History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 60

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1534

USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men > Part 60

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There is no record either of those who were present, or of those who took part in the services. Yet it would be not unsafe to surmise that Winthrop and Dudley, the Governor and Deputy-Governor of the colony, were both there; for the former, though with- out comment, made a note of the event in his diary. Undoubtedly, Peter Hobart, that " bold man who would speak his mind," came over from Hingham ; also from Dorchester came Richard Mather, together with his young associate, John Wilson, son of the pastor of Boston, and himself just graduated from

Cambridge. The Rev. John Allen may have found his way through the forest paths from Dedham, as Wilson and Cotton sailed across the bay from Boston. Earnest, devout men, they gathered from, far and near in the primitive wilderness meeting-house on that September day, and there extended the right hand of fellowship to the little congregation who now covenanted one with another " to worship | the Lord in Spirit and Truth, and to walk in brotherly love." The church then founded was destined to centuries of continued existence.

land clergymen who had been educated in the English universities and settled over English churches. A graduate of Oxford, Tompson had been the in- cumbent of a living in Lancashire, from whence he had came to New England, landing in Boston at about the time that the Antinomian Synod of 1637 was sitting. Settled at Braintree in September, 1639, in the following March Henry Flynt was ordained as teacher of his church, which would seem to indicate that the pastor from the very beginning proved un- equal to the performance of all his duties; for the teacher in the early New England churches was practically an associate pastor, and it is not likely that a poor community, such as Braintree then was, as- sumed without reason the support of two ministers. In any event the society seemed not unwilling to allow Mr. Tompson to seek other fields of usefulness, and in 1642 his brother ministers selected him with two others to go forth on a strange sort of missionary service among the Church of England heathen of Vir- ginia. A cry had come up from them for " a supply of faithful ministers whom, upon experience of their gifts and godliness, they might call to office ;" and the choice fell upon the Braintree pastor, on the ground that he was one of those who " might most easily be spared," his church having two ministers. He and his associates accordingly set out for Virginia, duly commissioned by the General Court and Governor of Massachusetts.

Their journey was over what is now a familiar route, for they went by way of Newport and New York, or Aquidneck and New Amsterdam as these places were then called. To reach their Virginia destination took them nearly three months; for at first they were wind-bound in Narragansett Bay, and then, in passing through Hell-Gate, their boat was swept upon the rocks and so damaged that they barely succeeded in reaching the neighboring shore. Cotton Mather, in the verses already quoted from, says of Tompson in this emergency,-

" Upon a ledge of craggy rocks near stav'd, llis Bible in his bosom thrusting, sav'd ; The Bible, the best of cordial of his heart,

' Come floods, come flames,' cry'd he, ' we'll never part.'"

The pastorate of William Tompson extended The shipwrecked missionaries received " slender { entertainment" at the hands of Governor William Kieft, the Dutch commandant at New Amsterdam, who indeed had no fondness for New Englanders ; but Isaac Allerton, formerly of Plymouth though then of New Haven, chanced to be there, and exerted himself greatly on behalf of his countrymen. Through through a period of nineteen years. He is represented by the writers of his own time as having been " a very powerful and successful preacher," and one " abounding in zeal for the propagation of the gospel ;" but he was likewise of a "melancholy temper and crazy body," and his ministry at Braintree can be ac- counted successful neither for himself nor his people. his assistance another pinnace was procured, and in He belonged to that earliest generation of New Eng. ' the dead of winter the three ministers set sail for

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Virginia. They encountered much foul weather, and the difficulty and danger through which they reached their destination caused them to entertain grave " question whether their call were of God or not." Once in Virginia, they were "bestowed in several places" where they " found loving and liberal enter- tainment ;" and the change to another and less rigor- ous climate seems to have proved most beneficial to Mr. Tompson, who wrote back to his friends that he was better in health and spirits than at any time since he came over from England.

But Virginia has never proved a fruitful field for New England workers, and the civil authorities there now looked askance at this earnest attempt at propa- gandism. Accordingly they soon put a stop to the public preaching of the new-comers, on the ground that they did not conform to the orders of the Church of England. Yet, if we can believe the report made on their return by the missionaries, the people, " their hearts being much influenced with an earnest desire after the gospel," continued to resort to them in private houses ; seeing which, the rulers " did in a sense drive them out, having made an order that all such as would not conform to the discipline of the English Church should depart the country by such a day."

