History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 61

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 61

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QUINCY.

After the year 1700 the pew permits seem to have been granted in constant succession.

The parish then numbered about one hundred and forty families, representing an entire population of not far from eight hundred souls; but those com- posing this population no longer dwelt together in the neighborhood of Mount Wollaston and about the stone meeting-house. They were scattered over a wide extent of territory from the Dorchester line to the present town of Randolph. This fact led to those bitter contentions in the church which, recalling the evil days preceding Mr. Fiske's pastorate, sad- dened its closing years. In point of fact, town and parish were passing through a natural stage of growth. That was being enacted on a small stage in Braintree which, when enacted on the larger stage of nationality, forms the most interesting part of history. A process of differentiation was going on, and, be- fore it was complete, it called forth a great deal of human nature.

The struggle seems first to have assumed defi- nite shape about the year 1695. The old meeting- house was then pronounced inadequate to the grow- ing needs of the parish. It was small, inconveniently situated, and out of repair. Those dwelling in the south part of the town complained that it was " very irksome, especially in winter, to come so far as most of them came to meeting, and through such bad ways, whereby the Lord's day, which is a day of rest, was to them a day of labor rather." Accordingly, the first proposition was that a new and larger church edifice, sufficient for the whole town, should be built at a more central point. This did not meet the views of old Col. Edmund Quincy and others, who lived in the northern limits; consequently they went to work to prevent anything being done at all, and at a private meeting held at Col. Quincy's they " did agree among themselves to shingle the old house, pretending to be at the whole charge themselves." But, none the less, " several pounds were afterwards gathered by a rate upon the whole town."

The project of a new and common meeting-house having been defeated by means such as this, the organ- ization of a separate church was next agitated. This was opposed, for the reason that such a secession from the parish would throw the burden of the minister's salary on a smaller number. Accordingly, in 1704-5 party feeling ran high. Two church meetings were held in January, whereat there was " much debate and some misapprehension about church discipline," by reason whereof there was " much sinful discourse" in the town. "Nine of the church withdrew from the Lord's table," and one of Parson Fiske's adhe-

rents pathetically remarked, as he noted down these events, " the disorders among us call for tears and lamentations rather than to be remembered."

Getting no satisfaction, but, on the contrary, being " squib'd and floured by several of the other end of the town," those of the south part in the winter of 1705 began to talk " very hotly of building a meeting- house by themselves ;" and on the 2d of May, 1706, the frame of the new edifice was raised. In the autumn of that year it was so far finished that they might comfortably meet therein. The matter had been " hitherto carried on in a way of great conten- tion and disorder ;" but a final difficulty, and the most serious of all, now presented itself. The people of the south had organized themselves into a new church, but the people of the north wholly declined to release them from their share of the burden of supporting the minister of the old church. An angry town-meeting was held to consider this matter on Nov. 25, 1706, and the seceders certainly made what seems now a fair and even a liberal proposition. They offered to maintain their own church, and also to pay £20 of Mr. Fiske's salary. Even this was not satisfactory, and the town insisted that their " south end neighbors and brethren should not be released from bearing their usual part of the charge for the support of the Rev. Moses Fiske, which they were forward in the day of it to vote for and agree to."

The matter was then carried before the General Court; but there no immediate action was taken, and in the spring of 1707 the contention and disorder were greater than ever. A council of churches was suggested, and agreed to on the 27th of April. Ac- cordingly, on the 7th of May delegates from nine neighboring parishes met in the Braintree meeting- house and heard the aggrieved brethren. Those composing this council do not seem to have succeeded in pouring oil on the troubled waters; and, on the 10th of the following September, the Rev. Hugh Adams was formally ordained as first pastor of the South Church, which forthwith petitioned the Gen- eral Court to be regularly set off as a distinct precinct. This prayer was dated in the true theological spirit of the time,-" From (Naphtali, if your honors please so to name our neighborhood, or) South Braintree ;" the significance of which grim Puritan jest is found in Genesis (xxx. 8) :- " And Rachel said, With great wrestlings have I wrestled with my sister, and I have prevailed : and she called his name Naphtali." Nev- ertheless, the dwellers in the south did not prevail on this occasion, for five days later, after an oral | hearing, the General Court voted that, during the exercise of his ministry by Mr. Fiske, "the whole

