Part 5

I do not know if it indeed was so, but to me the very nature of the New England world seems to have been less cheerful in those earlier days than now. Not only was life less joyous, but nature wore a harsher front. I have spoken of the great sickness of 1751, and how it desolated Weymouth; but epidemics seem to have been far more prevalent during the last century than in this. The fearful scourge of the small-pox has left its pit-marks on every page of early New England history, and when, in 1775, a chronic dysentery prevailed to such an extent that three, four and even five children were lost in single families, a Weymouth woman writing from the midst of the general distress could only say “the dread upon the minds of the people of catching the distemper is almost as great as if it were the small-pox.”[79] Yet in 1735 the diphtheria raged, as well as in 1751. Their winters also seem to have been longer, their snows deeper, their frosts more severe than ours. In 1717 there was a great snow-storm, famous in New England annals. The country was buried under huge drifts, which swept over fences and houses, reducing the whole colony to one white, glittering desert. Weymouth disappeared with the rest, and the event was of sufficient importance to cause a memorandum of it to be inserted in the records.[80] In other years we hear of the harbor freezing over in November; and on the 26th of March, 1785, the winter’s snow, though much reduced, lay still on a level with the fences, nor was it till April 7th that the ice broke up in the Fore River.[81] I doubt whether any man now living has witnessed a like occurrence.

A severer climate and harsher visitations seem strictly in keeping with the character of the people. The religious element which led to the settlement of New England still strongly asserted itself in the life and customs of the colony. Wealth had hardly yet begun to exercise its subtle influence upon it. Indeed, though almost all were prosperous there was little of what can properly be called wealth in the community, but there was equally little poverty. The people lived in rude abundance, and I do not believe that during the first hundred years of the history of Weymouth as many persons received public aid of the town. Certainly the method of dealing with pauperism, where it occasionally appears in the records, was primitive in the extreme, and scarcely commends itself to modern theories.[82] But as a rule there appears to have been a strikingly equal division of such property as the people had, which lay almost wholly in their cattle and their lands; accumulation had scarcely begun.

We are always accustomed to regard the past as a better and purer time than the present,--there is a vague, traditional simplicity and innocence hanging about it almost Arcadian in character. I can find no ground on which to base this pleasant fancy. Taken altogether I do not believe that the morals of Weymouth or of her sister towns were on the average as good in the eighteenth century as in the nineteenth. The people were sterner and graver,--the law and the magistrate were more severe, but human nature was the same and would have vent. There was, I am inclined to think, more hypocrisy in those days than now, but I have seen nothing which has led me to believe that the women were more chaste, or that the men were more temperate, or that, in proportion to population, fewer or less degrading crimes were perpetrated. Certainly the earlier generations were as a race not so charitable as their descendants, and less of a spirit of kindly Christianity prevailed among them. But in those days enjoyment itself was almost a crime, and every pleasure was thought to be a lure of the devil and close upon the boundary line to guilt. Holidays, accordingly, were few and far between. The May-pole disappeared with the wild Morton of Merry Mount. During the colonial period, election or training day was what the Fourth of July is to us,--the great anniversary of the year, on which the whole community came as near to unbending as it knew how. Thanksgiving and the annual fast were both church days; Guy Fawkes’ day was notorious for its noisy revels; Sunday was devoted to nominal rest and veritable exhortation. On that day, every one not an infant attended church, and the infants were left alone at home.[83] From Saturday evening to Monday morning all labor ceased,--the voices of the children were hushed,--the blinds were drawn, and a quiet, which was not rest, pervaded the town. The lecture and the sermon were the events of the week,--they supplied the place of the theatre, the novel and the newspaper,--they were listened to and discussed and commented upon by old and young,--and, so far as my investigations have enabled me to judge, the stiffest of orthodoxy was ever preached from the Weymouth pulpit.

