USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Roxbury > Eliot memorial : sketches historical and biographical of the Eliot Church and Society > Part 27
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29
454
ELIOT MEMORIAL.
trolled him. There was said to be property in the south of England, to which the family were entitled. On the mother's side there was a prominent merchant and ship- owner in Boston; and, but for the loss of documentary evidence the family estate might have been benefited by redress through the "French Spoliation " claims.
The mother of Miss Wesson, and her brother, Wil- liam Marshall Wesson, joined the Eliot Church by letter of recommendation from the Pine Street Church, Boston, in the year 1857. The mother, a women of unusual dignity, amiability, and Christian gentleness, died the next year. " Father Cleveland," so called and well known in Boston, long time a friend of the family, was at the funeral, being then well on toward one hundred years of age.
Miss Wesson had not made public profession of faith in Christ prior to the year named above, when she, too, became a member of the church. She had already in- dulged a Christian hope for twenty-five years. Her re- ligious life was not demonstrative, but quiet, such as might be expected from native temperament, family habits, and the general domestic atmosphere. On her one hun- dredth birthday (1897) she seemed not to have failed very sensibly during the past year. She spoke of her interest in the Eliot Church, her prayers for that and for friends, her love of the Bible, and of the comfort derived from sacred hymns. She repeated three stanzas of one among her favorites. It was no common spectacle to look upon
455
HONORABLE WOMEN.
the white hairs of one born while Washington was still living, and at a time of universal excitement in the civil- ized world, when Napoleonic wars were raging, thrones demolished, and new governments established, to see her sitting now, after a century's experience, in her solitary home, whence the family were all departed, meditating on Christ's gracious mediation and the church redeemed by his precious blood.
The last time that I called on her she spoke of her desire to sing, to sing with the great choir. It was natural to repeat to her, " And I heard a voice of many angels round about the throne, and the living creatures and the elders; and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thou- sands, saying with a great voice, Worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain to receive the power, and riches, and wisdom, and might, and honor, and glory, and bless- ing." November 30, 1897, at the age of one hundred years, four months and seven days, she joined the great choir. In the family lot at Mount Hope Cemetery there have been numerous interments, and all of persons who were over three-score and ten years of age.
MINISTERS' WIVES.
There is occasion to speak of ministers' wives. The wives of American clergymen have, as a class, been among the finest endowed, best educated, and most ex- emplary of American women. 3 Their position in Colonial
456
ELIOT MEMORIAL.
Revolutionary, and later times has been one of special delicacy and responsibility, besides being often one of peculiar trial. In their straitened circumstances and feeble health, not a few have belonged to the noble army of martyrs. Seldom have they become wandering stars. They have been keepers at home, skillful in domestic concerns. By their culture, their gentleness, suavity, and dignity, their influence has been marked in moulding and elevating the character of parishes. There is no pro- fession, no occupation in which the wise suggestions and warm sympathies of a wife are more needed. Imagine for a moment that Roman Catholic celibacy had pre- vailed here, and what a different aspect would our fair heritage have presented !
14. MRS. ELIZA HILL ANDERSON.
Twelve years have passed since Mrs. Anderson left us (March, 1888), and yet she can never wholly leave us. The Eliot Church will always have occasion to give thanks for the life and labors here of such Priscillas and Marys. Mrs. Anderson's membership with us covered more than half a century (1836-1888); her entire term of public Christian confession approached seventy years. In her ancestry there was a fair measure of longevity, through five generations on the father's side to John Hill (1600); and on the mother's side through six generations to Rich- ard Carpenter, born in England (1593). It was at a little short of four-score and four years that Dr. Anderson
457
HONORABLE WOMEN.
took leave of us early one morning ; a little past four- score and four Mrs. Anderson took her leave just at sunset.
Her life from girlhood in Catskill, New York, was marked by unfailing modesty, conscientiousness, and quiet decision of character. Although only eight years old when her mother died, she had received a maternal im- press which remained in clear outline through life. For example, her ministry of neighborhood kindness began very early, and continued to the last. The Bible became to her the book of books. Chapters were treasured in the memory ; so were hymns, a store which amounted at length to hundreds. Habits of industry, order, and accuracy were formed. When a little girl at school she stood at the head of her class in spelling, and as a re- ward of merit - present juvenile literature will look down in amazement from its crowded shelves - she received a copy of Washington's Farewell Address! In early womanhood her firm adherence to what is right was not inferior to that of the father of his country. While visiting in the family of a distinguished Commodore of the United States Navy she was invited to attend the theater, the Commodore arguing that it is well to go once in order to see what it is. Eliza Hill declined and never regretted the decision.
