History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 24

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton), ed. n 85042884-1
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Philadelphia : J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1538

USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I > Part 24

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For more than a hundred years after the discovery of America by Columbus, New England was un- known. It was a century of exploration and dis- covery, and the Catholic Spaniard played a leading part in the process of opening a new world to civiliza- tion. His imagination was inflamed by what are now incredible stories of treasure to be discovered, of magical and supernatural manifestations to be noted in nature and human life, and by hopes of at- taining to some new and unheard of power over the secret forces of nature, then so unknown, and yet so tempting to the unscientific mind of the sixteenth century. He was animated, also, by zeal to convert or dispossess the infidel, and to commend himself as a loyal son of the church, thus at one happy stroke making his fortune both for this world and the next. In 1565 St. Augustine was founded, and in 1582 Santa Fé was colonized and made a station of the church, and the Spaniard, keeping for the most part within those isothermal lines which, by an unwritten law of nations have so largely controlled the course of empire, was elated by visions of inexhaustible

wealth, national glory and religious propagandism for which the western continent offered such uuex- ampled opportunities.

To the Protestant Englishman during all this time New England was unknown except as an undistin- guished part of the western world. With the seven- teenth century the French, English and Dutch began to establish colonies in Nova Scotia, Canada, Vir- ginia and New York. Then New England begins to emerge slowly from the vast, unsurveyed bulk of the continent, and to attract the attention of those in whose keeping were the seeds which, for a hundred generations of English and Germanic life, had been preparing to grow into the social, civil and religious institutions of New England. "God sifted a whole nation," said Stoughton, "that he might send choice grain out into this wilderness." He might have said that the civil and religious institutions of the Ger- manic race were sifted to furnish precedents, apti- tudes and the specific religious impulses out of which to produce the Puritan Church and the New England Commonwealth.

Reviewing the events recorded in this volume, and contemplating the rare and great qualities of the founders of Salem as manifested in some of the most heroic and dignified aspects of human life, and in crises of difficulty and danger; regarding, also, with- out flinching or apology, the grim and cruel traits and deeds which disfigured their lives and stained their record, one need not be ashamed of his interest and admiration. The founders of Salem were not greater, wiser or better than other men. But the narrowness of their opportunity, together with the great use they made of it, rendered their qualities conspicuous, and the record of them a just cause of pride to all who inherit any share in their labors and rewards. As in some little Swiss canton, where nature has thrust together and pushed high into the

HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

air the sublimitics of that Alpine scenery, of which every detail may be surpassed elsewhere, while the general effect has no rival, so in this little township were to be brought together and set to do the drudgery of common life such gifts of culture, courage, wisdom and strength as commonly go to the founding of kingdoms and the conduct of empires. Indeed, in their own way, the way of intelligence and freedom, they were laying the foundations of institutions with influence more powerful and enduring than any em- pire which has risen or fallen since they lived their strenuous lives of homely toil and great endeavor. The events which were crowded into the first century of what was then their obscure history, spread over a larger surface and connected by more evident ties with the fortunes of civilization, would have attracted universal attention. Now they become an imperish- able part of the history of human progress.

In 1614 Capt. John Smith, prince among adventurers and good fellows, coasted, named and praised New England, and going home to England he spent much time in commending the newly-discovered "Para- dise " to rich and influential people. Then came the Pilgrims bound for a more genial climate; but driven out of their course by fortunate accident, they settle in Plymouth, and establish their church. But even in their little and well-sifted band there was not per- fect agreement in matters of religion, although that was their chief concern, and soon we see John Lyford, of no enviable reputation, with John Oldham and others, because they could not agree to "sepa- rate " from the Church of England, pushing out and exploring the coast to the northward to find or found a home. Among them was one Roger Conant, well commended then and afterward for his homely good sense and perfect honesty. They tarry awhile at Nantasket, where Capt. Miles Standish, coasting that way, had built a hut a year or two before, and there, in somewhat dubious case, they are waiting when the Dorchester Company in England, having by this time (1623) forty or fifty ships passing to and fro, bringing over fishermen, salt, etc., and taking home cargoes of fish, beaver skins and such furs and other spoil of the wilderness as may be gathered there, summon Roger Conant to take charge of their station at Cape Ann. A charter has been secured, and hopes are en- tertained that now, after many misfortunes, some profit may accrue to the adventurers. Conant is to be Governor, Lyford minister to the half a hundred people gathered there, and Oldham is asked to come and trade with the Indians, which office he declines. Misfortunes continue, however. Fire, sickness and quarrels (a fierce one with Miles Standish) break their courage, reduce their profits and finally cause the abandonment of the undertaking.

