USA > Massachusetts > The Puritans versus the Quakers : a review of the persecutions of the early Quakers and Baptists in Massachusetts, with notices of those persecuted and of some of their descendants and tributes to Roger Williams and William Penn > Part 3
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Among the earliest victims of the cruel laws in Massachusetts against the Quakers, were Lawrence
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Southwick and his wife Cassandra, their sons Daniel, John, and Joshua, and daughters Provided and Mary South- wick, Samuel Gaskill, Joshua Buffum, Samuel Shattuck, and Nicholas Phelps, most of whom have descendants in this vicinity; Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick, through their son Daniel, being my own ancestors. Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick were then an aged couple, inhabitants of Salem, and at that time members of the First Church there, but for entertaining two Quak- ers, John Copeland and Christopher Holder, they were committed to prison at Boston. Lawrence was released as being a member of the church, to be dealt with by that body, but Cassandra was kept in prison seven weeks and then fined forty shillings for professing her belief in the views promulgated by the two Quakers aforesaid. They and their sons Josiah and Daniel, and daughters Provided and Mary Southwick, were after- wards fined, whipped, and imprisoned, in Boston, and finally banished from Massachusetts for being Quakers, and my ancestor Daniel Southwick, and his sister Pro- vided, were sentenced by the General Court to be sold into slavery, because they could not pay the fines im- posed on them.
Hon. James Savage, author of the Genealogical Dic- tionary of the First Settlers in New England, has this sarcastic sentence in reference to this event: " When the fines of Daniel and Provided Southwick were unpaid, the tender hearted General Court of Massachusetts, with intent to MAGNIFY THE GLORY OF GOD, ordered them to be sold for slaves to any Christian in Virginia or Barbadoes." A kindly Christian regard had these Puri- tans for the souls, if they did not for the bodies, of their victims. The particular crime charged against Daniel and
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Provided Southwick was, " absenting themselves from the public ordinances," that is, not attending the regular " established church." But no ship-master could be found mean enough to take them away on such a mis- sion. Their parents, Lawrence and Cassandra, being banished under pain of death, went to Shelter Island, Long Island Sound, and both died there one year after, in the spring of 1660, from privation and exposure, within three days of each other, victims of " Puritan " in- humanity. Their son Josiah went to Rhode Island, where he raised a family of ten children, of whom one daughter, Cassandra, married Jacob Mott, whose daugh- ter Mary was wife of Nathaniel Greene, a preacher of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, and father of General Nathaniel Greene of Revolutionary fame. Provided Southwick became the wife of Samuel Gaskill, another of the banished Quakers, and they retired to the bor- ders of Rhode Island, in the south parish of Mendon, now Blackstone, near enough to the state of Roger Williams to be no longer fined or imprisoned for at- tending Quaker meetings, among their descendants be- ing the present District Attorney of Worcester County, F. A. Gaskill, Esq., and many others in this section.
Samuel Shattuck, above mentioned, went to Eng- land and was the bearer of the "King's Missive" to Gov. Endicott. Joshua Buffum retired with others to Smith- field, R. I., where they could live in peace and comfort, and where their descendants have been numerous.
Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick's son Daniel, who married Esther Boyce, daughter of Joseph and Eleanor Boyce, Quakers of Salem, had seven children, of whom the oldest, Lawrence Southwick of the third generation, married Tamsen Buffum, daughter of Caleb
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Buffum, also a Quaker, of Salem, and retired to Digh- ton, on the edge of Rhode Island, where their son Law- rence Southwick of the fourth generation, my great grandfather, was born in 1711, and he died in Uxbridge in 1795, the latter's first wife, my great grandmother, being Hannah Shove of Dighton, a member of Somer- set Friends' meeting. This Lawrence and Hannah (Shove) Southwick's daughter Elizabeth, born in 1748, was my grandmother, second wife of my grandfather, Moses Farnum, Jr., of Uxbridge, a zealous Quaker preach- er, who built in 1770, just south of his own residence in the south part of Uxbridge near the Rhode Island bor- der, the old Friends' meeting house, of brick, where Quaker meetings have ever since been held. His father, Moses Farnum, senior, was also a Quaker, son of John Farnum, who emigrated in 1706 from Andover to Ux- bridge, where he was one of the first board of Select- men, and the first town meeting in Uxbridge was held at his house which is still standing just east of the riv- er in the Central Village. This Moses Farnum, Jr., the minister, married for his first wife, Susan Comstock, a de- scendant of the Comstocks and Arnolds, old Quaker families in Smithfield, R. I., by whom he had ten child- ren, and by his second wife, Elizabeth Southwick, above referred to, he had a daughter Sarah, born in Uxbridge April 7, 1780, who was my mother, and who married for her first husband, James Harkness of an old Quaker family in Smithfield, by whom she had three sons, Mos- es, Nathan, and Elijah, all now deceased, my father, Caleb Wall, being her second husband, by whom she had six sons and one daughter, Sarah Elizabeth, the lat- er and her brothers James Harkness and Caleb Arnold
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Wall, now alone surviving of my mother's ten children. The reader will pardon this brief digression from the main subject, personal to the writer, because of his line- al descent on several lines from those who were so un- mercifully persecuted.
