MARCH MEETING, 1916

A Stated Meeting of the Society was held at the house of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, No. 28 Newbury Street, Boston, on Thursday, 23 March, 1916, at three o’clock in the afternoon, the President, Frederick Jackson Turner, LL.D., in the chair.

The Records of the last Stated Meeting were read and approved.

The President announced the death, on the third instant, of Frederick Lewis Gay, a Resident Member.

Mr. George L. Kittredge spoke as follows:

I am not in general very well disposed to extensive obituaries or memorial meetings. But when a member of the Society who has been with us from the very outset, and who has done so much for us all as Mr. Gay has done, not only in making contributions to our publications and our funds but in lending his documents to those of us who were engaged in investigations, and in furnishing us with information, of which he had a large store always at his command, — when such a man is taken away from us, who has been so intimately connected with all our activities, it is impossible to let his death pass without a word.

I shall not advert to what may be styled Mr. Gay’s public connection with the Society, because I am sure that Mr. Edes will recall to our memory some of the facts in that regard. I should, however, like to say a word about Mr. Gay as a private scholar and as the helper of other scholars.

I shall never forget what he said to me with an air of comical half exasperation, half amusement, about six weeks before he died. I had been commenting on an extremely rare volume which he had lent me and had let me keep for some time. It was a work relating to a distinct figure in English literature, Davenant, — a book of a highly significant character, significant particularly of the manners and customs of literary men in Davenant’s time. It was a tiny thing which he had brought to our meeting in the pocket of his coat, and which I carried away in a similar repository. When I gave it back to him he looked at it with affection, and said, “Unfortunately, everybody knows me as a collector, and that condemns me for good; but what I really care for is the things that books have inside of them!” and he chuckled in his own inimitable way.

It was a casual and unimportant remark, perhaps, but it reminds me of something that I think it is well enough to put on record orally at a meeting like this, — the fact that Mr. Gay, though known to the community chiefly as a collector, was known to his friends and intimates as an enthusiastic student, not only of history, but of all literature. His acquaintance with the highways and the byroads of English literature was quite surprising, and it was of a very catholic kind. He read anything which appealed to him; and it was interesting to observe what it was that did appeal to him. It was not merely the odd, the curious: it was the human element in the records that great and little writers have left behind them that he liked to turn over in his mind and to chat about with his associates.

However, the particular matter which concerns this Society more is that generous and kindly feeling which led Mr. Gay to be so liberal with his collections, and that even larger generosity which prompted him to contribute information from his own store of special knowledge whenever the occasion offered itself. Instances of that sort have come to my attention again and again, and more than once, in my own case, the facts contributed have been of vital importance to the matter in hand, and of a kind that I could not possibly have obtained from any other source.

My last memory of Mr. Gay concerns an interview with him at my house. It was a most characteristic incident. He wished to see me — so I was told — about a book, and in he came, tenderly nursing an enormous parcel. “Here,” said he, “I have something that I should like to have you look at, if you have time, in order to determine whether it would be worth while for the College Library to accept it. It is curious, but I doubt if it is of any real importance.”

I opened the parcel, and found, to my amazement and delight, that it contained a large lot of the papers of Bishop Percy relating to early English ballads and romances. They came at a most opportune moment, for I was at work just then upon that very subject, and, in fact, had recently been examining the catalogue of the Bishop’s manuscripts, dispersed years ago, and wondering what had become of certain lots that our library, which bought largely at the sale, had failed to secure. Here they were, a recent acquisition of Mr. Gay’s, in beautiful order and exquisitely bound. Of course I assured him that the library would give them the heartiest welcome, and added that their arrival at this juncture was a thing of much moment to me personally. He was fairly radiant at this news. He knew well enough that the library would be glad to have the documents. What pleased him beyond words was to learn that they would be of immediate utility to somebody who understood their peculiar value and really needed them.

As I have said, the whole incident was most characteristic. Mr. Gay was well aware that material intelligently collected will always find its student — will be of use to somebody sooner or later. But he was above all things a man with human interests; and it always gratified him immensely when anything that he had himself collected turned out, at a particular moment of which he was personally cognizant, to be of particular use to a friend.

Mr. Henry H. Edes said:

I do not rise to add any extended remarks to what Professor Kittredge has said, but I do want to tell the Society what a steadfast friend we have always had in Mr. Gay. He was elected to membership by the incorporators almost immediately after their organization; and from that time until his sickness in February he was among the most earnest and interested and generous of our members.

The honor of the treasurership of the Society has been mine from the beginning, and I wish to bear testimony at this time to the fact that nothing has been undertaken by the Society which called either for service or for money in which Mr. Gay has not joined in the most whole-souled manner. His gifts have always been generous, and in many cases exceeded those of any other member.

But of far greater value than his gifts of money was the unflagging interest which he had in the Society and in all its undertakings. He had the greatest pride in our publications and we are indebted to him for many of the most beautiful plates which adorn the various volumes.

It was always a pleasure to me to greet him at my office; he often came in late in the afternoon, after business hours, to have a chat or a conference about some historical matter in which he was interested at the time; and it generally had a bearing upon the work of our Society. I shall miss his genial presence.

Mr. Albert Matthews remarked on the deep interest in the Society’s publications taken by Mr. Gay, of his regularly receiving the proofs, and of his sending to the Editor a note, sometimes a book, and occasionally even a manuscript, that might be used in preparing a footnote to elucidate or add to something in the text.

Mr. John W. Farwell spoke as follows:

I have brought for your inspection to-day a copy, interesting not only for its imprint but also for its association, of “A Catalogue of Books belonging to the Library Company of Philadelphia. . . . Printed by B. Franklin, 1741.” Inscriptions on the fly-leaf show that it was purchased by George Livermore in London from William Pickering in June, 1845, then in paper covers. It was bound for him by Hayday. It was presented by Mr. Livermore to Edward Everett, January 17, 1859, and has Mr. Everett’s book-plate. From him it came into the possession of his son, Dr. William Everett, and was purchased by me at the sale of Dr. Everett’s books after the fire in his library, evidence of which is shown on the cover.

The book has 56 pages and the titles are arranged by sizes. As would be expected, the books are upon a variety of subjects, historical, literary, and scientific. On the last page is “A short Account of the Library,” which states that it was formed in 1731 by fifty persons, “each obliging himself to pay 40s. for purchasing the first Parcel of Books, and 10s. per annum to defray Charges and encrease the Library.” At the time of this publication, the number of members had increased to upwards of seventy. One rule says: “Any Member may borrow a Book for 2, 3, or 4 Weeks, leaving his Note for double Value, and paying a small Penalty if ’t is not return’d at the Time agreed.” Non-subscribers could borrow books by “leaving in the Hands of the Librarian, as a Pledge, a Sum of Money proportion’d to the Value of the Book borrow’d, and paying a small Acknowledgement for the Reading.” The Library was to be “open every Saturday Afternoon from 4 a Clock ’til 8.” An air pump, a microscope, and other valuable instruments had been presented by the Hon. John Penn, a lot of land for a building by the Hon. Thomas Penn, Proprietors of the Province, and the sum of 34 pounds sterling (to be laid out in books) from Dr. Sydserfe, late of Antigua. At the end is a note, saying, “A Copy of the Articles or Constitutions is left in the Library, for the Perusal of all that desire to be more fully informed.”352

In answer to my inquiry, the present Librarian, Mr. George Maurice Abbot, writes:

I would say that from a careful examination of our minutes and Catalogues, it appears to me that the one bearing date 1741, might really be called the first printed Catalogue. Although the minutes at various dates before 1736 direct Mr. Franklin should print a new one, my impression is that these were nothing but single sheets, certainly not books. On the 13th of December, 1736, it was ordered that B. Franklin print a number of copies of the Company’s Constitution.

June 9, 1740, B. Franklin was ordered to print a complete Catalogue. April 13, 1741, it was agreed that two hundred catalogues should be printed, which should include those formerly printed. This is the work of which you have a copy.

Mr. Abbot also had the kindness to send to me a copy of A Short History of the Library Company of Philadelphia, compiled by him and printed by the Company in 1913.

Mr. Clarence S. Brigham exhibited a photostat of a manuscript list of duplicate books bought from the Harvard College Library in. 1682 by Cotton Mather. Of ninety-six titles, eighty-one were theological and the remainder comprised history, philosophy, and philology. This purchase was probably the beginning of Mather’s library, as he was then but nineteen years old.

Plate I

Mr. Albert Matthews communicated the following paper, written by Professor Edmund Burke Delabarre of Brown University:

EARLY INTEREST IN DIGHTON ROCK

Among the other curiosities of New England, one is that of a rock, on a perpendicular side whereof, by a river which at high tide covers part of it, there are engraved, no man alive knows how or when, lines filled with strange characters; which would suggest as odd thoughts about them that were here before us, as there are odd shapes in that elaborate monument. Probably no one now alive, uninfluenced by the quaint phraseology of the past, would choose exactly these words in which to describe the Dighton Writing Rock and our knowledge of it. Yet the statement is true to-day, though far from a complete statement of our knowledge. Its particular interest is that, being still though incompletely true, it is, with two unimportant omissions, the first known published description of the so-called Dighton Rock.

This does not imply that we know no more about the rock than was known in Cotton Mather’s time. On the contrary, archaeological opinion is agreed as to its general nature and origin.353 Yet it still remains true that as to detail, no man knows just how or when the lines were cut, or what they mean; and that they still suggest odd speculations, as they did two hundred years ago and have been doing abundantly in all the intervening years.

No single object of antiquarian interest in America has been so much discussed, probably, as Dighton Rock. Interest in it is still keen, as is evidenced by the fact that no year goes by without some published reference to it. Just how important it has been considered is impressively shown by examination of a chronological bibliography listing not only papers specifically on this subject alone, but also references to it in papers or books on other subjects, and other known evidences of interest in it. In compiling such a bibliography I have found thus far 52 items belonging to 26 years out of the 120 between 1680 and 1799; 32 items in 18 years of the 37 between 1800 and 1836; 148 items in 35 years of the next 35, to 1871; and 197 items in 43 years of the 45 since 1871, — more than 400 items in all. It is probable that further search will largely increase this list, and fill in many of the few missing years. Some of the items, of course, are trivial; but many of them are due to authorities of the highest eminence in their time. Particularly during the period when the “Phœnician Theory” of the origin of the rock was under discussion, about 1800, and again after the “Norse Theory” had been announced, in 1837, no one of repute in such matters in this or foreign countries failed to give expression to his opinion. Nearly twenty first-hand copies of the inscription, many of them exceedingly different from the others, exist in printed form, and fully as many more have been made but never published; and some twenty different theories have been advanced to account for its origin.

In view of all this interest and discussion, it is a little surprising to realize that the whole history of the subject needs to be re-written. No one has yet assembled all the copies of the inscription, or shown what is actually “engraved” on the rock. The only photograph known to me which shows at all clearly how the rock appears to an actual observer, without emphasis or interpretation of any of its features, is given as a frontispiece to this paper, and has never been published.354 It is interesting to note that in this photograph careful scrutiny, aided by an active imagination, can easily discover and correlate all the varying copies that have been made. What the unknown inscribers actually intended beyond what this photograph reveals, is now and may always remain a matter of speculation alone. But those who have made varying copies have not thought that they were indulging in speculation. It seems to have been characteristic of each that he believed that he drew only what he was. sure was there, or what his companions all agreed on; and represented sometimes by dotted or by fainter lines whatever he thought was doubtful. Nevertheless they disagree radically. It follows that we have here an exceedingly interesting problem in the psychology of perception, as well as another in the psychology and art of copying. Moreover, however the figures were depicted, there has been an astonishing variety of interpretations as to what they mean. They present, therefore, another attractive problem concerning scientific methods of reliable interpretation, and psychological reasons for both right and wrong interpretations. Into these matters it is not the purpose of this paper to enter. It remains further true, however, that no one has yet brought together all the available historical facts concerning the rock and discussions of it; and not only have important omissions been made in this regard, but a considerable number of early occurring errors have been perpetuated without correction. The whole subject, then, needs to be surveyed anew, and to receive its first fully comprehensive presentation. The fulfilment of this task would require much more space than the present occasion affords. Enough neglected material and uncorrected error exist to justify giving separate consideration to the earliest studies and facts that have a bearing on the history of Dighton Rock, ending with the year 1730.

The name itself by which the rock is commonly known is a partial misrepresentation. Once or twice only in all its history it has been correctly called the Assonet Rock, or Monumentum Assonetense. For fifty years after the settlement of neighboring parts, the land on which it stands remained in the possession of the Indians. Since then, the shifting lines of townships have made it successively a part of Taunton, of Dighton, and of Berkley. Through all these changes, however, the name Assonet Neck persisted, and it is on Assonet Neck that the rock is situated, just across the Taunton River from the present village of Dighton.

Uncertainty as to Date of the Inscription

It must have been very soon after the settlement at “Cohannet alias Taunton,” in 1637, that the rock was first seen by white men. But whether it then had artificial markings on its surface we do not know. There is only one fact, and that not a conclusive one, that could be regarded as evidence that it had. This is the unquestionable faintness and uncertainty of the marks at nearly the earliest dates at which we have knowledge of it. How clear it appeared to Danforth in 1680 we do not know. If the lower part of Mather’s 1712 version was genuinely copied from the rock, the exceeding badness of the copy cannot be explained by unskilled draughtsmanship alone, and must indicate that the inscription was then practically as faint as it is to-day. But this part of Mather’s drawing cannot be relied on as actually derived from the rock. In 1730, however, Greenwood found the indentures “not very considerable,” and had difficulty in determining what were real indentures. His whole description, given in full later in this paper, makes the inference almost unavoidable that the wear and tear of the last two hundred years have scarcely at all increased the difficulty of deciphering the characters, except perhaps on the lowest part of the face. It would seem, then, that we must conclude either that the inscription is very ancient, as has so often been believed, or that its makers cut the lines so thinly that only slight weathering was needed to render most of them obscure. More than one authority on Indian petroglyphs describes cuttings that were exceedingly shallow.355 The dimness of the artificial lines, noted in the earliest detailed description of the rock that we possess, cannot therefore be regarded as a decisive indication of great antiquity.356 And there is no other indication of it than this. It follows that we do not know when the work was done. It is even possible, so far as real evidence shows, that it was at some time, or at various times, within the fifty years after the whites had settled in the neighborhood, during which the Indians still retained possession of Assonet Neck.357

Two statements have been made which, if true, would tend to invalidate this conclusion. One is, that “the Indians were ignorant of the existence” of such inscribed rocks;358 or that “the natives could not render any account of its origin, when the Europeans discovered the country.”359 The other claims that “the rock was seen and talked of by the first settlers in New England,”360 or “found there on the arrival of the first New England colonists.”361 No statement of either sort appears in the literature of the subject previous to the earliest one here noted. The second of the two seems to exhibit mere ignorance of the facts, since the first discoverable notice taken of the rock was in 1680, and the first printed reference to it in 1690. The other, I suspect, has always been founded solely on Greenwood’s misleading citation of Danforth’s tradition about the “wooden house.”362 As I read it, this was given by Danforth simply as an interesting incident connected with the river, which he had just named, and not necessarily as having anything to do with the rock. It was Greenwood who, fifty years later, without warrant from Danforth’s language, assumed that it was narrated with relation to the rock, and drew from it the unjustified conclusion that “this monument was esteemed by the oldest Indians not only very antique, but a work of a different nature from any of theirs.” Examination of Danforth’s own words is all that is needed to show how slim a basis they afford for the statements that we are discussing. Even if taken as having reference to the rock, there were doubtless other and conflicting traditions of equal value, of which Danforth, a casual visitor to Taunton, did not happen to learn. Benjamin Jones, a resident of the locality and owner of the rock, appears to have related one such to Greenwood and to Dean Berkeley in 1730,363 and Kendall gathered a number of them in 1807. Jones’s tradition may fairly be balanced against Danforth’s; and against Greenwood’s belief as to what is proved, may be set the contemporary opinion, apparently accepted by Berkeley, that the Indians were the responsible parties. Besides which, we may reasonably doubt that Danforth’s story was meant to imply anything whatever as to the occasion of the inscription.

Plate II

There remains one further bit of apparent evidence that the inscription was surely made before the arrival of the colonists. It is suggested by L. N. Kinnicutt364 that the name Assonet is derived from hassun-et, “near the rock,” and that Dighton Rock is implied. If so, since the name was in use as early as 1640, the rock was a prominent landmark to the Indians before that time. But there are rival derivations of the name, so that the meaning assigned by Kinnicutt is by no means certain, and cannot be taken as genuine evidence.365 We may finally conclude, therefore, I think, that we are not warranted in assigning to the inscription any definite date, whether before or after the earliest days of the Colony.

Knowledge of the Rock by the Colonists before 1680

That the inhabitants of Taunton, however, must have seen this rock, already inscribed or not, very soon after their arrival is perfectly clear. One of the most prized natural products of the region was the fine hay that still grows abundantly on the tide-washed flats bordering on the Taunton and the Assonet Rivers. There are such salt marshes or meadows still in use on Assonet Neck, both above and below Dighton Rock and not far from it; a small one in a Cove at the rock itself; and one on Grassy Island, which lies in Taunton River hardly more than a stone’s throw from the rock. Within three years after the first settlement there, these meadows were assigned to the proprietors of Taunton: “Whereas the inhabitants of Cohannett, now called Taunton, haue complayned of thire greate want of meddow grounds . . . the Court doth therefore now order and graunt the meddow lands at Assonet . . . vnto the said inhabitants of Taunton.”366

From another order of the General Court of Plymouth, dated June 6, 1643,367 it appears that Assonet Neck, already bearing that name, was known to and desired by the men of Taunton. After acquiring its meadows, they soon proceeded to assign them to certain individuals among them. Unfortunately the record of the earliest grants is lost. The first reference368 we can now find to the meadows at Smith’s Cove, a little above Dighton Rock, apparently occurs in a record of 1669, and in one of 1680 the first to “Henry Hodges meadow,”369 just below the rock. But we do know that the meadow at Grassy Island, close by Dighton Rock, was assigned to the Rev. William Hook in accordance with a Court Order of 1640 that “competent meddow & vplands” be “layd forth” to him and others;370 for in 1644, when Mr. Hook sold his holdings, he expressly reserved to himself two parcels of meadow, “the one lying at Grassy Island, the other at a place called Assonet.”371 Moreover, there are still preserved in the Proprietors’ Records of Taunton at least two records of grants of meadows on Assonet Neck or near-by, farther away than the meadows near Dighton Rock, in 1648; and numerous others in 1657 and immediately succeeding years.372 We may then safely conclude that hay was cut from all the near-by meadows almost from the beginning and that all the prominent rocks on the shore must have fallen within the range of vision of the white men; even further, that in their search for hay they must have inspected the little cove373 at Dighton Rock itself. Dighton Rock, therefore, had been seen by whites, probably as early as 1640. But this fact does not warrant any conclusion as to whether it was then inscribed or not; for no one seems to have thought to make an enduring statement as to its existence or appearance.

Plate III

LORT’S REPRODUCTION OF DANFORTH’S DRAWING, 1680

FROM ARCHAEOLOGIA. 1787. VIII. PLATE XVIII

COTTON MATHER’S DRAWING, 1690

FROM MATHER’S WONDERFUL WORKS OF GOD COMMEMORATED. 1690. ENGRAVED FOR THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS

Assonet Neck and the Indians

There is another question of importance concerning this earliest period, of whose solution we know little. How much use did the Indians actually make of Assonet Neck? Was it in any way regarded by them as especially important or precious? It is often assumed that it was one of their most prized possessions. “No offers that the English had made,” says Ebenezer W. Peirce,374 “were found sufficient to induce the Indians to part with their loved resort upon Assonet Neck.” “Assonet Neck was peculiarly the camping ground of the Wampanoag Indians. They retained possession of it longer than of any of the surrounding country, on account of the convenience of the oyster, clam and other fisheries.”375 The earliest discoverable statement of the sort is that of Isaac Greenwood in 1730, given in full on a later page of this paper, that “this Place was One of y^e most considerable Seats of Indians in this Part of y^e World, and the River remarkable for all Sorts of Fowl and Fish.”376 The one clear fact is that the Indians never did sell Assonet Neck, though efforts were made to buy it. This might conceivably have been because of the relative remoteness of the place, or for other reasons, rather than because of any particular love for it or extensive use made of it. Contemporary records are silent as to this. We only know that they did not sell, not why this was so. Examination of the Neck itself has not yet discovered any considerable signs of Indian occupancy. The so-called “Indian corn-hills,” it is true, are still very numerous and in splendid preservation. Indian relics are found on the Neck, but not more abundantly than elsewhere. Much more extensive shell-heaps exist in Freetown, whose lands the Indians sold in 1659, than are known on Assonet Neck. The place was inhabited by Indians, without question. But there is nothing yet, in records or in material remains, to show that it was held in exceptionally high esteem. It may well have been that it was; but evidence is lacking.

The few records that have a bearing on this matter, though inconclusive, are interesting. When Winslow and Hopkins, on their first visit to Massasoit in July, 1621, had crossed the river at the “knowne shole place” in Taunton, they went on down the river on the side opposite from Assonet Neck. “As we passed along, we observed that there were few places by the River, but had beene inhabited, by reason whereof, much ground was cleare, saue of weedes, which grewe higher then our heads.”377 The recent plague, however, had entirely depopulated this part of the country.378 It is probable that the salt meadows along Taunton River were included in the original Cohannet purchase, for they were soon made use of by the settlers, as already noted. Moreover they are expressly mentioned in Philip’s confirmatory deed of 1663. But some of them were sold again by the Indians to other parties in the “Freemen’s Purchase” of 1659; and this fact gave rise to protracted disputes between the proprietors of Taunton and the “ancient ffreemen.” The published histories of Taunton and of Freetown say nothing as to the settlement of these disputes; though how they all ended happily can be discovered from a probably unpublished document, which we shall have cause to mention again shortly. In 1643, apparently, an unsuccessful attempt was made to purchase Assonet Neck: “Whereas they [the inhabitants of Taunton] desire the Neck of Assonett for pastureing yeong beasts, it is also graunted by the Court, ꝑuided leave can be ꝑcured from Vssamequin, and all payments to be made by themselues, wi^thout any Charḡ to the countrey.”379

There is widely current a tradition that Assonet Neck was “a place of banishment among the Indians.” It is first mentioned in 1807 by an English traveler, Edward A. Kendall.380 It is commonly assumed in the neighborhood that this fact of “banishment,” as well as the name “Conspiracy” attached to a small island at the lower end of Assonet Neck, had something to do with King Philip’s War. But this assumption is disproved by a record of 1670, — the record above referred to of the final agreement between the proprietors of Taunton and the “ancient ffreemen” concerning the position of the line between their possessions and the ownership of certain meadows about Assonet Bay and along Taunton River.381 A part of their agreement reads thus: “All the Marsh or Meadow land at Assonate on both sides of Assonate Bay but not to extend any part to ye place commonly called the Banished Indians . . . shall be and is concluded to be Taunton meadows.” The description is not definite enough to enable us to say whether this place was on the Neck itself. If not, it must have been in its close vicinity. We have no knowledge as to the reason for the name, nor for that of Conspiracy Island.382

A record of 1673, testifying that a certain tract of land, bounded in part by Assonet and Taunton Rivers, is the property of an Indian named Piowant, clearly refers to Assonet Neck. In this record383 there occur two Indian local names that we might well wish had been preserved, instead of their probable modern equivalents of Stacy’s Creek and Smith’s Cove — “a smale Riuer or brooke called by the Indians Mastucksett,” and “a place in Taunton Riuer called and knowne by the Name of Chippaseutt.”384 The document was signed by the squaw-sachem Wetamo and five other Indians. If Piowant alone was regarded as owner of the Neck — not Philip, nor other Indians of rank and prominence — does this fact have any bearing on the probable extent to which the place was occupied and used?

Plate IV

COTTON MATHER’S DRAWING, 1712

ENGRAVED FOR THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS FROM PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 1714. XXIX, NO. 339

In 1676 the lands of Assonet Neck and some other places were seized by the Colony of New Plymouth as “conquered lands,” and ordered to be sold to defray the debts occasioned by King Philip’s War.385 The sale of Assonet Neck to six men of Taunton for the sum of one hundred and fifty pounds was effected on November 12, 1677. The sale is on record,386 and the original deed itself was discovered in 1875 among papers of the Walker family by Ebenezer W. Peirce387 and is now in possession of the Old Colony Historical Society of Taunton.388

Though there are other references to Assonet Neck during the period thus surveyed, yet these are all that I have yet discovered bearing in any way on the question of the Indians’ relation to it. Actual facts are few, and are as non-committal as are those concerning knowledge of Dighton Rock by the early white settlers. Their assemblage is at least of value in showing that opinion in favor of a great antiquity for the inscription, and against the possibility of its having been made by the Indians, must be matter of speculation only; and that the positive statements that have been ventured on these questions are unwarranted. Perhaps it may not be unreasonable to hope that further pertinent facts are known to some, and may, in consequence of this display of ignorance after diligent search, be brought to the writer’s attention.

Identity of “Rev. Dr.” Danforth

An age of myth passes into one of historical accuracy by slow stages. In the intermediate period grains of truth appear, but long remain mingled with inaccuracies of statement and inferences undistinguished from fact. Eventually these unreliable features may get sifted out, and possibly new truths may come to light. In the case before us, several errors and inferences first made have thus far persisted without correction, in spite of two hundred years of vigorous discussion; and there are new facts to record. The first printed reference to Dighton Rock — in fact, the earliest first-hand record of any kind of which we can be sure — was made in 1690. But ten years earlier, in 1680, a semi-mythical personage emerges, the “Rev. Dr. Danforth.” In all the literature of the subject there is no decisive indication as to who this person was. Fortunately, however, it is possible now to establish his identity beyond question, and thus to begin the historical period of Dighton Rock definitely with the year 1680.

This “Danforth,” we are told, made a drawing of a portion of the inscription in 1680; narrated a legend concerning it; and ventured a statement as to what two of its figures signified. We are indebted to the researches of the Rev. Michael Lort, in 1786, among the unpublished records of the Royal Society and of the Society of Antiquaries of London, for the first mention of these facts and the first publication of the drawing — over a hundred years after the observations were made. Lort’s information came, as he says, from an entry in the Minutes of the Society of Antiquaries of London, which quoted a letter written by Professor Greenwood in 1730. The letter from which the Antiquaries’ extract was made was found recently in the British Museum by David I. Bushnell, who published a transcript of it, not wholly reliable, in 1908.389 This adds no further information concerning Danforth to what Lort had already told. It does, however, give a photographic reproduction of Danforth’s drawing, which conveys a very different impression from that given by Lort’s presentation of it. Another small item completes all that we have ever been told about Danforth and his opinions. James Phinney Baxter, writing in 1887,390 referring to a letter to which he assigns an erroneous date, and which he wrongly says was addressed to Sir Hans Sloane, quotes certain words practically identical with those attributed to Danforth in Lort’s and in Bushnell’s Greenwood letter, though without mentioning either who wrote the letter, or that the quoted words were Danforth’s. He gives, however, a sentence not found in Lort, which has really served as the clue to our later discovery of the real Danforth. “In another place,” Mr. Baxter says, “he adds to the account, that ‘they slew y^r Saunchim.’” This sentence is certainly not in the Greenwood letter from which Lort derived his information, and hence points to another source of information. In a paper on “Early Voyages to America” two years later Mr. Baxter repeats this quotation, again misstating the date and the recipient of the letter, again also omitting to mention the name of its writer and the fact that Danforth was author of the portion quoted, and adding the further error that the letter is in the Sloane Manuscripts in the British Museum.391

Plate V

All that Greenwood said concerning Danforth, in the letter quoted by Lort and transcribed by Bushnell, after mentioning the fact that he sends a “Draught of some parts of this Inscription taken by the Rev^d M^r. Danforth 1680,” is this: “This Gentleman observes with relation to it, that there was a Tradition current among the eldest Indians ‘That there came a wooden house (and men of another Country in it) swimming up the River of Assoonet (as this was then called) who fought the Indians with mighty Success &c.’ . . . Some take this Inscription to be Hieroglyphical, thinking that in N° 2 the first figure represents a Ship without Masts and a mere Wreck cast upon the Shoals. The second representing an Head of Land possibly a Cape with a Peninsula Hence a Gulf (this according to M^r Danforth).” Under the drawing by Danforth, Greenwood writes: “N^o 2 Delineata per D^om Danforth Anno 1680.”392 Add to these statements Baxter’s discovery that “they slew y^r Saurichim” (or “Saunchem,” as he also spells it), and the further fact that Lort spoke of our hero as the “Rev. Dr. Danforth,” thus setting a fashion which has been followed by practically every one else since then, and we have the sum total of information concerning Danforth and his drawing and opinions which has yet been made public.

Who was this “Rev. Dr. Danforth”? It is generally and naturally assumed that it was the Rev. Samuel Danforth of Taunton. This assumption, however, presented one difficulty to any one who looked carefully into the facts. Samuel was son of the Rev. Samuel Danforth of Roxbury (who died in 1674) and was born December 18, 1666. In 1680, therefore, he was only thirteen years old, was a Freshman or Sophomore at Harvard, and had very likely never been in Taunton. He graduated in 1683, remained at College as Resident Bachelor, and took his A.M. in 1686. Shortly afterward he was called to the church at Taunton, and was ordained there September 21, 1687 — seven years after the drawing is reported to have been made. On the other hand, there seems to have been only one other Danforth in 1680 who afterward became a clergyman. Neither of them held the title “Doctor.” This other Danforth was Samuel’s brother John, born November 9, 1660, graduated from Harvard College 1677, either a Resident Bachelor at Harvard in 1680 or just leaving there with the A.M. degree, and nearly twenty years old. He was afterward minister at Dorchester.393 There is nothing in all the published facts concerning John Danforth to suggest any interest on his part in Dighton Rock. Under these circumstances it was not unnatural to suppose that Greenwood referred to some other Danforth, who was not a “Rev.” (neither of these two was such in 1680), or that the 1680 was an error, perhaps for 1688 or 1689. If the latter, then nothing would have been more natural than to suppose that the Rev. Samuel, soon after his coming to Taunton, heard of the curious inscribed rock, which was then within the limits of his parish,394 and soon went to see it and was interested enough to make a drawing of a portion of it. It is known that he was later greatly interested in the Indians and their affairs and compiled an Indian Vocabulary.395 Until very recently, therefore, the conclusion seemed practically certain that it was the Rev. Samuel Danforth who was referred to, and that the drawing was made in 1688 or even later.396

Acting on the clue furnished by Mr. Baxter, however, I have had search made in the British Museum for additional material, and have obtained from the Assistant Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries of London a transcript of the entry in the Minutes of that Society from which Lort drew his information. Both quests have yielded important results. Through the one, we can positively identify the Danforth concerned, as well as verify and add detail to the date. Through the other, we now know why he has always been dignified with the unmerited title of “Dr.”

John Danforth’s Drawing, 1680

It was the Rev. John Danforth, later of Dorchester, who made the drawing, and it was in October, 1680, that it was done. This we learn from a statement in a second letter by Greenwood, now in the British Museum.397 This is doubtless the letter from which Baxter quoted; and it was also seen there by Bushnell, but not transcribed.398 Possibly neither of them read the portion containing this new information. Certainly neither of them realized its importance sufficiently to quote it. There is practically nothing else concerning Danforth in this second letter additional to what is contained in the first,399 except that it also contains a version of Danforth’s drawing differing slightly from the other. Both of these drawings are reproduced in our plates; and we also present for further comparison a reproduction of Lort’s rendering of Danforth.400 It will be noted that the two drawings, as sent by Greenwood, have the figures solidly blocked in, while Lort’s version is in outline only. It is this fact mainly which has made the Danforth drawing appear at first sight so different in character from all subsequent ones. The drawings will receive more detailed study in our later discussion of Greenwood.

As to the value of Danforth’s drawing, beyond its historical interest, comparison with all the other available depictions that we have of this part of the rock convinces me that this is at least as faithful and accurate as any, and it has the additional advantage of being earlier by fifty years than any other and of showing some portions of the rock that have apparently since then broken away. I am inclined to speak even more positively. The most truthful of all depictions are of course those that leave the greater part of the figures vague and uncertain, as they really are. Of these, the Burgess photograph of 1868, here reproduced for the first time, is the best. The only other examples are the Kendall painting of 1807, badly misrepresented in all its reproductions except the one by Kendall himself in an engraving in the third volume of the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1809; and the unpublished Seager drawings of 1864, in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society. But I think it very probable that the Danforth of 1680 is the best of all that have attempted to interpret the characters into perfect clearness. Other critics have not always agreed with this opinion, some of them having, in the theories they were advocating, personal reasons for prejudice. Such other opinions as I have happened to transcribe into my notes I give as examples in a footnote.401

Plate VI

It will be remembered that under the drawings accompanying the first Greenwood Letter (called Letter A in our later discussion), Greenwood wrote: “D^om Greenwood,” “D^om Danforth.” The “D^om” evidently signifies merely Dominus, “Mister.”402 But it is easy to see that this could very readily be mistaken for “D^r.” And this is what actually occurred. The Assistant Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries informs me that in the Minutes of the Society the drawings were reproduced, as well as a portion of the letter; and that under them is written: “Dr. Greenwood,” “Dr. Danforth.” The error, therefore, was not Lort’s in 1787, but was made when the record was entered in these Minutes, in 1732. This, then, is the reason why both of these men, to neither of whom the title belonged, have been “doctored” in all the literature of Dighton Rock which makes any mention of them, except to call them just plain “Danforth” or “Greenwood” only.

It was not until more than a hundred years had passed after John Danforth made his drawing, as has been said already, that any mention of it was published. What was then made known through Lort403 became matter of common knowledge in the period of excited discussion following the publication of Rafn’s elaborate work404 in 1837, with its promulgation of the startling theory that the inscription on Dighton Rock was due to adventurous Northmen in the year 1008. Our chosen limitations prevent us from entering into any discussion of that as well as of many other interesting theories. We may be pardoned, however, for dwelling on the strangeness of the fact that, with the information available, as we shall see it was, to Lort, and so nearly found by at least two observers since, it is only now, a good deal more than another hundred years since Lort, that Danforth’s real identity comes to light.

Cotton Mather’s Description and Drawing, 1690

The first printed reference to Dighton Rock was made by Cotton Mather in 1690. It has been mentioned in very few even of the most complete discussions of the subject. Lort does not speak of it, nor does Rafn in what he attempted to make an exhaustive survey of previous discussions and a complete collection of all previous drawings. Consequently, although a very large number of writers enumerate the copies of the inscription, there are only two or three of them who include this item.405

Mather delivered a sermon on December 19, 1689, which he published in 1690 under the title The Wonderful Works of God Commemorated.406 Before the sermon, the book contains an Epistle Dedicatory “To the Right Worshipful Sir Henry Ashurst, Baronet.” Near the end of this Epistle occurs the following account of Dighton Rock:

Among the other Curiosities of New-England, One is that of a mighty Rock, on a perpendicular side whereof by a River, which at High Tide covers part of it, there are very deeply Engraved, no man alive knows How or When, about half a score Lines, near Ten Foot Long, and a foot and half broad, filled with strange Characters; which would suggest as odd Thoughts about them that were here before us, as there are odd Shapes in that Elaborate Monument; whereof you shall see, the first Line Transcribed here.

This is followed by a crude cut of the supposed “first line,” which we reproduce in Plate III, from a photostatic copy. The dimensions of the original are about one half inch by three inches.

Mather changed his opinion later, as we shall see, as to the number of lines; and was mistaken in thinking that the inscription was arranged in “lines” at all. He probably never saw the rock himself, and nowhere claims that he did. He certainly did not himself originate either this drawing or the one that he sent to the Royal Society later. Whence, then, did he obtain the drawing? Unfortunately his Diary gives no clue, for the portions from January 8, 1687, to May 17, 1690, are missing, and it is doubtful if they would have made mention of such a matter anyway. Nor does there seem to be extant any statement elsewhere, by him or by others, that gives the information. Yet we can be almost absolutely certain as to its source.

One of our plates407 shows the nine most commonly reproduced representations of the Dighton Rock inscription. These nine were first gathered together by Rafn, and have been shown in this tabular form by Winsor408 and by Garrick Mallery.409 Among the nine copies exhibited, one is that of Cotton Mather 1712, the upper part of which, representing the same “first line” as this 1690 cut, is almost identical with the latter. A glance at this 1712 Mather, the only one ever heretofore reproduced, gives the impression that it is utterly dissimilar to any of those by other artists. The impression is due, however, almost wholly to the small size of the cut and to the fact that its lines are broader and blacker than in other representations. Lort’s reproduction of Danforth also looks different from the other drawings, as well as from the Mather, largely because it too represents the lines broad, and in outline only. Naturally no one has suspected a relation between the two. When I first saw the Bushnell photograph of Danforth as actually sent by Greenwood, with the lines not in outline but fully filled in, it occurred to me that it was not so dissimilar to the others as I had supposed. It then further occurred to me to enlarge the 1690 Mather to the same size as Bushnell’s Danforth, and to compare the two. The result is to show a very remarkable degree of similarity. To compare Lort’s Danforth with the enlarged Mather does not bring out the similarity very well. Consequently, to facilitate this comparison and another that is to be made later, I have brought together onto one plate one of the two Greenwood versions of Danforth, photographically reproduced, drawn in full lines instead of outline; the 1690 Mather enlarged to the same scale; and two other versions by Mather of a later date.410 The Danforth and Mather are unquestionably different. At first sight one might think that no one could have copied one from the other and have done it so poorly. But this consideration loses its force on comparing the 1712 with the 1690 Mather, and again with what we later call the “Broadside” Mather, which are also given in our plate together. The three Mather versions differ from one another almost, if not quite, as markedly as the 1690 Mather does from the Danforth. The evident truth is that Mather was not a careful and accurate copyist. He was content to convey a general impression, and allowed himself almost unbelievable liberties in the details of his copying. It was doubtless not peculiarly a fault of Mather alone to be thus careless of accuracy. Although exhibited by him in an extreme degree, yet it was more or less characteristic of his time, as was so sensibly observed by Professor Kittredge411 concerning his alleged credulity; and it is a feature which has not disappeared entirely from scientific work even yet. When the Philosophical Transactions were abridged by Jones in 1721, he reproduced Mather’s original cut of 1714, but with some differences. Mallery’s presentation of the same cut is again somewhat different. If we count the “Broadside” as a Mather, we have then at least five versions of the “first line” of Mather, each exhibiting differences from the others.412 Were it not for the photostat, our own exactitude of reproduction would have been impossible. Where there was no need for scientific accuracy and no intention of attempting it, as in Mather’s case, considerable differences in copies were inevitable.

