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GEN
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
3 1833 03016 6042
Gc 974.402 B65bao Booth, John Nicholls, 1912- The story of the Second Church in Boston, the original Old North
THE STORY OF THE
SECO CHUR
ND CH
THE OLD NORTH 1649
O BOSTON
BY JOHN NICHOLLS BOOTH
A lively account of Boston's second oldest church and its links with American history from 1649 to the present Cotton Mather and the witch hunts * Ralph Waldo Emerson surrendering the pastorate of the Second Church * * Increase Mather giving up the presidency of Harvard for this pulpit * the three Second Church pastors who were chaplains to the Massachusetts Senate Henry Ware, Jr. and the founding of the American Unitarian Asso- ciation * *
* Why the Paul Revere lanterns were almost certainly hung in the steeple of this church's ill-fated edi- fice in North Square and not elsewhere as widely believed.
GEN
$113
THE STORY of the
SECOND CHURCH IN BOSTON (The Original Old North)
Including
THE OLD NORTH CHURCH MYSTERY
by
JOHN NICHOLLS BOOTH
Boston, Massachusetts
Allen County Public Library 900 Webster Street PO Box 2270 Fort Wayne, IN 46801-2270
@ by John Nicholls Booth
Printed in the United States of America ILLUSTRATIONS CREDITS We are indebted to the Massachusetts Historical Society for the engravings of Cotton Mather, Paul Revere and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
CONTENTS
Chapter
Page
Introduction .
vii
I IN THE BEGINNING . 1
II
THE GIANT WHO WENT WRONG
7
III
A NEST OF TRAITORS .
13
IV
GOOD-BY, CALVINISM! HELLO, UNITARIANISM! .
21
V WARE AND EMERSON 27
VI
IN FIVE BUILDINGS
33
VII
IN COPLEY SQUARE
41
VIII
A NEW SPIRE ON BEACON STREET
47
IX IN OUR LIFETIME 52
X THE OLD NORTH IN A NEW AGE . 60
Appendix
A THE OLD NORTH CHURCH MYSTERY
Where were the Paul Revere lanterns
really displayed?
65
B MASTERPIECES OF COMMUNION PLATE 89
C CHURCH LEADERS OF TODAY 90
D SKETCH OF THE MINISTER 91
On the 310th anniversary of the founding of the Second Church in Boston this historical study has been published with the assistance of the Atossa B. Thomas fund.
ILLUSTRATIONS
Page The Second Church in Boston today. Frontispiece Increase Mather: second pastor, Harvard president. 6
Cotton Mather: third pastor, prolific writer
6
Cotton Mather's chair in today's church chancel.
11
The true Old North Church of Paul Revere's lanterns
16
Paul Revere: patriot and Second Church leader
20
John Lathrop: the "Revolutionary Preacher"
.20
Model of the New Brick Church: Emerson's own church .
.
. . 23
Henry Ware, Jr.,: co-founder of Unitarian denomination . 28
Ralph Waldo Emerson: ninth pastor, famed writer.
30
The Second Church: in Copley Square 1874 to 1912 .
39
The sanctuary of the Beacon Street edifice
48
A view toward the west gallery of the church.
50
The sanctuary: Doric columns, wall memorials
55
A service in the Children's Chapel
58
John Nicholls Booth: twenty-first minister. 62
Boston's North End in Price's 1743 painting. 74
Map of Boston's North End: April 18, 1775.
75
Elevation profile: Charlestown to Second Church.
78
INTRODUCTION
On its 310th anniversary the Second Church finds itself lo- cated at the heart of the capital of Massachusetts and in the cen- ter of a metropolitan district numbering over 2,800,000 persons. Twenty-eight colleges and universities, seventeen museums and innumerable organizations devoted to fine arts, music, drama, literature and the dance contribute to this city's reputation as the "Athens of America."
Throughout all but the first nineteen years following the birth of Boston the Second Church has lived on, often participating influentially and courageously in the life, work and progress of its community. An intriguing procession of names, events and theological issues notable in American history appear in the annals of this church.
Cotton Mather and his father, Increase Mather, not only built the Second Church into the most influential and perhaps largest church in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries New World but shaped uniquely the initial years of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Ministers of this originally Puritan congregation were among the first in the country to repudiate a harsh Calvinist theology and to advocate a more spiritual approach to religion and worship. The church became avowedly Unitarian in 1802 and, through its pastor, helped to found the Unitarian denomination in America 23 years later.
