USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Charlestown > Century of town life; a history of Charlestown, Massachusetts, 1775-1887 > Part 18
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56. 9. 0
1. 4.
0
57. 13. 0
422. Thos. Fillebrown .
13. 16. 0
15. 11.
8
30. 0. 0
423. Benja Jennings .
30. 0. 0
6. 0. 0
19. 0.
0
55. 0. 0
p. 128.
424. Joseph Phipps .
140.
0. 0
43. 0. 0
22. 0. 0
2. 10. 0
207. 10. 0
p. 153.
425. Estate of John Deland
300. 0. 0
33. 12. 0
5. 12. 0
16. 0
340. 0. 0
do.
426. Matthias Taylor
10. 0. 0
12. 0
10. 12. 0
427. Walter Russell .
2. 4. 2
2. 4. 2
428. Eunice Miller
153. 0. 0
13. 0. 0
27. 0. 0
14. 0
193. 14. 0
p. 153.
429. Zach? Shed .
23. 1. 0
23. 1. 0
430. Abraham Frost
10. 0. 0
100. 0. 0
110. 0. 0 7. 16. 8
432. John Putnam
8. 0. 0
4. 11. 10
12. 0
13. 3. 10
433. Seth Wyman
11. 11. 0
11. 11. 0
431. Thomas Ireland
220. 0. 0
182. 10. 0
42. 4. 0
16. 0
415. 10. 0
p. 153.
435. Church Lot .
11. 10. 0
11. 10. 0
436. Thos. Ireland, Jr.
9. 0.0
9. 0. 0
[153. pp. 152, do.
TOWN LIST OF LOSSES, 1775.
do.
431. James Frost
7. 16.
8
173
43. 14. 0 28. 4. 8 10. 0
72. 8. 8 54. 0. 0
413. Peleg Stearns, Exec. Estate of Jas. Peirce 86. 0. 0 1. 8. 0 19. 14. 0
415. Moses Rand
p. 153.
10. 0
174
Names of Persons.
Loss on Buildings.
Lands, trees, and fences.
Estate, Personal.
Expense of Cartage. £ 8. d. 8. 1. 0. 0 192. 12. Total. 0
d.
p. 153. do.
438. Estate of Sam! Kent
5. 0.0
80. 10. 0
32. 0. 0
3.0
440. Estate of W'm Tufts
40. 0. 0
187. 6. 0
30. 0. 0
32. 3. 0 257. 6. 0 80. 0. 0 1,533. 6. 8
do.
4.11. John Borland
80. 0. 0
412. Co. of Middlesex gaol & house 3 Court House
1,000. 0. 02 533. 6. 8S
413. Comº of Donations
161. 0. 0
161. 0. 0
4.11. Estate of the Town 5,561. 13. 4
5,561. 13. 4
415. John Penney, £13. - 446. Sarah Manning, £14. - 417. John Chadwick, £4. 10. 1, all personal.
Non-Residents. Lands, trees, and fences.
418. Dan! Watson, £21. 16. - 419. Noah Bowman, £4. - 450. Sam! Cook, 10s. 8. - 451. Abraham Watson, £21. 2. 8. - 452. Nathan Watson, £2. 13. - 453. Jonathan Cooper, £19. 8. - 451. Gideon Frost, £15. 7. 6. - 455. David Hoar, £18. - 456. Ilastings & Lovel, £26. - 457. Estate of D. Frost, £9. 19. 8 .- 458. Rebecca Watson, £3. 12. 8. - 459. Timothy Minot, £10. - 460. Moses Stone, £29. 9. 4. - 461. Daniel Tufts, £27. 2. S, also £19. 10 personal. - 462. Mr Wyer of Nantucket, £7. - 463. Mr Madson, £40. - 461. Widow Paine, £4.
Estate of the Town destroyed.
465. 3 of the Court House, £266. 13. 4. - 466. 2 Schoolhouses, £300. - 467. Meeting-house, £3,000. - 468. Workhouse, £250 .- 169. Furniture for do., £100. - 470. 2 Ministerial houses, £1,100. - 471. Engine for hay, £50. - 472. Fish-houses, £16 .- 473. Pest-house, £30. - 474. 2 Bells and 1 Clock, £200. - 475. 1 Fire-engine, £30. - 476. Engine-honse, £18. - 477. 4 large ladders, £6. - 478. Pound, £14. - 479. Weights and measures for the standard, £2. - 480. Swing bridge, £20. - 481. Fence and trees, £12. - 482. House late Dowse's, £100. - 483. Do. Hick's, £12. - 481. Do. Dorcas Welsh's, £35.
