Quincy City (part 2 of 12)

rary, and as he advanced in years his infirmities grew upon him. He seems to have had a morbid tend- Cotton Mather's explanation of this, and of the course of

"Satan, who had been after an extraordinary manner irritated by the evangelie labors of this holy man, obtained the liberty to sift him; and hence, after this worthy man had served the Lord Jesus Christ in the church of our New English Braintree, he fell into that Balneum diaboli, 'ablack melan- and a comfortable help to him," in charge of a family She died ; and he returned to find his home broken up and his offspring scattered, though it is said they were obtained of Tompson is through Governor Winthrop's diary, and it is singularly illustrative of the time. In 1648 a synod met at Cambridge for the purpose of framing a code of church discipline. Before this representative gathering the Rev. John Allen, of Dedham, delivered a discourse which proved '"' a very godly, learned, and particular handling of near all the the exercise of his ministry; but the end of this melancholy was not so tragical as it sometimes is with some, whom yet, because of their exemplary lives, we dare not censure for their faithful of the churches in the neighborhood kept ' resisting of the devil' in his cruel assaults upon Mr. Tompson, by continually 'drawing near to God,' with ardent supplications on his behalf: and by praying always, without fainting, without ceasing, they saw the devil at length flee from him, and God himself draw The end of that man is peace."

The meaning of this is that Mr. Tompson did not commit suicide, and towards the close of his life the cloud lifted from him. He died on the 10th of December, 1666, having resigned his pulpit some seven years before. Both he and his second wife would seem to have been lacking in the quality of thrift, and during the closing years of his life he was wretchedly poor, - so poor, indeed, that in March, 1665, a public collection was taken up for him in the Dorchester church, which amounted to £6 9s., " besides notes for corn, and other things, above 30s." In his own day he had the reputation of one ''apt to forget himself in things that concerned his own good," because of his exceeding zeal; and it was intimated that his parish - ioners made for their minister '' somewhat short allow- Yet this does not seem to have been the 1657, an official inquiry showed that allowed Messrs. Tompson and Flynt £55 each, "paid ordinarily yearly, or within the year, in such things as themselves take up and accept of from the inhabitants." Old South congregation in Boston then paid its two ministers, and not an inadequate support for the time. Possibly payments were in arrears, for in 1661, during the incapacity of her husband, there was a church ; nor was the matter then disposed of, for in 1668 the widow presented a petition to the General Court, complaining church to her late

The body of William Tompson lies in the old burying-ground of Quincy, and the original stone, bearing quaint witness to his learning, piety, and He left by mal ordination did not take place until March 17, 1640, it has been confidently surmised that the postponement was in order to afford the distinguished Of But there is no reason to suppose that he imitated the discreditable zeal which Cotton had already shown in the work of hunting down his former associates; though it was asserted that through the exertions of its new teacher Braintree was " purged from the sour leaven of those sinful opinions that began to spread," and if any such re- Of Mr. Flynt's later doctrinal views nothing is known; it is simply recorded of him that in his day he bore '' the character of a gentleman remarkable for his piety, learning, Unlike Mr. Tompson, the Flynts, husband and wife, appear to have been thrifty people, and the teacher died in com- By his will he left the " great lot" of eighty acres granted to him by the town of _ Boston in 1640 to one son, and his dwelling-house, with the two lots it stood upon, to another son, both be- | quests subject to a life-estate in their mother, pro- not what portion of my estate to assign to my wife, in case God call her to marriage, otherwise than as the law of the country does provide in that case, accounting all that I have too little for her, if I had something else to bestow on my children." Teacher Flynt's wife, whose maiden name was Margery

27th of April, 1668. Born, it is supposed, in Der- | byshire, England, he landed in New England in October, 1635, being then about twenty-nine years old.

vesssel, with Vane, he seems to have been a political sympathizer of his, while theologically he was an ardent admirer of Cotton. Indeed, almost the only ory of his revered mentor, who had then been four years dead. Flynt during the Antinomian controversy adhered staunchly to Wheelwright. name is appended as teacher to the Braintree church covenant of Sept. 16, 1639, and Winthrop speaks of him as "a godly man" then ordained, descended from an "ancient and good" English family, she was also 'a gentlewoman of piety, pruy) c Jv? dence, and peculiarly accomplished for instructing ' y gs young gentlewomen, many being sent to her from Mrs. Margery Flynt died in March, 1687, having survived her

Henry Flynt left a numerous family, though no descendants of his name now live in Quincey. It was a granddaughter of his, Dorothy, child of the Rey. Josiah Judge Kdmund Quincey, of Braintree, and became the

Massachusetts has been more distinguished. A daughter of hers was that '' Dorothy Q." whose name has been embalmed in the familiar verses written upon her portrait by one of her distinguished descendants in the dells, the Jacksons, the Lowells, and the Quincys; and it is from Josiah Flynt that the last-named family derives that given name which, handed down from generation to generation, is in Massachusetts almost conceded to them as a peculiar patronymic. It was another Dorothy Quincy who in 1775 became the wife of John Hancock. The original Dorothy Flynt Quincy dwelt in the house which Col. Edmund Quincy built in Braintree in 1685, and which still remains one of the most interesting of all our colonial structures, quaintly typical of bygone times.

Judge Sewall slept one rainy night in March, 1712. Next to it is the room still known as Tutor Flynt's chamber, for it was long occupied by Dorothy's brother Henry, for more than half a century a tutor at Harvard College and a fellow of the corporation name of the person favored by it nowhere appears ; unless, indeed, it was the Rev. Peter Bulkley, one of that family of divines which furnished its first minister to Concord. The contest was a heated one, in which

"many uncomfortable expressions In the course of it things occurred which led some to suspect that the "sinful opinions' of John Wheelwright were perhaps not so That "sour leaven" may still have worked; for Mr. Josiah

Flynt was openly charged with uttering " divers dangerous heterodoxies, delivered, and that without caution, in his public preaching." In view of this dissension, more than one day was set apart by the church "to seek the Lord by fasting and prayer," morous and graphic than Judge David Sewall's account of his journey with Father Flynt from Cambridge to Portsmouth in June, 1754.! The old man was then in his eightieth year, but he took his "nip of milk punch," smoked his pipe, bore up when tumbled from his seat headlong into the road, and commented on men, women, and things in a way which showed that age had neither dimmed his faculties nor impaired He lived until 1760, and left behind acute and discriminating intellect ; firm but moderate ; steadfast in opinion but without obstinacy; zealous and faithful in the discharge of his various duties." He lies buried in the ancient graveyard close to the buildings of the college which he served so long. After the death of Teacher Flynt the church of Braintree, to use the language of a subsequent pastor, "fell into unhappy divisions, one being for Paul, and another for Apollos (as is too often the case in desti- and at one of them at least '" an awful division." A widespread scandal went abroad over these proceedings, and on the 25th of July, 1669, '" God sent a very solemn, awakening message to the church" by the mouth of Mr. Eliot, possibly But that did not prevent the church from meeting on the 21st of the folthe son of the Indian apostle.

No definite account of the cause One party, it is apparent, was anxious to invite young Josiah Flynt, son of the deceased teacher, who, having

Wearied as well as distressed by the angry turmoil, Josiah Flynt at about this time received a call from the church at Dorchester, which he accepted; and there he remained until his premature death, in 1680. Meanwhile Braintree continued for nearly two years At last things came to such a pass that in November, 1671, the County Court interfered. Taking into consideration "the many means that have been used with the church of Braintree, and hitherto nothing done to effect, as to the obtaining the ordinances of Christ among them,' - taking this into consideration, the court ordered and desired Mr. Moses Fiske ''to improve his labors in preaching the word at Braintree until the church there agree, and obtain supply for the work of the ministry." Mr. Fiske seems to have spirit. For he says, '' Being ordered by the Court, and advised by the reverend Elders and other friends, I went up from the honored Mr. Edward Tyng's, with two of the brethren of this church sent to acaccompany me, being the Saturday, to preach God's word unto them." The next day, Dec. 3, 1671, he took his place in the Braintree pulpit, and delivered his first discourse, not failing at the close of the after-

But so well did he on this occasion 'improve his labors'' that the next day "about twenty of the brethren came to visit him, manifesting (in the name of the

Court had done, and thanking him for his compliance therewith." On the 24th of February, 1672, Mr. Fiske received a unanimous call from the weary church, and on the 11th of the following September he was formally ordained ; or, as he himself phrased it, that was "the day of my solemn espousals to this church and congregation."

At the time of his ordination Mr. Fiske was thirty years old ; and his pastorate lasted thirty-six years, until his death, in 1708. in the history of the town and church, for during it not only was the second parish organized, but a small Episcopal society, one of the earliest in New England, Of the Rev. Moses Fiske himself, his religious tenets or intellectual force, not much has been handed down.