Conant now has in mind an undertaking of another kind. Finding on the peninsula of Naumkeag a sheltered place where he thinks it possible for colo-

nists to maintain themselves in comfort, he proposes to the Rev. John White, of the Dorchester Company, to establish there a plantation. It has been com- monly believed that he proposed to provide here a shelter for such unhappy creatures as might in Eng- land be persecuted for their religion. This is now disputed on the ground that he was not a "sepa- ratist" in Plymouth, and did not agree with John Endicott when he came, and that he was now proba- bly only looking out for a place where he and others might find life a little less hard to support on the usual terms. It is not impossible, however, that, "churchman" though he was, he had suffered enough for his religion to long for a place where the cursed jangle of theological discord might be forgotten, and other interests be made prominent. White promised him assistance of all needed kinds, and in 1626 Roger Conant, John Woodbury, John Balch and Peter Pal- frey (names to be remembered) begin the clearing of the forest and the building of houses. About twenty- five, all told, are gathered there, and Naumkeag (not yet Salem) begins to be, Two years later there were, it may be, thirty or forty persons in the colony. Some had followed Lyford to Virginia, and some had returned to England. Conant, resolute and patient, remained and kept with him those who were inspired by his confidence and shared his hopes, whether re- ligious or commercial. But, as so often happens, he was to sow that others might reap. He was too modest and undemonstrative to figure as a “ person- age," and to meet the more ambitious views of those in England who were influential in the management of affairs; and so it happened, when the property of the Dorchester Company passed into the hands of the New England Company, that Conant was superseded by Capt. John Endicott.

It was not Roger Conant, mild, tolerant, concilia- tory and unambitious, that the feeble colony needed, but John Endicott, the man of the iron hand and determined will, the man to tear the cross from the flag of England and defy the world when his blood was up and his religion was in question. As a busi- ness transaction the transfer was justifiable enough. The parties to it on the other side of the water were buying and selling so much property at its commer- cial value. But on this side of the water it looked like the betrayal of a trust. Having no rights which they could legally defend, the old colonists felt the change to be grievous when, from being masters of the situation, if not the guardians of a refuge sacred to those who were oppressed for conscience' sake, they were suddenly and unexpectedly reduced to a hand- ful of ordinary colonists who were transferred with the soil, and could only take the hard choice to go or conform to the law of the land. They were heard to talk about "slaves" and "slavery," and for some months held aloof from the meetings of the new- comers. But Capt. Endicott occupied a higher social

SALEM.

position than they, and he was not a man to be trifled with. In 1629 Governor Endicott receives in- telligence as follows : that the company at home has obtained a confirmation of their grant by letters patent from His Majesty, Charles I., and that he is confirmed as Governor, with a council styled " the Councill of Massachusetts Bay." The new-comers had the power. But they saw that it was hard for the others to submit, and were disposed to use their power kindly. The colony was now grown to in- clude, perhaps, three hundred persons, and at last the old settlers determined to make the best of it, and united in one body under Governor Endicott, and then, as we are told, "in remembrance of a peace set- tled upon at a conference at a general meeting be- tween them and their neighbors after the expectance of some dangerons jar," they called the place Salem, or Peace. The story is a pretty one, and seems to furnish a natural and probable explanation of the change of name, but it is necessary to say that all such interesting statements are doubted or denied by modern investigators. It is held by some that Conant gladly received Captain Endicott and that their dif- ferences of opinion related to such matters as the morality of raising tobacco and other such affairs of minor importance.

