Wessagusset and Weymouth

CONTENTS.

HISTORICAL ADDRESS — FOOTNOTES:

WEYMOUTH IN ITS FIRST TWENTY YEARS. A PAPER READ BEFORE THE SOCIETY, NOVEMBER, 1882, — FOOTNOTES:

BY
GILBERT NASH, Esq.,
SECRETARY.

Not long since, the statement was made by one of our leading journals, that the first church in Weymouth was formed in 1635;[99] and an inquiry for the authority for such a statement elicited the following reply: “The Massachusetts Colonial Records [1: 149] state, under date of 8 July, 1635, that ‘there is leave granted to twenty-one ffamilyes to sitt down at Wessaguscus.’ Gov. Winthrop in his Journal [1: 194] says, ‘at the court [5 mo. 8] Wessaguscus was made a plantation, a Mr. Hull, a minister in England, and twenty one families with him, allowed to sit down there—after called Weymouth.’ No explicit mention is here made of the first formation of the church in this connection but in lack of evidence of previous embodiment, it has always been assumed to have been coetaneous with the settlement of the town—or nearly so—following the general rule. Mr. Savage in his list of the early churches of Massachusetts puts it down thus: ‘xi. Weymouth, 1635, July.’ The very careful and accurate Dr. Clark [Con’l ch’hs of Mass., 16] says: ‘The same year (1635) about twenty families located in Weymouth, from which the First church in that town was constituted, and Rev. Joseph Hull settled over them.’ It is of course true that there were religious services, and possibly a church at Weymouth before this, but we are aware of no evidence carrying the life of the church now existent back of 1635.”

This may or may not be the true date at which the church was formed. The evidence given in the foregoing article to establish the fact certainly does not prove this, nor does it afford reasonable ground for its probability, and is anything but satisfactory to the least critical inquirer. If it proves anything it proves too much, for, while it admits the lack of positive evidence upon the question, it makes an admission which will go far to overthrow its own position. It says: “In lack of evidence of previous embodiment, it has always been assumed to have been coetaneous with the settlement of the town—or nearly so—following the general rule.”

Here are two points admitted, and the Journal mentioned should be good authority upon which to rest them. First, the lack of positive evidence, from which the necessary inference is that we must fall back upon probability or conjecture, as the basis of our judgment in the case. Second, that, as a general rule, churches were formed at the time settlements were begun, or soon after. Without question the latter statement is correct. The well known character and habits of the early emigrants, and the facts that have come to us in connection with them, prove this beyond a doubt. If, then, it can be proved that Weymouth was a prosperous settlement at a much earlier date than that assumed for it, 1635, we shall go far to prove the probability, at least, of an earlier church organization. And this brings us to the subject of the present paper, namely, What are our facts relative to the early settlement of the town, and how do they concern the church and its ministers?

The very general assumption that there was no permanent settlement in Weymouth, (using the name by which the town has since been known), previous to the arrival of the Hull company, in 1635, can hardly be sustained in face of the very strong evidence to the contrary. C. F. Adams, Jr., Esq., in his address delivered 4 July, 1874, at the celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of the town, and in his paper on the “Old Planters about Boston Harbor,” read before the Massachusetts Historical Society, and published in its collections, “the ablest paper,” says Rev. George E. Ellis, D. D., no mean judge of such matters, “ever read before that Society,” proves conclusively that the Gorges company, which settled upon the deserted plantations of Thomas Weston’s people, in September, 1623, and which, it has been usually thought, was wholly broken up in the following spring, left a number of its emigrants there, who remained and became permanent settlers. These were joined from time to time by single families or small companies, until, upon the arrival of Mr. Hull’s company, the settlement had attained to quite respectable proportions.

This ground has been so carefully covered by Mr. Adams in the papers before mentioned, that it will be necessary only to mention very briefly the main facts, and to sustain them by such other evidence as may be had from the court and town records, as well as from private sources.

A careful analysis of these records will show that, instead of the company from Weymouth, England, in 1635, being the first settlers, there were, at the date of its arrival, certainly not less than fifty families, and perhaps seventy or eighty, already residing there; and it is more than possible that this was an important reason why this place was selected by this company for its settlement. A flourishing colony already established, was sufficient evidence of good soil, a good location, a favorable position for trade with the Indians, and for communication with the other plantations about the bay; besides, and this was no insignificant matter in those days, the protection thus afforded against the savages.

More than this, it is probable that many of the previous settlers were relatives or friends of the later arrivals. Lenthal, in his remarks before the Dorchester Council in 1639, says that many of his former people had preceded him, giving this as a reason why he came to Weymouth. The similarity of name, and the localities of some whose former residences are known, give color to this probability; and the name Weymouth, given at this time, 1635, to the plantation, may not be wholly owing to the influx of new people, sailing from Weymouth, in Dorset, but to the calling up of old memories in the minds of previous settlers, who, years before, sailed from the same port and perhaps lived there.

An examination of the public records will afford evidence, surprising in value and volume, of this early and continued settlement. Although the earliest record in the archives of the town bears date 10 December, 1636, and very few entries are prior to 1644-5, yet there are those undated that are probably earlier, and these, with the evidence reflected from later dates, together with corroboration received from other and contemporaneous sources, give additional and strong proof in support of the same.

Thus we have the Gorges colony in 1623, the arrival of a new company from Weymouth, England, the following year, the capture of Morton in 1628, the visit of Gov. Winthrop in 1632, the tax lists of the Massachusetts Bay Colony for 1630 and onwards, which include Wessaguscus, and the incidental mention from contemporaneous sources covering nearly all of the intervening time. These afford a firm basis upon which to rest an earlier settlement than that of the Hull company. Later on, and still previous to that arrival, we learn from the colonial records that in March, 1635, the bounds between Wessaguscus and Mount Wollaston were referred to a committee for adjustment, and in the July following, a similar arrangement was made to fix the bounds between it and its next neighbor on the east, Bare-Cove, afterwards Hingham. In October, Richard Long was fined for making clapboards from good trees and selling them out of town, when he had been directed to make them into shingles for Castle Island; the proceeds of the fine to go towards a bridge in Wessaguscus. The Hull company could hardly have been so far advanced in business by this time, as this state of things would indicate; besides, Long was not a member of that company but must have been a prior settler. In March of the next year, Thomas Applegate, also a prior settler, was removed from his position as ferry keeper, and Henry Kingman, one of the new-comers, appointed to succeed him.

The assessment and payment of taxes is usually deemed conclusive evidence in matters with which they come in connection. If there were boundaries to be adjusted, there must have been residents on both sides of the line who were in contention about them. A ferry and a bridge, as means of communication, would hardly be necessary where there was no population.

The earliest of the town records contains a list of land owners with a description of their property. The record is not dated, but the time can be fixed with certainty, within about a year and a half. The names of Elizabeth and Mary Fry, daughters of William Fry, deceased, are upon this list, and as his burial is recorded as having taken place October 26, 1642, the list must have been prepared subsequent to that time. At the close of these property descriptions is the record of the transfer of some of this same property, and it is described in the lists as belonging to the grantors. Two of these transfers bear date 21 and 26 May, 1644, thus showing the latest limit at which it could have been compiled. The true date is probably 1643, and there is reason for believing, from internal evidence, that Rev. Samuel Newman was the compiler, he being at that time a resident of the town, his removal to Rehoboth taking place in 1644.

In this list, which is very incomplete as will be easily seen, there are the names of 71 persons with a general description of the property then owned by them. In these descriptions the names of 17 others are mentioned, from whom some of this property was purchased, or to whom the original grants were made. There are also mentioned as owners of property bounding the different lots described, the names of 52, who do not appear in the other two classes, yet who must have been property owners or they could not have been abuttors, making in all 123, at least, real estate owners at the time the list was made up. Why this large number escaped record we have no means of knowing, but since such is the fact we may reasonably infer that many others may have been omitted altogether, and that the full number was originally much greater; in fact we have evidence that this was so, from incidental mention in the later records. Taking, however, the lists as they come to us, we have the names of 123, without doubt most of them heads of families. These, at an average of five to the family, a moderate estimate for those days, would furnish a population of more than 600.

Of these 123, only 17 are found in the list of the Hull company, 20 March, 1635; the remaining 106 must have come in at some other date. Besides these above mentioned, there are found upon the birth record of Weymouth, previous to 1644, the names of seven, belonging to families not before enumerated, and this record is notoriously incomplete. A careful examination of these 130 families will throw further light upon the matter. Some of them came into the settlement subsequent to 1635, but only a few. Many are known to have been earlier residents. Some came with the Gorges company in 1623, and had resided here since that time, and many others were among the arrivals continually coming in during the eleven intervening years before the arrival of Mr. Hull and his company.

Bursley, Jeffries, and probably Ludden, with several others, were members of the Gorges company. Henry Adams, John Allen, Robert Abell, Stephen French, John Glover, Walter Harris, Edmond Hart, James Parker, Thomas Richards, Thomas Rawlins, Clement Briggs, Richard Sylvester and Clement Weaver, came in 1630, or soon after; William Torrey, as late as 1640, while the large majority were here at the date of the making up of the record, but further than this nothing is known with certainty. From the evidence we have, however, we may fairly presume that many of them were settlers previous to the arrival of Gov. Winthrop, and that some of them were of that company from Weymouth, England, in 1624, of whom Prince makes mention, and of whom something more will be said hereafter. Of the settlers who were here in 1628 and 1630, we know but little beyond the fact that they were here at that date, and that Thomas Morton, of Mount Wollaston, of unpleasant memory, was on intimate terms with some of them, and was arrested by the Plymouth authorities, while on a visit here in 1628.

So, then, our facts relative to the early settlement are briefly these. A permanent settlement in the fall of 1623, by Capt. Robert Gorges and his followers, continual additions during the next four years, the record of the arrest of Morton in 1628, for which the settlement was taxed £2, to £2: 10s. for Plymouth, showing the comparative size of the two plantations, casual mention for the following three years, the visit of Gov. Winthrop on his way to and from Plymouth, in 1632, record of births in 1633, and the colonial tax lists from 1630 onwards until the erection of the settlement into a plantation, with the right of a deputy to the General Court.

It will be remembered that the original settlers of Wessaguscus, or Weymouth, were what would now be termed “squatters,” and their titles simply those of possession, the real owners being the Indians, whose rights were general and not individual. The English titles were vested in governmental grants to the large companies like the Plymouth, the Gorges and the Massachusetts Bay. These early settlers came into the territory of Wessaguscus before it fairly was in the possession of either company; consequently they could only acquire such title as the native holders could give them, to be confirmed by later authority, whatever that might be. Weymouth extinguished the Indian title to its territory by purchase; the deed bearing date 26 April, 1642, was executed by the resident chiefs, who sign themselves Wampetuc, alias Jonas Webacowett, Nateaunt and Nahawton, and is recorded among the Suffolk Deeds. Nateaunt’s beach and probable camping ground was at the foot of Great Hill, in North Weymouth. The town was therefore now in a position to confirm the planters in their possessions, and the existence of the list of possessions made soon after, seems to indicate that this was done.

There are reasons why the early contemporaneous records and writers so seldom mention this town and its affairs, in the fact of its different origin, the marked jealousy, not to say unkind feelings with which the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies regarded it. It had a more commercial element in its constitution. It was, also, in its incipience, episcopal in its ecclesiastical relations, which, although gradually relaxing, carried enough of the flavor of the “establishment” with it to make it anything but palatable to the taste of their puritan and independent neighbors. The relations then existing between them and their neighbors about the Bay we cannot determine with certainty now, but we may judge something of what they were by the casual mention, and the incidental exhibitions of feeling, cropping out but too frequently.

If it were the usual custom in the settlement of this country to form churches immediately after taking permanent possession, and of this there can be little doubt, then Wessaguscus should have had a church several years at least before the arrival of Rev. Joseph Hull; and perhaps by a careful study of the facts we have, and the results growing out of them, we may make our probabilities approach more nearly to positive evidence than we have been able heretofore to do, although we may not quite reach the point we wish to attain.

With the Gorges company in the autumn of 1623, came Rev. William Morrell, their minister, a clergyman of the Established Church. He appears to have been a quiet, scholarly gentlemen, of cultivated tastes and refined habits, much better fitted for the duties and enjoyments of an English rectory, than to found and build up a church in the rough settlements of a new country. He could better enjoy the congenial society of his equals, at home, than guide the rude, independent minds of those who constituted his companions in this, to him, wholly unknown enterprise. The whole plan of the undertaking was conceived and started in a spirit particularly unconscious of the real position of affairs where it was to be executed. It was a paper campaign, projected by an impracticable general, and entrusted to incompetent officers. As such the result was inevitable failure. It was started with organization and machinery enough to carry on a colony of the greatest magnitude after years of successful growth; and in order to give it dignity and importance, and to secure the favor of the home government, its ecclesiastical character and position were well cared for in the plan. Mr. Morrell was its minister, sufficient for the needs of its first company. He was the pioneer to whom was intrusted all of the preliminary work that was to speedily result in a flourishing bishopric, and as such he was clothed with ample powers, with full control of all the churches present and in immediate prospect upon these shores. The reality soon satisfied him that the plan was a failure, or that he was not the man to execute it. A rigorous climate, an inhospitable coast, and the companionship of uncongenial spirits were more than he had bargained for and more than he could bear. With the discouragements of many of his associates he sympathized. Thus we find that he remained with his charge about a year and a half and then returned to England, sailing from Plymouth; having had the rare good sense and discretion to keep his ecclesiastical powers and authority to himself, for he did not attempt in the least degree to exercise these, although they were so large, showing them only when about to leave. With this marvellous prospect before him when he undertook the position, and the facilities given him to carry out almost any ideas he may have entertained respecting his ecclesiastical work, however extravagant they may have been, is it presumptuous to suppose that he did not neglect the very first step necessary to carry out the plan of the enterprise, which would be the formation of a local church? We have no positive evidence that he did this, but the probabilities would certainly seem to favor such a proceeding. Without such an organization he could hope to accomplish but little; with it he would have made a beginning and laid the foundations, at least, upon which to erect the imposing structure, that had filled the minds of the original projectors in England.