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town" was obliged to raise annually whatever sum was voted for his support. Meanwhile, steps were to be taken towards forming a second precinct, the in- | graduated at Harvard College during the summer in habitants of which, during Mr. Fiske's ministry, were " to take care by subscription to raise a maintenance for the minister there." which his mother's death took place. Parson Fiske did not long survive his wife. At the time of her death he seems to have been in feeble health, and a few days later he was stricken with " a sore malignant fever, and on the 10th day, being Tuesday, about one of the o'clock, P.M., he died, willingly, patiently, blessed God, and forgave all his enemies. . . . He was, with suitable solemnity and great lamentations interred at Braintree in his own tomb the 12th day." Of him an humble but devout parishioner wrote that he was " a diligent, faithful laborer in the harvest of Jesus Christ ; studious in the Holy Scriptures, having an extraordinary gift in prayer above many good men, and in preaching equal to the most, inferior to few ; zealously diligent for God and the good of men,- one who thought no labor, cost, or suffering too dear a a price for the good of his people."

It is, of course, obvious now that the separation proposed was a mere question of time. Considering how universal and even obligatory church attendance then was, the cause for present wonder is that through more than sixty years the people of so large a terri- tory were content to travel, summer and winter, such distances over their primitive roads to reach the com- mon mecting-house. It is doubtful whether even the intense religious sense of their time, backed though it was by both spirit and letter of law, would have induced them to do so. But they came to gratify a social, as well as a spiritual craving. Outside of a hard, secluded, week-day life the Sabbath and the meeting-house were all they had. In their widely- separated houses there were no newspapers, fewer books, and fewer still strange faces; and so they eagerly went to church, not minding weather or dis- tance, because there they met friends and relatives, while between the services they heard the parish news. Perhaps, too, whispers might reach them there | of events in that great outside world from which they in their homes were as much excluded as though they lived encircled by a Chinese wall.

The separation of old Braintree into several church precincts also foreshadowed a further political sepa- ration not less desirable. But the slow course of growth and sequence of events in that period of New England life is strikingly shown by the fact that sixty years of development preceded the separation of the parishes, and nearly ninety years more had passed away before the original town was divided. And it is a curious fact, as will presently be seen, that, while the North Precinct in 1706 offered such resistance as it could to the earlier dismemberment, in 1792 it was the same North Precinct which demanded to be set off, and which, though itself the original town, left name and records with its younger sister, so it might be at liberty to order its affairs in its own way.

whom the North Precinct subsequently took its name as a town. A youth of eighteen, John Quincy

His death was timely in one respect. It settled once for all the vexed question of parish division. On the 3d of November following a town and parish- meeting was held, at which it was voted that thence- forth " there should be two distinct precincts or so- cieties in this town, for the more regular and con- venient upholding of the worship of God." The ill feeling which had existed between the sections grad- ually passed away. Yet, as late as 1710, the good offices of neighboring ministers seem to have been called for, and on the 19th of February their " advice for reconciliation" was read from the pulpit. As usual in the Massachusetts of that time, a special fast was thereupon ordered "on account of the late disturbances ;" and then at last, on March 19th, the Sabbath, the reconciliation was made complete by the clergymen of the two precincts exchanging pulpits, and preaching each to the other's congregation.

The pulpit of the First Precinct was then filled by Rev. Joseph Marsh. His pastorate and that of the Rev. John Hancock covered, respectively, sixteen and eighteen years, and the two carried the history of the church into its second century. It was an uneventful period the world over; that of the two first Georges and Louis XV. The Massachusetts colony had

Though foiled in its efforts for independence before the General Court of 1707, the South Precinct had | now struggled through the more interesting early not long to wait. The court had held it liable for its period, and was unconsciously preparing itself for the career which a century later was to open before it. Meanwhile the royal Governors-Shute and Dummer, Belcher and Burnet-ruled a community numbering about an hundred thousand souls, and squabbled in- cessantly over petty questions with intractable General Courts. Locally, it was the period in which Judge share of the support of the pastor of the old church during the ministry of Mr. Fiske only. Mr. Fiske's second wife, Anna, died on the 24th of July, follow- ing this decision. The widow of Daniel Quincy, a peculiar interest attaches to Mrs. Fiske as the mother of that John Quincy, of Mount Wollaston, from

