The Ministers' Pay.
The salaries of New England clergymen were not large in early days, but the
£60 or £70 which they each were yearly voted was quite enough to suitably
support them in that new country of plain ways and plain living, if they
only received it, which was, alas! not always the case. The First Court of
Massachusetts, in 1630, set the amount of the minister's annual stipend
to be £20 or £30 according to the wealth of the community, and made it a
public charge. In 1659 the highest salary paid in Suffolk County was £100
to Mr. Thatcher, and the lowest was £40 to the clergyman at Hull. The
minister of the Andover church was voted a salary of £60, and "when he
shall have occacion to marry, £10 more." He was very glad, however, to take
£42 in hard cash instead of £60 in corn and labor, which were at that time
the most popular forms of ministerial remuneration; even though the "hard
cash" were in the form of wampum, beaver-skins, or leaden bullets.
Many congregations, though the members were so pious and godly, were pretty
sharp in bargaining with their preachers; for instance, the church in New
London made its new parson sign a contract that "in case he remove before
the year is out, he returneth the £80 paid him." Often clergymen would
"supply" (or "Sipploye," or "syploy" or "sipply," or "sciploy," as various
records have it) from month to mouth without "settling." As they got the
"keepe of a hors," and their own board for Saturday and Sunday, and on
Monday morning a cash payment for preaching (though often the amount was
only twelve shillings), they were richer than with a small yearly salary
that was irregularly and inconveniently paid. Often too they entered by
preference into a yearly contract with a church, without any wish for
regular settlement or ordination.
A large portion of the stipends in early parishes being paid in corn and
labor, the amounts were established by fixed rate upon the inhabitants;
and the amount of land owned and cultivated by each church-member was
considered in reckoning his assessment. These amounts were called voluntary
contributions. If, however, any citizen refused to "contribute," he
was taxed; and if he refused to pay his church-tax he could be fined,
imprisoned, or pilloried. For one hundred years the ministers' salaries
in Boston were paid by these so-called "voluntary contributions." In one
church it was voted that "the Deacons have liberty for a quarter of a yeare
to git in every mans sume either in a Church way or in a Christian way."
I would the process employed in the "Church way" were recorded, since it
differed so from the Christian way.
It is one of the Puritan paradoxes that abounded in New England, that the
community of New Haven, a "State whose Desire was Religion," and religion
alone, was particularly backward in paying the minister who had spiritual
charge there. After much trouble in deciding about the form and quality
of the currency which should be used in pay, since so much bad wampum was
thrust upon the deacons at the public contributions, it was in 1651 enacted
that "whereas it is taken notice of that Divers give not into the Treasury
at all on the Lords Day, it is decreed that all such if they give not
freely, of themselves be rated according to the Jurisdiction order for the
Ministers Maintaynance." The delinquents were ordered to bring their "rate"
to the Deacon's house at once. A presuming young man ventured to suggest
that the recreant members who would not pay in the face of the whole
congregation would hardly rush to the Deacon's door to give in their
"rate." He was severely ordered to keep silence in the company of wiser and
elder people; but time proved his simply wise supposition to be correct;
and many and various were the devices and forces which the deacons were
obliged to use to obtain the minister's rate in New Haven.
Some few bold Puritan souls dared to protest against being forced to pay
the church rate whether they wished to or not. Lieutenant Fuller, of
Barnstable, was fined fifty shillings for "prophanely" saying "that the law
enacted about the ministers maintenance was a wicked and devilish one, and
that the devil sat at the helm when the law was made." Such courageous
though profane expressions of revolt but little availed; for not only
were members and attendants of the Puritan churches taxed, but Quakers,
Baptists, and Church-of-England men were also "rated," and if they refused
to pay to help support the church that they abhorred, they were fined and
imprisoned. One man, of Watertown, named Briscoe, dared to write a book
against the violent enforcement of "voluntary" subscriptions. He was fined
£10 for his wickedness; and the printer of the book was also punished. A
virago in New London, more openly courageous, threw scalding water on the
head of the tithingman who came to collect the minister's rate. Old John
Cotton preached long and earnestly upon the necessity and propriety of
raising the money for the minister's salary, and for other expenses of the
church, wholly by voluntary and eagerly given contributions,--the "Lord
having directed him to make it clear by Scripture." He believed that tithes
and church-taxes were productive of "pride, contention and sloth," and
indicated a declining spiritual condition of the church. But it was a
strange voluntary gift he wished, that was forced by dread of the pillory
and cage!
