider- 
 able portion of these adventures is anything, rather 
 than fiction."'"*^ Judge Bullard had spent several 
 years in Mexico as a soldier of fortune, before he set- 
 tled at Alexandria. Much of the interest of Francis 
 Berrian comes from this mingling of the story of his 
 friend with the writer's fiction. 
 
 In the village of Alexandria, clean and delightful 
 every way to the eye, they had a comfortable residence 
 near the school building. The breezes were pleasant, 
 but in them, carried from the wide spreading swamps, 
 were the deadly fever germs. Here, as every where 
 in this section, Mr. Flint says, the rich soils were the 
 places of greatest danger, and the poor soils of the 
 pine woods the healthiest. Late in May, 1824, Mr. 
 Flint being quite ill at the time, the family retired 
 to the pine woods where they built a cottage near those 
 of two other families with whom they were intimate. 
 Judge BuUard's family being one of them doubtless. 
 Here in the woods there was a considerable settlement 
 of people from Alexandria and the region about."^^ 
 
 This summer in the pine woods is the pleasantest 
 and most idyllic of any that we have recorded in Mr. 
 Flint's life. And so he thinks himself."^" There was 
 every charm of nature, charms to which he and his 
 family were most responsive. There was also the rare 
 blessing of health and vigor. He was seized by a 
 "poetical paroxysm," and wrote: 
 
 -^^ Flint. Francis Berrian, p. iii. 
 
 281 Flint. Recollections, 353-364. 
 
 282 — Idem, 355.
 
 THE HOME ON THE RED RIVER 167 
 
 For I remember well the scorching day, 
 When weary, faint, and wan, I saw thee first. 
 Expecting soon to lay the load of life 
 Beneath the turf; but thy cool wave 
 And healthful breeze inspired other hopes. ^*^ 
 
 They were in comfort, and in the midst of warm 
 and cherished friends. The keenness of their pleas- 
 ure is perhaps best indicated by the poems written at 
 this time, which recite their experiences and medita- 
 tions.''* 
 
 Continuing his song of the forest and stream, Mr. 
 Flint says: 
 
 Thy fountains, springing midst the wavy pines, 
 Well from the hills, to join thee, o'er a sand 
 As pure as mountain-snow ; so bright. 
 That the gay red-bird tunes his note of joy, 
 Soon as he settles on thy laurel branch. 
 How often, ere the jocund morn had ting'd 
 Thy groves with gold, my angling rod in hand, 
 From thy pellucid wave I've drawn the trout. 
 In all his pride of mottled white and gold, 
 And born the cumbrous prize, triumphant, home. 
 
 There was no "jealous lock or latch" in their Eden, 
 for: 
 
 By joint consent with these dear friends we threw 
 Observance, form and state all to the winds. 
 
 Three or four families took many of their meals 
 together. The breakfasts were eaten under the beaches 
 near the stream where the abundant trout- Mr. Flint 
 caught over two thousand of them averaging over a 
 
 -^^ Flint. Recollections, 356. 
 
 -^* Beside the two poems written at this time by Mr. Flint and Micah, 
 there is a third poem written by the latter at some other time which Is closely 
 related to this occasion and experience. Mr. Flint incorporates it here with 
 this summer's experiences. See Recollections, 359-364.
 
 i68 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 pound in weight, during this summer-were tossed by 
 the anglers to the black girls who did the cooking. 
 
 And then, when evening from the azure east, 
 Threw her deep mantle o'er the dark-brown pine, 
 We've sat, well pleased, to list the breezy moan, 
 Nature's Eolian harp, to sink, or swell 
 Along the boundless forest-tops, in strains. 
 That awe, impress, or council sleep : - 
 This vesper hymn prolong'd, till the bright moon, 
 Thron'd on her silver car, and twinkling stars 
 Seem but to float just o'er the forest tops. 
 Sudden the blazing torches rise around, 
 And pour their flickering light amidst the trees. 
 And spread illusions o'er our humble sheds, 
 As those, that mark enchantment's fabled tales. 
 Our cabins turn to palaces, and the dark pine, 
 Seen half in living light, and half in shade, 
 Half lucid verdure, and half deepening gloom, 
 Shows, like the light of life, shut by the grave 
 From the dark regions of eternity.^'*'^ 
 
 As Mr. Flint looked back on these happy months 
 he could detect that even then there w^as a "sad pre- 
 sentiment" hanging over him. He seemed always to 
 fear when the cup of happiness was at his lips lest it 
 betoken a bitter one to follow. Micah's lines writ- 
 ten on this same occasion would be expressive of the 
 father's feelings. Micah says: 
 
 And, lost in thought, how deeply pondered, 
 On my distant native land. 
 
 Her granite cliffs, that breast the ocean, 
 Dashing back the Atlantic wave. 
 
 How soon and how sadly the father was to see those 
 
 Flint. Recollections, 356, 357.
 
 THE HOME ON THE RED RIVER 169 
 
 granite shores, neither of them could know, when they 
 went back to the village in the fall, singing: 
 
 Farewell, ye groves, that I am leaving. 
 Where I've spent the summer heats; 
 Autumnal gales now force us, grieving. 
 To resume our winter seats. ***' 
 
 The Recollections^'^'' tell the story of the few months 
 that followed the return from the hills. A part of 
 it is as follows : 
 
 In October of the last year, we resumed our laborious duties 
 in the Seminary. I had my son and another young man under 
 a particular course of personal instruction. I had boarders, a 
 numerous school, preached after a sort and as I could, and was 
 trying to digest this work. A few weeks of this overplied exer- 
 tion began to make me feel the illness, which brought me to your 
 country. I struggled to vanquish it, by resolution and exercise, 
 until the eighth of last December. I was then seized with a 
 bilious complaint, accompanied with spasm, which confined me to 
 my bed. All the aids of medicine were unavailing. The middle 
 of January, I was just able with assistance, to mount on horse- 
 back. Accompanied by my friend. Judge Bullard, of whom you 
 have so often heard me speak, I commenced a journey to Natchi- 
 toches and the interior beyond for my health. 
 
 There is a full description of this journey to and 
 from the Mexican frontier on the Sabine River. But 
 we must confine ourselves to the things that most inti- 
 mately concern Mr. Flint. 
 
 They journeyed slowly and at first the sick man 
 gained some strength. Their coming was known and 
 everywhere the planters vied with each other in their 
 attentions to the minister and judge. At Natchitoches, 
 they spent two weeks, most hospitably entertained, 
 and were deeply interested in the old town. Mr. 
 
 286 Flint. Recollections, 357, 358. ^^'^ — Idem, ^6^ Q.
 
 170 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 Flint speaks of its history as a succession of Indian 
 poii'ico'ws, Spanish fandangoes^ French balls and 
 American frolics. To tell the story he must be the 
 "great Unknown," and "have ten volumes for elbow." 
 "Pity, that all this interesting matter should be lost, 
 for want of an historian," says Mr. Flint.'*"* 
 
 He was called upon here to act as chaplain for a 
 French surgeon named Prevot, who was to be hanged 
 for killing a young attorney from the north, a Mr. 
 Mills, because he would not fight a duel with him. 
 The Frenchman belonged to "the school of Voltaire 
 and Delambert," which he said was a bad kind of 
 school to make a good Christian. He at first refused 
 to talk with Mr. Flint thinking he was a Roman priest. 
 Learning that Flint was a Protestant he said eagerly, 
 "vous avez raison done." Mr. Flint accompanied 
 him to the gallows, offered a prayer at the request of 
 the condemned man, saying for him in English to the 
 assembled people, that he died asking the mercy of 
 God, and in charity with all men. His last words to 
 Mr. Flint were: "Adieu, ministre! je vous remer- 
 cie."^^^ 
 
 Mr. Flint and his friend passed on to the Spanish 
 frontier and the village of Adayes.* This was a typi- 
 cal Spanish village, and the buildings and people of- 
 fered an interesting contrast to the French settlements. 
 Returning from this point they were lost in the woods 
 for a time and caught in a rain storm before they were 
 finally guided on their way to the United States Post, 
 "Cantonment Jessup." Here they were welcomed by 
 Colonel Many who commanded two companies of 
 
 -*^ Flint. Recollections, ■^66. -^^ — /^?ot, 367-369. * Now spelled Naies.
 
 THE HOME ON THE RED RIVER 171 
 
 soldiers. On reaching Natchitoches again, Mr. Flint 
 was unable to ride, and returned to his home by boat, 
 having had little benefit from his excursion.'"" 
 
 The illness continued. During the sultry weather 
 of March he grew so much worse that friends and phy- 
 sicians joined in urging him to go to the north as a last 
 resort. Many cases were cited to him to prove the 
 efficacy of such a step. But to the exhausted invalid, 
 
 Who had been for years sustained by the most assiduous nurs- 
 ing and care, it seemed a formidable experiment to commit myself 
 to such a great journey, and to separate myself from every friend. 
 
 You know enough of my habits to be aware how often, in my 
 days of distress and my nights of watching, I laid my case before 
 Him, who alone can help; how often, in the vibrations of feeling, 
 dififerent determinations would alternately have the mastery. . . 
 A carriage, a horse, a servant, all the little delicacies so 
 necessary to the fastidious appetite of an invalid, were constantly 
 furnished me by my friends. Kindness of every sort may be 
 rendered, and the heart may swell with grateful thoughts, which 
 cannot clothe themselves in words, and yet disease go steadily on. 
 So it was with me. I saw that I could not long survive in that 
 region. I determined to disengage myself from my family, cast 
 myself on the care of God, and commence a journey of twenty-five 
 hundred miles for my native land, looking forward as the most 
 fortunate consummation, that I had a right to hope, to revisit the 
 scenes and the friends of my first years, and after so much wander- 
 ing and toil, to be buried by the "graves of my father and my 
 mother." -"^ 
 
 So the journey was undertaken on the fourth of 
 April, 1825. When he arrived at the home of his 
 friend, Dr. James Flint in Salem, he said he "had 
 come home to die." '^' 
 
 -''"Flint. Recollections, 369-373. ^si — Idem, 373, 374, 
 
 -^-Encyclopedia Americana: Supplementary Volume, vol. xiv, 270, 271.
 
 XL A NEW LEASE OF LIFE 
 
 Mr. Flint in telling the story of this long and pain- 
 ful journey says: 
 
 It is unnecessary for me to speak of the forced cheerfulness of 
 my family and my friends, the presages of people, who talked 
 with confidence in their words to me, and who instantly used a 
 different language among themselves. Friendship and kindness 
 could do nothing for me, that was not done. A kind neighbor 
 was to accompany me as far as Baltimore. The morning sun 
 shone brightly. The bell had struck for calling together the 
 pupils in the seminary. They bade me farewell in the court-yard. 
 My family accompanied me to the steps. Perhaps the hardest 
 parting of the whole was with a little fellow between three and 
 four, with a dark Spanish countenance, but a brilliant eye, that 
 easily kindles with joy or is suffused with a tear, according to the 
 passing emotion. He is our Joseph [James Timothy], born to 
 us after an interval of fourteen years, excepting the infant which 
 we lost on the Mississippi. He was marching in the court-yard 
 with his military hat and feather, clad in a new suit, and with a 
 tin sword, given to keep him away from this painful business of 
 parting. But he had come, and saw that there was restrained 
 emotion and uncommon countenances. He came up to me and 
 asked why mama and sister looked so strange. I kissed him, not 
 daring even to turn back, or cast one "longing, lingering look 
 behind ;" and sustained by my two sons went on board the steam- 
 boat Natchitoches, bound for Natchez, parted from my sons, took 
 my berth, heard the parting gun fired on the bow, and instantly 
 felt, that we were descending the river.-*^ 
 
 At Natchez two physicians visited and aided him 
 
 293 Flint. Recollections, 374, ff.
 
 174 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 with counsel and medicines. He took the fine new 
 steamer Grecian for Louisville and made a speedy 
 journey in beautiful weather which he would have 
 greatly enjoyed but for his extreme illness. There 
 were such mornings as would almost create a "soul 
 beneath the ribs of death." But all the beauty, and 
 the busy and joyous life on the gay steamer, struck a 
 key not at all in unison with his feelings. Many nights 
 he took a mental leave of family and world, thinking 
 it unlikely that he would survive until morning. On 
 the eleventh of April he records, "we passed the place 
 , where our babe lies buried." In ten days he had 
 reached Louisville. What a contrast with their sad 
 and lonely journey up the great river in 1819. He 
 now traveled one "hundred miles a day, against the 
 whole weight of the Mississippi current." Then for 
 fifty days they had struggled with the current, and 
 thought ten miles a day good progress."^* 
 
 Louisville had grown to be a fine town, the very 
 smell at the landing indicating a great and growing 
 place. The log farm houses along the river had given 
 place to houses of brick. At Cincinnati, he was still 
 more surprised with the change that ten years, or a 
 little less time, had wrought. He stayed here two 
 days, visited by friends and relatives, and aided by 
 the then famous Dr. Drake."^^ 
 
 On the passage to Wheeling his complaint took a 
 new form which still more weakened him, but the 
 striking changes in the country continued to attract 
 
 -^* Flint. Recollections, 377. Also Geography and History, vol. i, 238. 
 
 295 Mr. Flint speaks of Dr. D., one of the respectable physicians of the 
 place. He was probably referring to Dr. Drake, a famous physician of 
 Cincinnati and a man that later Mr. Flint was to know intimately.
 
 A NEW LEASE OF LIFE 175 
 
 his notice. He was reminded of Caesar's changing 
 Rome from brick to marble when he saw the Ohio 
 villages. Wheeling, when he first saw it, "was a 
 smoky, mis-shapen village." Now he found rows of 
 massive brick buildings, and lodged in a hotel equal 
 to anything on the Atlantic coast. The great national 
 road from here to Baltimore seemed even more mar- 
 velous than other changes and especially as he remem- 
 bered their first toilsome and dangerous journey to 
 Pittsburg over the mountain road. The land travel 
 was more exhausting than the river. At Washington, 
 Pennsylvania, he was obliged to rest two days, receiv- 
 ing much kindness and attention, but being still fur- 
 ther inconvenienced for traveling in a stage, by the 
 application of a large blister.'''*' 
 
 Speaking of the journey through the mountain re- 
 gion, Mr. Flint says: 
 
 We were driven down the most considerable of them, a dis- 
 tance of between four and five miles, at a furious rate, and at mid- 
 night, and just on the verge of precipices, that it would be fearful 
 to look down upon at mid-day. I suffered more than I can de- 
 scribe, from weakness and exhaustion. We crossed the Potomac, 
 stayed a night at Frederick, and I was cheered with a distant view 
 of the Atlantic regions. . . Having arrived in Boston and met 
 some friends, who are very dear to me, and from whom I parted 
 between ten and eleven years before, as I departed for the West, 
 I could see by the very attempt to suppress surprise and exclama- 
 tion, how time and disease had changed my countenance. . . 
 A few hours brought me to you, my dear friend [Dr. James 
 Flint, Salem], and having accomplished the object of my 
 prayers, having seen again my earliest and most constant friend, I 
 felt in that joyful hour of meeting, as though, could I have had 
 my family with me, miserable as my health was, I should have 
 296 Flint. Recollections, 378-380.
 
 176 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 been the happiest of the happy. But at the end of this long pil- 
 grimage, \\ith more than two thousand miles interposed between 
 me and my family, your countenance, and that of my other 
 friends, told me but too plainly, that these halc\on hours were not 
 expected to be long repeated. There are no constant things here, 
 but disappointments and tears. Happy for us, that there remain- 
 eth a rest for the people of God.-*' 
 
 While the father is thus thinking and writing of his 
 family, busy about their home and school duties in the 
 far south, the eldest son is writing: 
 
 I implore his blessing 
 
 On an absent father's head, 
 That, health and hope possessing, 
 
 He may yet return to spread 
 A smile of joy and gladness 
 
 O'er an anxious mother's brow, 
 And chase the look of sadness. 
 
 Which is there imprinted now."*^* 
 
 Here ends not only the story of the long journey 
 home but the Recollections. Thus far it was written 
 during the summer in New England, and dedicated at 
 Salem in September to Doctor Flint. At the request 
 of his friend, another letter was written from Cin- 
 cinnati in September on his way home. This is print- 
 ed as a supplemental letter in that same volume. In 
 this he gives his impressions of things in New England 
 as he saw them after ten years absence. The very 
 marked industrial, social, and religious revolution, 
 then taking place, was a matter of the greatest interest 
 and concern to Mr. Flint, and he returns to it often in 
 the letters written during the next ten years, in which 
 period he was several times in New England. These 
 
 29" Flint. Recollections, 380-383. 
 
 298 Flint, Micah P. The Hunter and Other Poems, 129.
 
 A NEW LEASE OF LIFE 177 
 
 fully recorded impressions are of importance for an 
 understanding of Mr. Flint's character and will be 
 noticed later. 
 
 Dr. James Flint says in his article in the Encyclo- 
 pedia Americana that the effect of the climate, of quiet 
 and rest, and of a trip they took together to Saratoga, 
 was to so far restore his friend's health, that he was 
 able to write the Recollections.''''' This Mr. Flint did 
 at the urgent request of his friends. This book it ap- 
 pears was all written in New England at this time 
 except the supplement as above noted. The first let- 
 ter or chapter is dated Alexandria, Red River, Octo- 
 ber, 1824. Part of this may be a letter written at that 
 date to Doctor Flint, but at least a part of even this 
 letter was written after his return to New England. 
 It is quite possible that he used some of his own letters 
 to Doctor Flint and notes made earlier, but it is to be 
 remembered that he says he wrote "without books" or 
 journal.^"' 
 
 Besides the journeys mentioned by Doctor Flint, 
 Timothy probably visited his home in Reading, 
 though he does not mention this visit and seems to 
 have made his head-quarters in Salem. At the home 
 church he found a new minister in the place of the 
 aged Eliab Stone, who had died in August, 1822. His 
 father was still living at the place of his birth and at 
 the advanced age of eighty-eight years. His mother 
 had been dead near twenty years. He revisited Lun- 
 enburg where he was greeted as one come back from 
 
 -^^Encyclopedia Americana: Supplementary Volume, vol. xiv, 270, 271. 
 Giiswold in his Prose Writers of America [152] says that Flint began to 
 write the Recollections soon after his removal to Alexandria. 
 
 300 piint. Recollections, 4, 296.
 
 178 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 the grave. They had thought of him too, in their 
 humble annals, as a personage of history. He says 
 of this experience: 
 
 All that ought to have been remembered by my former people 
 in my favour, was remembered. All that in those days of inex- 
 perience, of untamed youth and temperament, related to me, 
 which I could have wished forgotten, seemed to have been com- 
 pletely consigned to oblivion. . . One burst of affectionate 
 remembrance was manifested by the whole people. I felt pain- 
 fully, that in wandering from that rustic, but feeling people, I had 
 wandered from home. This excitement, so many recollections, 
 alternately delightful and painful, stories of the living, the suf- 
 fering, and the dead, the necessity of conversing with so many, 
 soon renewed my indisposition, and 1 was compelled to hasten 
 away.^°^ 
 
 Much restored in health Mr. Flint began in Sep- 
 tember, the journey to his home in Alexandria. He 
 had finished his Recollections and left the manuscript 
 with the publishers who brought it out in March of 
 the following year. Dr. James Flint says that he 
 began the writing of Francis Berrian on the return 
 trip home, and finished it during the following win- 
 ter.^°" This story opens with a description of the 
 writer's journey from Massachusetts to the regions of 
 the Spanish frontier. Just what is fact and what is 
 fiction can not be told, as the journey progresses, but 
 we are enabled to see Mr. Flint making a comfortable 
 and glad return to his family, enjoying himself with 
 newly made and old friends on the palatial steam- 
 boats, and devoting himself to reading and writing as 
 
 301 Flint. Recollections, 388. 
 
 302 Doctor Flint says that Francis Berrian was begun on the return journey 
 in the fall of 1826. As the work was brought out in the summer of 1826, it is 
 clear that he should have said the fall of 1825. See article in Encyclopedia 
 Ajnericana: Supplementary Volume.
 
 A NEW LEASE OF LIFE 179 
 
 steam and current carried him south. We have also 
 a glimpse of the glad home coming in the Francis 
 Berrian. 
 
 We do not know whether Mr. Flint resumed his 
 school work or not. His son Micah must have been 
 in the practise of his profession as a lawyer about this 
 time and was perhaps already interested in a planta- 
 tion. The family circumstances continued to grow 
 easier from the beginning of their residence here. It 
 seems rather likely that Mr. Flint devoted himself 
 chiefly to literary work during the winters of 1825- 
 1826 and 1826-1827. A number of articles that ap- 
 pear in the first numbers of the Western Monthly 
 Review, beginning in May, 1827, appear to have been 
 written in Louisiana, and it would seem likely that 
 nearly all of the work on the Geography and History 
 was done before he moved to Cincinnati.^"^ 
 
 On April 27, 1826, Mr. Flint again left his home in 
 Louisiana for an expected absence of eight months. 
 He was ill at the time and this trip was probably taken 
 partly for the same purpose as the one a year before. 
 But he was not nearly so helpless, and hopeless as then, 
 and seems to have had certain business enterprises in 
 mind. Dr. James Flint says he brought the manu- 
 script of Francis Berrian with him on this journey.^"* 
 It was published during this summer and while Mr. 
 Flint was in the north. We do not know whether he 
 remained as long as he intended and are only told by 
 Dr. James Flint that he once more rejoined his fam- 
 
 303 The Geography and History was copyrighted, Oct. 19, 1827. See 
 also the preface to the different editions. See Revieiv, vol. i, 69, 71, 81, op- 
 posite 310. 
 
 30* See footnote 302.
 
 i8o TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 ily in the autumn of 1826. Some of his time while 
 in the north must have been spent in literary work, 
 especially on the Geography and History which was 
 ready for the public in the fall of the next year. He 
 had these volumes printed in Cincinnati, and it is like- 
 ly that so extensive a work would take a Cincinnati 
 printer many months to accomplish. In all probabil- 
 ity he completed his arrangements while north in 1826 
 for removal to Cincinnati and for the beginning of 
 his magazine and publishing business early in 1827. 
 
 In the October number of the first volume of the 
 Western Monthly Review we have a ten page article 
 entitled, "Extracts from the Journal of a Voyage from 
 Alexandria, Red River, Louisiana, to New York, by 
 way of New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico." There 
 are no names but there are unfailing signs in this jour- 
 nal that it is Mr. Flint's and that he was then in "the 
 laudable habit of taking notes during travels" even 
 if it had become "the bore to the public." ^°' Mr. 
 Flint is always at his best when describing the expe- 
 riences of a journey. Of the many such accounts which 
 we have, none are more interesting than this. It is 
 the story of the second trip to the north and was made 
 in 1826. 
 
 He embarked at New Orleans, May i , "in the large, 
 new ship Azelia, Captain Wibray, to sail next day." 
 He had spent two days in New Orleans, which place 
 he had not visited for two years. The nights in New 
 Orleans were made memorable by the immense band 
 of large bull frogs in the nearby swamp. "The depth, 
 number, and variety of the cries of these animals unit- 
 
 305 K'estern Mont/ily Revieiv, vol. iii, 270. For the story of the journey 
 see vol. i, 313-322.
 
 A NEW LEASE OF LIFE i8i 
 
 ed the ludicrous and the terrible." The invasion of 
 mosquitoes through a fissure in the netting, created a 
 situation not only "ludicrous" but so "terrible" that 
 a black girl must drive out the enemy and mend the 
 rent before there could be rest.^"'' 
 
 At evening time a steamboat gripped the Azelia 
 on one side and a French ship bound for Havre on 
 the other side, and carried them ofif like "a cat lugging 
 her kittens." By morning they are set free on the 
 "illimitable sea." The leave taking of the French 
 and Americans with the friends to be left behind, the 
 contrasts in the expression of emotions, are of keen in- 
 terest to this observer who seems equally to wonder 
 at the ways of nature and of man. He joins in spirit 
 with the worship conducted by the Roman priests on 
 the French ship, for do not even the black hands on 
 the grimy tug below, uncover and stand in reverence. 
 The first sight of the sea carries him back to the days 
 of his boyhood and the many hours that were spent 
 in the chill and healthful wave of the Atlantic. But 
 from the smooth river current to the sea is a sharp 
 change and in a few minutes all the bilious passengers 
 are sick. Mr. Flint remains on deck as long as he 
 can see land, dreaming of all that has happened on 
 those receding shores.^" 
 
 For two days he is disabled, but on the third there 
 is a dead calm following the brisk north breeze. For 
 three days they lie motionless in the water with the 
 spires of Havana visible from the topmast. They 
 amuse themselves with the sea birds, turtles, and with 
 sinking objects. All of these latter are turned suc- 
 
 306 if/estern Monthly Review, vol. i, 315. 
 
 307 — Idem, vol. i, 315-317.
 
 1 82 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 cessively into silver, gold, pearl, and diamond as they 
 sink in the clear, still water. The captain and sailors 
 of a Yankee schooner come on board and furnish 
 amusement for the passengers with their dialect and 
 ''apparent simplicity." Even Mr. Flint can see them 
 with the southern eye, but "apparent" proclaims him 
 as he always claimed to be "a true son of New Eng- 
 land." ^"'' After the calm, a storm, and even worse 
 sea-sickness, which has one virtue; causing an indif- 
 ference to existence which "excludes fear." But the 
 grand spectacle rouses him the second day of the storm. 
 What the poets have not been able to tell him he can 
 now see and feel for himself, though he has to be laid 
 on a mattress in the companion-way, to see it.""^ 
 
 On Sunday morning, the sixteenth day of the voy- 
 age, the beautiful bay and city of New York open be- 
 fore them. Here they are only planting. In New 
 Orleans was green corn and cucumbers. The verdure 
 here is not so deep but looks more healthful. A Jer- 
 sey steamboat carrying passengers to church in New^ 
 York, for it is Sunday morning, takes them in tow. 
 "At ten we gladly spring on shore, and I once more 
 tread optato gremio te/luris.^^^^° 
 
 One other incident occurring in Alexandria in Jan- 
 uary, 1826 or 1827, is recorded in a letter probably 
 written to Dr. James Flint. It is given because it 
 shows the things which most impressed Mr. Flint, and 
 because of its inherent interest. He was taking his 
 usual m.orning walk on a marshy forest road -a walk 
 so dreary that it had become the subject of frequent 
 
 SOS plint. Recollections, 390. 
 
 309 Jf'estern Monthly Review, vol. i, 320, 321. 
 
 "^^ — Idem, 322.
 
 A NEW LEASE OF LIFE 183 
 
 jest among his friends. He gives us one of his most 
 perfect pictures of the morning scenes and sounds. 
 Into this picture, amidst which he walks thinking of 
 the distant friend of his youth, comes the wail of a 
 woman. Coming along the road are a couple of In- 
 dian women and two or three children following in the 
 customary Indian file, a cart upon which is a rude 
 cypress coffin. Preceding it is an aged Indian man. 
 Sympathy in the face and words of this tender hearted 
 man, stops the procession. The aged father answers 
 in his broken French: "c'etoit mon seul fils-c'etoit 
 grand et brave. Mais il est parti, et nous partons.'^ 
 He had heard a father's "funeral oration for his son," 
 and he went on his way, the wails of the widow dying 
 in the distance, meditating upon how "death deals his 
 dart, and tears fall ; and hearts are as deeply desolated 
 in the wild woods, as when the tenant of a palace 
 falls.'"" 
 
 211 Western Monthly Revievj, 71-73. Extract from a letter.
 
 XII. LITERARY WORK IN CINCINNATI 
 
 After twelve years spent in the great west, and in 
 the early part of 1827, Mr. Flint was able to carry 
 out the object which he had more especially in view 
 when he was first planning to go west. This was the 
 plan, of which he wrote to the Missionary Society of 
 Connecticut, to establish, "in some central place a 
 religious publication, like our religious monthly pa- 
 pers ; except that it should more particularly vindicate 
 our literature, charities and institutions."^'" The 
 ''central place" was Cincinnati. The publication 
 was the Western Monthly Review. The object of 
 the Review, as set forth in the editor's inaugural ad- 
 dress, holds closely to that which was first in mind. 
 
 Mr. Flint probably moved to Cincinnati about the 
 time that his Western Monthly Review was first is- 
 sued, May, 1827."'' Cincinnati was chosen for the 
 new residence because it ofifered a central location 
 for his business, because there were friends and ac- 
 quaintances there, and especially because of its cli- 
 
 312 Letter of Timothy Flint, Lunenburg, July 23, 1815. 
 
 313 Mr. Venable in his Beginnings of Literary Culture in the Ohio Valley 
 [348] says the family joined Mr. Flint in the fall of 1825. This is a mistake 
 that might have been avoided by a more careful reading of the Revieiv. 
 On the other hand, Doctor Flint in the Americana article says Flint did not 
 move to Cincinnati until the fall of 1828. This is too late by a year and a 
 half. Mr. Flint declares in his opening article. Review, May, 1827, that 
 for himself and his children his first ties and duties are in Cincinnati. E. 
 H. Flint had opened his book store in that city as early as June, 1827.
 
 i86 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 matic advantages, being somewhat mid-way between 
 the north and the south. 
 
 The family circumstances must have been quite 
 comfortable by this time. We hear nothing more of 
 private schools and Mr. Flint had ceased to preach 
 regularly. Then too, the business enterprises under- 
 taken involved the investment of considerable capital. 
 In addition to the magazine, a retail book store was 
 opened, and in connection was a publishing and whole- 
 sale business. The second son, E. H. Flint, "Hub- 
 bard" the family always called him, was in charge of 
 the business which was continued as late as 1833, about 
 the time that Hubbard went south with his father's 
 family. The Review and many of Mr. Flint's books 
 were published by his son. There are also occasional 
 reprints from his press.^" 
 
 The very cordial reception given by the public to 
 Mr. Flint's first two books, the Recollections and 
 Frajicis Berrian, w^as a strong inducement for him to 
 venture wholly upon the field of literature. In his 
 "Editor's Address" while he is quite sensitive to the 
 criticisms of his own and his son Micah's books, yet 
 he is evidently much pleased with the wide reading 
 which has been given them. 
 
 In this inaugural address, Mr. Flint gives several 
 reasons for establishing such a review^ as he proposed. 
 
 We are physically, and from our peculiar modes or existence, 
 a scribbling and forth-putting people. . . At the census of 
 1830 the Mississippi valley will contain more than four millions 
 of inhabitants. . . Little, as they have dreamed of the fact 
 
 314 Charles Lowell, "Trinitarian Controversy" in fVestern Monthly Re- 
 view, vol. iii, 109.
 
 LITERARY WORK IN CINCINNATI 187 
 
 in the Atlantic country, we have our thousand orators and poets. 
 We have not a solitary journal expressly constituted to be the 
 echo of public literary opinion. The teeming mind wastes its 
 sweetness on the desert air. The exhausted author, after the 
 pains of parturition, is obliged to drop the dear offspring of his 
 brain into the immense abyss of a public, that has little charity 
 for any bantlings, that do not bring money into their hands, and 
 "Where it is gone and how it fares 
 Nobody knows and nobody cares." 
 
 To foster polite literature in the west, was then the* 
 first object named.^'"* 
 
 This particular object, Mr. Flint felt, was of much 
 importance because, he says : ", . . one, who has 
 not seen can not know, with what a curl of the lip, and 
 crook of the nose an Atlantic reviewer contemplates 
 the idea of a work written west of the Alleghany 
 mountains." 
 
 He proposed to be gentle and generous with every 
 aspiring writer. His "function" as well as his motto 
 was, Benedicere^ hand Maledicere.^^'^ It seems fair 
 also to say that this was his practice. The only time 
 when he might be fairly charged with breaking over 
 his rule was on some rare occasions when he met the 
 furious sectarian or the fawning politician. 
 
 There were enemies, however, against whom he 
 proposed to join forces even with "them of the bloody 
 flag." 
 
 ' Show us an author who advances an irreligious, or an im- 
 
 moral sentiment, an opinion that has a clear tendency to confound 
 the unchangeable distinctions of right and wrong, unhinge prin- 
 ciple, and overturn the social foundations, and we will do our 
 
 31^ fVestern Monthly Revie<w, vol. i, 9. 
 2^^ — Idem, 10, II, 16.
 
 i88 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 best to paddle our skiff into the line of battle, and will fight with 
 as hearty good will to the cause, as the best of them.^" 
 
 He had still another object in view. He believed 
 there was very little fairness in the world of review- 
 ers. He thought that for the most part their "censure 
 was malignant," and their praise ''nauseous," while 
 their motto was "Lay it on thick. Some will stick." 
 Mr. Flint proposed for himself a new standard in 
 this field.^'^ 
 
 Besides the magazine, three other works were 
 issued within the first year of the Cincinnati residence. 
 There was first the Geography and History, copy- 
 righted in October, 1827, then George Masoti, and 
 Arthur Clenning a few months later. Mr. Flint was 
 now fully launched on his literary career. During 
 the next five or six years, with occasional interrup- 
 tions from forced journeys to New England in sum- 
 mer and to Louisiana in the winter, usually on account 
 of ill health, this stream of literary productions was 
 continuous. The Review never more than paid ex- 
 penses, and suffered several minor changes in its plans. 
 The first volume has considerable poetry, most of it 
 Micah's. The next volume has less and the last one 
 almost none at all. As the poetry diminished, the 
 translations from the French increased until they oc- 
 cupied a large part of the space in the last numbers. 
 In June, 1830, he announced that the Review would 
 be discontinued as then published, and that a quar- 
 terly in two annual volumes would be issued. Each 
 volume was to contain at least five hundred pages, and 
 it was to be more scientific than the previous work. 
 The advertisement seemed to leave the future some- 
 
 ^^"^ JVestern Monthly Rev., vol. I, 14, ^la — Idem, 16, 17.
 
 LITERARY WORK IN CINCINNATI 189 
 
 what dubious, and dependant upon the response of 
 the public. At any rate we hear no more of the 
 Western Monthly Review or any successor to it con- 
 ducted by Mr. Flint. It might seem that the chief 
 weakness of the Review was that it was too ideal and 
 too far in advance of its constituency. 
 
 Mr. Flint was engaged in several varieties of liter- 
 ary work. One of his best short stories, "Oolemba" 
 was published in Judge James Hall's Western Souve- 
 nir for 1829. He wrote several articles for the 
 Knickerbocker soon after it began in 1832. These 
 were on Phrenology, Education, and Literature 
 and were published in volume two. He wrote 
 for other magazines and annuals. In 1831 he edited 
 the Personal Narratives of James O. Pattie. Pattie 
 was an unfortunate young man who had spent six 
 years wandering in the far southwest, and the Spanish 
 country. He suffered great hardships, left his father 
 and companions dead in the far country and returned 
 home broken and helpless. Senator Johnson of 
 Louisiana had befriended him, and given him a letter 
 to Mr. Flint when he returned to his home in Ken- 
 tucky. Flint made it possible for him to publish his 
 adventures, furnishing some material for his book, as 
 well as putting it into shape for the publisher.^^^ 
 
 One of the earliest and keenest interests of Mr. Flint 
 in the section where he began his literary work, was 
 the experiment of Robert Owen,"" a remarkable 
 
 "1" See R. G. Thwaites's Early JVestern Travels, vol. xvii!. 
 
 "-° Born at Newton, Montgomeryshire, Scotland, 1771, died 1858. See 
 article in Dictionary of National Biography (New York, 1895). Also his 
 Liff written by himself, 1857, 1858, 2 vols. 
 
 For Owen's ideas on socialism and communism, see Documentary History 
 of American Industrial Society (Cleveland, 1910), vol. vii, chap. ii.
 
 190 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 character who had founded a colony at New Har- 
 mony, Indiana. This was a sort of "Brook Farm" 
 community, although it did not have so many cranks 
 in it. The founder kept the control of affairs largely 
 in his own hands, and when things did not go to suit 
 him, or when he grew tired of his hobby, he closed up 
 the business and went back to Scotland. 
 
