USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Standard history of Essex county, Massachusetts, embracing a history of the county from its first settlement to the present time, with a history and description of its towns and cities. The Most historic county of America. > Part 41
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Winthrop Sargent, son of a merchant of Gloucester, of the same name, was born May 1, 1753, and graduated at Harvard College in 1771. In 1776, he joined the Revolutionary Army, and served with distinction till the close of the war, attaining the rank of major. He was adjutant-general in the disastrous defeat of St. Clair, at the battle of the Miamis, Nov. 3, 1791, and was wounded in the engagement. In 1796, a territorial government was established for the Mississippi country, aud Gen. Sargent was soon afterwards appointed its gov- ernor. From this place he was removed by President Jeffersou in
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1801, but he made Mississippi his home during the remainder of his life. He died June 3, 1820.
CHAPTER IV.
FIRST SELECTMEN - EARLY ORDERS FOR THE GOOD OF THE TOWN - SHIP-BUILDING-THE FIRST CHURCHI -ITS MINISTERS AND MEETING- HOUSES.
The first persons appointed by the Commissioners of the General Court " to order the prudential affairs of Gloucester," were William Stevens, Mr. Sadler, Obadiah Bruen, George Norton, Mr. Addes, Mr. Milward, Mr. Fryer, and Walter Tybbot. The next board of selectmen, as we should now call them, consisted of only five, - four of the preceding list, with the addition of Hugh Calkin. These were chosen by the town, for the year 1643, and five continued to be the number of this board of town-officers for more than a century fol- lowing. The orders " made and published for the good of the town," during the first ten years after its settlement, relate to trees and tim- ber, highways, trespass by "whatever great beasts," burial place, and various other matters of less importance. For mending the highway, " not above half of the town " were to be warned for one day.
Among the early acts of the town was a regulation providing that all ship-carpenters that build vessels of greater or lesser burthen should pay the town one shilling a ton.
This indicates the occupation of some of the settlers ; and we know that a ship was built in the town as early as 1643, by Mr. Stevens and other ship-carpenters, and that an historian of this period takes notice of the good timber for shipping to be found here, of several vessels that had been built in the town, and of "a very sufficient builder." This builder was, without doubt, William Stevens, who had built in London many ships of great burthen, among which was one called the " Royal Merchant," of 600 tons. Perhaps he built many vessels in Gloucester. We know that he was under contract to build one in 1661, soon after which date he was heavily fined, and probably im- prisoned, for speaking in contemptuous terms of Charles II., and renouncing his allegiance to that monarch.
The settlers of Cape Ann, with a minister among their number, were, of course, soon organized into a church government. This gathering of believers, under Rev. Richard Blynman, was the nine- teenth church, in the order of formation, in the Colony of Massachu- setts. Neither history nor tradition has handed down any account of its members, or its early proceedings ; nor, in fact, of its history for sixty years. Mr. Blynman's ministry in Gloucester was not a happy one. His church was defamed, his publie meetings were disturbed, and he himself was charged with a false interpretation of Scripture. But he appears to have worked undisturbed in other fields of labor, and to have been greeted with the loving salutations of eminent men. He was living in New London in November, 1650, and, in 1658, removed to New Haven, whence he returned to England, and was living in the city of Bristol in 1670. He is said to have died at an old age. His wife's name was Mary, and their children, born in Gloucester, were, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Azarikam. The name was found in Bristol in 1871.
Mr. Blynman's successor in the ministry here was William Perkins, - the Capt. Perkins who owned land in town in 1647. No means exist for ascertaining his rank in the church, nor the exact office that he filled in it, and it is only by the Quarterly Court Records that he appears at all as a laborer in spiritual things. These present him as a defendant in actions brought by a factious member of his congrega- tion ; but they contain nothing more serious against him than the reason alleged by a silly woman, in justification of her absence from meeting, that the teacher was " fitter to be a lady's chamber-man than to be in the pulpit." He remained in Gloucester till 1655, when he sold his houses and land here to Thomas Millet, Sr., and removed to Topsfield, where he died May 21, 1682. His wife was Elizabeth Wortten, whom he married at Roxbury, Aug. 30, 1636. Besides a daughter, Mary, born here in 1651, he had several other children.
