USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Old South church (Third church) Boston. Memorial addresses, Sunday evening, October 26, 1884 > Part 9
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10
In all his tastes and habits Mr. Adams was a model of republican simplicity. Indifferent to wealth and fame, he was also above the temptations of luxury and ease. He never outgrew the practice of his youth in this respect. His table, his dress, his manners were always plain, though never lack- ing proper attention and refinement. He had no fancy for display. When he became Governor, his friends gave him a carriage and a pair of horses, but he seldom used them, and, on retiring from office, he returned them to the donors. He studied economy from principle as well as necessity, avoiding when possible all appearance of ostentation or extravagance. He did all he could to make his beloved Boston "a Christian Sparta."
In person2 Samuel Adams was of medium height and very erect, of muscular form, florid complexion, light blue, pene- trating eyes, and heavy eye-brows. At the age of forty-eight his hair was already gray, giving him a venerable appearance. His countenance was strikingly open and benignant, full of expression, combining the qualities of serenity and firmness. He is said to have resembled William of Orange. His ap- pearance was always dignified and manly. At times there was a slight constitutional tremulous motion of the head and hand, which added impressiveness to his speech. Among strangers he was usually reserved, but in his family and among his friends he laid aside the cares of public life and
1 At the reception of the Massachu- setts Statues at Washington.
2 The portrait by Johnston, painted in 1795, was unfortunately destroyed by
fire. The engravings from it give Mr. Adams a very genial and dignified ap- pearance, quite in accordance with the descriptions of him by his friends.
108
participated freely in ordinary conversation. At such times, he was cheerful and responsive, full of sympathy, fond of anecdote, and keenly alive to any rational sentiment of wit or humor. His voice was uncommonly musical, and nothing gave him greater pleasure than the practice of singing at home. In dress, he retained the colonial style of the tie-wig, cocked hat, knee breeches, buckled shoes and dark red cloak.
Samuel Adams left no descendants bearing his name, but as "the Father of the Revolution" he has given us our inde- pendence ; and we may safely trust the Republic which enshrines it, to perpetuate his name and keep alive the memory of his masterly leadership, his incorruptible virtue and his undying love of liberty.
109
SAMUEL ADAMS,
BORN IN BOSTON, SEPTEMBER 16, 1722. GRADUATED AT HARVARD COLLEGE, 1740. JOINS THE CHURCH, 1742. TAKES HIS MASTER'S DEGREE, 1743. Follows mercantile business a few years.
Organizes a Political Club and Newspaper, 1747-48. MARRIED TO ELIZABETH CHECKLEY, OCTOBER 17, 1749. His wife dies, July 25, 1757. COLLECTOR OF TAXES, 1763-65.
-1764 --
DRAFTS THE BOSTON INSTRUCTIONS.
Proposes a union of the Colonies in opposition to Parliament.
MARRIES. HIS SECOND WIFE, ELIZABETH WELLS, DECEMBER 6. MEMBER OF THE LEGISLATURE, 1765-74.
-1765 -
WRITES THE MASSACHUSETTS RESOLVES.
INSTRUCTS THE PROVINCIAL AGENT IN LONDON.
CONDUCTS A CONTROVERSY WITH THE GOVERNOR, 1766.
-1768-
WRITES THE ASSEMBLY'S ADDRESSES TO THE MINISTRY, THEIR PETITION TO THE KING,
and Circular Letter to the other Colonies. DECLARES FOR INDEPENDENCE.
Writes " An Appeal to the World," 1769.
DEMANDS THE REMOVAL OF THE TROOPS, 1770.
-1772-
PROPOSES THE COMMITTEE OF CORRESPONDENCE.
Author of " The Rights of the Colonists."
15
IIO
-1773-
CALLS FOR A CONTINENTAL CONGRESS. OPPOSES LANDING OF THE TEA.
Drafts an Appeal to the other Assemblies, 1774.
MEMBER OF THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS, 1774-SI.
-1775- MEMBER OF THE PROVINCIAL CONGRESS.
SECRETARY OF STATE. COUNCILLOR.
SIGNS THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, 1776.
MEMBER OF THE BOARD OF WAR, 1777.
MEMBER OF THE STATE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION, 1779.
Marriage of his daughter, 17SI.
PRESIDENT OF THE MASSACHUSETTS SENATE, 17SI-84.
SENATOR, 1786.
PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE, AND COUNCILLOR, 1787.
-1788 -
Member of the Convention to adopt the Federal Constitution.
