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

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton), ed
Publication date: 1890
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & co
Number of Pages: 1034

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

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There is no need that the history of the college should be told here. But it should be marked that its establishment was a part of the religious life of the Colony and that from the beginning it was closely connected with the Cambridge church. We find Mr. Shepard at one time addressing a memorial to the commissioners of the United Colonies, asking a general contribution for the maintenance of poor scholars, to the end " that the Commonwealth may be furnished with knowing and understanding men, and the churches with an able ministry." He begs that it may be recommended to every family throughout the plantation, able and willing to give, to contribute a fourth part of a bushel of corn, or something equiva- lent to this, as "a blessed means of comfortable pro- vision for the diet of such students as stand in need of support." The plan was approved and adopted. This was the first provision made in New England for the benefit of indigent scholars. What he asked others to do he did himself. What was done in other churches was done in his church.

The administration of Nathaniel Eaton, the first principal of the college, was very unpromising and must have given the church much trouble. His faults were notorious, and he was dismissed from his office and excommunicated from the church. He entered the Church of England and became the vio- lent enemy of those who had trusted him and been deceived. Mr. Shepard's relation to this man, and his conscientiousness and charity, are revealed in the record in his little book : " The sin of Mr. Eaton was at first not so clearly discerned by me; yet after more full information I saw his sin great, and my ignorance and want of wisdom and watchfulness over him very great, for which I desire to mourn all my life and for the breach of his family."

It must have been to Mr. Shepard and the church a great relief and an especial joy when, in 1640, the Reverend Henry Dunster was made president of the college. Of him Mr. Shepard writes: "The Lord about a year after graciously made up the breach by one Mr. Dunstar, a man pious, painfull and fit to teach and very fit to lay the foundations of the domesticall affairs of the college; whom God hath much honored and blessed."

Mr. Shepard seems to have been at this time in an unusually happy frame of mind. "Thus the Lord hath been very good unto me, in planting the place I lived in with such a mercy to myselfe, such a bless- ing to my children and the country, such an oppor- tunity of doing good to many by doing good to stu- dents, as the school is."

Thus the church and the college began to move on together, with one general design. It has been noticed that Margaret Shepard died very soon after reaching Newtown. In 1637 Thomas Shepard mar- ried Joanna, the daughter of Thomas Hooker, his predecessor here. His record is as follows : "Oct., 1637. The yeare after these wars in the country, God having taken away my first wife, the Lord gave me a second, the eldest daughter of Mr. Hooker, a blessed store; and the Lord hath made her a great blessing to me to carry on matters in the family with much care and wisdom and to seeke the Lord God of her father." She is described as a woman of remark- able loveliness and wisdom. But after less than nine years of married life she, too, was taken away.

Those were exciting days in which things were starting in this new world. The events may not seem to us very large, but they were of vast import- ance in that time of beginnings. When the church here was organized trouble had already started in the Colony in connection with that resolute and restless woman whose name is " dismally conspicuous in the early history of New England." Mrs. Ann Hutchin- son had been attracted from England by her desire to continue to enjoy the preaching of Mr. Cotton. Her ' husband, who had left a good estate in Lincolnshire, is described as " a man of very mild temper and weak parts, and wholly guided by his wife." She was des-

CAMBRIDGE.

tined to encounter men who would not be so submis- sive. They came in the fall of 1634, and she soon showed herself a kind neighbor, especially to the sick, and wou the esteem of the people, over whom her attentions and abilities gave her influence. She became counected with the Boston Church and be- fore long avowed doctrines at variance with those commonly held here. Her house in Boston was where the Old Corner Book Store now stands.

