USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Ipswich > The celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the town of Ipswich, Massachusetts, August 16, 1844 > Part 6
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THE TOWN OF IPSWICHI.
REMARKS OF THE TOAST-MASTER, REV. T. FRANK WATERS.
MR. PRESIDENT, - In deference to the invitation thus ex- tended, and with due regard to the wish of the Committee that has made such provision for this festival, I accept the office assigned me, but for which I find I have neither wit nor wisdom. A certain debt of gratitude, however, rests upon me. There is a tradition in my father's family, I know not how trustworthy, to the effect, that, when the British occupied Boston, my great-grandparents, rather than live under the British flag, left that town, and journeyed eastward ; and that it was somewhere within the borders of this old town that my grandfather first saw the light. We have been waiting one hundred years to make some recogni- tion of the hospitality thus tendered ; and, if any slight act I may do to-day may serve to show our gratitude, I shall be most happy. I am reminded, too, that the office of toast- master for such a banquet is very much like a preface of a book, - something for use rather than for beauty ; something simple and plain, and not intended for the critic's judgment, and, in the estimation of most persons, best when brief. I trust by brevity to merit your approval, if by nothing else.
A : we turn back the page of history, we find that our wor- thy ancestors, in their many prayers and few festal gather- ings, were wont to make devout mention of their king. But we find already within them a marked jealousy of foreign rule ; and we may remember with gratitude that we have to-day the full flower of that which was then in the germ, when we at our festal gathering no longer pledge fealty to a king over seas, but wish health and prosperity to our own Republican President. I offer you, then, as the first senti- ment of this occasion,
" The President of the United States ; "
and in the absence of the President I will ask the band to play " The Star-spangled Banner."
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GOVERNOR ROBINSON'S ADDRESS.
THE TOAST-MASTER. - We have a record that at a very early date the worthy governor of this State, JOIN WINTHROP, showed his regard for this old town, in which ins son lived, by a journey hither through the wilderness on foot; and the regard Ipswich bore the old State has ever been beyond question by her ready response to every demand made upon her both in war and in peace. I give you, therefore, as the second sentiment of this occasion,
" The Commonwealth of Massachusetts,"
and would invite to respond to this toast his Excel- lency the Governor.
ADDRESS OF HIS EXCELLENCY, GEORGE D. ROBINSON, GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, - To all the children and de- scendants of the good old town of Ipswich she gives to-day a welcome from her heart. By her firesides, in her sacred places, amid familiar scenes, there she bids her chosen ones return to drink anew at the fountains of inspiration that hallow and endear and ennoble home, society, state, and country.
Personally I cannot of myself claim to be a descendant of this honored town. My memory has failed me, my re- search has proved fruitless, and I have been struggling all the time since my foot stepped upon the soil this morning, to think of some great-great-great-grandmother that might possibly have lived here, or of some cousin in the nineteenth degree upon whom I could call in case the Committee had not so kindly taken care of me here to-day. But that failing me, and it being iny official privilege and duty to speak for Massachusetts, I desire to say to you that the old Common- wealth herself comes back to the town of Ipswich to-day as one of the town's children. She is younger than Ipswich
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THIE TOWN OF IPSWICHI.
herself. We speak of our ancient Commonwealth. Why, the Massachusetts that we know, that is founded upon the principles expressed in her Constitution which has been her abiding guide for these many years, - that Commonwealth is nearly one hundred and fifty years the junior of the town of Ipswich. This community, and others. like it, scattered all over the Province and through the Colony, as it was then known, under the different charters, controlled by governors of royal appointment - these communities embraced the best inspirations of the people that dwelt in them; and gradually they came, by the development of the ideas that underlay their theory, into the State that we call our own.