If now, with these considerations in mind, we again compare Mather with Danforth, and the two with all the rest, we must be convinced that they are of the same type, that they present a clear family resemblance. No drawing or photograph made by any one else in all the history of Dighton Rock shows this kind of resemblance. As an expert can identify differing samples of an individual’s handwriting, so here careful study and comparison show the kind of quality in these two drawings which makes it almost if not fully certain that they come from the same original source. Mather was intimately acquainted with Danforth. They both show the “first line” only. Mather speaks of it very soon after Danforth becomes settled as a minister in a place near Boston.413 The conclusion is unavoidable that Mather copied his drawing from Danforth’s. Danforth’s, then, is the only original drawing of this part of Dighton Rock that we know of until Greenwood made the second known copy of the inscription direct from the rock in 1730.

Plate VII

LORT’S REPRODUCTION OF GREENWOODS DRAWING, 1730

ENGRAVED FOR THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS FROM ARCHAEOLOGIA, 1787, VIII, PLATE XVIII

Samuel Sewall’s Reference to the Rock, 1691

The next discoverable reference to Dighton Rock appears in the Letter-Book of Samuel Sewall in 1691. As this has been put in print only recently, it is natural that no previous writer on the Rock has discovered this case of its receiving mention. The entry reads as follows: “Febr. 24, 169⁰/₁. Memorand. to write to Mr. Danforth to take the writing off the Rock and send it.”414 The editors of the work have inserted a footnote reading: “Probably at Dighton.” The index to Series 6 of the Massachusetts Historical Collections refers to this passage, though for what reason it is not easy to see, under the name: “Rev. John Danforth, of Dorchester.” We have no further knowledge of the reason for Sewall’s desire, or as to which Danforth he intended to write to, or as to whether he carried out his intention. It may be that he sought for evidence in support of the theory that the American Indians were descendants of the ten lost tribes of Israel. In 1650 Thomas Thorowgood415 had advocated this view, as had many others. Samuel F. Haven tells us: “The Mathers, Samuel Sewall, and most of the prominent scholars and theologians of Massachusetts, were inclined to the same opinion, which has never failed to find supporters.”416 Sewall’s Letter-Book417 shows traces of adherence to this view, though nowhere advocating it without reserve. Greenwood’s letters, given below, show that some theory of Oriental origin for Dighton Rock was in the minds of scholars in 1730; and President Stiles,418 Colonel Valiancy,419 Samuel Harris,420 and others, actively advocated such theories in 1783 and later. We do not know that Mather or Sewall ever thought of Dighton Rock in this connection; but in view of the above cited facts, this theory might well have contributed to Sewall’s interest in the Rock.

Cotton Mather’s Drawing, 1712

The next contribution to the subject was made again by Cotton Mather. We can most briefly present the circumstances in the words of Professor Kittredge, as given on the first page of his paper cited above. “In November, 1712, Cotton Mather composed a series of thirteen letters on the Natural History of New England and kindred topics. Seven of them were addressed to John Woodward, M.D., F.R.S., Professor of Physic at Gresham College, and six to Richard Waller, Esq., Secretary of the Royal Society. All were intended as communications to that learned body. Excerpts from these letters were printed in 1714 in No. 339 of the Philosophical Transactions, — the number designated as ‘for the Months of April, May and June.’”421

Among the curiosities of which Mather made mention in these letters, Dighton Rock was included. I am indebted to Professor Kittredge for a transcript of Mather’s original words on this subject:

At o^r Taunton by the side of a Tiding River, part in, part out, of the River, there stands a large Rock; on the perpendicular side of which Rock next the River, there are seven or eight Lines, seven or eight foot long, and about a foot wide, each of them in unaccountable characters. It is generally taken for granted, that they are Artificial; and there they stand Graven in the Rock forever; but no man as yett has been a Zaphnath Poaneah enough to know any more what to make of them, than who it was that graved them. I have not yett been able to gett all y^e Lines; which, I hope, ere long I shall, when they will be at your Service. But will here give you the two first of them.422

The substance of this communication, but not its exact wording, was printed in Philosophical Transactions, No. 339, 1714, XXIX. 70, 71; and the drawing was reproduced as Fig. 8 on a plate containing a number of other illustrations.423 It is reproduced from a photostatic copy in Plate IV. Its “first line” is similar to that of 1690, and was probably derived from it. Whence he obtained the “second line” we cannot even plausibly surmise. It bears practically no resemblance whatever to anything now on the rock or ever represented as being there. One is strongly tempted to suspect that it was somehow evolved out of Mather’s own “inner consciousness,” and that he afterward forgot the fact. Still, after very careful study and comparison I have been able to form a bold and most uncertain guess as to what portions of the rock are meant to be represented by the different parts of the drawing.424 I am inclined to believe, therefore, that it is the work of some extraordinarily poor draughtsman, who actually tried to copy from the rock. It could hardly have been the same Danforth, who very creditably depicted the “first line.” Perhaps it was some unskilled farmer of the neighborhood who supplied it. If my hypothesis as to its correlations with other copies is correct, then it encroaches a little on what is already depicted in the “first line,” and it corresponds to practically the whole of the surface of the rock below the “first line,” instead of being only the “second line” out of seven or eight, as Mather thought it was.425

Plate VIII

GREENWOOD LETTER A, DECEMBER 8, 1730

ENGRAVED FOR THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS FROM THE ORIGINAL IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM, ADDITIONAL MANUSCRIPTS 6402.106

We can probably approximate very closely to the time when Mather secured this part of his drawing. In his Diary appears the following entry under the date of July 5, 1711: “There is one good Interest, which I have never yett served, and yett I am capable of doing some small Service for it. The Improvement of Knowledge in the Works of Nature, is a Thing whereby God, and his Christ is glorified. I may make a valuable Collection of many Curiosities, which this Countrey has afforded; and present it unto the Royal Society. May the glorious Lord assist me, in this Performance.”426 Dighton Rock had already engaged his attention as a curiosity, over twenty years earlier. Inasmuch as he proceeded to carry out the intention indicated in this passage, it is probable that this was the incitement to his endeavor to procure the remaining portions of the inscription. His interest being again engaged, and his intention to include the Rock among his “Curiosities” fixed, he would probably have sought to obtain the inscription complete after receiving what he understood to be a “second line” only out of many, had he had time before writing his letters. In fact in his letter he indicates his hope to succeed in this. It is fairly safe, therefore, to infer that this “second line” was procured after July 5, 1711, and very likely came to hand only very shortly before November 28, 1712.

Cotton Mather’s Broadside

Our next item in natural, and probably also in chronological order, is a very recent and in some respects important discovery. It is a little Broadside of uncertain date, shown in one of our plates. It has never been mentioned in any list of colonial broadsides, nor in any discussion on Dighton Rock. Two slightly differing copies of it are known to me. One is owned by the Massachusetts Historical Society, and for a long time this seemed a unique example. But recently I have discovered another among the Stiles papers in the Yale University Library, where it is bound into the collection of unpublished manuscript field-notes by Stiles, called his “Itinerary.” The former bears no indication of its date or origin. On the latter, however, Dr. Stiles wrote the following endorsement: “1766 Nov. — D^r Cotton Mather’s Acc^o sent to the Royal Society, & inserted in their Transactions abr. V. 5. 112. p. 4 M^r Chickly427 shewing me this in fall of 1766 first excited my Curiosity to examine the Rock.” The latter being a more perfect copy, is the one that I reproduce.428 The two are not identical. In the first, the cut of the inscription is printed below the descriptive matter; in the second, the position of the two is reversed. Hence either two separate editions of it were issued, or the printing of the one edition was interrupted, and resumed for some reason with the two portions in reversed positions. That the latter is more probable, appears from the fact that the type of the reading matter is identical, letter for letter and space for space — there are individual peculiarities about some of the letters that render this certain — and the individual types of the border likewise correspond exactly; hence the type remained set up in its original form instead of being distributed in the interval between the two impressions. The impression in the case of the first is more blurred and imperfect than in the other. Either it was printed later, after the cut and type were much worn, or the inking was less even and perfect. In all other respects the two are alike. The woodcut used was the same. Each is printed on a small piece of irregular shaped “laid” paper with no watermark, measuring 3¾ to a little over 4 inches in height, and 5⅛ to 5⅝ inches in width. The “first line” is about 3 ³/₃₂ inches long, the extreme width of the two lines is 1⅝ inch, and the space within the border measures about 1 ⁵/₁₆ by 3¾ inches.

It is not impossible that Cotton Mather himself may have issued this broadside either before or after his account was printed in Philosophical Transactions in 1714.429 So great was the interest aroused thereby, that it may well be that he caused this to be printed in order that he might distribute it to all who inquired concerning it. Certainly no adequate motive appears for its issuance at a later date by another person. Whether this be so or not, there is at any rate, even aside from Dr. Stiles’s testimony, no question that both words and drawing have Mather as their source. It may be that the particular paper used, or the particular border which surrounds the text, was in use at such a definite and limited time in some particular office of publication as to serve to establish the approximate date. It is certain that it is later than July 5, 1711, and earlier than November, 1766. Though there is no definite proof of it, it is probable that it was issued by Cotton Mather shortly after the appearance of the account in the Transactions in 1714.

It is interesting to compare the cut of the Broadside with the two drawings known to be by Mather. For this reason, besides giving a facsimile of the Broadside in Plate V, I have included the “first line” of the three, together with Danforth’s, in Plate VI. The Broadside is placed between the 1690 and the 1712 Mather versions; and in this case is reproduced from the one owned by the Massachusetts Historical Society. A careful study of the three Mathers line by line and figure by figure, gives many indications that the Broadside is an intermediate form between the other two. It is not safe to venture too confident an assertion in regard to this. But there are so many instances warranting this assumption, and so few that seem to indicate the opposite order of time in their execution, that it seems much more probable that the drawing from which the Broadside was derived antedates that from which the cut in Philosophical Transactions was made, than that the former was copied from the latter. It is possible that Mather had a drawing in 1712, which he copied for the Royal Society, and which he then used directly in the issuance of this Broadside to serve some purpose at home. But this is mere conjecture. Even if we should conclude with entire confidence that the drawing of the Broadside is earlier than the other it would not at all settle the question as to when the publication of it was made. It might have been long after, and by another hand. Nevertheless, for reasons already given, this is highly improbable.

The next event in our history is a brief and unimportant quotation from Mather’s Philosophical Transactions account, made by Daniel Neal in 1720. He makes a mistake in saying that this letter of Mather’s was written to Dr. Woodward. The passage is as follows:

Dr. Mather in a Letter to Dr. Woodward says, that at Taunton by the Side of a Tiding River there is a large Rock appearing above Water, on the perpendicular Side of which next the Stream are seven or eight Lines about seven or eight Foot long, and about a Foot wide, engraven with unaccountable Characters, not like any now known in the World.430

Dean Berkeley’s Visit to the Rock

Although it has required a long survey to establish the facts thus far, yet we can see that up to about 1730, nearly a hundred years, probably, after it was first seen by the colonists, very little notice had been taken of Dighton Rock. Only one drawing of the upper part of it existed, made by John Danforth in October, 1680; and only a questionable one of its lower portions, made by some one unknown and so unskilled that it is impossible to be sure that it really represents this Rock, and first known of as in possession of Cotton Mather in November, 1712. Of verbal description, we have only a few words attributed to Danforth, and a very brief and inadequate account by Cotton Mather. The year 1730, or thereabout, brings us three further contributions, all of them important. Two of these we now introduce into the discussion of Dighton Rock for the first time. The other is well known, but even in its case new facts have been discovered which remove a considerable confusion and inaccuracy previously existing. The three incidents referred to are: a visit to the Rock by the Rev. George Berkeley, D.D., then Dean of Derry but temporarily residing in Newport, afterward Bishop of Cloyne and one of the most deservedly eminent of English philosophers; a visit to the Rock and a drawing made of it by John Smibert (or Smybert), one of the earliest of American portrait painters; and another visit, resulting in a rather indifferent drawing and the first detailed discussion of the Rock, by Isaac Greenwood, “Hollisian Professor of y^e Mathematicks and Philosophy” at Harvard College.

Plate IX

GREENWOOD LETTER A, DECEMBER 8, 1730

ENGRAVED FOR THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS FROM THE ORIGINAL IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM, ADDITIONAL MANUSCRIPTS 6402.106 DORSE

I have found three obscure accounts of Berkeley’s visit, that have escaped the notice of the biographers of Berkeley and of previous writers on Dighton Rock. One is in a manuscript written by Pierre Eugène du Simitière about 1781;431 a second in the English Review’ for 1790; and the third in the unpublished Itinerary of Dr. Ezra Stiles, under date of 1767.

Du Simitière’s paper is headed: “Inscriptions in North America.” The portion dealing with Dighton Rock is entitled: “Inscription in Massachusetts.” After quoting from Neal and Douglass, and speaking of his visit to Dr. Stiles of Newport, he proceeds:

there is a tradition very current in New England, but particularly at New Port that when the learned Dean Berkeley resided near that last mentioned place about the year 1732432 he visited the rock at Taunton, and had began an Elaborate dissertation upon the supposed inscription, when a farmer in its neighborhood, observing the Dean one day employed in copying the unknown caracters, informed him, that, that rock had been used formerly by the Indians that resorted thither to Shoot ducks, and dart fish, to wett [whet] and Sharpen the points of their arrows and darts on that Stone which was the cause of the various hollow lines and figures formed thereon.

He then proceeds to refer to Gebelin’s Monde Primitif in such a manner as to show that the date of the manuscript is shortly after the publication of its eighth volume in 1781.

The paper by the Rev. Michael Lort, and another on the same subject by Colonel Charles Vallancey, in Archaeologia (1787, viii), were reviewed in the English Review for March, 1790. Concerning Berkeley’s visit to the Rock, the reviewer says:

In May 1728 the late Bishop Berkeley, that great and good man, went over to Boston. From thence he made an excursion, in order to examine these written mountains433 of America. He went to the rock. He examined the inscription. And, as we well remember to have been told by his ingenious and religious widow, the late Mrs. Berkeley, he returned fully convinced that this reputed scrawl of the present Indians, this boasted inscription of Punick, of Phœnician, or of Tartar hands434 was merely the casual corrosion of the rock by the waves of the sea. With this opinion, unknown as it appears to have been to Dr. Lort, we cordially concur.435

After reading this review, Dr. Lort wrote to the Rev. Thomas Percy, Bishop of Dromore, as follows:

Saville Row, April 16, 1790. . . . Now comes a reviewer in the last “English,” and says, we are mistaken; that the late Bishop Berkeley went on purpose to see it, and found it the work of the wind, waves, and weather corroding the rock, and I am very much disposed to be of this hypothesis; but what will Colonel Vallancey say to it? However, I shall try to get a more authentic account of this opinion of Bishop Berkeley’s.436

This is all that we know in detail as to Dean Berkeley’s visit; though we have one more confirmatory authority to cite. The two accounts do not agree concerning his theory about the Rock. But they are in agreement as to the fact of his having seen it; and the reference to Mrs. Berkeley makes it very probable that the story is true in this respect at least. The plausibility of the event is further increased by the fact that we know on the authority of Fraser,437 and of the Biographia Britannica,438 that during his stay in Newport Dean Berkeley made many visits to neighboring places. Thus Fraser says: “We learn, on Mrs. Berkeley’s authority, that ‘when the season and his health permitted, he visited the Continent [of America] not only in its outward skirts but penetrated far into its recesses.’” Moreover, the theory which Du Simitière represents Berkeley as accepting so readily is one related by Greenwood in 1730 as actually current at the time, as we shall see in our later discussion of Greenwood’s contribution.

These probabilities are turned into certainty by the testimony of Dr. Stiles, whose knowledge was derived from one who was probably an actual witness of Berkeley’s visit. On June 5th and 6th, 1767, Dr. Stiles, then minister at Newport, made a visit to the Rock. He records the fact on page 280 of his Itinerary, an unpublished manuscript in possession of the Yale University Library. The passage reads as follows:

Was taken off first by Dr. Cotton Mather. Then by Professor Greenwood. — Lastly by Dean Berkley. Greenw^d took the whole; the other two but half. Teste Benj Jones aet. 70 Owner of the Rock.

This Benjamin Jones came into possession of the land on which the Rock stands in 1720.439 He dwelt on the property, and died there in 1768.440 That he personally saw both Berkeley and Greenwood when they severally came to copy the inscription is rendered plausible by the fact that “a farmer in its neighborhood” told Berkeley about the rock being used by the Indians in sharpening their arrowheads, and Greenwood relates the same legend. It is very likely that both learned of it from the same source, and that Benjamin Jones was the “farmer” in question. His knowledge of Mather, however, would have been by hearsay only, and the fact that he said the latter had copied only half the inscription seems to show that he confused him with Danforth. Stiles himself, of course, knew of Mather’s description; but that he knew nothing of either Danforth or Greenwood, whose drawings were not published until 1787, is shown by the following passage in a letter441 which he wrote on June 15, 1767, to Professor John Winthrop: “Mr. Jones . . . told me, the whole was formerly decyphered or taken off by M^r Professor Greenwood your Predecessor. If, Sir, his drawing be in your hands, or in possession of the College, pray oblige me with a pencil’d copy.”

Plate X

GREENWOOD LETTER A, DECEMBER 8, 1730

ENGRAVED FOR THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS FROM THE ORIGINAL IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM. ADDITIONAL MANUSCRIPTS 6402.107

All of this renders it highly probable, therefore, that Jones had personal knowledge of Berkeley’s visit, and makes his testimony practically conclusive as to the fact of the visit and the truth of Du Simitière’s account of it. It adds the further fact that Berkeley copied about half of the inscription.

It is impossible to fix the exact date of the incident; but it must have been, of course, some time between his landing at Newport on January 23, 1729, in furtherance of his project to found a college for the education of Indian youths in the Bermudas, and the time of his abandonment of that project and departure for England on September 21, 1731.442

John Smibert and the Rock

That so gifted an artist as John Smibert made an early drawing of Dighton Rock is, if true, a fact of the highest importance. We have knowledge of it only through the same manuscript of Du Simitière that has already been referred to. In a footnote to the passage already quoted, the writer adds:

there was in the collection of Doctor Smibert at Boston, an accurate drawing of the Supposed inscription at Taunton, done by his father John Smibert an eminent painter that came over to america with Dean Berkeley, and afterwards Settled at Boston.

This is a meagre and tantalizing record. If this drawing could be found, it would be for many reasons the most interesting and important of all. Considering the incompleteness of the Danforth drawing, the utter badness of Mather’s, and the incompleteness and poor artistic merit of Greenwood’s, it doubtless would be the earliest good delineation of the characters made. But search in many directions has failed to discover it, and no writer on the Rock has known of its existence.

A report that I read somewhere to the effect that the Boston Smiberts later removed to England led me to make inquiries as to present-day families of that name. I found one such family now living in Scotland, and another in Australia. Letters to both of them received courteous replies. But neither of them know of the existence of the drawing in question.

However, John Smibert died in Boston, and so apparently did all his children, of whom he is known to have had four.443 An inventory of the estate left by him, dated September 22, 1752, is on file,444 and makes no mention of the drawing that we seek. His real estate all went to his eldest son, Dr. Williams Smibert, who must have been the “Dr. Smibert” referred to by Du Simitière. In his own will, dated January 17, 1770, and proved January 28, 1774, he describes himself as a “Doctor in Physick,” and as the “last that survives” his parents and their offspring.445 Williams Smibert’s estate was willed to his cousin, John Moffat; and through other steps we can trace the descent of whatever may have been left of John Smibert’s property in this line to people of still other names.446 In all this course, there is no clue to the fate of the drawing.

However, another son, Nathaniel, also survived the father for a few years. He was born January 20, 1735,447 and died in Boston, November 3, 1756.448 Before his death he, too, had become a painter of promise, and it may be that the father’s paintings and drawings, some of which are known to have been left in the studio, became his property.449 The statement of Du Simitière, however, makes it improbable that the drawing of Dighton Rock was among those that remained in the studio after Nathaniel died.

We must regretfully leave the subject of Smibert in this disappointing condition. I have thought it worth while to mention all the clues in my possession, in the hope that some one else may follow them out to a successful issue. The time of Smibert’s visit would very likely have been in 1729, since he arrived in Newport with Berkeley in January of that year and left there for Boston late in the same year. This is the most probable period for his visit to the rock.

There is one other report concerning Smibert which, while it has nothing to do with his drawing, nevertheless shows his interest in the Indians, and has served as an item of evidence for one theory concerning the origin of the Dighton inscription. The facts are first related, so far as I know, by Dr. Stiles in his Election Sermon of 1783.450 But they are most fully given in the following account written by Josiah Meigs to Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill:

The question relative to the first peopling of this continent, has justly excited the attention of reflecting men. I have often heard the late excellent Doctor Ezra Stiles, President of Yale College, relate the following anecdote: When Doctor Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, arrived at Newport, in Rhode-Island, about the middle of the last century, with a view of establishing a seminary of learning in America, he had with him, as a companion and friend, a Mr. Smibert, a celebrated painter of the Flemish school. In a few days after their arrival, Mr. Smibert saw in the streets a number of Narraganset Indians. At the first sight of them he expressed great surprise, and asked how those Tartars came there? On being asked why he called them Tartars, he replied, that, some years before, when he was at Florence studying his profession, the Grand Duke of Tuscany had received, as a present from the Sovereign of Russia, several Tartars, who had been taken prisoners: that he, Mr. Smibert, had been employed in drawing their portraits; and that their features were so much like those of the Narragansett Indians, that he was perfectly confident that they were of the same family and race.

I need not observe, that a painter’s business is to observe, with the most minute accuracy, the features of the human face, and that the conjecture of a migration of Tartars from the Eastern shores of Asia to our Northwestern region, is considerably strengthened by this anecdote.451

Plate XI

Isaac Greenwood’s Drawing, 1730

We reach at last the final source of information concerning Dighton Rock during the period with which we are dealing. When I first approached this subject, there seemed every reason to believe that our information concerning Isaac Greenwood and his important contribution was practically complete. As has been shown in dealing with the question of Danforth, Lort had quoted extensively from Greenwood and depicted his drawing; Bushnell had found Greenwood’s original letter and reproduced it fully, with a photograph of its drawings; and Baxter had given a small item of further information. But a little further inquiry showed a remarkable amount of uncertainty and confusion. Baxter’s quotation seemed to indicate an unexploited source of information. Various indexes to the Manuscripts in the British Museum seemed to give conflicting data. Dates were given variously; several different recipients of the letter were indicated; the British Museum references, if all of them were correct, implied a wealth of unused material.

The puzzling degree of confusion that actually existed can be exhibited best by a survey of all the facts concerning Greenwood’s contribution that were accessible in print. These will be presented in the chronological order of their publication.

1. The Catalogue by Samuel Ayscough,452 1782, mentions Greenwood’s letters twice, as follows:

Volume I, p. 355: “4432.55. James Greenwood. Inscriptions in New England, 1730, 1732.”

Volume I, p. 450: “J. Greenwood. 4432.55. Inscriptions in New England. 1730–32.”

2. The Rev. Michael Lort,453 in 1787, was the first to publish either the whole or a portion of a letter from Greenwood, together with the drawings accompanying it. The account referred to by Ayscough was already in the British Museum. Lort, however, did not discover it, but took his version from the Minutes of the Society of Antiquaries of London for the year 1732. He says that the letter was addressed to the Rev. Mr. Villan, Rector of St. John’s Tothillfields, and submitted to the Society of Antiquaries in 1732 by Mr. Bogdani. Its date was 1730.

3. Madden’s Index454 of 1849 has this entry: “Greenwood (Isaac), Hollesian Professor at N. Cambridge. Letter concerning an inscription on a rock in the river Taunton, in New England, etc., 1730. 6402. ff. 44, 112.”

4. James Phinney Baxter,455 in 1887 and 1889, gives a brief quotation, evidently from Greenwood or from some one who gives a similar account of Danforth’s opinions. He does not name the writer, but it might be inferred from what he says that it was the Rev. Mr. Fisher. The letter was addressed, he says, to Sir Hans Sloane, bears the date December 18, 1730, and is in the Sloane Manuscripts in the British Museum. It is accompanied by drawings. His quotation contains one sentence (“they slew y^r Saunchim”) not found in Lort’s version of Greenwood. It seems most probable, however, that the writer is Greenwood, and that either Lort omitted this sentence or it is a second letter from the same hand.

5. Scott’s Index456 to the Sloane Manuscripts makes no mention of anything by Greenwood, or of the inscription in Taunton River.

6. Andrews and Davenport’s Guide457 of 1908 catalogues a “Communication from Is. Greenwood, Cambridge, Dec. 8, 1730, regarding Inscriptions on the Rock in Taunton River, with two drawings,” under Add. MSS. 4432. f. 182.

7. David I. Bushnell458 in 1908, having found two letters from Greenwood in the British Museum, printed them both in full, with a photographic reproduction of accompanying drawings by Danforth and Greenwood. The manuscripts from which he made his transcripts belonged once to the Royal Society, he tells us, but are now preserved in the British Museum. The first letter bears no address, is dated Dec. 8th, 1730, and signed “Isaac Greenwood,” and is numbered Add. MSS. 6402, fol. 106 et seq. It is accompanied by drawings, whose reference number is not mentioned by Bushnell. The second letter is addressed, he says, to M^r John Evanses, Fellow of the Royal Society, and contains words which imply that the first letter was sent to the same person. Its date is April 28, 1732, its signature “J. Greenwood,” and its reference number is given inadequately as MS. Vol. 4432, British Museum. We shall discover later that the accuracy of these transcripts cannot be relied upon.

Except that it contains much more than was given by Lort, this letter might be the one that was copied in the Minutes of the Society of Antiquaries in 1732, from which Lort derived his copy. But if so, either the Antiquaries or Lort transcribed it only in part, and very carelessly. On the other hand, it could not be the same letter as the one quoted by Baxter, unless both Lort and Bushnell omitted the sentence concerning the “Saunchem,” or Baxter was mistaken in saying that there was such a sentence in the letter.

8. Although the above is all that I could discover in print, I will add to the list of data on record when my own investigations began the following, from a letter that I received from Mr. Bushnell:

I remember having seen another letter from Greenwood, bearing date Dec. 8, 1730, which, at that time, I regarded as an early copy of the one preserved in Vol. 6402, fol. 106 et seq. The latter I copied and reproduced in the Anthropologist. Now the “copy” of the letter, if copy it really is, was in the volume with the short note of April 28, 1732. . . . I do not know to whom the copy was addressed.

To facilitate their readier comprehension, I recapitulate these facts in tabular form. Since it is impossible to tell from them whether there is one letter or more of 1730, sent to one correspondent only or to several different ones, bearing only one date or more, I designate any letter of 1730 as X, without any implication as to their identity. The letter of 1732 I call Y, and the drawings Z. The abbreviation S.A.L. indicates the Society of Antiquaries of London; and B.M., the British Museum. O indicates that nothing is reported.

Authority	Document	Date	To Whom Addressed	Where Preserved
Ayscough	XY	1730–1732	Not mentioned	B.M., 4432.55
Lort	XZ	1730	Rev. Mr. Villan	Minutes S.A.L. 1732
Madden	X	1730	Not mentioned	B.M., 6402, ff. 44, 112
Baxter	XZ	Dec. 18, 1730	Sir Hans Sloane	B.M., Sloane MSS
Scott	O
Andrews	XZ	Dec. 8, 1730	Not mentioned	B.M., Add. MSS. 4432. f. 182
Bushnell	X	Dec. 8, 1730	Not given; presumably Mr. John Evanses	B.M., Add. MSS. 6402. f. 106 et seq.
Bushnell	Z			Not mentioned
Bushnell	X	Dec. 8, 1730	Not known	B.M., MS. Vol. 4432
Bushnell	Y	Apr. 28, 1732	Mr. John Evanses	B.M., MS. Vol. 4432

Here are three correspondents mentioned, three dates, and six reference numbers in the British Museum with three others left indefinite. This state of affairs naturally invited investigation. Through the kindness of Mr. Albert Matthews, I secured the assistance of a careful worker in the British Museum, to whose efficient labors I am indebted for a complete clarification of the entire problem. Through her, I have had search made for all the Greenwood material in the Museum, and have secured photostats of all that is there; and have had the records of the Royal Society examined. In addition, through the courtesy of Mr. H. S. Kingsford, Assistant Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries of London, I have obtained a transcript of the record in the Minutes of that Society for 1732, and a description of the drawings copied into the Minutes.

Plate XII

GREENWOOD LETTER B, DECEMBER 8, 1730

ENGRAVED FOR THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS FROM THE ORIGINAL IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM, ADDITIONAL MANUSCRIPTS 4432.185

Probably the most remarkable fact that we have to record in connection with the inadequacies of previous investigation is that no one has yet correctly named the correspondent to whom Greenwood addressed his letters. The name Villan, given by Lort, was a mistake for Viller, as it stands in the “Minutes,” and this name itself is incorrect.459 The mention of Sloane is due to a mistaken inference. “Evanses” is an incorrect rendering of the actual name, “Eames.”

The real facts, mingled with a very small amount of inference that seems entirely justified, can now be related. Some time before December 8, 1730, Professor Greenwood received from Mr. John Eames, a Fellow of the Royal Society, a letter stating that some of the members of the Royal Society, interested by Cotton Mather’s description in the Philosophical Transactions of 1714, wished to secure a new copy of the inscription on the rock in Taunton River.460 Accordingly, Greenwood visited the Rock and copied its inscription. He already had in his possession, or now obtained, either the original or a copy of Danforth’s drawing of 1680, and a slip of paper — whether written by Danforth, by himself, or by some one else, it is impossible to say — containing Danforth’s brief description. Greenwood copied the two drawings onto one sheet of paper, and composed a descriptive letter in reply to Eames. This letter (which we will hereafter call Letter B), however, was at first a rough draught only, with numerous corrections, erasures, and interlineations. Of this he then made a fair copy (Letter A), differing very slightly from the corrected original, markedly better in its handwriting and spelling, and containing most of the contents of the “Danforth slip” in a postscript. He sent the “fair copy” (Letter A)461 and the copied drawings to Eames probably at about the time of its date, December 8, 1730. He retained in his own possession the original draught, the two original drawings, and the “Danforth slip.”

In April, 1732, he learned from Eames that the latter had never received a reply to his previous letter with its request for the drawings.462 There being a ship about to sail immediately, Greenwood, with no time to make another copy, prepared the materials concerning the rock which he had retained for himself in 1730: the original rough draught of his letter, the original drawings, and the “Danforth slip.” Together these constitute what we will now call “Letter B.”463 They bear the original date of December 8, 1730, but were sent to Eames in 1732. With them he sent also a brief and hurried letter of explanation, dated April 28, 1732, which we designate as “Letter C.”464

The only possible doubt about this part of our story concerns the order in which the two letters were sent. But when we consider, first, that if a man makes two copies of a letter, the one a rough draught and the other a fair and perfect copy, it is the latter that he sends to his correspondent, retaining the rough draught for his own use; second, that Greenwood was in haste when he sent the duplicate letter, and so would have been less likely then than at the earlier date to have made a fair copy of the materials he had on hand; third, that the rough draught, slip, separated drawings, and letter of 1732 are still preserved together; and fourth, that Letters B and C were copied together on the same date into the Register Book of the Royal Society, — we cannot escape the conclusion that our account thus far is correct. Particularly important is the resulting conclusion, that the drawings accompanying Letter B, never heretofore published, if not the original Danforth and Greenwood drawings, are at least one step nearer the originals than are the drawings of Letter A, which Bushnell photographed and published and which Lort copied at second hand; and the further conclusion that the “Danforth slip,” if not written by Danforth himself, nevertheless gives us our nearest approach to Danforth’s own statement.

Letters B and C arrived in London June 5, were received by Eames, and were presented by him to the Royal Society, where they were read on June 15, 1732; and on the same day the two letters and the drawings were copied into the Register Book of the Royal Society. Eventually they passed into Birch’s collection of manuscripts and by 1782 were in the British Museum. Here they were registered at first, as we can show, under the number 4432, division or article 55. Later they became Add. MSS. 4432, at first with folio numbers 182–186 and perhaps 187, but now with folio numbers 185–190. Although Lort thought that he had made a thorough search of the records of the Royal Society, he failed to discover this entry in its Register Book, as well as the original letter, already in the British Museum.

Before November of 1732, Letter A, the fair copy originally sent by Greenwood to Eames, had also arrived. This letter is the one that was exhibited to the Society of Antiquaries of London by Mr. Bogdani. Mr. Eames, who was a member of the Royal Society, may have sent it to the other Society through the Rev. Mr. Villers.465 It was certainly not addressed to the latter. The dorse of its last sheet was not used for the address, and the sheet used as an envelope is not preserved. An excerpt from the letter, and the drawings, were copied into the Minutes of the Society of Antiquaries on November 9, 1732. This letter apparently came into the possession of the Rev. William Cole, who bequeathed the volume in which it is contained to the British Museum in 1783. The drawings are known as Add. MSS. 6402 folio 47, and the letter as Add. MSS. 6402 folios 106 and 107.

Some of my photostats show clear evidence of the changes in numbering to which the letters have been subjected. Thus the first sheet of Letter A has three numbers in its upper right hand corner, all of them probably too faint to show clearly in the plate which is herewith reproduced from it. The number highest up is “112.” Underneath it is “107” crossed out, followed by “106.” Consequently Madden’s reference to this letter as numbered 112 was once correct, although the folios now numbered 44 and 112 in volume 6402 contain entirely unrelated matters. Madden’s “44” may be an error, since the three successive numberings shown on the drawing are “48,” “46,” and now “47.” Nearly all the folios of Letters B and C show a “55” very plainly. On the folio containing the Greenwood drawing it is reversed, as if made on the back and showing through the paper. It may have been once on the folios where it is now missing and been cut off, as some of them have been trimmed. This “55” is the division number given to these two letters by Ayscough. Besides the “55,” the first folio of Letter B has a rather faint “185,” its present number; and a very faint “182” crossed out — the number by which Andrews refers to it. The triple numbering is shown more plainly on the last folio (189) of Letter B than on any of the others. With the exception of Madden’s “44,” therefore, the only error as to numbering and place of preservation that occurs in the table submitted above is that made by Baxter in saying that the letter he found was in the Sloane Manuscripts; Scott is correct in not listing it there.

Plate XIII

GREENWOOD LETTER B, DECEMBER 8, 1730

ENGRAVED FOR THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS FROM THE ORIGINAL IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM, ADDITIONAL MANUSCRIPTS 4432.185 DORSE

It is clear that there was but one recipient for all three letters, — Mr. John Eames.466 The introductory paragraph, together with Letter C and its address, proves that all were addressed to the same person. So also does the entry in the Register Book of the Royal Society, described below. How it came about that his name has never been mentioned and three wrong ones given has already been discussed.

The discrepancy of the reports as to date is explained by the photostats and plates in an interesting manner. Letter A is clearly dated, at the beginning, “Decem. 8. 1730.” The date in Letter B is placed at the end, and is also “Decemb. 8 1730.” But before the “8” is a faint additional stroke, not nearly so black and thick as every other letter and number in the line, and not at all like the “1” in “1730.” Not only Baxter, but the clerk who copied the letter into the Register Book of the Royal Society, as we shall see, thought that this was “18;” but Andrews correctly calls it “8.”

Our plates reproduce in facsimile from photostats all the Greenwood documents in the British Museum.467 Besides the actual contents of the letters, they show a considerable number of other features of interest. First of all, there is the great difference in style and handwriting in the two letters of 1730. One is fair, neat and deliberate in its calligraphy, with no erasures or corrections; the other presents a very different appearance, more hurried, careless and irregular. The rough draught has many erasures, interlineations, and underlinings which do not appear in the other. It also uses freely the contracted forms “y^e, y^t, y^r, w^ch,” etc., and such spellings as “Beech,” “meer,” “asshured,” etc., which the other presents in a more scholarly manner. The “Worthy Sir” close to the top at the beginning of Letter B escaped the notice of the Royal Society copyist. The handwriting of the “Danforth slip” it is hard to judge. It might be Greenwood’s more careless style. But it seems somewhat different from that, and probably it is by some other hand, even Danforth’s own.468 The “No. 2” at the bottom was unquestionably placed there by Greenwood to correspond to the number by which he named Danforth’s drawing in the text. Probably, also, the “n” in “Taunton” was inserted by Greenwood. The dorse469 of the last sheet of Letter B (folio 189) contains only the stamp of the British Museum, and the indorsement: “June 15, 1732. Tr. Copied.” For this reason, though I have a photostat of it, I have not reproduced it among the plates. The indorsement refers to the date when the letter was copied into the Register Book of the Royal Society; though what the “Tr.” means, I do not know.

The dorse of Letter C (folio 190) is an interesting study.470 It was originally folded, of course, and served as envelope for Letters B and C together. Two wax seals — probably Greenwood’s — are clearly shown. It is addressed: “For M^r. John Eames. Fellow of y^e Royal Society &c. London. To be left with M^r. Thos. Hollis Merchant in y^e Minories. Per Capt Winslow.” It is stamped with a “5” and “IV” enclosed in a circle with a horizontal diameter, — probably the stamp of the postal authorities, indicating the fifth day of the fourth month. The letter arrived in London, therefore, on the 5th of June. Intermingled with the address are three not very legible marks, that may also have been written there by postal clerks. The upper one is probably “1 oz” — the weight of the letter. The next looks like IN 5 or IIV 5; yet the character in the middle probably is not an N or a V. Could it be “11 shillings 5 pence” for postage?471 The last might be three faint initials — possibly “ADC,” and conceivably the initials of the mailing clerk. There are, further, two endorsements. One is that of the Royal Society copyist: “June 15, 1732. Copied.” The other has “June 15, 1732” and “Inscription in N. Engld.” in two different handwritings. Finally there is the stamp of the British Museum.