One pastor finally resigned the presidency of Harvard rather than give up the Second Church pulpit. Another minister left this church to become a revered professor of homiletics in the semi- nary at Harvard. Three clergymen served as chaplains of the Massachusetts Senate. America's foremost man of letters, Ralph Waldo Emerson, served this congregation - the only pulpit in which he ever settled during his ministerial career. He went on to preach the revolutionary Harvard Divinity School sermon, the second most important Unitarian address in this continent's re- ligious development.
Some of the lay members were Royal Governors of the colony before independence and others were elected Governors of the
STORY OF THE SECOND CHURCH
Commonwealth after it. A Second Churchman fell in the Boston Massacre; another designed and built the frigate Constitution ("Old Ironsides"); Boston was led through the terrible days of the Civil War by a mayor from this church; still another constituent became the national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic.
These 310 years of history have seen recurring heartaches, setbacks and errors as well as stirring moments of greatness and insistent pressures to make Boston a worthier community. And now, occupying its eighth building, The Second Church in Boston has arrived at the age of atomic power and space flight. Willing to change and grow with the times, despite its age and traditions, the Second Church is currently going through an internal transfor- mation of deep and abiding significance. Perhaps the record of its past, proudly though sometimes critically told, will stir it to even finer efforts in the future.
It is said that the birth of our nation began on April 18, 1775 when secret lantern signals in the North Church steeple set the machinery of war and independence into motion. The church that played this historic role, I am now fully convinced, was actually the Second Church in Boston, then located in North Square and known far and wide as the "North Church" or "Old North Church." Except for a letter to the Mayor of Boston in 1876, from the his- torian Richard Frothingham, I have been unable to find any docu- ments examining affirmatively the Second Church's participation in that episode. Therefore Appendix A is almost entirely an original construction, in reasoning and research. It constitutes perhaps the most thorough and exhaustive examination ever made of the entire question. I have tried to err on the cautious side, even to not taking advantage of higher estimated elevation figures for North Square, in Boston, and Town Hill, in Charlestown, in 1775, that would further enhance our case. The result is laid before the public for the first time, in this book, hoping for a favorable verdict that may rectify a long-standing error in histori- cal identification.
I am indebted to Clyde W. Hubbard, professional engineer and
INTRODUCTION
present chairman of the Second Church Standing Committee, for his elevation surveys, map studies and development of a profile in connection with the lanterns debate. I am grateful to my wife, Edith, for spending many hours researching old records and modern books for threads of information concerning the Puritan and Revo- lutionary War periods of the American colonies - their customs, ideas and contributions. With my secretary, Mrs. Phyllis Holloway, she typed the sometimes almost indecipherable drafts of the manu- script. My appreciation extends to Gobin Stair for aid on the cov- er and to Mrs. Nancy Davis for valuable suggestions and editorial work. The flattering picture of the writer and the helpful map of the North End are due to the generosity of Robert A. Davis, dis- tinguished New York City portrait artist.
J.N.B.
Chapter One IN THE BEGINNING
The brilliant Elizabethan Age had burned itself out. Strong- willed Englishmen, anxious for civil and religious independence, were pouring into small, sail-driven vessels headed for the grim wilderness across the seas.
One day in 1630, a group of Indians watched uneasily as the square sails of the Arbella slowly pushed the first colonists' ship into Massachusetts Bay and landed its passengers on the hilly peninsula of Shawmut.
Boston was born.
Sixteen more ships transported an additional two thousand English people into the Bay that first year. Almost all of the settlers were of Puritan sympathies. Under Governor John Win- throp, they erected a one-story, mud-walled and thatched-roof structure, with crude benches and pulpit.
The First Church in Boston was founded.
The massive migration continued. By 1641, three hundred vessels had made the slow, lurching cruise over the Atlantic and brought in twenty thousand colonists. The majority settled in Boston and the neighboring communities of Roxbury, Charlestown, Dorchester, Cambridge and Watertown. The First Church in Bos- ton could no longer handle the religious needs of the five thousand citizens who, by 1649, comprised Boston Town.
