History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II, Part 48

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1672

USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II > Part 48

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FIRST PREACHING, FIRST SETTLED MINISTER, AND FIRST CHURCH IN CHEBACCO .- For about forty-

1 Ipswich Records-Ilammatt Papers, III. 127.

2 Ibidem, II. 59.

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four years after its first settlement by English immi- grants in 1634, there was no preaching in this place at any time, by any regularly ordained minister. Either the pastor or teacher, and perhaps both, of the tir-t church in Ipswich, doubtless occasionally made pastoral visits to the people here, and counseled, consoled and prayed with them, at their dwelling- houses, and probably offered prayer on funeral occa- sions, after which the dead were carried upon the shoulders of the bearers to the primitive burial-place in Ipswich. But there is no record of their having officiated here at any general and publie religious meeting prior to 1667 or 1668. The missionary spirit does not seem to have been manifested in those days.

Early in the year last named, Rev. Jeremiah Shepard, a son of Rev. Thomas Shepard, of Cam- bridge, in response to an invitation of the people, came and preached here in a private dwelling-house ; but he declined to remain and preach continually, because of the opposition of the Ipswich church, which was ostensibly. in part at least, based upon the fart that Mr. Shepard had not then formally con- nected himself with any Congregational church or other ecclesiastical body. But the members of the church were influenced by other considerations, practical and sentimental. Besides the disinclination to lose so much taxable property from the original parish, they undoubtedly felt a tender regret at the thought of severing the social ties and breaking up the associations of their early communion and fellow- ship.

The people here, however, felt so seriously the in- convenience, as well as the hazard to their health as they advanced in life, of being obliged, year in and year out, in all vicissitudes of the weather, to travel to and fro the distance of four and five miles between their homes and the place of worship in the centre of the town, that they petitioned to be set off as a separate parish, and allowed to erect a meeting-house. The first meeting for consultation, which led ultimately to the organization of the Second Parish in Ipswich, was held in February, 1677.

The church and town authorities having repeatedly refused to grant their request, some of the inhabitants, early in the year 1679, concluded to recur to first principles of natural justice and equity, and take the matter directly into their own hands for adjustment.

THI. FIRST MEETING-HOUSE. - Three intelligent und energetic women, who seem to have been largely endowed with the executive faculty, with the con- n vanet if not active aid of their husbands, success- only managed the whole business of superintending the radthe ot the frame of a meeting-house, the sills und jojats Having dech clandestinely prepared under ther direction, without leave or license of the civil or ec le maston authorities.

A few days afterwards, three women Mrs. Good- The wife of William, It , Mr. Varney, the wife of TEow! and Mrs. Martin, wife of Abraham, and

Abraham Martin2 himself and his hired man, John Chub,-were placed under arrest, tried before a magistrate at Ipswich, found guilty of "contempt of authority in helping to raise a meeting-house at ('hebaeco," and bound over to a higher court. At that court, which subsequently met in Salem, the offenders appeared, pursuant to an order from the "Great and General Court " at Boston, and made humble acknowledgment of their offence, and con- fessed that they were sorry, and so all were legally forgiven.

The meeting-house frame thus surreptitiously raised, was allowed to stand, and permission was given for the completion of the building and its occupancy for public worship.

The site of this edifice was the spot now occupied by the house of the late Capt. Joseph Choate. This point would seem to be satisfactorily settled by the state- ment of Rev. Dr. Crowell, in his history of Essex. He came to this town to reside in 1814. and was then told that this was the location of the building by aged persons, whose parents had attended worship within it forty years after its erection.

The building is described as a plain, substantial structure, with a frame of white oak, and having a enpola surmounting the centre of the ridge-pole, and within it a bell.

THE FIRST MINISTER .- The first resident elergy- man of Chebaceo, Rev. John Wise, has for two hun- dred years been a prominent figure in the history of not only this little parish, but of the country. Hle was born in Roxbury, Mass., August 15, 1652, and was the son of Joseph Wise, who at one period of his life followed the occupation of a butcher. His mother was a daughter of Rev. William Thompson,3 who came to this country from England in 1637, and after preaching for awhile at Kittery or York (now Maine), was in 1639 ordained as minister of the church in Braintree, Mas -. , in that portion of it which is now the town of Quincy. The parish of Mr. Thompson was substantially the same that is now the Unitarian parish in that place,-the place of worship of President John Adams and his descendants.4

Joseph Wise, in 1635, came over from England as the servant of Dr. George Alcock, and was held by an agreement to labor for him for a definite period, unless earlier released by his virtual master, in ac-

1 º Thomas Varney and Abraham Martin were ancestors of the writer of this historical sketch of Essex. 3 Savage, Vol. IV. p. 289.