Even this sermon never reached the dignity of print, but, in the original handwriting of its author, rests undisturbed in the archives of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

It was certainly sugges- According to all known laws of generation and heredity, the result should have been of exceptional interest. That it was not, is probably due to the necessary limitations of theological development. The Rey. Cotton Mather, perhaps, indicated the climax. Mr. Fiske was a case in point. daughters of clergymen ; three of his own daughters - Mary, Anne, and Margaret - married clergymen ; and two of his sons were clergymen. By his first wife. a daughter of Mr. Symmes, of Charlestown, Mr. Fiske had fourteen children.

and two were born at separate births within a twelvemonth. Naturally, several of them died in early infancy ; and at last the mother was herself released Such cases were not singular in early New England, and of Mrs. Sarah Symmes, the grandmother of Mrs. Fiske, it is

Yet his family was small compared with that of Samuel Bass, the senior elder of his church, who died in 1694, after having sat in the deacon's seat for more than fifty years, and since the first organization of the church. At his death Deacon Bass numbered in his living offspring one hundred and sixtytwo souls; while among his contemporaries and the parishioners of Mr. Fiske, Henry Neal was the father of twenty-one children, and William Rawson had at one time twenty living sons and daughters, the fruit of his loins by a single wife.

The simplicity of life and the severe economy habitual in those days is shown in the fact that Mr. Fiske brought up his family of sixteen children, sending three sons to college and marrying off his daughters, on a stipend which never exceeded ninety pounds a year, and which was usually sixty or eighty pounds, payable in part in corn and wood at stated valuations. Hven this small salary seems to have | been a source of contention, and in 1690 it was

'from the beginning of the world to this day." Yet the parish had then increased greatly both in substance and population. The original meeting-house had. long before given place to a new and larger one, built of stone and furnished with a bell; and in 1694 the town made provisions for sweeping out the church and ringing the bell, appropriating twenty-five shillings to pay therefor, the bell, which weighed about until 1714, when a turret was built to shelter it. Until about the year 1700 there were no pews in the | meeting-house, the congregation sitting on benches, the men on one side and the women on the other. This thoroughly democratic system continued in use until about the year 1690, when, from habit or _ other cause, a sort of prescriptive right in particular Ac- | cordingly, in 1694 the town authorized the selectmen needs have been an ungrateful one, and nothing seems then to have been done ; but in March, 1698, a special committee of five, including the two deacons, was "They did the work," though, as would naturally be supposed, " not The first Sabbath in April | people took their places, as many as saw good so to do."

The parish then numbered about one hundred and forty families, representing an entire population of | not far from eight hundred souls; but those composing this population no longer dwelt together in the neighborhood of Mount Wollaston and about the stone meeting-house.

They were scattered over a | wide extent of territory from the Dorchester line to | the present town of Randolph. This fact led to | those bitter contentions in the church which, recalling | the evil days preceding Mr. Fiske's pastorate, sad- | dened its closing years. In point of fact, town and | parish were passing through a natural stage of | growth. That was being enacted on a small stage in | Braintree which, when enacted on the larger stage of

The struggle seems first to have assumed definite shape about the year 1695. The old meeting-_ house was then pronounced inadequate to the growing needs of the parish. It was small, inconveniently | situated, and out of repair.

Those dwelling in the south part of the town complained that it was '" very irksome, especially in winter, to come so far as most of them came to meeting, and through such bad ways, whereby the Lord's day, which is a day of rest, was to them a day of labor rather." Accordingly, the first proposition was that a new and larger church edifice, | sufficient for the whole town, should be built at a. more central point. This did not meet the views of | old Col. Edmund Quincy and others, who lived in the northern limits; consequently they went to work to prevent anything being done at all, and at a private | meeting held at Col. Quincy's they " did agree among themselves to shingle the old house, pretending to be at the whole charge themselves." But, none the less, 'several pounds were afterwards gathered by a rate upon the whole town."

The project of a new and common meeting-house having been defeated by means such as this, the organ- This was opposed, for the reason that such a secession from the parish would throw the burden of the minister's salary on a smaller number. Accordingly, in 1704-5 | party feeling ran high. Two church meetings were held in January, whereat there was "' much debate and some misapprehension about church discipline," by reason whereof there was "' much sinful discourse" in the town. "Nine of the church withdrew from | the Lord's table," and one of Parson Fiske's adhe- | rents pathetically remarked, as he noted down these events, ' the disorders among us call for tears and lamentations rather than to be remembered."

Getting no satisfaction, but, on the contrary, being 'squib'd and floured by several of the other end of the town," those of the south part in the winter of 1705 began to talk " very hotly of building a meetinghouse by themselves ;" and on the 2d of May, 1706, the frame of the new edifice was raised. In the autumn of that year it was so far finished that they The matter had been " hitherto carried on in a way of great contention and disorder ;" but a final difficulty, and the most serious of all, now presented itself. The people of the south had organized themselves into a new church, but the people of the north wholly declined to release them from their share of the burden of supporting the minister of the old church. An angry town-meeting even a liberal proposition. They offered to maintain their own church, and also to pay £20 of Mr. Fiske's Even this was not satisfactory, and the town insisted that their " south end neighbors and brethren should not be released from bearing their usual part of the charge for the support of the Rev. Moses Fiske, which they were forward in the day of it to vote for and agree to."

The matter was then carried before the General Court; but there no immediate action was taken, and in the spring of 1707 the contention and disorder were greater than ever. A council of churches was Accordingly, on the 7th of May delegates from nine in pouring oil on the troubled waters; and, on the 10th of the following September, the Rev. Hugh Adams was formally ordained as first pastor of the South Church, which forthwith petitioned the General Court to be regularly set off as a distinct precinct. This prayer was dated in the true theological spirit of the time, - '' From (Naphtali, if your honors please so to name our neighborhood, or) South Braintree ;" the significance of which grim Puritan jest is found in Genesis (xxx. 8) : - ' And Rachel said, With great wrestlings have I wrestled with my sister, and I have prevailed: and she called his name Naphtali." Neyertheless, the dwellers in the south did not prevail ; on this oceasion, for five days later, after an oral hearing, the General Court voted that, during the exercise of his ministry by Mr. Fiske, "the whole no = 5s 8 | town' was obliged to raise annually whatever sum | was voted for his support. Meanwhile, steps were to | be taken towards forming a second precinct, the in- | habitants of which, during Mr. Fiske's ministry, were then was, the cause for present wonder is that through more than sixty years the people of so large a territory were content to travel, summer and winter, such distances over their primitive roads to reach the common mecting-house. It is doubtful whether even the intense religious sense of their time, backed though it was by both spirit and letter of law, would have

But they came to gratify a social, as well as a spiritual craving. Outside of a | hard, secluded, week-day life the Sabbath and the In their widely- - books, and fewer still strange faces; and so they eagerly went to church, not minding weather or distance, because there they met friends and relatives, while between the services they heard the parish | news. Perhaps, too, whispers might reach them there | of events in that great outside world from which they in their homes were as much excluded as though they lived encircled by a Chinese wall.

The separation of old Braintree into several church | precincts also foreshadowed a further political separation not less desirable. But the slow course of erowth and sequence of events in that period of New England life is strikingly shown by the fact that sixty years of development preceded the separation of the parishes, and nearly ninety years more had passed away before the original town was divided. And it | is a curious fact, as will presently be seen, that, while the North Precinct in 1706 offered such resistance as | it could to the earlier dismemberment, in 1792 it was the same North Precinct which demanded to be set off, and which, though itself the original town, left | name and records with its younger sister, so it might be at liberty to order its affairs in its own way. | Though foiled in its efforts for independence before the General Court of 1707, the South Precinct had | not long to wait. 'The court had held it liable for its share of the support of the pastor of the old church Mr. Fiske's second wife, Anna, died on the 24th of July, follow- | during the ministry of Mr. Fiske only. ing this decision. The widow of Daniel Quincy, a | peculiar interest attaches to Mrs. Fiske as the mother of that John Quincy, of Mount Wollaston, from whom the North Precinct subsequently took its A youth of eighteen, John Quincey graduated at Harvard College during the summer in Parson Fiske At the time of her death he seems to have been in feeble health, and a few days later he was stricken with " a sore malignant fever, and on the 10th day, being Tuesday, about one of the o'clock, P.m., he died, willingly, patiently, DME interred at Braintree in his own tomb the 12th day." Of him an humble but devout parishioner wrote that he was "a diligent, faithful laborer in the harvest of Jesus Christ ; studious in the Holy Scriptures, having an extraordinary gift in prayer above many good men, and in preaching equal to the most, inferior to few ; zealously diligent for God and the good of men, - one who thought no labor, cost, or suffering too dear a a price for the good of his people."

