USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880, Vol. II > Part 37
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NOTE. - The writer has a small manuscript " Benjamin Colman, His Book." It contains book which has on the inside of the front cover, reports of sermons preached at "Chambridge," " Joseph Baxter, His Book, Anno 1689," and chiefly by Rev. Nathaniel Gookin, 1690-92.
CHAPTER VII.
THE FRENCH PROTESTANTS IN BOSTON. - THE LIFE OF PETER FANEUIL. - THE GIFT OF FANEUIL HALL TO THE TOWN.
BY CHARLES C. SMITH. Treasurer of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
T `HE Edict of Nantes was designed to give security to Protestantism in France, and to put an end to the religious wars which had long dis- tracted the kingdom. It was signed by Henry IV. on the 15th of April, 1598, - a day universally recognized as one of the great landmarks in French history. By its provisions the French Protestants were to have liberty to go or to reside wherever they chose within the kingdom, without being com- pelled to do any act which should violate their consciences. All the col- leges, schools, and hospitals were opened to them; and they could found schools and colleges of their own, and publish religious books in the cities where their worship was authorized. They could be admitted to all offices and employments, without subjecting themselves before admission to any ceremonies or oaths contrary to their consciences. In every city and town they could have a place of burial. No child could be taken from his parents to be brought up in another religion. Parents could provide by will for the education of their children. Protestant ministers were exempted from ser- vice in the watch or the guards, and from some other liabilities. Disin- heritance on account of religion was made unlawful.1 Such was in substance the supreme law of the kingdom down to the revocation of the Edict by Louis XIV., on the 17th of October, 1685,2- an act which, it has been justly said, inflicted a deeper wound on France than all the combined dis- asters of the closing years of his reign.3 But even before that time means had been found to evade its provisions and to restrict the benefits which it was designed to secure to the Protestants. So early as 1662, some of the inhabitants of Rochelle, disheartened by long-continued oppression, turned their thoughts to Massachusetts, with the view of seeking more peaceful homes on this side of the Atlantic ; and in the records of the General Court at the session in October of that year is the following entry : -
3 Poirson, Histoire de Henri IV., ii. 522, 523.
1 Martin, Histoire de France, x. 423, 424.
2 Ibid., xiv. 47.
VOL. II .- 32.
250
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
"In answer to the petition of John Touton, of Rochelle, in France, doctor chirurgeon, in behalf of himself and others, that himself and other Protestants, inhabi- tants of Rochelle, who, for their religion sake, are outed and expelled from their habi- tations and dwellings, etc., might have liberty to come hither, here to inhabit, etc., as in said petition on file appears, the Court judgeth it meet to grant this petition." 1
Touton himself accordingly came over, and was at Rehoboth in 1675; but it is not known whether any one accompanied him.2 His name is not in the list of freemen, either in Massachusetts or in Plymouth.
On the revocation of the Edict there was a great flight of Protestants from France, - industrious and useful citizens, who could be ill-spared from their own land, and who carried a new element of strength wherever they went. Beside those who sought refuge in England, Ireland, and Holland, considerable numbers came to America. Among them were not a few whose descendants have filled a conspicuous place in our history; and it is a noteworthy circumstance that three of the nine Presidents of the Old Congress were of Huguenot descent, - Henry Laurens, of South Carolina, John Jay, of New York, afterward Chief-Justice of the United States, and Elias Boudinot, of New Jersey.3 The first considerable company which came to Massachusetts arrived in the summer of 1686, and immediately applied to the inter-charter Government for permission to settle here. Under date of July 12, the Council Record recites : -
" Upon application of the French Protestants (lately arrived from St. Christopher's) to the President for admission to reside and dwell in this his Majesty's Dominion, and to bring in their effects and concerns here, - Ordered, that upon the taking the Oath of Allegiance before the President and under his hand and seal of his Majesty's Territory and Dominion, they be allowed to reside and dwell in his Majesty's said Dominion, and to proceed from hence and return hither as freely as any other of his Majesty's subjects ; and this to be an order for all such French Protestants that shall or may come into this his Majesty's Territory and Dominion." 4
These immigrants appear to have arrived in a very destitute condition ; and a few weeks later- August 5 -the Council took measures for the relief of the suffering French. A brief was ordered to be "drawn up and printed, and read in all meeting-houses, to supply the necessities of the French lately arrived here in great distress." This brief recites that -
" There are lately arrived fifteen French families, with a religious Protestant minister, who are in all - men, women, and children -more than fourscore souls, and are such as fled from France for religion's sake ; and by their long passage at sea their doctor and twelve men are dead, and by other inconveniences the living are reduced to great sickness and poverty, and therefore objects of a true Christian charity. Also, fifty per- sons-men, women, and children - which were by the cruelty of the Spaniards driven off from Elutheria (an island of the Bohemiahs), naked and in distress, as also many
1 Mass. Col. Records, vol. iv., part ii., p. 67.
2 Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, iv. 315.
