USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts : containing carefully prepared histories of every city and town in the county, Vol. I > Part 55
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1 Tycrman's Life of Whitefield.
2 Belcher's Biography of Whitefield.
Cambridge meeting-house against him, even though the college yard was opened, compelling him to speak from the meeting-house steps in the rain, or under the falling leaves of the great elm-tree. Yet Mr. Appleton probably was among his listen- ers, and, upon the testimony of Tutor Flynt, " was more close and affecting in his preaching after Mr. Whitefield's being here." . About three weeks after Mr. Whitefield's second visit to Cambridge, Mr. Appleton preached a sermon on the words, " I have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the in- crease." The sermon was published as having been " occasioned by the late powerful and awak- ening preaching of the Rev. Mr. Whitefield," and would seem to have grown out of the pastor's sense of a discriminating judgment on the part of his people as to the relative agencies of "itiner- ants" and others in doing the works of God. The Rev. Gilbert Tennent, writing to Whitefield in April following, reported of "the fruits" of the latter's ministry which he had found in Cam- bridge, that, " in the college and town, the shaking among the dry bones was general; and several of the students have received consolation "; the response to which report was a letter from Mr. Whitefield to the students, addressed to them in company with their fellows at New Haven. De- spite Mr. Whitefield's strietures upon the ministry in general and the college in particular, and not- withstanding the hard feeling and opposition there- by engendered, it must be conceded, we think, that in the college consciousness a sense of result- ing benefit prevailed; for "the overseers of the college thought it proper to set apart the forenoon of June 12, 1741, humbly to bless and praise the God of all grace for his abundant mercy to that society."
Neither Whitefield nor Cambridge, however, was yet done with each other. The florid and fervent apostle, after having returned to Great Britain, was once more in New England. The old agitation set in with greater force than before, and the practical question before the ministers was : Shall we admit him to our pulpits ? The exigency was grave, and Harvard College felt bound to lift up its " Testi- mony " against the innovator. In a remarkable document, under date of December 28, 1744, the faculty formally arraigned him as " an uncharitable, censorious, and slanderous man," " guilty of gross breaches of the ninth commandment," " a deluder of the people," and an "itinerant " and " exciting 1
1 The Great Awakening.
33]
CAMBRIDGE.
preacher "; and recommended the pastors to confer in their associations " whether it be not high. time to make a stand against the mischiefs coming through him upon the churches." This recommen- dation Mr. Appleton lost no time in adopting and carrying into effect. He had already received a request from a number of his parishioners that he would invite Mr. Whitefield into his pulpit. A ministerial Association met at Cambridge on the 1st of January, 1745. Besides Mr. Appleton, there were present Mr. Hancock of Lexington, Mr. Williams of Weston, Mr. Cotton of Newton, Mr. Warham Williams of Waltham, Mr. Storer of Watertown, Mr. Turell of Medford, Mr. Bowes of Bedford, and Mr. Cooke of Cambridge. To these brethren Mr. Appleton applied for advice as to what he should do. " After supplications to God, and mature consideration of the case, . . . . it was unanimously Toled, That it is not advisable, under the present situation of things, that the Rev. Mr. Appleton invite the Rev. Mr. Whitefield to preach in Cambridge "; and the ministers present, suiting the action to the word, declared "each of them for themselves respectively, that they would not invite the said gentleman into their pulpits."
Before the end of the month Mr. Whitefield published a reply to the "Testimony " of the col- lege faculty, defending himself at every point, but with candor acknowledging where he had been in error and the wrong; and declaring that "if the pulpits should be shut, blessed be God, the fields are open." To this characteristic deliverance both President Holyoke and Professor Wigglesworth re- turned a pamphlet fire ; and so intense was the pub- lic feeling against the "itinerant," that in June. following, Mr. Whitefield, having had the courage to preach in Cambridge notwithstanding, the Bos- ton Weekly News Letter1 was desired, in order " to prevent misapprehensions and some ill conse- quences," to give notice that " he preached on the Common, and not in the pulpit; and that he did it not only without the consent, but contrary to the mind, of the Rev. Mr. Appleton, the minister of the place."
Again in 1754, at the time of his fifth visit to America, and once more, on the 28th of August, 1770, Mr. Whitefield preached in Cambridge. This last occasion was but a few weeks before his death, and Mr. Appleton now invited him into his pulpit. He lived long enough to take a secret revenge on the college; for when, in 1764, its
library was destroyed by fire, and while President Holyoke and Professor Wigglesworth were yet in office, Mr. Whitefield not only presented for the new library a new edition of his journals, but " procured large benefactions from several benevo- lent and respectable gentlemen " in England ; " iul- stances of candour and generosity " which the president and fellows could not do less than grate- fully acknowledge.