The summer of 1643 accordingly found Mr. Tomp- son and his associates back with their New England flocks ; nor can their Virginia labors have been ac- counted fruitful, inasmuch as they seem to have made but a single convert. He, Daniel Gookins by name, followed his teachers back to Massachusetts, where at a later day he became a man of note; so that as Cotton Mather tunefully expressed it,

" by Tompson's pains, Christ and New England a dear Gookins gains."

" It fell out about the midst of his sermon, there came a snake into the seat, where many of the elders sat behind the | preacher. It came in at the door where people stood thick upon the stairs. Divers of the elders shifted from it, but Mr. Tomp- son, one of the elders of Braintree (a man of much faith), trod upon the head of it, and so held it with his foot and staff with a small pair of grains,1 until it was killed. This being so remarkable, and nothing falling out but by divine providence, it is out of doubt the Lord discovered somewhat of his mind in it. The serpent is the devil; the synod, the representative of the churches of Christ in New England. The devil had formerly and lately attempted their disturbance and dissolu- | tion ; but their faith in the seed of woman overcame him and crushed his head."

The mental and physical benefit which Tompson derived from his sojourn in Virginia was but tempo- rary, and as he advanced in years his infirmities grew upon him. He seems to have had a morbid tend- ency, which at times verged on insanity. Cotton Mather's explanation of this, and of the course of treatment adopted for its cure, is curiously suggestive. There were then no insane asylums.

"Satan, who had been after an extraordinary manner irri- tated by the evangelic labors of this holy man, obtained the liberty to sift him; and hence, after this worthy man had served the Lord Jesus Christ in the church of our New English Braintree, he fell into that Balneum diaboli, 'a black melan- choly,' which for divers years almost wholly disabled him for the exercise of his ministry ; but the end of this melancholy was not so tragical as it sometimes is with some, whom yet, be- cause of their exemplary lives, we dare not censure for their prodigious deaths. . . . . Accordingly, the pastors and the faithful of the churches in the neighborhood kept 'resisting of the devil' in his cruel assaults upon Mr. Tompson, by continually ' drawing near to God,' with ardent supplications on his behalf : and by praying always, without fainting, without ceasing, they saw the devil at length flee from him, and God himself draw near unto him, with unutterable joy. The end of that man is peace."

The meaning of this is that Mr. Tompson did not commit suicide, and towards the close of his life the

During his absence a severe bereavement had fallen on the unhappy Braintree clergyman. He had left 1 cloud lifted from him. He died on the 10th of De- his wife, who is described as " a godly young woman : cember, 1666, having resigned his pulpit some seven and a comfortable help to him," in charge of a family years before. Both he and his second wife would seem to have been lacking in the quality of thrift, and during the closing years of his life he was wretchedly poor,-so poor, indeed, that in March, 1665, a public collection was taken up for him in the Dorchester church, which amounted to £6 9s., " besides notes for corn, and other things, above 30s." In his own day he had the reputation of one "apt to forget himself in things that concerned his own good," because of his exceeding zeal ; and it was intimated that his parish - ioners made for their minister " somewhat short allow- ance." Yet this does not seem to have been the case ; for, in 1657, an official inquiry showed that of small children, with scanty means of support. She died ; and he returned to find his home broken up and his offspring scattered, though it is said they were " well disposed of among his godly friends." Marry- ing again some years later, the next glimpse which is obtained of Tompson is through Governor Winthrop's diary, and it is singularly illustrative of the time. In 1648 a synod met at Cambridge for the purpose of framing a code of church discipline. Before this representative gathering the Rev. John Allen, of Dedham, delivered a discourse which proved " a very godly, learned, and particular handling of near all the doctrines and applications" touching the matter in hand. 1 A prong, or fork ; obsolete.

