USA > Maine > York County > York > New England miniature; a history of York, Maine > Part 12
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His descendants-Jordans, Saywards, and Plaisteds-and connections-Wheelwrights and Hutchinsons-may all take pride in claiming kinship.
What can be more pleasing to a generous nature than to be exer- cised in doing public good? . .. What monument so durable as erecting of houses villages and towns?
- SIR FERDINANDO GORGES Brief Narration (London: 1658)
REVEREND SAMUEL MOODY (1676 - 1747)
REVEREND SAMUEL MOODY is indeed aptly called "Fa- ther", for he dominated the town of York to which he devoted his entire career. It may be that from boyhood he had been in- terested in York, and that upon completion of his studies at Har- vard, he had sought to be assigned here. During all his boyhood years he must have heard tales of Agamenticus in its earliest years from his maternal grandfather, Thomas Bradbury, related by marriage to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and the first resident of the Gorges manor on the banks of York River from 1634 to 1636 as custodian of the promoter's personal affairs in Agamenticus.
Samuel Moody was born January 4, 1676, in Newbury, Massachusetts, son of Caleb and Judith (Bradbury) Moody, and graduated from Harvard in the Class of 1697. In 1698 he re- ceived temporary assignment as chaplain to the Preble garrison in York. Soldiers paraded in the field northward of the town hall, and war gardens were tended on the so-called Scituate Field and on part of what is now a cemetery. During his first season as chaplain he accepted a call to become pastor of the church of York and made that position his lifework.
In 1698 York was, like Wells and Kittery, a frontier town, so recognized and supported by the General Court of Massachu- setts as a buffer to face direct attack by Indians from the north. Until 1703 a state of truce existed, but there was always immi- nent danger of attack by roving bands. Owners of outlying farms worked on them by day but sought by night the shelter of the nearest garrison where their families lived in the space allotted to them. Soldiers, detailed to York from other towns, were also on duty at these garrisons, as many as conditions appeared to warrant or as the quarters could accommodate. There was little chance for privacy or for the proper rearing of children or for the ordinary pleasures of well-ordered family life. Wolves ranged the forest within sight of town. Money was hardly obtainable, and products for barter above the common needs were to be gathered only by
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great sacrifice. This was the prospect which Samuel Moody ac- cepted and lived with during much of his pastorate. Furthermore he refused to enter into any agreement for a fixed salary, but left the provision of his maintenance to the Lord and the bounty of the people, making it clear that he intended to share all the joys and sorrows of his flock.
Samuel Moody was twenty-two years old when he began his service in York in 1698-a few years older than the boys who were to grow old with him, and as leaders in their fields, to share with him the forming of the pattern of life in York for several decades to come.
He had been in York only a few months when on Novem- ber 16, 1698, the town "Voted that there is a whous to bee built forthwith for the yous of the Ministry upon the Townes Land, the Demensions as faloeth: Twenty Eight Fout in Length and twenty fout wied with a Lentoe att on end twelve fout wide: the whous to be two Story high with three fire pleses".
In another official document written in 1702 this "whous" is referred to as a completed structure; it still stands on the south- east side of "the town way to the Meeting House Crick".
Throughout Mr. Moody's career the town kept the verbal agreement to provide for him, but on several occasions, beginning in 1700 and during the years when the town was besieged and impoverished, York received aid from the General Court on ap- peals for financial assistance for the support of the minister.
Two of these petitions are worthy of quotation, at least in part, for they add, first hand, to a description of the times:
June 9, 1702 :
The Humble Petition of Abraham Preble, Representa- tive for York Sheweth that Whereas the said town of York have of Late been under very Grate disadvantages by reason of the Losses sustained by the War: and families dispersed and Broken up: sum of which altho returned unto us are not Able to sustaine any publick charges: because of the Charges and disbursements about their one settlement: haveing much to doe and but Little to doe withall; haveing also bin Lately att Considerable Exspencs; In building for the Conveniency and accommodation of the Minestry: and in Maintaining a scool for the Instruction of our youth; which Wee Look up- on as highly Needfull and beneficiall and are still Willing to Give all due Encorragment thereunto we Can: and have- ing had Greate Reson to think Well and Worthely of What the Honble Coret hath done for us in our Low Estate for the seporte of the minestry a mong us, Which we Most Grate-
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fully Accept and acknowledg; are therefore Incoraged here- from to Sollicitt once More that your Hon's will please to Give us help by Granting some further Encorragement this year unto the Revd Mr Samuell Moody whome God hath hitherto Made a blessing unto us; Hopeing that if God will bless the land with peace: and this Honrd Corte and assembly shall please to assist us this yeare we shall be able hereafter to Carry on and Support the Minestry among our selves. . . .