$ 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., ii. 36.
4 MS. copy of the Council Records (in the office of the Secretary of State), p. 52.
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THE FRENCH PROTESTANTS IN BOSTON.
other poor French Protestants, are daily expected (as letters inform), who will bring further distress and charge with them. The President and Council have intreated Captain Elisha Hutchinson and Captain Samuel Sewall to receive and distribute the same among them, according to the direction of the President and Council from time to time for their respective necessities, and to whom such as are betrusted in. the several towns are desired to return what shall be collected ; and the ministers in the several towns are desired to publish this order, and to put forward the people in their charity." 1
In the early part of September a vessel arrived at Salem with some of these unfortunate persons; and on the 27th of that month the Council -
" Ordered, that the money lately gathered at Salem by way of contribution for the relief of the poor, distressed French Protestants be returned thither for the necessary support of the French lately arrived there, and to be distributed according to discre- tion." 2
Who the minister was with the company from St. Christopher's is not known; and we are equally ignorant as to the date when a French church was first organized in Boston. From letters preserved among the Mather Papers in the Prince Library, and from other sources, it appears that a minister by the name of Laurent Vandenbosch was here in the early part of 1686, before the arrival of this company ; but it is not known when he came nor how long he remained. While here he made himself obnoxious by joining persons in marriage contrary to law and custom, and by some other irregular acts. Subsequently he went to New York, where he became minister of a Huguenot church on Staten Island. In New York he managed to get into trouble again, and was dismissed from his church; and he finally went to Maryland.3 He was apparently followed as minister of the Boston church by David de Bonrepos, who is mentioned as "our minister " in the Report of a French Protestant Refugee in Boston sent to Geneva about the end of 1687, or the beginning of 1688.4 At that time the number of French here was very small. "Here in Boston," says the Refugee, writing in November, 1687, " there are not more than twenty French families, and
1 MS. copy of the Council Records, p. 67.
2 Ibid., pp. 79, 80. See also Bentley's Descrip- tion of Salem, in 1 Mass. Hist. Coll., vi. 264, 265, and Felt's Annals of Salem, ii. 242, 404, where it is stated that the amount of the contribution in Salem was £26.
3 Mather Papers, vi. 6, 20 ; 5 Mass. Hist. Coll., v. 98; Andros Tracts, ii. 36, 37 ; Savage, Genea- logical Dictionary, iv. 364; Magazine of Amer- ican History, i. 94.
4 Snow (History of Boston, p. 200) mentions the manuscript notes, by Cotton Mather, of two sermons preached in Boston Sept. 12 and Oct. 7, 1686, by the Rev. Mr. Laurie, now in the Library of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and says it is apparent from their tenor that Mr. Laurie was one of the Huguenot refugees. A
part of one of the leaves containing these notes is torn off; but there is not a word about the Huguenots in the part now remaining, and there is scarcely a doubt that Snow was mistaken in his inference, and that "Mr. Laurie " was the Rev. Gilbert Laurie, of whom Savage says (Genealogical Dictionary, iii. 59) that he was in "Boston, 1686; went to preach that year, in absence of Moody, at Portsmouth ; was probably a Scotchman, and may be presumed to have gone home in 1689." He was probably the "Mr. Lowry " who is mentioned in a letter of Jacob Jesson, dated London, June 12, 1686, as a young man of good reputation, who was about to sail for New England. (See Mather Papers, vi. 17.) Both sermons appear to have been preached in the Second Church.