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Braintree, then containing about eighty families, I mal ordination did not take place until March 17, allowed Messrs. Tompson and Flynt £55 each, 1640, it has been confidently surmised that the post- ponement was in order to afford the distinguished young divine ample opportunity for recantation. Of " paid ordinarily yearly, or within the year, in such things as themselves take up and accept of from the inhabitants." These salaries were the same that the | it he at last availed himself. But there is no reason Old South congregation in Boston then paid its two ministers, and not an inadequate support for the time. Possibly payments were in arrears, for in 1661, during the incapacity of her husband, there was a hearing at Cambridge on questions at issue between Mrs. Tompson and the deacons of the Braintree church ; nor was the matter then disposed of, for in 1668 the widow presented a petition to the General Court, complaining of certain moneys due from the church to her late husband which were then with- held. Not without reason, therefore, Mather wrote of the dead clergyman, when at last he had " labored into rest,"

" His inventory then, with John's, was took ; A rough coat, girdle, with the sacred book."

The body of William Tompson lies in the old burying-ground of Quincy, and the original stone, | bearing quaint witness to his learning, piety, and | vided she remained unmarried. Then his will closed force as a divine, still marks the spot. He left by his two marriages numerous descendants, both sons and daughters, but there is no trace of his lineage now to be found in the town over which first he ministered.

Teacher Henry Flynt, who became pastor on the resignation of Mr. Tompson in 1659, survived the latter only one year and four months, dying on the 27th of April, 1668. Born, it is supposed, in Der- byshire, England, he landed in New England in Oc- tober, 1635, being then about twenty-nine years old. Coming over at the same time, if not in the same vesssel, with Vane, he seems to have been a political sympathizer of his, while theologically he was an ardent admirer of Cotton. Indeed, almost the ouly fact recorded of him by Mather in the " Magnalia" is that having twin sons born to him in 1656, he named them one John and the other Cotton, in mem- ory of his revered mentor, who had then been four years dead. It has already been mentioned that Mr. Flynt during the Antinomian controversy adhered staunchly to Wheelwright. Accordingly, though his name is appended as teacher to the Braintree church covenant of Sept. 16, 1639, and Winthrop speaks of him as "a godly man" then ordained, it was not until the succeeding May that he made his submission to the General Court, acknowledg- ing his sin in subscribing his name to the church of Boston memorial of March, 1637. As his for-

to suppose that he imitated the discreditable zeal which Cotton had already shown in the work of hunting down his former associates; though it was asserted that through the exertions of its new teacher Brain- tree was " purged from the sour leaven of those sinful opinions that began to spread," and if any such re- mained there they were very covert. Of Mr. Flynt's later doctrinal views nothing is known ; it is simply recorded of him that in his day he bore " the charac- ter of a gentleman remarkable for his piety, learning, wisdom, and fidelity in his office." Unlike Mr. Tompson, the Flynts, husband and wife, appear to have been thrifty people, and the teacher died in com- fortable circumstances. By his will he left the " great lot" of eighty acres granted to him by the town of Boston in 1640 to one son, and his dwelling-house, with the two lots it stood upon, to another son, both be- quests subject to a life-estate in their mother, pro- with this quaint provision : " For the present, I know not what portion of my estate to assign to my wife, in case God call her to marriage, otherwise than as the law of the country does provide in that case, accounting all that I have too little for her, if I had something else to bestow on my children." Teacher Flynt's wife, whose maiden name was Margery Hoar, had evidently been a good and useful help- meet to him ; and indeed it is recorded on the stone which marks the spot in the old graveyard where side by side they are buried, that, like her husband, descended from an "ancient and good" English family, she was also "a gentlewoman of piety, pru- dence, and peculiarly accomplished for instructing young gentlewomen, many being sent to her from other towns, especially from Boston." Mrs. Margery Flynt died in March, 1687, having survived her | husband nearly twenty years. During that period " God [did not again] call her to marriage."

Henry Flynt left a numerous family, though no descendants of his name now live in Quincy. It was a granddaughter of his, Dorothy, child of the Rev. Josiah Flynt, of Dorchester, who married Judge Edmund Quincy, of Braintree, and became the stock from which sprang a progeny than which none in Massachusetts has been more distinguished. A daugh- ter of hers was that " Dorothy Q." whose name has | been embalmed in the familiar verses written upon her portrait by one of her distinguished descendants in the

