USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Milton > History of Milton > Part 10
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2. The Pilgrims of Plymouth, however, were dissenters from the Church of England. Later, as the New England Congregational churches grew, the distinction disappeared and Plymouth merged into the usual New England type of church.
3.
** Let men of God in courts and churches watch
O'er such as do a toleration hatch, ... "
Part of poem found in pocket of Gov. Thomas Dudley upon his death in 1653 (quoted in Ma- ther's Magnalia).
4. It was the third if we include the dissenting church of Plymouth.
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and deacons, while the Town had its civil officers; yet we find the Church concerning itself with some matters of secular life, while leaving to the civil authorities certain duties such as marriages and funerals that we now think of as religious functions. We must really think of the Town and the Church as practically the same entity in the very early days of the settlement. By the middle of the seventeenth century many of the first American-born genera- tion and of the later immigrants showed less interest in the Church, and the rift between Church and State began to appear. All were required to attend service, but not all were admitted to full communion with the Church. Thus we find the start of what later became the two subdivisions of the congrega- tion-the Church, or corporate body of fully qualified members, and the Parish, or the body of all those who attended church services. In the earliest days Church and Parish were essentially the same, while by 1800 we find that the Milton Church consisted of less than three dozen members as op- posed to several hundred in the Parish. As long as most of the population of a settlement were members of the Church it was entirely logical that Church and State should be thought of as one, and that the Church should regulate some matters which we now think of as purely secular. On the other hand, the official concern of the Church-at least insofar as it is recorded in the Dorchester Church records-appears generally to have been limited to at- tempts to enforce the Ten Commandments, particularly the Seventh, and to discourage excessive drinking. Most of the early Milton records have been lost or exist only in very abbreviated form, so we can learn little from them, but the Dorchester records are quite complete.
It is impossible for us today to appreciate the position of the Church in the lives of the early settlers, or for that matter in those of all Christians throughout the world. It is inconceivable to us today to think of resorting to armed force in order to impose our religious belief upon others, yet by 1600 Europe was only emerging from a long period of wars that were essentially religious in nature. The Englishmen of 1630, and most particularly that group which formed the backbone of the Puritan migration, were greatly concerned with religion from their earliest youth. In those days there was but little secular literature, and to a large extent religion offered the only
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opportunity for intellectual activity. Art and the theater were not approved of by the Puritans, and little outlet remained for the mind but religion.5 It is most difficult for us today to grasp the fine points of doctrine, such as the Covenant of Grace as opposed to that of Works, which was a source of much controversy, or the Antinomian heresy of Anne Hutchinson,6 but it was such matters as these that gave vent to the otherwise intellectual vacuum of those days. To read one of the early sermons is for us today a task of consid- erable difficulty and little enjoyment, yet our ancestors sat through hours of this every Sunday, and must have liked it or the practice would not have been so long continued. I think that we can secure our best appreciation of the position of religion in early New England if we think of it not only as the religion, but also as the radio, the television, the magazine, the novel and the theater of that day. Then, if we think of church attendance in a country town like Milton as also-before, after and between the services-the Wom- an's Club, the Rotary, the bridge party, and the gossip at the supermarket, we can begin to grasp the place of religion in the life of our ancestors.
The Meeting House was never called a church. The Church was com- prised of a select portion of that group which worshipped in the Meeting House. Church membership was not easy to come by-one must first con- vince those already admitted that one was fit for admission to their group, not always an easy thing, and then one must stand up before the entire con- gregation and publicly state just how and when one had seen the light.7 5. "Visitors to New England in the Puritan period testified to hearing technical religious discus- sion among farmers and hired hands sitting around the fireplace in the evening" (Miller & Johnson, The Puritans, p. 14).
Milton's Peter Thacher was minister at Barnstable on a trial basis for some months before he came to Milton. While there, a layman in the congregation accused him of preaching false doc- trine.