The Second Church in Boston was established.
A site was chosen in the North End, a section not easily served by the First Church even though the town was scarcely larger than the present size of New York's Central Park. No ecclesi- astical organization or member of the clergy was responsible for the founding of this new church. It was the creation of seven Puritan laymen; a democratic, people's church from its very in- ception. Although the congregation lapsed for short periods from purely democratic principles, it always returned eventually to its original genius speaking out courageously for the religious, in- tellectual and political liberties of the common man.
The incredible dynasty of the Mather family, destined later to lift this new church to unexpected heights of influence, touched the congregation fleetingly during the first months in its new
1
2
STORY OF THE SECOND CHURCH
wooden edifice. Samuel Mather, the eldest son of the Rev. Richard Mather, who was settled in nearby Dorchester's parish, delivered the dedicatory sermon on June 5, 1650. Mather was a member of the second class to graduate from the newly-estab- lished Harvard College in Cambridge and was the first "fellow" of that institution. After filling the pulpit for a few months, he rejected an invitation to become the settled minister and sailed for England to establish his residence there. Ultimately he be- came chaplain to the Lord Mayor of London.
Without another trained clergyman in Boston to call upon, the little group gathered each Sabbath to hear sermons by Michael Powell, one of its founding members. His eloquence inspired a desire in the congregation to ordain him as pastor. But the Gen- eral Court, noting that he lacked "academical education" and anxious to exalt the rough little pioneer town as an intellectual center, refused him ordination, saying: "He might have talents and a fine spirit and still not be competent to instruct the edu- cated, explain the Scriptures, and convince the unbelieving . . . in such a place as Boston."
After worshiping five years without a seminary-educated pastor, the congregation installed the Rev. John Mayo on November 9, 1655. The "difficulties and discouragements" that had prompted John Mayo to leave his parish at Nosset, in Plymouth County, did not make the Boston group reluctant to place its own fate in his hands. This unprejudiced spirit was to appear many times, in numerous guises, in the years stretching ahead.
Such status was accorded ecclesiastical institutions in those days that even small churches were accustomed to engaging two ministers. One was designated the pastor, and the other was named the teacher. The duties were somewhat similar, although inevitably one incumbent assumed most of the pulpit work. On March 27, 1664, the Second Church in Boston ordained as the teacher of the church and associate of the aging John Mayo, a youth named Increase Mather, the sixth son of the Rev. Richard Mather, pastor of the Dorchester church. He was accepting a pulpit call that his brother Samuel had declined fourteen years earlier.
3
IN THE BEGINNING
A brilliant period for Boston, for this church and for the name of Mather was ushered into existence.
Perhaps no family has ever occupied so unique a position in church circles as the dynasty begun in Boston by Richard Mather. It extended through four generations, embraced a period of 150 years, and produced eleven members for the ministry. The Mathers published more than five hundred different works, largely on re- ligion, but also touching political problems, legal questions, witchcraft, astronomy, mathematics, science and medicine. Four Mathers served the Second Church in Boston: two of Richard's sons, Samuel and Increase; his grandson, the famed Cotton; and his great-grandson, Samuel. To this day, the institution is often called "The Church of the Mathers."
It is interesting to note the preparation undergone by Increase Mather before he took up his ministry in a small colonial town. Entering Harvard College at the age of twelve, he withdrew after twelve months in order to receive several years of private tutor- ing. This was felt necessary because of his health. A preco- cious lad, he graduated from Harvard at seventeen and was preach- ing regularly the following year. In 1857 he sailed for England, obtained a second degree after a season of duties at Trinity Col- lege, Dublin, and then preached for various congregations during the next three years. But his nonconformist views were drawing him toward disaster. Finally, like his father years earlier, he felt compelled to leave England for the new country shores, where his lifetime career in the Second Church in Boston soon began.
He had been associated with the church only eight years when Mr. Mayo, his voice so enfeebled by age that his parishioners could scarcely hear his messages, resigned and moved to Yar- mouth, where he died in 1676. Michael Powell, that gifted lay preacher, had preceded him in death by three years. Poverty had saddened Powell's final years. The church gladly paid the full ten pounds and four shillings for his funeral. The division of the funeral expenses may cause unknowing eyebrows to elevate! Five pounds, fifteen shillings were spent for gloves; three pounds, seventeen shillings for wine; six shillings for a grave; and six shillings for Mr. Powell's coffin. This disproportion appears to
4
STORY OF THE SECOND CHURCH
be explained by the month in which the funeral took place - January. Last rites were lengthy affairs, with interminable prayers and sermons; only liberal handouts of wine and gloves to the mourners could make the midwinter ceremony tolerable in a relatively unheated Puritan meeting house.