This whole Whitefield episode forcibly illustrates the close relation which Harvard College sustained to the religious thought and life of the New Eng- land of the last century, and throws a strong beam of light upon this Cambridge "city set upon a hill." We can safely leave to the imagination the gossip, the disputings, and the excitement which the proceedings of these particular years occasioned in what had once been "the newe towne" on the banks of the Charles.
VIII. PRE-REVOLUTIONARY DAYS. 1750-1770.
THERE are many other interesting facts and in- cidents of this period, both within and without the college circle, which might well detain our atten- tion ; but we must pass on to the date of 1750, and to the events which give character to the period immediately preceding the Revolution. If the Revolution be the most stately and inspiring cham- ber in the temple of Cambridge history, the events of the period named constitute a very fitting portal.
In 1750, Captain Goelet, riding- out with two friends to see Cambridge, finds that it " is a neat, pleasant village, and consists of about an hundred houses and three colleges, which are a plain old fabrick of no manner of architect, and the present much out of repair, is situated on one side of the towne, and forms a large square; its apartments are pretty large." 1
Cambridge had now considerably enlarged its borders of a hundred years before, as a curious old map of the time fac-similed in Paige's History well shows. Half a dozen blocks, or squares, of buildings still constituted the "town," but the straggling streets which led north, south, east, and west had begun to show a very respectable distri- bution of houses. Harvard Square took its shape and proportions from the boundary of the college yard, from the junction of the " way down ye neck " with that to Watertown, and from the " burying- place," as the old graveyard opposite the college 1 N. E. Historical and Genealogical Register.
1 Issue of June 27.
332
HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
was called. The meeting-house stood in a little jog at the southeast angle of the Square, and the town-house close to the western wall of the meet- ing-house. The president's house, Dr. Wiggles- worth's, and Mr. Appleton's gave dignity to the beginning of the llarvard Street that was to be. The college yard was a rude rectangle of narrow dimensions, already almost crowded with its little family of halls. Against the market-place, toward
the west, crouched the prison. Toward the north opened the spacious Common, and beyond it lay the Square. Perhaps a hundred houses are down upon this map, though whether the representation was intended to be exhaustive does not appear. The broad "way to Charlestown" and the " causey" leading down to the Great Bridge across the river in the direction of Brookline and Roxbury pointed out the two rontes to Boston.
Meeting-house erected In 1756 -57.
These were yet primitive times in Cambridge. The forest was still near at hand, and the wild beasts thereof contributed to the sensations of the hour. " A great many bears killed at Cambridge and the neighboring towns about this time," writes student Belknap of Harvard in 1759, " and several persons killed by them." The Boston News Letter, under date of September 19, 1754, tells of a bear that had made his appearance in what is now East Cambridge a few days before, and, being closely pursued, took to the river, in which he was finally despatched.
The town had not yet a hundred and fifty taxable inhabitants, but it was growing. A signal proof of this was the building of a new meeting-house in 1756 and 1757. The college authorities had some- thing to say with respect to the planning of this new sanctuary, with a view to its better accommo- dation of the academic household ; and therefore
contributed to its cost. There was a long and cred- itable list of public subscriptions, on which are to be seen the historie names of Whittemore, Bradish, Brattle, Wyeth, and Vassall; and the structure was an imposing one for its time. It was large and square, with projecting tower and tapering spire, side porch, and two stories of windows; look- ing much, in fact, in its exterior, like the Old South Meeting-House in Boston. Within, the pul- pit and deacons' seat upon the side, the tiers of square box-pews, and the surrounding gallery, corresponded to the traditional arrangement. A plan of the house, with the allotment of pews, is printed by Paige, and the contiguous names of Appleton, Holyoke, Vassall, Phips, and Brattle make a solid row against the wall opposite the pulpit. This new meeting-house was to do signal service in the university town. In it "all the public Commencements and solemn inaugurations,
333
CAMBRIDGE.
during more than seventy years, were celebrated ; and no building in Massachusetts can compare with it in the number of distinguished men who at different times have been assembled within its walls. Washington and his brother patriots in arms there often worshipped during the investment of Boston by the provincial army in 1773. In 1779 the delegates from the towns of Massachu- setts there met and framed the constitution of the commonwealth, which the people of the new state ratified in 1780. There Lafayette, on his triumphal visit to the United States in 1824, was eloquently welcomed during the presidency of Dr. Kirkland." The house was taken down in 1833, and its site was sold to the college.