In October, 1636, Governor Winthrop gives this account of her : " One Mrs. Hutchinson, a member of the church in Boston, a woman of ready wit and bold spirit, brought over with her two dangerous errors : 1st, that the person of the Holy Ghost dwells in a justified person. 2d, that no sanctification can help to evidence to us our justification. From these two grew many branches, as 1st, our union with the Holy Ghost, so as a Christian remains dead to every spir- itual action, and hath no gifts nor graces other than such as are in hypocrites, nor any other sanctification but the Holy Ghost himself." A person was to find the evidence that he was a Christian in an immediate revelation made to his own soul. To receive this doc- trine was to be under a " covenant of grace." To de- pend upon other evidence, such as conduct and prom- ise, was to be under "covenant of works." There were thus two parties. The party which Mrs. Hutch- inson headed was called by two borrowed names- Familists and Antinomians. We need no testimony to tell us what the people of Cambridge were talking about in those days. We can readily reproduce the ecclesiastical life, as it was manifested in sermons and discussions, in the meeting-house and on the street. But we have Thomas Shepard's record : " No sooner were we thus set down and entered into church fel- lowship, but the Lord exercised us and the whole country with the opinions of Familists, begun by Mrs. Hutchinson, raised up to a great height of Mr. Vane, too suddenly chosen Governor and maintained too obscurely by Mr. Cotton, and propagated too boldly by the members of Boston and some in other churches." Mrs. Hutchinson's views spread rapidly. She gath- ered weekly assemblies of women before whom she ex- pounded her opinions and denounced the ministers who were opposed to her. Ignorant men and women were put forward as preachers, with the boast that they could excel the "black coats" who had been trained at the " Ninniversity." The associations of common life became infected by the disputes. Even the marching of troops which had been raised to assist Connecticut against the Indians was opposed on "the ground the officers and soldiers were too much under a covenant of works." It is difficult to comprehend this, until we remember that religious opinions were intimately and vitally connected with public and private affairs. Even English congregations in Hol- land had gone to pieces by falling upon similar con- tentions. The Colony here was in serious peril. The towus and churches in the country were, for the most

part, opposed to the troublesome woman. Boston was her stronghold, though even there she was stoutly resisted by Winthrop, Wilson and others. Vane, the boy Governor, entered into the strife " with all possible zest." The majority of the General Court were against Mrs. Hutchinson, and ordered that its session of 1637 should be held at Newtown. Here, on the 17th of May, the court met, in an excitement which threatened civil war. Mr. Wilson, the minister, in his zeal, got npon the bough of a tree, and there made a speech, advis- ing the people to look to their charter, etc., etc. There was an election of Governor, and Winthrop was chosen. Vane soon afterwards returned to England, and one element of the strife was removed. After discussion there was the prospect of a peaceful settle- ment of the difficulties, and the ministers, with the consent of the magistrates, called an ecclesiastical synod. It was the first synod held in America, and it met with the church in Newtown. It was a grave and reverend assembly which was thus convened in the humble meeting-house near the river. Mr. Shep- ard opened the first session with a " heavenly prayer." Mr. Hooker, of Hartford, and Mr. Bulkeley, of Con- cord, were the moderators. The sessions contin- ued for several weeks. Eighty-twoopinions were con- demned with great unanimity. Among these were the peculiar views of Mrs. Hutchinson and her adherents Certain questions of church discipline which had arisen were decided, and with freedom of speech mat- ters were carried on peaceably and " concluded com- fortably' in love." Mr. Shepard made a record of the chief business in this wise : " These errours, thorow the grace and power of Christ, were discovered, the de- fenders of them convinced and ashamed, the truth established, and the consciences of the saynts settled ; there being a most wonderful presence of Christ's spirit in that assembly held at Cambridge, 1637, about August, and continued a month together in publike agitations; for the issue of the synod was this : 1. The Pekoat Indians were fully discomfited, for as the opinions arose, wars did arise, and when these began to be crusht by the ministry of the Elders and by opposing Mr. Vane and casting him and others from being magistrates, the enemies began to be crusht and were perfectly subdued by the end of the synod.

"2. The magistrates took counsel and exiled Mr. Wheelwright, Mrs. Hutchinson aud diverse Ilanders whom the Lord did strangely discover, giving most of them over to all manner of filthy opinions, until many that held with them before were ashamed of them; and so the Lord within one year, wrought a great change among us."