Look at it. What concern have we as a State to-day that was not in the control of the towns two hundred years ago ? They took care of all the matters of expenditure ; they pro- vided seats in the meeting-house for the people ; they even selected the leader of the choir, and said who should be the singers in the praise of the Lord ; they took care of the schools and the highways and the poor; they looked after the morals and the behavior of everybody ; they raised troops, and equipped them ; they stood on guard against foes here and foes abroad. It was a State then in its infancy. And those early inhabitants left their impress upon the institu- tions that now we recognize as the expression of the Com- monwealth of Massachusetts. Though many of the customs and ideas of that time excite our curiosity, and provoke sometimes our ridicule, for all that, the people of that time were laying the foundations upon a solid basis. It has not gone for nought that the people stood by the sabbath in that olden time. It will never fail this Commonwealth to adhere to the same principles for a quarter of a thousand years to come.
It has been twice said to-day that one of my predecessors, Governor John Winthrop, walked all the way from Boston to Ipswich. Somehow or other there seemed to my mind to be a kind of intimation that I am a good way from John Winthrop ; that I didn't come down in the same way. But
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GOVERNOR ROBINSON'S ADDRESS.
I have a very strong suspicion, that, if Governor John had had the Eastern Railroad open, he would have bought a ticket on that line-unless the railroad company, with its usual gen- crosity, had offered him a chance to come for nothing. More than that, too ; the governor came down here on Saturday, and, finding that the old parish was in want of a minister, he proceeded the next day, in the quaint language of the time, " to exercise by the way of prophecy." And, since I have discovered that fact, I have been wondering how many more duties were to be put upon the Governor of Massachusetts. If he is to be called upon to travel overland, to imitate his good predecessor, and go Saturdays into every community where there is a meeting-house that has not a pastor, here and there, and exercise himself and the congregation the next day in the way of prophecy, candidates for the governorship will be less numerous than they are now ; and the only re- lief that I have personally for this year is, that, in searching history, I find that no one of my other predecessors has ever done any such thing. All the way down, after we leave Governor John Winthrop, including my immediate prede- cessor, nobody has ever done it. Now I submit to you, that considering all the wealth of intellect, the ability, the fertility, the ingenuity, that we have had in the guberna- torial chair, there is a possible excuse for the Executive to-day if he does not exercise himself on Sunday in the good old way.
Not forgetting the principles that underlie good sound religion, the fathers took along a kindred development, - the development of intelligence, the making of a man in his own brain and mind all that it is possible for him to be. And so they gave us the free school early, - one of the earli- est in the country, perhaps the first, and it may be even the pioneer in the world. One's mind at once traces along down the marvellous line of growth in that direction. He sees the outgrowth, on the one hand and the other, in all the towns and throughout the State, until Massachusetts becomes known for her school system the world over, - known not
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THE TOWN OF IPSWICH.
alone by statistics, not by the adornment of the school- buildings, not by the attractiveness of the pupils, but in the expression of intelligence, the power that is seen in the faces, and manifested in the actions, of the men and women that are in this Commonwealth. And knowing how to stand by the principles of both, how to be religious and how to be also intelligent, they knew also how to be free. Liberty they would have; and they counted every man and institu- tion and officer an enemy to themselves that attempted to thwart their high purpose. It has been narrated to you here how Governor Andros's taxation, or attempted taxation, was resisted by the seven men of this town, even to the point of fine and imprisonment on their part. And yet they staked their issue, their all, on the threshold, because they claimed their rights as citizens to have a part in the deliberations before they should impose rates upon themselves and their fellows for payment. That was under King James II .; that was in 1688; that was in this town. And do you know also, that across the water, in Old England, at the same time, - in the community from which this name was taken, in old Ipswich, -almost on the same day, the people of that parent-town were in mutiny and rebellion against that same king because of his encroachment upon their rights as Eng- lishmen ? You may well join hands to-day, - new Ipswich and old Ipswich, - and bid each other God speed in the better development of human liberty, and in the advance- ment of human rights.