The college precinct, too, was being amplified meanwhile. In 1741 a donation from a London family, a widow and her daughters, had enabled the erection of a chapel, which, bearing their name, Holden, stands to this day ; and in 1761 measures were initiated resulting in the building of Hollis Hall, which was completed two years later, and dedicated, January, 1764, in presence of Governor Bernard, with becoming ceremonies. The exhil- aration produced by this event was short-lived. Within three days of the dedication the outbreak of the small-pox drove the General Court out of Boston into Cambridge, and Harvard Hall was surrendered to their occupancy; in course of which, on the night of the 24th of January, it took fire and was totally destroyed. Let the Massachusetts Gazette of February 2, 1764, recite the mournful tale : -
"CAMBRIDGE, January 25, 1764.
" Last night Harvard College suffered the most ruinous loss it ever met with since its foundation. In the middle of a very tempestuous night, a severe cold storm of snow, attended with high wind, we were awaked by the alarm of fire. Harvard Hall, the only one of our ancient buildings which still remained, and the repository of our most valuable treasures, the public library and philosophical ap- paratus, was soon in flames. As it was a time of vacation, in which the students were all dispersed, not a single person was left in any of the colleges, except two or three in that part of Massachusetts most distant from Harvard, where the fire could not be perceived till the whole surrounding air began to be illuminated by it. When it was dis- covered by the town, it had risen to a degree of violence that defied all opposition. It is conjec- tured to have begun in a beam under the hearth
in the library, where a fire had been kept for the use of the General Court, now residing and sitting here, by reason of the small-pox at Boston : from thence it burst out into the library. The books easily submitted to the fury of the flame, which with a rapid and irresistible progress made its way into the apparatus chamber, and spread through the whole building. In a very short time, this venerable monument of the piety of our ancestors was turned into a heap of ruins. The other col- leges, Stoughton Hall and Massachusetts Hall, were in the utmost hazard of sharing the same fate. The wind driving the flaming cinders directly upon their roofs, they blazed out several times in different places; nor could they have been saved by all the help the town could afford, had it not been for the assistance of the gentlemen of the General Court, among whom his Excellency the Governor was very active; who, notwithstanding the extreme rigor of the season, exerted themselves in supplying the town engine with water, which they were obliged to fetch at last from a distance, two of the College pumps being then rendered use- less. Even the new and beautiful Hollis Hall, though it was on the windward side, hardly es- caped. It stood so near to Harvard, that the flames actually seized it, and if they had not been immediately suppressed, must have carried it.
" But by the blessing of God on the vigorous efforts of the assistants, the ruin was confined to Harvard Hall ; and there, besides the destruction of the private property of those who had cham- bers in it, the public loss is very great, perhaps irreparable. The library and the apparatus, which for many years had been growing, and were now judged to be the best furnished in America, are annihilated."
The loss, indeed, was, in some respects, irrepa- rable, and the calamity to the college was the sorrow of the town and of the province. The library numbered above 5,000 volumes, including the entire collections of Dr. John Lightfoot and Dr. Theophilus Gale, and a good general variety of the works of the fathers, the classics, tracts, theologi- cal treatises, transactions of learned societies, his- tories, and biographies ; together with a few ancient and valuable manuscripts, several portraits, and a font of Greek type, the gift of the then late Thomas Hollis. The apparatus, the nucleus of which was also the gift of Mr. Hollis, was ample and fine for the time.
A new Harvard Hall, however, rose speedily
334
HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
from the ashes, the General Court responding generously to the emergency of which it had been unwittingly the occasion, and private gifts of books and apparatus and money flowing plentifully in from all directions. The misfortune of 1764 hav- ing been thus repaired, the college was planted on a higher vantage-ground than ever before.
In June, 1769, President Holyoke departed this life at the age of eighty, after an administration of his office for nearly thirty-two years, leaving a record of good and faithful service which is one of the bright pages in the history of Harvard.
It must ever be a matter of regret to the faithful historian of the times before us that he cannot hold up the selectmen of Cambridge as a model to our present city fathers. But, alas ! the habit of jun- keting was formed thus early, and the following bill, which Dr. Paige has rescued from the dusty files, shows how the public business was mingled with private pleasure : -
The Selectmen of the town of Cambridge, To Eben". Bradish, Dr.