Mrs. Hutchinson was tried before the General Court for railing at the ministers and continuing her lectures in defiance of the Synod. A sentence of banishment was passed, but as it was winter she was committed to a private house in Roxbury. Her conversation there was so offensive that the church in Boston cited her to

HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

appear and answer to the charge of holding gross errors. She retracted some of her opinions and was admonished for holding others. She was placed under instruction, and not only retracted all the peculiar opinions imputed to her, but went so far as to say that she had never held them. A question of veracity was raised and decided against her, and she was excommunicated for having "impudently per- sisted in untruth." This was the end of her power and party here. She was ordered to leave the juris- diction. With some of her friends she went first to Rhode Island. In her banishment her heart turned to Vane and she wrote him of her experience. In 1638, or near that time, we find Roger Williams writing of these exiles: "I find their longings great after Mr. Vane, although they think he cannot returne this year ; the eyes of some are so earnestly fixed upon him that Mrs. Hutchinson proposeth if he come not to New, she must to Old England." Her after- life was troubled and troublesome. She became a widow, and finally moved to a place within or near the Dutch border, where the whole family, except a daughter of eight years, was murdered by the Indians. But after her departure from Massachusetts a long period of tranquillity was enjoyed here. Mr. Shep- ard gratefully acknowledges that by God's great care and goodness this town had been " kept spotless from the contagion of the opinions." This was un- doubtedly dne in large measure to Mr. Shepard's influence, and it is given by him as one of the reasons which led the General Court to decide to place the new college here.

There were many matters to be settled by study and experience in the new enterprise which had been undertaken in the New World. The founders were not quite separate from those who had been left. In the year in which Shepard began his ministry here, some of the Puritan ministers in England, hearing that the churches on this side had adopted a new and questionable mode of discipline, sent a letter of inquiry upon the matter. The questions were concerning a form of prayer and a liturgy; the proper subjects of infants' baptism and admission to the Lord's table; the removal of members from one church to another; the relation of a minister to his own church and to other churches, and similar things. There was a careful discussion, in which Shepard bore his part, and he joined with Mr. Allen, of Dedham, in the publication of a work explaining and defining the usages here. This solved various per- plexing matters and gave satisfaction to the English brethren. Upon the principles which it expounded the churches conducted their affairs, until it became desirable to have a more formal constitution. In 1646 the General Court took up the matter of calling a Synod. It was seen at once that it would not do for the government even to seem to impose any laws or methods upon the churches. They had done with all that. But it was recommended that a Synod

should be called. This was done, and the Synod met in Cambridge in the autumn of 1646, and after necessary adjournments was finally convened in 1648. It was a noble gathering. There were men in it who had won fame in the mother-land and were illustrious here. An old writer has truly said, "They were Timothys in their houses; Chrysostoms in their pulpits ; Augustines in their disputations." Of the Cambridge platform mention has been made in another connection. Its promotion was a notable event in the ecclesiastical life, and its name is a honse- hold word.

Our national connection with the Indians is far from satisfactory. It is pleasant to relieve the picture by brighter shades from the earliest times. The set- tlers had it as a distinct purpose to be of service to the heathen whom they found here. Preaching was sustained among them by legal permission. Their rights were protected by a special court. The people sought to be just in their dealings with them. The college turned its attention to their education. A brick building was erected for their accommodation by the Society for Propagating the Gospel, and was known as the Indian College. Several entered as students, but only one attained to academic honors. There was an effort to train up a native ministry, but this proved ineffectual. John Eliot has gained an immortal name by his efforts for their benefit. In his labors he had the counsel and assistance of Thomas Shepard. Eliot's first permaneut missiouary station was established at Nonantum, in Cambridge, in 1646. To the congregation gathered there Shepard gave his care and work. He wrote tracts which were translated into the Indian tongue. A loug letter writ- ten by him to a friend in England is entitled, "The Clear Sunshine of the Gospel Breaking Forth Upon the Indians in New England." He called it "An Indian Sermon."

Daniel Gookin, a member of the Cambridge Church, was an earnest co-worker with Eliot and Shepard. He removed here from Virginia in 1644, and attained military and political station. He was made superintendent of all the Indians who had sub- mitted to the government of Massachusetts ; was one of the licensers of the printing-press, and in 1681 was appointed major-general of the Colony. He was a man of integrity and force. His monument is in the old church-yard. His son was the fourth pastor of the Cambridge Church.