The story of the ecclesiastical and commercial for- tunes of Salem will be told elsewhere in the succeed- ing narratives. They were inextricably intertwined with each other. Both begin now to assume impor- tance, although many a weary day must pass before either of them will be settled and prosperous. For a time the religious interests which they had at heart compelled them to postpone somewhat the temporal enterprises upon which depended their comfort and success. Whatever we may say of the purposes of Roger Conant, nobody need be in doubt as to the purposes of John Endicott. Religion was with him the first concern. He believed his creed. He had come here to give it room to grow into a new mode of life, and he did not intend to let anything among the powers terrestrial or demonic interfere with his pur- pose. But, before the temporal plans of the little community could be carried out, some very stern ne- cessities were to try and to strengthen their faith. The winter of 1629 brought them little but trouble and sorrow. The climate, then as now, was rough and unsparing. No proper accommodations could be provided for so many families, their base of supplies was three thousand miles away, they were unused to such hardships and were ignorant of the dangers to be provided against. While, therefore, their friends in England were thinking of them as happily established in the "Paradise" of New England, and were look- ing forward to the pleasure of joining them in the spring or summer following, they began to sicken and die of exposure to cold, and the hunger which comes not with absolute famine, but inability to eat

the coarse food which they had. Some epidemic disease probably brought on shipboard, had been communicated to them, and the place had become in- fected and pestilential. When Winthrop came with Saltonstall, Dudley and Johnson, and a company, in seventeen ships, in all, a thonsand or more before the season was over, they found a colony of men and women haggard with weakness and want and de- pressed with sorrow. More than eighty had died in that awful winter, and of those who remained many had scarcely strength to stagger to the shore to meet the new-comers and give them tearful welcome. To the gentlemen and ladies who had come to transfer the government of the colony to the soil of New England, and establish here homes even more splen- did than those they had left behind them, Salem of- fered at that time but few inducements. Winthrop therefore pushed along the coast, and soon he, with Dudley, Johnson, Saltonstall and the most of the new colonists, were laying the foundations of Charles- town, Boston and Watertown. The seat of govern- ment was transferred to Charlestown, and again the hopes and ambitions of the men of Salem had ended in a bitter disappointment. To Governor Endicott was now measured out that which he had meted to Roger Conant, and probably he was no better pleased than he with the result. But this time there was no rebellion. Endicott was too good a discipli- narian to resist a higher authority, and it happened then, as it has many times since in Salem, that the good things provided for home use were passed over to the common account, and the commonwealth gained by her loss.

We need not waste much time in praising the con- summate wisdom of the founders of Massachusetts. They were wise, and they did well, and what they wrote in their charters and constitutions, and estab- lished in their customs and laws, show that they were seeking the best things in human institutions and knew the value of them when found.

But it is clear enough now that the Puritans were not the inventors of the system they established in New England, nor of the many complicated devices by aid of which they made their ideas effective in the conduct of affairs, social and civil. They selected, in- deed, but they did not create out of pre-existent nothingness the institutions which here they cleared from much rubbish of ecclesiasticism and from the burden of the monarchy of England. The begin- nings were small. Seen from the outside, they were mean and bare. The homes, labors and successes of the first colonists of Salem would be unworthy of our attention were they associated with the lives of or- dinary settlers in a new country. But small though the beginnings were, these men were beginning to store up and to train the energy which was afterward to expand with tremendous force in the opening of the whole world to commerce and civilization, and in

HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

the establishment of the best things in American Iifc.

In the New World, free to follow the bent of their minds, they emancipated themselves from many an impediment and returned to the natural tendencies of the Germanic racc, to which they belonged, and which, in Europe, has ever since been slowly attain- ing to that which they arrived at quickly. Of that race they brought the traditions and tendencies, and, almost unchanged, some of its most ancient customs and laws. The town, the town-meeting, the common holding of lands, the pasturage under herdsmen of their goats, swine and neat cattle, the pastor who was not a priest and many curious customs which have seemed to us to be evidences of their independence, skill and ingenuity, or which look like the temporary expedients of necessity, were simply survivals of English and German habits, dating back sometimes a thousand years, or even in some cases as we now know, antedating European civilization itself, and originating as in that immemorial past of our race when its home was in Asia.

