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Gc 974.502 N16c 1146176
M. L.
GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 00084 6607
South County Studies
The Narragansett Slebe
South County Studies Of Some Eighteenth Century Persons Places Conditions In that Portion of Rhode Island called NARRAGANSETT
BY ESTHER BERNON CARPENTER
With an Introduction by CAROLINE HAZARD compiled largely from Letters now first published by OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Boston Printed for the Subscribers 1924
COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY MARY CARPENTER
D. B. UPDIKE . THE MERRYMOUNT PRESS · BOSTON
Contents
1146176 Page vii
PREFACE
THE HUGUENOT INFLUENCE IN RHODE ISLAND 3
A paper read before the Rhode Island Historical Society, November 17, 1885
JOHN SAFFIN, HIS BOOK 39
ANNALS OF NARRAGANSETT
A SUNDAY IN OLD NARRAGANSETT
77
THE NARRAGANSETT GLEBE 92
THE WILL OF JAMES MACSPARRAN, CLERK 101
PARSON FAYERWEATHER 112
PARSON FAYERWEATHER'S WILL 122
THE WILLETT FAMILY IN RHODE ISLAND 132
THE WORLDLY GOODS OF A PURITAN 148
THE HELMES OF SOUTH KINGSTOWN
156
THE OLD FRIENDS' MEETING HOUSE 175
NEGRO SLAVERY IN THE COLONY OF RHODE ISLAND 195
TRADITIONS OF NARRAGANSETT SERVITUDE 211
THREE REPRESENTATIVE SERVANTS OF THE OLD TIME 222
A TRAVELLER IN OLD NARRAGANSETT 232
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James a. Japan-
7.50
Contents
THE PIOUS DREAMER 248
SUNDRY SAVORY RECIPES TO CURE DIVERS DISEASES 255
AN OLD BOOK OF HOUSEHOLD MEDICINE 262
THE CONFLICT OF COLONIAL AUTHORITIES IN NARRA- GANSETT 268
AN OFFICIAL PAPER OF 1727 274
INDEX 287
[ vi ]
PREFACE
I T was in 1879 that Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote to Esther Bernon Carpenter: " I like to see you sailing in your own ship à pleins voiles, on your own course, a thinking woman, with strength as well as sensibility of fibre."
Ten years before, when she was a girl of only twenty-one, he began to write to her letters which she regarded as giving her the best lessons of her life, letters of encouragement, of criticism, of understanding, which put her in touch with the world of thought and literature. "I never know what you are going to grow to," he tells her later: "I have seen such effects from steady, long continued devotion to science and letters,- such skill, such erudition, that when I see in a young person assiduous and persevering appli- cation in addition to natural endowments I hardly venture to construct such a student's horo- scope."
There are twenty-six of these letters from Dr. Holmes, beginning in 1869 and ending in 1886. He speaks in detail of her Essays or other papers which she sent him as they appeared in the Providence Journal. " If I were a millionaire," he writes, "I should have them printed on my pri- vate press (I should keep one of course ) and I
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Preface
cannot help thinking that the public must come to know you in some permanent form."
And who was Esther Bernon Carpenter, this girl, to whom Dr. Holmes wrote thus? She was born April 4, 1848, the daughter of Rev. James Helme Carpenter and Mary Hoxie Hazard his wife, and spent her earliest years in the old Willett house, a mile north of the South Ferry in Narragansett. The best blood in the country ran in her veins. Her great-grandfather, Fran- cis Carpenter, inherited the old estate from his uncle, Francis Willett, son of Andrew, son of Thomas, first mayor of New York, who was thus her four times great-grandfather, and also the three times great-grandfather of Oliver Wendell Holmes.
John Saffin married Martha Willett, one of the daughters of Mayor Thomas Willett, and in 1692 built the house in which these families lived. Her great-grandmother Carpenter was Esther Helme, whose mother was Esther Powel, daugh- ter of Esther Bernon, whose famous gold rattle, with its six golden bells and its whistle handle, belonged to one Esther after another, and thus came to her.
A quaint volume dated Boston, 1665, was among her earliest recollections. " Journals, let- ters, dialogues, dissertations on various grave subjects, from heraldry to theology, filled many
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pages of the strange old book which was so often my companion," she writes. This was "John Saffin, His Book," which Miss Carpenter em- balmed in one of her most important articles. It is a folio twelve inches by seven, and about an inch thick, with excellent paper, now yellowed by time, but with the ink still black and clear, in the beautiful script of the seventeenth century when penmanship was an art. These with other heirlooms are safe in the care of the Rhode Island Historical Society.
