USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : containing carefully prepared histories of every city and town in the county, Vol. I > Part 54
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Mr. Oakes, whose good fortune it was first to oceupy the new parsonage, was a graduate of Har-
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CAMBRIDGE.
vard in 1649, and had already preached in the col- ony, but had returned to England, where he was born. It was thence he was loudly called back by the Cambridge church, which paid the cost of his removal, and ordained him in generous style, as witness this bill of provisions for the ordination dinner : -
It. 3 bushells of wheate £0 15s.Od.
It. 2 bushells3 of malt
10 0
It. 4 gallons of wine
0 18 0
It. for beefe
1 10 0
It. for mutton
1 4 0
It. for 30/ of butter
0 15 0
It. for foules
0 11 9
It. for sugar, spice, and frute, and other small things
1
0
0
It. for labour
I
S
6
It. for washing the table lining
0
6 0
It. for woode 7s. 0 7 0
It. Suit 7 1b. 3s. bread 6 s.
0 9 0
£9 17s.3d.
No sooner was Minister Oakes fairly settled and at work than President Chauncy died, namely, in
February, 1672; and the latter was succeeded by Rev. Leonard Hoar, who came over from England with a strongly backed application for the vacant chair. Mr. HIoar was a graduate of the college, though not a native of the colony, and had removed to England upon his graduation. ITis assumption of office was followed by the granting to the college of a new charter, but not by a newness of life cor- responding thereto. Before the death of President Chauncy the college liad fallen into a necessitous condition. Its buildings were sadly dilapidated, the number of its scholars reduced, and all its available funds did not amount to £1000. Under President Hoar it languished still more, and in 1675 he was obliged to resign. Dislike on the part of the stu- dents, perhaps, had something to do with his res- ignation ; envy and jealousy among his associates in the government probably had more. The con- duct of Mr Oakes, who was a member of the corporation, was not altogether transparent in connection with the trouble. He, however, ac- cepted the " superintendence " of the college, with
The Old Parsonage : Built in 1670.
the rank and duties of president, and in 1679 allowed himself to be made president in full. This arrangement led to the engagement of Mr. Nathan- iel Gookin as his assistant in the care of the church. Mr. Gookin was a son of General Gookin, before mentioned, and on Mr. Oakes's death, in 1682, he succeeded him as pastor.
The year of President Oakes's death saw the completion of the much-needed new college build- ing, Harvard Hall, subscriptions for which had been begun by the New Hampshire town of Ports- mouth in 1669, and a commencement-upon which had been made in 1672. It was a brick edifice, of rather an ambitiously whimsical exterior, but
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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
stately and imposing for the time, and one that must have been universally recognized as a consid- erable addition to the furniture of the town.
There are traces of shipbuilding in Cambridge about 1672.1
From 1680 to 168S the number of taxable residents of Cambridge increased from 169 to 191. The number of families in 1680 was 121. At Mr. Gookin's ordination " provision" was made for eighty persons. The salary of the minister was about £ 50 in cash, and between £70 and £80 in supplies, besides an abundance of firewood. The contributions of the church for benevolent objects were frequent, and averaged something like a pound each. The sick and poor were liberally and ten- derly cared for. Such items open glimpses into the life of the time.
The history we are pursuing received its chief distinction, during the closing years of the cen- tury, from the college administration of President Increase Mather. "The period which elapsed while the college was under his superintendence is the most interesting, the most critical, and the mnost decisive of its destinies, of any of its his- tory." 2 It was also a period of great moment in the affairs of the colony, to whose fluctuations of prosperity a town so intimately related as Cam- bridge was of course peculiarly sensitive.
It was in the summer of 1685 that news reached Boston of the abrogation of the charter. In the following year arrived Sir Edmund Andros, pro- claiming himself " captain-general and governor- in-chief" of New England. Upon the accession of William and Mary to the British throne, Andros and his unwelcome government were overthrown, and the colony resumed its old forms until they were displaced by the province charter of 1692. The administration of Phips, Stoughton, Bello- mont, and Dudley succeeded in quick turn. These were political changes which played an important part in preparing the way for final colonial inde- pendence. And the fifteen years which they occupied corresponded substantially to the term of Increase Mather's presidency of Harvard.