Total: Town, £5,561. 13. 4. - Non-Residents, £282. 12. 2. - Residents, £117,600. 3.
TOWN LIST OF LOSSES, 1775.
437. John Ireland
15. 0. 0
£ 8 d. 170. 0. 0
8.
d.
6. 12. 0
85. 10. 0
439. Joseph Adams .
.
.
8. d.
·
.
-
Tower of the First Church. 1887.
THE FIRST CHURCH.
A SKETCH OF ITS HISTORY.1
TN July, 1630, several hundred English -men, women, and children - were trying to live in huts and tents on or around the Town Hill in Charlestown. They had recently escaped discomforts on the sea for privations on shore. Seven small vessels that had brought them from kindred and former homes, lay in the river. Forests and wild lands, where there were men as wild, spread inland. There were no mines or great extents of fertile land, and there were few to wel- come or to help them. Nearly all of the inhabitants were Indians, so ealled. Along the coasts of what we name New England there were only scanty groups of countrymen : in Maine perhaps five hundred persons ; in Rhode Island and Connecticut were none ; in Massachusetts were a few, but little more than those at Salem, Beverly, and Lynn, at Dorchester and Plymouth ; there was one man on the neighboring peninsula of Boston, and on Noddle's Island, Samuel Maverick.
Plainly reasons that had brought these people from their mother land to this Town Hill were strong, and principles that they believed had a vital power, attested by the presence on the spot of their succes- sors now that two centuries and a half have passed. The reasons for their coming, like the reasons for most of the great events of history, were of long growth. The Reformation in the sixteenth century had been marked by important changes in the thoughts and the belief of English people. The Roman Church, acknowledged for a thousand
1 This article by the writer was read by him in the meeting-house on Sunday evening, Nov. 12, 1882, at the commemoration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the church. Parts were then omitted, owing to lack of time. With a sermon by the Rev. Alexander McKenzie, D.D., delivered in the afternoon, and addresses by the Rev. Rufus Ellis, D. D., the Hon. Judge Charles Devens, the Rev. Ilenry M. Dexter, D. D., the Rev. A. S. Freeman, D.D., and the Rev. A. S. Twombly, D. D., it was privately printed, with other matter by the writer, in an octavo pamphlet. It is here reprinted as a supplement to accounts of the church on these pages, and an introduction to the following parts of its records.
176
THE FIRST CHURCH.
years, at length became no longer dominant. A large proportion of the people were, in some form, Protestants. These, while agreed sub- stantially in faith, had different opinions upon some points held to be of profound importance. Out of the religious change arose the Church of England, with the sovereign, not the Pope, as its appointed earthly head, and a reformed but yet conservative observance of some forms and words and usages that had been known since Christianity became an organized and wide-spread power. Within the Church, at first, there was, however, a great body, with a large amount of piety and learning, that desired still greater change. This, at length, in King James's reign, could be reduced, it has been stated, "to these four heads : purity of doctrine, the supply of the churches with good pastors, the Scriptural administration of church government, and the improve- ment of the Book of Common Prayer." The advocates of greater change - and greater purity, as they believed - were known as Puri- tans. The Church of England became the ruling power ; and, world wide, ruling powers in Church and State, when James I. was king, re- garded a dissenter as a sort of rebel who should be suppressed. The Puritans were made to feel this fact.
And thus a vigorous, intelligent, determined party chafed in England under rule from which it naturally sought relief or an escape; and sundry men within it were considering not only an escape, but reali- zation of a grand conception.
John Winthrop, a well-educated, wealthy gentleman of rare and noble character, who lived at Groton in the pleasant rural lands of Suffolk ; Thomas Dudley, once a soldier. later a good steward to the Earl of Lincoln; Increase Nowell, well bred and long tried, among whose nearer ancestors or relatives was Alexander, the prolocutor of Queen Elizabeth's first convocation, so decisive to the Puritans; John Wilson, son of William, prebend of three of the grand churches of Old England, - these and many others, scattered through that country, thought and acted.
Meanwhile different events prepared a way for them. At a time when, says Dr. Haven, English "colonization [of America] had been virtually abandoned in despair," two men, to whom this country owes much, sought "a proper seat for a plantation " in New England. In 1602 the illustrious friend of Shakespeare, the Earl of Southampton, largely paid the cost of an important voyage made by Bartholomew Gosnold directly to the Bay of Massachusetts, to Cape Cod and islands south of it. He brought back such good accounts of what lie found that, four years later, for the purpose named, a charter was procured,
177
ITS BEGINNING.
"from which," continues Dr. Haven, "the ultimate settlement of the United States, and the resulting heritage of territorial rights, are to be dated."