For the chronicles of the church and minister during the next ten years we have to rely mainly upon a single statement, we might almost say tradition, and that somewhat vague and unsatisfactory. The passage in “Prince’s Chronicles” relating to this settlement seems not to be credited by Mr. Adams, yet it is of such a nature that we can hardly pass it by as entirely without foundation. It reads as follows: “This year comes some addition to the few inhabitants of Wessagusset, from Weymouth, England, who are another sort of people than the former.” Then follows in brackets [“and on whose account I conclude the town is since called Weymouth”]. To this is appended the following note:—“They have the Rev. Mr. Barnard, their first non-conformist minister, who dies among them. But whether he comes before or after 1630, or when he dies is yet unknown, nor do I anywhere find the least hint of him, but in the manuscript letter taken from some of the oldest people of Weymouth.” The authority upon which this whole passage depends is the manuscript letter. The statement is a very important one, and would seem to be entitled to more weight than Mr. Adams is inclined to allow it. Rev. Thomas Prince was born 15 May, 1687, and was old enough before their decease, to know many of those who were the children of the very earliest settlers of the town. From them he undoubtedly obtained the information contained in the manuscript letter. And who were these people and how much value should attach to their testimony? As an answer let us look at the record of a single year, that of 1718, when Mr. Prince was 31 years of age. Among the deaths of that year we find the following:—Samuel, son of Elder Edward Bates, Capt. Stephen French, son of Stephen French, (Edward Bates and Stephen French were members of the Dorchester council, Feb., 1639, in the Lenthal matter, from the Weymouth church); Ichabod, son of Capt. John Holbrook; James, son of Dea. Jonas Humphrey; James, son of Robert Lovell; Lieut. Jacob, son of Capt. James Nash; John, son of Robert Randall; Dea. John, son of Joseph Shaw; William and Jonathan, sons of Capt. William Torrey, and John, son of John Vinson. These were all old men, and their fathers were among the first settlers of the town, and all, fathers and sons, were among its most intelligent and important citizens. This is the record for a single year. While Mr. Prince was in the prime of life there were scores of such, from whom his information would come only second hand. The death of Rev. Samuel Torrey, one of the ablest ministers of his day, the pastor of the church in Weymouth for many years, occurred in 1707, when Mr. Prince was 20 years old, whom he well knew, and whose authority would be unquestioned. Here were sources of information from which he probably drew his account. He has always had the reputation of being a very careful historian, and any statement of his should not be hastily set aside. Mr. Prince himself does not appear to doubt its correctness, but is surprised to find no mention made of the company and the minister, Mr. Barnard, in contemporary writers. As before intimated, satisfactory reason could no doubt be found for such omissions were the relations between the few scattered settlements of the time known to us. If we may not give some credit to this tradition upon such an authority, it will be hardly worth our while to pursue our inquiries further in this direction, for it is by just such incidental testimony, and that alone, that we are to establish much of our proof. And this is often the most satisfactory evidence, for the very reason that it is incidental and indirect, and therefore less liable to be swayed by prejudice or predisposition. Again, the probabilities are strongly in favor of the existence of this Mr. Barnard as the minister; for with such antecedents and surroundings as these early planters had, it would be natural and proper for them to have a minister, and in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, may we not credit the statement of Mr. Prince, that these settlers at Wessagusset had for their minister, Mr. Barnard, who lived and died among them; and that the statement did not come merely from a confusion of names, consequent upon the appearance of Massachiel Barnard, a member of the Hull company, who made his home in the town for several years? For similar reasons may we not well believe that this people and minister were not without a church for a series of years?

We have no further record of church or minister until 1635, when permission was given, 8 July, by the General Court, for Rev. Joseph Hull and 21 families to sit down at Wessaguscus. On the 2d of September, following, the name of the settlement was changed to Weymouth, and it was made a plantation, with a privilege of a deputy to the General Court. Mr. Hull was also made a freeman at the same time. His first grant of land is recorded as in Weymouth, 12 June, 1636. The same year he also received a grant of land in Hingham. In 1637, he was reported as being still in Weymouth, while the same year, probably later and transiently, he is named among the list of first settlers in Salem. He was also heard from about the same time, preaching at Bass River, Beverly. In September, 1638, he was chosen deputy to the General Court from Hingham, and was also appointed a local magistrate for the same town. His son, Benjamin, was baptized there, 24 March, 1639; and again he was elected its deputy to the General Court. 5 May of that year, he preached his farewell sermon in Weymouth, and later, in the same month, is heard from at Barnstable, in Plymouth colony, making a settlement.

His sojourn at Barnstable was a short and stormy one, for he had hardly become settled there with his little company when the territory was entered upon by Rev. Mr. Lothrop and his flock from Scituate. There his daughter Joanna was married in November, 1639, to Capt. John Bursley, who was unquestionably the Bursley of the Gorges company, at Weymouth, in 1623, whom we find back again in that town as a land owner in 1643. Mr. Hull was made a freeman of Plymouth colony, in December, 1639. There seems to have been trouble in the Barnstable church, and Mr. Hull preached at Yarmouth so acceptably, that, early in 1641 he received a call from the church there, which he promptly accepted, and for which both he and his wife were excommunicated by the Barnstable church. On this account perhaps, and possibly from the influence of the Plymouth authorities, who appear to have become hostile to him, his stay at Yarmouth was of short duration, for we find him as preacher at the Isle of Shoals, in March, 1642. He seems not yet to have wholly abandoned the Plymouth colony, for, 11 March, 1642, his wife Agnes renews her covenant with the Barnstable church, and 7 March, 1643, a warrant for his arrest is issued by the court, “should he continue his ministrations as minister or magistrate in that colony.” His troubles there appear to have been adjusted, for he was received back into the Barnstable church, 10 August, 1643. He now bids a final farewell to that colony, and we next hear of him as preaching at York, Maine, where, or in that vicinity, he remained for 8 or 10 years, subject however to the not very friendly attentions of his Massachusetts Bay colony acquaintances. He afterwards returned to England, and was, in 1659, rector of St. Buryan’s, Cornwall, where he remained about three years, when his name appears among the ejected ministers under the “St. Bartholomew Act.” He again took refuge in America, where he was found, 1665, the year of his death, once more at the Isle of Shoals, having been driven from Oyster River by the Quakers.

Mr. Hull was born in Somersetshire, England, about the year 1590; was educated at Oxford University, St. Mary’s Hall, where he graduated in 1614; became rector of Northleigh, Devon, in 1621, which position he resigned in 1632, when he commenced gathering from his native county and those surrounding it, the company with which he sailed from Weymouth, Dorset, 20 March, 1635.

“Mr. Hull,” says Savage, “came over in the Episcopal interest,” and his sympathies appear to have leaned in that direction, although while in America he was professedly a non-conformist, or Independent; hence, probably, the jealousy and petty persecution which followed him with more or less virulence, during the greater part of his residence on these shores. He was a man of worth and learning by the admission of Hubbard. He must have been a popular man from his success in securing followers to make up his company of emigrants, and his selection by the voice of his constituents at three different elections as deputy to the General Court, twice at Hingham, and once at Barnstable. He must have been an acceptable preacher from the eagerness with which his services were sought. Dr. Mather places him among our “first good men;” and Pike, his successor at Dover, remembers him as a reverend minister, while Gov. Winthrop says he was “a very contentious man.” Possibly the worthy Governor may not have been quite free from prejudice against the free-spoken, Independent minister, with Episcopal antecedents and tendencies, yet the frequent removals, numerous troubles, vexations and lawsuits, certainly give room for the Governor’s opinion. No fault seems to have been found with his moral or religious character, but he was certainly unfortunate while in this country by having circumstances so often against him, or in having so many bad neighbors. It is somewhat doubtful whether he was ever settled over the church in Weymouth.

Rev. Thomas Jenner was in Weymouth in the early part of 1636, and took the freeman’s oath in December of that year. According to Mr. Savage he was in Roxbury a year or two previous to that. Soon, in 1637, he received a call from the Weymouth people. The same year, according to Winthrop and Hubbard, “divers of the ministers and elders went to Weymouth, to reconcile the differences between the people and Mr. Jenner, whom they had called for their pastor, and had good success.” We find, also, from the General Court records, that this course was ordered by the court. He remained there for several years, and in 1640 represented the town in the General Court. He retired from the ministry there for some reason unexplained by the records, although we may get a hint at what it was, and went to Saco, Maine. Not much is known of him, further than this: that he came to Weymouth as early at least as the year following the arrival of Mr. Hull, and that he came in the interest of the ministers and authorities of the Massachusetts Bay colony, and was sustained by them through the troubles that ensued.

And now a third minister appears upon the scene, Rev. Robert Lenthal, who was in Weymouth as early as 1637, where “he disseminated his new doctrines, made proselytes and collected a strong party to oppose the new organization of the church, which took place 30 Jan’y, 1638,” according to notes appended to a sermon preached by Rev. Josiah Bent at the dedication of the new meeting-house in North Weymouth, 28 November, 1832. These notes were prepared by Hon. Christopher Webb, who was deeply interested in Weymouth history and had been long engaged in collecting materials for historical purposes. Mr. Savage also states that Mr. Lenthal was in Weymouth in 1637, “but not pleasing the Governor was forbid to be ordained.” Matters in the church, instead of growing better after the council of 1637, which met with such “good success in reconciling the differences between Mr. Jenner and his people in Weymouth,” became so much worse that it was deemed necessary to call a second council or conference, which was held at the house of Capt. Israel Stoughton, in Dorchester, a magistrate of the colony, 10 February, 1639. Notes of the proceedings were taken by Capt. Robert Keayne (brother-in-law of Rev. John Wilson), which have been preserved among the Stiles manuscripts in Yale College Library. From these notes much valuable information has come to light. The council must have been considered a very important one, since we find among its members, Rev. John Wilson, pastor, and Rev. John Cotton, teacher, of the church in Boston; Rev. Zechariah Symmes, teacher, of the church in Charlestown; Rev. John Weld, pastor, and Rev. John Eliot, teacher, of the church in Roxbury; Rev. Samuel Newman, (who went to Weymouth the same year); Rev. Thomas Jenner, of Weymouth; Mr. Edward Bates and Mr. Stephen French, of Weymouth, the former of whom, and not the latter as Mr. Trumbull has it, was then, or soon became, a ruling elder of the church in that town; also a private man, perhaps Capt. Keayne himself.

In those days one of the surest and most expeditious ways of disposing of a troublesome competitor, and one which has not yet been entirely abandoned, was to accuse him of heresy, and it was a very poor use of favorable circumstances that failed to convict, and thus dispose of the difficulty. The points which Mr. Lenthal was called to answer, and upon which he was supposed to differ, were, the constituents of the real church, and justification by faith. The churches of New England at that time very tenaciously held to the necessity of a covenant for giving “essential being” to the church, while Mr. Lenthal believed that baptism and not the covenant constituted this “essential being,” as it was termed. He also objected to reordination after a new election. The real point of difference seems to have been the relative merits of the church and parish systems, perhaps, as at present illustrated in the settlement of ministers by ordination or installation, or in their employment as “stated supply;” settling or only hiring; a matter of purely church polity. The churches believed strongly in the antecedence of election to ordination of church officers. The second point was justification by faith, as held by these churches against the construction put upon it by Mrs. Hutchinson and her adherents; a difference rather metaphysical than doctrinal, as it would appear to us. Both of these questions were satisfactorily settled, as far as the session of the council was concerned; Mr. Lenthal being sincere enough, or politic enough, not to differ too strongly from his judges.

The facts brought out were, that Mr. Lenthal had previously been a minister in good repute in England; that in the preceding years several of his people had come to America and were settled at Weymouth, and he expected more to follow. Mr. Jenner was now at Weymouth; Mr. Hull had not yet preached his farewell sermon, and there was not absolute harmony among the people. Upon Mr. Lenthal’s appearance in New England, his former people who had settled in Weymouth, with probably some others, enough to form quite a strong party, urged him to come to that place and be their minister, to which he willingly consented.

In attempting, however, to carry out this arrangement, Mr. Jenner being in possession, and having a strong official support, trouble ensued, so great that the salary of Mr. Jenner failed to be paid; hence the conference, although the plea was unsoundness in doctrine, on the part of Mr. Lenthal. Mr. Jenner and Mr. Newman, as previously stated, were both members of this council, the former to be a judge in his own case, and the latter a party in interest, as we find him, almost immediately, upon the ground, and within a short time in full possession of the field; Mr. Hull preaching his farewell sermon the same year; Mr. Jenner a resident of Saco, within two years; while Mr. Lenthal goes to that refuge for the persecuted, Rhode Island, where he was admitted as freeman, 6 August, 1640, and employed by the town of Newport in teaching a public school. It is said that he returned to England in 1641 or 1642. The trouble seems to have been that Weymouth was considered a public manor upon which any minister had a right to poach, and the difficulties that ensued in consequence, although satisfactorily settled, would not stay settled, but were continually breaking out afresh.

In this connection, J. Hammond Trumbull, in his notes upon the Stiles paper, published in the Congregational Quarterly for April, 1877, from which the report of the council of 1639 was taken, quotes from Winthrop as follows: “It is observable this church and that of Lynn could not hold together, nor could have any elders join or hold with them. The reason appeared to be because they did not begin according to the rule of the gospel.” Was this a church formed by Mr. Hull, or was it an attempt to form a second? The vigorous repressive measures of the General Court seem to have prepared the way for a permanent settlement of the difficulties, the prominent actors in the Lenthal faction being quite summarily dealt with. John Smith was fined £20 and committed during the pleasure of the court; Richard Silvester was fined £2 and disfranchised, for “disturbing the peace by combining with others to hinder the orderly gathering of a church in Weymouth, and to set up another there,—and for undue procuring the hands of many to a blank for that purpose.” Mr. Ambrose Martin, “for calling the church covenant a stinking carrion and a human invention, etc., was fined £10 and ordered to go to Mr. Mather to be instructed by him.” Mr. Thomas Makepeace, “because of his novile disposition was informed that we are weary of him, unless he reform;” and James Britton, “for his not appearing was committed, and for his gross lying, dissimulation and contempt of ministers, churches and covenant was openly whipt.” Thus promptly was heresy and insubordination crushed by our fathers, and freedom of speech, action and conscience protected,—in their way.

