USA > Massachusetts > Bristol County > Rehoboth > Rehoboth in the past. An historical oration delivered on the Fourth of July, 1860 > Part 4
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He was a learned man ; and had a large library for that age. His English books were appraised at &4; his other books at £18; by the latter I understand his classical works in the ancient languages. This library he bequeathed to his son Noah.
Any one having an ordinary knowledge of books, must see at once that such a work required great labor, research and discrimination ; and learned divines who have examined it, and are well qualified to judge of its merits, say that it is a work of great learning and ability, especially for that age, when Biblical literature was comparatively imperfect and limited. It was a work of great utility ; not only in itself, but as laying the foundation for subsequent works of a similar character. In 1662, a short time before Newman's death, an edition of this work, somewhat altered, was published by the learned scholars of Cambridge University, England, at the University Press, which was afterwards known to the
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APPENDANT NOTES.
public as the " Cambridge Concordance "-thus robbing Newman, the real author, of the reputation which belonged to him. A copy of this Cambridge edition is in the hands of the writer. Its title-page is " A Concordance of the Holy Scriptures; with the various Readings both in Text and Margin, by S. N. [ University Seal, ] Cambridge. Printed by John Field, printer to the Universitie 1662." In the preface, however, the editor (whose name is not given) acknowledges that it is founded on Newman's work and his plan adopted. On comparing, it will be found that Newman's quotations are abridged.
It is related of the author, that, while pursuing the work at Rehoboth, he was obliged, from the scarcity of materials for light in that infant set- tlement, to use pine knots for the purpose.
It is justly a matter of no little satisfaction to us that the author of such a monument of learning and industry, should have completed it while he was an inhabitant of the Old Colony.
Notices of this work are found in several of the ancient historians and writers. Mather, in his Magnalia, says of him: "He was a hard student ; and as much toil and oil as his learned namesake, Neander, employed in illustrations and commentaries upon the old Greek pagan poets, our Newman bestowed in compiling his Concordances of the sacred Scriptures."
In the celebrated " Life of Hugh Peters," the work is erroneously attributed to Cruden, who did not publish his Concordance till about a hundred years after Newman ; the biographer evidently confounding the one with the other. "The Rev. Mr. Newman, an eminent scholar in the University of Oxford, Eng., &c. This pious Clergyman with his pious companions, went and formed the settlement of Rehoboth. They built a Church and eneireled it with a set of houses like a half moon, facing the west, where they worshipped the Creator with great devo- tion, and Newman taught their children the arts and sciences gratis. In that barren soil Newman spent a useful life, and made to himself a name in the Christian Church that will last as long as the Bible. There he formed the first Concordance of the Old and New Testaments, which was ever made in the English tongue. The energy and Herculean labor in this necessary Index of the Bible, even astonished both the Old and New World," &c., &c.
In this edition, of 1658, are two prefaces-one written by D. Featly, and the other, by W. Gouge. Some interest to us, attaches to their
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APPENDANT NOTES.
names from their connection with Newman's Concordance. Who were they ? The first was doubtless no other than the famous Dr. Daniel Featly, a learned and distinguished divine in England. He was born at Charlton, Oxfordshire, March, 1582, and educated at Oxford, and was made fellow of Corpus Christi, 1602. He was distinguished as a theologian, and by his eloquence as a preacher, was appointed Chaplain to Sir Thomas Edmond, Ambassador to France, where he remained with him for three years. In 1613 he was Rector of Northhill, Cornwall, Chaplain to Abbott, the Primate, and Rector of Lambeth. In 1617 he received the degree of D. D., and was promoted by his patron to the rectory of All-Hallows, London, which he afterwards exchanged for Acton ; and finally became the last Provost of Chelsea College, where he died in April, 1645. He was imprisoned in 1643, for his oppo- sition to the Covenant, and came near losing his life.
He was the author of " Cygnea Cantio," 1629, and " the scholastic duel between him and King James," besides some forty religious works of a controversial character.
William Gouge, the writer of the other preface, was also a distin- guished divine and author. He was minister of Blackfriars. He was educated at King's College, where " he was remarkable for not being absent from morning and evening prayers for nine years, and for read- ing 15 chapters of the Bible every day." He died Dee. 16, 1653. He was author of " The whole Armor of God," " Exposition of the Lord's Prayer," " Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews," and other religious works. [See Lempriere's Biographical Dictionary.