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Edmund Quincy and Col. John Quincy flourished in | ceived a further sum of two hundred pounds upon his Braintree, and largely directed the course of the town's settlement. But the vote giving these larger sums was expressed in ominous words, for it ran that the sums were payable " in good and lawful bills of public credit on this Province." The colony was embarked on that troubled sea of depreciated paper money which was destined to long outlast the Hancock pastorate. affairs ; while of men destined to a later prominence, John Adams and John Hancock were born, the former at the foot of Penn's Hill, on Oct. 19, 1735, and the latter on the 12th of January, 1737, in a house which stood on the lot which, now the site of an academy, still bears his name. The house is yet standing-an almost perfect specimen of the colonial dwelling-in which lived the Rev. Moses Fiske, after whose death it was bought by the Rev. Joseph Marsh, his son-in-law ; and in that house during the pastorate of John Hancock, John Adams and Josiah Quincy, | Jr., went to school to the son of Mr. Marsh.

The Rev. Joseph Marsh himself was ordained as pastor of the First Precinct on May 18, 1709. A graduate of the college in the class of 1705, during the winter of 1708-9 he was preaching, by request of the General Court, at Tiverton, the inhabitants of which place had failed to "comply with the law and provide themselves with a minister." He first ministered in Braintree on Sunday, Oct. 31, 1708, less than three months after Mr. Fiske's death, and seems at once to have impressed himself on the peo- ple there as " a person of singular accomplishments, both natural and acquired." Accordingly, in Novem- ber they gave him a call, and on the 16th of Decem- ber, after extensive preparations had been made to properly receive him at his predecessor's house, " he came at night attended with the most of the inhabit- ants of this precinct." His salary was fixed at sev- enty pounds a year, and one hundred pounds additional was voted to him on his settlement, " and that to be paid for said settlement." Then on the 4th of May a special fast was kept " in order to ordina- tion," which took place two weeks later. On the 30th of the following June the young pastor married the daughter of his predecessor, and in April, 1710, he bought the Fiske homestead, where he lived until his death, in March, 1726. He was then in his forty- , first year.

Again the pulpit was but a short time vacant, for, the same name, was called to fill it. John Hancock, the father, was minister at Lexington, and so high was his professional standing and so great his in- fluence that he was commonly known as " Bishop" Hancock. The son may have enjoyed a certain ad- vantage from the father's fame, for when called to Braintree in 1726 he was but twenty-four, though he had graduated in 1719. The salary voted to him (one hundred and ten pounds) was larger than had been given to any of his predecessors, and he re-

The ordination of Mr. Hancock took place on the 2d of November, 1726, and was a great occasion, for the pastors of seven sister churches took part in it, while the elder Hancock preached the sermon. The ceremonies were held in the old stone meeting- house of 1666. It must even then have been in poor repair, for during the winter of 1730 " cart- loads of snow" were blown into it, and had to be shoveled out. As usual, it was not difficult to get the parish to vote the building of a new meeting- house ; the trouble came in the choice of location. Two meetings barely sufficed for the discussion of the question. The site first proposed was "at Col. Quincy's gate."1 This was rejected. The site of the old stone church was next proposed, and rejected. Finally it was decided by a majority vote that the new edifice should be "at the ten milestone, or near unto it;" and at the next meeting an exact site was fixed " on the training-field," a few hundred yards south of the tenth milestone from Boston. The new house, large and commodious for the time, was in point of fact a bald, oblong wooden structure, of the kind common to all New England towns. It was entered by doors at the two sides, and in front of it stood a tower, surmounted by an open cupola in which hung the bell, now increased in weight to two hundred and ninety pounds. This edifice was dedi- cated on the 8th of October, 1732, " in peaceable times ;" but the old stone house, though then aban- doned, stood for sixteen years more, until in Febru- ary, 1748, it was sold at auction and removed. It brought £100 in money of the old tenor. Mean- while, nine years before, on Sept. 16, 1739, " being Lord's day, the First Church of Braintree,

on June 29th, John Hancock, the son of a father of | both males and females, solemnly renewed the cove-

nant of their fathers, immediately before the partici- pation of the Lord's supper." A century of church life was complete.