President Mather did not immediately succeed President Oakes on the latter's death. One or two
candidates were first chosen to the office, and declined it. Rev. John Rogers filled it for a short season. Mr. Mather finally consented to assume its duties in June, 1685, and continued to discharge them for sixteen years, though only for a part of the time so far yielding his preferences as to become a resi- dent of Cambridge. He was largely mixed up in the political controversies of the period.
It was in the very midst of this time, too, that the witchcraft delusion rose to its height. In this melancholy chapter of New England history the name of Mather - father and son, and especially son - is conspicuous above almost all others. Such a stormy period as this cannot be supposed to have allowed many blessings to the little university town on the banks of the Charles. A new charter did indeed come to the college from the General Court, but the first uses of it were adroitly turned by the ambitious president to his own advantage. When afterward it was negatived by the crown, the affairs of the college were left in greater em- barrassment than ever. Other complications en- sued, and the double-mindedness of the president added constantly new elements of difficulty to the situation. The reorganization of the college came to be the politico-ecclesiastical issue of the hour. Finally, the president's firm refusal to remove his residence from Boston to Cambridge, notwithstand- ing the explicit order of the General Court for him so to do, led to his displacement, and Rev. Samuel Willard, as vice-president, assumed the duties of superintendence.
The year 1701, which found Mr. Willard at the head of the college, was the fifth year of the minis- try of Rev. William Brattle to the church in Cam- bridge. In 1703 the town deemed it necessary to build a new meeting-house. The edifice then in use had been standing about half a century. The usual tax was levied, and the college made a grant of £60. The new house stood near the site of the former, perhaps exactly upon it, and would appear to have been taken possession of in the fall of 1706. Ten years passed away, and Mr. Brattle dicd, but not before some happy changes had been made by his agency in the constitution of the church as respected the admission of new members. The day of his burial, February 15, was marked by an extraordinary snow-storm, one effect of which was that ministers and other notable men from all over the county were detained in town for nearly a week. Mr. Nathaniel Appleton, a native of Ips- wich, was pretty promptly chosen to succeed Mr.
1 Hubbard has an account of a ship built at Cambridge which sailed in 1651 for the Canaries, having fourteen pieces of ord- nance and about thirty men. She fell in with "aa Irish man-of- war" of superior force, and fought her a whole day at close quarters, but finally escaped with the loss of two men and "dam- nified in her merchandise between £ 200 and £ 300."- ED. 2 Quincy.
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Brattle, and on his ordination, in October, 1717, began a pastorate which lasted nearly sixty-seven years. The early stages of Mr. Appleton's minis- try were signalized by a rebuilding of the parson- age, and an addition of galleries to the meeting- house, in which more room seems to have been needed for the " scholars " of the college. Of the social spirit of the town at this time -its care over itself and suspiciousness toward strangers -a en- rious instance is given in the following action of " freeholders and inhabitants " " orderly convened " in December, 1723 :-
" Whereas, of late years, sundry persons and families have been received and entertained amongst us, to the great trouble of the Selectmen and damage of the town : for preventing such inconveniences for the future, Voted, That henceforth no freeholder nor inhabitant in said town shall receive or admit any family into our town to reside amongst us, for the space of a month, without first having obtained the allowance and approbation of the freeholders and inhabitants of said town, or of the Selectmen for the time being, on penalty of paying to the Treasurer of said town, for the use of the poor, the sum of twenty shillings. Also Voted, That no inhabitant in said town shall receive and entertain any person into their family (excepting such as are received by reason of marriage, or such as are sent for education, or men or maid servants upon wages, or purchased servants or slaves), for the space of a month, without having the allowance and approbation of the free- holders and inhabitants, or selectmen, as aforesaid, on pen- alty of paying the sum of twenty shillings for the use of tbe poor, as aforesaid."
Thus at the beginning of the last century did Cambridge undertake to put up the social bars.