The letters from Dr. Holmes speak in some detail of many of the papers contained in this vol- ume-the Friends' Meeting House, the Helme Family, the Fayerweathers, the Historical So- ciety study of the Huguenot Influence in Rhode Island. They also are the best indication of the ardent spirit that lived in that frail body. But the following extracts from them need no further words of mine.
Boston, Dec. 26th, 1869 M Y DEAR MISS ESTHER : I shall take your letter as my text and preach you a little sermon - not a fault-finding one, you may be sure, but a sermon of encouragement, of good cheer, such as is fitting at this sweet season when the pillars of our churches are bud- ding like Aaron's rod with fragrant evergreens and their vaulted roofs shaking with Te Deums.
Afraid, are you, my dear child, to send me this let-
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Preface
ter? I never received a truer, simpler, sweeter one, nor one which I would more earnestly wish my children to read, -and I have had letters now and then from some of the great people of the earth, or -those I might be vain of, at least, as my correspondents. I only won- der what I have said or done to deserve such a tribute as you pay me. Nothing, nothing but speak a few kind words which any human creature with a few drops of mother's blood in his veins could hardly find it in his heart not to speak. No Christmas tribute has come home to me quite so nearly and so warmed my better nature. If I only deserved it.
You have written to me from time to time, never at superfluous length, as so many young people do, never insisting on perpetual answers to unending questions, but always, it has seemed to me, at the right moment, with a rare discretion, asking a few words of counsel when they were needed, telling me just enough of your- self to guide me in advising you, and, I think I can truly say of you, never writing an idle line, or one that you need remember with regret. And I have always answered you - none but a churl could do less-have given you a few brief hints and shewed a little human interest in you - what has that cost me ? I sometimes think that in doing small favors we gain, ourselves, such an amount of selfish pleasure that it is almost like cheating to purchase our enjoyment so cheap. So when you thank me for these "best lessons of your life" I can only sigh and say, "Count it not a sin, my Task- master, if I have won the pleasure such words give, without paying for it."
All you tell me of yourself and your family is on the
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Preface
whole most gratifying. For, in the first place you give me good news of your father, whose well-being must form one great element in your daily happiness. And there is a certain air of content-I do not mean that hilarity which is born with some people, but the con- tent which has been fought for in many a daily con- tact and many a nightly vigil,-which is based in sacred trust, in self-conquest, in self-surrender. I am greatly pleased that your Rector is a man in whose human sympathies as well as his spiritual teachings you can trust. Every soul knows for itself what reli- gious soil it grows best in. Refined and delicate natures, that find the wind of the open-air creeds too strong for them -that love the decencies and the dignity of a well-ordered service, are greatly attracted to the Episcopal church. I doubt if any of the protestant com- munions meet all the wants of many young persons, and those among the most devout and the most sen- sitive to religious influences, so well as this. To me the one great essential of every church is that it shall sub- stitute nothing for "Our Father" of the Lord's Prayer, and admit no equivalents for duty and character. But your church has many large-minded and level-hearted men who I think are not very far removed from my opinion on this point.
Now as to your self-accusations. I know all about them-for I am one of the same kind. Fight them- fight them, heartily, cheerily. You and I shall never overcome them, quite, for they are constitutional with both of us. Your case is perhaps a little graver than mine, but I, your Doctor, tell you you are greatly im- proved-doing well, - so well that I have only to say
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go on and do what to-day lays before you as well as you can, "As ever in the Great Taskmaster's eye," and avoid reproaching yourself, ... as a part of your duty.
Boston, May 25th, 1873
As to the account of the Helme family, I read it all through from beginning to end and was exceedingly pleased with it-not because I recognized traces of your recollection of something of my own in it-but because it was an interesting family history, very well told. I have hardly any fault to find with it. One or two sentences were rather long, I thought, and might perhaps have been broken up to advantage. But I as- sure you it is a very creditable performance in a lit- erary point of view, and shews a good taste and a dis- criminating eyefor the points of narrative which would give you a good chance of success as a local historian. It is very pleasant to see the name and a fragment or two of a noble life which has passed away almost un- remembered rescued by loving hands from oblivion.