Many glimpses that a man will take as he recounts the old history will be interesting. We cannot help stopping a moment to think of poor Joe Lane who stole the widow's Bible, and got fined fifteen shillings for it, which he was to give to the widow, by the way, and ten shillings more for lying about it. That is good wholesome doctrine. It was bad enough to steal the Bible; but it was worse not to get the covers open, and find out that lying also was sinful. The magistrates at that time were very careful about such invas- ions of propriety. Then we learn that some citizen of this
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GOVERNOR ROBINSON'S ADDRESS.
town, in the good old days, was sentenced to pay a fine of twenty shillings, or to be whipped, for too great familiarity with the devil. The historian does not tell us which course he preferred to take. If that had been stated, we should know what the citizens of Ipswich regard a good whipping as worth. Some hill was named here to-day in the course of the discourse, -" Heartbreak," I believe that is it, - called by that romantic name because of the fate of a poor young man that was fined five pounds, and let off with four pounds, because he undertook to make love to a girl without asking her parents' consent. I would be glad to be assured by the town-fathers to-day that the influence of that penalty upon the young men of Ipswich was so salutary and lasting that no one has ever transgressed from that time to now.
But, ladies and gentlemen, I have no right, in considera- tion of your patience, as well as also of my own time, - the minute of my departure being quite near, - to weary you with many more remarks. These scenes bring up sugges- tions which can never be met elsewhere. The old houses, many of them, stand ; the roads still run around the valleys and up the hills ; the river flows on to the sea ; the rocks are on and by the hills ; the birds are singing still; the sun shines, the rain falls ; men, women, and children are here : and yet, as you pass the doors along the roads, the old faces are gone never to come again ; new faces look out to greet you. And, as you look forward to the time that shall come, you can see even these faces disappearing from the active stage of life, and imagine new forms, new faces, and new lives coming upon this scene to make the Ipswich of the coming time. It will indeed be well if he who shall stand here two hundred and fifty years hence to speak for Massachusetts, - if he, looking upon the history then completed, can say as well for the town as may be said now. It rests with the generation of to-day what the forward movement shall be. We make our history, not in centuries, but in days ; we live, not in multitudes and in communities, but in individual lives ; we carry the town and the state with ourselves and
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THE TOWN OF IPSWICHI.
by ourselves ; and, if the future shall not be so rich in prom- ise and so abundant in fruitage, it may be, perhaps, because we have been negligent in the present.
Two hundred and fifty years from now we shall be for- gotten ; but your visitor to-day, whom I represent, will be here. Massachusetts dies not, because she is in the living and endless life of her people. So, though all visitors shall be missing, though it may be only a tear on the grass that shall overgrow the grave, though it may be a remote de- scendant that will call up the memory or the reference to the present, Massachusetts, in the prophecy of the present, will be here stronger, I take it, than now, broader and greater than to-day, - the Massachusetts of an advanced civiliza- tion, the exponent, I trust, of a correct and high life, and of an enduring faith in all that makes for the development and advancement of men.
I give you, " The Old Town of Ipswich."; May she be for the two hundred and fifty years next to come as faithful to the principles of right, honor, and liberty, as she has been in the past; and her next celebration shall be as glorious as the present.
THE TOAST-MASTER. - I offer you as the next sen- timent on this occasion one that will come home to all your hearts, I am sure : -
" John Winthrop, Jr., and the Original Founders of the Town of Ipswich."
" So live the fathers in their sons ; Their sturdy faith be ours, And ours the love that overruns Its rocky strength with flowers."
A kind Providence still spares an honored descendant of the old governor and his son, whom we had hoped to have had with us in person ; but in his absence I have received a letter, to which I ask your attention. It is from Hon. ROBERT C. WINTHROP of Brookline.
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LETTER OF HON. ROBERT C. WINTHROP.
BROOKLINE, MASS., Aug. 4, 1884.
DEAR SIR, -I pray you to present my grateful acknowl- edgments to the town of Ipswich for the invitation to be present as one of the guests of the town, at the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of its incorporation.
I have not forgotten the old record of my ancestor : "The Governor's son, John Winthrop, went with twelve more to be- gin a plantation at Agawanı, after called Ipswich." This was in March, 1633-34, and was followed by a hardly less interest- ing entry in his Journal on the following 3d of April : "The Governor went on foot to Agawam, and, because the people there wanted a minister, spent the sabbath with them, and ex- ercised by way of prophecy ; and returned home the 10th."