There is a tradition in the family far back that the first Lawrence Southwick came to this country early as 1627, or 1630, but the first record of him appears in 1639, the 24th day of April of which year he and his wife Cassandra were baptised and admitted to member- ship of the first church in Salem, and Sept. 6, the same year, he was admitted by the General Court a freeman of the Massachusetts colony. They appear to have joined the Quakers soon after the first ones came from England. Their son Daniel, who was so persecuted, was ancestor of all the Southwicks in this county, including the present Register of Probate, F. W. Southwick, Esq., of Worcester, whose line of descent runs through Dan- iel Jr., Jonathan, John, and Dr. Moses D., all resident in what is now Blackstone, Uxbridge, or vicinity.
Another of my ancestors who was driven from Massachusetts on account of his religious opinions was Thomas Arnold, who came to America in the ship "Plain Joan," in May, 1635, and was admitted a freeman of Massachusetts Colony May 13, 1640, at Boston, and af- terwards settled in Watertown. In October, 1651, he was fined 20 shillings by the court for offence against the law concerning baptism. April 2, 1654, he was fined five pounds for neglecting public worship 20 days. April 2, 1655, he was fined ten pounds for neglecting public worship for forty days, and his land was levied on
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to pay it. He was probably a Baptist, as this was be- fore there is any record of any Quakers here, but his descendants became Quakers, and the principle for which he suffered was the same. Soon after the beginning of the Quaker persecutions he sold out his estate in Water- town and removed to Providence, R. I., where he labored side by side with Roger Williams and others in the founding of a colony on the principles of free religious toleration. He eventually settled in the valley of the Mo- shassuck, near where stands the oldest Quaker meeting house in Rhode Island, in what used to be called "Low- er Smithfield " after the division of the original town and county of Providence into townships. Here he died in September, 1674, leaving a widow, Phebe, who was daughter of George Parkhurst of Watertown, three sons, Richard, John, and Eleazar, and two daughters, Elizabeth and Susannah, wives respectively of Samuel Comstock and John Farnum. Between these five child- ren the extensive landed estate of the father in northern Rhode Island, where they left many descendants, was divided. Richard Arnold and his brother-in-law Samuel Comstock, both ancestors of mine, were the first settlers about 1666, in that part of the original township of Providence, afterwards Smithfield, and now Woonsocket. Richard Arnold built the first saw mill in Woonsocket, near the falls, on the Globe Village side of the river. He spent his last days on the old homestead of his father Thomas in the valley of the Moshassuck, where he died April 22,1710, leaving his landed estate at Woonsocket to his sons Richard, Jr., and John, and to his son Thomas and son-in-law Thomas Steere, husband of his daughter Mary, he left the remainder of his estate, at Moshassuck,
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except the use during life of the homestead where he last lived, to his widow Sarah (Angel). By his will he made the express provision that "Toby, my negro ser- vant, serve with my son Thomas till he comes to the age of 25 years, which will be in February 1716, and that then my son set him free, and give him two suits of apparel, a good narrow axe, a broad hoe, and one scythe with the tackling fit for mowing, and 20 shillings in money." This was when slavery existed in Rhode Is- land, and if others at that time had followed this noble example, slavery would have come to an end in this country over 150 years before it did, and that without internal political strife and civil war. This Richard Arnold, senior, was a man of superior abilities, and occu- pied many influential positions, including those of mem- ber of the General Assembly of the Province, one of the Assistants or Council of the Governor, and a mem- ber of the Continental Congress. Under the adminis- tration of Sir Edmund Andros, 1686-9, he was given a seat in his Council. His brother-in-law, Samuel Com- stock, settled west of him, westerly of Union Village.