Eliot's translation of the Indian Bible was printed here by Samuel Green and Marmaduke Johnson. This was the first Bible printed in America. It was followed by numerous works in the Indian language. The Reverend Dr. Albro has said, " Thus Cambridge has the honor of furnishing the first Protestant tract in a heathen language, as well as the first heathen mission and the first Protestant translation of the Bible." -

Several events of less importance may properly find

CAMBRIDGE.

a place at this point in the narrative. It is interest- ing to find the name of the minister and the affairs of the church in the public records. The General Court which met here in 1636 made a grant of fifty pounds to Mr. Thomas Shepard. In thetown records of 1638 is a grant to him of two and two-thirds acres of land on the road to Charlestown. In 1647 there is a grant of six acres of meadow land. In 1650 there is an en- try stating that three hundred acres of land beyond Watertown Hill had been formerly given to Mr. Shephard and also two hundred acres more near Mr. Samuel Shepard's farm. In 1640 Mr. Shepard was brought into great embarrassment through the de- pressed financial condition of the colonists. It

was a time of extremity. There was no money. Mr. Shepard's salary was then seventy pounds, payable in corn, which in this year was made legal tender for new debts. The emergency was so pressing that a removal to Connecticut was discussed. Mr. Hooker urged this removal upon his son-in-law in a lay letter which has been preserved.1 He wrote, " I cannot see in reason but if you can sell and the Lord afford any comfortable Chapman, but you should remove. For why should a man stay until the house fall on his head ? If I were in your places, I should let those that must and will transport themselves as they see fit, in a way of providence and prudence. I would reserve a special company, but not many, and I would remove hither." The matter was of painful interest. To Mr. Shepard it was of deep personal concern. It threw him upon his habit of almost morbid self-ex- amination and self-depreciation. In his "Meditations and Experiences," under date of Feb. 14, 1640-41, he writes, " When there was a Church meeting to be re- solved about our going away, [viz., to Matabeseck], I called on myself as poor, and as unable to resolve myself, or to guide others or myself in any action, as a Beast." In October, 1640, the Conrt proposed to make to Cambridge a grant of Shawshine for a village. In 1643-44 the grant was made. Lands at Shawshine were assigned to some persons, which gave others more room, and the church and elders stayed in their place.

In 1648, at a general town-meeting, it was voted that there should be a farm laid out of a thousand acres, and improved for the good of the church, and that part of the church that shall here continue. In 1655 Shawshine was incorporated as Billerica. The thought of removal seems in this adjustment to have passed away. The census of 1647 gives as the number of ratable persons in the town, one hundred and thirty-five, with ninety houses.

Among the entries in the old church-book are some which are characteristic of the simplicity of the times. "Item, Mr. Harlakingdon gave the church a legacye of 20/. wch we received a young cow for it of Mr. Pelham in the beginning of the year 1640. We

gave the summers milk of the cow to brother Towne and brother John French ; the first calfe dyed. The winteringe cost to John Stone, 258. wch snm the sec- ond calfe was sold for. The second summers milke wee gave to sister Manninge and brother John French. The 3d summers milke was yelded Elder Frost and alsoe all the winteringe of it. The beginning of the year 1643 we yelded it Elder Frost for his owne; at that time it was worth but 51." This fall in the value of the church cow was due to a general decline. In 1640 Winthrop says that "cattle and all commodities grew very cheap." In Roger Harlakenden's will, in 1638, is a bequest of forty pounds to Mr. Shepard, " and to our elders that wch is in their hands, and to the pore brethren of our congregation twentye pounds to be ordered by Mr. Shepard."

There is a list of the weekly contribution which in nine months came to nearly fifty pounds. There are records like these :

£ s. d.

Imprimis for eleven quarte of red wine for the use of the Lords'

tabell upon the 9th day the tenth month at 15d a quart . . . . 0 13 9 And for bread for the Lords' table at that time 8ª. For a mes- senger to go for the wine 12d 0 1 8 Pd for a lether pillow to put in the cushion to the deek 5s; it wayed 51bs 0 50 Payd for sendinge a messenger (goodman Crackbone) to Char-

lestowne and Roxbury to atayne helpe for preachinge in our pastor's weakness 0 2 0

Payd to goodman Line for 5 quarts and 12 piat of wine 0 6 6

Payd by brother Towne for his half year's allowance 5 ( 1 And payd him for 5 times goinge with messages to the church . 0 34 Givea to our brother Hall the 11th of the 4th month toward the

rearing of his house that was blown down . 100 For the refreshing of my brother Sill in time of fayntnes, sent him 4 pinte of sack, 28 44 0 2 4