He [Newman] had a large family of children. Among them was Samuel, Jr., supposed to be the oldest, who lived and died at Reho- both ; Antipas, the minister of Wenham, who married Elizabeth, daugh- ter of Gov. Winthrop, and who died Oct. 15, 1672; Noah, who was his father's successor in the ministry, and who died April 16, 1678. His wife was Joanna, daughter of Rev. Henry Flint, one of the first minis- ters of that part of Braintree which is now Quincy ; Hopestill, a daugh- ter, born at Weymouth, Nov. 29, 1641, became the wife of the Rev. George Shove, the third minister of Taunton, and died March 7, 1674. They had five children-three sons and two daughters. Their blood still circulates in the veins of our neighbors ; their descendants are in our vicinity.
Mr. Newman made a will, which seems not to have been discovered
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APPENDANT NOTES.
by any of the historians or genealogists. The extracts which I have obtained from it settle some heretofore doubtful points. His wife's name was Sibel. He appoints Stephen Paine, sen., Thomas Cooper, Lt. Hunt, " overseers to give advice to my distressed Widow." He names his three sons, Samuel, Antipas and Noah, and three daughters. To Antipas he gives some " land at Wenham," and to his three daugh- ters £5 each. Hopestill is mentioned by name. He gives ten shillings to his old servants, Mary Humphrey of Dorchester, Elizabeth Cubby of Weymouth, and Elizabeth Palmer of Rehoboth, and the same amount to " Lydia Winchester, his present servant."
Rev. Samuel Newman was buried in the Old Burying Ground at Seekonk. His dust has there mingled with his mother earth, but no monument marks the spot. A man of so much usefulness and distinc- tion in his day and generation as Rev. Samuel Newman, should not be suffered to remain without even the ordinary memorials of the dead- such as mark the last resting place of the most humble tenant of the grave. We often neglect the living and honor the dead ; but we some- times honor the living and forget the dead.]
Thus far I have extracted from Mr. Daggett's able paper before the Historical Society. I will now correct a slight mistake or two in the above, and make some additional illustration in these matters.
" A large family." He had three sons and one daughter [Hopestill]. The " three daughters " alluded to in the will are daughters-in-law, the wives of his three sons, a very common expression in those times ; and he gives them [in addition to what he had given their husbands, his sons,] £5 each, and ten shillings each to his former house-maids, as mere tokens of his kind personal remembrance of them, calling them " daughters," &c. The other general features of the will are sufficently correct as represented by Mr. Daggett.
This third edition of the Concordance is very rare. There is a copy of it in the Athenaeum at Boston, presented by King William III., as stated in gold letters on its cover. The copy which I possess is the one reserved by its author for his own use. It is a large folio, printed at London, 1658, in small, antique type, and contains 1370 pages. It has passed through the ownership of six different clergymen, and was presented to me in 1858, just two hundred years from the date of its imprint, by the surviving heirs of the late Rev. Dr. Wight of Bristol,
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APPENDANT NOTES.
Rhode Island, at the suggestion of Gov. Dimond and the Hon. Nathaniel Bullock, to whose kindness and historic and antiquarian prochivities I am indebted for this interesting memorial of the past.
From President Stiles's MS. diary : "Four very considerable men, Williams, Blackstone, Newman and Gorton, lived in a vicinity, with no connection and little acquaintance."-" Nov. 18, 1771. I lodged at Mr. Hide's at Rehoboth. [Rev. Ephraim Hyde, the seventh pastor.] He cannot recover any of Mr. Newman's MSS .; he supposes they fell into the hands of the late Mr. Avery, of Norton, by a marriage con- nection."
Comment .- Blackstone lived in Rehoboth, Williams in Providence, and Gorton was the factious controversialist at Warwick, Rhode Island, differing with pretty much everybody else, and sometimes differing with himself. Gov. Arnold, in his excellent history of the State, says he was the " veriest leveller recorded in history." The libraries of Blackstone and Newman were burnt by the Indians; and there is no evidence of much written intercourse between any of these four " very considerable men." With Gorton he would not be likely to have much intercourse ; but as there is no written evidence to the contrary, and as the other three were educated men, and were also men of enlarged and liberal views for those times, there is no doubt of there having been much more familiarity and christian courtesy between them than is warranted by the remark of Dr. Stiles. About the recovery of Newman's MSS., as alluded to by Mr. Hyde, I have made pretty diligent research, and the result is that there were none to recover ;- the conflagration at Reho- both, March 28, 1676, by the Indians, seems to have settled that matter.