It may be sufficient here to state that after various difficulties there was formed - Nov. 3, 1620 -The Council at Plymouth in Devon for Planting and Governing New England in America. There were forty patentees, of whom several were peers, the others men of conse- quence. From them the Pilgrims by the Mayflower obtained a patent dated June 1, 1621. From them, March, 1628, a grant was had of lands "extending from the Atlantic to the Western Ocean," and be- tween a line "three miles north of the River Merrimac," to one "three miles south of the Charles." In one year after that, a Massachusetts Company was chartered, with the power to colonize, govern, and repel by sea or land all persons who attempted the destruction or the detri- ment of planters. It, indeed, was a commercial and a planting company, and soon prepared to prosecute its business.
" Meanwhile," wrote Dr. Palfrey, "a movement of the utmost im- portance, probably meditated long before, was hastened by external pressure." Puritans, who felt the strong repression of their principles in England, had resolved, but after "sorrowful reluctance," "to emi- grate at once to the New World." Most of them were from the eastern counties, - Suffolk, Lincolnshire, and the East Riding. The leaders were well-educated, thoughtful, and far-looking men, with no small fortunes, and exalted purposes. The wise and energetic use of all their means resulted in the chief attempt to colonize New England that had yet been made, and the presence on Town Hill in Charles- town, July, 1630, of large numbers of the colonists associated with them. Many, and perhaps the great majority, appear to have been plain, substantial country-people, - they, like their leaders, thoroughly devoted to Puritanism, and endowed with vigorous English sense.
Their purposes could not be fully told in England, where and when these might be hindered or prevented. They came here to settle, plant, and build, to earn an honest living, and make homes as good as could be, for they knew the worth of homes.
But wider and far higher than material things was the great purpose of their coming. It was not for wealth alone, or power, or toleration as we know it. "Their lofty and soul-enthralling aim," says Dr. Ellis, "the condition and reward of all their severe sufferings and arduons efforts, was the establishment and administration here of a religions and civil commonwealth .. . founded " on "the Bible, the whole Bible ; " or as Governor Winthrop wrote, "whereas the way of
12
178
THE FIRST CHURCH.
God hath always been to gather his churches out of the world; now the world, or civil state, must be raised out of the churches."
Without delay the colonists began, with sturdy English pluck and sense, the ordering of things material by which they were to live, of needed civil institutions, and above all of their churches that were as the soul to the material body.
July 8, 1630, they kept a public day of thanksgiving for their ar- rival, a day observed through all the plantations; one that might be called the first great New England Thanksgiving, and observed upon Town Hill by probably the largest number of English that had yet been gathered on New England ground.
Friday, July 30, the covenant of a church was signed, upon or near this hill. On August 27 John Wilson was appointed teacher, Increase Nowell ruling elder. The number of members was about one hundred. The first place of meeting is said to have been under the Charlestown Oak ; afterwards the services were in the Great House, so called, built for the governor, and standing near the southwest corner of the present City Square.
. The settlers failed to find good water that was close by, and disease prevailed. A movement was begun across the river to a neighboring peninsula. By autumn a large number were established there; and on September 7, old style, the town that they began was known as Boston. In November the governor, the minister, and other chief men moved there. Church service, it is said, was held alternately in the two places. It was two years later when the first meeting-house in Boston was erected. As Ilubbard says, "they made but one con- gregation for the present." As Governor Hutchinson wrote, "they considered themselves, . . . at first, as but one settlement and one church, with Mr. Wilson for their minister." At length a large part of the people were in Boston, services were chiefly held there, storms and ice in winter made the passage of the river difficult, and when the fall of 1632 was closing, it was thought best that a separate church should be established here. Governor Winthrop states that "those of Charlestown who had formerly been joined to Boston congregation were dismissed " from it. They numbered nearly one fourth of it. The Records of the First Church, Charlestown, state that the first (35) signers of its covenant " were dismissed from Boston Church," -one that from the beginning has been very prominent and influential, known as the First Church, Boston, of which Hubbard wrote two hundred years ago, "some have been heard to say, they believed [it] to be the most glorious church in the world."
179
ITS ORGANIZATION.
Friday, Nov. 2, 1632, - Nov. 12, new style, - was made a day of fasting and prayer in Charlestown. Sixteen men, all with their wives, and three men singly, signed a church covenant, and formed the organization to-day existing here. The Rev. Thomas James, a graduate of Emanuel College, Cambridge, was elected and ordained the pastor. Ralph Mousall and Thomas Hale became the first two deacons. With serious contemplation of their place and mission, this small band of thirty-five began their work. The territory of the town at first was large and long, extending eight miles up into the country, but soon became diminished by formation of new towns. In ten years Woburn was incorporated; seven years later, Malden.
