History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 33

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 33

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HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

sive imaginations. The ways and doctrines of these Quakers appeared to them to lead out to the un- fenced wilderness of antinomianism [no-law-ism] ; so their propagators were honestly, if mistakenly, held to be dangerous to the security of the new com- munities struggling to set up here law and order in commonwealth and church. The latter were con- tending with teachings and influences sincerely be- lieved to be disorganizing and hostile to the peace, if not to the existence, of the newly-planted colony. It is asking too much to require that magistrates and ministers, church-members and citizens, in the in- fancy of a great and critical experiment in the con- duct of civil and ecclesiastical affairs, acting under cir- cumstances of frequent perplexity and serious embar- rassment making their own precedents as they went, and daily treading paths of uncertain ending, should have been exempt from the limitations of their age, and should have made the discovery, at once and on the spot, that the extreme of tolerance towards dissent and contradiction was a discreet and safe policy, to be fearlessly followed out in practice without any restrictions and under whatever provocation-a dis- covery which, after two hundred years of social progress, hardly commands an unqualified and univer- sal acceptance. It would be disingenuous not to allow, however, that personal feelings, wounded pride and narrow and bitter prejudices doubtless mingled with considerations of public policy, however uncon- sciously, in promoting the persecution of the Quakers,

Persecutors and persecuted were alike human. Grant that the doctrines of the Quakers had much truth to justify their earnest proclamation. They had too often, as uttered, the implication, if not the tone, of the Pharisee's "I am holier than thou," to the mem- bers of the New England Churches. Their authors were not sparing in the terms of self-humiliation, it is true, and this made the assumption of superior in- sight, and nearer communion with God, the more irri- tating and offensive. The very truths and half-truths that were couched in many of the allegations made against the Christianity of the day,-allegations of un- dne devotion to letter and form, and of lack of true religious experience and life, which, if they had come from brethren within the church, or from supposed friends, might have been welcomed by the more spiritually-minded and conscientious of the fold,-were not to be borne when regarded as the false accusations of meddlesome, censorious and aggressive pretenders to superior piety. The cruelties visited upon the Quak- ers were simply horrible, almost beyond belief. Yet we may not flatter ourselves that it is because we are so much better than our fathers that we are to-day unanimous in this verdict. It is, that we are nearly a quarter of a millenium later than the Puritans of 1656, and that between their time and ours a good deal has been learned. As to the aggravated sufferings to which the Quakers were subjected, however, this should be said : that in an age when all pains and

penalties for crime were immeasurably heavier and more cruel than now, if the Quakers must suffer pun- ishment at all, the punishments inflicted upon them were not unusual, and therefore were such as should have been expected : fines, whippings, public disgrace, imprisonment, enslavement,1 banishment and death. And furthermore it should be mentioned, though not as alleviating in the least the responsibility for the harsh treatment visited upon the Quakers, that some who suffered seemed rather to court martyrdom than to shrink from it. The disturbances growing out of the visits of Quakers to the places of public worship ap- pear to have been less numerous and less violent in Salem than in some other places. As has been already mentioned, a Mrs. Oliver had, in Mrs. Hutchinson's time, and again afterwards, claimed in the open cou- gregation the right to partake of the communion, though not a member of the church; had denied the right of the church or the magistrates to prevent her ; and had suffered a brief imprisonment for the first offense, and was " publicly disgraced " after the second- One Christopher Holder, a Quaker, after being ban- ished, returned and spoke a few words in the meeting here, September 21, 1657, "after the priest had done," but "was hauled back by the hair of his head, and a glove and a handkerchief were thrust into his mouth." On the Monday he was sent to Boston, received thirty stripes and was imprisoned nine weeks. Samuel Shattock, for trying to prevent the stopping of Hol- der's mouth, was carried to Boston and imprisoned there. Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick, members of the church in Salem, for entertaining Holder and another of his sect, were sent to Boston and imprisoned. Some twenty persons are named by Felt [Annals] as having been among the persons punished, or indicted for attending a Quaker Meeting at Nicholas Phelps'. So serious was the apprehension of evil to the churches from this source, that when the covenant was "re- newed," soon after the Rev. John Higginson's settle- ment, a special clause of warniug against the leaven of the doctrine of the Quakers was added at the end, as has been noted already.