Two generations of my family were thus associated with the first beginnings of Ipswich. John Winthrop, Jr., the founder of the town, was soon afterwards governor of the little Colo- ny on the Connecticut River, under the charter of Lord Say and Sele and Lord Brooke, where he planted Saybrook. He was afterwards the founder of New London, and, having obtained the charter of Connecticut from Charles II., was governor of that Colony for nearly seventeen years. But his ties to Ipswich were not soon severed. There he built a house, and resided there from time to time for several years ; and there was born his eldest son, commonly known as Fitz- John Winthrop, who was governor of Connecticut from 1698 until his death, in 1707.
It would afford me real pleasure to revive these old memo- ries by accepting the invitation of the town, and attending its festival on the 18th inst. : I would even come "on foot," as my ancestor did, and " exercise by the way of prophecy," if I were as young as he then was. But engagements and dis- abilities combine to render it impracticable for me to be with you, and I can only offer you my best wishes for the success of the occasion and the continued prosperity of the town of Ipswich. Believe me, dear sir, very faithfully yours,
ROBE C. WINTHROP.
GEORGE E. FARLEY, Esq., Sec'y of Committee.
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THE TOWN OF IPSWICHI.
THIE TOAST-MASTER. - Another lineal descendant of the fathers of the town is present with us to-day, and I now take pleasure in inviting a response from the Hon. LEVERETT SALTONSTALL.
ADDRESS OF HON. LEVERETT SALTONSTALL.
MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, - There are few men living, who by character and attainments so admirably illustrate the virtues and talents of their ancestors as the excellent gentleman whose letter has just been read. Would that he had felt able to be here to-day to add force to what he has written in response to the sentiment, by his rare elo- quence ! - a duty for which I so painfully feel my own insuf- ficiency, but which in his absence I consider it a high honor to be called upon to perform. And as Governor Winthrop with Sir Richard Saltonstall came over in the " Arbella," and as their sons four or five years later came hither together to found this ancient town, so now my heart throbs with a thrill of ferveut sentiment while following my honored friend in laying a small tribute upon the shrines of these good men and their co-workers.
The sentiment carries us back two hundred and fifty years, to those admirable men and women from whom not we alone, nor New England, but thousands of the bravest and best throughout our great country, love to trace their blood and their virtues, whose piety, wisdom, and incredible conrage laid deep the foundation of those twin columns of religion and civil liberty upon which so vast and majestic a temple has been reared.
How should we rejoice, and, with gratitude all the more profound as the years roll on, celebrate these great anniver- saries and centennials, which recall to us our fathers and mothers of former generations, and which so tend to strengthen the ties between the past and the present, to fill our hearts with thankfulness, and our minds with wonder, as we reflect on their trials and sufferings, their religious faith and zeal,
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MR. RICHARD SALTONSTALL'S HOUSE.
BUILT IN 1635.
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ADDRESS OF IION. LEVERETT SALTONSTALL.
as well as on their far-seeing and prudent management of public affairs ! They seem to have seen through the long vista of years, away ahead, the blossoming and fruiting of these great republican institutions which they here planted, and watered with their very life's blood.
We are prone to picture to ourselves the carly settlers as stern old Puritans, men of middle age, or older, who had laid aside with their youth the desire to enjoy the sweets of life, and who, from long forbearance, had lost the very faculty and sense of enjoying anything but a long sermon preached through the nose. But this is not so. There were many young men of gentle blood, educated at the universities, some owning estates in England. They brought with them their young wives, tenderly nurtured, and accustomed to all the refinements and luxuries of life, to nurse their babes to sleep, with the howling of wolves, and ofttimes the war- whoop of the savage Indian, for a lullaby.
Two centuries and a half is a long time to review ; but in many ways how near it seems to us !
I doubt if there be any people who have so reverently and so devoutly cherished the memory of their ancestry. Fireside traditions have been supplemented by anniversary discourses and sermons and by days of public thanksgiving, which have been observed from the first settlement. Few there are among those of New England extraction who do not feel this interest, for few there are who do not trace their descent from one or more of the first settlers. The late Colonel Thomas HI. Perkins of Boston, whom I well recollect, used to relate that in his youth he had seen an old man who had conversed with Peregrine White, the first child born in the Plymouth Colony -one link only between the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers and him who was living thirty or forty years ago.