Indeed, during the whole of the seventeenth cen- tury, the daily life of the people of Salem, if accur- ately represented to us now, would suggest European rather than American associations. Religion was the most important concern in that little settlement when it held a thousand souls. But, after all, the business of getting a living then, as now, occupied most of the waking hours. For the most part, their life on shore was rural, and their occupations and customs such as may even now be noted in secluded parts of the Old World.

On a summer morning the good man and good wife were up with the sun, attending to their various tasks, for by six o'clock at the latest, and in some years by half an hour after sunrise, the herdsmen of various kinds will be heard blowing their horns as they pass each man's door, gathering all the swine, goats and neat cattle of the town into flocks and herds, to be cared for during the day in the great pastures and other common fields. "The Great Pen " is provided for the cattle, and if, at six o'clock, any townsman shall not have his cows milked and ready for the herdsman, he must follow after as he may, and be responsible for any damage done to or by his stray cattle. At half an hour before sunset the horns of the approaching herdsmen were heard again, and every man was required to care for his own swine and goats at home. Sometimes in town-meet- ing it was a matter which divided the suffrages of freemen, as it was voted, that in a given season, the swine should or should not be allowed to run at large by night. Such customs are unknown now in America. But they still survive in many of the pas- toral regions of Europe, such as the Black Forest and secluded valleys of Switzerland.

Simple, honest, God-fearing men and women made

up the majority of the population. Their tasks were homely and laborious, and their tastes simple. But although from necessity their life externally was not unlike that of the European peasantry, they were neither stupid nor ignorant. Even those who had belonged to the servant class, and there were many of them, had passed through experiences which had sharpened their wits and greatly enhanced in their eyes the value of liberty. They had come over "un- der bonds" to serve a specified time in a condition not much hetter than slavery. Some had regained their freedom on the failure of commercial and in- dustrial enterprises, it being cheaper to let them shift for themselves than to find work for them or to re- turn them to England.

The yeomanry were picked men who had come over, not only because they hoped to better their con- dition and give their children a better chance than they could have at home, but also because they were interested in great problems of religion and govern- ment, and believed that these problems could be worked out to better advantage in a new country where they might be free from tradition and adverse precedent. They were trained in a school of experi- ence which will show results in later generations.

Among these were some who held with tenacity to the social distinctions of the old country. They were those of official and professional standing, such as in England would, if not hearing a title, be permitted to write " gentleman " after their names. In spite of the leveling influence of their experiences and of the theories they held, the old habits were not easily given up, and, unconsciously, even, the relations of master and servant were retained on the Old World footing. and the mutual reserve remained after such relations had ceased. It took two hundred years, under the most democratic of institutions, to abolish the distinctions of aristocracy, and to make a " yeoman " of like character and education seem as good as a "gentleman." It was years before the possibility of establishing in Massachusetts an hereditary aristoc- racy ceased to be either a menace or a temptation.

With the founding of Boston, Salem lost its rela- tive importance, but continued to be a centre of intel- ligence, and gradually, after long discipline, became one of the most influential towns in the common- wealth. Its liberality and intellectual alertness were shown very early in the treatment accorded to Roger Williams, who was loved and honored in Salem long after he was proscrihed by the colonial authorities. Even John Endicott admired and defended him until further resistance to authority would have been re- bellion. The enthusiasm, humaneness and free thought of Roger Williams seem to belong rather to our time than to that of the Puritan, who, with all his goodness, was grim and sometimes cruel. The man who, in 1631, could advocate, as he did, the rights of the savage, and in later years make his noble

SALEM.

plea for toleration, must have been a rare creature, and those who loved and honored him, as he was loved and honored in Salem, must have been, even then, capable of better things than the circumstances of the hard times in which they lived could offer them. When he goes into exile in 1636 it is pleasant to read that Governor Winthrop, not in office, how- ever, gives him a private hint that he is wanted by the government, and that the safest place for him will be found on the shores of Narragansett Bay.