Plate XIV

GREENWOOD LETTER B, DECEMBER 8, 1730

ENGRAVED FOR THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS FROM THE ORIGINAL IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM. ADDITIONAL MANUSCRIPTS 4432.186

Underneath the drawings of Letter A, Greenwood wrote a description in Latin. We have already seen, in our discussion of Danforth, how his Latin abbreviation for “Mister” (D^om) misled the person who copied the drawings into the Minutes of the Society of Antiquaries, and led every one thereafter to speak of “Dr.” Danforth and “Dr.” Greenwood.

Isaac Greenwood’s Letters and Drawings

We can now consider the actual contents of the letters and of the drawings, and the different versions of them that have been recorded. We will consider the drawings first. As has been already said, those of Letter B (4432 f. 185 et seq.) may possibly be the original by Danforth and the original by Greenwood; though of this we have no sufficient evidence.472 If copies, they nevertheless certainly are nearer to the originals than any others in existence. Yet they have never before been reproduced. Our modern versions are all derived from the copies of these that Greenwood made and sent with Letter A (6402 f. 47). From Greenwood’s copies they were first copied into the Minutes of the Society of Antiquaries, then from that source they were copied by Lort and published in Archaeologia, which in turn has been the source of all later reproductions except Bushnell’s. There are many slight and a few important differences between the “originals” in B, the “Greenwood copies” in A, and the copies by Lort.473 In the Danforth drawing, for instance, there are several cases of lines joined together in B which become separated in A, or separated in B which become joined in A. The faint “BI” near the left in B has become a clearer, but still linear, “B” in A. A little distance from the right end there is a small linear square in B and none in A. Finally, and most striking of all, a part of the third figure from the right at the top, above the square just mentioned, is clear and perfect in B, but has suffered a blot or smear in A. Lort follows practically all the characteristics of A except that he gives the whole in outline. He even preserves the unintended blot, as have all subsequent copies. In the Greenwood drawing, there are even more cases of difference in the joining or separating of lines; the proportions are visibly different; the water has been more artistically presented in A; the second apparently human figure from the right end has no dots for eyes and mouth in B, but has them in A; the first triangular figure from the left has an included character in A, which was lacking in B. Lort naturally follows nearly all the characteristics of A, though he omits so elaborate a presentation of the water and shore, in a very few cases approaches more nearly the line-meetings of B, and once at least, in the lines running to eye and mouth of the head at the left, he differs from both. His own statement, his mistake about the “Dr.,” and the above facts, all concur in proving that his copies were made from the Minutes of the Society of Antiquaries, whose drawings were copied from Letter A.

The contents of the letter are almost identical in the two cases. The main difference is that what was a separate slip included in the rough draught, B, has become a postscript in A. Because A is so clearly legible in the plates, and has already been transcribed, though imperfectly, by Bushnell, we will here give a transcript of the original draught only, Letter B, and will exhibit the differences between the two in another connection.

Worthy Sir,

I have according to y^e Desire of some of y^e Members of the honourable, y^e Royal Society, wch You mentioned to Me in Your last, examined y^e remarkable Inscription on y^e Rock in Taunton-River, described in y^e Philosophical Transactions N^o 339. p. 70. And herewith send a View of as much of it as I could then possibly take.

ABCDE represent y^e Face thereof, being a Plane nearly perpendicular to y^e Horison, looking N b W, in Length from B to D 11½ Feet, and in Depth from C to F, 4½. This seems to have been left by Nature very smouth, and is certainly in its Substance very uniform, compact and durable.

BGD represent y^e Surface of y^e Water at y^e Time of Observation. I am informed that at some extraordinary Tides y^e Water ebbs below y^e Rock: and some of undoubted Veracity belonging to y^e Town asshured me, that the River has been constantly incroaching on that Part of y^e Beech, so as to waste y^e adjacent Land; wch since y^e Memory of many alive is something more distant from y^e Rock than formerly tho’ now but a few Feet, and that y^r are y^e like Figures for some Feet under AE wch is y^e present Surface of y^e Beech.

In determining y^e Characters or Figures I found some Difficulty, for the Indentures are not at present very considerable, nor, I think, equally deep; wch put me upon y^e following Rule. vizt. Carefully to trace out and chaulk all such Places, and those only, wch I beleived were real Indentures; and in this Part I desired y^e Revisal and Assistance of y^e Rev^d Mr Fisher474 and others. Many places were passed over wch did not seem to be indented, as to y^e Eye, tho remarkably discoloured, by some adheerent Matter, in corresponding Figures to y^e Rest. I thought it more adviseable to give such Parts of these Characters as were real, that thereby y^e whole might be obtained; than to run y^e Risque of a conjectural Description, wch would certainly endanger y^e Discovery of many Parts: And for this reason I must also note, that y^e Figures are not all so well defined as I have expressed them; y^r Bounds being scarcely perceivable in some of Them: the Stroakes also may be something tho’ very little broader, y^r Direction being w^t I cheifly aimed at.475

Plate XV

Time is supposed gradually to have impaired them; And one of advanced Years, in y^e Town, told Me he was sensible of some Alteration since his Memory. And for this Reason I have also sent You N^o. 2, wch is a Draught of some part of this Inscription taken by the Rev^d Mr Danforth, 1680. This Gentleman observes with relation to it that there was a Tradition current among y^e Eldest Indians, that there came a Wooden House (and Men of another Country in it) swimming up y^e River of Asoonet (as this was then called476) who fought y^e Indians with mighty Success &c. This, I think, evidently shows that this Monument was esteemed, by y^e oldest Indians, not only very antique; but a Work of a different Nature from any of theirs. It may not be improper to add here that this Place was One of y^e most considerable Seats of Indians in this Part of y^e World, and the River remarkable for all Sorts of Fowl and Fish.

After this Description You may expect an Account of the Sentiments of some among us relating to this Inscription. Such as look upon it as y^e Work of Nature are little acquainted with her Operations, and have made but a cursory Observation hereof. Two Opinions prevail most. (1.) That these Figures are y^e undesigning and artless Impressions of some of y^e Natives out of meer Curiosity, or for some particular Use. (2.) That they are a Memorial, in proper Sculpture, of some remarkable Transaction or Accident. — That they are not y^e Effect of meer Curiosity I think is very evident. For (1) The Natives of this Country were altogether ignorant of Sculpture and y^e Use of Iron; And tho’ they had some Stone Instruments, None, that ever I have seen, are capable (in much better Hands than theirs) of forming so accurate an Inscription. And if they were; (2). It is highly probable there would have been in y^e Neighbourhood, or in some other parts of New England other Sketches of y^e same or a like Nature and Regularity, wch cannot be pretended. (3) One would think their Curiosity would have lead them to y^e Representation of Birds, Beasts, Fish. Trees &c wch we have since found to be y^r prevailing Genius; and not to Figures quite different from the Objects of their Senses. (4) They were a Nation too Idle and Irresolute for a Work of so much Industry and apparent Design. — Some think these Sculptures were of particular Use to y^e Natives, in sharpning y^e Heads of y^r Arrows, y^r Axes &c, or at least that they were first formed by such Means. This is obviated by Two Considerations. (1) That477 there are no more, as I can yet hear, of such Indented Rocks. If this was their usual Custom we should find these Traces and Indentures, very probably, on many Rocks of y^e same Nature as this; And if it was Political, (a Customary Preparation to confirm and encourage One Another in their Intention or Prosecution of War), No doubt but kindred and Confederate Tribes would have had their Respective Standards. — But (2) The Figures are too Regular and uniform to comport with such an Occasion. And this brings Me to y^e Second Opinion vizt. That These Figures are a Memorial, in proper Sculpture, of some remarkable Transaction or Accident. Which appears, from y^e great Number thereof; from y^e Likeness of several; from the Parallellism and Conformity of y^e Stroakes, one with Another, in each; from y^e Circumstances of y^e Rock and Place, wch are very proper for such a Design; and from y^e equal Irregularity of some of y^e Oriental Characters &c. — But for y^e furthur Discovery of this, our Hopes being placed upon y^e extraordinary Skill and Ingenuity of M^r La Croze,478 in y^e Alphabets, both ancient and Modern, of the Oriental Tongues, it is with pleasure I now take Leave of this Subject.

If it shall be thought proper to prosecute y^e Subject any furthur, I will endeavour to transmit unto y^e Society a large Veiw of y^e whole Inscription,479 with an Account of some other Sculptures wch probably were the Work of some Modern Indians. And this I esteem, but a just Debt to that Illustrious Body, who have improved, in so eminent a manner, every Branch of Humane Literature.

I am, Worthy Sir, Your Obed^t Hum^l Serv^t

Is: Greenwood

Camb. Decemb. 8 1730.

It thus appears that Greenwood was of the opinion that the inscription was not the work of Indians, and that it contained Oriental characters. This view was greatly developed in detail and ardently advocated some fifty to seventy-five years later in several forms. Vallancey believed it the work of Siberian Tartars who had emigrated from Asia to America; Stiles, that these Tartars were descendants of the Canaanites expelled by Joshua, and ancestors of the Indians, but that the inscription was made by Phœnicians; Gebelin, that it was the work of Carthaginian sailors; Mathieu, that it was due to a Prince of Atlantis; Dammartin, that it was by Egyptians; Samuel Harris, that it contains Hebrew words; and Ira Hill, that it was done by Jewish and Tyrian sailors during the reign of King Solomon. But the exposition of these theories belongs to a later chapter of this history.

With this letter were sent the two drawings on separate sheets, and the “Danforth slip,” which Greenwood had retained with the rough draught, when he sent off the copied letter and drawings in 1730. The “Danforth slip” reads as follows, with what are apparently Greenwood’s own two additions to it placed in brackets:

The Uppermost of y^e Engravings of a Rock in y^e river Assoonet480 six miles below Tau[n]ton in New England. Taken out sometime in October 1680. by John Danforth. It is reported from the Tradition of old Indians, y^t y^r came a wooden house (& men of another country in it) swimming up the river Asonet, y^t fought y^e Indians, & slew y^r Saunchem. &c.

Some recon the figures here to be Hieroglyphicall. The first figure representing a Ship, without masts, & a meer Wrack cast upon the Shoales. The second representing an head of Land, possibly a cape with a peninsula. Hence a Gulf.

[N^o. 2]

Greenwood’s Letter C, which enclosed this rough draught, Letter B, sent to replace his Letter A which had failed to reach its destination, was as follows:

NE. Camb. April 28 1732.

Hon. Sir

I perceive by Yours that a Packet I sent to You upwards of a Year since miscarried in wch was an Answer to Your Request relating to y^e Inscription on y^e Rock at Taunton. I am loth by this First Opportunity to omit sending a Coppy thereof, And with Thanks to you for Your Favours, I am with all due Respect,

Your Obliged Humble Serv^t.

I: Greenwood

If it shouldbe thought proper to make it public, I shouldbe glad You’l would see that y^e Title Hollisean be placed before Profess. of y^e Mathematieks and Philosophy at Camb. NE.

Please to excuse my Brevity, for I am but just now informed that y^e Vessel is immediately to sail.481

The address and other features that appear on the back of this sheet, which was used as an envelope in which to send both Letters B and C through the mail, reveal the name of his correspondent, and have already been discussed.

On the 15th of June, 1732, Letter B was read, presumably by Eames, to the Royal Society, onto whose Register Book for 1731–32 it and its enclosures were copied at once. In the margin of the Register appears: “Read, June 15: 1732.” On the letter itself, as well as on Letter C, was endorsed: “June 15, 1732. Copied.” The copy in the Register Book is headed: “An Account of an Inscription in unknown Characters found on a Rock in Taunton River, in New England: communicated in a Letter to M^r John Eames F. R. S. By M^r Isaac Greenwood, Hollisian Professor of the Mathematieks & Philosophy at Cambridge in New England. Dated Cambr: Decemb^r 18. 1730.” Then follows the copy of the letter itself, exact as to wording, apparently (only the beginning and the end of it have been transcribed for me), but differing in such particulars as the use of abbreviations, the substitution of “the” for “y^e,” the use of capitals, etc.

Plate XVI

GREENWOOD LETTER B, DECEMBER 8, 1730

ENGRAVED FOR THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS FROM THE ORIGINAL IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM, ADDITIONAL MANUSCRIPTS 4432.189

The two drawings have been copied onto a piece of paper, with the appropriate description written under each, and this paper has been pasted into the book. Underneath the Greenwood drawing, in the hand of the clerk who copied the letter, is the description that appears in Greenwood’s hand on the drawing in Letter B; but to it is added, in a small and crabbed writing apparently by another hand:

	ft
length From B to D	11½
Depth from C to F	4½

B.C.D. represent the surface of the water at the time of Observation.

Underneath the Danforth drawing, in the crabbed hand, are reproduced the contents of the “slip,” with mention of “John” Danforth, of “October” 1680, and of the “Saunchem,” which prove that it was Letter B, not A, that was here copied, and that these now new facts might have been announced already by Lort, had he thoroughly searched the records of the Royal Society. The two drawings are very like their originals; but the dots representing eyes and mouth have been inserted in the head of the second figure from the right in the Greenwood drawing, though lacking in the original. This is a natural error, rendered more natural by suggestion from the neighboring figure, and not evidence that it was the drawing of Letter A that was being copied.

The Minutes of the Royal Society for 1732 could not be examined by my correspondent, as they were already stored away with other manuscripts and pictures as a precaution against a possible Zeppelin raid; but the Secretary said he should not expect anything to be there, when the original was copied into the Register.

After Letter A arrived, as it eventually did, it would appear that Mr. Eames thought that the Society of Antiquaries of London would be interested in the new information. It seems probable that he gave this accidentally duplicate letter to the Rev. Mr. Villers, who, through Mr. Bogdani, submitted it to the Society of Antiquaries, to whom it was read at a meeting held November 9, 1732. The drawings and about half of the letter were copied into the Minutes of the Society, where they are still accessible.482 The copy is preceded by the following introduction:

Mr. Bogdani produced a Drawing from a Rock in the River Taunton in New England drawn by D^r Greenwood 1730 & another of the same by D^r Danforth 1680 together with a letter from D^r Isaac Greenwood Hollesian Professor at New Cambridge to the Rev. M^r — Viller Rector of S^t — Tottlefields dat. N.E. Cambr. Dec. 8 1730, giving an account of the same as follows.

The excerpt omits the introductory sentence, which gives the conclusive evidence as to the person to whom the letter was addressed. It begins with the second sentence, “ABCDE . . . ,” and ends at about the middle part of the letter with the words “. . . Fowl and Fish.” It is very faithful to the original, but presents a few differences in spelling and capitalization. The two illustrations, the Assistant Secretary of the Society informs me, are identical with Numbers 2 and 3 on Plate XVIII of Volume VIII of Archaeologia. Below the drawings in the Minutes is written the description in Latin as in Greenwood’s Letter A, except that “perpendicularis” is substituted for “perpendiculari,” “Nove” for “Novae,” “D^r” for “D^om” in both cases, and “Supera” for “supra” in the second case of its occurrence. Also the order of one line is changed.

For some reason, it was not “thought proper” by the Royal Society or others to make the letter public.483 Consequently the duplicate letters with their drawings and the records of the two Societies slumbered unknown for fifty years. It was not until Professor Stephen Sewall of Harvard College had made a new copy of the inscription in 1768; and a copy of this had been sent to M. Court de Gebelin in Paris, who, in the eighth volume of his Monde Primitif, published in 1781, pronounced the inscription Punic or Carthaginian; and Dr. Ezra Stiles, President of Yale College, in his Election Sermon of May 8, 1783, had supported Gebelin’s interpretation, — it was not until then that the first widespread interest in the mysterious rock since Mather’s time arose, and new public discussions of it began. It was President Stiles’s sermon that incited the Rev. Michael Lort, in 1786, to survey the history of the subject anew. He discovered, as he says, that copies of the Dighton inscription —

had been sent, at different times by different persons, both to the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries, though no notice had been taken thereof in the printed Memoirs of either Society, except a very slight one in the Philosophical Transactions for the year 1714; I have therefore, from the minute books of each Society, collected together these different accounts, and, together with the drawings which accompanied them, submit them [on November 23, 1786] to the inspection of this learned body [the Society of Antiquaries]; and by their means, if it shall be thought proper, to the world at large.484

From his paper, entitled “Account of an antient Inscription in North America,” all subsequent knowledge of Danforth and Greenwood has been drawn, until Bushnell published his transcript from the letter itself in 1908.

Since he searched only in the Minute Books of the Societies, Lort naturally failed to discover the entire letter with its ampler information, either in the Royal Society’s Register or in the British Museum. His transcript from the Minutes of the Society of Antiquaries, moreover, is rather careless. The difference in his drawings has already been noted. In the letter, he transfers the part beginning: “ABCDE . . .” to the end, himself beginning with the words: “I am informed . . .” In spelling, capitalization and punctuation, he diverges widely from his original. He presents many cases of changed order of words, such as: “at present are not” in place of “are not at present,” “may be also” in place of “also may be.” Occasionally he inserts words or changes the manner of phrasing. The more important differences of the latter sort will be indicated shortly.

Except for Baxter’s brief quotation in 1887 from the “Danforth slip,” in connection with which he gave no indication that its source was either Danforth or Greenwood, no further new information appeared concerning either of them until David I. Bushnell published his transcript of Letters A and C in full, in the American Anthropologist in 1908. Unfortunately this transcript is very unreliable. More than fifty errors of capitalization, punctuation, paragraphing, and spelling occur on his first page alone. Some even more serious errors will be indicated in a comparative table below. Nevertheless he has the merit of having been the first to give us the whole of either of the letters of 1730, or that of 1732, or to show accurately how Greenwood’s own drawings actually looked.

The table which follows exhibits some of the more important differences in the various versions of the letter of 1730. It pays no attention to differences in the use of capitals, punctuation, forms like “y^e” or “&” and their equivalents, abbreviations, and the like, which are exceedingly numerous. It does not include all changes in order of words such as Lort frequently indulged in. It also omits consideration of the version in the Royal Society’s Register, since that has never, directly or indirectly, served as a source of information.

Plate XVII

GREENWOOD LETTER C, APRIL 28, 1732

ENGRAVED FOR THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS FROM THE ORIGINAL IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM, ADDITIONAL MANUSCRIPTS 4432.190

Conclusion

Our present task is at an end. The further history of delineation and discussion of the message of this cryptic rock is quite as full of interest, of variety, of uncorrected error, of forgotten theories, of unpublished or unassembled material, as that which we have surveyed. But its consideration must be reserved for another occasion. For the period that we have dealt with, covering about the first century of possible acquaintance with the rock by white men, we found at the start a very small amount indeed of reliable information. Although we are probably far from having attained ideal accuracy or from having discovered all possible sources of pertinent material, yet we have now approached toward this ideal quite materially. At the start, we found a number of positive statements concerning knowledge of the rock by the colonists, and absence of knowledge by the Indians. We can now quite as positively claim that no such statements are supported by evidence. Of historical facts, we had only these: that “Dr.” Danforth made a drawing in 1680, and the brief observation given in the body of Greenwood’s letter; that Cotton Mather gave out drawings apparently different from Danforth’s in 1690 and in 1712, and an exceedingly brief and empty description; that a brief phrase, discovered by Baxter, was to be added to Danforth’s account; that Greenwood made a drawing and wrote a letter in 1730, to a correspondent about whose identity conflicting claims have been made, of which an excerpt was published by Lort and a full transcript by Bushnell; and that another letter by Greenwood was written in 1732, and also transcribed by Bushnell. To these meagre and not wholly reliable statements we can now add a very respectable number of fresh discoveries. The Danforth was John Danforth, and the “Dr.” an easily explainable error. The date of his drawing was not 1688 or thereabout, as it seemed unavoidable to conclude from earlier probabilities, in spite of Greenwood’s statement, but really 1680, and in October. Cotton Mather’s “upper line” was not really new, but was a bad copy of Danforth’s; and his lower “line” is without a peer in misrepresentation. His own original letter of 1712 differs somewhat from its reproduction in the Philosophical Transactions. There exists a “Mather Broadside,” whose date we do not know. Samuel Sewall showed an interest in Dighton Rock in 1691. The rock was visited about 1730, not only by Greenwood, but by persons no less eminent than Dean Berkeley and John Smibert. Of the theories of Berkeley we are given some account. Smibert is said to have made a drawing, which seems to have entirely disappeared. The confused and conflicting statements about Greenwood and his letter or letters have been cleared up, the several versions of the letter traced to their sources, and the actual facts about it definitely determined.

Nevertheless we cannot close this chapter in the story of the tide-worn and controversy-worn Writing Rock with entire satisfaction. A number of unsolved problems remain on our hands, of which there is no reason to despair of a possible solution. Is there not somewhere existent definite information, besides the little we have gathered and earlier than Greenwood’s belated observations of 1730, about what use the Indians actually made of Assonet Neck? Did not some of the earliest settlers near-by make mention of the rock before 1680? Are there no letters or other papers by John Danforth himself, descriptive of his visit to the Rock? Is there no documentary proof of the source from which Cotton Mather obtained both the upper part and the lower part of his drawings? Who issued the “Mather Broadside,” and when, and for what reason? And where now is the lost Smibert drawing? It will be one of the happiest results of the publishing of this paper, if some or all of these questions may receive an answer.

List of Plates accompanying this Paper

I Burgess Photograph of Dighton Rock, 1868, from an original in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
II Best Known Drawings of Dighton Rock made before the Introduction of Photography, from the Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1893, Plate LIV.
III Lort’s Reproduction of Danforth’s Drawing, 1680, from Archaeologia, 1787, VIII, Plate XVIII.
III Cotton Mather’s Drawing, 1690, from Mather’s Wonderful Works of God Commemorated, 1690.
IV Cotton Mather’s Drawing, 1712, from Philosophical Transactions, 1714, XXIX, No. 339.
V Mather Broadside, from an original in the possession of the Yale University Library.
VI Comparisons of the Danforth Drawing 1680, the Mather Drawing 1690, the Mather Broadside, and the Mather Drawing 1712.
VII Lort’s Reproduction of Greenwood’s Drawing, 1730, from Archaeologia, 1787, VIII, Plate XVIII.
VIII Greenwood Letter A, December 8, 1730, from the original in the British Museum, Additional Manuscripts 6402.106.
IX Greenwood Letter A, December 8, 1730, from the original in the British Museum, Additional Manuscripts 6402.106 dorse.
X Greenwood Letter A, December 8, 1730, from the original in the British Museum, Additional Manuscripts 6402.107.
XI Greenwood Letter A, December 8, 1730, from the original in the British Museum, Additional Manuscripts 6402.47.
XII Greenwood Letter B, December 8, 1730, from the original in the British Museum, Additional Manuscripts 4432.185.
XIII Greenwood Letter B, December 8, 1730, from the original in the British Museum, Additional Manuscripts 4432.185 dorse.
XIV Greenwood Letter B, December 8, 1730, from the original in the British Museum, Additional Manuscripts 4432.186.
XV Greenwood Letter B, December 8, 1730, from the original in the British Museum, Additional Manuscripts 4432.187, 188.
XVI Greenwood Letter B, December 8, 1730, from the original in the British Museum, Additional Manuscripts 4432.189.
XVII Greenwood Letter C, April 28, 1732, from the original in the British Museum, Additional Manuscripts 4432.190.
XVIII Greenwood Letter C, April 28, 1732, from the original in the British Museum 4432.190 dorse.

Plate XVIII

GREENWOOD LETTER C, APRIL 28, 1732

ENGRAVED FOR THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS FROM THE ORIGINAL IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM, ADDITIONAL MANUSCRIPTS 4432.190 DORSE

Mr. Andrew McF. Davis read the following paper:

A CONFLICT IN THE OFFICIAL RECORDS

The fact that official publications of the State of Massachusetts furnish more than one date for the original charter of the town of Charlton, would not of itself furnish to others than those interested in the local history of the region a motive for an extended research among the archives and official documents of the Commonwealth in order to determine which was the right date, but when it appears that the date finally accepted at the State House is not the same as that given in the well-known publication entitled the Acts and Resolves of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay, the question rises in importance, for such points were not settled by those who had charge of that publication without careful examination. It happens that the Act establishing Charlton as a district was printed in the Province Laws before Mr. Goodell personally assumed the editorship of that publication, so that one may challenge the accuracy of the date given therein without impugning his judgment. Indeed, it is quite probable that he knew nothing about the steps taken at that time to determine this date, since his oversight of the work as Commissioner was interrupted during the preparation of Volume III for the press by protracted illness. At any rate, whoever may be responsible for it, there is doubt as to the accuracy of the date given in that volume for the establishment of the district of Charlton, and the circumstances which probably led to the acceptance of the one which was adopted are curious and interesting.

Towns were originally created in the Colony of Massachusetts without much formality, perhaps in consequence of doubt whether a mercantile company had power to create corporations of any sort, no matter what their nature. The one conspicuous violation of this proposition, the incorporation of Harvard College, took place in the days of the Commonwealth. Under the Province, the right to exercise this power seems to have been tacitly acknowledged and was freely exercised. The custom then grew up of engrossing on parchment the Acts creating new towns and of depositing these engrossed Acts in the archives. It follows that in cases where this step has been complied with, no question can arise as to the date of a charter. It happens that no such document is to be found in the archives in the case of Charlton. There is, however, in the hands of the town clerk of that place, what he himself terms “a contemporary copy of the original charter of Charlton,” and he adds: “The date of the Charter is Jan. 10, 1755.”485 It is probable that this date must be accepted, and it is reasonable to suppose that the doubts which have grown up about it would never have arisen, had the various investigators who sought to ascertain it applied directly to Charlton. Any person who has read the reports of the Commissioner of Public Records from year to year will understand why the town clerk’s office did not suggest itself as a place of inquiry concerning the date of a charter. The custody of the papers and records of the town was deputed to the care of the town clerk. Such a thing as a town safe was almost unheard of. Few of the town clerks realized the historical value of the papers placed temporarily in their hands, and as a result the documents were exposed to all sorts of vicissitudes in the various houses where they were from year to year deposited. If the records and papers of any town have been carefully preserved, it has been by rare good luck.

There are two official publications of the State of Massachusetts to which the ordinary investigator would naturally turn for information as to the date of a charter of a town established prior to the revolution. The first of these is the Manual of the General Court, which furnishes the date of the creation of all towns in the Commonwealth, and the second is the publication generally spoken of as the Province Laws. A third official source of information, not so generally known, is the report of Carroll D. Wright, Commissioner of Public Records. This was published in 1889 and contains information of the same character. It furnishes no new knowledge on the subject, since it refers to the Province Laws as authority for the date of incorporation of Charlton. There are, in addition, the contemporary publications of the laws passed during the provincial period, but these are classified by sessions and do not give the dates of the passage of specific acts.

The Manual is published annually for the benefit of the members of the General Court and contains, besides the names of the State officials and of the legislators, much condensed information as to the counties and towns in the Commonwealth. From time to time since this volume was first issued new tables have been added to its contents and it has now become a vade-mecum for the members of the legislature, without which they would be at a loss to know where to turn to gain the information contained in its pages. In 1871 the practice began of furnishing the dates of the charters of the towns in this Commonwealth, and, if originally incorporated as a district, the date of that incorporation. The date of a charter does not change from time to time, and presumably the date first inserted in the Manual should appear thereafter from year to year. Such was not the case, however, in regard to the charter of Charlton. From 1871 to 1891 inclusive, the Manual gives the date of that charter as November 2, 1754. From 1892 to 1900 inclusive, the date is given as November 21, 1754. From 1901 to the present time the date has been given as January 10, 1755.

Any person seeking for the date of this charter would necessarily assume its stability. He would, therefore, feel at liberty to quote the date given in any one of the forty-five volumes of the Manual containing this information. If by chance he sought to corroborate the date that he found by consulting the Province Laws, he would find that October 21, 1754, was the date of the passage of the charter according to that authority, a date which agrees with that given in eight only of these volumes.

If he should seek for explanation of these discrepancies he would find a possible explanation for the first date given in the Manual in the fact that this is the date given for the incorporation of the town of Charlton by Peter Whitney in his History of the County of Worcester.486 This work is a standard and is in its way reliable and fairly accurate, but is hardly to be accepted as a suitable basis for an official announcement of this kind in a State publication. It was published in 1793, and it is probable that the compiler of the table in the Manual in 1871, not finding the Engrossed Act in the archives, turned to Whitney’s pages for information as to the date. The language used in the History is: “This Town was taken wholly from Oxford, and was the westerly part thereof: It was incorporated November 2d, 1754, and then received its present name” (p. 221).

On the second of November, 1754, the legislation which finally resulted in the incorporation of Charlton as a district was in its preliminary stages and consisted merely of the appointment of a joint committee to consider the subject and make report thereon. The date given in the History must, therefore, have been an error, and probably was a compositor’s error. It is not unlikely that Whitney wrote November 21, a date for which authority is to be found in the Records of the General Court, for the statement which he made and the compositor when setting it in type mistook the numeral one for a letter d.

What was sufficient to satisfy a historian seeking merely for the first official record of an incorporation, no matter what its form, would not necessarily be enough for one, who, like the editor of the Province Laws, was seeking for the date of an incorporation of a district, the details of which were at his command in the pages of the contemporary publication of the perpetual laws. So far as he was concerned, there was no reason for choice between November, 1754, and January, 1755; but the thought suggests itself that a clue to the time of the passage of the Act might be inferred from its position in chronological sequence in the perpetual laws. If, however, we consult the preface to the first volume of the Province Laws, we find that the arrangement of the Acts in those volumes “is not strictly chronological, nor could it be made so without disarranging the order uniformly pursued in the early editions.” In other words, the clue fails us because the arrangement in the early editions is not strictly chronological.

It is not essential to follow in detail the action of the General Court in reaching a final decision to incorporate Charlton as a district, but in order to understand how the date November 21, 1754, could have been selected for a result which apparently was not actually reached until January 10, 1755, it is important to examine some of those details. This examination will disclose certain unexpected features in the progress of the legislation as recorded in the official records which are in themselves interesting and call for explanation.

The matter first turns up in the Records, April 8, 1754, when a petition signed by William Allton and others, inhabitants of the west part of Oxford, setting forth the great distance of their homes from the body of the town and the inconvenience of attending worship there, and praying that they might be set off with their families and estates into a separate town or district, was presented to the General Court.487 Some of these people lived ten miles from the church which they were through taxation obliged to support.

There was no question that those thus situated were entitled to relief, and the town clerk of Oxford was ordered to appear at a given day and show cause why the prayer of the petition should not be granted. In due time the answer of the town clerk was filed and thereafter a joint committee was appointed which reported November 7, 1754, in favor of the petitioners. A bill was, on November 9, introduced in the House for setting off the inhabitants as also the estates of the westerly part of Oxford, and also the westerly part of the Country Gore, into a separate district by the name of, and a second reading was ordered for the next succeeding Tuesday. This is the last that is heard of this particular bill, but on the 13th of November a new bill was introduced in the House having similar import with the exception that its purpose was to incorporate the same persons and estates into a town by the name of. This bill was read a first, second, and third time, and was passed to be engrossed and was sent up for concurrence. In the Council it was read once on the thirteenth, twice on the fourteenth, and on the same day a concurrence was voted. These dates and these facts are taken from a copy of the bill to be found in the Archives.488

Under date of November 21, 1754, there is an entry in the General Court Records489 to the following purport: “An engrossed Bill, entitled an Act for setting off the inhabitants as also the estates of the westerly part of Oxford, as also the westerly part of the Country Gore into a separate town by the name of having been read three several times in the House of Representatives and in Council, Passed to be enacted by both Houses and signed by the Governor.” Here we have in the official records authority for the positive statement of the final passage of an Act incorporating a town, as yet nameless, but comprehending within its bounds the area known as Charlton.

In the Province Laws, the editor sought to append to each Act not only the date of its passage but also the date of the publication thereof, and the Commissioners quote, in a note to their preface to the first volume,490 from an order of the General Court in 1673 to the effect that all laws and orders of every session thought fit to be published should “be read in the Market Place, Boston, upon the fifth day being a lecture day, within ten days after the end of such sessions, which being performed is, and shall be accounted sufficient publication.” The official publication of Province Acts, whatever the method may have been, was not always easy to ascertain, and there are many in the different volumes of the Province Laws of which only the date of the passage could be learned. In such cases the editor was obliged to content himself with the date of the passage of the Act. The Act relating to the charter of Charlton is one of those which lack a date of publication.491 Whether the publication of the Act was an essential for its validity or not, it would seem as though this statement of the passage of the Act on the pages of the official document in which the doings of the General Court are recorded, was adequate to relieve Peter Whitney from the charge of having no basis for the date given in his History for the incorporation of Charlton, provided the conjecture is correct that he put down November 21 in his manuscript which was converted by the compositor into November 2d.

On the other hand, the person who decided the date in the Province Laws had several reasons for not accepting November 21 as the date of the passage of the Act actually published in Volume III of that publication. The language of the Act as given in that volume corresponds with the language used in a contemporary publication of the perpetual laws, in which the incorporation of Charlton is described as a district, and the territory included in that district does not comprehend the Country Gore — two vital differences. If we could say positively that reliance was had on the entry that we have quoted for the determination of the date given in that document, we should have a right to say that there was gross carelessness displayed in this acceptance. As matters stand we can only say that there is no other evident record upon which that opinion could have been based, and that being the case there is a probability that the date given in the Province Laws rests upon the record quoted. Had the editor examined the House Journal he would have found evidence, that notwithstanding the statement in the Court Records to the effect that the Governor had signed the bill, such was not actually the case. Under date of January 6, 1755, the following entry is made in the Journal:

Ordered, That the Secretary be directed to attend the House, who accordingly attended, and Mr. Speaker was pleased to ask him, Whether the bill for creating the westerly part of Oxford into a town was passed the Honorable Board, and signed by his Excellency the Governor?

Mr. Secretary informed the House that the Council had passed the Bill and that it had been laid before the Governor, and he had not signed it.

Thereupon a bill entitled “An Act for setting off the inhabitants as also the estates of the westerly part of Oxford into a separate district by the name of ” was read a first time.

It may be inferred from the rapidity of the action of the representatives in introducing a new bill that they already knew that the previous bill had been held up by the Governor and from the change of the form of organization in the new bill from town to district that they realized what his probable objections were. Perhaps also the dropping of the Country Gore may indicate a reason. Nothing appears in the records to indicate that objection was raised to the older bill by the residents of that section, but at a later date the inhabitants of the Gore vigorously resisted annexation to Charlton.

There is evidence existing that Governor Shirley was opposed to the incorporation of new towns, and it was in consequence of suggestions originating with him that “Additional Instructions” were prepared in 1743, authorizing the erection of “Precincts, Parishes or Villages” without the liberty of sending representatives to the General Court, but requiring the submission to his Majesty of bills for creating new or dividing old towns, before they should go into effect.492 Shirley had written to the Lords of Trade, a letter in which he recommended this proceeding and spoke of the effect that creating new towns had in “increasing the number of Representatives,” which he said “seems to promise no good effect for his Majesty’s service.” To prevent this increase he suggested that “Precincts, Parishes or Villages” might be erected with “all the Officers and Privileges of a Township except that of sending Representatives” to the General Court, thus securing for the petitioners for new towns the substance of their desires without violating the clause of the charter which provided that each town might have two representatives. It is evident from the use of the words “Precincts, Parishes or Villages” in the Instructions that those who framed them had Shirley’s letter in mind. For some reason the General Court seems to have preferred to call these new organizations districts rather than precincts, parishes or villages. It may be added that all districts were made towns by an Act passed August 23, 1775.

The protean bill, first introduced for the purpose of incorporating what was afterwards called Charlton into a district, then suddenly changed to the founding of a town and now posing as the creator of a district, must evidently have had its career influenced by Shirley’s well-known hostility to the erection of new townships, but why the representatives should have cared to select the township form for the organization of the place with all the delays necessarily inherent upon such a course is not clear. In seeking to make Charlton a town, they had first to overcome Shirley’s opposition, and if his acquiescence should be gained, they still had to encounter the delay caused by the submission of the bill to the Lords of Trade with the probability that opposition to its approval would develop in the Board. In any event the securing the approbation of the Board would take months.

If we now recur to this bill for “setting off the Inhabitants as also the Estates of the westerly part of Oxford into a separate District by the name of,” which was introduced in the House January 6, 1755, and then had its first reading, we find that it was amended on the 8th and read a second and third time and passed to be engrossed on the 9th. On the 10th the enactment is recorded in the House Journal, and on the same day the concurrence of the Council is recorded in the Court Records, the fact that it had been signed by the Governor not being stated.

The Act was printed on pages 466 and 467 of the laws of the session begun May 29, 1754, and continued by adjournment to October 17, 1754. No specific date is given for the passage of the bill. It was not included in the edition of the perpetual laws published in 1759.

The contemporary copy of the charter in the hands of the town clerk seems to be the most conclusive authority as to the date of the charter. The record of the enactment of the bill is corroborative, even though there is no statement that the Governor had signed it, but it is evident that those who have had to determine officially what that date was have had at their hands a perplexing question to settle.

1 Read but not printed

2 Read but not printed

3 Read but not printed

4 Mr. Gay died in office, 3 March, 1916

5 The title reads:

Éloge de M. Franklin, Lu à la séance publique de l’Académie des Sciences, le 13 Nov. 1790. Eripuit cœlo fulmen, mox sceptra Tyrannis. Turgot, 1775. A Paris, . . . 1791.

