Commentary on Selected Correspondence Between Increase Mather and Sir William Ashurst
By Harley P. Holden
IN June of 1973 there became available through auction at Sotheby’s, in London, five manuscript letters written by Increase Mather, of Boston, to Sir William Ashurst, of London, in 1709, 1710, and 1717. They came to the attention of the Harvard University Archives because much of their content concerned topics of interest to the history of the University. Clifford K. Shipton, then four years in retirement as custodian of the Harvard University Archives but still a valued advisor to his successors, was consulted, and it was upon his enthusiastic recommendation that the Mather-Ashurst letters were purchased at auction, with funds made available through the Friends of the Harvard College Library and the Charles Warren American History Fund.
This article will be concerned only with the content of the Mather-Ashurst letters that relate to the University: attempts to obtain a legal royal charter; insights into the resignation of Increase Mather as Harvard president; controversy over the choice of John Leverett as Mather’s eventual successor; circumstances surrounding Sir Robert Boyle’s legacy and attempts by the University to profit from it. Among the non-Harvard subjects for the researcher, mentioned in the Mather-Ashurst letters but not within the scope of this article, are war between France and England and attendant disposition of Canada and Nova Scotia; controversy between Mather and Governor Dudley; discussion over and choice of Sir William Ashurst as Massachusetts colonial agent (proferred but not accepted); references to such luminaries of colonial Massachusetts as Samuel Sewall, Jeremiah Dummer, John Leverett, and Governor Samuel Shute; charming discourse by Increase Mather on his ability and effectiveness as a preacher at the age of nearly four score. By the time this article appears, the full text of the Mather-Ashurst letters, with annotations and commentary by Robert W. Lovett, former Curator of Manuscripts and Archives at the Harvard Business School, will be available in two additional volumes of Harvard College Records edited by Mr. Lovett for the Colonial Society of Massachusetts (Publications, xlix. documents 158A-C, 160A, 177A). The intention of this article is to discuss the Harvard content of the Mather-Ashurst letters and to comment on their relationship to the history of Harvard.
Increase Mather, Puritan clergyman, politician, Harvard president, author, and father of Cotton Mather, was one of the most prominent figures of the middle period of American colonial history. Sir William Ashurst, on the other hand, is a shadowy figure whose identity and accomplishments must be gleaned from the accounts of the activities of his father and brother, both Henry Ashursts, who played more prominent roles than William in American colonial affairs.
Henry Ashurst, the father, usually known as “the Alderman” to distinguish him from his father and his son of the same name, was a London merchant much concerned with reformed religion and for the welfare of Puritan Nonconformists everywhere.1 For many years he was treasurer of the New England Company, an English Protestant missionary society, founded in 1649 by the Long Parliament for the purpose of converting Indians in New England.2 His interests as a merchant and as a supporter of Indian missionary activity also included politics. His ability to come out on top or near the top with every change in English government made him a most effective colonial agent for Massachusetts. Son Henry followed many of the same interests as his father, being a devoted Puritan, successful merchant, member of the New England Company and, for twenty years, a colonial agent for Massachusetts. Through his occupation of London merchant “he sat on most of the ad hoc Parliamentary committees concerned with colonial affairs and was, therefore, in a strategic position to be of assistance.”3
Our Increase Mather correspondent, Sir William Ashurst, was son to Alderman Henry Ashurst and brother to Sir Henry. He was, himself, knighted in 1689 and served as Lord Mayor of London in 1693.4 Like his father and his brother, he was a London merchant, a Puritan in religion, and a Whig in politics. His activities on behalf of colonial New England, unfortunately, are less well documented than those of his father and brother. We may surmise that much of his interest in and service to New England came not only from his Puritan and Whig affiliations but from his long service, like that of other family members, in the New England Company, of which he became treasurer upon his father’s death in 1681 and governor in 1695, retaining the latter post until his death in 1720. “As a result of this central position in the New England Company, Sir William became the frequent correspondent of Samuel Sewell and of the Mathers. . . .”5
During the period 1688 to 1692, when Increase Mather was in England, we know that one of the influential Englishmen with whom he became acquainted was Sir William Ashurst, twenty years before the Mather-Ashurst correspondence under discussion.6 This acquaintance, established between two men of similar political and religious outlook, grew and remained warm, so their correspondence indicates, during the next thirty years. A warm feeling for Sir William extended to the next generation of Mathers as well, for Cotton Mather was inspired to write to Jeremiah Dummer in 1716 of “our incomparable Sir William Ashurst, whom you know to be one of the best men, and I know that you have not a better Friend upon the earth.”7 Ashurst’s friendship extended not only to the Mathers and Samuel Sewall but to the Colony of Massachusetts and to New England. Although he declined to become colonial agent, when offered the post by the Massachusetts General Assembly in 1710,8 he was helpful and sympathetic to the needs of Massachusetts and the other New England colonies, like his brother and his father, in relationships between Crown and Colony.
Prominent among the topics of Harvard interest discussed in the Increase Mather-Sir William Ashurst correspondence, is the current state of Harvard’s charter and Mather’s wish to incorporate provisions which would safeguard Congregationalism and provide organizational stability. Intertwined with the Charter Controversy, is discussion of Mather’s resignation from the Harvard presidency in 1701 and the eventual selection of his successor, John Leverett, in 1707.
From 1650 until 1686, Harvard was governed under the Charter of 1650. With the change in civil government that came with the advent of the Dominion of New England in 1686, came a change in Harvard governance as well. From 1686 to 1689, the College was not presided over by the President and Fellows and the Overseers, as provided by the Charter of 1650, but, under the new civil government, was administered by royal officials who appointed such individuals as they deemed necessary to operate the institution. Even though the former Massachusetts colonial government was restored in 1690, the College Charter of 1650 remained suspended until 1707.9 The Charter Controversy that boiled and roiled during the 1690’s and the early years of the eighteenth century, was covered by Samuel Eliot Morison, forty years ago, in his bible for the investigation of Harvard’s first century, Harvard in the Seventeenth Century, and more recently has been admirably recounted, in considerable detail and with emphasis on the early-eighteenth-century charter ramifications, by John M. Hoffmann, in his as-yet-unpublished Harvard doctoral dissertation, Commonwealth College; the Governance of Harvard in the Puritan Period. Thus, we shall not concern ourselves with those details here.
In seeking a legal and stable charter for Harvard, Increase Mather and his supporters were concerned that the College remain Nonconformist and not fall prey to the encroachment of Anglicanism. During an audience with James II, in the course of Mather’s four-year stay in England, 1688–1692, Mather expressed a willingness to see the founding of a college of Church of England persuasion, in Massachusetts or New England, should one be contemplated, so long as Harvard, founded by Nonconformists, be allowed to retain that philosophy. James II agreed with the reasonableness of that desire.1 Mather as a cleric and representative, at that time, of a majority of the Harvard Corporation, was willing to accept a charter whereby the Crown would have the same rights of visitation as it had at such English universities as Oxford and Cambridge, so long as Congregational or Nonconformist control was maintained. The Colonial Council, on the other hand, dominated by laymen, was anxious to renew the right of visitation or review that they had enjoyed as Overseers of the College under the Charter of 1650.2 As president of Harvard, Mather was concerned, above all, with incorporation and was willing to accept either a legislative or a royal charter so long as Anglicanism was avoided.3 Thus the controversy continued, sometimes quiescent, at other times eruptive.
In 1707, Massachusetts Governor Joseph Dudley, long an opponent of the Mathers, reversed his previously held opinion that the charter of the College had died in 1686 along with the civil government. He now declared that the Harvard Charter of 1650 remained valid, since it had never been formally repealed. This pleased the Colonial Council, who wanted a restoration of the power of visitation that they had enjoyed, although not necessarily always exercised, under the Charter of 1650, and made them amenable to the election of Dudley’s choice as president of Harvard, John Leverett.4
It was within this framework that Increase Mather wrote to Sir William Ashurst, on 19 January 1709/10, alluding to Governor Dudley and the recently elected Harvard president, John Leverett: “D. has put in a Lawyer to be the President, who is his creature. And the professors of the same stamp. They have now no charter, but what is of D’s making so that they are not a Corporation in Law. This I thought it needful to inform you of, that so you may consider whether it may be meet to put anything into their hands as things are now circumstanced. . . . There is no hope of having the Colledge settled on a Legal foundation as long as D. is Gouvernour.”5 As we have seen, Mather had had an audience with King James and, later, with King William and had discussed the college charter with them. In the Mather-Ashurst letter of 8 November 1710, Mather recalls his audience with King William and also his negotiations, in Massachusetts, for a college charter that had caused him so much anguish during the twenty years previous and that now, in 1709/10, still remained a matter of great concern to him. He writes as follows:
For a long time there was no president and Fellows. When I was in England I addressed K. William for his Royal favor to the Society, who expressed to me a great willingness to encourage them. Several Ministers of State assured me that if the General Assembly would by an act incorporate the Colledge it would be confirmed by the K[ing]. This the Assembly upon my desire, did, but they took no notice of the K. in their Act for incorporation. The K. very kindly (tho he repealed that Act) signified to the General Assembly that they should view that Act again only reserve to his Majesty a power of visitation as in all the Colledges in England. After which the Governour and Council (which doubtless you will wonder at) made themselves visitors but left out the K. which his Majesty was not well pleased with. They urged me to remove from Boston to the Colledge to which the Church to which I am related would not consent. Nor was I myselfe willing except the Colledge had bin on a charter foundation confirmed by the K. I therefore resigned the presidentship. After which for 7 years there was no president nor Fellows (only Tutors to uphold learning) and a legal foundation. When Mr. D. became Governour he proposed to the Assembly that Mr. Leverett might be established president. The House of Commons noted twice that they could not approve of him. Nevertheless, by a trick when the leading men were gone home, the Governour prevailed with a bare majority to consent. Mr. Leverett (not withstanding we are of differing principles) professed a great respect for me, for which he has some reason for that he received his Academical Degrees from me, and I brought him in to be a Fellow of the Colledge above twenty years ago.6
Thus, expressed in this letter, we have an account of Mather’s years of effort to obtain a soundly legal College charter, the reason for his resignation as Harvard president (explored in detail and expanded by Morison and Hoffmann), and the bitterness that he felt toward his official successor as Harvard president, John Leverett. Mather was not alone in feeling that the Charter of 1650 was not legally adequate to insure the flow of gifts and bequests, to survive Imperial invalidation or to counter the threat of Anglican intrusion. But Mather and his sympathizers did not get a royal charter. The Charter of 1650 prevailed and, with the passage of time, the mitigation of the threats to Harvard survival that concerned the Mathers and the internal strengthening of the College and its governance, under President Leverett, the early constitution of the College, embodied in the Charter of 1650, came to seem more satisfactory.7
Another subject of discussion, in the Mather-Ashurst letters, and one tied closely to Increase Mather’s wish for a sound legal charter for Harvard College, was the matter of the Boyle legacy. Sir Robert Boyle (1627–1691), the English natural philosopher, chemist, and author of Boyle’s Law on the proportional relation between elasticity and pressure, was also much interested in the education and conversion of American Indians and in the growth of Harvard College. Although Boyle never visited America, he was familiar with the College and with New England. When Leonard Hoar, who served as Harvard’s president from 1672 to 1674/75, was in England, he had cultivated the friendship of Boyle;8 George Stirk (a.b. 1646), an alchemist, had also become Boyle’s good friend.9 “Boyle had many correspondents in America who wrote to him on a variety of subjects. For example, William Avery wrote of natural phenomena in New England, of the clay of Martha’s Vineyard, and of his alchemical discoveries and speculations; William Penn described the Indians, natural ores and the wild flowers; John Winthrop wrote describing the death of a fish in a pond in Watertown.”1 John Winthrop also corresponded with Boyle on the “New Englander’s program in civilizing and converting the heathen.”2 It is evident, then, that Sir Robert Boyle, both through his New England correspondents and acquaintances and through his service as governor of the New England Company from 1661 to 1689, was well acquainted with Harvard College and New England when Increase Mather met with him during the latter’s English sojourn from 1688 to 1692.3
Sir Robert Boyle died during Mather’s visit, in 1691. Long interested in Indians, through his position as governor of the New England Company, he directed, in his will, that a fund of £400 be employed as an investment for the relief of poor Indian converts. Boyle’s executors were persuaded to invest the £400 and additional funds in the manor of Brafferton, in Yorkshire. Forty-five pounds from the annual rents were to go to the New England Company, to pay two Indian missionaries, and another £45 to the President and Fellows of Harvard, “to be by them employed and bestowed for the Salary of two other Ministers, to teach the Natives, in or near his Colonies, in the Christian Religion. . . .”4
Harvard had to wait a long time to receive any benefit from Sir Robert Boyle’s estate. In the aforementioned letter of 19 January 1709/10, to Sir William Ashurst, Increase Mather discusses this concern. “Some years ago you wrote of a moyety out of Mr. Boyle’s Legacy to be disposed of by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. It is disputed whether it was intended that the Corporation should improve the money for the education of some to preach to the Natives, or only to determine which of those that are employed in that service should have the benefit of that Legacy. The Colledge has not as yet received anything. And now that Society is in other hands than it was when the Corporation in London ordered the Legacy for them.”5 By “that Society” Mather referred to the College and by “the Corporation,” to the governing board of the New England Company in London. Sir Henry Ashurst, brother of Sir William, was an executor of Boyle’s estate and, as an officer of the New England Company, undoubtedly saw that that body benefited from the estate of Sir Robert Boyle, its first governor. Mather’s reference to “now that the Society is in other hands,” concerns the fact that the mantle of leadership in Harvard College had passed from his shoulders to the shoulders of John Leverett.
In the letter of 8 November 1710 to Sir William Ashurst, Mather continues his discussion of the Boyle legacy. “I know not whether you received what I wrote to you concerning Mr. Boyle’s legacy to the Colledge. I was president of the Colledge when that money was ordered. And indeed my solicitation with the executors of Mr. Boyle’s will in special Sir H. Ashurst occasioned that donation to the Colledge. The unsettled state of that Society made your Commissioners at a Loss what to do.”6 As we have noted, Sir Henry Ashurst was an executor of Boyle’s will and, like his brother and his late father, a valuable and useful friend to the Bay Colony and to the College. The last sentence of the quotation may indicate that the Commissioners of the New England Company, from their post in London, were unwilling to dispense income from the Boyle estate investments because of the uncertain legal status of the College.
Later in the letter of 8 November, Mather writes that, when Leverett became president of Harvard, Mather had informed him of the status of the Boyle legacy and of the New England Company’s order, of July 1697, to make annual payments to the College.7 The text of the letter indicates that there was some dispute between the College and the New England Company Corporation over the amount to be paid, resulting in Harvard’s receiving nothing. Mather indicates his willingness to cooperate with the settlement of the “Arrears.”8 He concludes discussion of the Boyle legacy, in the letter of 8 November, as follows: “I attest that the design of the Legacy is that 2 scholars shall be educated in that Society who shall with gratitude instruct the Indians in Christianity. And that will be a great benefit to the Colledge when two of the members therein shall be so priviledged, and may (if the Lord pleases) promote Christianity. I must pray you to inform me if I am mistaken.”9
A few months before Mather’s letter to Ashurst, of 8 November 1710, the New England Company received a letter from the President and Fellows of Harvard College, inquiring about their share in the Boyle estate. The Company declared its intention to pay the £45, in the future, but hoped that the College would not insist on payment of arrears, since the money had been spent by the Company’s Commissioners to pay the salaries of ministers. Sir William Ashurst, in his capacity as governor of the New England Company, wrote to the President and Fellows of Harvard College, admitting that this had been done and that annual payments had not been made to the College, as ordered in 1697. At a meeting between representatives of the Commissioners and the College, in 1710, it was agreed that the Commissioners would pay £90 each year for six years and, thereafter, £45 per year.1 In the following decades, some money was received from the Commissioners but the whole matter of the dispersal and receipt of income from the Boyle legacy, as the Harvard records reveal, remained a matter of dispute and uncertainty throughout the eighteenth century.
The five Increase Mather letters written to Sir William Ashurst in 1709, 1709/10, and 1717 and purchased by Harvard University in 1973, as we have noted, are concerned with the governance of Massachusetts, with the education of Indians, with some of the leaders of Massachusetts, and with Increase Mather as a preacher in his old age, as well as with matters of interest to the University. The letters, in their Harvard discussions, contain nothing to change significantly our view of Harvard’s history but, rather, add to our knowledge of it. We learn, from Mather’s own words, of his reasons for resigning the Harvard presidency, his attitude toward his successor, John Leverett, and his central theme of the need for a strong legal charter for the University which would insure the continued receipt of gifts and bequests and preserve its Puritan Nonconformist philosophy. Also partially revealed, is the very important role played in Massachusetts and Harvard College affairs by the politically and economically powerful London-based Ashurst family. Whatever the importance of the Mather-Ashurst letters to students of Harvard’s and New England’s past, they are significant in that they add a few more squares to the great patchwork quilt of Harvard history.
* A significant portion of this memorial article appeared originally in The Harvard Librarian, x (November 1973-January 1974).
1 The manuscript research for this article was done in the collections of the American Antiquarian Society where the correspondence with the Corporation is arranged chronologically. References made in the text here are to dated materials there. Other references to printed material easily available will also be made in the text of this article.
* When this paper was first delivered before the Colonial Society in 1974, the author’s book, Youth from Every Quarter: A Bicentennial History of Phillips Academy, Andover (Trustees of Phillips Academy, 1979), had not been published. A substantial part of the material in this paper appears in Chapters III and IV of that work.
1 Bernard Bailyn, Education in the Forming of American Society (University of North Carolina Press, 1960), 14. Bailyn believes that educational historians in the early years of this century sought to find in the colonial period the roots of nineteenth-century educational institutions and thus concentrated too much on colonial formal education, failing to grasp the significance of other agencies like the family and the church that probably played a far more important part in the education of children than did schools and colleges themselves. For these writers, as Bailyn puts it, “the past was simply the present writ small” (ibid., 9).
2 The standard histories of Andover are Abiel Abbot, History of Andover from its Settlement to 1829 (Andover, 1829); Sarah Loring Bailey, Historical Sketches of Andover, Massachusetts (Boston, 1880); and Claude M. Fuess, Andover: Symbol of New England (Published by the Andover and North Andover Historical Societies, 1959). Susannah Rogers’s elegy is in Bailey, 191–193. The Andover and North Andover Historical Societies published a reprint of Miss Bailey’s book in 1974.
3 See Philip J. Greven, Jr., Four Generations: Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts (Ithaca, 1970), especially 268–282. In speaking of the probable connection between familial change and change in attitude toward religion, Greven writes (279), “The probability of such a connection is suggested by the fact that many of the people who left Andover moved to towns in Massachusetts, Connecticut (Windham County), and New Hampshire, towns which later were caught up in the revivals of the 1720’s and 1740’s. In contrast, many of those who remained behind in Andover failed to be touched by the Awakening, and Andover itself was an Old Light, nonrevivalist town during the 1740’s. That there were such perceptible differences in the religious experiences of members of the same families, some of whom stayed and others of whom left, does suggest that their familial experiences might have been of critical importance in shaping their religious needs and responses.” In suggesting a relationship between familial change and change in attitude toward royal authority, he writes (280), “It is not inconceivable, for example, that the slow and subtle, but nevertheless tremendously important, changes in the relationships between fathers and sons might have been connected closely with the movement for independence itself during the third quarter of the eighteenth century—that period in which the fourth generation of Andover was coming to maturity and establishing its own independence from fathers and families.”
Bailyn writes of the same change in more general terms: “By the end of the colonial period it [the educational system] had been radically transformed. Education had been dislodged from its ancient position in the social order, wrenched loose from the automatic, instinctive workings of society, and cast as a matter for deliberation into the forefront of consciousness. Its functionings had become problematic and controversial. . . . Where there had been deeply ingrained habits, unquestioned tradition, automatic responses, security, and confidence there was now awareness, doubt, formality, will, and decision” (Bailyn, Education, 21–22).
4 For the other children, see Albert M. Phillips, Phillips Genealogies (Auburn, Mass., 1885), 18. The author errs in giving the date of Samuel Phillips, Jr.’s birth as 1750 rather than 1752. For the correct date, see Vital Records of Andover, Massachusetts to the End of the Year 1849 (Published by the Topsfield Historical Society, 1912), 303. Sam’s sister Hannah lived until he was twelve years old, but she was ten years older than he.
5 For the early town schools in Andover, see Bailey, Historical Sketches, 617–622. Edward Wigglesworth, who taught in Andover in the early 1760’s, had this to say about his position: “I am stuffed way up here among a Parcel of stupid Monsters (except a few) that are as ignorant as the Caffaries of Madagascar. But then I have a plenty of harmless Country Lasses, fat as Butter and make a Body sweat all Night as tho they were hard at work . . .” (See Clifford K. Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, xii. 509).
6 John L. Taylor, A Memoir of His Honor Samuel Phillips, LL.D. (Boston, 1856), 14–15.
7 For John Barnard, see Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, v. 475–479.
8 For George Phillips, see Henry Wilder Foote, “George Phillips, First Minister of Watertown,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, lxiii. 193–227.
9 For the first Samuel Phillips, minister of Rowley, see John Langdon Sibley, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University, i (Cambridge, 1873), 221228. See also an elegiac poem produced by Edward Payson printed in Thomas Gage, The History of Rowley, etc. (Boston, 1840), 79–84. Little is known of the second Samuel Phillips, the Salem goldsmith. See Phillips, Phillips Genealogies, 13–14. In a notebook in the Phillips Papers in the Phillips Academy Archives at the Oliver Wendell Holmes Library in Andover is the following notation: “Samuel Phillips Senior do freely for Ever give to my son Samuel Phillips junior a Seal ring; 3 pair (or 1 sett) of shirt buttons and a shirt buckel, all of Gold and weighing 11 penny weight. Witness my Hand Sam: Phillips. This 23d of Sept: 1709.”
1 Unless otherwise noted, the material in this paper on Parson Phillips has been taken from Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, v. 432–440.
2 There are several documents among the Phillips Papers that deal with the Parson’s salary problems. These include tabulations of arrears of salary, parish committee reports on the subject, and a letter from the Parson to his congregation dated 8 June 1762 that starts off: “Beloved Brethren, With respect to the Business which, I perceive, you are now met together upon, I shall say, The Parish can witness for me, that in years past, I sent in one Memorial after another, frequently entreating that Justice might be done me with regard to my Salary. . . .” This letter and some of the other documents in the Phillips Papers on the subject of the Parson’s salary have been printed in Historical Manual of the South Church in Andover, Mass. (Andover, 1859), 41–45.
3 For this story, see Claude M. Fuess, An Old New England School (Boston, 1917), 10.
4 Historical Manual of the South Church, 68.
5 Bailey, Historical Sketches, 446.
6 A good insight into the character of the Parson can be derived from a letter—too long to be included here—that he wrote to his son Samuel and his daughter-in-law Elizabeth shortly after their marriage. In this document in the Phillips Papers, dated 27 September 1738, the Parson urges the newlyweds to be thankful for their blessings, to examine themselves regularly, to make family prayers a part of their daily life, to behave properly toward their fellowmen, to conduct business honestly and without favoritism, to contemplate mortality, and to use their time well and practice thrift. The section on the proper conduct of business has been printed in Bailey, Historical Sketches, 154. In a manuscript book entitled Genealogy of the Phillips Family, prepared in 1856 by William Gray Brooks, there can be found (139–142) annotations that the Parson wrote in his almanacs for the years 1739–1746 recording family and parish matters, natural phenomena like earthquakes, and political events like the siege of Louisbourg. The original of this manuscript book is the possession of C. Lloyd Thomas, present owner of the old Phillips mansion in North Andover, who has generously allowed me to make a copy for the Phillips Academy Archives.
7 Unless otherwise noted, the material on Squire Phillips has been taken from Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, ix. 431–436.
8 There is some evidence to indicate that the Squire may have moved his store to a building across the street from his home at some later date, according to an architectural survey conducted by Cary Carson for the North Andover Historical Society in 1967. I am indebted to Thomas Leavitt and Helena Wright, director and librarian, respectively, of the Merrimack Valley Textile Museum for this information.
9 For this case, see William E. Park, “The Earlier Annals of Phillips Academy,” an address delivered at the centennial of the school in 1878. Apparently it was planned to print the record of the centennial, and the editors got as far as page proof. There exists now only a single copy of the page proof in the Phillips Academy Archives. The Parker case is on 56.
1 The complaint, with notations on further court proceedings, dated May-June 1758, is in the Phillips Papers.
2 For an account of this episode, see William G. Brooks in Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, IX (1866–1867), 252–254. Brooks also prints a letter, dated 29 August 1769, from the Squire to his son, now in the Phillips Papers, in which the father urges Sam to behave with circumspection, now that he has won a higher rank. But he closes, “. . . by no means give the most distant hint of yielding your place.”
3 Squire Phillips to Sam Phillips, Andover, 7 July 1768 in Phillips Papers.
4 Squire Phillips to Sam Phillips, Andover, 5 November 1769 in Phillips Papers.
5 Squire Phillips to Sam Phillips, Andover, 20 November 1769 in Phillips Papers.
6 This letter in the Phillips Papers is addressed to “Mr. Samuel Phillips in Cambridge” and signed by the Squire.
7 Squire Phillips to Sam Phillips, Andover, 20 November 1769 in Phillips Papers.
8 Park, “Early Annals,” 57.
9 For the Barnards, see Bailey, Historical Sketches, 426–439.
1 Taylor, Memoir, 16.
2 Elizabeth Phillips to Sam Phillips, Andover, 4 May 1766 in Phillips Papers.
3 Elizabeth Phillips to Sam Phillips, Andover, 13 June and 29 July (no year given) in Phillips Papers.
4 Elizabeth Phillips to Sam Phillips, undated but addressed to Sam at Cambridge, in Phillips Papers.
5 Elizabeth Phillips to Sam Phillips, Andover, 4 May 1766 in Phillips Papers.
6 Elizabeth Phillips to Sam Phillips, Andover, 25 March 1765 (copy) in Phillips Papers.
7 This phrase is from the so-called “Constitution” of Phillips Academy. See Theodore R. Sizer, The Age of the Academies (New York, 1964), 78.
8 On Moody, see Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, XII. 48–54, and John W. Ragle, Governor Dummer Academy History (published by Governor Dummer Academy, 1963), 13–27.
9 One of Master Moody’s favorite injunctions to his boys was “Crede quod Possis, et potes” (Shipton, 51).
1 Lawrence A. Cremin, American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607–1783 (New York, 1970), 509, says of Moody: “No provincial schoolmaster was more respected during the eighteenth century, and none made a greater impact on the later life of the Republic.”
2 Undated fragment of a letter from Sam Phillips to his parents in Phillips Papers.
3 Squire Phillips to Sam Phillips, Andover, 5 December 1767 in Phillips Papers.
4 Sam Phillips to Elizabeth Phillips, Newbury Falls, 21 March 1765 and Byfield, 5 April 1765 in Phillips Papers.
5 Sam Phillips to Elizabeth Phillips, Byfield, 5 April 1765 in Phillips Papers.
6 Sam Phillips to Elizabeth Phillips, Byfield, 29 June 1765 in Phillips Papers.
7 Sam Phillips to “Honoured Parents,” Newbury, 15 June 1767 in Phillips Papers.
8 The material in the last two paragraphs has been taken from Samuel E. Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard, 1636–1936 (Cambridge, 1936), 76–163, and Sheldon S. Cohen, “Harvard College on the Eve of the American Revolution,” sufra infra, 173–190.