 Owen was a rich manufacturer whose home, when 
 he chose to be limited to one little spot on the earth, 
 was in New Lanark, Scotland. He was a globe trot- 
 ter of an unusual type for that day. His wealth en- 
 abled him to indulge successive hobbies, one of which 
 was the founding of an ideal community. He pub- 
 lished pamphlets and used every kind of means to get 
 his visionary scheme before the world. He laid 
 down ''twelve fundamental laws, nine conditions of 
 happiness and twenty-eight universal laws," which he 
 thought were all that were necessary to bring in the 
 millenium. He had no use for the Christian or any 
 other revealed religion. Mr. Flint found much to 
 admire about the character of the man, but he had no 
 faith in his social theories and no excuse for his hos- 
 tility to religion. 
 \ In 1828, Mr. Owen challenged the ministry of the 
 country to meet him in debate upon the subject of 
 religion. Reverend Alexander Campbell of Beth- 
 any, West Virginia, a leader among the dissenting 
 and liberal elements breaking away from the Calvin- 
 istic Presbyterians and Baptists, and founder of the 
 sect which was to become the "Christians" or "Dis- 
 ciples," accepted the challenge. The debate was 
 arranged to take place in Cincinnati, in April, 1829,
 
 LITERARY WORK IN CINCINNATI 191 
 
 one year from date of agreement. Then Mr. Owen 
 started on one of his globe trotting trips,^'^ visiting his 
 home, several places in Europe, the West Indies, 
 Mexico, and the United States, engaged the while in 
 propagating the gospel of his new social system. He 
 was one of those men, Mr. Flint says, who always had 
 the best of every person he met in argument, at least in 
 his own mind. When he left them they were always 
 counted as converts to the new faith. 
 
 Owen arrived in Cincinnati in time for the debate, 
 with a day or two to spare. The affair had been 
 widely advertised, and caused intense interest. It 
 continued through eight days. Mr. Flint sat on the 
 platform of the Methodist church building where the 
 debate was held, the much larger Presbyterian build- 
 ing being refused for the purpose, and was enabled to 
 make a careful study of the people and debaters. 
 There was so much of human nature evident on this 
 occasion that Mr. Flint was intensely interested in it. 
 He gives a very full report of the debate and extensive 
 reviews of the reports which were published later. 
 He thought Mr. Owen had winded himself after the 
 first day, and could do nothing but repeat, each time 
 his turn came, the platitudes of his system. Indeed, 
 Mr. Flint thought that Owen's chief purpose in the 
 debate was to advertise his social hobby. Owen was 
 quick at retort and had somewhat the advantage of 
 Campbell at this point, but it did not serve to put him 
 on an equality with his antagonist. 
 
 Mr. Flint was greatly interested in what he saw and 
 heard of Alexander Campbell. He seemed an inter- 
 
 222 For an interesting comment on Owen's travels see Revieiv, vol. iii, 145.
 
 192 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 esting combination of "Scotch shrewdness and Ken- 
 tucky hard fight." He was unfavorably impressed 
 with Mr. Campbell's nasal twang, though otherwise 
 he had a good voice, with his many provincialisms 
 and his almost flippant way of using the sacred names. 
 He could not agree with his underlying naturalistic 
 philosophy, and did not like his severely logical way 
 of building up his religious system. But all these 
 were minor matters. Campbell was self possessed, 
 quick of apprehension and at retort -if not the equal 
 of Owen in this respect, he was a skilled controversial- 
 ist, and had at his command an amazing amount of 
 reading of everything which could bear upon his 
 subject, both ancient and modern. 
 
 The liberality of his theological views was the one 
 thing that specially attracted Mr. Flint in this wes- 
 tern theologian. He was greatly surprised to find it. 
 His remark is, concerning Campbell's views of Chris- 
 tianity: "They are decidedly of the liberal cast." 
 This discovery, by a man so nearly related to the New 
 England Unitarians, as Mr. Flint was, of a similarity 
 between his own and Mr. Campbell's views, is one 
 indication of a parallelism between New England 
 Unitarians and western "Campbellites" that has re- 
 ceived little or no attention from later historians. 
 However it was common at an earlier date, to charge 
 this body with Unitarianism. 
 
 Mr. Flint hoped that the result of this debate would 
 be: 
 
 . That the empire of bigotry in this quarter v.ill 
 be shaken to its center; that the two extremes of Calvinism 
 and Atheism will be alike rejected by the sober good sense of 
 the people, and that the intellectual pendulum will settle in
 
 LITERARY WORK IN CINCINNATI 193 
 
 its vibrations to the permanent point of reasonable and liberal 
 Christianity.^-' 
 
 Mr. Flint's concluding remarks on the Owen- 
 Campbell debate let us into the strained relations be- 
 tween him and the orthodox Calvinists. It was an 
 impossible thing that a rigid Calvinist like Reverend 
 Dr. Joshua L. Wilson, pastor of the First Presbyterian 
 Church in Cincinnati from 1808 until 1846, should 
 have confidence in the theological views of a man like 
 Flint. Doctor Wilson was the man who, a few years 
 later, was to accuse Lyman Beecher- fresh as he was 
 from combating Boston Unitarians - and to bring him 
 to trial for heresv. This too, in Mr. Beecher's own 
 church, the Second Presbyterian Church of Cincin- 
 nati.''* 
 
 Soon after Mr. Flint came to Cincinnati, the ortho- 
 dox party had started a weekly paper called the Pan- 
 dect. Doctor Wilson was one of the editors. In the 
 first number of the paper Mr. Flint's religious posi- 
 tion was attacked. The attack would seem to have 
 been very rabid, so much so that Flint did not deign 
 to notice it. Later, December 30, 1828, the same 
 paper made what Mr. Flint called a milder assault, 
 and he replied to it.^'^ 
 
 One of the charges made against Mr. Flint by the 
 Pandect was that "being a professed minister of the 
 gospel" his position was so much the worse. Flint 
 
 323 ff/estern Mont/sly Revieiu, vol. li, 647. On Owen, see Revieiv, vol. 
 i, 105-118, ii, 197-201, 639-647, iii, 91-100, 133-145. 427-439- On Alexander 
 Campbell see four of the last named of the above articles and Revieiv, vol. 
 ii, 660. 
 
 3-* See Henry A. and Kate B. Ford's History of Cincbuiati, Ohio, 150, 
 151. See also W. B. Spragiie's Annals of the American Presbyterian Pulpit, 
 vol. ii, 308-318. 
 
 325 ff/estern Monthly Reiiew, vol. ii, 460-462.
 
 194 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 held to the early New England idea of the minis- 
 try- that a minister was only such so long as he con- 
 tinued to perform the office for which he was or- 
 dained. 
 
 The claim of any peculiar and inherent rights and dignities, 
 of being once a minister and always a minister, are at least as 
 contrary to scripture, reason and common sense, as they are to the 
 whole spirit of our institutions. Piety is a real thing; but the red 
 stockings of a cardinal can be put on or off.'^" 
 
 When he began his literary work he had been care- 
 ful to say that he only left the sacred office because he 
 had long been unable to fulfill its duties, and that he 
 would rather be accused of any other motive than lack 
 of reverence for the holy calling, as the cause of his 
 leaving it.^"' So far did Mr. Flint go in this notion 
 of his being no longer a minister, that he even flattered 
 himself that he did not look like a minister, and he 
 ,, certainly did not afifect the clerical dress. ^'^ 
 
 Mr. Flint will not be behind the editors of the 
 Pandect in reverence for the Scriptures, though he 
 can not interpret them as they do. He thinks, that to 
 take a naked proposition from the Bible, and make it 
 stand as a simple categorical assertion, is a method 
 which makes "a horrid jargon of contradictions" of 
 this "divine and much injured book." But the main 
 point of the charge against Mr. Flint seems to have 
 been that he did not accept the orthodox statement 
 concerning the Trinity. This he admits, and he gives 
 some of the reasons for his position.^"^ 
 
 We are not surprised to learn that Mr. Flint is lead- 
 
 326 if^estern Monthly Revieiu, vol. ii, 594. 
 2^^ — Idem, vol. i, 19. 
 3-^ — Idetn, vol. iii, 288, lines 34-37. 
 ^2^ — Idem, vol. ii, 460-462.
 
 LITERARY WORK IN CINCINNATI 195 
 
 ing, a few months after the above incident, in a move- 
 ment to form the "First Congregational Church" in 
 Cincinnati. This society held its first meetings in 
 1829, obtained a charter in 1830, and dedicated a 
 building the twenty-third of May in that year. Tim- 
 othy Flint's name heads the list of the signers to the 
 form of union. In the same list are the names of Abi- 
 gail Flint and Emeline H. Flint, the wife and 
 daughter. M r. Flint wrote a hymn for the dedication 
 exercises, and his name was placed upon a bronze 
 metal tablet in the church a few years later together 
 with those of the founders of the church.''" In i860 
 there were "liberal" and "conservative" wings in this 
 church, contending in the courts over the property. 
 It was then developed that, while the church had al- 
 ways been known as a Unitarian church, it had not 
 been called such at its founding because 07ie of the 
 leaders had objected to the name "Unitarian." I 
 think we hazard none of the facts in the case when we 
 say that the "one" was Timothy Flint. To any one 
 acquainted with the theological disputes and parties 
 of the day there is much of significance in this posi- 
 tion of Mr. Flint. He proposed to establish a church 
 in Cincinnati such as he believed was like those of the 
 fathers in New England. He would not admit a sec- 
 tarian name or creed. ''^ 
 
 In the summer of 1828, Mr. Flint made a trip to 
 New England. The experiences of the journey are 
 
 ^3*^ Letter of George A. Thayer, Cincinnati, Jan. 4, 1908, reporting sev- 
 eral items from the records of the First Congregational Church, Cincinnati, 
 in the Unitarian Library, Boston. 
 
 "^1 — ■ Idem. Also Ford's History of Cincinnati, 164, 165; and The 
 Unitarian Church Case — Remarks of R. M. Corwine and the Opinion of 
 Judge Collins (Cincinnati, i860).
 
 196 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 fully recorded in a letter to Dr. James Flint, printed 
 in the Review.^^' This journey was begun on the 
 eleventh of July and he returned in September. He 
 had three stage companions for a part of the journey 
 from Wheeling to Baltimore: Mr. Robert Owen; a 
 rigidly orthodox Scotch lawyer; and a woman de- 
 voted to the Episcopal faith. There was "no want of 
 disputation and logomachy." The lady and the law- 
 yer could not tolerate the infidel and soon left him to 
 Mr. Flint. Owen thought religion of every kind had 
 been the enemy of the race. Man, he said, was en- 
 tirely the victim of circumstances, yet he proposed to 
 save him by changing these same masterful circum- 
 stances. He seemed to be purely materialistic. He 
 was tolerant and gentlemanly toward those who op- 
 posed him, but patronizing. It was this trait that had 
 so sorely tried the lawyer and their female compan- 
 ion. It does not seem to have concerned Mr. Flint, or 
 perhaps Owen did not find it expedient to patronize 
 him. This was a liberty that few ever ventured upon 
 with him. Flint says their argument had "one fea- 
 ture at least worthy of praise. It was marked neither 
 with boisterousness nor temper." Flint's conclusion 
 about Owen upon this occasion is that he was a mild, 
 humane, and polished gentleman, a man of great nat- 
 ural shrewdness who had seen much, "with eyes keen- 
 ly attentive to what he had seen." ^^^ 
 
 He entered Washington at night. Like a French 
 town, it appeared best in the moonlight. He thought 
 it was an index of the country, a prophecy of what was 
 
 ^3- IVestern Monthly Re-vieix:, vol. ii, 193-209, 249-263. 
 2'^ — Idem, i97-20t.
 
 LITERARY WORK IN CINCINNATI 197 
 
 to be rather than a finished plan. It was a city of 
 villages, cow pastures, and corn fields. It was more 
 favorable than the sights and sounds of a city, as a 
 place in which the greenhorn Solomons from the 
 country might expand their thoughts, ripen their con- 
 ceptions, and bring forth many a sublime invention 
 for the good of the nation. Mr. Flint judged that 
 there was enough money lost in a single day of extra 
 and worse than useless spouting, than would be suffi- 
 cient, to make the grounds more in keeping with the 
 country's expectations from the metropolis. These 
 grounds were very trying to him. They were unen- 
 closed, covered with blueberry swamps and clumps of 
 bushes, and cut up into yellow clay roads. Where 
 there might have been grass, it was ''gnawed up by the 
 roots by hungry cows." ^^* 
 
 The morning after his arrival in Washington, he 
 wandered about the buildings, from which the legis- 
 lators had all departed and where no ''contracts of 
 scratch and tickle were making." The Indian fig- 
 ures in the panels seemed to him copied from the to- 
 bacco store tribe rather than "the real forest walkers." 
 The patent office excited curious interest and shrewd 
 comment. There were some "fifteen hundred or two 
 thousand projects to triumph over gravity and friction, 
 time and space, height and depth, and to make for- 
 tunes, by catching dame nature napping in some of 
 her most fixed purposes." But the head itself, when 
 wound up by desire for money and fame, seemed to 
 Mr. Flint, the "most versatile and rapid engine." ^^^ 
 
 *^* IVestern Monthly Reviezv, vol. ii, 203-206. 
 3~^ — Idem, 202-207.
 
 198 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 Mr. Flint returned home over a new route, up the 
 Hudson and by way of the Erie Canal. This was a 
 ten or t\velve day trip at that time. It seemed a very 
 easy and speedy means of traveling compared with his 
 first journey west in 1815. The canal seemed to him a 
 herculean achievement for a country in the dawn of 
 its career. Many incidents of canalboat travel are 
 told, as it w^as then a novel experience. He marveled 
 at what he saw^ of growth in such cities as Rochester 
 and Buffalo, places recently sprung up in the forests, 
 but already boasting of city ways and comforts.^^" 
 
 He arrived at Niagara Falls at half past one at 
 night. Instead of going to bed as his fellow passen- 
 gers did, he spent the remainder of the clear moon-lit 
 night, viewing the falls, a spectacle which it had been 
 almost the first remembered w^ish of his heart to see. 
 He saw it "in a temperament, at a time and under cir- 
 cumstances just such," as he would have chosen. He 
 does not attempt any extended description of the falls 
 but refers to that w^hich he had w ritten earlier for the 
 Geography and History,^^' and before he had seen 
 them. He had dreamed about the falls so often that 
 the reality was somewhat disappointing. The inter- 
 est in foUow^ing Mr. Flint to the falls, is not in his de- 
 scription of them, but in his unconscious revealing of 
 himself in this experience which opened for him a 
 new chapter in the volume of truth, new powers in his 
 own soul, and a new appreciation of the Eternal. He 
 says: 
 
 He must have been obtuse of brain and of heart who could 
 
 336 jfestern Monthly Re-viezi', vol. ii, 250-255. 
 ^^^ See vol. ii, 428, 429.
 
 LITERARY WORK IN CINCINNATI 199 
 
 have thus contemplated this spectacle alone in this repose of 
 nature, under the light of the moon, and the blue stars twinkling 
 in the cloudless dome of the firmament, and not have thoughts, 
 w^hich the poverty of language can never clothe in words. 
 
 Mr. Flint was not one of the "obtuse of brain and 
 heart," neither did he sufifer from a poverty of words, 
 but he is too true an artist to attempt a description of 
 this deep experience of the soul. He was content to 
 impress the picture on his own memory, so that ever 
 afterwards, "with a little fixedness of attention," he 
 might repaint the magnificent vision for his own con- 
 templation.^^^ 
 
 On the eighth of August, 1829, Mr. Flint began an- 
 other journey to New England. This, like the for- 
 mer is reported in a letter to Dr. James Flint.^^^ On 
 the steamer up the Ohio from Cincinnati, one of his 
 companions was a clergyman who knew Mr. Flint 
 only by reputation. Neither of them had any interest 
 in the universal amusement, cards, and naturally 
 began to "confabulate." Mr. Flint says of this "con- 
 fabulation": 
 
 In discussing matters and things in our city, I soon became, 
 as I had foreseen would happen, the theme of his remarks. The 
 uncertainty of the light made me able to command my counte- 
 nance beyond the fear of betrayal. In a conversation of a good 
 long hour "by the Worcester clock," I had the advantage of my 
 good natured friend, of hearing my posthumous and historical 
 valuation addressed to the conscious and concrete flesh and blood, 
 as though it had been an abstract thing without parts, or passions. 
 Woe is me ! May our friends annoint us, while we live, with their 
 most bland and precious oil ; for on our cold stone such rencoun- 
 ters teach us we may expect little but the true caustic acid. The 
 
 338 ff'gstern Monthly Revieiv, vol. ii, 255-260. 
 ^^^ — Idem, vol. ii, 284-295.
 
 200 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 gentleman was a zealous religionist, regarding my views of re- 
 ligion, as heretical ; and you may imagine what kind of a portrait 
 I obtained from this patient and protracted sitting. But we of 
 the West, who have seen alligators, felt blisters, and tasted calo- 
 mel, learn not to make wry faces at swallowing a bitter potion. 
 Nevertheless, when I informed him, that I was the gentle- 
 man, whom he had condescended to discuss, I would have pre- 
 ferred, for the moment, to have been the subject, rather than the 
 painter,'^" 
 
 In January of 1 832, Mr. Flint was compelled by the 
 unusual severit}-^ of the winter, and the orders of his 
 physician, to go to the south for his health. One result 
 of this journey is a story, the materials for which he 
 gathered from the conversation and story telling on 
 the boat. The story is, "The First Steamboat on the 
 La Plata; or, the Monogamist."^" 
 
 During his residence in Cincinnati Mr. Flint was 
 honored by the citizens of the city in several ways. 
 One of the considerations shown him was giving to 
 him, together with Reverend Mr. Pierpont, a place in 
 the then locally famous picture of Lafayette's Land- 
 ing and Reception at Cincinnati, by the French artist 
 Hervieu. Neither Mr. Pierpont nor Mr. Flint had 
 been present upon the occasion of the "Landing" but 
 they were nevertheless placed among the prominent 
 citizens gathered at that time.'" 
 
 Itwas early in the period of his Cincinnati residence 
 that Mr. Flint received another honor and a recogni- 
 tion of his ability as a historical writer. On October 
 30, 1828, his name w^as proposed to the Massachusetts 
 
 3^0 JVestern Monthly Revieiv, vol. ii, 285. 
 
 ^^''^ Knickerbocker, vol. ii, 321-340, 433-450. See especially the introduc- 
 tion, 321. 
 
 2*- Jf'estern Monthly Review, vol. iii, 440-447. This picture has been lost.
 
 LITERARY WORK IN CINCINNATI 201 
 
 Historical Society as a corresponding member and he 
 was elected as such January 28, 1829."^ 
 
 The materials for following Mr. Flint in any other 
 of his travels, until the summer of 1833 when he vis- 
 ited New England again, are lacking. For the last 
 two or three years of the Cincinnati residence, there is 
 very little that relates to the daily affairs of Mr. Flint 
 or of his family. Several books came from his pen 
 during this time, and indicate that he was able for 
 much work, and quite as busy as during the first half 
 of his six and a half years in the city. 
 
 ^*3 Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, first series, vol. i, 
 416, 418.
 
 XIII. NEW ENGLAND AND NEW YORK 
 
 Mr. Flint was absent from New England for ten 
 years at the time he first went west. After 1825, he 
 made a number of visits of which we know, to that 
 section up to the time of his death in 1840. This inti- 
 mate view of New England, by one so loyal and keen 
 as Mr. Flint, and by one who could see it with other 
 eye than that of the native and the partaker in the pass- 
 ing events, furnishes a suggestive study of a very im- 
 portant period in the history of New England. He 
 saw with great concern, the breaking up of the simple 
 agricultural and village society by industrial changes ; 
 the passing of the old orthodoxy, and the rule of the 
 state church and ministry. These things which had 
 been the marked characteristics of New England and 
 peculiarly of Massachusetts, he had known and loved 
 in his youth. He was not a man to hold tenaciously 
 to the past but he looked on the changes and the future 
 with an anxious and solicitous eye, knowing better 
 than most of his contemporaries, what these things 
 meant. 
 
 During his first visit, he was struck with the number 
 of large new buildings throughout eastern New Eng- 
 land. Connecting them with the asperity and ear- 
 nestness of the religious investigations then so com- 
 mon, he might have judged he says, that these new 
 buildings were the temples of a new worship. So
 
 204 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 indeed he found them to be, "the worship of the 
 golden shrine." ""** He spent much time investigating 
 the city of Lowell and its industrial institutions dur- 
 ing the summer of 1833. In his youth he had known 
 the site of this city as a farmstead. Now it had come 
 to be the equal of many older places called into exist- 
 ence, along with other rivals of a recent day, by manu- 
 facturing interests, in the same way that agriculture 
 had conjured up great cities in the forests of the west. 
 In these new eastern cities, there was more of apparent 
 culture and comfort than in the western cities, but he 
 thought the latter the most wholesome and promising 
 for society. Hard as he knew the lot of the western 
 emigrant to be, he wished that more people would go 
 to the unoccupied lands of the west. The one redeem- 
 ing feature that is well worth while, as he sees this 
 gathering of the youth into the factory centers, is, that 
 they are not far removed from the homes of their 
 youth and the graves of their fathers.^" 
 
 The vast numbers of children and youth of both 
 sexes, reared together in the factories, amidst the inces- 
 sant and bewildering clatter and whirl of machinery, 
 breathing a heated and "unnatural air . . . of 
 cotton." With minds unoccupied, and with morbid 
 excitements, all looked most serious ; and he wondered 
 if New England could escape the fate of Europe. 
 The blanched faces, slender forms, and taper fingers 
 of the factory girls was one result of the new employ- 
 ment. He could not but compare unfavorably these 
 young women, as the future wives and mothers, with 
 the older type of womanhood, the plump form, the 
 
 3** Flint. Recollections, 1%^. ^*^ Knickerbocker, vol. u, 2SI-211.
 
 NEW ENGLAND AND NEW YORK 205 
 
 round, ruddy, pretty, but unthinking Saxon face of 
 the farmer's daughter. Indeed he could not seem to 
 find this old type any place either in factory city or 
 country village, except on the faces of the old clocks. 
 In lieu of them there were "the insect forms, long and 
 pale visages, covered with calash bonnets, a race ap- 
 parently imported from Italy." ^*^ 
 
 The skilled workers in the factories, he remarks 
 were largely foreigners, and they served to add to the 
 serious problems which called for the most enlarged 
 philanthropy and religious zeal. He firmly believed 
 that in all these great changes the New England char- 
 acter would not be found wanting or "that the cor- 
 porate arithmetical intellect, which is said not to be 
 guided by a soul, would be permitted to count upon 
 the products of the human tenants of these new 
 establishments, as though they were a part of the 
 machinery.""*' 
 
 On his first visit Mr. Flint noticed many improve- 
 ments with which he was much pleased. There was 
 an air of nobleness in many of the recent buildings. 
 Use was being made of that abundant material, stone. 
 It was a wonder to him that the fathers had not been 
 as wise as the Germans of Pennsylvania, in their use of 
 this building material. The newspapers had im- 
 proved much. Fine writing could be found in most 
 of them and he saw nothing more of "the cumbrous 
 inanity or the tiresome insipidity, that used to fill the 
 papers." Everybody seemed to have caught the 
 forms of good society. Hardly a farmer's daughter 
 
 3^6 Flint. Recollections, 384, 386, 387. 
 ^^'Knickerbocker, vol. ii, 252.
 
 2o6 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 he says, "who cannot keep up a sustained conversa- 
 tion, in good set phrase, upon any given subject." ^^'^ 
 
 During the summer of 1828 the lines "On Revisit- 
 ing the Churchyard of my Native Place," were writ- 
 ten. These were called forth by his musings over the 
 newly made grave of his father who had died in that 
 year at the advanced age of ninety-one years.^^* 
 
 During his visit to New England in the summer of 
 1829, Mr. Flint made a very careful examination of 
 the then famous Siamese twins, and gave a three page 
 account of them in his Review. At this time also he 
 visited the war ship Columbus in Boston Harbor, ad- 
 mired its plain simplicity in comparison with the 
 flaunting gaudiness of the New York and Liverpool 
 packets, and then, as was his wont, fell to moralizing 
 over a possible meeting of this ship w^ith one of its 
 kind in hostile combat upon the tempestuous brine. 
 
 . What a sublime idea of human daring, power, con- 
 trivance and triumph of art over nature ; what an affecting em- 
 blem of the reckless, mad, and wanton wrath and folly of 
 nations ! ^^° 
 
 The visit which was made in the early summer of 
 1833, was extended for some two months and the New 
 England experiences are more fully recorded than in 
 any other of his journals and letters. This account 
 was in a letter written to Dr. James Flint, in Septem- 
 ber, from the Narrows, Long Island, after he had been 
 
 ^*s Flint Recollections, 385-390. 
 
 349 Ij/estern Monthly Re'viens:, vol. ii, 210, 211. Two and more dates are 
 given in the parish records of North Reading for the birth and death of Mr. 
 Flint's father. The published genealogies do not give the date of his death 
 and thus it is uncertain. In this poem Flint says he was "fourscore years 
 and ten." 
 
 350 Jl'estern Montlily Re'vieiv, vol. ii, 286-289.
 
 NEW ENGLAND AND NEW YORK 207 
 
 appointed to take charge of the Knickerbocker.^^^ 
 His health was very poor just at this period. It was 
 one of the cholera years, and he had several premon- 
 itions of that dread disease as he journeyed from Cin- 
 cinnati via Lake Erie and the canal. As several 
 times before, so he was compelled now to travel, when 
 so ill as to be often obliged to rest a few days from his 
 journey, and to seek aid from the local physicians. As 
 he left the city which had been his home for several 
 years, very early in the morning, he felt, he says, 
 that: "There is nothing like the gloom from travers- 
 ing a sleeping city." The ravages of the cholera 
 were everywhere visible as he journeyed north. But 
 it did not wholly prevent his pleasure in the great im- 
 provements of the country since last he passed that 
 way, nor his enjoyment of the fine roads -while they 
 lasted. When all hands must alight and help lift the 
 stage out of the hole in the midst of a swamp, he is as 
 jovial over the mishap as in the days of his misfor- 
 tunes upon the "Father of Waters." While there are 
 few travelers who "have traversed the whole extent of 
 the United States oftener than myself," he says, "per- 
 haps none have had so few accidents to record," or "so 
 seldom encountered the annoyance of personal rude- 
 ness." As always, he finds friends. "General Mil- 
 ler, late Governor of Missouri," remained with him 
 during his detention from his journey by sickness. 
 
 He objects to the "shelves" on the canal boats (and 
 even on the elegant steamboats where it was the same) , 
 
 ^f*! Knickerbocker, vol. ii, 242-263. Mr. Gallagher said in the Cin- 
 cinnati Mirror, July 6, 1833, vol. ii, 168, that Mr. Flint had taken charge 
 of the Knickerbocker.
 
 2o8 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 which are so narrow that a sleeper could not turn over, 
 and so short that a man above five feet ten could not 
 stretch himself in them. On this journey Mr. Flint 
 seems to have had his first experience on the railroad. 
 He says of it: 
 
 In passing on the rail-road from Schenectady to Albany, one 
 experiences the unique sensation, with which it must require a 
 long time to become familiar, resulting from the swift motion of 
 a long h'ne of cars following the smoking engine, as if it were a 
 thing of life. The gentleness of the motion renders it difficult 
 to estimate its rapidity, which is easily measured, however, by the 
 apparent dizzying flight of trees and fences."^- 
 
 He spent a month with Doctor Flint and they vis- 
 ited their birth place in North Reading. Here, he 
 says: 
 
 We once more saw together the church where we were bap- 
 tized, and the church yard containing the remains of our parents 
 and our kindred, the place of our first thoughts and imaginings, 
 and beheld the faces of our kindred, and the companions of our 
 first days, that still survive. What a change had time wrought, 
 since our last visit to the same places ! 
 
 He visited for the second time, his former parish of 
 Lunenburg, "where," he says, "before I became a so- 
 journer in the distant west, I terminated a ministry of 
 fourteen years." Since then he had wandered so far, 
 experienced so much, and labored in pursuits so far 
 from this place as to cause doubts whether his expe- 
 riences here were remembrances or dreams. "The 
 whole seemed like the consciousness of transmigra- 
 tion, and of having long been in a different mode of 
 being from that I passed here." '''' About the time of 
 his visit, Lunenburg was in the midst of a very bitter 
 theological controversy which resulted two years later 
 
 ^^-Knickerbocker, vol. ii, 250-251. 353 — Idem, 251, 253, 254.
 
 NEW ENGLAND AND NEW YORK 209 
 
 in the organization of a Trinitarian church.''"* This 
 latter church, as in so many places proved the most 
 vital, and the old church of which Mr. Flint was pas- 
 tor ceased to exist as an organization in 1867.®^'^ 
 
 Mr. Flint traveled in New Hampshire and Mass- 
 achusetts extensively at this time and the saddest thing 
 of all that he saw in this region was two or three 
 churches where formerly there was but one, "erected 
 as hostile spiritual batteries against each other, where 
 the means of the whole place, were with difficulty ad- 
 equate to the support of a single minister." "We 
 everywhere heard the bickering and tale bearing of 
 mutual efTforts at proselytism." The sacred "wed- 
 lock" character of the old pastorate was gone. 
 
 Strange that all this should grow out of the inculcation of the 
 religion of the Prince of Peace ! . . . The more minute and 
 undefinable the question of dispute, the fiercer and more embit- 
 tered the quarrel about it, and the more positively eternal sal- 
 vation is made to depend upon embracing or rejecting it. 
 
 But he always sees a bright spot even if it is far re- 
 moved and somewhat clouded : 
 
 The gas of human pride and intolerance of opinion would be 
 dangerous, if it remained pent up in the human breast. Perhaps 
 it escapes as safely through this valve, as that of politics, or of 
 philosophical dogmas. Unhappily the ultimate tendency is to 
 bring contempt and reproach upon the worthy name, by which 
 we are called.'^* 
 
 In Boston he attended a meeting of his class, thirty- 
 three years having elapsed since their graduation. 
 This was the first time he had been able to meet with 
 them in many years. The meeting was held at the 
 
 2^* See Congregational Year Book (Boston, 1909), 238. 
 3-"'^ Lunenburg Parish Records. 
 ^'^^ Knickerbocker, vol. ii, 25+.
 
 210 riMOTHY FLINT 
 
 home of Lemuel Shaw, chief justice of the state. Of 
 this meeting Mr. Flint speaks very feelingly. He 
 says: "and in that long interval the stern king of the 
 scythe and hour glass had scathed our numbers with a 
 deadlier mortality, than the issue of the severest bat- 
 tle." It was a proud roll that they called. "Our 
 heroes and sages, upon our showing, only wanted their 
 Homers and Pindars, to have figured with the best." 
 But most of the number had forever ceased from col- 
 lege trick and quip and crank, as from all life's labors. 
 Gray hairs reminded us, the survivors, that we could not be 
 far behind. . . I have not passed an evening calling forth 
 more kindness of feeling. The mirth was of the cast that cheers 
 the heart, indeed, but springs from the same fountains which 
 give birth to tears.^^^ 
 
 Mr. Flint had located "at the Narrows, on Long 
 Island, in view^ of the splendid bay of New York, 
 studded and whitened with sails, and in front of the 
 fresh and verdant landscapes of Staten Island," early 
 enough in September to take charge of the October 
 number of the Knickerbocker. It does not seem that 
 he ever brought his family to New York, or that he 
 resided here more than a month or two at this time. 
 He was in very poor health when he took charge of 
 the magazine and seems to indicate in his first editor- 
 ial, that he regarded the step as a doubtful experiment 
 on this account. 
 
 The Knickerbocker was in its second volume, and it 
 was the fourth number which Mr. Flint edited. It 
 had been without an editor-in-chief for six months, 
 ever since Mr. Charles Fenno Hoffman had retired in 
 March. The acting editor, Samuel Daly Langtree, 
 
 ^57 Knickerbocker, vol. ii, 261-263.
 
 NEW ENGLAND AND NEW YORK 211 
 
 had charge in the interim and again after Mr. Flint's 
 departure. Mr. Langtree's statement in the maga- 
 zine about editorial affairs, indicates that Mr. Flint 
 was in full charge of but the one number, that for Oct- 
 ober, 1833. Mr. Langtreesays: 
 
 During the remainder of the time that distinguished scholar 
 was announced as editor of this periodical, the precarious state of 
 his health did not permit his residing in this city: and his final 
 resignation, from the same cause, made no further derangement 
 in its direction than the withdrawal of his name."^^ 
 
 Doctor Flint also says that his cousin retired from 
 the magazine before the end of 1833. However, he 
 supplied much of the material for the magazine until 
 February, 1834. ^^s actual retirement from the 
 magazine must have taken place then, before the end 
 of the year, and he would be at home in Cincinnati 
 until about January of 1834, when he moved back to 
 Alexandria, Louisiana. 
 
 Mr. Flint's relations with the proprietors at this 
 time, Messrs. Peabody and Company, and with the 
 editor in charge, Mr. Langtree, were most cordial. 
 He was held in high esteem and honor by them. But 
 the magazine was bitterly attacked by a few enemies 
 of Mr. Flint even before he took charge of it, under 
 the misapprehension that he was already the editor. 
 This misapprehension had probably risen from the 
 fact that he had already contributed leading articles 
 to the magazine after the retirement of Mr. Hoffman. 
 It is possible also that Mr. Flint had some family ties 
 with the Peabody of this firm, as he had with the 
 Salem family of that name. 
 
 On taking editorial charge of the Knickerbocker, 
 
 ^^^ Knickerbocker, vol. iii, 320.
 
 212 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 October, 1833, ^^r. Flint said that he had some doubts 
 about the wisdom of his past course of attempting to 
 overcome abuse by silence, "and to enact saint among 
 the children of Belial/' He meant still to continue 
 "under the banners of the peace society, but no longer 
 to the limit of eschewing self-defence."^^'' Accord- 
 ingly he availed himself of this new indulgence in the 
 October number of the Knickerbocker^ to even up 
 with the editor of the American Monthly Review, and 
 with Judge James Hall of Cincinnati. The latter had 
 sarcastically and wittily ridiculed Flint's "Lectures 
 upon Natural History" in his IVesiern Monthly Mag- 
 azine.'''''' The former had attacked him on account of 
 the same book in a long review.'^' Both critics of 
 Mr. Flint had room to criticise this work and the Re- 
 view made some fair criticisms, but they were, as 
 Flint says, "malignant," if not "lumbering and dull." 
 Flint proves himself very skillful at newspaper abuse, 
 but it is the most disappointing piece of work which 
 his pen has left.""" The only excuse is that he did 
 what the majority of his time were doing. 
 
 About the time Mr. Flint took charge of the Knick- 
 erbocker^ Mrs. Trollope's Domestic Manners of the 
 Americans was being very widely read and most in- 
 dignantly commented upon. Mr. Flint's intimate 
 acquaintance with Mrs. TroUope during her residence 
 in Cincinnati, covering a period of perhaps a year and 
 a half, soon after Flint established himself and family 
 in that city, had led to his being asked he was sure, "a 
 thousand times, what sort of person was Mrs. Trol- 
 lope, and what were her objects in visiting America?" 
 
 3^9 Knickerbocker, vol. ii, 241. ^ei Vol. iii, 261 ff. 
 
 ^''^ Vol. i, 262-273. ^^-Knickerbocker, vol. ii, 310.
 
