History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 27

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 27

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at home, granting all that reason and the democratic sentiment of America claims for the rank and file of citizenship, still it remains true, and after making all deductions, fair and unfair, only the more conspicu- ously true, that in those days the little town of Salem was the home to a remarkable degree of intellect, cul- ture and high-bred character ; that it was not merely the dwelling-place of traders and speculators, but was an exceptional centre of attraction for a large number of men of comprehensive ideas, broad culture and a certain largeness of life not common then or now. In the chapters which follow on commerce and on litera- ture the story of the achievements of the men of Salem will show in what ways the energy which had been stored up and the knowledge which had been accum- ulating were put to use both in enriching the world and making it wiser,-two processes not always carried on together. Aside from this history of activity on the sea and the gathering up of literary power there is little to tell of these times before the War of 1812. What there is to be noted shows that a settled pros- perity has begun. The common is laid ont, two banks are incorporated, the turnpike was opened, making rapid travel possible, two new banks were incorpo- rated, two military companies held their first parade, a ship came in from a voyage round the world and another made the first voyage for trade at the Fiji Islands, Nathaniel Hawthorne was born, the Athe- næum was incorporated, and Mes-rs. Judson, Newell, Nott, Hall and Rice were, in the Tabernacle Church, consecrated the first missionaries to India. This lat- ter event, to many the most notable of the century, was one of the remarkable modern illustrations of the earnestness of the Puritan spirit in matters of religion, and it was a direct result of the meeting of two phases of the Puritan character. The spirit of enterprise opened the heathen world to commerce and the pious zeal of the church which had maintained the Puri- tan creed sent the gospel to complete the work of civ- ilization. The two purposes which united at the founding of Salem made the third century of its life illustrious with the double triumphs of commerce and religion. The record of the Christian missionaries of New England shines with all the traits of heroism. In all the years which have followed since the sailing of the first missionaries in the brig "Caravan" in 1812, the Orthodox people of Salem have retained their in- terest in their work, and have been able with both money and advice to assist in generous measure.

It would be a mistake to suppose that the large amount of liberal "leaven " in the ecclesiastical life of Salem was the result of any easy-going optimism on the part of the people, or that the changes which have passed over the Puritan spirit indicate any wholesale lapse of the people from the standards of their fathers. The change was the result of a battle fiercely but fairly fought, and it has left all parties in possession of an inheritance directly derived from their

SALEM.

forefathers. The strife which followed the division of the Congregational body of Salem was probably the last one of its kind in Puritan history, and it would be an instructive exhibition if one could put the sym- bols of ecclesiastical discipline in chronological order, marking the two hundred years, with the gallows at one end and a "union Thanksgiving service " at the other. Tolerance in all matters of religion has become common-place in Salem. But all parties who date their ecclesiastical ancestry from the beginning are equally proud of their fathers and all claim, whatever their modern differences, to illustrate in important particulars the principles of the founders. Even the Episcopalians and the Quakers now live in peace with the descendants of those who persecuted them, and claim their share of the common inheritance, while not a few of the children of the persecutors have accepted the tenets of the men and women who suffered as disturbers of the peace and rebels against the church of God. Of no portion of her population is Salem more proud than of her "Friends." It is hard for her to forgive herself that in her borders they suffered violence. Their love of peace and their zeal for human liberty have conquered. Left to themselves, they have proved themselves to be not disturbers, but keepers of the peace, and as others adopt their rule of conduct their protest dies away and they are no longer to be distinguished from their friendly neighbors.

The founding of the Andover Theological School and the oath imposed upon its professors, with its list of things to be opposed, are part of the ecclesiastical history of Salem, and show some of the influences at work in shaping her religious and social life. John Norris, of Salem, gave ten thousand dollars of the original endowment. The school was intended to offset the "latitudinarianism" of Harvard College. The heresies mentioned were those which in Salem were, or had been, regarded with more or less sym- pathy and toleration. It is a list which could never have been made in a western town. The professors were sworn to opposition, "not only to Atheists and infidels, but to Jews, Papists, Mohammedans, Arians, Pelagians, Antinomians, Arminians, Socinians, Sabel- lians, Unitarians and Universalists." Now every one of these words stood for that which had been a be- lief held by men of Salem or their friends and busi- ness correspondents at some time in their troubled history.