9 2 July 1768.
1 10 July 1768.
2 10 December 1768.
3 The charge against Wigglesworth was that he had been engaged in business for ten years after graduation from college, had then taught school in Andover, had never been ordained, had been appointed a tutor at Harvard through the intercession of his father, who was his predecessor as professor of divinity, and then had succeeded to the professorship on the death of his father almost as if it were an inheritance. The Phillipses must have known Wigglesworth during his tour of duty at Andover and may well have thought it strange that a small-town schoolteacher should be the divinity professor at Harvard. See Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, XII. 507–517.
4 Sam Phillips to “Honoured Parents,” Cambridge, 10 March 1768 in Phillips Papers. Stephen Peabody mentions the Wigglesworth trouble in his diary entry for 2 March 1768. This diary is at the Massachusetts Historical Society.
5 Supra Infra, 173–180. For a more extended account of the disorders of 1768, see also Sheldon S. Cohen, “The Turkish Tyranny,” New England Quarterly, XLVII (December 1974), 564–583, which appeared after this article was completed.
6 See the testimony of Sam Phillips and David Parsons, Depositions Numbers 37 and 3, in a folder entitled “Disorders of 1768” in the Harvard University Archives.
7 Squire Phillips to Sam Phillips, Andover, 17 March 1768 in Phillips Papers. The Squire urged that “Obedience and Submission is your Indispensible Duty” and hoped his son would “Shudder at the Thought of Rebellions.”
8 Entry for 8 October 1768.
9 Supra Infra, 187.
1 Park, “Early Annals,” 58–59, says, “The spirit of Liberty is now brought to Phillips’s door. His journal contains less of religious experience . . . but it sparkles with observations upon debates and revolutionary proceedings,” and he speaks of Sam as writing of the political events of the day “with suppressed glee.”
2 Entry for 1 October 1768.
3 Entry for 8 October 1768.
4 26 March 1769.
5 10 March 1770.
6 To be sure, during his undergraduate days, Sam wrote a theme on Liberty in which he said, “. . . we cannot be happy without we are free. . . . Unborn generations will either bless us for our activity and magnanimity, or curse us for our sloth and pusillanimity . . .” and wrote of “. . . the cruel usurpation of those rights and privileges, for the defence of which whole kingdoms are ready to sacrifice their lives and fortunes.” Taylor, Memoir, 46–47. I believe that Sam’s journal entries reflect his attitude more accurately than this set piece.
7 Journal entry for 10 September 1768.
8 Journal entry for 3 December 1768.
9 Sam Phillips to “Ever Honoured Parents,” Cambridge, 1 December 1767 in Phillips Papers. For William Brattle, see Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, VII. 10–23.
1 Harvard Faculty Records, III, 55, 88, 116, 142, and 187 in Harvard University Archives.
2 Taylor, Memoir, 27.
3 Morison, Three Centures, 138–141.
4 See Taylor, Memoir, 26, for two assessments of Sam’s position as an undergraduate at Harvard. One is a quotation from John Eliot’s Biographical Dictionary, the other from the Reverend David Tappan’s funeral sermon preached at the time of Sam’s death.
5 Sam Phillips to Squire Phillips, Cambridge, 27 May 1771, quoted in Taylor, Memoir, 28–29. The original of this letter is no longer in the Phillips Papers.
6 This correspondence is in Phillips Papers.
7 In a document dated simply “Monday Morning 5 o’clock” and addressed to “Honoured Sir,” almost certainly his father, Sam Phillips outlines plans for his school. In speaking of the advantage of having students live with the master, so that they can be constantly under his supervision, he adds: “as was found in Mr. Moody’s School, altho’ it was attended with more Difficulty there (on Account of Collections from every Quarter than it would be here).” Myron R. Williams in The Story of Phillips Exeter (published by The Phillips Exeter Academy, 1957), 25, suggests that Sam Phillips may have hoped to found a school “as little as possible like the one kept by Master Samuel Moody . . . which as a boy he had attended.”
8 In a document in the Phillips Papers addressed simply “Dear Friend” but almost certainly meant for Eliphalet Pearson, Sam Phillips puts on paper what I believe to be his earliest thoughts on what a secondary school should be. I believe that this letter was probably written sometime during 1776.
9 The first two phrases are from the preamble to the Phillips Academy “Constitution.” See Sizer, Age of Academies, 77. The third phrase is from the “Monday Morning at 5 o’clock” letter from Sam Phillips to his father.
1 When I delivered this paper before the Colonial Society on 19 December 1974, I had not seen the sketch of Samuel Phillips that Ted Shipton had written before his death for Vol. XVII of Sibley’s Harvard Graduates. Since then I have seen it and find, happily, that we are in agreement about Sam Phillips’s education. Though Ted did not have access to the Phillips Papers in the Phillips Academy Archives, and though his treatment of Sam’s education is necessarily much shorter than mine, his account is an admirable summary of Sam’s early training.
1 Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables (ed. New York, 1935), 40–41.
2 He has no entry in the Dictionary of National Biography or in any other standard collection, and only a brief and very unsatisfactory one in E. G. R. Taylor, Mathematical Practitioners of Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge, 1954), 275. Other references to him will be discussed later.
3 Derek Howse and Michael Sanderson, The Sea Chart (New York, 1973), 53.
4 New York Public Library, Dictionary Catalog of the Map Division (10 vols., Boston, 1972), III. 282; the map—entitled “The South Part of Virginia [and, in a later hand: ‘Now the North Part of Carolina’] Nicholas Comberford Fecit Anno 1657”—is noticed in P. Lee Phillips, Virginia Cartography (Washington, 1896), 33–34, and in William P. Cumming, The Southeast in Early Maps (2nd edition, Chapel Hill, N. C., 1962), no. 50.
5 Hawthorne, 250–251; cf. Thomas M. Griffiths, Maine Sources in The House of the Seven Gables (Waterville, Maine, 1945), 19–20.
6 Dictionary of National Biography, LXIII. 324–325; William Betham, The Baronetage of England (5 vols., London, 1801–1805), II. 297.
7 The original report is at Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth, in the file relating to William Hack’s Description of New England. The atlas is no. 3162 in P. Lee Phillips, A List of Geographical Atlases in the Library of Congress (Washington, 1909).
8 I. N. Phelps Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498–1909 (6 vols., New York, 1915–1928), I. 209. While useful in drawing attention to the map, the notice—which may be due as much to F. C. Wieder or to Henry Stevens as to Stokes—contains several mistakes, the most serious of which is the unqualified statement that the map at Plymouth is “dated 1663”: there is no date of any sort visible on the map.
9 Jeannette D. Black, The Blathwayt Atlas. Volume II: Commentary (Providence, 1975), 85 n. 13.
1 Papworth’s Ordinary of British Armorials (London, 1874), 566, quoting from British Library Cottonian MS. Tiberius D. 10 and Harleian MSS. 1392 and 1459.
2 Betham, II. 291–297; John Prince, The Worthies of Devon (London, 1810), 160, 168, 237, 628.
3 Joseph Foster, Alumni Oxonienses . . . (4 vols., Oxford, 1891–1892), IV. 1705.
4 House of Commons, Members of Parliament: Return . . . (2 vols., London, 1878), I. 535, 541, 547; Romney Sedgwick, The History of Parliament: the House of Commons, 1715–1754 (2 vols., London, 1970), I. 227.
5 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1680–1681, 137.
6 On the Dominion of New England, see Viola F. Barnes, The Dominion of New England (New Haven, 1923); David S. Lovejoy, The Glorious Revolution in America (New York, 1972), 166–219. On Yonge, House of Commons, Return, I. 535, 541, 547, 558; C.S.P., Domestic, 1689–1690, 50, 86–87; Narcissus Luttrell, A brief historical relation of state affairs (6 vols., Oxford, 1857), I. 342.
7 House of Commons, Return, I. 565.
8 Calendar of Treasury Books, IX. part ii, 475.
9 C.S.P., Colonial (America and West Indies), 1689–1692, 288–289, 346.
1 House of Commons, Return, I. 573, 580, 587, 594, 601 and II. 2, 10. C.S.P., Domestic, 1700–1702, 251, and 1703–1704, 278. Ibid., 1696, 424, and 1697, 298. The Privy Council allowed the Bill in favor of the Courtenays to become law only after being assured that “Sir Walter Yonge did not oppose it, since no more was to be granted than Sir William formerly had.” Yonge’s acquiescence was, perhaps, proved unwise in 1711, when he lost the seat at Honiton: the Courtenays were already empowered to appoint the portreeve, the main electoral officer in the borough.
2 Luttrell, III. 299–300.
3 C.S.P., Domestic, 1694–1695, 180; Calendar of Treasury Books, x. part ii, 739. Cf. C.S.P., Domestic, William and Mary, Addenda, 272; Luttrell, III. 353.
4 Calendar of Treasury Books, XXIX. 145, 177, 407 (4 March 1715); Ibid., XXII. part ii, 666; Calendar of Treasury Books and Papers, I. 446, II. 129, 137. Yonge died on 17 or 18 July 1731, and was succeeded in the family baronetcy by his son William (1693–1755), celebrated as the “stinking Yonge” detested by King George II, who became Lord of the Admiralty, Lord of the Treasury, and Secretary at War. He was the father of the last holder of the baronetcy, Sir George Yonge, Bt., who was also a Lord of the Admiralty, and a Governor of the Cape of Good Hope. See Historical Register: the Chronological Diary (London, 1731), 308. On Sir William Yonge, see: Sedgwick, II. 567–568; Betham, II. 296–297; J. C. Sainty, Admiralty Officials, 1660–1870 (London, 1975), 22; Dictionary of National Biography, LXIII. 331–334.
5 L. H. Harper, The English Navigation Laws: a seventeenth century experiment in social engineering (New York, 1939); Oliver M. Dickerson, The Navigation Acts and the American Revolution (Philadelphia, 1951). On the composition, functions and perquisites of the Customs Commission, Elizabeth Evelynola Hoon, The Organization of the English Customs System (New York, 1938), 56–61, 84–86, 90–91.
6 C.S.P. Colonial (America and West Indies) 1693–1696, 631, 670; ibid., 1724–1725, 82–83.
7 Gertrude Jacobson, William Blathwayt, a late seventeenth century English administrator (New Haven, 1932).
8 Blathwayt to the Governor of Barbados, June 1677, quoted in Lovejoy, 20.
9 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, XLVIII. (1894), 453–455.
1 Stokes, op. et loc. cit. It is fair to note that Stokes later described himself as knowing relatively little about the maps he discusses, and that he gives much of the credit for his cartographic sections to Dr. F. C. Wieder of Amsterdam, some also going to Henry Stevens for descriptions of the plates.
2 The Mapmaker’s Art (London, 1953), 101–116.
3 Archer B. Hulbert (ed.), Crown Collection of Photographs of American Maps, v. no. 24; Phelps Stokes, I., plate 10 and 207–210.
4 Arthur Henry Johnson, The history of the Worshipful Company of the Drapers of London (5 vols., Oxford, 1914–1922), II. 197 and III. 627; Tony Campbell, “The Drapers’ Company and its school of seventeenth-century chart-makers,” in: Helen Wallis and Sarah Tyacke (eds.), My Head is a Map: essays and memoirs in honour of R. V. Tooley (London, 1973), 87.
5 Campbell, 103, n. 23; and Mr. Campbell’s letter to the present writer, 28 January 1976.
6 Campbell, 106, n. 77, citing Commissary Court of London MS. 9168/30.
7 Mr. Campbell’s letter to the present writer, 23 February 1976.
8 Herbert C. Schulz, Norma B. Cuthbert and Haydee Noya, Ten centuries of manuscripts in the [Henry E.] Huntington Library (San Marino, 1962), 79–80.
9 London Gazette, no. 3570, 25–29 January 1699 [i.e., 1700, New Style].
1 [John Shers?] to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, 2 December 1594, in: Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report on the Pepys Manuscripts preserved at Magdalene College, Cambridge, in House of Commons Sessional Papers, 1911, XXVIII. 39.
2 Campbell, 94–98.
3 Ibid., 815 Thomas R. Smith, Manuscript and Printed Sea Charts in Seventeenth Century London: the case of the Thames School, unpublished text (at the John Carter Brown Library) of a lecture delivered at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
4 Ernesto García Camarero, “La escuela cartográfica inglesa ‘At the Signe of the Piatt’”, Real Sociedad Geográfica: Publicaciones. Serie B, no. 399 (Madrid, 1959).
5 Lynam, 105–107; Christopher Lloyd, “Bartholomew Sharp, buccaneer,” Mariner’s Mirror, XLII. (1956), 291–301. Sharp’s narrative was published in Hack’s own A Collection of Original Voyages (London, 1699).
6 Alexandre Olivier Exquemelin (et al.), Bucaniers of America . . . , Second Edition (London, William Crooke, 1684), Part III, 63–84: this chapter concludes with an incredible story alleging that Sharpe had bought an old boat for £20 in the Thames, with which he had taken a French vessel in the Downs and had returned to a career of piracy. It is signed “W.D. At the Bank-side beyond the Bear-Garden.” P[hillip] A[yres], op. cit. (London, Printed by B.W. for R.H. and S.T., 1684), 1–14. Both works are in the John Carter Brown Library.
7 Basil Ringrose, Journal: British Library Sloane MS. 3820 (the original) and Sloane MS. 48 (version by William Hack). Cf. Basil Ringrose, The Dangerous Voyage and Bold Attempts of Captain Bartholomew Sharpe, and others; performed upon the Coasts of the South Sea, for the space of two years, &c. From the Original Journal of the said Voyage . . . (London, William Crooke, 1685), 133.
8 Bartholomew Sharpe, Journal, Naval Historical Library (Ministry of Defence), MS. F.4.
9 Lloyd, 291–292; cf. Ringrose, 162–163.
1 Sir Henry Morgan to Sir Leoline Jenkins, 8 March 1682, C.S.P. Colonial (America and West Indies), 1681–1685, 203–205.
2 The surviving copies of Hack’s South Sea Waggoner are fully listed, and the variation of their components, and of the associated Hack manuscripts, are analyzed by Thomas R. Adams, “William Hack’s Manuscript Atlases of ‘The Great South Sea of America,’” John Carter Brown Library Annual Report, 1066, 45–52.
3 Estelle Frances Ward, Christopher Monck, Duke of Albemarle (London, 1914); Cyrus Harold Karraker, The Hispaniola treasure (Philadelphia, 1934). Most works on the subject give the date of the original wreck as 1642 or 1643, but Spanish sources are quite clear that the wreck of the treasure-carrying ship on the Abrojos was in November 1641, as documents in the Archivo General de Indias and the British Library amply confirm: cf. Huguette and Pierre Chaunu, Seville et l’Atlantique, 1104–1650 (11 vols., Paris, 1955–1959), v. under date.
4 John Carter Brown Library Annual Report, 1966, 21–24 and 52. On the Clevlands, see: John Charnock, Biographia Navalis (6 vols., London, 1794–1798), III. 66–70, and Sir Lewis Namier and John Brooke, The History of Parliament: the House of Commons, 1754–1790 (3 vols., New York, 1964), II. 220–222. In his later career, Hack was notably attached to the great Whig lawyer and statesman John, Lord Somers (1651–1716), Lord Keeper, Lord Chancellor and Lord President of the Council under William and Mary and under Anne. At the least, Somers received the dedication of Hack’s sole volume published under his own name, of one of his two separate printed maps and of one of the South Sea Waggoners (one of those now in the British Museum). This is yet another important justification of Somers’ reputation as a patron to add to the examples enlighteningly brought together by William L. Sachse, Lord Somers (Manchester, 1975), whose painstaking work has largely compensated for the grievous early loss of Somers’ own papers to show his significance as maecenas in scholarship, arts, and letters.
5 John Carter Brown Library Annual Report, 1966, 51, 52; Lynam, op. cit.; William H. Bond, “Contemporary Collectors: Arthur Amory Houghton, Jr.,” The Book Collector, VI. (1957), 32 and plate.
6 British Library atlas 7 Tab. 127, formerly K. Mar. VII. 3.
7 Cumming, Southeast, 162, no. 100.
8 Practically no study of Moll’s work as a whole has been done, though he has an entry, with detailed bibliography, in the Dictionary of National Biography, XXXVIII. 128–130, and enlightening mentions under his name in Cumming, op. cit.
9 Lionel Wafer, A New Voyage & Description of the Isthmus of America, ed. L. E. Elliot Joyce (Hakluyt Society Second Series, LXXIII. Oxford, 1934), especially xxiv n., 3 n., 115 n.; G. P. Insh, The Company of Scotland trading to Africa and the Indies (London, 1932).
1 Cf. Leona Rostenberg, English Publishers in the Graphic Arts, 1599–1700 (New York, 1963), 72.
2 Smith, op. and loc. cit., and in his paper, so far unpublished, on Nicholas Comberford, of which a resume appears in Imago Mundi, XXIV. (1970), 95. Hack usually signed his address, in full, “at the Signe of Great Britain & Ireland, neare New Staires, in Wapping”; Thornton his as “at the signe of England Scotland & Ireland in the Minories,” or, sometimes, just “at ye Platt in ye Minories” (see Cumming, op. cit., nos. 89, 100, 123); Campbell, 98; Black, II. 16. Of those contemporary mapmakers whom there is occasion to mention here, Philip Lea was of the Weavers’ Company and John Seller of the Merchant Taylors.
3 Campbell, 88–91.
4 Smith, Manuscript and Printed Sea Charts; Campbell, 100–101.
5 A separate chart by Hack of “Pepys Island”—really the Falkland Islands misplaced, and mendaciously claimed as a new discovery of what was already well known, at least to the Dutch, is British Library Additional MS. 17,940b. Several charts of it also occur in some of Hack’s South Sea Waggoners, which include charts, mainly of the Galapagos, credited originally to William Ambrose Cowley, who made a journey almost around the world westwards from Virginia to Holland, in 1683–1686: on Cowley’s navigation and voyage, known almost entirely through Hack’s rendering of his charts, see: P. R. Grant, “Four Galápagos islands,” Geographical Journal, CXLI. (March 1975), 76–87 and plates.
6 The Diary of Samuel Pepys: a new and complete transcription edited by Robert Latham and William Matthews (II vols., Berkeley, 1970–), v. 38, 46, 50 (18 and 27 February and 4 and 5 March 1665) and III. 240 (22 July 1663). Pepys called Burston “the ablest man in Towne.”
7 “A Narrative of a Deceiving of Expectations,” enclosed with William Dobbyn to John Percivalle, 17 December 1655, printed in Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report on the Manuscripts of the Earl of Egmont, 1. part ii (London, 1905), 569–573
8 Schulz, et al., 79; Black, II. 13, 21; Rostenberg, 68, 74; David Piper, Catalogue of the Seventeenth Century Portraits in the National Portrait Gallery (Cambridge, 1963), xxiii.
9 Leo Bagrow and R. A. Skelton, History of Cartography (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), 62–65; David W. Waters, The Art of Navigation in England in Elizabethan and Early Stuart Times (New Haven, 1958), 62–64, etc.
1 Martín Cortés, The Arte of Navigation, Conteyning a compendious description of the Sphere . . . (London, 1561), ff. lvi—lx.
2 For non-cartographic coordinates from this period for Boston, see what John Josselyn characteristically says, in An Account of Two Voyages to New-England (London, 1674), 160–161: “Two miles Northeast from Roxbury, and Forty miles from New-Plimouth, in the latitude of 42 or 43 degrees and 10 minutes [sic], in the bottom of Massachusetts-Bay is Boston (whose longitude is 315 degrees, or as others will 322 degrees and 30 seconds [sic])”; John Foster, An Almanack of Coelestial Motions for the Year of the Christian Epocha, 1681 by John Foster, Astrophil (Boston, 1681), in which the title continues “Calculated for the Meridian of Boston in New-England, where the Arctick Pole is elevated 42 Degrees & 30 Minutes,” but a final note reads: “The Reader is desired to take notice that our Latitude here in Boston, hitherto reputed to be 42 gr. 30 min. is by better Observations found not to exceed 42 gr. 24 m. of which you may expect the certainty by the next opportunity.” Foster, an adornment to New England letters and craftsmanship, an eminent early graduate of Harvard and the first printer in Boston (as opposed to Cambridge) had no such opportunity to revise his Almanack, as he died prematurely in September 1681. Most eighteenth-century statements seem to credit Boston with a latitude of 42° 25′: in the circumstances, Hack’s 42° 45ʹ is not to be censured. Cf. the Revd. Edmund F. Slafter, History and Causes of the Incorrect Latitudes as recorded in the journals of the early writers, navigators and explorers relating to the Atlantic coast of North America, 1535–1740 (Boston, 1882), especially 6.
3 Waters, xxxiv, 57–60, 205–206, 302–304, 416–419, 438, 533–534; E. G. R. Taylor, The Haven-Finding Art (New York, 1957), 245–263. It might be hoped that by the middle of the seventeenth century the principal towns of New England should have been located with the accuracy achievable on land by such an instrument as the four-foot quadrant used by William Baffin as early as 1613 to determine the measurements of places in Arctic waters to within a few minutes of arc (Waters, 276, 572).
4 Reproduced in: R. A. Skelton, Explorers’ Maps (London, 1958), fig. 78, 124–125.
5 William Ravenhill, “Joel Gascoyne: a cartographer with style,” Geographical Magazine, XLIV.5 (February 1972), 335–341, illustrating a number of Gascoyne’s compass roses, exemplary of Thames School geometrical and artistic achievement.
6 Cf. [John Green, alias Bradock Mead] The Most Inhabited Part of New England . . . (London, Thomas Jefferys, 1755, and several later editions).
7 Wilma George, Animals and Maps (London, 1969), especially 94–100, commenting principally on the abundant fauna shown on Blaeu’s Nova Belgica et Anglia Nova of 1635 and on the Visscher-Allardt map Totius Neobelgii Nova et Accuratissima Tabula of circa 1651 and later dates: she notes that 56 percent of the main families of North American mammals can be reliably identified on maps of the period.
8 James Truslow Adams, The Founding of New England (Boston, 1921), 201–205; John Mason, A brief history of the Pequot war, ed. Thomas Prince (New York, 1869).
9 This journey and survey have never been fully studied in their own right, but most of the materials for such an examination are described and discussed in Harral Ayres, The Great Trail of New England (Boston, 1940), 24–29, 215–220, 347–363.
1 Adams, 199–200; Richard Lebaron Bowen, Massachusetts Records (Rehoboth, 1957), 26–27, 35; Lovejoy, 99; Charles II’s Letters Patent of 12 March 1664 investing James with the miscellaneous territories are recited in the Duke’s commission to Nicolas of 2 April 1664, printed in the Appendix to: New York Historical Society, Commemoration of the Conquest of New Netherland (New York, 1864), 63–64.
2 Cf. F. Grenacher, “The woodcut map,” Imago Mundi, XXIV. (1970), 31–41; Herman R. Friis, “Highlights of the history of the use of conventionalized symbols and signs. . . ,” Bulletin de l’Institut Océanographique (Monaco, 1958), numéro spécial 2, 223–241.
3 James Mooney, “The aboriginal population of America, north of Mexico,” Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Washington, LXXX. no. 7 (1928), 2.
4 The original is in the Museum of the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence.
5 Adams, 338–339; Douglas R. McManis, Colonial New England: an historical geography (New York, 1975), 42–49.
6 For an eye-witness impression of how close to the early settlements impenetrable wilds were, John Winthrop, The History of New England from 1630 to 1649 (ed. Boston, 1825–1826), I. 99, 144, 155, 173 etc. Cf. Douglas E. Leach, The northern colonial frontier, 1607–1763 (New York, 1966) and Edmund S. Morgan (ed.), The founding of Massachusetts (Indianapolis, 1964).
7 Ayres, 37–38, 430–432.
8 Charles Edward Banks, “Martin’s or Martha’s—What is the proper nomenclature of the Vineyard?”, New England Historical and Genealogical Register, XLVIII. (1894), 201–204.
9 Lawrence C. Wroth, The Voyages of Giovanni da Verrazzano, 1524–1528 (New Haven, 1970), 86–87; Howard Millar Chapin, Cartography of Rhode Island (Providence, 1915). Later mapmakers seem to have misread the account of this, so that many maps of the late sixteenth century call the island “Claude” or “Claudia” instead, after King Francis’ wife.
1 Phelps Stokes, II. 67–72, 88–90, 111–115, 136–137, 142, 143–144 and plates C nos. 23, 32, and 39; Cornelis Koeman, Atlantes Neerlandicae (5 vols., Amsterdam, 1967–1971), I. 96 no. [214].
2 Ibid., II. 158–159 and C plate 57; Koeman, IV. 385, no. [135].
3 The remarks on the identity and nomenclature of New England towns that follow are based upon consultation, in general, of John Hayward, The New England Gazetteer (Boston, 1857), and more particularly on Bowen, Massachusetts Records, on Joel N. Eno, “The Nomenclature of Connecticut Towns,” Connecticut Magazine, VIII. (1903–1904), 330–335, on Thomas William Bicknell, History of Rhode Island, III. (1920), Appendix, 1175–1195, on Elmer Munson Hunt, New Hampshire Town Names (Peterborough, N. H., 1970) and on Ava Harriet Chadbourne, Maine Place Names and the peopling of its towns (Portland, 1955).
4 Hunt, xiv-xv.
5 John Russell Bartlett (ed.), Records of the Colony of Rhode Island (10 vols., Providence, 1857–1865), III. 12–227. The map is a copy printed on paper and colored some time between 1680 and 1683, which is no. 12 in the Blathwayt Atlas: Black, II. 86–87.
6 Richard S. Dunn, Puritans and Yankees: the Winthrop dynasty of New England, 1630–1717 (Princeton, 1962), 222–224; Bicknell, op. et loc. cit.
7 William Hubbard, A Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians in New-England (Boston, 1677), 21, 31–32; Douglas Edward Leach, Flintlock and Tomahawk: New England in King Philip’s War (New York, 1958), 41–42, 57–62, 77–84.
8 Chadbourne, 46–52.
9 Jonathan Swift, On Poetry: a Rapsody (London, 1733),1, 117.
1 I owe the suggestion for this simple and convincing solution to what has long been a troublesome conundrum in early Rhode Island topography to Miss Denise Wilcox.
2 Hayward, 124; cf. William Wood, New England; Prospect (London, 1634), 3839, and Josselyn, 163–164.
3 Phelps Stokes, VI. 86, 145–146.
4 Ibid., II. 66–68.
5 Dictionary of National Biography, XVIII. 433–436; XXIII. 163–164 and XLVIII. 128–133; Adams, 124–125, 196–197; George L. Miner. “The possible origin of the name ‘Point Judith’,” Rhode Island Historical Society. Collections, XIII. (July 1920), 103–104; Douglas Brunton and Donald Henshaw Pennington, Members of the Long Parliament (London, 1954), 123–124. On the overseas interests of this important group in government, Arthur Percival Newton, The Colonizing Activities of the English Puritans (New Haven, 1914).
6 [W. P. Cumming], “The Early Seventeenth Century: the first settlements,” in W. P. Cumming, R. A. Skelton and D. B. Quinn, The Discovery of North America (London, 1971), 254–256; Warner F. Gookin, A Voyage of Discovery to the Southern parts of Norumbega, including the places named Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and the Elizabeth Islands by their discoverer Bartholomew Gosnold, in the year 1602 A.D. (Edgartown, 1950), and id., “Notes on the Gosnold family,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, LVII. 4 (October 1949), 307–315.
