USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > Scituate > The early planters of Scituate; a history of the town of Scituate, Massachusetts, from its establishment to the end of the revolutionary war > Part 25
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During the years which ensued up to 1755, when the personnel was changed, the "profit and advantage" may have been all that the public could desire. In that year, for all sufficient reasons a change was decreed, the com- missioners were deposed and the House with such as the Honorable Council should join appointed its own commit- tee. To this duty Thomas Clapp, having discarded his vestments and put on the uniform of a militia colonel was chosen, with Elisha Barrow of Rochester. John Cushing was added by the Council. They sold the revenue in Ply- mouth County to Seth Bryant for $320 and that in Suffolk was knocked off to the patriot Samuel Adams for $2013: 063:08d.
In 1743, he was made a judge of the Court of Common Pleas for Plymouth County and held this office acceptably for thirty-seven years.
The other Thomas was a son of Deacon Stephen Clapp born in 1703 and graduated from "the College at Cam- bridge" at the age of nineteen. Four years later he was ordained at Windham, Connecticut and preached to that congregation for fourteen years. In 1740 he was chosen "Rector of the College at New Haven."
He came to the college at a time when the revivalist Whitefield and the Evangelist Jonathan Edward were seek- ing to create a general religious awakening and restore the church to the real place of respect and power which it for- merly held and from which they maintained that it had fallen. Clapp and the Rev. Joseph Noyes, a representative New Haven clergyman of the time, with others violently disagreed with Whitefield and Edwards. They sturdily maintained that neither the church nor religion had fallen into decay and decried the work in which the revivalist and his assistant were engaged, as calculated to work a distinct disadvantage to both. A war of pamphlets between them ensued. The clergy and the laity each became aroused and
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separated into two political parties- the evangelists calling themselves the "New Lights" and those of the clergy held responsible for the alleged decline in the power and position of the church the "Old Lights."
Clapp, under whose ministrations it was claimed that religious fervor had languished, was of the latter. It was said of him and the other ministers, that :- "their preaching lacked point and earnestness, and application; their devo- tional services were without warmth and unction; that their labors were not blessed by the Holy Spirit; their people slumbered; the tone of religious life and sentiment, was sinking; and true godliness seemed fast retiring from the land."
He naturally resented this outspoken criticism and being in a position of power manifested his displeasure by expell- ing three of the college students who had attended meetings of the revivalists. This was one of his first acts as Rector. It brought him particularly and prominently to the notice of the Old Light party which was then in the political ascen- dency in Connecticut. It at once adopted and made much of him. The advantage thus obtained, he shrewdly made use of-but for the benefit of the college. In May 1745 he obtained for it from the legislature of Connecticut a broader and more appropriate charter. By this charter the trustees were incorporated under the name of "the President and Fellows of Yale College in New Haven." From this date the name of Yale, which had therefore strictly belonged only to the College Hall, became the name of the College itself. It was Thomas Clapp who gave legal permanency to that which, under Dr. Woolsey had been the name of the "spiritual body" only.
He did more. He obtained from the legislature, grants of public monies and permission to set up a lottery to reap additional funds. With both of these he built the dormitory called Connecticut Hall and the Chapel.
1 Yale College, edited by William L. Kingsley. New York, Henry Holt & Co., 1879. Vol I Page 68.
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In another year it became apparent to him that the New Lights had fully shot their denunciatory bolts. Always honest with himself, a little introspection persuaded him that he had really fallen to a low plane in his religious enthusiasm and fervor. The awakening was characteristic of the man. At the commencement of the revival, under the idea of re- pressing the fanaticism of the followers and imitators of Whitefield and the disorganizing tendency of their proceed- ings, he had thrown himself and had been received into the party of the Old Lights. He now saw his mistake-that notwithstanding the disorders which had accompanied the great religious awakenings the good had preponderated over the evil. The members of the Old Lights seemed really to have lost their earnestness and to have become indifferent to religion.
Always a great friend of the college, and anxiously seek- ing its welfare, he was fearful lest the supremacy of his faction should work to the detriment of that institution. This primarily, and his own honesty and openness of mind, led him gradually to reach a conclusion which eventually al- lied him with his former opponents.