During a few years following Mr. Perkins's departure, the church contented itself with such religious edification as the two most gifted of the lay brethren - William Stevens and Thomas Millet - could afford ; but the town was mindful of its want of a " meete person to come and preach the word of God," and accordingly engaged Mr. John Emerson, in 1661, to be their minister. In July of that year,
they voted him a salary of sixty pounds per annum, which he was to receive in Indian corn, pease, barley, fish, mackerel, beef, or pork. He was son of Thomas Emerson, of Ipswich. He graduated at Har- vard College, in 1556; and was ordained as pastor of this church, Oct. 6, 1663, which, to use the language of one of his successors, " he served more than forty years in the gospel of God's dear Son." He was not indifferent to the secular concerns of life, for he was part owner of the three principal mills in town, and though not favorably located for the accumulation of property, he died possessed of a con- siderable estate. Only one article from his pen is known to be extant in print, - the account furnished by him in a letter to the Rev. Cot- ton Mather, of the strange and wonderful occurrences by which the town was kept in a state of agitation and alarm for several months, in 1692, which Mr. Emerson ascribed to diabolical agency. Mr. Emerson died Dec. 2, 1700, aged seventy-five. His wife was Ruth, daughter of Deputy-Gov. Symonds. She died Feb. 23, 1702. They had several children, one of whom, John, born May 14, 1670, grad- uated at Harvard College, in 1689, and died June 21, 1732, minister of a church in Portsmouth, N. H.
Mr. Emerson's congregation, small and weak at the time of his set- tlement, had about trebled in number, and was left by him in a state of increasing growth and prosperity ; but nearly two years elapsed before the vacant pastorate was filled. Finally, Sept. 11, 1702, out of four who were proposed as candidates, the church unanimously made choice of the Rev. John White, chaplain of Saco Fort. He was a son of Joseph White, of Watertown, and was born in 1678. He graduated at Harvard College, in 1698. Liberal terms of settle- ment were made, and his ordination took place April 21, 1703. A long and peaceful ministry of more than half a century followed the connection now formed between pastor and people. In 1703, his church consisted of seventy members. In the course of fifty-one years, three new churches were formed by members of his flock ; and at the end of that period, there remained in the parent church two hundred and sixty members. When old age came on and his health began to fail, he was provided with a colleague ; but he continued to preach occasionally till near the end of his life, and at last dropped gently away, while sitting in his arm-chair, Jan. 17, 1760, in the eighty-third year of his age, and the fifty-eighth of his ministry.
Mr. White was thrice married : first, June 9, 1703, to Lucy, daughter of the Rev. John Wise, of Ipswich, who died March 5, 1727, aged fifty-six years ; next, to Widow Abigail Blake, daughter of the Rev. Increase Mather, of Boston, who died Dec. 10, 1748, aged seventy ; and last, to Mrs. Alice Norwood, of Gloucester, who died in January, 1763. His children, eleven in number, were all by his first wife. Two of his sons - Benjamin and Samuel - graduated at Harvard College, but of their history and end very little is known. Four of his children were daughters, all of whom were married. One of them, Hannah, died at the great age of ninety-thrce, Oct. 26, 1814.
Mr. White's death left his colleague sole pastor of the church. Mr. Samuel Moody, of York, afterwards the famous Master Moody of Dummer Academy, grandson of Mr. White, had been the choice of a majority of the church as colleague, but he declined, and an invitation was extended to the Rev. Samuel Chandler, of the same place. He accepted it, and was installed as colleague pastor, Nov. 13, 1751. Mr. Chandler was a son of Josiah Chaudler, of Andover, where he was born in 1713. He graduated at Harvard College, in 1735 ; and, in 1742, was ordained minister of the church in York. Into the so- cial festivities of the day of installation, we are permitted to take a look by the pastor himself, who informs us, in a journal which he kept, that " Deacon William Parsons entertained the council at his own charge ; Mr. William Stevens, the Schollars and Gentlemen, at his own charge ; and Mr John Stevens entertained the Council in the morning with Plumb Cake." During Mr. White's ministry, a second, a third, and a fourth church had been organized by members dismissed from the first. In 1755, the fifth and last one was formed by members residing at Sandy Bay, which portion of the town had been already set off as a separate parish. In the same year, Mr. Chandler served from Sept. 8th, to Dec. 28th, as chaplain in the expedition against Crown Point. The First Parish had now become so reduced iu terri- torial extent, that its members were compriscd chiefly of those who dwelt on the borders of the main harbor ; but the growth of the mar- itime business of the town within fifty years, had been such that these now formed a very large religious body. The customs of the town exacted of the pastor of this large flock, numerous and trying duties, and they were sometimes a heavy burden upon him. In addition to these were the political troubles of the period, and, hardest of all to
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HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.