At a meeting of the American Academy held February 29, 1792, the gift of the Éloge from the “Consul of France” was acknowledged, and elsewhere in the Academy’s records it is stated to have been given by “M. De La Tombe.” The donation was also noted in the Columbian Centinel of March 3, 1792, p. 3/2.

6 Franklin was made a member of the Society of Arts in 1755 and of the Royal Society in 1756; in 1759 he received the degree of LL.D. from the University of St. Andrews, and by the corporation of Edinburgh was given the freedom of that city; in 1762 he received the degree of D.C.L. from the University of Oxford, his son William at the same time obtaining the degree of A.M.; and long before the outbreak of the Revolution he was in correspondence with the most distinguished scholars of England and Scotland. Clearly, therefore, Condorcet was under a misapprehension in supposing that there was any tardiness on the part of England in recognizing Franklin’s scientific work.

7 The epigram is, however, mentioned in Condorcet’s “Vie de M. Turgot, publiée en 1786,” where it appears in the same form as on the title-page of the Éloge de M. Franklin. (Œuvres de Condorcet publiées par A. Condorcet O’Connor, Paris, 1847, v. 162.)

8 In Turgot’s Œuvres, Paris, 1810, ix. 140, the epigram appears in the form “Eripuit Cœlo fulmen, sceptrumque Tyrannis.” The date 1775, assigned to the epigram on the title-page of Condorcet’s Éloge de M. Franklin, is doubtless incorrect, for Franklin did not reach Paris until December 21, 1776, and the earliest known allusion to the epigram is under date of April, 1778, where it reads as in Turgot’s Œuvres. For a full and interesting discussion of the epigram, see Charles Sumner’s “Monograph from an old Note-Book; with a Postscript. ‘Eripuit cœlo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis,’” in the Atlantic Monthly for November, 1863, xii. 648–662. It should be pointed out, however, that in a letter to Horace Walpole dated March 1, 1777, Madame du Deffand (Lettres de la Marquise du Deffand à Horace Walpole, 1912, iii. 308) says, “Voilà des vers pour mettre au bas de l’estampe de M. Franklin” — and then quotes four lines of which the first is identical with the first line of the verses in French written by Turgot (Œuvres, ix. 140). Possibly the original verses were in French and afterwards given a Latin form.

9 Works (ed. Bigelow), vi. 111–112.

10 Glenbervie Journals (1910), p. 95.

11 Bigelow, Life of Franklin, iii. 259 note.

12 Washington’s Writings (ed. Sparks), ix. 72.

13 In 1727 two editions appeared of Prince’s “Earthquakes the Works of God & Tokens of his just Displeasure. Two Sermons On Psal. xviii. 7. At the Particular Fast in Boston, Nov. 2. and the General Thanksgiving, Nov. 9.” In 1755 Prince published “Earthquakes the Works of God, and Tokens of His just Displeasure.” This was Sermon I of the 1727 edition, with an “Appendix Concerning the Operation of God in Earthquakes by Means of the Electrical Substance,” dated “Boston, Dec. 5. 1755.” The passage quoted in the text is from this Appendix. A controversy between Prince and Winthrop took place in the newspapers in 1755.

14 Franklin’s Works (ed. Sparks), v. 419.

15 Works (ed. Bigelow), ii. 253–254, 255.

16 Works (ed. Sparks), v. 337.

17 Publications, viii. 90–92, 104.

18 Publications, xii. 288–294. The following references may be added to those furnished by Mr. Matthews and Mr. Cunningham: William Douglass, Summary, Boston, 1749, i. 239 n; Sir Walter Scott’s note in his edition of Dryden, vi. 222 ff; Saintsbury’s Dryden, vi. 237; Addison, Spectator, No. 269, January 8, 1712, with C. N. Greenough’s note, Selections from the Writings of Joseph Addison, ed. by Wendell and Greenough, Boston, [1905,] (Athenæum Press Series), p. 325; Brand, Popular Antiquities, ed. W. C. Hazlitt, i. 221.

19 The manner of the Burning the Pope in Effigies in London On the 5th of November, 1678. With The manner of carrying him through several Streets, in progression to Temple-Bar, where at length he was decently burned. Also A Particular of several Bloody Massacres done by the Papists upon the Bodies of English, Irish, and French Protestants. With Allowance. London, Printed for D. M. 1678.

20 Pp. 3–6. The pagination of the original is given within square brackets.

21 History of Plymouth Plantation (ed. Ford), i. 333–334.

22 New England’s Memorial (1669), p. 51. The year is correctly given in the headline as 1623. Cf. J. A. Goodwin’s Pilgrim Republic (1888), pp. 249–250.

23 Cf. Boston Post Boy of April 20 (p. 3/3) and 27 (p. 4/3), 1772.

24 Publications, xiv. 268 note 2.

25 New England Palladium, January 14, 1803, p. 3/2. A reference to the proposals also appeared in the Boston Weekly Magazine of January 22, 1803, i. 55.

26 The following advertisement, evidently referring to the edition published by Allen Danforth at Plymouth in 1826, appeared in the Columbian Centinel of December 2 (p. 2/5), 9 (p. 4/4), and 16 (p. 1/3), 1826:

NEW ENGLAND MEMORIAL

JUST published, a new edition of the “NEW-ENGLAND’s MEMORIAL,” or a brief relation of the most remarkable passages of the providence of God, manifested to the Planters of New-England, with special reference to the Colony of Plymouth. By Nathaniel Morton, Secretary to the Court for the Jurisdiction of New-Plymouth. For sale by RICHARDSON & LORD.

27 This specimen of the page and type consists of Morton’s address to the “Christian Reader,” dated “Plymouth in New-England, January 13, 1680,” afterwards printed in Young’s Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers.

28 It is curious to find this statement at so early a period. In the Preface to his edition published in 1826, Judge Davis said that “The first edition of the Memorial was published in 1669. It was a small quarto volume, printed at Cambridge, by Samuel Green and Marmaduke Johnson” (p. iv). This latter statement is unquestionably correct: see Mr. Matthews’s paper called A Ghost-Book (Publications of this Society, xiv. 268–281).

29 Josiah Cotton.

30 Plymouth Church Records, lib. i. p. 45.

31 The letter is printed in Washington’s Writings (ed. Sparks), vii. 459.

32 Cf. Publications of this Society, vii. 127–181, 341–398, xvii. 161–205.

33 See p. 47 note 3, below.

34 John Fitzgerald.

35 Charles Simms.

36 Francis Conway, who married Elizabeth Fitzhugh.

37 Samuel Hanson was tutor to George Steptoe Washington (cf. p. 47 note 3, below), but failed to exercise due control over his ward: see Washington’s Writings (ed. Ford), xi. 263, 297, 372.

38 Born 1739, died 1795; of Cedar Park, Anne Arundel County, Maryland: see Maryland Historical Magazine, viii. 82.

39 David Humphreys (1752–1818).

40 George Augustine Washington, son of Charles Washington (brother of George Washington), married Frances Bassett, daughter of Col. Burwell Bassett.

41 The proceedings in detail are given in J. Pickell, New Chapter in the Early Life of Washington, p. 87. Much information about the Potomac Company will also be found in Corra Bacon-Foster, Early Chapters in the Development of the Patomac Route to the West (1912).

42 William Fitzhugh (b.1741): see Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, viii. 94. Ravensworth was the home of the Fitzhughs in Fairfax County, Virginia.

43 Dr. James Craik.

44 William Shaw, who had recently been Washington’s secretary.

45 Philip Richard Fendall.

46 Chevalier Mauduit Duplessis.

47 To intend, in the sense of “to start on a journey, to set out,” is marked “obsolete or archaic” in the Oxford English Dictionary, no extract from English prose being cited later than 1744. This use, however, was common in this country certainly until the nineteenth century.

48 See p. 47 note 2, below.

49 William Lyles & Co. supplied rum for the workers on the canal: see Pickell, p. 83.

50 Thomas Mifflin (1744–1800).

51 William Craik, son of Dr. James Craik, married Ann Fitzhugh, sister of Mrs. G. W. P. Custis. His eldest sister was Nancy Craik, who married Richard Harrison.

52 “Fore-bay, . . . ‘a reservoir or conductor between a mill-race and a waterwheel. The discharging end of a head or mill-race’” (Oxford English Dictionary, where the earliest extract is dated 1874).

53 Mrs. Daniel French.

54 Tobias Lear (H. C. 1783), Washington’s secretary.

55 * The ground at the ferry being stiff, breaking up in pretty large and heavy clods and the seed harrowed in with my lightest harrow, was not well covered & left the ground very rough & lumpy with hollows between the furrows that would prevent the grain from being well covered — and the Timothy seed still worse.

56 George Gilpin.

57 See p. 47 note 2, below.

58 Edmund Randolph (1753–1813) married Elizabeth Nicholas.

59 “Lea-land, lay-land. . . . Fallow land; land ‘laid down’ to grass” (Oxford English Dictionary).

60 Joseph Jones of Virginia.

61 Dr. David Stuart married Eleanor (Calvert) Custis, the widow of Martha Washington’s son, John Parke Custis. George Washington Parke Custis, Eleanor Parke Custis, Elizabeth Parke Custis, and Martha Parke Custis, were the children of John Parke Custis.

62 George Steptoe Washington, Harriott Washington, and Lawrence Washington were the children of Samuel Washington, a brother of George Washington.

63 Burwell Bassett (d. 1793).

64 See p. 47 note 2, above.

65 “Presley Thornton . . . was a British officer during our Revolution, but he would not fight against his country, and therefore went to Gibraltar, and was in Garrison there during its siege by the Spaniards, where it is said he distinguished himself by his gallant behavior” (Washington to C. C. Pinckney, March 31, 1799, in Washington’s Writings, xiv. 169). He was a first cousin of Mildred Thornton, who married Charles Washington (brother of George Washington).

66 See letter to Triplet in Washington’s Writings (ed. Ford), xi. 64.

67 The Sieur Oster is given in the Massachusetts Almanac for 1785 as the French Vice-Consul at Virginia.

68 His shop and residence were afterwards moved to Hanover Street, where he was a near neighbor and friend of Mr. Edes’s great-grandfather, Nathan Webb (1767–1853), who was a parishioner of Dr. Andrew Eliot. Mr. Edes informs me that this well-known Massachusetts name was at that time pronounced “Ellit.”

69 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, i. 502 note; Boston Transcript, June 4, 1869. The Doctor was quoting a review of the new Pharmacopœia in the Monthly Anthology.

70 The Easter term of the English law-courts lasted from the Wednesday fortnight after Easter to the Monday after Ascension Day. The last Wednesday in Easter term was, therefore, the day before Ascension Day, which always falls on a Thursday; and thirty-nine days after Easter Sunday. (John J. Bond, Handy-Book of Rules for Verifying Dates, 4th ed., p. 174.)

71 This term is first applied in the Colony Records (i. 194) to the Easter term meeting of 1637, and in Winthrop’s Journal (1853, ii. 157) to that of 1634.

72 It is referred to as “the yearly day of election” in an act of 1647 (Charters and General Laws of Massachusetts Bay, 1814, p. 105), and in several subsequent enactments of the General Court.

73 Dr. C. F. Bishop errs in stating, in his History of Elections in the American Colonies, p. 102, that “after 1632 the regular election took place on the second Wednesday in May.” I have compared the dates of the fifty-three courts of elections under the Colony Charter with the calendar, and find that only in one instance (1652) was Election Day held on a different date from the last Wednesday in Easter term. On that occasion (1652) it was held the day after.

74 Bishop, 128–32.

75 Bishop, 130–32; Winthrop, ii. 379. An act of October, 1680, following one of the unsuccessful attempts to abolish direct voting, prescribes that all freemen who have not voted by proxy appear “on the election day . . . at the court house by eight of the clock in the morning, to bring in their votes as aforesaid” (Charters and General Laws, 1814, p. 108).

76 See Mr. Swift’s article on Massachusetts Election Sermons (Publications of this Society, i. 388).

77 Charters and General Laws, p. 29; Publications of this Society, ii. 20. The Province Charter does not expressly require that the Councillors, and the Speaker and the Clerk of the House, be chosen on Election Day, but our associate Mr. Matthews has established, from the examination of Boston newspapers and other sources, that such was the practice. The election of Speaker on Election Day was made obligatory by the Explanatory Charter of 1725 (Publications of this Society, ii. 31). Councillors were chosen, it will be remembered, not by the Representatives (Deputies) alone, but by the entire General Court, consisting of Royal Governor, outgoing Council, and House of Representatives. In the newspapers of the Provincial period Election Day is also referred to as “The Anniversary Day for the Election of Counsellors” (e. g., Boston News Letter, June 4, 1711, and May 31, 1733; and cf. p. 59 note 2, below).

78 H. A. Hill, History of the Old South Church, i. 362.

79 This occurred in 1785, and in 1806 there was a prolonged contest in the General Court over counting the votes. (W. Burdick, Massachusetts Manual for 1814–15, pp. 26–28; 2 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xx. 12–21.)

80 The former Election Week, under the new title of Anniversary Week, continued to attract to Boston the annual swarms of longfaced, black-coated brethren from country pulpits that so annoyed Dr. Holmes, and suggested his poem “The Moral Bully.” Cf. 1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xiii. 45–46.

81 The former Election Week, under the new title of Anniversary Week, continued to attract to Boston the annual swarms of longfaced, black-coated brethren from country pulpits that so annoyed Dr. Holmes, and suggested his poem “The Moral Bully.” Cf. 1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xiii. 45–46.

82 Author not known. [E. E.’s note.]

83 “The game of Paw-paw, or props, was played with four small shells, known to naturalists as the Cyproea Moneta, and was one of the gambling games much practiced by the boys of Boston” (1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xiii. 46). Cf. Mary C. Crawford, Social Life in Old New England, p. 431; Oxford English Dictionary, under “Prop, sb.⁴.”

84 Cadets. [E. E.’s note.]

85 The Old Brick, which was the third meeting-house of the First Church, stood from 1713 to 1808 in Cornhill Square.

86 Noted for long sermons. [E. E.’s note.] The Rev. Thomas Frink (H. C. 1722), preached the Election Sermon of 1758. (Cf. Publications of this Society, i. 420.) This allusion fixes the approximate date of the poem.

87 P. 44, above.

88 Columbian Centinel, July 7, 1792, p. 2/4, where the toasts offered are printed.

89 The song was printed in the Massachusetts Mercury of May 24, 1799, p. 4/1, preceded by the following:

Messrs. Young & Minns,

The following, though far from perfect, may have sufficient merit to entitle it to publication. It was written at Surinam, a few days previous to the last anniversary of the Birth of the American Hero.

Yr’s.

A SEA CAPTAIN.

90 Publications, xiv. 199–201.

91 The allusion is to Congress, not to the Massachusetts Legislature. One of the toasts given at the celebration at Concert Hall, Boston, on the same day was this: “The Hon. Roger Griswold, and the fifty-two Gentlemen in Congress: — May their exertions to rid the National Legislature of a beastly character, be remembered by their constituents” (Columbian Centinel, February 24, 1798, p. 2/4). Matthew Lyon of Vermont had insulted Roger Griswold of Connecticut and had used an indecent expression. On February 12th a resolution for expelling Lyon was voted on, and “The Speaker then declared the Yeas to be 52 and the Nays 44, and as the Constitution requires two thirds of the Members present to expel a Member, the Resolution was not agreed to” (Columbian Centinel, February 21, p. 2/2). The Speaker of the House was Jonathan Dayton of New Jersey. For a reference to Lyon, see Publications of this Society, xvii. 311 note 1.

92 Columbian Centinel, February 24, 1798, pp. 2/3.

93 Thomas Jefferson was then Vice-President.

94 The Alien and Sedition Acts had been passed by Congress in 1798.

95 State Papers and Publick Documents of the United States (Wait, Boston), iii. 415. I am indebted to our associate Dr. Morison for this reference. Cf. Publications of this Society, xvii. 326. Pickering’s report was printed in the supplement to the Columbian Centinel of February 6, 1799.

96 Faculty Records, vii. 33, 34.

97 The only allusion to it known to me is in an article On Some Social Distinctions at Harvard and Yale before the Revolution (Proceedings American Antiquarian Society, October, 1893, ix. 34–59) by our associate Professor Franklin B. Dexter, whose attention was called to it by the late William H. Tillinghast.

98 For a notice of Joseph Williamson (1633–1701), who was knighted January 24, 1672, see the Dictionary of National Biography.

99 Report on the Manuscripts of J. M. Heathcote, Esq. of Conington Castle, Co. Hunts (1899), pp. 88–89, 144–147, 148–150, 150–152, 170–171, 191–192, 194–195.

100 “Many news letters were sent to Fanshawe by this indefatigable collector [Williamson], who, while gathering materials from far and wide for his Gazette was always willing to provide entertainment for his friends, and who gives many items of gossip not mentioned by either Pepys or Evelyn” (Report on the Manuscripts of J. M. Heathcote, p. xxiv).

101 Letters addressed from London to Sir Joseph Williamson while Plenipotentiary at the Congress of Cologne in the years 1673–1674 (Camden Society, 1874), ii. 161.

102 “There is a complete collection of his [Henry Muddiman’s] news letters from 29 April, 1667 to 12 October, 1689 in the Marquis of Bath’s library at Longleat. Their dates are on alternate days and they are contained in fourteen folio volumes, . . . This collection of some thousands of consecutive news letters by one person is quite unique, and considering his privileged position, should be of high value when calendared” (J. B. Williams, The Newsbooks and Letters of News of the Restoration, in the English Historical Review, 1908, xxiii. 275–276).

103 J. B. Williams, History of English Journalism to the foundation of the Gazette (1908), p. 3.

104 The pamphlet consists of twenty pages: title, 1 leaf; Treaty, pp. 3–19; advertisement, p. [20].

105 Allusions to the Treaty will be found in New York Colonial Documents, iii. 388–389, 465, 467, 468, 469, 487, 506, 511, 519, 520–523, 525, iv. 169, 210, 478, v. 620, ix. 370.

106 Cf. Publications of this Society, iii. 86–90.

107 H. C. 1772; died 1813.

108 Samuel Webber and the elder Henry Ware.

109 Observations on a Variety Of Subjects, Literary, Moral and Religious; In a Series of Original Letters, Written by a Gentleman of Foreign Extraction, who resided some Time in Philadelphia. Revised by a Friend, to whose Hands the Manuscript was committed for Publication. Philadelphia: Printed by John Dunlap. M,DCC,LXXIV.

110 This manuscript volume (in my possession) is but a fragment of the journal kept by Mr. Brooks on a European tour of some thirteen months. It covers the interval from April 9, 1834 (Florence), to December 13, 1834 (New York). The passage from Liverpool to New York, in the packet ship Virginian, took twenty-eight days, — a week less than the captain’s forecast. There were twenty-four cabin passengers.

111 1795–1872; H. C. 1816.

112 Willis’s account of his own first call upon Lady Blessington shortly before this date may be found in The New-York Mirror (reprinted in The American Ladies’ Magazine, April, 1835, viii. 215–219).

113 Publications, xii. 227.

114 Curwen Papers, v. 87.

115 Of these three endorsements, the second and third are in the same hand as the Articles above.

116 i. 15. The entry there reads: “Vial; dead 1729.” The name “Vial” is in the hand of Tutor Flynt, the rest of the entry having been inserted, of course at a much later date, by President Wadsworth. Viall was placed eleventh in a class of thirty-seven.

117 Cambridge Church Records, 1632–1830 (1906), p. 96.

118 Narragansett Historical Register, iii. 100, 106, 108–110; J. N. Arnold, Vital Record of Rhode Island, Bristol, p. 168. I am indebted to Mr. Matthews and to Mr. Gay for information about Viall.

119 Publications of this Society, ii. 27.

120 Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1702, No. 728.

121 Ibid. No. 780.

122 Ibid. No. 924.

123 Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1702, No. 966.

124 Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1702, No. 1046.

125 Ibid. No. 1131.

126 Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1702, No. 1135.

127 Ibid. 1702–1703, No. 30.

128 Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1702–1703, No. 315.

129 Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1702–1703, No. 319. The Governor of Jamaica was Thomas Handaside.

130 Ibid. No. 544.

131 Ibid. No. 673.

132 Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1702–1703, No. 1224.

133 Ibid. No. 996.

134 Ibid. No. 1071.

135 Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1702–1703, No. 1399.

136 Boston News Letter, July 24, 1704, No. 14, p. 2/1.

137 For permission to exhibit this document, I am indebted to Miss Mary A. Tenney, on behalf of her family, in whose possession it has been since Revolutionary days.

138 It is printed in the Postscript to the Massachusetts Spy of May 12, 1774. In the same paper of June 2 (p. 3/3) appeared the following:

Tell it in Gath, publish it in Askelon, that the Boston Port-Bill, in all its parts is now carrying into execution and that Boston is thereby put into greater distress, and is more insulted by an English armament than sheever was by a French or Spanish fleet in the hottest war, when left without one British ship for her protection. The town is become a spectacle to angels and men, G o d grant that it may not be intimidated by the present horrors to make a surrender of the rights of Americans; or in any respect to dishonour herself in this day of tryal and perplexity.

Business was finished at the custom-house at 12 o’clock yesterday noon, and this harbour is now shut against all vessels bound hither, and on the 15th instant none will be allowed to depart hence. Be it forever remembered, to thy grief and shame, O Britain!

139 Frothingham, Rise of the Republic of the United States, p. 336 note.

140 Wells, Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams, ii. 172.

141 Copied from an original (two leaves, printed on inside pages) owned by the American Antiquarian Society. An extract from this letter is in Force’s American Archives, 4th Series, i. 397; but apparently the letter has not before been reprinted in full.

142 “William Cooper Clerk” is an autograph signature. Near the wax of the seal, still visible, are written a few words, apparently “S Jenison Or Town.” No doubt this was Samuel Jennison (1733–1790), later elected a member of the Provincial Congress from Douglas: see W. A. Emerson, History of Douglas, pp. 68–70; G. F. Daniels, History of Oxford, pp. 559–560; Vital Records of Oxford, p. 289.

The Massachusetts Historical Society owns two copies of this broadside.

One, with the wax of the seal still visible, is addressed “For the Committee of Correspondence for Salem.” The other ends with the words “We are, &c.;” after which is written in ink in Cooper’s hand:

June 8. 1774.

By Order of the Committee of Correspondence for Boston, William Cooper Clerk.

143 Form A is copied from the document exhibited to-day. It is a folded sheet which, opened, measures 13¾ inches in width by 20 in height. The covenant is printed on the first page. The alterations made in the Westford meeting of July 4 are indicated in footnotes, all the alterations being in ink.

Form B is copied from a broadside owned by the American Antiquarian Society. It measures 7½ inches in width by 12½ in height.

144 In the Westford document, the name “Westford” has been inserted.

145 The words “in the presence of God” are crossed out in the Westford document.

146 The words “and in good faith” are crossed out in the Westford document.

147 The word “full” is crossed out in the Westford document.

148 At the bottom of the broadside the words “This came from Sutton” are written in ink in the hand of Isaiah Thomas. I am greatly indebted to our associates Dr. Charles L. Nichols, for ascertaining what documents bearing on the subject are owned by the American Antiquarian Society, and Mr. Clarence S. Brigham, for sending the documents to Boston for my inspection.

149 The word “fully” is crossed out in the Westford document.

150 The words “imported from Great Britain” are here interlined in the Westford document.

151 The last two letters in “June” have been crossed out and “ly” written above, and “4th” has been inserted in the blank space.

152 E. R. Hodgman, History of the Town of Westford, p. 95. The town clerk of Westford at that time was John Abbot (1713–1791).

153 Most of the signers are mentioned in the genealogical section of Hodgman’s History of the Town of Westford, pp. 435–486.

154 On July 10, 1775, “Chose Doctor Asaph Fletcher to represent this town in the great and general Court to be held at Watertown” (Hodgman, History of Westford, p. 113).

155 It is impossible to decipher this surname.

156 This Christian name is badly blotted.

157 This surname is doubtful.

158 In a town meeting held at Westminster August 3 it was “voted that the Inhabitants would sign a Covenant that might be Drawn up and laid before the Town;” a committee was chosen to prepare one, and on August 19 the town voted “almost unanimously” to accept the proposed covenant. Though not entered on the town records, the original document has been found and is printed, together with the names of forty-seven signers, in W. S. Heywood’s History of Westminster, pp. 152–153. It differs materially from forms A and B. Heywood says:

The document is complete as far as it goes, and with the signature fills the two pages of a half sheet of foolscap paper. There are indications tending to show that the other half has been torn from the one preserved, and it may be presumed that there were upon it names of other well-known residents, who would be likely to take the same self-sacrificing and heroic stand in behalf of their own and their country’s liberties (p. 153).

Is it not probable that the missing half-sheet contained the printed covenant — either form A or form B, Westminster being in Worcester County?

159 Copied from a broadside owned by the American Antiquarian Society. It measures 6⅝ inches in width by 9 in height. The Massachusetts Historical Society owns two copies of this broadside: one measures 7¼ inches in width by 9¾ in height; the other measures 9 inches in width by 15 in height.

160 “William Cooper Clerk” is an autograph signature.

161 Worcester Town Records (Collections of the Worcester Society of Antiquity, iv. 206). The Worcester covenant was adopted at a town meeting held June 20 (iv. 230–233). A protest, signed by fifty-two persons, was immediately drawn up and entered in the town records. It was also printed in the Boston News Letter of June 30, p. 2/1, and in the Boston Post Boy of July 4, p. 1/2, where it was preceded by the following note:

Messi’rs Printers,

If you please you may give the following Protestation, &c. of us a few friends of truth, peace and order, a place in your paper: For it is believed that we, and many others thro’ the province, have too long already, held our peace.

Then comes the protest, with the “Attest, Clark Chandler, Town Clerk,” and the names of the signers. At a town meeting held August 24, the town clerk was severely censured and ordered to erase the record of protest (Worcester Town Records, iv. 236–239). A facsimile of an erased page is given in Celebration of the Centennial Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Worcester (1876), p. 113.

It is stated in the History of Worcester County (Boston, 1879, ii. 578, 579) that “‘The American Political Society’ was formed Dec. 27, 1773;” and that “At the monthly meeting of the Political Society in June [1774], it was voted to sign a covenant not to purchase any English goods until the port of Boston was opened, and to discontinue intercourse with those declining to subscribe.” The American Antiquarian Society (Worcester Papers, i. 20) owns an undated draft of a covenant which accords in sentiment, but not in wording (being still more drastic), with the Boston covenant. At the end is written: “It is thought best not to sign any agreement yet, as it is expected we shall have the plan of a General one from Boston very soon. Yours W^m Henshaw. Please return this to the bearer M^r Timothy Bigelow.”

162 Copied from a broadside owned by the American Antiquarian Society. It measures 7½ inches in width by 10 in height.

163 “W^m Young” is an autograph signature. The broadside was no doubt printed in Boston, as the type is apparently the same and the paper has the same watermark as form A of the covenant. At all events, it certainly was not printed at Worcester, as sometimes stated, since Thomas himself said that “The first Thing ever printed in Worcester” was the Massachusetts Spy of May 3, 1775 (Nichols, Bibliography of Worcester, pp. vii, 2; Nichols, Isaiah Thomas: Printer, Writer & Collector, p. 57).

164 American Archives, 4th Series, i. 397–398.

165 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xviii. 177.

166 xviii. 177–178.

167 xviii. 178.

168 Letters and Diary, pp. 276–277.

169 1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, viii. 331.

170 Boston Evening Post, July 4, p. 2/2–3. What Andrews called “The declaration” was also printed in the Boston Post Boy of July 4, p. 2/2, but it there precedes (not follows) the two protests.

171 At a town meeting held at Braintree on June 27 a committee was appointed “to prepare a draught of a covenant to be laid before the Town;” the draught offered by the committee the same day was “Voted accepted, and was then proposed the same should be offer^d to the Members of the s^d Town for signing &c.” The meeting then adjourned to July 25, when “The above said covenant having had some exceptions made, so it was offer^d to the Town for amendment which was accordingly done, and then almost every one Present sign^d the same, and it was then order^d by the Town to the Members of the Town in the several Precincts that were not Present at the Meeting for signing and then to be lodg^d with the clerk of s^d Town” (Braintree Records, p. 449).

172 2 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, ii. 481–482.

173 It is printed in 2 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, ii. 482–483. When a copy of the covenant reached Dover, on June 28 Jeremy Belknap wrote a vigorous protest, which doubtless had its effect, for on July 4 “The Selectmen & Committee of Correspondence of this Town met & agreed to suspend this matter till they shall hear what is the Result of the approaching Congress, upon the Subject” (ibid. ii. 484–486).

174 Pickering Papers, xxxix. 57.

175 Pickering Papers, xxxiii. 96.

176 Narrative and Critical History of America, vi. 96–97. The misapprehension is due to confusion between the Provincial Committee of Correspondence and the Boston Committee of Correspondence. The General Court met in Boston on May 25, was adjourned on May 28 to meet at Salem on June 7, and was dissolved on June 17. On May 26 it was ordered in the House of Representatives that “the Committee of Correspondence be, and they are hereby directed to Write to the Committees of Correspondence of all the British Colonies on this Continent; inclosing a Copy of the unprecedented Act of the British Parliament for shutting up the Port of Boston, and otherwise punishing the Inhabitants of said Town: And desire their immediate Attention to an Act, design’d to suppress the Spirit of Liberty in America” (House Journal, p. 9). The only action taken with respect to non-importation was on June 17, when, nine days after the Boston Committee of Correspondence had sent out the Solemn League and Covenant, —

Upon a Motion made, the House pass’d the following Resolve, viz.

Whereas this and his Majesty’s other Colonies in North-America, have long been struggling under the heavy Hand of Power; and our dutiful Petitions for the Redress of our intolerable Grievances, have not only been disregarded and frown’d upon, but the Design totally to alter the free Constitutions of Civil Government in British America, and establish arbitrary Governments and reduce the Inhabitants to Slavery, appears more and more to be fixed and determined: It is therefore strongly recommended by this House to the Inhabitants of this Province, that they renounce altogether the Consumption of India Teas, and as far as in them lies, discontinue the Use of all Goods and Manufactures whatsoever, that shall be Imported from the East Indies and Great-Britain, until the publick Grievances of America shall be radically and totally redressed. And it is further recommended to all, that they give all possible Encouragement to the Manufactures of America. And it is moreover strongly recommended to the Inhabitants aforesaid, that they use their utmost Endeavours to suppress Pedlars and Petty-Chapmen (who are of late become a very great Nuisance) by putting in Execution the good and wholesome Laws of this Province for that Purpose (House Journal, p. 46).

177 See E. S. Steams, History of Ashburnham, pp. 133–134; W. Barry, History of Framingham, pp. 90–91; J. H. Temple, History of Framingham, p. 267; J. G. Metcalf, Annals of Mendon, pp. 320–321; J. R. Trumbull, History of Northampton, ii. 343–344; and cf. pp. 110, 111 note 3, 113 note 1, 117, 118 note, above. The Massachusetts Spy of June 30, 1774, said that on June 20 the people of Charlton “generally signed a covenant, obliging themselves, to withdraw all commercial intercourse with the Island of Great Britain; and not to purchase, or use any goods imported from thence, from and after the last day of August next, or till the Port of Boston be opened, and all our charter and constitutional rights are fully restored; but a few individuals refused to sign” (p. 3/1). On June 29 Governor Gage issued “A Proclamation For discouraging certain illegal Combinations,” which was printed in the contemporary Boston newspapers; also in 1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xii. 45–48. Cf. ibid. xi. 392–394; Moore, Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution, p. 65.

178 The Term Indian Summer, read before this Society in December, 1901 (Publication, vii. 241–244); printed in Monthly Weather Review for January and February, 1902, xxx. 19–28, 69–79, and also in a separate pamphlet.

179 The Old Farmer and his Almanack, 1904, pp. 191–198.

180 Robert Temperley, The Merchant Shipping Acts, London, 1907, pp. 710–711.

181 Monthly Weather Review, January, 1915, xliii. 44–45.

182 A Collection of Poems, on American Affairs, . . . Written between the year 1797 and the Present Time, i. 97–98. In 1902–1907 was published in three volumes The Poems of Philip Freneau, edited by Fred Lewis Pattee.

183 Illustrated Poems (1849), pp. 141–142. In the preface, dated October 1, 1848, Mrs. Sigourney says: “The edition now presented to the public comprises selections from previous volumes, poems that have appeared only in a fugitive form, and others that have never before been indebted to the ministry of the press.”

184 This appears to be the same tradition as that recounted by Charles Brockden Brown in a note in his translation of Volney, View of the Soil and Climate of the United States (Philadelphia, 1804), p. 210. If the tradition has a basis of fact, Brown’s is undoubtedly the more correct version.

185 “Having,” she herself wrote late in life, “become an enthusiast about our aborigines, the first tune that I was permitted to choose for my own performance was that sweetly plaintive melody of the ‘Indian Chief’s Death-Song.’” And again, referring to her Traits of the Aborigines of America — the poem of four thousand lines filling pp. 3–131, while the Notes fill pp. 133–284 — she said:

This was composed two years before my marriage, but its publication was delayed for some time, . . . An early acquaintance with the Mohegan tribe of Indians, who resided a few miles from Norwich, and a taste for searching out the historic legends of our forest-people, deepened my interest in their native lineaments of character, and my sympathy for their degraded condition. In the notes of the volume much information is concentrated respecting them, derived from various sources, in the revision of which I gratefully received the aid of the acute and discriminating mind of my husband (Letters of Life, 1866, pp. 53, 327).

186 Jesuits in North America (1880), p. lxxv. Though not found in this passage, Parkman elsewhere employs the term Indian summer: see Mr. Matthews’s monograph.

187 Lettres d’un Cultivateur Américain . . . depuis l’Année 1770 jusqu’en 1786, par M. St. John de Crevecoeur, Traduites de l’Anglois, Paris, 1787, i. 294. The description fills pp. 289–314.

188 In his Letters of an American Farmer, published in London in 1782, Crevecœur does not mention the Indian summer. My attention was called to the passage in the text by Mr. Franklin B. Sanborn’s paper on “St. John de Crèvecœur, the American Farmer (1735–1813),” printed in 2 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xx. 32–83. Mr. Sanborn shows that Crevecœur was often inaccurate, remarking in one place: “But dates were never St. John’s forte. He misstated the ages of his children by two years, and dedicated the French edition of his ‘Lettres d’un Cultivateur Américain’ to Lafayette from ‘Albany, 17 Mai 1781,’ though at that date he was in England” (p. 34 note: cf. pp. 36, 37 note, 45, 52–53, 73–74).

189 See Young, Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers, p. 400.

190 Bradford, History (1856), p. 9.

191 Bradford, History, p. 11.

192 Bradford, History, p. 13.

193 P. 15.

194 Dexter, The England and Holland of the Pilgrims, pp. 467–468.

195 Bradford, History, pp. 53–54.

196 Bradford, History, p. 17.

197 Book of the General Laws (1672), p. 2.

198 Bradford, History, pp. 59–60.

199 Bradford, History, pp. 66–67.

200 Bradford, History, pp. 59–60.

201 Bradford, History, p. 198.

202 Goodwin, Pilgrim Republic, p. 368.

203 Plymouth Colony Records, xi. 101.

204 iv. 85, 86.

205 Bradford, History, p. 135.

206 Plymouth Colony Records, xi. 6.

207 Plymouth Colony Records, xi. 50.

208 Goodwin, Pilgrim Republic, p. 496.

209 Publications of this Society, xvii. 302 and note.

210 Could this have been the Rev. James Freeman, minister of King’s Chapel?

211 Massachusetts Magazine, iii. 52–53.

212 Third Series, vii. 29–30.

213 James Bowdoin married Elizabeth, daughter of John Erving.

214 In Airs of the Pilgrims, pp. 1–3, appended to W. S. Russell’s Guide to Plymouth (1846).

215 In the later versions this is printed “fresh meat.”

216 Massachusetts Spy, February 3, 1774, p. 4/1.

217 Early English and French Voyages (Original Narratives of Early American History), pp. 337, 347, 350, 371.

218 Travels and Works of Captain John Smith (edited by A. G. Bradley, 1910), pp. 194–200, 267.

219 These facts and others concerning the New England fur trade will be found in C. H. McIlwain’s Introduction to Wraxall’s Abridgment, chap. i. note A. This is the best account of the New England fur trade at present available.

220 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 55; Young, Chronicles of Massachusetts Bay (1846), p. 148.

221 Plain Dealing (1867), pp. 109–111.

222 F. J. Turner, Publications of this Society, xvii. 254.

223 Winthrop’s Journal (1908), i. 103, 108; McIlwain, p. xxxi.

224 Johnson, Wonder-working Providence (1910), p. 237.

225 Plain Dealing, p. 108.

226 New English Canaan (Prince Society, 1883), pp. 282–283, and Introduction, pp. 19 ff.

227 These facts are well summarized by McIlwain, pp. xxix–xxxi.

228 This petition appears in one form in 1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, v. 131–134, and in a somewhat different form in Bradford’s History (1908), p. 314. It is calendared in the Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1574–1660, p. 157, where it is dated 1632, obviously a mistake.

229 Cf. Publications of this Society, xii. 101–113, 191–203.

230 The operations of this Canada Company are best described by H. P. Biggar, Early Trading Companies of New France, chapters viii and ix. See also H. Kirke, The First English Conquest of Canada (1908), and Parkman, Pioneers of France in the New World, chap. xvi. For the interest of Gorges and Mason in this Company, see J. W. Dean’s Introduction to Captain John Mason (Prince Society), pp. 53–54.

231 Works of Captain John Smith, pp. 192, 237.

232 The Laconia charter is printed in Captain John Mason, pp. 189 ff. For an account of the Laconia Company, see J. W. Dean’s Introduction to this work, pp. 53 ff. Dean relied for his information largely upon a work on the Isles of Shoals by John S. Jenness (1875). See also a note by Charles Deane in 1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, vi. 376–380; and cf. Publications of this Society, xii. 372.

233 Captain John Mason, pp. 72–74, 331, 335; Gorges, Brief Description of Laconia, in Collections Maine Historical Society, vol. ii. part ii. pp. 67–68; Morton, New English Canaan, p. 237. The best secondary account of the explorations of the Laconia Company is that of Amandus Johnson, Swedish Settlements on the Delaware, i. 392 ff.