At sixteen Dr. Anderson taught a public school; at sixteen Mrs. Anderson also became a teacher. While connected with a young ladies' school in New Haven
---
458
ELIOT MEMORIAL.
she had among her pupils some who came to prominent positions - Mrs. President Porter, Mrs. Dr. Buckingham of Springfield, Mrs. Dr. Bond of Norwich, Mrs. Dr. Krebbs of New York, Mrs. Professor Park of Andover, and Mrs. Commodore Foote. Fondness and aptness for teaching continued to the last. At the age of eighty-two she carried two granddaughters through a course in moral philosophy with interest and profit.
Preparation for special auxiliary service in the cause of foreign missions began in a very natural way. She was early an inmate in the family of Rev. Dr. David Por- ter of Catskill, a man deeply interested in that cause, at whose house she became acquainted with such men as Samuel J. Mills, Drs. Cornelius and Goodell, Horatio Bardwell of the Marathi Mission, and Cyrus Kingsbury of the Choctaw Mission. In the family of a brother, Henry Hill, treasurer of the American Board, she began acquaintance with Boston next door to that of Jeremiah Evarts.
Mrs. Anderson's married life was one of cheerful self- sacrifice. It involved three long absences of her hus- band on foreign deputations; it involved the need of most, provident management in household administrations, upon an inadequate income. A golden mean was maintained between running in debt on the one hand, and niggard parsimony on the other. In welcoming guests nothing was overdone. Hospitality was most abundant, especially in behalf of departing and returning missionaries. Per-
459
HONORABLE WOMEN.
sonal assistance in outfit and refit were bestowed, and often at no small personal inconvenience. Not infre- quently did she leave a sick bed to minister to some newly-arrived laborer from beyond sea. The heads of the family sometimes had to betake themselves to an attic chamber to make room for unexpected arrivals, and such were often unexpected at any given time. Probably no other house on this continent ever entertained so many guests of that class. The earliest in the long list were Mr. and Mrs. Levi Spaulding of Ceylon. The
apostolic Daniel Temple was another. The saintly David Stoddard and Fidelia Fiske were among them. During the first ten months of a certain year one hun- dred and fourteen different missionaries and their friends were entertained for a longer or shorter time. Upon careful inquiry I am satisfied that for the thirty-nine years of Dr. Anderson's service as secretary, and while at housekeeping, the average of hospitality that year was only about the average for the whole period. At the Jubilee visit (1860) there were sixty-eight present; the Lord's prayer was repeated in twenty different languages, and a hymn was sung simultaneously in numerous tongues.
Through these years Mrs. Anderson kept up a wide correspondence, foreign as well as domestic. Her con- tributions to a religious journal, over the signature of Beulah, sundry obituary notices, besides short essays in the Missionary Herald and Life and Light, are in style and sentiment unadorned, clear, and pertinent. So is an
460
ELIOT MEMORIAL.
Address to Hawaiian Women after a visit to the Sandwich Islands, and published in the language of those Islands. Her Memorial of Susan Maria Underwood, a deceased member of this church, had the same characteristics. Similar, too, is the Memoir of Mary Lathrop, of which in the German language I lighted on a copy when travel- ing in Switzerland a few years since. Today it is doing good service in the Ottoman Empire, having passed through several editions in both the Turkish and Arme- nian languages.
But did foreign missions absorb thought and effort? If in the Eliot Church there was any one more ready for local Christian activity during my pastorate, I have yet to learn the name. The busiest woman with orderly habits is the one most ready for service outside of her special sphere. Queen Victoria, though monarch of Great Britain and Empress of India, finds time to be president of a Bible Society in Berkshire, the county that includes Windsor Castle.
Mrs. Anderson enjoyed a fixed and all-sustaining assurance of the Saviour's presence, and gracious readiness to do all that could be desired. Forty years before her decease she told me that death would be no surprise to her at any hour. In the course of a prolonged sickness, the year preceding that event, she said to a grand- daughter, " I would have our Saviour depicted as Mr. Greatheart, standing at the entrance of a building or enclosure, and close by a little, white, trembling lamb ;
46I
HONORABLE WOMEN.
but Mr. Greatheart is very near." Her closing testimony ran thus: "Why, I feel as if Christ were right here! I am not alone."