7 Justin Winsor, The Memorial History of Boston . . . 1630–1880 (4 vols., Boston, 1881), I. 56. It is possible that the West to which the name was intended to refer was the Captain Francis West, who was commissioned Admiral of New England and who in 1623 attempted to collect fees from fishermen on the coast for the Council of New England (Adams, 106; Philip L. Barbour, The three worlds of Captain John Smith [Boston, 1964]).
8 John Smith, A Description of New England (London, 1616), 1. [sig. ¶ 4]; cf. Emerson D. Fite and Archibald Freeman, A Book of Old Maps (Cambridge, Mass., 1926), 124–127.
9 Hunt, 181.
1 Leach, 34, 47, 50, 55, 75–77
2 Bowen, 41; Leach, 10, 15, 243.
3 Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana: or, the Ecclesiastical History of New-England, from its first Planting in the Year 1620. unto the Year of our Lord, 1698 (London, Thomas Parkhurst, 1702). Cf. Thomas James Holmes, Cotton Mather: a bibliography of his works (3 vols., Cambridge, 194.0), no. 213-A.
4 This is evidently the assumption both of Dr. William Douglass, A Summary, Historical and Political, Of the . . . British Settlements in North America (2 vols., Boston, 1749–1752), I. 366, and of Lloyd A. Brown in his “Notes on the Magnalia Map,” in Holmes, II. 592–596. Professor Cumming rightly points out—even without offering the reflection that follows—that there is no evidence at all that Mather was personally responsible for the 1702 map: British Maps of Colonial America (Chicago, 1974), 33–34
5 Nathaniel Mather to Increase Mather, Dublin, 26 February 1676/7, in “The Mather Papers,” Massachusetts Historical Society. Collections. Fourth Series, VIII. (1868),9.
6 Nathaniel Woodward and Solomon Saffery, A Description of the extent of the Bounds of Massachusetts Bay Patent southward. . . 1642 (B. W. Thayer’s Lith[ography Works, 204 Washington Street] Boston [ca. 1851–1853]), Massachusetts Archives Vol. 35, 3rd series, no. 18, reproduced in Ayres, 26 (see also 359–363).
7 “In 1700, [Robert] Calef’s book in answer to Mather’s ‘Wonders of the Invisible World’ was printed in London and quickly imported into the colony. Though the rage of the Mathers’ father and son, was unbounded, their cause had been thoroughly discredited, and their day was past. They belonged, in reality, to the sixteenth century, while Calef, the merchant, defending the cause of intellectual freedom with no weapon but that of common sense, belonged to the eighteenth, the dawn of which was now at hand,” op. cit., 455–456. It is only fair to note that a much more favorable view of the relative modernity of Cotton Mather’s outlook has been given, for example, by Raymond Phineas Sterns, Science in the British Colonies of America (Urbana, Illinois, 1970), 403–426, which justly remarks that “Mather demonstrated a considerable capacity for growth. . . . He was not the same man in the 1720’s that he had been in the 1680’s. And one of the marked aspects of this growth lay in his development as a natural philosopher.”
8 The sequence of states of this map, which are largely differentiated by amendments to what is evidently an early road system in Anglo-Indian New England, is given by Henry Stevens and Roland Tree, Comparative Cartography (Map Collector’s Circle no. 39, London, 1967), no. 35; commentary on the states is given by Ayres, 37–39, 430–432.
9 Bibliothèque Nationale Ge.D.11729 (1), (2), (3) and (4). Cf. Cumming, 31–34. The 4-sheet map, in the complete form originally issued by John Thornton, Robert Morden and Philip Lea under the title A New Map of the English Empire in the Continent of America was first advertised in Easter term, 1685, and incorporated a textual Description missing from the only copy of the whole map known: see the full listing as no. [123] in: Elizabeth Baer, Seventeenth Century Maryland: a bibliography (Baltimore, 1949), 123–125.
1 Upon Thornton, and The English Pilot, IV.—America—in general, see Coolie Verner (ed.), The English Pilot: the Fourth Book, London, 1680 (Theatrum Orbis, Terrarum, Amsterdam, 1967).
2 The political background to this tension is depicted by Adams, 125–174, 253–277, 364–397, etc. and by Lovejoy, 122–159. One may recall that when Samuel Adams had his famous portrait painted by John Singleton Copley about 1770, at the height of renewed tension between old and New England, he had the actual Charter of 1629 included in the picture, himself pointing to it, since it had allowed “the right to govern and tax ourselves”: William P. Cumming and Hugh F. Rankin (eds.), The Fate of a Nation (London, 1975), figure 22.
3 Stewart Mitchell (ed.), “The founding of Massachusetts,” Massachusetts Historical Society. Proceedings, LXII (1928–1929), 252–253.
4 Adams, 92–93, 103–104.
5 Samuel Abbott Green, Ten Fac-simile Reproductions Relating to New England (Boston, 1902), 23.
6 Nathaniel B. Shurtleff (ed.), Records of the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay in New England, 1628–1686 (5 vols., Boston, 1853–1854), III. 278, 288, 361–362; S. E. Hillier, “Exploration westward from the Northeastern seaboard,” in W. P. (Humming, S. E. Hillier, D. B. Quinn and G. Williams, The Exploration of North America, 1630–1776 (New York, 1974.), 56–57.
7 Black, 11., Map 8, 63–72.
8 There is a considerable body of scholarship on this map in print, though it is almost entirely directed to comparing the two evident chief forms of it, the so-called “White Hills” and “Wine Hills” versions, and to debating their relationship and priority. The three most important contributions in the bibliography are: Randolph G. Adams, “William Hubbard’s ‘Narrative,’ 1677—a bibliographical study,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, XXXIII. (1939), 25–39, Richard B. Holman, “John Foster’s Woodcut Map of New England,” Printing & Graphic Arts (1960), 53–59 and David Woodward, “The Foster Woodcut Map Controversy: a further examination of the evidence,” Imago Mundi, XXI. (1967), 52–61. The latter study reinforces beyond any possibility of further question Adams’ strong and correct theory that the “White Hills” version was the original, cut by Foster in Boston, and that the “Wine [or, rather, ‘Wnie’] Hills’ version was the London one, a copy of that made in Boston, and that the two versions of the map belong respectively in the Boston and London editions of the book. All these studies of the first map printed in America are bibliographical: it still needs to be studied as a piece of cartography. On this aspect, the only contribution is Miss Black’s, placing it in the context of the lost “Reed” map and the extant Blathwayt one: op. cit., II. 71–72.
Joseph Moxon (1627–1691), printer, print- and map-seller and Fellow of the Royal Society, is celebrated for his Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing of 1683 and for a whole corpus of publishing on technological subjects: he was making globes in London—the two being, of course, the conventional celestial and terrestrial pair—from 1653 onwards, at first in imitation of Johannes Blaeu. Cf. Helen Wallis, “Globes in England up to 1660,” Geographical Magazine, XXXV. 267–279.
On Tompson (1642–1714), see Samuel Green’s essay “Benjamin Tompson, the earliest American poet,” op. cit., 25–30 and reproductions. Tompson’s most substantial and elegant work was New Englands Crisis (Boston, John Foster, 1676), to which there was a substantial and informative supplement entitled “New Englands Tears for her present miseries: or, a Late and True Relation of the Calamities of New England since April last past. With an Account of the Battel between the English and the Indians upon Seaconk Plains And of the Indians Burning and Destroying of Marlbury, Rehoboth, Chelmsford, Sudbury, and Providence. With the Death of Antononies [i.e., Canonchet, son of Miantonomo] the Grand Indian Sachem; and a Relation of the Fortification begun by Women upon Boston Neck . . .” published as such, later that year, in London (copy in the John Carter Brown Library).
9 The chief contemporary histories are those of Hubbard, op. cit., and Increase Mather’s A Brief History of the War with the Indians in New-England (Boston, 1676); see also the bibliography in the chief modern treatment, Leach, op. cit.; to this should now be added Alan and Mary Simpson (eds.), Diary of King Philip’s War, 1675–1676, by Colonel Benjamin Church (Chester, Conn., 1975).
1 John Melish, A Description of the Roads in the United States (Philadelphia, 1814), preface.
2 John Carter Brown Library, Codex Eng 3. Cf. id., Annual Report, 1953, 17–20.
3 Black, II. 84.
4 Maps 11 and 12 in the Blathwayt Atlas: id., 82–87.
5 Reproductions of State 2 of Seller’s map were published by the Massachusetts Historical Society as no. 146 in its series of photostat Americana (1925: the text from the Houghton Library, Harvard; the map from the Library of Congress) and by Yale University Library (1973: the map alone, reproduced in color by the Meriden Gravure Company from Yale’s own copy). On the map, see Phelps Stokes, II. 157 and plate C no. 52; Stevens and Tree no. 34; Black, II. 83–85.
6 Leach, 84–88.
7 On the exact sites and histories of these garrison houses, see Leach, passim, and works therein cited.
8 Hillier, 56; the phrase is the inspired title of one of Professor Cumming’s main sections in British Maps of Colonial America.
9 New Englands Prospect. A true, lively and experimentall description of that part of America, commonly called New England: discovering the state of that Countrie, both as it stands to our new-come English Planters; and to the old Native Inhabitants (London, by Thomas Cotes for John Bellamie, 1634), with a glossary of Massachusetts Indian words as an appendix; later editions appeared in London in 1635 and 1639 and in Boston (edited by Nathaniel Rogers) in 1764 and 1865 (the latter published by the Prince Society). On the last version of Smith’s map is inscribed “He that desyres to know more of the Estate of New England lett him read a new Book of the prospecte of new England & ther he shall have satisfaction.”
1 C.S.P. Colonial, 1574–1660 (28 June 1632), 153. Although it was not impossible at this time for “Mr.” to have been applied to Sir Richard (1586–1661: knighted by King James I in 1618), the knight, who had settled Watertown in 1630, bringing five of his children with him, returned to England with all save his two elder sons in April 1631: he was followed later that year by his eldest son Richard Saltonstall (1610–1694), leaving only the 16-year-old Samuel Saltonstall to be meant by this reference. The latter remained alone at Watertown till his brother Richard’s return from England, married, in 1635: Robert E. Moody (ed.), The Saltonstall Papers, 1607–1815, I. (Massachusetts Historical Society. Collections, LXXX. Boston, 1972), 8–11, 15. 25.
2 British Library Additional MS. 5415.G.3. Winsor, Narrative and Critical History, III. between 380 and 381 (good photographic reproduction, with reading of the manuscript annotations, and a commentary); Greene, 19–23 and large photographic reproductions of the map. In 1635 the first English edition of the great Mercator-Hondius atlas was published in the translation of Wye Saltonstall, son of Sir Samuel Saltonstall, and therefore first cousin to the younger Richard Saltonstall.
3 Robert Ryece to Governor John Winthrop, 9 September 1636 and 17 January 1636/7, The Winthrop Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections. Fourth Series, VI. (1863), 409, 394.
4 Douglass, I. 362. C. W. Bowen, The Boundary Disputes of Connecticut (Boston, 1882), 19, 53–55, Benjamin Trumbull, History of Connecticut (2 vols., New Haven, 1898), I. 151, and Adams, 243, all perpetuate the curious error of supposing that Woodward and Saffery did not traverse the country they delineated. The testimony of Richard Callicott, about 67 years old, their former assistant, is printed by Ayres (350–351), from Massachusetts Archives, vol. 3, p. 22, and gives conclusive firsthand evidence that their route was overland.
5 Ayres, 30–32 and plate, 364–393. The original diary is in the Yale University Library; its text was edited by R. C. Winthrop and others, and published in Massachusetts Historical Society. Proceedings. Second Series, VII. (1892–1894), 4–13.
6 Shurtleff, op. et loc. cit.
7 Lovejoy, 126–129; the instructions to the Commissioners are printed in Shurtleff, IV. part ii, 182–183.
8 Ibid., 183.
9 Ibid., 145.
1 Ibid., 236–243. It is now considered by geographers that the Merrimac begins only at Franklin, New Hampshire, where it is formed by the junction of the Pemigewasset and the Winnipesaukee rivers, the latter flowing out of the lake of that name.
2 Shurtleff, op. et loc. cit., 155.
3 John Carter Brown Library Codex Eng 153; cf. id., Annual Report, 1953, 17 and 1965, 50.
4 C.S.P. Colonial (America and West Indies), 1661–1668, nos. 1103, 1199, 1297, pp. 341–348, 381, 417–419.
5 Ibid., 20 November 1665, no. 1089 and 9 April 1666, no. 1169, pp. 333–334, 370–371
6 O’Callaghan, III. 111.
7 Black, II. 69.
8 C.S.P. Colonial (America and West Indies), 1675–1676, 20 September 1675, no. 673, and 17 June 1676, no. 953, [pp.] 282, 406–4.09; Michael G. Hall, Edward Randolph and the American colonies, 1676–1703 (Chapel Hill, N. C, 1964).
9 Id., 30; John Hull, “Diary. . . ,” American Antiquarian Society. Transactions and Collections, in. (1857), 242; John Langdon Sibley, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University, II. 68–71 and I. 194–208; Dictionary of American Biography, XVIII. 113–114.
1 Shurtleff, III. 120.
2 Id., IV. part ii, 519; Tuttle, op. et loc cit.
3 Massachusetts Archives, vol. 58, no. 92a.
4 Adams, 380–384; Lovejoy, 138–145.
5 Adams, 386; running the gauntlet of royal displeasure, while the claim was sub judice, Stoughton and Bulkeley bought out the claims to Maine of Gorges’ heirs, on behalf of Massachusetts (C.S.P. Colonial (America and West Indies), 1677–1680, 224).
6 Robert N. Toppan (ed.), Edward Randolph (7 vols., Boston, 1899), III. 3–4, 32.
7 For these maps, see E. L. Stevenson, Maps Illustrating Early Discovery and Exploration in America, 12 facsimiles (New Brunswick, 1903); Henry Harrisse, Discovery of North America (London, 1892), 412–415, 557–581; Wroth, op. cit.; J. G. Kohl, Die beiden ältesten General-Karten von Amerika . . . (Weimar, 1860); Phelps Stokes, II. 131–136, plates C nos. 1, 7, 9, 10, 13, 21a, and 22 (frontispiece); Cumming, Skelton and Quinn, plates 29, 54, 69, 71, 72, 73, 74, 115, 116, 326. For Daniel’s map of northeastern North America, of 1639, and that by Comberford, of 1646, see Phelps Stokes, II. 149–150 and 152, plate C no. 34.
8 London Gazette, no. 1085, 10–13 April 1676, reprinted in Greene, 23; cf. Rostenberg, 66.
9 Douglass, II. 21.
1 Id.,I. 362.
1 Selden to James Ussher, 14 September 1625, in Richard Parr, The Life of . . . James Usher . . . with a collection of three hundred letters . . . (London, 1686), 338.
2 Historical Manuscripts Commission, Guide to the Reports of the . . . Commission, 1870–1911 (London, 1914–1938), 3 vols.
3 “Howard, William,” Dictionary of National Biography, X. 79–80. One of Lord Howard’s daughters married Sir Robert Cotton’s eldest son, Thomas.
4 In A Survey of London (1603) John Stow wrote: “I have attempted the discovery of London, my native soyle and countrey” (iv).
5 As late as 1656 Sir William Dugdale remarked in his Antiquities of Warwickshire, [iii], “how acceptable” was Lambarde’s pioneer work.
6 Cf. [Richard Rawlinson,] The English Topographer: or, an Historical Account. . . By an impartial hand (London, 1720); William Upcott, A Bibliographical Account of the Principal Works Relating to English Topography, 3 vols. (London, 1818).
7 Camden to Ussher, Chesilhurst, 10 July 1618, in Parr, Life of Usher, 65. Sir Maurice Powicke’s excellent sketch of “William Camden” was published in English Studies, new ser., I. (1948), 67–84.
8 Camden, Britain, or A Chorographical Description, trans. Philemon Holland (London, 1610), [v]-[vi].
9 Camden’s Britannia, for its use in supplementing the “Itinerary of Antoninus,” was highly praised by Thomas Reynolds in Iter Britanniarum; or that part of the Itinerary of Antoninus which relates to Britain, with a new comment (Cambridge, 1799), x–xii.
1 Camden, Britain (1610), [v]-[vii].
2 “Mr. Camden, the Glory of England, who has eternized his own Native Country, and has given a Plan to the whole World for this sort of History, in which he has exceeded all former Ages, and has been ever followed by the succeeding” [Rawlinson,] English Topographer, xii.
3 Ibid., [v]. Eventually Camden accumulated his own library of books and manuscripts for his research and for use by other scholars.
4 “Parker, Matthew,” D.N.B., XLIII. 260–261.
5 Anthony Wood, Athenae Oxonienses (London, 1696–1699), I. 83.
6 The Itinerary of John Leland, the Antiquary . . . 3rd edn.: Printed from Mr. [Thomas] Hearne’s corrected copy in the Bodleian Library (Oxford, 1770), I. xiii–xiv; T. S. Dorsch, “Two English Antiquaries: John Leland and John Stow,” English Assoc. Essays and Studies, new ser., 12. (1959), 29–30.
7 “In the 18th year of his age, [he] began to collect antient records, charters, and other MSS.” John Nichols, The History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester . . . (London, 1795–1815), II. pt. 2, 835.
8 “Cotton, Sir Robert Bruce,” D.N.B., XII. 309.
9 Camden, Britain (1610), 769.
1 A. L. Rowse, The England of Elizabeth: the Structure of Society (London, 1950), 222–227.
2 John Borough to Sir Robert Cotton, Venice, 26 August 1622, in Sir Henry Ellis, ed., Original Letters of Eminent Literary Men of the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries (London, 1843), 129–130; James Ussher to Cotton, 12 July 1625, ibid., 133–134.
3 Most notable of the catalogues are Jacques de Thou, Catalogus bibliothecae Thuanae, ed. J. Quesnel, 2 vols. (Paris, 1679); Nicolaas Heinsius, Bibliotheca Heinsiana, 2 vols. (Lugduni in Batavis, 1682); Cardinal Francesco Barberini, Index bibliothecae qua Franciscus Barberinus, 2 vols. (Rome, 1681). Jack A. Clarke, “A Book-Buying Tour in 1645: a Note on Ismael Boullian in Italy,” Journal of Library History, 4. (1969), 330–336. The Biblioteca Thuana was continued after de Thou’s death by his cousins, who engaged Boullian.
4 Sir Henry Bourgchier to James Ussher, London, 16 April 1622, in The Whole Works of the Most Rev. James Ussher (Dublin, 1847–1864), XV. 173.
5 C. E. Wright’s harsh judgment of Cotton does not, I think, take into consideration the informal archival practices that prevailed and the bureaucratic jealousies suggested in some of the documents. C. E. Wright, “The Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries and the Formation of the Cottonian Library,” in Francis Wormald and C. E. Wright, eds., The English Library before 1700: Studies in its History (London, 1958), 194–197. “Cotton, Sir Robert Bruce,” D.N.B., XII. 310, 312; Thomas Wilson to the King, 1 March 1618, Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of James I. 1623–1625, Addendum, 553; “Agard, Arthur,” D.N.B., I. 172. “A copy of the inquisition for part of Cambridgeshire [relating to Domesday Book], bound up with the famous Liber Eliensis, now in the Cottonian Library Tiberius A. VI-4, both which MSS. as appears by a note written at the bottom of the first page of the volume, were given to Sir Robert Cotton, by that industrious antiquary Mr. Arthur Agarde, one of the then chamberlaines of the exchequer.” Sir Joseph Ayloffe, comp., Calendars of the Ancient Charters . . . now remaining in the Tower of London (London, 1774), xxi. On “dislocated manuscripts” as a common archival problem see Notes and Queries, 2nd ser., 11. (January—June 1861), 485; Randolph G. Adams, “The Character and Extent of Fugitive Archival Material,” American Archivist, 2. (1939), 85–96.
6 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic. . . 1611–1618, 164, 305; ibid., 1623–1625, 548.
7 Thomas Fuller, The History of the Worthies of England . . . (London, 1662), 52; the catalogue appeared in Thomas Powell, Repertorie of Records (London, 1631), reprinted in 1772. Cf. William Prynne’s praise of Cotton, “whose famous Name and Memory alone are sufficient to add more praise and lustre to this Abridgement, than any Panegyrical Epistle I am able to prefix thereto.” An Exact Abridgement of the Records in the Tower of London . . . Collected by Sir Robert Cotton . . . (London, 1657), [iv].
8 Edward Edwards, Lives of the Founders of the British Museum. . . 1570–1870 (London, 1870), 59–60.
9 Ibid., 54–56.
1 “Cotton, Sir Robert,” D.N.B., XII. 309, 310.
2 Borough to Cotton, Venice, 26 August 1622, in Ellis, ed., Original Letters of Eminent Literary Men, 130. Cotton’s egotism is unintentionally revealed in Thomas Fuller’s statement: Cotton “was wont to say, That he himself had the least share in himself, whilst his Country and Friends had the greatest interest in him.” History of the Worthies of England, 52.
3 Wright, “Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries,” 183–184, 185–191; Joan Evans, A History of the Society of Antiquaries (Oxford, 1956), 8–13.
4 A list of thirty-seven members, with biographical data, is in Archaeologia, I. vii—xiv. Twenty-one were graduates of Oxford, sixteen of Cambridge. Evans, History of Society of Antiquaries, II.
5 Among later researchers in the Cottonian Library, Sir Francis Bacon worked on his Historic of the Raign of King Henry VII (London, 1622). “Cotton, Sir Robert,” D.N.B., XII. 310.
6 Speed to Cotton, [1609 or 1610], in Ellis, ed., Original Letters, 108–113; Speed, The History of Great Britaine . . . (London, 1611), 169.
7 D.N.B., XII. 309. In Thomas Hearne, ed., A Collection of Curious Discourses, Written by Eminent Antiquaries . . . (Oxford, 1720), xxxiv—xl; list of members and Secretary Francis Tate’s list of discourses, cxii, cxiv—cxx. None of them was published until Hearne’s edition.
8 Archaeologia, I. iv–v; Wright, “Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries,” 182, 190.
9 Carew to Cotton, Anthony, [Cornwall], 7 April 1605, in Ellis, ed., Original Letters, 98–99; Edwards, Lives of the Founders, 58.
1 “James, Richard,” D.N.B., XXIX. 218; The Autobiography and Correspondence of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, Bart., during the Reigns of James I. and Charles I., ed. James Orchard Halliwell, 2 vols. (London, 1845), II. 39; Thomas James to James Ussher, Oxford, 28 January 1623, in Parr, Life of Usher, 303.
2 James to Cotton, 2 April [1625] in Rev. Richard James, Iter Lancastrense: a Poem Written A.D. 1636, ed. Rev. Thomas Corser ([Manchester:] The Chetham Society, 1845), lii.
3 Thomas James to Ussher, 28 January 1623, 27 July 1624, in Parr, Life of Usher, 303, 310.
4 Thomas Smith, Catalogus librorum manuscriptorum bibliothecae Cottonianae (Oxford, 1696), including a history of the library and a memoir of Cotton.
5 Bishop William Nicolson’s criticism, quoted in James, Iter Lancastrense, ed. Corser, xlix—l. James’s papers eventually went into the Bodleian Library. D.N.B., XXIX. 219. Sir Simonds D’Ewes accused James of lending out Cotton’s “most precious manuscripts for money, to any that would be his customers,” Autobiography, 39.
6 James, Iter Lancastrense, civ; Wood, Athenae Oxon., I. 615–616; D.N.B., XXIX. 219.
7 Ussher to Cotton, 20 December 1624; also 12 July 1625, in Ellis, ed., Original Letters, 131, 133.
8 Cotton to Ussher, 26 March 1622, in Parr, Life of Usher, 79.
9 Selden to Ussher, 4 August 1625, ibid., 332.
1 Camden to Cotton, [n.d.], in Ellis, Original Letters, 124. Sir Simonds D’Ewes “borrowed many precious manuscripts of him,” Autobiography, II. 38.
2 Hearne, ed., A Collection of Curious Discourses, 279. The materials on arms and heraldry he bequeathed “unto my successor in the Office of Clarenceux” King-at-Arms.
3 Wright, “Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries,” 197–198.
4 Andrew G. Watson, The Library of Sir Simonds D’Ewes (London, 1966), 16–17, 29–30. D’Ewes asserted that he was “led, out of a virtuous emulation of him [Cotton] at the first, to the study of records, and to the treasuring and storing up of . . . manuscripts and autographs, as well as original letters of state, as old deeds and writings.” Autobiography, II. 38.
5 Edwards, Lives of the Founders of the British Museum, 63–116. The author of the pamphlet was Robert Dudley, who had written it for James I (ibid., 106–111).
6 D’Ewes, Autobiography, 40–42. The text of this passage is more accurate in “Extracts from the MS. Journal of Sir Simonds D’Ewes (London, 1783),” in Antiquities Biographical and Miscellaneous: Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica (London, 1790), vi. [no. 2], 47–48; James, Iter Lancaslrense, ed. Corser, lxxvi, lxxx.
7 Edwards, Lives of the Founders, 122–125. Cotton told D’Ewes in 1630 that “they had broken his heart that locked up his library from him.” D’Ewes, Autobiography, II. 41.
8 D’Ewes, Autobiography, II. 43; Fuller, History of the Worthies of England, 52; Edwards, Lives of the Founders, 131 and n., 133–134. Edwards mentions (131) Sir Thomas’s “improvement of his library, at considerable charge, and . . . the liberality with which he lent his choicest manuscripts, and, in many ways, made them and his other collections serviceable to literature.”
9 Sears Jayne and Francis R. Johnson, eds., The Lumley Library; the Catalogue of 1609 (London, 1956).
1 Sir Charles Cornwallis, A Discourse of the Most Illustrious Prince Henry, Late Prince of Wales. . . (London, 1641), reprinted in The Harleian Miscellany, IV. (1809), 339.
2 See engraving of portrait in Thomas Birch, The Heads of Illustrious Persons of Great Britain, engraved by Mr. Houbraken and Mr. Vertue . . . (London, 1813), 57.
3 Cornwallis, Discourse, 335–337; “Newton, Sir Adam,” D.N.B., XL. 364.
4 Cornwallis, Discourse, 336; transcript of letter, ca. 1610, noted in Bodleian Quarterly Record, 6. (1929–31), 78; Thomas Birch, The Life of Henry, Prince of Wales. . . (London, 1760), 186–187.
5 Jayne and Johnson, eds., Lumley Library, 14, 16. Prior to this excellent work it was held that James I purchased the Lumley Library for Prince Henry at the suggestion of Adam Newton. Birch, Life of Henry, Prince of Wales. . . , 161, 163–164.
6 Jayne and Johnson, eds., Lumley Library, 2–9.
7 Ibid., 14, 18; Edward Edwards, Memoirs of Libraries . . . (London, 1859), 419–420; Ellis, ed., Original Letters, 143–144. The books, in Latin for the most part, were arranged in eight broad classes or fields of knowledge.
8 Jayne and Johnson, Lumley Library, 19.
9 H. W. Garrod, “Sir Thomas Bodley and Merton College,” Bodleian Quarterly Record, 6. (1929–31), 272; Wood, Athenae Oxon., I. 384–385; “Bodley, Sir Thomas,” D.N.B., V. 294–295.