Richard Arnold Jr., inherited and settled upon the western portion of his father's estate in Woonsocket, which included Union Village, and his brother John set- tled on the easterly part extending to the falls and in- cluding Globe Village. They were the organizers of the Society of Friends in northern Rhode Island, and the builders of the first Friends' meeting house in 1719, which stood on the site of the present one in Woonsocket. Other descendants of the first Thomas Arnold were among the first Quakers in the Moshassuck Valley, at what used to be called "Lower Smithfield," now the
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town of Lincoln, where the first Friends' meeting house erected in Rhode Island, which is still standing, was built by them in 1704, and in Providence where the orig- inal Friends' meeting there, also still standing, was built by them in 1724.
This Richard Arnold, Jr., who was my great-grand- father, resided not far from the Quaker meeting house in the old Union Village, Woonsocket, in the house still standing where his son, Judge Thomas Arnold, and grandson, Chief Justice Peleg Arnold, all Quakers, af- terwards lived, and where their descendant, Albert Mow- ery, now resides. Richard Arnold, Jr. married Mary Woodward, and had six sons and one daughter Mary, the latter being wife of David Wilkinson, son of Samu- el Wilkinson, who was grandfather of Hannah Wilkin. son, wife of Samuel Slater, the father of cotton manu- facture in the United States. All these children of Richard Arnold, Jr., married and settled on estates in the vicinity of their father, in old Smithfield, now Woonsocket. One of the six sons of Richard Arnold, Jr., was my great grandfather Joseph Arnold, a hotel keeper and many years Town Clerk of old Smithfield, of whom it is recorded that "he was a man of sterling qualities and held in high esteem by his fellow towns- men, and that at a time when the value of a negro slave in Rhode Island was £70, he was an ardent and con- scientious anti-slavery man, so much so that on his at- tendance at the yearly meetings of the Friends in New- port he would not stop at the hotels or houses of those who held slaves." This Joseph Arnold's wife was Pa- tience Wilkinson, sister of the David Wilkinson above mentioned, and their daughter Patience, born May 14,
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1738, was my grandmother, the first wife of my grand- father Thomas Wall, who resided on her father's home- stead where their son Caleb Wall, my father, was born, June 9, 1765. The old house of my great-grandfather Joseph Arnold stood on the site of the residence of the late John and Eliza Osborne in Woonsocket where their daughters who are descendants of the second Richard Arnold still live, a locality which was formerly the cen- tre of quite a large mercantile and financial business, in the good old "Smithfield Union Bank" Village times, of over half a century ago, when Walter Allen was Presi- dent of the bank, his son-in-law John Osborne, Cashier, and Christopher Almy, Post Master, the Woonsocket Post Office being then at the " Old Bank" Village to ac- commodate the first line of mail stages between Provi- dence and Worcester which ran through that village, by the old Quaker meeting house. This was before the time of railroads, and there are those still living who will call to mind many things regarding that old mail stage route between Worcester and Providence and its drivers fifty years or more ago, including John Bradley, Aaron White, Samuel Lawton, Beriah Curtis, and others well remembered in Worcester and other places along that old route.
The historian of Woonsocket corroborates the tes- timony of the historian of Rhode Island, Gov. Arnold, in the statement, that " The spirit of civil and religious liberty for which Rhode Island has been so distinguished, is due in no small degree to the influence which the Quakers exerted in shaping the politics as well as the religion of the colony in which they had sought refuge, and where, for many years, they were its law givers.
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The Quakers, from whom flow nearly all of the good and perfect gifts in the early history of Rhode Island, after erecting their meeting houses proceeded to estab- lish schools in various localities." Early in 1777, my grandfather, Moses Farnum, and Moses Brown, Thomas Lapham, Job Scott, Elisha Thornton, Samuel and George Arnold, Antipas Earle, and David Steere, were appoint- ed to draw up a plan, which was adopted, establishing a free school among Friends, and Moses Farnum, Moses Brown, Thomas and David Steere, Ezekiel Comstock, Benjamin Arnold, Rufus and George Smith, Daniel Cass, Samuel Aldrich, Gardner Earle, David Buffum, and Thomas Lapham, Jr., all Quakers, were appointed the first School Committee in northern Rhode Island. The yearly meeting established a Friends' school at Ports- mouth, R. I., in 1784, which was removed to Providence in 1819, and which has developed into the present flour- ishing institution there. near Brown University. "The philanthropic zeal of the Quakers in the early times, awoke such an interest in educational matters, that measures were soon after taken to establish public schools which should be free to all."
Such was the kind of persons once not deemed good enough to live in Massachusetts.
