Relation of Antipas Brigham, October 16, 17851

    Introduction

    Antipass, son of Lieut. Jonas and Parsis Brigham, was born on March 15, 1758, and baptized on March 26, his name chosen in remembrance of an earlier son of the same name who died at the age of six. His parents had been admitted into the Westborough church on August 16, 1747, eight and a half months after the birth of their first child, Martha.2

    Antipas married Hephzibah, the daughter of Edmund and Sarah Brigham on January 24, 1780.3 After the birth of their first two children, Antipas and Hephzibah joined the Westborough church on October 16, 1785.4 Hephzibah died on March 11, 1789, two days after the birth of her sixth child, Persis. Antipas then married Lydia Cutler of Western on November 18, 1790.5 She bore three children before her death in Northborough on June 16, 1798, at the age of 28.6

    Now a 41-year-old widower, Antipas married Julia, the 26-year-old daughter of the Reverend Peter and Julia Whitney of Northborough. Breck Parkman noted in his diary that on April 7, 1799, his brother-in-law, Elijah Brigham, went to Northborough to perform the marriage, “Her Father and mother so disgusted at the match that Mr. Whitney declines performing the Ceremony. A very unhappy circumstance for young persons to marry against their parents consent.”7 Five months later, when in Northborough, Breck found Antipas’s “wife very unwell,” he wrote. “Looks as if She had newly laid in.”8 In late 1800, Julia Brigham, “having been in travel is thrown into convultion fitts and is nigh unto death.” She died that day. If Julia Brigham had had a miscarriage or full-term birth in September 1799 and another birth in November 1800, the public records are silent about either event as well as about her marriage and death.9

    Sometime after Julia’s death, Antipas is said to have moved to “St. Albans, Vt., later Schoharie, N. Y.,” where he died in 1840.10

    The Relation

    I desire to bless God that I was Born in a Land of Gospel Light and have been favord with a preached Gospel—but I would lament the mesemprovement I have made of my Time and Oppertunities—And I desire to bless God that He has been pleased to Shew me that I am a Sinner and that the name of Christ alone is to be trusted in for salvation———————

    As, to the Articles of my faith I believe there is One God in three Persons, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost—and that the Screptures were given by Divine Insperation, and that all Men are [eonncluded?] under Sin being fallen from God, and are Justly condemned by his holy Law—I believe Jesus Christ was Constituted by the Father to be a Savior to all Believers, and that the Ordinances are of Divine Appointment, and that the Supper was Instituted to be a Standing memorial of the Death and Sufferings of my blessed Lord—And I desire with a penetent and beleeving heart to wait on God in His Ordenance—and to bless God that I was born of Christian Parents by whom I was early Dedecated to him in Baptism and now would take my baptismal engagement on myself—and desire Admittance to ful Communion with the Church of God in this place, and Ask your Prayers to God for me that I may be a Worthy pertaker at the Table of the Lord.

    Antipas Brigham

    Westboro, October 16, 1785

    1 Digital image of the relation: https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:z316s983p (images 25–26). The filing notation reads: “The Relation of Antipas Brigham Oct. 16, 1785.”

    2 For the children of Jonas and Persis Brigham (Martha, Jonas, Antepass, Eli, Edward, Barnabs, Antapass, Daniel, David, Persis, Joseph William) and the death of the first Antepass, see Vital Records of Westborough, Massachusetts, to the End of the Year 1849 (Worcester, MA: Franklin P. Rice, 1903), 24–27, 231 (hereafter cited as WVR). For the baptism of Antepas and the admission of Jonas and Persis Brigham to the Westborough church: https://www.colonialsociety.org/node/3941 and https://www.colonialsociety.org/node/3908.

    3 Vital Records of Westborough, Massachusetts, to the End of the Year 1849 (Worcester, MA: Franklin P. Rice, 1903), 118. Hepzibah was born on July 29, 1760; ibid., 26.

    4 Westborough Church Records, 251, https://www.colonialsociety.org/node/4081. Their first two children were Naham, born Apr. 8, 1781, and William, Dec. 24, 1782; Westborough Vital Records, 27–28.

    5 Antipas Brigham m. Lydia Cutler of Western, Nov. 18, 1790; Vital Records of Brookfield, Massachusetts to the End of the Year 1849 (Worcester, MA: Franklin P. Rice, 1909), 278.

    6 Vital Records of Northborough, Massachusetts, to the End of the Year 1850 (Worcester, MA: Franklin P. Rice, 1901), 130. Her children: Ransly, Aug. 20, 1791 (WVR, 28); Lydia, Nov. 16, 1793 in Westborough (date and place from Ancesry.com without source citation); and Polly, Jan. 7, 1796 (Vital Records of Northborough, 22. Antipas and Lydia were dismissed to the church in Northborough, Aug. 31, 1794; https://www.colonialsociety.org/node/4164.

    7 Diary of Breck Parkman (Parkman Family Papers, American Antiquarian Society), Apr. 7, 1799.

    8 Ibid., Sept. 16, 1799.

    9 Ibid., Nov. 29–30, 1800. Whitney Bible records give the date of death as Nov. 29; NEHGR 90 (Oct 1936), 392.

    10 Emma Elisabeth Brigham, The History of the Brigham Family (Rutland VT: The Tuttle Company, 1927), 2:72.