The war with England in 1812 was a disaster to Salem which her merchants dreaded and would have avoided. Their ships were abroad on all seas, and they protested against the peril and loss which they saw to be inevitable. But the war being declared, they turned their attention with characteristic vigor to the prosecution of it to a victorious conclusion. As in the Revolution, an efficient navy being wanted and not being available, an extemporaneous navy was

speedily organized, and, as usual, the privateering fleet of Salem was greatly out of proportion to her small population. Ships and seamen were abundant, and the boys were natural sailors and sea-fighters. Of the enemy much spoil was taken and many prison- ers. But of the forty privateers, twenty-six fell into the hands of the British, and their crews lay in prison at Barbadoes and elsewhere. Dartmoor was filled with them, and until within a few years the survivors of captivity in that gloomy place recited the stories of their sufferings and release to admiring listeners.

As commerce culminated and passed away, the in- tellectual vigor which had been evolved or educated by its enterprise and wide experience of the world began to manifest itself in other ways. The life of profes- sional men in the town was attractive and their work lucrative, according to the modest standard of the time. Ministers, lawyers and doctors, of learning and ability abounded. Scholars were numerous and well equipped. The men of native mental power, who had not been highly educated, sent their boys to Harvard College, and young men of wealth, education and the habit of foreign travel were in many families where culture was accounted at least as good as wealth. At that time all classes lived the year round in Salem. They might have outlying farms, and were in the habit of traveling much abroad, but the principal in- terests of the rich and educated families were at home. The influence of this concentration of in- terest, and the maintenance of a permanent domestic life in one place was favorable to the cultivation of the whole community. Men of exceptional gifts were not isolated from their townsmen. Those who were conspicuous for their wisdom were held in honor at home, and served the community like other citizens. For illustration every institution of the town might furnish an example,-Timothy Pickering was pres- ident of the Essex Agricultural Society ; Nathaniel Bowditch was president of the Essex Fire and Marine Insurance Company ; Daniel A. White was president of the Athenæum and of the Essex Institute ; Lever- ett Saltonstall held similar offices; Colonel Francis Peabody founded the Lyceum; and in the school committee for 1821 we find the names of Tim. Picker- ing, Joseph Story, Nat. Silsbee, Gid. Barstow, Lever- ett Saltonstall, John Pickering and others. In the list we have one who had been a cabinet officer under two Presidents, a member of Congress, an United States Senator, a justice of the Supreme Court, with others almost equally eminent, together with two physicians of fine attainments, and business men of prominence. Not one of the whole list is insignifi- cant. John Pickering made the first Greek lexicon with definitions in English, and not Latin, while among the teachers with whom the committee had to deal with then or a little later were such men as the author of "Worcester's Dictionary " and Henry K. Oliver. Rufus Choate was practicing law ; Nathaniel

HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

Hawthorne was just going to college at Brunswick ; the sculptor and poet, W. W. Story, was not quite old enough to enter sehool ; Jones Very, the poet, was a shy and modest lad of eight years; Samuel Johnson, the eminent historian of the "Oriental Religions," was getting the first impressions of the East which were to turn his attention to its literature, and make him the first American scholar in that department of learning; and many boys were fitting themselves in the public schools to become what they have been ever since-most important factors in the evolution of American society. Education was a "hobby " at this time, and money was at rapid rate being turned into brains and brain culture. Between 1815 and 1832 seventy-nine Sal m boys were graduated at Har- vard College alone. In 1828 seventeen boys entered Harvard College, and seven the same year went to other colleges. In those days young men, their travels being over, returned to live at home, and a proportion of the men to be met on Essex Street, unusually large for a town of its size, were college bred. The intense mental energy directed by the fathers into the channels of commerce could not be limited to them, and their sons, inheriting their ability with a wider range of experience and a greater knowledge of the world of books, became lawyers, judges, theologians, physicians, men of science and men of letters, and exponents in all New England and the Northern States of the intellectual and " gentle " life." It was a period of wonderful intel- lectual stimulus and fertility. Within a radius of twenty miles from the custom-house, from which the "Scarlet Letter" was dated, the stock being homo- geneous and the conditions similar, there were pro- duced in the early part of the century in Boston, Cambridge, Salem and other towns, Story, the two Danas, Sparks, Everett, Ticknor, Prescott, Norton, Ripley, Emerson, Parker, Hawthorne, Rantoul, Holmes, Whittier, Motley, Lowell and many another of equal or lesser light, and they drew into their fel- lowship such men as Channing, Bancroft, Longfellow, Agassiz, Choate and Webster. The common family life out of which they came was, to a great extent, the common life of an ordinary social circle in Salem. IIenry R. Cleveland, son of a ship-master, was one of the "five of clubs," and brought his companions, Sumner, Longfellow, Hillard and Felton, to enjoy the gay and witty society to be found about his home. Many a visitor from Cambridge and Boston sought the company of the accomplished men and beautiful women who constituted a genuine "society," and many of the daughters of Salem were taken away to grace the homes of other cities.

Certain writers have much to say about the " pro- vincialism " of Salem in the first half of this century. It is not necessary to deny any charge they may make, for no doubt it was provincial. But it was less so than any sea-port town of England at the same

time, and was behind few English towns in the knowledge the people had of English literature of the better sort. Dr. Kirwan's philosophical library, made a prize of war in the Irish Channel, became the basis of the present Athenaeum Library, a rare collection of good books both new and old. But it is safe to say that there was in that library no book so abstruse, so philosophical, or printed in language so uncommon as to he unfit for the use of numerous men and women in Salem. Rummage the closcts of any old gambrel- roofed house to-day, and along with crackle-ware tea- pots and old silver porringers you will find some rare volume of "Seneca," the "Spectator," the "Dial," the common reading of Hawthorne and his playmates of seventy years ago or later.

Salem became a city about the time when its most famous days were over. With the transference of its trade to the larger cities and more accessible markets its local prominence was greatly reduced. The build- ing of railroads and the multiplication of modern in- ventions reduced, instead of increasing, its relative importance. Great efforts were made, and hopes were entertained, that the port of Salem might again become the centre of a great inland trade. Stephen C. Phillips lost his life in a burning steamer on the St. Lawrence River, while making an effort to open new provinces to the enterprise of Salem. His sons were prominent in the movement which resulted in the provision made by the city for an abundant supply of pure water. When the city charter was procured, most of the wealth won by enterprise in all quarters of the globe was still held by citizens at home, or so invested as to swell the general resources of the city. But the inviting fields for enterprise opened in the Western States have caused the trans- ference of a large part of it to other places, and with it have gone many of those who have inherited it. Some of them are to be found in most of the large cities of the Eastern States and in Europe. The sons of Salem are officers of many western railways, and the money won in oriental trade now facilitates the transport of the grain which feeds the millions of Europe.

The old Salem is gone. The men, the commerce, the Puritan spirit, the high-bred courtesy, the stately ways, the great men and women with strong local at- tachments, -these are gone. Nothing remains of the most stirring cpoch in the life of the town but names, places, and a decreasing number of the families who trace their ancestry back of the nineteenth century, in Salem.