6. Mistress Hutchinson, a well-to-do and highly intelligent lady, cannot here be given the at- tention that she deserves. She instigated a religious controversy which threatened serious polit- ical consequences, and at a time when relations with the mother country were very touchy. Af- ter what was probably the most famous early New England trial she was banished from the Col- ony, and eventually killed by Indians near Westchester, New York, where the Hutchinson Riv- er Parkway commemorates her name. She was an ancestor of Governor Thomas Hutchinson and of mine. William, her husband, originally owned much of East Milton as far west as Gulliver's Brook.
7. A Negro slave could be and fairly often was admitted to this inner body and yet his owner might be refused membership.
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Women were often allowed to read their "relation",8 as the statement was called, but men were supposed to present their case verbally. I find a note in the Dorchester Church Records that some young men would like to join the Church if only their "relations" could be read. This requirement was evi- dently eased or waived in later years. In November 1797 the Milton Church voted "that in future this Church will not insist on a relation from those who desire admission into full communion." By the time of the Revolution it appears that the great majority of the Milton congregation, as in most oth- er towns, was not in full communion with the Church, and that no particu- lar distinction was drawn between the two classes. Members of the Church were a close inner group that had certain voting and managerial privileges. Probably, at least as time went on, they were thought of more as a vestry committee than as the chosen body of Christ's saints that they were original- ly supposed to be.
A misguided Historical Society a number of years ago marked the site of Milton's first Meeting House with a bronze plaque showing a log structure. I know of no justification whatsoever for assuming this type of construction, and there is much evidence to the contrary. We have definite proof that the Pilgrims built their first meeting house of sawed boards, and it has been shown that log construction was introduced into this country by the Swedes and did not reach New England until after the coastal areas had been set- tled.9 Some early garrison houses built for defensive purposes were made of carefully squared and fitted timbers with flush corners, but this was expen- sive construction used to stop bullets.
The Meeting House was not in any way considered sacred. It was a build-
8. Examples of "relations" of the mid-1600's are given in the last part of the diary of Michael Wigglesworth, published by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts in Vol. xxxV, 1942-46. In- cidentally this diary shows Wigglesworth, hitherto usually known for his "Day of Doom", to have been about everything that today's debunkers and Puritan haters claim a clergyman of that day to have been. Fortunately he was not at all typical.
9. Dedham's first meeting house, built in 1637, was of frame construction, thirty-six by twenty feet in size, with a thatched roof. That of Sudbury built in 1642 under conditions which were ruder than existed in Milton, is known to have been of frame construction. If the reader is still inclined to believe that the log cabin was used in early New England, he should read that excel- lent book The Log Cabin Myth, by Harold R. Shurtleff (edited by Samuel E. Morison), Cambridge, 1939.
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ing used for religious, civic, and social purposes. The Sunday service would normally start at about nine o'clock and finish by noon or thereabouts.10 There would be a very lengthy prayer, a sermon of at least an hour in length, and singing of psalms, but there would be no music whatsoever.11 Puritan music and church singing are two most interesting subjects, each of which deserves a book by itself. By 1700 the singing had fallen into a most degen- erate state. A deacon would read a line, then all would sing it, each follow- ing his own idea of tune, then the deacon would read another line, and the process would be repeated. This was called "lining out the hymn". Milton's Peter Thacher was one of the leaders in the movement to reform church singing and to make it again harmonious. I have found a record of the fol- lowing amusing lines, written on the back of a church pew at an unknown date, but evidently at the time when the reform movement in church music was causing wide dissensions in many a congregation.
"Could poor King David but for once To S[alem] Church repair, And hear his psalms thus warbled out, Good Lord, how he would swear."
It has been said that in some New England towns people built small "noon houses" near the Meeting House. These would have a fireplace and might be used jointly by several families in the interval between services. There is record of the sale in 1730 of a twenty-foot-square lot just across the road from the Milton Meeting House to a group of eight men, some of whom lived on Brush Hill and near Houghton's Pond. They put up a building of some sort, very probably for just this purpose.