1 Ibid.
2 The Life of Sir Thomas Bodley, the Honourable Founder of the Publique Library in the University of Oxford. Written by himself. (Oxford, 1647), 14, 15.
3 Ibid.
4 G. W. Wheeler, ed., Letters of Sir Thomas Bodley to Thomas James, First Keeper of the Bodleian Library (Oxford, 1926), xi–xii; William D. Macray, Annals of the Bodleian Library, A.D. 1598-A.D. 1867, rev. edn. (London, 1890), 15–16.
5 Life of Sir Thomas Bodley, 15.
6 Garrod, “Bodley and Merton College,” 273.
7 S. G[ibson], “Bodleian Catalogues of the Seventeenth Century,” Bodleian Quarterly Record, I. (1914–16), 228–229; Bodley to James, London, 15 January [1612], in Letters of Bodley, ed. Wheeler, 221–222. Concerning Bodley’s and Keeper Thomas James’s opposition to English translations of the classics, see below, note 6, page 170.
8 Letters of Bodley, ed. Wheeler, xiii–xv, 4, n. 3. On the Stationers’ Company, see below, 169.
9 Wood, Athenae Oxon., I. 537–538; “James, Thomas,” D.N.B., XXIX. 221–222; G. W. W[heeler], “Thomas James, Theologian and Bodley’s Librarian,” Bodley Quarterly Record, 4. (1923–25), 91; Letters of Bodley, ed. Wheeler, xiii, xx–xxi, 8.
1 Wheeler, “Thomas James,” 91; “A Librarian’s Correspondence,” Bodleian Quarterly Record, 6. (1929–31), 13.
2 The Life of Sir Thomas Bodley, Written by Himself, together luith the First Draft of the Statutes of the Public Library at Oxon; John Cotton Dana and Henry W. Kent, eds., Literature and Libraries in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, III. (Chicago, 1906), 66, 70; Bodley to James, 11 September [1601], 11 August [1602], in Letters of Bodley, ed. Wheeler, 17–21, 51–52.
3 Bodley to James, 22, 26, 29 July [1601], ibid., 10, 11, 14.
4 26 August [1601], ibid., 17; Macray, Annals of the Bodleian Library, 28; [Miss] K. M. P[ogson], “A Grand Inquisitor and His Library,” Bodleian Quarterly Record, 3. (1920–22), 239–244.
5 Bodley to Cotton, 6 June [1601], in Ellis, ed., Original Letters, 102–103, with list of manuscripts given as recorded in Bodley’s Donation Book.
6 Bodley to James, 15, 22, 29 July [1601], Letters of Bodley, 9–11, 12–13.
7 Bodley to James, 5 May [1602], 10 October, 14 November, [1604], Letters of Bodley, 37, 112, 117; Life of Bodley and Statutes, 81; H. Streeter, The Chained Library: a Survey of Four Centuries in the Evolution of the English Library (London, 1931), 198–212; Burnett Gibson, “Bodleian Catalogues of the Seventeenth Century,” 228. It was actually a shelflist, with an index of authors, rather than a catalogue.
8 Bodley to James, 24 August [1604], Letters of Bodley, 108.
9 Ibid., xxvii–xxx, 108, n. 3, 151, 153–163; H. R. Trevor-Roper, ed., “Five Letters of Sir Thomas Bodley,” Bodleian Library Record, 2. (1941–49), 153. King James gave the Library a copy of his Opera (1619) in 1620, listed in Benefactors’ Register Booke. The Bodleian Library and Its Friends: Catalogue of an Exhibition held 1969–70 (Oxford, [1969]), 23, 24, 32.
1 Life of Bodley, and Statutes, 94–95, 98; Bodleian Quarterly Record, 2. (1917–19), 148; 3. (1920–22), 215–218. It is a misinterpretation of the Statutes (“that we should proceed with some choice Limitation, in the Admission of such Persons, as are to study in the Library”—Life of Bodley, and Statutes, 93) to conclude that “The Bodleian Library was accessible to a very limited clientele.”—Sidney L. Jackson, “Bodley and the Bodleian: Collections, Use and Administration,” Library Quarterly, 39. (1969), 258, 260.
2 Wheeler, “Early Bodleian Subject-Catalogue,” Bodleian Quarterly Record, 2. (1917–19), 18–20; Wheeler, The Earliest Catalogues of the Bodleian Library (Oxford, 1928), ch. 7.
3 “Bodleian Press-Marks in Relation to Classification,” Bodleian Quarterly Record, 1. (1914–16), 287; G. W. W[heeler], “‘Free Access’ in 1613,” ibid., 4. (192–325), 192–198. On the scholarly work of Twyne, another perennial Oxonian, see ibid., 2. (1917–19), 144, and D.N.B., LVII. 401–402.
4 Gibson, “Bodleian Catalogues,” Bodleian Quarterly Record, 1. (1914–16), 229; “Notes and News,” ibid., 4. (1923–25), 27. The British Museum received the same privilege in 1757.
5 Wheeler, “Thomas James, Theologian,” Bodleian Quarterly Record, 4. (1923–25), 91–95, and list of his works, 138–141; Gibson, “Bodleian Catalogues,” ibid., 1. (1914–16), 229; “A Librarian’s Correspondence,” ibid., 6. (1929–31), 12; Letters of Bodley, 155 n., 163. James also compiled a Bibliotheca Rabinnica in 1629 which was transcribed in several copies but never printed. Wheeler, Earliest Catalogues, ch. 8.
6 Gibson, “Bodleian Catalogues,” Bodleian Quarterly Record, 1. (1914–16), 229; Wheeler, Earliest Catalogues of the Bodleian Library, ch. 4. This catalogue reflects one of the basic principles of Bodley and James, viz., that no English translation of a Latin or Greek book should be in the collections, for the Library was for scholars, who would not need translations. Note by Charles Hughes of Manchester, Bodleian Quarterly Record, 1. (1914–16), 115–116.
7 “Poems on the Founder and the Library in 1613,” Bodleian Quarterly Record, 1. (1914–16), 106; “A Librarian’s Correspondence,” ibid., 6. (1929–31), 17, quoting Camden’s Britannia (1607); Wood, Athenae Oxon., I. 537.
8 Bodley to Christian Huygens, 14 August [1607], Bodleian Quarterly Record, 5. (1926–28), 275–276.
9 Life of Thomas Bodley, 16. Within the first decade an extension, known as Arts End, was under construction, but Bodley died (28 January 1613), probably before it was completed. Bodleian Library and Its Friends: Catalogue, 12.
1 Life of Thomas Bodley, 16.
2 Fuller, History of the Worthies of England, 110–111.
3 Ibid., 111.
* The author wishes to thank the Harvard University Library for permission to quote from the Harvard University Archives.
1 John S. Brubacher and Willis Rudy, Higher Education in Transition, An American History: 1636–1956 (New York, 1958), 3–38; Arthur M. Schlesinger, The Birth of the Nation; A Portrait of the American People on the Eve of Independence (New York, 1968), 178–181; Beverly McAnear, “College Founding in the American Colonies, 1745–1774,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XLII (1955), 22–44.
2 Lawrence Cremin, American Education: The Colonial Experience, 1607–1783 (New York, 1970), 510; Robert B. Lillie, Cambridge in 1775 (Salem, 1949), 14–21; Quinquennial Catalogue of the Officers of Harvard University, 1636–1910; Letter from Dr. Clifford K. Shipton to author, 15 August 1972; Schlesinger, 181.
3 Harvard College Faculty Records, III, Harvard University Library. Samuel E. Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard, 1636–1936 (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), 103–104; “The Laws of Harvard College [1767],” Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, XXXI (1935), 347–348.
4 Clifford K. Shipton, Biographical Sketches of Those Who Attended Harvard College. . . (Boston, 1972), XIV. 127, 442–447; Clifford K. Shipton, “Ye Mystery of Ye Ages Solved, or How Placing Worked at Colonial Harvard and Yale,” Harvard Alumni Bulletin (11 December 1954), 258–263; Copy of Colonel Timothy Pickering Ms., Harvard College Papers, 1 (1650–1763), 200, Harvard University Library; Morison, 102–104; Brubacher and Rudy, 39–40. (Starting in 1769 entering freshmen were generally placed in the class lists in alphabetical order.)
5 “The Laws of Harvard College, 1767,” 348–380; Morison, 110.
6 Copy of Pickering Ms.; The Laws of Harvard College, 1767; “The Laws of Harvard College, 1767,” 351–353; Morison, 89–90, 135–136.
7 “The Laws of Harvard College 1767,” 380–381.
8 Edmund S. Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis (2d ed.; New York, 1963), 61–67, 172–174, 234–235, 244–245; Merrill Jensen, The Founding of a Nation: A History of the American Revolution, 1763–1775 (New York, 1968), 134–136, 146–148, 243–264, 352–353, 410–411, 447–453, 584–587; Gerard D. Warden, Boston, 1689–1776 (Boston, 1970), 162–169, 184–190, 226, 283–286, 316–324.
9 The Diary of Stephen Peabody, 1767–1768, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Mass. (hereafter cited as Peabody Diary); The Boston Gazette and Country Journal, 25 July 1768, 4 September 1769; Josiah Quincy, The History of Harvard University (Boston, 1860), II. 163; Harvard College Faculty Records, IV. 4; Morison, 133, 141, 146.
1 Harvard College Commencement Theses and Quaestiones Listings, 1765–1773, Latin translations made by Professor Leo Kaiser, Classics Department Loyola University. (Note the Commencement of 1774 was canceled because of the Coercive Acts and the British military occupation at Boston. The next public commencement was held in 1781. Morison, 145.)
2 Peabody Diary, 28 September 1767; Boston Gazette, 28 September 1767; Diary and Account Book of Samuel Chandler 1773–1775, Harvard University Library; William C. Lane, ed., “Letters of Nathaniel Walker Appleton to his Classmate Eliphalet Pearson, 1773–1784,” Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, VIII (1906), 291–311.
3 Morison, 138–140; see also Ms. Diaries of Moses Hale (A.B. 1771) and Theodore Parsons (A.B. 1773), Harvard University Library.
4 Harvard College, Commencement Theses and Quaestiones Listings, 1766–1773.
5 Harvard College Papers, II. 22, 229; Harvard College Faculty Records, II. 213; III. 153–155, 230–231; Morison, 116.
6 William C. Lane, “The Rebellion of 1766 in Harvard College,” Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, X (1908), 40; Joseph Thaxter (A.B. 1768) later recalled that “The Provisions were badly cooked/the Soups were dreadful we frequently had Puddings/made of Flower and Water and boiled so hard as not to be/eatable.” Harvard College folio on student disorders, 1768, Harvard University Library. U.A. III, 15.21.6.
7 Lane, 40–41, 44; Harvard College Faculty Records, III. 3–8; Morison, 118.
8 Lane, 41, 46; Harvard College Faculty Records, III. 7–9; Morison, 118.
9 Lane, 40–48; Harvard College Faculty Records, III. 4, 10–12.
1 Benjamin Peirce, A History of Harvard University from its Foundation in the Year 1686 to the Period of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1833), 221–226; Harvard College Overseers Records, Harvard University Library, II, 273–277; Lane, “The Rebellion of 1766 in Harvard College,” 48–59; Harvard College Faculty Records, III. 13–22; Morison, 118.
2 Lawrence S. Mayo, ed., The History of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts Bay by Thomas Hutchinson (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), III. 135–136; Clifford K. Shipton, Biographical Sketches of Those who Attended Harvard College (Boston, 1937), v. 275–276; “Letters of Nathaniel Ames and W. Hook,” Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, XIX (1918), 261.
3 Peabody Diary, 21–31 March 1768; Harvard College folio on student disorders, 1768.
4 Peabody Diary, 31 March-3 April 1768; Harvard College folio on student disorders, 1768.
5 Harvard College Faculty Records, III. 75–77; Peabody Diary, 3–4 April 1768; Harvard College folio on student disorders, 1768; Mayo, ed., Hutchinson’s History of Mass. Bay, III. 135.
6 Harvard College Faculty Records, III. 77–78; Peabody Diary, 4–5 April 1768; Harvard College folio on student disorders, 1768.
7 Harvard College Faculty Records, III. 80; Harvard College folio on student disorders, 1768.
8 Harvard College Faculty Records, III. 78–79; Harvard College Overseers Records, II. 295–296; Peabody Diary, 7 April 1768; Harvard College folio on student disorders, 1768.
9 Thomas Barnard, The Power of God, the Proof of Christianity; A Discourse Delivered at the Dudleian Lecture in the Chapel at Harvard College Cambridge New England, May 11, 1768 (Boston, 1768), 25; Harvard College Faculty Records, III. 81–82; Harvard College Overseers Records, III. 1–3; Harvard College folio on student disorders.
1 Harvard College Faculty Records, III. 82–86; Harvard College Overseers Records, III. 44–46; Harvard College folio on student disorders, 1768; Quincy, History of Harvard University, II. 116–119, 150–155. The readmitted students were Jonathan Austin, Stephen Peabody, and William Tudor.
2 Frederick W. Coburn in DAB s.v. Varnum, James Mitchell; William S. Bartlet, The Frontier Missionary: A Memoir of the Life of the Rev. Jacob Bailey, A.M. Missionary at Pownalborough Maine. . . (Boston, 1853), 109; Quinquennial Catalogue of the Officers of Harvard University, 132–133; Shipton, Biographical Sketches of Harvard Graduates, XVI. 253–265.
3 Harvard College Faculty Records, III. 129–132.
4 To the sons of Harvard, the following description of their present tyrannical pedagogues, Harvard University Library; A True Description of a Number of Tyrannical Pedagogues (Boston, 1769), 1–7.
5 Shipton, Biographical Sketches of Harvard Graduates, XIII. 622–626; Morison, 99–100; Dexter, The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, I. 426.
6 Diary and Account Book of Samuel Chandler, 15–16 February 1774; Shipton, Biographical Sketches of Harvard Graduates, XIII. 623–626; Morison, 135. On 14 March 1774 Chandler noted a class meeting which supported a lower class against threats made by Tutor Stephen Hall.
7 Shipton, Biographical Sketches of Harvard Graduates, x. 516–523; Quincy, History of Harvard, II. 164; Morison, 146, 161–163; Harvard College Faculty Records, IV. 4–5.
8 Harvard College Faculty Records, IV. 12–14; Harvard College Overseers Records, III. 81–83; Morison, 147–150; Quincy, History of Harvard, II. 164–169. (The figures on the number of students leaving Harvard College in the classes 1775–1778 are based upon the Harvard College “Admissions Book,” Harvard University Archives, and the Quinquennial Catalogue.)
9 Howard H. Peckham, “Collegia Ante Bellum, Attitudes of College Professors and Students Toward the American Revolution,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 95, no. 1 (1971), 54–56; “Harvard Soldiers and Sailors in the American Revolution,” The Harvard Graduates Magazine, XXVIII (December 1919), 250–257; Shipton, Biographical Sketches of Harvard Graduates, XV. 329–331; XVI. 119 ff.
1 Clifford K. Shipton, New England Life in the 18th Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), xxiii–xxv; Cremin, 465–466.
2 Harvard College, folio on student disorders, 1780, 1781, 1783, 1788; Shipton, Biographical Sketches of Harvard Graduates, XVI. 260; “The Laws of Harvard College 1767,” 362 n.
3 Elizabeth Smith to Isaac Smith, 13 April 1768; L. H. Butterfield, Wendell D. Garrett, Marjorie E. Sprague, eds., Adams Family Correspondence (New York, 1965), I. 65; Andrew Eliot to Thomas Hollis, 25 December 1769, “Letters from Andrew Eliot to Thomas Hollis,” Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections (Boston, 1858), IV. 447; Mayo, ed., Hutchinson’s History of Massachusetts, 135.
4 Harvard College folio on student disorders, 1768. For references to arbitrary Turks see for example, Bernard Bailyn, ed., Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1750–1776 (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), I. 43–44, 79, 324, 335, 416–458.
5 Morison, 135–136.
6 Mellen Chamberlain, “Remarks at the Dinner of the Sons of the American Revolution, Concord, Massachusetts, April 19, 1894” in John Adams the Statesman of the American Revolution; with Other Essays and Addresses Historical and Literary (Boston, 1898), 248–249.
7 Stanley N. Katz, ed., A Brief Narrative of the Case and Trial of John Peter Zenger Printer of the New-York Weekly Journal (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), 99.
* Thankful acknowledgements are due to the directors, librarians, and other staff members of the following institutions for their cordial and learned assistance: John Carter Brown Library, The Essex Institute, the American Antiquarian Society, the Library Company of Philadelphia, and the British Museum.
1 Cf. “The Vision of Mirza. . . , translated from the original Arabick.” Newport (R.I.) Mercury, no. 547, 1, 20–27 February 1769. “Said to be written by B——— F———, Esq.” This vision describes how Mirza is visited by the angel Raphael, who shows him an American dreamscape, and makes predictions concerning Anglo-American relations; the vision is short, circa one and a half columns, and ends with “. . . the haughty one perished in the pit which he had digged for the humble.” Mirza’s dream-vision is not discussed at length here because it did not occur as an imprint but as a lead article. However, the article contains most of the genre characteristics listed below, and especially the thematic elements common to the imprints.
B——— F———, Esq., could be Benjamin Franklin, because the Mercury’s first publishers were Franklin and Hall, the former being James; and thus Solomon Southwick, successor to Franklin and Hall, and publisher of “The Vision of Mirza,” could have known Benjamin Franklin. But it is possible that the initials are a ruse and in keeping with the pseudonymous and anonymous nature of the genre.
It should be added that the title is purloined from “The Vision of Mirzah” by Addison, Spectator, no. 159 (1711). While Addison’s piece also deals with a man appeared and appealed to, there the similarity between the two “Visions of Mirzah” ends. Addison’s is a moral allegory and [Franklin]’s is strictly political. Both are spurious, of course, and Addison, who labels his the first vision of Mirzah, never follows it up with another. Franklin, if indeed it is Franklin who authored the 1769 vision, borrowed only Addison’s title and mise en scène but not the action and content. Franklin did author a spurious vision, untitled, in his New-England Courant, no. 41 (1722). It was a dream-veiled satirical allegory on Harvard College. This additional fact, seen in the light of Franklin’s likely familiarity with Addison’s paper, especially only a decade after the latter’s heyday, supports Franklin’s authorship of the Mercury vision.
2 The author of “A Wonderful Dream” perhaps requires anonymity because of his anti-clerical, not his political, remarks.
3 Tapley, Salem Imprints, 37.
4 Ibid., 42.
5 “The Indian Dream,” Punkapog, 1.
6 Ibid., 2.
7 Ibid., 3.
8 Ibid., 5.
9 Ibid., 6.
1 Ibid.
2 Ibid., 7.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid., 8.
5 Ibid.
6 Tapley, op. cit., 52. H. T. also causes confusion when she mentions “Samuel Clarke of Gloucester. . .” on the same page. She took Russell’s title page to heart, and gave credence to his chicanery much too readily.
There are many reasons why there cannot be a Samuel Clarke: his name fails to appear in Clark(e) family genealogies or in Gloucester records. He is unmentioned in Harvard and Yale registers and in William Bentley’s Diary. He is given a tentative birth date of 1728 in Evans, which would make him six years old when, and if, he dreamed the “Swansea Vision” in 1734. In A Short Relation, he says he is forty-eight, and has been bedridden for thirty years. The first edition was in 1769. This would make Clarke born in 1721, and that date doesn’t match Evans’s. It would be interesting to know from what source Evans was assigning dates. While Samuel Clark(e)s do show up in some records, none of them have the life-spans or geographical location that would make them likely prospects for suspicion.
Just as Publicola, Americanus and other such pseudonyms were often used by many authors, we can suspect that Samuel Clarke, both first and last name being very common in New England, was not only a pseudonym, but one used, perhaps, by several authors.
A likely prospect for at least one of the works attributed to Clarke would be the Reverend Samuel Williams, 1743–1817, who from 1765 to 1780 was a minister in Bradford (now Haverhill), Massachusetts.
He knew E. Russell, because Miss Tapley points out that the Daniel George of Russell’s almanac series was recommended to Russell by Williams (p. 52).
Williams often gave sermons in Salem, and Evans lists two discourses (14627, 17073) given at Salem, with political overtones.
John Boyle published the latter of these; John Boyle also printed Angel, Devil and Ghost, signed by an S. W. Perhaps Clarke and S. W. were the same.
The Samuel Clarke of the Short Relation, as mentioned above, was most likely a minister.
But all of this is conjecture and barely scratches the surface. It should be stressed that the pseudonym was used by several authors, in all probability, and that Samuel Williams was author of, perhaps, Angel, Devil and Ghost, and one of the Samuel Clarke works—probably “The Indian Dream,” or the “Swansea Vision,” or both.
E. Russell must be discounted because of the shift in style from his Publicola foreword in A Short Relation to any of the texts attributed to Clarke.
7 A Short Relation (Russell), Samuel Clarke, 12.
8 Ibid., 13.
9 Cf. Isaiah, XIII.
1 A Short Relation, 14.
2 Cf. Isaiah, 60:2
3 A Short Relation, all of the antiphony, 15.
4 Ibid., 16–18. Probably referring to Seven Years’ War.
5 William Brigham, Historical Notes on the Earthquakes of New England, 13. An earthquake occurred in New England on 2 February 1766, accompanied by a meteor. It was clearly sensed on 14 June in Essex County.
6 S. K. Vsekhsvyatskii, Characteristics of Comets, 130. Seventeen sixty-nine Messier comet, with long tail, reported widely in Europe. Visible August through December. Clarke reports seeing it in September.
7 A Short Relation, 19.
8 Ibid., 19–20.
9 Ibid., 20.
1 Ibid.
2 Ibid.
3 S. W., Angel, Devil and Ghost, 8.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid., 12–13.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
1 Ibid., 17.
2 Ibid., 18.
3 Ibid., 29.
4 Ibid.
5 “Gentleman of Philadelphia,” 12.
6 Ibid., 13.
7 Ibid., 14–15.
8 Ibid., 15.
9 Ibid., 16.
1 Ibid.
2 Samuel Elsworth, Solemn Predictions, 4.
3 Ibid., 5.
4 Ibid., 6.
5 Vsekhsvyatskii, op. cit., 136.
6 Solemn Predictions, 8.
7 Ibid., 7.
8 Brigham, op. cit., 13. Earthquake in Cambridge in 1786 and in 1787. In 1761, there was a tremor felt throughout New England, as well as the previously mentioned one of 1766, accompanied by a meteor.
1 Philip Arthur Muth, “The Ashursts: Friends of New England” (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Boston University, 1967), 65.
2 William Kellaway, The New England Company, 1640–1776 (London, 1961), 1.
3 Muth, 68.
4 John Eglinton Bailey, “Henry Ashurst,” The Dictionary of National Biography.
5 Muth, 327.
6 Kenneth Ballard Murdock, Increase Mather: The Foremost American Puritan (Cambridge, 1925), 198.
7 Cotton Mather to Jeremiah Dummer, February 1716/17, in Mather, Diary of Cotton Mather (New York, 1957), II. 810.
8 Muth, 330.
9 John Maynard Hoffmann, “Commonwealth College: The Governance of Harvard in the Puritan Period” (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 1972), 356–357.
1 Samuel Eliot Morison, Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, 1936), II. 483.
2 Hoffmann, 377.
3 Ibid., 416.
4 Ibid., 433, 434.
5 Increase Mather to William Ashurst, 19 January 1709/10, Increase Mather Papers, Harvard University Archives.
6 Mather to Ashurst, 8 November 1710.
7 Hoffmann, 435.
8 William L. Sachse, “Harvard Men in England, 1642–1714,” Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications, xxxv (1942–1946), 144.
9 Morison, 235.
1 Kellaway, 48.
2 Richard S. Dunn, Puritans and Yankees: The Winthrop Dynasty of New England, 1630–1717 (Princeton, 1962), 172.
3 Murdock, 178.
4 Morison, 486.
5 Mather to Ashurst, 19 January 1709/10.
6 Mather to Ashurst, 8 November 1710.
7 Kellaway, 174.
8 Mather to Ashurst, 8 November 1710.
9 Mather to Ashurst, 8 November 1710.
1 Kellaway, 174.
1 After leaving Harvard, Pitt was accustomed to change the usual family spelling from Clark to Clarke. The autobiography is printed in George Faber Clark’s History of Norton mentioned above.
2 See the account of her, sub nomine, in the Dictionary of American Biography. Her portrait by Chester Harding is in the trustees’ room of the Boston Athenæum.
3 A Memoir of Miss Hannah Adams, 12, 54–55.
4 The greater part of these along with a most interesting Minute Book still remain in the possession of the present Norton Public Library.
5 Faculty Records, vols. VII–X. Harvard University Archives, hereinafter cited as HUA.
6 Clark, History of the Town of Norton, 189.
7 See Appendix III. The document was printed as a pamphlet of eleven pages by Edmund Anthony, Printer, of Taunton, Massachusetts (1835). The title page carries the following: “I present you a small token of my affection for you, and designed to imprint on your mind a remembrance of me, your Pastor.” The Preface explains that the message was found among Clarke’s papers after his death.
8 Quoted in Clifford K. Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, XV (Boston, 1970), 448–449, hereinafter cited as Sibley.
9 Quoted in Samuel Eliot Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard (Cambridge, 1936), 103, hereinafter cited as Morison.
1 Morison, 178.
2 Appendix I gives brief accounts of the members of the Class of 1790.
3 Quoted in Clark, History of the Town of Norton, 188.
4 Quoted in Sibley, XV. 187.
1 Joseph Willard, A.B. 1746; tutor in Greek, 1766–1770; minister in Beverly, 1770–1781; President, 1781–1804. A strong supporter of scientific teaching and a vigorous disciplinarian.
2 An annotated list of the members of Pitt Clarke’s class is given in Appendix I. Although for some reason Clarke unmistakably writes “Thomas Clean Thacher,” the second name should be Cushing.
3 Timothy Lindall Jennison, A.B. 1782; tutor in Greek, 1785–1788; M.D. 1824 and for many years a physician in Cambridge.
4 Eleazer James, A.B. 1778; tutor in Latin and Greek, 1781–1789.
5 See Appendix I.
6 Jason Haven, A.B. 1754; pastor of the First Church in Dedham; Dudleian Lecturer, 1789. His son Samuel was A.B. 1789.
7 Nathan Reed, A.B. 1781; tutor in mathematics and natural philosophy, 1783–1787.
8 Jonathan Burr, A.B. 1784; tutor in logic, metaphysics, and ethics, 1786–1787.
9 Cushing Otis, A.B. 1789, James Prescott, A.B. 1786, and James Wilson, A.B. 1789, were variously admonished for “language shockingly profane” and for being “guilty of riotous and very indecent conduct in the course of the day in various parts of the College.” Faculty Records, v. 247–250, 255–256, HUA.
1 Eliphalet Pearson, A.B. 1773; first headmaster of Phillips Academy, Andover; Hancock Professor of Hebrew, 1786; acting President, 1804–1806; Professor of Sacred Literature in Andover Theological Seminary of which he was a founder.
2 David Osgood, A.B. 1771; minister of the church in Medford.
3 Mane, “in the morning.”
4 Oliver Goldsmith, The Roman History, 2nd ed., 2 vols., London, 1770. Given in Catalogus Bibliothecae Harvardianae Cantabrigae Nov. Anglorum, Boston, 1790, hereinafter cited as Cat. 1790.