In this case I think I can see where you got some of those qualities which without meaning to flatter you I think -no, I feel sure you possess. It is a good thing to count a few strains of really, not conventionally, generous blood among one's ancestry.
Boston, Jan. 11th, 1874
I have just been reading the two articles on the "Old Friends' Meeting House" which you have kindly sent me. Although I thought I had my hands full, as my table is a litter of unanswered letters, I just threw all
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Preface
out of the way to tell you before I touch one of them how much more than pleased I have been with these two charming papers. If I said my feeling was admi- ration it would not have exaggerated the truth. Your style is now formed and it is a really finished one, clear, graceful, sympathetic, not over-sentimental, and as far as I can see without affectation or pretence, one of which faults so many young writers conscious of their powers of expression sooner or later fall into.
I have not much to say to you now, but I hope you carefully preserve copies of all your contributions of the historical and biographical character, for they are far better worth preserving in a volume than most of the articles which are so embalmed. If I were a mil- lionaire I would have them printed on my private press (I should keep one of course) and I cannot help thinking the public must come to know you in some permanent form by and by.
But remember in all this that I am your friend, and have a kind of personal interest in all you write, and must not allow myself to over-praise you. For all that, I can honestly say that I am surprised and delighted to find you choosing such excellent subjects and treat- ing them in so finished and interesting a manner. You have often said I have helped you-don't you believe it-you have helped yourself, and would have learned from nature and men and women and books if you had never had a word of special counsel from anybody. But it does please me even to think you believe (though I tell you not to) that I have been of some kind of use to you.
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Preface
Boston, Jan. 21st, 1880 All the communications to the paper you send me are good, but two interested me particularly, the two relat- ing to the Fayerweather. In the first place I am always interested in an inventory, and you have unearthed a good one and related it in a very agreeable way-with just enough poetical side-light and incidental moral reflection to make the dough into bread by "raising" it with their mental yeast. But the Fayerweather in- terested me for another reason. About the time of my birth "Thomas Fayerweather Esq." was living in Cambridge. Just when he died I do not know, but I never saw one of the name, and the very existence of such a family in Cambridge was to me like a piece of mythology. My impression is that he or they lived in that famous row of old Tory houses, the same where Longfellow now lives, and the fine old English name with the Y in it sounded as if it came from the lord of some grand old manor in the Mother-country.
Well, after reading your two articles I went straight to the "little library" upstairs and took down two little pudgy, but venerable looking volumes-the Greek Septuagint of the Old and New Testaments. Well did I remember the name, but I was not sure of the exact date. On the first blank leaf I read
Abiel Holmes The gift of Thomas Fayerweather Esq.
Whether this belonged to the library of your "Samuel Fayerweather, Clerk" or not I cannot say. If it did I suppose I ought to send it to the Corporation of King's
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Preface
College, New York, with thanks for a century's use by borrower and apologies for detaining it so long.
Boston, Nov. 25th, 1885
I am delighted to hear of your reception at the Rhode Island Historical Society, and particularly pleased that you took up a subject in which I, like you, have an hereditary interest not through descent, however, but because my father wrote a "Memoir of the French Protestants" who settled at Oxford, with which as well as with Mr. Daniel's much larger history you must of course be acquainted. I felt sure long ago that you could make a reputation as an historical writer, and to say nothing of preceding papers this elaborate and admirable contribution to local, and I might add to general history, inasmuch as the story you tell relates to a great far reaching religious movement- your con- tribution, I say, amply proves your fitness for the noble task of conservation of that which is best worthy of memory in the past. It gives me really a thrill of plea- sure to see how you are redeeming the promises of your earlier girlhood.
Boston, Feb. 11th, 1886
I do not write because I feel obliged to, but to thank you for the two newspaper extracts you have just sent me. I was reading the Aeneid when they came, and much interested in that old story. I laid my Virgil down to look at the E. B. C. article, and before I knew what I was about I had read the whole article. Pretty well, to beat P. Virgilius Maro!