Death of 'his son, January 17. LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR, 1789-93. GOVERNOR, 1793-97.
Dies, October 2, 1803, in his eighty-second year. Committed to the Checkley Tomb, in the Granary Burial Ground.
THE MINISTERS OF THE OLD SOUTH
FROM 1670 TO 1882
BY THE
REV. INCREASE N. TARBOX, D.D.
"LORD, HOW CAN MAN PREACH THY ETERNAL WORD? HE IS A BRITTLE CRAZY GLASS : YET IN THY TEMPLE THOU DOST HIM AFFORD THIS GLORIOUS AND TRANSCENDENT PLACE, TO BE A WINDOW, THROUGH THY GRACE.
"BUT WHEN THOU DOST ANNEAL IN GLASS THY STORY, MAKING THY LIFE TO SHINE WITHIN THE HOLY PREACHERS, THEN THE LIGHT AND GLORY MORE REVEREND GROWS, AND MORE DOTH WIN; WHICH ELSE SHOWS WATERISH, BLEAK AND THIN.
"DOCTRINE AND LIFE, COLOURS AND LIGHT, IN ONE WHEN THEY COMBINE AND MINGLE, BRING A STRONG REGARD AND AWE : BUT SPEECH ALONE DOTH VANISH LIKE A FLARING THING, AND IN THE EAR, NOT CONSCIENCE RING."
THE MINISTERS OF THE OLD SOUTH.
THE Old South Church, in its continuous history of two hundred and fifteen years, presents us with a list of fifteen men who, in its several generations, have filled the pastoral office, previously to the present incumbent. On an occasion like this, it will be impossible to consider them, one by one, and attempt to give even the most meagre account of their in- dividual characters and labors. We must dwell rather upon some general facts appertaining to the ministry of these men, and look at them in certain historical groupings. The names are :-
THOMAS THACHER SAMUEL WILLARD EBENEZER PEMBERTON JOSEPH SEWALL, D.D. THOMAS PRINCE
ALEXANDER CUMMING
SAMUEL BLAIR, D.D.
JOHN BACON JOHN HUNT JOSEPH ECKLEY, D.D. JOSHUA HUNTINGTON BENJAMIN B. WISNER, D.D.
SAMUEL H. STEARNS
GEORGE W. BLAGDEN, D.D.
JACOB M. MANNING, D.D.
114
The first pastor of the Old South, Mr. Thomas Thacher, was born in England, and came to this country in his youth. Had the Church been formed forty years earlier, when the settlements in the Massachusetts Bay were just beginning, very naturally it would have enrolled in its early history several English-born pastors. Of the ten ministers serving the First Church of Boston from 1630, the year of its founda- tion, to 1715, nine were born in England. In the old Church of Salem, founded in 1629, the seven earliest pastors were English-born, and the same was true of the seven earliest pastors in the old Church in Ipswich. Those scholarly divines that came over from England to New England in the first generation, were, as a rule, in middle life, at the time of their coming. This fact, added to the hardships which they en- countered in this wilderness land, made their ministries here, on the average, short. There were some notable exceptions, like that of Mr. John Eliot, who coming over as a young man in 1631, died in 1690, at the age of eighty-six, having served in the ministry of the Church of Roxbury fifty-nine years, besides his immense outside labors and constant exposures.
But the Old South, not having been organized until 1669, was naturally dependent for her early pulpit supply upon the neighboring college. Harvard had already sent forth twenty- five classes, before the Old South Church came into existence ; and after the ministry of Mr. Thacher ceased, by reason of death, in 1678, these Harvard graduates for a long course of years furnished its pulpit supplies.
There are certain facts connected with the ministries of these fifteen men, which are noticeable, if they may not even be called singular and curious. All but one of them were colleague pastors, and yet the whole period of the joint pas- torate in the history of this church covers only eighty-one years out of two hundred and fifteen, and forty of these eighty-one years were occupied by the joint pastorate of the Rev. Dr. Sewall and the Rev. Thomas Prince. Dr. Wisner, who was settled in 1821, was called in 1832 into the service of the American Board as Secretary. He went through his
115
brief term of service as sole pastor. This was the only instance of the kind. Usually these colleague pastorates were brought about by the advanced years or infirm health of the older occupants.