Sunday observance was not then carried to some of the extremes that later existed. The common sense rule said that you should not do anything of a secular nature between sunset Saturday and the same time on Sunday, except those things that could not be put off. Obviously the animals had to
10. "I was near a hour & halfe in my first prayer ... & an hour in sermon. ... sweet much soe yt my shirt was wet to my back" (Rev. Peter Thacher's diary, 11 January 1679). "I stood about three houres in prayer & preaching ... " (Ibid., 27 April 1679).
11. By 1779 Milton appears to have had an organized church choir, but as late as 1846 the new Congregational Church depended upon a bass viol and a seraphine, which was a crude form of harmonium without resonators, rather harsh in tone.
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be fed and watered, the cows milked, and some food prepared. Obviously one did not bake bread, wash clothes or patch the barn roof. This custom died hard in New England. When I was a boy here, one did not play base- ball on Sunday afternoon anywhere that a policeman might see you, and in the boyhood of my uncles you either took a walk or remained out of sight in- doors where you were supposed, at least in strict households, to sit still and read a good religious book.
No Sabbath travel except for the purposes of church attendance, of neces- sity, or of mercy, was allowed. Practically speaking, this forbade all travel on main roads between towns, and we find constant mention in diaries and journals, even as late as the early Federalist period, of people being stopped, asked where they were going, and often prevented from continuing their journey.
Church attendance was required of all, but this obviously was never en- tirely secured. In Boston, where one attended the church of one's choice, there would necessarily be many who could manage to avoid going, should they so desire, but in a town like Milton with a single church it would be very simple to maintain a check. As late as 1791, Massachusetts law provid- ed a fine for failure to attend, but there is no evidence that attempts were ever made to enforce it.
The early meeting houses were unheated, although people might and did bring hot bricks and charcoal foot stoves with them. I also have a suspicion that a large and woolly dog was rather a desirable possession in winter. Sew- all in his diary speaks of a dog in a Boston Meeting House as if they were quite usual. (His particular dog misbehaved.) In March of 1755 our Town Meeting decreed that if a dog were allowed to come into the Meeting House more than once on the Sabbath the owner must pay a shilling or forfeit the dog. Apparently if the dog came in and remained quiet all was well, but four years later the Town changed its mind and applied the same penalty to the dog's initial appearance. As late as April 1810 Town Meeting voted against installing a stove in the Meeting House. Our ancestors obviously were pret- ty rugged individuals, or else awfully "sot" in their ways.
Milton originally was part of Dorchester, and the early settlers here were
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of course members of the Dorchester Church. The first Meeting House was in the immediate vicinity of Edward Everett Square, but in 1670 it was moved farther south to Meeting House Hill. The first location was about 31/2 miles from the falls of the Neponset at what became Milton Village, and, since the earliest settlement of Milton was in an area within about a half mile of this point, it was not too far to go on Sundays when there was little activity other than church attendance. I have found a somewhat later record of five miles as being the greatest distance that a churchgoer should be expected to travel.
Thus we find the early settlers of Milton as regular members of the Dor- chester Church throughout the first years of the settlement. As the farms in- creased and spread out farther to the south and west the trip to church be- came more of a hardship, and at some undetermined time, but perhaps about 1656, a Meeting House was built at Churchill's Lane and Adams Street, and services were held there. This was an irregular and perhaps il- legal procedure, for the settlers of Milton were members of the Dorchester Church, and as such were required to pay their tax toward supporting Mr. Mather, the Dorchester minister. Perhaps they did, as well as raising funds for the local services, but neither the Town nor the Church records of Dor- chester make any reference to the matter whatever, other than a Town vote in 1657 that ". . . our brethren . . . at Unqutie ... in regard they had a min- ister ther . . . are exempted from payinge unto Mr. Mather for this yeare if they desire it." Again in 1661 Unquity was exempted from the ministerial rate, as the tax was then called. From this same record we learn that our Meeting House was at Adams Street and Churchill's Lane in September 1660.