bear, the danger that, towards the close of his life, threatened the eternal welfare of his parishioners. A new teacher had come to them, and, in opposition to the venerable authority of ancient interpreta- tion and universal belief, was proclaiming the final salvation of the human race as a doctrine of the Holy Scriptures. Besides the trials incident to his public office, great domestic troubles fell to his lot ; but wisdom, prudence, and patience were conspicnous traits of his character, and he bore all his afflictions as a sincere disciple of Christ. Mr. Chandler died of consumption, March 16, 1775, aged sixty-two. His wife was Anna Pecker, of Haverhill, to whom he was married Sept. 12. 1738. He had two sons and two daughters. John, the eldest son, was a mariner ; and, in 1777, was a prisoner in England. Samuel, the other son, graduated at Harvard College, in 1775. He was also a prisoner in England, in 1777 ; and, on his release, settled in Newburyport, where he died, in May, 1787.
The next pastor of the First Parish was the Rev. Eli Forbes. He was born in Westborough, in October, 1726, and entered Harvard College in 1744, but did not graduate till 1751, having been absent a portion of the intervening time as a soldier in the service of the Col- ony. He was ordained minister of the Second Parish in Brookfield, in 1752, and remained in that office till March, 1776, when, at his own request, he received a dismission. His call to the First Parish in Gloucester was opposed by friends of the Rev. John Murray, but without success ; and it was formally made and accepted. The instal- lation took place June 5, 1776. At the time of his settlement, the prospect of a happy ministry was not encouraging. The town had just entered upon a period of severe suffering in various forms, which continued through the Revolutionary war; and the church itself was distressed by the withdrawal of the followers of Mr. Murray from publie religious worship. A long controversy followed the latter event, which was finally terminated by a lawsuit, which resulted in favor of the seccders. The war had now ceased, and the remainder of Mr. Forbes's ministry was passed in a quiet discharge of the ordi- nary duties of his office, which he continued to perform till far ad- vanced in life. He died Dec. 15, 1804, aged seventy-eight. His ministerial gifts, together with his high moral character and his social qualities, seeured him a large degree of popularity in the town, and consideration and respect wherever he was known. The degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred upon him by Harvard College, a short time before his death. Several productions of his pen were printed, among which was a " Family Book of Sermons."
Mr. Forbes married - first, Mary, daughter of the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman, of Westborough; she died Jan. 16, 1776; and he next married, Sept. 15, 1776, Mrs. Lucy, widow of Hon. Thomas San- ders, of Gloucester, who died June 5, 1780, aged forty-eight. For a third wife he took Mrs. Sarah, widow of Capt. Thomas Parsons, of Newbury. to whom he was married Sept. 13, 1781; she died in Bos- ton, of small-pox, Sept. 19, 1792. He next married, Nov. 13, 1793, Mrs. Lucy Baldwin, of Brookfield, who died March 13, 1804. She was a sister of his first wife, and both died of cancer. Mr. Forbes had a son Eli, who was a captain in the army, in 1800; and a daugh- ter Polly, who married Peter Coffin.
Mr. Forbes was suceecded in the ministry, in this parish, by the Rev. Perez Lincoln, who was ordained Aug. 7, 1805, He was son of David Lincoln, of Hingham, and was born Jan. 21, 1777. He gradu- ated at Harvard College in 1798. He entered upon the duties of his pastorate with zeal and devotion, but his health soon began to fail ; his complaint, which was of a pulmonary nature, made such progress that he ceased to preach in the fall of 1810, and died in Hingham, June 13, 1811. His wife was Sophia, daughter of Thomas Loring, of Hingham. She remained a widow, and died Oct. 2, 1817, leaving no children.
Though Mr. Lincoln's ministry was a short one, it had continued long enough to make a deep impression upon the people of his charge, and to secure him a large place in their affeetions.