The way having been thus prepared, Rev. Samuel Newman came to Weymouth in 1639, where he remained for four or five years, but the seeds of former troubles had not yet ceased to sprout; the difficulty was not wholly overcome; the spirit of unrest that had for some years so possessed the people would not so soon be quieted. He found his position anything but a bed of roses, and he was glad to emigrate to escape the labor of so hard a field; therefore, in 1644, he, with some 40 families, sought refuge in Seekonk, which, in memory of the occasion and its cause, he called Rehoboth, “The Lord hath made room for us.” Not because Weymouth had become too narrow in territory for them, for probably not a quarter of its acres had been taken up, but for the same reason that separated Abraham and Lot. The pressure was on the spirit and not upon the body; and so, rather than continue the quarrel, they sought a new home further in the wilderness. Common tradition, which most of the historians have followed, says that he took with him a majority of his congregation, but with the facts relative to the population that we have already before us, it will be easy to prove that this could not have been correct, for we have seen that at the date of the first meeting held by the original planters of Seekonk, which by the way was held in Weymouth, 24 October, 1643, the latter town had at least 130 families, probably a good many more, while of these only 23 names are found in the list of the original proprietors of Seekonk, four of whom certainly remained in Weymouth, leaving but 19 out of which to manufacture a majority of 130. This emigration was indeed a serious loss, but its general effect was hardly perceptible, and the business of the town apparently went on as though nothing important had happened.

Rev. Mr. Newman was born in Banbury, England, in 1600; graduated at Oxford, in 1620; came to Dorchester, Mass., in 1636, and to Weymouth, in 1639; whence he removed to Rehoboth, where he died 5 July, 1663. “He was a hard student, an animated preacher, and an excellent man, ardently beloved and long lamented by his people. He compiled by the light of pine knots, a concordance of the Bible, the third at that time in the English language, and the best. While living he was defrauded of the pecuniary profits of his work, and when dead, he was robbed also of the name, the work being afterwards known as ‘Cruden’s Concordance.’”

With the withdrawal of Mr. Newman, and the settlement of Mr. Thomas Thacher, who was ordained 2 January, 1644, the perplexing trouble of the Weymouth church came to an end, and an era of extended prosperity dawned upon it. From this time forward the history of the church can be traced quite fully and accurately, although it has no records of its own previous to the time of Rev. William Smith, those for the first hundred years of its existence being missing.

So much for our brief record of facts. Some of them, however, and those among the more important, need to be accounted for or explained, in order to make the narrative consistent and satisfactory. The intense difficulties of the eight years from the arrival of Mr. Hull in 1635, to the departure of Mr. Newman in 1644, must have had an origin that is not revealed to us in the records at our command. What were the causes that produced them and contributed to keep them alive during this period? Why is it that contemporaneous writers have so little to say about this settlement and its events during its first twenty years? Perhaps a closer look at the facts we have may throw some light upon the subject.

Rev. Mr. Morrell, it is admitted, came to this town in the Episcopal interest. He was a clergyman of the Established Church, clothed with extraordinary powers to form, govern and perpetuate churches of that communion. Whatever influence he exerted was in favor of the extension and strengthening of that organization. His people were in sympathy with him in this matter, and if he founded a church here it was of that denomination; if he did not, he left influences behind him that would naturally work towards the accomplishment of that purpose, and these influences would as naturally continue to operate while these settlers formed an important element in that community; they would of necessity oppose the ecclesiastical systems of the Plymouth and Bay colonies, then or soon to become their near neighbors. While the settlement was one, before the arrival of Gov. Winthrop and the rapid increase of settlements around the Bay, there was nothing to call up this feeling of opposition, for the few emigrants who came from time to time, even if their sympathies were at variance with the previous settlers, had enough to do to look after their own affairs; besides, the colony was not strong enough to quarrel. The arrival of Gov. Winthrop, the establishment of the colonial government, and the large tide of emigration that set in immediately after, had its effect upon the little plantation of Wessaguscus. The favorable situation, and the already established community, drew in many new settlers from other points, and the influence of the government, and the religious system it supported, soon made itself felt, and with the assistance derived from these sources, became at length predominant. Still the old feeling of loyalty to the Church of England and to the Gorges company, was powerful enough to form a strong party.

Such was the position of affairs, when, in the summer of 1635, the arrival of Mr. Hull and his score of families introduced a new element of discord into the already divided community. The new comers, not in full sympathy with either faction, deemed themselves strong enough and of sufficient importance to have at least an equal voice in the councils of the town, and as there was no minister at their coming, and as they brought one ready-made at their hands, what better could they do than accept him for all? This at once aroused the opposition of the older settlers, and measures were immediately taken to prevent such a result. The friends of the government seem to have been the strongest and most energetic. They select Mr. Thomas Jenner, a recent emigrant to Dorchester, and invite him to take the field in opposition, which he was very ready to do, for we find him here in the year following. Success appears to have followed the movement, for Mr. Hull virtually retires from the contest, as the records show him in 1636 and 1637 as a candidate for the ministerial position in other places, and soon, with a sufficiently permanent location in the neighboring town of Hingham, to become its deputy to the General Court. Still he does not appear to have wholly relinquished his claim upon the Weymouth pulpit, for it was not until 1639 that his farewell sermon was preached.

The jealousy of the original settlers of any authority below the crown, outside of their own patent, may have prevented as close an intimacy with the neighboring plantations as would otherwise have existed; and this would furnish a reason why it is so seldom mentioned by them in connection with their own affairs. However this may be, the authority of the colonial government was gradually extended over the settlement, and the people submitted with the best grace they could, but not without an occasional exhibition of the old spirit by way of protest. The town was reorganized, its name changed, and the privilege of a deputy to the General Court granted to it in the summer and fall of 1635. At once the three opposing elements show themselves, and the little town chooses three deputies, instead of the one to which it was entitled. Capt. John Bursley represents the original settlers, Mr. Wm. Reade those who favor the colonial government, while Mr. John Upham is the selection of the Hull emigrants, and, as has been sometimes the case in later days, the patronage of the ruling power proves the most powerful, and Mr. Reade retains his seat, while his two competitors quietly retire.

This of course did not tend to soothe the troubles, for, as we have already seen, they grew so rapidly, developing mainly in the church, the civil powers being too powerful for open resistance, that in 1637, the General Court deemed it necessary to interfere and ordered a council of prominent officers and ministers to settle the differences. This was followed by a second, neither party being willing to submit to an adverse decision. And, as if this difficulty were not enough, about the same time, 1637, appeared another discordant element in the person of Rev. Robert Lenthal, who had already some partizans in the divided parish. He needed but little solicitation to join in the fray, and we have seen the result of his interference, as far as the public records show. And now, in 1638, Mr. Samuel Newman becomes a fourth aspirant for the Weymouth pulpit. Truly there must have been a wonderfully attractiveness in this place for people to draw so many illustrious teachers thither at the imminent risk of woeful discomfiture. Yet nothing can be more certain than that about the year 1638-9, there were no less than four ministers urging their claims to the pastorate of the Weymouth church, and that each of them had a strong following; nor can it be doubted that the causes that produced this state of affairs were deep-seated and some of them of long standing.

The question of the existence of the church through all of these eventful years cannot be definitely settled with the evidence we now have. We have proved a permanent and comparatively prosperous settlement during the whole of this period, and this fact argues a strong probability of a church organization, for in those days it was hardly reputable for a community to be without one. We are certain of Mr. Morrell, and we have important testimony in favor of Mr. Barnard, previous to 1635,—another argument in favor of the existence of a church, for ministers without churches were not so common in those days as at the present time. The coming of Rev. Joseph Hull in 1635, a regularly ordained minister, and of three others in the three following years, without any record of tradition of the formation of a church during that period, while there are many references to a church already existing, furnish perhaps the strongest argument in favor of a prior organization.

Negative evidence, or lack of positive statement, should not be forced, but since it has been employed to prove the formation of a church here at a given date, perhaps we may be permitted to urge it a little more strongly in favor of an earlier date for the same event. If there were, as is admitted, ten other churches in existence on the shores of the Bay at the arrival of the Hull company in 1635, and that company proceeded immediately to form the eleventh, in accordance with the universal custom, several of the preceding ten must have been called to assist in its organization, in which case we can hardly conceive it possible that some one at least of the number should not have made the transaction a matter of record, or that their records should not in some way allude to it, for the formation of a new church was then a matter of some importance, but nowhere, in church or state or private records, do we find the slightest intimation of such an event; whereas, had there been a church formed at an earlier date, when there was no other existing on the shores of New England, besides that at Plymouth, and that not in sympathy, we have a very good reason why we hear nothing of it.

The material needs of the new settlement and other causes before alluded to might prevent its own record, while the distractions afterwards existing, and the consequent jealousies between the contending parties might easily forbid any subsequent one. The theory of a regular succession of pastors beginning with Mr. Hull in 1635, and following down through Mr. Jenner, Mr. Lenthal and Mr. Newman, until Mr. Thacher is reached, has been a favorite one, but is hardly admissible in face of the evidence already produced, which would rather go to show the attempted formation of a second church by some of the conflicting interests in opposition to one already in existence. We may hope at some time to discover further testimony with which to settle this vexed question, but for the present we must be content to allow it to rest upon no firmer basis than probability, yet with that strongly in favor of a much earlier organization of the church, reaching back perhaps to 1623.

WEYMOUTH THIRTY YEARS LATER — FOOTNOTES:

A PAPER READ BY
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS
BEFORE THE WEYMOUTH HISTORICAL SOCIETY, AT THE FOGG OPERA HOUSE, SOUTH WEYMOUTH, ON THE EVENING OF TUESDAY, THE 23D SEPTEMBER, 1904.

It is already five months since your Society celebrated the completion of its twenty-fifth year. It may be said to have then attained its majority. Yet, perhaps, this middle period of September is more appropriate for your anniversary than a day in April; for towards the middle of September, 1623, that is, two hundred and eighty-one years ago at this time,—possibly on what was then the thirteenth of the month, now the twenty-third,—Captain Robert Gorges, at the head of a little company of adventurers, sat down at Wessagusset. Thus, as nearly as can now be ascertained, the permanent settlement of a part of what has for hard upon two whole centuries and three-quarters of another been known as Weymouth,—the second permanent settlement in Massachusetts,—dates from this season, and, possibly, from this day of September. The Weymouth Historical Society commemorates the event to-night. It might well commemorate it annually.

But, in the first place, I crave indulgence while I say a single word personal to myself. I want to explain why I meant to be here last April, and why I am here now. Towards Weymouth, I confess to a peculiarly kindly feeling. Not only was Weymouth the birthplace and maiden home of one whom, among my ancestors, I specially reverence, but to Weymouth I feel under personal obligation. It is a short story, soon told; it relates also wholly to myself, but here I feel at liberty to tell it.

Just thirty years ago last spring, on a day in April, if my memory serves me right, your old-time selectman, James Humphrey,—remembered by you as “Judge” Humphrey,—called at my office, then in Pemberton Square, Boston. Taking a chair by my desk, he next occasioned wide-eyed surprise on my part by inviting me, on behalf of a committee of the town of Weymouth, to deliver an historical address at the coming 250th anniversary of the permanent settlement of the place. Recently returned to civil life from four years of active military service, and nominally a lawyer, I was at that time chairman of the State Board of Railroad Commissioners, and, as such, devoting my attention to questions connected with the growth and development of transportation. To independent historical investigation I had never given a thought. As to Weymouth, I very honestly confess I hardly knew where the town so called was, much less anything of its story; having a somewhat vague impression only that my great-grandmother, Parson William Smith’s daughter, Abigail, had been born there, and there lived her girlhood. Such was my surprise, I remember, that I suggested to Mr. Humphrey he must be acting under a misapprehension, intending to invite some other member of my family, possibly my father. He, however, at once assured me such was not the case, satisfying me finally that, a man sober and in his right mind, he knew what he was about, and who he was talking to. Subsequently, I learned that he did indeed act as the representative of a committee appointed at the last annual Weymouth town meeting; for an explanation of the choice appeared,—as “a great-grandson of Abigail (Smith) Adams, a native of Weymouth,” I had been selected for the task. Overcoming my surprise, I told Mr. Humphrey I would take the matter under consideration. Doing so, I finally concluded to accept. Though I had not the faintest idea of it at the time, that acceptance marked for me an epoch; I had, in fact, come to a turning-point in life. That, instinctively, if somewhat unadvisedly and blindly, I followed the path thus unexpectedly opened has been to me ever since cause of gratitude to Weymouth. For thirty years it has led me through pastures green and pleasant places. But at the moment, so little did I know of the earlier history of Massachusetts, I was not aware that any settlement had been effected hereabouts immediately after that at Plymouth, or that the first name of the place was Wessagusset; nor, finally, that Thomas Morton had at about the same time, erected the famous May-pole at Merrymount, on the hill opposite where I dwelt. Thus the field into which I was invited was one wholly new to me, and unwittingly I entered on it; but, for once, fortune builded for me better than I knew. I began on a study which has since lasted continuously.

Weymouth is, therefore, in my mind closely and inseparably associated, not only with the commencement of what I dare not call a career, but with a fortuitous incident which led for me to more pleasurable pursuits than elsewhere it has been given me to follow.

That address of mine, the immediate outcome of the invitation extended through Mr. Humphrey in 1874, has since been more than once kindly referred to by investigators here in Weymouth; and, I infer from my being here to-night, it is even yet not wholly forgotten. I may add also that it is distinctly the cause of my being here; for, as six months ago I thought over your invitation to address a Weymouth audience once more, it seemed to offer what must be a rare opportunity in any life,—an opportunity to go back, after years of study directed largely to historical topics, more especially to topics connected with New England, Massachusetts and the region hereabout, and to review what I in the beginning said, close to the spot where I said it. Accordingly, I this evening propose to find my text in what I uttered on King-oak hill thirty years ago last July; and, in so doing, to pass judgment upon it.

For a first performance, I will honestly confess it does not seem to me, as I now look over it, wholly devoid of merit. Curiously enough also, the best portions of it are distinctly the closing portions, in which I wrote with a warmth and feeling absent from the earlier part. Nevertheless, that Weymouth address of 1874, as I now see it, was, as a whole, wrong in conception and faulty in execution. It was wrong in conception, because in it I tried to cover too much ground. That it was defective in execution, is most apparent. Accepting an invitation to deliver a commemorative address on the 250th anniversary of the permanent settlement of Weymouth, I attempted an historical sketch covering the town’s whole existence. I ought to have confined myself to a close analysis of its first twenty years. That period would have opened to me, had I known how to use it, a field of investigation at once ample in extent and curiously rich. Nor is this all; it would have done a great deal more. Unwittingly, I missed the opportunity of a life-time. Simply, I was not equal to the occasion. My consolation is that few would have been equal to it. But of this, more presently.