On this occasion, in his discourse which is still extant, the pastor described himself as having been with his people almost thirteen years "in weakness,

1 The point where the Old Colony railroad now passes under Adams Street, between the old Quincy and the old Adams houses.

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HISTORY OF NORFOLK COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

and in fear, and in much trembling." He continued with them five years more. These were the years of " the great awakening," during which Whitefield, Tennent, and Davenport held forth continually to excited audiences, and New England was lashed into such a state of religious frenzy as was never known on the continent before or since. It is scarcely probable that Braintree wholly escaped the contagion of the craze ; but when, shortly after reason had re- sumed its way, Hancock died, the brother clergyman who preached his funeral discourse spoke of him " as a wise and skillful pilot," who had steered "a right and safe course in the late troubled sea of eccle- siastica! affairs ;" so that his people had " escaped the errors and enthusiasm which some, and the infi- delity and indifferency in matters of religion which others had fallen into." These words were in them- selves no poor tribute to the preacher cut off " in the | midst of his days and growing serviceableness."

It was in 1728, the third year of the Hancock pas- torate, that the first Episcopal church edifice in | Braintree was finished, and on Easter Monday of that year services were performed in it. Dr. Ebenezer Miller, a Harvard graduate of 1722, was its rector, | and for a century and a half thereafter descendants of his name continued to live in the town. Though it had no church of its own until 1728, this society had long been forming. Indeed, as early even as 1689 a little company of church-people held services in Quincy, and in one house, at least, prayers of the Church of England were daily read. In 1701 the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts was formed in London, and, for some reason now unknown, Braintree was early selected as a promising field in which to labor. In 1702 one zealous in the cause wrote to a leading church digni- tory : " Braintrey should be included ; it is in the heart of New England, and a learned and sober man would do great good and encourage the other towns to desire the like. If the church can be settled in New England, it pulls up schisms in America by the roots, that being the fountain that supplies with infectious streams the rest of America." Accordingly, “ an annual encouragement of fifty pounds and a gratuity of twenty-five pounds for present occasions" was granted by the society to Mr. William Barclay, " the minister of the Church of England at Braintree in New Eng- land." At the same time a collection of books to form the basis of a church library was sent out, the twenty volumes or so of which, bearing the quaint seal of the mother-society, are still on the shelves of the Quincy rectory. Thus, in 1704, Christ's Church in Braintree was fully organized, several of the names

found earliest in the town records, such as Veazie, Saunders, and Bass, being those of its wardens and vestrymen.

The movement did not pass unnoticed. The time was gone by when it could be suppressed with a high hand, for not only had the rigor of the primitive church discipline relaxed, but under the royal Gover- nors the Episcopalian ritual had for years been familiar in Boston ; though on the 25th of December those of the antique faith still took occasion to " dehort their families from Christmas keeping and charge them to forbear." Accordingly, in Braintree, when it came to a question of increasing the minister's salary to ninety pounds, Col. Edmund Quincy pressed hard the argu- ment that the churchmen were now "scheming to get a foot in the town," but that they must "pay their proportion," and now was the time to suppress them.

By 1704 Mr. Barclay had returned to England, and for several years thereafter only a skeleton organ- ization of the church was maintained. In 1713 the case was pronounced desperate by the Rev. Thomas Eager, who had apparently been sent out to look over the field, and who mentioned, as obstacles in the way of any growth of the church, that its members were taxed for the support of the regular precinct minister, and that they had no place of worship of their own. They feared censure as conventiclers if they assembled for worship in a private house. Yet he claimed to have at times as many as thirty attendants at services, with twelve regular communicants. Mr. Eager seems to have remained in Braintree nearly two years, and the account he gave of the dwellers there was not a flattering one. "The people are very great strangers to truth," he wrote, " and I do really believe that I have not passed one day since my arrival with- out one false report or other being raised upon me." He declared that the whole province had been much disturbed on account of his coming, and people " have not failed to affront and abuse me wherever they meet me. Atheist and papist are the best language I can get from them." On the other hand, Governor Dud- ley gave the society a no less " sorrowful account" of Mr. Eager, writing to it that " the church is greatly hurt by him. During the few months of his stay here he was frequently in quarrels and fightings, and sending challenges for duels, that at length the au- thorities at Brandry was quite ashamed and dis- couraged."