The Puritan minister was a great personage in the little colony. From the nature of the case, religion being avowedly and actually first among the concerns of the community, he was a man of much official dig- nity and influence. He could not be elected to office nor long hold it in comfort unless he represented the best thought and feeling of the people and showed a gift for mastery. He was the most highly-educated man in town. He had leisure to correspond with men of like standing abroad. He was the organ of communication with the outside world. He had no competitors. The intellectual appetite of his towns- men was keen, and there were no adequate means of satisfying it in a time when they had no lectures, no concerts, theatres, newspapers, magazines, or many books. He was the peer of the best, and was freely consulted both in public and private by parishioners and magistrates as to questions of conscience and questions of policy. The first ministers were men of such parts and learning that they were largely inde- pendent of each other and of their congregations. They seemed to have moved back and forth between the two continents with great freedom, and to have excited great interest, both by their coming and their going. They have been over-praised, and condemned beyond their demerits; for they were neither so good nor so bad as they have sometimes been represented to be. They would not have been human had they not been tempted to magnify their office unduly, and they must have been more than human to emancipate themselves wholly from the bigotries and superstitions of their times. We shall soon see them doing some cruel work, and our modern blood will find it difficult to keep cool as we helplessly watch the unmerited sufferings of good, even if misguided, men, and we shall helplessly writhe as we hear the hissing whip fall upon the naked backs of women whom pastors and magistrates alike agree to punish in the name of God. But if we are wise, we shall reflect on all the circum- stances of the time and make such allowance as is due.

The Puritan attempted to crush the imagination, and is, therefore, supposed to have been devoid of it. But the imagination is a faculty nimble of foot and light of wing. It goes where it is not sent, and works where it is most contemned. Often it trans- forms itself, and, because its lighter moods are not in favor, plods in the disguise of some heavy-footed fac-

ulty, and masquerades as a phase of the sober reason, or still more homely common sense. In the Puritan the imagination did not exercise itself in the modern fashion nor after the manner of "ungodly play- wrights." It was not stimulated by such visions of wealth and conquest as turned the head of the Catho- lic Spaniard. It was in him a sober faculty, dealing with the well-attested realities of common life, and what he considered the equally well-attested realities of the supernatural world. Given the facts to work upon, and this creative faculty was capable of producing surprising results. As the sober-visaged, plainly-clad Puritan sat in church listening to the long prayers and still longer sermons and lectures in which his favorite preacher described the city of God, his im- agination, released from all restraint by his godly purpose, made many an excursion into the realm of those fair possibilities which on the earth were no- where actual. He saw new and holier churches, so- cieties, commonwealths arising to make the earth a safer home for the chosen children of God. He saw cities arise in the wilderness; fleets sailed over un- known seas, and broad lands, cleared, inhabited and wisely ruled, stretched in peaceful expanse before his comprehensive and creative imagination. These visions were not a waste of his time and energy ; for they were the working plans of the architect and the engineer, who was able to create that which he imag- ined. He could understand the proud boast of the Roman, who, if he could not play the fiddle, could make a small village into a great city. To describe the Puritan as without imagination is to deny to him that which was a chief characteristic of his laborious life. His stimulus and delight came with and from the exercise of this power, by which the mind clearly sees that which, as yet, has never been. That which distinguished him from those who commonly and con- sciously use this power was the capital fact that they never used it solely for pleasure. It was an instru- ment as useful as the more homely tools of the work- ing intellect. That which in the Puritan was active, but disguised, in his posterity two hundred years later was to break out into the full fruit and flower of the imagination. Hawthorne was the legitimate product of the ancient stock. All along the line of modern life, when Puritanism had completed its emancipa- tion, there broke a wave of poetry. Bryant, Long- fellow, Holmes, Lowell and the rest of that distin- guished company only revealed the inherited traits which were in their ancestors, though not then mani- fest. Even Quakerism now siugs in the poetry of Whittier.

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History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 24

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton), ed. n 85042884-1 Publication date: 1888 Publisher: Philadelphia : J. W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1538

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton), ed. n 85042884-1
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Philadelphia : J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1538