In the early days, however, the clergy of New England were an aristocracy,--almost a caste. Not, of course, an aristocracy of wealth, but of education, tradition and faith,--a veritable priesthood in fact. The tie between the pastor and his people partook almost of the nature of the wedding bond; there was a sanctity about it; it was well-nigh indissoluble. But in its earliest period Weymouth was not fortunate in these relations. Prior to 1635 the plantation was too poor and too small in numbers to maintain a church, but that year one was gathered, being the eleventh of the colony.[84] Of Mr. Hull, the first authentic pastor, it can only be said that he preached in Weymouth for several years, and then his connection with the church was dissolved. There seems indeed at this time to have been a serious schism in the infant settlement, for, while Mr. Hull arrived in 1635 and preached his farewell sermon in May, 1639, yet as early as January, 1638, the elders of Boston had come to Weymouth, and had there demonstrated the efficacy of prayer by effecting a reconciliation between one Mr. Jenner and his people. The reconciliation seems to have been but temporary, for, after representing the town as deputy in the General Court in 1640, in 1641 Mr. Jenner removed to Saco. Meanwhile, in 1637, the Rev. Mr. Lenthall also appears upon the Weymouth stage, bringing with him the pestilential doctrines of Mrs. Hutchinson in regard to justification before faith and other equally incomprehensible theses, which came so near working the destruction of the infant colony. A movement was started inviting Mr. Lenthall to settle and organize a new church. It was apparently making rapid headway when the magistrates of the colony energetically interfered to put a stop to it. In March, 1638, Mr. Lenthall accordingly, with some of his leading supporters, was summoned to appear before the General Court, and made to see good reason why, with expressions of deep contrition, he should make a retraction of his heresies in writing and in open court. Upon this, he was, with some opposition, dismissed without a fine, but only on condition that he was to make a similar public recantation in Weymouth, and should also be on hand when the next General Court assembled. His followers did not escape so easily; one of them was heavily fined, another was disfranchised, a third, having no means wherewith to pay a fine, was publicly whipped, and a fourth, “because of his novel disposition,” received a significant intimation to the effect that the General Court “were weary of him, unless he reform.” Shortly after this miscarriage, features in which are unpleasantly suggestive of inquisitorial proceedings in other lands, the Rev. Mr. Lenthall seems to have left Weymouth, for he is next heard of in Rhode Island, that blessed asylum for the persecuted of Massachusetts.[85]

Mr. Lenthall, however, represented only a schism in the Weymouth church; Mr. Jenner was the minister in the line of true succession. He retired to Maine in 1640 and was succeeded in his pastorate by Mr. Newman, who at last brought with him peace to the distracted church. He must have been a very superior man,--able, learned and faithful. Educated at Oxford, he had preached many years in England before coming to this country in 1638. He then spent some time in Dorchester, and was subsequently invited to Weymouth, where he settled and remained until he migrated with the larger portion of his people to Rehoboth. He is the real author of the Concordance to the Bible which goes under Cruden’s name; for it was he who prepared the basis of the work, which was subsequently finished and published at Cambridge.[86]

The Weymouth church had now had three preachers in nine years, but the day of short pastorates was over. The Rev. Thomas Thacher was ordained as the successor of Mr. Newman in 1644, and there remained, beloved and respected of his people, for twenty years. Then marrying a second time, and his parish being unable to afford him a sufficient maintenance,[87] he moved to Boston, the home of his wife, and in him Weymouth lost at once its spiritual and its medical adviser, for Mr. Thacher was a skillful physician as well as a learned divine. Subsequently, in 1669, he became the first pastor of the Old South Church, in Boston, in which position he died, in 1678, leaving behind him a race of descendants whose names are familiar through a century of colonial annals.

To Mr. Thacher’s pastorate of twenty years succeeded the fifty-one years of the learned and exemplary Samuel Torrey, the trusted adviser of the magistrates of his day, the intimate friend of all its leading divines, thrice invited to preach the election sermon, twice called to the presidency of Harvard College. Mr. Torrey enjoyed a very remarkable gift of prayer, so that it is told of him that upon the occasion of a public fast, in 1696, after all the other exercises, he prayed for two hours, and that so acceptably that his auditors, when towards the close he hinted at some new and agreeable fields of thought, could not help wishing him to enlarge upon them.[88] He died deeply lamented, at the age of seventy-six, in the year 1707.

Peter Thacher succeeded Mr. Torrey in the year of the latter’s death, and continued in his ministry eleven years; being followed, in 1719, by Thomas Paine, whose connection with the church continued until dissolved, at his own request, in 1734. He then retired to Boston, where he ended his life, and his body was brought back to Weymouth for burial beside his children. He was the father and the grandfather of those Robert Treat Paines, the line of which is continued to the present day.

In 1734 the Rev. William Smith was settled as the eighth successive pastor of the first church, and so continued for forty-nine years, and until after the close of the colonial period. Mr. Smith was beloved and respected through his long ministry by his people, but to posterity he is chiefly known as the father of her who proved to be the most famous child of Weymouth. The familiar anecdote of Parson Smith’s sermons on the marriages of his two daughters does not need to be repeated here.[89] Whether the good old pastor did or did not prepare the wedding discourse for Abigail’s benefit from so very unsavory a text as that “John came neither eating nor drinking, and men say he hath a devil,” we cannot now tell; the anecdote rests on tradition alone. Let us hope, however, that he did, for he lived to see his daughter’s choice justified in the eyes of the most doubting of his parishioners; though he had himself already been thirteen years in his grave when, on the 8th of February, 1797, that daughter wrote to her husband in these solemn words, breathing the full spirit of the dead divine: “You have this day to declare yourself head of a nation. ‘And now, O Lord, my God, thou hast made thy servant ruler over the people. Give unto him an understanding heart, that he may know how to go out and come in before this great people; that he may discern between good and bad. For who is able to judge this thy so great a people?’... My thoughts and my meditation are with you, though personally absent; and my petitions to Heaven are, that ‘the things which make for peace may not be hidden from your eyes.’”[90]