On the 3d of November following a town and parishmeeting was held, at which it was voted that thenceforth "there should be two distinct precincts or societies in this town, for the more regular and con- fast was thereupon ordered 'on account of the late disturbances ;" and then at last,on March 19th, the Sabbath, the reconciliation was made complete by the clergymen of the two precincts exchanging pulpits,

The pulpit of the First Precinct was then filled by Rev. Joseph Marsh. His pastorate and that of the Rey. John Hancock covered, respectively, sixteen and eighteen years, and the two carried the history of the church into its second century. It was an uneventful period the world over; that of the two first Georges and Louis XV. The Massachusetts colony had

Meanwhile the royal Governors - Shute and Dummer, Belcher and Burnet - ruled a community numbering about an hundred thousand souls, and squabbled incessantly over petty questions with intractable General affairs; while of men destined to a later prominence, John Adams and John Hancock were born, the | former at the foot of Penn's Hill, on Oct. 19, 1735, | and the latter on the 12th of January, 1737, in a_ house which stood on the lot which, now the site of an academy, still bears his name. The house is yet standing - an almost perfect specimen of the colonial seems at once to have impressed himself on the people there as '"'a person of singular accomplishments, both natural and acquired." ber they gave him a call, and on the 16th of December, after extensive preparations had been made to | ants of this precinct.' His salary was fixed at seventy pounds a year, and one hundred pounds additional was voted to him on his settlement, '' and Then on the 4th fluence that he was commonly known as " Bishop" Hancock. The son may have enjoyed a certain advantage from the father's fame, for when called to Braintree in 1726 he was but twenty-four, though he

He was then in his fortyceived a further sum of two hundred pounds upon his settlement. But the vote giving these larger sums was expressed in ominous words, for it ran that the sums were payable "in good and lawful bills of publie¢ credit on this Province.' The colony was embarked on that troubled sea of depreciated paper money which was destined to long outlast the Hancock pastorate.

The ordination of Mr. Hancock took place on the 2d of November, 1726, and was a great occasion, for the pastors of seven sister churches took part in it, while the elder Hancock preached the sermon. The ceremonies were held in the old stone meeting- It must even then have been in poor repair, for during the winter of 1730 " cartloads of snow" were blown into it, and had to be shoveled out. As usual, it was not difficult to get the parish to vote the building of a new meetinghouse ; the trouble came in the choice of location. Two meetings barely sufficed for the discussion of the question. The site first proposed was "at Col. Quincy's gate.""' This was rejected. The site of the old stone church was next proposed, and rejected. Finally it was decided by a majority vote that the new edifice should be ''at the ten milestone, or near unto it;"' and at the next meeting an exact site was fixed '' on the training-field," a few hundred yards south of the tenth milestone from Boston. The new house, large and commodious for the time, was in point of fact a bald, oblong wooden structure, of the kind common to all New England towns. It was entered by doors at the two sides, and in front of which hung the bell, now increased in weight to two hundred and ninety pounds. This edifice was dedicated on the 8th of October, 1732, "in peaceable times ;' but the old stone house, though then abandoned, stood for sixteen years more, until in February, 1748, it was sold at auction and removed. It brought £100 in money of the old tenor. Mean- 16, 1739) 'being Lord's day, the First Church of Braintree, both males and females, solemnly renewed the covewhile, nine years before, on Sept.

On this occasion, in his discourse which is still extant, the pastor described himself as having been with his people almost thirteen years 'in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling." He continued with them five years more. These were the years of " the great awakening," during which Whitefield, Tennent, and Davenport held forth continually to excited audiences, and New England was lashed into such a state of religious frenzy as was never known on the continent before or since. It is scarcely probable that Braintree wholly escaped the contagion who preached his funeral discourse spoke of him "as a wise and skillful pilot,' who had steered "a right and safe course in the late troubled sea of ecclesiastical affairs; so that his people had '" escaped the errors and enthusiasm which some, and the infidelity and indifferency in matters of religion which | his name continued to live in the town. Though it had no church of its own until 1728, this society had long been forming. Indeed, as early even as 1689 a little company of church-people held services in Quincy, and in one house, at least, prayers of the would do great good and encourage the other towns to desire the like. If the church can be settled in New England, it pulls up schisms in America by the roots, that being the fountain that supplies with infectious streams the rest of America." Accordingly, "an annual encouragement of fifty pounds and a gratuity of twenty-five pounds for present occasions" was granted twenty volumes or so of which, bearing the quaint | seal of the mother-society, are still on the shelves of | Thus, in 1704, Christ's Church | in Braintree was fully organized, several of the names | church discipline relaxed, but under the royal Governors the Episcopalian ritual had for years been familiar in Boston ; though on the 25th of December those of the antique faith still took occasion to " dehort their families from Christmas keeping and charge them to forbear." Accordingly, in Braintree, when it came to a question of increasing the minister's salary to ninety pounds, Col. Edmund Quincy pressed hard the argument that the churchmen were now "scheming to

By 1704 Mr. Barclay had returned to England, and for several years thereafter only a skeleton organ- In 1713 the case was pronounced desperate by the Rev. Thomas Eager, who had apparently been sent out to look over the field, and who mentioned, as obstacles in the way of any growth of the church, that its members were taxed for the support of the regular precinct minister, and that they had no place of worship of their own.

Yet he claimed to have at times as many as thirty attendants at services, Mr. Hager seems to have remained in Braintree nearly two years, and the account he gave of the dwellers there "The people are very great get from them." ley gave the society a no less Mr. Eager, writing to it that "the church is greatly hurt by him. During the few months of his stay here he was frequently in quarrels and fightings, and sending challenges for duels, that at length the authorities at Brandry was quite ashamed and discouraged."

But there was ground for the complaint of Mr. Eager as to the taxing of his people for the support of the precinct ministers. The matter had already been before the Governor and Council on the com- in the Negative. I! said, the Governor and Council had not Authority to rescind the Laws by nulling an execution. Mr. Secretary seconded me. Then the Governor put it whether he should be bound over to the Sessions, which was Voted. Goyernor directed fifty pounds. But "twas brought to ten pounds, and five pounds each Surety.

1727. Accordingly, Judge Sewall, in Boston, made the following entry in his journal: '" Monday, Dee. 25,1727. Shops open, and people come to Town Mr. Miller keeps the day in his New church at Braintey: people flock thither."

The vexed question of taxation was now at last settled. It had again been brought before the Governor and Council in the spring of 1727. Lieutenant-Governor Dummer was then acting as Governor during the interim between the Shute and thé Burnet adminis-

Mr. Eager was succeeded by the Rev. Henry Lucas, who, after a short rectorship, removed to Newbury, and for several years thereafter the organization lay dormant. It was not until 1726 that any steps were taken toward building a church edifice. Ebenezer Miller, son of Samuel Miller, of Milton Hiil, was then a recent graduate of the college, and student of divinity. leaning towards Episcopacy, being, it has been said, the first graduate of Harvard who took that turn.

sharp letter to Col. Edmund Quincy. In it he said that he was "surprised to find this matter driven to extremity, especially after the hopes you have raised in me that your people were thoroughly disposed to make those of the Church of England amongst you He further requested Col. Quincy to bring the matter before the parish and two agreements were entered into, - one for the building a church edifice, the other for sending young Miller to England, there to receive orders. Both agreements were carried out, and in 1728 an the town, a few hundred yards only south of the old stone meeting-house, was ready for occupancy. In course of years, after the old English custom, the ground about it became covered with stones marking the resting-place of some who had worshiped within those walls; and these stones still remain a memorial of the site upon which stood one of the earliest offburse the petitioners whatever sums they might have been assessed for Mr. Hancock's ordination charge

A question which for twenty-five years had been a cause of hard feeling, and which had given rise to a bitter sense of oppression, was thus properly disposed of. It was not without ground of pride, therefore, that Mr. Hancock recorded "it was done before ever any That it was settled in a way so creditable seems to have

Through thirty-six years Dr. Miller remained the rector of Christ's Church, devoted to his parish, and accounted one of the ablest defenders of Episcopacy in New England. At the close of his ministry the

290 HISTORY OF NORFOLK COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS. cants. Indeed, he and his immediate successor so | churchmen in Braintree were favorers of the Stamp raised the Braintree church that for a time it seems 'to have exercised a maternal care over those of the same communion in the vicinity who were weaker than itself." Revisiting England in 1747, Mr. Miller was then made a Doctor of Divinity by Oxford. On the 11th of February, 1763, "to the very great loss

1830. It had already seen its best days, for the Revolutionary troubles were at the time of its first rector's death already impending. Indeed, a posthumous attack made on him just after his death, a graduate of the college in the class of 1741, succeeded Dr. Miller. in July, 1764, and his connection with the society lasted through thirteen troubled years, until 1777. He left behind him in Braintree the reputation of being means thus obtained a piece of land was bought and a house built, the rent of which at a later period sufficed to keep the abandoned church in decent repair while the almost lifeless society awaited the return of better days.