Having once taken this position he began to reconstruct upon a sure and firm basis. He persuaded the corporation to appropriate £28:10S sterling to procure a public Professor of Divinity in the college and was later installed in the posi- tion himself. He did much for the spiritual life of the college from this vantage point and continued his practical interest in the educational side as well.
These activities, his bold change of front and his arbitrary action upon occasion, of course made him enemies which grew in numbers as the members of the Old Light party began to realize that he was not only deserting them but was gaining and enjoying the same popularity among his new friends that he had formerly held with them.
They began the attack. They alleged that he was arbi- trary in governing the college, which was probably true, and in his treatement of the students,-which was quite as
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probably untrue. They said, without the slightest semblance of truth, that he fixed the annual expenses of the under- graduates at a grossly exorbitant figure, in order that he might thereby carry forward the ambitious plans which he had for the enlargement and advancement of the college.
Finally in 1763 they had made such progress toward undermining him, that a numerously signed memorial was presented to the Legislature in which that body was asked to enact a law providing for :---
"an appeal from any and every sentence given by the authority of the College (President Clapp), to the Governor and Council of the colony for the time being, and that the said Legislature would immediately issue forth a Committee of Visitation, enabling some suit- able persons to inquire into all the affairs of said College and either of themselves rectify all abuses which they may discover, or make report of what they shall find, with their opinions thereon to the Assembly at their next session."
In the fight which followed the presentation of this memorial, the ablest jurists of the colony were arrayed upon its side. Clapp was alone but undismayed. He denied that the Legislature was either the founder of the college or that it had in any sense authority of visitation over it. He was blazing the way for Webster's tremendous argu- ment fifty-five years later in the Dartmouth College case. He tactfully told the Assembly, "that our especial respect and gratitude is due to it as the great benefactors of the college," "but", he thundered back "the ministers who made the first donations in 1700 were its founders. They were its lawful visitors and that right of visitation passed to the trustees under the charter and now resides in the President and Fellows."
He successfully impressed this view upon his auditors. The Assembly supported him. As he himself naively put it :----
"When these arguments were considered by the hon-
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orable the General Assembly, but very few appeared to be of the opinion that the Assembly were the founders of the College, and so they acted nothing upon the memorial; and it is generally supposed that this question will never be publicly moved again."
It never was. The Scituate clergyman had saved to its patrons and the country the foundation stones of a great university. He had upheld the enunciation of Lord Mans- field "that the corporations of the universities are lay corpor- ations, and that the crown cannot take away from them any rights that have been formerly subsisting in them under old charters or prescriptive usage." He had won for himself the encomiums of the matchless Webster and the great English Chancellor Kent who said of his argument seventy years later, "He grounded himself upon English authorities in the true style of a well read lawyer."
He had saved Yale College; but he did not live to see it benefit by his labor. The enemies which he had made con- tinued to attack both him and the institution-not openly but insidiously, until his health was broken and at the end of three years he resigned.
He died at New Haven, January 7, 1767. As his enemies also passed away a true appreciation of his great devotion, his honesty and loyalty became uppermost and fixed.
The stone placed by a succeeding and appreciative gener- ation to his memory bears this inscription :-
"Here lyeth interred the body of the revered and learn- ed Mr. Thomas Clap, the late President of Yale College in New Haven; a truly great man, a gentleman of superior natural genious, most assiduous application and indefatigable industry. In the various branches of learning he greatly excelled; an accomplished in- structor; a patron of the College; a great divine, bold for the truth; a zealous promoter and defender of the doctrines of grace; of unaffected piety, and a pattern of every virtue; the tenderest of fathers and best of friends; the glory of learning and ornament of religion;
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for thirteen years the faithful and much respected pas- tor of the Church in Windham; and near twenty-seven years, the laborious and principal President of the Col- lege and served his own generation by the will of God. With serenity and calmness he fell on sleep the 8th day of January 1767 in his sixty-fourth year.
"Death, great proprietor of all, 'Tis thine to tread our empires, And to quench the stars."