The first quarter of the last century was the heart of the period (1692 - 1736) to which Presi- dent Quincy assigns the second stage of the growth of the college ; and it is the college history which, during that term of years, gives outline, body, and countenance to the history of the town. In 1708, greatly to the disappointment of the Math- ers, Mr. Willard had been succeeded in the presi- dency of the college by John Leverett, a grand- son of Governor Leverett, who held office until 1725, when he in turn gave place to President Wadsworth. Mr. Appleton's long ministry to the church was meanwhile well begun. The church was destined to some suffering by reason of defec- tion in life on the part of its membership, the care and discipline of which came to be an onerous part of the pastor's burden ; but the college flourished like a green bay-tree. The Mathers withdrew from active participation in its affairs. President Lev- erett threw himself into his work with both zeal and discretion, and though his administration had
its stormy passages, it was marked by many im- portant gains. These were times when both relig- ious and political feeling ran high ; but the college forged steadily ahead, despite the battering waves. It was during this administration that the stream of Thomas Hollis's benefactions to Harvard began to flow, - an experience one of the brightest in its history.
The point now before us is a good one, perhaps, to pause for another hasty survey of the college walls and inspection of that college world which was so largely the Cambridge world. The year 1720 saw the completion of Massachusetts Hall, substantially as it appears to-day ; which building, with Harvard Hall opposite, and the first Stoughton against the eastward opening between the other two, formed the three sides of the college " quad." The president's house had been pulled down to make way for the new building, which was erected by legislative bounty at a cost of about £3,500 pro- vincial currency. The general course of study and discipline, the college life and atmosphere, at the time before us, are vividly revealed, not only in the diaries of the presidents, but in the report of a solemn " visitation " of the college, which had been instituted by the overseers in some spirit of dissat- isfaction a year or two earlier. Points in the re- port of the committee of visitation are that " there is too common and general a neglect of the stated exercises among the undergraduates "; that "the Masters' disputations and Bachelors' declamations . . . have been a long time disused "; that there has not been "any great recommendation of books in Divinity to the students, but that they have read promiscuously, according to their incli- nations "; that "the Greek Catechism is recited by the Freshmen without exposition "; that " there has been a practice of several immoralities, par- ticularly stealing, lying, swearing, idleness, picking of locks, and too frequent nse of strong drink "; that " the tutors and graduates do generally give their attendance on the prayers in the Hall, though not on the readings"; that "the scholars are, many of them, too long absent from the college"; that " the scholars too generally spend too much of the Saturday evenings in one another's cham- bers; and that the Freshmen, as well as others, are seen, in great numbers, going into town, on Sabbath mornings, to provide breakfasts"; and so on.
At the time of President Leverett's accession to office an " ancient and laudable practice " had been
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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
revived, of having the undergraduates read at morning prayer a verse ont of the Old Testament into Greek, and at evening prayer, when the president was officially present, a verse out of the English or Latin New Testament into Greek. This duty was exacted of all except the Freshmen, who were permitted to use their English Bibles. Under President Wadsworth the duty was permitted to be performed in tutors' chambers. Morning and evening prayer included each, in fact, two prayers, with a Scripture reading and exposition, and on Saturday the singing of a psalm. On the Sabbath the expositions gave place to a report at evening, by scholars in course, of the sermon which had been preached in the morning at the meeting-house near by, where the members of the college regu- larly attended, occupying seats in the front gallery. Besides his eight or ten expositions of Scripture in the week, the president was charged with general oversight and administration, and occasionally looked in on the weekly declamations. There were four classes of students then as now, but the two upper were called respectively senior and junior " Sophisters." The Freshmen were "fags " to the whole college out of hours. To eat in commons was compulsory. So likewise, except for the Freshmen, was the study of Hebrew under one Judah Monis, a converted Jew. Discipline was promoted by daily visits of tutors to students' rooms, and enforeed by fines, reprimands, degra- dation, and expulsion. The extreme penalty was publicly and solemnly administered. Card-playing subjected the offender to public admonition. Com- mencement had already begun to be a gala day, - drawing to Cambridge, by the roundabout way of Roxbury, the governor and his guards, marked by a prefatory procession of authorities, dignitaries, and invited guests, and relieved by a dinner in Harvard Hall. The literary exercises, which were divided into two sessions by the dinner, took place in the meeting-house, which, for the occasion, was the centre of a strange and animated scene. The Cambridge Common, during Commencement week in those days, was built over with a city of booths, laid out in regular streets, where all the diversions and refreshments of a muster or a country fair were dispensed to a miscellaneous and too often uproarious crowd. By the middle of the century these wild abuses of the occasion led to strenuous efforts to make college commencements private affairs ; but as early as the first years of President Wadsworth's rule recourse was had to the civil
authorities to forbid the booth system. And before this, even, the government of the college had found it expedient to prohibit "Commencers" from " preparing or providing either plumb cake, or roasted, boiled, or baked meats, or pies of any kind," and from having in their chambers " dis- tilled liquors, or any composition made therewith." The president would visit the rooms of the " Com- mencers " on Commencement Day, to see that this decree was enforced, and the attempted evasion of it " by plain cake "- so quaintly reads the record - was met by a stern threat of withholding honors of graduation from the offender.