 NEW ENGLAND AND NEW YORK 213 
 
 He devoted several pages to answering this question 
 and to a criticism of Mrs. TroUope's book.'" His 
 description of her personal appearance, and of her 
 habits in society, and judgment in business matters is 
 not very complimentary, especially in view of Mrs. 
 TroUope's warm expressions of approval of Mr. Flint. 
 She had said many things complimentary, and put in 
 a note in her first volume to say : "The pleasant, easy, 
 unpretending talk on all subjects, which I enjoyed in 
 Mr. Flint's family was an exception to everything 
 else I met at Cincinnati." ^^* Mr. Flint thinks that her 
 business ventures could not possibly have succeeded, 
 and that her judgment of church, state, and society 
 were absolutely without value. Moreover he thinks 
 that if she had been wise enough to have secured en- 
 trance to the best society, as she might have done in 
 Cincinnati, and if she had used the sixteen or seven- 
 teen thousand dollars that she foolishly sunk in bus- 
 iness, to open an account at the local bank, 
 "she would have been dinnered and toasted and the 
 fashion. . . America would have been an ocean 
 of milk and honey. The people would have been 
 lamblike, and half saints. In short she would have 
 found everything just as far south-west toward para- 
 dise, as she has now found it north-east a rinfer^^^'^ 
 He is complimentary in speaking of her wide reading, 
 and very extensive acquaintance with noted men and 
 great events in Europe. There is one thing that he 
 thinks she knows very well how to do, and that she has 
 done well in her book. He says: "Manners, when 
 
 3"-^ Knickerbocker, vol. ii, 286-292. 
 
 '^'^* Trollopc, Mrs. Domestic Manners of the Americans, vol. i, 128, note. 
 
 ^^° Knickerbocker, vol. ii, 292.
 
 214 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 and where she chooses, she describes well, for it is in 
 her line.'' This admission by Mr. Flint is significant 
 when we read some of the things that she said about 
 American manners, as she found them at Cincinnati, 
 such as the following: 
 
 My general appellation amongst mj- neighbors was "the Eng- 
 lish old woman," but in mentioning each other they constantly 
 employed the term "lady" ; and they evidently had pleasure in 
 using it, for I repeatedly observed, that in speaking of a neighbor, 
 instead of saying Mrs. Such-a-one, they described her as "the 
 lady over the way that takes in washing," or as "that there lady, 
 out by the gully, what is making dip-candles." Mr. Trollope 
 was constantly called "the old man," while draymen, butcher's 
 boys, and the laborers on the canal were invariably denominated 
 "them gentlemen." ^"'^ 
 
 During her whole stay in the country she says she 
 did not hear a sentence elegantly turned and correctly 
 pronounced from the lips of an American. 
 
 Were Americans, indeed, disposed to assume the plain unpre- 
 tending deportment of the Switzer in the da3's of his picturesque 
 simplicity' (when, however, he never chewed tobacco), it would 
 be in bad taste to censure him ; but this is not the case. Jonathan 
 will be a fine gentleman, but it must be in his own way. Is he 
 not a free-born American? Jonathan, however, must remember, 
 that if he will challenge competition with the old world, the old 
 world will now and then look out to see how he supports his 
 pretensions.^^'^ 
 
 Mr. Flint remarks further about some of these cus- 
 toms that Mrs. Trollope condemns, as for instance 
 "the villanous and filthy and savage and universal 
 habit, growing into use even by boys, of chewing and 
 smoking tobacco." During a recent long journey this 
 habit had forced itself upon his observation and espe- 
 
 3^*^ Trollope, Mrs. op. cit., vol. i, 140. 
 367 — Idem, 167.
 
 NEW ENGLAND AND NEW YORK 215 
 
 cially since Mrs. Trollope had called his attention to 
 it. It is too true he admits that "Americans are most 
 filthily given to spitting, though they do not, as the 
 Edinburgh [Review] says, spit as soon as they are 
 born, and spit through life, and spit out their expiring 
 breath." Mr. Flint is willing that Mrs. Trollope 
 should "apply the lash to these vile customs." 
 
 Let her correct the visible rudeness and boorishness of man- 
 ners, that seems to be growing up from our habits of equality, and 
 being all as though inmates of a public house on the road and in 
 steamboats. Her rebukes have already done visible good. May 
 they still do more. There is ample space for further improve- 
 ment.^^* 
 
 While Mr. Flint's connection w^ith the New York 
 magazine was very brief, yet it is important because 
 it lets us far into his thought and work at this period. 
 Mr. Langtree, the editor of the Knickerbocker, takes 
 a very kindly leave of Mr. Flint in the February num- 
 ber of his magazine, as follows : 
 
 One thing we are glad of, which is, that the eminent scholar 
 and distinguished man - the Father of the Literature of his 
 Country - whose name lately honored this Magazine, had hap- 
 pily resigned its charge in time to spare his venerable age the 
 mortification of witnessing the unworthy fact, that a character 
 which abroad is reverenced, and respected, and admired, as it 
 should be, could not, at home, avail to prevent the wretched 
 insult and pointless jest which ever}' little scribbler seemed ele- 
 vated in the consciousness that he was able to discharge. 
 
 We care not for the storm : but, illustrious man ! for the credit 
 of this country, and for the honor of humanity, we feel rejoiced, 
 that thou wilt see no more of that spirit which, however we know- 
 that it existed, we had still hitherto supposed would, toward such 
 as thee, have forgotten its acerbidity.^*'^ 
 
 3'^^ Knickerbocker, vol. ii, 291. 
 ^^^ — Idem, vol. iii, 160.
 
 XIV. TRAVELS IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 
 
 When Mr. Flint gave up his work in New York 
 and moved with his family from Cincinnati to Alex- 
 andria it might seem that he was ready to live there 
 quietly for the remainder of his days. But it was 
 during the first year or two of this residence in the 
 south, in 1834 and 1835, that his travels became more 
 extended than at any other period in his life. The 
 chief reason for this was the one that had several times 
 before sent him on long journeys -the search for 
 health. Besides this there was now a freedom from 
 business cares and sufficient means for such expenses, 
 not to mention the old love of travel which still re- 
 mained with him, that caused him to venture into new 
 and widely separated portions of the world. 
 
 Mr. Flint speaks of his own reasons for traveling 
 at this period of his life. He says he was like other 
 invalids who were compelled, with the sea-fowl and 
 the swans to "anticipate the autumnal northern storms, 
 and sail before them to the land, 'where the citron 
 tree blooms,' and frost is unknown. . ."^^" More 
 than once before, and now again, he recovered his 
 health, while on some long, and what would be to 
 most invalids, a most trying journey. He seemed to 
 find relief in the very strangeness and novelty of his 
 surroundings. It was not only the change of climate 
 
 ^^•^ "Sketches of Travel, Number Two," in Knickerbocker, vol. v, 279.
 
 2i8 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 that he sought but ''to beguile the time rendered weary 
 by ill health ... to distract, by noting diver- 
 sity of character, objects, and incidents, the painful 
 attention, which undiverted, an invalid is too apt to 
 turn in upon the observation of the ever-varying symp- 
 toms of his illness." "^ Under these circumstances, he 
 began, after only a few months in Alexandria in the 
 early part of 1834, what was probably his most extend- 
 ed journey. The records, or those which have thus 
 far been discovered, are quite fragmentary, but it 
 seems that he left Alexandria about the first of April 
 and journeyed to the north. 
 
 Just before this trip was begun there was a great 
 fire in Alexandria, which occurred upon the evening 
 of the thirtieth of March, 1834. We have Mr. Flint's 
 vivid description of this. He had seen two or three 
 of the most destructive fires that had ever occurred in 
 the history of our cities. But the brilliant young fo- 
 liage, the deep, calm, red waters of the canallike river, 
 furnished a background which made this "A Splendid 
 Spectacle," though he was not unmindful of the morn- 
 ing, "when the bright sun should have robbed the 
 scene of its enchantment.""^' 
 
 The next word from Mr. Flint is in a Knickerbock- 
 er article, "Sketches of Travels,""'^ where he says: 
 
 Near the close of May, at the gray of the dawn of a delightful 
 New-England Spring morning, I rolled away from Boston over 
 the Charlestown and Maiden bridges, on a tour to - among 
 other places - Lake Winnipisaukee, and the White Mountains 
 of New-Hampshire. 
 
 3'i Knickerbocker y vol. v, 284. 
 ^''~ — Idem, vol. iv, 295, 296. 
 ^^* — Idem, vol. V, 242-245.
 
 TRAVELS IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 219 
 
 The turf was a carpet of the tenderest and most bril- 
 liant verdure. The fruit trees in full blossom, the air 
 rife with a delicious aroma. On the route through 
 Reading, Andover and Haverhill, he communes with 
 himself saying Peace to you, my native New England- 
 ers ! He dared not go further in recording his thoughts 
 at this time. The birth place of Harriet Newell in 
 Haverhill was pointed out to him and led him to re- 
 mark about her memoirs, about the unequalled cir- 
 culation of the little book, the "true pathos, the deep 
 feeling, the exalted poetry of religious sentiment" 
 which abounded even in the midst of much tiresome 
 repetition. 
 
 He had not heard the Merrimac "celebrated for its 
 beauty : but rolling along its green banks, dashing over 
 its rocks, filling its noble channel," it struck him as a 
 singularly romantic and beautiful river. The White 
 Mountains were still white with snow when they "be- 
 gan to stand forth on the Northern horizon, glittering 
 in the beams of the declining sun." They seemed to 
 him "the noblest mountains in North America, east 
 of the Mexican piles of Orizaba.""^* 
 
 The traveler dwells briefly upon scenes and places 
 in New Hampshire and sails down Lake Champlain 
 and passes it with a single, "charming," leaving its 
 further description to other travelers. On the shores 
 of Canada he pauses to view a foreign country, for the 
 "spruce, capoted, brisk, sun-burnt, chattering Creoles 
 of La Prairie afford a striking variety, and remind 
 
 "''* Mr. Flint might seem to imply here that he had been in Mexico. But 
 there is no time when such a visit could easily have been made and no direct 
 reference to it. This implication and others like it are probably the result 
 of his realistic way of putting things.
 
 220 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 him," that he has reached such a country. In Quebec 
 he is struck with the great numbers of American trav- 
 elers from every part of the land, and accounts for 
 their presence there by the new facilities in traveling 
 which have, in some sense annihilated space and 
 time.^'^ 
 
 Of travel in this country he says: "No where - 
 give the English their due -are there finer or better 
 found steam-boats, than those that ply between Que- 
 bec and Montreal." He had no space in which to 
 dwell upon many things that interested him in this 
 new land, such as the "grand spectacle of the Mont- 
 morency . . . the majestic Ottawa . . . those 
 prodigious works of art, the Rideau and Weliand Ca- 
 nals . . . the unique scenery about Quebec - 
 nothing of the strange Upper Town, perched upon 
 its eagle eyrie of rocks -nothing of the historic plains 
 of Abraham." But he takes time to give a vivid 
 picture of the life on one of the St. Lawrence boats, 
 and to marvel at the beauty of nature and art on the 
 great river's banks, where "the bleak and inexorable 
 winter breeze but a few days since whistled over this 
 same scenery, then a surface of snow, six feet in depth, 
 and that this broad stream . . . was then 
 bridged with ice, as thick and firm as the solid earth, 
 in the midst of a desolate nature, where Winter and 
 Death held undisputed empire."^'*' 
 
 In another article, Mr. Flint tells of an interesting 
 gathering of a few friends in Montreal, which must 
 have occurred at this time. The conversation drifted 
 into a discussion of books of travel. The caricatures 
 
 3'5 Knickerbocker, vol. v, 244. ^'^ — Idem, 244, 245.
 
 TRAVELS IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 221 
 
 in John Bull in America were highly appreciated by 
 the company; but misrepresentations of Captain 
 Hall, Major Hamilton, and Mrs. Trollope were re- 
 sented by all present. One of the company present, 
 
 who is represented by Mr. Flint as a "Mr, M ", 
 
 but whose writings sound very much like our well 
 known "T. F." offered to bring to the company by the 
 next evening "a synopsis of the books of the pedantic 
 and arrogant Captain Hall, that of the coarse flippant 
 and vulgar man-in-petticoats, Mrs. Trollope, as well 
 as of the impudent coxcomb, Major Hamilton." This 
 "synopsis" is given us in nine or ten pages of an article 
 in the Knickerbocker on "English Caricatures." It 
 is not the least interesting but it is among the least ad- 
 mirable of Mr. Flint's literary productions which 
 have been preserved."" 
 
 The northern journey, Mr. Flint says, had for him, 
 "remembrances of recovered health, corroding anxi- 
 eties laid asleep, pleasant acquaintances, and half-for- 
 gotten dreams, as gay and agreeable to dwell upon in 
 the retrospect, as I ever expect to have of any days 
 still reserved for me in the future of this life." ^^^ How 
 long this visit was continued or just where Mr. Flint 
 traveled after his restoration to health we do not defi- 
 nitely know. It is one of the places where material is 
 short and where we would most like to know what 
 came next in the experiences of our friend. 
 
 It is from the middle of this summer of 1834, until 
 the sev^enth of November that we must place the Euro- 
 pean journey if we are to conclude that Mr. Flint 
 made one. After the Canadian travels he would have 
 
 ^'^'Knickerbocker, vol. v, 396-408. ^^^^ — Idem, 245.
 
 222 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 several months in which to make this trip to the old 
 world -the world of which he had read and dreamed 
 so much. His restored health, his leisure, easy access 
 to the great lines of ocean travel, would suggest and 
 make possible the trip at this time. From the refer- 
 ence to it''' in May, 1835, there is no time for it later, 
 and I do not see where there is any time for it in the 
 years before his final location in Alexandria. If it 
 had been earlier it hardly seems possible that such an 
 experience would go without mention in the numerous 
 writings which cover, almost if not quite, every year of 
 his life up to this time. 
 
 The reference to the European experiences is as 
 follows : 
 
 For myself, I have seen Europe, the West Indies, and South 
 America, and have compared my impressions of what I there 
 savi^, with what I have seen in the United States and Canada. 
 Generally speaking, we have little to compare with Europe, in 
 point of architecture, sumptuous erections, and monuments of 
 the arts. But, contrary to the general impression, and the arro- 
 gant boast of the European travelers among us, Boston, New- 
 York, and Philadelphia - particularly the latter - are intrinsically 
 handsomer towns, and strike the eye of an impartial observer, I 
 dare be bound to say, more agreeably than most of the European 
 capitals, in every point of view, except extent; and two of our 
 cities sustain no mean competition with most of them, except 
 London and Paris, even in that point of view. But our natural 
 scenery, in many respects, incomparably exceeds that of Europe. 
 It is out of the question that there is nothing in the old world to 
 compare with the grandeur of our rivers, lakes, water-falls, and 
 forests. . . The Alps and Apennines, it is true, present more 
 elevated peaks, more sublime ranges of rock and glacier. But 
 after all, it is naked sublimity alone, for their mountain scenery 
 is bald, ragged, revolting. [Mr. Flint never visited the Rocky 
 
 379 Knickerbocker, vol. v, 397.
 
 TRAVELS IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 223 
 
 Mountains and seems here to have forgotten of their existence.] 
 Trees, verdure, cultivation, are never seen upon their higher 
 summits.^^° 
 
 There are several reasons for doubting whether Mr. 
 Flint actually visited Europe. "English Carica- 
 tures," the article in which he refers to the matter, 
 does not, as is usual, have his initials appended. It is 
 announced as "By the Author of 'Macoupin, or the 
 Talking Potato.'" The article is more impersonal 
 than is usual with Mr. Flint. It is, however, credited 
 to him in the index of the magazine. "Macoupin" is 
 also credited to him in the same way and has his ini- 
 tials at the end of the article. Again, if Mr. Flint 
 was in Europe in the summer and fall of 1834 i^ seems 
 very strange that in the extensive articles for the 
 Athenceum^ which it would seem must have been pre- 
 pared just after this time, there is no reference what- 
 ever to this experience, though there are many passages 
 where it might fittingly have been referred to. Dr. 
 James Flint does not mention it, and, what is still more 
 important, perhaps, is the fact that the family of Mr. 
 Flint, or those of them now living in Alexandria, 
 Louisiana, think that he never made such a journey.^" 
 
 About the same arguments may be made against the 
 statement that Mr. Flint here makes in reference to 
 South America. There is, however, more circum- 
 stantial evidence for thinking that he may have been in 
 that part of the world. There was time for it when 
 he made the trip south in January, 1832. It was at 
 that time that he wrote his first South American story 
 
 ^^° Knickerbocker, vol. v, 397. 
 
 ^^^ Letter of Fredric Seip, Alexandria, La., Jan. 20, 1910, in Harvard 
 University Library.
 
 224 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 and that he says he gathered the material for it.^*' 
 After this he wrote several stories which had their 
 setting in South America. It might also have oc- 
 curred at the time of the Cuban trip which is now to be 
 mentioned, though it is hard to account for his silence 
 about such an important part of a journey if it oc- 
 curred at that time. 
 
 Mr. Flint says of the traveler: 
 
 The requisite qualifications are, natural endowments, much 
 previous instruction, capability of keen perception and enjoyment 
 of the beautiful and sublime in natural scenery, a generous and 
 philosophic mind to observe men, manners, institutions, laws, 
 literature ... a sincere desire to separate the true from 
 the seeming, and more than all, an indulgent and impartial spirit, 
 and a disposition to find enjoyment, wherever propriety and 
 innocence allow."^" 
 
 When he wrote these words he was moralizing over 
 the writings of different types of travelers. However, 
 it is a good description of Mr. Flint, the accomplished 
 traveler, as he begins the journey of 1834- 1835 ^^^ 
 the last one of which we have any detailed account. 
 
 From New Orleans to Havana was a three to five 
 days' journey. He did not stop in that busy mart but 
 decided to 
 
 Mount the volante, and through lanes bounded with cofifee 
 plantations on the one hand, and cane on the other, to seek shelter 
 among the palms. 
 
 Here had I passed my winter in air, in sun, or shade, as tem- 
 perature or my feelings inclined me. . . I had resided in a 
 planter's family, in the middle condition, of which half were 
 New-Englanders, half Creoles, catholics, easy in circumstances, 
 
 •^^- See page 200. 
 
 38- Knickerbocker, vol. v, 396. Mr. Flint's comment on the social and 
 political importance of travel is interesting. See Knickerbocker, vol. iv, 
 i68, 169.
 
 TRAVELS liN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 225 
 
 gentle and affectionate in their intercourse, kind and forbearing 
 to their servants, attentive to me, and their lanjnaage and move- 
 ments invested with an amusing, languid, sleepy kind of drawl, 
 which I traced to their indolence and delicious climate. . . 
 Not that the gentleman and ladies had not a full touch of human 
 nature in their constitution here, as elsewhere. 
 
 There too was there smirking, coquetry, the inflic- 
 tion of bright eyes, the love of woman for new styles, 
 the rich and poor, as in other parts of the w^orld.'^^* 
 
 Toward the middle of March he started north be- 
 cause "coolness fled, even from the w^hispering palm 
 groves." He returned to Havana and began anew 
 the attempt to "beguile ill health in the revolutions 
 of perpetual change." While the negroes chattered, 
 "and numerous casks were draying and rolling along 
 the streets, and the dews dripped from the graceful 
 palms, just as they will do at the same hour next 
 March," he entered "the good ship Union for Bos- 
 ton." The first two days they were becalmed. Then 
 came a storm. As usual the passengers interested Mr. 
 Flint, and several of them are pictured for us. There 
 were merchants, "portly, clever personages, who loved 
 champagne, and cent per cent." They were as much 
 out of his line as he was out of theirs. There were 
 two passengers, however, one of whom would put her- 
 self in line with Mr. Flint and the other that he in- 
 stinctively felt himself to be in line with."^"^ 
 
 The first was a rich and not uncomely widow, who 
 had just laid aside her sables for the loss of her hus- 
 band who had left her, after only a few hours sickness, 
 with a half million dollars and a son and daughter. 
 
 3** Knickerbocker, vol. v, 279. '^' — Idem, 279, 280.
 
 226 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 Mr. Flint says of this lady : "My vanity furnishes me 
 with no clue to explain why this lady honored me with 
 a particular share of attention." Not only the lady 
 but her two children, it would seem, showed the be- 
 nevolent looking old gentleman "a particular share of 
 attention." Mr. Flint was fond of children and they 
 of him, but these two, as well as their mother seem to 
 have been considerable of a trial to him. He was 
 even moved to envy the departed husband and father 
 and to conclude that there were worse evils than chol- 
 era, and that the exit of her poor husband might have 
 been to him a merciful release. 
 
 Mr. Flint continues about this woman and her chil- 
 dren: 
 
 Unused to slaves, this lady had estimated them more entirely 
 the passive instruments of the caprice and tyranny of their mas- 
 ter's family, than persons who had been born and reared amidst 
 the indulgences of slavery. The consequence was, that these two 
 children . . . were precisely the most annoying and mis- 
 managed cubs, that ever sinner was tormented withal. . . 
 They were ugly urchins, which rendered their evil manners so 
 much the more unendurable. But what capped the climax of 
 misery of being greased with turkey bones, and daubed with 
 eggs, and having my books covered with ink, and my laboriously- 
 collected herbarium scattered leaf by leaf into the sea, was, that 
 the learned Theban of a mother was a harranguer, a tedious 
 preacheuse, upon the subject of education. She had read a whole 
 library of the modern dull books upon this theme. Most pro- 
 foundly was she imbued with the theory of education ; and I was 
 placed in a dilemma of bores, between the preaching of the mother, 
 and the practice of the children. I soon gave the imps to under- 
 stand, in all practicable ways, that I was neither their step-father 
 nor their slave. If pins sometimes happened to point upwards 
 through my dress, when my persecutors bounced into my lap, or 
 if they sometimes tumbled over my legs, when racing past me
 
 TRAVELS IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES 227 
 
 in the dark, I hope the charitable-minded will attribute it to 
 accident, though I fear their mother did not.^®*' 
 
 When the storm broke upon them, the third day of 
 their voyage, Mr. Flint escaped still further from his 
 young scourges and their lecturing mother by means 
 of the sea-sickness which overtook them and him alike. 
 His own sickness was not severe and it was then that 
 he made the acquaintance of the other passenger who 
 interested him. He does not give her name but says 
 that she belonged to one of the first and wealthiest 
 families in Boston, as he afterwards learned. She had 
 been in Cuba for her health and was returning home 
 in strength. He admired her courage during the 
 storm and discovered that it came from a reasonable 
 view of the situation and from a well balanced mind 
 and faith.'" 
 
 After a sixteen days' voyage they were in Boston 
 harbor, viewing the city of "money and hills." Mr. 
 Flint took leave of his young friend by telling her 
 that when the platonic year came round, after thirty 
 thousand calendar years had passed, he desired to be 
 considered her declared suitor. 
 
 Mr. Flint went to the Tremont House, spending 
 only a few days in Boston, during which time he called 
 upon a few old time friends and made arrangements 
 for the continuing of his travels. While he says he 
 
 2^^ Knickerbocker, vol. v, 280. There is a perplexing remark made by Mr. 
 Flint in telling the story of his experiences with this widow. He seems to say 
 that he himself is a widower. Numerous references in the family letters as 
 late as 1839, the statements made by Dr. James Flint at the time of Flint's 
 death and the very clear and positive statements of the family, make certain 
 that Mrs. Flint did not die until a few weeks before her husband. The pas- 
 sage here referred to must be taken as a rather awkward reference to his long 
 absence from home and to his traveling alone. 
 
 ^^"'Knickerbocker, vol. v, 281, 282.
 
 228 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 had no purpose there "to observe, figure, or seek 
 pleasure/' yet he took occasion to call upon his young 
 friend of the good ship Union. He was most kindly 
 and hospitably received -as an elder brother might 
 be by a younger sister. A party of the family friends 
 were invited in to meet him. He was introduced by 
 the young lady to her friends, "as the person who was 
 to stand first on the list of her declared lovers, when 
 she should re-visit Boston, after thirty thousand 
 years," and she declared to him that his chances should 
 be predicated on changing nothing but the state of his 
 health. It was also arranged that Mr. Flint should 
 meet some of these friends at Buffalo or Niagara Falls 
 later in the summer.^^^ 
 
 3SS This brief narrative of the Cuban visit and the subsequent voyage 
 to Boston appears in the April number of the Knickerbocker for 1835, as 
 "Sketches of Travel, Number Two." The journey could not have ended until 
 about the end of March. The article itself must have been written in Boston 
 about April i. That it appears in the April number of the magazine may- 
 be accounted for by the habits of that journal of appearing late. See Knicker- 
 bocker, vol. vi, 580, note.
 
 XV. LOUISIANA AND THE LAST DAYS 
 
 Dr. James Flint says of Mr. Flint's removal to his 
 earlier home in the south: 
 
 In 1834, '^6 went to the "South" to remain with his family 
 in Alexandria, where his eldest son and daughter resided ; the 
 daughter having recently married an eminent advocate and 
 planter of that place. He there passed the concluding years of 
 his life in the enjoyment of competence and leisure, usually, how- 
 ever, spending his summers in New England, and wrote nothing 
 excepting a Second part of Recollections of the Mississippi Valley, 
 the manuscript of which he brought with him on his last visit 
 to friends at Salem, Massachusetts, where he died, August i6th, 
 i840.3»» 
 
 Very little is known of the course of Mr. Flint's life 
 during the last four or five of his three score years. 
 Such as we have is gathered from a few letters of his 
 family and friends. These do not furnish a continu- 
 ous story. 
 
 There was not much literary work performed in 
 this period. Besides the manuscript for the second 
 part of the Recollections Doctor Flint mentions also 
 that his cousin left revised copies of all of his principal 
 works. Doctor Flint thought it a great desideratum 
 that all the works should be published in a uniform 
 edition, and improved with the revisions which his 
 friend had left.^^" There was still another work of 
 
 •^^^ Encyclopedia Americana: Supplementary Volume. 
 
 390 _ JJgjji^
 
 230 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 considerable extent, performed probably in the fall 
 and winter of 1834. This was the series of eleven 
 articles on "Sketches of the Literature of the United 
 States," prepared for the London Athenaum. Much 
 of the material is taken from earlier works but there is 
 some new matter and it is all rearranged. 
 
 Peabody and Company of the Knickerbocker had 
 suggested Mr. Flint to the London people as a suitable 
 man for the undertaking, but a misunderstanding had 
 arisen about the matter. Peabody and Company had 
 asked for some money in advance in order to aid the 
 proposed work. The money had been sent but the 
 manuscript was not furnished either by Mr. Flint or 
 Peabody and Company. The editors of the London 
 magazine were not at all inclined to blame Mr. Flint, 
 but when they learned that he had gone to Louisiana 
 and not furnished the promised papers, for which 
 they had advanced money, they justly felt that they 
 had been victimized by some one. After this failure 
 they engaged Nathaniel Parker Willis for the work. 
 
 Unexplained, this incident looks discreditable to 
 Mr. Flint. Even so careful a student as Professor 
 Henry A. Beers, in his Nathaniel Parker JVillis^^^ 
 passes the matter with only the remark that Mr. Flint 
 failed to come to time with the articles he had agreed 
 to furnish to the Athemeum. In the Athenceum^ 
 1835,''' there is a letter of Mr. Flint dated at Alex- 
 andria, November 17, 1834, written to Clark and Ed- 
 son, successors of Peabody and Company. 
 
 I have just received a letter directed to Peabod)' and Co., 
 
 391 Pages 216, 217. 3^- No. 380, 105.
 
 LOUISIANA AND THE LAST DAYS 231 
 
 late of the Knickerbocker, from Mr. of the London Athen- 
 
 CEum, saying that he had forwarded an order in my favor for 
 £20, in pay for an article on American Literature, which he un- 
 derstood me to have contracted to forward to that Periodical. A 
 year ago, Mr. Peabody said something to me about furnishing 
 such an article, and I expressed my willingness to do it, after 
 which I heard nothing on the subject until I recently saw my 
 name set down in the papers, as one who was to write such an 
 
 article. I need say no more than this to Mr. , to acquit 
 
 myself of the imputation, of having received pay without per- 
 forming the stipulated services. If he knew me, I need not say 
 even this. No order has come to my hand, nor did I stipulate 
 to furnish manuscript any further than as above stated. Have 
 the kindness to write to him immediately, for I would not be 
 willing to remain a moment under the suspicion of being capable 
 of such a want of integrity, as would be implied in receiving 
 compensation, and failing to return quid pro quo. 
 
 This matter is best explained perhaps by the bus- 
 iness failure of Peabody and Company sometime in 
 1834, and by their afterwards returning at least a part 
 of the £20 to the London firm.^"" Mr. Flint's series 
 of articles began to appear in the July fourth number 
 of the AthencBum, 1835, ^^^ were concluded Novem- 
 ber ninth, of that year. 
 
 Mr. Flint must have felt when he returned to the 
 south in 1834, that his work was almost done. His 
 extensive travels after this time were not on account 
 of business, but, as before mentioned, were for the sake 
 of health. He was, it is true, only fifty-five years of 
 age. But most of these years had been marked by 
 sickness, and many of them by severe labor and unu- 
 sual exposure. In appearance and strength he was old 
 
 ^^^ Atheneeum, no. 375, 12, note; no. 380, 105.
 
 232 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 beyond his years. In 1828, at the New Year season, 
 he had written : 
 
 Fondly I thought, that, years ere this, my breast 
 Would cease to swell with joy or sorrovv.^^* 
 
 Mr. Flint did not perform any of the duties of his 
 early profession in his last years. His son James, 
 writing him from Harvard, addressed him as "Tim- 
 othy Flint, Esq." Other correspondents still used the 
 title "Reverend." Mr. Flint sometimes seemed to 
 feel himself shut off from the great world in which he 
 had lived so actively. There is a fragment of a let- 
 ter preserved in the Boston Public Library, probably 
 written to Reverend Charles Lowell, and during these 
 last years, which shows the loneliness of the man and 
 his desire to keep in touch with early and far distant 
 friends. He says: 
 
 Thus I have poured out a feminine flood of gossip. Let me 
 tempt you to sin in the same way. As I draw myself into my 
 shell, abandoned by all others, let me not be forsaken by you. 
 Give me your history in terms as garrulous as mine. Let the 
 record of our kindness run on till death. You know those that 
 I do and ought to remember, and will convey to them my affec- 
 tionate salutation. God bless you and yours. T. Flint. 
 
 His children were all with him. Emeline, his eld- 
 est daughter, had married General Thomas in 1833. 
 She was a very accomplished woman, strong minded, 
 but not imaginative like others of the family. For 
 several years before her marriage she was her father's 
 literary companion. She had aided him in his exten- 
 sive translations from the French, such as the Bio- 
 graphie Universelle Classique. He speaks several 
 times of his co-worker. She was also, as Mr. Flint 
 
 394 Jf/fstern Monthly Review, vol. i, 529.
 
 LOUISIANA AND THE LAST DAYS 233 
 
 was not, a Spanish scholar, and made some translations 
 from this language for the Western Monthly Review. 
 She was the second wife of General Thomas, who was 
 a man of much force and prominence in his section of 
 the country. He had extensive business interests and 
 was an attorney. Soon after or possibly just before 
 the death of her father and mother, Mrs. Thomas 
 planned and built in Alexandria, what has been known 
 for two generations as the Flint Homestead. It was 
 used by General Banks as his headquarters when his 
 army was in Alexandria during the Civil War. It is 
 still owned and highly valued by the family.^"" 
 
 Micah Peabody, the eldest son, had married Fran- 
 ces Bullard, a niece of General Thomas, some time be- 
 fore the return of his family from the north. He had 
 been prosperous as an attorney and planter, leaving an 
 estate at the time of his death, valued at one hundred 
 and fifty thousand dollars. Samuel Swett in the Har- 
 vard Class Book for the Class of 1800, says also that 
 this large estate was inherited and carried on by Mr. 
 Flint, the son having been unmarried. Both of these 
 statements are inaccurate according to the fam- 
 ily letters. Mr. Flint and his children together in- 
 herited Micah's estate, the wife and children of the 
 latter having died before he did. This estate was 
 heavily involved, and was being managed by Hubbard 
 Flint, while his younger brother was a minor and 
 studying law at Harvard, 183 8-1 841.''"' 
 
 Everything indicates that Mr. Flint was in com- 
 
 3«^ Family letters and records, for the most part in possession of Mrs. 
 Emeline Flint Seip, Alexandria, La. Mrs. Seip's letters, 1907-1910, have 
 been placed in Boston Public Library. 
 
 39C _ i^ejn^
 
 234 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 fortable circumstances in his last years. Mr. Gal- 
 lagher remarks that his Geography and History was 
 not only vastly popular, but vastly profitable as 
 well.^"^ He had a house of his own across the river 
 near Alexandria, and opposite his son Micah's home 
 at that place. This was probably in the pine woods 
 that covered the hills opposite the village. The house 
 here in which he lived is still standing. He operated 
 a farm of about one hundred acres. Old account 
 books in the possession of the family show his pur- 
 chases of farm and family supplies. Mr. Flint had 
 servants which his grandchildren think he owned, but 
 they are not certain on this point.^''* Considering his 
 earlier feelings and expressions on this subject, it 
 would seem unlikely that he ever bought or owned a 
 slave. 
 
 Mr. Flint also owned a cottage in the pine hills at 
 Pineville, two or three miles from Alexandria, where 
 he spent his summers. The location is still known to 
 his family and to many people who make their 
 home in the region. Trees and shrubs which he 
 planted are today reverenced because of their associa- 
 tion with the man whom all delight to honor. "An- 
 gel's Rest" and "Summerville" are named in the fam- 
 ily letters as rallying places for the long hot seasons, 
 during Mr. Flint's last years. Mr. Flint taught 
 French to his young daughter, Martha Elizabeth, 
 born in Cincinnati, 1828, while they dwelt in their 
 summer Arcadia. But it was the son and not the father 
 who was doing the fishing then. Another fragment of 
 
 3^^ Cincinnati Mirror, vol. iii, 37. 
 
 398 See letters of Emeline Flint Seip and Fredric Seip, and especially the 
 latter's letter of Jan. 20, 1910.
 
 LOUISIANA AND THE LAST DAYS 235 
 
 the letter mentioned above, gives us a picture of their 
 life in the pines: 
 
 Yesterday was Sabbath and we passed the day in a general 
 family muster and ride. But to-morrow alas! We move into 
 town where I have to live. You all have had to undergo a double 
 talkover- first when Micah came, and since on my return, nor 
 were j'our hospitality, your beautiful [words missing from man- 
 uscript]. 
 
 This fragment may indicate a recent trip to the 
 north.^^"^ 
 
 Mr. Flint's home life had always been beautiful. 
 This fact is remarked by several of his friends and it 
 is one of the treasured traditions of his descendants. 
 Mr. Swett says: 
 
 His affection for his family was deep, strong, self-absorbing 
 to an extent that we would not dare to give the slightest con- 
 ception - were we not in possession of facts which speak louder 
 than words. His wife's affection is betokened by the fact that 
 his word to her, assuring her of his speedy dissolution, proved to 
 be her death warrant.*"** 
 
 In the w^inter of 1836- 1837 ^ great pleasure came to 
 Mr. Flint through the visit of his cousin, Dr. James 
 Flint. In Doctor Flint's volume of verses, the fol- 
 lowing are found : 
 
 Lines written at sea on a voyage to visit and spend the winter 
 with my earliest and best loved friend, Rev. T. Flint, on the 
 banks of the Red River, for the recovery of my health. At Sea, 
 on board the Saxon, Dec, 1836. 
 
 Lo ! my heart's nearest brother, more near than by blood, 
 I come on the waves of the dark rolling flood. 
 And I smile at the peril, nor shrink from the pain - 
 To meet thee, my brother, on earth once again. 
 
 399 Family letters. See also Appendix A. 
 ♦°° The Christian Register, vol. xix, 138.
 
 236 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 I come with my brother once more to review, 
 
 Our sweet spring time when hope and her visions were new, 
 
 To live o'er again our best days of the past. 
 