15. MRS. SARAH ELIZABETH R. PECK.
It was peculiarly gratifying to the writer that a daughter of my father's first pastor, the Rev. Asahel Hooker, should join our congregation. She brought her two daughters, though only the youngest of them, Sarah Edwards, became a uniform worshiper with us. This daughter, a young woman of rare excellence of character, who professed to have been much benefited by ministra- tions at the Eliot Church, became, as Mrs. Winans, a highly valued resident of Rochester, New York, where, owing to progressive paralysis, she departed this life three years since (July 6, 1897). Mrs. Peck's mother, Phebe Edwards, was a granddaughter of President Jonathan Ed- wards, the celebrated theologian; while Mr. Hooker was a descendant in the fifth generation from Thomas Hooker, well known as the first minister of the first church in Hartford, Connecticut. At Norwich Mrs. Peck attended the school of Miss Lydia Huntley, afterwards Mrs. Sig- ourney, the poet, and in 1826 she married the Rev. Solo-
mon Peck, D.D. At sixteen Dr. Peck was graduated from Brown University; at eighteen he was a tutor; later, Professor of Latin in Amherst College; but was more widely known as Corresponding Secretary of Foreign Mis- sions of the Baptist Union. After the Civil War Mrs.
462
ELIOT MEMORIAL.
Peck accompanied her husband to Beaufort, South Caro- lina, and engaged in Christian work among the freedmen. Later he held useful positions here at the North. Dr. Peck was a scholarly man, a man of culture, refinement, and gentlemanliness, as well as of superior executive abil- ity. The captiousness of a few missionaries, and the per- tinacious misapprehension of their sympathizers, occasioned a severe trial, and at the same time gave occasion for the exercise of an unusual and most noble Christian forbear- ance on his part.
As Dr. Peck belonged to a different religious denom- ination, it was appropriate that Mrs. Peck should chiefly identify herself with the same, rather than to become con- spicuous in a connection which attracted her on the score of ancestral interest and original convictions. After a widowhood of seven years she died under the roof of her son-in-law, the Rev. Dr. Stanger, then at Cincinnati. With firm reliance on the sacrificial merits and high- priestly intercession of Jesus Christ, she sang with others, in her last sickness, such favorite hymns as, "Rock of ages," "My faith looks up to thee," "To Jesus, the crown of my hope."
WIDOWS OF MINISTERS.
The proportion of widows in the congregation and their absolute number were large. It was a noticeable circumstance that at one time there should be five widows of ministers who died young - Mrs. Maria Grozer Pack-
463
HONORABLE WOMEN.
ard, Mrs. Adeline Grozer McGeoch, Mrs. Margaret Cod- man Peabody, Mrs. Bradford Homer, and Mrs. Maria Rea Dexter. There were two whose husbands had been physi- cians-one the widow of Dr. Fiske of Worcester, and one the widow of Dr. Adams, formerly of Bath, Maine. The latter belonged to a group of thirteen children, and was herself the mother of thirteen. She died March IO, 1857, in her eighty-seventh year. This suggests that not a few of the class now referred to lived to a good old age - Mrs. Ballister, eighty-four (died June, 1845); Mrs. Anna Williams (died November, 1855), aged eighty-nine and some months; Mrs. Susan Elms, a member of the Old South (died February, 1856), aged eighty-four; Miss Abigail Prentiss (died February, 1858), aged eighty-seven ; Mrs. T. K. Thomas (died December, 1858), aged eighty, and Mrs. Mary H. Waugh, at the same age; Mrs. Eleanor V. Ames (died January, 1859), aged eighty years and eleven months; Mrs. L. Williams (died Sep- tember, 1860), aged eighty-one; Miss Abigail Seaver (died December, 1861), aged eighty-six; Miss Lydia Prentiss (died March, 1863), aged eighty-four; Mrs. Lydia G. Towne, the mother of Rev. Dr. Joseph Towne (died September, 1863), aged eighty-two; Miss Hannah Grozer (died July, 1864), aged eighty-eight; Mrs. Sarah Cush- ing (died July, 1864), aged eighty; Mrs. Rising (died August, 1865), aged eighty-four; Mrs. Sarah Jewett (died January, 1867), aged eighty-five; Mrs. Frances Rupp (died March, 1867), aged eighty-two; Mrs. Simmons (died
464
ELIOT MEMORIAL.
