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]
To the Weymouth of that day these eighteen men were the equivalent of
about one hundred and thirty now; and they were raised to take part in
the unfortunate Canada campaign under Arnold and Montgomery. How many
of them ever returned we cannot tell, but the weary sons of Weymouth
in 1776 doubtless found final resting-places in the wilds of Maine or
beneath the snows of Canada, as more recently they found them in the
swamps of the Chickahominy or beneath the torrid sun of Louisiana. By
December of that year twenty-two more men went into the continental
service, under Lieutenant Kingman; and now the bounty was three pounds
per month for three months.[95] It was shortly before this time that
a Weymouth-born woman, writing from the next town of Braintree, thus
described the aspect of affairs: “I am sorry to see a spirit so venal
prevailing everywhere. When our men were drawn out for Canada a very
large bounty was given them; and now another call is made upon us, no
one will go without a large bounty, though only for two months, and
each town seems to think its honor engaged out-bidding the others. The
province pay is forty shillings. In addition to that this town voted to
make it up six pounds. They then draw out the persons most unlikely to
go, and they are obliged to give three pounds to hire a man. Some pay
the whole fine, ten pounds. Forty men are now drafted from this town.
More than one-half, from sixteen to fifty, are now in the service.
This method of conducting will create a general uneasiness in the
Continental army. I hardly think you can be sensible how much we are
thinned in this province.”[96]
And now a new difficulty, with which our generation has been sadly
familiar, was added to the heavy load under which the unfledged
nationality was compelled to stagger. The value of its paper
currency had hitherto been sustained; but at last, in the face of
ever-increasing new issues, it began to depreciate, and by the close
of the year 1776 it had fallen one-sixth in value. In vain does
Congress enact that whoever pays or receives the currency at a rate
less than its nominal value shall not only be accounted a public
enemy, but shall forfeit the amount involved in such unpatriotic
transaction. In defiance of law prices steadily rise. In January,
1777, the Legislature of Massachusetts went even further, and passed
a measure entitled “An Act to prevent Monopoly and Oppression.” Under
this the selectmen of Weymouth, aided by a committee of their townsmen,
proceeded to fix a tariff of prices at which articles were to be sold.
It is a sad record. The effort was, of course, a futile one, but it was
made; and there it stands “as a perpetual memorial,” beginning with
Indian corn and ending with cedar-posts, a monument of the wretched
expedients to which sensible men will resort in troublous and unsettled
times.