 And communing of heaven, to prepare for the last. 
 
 Through thirty-six lines like the above, Doctor 
 Flint expresses his hopes for pleasure and health. He 
 is prepared, and half expects to leave his body in the 
 soil where he supposes his friend will lay his dust, 
 little knowing that they will lie together in their 
 native soil and in a beautiful cemetery which he is 
 soon to consecrate with other verses.^"^ 
 
 In this same year, Mr. Flint was called upon to 
 suffer the loss of his oldest son, September 15, 1837. 
 Micah w^as but thirty-four years of age when he was 
 carried away by one of the southern fevers. This son 
 had been the pride and hope of his parents. When 
 but twelve years of age he had written a poem, which, 
 it is said, was printed by the Edinburgh Review and 
 highly complimented by that magazine. His Hun- 
 ter and Other Poems was published by the firm that 
 issued the Recollections and at the same time. Criti- 
 cisms of his son's book, Mr. Flint took as seriously as 
 he did those of his own works. He had high hopes 
 for Micah's development as a poet, and often shows 
 this hope in his writings. The family say now, that 
 he was much disappointed that Micah gave so much 
 time to ''negroes and cotton"- to quote Micah's own 
 remark when he returned to his plantation from a 
 visit to his parents in Cincinnati.""' Mr. Flint 
 worked many of his son's poems into his stories, espe- 
 cially into the Shoshonee Valley. They are found also 
 
 *°i Flint, James. Verses on Many Occasions, 99, 100, 171. 
 ^'^^ Knickerbocker, vol. iii, 119.
 
 LOUISIANA AND THE LAST DAYS 237 
 
 in several numbers of the Review and also in the 
 Knickerbocker. These poems received many favor- 
 able notices from the critics of the period. That such 
 a son as this should be stricken down and at so early an 
 age, and soon after the death of the wife and two little 
 sons, Micah Jr. and James Jr., would be the heaviest 
 loss that Mr. Flint ever met with in his family. 
 Though the father did not allow himself to be hon- 
 ored with the title of the "sacred office," in this hour 
 of his deepest grief, he rose up as the priest of his own 
 house, and conducted over the body of his first born, 
 the last sad rites of the Christian Church. Micah's 
 body was buried in what is now known as the old 
 Flint graveyard across the river from Alexandria, 
 and where now rests the dust of most of Mr. Flint's 
 children and grandchildren, and that of his beloved 
 wife. Here together they await the general resurrec- 
 tion in the last day, when again the family circle may 
 be complete, though one grave is in distant Salem, an- 
 other in Galveston, Texas, and one, a little one, upon 
 the shifting banks of the Great River.*"^ 
 
 Micah's plantation was at Cheneyville, twenty-five 
 or thirty miles from Alexandria. He called this 
 place "Lunenburg," a name which it still bears. His 
 home is yet standing at this place, and many of his for- 
 mer slaves proudly bear his name. He had a home 
 also in Alexandria. His sister, Emeline Thomas, 
 wrote of his death : 
 
 It was singularly magnanimous and calm. I have witnessed 
 the departure of no one who seemed to have so entirely triumphed 
 ^"3 Pamily letters and records. See the Seip Letters, Boston Public Library.
 
 238 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 over the fear of death. Until a few minutes before his last 
 breath, he occupied himself in sending messages to his friends. ■*"* 
 
 In 1839 we have another glimpse of Mr. Flint and 
 his family in the woods. We are glad to know that 
 they "are well." Early in the spring of 1839, he 
 made a visit to New England and returned before the 
 first of July."^ Throughout his southern residence, 
 it was the sultry weather of March that caused Mr. 
 Flint the most trouble. It was this period that he 
 aimed to spend at the north. How often he made this 
 long journey during his last six years we do not know, 
 but it must have been several times. He knew how to 
 travel comfortably. He thought the time would soon 
 come when families would make the trip from the 
 south to the north and back in season, enjoying and 
 employing themselves in a domestic and social way 
 on the steam and canal boats, much as they might do 
 at home. He, himself, could be at home in almost any 
 surroundings. He could isolate himself for thought 
 or work when and where he would. He is said to 
 have translated the Biographie Universelle in a room 
 where others were talking and working.**"' 
 
 While on his northern trip in 1839, Mr. Flint 
 caught a severe cold, and was ill some time after his 
 return home. On this visit at the north he had the 
 added pleasure of seeing his son James Timothy at 
 Cambridge and also the daughter of General Thomas 
 who was at school in that section. James went home 
 in 1839, taking with him, doubtless, as he was bidden 
 in the home letters, "a sewing basket and water colors 
 for little sister Martha." 
 
 404 Family letters and records. "^"^ Encyclopedia Brittan'ica. 
 
 405 _ Itlgjji,
 
 LOUISIANA AND THE LAST DAYS 239 
 
 Early in May of 1840, James was still at home, and 
 accompanied his father on the steamer to Natchez, as 
 he started for the north. It was much later than Mr. 
 Flint was in the habit of making this trip. It does 
 not seem that he was compelled to go on account of his 
 health, though he was not well. He had it in mind, 
 of course, to make a visit, and perhaps chiefly, to 
 arrange for the publication of the second part of the 
 Recollections which he had with him. The revision 
 of his other works was also completed *°^ and he doubt- 
 less hoped to arrange for their publication. 
 
 At Natchez they were waiting for a steamer which 
 should take Mr. Flint up the river, when they were 
 overtaken by a tornado. Mr. Venable says of this 
 storm : 
 
 At one o'clock of the sultry afternoon of Thursday, May 7, 
 a furious storm sweeps along the river, whirls the shipping to 
 destruction, tears the city. "Never, never, never was there such 
 desolation and ruin," was the word of the Natchez Courier next 
 day. The loss of property was immense, and not fewer than 
 four hundred people were killed. . . The Natchez Free 
 Trader mentioned that among those who were taken out alive, 
 were "Timothy Flint, the historian and geographer, and his son 
 from Natchitoches, Louisiana." *°^ 
 
 In one of the last letters that he ever wrote, Mr. 
 Flint tells of this experience. The letter was written 
 from North Reading, and probably to his classmate, 
 Samuel Swett. At any rate, the latter included it in 
 the article on the death of his friend in the Christian 
 Register. Only a part of the letter was used and it 
 is as follows : 
 
 *^'' Encyclopedia Americana: Supplementary Volume. 
 408 Venable, William H. Beginnings of Literary Culture in the Ohio 
 Valley, 360.
 
 240 TLVIOTHY FLINT 
 
 The morning preceding the storm had been excessively sultry. 
 The sky was overcast rather, as it appeared, with a sort of dusty 
 haze than thick clouds - and the sky from nine to one was a 
 continual rumble of a hundred low thunders all melting into each 
 other, and no rain fell. At half after one, there sat at the hotel 
 table, I suppose, fifty guests. The thunder had wnthin a few 
 minutes become severe, and the darkness so great as to require 
 candles. But these circumstances are not apt in that climate to 
 create alarm, I finished a hasty dinner and went through a 
 reading room, and a beautiful bar-room to the front door looking 
 up the street, for it was Natchez under the hill. I saw a ter- 
 rific looking black cloud, as though a well defined belt of black 
 broad cloth, seeming a mile and a half wide, shooting up the river 
 bluff with fearful velocity. At the end it poured out dark 
 wreaths, resembling those of the steam-boat pipe. I ran to the 
 reading room for James, bidding him take my arm and follow 
 me into the street. But as we made for the front door, the win- 
 dows and doors blew in. The boats were seen dashing into the 
 river, and the air was black and full of flying fragments. There 
 was a general rush for the front door. The rush closed the 
 passage, and kickings, fighting, and cursing ensued. Part were 
 trampled under foot, and part, such as James and I, thrown 
 over their heads. They, fortunately for us, threw us and three 
 more into a place, where we were destined to be saved. It was 
 between the bar room and the reading room, I felt the pillars 
 reel, seized one of them, and expected the next moment to have 
 all my maladies effectually cured. The next moment every 
 thing came down with a crash like the blow of a hammer, and 
 the w^hole pile chimneys and all were packed as closely as if they 
 had been taken down and piled. Water poured upon us like a 
 torrent, and we were as dark as Eg\'pt. James had been 
 separated from me. I found myself alive though much bruised 
 and crushed, and a nail had gone through my hat and grazed 
 my temple, so as to cause some bleeding. My first word was 
 for "James! James! are you alive?" The answer was, "I am. 
 Are you living, Father?" We were saved by the arching of two 
 or three beams, that resisted all that came upon them. He 
 crawled through the mud and got hold of my hand. The tim-
 
 LOUISIANA AND THE LAST DAYS 241 
 
 bers gave us four inches. After being there, perhaps, half an 
 hour, we were extricated. The town under the hill, boats and 
 all, were a wreck - in fact, the latter all sunk and gone. Many 
 bodies were dug from our house, and the whole spectacle was one 
 of sickening horror. I was manj^ hours covered with mud, and 
 under a drenching rain, before I could recover anj' clothes or get 
 a shelter. The crown of James's hat was cut from his head, 
 just grazing the top of the skull. He returned home, after 
 seeing me on an upcountry boat. The season had been the warm- 
 est ever known, and wc had had two months of high summer. 
 The weather turned very cold, the night I began to ascend the 
 river, and my long drenching and exposure, with my previous 
 sickness, gave me severe chills. They followed me all the way 
 here, and contributed, I have no doubt, to my present condition. 
 I had not thought when I began, that I could scrawl so much. 
 Take it, not for what it is worth, but for what it has cost me. 
 You will, probably, be one of my last correspondents. At any 
 rate, I can only loose the memory of your kindness to me and 
 mine with life. I am, dear sir, gratefully and affectionately 
 yours, Timothy Flint.*°* 
 
 This letter was written from the home of his 
 brother, Peter Flint. It was not at the house of their 
 birth but a mile or so to the west of the village of 
 North Reading, and near the place where the remains 
 of their father and mother were probably buried. In 
 this home was a little granddaughter whose duty and 
 privilege it was to comb and brush the silver hair of 
 her great uncle, and who thirty-four years later, when 
 WTiting a letter to the almost unknown cousins in the 
 south, was proud to tell them how she cherished the 
 memory of Reverend Timothy Flint, and this child- 
 hood ministry to the dying man."'"* 
 
 *03 The C/iristia?! Register, vol. xix, 138, 139. 
 
 *"5 Letter of C. A. Clark, North Reading, Mass., July 26, 1874, in pos- 
 session of Mrs. Seip.
 
 242 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 His disease, says the Harvard Class Book for the 
 Class of jSoo, was biliousness. The cemetery rec- 
 ords give liver complaint as the cause of his death. 
 He lingered for six or seven weeks after he reached 
 his brother's home, in a very feeble state, hardly ex- 
 pecting to live from one day to another. 
 
 Of the last hours, Samuel Swett says in the Chris- 
 tian Register: 
 
 The last heavenly messenger who summoned him to a better 
 and happier world, he met with the resolution of a philosopher, 
 the resignation, hope and confidence of a Christian. He says in 
 one of his last letters: "Submission is my wisdom as well as my 
 dut)', and I am thankful I feel it in all its comfort." *^^ 
 
 A notice of the death of Mr. Flint, written in all 
 probability by Dr. James Flint, appeared in the Salem 
 papers*'" as follows: 
 
 Died, on Tuesday evening last, in Reading, Mass., at the 
 residence of his brother, of a lingering and painful disorder, 
 Timothy Flint, aged 6o, well known in America, and on the 
 other side of the Atlantic, as the author of various works, that 
 have given him a rank among the most distinguished writers of 
 the country. Of a genius highly imaginative and poetical, he 
 united with a vigorous intellect and discriminating judgment, a 
 quick sensibility and warm affections, a vivid perception and 
 enjoyment, a deep felt and ever grateful recognition of the author, 
 of the beautiful, grand and lovely in nature, of the true and 
 good, the elevated and pure, the brilliant and divinely gifted in 
 human endowment and character; and possessing a rare facility 
 and power of embodying in glowing and appropriate language 
 his impressions of the outward, and what he conceived and felt 
 ' of the inward and spiritual world. During the brief period of 
 seven or eight years, in which he exercised his talents as an 
 author, he wrote with a fecundity and frequency of publication 
 scarcely surpassed by the prolific author of the Waverley novels. 
 
 411 The Christian Register, vol. xix, 138. 
 
 412 Salem Gazette, Aug. 21, 1840. Essex Register, Aug. 24, 1840.
 
 LOUISIANA AND THE LAST DAYS 243 
 
 His Recollections of ten years in the Valley of the Mississippi, 
 the work by which he was first known to the public as an author, 
 possesses all the interest of a romance, joined with the feeling 
 that we are reading a true narrative of the author's actual expe- 
 rience, of what he saw and felt, in the adventures and fortunes 
 therein recorded, containing the most graphic and faithful paint- 
 ings of the scenery and physical aspect of the regions he describes. 
 ^^ His Geography and History of the Mississippi Valley, etc., is a 
 work of great value, containing the best general account of that 
 vast and fertile country, that has yet been given to the public. 
 His novels contain scenes and descriptions of surpassing beauty 
 and interest. Some of the finest productions of his pen are to 
 be found in the Western Monthly Review, which he sustained 
 almost alone for three years. Many beautiful Tales also were 
 furnished by him for the different annuals and periodicals of the 
 time. 
 
 He left his residence on Red River, La., last May, in feeble 
 health, hoping to derive benefit from the bracing air of the north. 
 He came to his native place, where his disorder soon assumed 
 symptoms of a speedy and fatal termination. He wrote his 
 family, that before they received his letter he should be no longer 
 among the living; which intelligence was so taken to heart by 
 Mrs. Flint, that she was seized with a fever, and died just four 
 weeks to a day before her husband. Their spirits, we may hope, 
 have met in the regions of the blessed, to know no more separa- 
 tion or sorrow forever.*^^ 
 
 Four days later, interment took place in the new 
 Harmony Grove Cemetery at Salem. It was a beau- 
 tiful spot, such as Mr. Flint loved at Mount Auburn 
 in Boston. Doctor Flint had been one of the founders 
 of the cemetery, and he and James Timothy bought a 
 
 *^3 One of the family traditions records that after the death of his mother, 
 James Timothy Flint went to the bedside of his father in North Reading. 
 We are told that the dying man asked continually for his wife and that the 
 son dared not tell him that she had gone on before lest the news should be 
 the call that would bid him go, even as the word that had gone to Mrs. 
 Flint had been the occasion of her death. See Mrs. Seip's letter, Jan. 30, 19 10.
 
 244 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 lot which was used for the first time when the friend 
 and father was buried in it/'' Fifteen years later it re- 
 ceived the body of Dr. James Flint, which rests just 
 beside that of his "more than brother." Several 
 members of Doctor Flint's family are buried here also, 
 but the circle was not completed until about a year 
 ago, when the last child of Doctor Flint, Miss Amelia 
 G. Flint, ninety-two years of age, was buried there. 
 The graves of the two friends occupy the center of the 
 lot. ''David and Jonathan" are united in death as 
 they were in life. 
 
 Over the grave of Mr. Flint was erected a simple 
 monument, eight or nine feet in height, with the fol- 
 lowing inscription wTitten by Doctor Flint."^ 
 
 REV. TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 Whose writings have won for him deserved 
 
 celebrity, was born in Reading, Mass., 1780, 
 
 where he died on a visit from the South, 
 
 August 16, 1840, aged 60. 
 
 He painted on his glowing page, 
 The peerless valley of the West ; 
 
 That shall in every coming age, 
 His genius and his toils attest. 
 
 *i* Harmony Grove Cemeter}- Records (Salem). Both Dr. James Flint 
 and Timothy Flint were much interested in the beautifying of burial places. 
 The latter once visited Mount Auburn Cemeterj-, Boston, and greatly enjo\ed 
 its beaut\- and care. As he wandered over it with a friend, some of its hill- 
 side views made him imagine the pines saying: 
 
 "Oh, lay me in the spot where the sunbeams rest, 
 When they promise a glorious morrow;" 
 
 -Knickerbocker, vol. ii, 257, 258. 
 
 *i^ An exact copy of this inscription is preserved in Doctor Flint's Verses 
 
 on Many Occasions. Also in a manuscript copy in Boston Public Library 
 
 which had been sent to Mrs. Coffin by Doctor Flint in 1841, just as it had 
 
 been "prepared by his bereaved and still loving kinsman and friend."
 
 "rrMOTHY Flint's Monument, Harmony GROvn: 
 Cfmftkry, Sai.rm, Massachusetts
 
 LOUISIANA AND THE LAST DAYS 247 
 
 But wouldst thou, gentle pilgrim, know 
 What worth, what love endeared the man? 
 
 This the lone hearts that miss him, show 
 Better than storied marble can.
 
 XVI. LITERARY TRAITS AND ESTIMATES 
 
 Mr. Flint did not expect to win an enduring fame 
 by means of his writings. He knew too well the fate 
 of the many masterful minds and true geniuses, of his 
 own and other days, to hope that he would escape the 
 almost universal doom of being soon forgotten. On 
 this point he moralizes when he is reviewing the nov- 
 els of Charles Brockden Brown.*'" Mr. Flint felt 
 himself in close sympathy w4th Mr. Brown at many 
 points. They were alike "blighted by the mildews of 
 disease almost from birth." Mr. Brown, too, was 
 compelled to write for his daily bread, incessantly 
 until his fragile frame was worn out. He had reached 
 what Flint held as his ideal : deep feeling, powerful 
 moral painting, laying open the recesses of the heart. 
 
 While Timothy Flint did not think he would be 
 remembered as a litterateur, he thought he was pre- 
 serving matters of interest for the future historian. 
 In the advertisement to the Western Monthly 2?^- 
 view*^'' he says: 
 
 We can easily enjoy in anticipation, the eagerness, with which 
 the future historian will repair to them, as a synopsis, of most 
 of what has been said, and written, in the Western Country, 
 touching its own natural, moral, and civil history. 
 
 '*'*^ American novelist, 1771-1810. See Flint's article in tVestern Monthly 
 Revienv, vol. i, 483-494- 
 *i^ Vol. i, p. iii.
 
 250 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 Professor Henry A. Beers ^"* says : 
 
 That Flint had a glimmering sense of what fiction might some 
 day accomplish as a real contribution to sociology, is indicated 
 on page 148, volume ii, of Arthur Clenning: "A fair history 
 of the society of a country village [would be a thousand times 
 more interesting than a novel ; and besides the interest of the 
 picture, it would be one of the most useful views of society that 
 can be presented. But taste has not yet matured sufficiently to 
 relish such a picture, and, perhaps, the historian does not yet 
 exist who has the requisite discrimination and felicity to draw 
 it!] 
 
 In George Mason the moral purpose is always in 
 evidence often to the detriment of art in the story. He 
 often stops to point out the moral, to preach and to 
 exhort. The "genuine American" motto, *'Don't give 
 up the ship," is often brought in though it must be 
 dragged in bodily. It is in this book that he says : 
 
 I write for the young, the poor, and the desolate; and the 
 moral maxim which I wish to inculcate is, that we ought never 
 to despond either in our religious or our temporal trials. 
 
 In this work he is concerned with "the short and 
 simple annals of the poor" because nine in ten of the 
 human race are of that class."" 
 
 But Mr. Flint is not always or only utilitarian in 
 his writings. He values literature for its civilizing 
 and ennobling powers. It is worthy of culture 
 simply as an art. One of his chief regrets expressed 
 in a number of articles on the subject and notably in 
 the series published in the Athetiaum,'^^^ is, that liter- 
 ature is in such a low state in the country. He re- 
 
 *^^ Letter of Henn- A. Beers, Dec. 12, 1907, in Library of Harvard Uni- 
 versit>'. 
 
 ^i** Flint, Timothy. George Mason, 3, 4. 
 420 Volume for 1835.
 
 LITERARY TRAITS AND ESTIMATES 251 
 
 grets that people are so absorbed in business and poli- 
 tics, that there is almost no time left for encouraging 
 the high and necessary art of the literary worker. He 
 lamented the lack of taste in the reading public, and 
 all that tends to degrade it among publishers and re- 
 viewers. He thought one of the greatest weaknesses 
 of the American literary world was that it had not cut 
 loose from its English models and bid defiance to the 
 pride and conceit of the English world of letters. At 
 this point he shows, as on many other occasions, his 
 dislike of things English. He would turn from Eng- 
 land to the continent for ideals and inspiration. For 
 himself, he goes to the French but he sees that Ger- 
 many is to be, and already is, the leader in the search 
 for truth and in cosmopolitan scholarship.*'^ He was 
 much interested in, and hopeful concerning, the be- 
 ginning that was being made by a little group of Har- 
 vard men to introduce the German thought and liter- 
 ature into the United States. It promised well for a 
 new and worthy school in America. 
 Mr. Griswold says: 
 
 Flint was compelled to write constantly and rapidly, and to 
 print without revision. *-- 
 
 This may well be true. His letters are as accurate 
 as his printed page. And lack of finish is one of the 
 greatest evils of the page, and the story as well. There 
 are so many obvious faults, in plot, sentences, and even 
 in use of words, that one often regrets that he did not 
 spend more time in the revising of his work. At such 
 times new regrets arise, that the revised copies of his 
 
 1 
 
 *-^ f Western Monthly Rfvieiv, vol. iii, 267, 278. 
 
 *22 Griswold, Rufus W. Prose IVriters of America, 153.
 
 TLMOTHY FLINT 
 
 principal works which Doctor Flint mentions,"'^ are 
 not thus far discovered. 
 
 Of one common fault, Mr. Flint pleads that he is 
 not guilty in any way that it is possible to avoid, that 
 of deliberately emptying other people's books into 
 his own. No one is disposed to charge him with this 
 fault. He was quite free, however, to pour his own 
 books into each other. This is notably true in the 
 Geography and History as depending on long pass- 
 ages from the Recollections. The Indian Wars is lit- 
 tle more than a compilation from the Geography and 
 History. Many paragraphs and pages in succession 
 are carried over without other changes than those 
 made by the printer. This is not true in the case of 
 Daniel Boone. The same scenes and incidents which 
 occur in the earlier work are here entirely rewritten. 
 In his stories he often takes a page or two of descrip- 
 tion, or an incident, from the inexhaustible Geog- 
 raphy and History, and this work supplies material 
 also for the Review. He makes a generous use of his 
 son Micah's poetry in his stories, notably in the Sho- 
 shonee Valley. There is in this story a curious adap- 
 tation of one of Micah's poems. "Frederick" stand- 
 ing on the Chinese shore and gazing out into the sea 
 where a few leagues away the beloved "Jessy" had 
 disappeared into the depths, recites a few lines that 
 have a familiar sound for they recall the lines of Mi- 
 cah P. Flint. In truth three verses of Micah's "Lines, 
 on Passing the Grave of my Sister" have been adapted 
 by the father and put into Frederick's mouth. *^* 
 
 *-^ Encyclopedia Americana: Supplementary Volume. 
 424 Flint, Timothy. Shoshonee Valley, vol. ii, 262; JVesiern Monthly 
 Review, vol. i, 652, 653.
 
 LITERARY TRAITS AND ESTIMATES 253 
 
 Dullness never appeared to Mr. Flint as dignity. 
 He chose always the language of the heart. To be 
 prosy or dull seemed to him almost a sin to be ranked 
 with dishonesty. The Britannica s^Lys: "His style 
 was vivid, plain, forcible, and his matter always in- 
 teresting." Of his style in writing and speaking Mr. 
 Flint says upon one occasion, "We admit ourselves, 
 that we have a pernicious attachment to ornamented 
 speech." ''^^ 
 
 Professor Henry A. Beers, when writing his life of 
 Nathaniel Parker Willis, about 1885,*'" had occasion 
 to examine Mr. Flint's articles on "Sketches of the 
 Literature of the United States," in the Athenceum in 
 1835, as they were related to similar articles of Mr. 
 Willis published in the same volume of the AthencBiim. 
 About Mr. Flint's articles, Professor Beers remarks 
 that they amply made up in heaviness any want of 
 ballast in Willis. He thought them full of general 
 views which if not correct, were harmless because un- 
 readable. Professor Beers says of Arthur denning^ 
 however, that it is by no means without merit: 
 
 It has imagination and enough imaginative art to secure 
 interest. Ecce Signum - 1 have read it through, and so have 
 two other members of my family - a feat not always possible in 
 the case of a modern novel of much greater pretensions.*^'^ 
 
 This feat is the more striking when it is known that 
 it was accomplished in two days' time, and the story 
 has about the same number of words as the average 
 modern novel. 
 
 Mr. Venable thinks there was never a more delight- 
 
 *-^ JVestern Monthly Revieia, vol, i, 749. 
 
 *28 Beers, Henry A. Nathaniel Parker Willis, 217. 
 
 *27 Letter, Dec. 12, 1907.
 
 254 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 ful book of the kind written than the Recollections. 
 He says : 
 
 A more original book it would be impossible to conceive of. 
 In fact, it seems not to be a book, but a familiar talk - a picture 
 from nature; a man revealing himself to the sympathetic world 
 with unconscious and complete candor, confidence and enthu- 
 siasm.*-* 
 
 He thinks the novels, especially Francis Berrian^ 
 racy and readable to this day. 
 
 Mr. Gallagher thought this first novel of Mr. 
 Flint worth, for its descriptions alone, a score of the 
 English novels that were being reprinted every day in 
 this country. The fact that Mr. Gallagher wrote 
 about Mr. Flint and his work while Mr. Flint still 
 lived in Cincinnati, and the considerable measure of 
 success that he himself had in the literary field, make 
 his remarks and estimates of unusual value. Al- 
 though he was an ardent admirer of Mr. Flint and 
 had read his Recollections, the Geography and His- 
 tory and Francis Berrian again and again, and hoped 
 to read them yet more, and while he read he had no 
 thought of time, he was not blind to the faults. He 
 was free also to speak of them.^^^ He thought his 
 friend's style was in defiance of the schools, obnoxious 
 to criticism, but of great force and often much beauty. 
 He says : 
 
 Disdaining the trammels which the masters would impose on 
 him, he soars into the regions of poetry. Consequently he for- 
 gets not infrequently, that there is such a thing in composition 
 as ending a sentence. 
 
 This highly poetic style, Mr. Gallagher thought, 
 
 428 Venable, William H., Beginnings of Literary Culture in the Ohio 
 Valley, 358. 
 
 ■*"^ Cincinnati Mirror, vol. iii, 36, 37.
 
 LITERARY TRAITS AND ESTIMATES 255 
 
 was hardly suitable for scientific works. He had 
 himself found it a great annoyance. It was too inter- 
 esting to be useful. In looking for facts in the pages 
 of the Geography and History one forgot his quest or 
 having found the facts he forgot himself and went on 
 and on in the thrilling narrative. Mr. Gallagher did 
 not know of Flint's equal in the English language, in 
 descriptive writing. Of this power he says, he would 
 feast his eye upon some scene of beauty, to him of sur- 
 passing loveliness, seize his pen -the divine afflatus 
 upon him -and page after page would soon be glow- 
 ing with the eloquence and fervency of his nature.*^" 
 
 Mr. Gallagher thought carelessness and volumi- 
 nous writing was Mr. Flint's greatest weakness. In 
 the latter part of the Cincinnati period, when Mr. 
 Gallagher was writing of him as the first man in the 
 western group of writers -"a group only ten years be- 
 hind the Atlantic circles"- Mr. Flint was very pro- 
 ductive and seemed to his friend, not to be adding to 
 his fame. "Capability," Mr. Gallagher thought, 
 was the one word that summed up and described Mr. 
 Flint's mental traits. He says: 
 
 Besides John Neal, there is no one who can produce in a 
 certain time, so manj' volumes on so manj' subjects, and gen- 
 erally so well executed, as Timothy Flint.*^^ 
 
 Mr. Flint's style both accounts for his interest in 
 French literature, and is itself accounted for by the 
 influence of that literature. His interest in French 
 writers was so strong toward the close of his literary 
 career, that he did little more than translate and com- 
 ment upon the works of the men that most interested 
 him. This was not a late interest, however, for he 
 
 *2° Cincinnati Mirror, vol. iii, 36. *3i — Idem.
 
 256 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 tells that in college he was a student of French writers. 
 There is no doubt that one of the reasons for the fail- 
 ure of his magazine was that he lived too much in 
 European, and especially in French literature and 
 history. In this, as in his missionary work, and his 
 religious views, he was in advance of his age so far that 
 they left him alone or only threw stones after him. 
 His translations from the Genie du Christianisme had 
 been "cradled" in many papers but not credited to 
 him.*^== 
 
 Perhaps the most extensive work that Mr. Flint ever 
 undertook was that upon which he was engaged in 
 the early part of 1830, the translation of the Diction- 
 aire Historique, ou Biographie Universelle Classique. 
 Upon the basis of this and the work of Lempriere, he 
 proposed to construct an American Biographical 
 Dictionary. Upon the translation he had his oldest 
 daughter's help. In April, 1830, he had made a 
 good beginning of six hundred manuscript pages and 
 had gotten well along with the b's. In June he had 
 gotten on to "D'JENGUYS." The translations were 
 probably finished, but whether the American Bio- 
 graphical Dictionary was completed there are no 
 means of knowing. The closing article in the last 
 number of the Review is a translation from the Dic- 
 tionaire Historique d'Education, which he had been 
 admiring a few months earlier and wishing some com- 
 petent translator would undertake to put into Eng- 
 lish."^ 
 
 Some of the estimates that were made of Mr. Flint's 
 
 432 Jf^estern Monthly Revieiv, vol. iii, 534. 
 
 *33 — Idem, vol. iii, 534, 582, 663, also 587, 666.
 
 LITERARY TRAITS AND ESTIMATES 257 
 
 literary work by his contemporaries may be further 
 noted. N, P. Willis, in his American Monthly Mag- 
 azine*^^ for 1829, spoke strongly of the value of Mr. 
 Flint's magazine and historical work as contributions 
 to the knowledge of the west, and mentioned the Sho- 
 shonee Valley as showing the influence of the white 
 people upon the Indians. In the Athenceum^^^ Mr. 
 Willis said, that he was really a man of talent, and that 
 Francis Berrian was his best work. The New York 
 Observer *^^ said that he ranked among the more dis- 
 tinguished writers of the country. His classmate, 
 Samuel Swett, said: 
 
 Mr. Flint was one of the most distinguished of our literary 
 characters, especially at the west. 
 
 His Recollections^ Swett thought was to be an ever- 
 lasting monument to his fame.*" 
 
 William Cullen Bryant made a very favorable re- 
 view of the first edition of the Geography and History 
 in the New York Evening Post. Mr. Flint says of 
 this notice (no copy of which has been found) , "If any 
 one were not proud, he would be more or less than 
 man.""« 
 
 Griswold said. 
 
 It [the Geography and Historyl was at that time the most 
 important contribution which had been made to American 
 geography, and, with the Recollections, it embraces the most 
 graphic and faithful descriptions of the scenery and physical as- 
 pect of the western states that has ever yet been written.^^^ 
 
 "*Vol. i, 75. 
 
 *35 Vol. for 1835, no. 375, 12. 
 
 436 Vol. xviii, 139. 
 
 *^'' Christian Register, vol. xix, 138. 
 
 *^^ Flint, Timothy. History and Geography, p. xiii. 
 
 *^^ Griswold, op. cit., 152.
 
 258 TLVIOTHY FLINT 
 
 Henry T. Tuckerman "" speaks of Flint as exten- 
 sively read, widely beloved, as at home in the wilder- 
 ness, a favorite in society, the peculiar value of his 
 writings being that they evince not a cursory survey of 
 regions described but of years of residence. Besides 
 this intimate contact with men and countries he had 
 the power of patient observation. Tuckerman believed 
 that Flint's books would often be consulted by subse- 
 quent writers. 
 
 The New York Co7?i7nercial -quoted by Mr. Gal- 
 lagher in his iVf/rror^"^- thinks the Geography and 
 History, and the Recollections the most valuable con- 
 tributions that industry and research have ever pro- 
 duced for the making known of the western interior. 
 Mr. Flint is, this critic thinks, one of the most excellent 
 writers that the country has produced, and belongs to 
 that very rare class in the country, "authors or littera- 
 teurs." He says also that Mr. Flint is almost as ver- 
 satile as Goldsmith, that he is distinguished as a 
 novelist, naturalist, geologist, geographer, and essay- 
 ist. His ethical productions seem to this writer to 
 show a mind strong and cultivated, a judgment un- 
 warped and sound, with a sense of religion of the most 
 purifying influence. This writer's only lament is that 
 Mr. Flint has not been more widely appreciated. 
 
 Mrs. Trollope thinks no better of America's liter- 
 ature than of her other characteristics, but she has a 
 good word for Mr. Flint. She says: 
 
 Mr. Flint's Francis Berrian is delightful. There Is a vigor 
 and freshness in his writing that is exactly in accordance with 
 
 ^■^'^ America and Her Comrnenlntors. jr'itli a Critical Skefc/i of Travel 
 in the United States, 402, 404. 
 
 ■**! Cincinnati Mirror, vcl. iii, 444.
 
 LITERARY TRAITS AND ESTIMATES 259 
 
 what one looks for in the literature of a new country ; and yet, 
 strange to say, is exactly what is most wanting in that of Amer- 
 ica. . . His History of the Mississippi Valley is a work of 
 great interest and information, and will, I hope, in time find its 
 way to England, where I think it is much more likely to be ap- 
 preciated than in America.*'- 
 
 The United States Literary Gazette*'" of Boston for 
 May 15, 1826, gives a dozen pages of quotations from 
 the Recollections. The reviewer makes few remarks 
 about the work except that it is by one very competent 
 to write and not of the common class of tourists. It 
 is, he thinks, a very important subject upon which the 
 older section of the country needs to be accurately and 
 fully informed, and he quotes fully for the benefit of 
 those who may not see the book. 
 
 The Southern Review*** gives an extended review 
 of the Recollections. The reviewer has carefully read 
 the work, and gives a very accurate itinerary of Mr. 
 Flint's journeyings, which can not be made out without 
 careful reading and rereading. With the quotations 
 and synopsis given in this review, we have a very good 
 presentation of the whole work. But even then the 
 reviewer says : 
 
 When we look back on what we are compelled to omit, we 
 can not but feel regret. We feel sorrow at closing the volume 
 and bidding our friend adieu, and can not refrain from sincerely 
 wishing him a re-establishment of his health, and a long life of 
 happiness and utility in the bosom of his amiable family. 
 
 Concerning the character of this "Presbyterian 
 
 Minister from New England," this writer says : 
 
 He Is, evidently, a man of sound observation, of liberal prin- 
 
 ^'t^ Trollope, Mrs., op. cit., vol. ii, 155. 
 **^' Vol. iv, 133-146. 
 4** Vol. ii, 192-216.
 
 26o TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 ciples, of engaging simplicity, pure benevolence, and unaffected 
 piety. . . Though a man of education, he does not appear 
 to be one of science ; or if so, he has carefully avoided displaying it. 
 
 This man is very much pleased with Mr. Flint's 
 unprejudiced views on the slavery question, and with 
 his advice to the people of the north against the polit- 
 ical agitation and abuse of the question. 
 
 The A^nerican Monthly Review**^ devotes eight 
 pages to a review of Flint's History and Geography. 
 The reviewer is occupied with pointing out the errors 
 of fact, or supposed errors, the infelicities of the lan- 
 guage and the absurdities of certain statements. Some 
 of these charges are true. Mr. Flint is not always 
 clear in his statements. Some of his statements are 
 far too general when they should have been definite. 
 In other cases, it is probable that Mr. Flint knew of 
 what he was speaking better than the reviewer. For 
 instance, the reviewer states that Mr. Birkbeck had 
 nothing to do with Mr. Flower's founding of Al- 
 bion, Illinois. He seems to be ignorant of the fact 
 that Mr. Flower and Mr. Birkbeck bought a tract 
 of land together, divided it by lot and labored to- 
 gether for the building up of the settlement on the 
 English Prairie where both Albion and Wanborough 
 were located."'' 
 