Once however, two men, comparatively young, John Bacon, thirty-four, and John Hunt, twenty-seven, were called and settled over this Church as colleague pastors on the same day, Sept. 25, 1771. This looked as though it might be the begin- ning of a long double pastorate. But circumstances conspired to render the ministries of both these men among the shorter ones of the Old South. Mr. Hunt died in 1775, amid the opening scenes of the revolutionary struggle. Mr. Bacon was dismissed the same year, and not only left the Old South ministry, but the ministry altogether. He was a native of Canterbury, Conn., and after leaving Boston established him- self as a lawyer in Stockbridge, Mass., became a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, President of the Massachusetts Senate, and Member of Congress from the Berkshire district. His son Ezekiel Bacon, a graduate of Yale College in 1794, was also a Judge and Member of Congress, and lived to the great age of ninety-four. John Bacon, the father, died in 1820, aged eighty-three.
Let us try and gain some conception of Boston in 1669, when this ministerial succession was about to begin. While we all delight to honor the early fathers of New England, who, by their sacrifices and sufferings, gave us our goodly heritage, yet any review like that we are now making may serve to show how fitting are the words of the wise man, " Say not thou what is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this."
In 1669, the town of Boston contained about six or seven thousand inhabitants. Snow, in his History of Boston, gives the number of its families in 1673, as fifteen hundred. Drake gives the same number of families for 1674. In both cases, the very roundness of the number shows the estimate to have been somewhat conjectural and approximate. Reckoning
II6
five to a family, this would give a population of seven thousand five hundred, and, judging from incidental facts, this estimate is too high, rather than too low.
This population, whatever it may have been, was some- what evenly distributed over what we call the North End, including the territory represented by such streets as Corn- hill, Court, Sudbury and Green. The two church edifices existing at that time, would, by their position, indicate where the population was. The Meeting-house of the First Church was at Church Square in Cornhill, and the Meeting-house of the Old North, or Second Church, was at North Square, in the open space between North and Moon Streets. When a site for the Old South Meeting-house was sought, the spot was purposely chosen outside of the thickly settled portion of the town, but in anticipation of a steady movement of the people in that direction. It was called then simply the South Meeting-house, and was not known as the Old South until some fifty years later, when the New South Church was formed with its place of worship at the South Green. Lan- guage has to be endlessly shaped and modified according to circumstances. To tell the whole story now, we have to say the New Old South, and the Old Old South.
In the summer of 1669, when the new-formed parish was taking steps to erect a house of worship on the spot where the old Meeting-house now stands, Richard Bellingham, then Colonial Governor, felt it needful to call his Council about him for consultation, fearing, as he said, " a sudden tumult" from " some persons attempting to set up an edifice for publick worship, which is apprehended by authority to be detrimental to the publick peace." The Governor and Council concluded on the whole, not to interfere, but advised those who were building " to conform to the laws on this subject." Accord- ingly they applied to the Selectmen, and a vote was passed by that body, affirming the " need of another meeting-house to be erected in this town." And certainly this was so, if there were seven thousand, or even six thousand people in the place, especially at a period when all families were expected
h
A C
ta
be
ter
T
m
CO
be
a
a a
II7
to attend church, and were generally in the habit of so doing.
In 1669, when men were laying the foundation of your first meeting-house, the town authorities were trying to hunt out and suppress a little religious organization, now known as the First Baptist Church of this city. This church had been secretly formed in 1665, over in Charlestown, consisting of eighteen persons, and since then had led a very precarious and diversified existence. They had met for their worship as secretly and with as many precautions as did the Pilgrims in England under James I., or Paul's converts in the ancient city of Rome.
In 1669, the party cries which were resounding in the homes, in the streets, and in the churches of Boston, were " Synodalia " and " Anti-Synodalia"-words utterly without meaning to the people at large in this generation, but brist- ling with significance at that time, not only in Boston, but throughout New England. The First Church in Boston was Anti-Synodalia, that is, it was opposed to the action of the Church Synod, which met in Boston in the year 1662, and es- tablished what is known as the Half-Way Covenant. The Old South was strongly Synodalia in its sympathies, and was composed chiefly of persons who had come out of the First Church expressly on that issue.