A grandson of this Rev. William Thompson (who was, of course, a nephew of Mrs. Joseph Wise and first cousin of Rer. John Wise) was the Rev. Edward Thompson, who died March 16, 1705, at the age of forty years, and over whose grave, near the Winslow tomb in Marshfield, Mass., is the following quaint epitaph :

"Ilere, in a Tyrant's hand, doth captive lie A rare synopsis of Divinity.

Old Patriarchs, Prophets, Gospel Bishops meet I ndler deep silence in this winding sheet : All rest awhile, i hope and full intent,

When their King calls, to meet in Parliament."

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ESSEX.

cordance with a rule somewhat similar to that in- volved in the contracts made with the Chinese coolies brought to the Pacific coast, within a few years past,-though the bargain of the Puritan settlers was upon a higher moral plane, the motives for emigra- tion of both parties to the agreement, being above merely commercial or sordid considerations.

Joseph Wise was set free from the legal bond of service by a clause of the last will and testament of his master, Dr. Alcoek, who died in 1640, expressly giving him "the rest of his time" from after the next fol- lowing summer,-in the same way in which inden- tured apprentices to a mechanical trade were freed from the obligation of servitude, sometimes for meri- torious conduct and sometimes because they had paid for their freedom a stipulated sum. The phrase " bought his time" I occasionally heard in my boy- hood, when a custom prevailed, which is now entirely obsolete ; the Young America of these days scorning the thoughts of any such trammels.

In December of the year he was set free, he volun- tarily entered the more enticing servitude of matri- mony, by uniting in wedlock with Miss Mary Thomp- son, whose parentage is hereinbefore mentioned.

Of their thirteen children, eleven lived to maturity; of whom John was the fifth. When he was ten years old, his mother's brother, Benjamin Thompson, grad- uated at Harvard College, and not long afterward be- came master of the Free School in Boston. We do not find recorded any particulars of his childhood and youth ; but it is not an unwarrantable supposi- tion that this uncle may have rendered him essential aid in his earlier years in acquiring rudimentary knowledge. This same uncle was an early tutor of the subsequently noted Cotton Mather.

John Wise graduated at Harvard College, in 1673. That institution was then probably not much (if any) superior in its facilities for a " liberal education," to a respectable academy of a later period-not the equal, as a whole, of the present Normal Schools of this State, or the High Schools, or even of some private institutions in our cities and larger towns.

Mr. Wise preached first, so far as is now known, at Branford, in Connecticut, and, under a regular ap- pointment of the colonial authorities, officiated as a chaplain to a military expedition in King Philip's War. He afterwards preached at Hatfield, Mass., in the years 1677 and 1678; and there, as had been the case at Branford, he was urgently solicited to settle as pastor. It is stated that he was almost persuaded to remain at Hatfield and grow up with the place, which was then a new settlement. But he finally declined.

In December of 1678 he was married at Hatfield to Miss Abigail Gardner, daughter of Thomas Gardner, of Roxbury.

He came to Chebacco to preach in the spring of 1680, officiated at the dedication of the meeting- house, which had been raised a year previously, and was from that time the recognized minister, though

he was not regularly ordained, nor was the church organized, until three years later.

The narrative of his residence in this place, and of his ministerial career of forty-five years' duration to his death in 1725, at the age of seventy-three, has an interest which is in some respects romantic.

A notable incident of his pulpit ministrations, often mentioned in local notices and commemorative discourses, was his fervently uttered wish in public prayer for some of his neighbors then held captive by pirates, that if there were no other way of release, they might rise and slay their captors. On that same day they arose and, killing the pirates, effected their escape.

This may have been only a coincidence, or, for aught we may positively know, it may have been something more. While not assuming anything either way as a settled conclusion, we should not be disquieted by anybody's adoption of the sentiment ex- pressed in one of Tennyson's idyls of King Arthur,-

" More things are wrought by prayer

Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice Rise like a fountain for me night and day. For so the whole round earth is every way Bound by gold chains about the feet of God."