5 Timothy Hilliard, A.B. 1764; minister of the First Church in Cambridge; Dudleian Lecturer, 1788.
6 Edward Wigglesworth, A.B. 1749; Hollis Professor of Divinity, 1765–1794; acting President, 1780. Although accepted as “orthodox” by the Corporation, he was a distinguished liberalizing figure in Harvard theological teaching.
7 Caleb Gannett, A.B. 1763; tutor in natural philosophy, 1773, Fellow, 1778; Steward, 1779.
8 Charles Rollin, Ancient History, 10 vols., London, 1734, and later eds., in Cat. 1790. A standard work at Harvard, this was a translation of his Histoire ancienne, 12 vols., Paris, 1730–1738.
9 Nathaniel Freeman, of Sandwich, A.B. 1787. John Lowell, A.B. 1786; Fellow, 1810–1822; Overseer, 1823–1827.
1 Simeon Howard, A.B. 1758; tutor, 1766–1777; Fellow, 1780; minister of the West Church in Boston.
2 Thomas Sheridan, Lectures on Elocution, London, 1762, in Cat. 1790.
3 Samuel Webber, A.B. 1784; tutor in natural philosophy, 1787–1789; Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, 1789–1806; President, 1806–1810. Morison calls him “perhaps the most colorless President in our history.”
4 Samuel Williams, A.B. 1761; pastor at Bradford, Massachusetts; member of the American Philosophical Society; Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, 1780–1788; LL.D. Edinburgh and Yale, 1785; one of the founders of the University of Vermont.
5 John Abbott, A.B. 1784, tutor in logic, metaphysics, and ethics, Librarian. Later Professor of Languages at Bowdoin College.
6 Possibly Clarke’s neighbor, Thomas Adams, father of Hannah Adams.
7 See Appendix I.
8 Colonel Ebenezer Crafts of Sturbridge, where he kept the Public House; A.B. Yale 1759; father of Samuel Chandler Crafts.
9 See Appendix I.
1 Peter Thacher, A.B. 1769; pastor of the Brattle Street Church in Boston, 1786–1802; father of Thomas Thacher, A.B. 1790.
2 Henry Home, Lord Kames, Elements of Criticism, 2nd ed., 3 vols., Edinburgh, 1763, in Cat. 1790.
3 Samuel West, A.B. 1761; pastor of the church in Needham, 1764–1788; father of Samuel West, A.B. 1788, and Nathan West, A.B. 1792.
4 Abraham Fuller, b. 1720. A Newton official for 27 years, representative in the General Court, delegate to the Provincial Congress, senator, judge of the Court of Common Pleas.
5 Thomas Prentiss, A.B. 1766, minister in Medfield, 1770–1814; Dudleian Lecturer, 1800.
6 Josiah Holbrook, a neighbor in Wrentham and a student at Providence College.
7 This is Caleb Gannett. See note 7, p. 247.
8 Oliver Wight, brother-in-law of Pitt Clarke.
9 See Appendix I.
1 Probably Thomas Adams, father of Hannah Adams.
2 Asa Hammant, uncle of Pitt Clarke.
3 See Appendix I.
4 The reference is to Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, a standard Harvard text.
5 Joseph Nancrede, the first salaried instructor in French, appointed in 1787. The Faculty Records show students disciplined for disorders in his classes.
6 Probably John Andrews of Newburyport, A.B. 1786, Hon. D.D. 1824.
7 Gad Hitchcock of Pembroke, A.B. 1743; Dudleian Lecturer, 1779; S.T.D. 1787.
8 Elezear Smith, a neighbor in Medfield.
9 Steven Baxter, of Princeton, Massachusetts, A.B. 1788.
1 Benjamin Waterhouse, M.D. Leyden, 1781; Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic, 1783–1813; one of the founders of the Harvard Medical College.
2 Clarke was in fact charged with breakage, and with thirty others was fined ten shillings. Faculty Records, v. 277–278, 291, HUA. See Introduction.
3 This, on the authority of Dr. C. K. Shipton, was the privy.
4 Nicholas Pike, New and Complete System of Arithmetic, Newburyport, 1788, in Cat. 1790.
5 Joel Smith, a neighbor in Medfield.
6 Henry Ware of Hingham, A.B. 1785, S.T.D. 1806; successor to Edward Wigglesworth as Hollis Professor of Divinity.
7 Joshua Payne, A.B. 1784.
8 See Appendix I.
9 See Appendix I. Allen could be either Ephraim or Thomas, both of the Class of 1789.
1 Thaddeus Mason Harris, A.B. 1787; Librarian, 1791. “Sir” was the formal mark of the Baccalaureate, a manner of address to which students were entitled in March of the senior year. The Butler was generally a resident Bachelor or Master of Arts.
2 Pope, Essay on Man.
3 Jeremy Belknap, A.B. 1762; author of a distinguished History of New Hampshire; member of the American Philosophical Society; minister, 1787ff., of what was later the Arlington Street Church, Boston; member of the Board of Overseers; Dudleian Lecturer, 1790; founder of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
4 Either Levi Lincoln of Hingham, A.B. 1789, or Abner Lincoln, also of Hingham, A.B. 1788. Charles Jackson, A.B. 1788, was admitted to the Senior Class in 1787 from Providence College.
5 William Greenough, Yale, 1774, of West Newton.
6 Rev. Henry Lincoln, Harvard, 1786, of Falmouth.
7 Caleb Child, Harvard, 1787, then supplying the pulpit of the Third Church in Roxbury, Massachusetts.
8 “Keen winter is breaking up at the welcome change to spring and the Zephyr.” Horace, Odes, 1.4.1.
9 Samuel Stillman, A.B. 1757, the popular “Baptist Bishop of Boston,” who was minister of the First Baptist Church and did much work with prisoners.
1 Congreve, The Morning Bride, Act I, Scene 1.
2 Isaac Smith, A.B. 1767; tutor in Latin, 1774–1775; went to England during the Revolution; Librarian, 1787–1791.
3 Probably Obediah Parsons, Harvard, 1768, of Lynn.
4 See Appendix I. The Quincy home was on what is now Washington Street, nearly opposite the famous Province House.
5 Patrick Brydone, A Tour Through Sicily and Malta, 2 vols., London, 1773. Cat. 1790 has two sets, ed. London, 1776, and there is a set, Boston, n.d., in the Norton Library which Clarke helped to found in 1794.
6 William Sawyer, Harvard, 1788, of Newbury, later a merchant in Boston.
7 Ebenezer Grosvenor, Class of 1788, son of the Reverend Ebenezer Grosvenor of Harvard, Massachusetts. He died of a violent fever in the spring of 1788, as did his father.
8 Nahum Mitchell, A.B. 1789.
9 See Appendix I
1 Marshall Spring, A.B. 1762; a physician of Watertown; he cared for the wounded at Lexington.
2 Samuel West, A.B. 1788; son of the Reverend Samuel West, A.B. 1761, of Needham. See note 3, page 252.
3 Jonathan Edwards, A Careful and Strict Enquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions of That Freedom of Will Which is Supposed to be Essential to Modern Agency, Vertue and Vice, Reward and Punishment, Praise and Blame, Boston, 1754. The edition of 1790 is given in A Catalogue of the Library of Harvard University, 3 vols., Cambridge, 1830–1831, hereinafter cited as Cat. 1830.
4 Thomas Baker, Reflections on Learning, Wherein is Shown the Insufficiency Thereof in its Several Particulars to Evince the Usefulness and Necessity of Revelation, London, 1756.
5 Probably Jacques Abbadie, The Art of Knowing One’s Self; Or a Diligent Search After the Springs of Morality, 2 vols. in 1, London, 1695–1698, from the French, L’Art de se connaître soi-même, ou la recherche des sources de la morale, Rotterdam, 1692.
6 See Appendix I.
7 “H. A.” is probably Hannah Adams.
8 This is Caleb Gannett.
9 Probably his uncle.
1 Daniel Perry, chosen deacon of the church in Sherborn in 1779 and selectman there and representative in the General Court.
2 Probably Joseph Priestley, Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion, 3 vols., London, 1772–1774, a very popular work. An edition of 1782 is listed in Cat. 1830.
3 Possibly his classmate David Smith. See Appendix I.
4 James Cook, The Voyages of Captain Cook Around the World, 8 vols., London, 1773–1774, with many later eds. and variants.
5 Calvin Whiting, A.B. 1791.
6 John Wyeth, A.B. 1760.
7 Hugh Beattie, An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, Edinburgh, 1770, in Cat. 1790. This is an attack on Hume’s skepticism.
8 This could be Laurence Sterne, The Sermons of Wm. Yorick (L. Sterne), 7 vols., London, 1760–1769, and many subsequent eds.
9 “Conscience does not constitute a personal unity.” Unidentified.
1 Probably Philip Doddridge, A Course of Lectures on Pneumatology, Ethics, and Divinity, London, 1763, and many later editions. The works of this famous divine, who sought to unite all Nonconformist churches, were widely read in New England.
2 Richard Price, Review of the Principal Questions and Difficulties in Morals, London, 1757, and later eds. In Cat. 1830.
3 Claude Nicolas Le Cat, A Physical Essay on the Senses, London, 1750, transl, from his Traité des sens, Rouen, 1740. The English ed. is in Cat. 1790.
4 John Walker, Rhetorical Grammar, London, 1785, in Cat. 1830.
5 Eliphalet Porter, A.B. 1777; Dudleian Lecturer, 1803; S.T.D. 1807.
6 See Appendix I.
7 John Adams, A.B. 1755. Soon to be Vice-President of the United States.
8 This could be Charles Jackson, A.B. 1788. See note 4, page 262.
9 “The goal of deeds must take no heed of man’s private convenience.” Unidentified.
1 Pierre Bayle, Dictionary, Historical and Critical, 5 vols., London, 1734–1738, in Cat. 1790, which also has the French Dictionnaire historique et critique, 3rd ed., 4 vols., Rotterdam, 1720.
2 Georges Louis Leclerc Buffon, Natural History, 6 vols., London, 1775, in Cat. 1790, which also has the French Histoire naturelle . . . , 2nd ed., 17 vols., Paris, 1749–1767.
3 Pope, Essay on Man.
4 Possibly Robert Jenkin, The Reasonableness and Certainty of the Christian Religion, 2 vols., London, 1698–1700, in Cat. 1790.
5 Daughter of Jesse and Abigail (Plimpton) Pratt of Medfield.
6 Brother of Abigail Plimpton Pratt.
7 Job Hammant, maternal uncle of Pitt Clarke, b. 1742.
8 Samuel Hammant, maternal uncle of Pitt Clarke, b. 1736.
9 For Grout see Appendix I. Clarke is probably referring also to John Pierce, A.B. 1793.
1 Dr. Erasmus Babbit, 1732–1799, a physician of Sturbridge.
2 These are Elisha and Jacob Clarke.
3 Jabez Chickering, A.B. 1774, minister at Dedham.
4 Samuel Langdon, A.B. 1740; President of Harvard College, 1774–1780. His Election Sermon, Government Corrupted by Vice and Recovered by Righteousness. A Sermon Preached Before the Honorable Congress of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay in New England . . . , was printed at Watertown, 1775.
5 William Kneeland, A.B. 1751; tutor, 1751–1763. A practising physician and president of the Massachusetts Medical Society.
6 James Harris, Hermes: Or Philosophical Enquiry Concerning Language and Universal Grammar, London, 1751. Cat. 1790 has two copies of the 1756 ed.
7 “Men are generally ready to believe what they want to.” Caesar, De Bello Gallico, 3.18.6.
8 For “Kaims” see note 2, page 251. The other reference is to William Guthrie, John Gray, and others, A General History of the World From the Creation to the Present Time, London, 1764–1790, in Cat. 1790. This was a standard Harvard text.
9 Abbé Claude François Xavier Millot, Elements of General History . . . , 5 vols., London, 1778–1779, in Cat. 1790, from the French Elémens d’histoire générale, new éd., 4 vols., Paris, 1778.
1 James Burgh, The Dignity of Human Nature: Or a Brief Account of the Certain and Established Means for Attaining the True End of Our Existence, London, 1754. Cat. 1790 has three sets of the 2 vols., 1767 ed. For Sheridan see note 2, page 248.
2 Thomas Reid, Enquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense, Edinburgh, 1764. Cat. 1790 has two copies of the 1765 ed. Reid’s views were a reaction to Hume’s skepticism.
3 Amos Crosby, A.B. 1786; tutor in Greek, 1788–1792.
4 John Warren, A.B. 1771; Professor of Anatomy and Surgery, 1782–1815; member of the famous Warren family of doctors.
5 Aaron Dexter, A.B. 1776; Professor of Chemistry and Materia Medica, 1783–1829. For Waterhouse see note 1, page 256.
6 William Enfield, Institutes of Natural Philosophy, Theoretical and Experimental, London, 1785, in Cat. 1790. This was a standard work at Harvard.
7 “Note that a faithful study of the liberal arts humanizes character and permits it not to be cruel.” Ovid, Epistulae ex Ponto, 2.9.48.
8 Caleb Prentice, A.B. 1765.
9 According to Morison, p. 119, the Seniors chose in September two Valedictorians and two Collectors of Theses who drafted the Thesis Sheet for Commencement. Clarke gives this as taking place in May.
1 Soame Jenyns, A Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil, London, 1757. The work was savagely attacked in The Literary Magazine by Dr. Johnson, who claimed that Jenyns was not qualified to deal with so profound a subject.
2 John Ogilvie, Enquiry into the Causes of the Infidelity and Skepticism of the Times, London, 1783, in Cat. 1830.
3 Samuel Haven, A.B. 1749, S.T.D. Edinburgh, 1771; Dudleian Lecturer, 1798.
4 Samuel Clarke, a prolific writer on theological subjects and advocate of the Newtonian system, was chaplain to Queen Anne and rector of St. James’s, Westminster. Pitt Clarke could have been reading A Collection of Papers, Which Passed Between the Late Learned Mr. Leibnitz, and Dr. Clarke, in the Years 1715 and 1716, Relating to the Principles of Natural Philosophy and Religion, London, 1717, and many later eds.
5 This could be Ebenezer Bridge, A.B. 1764.
6 Ebenezer Coffin, A.B. 1789.
7 Samuel Moody of Newbury, Class of 1789, died May 1789.
8 Pope, Essay on Criticism.
9 Joseph Priestley, ed., Theological Repository, 6 vols., London, 1769–1784; Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion, 3 vols., London, 1772–1774, both in Cat. 1790.
1 Jean Jacques Burlamaqui, Principles of Natural and Political Law, London, 1763, and later eds., transl. from the French Principes de droit naturel et de politique, Geneva, 1748. Morison, p. 138, calls this the only book on political science in the curriculum.
2 Thomas W. Thompson, A.B. 1786; tutor in Latin, 1789–1791; later United States congressman and senator.
3 “Either Caesar or nothing.” The motto of Caesar Borgia.
4 Both Voltaire’s Oeuvres, 27 vols., Geneva, 1761 and 1769, and his Metaphysics of Sir Isaac Newton and Leibnitz, tr. by D. E. Baker, London, 1747, are in Cat. 1790.
5 Hezekiah Packard, A.B. 1787; tutor, 1789–1793; Dudleian Lecturer, 1814; later vice-president of Bowdoin College.
6 Samuel Woodbridge, Yale, 1763.
7 Daniel Clarke Sanders, A.B. 1788, of Sturbridge, president of the University of Vermont, 1800–1814; Calvin Wighting, A.B. 1791; Luther Mills, A.B. 1792.
8 Either Ephraim or Thomas Allen, both A.B. 1789.
9 See Appendix I.
1 Rev. William Ewing of Rowley.
2 Hannah Adams.
3 James Beattie, Dissertations Moral and Critical. Dublin, 1783. Cat. 1830 has 2nd ed., London, 1783.
4 William Emerson, The Arithmetic of Infinities and the Differential Method . . . , London, 1767, in Cat. 1830.
5 Thomas Rutherford, Essay on the Nature and Obligations of Virtue, Cambridge, England, 1744, in Cat. 1790.
6 Nathaniel Lardner, The Credibility of the Gospel History, 2nd ed., London, 1730. His Complete Works, 15 vols., London, 1741–1757, are in Cat. 1790.
7 Nathan Fisk, A.B. 1754, S.T.D. 1792; Dudleian Lecturer, 1796.
8 This was Jason Haven. See note 6, page 245.
9 William Emerson, A.B. 1789; later minister of the First Church (Unitarian) in Boston, and father of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
1 This might be Captain Thomas Warland who had bought Apthorp House.
2 William Emerson, A Treatise of Algebra, London, 1764, in Cat. 1830. His Doctrine of Fluxions, London, 1749, is in Cat. 1790.
3 Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origins of Our Ideas on the Sublime and Beautiful, London, 1757. Cat. 1790 has 3rd ed., London, 1761.
4 Henry Cumings, A.B. 1760; Dudleian Lecturer, 1791; S.T.D. 1800; minister of the First Congregational Parish of Billerica, 1763–1823. Shipton calls him “one of the best known and most respected of New England clergymen,” Sibley, XIV. 581.
5 Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, Glasgow, 1759. Cat. 1790 has the 2nd ed., London, 1761.
6 “Dialing” is a method of surveying.
7 See Appendix I.
8 Webber succeeded Professor Williams, who had been forced to resign, as Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy.
9 Father of Benjamin Whitwell, A.B. 1790.
1 Thomas Simpson, A Treatise of Fluxions, London, 1737, in Cat. 1790.
2 Francis Maseres, Elements of Plane Trigonometry, London, 1760, in Cat. 1790.
3 David Ramsay, History of the Revolution of South Carolina, 2 vols., Trenton, 1785. Cat. 1830 has two copies.
4 William Emerson, Elements of Trigonometry, London, 1749. Cat. 1790 has the 1764 ed.
5 John Marrett, A.B. 1763, who rode over from Lexington, has recorded his impressions of Washington at the reception held in the College library: “There is something in his Mien, Behaviour and address which Commands love and respect and Discovers quickness and penetration of thot, and observation (with the greatest of ease) of everything around him. He appears affible and pleasant, But not lightly so.” Sibley, XV. 438–439.
6 Samuel Shapleigh, A.B. 1789; Librarian, 1793–1800.
7 Hugh Hamilton, Geometric Treatise of the Conic Sections: From the Latin, London, 1773, in Cat. 1790.
8 For Emerson see note 4, page 291. Johann David Michaelis, Dissertation on the Mutual Influence of Opinions on Language and of Language on Opinions . . . , London, 1769, in Cat. 1790. Hugh Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric, London, 1783, and many later eds.
9 See note 6, page 292.
1 James Ferguson, Astronomy, London, 1773, in Cat. 1830.
2 William Harris, Practical Discourses on the Principal Representations of the Messiah in the Old Testament, London, 1724, in Cat. 1790.
3 William Emerson, The Elements of Geometry, London, 1763, in Cat. 1790.
4 Probably John Clarke, A.B. 1774; tutor, 1777.
5 See Appendix I.
6 Rev. John Simpkins, A.B. 1786, later minister in Brewster.
7 This is Clarke’s only reference to his return to Harvard after he had been formally separated in the previous December. See Introduction, page 240.
8 Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopedia, Or Universal Dictionary of the Arts and Sciences, 2 vols., London, 1728. Cat. 1830 has 7th ed., 2 vols., London, 1751–1752.
9 Sir Isaac Newton, Opuscula Mathematica, Philosophica, et Philologica, 3 vols., Lausanne and Geneva, 1744, in Cat. 1830.
1 Edmund Stone, The Method of Fluxions Both Direct and Inverse, London, 1730; Christian Wolff, Elementa Matheseos Universae, 2 vols., Magdeburg, 1713–1715. Cat. 1790 has ed. 5 vols., Geneva, 1743–1752. John Wallis, Opera Mathematica, 3 vols., Oxford, 1695, in Cat. 1790.
2 The cryptogram can be read: “P. B. [Phi Beta Kappa] met and admitted Ward and Whitney.” These were two Juniors. For alternative readings see Appendix II.
3 Jacob Cushing, A.B. 1748; pastor of the church in Waltham; Dudleian Lecturer, 1792.
4 See note 8, page 297.
5 John Gregory, A Comparative View of the State and Faculties of Man With Those of the Animal World, London, 1765. Cat. 1790 has 3rd ed., 1766.
6 See Appendix I.
7 See note 1, page 298.
8 John Jortin, Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, 5 vols., London, 1751–1753.
9 Dr. Timothy Sheppard came to Medfield from Sherborn and practised there for a few years before moving to Hopkinton.
1 William Robertson, History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, 3 vols., London, 1769, in Cat. 1790. William Leachman, The Nature, Reasonableness and Advantages of Prayer, Glasgow, 1743. Cat. 1790 has 5th ed., 1755. “Clarke’s Demonstrations” is probably Samuel Clarke, Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion, London, 1705. Cat. 1830 has 10th ed., 1766.
2 Possibly the sister of Clarke’s classmate Thomas Thacher.
3 Rev. Richard Mansfield, Yale, 1741, minister of the church at Derby.
4 Philip Doddridge, none of whose works, however, can be so identified. See note 1, page 272.
5 Rev. Thomas Fitch Oliver, A.B. 1775, an Episcopalian. Clarke is referring to Christ Church in Cambridge.
6 See Appendix I.
7 Thaddeus Mason Harris, A.B. 1787; Hezekiah Hooper, A.B. 1789.
8 See note 3, page 262.
9 Alden Bradford, A.B. 1786; tutor.
1 The Monthly Review, 74 vols., London, 1749ff. Clarke read frequently in it. In Cat. 1790.
2 John Mellen of Barnstable, A.B. 1770; tutor, 1780–1783; Dudleian Lecturer, 1799.
3 Rev. Nathaniel Robbins, A.B. 1747.
4 Rev. Moses Everett, A.B. 1771.
5 See note 6, page 271.
6 See note 5, page 294.
7 A well-known tavern.
8 See Appendix I
9 Clarke means Rollin, author of the officially prescribed Ancient History. See note 8, page 247.
1 Probably Hannah Adams, who spent much time in Boston.
2 James Bowdoin, A.B. 1745; Governor of Massachusetts, 1785–1787.
3 John Locke, A.B. 1792.
4 This is obviously Frederick II of Prussia, who wrote a Histoire de mon temps.
5 The library had a set of the 4th ed., 3 vols., London, 1788, in Cat. 1790.
6 For Gray see Appendix I. For Abbadie see note 5, page 269.
7 See Appendix I.
8 Rev. Jedediah Morse, Yale, 1783.
9 Nicholas Pike, A New and Complete System of Arithmetic Composed For the Use of the Citizens of the United States, Newburyport, 1788, in Cat. 1790.
1 David Hartley, Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations, 2 vols., London, 1749, in Cat. 1790.
2 Samuel Clarke, The Scripture Doctrine of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, London, 1712, and later eds. In Cat. 1790.
3 See note 7, page 292.
4 Rev. Robert Gray, A.B. 1786. Minister at Dover, N. H.
5 A.B. 1776. A naval surgeon during the Revolution, he later held various public offices and in 1808 became postmaster in Boston.
6 Benjamin Rolfe, A.B. 1777, minister at Parsonsfield.
7 Rousseau’s Contrat social, Amsterdam, 1762, his Emile, Amsterdam, 1762, and his Confessions, 2 vols., Geneva, 1780, are in Cat. 1830.
8 See note 7, page 288.
9 Soame Jenyns, Works, 4 vols., London, 1790. See note 1, page 285.
1 Abiel Holmes, A.B. Yale, 1783; minister of the First Church in Cambridge.
2 Possibly the father of Pitt Clarke’s pupil in Cambridge.
3 See note 4, page 293.
4 Samuel Clarke, Sermons, 2 vols., London, 1738. See note 4, page 286.
5 Samuel Hamant, uncle to Pitt Clarke.
6 For Samuel Clarke see note 4 above. John Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity as Delivered in the Scriptures, London, 1695.
7 James Oswald, Appeal to Common Sense in Behalf of Religion, 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1766–1772, in Cat. 1790.
8 Thomas Percival, Moral and Literary Dissertations, Warrington, 1784, in Cat. 1830.
9 See note 1, page 285 and note 9, page 327.
1 See note 1, page 285 and note 9, page 327.
2 Vicesimus Knox, Essays, Moral and Literary. A copy of the 2nd ed., 2 vols., Philadelphia, 1792, is in the Norton Library which Clarke helped to organize in 1794.
3 See note 5, page 294. Clarke excerpted his summary from Part VII, Section II, chs. 1–3 of the Theory of Moral Sentiments.
4 See note 4, page 286 and note 2, page 322.
5 Anna Letitia Barbauld (Mrs. Aiken) was a minor English poet and writer of miscellaneous devotional works for children. Her Collected Works were issued in 1835.
6 Probably Thomas Amory, author of Sermons, 2 vols., London, 1758–1766, in Cat. 1790.
7 Isaac de Beausobre and Jacques L’Enfant, Introduction to the Reading of the Holy Scriptures . . . With Special Reference to the New Testament, London, 1734, in Cat. 1790.
8 De Francheville has not been identified.
9 Zachary Pearce, Commentary With Notes on the Evangelists and Acts . . . , 2 vols., London, 1777.
1 David Hume, The Life of David Hume, Esq., Written by Himself, and Letter from Adam Smith, LL.D., to Wm. Strahan, Esq., London, 1777, in Cat. 1830.
2 Religion Essential to Man. This work has not been identified.
3 This could be either Andrew Baxter’s, An Inquiry into the Nature of the Human Soul, London, 1733, or his Evidence of Reason in Proof of the Immortality of the Soul . . . , London, 1779.
4 Possibly Joshua Cushman, A.B. 1791, ordained in 1795 at Winslow.
5 John Mason, The Student and Pastor. . . , London, 1755; David Fordyce, Theodorus: A Dialogue Concerning the Art of Preaching, 3rd ed., London, 1755, both in Cat. 1790.
6 See Appendix I.
7 This could be Richard Baxter, Church History of the Government of the Bishops and Their Councils Abbreviated, London, 1680.
8 Edward Harwood, A New Introduction to the Study and Knowledge of the New Testament, 2 vols., London, 1767–1771, in Cat. 1790.
9 Henry Grove, Sermons and Tracts. Being His Posthumous Works, 4 vols., London, 1740, in Cat. 1790.
1 John Boyle, Fifth Earl of Orrery, Remarks on the Life and Writings of Dr. Jonathan Swift, London, 1752.
2 Probably John Eliot, A.B. 1772, S.T.D. Edinburgh, 1797; later Fellow.
3 Perhaps Thomas Woolston (1669–1731), the English deist.
4 Joseph Priestley (1734–1804), the English scientist and Nonconformist writer.
5 An attempt at precise identification follows this list.
* See Introduction, footnote 7, page 237.
† The Rev. author here declares a truth, which is no less applicable to other Unitarians, than to himself. They have not assumed the name—Unitarian; it has been forced upon them. It is a name, which denotes dissent from human authority, in its attempts to enforce, as fundamental truth, the doctrine of the trinity.—When these unhallowed attempts shall cease; then, dissent from them being no longer a solemn duty, the name for such dissent will of course fall into disuse; and Unitarians will be known only by the name, which to them is above every name—even the name of their only Lord and Master.
† In this declaration he makes known one of the essential principles of liberal Christianity, namely—that we are accountable for our sentiments—not to one another; but to God only.