In the year before (1668), the Rev. John Davenport had been prevailed upon to leave his people in New Haven, with whom he came over from England more than thirty years before, and whose spiritual father, greatly beloved, he had ever since been, that he might remove to Boston and become the pastor of the First Church, made vacant by the death of its honored leader, the Rev. John Wilson. Nothing can bet- ter show the height of party feeling at that time than this fact. Ten years before, if any one had suggested that Mr. Daven- port would leave his people at New Haven for another settle- ment, the idea would have been scouted as idle and almost insane. But Mr. Davenport was regarded as the ablest minister in New England in opposition to the Synod, and 16
118
it was felt that his services must be secured in the chief town of New England. So he tore himself away from his weeping people, and came here, to labor only a little more than a year, and to die at the age of seventy-two. But the conflict be- tween the First Church and the Old South, or, more generally, between those who opposed the action of the Synod and those who favored it, did not die out for more than a generation afterwards.
Thomas Thacher, the first pastor of the Old South, was born at Milton Clevedon, England. His father, Peter Thacher, had been minister first at Milton Clevedon, and then at Salisbury, where Thomas Thacher's childhood and early youth were passed. He was a natural scholar and was early prepared for the University. But at the time when he would have entered upon his University course, the persecuting spirit under Laud was at its height, and he could not conscientiously put his name to the articles which he would have been re- quired to sign to effect his entrance either at Cambridge or Oxford. He was then fifteen years old, and with the consent of his parents he resolved to try his fortunes in America. His parents intended soon to follow him, and re-establish his old home in the new world, but the death of his mother soon after broke up this plan.
When he reached Boston in 1635, Harvard College had not yet come into existence, but he entered the family of the Rev. Charles Chauncey of Scituate, who, years afterwards, from 1654 to 1672, was President of the College. Mr. Chauncey was one of the ripe scholars of his generation, especially in Hebrew and Greek. Here young Thacher acquired such an education in these ancient Scripture tongues, as to become himself in after years the author of a Hebrew Lexicon.
In respect to his education in these rude fields of the West, his experience was not very unlike that of John Higginson, oldest child of the Rev. Francis Higginson of Salem. His father died in the summer of 1630, only a year after his ar- rival upon these shores, when his son John, the eldest of eight children, was fourteen years old. The boy was aided in his
119
education by the ministers and magistrates of the colony, and a few years later he lived for some time in the family of the famous Thomas Hooker of Hartford, another of the learned English scholars who had fled for refuge to these shores. Young Higginson began to preach when he was about twenty years of age, and after seventy-two years of minis- terial service he died at the age of ninety-two.
Mr. Thacher had been twenty years pastor at Weymouth before coming to Boston, and the first years he passed in Boston were given rather to the practice of medicine than to preaching. It was not uncommon, in the early New England years, for the clergyman to add to his study of theology some knowledge of medicine, so that he might, if occasion required, minister alike to the soul and the body. The Rev. John Rogers of Ipswich, afterwards president of Harvard College, was, for long years, the chief physician of that town, at the same time that he was one of the ministers of the First Church.
Mr. Thacher was fifty years old when he began his ministry here in February, 1670, and his connection with the church was closed by his death in October, 1678.
The colleague and successor of Mr. Thacher, the Rev. Samuel Willard, for twenty-nine years pastor, and, for seven years before his death, Vice President of Harvard College, would of himself furnish abundant material for a long paper. So also would his successors in office, the Rev. Ebenezer Pemberton and the Rev. Joseph Sewall, D.D. The last named, son of Judge Samuel Sewall, held the pastoral office in the Old South for fifty-six years, a period considerably longer than that covered by any other one of the Old South ministers.
But we must needs make more than a passing reference to the Rev. Thomas Prince, the next name on the list. He was for forty years the colleague of Dr. Sewall, but died eleven years earlier than he. The two men were of about the same age and were classmates at Harvard. Mr. Prince died at tlic age of seventy-two, and Dr. Sewall at eighty.
No name on the list of the Old South pastors remains in
I20
greater honor and brightness to-day than that of Thomas Prince. He was a large scholar, a lover of books and all good learning. The historical spirit was strong within him, as was also the literary, and his name stands associated with various societies and institutions existing at the present day. There is something in the very name with the associations clustering about it, suggestive of grace and elegance. By the. bent of his mind, and by his habits of study, he became a kind of forerunner of such organizations as the Massachusetts His- torical Society and the New England Historic Genealogical Society. His belles-lettres tastes were as marked as his historical. In the very year of his death appeared his re- vised and improved edition of the New England Psalm Book. The Prince Library, now deposited in the Boston Public Library, has long been one of the noteworthy things of our city.
Dr. Joseph Sewall, Mr. Prince's associate, after his long ministry, died in 1769, almost exactly one hundred years after the founding of the church. We have spoken of the excite- ments, and of the high party spirit prevailing in Boston in 1669. But these were mild as compared with the stormy passions ruling and reigning in 1769. The questions which were up for debate in the former period were ecclesiastical, but the questions of 1769 were political and of the most intense and fiery character.