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THE TURNERS
The progenitors of the family of Turner whose members have found so many important places in the life of the town, the colony, the province and of the Commonwealth was Humphrey, a tanner who came out of Devonshire in 1628 to New Plymouth. He built a house there and re- mained for five years. In 1633 he sold it to Josias Wins- low for eight pounds. The price paid ($26.662-3) affords very accurate evidence of the crudity of the structure which he and his family called home. The one in Scituate to which he brought them the same year was of the same type and not much better. It was on the Driftway. He also had the fourth lot on Kent Street. Three years later he had a grant of eighty acres from the Colony Court on the North River near the present Union Bridge in Norwell. Here he erected the first tannery in the Colony f and for years received the hides from all the Pilgrim farmers until a "leather mill" was erected upon Town brook in Plymouth by Nathaniel Thomas. #
When he left Plymouth for Scituate he was amicably "dismissed" from the church body of the former place, in case he, Annable, Gilson, Foster, Rowley and Cobb who came with, or had immediately preceded him, "join in a body at Scituate." He was one of the seventeen organiz- ers of the church here under the pastorate of Mr. Lothrop.
His family consisted of eight children. No mention is made of his wife in the enumeration of the members of the First Church by its minister, although those of the others who were married appear in the list. Neither is there any record of her death to be found. Winsor says that she was Lydia Gainer and deceased before her husband. The children were John, Senior, so-called, Joseph, John call-
Plymouth Colony Records Vol II Page 68.
Davis,-Ancient Landmarks of Plymouth Page 144.
HUMPHREY TUAREL
IN 1694 AND DILD IN SORTUXTE
DAVID TURNER F058
671 800. AMOS TURNER 1739
MARY SIS WIFE 1729
1870 CAPT SAMUEL TURNER 1750 ABIGALL HIS WIFE 1744 1703 NATHANIEL THOR BON 1234 1720 ABIGAIL THER DABEITER 1732
1706 CAFT. JAMES TURNER 1776 MARY HIS WIFE AGED 73 1736 LYDIA THEIR DAVENTER 1740
1736 LEFT SETH TURNER 174G.
THE HUMPHREY TURNER MONUMENT, Meetinghouse Lane Cemetery, Scituate.
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THE TURNERS
ed by his father "young John" i and by others John Junior, Daniel, Nathaniel, Thomas, Mary, the second wife of Wil- liam Barker and Lydia, the wife of James Doughty.
When the town was incorporated, the father of this family at once was called into public affairs. He was a constable, a surveyor of highways, a grand and a traverse juryman. In the latter capacity he sat upon the first jury impannelled in the colony to try a white man for the murder of an Indian. John Billington of Plymouth had been hang- ed after a jury trial, eight years before (1630) for the murder of his neighbor Newcome or New-Comin, but the indictment of Thomas Jackson, Richard Stinnings, Arthur Peach and Daniel Crosse for the robbery and murder of the Indian Penowanyanquis on the trial of which Humphrey Turner sat, was the first opportunity offerred the fore- fathers to show Massasoit their ability and willingness to scrupulously keep their treaty faith with him. The trial took place before Governor Prence, William Bradford, Edward Winslow, Miles Standish and John Alden and John Jenney +, John Browne and John Atwood, Assistants. Upon the jury with Turner sat Edward Foster, the lawyer, Elder William Hatch and Richard Sealis, his neighbors, John Peabody, a first citizen of Duxbury, John Winslow, the son of the Governor, and Samuel Hinckley, whose son Thomas was afterward the colony's chief executive. Cross broke jail and escaped, but the others had sentence of death pronounced; "vizt, to be taken from the place where they were to the place from whence they came, and thence to the place of execution, and there to be hanged by the neck
¿ The historians of Scituate, Duxbury and Hanover have referred to this son as "young son John" and allege that he was so named at the request of a godfather. Savage has it that this is mere tradition and says "but such folly should not have been allowed" (Gen. Reg. Vol IV Page 346). His father referred to him as "my son young John Turner". (Plymouth Colony
Records (Wills) Vol III P 71.)
¿ The American ancestry of Judge Charles H. Jenney of the Superior Court of Massachusetts.
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THE EARLY PLANTERS OF SCITUATE
untill their bodyes were dead, which was executed accord- ingly."