Mr. Wise's published writings, "The Church's Quarrel Espoused " and "A Vindication of the Gov- ernment of the New England Churches;" the oft-re- peated and accredited tradition of his easy and speedy disposal of the doughty athlete Chandler, who had jogged all the way from Andover on horseback to try his hands and arms with him at wrestling, and who was at the very first bout laid upon his back on the ground, and at the second lifted over the fence, and who then said that if Mr. Wise would be kind enough to pass his horse over, he would go home; and his spirited resistance to the usurpation of Sir Edmund Andros, with his keen and incisive afli- davit and petition for redress for the wrongs inflicted upon him and his associates by that despot, which have given him a national reputation, all demonstrate that in strongly marked individuality of character, as well as in physical strength, he surpassed the occu- pants generally of the Congregational pulpits of his time.

He was evidently what would be called, in the ir- reverent phraseology of the present time, a " muscu- lar Christian." If the modern champion slugger, John L. Sullivan, had lived at that early day, and had un- dertaken to "fool" around Mr. Wise, his laurels would doubtless have soon withered, for he would probably have been knocked out of time in the first round.

Though above the average stature, he was well proportioned, and though of dignified and command- ing aspect, he was free from arbitrary assumption of authority, and seems to have had a singularly modest estimate of his own intellectual powers, which, as evinced by his printed discourses and essays, were

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HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

decidedly superior. While of a lively faney and a Those who suffered with him in this persecution somewhat ardent temperament, which would have ; were John Appleton, at whose house was held the rendered him fearless of carrying all sail in a mental yacht-race, he was at the same time thoroughly bal- lasted with sound, practical sense. first meeting to consider the question of resistance to the collection of the unlawful tax ; John Andrews, William Goodhue, Robert Kinsman and Thomas French. Wise and Appleton were fined £50 each ; Andrews, £30; Goodhue and Kinsman, £20 each ; and French, £15. Wise and Appleton were required to give bonds in the sum of £1000 each, and the others £500 each, for their good behavior for one year. Mr. Wise was suspended from his clerical functions, and they were all debarred from holding any civil office.

In everything pertaining to ecclesiastical order and church government, he was thoroughly and consist- ently a L'ongregationalist. He was in favor of leay- ing each church and society to regulate and manage its own affairs, without dictation or interference from without, whether by Presbyteries or Associations. In his published writings on the subject he employed wit, sarcasm and invective, as well as sober argu- ment, in controverting the position of those in his time who proposed a more stringent sectarian organi- zation, with standing councils, to be empowered with what he regarded as a semi-popish authority over in- dividual ministers and their congregations. Then, as has often since been the case, there was manifest a pruriency for a domineering sway over the many by the few.

But the most important event of his publie career, which, at the time, gave him not only a colonial but also, to some extent, no doubt, a transatlantic distinction, wherever abroad the affairs of these new settlements were regarded with any interest, and which now secures for him an abiding national repn- tation, was his manly and courageous resistance to the assumption of the colonial Governor, Sir Edmund Andros, who, in 1657, levied upon the colonists, with - ont warrant or authority of any deliberative assem- bly, a tax of one penny upon every pound of their estates.

NOT THE FIRST .- The fact that he was not, as he is commonly supposed to have been, the first person in the colonies to protest against taxation without representation, should not detract in the slightest degree from the pre-eminent merit of his heroic ac- tion ; for which, with five others, he was fined and imprisoned.1

' The first person in the New England colunirs who remonstrated against taxation without representation, so far as ran be known from auy birini af ree of, was Her George Phillips, ancestor (by his first w fe 4 W. nde Il I'bil y , the er stor and philanthropist, and (by bis ser- wife of the late Hon Stephen C Phillips, of Salem. Hle uttered ble pratet in 16 /, Afty hive years before that of Mr. Wise, and twenty year 1M f. in the Litro wasborn

Has te rr PER01 ame from England in the ship " Arbella," in Is, with tehn Wenthr q, En Richard Sultanstall, Major William Ha- ti rn , John Waren and we all worthy and some knightly.