But it is necessary to go back to the year 1765, when the long, monotonous quiet of over a century was to be broken for Weymouth and all her sister towns by the deep though distant mutterings of an impending war. The first notes of the struggle then break sharply in on the peaceful sameness of the town records like the blast of a trumpet. The Stamp Act had been passed, and the August riots had taken place in Boston. Mr. Oliver had been forced to resign his office, and the house of the Lieutenant-Governor had been sacked. The odious act was to take effect on the 1st of November, and a special session of the General Court had been called to take into consideration the course it was incumbent on the colony to pursue. The representative of Weymouth in those days was James Humphrey, Esq. Under these circumstances a meeting of the freemen was held on the 16th of October, at which Dr. Cotton Tufts was chosen Moderator, and a ringing address of instructions to Master Humphrey, as he was called, was voted and entered at length upon the records. The spirit of the ancient town was up, and its voice emitted no uncertain sound. Cotton Tufts was at that time thirty-four years of age. He was fully imbued with the patriotic spirit of the day, and was, in his own vicinage, a leading man. It is to his pen that the papers now entered on the town records are in all probability to be credited.[91]

Presently the government of the mother country somewhat receded from its position, and, during the loyal reaction which ensued, a draft of a measure indemnifying the sufferers in the August riots was submitted to the General Court. A special town meeting was held on September 1, 1766, and the town refused to give its assent to the payment of damages out of the public treasury. But another meeting was held on the 1st of December, when written instructions were entered at length on the records, again embodying the full rebel spirit of the day, but this time, and under strict conditions, authorizing Master Humphrey to vote for the proposed compensation.

In 1768 came the news that the British regiments were ordered to Boston. A committee of the Boston town meeting, called in consequence of this announcement, waited on Governor Bernard with a request, among other things, that the General Court should be convened. Meeting with a refusal, the Boston people took the matter into their own hands, and instructed their selectmen to invite, by circular letter, all the towns in the colony to send representatives to assemble in convention, at Boston, on the 22d of September. Over one hundred towns complied with this bold invitation, thus overriding the royal governor, and convening an assembly which, though it sat but four days, and carefully avoided any claim to a legal existence, was, in everything but in name, a house of representatives. In this convention sat James Humphrey, under instructions to be there from the town of Weymouth.

More than five years now passed away during which the controversy between the mother country and the colonies was continually approaching a crisis, but they left no mark on the records of Weymouth. Then arose the question as to the tax on tea. Early in December, 1773, the famous town meeting had been held in Faneuil Hall, at which the resolve was passed, “that if any person or persons shall hereafter import tea from Great Britain, or if any master or masters of any vessel or vessels in Great Britain shall take the same on board to be transported to this place, until the unrighteous act shall be repealed, he, or they, shall be deemed by this body an enemy to his country, and we will prevent the landing and sale of the same, and the payment of any duty thereon, and will effect the return thereof to the place from whence it shall come.”[92] Copies of this resolve were sent to all the sea-port towns in the Province. A few days later, on the night of December 16th, the celebrated tea-party took place in the Old South Church and on the wharves of Boston. In response to the resolve a special town meeting was held in Weymouth on Monday, January 3d, 1774, at which it was resolved by a very large majority, after some debate, that the inhabitants of the town would neither purchase nor make use of any teas, excepting such as they might happen then to have on hand, until Parliament repealed the odious duty upon it. On the 28th of September the town again met and chose a representative to the General Court, which convened at Salem on the 5th of October; no other instructions were given to him than those adopted by Boston for its own representatives, copies of which had been freely circulated.