1 Clifford K. Shipton’s is the most balanced sketch; it is in Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, XVI. 475–484. Elsie M. S. Bronson contributed the piece to the D.A.B. Edward B. Hall, a successor pastor, writes of Hitchcock in his Discourses Comprising a History of the First Congregational Church in Providence (Providence, 1836); see also William R. Staples, Annals of the Town of Providence . . . to 1832 (Providence, 1843). Hitchcock’s papers are in the Rhode Island Historical Society; references to diary entries, sermons, letters, bills herein, unless otherwise noted, are from this collection. The diary entries are for the most part in interleaved almanacs, cover mainly the War years, with some additions, and are not very detailed. The Society also is custodian of records of the First Church, Providence. Mystic Seaport, Inc. has letters from Hitchcock to Silas Talbot, naval officer, from 1781 to 1794. These I did not consult, since I was not dealing primarily with Enos’s Providence career.
2 For the family genealogy and history see Edward Hitchcock, Genealogy of the Hitchcock Family . . . (Amherst, 1894).
3 Records of the Second Church, Beverly, for this period are deposited in the Beverly Historical Society. See Robert W. Lovett, “A Parish Weathers War and Dissension, the Precinct of Salem and Beverly, 1753–1813,” Essex Institute Historical Collections, April 1963, XCIX. 27–55.
4 Enos had 200 copies of Gad Hitchcock’s sermon printed by Sam Hall, Salem, at a cost of £5. The text was: “For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more.” Swain’s contribution exists in Ms. at the Massachusetts Historical Society.
5 William Bentley, Diary (Gloucester, 1962), II. 367. Bentley writes of Hitchcock: “This G[entleman?] did not make the figure he has since, and requested leave to go as a chaplain in the American Army, and finally fixed him in Providence.”
6 Essex Registry of Deeds, Book 134, 91–92. There is a receipt from Joshua Dodge, dated 21 May 1772, for £173–6–8, doubtless the cost of the property. The place later belonged to Dr. Joshua Fisher, prominent Beverly doctor, then to Rev. Daniel Oliver, minister of Second Church in the 1790s; next to John Fairfield who, though a minister, was not connected with a local church. It was later in the Brown, Glines, Kidder, and Stearns families, and now belongs to Vito Bucco; it is numbered 55 Conant Street.
7 Sidney Willard, Memoirs of Youth and Manhood (2 vols., Cambridge, 1855), I. 54. The author mistakenly says that Hitchcock had no children.
8 The papers were: Richard Draper, Boston News-Letter, subscribed to in 1772, Thomas and John Fleet, Boston Evening Post, 1775, and Benjamin Edes, Boston Gazette, which Mr. Greenleaf, stage driver, began to bring in December, 1776.
9 Figures are as follows: New members, 1772–1780, 30, with 23 of these before 1775; Baptisms, 1771–1780, 102; Deaths, 1771–1776, 71 adults, 32 infants; Marriages, 1771–1778, 68.
1 The greater portion of Hitchcock’s War diary entries appear in Publications of the Rhode Island Historical Society, New Series, VII. nos. 2–4 (whole nos. 26–28, 1899–1900), edited by William B. Weeden. They are introduced by a brief sketch of Hitchcock’s life. See also Carlton A. Staples, “A Chaplain of the Revolution,” Unitarian Review, 35. no. 4, 267–278 (April 1891). An account of chaplains during the Revolution may be found in chapter III of Roy J. Honeywell, Chaplains of the U. S. Army (Office of Chief of Chaplains, 1958). See also Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register of Officers of the Continental Army During the War of the Revolution (new ed., 1914).
2 Diary of Nathaniel Cleaves, as quoted in Hamilton Hurd, ed., History of Essex County (Philadelphia, 1887), 701, and William P. and Julia P. Cutler, Life, Journals and Correspondence of Rev. Manasseh Cutler (2 vols., 1888), entry for 31 May 1775.
3 Among supplies engaged by Hitchcock were Jacob Emerson (A.B., Harvard, 1756), who supplied the pulpit 7 days in 1777, and Joseph Cummings (probably the Harvard Graduate of 1768), who received $42 in February 1778 for 7 days preaching.
4 Boston Gazette, 6 October 1777, page 3, column 1. The Battle occurred on 19 September, and Hitchcock wrote on the 21st, from three miles above Stillwater.
5 John Low, Clerk, wrote to Hitchcock about this on 5 September, and the latter replied from “Camp at Danbury,” on 2 October. The exchange is printed by Weeden, R. I. H. S. Publications, VII. no. 2, 89–91.
6 Enos refers to a portrait in his diary entries for 30 April and 20 October 1779, and Mrs. Hitchcock mentions it in a letter of 12 July. The Rhode Island Historical Society has a portrait by William Blodgett, who was organist at St. John’s Church, Providence, and served in Col. Daniel Hitchcock’s Regiment of Rhode Island Infantry. It shows a pink-cheeked, chubby man with a clerical collar. The Essex Institute has a miniature; back-to-back, in the same frame, is one of Mrs. Hitchcock.
7 The sermon appears as part of Weeden’s edition of the War diaries; R. I. H. S. Publications, VII. no. 2, 100–106.
8 James Thacher, Military Journal (Boston, 1827), 203.
9 Hitchcock to John Low, from Camp at Danbury; quoted in Weeden, R. I. H. S. Publications, VII. no. 2, 91.
1 Hitchcock to Josiah Batchelder, Jr., printed in Edwin M. Stone, History of Beverly (Boston, 1843), 275–280. Since regiments were raised from a local area, it was the practice for that area to assume responsibility for at least some of the supplies furnished its regiment.
2 On 27 July 1779 she writes: “as to the flower, thaire was not above two or three quarts, so bad but that it was yoused for something or other. What I have now is very good, which is not half a barel.” And on 30 April 1780 she wrote: “Mony still grows wors it is said but few will take it at all.”
3 A diary entry for 11 April 1777 records purchase of a share in two lottery tickets for $10; he later purchased tickets with his friend, Capt. Moses Greenleaf, of Newburyport. Several tickets were stolen in the theft from his home, and he wrote to Timothy Pickering, 21 May 1778, referring to the loss of them, by number (Pickering Collection, Massachusetts Historical Society). As late as 1 December 1796, President Willard sent Hitchcock ticket no. 20711 in the Harvard College Lottery (Willard Papers, Harvard University Archives).
4 Letter of 23 July 1778, from Camp Greenwich; printed in Edwin M. Stone, History of Beverly, 276. In a subsequent letter to Batchelder of 13 July 1779 he asks for, among other things, “stockings, a proportion of them fit for officers.” In the letter to Timothy Pickering, already noted, he reports that the towns’ clothing from Essex County had been received.
5 Hitchcock sold his home to Dr. Joshua Fisher for £400 on 10 January 1781; Essex County Registry of Deeds, Book 141, 258.
6 Some $6,000 additional came to the Church through a trust left to his adopted daughter. Col. Daniel Hitchcock, apparently no close relation, also left money, in 1777, to the Benevolent Society. For additional information on the First Church, Providence, see Charles M. Young, A Historical Retrospect of the First Congregational Society in Providence, Rhode Island (Providence, 1910), and Carlton A. Staples, A Historical Discourse, First Congregational Church, Providence, Rhode Island, 1878 (Providence, 1879). The Church became Unitarian in the nineteenth century.
7 Memoirs of the Bloomsgrove Family in a Series of Letters was dedicated to Martha Washington. Hitchcock also wrote The Farmer’s Friend, or the History of Mr. Charles Worthy (Boston, 1793); it is a fictitious biography, with moral anecdotes.
8 Life . . . of Manasseh Cutler, I. 204, entry for 26 June 1787. The two friends talked until one in the morning.
9 Willard to Hitchcock, 15 January 1782 (Treasure Room, Boston Public Library).
1 Sibley’s Harvard Graduates (Shipton), XVI. 480–481.
2 Providence Gazette, 5 March 1803. Students from the upper classes of the public schools and from Brown also were present. David Tappan, Professor of Divinity at Harvard, preached the funeral sermon the following Sunday; it was published in Cambridge in 1803.
3 A copy of his Will is in the Rhode Island Historical Society.
4 Quoted in Edward Hitchcock, Genealogy of the Hitchcock Family, 424.
5 It is of interest that two other ministers of Second Church, Beverly, later served in Providence. Edwin M. Stone, author of the History of Beverly, worked with the Ministry-at-Large there, and was also active in the Rhode Island Historical Society. Joseph J. Russell was minister of the Free Evangelical Congregational Church in the 1930s. Two other ministers were chaplains; Don L Patch left to take part in World War I and Robert L. Rasche came to Second Church following service as a Navy Chaplain in World War II.
1 Lawrence Park, Joseph Blackburn, A Colonial Portrait Painter, with a descriftive list of his works (Worcester, Mass., 1923), 11.
2 William Dunlap, History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States (New York, 1834), I. 32.
3 Ibid., I, 104.
4 Ibid., I. 342.
5 Quoted in John Hill Morgan and Henry Wilder Foote, An Extension of Lawrence Park’s Descriptive List of the Works of Joseph Blackburn (Worcester, Mass., 1937), 10.
6 Brooklyn Museum Quarterly, October 1919, 229.
7 Park, Josef A Blackburn, 5–6.
8 Ibid., 6.
9 Quoted in Hereward Trott Watlington’s “The Story of the Clayton Portraits,” The Bermuda Historical Quarterly, XII. No. 1 (1955), 14.
1 Louisa Dresser, “The Background of Colonial American Portraiture: Some Pages from a European Notebook,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, LXXVI. (1966), 41–53.
2 E. P. Richardson, Painting in America, from 1502 to the present (New York, 1956), 69.
3 Ibid., 49.
4 Ibid., 69.
5 Ibid., 71.
6 C. H. Collins Baker, “Notes on Joseph Blackburn and Nathaniel Dance,” The Huntington Library Quarterly, IX. No. 1 (November 1945), 33–42.
7 Theodore Bolton and Harry L. Binnse, “An American Artist of Formula: Joseph Blackburn,” The Antiquarian (New York, 1930), XV. No. 5, November, 88.
1 Thomas Hooker, The Application of Redemption (London, 1659), Book 10, 413.
2 In this connection it should be remembered that the “preparationist” problems posed by the question, “Was there not something man could do?” have to do with the interior life. The problem of how strictly or in what way unconverted or unregenerate persons could be held in obedience to the Law in their outward behavior was another and much debated question.
3 Zwingli, “Of the Clarity and Certainty of the Word of God.” Printed in The Library of Christian Classics, Vol. XXIV, Zwingli and Bullinger. G. W. Bromily, ed. (Philadelphia, 1953), 68, 82, 94–95.
4 William Haller, The Rise of Puritanism (New York, 1938), Chaps. I and II.
5 John Downame, Guide to Godliness (London, 1622), Epistle Dedicatory.
6 Haller, The Rise of Puritanism, Chap. II.
7 Charles H. and Katherine George, The Protestant Mind of the English Reformation, 1570–1640 (Princeton, 1961), 58.
8 William Perkins, Works, 3 vols. (London, 1626), II. 208–209.
9 In the Geneva Bible these passages from Proverbs are accompanied by marginalia which reads: “He dirideth the presumption of man, who dare attribute to himself any thing, as to prepare his heart or such like. . . .” Yet the textual ambiguity remained uncorrected until 1611 when the authorized version was made to read: “The preparations of the heart in man, and the answer of the tongue, is from the Lord.”
1 Geoffrey Nuttall, The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience (Oxford, 1946), 3–4, 21, 23.
2 Ibid., 139.
3 Richard Sibbes, Works, ed. Alexander Gresart, 7 vols. (Edinburgh, 1862–1864), V. 370.
4 Ibid., IV. 225; VI. 33.
5 John Cotton, A Treatise of the Covenant of Grace (London, 1671), 54.
6 Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana, 2 vols. (Hartford, 1855), I. Book in, 274.
7 William Twisse, A Treatise of Mr. Cottons Clearing Certain Doubts Concerning Predestination, Together with an Examination Thereof (London, 1646), 54, 43. For a detailed account of the influence of Sibbes on Cotton, see Larzer Ziff, The Career of John Cotton, Puritanism and the American Experience (Princeton, 1962), 30–33, 41.
8 Twisse, A Treatise, 230.
9 John Cotton, Christ the Fountaine of Life (London, 1651), 27; Cotton, A Treatise of the Covenant of Grace, 199–200.
1 Cotton, A Treatise, 204, 208.
2 John Cotton, A Copy of a Letter, with the questions propounded, to such as are admitted to the Church-fellowship (1641), 5; Cotton, Of the Holiness of Church Members (London, 1650), 43; Cotton, A Treatise, 68–69.
3 Cotton, A Treatise, 37, 40, 61, 63.
4 Ibid., 35.
5 George E. Ellis, The Puritan Age and Rule in the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay, 1620–1685 (Boston, 1888), 303–304, 322–323. The Antinomians, as Ellis points out, were the predecessors of the Quakers, who, because they claimed direct revelation without the “Word,” were also persecuted by the New England Puritans.
6 Cotton, A Treatise, 65.
7 Perry Miller, The New England Mind; from Colony to Province (Cambridge, 1953), 59.
8 Charles Francis Adams, ed., Antinomianism in the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, 1636–1638 (Boston, 1894), 2725 Williston Walker, A History of the Congregational Churches in the United States (New York, 1897), 139; John Cotton, The Way of Congregational Churches Cleared (London, 1648), 51.
9 Walker, A History, 139–140.
1 Charles M. Andrews, The Colonial Period of American History, 4 vols. (New Haven, 1936), II. 84–86.
2 Great Britain, Public Record Office, Colonial Record, Class 1, Vol. 9, No. 72, Library of Congress Microfilm Ac. 10, 741, Reel 4.
3 Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Colony of Massachusetts, 2 vols. (London, 1765), I. 43. Perry Miller, in his essay “Thomas Hooker and Connecticut Democracy” [Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge, 1956), 16–47] gives a lengthy discussion on Hooker’s removal. Hooker and Cotton, says Miller, were also divided on several political issues related to Congregational polity, such as the power of magistrates in civil affairs, and the degree to which political rights should be extended beyond visible believers. Hooker held that the power of magistrates should be limited, and that nonbelievers should have some say in the government. Cotton held the opposite view.
4 Winthrop Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Vol. 3. (Boston, 1943), 328.
5 See Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma; The story of John Winthrop (Boston, 1958), 142.
6 Ellis, The Puritan Age and Rule, 308.
7 John Cotton, Sixteen Questions of Serious and Necessary Consequences (London, 1644), 9, 13.
8 Printed in John A. Albro, The Life of Thomas Shepard (Boston, 1870), 205–206.
9 Walker, A History, 141–142.
1 John Winthrop, A Short Story (London, 1644), printed in C. F. Adams, ed., Antinomianism in Massachusetts, 107–114.
2 Thomas Weld (1590–1662) came to New England in 1632, was made preacher at Roxbury that same year, and later took an active part in all the proceedings against the Antinomians. In 1641 he was sent to England as an agent of the colony. While in London, in 1644, he came upon an account of the Hutchinsonian affair called “A Catalogue of Erroneous Opinions condemned in New England,” to which he added a Preface and issued as A Short Story. It is generally believed that John Winthrop had drawn up the main account.
3 Winthrop, A Short Story, “Unsavory Speeches Confuted,” 128.
4 Mather, Magnolia, II. Book VII, 514–515.
5 Cotton, The Way Cleared, 48.
6 Winthrop, A Short Story, “The proceedings of the General Court holden at Newtown,” 169–172.
7 Cotton, A Treatise, 177–178.
8 “The Examination of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson at the Court at Newtown, November 1637,” printed in C. F. Adams, ed., Antinomianism in Massachusetts, 274, 276.
9 Winthrop, A Short Story, 177.
1 “A Report of the Trial of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson before the Church in Boston, March, 1638,” printed in C. F. Adams, ed., Antinomianism in Massachusetts, 315–327; Cotton, Sixteen Questions, 13.
2 “A Report of the Trial,” 321, 309; Winthrop, A Short Story, 224.
3 Thomas Shepard, Autobiography, ed. Nehemiah Adams (Boston, 1832), 386; Cotton, The Way Cleared, 53.
4 John Cotton, The Churches Resurrection (London, 1642), 29–30.
5 Walker, A History, 145.
1 Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. L. H. Butterfield et al., 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1961), II. 115, note.
2 The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Lije of the Author, ed. Charles Francis Adams, 10 vols. (Boston, 1850–1856), II. 512, note.
3 John Adams to Richard Cranch, Worcester, 2 September 1755, Adams Papers (Massachusetts Historical Society).
4 Adams, Diary, I. 64.
5 John Langdon Sibley and Clifford K. Shipton, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts (Cambridge and Boston, 1873–1976)1 VI. 201–207 for sketch of Thomas Paine.
6 Robert Treat Paine to James Freeman, 13 August 1751, Paine Papers (Massachusetts Historical Society).
7 Paine, Journal of a Passage from Cadiz towards Boston in the Sloop Hannah, Paine Papers.
8 Adams, Diary, II. 66, entry of 27 October 1772.
9 John Adams to Abigail Adams, [13] February 1776, Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield et al. (Cambridge, 1963– ), I. 347.
1 Adams, Diary, I. 64, entry of [29 December] 1758.
2 Ibid., I. 59–60, entry of 3–4 December 1758.
3 Paine to Eunice Paine, 6 July 1759, Paine Papers.
4 Adams, Diary, I. 71, entry for January 1759.
5 Ibid., I. 231–232, entry for 30 November 1762.
6 Ibid., III. 285.
7 Ibid., III. 285.
8 Legal Papers of John Adams, ed. L. Kinvin Wroth and Hiller B. Zobel, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1965). Volume 3 is devoted to the Boston Massacre trials. See also Zobel, The Boston Massacre (New York, 1970).
9 William Molineux to Robert Treat Paine, Boston, 9 March 1770, Paine Papers. The superior court had earlier appointed Solicitor General Samuel Quincy as special prosecutor. Zobel points out that Quincy’s Loyalist leanings troubled the radicals and they moved “to reinforce the prosecution team. They arranged to have first the Boston selectmen, then the town meeting itself, vote, ostensibly at the request of certain anonymous ‘Relatives of the Deceased,’ to pay the expenses of prosecuting Richardson, Preston, and the soldiers. To handle this important assignment, the leadership picked John Adams’s perennial legal rival, Robert Treat Paine” (Zobel, The Boston Massacre, 219).
1 On 16 March, John Robinson, a British customs commissioner managed to sail for England from Boston carrying with him military depositions largely blaming the town for the late happenings. The Narrative was quickly printed and sent off to England to counteract Robinson’s mission. “By vote of the Town, the copies not sent abroad were impounded, lest the publication in Boston ‘give an undue Byass to the minds of’ prospective jurors. The radicals’ good faith is open to serious question. They permitted (perhaps even directed) Edes and Gill to print the initial inflammatory letters; and they allowed copies of the pamphlet, either from their own stock or reprints of those sent to England, to circulate in Boston well before the trials. The English courts had long condemned such publications as prejudicial; but the Massachusetts court was in no position to restrain the radicals on this issue, or even to criticize them” (Zobel, The Boston Massacre, 212–213).
2 Randolph G. Adams, “New Light on the Boston Massacre,” American Antiquarian Society, Proceedings, New Ser., 47, pt. 2 (1937), 268.
3 Adams, Diary, III, 296.
4 Paine Papers.
5 Adams, Works, X. 234.
6 This account, filed in the Paine Papers under June 1774, was probably written later in life by Paine.
7 Ibid.
8 Joseph Hawley to John Adams, Northampton, 25 July 1774, Adams Papers (Massachusetts Historical Society).
9 Warren-A dams Letters. Being chiefly a correspondence among John Adams, Samuel Adams, and James Warren, 1743–1814, Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, 72–73 (1917–1925), I. 75.
1 Warren-Adams Letters, I. 143.
2 Adams Papers.
3 Warren-A dams Letters, I. 171.
4 Ibid., I. 150.
5 Ibid., I. 190.
6 Paine to James Warren, Philadelphia, 1 January 1776, Paine Papers.
7 Paine to Joseph Hawley, Philadelphia, 1 January 1776, ibid.
8 Paine to Joseph Palmer, Philadelphia, 1 January 1776, ibid.
9 Joseph Hawley to Paine, Watertown, 19 February 1776, ibid.
1 Thomas Cushing to Paine, Watertown, 29 February 1776, ibid.
2 Adams Family Correspondence, I. 350.
3 Abigail Adams to John Adams, 21 April 1776, ibid., I. 389.
4 Ibid., II. 30.
5 Ibid., II. 99–100.
6 John Adams to James Warren, Philadelphia, 26 July 1776, Warren-A dams Letters, I. 265.
7 John Adams to Jonathan Mason, Jr., Philadelphia, 18 July 1776, John Adams Letterbook, Adams Papers.
8 Ralph Davol, Two Men of Taunton in the Course of Human Events, 1731–1829 (Taunton, 1912), 395.
9 John Adams to Rush, Quincy, 30 May 1814, Letterbook, Adams Papers.
1 See my Some Early Tools of American Science (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1950; New York: Russell & Russell, 1967).
2 Shipton never quite reached Prince’s class, 1776.
* In gratitude for the help I have received on this project, I would like to offer a special word of acknowledgment to Alice Stroup and I. Bernard Cohen, for their incisive comments and helpful suggestions; and to Ebenezer Gay and David Wheatland, the curators of the Harvard University Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, to whom my paper is warmly dedicated. Their boundless enthusiasm and continued encouragement, and their energetic willingness to share with me the resources of the collection, have stimulated and enlightened my interest at every stage of this undertaking. They have brought the history of scientific instruments to life for me, and in a manifold sense have made this paper possible. This paper was written as an undergraduate honors thesis in History and Science at Harvard University in 1979.
1 Charles W. Upham, “Memoir of Rev. John Prince, LL.D., Late Senior Pastor of the First Church in Salem, Mass.,” The American Journal of Science and Arts, ed. Benjamin Silliman, XXXI (January 1837), 201; Essex Institute, Historical Collections, IV (1862), 272–273, xv (1878), 296–297; Joseph F. Felt, Annals of Salem, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Salem, 1849), II 616; William Bentley, The Diary of William Bentley D.D., 4 vols. (Salem, 1914), IV. 494.
N.B.: Felt gives Prince’s birth date as 11 July 1751, and the Historical Collections, IV. 272, gives it as 12 July 1751. Prince’s mother, Esther, died on 19 July 1799, age 78, and his father, John, died on 21 July 1786, age 70. The eleven day discrepancy in reporting Prince’s birth date is the difference between old style and new style dating. The English adopted the Gregorian Calendar in 1751.
2 Dirk J. Struik, Yankee Science in the Making (Boston, 1948), 15.
3 Upham, op. cit., 201.
4 Theodore Hornberger, Scientific Thought in the American Colleges 1638–1800 (New York, 1968), 16–17.
5 The Reverend Dr. Parkman of Boston, sermon delivered in Salem on the occasion of Prince’s death; quoted in the Appendix of Charles W. Upham, A Discourse at the Funeral of the Rev. John Prince, LL.D., Senior Pastor of the First Church in Salem, on the Ninth of June 1836 (Salem, 1836), 29.
6 “College Book No. 6 (Hollis Book),” 1726–1779, 1–2, 62; and Meeting of the President, Professors and Tutors of Harvard University, 2 December 1774, Faculty Records, III (1766–1775), 260, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
7 Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Archives, Corporation Records, 1750–1778, II. 442.
8 Upham, “Memoir,” 201–202.
9 Harvard University Quinquennial Catalogue of the Officers and Graduates 1636–1925 (Cambridge, 1925), 196.
1 Upham, “Memoir,” 207.
2 Bentley, op. cit., III. 267.
3 Historical Collections, IV (1862), 272–273. Mary Bayley was the daughter of James Bayley of Boston (d. 6 April 1801, age 80).
4 Bentley, op. cit., IV. 603.
5 Historical Collections, loc. cit. Milly Waldo, the daughter of John and Phebe (Guild) Messinger of Wrentham, Massachusetts, was born 8 December 1762 in Wrentham and died 7 January 1839 in the Boston home of her son, Henry S. Waldo.
6 Bentley, op. cit., IV. 603.
7 Historical Collections, loc. cit.
8 Upham, Discourse, 8.
9 John Prince to a Virginian, 23 July 1782; quoted in Upham, “Memoir,” 211–212.
1 Upham, Discourse, 7–8.
2 Upham, “Memoir,” 202, 214; Bentley, op. cit., records John Prince’s illnesses on numerous occasions in his Diary.
3 Upham, “Memoir,” 202.
4 Hornberger, op. cit., 24, 60. These textbooks were used by Yale, Dartmouth, and Brown during this century as well. ’sGravesande’s was superseded by Benjamin Martin’s Philosophical Grammar at Yale in 1760, Brown in the 1770s, and Dartmouth in 1792. William Enfield’s Institutes of Natural Philosophy, Theoretical and Experimental replaced Martin’s book at Yale in 1788. It was adopted by Harvard as well about this time. Watts’s Astronomy was replaced by James Ferguson’s Astronomy Explained upon Sir Isaac Newton’s Principles at most schools in the 1780s.
5 “Hollis College Book,” op. cit., 6, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
6 Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Archives, Corporation Records, III. 325, 326.
7 Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Archives, Corporation Records, II. 439.
8 Cotton Mather, Manuductio ad Ministerium (Boston, 1726), 47–50.
9 Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences: to the End of the Year M.DCC.LXXXIII, o.s., I (1785), xx–xxii.
1 Struik, op. cit., 22, 27.
2 Donald Fleming, Science and Technology in Providence 1760–1914 (Providence, 1952), 21.
3 Thomas Hollis (nephew of the benefactor) to Col. Hutchinson, Harvard College Treasurer, 20 July 1732, “Hollis College Book,” 29, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts. This letter accompanied an orrery, sphere, and microscope.
4 Willem ’sGravesande, Mathematical Elements of Natural Philosophy, trans. J. T. Desaguliers (London, 1737), preface.
5 “Hollis College Book,” 6–8, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
6 Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Archives, Corporation Records, III. 326–327.
7 John Winthrop, Two Lectures on Comets, Read in the Chapel of Harvard-College in Cambridge, New-England, in April 1759 (Boston, 1759), and Two Lectures on the Parallax and Distance of the Sun, as Deducible from the Transit of Venus (Boston, 1769).
8 John Prince to Mrs. George Adams on her husband’s death, Salem, 25 January 1796; quoted in Upham, “Memoir,” 216.
9 Bentley, op. cit.
1 Historical Collections, IV (1862), 176–179; “Philosophical Library. Catalogue and Charge Book 1781–1809,” and “Philosophical Library. Record Book 1781–1810,” Salem, Massachusetts Libraries, Essex Institute, Salem, Massachusetts. These manuscript volumes are in Prince’s own hand. This library became the core of the Salem Athenæum when it was established in 1810. The books are listed in Appendix I.
2 Historical Collections, IV (1862), 176–179.
3 Upham, “Memoir,” 213, 218.
4 Hornberger, op. cit., 7–14. These data were taken from the Reverend Samuel Miller’s census in 1801, which was published as A Brief Retrosfect of the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1803).
The only library much larger than 3,000 volumes was Harvard’s collection of 13,000 to 14,000. Princeton’s library was “small” after the university suffered damage during the Revolution.
5 Upham, “Memoir,” 213.
6 Benjamin Silliman, “Remarks by the Editor” (added to the Prince memoir), The American Journal of Science and Arts, XXXI (January 1837), 221.