From 1640 for fourteen years consecutively, save for the year 1643, Humphrey Turner was a deputy from Scituate to the Colony Court and meantime was commissioned by that body and the town to perform important public duties. He assisted in fixing the bounds of the Hatherly grant made by Prence and Collier; was on the committee to dispose of the land on the "Two Miles" to the residents thereon; designat- ed with two others to settle the uncertain bounds of the land of William Randall and active in protecting the "com- mon lands" of the town against trespassers.
The provisions of his will give an excellent insight into his chararter, and contradict as well the very prevalent im- pression, that the pilgrim parent was a stern and unforgiving one. Humphrey Turner's second son Joseph was a scape- goat and ne'er-do-well. He had been "found guilty of many abominable crimes;" had been arrested and escaped from the custody of the under marshal thereby causing the dismissal of that functionary from office; had participated in riotous trespasses and with an unbridled tongue had traduced the wives and sisters of his neighbors. He had frequently been in the turbulence which ensued from these actions, before the death of his father; and that parent well knew his propensity for trouble. Like so many affec- tionate fathers since, and lacking the same good judgment, he gave to this son the greatest portion out of his personal estate, more than four times that given to his eldest son. It did him no good. Just before his father died he was sued for slander by Charles Stockbridge and his wife, and a judgment of one hundred pounds recovered against him. The record does not recite that the execution which issued thereon was satisfied. He was also sued by John Jacob for a similar cause of action. He married Bathsheba, the daughter of Peter Hobart of Hingham fand perhaps the influence of this lady produced a change for the better.
Savage, Gen. Reg. Vol IV Page 347.
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THE TURNERS
He certainly, through this or other means, had established himself in the confidence of his neighbors in 1673 and had entered Phillip's War in the capacity of ensign. He joined the expedition against the Narragansetts and being severely wounded was invalided home. The town then "chose Serj. John Damon to go with Joseph Turner and procure a cure for him; also to support him at the Town's expense so long as he liveth." He refused thus to be made a pauper; but recovering sufficiently from his wounds through the "cure" which his neighbor Damon had obtained for him, rejoined the troops now led by Governor Josias Winslow in person, and with him was in the battle at Narragansett Fort Decem- ber 19, 1675. In 1681 he was "freed from training" by the Colony Court on account of his first service. t
The eldest son of Humphrey Turner, John, married Mary, « the granddaughter of Elder Brewster, on the twelfth day of November 1645. He succeeded to the tannery of his father with his brother Thomas. Like his father he held numerous town offices and was in the Narragansett cam- paign with his brother Joseph. His great affection was for his brother of the same name. These two were much attached to one another. They lived and worked in a com- plete harmony. If a committee was to be chosen to carry forward some action for the town, the name of both appeared upon it; if an inquest was to be held to inquire the cause of death of a Scituate freeman, both would be named for it, if one. They served together upon juries in the Court at Plymouth and they made division of lands between their neighbors. In 1647 the Colony Court permitted the pur- chasers and freemen of Scituate to dispose of the common lands. Soon thereafter these gave it over to the municipal- ity and in the town meetings which followed for a decade, John Turner, Senior, and John Turner, Junior, were more frequently assigned to the performance of this duty than any other persons.
¿ Plymouth Colony Records Vol VI Page 64.
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THE EARLY PLANTERS OF SCITUATE
They did not actively participate in the acrimonious squabble that for a long time was kept up between the north and south religious societies although each was attach- ed to a rival church gathering. Indeed, so amiable was the elder John that he was influential and forceful in an at- tempt to bring the two together, which nearly succeeded.