234 Winthrop’s Journal, i. 224; Morton, pp. 234 ff. and Introduction, pp. 77–78.

235 New English Canaan, pp. 238, 240.

236 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xl. 70. The contributor of this document, Dr. Charles E. Banks, believes that the writer was Walter Neale, first governor of Laconia.

237 Winthrop speaks of trading with the Dutch for beaver and estimates their total trade at nine or ten thousand skins a year (Journal, i. 131). See also McIlwain, p. xxxii; Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, i. 126. McIlwain errs, however, in citing Weeden (i. 131) to the effect that this illicit trade amounted to from ten to fifteen thousand skins a year. What Weeden does say is that the Dutch, previous to the loss of their Connecticut trade, had drawn that number of skins yearly from New England — quite a different matter.

238 McIlwain, pp. xxx–xxxi; Bradford, pp. 299–302; Winthrop’s Journal, i. 103, 109–110.

239 See an interesting note by Mr. H. A. Wright (Outlook, May 5, 1915, cx. 47) on the size of Pynchon’s trade. His success at Springfield was a source of great annoyance to the Dutch, and was one of the grievances against the English which Stuyvesant brought forward at the time of the treaty of Hartford in 1650 (Plymouth Colony Records, ix. 172, 176, 178).

240 C. H. Levermore, Republic of New Haven, p. 90.

241 No attempt is here made to describe this episode in full. Amandus Johnson (Swedish Settlements on the Delaware, i. 208–217) gives a detailed account with references to the sources. His account supersedes that of Levermore (Republic of New Haven, pp. 90 ff), which is condensed and uncritical and has minor inaccuracies.

242 Levermore, p. 95.

243 See McIlwain, p. xxxi.

244 Plymouth Colony Records, ix. 22–23.

245 Weeden, i. 42; Massachusetts Colony Records, ii. 86; Connecticut Colonial Records, i. 113; Plymouth Colony Records, ii. 82. J. A. James (English Institutions and the American Indian, Johns Hopkins University Studies, 12th Series, x. 25–26) makes the mistake of supposing that this proposed company went into operation. The references which he cites in proof of his statement refer to the activities of the Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians.

246 Plymouth Colony Records, ix and x. Johnson gives an account of the efforts of the English to get a foothold upon the Delaware from 1643 to 1653 with full references to sources (vol. i. chap, xxxvi). Levermore must be relied upon for the rest of the history of the New Haven Delaware Company (pp. 98–99).

247 Plymouth Colony Records, ix. 140–141.

248 ix. 189.

249 Plymouth Colony Records, ix. 210–212; Johnson, i. 402.

250 Plymouth Colony Records, ix. 199.

251 ix. 213–215.

252 Plymouth Colony Records, x. 13, 14, 15, 32–33, 56.

253 x. 127; Levermore, pp. 98–99.

254 Johnson, i. 394; Winthrop’s Journal, ii. 62–63.

255 Winthrop’s Journal, ii. 164.

256 Massachusetts Colony Records, ii. 60.

257 Of the members of this Company, Tyng was Treasurer of the Massachusetts Bay Company. Valentine Hill was a prominent merchant of Boston, a selectman, and at different times a deputy to the General Court (Savage, Genealogical Dictionary; Massachusetts Colony Records, iii. 259, 340). A later entry in the Colony Records shows him engaged with Tyng in a trading venture to the Azores, Madeiras, and West Indies (ii. 247–249). Sedgwick was at this time a deputy and later was commander, with Leverett, of the expedition which was intended to attack New Amsterdam, but conquered Acadia instead. A good account of Sedgwick will be found in Publications of this Society, iii. 156–173. Norton was a lieutenant for Charlestown and deputy (Massachusetts Colony Records, ii. 166, 186). Hewes was also a lieutenant (ii. 163) and a prominent merchant. There is a good account of Hewes and his commercial ventures by Eben Putnam, Lieutenant Joshua Hewes and Some of his Descendants (1913). Pages 66–69 describe this Company of Adventurers and his connection with it, but without adding anything new. For Aspinwall see the next note.

258 Journal, ii. 164. William Aspinwall came over, probably with Winthrop, in 1630, and was prominent in the colony until the time of his banishment, in 1637, for being a supporter of Wheelwright and Anne Hutchinson. With others of his fellow sufferers he joined in establishing a colony in Rhode Island, and became its first Secretary. Here also he got into trouble, “being a suspected person for sedition against the State.” The scanty notices we have of him from 1637 to 1642 show him engaged in trading. In the latter year he was restored to his rights and citizenship in Massachusetts, and speedily became Recorder and Notary Public. His connection with the Delaware Company was apparently the result of his trading ventures in 1637–1642. In 1651 he was suspended from his office as Recorder “for chardging the Courte and Jury to goe against lawe and conscience,” and the next year he lost his position as Notary Public. We know little about him after 1652 except that he was alive in England in 1662. The above account is taken from that of John T. Hassam printed in 2 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xii. 211–219, Suffolk Deeds, x. 15–24, and Aspinwall Notarial Records (Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xxxii). I am indebted to Mr. S. E. Morison for this reference.

259 Johnson (i. 396) prints a photographic facsimile.

260 Winthrop’s Journal, ii. 181, 190; Johnson, i. 394–397.

261 Winthrop’s Journal, ii. 210, 246; Johnson, i. 398.

262 Massachusetts Colony Records, ii. 138, iii. 53.

263 William Paine was one of the wealthiest men in the colony. He came over in 1635 and settled at Watertown, but removed in 1639 to Ipswich. He owned a five-sixths interest in the fulling and grist mill at Watertown and a three-fourths interest in both the Lynn and the Braintree Iron Works. He and Thomas Clarke, a member of this Company, were interested with the younger Winthrop in the New Haven Iron Works and the black lead mines at Sturbridge. Some of his letters to Winthrop, which throw light upon their business relations, are printed in 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, vii. Paine was also a landowner on a large scale and at the time of his death was part owner of five vessels and had investments in ventures in England and Jamaica. The extent of his interests discloses the many-sided activities of what we may fairly term the capitalist class in Massachusetts at this time. The fur trade was only one of the forms of investment, perhaps the most speculative form, open to enterprising men of Paine’s generation. For an account of Paine and his undertakings, see Albert W. Paine, Paine Genealogy, Ipswich Branch (Bangor, Maine, 1881), pp. 57–73. Mr. S. E. Morison first called my attention to this Genealogy.

264 Massachusetts Colony Records, vol. iv. pt. i. 291.

265 Johnson states in his Wonder-working Providence (p. 237) that at the time he was writing, about 1651, the competition at Springfield had become so keen that there was little profit in the trade, and many of the settlers had turned to agriculture.

266 Massachusetts Colony Records, vol. iv. pt. i. 354, 355.

267 Ibid. p. 374. The secondary writers who treat this episode are Brodhead, History of New York, i. 655, 671–674; O’Callaghan, History of New Netherland, ii. 402–406; Hutchinson, History of Massachusetts (1795), i. 150 note.

268 New York Colonial Documents, xiii. 101, 107, 126, 129, 150.

269 Plymouth Colony Records, x. 220, 443.

270 Massachusetts Colony Records, vol. iv. pt. i. 395.

271 Plymouth Colony Records, x. 445–446.

272 Winthrop’s Journal, i. 151.

273 New York Colonial Documents, xiv. 465.

274 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, vii. 512.

275 Massachusetts Colony Records, vol. iv. pt. i. 438. It is here stated that in October, 1659, the General Court had granted the company a tract of land on the Hudson above Fort Orange, but nothing is said about such a grant in the only passage in the Records of that date which refers to the company (p. 395). There is, however, little reason to doubt that such a grant was made.

276 Vol. iv. pt. ii. 51. According to Weeden (i. 161, citing Felt’s Annals of Salem, i. 227), the company reported in 1662 an expenditure of £250 in running lines and £150 for a land journey and other expenses. Several members of the company, including Hathorne, were Salem men.

277 For the official attitude at different times, see Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1574–1660, pp. 26 and 154; New York Colonial Documents, iii. 6–8; Thurloe, State Papers (1742), v. 81. Bradford in 1627 challenged the right of the Dutch to the country (1 Massachusetts Historical Collections, iii. 52, 53), as did Gorges and Mason in 1632 (Captain John Mason, pp. 293, 296). Morton’s opinion has already been quoted (New English Canaan, p. 240). Even after the Treaty of Hartford, the United Commissioners asserted in 1653 the priority of the English claims (Plymouth Colony Records, x. 13). I can find no justification for the statement of J. A. Stevens (Narrative and Critical History of America, iii. 386) that Cromwell in the treaty of 1654 formally recognized the Dutch title to New Netherland. An examination of the treaty (printed in Dumont, Corps Universel Diplomatique, vol. vi. pt. ii. 74–79) does not bear out his contention. It should be said, however, that after that peace Cromwell took the position that the Dutch could not be removed except by friendly agreement (Letter of William Leete to Samuel Disborow, October 10, 1654, in British Museum, Egerton MSS. 2519, fol. 10. I am here relying upon a transcript in the Library of Congress).

278 The correspondence about the rival claims will be found partly in Plymouth Colony Records, x. 220, 443–446, partly in New York Colonial Documents, xiv. 446, 465. See also 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, vii. 512. The Hartford treaty is printed in Plymouth Colony Records, ix. 188–190.

279 Compare Stuyvesant’s statement: “New-England does not need her [England’s] interference and assistance in this matter, for she is conscious that her power overbalances ours ten times and it is to be apprehended, that they will in this matter make an attempt so much sooner, as they see and trust that during the present monstrous condition of the English government no countermanding order will be issued from that side; but we will willingly submit our speculations to wiser judgments and hope the best” (New York Colonial Documents, xiii. 162).

280 John Paine was born in 1632 and upon his father’s death in 1660 inherited the bulk of his property and interests. He engaged in mercantile enterprises in Boston and Portsmouth and was interested in various land speculations. Little is known about him except for this episode and another which is closely connected with it. At the time of his marriage he had received as a gift from his father-in-law, Richard Parker, 700 acres of land upon Prudence Island in Narragansett Bay. Learning at the time of his visit to New York in 1672 (A. W. Paine is apparently mistaken in having him go to New York in 1671) that the Duke of York, who had purchased the rights of the Earl of Stirling to Long Island and the adjacent islands, claimed jurisdiction over Prudence Island also, Paine got from Governor Lovelace a grant of the whole island to be held in fee simple for a yearly quit-rent of “two Barrels of Syder and six Couple of Capons,” to be known as Sophy Manor. The story that Paine won the favor of Lovelace by contributing liberally toward the repair of Fort James comes from Arnold, the historian of Rhode Island, and I have been unable to discover the source of his information. Paine’s action involved him in a lawsuit with the colony of Rhode Island for attempting to introduce a foreign jurisdiction, but before it was decided the matter was allowed to drop, probably because Paine gave up the contention that the island belonged to the Duke of York. Paine died shortly afterward, in 1675, having, it is said, before his death lost much of the property inherited from his father. Paltsits mistakenly attempts to identify him with a certain John Paine who came to New York as a soldier in 1664 (Minutes of the Executive Council of New York, i. 142 note 4). See A. W. Paine, Paine Genealogy, pp. 78–92; Arnold, History of Rhode Island, i. 362–364; Brodhead, ii. 188–189; Minutes of the Executive Council of New York, ii. 725–736; 2 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xvii. 85.

281 These documents, together with Lovelace’s reply, are printed in Minutes of the Executive Council of New York, ii. 662–666. Two of them are printed in New York Colonial Documents, xiv. 664, 673. A brief account of the episode will be found in Brodhead, ii. 188. The original of Paine’s address to Lovelace is to be found in New York Colonial Manuscripts, xxii. 137, and of Lovelace’s reply to Massachusetts in the Massachusetts Archives, cxii. 225. See also Minutes of the Executive Council of New York, i. 121, 142.

282 His journal is printed below, pp. 188–191.

283 Minutes of the Executive Council of New York, ii. 664; New York Colonial Documents, xiv. 673.

284 The petition is printed below, pp. 191–192.

285 These statements are based upon extensive study by the writer of New York’s Indian policy. A few references will suffice to illustrate their truth. As early as 1662 an attack by the Mohawks upon an English trading house on the Kennebec was the subject of negotiations between Massachusetts and the Dutch (Brodhead, i. 704; New York Colonial Documents, xiii. 224–227, 240, 297, 355, 378). Complaints of depredations by the Mohawks in Hampshire County were considered by the General Court in 1667 (Massachusetts Colony Records, vol. iv. pt. ii. 359). The attempt of Connecticut and Massachusetts to get aid from the Mohawks at the time of King Philip’s War and the attitude of New York at that time may be traced in Connecticut Colonial Records, ii. 397, 407, 414, 419, 426, 436, and F. B. Hough, Easton’s Narrative and other Documents relating to King Philip’s War (1858), pp. 155–159. The attitude of New York during Lt.-Gov. Dummer’s War is sufficiently illustrated in the notes printed by McIlwain, Wraxall’s Abridgment, pp. xlix, xciv.

286 Massachusetts Colony Records, vol. iv. pt. ii. 548.

287 Ibid. 558.

288 Massachusetts Colony Records, vol. iv. pt. ii. 570; Massachusetts Archives, iii. 25.

289 Alvord and Bidgood, First Explorations of the Trans-Allegheny Region by the Virginians, 1650–1674, p. 244.

290 But see the opinion of F. E. Melvin in the Mississippi Valley Historical Review, i. 260–262. Melvin believes that Coxe was less credulous than has been generally supposed.

291 I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. S. E. Morison for his suggestions and criticisms, which have been of great assistance to me in the preparation of this paper.

292 Massachusetts Archives, cxii. 222–224.

293 Massachusetts Archives, cxii. 221.

294 The poem was communicated in February, 1915 (see p. 27, above), but its publication has been delayed until the text could be collated with the manuscript in Dublin.

295 Publications, xiii. 254–259.

296 One in John Lloyd’s Short Tour (1780); the second in O’Looney’s Clare Bards (1863); and the third in Father Dinneen’s edition of Tadag Gaolach O’Sullivan (1893).

297 Published in The Nation (Dublin, 1858), N. S., ix. 731, 763.

298 Dublin (1913), p. 217.

299 Irish MS. No. IX.

300 MS. ²³/_B37.

301 London (1906), pp. 13–14.

302 bhúr, O’C; do, MS. R. I. A

303 tréith, MS. R. I. A.; faon, O’C.

304 So O’C; mar cruadann a coiléir (an coiléir), MS. R. I. A.

305 Dr. Hyde is not quite sure that the MS. has scolta; possibly the reading should be seolta, “guided,” “taught.” In either case the reference would be to the poor Gaelic people.

306 do throideadh, O’C; do throideann, MS. R. I. A.

307 Laoisigh, O’C; laoirce, MS. R. I. A.

308 lease, O’C; leighis, MS. R. I. A.

309 nuair, O’C; tan, MS. R. I. A.

310 chíos, O’C; chuing, MS. R. I. A.

311 Os doigh linn na mairid, O’C; Os dóthchus na maireann, MS. R. I. A.

312 is le fíoch, O’C; agus fíoch, MS. R. I. A.

313 Inis Eilge, “Island of Elg,” is an old poetic name for Ireland of uncertain origin. Compare Kuno Meyer, in the Berlin Sitzungsberichte, 1913, p. 446.

314 “Brother O’Leary” is the Reverend Arthur O’Leary, a Capuchin friar, who labored conspicuously to keep the Irish Catholics loyal to the British throne. By so doing, O’Meehan declares, he tightened the yoke (literally, the collar) for the man who is wandering. It seems safest to interpret this phrase as a general reference to the wretchedness of the poor Gaels, though a more particular application to the fortunes of the young Pretender is also possible. In O’Meehan’s other poem on Washington, it may be recalled, the name of “the innocent Charles Stuart” was linked with those of Louis of France and the American leader, and at the time when the second song was written the condition of Charles Edward was certainly that of a discredited wanderer. Still the figure of “tightening the yoke” seems to apply best to the oppression of the people. The last couplet of the stanza doubtless means, as Dr. Hyde suggests, that O’Leary was making a profit out of bribes, while the wretched Gaels got nothing but “leave to talk.” O’Leary is known to have been in receipt of a government pension, for his loyal writings, before 1784. The “lad of gold” has not been identified, unless the name applies also to O’Leary. The order of the passage seems at first to favor the view that some other character is referred to. But this is by no means certain, and the epithet would have been a natural one for O’Meehan to apply to O’Leary. It might be interpreted as a general term of praise, here ironically employed with reference to the popular and prosperous clergyman; or one might even see in the phrase a double meaning which anticipates the later reference to bribes.

315 At Harvard the degree of Master of Arts, which from 1645 to 1869 was given in course — that is, at the end of the third year after obtaining the degree of Bachelor of Arts — has been granted since 1869 on examination only. Hence, previous to 1870, no date follows the A.M. degree, unless it was granted more than three years after graduation.

In the 1830 Harvard Triennial the names of those who received honorary degrees were for the first time placed by themselves at the end, each under the year when the degree was conferred. Previous to 1830 the practice was confusing, for the name of each recipient was placed under the class in which he graduated A.B. in some other college; or, if he was not a college graduate, in the class to which he presumably would have belonged had he gone to college; and a dash separated the names of those who graduated A.B. from those who received honorary degrees, the date when the latter were conferred being also given. Thus the first degrees conferred on Franklin and on Washington were respectively A.M. in 1753 and LL.D. in 1776, both from Harvard. In the 1754 Triennial the name of Franklin appears under the class of 1724, and in the 1776 Triennial that of Washington under the class of 1749. That is, it was assumed that if Franklin and Washington had gone to college they would have graduated in those years respectively.

The early practice at Yale was still more confusing, since no dash separated the names of those graduating A.B. from those receiving honorary degrees, and no date was attached to the names of the latter.

316 That is, the entry so stood as regards the date of the conferring of the degree. In the 1772 and 1775 Yale Triennials Mather’s Harvard class is misprinted 1725. Innumerable differences in typography, in arrangement, and in details occur in the different editions of both the Yale and the Harvard Triennials and Quinquennials.

317 Diary of Cotton Mather, ii. 805, 758–759, 762–763.

318 Our associate Professor Franklin B. Dexter, to whom I am indebted for information about the 1742–1745 and 1751 Triennials, writes: “In 1868 the change to 1725 was made, unhappily, on the theory that if given in 1724 it would have been entered in the Catalogue of that year, and also because, although other instances could be found where in those early days a Master’s degree was given two years after a Bachelor’s degree, no other instance occurs of a Master’s degree after an interval of one year.”

319 There has been much uncertainty in regard to degrees, honorary or otherwise, conferred on Harvard graduates by foreign universities previous to 1731, and different editions of the Triennials and Quinquennials vary in this respect. The following list is compiled from the 1915 Quinquennial:

1642 Benjamin Woodbridge, A.M. Oxford 1648
1642 Henry Saltonstall, M.D. Padua 1649
1645 James Ward, A.M. Oxford 1648, M.B. Oxford 1649
1650 William Stoughton, A.M. Oxford 1653
1650 John Glover, M.D. Aberd. 1654
1650 Leonard Hoar, M.D. Cambr. 1671
1651 Isaac Chauncy, M.D.
1651 Ichabod Chauncy, M.D.
1653 Joshua Ambrose, A.M. Oxford 1656
1656 Increase Mather, A.M. Dublin 1658
1656 John Haynes, A.M. Cambr. 1660
1674 Edmund Davie, M.D. Padua
1678 Cotton Mather, S.T.D. Glasgow 1710
1684 Samuel Myles, A.M. Oxford 1693
1693 William Vesey, A.M. Oxford 1697
1699 Jeremiah Dummer, Ph.D. Utrecht 1703
1701 Timothy Cutler, S.T.D. Oxford 1723, Cambr. 1723
1710 Edward Wigglesworth, S.T.D. Edinburgh 1730
1722 Ebenezer Miller, A.M. also Oxford 1726.

It is not known when or from what university the Chauncys received their degrees, nor when Davie obtained his. It may be added that George Stirk, who graduated in 1646 and later changed his name to Starkey, presumably also received the degree of M.D., though again when and from what university is unknown.

320 The bestowal of an honorary degree on a Harvard man by a foreign university was usually, if not always, noted in the Boston newspapers of the eighteenth century. Thus Cutler’s degree from Oxford was noted in the New England Courant of July 22, 1723, p. 2/1; and Wigglesworth’s degree from Edinburgh was noted in the Boston News Letter of August 27, 1730, p. 2/1.

321 New England Weekly Journal, November 8, 1731, p. 2/2. The same notice appeared in the Boston News Letter of November 4.

322 In College Book III. 137–170 are entered twenty-five diplomas for honorary degrees, most of which were received by Harvard graduates from other universities or conferred by Harvard College. A list of these was given by Mr. William C. Lane in our Publications, x. 230 note 2.

323 Mather employed the title in books published in 1728 and 1732: see pp. 223, 224, below. The New England Weekly Journal of Monday, January 31, 1732, said that “On Friday last the Old North Church in this Place made Choice of Mr. Samuel Mather, Chaplain at His Majesties Castle William, to succeed his Renowned Father in the Pastoral Office among them” (p. 2/2. A similar item appeared in the Boston News Letter of February 3, p. 2/2). And the Weekly Rehearsal of February 28 stated that “The Rev. Mr. Samuel Mather, lately Chaplain of Castle William has accepted the Choice to succeed his Father in the Pastoral Charge of the Old North Church” (p. 2/2. A similar item appeared in the Boston News Letter of March 2, p. 2/2). The date “January 28, 1730–31,” given in Cotton Mather’s Diary (ii. 818), should be January 28, 1731–32. Samuel Mather was ordained colleague pastor June 21st: see New England Weekly Journal, June 19, p. 2/1, June 26, p. 2/1; Weekly Rehearsal, June 26, p. 2/2.

It appears, then, that Samuel Mather was Chaplain from 1728 (or earlier) to 1732, when he resigned after being chosen colleague pastor with the Rev. Joshua Gee. His resignation of the chaplaincy clears up a matter which puzzled the editors of the Belcher Papers. On August 12, 1732, Governor Belcher wrote to his son Jonathan Belcher, Jr. (H.C. 1728):

M^r Warren shall know your concern (and my readiness) to serve him. But Coll^ll Tailer (before his death) had fix’d a successor to M^r Mather, M^r Moseley (whom you knew at College, being, I think, next class to yours) (Belcher Papers, i. 164).

The reference is to the Rev. Samuel Moseley (H.C. 1729), and the editors remark: “Apparently he had been designated by Lieutenant-Governor Tailer for some civil employment.” Tailer died March 1, 1732, and evidently the allusion in Belcher’s letter was to the chaplaincy of the Castle.

324 This statement is slightly inaccurate, as Mather’s Aberdeen degree is not in the 1895 Quinquennial: see p. 217, below.

325 I am indebted to Mr. C. Chester Lane, the present editor of the Quinquennial, for information in regard to this correspondence and for a reference to Scottish Notes and Queries.

326 Cotton Mather was three times married: first, May 4, 1686, to Abigail Phillips; second, August 18, 1703, to Elizabeth (Clark) Hubbard; third, July 5, 1715, to Lydia (Lee) George. By his first wife there were, disregarding daughters, three sons: Joseph, born March 28, 1693, died April 1, 1693; Increase, born July 9, 1699, drowned at sea in September, 1724; and Samuel, born December 13, 1700, died February 7, 1701. By his second wife there were, also disregarding daughters, three sons: Samuel, born October 30, 1706, H.C. 1723, died June 27, 1785; Nathaniel, born May 16, 1709, died November 24, 1709; and Eleazar, born October 30, 1713, died November 17–18, 1713. There were no children by his third marriage. The above dates, often wrongly given, are taken (of course with the exception of the date of death of Samuel Mather of H.C. 1723) from Cotton Mather’s Diary. In 1726 Samuel Mather called himself the “only Brother” of his sister, and in 1728 the “only Son of” his father: see pp. 220 note 2, 221, below.

327 See F. B. Dexter’s Yale Biographies and Annals, i. 627–628.

328 In books printed between 1761 and 1773, Mather used only the degree A.M. (or M.A.): see p. 225, below.

329 Literary Diary, ii. 169.

330 P. 3/1. “A Poem On Occasion of the Death of Dr. Thomas Mather, . . . By a young Gentleman intimately acquainted with the late Doctor,” was printed in the Boston Evening Post of January 24, 1763, p. 1/2. In a letter (owned by the Massachusetts Historical Society) to Thomas Hollis dated December 11, 1762, Samuel Mather mentions the death of his son. On July 15, 1761, the Corporation took the following action:

At the same Meeting The Rev M^r Sam Mather of Boston desird the Corporation to grant to his Son, who is in the Practice of Physic, a Degree of Master of Arts, the Corporac͞on in Consideration, That his s^d Son had never been at any College & not being satifyed in his Qualifications in Classic Learning, or his fitness in any other Regard for the s^d Degree, & there being no Time for his Examination (w^ch yet his Father consented he shou’d submitt to, if it was requir’d) for the s^d Reasons the above Request was deny’d unanimously (College Book vii. 90–91).

331 Overseers’ Records, ii. 153.

332 College Book vii. 184.

333 Boston Gazette, May 15, 1769, p. 2/1. “The Subject was exposing the Idolatry of the Church of Rome, &c.”

334 College Book vii. 260.

335 Boston Gazette, July 26, 1773, p. 3/1.

336 President Langdon’s only honorary degree was that of D.D. from Aberdeen in 1762, and that he must have received his diploma at the time stated in the text is shown by the following title: “The Duty and Honor of A Minister of Christ. A Sermon Preached at Windham, near Casco-Bay, at the Ordination Of the Reverend Mr. Peter Thacher Smith, To the Work of the Gospel Ministry, and the Pastoral Care of the Church there, September 22, 1762. By Samuel Langdon, D.D. Pastor of the First Church in Portsmouth. . . . Portsmouth, . . . 1763.”

337 Publications of this Society, xiv. 285 and note.

338 In the Boston News Letter of September 15, 1726, appeared this advertisement:

JUst Published, An Essay to bespeak & engage Early Piety; Occasioned by the Early Departure of Mrs. Elizabeth Cooper, by her Father, Dr. Mather, with an Elegy by her only Brother. Sold by John Phillips on the South Side of the Town House Boston (p. 2/2).

The exact title of the sermon is: “Pietas Matutina. One Essay more, To Bespeak and Engage Early Piety; Made On an Occasion taken from the Early Departure of Mrs. Elizabeth Cooper, At the Age of Twenty-two August 7 1726. By her Father. . . . Boston: Printed for J. Phillips, MDCCXXVI.” Samuel Mather’s elegy, printed on the last two pages of the pamphlet, consists of fourteen stanzas of four lines each, and is entitled: “Thoughts, Produced by the Death of Mrs. Elizabeth Cooper, In the Sorrowful Mind of her only Brother.” The first stanza is as follows:

Say, Mournful Song, what gloomy grief

Invades my mind, untunes my Soul!

And try to bring me some relief,

To stay the winds, and waves controul.

For information about the pamphlet itself, which is rare, I am indebted to the officials of the Library of Congress.

339 The title, somewhat misleadingly given by Sabin, is as follows:

The State of Religion in New-England, Since the Reverend Mr. Whitefield’s Arrival there. In a letter from a Gentleman in New-England to his Friend in Glasgow. To which is subjoined an Appendix, containing Attestations of the principal Facts in the Letter, By The Reverend Mr. Chauncy, . . . Mr. John Caldwell, Mr. John Barnard . . . Mr. Turell, Mr. Jonathan Parsons . . . and Dr. Benjamin Colman . . . Glasgow, . . . mdccxlii.

340 The only copy I have seen of the second edition lacks the title-page. The card catalogue of the Boston Public Library gives 1742 as the date of this edition, but doubtless Sabin is correct in stating that it was published in 1743.

341 It was advertised as “This Day Published” in the Boston Evening Post of February 8, 1783, p. 3/2, and in the Boston Gazette of February 10, p. 3/2; and as “Just Published” in the Boston Gazette of February 17, p. 1/3, March 3, Supplement, p. 2/3, March 17, Supplement, p. 2/2, and in the Independent Chronicle of February 20, p. 1/2. On March 13, 1783, the Rev. John Eliot wrote: “P. S. Matheetes Archaios is too despicable to have anything said about it” (Belknap Papers, iii. 250). Mr. Evans writes me that he cannot recall his authority for the attribution to Mather. Professor Dexter makes the suggestion, confirmed by Mr. Evans, that this was the Brinley Catalogue, where an entry reads: “Serious Letter to the Young People of Boston, . . to guard them against Error, etc. By Matheetes Archaios [S. Mather?] Boston, 1783” (no. 6397, iv. 49). Mr. Dexter adds: “We bought this volume at the Brinley sale, and the title-page has ‘S. Mather?’ written in it in ink, in a not-modern hand. In cataloguing this copy, some thirty years ago, I considered this attribution; but decided that it was not very probable.” As the volume came from the library of the Rev. Dr. Joseph McKean, perhaps the query is in his hand.

342 The funeral discourses which were customarily delivered at that time on the death of a prominent person sometimes contain valuable information. That no funeral discourse or sermon was preached after Mather’s death was due to his own desire. He died June 27 and was buried June 30, 1785: see the Massachusetts Centinel of June 29, p. 3/2; and the Independent Chronicle of June 30, p. 3/2, which prints extracts from his will. In the Boston Magazine for June we read:

30. On Monday morning last, departed this life, and entered into rest, Doctor SAMUEL MATHER, of this town, in the 79th year of his age. He left positive orders that his interment should be private, and without any ceremony: he has also signified his desire, that he may not have any funeral encomiums from any quarter. On Thursday he was interred, without the least ceremony, at 5 minutes past sun setting, followed by six persons, without pall bearers, in conformity to his will, and laid in the family tomb (ii. 237).

343 The Harvard College Library owns an interesting copy of a book entitled:

An Abridgment of the Life Of the late Reverend and Learned Dr. Cotton Mather, of Boston in New-England. Taken from the Account of him published by his Son, the Reverend Mr. Samuel Mather. . . . By David Jennings. Recommended by I. Watts, D.D. . . . London: . . . 1744.

This is a presentation copy from Watts to Mather and from Mather to the College, and a note on the College book-plate says that “This book belonged to the Library before the fire Jan. 24. 1764.” Watts’s Recommendation is dated “Newington near London, Aug. 13. 1743;” and in the Preface Mr. Jennings says that from Samuel Mather “I have received a very civil and obliging Letter, with full Leave and Liberty to make such an Abridgment of his Book as is here attempted. I hope he will not be displeased with my prefixing his License to this Work, without which I should not have undertaken it.” Then follows Mather’s letter.

344 Not before attributed to Mather. It is a reply to Dr. William Douglass’s “A Dissertation concerning Inoculation of the Small-Pox. . . . Boston, N.E. . . . M.DCC.XXX.” My authority for the attribution of the Letter to Mather is a note on the fly-leaf of a volume owned by the Massachusetts Historical Society containing various pamphlets, among them Douglass’s Dissertation and the Letter. This note reads:

Dissertation on Inoculation.

By Dr. Duglas.

Remarks on it by Sa^m. Mather

This note may or may not be correct, but is given for what it is worth. As Mather appears to have written on inoculation in 1722, he might well have returned to the subject in 1730: see p. 220, above. Mather’s interest in the subject is attested by a copy, now in the Boston Athenaeum, of Dr. James Jurin’s “An Account Of the Success of Inoculating the Small Pox in Great Britain. . . . The Second Edition. London: . . . 1724.” This has marginal notes apparently in the hand of Mather, and on the title-page are written in ink these inscriptions: “Sam. Mathers 1727” and “The Gift of the Author.”

345 The dedication was perhaps an afterthought, due to the receipt of the diploma, for this advertisement appeared on October 18, 1731:

SUbscriptions towards Printing an Essay concerning Gratitude, by Mr. Samuel Mather, are taken in by Thomas Hancock, Bookseller (Weekly Rehearsal, p.2/2).

Though bearing the date 1732 on the title-page, this Essay was published late in 1731, as appears from an advertisement on December 27, 1731:

THIS may inform the Gentlemen who Subscribed to Mr. Samuel Mather’s Essay concerning GRATITUDE, that the Books are now ready to be delivered to their Order.

N.B. Some Books will remain to be Sold after the Subscribers are supply’d, by Tho. Hancock (Weekly Rehearsal, p. 2/2).

It is perhaps worth while to call attention to this early instance of the practice, now so common among publishers, of placing the following year on the title-pages of books issued in the closing weeks or months of a year.

346 Haven, Sabin, and Evans enter the book under “Rock-man, Constant,” without attempting to identify the author. They also state that the date on the title-page is misprinted mdcclviii. In the only copies I have seen the date is correctly given. In 1885 the late William Cushing wrote in his Initials and Pseudonyms:

Rock-man, Constant, M.A. Rev. Nicholas Bowes. Modest account concerning the salutations and kissings in ancient times. . . . B. 1768 (p. 252).

Bowes, Rev. Nicholas, M.A., — 1755. Constant Rock-man. An American Cong, minister; Harv. Univ., 1725; pastor at Bedford, Mass. (p. 361).

The Rev. Nicholas Bowes, son of Nicholas and Dorcas (Champney) Bowes, was born in Boston, November 4, 1706; married Lucy Hancock of Lexington; and died in 1755. Obviously, therefore, he could not have been the author of a book written in 1768. Mr. Cushing was perhaps led astray by two entries in pencil on the title-page of a copy of the Modest Account owned by Harvard College. One reads: “Was not this from & the answer to it written by Nicholas Bowes, for whom they were published?” The other reads: “See the Kiss of Charity.” This refers to a pamphlet (usually attributed to Shippie Townsend) advertised as “This Day Published” in the Boston Gazette of July 11, 1768, p. 1/3, and entitled:

An Inquiry Whether the Scriptures enjoin the Kiss of Charity, as the Duty of the Disciples of Christ, in their Church-Fellowship in all Ages. — Or, only allowed it to the first Disciples, in Consequence of the Customs that then prevailed. Occasioned by a Letter lately published by Constant Rockman, M.A. Intitled, “a Modest Account concerning the Salutations and Kissings in ancient Times,” &c. Containing some Remarks thereupon. . . . Boston: New-England. Printed by Kneeland and Adams, for Nicholas Bowes, opposite the Old Brick Meeting-House, in Corn-Hill. MDCCLXVIII.

Nicholas Bowes the bookseller was presumably that son of the Rev. Nicholas Bowes who was born October 20, 1737. The bookseller married Rebecca Wendell November 26, 1767, and died in Boston in April, 1790. (Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xxiv. 40, xxx. 48; Bedford Vital Records, p. 13; Paige, History of Cambridge, p. 494; Massachusetts Centinel, April 10, 1790, p. 3/1; Suffolk Probate Files, No. 19481. The accounts of the Bowes family in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, x. 82, and in the Heraldic Journal, i. 109, contain inaccuracies.) Mr. Cushing confused the father with the son.

The Modest Account was advertised as “This Day Published” in the Boston Gazette of May 23, 1768, p. 3/1. In his Annals of the American Pulpit (1857, i. 373), Sprague vaguely enters in his list of Mather’s works: “A modest account of the salutations in ancient times (anonymous,) 1768.” A copy owned by the Massachusetts Historical Society bears the signature “Ezra Stiles Junij 25. 1768;” and under the name of Rock-man is written, in Stiles’s hand, “The Reverend Samuel Mather of Boston.” That this ascription is correct is proved by a letter (owned by the Massachusetts Historical Society) written to Thomas Hollis on May 17, 1768, in which Mather himself says:

I beg leave now to put into your Hands [Accipe, sed Facilis] a Letter obtained from me thro’ Importunity from D^r Chauncey, my Friend and Neighbour, and some others: which I have publish’d under a fictitious Name, [‘Rockman versus Sandeman’] lest some Offence might be given by my writing on such a Subject; tho’, I think, there is not any Thing justly exceptionable in it.

This letter was received in October by Hollis, who made this endorsement: “A modest account concerning the Salutations & Kissings in ancient times; in a Letter to a Friend, . . . By Constant Rockman, M.A. Boston, in N.E. 1768, in oct.”

347 Some copies of this pamphlet lack the bastard-title. The recto of this reads: “America Known to the Ancients.” On the verso is printed a letter dated “Bost. N.E. Dec. 31. 1772,” and signed “S.MATHER.”

348 This was in reply to a pamphlet entitled:

Salvation for all Men, illustrated and vindicated as A Scripture Doctrine, in Numerous Extracts from a Variety of Pious and Learned Men, who have purposely writ upon the Subject. Together with their Answer to the Objections urged against it. By One who wishes well to all Mankind. . . . Boston: . . . 1782.

The authorship of this pamphlet, usually attributed either to the Rev. Dr. Charles Chauncy (H.C. 1721) or to the Rev. Dr. John Clarke (H.C. 1774), raises an intricate problem which will be discussed on another occasion.

349 The pamphlet “Salvation for All Men,” advertised as “Just Published” in the Boston Gazette of September 2, 1782 (p. 4/2), caused a heated controversy. Mather’s “All Men will not be saved forever” was advertised in the same paper of Monday, November 4, as “Now in the Press, and on Thursday next will be Published” (p. 3/2). The same paper of November 25 (p. 3/2) announced for sale “A Letter to Dr. Mather. Occasioned by his disingenuous Reflexions upon a certain Pamphlet, entitled, Salvation for All Men,” presumably written by the Rev. Dr. John Clarke. In the Independent Chronicle of January 9, 1783, was advertised as “This Day published, And to be sold at EDES’s Printing-Office, in Corn-hill (price 4d.) A LETTER, to the Author of a Letter to Dr. Mather” (p. 2/2). This last is the pamphlet mentioned in the text, where it is inserted because usually ascribed to Mather; but I doubt very much whether it was written by him.