A new Salem has taken the place of the old. A . city stands where the old town won its renown,-a city with railroads, horse-cars, electric lights and cot- ton-mills, and a large foreign population. The man- sions built by merchants of English descent and train- ing are inhabited by operatives in the mills or labor- ers, who have no interest in the old ways or the

SALEM.

former inhabitauts. The Irish brogue and the French language are heard now where pure English was once the rule. The old wharves are rotting ; the ancient warehouses are silently falling to decay, and the beautiful shores of streams and harbors, which once delighted the eyes of their owners, are becoming an offense to the poor who dwell along their borders. The custom-house, always too large for any reason- able expectations of prosperity, is much too vast for the diminishing commerce in dutiable goods. The old Salem is dead and gone. Most of it does not even exist as a relic of a fast-fading antiquity.

But a new Salem is rising. The points of activity and interest are no longer on her shores, which, for the present, are abandoned to chance and fate until, with renewed life and a more abundant leisure, meas- ures shall be taken to make them once more as beautiful and attractive as they were when " Lover's Lanes " and clean beaches were the resorts of the youth. The centres of life and business activity are now within the town, along that highway which, once a lane and then a street, took its curves from the line of the shores where the merchants lived and business was done. Two hundred years ago what is now Essex Street was a shady lane, where the goats and swine and cattle passed on their way to and from their pastures, and where, in the dewy freshness of a summer morning, the horns of the herdsmen sum- moned their flocks and herds, to be driven away to fields now inhabited by prosperous citizens. The shores are now deserted by commerce, and the shaded lanes of the old time are now the paved and lighted highways through which begins to move, with in- creasing energy, the business which is to repair and rebuild the fallen fortunes of the city. Home indus- tries, domestic commerce, manufactures, science, literature, music, art and education are now restoring the vanishing wealth, renewing the ancient renown, and making the city a centre of enterprises which are already enriching the national life.

Since the nineteenth century began there have been three distinct periods in the progress of the city. First, there was the commercial and intellectual energy of the first thirty years. They were supposed to be without limit. But they were appropriated by the larger life of New England. Then came the slowly diminishing prosperity of the thirty years be- fore the War of the Rebellion, in which, in spite of costly endeavors to prevent it, the city lost its an- cient importance as a centre of business. The war ended the career of "Old Salem," and the new Salem began to be. The city lives no longer on its mem- ories alone, and is not distinguished solely for its an- tiquity. Business activity and scientific enterprise are rapidly preparing the conditions for a new career of progress, on new lines. The history of Old Salem is closed ; but in the new city, which is rising on its ancient foundations, its memories will be cherished, its annals will be preserved with care and enriched 2

with fresh discovery. The historic places where the good and evil passions of men were displayed in con- flict, and where great virtues made the contest illus- trious, will be visited, as the years pass, by an increas- ing number of pilgrims from all the newer parts of the country. The ideals of character which were the Puritan's finest contribution to the resources of mod- ern civilization, honored and revered on the spot which gave them birth, will be constant sources of virtue and intelligence.

The people of Salem are proud of their ancestry and history, and a diligent band of local antiquarians is working out the story of the past, with results of more than local fame. But the city is entering upon a new career, and may become as notable for its achieve- ments in the years to come as it was justly famous in the past.

The Atheneum, the Essex Institute, the Pea- body Academy of Science and the societies and indi- viduals that are atteuding to music and art are yet to be heard from in a way not unworthy of Salem. The idea is being cultivated that wealth is not the sole foundation of good society, and that the money made in the old times was not the principal gain. That money is now flowing in other channels, but it has, in flowing away from the place where it was accumu- lated, made it only the more evident that it was one of the least of the treasures gained in the enterprising days of foreign commerce. Now attention is turned to the other things which are seen to be permanent and of staple value in good society. The new Salem will be rich, but its cultivation will be not incidental. It will he held to be of primary importance, and, with religion, good morals and wisdom, will enrich the national life far beyond any material contributions which it may make to the national prosperity.

CHAPTER II. SALEM-(Continued).

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY.

BY REV. EDMUND B. WILLSON.