Since, as Higginson said, "New England was a plantation of Religion, not a
plantation of Trade," the church and its support were of course the first
thought in laying out a new town-settlement, and some of the best town-lots
were always set aside for the "yuse of the minister." Sometimes these lots
were a gift outright to the first settled preacher, in other townships they
were set aside as glebes, or "ministry land" as it was called. It was a
universal custom to build at once a house for the minister, and some very
queer contracts and stipulations for the size, shape, and quality of the
parson's home-edifice may be read in church-records. To the construction
of this house all the town contributed, as also to the building of the
meeting-house; some gave work; some, the use of a horse or ox-team; some,
boards; some, stones or brick; some, logs; others, nails; and a few, a very
few, money. At the house-raising a good dinner was provided, and of course,
plenty of liquor. Some malcontents rebelled against being forced to work on
the minister's house. Entries of fines are common enough for "refusing
to dig on the Minister's Selor," for neglecting to send "the Minister's
Nayles," for refusing to "contribute clay-boards," etc. As with the
town-lot, the house sometimes was a gift outright to the clergyman, and
ofttimes the ownership was retained by the church, and the free use only
was given to each minister.
It was a universal custom to allow free pasturage for the minister's
horse, for which the village burial-ground was assigned as a favorite
feeding-ground. Sometimes this privilege of free pasturage was abused. In
Plymouth, in 1789, Rev. Chandler Robbins was requested "not to have more
horses than shall be necessary, for his many horses that had been pastured
on 'Burial Hill'" had sadly damaged and defaced the gravestones,--perhaps
the very headstones placed over the bones of our Pilgrim Fathers.
The "strangers' money," which was the money contributed by visitors who
chanced to attend the services, and which was sometimes specified as "all
the silver and black dogs given by strangers," was usually given to the
minister. A "black dog" was a "dog dollar."
Often a settlement or a sum of money was given outright to the clergyman
when he was first ordained or settled in the parish. At a town meeting in
Sharon, January 8, 1755, which was held with regard to procuring a new
minister, it was voted "that a committe confer with Mr. Smith, and know
which will be more acceptable to him, to have a larger settlement and a
smaller salary, or a larger salary and a smaller settlement, and make
report to this meeting." On Jan. 15th it was voted "that we give to said
Mr. Smith 420 ounces of silver or equivalent in old Tenor bills, for a
settlement, to be paid in three years after settlement. That we give to
said Mr. Smith 220 Spanish dollars or an equivalent in old Tenor bills for
his yearly salary." Mr. Smith was very generous to his new parish, for his
acceptance of its call contains this clause: "As it will come heavy upon
some perhaps to pay salary and settlement together I have thought of
releasing part of the payment of the salary for a time to be paid to me
again. The first year I shall allow you out of the salary you have voted me
40 dollars, the 2nd 30 dollars, the 3rd 15, the 4th year 20 to be repaid
to me again, the 5th year 20 more, the 6th year 20 more and the 25 dollars
that remain, I am willing that the town should keep 'em for its own use."
He was apparently "willing to live very low," as Parson Eliot humbly and
pathetically wrote in a petition to his church.