The Samuel Gaskill, above referred to, who mar- ried Dec. 30, 1662, Provided Southwick, had a daughter Hannah, born Jan. 2, 1669, who married George Smith, father of John Smith who settled in 1744 in old Men- don, where the first Quaker meeting house was built in 1729. All these were Quakers, and the latter was grand- father of Samuel Smith, who gave the land for the first Quaker meeting house in the south part of Mendon,
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now Blackstone, the latter being father of Samuel Smith, Esq., who was city clerk of Worcester from 1856 to 1877. The Salem records say that the above mentioned "Samuel Gaskill, for attending a meeting held by the Friends, or Quakers, was tried, convicted, and sent to Boston with many others to be whipped. He was also fined £8 for 32 days absence from the ' regular church meeting.'"
Another of the persons banished from Massachu- setts for their religious opinions, was Thomas Macy, one of the first settlers of Newbury, who was prosecuted, fined thirty shillings, and reprimanded for violation of the law of 1658 in harboring four Quakers, two of whom, Wm. Robinson and Marmaduke Stephenson, were after- wards executed upon the gallows, Dec. 27, 1659, as be- fore related. To escape a like fate himself if he re- mained here, Macy "shook the dust from off his feet" and departed for the then uncivilized island of Nantuck- et, beyond the jurisdiction of Massachusetts, with all his worldly goods, accompanied by his wife and children, in an open boat. He encountered a severe storm on the way, but his determined spirit overcame all obstacles, and he landed safely at Nantucket in the fall of 1659. the first white settler there, and the ancestor of a nu- , merous posterity of Quakers on that island, where he found only Indians, some 1500 in number. He was soon joined by Tristram, Peter, and James Coffin, Richard and John Swain, Christopher Hussey, Edward and Nathaniel Starbuck, Robert Pike, Peter Folger, and others from Massachusetts, whose greatest fault was their sympathy with the persecuted Quakers, and whose title to their lands was made by amicable purchase from the Indians
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and whose descendants upon that Quaker island have been as numerous as the " sands of the sea." This Pe- ter Folger, whose daughter Abiah was the mother of Benjamin Franklin, was an earnest opponent of the pro- scriptive laws against the Quakers and Baptists, and wrote a pamphlet strongly urging the repeal of those laws and the cessation of persecutions, regarding the "Indian wars and other calamities that befel the Puri- tans as so many judgments of God in punishment for their heinous offences." The expression of such views was a sufficient offence for the banishment of Folger and others like him from " Puritan " soil. Nantucket be- longed to New York till 1692, when it was annexed to Massachusetts. The quality of the people on this is- land, is well represented in the fact that from this place emanated the first public protest of any associated body in this country against human slavery, about the year 1717, from Nantucket monthly meeting of Friends; and one of the earliest public advocates of the cause of the oppressed Africans was Elihu Coleman of Nantucket, a minister of that Society, who wrote a pamphlet in 1729, entitled, "A Testimony Against that Anti-Christian Practice of Making Slaves of Men." What Quaker of the present day does not feel proud of denominational association with a class of people having such a history ?
To show that the persecution of the Quakers was for their religious opinions, alone, from the first, we have only to read the account of the trial of the first Quak- ers who arrived here from England, previous to the sending of them back, as if the Quakers had not as good a right here as the Pilgrims or Puritans themselves. At the examination of the eight Quakers before referred to,
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who arrived at Boston, Aug. 27, 1656, in the Speedwell, Robert Lock, master, which left Gravesend, May 30, 1656, the following questions were asked and answers given before the Court of Assistants, Sept. 8, 1656:
QUESTION, (by the Court)-Whether you brought not over hither several books wherein are contained the several opin- ions of ye sect or people called Quakers ?
ANSWER, (by the Quakers)-Yea, those that were taken from us.
QUESTION-Wherefore came you into these parts ?
ANSWER-To do the will of God as made known to us by His Spirit in our hearts.
QUESTION-Do you acknowledge the light in every man's conscience that comes into the world is Christ, and that that light would save him if obeyed ?
The answer, as given in their books, was : The light is but one, which is Christ, and all are enlightened with one light. This is called the light of the spirit or conscience, the true teacher.
QUESTION-Whether you own that the Scriptures are the only rule of knowing God and living to Him ?
ANSWER-The eternal word is the rule of our lives, and not the mere written word.
QUESTION-If you had not the Scriptures to direct you, how have you within you that which was before Scripture, that would guide aright ?