350 In 1792 began to be printed (1 Massachusetts Historical Collections, i. 256) an article headed “The following Account of the first settlement of Boston, was written in the year 1784, by the late Dr. Samuel Mather.” At that time the Collections of the Historical Society were printed serially, and this article happened to begin on the last page of a serial. At the bottom of the page is the catchword “But,” yet no more was ever printed. The reason is thus stated in the next serial at the bottom of p. 257:

☞ Doctor Mather’s account of the first settlement of Boston, which was continued from our last sheet has been mislaid; and as another copy cannot be obtained, we are obliged to leave it incomplete.

The Boston Public Library owns a broadside dated “Worcester, January 12th, 1789,” which reads in part as follows:

Proposal For Printing by Subscription, A Disquisition on the Most Holy Deity. In which it is endeavoured to communicate the Scriptural Doctrine concerning God, And his Manifestation to his Intelligent Creatures. By the late Samuel Mather, D.D. Pastor of a Church in Boston. Contents. The Preface. The Prologue. Chap. I. . . . Chap. XI. . . . [The manuscript of this valuable Essay was found, ready prepared for the Press, among the papers of the late author, after his death, and is now proposed to be printed at the request of a number of the clergy, and others, in this State, who have perused it.] Conditions of Publication. . . . V. The work to be put to Press as soon as 500 Copies are subscribed for . . . Subscriptions are received by I. Thomas, the intended Publisher, at his Bookstore in Worcester; . . .

It is not unlikely that this was the work (now owned by the American Antiquarian Society) which, as we learn from some amusing letters owned by the Massachusetts Historical Society, Mather had endeavored, through the joint efforts of Thomas Hollis, the Rev. Nathaniel Lardner, and Ralph Griffiths (publisher of the Monthly Review), to get published in London a quarter of a century earlier. Writing to Hollis on December 11, 1762, Mather said:

Within this current Year I have been busily emploied in writing some Disquisitions on very important and interesting Subjects. One of These I beg to enclose to you and inscribe to your Name, if it be thôt worthy to be communicated to the Public. As I am diffident of my own Composures, I commonly offer them to select Friends to read, before I think of sending them abroad. Accordingly I have desired the learned D^r Lardner in Hoxton Square London to give it an attentive Reading; and, if he approve of it and will signifie by a few Prefatory Lines, that it deserves Consideration, I am willing, that it should be made public: And, since you kindly signified to me, that Mr Griffiths in the Strand would print for me; I desire, that you would offer it, with my Compliments, unto Him. I hope, that your Modesty will not make You unwilling to receive my Dedication; especially since my Gratitude to your excellent great Uncle, as well Respect to yourself, is intended in it.

This appeal was not relished by Hollis, who replied on May 19, 1763:

Inclosed is a parcel from Dr Lardner. It contains the Mss which you desired me to lay before him, and a letter.

I likewise forward to You the dedication to that Mss. Dedications I never have accepted nor ever will accept, and I am utterly below them. I return you, however, my humble thanks for the honor You intended me, as well as for two curious publications.

What Griffiths said to me was, not “that he would print for you,” but “that the Reviewers should take notice of your dissertation in the Review, and would, probably, do the same by any other which You might send them.” And yet no notice was taken of it in the Review. As matters of this kind are out of my way, I beg the favor of You to dispense me from them in the future.

351 Proceedings, April, 1903, xv. 296–298.

352 There is a copy of this Catalogue in the Boston Athenæum.

353 David I. Bushnell, of the Bureau of American Ethnology, in a letter of October 21, 1915, to the writer of this paper, expresses well the opinion that he shares with all recent authorities, as follows:

There is of course absolutely no reason to attribute the origin of the pictographs appearing on the Rock to any but the North American Indian, as he was known to the colonists. The many and varied theories which have from time to time been presented, some regarding it as of Norse origin, appear to be without the slightest foundation or reason. The figures represented on the Rock do not differ essentially from those found over a wide extent of territory extending to the Ohio river and beyond. Therefore to select this one example as being distinctly of different origin is without justification.

354 Plate I. This photograph, measuring 9 by 13 inches, was presented to the Massachusetts Historical Society by George C. Burgess of Dighton, December 24, 1868. A stereoscopic photograph, taken by Augustine H. Folsom, a photographer of Roxbury and Boston, was also presented to the Society by Burgess on February 10, 1869. Eight other photographs, taken at various times between 1853 and 1913, are known to the writer of this paper. In every case the supposed lines were first chalked over on the rock, in order to render them more distinct. But the two Burgess photographs were evidently taken, either without any preliminary chalking, or at most with the faintest trace of it, — probably with none at all.

355 See, for example, E. G. Squier, in National Intelligencer, March 27, 1849, p. 2/1–3, extracted from the British Ethnological Journal, December, 1848; Garrick Mallery, Picture-Writing of the American Indians, 10th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1888–9, pp. 88 ff. The following is an almost exact quotation from Mallery, describing the ledges at the Pipestone quarry in Minnesota but adapted so that it becomes possibly applicable to the Assonet rock: “It was formerly a custom for each Indian who came to the vicinity to secure game or fish, to transcribe his totem upon the rock. This was done by pecking out the stone with some sharp pointed instrument or by the use of pieces of quartzite. The figures are of different sizes and dates. The excavation of the surface is often very slight, in many cases not exceeding ¹/₁₆ of an inch, and sometimes only enough to leave a mere tracing of the designed form. The hardness of the rock was a barrier to deep sculpturing with the imperfect tools of the aborigines; but the tenacity with which it retains impressions will warrant the assignment of any date to these inscriptions that may be called for within the human period. Yet it is probable that they date back to no very great antiquity.”

356 One of the most convincing evidences is the fact that on another part of the same rock is a group of characters so faint that they have apparently been seen and described by only one previous observer. Dr. Stiles made them out dimly in 1767, as he relates in his unpublished Itinerary, and was told by neighbors that they had been made not more than thirty years before. Without knowledge of their having been previously discovered, I saw them in 1915, and made a drawing in close agreement with that of Dr. Stiles. These figures, at least, must have been thinly carved in order to become difficult to discern within thirty years, and to have been overlooked by everyone else; and the wear of the rock must have been very slow indeed, since they are still discoverable after another 150 years.

357 The principal objections that have been urged against this conclusion are these: (1) The Indians were too lazy; (2) they had no adequate tools; (3) they left no other similar monuments. The replies to all these claims are adequate and convincing. (1) Among others, E. G. Squier, in the paper already referred to, says that the labor expended on some other inscriptions of known Indian origin is vastly greater than that required to make the Dighton Rock inscription; that the work on some single ones of their tools was probably little less; and that they had abundant leisure. (2) Very many trustworthy authorities have claimed that the stone implements of the Indians sufficed for the work. But besides stone, they also possessed copper tools. Moreover, for nearly a century before there occurs any mention of the rock, they obtained from traders an abundance of iron and steel as well as copper implements. How abundant and varied these were has been shown best very recently through the uncovering of about sixty Indian interments on Burr’s Hill, in Warren, Rhode Island. The collection is of the greatest historical value, and is preserved in the George Haile Free Library at Warren. It has not yet been adequately described, but some idea of it can be gained from the Providence Sunday Journal of August 24, 1913, section 5, p. 1, and November 30, 1913, section 5, p. 2. (3) A great number of Indian petroglyphs are now known and have been described by Schoolcraft (History, etc., of Indian Tribes, 1851), Squier (paper above cited; also Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, 1847), Mallery (10th Annual Report, Bureau of American Ethnology, 1893), and others. Of examples on Narragansett Bay, six were pictured in Antiquitates Americanæ, 1837, and another by W. J. Miller in the Wampanoag Tribe of Indians, 1880. These and others have been described also by other writers. In the collection of the Old Colony Historical Society at Taunton is a headstone supposed to be that of a “praying Indian,” with an inscription that is supposed to have been made during the ministry of the Rev. Samuel Danforth. In the collection of the George Haile Free Library at Warren, is a small stone implement with an inscription, whose authenticity, however, has not yet been satisfactorily determined. Though they did not do it extensively, yet the Indians about Narragansett Bay did unquestionably make some rock-carvings.

358 Thomas H. Webb, quoted in Antiquitates Americanæ, 1837, pp. 356 ff.

359 Yates and Moulton, History of the State of New York, 1824, i. 86.

360 Rasmus D. Anderson, America not discovered by Columbus, 2nd ed., 1877, pp. 82 ff.

361 Prof. Elton, D.D., Report of the 18th meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1848, part ii. p. 94.

362 See pp. 251, 289, 291, below.

363 See pp. 267, 270, 290, below.

364 Indian names in Plymouth County, 1909, p. 42.

365 E. W. Peirce (Collections Old Colony Historical Society, 1885, No. 3, p. 113), who says that the name means either “what is most desirable or most noticeable” or “the place of stones,” thinks that the place alluded to is Joshua’s Mountain, near the village of Assonet, several miles from Dighton Rock. Dr. P. W. Leland, in a paper on Algonquin place-names read in 1858 (ibid. p. 89), is of the same opinion. The History of Freetown, 1902, gives still another interpretation, “a song of praise.” J. H. Trumbull (Collections Connecticut Historical Society, 1870, ii. 19) says hassun is never used in composition except in an adjectival sense, and consequently hassun-et could mean only “at a stony place.” It is not without interest in this connection to notice Rafn’s derivation (1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, 1865, viii. 175) from the Icelandic Esiones, from esia, a marshy district.

366 Plymouth Colony Records, i. 142: dated March 3, 1639–40.

367 ii. 58.

368 William Bradford’s Confirmatory Deed, Plymouth Colony Records of Deeds, v. 459.

369 Agreement as to Division of Land on Assonet Neck, Bristol County, Massachusetts, N. District, Land Records, Book 3, p. 287.

370 Plymouth Colony Records, i. 143.

371 250th Anniversary of the Founding of Taunton, 1889, p. 256.

372 Old Proprietary Records, Taunton, Book 4, pp. 185, 188, 189, 192; Book 5, pp. 155, 156, 158, 159; etc.

373 Called Asonate Cove in a deed of 1768 (Bristol County, Massachusetts, N. District, Land Records, Book 57, p. 41).

374 Collections Old Colony Historical Society, No. 3, 1885, p. 113.

375 Walter D. Nichols, in Hurd’s History of Bristol County, Massachusetts, 1883, p. 181.

376 See p. 289, below.

377 Mourt’s Relation (ed. Dexter, 1865), pp. 104–105.

378 Francis Baylies (Historical Memoir of the Colony of New Plymouth, 1830, i. 283) says that the territory of Taunton, including Berkley, was claimed by the sachem of Tetiquet, but was desolate and depopulated, owing to the ravages of the plague. But the whole country had been thickly populated. In another place (iii. 3) he says: “The lands of Mt. Hope and Poppesquash and, probably Assonet and Shewamit, were held by the Wampanoags. The last were uninhabited.”

379 Plymouth Colony Records, ii. 58.

380 In a letter to the Hon. John Davis, dated October 29, 1807, published as an “Account of the Writing-Rock in Taunton River” in Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1809, iii. 165–191. The statement quoted is on p. 181; and is again made by Kendall in his Travels, 1809, ii. 231.

381 Bristol County, Massachusetts, N. District, Land Records, Book 3, p. 198: 20 July, 1670. I am indebted to Charles R. Carr of Warren, Rhode Island, for this important reference.

382 The two names do not seem to be Anglicized Indian designations, but more probably terms applied by the English because of incidents known to them and hence occurring after their arrival. If so, our choice among known incidents is very limited, and the most likely occasion for their origin seems to have been furnished by the events of the period between 1642 and 1645. There were “conspiracies” by Corbitant and the Namaskets in 1621, and by other Indians in 1623; but apparently they had nothing to do with this locality. In 1632 Massasoit was attacked by the Narragansett Canonicus, and successfully defended by the English. Nothing connects this conflict with the region in question. From 1634 to 1637 occurred the Pequot troubles, ending in the extermination of this tribe. Many Indians were taken captive and distributed among the allies; and some of these were afterward shipped away to be sold as slaves. Several persons have suggested to me that some of these may have been held for a time on Assonet Neck. But this region was still a remote, almost unknown, unsettled wilderness. Moreover, Plymouth took no part in the Pequot War, and had no share in the captives. The names must have arisen later, in all probability. The evidence as to the disposal of the Pequot captives is fully discussed by A. W. Lauber in his History of Slavery in Colonial Times (Columbia University Studies in History, 1913, liv. 374–376). A few years after this war, however, the Narragansetts did for many years actively “conspire” against both the Mohegans and the English; some of their plottings were conducted not far away, at least, from the Taunton River; and they held for a time a number of Mohegan captives.

The known and unknown earlier rivals to this last named period are, therefore, merely unsupported possibilities. In its own favor, however, are a number of definite considerations. (1) “The Narigansets, after the subduing of the Pequents, thought to have ruled over all the Indeans.aboute them. . . . By reason of [their] plottings, the Indeans were drawne into a generall conspiracie against the English in all parts” (Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation, 1912, ii. 363, 353). They planned, according to Lion Gardener, to let the English alone until they had destroyed Uncas, “and then they, with [other tribes], would easily destroy us.” The plot was an extended one; for, endeavoring to enlist the aid of Indians on Long Island, Miantonomoh told them: “We are all the sachems from east to west, both Moquekues and Mohauks joining with us, and we are all resolved to fall upon them all [i.e., the English], at one appointed day” (Gardener’s Narrative, in Orr’s History of the Pequot War, pp. 138–142). These “Moquekues and Mohauks” were probably not two separate tribes; for the name of the Mohawks was known in two forms, each spelled in many ways, of which Moquawes, Mackwaes, Mawques, Maquas, are some that I have noticed. “All the sachems [of Long Island] hadd accepted and promised assistants and soe hadd all the Sachems from the Dutche to the Bay” (3 Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, iii. 162). Some writers (e.g., S. G. Drake, Book of the Indiana; G. W. Ellis, King Philip’s War, pp. 26–35) blame Uncas and defend the Narragansetts; but “the belief was general that there was a widespread conspiracy among the Indians, with Miantunomo as their leader” (Bradford, ii. 354 n). Palfrey (History of New England, ii. 127 n) rightly insists that the reality of the alarm is shown by the record of public proceedings in all the colonies. (2) The Pocassets, living close to Assonet Neck, perhaps actually making use of it, may very likely have joined in these conspiracies; for their sachems, Corbitant and his successor Weetamoe, were always hostile to the English. “Ther was a Sachem called Corbitant, alyed to Massassoyte, but never any good freind to the English to this day” (Bradford, i. 225). (3) “Miantonomoh had, in some way, obtained possession of a portion of Massasoit’s domains,” which the English in 1643 endeavored to make him restore (Sylvester, Indian Wars of New England, i. 120 n. For confirmation, see Plymouth Colony Records, ix. 15). (4) In 1645, the Narragansetts occupied with hostile intent some place in this region. I find no definite indication as to just what place it was. However, the following statements are pertinent. The Commissioners of the United Colonies “sent to Plimoth to send forth their 40 men with all speed, to lye at Seacunke, least any deanger should befalle it, before the rest were ready, it lying next the enemie” (Bradford, ii. 380). “Forces were sent out of Plymouth under the command of Capt. Standish, and marched as far as Rehoboth, that being near the borders of the Enemy” (Increase Mather, Early History of New England, Drake’s edition, p. 195). This makes Assonet Neck, or the Pocasset country just south of it, a distinct possibility as the seat of the main body of the hostile Indians; for Seacunke alias Rehoboth, which Massasoit had sold to the English in 1641, extended nearly to the Taunton River. The southern extremity of Assonet Neck, with its wide outlook over protecting rivers, would perhaps have been the most favorable place in the region for their purpose. The following, from Edward Winslow’s Hypocrisie Unmasked (London, 1646, p. 85), seems at first sight to argue against this assumption: “And for Captaine Standish, this I heard him relate, that being at the place of Rendezvouzc, before the Massachusets Forces came, observing that some of the Inhabitants of Providence received the Indians into their houses familiarly, who had put themselves also into a posture of Armes, and the place within a mile of Secunck or Rehoboth where Captaine Standish lay; he sent to Providence and required them to lay aside their neutrality, and either declare themselves on the one side or other.” Yet this is not conclusive, for these may have been wandering individual Indians, or other bands, and not the main body of the enemy. (5) By this time the Narragansetts held many Mohegan captives; for one condition of peace with them was that they should “restore unto Uncass, the Mohegan sagamore, all shuch captives, whether men, or women, or children, and all shuch canoowes, as they or any of their men have taken” (Bradford, ii. 384). If they “conspired” on Assonet Neck, they doubtless guarded their “banished” prisoners near-by — and no other meaning for “banishment” is supported by anything that we know about Indian practices. As late as 1649, Uncas complained that these captives and canoes had not been returned to him (Plymouth Colony Records, ix. 144).

It is well known that charges of conspiracy were made against Alexander in 1662 (G. W. Ellis, King Philip’s War, 1906, p. 37), and against Philip as early as 1667 (p. 38). It may have been on one of these occasions that the island received its name, but there were no incidents in either of them suggestive of banishment. Again, in 1669, there was a “rumored Indian plot,” of which Ninigret was supposed to be the head, and in which some Indians from Pocasset were apparently involved (Connecticut Colony Records, ii. 548–551; Rhode Island Colony Records, ii. 264–286). There is given no indication, however, that any of its plottings took place outside of Ninigret’s own country. There may have been many other local and unrecorded “conspiracies,” by Indians or others, besides those here noticed. If the two names, “Conspiracy” and “Banished Indians,” originated together in connection with one series of events, then among incidents known to us those of the period from 1642 to 1645 appear to be the only ones offering a plausible explanation of them. But it is equally possible that they arose on separate occasions, and if so, that “Conspiracy” at least was of later origin. There is one other peculiar name applied to some place near-by, on the Freetown side of Assonet River, as to whose meaning it seems vain to speculate. This is a piece of salt meadow, “at a place called Behinde Noon, in a Cove” (Bristol County, Massachusetts, No. District, Land Evidences, Book 4, p. 492; record of 1705). It seems interesting and mysterious enough to be worthy of mention.

383 Plymouth Colony Records, xii. 242.

384 I have no desire to appear as possessed of any real knowledge as to the derivation of Indian names. But an amateurish attempt to see what could be made of the two here mentioned led to interesting results. I made use of Trumbull’s paper cited above, and of his Natick Dictionary (Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 25, 1903). The name Mastucksett is derived, as I judge from Trumbull’s manner of explaining similar names, either from maskhet-ock-set, “near the meadow land,” or from massa-tuk-set, “near the big tidal river” (i.e., the Assonet River). Either of these would be appropriate for Stacy’s Creek. The name Chippascutt is of more interest. It was without question applied to some place in or near Smith’s Cove, or to the Cove itself. This is a considerable widening of Taunton River opposite the village of Dighton, where the river is divided into two by Grassy Island. Dighton Rock stands on the shore of this Smith’s Cove. In the paper cited (p. 10), Trumbull says that peske-tuk means “a divided river;” and in his Natick Dictionary he gives the meaning of chippe as “(it is) separated, apart,” or divided. Thus chippe-peske-tuk or chip-peske-ut would be “at the dividing of the river.” But an alternative meaning seems warranted by the Natiek Dictionary. In it, there is no indication given of peske or anything similar meaning “river.” But -pisk means “rock;” chepisq or chippipsk means “a detached or separated rock.” According to this, chepisq-ut would imply “at the rock that stands apart,” and thus perhaps Dighton Rock. But again, the meaning “division” as well as “apartness” is justified by Trumbull’s examples (see the word “divide” in the Dictionary), and hence the word may signify “at the cleft rock.” Now a Cleft of Rocks — a narrow cleft about six inches wide and perhaps thirty feet deep in the massive conglomerate of Hospital Hill, at the northern end of Assonet Neck and at the head of the meadows bordering on Smith’s Cove — is a natural curiosity of the region, and is mentioned as a boundary mark in the original Assonet Neck deed of 1677, and in another deed of 1687 (Book 5 of Land Evidences at Taunton, p. 367). It may be this that is referred to in the name.

385 Plymouth Colony Records, v. 191 (10 March 1675–6), 240 (July 13, 1677).

386 Plymouth Colony Records of Deeds, Book 5, p. 199.

387 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxix. 318; Indian History, etc., 1878, p. 254.

388 I have had photostats made of this deed. It bears the signatures of Constant Southworth, Treasurer of Plymouth Colony, of Josiah Winslow, Governor, and of Nathaniel Morton, Secretary. Its seal is in fair preservation, and is a different one from that shown on The Book of the General Laws Of the Inhabitants of the Jurisdiction of New-Plimouth, Boston, 1685. The “V” of the word “PLIMOVTH” in the latter, is lacking in this; and there are other differences. The possession of two seals by the Colony appears not to have been known heretofore.

389 An Early Account of Dighton Rock, American Anthropologist, 1908, x. 251–254.

390 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, 1887, xli. 414.

391 Collections Old Colony Historical Society, 1889, No. 4, p. 16. Mr. Baxter in this paper expressly disclaims any pretension to critical accuracy and completeness, and is rather to be congratulated on the real discovery that he made than criticized for not having taken ampler notes.

392 The source of these quotations is discussed fully in a later part of this paper.

393 These biographical facts concerning the Danforths can be confirmed and extended from Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, i. 88, ii. 369, 507, iii. 171, 243; and from J. J. May’s Danforth Genealogy, 1902. I am myself indebted to Mr. Albert Matthews for them.

394 Assonet Neck was made a part of Taunton in 1682, of Taunton South Precinct in 1709, of Dighton in 1712, and of Berkley in 1799.

395 Now in possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Mrs. Eliza Howard, who presented it in 1796, wrote to the Rev. Jeremy Belknap concerning Samuel Danforth: “He was very zealous for promoting religion among the Indians.” The Vocabulary is in manuscript, and is not complete.

396 I take the liberty of quoting from a letter by Mr. Albert Matthews, written April 11, 1915, shortly after I had told him of my discovery of the real facts, to show that others shared the above opinion: “As I run over in my mind the reasons that led you, Mr. Gay, and myself to conclude that it was Samuel and not John Danforth who made the first copy, I fail to see how we could have reached any other decision from the available facts.” Samuel F. Haven (Proceedings American Antiquarian Society, October 21, 1864, p. 41) arrived at the same conclusion: “probably the Rev. Samuel Danforth of Taunton, though he must at that time have been quite a young man.”

397 A facsimile reproduction of the entire letter is given in Plates XII to XVI. It is more fully discussed below (pp. 280–291), where it is called the “Greenwood Letter B.”

398 So the writer is informed by Mr. Bushnell in a private letter.

399 The material is presented, however, in an entirely different manner. In the first letter it was quoted in part in the body of the letter, and then further information was added in a postscript. In the second letter the same quotation is given in the body, but there is enclosed also an entirely separate slip of paper containing all the facts, in place of the postscript. Later in this paper (p. 284, below), I present reasons for believing that this enclosed slip may have been written by Danforth himself, and that the accompanying drawing also may have been Danforth’s own.

400 See Plates XI, XV, and III. The version by Lort is from Archaeologia, London, 1787, vol. viii, plate xviii.

401 Thomas H. Webb, sending a copy of Danforth to Professor Rafn in 1834, says: “This is not sent with any idea that it will prove serviceable in your present enquiry, but simply to shew what strange things have been conjured up by travellers, and sent to Europe for examination” (Antiquitates Americanæ, 1837, p. 371).

Professor C. C. Rafn (in the same volume, p. 377) says: “Danforth’s drawing merits no confidence.”

Karl H. Hermes (Die Entdeckung von America durch die Islander, 1844, p. 123) calls it “eine rohe Abbildung.”

Daniel Wilson (Prehistoric Man, 1862, ii. 172–178): “As early as 1680, Dr. Danforth executed what he characterizes as a ‘faithful and accurate representation of the inscription.’” This statement is one of several errors of which Wilson is guilty.

Rev. Charles R. Hale, in an unpublished manuscript discussion of Dighton Rock (in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society; written in 1865), repeats this last statement, without reference to its source, adding that only a very vivid imagination could so describe it. He says further: “Danforth’s drawing is quite too incorrect to be the basis of any accurate reasoning.”

None of these critics, of course, had the advantage of acquaintance with the genuine original of Danforth; though that would probably have made little difference in their opinion. Hale had Seager’s cautious drawing in mind as his ideal.

402 Though perhaps the word “Mister” does not express the exact significance of “Dominus,” yet it seems to be the nearest English equivalent that we have; and is the equivalent that Greenwood used when referring to these persons in English.

403 Account of an antient Inscription in North America, Archaeologia, viii. 290–301.

404 Antiquitates Americanæ, Hafniæ, 1837.

405 The earliest mention of it in the subsequent literature of Dighton Rock that I have taken note of is by Samuel G. Drake in his edition of F. Baylies’s Historical Memoir of the Colony of New Plymouth, 1866, pt. v. p. 22.

406 A copy in the Prince Library (Boston Public Library) has on a fly-leaf the signature “Mary Thacher Her Book Anno Domini 1689,” indicating that the sermon was published before March 25, 1690. For this information, as well as for various references to Boston newspapers cited later, I am indebted to Mr. Matthews. There was a second edition of this book published in 1703 (Sabin, xi. 450).

407 Plate II.

408 Narrative and Critical History of America, 1889, i. 103. This is a reproduction of seven of them, from a plate in Antiquitates Americanæ.

409 Picture-Writing of the American Indians, Bureau of American Ethnology, 10th Annual Report, 1888–’89 (1893), plate liv, p. 762.

410 Plate VI.

411 Cotton Mather’s Election into the Royal Society, Publications of this Society, xiv. 82.

412 There are many later cases where there are differences between original and copy in the representations of this inscription. The degree of difference naturally grows less, as we approach modern times. Sewall’s original of 1768 was several times copied, and always with large variations. Many versions of the drawing of 1789 exist; and they differ. The copies of Kendall’s 1807 original are in important respects very different from it. The 1830 drawings by Bartlett and by a Committee of the Rhode Island Historical Society, and the Gardner photograph of 1875, have been more frequently reproduced than any others; and always with some points of difference, except when copied by a photographic process.

413 John Danforth was ordained at Dorchester, June 28, 1682.

414 Letter-Book, i. 116. Mr. Clarence S. Brigham, Librarian of the American Antiquarian Society, aided me in the discovery of this passage.

415 Jews in America, or, Probabilities that the Americans are of that Race, London, 1650. New edition with additions, 1660.

416 Archæology of the United States, Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, 1856, viii. 5.

417 i. 122, 192, ii. 155, 163.

418 The United States elevated to Glory and Honor. A Sermon, Preached . . . At the Anniversary Election, May 8th, 1783.

419 Observations on the American Inscription. Read February 9, 1786. Archæologia, viii. 302.

420 First referred to by Edward A. Kendall, in Travels, 1809, ii. 224; and in the Diary (1911, iii. 322–323) of William Bentley under date of October 13, 1807.

421 To this, Professor Kittredge adds the following footnote: “No. 339 of the Philosophical Transactions has the colophon, ‘London, Printed for W. Innys, at, the Princes’-Arms in St. Paul’s Church-yard. 1714.’ It was afterwards assembled with other numbers to make up ‘Vol. XXIX. For the Years 1714, 1715, 1716,’ which was issued as a whole in 1717. The excerpts are on pp. 62–71. They bear the title, ‘An Extract of several Letters from Cotton Mather, D.D. to John Woodward, M.D. and Richard Waller, Esq.; S. R. Secr.’ The Letter-Book of the Royal Society (M. 2. 34) contains this article (as printed in the Transactions) in MS., prepared for the press (Gay MS., fols. 151–168).”

422 In further explanation, Professor Kittredge has kindly written to me as follows: “This is Mather’s communication, addressed to Richard Waller, Sec’y of the Royal Society, preserved in the Society’s Letter-Book M. 2. 21. 32 (written Nov. 28, 1712). My copy is from a transcript made from the Letter-Book for F. L. Gay of Brookline. It was from this letter that the report in Phil. Trans. No. 339 (for Apl.–June, 1714), vol. xxix, was made. At the end of this letter in the Letter-Book a part of the page is cut away. This cut-off bit obviously contained the inscription reproduced as Fig. 8 in the plate in Phil. Trans. . . . It does not appear that he ever made any further communication to the Royal S. on the subject. I have studied his subsequent communications (unprinted) very carefully, and have found nothing about the Rock. These communications were continued, at intervals, for several years. The latest were sent in 1724.”

423 There are at least two abridgments of the early numbers of the Philosophical Transactions. The one by Hutton, Shaw and Pearson, 1809, vi. 85, gives portions of Mather’s contributions, but omits altogether the reference to Dighton Rock. Philosophical Transactions, abridged by Henry Jones, volume v, 1700–1720, part ii, published in 1721, gives Mather’s letters more fully. His text concerning the rock is on p. 165; and his drawing of the inscription is given in Figure 72, on Plate VIII, opposite p. 190. The text is almost, but not quite identical, with that of the original in No. 339.

In case there should be any interest in comparing Mather’s actual letter with the Philosophical Transactions, we present the latter’s statement in full:

In the next place, he gives an account of a strange Inscription found on a Rock, in these Words. At Taunton, by the side of a Tiding River, part in part out of the River, there is a large Rock, on the perpendicular side of which, next to the Stream, are 7 or 8 Lines, about 7 or 8 Foot long, and about a Foot wide, each of them ingraven with unaccountable Characters, not like any known Character. He has not yet been able to procure the whole, which he hopes to be Master of before long, and has herewith sent a Copy of two of them, promising the rest; they are as is represented, Fig. 8 (No. 339, xxix. 70–71.)

Jones’s Abridgment, p. 165, repeats this with some differences of capitalization, etc. It also omits the phrase “which he hopes to be Master of before long;” changes “and has herewith sent” into “but has sent;” omits “promising the rest;” and changes “they are as represented, Fig. 8” into “represented in Figure 72.”

The “first line” is about 3⅛ inches long in the 1714 cut; the “second line” about ¼ inch longer; and the width of the two together about 1⅝ inches. The cut in the Jones Abridgment is of approximately the same dimensions.

424 See note on p. 417, below.

425 Mather’s drawing has often been characterized by other writers possessing a first-hand knowledge of the rock, and always unfavorably. I give such examples as my notes afford.

Edward A. Kendall (Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1809, iii. 188): “In the Doctor’s second line we are not able to discover a single figure resembling those on the rock, . . . though that part of the rock is at this day filled with figures the most distinct. . . . Dr. Mather, like his successors, toiled in the maze of conjecture;” he “substitutes for figures, at this day as plain as if they had been yesterday inscribed, others, of which it is impossible to recognize a single feature” (pp. 185–186).

Hon. John Davis (same volume, p. 197): “Mather’s copy is imperfect, and of little or no use.”

Samuel F. Haven (Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, 1856, viii. 28): “very rude and inaccurate.”

Rev. Charles R. Hale (unpublished manuscript on Dighton Rock, 1865, in possession of American Antiquarian Society): “It is hardly possible to conceive of a more incorrect drawing than Dr. Mather, or the draughtsman employed by him, has given us.”

George A. Shove (in Hurd’s History of Bristol County, Massachusetts, 1883, p. 250 f): “It bears not the slightest resemblance to the sculptured characters, but appears as if executed by a person having the St. Vitus dance or the delirium tremens.”

426 Diary, ii. 85–86.

427 William Checkley (H. C. 1756) was an officer of the Customs in Providence, and died July 18, 1780. His widow married Dr. Stiles in 1782. He was son of the Rev. Samuel Checkley (H. C. 1715), first minister of the New South Church in Boston. See Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, i. 58 note; and Providence Gazette Deaths.

428 Plate V. The “first line” of the other is shown in Plate VI.

429 Broadsides are known of a date earlier than this. See, for example: List of Early American Broadsides, 1680–1800 (Proceedings American Antiquarian Society, N. S., xi. 455–516); Weeks and Bacon, Historical Digest of the Provincial Press, 1911, i. 15, 16, 99 n, 219.

430 History of New England, ii. 593.

431 For my first acquaintance with Du Simitière’s manuscript I am indebted to Mr. Frederick L. Gay, who sent me his transcript of it. But he inadvertently omitted to give me also its author and source. A reference in the narrative to a visit by the author to the Rev. Dr. Stiles of Newport in 1768 led me to apply to Mr. Franklin B. Dexter, editor of Stiles’s Diary, for help; and he kindly suggested that I enquire of the Library Company of Philadelphia to see if Simitière might be the author sought. His surmise was correct, and the manuscript is No. 1412 Quarto in possession of the Library Company.

In Drake’s Dictionary of American Biography is the following brief account of the writer: “Pierre Eugène du Simitière, painter and antiquary, b. Geneva; d. Phila. 1788. A.M. of N. J. Coll. 1781. . . . He was an ardent patriot and a well-informed man, and collected materials for a Hist. of the Amer. Revolution.”

432 This date is evidently inaccurate, since Berkeley left America in 1731.

433 The valley known as the Wady Mukatteb, near Mount Sinai in Arabia, is lined with rocks and cliffs “engraved with ancient unknown characters.” These were called the “written mountains,” and were arousing interest and speculation in England analogous to that devoted to Dighton Rock, during the period under discussion. Among the earliest writers who mention them, according to Léon de Laborde (Journey through Arabia Petraea to Mount Sinai, 2nd ed., 1838, p. 259), were Belon, Neitzchitz, Monconys and Kirscha; but they attracted little attention. In 1706, however, Montfaucon published a French translation of the Topographia Christiana of Cosmas Indicopleustes, a writer of the sixth century, who believed that the children of Israel, during their forty years of wandering in the wilderness, made these inscriptions, “which have been preserved to this present time, as I suppose, for the sake of unbelievers.” In 1722 they were seen by the prefect of the Franciscan monastery at Cairo, who thought it probable that “these unknown characters contain some very secret mysteries, and that they were engraved either by the Chaldeans, or some other persons long before the coming of Christ.” His manuscript Journey from Grand Cairo to Mount Sinai was translated into English in 1753 by Robert Clayton, Bishop of Clogher, who was so confident that confirmation of the truth of the Biblical narrative of the Exodus would be derived from this source that he offered the sum of £500 toward defraying the expenses of anyone who would visit and copy them.

Such expectations were gradually abandoned, however, as the inscriptions became better known. They were visited, and some of them described and pictured, by Dr. Richard Pococke (Description of the East, 1743, i. 148), and by the eccentric Edward Wortley Montagu (Philosophical Transactions, 1766, lvi. 40–57; Gentleman’s Magazine, 1767, xxxvii. 374, 401: cf. Nichols’s Illustrations, 1812, iv. 625–656). The Rev. Thomas Harmer contributed to the discussion in his Observations on Divers Passages of Scripture, 2nd ed., 1776, ii. 142–153. Karsten Niebuhr went to the place in 1762, “although convinced that the wonderful part of the story of that mountain was perfectly imaginary,” and reported: “The marvelous part of this discovery by degrees disappeared; and the sanguine hopes which had been built upon it, vanished. . . . Those who examined them the most accurately, concluded . . . that they related nothing more than the names of travellers, and the dates of their journies” (Reisebeschreibung von Arabien, 1772; English translation 1792, i. 200–207).

This opinion seems to have been generally accepted. The writers in the English Review and in the Gentleman’s Magazine who reviewed Lort’s paper of 1787, were both so impressed by the commonplace outcome of these wonder-tales, that they regarded Dighton Rock as an empty marvel of the same kind. The latter says: “After the disappointment at the written mountain, one would not have thought the learned would have run after any more mountain scrawls” (1787, lvii. 699).

It was not until much later that the “unknown characters” were actually deciphered, and the opinion confirmed that their content was utterly trivial. The first success in this was due to Eduard Friedrich Ferdinand Beer (Inscriptiones . . . ad Montem Sinai, 1840). Suggestions as to later research and discussion can be found in the Princeton Review, 1870, xlii. 533, in Biblical encyclopaedias under the heading of “Sinaitic Inscriptions,” and in numerous books of travel.

434 These remarks refer to theories which in 1790 had recently been promulgated by President Stiles, Court de Gebelin, Vallancey and others.

435 English Review, xv. 180–182.

436 J. B. Nichols, Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century, 1848, vii. 504–506. Professor Kittredge gave me this reference and it was the clue to my discovery of the English Review.

437 Life and Letters of George Berkeley, 1871, p. 161. But compare what Fraser says later: “It is not to be supposed, however, that Berkeley travelled extensively in America, his knowledge of that country from personal observation was limited to a narrow region” (p. 162).

438 Biographia Britannica, vol. vi. pt. ii. 1766, Supplement, p. 16, Note I: “He was indefatigable in pastoral labours throughout New England.”

439 Bristol County, Massachusetts, N. District, Land Records, Book 13, p. 258.

440 Ibid. Probate Records, Book 20, p. 396.

441 In the Stiles Collection, Library of Yale University.

442 All authorities agree as to the date of Berkeley’s arrival at Newport. Dr. Fraser, however, his chief biographer, incorrectly names the Boston newspaper in which this event was announced. Benjamin Rand (Berkeley and Percival, 1914, p. 37) corrects the error, stating that both the Boston Gazette of January 27, 1729, and the New England Weekly Journal of February 3, 1729, make mention of the fact. The latter speaks of him as “Dean Barkley of Londonderry.” It is interesting to note that the pronunciation of his name thus indicated persisted for some time in New England. In 1750 an inventory was filed in Taunton, of an estate in Berkley, a neighboring town that had been named in honor of the Dean. The original instrument spells the name correctly; but the clerk who copied it into the Probate Records (Book 12, p. 158) gives it as “Bartley.”

The date of Berkeley’s departure for England has not yet found its way into his biographies. Even Rand fails to give it. Previous approximations have been based on a statement by Berkeley, in a letter dated September 7, 1731, that “I am now on the point of setting out for Boston, in order to embark for England” (Life and Letters, 1871, p. 188). Mr. Matthews has recently discovered that the exact day of sailing is shown by an entry in the Weekly Rehearsal of Monday, September 27: “Last Tuesday the Rev. Dean Berkley embark’d in Curling for London” (p. 4/2). The discovery seems to have been first made, however, by Mr. William E. Foster of Providence. In a paper on Some Rhode Island Contributions to the Intellectual Life of the Last Century, read before the American Antiquarian Society in April, 1892, he says: “The exact date, only roughly conjectured hitherto, even in the biography by Dr. Fraser, is found to have been September 21, 1731, through an entry under that date in an unpublished diary of Benjamin Walker. This manuscript is in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society” (Proceedings, viii. 103–132, 123 n). The entry in the Diary reads: “Dean Barclay saild in Curlin for London wi^th family.”