 The editor of the Knickerbocker^ probably Charles 
 Fenno Hofifman,"^ was an admirer of Flint. In 
 March, 1833, he gives six pages of the translation of 
 Droz's Art of Being Happy. He speaks of the trans- 
 
 4« Vol. iv, 460-468. 
 
 ^*^ See Thwaitcs's Early Western Travels, vol. ix, 71, note ; vol. x, 47, 
 note, 271, 272. 
 
 **'^ Knickerbocker, vol. ii, no; vol. iii, 320.
 
 LITERARY TRAITS AND ESTIMATES 261 
 
 lator as, our eloquent countryman. In the same vol- 
 ume he reviews the Lectures upon Natural History. 
 He says: 
 
 The name of Mr. Flint begins to be well known to his 
 countrymen as that of one of the very best of our native writers. 
 
 He approves of the aim of the book and speaks of 
 the style as, "like all of the writings of the author, flow- 
 ing, warm and animated.""^ 
 
 On the other hand is the American Monthly Re- 
 view "^ which had to read the same Lectures with "our 
 smelling bottle in hand." It was not from fear of the 
 cholera, nor from the bad odor arising from the book, 
 nor yet from a proneness to fainting, but 
 
 To prevent heart sinking, we were obliged to stimulate our 
 nasal extremity, while we read. . , Such continued deep 
 plowing of our sensibilities, such delectable outpouring of waters 
 of pathos, such wild visions of fancy, hanging round grave and 
 solemn preaching, like mistletoe on an oak, such snuffs, mere 
 finger pinches of philosophy, mingled with wholesale absurdities, 
 were altogether too much for our poor, mechanical, straightfor- 
 ward humanity. We trust there are natures to which this 
 book will be like mother's milk, natural food. 
 
 It is the high sounding title of the work and its very 
 general and popular character which seems to be most 
 offensive to the editor of the American Monthly Re- 
 view. The title of the book is a mere bait, he thinks. 
 It is not fair because it does not say that important lec- 
 tures are translations. The editor has not time to 
 point them out but he warns the reader that the book is 
 full of errors. It has great honesty of purpose united 
 with great credulity. The credulity is that of poetry, 
 
 **^ Knickerbocker, vol. i, 140-146, and 193, 194. 
 4*9 Vol. iii, 261.
 
 262 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 and altogether too credulous for natural history. The 
 reviewer says: 
 
 Hence it is that furies with snaky hair, no longer people the 
 regions of imagination, but under our author's hand would 
 become every day sort of folk. He tells us that he has actually 
 seen a hair - plucked from the living horse, and thrown into a 
 trough of water, exposed to the genial rays of a warm sun, turn 
 to a living snake.*^" 
 
 The editor thinks that Mr. Flint has destroyed a 
 beautiful fable by believing it a fact. 
 
 Still, with all his exuberance and wildness . . . Mr. 
 Flint has made a useful book. Its object is noble. Even with 
 all his faults, his inflated style, and all its puerilities and gross 
 inaccuracies the book has many redeeming virtues, and for the 
 hour is a pleasant companion. 
 
 But it is vain to look for a little appreciation of the 
 work. The reviewer is of]f again upon his old way of 
 ridicule: 
 
 There is no system, and the author pretends to none. 
 
 You are not led softly into the realms of mystery 
 but: 
 
 You are seized by the collar, and pitched heels over head into 
 the fathomless ocean of science. As j'ou scramble ashore all 
 dripping and covered with sea-weed, the author again grasps you 
 and introduces you to some great picture. 
 
 ■'"'O American Monthly Revieiv, vol. iii, 264. This reference is to page 49 
 of the Lectures and is as follows: "I have observed an analogous fact, apper- 
 taining to another branch of natural history. I heard the fact asserted and 
 denied, and I made the trial myself. A long black hair from a horse's mane 
 was left in a wooden trough, to soak in rain water, during tlie sultry dajs of 
 August, for ten or twelve days. At the end of that time it had become 
 ■white, and had acquired a protuberance at one extremity', like a head. It 
 moved about, folded and unfolded itself, showed sensibility when touched, 
 and had become in fact that singular animal, of which naturalists, as far 
 as I know, have taken no notice ; but Avhich farmers know well by the name 
 hair-snake."
 
 LITERARY TRAITS AND ESTIMATES 263 
 
 Again and more fairly: 
 
 This is the great fault of the book before us ; there is a want 
 of impressive distinctness. . , It is truly to be lamented that 
 one who knows so well how to color and embody with life such 
 facts, should allow his imagination to usurp the throne of his 
 judgment. 
 
 The Style of this reviewer is that of the smart news- 
 paper paragrapher and there appears to be a personal 
 dislike of Mr. Flint. But he has pointed out the evi- 
 dent weaknesses of the author. His suggestion that 
 Mr. Flint might honor his former profession, the 
 ministry, by thinking more and writing less, is of 
 course unkind, but it is none the less true. 
 
 The London Quarterly Review *^"^ for 1832, gives 
 twenty pages to a review of the Recollections. Most 
 of this is in fine print, quoting from Mr. Flint's work. 
 It is for the most part favorable, but the reviewer has 
 not read the work closely enough to follow Mr. Flint's 
 movements. He thinks that Mr. Flint lived longest 
 at Jackson, Missouri, and that he made one visit to 
 New England during the first ten years of his western 
 residence. The impression of the reviewer concern- 
 ing the work as a whole is worth notice. He says: 
 
 We wish Mr. Timothy Flint had fallen in our way before 
 we drew up our account of Mrs. Trollope On the Domestic 
 Manners of the Americans, because the tw-o writers travel over 
 much of the same ground, and the contrasts as well as the paral- 
 lels, which their descriptions of nature and society present, are full 
 of interest. Having lost the opportunity of presenting them 
 together -we must be contented with expressing our hope that 
 these Recollections may be reprinted in this country, and placed 
 in every library of voyages and travels, on the same shelf with 
 
 ^5^ Vol. xlviii, 201-222.
 
 264 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 those two little volumes which seem to have proved such bitter 
 chewing to our Radicals and Whi^s. With obvious faults, Mr. 
 Flint's style is marked by countervailing excellencies, being lively, 
 flowing, often vigorous, and, in general, quite unaffected ; but this 
 is a secondary merit. These pages reflect a sincere, humane, and 
 liberal character, a warm and gentle heart and hardly even a 
 prejudice that is not amiable. 
 
 The reviewer is in full sympathy with Mr. Flint 
 except that he is "pulled up" by the unfavorable com- 
 parison of the present European nations with the an- 
 cient people of America known as Moundbuilders. 
 
 Of such poor bigotry, based on such solid ignorance, we should 
 never have expected to discover a specimen in the same book with 
 the beautiful passages we have been quoting. Here, however, 
 J is the Yankee mark. 
 
 ' The North American Review for October, 1826/" 
 
 I in reviewing the Recollections says : 
 
 I This volume has been perused by us with great pleasure, and 
 
 I with much respect for the writer's talents and character. We 
 
 / have risen from it, indeed, with a stronger sympathy, than we 
 
 I should wish to have occasion to feel with the author in the hard- 
 
 ships and sufferings endured by him and his family; with more 
 vivid conceptions than we before possessed, of the peculiar aspects 
 of the grand and beautiful features of the country he describes; 
 with more enlarged views of its natural resources, of the extent 
 and progress of its population ; and with more favorable impres- 
 sions of the general character of our fellow citizens of those vast 
 and fertile regions, that border upon the Mississippi, and its 
 mighty tributary streams from the east and the west. 
 
 Mr. Flint is not one of the common herd of travel writers 
 and journal makers "who" as he remarks, "travel post or are 
 wafted through a country in a steamboat, and assume, on the 
 ground of having thus traversed it, to know all about it." ^'^^ 
 
 *52 Vol. xxiii, 355-368. ^^^ — Idem, 357.
 
 LITERARY TRAITS AND ESTIMATES 265 
 
 Still more to the purpose the reviewer thinks, is the 
 fact that Mr. Flint's 
 
 Intellectual, moral, and literary qualifications fitted him to 
 avail himself of these advantages, and to impart attractions and 
 an interest to his narrative, which such qualifications only can 
 impart to a work of this kind. He unites properties which do 
 not often meet in the same mind, a capacity for discriminating 
 and philosophic observation, a true tact and common sense logic, 
 with the imagination, feeling, and romantic sentiment of the 
 poet and novelist. . . His deep and vivid sympathy with the 
 varying aspects of the physical universe, which opened to his 
 view in the Western world, gives to his narrative one of its most 
 peculiar and engaging features. There is a truth, a distinctness, 
 a graphic fidelity in his descriptions, which make the reader feel 
 himself to be a present spectator of the objects and occurrences 
 he describes. . . As he feels strongly and deeply, he heightens, 
 no doubt, by the coloring of his imagination, the hues of the gay 
 or sad vicissitudes which befell him. Yet there is an air of good 
 faith and reality in what he relates, which convinces us, that we 
 may listen to him with the confidence, with which a man, at his 
 fireside, receives the communications of a friend of tried integrity, 
 telling the tale of his eventful wanderings and various fortunes 
 after an absence of many years.*^*. . It has the peculiar charm 
 of an autobiography, written by a man of cultured intellect, dis- 
 closing his thoughts and the hidden workings of his soul, under 
 various novel circumstances. . . The reflections are often orig- 
 inal and sensible, and indicate a mind accustomed to hold "large 
 discourse, looking before and after," and rich in its own re- 
 sources. 
 
 In the closing paragraph of this review, the faults 
 are pointed out. The reviewer does not mean to be 
 unjust, and is not, when he says : 
 
 An obvious fault in this work is the confusion, which the read- 
 er experiences in its perusal, arising from the circumstance, that 
 the author seems sometimes to be writing at Alexandria, some- 
 
 ^^* North American Revieiv, vol. xxiii, 358.
 
 266 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 times in New England, and at other times it is difficult to con- 
 jecture where. Instances of repetition in thought and language 
 frequently occur. The same word is often repeated ungrace- 
 fully in the same sentence, where a synonym would save the 
 awkwardness, and express the sense equally well. The thread- 
 bare quotation, "longing, lingering look behind," comes upon 
 us something like a half dozen times. Many parts of the work 
 bear evident marks of haste in the composition. We notice these, 
 not as flagrant faults, but as blemishes, which a little more atten- 
 tion, or careful revision would have prevented. 
 
 This review makes extensive quotations from the 
 w^ork and is perhaps the best of the several that were 
 written. 
 
 The North American Review did not soon forget 
 Mr. Flint. It occasionally referred to him for several 
 years after his retirement. In July, 1 836, it said : 
 
 Flint's Ten Years' Residence is one of our few genuine na- 
 tional works. It could have been written nowhere but in the 
 Western Valley. It could have been written by no one, whose 
 mind had not been moulded by a constant contact with western 
 scenery and people. 
 
 The reviewer was speaking of another writer's work 
 in lines similar to those of Mr. Flint. This writer 
 seems to have criticised Flint's work as a failure. The 
 Review remarks: 
 
 He will have adJed to his already well-earned fame, when 
 he shall have produced such a "failure" as Mr. Flint's Ten Years 
 Residence in the Mississippi Valley. *^^ 
 
 ^'^s Vol. xliii, 2.
 
 XVII. PERSONAL AND RELIGIOUS 
 CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 It seems fitting that a few of Mr. Flint's friends and 
 critics should be heard from as they bear witness con- 
 cerning his personal and religious life. 
 
 In forming any estimate of his life it must always be 
 kept in mind that Timothy Flint was in poor health, 
 often an invalid, for at least two thirds of his three 
 score years. He belonged to that choice company of 
 the world heroes and heroines who carry their own 
 and often their brother's burden, while suffering from 
 pain and disease. That he did his full share of work 
 in the world, invalid though he was, is evident when 
 one turns through the two thousand pages of the Re- 
 view which was almost exclusively his own work,^^^ 
 and that was but a small part of his literary work dur- 
 ing the three years of its publication. 
 
 Mr. W. D. Gallagher said: "He writes as he 
 talks- rapidly, eloquently, poetically, carelessly." 
 Mr. Gallagher, as has been said, was a close friend of 
 Mr. Flint and admired him greatly. In 1835 ^^ ^^^~ 
 
 '^^^ N. P. Willis is clearly mistaken in thinking that Mrs. Trollope did 
 any extensive writing for the IVestern Monthly Revieav. There are no 
 signed articles by her and nothing to show that she wrote anything. Others 
 seem to have the same idea as Mr. Willis in this matter. Mr. Gallagher in 
 the Mirror (vol. iii, 37), says Flint wrote three fourths of the Revieiu him- 
 self.* This appears to be a just estimate.
 
 268 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 icated to him a little volume of poems, Erato Number 
 Oner' 
 
 IMr. Flint was a man who made many devoted 
 friends and a few bitter enemies. There is a freshness, 
 a fullness and vitality, a personal charm about the man 
 which strikes even the modern reader strongly. This 
 is noticeable in the opening pages of his magazine. 
 Modern readers feel also the personal charm of the 
 man in his novels and other writings. 
 
 Mr. Willis was so charmed with the spirit which 
 Mr. Flint had shown in making a correction concern- 
 ing a previous statement about Mr. Willis's mag- 
 azine, that he says, "Now could we walk to Ohio 'to 
 kiss the hand of that man'." He had not met with 
 such cordial sympathy since he left his college class."^ 
 
 It was the charm of personal character, subtle and 
 elusive, but marked, that first attracted and induced 
 the writer to make an extended study of his life. This 
 impression has been made upon several friends, some 
 of literar}" tastes, and others, the casual novel reader, to 
 whom Mr. Flint's novels and Recollections were 
 loaned. This persistence of his influence and charm 
 will help to explain some of the warm expressions of 
 his contemporaries. 
 
 One of his most enthusiastic admirers was Mrs. 
 TroUope. Such a person's testimony regarding Mr. 
 Flint and his family is all the more striking because of 
 her usual attitude toward things American. *^^ She 
 says: 
 
 The most agreeable acquaintance I made in Cincinnati, and 
 
 *•"> Cincinnati Mirror, vol. iii, 36. Also, Knickerbocker, vol. v, 348-349. 
 ■*f'i American Monthly Magazine, vol. i, 358. 
 ^•'- See pages 212-215.
 
 CHARACTERISTICS 269 
 
 indeed one of the most talented men I ever met, was Mr. Flint, 
 the author of several extremely clever volumes, and the editor 
 of the Western Monthly Review. His conversational powers 
 are of the highest order: he is the only person I remember to 
 have known with first-rate powers of satire, and even of sarcasm, 
 whose kindness of nature and of manner remained perfectly unin- 
 jured. In some of his critical notices, there is a strength and 
 keenness second to nothing of the kind I have ever read. He is 
 a warm patriot, and so true-hearted an American that we could 
 not always be of the same opinion on all the subjects we discussed ; 
 but whether it were the force and brilliance of his language, his 
 genuine and manly sincerity of feeling, or his bland and gentle- 
 man-like manner that beguiled me, I know not, but certainly he 
 is the only American I ever listened to, whose unqualified praise 
 of his country did not appear to me somewhat over-strained and 
 ridiculous.^®^ 
 
 His classmate, Samuel Swett, says about him: 
 
 . . . Of ardent temperament, active, insatiable inquisitive- 
 ness, confident in his opinions and sanguine in his pursuits, inde- 
 fatigably studious, and well read in his profession and the auxil- 
 iary sciences and literature. . . He was himself an eloquent 
 companion, of inexhaustible information, infinite anecdote, sur- 
 charged with wit and humor, and, what is better, with good 
 humor. How his heart overflowed with human kindness, his 
 numerous troops of friends in every part of our country will 
 cordially attest.*^* 
 
 It was this friend who thought that Flint's western 
 experiences had effectually cured him of his unsophis- 
 ticated traits, and made him passionately fond of so- 
 ciety. 
 
 At the time of his death the Knickerbocker said : 
 He was a warm friend, an upright, independent and honorable 
 
 man and a true Christian.*®^ 
 
 ^^^XroUope, Mrs., op. cit., vol. i, 124. 
 ^•* Christian Register, vol. xix, 13S. 
 ^^^' Knickerbocker, vol. xvi, 364.
 
 270 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 In the land of his adoption, he is well remembered, 
 though he is almost forgotten in the land of his birth. 
 Descendants and friends remember him as an extreme- 
 ly attractive and lovable man, who combined with in- 
 tellectual culture and strength, great charm of man- 
 ners and personality, 
 
 Mr. F'lint probably did largely overcome his nat- 
 ural shrinking from the public. But he was always 
 somewhat, as he says : 
 
 Repulsed from the giddy, joyous throng 
 
 As one of other kind, in musing mood 
 
 I find me here alone, a pilgrim come 
 
 To view once more the final resting place 
 
 Of my forefathers, and the sounding pines 
 
 Still spread their dark green tassels to the breeze.**® 
 
 He was in the habit of walking in the woods at sun- 
 rise and again in the evening.*" He traversed the 
 streets but little.**'^ There was always something of 
 the recluse about him. He was very sensitive to 
 criticism, though he did not often reply to it.*^^ 
 
 But along with this brooding and silent nature, 
 shrinking from his kind, there was also an intense 
 interest in men. He delighted to study the "forest 
 walkers" and to show that the human nature which 
 was there, was a "correspondence -as the Sweden- 
 borgians say- of all, that was in Rome, or is in Pekin 
 or Petersburg, Paris, London, or Washington."*^" If 
 Flint's novels are not of the modern psychological 
 
 466 ffgstern Monthly Revieiv, vol. ii, 210. 
 
 **^ — Idem, vol. iii, 637, line 16 
 
 *®^ — Idem, vol. ii, 83, line 33. 
 
 **® — Idem, vol. i, Editor's Address, 9 ff., also 272-273. 
 
 *'o Flint, Timothy. Shoshonee Valley, vol. i, 17.
 
 CHARACTERISTICS 271 
 
 type, they show at least as much interest in the motives 
 of their people, as in the plot. This is true particu- 
 larly of the Shoshonee Valley and Francis Berrian. 
 
 Mr. Flint is interested in the eccentric doctor, who 
 proposed with bread pills and colored waters to "kick 
 calomel and fever out of doors." His theory rested 
 on the healing powers of nature and his practice was 
 to let the patient alone. Flint was half in favor of the 
 theory, but wholly interested in the doctor as a speci- 
 men of his tribe.*" 
 
 As another indication of his interest in character, it 
 is suggestive to remember that he had a large collec- 
 tion of autographs, as large, he thought, as any col- 
 lection in the country."' 
 
 Mr. Flint had a very lively interest in the frontiers- 
 man. He says of them : 
 
 There is a kind of moral sublimity in the contemplation of the 
 adventures and daring of such men. They read a lesson to 
 shrinking and effeminate spirits, to the men of soft hands and 
 fashionable h'fe. . . They tend to reinspire something of that 
 simplicity of manners, manly hardihood, and Spartan energy and 
 force of character, which formed so conspicuous a part of the 
 nature of the settlers of the western wilderness.*"" 
 
 Mr. Flint's most popular book Daniel Boone,*'* 
 judging by the fourteen different editions through 
 which it passed, shows this strong interest in the fron- 
 
 ■*^' JFestern Monthly Revieiv, vol. ii, i^6y\6-]. 
 
 ■*^- — Idem, vol. iii, 637, line 4. 
 
 ^^" Editor's preface to Pattie's Personal Narrtiti-vr, in Thwaites's Early 
 Western Travels, vol. xviii, 27. 
 
 *^* The popularity of Flint's Daniel Bonne is shown also by the fact that 
 it was copied by later writers. The North .Imerican Revieiv, vol. Ixii, 71, 
 says of the A dventiires of Daniel Boone, by the author of Uncle Phillip's 
 Conversations that it is taken almost entirely from Mr. Flint's v.orlc. Even 
 Flint's mathematical errors are copied.
 
 272 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 tiersman. The story of Oolemba and the Shoshonee 
 Valley are studies of Indian life as aflfected by the 
 white race. These red men and the frontiersman 
 were types of life that he knew well and most suc- 
 cessfully described. 
 
 Mr. Venable's remark about Timothy Flint's inter- 
 est in human nature, and his optimistic view in all 
 stages, is quite in point here : 
 
 Timothy seems never to have encountered other tlian amiable 
 people in his wanderings; French, Spanish, Dutch, German, Eng- 
 lish, half-breeds, full blood savages -all were amiable to him. 
 With equal hospitality of heart, he met Yankee traders, and 
 Kentucky boatmen, Canadian voyageurs, and Texas rangers.*^^ 
 
 Enough has been said during the progress of this 
 story about his love of nature, of his delight in the 
 wildest storm and the most terrific crashes of thunder, 
 and his interest in a great variety of nature's phenom- 
 ena. 
 
 Mr. Flint was often lifting the curtain of the future 
 and vv^ondering what would be, in the years to come. 
 The development of the Mississippi Valley, the in- 
 fluence of canals and railroads and the growth of our 
 institutions, are subjects with which he frequently 
 deals. One of the most curious articles that we have 
 from his pen, and not the least interesting, is an article 
 entitled, "Extracts from the Gazette of Oregon, 
 mouth of Columbia, July 5, 1900." In this article,*^^ 
 Mr. Flint attempts to put himself forward nearly three 
 quarters of a century, and write a Fourth of July edi- 
 torial for a daily paper published at an unknown city, 
 of one hundred thousand inhabitants, and fifty years 
 
 475 Venable, William H., op. cit., 346. 
 
 476 IfTestern Monthly Review, vol. i, 255-263.
 
 CHARACTERISTICS 273 
 
 of age, at the mouth of the Columbia River. One's 
 curiosity is to see how far he missed, and how near he 
 came to the conditions that existed when the year 1900 
 had arrived. There were he says, vast numbers of 
 Japanese and Chinese who could come from their own 
 land in seven days, but they were merchants and me- 
 chanics, devoted to their adopted land, celebrating the 
 national day, and loved and trusted by their native 
 American neighbors. Of the millions of people who 
 lived west of the Rocky Mountains, one half were 
 immigrants from China, Japan, and the islands of the 
 sea. This section of the great country, could compare 
 in culture, comforts, and wealth with the proudest 
 portion of the land. There were one hundred mil- 
 lions of people in the United States, united and strong, 
 courted by all the nations of the earth. 
 
 The Spanish Republics extended far to the north 
 as in the days before the Mexican War. They were 
 now populous and happy. Travel was so expedited 
 that the journey from the mouth of the Missouri via 
 river and canal, could be often made in less than 
 twenty days ! The journey across the continent was so 
 comfortable that a rich lady, who fancied herself an 
 invalid, had made the entire distance by river and 
 canal and had not once left her couch. Canals were 
 every^vhere common, even over the mountains. Bal- 
 loons were now traveling through the air, directed as 
 easily as skiffs in the water. Strange that he did not 
 foresee the railroad! 
 
 It is the age of petticoats and the "better half" of 
 the species. Woman has learned algebra, chemistry, 
 and all the list, including verse-making and man-gov-
 
 2 74 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 crning. She has thrown corsets, false curls, everlast- 
 ings and affectation to the fire and winds, and returned 
 to the graceful draperies of the Greeks. 
 
 In short, they have jjymnasticised and calfsthenized, and man- 
 aged, what with verses and pretty ways, and thrumming instru- 
 ments, and warbling songs, after the fashion of the nightingale, 
 and by seeming to be humble and good, until, aided by down 
 right muscle and physical power . . . they have carried the 
 point, that for the next century they shall legislate, decide the 
 causes, and fight the battles, allowing the men to lie upon their 
 oars, and to be put upon a probation of good behavior, in which, 
 if they come forth as gold, they may be allowed to take govern- 
 ing, turn about, every other century/"' 
 
 In morals there were still greater improvements. 
 The very boys in the street scout a miser. A profane 
 man is not admitted to good society'. A liar gets no 
 credit for the second lie. The people turn up their 
 noses at a babbler. Even the fairest woman if she at- 
 tempt to relate scandal, causes the people to rise from 
 the tea-table and fly as from the plague. Already 
 there has come to be a thousand churches of Christ in 
 China. There has just been a world meeting of all 
 Christian churches at the birth place of the Redeemer, 
 which separated, after recommending as "The motto 
 and formula of all Christians under heaven these 
 words: Glory to God in the highest; on earth peace 
 and good will to men.^^ ''* The article closes with an 
 amusing description of the manner in which "Miss 
 Emily Evergreen of the city of Oregon, aged seventy- 
 five years," was ground over and rejuvenated "by 
 transfusion of youthful blood into her veins.""" 
 
 *'''' Western Monthly Revieii; vol. i, 260. 
 *" _ Idem, 258. 
 479 — Ide?n, 261-263.
 
 CHARACTERISTICS 275 
 
 The questions of death and the future life were of 
 even more interest to Mr. Flint than these of the fu- 
 ture of the world's development. He said that when he 
 passed through a town, if he had time, he always vis- 
 ited the cemetery. In his notes to the Art of Being 
 Happy he returns repeatedly to the thought and expe- 
 riences of death and the hope of immortality. Mr. 
 Flint is not morbid at this point, but rises to the height 
 of St. Paul and the great Christian souls of all ages, in 
 his confidence of victory over death and the infinite 
 gain of the future life.*^" 
 
 Mr. Flint championed many reforms. He deliv- 
 ered some of his most telling blows against dueling.**^ 
 He organized and addressed temperance societies. 
 From many remarks that he makes we may judge that 
 he was himself a teetotaler and advocated this kind of 
 temperance as the only sure cure for a great evil.*^^ 
 He detested tobacco. 
 
 He was always strongly opposed to partisan politics. 
 Many of his keenest shafts were directed at the politi- 
 
 480 por a discussion of Immortality see Notes to the Art of Being Happy, 
 193-313, especially, 304-312. Here is a typical passage from page 311 of this 
 work: 
 
 "For myself I feel that I am immortal, and that these fellow sojourners, to 
 whom I have been attached by the affection of lonp; intimac}', and the recep- 
 tion of many and great kindnesses, will exist with me hereafter. I pretend 
 to conceive nothing, I wish to enquire nothing, about the mode, the place 
 and circumstances. I should as soon think of disturbing myself, bj' endeavor- 
 ing to conceive the ideas that might be imparted by a sixth sense. It is 
 suHicient that my heait declares, that a being who has seen this glorious 
 world, cherished these warm affections, entertained these illimitable aspira- 
 tions, felt these longings after immortality, indulged 'these thoughts, that 
 wander through eternity,' cannot have been doomed by Him, who gave 
 them, to have been quenched forever in annihilation. Even an illusion so 
 glorious would be worth purchasing at the price of a world." 
 
 481 Western Monthly Revieiv, vol. i, 453-461. 
 *8- — Idem, vol. ii, 79-97.
 
 27b TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 cians of his day/"^ He thought it a matter of deep 
 regret tliat all well bred persons did not banish poli- 
 tics as a subject of discussion while journeying, for: 
 
 What is it to a traveler, who of two stupid demagogues are 
 elected to congress, or who made the heaviest speech at a cau- 
 cus? *^* 
 
 He had little sympathy with radical and extremist 
 of any kind. He was not a Mason, but he disapproved 
 heartily of the anti-masonic excitement consequent 
 upon the Morgan episode, during the years 1826- 
 1828.*^= 
 
 Mr. Flint had much to say, and that in his most se- 
 rious vein, about slavery. In 1825, he said: "I have 
 never owned a slave, and I would to God, there had 
 never been one on earth." But he had seen the insti- 
 tution at close range. If he knew all of the evils con- 
 nected with it he knew also, all that could be said for 
 it. Moreover he had then warm friends, and soon 
 after sons, who owned large numbers of slaves. He 
 could see both sides of the question and was compelled 
 to say of the northern attitude: 
 
 But when I hear opinions that are expressed in your region, 
 and see the bitter influences of misrepresentation upon this sub- 
 ject, and read the intemperate and inflammatory productions of 
 the day, productions, which, I doubt not, are in many instances 
 got up merely for political purposes, I tremble, in contemplating 
 their probable influence upon public feeling at the South. ^®® 
 
 If there were space it would be a pleasure to say 
 much about Mr. Flint's family. James and Hubbard 
 were prosperous planters. James was one of the best 
 and most noted lawyers in the south, and had a very 
 
 483 ff^estern Monthly Rev., vol. ni, ^1 J. "^ — Idem, vol. iii, 169-181. 
 ■*^* — Idem, vol. ii, 196. *8^ Flint. Recollections, 341-348.
 
 CHARACTERISTICS 277 
 
 large and remunerative practise. He was an officer 
 in the Mexican War. He was a quiet and methodical 
 man. The yellow fever, after taking him, carried off, 
 in 1855, his wife and two of his children within a few 
 weeks.*" Hubbard was a painstaking and burden- 
 bearing man, the most religious one of the five. His 
 old slaves long prayed for "Massa Hubbard." Both of 
 these brothers lost their lives by the yellow fever, con- 
 tracted while nursing their black people during a 
 fever epidemic in 1853 -dying within a few weeks of 
 each other. Emeline and Martha died during the 
 Civil War. Mrs. E. H. Flint is said to have refused 
 one million dollars for her property shortly before 
 that time. All five had children except Emeline. 
 Micah's two sons died early. Two of James's four chil- 
 dren are living: Mrs. Emeline Flint Seip, Alexandria, 
 Louisiana and James Timothy Flint of Nashville, 
 Tennessee. The latter has three daughters but no 
 sons and the name of Timothy Flint passes with this 
 grandson. Mrs. Seip has four sons, approaching 
 manhood, two of whom bear the honored name of 
 Flint as given names. Mr. Flint's youngest daughter, 
 Martha, who became Mrs. McWaters, has one 
 daughter living, Mrs. E. A. Preston, Walla Walla, 
 Washington. She also has children, one of whom is 
 Mrs. Skinner of Galveston, Texas. There are still 
 other grandchildren of Mr. Flint living in the south. 
 Several of Mr. Flint's grandchildren have shown the 
 same active, nervous, and poetic nature that belonged 
 to their grandfather. The family traits are said to be 
 
 *^' For a biographical sketch of James Timothy Flint, see Alice Fortier's 
 Louisiana, vol. ii, 143 ff. Also, Fredric Seip's letter written from Alex- 
 andria, La., Jan. 10, 1910, in Library Harvard University.
 
 278 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 marked in them, and I have had many opportunities 
 through their correspondence and literary produc- 
 tions of knowing that some of the strong features of 
 the father are preserved by the children of the second 
 and third generation/"*- 
 
 Mr. Flint was a profoundly religious man. He 
 was deeply, genuinely Christian, in all his acts and 
 thoughts. Not alone his preaching, and his devoted 
 service upon the hardest of missionary fields, bear 
 witness to his religious life, but the great mass of his 
 writings are permeated with the spirit of piet>'. His 
 stories have confessedly a moral aim. All of his con- 
 temporaries, who speak of the religious side of his life, 
 bear w^itness to its warmth and depth. 
 
 In his family life, religion was not only regarded as 
 a matter of precept and practice, but as an institution. 
 There w^ere morning and evening prayers. On the 
 Sabbath there were special services, and sermons like 
 those of Paley were read by some member of the fam- 
 ily circle.*^^ His prayer, used in family worship, has 
 been preserved, in the Bibles of more than one of his 
 children.*®'' One of Flint's best poems, "The Being 
 of a God"*®' goes more deeply into his thought about 
 God than any of his prose. At the same time it is full 
 of faith and hope. 
 
 Timothy Flint was in full sympathy, and often in 
 hearty fellowship, with all Protestant sects in their 
 practical expressions and emotional experiences of re- 
 
 488 Several letters of Emeline Flint Seip, 1907-1910, in Boston Public 
 Librarj'. 
 
 4S9 Jfestern Mofit/ily Reviev:, vol. i, 747, line 46. 
 
 *»o See Appendix D. Also manuscript in Librar\, Harvard University 
 and in Library, Yale Universit}-. 
 
 *^i Western Monthly Revieii; vol. i, 528. Also Appendix E.
 
 CHARACTERISTICS 279 
 
 ligion. In these matters he was at one with the Ro- 
 man church itself. It was only when a sect became 
 exclusive and intolerant toward other Christians, that 
 Mr. Flint parted company with them. It is Francis 
 Berrian that appears to talk, but it is Mr. Flint's 
 notion when he says to the priest: 
 
 My heart subscribes to all your forms of prayer, neither am I 
 displeased with some of your imposing forms of worship.*"^ 
 
 Again in the Recollections he says there can be no 
 question about the revolting contradictions of the real 
 presence, the infallibility of the Pope, and other ad- 
 ditions of the dark ages, but their reverence for and 
 attachment to their church and ministry, unwilling- 
 ness to dispute about articles of faith, and their will- 
 ingness to sacrifice personal interests to the common 
 cause, might not be regarded by Protestants without 
 utility. He believed the Catholics were right in 
 thinking that theological disputations were ruinous in 
 their tendency, and that the multitudes never had, did 
 not then, and never would have, "an influential faith, 
 except it be an implicit one.""^ 
 
 He was in deep sympathy with the Episcopal 
 church in its marked tendency to put the emphasis 
 upon worship and work, and in its swinging away 
 from the "horrible and revolting doctrines of Calvin- 
 ism and Hopkinsianism" which make one shudder 
 even in the reading. He thought the spirits of Dodd- 
 ridge, Baxter, and Watts, with others of their kind, 
 had found a refuge in the Episcopal church, since 
 they had been driven from their gentle and beneficent 
 rule in the New England churches, by the tempest of 
 
 *^2 Flint, Timothy. Francis Berrian, vol. i, 217. 
 ■••'^ Flint. Recolltitions, 117, 118.
 
 28o TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 fierce and contending opinions then raging. But he 
 could not understand how the liberal views of the Gos- 
 pel which prevailed in the Episcopal communion, 
 could be made to agree with the thirty-nine articles. 
 When he came to the apostolic sanction of the Episco- 
 pacy, as established in the English church, he pro- 
 tested indignantly. He said : 
 
 It seems to us altogetlier the wrong time in the day, for a 
 man of calm, temperate and enlarged spirit of the author, to 
 come forward with the proposition, that the extL-rnal form of the 
 constitution and government of any church is of Divine appoint- 
 ment. 
 
 This he thought was descending to the common secta- 
 rian plane, and making claims which were equally 
 valueless whether made by the oldest or the newest 
 sect.""* It may be of interest as showing sectarian ten- 
 dencies to remark about the religious affiliations of 
 Mr. Flint's family. Near the close of his life they 
 were inclined to Unitarianism. James Timothy was 
 a Spiritualist and prepared a work in manuscript upon 
 this subject. The present generation -and those im- 
 mediately preceding them -are all Episcopalians, lib- 
 eral, and tolerant generally, in their opinions and prac- 
 tises of religion. They are still a strongly religious 
 family.*^' 
 
 Mr. Flint had seen the immense amount of good 
 that was done by the Methodists, "on the very skirts 
 of civilization, and among a peculiar race of people, 
 upon whom no other denomination of Christian min- 
 isters would be likely to operate." He admitted the 
 zeal, the affectionate spirit and the brotherly love, the 
 
 *9* H'estern Monthly Revieii; vol. ii, 386-389. 
 ■*®^ Letters of Mrs. Seip, 1907, 1908.
 