The Puritan ministers in New England in the eighteenth century were all
good Whigs; they hated the English kings, fully believing that those stupid
rulers, who really cared little for the Church of England, were burning
with pious zeal to make Episcopacy the established church of the colonies,
and knowing that were that deed accomplished they themselves would probably
lose their homes and means of livelihood. They were the most eager of
Republicans and patriots, and many of them were good and brave soldiers in
the Revolution.
When the minister acquired the independence he so longed and fought for,
it was not all his fancy painted it. He found himself poor
indeed,--practically penniless. He complained sadly that he was paid his
salary in the worthless continental paper money, and he refused to take it.
Often he cannily took merchandise of all kinds instead of the low-valued
paper money, and he became a good and sharp trader, exchanging his various
goods for whatever he needed--and could get. Merchandise was, indeed, far
preferable to money. The petition of Rev. Mr. Barnes to his Willsborough
people has been preserved, and he thus speaks of his salary: "In 1775 the
war comenced & Paper money was emitted which soon began to depreciate and
the depreciation was so rappid that in may 1777 your Pastor gave the whole
of his years Salary for one sucking Calf, the next year he gave the whole
for a small store pig. Your Pastor has not asked for any consideration
being willing to try to Scrabble along with the people while they are in
low circumstances." His neighbor, Rev. Mr. Sprague, of Dublin, formally
petitioned his church not to increase his salary, "as I am plagued to death
to get what is owing to me now," or to buy anything with it when he got it.
The minister in Scarborough had to be paid £5,400 in paper money to make
good his salary of £60 in gold which had been voted him.
"Living low" and "scrabbling along" seems to have been the normal and
universal condition of the New England minister for some time after the War
of Independence. He was obliged to go without his pay, or to take it in
whatever shape it might chance to be tendered. Indeed, from the earliest
colonial days it was true that of whatever they had, the church-members
gave; meal, maize, beans, cider, lumber, merchantable pork, apples,
"English grains," pumpkins,--all were paid to the parson. Part of the
stipend of a minister on Cape Cod was two hundred fish yearly from each
parishioner, with which to fertilize his sandy corn-land. In Plymouth,
in 1662, the following method of increasing the minister's income was
suggested: "The Court Proposeth it as a thing that they judge would be very
commendable and beneficiall to the townes where God's providence shall cast
any whales, if they should agree to set aparte some p'te of every such fish
or oyle for the Incouragement of an able and godly minister among them." In
Sandwich, also, the parson had a part of every whale that came ashore.
Various gifts, too, came to the preachers. In Newbury the first salmon
caught each year in the weir was left by will to the parson. Judge Sewall
records that he visited the minister and "carried him a Bushel of
Turnips, cost me five shillings, and a Cabbage cost half a Crown." Such a
high-priced cabbage!
That New England country institution--the "donation party" to the
minister--was evolved at a later date. At these donation parties the
unfortunate shepherd of the flock often received much that neither he
nor the wily donors could use, while more valuable and useful gifts were
lacking.
A very material plenishing of the minister's house was often furnished in
the latter part of the eighteenth century by the annual "Spinning Bee." On
a given day the women of the parish, each bearing her own spinning-wheel
and flax, assembled at the minister's house and spun for his wife great
"runs" of linen thread, which were afterward woven into linen for the use
of the parson and his family. In Newbury, April 20,1768, "Young ladies met
at the house of the Rev. Mr. Parsons, who preached to them a sermon from
Proverbs 31-19. They spun and presented to Mrs. Parsons two hundred and
seventy skeins of good yarn." They drank "liberty tea." This makeshift of
a beverage was made of the four-leaved loosestrife. The herb was pulled
up like flax, its stalks were stripped of the leaves and were boiled. The
leaves were put in a kettle and basted with the liquor distilled from the
stalks. After this the leaves were dried in an oven to use in the same
manner as tea-leaves. Liberty tea sold readily for sixpence a pound. In
1787 these same Newbury women spun two hundred and thirty-six skeins
of thread and yarn for the wife of the Rev. Mr. Murray. Some were busy
spinning, some reeling and carding, and some combing the flax, while the
minister preached to them on the text from Exodus xxxv. 25: "And all
the women that were wise-hearted did spin with their hands." These
spinning-bees were everywhere in vogue, and formed a source of much profit
to the parson, and of pleasure to the spinners, in spite of the sermons.