The younger John, while active, was not physically strong. On this account he was freed from bearing arms and training. He was one of the local Council of War however; and a colonial collector of the excise upon "tarr, boards and oysters." He married Ann James, the sister of the shipbuilder at the Harbor, and from them descended John Bryant Turner, Squire Bry., born in 1786, the intimate of John Quincy Adams. A genuinely strong fondness for each other existed between these two men. It led Turner to refuse an election to Congress in 1830 in order that his friend might occupy a seat in the lower branch of the National Legislature. Indeed it is highly probable that Turner himself suggested it and is the person referred to by Morse 1, as remarking "that in his opinion the accept- ance of this position by an Ex-President instead of degrad- ing the individual would elevate the representative char- acter." Mr. Adams replied that he, "had in that respect no scruple whatever. No person could be degraded by serving the people as a Representative in Congress. Nor in my opinion would an ex-President of the United States be de- graded by serving as a Selectman of his town, if elected thereto by the people." Squire Turner's maternal grand- father was also the grandsire of that remarkable and able civil engineer, Gridley Bryant of Scituate, who built the first railroad # in Massachusetts-the railroad over which was
¡ John Quincy Adams. By John T. Morse, Jr. (Am. Statesman Series) page 226.
į Charles Francis Adams says of him :- "Bryant was of that Scituate family which seventy-five years before had furnished Braintree its active minded minister. x x x x This famous structure (the railroad) marked an epoch not only in the history of Quincy but in that of the United States; and in every school
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THE TURNERS
conveyed the huge granite blocks now composing the shaft on Bunker's hill, to the sea.
The eldest son of young John Turner was David, born in 1694 and graduated from Harvard College at the age of twenty-four. He was ordained to the ministry and settled over the parish in Rehoboth as its second pastor, in 1721. "He studied medicine some," says a descendant; "was styled Dr. and practised among his parishioners." He, like so many of the Turner family, was a very ready wit and apt at repartee. His pastorate was a long one, concluded only by his death in 1757.
The youngest son of Humphrey Turner, Thomas, had a son of the same name who practised law in Scituate from 1690 until the time of his death in 1721. He was a repre- sentative in the provincial legislature in 1711 and served with Nathaniel Byfield, Benjamin Lynde and Addington Davenport f upon numerous committees. These were all
history, it is mentioned as the most notable event during the ad- ministration of the younger Adams. Its projector Gridley Bryant has given this account of how he came to construct it, and of the obstacles he had to overcome. His story of private apathy and legislative obstruction reads like a repetition of the similar experience of George Stephenson at nearly the same time in England; and, while his project was looked upon as "visionary and chimerical" on the exchange, at the State House, it was solemnly argued that corporations in abundance already existed, and that it was wrong to take people's land under eminent domain, for purposes of more than questionable utility. Finally the success of the enterprise was altogether due to the munificence and public spirit of one of the most eminent and energetic of Boston merchants at a period when Boston still boasted of a race of merchants foremost in trade .- Col. Thomas Handasyd Perkins. He supplied all the funds needed to build the railway, over which, on the 7th of October 1826, Bryant passed his first train of cars. (Three Episodes of Massachusetts History Vol II Page 926). See also Memorial History of Boston Vol IV pages 116-120.
+ A son of this Judge Davenport, Addington Davenport, Jr., being defeated for Attorney General of the province, went to England in 1732, obtained a master's degree at Oxford and having been ordained, came to Hanover and established the first church of England in Plymouth County-St. Andrews at Hanover. He was its first rector.
(Washburn's Judicial History of Mass.) page 207.
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able men of their time and Turner's selection to act with them speaks highly for his abilities and legal qualifications. He was also on the committees for promoting the trade of the province; to take account with the treasurer and destroy some thirty-five thousand dollars' worth of torn and defaced bills of colonial currency which by reason of this condition had become no longer serviceable. f He was returned in 1717 and again the following year.
Still another member of the Turner family to be honored with place in the Massachusetts legislative assembly of the provincial period was Major Amos, who served as represnt- ative from Scituate in the years 1726, 1727, 1728 and 1732. He did not attract much attention. In those years there existed a Province fund of £50,000 held by Trustees and created for the purpose of being loaned upon "good security" or first mortgages of real property to such as should be approved in the various towns, according to their population. Major Turner had, some years before, being chosen as representative, availed himself of this fund to obtain a mortgage upon his farm. He was three years in arrears of the payment of interest. It may be that he had a purpose in mind when he was first elected; or it may have been a mere happening that his fellow members in 1726 re- mitted this interest "because he sustained great loss in the burning of his barn." # This was his only legislative ac- complishment in the four years of his service. At this day it looks of doubtful propriety-the security having been diminished, the interest should therefore be rebated.
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