 CHARACTERISTICS 28 1 
 
 untiring and unshrinking purpose, and more than all, 
 the character of sentiment, tenderness, and bearing 
 that marked their worship. It united, too, he 
 thought, little as it had the credit for the union, "a 
 greater degree of liberality with its well known zeal, 
 than any other denomination, except the Liberal 
 Christians." But he aimed to be impartial. There 
 were things in the Methodist body that were foreign 
 to their true spirit, such as noise, groanings, clapping 
 of hands, stamping, shouting, and other parts of what 
 might be "called the manual exercise of the Methodist 
 worship." This, he says, was inconsistent with their 
 origin, culture, and the good sense of many of their 
 people."®** He protested against the use of their splen- 
 did esprit du corps for political and selfish ends. He 
 saw the danger there was in their covering up from 
 their own view and attempting to hide from the world, 
 some very common sins under the warm cloak of their 
 piety. This he exposed mercilessly in his picture of 
 the "Reverend Thomas S." and his dealings with a 
 wealthy young heiress committed to his care. This 
 man is presented as follows: 
 
 With religion always in his mouth, and enough of morals and 
 strictness to be always respectable; full of long and reiterated 
 observances, and apparently always having, as his phrase was, 
 the world under his feet; aiming always, too, in his religious 
 exercises at the feelings, placing much dependance upon frames 
 of mind, and considering the exaltation or the depression of feel- 
 ing, as the graduated marks of nearness to God, or distance from 
 him, it was no wonder that he gained an increased hold upon 
 the sensitive and thoughtful nature of his fair associate. There was 
 something imposing, too, in this assumed austerity of a young 
 498 Jf^estern Monthly Rcvieic, vol. ii, 476.
 
 282 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 and handsome man, something sublime in this apparent conquest 
 of all earthly affections.*^^ 
 
 Mr. Flint was naturally a Presbyterian but not a 
 Calvinist. He did not think that the New England 
 churches at the close of the Colonial period were Cal- 
 vinistic. He thought the men upon whom the min- 
 istry of that period had fed, Watts, Baxter, Doddridge 
 * and more than all Matthew Henry, were orthodox in 
 theory and heretical in practise -if their phrase and 
 term were Calvinistic, their life and practise were Ar- 
 minian/^* He thought they were little interested in 
 the Athanasian doctrine of the Trinity, and that if 
 they had been asked categorically if they believed in 
 the strict unity of the Deity they would have given but 
 one answer. Mr. Flint was a Presbyterian, as he con- 
 ceived that party to have been in the great days of 
 Puritan thought. He believed the Trinitarian party 
 in New England was sectarian and bigoted, that it was 
 pulling down the traditions and institutions of the 
 fathers."** He believed they were mocking the spirit 
 of the Pilgrims which they pretended to follow. 
 
 One of the leading characters, and the most clearly 
 drawn one in his Shoshonee Valley is Elder Wood, the 
 Baptist trapper missionary. His head is Calvinistic. 
 His sermons to the Indians are occasionally of the high 
 Calvinistic type. Upon such occasions the Indians 
 can make nothing of the elder's teaching. They easily 
 drive him into a corner. But they believe in the heart 
 and life of their preacher. With his theology he per- 
 plexed and repelled them. With his humanity and 
 religion he wins them. This character is a concrete 
 
 *^' Flint, Timothy. Francis Berrian, vol. ii, 281. 
 49S jyestern Monthly Rcvieiv, vol. iii, 369, 370. 
 *^^ — Idem; also vol. ii, 339-345.
 
 CHARACTERISTICS 283 
 
 expression of Mr. Flint's position in reference to Cal- 
 vinism and Presbyterianism. 
 
 So far as he followed the Unitarians of the early 
 Channing type, it was not only because he was very 
 closely related to them by strong early ties but because 
 he felt that they best preserved the spirit of the earlier 
 age and ministry, which he so much admired. It 
 seemed to him that there never had been a purer or 
 better ministry than that of New England a half cen- 
 tury before his time. Their "preaching was afifection- 
 ate, persuasive, mild, paternal." "°° It was a time 
 when. 
 
 Religion was understood to be a matter of practise and good 
 feeling; and the theories by which good men became religious, 
 were little investigated, the people being more concerned to gather 
 the good fruits, than to search out the elementary principles of 
 its origin and development.^"^ 
 
 The Unitarian party- Flint called it the "Liberal 
 Christian" party- appeared to him to adhere most 
 strictly to the simple covenants of the fathers and to 
 avoid the dogma of Calvinism or other isms. It ap- 
 peared to him, as it may easily appear to the present 
 day student of those times, that the Unitarian party 
 taken as a whole was the most tolerant, and undog- 
 matic body of the period. 
 
 He would like to have believed, he says : 
 
 That the spirit of bigotry had not found its way even into the 
 ranks of the unitarians. . . True, they do not wield fire and 
 fagot. True, they contend not for the converting influence of 
 inquisition and dungeons. 
 
 But they are not above a little harmless ridicule, of 
 those who hold that Christ is worthy of worship, as he 
 
 600 ffgsiern Monthly Revieiv, vol. i, 685. 
 '^"^ — Idem, vol. iii, 369.
 
 284 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 himself does, dp above hints that such a person is 
 weak, credulous, obtuse of intellect, and ought to be 
 sent where people are less enlightened. Theirs are 
 these "mild and harmless expedients, that may be 
 adopted with the most Christ-like tempers." 
 
 The truth is, the spirit of man is naturally a persecutinti; spir- 
 it. . . Every one wishes to bend every other mind to his 
 opinion. . . The leaders of all sects wish to exclude all light, 
 but that, which tends to confirm their followers in their present 
 persuasions. Every one talks about the omnipotence of truth ; 
 and yet every one dreads, that any other views, than his own, 
 should be presented to his disciple.^*^- 
 
 With the more advanced biblical and rational po- 
 sition of Theodore Parker, Flint was not in sympathy. 
 With the rationalism, the swinging away from re- 
 vealed religion and the reducing of Christ to the ranks 
 of humanity which marked one wing of Unitarianism 
 in its second or third generations, Flint had no sym- 
 pathy whatever. He says concerning the person of 
 Christ: 
 
 We rcf^ret the application of that ingeniiit)' of unitarians, 
 which denies that Christ is the object of worship in the Scriptures. 
 
 It is to be remembered that no party then raised the 
 question of fallibility concerning the teachings of the 
 Scriptures. Flint continues: 
 
 We have no fears of giving him too high a place in our 
 thoughts, or of placing on him too entire a reliance. If the 
 gospel and the epistles do not give to the Saviour a claim far 
 above any prophet, apostle, martyr, example, principality, angel, 
 or power, if the apostles do not assign to him a high and peculiar 
 place in their faith, thoughts and hopes, then words to us would 
 cease to have a meaning. 
 
 He thinks that the contention between, "unitarian" 
 
 502 ff^gstern Monthly Review:, vol. ii, 345.
 
 CHARACTERISTICS 285 
 
 and ''trinitarian," like the greater portion of all theo- 
 logical disputes, is a dispute about terms. If they 
 
 Were compelled to be silent, until they had precise ideas about 
 what is the point of division and dispute between them, we are 
 clear, that the greater portion of the dispute would be consigned 
 to oblivion. Worship is a feeling, a homage of the mind and 
 of the heart, and the object not the less real, because utterly 
 incomprehensible, either as three, or one.^"^ 
 
 He wished to leave the question where the Scrip- 
 tures left it. He did not believe that the abstract name 
 and dignit}^ of the Saviour or of the Deity was a thing 
 that had been revealed to us, and even if God had at- 
 tempted to reveal it, mankind would not have been 
 able to understand it.'"^ In a word, he believed in the 
 Trinity of Revelation and experience, but not in the 
 Trinity of Athanasius. 
 
 Sectarianism in religion was Mr. Flint's particular 
 aversion. He said about 1832 in the notes to his Art 
 of Being Happy : with the fierce war cry of sects in 
 religion, in their acrimonious and never ending con- 
 tests about abstract terms without a meaning, their 
 combats about the vague and technical phrases of 
 formulas of faith, I have long since had nothing to do. 
 For many years they have rung on mv ear like the 
 distant thunder of clouds that have passed by. 
 
 This meditating spirit is the cue to Flint's religious 
 position. Wherever he found that, whether among 
 the Orthodox as he often did, or the Liberals, he 
 counted himself one with them. He did not believe 
 in logic as the servant of religion. He thought, 
 "Disputation and discussion, under the mistaken idea 
 
 503 ff^estern Monthly Re'vieiu, vol. ii, 280. 
 50* — Idem.
 
 286 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 of enlightening the understanding, tend to banish the 
 small remains of religion from among us."'""'^ He 
 loved Matthew Henry because he was devotional - 
 "orthodox in term and phrase, but evangelical and 
 liberal in temper and spirit."^*"' He was devoted to 
 the French romantic writers because they were poets 
 rather than theologians. Villemain studied the liter- 
 ature and history of the past not for "their dogmas, 
 but for their piet}^ and enthusiasm." ^"' Lamartine he 
 thrilled under, because he had the pathos, melancholy, 
 originality, and shaggy vastness of Byron without his 
 skeptical, misanthropic and revolting epicurism.^"* 
 More than by other Frenchmen he was moved by 
 Chateaubriand in his Le Genie du Christianisme. He 
 spoke in the exalted language of poetry and not "in 
 the shibboleth and terms of a sectarian." ^"^ He ad- 
 mired Paley for one reason particularly- that he so 
 nearly avoided "all disputable points among the sects, 
 and all doctrinal matter of doubtful authority, or 
 ambiguous interpretation." "° 
 
 Mr. Flint always thought of religion as a natural 
 sentiment in man. He thought a person left to grow 
 on a desert island would have a religion. He says on 
 this point: 
 
 It is an inwrought feeling in our mental constitution, an un- 
 written, universal, and everlasting gospel, pointing to God and 
 immortality'.''^^ 
 
 5°5 Flint. Recollections, 117. 
 
 506 fyestern Monthly Review; vol. iii, 370, line 18. 
 
 «o"— Idem, 264. 
 
 5°8 — Idem, 26, 27. 
 
 5°3 — Idem, vol. i, 609-625. 
 
 '^o-'ldem, 746. 
 
 *ii Flint, Timothy. Art of Being Happy, 230.
 
 CHARACTERISTICS 287 
 
 Nevertheless he believed religion was not unreason- 
 able. He says : 
 
 We are bound to believe things, that are above reason, on the 
 testimony of God. But God, the author of light and order, has 
 not called upon us, any where, to believe things, that are contrary 
 to reason. ''^- 
 
 He was in sympathy with scientific exegetical study 
 of the Bible, for he thought it all important to know 
 its teachings.''^^ He was not much in sympathy with 
 the theological schools. He thought Andover in 
 1830 was as far from Princeton orthodoxy on one side 
 as it was from the Unitarians on the other. This had 
 resulted from the influence of such men as Edwards, 
 Hopkins, Emmons, and Worcester, and from its prox- 
 imity to the "warm crater of notions."'"' 
 
 Mr. Flint's conclusion as to the essence of religion, 
 first stated in his Recollections and held throughout 
 his life, is: 
 
 Religion is love, love to God and to men ; if there should ever 
 
 be anything like assent to a common faith on the earth, it would 
 
 be the experimental religion, the religion of the heart.^^^ 
 
 ^1* Western Monthly Revieiv, vol. ii, 342. See also the review of "Let- 
 ters on the Logos," by Chas. W. Upham and the "Trinitarian Controversy" 
 by Dr. Charles Lowell, in the Re-vieiv, vol. ii, 233-246, 269-281. 
 
 613 _ /^^,„. 
 
 *"'* — • Idem, vol. iii, 370. 
 515 Flint. Recollections, uy.
 
 APPENDIX A 
 
 Itinerary of Timothy Flint 
 
 1780 Born, North Reading, Massachusetts 
 
 1795 Phillips Academy, Andover 
 
 1796 Enters Harvard College 
 
 1800 Graduates at Harvard 
 
 1 801 Teaches in an Academy at Cohasset. Studies 
 Theology 
 
 1802 Preaches at Marblehead and is married there. Is 
 settled at Lunenburg, and ordained 
 
 1 814 Resigns. Mission in New Hampshire 
 
 1815 Mission in Massachusetts and New York. Mis- 
 sion to the west. Cincinnati, Indiana, and Ken- 
 tucky 
 
 1816 St. Louis and St. Charles 
 
 1819 Arkansas. New Madrid, Missouri 
 
 1820 Jackson, Missouri 
 
 1 82 1 St. Charles, Missouri 
 
 1822 New Orleans 
 
 1823 West Florida. New Orleans. Alexandria, Louis- 
 iana. 
 
 1825 New England and return to Alexandria 
 
 1826 New England via Gulf and Atlantic. Return 
 via Cincinnati 
 
 1827 Removes to Cincinnati 
 
 1828 Visits New England
 
 290 ITINERARY OF TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 1829 Visits New England 
 
 1832 Visit to Alexandria, Louisiana; possibly South 
 America 
 
 1833 Visits New England. Lives in New York City 
 
 1834 Removes to Alexandria, Louisiana; travels in 
 New England, Canada, and possibly Europe 
 
 1835 In Cuba, New England, and on the Great Lakes. 
 1836-1838 New England journeys (?) 
 
 183Q Visits New England 
 
 1840 Goes to North Reading. Died August 16, 
 buried at Salem
 
 APPENDIX B 
 
 Flint's Letter of Resignation to the Missionary 
 Society OF Connecticut"' 
 
 Rev. Abel Flint, Secry. Miss. Soc. Con., Hartford, 
 Con. 
 
 Rev. and dear Sir, I learned at St. Louis yesterday 
 without surprise but not without regret, that reports 
 unfavorable to me had reached Hartford. Mr. 
 Beebee, son in law of Mr. Hempsted, has been in your 
 region. He is hostile to missionaries in general, and 
 to me in particular, and I had every thing to fear from 
 the representations of such a man. To the reports I 
 will be as frank, sincere and brief as possible. Wheri 
 I left Cincinnati, I had loaned money, which I could 
 recover in no other way, but in goods. They made 
 but a trifle and would be nothing without more. My 
 son was an excellent accountant. My brother and son 
 wished to make the experiment of store keeping to- 
 gether. I had nothing to do with the business, and 
 was seldom in the store oftener, than once in a week. 
 The experiment was unfortunate, but I was resigned. 
 
 When I came here, I found, that I had no alterna- 
 tive, but either labor for myself and family, or injus- 
 tice to my creditors, and absolute want. I will 
 
 ^1^ Letter preserved in the Congregational House [Hartford, Conn.], 
 Archives of the Missionary Societ}^ of Connecticut.
 
 292 APPENDIX B 
 
 venture to affirm, that no other man with a family and 
 my means [would] have had any other alternative. 
 In the face [of sedejntary habits of thirty five years 
 standing, of ill health, and what is still harder to the 
 iiesh, in the face of the opinion and example of this 
 indolent people- i have labored in the intervals of my 
 other duty, and that severely -and each member of 
 my family has labored -my wife, slender, as she is, 
 often until midnight, after the toils of a school through 
 the day. We have supported in the midst of poverty 
 and embarrassment a decent and hospitable standing 
 and a character of integrity, which enables me to loan, 
 when, and where 1 choose, an admission of integrity, 
 which the people of this country seldom pay to a poor 
 man. But at the same time I have made as frequent 
 excursions to preach and distribute bibles, as any 
 other missionary in the country. My scene has been 
 laid in the wildest part of it. I have seen seven, or 
 eight ephemeral and holiday missionaries commence 
 and decline in my neighborhood. Three respectable 
 ministers have been here with a view to settle in this 
 region, have become discouraged and are gone, since 
 I have been here. Twelve at least have been in this 
 way in this country- they are all gone. Mr. Math- 
 ews, than whom a more devoted minister in my mind 
 does not breathe, is now insulted and left by his con- 
 gregation, and he is firm, independent and useful still. 
 Mr. Giddings has his full share of trial and opposi- 
 tion. 
 
 I also, have had enemies, and bitter ones in this 
 place. I have been at once popular and unpopular 
 during all of my residence here. To my face I have
 
 LETTER OF RESIGNATION 293 
 
 always received the most pointed respect. My con- 
 gregations at this time are larger by far, than they 
 were, when I came to this place. They are larger, 
 than when Mr. Mathews, or Mr. Giddings preached 
 here, or other ministers, who are known. 
 
 A number of religious characters have moved into 
 St. Louis, since I left there and have altered the aspect 
 of that place- and a baptist minister [Peck?] has ren- 
 dered himself conspicuous there. There are hopeful 
 appearances, and there is also rivalry and opposition. 
 But, when I left it, there was but one Pres. family in 
 the place. St. Charles is now what that place [then 
 was.] Religion, when I came here was considered 
 contemptible. The phalanx of opposition was in 
 array from one end of the street to the other. Why 
 did they invite me here? On speculation. A min- 
 ister- a church -a school -are words to flourish in an 
 advertisement to sell lots. They spoke of Mr. Gid- 
 dings as good and devoted, but feeble. They paid me 
 a similar compliment. They probably misinterpret- 
 ed us both. When I brought terror into their billiard- 
 rooms, and a blush into their faces at beholding their 
 likeness depicted with independence and fidelity of 
 intention at least, they began to talk of starving me 
 out. I located a New Madrid claim on an Island 
 above this town. The clamor of Speculation was 
 raised against me -for they thought me getting in a 
 situation to take care of myself. They learned my 
 connection with your society, and no doubt might at 
 that time have obtained a request to you to withdraw 
 your patronage. I could easily give you a volume of 
 detail upon the subject; but you know human nature,
 
 294 APPENDIX B 
 
 and can fill in the outline. I shall not attempt a vin- 
 dication of my course. I knew, as well, as another, 
 that my tone of remonstrance has not been popular for 
 the moment -but I venture to affirm -that there is no 
 minister in this territory, who has a better share of the 
 general respect, wherever I am known. The best 
 families in this place have their children in Mrs. 
 Flint's school. I am poor but respected and it is the 
 hardest country that I have yet known, in which to 
 unite poverty and respect. I have two applications 
 to settle in regions near this, where I am as well 
 known, as here. And in taking leave of your respec- 
 table Society, I aver, with a pride, that I hope is hon- 
 est, that its honor and interests have been supported 
 not only with fidelity of intention but with a good 
 degree of success. If this be boasting I hope you will 
 charge to the occasion and not to me the necessity. I 
 make no doubt- that impartial and respectable people 
 will amply confirm this statement. 
 
 You may ask why I have not organized churches? 
 Not because I have not been as frequently invited to 
 do it, as brother Giddings. The question has been 
 frequently proposed to me here. I have had two rea- 
 sons the one secret- the other avowed. I have thought 
 a premature organization of a church might injure 
 the interests it would wish to subserve. I have deemed 
 the elements too unsettled and character too equivocal, 
 and the numbers too small in the instances, where I 
 have received requests of this kind. I have seen so 
 much coloring, too, in missionary statements, that I 
 have feared to blazon what little has been done. I 
 have hoped to do but little more, than sow a seed for
 
 LETTER OF RESIGNATION 295 
 
 the generations to come. Another reason is, that 
 I have been taught to consider my duty as subordinate 
 in this country. Notwithstanding my age, notwith- 
 standing pride whispered me, that I was not fitted for 
 that station, I have loved brother Giddings, have sup- 
 ported a cheerful cooperation in subordination to his 
 views, and have yielded to him the place of fame. I 
 have said enough perhaps too much -but what I have 
 said is necessary to my feelings. 
 
 I have passed through good report and through evil 
 report. I have endured my "cruel mockings" and 
 my perils from "false brethren." The fiercest spirits 
 of the union are here. Every thing is in a State of 
 chaos -and in looking back upon the ways through 
 which God has led me -I bless him in my inmost 
 soul -that I have gone through my trials -as well -as 
 I have. I came naked here. I am naked still. My 
 health is poor, but my confidence in the God whom I 
 serve, is deep and unabated. He will some how or 
 other "spread a table for us in the wilderness," and 
 though no longer under the protection of your So- 
 ciety, I shall not the less attempt to Spread the name 
 and the Salvation of my Redeemer. I respectfully 
 resign my commission, as missionary, and acknowl- 
 edge, that I have received a compensation in full of 
 all demands. 
 
 In taking leave of your respectable society I should 
 do injustice to my feelings, did I not admit that it has 
 treated me with great kindness ; and that I heartily ap- 
 prove the vigilance with which it inspects its distant 
 missionaries. And though not one of them in name 
 and office, I hope I shall still be in heart and affection.
 
 296 APPKNDIX B 
 
 I earnestly pray the Great Shepherd to bless you, and 
 give you the best earthly compensation - the conscious- 
 ness of doing good, and the brightest crown in hea- 
 ven -that, which will be awarded to those "who have 
 turned many unto righteousness." 
 
 Respectfully yours, T. FLINT.
 
 APPENDIX C 
 
 MiCAH P. Flint's "Lines, on Passing the Gilwe 
 OF My Sister" 
 
 In descending the Mississippi, there is a long sweep- 
 ing point of heavily timbered bottom, just opposite 
 the second Chickasaw Bluff, a name which is given to 
 one of those peninsulas of high land, which jut into the 
 alluvion, and approach the river from time to time on 
 its eastern side. In this bottom, at the distance of 
 about two hundred and fifty paces from the bank of 
 the river, there is a little grave, in which are deposited 
 the remains of my youngest sister. She was born on 
 our passage from Arkansas to St. Charles, in the fall 
 of 1819, and survived only three days. At that time, 
 the settlements on the Mississippi were so thin, and 
 remote, that there were often intervals of unbroken 
 forests, extending from twenty to thirty miles along 
 its shores. It was in the midst of one of these, and in 
 a night of storms, that this little infant was born ; and 
 it is there, that she was buried. We were ascending 
 the river in a small batteau, and were entirely alone, 
 having been left by our hands a few miles below. Our 
 solitary situation -the circumstances of her birth -the 
 place of her burial -all, conspired to make a deep 
 and lasting impression on my mind. Some years
 
 298 APPENDIX C 
 
 afterwards, 1 passed the same place, in the spring of 
 the year, on my way up the river, in a steam boat. Be- 
 fore we arrived there, I had stolen away from the 
 crowded bustle of the cabin, to a more secluded place 
 on the top of the boat, that I might indulge my feel- 
 ings without observation, or restraint. 1 shall not 
 attempt to describe them now. I felt a desire to con- 
 secrate the memory of this "desert born" and "desert 
 buried," in the minds of some, whose friendship has 
 been, and ever will be, dear to me. 
 
 Lines, on Passing the Grave of My Sister''' 
 
 On yonder shore,- On yonder shore. 
 Now verdant with its depth of shade. 
 
 Beneath the white-armM sycamore. 
 There is a little infant laid. 
 
 Forgive this tear. A brother weeps. 
 
 'Tis there the faded flowret sleeps. 
 
 She sleeps alone. She sleeps alone. 
 
 The summer's forests o'er her wave ; 
 And sighing winds at Autumn moan 
 
 Around the little stranger's grave, 
 As though they murmur'd, at the fate 
 Of one so lone and desolate. 
 
 In sounds that seem like sorrow's own, 
 Their funeral dirges faintly creep; 
 
 Then deep'ning to an organ tone. 
 In all their solemn cadence sweep, 
 
 And pour unheard, along the wild, 
 
 Their desert-anthem o'er a child. 
 
 ^^"^ Western Monthly Re^cneii:, vol. i, 651-653.
 
 LINES BY MICAH P. FLINT 299 
 
 She came, and pass'd. Can I forget, 
 
 How we, whose hearts had hail'd her birth, 
 
 E'er three autumnal suns had set, 
 Consign'd her to her mother Earth? 
 
 Joys, and their memories pass away; 
 
 But griefs are deeper trac'd, than they. 
 
 That little group ; - 1 see them now. 
 As when I knelt among them, there, 
 
 And saw our father's pallid brow 
 Uncover'd to the desert air ; 
 
 As, in the midst, he knelt to pray 
 
 Beside the bier, on which she lay. 
 
 Again, I see each pale cheek flush ; 
 
 Again the burning tear-drop start. 
 And mark the deep and voiceless gush 
 
 Of feelings -such as wring the heart. 
 That grave -the spade -the coffin -pall, 
 Aye, even yet, I see them all. 
 
 We laid her in her narrow cell, 
 
 We heap'd the soft mould on her breast. 
 
 And parting tears, like rain-drops fell 
 Upon her lonely place of rest. 
 
 May Angels guard it; -may they bless 
 
 Her slumbers in the wilderness. 
 
 She sleeps alone. She sleeps alone. 
 
 For all unheard, on yonder shore. 
 The sweeping flood with torrent moan, 
 
 At evening lifts its solemn roar, 
 As, in one broad, eternal tide, 
 Its rolling waters onward glide.
 
 300 APPENDIX C 
 
 There is no marble monument, 
 There is no stone,- with graven lie, 
 
 To tell of love, and virtue blent, 
 In one, almost too good to die. 
 
 We needed no such useless trace, 
 
 To point us to her resting place. 
 
 The pilgrim, as he wanders by, 
 
 May see, indeed, no trace, from whence 
 
 To learn, that he is treading nigh 
 The sleeping dust of innocence ; 
 
 But there are hearts, by whom that spot. 
 
 In death, alone, will be forgot. 
 
 She sleeps alone. She sleeps alone. 
 
 But now, the Spring hath pass'd her bier, 
 With flowery crown, and verdant zone, 
 
 To wake again the slumbering year; 
 And all around, on joyous wing. 
 The forest songsters flit and sing. 
 
 She sleeps alone. She sleeps alone. 
 
 But midst the tears of April showers. 
 The Genius of the wild hath strown 
 
 His germs of fruits, his fairest flowers, 
 And cast his robe of vernal bloom. 
 In guardian fondness o'er her tomb. 
 
 She sleeps alone. She sleeps alone. 
 
 But, yearly, is her grave-turf drest. 
 And still, the summer vines are thrown. 
 
 In annual wreaths across her breast, 
 And, still, the sighing Autumn grieves, 
 And strews the hallow'd spot with leaves.
 
 APPENDIX D 
 
 The Family Prayer of Timothy Flint "* 
 
 O! God our Heavenly Father, we rejoice that Thou, 
 the Lord God, gracious, merciful, wise, and omnip- 
 otent, reigneth ; and hast sent Thy Son Jesus Christ our 
 Savior, to declare Thy Word and to save us from our 
 sins. We thank Thee for all that Thou art, hast been 
 and will be to us, and we confide that as Thou has been 
 our father's God, Thou wilt also be our God and our 
 guide even unto death. Keep us we beseech Thee in 
 Thy love and fear all the days of our life. May we 
 earnestly seek to know and humbly strive to obey Thy 
 righteous will. May we allow no opportunity to do 
 good or avert evil to escape us. May we labor to 
 bring our thoughts, our words and actions into con- 
 formity to our duty as made known to us by reason of 
 Thy Holy Word. May we search into the natural 
 and moral laws of our being, and religiously conform 
 to them. May we strive beyond all else to manifest 
 the same mind, nature and character which were in 
 Christ Jesus. Deliver us from all evil, natural, and 
 moral and especially from the fear of death. Fill 
 our soul with love for Thee and all men ; and finally, 
 after we shall through Thy strength and in the hope of 
 that blessed immortality promised in Thy Word, have 
 overcome the bitterness of death, raise us to that im- 
 mortality, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. 
 
 [Ending with the Lord's Prayer.] 
 
 51S Family Archives; also manuscripts in Harvard and Yale Libraries.
 
 APPENDIX E 
 
 The Being of a God''^ 
 
 There are, who will not see in earth, or sky, 
 
 Nor find deep in the chambers of their heart 
 
 The Great Invisible. That murky mind 
 
 I envy not, that readeth thus the page 
 
 Of elder scripture. Nature's eloquence 
 
 Pours in my ear a mystic strain from heav'n. 
 
 'Twas when the southern breeze was bland, 
 
 Charg'd with the fragrance of the budding spring, 
 
 Night's shadov^ veil was curtain'd o'er the sky. 
 
 Along the blue at intervals repos'd, 
 
 Festoon'd and motionless, the fleecy clouds, 
 
 Heav'n's radiant lamps, hung out between. 
 
 Lit up the portals of the throne of light. 
 
 He, who can ken the starry sky, nor hear 
 
 The sphery music singing of a God, 
 
 Will die an Atheist in hopeless gloom. 
 
 My senses caught the glorious argument. 
 
 My bosom with the high conviction warm'd. 
 
 Beyond that blue ; beyond those stars ; beyond 
 
 The sky; beyond the grave; still deeper in 
 
 The eternal space He dwells in light. 
 
 Aye ; and this mind, so anxiously that thrills 
 
 'Twixt hopes and fears, the tenant soul within, 
 
 .-.19 ff^fstern Monthly Revieiv, vol. i, 528.
 
 THE BEING OF A GOD 303 
 
 Imprison'd in this crumbling clay, disturb'd, 
 
 As sleeping waters, with a pebble's fall. 
 
 Shall, fearless, soar past suns, and worlds and all 
 
 The unimagin'd mysteries beyond ; 
 
 Until it scale the adamantine walls 
 
 That guard the access to His spotless throne. 
 
 There shall I see his face without a veil ; 
 
 Not darkly through a glass in sin and tears ; 
 
 But changing to his image, as I view. 
 
 -Timothy Flint.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 I. FLINT'S WRITINGS 
 
 [Arranged in chronological order} 
 
 Sermon at the Ordination of Rev. E. Hubbard, Newburyport, 1808. 
 
 Covenant of Lunenburg Church: in Cunningham's J History of 
 the Town of Lunenburg. 
 
 Letter of Resignation to the Lunenburg Church (Lunenburg, April 
 7, 1814) : in Cunningham's A History of the Town of Lunen- 
 burg. 
 
 Letter to Rev. Mr. [Charles] Lowell (Lunenburg, November, 
 1814). In Ms. Department of Boston Public Library. 
 
 This letter is in reference to his troubles in the Lunenburg pastorate, 
 his mission in New Hampshire and his plans for the future. 
 
 A Sermon delivered in Leominster at the Commencement of the 
 Year, Lord's Daj^ Jan. ist, 181 5 (Leicester, 1815), pamphlet. 
 
 Oration before the Washington Benevolent Society of Lancaster 
 and Sterling and of Leominster and Fitchburg. Delivered at 
 Leominster, July 4, 181 5. (Worcester, printed by William 
 Manning), pamphlet. 
 
 Report to the Massachusetts Society for promoting Christian Knowl- 
 edge: in the Society's Account (Andover, 1815), pamphlet, pages 
 
 53, 54. 
 
 Annual Narrative of Missions (Hartford, 1816-1823). 
 
 Several extracts from Flint's letters and reports to the Missionary 
 Society' of Connecticut. 
 
 Letter to Rev. Abel Flint, Secretary of the Missionary Societ}^ of 
 Connecticut, Lunenburg, July 23, 1815. 
 
 This is the first of a series of fourteen letters to the Missionary So- 
 ciety of Connecticut, most of which are in the nature of reports of his 
 missionary work in the West. All are preserved in the archives of the 
 Society, Congregational House, Hartford. 
 
 Idem, Lunenburg, Aug. 15, 181 5.
 
 3o6 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 Letter to Rev. Abel Flint, Secretary of the Missionary Society of 
 Connecticut, Cincinnati, Dec. 5, 1815. 
 
 Idem, Cincinnati, Jan. 18, 181 0. 
 
 Idem, Cincinnati, Feb. 12, iSlb. 
 
 Idem, Cincinnati, March 20, 18 16. 
 
 Idem, St. Louis, July 2, 1816. 
 
 Idem, St. Charles, Oct. 10, 18 16, 
 
 Idem, St. Charles, April 15, 1817. 
 
 Idem, St. Charles, Aug. 3, 181 7. 
 
 Idem, St. Charles, Nov. 1, 181 7. 
 
 Idem, St. Charles, May 4, 1818. 
 
 Idem, St. Charles, June 4, 1818. 
 
 Idem, Marais Creche near St. Charles, Jan. 15, 1822. 
 
 Letter to Stephen Hempstead, Cincinnati, Dec. 29, 18 15. 
 
 Idem, Cincinnati, March ii, 1816. 
 
 Idem, St. Charles, Nov., 1816. 
 
 Idem, Jackson, July 6, 1820. 
 
 Preserved in Missouri Historical Society collection, St. Louis. Copy- 
 in Harvard University' Library. 
 A Collection of Hymns from European Books. Printed for Flint 
 in 1815 or 1816. 
 
 Mentioned only in Flint's missionary reports. 
 Arguments Natural. Moral and Religious, for the Immortalitj' of 
 the Soul. 
 
 This was written before 1802 and published or printed before 1826. 
 Mentioned by W. D. Gallagher, in Cincinnati Mirror, vol. iii, 37. I 
 have not been able to find a copy of this pamphlet. 
 Recollections of the last Ten Years, passed in occasional Residences 
 and Journeyings in the Valley of the Mississippi, from Pittsburg 
 and the Missouri, to the Gulf of Mexico, and from Florida to the 
 Spanish frontier ; in a series of Letters to the Rev. James Flint, 
 of Salem, Massachusetts (Boston, 1826). 
 
 It has been asserted frequently, and even by Br. James Flint that 
 this book was republished in London. But as no bibliography that I 
 have seen mentions such an edition and as the British Museum Catalogue 
 has only the Boston edition, I am inclined to think it very doubtful 
 whether or not it was ever published in England. It is probably confused 
 with the London edition of Francis Berrian which has been overlooked 
 by the bibliographers and by the friends of Flint. 
 
 The Harvard Class Book for the Class of 1800 says that it was partly 
 republished in France. There is no trace, however, of this work in the
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 307 
 
 A 
 
 articles upon Flint in La Grande Encyclopedie and the Biographic Gen- 
 erale. They mention only the American edition. Allibone in his Critical 
 Dictionary of English Literature, mentions an edition of this work. Boston, 
 1831. His authority apparently is Rich's Bihliotheca Americana Nova 
 (London, 1846), 230. Sabin in the Bihliotheca Americana, vol. vi, 479, 
 thinks this is a mistake. In its review of the Recollections in the October 
 number, 1832, vol. xlviii, 201-222, the London Quarterly Review in giving 
 the title page of the book says, "Boston, 8vo, 1831." 
 
 Francis Berrian, or the Mexican Patriot (Boston, 1826), 2 vols. 
 
 The British Museum Catalogue mentions another edition of this 
 work (London, 1834), 3 vols. There was also a second American edi- 
 tion (Philadelphia, 1834), 2 vols. The London edition is not mentioned 
 by any of the American bibliographies nor by Flint's friends. It is 
 possible that the latter have confused this edition of Francis Berrian 
 with the Recollections which they report as having been republished in 
 London. 
 
 Extracts from the Journal of a Voyage from Alexandria, Red river, 
 Louisiana, to New York, by way of New Orleans and the gulf 
 of Mexico: in the Western Monthly Review, vol. i, 313-322. 
 
 A condensed Geography and History of the Western States, or the 
 Mississippi Valley (Cincinnati, 1828), 2 vols. 
 
 This is Mr. Flint's most serious contribution to literature. It was a 
 very important book in its day and is of much value yet, not only as 
 indicative of Flint's character but as a history of his time. 
 
 The History and Geography of the Mississippi Valley. To which 
 is appended a Condensed Physical Geography of the Atlantic 
 United States, and the whole American Continent (Cincinnati, 
 1832), 2 vols. 
 
 This work is styled a "Second Edition." Not only is its title different 
 from the first edition but there are many changes in the text. Nearly 
 all of the material in the two volumes of the first edition is put into the 
 first volume of this edition. In thp second A'olume of this edition there 
 is entirely new material and it has for title. The United States and the 
 other Divisions of the American Continent. 
 
 Idem (Cincinnati and Boston, 1833), 2 vols. 
 
 'The Western Monthly Review (Cincinnati, May, 1827, to June, 
 1830), 3 vols., large 8vo, pp. 668, 704, 756. 
 
 About three fourths of this publication is from Mr. Flint's pen. It 
 is very valuable for biographical and also for historical and research 
 purposes. 
 The Downfall of the Fredonian Republic (Cincinnati, 1827) : in 
 Western Monthly Review, vol. i, 69-71. 
 