To make either a comprehensive or careful analysis of the early history of your town now, is out of my power; nor would one evening’s time admit of it. I will, however, say that to-day, not less than in the days of the late James Savage, “a careful history of Weymouth is much wanted.”[100] Nine years after my prentice effort, your associate and recording secretary, Gilbert Nash, approached the subject both with a better comprehension, and a knowledge much closer and far wider than I could boast. But my effort, supplemented though it was by him, left much to be desired,—a desideratum it should be the mission of this Society to make good.

Turning then to Wessagusset, and the early history of Weymouth, and confining myself to them, I find its record composed of two parts:—the Wessagusset settlements, pre-historic almost in character, and the subsequent struggling into life of Weymouth, in the early years of the colony. The story of Wessagusset is in itself curiously interesting, as well as of momentous importance; and it was in connection with that I missed the opportunity of a life-time, to which I just referred. It vexes me now to think of it. It even brings to mind Whittier’s familiar lines:

“For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’”

It came about in this wise:—Weymouth is very classic ground; to what an extent it is classic I certainly did not at the time now in question appreciate; nor, I am confident, did your people appreciate it. Not only did some of the most dramatic, as well as momentous, episodes in the early life of Massachusetts here occur, but it so chanced that one at least of those episodes has been woven into a poem familiar as a household word. I refer, of course, to Longfellow’s “Courtship of Miles Standish.” It was with that I should forever have connected my effort of 1874; I should have vindicated history, while showing how, as material for poetical treatment, Longfellow had failed to use it as it might have been used. He also had proved unequal to the occasion. You remember the episode in Longfellow’s poem to which I refer; it is the seventh part, entitled “The March of Miles Standish.” I would like to read the whole of this part to you; and then, in sharp contrast, set before you the historic facts. I must, however, confine myself to some two score lines of the poem, enough to recall its spirit, and follow them with a mere outline of the actual facts. But that will suffice:

“Meanwhile the stalwart Miles Standish was marching steadily northward,
Winding through forest and swamp, and along the trend of the seashore.

“After a three days’ march he came to an Indian encampment
Pitched on the edge of a meadow, between the sea and the forest;
Women at work by the tents, and the warriors, horrid with war paint,
Seated about a fire, and smoking and talking together;
Who, when they saw from afar the sudden approach of the white men,
Saw the flash of the sun on breastplate and sabre and musket,
Straightway leaped to their feet, and two, from among them advancing,
Came to parley with Standish, and offer him furs as a present;
Friendship was in their looks, but in their hearts there was hatred.
Braves of the tribe were these, and brothers gigantic in stature,
Huge as Goliath of Gath, or the terrible Og, king of Bashan;
One was Pecksuot named, and the other was called Wattawamat.

“But when he heard their defiance, the boast, the taunt, and the insult,
All the hot blood of his race, of Sir Hugh and of Thurston de Standish,
Boiled and beat in his heart, and swelled in the veins of his temples.
Headlong he leaped on the boaster, and, snatching his knife from its scabbard,
Plunged it into his heart, and, reeling backward, the savage
Fell with his face to the sky, and a fiendlike fierceness upon it.
Straight there arose from the forest the awful sound of the war-whoop,
And, like a flurry of snow on the whistling wind of December,
Swift and sudden and keen came a flight of feathery arrows.
Then came a cloud of smoke, and out of the cloud came the lightning,
Out of the lightning thunder; and death unseen ran before it.
Frightened the savages fled for shelter in swamp and in thicket,
Hotly pursued and beset; but their sachem, the brave Wattawamat,
Fled not; he was dead. Unswerving and swift had a bullet
Passed through his brain, and he fell with both hands clutching the greensward,
Seeming in death to hold back from his foe the land of his fathers.

“There on the flowers of the meadow the warriors lay, and above them,
Silent, with folded arms, stood Hobomok, friend of the white man.

“Thus the first battle was fought and won by the stalwart Miles Standish.
When the tidings thereof were brought to the village of Plymouth,
And as a trophy of war the head of the brave Wattawamat
Scowled from the roof of the fort, which at once was a church and a fortress,
All who beheld it rejoiced, and praised the Lord, and took courage.”

Such is the poet’s rendering; now what were the facts? We all recognize in these cases what is known as “poetic license.” It is the unquestioned privilege of the poet to so mould hard facts and actual conditions as to make realities conform to his idea of the everlasting fitness of things. On the other hand, it is but fair that, in so doing, the artist should improve on the facts. In other words, he should at least not make them more prosaic, and distinctly less dramatic, than they were. In the present case, I submit, Longfellow, instead of rendering things more poetic and dramatic, made them distinctly less so. This I shall now proceed to show.

And here let me premise that it was the habit of Longfellow, as I think the unfortunate habit, to improvise,—so to speak, to evolve from his inner consciousness,—the local atmosphere and conditions of those poems of his in which he dealt with history and historical happenings. It was so with the “Ride of Paul Revere;” it was so with the episodes made use of in the “Tales of a Wayside Inn;” it is notorious it was so in the case of “Evangeline” and Acadia; it was strikingly, and far more inexcusably, so in the case of “Miles Standish” and Plymouth. While preparing a poem which has deservedly become an American classic, as such throwing a glamour of romance over that entire region to which it has given the name of the “Evangeline Country,” Longfellow never sought to draw inspiration from actual contact with that “forest primeval” of which he sang; nor again, when dealing with the events of our own early history, did he once visit, much less study, the scene of that which he pictured. He imagined everything. I gravely question whether he even knew that the conflict he describes in the lines I have just quoted took place on the shores of Boston bay, and at a point not twenty miles from the historic mansion in which he lived, and the library where he imagined. He certainly, and more’s the pity, never stood on King-oak hill, or sailed up the Fore-river.

What actually occurred here in April, 1623, I have endeavored elsewhere to describe in detail, just as it appears in our early records. Those curious on the subject will find my narrative in a chapter (vi) entitled “The Smoking Flax Blood-Quenched,” in a work of mine, the matured outcome of my address here in 1874, called “Three Episodes of Massachusetts History.” To that I refer them. Meanwhile, suffice it for me now to say, the actual occurrences of those early April days were stronger, more virile, and infinitely more dramatic and better adapted to poetic treatment,—in one word, more Homeric,—than the wholly apocryphal, and somewhat mawkish, cast given them in the lines I have quoted. Indeed, so far as the incidents drawn from the history of Weymouth are concerned, the whole is, in the original records, replete with vigorous life. It smacks of the savage; it is racy of the soil; it smells of the sea. It begins with the flight of Phineas Pratt from Wessagusset to Plymouth, his loss of the way, his fear lest his foot-prints in the late-lingering snow banks should betray him, his nights in the woods, his pursuit by the Indians, his guidance by the stars and sky, his fording the icy river, and his arrival in Plymouth just as Miles Standish was embarking for Wessagusset. Nothing then can be more picturesque, more epic in outline, than Standish’s voyage, with his little company of grim, silent men in that open boat. Sternly bent on action, they skirted, under a gloomy eastern sky, along the surf-beaten shore, the mist driving in their faces as the swelling seas broke roughly in white surge over the rocks and ledges which still obstruct the course they took. From the distance came the dull, monotonous roar of the breakers, indicating the line of the coast. At last they cast anchor before the desolate and apparently deserted block-house here in your Fore-river, and presently some woe-begone stragglers answered their call. Next came the meeting with the savages, the fencing talk, and the episode of what Holmes, in still another poem, refers to as,

“Wituwamet’s pictured knife
And Pecksuot’s whooping shout;”

all closing with the fierce hand-to-hand death grapple on the blood-soaked, slippery floor of the rude stockade. Last of all the return to Plymouth, with the gory head of Wattawamat, “that bloody and bold villain,” a ghastly freight, stowed in the rummage of their boat.

The whole story is, in the originals, full of life, simplicity and vigor, needing only to be turned into verse. But, in place of the voyage, we have in Longfellow’s poem a march through the woods, which, having never taken place, has in it nothing characteristic; an interview before an Indian encampment “pitched on the edge of a meadow, between the sea and the forest,” at which the knife scene is enacted, instead of in the rude block-house; and, finally, the killing takes place amid a discharge of firearms, and “there on the flowers of the meadow the warriors” are made to lie; whereas in fact they died far more vigorously, as well as poetically, on the bloody floor of the log-house in which they were surprised, “not making any fearful noise, but catching at their weapons and striving to the last.” And as for “flowers,” it was early in April, and, in spots, the snow still lingered!

That Longfellow wrote very sweet verse, none will deny; but, assuredly, he was not Homeric. At his hands your Weymouth history failed to have justice done it. The case is, I fear, irremediable.

Another cause of great subsequent regret to me has been the fact that, in 1874, the exact locality of the site of the original Wessagusset settlement, and of Weston’s block-house, in which took place the death grapple just referred to, was not known. Tradition asserted that it was somewhere on Phillips creek, above the Fore-river bridge. Seventeen years later, in a volume entitled “The Defences of Norumbega,” published in 1891, by the late Prof. E. N. Horsford, I chanced across a reproduction of Gov. Winthrop’s map of Massachusetts bay of 1634. This map was in 1884 discovered by Henry Waters, among the manuscripts of the Sloan collection, preserved in the British Museum.[101] A portion of it, covering the Weymouth Fore-river and the Wessagusset site, was reproduced in the printed “Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society” (Second Series, vol. vii, pp. 22-30), and thereon is indicated the site of the original Wessagusset. That site no longer exists; and it will ever be matter of profound regret to me that the spot was not known, and the exact location fixed, a few years earlier, at the time of the celebration of 1874. The spot was then unimproved, as the expression goes; it has since been “improved” out of existence. Sold for a trifling sum as a gravel, or a material, pit, had what has since come to light then been known, it might have been secured, and dedicated forever as a public water park fronting on the Fore-river. A permanent memorial should there have been erected.

Instead, bodily carried away, it has literally been cast into the sea; and the tide now daily ebbs and flows over the spot where, two hundred and eighty-two years ago last April, Thomas Weston’s “stout knaves” established themselves; and where, on April 6, 1623, that hand-to-hand death grapple took place between Miles Standish and the fierce Pecksuot, the result of which struck terror to the hearts of the Massachusetts savages, and gave immediate safety, and years of subsequent peace, to the infant Plymouth plantation.

Thus, what occurred at Wessagusset in that pre-historic period has been in poetry and common acceptance so disguised, perverted and transmogrified as to have lost all semblance of itself. It can no longer be recognized; while the place where it all occurred has ceased to be. So it only for us remains to recur to actualities.

In one other aspect the temporary lodgment of Thomas Weston’s “rude fellows” here in Weymouth from June, 1622, to April, 1623, has an interest in the Massachusetts annals. It is characteristic of a distinct phase in the first attempts at the European occupation of New England. I used the word “occupation” designedly, for those sporadic trading stations cannot be referred to correctly as settlements; they contained in themselves no power of self-perpetuation, being composed wholly of men engaged for wages in an effort at the trade exploitation of a region. This is wholly different from colonization in good faith. Thomas Weston acted on a well-defined plan, when, early in 1622, he dispatched his company to establish themselves somewhere on the shores of Massachusetts bay. He himself expressed it:—“Families,” he said, “were an encumbrance in any well-organized plantation; but a trading-post occupied by able-bodied men only could accomplish more in New England in seven years than in old England in twenty.”

Nor was his, here at Wessagusset, by any means the earliest attempt of the sort. On the contrary, it had been preceded by a score of years; and, twelve months ago, on the 1st day of September, 1903, the 300th anniversary was observed of the similar, but even more abortive, experiment made by Capt. Bartholomew Gosnold on the island of Cuttyhunk, at the extreme western end of the Elizabethan group, off New Bedford. Again, three years later, in August, 1607, a similar attempt was made further to the eastward, when the Popham and Gorges plantation was established on the Kennebec. In that case, the adventurers did actually winter on the coast; but, as the survivors described their experience, they found the country “over cold, and in respect of that not habitable by Englishmen.”

At this time, as probably long before and continuously thereafter, Monhegan island, southwest of Penobscot bay, seems to have been a rendezvous for fishermen; and when, in the early spring of 1622, those composing the advance of Thomas Weston’s company arrived at the Damariscove station, on the group of islands just south of Penobscot bay, they found that the men belonging to the ships there fishing “had newly set up a May-pole and were very merry.” But, a band of sea-farers only, there were no families in that company. These, one and all, were mere fishing or trading posts; and, so far as I have been able to learn, not until the Mayflower put into Provincetown harbor on what is now the 21st of November, 1620, had any women of European blood ever set foot on New England soil. That day is properly celebrated. It marked the close of the trade-exploiting period, and the beginning of true colonization.

With almost no interval between, or, at most, with an interval of less than six months,—from early April to mid-September,—the Gorges settlement followed, here at Weymouth, on that of Weston. Except in one respect, I now find my thirty-years-ago treatment of this Gorges settlement not unsatisfactory. I failed to grasp its significance in connection with the European occupation of Massachusetts; and in that connection it has a very considerable significance. To a certain extent Mr. Nash afterwards made good my deficiencies. Nevertheless, the story has, I apprehend, even yet, never been fully told. To tell it should be one of the chief functions of your Society. I will endeavor briefly to outline it, as I now surmise it to have been. For, with inquirers into the events of a remote past, it is much as it is with persons looking for things in dark places. The intellectual perceptions, like the eyes, by degrees become accustomed to a murky environment; and when so accustomed, things quite invisible to others are by long-time investigators distinctly seen.

When that work of mine to which I have already referred,—the “Three Episodes of Massachusetts History,”—appeared, now ten years ago, the introductory part was entitled “The First Settlement of Boston Bay.” Recently, a fifth impression has been called for, and this afforded me an opportunity for a second preface to it, of some significance. When the book first appeared, it naturally passed into the hands of reviewers. As a rule, those reviews were not unfriendly; but the writer of one of them displayed, in perfect good faith, his absolute and complete inability to grasp the elementary significance of the work before him. Supposing that the “First Settlement” there referred to was that of Winthrop, in 1630, he intimated doubt as to the necessity for any further account of that incident, it having been already sufficiently dealt with. The man failed to get even a glimmering perception of the fact that I was therein endeavoring to exhume, and, so to speak, to vivify, a pre-historic settlement, one anterior to that of Winthrop, and obliterated by it; as much obliterated by it as are the ruins of earlier Egyptian temples, a succession of which have occupied the same site. I was, in fact, a sort of historical resurrectionist. Thus, as I sought to show, the real first settlement of the region about Boston bay was considerably prior to that of Winthrop; and, beginning with Weston’s venture in June, 1622, was, some ten years later, merged in that of Boston. But, for years before Winthrop came, the region about Boston bay was occupied; and, moreover, nearly all those stragglers,—the “old planters” they were called,—came from Weymouth. Weymouth thus antedated Boston as a permanent European settlement by at least six years.