THIS history lays no claim to completeness. It deals but slightly with the interior, the unorganized religious life of the first settlers of Salem, or of the later inhabitants of the place. It is little more than a historical sketch of the church-life of its people.

Nor is it for the most part history now written for the first time. The main facts relating to nearly every church in the town have been already collected and printed-those of earlier date than the present century by the very competent hand of Rev. Mr. Bentley, minister of the East Church; those falling

HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

within the present century by Charles S. Osgood and Henry M. Batchelder, in their historical sketch of Salem, published in 1879, whose contents were mani- festly verified with painstaking care so far as the authority for them could be had and the scope of that work permitted them to be included.

The settlement of New England, it is to be borne in mind, was an enterprise in the interest of religion. " Civilized New England," says Palfrey, " is the child of English Puritanism." To know the child, there- fore, we should know something of its ancestry. Only bricfest notices of the ante-migration period of Eng- lish Puritanism, however, can find room here.

When it is said that the colonizing of New Eng- land was in the interest of religion, it is not meant that secular interests had no voice in the councils that directed it. Hopes of advantageous trade and prospects of opening new fishing-grounds were not wanting. Philanthropic plans for converting and civilizing the Indians mingled with schemes for reaping solid gains from exchanging English goods for land, peltry, fish, whatever products might turn to account in a commerce between the Old World and the New. The sleepless love of adventure, thirst for roving and change, sure to be dreaming its fasci- nating dream of voyage and exploration in every tenth young Englishman's brain, of course played its part. The never failing, restless, religious adventurer- source of constant danger to the peace of the new settlement-would also be ready to embark in the first ship that sailed. It remains true that a religious purpose was predominant and controlling in the Puritan company that settled Salem.

Up to the time of its leaving its English home for the West, the history of Puritanism is to be studied chiefly as the history of a national religious move- ment, of the rooting, spread and final prevailing of the ideas of the Reformation on English soil. It is our province to trace it more particularly after its landing in America, and more particularly still in the planting, growth and shaping of the institutions which it founded and fostered in this town. It lost nothing of its intensity of religious purpose when it left its native land. It became even a larger element in the life of the settlers of New England after their removal than it had been before, in that here they led a life of narrowed and simplified conditions. It had a more undivided supremacy. It had deeply colored and characterized their life and history before they came; now it was the very life of their life. It im- bedded itself in their social and domestic customs, and took control of their political aims and plans.

the only way to realize a pure worship, with entire freedom of mind and conscience, seeing no other sure way to obtain relief from the despotism of the Church of Rome, whose spirit was still present and ruling, and whose methods still lingered in the Church of Episcopal England. Those who took this view were the Separatists, Brownists, Independents of their time, avowed advocates of democracy in church government, for which Robert Brown of Norwich was a strenuous contestant, and in which he led a considerable following. Others regarding the national church as a true church still, even in its degeneracy, and having an invincible antipathy to the least semblance of schism, firmly resisted the secession movement, and sought rather to purify the church of its formalism by the leaven of a more sin- cere and fervent piety. These were the Puritans.

From the former class came the Plymouth colo- nists,-by the way of Holland, where they tarried a few years, and contemplated for a time making a permanent religious home under the tolerant laws, the Protestant leanings and the comparatively hos- pitable public sentiment of that country.

The Puritans continued for a while their experi- ment of staying in the national church and there working out its reformation. They never formally abandoned it. But practically they did. They con- fessed to themselves after a time that they were not succeeding. Reluctantly they became more and more accustomed to turn their eyes to the sea and to think of the shores beyond. English trading com- panies were sending their ventures meanwhile to the wild and little-known bays and rivers of Virginia and their ships were ranging the whole long Eastern coast of the new continent. They might try their experiment there, they thought, under a less close and jealous scrutiny, and possibly pursue there, un- molested by savage neighbors, as they could not at home, unmolested by priests and prelates, the better religions life they craved.

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History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 27

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