President Wadsworth was inaugurated on one of these Commencement Days, namely, the 7th of July, 1725; and he distinguished the occasion by pro- nouncing memorifer a Latin oration. For his en- couragement the General Court, which all this time was the college's fostering hand, not only established his salary at £400, but voted £1000 to be used " for the building a handsome wooden dwelling- house, barn, and out-houses, on some part of the College land," for the accommodation of him and his successors. Both salary and dwelling languished, however, and of the latter the president was obliged to take possession for himself and family " when not half finished within." Then and thus arose upon the south frontage of the college yard, not far from the lot which nearly a hundred years be- fore had been assigned to the Rev. Thomas Hooker, that seemly and venerable gambrel-roofed mansion which stands to day on Harvard Street, next to the Square, and nearly opposite Dunster Street, - one of the most conspicuous landinarks of the modern city, because one of the most honored links with the ancient town. For a hundred and twenty years this was to be the official residence of the college presidents. " Probably no private mansion in America has seen so many illustrious personages under its roof-tree." 1
In 1721-22 the General Court was driven out from Boston over to Cambridge, and in turn out of Cambridge, by the prevalence of the small-pox ; which unpleasant pestilence raged again, with an even increased violence, in 1730, breaking up the college exercises and scattering the students for a season, and occasioning no less than nine town- meetings to devise measures for its extermination. Twice again, within a comparatively short time, were the exercises of the college similarly inter- rupted - in 1740 by a "throat distemper," which
1 Drake.
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proved so fatal in the town that the students were dismissed in June, and the Commencement post- poned until autumn; and in 1750 by the small- pox once more, in connection with which latter visitation very nearly one person in every three of the entire population of the neighboring town of Boston was down with the malady in its ordinary form, while upwards of two thousand took it by inoculation. The population of Boston was then about 15,000, and Cambridge suffered in pro- portion.
Among the victims of the "throat distemper " of 1740 were President Holyoke's wife and son.
VII. WHITEFIELD IN CAMBRIDGE. 1740-1764.
THE reader must bear in mind that the present stage of this history lies in the very midst of that powerful religious movement which, originating in 1734, at Northampton, Massachusetts, under the fierce and lurid preaching of Jonathan Edwards, had spread through the colonies, and is known in American annals as "The Great Awakening." It is not, of course, within the intent of this sketch to give any detailed description of this remarkable revival, or to spread out the variety of causes which contributed to it, and the complicated forces which carried it forward. It was a time when the theo- logical caldron was seething furiously ; when con- troversies over doctrine were growing bitter and divisive, and when the spiritual life of the churches was correspondingly on the decline. The head was having more to do in the service of religion than the heart, and there was doubtless need of some radical and rousing measures of reformation. In this, as in all other important changes in the New England character, Cambridge was destined to play a leading part, and the central figure around which rolled " the shock and shout of battle " was that mighty warrior of the church militant, the Rev. George Whitefield.