This fact I endeavored to establish, and fix in our Massachusetts history; and, moreover, the fact has singular historical interest. It was a struggle for possession between two forms of civilization and of religious faith. The Gorges settlement was ecclesiastical and feudal; that led by Winthrop was theological and democratic: that is, both as respects church and state, the Gorges attempt at Wessagusset was the antithesis, the direct opposite, to the Winthrop accomplishment at Shawmut. Moreover, the fate of the two settlements during the earlier and crucial period depended not on events in Massachusetts, but upon a struggle for supremacy going on in England. Gorges represented Charles I; Winthrop, the Parliament. If the fortune of war had turned otherwise than it did turn, and Charles I had emerged from the conflict victorious, there can be little question Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and not John Winthrop, would have shaped the destiny of Massachusetts. Its history would then have been wholly other than it was.

In discussing the developments of the past,—the sequence of history,—it is never worth while to philosophize over what might have been, had something, which did not happen, chanced to happen at the crucial moment. What did occur, actually occurred; and not something else. None the less, so far as Weymouth is concerned, the forgotten story of that abortive Gorges attempt at a feudal pre-emption, is history; and, moreover, it is an extremely suggestive bit of history. At one time, the chances seemed to preponderate in favor of Gorges, and against Winthrop. First on the ground, the Gorges settlement represented prerogative at a period when king and primate had it all their own way. The permanence of the Puritan colony was thus for a time at stake; and, indeed, it was years before the Gorges claims ceased to occasion anxiety in the Boston council chamber. More than once a royal intervention, from which there was no apparent avenue of escape, seemed imminent. The single possible recourse was to a policy of delay, of procrastination; and, while pursuing it, those entrusted with the fate of the infant commonwealth watched in fear and trembling the slow course of English events, as they unfolded themselves towards a doubtful end. Time, and the chances of war on the other side of the Atlantic, at last dispelled danger; but the Wessagusset settlement, prior in time, long made itself sensibly felt as a disturbing factor in Massachusetts development. And now, looking back on the celebration held here in 1874, and my own contribution to it, I think I may fairly claim that form and substance were at that time and there given to a chapter of history then altogether forgotten; but, when revived, not devoid of interest, because explanatory of much, before mysterious.

The Gorges settlement, moreover, was, I take it, a true settlement, not a mere attempt at trade exploitation. And by a true settlement I mean that it contained in itself the possibility of continued life; it was self-perpetuating, for those composing it were in part women. Of it, every line of contemporaneous record long since perished. That such a record once existed, we know. In the inventory made after his death of the property of William Blackstone, the recluse of Shawmut, among the titles of a not inconsiderable library is found the significant item, “ten paper books.” They were valued at six pence each; but, in all human probability, those “paper books” contained Blackstone’s day-by-day account of what occurred during the eleven years which elapsed between his landing at Wessagusset in 1623, and his removal from Boston in 1634. Those “paper books” we, moreover, know, preserved for over forty years and until the death of him who wrote in them, perished a month later in the flame and smoke which marked the outbreak of King Philip’s war. In the next century also when, about 1750, Thomas Prince compiled his Annals, he made reference to “manuscript letters, taken from some of the oldest people at Weymouth.” These also are hopelessly gone. Thus we have not, nor can we now reasonably hope ever to have, any direct and authentic memorials of earliest Weymouth. We do know, however, that Samuel Maverick came to Massachusetts bay in 1624, and that he was associated with Gorges. That he came to Wessagusset, cannot be asserted.[102] The place was outside the limits of the Robert Gorges patent, and Maverick permanently established himself across the bay at Chelsea, then known as Winnisimmet. He there married the widow of David Thompson, another Gorges associate and the first occupant of Thompson’s island, which, at the mouth of the Neponset, still perpetuates his name. To Samuel Maverick a son was born before 1630.

Thomas Walford, also one of the Gorges following, that doughty blacksmith of Charlestown who, by killing a wolf, discharged the fine imposed on him because of nonconformity in church-going, was a married man.

Of William Jeffreys and John Burslam, we know only that they remained at Wessagusset, and were living here, apparently in prosperous circumstances, at the time the place was incorporated as Weymouth. We do not know positively that they were married, or had families; but the inference is strong that such was the case. They were not adventurers, mere wanderers, of the Thomas Weston and Thomas Morton stripe. They had given hostages to fortune, and had a stake in the country.

When my address of 1874 was published, in one of the foot-notes[103] to it I dismissed as improbable an entry in Prince’s Annals to the effect that, in 1624, there came “some addition to the few inhabitants of Wessagusset, from Weymouth, England,” having with them the Rev. Mr. Barnard, their first non-conformist minister. Mr. Nash, in his paper entitled “Weymouth in its First Twenty Years,” has taken a different view, setting forth in much detail his reasons for believing the fact stated. Very possibly I was wrong, and he is right; and certainly it is corroborative evidence of his rightness that Samuel Maverick fixes that year, 1624, as the time of his coming to New England, and Boston bay. Possibly he was one of Mr. Barnard’s company; and he certainly afterwards sympathized in Mr. Barnard’s religious views.

Into these questions it is unnecessary to enter. Nor would it be profitable so to do; for the salient facts are indisputably established that (1), the first Gorges contingent came out and set themselves down at Old Spain in September, 1623; that (2), the settlement there has been continuous from that day to this; (3), some of those thus sent out under the auspices of Gorges had families and left descendants; and finally, (4) that, starting from Wessagusset, these first planters established themselves at points favorable for commercial dealings in pelts and supplies on the north, as well as the south, side of Boston bay. That William Blackstone, the earliest occupant of the historic peninsula on which Boston rose, was one of the Gorges company admits of no question at all; that he came over as one of the companions of Capt. Robert Gorges and the Rev. William Morell scarcely admits of question. Beyond this, while all is matter of surmise, that “all” is merely a question of more or less.

But, whether the infant community was a puny bantling or a vigorous brat, I now find myself compelled to admit that its significance, and the secret of its later history down to the time when, in 1644,—a full score of years after the first settlement,—it was swallowed up, and its individuality forever lost, in an all absorbing environment,—the significance, I say, of this later history wholly escaped my observation when I prepared the address of 1874. As I have said, Mr. Nash has, to a certain extent, since made good my deficiencies; I suspect, however, that even yet the riddle is but partially read. To be adequately treated, its treatment should be patient and microscopic. It should be studied in close connection with the course both of foreign events and of events in that subsequent agitation which, rending in twain the nascent commonwealth, permanently influenced the character of Massachusetts. By so doing it also went far towards shaping its destiny. I can now do no more than throw out a few suggestions,—mere hints, perhaps, or possibly surmises,—which it must be for others, members of your Society, to consider, giving them such weight as may properly be their due.

To appreciate fully what now here occurred during that formative period between 1630 and 1644, we must revert to the initial fact that Weymouth, or Wessagusset, as it was still called, was the New World centre from which the Gorges movement had gone forth; or, as the founder of Massachusetts would more probably have expressed it, it was the plague spot from which disease might spread. In the parlance now much in vogue among the less scientific, that disease had to be stamped out; and the magistrates of the colony of Massachusetts Bay proceeded to stamp it out. They did, also, a very thorough piece of stamping-out work; but, however thoroughly it may be done, stamping-out is at best a rough and even brutal method of reaching results; and, as a rule, it is the recourse of men of intense and narrow minds,—those who never for an instant doubt that they are right. Whether priest and inquisitor, or minister and magistrate,—fulfilling their mission on Jews in Spain, or Huguenots in France, or Lutherans in Holland, or non-conformists in England, or churchmen in Massachusetts,—they know perfectly that they are engaged in the Lord’s work; and, being engaged in it, they will not hold their hands. Why should they? Are they not God’s chosen implement? Now it is an indisputable fact that every person on the Massachusetts shore connected with that earlier settlement, the old Gorges “planters,” so-called, was soon or late either harried out of the country, or made so uncomfortable in it that he voluntarily withdrew,—in other words, went into exile. Morton of Mount Wollaston, he of May-pole fame, was the first victim. Of Morton it must be admitted little that is good can be said. He was an ungodly roysterer. His trading-post was a public menace as well as a nuisance; and, as such, was very properly abated. But there is no sort of reason to suppose that there was in the beginning any connection between Morton and Gorges.

Morton came out originally in June, 1622, and apparently as a companion of Thomas Weston’s brother Andrew, on the ship Charity. He then remained at Wessagusset some three or four months, while the vessel which brought him out continued on to Virginia, thence returning to Wessagusset. In early October he again embarked, going back to England. He thus made acquaintance with the vicinity of Weymouth Fore-river, and the region about Boston bay, during the summer months, their period of alluring aspect. So enamored was he of the country that he the next year piloted others back to it; one more band of pure adventurers, they came intent on exploiting the land, getting from it whatever of immediate value it might contain. But this second company, no more than the first, came out under the auspices of Gorges; nor did he look on it with favor. It must at least be said in favor of those sent out by him that they were uniformly men of education and substance; and they came to New England in good faith, here to establish themselves. Of this class were William Blackstone, Samuel Maverick, David Thompson and Thomas Walford.

Thomas Morton, and that strange, mysterious enigma who called himself “Sir Christopher Gardiner,” were of an altogether different stamp; but, though in the beginning Morton at least had no connection with Gorges, subsequently he entered into close relations with him, and the inference is at least reasonable that he was arrested, forced to leave the country, and saw his house burned and his plantation across the Fore-river, on Mount Wollaston, desolated, quite as much because of the jealousy the new comers entertained towards the old Gorges “planters” as from any disapproval of himself, or because of the misdeeds of his crew. On the other hand, Sir Christopher Gardiner already, when Winthrop came, was dwelling mysteriously with his female companion on the cedar-clad hummock overlooking the mouth of the Neponset. Gardiner was unquestionably an emissary of Gorges, probably his agent, here to watch over his interests. He was arrested and his establishment, such as it was, broken up. Personally held under surveillance for months, he at length went voluntarily away. But, while in Boston, during the summer of 1631, he seems to have been treated with courtesy, and even with a degree of consideration. Finally, in 1632, he went back to England of his own choice.

Next was William Blackstone, the hermit of Shawmut, the original planter from Wessagusset, who when Winthrop and his company landed at Charlestown in June, 1630, already had a house, with a young orchard about it, on the west side of Beacon hill, looking up the Charles towards Cambridge and Brighton. A recluse and a scholar, a missionary among the Indians, with whom he lived in peaceful and even friendly relations, this man, in every respect estimable, was, as Cotton Mather tells us, “of a particular humor, and he would never join himself to any of our churches, giving his reason for it, ‘I came from England because I did not like the lord-bishops; but I can’t join with you, because I would not be under the lord-brethren.’” These words, I fancy, furnish a key-note to the Gorges settlement. To those composing it, the new environment was unsympathetic; and, as early as 1633, Blackstone turned his face to the wilderness.

David Thompson, also one of the Gorges contingent, never was at Wessagusset. According to Thomas Morton, a Scottish gentleman, both a traveller and a scholar, quite observant of the habits of the Indians, he seems to have moved down from Portsmouth to Massachusetts bay about the year 1626, accompanied by his wife, and bringing with him several servants. A friend of Samuel Maverick’s, he established himself at the mouth of the Neponset, on the island which still bears his name, and he may, possibly, have been a fellow-occupant, with Maverick, of Winnisimmet. He died in 1628, two years before the coming of Winthrop. Like the other Gorges “planters,” he was a man of character, substance and education. As such, he also throws his ray of light on the Wessagusset company.

But Samuel Maverick, the first resident of East Boston, was perhaps, most typical of all the Gorges following. A man of gentle birth and fair education, later noted for his good fellowship and hospitality, he was active in social and business life, altogether a useful and public-spirited citizen. Distinctly of the Gorges connection and a churchman, he was “strong for the Lordly prelaticall power,” as the Puritanic speech went. So, always conscious of the hostile feeling entertained towards him, at last, but not until 1648,—when for a quarter of a century he had been resident at Noddle’s Island, as East Boston was called,—he was arrested, fined and imprisoned, and, subsequently, forced into exile. His crime was non-conformity.

Unlike the others, Thomas Walford, who I take it began his American experiences here at Wessagusset in 1623, was not an educated man or of the better class, so-called, in England; a smith by trade, he was one of John Winthrop’s “common people,” those who became two centuries later, Abraham Lincoln’s “plain people.” But, though a man of the anvil, he was also a churchman, an Episcopalian, and he sturdily stood by his creed. He had before 1630 made a home for himself and his family in Charlestown, where he dwelt in rude but secure independence. Accustomed to his wilderness liberty, and liking not the ways of the new comers, he would not submit to their severe rule, especially exercised in the matter of Sabbath observances. The old pioneer’s Sunday had, probably up to that time, partaken more of the continental and Catholic than of Puritan characteristics. So he soon was in trouble. He was arrested, fined and banished. At Portsmouth he found a refuge and a welcome. In due time becoming a selectman of the town and a warden of the church there, he died in 1660, much esteemed in the place of his exile.

So much for those followers and adherents of Sir Ferdinando Gorges who had gone forth from the mother community here at Wessagusset, or had, coming from elsewhere, set themselves down at her side. Unless, like David Thompson, they died betimes, one and all, soon or late, they were either exiled point-blank, or harried out of the land. Not character, nor occupancy of the soil, nor obedience to the law, were of avail; they were not of the Lord’s people! So much for the out-dwellers.

We now come back to the original settlement,—the plague centre! After 1625, and the return to England of the Rev. William Morell,—that first clergyman of Weymouth and the potential bishop in partibus of New England,—those who came in his company, and as the companions of Capt. Robert Gorges, separated in search of more favored sites for trade and plantation. Of the savages, they seem to have felt no apprehension; with them they lived in perfect amity. This alone is significant of their character. As for trade, even then, before the advent of Winthrop and his company, Boston bay was well known to the fishermen who annually frequented the coast—“lone sails off headlands drear”—and they periodically looked into Boston bay for barter and refreshment. The Indians of the interior could communicate with the coast only by trail or by the water routes; and of these last there were but four, the Monatiquot, emptying into Boston bay by the Weymouth Fore-river, the Neponset, the Charles and the Mystic. Of these, so far as the back country was concerned, the Monatiquot was least considerable. So, naturally, those of the first comers who had means and servants, and who did not fear solitude, sought more favorable sites, establishing themselves at the mouth of the Neponset, or on the shores of the Charles or the Mystic. After this dispersion, the Wessagusset community seems to have settled down into the slow monotony of a pioneer existence. William Jeffreys and John Burslam appear to have been the leading men, and their names only, from among those there remaining, have come down to us. Ten years later it was described by one who visited it as “a small village; very pleasant and healthful, very good ground, well-timbered, and with good store of hay ground.”

