In the year 1883 I prepared a somewhat detailed sketch of the history of
the North Precinct of the original town of Braintree, subsequently
incorporated as Quincy, which was published and can now be found in the
large volume entitled "History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts." In the
preparation of that sketch I had at my command a quantity of material of
more or less historical value,--including printed and manuscript records,
letters, journals, traditions both oral and written, etc.,--bearing on
social customs, and political and religious questions or conditions. The
study of this material caused me to use in my sketch the following
language:--
"That the earlier generations of Massachusetts were either more
law-abiding or more self-restrained than the later, is a proposition
which accords neither with tradition nor with the reason of things.
The habits of those days were simpler than those of the present; they
were also essentially grosser. The community was small; and it hardly
needs to be said that where the eyes of all are upon each, the general
scrutiny is a safeguard to morals. It is in cities, not in villages,
that laxity is to be looked for." But "now and again, especially in
the relations between the sexes, we get glimpses of incidents in the
dim past which are as dark as they are suggestive. Some such are
connected with Quincy.... The illegitimate child was more commonly met
with in the last than in the present century, and bastardy cases
furnished a class of business with which country lawyers seem to have
been as familiar then as they are with liquor cases now."[1]
Being now engaged in the work of revising and rewriting the sketch in
which this extract occurs, I have recently had occasion to examine again
the material to which I have alluded; and I find that, though the topic to
which it relates in part is one which cannot be fully and freely treated
in a work intended for general reading, yet the material itself contains
much of value and interest. Neither is the topic I have referred to in
itself one which can be ignored in an historical view, though, as I have
reason to believe, there has been practised in New England an almost
systematic suppression of evidence in regard to it; for not only are we
disposed always to look upon the past as a somewhat Arcadian period,--a
period in which life and manners were simpler, better and more genuine
than they now are,--not only, I say, are we disposed to look upon the past
as a sort of golden era when compared with the present, but there is also
a sense of filial piety connected with it. Like Shem and Japhet,
approaching it with averted eyes we are disposed to cover up with a
garment the nakedness of the progenitors; and the severe looker after
truth, who wants to have things appear exactly as they were, and does not
believe in the suppression of evidence,--the investigator of this sort is
apt to be looked upon as a personage of no discretion and doubtful
utility,--as, in a word, a species of modern Ham, who, having
unfortunately seen what ought to have been covered up, is eager, out of
mere levity or prurience, to tell his "brethren without" all about it.
On this subject I concur entirely in the sentiments of our orator, Colonel
Higginson, as expressed in his address at the Society's recent centennial.
The truth of history is a sacred thing,--a thing of far more importance
than its dignity,--and the truth of history should not be sacrificed to
sentiment, patriotism or filial piety. Neither, in like manner, when it
comes to scientific historical research, can propriety, whether of subject
or, in the case of original material, of language, be regarded. To this
last principle the published pages of Winthrop and Bradford bear evidence;
and, in my judgment, the Massachusetts Historical Society has, in a career
now both long and creditable, done nothing more creditable to itself than
in once for all, through the editorial action of Mr. Savage and Mr. Deane,
settling this principle in the publications referred to. I am, of course,
well aware that Mr. Savage did not edit Winthrop's History for this
Society, but nevertheless he is so identified with the Society that his
work may fairly be considered part of its record. Whether part of its
record or not, Mr. Savage and Mr. Deane,--than whom no higher authorities
are here recognized,--in the publications referred to, did settle the
principle that mawkishness is just as much out of place in scientific
historical research as prurience would be, or as sentiment, piety and
patriotism are. These last-named attributes of our nature, indeed,--most
noble, elevating and attractive in their proper spheres,--always have
been, now are, and I think I may safely say will long continue to be, the
bane of thorough historical research, and ubiquitous stumbling-blocks in
the way of scientific results.
But in the case of history, as with medicine and many other branches of
science and learning, there are, as I have already said, many matters
which cannot be treated freely in works intended for general
circulation,--matters which none the less may be, and often are, important
and deserving of thorough mention. Certainly they should not be ignored or
suppressed. And this is exactly one of the uses to which historical
societies are best adapted. Like medical and other similar associations,
historical societies are scientific bodies in which all subjects relating
to their department of learning both can and should be treated with
freedom, so that reference may be made, in books intended for popular
reading, to historical-society collections as pure scientific
depositories. It is this course I propose to pursue in the present case;
and such material at my disposal as I cannot well use freely in the work
upon which I am now engaged, will be incorporated in the present paper,
and made accessible in the printed Proceedings of the Society for such
general reference as may be desirable.