The fragment of his papers containing the thirteen articles of his pri- vate platform [on page 23] first appeared in print in Mather's Magnalia, and was doubtless preserved through a copy permitted to be taken by some friend during its anthor's life time, and which afterwards fell into Mather's hands. The Latin epitaph on page 33, of which I have made a rather free translation, was also written by Dr. Cotton Mather, and is in his Magnalia. And here I desire to record my own impressions of Mather and his works, without prejudice, and without any desire to compromise the opinions of anybody else. Dr. Cotton Mather was a very learned man-a very pious man-a very talented man-a very good man, and an able theologian and preacher of the gospel, according to the standard of his times. But his mind was of that imaginative cast
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APPENDANT NOTES.
which, without a rigid control, rendered him an unsafe historian and biographer. He would hastily grasp, as with the hand of a great mas- ter, the appearances that evidently clustered around a fact, and educe from them his supposed reality, without delving for the truth itself. He was inattentive to those small but important items-those minutic in dates, places and delicate colorings of events, which are the rubble- stones which must ever support the foundations of the structure of true history. His historie writings [especially his Magnalia] are such as we should hardly know how to do without, and yet such as we constantly feel that we dare not implicitly trust. The fact that the Magnalia, though professedly an English book, is continually assaulted with hail- storms of Latin, was not peculiarly a fault of his-it was a fault in the taste of the age in which he lived; and with all these faults, and much trouble as he has caused in leading subsequent writers astray, he will ever be entitled to the gratitude of his countrymen, and to an honorable place in the theologic and historic literature of America.
At the close of this long note-the last on the founder of Rehoboth- perhaps it may be a convenience to some of my readers to refer them to the principal writers who have referred to, or more or less spoken of, Rev. Samuel Newman.
[Wood's Athen. et Fast. Oxon., London. Mather's Magnalia. Holmes's Am. Annals, Vol. I., p. 332, 333. President Stiles's Literary Diary. Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., Vol. IX., p. 191, First Series. Morton's Memorial; edited by Judge Davis. Allen's Biog. and Hist. Dic. Elliott's Biog. Dic. Bliss's Hist. Rehob. Farmer's Register; First Settlers of New England. Mass. Hist. Coll., New Series, Vol. VII , p. 187. Baylies' Plym. Colony, Vol. I., p. 316; Vol. II., p. 196, 209, 211. John- son's Wonder Work. Prov., Chap. X., p. 127. Preface to Cruden's Concordance. Preface to Newman's Concordance, Third Edition of 1658, by Dr. Featly and Rev. William Gouge. Neal's Hist. Puritans, Vol. II., p. 315. Neal's Hist. New England, Vol. II., p. 341. Young's Chronicles Mass. History of Dorchester. History of Weymouth. Rec. Banbury, Eng. Rec. Oxford Univ., Eng. Rec. Midhope Chap., Yorkshire, Eng .; &c., &c. Many of these contain errors in dates, &c., copied from one to another, originally started wrong by Cotton Mather; but some of them have been carefully corrected by the accurate researches made while in England by the Hon. James Savage of Boston, to whom, for many favors, I have long been under lasting obligations.]
[NOTE I .- Page 37.]
On opening the grave of Roger Williams, in the spring of 1860, no remains were found except a good representation of his skeleton formed of the roots of an apple tree. The root had stretched itself some dis- tance to reach the grave, in search of the elements of its own subsist- ence, such as the phosphate of lime, into which the bones had resolved
8
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APPENDANT NOTES.
themselves, in the exact shape in which they were originally buried. And as the root consumed the remains, it assumed the appearance of a human skeleton made of apple tree root. When some one present en- quired why there were no other remains, the reply was that the owner of the orchard had been eating him up in the form of apples. [See a very able paper on this matter, read before the Rhode Island Historical Society, May 18, 1860, by Hon. Zachariah Allen, L. L. D., in which this curious but rational development of some of Nature's recondite laws, is philosophically and eloquently illustrated.
[NOTE J .- Page 38.]
Would it not be an act of justice, as well as an act of credit, to the now populous and wealthy city of New York-the first commercial city on this Continent-to erect a plain, simple but substantial memorial over this lonely grave of their very worthy first mayor ?
[NOTE K .- Page 40.]
For many of the statistics in these passages, I am indebted to Bliss's history, from which I have condensed them. The author of that valua- ble history of the town, though led astray in some matters as to dates, &c., by earlier writers, should long be held in grateful remembrance. With the then scanty and widely scattered materials, he performed a service for his native town which can never be over-estimated; and if he were living now, and could be benefited thereby, I should rejoice in an opportunity here to say more ;- HONOR AND PEACE TO HIS MEMORY.
[NOTE L .- Page 41.]
The following is a verbatim copy of the original platform of govern- ment at Plymouth. [See Gov. Bradford's Plymouth Plantation, p. 89.