Wr I'll. - tlel in Watertown, Muss., and was minister of the hur h the toute tvar, until h's death in 141, at the age of fifty

Ho wa- u T. liberal and t lerant than mir of the other Puritan alm, in ther \ ttar ne in with his distinguished parishioner sadtrim der the h ou andere able Sir Richard Saltonstall, ¥ r 1.1 n Watyt wn Luta year power to his return to England. Hi to ht 1 Two of Band reli i u bberty led bim early to the

Inbos -je Withre, theft werner (who, hotwith- BAD 1| 1 10') .IAsh fiberality, was fond of

At a town-meeting held in Ipswich, pursuant to an order from the treasurer of the colony, acting un- der the command of Governor Andros, for the pur- pose of choosing a commissioner to join with the selectmen in assessing the inhabitants, the citizens, after having been forcibly and eloquently addressed hy Mr. Wise, voted unanimously not to choose such commissioner, or take any steps whatever to collect the tax.

The whole town itself, of course, thus became as much responsible for the position taken as were the six men singled out for prosecution ; but as an at- tempt to arrest and imprison the entire people of the place would have been undertaking too large a con- tract, they seized upon those whom they considered to be ringleaders.

In his petition for redress of his grievances, which accompanied his suit for damages, brought against the chief justice, Joseph Dudley, some two years afterwards, when Andros had been driven from the Governorship, in consequence of a change in the occupancy of the British throne, Mr. Wise told of the insolence of one of the judges at his trial, who said, " Mr. Wise, yon have no more privileges left yon than not to be sold for slaves."

King James II., of whom Andros, now deposed, had been the pliant tool, was now in exile; and William and Mary of Orange having acceded to the

from the people of the colony, without consulting them. Mr. Phillips and the Ruling Elder of his church, Richard Brown, called the people of Watertown together, and gave it as their opinion that it was dangeruns to submit to the order of the Governor oud his assistants to tax the peo- pls without their consent. For so doing they were arraigned before the Governor, and it is recorded that there was " much debate" ou the suli- Jest.

Their action would seem to have had a beneficial effect ; for not long afterward, before any further attempt to levy a tax, the court, on the 19th of May, 1632, ordered that " two of every plantation he appointed tu confer with the Court about raising of a public stock ; " and this led, u short time afterward, to the establishment of a representative body in the government of the colony.

Governor Winthrop claimed that Mr. Phillips afterwards " acknowl- edged bis error." I cannot find, however, in any record, the slightest evidence that he ever made any such acknowledgment. Possibly, his respect for the Governor's really good qualities, and a compassionate Ireliag towards him on account of bis mortification at the failure of his tax-raising scheme, may have induced Mr. Phillips to let him dowu ensily.

As all this occurred twenty years before John Wise was born, it is possible that he may not have heard of it.

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throne, the relative political and legal status of the oppressor and his victims had entirely changed. Mr. Wise recovered damages of Chief Justice Dudley, who had been Sir Edmund's companion-sycophant to royalty ; and the town of Ipswich reimbursed the persecuted men for their pecuniary losses.

In 1689 he was chosen by the town as a Represent- ative in an assemblage convened that year in Boston, for advisory purposes.

Mr. Wise lived thirty-six years after this triumph- ant vindication, and continued preaching until with- in a short period before his death, which occurred at the age of seventy-three years. The following is the inscription npon his memorial stone in the old bury- ing-ground in Essex :

"UNDERNEATH LIES THE BODY OF THE

REV. JOHN WISE, A.M.,

FIRST PASTOR OF THE 2D CHURCH IN IPSWICH. Graduated at Harvard College, 1673. Ordained Pastor of said Church, 1681. And died April, 8, 1725, Aged 73.

For talents, piety and learning, He shone as a star of the First Magnitude."

He had seven children, five sons and two daughters, who survived him several years. His wife's deatlı occurred only a few months after that of her husband.

The eldest son, Jeremiah, was a preacher, and was for forty-eight years, until his death, pastor of a church at South Berwick, Maine. A daughter became the wife of Rev. John White, of Gloucester. Ammi Ruhami was a military man, with the rank of major, and he and his brother Henry were actively engaged in secular business pursuits.

During the appalling witchcraft delusion in 1692, Rev. John Wise, with an equal, if not even greater, degree of intrepidity than when opposing Gov. Andros, interposed in behalf of one of the victims and his wife by heading a petition of thirty-two in- habitants of Chebacco, attesting the irreproachable character of the accused persons, who had for some years resided among them prior to their removal to Salem. This furnishes no proof that he did not share the general delusion of the times on the question of the existence of witches ; but it demonstrates his bravery and generosity, in incurring the hazard of losing his own life by an effort to save the life of another.