A great part of the population for a long time occupied a village near the present Square and Boston ferry, or along " the Country Road," now called Main Street. Moving out of Charlestown, that began so early and extensively, has always since continued ; yet the town has constantly increased in population. Of the nineteen families that had been represented on the covenant of 1632, eight were gone within a dozen years, two more in fifty, six more in about a century. The settlement of the first minister lasted less than three years and a half, but after his time settlements were long ; nine made before the Revolution averaged more than twenty-five years each, including two that prematurely closed by early deaths.
The first name on the covenant signed here, November, 1632, was Increase Nowell, who, Dr. Budington wrote, "may be considered the father of the church and the town. He was a zealous Puritan and active and devout Christian, and deserves to be held in grateful esteem by the citizens of this Commonwealth, and especially by the inhabitants of this town." He left abundance in Old England for privations here. His immediate family, before and after him, was honorable. His sons, Alexander and Samuel, were graduates of Harvard. The former wrote an almanac for 1665, printed by Samuel Green at Cambridge in that year. The latter was styled the "excellent " and "never-to-be-for- gotten," the "Fighting Chaplain in Philip's War." Both were among the very earliest writers in this town whose work was printed in Amer- ica. Another name is Ralph Mousall, one of the first two deacons. He was a selectman for nearly twenty-five years, and from 1686 to 1638 a representative to the General Court, that expelled him, after questioning him about what he had said in favor of Mr. Wheelright, who had delivered an obnoxious Fast Sermon. Ilistorians tell us now that the Court was wrong and the Deacon was right. John Hale, the other deacon, was a selectman for eleven years. His son JJohn, bap-
180
THE FIRST CHURCH.
tized here 4th month, 5th day, 1636, became the first minister at Beverly, and author of " A Modest Enquiry into the Nature of Witch- craft," printed in 1702, - perhaps the rarest book on witchcraft in New England, and worth more now, for its size at least, than perhaps any other New England book of the eighteenth century.
Two other signers were William and Ann Frothingham, the only signers whose name and lineage now remain, or for many years have remained, in this town. Their descendants have been numerous ; con- stantly some of them have been in positions of trust. Three of them successively were deacons of this church, their terms of office reaching ninety-seven years. And, at a time like this, how we lament the ab- sence here of one in whose too early death so many of us lost a friend, and Charlestown one of its most cherished citizens and its historian, - Richard Frothingham !
Dec. 22, 1634, the Rev. Zechariah Symmes was here installed. Born in Canterbury, that delightful ancient city closely associated with the planting of the Christian faith in England, - another graduate of Emanuel, -- he labored here for thirty-seven years. Meanwhile, a common school was established, -eleven years before the law of Mas- sachusetts ordered that a town must have one.
On the 6th of November, 1637, the Rev. John Harvard, still another from Emanuel, became a member of this church. He, for some por- tion of his brief time here, supplied the pulpit, and died on Sept. 14, 1638. We all know how and where his name has been enshrined, and how in those days of small things great things arose, and Puri- tans by the Bay of Massachusetts testified to their belief in true, sound learning. John Harvard of Charlestown gave about twice as much as the whole colony had dared to promise for the college that was begun at Cambridge.
In 1639 the Rev. Thomas Allen, like many of his people an Eastern County man, was installed, or was ordained, as teacher and assistant. He remained here for twelve years.
Meanwhile the purposes of those who founded Massachusetts were developed, and affairs with which they or their children had to deal. The Synod of 1637 was assembled to consider doctrines held by Mrs. Anne Hutchinson; a second in 1648 to form an ecclesiastical consti- tution ; and another in 1662, of great importance, respecting baptism and a consociation of churches. In 1648 a case of witchcraft is said to have originated in this town, and to have been the first in Massa- chusetts. A few years later occurred the dealings with the Quakers, so often mentioned. The leading member of this sect in Charlestown was severely fined.
181
EARLY CHARACTERISTICS.
Grave charges of intolerance, of persecution, and of superstition have been made against the Puritans in Massachusetts. The plain statement of their rights, of their position, and their purpose here, is quite sufficient answer to much said against them. They were here at first as members of a private corporation, through which they had honestly obtained their lands for homes where they proposed to carry out their plan of a religious state, as they could not in England. They had invested, labored, suffered for their purpose. Through all their earlier period of weakness they must do no less than keep out those who would impair, imperil, or even ruin their great plan. It may be questioned whether any church, society, or club, or school, in its own building, now could safely do much less. Whatever may be thought about their plan, it was one well worth trying; and Americans owe quite enough to them to be at least both just and civil to them.