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Preface
Miss Carpenter lived a secluded life in a small village, for after the early years near the sea, Wakefield was her home. But to her the quiet country echoed with voices from the past, voices demanding utterance. "The gray walls of famil- iar homesteads fast crumbling under the touch of time plead for a longer continuance in our kind recollection," she writes. It is to fulfil such a desire that friends of hers and lovers of the past in Rhode Island have made possible the publication of this book. Not in vain shall the voices she heard cry to her, "Child of our race, kindle again the fire on our deserted hearth. By all the memories of thy childhood forget not thine ancient heritage. Let it perish not, but en- dure to be our memorial upon the earth. When it is gone what shall remain to tell of us, and the pleasant places where we dwelt and the lands we called after our own names!"
C. H.
Peace Dale, November, 1923
South County Studies
THE HUGUENOT INFLUENCE IN RHODE ISLAND
T HE principal anniversary in the course of the greatest national persecution in modern his- tory was observed thirteen years ago, at the three hundredth return of the memories of the martyr- dom of St. Bartholomew's Day, that "bloodiest picture in the book of time." The massacre of that day was the severest blow ever struck at religion under any name, and in the sorrowful words of the devout Catholic and brilliant thinker, Chateaubriand, “gave to philosophi- cal ideas an advantage over religious ideas which has never since been lost." The courtly instigators of that crime, and the brutal executors of their will, alike be- lieved that they had well-nigh extirpated the heretics. And Louis XIV was convinced that in affixing his signature to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes he should extinguish the very name of heresy in his do- minions. But the spiritual forces which brought about the Reformation, with its final corollary, religious free- dom, were working out results which in their ultimate course could neither be arrested by persecution nor limited by toleration. Kings and statesmen, priests and nobles, could direct the cumbrous machinery of the state and the law against the visible manifestations of heresy, but they could not cope with the finer agencies of thought and conscience, and the soul of the heretic was an unshaken citadel.
The Huguenots of France who first began to be gen- erally called by that name under Charles IX, were des- tined to carry it to distant countries, and to make it an
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South County Studies
honored title to the latest generation. Colonization had been attempted even before the great massacre of 1572, and the brief period of toleration, under that honest sol- dier and clear-sighted man of affairs, Henry VI, was quickly followed by the oppression of more than half a century, culminating with the infamous dragonnades, the results of which, in the multitudes of forced con- versions, furnished the pretended warrant for that Act of Revocation which, in 1685, drove hundreds of thou- sands of loyal and home-loving Frenchmen into exile.
With the fall, in 1628, of La Rochelle, the historic Huguenot city, "the Religion" ceased to be coupled with the strife of civil factions, many of the great nobles deserting a cause that could no longer serve their party interests. The Reformed Church, thus tried by adver- sity, was to be still further purified by persecution. Those who endured both these ordeals, and remained true to the reformed doctrines, were recruited from the intellectual and the industrial strength of the nation. First may be named a group of noble families of ancient distinction, who were still loyal to the Protestant faith. With them stood the leading merchants and manu- facturers of the kingdom; and they were followed by the more intelligent artisans, peasantry, and seamen. With the Huguenots, as in the case of the Jews, ex- clusion from all the ambitions of civil and political life had resulted in the concentration of their abilities upon the practical interests of business. French trade and manufactures flourished in heretic hands. One-third of the trade of the country was conducted by the Re- formed. In silk weaving, glass manufacturing, as fab- ricants of jewelry and pottery, and in many other
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Huguenot Influence in Rhode Island
branches of the finer industries, they were eminent for their ingenuity and taste. In agriculture, wherein, as the good sense of the French nation has always ac- knowledged, lies the true wealth of a people, they were especially diligent and successful. A refugee in Boston in 1687 is surprised at the careless husbandry of the English, qui sont beaucoup fenéans, and are proficient only in raising their Indian corn and cattle. No small number of the French seamen, and those confessedly of the best type, were of the Reformed religion. In de- parting from the able policy of Richelieu and Mazarin, and causing the Huguenot emigrations, the govern- ment of Louis XIV disorganized the great middle class of the kingdom, and impaired the chief resources of national prosperity.
When the time arrived for the multitudes of French- men, natives of separated provinces, members of differ- ent classes and belonging to diverse callings, but all united as confessors of a common faith, to decide be- tween recantation and expatriation, the stern choice was firmly made. In a moment, as it were, by the power of a noble impulse that warmed the hearts and nerved the wills of the tens of thousands of " the Religion," France wasabandoned for a refuge beyond the seas. Then began such an exodus as the civilized world had never seen. The expulsion, early in the same century, of the Moors and Jews from the borders of Spain could scarcely af- ford a parallel to the decree by which the Most Chris- tian King drove his Protestant subjects from the heart of his kingdom into perpetual exile. As the children of Israel departed in haste, taking with them their yet unleavened bread, so it is told, in the homely story of a
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refugee family, that they fled at a sudden warning, leaving "the dinner on the fire." These also left all and followed Him, their Divine Master, as truly as those who left houses and lands, for His name's sake.