In ye name of God, Amen. We whose names are under-writen, the loyall subjects of our dread soveraigne Lord, King James, by y" grace of God, of Great Britaine, Franc, & Ireland king, defender of y& faith, &c., haveing undertaken, for ye glorie of God, and advancemente of y® Christian faith, and honour of our king & countrie, a voyage to plant ye first colonie in ye Northerne parts of Virginia,* doe by these presents solemnly & mutualy in ye presence of God, and one of another, covenant
*The term Virginia, in the compact above, was the name used before that of New England. The farewell sermon of John Robinson, their pastor, in Leyden, alluded to in the passage to which this is a note, may be found in the First Volume
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APPENDANT NOTES.
& combine our selves together into a civill body politick, for our better ordering & preservation & furtherance of ye ends aforesaid ; and by vertue hearof to enacte, constitute, and frame such just & equall lawes, ordinances, acts, constitutions, & offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meete & convenient for ye generall good of ye Colonie, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witness wherof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cap-Codd ye 11. of November, in ye year of ye raigne of our soveraigne lord, King James, of England, France, & Ireland ye eighteenth, and of Scotland ye fiftie fourth. Anº: Dom. 1620.
Miles Standish,
William Bradford,
Isaac Allerton,
Samuel Fuller,
John Alden,
*Christopher Martin,
*William Mullins,
Stephen Hopkins,
*William White, Richard Warren,
Edward Dotey,
*Edward Tilley,
Edward Leister,
*John Tilley,
Francis Cooke,
*Thomas Tinker,
*Thomas Rogers,
*John Ridgdale,
*Edward Fuller, Francis Eaton,
*John Turner,
*John Crackston,
*James Chilton,
*Moses Fletcher,
John Billington,
*Degory Priest,
John Goodman,
Gilbert Winslow,
*Thomas Williams,
Peter Brown,
*Edward Margeson,
*Richard Clarke,
*John Allerton,
*Richard Britterige, Edward Gardiner, *John Carver,
*Thomas English.
Edward Winslow, William Brewster, John Howland, George Soule,
Those marked with a star thus * died the first year. The first person who stepped upon the landing rock, at the general disembarkation, was Mary, the daughter of James Chilton, who afterwards married John Winslow, son of Edward. John Billington was [ten years after] hung for murder, but left respectable descendants.
of Mather's Magnalia. [The italicizing is not in the original of the compact, but I have marked those words on which I based my remarks in the Oration.]
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APPENDANT NOTES.
[NOTE M .- Page 45.]
For a further illustration of this coinage, see Historical Magazine, Vol. III., p. 197, and Thomas Hollis's Memoirs, p. 397. A rather captions reply to the above article in the Magazine, appears in the same volume, p. 316, but the argument used is a felo de se. I have a good and well preserved specimen of this coin, and nobody acquainted with the first limb or twig of " treeology " would ever dream of its being a pine.
CONCLUDING NOTE .- [PERSONAL.]
I here embrace an opportunity to try to correct some wide spread mistakes. In the course of my genealogical labors, I receive many letters addressing me by the title of Rev. How this practice came into use I do not know; but as my name is sometimes alluded to by my friends in the public journals, I suppose the mistake was made by some one inadvertently associating my name with that of Rev. Samuel New- man, the founder of Rehoboth, and from whom I am a lineal descendant. Nor have I any very high opinion of the application of the sacred title
of reverend to men. My only apology for using the term in reference to others, is in deference to a long standing custom, rendering it almost a necessity in definite description. The term reverend is used but once in the Bible, [Psalms cxI., 9,] and there it is applied to the Supreme Being, alone ! Do we rob God ? or do we claim an equality with Him ? one or the other seems inevitable. I have not, nor never had, any claim to such title. Nor is my name Samuel-a name by which I am often addressed. The name my sainted mother gave me is on the title-page of this humble production, and has never been altered ; and any additions or appendages thereto, have been made by the voluntary, unsolicited aets of others.
In very early life I was left an orphan, and without education, prop- erty or friends to help me to instruction. I had an early proclivity for little books, which gradually extended itself for larger ones; but the calls of life could only be answered by daily manual labor, and all book progress was necessarily slow, fettered and limited, although the hours which Nature demands for sleep have been too often eneroached upon throughout the past half century. For whatever of Science, Philosophy, History, Literature, or attainments in any of the departments of human learning, I may possess, (and I am often credited with much more than
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APPENDANT NOTES.
I merit, ) I am indebted only to the blessing of Heaven and the common kindness and sympathy of my fellow men, as I have lived thus far in life without a teacher. I am a graduate of no school except a small childrens' school taught by my mother ; yet, for reasons best known to herself, Brown University saw fit to pick me up as a sort of isolated sheep from the more favored flock, and generously conferred upon me one of her Honorary Degrees.