A further mention of his friendly interposition, and the principal reason for it, will be found under the head of Witchcraft, in this history.

THE SECOND MINISTER .- Mr. Wise's immediate successor was Rev. Theophilus Pickering, a native of Salem, born in the Pickering mansion of several gables, still standing in Broad Street, in the vicinity of the State Normal School building. He was an uncle of Timothy Pickering, distinguished as an officer in the Revolution and as a member of the Cabinet of

President Washington, and likewise of that of the elder Adams. John Pickering, distinguished as a lawyer and scholar, author of " Pickering's Synonyms," and Octavius Pickering, who were brothers, I think, were also, I believe, nephews of Theophilus.

With Octavius, when he was a resident of Boston, 1 was personally acquainted, having first met him when he appeared as a witness before a legislative committee, and having had some conversation with him relative to the family traditions concerning the Chebacco minister, and his personal traits and char- acteristics.

I judge that the Rev. Theophilus Pickering was a person of varied learning and accomplishments ; of fine literary tastes ; intellectually able ; dignified in manner, staid and decorous in his style of public speaking, yet animated and interesting ; of strict in- tegrity and a nice sense of personal honor; from natural temperament not so effusive and enthusiastic as some others, and having a constitutional abhor- rence of rant and sensational utterances. He was devout and sincere, frank in the avowal of his exact opinions, and averse to a tacit or seemingacquiescence in anything of which he did not fully approve.

He had considerable mechanical skill, and found agreeable recreation in manual labor. Some of the interior finishing of the dwelling-house, which he owned and for some time occupied, now the residence of Mr. Edwin Hobbs, is said to be the product of his workmanship.

For fifteen or sixteen years after his settlement, the relations between him and his church and society were entirely harmonious and cordial, so far as can be known. About the year 1740, when the famous Rev. George Whitefield first preached in Ipswich, and visited Chebacco, or soon after, signs of discon- tent and disaffection towards him began to be mani- fested, first like drops of a slight sprinkling from the outermost fringe of a cloud, the cloud gradually in- creasing in density till it became dark and frowning, and the rain began to fall pitilessly. It chilled Mr. Pickering ; and I have no doubt that like chills to the physical system, in damp and malarial regions, it shortened the number of his days on earth.

The story is too long to be given here in particu- larity of detail. The dissatisfaction of a portion of his church grew into a schism. Conferences and consul- tations were ineffectual to heal the breach, and at length the disaffected members withdrew and organ- ized a separate society and church, of which Rev. John Cleaveland became the settled pastor.

The charge against Mr. Pickering was principally that he did not adopt nor approve of the measures introduced by Whitefield for the promotion of re- ligious revivals. The controversy which had arisen was not professedly about theological doctrines so much as about methods-methods of impressing the doctrines upon the minds of the listeners and of testing the fitness of persons to become church mem-

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bers, although some of the "specifications" of the charge against the minister, as they are termed in military trials, were to the effect that the distinctive loctrines of grace had not been presented with the frequency and cogency considered desirable and es- sential. vated in tone, circumspeet in phraseology, and in keeping with the proprieties of eivilized life. But this cannot he truthfully said of all his early followers in this country, a fact which was lamented by some of the better class of his admirers and adherents. Some of his disciples, particularly some of the preachers and exhorters, were fanatics and cranks. Especially was this the ease with Rev. James Davenport, who preached for some time to the Separatist Church in Boston, to which Rev. John Cleaveland preached, Mr. Pickering's course in general, and censuring his ( and which invited the latter to settle as its pastor. Davenport preached also in Ipswich, and seems to have been a favorite with the minister there, the Rev. Nathaniel Rogers, who, with him, came to Chebacco, and virtually insulted Mr. Pickering by holding forth in his pulpit without his consent, and alluding to him in their prayers as a man blinded, and asking God to open his eyes and cause the scales to fall from them. Mr. Pickering doubtless had reference to such per- sons, when, in a letter, he wrote of "the conceit of some that the sudden starts of their faney are imme- diate impressions from the Holy Spirit." We can judge of the feeling cherished by some of the conser- these Whitefield " New Lights," as they were termed.

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History of Essex County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II, Part 48

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed Publication date: 1888 Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1672

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1888
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1672