All of the Quakers, two centuries ago, were not the counterparts of estimable Quakers of late generations and to-day. It is a question whether sundry of their ways would be allowed in public now. "The Puritans," Judge Parker wrote, "had no peace, but 'torment upon torment' from the Quakers." And, indeed, "so far from the Puri- tans persecuting the Quakers, it was the Quakers who persecuted the Puritans."
What is now called the witchcraft delusion was once a belief, - one of the few beliefs in which, it has been said, the various divisions among Christians once remarkably agreed. A person who uses names, dates, and facts found in New England in the last half of the seven- teenth century, and does not heed others, may make it seem that our forefathers were a superstitious and bloodthirsty race. They did act harshly in some cases ; we wish now we could say in none. But things in this world are comparative as well as positive. Men should be judged by their own age, and not by our age. When the wide, long prevalence of a belief in witcheraft and its punishment are thought of, we realize that a curious characteristic that marked their times, to but a moderate extent marked them.
It is sad that even one trial of a man by torture ever has occurred in Massachusetts ; but when we examine what the seventeenth century was through Christendom, - the appalling use of torture in ecclesi- astical and civil cases, the abominable dungeons, - we can feel deep thankfulness that our forefathers were so much less cruel than their age. And furthermore, there seems to be good reason for believing that instead of being chief among the sinners, they were first among those who reformed, and who renounced what we now hold to be an
182
THE FIRST CHURCH.
error. They had their faults, of course, and we may now be even glad that we did not live with them ; but when Americans must make apologies because they hurt the feelings of George III., it may be time to make apologies for our old Puritans, and not until that time.
Their virtues and heroic faith have been already here to-day re- vealed afresh with eloquence and truth, in a discourse [by the Rev. Alex- ander Mckenzie, D.D.] to which no other words than those of thanks and appreciation can be added.
In 1658 died good Jolin Green, the only ruling elder of the church, admitted to it less than five months after it was organized. He kept its early records and those of the town. His admirable writing is a model, testifying to his careful thoroughness.
In 1669 another celebrated Boston church was organized in Charles- town, - the Old South. Its first minister, the Rev. Thomas Thatcher, was a member of this church.
At this period two pastors of our church are especially distinguished : Thomas Shepard, who was ordained in 1659, and who died in 1677 ; and his son Thomas, who after some uncertainty in the matter was, three years later, made his successor. The former, in 1672, preached the Election Sermon at Boston, - probably the first sermon by a Charlestown minister printed in America. An elegy upon his death, composed by the Rev. Urian Oakes, was one of the earliest poems com- posed and printed in this country. He is said to have been "a very holy man, much distinguished for his erudition, his various virtues, and winning manners," and also " a watchful guardian of Harvard College." Indeed, he was a son worthy of his honored father, the Rev. Thomas Shepard of Cambridge Church. Thomas, the third thus named in this remarkable family, and the only minister of this church who was bap- tized in it, was also distinguished for learning, for piety, and the un- usual success of his labors. His salary, it is of interest to note, was £100 a year. Unhappily, in 1685, he died, aged only twenty-seven, lamented by all. His funeral was attended by the governor and mag- istrates, by many of the clergy, and the faculty and students of the college. Cotton Mather says he was "A Son that was the Lively Pic- ture of his [father's] Virtues," a "Confirmation to that Observation, That as the Snow-Ball, the further it rolls, the greater it grows, thus the further that the Grace of God is continued, and received, and valued in any Family, the Greater Effects of that Grace will be still appearing."
For a year and five months the church was then without a pastor. Various ministers supplied the pulpit ; among them, the Rev. Cotton
183
SHEPARD AND MORTON.
Mather preached to the Artillery Company. In July, 1686, the Rev. Charles Morton came from England. His family had been of hon- orable character for full three hundred years. He was a graduate of Oxford, and a scholar widely known. "The Worthily Famous," wrote John Dunton, with "Sense Enough for a Privy Counsellour, and Soul Great Enough for a King;" "a person too considerable in his Generation, to want any of our commendation," said prominent ministers near here. Received with enthusiasm, he was, after about four months, installed pastor of this church, in the ministry of which he continued eleven and a half years until his death.
The disturbances arising from the conduct of Governor Andros, and the Revolution of 1688, also made Mr. Morton prominent. For expressions deemed seditious in his sermon, Lecture Day, Sept. 2, 1687, he was prosecuted and acquitted. By some ninety years he was a precursor of the patriots of another "glorious Revolution."
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