The Quakers in Salem had their meetings at first in private houses. Their first meeting-house stood on the south side of Essex Street, on the space between the houses numbered at present 373 and 377, and is said to have been built by Thomas Maule, in 1688. Maule had some years before been warned, as a Quaker, to quit the town, and two citizens, Samuel Robinson and Samuel Shadocke,had been fined twenty shillings each for "entertaining " him in 1669. In 1716 Maule bought the meeting-house he had built in 1688, for twenty-five pounds, the society having then built their second meeting-house, a plain building, as all Quaker meeting-houses are, on the present site of

1 Mr. Bentley mentioned that in 1659 " the heads of a family belonging to Salem were ordered to be sold." If, as is probable, the reference is to Daniel and Provided Southwick, son and daughter of Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick, the order was not carried into effect.

SALEM.

the Quaker burying-ground, at the corner of Essex and North Pine Streets, the latter street not having been opened. This second meeting-house is remem- bered by the older citizens of Salem, having been removed only about fifty-five years ago, that is in 1832.1 The brick meeting-house, on the corner of Warren and South Pine Streets, now occupied by the society, was built in 1832, upon land given for the purpose by a friend, indeed, though not a Friend by sectarian designation, George S. Johonnot.

A difference as to discipline or doctrine, which arose among the New England Quakers towards the end of the first quarter of this century, led to earnest and protracted controversy, and finally to a practical divi- sion of the body into two sections, in 1843, sometimes popularly designated as "Gurneyites and Wilburites," from their adhesion, respectively, to John James Gur- ney, of England, and John Wilbur, of Rhode Island : each section claiming to be logically and spiritually in historical line with the founders of the sect. The latter conceived that the former " did not allow so full an agency to the Holy Spirit on the mind and heart as the primitive Friends did." The separation took effect in this region, at the New England Yearly Meeting, in June, 1845; and again at the Quarterly Meeting in August, and at the Monthly Meeting in September following, was ratified by the followers of the two representative men above named, and the two sections fell irreconcilably apart. The majority of the society in Salem held with Gurney, and those of the adverse views put up a small meeting-house at the corner of Essex and North Pine Streets, in 1847, which is now standing on the same spot, having been changed into a dwelling-house.

Though the Quakers have no fixed and salaried local ministers, the following persons are named in the "Historical Sketch of Salem," by Messrs. Osgood and Batchelder, as being "among the minis- ters acknowledged and recorded as such, from time to time, by the Salem Monthly Meeting of Friends (comprising the meetings of Salem and Lynn) : Mica- jah Collins, Mary Newhall, Moses H. Bedee, Avis Keene, Elizabeth Breed, Jane Mansfield, Benjamin H. Jones, William O. Newhall, Abigail Bedee, Soph- ronia Page, Henry Chase, Hannah Hozier, Lydia Dean, Mary Chase, Daniel Page and Ruth Page." No records of the minority meeting in the house by the burial-ground, are known to have been preserved. Its numbers, not large at first, gradually diminished till the society became extinct. Among those who upheld that meeting, and were identified with it as ministers or well-known supporters, are remembered Nathan Page, David Buffum, Lois (Southwick) Ives and George F. Reed. Current rumor used to say that the

last-named, a fine scholar and an able teacher, a mem- ber of the class of 1831 in Harvard College,2 remarka- ble as a linguist, in character simple and guileless as a child, was sometimes, in the last days of the society, the only attendant at the meeting-house, and that then he sat there alone in silent worship and medita- tion what time the Spirit detained him.

In 1671 the inhabitants of "the farms," or "Salem Village," as the lands now lying about "Danvers' Centre" were then called, regarding themselves as entitled by their numbers and their remoteness from the Salem Church to a nearer place of worship and the full services of a minister, began to hold religious services among themselves on the Lord's day, and constituted a church, the parent church assenting and regarding this church and congregation as a branch of itself. Rev. James Bailey was the first minister, settled in October, 1671, and Rev. George Burroughs, of unhappy memory (as a victim of the witchcraft madness), succeeded him, November 25, 1680. On the 10th of November, 1689, this church was formally separated from the mother church at Salem, and on the 15th of that month Samuel Parris was ordained its pastor.