And again in 1704:
To His Exc. Joseph Dudley, Capt. Gen. and Gov-in- Chief of Her Majesties Forces in the Province of the Mass. Bay in New England and the Hon. the Council and Repre- sentatives of her Maj in sd Province in Gen. Court assembled June 7, 1704
The Humble Petition of Lewis Bane, Rep. of the Town of York, in behalfe of sd Town.
Humbly Showeth
That the sd Town are Blessed with a very worthy minister the Rev Mr. Samuel Moodey whome in the time of Peace the Inhabitants of the sd Town with Difficulty but with Cheerfulnesse supported: but are now reduced to such Poverty by the Calamity of the War that they are not capable to yield him a competent Maintainance And the Sd Mr Sam- uel Moodey served her Maj. as chaplain to the forces that marched the last Winter to Pegwacket. And constantly Serves as chaplain to the forces Posted in the Sd Town. ... Your Petitioner therefore Humbly prais your Ex. and Hon. to take the Premises into Consideration and Grant such Allowance toward the Support of the Rev Mr Moodey aforesaid as in your wisdom shall be thought proper. . . .
In 1702 Queen Anne's War was declared, and in 1703, the French in Canada incited Indians to prey upon the English in Maine. For the next decade York was in a state of siege, all persons were required by law to live in garrisons, and all the men were ordered to carry their guns "when they go to publick worship on the Lord's day, or other times, and also when they go abroad to work" or pay a fine of five shillings.
For at least the first ten years of his pastorate Father Moody had few neighbors living close by. Only the Preble garrison on Scituate Men's Row and Harmon's garrison to the southward across Meeting House Creek had escaped destruction in the Massacre in 1692, and only the Banks and the Curtis houses had been rebuilt. In Governor Joseph Dudley's survey of all the garri- sons available in 1711 the minister's house was listed as being suitable for the care of three families or fifteen "souls", including
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two soldiers. In 1708 the town voted ten pounds to build a study for the minister, near the garrison (Preble's) so that he might write his sermons in a little more quiet and privacy.
Yet he found time for affairs other than his pastoral duties during those dangerous days. In the diary of Judge Samuel Sewall of Boston are references to several visits which Cousin Moody made to his home, apparently traveling by sea. In 1704 he wit- nessed the hanging of Captain John Quelch and six of his pirate crew on the Boston side of Charles River. In his letter book, the judge shows that Mr. Moody was still serving as a chaplain in 1707, for he wrote:
Shipped of the Brigantine Lark, Captain Samuel Long, a Small Box marked S.S.2 with ink qt. 14 pounds of Sugar in a linen Bagg; six pounds of Rice and Two pounds Chockalett in another linen Bagg; a little Cinnamon; a Doz. of Bisket; Doz of Ginger Bread. Tin Pot. Knife, Old shirt, wooden Dish: To be delivered to the Rever. Mr Samuel Moody Chaplain to Her Maj. Forces Eastward and to Cousin Samuel Sewall. In my Letter I enclosed a News-Letter, two copies of Mr. Bayley's Verses, Babylon is Fallen. Referd him to the comon Stock for Mr. William's Sermon; a Hun- dred of them being sent to the Army at my Motion.
In his entries during 1712, Judge Sewall shows his pleas- ure in receiving Cousin Moody and his wife in his Boston home on several occasions.
Friends and relatives also visited Mr. Moody in York, and as the years went by some of them came to York to live, one brother-in-law, Nicholas Sewall, becoming his next-door neighbor. Another brother-in-law, Samuel Sewall, came with his brother Nicholas and lived on the south side of the river. His sister's grandson, Richard Jaques, married a daughter of Johnson Harmon and lived nearby on Godfrey's Point Bolleyne.
In 1718 Wymond Bradbury and his sons, Wymond Jr. and John, came here to follow their trade as coopers near the church. They too were relatives of Mr. Moody, whose mother was a Bradbury.