Episcopacy has ever been an exotic in Massachusetts; and the cultivation of exotics is expensive for those engaged in it. was always most liberal in dealing with its sickly the sent over sixty pounds sterling for the support of the Naturally the society was inclined to a friendly feeling toward the hand which fed it. To it the Apthorps, the Borlands, the Cleverlys and hood, with the exception of the Quincys - belonged. The gentry were apt to be Tories, and as early as 1765, John Adams noted in his diary that most of the and, '"'no matter how much provoked by those of the other side, they would not discuss politics." Before that "parties ran very high, and very hard words and threats of blows upon both sides were given out." A few days later there was something very like an actual outbreak in the town, the North Precinct of which had the reputation of being a nest of Tories. The stock of public powder was removed from it by an organized mob, and Mrs. Adams again wrote, " The church parson thought they were coming after him, and ran up garret."" The popular feeling was now so strong that it was no longer safe for Mr. Winslow Yet he seems to have struggled on, vainly hoping for better days, until his salary was stopped and many of his people had moved away. Then, taking very properly the eround that his ordination oath compelled him to conform literally to the Prayer-Book, he, '" with sad and silent musings," resigned his charge. Going to New York, which was in British occupation, he died there in 1780, before the close of the war. He was

The English society had spent, it is said, over thirteen thousand dollars in the attempt to build up the Braintree church, and it was now less than ever able to stand alone. The ritual was again in as great public odium as it had been a whole century before. To a certain extent Mr. Joseph Cleverly faced the storm in Braintree, and filled, as best he could, the place which Mr. Winslow had left vacant. A native of the town, and coming of a family long resident there, he had graduated at Harvard College in 1733, and, though never in orders as an earnest Hpis- years, reading prayers and services, and being referred to in its records as the society's teacher. He lived to extreme old age, dying in 1802.

of suspended animation. It did not wholly die, for the church edifice and the rectorship were there, and the rent collected from the latter sufficed to keep the The parish committee secured the assistance of clergymen and readers, so that from time to time church services were performed, and a few kindly-disposed ladies exerted themselves to keep up a Sunday-school, at which the children not town life, Christ Church hardly made itself felt between the close of the Revolution and the year 1825. It had lived on support from without, and that support was withdrawn. Accordingly, with one period of faint revival between 1822 and 1827 under the fostering charge of a faithful and able rector, the Rev. B.C. Cutler, it continued to languish until long after in modes of life of the whole outside community brought in new and influential families, introducing elements in which the Episcopal form of worship found natural support. But the town had then lost its individuality. During the first hundred years of its existence the history of Christ Church in Braintree and Quincy is most interesting as showing how wholly alien Episcopacy was to the New England civilization; how practically impossible it was for it there to take root and to flourish ; and how, supported for a time at great effort and cost from without, | when that support was withdrawn, it languished and died away, having, so far as could be seen, in no way influenced the growth of the native community. Like Catholicity, it was a wholly alien institution; and, shillings "old tenor" per ounce, instead of six shillings seven pence, as it should have been. In 1645 there were in circulation bills of the "new tenor," of the " middle tenor," and of the "old tenor."' Those of the two former, being of greater value than the latter, were hoarded. Apparently, in 1788, Mr. Briant's salary of sixty pounds '" new tenor'' was equivalent to about fifty-four pounds in silver, or to six hundred pounds in 'old tenor," and in purchasing power was not less than what had been paid to his predecessor. A graduate of Harvard College in the class of 1739, Mr. Briant, when he came to Braintree, was in His pastorate was brief, for he died before he was thirty-three ; but it was as troubled as it was short.

he seems to have paid little regard to conventionalities. Had he lived he might have held his ground, and succeeded in advancing by one long stride the

Returning to the history of the original precinct church, around which the whole religious lite and mental activity of the town still centred, the Hancock pastorate, ending with premature death in May, 1744, was followed by an interim of a year and on the other hand, it is not improbable that he was too far in advance of his day, and that premature decline alone saved him from the loss of his pulpit, and theological ostracism. Yet his career, so far as it went, was indisputably an interesting one.

In the year 1749, Mr. Briant published a sermon on moral virtue. He seems before to have preached it several times in different pulpits, and it had excited a but he declined todo so. At last, on the 16th of September, 1745, the Rev. Lemuel Briant, of Scituate, was unanimously chosen pastor, and on the 11th of the following December he was formally ordained. The salary of the new minister was fixed at " fifty pounds per year in bills of credit on this province of that the minister of that place had felt moved to controvert its teachings. This he had essayed to do by means of a series of discourses, in regard to which it was at the time remarked the main difficulty was to tlement, to be thereafter increased by a further annual sum of " twelve pounds and ten shillings in bills of the like emission." This salary was considerably smaller than had been paid either to Mr. Hancock or to Mr. emission. How clergymen and the few others who, in Massachusetts, were dependent on fixed incomes contrived to live in those days must always remain a mystery. At the time of Mr. Hancock's death, bills of the tenor in use when he was settled passed in cirof Mr. Briant." The progress of religious thought has since been so great, that it is not easy now to see In it moral and religious truisms seem to be set forth in plain, strong English, which at times rises into eloquence; while it throughout possesses the better quality of plain speaking. The writer said what he proceeded to vigorously denounce the absurdities to which a lifeless, conventional religion had led. The distinctness with which he gave utterance to the truth that was in him startled those who had quietly settled down in the faith that Calvinism was not only the foundation of all things, but that it was a good founda- tion. Once more accepted formulas had been chal- | Rev. Mr. Foxcroft, the colleague of Dr. Chauncey in the First Church of Boston, Mr. Briant had in his and the theological rancor with which they did it was expressed on the title-pages, even, of the sermons in which they thought to confute him. The Rev. Mr. Niles, of the Middle Braintree Precinct, for instance, called his discourse a vindication of certain gospel doctrines and teachers " against the injurious reflections and misrepresentations" of the " Rev. Mr. Lemuel righteousness of men in the room of the surety righteousness of Christ, in the important article of justification before God." Mr. Briant was not a man to be summarily suppressed. He was young, it was true, letter referred to as 'a verbose, dark, Jesuitical writer,' and, accordingly, Mr. Foxcroft now returned the compliment by accusing Mr. Briant of being not To this contribution to theological debate Mr. Briant speedily replied in a piece dated April 15, 1751, which he entitled "' Some more friendly remarks on Mr. Porter In a second Letter to him and two of his abettors, namely, Mr. Cotton, appendix writer, and Mr. F - xcr - ft, marginal noter." The title alone is sufficient. In pointed controversy his opponents were no match for Mr. Briant, and he now fairly convicted them of having brought serious charges against him on the strength only of conjecture and suspicion ; but the discussion had drifted away from great doctrinal issues to mere personalities, and it ceased to be of importance. Yet it did not end then. notes to Winthrop, to some forgotten controversy of earlier days, Mr. Savage has alluded to what he calls Mr.

Briant in his reply trifled with them. Hardly troubling himself to conceal his contempt, he permitted a vein of irony to run through his answer, which, while it must have bewildered as well as exasperated his opponents, was out of place. The subject-matter under discussion should at least have made the discussion serious. As it was, he very distinctly, to use a modern word, chaffed his reverend critics.

Naturally they were not slow to respond, and, as is the custom of men of their calibre, they forthwith proceeded to identify themselves with the sacred cause of which they were the self-appointed and incompetent advocates.

later, caused him to sever his connection with his parish. The closing months of his short pastorate must have been very trying to him. Among his brethren he was not without sympathizers, and he counted the celebrated Dr. Jonathan Mayhew, of the West Church in Boston, as his intimate friend; but his controversial methods must have startled even those who believed as he did, and prevented their rallying to his support. undivided.

Through their agency an Heclesiastical Council was called to consider the case of the Braintree church. Mr. Briant declined to acknowledge the authority of It adjourned ; but met again in January, 1753, and, Mr.

Briant still declining to appear, it proceeded to take cognizance of his case. Hight causes of complaint had been preferred. They related to all grades of offense from the sermon on moral virtue to whispers of " scandalous immoralities."'

In their findings the Council expressed its opinion that there did exist grounds of complaint against the pastor, but it added the belief that the " aggrieved had gone too far in their charges. The members of the Council concluded its report by giving " their best advices" to the two parties; thus, in the words of Mr. Briant's most eminent successor, effecting "as much as Councils ever effect, - that is, nothing at all, except, it may be, to increase the difficulty in which they intermeddled." sible tribunal could not be overlooked. they were referred to a committee of the North Precinct church composed of its most respected members. At its head was John Quincy, then one of the most prominent men in the public affairs of the province, and others of its members bore names which had appeared on almost every page of the town the theatre in which the debate went on; one precinct was arrayed against the other. Under these circumstances young Adams could not but have taken a lively interest in it. More than sixty years then passed away, during forty of which the New England mind was wholly drawn off from problems of theology, and concentrated on questions of civil rights first and of government afterwards. Then, at last, during the earlier part of the present century, an established order of things was brought about, and Growth justified the pastor. As to the immoralities charged on Mr. Briant, the committee reported that they had _ "never been proved in any one instance."