Marblehead, taken from Salem, was incorporated in 1649, but no church was gathered there till 1684; meantime such of its people as had had or desired church fellowship continued to find it in connection with the church in Salem. On the other side of Bass River, in what is now Beverly, public worship was established in 1657, and Rev. John Hale was settled as the first minister in 1667. In 1713 a second church was formed in that part of Danvers, then called the lower parish, or " middle precinct," afterwards South Danvers, now Peabody.

EAST CHURCH .- The third church formed within the present territorial limits of Salem, regarding the Quaker "Meeting " as the second, was that commonly known by the title of the East Church. But as Quaker "meetings" were not held worthy to be counted as " churches" (members of Congregational Churches being judges), and as the Quakers them- selves adopted another name for their assembly, this church styled itself the "Second " Church. It will be remembered that during the colleagueship of Mr. Nicholet with Rev. John Higginson (1672-76), efforts were made to establish a meeting, and that a meeting- house was partly built in the east part of the town, on the northeast border of the common. With the de- parture of Mr. Nicholet, the division in the society was virtually healed, and the meeting-house was not completed ; but the idea of a church in that quarter did not wholly die out of the minds of the residents in those parts. When a committee of the First Parish reported "reasons for building a meeting-house" for the use of that parish early in the last century, it un-

1 The frame of it is now standing in Peabody, on the Lynnfield road, having been purchased by the late Mr. Samuel Brown, taken down by him and set up again for a barn near his dwelling-house. An addition has been put to it, but its original size and form are easily to be made out.

2 Mr. Reed completed his college course, and had a part assigned him for commencement, but neglected to prepare for it, and did not take his degree.

HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

designedly gave strength to the project long enter- tained by the Eastern District of a separation from the parent church, and of building a meeting-house in the midst of the population to be accommodated thereabouts. As quoted by Dr. Flint in his sermon on leaving the old East Church, in 1846, this commit- tee's report alleged that "the house [of the First Church] was not big enough to hold the people, and, for want of room, many of the eastern end of the town, and many others on other accounts, stayed away from public worship; and a great many, under pretence of being of the Church of England, went to Marblehead in boats, [so] that our harbor appeared more like a day of frolicking than anything else." The First Church resisted separation as long as it could, and more than hinted in its acquiescence at the last that the "proceedings of some of the said brethren " had been "irregular" and "contrary to good order;" but seeing a meeting-house already built, and knowing that a minister was selected and ready to be ordained, it finally, in 1718, made a virtue of necessity, ceased from further opposition, and gave the Second Church its benediction at parting.

The year 1718 was an eventful year to the First Church, made so by its having recently lost by death, both within three weeks, its two ministers (Rev. Mr. Noyes and Rev. Mr. Curwin), by the settling of another (Rev. Samuel Fisk), by the erection of a large, new church building for its own use, and by the completing of the new East Church building for the people living in that section, and the organization of a separate church and congregation there, over which Rev. Robert Stanton was ordained the minis- ter on the 8th of April, 1719. The East Society's meeting-house was situated half a mile to the east of the First Church, on Essex Street, at the corner of what was then Grafton's Lane (now Hardy Street). In the sermon of Dr. Flint, just above quoted, it is thus described, -" The house was in dimensions originally forty by sixty feet, and what has been called tunnel-shaped, the belfry and spire ascending from the centre of the roof." In 1761 this meeting-house was new sashed and glazed ; in 1766 elap-boarded ; in 1770, “ there not being room to accommodate the congregation," it was voted to enlarge it, which was done the following year by dividing it in the centre, carrying the western half fourteen feet farther west, and covering in this additional space. The seams, showing the lines of junction between the old part and the new, were visible in the plaster of the ceiling till the house was abandoned, in 1846. At the time of the enlargement a new steeple was built at the western end, and a porch was added at the eastern end. In 1846 the present church edifice was built and occupied.