In spite of the strain of threats of invasion, York progressed and expanded. After Queen Anne's War was ended in 1713 by the Treaty of Utrecht, the work of rebuilding the town was re- newed. The church building being now too small, a new (the third) and larger one was built on the Scituate Men's Row where the present church stands, but the minister continued to live in
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the parsonage near Meeting House Creek until a new one was built near the new church in 1715. In 1721 the new parsonage was fortified by a stockade fifty feet square with flankers on two diagonal corners so that the minister lived in a fort as the fourth Indian war, which ended in the destruction of Norridgewock, was waged. York was the headquarters of the Maine Regiment under Colonel Westbrook in those years. Families now could leave the garrisons and return to a more normal life in their own homes. Mr. Moody was able to give close attention to his Latin school, with the assistance, first, of Joseph Emerson in 1718, and then of his son Joseph after his graduation from Harvard in that year. In his diary Joseph Moody noted that when his father, having preached in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1722, was asked to return for a longer period, the church granted him permission to be away for three or four months.
By this time a plan for creating a second parish was under consideration. On March 10, 1719, the town voted to allow the citizens living above the Mill Creek (at the foot of Cider Hill) to build a meetinghouse at their own expense. Land was available, for Alexander Maxwell, the first Scottish bondsman to settle in the Scotland district, had bequeathed half of his land to the church and half to Reverend Samuel Moody. On this the building of the Second Church was started, and on February 29, 1724, the first service was held, though the structure was not completed until several years later. For Mr. Moody's son Joseph, the first pastor, ordained in 1732, a parsonage was built adjoining the church.
In 1728 Hannah Sewall Moody, wife of Reverend Samuel Moody and the mother of his son, Reverend Joseph, and of his daughter Mary, the wife of Reverend Joseph Emerson, died at the age of fifty-one. In 1732 Father Moody married for his second wife Mrs. Ruth Emerson Newman.
By 1735 Moody was freed from sharing the use of his church with the town, the courts, and the military, for a new County Court House was built within a few feet of the site of the present town hall. At last, after a hundred years, the church building was reserved for the holding of religious services.
In these less anxious days when Mr. Moody was in his sixties, the townspeople undertook to lighten his work still more out of regard for his accumulated years. Early in the 1730's, a Negro slave was bought for him as a personal attendant, but by 1735 it appeared that the slave "can't do for Mr. Moody". In
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1739 the assessors undertook to secure assistance for Mr. Moody "in the pulpit when their shall be occasion". In 1741 a committee was appointed "to agree with Mr. Daniel Emerson, Present Butler of Harvard College, if they can get him, to be the Person to Preach with us". Daniel Emerson was so engaged, but from such evidence as has been found, it appears that Samuel Moody's labors were not lightened as much as the scope of his activities was increased.
On April 1, 1742, the parsonage (and many church rec- ords) was destroyed by fire, but the very next day a meeting of the Parish was called to consider the building of a new one. With the threat of another war coming on in 1744, this new parsonage was fortified, the Parish voting on May 31 "that there be a Board Garrison Built round the Parsonage House with Two Substantial Flankers on the opposite corners". And so the minister lived be- hind barricades again, this time for the rest of his life, for the "Board Garrison" was not removed until 1749.
In 1745, Mr. Moody, nearly seventy years of age, was well and agile enough to accompany the York troops as their chaplain on the arduous Louisburg Expedition, taking with him "the Sword of the Lord and Gideon", as he called his axe, with the intent to destroy such "graven images" as he expected to find. Fortunately he escaped the camp fever which took so many of the young men.
The fourth, and present, church structure was erected in 1747, and no doubt he assisted in the plans for it, since it was completed some six months before his death on November 13, 1747.
His was a life of accomplishment, with no record of failure or major disappointments. Starting under conditions as unfavor- able as can be imagined, he led his flock up from almost un- bearable living conditions to a life of comparative comfort, and when his labors were done, the boys whom he had counseled and guided had grown to be the men who were trained to follow his precepts and to make York strong. That resourceful men of means and education should follow his leadership and assist him in his efforts, as did Elder Joseph Sayward, to the point of personal financial ruin, clearly illustrates his fitness for the times.