The Braintree Church was "gathered", as the old saying went, in Sep- tember of 1639, with Mr. Thompson as minister, Mr. Flynt as teaching eld- er, or assistant pastor, and Stephen Kinsley as ruling elder. In those days a ruling elder was a layman who exercised authority within the Church in certain matters of discipline and who could preach and generally act as a minister in all ways except that of administering the sacrament. Dr. Teele says that Elder Kinsley instituted religious services at Unquity at an early date. He was in Braintree as early as 1638, living just east of the present
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town line at East Milton. At some time after 1653, probably 1656, he moved to Milton, and lived on Adams Street just north of Algerine Corner. Pre- sumably it was after he took up residence here that local services were start- ed with the Elder officiating, perhaps at times being replaced by some minis- ter from outside. Throughout this period the inhabitants of Milton were still legally a part of the Dorchester parish, and it is certain that some con- tinued to attend services at the Meeting House near Edward Everett Square.
In 1662 Milton was set off from Dorchester and became a separate town, yet we find the extraordinary situation of the Milton inhabitants failing to establish a new Church and remaining members of the Dorchester Church. In 1668 the Dorchester Church called a meeting to hear and judge a quarrel between three Milton residents, and eight years later we read of certain Mil- ton children assenting to the covenant of that Church.
The first minister in Milton was Samuel Torrey, who had gone to Har- vard, but left in a huff along with several of his classmates when the college course was extended from three to four years.12 He was in Milton in 1663 and 1664, going to Weymouth in December of the latter year, and remain- ing there as minister until his death some 50 years later. Mr. Torrey was fol- lowed for a short time, probably from about 1666 until 1669, by Joseph Em- erson. The Town records show that Milton had twinges of conscience as to whether they had done the fair thing by Mr. Emerson when they dismissed him. There was a gap of about a year without a minister, and then in 1670 Thomas Mighill, Harvard 1663, came to Milton for a trial run, as it were. With a short absence, due perhaps to the exigencies of King Philip's War of 1675, he remained for almost eight years, at £60 per year.
In 1664 the Town bought land for a "ministerial house" from Robert Vose, and the house was built shortly thereafter. It stood a little north of Brook Road, about halfway between Churchill's Lane, the only road there at that time, and Randolph Avenue, probably quite near the present house at 216 Randolph Avenue. The old Meeting House on Adams Street was re-
12. It must have been a source of great satisfaction to him to have been elected President of Har- vard in 1682. Our Rev. Peter Thacher, who was a member of the Harvard Corporation, carried the news to him in Weymouth, but he refused the office.
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paired in the fall of 1670 and its roof rethatched for use that winter, but a new building was started near what was later to be the head of Vose's Lane on Centre Street, and was finished the following year. It remained in use until 1728. Dr. Teele believed that it was a small, almost square building with a gallery on one side, but we know nothing definite, beyond the fact that it was clapboarded, and that in 1728 it had a small bell.
Let us pause now for a moment and consider just what the early Milton Church was. One of the great objections of the Puritans to the Anglican Church was the control by the bishops, and the result was that the New England congregations had no formal higher organization. Each church was a separate entity, owing its allegiance direct to Christ alone, and subject to no control but its own. Naturally this theory was not wholly workable and a loose control soon evolved. Practically speaking, all the ministers, except those that came over from England, were graduates of Harvard and had been taught the same beliefs. On rare occasions and for some special pur- pose a synod of ministers and leading laymen from each church assembled in convention, and determined policy and procedure, but these general as- semblies were rarely used. If a local church had some problem to settle and felt the need of outside help, the members would invite small delegations from perhaps five or six other churches to join in council to help decide the problem. Conversely, if it was felt that a church was going astray, a self-ap- pointed council of neighboring churches might assemble and attempt to re- turn the wayward sister to the path that they felt she should follow. Thus there was a loose but reasonably effective control over what was theoretical- ly a group of completely independent congregations, and this control was sufficiently effective to allow the Unitarian movement of the early 1800's to proceed decently and according to rule.