 See also Thwaites's Early Western Travels, vol. xviii, 365-379.
 
 x) 
 
 308 TLVIOTHY FLINT 
 
 Canals (Cincinnati, 1827) : in JVestern Monthly Revinv, vol. i, 
 73-78. 
 
 Jemima O'Keefy. - A Sentimental Tale (Cincinnati, 1827): in 
 fVestern Monthly Revieiv, vol, i, 384-393. 
 
 Duelling [j;V] (Cincinnati, 1827): in JVestern Monthly Review, 
 vol. i, 453-4t)i. 
 
 Violetta and Thoroughgrabb. A Tale : in Western Monthly Re- 
 view, vol. i, 442-453. 
 
 This story is presented as a sample of a storj' which the author hopes 
 to publish soon in two volumes, boards. It is difficult to decide from the 
 playful wa}- in which the stoiy is introduced by the editorial note, whether 
 or not it is Mr. Flint's own work. This point is decided however by the 
 printing of the same story in the Knickerbocker a few years later, Sept. 
 1835, vol. vi, 173-186. In the latter magazine the story seems to be 
 entirely rewritten and much of the frontier slang and dialect is elimi- 
 nated. 
 
 Extracts from the Diary and Correspondence of Mrs. Risk. 
 
 This work was announced in Sept., 1827. In Jan., 1828, Mr. Flint 
 announced that the volume was ready for the press and only waited a 
 suitable paper for publication. Mr. Flint says in the first announce- 
 ment that from "an attentive perusal of her numerous and voluminous 
 manuscript writings, the editor is persuaded, that this will constitute a 
 work of no common interest of its class." No later mention of the work 
 is made in the Rei'ieiv. See Revic^u, advertising pages for Sept., 1827, 
 vol. i, and also page 565. 
 
 Address on Intemperance, Delivered before the Cincinnati Temper- 
 ance Society (Cincinnati, 1828) : in Western Monthly Reviev, 
 vol. ii, 79 - 97. 
 
 A Tour (Cincinnati, 1828) : in Western Monthly Revieiu, vol. H, 
 193-209, 249-263. 
 
 Mr. Flint describes this tour as from Cincinnati via Wheeling and 
 Washington to Salem, returning via Erie Canal and Buffalo. 
 
 The Life and Adventures of Arthur Clenning (Philadelphia, 1828) , 
 2 vols. 
 
 George Mason, the Young Backwoodsman ; or "Don't Give up the 
 Ship." A story of the Mississippi (Boston, 1829). 
 
 This book was republished (London, 1833) under the title, Don't 
 Give up ike Ship; or, the Good Son. A tale by T. Flint. 
 
 Inland Trade with Mexico (Cincinnati, 1829) : in Western Month- 
 ly Review, vol. ii, 597-607, 649-659. 
 
 See also Thwaites's Early JVestern Travels, vol. xviii, 327-364. This 
 is largely a review of Dr. Willard's travels in the southwest.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 309 
 
 Agnes Sorel de Merivanne: The Recluse Coquette (Cincinnati, 
 1829) : in Western Monthly Review, vol. iii, 57-67. 
 A short story of French life in Louisiana. 
 
 Oolemba in Cincinnati: in James Hall's Western Souvenir (Cin- 
 cinnati, 1829), 68-101. 
 
 This is a short, interesting story of an old Indian's visit to Cincinnati 
 after many years and when that city has grown to be a large and thriving 
 community. 
 
 On the Progress of Political and Literary Opinions on the Continent 
 of Europe (Cincinnati, 1829): in Western Monthly Revieiu, 
 vol. iii, 266-284. 
 
 A Tour (Cincinnati, Oct., 1829) : in Western Monthly Review, 
 vol. iii, 284-294. 
 
 Like most of his journeys this is in the form of a letter to Dr. James 
 Flint. It describes a trip to New England via Wheeling, the return to 
 Cincinnati being by a northern stage route and in the company of Rev. 
 Mr. Pierpont. 
 
 Is it expedient for the United States to obtain possession of Texas ? 
 (Cincinnati, 1830) : in Western Monthly Revieiu, vol. iii, 359- 
 368. 
 
 American Biographical Dictionary. See Western Monthly Re- 
 view, vol. iii, 470-480. 
 
 In 1830 Flint was planning this work which is here fully outlined. 
 It was to be based on the Biographie Universelle Classtque, on the 
 Bihliotheca Classica, of Lempriere, and the American biographies. It 
 was to be far more extensive than any American work and to correct 
 the provincial disproportions of Lempriere. He probably did not go 
 further with this enterprise than to complete the translation of the French 
 work. 
 
 Dictionaire Historique, ou Biographie Universelle. See Western 
 Monthly Review, vol. iii, 470-480, 534-545, 582-587, 663-666. 
 
 Mr. Flint was interested in this work as furnishing part of the found- 
 ation for his American Biographical Dictionary. We have extensive por- 
 tions of his translations in the Revieiv. In June, 1830, he had reached 
 "D'jenguys." His interest in this work, the three or four years of working 
 time which he yet had in the north, and the help of his daughter Emeline, 
 makes it seem quite likely that he finished the translation of this work. 
 There is now no trace of it to be found, unless indeed it may have been 
 worked into some of the dictionaries published during the next generation. 
 
 Party Spirit (Cincinnati, 1830) : in Western Monthly Review, vol. 
 iii, 517-525-
 
 310 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 A characteristic article showing Mr. Flint's views of sectarianism in 
 religion, society, and race. 
 
 Gambling. A Prize Tract. 
 
 A copy of this tract has not been found. It is mentioned only in the 
 Cincinnati Mirror, vol. iii, 36, 37. 
 
 The Lost Child (Boston, 1830), i8mo. 
 
 The North American Revie<w [vol. xxx, 564] lists this as a novel. 
 Mr. Flint published as the leading article in the first volume of the 
 ff^'estern Monthly Review, "The Lost Child." This appears to be an ac- 
 count of an actual occurrence wherein tlie four year old boy of a Mr. 
 Clark in Hempsted County, Arkansas, was stolen from his home about 
 the first of the year, 1826. Mr. Flint's "novel," if such it be, may have 
 been an expansion of this story or suggested by it. It has not been pos- 
 sible for the writer to locate a copy of the book. 
 
 The Shoshonee Valley; a Romance (Cincinnati, 1830), 2 vols. 
 
 Several chapters of this book are found in the Western Monthly Re- 
 vieiv. 
 
 The Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie, of Kentucky. Edited 
 by Timothy Flint (Cincinnati, 1831). 
 
 See also Pattie's Personal Narrative, 1825-1830: in Thwaites's Early 
 Western Travels (Cleveland, 1905), vol. xviii, 37-324. 
 
 The Art of Being Happy: From the French of Droz, "Sur L'Art 
 D'Etre Heureux;" in a series of letters from a Father to his 
 Children: with Comments and Observ'^ations (Boston, 1832). 
 
 Indian Wars of the West (Cincinnati, 1833). 
 
 The Blind Grandfather: in the Token and Atlantic Souvenir (Bos- 
 ton, 1833) , 250-264; also in the Cincinnati Mirror, vol. ii, 57-59. 
 
 The Knickerbocker (New York), vols, i-vii. 
 
 Mr. Flint was announced as editor of the magazine in Juh', 1833, and 
 he remained such in name until Feb., 1834. He appears, however, to 
 have been in full charge of only the Oct., 1833, number. Several stories 
 and journals, together with other articles from his pen, appear in the 
 months when he was in nominal charge of the magazine. 
 
 Phrenology: in the Knickerbocker (New York, 1 833), vol. ii, 103- 
 IIO. 
 
 Obstacles to American Literature: in the Knickerbocker (New 
 
 York, 1833), vol. ii, 161-170. 
 Reminiscences of a Recent Journey from Cincinnati to Boston 
 
 (Long Island, Sept., 1833) : in the Knickerbocker, vol. ii, 242- 
 
 263.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 311 
 
 The First Steamboat on the La Plata; or, "The Monogamist": in 
 the Knickerbocker, vol. ii, 321-340, 433-450. 
 
 The Influence of Education on the Formation of Character : in the 
 Knickerbocker, vol. ii, 401-409. 
 
 Biographical Memoir of Daniel Boone, the first Settler of Kentucky 
 (Cincinnati, 1833). 
 
 Sabin in his Dictionary of Books relating to America (New York, 
 1868-1893), vol. vi, 477, gives a list of fourteen different editions of this 
 work. The titles vary with the different editions which are all published 
 in Cincinnati and from 1833 to i868. It appears that only the first four 
 editions were controlled by Mr. Flint or his family. 
 
 Lectures upon Natural History, Geology, Chemistry, the Applica- 
 tion of Steam, and Interesting Discoveries in the Arts (Boston, 
 
 1833). 
 
 The Bachelor Reclaimed or Celebacy Vanquished, from the French O \ 
 (Philadelphia, 1834). ' 
 
 A translation or paraphrase. 
 
 The Past, the Present and the Future: in the Knickerbocker, vol. 
 iv, 165-175. 
 
 This paper appears in the September, 1834, Knickerbocker, and a note 
 informs us that the subject matter was "condensed from an elaborate 
 lecture delivered before the Cincinnati [Ohio] Lyceum, some months 
 since." It must have been delivered near the close of the Cincinnati 
 period. It takes account of the great advances in material comfort, the 
 means of travel, and the new intellectual era that Mr. Flint feels certain 
 the country has just entered upon. Like other articles, much of it is 
 devoted to an optomistic description of the future. This is done by imag- 
 ining what the lecturer before the Lyceum on the anniversary occasion 
 will say fift)^ years later. 
 
 A Splendid Spectacle: in Knickerbocker (Oct., 1834), vol. iv, 295, 
 296. 
 
 A description of a great fire in Alexandria, La., on the thirtieth of 
 March, 1834. 
 
 Macoupin: or, the Talking Potato: in Knickerbocker, vol. iv, 372- — 
 
 377. 
 
 The story of an Algonquin Indian which is used to characterize the 
 dishonest priest. 
 Napoleon Buonaparte: in Knickerbocker, vol. iv, 442-449. 
 
 "This paper is translated from a recent French work, of much celebri- 
 ty." — Knickerbocker, vol. iv, 442, note.
 
 312 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 Sketches of the Literature of the United States: in the Athemviim 
 
 (London, 1835). 
 
 This was a series of eleven papeis. Much of the material is taken 
 
 from his magazine and other writings. 
 Fragments of a Letter to Rev. Mr. [Charles] Lowell [probably 
 
 Alexandria, 1835], in Boston Public Library, Ms. Department. 
 Sketches of Travel: in Knickerbocker (March, 1835). vol. v, 242- 
 
 245. 
 Sketches of Travel. Number Two: in Knickerbocker (April, 
 
 1835), vol. V, 278-284. 
 English Caricatures: in Knickerbocker (May, 1835), vol. v, 396- 
 
 408. 
 Martha: or, the Grand Cataract of Bogota: in Knickerbocker 
 
 (July, 1835). vol. vi, 28-43. 
 Hannah Hervey: in Knickerbocker, March, 1836, vol. vii, 251-261. 
 Letter (North Reading, 1840) : in Christian Register, vol. xix, 
 
 138-139. 
 Recollections of the West, Second Part. 
 
 Doctor Flint says in his Historical Address at the Bi-centcnnial of 
 Reading [44-45], "but I forbear further notice of his merits at present, as a 
 w riter and a man, hoping, as I do, ere long, should I live, to give to the 
 public his biography, chiefly from his published and private letters to me, 
 together with a continuation of his Recollections of the West, in a second 
 part, which, at his decease, he left with me in manuscript." This second 
 part of the Recollections is said by some of the present generation of Mr. 
 Flint's family and friends to have been privately printed by his family 
 soon after his death. The most careful searching in eveiy possible place 
 has failed to give any clue to this work. I am inclined to think that it 
 was never printed. Doctor Flint does not say that he had prepared the 
 manuscript for his biography of Timothy Flint at this time but he had 
 eleven years more of life in which to accomplish his proposed task of 
 love and honor for his friend. Any work he may have done in this 
 direction is so important for our study, as also the manuscript which he 
 said had been left with him for the second part of the Recollections, that 
 the writer has spared no pains in an endeavor to get some trace of the 
 manuscript or manuscripts. A careful search among the descendants of 
 Doctor Flint in Salem and other places, in the libraries of Boston, Salem, 
 Worcester and se\eral places in other parts of the country-, has failed to 
 give the slightest clue to any manuscript left by Doctor Flint. All of his 
 writings seem to have been destroyed. His will directs that his books
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 313 
 
 shall be given to certain members of his family and that his sermons shall 
 be burned. No mention is made of any manuscript. "^^o 
 
 Revised copies of all Flint's principal works are said by Dr. James 
 Flint, in the article in the Encyclopedia Americana: Supplementary Vol- 
 ume (Boston, 1858), to have been left at the time of his death. Doctor 
 Flint was in hopes that they would be published in a uniform edition. 
 These works were probably left with his family in Alexandria and very 
 likely burned by General Banks's army during the Civil War when the 
 library of James Timothy Flint was destroyed. 
 A number of poems are found in several of Mr. Flint's works. 
 
 Most of the following list belong very clearly to Flint. There may 
 
 be some doubt as to the authorship of one or two of them. It is 
 
 so difficult to determine the time of several of them that I have 
 
 grouped them all alphabetically. 
 
 Beech Woods, The: in Western Monthly Review, vol. i, 272, 273. 
 
 Being of a God, The: in Western Monthly Review, vol. i, 528. 
 
 Boone's Remembrances of Arriving in Kentucky: in Western 
 Monthly Review, vol. i, 154. 
 
 Farewell to the Pine Woods: in Recollections, 356, 357. 
 
 Feast of Booths, The: in Western Monthly Review, vol. i, 212-216. 
 
 New Year, The: in Western Monthly Revieiu, vol. i, 529-530. 
 
 On Revisiting the Churchyard of my Native Place, in Western 
 Monthly Review, vol. ii, 210-211. 
 
 Reflections on Crossing the Missouri: in Recollections, 289-291. 
 
 Where is Joy: in the Knickerbocker (Oct., 1834), vol. iv, 262, 263. 
 This poem is dated Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 II. BIOGRAPHIES OF TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 Most of the encyclopedias give some notice of the life and writ- 
 ings of Mr. Flint. The older ones are naturally more full than the 
 later. Some of them are quite inaccurate. A few of the more 
 accurate and extended accounts are given. 
 Cincinnati Mirror, vol. iii, 36, 37. 
 
 In this number of the Mirror is a three column biographical sketch 
 of Mr. Flint by "W.D.G." This is of course W. D. Gallagher, who at 
 this time, Nov. i6, 1833, was associated with Thomas H. Shreve in 
 
 ^'"^ It is quite possible that Doctor Flint never got as far as preparing the 
 manuscript for this biographj'. It is said of him by one of his associates in 
 the Salem pastorate that he was a man who never prepared his sermons 
 vintil Saturday night.
 
 314 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 editing tlie Mirror. Tliis i^' one of the most valuable biographical arti- 
 cles we have. 
 Encyclopedia Americana: Supplementarj- Volume (Boston, 
 1 8 s8 ).■"•-» vol. xiv. 
 
 riie article in this work is extended and very important. It is said 
 by the writer of the Harvard Class Book for the Class of iSoo, to have 
 been written by Dr. James Flint. Other evidences stronn;!}- favor this 
 statement. This article is, says the Class Book, also in the Conversation 
 Lexicon, second edition. 
 
 Encyclopedia Britannica (New York, 1870), 25 vols. 
 This has perhaps the best encyclopedic article on Flint. 
 
 Harv.'VRd Class Book for the Class of 1800. A Ms. in Harvard 
 University' Librarj-. Two articles on Flint, pp. 20-23, "o author 
 mentioned; pp. 124-129, by his classmate [Samuel] Swett. 
 
 International Cyclopedia (New York, 1887), 15 vols. 
 
 N.ational Cyclopedia of American Biography (New York, 
 1896), vol. vi, 359. 
 
 New American Encyclopedia (New York, 1870), 16 vols. 
 Has a fair article on Flint. 
 
 "S" [Samuel Swett]. Obituan," and Appreciation: in Christian 
 Register (Boston), vol. xix, 138, 139. 
 
 This is a valuable sketch of Flint's life and especially of the last da3's. 
 
 Venable, William H. Beginnings of Literary Culture in the 
 Ohio Valley (Cincinnati, 1891), 323-360. 
 
 This lecture on Flint is by far the most complete and valuable piece 
 of work that has been done on the subject in recent years. Tliere are 
 several errors in dates and in other minor matters. He is very much 
 limited for materials and for space but he has given us a very readable, 
 comprehensive, and sympathetic piece of work. Indeed the writer is 
 free to confess that it was Doctor Venable's lecture on Flint that first 
 gave him an interest and led him to a fuller study of his life. 
 
 in. FLINTIANA 
 
 Allibone, Samuel Austin. A Critical Dictionary of English 
 Literature, and British and American Authors, living and de- 
 ceased, from the earliest accounts to the middle of the nineteenth 
 century (Philadelphia, 1871-1892), 5 vols., vol. i, 607. 
 
 American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge 
 (Boston, 1841), p. 287. 
 
 521 TTiis article appears in the same form in this volume under other 
 dates: Philadelphia, 1847, and again 184S, same cit>-.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 315 
 
 American Monthly Magazine (Boston, 1829), vol, i. 
 
 This magazine was edited in Mr. Flint's time by N. P. Willis, an 
 admirer of Mr. Flint. It has several appreciative reviews and notices. 
 
 American Monthly Review (Boston, 1833), vols, iii and iv. 
 
 Beers, Henry A. Nathaniel Parker Willis (American Men of 
 Letters Series), (Boston, 1885). 
 
 Bryan, Wm, S. and Robert Rose. A History of the Pioneer 
 Families of Missouri (St. Louis, 1876). 
 
 Cincinnati First Congregational Church [Unitarian] Rec- 
 ords. 
 
 Reported in letter of Geo. A. Thayer (Cincinnati, Jan. 24, 1908), in 
 Unitarian Library, Boston. 
 
 Cincinnati Mirror (1832-1835), 3 vols. 
 
 Several references to Flint, and an important article on his writings. 
 Edited by Wm. D. Gallagher. 
 
 Cooke, Harriet R. The Flint Family: in The Driver Family 
 (New York, 1889), 291-307. 
 
 Cunningham, George A. A History of the Town of Lunen- 
 burg in Massachusetts, From its Original Grant, Dec. 7, 17 19. 
 A manuscript in Lunenburg Town Library. 
 
 DuYCKiNCK, Evert A. Cyclopedia of American Literature (New 
 York, 1856), 2 vols. 
 
 Eaton, Lilley. Genealogical History of the Town of Reading, 
 Mass. (Boston, 1874). 
 
 Essex Register [Salem], Aug. 24, 1840. 
 
 Flint, James. Verses on Many Occasions with Others for which 
 it may be thought there was no Occasion (Lynn, 1851). 
 
 Flint, Rev. Timothy: in Encyclopedia Americana: Supplemen- 
 tary Volume (Boston, 1858). 
 
 Historical Address delivered at the Bi-centennial Celebration 
 
 of the Incorporation of the Old Town of Reading, May 29, 1844 
 (Boston, 1844). 
 
 Flint, James Timothy. Letters to Parents and Relatives (Cam- 
 bridge, Mass., 1838-1841). 
 
 These letters are ver\- important for the last years of Mr. Flint's life. 
 The son was in the Harvard Law school and wrote frequentl}'. Several 
 of his letters are preserved by the family in Alexandria, La., and are 
 now in care of Mrs. Emeline Flint Seip. 
 
 Flint Jr., James Timothy. Several Letters to the Writer in
 
 3i6 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 reference to his Grandfather's books and life. In Harvard Li- 
 brary. 
 
 Flint, Mic.vn Peabodv. The Hunter and Other Poems (Boston, 
 1826). 
 
 Lines on Passing the Grave of My Sister: in Western Month- 
 ly Revieiv, vol. i, 651-653. 
 
 Letters concerning a Journey from Nashville to Alexandria, 
 
 Aug. and Sept., 1833: in Knickerbocker, vol. iii, 112-119, 
 
 Ford, Henry A. and Kate B. History of Cincinnati, Ohio (Cin- 
 cinnati, 1881). 
 
 GiDDiNGS, Salmon. Letters to the Missionary Society of Con- 
 necticut (St. Louis, 1 8 18), Archives of the Societ>% Congrega- 
 tional House, Hartford. 
 
 Griswold, Rufus W. Prose Writers of America (Philadel- 
 phia, 1847). 
 
 HoucK, Louis. A History of Missouri from the Earliest Explor- 
 ations and Settlements until the Admission of the State into the 
 Union (Chicago, 1908), 3 vols. 
 
 Knickerbocker (New York, 1833, 1834), vols, i, ii, iii. 
 
 Has a number of articles by Flint and several about him. Important 
 source. 
 
 Literary Gazette (Boston, 1826). 
 
 Lunenburg, Mass., copy of the Recollections. Mss. notes in. 
 
 Parish and Town Records. 
 
 See letters of J. A. Litchfield to the writer in Boston Public Libraiy. 
 
 Massachusetts Historical Society. Proceedings (Boston), vol. 
 i, 416, 418; vol. X, 52, first series. 
 
 Massachusetts Society for promoting Christian Knowl- 
 edge. Account (Andover, 1815). 
 
 Missouri Historical Society. Collection (St. Louis), Let- 
 ter of Abel Flint to Stephen Hempstead, Hartford, April 30, 
 1818. 
 
 Letter refers to unfavorable reports made to the Missionary Society- 
 of Connecticut about Timothy Flint. 
 
 New York Commercial. 
 
 Quoted in Cincinnati Mirror, vol. iii, 444, as containing a review of 
 the Baclielor Reclaimed or Celibacy Vanquished and an estimate of 
 Flint's writings. The Commercial article is quoted to the extent of four
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 317 
 
 or five hundred words and is valued as showing Mr. Flint's high standing 
 
 in the literaiy world. 
 Norton, Augustus T. History of the Presbyterian Church in 
 
 Illinois (St. Louis, 1879). 
 North American Review (Boston, 1826, 1830, 1836, 1846), 
 
 vols, xxiii, XXX, xliii, Ixii. 
 North Reading. Semi-centennial Souvenir (North Reading, 
 
 1903). 
 
 Has a history of the North or Second Church of Reading (North 
 
 Reading Church) and other valuable material. 
 
 Union Congregation Church Manual (Andover Press, 1903). 
 
 Parish Records. 
 
 Pandect, The (Cincinnati, 1827, 1828). 
 
 A Calvinlstic paper published by Dr. Joshua L. Wilson and other 
 
 orthodox ministers of the city. Several times attacked Flint. See Rei^eiv, 
 
 ii, 460-462. 
 Quarterly Review (London, 1832), vol. xlviii, 201-222. 
 Phillips Academy. Biographical Catalogue (Andover, 1903), 
 
 p. 40. 
 Richards, Thomas C. Samuel J. Mills, Missionary, Pathfind- 
 er, Pioneer and Promoter (Boston, 1906). 
 Sabin, Joseph. A Dictionary of Books relating to America, from 
 
 its discover}' to the present time (New York, 1868-1892), 19 
 
 vols. 
 Salem. Records of the First Church. Essex Institute. 
 
 Records of North Church. Essex Institute. 
 
 Salem Gazette, Aug. 21, 1840. 
 
 Seip, Emeline Flint. Several Letters, Poems and Copies of 
 
 Family Records (Alexandria, La., 1907-1910). In Boston 
 
 Public Library. 
 Seip, Fredric. Several Letters relating to Mr. Flint's life in 
 
 Alexandria and to that of his family (Alexandria, La., 1908- 
 
 1910). In Library of Harvard University. 
 Southern Review (Charlestown, 1828), vol. ii, 192-216. 
 Stedman, Edmond C. and Ellen M. Hutchinson. Library of 
 
 American Literature (New York, 1887-1890). 
 Thomas, Emeline Flint. Letters to her brother, James Tim- 
 othy Flint at Harvard (Alexandria, 1838-1841), belonging to
 
 3i8 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 the Family in Alexandria, La. In care of Mrs. Emeline Flint 
 Seip. 
 
 Trolloph, Frances. Domestic Manners of the Americans (Lon- 
 don, 1832), 2 vols. Republished (New York, 1901). 
 
 TucKERMAN, Henry T. America and her Commentators. With 
 a Critical Sketch of Travel in the United States (New York, 
 1864), 401-404. 
 
 This is one of the most careful, fair, and valuable criticisms of Mr. 
 Flint and his work.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Adayes: 170 
 
 Alabama: 118 
 
 Albany (N.Y.) : 208 
 
 Albion (111.): 260 
 
 Alexandria (La.): mentioned, 15, 
 211, 222, 237, 277; moves to, 157; 
 first letter in Recollections dated 
 from, 177; described, 163-164; re- 
 sides, 163-183 ; home life, 167-168 ; 
 returns to, 178, 217, 229; journey 
 from, 180; incident, 182-183; fire, 
 3i8; homestead, 233 
 
 Alleghany Mts: mentioned, 17, 53, 
 57i i53j footnote 
 
 Alps: 222 
 
 American Antiquarian Society of 
 Worcester: 15-16 
 
 American Biographical Dictionary: 
 works on, 256 
 
 American Monthly Review: men- 
 tioned, 212; review, 260; extract 
 from, 261, 262, 263; cited, 315 
 
 Andover: mentioned, 218, 287 
 
 Angel's Rest: summer home, 234 
 
 Apennines: 222 
 
 Arkansas: mentioned, 84, 119, 297; 
 resides, 121-127; people, 123-124; 
 hardships, 125-127 
 
 Arkansas Post: 121, 123 
 
 Arkansas River: mentioned, 119, 
 120, 151, 163; marks border of 
 new climate, 121 ; scenery along, 
 121-123 
 
 Army, union: 15 
 
 Arthur Clenning: Flint's experiences 
 portrayed, 44 ; mentioned, 49 ; pub- 
 
 lished, i88; extract, 250; criticism, 
 253 ; cited, 308 
 
 Art of Being Happy: extract, 27, 
 286; mentioned, 275, and footnote, 
 285 ; cited, 310 
 
 Athenaum : prepares articles, 223 ; 
 sketches prepared for, 230, 231; 
 mentioned, 231; cited as authority, 
 231; articles, 250-251; criticism ot 
 articles, 253; article by N. P. Wil- 
 lis, 257 
 
 Atlantic Ocean: mentioned, 164, i8i 
 
 Attala: 58 
 
 Azeila (ship) : 180-181 
 
 Babcock, Rufus: book cited, 98, 
 
 footnote 
 
 Ballinger, Madam — : 140 
 
 Baltimore (Md.): mentioned, 173, 
 
 175. 199 
 
 Banks, Gen. — : 233 
 
 Baptists: i8, 96, 190, 282, 293 
 
 Barnard, Rev. Dr. — : 36 
 
 Baton Rouge (La.): 154, 155 
 
 Baxter, Mr. — : 279, 280 
 
 Beaver (on the Ohio River) : 62 
 
 Beebe [Beebee], Mr. — : 115, 291 
 
 Beecher, L3man: 18, 193 
 
 Beers, Prof. Henry A: mentioned, 
 230; extract from letter, 250; criti- 
 cises articles in Athenaum, 253 ; 
 criticises Arthur Clenning, 253 ; 
 cited, 315 
 
 Belial: children of, 212 
 
 Bellefountaine (Mo.) : 119 
 
 Bently, Dr. — : 26
 
 320 
 
 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 Berrian, Francis: character in luMik, 
 29; at Harvard, 32-33; mentioned, 
 279 ; see also, Francis Berrian 
 
 Bethany (W. Va.): 190 
 
 Bibles: lack, 78; distributed, 95, 109; 
 scarcity', 102 
 
 Bigelow, E. V: work cited, 34 
 
 Biographic Universclle Classi(jiie: 
 232, 238, 256 
 
 Birkbeck, Mr. — : 260 
 
 Blackburn, Rev. Dr. Gideon: men- 
 tioned, 91, and footnote, 92, 98; 
 unites forces with, 93, 94; elo- 
 quent, 107-108 
 
 Blythe, Dr. — : 77 
 
 Boats: Kentucky flatboat, 61-62, 63; 
 skiff, 62; keel, 62, 119; purchases 
 for journey, 83; steamboat, 83; 
 crew on, 85 ; method of propelling, 
 89; journey up Miss. Riv., 127- 
 132; builds flatboat, 151; embarks 
 on steamer, 155, 163 ; berths, 207- 
 208; good, 220; experience on, 
 225-227 
 
 Bogues: nickname applied to natives, 
 
 Bonhome: no 
 
 Boon's Lick: 103 
 
 Boston (Mass.) : Congregational 
 Library, 16; mentioned, 161, 175, 
 218, 259; class reunion, 209-210; 
 compared with European cities, 
 222 ; stops at Tremont House, 227 ; 
 beauty of Mt. Auburn, 243, 244, 
 footnote 
 
 Boston Public Library-: 16; original 
 letter in, 232 
 
 Brook Farm: 190 
 
 Brown, Chas. Brockden: 249 
 
 Bryant, Wm. Cullen: 257 
 
 Buffalo (N.Y.) : 198, 228 
 
 Bullard, Frances: marries Micah 
 Flint, 233 
 
 Bullard, Judge Henry: 36, 165, 166 
 
 Bullard, Rev. John (father of pre- 
 ceding) : 36, 165 
 
 Byron, Lord: 286 
 
 Cahokia Prairie: 106 
 
 Cairn (111.): 86 
 
 Calvinism: 192, 279 
 
 Calvinists: 18, 193 
 
 Cambridge (Mass.) : 238 
 
 Campbell, Alexander: 18; debates 
 
 with Robert Owen, 190-193 
 Canada: 88; visits, 219-222 
 Cantonment Jessup (U.S. Post) : 170 
 Caracas, Venezuela: earthquake at, 
 
 134 
 
 Cartwright, Peter: 17 
 
 Catholics, Roman: mentioned, 90-91, 
 93i 97» 98? 132; churches in La., 
 154, 165; cemetery, 160; doomed 
 man refuses to see priest, 170 ; ser- 
 vice by priests, 181; pope, 279; 
 agrees with, 279 
 
 Cemeterj^: Catholic, 160; Protestant, 
 160-161 ; private, 237 ; Flint buried 
 in Harmony Grove, 243 ; beauty 
 of Mt. Auburn, 243, 244; monu- 
 ment in (illus.), 245 
 
 Channing, William EUery: i8 
 
 Chateaubriand, M. — : 45, 286 
 
 Cheneyville (La.) : 237 
 
 China: 273 
 
 "Christians": 190; compared with 
 Unitarians, 192 
 
 Christian Register, The: quotation, 
 235; article, 239, 242; letter from, 
 241 
 
 Church: called to Lunenburg, 35; 
 trouble, 43-45 ; resigns, 43 ; hopes 
 to found Presbyterian, 80; organ- 
 ized in St. Charles, 98, 117; dis- 
 courages founding, 109; lack of 
 Protestant in La., 154; Catholic, 
 154, 165 ; in New Orleans, 158 ; de- 
 bate in Methodist, 191 ; Presbvte- 
 rian, refused for debate, 191 ; Flint, 
 one of the leaders to form first 
 Congregational, 195 ; Trinitarian,
 
 INDEX 
 
 321 
 
 209 ; Flint's attitude and sympathy 
 toward various denominations, 279 
 
 Cincinnati (Ohio) : mentioned, 63, 
 77. 95, loi, 150, 179, 211, 234, 236, 
 269, 291; spent winter in, 64; 
 settle for winter, 65; described, 65- 
 66; friends, 83; date of leaving, 
 84; revisits, 174; plans removal, 
 180; literary work, 185, 189; lo- 
 cates, 185-217; debate, 190-191; 
 honored, 2cx3-20i ; Mrs. Trollope, 
 212-213 ; moves from, 217 
 
 Cincinnati Mirror: mentioned, 41, 
 258 ; cited as authority, 41, 234, 
 254, 255, 258, 268; cited, 313 
 
 Cities: eastern compared with wes- 
 tern, 204 
 
 Civil War: 15, 233, 277 
 
 Clark, C. A: 241 
 
 Clark, Wm: 33 
 
 Clarke Company, Robert: thanked, 16 
 
 Clay, Henry: 77 
 
 Cohasset: 34 
 
 Collins, Judge — : 195, footnote 
 
 Columbia River: 273 
 
 Columbus (war-ship) : 206 
 
 Congregationalists: 18, 153, footnote; 
 relations with Presbyterians, 67, 
 footnote, 90, footnote, 96 
 
 Connecticut, Missionary Society of: 
 Flint's connection with, 54; let- 
 ters, 69, 84, 115, 141-142, 145, 146, 
 185, 291-296; salary, 78-79; men- 
 tioned, 91, footnote, 112, footnote, 
 146 
 
 Cooke, Harriet R: author of Driver 
 Family, zz, footnote; work cited, 
 
 315 
 Cordelle: used to propel boat, 89, 128 
 Corwine, R. M: 195, footnote 
 Covenant: used by Flint in Lunen- 
 burg, 42 
 Covington (La.) : 155, 156 
 Creoles: 219 
 Cuba: 227 
 
 Cuivre (Mo.) : 109 
 
 Cunningham, George A: work, 35, 
 
 footnote, 41, 46; cited, 315 
 Cutler, Ephraim: 25, footnote 
 Cutler, Julia P: writer, 25, footnote 
 Cutler, Rev. Dr. Manasseh: 26 
 Cypress tree: 122-123 
 
 Damon, Rev. David: 43 
 
 Daniel Boone: related to other 
 works, 252 ; most popular work, 
 271-272, and 271, footnote; cited, 
 
 3" 
 
 Dartmouth College: 28, 29 
 Dayton (Ohio) : 72 
 Dead Man's Riffle: 61 
 Delaware River: 56; compared with 
 
 Mississippi, 154 
 Disciples: 190 
 
 Doddridge, Mr. — : 279, 280 
 Donnell, Mr. — : 94 
 Drake, Dr. — : 174, and footnote 
 
 Earthquakes: in Mo., 133; plan 
 to save from, 134 
 
 Easton: 56 
 
 Economic Conditions: abundant food, 
 65 ; cost of living, 65-66, 93 ; in 
 Ky., 75-76; in St. Charles, 108 
 
 Edinburgh Reviezv: poem, 236 
 
 Edwards, Jonathan: 287 
 
 Egypt: 240 
 
 Emmons, Nathaniel : 287 
 
 Encyclopedia Americana, Supp. Vol: 
 as authority, 34; article cited in, 
 177; quotation from, 229; cited, 
 
 314 
 Encyclopedia Britannica: extract, 
 
 253; cited, 314 
 Episcopal Church: 279, 281 
 Erie Canal: 198 
 Essex County: 25, 49 
 Essex Institute (Salem) : 15 
 Europe: mentioned, 65, 191; visits 
 
 (?), 222
 
 322 
 
 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 Everett, David: 28 
 Ewing, Finis: 18 
 
 Factories: 204 
 
 Federal Party: 51 
 
 Female Charitable Association: of 
 Cincinnati, 83 
 
 First S.S. on the La Plata: gathers 
 material for, 200 
 
 Fishkill (N.Y.): 56 
 
 Fitchbiirg (Mass.) : mentioned, 34, 
 51, 165 
 
 Flint, Rev. Abel : extract from let- 
 ter to, 54; mentioned, 91, footnote, 
 112, footnote, 113; letter to, 146, 
 291-296 
 
 Flint, Ebenezer Hubbard (son of 
 Timothy Flint): birth, 40; book- 
 store in Cincinnati, 185, footnote', 
 business, 186; manages Micah's 
 estate, 233 ; characteristics, 276, 
 277 
 
 Flint, Mrs. E. H : wife of preced- 
 ing, 277 
 
 Flint, Emeline Hubbard (daughter 
 of Timothy Flint) : mentioned, 40, 
 '37i 195; falls in river, 85; mar- 
 ries Gen. Thomas, 232 ; describes 
 brother's death, 237-238 ; death 
 of, 277 
 
 Flint, Hezekiah (uncle of Timoth}') : 
 goes west, 25, and footnote 
 
 Flint Jr., Hezekiah (son of preced- 
 ing) : in Cincinnati, 25, footnote, 
 
 64 
 
 Flint, Rev. Jacob: 34, 36 
 
 Flint, Dr. James (cousin of Tim- 
 othy) : mentioned, 28, 34, 150, 182, 
 199, 223, 227, footnote, 252; quo- 
 tation from Historical Address, 
 etc., 29; at Harvard, 31; Recollec- 
 tions dedicated to, 45 ; Timothy 
 visits, 171, 175; connection with 
 the Recollections, 177; informa- 
 tion from, 178, 179; gives date of 
 
 move to Cincinnati, 185, footnote; 
 letters to, 196, 199, 206; goes to 
 North Reading with, 208 ; cited 
 as authorit}-, 229; visits Timothy, 
 235; verses by, 235-236; article, 
 242; buried beside Timothy, 244; 
 writings, 315 
 
 Flint Jr., James (son of Micah P. 
 Flint) : death, 237 
 
 Flint, James Timothy (youngest son 
 of Timothy) : birth, 141 ; parting, 
 173; at Harvard, 232, 238; visits, 
 238 ; return home, 238 ; in Natchez, 
 239-241 ; buys cemetery lot, 243 ; 
 occupation, 276-277 ; children, 277 ; 
 Spiritualist, 280; library destroy- 
 ed, 15 
 
 Flint, James Timothy (grandson of 
 Timothy Flint): gives aid, 15; 
 mentioned, 277 
 
 Flint, Martha Elizabeth (youngest 
 child): teaches French to, 234; 
 gift, 238; mentioned, 277; death, 
 277; daughter living, 277 
 
 Flint, Martha Kimball (mother of 
 Timothy) : 21 
 
 Flint, Micah Peabody (oldest son 
 of Timothy): date of birth, 40; 
 mentioned, 83, 106, 235 ; very ill, 
 125 ; poem in memory of sister, 
 130, 297-300; lines by, 168, 176; 
 occupation, 179 ; criticism of work, 
 186; poems published in Revieiv, 
 i88; marries Frances BuUard, 
 233; prosperous, 233; estate, 233; 
 death, 236; published poems, 236; 
 father uses poetry, 252; sons, 277; 
 works cited, 316 
 
 Flint Jr., Micah (son of Micah P.) : 
 death, 237 
 
 Flint, Peter: 241 
 
 Flint, Thomas: 21-22 
 
 Flint, Timothy: great-uncle, 22 
 
 Flint, Timothy: birth and baptism, 
 21 ; genealogy, 21-22 ; boyhood.
 