Much has been written of his eccentricities and of his rambling and morbid sermons. Though he preached without either notes or text, interpolating direct personal remarks on occasion to rebuke the vain or to awaken the slumberous, he pre- pared many of his sermons for publication, of which copies are known still to exist. The titles of a few of the printed sermons give
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clues to the horrors that were to come in hell to punish the sin- ful: "The Vain Youth Summoned to Appear at Christ's Bar"- "Doleful State of the Damned"-"Judas, the Traitor Hung Up in Chains"-"Smoaking flax Inflamed ... ". To make vivid the ulti- mate of hell to parishioners living from day to day in fear of death by torture, he showed the full power of his imagination :
We might also transiently Consider Hell as a Place and State of the Blackest Darkness, the Most exquisite tor- ment and extreamest Horrour, Despair and Raging Blas- phemy. A Place of Howling, Roaring, Yelling, Shrieking- But Words utterly and infinitely fail of expressing to the Life, the Heart-rending Pangs of the second Death. . . . a Prison, a Lake of Fire and Brimstone; a Bottomless Pit, a Furnace of Fire, Prepared for the Devil and his Angels: a Place where the Worm dieth not, and the Fire is not Quenched. [From "Doleful State of the Damned"]
Suppose thou wert cast Naked into a deep Pit, full of Toads, Serpents, Vipers and Adders, that would crawl over thy Flesh, and in thy Mouth . . . [From "The Vain Youth"]
What his fellow-ministers most deplored was his readiness to call by name and rebuke individual members of his audience whose conduct seemed to him unbecoming: "Here comes -
with his lady and his ungodly strut"; or when he stopped his sermon, while a late arrival found her seat, and said, "Here she comes, top and t'gallant rigged most beautifully but she has a leak that will send her to hell". His colleagues chided him and went away in doubt of his mental balance, and in church records he is treated with diplomatic disparagement as "a man of great constitutional eccentricities". One might well wonder how York would have fared under a saintly pastor of gentle mien.
Even so, the value of his life work is not to be measured by his preaching from the pulpit but by his practice of working directly with his parishioners, sharing their privations and their dangers as one of them, setting an example to them of the forti- tude to endure hardships, and to strive for a better life. His teachings are best expressed in his own words, in a letter to Lieu- tenant Joseph Storer, written in 1723:
It's better to love God's House when we can't go to it, than to go to it and not love it. .. . And truly it's not much desirable to live, that we may get or keep or enjoy ye World, especially to stay out of Heaven for these poor things; but
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that we may recover strength and do service in our Places; and get our Evidences cleared; and see our Children settled; and much more ye Church-for these and such like reasons it's desirable to live. Something may be done for God & his People, and our Family and Friends here, that we can't do in Heaven. And O how good it is to be put into ye furnace, though never so hot, that we may be refined and new moulded, and made vessels of Honor fit for ye Master's Use! And when the LORD shall see his children humbled, sancti- fied, made more Prayerful, more watchful, more abundantly fruitful in every Good Word and Work, by affliction, he will say, This rod was well bestowed! . . .
JEREMIAH MOULTON (1688 - 1765)
JEREMIAH MOULTON, son of Joseph and Hannah or Hanneth (Littlefield) Moulton, York's most valuable man during the period of the Indian Wars, was one of four of that name living in town during the first quarter of the eighteenth century, though writers, by neglecting to distinguish them, have sometimes given the impression that there was only one. A little of the Moulton genealogy at the start seems necessary.
Thomas Moulton of Hampton, New Hampshire, brought with him to York in 1655 his wife and at least four of his chil- dren: Abigail (1645-1692), who married Henry Simpson and was killed with him in the Massacre; Joseph (1648-1692), who with his wife Hannah (Littlefield) was also killed in the Massa- cre; Jeremiah (1650-1731), whose first wife was a daughter of Rowland Young; and Mary (1652-1725), whose second husband was Samuel Bragdon. Of three other children, Thomas, Daniel, and Hannah, there is little mention in York records.
Jeremiah (1650-1731) left no record of outstanding achievements, though he was called "Honorable" in order to dis- tinguish on legal documents which Jeremiah was being referred to. The title derived from his service in 1692 as representative to the General Court. Until 1694 he lived in the Cider Hill District; then he lived the rest of his life near York River at the foot of what is now Varrell Lane, having bought of Captain Job Alcock the property on which stood the former Alcock garrison. In his will he bequeathed this property to the husband of his daughter Mary, Captain Johnson Harmon, the officer in command of the successful expedition against Norridgewock in 1724. The third Jeremiah, called Tertius or Tertio, was his grandson, a child of his son Joseph, who married Mary Pullman.