7 Historical Collections, IV (1862), 175–176. Bowditch wrote in his will, “Thus, in early life I found near me a better collection of philosophical and scientific works than could be found in any other parts of the United States nearer than Philadelphia. This inestimable advantage has made me deeply a debtor to the Salem Athenaeum.”
8 Struik, op. cit., 71–77, 82–84.
Prince inscribed a dedication to his friend, Nathan Read, in a copy of his article on the telescope stand. I found this copy in the Essex Institute, Salem, Massachusetts.
9 Bentley, op. cit., I. 42, 142, 286, 343–344, 349, 350, 351; II. 107, 230.
1 Ibid., IV. 494.
2 John Prince to R. T. Paine, Salem, November 1835, Benjamin Franklin Collection, Yale University Library, New Haven, Connecticut.
3 Upham, Discourse, 14.
4 Ibid., 13–14.
5 Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, o.s., I (1785), XX–XXI.
6 Charles Wentworth Upham, “Memoir of Rev. John Prince, L.L.D.,” Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 3rd series, IV (1836), 274.
7 Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge, n.s., V (1837), ix. There is no mention of when Prince was elected. This reference comments on the death of a member, John Prince.
8 Harvard University Quinquennial, loc. cit.
9 Struik, op. cit., 167.
1 Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Vaughan, Paris, 23 July 1788; The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd (Princeton, 1956), XII. 397–398.
2 The usual tools included files, chisels, gouges, broaches, hammers, frame saws, hand case saws, mallets, mounted oilstones, steel shifting point compasses, double callipers, screw plate and taps, a vise, iron clamps, cutting pliers, flat pliers, drill stock and breastplate, screwdrivers, pincers, burnishers, and scrapers.
This list is based on a selection of tools sent by William and Samuel Jones to Harvard for repairing the philosophical apparatus. William and Samuel Jones invoice, 9 August 1815, “Philosophical Apparatus and Professorships of Natural History,” 19, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
3 William Bentley, Diary of William Bentley (Salem, 1905–1914), IV. 494.
4 John Prince to President Fitch of Williams College, 24 September 1795; quoted in Charles W. Upham, “Memoir of Rev. John Prince,” The American Journal of Science and Arts, XXXI (January 1837), 207–208.
5 Supplies were usually late in being shipped from England. On one occasion William Jones wrote the Harvard treasurer, Ebenezer Storer, “Inclosed you have a bill of lading for three cases shipped on board the Minerva Capt. Clement containing a capital air pump, mechanical Apparatus &c, ordered by the College (we are ashamed to say) a long time ago. . . . There are a few more small articles to complete the order which we shall send by the Diana the next ship, for this being quickly filled, she has refused to take any more packages.”
W. Jones to E. Storer, London, 27 February 1804, Harvard College Papers (1797–1805), 1st series, IV. 63, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
6 John Prince to Ebenezer Storer (?), 3 June 1791, “Philosophical Apparatus and Professorships of Natural History,” 8, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
7 Jefferson, loc. cit.
8 Upham, “Memoir,” 206.
9 Ibid. The last letter Prince wrote to Samuel Jones was dated 19 March 1836, i.e., several months before his death.
1 See note 6, on page 460 for an example.
2 Upham, “Memoir,” 205–207. Prince preserved copies of all his literary and philosophical correspondence in eleven manuscript volumes. It is presently unknown whether these letter books still exist.
3 Maurice Daumas, Scientific Instruments of the 17th and 18th Centuries, trans. Mary Holbrook (New York, 1972), 121, 137.
4 Benjamin Martin, Philosophical Grammar, 6th ed. (London, 1762), 175; or Willem Jacob van ’sGravesande, Mathematical Elements of Natural Philosophy, 5th ed., trans. J. T. Desaguliers (London, 1737).
5 ’sGravesande, op. cit., I. 222–239.
6 George Adams, An Essay on Electricity, 3rd ed. (London, 1787), 287–292.
7 Martin, op. cit., 133–134, 176–1785 ’sGravesande, op. cit., I. 5–7; II. 216–221.
8 George Adams, Lectures on Natural and Experimental Philosophy, 2nd ed., corrected by William Jones (London, 1799), I. 50.
9 Francis Hauksbee, Physico-Mechanical Experiments on Various Subjects, 2nd ed. (London, 1719), 1–5.
1 Martin, op. cit., and ’sGravesande, op. cit. There is little change in even the pump’s ornamentation.
2 Joseph Priestley, “Postscript,” Philosophical Transactions, LXIV (1774), 95.
3 J. Smeaton, letter printed in Philosophical Transactions, XLVII (1752), 416–417, 419.
If the piston did not fit tighdtly into the barrel and left a space equal to just 150th of the total barrel volume, then when the piston was completely raised, the trapped air would expand 150 times in the barrel. Once the air in the receiver was rarefied 150 times, it would be in pressure equilibrium with the air in the barrel, and the pump could no longer exhaust any air from the receiver. Another problem in the pump design was the lower intake valve, consisting of a moistened thin bladder stretched over a hole much smaller than a tenth of an inch in diameter. Although a bladder stretched over a large hole would burst or be forced into the cavity (when the piston’s descent increased the barrel pressure), the flap valve’s small surface area prevented the low pressure air in the receiver from entering the barrel.
4 Ibid., 417, 419–420, 422–424.
5 John Prince, “An Account of an Air-Pump on a New Construction; with Some Observations on the Common Air-Pump, and Mr. Smeaton’s Improvement: In a Letter from Rev. John Prince to Rev. Joseph Willard, President of the University of Cambridge,” Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences: To the End of the Year M.DCC. LXXXIII, o.s., 1 (1785), 515–516.
6 Ibid., 497, 500, 507.
7 Ibid., 504–505.
8 Ibid., 501, 503, 508–510, 511–512, 513.
9 Adams, Lectures on Natural Philosophy, I. 153.
1 Ibid., I. 153–155, and Prince, “An Account of an Air-Pump,” 515–516.
2 Thomas Dobson, Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, or Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Miscellaneous Literature (Philadelphia, 1803), III. 35–36. Criticism was leveled at the Prince pump for fluctuations of air in the receiver and mercury in the gauge. These objections were unfounded, and it seems that the author of the erroneous article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1798) wanted to conclude, “We may be indulged in one remark, that although this noble instrument originated in Germany, all its improvements were made in Britain!”
3 William Nicholson, ed., A Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry, and the Arts, 1 (April 1797), 130.
4 William Jones to John Prince; quoted in Dobson, op. cit., III. 36.
5 Adams, Lectures on Natural Philosophy, I. 50.
6 Dobson, op. cit., III. 33, 36.
7 Adams, Lectures on Natural Philosophy, plate I. The pump described in the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences was sold to Bowdoin College by Prince before 1803. After the college carted the pump off to the town dump in 1958, the Museum of History and Technology acquired it “on loan” from Bowdoin (Smithsonian Catalogue Number: 315, 394).
In 1812, Prince wrote Professor Parker Cleaveland of Bowdoin, “I was very sorry to find ye pump had been so disordered—It has given me a great deal of trouble to repair it, and nothing else but it having been my pump would have induced me to undertake it—.” Prince also wrote, “I have been very diligently imployed upon it the pump and very anxious to get it to you since ye declaration of war as well as to be in time for your lectures—.” For the details of his repairs noted in this letter, see John Prince to Parker Cleaveland, Salem, 3 July 1812, Parker Cleaveland Papers, Bowdoin College Library, Brunswick, Maine.
8 William Jones to Ebenezer Storer, 27 February 1804, Harvard College Papers (1797–1805), 1st series, IV. 63, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
9 Dobson, op. cit., 36–37.
1 Daumas, op. cit., 121.
2 John Quekett, A Practical Treatise on the Use of the Microscope, Including the Different Methods of Preparing and Examining Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral Structures, 3rd ed. (London, 1855), 28.
3 Harriet Wynter and Anthony Turner, Scientific Instruments (New York, 1975), 194–202. The compass joint mounting was mechanically poor, but worn or broken mounts are almost unknown. Fork-mounting moved the joint to the center line of the tube. This made for better balance.
4 John Prince to William and Samuel Jones, 10 July 1800; quotes in Upham, “Memoir,” 210.
5 William and Samuel Jones to the Treasurer of the Corporation of Harvard College, London, 19 August 1817, “Philosophical Apparatus and Professorships of Natural History,” 22, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
6 John Farrar to Ebenezer Francis, Cambridge, 5 September 1828, Harvard College Papers (1828–1829), 2nd series, III. 125–126, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
7 William and Samuel Jones to the Treasurer of Harvard College, London, 19 August 1817, “Philosophical Apparatus and Professorships of Natural History,” 22, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
8 Report of the Committee on the State of the Telescope, 16 October 1826, Harvard College Papers (1826–1827), 2nd series, I. 167, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
9 John Prince to William and Samuel Jones, 10 July 1800; quoted in Upham, loc. cit.
1 John Prince, “Description of a New Stand for a Reflecting Telescope,” Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, n.s., I (1833), 334–337. The telescope’s maximum elevation was 65° above the plane of the circular table, and the tube could dip below the horizon to view terrestrial objects as well.
2 Ibid., 337.
3 Quekett, op. cit., 28–29.
4 George Adams, Essays on the Microscope (London, 1787), 65–80, plate 3, figure 1.
5 Prince Invoice for 1794–1799, dated 11 December 1799, “Philosophical Apparatus and Professorships of Natural History,” 12, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The following description is based on the remnants of this lucernal housed in the Harvard Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments.
6 Prince had detailed his improved construction of the lucernal in a ten-page account to George Adams on 3 November 1792, and another letter, dated 3 July 1795, had proposed further alterations. [Upham, “Memoir,” 205–206.] Immediately recognizing the merits in Prince’s modification, Adams had built this new lucernal. The first, and perhaps only, copy of the instrument was sold to John Hill, whose order for a lucernal was pending in Adams’s shop at the time. Although Adams had never publicly acknowledged his use of Prince’s design, he had confided his indebtedness to a clergyman in a letter to Hill. Shortly after Adams’s death in 1795, Hill felt compelled to publicize the considerable improvements by printing part of Adams’s letter in the Gentleman’s Magazine. [John Hill, “Mr. G. Adams’s Description of the Lucernal,” The Gentleman’s Magazine, ed. Sylvanus Urban, 66 part 2 (November 1796), 897–898.]
7 Hill, op. cit., 898, 899.
8 Ibid., 898–899.
9 Ibid., 898.
1 Ibid., 899.
2 See Chapter III, 69–70, for discussion on the attitude of W. and S. Jones towards other instrument makers.
3 William Jones to John Prince, 29 September 1798, and 3 March 1798; quoted in Upham, “Memoir,” 207.
4 A London correspondent to John Prince, 3 March 1798; quoted in Upham, “Memoir,” 215.
5 Upham, “Memoir,” 208–209.
6 Ibid., 209–210.
In his Micrographia (1837), 189, Andrew Pritchard said that an American had made a solar microscope for opaque objects in which light was concentrated on the object by four small reflectors placed around the object. Each reflector was supplied with its own condensing lens. It is very possible that the American making these alterations was Prince, since he continued to improve the solar microscope throughout his lifetime.
7 Ibid., 207, 208, 209. John Prince described the magic lantern on 13 February 1797 and 2 March 1801. He accompanied the 1801 letter with models and diagrams. The kaleidoscope was detailed in a letter of 24 November 1818.
8 Ibid., 209.
9 John Prince to Ebenezer Storer (?), Salem, 3 June 1791, “Philosophical Apparatus and Professorships of Natural History,” 8, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
1 Upham, “Memoir,” 208–209. Prince recommended to W. and S. Jones that thermometers have their zero point set at the freezing point of mercury in order to do away with positive and negative scales (24 September 1795). He detailed improvements on the equatorial on 4 December 1795, and sent the Joneses his new hydrostatic device on 28 October 1823.
2 Benjamin Silliman, “Remarks by the Editor,” The American Journal of Science and Arts, XXXI (1837), 221–222.
3 Dirk J. Struik, Yankee Science in the Making (Boston, 1948), 20.
4 Theodore Hornberger, Scientific Thought in the American Colleges, 1638–1800 (New York, 1968), 22–34.
5 Struik, op. cit., 25.
6 Ibid., 26.
7 Hornberger, op. cit., 35–37.
8 “Hollis College Book, No. 6” (1726–1779), 6–7, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
9 Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Corporation Records, in. 326.
1 Joseph Lovering to the Harvard Corporation, Cambridge, 19 March 1838, College Papers, 2nd series, VIII. 299–301, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
2 I. Bernard Cohen, Some Early Tools of American Science (Cambridge, 1950), 9–10.
3 Hornberger, op. cit., 7–14.
4 Peres Fobes to the Corporation of Rhode Island College, 25 August 1802; quoted in Donald Fleming, Science and Technology in Providence 1760–1914 (Providence, 1952), 22.
5 Silvio A. Bedini, Early American Scientific Instruments and Their Makers (Washington, D. C., 1964), 3, 160–165.
7 John Prince was paid by Ebenezer Storer £1.8.0 on 7 December 1790 for Wells’s book. Treasurer’s Reports to the President and Fellows of Harvard College (1790–1791), 2, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
8 “The President and Corporation of R. I. College Debit to John Prince 1800–1802,” MS. (1-E, -B81mi, vol. 2, p. 225), John Hay Library, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. Grew’s Anatomy of Plants was purchased on 21 May 1800 at $4.50, and ten numbers of the 5th volume of Nicholson’s Journal were bought at $7.50 on 22 April 1802.
9 John Prince to Ebenezer Storer (?), Salem, 3 June 1791, “Philosophical Apparatus and Professorships of Natural History,” 8, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
1 Prince invoice for apparatus to Harvard College, 29 May 1793, sheet no. 2 (1792–1793), “Philosophical Apparatus and Professorships of Natural History,” 10, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
2 Prince invoice for apparatus sold to Harvard (1794–1799), 11 December 1799, “Philosophical Apparatus and Professorships of Natural History,” 12, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
3 President and Corporation of Rhode Island College Debits to John Prince, 21 May 1800–30 June 1803, MS. (1-E, -B81mi, vol. 2, p. 239), John Hay Library, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island.
4 Meeting of the President and Fellows of Harvard College, 21 July 1779, Corporation Records (1778–1795), III. 45–46, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
5 John Farrar to (?), Cambridge, 31 July 1832, College Papers, 2nd series (1831–1833), V. 176, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
6 John Prince to R. T. Paine, Salem, November 1835, Benjamin Franklin Collection, Yale University Library, New Haven, Connecticut.
7 John Prince’s invoices for apparatus sold to Harvard College, dated 29 May 1793 (sheet no. 1, 1789–1791; sheet no. 2, 1792–1793), 11 December 1799 (1794–1799), 24 August 1802 (1801–1802), “Philosophical Apparatus and Professorships of Natural History,” 9, 10, 12; and Corporation Papers, 1st series, supplements 1800–1804, Box 7, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Account of articles taken of Dr. Fobes by Dr. Prince for new apparatus with receipt for the money for the same, 1802, MS. (1-E, -B81mi, vol. 2, p. 225); the President and Corporation of R. I. College, Debits to John Prince, 1804?, MS. (1-E, -B81mi, vol. 2, p. 247); President and Corporation of Rhode Island College, Debits to John Prince, 6 September 1804, MS. (1-E, -B81mi, vol. 2, p. 249), John Hay Library, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. John Prince to James Dean, 30 June 1806, letter extensively quoted in Julian Ira Lindsay, Tradition Looks Forward: The University of Vermont: A History 1791–1904 (Burlington, Vermont, 1954), 106–107. This last letter is missing from the Guy W. Bailey Library, Burlington, Vermont.
8 Personal correspondence between the author and the archivists at Amherst, Columbia, William and Mary, Charleston, Union, Williams, and the University of Pennsylvania, January 1979.
9 John Prince to Ebenezer Storer (?), 3 June 1791, “Philosophical Apparatus and Professorships of Natural History,” 8, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
1 W. and S. Jones to Treasurer of the Corporation of Harvard College, London, 19 August 1817, “Philosophical Apparatus and Professorships of Natural History,” 22, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Prince invoices for apparatus sold to Harvard, dated 29 May 1793, 11 December 1799, “Philosophical Apparatus and Professorships of Natural History,” 9, 10, 12; and Treasurer’s Reports to the President and Fellows of Harvard College (1790–1800), Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
8 W. and S. Jones to the Treasurer of the Corporation of Harvard College, London, 19 August 1817, “Philosophical Apparatus and Professorships of Natural History,” 22, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
9 Upham, “Memoir,” 209.
1 See Treasurer’s Reports to the President and Fellows of Harvard College (1735–1786), Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts; and “The Reverend Doctor John Prince in Accounts-Current with the Corporation of Rhode Island College (1800–1804),” (MS. B.U. 6 September 1804), John Hay Library, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island.
2 Ebenezer Storer to Thomas Gibson (of Lawrence Lane, London), 20 October 1791, Harvard College Letter Book 1778–1809, 1st series, no. 2, 11, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Storer drew a bill in favor of Prince for £20.
3 W. and S. Jones to John Farrar, 11 August 1821, “Philosophical Apparatus and Professorships of Natural History,” 23. Glassware, proper for an electrostatic machine, to be bought from George Adams (E. Storer to Hodgson Atkinson, 3 July 1788, Harvard College Letter Book 1778–1809, 1st series, no. 1, 54–55) was shipped to Salem (according to the Treasurer’s Reports to the President and Fellows of Harvard College, 8 December 1788). All these manuscripts are in the Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
4 Bill of Apparatus of Dr. Prince, 1821, “Library Catalogue and Philosophical Apparatus, 1793–1814,” Williams College Library, Williamstown, Massachusetts.
5 Benjamin Silliman, “Remarks by the Editor,” The American Journal of Science and Arts, XXXI (January 1837), 222.
6 Ibid.
7 Ebenezer Storer to John Prince, Boston, 6 May 1788, Harvard College Letter Book 1778–1809, 1 st series, no. 1, 53, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
8 Prince invoice for apparatus supplied to Harvard (1789–1791), 29 May 1793, “Philosophical Apparatus and Professorships of Natural History,” 9, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
9 Ibid.
1 John Prince to E. Storer (:), Salem, 3 June 1791, “Philosophical Apparatus and Professorships of Natural History,” 8, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
2 John Prince to James Dean at the University of Vermont; 30 June 1806; in Lindsay, op. cit., 106–107.
3 David P. Wheatland, The Apparatus of Science at Harvard, 1765–1800. (Cambridge, 1968), 111.
4 John Prince to Joseph Willard, Salem, 14 February 1803, Corporation Papers (1800–1804), 1st series, supplement 1800–1804, Box 7, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
5 Martha Fales, “Dr. Prince’s Air Pump,” The Magazine Antiques, March 1973, 499.
6 Meeting of the President and Fellows of Harvard College, 6 June 1826, Corporation Records (1819–1827), VI. 294–295; John Farrar to President Kirkland, 5 June 1826, Corporation Papers (1826–1827), 2nd series, Box 1, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
7 Meeting of the President and Fellows of Harvard College, 6 June 1826, Corporation Papers (1826–1827), 2nd series, Box 1, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
8 Meeting of the Overseers of Harvard University on 1 June 1824, and 17 February 1825, Overseers Records (1824–1829), VII. 14–19, 192–194, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
9 John Prince to Loammi Baldwin, Salem, 22 July 1794 (MS. Prince 1794 July 22), John Hay Library, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island.
1 Cohen, op. cit., 56, 60.
2 Meeting of the President and Fellows of Harvard College, 9 June 1790, Corporation Records (1788–1795), III. 356–358, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
3 Peres Fobes to the Corporation of Rhode Island College, 25 August 1802; in Fleming, op. cit., 22, 24.
4 Cohen, op. cit., 56; Lindsay, op. cit., 106.
5 John Prince, “An Account of an Air-Pump on a New Construction,” Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1 (1785), 514.
6 Andrew Preston Peabody’s comments on Farrar; quoted in I. Bernard Cohen, Some Early Tools of American Science (Cambridge, 1950), 125.
7 Samuel Williams, 1785; quoted in Cohen, op. cit., 45.
8 Charles W. Upham, A Discourse at the Funeral of the Rev. John Prince, L.L.D., Senior Pastor of the First Church in Salem, on the Ninth of June 1836 (Salem, 1836), 14.
9 John Prince to Ebenezer Storer (?), Salem, 3 June 1791, “Philosophical Apparatus and Professorships in Natural History,” 8, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
1 John Prince to Prof. Parker Cleaveland, Salem, 7 November 1821, Parker Cleaveland Papers, Special Collections, Bowdoin College Library, Brunswick, Maine.
Here Prince tells of electrical machine experiments.
Charles W. Upham also claimed that Prince’s correspondence contained many accounts of experiments he had performed. See “Memoir of Rev. John Prince,” The American Journal of Science and Arts, ed. Benjamin Silliman, XXXI (1837), 211
2 Benjamin Silliman, “Remarks by the Editor,” The American Journal of Science and Arts, XXXI (1837), 220–221.
3 Silvio Bedini, Thinkers and Tinkers (New York, 1975), 185–186.
4 Silvio Bedini, Early American Scientific Instruments and Their Makers (Washington, 1964), 11.
5 Ibid., 15–17, 19–21, 33, 34–36, 40, 44–46, 54–57) 62, 160–165.
6 Bedini, Thinkers and Tinkers, 166–167.
7 John Prince to Parker Cleaveland, Salem, 7 November 1821, Parker Cleaveland Papers, Special Collections, Bowdoin College Library, Brunswick, Maine. One pump went to New York, another to Philadelphia.
8 Ibid.
9 Bedini, Early American Scientific Instruments, 10, 13.
1 Bedini, Thinkers and Tinkers, 188–189.
2 Bedini, Early American Scientific Instruments, 15, 21.
3 Bedini, Thinkers and Tinkers, 188–189.
4 Brooke Hindle, ed., Early American Science (New York, 1976), 108.
5 Charles W. Upham, “Memoir of Rev. John Prince, L.L.D.,” Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 3rd series, V (1836), 271.
6 Upham, “Memoir of Rev. John Prince,” The American Journal of Science and Arts, XXXI (1837), 211–212.
1 Quoted in The Bulletin of the New York Sabbath Committee, VII (August-September [1920]).
2 Increase Mather, “To the Reader,” in Cotton Mather, A Good Evening for the Best of Dayes (Boston, 1708).
3 Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana: Or The Ecclesiastical History of New England (London, 1702), bk. 3, 27.
4 Winton U. Solberg, Redeem the Time: The Puritan Sabbath in Early America (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1977), III.
5 Chester N. Greenough, Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, XIX (1918), 366–367; Julius H. Tuttle, Bibliographical Essays: A Tribute to Wilberforce Eames (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1924.), 365.
6 Hill, Society and Puritanism, 204. At least one of three doctoral dissertations which have appeared in recent years briefly discusses Cotton’s treatise. This is Harry A. Poole, “The Unsettled Mr. Cotton” (University of Illinois, 1956), 6. I have not examined either Donald R. Come, “John Cotton: Guide to the Chosen People” (Princeton University, 1949) or Judith B. Welles, “John Cotton, 1584–1652: Churchman and Theologian” (University of Edinburgh, 1948).
7 Montague R. James, The Western Manuscripts in the Library of Emmanuel College: A Descriptive Catalogue (Cambridge, At the University Press, 1904), 122–123.
8 I have profited from Samuel A. Tannenbaum, The Handwriting of the Renaissance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1930).
9 The Oxford English Dictionary defines Aorist as “one of the past tenses of the Greek verb. . . . It corresponds to the simple past tense in English, as ‘he died.’” Frank Stubbings, Librarian of Emmanuel College, suggests that in this passage Cotton has misinterpreted the sense of the aorist participle, which can hardly mean other than “when the sun was/had risen”—though this does not suit Cotton’s view.
1 Franciscus Junius (1545–1602), a Reformed theologian highly esteemed by contemporaries, went to Heidelberg in 1573 at the invitation of the Elector Frederick III to assist in a Latin translation of the Old Testament. His Parallela Sacra (1588), a translation of Old Testament quotations in the New Testament, profoundly influenced biblical exegesis.
2 Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335–394) was bishop of Nyssa and later metropolitan of Caesarea in Cappadocia. A pillar of orthodoxy, he sought in his writings to refute various heresies and to show the harmony of Scripture with the scientific and philosophical learning of the day.
3 Gregory I (the Great), whose pontificate was from 590 to 604, was one of the Latin Fathers of the Church. A vital bridge between the wisdom and culture of the ancient and medieval worlds, he became, through his writings on the Christian way of life, a leading theological authority in the Middle Ages. He wrote many homilies on the Gospel.
4 Augustine (354–430), bishop of Hippo, theologian, and Doctor of the Church. Through his thought and his formulation of doctrine, Augustine exerted the greatest influence on the Latin Fathers who came after him and on the whole Middle Ages.
5 In the place cited, Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23–70) states that different people compute the days in different ways and cites as examples the Babylonians, Athenians, Umbrians, Romans, Egyptians, and common people everywhere. See Pliny, Natural History, Loeb Classical Library, trans. Harris Rackham (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, and London, William Heinemann, Ltd., 1938–1963), I. 318–321 (bk. 2, chap. 79).
6 Filippo Beroaldo (the Elder, 1453–1505), an illustrious Italian humanist, was a professor of literature at the University of Bologna. A prolific author who edited and annotated various ancient Latin writers, he published an edition of Pliny’s Natural History at Parma in 1476. The Chronicon Sacrae Seripturae (4 vols., Frankfurt, 1606) attributed to him, which is probably the work mentioned here by Cotton, was actually written by Matteo Beroaldo, who was born in Paris.
7 The word after inchoant is undoubtedly the name of the author of De festis, but I have been unable to decipher the name. The first three letters may be Cre or Bro; the last four appear to be spin, but the p is a brevigraph and therefore should be read as p followed by a vowel and an r.
8 According to the OED, a chronologer is “one who investigates the date and order in time of events,” and chronology is “the science of computing and adjusting time or periods of time, and of recording and arranging events in order of time.” Chronology as a science apparently originated in the late sixteenth century.
9 Leo I (the Great) was pope from 440 to 461. The greatest administrator of the ancient Church, he was significant primarily for his thought and doctrine. Many of Leo’s sermons and letters have survived. Dioscorus was Patriarch of Alexandria from 444 to 451. In 449 he presided at “that Robber Synod,” the Council of Ephesus. The word Feriis in the Decretal so named is an uncertain rendering. The word may be Feria, though Cotton writes that word distinctly shortly below in quoting Augustine’s De Consensu Evangelistarum, or Feriis.
1 Cotton was apparently quoting from canon seven of the Council held in present-day Tarragona, Spain. The appropriate passage in the canon reads: “ut omnis clerus die sabbato ad vesperam sit paratus, quo facilius die dominico solemnitas cum omnium praesentia celebretur” See Joannes Dominicus Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum Nova et Amplissima Collectio (Florence, 1762), VIII. 539–540.
2 Gilbert Genebrard (1537–1597), a Benedictine monk who received a doctorate in theology, became professor of Hebrew and Scripture at the University of Paris. Consecrated a bishop, he was later appointed archbishop of Aix-en-Provence. One of the outstanding savants of the sixteenth century, he published numerous works in the fields of Old Testament exegesis, rabbinical literature, Patristics, dogmatic and moral theology, canon law, liturgy, and chronology. Cotton is probably referring here to Génébrard’s Chronographiae libri (4 books, Paris, 1580). Génébrard also wrote Notae Chronicae, Sive ad Chronologiam et Historiam Universam Methodus (Paris, 1585).