There were also informal regional associations of ministers who met to- gether periodically for prayer, consultation, and, I trust, a little social relax- ation. In 1680 Braintree, Bridgewater, Cambridge, Dedham, Dorchester, Hull, Medfield, Milton and Weymouth constituted one group. The minis- ters usually met every two months, rotating among the various parsonages.
In the 1600's Harvard did not graduate a minister; it merely produced a
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man suitable to be one, and he became one only when ordained by a congre- gation. Initially a church undertook to select and ordain their minister solely by their own action, but before long it became customary to invite delegations from a number of other churches to assist in the ceremony of ordination. They were merely witnesses and assistants; the power was solely in the hands of the local congregation. Once the candidate had been ordained, he became a minister, but only for so long as he continued to guide and minister to that church. If he should leave, he-technically at least-again became a layman until such time as another congregation might call and ordain him. Generally in the early days the minister was selected and ordained as a young man, and remained minister of that church for the rest of his active life.
A congregation was "gathered" by a group joining together and signing a covenant. There is no connection here with the covenant of the Scottish re- formists; that of the New England churches was simply an agreement to wor- ship together and to abide by certain simple rules. The congregation then selected and ordained a minister, thus becoming a fully established church. It was normal for the church to be gathered at the same time that the town was incorporated, but sometimes, on account of distance or lack of roads, a second church might be organized in the same town.13 In Milton, however, we find the most unusual case of a town coming into being and yet having no legally constituted church. Milton was set off from Dorchester in 1662, had its own Meeting House and hired various ministers from at least 1663, yet there was apparently no legally constituted church organization provid- ed for many years to come.
Samuel Mann, who had been driven from his Wrentham parish by King Philip's War, served Milton for some two years until 1680. It was during his incumbency that the first Milton Church of which we have record was or- ganized, yet he apparently was not ordained by it. There may well have been an earlier Church, although if so it was never recognized by the parent Church in Dorchester. In May 1678, "ther was a church gathered by some
13. Barnstable, for instance, where a second parish was established in 1717, seventy-eight years after the first settlement.
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of our breatheren yt14 live at Milton it was done in or meeting hous at dor- chester because of some opposission yt did appear .. . "
Here is a hint of some dissension and the existence of a possible rival group or congregation. Several of the signers of the Milton covenant were newcomers who had only recently joined the Dorchester Church, and there may well have been a lack of harmony between them and the older settlers. Our State Archives contain a petition of a number of prominent inhabitants of the Town in favor of retaining Mr. Mighill. Whatever may have been the disagreement or rivalry, the establishment of the new congregation cleared the air, and the Church of Christ in Milton started on a career which was to be remarkably serene and free from trouble until the Unitarian schism final- ly arrived. Even then the division of the congregation took place under much less unhappy conditions than existed in most other of the Bay towns.
Much trash has been written about the rigid theocratic control which sup- posedly was exercised over the New England town of two hundred or more years ago. Of course the minister had great weight, as was only fitting, since he was retained to guide the moral and spiritual affairs of the community, but this did not stem merely from the fact that he was a minister. It was practically mandatory that he should be a college graduate, an educated gentleman, often the only one in the community. As such he naturally was looked up to by most of those who had lesser education. Moreover, he was a leader, trained by Harvard or Yale for that purpose. Then finally he was in almost all cases a high-minded man with no ulterior motives, who had cho- sen to serve the community, presumably for the rest of his natural life. Is it any wonder that he exercised great power? It was exercised, however, by the will of the inhabitants and by the minister's personality and leadership, and not by some external theocratic force.
Normally a young aspirant who had just graduated from Harvard or Yale, or who had filled in some time since graduation by teaching school, was in- vited to preach for a short trial period. If the congregation approved of him,
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