After supplying their pulpit with transient preachers for more than four years, the parish gave the Rev. Levi Hartshorn a call to become their pastor, which he accepted, at a salary of $700. Mr. Hartshorn was born in Amherst, N. H., in 1789, graduated at Dartmouth Col- lege in 1813, and was ordained over the First Parish here Oct. 18, 1815. The ministry of this young pastor, like that of his last predc- cessor, was soon cut short by death. While on a visit to his father, at Amherst, in September, 1819, he was taken siek with typhus fever, and died there on the 27th of that month. In a sermon preached to the bereaved parish by the Rev. Dr. Dana, his character is portrayed as one of the highest excellence. Mr. Hartshorn was the last person who died in the office of minister of the First Parish. The divisions
with regard to some of the fundamental doctrines of Calvinism, which, about the time of his death, had begun to rend many of the ancient churches of New England, were beginning to separate the members of this parish, the Baptists and Methodists proselyting within its liniits, drew many away ; and it was not till Aug. 3, 1825, that the vacant pulpit was again filled by a settled pastor. On that day, Hosca Hildreth, who had been for many years an instructor in Phillips Acad- emy, Exeter, N. H., was ordained to that office. He labored with zcal aud ability in the cause of temperance, both in town and abroad, and finally engaged in it as a public lecturer and agent. Having entered upon this employment, his connection with the parish was dissolved, at his own request, Dec. 31, 1833. Mr. Hildreth died at Sterling, July 10, 1835, leaving a widow and several children, of whom the only one born in Gloucester, Charles H., is a physician in his native town.
The next minister of the parish was the Rev. Luther Hamilton, a native of Conway, who was installed Nov. 12, 1834, as a decided Unitarian in his religious views. To thesc views, a majority of the parish were now attached ; but a majority of the members of the church still held to the ancient faith. Their concurrence in the settlement of Mr. Hamilton had not been asked ; and they soon held a meeting, at which they voted that all connection between the church and parish should be dissolved. Their organization was kept up, however, till 1837, when, most of its members having joined other churches, this venerable body, after a duration of nearly two hundred years as a church of the Puritan faith, ceased to exist.
Mr. Hamilton's ministry here was a short one. Having been elected in November, 1835, as a representative to the General Court, by a politi- cal party whose opinions were opposed by a majority of his parishion- ers, they soon after dismissed him. From this time the pulpit was oeeupied by transient preachers till July 19, 1837, when the Rev. Josiah K. Waite was installed as pastor. He continued in that office till Sept. 30, 1849, when he resigned. The following have since been the ministers of this parish : The Rev. William Mountford, the Rev. Robert P. Rogers, and the Rev. Minot G. Gage, who is the pas- tor at the present time.
In a printed sermon of the Rev. E. Forbes, he tells us, "that the first settlers of Cape Ann were early solieitons to set up and maintain the publie worship of God among them. Though they were few in numbers, and strangers in the land, yet, like Abraham, as soon as they pitehed their tent, they set up an altar ; i. e., they agreed on a place where they might meet for the public worship of God on the Sabbath." In another sermon, he says : "So long ago as in 1633, the first settlers of this town consecrated a house for publie worship." The exact location of this house eannot now be ascertained ; but it is known to have adjoined the burial-place. Very soon after the incorporation of the town, it may be inferred, from allusions in the town records, that there was a meeting-house on the Meeting-house Plain. On this spot, about the time of Mr. Emerson's settlement, a new one was erected, probably the third one built in the town. The sum voted by the inhabitants to pay for it was £60, besides the boards that should be used upon it Nothing more is known about it, except that, in 1686, the town voted to build two galleries in it, and that it was fur- nished with a bell. In 1700, a new one was erected on the site of, or
near the old one. The amount raised, in three assessments, to pay for it, was £253. After it was built, the town voted that the women should be scated in the east gallery ; and appointed a committee, con- sisting of the two deacons and three other prominent citizens, to seat the people in it. The population at the Harbor, at the end of the forty years following, had gained so much in wealth and numbers over the northerly part of the parish, that seven of the principal citizens, resi- dent in the former, undertook to build a new meeting-house for the parish in their section of the town ; and after considerable trouble, the northerly part was set off as the Fourth Parish. The new meet- ing-house was erected on a street named Cornhill Street, but now known as Middle Street, and was of large dimensions : sixty feet wide, seventy-five feet long, and thirty feet stud. It had a tower sev- enty feet high, which was surmounted by a spire of equal height. It stood ninety years ; and, in its old age, when, on a windy Sunday, the great building shook upon its foundation, and the timbers ereaked with startling sounds, the worshippers were awed by a feeling of inse- curity, even in the temple of the Lord. Publie worship was held in it, for the last time, April 6, 1828. It was soon afterwards taken down ; and before the close of the year, the meeting-house now stand- ing on the same spot was crected. This was dedicated Dec. 25, 1828.