But there was ground for the complaint of Mr. Eager as to the taxing of his people for the support of the precinct ministers. The matter had already been before the Governor and Council on the com-

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plaint of William Veazie, the churchwarden, who, in 1727. Accordingly, Judge Sewall, in Boston, made 1696, had been fined " for plowing on the day of the following entry in his journal : " Monday, Dec. Thanksgiving."

" June 2 (1713), Mr. Veisy, of Braintry, and constable Owen are heard ; about his distraining for a rate of twenty-six shillings toward Mr. Marshes Salary, when the Governor and Council had ordered him to forbear till the General Court, which order was sent by Veisy himself, who would not let Owen take a copy of him, and provoked him ; whereupon Owen took a cow of Veisy, prised at four pounds, offered Veisy the overplus before witnesses, which Veisy refused. The Governor put the Vote whether the Cow should be returned, which passed in the Negative. I1 said, the Governor and Council had not Authority to rescind the Laws by nulling an execution. Mr. Secretary seconded me. Then the Governor put it whether he should be bound over to the Sessions, which was Voted. Gov- ernor directed fifty pounds. But 'twas brought to ten pounds, and five pounds each Surety.

" It was afterwards thought advisable to dismiss this Bond, Chide him, and let him go, which was done next day, upon his Submission and petition to be dismissed."

Mr. Eager was succeeded by the Rev. Henry Lucas, who, after a short rectorship, removed to Newbury, and for several years thereafter the organization lay dormant. It was not until 1726 that any steps were taken toward building a church edifice. Ebenezer Miller, son of Samuel Miller, of Milton Hill, was then a recent graduate of the college, and student of divinity. As such he early manifested a strong leaning towards Episcopacy, being, it has been said, the first graduate of Harvard who took that turn. To him the members of the Braintree society went, and two agreements were entered into,-one for the building a church edifice, the other for sending young Miller to England, there to receive orders. Both agreements were carried out, and in 1728 an unpretentious wooden building on the main street of the town, a few hundred yards only south of the old stone meeting-house, was ready for occupancy. In course of years, after the old English custom, the ground about it became covered with stones marking the resting-place of some who had worshiped within those walls ; and these stones still remain a memorial of the site upon which stood one of the earliest off- shoots in Puritan Massachusetts of the established Church of England.

Having been made Master of Arts by Oxford, and licensed to preach the gospel in July, 1627, Mr. Miller was the next month appointed minister to Braintree, in New England, and in September chap- lain to the Duke of Bolton. He thus came back to his people well recommended, and he arrived among them in time to open his mission on Christmas day,

25, 1727. Shops open, and people come to Town ¡ with Hoop-poles, Hay, Wood, &c. Mr. Miller keeps the day in his New church at Braintey : people flock thither."

The vexed question of taxation was now at last set- tled. It had again been brought before the Governor and Council in the spring of 1727. Lieutenant-Gover- nor Dummer was then acting as Governor during the interim between the Shute and the Burnet adminis- trations, and in reference to this question he wrote a sharp letter to Col. Edmund Quincy. In it he said that he was " surprised to find this matter driven to extremity, especially after the hopes you have raised in me that your people were thoroughly disposed to make those of the Church of England amongst you easy in all these matters." He further requested Col. Quincy to bring the matter before the parish committee, and personally to use his " utmost in- fluence that those people may obtain the relief they look for, as I think common justice entitles them to." Accordingly, at a meeting of the North Precinct held on 29th of the next month (May, 1727), the Episco- palians appeared and presented their case. There is no record of what was said in debate, but the meeting finally voted to remit future taxes, and also " to reim- burse the petitioners whatever sums they might have been assessed for Mr. Hancock's ordination charge and settlement."

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History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 61

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