Honorable Jeremiah's brother Joseph and his wife Hannah Littlefield were, as has been said, the parents of the famous Jere- miah, who in later years was sometimes called "Hon.", Judge, and most often, Colonel. But he had a son Jeremiah who was also
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called Judge, and sometimes Jeremiah Fourth. To complicate matters still further, after the Honorable Jeremiah died in 1731, the titles of the other Jeremiahs were advanced: Jeremiah Jr. was "promoted" to "Hon.", Tertio to "Jr.", and Fourth to "Tertio". Dates in the records must be closely scanned, unless the names of wives also appear.
Jeremiah Moulton was born in a tavern on the Scituate Men's Row which his parents had been conducting for only a few years before the Massacre of January 25, 1692. Only four years old at the time, the events of that terrible day probably were his earliest and most vivid recollection of his many experiences with Indians. There was a party of guests from Portsmouth staying at the tavern, which with other visitors and employees, filled the house to the extent that scouts of the Indians mistook the place for a garrison and sent half of their band of a hundred and fifty to concentrate an attack on that place alone, while the other half attacked houses on Cider Hill and along the northeast bank of York River in detachments of only two or three to the dwelling. The Moulton tavern was quickly overrun and destroyed; Joseph Moulton and his wife and some of the occupants were killed, and others taken prisoners. Among these, Theodore Atkinson, one of the Portsmouth guests, and Joseph Bane, a York boy of sixteen who was employed in the tavern, were held in captivity for several years by the Indians as servants and scribes. In later years, after they had been released and returned to their homes, these men rendered valuable services as interpreters when peace treaties were arranged or when prisoners were redeemed.
Of little Jeremiah's activities on that day, a story has come down to us that he raised such a commotion over being captured that the Indians found amusement in baiting him. It is said that he struck back at his tormentors with fists and feet, and finally dashed off through the snow while the Indians, howling with laughter, made no effort to prevent his escape. Possibly there may be some truth in the story, and from it may come the clue as to how the half of the Indians detailed to attack the tavern wiled away the time waiting for the other half to race over Cider Hill and back over Scituate Men's Row to rejoin them for the dash down through Lower Town. If so, Jeremiah spent that night in Preble's garrison, the only house on the Row to escape destruction. In any event he might have been one of the children whom the Indians reported they had left at a garrison with some old women. After all, there are limits to a four-year-old's endurance. It may
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be that the little orphan was brought up in the Preble garrison, or perhaps he stayed there, at least until after 1694 when his uncle Jeremiah went to live on his new property in Lower Town close by York River. At any rate, someone brought him up well and gave him a good education. Lieutenant Abraham Preble (son of Nathaniel and grandson of Abraham), fifteen years his senior, was the greatest influence on Jeremiah's training and character. Probably the boy learned his first lessons in woodcraft from the young officer as soon as he was considered old enough to do his share of scouting for Indians in the forest. Furthermore he was Abraham Preble's assistant in his extensive surveying work, and under his coaching learned to be observant and accurate, and to write intelligible reports in good handwriting.
After he had married Hannah Ballard of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and bought his brothers' claims to the homestead where they had suffered in the Massacre, he built a new house on Scituate Men's Row, just west of the present Jefferds' Tavern. In 1713 his first son, Jeremiah, was born; then Daniel (1716); Hannah (1720); Thomas (1722) and Abigail (1724)-both of whom died in the diphtheria epidemic of 1736-Dorcas (1726); and Lucy (1728).
When the pressure of Queen Anne's War interrupted his close association with Abraham Preble, Jeremiah was taken into the company of Captain John Wheelwright of Wells. However, around 1720, Jeremiah assisted Abraham Preble in laying out eight miles square of Phillips land north of Wells, dividing it into houselots and roads, and making all the necessary prepara- tions for setting up a new town, at first to be called Phillipstown but now known as the two towns of Sanford and Alfred. In 1722 the report was laid before the Proprietors at a meeting in a Boston tavern. Preble, now a captain, was offered the position of secretary for the new corporation, but he declined on account of ill health and recommended his assistant Jeremiah. Preble, Register of Deeds at the time, no doubt turned some of his duties of recording over to Jeremiah, who thus received valuable training as a scribe which he put to constant use in later years. The further develop- ment of Phillipstown was delayed until 1729, and meanwhile in 1723 Captain Abraham Preble died.
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