252
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
they are every day diminishing on account of departing for the country to buy or hire land, and to strive to make some settlement. They are expected this spring from all quarters. Two young men have lately arrived from Carolina, who give some news of that colony."1 De Bonrepos is believed to have remained here about two years; and in 1689 he became minister of the church at New Rochelle, near New York.2
Nothing is now known about the history of the church for the next seven or eight years, or whether it had any settled ministers; but it is not prob- able that the members were left wholly without pastoral care during this period.3 At length, in 1696, the Rev. Pierre Daillé was called to take charge of the church. He was then about forty-eight years of age, and had been in America since 1683, having been minister of a French church in New York, and at the same time engaged in missionary work in that neighborhood.4 He was a man of ability, of exemplary character; and of agreeable manners, and he soon won the confidence and respect of the community. Previously to his coming to Boston he had been one of In- crease Mather's correspondents; and such were his relations with his brother ministers that when Cotton Mather's wife died in November, 1713, he was selected as one of the pall-bearers.5 His ministry here extended over nearly twenty years, till his death May 20, 1715.6 He was married
1 Report of a French Protestant Refugee in Boston, 1687. Translated from the French by E. T. Fisher (Brooklyn, N. Y. 1868), pp. 34, 35. A considerable number of the early immigrants settled at Oxford, about fifty miles southwest from Boston, where they remained until 1696, when the settlement was broken up by an Indian massacre. An account of this community by the Rev. Dr. Holmes is in 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. ii; 'and their history has recently formed the subject of a monograph by Mr. George F. Daniels, entitled The Huguenots in the Nipmuck Country. Anthony Sigourney and some others who were afterward at Boston were among the settlers at Oxford. [See also Historical Collec- tions, by Holmes Ammidown, 1874. There is in Suffolk Deeds, xiv, 212, a list of persons natu- ralized Jan. 5, 1688, entered "at the desire of Gabriel. Bernon " July 20, 1688, and this Ber- non's name is on the list, which is printed in Agnew's Protestant Exiles, London, 1871, i. 46. See Sewall Papers, ii. 262 .- ED.]
2 Information furnished to the writer by the Rev. Charles W. Baird, D. D., of Rye, N. Y., who has been engaged for several years in col- lecting materials for a History of the Huguenot Emigration to America.
8 In a petition of the inhabitants of Oxford to the General Court, in 1699, it is stated that their former minister, the Rev. Daniel Bondet, left Oxford almost two years before the settle- ment was broken up by the Indians ; and in a letter from Mr. Bondet to Lord Cornbury, written
in 1702, he says that he remained in Massachu- setts two years after leaving Oxford. See Daniels, Huguenots in the Nipmuck Country, pp. 88-90 120-122; Documentary History of New York, iii. 929-931. As Oxford was aban- doned in the summer of 1696, Bondet must have left there in 1694 ; and it is not improbable that he had charge of the Boston church during these two years. This supposition derives some sup- port from a letter from Bondet to Increase Mather, written in January, 1697-98, in which he desires that his person and labors should be re- called to the memory of the Boston ministers. Huguenots in the Nipmuck Country, pp. 118, 119. [Drake, Town of Roxbury, 172, says that the Rev. Nehemiah Walter, of Roxbury, who had acquired the language at Annapolis, in Nova Scotia, sometimes preached to them in their own tongue. - ED.]
4 Notice of Rev. Pierre Daillé in the Ameri- can Magazine of History, i. 92, 93, 96.
6 5 Mass. Hist. Coll., vi. 407.
6 This is the date given in the notice of his death in the Boston News-Letter of May 23, 1715. "On Friday morning last, the 20th current, Dyed here the Reverend Mr. Peter Daillé, Pastor of the French Congregation, aged about 66 years. He was a person of great Piety, Charity, affable and courteous Behaviour, and of exemplary Life and Conversation, much Lamented, especially by his Flock; and was Decently Interred. on the Lord's Day Evening, the 22d Instant." But on his grave-stone the date is given May 21st. See
253
THE FRENCH PROTESTANTS IN BOSTON.