I had as a visitor from England last year a descendant, and bearing the name, of Brampton Gurdon, whose daughter Muriel came to this town, when eighteen years of age, with her young husband, Richard Saltonstall. He called me
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THE TOWN OF IPSWICH.
cousin, going back eight generations, to the time of the set- tlement of this town, for a common ancestor. So the knowl- edge we have of the men who settled this and other towns, of their characters, and of the parts they and their descendants took in the great work of founding and forming this mighty nation, in a certain way makes us feel the great history to be much briefer than of two centuries and a half.
At the Endicott festival a few years ago, at the dinner succeeding the oration, the accomplished orator said that he had occasion in the morning to allude to the four " good men," - Conant, Woodbury, Balch, and Palfrey, - who were already settlers in Salem at the landing of Governor Endicott in 1628, and received him, and to Governor Endicott welcoming Gov- ernor Winthrop and Sir Richard Saltonstall in 1630. "Now," said he, " I see before me descendants of those four men, who live in Salem, and still bear their names ; while on my right sit Winthrop and Saltonstall, the latter born and formerly resi- dent in Salem." The late Dean Stanley, who was one of the guests, turned to me, and exclaimed, " What an astonishing statement ! Nothing like it could be said in any town in Eng- land." Is it not quite natural, then, that we feel such honest local pride ? and that the thousands upon thousands descended from our forefathers, who cover the prairies and fill the cities of our broad land, and who have so imparted of their inherit- ance to the homes of their adoption, all recur to their ances- try with deeper sentiment as they grow older ?
I trust my motive may not be misunderstood if I say a few words about one of the founders in whom I may be supposed to feel a special interest, and to have a more intimate acquaint- ance with than with the other worthy men, his associates.
Richard Saltonstall was in 1634 only twenty-four years of age, but a young man of fine education, a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and of most liberal char- acter. He returned with his father (who had to take back his two young daughters after that dreadful winter of 1630- 31), but only to marry and bring back his young bride, Muriel Gurdon, and with her to settle in Ipswich. He made
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ADDRESS OF HON. LEVERETT SALTONSTALL.
several voyages to England for her health, and to look after his estates, but passed the greater part of his life here, taking an active interest in the place and in public affairs. He incurred the displeasure of some of the principal men by opposing a scheme of theirs for a standing council of three to hold office for life, and by writing a book showing it to be too aristocratic in its tendency, but succeeded in defeating the measure after a long and serious struggle and the effort on their part to censure him. He also petitioned the Gen- eral Court to punish two men who brought from Africa two negroes, and that the latter should be returned - the first antislavery petition on record, I believe. Johnson, in his " Wonder-working Providence," says of him, -
" His father gone, young Richard On most valiantly doth war."
His son Nathaniel, born here, settled in Haverhill, where he married the daughter of John Ward, whose father was at one time minister here,1 and was a man of the same enlight- ened and liberal views which characterized his father and his grandfather. Appointed one of the judges to try the witches, he left the bench, and refused to take any part in the matter - an act requiring great courage at that time.
I have this morning seen the old house where Saltonstall is said to have lived. This may or may not be so. But as, in visiting the Holy Sepulchre, this particular spot may be a matter of doubt, yet one thing is certain, here is Mount Zion, and there the Mount of Olives, here the Pool of Siloam, and there the Garden of Gethsemane: so here are the same hills, the same fields, and the same gentle river winding through them, which my ancestors beheld, - the one from early manhood to old age, the other from infancy to manhood, - and where they had their varied experiences of joy, of suf- fering, and of anxiety, and where they exercised their brave spirits, contending against privation and the various dangers of the time.
1 Author of "Simple Cobbler of Agawam."
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THE TOWN OF IPSWICHI.
May we never forget the founders of this town, and what they dared and endured for posterity, nor neglect to cherish and hand down to our children and children's children their sacred memory !
The band played Keller's " American IIymn."
THE TOAST-MASTER. - I cannot forbear repeating that quotation from Cotton Mather, which you have already heard : "Here was a renowned church, con- sisting mostly of such illuminated Christians, that their pastors, in the exercise of their ministry, might think that they had to do, not so much with disciples as with judges."
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