Or the 22d of the following October a precinctmeeting was held to take action on the pastor's request for dismission. His health was failing. As was usual in the town- and precinct-meetings of that period, John Quincy served as moderator, and it was presently voted that the pastor's request be granted, his parishioners apparently having considered that it was hopeless '' to wait patiently some time longer to see if it may not please God in his good Providence to restore our reverend pastor to his former state of health." quite one year, dying at Hingham in the early autumn of 1754. At the time of his death he was but thirty-two, and of all those who have served as pastors of his church, his remains and those of his eloquent successor a century later, William Parsons Lunt, alone do not moulder in the old First Precinet graveyard.

Briant was buried in the neighboring town of Hingham in September, 1754, while Mr. Lunt, in March, 1857, a tired wayfarer, was laid, decently, reverently, beneath the sands of the Syrian desert, as he journeyed towards the Holy Land. A little heap of stones alone marked his resting-place. There is high authority to the fact that, in his religious views, Lemuel Briant was a man half a century in advance of his time. During the controversy of 1749-53, John Adams was a growing lad, for he entered Harvard in 1751. It was an open question with him whether he would prepare himself for divinity or the law, and in the minds of the college students of those days theological disputes had all the active interest which new scientific or philosophical

"T thank you for your favor of the 10th, and the pamphlet enclosed, entitled 'American Unitarianism.' I have turned over its leaves and find nothing that was not familiarly known to me. In the preface Unitarianism is represented as only I can testify as a witness to its old age. Sixty-five years ago my own minister, the Rev. Lemuel Briant, Dr. Jonathan Mayhew, of the West Church in Boston, the Rev. Mr. Steele, of Hingham, the Rev. John Brown, of Cohasset, and perhaps equal to all, if not above all, struggle followed close on the French war. rapid sequence of great events outside materially affected even the First Precinct church of Braintree. A long period of doctrinal quiesence ensued, which amounted at last almost to torpidity. It was on the 22d of October, 1753, that Mr. Briant was dismissed, and just one year later, on the 8th of October, 1754, the parish extended a call to the Mev. Anthony Wibird.

Mr. Wibird, a graduate of Harvard in the class of 1747, was at the time of this call in his twenty-eighth year. He at first declined, apparently on the ground that the salary voted would not suffice for his support. It was small, being but eighty pounds a year, with a further sum of one hundred and thirty-three pounds, six shillings, and eightpence, "lawful money," for "a settlement." This it will be noticed was not so much as Mr. Fiske had received nearly a century before.

no sum at settlement, and this proposition Mr. Wibird accepted. Accordingly, on the 5th of February, 1755, he was ordained. His pastorate, the longest in the annals of the parish, covered forty-five years, outlasting the century. During it the colonies separated from the mother-country, and the North Pre- What terror, the downfall of the old and the upbuilding of the new, the world in those days moved rapidly ; but amid all the turmoil without, - stamp-acts, tea-riots, Bunker Hill fights, Declarations of Independence, and elections of Presidents, - the Rev. Mr. Wibird seems to have pursued the even tenor of his way, His colleague during the closing years of his ministry wrote of him that "he was a learned man, though in his habits somewhat eccentric, and withal of great dignity, and beloved and respected by his people." He was, as his name implies, a genuine New Englander, also; and traditions still linger among the grandchildren of his parishioners touching the dry, quaint humor with which he observed on men and and things. He was never married, nor was anything bearing his name ever put in type, though he was once chosen to deliver the annual election sermon. He was about seven years older than John Adams, who saw a good deal of him during the years while the former was picking up a practice at Braintree, and in 1759 the active-minded young lawyer wrote of the divine that his soul was lost in " dronish effeminacy," though he had " his mind stuffed with remarks and stories of human virtues and vices, wisdom and folly, ete." On yet another occasion he remarked upon Parson Wibird's popularity, ' He plays with babies and young children that begin to prattle, and talks with their mothers, asks them familiar, pleasant questions about their affection to their children; he has a familiar, careless way of conversing with people, men and women; he has wit and humor."

Before Mr. Wibird's pastorate closed he was, through bodily infirmity, disabled from preaching, so that on Feb. 5, 1800, exactly four months before the pastor's death, the Rev. Peter Whitney was ordained as his colleague. Like all his predecessors in that pulpit, except Tompson and Flynt, Mr. Whitney was a Harvard graduate, belonging to the class of 1791, and at the time of his ordination he was thirty-two. His pastorate lasted through forty-three years, and during it the separation of church and state took place in New England. Quincy town and precinet were divided. Intellectually, Mr. Whitney was in no way remarkable; a worthy, easy-going divine of liberal tendencies, while Dr. Storrs, of the Middle Precinct, held his church and its people firmly to the strict faith of the fathers, the old North Precinet - the church of Wheelwright and Briant - was allowed to drift, as it was fit and proper that it should, quietly and easily in Channing's wake. The change to Unitarianism was then almost unnoticed, and in 1827 Mr. Whitney was able to record that "for the last thirty years this society has been more united, perhaps, than any other in our country. No 'root of bitterness' has in any measure sprung up to trouble them; none of that ill-will which sectarianism so often produces has been found among them; nor have any of those sources of division arisen which in so many of the towns of New England have cut the happiest societies asunder."

These words were written at the very time when the old epoch had come to a natural close, and the The silence of the West Quincy hills was now broken by the sharp ring of the sledge' on the drill, and loud blasts told of quarries from which gangs of busy men were taking huge blocks of stone to be carried off on the newly-devised railway, which, opened only the year before, was daily examined by curious visitors from far and_ near. Forces destined in a few years to wholly revolutionize the town were thus already actively at work. Though the mass had not yet been celebrated in Quincy, and, indeed, no new religious society had been organized there for more than a century, the. church and the town were no longer one. The separation had taken Most significant of all, the old church edifice of 1732, in which three whole genplace seven years before.

erations of townspeople had worshiped together as one civil and religious family, - this plain, wooden meeting-house was even then being removed to give place to that more pretentious temple of stone which was in a few years to be known only as the church of one, and not the most numerous, of the half-dozen religious societies into which the people of the town had divided.

Chapter Xxviii Life In The Colonial Town

In speaking of the town of Braintree, then newly incorporated, Capt. Edward Johnson, in his " Wonderworking Providence,' remarked: 'Some of Boston retain their farms from being of their Town, yet do they lye within their bounds, and how it comes to pass I know not." It will also be remembered that at the time of the incorporation two thousand acres had been "set apart at the Mount" for the use of Boston, " in the most convenient place unallotted." For several years thereafter Boston continued to make allotments in Braintree, until in January, 1644, a tract of three thousand acres was granted to John Winthrop, Jr., and others for the encouragement of some iron-works

Boston, or set aside as common lands, or given away in large private allotments. It has already been remarked that the actual settlers in Braintree seem as a rule to have been poor persons who received small grants of land. On these fell the burden of the town's charges.

Those charges, it is true, were in the earlier period practically limited to the support of the clergyman ; but a contribution of £60 a year for that purpose was a heavy burden in itself, and naturally the exemption of the Boston allotments from their share of the charge was from the beginning a source of contention. The arrangement was one which could not possibly last. Accordingly, an order was passed, as early as 1641, that no house or land in the town should be sold to any one not an inhabitant until it had first been offered to 'the men appointed to dispose of town affairs," and in case they did not see fit to purchase, it could then be sold " only to such as the townsmen shall approve on." Nor could any one not received as an inhabitant build within the town limits without permission. In the case of Braintree this rigorous restriction of non-resident ownership and new settlement had probably a fourfold object. In the first place, it was an outgrowth of the Antinomian excitement and its alien law. All elements of civil and religious discord were to be excluded. Above all things, the peace of the church was not to be disturbed. Church and town were one; and it was thus reserved for the members of the church to say who might be inhabitants of the town. So important was this exclusive power centred in church-government and church-membership, that it is earliest Massachusetts polity. Its formal recognition on the first pages of the Braintree records was fit and proper. It hedged the Lord's people securely in against intruders.

The legal inhabitancy of the town, moreover, carried with it certain rights and privileges in the com- Further on these will be more particularly referred to. Then came in the question of the support of the poor and the helpless, under that system of English law and custom which the settlers had brought over with them as their rule of conduct. Every one had a right to freezing. That right was established by legal residence. From the beginning, therefore, it has been matter of deep concern with all Massachusetts towns to prevent the poor and dependent from becoming legal inhabitants within their limits. This is still the The order of 1641 was intended to provide selves all lands and tenements offered for sale, so that neither land nor tenement should in future be held by any one who did not actually live in Braintree and share in its parish burdens.

The evil of non-residency could not be remedied in this way. Accordingly, in 1647 another attempt was made to correct it. Upon a commutation payment of £50 in five equal annual instalments, " to be made in merchantable corn, as wheat, rye, peas, and Indian, at fifty shillings in each of them," Boston agreed that all land owned by its inhabitants in Braintree should, when laid out and improved, be accounted as Braintree lands, and as such be liable to all common town charges. failed to settle the question. unimproved lands next became the bone of contention.