ANSWER-That inner light would be a sufficient guido.
QUESTION-Do you acknowledge that Christ is God and man in one person ?
ANSWER-This they will not acknowledge.
QUESTION-Do you acknowledge one God subsisting in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ?
ANSWER-They acknowledge no trinity of persons,
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QUESTION-Do you acknowledge that God and man in one person remain forever a distinct person from God the Fath- er and God ye Holy Ghost and ye saints, notwithstanding their union and communion with him ?
ANSWER-This they will not acknowledge.
QUESTION-Do you acknowledge baptism with water to be an ordinance of God ?
ANSWER-This they will not acknowledge.
The Quakers believed in the inward baptism of the Holy Spirit. The bigoted Puritans would tolerate only their own particular views regarding baptism, by their mode, persecuting both the Baptists for "objecting to the baptism of infants," and the Quakers for their spiritual views regarding this rite as requiring no outward cere- mony.
Thus we see that the ground of persecution of the Quakers, was solely on account of their different views of religion, and their refusal to support the regular es- tablished church and attend its meetings, their aim be- ing to hold meetings of their own and peaceably and quietly express themselves therein in their own way. Because they were not allowed this privilege, those of the Quakers who were unwilling to undergo the terrible penalties and martyrdom impending over their heads if they remained here, sought refuge elsewhere, where they could be allowed the privileges denied them here.
A good illustration of the views for the holding of which the Quakers were persecuted is recorded in the trial of a preacher from Rhode Island, who had ventured on Massachusetts soil, and was brought before the court for blasphemy, charged with being "a deist, an atheist, blasphemer of the Bible, etc.," witnesses being produced
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to show that he had said "the Bible was not the word of God." In his defence, disclaiming the charges made, he fortified his true Christian position by saying that he loved his Redeemer and venerated his Bible; that his Bi- ble told him that "Christ was the word of God and the Bible a record of the divine will." This was what he meant by saying that the Bible was not the word of God; the Word was Christ, the Holy Spirit of God in the heart.
THE BAPTIST AND QUAKER FOUNDERS OF RHODE ISLAND.
In striking contrast with the persecuting spirit of the Puritans of Massachusetts, referred to, let us now consider the humane and truly Christian policy adopted from the first by the founders of Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, who granted free toleration of all relig- ious opinions. When Roger Williams, late in the au- tumn of 1635, was banished from the soil of Massachu- setts because of his religious tenets, he passed through the jurisdiction of Plymouth Colony where he had pre- viously lived two years and was not allowed to remain, into the land of the "uncivilized heathen," traversing alone in mid-winter the deep snows in the forests, as he has himself recorded, "sorely tossed for fourteen weeks in a bitter winter season, not knowing what bed or bread did mean," sheltered only by the rude wigwam of the Indian, till he found the hospitable cabin of Massasoit, the Chief Sachem of the Wampanoags, and father of King Philip, at Mount Hope, in Bristol. Joined here soon afterwards by others from " Puritan " soil, who like him had been driven thence for their differing theological views, he embarked with them there in a canoe and pro-
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ceeded thence around to the head of Narragansett Bay, and there, upon a green slope near a spring, they knelt, and prayed, and chose that spot, which he called " Provi- dence," from "God's merciful providence to him in his distress," for a settlement. Williams and his companions had now passed into the territory of the Narrgansett Indians, of whose Chief Sachem, Canonicus, he obtained a grant of land by amicable purchase, instead of taking it from them by stealth, fraud, or force. "The freedom enjoyed at Providence," says Lossing, "was soon spoken of at Boston, and persecuted men fled thither for refuge. Men of every creed were allowed full liberty of con- science, and lived together happily. The same freedom was allowed in politics as in religion, and there was es- tablished a pure democracy." The Indian Miantonomoh gave them the beautiful Island of " Aquiday," or " Aquid- neck," the Indian name of Rhode Island, for forty fath- oms of white wampum, and upon its northern verge they made the settlement of Portsmouth. The meaning of the Indian word Aquiday, or Aquidneck, is " Peaceable Isle," significant of the grand Christian principles on which the state of Rhode Island was founded by the Baptists and Quakers.
At the time of Roger Williams' sentence of banish- ment from Massachusetts, in the autumn of 1635, he was given only six weeks to depart, his particular offence be- ing that he had called in question the authority of mag- istrates in respect to two things, "one relating to the right to appropriate the lands of the Indians without purchase from them, and the other to the right of the civil power to impose faith and worship." As to the last point, on which there was the widest divulgence, while
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