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HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.
CHAPTER V.
EARLY EVENTS - INDIAN WAR - DIVISION OF LAND - TOWN OPPRESSED BY TIIE RULE OF ANDROS - WITCHCRAFT - COLONY TAX IN 1693- FIRST SCHOOL - BURIAL GROUND - THE PEOPLE ALL FARMERS.
Life in an isolated hamlet of fifty or sixty families furnishes few incidents for general history. Very few matters are transmitted to posterity even in its local annals. A few facts, however, concerning the carly history of Gloucester, have been preserved and may prop- erly be grouped together here. In the year of its incorporation, Gloucester was "to have ten muskets of the country's left them," by order of the General Court. The rank of the town, at that time, in pecuniary importance, is shown in its proportion of a Colony tax of £800; that of Gloneester was £6 10s., while Ipswich is down at £82. In 1650 the town was presented at court for being "deficient in ye Stocks "; and in 1653 was fined the penalty of the law and costs for defect in ammunition. In the last mentioned year the people author- ized the erection of a saw-mill, a corn-mill having been set up previ- ously.
The early inhabitants of the town were undoubtedly indebted to the forests, which covered their whole territory, for a considerable part of their living. The various acts of the town, in reference to wood and timber, authorize a belief that a traffic in these was early commenced, and indicate a watchful care of the forest. For several successive years, every family was permitted to cut twenty cords on the town's common for its own use ; but none was to be sold out of town under three shillings and sixpence per cord.
From these matters of mere local interest the concern of the people was called to an important event, which awakened deep anxiety in the minds of every inhabitant of the English race in the Colony. The isolated situation of the town, protected on three sides by the sca, and on the other by a tract of country quite thickly peopled by the new settlers, saved it from great apprehensions of assault by an Indian enemy, though not perhaps from some degree of alarm. During all the troubled period of the Indian war of 1675, it is not known that any hostile Indian set his foot on the soil of Cape Aun, nor is it known that more than one person fell in fight during the war. Six- teen men from Gloucester were certainly in the military service of the Colony at this time, one of whom, Joseph Somes, was killed in the great fight at Narragansett Fort. Isaac Ellery, said to have been of Gloucester, was also slain in the same battle. Edward Haraden, who was in the company with Somes, was wounded. The large num- ber sent to the war by this town, comprising as many as one-fourth of all its male citizens who were capable of bearing arms, shows the exigency of the occasion, and proves that the struggle, on both sides, was for the possession of the soil.
A few years after the restoration of peace, the town entered upon a measure which engaged the attention of all of its people - the first general division or grant of land. On the 27th February, 1688, it voted that every householder and young man, upwards of twenty-one years of age, that was born in town, and was then living in it, and bearing charges to town and county, should have six acres of land. In accordance with this vote, one hundred and thirteen lots were laid out. The list of grantees exhibits one remarkable fact, that not more than fifteen males of adult age had been added to the population by immigration in the preceding twenty-four years ; and it does not seem that the number of transient settlers in the same time had been con- siderable.
While the people were thus adding to their individual property, they were losing some of their political privileges. The Colony charter was taken away, and a governor of New England, Sir Edmund Andros, was appointed by the king. The oppressive rule of Andros was resisted by the selectmen of Gloucester, who, for non-compliance of the town with a warrant for the assessment of one of the odious taxes levied upon it by him and his council, in 1688, were fined at the superior court in Salem, to the extent, with costs, of upwards of forty pounds. This proceeding prepared the people of the town to hear with joy the news that soon after reached them, giving informa- tion that their tyrannical ruler had been deposed and imprisoned ; and to declare, in town meeting, with "a full and clear vote in the affirmative," in favor of re-assuming the old government under the charter.
The political anxieties of the people were scarcely terminated when a new and wholly unlooked-for trouble overwhelmed them with amaze-
ment and terror. The shocking delusion of witchcraft, which makes the year 1692 one of the saddest in New England history, left no fatal results in Gloucester, but several of its people were charged with this imaginary crime, and confined in prison for trial. It does not appear, however, that any were brought before the court. The names of the aceused were : Abigail, daughter of Timothy Somes ; Aun, wife of Capt. William Dolliver ; Mary, wife of Hugh Rowe; Phebe, wife of Timothy Day ; Widow Rachel Vinson ; Esther, wife of Samuel Elwell ; Rebecca, wife of Richard Dike ; and Abigail, daughter of Hugh Rowe.
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