But not until 1635, five years after the occupation of Boston, and when Wessagusset had been twelve years in existence, did the place receive any considerable, or, at least, certain accretion. Then, the Rev. Joseph Hull, with twenty-one families from England, was allowed by the Massachusetts-bay magistrates here to establish themselves; and Weymouth was at last incorporated by that name it has ever since borne. But it was still referred to as “a very small town;” though it has been computed that it then numbered from 350 to 600 souls. Now it was that trouble began. As the new Weymouth wine fermented in that old Wessagusset bottle, the scriptural adage received new illustration. But the story of what occurred is known only in part,—from hints and fragments scattered hither and yon, and which have painfully to be pieced together. What is known is, however, full of suggestion. With the new life came turmoil; and, in those times, the turmoil was sure to be theological in character.

It is safe to surmise that the departure of the Rev. William Morell to England, in 1624, and the withdrawal of Blackstone somewhat later, wearing doubtless the “old canonical gown” in which Winthrop six years later found him clad, did not, as things then went, deprive the little Wessagusset settlement of all spiritual nutriment. Those there remaining doubtless had, not a meeting-house, for they were Episcopalians, but a church, such as it was, in which religious services were duly conducted on each Lord’s day, the Prayer-book and ritual being in use. This had continued through a dozen years, when at last a veritable irruption set in. Of what ensued, nothing is clear; we have to grope our way in the gray glimmer of that early dawn. The Rev. Mr. Hull, we are told, made his advent in the interests of Episcopacy; but, if he did, he either brought with him, or encountered, a body of dissentients. That the old settlers eyed the new-comers askance is more than likely; but the enigma still awaits solution. All we know is that the little settlement, presumably at the foot of Great hill, and in and about Old Spain, was rent, not in twain, but in quarters; and soon their occupants were vociferously holding forth from no less than four rival pulpits. At last, so loud became the tumult of tongues, and so grievous was the state of spiritual affairs, that a delegation from the church of Boston made its appearance,—Heaven save the mark!—in the role of peacemakers.

Now, in 1638, the church of Boston, after an interlude of direst stress and storm, was at peace within itself; but the peace was that of a sternly enforced conformity,—a peace somewhat akin, in fact, to that order commonly associated with the name of Warsaw. The great Antinomian controversy had shortly before been brought to a close. Silenced and overborne were the wise, tolerant and forbearing councils of Winthrop and Cotton; a policy of “thorough” had been decided on, and proclaimed. The conventional priesthood having at last secured full sway, neither liberty of thought nor freedom of speech was to be tolerated in Massachusetts. This revised order of things, a new gospel dispensation, the 1638 delegation of the Boston church doubtless came to propagate in Weymouth. It was the spiritual, perhaps the inquisitorial, precursor of the civil arm. A few weeks only before, the Boston congregation had silently witnessed some very high-handed proceedings in the case of Mistress Anne Hutchinson; and at “the Mount,” as what is now Quincy was then designated, the Rev. John Wheelwright had been made to realize the power of the magistrate. The Rev. William Hubbard gives the following account of what next occurred at Weymouth; and, though the Rev. William Hubbard’s General History of New England is not now looked upon as a peculiarly veracious or reliable record, yet in this case it may be accepted as the most intelligible and consecutive narrative that has come down to us, in any degree contemporary with what took place:—

To make this intelligible, so far as Weymouth is concerned, we must keep in mind a few dates connected with the great course of world occurrences. The events referred to in this extract from Hubbard’s history, took place during the summer of 1638. A church tumult in Edinburgh on Sunday, July 23, 1637, a year previous, had brought matters in England to a crisis; and from that day Sir Ferdinando Gorges was wholly impotent, shorn of all influence. Thenceforth, he ceased to be in any degree an active factor in Massachusetts affairs; and his people in New England, no longer looking to him, must, as they best could, take care of themselves. Already, six months before the Edinburgh tumult, on the 29th of January, 1637, the Rev. John Wheelwright, the favorite divine of Mistress Hutchinson, had, on a day of special fast, preached in Boston that occasional discourse which was later made the pretext for a sweeping political proscription. On the 27th of May, 1637, the Massachusetts charter election, the equivalent of our annual State election, had been held at Cambridge, as the result of which young Sir Harry Vane had been superseded as governor by Winthrop, with the harsh and uncompromising Dudley as deputy. It was a political as well as a church upheaval; for Vane was, socially, the friend of Maverick, and, while in doctrine he sympathized with Wheelwright, he was the cynosure of the Hutchinsonian cult.

The conservative, or clerical, party thus found itself in complete political control; a control cemented and confirmed by the triumphant conclusion of the Pequot war, and the return of young Vane to England, both which events occurred in August. Every condition now pointed to the adoption of a policy of “thorough”—the stamping-out process was to begin. It did begin; and it was carried out. John Wheelwright, the first minister of those inhabiting part of the region two years later incorporated as Braintree, but which a century and a half later became Quincy, was the initial victim. He was banished, and his supporters made to see light,—real orthodox light! Next came Mistress Hutchinson. Her story has been told, by myself among others, in all possible detail.[104] I need only allude to it here. She, and all those who stood by her, were “sent away,”—in other words, driven into exile. This had occurred in March, 1638. And now, the stamping-out process being completed in Boston, the party in political control turned its attention to the out-lying districts. Weymouth was the traditional plague centre of prelatical poison,—we designate it Episcopacy,—the seat of the Gorges settlement, the abiding place of Morell, the spot whence Blackstone and Walford had emerged. No mercy was to be shown it. The last vestige of the ritual was to disappear from within the limits of the colony of Massachusetts-bay. Thus, with Weymouth, in 1638, it was much as with some French city in the days of The Terror, when a committee of the Convention of ’93 there put in an appearance. So far as dissent and the suspects were concerned, it meant the end.

It is needless to revert to colonial records, and again to tell the story of what was then done. Mr. Lenthal appears to have been a worthy man and a devout minister of God’s word, as he read it; but he did differ from the powers that then were on certain abstract doctrines of baptism, re-ordination and justification by faith, whatever those terms may have signified. They have small meaning to us; but then, they implied heresy: and for heretics there was in 1638, and the years ensuing, no place in Massachusetts. He and his followers were summarily dealt with. Wise in his day and generation, Mr. Lenthal made haste to see the light, and to express a realizing sense of the error of his ways. He then took refuge in Rhode Island. His followers were sternly disciplined, reprimanded, threatened, fined, disfranchised, and “openly whipt.” The insubordination was crushed out; so also were freedom of speech and religious liberty. But order reigned in Weymouth; conformity was thenceforth there complete.

The late Matthew Arnold was accustomed vigorously to declare that the great middle class of England, the kernel of the nation, was in Tudor times so disgusted with the cowled and tonsured Middle Ages that, during the first half of the seventeenth century, it “entered the prison house of Puritanism, and had the key turned upon its spirit there for two hundred years.” The result was, he further declared, “a defective type of religion, a narrow range of intellect and knowledge, a stunted sense of beauty, a low standard of manners.” Into the discussion which this utterance invites, I do not propose here to enter. I merely call attention to what all the study, investigation and thought of thirty years lead me to consider one of the most interesting and suggestive of the minor episodes of our early Massachusetts history, the final advance of the puritanical glacier over the last lingering vestige of an earlier attempt at a distinctly more cultured New England civilization. I institute no comparison; I make no criticism. To discuss the might-have-been is, to my mind, hardly worth while. I call attention only to one still unwritten page of our Massachusetts history; a page the existence as well as the possible meaning of which had altogether escaped me, if indeed it had even as yet glimmeringly dawned upon me, when I addressed you here in Weymouth in response to your invitation of thirty years ago.

Thus, as I have since come to see it, the history of Weymouth, that local history which is the peculiar province and charge of the Society I to-night address, naturally divides itself into three parts—first, the Adventurous, in which Thomas Weston and Miles Standish, Squanto and Pecksuot, play their parts, and dramatic enough those parts were: second, the Feudal and Episcopal, in which Sir Ferdinando Gorges and Governor John Winthrop hold the stage, in London and at Boston, in Wessagusset and at Shawmut: and, finally, part the third, that Puritanic period of slow growth and gradual change which lasted for two whole centuries, from 1640 to 1840, and which Matthew Arnold has likened unto detention in a prison-house. My earlier utterances on the earliest and second periods I have passed in review; and now, in closing, I have something to say in criticism of the conclusions I then reached as respects the third, or final, period.

My former treatment of this later period,—that extending from 1640 to 1840,—I find was of the purely conventional character; a method of treatment, whether by myself or others, for which I have since come to feel a very pronounced contempt. Why is it, I would like to ask, that such undue prominence is in anniversary addresses always given to times and episodes connected with wars and military operations? Take for instance, your own case. Weymouth now boasts a corporate and continuous history of some 270 years,—as such things go, a very respectable antiquity; and, during that time, its women have never seen, except perhaps a hundred and thirty years ago, or, just possibly, on one occasion nine years less than a century back, the flash of a hostile gun or the gleam of an enemy’s flag. It is within the bounds of possibility that a grandmother, or, more probably, a great-grandmother, of some one among you did, on those days of April in the year 1775, watch from some summit of the town the smoke of burning Charlestown; or, again, like Abigail Adams from Penn’s hill in Braintree, your progenitors on the distaff side may in March of the following year have looked curiously on that “largest fleet ever seen in America,” numbering upwards of one hundred and seventy sail, and looking “like a forest,” as, with Howe’s evacuating army on board, the British ships lay in the outer harbor. Finally, on June 1, 1813, Weymouth men and women may from the Great hill have followed with anxious eyes the ill-fated frigate Chesapeake move out to her disastrous duel with the Shannon. But, not since Miles Standish grappled with the savage Pecksuot in the wooden block-house at Old Spain on the 6th of April, 1623, has an armed conflict between hostile men occurred on Weymouth soil. Yet in every narrative of the town, accounts and details of its part in war, and of its contributions thereto, occupy the place of prominence. In point of fact, no war or its operations, its successes or reverses, since the death of the Wampanoag, King Philip, in 1676, has exercised any direct influence on Weymouth history, or affected to any appreciable extent the town’s development. In the war of the Rebellion, as in Queen Anne’s war, in the French wars, and in the war of Independence,—though in far less degree in the first than in any one of the latter,—Weymouth was called on for contributions in material, in money and in men; but after those struggles, as during them and before, life here moved on absolutely undisturbed in the even tenor of its way,—quite unchanged! The same people lived in a like manner, pursuing their wonted occupations; generations were born, went to school, were married and had offspring, grew old and died, as their fathers and mothers had done before them, as their sons and daughters were to do after them. Of great, far away events only echoes reached the town; and yet, what the town then did in connection with those distant great events becomes the staple of its story. This I submit is not as it should be; in fact it is not history at all.

Moreover, I am further disposed to contend that the record of Weymouth, as of its sister towns of Massachusetts without exception, whether in the War of Independence, or, more recently, in our Civil War, was not in all respects ideal, or in conformity with reason, experience and the everlasting fitness of things. Never, whether in Independence-day orations or in occasional addresses, does the declaimer weary of expatiating on the public spirit and self-sacrifice then displayed and evoked; but, on the other hand, read the record as set forth by Mr. Nash in the pages of his history, or registered in your town-books. Referring to the Revolutionary war, and its direct results on Weymouth, Mr. Nash puts first among them the excessive use of intoxicating liquors “which then became well-nigh universal.” He speaks of this as a public “calamity,” most far-reaching in its destructive effects on both the minds and estates of that generation, and of those that succeeded. My own investigations have led me to believe that what we term the “drink habit” with our Massachusetts race dated from a period long anterior to any Revolutionary troubles. In this respect I think Mr. Nash greatly exaggerates the influence of army life. Assuredly, however, stimulating the alcoholic appetite cannot be accounted one of those features of the soul-stirring time in which posterity can take a justifiable pride. But, in saying what I have said, I wish to be explicit. I do not want to be misunderstood. For, on this head, communities are, I have found, sensitive; nor, I freely admit, does such sensitiveness on their part furnish any just occasion for surprise. On the contrary, it is very human,—altogether natural.

Not long ago, in Lincoln, where I now live, I expressed myself on this subject to the same effect; and I afterwards found I, in so doing, had occasioned pain, as well as surprise. I had seemed to speak depreciatingly of the dead, and of a period the memory of which was sacred. Nothing could have been further from my thought. The criticism I then made, and now make again, applies to all of our Massachusetts, I may say our New England, towns. Their records tell me the same story. Turn, for instance, to your own town books covering those heroic periods, whether Revolutionary or of the Civil war. Should you do so, you will find in them a wearisome repetition. In the first flush of excitement, volunteers, in each case, enrolled themselves in crowds, they were eager to get to the front; then came the cold reaction, and the consequent haggling. Call follows call for men—and yet more men; for war is insatiable,—and these calls are grudgingly responded to by votes providing for the payment of bounties, and by complicated plans for the procurement of substitutes. Never once in all those annals do you read of a stern exaction. On the contrary, the question always is as to how cheapest to avoid it. The heroic chord is rarely struck. That there were individual cases, many and touching, of self-sacrifice and lofty patriotic impulse, I am the last to deny. Was I not witness to them? Such you do well to commemorate and recall; nor can they be held in too green a memory. It is not to those I refer, but to the system under which war was carried on; it was weak, unscientific, to the last degree wasteful of blood and of treasure,—moreover, it was cruel to those in the field. Through it much unnecessary agony was caused; and the necessary agony, at best quite enough, was unduly prolonged. Properly studied, your town record, like the records of all your sister towns, teaches on this head a lesson of utmost value. No nation has any right to enter upon a war, domestic or foreign, unless it is ready promptly to meet the cost thereof in flesh and blood, as well as in money. It should not be a question of voluntary enlistment, or of mercenary service; but, if a community elects to fight, it should put its fighting force at the absolute disposal of its government. Conscription and the draft should be the order of the day,—the unmarried first, the married next; and, for the able-bodied, no exemption. Never, in the whole history of Massachusetts, was the ordeal of a war thus systematically met. On the contrary, as studied in your Weymouth annals, or those of your sister towns, after the first fierce outburst of ardor cooled, it is one long wearisome record of services sold and bought.