April, 1867), aged ninety. Besides these there were others whose names appear elsewhere.
There were some whose bereavement was intensified by circumstances peculiarly trying, as Mrs. Birchmore. Her husband belonging to the navy was lost in the gulf of Mexico; and another whose widowhood began in a way yet more heart-rending. There were those whose term of loneliness extended to thirty, forty, and even fifty years. It is fitting that particular mention should be made of those who, in comparatively advanced years, be- came the widows of ministers.
16. MRS. MARY CODMAN.
After the death of the Rev. Dr. John Codman at the age of sixty-five years, his widow became an inmate in the family of her brother, Mr. Ebenezer Wheelwright, who was a member of the Eliot Church. Ten years later (April, 1857), and at the same age as her revered husband, she joined the family on high. From her fourteenth year she had indulged the hope of being a regenerate child of God. The great spiritual crisis-the most important that any human being experiences, death and the resur- rection not excepted - took place at Bradford Academy, the same season with two young friends of hers, Harriet Newell, who found an early missionary grave in the Isle of France, and Anne Hasseltine Judson, the heroine of Rangoon, who sleeps alone under the shade of a Hopea tree in Burmah. Mrs. Codman was their peer in natural
465
HONORABLE WOMEN.
endowments, and in the noble specialty of Christian de- votedness.
Richard Baxter writes: " Ought a clergyman to marry ? Yes; but let him think, and think, and think again before he does it." Dr. Codman did that, and after four years of pastoral labor he introduced to the good people of the Second Church, Dorchester, one who proved eminently his helper and theirs also. Every pastor's wife is a help or hindrance to him. There is not in the land - neither at the Capitol of the nation nor elsewhere -a female position more honorable or responsible than hers. If by wise domestic counsel and the perennial flow of Christian cheerfulness and well-directed cooperation she fill her ap- propriate sphere, then do pastor and parish owe her a debt which words can but imperfectly express. In this case there came a youthful bride, matronly yet affable, spiritually minded, and ready to enter at once into coop- erative labors with her husband. And so she continued, active in the female prayer meetings, the Maternal Associa- tion, distributing religious books, with encouraging words to children and youth, sympathizing with the afflicted, watching with the sick, more, perhaps, than any other indi- vidual in the parish. In her were combined to an unusual degree dignity with grace, sensibilities delicate but not fastidious; firmness that was yet attractively feminine, and strength of mind without the masculine element. Bal- anced energy, refinement, quick and quiet good sense were grouped in rare congruity. "Man is no hypocrite
466
ELIOT MEMORIAL.
in his pleasures," was a frequent saying of hers. She delighted in the Assembly's Shorter Catechism, Baxter's Saint's Rest, and such spiritual songs as those cunning artificers of sweet rhythm and rich Christian sentiment, Watts and Doddridge, Cowper and Montgomery, composed. But her chief delight was in the Holy Scriptures, large portions of which were hid in her heart. Among favorite, never-tiring chapters was the fourteenth of John's gospel, and especially in her closing years, till the summons of the last verse came, " Arise, let us go hence."
17. MRS. MARTHA VINAL HOOKER.
Our neighboring Charlestown was Mrs. Hooker's birth- place, April 27, 1806. Her father having died the next year, the family of a beloved aunt in Boston became her home. Under the ministry of Dr. Sereno E. Dwight she joined Park Street Church when sixteen years of age, and was at that time its youngest member. Academic train- ing was enjoyed in the excellent schools of Rev. Joseph Emerson at Saugus, and that of Miss Z. P. Grant at Derry, New Hampshire. In 1827 she married Rev. Henry B. Hooker, then pastor at Lanesborough, Massachusetts. Ten years later Dr. Hooker became pastor of the First Church, Falmouth, where he remained till called to the sec- retaryship of the Massachusetts Home Missionary Society (1858), when the family removed to Boston.
The good people of Falmouth pronounce Mrs. Hooker a model minister's wife. She was greatly interested in
467
HONORABLE WOMEN.
the Maternal Association, and had highly valued Sunday School classes of young ladies. She contributed articles to the Sunday School papers, and to the American Messenger. The young people had a large and constant share in her kind regards. She formed them into mission bands, and strove in various ways to promote their mental and spirit- ual culture. Many testimonies have reached me from those who came under her immediate influence, in regard to her tact and her happy ways. During the thirty-five years after residence in Falmouth ceased, her frequent summer visits to that place served to keep alive the most cordial relations, and her memory is fragrant there.