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Holmes family. From her are descended the Wen- dells, the Jacksons, the Lowells, and the Quincys ; and it is from Josiah Flynt that the last-named family de- rives that given name which, handed down from gen- eration to generation, is in Massachusetts almost con- ceded to them as a peculiar patronymic. It was another Dorothy Quincy who in 1775 became the wife of John Hancock. The original Dorothy Flynt Quincy dwelt in the house which Col. Edmund Quincy built in Braintree in 1685, and which still remains one of the most interesting of all our colonial structures, quaintly typical of bygone times. In this house, still looking towards the brook, is the room in which Judge Sewall slept one rainy night in March, 1712. Next to it is the room still known as Tutor Flynt's chamber, for it was long occupied by Dorothy's brother Henry, for more than half a century a tutor at Harvard College and a fellow of the corporation through sixty-five years. To this day, indeed, the grandson of the old Braintree teacher is a tradition of the University. A genuine product of New Eng- land soil, his quaint manners and curt, dry sayings are repeated ; nor are there many descriptions of Mas- sachusetts life and manners in the last century more hu- morous and graphic than Judge David Sewall's account of his journey with Father Flynt from Cambridge to Portsmouth in June, 1754.1 The old man was then in his eightieth year, but he took his " nip of milk punch," smoked his pipe, bore up when tumbled from his seat headlong into the road, and commented on men, women, and things in a way which showed that age had neither dimmed his faculties nor impaired his digestion. He lived until 1760, and left behind him the reputation of " a man of sound learning, of acute and discriminating intellect ; firm but moderate ; steadfast in opinion but without obstinacy ; zealous and faithful in the discharge of his various duties." He lies buried in the ancient graveyard close to the buildings of the college which he served so long.

After the death of Teacher Flynt the church of Braintree, to use the language of a subsequent pastor, " fell into unhappy divisions, one being for Paul, and another for Apollos (as is too often the case in desti- tute churches), and were without a settled ministry above four years." No definite account of the cause of strife in this case has come down. One party, it is apparent, was anxious to invite young Josiah Flynt, son of the deceased teacher, who, having graduated at Harvard a few years before, was now a minister and a candidate for settlement. Another party was strong in opposition to this choice, but the

name of the person favored by it nowhere appears ; unless, indeed, it was the Rev. Peter Bulkley, one of that family of divines which furnished its first minister to Concord. The contest was a heated one, in which "many uncomfortable expressions passed about." In the course of it things occurred which led some to suspect that the " sinful opin- ions" of John Wheelwright were perhaps not so covert in Braintree as had been asserted. That " sour leaven" may still have worked ; for Mr. Josiah Flynt was openly charged with uttering " divers dan- gerous heterodoxies, delivered, and that without cau- tion, in his public preaching." In view of this dissension, more than one day was set apart by the church " to seek the Lord by fasting and prayer," and at the frequent meetings there was much " un- comfortable debate," and at one of them at least " an awful division." A widespread scandal went abroad over these proceedings, and on the 25th of July, 1669, " God sent a very solemn, awakening message to the church" by the mouth of Mr. Eliot, possibly the son of the Indian apostle. But that did not pre- vent the church from meeting on the 21st of the fol- lowing January, and acknowledging " several things scandalous and offensive, one to another." Finally it was determined to call a council of sister churches, and even then a debate took place, " wherein much provocation to God and each other did appear."

Wearied as well as distressed by the angry turmoil, Josiah Flynt at about this time received a call from the church at Dorchester, which he accepted ; and there he remained until his premature death, in 1680. Meanwhile Braintree continued for nearly two years longer in a "destitute, divided state." At last things came to such a pass that in November, 1671, the County Court interfered. Taking into consider- ation " the many means that have been used with the church of Braintree, and hitherto nothing done to effect, as to the obtaining the ordinances of Christ among them,"-taking this into consideration, the court ordered and desired Mr. Moses Fiske "to im- prove his labors in preaching the word at Braintree until the church there agree, and obtain supply for the work of the ministry." Mr. Fiske seems to have obeyed this command in the true church militant spirit. For he says, "Being ordered by the Court, and advised by the reverend Elders and other friends, I went up from the honored Mr. Edward Tyng's, with two of the brethren of this church sent to ac- accompany me, being the Saturday, to preach God's word unto them." The next day, Dec. 3, 1671, he took his place in the Braintree pulpit, and delivered his first discourse, not failing at the close of the after-

1 Proceedings of Mass. Hist. Soc., vol. xvi. (1878) pp. 5-11.

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noon service to apologize as to his coming. But so well did he on this occasion "improve his labors" that the next day "about twenty of the brethren came to visit him, manifesting (in the name of the church) their ready acceptance of what the learned Court had done, and thanking him for his compliance therewith." On the 24th of February, 1672, Mr. Fiske received a unanimous call from the weary church, and on the 11th of the following September he was formally ordained ; or, as he himself phrased it, that was " the day of my solemn espousals to this church and congregation."