On a greatly reduced scale, it was the question which during that century and the next involved England A wilderness was in dispute, with a paper title set up against Fortunately the parties to the conand France and Spain in war upon war.

actual occupancy. flict were not in a position to go to war; but in January, 1698, seventy freeholders of Braintree formally and in writing covenanted one with another "to defend our ancient rights, and oppose in a course disturb, molest, or endeavor to dispose" any of their number; and they promised to bear as a common burden all charges which might arise out of the lawsuits expected to ensue.

This determined front naturally brought about a compromise, and in the year 1700 a body of the Braintree freeholders agreed to purchase all the waste land by inhabitants of Boston, paying therefor £700. In order to effectually prevent a repetition of the nonresident experience, it was at the same time, and at a public meeting, further voted that no purchaser of these lands should make any conveyance of them to any outsiders, '"' thereby to let them have a foothold or interest in said purchase or any other way." purchase-money was raised by voluntary subscription through the efforts of an association consisting of one hundred inhabitants of Braintree, and the Boston

Thus ended a controversy the importance of which to Braintree cannot be exaggerated. It involved a vital question, - that of a fixed rent charge to be forever paid by the actual occupant of land to a technical owner. English and Irish experience had sought to

American wilderness had thought to secure forever some annual return from them, just as English adventurers and court favorites had secured similar returns from the grants of William the Conqueror, Henry VIIL., and Elizabeth.

this about. These efforts also were authorized by the king, and the greatest names in England were associated with them. For instance, on Sunday, the 29th of June, 1623, eleven men met together in a room at Greenwich, near London. King James was present with them. A small map of New Hngland was laid upon a table. On that map the whole coast from the St. Croix to Buzzard's Bay had been divided The were parties to the arrangement. King James drew the lot for Buckingham, who chanced not to be present. The region in which Braintree and Quincy lies fell to Lord Gorges. The Earl of Warwick drew Cape Ann.

This and many other similar attempts were made to introduce into New England the system which Strongbow had introduced into Ireland four centuries and a half before. That these attempts failed was, it may safely be asserted, the making of the New England people. The occupants of the soil became the owners of it. Paying no rent, what they would under another system have been forced to pay as rent remained with them; and it represented that slow increase of substance which built up the community. The increased value which the laborer's toil gave to the land belonged to the toiler, and not to his landlord.

This is not the place to discuss in detail the cause of the failure of these attempts. That failure was probably due to natural economical influences ; for it clearly was not due to any prejudice against the system itself in the minds of the early settlers. The allotments at 'the Mount" afford conclusive evidence Landlordism depends on a monopoly of land; and it was the abundance of cheap lands, combined with the want of accumulated capital, which made such a monopoly impossible in America. But while this is true of the country as a whole, it is The net of the law was thrown over the people there in 1637, when provision a town was incorporated. had to extricate themselves. 10, 1698, was accordingly their declaration of independence of landlordism. The contract of 26th January, 1700, was the recognition of that independence, The long struggle between the paper claimants of the soil on the one side and its actual occupants on the other side runs through sixty years of the town records. It was only an episode in the history of an insignificant New Hngland village, and as such is beneath the notice of history. Yet it had great histor- In a natural way, all unconsciously to those composing it, a single member in a community of towns was asserting itself in the line of common development.

Meanwhile the freeholders had been called upon to pass through another experience in the same matter of title. no little alarm; but it reads now like a burlesque on ants of Quincy, on behalf of the whole, took of the Indian descendants of Chickatabut a deed of the Braintree township, duly signed and sealed, with delivery "by turf and twig. in excess of caution, as a muniment of title in the Among the controversy with Boston then going on. eight grantees was one Richard Thayer. By virtue of this Indian deed, Thayer, in 1682, laid claim for himself to the whole township, and actually petitioned hands. In his petition he claimed to have long enjoyed quiet possession by virtue of his Indian deed, but that more recently, '' under pretence of an imaginary line,' the Massachusetts colony had usurped jurisdiction and dispossessed him. The General Court had then, he asserted, disallowed the deed, and refused to give him his appeal to the king. Accordingly, having now been driven from his property " to his bitter Ruin," he made his appeal in person.

The Privy Council in due course referred the paper to the Committee of Trade and Plantations, and it was by them sent to Joseph Dudley and John Richards, the agents of the colony in London, to report thereon. Massachusetts at this time was not in favor at court, and it was impossible to know what secret influences might be at work behind a distant and all-powerful tribunal like the Privy Council. The freeholders of the town seem, accordingly, to have been greatly stirred up when tidings reached them of this new assault. prepared and "subscribed by an hundred and thirtyfour hands out of this small town, consisting of ninety or a hundred families at the most." monstrance which accompanied this address seems to have been final, for, in January, 1683, Dudley and Richards filed their answer, in obedience to the order more, a derne solitary desert, and his share therein can hardly reach the five hundredth part. . . . The body of the town are of one soule as to satisfaction with the present Government (that of Charles II.), and looke at themselves as basely traduced by Thayer's reports. Whose cards, had they been good, him out." As to his complaint of the "utter ruin" brought on himself and family, the remonstrants asserted vigorously that he had brought it upon himself, ''having expended that little estate he had in contention and litigation," "one of the forlorn hope among men of desperate fortunes, .. . and can find nothing for his living but by this way of lying claim. characteristic document. It was not only illustrative of the people and times, but it is still entertaining reading. It was drawn up apparently by Col. Edmund Quincy, that "true New England man,' who died Jan. 8, 1698.

"went into New England" in 1641; but it is agreed that " his very poor father, with eight poor children, of which this Richard was one, came two-and-forty years ago, in exceeding mean and low condition, and was suffered to sojourn, as a poor man

The town spoke in this way of Richard Thayer not without reason. The authorities had become acquainted with him and his ways during King Philip's war, when, in company with several others, he was There was a sort of advanced station, or picket-post, in Bridgewater, of which Thayer had charge, and he soon proved himself a timorous braggart. He evidently belonged to a class peculiar neither to that time nor to New England, - noisy, scheming men of great pretension and small performance. As a soldier, he kept the country in a state of continuous alarm, and was always scouting to no purpose. Nor did he forget at the end of the war to bring in what in those days was looked

Returning to the question of the town lands, the matter of title being disposed of, it remains to speak of the commons. In the original Braintree there were three of these, comprising some fifteen hundred acres in all, and known as the South and North Commons and the ministerial lands. When it is said that the settlers of Massachusetts were as a body common people of the purest English blood, much naturally The English are a tenacious race, not easily They brought

| to New England, therefore, together with their language and families and household stuffs, a mass of customs and usages which dated back to the Saxon days of Kings Ceawlin and Ine, but were little apand stranger, in a remote and obscure part of the town untill he | adventured to purchase only four acres of land, which at that time and in that place might be bought for a very small matter, yet more than the poor man was able or willing to pay. The grantor, yet living with us, now saith he is not paid for it plicable to the new surroundings. Of these usages and customs many yet remain in the more remote towns, strange relics of the almost forgotten communal system of early German life. Antiquarians from time are apt to expatiate, as if it were matter of surprise | him "a piece of land to puta house upon on the comthat the first settlers, in bringing with them their | new life. In the matter of town commons, for instance, the original settlers came from a country in which all the land was occupied to a country in which, except in choice localities, land hardly repaid the cost of fencing. The cultivator could certainly afford to pay no rent. mons, like those of most other towns, early proved a source of quarrel and vexation. taking stone, timber, and thatch off of those commons, as well as pasturing cows upon them, was long regarded as valuable. It was one of the advantages pertaining to legal inhabitancy. As early as 1646 a vote was passed, and now stands upon the record, authorizing legal inhabitants to take timber off the commons for any use in the town, but imposing a penalty of five shillings a ton on any sold out of the town. For years votes of a similar character were from time to time recorded, especially in regard to stone for building material. Then, not satisfied with the commons they had within their own limits, with genuine Anglo- they assigned was that the town lands were worn out, it was, in fact, an outbreak of the general and indiscriminate land-appropriation fever which then and ever since has prevailed in America.

Meanwhile, year by year the townsmen were called upon to take actioneither to defend or to improve the town lands. In 1662 a part of them were fenced in, and litigation ensued. Then, in 1682, a committee

Nothing more was then done in the matter for half a jots, to sell them by auction, and execute deeds of them in bemon." The lands were then leased to others, and the

In their memorial they particularly referred to one open way which had been recently laid out through these lands; and they add that, "although we repeatedly attempted to fence against the same by a sufficient stone wall, yet we were as often prevented by certain unknown eyvilminded persons, who, as fast as we built up the wall by day, did in the night-time throw the same down again."