Pieced patchwork bed-quilts for the minister's family were also given by
the women of the congregation. Sometimes each woman furnished a neatly
pieced square, and all met at the parsonage and joined and quilted the
coverlet. At other times the minister's wife made the patchwork herself,
but the women assembled and transformed it into quilts for her. The parson
was helped also in his individual work. When the rye or wheat or grain on
the minister's land was full grown and ready for reaping and mowing, the
men in his parish gave him gladly a day's work in harvesting, and in turn
he furnished them plenty of good rum to drink, else there were "great
uneasyness." The New England men were not forced to drink liberty tea.
One universal contribution to the support of the minister all over New
England was cord-wood; and the "minister's wood" is an institution up to
the present day in the few thickly wooded districts that remain. A load of
wood was usually given by each male church-member, and he was expected to
deliver the gift at the door of the parsonage. Sixty loads a year were a
fair allowance, but the number sometimes ran up to one hundred, as was
furnished to Parson Chauncey, of Durham. Rev. Mr. Parsons, of East Hadley,
was the greatest wood-consumer among the old ministers of whom I have
chanced to read. Good, cheerful, roaring fires must the Parsons family have
kept; for in 1774 he had eighty loads of wood supplied to him; in 1751 he
was furnished with one hundred loads; in 1763 the amount had increased to
one hundred and twenty loads, when the parish was glad to make a compromise
with their extravagant shepherd and pay him instead £13 6s 8d annually
in addition to his regular salary, and let him buy or cut his own wood.
Firewood at that time in that town was worth only the expense of cutting
and hauling to the house. A "load" of wood contained about three quarters
of a cord, and until after the Revolutionary War was worth in the vicinity
of Hadley only three shillings a load. The minister's loads were expected
to be always of good "hard-wood." One thrifty parson, while watching a
farmer unload his yearly contribution, remarked, "Isn't that pretty soft
wood?" "And don't we sometimes have pretty soft preaching?" was the answer.
It was well that the witty retort was not made a century earlier; for the
speaker would have been punished by a fine, since they fined so sharply
anything that savored of "speaking against the minister." In some towns a
day was appointed which was called a "wood-spell," when it was ordered that
all the wood be delivered at the parson's door; and thus the farmers formed
a cheerful gathering, at which the minister furnished plentiful flip, or
grog, to the wood-givers. Rev. Stephen Williams, of Longmeadow, never
failed to make a note of the "wood-sleddings" in his diary. He wrote on
Jan. 25, 1757, "Neighbors sledded wood for me and shewed a Good Humour.
I rejoice at it. The Lord bless them that are out of humour and brot no
wood." In other towns the wood did not always come in when it was wanted or
needed, and winter found the parsonage woodshed empty. Rev. Mr. French, of
Andover, gave out this notice in his pulpit one Sunday in November: "I will
write two discourses and deliver them in this meeting-house on Thanksgiving
Day, _provided I can manage to write them without a fire_." We can be
sure that Monday morning saw several loads of good hard wood deposited at
the parson's door.
Other ministers did not hesitate to demand their cord-wood most openly,
while still others became adepts in hinting and begging, not only for wood,
but for other supplies. It is told of a Newbury parson that he rode from
house to house one winter afternoon, saying in each that he "wished he had
a slice of their good cheese, for his wife expected company." On his way
home his sleigh, unfortunately, upset, and the gathering darkness could not
conceal from the eyes of the astonished townspeople, who ran to "right the
minister," the nine great cheeses that rolled out into the snow.