At the time of his ordination Mr. Fiske was thirty years old ; and his pastorate lasted thirty-six years, until his death, in 1708. It was also an important period in the history of the town and church, for during it not only was the second parish organized, but a small Episcopal society, one of the earliest in New England, was formed. Of the Rev. Moses Fiske himself, his religious tenets or intellectual force, not much has been handed down. One only of his numerous discourses is now known to exist,-that which he preached be- fore the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, on June 4, 1694, the day of their annual election. Even this sermon never reached the dignity of print, but, in the original handwriting of its author, rests undisturbed in the archives of the Massachusetts His- torical Society.

The manner in which the New England clergy intermarried, continually, so to speak, breeding-in, has often been remarked upon. It was certainly sugges- tive. According to all known laws of generation and heredity, the result should have been of excep- tional interest. That it was not, is probably due to the necessary limitations of theological development. The Rev. Cotton Mather, perhaps, indicated the climax. Mr. Fiske was a case in point. Himself the son of a clergyman, he married successively two daughters of clergymen ; three of his own daughters- Mary, Anne, and Margaret-married clergymen ; and two of his sons were clergymen. By his first wife, a daughter of Mr. Symmes, of Charlestown, Mr. Fiske had fourteen children. Through a period of nine- teen years the unfortunate woman gave birth to in- fants on an average of one to each seventeen months, and two were born at separate births within a twelve- month. Naturally, several of them died in early infancy ; and at last the mother was herself released by death from incessant child-bearing. Such cases were not singular in early New England, and of Mrs. Sarah Symmes, the grandmother of Mrs. Fiske, it is recorded that " her courage exceeded her stature and she raised up ten children to people this Amer- ' fencing off at his own cost the seats assigned to him.

ican wilderness." She was the mother of thirteen. By his two marriages, Mr. Fiske had sixteen chil- dren. Yet his family was small compared with that of Samuel Bass, the senior elder of his church, who died in 1694, after having sat in the deacon's seat for more than fifty years, and since the first organization of the church. At his death Deacon Bass num- bered in his living offspring one hundred and sixty- two souls; while among his contemporaries and the parishioners of Mr. Fiske, Henry Neal was the father of twenty-one children, and William Rawson had at one time twenty living sons and daughters, the fruit of his loins by a single wife.

The simplicity of life and the severe economy habitual in those days is shown in the fact that Mr. Fiske brought up his family of sixteen children, sending three sons to college and marrying off his daughters, on a stipend which never exceeded ninety pounds a year, and which was usually sixty or eighty pounds, payable in part in corn and wood at stated valuations. Even this small salary seems to have been a source of contention, and in 1690 it was grudgingly paid upon the pastor's receipt in full " from the beginning of the world to this day." Yet the parish had then increased greatly both in sub- stance and population. The original meeting-house had. long before given place to a new and larger one, built of stone and furnished with a bell; and in 1694 the town made provisions for sweeping out the church and ringing the bell, appropriating twenty-five shil- lings to pay therefor, the bell, which weighed about two hundred pounds, being uncovered upon the roof until 1714, when a turret was built to shelter it. Until about the year 1700 there were no pews in the meeting-house, the congregation sitting on benches, the men on one side and the women on the other. This thoroughly democratic system continued in use until about the year 1690, when, from habit or other cause, a sort of prescriptive right in particular persons to certain seats had become recognized. Ac- cordingly, in 1694 the town authorized the selectmen to "seat the meeting-house." The task, involving as it did all sorts of questions of preference, must needs have been an ungrateful one, and nothing seems then to have been done ; but in March, 1698, a special committee of five, including the two deacons, was appointed to attend to the business. "They did the work;" though, as would naturally be supposed, " not to general satisfaction, The first Sabbath in April people took their places, as many as saw good so to do." Then came by degrees the division of the church into pews, each party who obtained a permit

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History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 60

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1534

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1534