 INDEX 
 
 323 
 
 25-^8; youth, 28-34; education, 
 29-34; ministry in Lunenburg, 35- 
 46 ; resigns from pastorate, 43-46 ; 
 eloquence of, 51-53; journey west, 
 55-64; 83-85; in Ohio, 65-81; or- 
 ganizes churches, 72 ; journey 
 through Ind. and Ky., 75 ; on Miss. 
 Riv., 85-92; stay in St. Louis, 91- 
 97; in and around St. Charles, 
 101-118; Sunday observances, 112; 
 troubles in ministry, 112-115; sick- 
 ness, 117; prophecy, 122, 272-274; 
 in Arkansas, 121-127; hardships, 
 125-130, 142-146, 295 ; in New Ma- 
 drid, 131-135; in Jackson, 135- 
 141 ; return to St. Charles, 142- 
 150; asks for aid, 145-146; jour- 
 ney south, 150-154; in New Or- 
 leans and vicinity, 154-161 ; in 
 Alexandria, 164-182; head of col- 
 lege, 164, 169; ill health, 169-178; 
 goes north, 171-178, 179-182; in 
 Cincinnati, 185-201 ; objects in es- 
 tablishing JVestern Monthly Re- 
 'vieiv, 186-188 ; literary career, 178- 
 207 ; attitude toward ministerial 
 duties, 193-194; goes to New Eng- 
 land, 195-200; goes south, 200; 
 journeys, 207-210; takes charge of 
 Knickerbocker, 207, 210-211; re- 
 signs, 215; returns to Alexandria, 
 217; travels, 218-228; in Canada, 
 219-222 ; in Europe ( ? ) , 222 ; in S. 
 Amer. (?), 222, 223-224; in Cu- 
 ba, 224-228 ; writes for Atheneeum, 
 230-231; prosperity, 233-234; last 
 years, 233-242; death, 242, and 
 footnote; rank as writer, 242-243; 
 monument and inscription, 244- 
 247 ; criticism of work, 249-266 ; 
 interest in French literature, 255- 
 256; type, 17; characteristics, 18- 
 19, 267-287; dislike of liquor and 
 tobacco, 275 ; attitude toward slav- 
 ery, 276; famil}', 276-278; reli- 
 
 gious, 18, 194, 195, 275, footnote, 
 278-287; itinerary', 289-290; letter 
 of resignation, 291-296; family 
 prayer, 301 ; books and papers de- 
 stroyed, 15; list of writings, 305- 
 313; biographies of Flint, 313-314 
 
 Flint, Mrs. Timothy (wife of pre- 
 ceding) : marries, 34; mentioned, 
 62, 72, 195, 292; keeps school, io8, 
 109, 294; very ill, 125, 145; anx- 
 ious to leave Ark., 127; in travail, 
 128-130; death, 227, footnote, 243, 
 and footnote; see also Hubbard, 
 Abigail 
 
 Flint, Wm: father of Timothy, 21 
 
 Flint, Wm: grandfather, 21 
 
 Flint, Wm: great-grandfather, 21 
 
 Flint, Wm: great-great-grandfather, 
 22 
 
 Flint family treasures: destroyed, 15 
 
 Flint homestead: 21; illustration, 23 
 
 Flint Street: 22 
 
 Florida: interested in history, 156 
 
 Flour Island: 119 
 
 Flowers, Mr. — : 260 
 
 Ford, Mr. — : History of Cincinnati, 
 cited, 195, footnote 
 
 Fortier, Alice: work cited, 377 
 
 Francis Berrian, or the Mexican Pa- 
 triot: mentioned, 28, 271; quota- 
 tion, 30-31, 32, 33; material, 165, 
 i66; when written, 178; personal 
 references, 178-179; published, 
 179; well received, 186; criticism 
 by W. H. Venable, 254; by N. P. 
 Willis, 257 ; by Mrs. Trollope, 258- 
 259 ; extract from, 281-282 ; cited, 
 
 307 
 
 Frankfort (Ky.) : 80 
 
 French: of Arkansas, 125; compared 
 with Germans, 138; in New Or- 
 leans, 159; interest in French 
 Avork and translations, 255-256. 
 
 Gallagher, W. D : mentioned, 41,
 
 324 
 
 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 and footnote, 267, footnote \ state- 
 ment, 234; value as critic, 254; 
 criticises Flint's works, 254-255; 
 criticism, 258, 267; dedicates book 
 to Flint, 268 
 
 Galveston (Tex.) : mentioned, 237, 
 277 
 
 Galveston flood: 15 
 
 Geography and History of the Mis- 
 sissippi Falley : quotation, 26 ; cit- 
 ed, io6, 307 ; gathers material for, 
 155; mentioned, 179, and footnote; 
 publication, i8o, 188; Niagara 
 Fails described in, 198 ; popularity', 
 234; criticism, 243; related to oth- 
 er works, 252 ; criticism by Mr. 
 Gallagher, 255 ; by Griswold, 257 ; 
 by Mrs. Trollope, 259 ; review in 
 Amer. Monthly Review, 260. 
 
 George Mason: Flint's own experi- 
 ences portrayed, 44, 137; quota- 
 tion, 44, 149 ; Mo probable scene 
 
 of story, 136; works on, 149, 150; 
 published, 188; moral purpose, 
 250; cited, 308 
 
 German settlement in Missouri: 137- 
 141 ; people compared with French, 
 138; trouble with pastor, 139-140; 
 funeral customs, 140, footnote 
 
 Germans: minister and family, 59- 
 60; of Pennsylvania, 205; of 
 Missouri, 138 
 
 Ghent (Ky.) : 77 
 
 Giddings, Rev. Salmon: mentioned, 
 80, 91, 92, 94, 98, 99, 101, 107, 
 108, 109, 295 ; writes letters against 
 Flint, 112-114; brief account, 113, 
 footnote; Flint's relations with, 
 115 ; letter, 117 ; trials of, 292, 293 ; 
 attitude of Flint toward, 294 
 
 Goldsmith, Oliver: 258 
 
 Golgotha: 65 
 
 Gray, Mrs. — : 132, 134 
 
 Grecian, S.S: 174 
 
 Griswold, Rufus W: extract by, 251 ; 
 
 criticism by, 257 
 Gulf of Mexico: mentioned, 88, 180 
 
 Hali, Capt. — : 221 
 
 Hall, Judge James: 189, 212 
 
 Hamilton, Major — : 221 
 
 Harmony Grove Cemetery: Flint 
 buried in, 243 
 
 Harrison, Gen. — : 71; described, 
 72; home (illus.), 73; mentioned, 
 78 ; forced to stop with, 84 
 
 Hartford (Conn.): Congregational 
 Library, 16, 55; mentioned, 55, 92, 
 115, 291 
 
 Hartford Theological Seminarj : 
 thanked, 15 
 
 Harvard Class Book for Class of 
 iSoo: cited, 31, 34, 314; as author- 
 ity, 39, 40, 165, 242; statement 
 from, 233 
 
 Harvard University: thanked, 15; 
 mentioned, 29; Timothy Flint at, 
 31-33 ; Francis Berrian rt, 32- 
 33 ; class historian relates inci- 
 dent, 39; class reunion, 209-210; 
 James Timothy Flint at, 232, 233 
 
 Harvard University Library: 80, 
 footnote 
 
 Havana: mentioned, 181; visits, 224- 
 225 ; people, 225 
 
 Haverhill: 218 
 
 Havre (France): mentioned, 181 
 
 Hempstead, Stephen: letter to, 80, 
 footnote; mentioned, 91, footnote, 
 92, 291 
 
 Hempstead family: mentioned, 141 
 
 Henry, Matthew: 282, 286 
 
 Herculaneum (Mo.): 91 
 
 Hinman, George W: 29, footnote 
 
 Hoffman, Chas. Fenno: 210, 211; 
 admirer of Flint, 260 
 
 Hopkins, Samuel: 287 
 
 Hospitality: lacking in west, 62;
 
 INDEX 
 
 325 
 
 shown by Gen. Harrison, 72 ; 
 
 shown little, 79; great, 131 
 Houck, Louis: History of Missouri, 
 
 cited, 135, footnote, 316 
 Howard, Luther G: 40 
 Hubbard, Abigail: date of baptism, 
 
 34, footnote; Flint marries, 34; 
 
 see Flint, Airs. Timothy 
 Hubbard, Rev. Ebenezer: 34, 41 
 Hudson River: 56, 198 
 Hull, Rev. — : 164 
 
 Illinois: ask for transfer to, 80 
 
 Hlinois River: 106 
 
 Imlay: 45 
 
 Indiana: journey through, 75 
 
 Indians: Shawnoe, 88; mentioned, 
 
 103, 104; funeral, 183; Elder 
 
 Wood's sermons, 282 ; stoiy cited, 
 
 309 
 Indian IVars: related to other works, 
 
 252 
 Ipswich River: 21 
 Italy: 205 
 Itinerants: 17, 124 
 
 Jackson (Mo.): 132; spends year 
 in, 135; people, 135-136; German 
 settlement near, 137-141; men- 
 tioned, 263 
 
 Japan: 273 
 
 Johnson, Senator — : 189 
 
 Jones, J. G: book cited, 153, foot- 
 note 
 
 Journeys: west, 55-64, 80-91; on riv- 
 er, 60 ; through Ky., 75 ; inces- 
 sant travel, 102; up Miss. Riv., 
 127-132; on Miss., 150-154; on ac- 
 count of health, 169-171 ; north, 
 171-176; return to Alexandria, 
 178; account, 180; north, 195-200; 
 south, 200; from Cincinnati, 207- 
 210; east, 217-220; in Canada, 
 220-221; in Europe (?), 222-223; 
 
 in S. Amer. (?), 222-224; to 
 Cuba, 224-225; future, 238 
 
 Keelboat: purchases, 83; embarks, 
 119 ; see Ooats 
 
 Kentuckians: first intimate experi- 
 ence with, 63 ; manners, 75-76 ; 
 mentioned, 92; restless, 80-81; 
 reference, 95; Flint compares self 
 to, 101-102 
 
 Kentucky: mentioned, 55, 69, 189; 
 journey through, 75 ; manners, 75- 
 76 ; rec'd gift of money, 79 
 
 Kingston (N.H.): Flint works three 
 weeks in, 47-48 
 
 Kingston (Miss.): mentioned, 153, 
 footnote 
 
 Knickerbocker: writes for, 189; cit- 
 ed as authorit}% 204, 205, 207, 217, 
 220, 221, 222, 225, 227, 260, 261, 
 269 ; takes charge of, 207, 210-211 ; 
 quotations from, 208, 209, 211, 
 215, 218, 222-223, 224-225, 226- 
 227, 244, footnote, 261, 262, 269; 
 article, 212; criticizes Mrs. Trol- 
 lope's book, 213; resigns, 215; 
 mentioned, 231; reviews, 260-261; 
 contributions, 310-313 
 
 Lafayette, Marquis de: 200 
 
 Lake Champlain: 219 
 
 Lake George: 49 
 
 Lake Ponchartrain (La.) : 155; cross, 
 
 155-156 
 Lake Winnipisaukee: 218 
 Lamartine, M. — : 286 
 Lancaster (Mass.) : 51 
 Langtree, Samuel Dal)': 210-211, 
 
 215 
 La Prairie: 219 
 Larned, Rev. Sylvester: 158, and 
 
 footnote 
 Lawrence Academy (Groton) : 40 
 Lawrenceburg: 85
 
 32b 
 
 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 Lawyers: comparison, in various 
 sections, 70 
 
 Lear, King: 129 
 
 Lecture upon Natural History: 28, 
 cited, 311 
 
 Lemprierc, M. — : 256 
 
 Leominster (Mass.): 42; Fourtli of 
 July oration, 51-52 
 
 Letter: to Chas. Lowell, 47 and foot- 
 note, 232; of Flint, cited, 78-79, 
 83. 94-95. 96, 102-103, 104, 109, 
 no, III, n2, 113, 114, 115, 116, 
 117, 118, 119, 121, 125, 127, 128, 
 132, 135. 137, 141, 145, 185; first 
 missionary, 56, 58 ; to Gen. Put- 
 nam, 63 ; to Miss. Soc. of Conn., 
 69; cited, 78, 79, footnotes; to 
 Stephen Hempstead, 80, footnote; 
 to Missionary Society- of Connec- 
 ticut cited, 84, 115, 141-142, 145, 
 146, 185 ; first miss., from St. 
 Louis, 90, 91-92 ; from St. Louis, 
 94-95 ; report from letter of S. 
 Giddings, 98, footnote; from 
 Timothy Flint, 111-112; by Mr. 
 Giddings against Flint, 112-114, 
 291-296; of S. Giddings, 117; of 
 George A. Thayer, 195 ; to James 
 Flint, 196, 199, 206; in Athenaum, 
 230-231; to Rev. Chas. Lowell, 
 46-47, 232; family, 235 ; of Emeline 
 Thomas, 237-238 ; of Flint, 240- 
 241 ; of C. A. Clark, 241 ; of Hen- 
 ry A. Beers, 250; of Flint, pre- 
 served, 305-306 
 
 Lexington (Ky.) : 72, 77 
 
 Life and Adventures of Arthur 
 Clenning: see Arthur Clenning 
 
 Litchfield, J. A: letter from, 35, 
 footnote 
 
 London: 222, 270 
 
 London Athenaum, The: see Athen- 
 aum 
 
 London Quarterly Review. 263-264 
 
 Louisiana: mentioned, 188 
 
 Louisville (Ky.) : reaches, 174 
 Lowell, Rev. Chas: letter to, 46-47, 
 
 232; work cited, 186, footnote 
 Lowell, James Russell : mentioned, 46 
 Lowell (Mass.): visits, 204 
 Lunenburg: name of Micah's plan- 
 tation, 237 
 Lunenburg (Mass.) : librarian thank- 
 ed, 16; mentioned, 34; Flint set- 
 tles as minister, 35-47; ordination 
 of Flint, 36; trouble in church, 39; 
 letter from, 55; visits, 177-178; 
 208-209 
 Lutheran, German: minister, 59-60 
 
 McGuffey's Eclectic Readers: 52, 
 
 footnote 
 Mackenzie, Alex: 33 
 Macoupin: accredited to Flint, 223; 
 
 cited, 311 
 Madisonville (La.): 156 
 Mad River: 59 
 
 Maine: sufferings of family from, 66 
 Mamelle (Mo.) : 106 
 Many, Col. — : 170-171 
 Marblehead (Mass.) : 34 
 "Marietta on the Ohio": 25, 63 
 Massachusetts: mentioned, 49, 66, 
 
 84, 209 ; desires to return, 145 ; 
 
 changes, 203-206 
 Massachusetts General Association: 
 
 46 
 Massachusetts Historical Societ}-: 
 
 Proceedings, 31 ; becomes corre- 
 sponding member, 201 
 Massachusetts Society for promoting 
 
 Christian Knowledge: 47, 48-49; 
 
 quotation from Account of, 48, 
 
 footnote, 54 
 Mathews, Mr. — : 94; trials of, 292, 
 
 293 
 Mediterranean Sea: 53 
 Merrimac River: 219 
 Methodists: 17-18, 66, 68, 96, 280, 
 
 281-282
 
 INDEX 
 
 327 
 
 Mexico: Judge Bullard in, 166; 
 
 Mexican War: 273, 277 
 mentioned, 191 
 
 Miami River: 60 
 
 Middle Ages: 17 
 
 Middlesex County (Mass.)-' 25 
 
 Migration: to west, 66 
 
 Miller, Gen. — : 207 
 
 Mills, Samuel J: 80, footnote, 91, 
 footnote, 95 
 
 Mill's and Smith's Journal: 80, 
 footnote 
 
 Ministers: of the west, 68-69; o'f 
 Ky., 76 ; eloquence of, 107-108 
 
 Missionaries; home compared to for- 
 eign, 97; hardships endured, 145- 
 146 
 
 Mississippi River: 62, 80, 81, 83, 
 150, 163, 173, 237, 397; reach, 85; 
 journey, 85-92, 127-131, 150-154; 
 prepares for trip, 118; scenery 
 along, 120 
 
 Mississippi Valley: mentioned, 17; 
 development, 272 
 
 Missouri River: mentioned, 33, 97, 
 119; dangerous, 110; mishap, 151 
 
 Montmorency River: 220 
 
 Montreal: 220 
 
 Monument, Timothy Flint's: inscrip- 
 tion, 13, 244-347; illustration, 245 
 
 Morgan, Gen. — : 132 
 
 Morse, Rev. Dr. Jedidiah: 54, foot- 
 note 
 
 Mosquitoes: great swarms, 126 
 
 Moundbuilders: 364 
 
 Mounds: 105-106 
 
 Music: for religious service, 78 
 
 Naies: see Adayes 
 
 Napoleon, Bonaparte: 53 
 
 Narrows (L.I.) : mentioned, 206; lo- 
 cates at, 2IO 
 
 Nashville (Tenn.) : mentioned, 15, 
 277 
 
 Natchez (Miss.) : mentioned, 118, 
 
 164; described, 152-153; in, 173; 
 
 goes to, 339 ; storm, 239-341 
 Natchez Courier: cited, 339 
 Natchez Free Trader: cited, 239 
 Natchitoches: mentioned, 169, 171, 
 
 239 
 
 Natchitoches, S.S: cm, 173 
 
 Navigator: cited, 62 
 
 Neal, John: 355 
 
 Newburg (N.Y.): 56 
 
 Newbury (Mass.): 41 
 
 Newell, Harriet: 219 
 
 New England: clergymen, 59, 67, 
 footnote, 80, footnote, 91, footnote, 
 96; people, 78; mentioned, 150, 
 161, 177, 188, 263; progress made 
 in ten years, 176 ; absence from, 
 203 ; changes, 203-206 ; visits, 238 
 
 New Hampshire: mentioned, 47, 309, 
 219 
 
 New Harmony (Ind.) : Owen's col- 
 ony, 190 
 
 New Jersey: 56, 133 
 
 New Lanark (Scotland) : 190 
 
 New Madrid (Mo.) : mentioned, 131, 
 152, 293; experiences, 131-135 
 
 New Orleans (La.) : levees near, 
 153; reach, 154; return to, 157; 
 described, 158-161 ; mentioned, 
 163; visits, 180-181 ; vegetation, 
 182 
 
 Newport (Ky.): 57 
 
 Newton (Sussex Co., N.J.) : 56 
 
 New York (state) : 49 
 
 New York City: location compared 
 to New Orleans, 161 ; journey to, 
 180; reaches, 182; leaves, 217; 
 compared with European cities, 
 222 
 
 New York Commercial: 258, 316 
 
 New York Evening Post: 257 
 
 New York Observer: 257 
 
 Niagara Falls: visits, 198; mention- 
 ed, 229 
 
 North American Revieiv: criticism of
 
 328 
 
 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 Recollections, 264-266 ; mentioned, 
 271, footnote; cited, 317 
 
 North Bend (Ohio) : 71 
 
 North Precinct Congregation: 22, 
 footnote 
 
 North Reading (Mass.) : librarian 
 thanked, i6; Parish Records, 21, 
 and footnote, 317; mentioned, 21, 
 145 ; saying in, 22 ; educational ad- 
 vantages, 29 ; schoolhouse, 29 ; 
 church, 36 ; visits, 208 ; writes 
 from, 239; near, 241 
 
 Norton, Augustus T: book by, cited, 
 91, footnote, 113, footnote, 317 
 
 Ohio: spends winter, 65-81; termed 
 "Yankee state," 68 
 
 Ohio River: journey, 60-64; men- 
 tioned, 65, 71, 75, 83, 199 
 
 Ohio Valley: 17, 79 
 
 Oolemba: short story, 189, 272; cit- 
 ed, 309 
 
 Oregon: 274 
 
 Orizaba (Mex.) : 219 
 
 Osgood, David: 92, and footnote 
 
 Ottawa River: 220 
 
 Owen, Robert: 189-193 ; debates with 
 Rev. Alex. Campbell, 190-193; as 
 travelling companion, 196 
 
 Packets: New York and Liverpool, 
 206 
 
 Paley, Wm. — : 278, 286 
 
 Pandect: weekly paper, 193; charge 
 against Flint, 193-194 
 
 Paris: 222, 270 
 
 Parish, Elijah: '92, and footnote 
 
 Parker, Theodore: 284 
 
 Pattie, James O: edits Personal Nar- 
 rative of, 189 
 
 Peabody and Co: 211, 230, 231 
 
 Peabody, Mr. — : 231 
 
 Peabody, Joseph: 34, 150 
 
 Peck, John Mason: 18, 107, 293 
 
 Pekin : 270 
 
 Pennsylvania: Germans, 205 
 
 Philadelphia: 59; compared with 
 European cities, 222 
 
 Phillips, Mr. — : 127 
 
 Phillips Academy (Andover) : 31 
 
 Pierpont, Rev. Mr. — : 200 
 
 Pilgrims: spirit of, 282 
 
 Pineville (La.) : cottage in, 234 
 
 Pioneers: ministers, 17; stories, 26; 
 expectations, 66; frequent realiz- 
 ation, 66 ; trouble, 101 ; charac- 
 teristics, 102-104; business meth- 
 ods, 104; sufferings, 105; Flint ad- 
 mirers, 271 ; see Flint, Timothy 
 
 Pittsburg (Pa.): 58, 60, 61; rate 
 of living compared with Boston, 
 62 ; mentioned, 175 
 
 Point Prairie (Mo.): 106; locates 
 at, 115 
 
 Post: see Arkansas Post 
 
 Postell, William: 150 
 
 Potomac River: crosses, 175 
 
 Poydras, Mr. — : 158 
 
 Presbyterians: Old School, 18; New 
 School, 18; Arminianized, 18; N. 
 Eng. clergymen, 67, footnote, 91, 
 footnote, 96 ; Cumberland, 68 ; 
 church organized, 98 ; see Church 
 
 Presb}'tery: Cumberland, 18; Flint 
 attends meeting, 67 ; to be formed, 
 94; meeting, 117 
 
 Preston, Mrs. E. A: 277 
 
 Prevot, Surgeon — : hanged, 170 
 
 Prince, Dr. — : 25, 36 
 
 Princeton College: 158, footnote, 287 
 
 Putnam, Gen. — : 63 
 
 Quebec: 220 
 
 Railroad: first experience on, 208 
 
 Rapide, Parish of: 164 
 
 Raymond (Mass.) : Flint works six 
 
 weeks in, 47-48 
 Reading (Mass.) : librarian thanked, 
 
 16; North Parish Church, 22;
 
 INDEX 
 
 329 
 
 mentioned, 177, 218 ; Flint's death 
 place, 242 ; see North Reading 
 
 Recollections of the last ten years: 
 notes in Lunenburg Libraiy copy, 
 40 ; dedication, 45 ; mentioned, 49, 
 loi, 142, 151, 155, 268; begin- 
 ning) 55 ; quotations, 57, 58, 60, 
 63, 67, 68, 69, 72, 76, 86, 106, 107, 
 120, 126, 127, 128-130, 135-136, 
 139, 140, 152, 165, 167, 169, 171, 
 173, 175-176, 178, 287; cited as 
 authority, 70-71, 72, 84, 85, 86, 
 87, 88, 89, 90, 96, 97, 103, 104, 
 105, 106, 107, 108, no, 112, 115, 
 n8, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 
 126, 127, 128, 131, 132, 133, 134, 
 135, 136, 137. 138, 139, i4'3, 141. 
 149, ISO, 151, 152, 153, 154, 156, 
 i57» 158, 159, 160, i6i, 163, 164, 
 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 
 173. 174. 175, 176, 177. 182; end 
 176; where and when written, 
 177; left with publisher, 178; 
 well received, 186; Ms. for sec- 
 ond part, 229; second part, 239; 
 criticism, 243 ; related to other 
 works, 252 ; criticism by W. H. 
 Venable, 253-254; by Griswold, 
 257 ; in U.S. Literary Gazette, 
 259; in Southern Revietv, 259; 
 Swett's estimate, 257 ; review in 
 London Quarterly Revieiv, 263 ; 
 in North American Rei>ieiv, 264- 
 266 ; reference to religion, 279 ; 
 cited, 306 
 
 Red River: 88; home on, 163, 235, 
 243 
 
 Religious and Social Conditions: in 
 Newton, N.J., 56 ; along route of 
 western journey, 56-59; among 
 boatmen, 57 ; among immigrants, 
 66-67, 105, 132; in Ohio Valley-, 
 67-70, 71, 75-77, 78; desperadoes, 
 88 ; in Ste. Genevieve, 90-91 ; in 
 St. Louis, 91-93, 94-95, 98; attach- 
 
 ment to religious form, 96, 97; in 
 and near St. Charles, 103-104, no, 
 111-112; itinerant preachers, 107; 
 in Arkansas, 123-125 ; in Jackson, 
 i35"i36; among Germans, 138- 
 140; in Warrington, Miss., 152; 
 in New Orleans, 159; in Havana, 
 224-225 
 
 Richards, Thomas C: 91, footnote 
 
 Rideau Canal: 220 
 
 Robinson Crusoe: 33 
 
 Rochester (N.Y.) : 198 
 
 Rocky Mountains: 103, 222, 273 
 
 Rome: 270 
 
 Rousseau, Jean J : 28 
 
 Roy, J. E: 113, footnote 
 
 Sabine River: journey, 169 
 
 St. Anthony (falls of) : 88 
 
 St. Charles (Mo.): mentioned, 92, 
 93, 131, 293, 297; moves, 97; 
 stay in, 101-118; acclimatization, 
 101; legislature, 106; love for, 
 118; returns, 141-150; trouble, 
 142-146; prepares to depart, 150 
 
 St. Francis (Ark.) : 127 
 
 Ste. Genevieve (Mo.): mentioned, 
 141 
 
 St. Lawrence River: 220 
 
 St. Louis (Mo.) : mentioned, 80, and 
 footnote, 84, 91, 114, 119, 141, 
 291; stay in, 91-97; reasons for 
 leaving, 97; spends Sunday, 151 
 
 St. Paul: 275 
 
 St. Petersburg (Russia) : 65, 270 
 
 St. Tammany County (La.): 156 
 
 Salem (Mass.) : mentioned, 22, 145, 
 161, 172, 177, 237; First Church, 
 25, 36, 46; North Church, 36; 
 East Church, 150; visits, 177; 
 Flint buried in, 243 
 
 Salt River: 103 
 
 Saratoga: mentioned, 177 
 
 Sawyer, Mr. — : 92 
 
 Saxon, S.S: 235
 
 330 
 
 TIMOTHY FLINT 
 
 Schenectady (N.Y.): 208 
 School: applies for, 47; in Cincin- 
 nati, 65; desire for, in Ohio, 68; 
 
 in St. Louis, 93; Mrs. Flint's, 
 
 108, 109, 294; in Jackson, Mo., 
 
 135; in Covington, 156 
 Sects, religious: compared, 96; 
 
 Pilgrims, 124, 135, 136; see under 
 
 names of various denominations 
 Seip, Emeline Flint: aid rendered, 
 
 15; mentioned, 235, footnote, 277; 
 
 letters cited, 317 
 Seip, Frederic: 223, footnoli', 235, 
 
 footnote, 277; letters cited, 317 
 Sermon: preached at ordination of 
 
 Ebenezer Hubbard, 41 
 Shaw, Lemuel: 210 
 "Shawnoe-town" : 85 
 Shoshonee Valley: uses son's works 
 
 in, 237, 252; criticized by N. P. 
 
 Willis, 257 ; mentioned, 271, 272, 
 
 277, 282; cited, 310 
 Siamese twins: 206 
 Simpson, Prof. Samuel: thanked, 
 
 16 
 Smith, Mr. — : 80, footnote 
 Smith, Elias: 96 
 Solomons: 106 
 Solons: 106 
 South America: 222, 223; scene of 
 
 stories, 223, 224 
 Southern Revievi: 259; extract, 259- 
 
 260, cited, 317 
 Spartan, S.S: 163 
 Staten Island: 210 
 Sterling (Mass.) : 51 
 Stone, Eliab: mentioned, 28, 36, 177 
 Stone, Micah: 29 
 Storm: 84; on Miss. Riv., 119, 128- 
 
 129: in Covington, 157; at sea, 
 
 182, 225 ; at Natchez, 239-241 
 Summerville: summer home, 234 
 Swayze, Rev. Samuel : founds 
 
 church, 153, footnote 
 Swedenborgians: 270 
 
 Swett, Samuel: statement, 233; 
 article by, 235; writes to, 239- 
 241 ; extract by, 242 ; criticism 
 by, 257, 269 
 
 Swiss: in Ind., 75 
 
 Tartars: 81 
 
 Teamsters: of the west, 59 
 
 Tennessee: 91, footnote 
 
 Tennesseeans: 92 
 
 Thayer, George A: 195, footnote 
 
 Thomas, Gen. — : marries Emeline 
 Flint, 232, 233; daughter, 238 
 
 Thomas, Emeline (wife of preced- 
 ing) : describes brother's death, 
 237-238 ; see Flint, Emeline 
 
 Thwaites, R.G: cites Pattie's Per- 
 sonal Narrati've in Early Western 
 Travels series, 189, footnote, 271, 
 footnote, 310 
 
 Tracts: "Swearer's Prayer," 59; 
 distributed, 78, 109 
 
 Transylvania Universitj' (Lexing- 
 ton, Ky.): 77 
 
 Travels: see Journeys 
 
 Tremont House (Boston) : 227 
 
 Trinitarian Part}': 45, 282 
 
 TroUope, Frances Milton: book 
 cited, 212; intimac>- with Flints, 
 212-213 ; book criticised in Knick- 
 erbocker, 213 ; praises Flint family, 
 213; quotation, 214-215, 258-259; 
 mentioned, 221 ; work cited, 263, 
 318; admiration for Timothy 
 Flint, 268-269 
 
 Tuckerman, Henry T: 258 
 
 Union, S.S: 225; passengers on, 
 225-229 
 
 Unitarians: does not connect self 
 with, 18 ; comparison to Camp- 
 bellites, 192; helps found church, 
 195; family inclines to, 280, 283; 
 lacks sympathy with, 284, 285; 
 inentioned, 287
 
 INDEX 
 
 331 
 
 United States Literary Gazette: 259 
 Universalist Society: of North Read- 
 ing, 29 
 Upham, Chas. W: book cited, 287, 
 footnote 
 
 Venable, W. H: work mentioned, 
 16; error in article, 1S5, footnote; 
 extract from, 239; criticism of 
 Recollections, 253-254; quotation, 
 254, 272; work cited, 314 
 
 Versailles: 80 
 
 Vevay (Ind.) : 75 
 
 Vicksburg (Miss.): 152 
 
 Villemain, M. — : 286 
 
 Vincennes (Ind.) : 75 
 
 Voltaire, School of: mentioned, 170 
 
 Walla Walla (Wash.) : mentioned, 
 
 277 
 Wanborough (III.) : 260 
 Warrenton (Miss.) : 152 
 Washington (D.C.) : described, 196- 
 
 197; mentioned, 270 
 Washington (Miss.) : 118 
 Washington (Pa.) : mentioned, 175 
 Wasiiington Benevolent Society 
 
 (Mass.) : 51 
 Washington, George: society named 
 
 for, 51 
 W^atts, Isaac: 39, 279, 2S0 
 Webster, Daniel: 52 
 Weiberg, Rev. Mr. — : 139-140, 
 
 141 
 Welland Canal: 220 
 Western Monthly Re-vietv: quoted, 
 
 25. 27. 30, 187-188, 194, 199-200, 
 
 232, 270, 274, 283, 284, 285, 287; 
 mentioned, 29, 130, 179, 267, 
 269; cited as authority, 122, 155, 
 157, 180, 181, 182, 1S3, 187, 193, 
 194, 196, 197, 198, 200, 206, 212, 
 213, 251, 252, 253, 256, 271, 272, 
 274, 275, 276, 278, 2Sc, 281, 282, 
 283, 284, 285, 286, 287; article in, 
 180; establishes, 185; reasons for 
 establishing, 186-188; financial 
 value, 18S; changes, 188; weak- 
 ness, 189; translations, 233; criti- 
 cism of work, 243 ; advertisement, 
 249; related to other works, 252; 
 religious views in, 283-285; con- 
 tributions to, 307-313 
 
 West Indies: 191, 222 
 
 Wheeling: 62, 174-175, 196 
 
 White Mts: 218, 219 
 
 White River: 120, 123 
 
 Whitewater (Ky.) : 57 
 
 Whitewater River: German settle- 
 ment, 137-141 
 
 Whiskey: used by boatmen, 85, 88; 
 by Dutch, 139 
 
 Wilbray, Capt. — : 180 
 
 Vl^Illis, Nathaniel Parker: mentioned, 
 230, 267, footnote; life of, 253; 
 criticises Flint, 257; admiration 
 for Flint, 268 
 
 Wilson, Rev. Dr. Joshua L: 193 
 
 Wood, Elder: character in S/io- 
 shonee Valley, 282 
 
 Worcester, Samuel : 287 
 
 Yale University: thanked, 15 
 Yankees: 63, 64
 
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