March, 1769, To dinners and drink
£0 17s.8d.
April, To flip and punch
0
2 0
May 1, To wine and eating
0 6 8
May, To dinners, drink, and suppers 0 18 0
CC To flip and checse 0 1 8
To wine and flip
0 4 0
June,
To punch 0 2
8
July, To punch and eating 0 4 0
August, To punch and cheese 0 3
0 4
8
Dec., Jan., 1770, and Feb., sundries
0 12
0
£4 10s.7d.
Bradish's tavern, where town affairs were then transacted, was on the westerly side of Brighton. Street, between Harvard Square and Mount Auburn Street.
One event of importance belonging to this pre- Revolutionary period deserves a separate chapter.
IX. THE PLANTING OF CHRIST CHURCH. 1759-1761.
THE planting of Christ Church has several aspects of interest and importance, one of which is found in the fact that it was a new and radical ecclesiasti- cal departure, the beginning of what may be called the second stage in the organic religious history of the town. Up to this time there was but one church in Cambridge, the Congregational. The First Parish and the town were almost synony-
mnous terms ; the two bodies had been, though in a constantly diminishing degree, substantially co- extensive and coincident. Intrusion was now to come.
It will be unnecessary to remind the reader that, at the time before us, the Church of England had few friends in New England. It was to get away from the English Church that our first American fathers crossed the seas; but the Church they had turned from was not long in following after and planting itself in the new state they had founded on these shores. The first of its more successful efforts were directed, though in a desultory way, toward the younger of the American colonies, at the southward; and out of these efforts grew, in 1701, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. The Church-of-England clergy who had attempted in the first instance to preach in New England had been unceremoniously shipped homewards as " factious and ill-condi- tioned," and it was not until 1679 that the Epis- copal Church was fairly planted in Boston. By 1750 the number of places of Episcopal worship in Massachusetts had increased to twelve. In the theological warfare which had been progressing of late the Episcopal clergy had taken little or no part, for they were working generally under the auspices and at the charges of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, whose standing injunetion to its missionaries was to " avoid controversy, and to make the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, and the duties of a sober, righteous, and godly life, as resulting from such doctrines, the chief subjects of their sermons." The result was a general gain to the good reputa- tion of the church, its internal peace, and its out- ward prosperity. In September, 1722, there had occurred at New Haven the very unexpected and alarming event of the conversion into the Episco- pal Church of no less than seven Congregational ministers, including Timothy Cutler, the rector of Yale College ; an event which " shook Congrega- tionalism throughout New England like an earth- quake, and filled all its friends with terror and apprehension." 1 Mr. Cutler, who was a graduate of Harvard, went to England, received Episcopal ordination, and came back to Boston in 1724 as a missionary. One of his first acts, in connection with Mr. Samuel Myles, rector of King's Chapel, was to apply for seats at the board of overseers of Harvard College under the terms of the charter. 1 Quincy's Ilistory of Harvard College.
7
Oct.,
To punch and flip
To dinners and drink
0 13
8
335
CAMBRIDGE.
This attempt-so it was construed throughout the province -to introduce Episcopal influences into the college management produced a fresh commotion ; but though persistently followed up in various forms for several years, it failed of success, as might have been expected. When, then, a generation later, a veritable missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts arrived in Cambridge, and an Epis- copal Church was actually planted within a stone's throw of the college ground and the meeting-house of the Congregational parisli, it is not strange that the movement was regarded as a renewal of the old scheme in another quarter.
The Rev. East Apthorp, the Episcopal mission- ary who was thus the first to bring permanently within C.unbridge precincts the liturgy, the surplice, and the suggestion of a bishop, was the fifth in a good old-fashioned Boston family of eighteen children. His father, Charles Apthorp, was one of the wealthy and aristocratic citizens of that town, and one of the most prosperous and distin- guished merchants of the country. He was pay- master and commissary to the land and naval forces of England quartered in Boston, and at his death, in 1758, left a fortune equal to $150,000.1 Mrs. Apthorp was a native of Jamaica, a woman of rare qualities of person and character. The fam- ily had a country-seat at Quincy, and in Boston Mrs. Apthorp in her widowhood lived at one time near the site of the Central House, Brattle Square. Mr. Apthorp was one of the founders of Trinity Parish. East Apthorp, who was the fourth son of this worthy couple, and who was named for his grandfather, was born in Boston in 1733. His preparatory education was at the Latin School, under the care of Mr. Lovell ; and he went thence to Jesus College, Cambridge, England, where he received his first and second degrees in 1755 and 175S, won several prizes, and was made Fellow of his college. Taking orders in the Established Church, he was deemed a proper person to be intrusted with the mission at Cambridge, in Massa- chusetts, and he was appointed thereto by the Soci- ety for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts iu 1759. Coincidently with this appoint- ment a subscription was set on foot by citizens of Cambridge for funds for the building of a church edifice. The originators of this movement were Henry Vassall, Joseph Lee, John Vassall, Ralph Inman, Thomas Oliver, David Phips, Robert Tem-
. 1 Manuscript Records.