three times, but no children are mentioned in his will which was executed just one month before his death.1 In it he directed, "that there be no wine at my funeral, and that none of my wife's relations have mourning clothes" furnished Daille them except gloves. 'Gloves and scarves were to be given to all the ministers of the town, and to the Rev. Mr. Walter of Roxbury. His French and Latin books were left to the church as a foundation for a library; and the church was also to have the income of one hundred pounds for the benefit of the minister, and ten pounds toward the cost of building a meeting-house. Five pounds were to be given to Old Mr. John Rawlings, the French schoolmaster.2 His widow was to receive three hundred and fifty pounds and his negro Kuffy; and a brother who lived in Holland was named as residuary legatee. These testamentary provisions show how deep an interest Daillé took in the welfare of his church. He was buried, like many of his congregation, in the Granary Burial-ground.3
In January, 1704-5, during his pastorate, the congregation bought of James Mears, hatter, an irregularly shaped lot of land on the School-House Lane, now School Street, " to erect and build a church upon for the use of the French Congregation in Boston, aforesaid, to meet therein for the wor- ship and service of Almighty God, according to the way and manner of the Reformed Churches of France." The sum paid for it was " one hundred and ten pounds current silver money of New England," and the lot, which was about midway between the present site of the Parker House and Wash- ington Street, measured forty-three and one-half feet on the Lane, thirty-six feet on the side toward what is now Washington Street, thirty-five and one- half feet on the rear line, and eighty-eight and one-half feet on the side toward Tremont Street.4 A few weeks afterward - on the 29th of January - the selectmen of the town passed the following order : -
Shurtleff's Topographical and Historical Descrip- tion of Boston, p. 224. [Rev. William Cooper's interleaved almanac (N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., 1876, p. 435) says : " May 20, Dyed Mr. Peter Daille, pastor of ye Congregation of French Refugees in this place ; aged abt 70." Sewall records, " Apr. 14, I visit Mr. Peter Dallié, who seems to be in a languishing dying condition ; has kept house about eight weeks." Sewall Papers, iii. 45. There are sonie Latin letters of Daillé, addressed to Increase Mather, in the Prince Library. Prince Catalogue, p. 148 .- ED.]
1 The will is recorded with Suffolk Wills, lib. 18, fol. 234. The inventory is not in the Probate Records; but according to Sargent (Dealings with the Dead, ii. 497) the whole valuation of the estate was two hundred and seventy-four pounds and ten shillings sterling.
2 This was probably the person mentioned in a letter from Joshua Moody to Increase Mather, written, as Prince supposed, in March, 1683-84,
while Moody was a prisoner in Portsmouth : " If one Mr. John Rawlings brings this himself, and you be at leisure to admit any discourse with him, you will find him serious and pious. He hath been a Ruling Elder of the French Church in South-Hampton. He is often with us, and you may hear from him more fully how matters are here. He is sober and credible." (4 Mass. Hist. Coll., viii. 363.) If he was the person named by Savage as having a son born in Boston in 1686 (Geneal. Dict., iii. 509), he must have been one of the earliest of the French settlers here, and he may have had the oversight of the church when it was without a minister.
8 [See Shurtleff, Desc. of Boston, 223. - ED.] 4 The deed to John Tartarien, Francis Bredon, and Jean Dupuis, Elders of the French Church, for themselves and the other members of the congregation, is recorded in Suffolk Deeds, lib. 22, fol. 102. Mears wrote his name "Meeares."
254
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
" Whereas the Congregation of French Protestants have for some years past had their public meetings for the worship of God in the Free School-house in Boston, and that they for some months past have met in another convenient room, while the said school-house was taken down and a more commodious one built in the room thereof, the which house being now finished, it is voted that the said French congregation have the liberty to meet in said new school-house for the worship of God as formerly they did in the old." 1
Apparently this was not in accordance with the wishes of the congrega- tion ; and the next week the selectmen made the following record : --
"The petition of John Portree, Francis Breedon, and John Dupee, Elders of the French Congregation, their petition for license to erect with timber a building for a meeting-house of thirty-five foot long and thirty foot wide, on a piece of land of theirs, situate between the land of Mr. Samuel Haugh and the land of Mr. Joseph Malam, butting on the School-House Lane, in Boston. And having consulted with the major part of the justices of the said town, being present, who declare their opinion that it is not convenient to grant the same, since they have the offer of the free liberty to meet in the new school-house, that being sufficient for a far greater number of persons than doth belong to their congregation, the premises being considered, the said selectmen do disallow the said petition." 2
Probably the cause of this refusal was the unwillingness of the select- men and the justices to consent to the erection of a wooden building in that neighborhood. But whatever may have been the reasons for their action, it prevented the erection of a meeting-house for ten or eleven years. Finally, shortly after the death of Mr. Daillé, a small brick meeting-house was built on the land, which continued to be occupied by the congregation until its dissolution about the year 1748. At that time the number of male com- municants and subscribers had been reduced to about seven.3 Accordingly, by a deed, dated May 7, 1748, Stephen Boutineau, the surviving elder, Andrew LeMercier, the minister, and others, proprietors, assigned all their right and interest in it to the trustees of a new Congregational Church, for "the sum of three thousand pounds in good bills of public credit on the province aforesaid, of the old tenor," for the sole use of a Protestant Church forever.4 Subsequently, the building passed into the hands of the Catholics; and, according to the Rev. Dr. Holmes, " Mass was performed in it for the first time Nov. 2, 1788, by a Romish priest." 5