3 Austin is Augustine. De Consensu Evangelistarum, written in 400, may be found in J. P. Migne, Patrologiae Latinae, XXXIV.
4 August is Augustine. De Trinitate, written from 399 to 422, is in PL, XLII. Here Cotton quotes quite accurately, as comparison with the text in PL, XLII. 894 (bk. 4, chap. 6), will demonstrate.
5 William Perkins (1558–1602) was a leading spokesman of Elizabethan Puritanism. A systematic theologian who applied Calvinist ideas to practical affairs, he had much to say on the Sabbath in his Treatise of the Vocations, or Callings of Men and in other writings. These were published in The Workes of that Famous and Worthy Minister of Christ in the University of Cambridge, Mr. William Perkins, 3 vols., London, 1616–1618.
6 John Foxe (1516–1587) published his Actes and Monuments in 1563 and again in 1570. He set his account of the history of Christianity in England in the framework of the Christian philosophy of history outlined a millennium earlier by Augustine and given a Protestant twist in the sixteenth century. Foxe’s work, better known as the Book of Martyrs, taught Elizabethan Protestants that England was an elect nation whose providential mission was to build the New Israel.
7 Richard Grafton (d. 1572?), a prosperous London merchant and ardent supporter of the Reformation, joined with fellow merchant Edward Whitchurch in printing English translations of the Bible and other religious works. Grafton also published chronicles and became an original author in this field. The “concordance of yeares” mentioned by Cotton was probably Grafton’s brief treatise containing many tables and rules for the computation of time, first published in 1571 and reprinted several times by 1611.
8 Wolphius is undoubtedly the Latinized version of Wolf (Wolff) or Wolph. The reference is so general and the name so common that identification is both difficult and risky. Perhaps Cotton had in mind Johannes Wolf or Wolph (1522–1571), pastor and later professor of theology in Zurich, who published Tabulae Chronologicae in Nehemiam et Esdram and Der Christen Sabbath. Another possibility is Henricus Wolf or Wolph (d. 1594), professor of Hebrew and later pastor in Zurich. He published Chronologiam and left among his unpublished works a translation entitled De Calendario Gregoriano non Recipiendo. See Christian G. Jöcher, Allgemeines Gelehrten-Lexicon (Leipzig, 1751), IV. 2051–2052, 2047, and s.v. Wolf.
* I am delighted to have this essay accepted for Ted Shipton’s memorial volume. It was written originally at his request as the keynote speech (titillating but not substantial) for a conference he organized in 1963. I have since revised it extensively and in the process bored several kindly audiences with it. Now, I gladly give it up as no longer readable aloud. Meanwhile, two friends have helped me with it: Ms. Sandra Peterson took the idea, and in altered form, traced it in American literature up through Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, earning the Ph.D. in English on the way; more recently, Charles G. Steffen, while a doctoral candidate in history at Northwestern University, tracked down lost footnotes, checked quotations, reminded me of recent literature I should read, criticized the whole, and made solid suggestions for significant improvements based on his review of the cases. Sigmund Diamond, the late Max Savelle, and at least two Northwestern University graduate English seminars also aided and abetted me in this crime.
1 John Rogers, Death The certain Wages of Sin to the Impenitent: Life The sure Reward of Grace to the Penitent: Together with the only Way for YOUTH To avoid the former, and attain the latter (Boston, 1701), 153.
2 Ibid., 121–122.
3 Ibid., 127.
4 Ibid., 143, 132.
5 Ibid., 135.
6 Ibid., 147.
7 Ibid., 152.
8 Clifford K. Shipton, “The New England Frontier,” The New England Quarterly, x. (March 1937), 25–36.
9 Cotton Mather, The Sad Effects of Sin (Boston, 1713), 56.
1 Dictionary of National Biography, s.v., William Perkins.
2 See Alfred William Pollard, comp., A Short-title Catalogue of Books Printed in England. . . 1475–1640 (London, 1926), and Donald Goddard Wing, comp., Short-title Catalogue of Books Printed in England. . . 1641–1700 (3 vols., New York, 1945–1951).
3 Michael Shugrue, “Applebee’s Original Weekly Journal. . . ,” The Newberry Library Bulletin, VI. (March 1964), 111–112.
4 “John Winthrop’s Christian Experienca,” Winthrop Papers (5 vols., Boston, 1929), I. 154–160. I think the figure is Edmund S. Morgan’s, but I forget from where.
5 Edmund S. Morgan, ed., “The Diary of Michael Wigglesworth,” Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications, XXXV. 311–444; Cotton Mather, “Diary,” Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, Seventh Series, VII–VIII.
6 Mather, ibid., 584.
7 American Historical Review, 78. (December 1973), 1311.
8 Robert G. Pope, ed., “The Notebook of the Reverend John Fiske, 1644–1675,” Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications, XLVII. See the early pages, especially.
9 “Beverly First Church Records,” Essex Institute, Historical Collections, XXXV. (July 1899), 194. In this and following quotations from the records, most abbreviations and thorns have been silently expanded.
1 Ibid., 188, 193. Also see, for examples, Richard D. Pierce, ed., Records of the First Church in Boston, 1630–1868, Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Collections, XXXIX. (Boston, 1961), passim.
2 See Emil Oberholzer, Jr., Delinquent Saints: Disciplinary Action in the Early Congregational Churches of Massachusetts (New York, 1956), 135–141. This trend was especially noticeable in extramarital sexual relations.
3 “The Earliest Church Records in Groton,” Groton Historical Series, I. No. 10, 41–42.
4 Samuel Eliot Morison, ed., William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation 1620–1647 (New York, 1952), 320.
5 Records of the Suffolk County Court, Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications, XXIX. 491 (28 July 1674).
6 George F. Dow, ed., Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, Massachusetts (Salem, Mass., 1911), I. 156.
7 Jules Zanger, “Crime and Punishment in Early Massachusetts,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., XXII. (July 1965), 471–477.
8 Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, ed., Records of the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay (5 vols., Boston, 1853–1854), II. 241; III. 125–126.
9 Charles W. Upham, Salem Witchcraft, With an Account of Salem Village and A History of Opinions on Witchcraft and Kindred Subjects (2 vols., Boston, 1867), II. 397.
1 Esther Forbes, A MIRROR FOR WITCHES (Boston, 1928).
2 (Boston, 1675).
3 Ibid., 23.
4 Ibid., 17.
5 The second has the title A Sermon (preached at the Lecture in Boston. . . When two men were Executed . . .) (Boston, 1685).
6 Three printings (under different titles) were issued in 1686 and 1687. A fourth occurred in London in 1691. The quotation is from the 1687 edition, 114.
7 Ibid., 121, 122.
8 [Mather], Pillars of Salt, 106.
9 Ibid., 52–55.
1 Ibid., 83–85.
2 The statements in this paragraph and below are based on a reading of the True Confessions and Dying Warnings listed in the following sources: Charles Evans, American Bibliography (14 vols., Chicago, 1903–1955); Thomas M. McDade, The Annals of Murder: A Bibliography of Books and Pamphlets on American Murders from Colonial Times to 1900 (Norman, Oklahoma, 1961); Broadsides, Ballads Etc. Printed in Massachusetts 1639–1800, in Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, 75; and Ola Elizabeth Winslow, American Broadside Verse form Imprints of the 17th & 18th Centuries (New Haven, Conn., 1930). After this essay had been accepted for publication by the late Walter Muir Whitehill, my colleague, Richard Colles Johnson, brought to my attention Ronald A. Bosco’s “Early American Gallows Literature: An Annotated Checklist,” in Resources for American Literary Study, VIII (Spring 1978), 81–105. In his introduction, Bosco cites Wayne C. Minnick, “The New England Execution Sermon, 1630–1800,” in Speech Monographs, XXXV (1968), 67–89. It is an interesting article, but I did not change mine because of it.
3 A Compleat Body of Divinity (Boston, 1726), 802–803.
4 See George Lee Haskins, Law and Authority in Early Massachusetts: A Study in Tradition and Design (New York, 1960), 91–93, 204–211.
5 The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (New York, 1939), Chapter XIII, passim. Quotation from page 384.
6 Cotton Mather, TREMENDA. The Dreadful Sound WITH WHICH The Wicked are to be Thunderstruck (Boston, 1721), 35–40.
7 Thomas Foxcroft, Lessons of Caution to Young Sinners (Boston, 1733), i.
8 A Compleat Body of Divinity, 597–655 (second pagination).
9 See Perry Miller, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Cambridge, Mass., 1953) passim. For two works that question Miller’s theme of declension, see Darrett Bruce Rutman, Winthrop’s Boston: Portrait of a Puritan Town (Chapel Hill, N. C., 1965), and Michael Zuckerman, Peaceable Kingdoms: New England Towns in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1970).
1 Magnalia Christi Americana or, THE Ecclesiastical history of NEW ENGLAND (London, 1702), Book VI, 37.
2 Robert Calef, “More Wonders of the Invisible World,” in George Lincoln Burr, ed., Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases (New York, 1914), 375–376. The obvious parallel between this statement of the situation and Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon suggests that societies in crisis, regardless of their differences, tend to act alike. A further and striking parallel is to be found in Tudor Society described by Lacey Baldwin Smith, “English Treason Trials and Confessions in the Sixteenth Century,” The Journal of the History of Ideas, xv. (October 1954), 471–498.
3 Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana, Book VI, 43–47. I was happy to have Mr. Charles G. Steffen point out to me Kai T. Erikson’s statement, on pages 194–195 of his Wayward Puritans. . . (New York, 1966), supporting this view. “To repent,” he wrote, “is to agree that the moral standards of the community are right and that the sentence of the court is just.”
4 Winthrop, speech to General Court 3 July 1645, in Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson, eds., The Puritans (Boston, 1938), 207.
5 Lawrence W. Towner, “A Fondness for Freedom: Servant Protest in Puritan Society,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., XIX. (April 1962), 213–215. The quotations are from page 215.
6 I am indebted to Mr. Charles G. Steffen for the following data and for suggesting their importance to me: In the early years of the literary genre, through 1701, the eleven confessors were all members of the community. But between 1702 and 1776, while nineteen were members of the community, sixty-six were outsiders, among them sixteen Indians, ten blacks, eleven Irish, and twelve pirates. See note 2, page 532, above, for the sources.
7 Advice from the Dead to the Living. . . poor Julian. . . (Boston, [1733]).
8 Ibid.
9 These broadsides are in the Boston Public Library and are cited in Broadsides, Ballads, op. cit., Nos. 628–630.
1 Winslow, American Broadside Verse, 167; and Broadsides, Ballads, Etc., 128 (No. 912).
1 Alan Heimert and Perry Miller, eds., The Great Awakening (Indianapolis, 1967]) Alan Heimert, Religion and the American Mind: from the Great Awakening to the Revolution (Cambridge, 1966). Perry Miller, “From Edwards to Emerson,” Errand into the Wilderness (New York, [1964]). See also Wm. G. McLoughlin, Isaac Backus on Church, State and Calvinism (Cambridge, 1968).
2 Alice M. Baldwin, The New England Clergy and the American Revolution (Durham, 1928), 80. Eugene E. White, “Decline of the Great Awakening in New England,” The New England Quarterly, XXIV (March 1951), 49–50. C. C. Goen, Revivalism and Separatism in New England, 1740–1800 (New Haven, 1962), 28.
3 Emil Oberholzer, Jr., Delinquent Saints, Disciplinary Action in the Early Congregational Churches of Massachusetts (New York, 1956), 78, 410.
4 Clifford K. Shipton, review of Delinquent Saints in William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, XIII. No. 3 (July 1956), 409–411.
5 Goen, Revivalism and Separatism, 28.
6 See Wm. G. McLoughlin, New England Dissent, 1630–1833 (Cambridge, 1970).
7 David Hall, The Christian History (Boston, 1744), 185.
8 Charles Chauncy, Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in New England . . . (Boston, 1743), 77. See Edwin S. Gaustad, “Charles Chauncy and the Great Awakening: a Survey and Bibliography,” The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, XLV (1951), 125–135.
9 Charles F. Adams’s suggestion that the Great Awakening produced a low level of sexual morality in New England has been at least partially refuted by Henry B. Parkes, but Oberholzer is inconclusive in his analysis. He does say, however, that “The decline of church discipline began in the decade following the Great Awakening.” Oberholzer, Delinquent Saints, 236–239. See Charles F. Adams, “Some Phases of Sexual Morality and Church Discipline in Colonial New England,” II. Proceedings, Massachusetts Historical Society, VI (1891), 477–516. Henry B. Parkes, “Sexual Morality and the Great Awakening,” The New England Quarterly, III (1930), 133–135, and “Morals and Law Enforcement in Colonial New England,” ibid., V (1932), 431–452.
1 Ellen D. Larned, Historic Gleanings in Windham County, Conn. (Providence, 1899), 38–39.
2 The Christian History, 195–196.
3 Ibid., II. 156.
4 Goen, Revivalism and Separatism, 201. Isaac Backus Papers, November 1768, Andover Newton Theological School.
5 Isaac Backus, A History of New England. . . (Newton, 1871), 11, 88–89.
6 Isaac Backus Papers, Andover Newton Theological School, 5 March 1753.
7 Records of the First Baptist Church of Middleborough, 28 June 1764.
8 Backus, History, II. 276.
9 Ibid., II. 446.
1 See the excellent sketch of Prentice in Clifford K. Shipton’s, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, VIII (Boston, 1951), 248–257.
2 Solomon Prentice, Narrative (Massachusetts Historical Society), 3.
3 Activities in Grafton and the trials of Prentice are recorded in the diary of the Reverend Ebenezer Parkman of Westborough. See F. G. Walett, ed., The Diary of Ebenezer Parkman, Worcester, 1974, 182 et seq.
4 Frederick C. Pierce, History of Grafton (Worcester, 1879), 548.
5 William L. Chaffin, History of. . . Easton (Cambridge, 1886), 136.
6 Franklin B. Dexter, Extracts from the Itineraries and other Miscellanies of Ezra Stiles (New Haven, 1916), 418.
7 Parkman Diary, 18 June, 7 July 1747.
8 Ibid., 18 May 1747.
9 Ibid., 19 July 1747.
1 Parkman Diary, 29 June 1749. See Mary B. Claflin, Brampton Sketches (New York, 1890), 118–120.
2 Dexter, Extracts, 418.
3 Parkman Diary, 23 February 1773.
4 See Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, VIII. 481–490. Henry S. Nourse, History of the Town of Harvard (Harvard, 1894), 185–187.
5 The Christian History, II. 13.
6 Nourse, Harvard, 253–254.
7 Thomas B. Wyman, Charlestown Genealogies and Estates (Boston, 1879), I. 544.
8 Nourse, Harvard, 255.
9 Backus, History of New England, II. 472.
1 Isaac Backus Papers, Andover Newton Theological School.
2 Nourse, Harvard, 268. Worster was later converted to Shakerism and at one time was stripped and whipped by a mob of townspeople.
3 Ibid., 255. Zaccheus Stevens transferred the property to Ireland “for the use of the community.” Builders of the house were David Hoar, Malabar Bean, Isaac Willard, Abel Jewett, Samuel and Jonathan Cooper, Ethan Phillips, John Maynard, and Zaccheus Stevens.
4 Ibid., 472. Clara E. Sears, Gleanings from Old Shaker Journals (Boston, 1916), 2–3. Nourse, Harvard, Edward D. Andrews, The People Called Shakers (New York, 1953), 36. Backus, History of New England, II. 462.
5 Sears, Shaker Gleanings, 3–4.
6 Nourse, Harvard, 257.
7 Andrews, Shakers, 36. See Amos Taylor, Narrative of the strange Character of the People known by the name of Shakers. . . (Worcester, [1782]). In a curious [and probably mistaken] early reference to Shakers in Massachusetts, Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy, 4 May 1781, refers to a Superior Court case at Northampton in which “two persons of this sect were indicted for Adultery, to which they both pleaded guilty. . . . It is said the woman, conceiving her husband to be an UNHOLY man, thought she ought not to cohabit with him, or suffer him to partake of those conjugal pleasures which were his right only to enjoy; but threw herself into the arms and embraces of one of the Brotherhood, who was, as she supposed, more righteous and ’tis said pregnant by him. It is hoped these disturbers of the peace will be properly taken care of.”
8 Franklin B. Dexter, The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles (New York, 1901), II. 558.
9 Sears, Shaker Gleanings, 4.
1 Andrews, People Called Shakers, 50.
* Read at the Society’s meeting on 26 April 1973.
1 The term “Great Seal Deputed” is used in English seal nomenclature to denote those seals which, over the course of centuries, have taken the place of the one Great Seal of the realm for the authentication of documents, which at one time would have been authenticated by the Great Seal itself. As government became more complex and its ramification more widespread, the use of the one Great Seal became impossible and so other seals fulfilled its tasks, some of them specifically being called [Great] Seals Deputed for particular business. Of this category of seal, those for use in the British colonies show the widest divergence from the traditional pattern of Great Seals and are probably the most interesting of them all. The use of the term in connection with the Massachusetts Bay seals, is invaluable in that it establishes a differentiation between the Great Seal of proprietorial government and the Great Seal Deputed of royal government with some precision.
The proprietorial seals have been studied, though from a different viewpoint to that of this present paper, by M. B. Jones in “The Early Massachusetts-Bay Colony Seals” (Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, XLIV (1934), 13–44). It is interesting to note that on p. 17 of his article Jones mentions and describes the seal used by Sir Edmund Andros when he took over “the reins of government in 1686.” From the illustration facing p. 17, it is clear that this seal was the Great Seal Deputed of the short-lived Dominion of New England and not a seal for the colony of Massachusetts Bay alone. On this ground, this New England seal is not included in the enumeration of strictly Massachusetts Bay seals in this paper.
The reproductions of the seals of Georges I, II, and III accompanying this article are made by kind permission of the Deputy Master of the Royal Mint.
2 Studies similar to this present one have appeared for Virginia in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, LXVI. no. I (January 1958), 1–21; for Maryland in the Maryland Historical Magazine, 54. no. 2 (June 1959), 30–37; and for New Jersey in Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society, LXXIX. no. 4 (October 1961), 223–231.
3 Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, 1700, 743 (hereafter cited as Cal. S. P. Col., A. & W. I.)
4 Since this paper was delivered, thanks to the good offices of my friend, Mr. Roger Ellis, F.S.A., it is now possible to provide an illustration of a good impression of William and Mary’s seal as applied to a document amongst the records of the High Court of Admiralty in the Public Record office (ref. HCA1/85 Pt. II). The actual legend differs slightly from Popple’s rendering just quoted in particular his ugly Guglielmus is rendered more correctly as Guilelmus. This impression is reproduced by permission of the Keeper of the Public Records.
5 Royal Mint Record Book, VII. 75. The office of H. M. Graver of the Seals was not on the establishment of the Royal Mint but was a separate office to which appointment was made by royal warrant. The Graver presented his bill for seals to the Board of Trade and Plantations until George II’s reign who, after approving the charges, passed it to the Treasury for payment. The Treasury in its turn submitted the bill to the Master and officers of the Royal Mint, asking them to certify the reasonableness of the charges. Hence this information is more readily accessible in the records of the Mint than in the records of the Treasury. From 1728, the Graver presented his bill direct to the Treasury.
6 P.R.O. C.O.5/1312, f.40.
7 Cal. S. P. Col., A. & W. I., 1702, 366.
8 Royal Mint Record Book, VII. 78.
9 Journal of the Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, I. 47 (hereafter cited as Journ. T.& P.).
1 Ibid., 50.
2 Ibid., 51.
3 Calendar of Treasury Books, XIX. 397.
4 Journ. T. & P., I. 70.
5 Ibid., 73.
6 Ibid., 76.
7 Ibid., 128.
8 Ibid., 129.
9 Ibid., 132.
1 Ibid., 134.
2 Ibid., 139.
3 Cal. S. P. Col., A. & W. I., 1704–1705, 657.
4 Royal Mint Record Book, VII. 81–82.
5 Cal. S. P. Col., A. & W. I., 1704–1705, 599.
6 Cal. S. P. Col., A. & W. I., 1708–1709, 19.
7 Ibid.,37.
8 Journ. T. & P., ii, 62.
9 Royal Mint Record Book, VII. 91.
1 Journ. T. & P., III. 46.
2 Ibid., 277.
3 Ibid., 279.
4 Royal Mint Record Book, VII. 100.
5 Ibid.,
6 Cal. S. P. Col., A. & W. I., 1726–1727, 309.
7 Ibid., 352.
8 Ibid., 403.
9 Journ. T. & P., v. 421.
1 Ibid., 430.
2 Cal. S. P. Col., A. & W. I., 1726–1727, 403.
3 Royal Mint Record Book, VII. 116.
4 Cal. S. P. Col., A. & W. I., 1732, 180.
5 Ibid., 192.
6 Journ. T. & P., VI. 341.
7 Ibid., XI. 133.
8 Ibid., 148.
9 Ibid., 242.
1 Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial, v. 86.
2 Ibid., 86.
3 What happened to the matrices of colonial Great Seals Deputed is a mystery yet unsolved. After their return to England and formal defacement by the Sovereign in Council they vanish from sight. Probably they were melted down and the silver reused. The George III seals of the “royal” colonies in North America, of course, were not returned to England and, with one exception, have not been traced. The exception is the matrix of George Ill’s Great Seal Deputed for the colony of South Carolina, which is now in the British Museum and is described by A. P. Tonnochy in his Catalogue of Seal Dies in The British Museum (London, 1952), 52, entry 267. Unfortunately, the Museum is unable to say when, how, or from whom it acquired this unique survival.
In A Guide to Seals in the Public Record Office (London, H. M. Stationery Office, 1954), the late Sir Hilary Jenkinson on p. 45, fn. 3, notes that as late as 1786 the Great Seal Deputed of the former colony of New Hampshire was used on a document, now filed amongst the class of American Loyalists’ Claims in the records of the Exchequer and Audit Department (A.O. 13/40). One wonders whether other—and possibly later—examples of such unusual usages are to be found in records in the former colonies themselves and whether they afford any clues as to the eventual fate of the matrices.
1 Whitcombs had been in Norridgewock since Caroline’s great-grandfather, Thomas Whitcomb (1736–1824), born in Littleton, Massachusetts, and married there on 29 November 1759 to Anne Whitney of Stow, came to Maine during the Revolution. They moved first to Deerfield, New Hampshire, where Thomas enlisted as a Revolutionary soldier. Discharged in December 1776 after service at Ticonderoga, Thomas Whitcomb came to the Kennebec, where he became a taxpayer at Norridgewock in 1780. His wife, known as “Old Granny Whitcomb” served as traveling doctor and midwife for the region until Zebulon Gilman arrived in 1785. Their son, Charles Whitcomb (1765–1846), who married Sylvia Davenport (1767–1855), was a farmer in Moscow. Charles’s third son, Emmon Whitcomb (1800–1885), who was born in Norridgewock, married Lydia Smith (1804–1861)—Caroline’s parents—farmed first in Moscow, then pushed north to Aroostook, winding up at Presque Isle and Easton.
2 Children of Harrison Gray Otis and Caroline (Whitcomb) Greenwood
- 1. Helen Frances (1843–?), m. 1861 John Hartwell Cross (1833–1875)
- 2. Emily Moore (1847–?), m. 1871 Orlando Partridge Robinson (1842–?)
- 3. Julia Etta (1848–?)
- 4. Flora (1851–1930), m. 1879 John Thomas Williams (1848–1881)
- 5. Sanford Russell (1858–?), m. 1886 Vina Rose Akeley (1864–?)
As Julia was born in Moscow in 1848 and Flora in Presque Isle in 1851, the move to Aroostook must have taken place between those years.
3 Betsey Russell, born 25 September 1788, was the daughter of Calvin Russell (1762–1852), a native of Lexington, Massachusetts, who lived at Groton when, in his teens, he enlisted in the Revolution. In 1793, with his father Ephraim Russell (1731—), brothers, and wife Hannah Bailey (1764–1846), whom he had married in 1784, Calvin Russell came to Canaan (now part of Skowhegan), Maine. He stayed there, at least in theory, until 1824, when he moved to Moscow, where he died in 1852. Although he had nine children, who, on his death at 90, provided him with a decent gravestone in the Bingham burying ground, he was described as a hunter and trapper, of no settled abode, who moved from place to place where game was abundant. In applying for a pension he once claimed that his income was less than five dollars a year! Although his wife must have done most of the work, she lived past her eighty first birthday.
Betsey Russell Greenwood was described thus by her granddaughter, Eva J. Hamilton: “She was not tall, dark hair, black eyes. Died in Moscow of dropsy and consumption at the age of fifty-six years. A Baptist.”
Calvin Russell was the great-great-great-grandson of John Russell (d. 1678), the contentious Baptist shoemaker and preacher, who came from England to Boston in 1635, settled in Woburn in 1640, and made a theological nuisance of himself. Of his preaching, the Reverend Samuel Willard of The Old South Church wrote: in 1681 in Ne Sutor ultra Crepidam, or brief Animadversions Upon the New-England Baptists: “Truly, if Goodman Russell be a fit man for a minister, we have but fooled ourselves in building colleges and instructing children in learning.” Similarly, because of him, Cotton Mather accused the Baptists of the sin of Jeroboam in making priests of the lowest order of the people.
On the death in Woburn of his first wife, whom he had presumably married in England, John Russell married in 1645 Elizabeth Baker (?—1690). Their son John (?—1680) married Sarah Champney (?-1680) of Cambridge. Their grandson John (1662–1717), married in 1682 Elizabeth Palmer; their great-grandson Joseph (1685–1763) married Jane Kendall (1692–1775). All these Russells stayed in Woburn. Ephraim, the father of Calvin and a great-great-grandson of the immigrant John, lived in Concord and Groton before coming to Canaan Plantation (Skowhegan) with his son in 1793. Eben Weston says that Ephraim Russell lived on an acre or two of land fenced off for him on the John Webb farm where he followed his trade of shoemaker. He also taught school in the winter of 1797–1798, thus combining cobbling with instruction in the manner of his ancestors.
4 Children of Gilbert and Betsey (Russell) Greenwood
- 1. Rhoda (1811–1813)
- 2. Harrison Gray Otis (1813–1898)
- 3. Betsey (1815—), m. 1835 Charles Grant
- 4. Israel (1817–1863), m. Abigail Whitney
- 5. Calvin Russell (1820—), m. Susan Cleveland
- 6. Gilbert (1822–1822)
- 7. Nancy Towne (1824–), living in 1915
- 8. Gilbert (1827–1907?), m. 1856 Esther Tucker Hale
- 9. William B. (1829–1894?)
Eva J. Hamilton said that Gilbert Greenwood was a Congregationalist, although his wife was a Baptist.
5 Frederick Greenwood, having cast his net widely for everyone of the name that he could locate, gathered data on the Maine Greenwoods. When he came to publish, he put this in a separate section, devoted to descendants of Miles and Elizabeth Rhodes, without attempting to link this pair specifically into the family.
My grandmother corresponded with the children of Isaac John Greenwood (1833–1911), who had long been at work on another study of the family, but learned nothing useful from them. His book, The Greenwood Family of Norwich, England in America, posthumously published in 1934—four years after my grandmother’s death—mentioned only Miles’s Hall and Elkins wives, and had nothing to say about Elizabeth Rhodes and her Maine descendants.