Payd to my brother Cane for goinge to Salem for a message to

Mr. Philips when he was about to come to us. 500 Payd the byman that brought Mr. Philips and for his goods,

bringing from Salem when he removed to us . 0 0 0

There are several other entries relating to Mr. Philips. He was the Rev. John Phillips. It is clear from this record, that it was proposed to make him the associate of Mr. Shepard, as the teacher of the church. He came here from Salem in 1639, and in 1640 " took office " in Dedham. It is not known why this change was made in his plans. At Dedham it was regarded as a special providence that he had not settled else- where, but could come with his gifts and his fame to be the minister there. The house which he built "anent Charlestowne lane, with the land adjoining and wood lot," was sold by the town to Thomas Danforth, the Deputy for fifty pounds, and the property long remained in the Danforth family.

A few more extracts may be made from the old accounts :

£ 8. d.

[1639.] To Elder Frost we eent the 15 of the 5th month in beefe,

cheese, candle and money to buy corne, in all 209 . 1 0 0 Payd my brother Towne his balf year's allowance 30ª 1 10 0

l'ayd him for paynes taken more than ordinary in making cleane the meetinge house in the time of its repayreinge 12: 0 12 0 Payd for 9 times going to call the church together at 8ª a time 6ª 0 6 0

[1643.] Payd our brother Manninge for a belrope 01 6

[1644.] Payd Mr. Palgrave for phyeic for our sister Albone 0 2 6

sitPaige's " History of Cambridge," p. 46.

HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

For 4 years' rent for our sister Albone (beside 5 montbs' time al-

lowed her for about 78 charges in repayer web she did) I say 4 years 400 [1645.] Payd for a goat for goody Albone to goodman Prentiss . 0 11 0

Elsewhere we find these records: 1646, Nov. 5. The Townsmen ordered "that there shall be fifty shillings paid unto Tho. Langhorne, for his service to the town in beating the drum, this two years last past."

In 1642 " It is ordered that, according to an order of Court, made the last General Court for the towns- men to see to the educating children, that John Bridge shall take care of all the families of that side the highway his own house stands to by Bro. Winship's," and so on dividing the town into six parts.

In the course oftime the meeting-house came to need attention. It deserved it, for its constant and its occasional service. There the church had its beginning. There, it appears, the first Harvard commencement was held in 1642. There the Cambridge Platform was framed in 1648. Other events of great importance to the community found a place within its lowly walls.

In February, 1649, at a meeting of the whole town, "it was voted and agreed by a general consent, that the meeting-house shall be repaired with a 4-square roof and covered with shingles, and the charge there- of levied upon the inhabitants of the town by equal rate. "Either because it was found cheaper to build a new house, or a new house was desired, or another site was preferred, three weeks later: " It was voted and agreed that the five men chosen by the town to repair the meeting-house shall desist from the same and agree with workmen for the building of a new house ahout forty foote square, and covered as was formerly agreed for the other." It was also agreed that the new house should stand on " Watch-house Hill. This was very near the place where Dane Hall now stands, and near the parsonage.

But it was not to be given to Thomas Shepard to fill the new sanctuary with the sound of the "silver trumpet, from whence the people of God had often heard the joyful sound of the gospel." His constitution had never been vigorous, and his labors and trials must have impaired his health. Hedescribes himself as " very weak and unfit to be tossed up and down and to bear persecution." Besides his public sorrows, there were afflictions in his own house which grieved his sen- sitive heart. One child had died in England; two children died here. His wife died soon after his com- ing. His second wife died in less than nine years after their marriage. Yet his life was not altogether sad. He married for the third time. The third wife, Margaret Boradell, or Borrowdale, the sister of "John Borrowdale, of London, Gentleman," became the wife of his successor. Four sons remained to him when he died, three of whom served in his own profession. The fourth died in his youth.

In August, 1649, when returning from a meeting of ministers at Rowley, "he fell into a quinsie, with a |

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

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton), ed Publication date: 1890 Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & co Number of Pages: 1034

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton), ed
Publication date: 1890
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & co
Number of Pages: 1034