What was the result? The ranks of your regiments were never full; the morale of the men at the front suffered. The saddest sights I ever saw were those skeleton battalions in the last campaign against Richmond, that of 1864,—those few survivors grouped about the tattered colors, thrust into action yesterday, decimated again to-day, doomed to-morrow: and no recruits! Those were the men who went forward voluntarily, and at the first call to arms. No better material was ever mustered; no braver troops ever returned an enemy’s fire: but, under the system which always prevailed, the community from which they came either left them to take that fire to the end, or sent forward to associate with them the bounty-bought sweepings of your municipal gutters, the dregs of your civic cesspools. I speak of that whereof I know. It was not right, nor was it war: but it made war costly, long, murderous. Life was simply flung away.

Do you ask what course should have been pursued? What ought to have been done? I will tell you. With 30,000 men in the field, the State should have had 20,000 always at home in the training-camps; and when, after such terrible struggles as those at Gettysburg or in the Wilderness, word came that a regiment had lost 150 men, dead or disabled, on the notifying click of the wire the message should have flashed back that 175 men were on the way to make full the depleted ranks. The next day 175 fresh men, bearing as yet uncalled numbers in the draft, should have been ordered forthwith to report at the depots. That is business; that would be war. In place of it, you let your old regiments dwindle to skeletons, while you ever organized new; and, as the indecisive warfare dragged itself along, your towns competed with each other for bounty-bought flesh and blood. It was quoted at so much a pound.

This is the side of the record to be studied in your town-books; but it is a side of the record men do not like to study. Even reference to it is misconstrued. It is not popular! Yet here is the lesson to be borne in mind, that valuable to learn. That our young men rushed eagerly to arms in the early days of each conflict, no one denies; that they fought bravely and fell frequently, the names on your monuments and the flags in your cemeteries give proof. But, under your methods of carrying on warfare, two of them died where one only need to have died; two indecisive battles had to be fought, where one vigorously followed up would have sufficed. It was so in the Revolution; it was so in the Civil War. That in either case it would have been so had the struggle been over your own hearth-stones, I neither suggest nor believe. Then, however, the outcome would have directly influenced home existence, and Weymouth development; not so a remote war, the echoes only of which disturbed the monotony of your daily village life.

Thus, with Weymouth as with other Massachusetts towns, the battles and campaigns, whether of 1776 or of 1864, and the sufferings and sacrifices incident thereto, were not momentous factors of fate. Indeed, as I now see it, since 1644 there has been but one considerable event in your history, one only which marked an epoch of far-reaching change. That event occurred on the 1st of January, 1849, when the South Shore railroad was opened to traffic, bringing Weymouth into direct and easy intercourse with the outer and active world. That inaugurated for you as a community a revolution in life, in occupation, in education, in religion and in thought;—that date, two hundred and fourteen years from the incorporation, marks the dividing line between the Weymouth of the provincial period, and your Weymouth of to-day. Already, in 1804, nearly half a century earlier, your first post-office had been established; quite an incident in your history. What facts has your Society preserved concerning it? Late in the eighteenth century stage coaches put in their appearance. They were a factor of change; what do you now know of the influence they exerted? The daily newspaper is one of the great educational forces of modern times; when did it first find its way generally to Weymouth? Not, I fancy, before 1850. What great economical crisis, affecting every phase of life, has occurred in the history of the town? Once, and almost within the memory of men now living, Weymouth was commercial, as well as agricultural. It had been so almost from the beginning. It had iron-works in colonial times, and later a few small mills; but when was it, and from what causes, that it passed from an agricultural and a commercial to the manufacturing stage? Presumably, the coming of the railroad worked the change; and, in working it, modified the whole character of the town.

And here I submit, in these industrial, economical, social, religious and educational phases is the true field of study and accumulation, to which the local historical society should devote itself. The present is always familiar and commonplace; it is the past which interests. But our present will be the next century’s past; and it is the mission of societies like this of yours to make the record of to-day fuller, more exact and more intelligible than is that of yesterday.

Of that “yesterday” of yours, extending practically from the 2d of January, 1644, the date of the ordination of the Rev. Thomas Thatcher, which closed the primitive period, to the 1st of January, 1849, which witnessed the opening of the South Shore railroad,—of that “yesterday,” covering five years more than two centuries, I thus delivered myself on King-oak hill in my 1874 address:

Speaking now in the light of subsequent investigation and long study, I can bear testimony that this passage was written neither in a depreciatory spirit, nor in one of pessimistic exaggeration. I have learned more since writing it. I acknowledge I do not, on better acquaintance, fancy that “prison-house of Puritanism” wherein our race had “the key turned upon its spirit for two hundred years.” Frankly, I see truth in Matthew Arnold’s indictment,—“a defective type of religion, a narrow range of intellect and knowledge, a stunted sense of beauty, a low standard of manners.”

Let us for a moment, in a realistic mood, face the facts of that unlovely period. And first, of morals. The early church records of Weymouth no longer exist; and, perhaps, it is well for the good names of not a few of your families that the fire of April 23, 1751, swept away the old Meeting-house, and with it the documents there stored. The records of the Braintree church remain in part; and, of such as remain, I have made historical use. Those who care so to do may familiarize themselves with my conclusion.[105] So far as morality is concerned, the picture presented is not of a character which would lead us to covet for our sons and daughters a recurrence of that past.

Next, temperance:—As respects the in-temperance of that colonial period, I myself caught a youthful glimpse of its vanishing skirts. Distinctly do I recall the village tavern, the village bar-room,—for in Quincy, in my youth, bar-room and post-office were one,—and, moreover, the village drunkards. They were as familiar to eye and tongue as the minister, the squire, or the doctor. I see them now, seated in those wooden arm-chairs on the tavern porch, waiting to see the Plymouth stage drive up. The drunkard reeling home in broad daylight is an unknown spectacle now; then, he hardly excited passing notice.

Take religion next:—I submit in all confidence that the world has outgrown eighteenth century theology. It is a cast-off garment; and one never to be resumed. Bitter, narrow, uncharitable, intolerant, an insult to reason, the last thing it preached was peace on earth and good will among men. I have had occasion to examine into its utterances and to set forth its tenets. Those curious on the subject may there inform themselves.[106] You would not sit in church to-day, and listen to what was then taught,—an angry, a revengeful and an unforgiving God.

Schools:—Prior to 1850 the schools of Massachusetts were archaic, the primitive methods alone were in vogue; and not until after that time was any attention at all paid either to scientific instruction, or to the laws of sanitation. Charity! the care of the insane! the treating of the sick! In your Weymouth records for the town meeting of March 17, 1771, you will find the following: “Voted, to sell the poor that are maintained by the town for this present year at a Vendue to the lowest bidder.” Do you realize what that meant, and who were included in the “poor that are maintained by the town?” It was the old-time substitute for the asylum, the almshouse and the hospital. In those days the care of the demented was farmed out to him or her who would assume it at the lowest charge to the public. Even as late as 1843, and in the immediate neighborhood of Boston, naked maniacs could be seen confined in cages, or unlighted sheds, connected with the almshouse or abutting on the public way.[107] Or take this other Weymouth record of August 28, 1733, exactly one year before my ancestor, Rev. William Smith, was ordained your minister.

Twenty pounds in those days was $66.60 of the money of our days; and that in old tenor bills! A public inducement to baby-farming is not now held out. And so I might go on to the close of the chapter, did time permit. But Macaulay has said it all before, and why now repeat in more prosaic terms the tale of ancient wrong? Rather let me close with this passage from his History:

INDEX.

• Abell, Robert, 93.
• Aberdeceest, 9.
• Abington, 47.
• Acadia, 120.
• Act to prevent monopoly, 80.
• Adams, Abigail, Mrs, 70, 84, 115, 116, 145.
• Charles F., Jr., 5, 89, 97, 114.
• Henry, 93.
• John, 84.
• John Q., 38, 57.
• Allen, John, 93.
• Ann, Cape, 9.
• Antinomian controversy, 139.
• Applegate, Thomas, 91.
• Arnold, 79.
• Matthew, 143, 144, 152.

• Back river, 62.
• Bacon, 6.
• Banbury, England, 108.
• Bare Cove, 91.
• Barnard, Elder Massachiel, (First non-conformist minister), 35-37, 97, 99, 112, 131.
• Barnstable, 100, 102.
• Church, 100, 101.
• Bass River, Beverly, 100.
• Bates, Elder Edward, 98, 104.
• Joshua, 85.
• Samuel, 98.
• Bayley, Nathaniel, 77.
• Beacon Hill, 135.
• Bent, Rev. Josiah, 103.
• Bernard, Gov., 72.
• Rev. Mr., 141.
• Beverly, 100.
• Bicknell, 36.
• Blackstone, William, 34, 35, 44, 68, 129, 131, 134, 135, 138, 142.
• Lands at Wessagusset, 129.
• One of the Gorges company, 131, 134.
• Blancher, Samuel, 80.
• Boston, 21, 31, 55, 104, 134, 142, 144.
• Bay, 9, 12, 24, 30, 33, 37, 121, 131, 133, 137.
• Church sends delegation to Weymouth, 139.
• Church troubles, 139.
• Evacuation of, 145.
• First occupied by a Weymouth settler, 35, 127, 131.
• Tea-party, 73.
• Bowdoin, James, 82.
• Bradford, Gov., 11, 13, 14, 16, 30.
• Braintree, 45, 75, 79, 142, 145, 152.
• Bridge in Wessaguscus, 91.
• Bridgewater, 75.
• Briggs, Clement, 93.
• Brighton, 135.
• Bristol, England, 29.
• Britten, 141.
• Britton, James, 106.
• Burslam, John, 130, 138.
• Burslem, 43, 44.
• Plantation, 35.
• Bursley, 36, 46, 93.
• Joanna (Hull), 100.
• John, 100, 111.
• Burslyn, John, 45.
• Butler’s “Hudibras,” 19-21.

• Calvin, 6.
• Cambridge, 135, 141.
• Castle Island, 91.
• Chamberlain, George W., 87.
• Chapman, Maria W., 55.
• Chard, William, 57.
• Charity, vessel, 11, 13, 133.
• Charles I, 128.
• Charles river, 135, 137.
• Charlestown, 104, 130, 135, 136, 145.
• Chelsea, 130.
• Chesapeake, frigate, 145.
• Chicatabot, 38.
• Churches in Massachusetts Bay in 1635, 112.
• Clark, Dr., 88.
• Concord, 74.
• Continental army, enlistments in, 77.
• currency, 80, 82.
• Copp, John, 57.
• Cotton, Rev. John, 104, 139, 140.
• Cromwell, Oliver, 6.
• Cruden’s Concordance, 68, 108.
• Cushing, Adam, 62.
• E., 80.
• Cushman, Robert, 11.
• Cuttyhunk, 125.

• Damariscove Islands, 8, 125.
• Delfthaven, Holland, 10.
• Distemper, throat, in Weymouth, 52.
• Dorchester, 36, 45, 108, 110.
• Council, 90, 98.
• Dover, 102.
• Downing, Sarah, 49.
• Dudley, Gov., 141.
• Duxbury, 23.

• East Boston, 136.
• Easton, 47.
• Edinburgh (Scotland) tumult, 141.
• Eliot, Rev. John, 104.
• Ellis, Rev. George E., 89.
• Episcopacy in New England, 30, 33, 34, 102, 110, 139, 142.
• Erasmus, 6.

• Ferry to Quincy Point, 56, 91.
• Fictitious execution described, 18, 19.
• Fire at Plymouth, 31.
• First settlement of Boston bay, 126, 127.
• Fitcher, Lieut., 38.
• Fore river, 13-15, 24, 29, 53, 64, 74, 76, 121-124, 133, 134, 137.
• Fortune, vessel, 10.
• French, 36.
• Stephen, 93, 98, 104.
• Fry, Elizabeth, 92.
• Mary, 92.
• William, 92.
• Furnival’s Inn, 11.

• Galileo, 6.
• Gardner, Henry, 74.
• Sir Christopher, an emissary of Gorges, 134.
• returns to England, 135.
• Gettysburg, 149.
• Gibbon, 60.
• Glover, John, 93.
• Goold, Capt., 75.
• Gorges, Ferdinando, 29, 30, 128, 130, 137, 141, 144.
• His plantation on the Kennebec, 125.
• John, 34, 35, 44.
• Robert, 29-31, 33, 34, 36-38, 94, 114, 130, 131, 137.
• Character of his colonists, 30, 134.
• Date of settlement at Wessagusset, 114, 126.
• His company, 30, 89, 91, 93, 94, 110, 134.
• His grant in New England, 29, 30.
• Returns to England, 31.
• Visits Wessagusset, 29, 94.
• Settlement, commercial, 131.
• Continuous, 131.
• Ecclesiastical and feudal, 127, 128.
• Its keynote, 135.
• Its original planters harried or exiled, 133.
• Regarded as a plague spot, 132-140.
• Self-perpetuating, 129.
• Gosnold, Bartholomew, 125.
• Gray, Haryson, 74.
• Great hill, 53, 85, 95, 139, 145.
• Pond, 62.
• Greene, Richard, 11, 14.
• Gustavus Adolphus, 6.
• Guy Fawkes’ Day, 31, 66.

• Hampden, John, 6.
• Hancock, John, 82.
• Harris, Walter, 93.
• Hart, Edmond, 93.
• Harvey, Ruth, 65, 154.
• Heber, Bp. Reginald, 32.
• Hingham, 75, 86, 91, 100, 102, 110.
• Hobart, Peter, 87.
• Hobbamock [Hobomok], 26, 120.
• Holbrook, Ichabod, 98.
• John, 98.
• Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 122.
• Horsford, E. N., 123.
• Hubbard, 102.
• Rev. William, 140.
• Hull (town), 37.
• Agnes, 101.
• Benjamin, 100.
• Company, 91, 93, 99, 112.
• No record that it formed a church, 112, 113.
• Joanna, 100.
• Rev. Joseph, 36, 45, 67, 86, 88, 93, 95, 99-101, 103, 105, 106, 108, 110, 112, 113, 138, 139.
• Effect of his arrival at Weymouth, 110, 138.
• Claims a Weymouth pulpit, 110.
• Deputy to Gen’l Court from Hingham, 110.
• Farewell sermon, at Weymouth, 110.
• Perhaps an Episcopal clergyman, 139.
• Humphrey, James, 61, 63, 71, 72, 77, 98, 115, 116.
• Jonas, 98.
• Hunt’s hill, 62.
• Hutchinson, Mrs. Anne, 67, 105, 140-142.