Twelve years of widowhood were appointed to Mrs. Hooker. The morning of her last day on earth came clear and calm outwardly, yet not more so than within the chamber of quietness whence for eight months she had not been able to go below stairs. The window of that upper room looked toward the rising sun, and her hand had been a good while on the latch of another door, which at length opened inward. Her pilgrimage of eighty- seven and a half years was finished.
18. MRS. LUCY GILPATRICK MARSH.
The Eliot City Mission Society - a society inde- pendent of the one in Boston - was greatly favored in the agents whom it employed. In no case was this more strikingly true than that of Mrs. Marsh. From the hour of conversion at twenty years of age, onward till the hour
468
ELIOT MEMORIAL.
of death, in June, 1868, she seemed to be actuated by the genuine missionary spirit. The chief reason for her leav- ing the home of childhood in Biddeford, Maine, was the opposition of family friends to her Christian activity. On returning home to minister to an aged mother, she had occasion to rejoice over the conversion of that parent when approaching three-score and ten. Afterwards, under the same circumstances, she was cheered by the hope of her father's conversion at near four-score. During a ten months' visit at Biddeford she established a female prayer meeting and several conversions followed. She also in the midst of much opposition gathered a Sunday School, and carried fuel in her own arms to the schoolhouse to make it comfortable for the hour of meeting.
Returning to this city Mrs. Marsh became the inde- fatigable matron of a reformatory institution; attended the prayer meetings of the church to which she belonged, each of them preceded by a preparatory devotional meet- ing; and in addition to the regular Sunday School ser- vice, she once a week taught a class of colored children, spending Saturday afternoons in visiting its members, besides paying weekly visits to the inmates in the House of Correction. As the wife of Rev. Christopher Marsh of West Roxbury her life was still that of a missionary laboring in the byways for miles around. Owing in no small measure to her self-denying and energetic efforts, a place of worship was built, for which, as also for the communion service, she solicited funds. There, too, she
469
HONORABLE WOMEN.
gathered a female prayer meeting and a meeting for mothers, both of which she sustained almost unaided. The Sunday School also was her creation and for a time was superintended by her.
After the death of Mr. Marsh, whose last pastorate was at Sanford, Maine, Mrs. Marsh began work here (September, 1861) as missionary, and the next year joined the Eliot Church. Singular devotedness, fidelity and good judgment marked her whole ministry. The pastor re- garded her less as a parishioner than a colleague, his senior in age, a model of wise, earnest, and harmonious cooperation. She mentioned to a friend that this passage was her daily resting-place, " Be careful for nothing." Of nothing that pertained to herself - ease, strength or health - was she careful. To the welfare of the poor and those spiritually perishing she devoted herself wholly. A Bible class in the Mission Sunday School, a mothers' meeting and two weekly prayer meetings were only a part
of her steady occupation. A sewing school was one favorite method of usefulness, and her coming was always the signal for the brightening of faces. Visiting from house to house with prayer and the name of Jesus on her lips occupied the larger part of her time. Those seven years of labor in Roxbury were performed after Mrs. Marsh had reached her seventieth year. Such in-
dustry is therefore all the more noteworthy. The record of her last twelvemonth showed that, besides being the almoner of various comforts and delicacies for the sick
470
ELIOT MEMORIAL.
and destitute, she distributed more than one thousand and two hundred garments and other articles among the needy ; more than two thousand religious tracts, papers, and books, and made rising of three thousand visits, which, owing to lameness, was a number less by one thousand than that of the year previous. Did she ever recount her labors and successes with a tinge of vanity ? Far otherwise. We have noticed that it is the light ears of grain which hold their heads high and wave about most freely. This noble woman was a branch of the vine so laden with fruit as to hang low; she was clothed with humility. The concurrent testimony of those associated intimately with Mrs. Marsh was that they found no flaw in her and could find no fault with her. Dr. Rufus An- derson, who had known her for nearly fifty years, wrote that she filled her various responsible positions "with the unbounded confidence of those who knew her, in her ability, integrity, and devotedness to the cause of her Redeemer, and in her unwearied efforts for the salvation of those placed under her care." Another friend, an acquaintance of forty years, stated, "I never knew Mrs. Marsh lukewarm, or with a cold heart. Her life has been a chain of well-doing all along without one breakage." Her funeral was from the Eliot Church, June 22, 1868.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.