Under these circumstances both the lessees and the town were discouraged. However it might be in England, the remains of the communal land system, beyond the limits of a training-field and graveyard, were not productive of satisfactory results in Massachusetts. It sold; and this question divided the town for years, just as it has since divided the Parliament of Great Britain and the Congress of the United States. The problem which Burke and Benton debated on a large scale was, on a smaller scale, and before they were born, discussed in the Braintree town-meetings. John Adams has told the rest of the story :

"Tn 1763 or 1764 the town voted to sell their common lands. This had been a subject of contention for many years. The south parish was zealous, and the middle parish much inclined The lands in their common situation appeared to me of very little utility to the public or to individuals; under the care of proprietors where they should become private property, they would probably be affairs. Perhaps the most singular circumstance connected with the subsequent fate of the North Common was that a large portion of it, including that region immemorially known as Mount Ararat, in which a term of twelve years. Then, in 1699, it was again voted that the town " would stand by the persons who have the town Lands leased to them, in defending them from Mr. Tompson, their late Schoolmaster, they paying rent of said Land to the Town Treasurer the leading stone-quarries have since been developed, was afterwards bought by John Adams himself. Towards the end of his life he deeded it back to the town in endowment of an academy. It has always been locally known as 'the common," and the rents received from it for pasturage and rights of quarry have again in this way been appropriated to school purposes.

favored or fertile points on the line of a main | thoroughfare which connected places beyond its | limits. In this case the thoroughfare connected the > Massachusetts and the Plymouth colonies, and the line followed by it was dictated in advance by the lay | of the land, the points of ferriage or fording, and the course of the brooks. The construction of a great coast road from Newbury, on the Merrimac, to Hingham - the northern and southern limits of the Massa- | chusetts Bay colony - had been ordered by special vote of the General Court in November, 1639, two | months after the Braintree church was gathered. | Those deputed to lay out the new road were em- | powered to do so wherever it might ' bee most con- | venient, notwithstanding any man's propriety, or any | corne ground, so as it occation not the puling downe | of any man's house or laying open any garden or | orchard." Its width was not specified, except in the | common lands or where the lands was wet and miry ; | it was there to be six, eight, and even ten rods wide. | At first designed to connect all the outlying coast towns of the Massachusetts Bay with Boston, it naturally was almost immediately continued along the shore to Plymouth. South of Boston it doubtless - followed almost exactly the old Indian trail, seeking | the fords, avoiding morasses, clinging to the uplands, This trail | in due course of time was succeeded by the blazed way, axe-marks on the bark of trees supplying for | the settler those more subtle indications which had | pointed out his path to the savage. Europeans, like Alderman, of Bear Cove, in 1634, | made their journeys on foot, and groped their way from tree to tree. The blazed trail was shortly succeeded by the bridle-path, which was little more | than the blazed trail made passable to horsemen, so - that only at certain points was the rider forced to dismount and lead his steed over difficult ground. Natu- | rally, these incipient roads were far from straight, and | in following them many fences and gates had to be | passed. They were, in fact, little more than a suc- cession of farm lanes running through cleared and | fenced lands, and open only through the commons. | Gradually these farm lanes were fenced in and the bars and gates removed, until at last the lanes were |

Such being the general process, the date of the | laying out of any particular street, or the fact that originally it passed the gate or house of Goodman This or Deacon That, is of interest only as affecting titles or to those dwelling upon it.

mere cumbersome detail. That only is of interest now which bears on the progress of early development ; and the genesis of the Massachusettss town roads can best be studied in the history of one of them. The main thoroughfare through Braintree, connecting it with Boston, is fairly typical.

In a direct line the centre of the North Precinct was but little more than seven miles from Boston stone; and the devious character of the colonial ways is well illustrated by the fact that the great coast It followed in some degree the line of the bay shore in order to avoid the difficult Blue Hill formation, and yet it was forced to make a long detour to go around the creeks and marshes which everywhere indent the coast. But the Neponset River was the great obstacle to be overcome; and for more than twenty years that puny stream seems to have defied every colonial effort at reliable crossing. Indeed, the futile attempts to effect one afford perhaps as clear an insight as can be obtained into the process through which the road development of New England was gradually worked out.

The matter of a reliable public-way crossing of the Neponset first received the attention of the General Court in 1684, the year in which Boston had " enlargement at Mount Woolliston." Mr. Israel Stoughton was then granted liberty to build a mill, weir, and bridge at the river's lower falls. Five months later, at the next session of the court, an exclusive mill privilege on the Neponset was granted to Stoughton, who, on the other hand, agreed to " make and keep in repair a sufficient horse-bridge over the The building of this bridge was an important event in the history of the colony, - as important as was the building of the St. Louis bridge across the Missouri in the history of the nation more Indeed, the earlier effort at construction taxed much the more severely of the two the resources of the community which attempted it. whose name in connection with the quaint and ven- erable hall which perpetuates his memory is a household word among the graduates of Harvard College, Israel Stoughton was a man of enterprise and substance. In the summer of 1634 he built on the Neponset the mill at which was ground the first bushel of corn ever ground by water-power in New England. This prototype of all the busy water-

| wheels in New England stood at the foot of Milton | Hill, on the Dorchester side of the stream, in the | midst of a wilderness; for it was four miles from

Wassagusset was the nearest inhabited place. There was no road to it, and in 1634 the bridge at Stoughton's mill was probably little more than a succession 'of logs thrown from rock to rock across the stream, In the autumn of that year the blazed trail seems to have been converted into a bridle-path ; for the town of Dorchester then ordered a road made to the mill, and voted the sum of five pounds with which to make it. This amounted to a little over one pound a mile for a road through a wilderness, and it was intended to make a trail passable for horses, so that those having river, as no one could be induced to undertake the charge of one unless he was furnished with a house, land, and boat at the public cost. This method of overcoming the difficulty was not in accordance with the usages of the time; and so the Court, in apparent despair, referred the matter to Mr. John Glover, who lived on the south side of the river, in what was then a part of Dorchester. From the position of his farm Glover stood much in need of the ferry, and accordingly he kept up an agitation of the matter; so now the Court empowered him to grant the ferry to any one who could be induced to take it for a term of seven years, 'or else to take it himself, and his heires, as his owne inheritence forever."

Four years more passed away, and the problem of crossing the Neponset was still unsolved. Mr. Glover did nothing. Yet the difficulty was one sure in time to force its own solution, for the river had to be crossed by every one journeying over the great coast Under the order of 1639 any town guilty and by Bray Wilkins, who then dwelt on the Neponset, but subsequently moved to Salem, where he lived into the next century, dying at the age of ninety-two. Ten years before his death, Bray Wilkins, being then to ply across the Neponset, between the landing at the head of what is now Granite Bridge, on the Dorchester side, and the tongue of upland which, under the name of "the ridge,' makes out across the marshes to the river's bank on the opposite shore. This, from the rate of fare established for it, was known as the "penny ferry." It was intended for the conveyance of foot passengers, and, indeed, owing to the flats in the river's bed, could have been Like its predecessor further down the stream, it soon proved a failure, and was discontinued.

penalty against Dorchester. 'The town then petitioned the court fora remission of the fine. This was allowed in May, 1652, but only on condition that the bridge should be constructed according to law, within three months, "and, if not, the said fine to take place according to the court order, the making of such bridges over such rivers being no more than is usual in the like case."

Dorchester was stimulated by this pressure to some action, but it seems to have been very loth to go into bridge-building. Accordingly, the town bethought itself' of the clause in the exclusive grant to Israel Stoughton, in 1634, one condition of which was that the grantee should ' make and keep in repair a sufficient horse-bridge" over the river. Israel Stoughton himself was now dead, but his widow owned and worked the mill; so proceedings were begun against her. She then, in her turn, had recourse to the General of the fact that near the mill there was a good fordingplace with a gravel bottom, she was excused from building a horse-bridge on condition that she maintained a good foot-bridge, with a sufficient hand-rail. Satisfied with this concession, the widow Stoughton seems to have adopted a policy of masterly inactivity, and the next spring the attention of the Court was called to the fact that, so far from a new foot- matter was taken in hand energetically. also. Massachusetts now numbered a population of over twenty thousand, dwelling in more than a score of towns, while Plymouth had five thousand people in five towns; and a little river only seven miles from Boston, on the main road between the two colonies, was still unbridged, and in times of freshet must for days together have been impassable. The construction of a cart-bridge ''neere Mrs. Stoughton's mill" was now, therefore, pronounced both a necessity and a county matter, and ordered to be undertaken at once. committee of six, among whom was Deacon Samuel Bass, of Braintree, was accordingly appointed, with

The first attempt to fix the line of road through Braintree was in 1641; but not until 1648 was the final location made. Running close at the base of the hills, crossing brooks at the points where uplands were nearest each other, the coast thoroughfare

Neponset, proved an obstacle not easily overcome. As early as 1635 a ferry had been established across the Monatiquot between Mount Wollaston and Wassagusset, the toll being one penny for each person and cept that he was married to a wife, Elizabeth, who would seem to have been an unamiable woman, inasmuch as in 1636, " for swearing, railing, and _ reviling,' she was sentenced by the magistrates to stand - six months only after he was licensed, Henry Kingman, of Weymouth, was put in his place. A year later Kingham was authorized to keep a tavern in connection with his ferry, the toll on which was in

March, 1638, raised to two pence a person. Meanwhile Applegate would seem to have remained in | and a half before. Kingman's employ, for this year in crossing the ferry | coming railroad era.

he upset a canoe of which he had charge, and into which he had crowded nine persons, three of whom were drowned. For this misadventure he was summoned before the General Court, and Richard Wright, a prominent personage at "' the Mount," was commissioned '"' to stave that canoe, out of which those persons were drowned." The matter ended with the appearance of Applegate and five others before the March General Court of 1639, which discharged them with an admonition not in "future to ven- But in consequence of this mishap the use of canoes at ferries was interdicted.

and at the same time reduced the toll to a penny. Two months later the act providing for the construction of the coast road was passed, and, as the road was laid out in 1641, the ferry undoubtedly was a link in Subsequently John Winthrop, Jr., established his iron-works in that neighborhood, and a stone bridge was in 1644 built across the little river, twenty years before one was built at the Milton Falls.