• Indian depredations, 17.
• Influence of Weymouth settlement on Massachusetts, 132.
• Isle of Shoals, 43, 101.

• Jeffers, John, 44.
• Jeffery, 44.
• Jeffrey, Thomas, 43.
• Jeffries [Jeffreys], William, 34-37, 43, 44, 93, 138.
• Residence in Wessagusset, 35, 130, 138.
• Jenner, Rev. Thomas, 67, 68, 102-105, 110, 113.
• Invited to Weymouth, 110.
• Johnson, Edward, 18.

• Keayne, Robert, 103, 104.
• Kennebec, 125.
• Kepler, 6.
• King, 36.
• Philip’s War, 28, 49, 129, 145.
• Kingman, 36, 79.
• Henry, 91.
• King-Oak hill, 5, 53, 54, 85, 117, 121, 151.

• Lenthall, Rev. Robert, 67, 68, 90, 98, 103-105, 111, 113, 140, 143.
• Character of, 143.
• Levett, Christopher, 130.
• Lexington, 74.
• Leyden, Holland, 9, 27.
• Lincoln, Abraham, 6, 136.
• Mass., 147.
• Liquor nuisance at Mt. Wollaston, 39.
• London, England, 144.
• Long, Richard, 91.
• Island, 76.
• Longfellow, Henry W., quoted, 25, 119, 120.
• His dealing with history, 120-123.
• Lothrop, Rev. Mr., 100.
• Loud, John J., 47.
• Lovell, 36.
• Enoch, 61.
• James, 98.
• Robert, 98.
• Solomon, 74, 78, 80-82, 85.
• Loyalty of Weymouth settlers to Church of England, 110.
• Ludden, 93.
• Luther, Martin, 6.
• Lyford, Rev. John, 37.
• Lynn, 106.

• Macaulay, 154.
• Makepeace, Thomas, 106.
• Martin, Ambrose, 106.
• Massasoit, 21.
• Mather, 106.
• Cotton, 102, 135.
• Maverick, Samuel, 129-131, 134-136, 141.
• Character of, 136.
• Mayflower, 7, 10, 126.
• Maypole at Merrymount, 38, 44, 84, 116, 133.
• At Penobscot bay, 125.
• Merchant Adventurers, London, 9, 10.
• Merrymount settlement broken up Standish, 41-43.
• May-pole, 44, 116.
• Milton hill, 55.
• John, 6.
• Monatoquit, 41, 137.
• Monhegan island, 125.
• Montgomery, 79.
• Moon head, 76.
• Morell [Morrell], Rev. William, 30-34, 95, 96, 109, 112, 130, 131, 137, 142.
• A Clergyman of the Established Church, 96, 109, 137.
• Poem by, 32, 33.
• Returns to England, 96, 138.
• Morton, Thomas, of Merrymount, 12, 17, 21, 36, 38, 40-44, 53, 84, 94, 116, 130, 133-135.
• Character of his party, 38, 39, 133.
• His “New English Canaan,” 17-19, 21.
• Landing of, 11, 12.
• Not at first connected with Gorges, 133.
• Possibly one of Weston’s Colony, 12, 133.
• Visits Weymouth, 36, 37.
• Mount Wollaston, 45, 56, 84, 91, 94, 134.
• Becomes Merrymount, 38.
• Location of, 37, 38.
• Mystic river, 137.

• Nahawton, 95.
• Narragansett Fort, 50.
• Nash, Alexander, 55.
• Captain, 82.
• Gilbert, 87, 118, 126, 131, 132, 146, 147.
• Jacob, 98.
• James, 98.
• Nateaunt, 95.
• Neponset river, 130, 134, 135, 137.
• New Bedford, 125.
• New English Canaan, extracts from, 37, 40, 41, 53, 54.
• [See Morton.]
• Newman, Rev. Samuel, 47, 68, 69, 92, 104, 105, 107, 108, 111, 113.
• Newport, R. I., 106.
• Noddle’s Island, 136.
• North river, 22.
• Weymouth, 75, 95, 103.
• Northleigh, England, 101.
• Norton, Jacob, 51.
• Norumbega, 123.

• Old North (First) Church, 87, 88.
• South Church, Boston, 69, 73.
• Spain, 5, 6, 35, 56, 131, 139, 145.
• Oldham, John, 34, 35, 37, 44.
• expelled from Plymouth, 37.
• Opposition to the ecclesiastical system of Plymouth, 109.
• Oxford University, England, 101, 108.
• Oyster river, 101.

• Paine, Rev. Thomas, 69.
• Robert Treat, 70.
• Parker, James, 93.
• Pecksuot, 23, 25, 26, 28, 40, 119, 122, 124, 144, 145.
• Penobscot bay, 125.
• Expedition, 81.
• Peirce, John, 11.
• Pequod war, 46, 47.
• Penn’s hill, Braintree, 145.
• Phillips creek, 6, 13, 123.
• Pike, Rev. Mr., 102.
• Plymouth, 5, 16, 17, 21, 23, 29, 31, 39, 43, 44, 94, 95, 113, 116, 120-122, 153.
• Pool, 36.
• Poole, Joseph, 49.
• Popham plantation, 125.
• Porter, 36.
• Portsmouth, N. H., 135, 136.
• Pratt, Ebenezer, 61.
• John, 49.
• Phineas, 17, 22, 24, 121.
• Escapes to Plymouth, 22-24, 121, 122.
• Prayer-book used at Weymouth, 139.
• Prince, Rev. Thomas, 98, 99, 129, 131.
• Chronicles, 97, 131.
• Provincetown harbor, 126.

• Quakers, 101.
• Queen Ann’s turnpike, 55.
• war, 145.
• Quincy (town), 142.
• John, 84.
• Point, 56.

• Randall, John, 98.
• Robert, 98.
• Randolph, 75.
• Rassdall, Mr., 38.
• Rawlins, Thomas, 93.
• Reade, William, 111.
• Rehoboth, 47, 68, 92, 107, 108.
• Revere, Paul, 120.
• Richards, Thomas, 93.
• Richmond, Va., 148.
• Robinson, John, 27, 28.
• Roxbury, 102, 104.
• Neck, 55.

• Sable, Cape, 56.
• Saco, Me., 103, 105.
• Salem, 100.
• Salisbury, Surgeon, 11.
• Sanders, 14, 16, 17.
• Sandwich Bay, 14.
• Savage, James, 88, 101-103, 118.
• Scituate, 100.
• Seekonk, 107.
• Shakespeare, 6.
• Shannon, frigate, 145.
• Shaw, John, 98.
• Joseph, 98.
• Shawmut, 127, 129, 135, 144.
• Shoals, Isle of, 9.
• Shrimp, Capt. [Standish], 41, 42.
• Silvester, Richard, 106, 141.
• [See Sylvester.]
• Site of Weston’s Block-house, 123, 124.
• Sloan collection, 123.
• Smith, 141.
• Abigail, 70, 84, 115, 116.
• John, 106.
• Rev. William, 51-57, 70, 75, 86, 108, 115, 154.
• Smoking Flax Blood-Quenched, 121.
• South Shore Railroad, 150, 151.
• Southampton, 10.
• Sparrow (vessel), 8.
• Speedwell (vessel), 10.
• Squanto, 13, 14, 144.
• St. Bartholomew Act, 101.
• St. Buryan’s, Cornwall, 101.
• St. Mary’s Hall, Oxford (England), 101.
• Standish, Miles, 13, 23-28, 39, 41-43, 50, 118-124, 144, 145.
• His account of visit to Merrymount, 42, 43.
• Longfellow’s version of, 119, 120.
• Relieves Wessagusset, 24-26, 119-123.
• Sir Hugh, 119.
• Thurston de, 119.
• Stoughton, Israel, 103.
• Stow, 74.
• Swan (vessel), 11, 13, 14, 17, 23, 24, 27, 29, 31.
• Sylvester, Richard, 66, 93.
• [See Silvester.]
• Symmes, Rev. Zechariah, 104.

• Taunton River, 62.
• Thacher, Rev. Peter, 69, 113.
• Rev. Thomas, 69, 108, 151.
• Thompson, David, 130, 134, 135, 137.
• Character of, 135.
• Never at Wessagusset, 135.
• Thompson’s Island, 130.
• Three Episodes of Massachusetts History, 121, 126.
• Tirrel, John, 78.
• Torrey, John, 61.
• Jonathan, 98.
• Joseph, 61.
• Paul, verses by, 51.
• Rev. Samuel, 69, 98.
• William, 93, 98.
• Troubles from paper currency, 78-80.
• Trumbull, J. Hammond, 104, 106.
• Tufts, Cotton, 47, 52, 55, 64, 71, 74, 75, 78, 85.

• Upham, 36.
• John, 46, 111.

• Vane, Sir Harry, 141, 142.
• Vinson, John, 62, 98.
• Lieut., 82.
• Virginia massacre, 21.

• Walford, Thomas, 130, 134, 142.
• Character of, 136.
• Wampetuc, 95.
• Warren, Joseph, “Solemn League and Covenant,” 73.
• Waters, Henry, 123.
• Wattawamat. [See Wituwamat.]
• Weaver, Clement, 93.
• Webacowett, Jonas, 95.
• Webb, Christopher, 103.
• Weld, Rev. John, 104.
• Wessagusset [Wessaguscus] (early name of Weymouth), 12, 44, 86, 91, 94, 109.
• Described in Wood’s N. E. Prospect, 44.
• Distress in winter, 14-16.
• Double name of, 35.
• History indistinct from 1623 to 1628, 37.
• Importance of its early history, 118.
• Morton’s colony destroyed, 27.
• Name changed to Weymouth, 100, 111, 116.
• Original site of, 123.
• [See Weymouth.]
• Weston, Andrew, 133.
• Thomas, 8-11, 89, 124, 125, 130, 133, 144.
• Abandons Plymouth colony, 10.
• At Wessagusset, 29, 133.
• Character of, 10.
• Dies in Bristol, Eng., 29.
• Influence of, in settlements at Plymouth and Weymouth, 9.
• Plans for settlement, 8, 9, 125.
• Returns to England, 133.
• Trials of his colony, 14-17, 21.
• Weymouth, Action on Stamp Act, 71, 72.
• Action on tax on tea, 72, 73.
• Allowed a deputy to the Gen’l Court, 45, 111.
• Arrival of Weston’s party 8.
• their character, 11, 12.
• Attack on, anticipated in the Revolution, 74-76.
• Attitude at opening of the Revolution, 73-76.
• Birth record, 93.
• Bridge, 91.
• Centre of the Gorges movement, 132.
• Changes in, 88.
• Chooses three deputies, 45, 111.
• Church troubles, 102-111, 138.
• Comparative size of, 94.
• Clergymen, 66-70, 95-113.
• Council, 1637, 102, 103, 111.
• Council, 1639, 103, 104, 106.
• Date of settlement, 7, 90, 91, 114.
• Deaths in 1718, 98.
• Deserters from Continental army paid, 80.
• Distance from Boston, 55.
• Episodes in its early history, 118-123, 144.
• European contemporaries with its settlement, 6.
• Expenses, 58, 82-84.
• Extinguishes Indian title in 1642, 94.
• Families in 1644, 107.
• Facts as to early settlement, 94.
• Ferry, 56, 91.
• First twenty years, 87.
• Fisheries, 62.
• Grant for tanyard, 61.
• Great snow-storms in, 64.
• Holidays observed, 66.
• In the Civil War, 76, 147, 148.
• Intemperance in, 147, 153.
• Jealousy of, 95.
• Made a plantation, 45, 100.
• Meeting-house burned, 50, 51, 152.
• Morals of, 65, 152.
• Number of families in, before 1644, 93.
• Old North Church, organization of, 87, 88.
• Origin of name, 90.
• Originally called Wessagusset, 116.
• Pisciculture in, 62.
• Plague centre of prelatical poison, 142.
• Population of, 1635, 93.
• Post Office established, 150.
• Probable date of settlement, 114.
• Records, extracts from, etc., 48-50, 54, 57-66, 77, 78, 81, 82, 90, 92, 153, 154.
• Religion in, 153.
• Rival claimants to pastorate, 111, 112.
• Rules concerning fires, 58.
• Sad accident at, 66.
• Schools, 57, 82, 83, 153.
• School-master, 57.
• Settlement antedates Boston, 127.
• Sickness in, 52, 63.
• Sketch of, by Cotton Tufts, 47, 52, 55, 64.
• Soldiers and the Lord’s day, 66.
• Soldiers in Canada campaign, 78-79.
• Soldiers in Civil War, 79, 148-151.
• Soldiers in Continental service, 77-81.
• Snow-storm of 1717, 64.
• Theory of pastoral succession, 113.
• Town bounty to soldiers, 79-83.
• Town debt, 77, 83.
• Town meetings, 60, 61, 76.
• Treatment of the poor, 153, 154.
• Weston’s influence in, 9, 10.
• Weymouth, England, 36, 90, 91, 93, 97, 101, 131.
• Weymouth River, 13.
• Wheelwright, Rev. John, 140-142.
• White, Asa, 77.
• Dr., 62.
• James, 77, 78.
• Samuel, 49.
• Whitman, Capt., 77, 82.
• Whitman’s Pond, 85.
• Whitmarsh, Ezra, 61.
• Whittier, John G., 118.
• Wilson, Rev. John, 44, 103, 104.
• Winnisimmet, 130, 135.
• Winslow, Edward, 11, 17.
• Winthrop, Gov. John, 34, 36, 87, 91, 93, 102, 106, 109, 127, 128, 135-139, 141, 144.
• His map of Massachusetts, 123.
• Visits Wessagusset and Plymouth, 34, 44, 91, 94, 134.
• Winthrop settlement, contrasted with that of Gorges, 127, 128.
• Theological and democratic, 127.
• Wituwamat, 25-28, 119, 120, 122.
• Wollaston, Capt., 37, 38.
• Arrival of his company, 11, 12.
• Settlement at Mt. Wollaston, 38.
• Settlement broken up, 41-43.

• Yarmouth, 100, 101.
• York, Maine, 101.

APPENDIX. — Transcriber’s Notes

The Number of Acres in each Person’s Lot in 1663.

Poll List of 1774.