Another source of income to New England preachers was the sale of the
gloves and rings which were given to them (and indeed to all persons of
any importance) at weddings, funerals, and christenings. In reading Judge
Sewall's diary one is amazed at the extraordinary number of gloves he thus
received, and can but wonder what became of them all, since, had he had
as many hands as Briareus, he could hardly have worn them. The manuscript
account-book of the Rev. Mr. Elliot, who was ordained pastor of the New
North Church of Boston in 1742, shows that he, having a frugal mind, sold
both gloves and rings. He kept a full list of the gloves he received, the
kid gloves, the lambswool gloves, and the long gloves,--which were for his
wife. It seems incredible, but in thirty-two years he received two thousand
and nine hundred and forty pairs of gloves. Of these, though dead men's
gloves did not have a very good market, he sold through various salesmen
and dealers about six hundred and forty dollars worth. One wonders that he
did not "combine" with the undertaker or sexton who furnished the gloves to
mourners, and thus do a very thrifty business.
The parson, especially in a low-salaried, rural district, had to practise a
thousand petty and great economies to eke out his income. He and his family
wore homespun and patched clothing, which his wife had spun and wove and
cut and made. She knitted woollen mittens and stockings by the score. She
unfortunately could not make shoes, and to keep the large family shod was a
serious drain on the clerical purse, one minister declaring vehemently
that he should have died a rich man if he and his family could have gone
barefoot. The pastors of seaboard and riverside parishes set nets, like the
Apostles of old, and caught fish with which they fed their families until
the over-phosphorized brains and stomachs rebelled. They set snares and
traps and caught birds and squirrels and hare, to replenish their tables,
and from the skins of the rabbits and woodchucks and squirrels, the
parsons' wives made fur caps for the husbands and for the children.
The whole family gathered in large quantities from roadsides and pastures
the oily bayberries, and from them the thrifty and capable wife made scores
of candles for winter use, patiently filling and refilling her few moulds,
or "dipping" the candles again and again until large enough to use. These
pale-green bayberry tallow candles, when lighted in the early winter
evening, sent forth a faint spicy fragrance--a true New England
incense--that fairly perfumed and Orientalized the atmosphere of the
parsonage kitchen. They were very saving, however, even of these home-made
candles, blowing them out during the long family prayers.
Some parsons could not afford always to use candles. In the home of one
well-known minister the wife always knitted, the children ciphered and
studied, and the husband wrote his sermon by the flickering fire-light (for
they always had wood in plenty), with his scraps of sermon paper placed on
the side of the great leathern bellows as it lay in his lap; a pretty home
scene that was more picturesque to behold than comfortable to take part in.
Country ministers could scarcely afford paper to write on, as it was taxed
and was high priced. They bought their sermon paper by the pound; but they
made the first drafts of their addresses, in a fine, closely written hand,
on wrapping-paper, on the backs of letters, on the margins of their few
newspapers, and copied them when finished in their sermon-books with a
keen regard for economy of space and paper. The manuscript sermons of New
England divines are models of careful penmanship, and may be examined with
interest by a student of chirography. The letters are cramped and crabbed,
like the lives of many of the writers, but the penmanship is methodical,
clear, and distinct, without wavering lines or uncertain touch.
As every parsonage had some glebe land, the parson could raise at least a
few vegetables to supply his table. One minister, prevented by illness from
planting his garden, complained with bitterness that, save for a few rare
gifts of vegetables from his parishioners, his family had no green thing
all summer save "messes of dandelion greens" which he had dug by the
roadside, and the summer's succession of wild berries and mushrooms. The
children had gathered the berries and had sold them when they could, but of
course no one would buy the mushrooms, hence they had been forced to eat
them at the parsonage; and he spoke despitefully and disdainfully of the
mean, unnourishing, and doubtfully healthful food.