The section of the coast road within the limits of Braintree was about five miles in length, the church It was the backbone upon which the growing settlement formed itself. At first it had but three lateral branches, - two to points upon the shore, Squantum and Hough's Neck, and one to what subsequently became the Second Precinct of the town. Wright's mill, upon the town brook, stood a short distance from it, and with this the way from Hough's Neck connected, crossing the coast road. From this simple beginning the system of modern town-ways gradually developed, the lane and farmway regularly, at the proper time, becoming the vilage road and town street, fierce contests sometimes arising over questions of prescriptive right. But from 1641 to 1803 the old coast road remained the single thoroughfare from Braintree, and Quincy, to Boston. Then, at last, the needs of an increasing community began to make themselves felt, and a bridge across the Neponset nearer its mouth was projected. Chartered in 1802 and located in 1803, the turnpike road of which this bridge was a part followed nearly a straight line from the point where it crossed the Neponset to the centre of the town. The way in which it was laid out and built - disregarding the lay of the land, crossing the marshes, cutting through hills, and filling the bog-holes - was in strong contrast with the method pursued a century It even dimly foreshadowed the Gates and bars and crooked farm-ways disappeared before the " pike,' and the colonial lines of travel underwent a change which only prepared the way for the greater change brought about by the railroad only two-score years later. During Braintree's first century it is very questionable whether the roads were kept in any state of | systematic repair at all. That they were very bad, and at the season of the year when the frost comes out of the ground well-nigh impassable, may safely be inferred. There was no tax imposed for constructing or keeping them in order, and such work as was done it about. He afterwards recounted his experience in the matter. In March, 1761, being then a young lawyer in Braintree, he found himself suddenly chosen surveyor of highways. and remarked that '' they might as well have chosen any boy in school;" but after thinking the matter over, he concluded that it was best for him to accept the situation quietly, and at least give the town an energetic administration of the office.

" Accordingly, I went to ploughing and ditching and blowing rocks upon Penn's Hill, and building an entire new bridge of stone below Dr. Miller's and above Mr. Wibird's. The best workmen in town were employed in laying the foundation and

Yet this not unusual outcome of amateur, though official, zeal seems to have set the Braintree road surveyor reflecting, for he goes on to say, - a more equitable method and more likely to be effectual, and, therefore, joined this party in a public speech, carried a vote by a large majority, and was appointed to prepare a by-law, to be procured a copy of their law, and prepared a plan for Braintree, as nearly as possible conformable to their model, reported it to the town, and it was adopted by a great majority. Under this law the roads have been repaired to this day, and the effects of most suggestive portion of it. Some idea may be formed of what the condition of the roads must have been before 1760, when their condition prior to the year 1820 is confidently spoken of as a vast and indisputable improvement.

country town was comparatively light. There was then no internal commerce worthy of the name. There were no lines of regular stages running through Quincy prior to the year 1800, and the pleasure travel over the roads amounted to nothing at all.

covered with snow, the clumsy carts and sleds, drawn mainly by oxen, were kept busy bringing loads of cordwood down from the wood-lots, or carrying corn, potatoes, and other farm produce to market in Boston. Manure was hauled only from the barn-yard to the neighboring field; lumber and material were carted only when some dwelling or out-building had to be raised. 'The quarry teaming did not begin until after 1825, and the stage-coach period was wholly of The first of these coaches which ran from Boston was that to Providence in 1767, making part of the inside line to New York; and the Massachusetts packet or, later, a steamboat service until after the railroad was opened. As late as 1823 the stagecoach travel through Quincy was limited to some three trips a week to and from Plymouth and the in- Locally, when the Neponset turn- baggage-wagon, in which he also carried passengers, Simon Gillett purchased the route in 1823, and shortly after put upon it a regular Hancock" by This was an epochal event, and the " John Hancock" made four trips a week, carrying passengers stage passenger-coach, the ' John name. inside and out. It left Quincy betimes in the morning so as to reach Barnard's, in Elm Street, at nine o'clock, from which place it started at four P.M. on its return trip. It was years later that daily trips were made; and, indeed, it was not until 1840 that the stage-coach movement began to tax the capacity of the highways.

During the first hundred and seventy years of the settlement, therefore, the country roads in Braintree, however poorly made or kept in repair, were quite

Portsmouth in 1755, and John Adams' drive with his wife to Salem in 1766 to visit their '" dear brother Cranch." 'There being then no stages at all in the colony, 'a single horse and chair without a top was the usual mode of conveyance. chair, called a calash, was very seldom used." In the case of Tutor Flynt, he and his companion, leaving Cambridge after breakfast, ''oated" and had "a nip describes how, " because of the Porrige of snow, the Bearers rid to the Grave, alighting a little before Mourners, Cous. Edward and his Sister rid first; then Mrs. Anna Quincy, widow, behind Mr. Allen; and cousin Ruth Hunt behind her Husband." <A few years later, in 1712, Judge Sewall also describes a journey he made from Plymouth, where he had been holding court, to Boston. It was early in March : streets of Salem he found "broad and straight and pretty clean." elegant and grand he had seen in " any of the interior towns." A few years later, while riding the

"Overtook Judge Cushing in his old ecurricle and two lean horses, and Dick, his negro, at his right hand, driving the curricle. This is the way of traveling in 1771, - a judge of the out. Rained very hard, that went into a Barn awhile. Baited Dryed my coat and hat at By that time got to Braintry, the day and I were in amanner spent, and I turned in to Cousin Quinsey.

When Judge Sewall thus turned in at its gate on that rainy March day, the Quincy house had already been standing for twenty-seven years. It still remains, a noticeable specimen of the best domestic architecture of colonial times. Its comparatively broad hall in the centre of the house, the easy, winding staircase with carved balustrade, the low studded, but fairly of Dr. Chauncey, pastor of the First Church in Bosson, as he drove about the town making his parochial ln heavy, yellow-bodied chaise, with long shafts, a black boy perched on the horse's tail, the old divine was seated, in his dignified clerical costume, with threevisits at a period about fifteen years later.

gracefully to citizens as he passed. young driver in the meanwhile exchanged his compliments with young acquaintances of his own color by touching them up with his long whip from his safe perch."

This was after the Revolution, but the simple ways of the fathers were still in vogue. It has already been mentioned that when Bray Wilkins, in 1692, at the age of eighty-two, came from Salem to Boston to pass election week, his wife, scarcely younger than himself, rode on the pillion behind him. method of conveyance was not peculiar to those of Bray Wilkins' condition in life. in November, 1700, the widow of Col. Edmund Quincy died. Judge Sewall went out to Braintree to her funeral from the old Quincy house, and he broken line of the floors and ceilings which tell the story of increased size, the little ship-like lockers and other like attempts to economize space while space is everywhere wasted, - all these things bespeak the dwelling-place of gentry. Time has only hardened into something very like iron the solid timbers of hewn oak still bearing upon them the marks of the axe; and one room yet has on its walls the quaint Chinese paper which tradition says was hung there in 1775 in honor of Deborah Quincy's approaching marriage to Hancock.

Nor in the last century was the Edmund Quincy house the only specimen of this order of dwelling in Braintree North Precinct. Col. John Quiney occupied another such house at Mount Wollaston, which he had built in 1716, and which stood there, though reduced to baser uses, until the year 1852. Here during his long public life he often entertained parties of ladies and gentlemen who came across the bay to visit him from Boston, and there are traditions of strawberry parties held on the Half-Moon before yet the upland top of that now submerged gravel ridge had been wholly washed away. The Vassall solid St. Domingo mahogany. Originally it was a | small dwelling, constructed on a plan not unusual in | the tropics, with kitchen and all domestic arrangements behind the house and in a separate building. | Tn itself it contained only parlors and sleeping-rooms ; | but gradually it was added to, until the original house is now lost in the wide front and deep gabled wings of the later structure. In this house John Adams died; and in the same room in it were celebrated his own golden wedding, and the golden weddings of his son and his grandson.