In May, 1769, one hundred years almost to a day from the founding of this Church, the Colonial Legislature being called together, refused to sit and deliberate unless the armed forces quartered on the town were removed. Sir Francis Bernard, then royal Governor of Massachusetts, after refusing this request, thought to frighten the people by threatening to go in person to England and and lay these matters before the King. Thereupon the Legislature retaliated by passing a unanimous vote, to petition the King to remove Sir Francis Bernard forever from this government. He was recalled, and on the first of August, 1769, set sail for England. When he left the town his departure was celebrated by the
I21
ringing of bells, the booming of cannon, and the kindling of bonfires.
At that time hardly a day could pass, without some event fitted to keep the indignation of the people at fever heat. It was only a few months later, March, 1770, that the first bloody encounter between the people and the British troops took place in State Street, which resulted in the death of seven citizens.
The Old South Meeting-House in all those years, like Faneuil Hall, was one of the grand rallying places of the people, where the orators of the Revolution poured forth their fiery sentences to crowded houses and eager listeners. The historic charm which gathers around that ancient edifice is very largely due to the strange experiences through which it passed during all those stormy years, reaching from the enact- ment of the Stamp Act in 1765 to the evacuation of Boston by the British troops in the spring of 1776.
Let us return a moment to Dr. Sewall, and bring up a noticeable fact connected with his pastorate. During his long ministry he was associated with four colleagues. In his early life he was brought in to be associate pastor with the Rev. Ebenezer Pemberton. Four years afterwards Mr. Pem- berton died. In the year following, i. e. in 1718, Thomas Prince was made associate with Dr. Sewall, and this connec- tion continued, as we have said, forty years. Mr. Sewall was then sole pastor for three years, when the Rev. Alexander Cumming was joined with him, but continued only two years by reason of death. Then there was another interval of three years in which Dr. Sewall was sole pastor, when Dr. Samuel Blair was united with him, and Dr. Sewall died three years afterwards. We have before said that the whole period of the joint pastorate in this church was eighty-one years, and forty- nine of those years were within the period of Dr. Sewall's ministry.
During the first century of this Society's existence, the population of Boston had slowly grown from the six or seven thousand of 1669 to the eighteen or twenty thousand of 1769.
I22
The three Congregational churches of the former period had increased to eleven in the latter ; and the gradual march of the population southward and westward is indicated by the localities chosen for the New South Meeting-House at the South Green, the Hollis Street Church and the West Church, while the great enlargement of the population on the old territory is shown by the new churches which had sprung up there, viz. : Brattle Street, the New North, Federal Street, School Street and the Samuel Mather Church, so called. Besides these, during the century, three Episcopal churches had come into existence, King's Chapel, Christ Church and Trinity Church, as also a second Baptist church.
When Boston emerged from her captivity in 1776, and her scattered inhabitants gathered back to their homes, there fol- lowed a time of house cleaning and church cleaning such as never had been seen before, and has never been seen since. The Old South Meeting-House was in such a state of ruin and degradation, that the parish, in its broken condition, could not undertake to put it in order at once for Sabbath services.
Moreover, after the dismissal of the Rev. John Bacon and the death of the Rev. John Hunt in 1775, the line of the pas- toral succession was broken, and was not renewed again until October 27, 1779, when the Rev. Joseph Eckley was ordained. Mr. Eckley was born in England, and came as a youth, with his father's family, settling in New Jersey. He was graduated at the College of New Jersey in 1772, and was twenty-nine years old when he was ordained here in 1779. The congre- gation had not then returned to its own house of worship, but by the courtesy of the Episcopal Society in King's Chapel, held its Sabbath services in that house. It was not until March 2, 1783, that their own house was in order for the renewal of the regular sanctuary worship.
When Dr. Eckley began his ministry in 1779, the storms of war which had broken so furiously about Boston had rolled away to other parts of the land. But questions of an ecclesi- astical and theological nature were again coming up, to be warmly discussed, and to breed discord and division among
br pa re di its
st chỉ af Wa of S
ma m in ag lo WI 18 al it kt ab bt of
fo
p la
L hi mi
th
123
the churches. Dr. Eckley's ministry, reaching from 1779 to 18II, covers a period when the old Congregational churches of Boston, with the single exception of the Old South, were passing from their early associations into new relations.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.