443 For the birth-dates and names of his children, see Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xxiv. 205, 209, 214, 218. Two of these records are inexact, as indicated in later footnotes. For the main facts known concerning John Smibert, see especially W. Dunlap, History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States, 1834, i. 27–31. Horace Walpole (Anecdotes of Painting in England, 1771) says that Smibert was born in Edinburgh about 1684, and died in March, 1751, leaving a widow and two children. The date of death was actually April 2, 1751, as is proved by obituary notices in the Boston News Letter for April 4, and in the Boston Evening Post for April 8, 1751. Another item of interest which seems to have escaped the notice of the biographers of Smibert is the following advertisement, which appeared in the Boston News Letter of October 17, 1734:

John Smibert, Painter,

SELLS all Sorts of Colours, dry or ground, with Oils and Brushes, Fanns of & several Sorts, the best Metzotinto, Italian, French, Dutch and English Prints, in Frames and Glasses, or without, by Wholesale or Retail, at Reasonable Rates; at his House in Queen-Street, between the Town-House and the Orange-Tree, Boston (p. 2/2).

Queen Street is the present Court Street. The Orange Tree stood on the northerly corner of Hanover and Court Streets: see Memorial History of Boston, i. 548, vol. ii. pp. xiv (Plan B, no. 30), xvii, 452. For the site of Smibert’s house, see ibid. vol. ii. pp. xiv (Plan B, no. 33), xviii.

444 Suffolk Probate Files, No. 9822.

445 His death, on January 18, 1774, was noticed in all the Boston newspapers. The Boston Records give the date of his birth as January 29, 1732; but this is probably incorrect, for his sister Allison was born only eight and a half months before. He apparently entered the Boston Public Latin School in 1743, and its Catalogue (1886) discussed his name (which is commonly given as William) and his birth-date as follows: “The record [on the Town Records] is plainly Jan., but the date of baptism at the Old South, 2 July, renders it possible that the copyist has mistaken u for a, and that it should read Jun. The record of baptism gives the name as Williams, which being the family name of his mother, is very likely correct” (p. 62 note 10). See also Suffolk Probate Files, No. 15549.

446 These facts are taken, and can be amplified, from Nathaniel I. Bowditch’s manuscript Records of Land Titles, in possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Liber 14, pp. 257, 258. See also 1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, ix. 208; Suffolk Probate Files, No. 16410.

447 The date of Nathaniel Smibert’s birth is always given as January 20, 1734. But inasmuch as a brother was born November 24, 1733, this date must be Old Style, and Nathaniel’s birth was in 1735. For the few facts known concerning his life, see: W. Dunlap, History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States, i. 31; Scribner’s Cyclopedia of Painters and Painting, 1887, iv. 192; and the next note.

448 “Yesterday Afternoon died here in the 22d Year of his Age Mr. Nathaniel Smibert, an ingenious young Gentleman, greatly esteemed by all that knew him” (Boston News Letter, November 4, 1756, p. 2/2). This passage corrects the usually given date of his death (November 8), as well as supporting the above correction as to his date of birth. Long obituary notices appeared in the Boston Gazette of November 8, p. 2/2; and in the Boston News Letter of November 11, p. 3/2.

449 As there is a bare possibility that the drawing may have been left in the studio and shared the fate of the other drawings and paintings that were there, I cite a few items that I have noted. In the work above referred to, Dunlap says on p. 351 that John Trumbull, when painting in Boston between 1777 and 1779, occupied the room which had been built by Smibert, in which remained many of his works. See also John Trumbull’s Autobiography, 1841, p. 49; Suffolk Probate Records, lxxxiv. 554–556. Mr. Charles H. Hart of New York informs me that some of Smibert’s paintings were still in the studio as late as the first decade of the last century. For further hints as to the use of Smibert’a studio or of the site on which it stood, and thus possibly as to the fate of its contents, see Memorial History of Boston, iv. 384; S. A. Drake’s Old Landmarks and Historic Personages of Boston, 1873, 72–74.

450 The United States elevated to Glory and Honor, New Haven, 1783.

451 Medical Repository, 1811, Third Hexade, ii. 176. Dr. Mitchill mentions the incident again in Archæologia Americana, 1820, i. 327.

452 “A Catalogue of the Manuscripts preserved in the British Museum hitherto undescribed: consisting of five thousand volumes, including the collections of Sir Hans Sloane, Bart. the Rev. Thomas Birch D.D. and about Five Hundred Volumes bequeathed, presented, or purchased at various Times,” London, 1782. I owe the facts concerning this Catalogue to Professor Kittredge, who explains further: “From Ayscough’s Preface (i. p. iv.) it appears that nos. 4101–4478 in his Catalogue are from the collections of Birch. Only nos. 1–4100 are Sloane MSS. In the present numeration in the British Museum, the Add’l MSS. begin with 4101. . . . 4432 (the Catalogue’s number for Greenwood) is the number of the MS. (now called Add’l. MS. 4432); 55 is the number of the article or division of the MS. Ayscough makes 86 divisions or articles (1–86) in this MS. 4432.” In connection with statements made below, it should be noted that this no. 4432 (now Add. MSS. 4432) is in the collection of Birch, not of Sloane. We shall later identify this reference with two letters of different dates by Isaac Greenwood, still in the British Museum, catalogued under slightly different numbers; and shall see that the “James” Greenwood was an error due to the fact that the letters were signed “Is.” and “I.” Greenwood, respectively.

453 Account of an antient Inscription in North America. Read November 23, 1786. In Archæologia, viii. 290–301. The same or a similar letter was later published in full by Bushnell, as discussed below.

454 F. Madden, “Index to the Additional Manuscripts, with those of the Egerton Collection, preserved in the British Museum, and acquired in the years 1783–1835,” 1849. This might prove to be a correct reference for the time when it was made, though incorrect now, on account of a change in the folio numbers.

455 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, 1887, xli. 414; Early Voyages to America, Collections Old Colony Historical Society, No. 4, 1889, p. 16.

456 Edward J. L. Scott, Index to the Sloane MSS. in the British Museum, 1904.

457 Charles M. Andrews and Frances G. Davenport, Guide to the manuscript material for the History of the United States to 1783 in the British Museum, p. 73. The reference is correct, but the folio number has been changed.

458 An Early Account of Dighton Rock, American Anthropologist, x. 251–254.

459 The person referred to was doubtless the Rev. Dr. Villers, and he was not Professor Greenwood’s correspondent. His identity seems to be conclusively established by the following notes, which I owe to the courtesy of Mr. Matthews:

Tothillfields is in Westminster, and St. John the Evangelist is in Smith Square, Westminster. In the Historical Register, 1736, xxi, Chronological Diary, p. 19, is the following: “Dy’d, . . . The Rev. Dr. Villers, Rector of St. John the Evangelist, Westminster.” This is under February, though no day is specified. On p. 15, under “Preferments,” is this: “Dr. Willis, Dean of Lincoln, to the Rectory of St. John, Milbank, Westminster, in the Room of Dr. Villers, deceas’d.” Millbank Street runs between Smith Square and the Thames, being connected with Smith Square by Church Street.

Even with these definite contemporary statements, however, it seems that the name under discussion must undergo yet another transformation. In a letter dated February 24, 1916, the Ven. Basil Wilberforce, Archdeacon of Westminster, forwards to me the following results of an inquiry made by Mr. J. E. Smith, “who is the antiquary expert of Westminster:” “There was never a Rector of St. John’s named Villiers, Villan or Viller. There was, however, a John Villa, who held the rectory for some years, including (so far as I remember) the particular years you mention. In the ‘Parochial Memorials of St. John’ you will find a reproduction of his signature obtained from the parochial receipts which the Rectors at that time used to give in respect of an allowance secured to them under the local Act. At the time the above mentioned Memorials were compiled every possible source of information was referred to with reference to the Rectors in succession of the Parish, but it happened that the John Villa in question afforded less information in the research than any one of the other Rectors. Such as could be gleaned, however, was incorporated with the Memorials. It was so sparse that I employed an expert to endeavor to render it more complete, but without success.”

Since there is a question as to whether the contemporary printed sources or the Parochial Memorials furnish the more reliable version of the name, I retain the spelling of the former in the text.

460 See first paragraph of Greenwood’s letter of 1730.

461 Reproduced in Plates VIII to XI.

462 See Letter C.

463 Reproduced in Plates XII to XVI.

464 Reproduced in Plates XVII and XVIII.

465 Neither Viller, nor Villan, nor any similar name beginning with a V or a W appears on the membership lists of either of the two societies in 1732 or thereabout. Cf. p. 279 note.

466 The Dictionary of National Biography speaks of John Eames as a “dissenting tutor.” “His reputation as a tutor, especially in natural science, was very great.” Dr. Isaac Watts considered him the most learned man of his acquaintance; and he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society through the influence of Sir Isaac Newton. He died in 1744.

467 The approximate measurements of these papers are as follows:

Letter A (6402.106, 107)	8 × 12
Combined Drawing (6402.47)	8 × 12¾
Letter B (4432.185, 189)	7½ × 9 +
Greenwood Drawing (4432.186)	3½ × 9½
Danforth Drawing (4432.187)	2¾ × 7¾
Danforth Slip (4432.188)	2½ × 6¼
Letter C (4432.190)	8½ × 11

468 Note particularly the difference in the capital “R” and in the manner of writing “y^e.” Note also that the slip calls the river “Assonet” or “Asonet.” Greenwood knew that its name was “Taunton;” but, quoting the slip, he wrote: “Assoonet (as this was then called),” — meaning, perhaps, at the time the slip was written. The error in name is clearly due, not to Greenwood, but to the writer of the slip.

A letter written by John Danforth in 1698 is in possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society. It presents a great variety in the manner of forming the letters. Thus there are three forms of r; three of e; two of h, etc. Capitals T, H, S, and W are very like those of the slip. I noticed three cases of the occurrence of the word “y^e;” in every case, the lower curve of the y is to the right, exactly as in the slip, although every other y in the whole letter, so far as I observed, even in “y^r,” has the curve turned to the left. The e also being alike in the two, the whole “y^e” becomes a strongly characteristic indication of identity. The spelling “neer” for “near” is reminiscent of the “meer” of the slip. This letter, therefore, although its very closely written page and variety of style give it at first sight an appearance very different from that of the slip, rather supports the assumption that the latter was written by Danforth.

469 This word is given in three different forms on the backs of the originals in the Museum: “dorse,” “dors,” and “dorso.”

470 Plate XVIII.

471 See C. W. Ernst, The Postal Service in Boston, in Professional and Industrial History of Suffolk County, 1894, ii. 443–504.

The British Post-Office Act of 1710, 9th Anne, Chapter 10, established a legal route and legal rates for mails from Boston, via New York, to London; the rate being 2 shillings per sheet, or 8 shillings for one ounce. But New York had no mail packets until 1755–56. Letters from Boston went by private ship, as so-called ship letters, instead of being sent by the legal route at the legal rates. If for London delivery and not carried personally to their destination by the ship’s captain, they were handed over to the “penny post” — not the Post Office, but a concern for handling local letters, whose charge for delivery was one penny.

Thus the above suggestion about the meaning of the “I N 5” does not seem to be warranted. Mr. Ernst, to whom I have submitted the problem, tells me that the “5–IV” indicates that the penny post received the letter on June 5th; and that the other marks indicate the receiving office. But if the penny post delivered for one penny irrespective of weight, what is the reason for the weight being indicated? Greenwood’s letter of three sheets and three smaller enclosures must actually have weighed not far from “1 oz.” “It is conceivable,” writes Mr. Ernst, “that your ship letter on arriving in London was gobbled by the postal authorities; but they could not lawfully collect more than a few pence.” The latest discussions of this subject of which I know are J. C. Hemmeon’s History of the British Post-Office, 1912, and a paper on The Colonial Post-Office, by William Smith, in the American Historical Review for January, 1916 (xxi. 258–275). They do not help to enlighten me as to the meaning of the I N 5, or whatever else is there written; and so I leave the solution of this question uncertain.

472 Evidence is not wholly lacking, however. The following mingling of surmise and fact is interesting and may be true; and it seems worth while to record a consistent and plausible speculation. On the Danforth drawing of Letter A (6402 f. 47), which is unquestionably a copy by Greenwood, underneath the first figure at the left is a character like a B lying on its side, thus: . It is not in keeping with the rest of the drawing, and looks almost as if it did not belong there. Yet Lort and all his successors accepted it as real and made it conform to the rest of the drawing. So also did Cotton Mather in 1690, though he made it look like a 9, not a B. But on this “original” Danforth drawing of Letter B (4432) it is much fainter than on the copy that Mather made and on the other copy that Greenwood made for Letter A. Moreover, it is not merely a B, but apparently a BI, and it clearly is not a part of the drawing itself, but an extraneous mark. Now it is a curious coincidence that these very initials are cut on another stone on the same property within half a mile from Dighton Rock. The owner of the rock at the time of Danforth’s visit in 1680, and again when Cotton Mather obtained his first drawing about 1689, was James Walker, a prominent man in Taunton, one of the original purchasers of Assonet Neck in 1677. In 1690, he deeded his property there to two daughters (see Bristol County, Massachusetts, N. District Land Records, Book 2, p. 242), one of whom in 1695 became the wife of Benjamin Jones (Memorial of the Walkers of Old Plymouth Colony, 1861, p. 421). The property was divided, and the part containing the Rock came into the ownership of this Benjamin Jones, who already dwelt there, the division line being marked by boundary stones on one side of which were “marked or engraven” the initials B:I: (loc. cit. Book 7, p. 720). In 1720, Hannah, widow relict of this Benjamin, deeded the property to her son Benjamin (loc. cit. Book 13, p. 258), who, since he lived until 1768 (Bristol County Probate Records, Book 20, p. 396), was dwelling on the place in 1730. He had personal knowledge of Greenwood’s visit at that time (see p. 270, above). It is barely possible that John Danforth visited in Taunton shortly after graduating from Harvard College; went to the Rock in company with its owner, James Walker; gave to the latter his original drawing, or one of them, and perhaps also the descriptive “slip” now in 4432 f. 188 to go with it; that later, possibly after Walker’s death (1691 or 1692), his daughter Hannah had these papers, and through her marriage they came into possession of Benjamin Jones; that he or his son Benjamin placed these initials on the drawing, and that it was from the latter that Greenwood secured the papers in 1730. My correspondent tells me that the paper of the two drawings, 186 and 187, seems different from the body of the letter, and smoother, especially 186. The two drawings, therefore, are apparently on differing paper, and 186 looks more handled than 187. As to the “slip,” 188, it is difficult to judge, because it is pasted onto modern paper of the British Museum. It is not probable that it was written by Greenwood at the same time that he composed his letter, because in such case he would have incorporated it into the letter. He already had it, as a descriptive companion to the drawing. Its handwriting may not be Greenwood’s and may be Danforth’s. It looks as if Greenwood had added to it not only the “No. 2,” but also the inserted “n” which corrects the previous spelling of the word “Tanton;” and other reasons have been given on an earlier page for the belief that the slip was not written by Greenwood. These considerations do not prove that the drawing and slip were by Danforth himself, nor that the initials on the drawing were put there by Benjamin Jones, father or son; they do not explain how Mather in 1689 happened to put another character in the corresponding position on his drawing; but they indicate interesting possibilities.

473 For B, see Plate XIV; for A, Plate XI; and for Lort, Plate VII.

474 Nathaniel Fisher was born about 1686; Harvard College, 1706; ordained in 1710; first minister of Taunton South Precinct, which, together with Assonet Neck, became the township of Dighton in 1712; continued in office until his death at the age of 91, August 30, 1777.

475 This is the end of the first page, except that the word “Time” is added at the bottom, to indicate the first word on the following page.

476 There is no evidence that any part of Taunton River was ever called Assonet. Its Indian name was Titicut, Tetiquet, or Tecticutt. Plymouth and Taunton records refer to it always as “down the river,” the “great river,” “Taunton Great River,” or later “Taunton River.” Assonet Bay and Assonet River are on the other side of Assonet Neck, and empty into Taunton River two miles below Dighton Rock. They are called by these names very frequently in the Proprietors’ Records between 1648 and 1669.

477 This word ends the second page of the letter.

478 Probably Mathurin Veyssière de Lacroze, who, according to Larousse’s Grand Dictionaire (xv. 973), was an “érudit et orientaliste français, né 1661, mort 1739.”

479 The words “that wch is under, with what is above Ground;” are here written in and crossed out.

480 This is an error made by Danforth: see pp. 284 note 1, 289 note 3, above.

481 The New England Weekly Journal of May 1, 1732, has the following entry: “Custom House, Boston, April 29. . . . Clear-Out, . . . Winslow & Scott for London” (p. 2/1). We have already seen that the letter was sent “Per Capt. Winslow.” This was doubtless the “Edw. Winslow” who “Entred Inwards” on the preceding 4th of March (ibid. March 6, p. 4/2).

482 MS. Minutes S. A. L., ii. 2.

483 The reason probably was that the drawings were not considered sufficiently complete and accurate. For we learn that before 1744 Eames sought to obtain a “more accurate copy” through Professor John Winthrop. See Archaeologia, viii. 295.

484 Archaeologia, viii. 292.

485 Letter of Frank O. Wales, town clerk, February 17, 1916.

486 Whitney’s error was reproduced by Anson Titus, Jr., in Charlton Historical Sketches (p. 21), but George F. Daniels in his History of the Town of Oxford (p. 40) and John Haven in his Historical Address (p. 7) give the date January 10, 1755. So also do each of the two histories of Worcester County published respectively in 1879 (i. 374) and 1889 (i. 746).

487 The petition is in the Archives, cxvi. 586.

488 cxvi. 764.

489 xx. 327.

490 Province Laws, vol. i. p. xxv.

491 Province Laws, iii. 781.

492 Province Laws, iii. 70–72.

493 College Book, i. 43.

494 Henry Saltonstall (1642) was a son, but not the eldest son, of a knight (Sir Richard Saltonstall). The only eldest son of a knight known to have been a student at Harvard was William Mildmay (1647), whose parentage has long been in dispute. It can now be stated, though the story is too long to be given in detail here, that he was not (as alleged by Savage and others) a son of Sir Henry Mildmay of Graces, Little Baddow, Essex, but was the eldest son of Sir Henry Mildmay of Wanstead, Essex. These two Sir Henry Mildmays were second cousins, both great-grandsons of Thomas Mildmay of Chelmsford, Essex. The Harvard graduate was a great-grandson of Sir Walter Mildmay, founder of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

495 The latest instance I have noted is an allusion to “Sir Ballard, a resident Graduate” under date of December 2, 1801 (College Book, viii. 408). Cf. Publications of this Society, viii. 295 note.

496 There are numerous instances where graduates, even after taking; their A.M., remained in residence. I have nowhere seen any allusion to this fact, and, though many were no doubt studying theology, it is difficult to know exactly what they were doing. Thus Daniel Rogers (1706–1782) was still in residence on September 8, 1729; while Daniel Rogers (1707–1785) remained in residence as late as April 11, 1732 — or seven years after graduation.

497 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxxiii. 423.

498 Of the fifty-nine dates given by Mr. Dean, eight (1643, 1646–1650, 1682, 1689) are certainly wrong, one (1642) is probably wrong, while two (1644, 1645) are doubtful.

499 2 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, x. 194–205, 360; xii. 72–73, 285–286.

500 1646, 1648, 1673, 1677, 1683, 1691, 1693, 1695, 1696, 1698–1700. The present paper cites contemporary records for all these dates except two — 1648 and 1673.

501 Magnalia (1702), bk. iv. p. 131.

502 On July 4, 1688, Sewall wrote: “Com̄encement managed wholly by Mr. W^m Hubbard; compared Sir William [Phips], in his Oration, to Jason fetching the Golden Fleece. Masters proceeded, no Batchelours” (Diary, ii. 219). Yet elsewhere he wrote under date of June 30, 1688: “Writt to . . . Brother . . . Stephen; . . . In Brother Stephen’s I inclosed the Com̄encers Theses” (Letter-Book, i. 85). Perhaps this entry was made some days after June 30 and Sewall inadvertently wrote “Com̄encers Theses” instead of “Quaestiones.”

503 1642, 1645, 1649–1652, 1654–1669, 1671, 1673–1677, 1679–1681, 1683–1686, 1690, 1692, 1694–1707, 1709, 1710, 1712–1716, 1718, 1724, 1728, 1729, 1736, 1752, 1757, 1764, 1774, and 1775. The Theses for 1642 were printed at Cambridge, but no copies are extant. Presumably they were dated, but if so the date was omitted when the Theses were reprinted in London in 1643 in New Englands First Fruits (pp. 18–20). Sewall mentions the Theses for 1707: see p. 335 note 2, below. President Stiles once owned the Theses for 1713, but his copy cannot now be located. Theses were printed in 1728 and 1729: see p. 338 note 3, below.

504 1687, 1689, 1721, 1727, 1730–1735, 1737–1739.

505 See pp. 332, 351, 352, below.

506 The year-date on the Theses for 1761 is also misprinted — “M,DCC,XLI.” instead of “M,DCC,LXI.” — but that misprint carries its own refutation. For another misprint in the year-date in 1808, see p. 366, below.

507 There were no public Commencements in 1752, 1757, 1764, 1774–1780. No Quaestiones are extant for any of those years, and no Theses for 1752, 1757, 1764, 1774, and 1775. But as Theses were printed in 1776–1780, there seems to be no reason why they may not have been printed in the other years as well, and also the Quaestiones for each of those years. At all events, simply because no copies are extant we cannot assume that none were printed. What were known as “private Commencements” were held in 1727–1735, but Quaestiones were printed in each of those years, as were also Theses (though those for 1728 and 1729 are not extant: cf. note 1, above).

508 Magnalia, bk. iv. p. 131.

509 1645, 1646, 1648–1650, 1652, 1654, 1661, 1662, 1667, 1670, 1672, 1673, 1677, 1683, 1706, 1721, 1752, 1757, 1764, 1774–1780, 1782, and 1783.

510 1722, 1727, 1730–1739, 1741.

511 It is not necessary to give here the Theses and Quaestiones that are fully dated, since they are all noted in the list on pp. 378–384, below.

512 See p. 332, below.

513 It will be observed that many more Quaestiones than Theses have been preserved. No doubt Mr. Lane’s conjecture is correct: “It is likely that the fire of 1764 was the cause of the destruction of many of the earlier Theses for it is to be noted that of the 21 sheets extant between 1642 and 1726 (85 years) the College Library has only four, while of the 58 extant Quaestiones falling within the same period, the College has 56. From this date down the file of both sheets in the College Library is fairly continuous. It is reasonable to conclude therefore that while the College file of Quaestiones escaped destruction in some way in 1764, the file of Theses perished.” Mr. Lane’s exhaustive and very useful article on Early Harvard Broadsides will be found in the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society for October, 1914, xxiv. 264–304.

514 In describing in 1907 a file of the Boston News Letter owned by the Boston Athenaeum, I wrote: “In a communication to this Society made in October, 1864, on ‘Catalogues of Harvard University,’ Sibley, speaking of the Triennial Catalogues, said: ‘A few years since, I found an excellent copy of the one for 1715, bound near the middle of a volume of the “Boston News Letter” of that year, which is in the Library of the Boston Athenaeum. Being of the same size as the newspaper, it had till then escaped observation’ (1 Proceedings, viii. 31). This catalogue is no longer in the volume” (3 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, i. 205). When Mr. Lane was preparing his paper on Early Harvard Broadsides, he asked me whether the missing Triennial had since turned up, and I was obliged to report that it had not; but recently I found it bound in a volume of broadsides to which it had been removed.

515 This statement is based on an examination of every known copy of every Boston newspaper of the proper date from 1704 to 1728, my thanks being due to the librarians of the American Antiquarian Society, the Connecticut Historical Society, the New York Historical Society, and the State Historical Society of Wisconsin for information about certain issues. Of a few issues of the right date, no copies are known.

516 Nevertheless the dates of two Commencements before 1728, did we not know them from other sources, could be recovered from newspapers. The following notice is from the Boston News Letter of July 24, 1704: “Mr. Thomas Weld, a pious Youth, Son to the Reverend Mr. Thomas Weld, Minister of Dunslable, who took his Second Degree at Cambridge on the 5th Instant, Sickened on the Fryday following, Dyed the 21st Currant at Braintrey, and Buried at Roxbury the 22d” (p. 4/1). For the other instance, see p. 339, below.

517 “The Rev^d m^r Urian Oakes was Installed Presid^t of Harvard College by Govern. Bradstreet in the College-Hall on the Com̄encm^t day. August 1680” (College Book, iii. 72). “Com̄encm^t Day at the Presid^ts House 1712” (iv. 43). “At a meeting of the Presid^t and Fellows of Harvard College in the Library on the Com̄encm^t Day 1718” (iv. 62).

518 “At an Overseer’s Meeting in the College Hall, 7° Iuly. 1714” (College Book, iv. 53). “At a Meeting of the Presid^t and Fellows of Harvard College at the Presid^ts House in Cambridge Iune 28, 1721” (iv. 72).

519 On June 17, 1729, the Corporation “Voted, yt y^e Commencement for this year, be upon Friday, y^e twenty-seventh of this Jnstant June” (College Book, iv. 138). The record of this meeting, in the hand of President Wadsworth, is immediately followed by a “Memorandum, on Commencement day, Jun. 28. 1729,” also written by President Wadsworth. In his Diary (p. 68), Wadsworth correctly dates the entry, “Commencement. Jun. 27. 1729.” “A Stated meeting of the Board of Overseers of Harvard College was held on Commencement day, the twenty seventh of June, A.D. 1870, at nine o’clock in the forenoon in Gore Hall, in Cambridge” (Overseers Records, x. 412): but Commencement Day in 1870 was June 28, not 27.

520 College Book, i. 93.

521 Overseers’ Records, i. 34.

522 College Book, iv. 39.

523 The dates in the Steward’s Account Book of Thomas Chesholme must be used with great caution.

524 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, iii. 374. The entry may have been made as late as 1745.

525 New England Historical and Genealogical Registry, xiii. 305–306.

526 Edward Holyoke’s Almanack for 1715 gives August 31 as Commencement, while Nathaniel Whittemore’s Almanack for 1715 gives July 6: the correct date was August 31. Other errors in almanacs are as follows. John Tulley’s Almanack for 1689 gives July 3 as Commencement: the correct date was September 11. Whittemore’s Almanack for 1721 gives July 5 as Commencement: the correct date was June 28. Nathan Bowen’s New-England Diary for 1727 gives July 7 as Commencement: the correct date was June 30. Nathaniel Ames’s Astronomical Diary for 1740 gives July 2 as Commencement: the correct date was August 27. Ames’s Astronomical Diary for 1749 gives July 5 as Commencement: the correct date was July 18. George Wheten’s Astronomical Diary for 1753 gives July 4 as Commencement: the correct date was July 18.

527 History of Harvard University, p. 9.

528 Collection of College Words and Customs, p. 55.

529 See p. 310, above.

530 Harvard the First American University, pp. 55–56.

531 Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, xx. 46, 250. In 1875 Edmund Quincy remarked: “Mr. Sibley finds himself unable to fix the precise day of the Commencement of 1642, but probably it was in August” (Harvard Book, ii. 152).

532 Life and Letters of John Winthrop, ii. 301.

533 Harvard Graduates, i. 15.

534 Attention may be called to a curious error that has crept into the Century Dictionary. In its academic sense the word “act” is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “a thesis publicly maintained by a candidate for a degree, or to show a student’s proficiency,” and in the Century Dictionary as “a public disputation or lecture required of a candidate for a degree of master;” but the latter definition is incorrect and both definitions are imperfect, since the word also means (as in the passage quoted in the text) the occasion or ceremony of keeping acts. On May 6, 1650, the Overseers ordered that such as “expect to proceed masters of Art” were “to exhibit their Synopses of Arts required by y^e Lawes of y^e Colledge” (College Book, i. 44), the reference being to the 19th of the College Laws of 1642–1646, which reads:

Every Scholar that giveth up in writing a Synopsis or summa of Logicke, Naturall & morall Philosophy, Arithmeticke, Geometry; & Astronomy, & is ready to defend his theses or positions, . . . at any publike act after triall hee shall bee capable of y^e 2^d degree of Master of Arts (i. 44).

The order of May 6, 1650, was printed in Quincy’s History of Harvard University (i. 518), but the words “their Synopses of Arts” were misread by the copyist employed by Quincy and in the History are misprinted “their synopsis of acts.” The expression “synopsis of acts” obviously has no meaning at all; yet the above passage from Quincy’s History was quoted by B. H. Hall in his Collection of College Words and Customs (1851, p. 3), and also duly appears in the Century Dictionary under “act.”

It will be observed that in 1642 the students kept two “solemne Acts for their Commencement.” Mr. Lane suggests that the ceremony consisted of two parts: first, orations, etc.; second, defence of theses.

535 New Englands First Fruits, pp. 16–17.

536 History (1853), ii. 91–105. It is possible that the original manuscript of Winthrop’s History, if in existence, would throw some further light on the date of these passages; but unfortunately, as Mr. Tuttle informs me, the second volume of the manuscript (which contained the passages in question) was loaned to James Savage on October 27, 1825, and was destroyed by fire on the 10th of November following.

537 Massachusetts Colony Records, ii. 28. Cf. Love, Fast and Thanksgiving Days of New England, pp. 156, 178.

538 Massachusetts Colony Records, ii. 31.

539 Cf. Winthrop, History, ii. 55; Publications of this Society, xvii. 215.

540 On November 20, 1637, the Court appointed the following committee “to take order for a colledge at Newetowne:” Richard Bellingham (Treasurer), Rev. John Cotton, Rev. John Davenport, Thomas Dudley (Deputy-Governor), Roger Harlakenden, John Humfrey, Rev. Hugh Peters, Rev. Thomas Shepard, Israel Stoughton, Rev. Thomas Weld, Rev. John Wilson, John Winthrop (Governor). These names — except that John Endicott (then Deputy-Governor) takes the place of Roger Harlakenden (who died in 1638) — are printed on the 1642 Theses (New Englands First Fruits, 1643, p. 18). Mr. Gay conjectures that “at the first Commencement only six were probably present, viz. Winthrop, Endicott, Bellingham, Cotton, Wilson, Shepard. Of the other members, Weld, Peter, and Humphrey were then in England, Stoughton was apparently on the way thither, and Davenport had gone to New Haven in 1638” (Publications of this Society, xvii. 125). Mr. Gay has apparently overlooked Dudley. By “most of them,” Winthrop appears to refer to the members of the board as it was constituted on September 27.

541 Massachusetts Colony Records, ii. 30.

542 Referring to the years 1672–1673, Dr. Green says: “During this period the customary way of giving the date of Commencement on the college programme was changed, and the Roman system adopted.” As a matter of fact the Roman system was employed in 1647, though no system was adhered to consistently. Some dates are given in the text under 1643, 1646, 1653, 1675, 1676, 1682, 1684, 1723, 1768, 1772, 1774–1780. A few others follow, Q and T indicating the Quaestiones and the Theses:

1647	T	Cantabrigiæ Nov: Ang: 6 Calend. Sextilis. 1647.
1655	Q	Decimoquarto Die Sextilis 1655.
1670	T	Cantabrigiæ Nov-Angliæ die nono Sextilis Anno	M. DC. LXX.
1674	Q	Tertio Idus Sextiles M.DC.LXXIV.
1678	T	Cantabrigiæ Nov-Anglorum Idibus Sextilibus: MDCLXXVIII.
1687	T	Cantabrigiæ Nov-Anglorum. Anno à, Christo nato. MDC.LXXXVII.
1690	Q	Sexto Nonas Quintilis. M,DC,XC.
1691	T	Cantabrigiæ Nov-Anglorum Calendis Julii. M. DC. XCI.
1692	Q	Die Sexto Quintilis M DC XCII.
1696	Q	Kalendas Quintilis. M DC XC VI.
1698	Q	Die Sexto Quintilis. M DC XC VIII.
1708	T	Habita in Comitijs Cantabrigiæ Nov-Anglorum, Die Septimo Quintilis. MDCCVIII.
1713	Q	Calendis Quintilibus. M DCC XIII.
1717	T	Habita in Comitiis Cantabrigiæ Nov-Anglorum, Quinto Nonarum Quintilis. MDCCXVII.
1740	T	Habita in Comitiis Academicis Cantabrigiæ Nov-Anglorum, Sexto Calendas Septembris, Anno MDCCXL.

Other dates will be found in Mr. Lane’s article on Early Harvard Broadsides.

543 Cf. p. 207 note, above.

544 In an almanac (the only known copy of which lacks the title-page) for 1646 compiled by Samuel Danforth, Commencement Day is given as July 28. Danforth may have given July 28 because in 1645 Commencement had been July 29; or the last Tuesday in July may have been fixed upon at some Corporation or Overseers’ meeting between the summer of 1645 and the end of that year, when the almanac was presumably printed.

545 P. 1. The copy owned by the Massachusetts Historical Society fills sixteen pages, but has no title. It was not printed until 1709, for on September 17 of that year Sewall wrote: “Mr. Green finishes printing Mr. Whiting’s Oration” (Diary, ii. 263). Presumably the date was taken from the original manuscript.

546 Sibley, Harvard Graduates, i. 548. Dr. Green quotes the extracts in the text and also the date “30–5–50” and the words “Commencment Chardge” against the name of William Stoughton, who graduated in 1650 (Sibley, i. 549). But, as already stated (p. 315 note 4, above), the entries in Chesholme’s book must be used with great caution, and no date found in it can be accepted as Commencement Day unless the day is specifically stated to be Commencement Day. Thus against the name of Urian Oakes is the date “10–7–52” and the words “his Commencement Chardges” (i. 548); against the name of John Collins is the date “10–7–52” and the words “his Commencment Chardges” (i. 549); against the name of John Glover is the date “12–7–51” and the words “by his Commencmente Chardges” (Chesholme’s Account Book, p. 142); against the name of Leonard Hoar is the date “10–7–53” and the words “by Commencment Charges” (Sibley, i. 550). There is no reason for supposing that Commencement came on September 10 in 1652, and we know with certainty that it did not come on September 12 in 1651 or on September 10 in 1653. The Commencement charge was often paid not on Commencement Day, but on quarter day; and presumably the above dates were quarter days. This point is clearly brought out by the original entry under Mildmay’s name, which in Chesholme’s Account Book (fol. 3) reads: “13–7–50 by m^r Willyam Mildmay his Commencment Chardges 003–02–06;” but above the date is written “quarter day,” while below the date is written “Commencment day 30 of July befor this quarter day.” Many other instances where Commencement charges are entered against a quarter day occur in Chesholme’s book. The practice of granting degrees before College dues were paid, though surprising, apparently continued for over half a century. On June 11, 1694, the Corporation ordered “That Such as Stand for their Degrees Shall ten days at least before the Com̄encm^t clear their Accounts with y^e Colledge Steward” (College Book, iv. 9). As late as 1721 the Steward found it “exceeding Difficult to get in the Tuition money as well as other College dues” (iv. 70); and on June 2, 1725, the Corporation felt it necessary to vote “That the Tut^rs be desired to Notify those who Stand for their degrees that they pay all College Dues to the Stew^d in order to their regularly receiving their degrees and that the Stew^d Exhibit to the Tut^rs a List of the Commencers Names the day before Commencment to signify how far this Order is complyed w^th” (iv. 102)

547 Ill Newes from New-England, pp. 10, 11.

548 Wonder-Working Providence, p. 166.

549 Early Harvard Broadsides, pp. 275–279, where the problem is discussed at length.

550 See p. 323 note 2, above.

551 Chesholme’s Account Book, p. 54; Sibley, i. 552.

552 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, i. 8. It is pleasant to find that on September 20 Adams “came to Cambridge again with my uncle N. A.,” and that on the next day he was “admitted into Colledge” — his uncle Nathaniel no doubt furnishing the “pecunia.”

553 Ibid. i. 13.

554 Ibid. i. 17.

555 In the second of two volumes of manuscripts (preserved in the College archives) labelled “President Leverett’s Discourses.” This title is a misnomer, since, though all the discourses are unmistakably in the hand of Leverett, he was certainly not the author of some of them. The second volume contains “Oratio Comitiis Cantabr. Nov-Anglor̄ habita Anno Domini, 1652. ꝑ orataqȝ à Rev^do Nath. Rogers. Ecclesiæ Ipsvicensis Pastore Eximio, in Aulâ Scil. Harvardinâ” (pp. 93–98); an oration delivered in 1686 (pp. 99–104); “Oratio Salutatoria Comitiis Academicis habita Anno Dom̄. 1703” (pp. 104–114: was this by Spencer Phips?); an oration in 1708 (pp. 114–123) and another in 1709 (pp. 124–125), presumably by Leverett himself; and orations delivered by Oakes in 1672 (pp. 1–9), 1675 (pp. 10–29), 1677 (pp. 29–52), and 1678 (pp. 52–77); and various other discourses. Presumably the dates were copied from the original manuscripts.

556 2 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xiii. 350.

557 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, i. 21. The dates in Adams’s Diary are somewhat hard to follow, and Sibley (Harvard Graduates, ii. 384) wrongly assigns the extract quoted in the text to “Aug. 10. 1674.” The year “1674” is Sibley’s interpolation. The extract itself shows that it must have been written in 1675. First, Commencement in 1674 was on August 11, not 10. Second, President Hoar of course presided in 1674; but on March 15, 1675, “D^r Leonard Hoar made a resignac̄on of his Presid^tship of the College” (College Book, iii. 67: see also p. 369, below). The entry corrects an error in the Quinquennial, where it is stated that Adams took his A.M. in 1674.