In winter the parson's family fared worse; one minister declared that he
had had nothing but mush and milk with occasional "cracker johnny-cakes"
all winter, and that he had not once tasted meat in that space of time,
save at a funeral or ordination-supper, where I doubt not he gorged with
the composure and capacity of a Sioux brave at a war feast.
Often the low state of the parsonage larder was quite unknown to the
unthinking members of the congregation, who were not very luxuriously fed
themselves; and in the profession of preaching as in all other walks of
life much depended on the way the parson's money was spent,--economy and
good judgment in housekeeping worked wonders with the small salary. Dr.
Dwight, in eulogizing Abijah Weld, pastor at Attleborough, declared that
on a salary of two hundred and twenty dollars a year Mr. Weld brought up
eleven children, kept a hospitable house, and gave liberally in charity to
the poor. I fear if we were to ask some carnal-minded person, who knew not
the probity of Dr. Dwight, how Mr. Weld could possibly manage to accomplish
such wonderful results with so little money, that we should meet with
scepticism as to the correctness of the facts alleged. Such cases were,
however, too common to be doubted. My answer to the puzzling financial
question would be this: examine and study the story of the home life, the
work of _Mrs_. Weld, that unsalaried helper in clerical labor; therein
the secret lies.
In many cases, in spite of the never failing and never ceasing economy,
care, and assistance of the hard-working, thrifty wife, in spite of
tributes, tithes and windfalls--in country parishes especially--the
minister, unless he fortunately had some private wealth, felt it incumbent
upon him to follow some money-making vocation on week-days. Many were
farmers on week-days. Many took into their families young men who wished
to be taught, or fitted for college. Rev. Mr. Halleck in the course of his
useful and laborious life educated over three hundred young Puritans in his
own household. It is not recorded how Mrs. Halleck enjoyed the never ending
cooking for this regiment of hungry young men. Some parsons learned to draw
up wills and other legal documents, and thus became on a small scale the
lawyers of the town. Others studied the mystery of medicine, and bought a
small stock of the nauseous drugs of the times, which they retailed
with accompanying advice to their parishioners. Some were coopers, some
carpenters, rope-makers, millers, or cobblers. One cobbler clergyman in
Andover, Vermont, worked at his shoe-mending all the week with his Bible
open on his bench before him, and he marked the page containing any text
which bore on the subject of his coming sermon, with a marker of waxed
shoe-thread. Often the Bible, in his pulpit on Sunday, had thirty or forty
of these shoe-thread guides hanging down from it.
One minister, having been reproved for his worldliness in amassing a large
enough fortune to buy a good farm, answered his complaining congregation
thus: "I have obtained the money to buy this farm by neglecting to follow
the maxim to 'mind my own business.' My business was to study the word of
God and attend to my parish duties and preach good sermons. All this I
acknowledge I have not done, for I have been meddling with your business.
_That_ was to support me and my family; that _you_ have not done.
But remember this: while I have performed your duties, you have not done
mine, so I think you cannot complain."
Some of the early ministers, in addition to preaching in the meeting-house,
did not disdain to take care of the edifice. Parson Everitt of Sandwich was
paid three dollars a year for sweeping out the meeting-house in which he
preached; and after he resigned this position of profit, the duties were
performed by the town physician "as often as there shalbe ocation to keepe
it deesent." The thrifty Mr. Everitt had a pleasing variety of occupations;
he was also a successful farmer, a good fence-builder, and he ran a
fulling-mill.
So, altogether, as they were wholly exempt from taxation, the New England
parsons did not fare ill, though Mr. Cotton said that "ministers and milk
were the only cheap things in New England," and he deemed various ills,
such as attacks by fierce Indians, loss of cattle, earthquakes, and failure
of crops, to be divine judgments for the small ministerial pay; while
Cotton Mather, in one of his pompous and depressing jokes, called the
minister's stipend "Synecdotical Pay." A search in a treatise on rhetoric
or in a dictionary will discover the point of this witticism--if it be
worth searching for.