The emigration was from the most distinguished pro- vinces of the kingdom. From proud Normandy and an- cient Bretagne went the descendants of the Crusaders, to begin a holier pilgrimage than that on which their ancestors had departed centuries before. From Sain- tonge, the early seed plot of the Reformation in France; from the Lyonnais, the seat of Protestant industry; from sunny Champagne and stately Dauphiny; from romantic Languedoc and fair Lorraine; from Tou- raine, Berry, and the Orleanais, copiously watered by the veins and arteries of the noble Loire; from Poitou, rich in ancient memories ; from the Isle de France and the capital of the kingdom; from Guyenne, the fruit- ful; from the inheritance of the Counts of Foix; from Picardy and Maine; and above all, from Aunis, the faithful province, with its Huguenot stronghold, La Rochelle, "proud city of the waters," from town and hamlet, from chateau and cottage, from hill country and islet, from the seaboard and from the interior, from the north, east, and south of France, the fugitives, eluding the strictest vigilance of the watchful guards stationed on the frontier, escaped in multitudes to their distant refuge among a people of an alien race and a foreign tongue.
What elements of mind and character did they bring to the formation of the complex nationality which, in the last two centuries, has been developed in the matur- ing of the American Republic?
Huguenot Influence in Rhode Island
It has never been denied that the emigration wielded a greater influence than might have been expected from its mere numbers. The qualities of its members were, indeed, of a shining order to have irradiated our his- tory with that long, bright track of light which we are now following to its origin in the dawning of the Re- formation.
Though Lefèvre is called the father of the French Reformation, Calvin, as its tutor and governor, formed its character and shaped its destinies. Geneva domi- nated La Rochelle. Calvinism, originating in the de- mand of the logical French mind for a definite theology, was, in the severities of its discipline, a more whole- some training for the people of the Gallic race, natives of a smiling country, strong in le bon sens against the promptings of fanaticism, and sustained in all reverses by an inexhaustible cheerfulness, than to the moulding of the morbid and gloomy Saxon, whether brooding in the mountain retreats of the Covenanter or battling with the assaults of the stern climate in which the Puritan met an unrelenting foe. No superstitious terrors or cru- elties mar the civil record of the Huguenots. During the wars of "the Religion" they fought in self-defence and with few violations of the laws of civilized warfare. In retaliation for massacres they repeatedly committed acts of iconoclastic impiety, and this is a reproach from which even the sober blood of the Netherlanders is not free. But it may be said of themas a people, that though tried by the refinements of persecution, suffering in the separation from their children, goaded by the violence of a brutal soldiery, transported like criminals, endur- ing as galley-slaves the severest labor that can be per-
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South County Studies
formed by man, or driven into hopeless exile, they still remained confessors, and did not degenerate into fanat- ics. In them the best type of the national character as- serted itself, blending with its kindred traits in Protest- ant England and America, and within the scope of its immediate influence, subduing the asperities of a race that was ruder in the etiquette of its pleasures than the more gentle people had been in the chivalry of its war- fare. The sudden and secret departure of the exiles constituted a phase of history that was to be repeated little more than a century later, in the flight of the émigrés. But the priests and the nobles who composed the proscribed classes of the Revolution brought to Eng- land no such accession to her moral or material wealth as was furnished by the Huguenot manufacturers and artisans of the intelligent middle class. The character of the refugee contribution to the strength of the English people was chiefly industrial. In America the Huguenot name has been especially identified with political as- cendancy. By a fulfilment under favoring conditions of national aspirations analogous to that which was seen in the founding of the democracy of New England, long before English liberties were secured by the Revolution of 1688, the immediate descendants of expatriated Frenchmen, by their share in our struggle for independ- ence, anticipated the rising of their countrymen, the tiers état of France, with whom originated the Revolution. In summing up all these phases of nationality, either industrial, political, scholarly, social, or religious, it is enough to say that intellectuality is the note of Calvinism. French Protestantism owed its early development to the results of the Humanist culture, chastened and syste-
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