ple, and James Apthorp. The latter was an elder brother of the young minister for whose labors these preparations were undertaken. In Septem- ber, 1759, a building committee was appointed, of which Mr. East Apthorp himself was one. Mr. Peter Harrison of Newport, Rhode Island, who had designed the Redwood Library in that town and King's Chapel, Boston, was engaged as architect. A suitable lot of land fronting on the Common was secured by consolidating some adjoining purchases. And in October, 1761, the church was solemnly opened for public worship, Mr. Apthorp conduct- ing the services. There being no bishop in " the parts," formal consecration was not possible. The edifice was sixty feet by forty-five; contained forty-four pews,-two double rows of square pews occupying the nave; and was completed at a cost, not including that of the land, of about £1,300, a snm which considerably exceeded the original estimate. A variety of generous benefac- tions testified to the wide-spread interest in the en- terprise outside the " standing order," and stamped it with distinction. Mr. Apthorp's brother-in-law, Barlow Trecothick of London, alderman, and after- wards lord mayor of the city, gave an organ, a fine instrument by Snetzler of London, the first maker of his day. On being set up, the instrument was dedicated with a special prayer and sermon. Cap- tain Edward Cahill of London gave a bell; Mr. Apthorp's mother, a silver dish for baptisms ; Mrs. Mary Faneuil, a large Bible for the reading- desk ; Hon. Thomas Lechmere, two folio prayer- books; plate and linen for the communion-table were lent or given by Governor Bernard, Governor Shirley, Dr. Caner of King's Chapel, and others.
Thus was founded Christ Church in Cambridge, the second parish in the town. For a hundred and thirty years the organized religious life of the community had been one and homogeneous; it was now for the first time divided.
Mr. Apthorp had already taken to wife Eliza- beth, daughter of Foster Hutchinson, Esq., and in 1761 there was erected for him, and apparently by him, what was for the times a spacious and splendid mansion just on the eastern edge of the town, a little to the south of "the way down the neck," on the brow of the slope overlooking the Charles River meadows. This house, since capped with an additional story, still stands conspicuously in its open lot between Linden and Chestnut streets, the first of the historic structures of Old Cambridge to confront one approaching from Boston.
336
HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
The settlement of Mr. Apthorp in the university town, the building of so artistic a church almost directly opposite the college yard, the lavish hand with which it was equipped and embellishcd, and above all the erection of so imposing a residence for the young rector and his bride, combined to make up a situation which the watchful and sen- sitive Congregationalists of Boston and vicinity could not but regard with disturbance if not with dismay. Dr. Jonathan Mayhew, the minister of the West Church, Boston, a man of great learning and spirit, was moved to raise his voice against the in- trusion, and in a series of pamphlets sought to offset this " formal design to carry on a spiritual siege of our churches, with the hope that they will one day submit to a spiritual sovereign."1 Dr. Mayhew seems to have been particularly troubled by Mr. Apthorp's rectory, for we find him saying : " Since the mission was established in Cambridge, and a very sumptuous dwelling-house (for this country) erected there, that town hath been often talked of by the Episcopalians as well as others as the proposed place of residence for a bishop." Again he lets out the suspicion that "a certain superb edifice near Harvard College was even from the foundation designed for the palace of one of the humble successors of the Apostles." There was a considerable pamphlet war over the points thus raised, in which Mr. Apthorp took due part; but in 1765, worried, perhaps, if not worn out, in a controversy which his quiet and scholarly temper must have found extremely distasteful, he resigned his mission and removed to England, where he continued to exercise his ministry, with a grow- ing influence and fame, until his death in 1816.2 Christ Church, with its congregation of about twenty families and forty communicants, including a sprinkling of " collegians," fell presently to the pastoral care of the Rev. Winwood Serjeant, des- tined to hold permanently the ground it had thus venturesomely won.
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