1 MS. Minutes of the Selectmen of the Town of Boston (in the office of the City Clerk), p. 95.
2 Ibid., pp. 95, 96.
3 Petition of Mr. LeMercier to the Governor and General Court, printed in N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., xiii. 319. In their answer to the peti- tion the proprietors say, " He has driven all our young people to other churches." (Ibid., p. 321.) These documents are in "A Brief Memoir of Rev. Andrew LeMercier," which fills a little more than nine pages of that magazine.
4 The deed is recorded with Suffolk Deeds, lib. 76, fol. 128.
5 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., ii. 64. [The folio French Bible given by Queen Anne to the Church is now preserved in the Library of the Divinity School at Cambridge ; or one which bears this inscrip- tion : " This volume was presented to the Library of Divinity Hall, A. D. 1831, by the widow of the late Samuel Cobb of Boston. He bought it at the sale of the books of Mather Byles, and understood it to be the copy formerly used in the pulpit of the French Protestant Church in School Street. JOHN G. PALFREY."
It is known that this Bible was at one time in the possession of Dr. Byles. - ED.]
255
THE FRENCH PROTESTANTS IN BOSTON.
The last minister of the French congregation was Andrew LeMercier, who came over to Massachusetts in 1715, in accordance with an arrange- ment made in London with Andrew Faneuil in behalf of the church, under which he was to have an annual salary of one hundred pounds, New Eng- land currency. When he came to Boston he was twenty-three or twenty-
Christo
vita est
KILBURN
Mercerus
Andrew Le Mercier 1
four years of age; and he continued in the ministry for about thirty-two years. He left at his death a considerable number of manuscript sermons, one of which - a third sermon on the Second Epistle of Peter, preached
1 [This cut follows a photograph from a N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., October, 1859, portrait preserved in the Essex Institute at P. 323, that this portrait belonged to a friend of LeMercier, Hon. Thomas Cushing, who died in 1788; and passing to Colonel Thomas Cush- ing, of Salem, was finally transferred to the Essex Institute. - ED.] Salem. Dr. Wheatland, the librarian, knows nothing of its history. It can be inferred from an article by "Sigma " (L. M. Sargent) in the Boston Transcript, Jan. 28, 1851, copied in the
256
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
May 30, 1719- is preserved in the Library of the Massachusetts Historical Society.1 It is beautifully written, with careful erasures and interlineations, but is singularly hard, dry, and uninteresting. If his ordinary preaching did not improve in the next twenty-five years, no one need wonder that the young people of his congregation went to hear other and more attractive preachers. In 1732 he published, in English, The Church History of Geneva, in five Books, with a Political and Geographical Account of that Republic, in a volume of upward of three hundred pages; and the next year this was followed by a Treatise against Detraction, in ten Sections, in a somewhat larger volume. The Church History is dedicated to " the pastors of the churches of Christ in New England," in words which show that he was on very friendly terms with his brother ministers, and the volume was apparently written to gratify their curiosity. "I have hardly ever been in any learned company here," he writes, "but that I have been asked several questions concerning the Church and Academy of Geneva." Of many of the things which he relates, he says, he was an eye-witness; but, with the exception of a few references to persons whom he had known in Geneva, the volume contains nothing of an autobiographical character.2 The other volume is dedicated to the elders, deacons, and heads of families of his own congregation ; and in the dedication he says : -
" You have not despised my youth when I first came among you ; you have since excused my Infirmities ; and as I did the same in respect to yours it has pleased our Saviour the Head of his Church to favor us with an uninterrupted Peace and Union for the almost eighteen Years that I have preached the Word of Salvation to you. By that blessed Peace our Flock, tho' exceeding small, hath subsisted, and even is enlarged by the addition of some who were once the Opposers of our Doctrine, I mean Roman Catholics, several of whom have been converted by the preaching of God's Word ; and also by the addition of some Protestants of other Nations."
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