Under the inspired and energetic ministry of Increase Mather the church was reorganized, grew and prospered, until it became the church of Boston. Even the church's total destruction by roaring flames in the November 27, 1676 Boston fire did not deter its forward march. On the same site in North Square, a new build- ing that was to be the pride of the colony for nearly a century thereafter rose toward the sky. Later called "The Old North Church", it would figure prominently in American history. This patriot church became a "nest of traitors" to the British Tories; from its steeple the Paul Revere lanterns were almost certainly hung. Finally, at the start of the American Revolution, the edifice was torn down by soldiers of the King.
Dr. Increase Mather developed into a courtly and dignified gentleman, knowledgeable in many fields, and unflagging in his production of written treatises, an essential personage for all civic functions of note. He was a man of imperious presence, possessing a powerful voice of such effect that (his son once wrote) his "hearers were struck with awe like that produced by the fall of thunderbolts."
He worked on his sermons every day in the week except Sun- days, completing them by Friday and spending Saturday commit- ting them to memory. The pews in his meeting house were soon packed with eager worshipers and remained that way throughout most of his sixty-year ministry.
Various enticements across the years failed to draw him from his beloved pulpit. He accepted the notable honor of the presi- dency of Harvard College in 1685 only on the condition that he could reside in Boston and continue as minister of the Second Church. In his effort to prevent the college from leaving the Calvinist realm for the more liberal fields into which it would eventually move, he aroused animosities that finally undermined his position. The overseers of Harvard took a tactful means of
5
IN THE BEGINNING
easing him from office. Their ultimatum: "Either give up the Second Church and move into Cambridge or else resign from the presidency of Harvard College." Increase Mather didn't hesi- tate. He chose to remain with his church. He had given the dis- tinguished school sixteen years. He was the grateful recipient, in 1692, of the first Doctor of Divinity degree awarded in America.
Dr. Mather applied his religious principles to the key political issue of the era. King Charles II had revoked the charter which the Puritans had brought with them from overseas. In changing from a chartered colony to a royal province, Boston would lose many privileges and liberties. Only Increase Mather, both in his pulpit and in the crowded Town Hall, dared to stand up and op- pose the Royal Commissioner and his partisans. The King's representative, Edmund Randolph, arrested the clergyman for defamation, and a suit for five hundred pounds was leveled against him. A courageous jury acquitted the minister. Another attempt to arrest him was narrowly averted by some vigilant friends.
In one last desperate attempt to secure a charter similar to the one under which they had lived so happily, the colonists decided to send Dr. Mather, the most learned and eloquent man in the col- ony, to see Charles' successor, James II. The local government tried frantically by every means to prevent the emissary from leaving his country. Legal methods, searches, arrests and guards all failed. Disguised as a woman, Dr. Mather crossed the town and, after being rowed out into the Bay, was smuggled aboard the sailing vessel President, shortly after it had been thoroughly searched for his presence.
The American colonist enjoyed several pleasant interviews with King James II, successfully negotiated with courtiers and commissioners of the monarch and, after four busy years in England, returned to Boston with a new charter. He was unable to abrogate the change of the colony into a province but did secure the incorporation of Maine, Nova Scotia and the Plymouth Colony into the Province of Massachusetts. King James II allowed Increase Mather to select the new Royal Governor. A native New Englander and member of the Second Church in Boston, Sir William Phips, was appointed. The courage and statesmanship of Dr.
6
STORY OF THE SECOND CHURCH
Mather prevented a potential rebellion, strengthened the position of the colony and insured the preservation of several imperiled civil and religious freedoms.