The birth-place of Rev. Robert Stanton, the first minister of the East Church, is not known. Mr Felt gives 1692 as the year of his birth. He graduated at Harvard College in 1712, and died May 30, 1727, after a ministry of eight years. Dr.

Flint, the fourth in the line of his successors, inters that his ministry was peaceful and happy, from the fact that nothing to the contrary has been recorded, and that his early death was regretted alike by his people and the community at large. Mr. William Jennison was ordained the year following Mr. Stan- ton's death; that is, in 1728, May 2d. He was born in Watertown in 1705, and died in the same town in April, 1750, having been dismissed from the East Church Sept. 13, 1736. He graduated at Harvard College in 1724. His letter of resignation is pathetic in its humility. A disaffection of his society towards him had become general, the cause of which is not now known. "Honored and Beloved," he wrote, "I esteem myself very unhappy that I have fallen under your displeasure. Glad would I be, if it lay in my power to fulfill the ministry I have received among you, [so] as to approve myself to God and to the con- sciences of all of us; but when I consider the great and long uneasiness and dissatisfaction you have la- bored under (for which I am heartily sorry), I despair of being re-instated in your love and affection, so as to answer the great ends of the sacred office among you. I am therefore willing to accept a dismission from the sacred office among you, which I write with fear and trembling, not knowing at present what will become of me and mine; but earnestly trusting to your favor and kindness towards us under the diffi- eulties of my situation, and which you have encour- aged me to hope for, upon my being freely and wil- Jingly dismissed. I heartily wish the best of blessings to your dear church and flock. .. . "

The long ministry of Rev. James Diman fol- lowed that of Mr. Jennison. Mr. Diman was born on Long Island, N. Y., Nov. 29, 1707, grad- uated at Harvard College iu 1730, was librarian of the college two years, was ordained in Salem May 11, 1737, and died Oct. 8, 1788. His minis- try was peaceful for the most part, and so success- ful that an enlargement of the meeting-house was required in his day and was made. Towards the end of his pastorate, however, his society became desirous of a colleague. A large portion of the people had fallen out of sympathy with their minister's opinions and teaching», which were rigidly Calvinistie, and, in this, at variance with their own. These divergeneies led at length to an interruption of harmony ; feelings of personal coldness and alienation set in. After a reluctant assent to the expressed wishes of the society for a colleague, in 1783, and the settlement, the same year, of one who held theological views not in accord with his own, the senior minister manifested an in- creasing estrangement and withdrawal from his soci- ety. Mr. Diman is described as " of grave aspeet, in- vested with the imposing dignity-rather stern and awe-inspiring-peculiar to the ministers of the age of huge wigs, which were a symbol of the clerical authority and the orthodox theology of the day."

The colleague called to assist Mr. Diman was the

SALEM.

widely-known scholar, independent thinker, political writer and vigorous preacher, William Bentley, who "dispensed at once with the wig and creed of which it had been so long the symbol." Mr. Bentley was born in Boston June 22, 1759, graduated at Harvard College in 1777, was three years tutor there, ordained in Salem Sept. 24, 1783, died Dec. 19, 1819, the discourse at his funeral being preached by Professor Edward Everett, then connected with the college at Cambridge. The beginning of Mr. Bentley's ministry marked the transfer of the East Church from apparent allegiance to the theology of the Westminster Assem- bly to that of a liberalism not yet defined, but which later took the name of Unitarian. It cannot be said that the new minister brought about the change, since we have seen that the people of that church, in choos- ing a minister, showed a preference for one of a dif- ferent type from that of their senior pastor, even while the latter was yet preaching to them-they having already departed from the doctrinal faith up- held by him. This more liberal theology, which proved to he the nascent New England Unitarianism, was, to a wide extent, "in the air," in the last quarter of the last century, in Eastern Massachusetts, though not yet developed into an open and systematized con- fession of faith, nor exciting yet the opposition and alarm which it caused in the early years of the pres- ent century, greatly disturbing all the Congregational Churches of New England, and dividing a considera- ble portion of them into two polemic camps. Of the Boston clergy, a considerable number had ceased to hold to the creed of the New England founders. Some were pronounced in their disaffection and dissent; some simply refrained from teaching important parts of the creed of Calvin and the Westminster divines. Mayhew and Howard, of the West Church; Chauncey and Clarke, of the First Church; and Lathrop, of the Second Church, who preached Mr. Bentley's ordina- tion sermon, were well known for their liberal opin- ions. So were Mr. Barnard, of the North Church, and Mr. Prince of the First Church in Salem; while the pastors of two churches of the Episcopal order in Boston and Salem,-Rev. James Freeman, of the King's Chapel in Boston, a friend and classmate of Mr. Bentley, and horn the same year, and Rev. Na- thaniel Fisher, rector of St. Peter's in Salem-were by common repute of the same general way of think- ing.