Among the unpublished material to which I have referred are the records of
the First Church of Quincy,--originally and for more than a century and a
half (1639-1792) the Braintree North Precinct Church. The volume of these
records covering the earliest period of the history of the Society cannot
now be found. It was in the possession of the church in 1739, for it was
then used and referred to by the Rev. John Hancock, father of the patriot,
and fifth pastor of the church, in the preparation of two centennial
sermons preached by him at that time; but eighty-five years later, when,
in 1824, the parish was separated from the town, the earliest book of
regular records then transferred from the town to the parish clerk went
no farther back than Jan. 17, 1708.
There is, however, another volume of records still in existence,
apparently not kept by the regular precinct clerk, the entries in which,
all relating to the period between 1673 and 1773, seem to have been made
by five successive pastors. Small and bound in leather, the paper of which
this volume is made up is of that rough, parchment character in such
common use during the last century, and the entries in it, in five
different handwritings, are in many cases scarcely legible, and frequently
of the most confidential character. In the main they are records of
births, baptisms, marriages and deaths; but some of them relate to matters
of church discipline, and these throw a curious light on the social habits
of a period now singularly remote. In view of what this volume contains,
the loss of the previous volume containing the record of the church's
spiritual life from the time it was organized to 1673, a period of
thirty-four years, becomes truly an _hiatus valde deflendus_.[2]
For a full understanding of the situation it is merely necessary further
to say that, during the period to which all the entries in the volume from
which I am about to quote relate, Braintree was a Massachusetts sea-board
town of the ordinary character. It numbered a population ranging from
some seven hundred souls in 1673, to about twenty-five hundred a century
later; the majority of whom during the first half of the eighteenth
century lived in the North Precinct of the original town, now Quincy. The
meeting-house, about which clustered the colonial village, stood on the
old Plymouth road, between the tenth and the eleventh mile-posts south of
Boston. The people were chiefly agriculturists, living on holdings
somewhat widely scattered; the place had no especial trade or leading
industry, and no commerce; so that, when describing the country a few
years before, in 1660,--and since then the conditions had not greatly
changed,--Samuel Maverick said of Braintree,--"It subsists by raising
provisions, and furnishing Boston with wood."[3] In reading the following
extracts from the records, it is also necessary to bear in mind that
during the eighteenth century the whole social and intellectual as well as
religious life of the Massachusetts towns not only centred about the
church, but was concentrated in it. The church was practically a club as
well as a religious organization. An inhabitant of the town excluded from
it or under its ban became an outcast and a pariah.
The following entry is in the handwriting of the Rev. Moses Fiske, pastor
of the church during thirty-six years, from 1672 to 1708, and it bears
date March 2, 1683:--
"Temperance, the daughter of Brother F----, now the wife of John
B----, having been guilty of the sin of Fornication with him that is
now her husband, was called forth in the open Congregation, and
presented a paper containing a full acknowledgment of her great sin
and wickedness,--publickly bewayled her disobedience to parents,
pride, unprofitableness under the means of grace, as the cause that
might provoke God to punish her with sin, and warning all to take heed
of such sins, begging the church's prayers, that God would humble her,
and give a sound repentance, &c. Which confession being read, after
some debate, the brethren did generally if not unanimously judge that
she ought to be admonished; and accordingly she was solemnly
admonished of her great sin, which was spread before her in divers
particulars, and charged to search her own heart wayes and to make
thorough work in her Repentance, &c. from which she was released by
the church vote unanimously on April 11{th} 1698."
The next entry of a case of church discipline is of a wholly different
character. The individual subjected to it bore the same family name as
the earliest minister of the town, the Rev. William Tompson, who was the
first to subscribe the original covenant of Sept. 16, 1639, but was not
descended from him. Neither must this Samuel Tomson, or Tompson, be
confounded with Deacon Samuel Tompson, who, born in 1630, lived in
Braintree, and whose name is met with on nearly every page of the earlier
records. The Samuel Tompson referred to in the following entry seems to
have been the son of the deacon, and was born Nov. 6, 1662. His name
frequently appears in the town records, and usually (pp. 29, 35, 39, 40),
as dissenting from some vote providing for the minister's salary or the
maintenance of the town school. He was, though the son of a deacon,
evidently a man otherwise-minded. This entry, like the previous one, is in
the handwriting of Mr. Fiske.
"Samuel Tomson, a prodigie of pride, malice and arrogance, being
called before the church in the Meeting-house 28, July, 1697, for his
absenting himselfe from the Publike Worshipe, unlesse when any
strangers preached; his carriage being before the Church proud and
insolent, reviling and vilifying their Pastor, at an horrible rate,
and stileing him their priest, and them a nest of wasps; and they
unanimously voated an admonition, which was accordingly solemnly and
in the name of Christ, applyed to him, wherein his sin and wickedness
was laid open by divers Scriptures for his conviction, and was warned
to repent, and after prayer to God this poor man goes to the tavern to
drink it down immediately, as he said, &c."