INCREASE MATHER Second pastor, Harvard president
COTTON MATHER Third pastor, prolific writer
Chapter Two THE GIANT WHO WENT WRONG
During this turbulent period Increase Mather did not realize that he was raising a son who would become the most world- famous of all New England preachers. His eldest boy, Cotton, at the age of eleven, could speak Latin readily, had gone through most of the New Testament in Greek and had done considerable work in his Hebrew grammar. He received two degrees from Har- vard with marked distinction, one at the age of sixteen and an- other at nineteen. An impediment of speech made him despair of entering the ministry, but, like Demosthenes, whose eloquence he later would emulate, he finally overcame this stubborn defect, enabling him to give up medical studies for his real love, theology.
In the year that Increase Mather added the presidency of Har- vard College to his other responsibilities, Cotton was ordained as his colleague in the Second Church in Boston. Probably the educational post became feasible for the father when much of the church's administrative load could be assumed by the son.
Puritanism was now approaching the zenith of its influence in America. It must be remembered that the Puritan migrants to the new continent were not mere adventurers. Most of them were well- educated and deeply religious. Some were persons of means and scions of the aristocracy. They had come out of the Church of England seeking greater strictness of life and simplicity of wor- ship, believing that in spite of the Reformation a sufficient di- vergence from the Roman Church had not taken place.
The Massachusetts Bay Colony was a carefully planned theo- cracy where the Puritans could establish their own prescribed way of life, free of the restrictions that had surrounded them in their native land. Eventually they were to deny as many rights to non-Puritans as they had complained were kept from them in England, a not unknown state of intolerance into which many ex- tremists eventually descend. The Mathers, together with the other Puritan pastors of the time, were accepted authorities on most questions: religious, political, legal and medical. Calvinists all, their theology and their God were harsh. They divided all men into the elect and the "damned" and believed every word of the Bible in its most literal sense. This uncritical reliance upon
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STORY OF THE SECOND CHURCH
Biblical authority later led to Cotton Mather's sad belief in witch- craft and his terrible role in the New England witch hunts.
Probably neither Theodore Parker nor Abraham Lincoln, in penning their famed one-sentence description of democratic gov- ernment, realized that the Englishman, Wycliff, was its true origi- nator. In 1384 he wrote the phrase that later fortified the Puritans' desire for a Bible-based society. The scriptures, he asserted, were to be used "for the Government of the People, by the People, and for the People."
Calvinism's doctrine of the elect was bound to produce un- democratic results. The franchise was limited to church members. This disbarred eighty per cent of the populace from voting. Any- one opposing the union of church and state might be expelled, like Roger Williams, from the colony. For one man to dissent from the rest of a jury was a punishable offense in the earliest colonial days. The freethinker was considered a dangerous man. The parson's sermons were studied carefully for lapses from pre- scribed dogma. Opportunities to discover heresy were many, for sermons often lasted one to two hours; any shorter discourse would have been considered superficial and irreligious.
Cotton Mather proclaimed that not one word in the New Testa- ment authorized such aids to devotion as the organ. Only the violincello and bass viol were acceptable for religious instru- mental music. Not until the eighteenth century did the liberals begin to win their fight for the installation of pipe organs in New England churches. For some years thereafter many pillars of these churches considered the services no longer religious.
Despite his objection to the pipe organ, Cotton Mather joined his father in helping to reform congregational singing. They shuddered to think that this aspect of Puritan worship had reached its nadir. Music was chiefly in the form of Psalm singing, each line being read by an officer of the church before the congregation vocalized it. Each note was dragged out long and mournfully; the key was often too high; and little effort was expended to remain in tune. This problem was compounded by the constant repetition of many almost unsingable versions of the Psalms, to which play- ful worshipers would add surreptitious quavers and extra notes.
9
THE GIANT WHO WENT WRONG
Cotton Mather published in 1718 a new translation of the Psalms, called the Psalterium Americanum, in which he made it possible to adapt the verses to tunes of different meter. Even a simple and practical reform of this nature was not easily achieved. Many parishioners resisted any form of change as sacrilegious.
The edifice in which Second Churchmen then worshiped was called a "meeting house". The word "church" sounded too Popish for the Puritans. The pulpit resembled a desk and sported an hourglass to help time the lengthy prayers and sermons. The women sat together on one side of the building while the menfolk occupied the other half. Everyone stood during the pastor's prayer, although the aged and ill were permitted to sit down at the halfway point. They could remain there until the praying stopped, sometimes nearly twenty minutes later.
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