It was with men like these that Mr. Bentley was classed theologically, if, indeed, he was not more unorthodox than they; and this fact recommended him the more as an acceptable candidate to the wor- shippers in the East meeting-house. Chiefly on ac- count of his political opinions, which were in accord with those of the Republicans of his day, as opposed to those of the Federalists, and on account of his frequent and strong enforcement of these opinions through the press, he was not in close and cordial professional fellowship with his clerical brethren of

the neighborhood, they being for the most part Fed- eralists. Consequently his interchange of pulpit services with them was much more restricted than it would otherwise have been, being confined to a few. He was an ardent patriot. On the 22d of February, 1793, le delivered an oration commemorative of the birthday of George Washington to a very large assembly in the North meeting-house. Again, after the death of Washington, he was invited by the citi- zens of Salem to pronounce a funeral oration, which he did in the same place before a vast gathering of people. When the United States frigate "Constitution" was driven into Marblehead harbor by the British cruisers Tenedos and Endymion, on Sunday, April 3, 1814, and a messenger brought the news to the church, Dr. Bentley promptly dismissed the congre- gation and hastened, with many of his parishioners, to the scene of the expected attack.

Dr. Bentley was a man of broad culture, of a wide range of reading and research, and of a catholic mind. The deep and long-enduring influence which he exerted is attested by the traditions that still live among the people of Salem, showing the authority that went with his name and word. He did not write for posterity, but for his own time, caring little for fame. His fame reached beyond his immediate neighborhood and out- lasted his time, not because he planned it to be so, but because of the powers of his large and many-sided personality and his wealth of resources. He had much and varied learning, had it at command, and possessed along with it that bracing, balanced, health- ful "common sense" which is so uncommon. His heart was warm, his sympathies were quick, his hand was always in practice, both for giving and serving. "From all that I have learned of him," says his suc- cessor, Dr. Flint, " I have conceived of him as pos- sessed of a vigorous and brilliant intellect,-rapid and exuberant in thought,-of great ease and fluency of speech,-untrammeled by the authority of names or systems in philosophy or theology,-interpreting the universe and the Bible fearlessly by the light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world,-the light of the soul, which is greater than the outward universe, or the mere letter of the Bible." Dr. Bent- ley never married. "Having no family ties to divide his cares and responsibilities with his people, he made them his family. And the affection he manifested for them he had the happiness to know was cordially reciprocated by them." Once he wrote for posterity- a "Historical Sketch of Salem," published in the " Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society" (vol. vi.).

Dr. Bentley's successor, just above quoted, was Rev. James Flint, born in Reading December 10, 1779; graduated at Harvard College in 1802; ordained over the church in Bridgewater [East Parish] Octo- ber 29, 1806; installed pastor of the East Church, in Salem, September 19, 1821; he died March 4, 1855. He was the sole minister of the East Church for thirty

HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

years, till 1851, when Rev. Dexter Clapp became his colleague. The period of Dr. Flint's ministry was one of steady prosperity for the society. In 1846 the beautiful brick church, with front of free stone, was built on what is now Washington Square (then Brown Street), over against the southwest angle of the com- mon. Dr. Flint was a man of scholarly tastes, had a poetic temperament, and his graceful and vivid writ- ing, combined with an animated and warm delivery of his discourses, made him an attractive preacher, welcomed always in the pulpits of his denomination, as his presence was acceptable also on those more public occasions which brought him before his fellow- citizens at large.

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History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 33

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