A committee had been appointed at a town meeting held in July to procure signatures to the Joseph Warren “Solemn League and Covenant,” which had been sent forth by the Boston committee of correspondence on the 5th of June. This measure was subsequently adopted by the Congress then sitting at Philadelphia, and recommended under the name of a Continental Association. So, on the 23d of December, 1774, at the close of the evening lecture, the roll of the inhabitants of Weymouth was called, and each man voted yea or nay on the question of the approval of the association. The two precincts voted separately; in each one hundred and twenty-three names were called, beginning with the two clergymen; in the first precinct, one hundred and thirteen answered to their names, of whom one hundred and nine voted “yea”; in the second precinct, out of one hundred and three voting, not one responded “nay.” On the 30th of January the town again met and voted “To bare the constables of 1773 harmless in not carrying their money to Haryson Gray,” he being the royalist treasurer of the Province; and further directed that the funds on hand should be turned over to the town treasurer. On the 9th of March this vote was reconsidered, and the money was directed to be paid to Henry Gardner of Stow, who now represented the patriot exchequer. At this meeting, too, the question was agitated of raising a company of minute-men, but the motion to that effect was not then carried. On the 27th of the same month, however, another town meeting was held and the action of the previous meeting was reconsidered, the town voting to raise a company of fifty-three men, who were to receive one shilling a week each for four weeks, and were to be drilled two half days a week. Upon the 2d of May another town meeting was held, and upon the 9th yet another. The affairs at Lexington and Concord had now taken place, and the greatest anxiety prevailed through all the towns in the vicinity of Boston. They were ever looking for similar enterprises. So at the first of these two meetings provision was made for a military guard of fifteen men, and at the second a committee of correspondence was organized, at the head of which were placed Dr. Tufts and Colonel Lovell. Twelve days later, early on Sunday, the 21st of May, the news was brought to the town that three sloops and a cutter had, during the previous night, come down from Boston and had anchored at the mouth of the Fore River. A landing was momentarily expected, and it was even reported to have taken place, and that three hundred soldiers were advancing on the town. Three alarm guns were fired, the bells were rung and the drums beat to arms. The panic and confusion were very great and worth recording, for it is the only time in the long history of the town that Weymouth has ever had cause to fear that a civilized and disciplined foe was at her threshold. Every house below the present North Weymouth station was deserted by the women and children. Mr. Smith’s family fled from the old parsonage, and Dr. Tufts’ wife being ill at the time, had a bed thrown into a cart, and, putting herself upon it, was driven to Bridgewater as a place of security; and, indeed, tradition says that other ladies of Weymouth gave evidence that morning of an abundant vitality, and displayed truly remarkable powers of locomotion. Meanwhile Dr. Tufts himself was busy serving out rations and supplying ammunition to the minute-men, who poured rapidly in from Hingham and Randolph and Braintree and all the neighboring towns, until nearly 2,000 of them were on the ground. Then it was discovered that the enemy were only foraging, and were engaged in removing hay from Grape Island. By the time they had secured about three tons, the minute-men had brought a sloop and lighter round from Hingham on which they put out for the island, whereupon the enemy decamped.[93] It was a mere alarm in which no one was hurt, but it showed the spirit of the town even though it only resulted in the destruction of the hay, which doubtless Gen. Ward’s army needed, and which, had they been older soldiers, the minute-men would have brought away instead of burning.

Towards the middle of July again, a small party, among whom was Captain Goold of the Weymouth company, with twenty-five of his men, went out from the Moon Head and burned a house and a barn full of hay on Long Island. On this occasion they had a sharp skirmish, for the British men-of-war lying in the harbor sent out their cutters to intercept the party. They all, however, got back safely except one man of the covering force on Moon Head, who was killed by a cannon-ball. That night a sloop of war dropped down to the Fore River, but attempted nothing beyond creating another alarm. And this experience from time to time was repeated, until at last, in the spring of 1775, Boston was evacuated; and upon the 14th of June following, in consequence of military movements on the islands in the harbor, the last remnant of the British fleet put to sea, and the towns bordering on the bay were thereafter allowed to rest in peace.

During the year 1775 ten town meetings had been held in Weymouth, and seven were held in 1776. And now we enter on a new phase of the struggle for independence. For us, with our recollections of the war of the rebellion still fresh in our memories, it is most curious to read these ancient records,--to observe how closely history repeats itself. We well remember the fierce, self-sacrificing patriotism of 1861,--how the country was all alive with eagerness, how money was poured forth like water, and how regiments enlisted faster than they could be put into the field. We remember how this lasted through a short six months, and how we then began to realize what war meant. Then bounties began to be paid,--then enlistments grew more difficult just in proportion as the call for men became more pressing,--then values were unsettled, prices rose, the feverish glow of excitement faded away, and stern-visaged war gradually assumed her whole hateful front. We generally, too, are apt to imagine that the earlier days were less selfish, more self-sacrificing, more harmonious than our own. The records tell a different story. The declaration of Independence had only just been ventured upon,--it was not yet entered upon the records of Weymouth, “there to remain as a perpetual memorial,”--when on the 15th of July, 1776, a town meeting was held to secure the enlistment of ten men for the continental army, that being the quota of the town. It was voted to raise £130, in order to give each recruit a town bounty of £13 in addition to the state bounty of £7,--making a bounty of £20 to each man. It was also voted to allow the citizens of Weymouth two days in which to enlist, after which a committee of two was to go forth in search of recruits elsewhere. But before the 22d of the month eight men more were called for, and so at its adjourned meeting the town had to increase its appropriation to £234, a portion of which sum was borrowed of Captain James White for one year,--being the earliest record of a Weymouth town debt.[94]