In religious matters, I am an outsider to every variety and shade of religious organization ; yet I am no infidel, nor am I a disrespectful or inattentive observer and listener at religious meetings. In none of my by-gone editorial writings, in no book, pamphlet, letter or document written by me throughout my past life, have I ever left a single word that could be construed into any disrespect or want of veneration for the christian religion or for God, whether I see him revealed in the Scrip- tures or geometrizing in the rainbow ; but, on the contrary, I respect, admire and love, with what I believe to be a christian impulse, all I see praiseworthy, pure and good in all men, with no desire to take note of their faults. My worship is summed up in the Lord's Prayer, and my ereed is reducible to eight small words : " Cease to do evil ; learn to do well."
In earlier life, the physical sciences and moral and intellectual philoso- phy, were among my most congenial pastimes ; but, in later years, anti- quarian and genealogie investigations are my favorite pursuits ; and I have many thousand families of the present and past, in systematic arrangement,-a vast collection, which is designed as a deposit in the archives of the State of Rhode Island, for the benefit of the future.
I am aware that it is not commendable for one to say or write much of himself; but if I had died yesterday, and my labors and papers ever been deemed worth overhauling, not a paragraph of autobiography would have ever been found among them. Under these circumstances, and to correct the mistakes alluded to, perhaps I may be excusably indulged in this brief exposition. And I only here desire to add, for the benefit of the youth and young men of this favored age, that although the most protracted life of man is but a moment in the great cycle of Time, yet, independent of all the legitimate calls of life, there is a large amount of surplus time that may and must be devoted to something ;- what that something is, their future destiny will faithfully illustrate and develope. Adeo in teneris consuescere multum est. VIR.
DESCENDANTS OF REV. SAMUEL NEWMAN.
ARRANGED IN GENEALOGICAL ORDER BY S. C. NEWMAN, A. M.
PARENTS.
PLACE OF BIRTH.
BORN.
DIED.
MARRIAGE AND REMARKS.
Rev. Samuel Newman, son of Richard, Sibel, daughter of - Featly, __.
Banbury, England, Unknown, ..
May, 1602, April 8, 1604,
July 5, 1663, Nov. 2, 1672,
June 10, 1624, at Banbury. Supposed to have been born in York- shire. Resided at Banbury.
CHILDREN.
Samuel,
Antipas,
Noah,
Hopestill,
Banbury, England, Midhope, England, Midhope, England, Weymouth, Mass.,
July 6, 1625, Oct. 15, 1627, Jan. 10, 1631-2, Nov. 29, 1641,
Dec. 14, 1710, Oct. 16, 1672, April 16, 1678, Mch. 7, 1674-5,
Dec. 6, 1659, to Bathsheba Chickering. Elizabeth, dau. of Gov. Winthrop, 1658. Joanna, daughter of Rev. Henry Flint. Rev. George Shove, July 12, 1664.
The oldest son was Deacon of his father's church ;- the second son was the clergyman of Wenham, Mass. ;- the third son was his successor as clergyman at Rehoboth ;- and the only daughter, Hopestill, was the wife of Mr. Shove, the third minister of Taunton. His widow kept house till her death ; and she boarded the clergymen that temporarily filled the interim between the death of her husband and succession of her son Noah.
[Fac simile of his autograph.]
Samuel Newman
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GENEALOGICAL
RECORD.
DESCENDANTS OF REV. SAMUEL NEWMAN.
Continued.
PARENTS.
PLACE OF BIRTH.
BORN.
DIED.
MARRIAGE AND REMARKS.
Samuel, son of Rev. Samuel,.
Banbury, England, Dedham, Mass.,
July 6, 1625, Dec. 23, 1640,
Dec. 14, 1710, Aug. 8, 1687,
Dec. 6, 1659, at Dedham.
Bathsheba, dau. of Francis Chickering, CHILDREN.
Mary,.
Bathsheba
Samuel,
Rehoboth, Mass., Rehoboth, Mass., Rehoboth, Mass., Rehoboth, Mass.,
Jan. 3, 1660-1,
Jan. 19, 1661-2,
Feb. 21, 1662-3, Nov. 1, 1665,
Sept. 10, 1669, Jan. 13, 1671-2, June 25, 1747, Feb. 17, 1747-8, July 24, 1675, Dec. 9, 1677,
Unmarried.
Hopestill,
July 19, 1669,
Unmarried.
Mary, ..
Rehoboth, Mass., Rehoboth, Mass., Rehoboth, Mass.,
Nov. 7, 1670,
Samuel Woodward.
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