Mr. Whitefield was an ordained clergyman of the Church of England, who had caught the infection of Wesleyanism, had cut loose from the conven- tionalities of the Establishment, and had given himself with a prodigious enthusiasm and vigor to a general evangelical mission. It was in the pur- suit of this career that he made his several visits to America between 1737 and 1770. He was the Moody of his age, on a larger scale; and came hither much as our American evangelist of this century has visited England in our own times.
On his second visit to America, Whitefield reached Boston in September, 1740, being then but twenty-five years of age. His first sermon in Boston he preached on Friday, the 29th of the month, the day after his arrival. His fame, and the suspicion and opposition which his peculiarities aroused in the minds of many of the standing or- der, invested his advent with much of the quality of a first-class sensation. The incidents which attended his progress increased its natural effect and impressions. His first congregation, in Dr. Colman's meeting-house, he estimates at four thou- sand; but he had a great gift for overrating his congregations, and his figures are to be taken with considerable reduction. On Saturday he preached in the morning to about "six thousand " in the Old South Meeting-House, and in the afternoon to about "eight thousand " on the Common. On Monday afternoon, when the New South Meeting- House on Summer Street was filled with an eagerly expectant congregation, a panic broke out just be- fore Mr. Whitefield reached the house, and in the efforts of the crowd to escape from the building by the doors and windows, five persons were actually killed and several others wounded. Though the weather was wet, the service was immediately ad- journed to the Common.
On Wednesday, Mr. Whitefield came out to preach at Cambridge, and the prefatory incidents above related may suffice to suggest the excitement which must have filled the little university town at his coming. " Here," he writes, is "the chief college of New England for training the sons of the prophets. It has," he continues, " one president, four tutors, and about a hundred students. The college is scarce as big as one of our least colleges at Oxford; and, as far as I could gather from some who knew the state of it, not far superior to our universities in piety. Discipline is at a low ebb. Bad books are become fashionable among the tutors and students. Tillotson and Clark are read instead of Sheppard, Stoddard, and such- like evangelical writers; and, therefore, I chose to preach from these words : "We are not as many, who corrupt the word of God'; and God gave me great freedom and boldness of speech. A great number of neighboring ministers attended, as in- deed they do at all other times. The president of the college 1 and minister of the parish 2 treated me very civilly."3 This discourse would appear to 1 Edward Holyoke, who succeeded Wadsworth in 1737.
2 Mr. Appleton. 3 Whitefield's Journal.
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HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
have been preached under an elm-tree which stood at the northwest corner of the Common, a few rods from what is now known as the "Washington Elm."
In the afternoon he preached again, this time in the college " court," as he calls it, meaning there- by, evidently, the enclosure between the buildings. He describes the services on this memorable day as attended with " manifest power." A minister soon after wrote him "that he believed one of his daughters was savingly wrought upon at the time "; and among other " converts " was Daniel Emerson, a student, who became in 1743 first minister of Hollis, New Hampshire, and remained such till his death in 1801, -" a son of thunder, a flaming light,"1 and "the means of extensive revivals of religion." 2
After making a brief circuit through a series of New England towns, Mr. Whitefield returned, and preached in Cambridge on Saturday, the 11th of October, holding forth on this occasion from the meeting-house door in the Square " to a great body of people, who stood very attentively (though it rained), and were much affected. It being the town of the university," he continues, "I dis- coursed in these words, 'Noah, a preacher of righteousness'; and endeavored to show the quali- fications for a true evangelical preacher of Christ's righteousness. After sermon the president kindly entertained me and my friends." The instrumen- tality of these sermons was instantaneous and marked. " The college is entirely changed," wrote Dr. Benjamin Colman, the minister of the Brattle Street Church in Boston. " The students are full of God. Many of them appear truly born again. The voice of prayer and of praise fills their cham- bers; and joy, with seriousness of heart, sits visibly on their faces. I was told yesterday that not seven out of the one hundred in attendance remain unaffected."
Much of Mr. Whitefield's particular preaching was as little relished by the Congregational minis- ters as his general course had been by the clergy of the Episcopal Church. On both sides doors were closed against him, and he was forced to gather his hearers in the open air. Thus it had been in Cambridge. He was very severe on " un- converted ministers," as he called them. " How can dead men beget living children ?". he cried. This was the offence, doubtless, which barred the
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