558 President Leverett’s Discourses, ii: see note 1, above.

559 2 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xiii. 369.

560 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxxiv. 103.

561 The manuscript of this portion of the Diary itself is not in existence. It is greatly to be regretted that Sewall’s Diary, upon which so much reliance is placed for exact dates, should have been so carelessly printed. Marginal entries (which often are essential to the text) have not been printed at all, words have been misread, and various errors of commission and omission occur. Cf. Publications of this Society, xvii. 53 note, 63 note 2. In 1701 the printed Diary (ii. 38) wrongly gives Commencement as July 1 instead of July 2: see p. 330, below. And in 1704 the printed Diary twice (ii. 111, 112) gives Commencement as July 15 instead of July 5, the original Diary showing that Sewall wrote “July, 5” in each case, the comma having been turned into the figure 1.

562 President Leverett’s Discourses, ii: see p. 326 note 1, above.

563 See p. 313, above.

564 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vii. 56. It is to be regretted that the person who deciphered Russell’s Diary was unable to read his writing, as the printed Diary contains several palpable errors. Nor was Russell, as alleged by the editor, a Tutor, but, as stated in the text, a resident graduate.

565 There is still another contemporary record for this year. In a letter to Increase Mather dated Stamford, September 16, 1682, the Rev. John Bishop said: “I lately received . . . a Catalogue of Harvard’s sons” (4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, viii. 311). This can refer only to the 1682 Triennial. Had Commencement come on September 13th, Bishop would have received his catalogue not “lately,” but only a day or two before he wrote his letter — if, indeed, he could have received it at all before September 16th.

How many days before Commencement were the programmes printed? In 1671 Commencement was August 8, and on August 2 William Adams noted in his Diary: “Was printed our theses for y^e commencemt” (4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, i. 13). Of the extant Theses and Quaestiones for the years 1727–1735 only two are fully dated: the Quaestiones for 1728 and 1729. On June 17, 1728, Commencement was appointed to be “on Friday, y^e 28^th of this Jnstant June” (College Book, iv. 131); and on June 17, 1729, Commencement was appointed to be “upon Friday, y^e twenty-seventh of this Jnstant June” (iv. 139) Hence in those two years the Quaestiones could not have been printed more than eleven or ten days in advance. That the programmes would have been printed two or three weeks before Commencement is unlikely in the extreme.

566 There is no name on the title-page, but on the title-page of a copy of the almanac owned by the Massachusetts Historical Society Judge Sewall has written, “By Mr. Cotton Mather.”

567 College Book, i. 89.

568 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, viii. 521–522.

569 College Book, iii. 85. The only entry relating to the matter in Increase Mather’s manuscript Diary (owned by the American Antiquarian Society) is under date of January 3, 1684: “O[v]erseers of ye Colledge mett, & voted yt Com̄ent sd for ye future be on ye 1 Wednesday in July.”

570 On January 12, 1684, Russell says in his Diary, “I went to Cambridge to carry my Almanack to ye Press;” and on January 26, “My Almanack was printed” (New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vii. 59).

571 College Book, i. 93, iii. 85.

572 See p. 316 note 2, above.

573 John Nelson.

574 Isaac Addington, Secretary of the Province.

575 Increase Mather.

576 This entry, though it begins June 30, obviously could not have been written before July 2. In the printed Diary (ii. 37–38) the figure “2.” which of course means July 2, appears as a semicolon, thus making it appear that Commencement was July 1.

577 John Leverett.

578 College Book, iv. 53. Cf. Sewall, Diary, iii. 9. See p. 316 note 2, above.

579 College Book, iv. 58.

580 Overseers’ Records, i. 19. A similar entry is in Leverett’s Diary, p. 198.

581 P. 199. No meeting is recorded in the Overseers’ Records on June 28. The Corporation met that day, but the fact that it was Commencement is not stated: see p. 314 note 4, above.

582 See pp. 312, 312 note 4, 313, 313 note 4, above.

583 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xiv. 28.

584 xv. 199.

585 Overseers’ Records, i. 52.

586 The date should have been “Quinto Nonas Quintilis.” According to the Roman calendar, the Calends were the first day in any month; the Ides were the 15th of March, May, July, and October, and the 13th of the other months; the Nones were the ninth day before the Ides (counting both days), i.e. the 7th of March, May, July, and October, and the 5th of the other months; and the Romans reckoned the days forward to the Calends, Nones, or Ides next following. The fact that Commencement happened to come on July 3 may have caused the authorities inadvertently to write “Tertio” instead of “Quinto.” On the other hand, Professor Albert A. Howard of Harvard University, to whom I am indebted for help, tells me that the authorities may have used printed tables for converting Christian dates into Roman dates. If so, since the programmes were no doubt prepared and printed in June, it would have been easy for the authorities to look at the June column instead of the July column, for the 3d of June would have been “Tertio Nonas Junias.”

In 1663 Commencement was August 11, the Quaestiones being dated “UNDECIMO DIE SEXTILIS M.DC.LXIII.” There has been preserved in manuscript a set of burlesque Theses, dated “Quinto Idùs Augusti An^o Magni Iubilæi MDCLXIII.” — that is, Sunday, August 9. “This discrepancy as to the date,” writes Mr. Edes, “can be accounted for by assuming that the author or authors forgot that the Ides of August fell on the thirteenth of the month instead of the fifteenth as in July when, probably, no inconsiderable portion of this paper was written.” (See Publications of this Society, v. 322–339.) It thus appears, to borrow Jowett’s phrase, that in 1663, as now, “not even the youngest” were infallible.

587 See p. 321, above.

588 See p. 318, above.

589 Massachusetts or The first Planters of New-England (Boston, 1696), p. 20.

590 New-Englands Plantation (Essex Book and Print Club, 1908), p. 30.

591 College Book, iii. 27.

592 iii. 73.

593 iii. 73.

594 Dr. Green quotes these lines and asks: “Do they have reference to the drinking habits of that period?” The answer must obviously be in the affirmative. Our associate Mr. Merritt calls my attention to an interesting passage in a letter from the Rev. Nathan Prince to the Secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. The controversy of Prince, for many years Tutor and Fellow, with the Corporation was a cause célèbre in the history of the College. Writing on August 29, 1745, he said: “It has been represented that ‘I was expelled the Independent College in this Country for Immorality.’ There is something, Sir, more gross than Intemperance itself suggested to the mind, when ’tis said that a Person is condemned for Immoralities: Whereas I never was charged before the Government of that College with any thing immoral, but only with one or two Acts of Intemperance during fifteen years’ run of their lascivious Commencements and other publick Entertainments” (W. S. Perry, Historical Collections relating to the American Colonial Church, iii. 393).

595 College Book, iv. 7. On July 8, 1707, Sewall recorded that he “gave Mr. Stoddard for Madam Stoddard two half pounds of Chockalat, instead of Com̄encment Cake; and a Thesis” (Diary, ii. 192).

596 Diary, ii. 189–190.

597 By “Fellows of the House” axe meant the Tutors.

598 College Book, iv. 69–70.

599 iv. 78.

600 iv. 118.

601 Here a marginal entry reads: “N.B. The overseers at y^r meeting. Apr. 11. 1727. added ys clause, viz: And y^t these Rules be observed till further order.”

602 College Book, iv. 121–122.

603 iv. 122–123.

604 Here a marginal entry reads: “Reforming y^e Commencements Ys Act was consented to by y^e Overseers, published in the Hall. Jun. 19. 1727. and ordered to be set up in y^e Hall.”

605 College Book, iv. 123.

606 iv. 124. An advertisement about Commencement was printed in the Boston News Letter of May 18, 1727.

607 This does not mean that Commencement was never mentioned before 1728. It has already been pointed out (p. 314 note 2, above) that the Commencement of 1704 was casually referred to in a Boston paper, and advertisements about Commencement were occasionally inserted by the College authorities. Also, there was printed in the New England Weekly Journal of July 3, 1727, a poem of 155 lines called “The Sequel of Commencement,” introduced as follows:

Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero

Pulsanda tellus —— —— Hor.

WHILE I was preparing an Entertainment for the Publick, I was diverted from my Subject, with the Seasonable Conclusion of a Poem, enclosed in the following Letter to our Society.

Gentlemen,

‘You may please to remember, that the Poem on Commencement that was published the last Year, concluded at the College with a Complement to the Members of that learned Society. I have presumed to march off the prodigious Swarm that were then left at Cambridge, and conduct them thro’ their various Pastimes & Divertisements, down to their several Districts and Habitations; promising my self your Protection, and candid Examination of the Performance.

I am

Gentlemen

Your Obliged Servant.

608 The word “author” formerly meant editor or publisher.

609 No copies of the Theses for 1728 or 1729 have been preserved; but that they were duly printed is proved by the passage in the text and by this extract from the same paper of June 30, 1729 (p. 2/2):

On Fryday last the 27th Currant, was the Annual Commencement at Cambridge for this Year, (it being the Third in order of the more Private Commencements.) when the following Persons, had their Degrees given them, after they had held their Publick Disputations in the Church of that Town, as they are in the Printed Theses and Questions, viz. . . .

610 P. 2/1. Then follow the names of those who received degrees. It is pertinent to point out that the names of those receiving degrees printed in the newspapers furnish important evidence which has not as yet been used by the Editor of the Quinquennial. Thus the 1915 Quinquennial records that thirty-eight members of the class of 1725 and twenty-eight members of the class of 1726 received their second degree (A.M.) in course — that is, in 1728 and 1729 respectively. But the newspapers cited in the text and in the preceding note record only thirty-six in 1728 and twenty-seven in 1729. It is to be hoped that this source of information will some day be utilized. A case in point may be specified. Stephen and William Fessenden were both in the class of 1737 and so would have taken their A.M. in course in 1740. On July 1, 1741, the Corporation voted (College Book, iv. 231) that “Mr. Fessenden who was a Candidate the last year, be allow’d the Same Privilege” — that is, be allowed his second degree. The vote clearly indicates that one of the Fessendens received his A.M. in 1740, and from the Boston News Letter of August 28, 1740, we learn that it was “Gulielmus Fessenden.” Hence it was Stephen who received his A.M. out of course in 1741, thus correcting an error in the Quinquennial, where it is stated that both Fessendens received their A.M. in 1741.

A curious fact to which, apparently, attention is now called for the first time is that the Quinquennial contains the names of several men who never received the A.B. degree at all. Three instances may be given. Ebenezer Hartshorn entered in the class of 1732, left College, in 1737 was given an A.M., and his name is printed under his class (1732). George Erving entered in the class of 1757, left College, in 1762 obtained an A.M. from Glasgow University, was admitted to the same degree ad eundem at Harvard in 1762, and his name is printed under his class (1757). Amos Windship entered in the class of 1771, left College, in 1790 was given both an A.M. and an M.B., and his name is printed under his class (1771). On August 19, 1830, the Corporation “Voted — That in the present number of Colleges in the United States, & variety of studies required in them, that it is inexpedient to grant generally, degrees ad eundem” (Corporation Records, p. 186).

611 The advertisements in the newspapers informing the candidates for their second degree when to appear in Cambridge gave a clue. A glance at the list of Commencement Days (pp. 378–384, below) shows that during the nine years (1727–1735) when these private celebrations obtained, Commencement ranged from June 23 to July 5 and that the day was always Friday, except in 1730 when it was Wednesday.

612 College Book, iv. 145.

613 iv. 166.

614 Boston News Letter, July 5, 1733, p. 2/1. An account in the New England Weekly Journal of July 2 reads in part as follows:

Cambridge, June 30. 1733.

Yesterday was the Commencement, at which His Excellency the Governour [Belcher] was present, being attended by a number of the King’s Officers, and Col. Hatch’s Troop of Horse Guards; His Excellency brought with Him in his Chariot the Honourable Mr. George Townshend Son to the Right Honourable the Lord Viscount Townshend, and Nephew to the Right Honourable Sir Robert Walpole (p. 2/1).

George Townshend, later Admiral, was then a youth of eighteen, and was serving under Captain Thomas Durell on the Scarborough. To the Commencement of 1711 Governor Dudley brought General John Hill — brother of Queen Anne’s favorite Abigail Hill, Lady Masham, and the “Jack” Hill depicted by Thackeray and others — and Admiral Sir Hovenden Walker, who were in command of the land and sea forces in the disastrous expedition against Quebec. But for the intercession of Dudley, Hill, and Walker, John Wainwright, who “stood Convict of being . . . in a Riot late in the night,” would have lost his degree. (College Book, iv. 39–40.) In 1744 some Mohawk chiefs, then visiting Boston, were brought to Commencement by Governor Shirley and dined in the College Hall (New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xiv. 257). So far as I have observed, the presence of distinguished guests (except, of course, the Governors and Lieutenant-Governors) was first noted on the Commencement programmes in 1868.

615 College Book, iv. 173.

616 Overseers’ Records, i. 145.

617 i. 148.

618 i. 149.

619 College Book, iv. 189.

620 Overseers’ Records, i. 150.

621 On June 10, 1741, the Overseers took the following action:

Upon a Motion made & Seconded and a Considerable debate thereupon — The Question was put whether it shal be recommended to the Corporation to make an Order for suspending for this present year the Laws relating to the Commencemt so far as they may be thought inconsistent with a more private manner of giving the degrees and also that it be recommended to the said Corporation that thereupon the degrees be given in as private a way as may be — wch passed in the Negative (Overseers’ Records, i. 191).

622 College Book, iv. 222–223.

623 The President and the Steward were the Rev. Edward Holyoke and Andrew Boardman (d 1747). On July 3 Holyoke noted: “The Com[mence]ment put by on account of the throat distemper” (Holyoke Diaries, p. 6). In July Paul Dudley wrote: “The Commencement put by this year by reason of the Throat Distemper at Cambridge. The President’s Lady died of it the latter end of June” (Diary, in New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxxv. 30). This was Holyoke’s second wife, Margaret Appleton, who died June 25 (Holyoke Diaries, p. 6).

624 College Book, iv. 222–223.

625 iv. 223.

626 College Book, iv. 298–299.

627 Overseers’ Records, ii. 14, 15.

628 College Book, iv. 300.

629 College Book, vii. 13. Approved by the Overseers on June 10, 1752 (Overseers’ Records, ii. 26).

630 College Book, vii. 22.

631 College Book, vii. 22–23. There was no meeting of the Corporation between August 27 and September 18, 1752; but between those meetings President Holyoke has written: “Mem^o All the after Dates are according to the Kalendar as it hath been corrected by Act of Parliament” (vii. 16). The Act of Parliament, passed in 1751, decreed that the following first day of January should be New Year’s Day (instead of, as formerly, March 25th), and that in September, 1752, the 3rd should be reckoned the 14th.

632 Overseers’ Records, ii. 30.

633 College Book, vii. 32. No action was taken by the Corporation at its meeting held on April 30, and no meeting was recorded between April 30 and May 27.

634 College Book, vii. 59.

635 The meeting-house in Cambridge was then being rebuilt: cf. p. 377 note 1, below.

636 College Book, vii. 59–60.

637 Overseers’ Records, ii. 47.

638 College Book, vii. 60.

639 Overseers’ Records, ii. 47–49.

640 By “English grain” is meant wheat.

641 College Book, vii. 60–62. On May 28, 1759, the Corporation voted “That it shall be deemed no Offence, if any Scholar shall at the Com̄encem^t make & entertain any of the Guests at his Chamber, w^th Punch, any Law Usage or Custom to the contrary notwithstanding” (vii. 75).

642 In the form of the diploma entered in College Book, iv. 61, the date is left blank: “Subscribo —— —— Anno ——.” Neither the Boston News Letter of July 14 nor the Boston Evening Post of July 18 mentioned the day. But in the Boston Gazette (the only other paper published in Boston at that time) of Monday, July 18, was a paragraph beginning, “The following young Gentlemen received their Degrees as Bachelors of Arts by a Diploma last Wednesday, viz. . . .” (p. 2/1) — that is, July 13.

643 College Book, vii. 80.

644 Overseers’ Records, ii. 65.

645 College Book, vii. 84.

646 Overseers’ Records, ii. 70.

647 Harvard Hall was burned January 24th: see Publications of this Society, xiv. 2–43.

648 College Book, vii. 117–118. The reference is to vii. 13, where the form for 1752 is entered.

649 Overseers’ Records, ii. 163–167.

650 College Book, vii. 118–119.

651 College Book, vii. 119–120.

652 Overseers’ Records, ii. 170.

653 College Book, vii. 121.

654 Overseers’ Records, ii. 174. The following is taken from their meeting of July 18 (ii. 177–178):

The form of Presentation — with the Governor’s Placet, added in y^e Psence & at y^e Desire of y^e Overseers. . . .

Placetne?	Placet
Cantabrigiæ Julij. 17^mo	Fra. Bernard
1764.	Bostoni Julij 18^mo 1764.

655 The square brackets are in the original.

656 College Book, vii. 181. The Overseers’ Records are silent regarding this matter.

657 College Book, vii. 273. Approved by the Overseers June 2 (Overseers’ Records, iii. 73). A notice that there would be no public Commencement appeared in the Boston Gazette of June 6, p. 1/1.

658 College Book, vii. 290–291. Approved by the Overseers July 31 (Overseers’ Records, iii. 80).

659 College Book, vii. 293.

660 College Book, vii. 303. Approved by the Overseers July 2 (Overseers’ Records, iii. 94). The diploma is recorded in College Book, vii. 306–307.

661 College Book, vii. 323. Approved by the Overseers June 19 (Overseers’ Records, iii. 109). The diploma is recorded in College Book, vii. 327–328.

662 Rev. Samuel Langdon.

663 The result of Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga, October 17, 1777.

664 College Book, viii. 2–3. Approved by the Overseers June 10 (Overseers’ Records, iii. 131–132). The diploma is recorded in College Book, viii. 5–6.

665 Overseers’ Records, iii. 156.

666 Overseers’ Records, iii. 156.

667 College Book, viii. 24. Approved by the Overseers May 20 (Overseers’ Records, iii. 157–158).

668 College Book, viii. 27.

669 viii. 27.

670 viii. 29.

671 Harvard College Papers, ii. 138. The petition is signed by all of the thirty-students in the graduating class except John Barrett, Nathaniel Bethune, Philip Draper, and James Hughes. The absence of these four names was perhaps due to rustication.

672 Overseers’ Records, iii. 195.

673 iii. 196.

674 College Book, viii. 54.

675 viii. 56.

676 The beginning of this notice, together with the names of those receiving degrees, was also printed in the Independent Chronicle of July 27, p. 3/3; but the omission of the statement that the degrees were granted by a general diploma and of the diploma itself, tends to convey the impression that the Commencement was a public one.

677 See p. 357, above.

678 Harvard College Papers, ii. 156. The petition has attached to it the names of all the members of the class except Isaac Bayley, Elisha Doane, Isaiah Lewis Green, and Elijah Paine. In a Calendar prepared some years ago, the late William G. Brown said: “The class of 1781 in the Quinquennial numbers twenty-seven & included all the signers of the above except Atkins.” Mr. Brown overlooked the fact that Dudley Atkins afterwards changed his name to Dudley Atkins Tyng: hence all the signers duly received their degrees

679 College Book, viii. 84.

680 Overseers’ Records, iii. 216.

681 iii. 217. The petition to the Overseers has not been preserved.

682 College Book, viii. 95. On July 18 the Corporation voted “That the Law respecting the dress of the Candidates for degrees be suspended for this day” (viii. 98).

683 John Hancock.

684 Thomas Cushing (H.C. 1744).

685 Rev. Dr. Edward Wigglesworth (H.C. 1749).

686 On July 31 the Rev. John Eliot, then an Overseer, wrote to Jeremy Belknap: “We somewhat expected you down at Commencement. A truly academical day it was. Wigglesworth exceeded y^e expectation of his warmest friends, and did honour to himself & the Society. The young gentlemen behaved to a charm. . . . Old Mother Harvard is a good old dame enough, & will nourish many likely children who are yet to come. Your friend here was very set against a public Commencement, thinking that the consequences would be rather bad as to rioting & wantonness, and that the Prœses pro tem. would be no advantage to the performances. I am glad to be disappointed, and rejoice that my motion was overruled” (Belknap Papers, iii. 212–213).

687 College Book, viii. 233. This petition has not been preserved.

688 College Book, viii. 234–235.

689 In May Hancock was re-elected Governor.

690 Diary, in H. Adams’s Historical Essays (1891), pp. 90–91.

691 Overseers’ Records, iii. 343.

692 iii. 344.

693 Gov. Caleb Strong (H.C. 1764), Dr. Josiah Bartlett (d 1820), Rev. Joseph Eckley, Rev. John Eliot (H.C. 1772), Rev. Jedidiah Morse, Rev. Peter Thacher (H.C. 1769), Rev. John Thornton Kirkland (H.C. 1789).

694 Overseers’ Records, iv. 326.

695 Oliver Wendell (H.C. 1753), John Lowell (H.C. 1760), Rev. Simeon Howard (H.C. 1758), Rev. John Lathrop (d 1816), Ebenezer Storer (H.C. 1747).

696 College Book, viii. 482.

697 Rev. Joseph Willard.

698 Rev. Eliphalet Pearson.

699 College Book, viii. 486.

700 Overseers’ Records, iv. 341.

701 College Book, viii. 490.

702 Overseers’ Records, iv. 345.

703 For the reasons which brought about this change, see Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, 1911, xx. 221–222, 250–254.

704 “The usual exercises of Commencement at Harvard University will take place to-day, according to the programme already published. The Banks of this city and the Custom House will be closed” (Boston Courier, July 18, 1849, p 2/1).

705 Boston Transcript, August 29, 1832, p. 2/1. The same paper June 27, 1871, said: “Cambridge Commencement is not what it was, say chronic sympathizers with the past given to decrying the present, and wanting the prophetic eye of the future. . . . The metropolitan banks are not closed as of old and the day is no longer the distinguished holiday it once was; indeed in no sense is it a holiday at all, except in the social greetings of classmates of several generations of ‘Sons’” (p. 2/1). I am indebted to Mr. Charles A. Ruggles of the Boston Clearing House for the information that “the last time the banks were closed on account of Commencement Day was in 1870.” With regard to the Custom House, Mr. E. Perry writes me that “a great many of the old records were destroyed in a fire in 1894 and a search of such as are available has not disclosed any data bearing on the subject.”

706 For the game of props, see p. 61 note 1, above.

707 An error for the last Wednesday in August.

708 Boston Courier, July 19, 1849, p. 2/2.

709 College Book, ix. 43.

710 Crimson, viii. 109.

711 Punch was prohibited in the spring of 1894: see Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, iii. 79.

712 The dinner was served for the last time in 1904: cf. p. 378, below. In 1845, as no doubt at every previous dinner, wine was served (cf. 2 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, v. 247); but in 1846, the first under the presidency of Edward Everett, “The entertainment was conducted on the plan of total abstinence from all drinkables except water and lemonade” (Boston Advertiser, August 27, 1846, p. 2/2), and wine was never again reverted to.

713 The 1910 Quinquennial contains a list of “Persons appointed to preside at Commencement during Vacancies in the President’s Office” (p. 10 note); but only four years (1681, 1724, 1737, 1769) are given, and the statement about 1737 is incorrect.

714 From the resignation of President Mather on September 6, 1701, to the inauguration of President Leverett on January 14, 1708, there was no President. But Samuel Willard was Vice-President from July 12, 1700, to August 14, 1707, and his name is on the Quaestiones for 1702–1705 and 1707, the sheet for 1706 not being extant.

715 There was also a vacancy in 1774, but, as there was no public Commencement in that year, perhaps there were no exercises. The general diploma was signed by Nathaniel Appleton, John Winthrop, Andrew Eliot, Samuel Cooper, John Wadsworth, “Socii,” and John Hancock, “Thesaurarius.”

716 President Holyoke was elected May 30, 1737, but was not inaugurated until September 28. President Eliot was elected and assumed office on May 19, 1869, but was not inaugurated until October 19. For President Rogers, see p. 371, below.

717 See p. 325, above.

718 College Book, iii. 67.

719 iii. 68.

720 iii. 70.

721 i. 82, iii. 71, 72.

722 See p. 327, above.

723 The date of his death is given in College Book, iii. 72, and by Mather (Magnalia, bk. iv. p. 129) as July 25; but by Sewall (Diary, ii. 14*), by W. Adams (4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, i. 22), and by John Hull (Transactions and Collections American Antiquarian Society, iii. 249) as July 24. The Quaestiones for 1681 are surrounded by a black border.

724 College Book, iii. 72.

725 iii. 73.

726 The following entries occur in Increase Mather’s Diary under the dates of July 26, August 7, and August 8, 1681: “At mr. Oakes’s Funeral, whe ov^rseers of ye colledge, desired mee to modte ye mrs disputations on y^e ensuing Com̄enct, but I did absolutely & peremptorily decline it, also to mr Gookin in private I manifested my resolution not to meddle in yt matter. . . . Rode to Cambridge, wh pryd; & visited Mr. Sherman. . . . Spent in preptions for ye Commencement.”

727 Diary, i. 26. In calling his father “President,” Cotton Mather merely meant that he was the presiding officer. Increase Mather was elected President in 1681, the precise date not being recorded in College Book, i. 82, iii. 74. The choice was approved by the Overseers on September 8, 1681 (Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 109, 109 a).

728 Noadiah Russell stated that Rogers came to Cambridge on May 23, 1683, and was inaugurated August 14 (New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vii. 59). On August 14 Increase Mather wrote in his manuscript Diary (owned by the American Antiquarian Society): “Rode to Cambridge w^he m^r Rogers was Installed p^rsident Returned about sunset.” But an entry (in the hand of Thomas Danforth) in College Book, iii. 84, reads: “Aug. 12. 1683. m^r John Rogers was solemnly inaugurated into the place of President.”

729 See p. 328, above.

730 College Book, i. 93, iii. 85.

731 Cf. Publications of this Society, xiv. 143–144.

732 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, viii. 502.

733 Warham Mather graduated in the class of 1685, in which year Commencement was for the first time held on the first Wednesday in July: yet, within three years, Warham Mather spoke of “the usual time.”

734 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, viii. 671.

735 3 Massachusetts Historical Collections, i. 83. This order is interesting as being the only known one of the sort, the presiding officer on all other occasions having been appointed by the Corporation or the Overseers.

736 Diary, i. 322.

737 College Book, iv. 96.

738 College Book, iv. 198.

739 iv. 198.

740 It is possible that there may be some omissions in this list.

741 Publications of this Society, iii. 420.

742 New Englands First Fruits, p. 12.

743 See p. 321, above. By “the college,” Winthrop unquestionably meant the first Harvard College. Previous to 1718, every building was called a “college;” in 1718 the word “hall” was introduced; from 1718 to 1781, when the original Stoughton College was taken down, the words “college” and “hall” were employed indifferently; after 1781, “college” disappeared as an official designation, though remaining in colloquial use. See Dialect Notes, ii. 91–114.

744 2 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, v. 403. An earlier writer had also stated that “In this house,” that is, in the first meeting-house, “in 1642 were held the first College commencement exercises” (Harvard Register, 1881, iii. 81).

745 T. Hutchinson, Collection of Original Papers (1769), p. 501.

746 It will perhaps be thought that Randolph wrote not “the 2d of August,” but “the 2d Tuesday of August.” His narrative is no longer in the Massachusetts Archives, where presumably it was in Hutchinson’s day. No doubt the original is in the Public Record Office, London, and this reads: “their commencement is kept yearly on August 2nd in the meeting-house at Cambridge” (Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1675–1676, p. 467).

747 Owing to the ruinous condition of the first Harvard College and the unfinished state of the second Harvard College, it is quite possible that in 1676 the exercises were held in the meeting-house; but if so, that fact does not affect previous Commencements.

748 See p. 323, above.

749 See p. 326 note 1, above.

750 Diary, i. 15. This was the building burned in 1764.

751 Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 92.

752 1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, vi. 340.

753 General History of New England, p. 610. Though not printed until 1815, on June 11, 1680, a committee was appointed “to pervse the same, & make returne of their opinion thereof to the next session, that the Court may then, as they shall then judge meet, take order for the impression thereof;” and on October 11, 1682, the Court made a grant of £50 to Hubbard, he transcribing his history “fairely into a booke, that it may be the more easely pervsed” (Massachusetts Colony Records, v. 279, 378).

754 See p. 314 note 3, above.

755 Diary, ii. 181.

756 Diary, ii. 111. On July 2, 1707, Sewall wrote: “Com̄encement Day is fair and pleasant. . . . Got Joseph a Table, and Bread, which he wanted before. Went into the Meetinghouse about 11. . . . My Son held the first Question in the Afternoon; . . . My Son was the first that had a Degree given him in the New Meetinghouse” (ii. 190).

On July 5, 1704, Sewall went on to say: “Waited on the Gov^r from Dinner Time till the last Question: Then follow’d the Govr in. Mr. Gibbs was holding the last Question. Dr. Dum̄er rose up and in very fluent good Latin ask’d Leave, and made an op̄osition; and then took Leave again with Com̄endation of the Respondent” (Diary, ii. 111). Probably it was unusual for those not candidates to take part in the exercises, as Jeremiah Dummer (H.C. 1699; Ph.D. Utrecht 1703) did on the above occasion; but two years earlier a more noted person was moved to do so and was prevented only by lack of time. Having recently renounced Quakerism George Keith came to New England as an Anglican missionary, arriving in the same vessel with Governor Dudley and Lieutenant-Governor Povey, as stated in his Journal of Travels (1706, pp. 1–5). The story of his appearance at Commencement is more fully told in a letter to Lewis Morris dated July 27, 1702: “I prevailed with Mr. Keith to stay here til our commenc^nt was over, where the good man met with very little university Breeding, and with less learning, the last Thesis disputed by the masters was, Immutabilitas Decreti divini non tollit Libertatem crœture.” This met with Mr. Keith’s hearty disapproval, as did also two propositions which “the opponents urged, and both the President Mr. Willard, and the Respondent assented to: . . . and their manner of urging hereupon did clearly evince their opinion to be that the bad as good actions of men were necessarily determined; the day being far spent was the main reason why M^r Keith did not publickly oppose them, but when he returned to Boston he drew up in Latin an answer to the President’s arguing of a full sheet of Paper wh^h he transcribed ready to be sent to M^r. President upon M^r. Keith’s return” (W. S. Perry, Historical Collections relating to the American Church, iii. 72). Thereupon a pamphlet war took place between Willard and Keith.

757 Previous to 1833, the First Church had no fewer than four meeting-houses. The first (1632–1650) was in Dunster Street; the second (1650–1706) was on watch-house hill; the third (1706–1756) was on or near the site occupied by the second; and the fourth (1756–1833) was also on or near the same site, within the present College Yard, near Dane Hall. In 1833 the fourth house was removed, the land on which it stood was sold to Harvard College, and the First Church (Unitarian) erected a new meeting-house in Harvard Square, at the corner of Church Street, opposite Massachusetts Hall. (Paige, History of Cambridge, pp. 246 note, 259, 259 note, 287, 293, 304.)

758 See Paige, History of Cambridge, pp. 299–302. The First Church (Congregational) was in 1829 incorporated as the Shepard Congregational Society.

759 Harvard Alumni Bulletin, May 3, 1916, xviii. 574–575.

760 Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, xx. 75, 254.

761 The statements in this sentence are believed to be correct. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the dinner was, for special reasons, sometimes omitted. For its omission in 1905 and subsequently, see Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, xiii. 72, 627, 764, xiv. 44. Memorial Hall was dedicated on June 23, 1874, the day before Commencement.

762 In the eighteenth century, bad commons provoked several rebellions. But the Commencement dinner by no means escaped criticism, and complaints were of long standing before it was abolished. Thus the Boston Post of July 18, 1850, said:

The College Dinner. — It is said that the college dinner at Cambridge yesterday partook largely of the character of an “indignation meeting.” A “come-outer” states that some of the poultry was very lively, and in the course of the muss escaped out of the windows (p. 2/3).

763 An italic Q or T indicates that the Quaestiones or Theses for that year are extant, but unavailable as evidence owing to errors in date (1723, 1768, 1772: see pp. 332, 351, 352, above) or because not fully dated (see pp. 312, 313, above). All extant Quaestiones and Theses are in the Harvard College Library — chiefly originals, but a few in facsimile. The list printed by Mr. Lane in his Early Harvard Broadsides shows what libraries own original programmes.

764 An italic Q or T indicates that the Quaestiones or Theses for that year are extant, but unavailable as evidence owing to errors in date (1723, 1768, 1772: see pp. 332, 351, 352, above) or because not fully dated (see pp. 312, 313, above). All extant Quaestiones and Theses are in the Harvard College Library — chiefly originals, but a few in facsimile. The list printed by Mr. Lane in his Early Harvard Broadsides shows what libraries own original programmes.

765 Before September 26.

766 Day of month not known.

767 No Commencement.

768 i. 548.

769 4 Series, i. 8 (W. Adams).

770 4 Series, i. 13 (W. Adams).

771 4 Series, i. 17 (W. Adams).

772 4 Series, i. 21 (W. Adams).

773 2 Series, xiii. 250 (I. Mather).

774 2 Series, xiii. 369 (I. Mather).

775 7 Series, vii. 26 (C. Mather).

776 5 Series, v. 85 (S. Sewall).

777 xiii. 255 (J. Pierpont).

778 5 Series, v. 181 (S. Sewall).

779 5 Series, v. 219 (S. Sewall).

780 xiii. 256 (J. Pierpont).

781 5 Series, v. 323–324 (S. Sewall).

782 7 Series, vii. 166 (C. Mather).

783 xx. 157 (J. Baxter).

784 5 Series, v. 390 (S. Sewall).

785 xx. 157 (J. Baxter).

786 5 Series, v. 456 (S. Sewall).

787 5 Series, vi. 37–38 (S. Sewall).

788 5 Series, vi. 81 (S. Sewall).

789 5 Series, vi. 111–112 (S. Sewall).

790 5 Series, vi. 133 (S. Sewall).

791 “July 3. I carried my mother to Charlestown, and then to Commencement” (Diary of Rev. Joseph Green, H.C. 1695, in Essex Institute Historical Collections, vol. x. pt. i. p. 74).

792 5 Series, vi. 190 (S. Sewall).

793 5 Series, vi. 227 (S. Sewall).

794 5 Series, vi. 282 (S. Sewall).

795 5 Series, vi. 318 (S. Sewall).

796 5 Series, vi. 354 (S. Sewall).

797 5 Series, vi. 390 (S. Sewall).

798 5 Series, vii. 8–9 (S. Sewall).

799 5 Series, vii. 90 (S. Sewall).

800 5 Series, vii. 134 (S. Sewall).

801 5 Series, vii. 187 (S. Sewall).

802 5 Series, vii. 222 (S. Sewall).

803 5 Series, vii. 258 (S. Sewall).

804 xv. 202 (J. Bumstead).

805 5 Series, vii. 378 (S. Sewall). Only official documents are cited after this date.

806 No public Commencement, but the general diploma is dated July 1.

807 No public Commencement, but the general diploma is dated July 13.

808 The year-date on the Theses for 1761 is misprinted 1741: see p. 312 note 4, above.

809 No public Commencement, but the general diploma is dated July 18.

810 No public Commencements from 1774 to 1779, both included, but the general diplomas are dated as given in the text.

811 No public Commencements from 1774 to 1779, both included, but the general diplomas are dated as given in the text.

812 No public Commencement. The degrees were granted July 19, but the general diploma is dated July 22: see pp. 359–360, above.

813 The Order of the Exercises of Commencement was printed as a broadside from 1791 to 1810, both included. *

814 The Quaestiones were not printed after 1791.

815 The year-date on the Order of the Exercises for 1808 is misprinted 1308: see p. 366, above.

816 The Order of the Exercises of Commencement and the Theses were printed as broadsides for the last time in 1810. After 1810 the dates have been obtained from the Commencement programmes and Boston newspapers.

817 The Commencement programme is wrongly dated: see p. 366, above.

From 1642 to 1916, both included, is a period of 275 years. There was no Commencement in 1644 (see p. 322, above), but there were two Commencements in 1653 (see p. 324, above): consequently the number of Commencement Days exactly corresponds with the number of years that have elapsed since 1642. According to months, Commencement has occurred as follows:

June:	1721, 1727–1733, 1749, 1869–1916	57
July:	1646–1650, 1684–1688, 1690–1714, 1716–1720, 1722–1726, 1734–1739, 1741–1748, 1750–1774, 1777–1801, 1849–1868	129
August:	1651–1682, 1715, 1740, 1776, 1802–1848	83
September:	1683, 1689	2
October:	1643 (day unknown), 1775	2
Unknown:	1642 (probably September), 1645	2
		275

818 The Principal from October, 1701, to September, 1727, was John Stirling (Innes, Munimenta Alme Universitatis Glasguensis, vol. i. p. xci).

819 The volume contains the label “BRINLEY. 1189:” (see Brinley Catalogue, i. 161).

820 Publications, i. 21–71.

821 Publications, i. 157–158, 182–183, 266, 266–268, 386; iii. 1–2, 243–246, 404–405, 471–474; v. 55–56, 318–319; vi. 212–213, 454–455; vii. 228–230.

822 The location of each society, if not indicated in the title, is given in a footnote.

823 Boston.

824 Cf. Publications of this Society, iii. 244.

825 Cf. Publications of this Society, i. 48 note.

826 Boston. Cf. Publications of this Society, i. 62.

827 Cf. Publications of this Society, i. 44–45.

828 New Bedford.

829 Taunton.

830 Cf. Publications of this Society, iii. 245.

831 Westfield.

832 Cf. Publications of this Society, iii. 85.

833 Edgartown.

834 Rutland.

835 Spencer.

836 Boston.

837 Boston.

838 Tisbury.

839 This society has no fixed location.

840 Dedham.

841 Scituate.

842 Boston.

843 Boston.

844 Boston.

845 Boston.

846 Boston.

847 Medford.

848 Boston.

849 Lowell.

850 Taunton.

851 Haverhill.

852 Boston.

853 Boston.

854 Salem.

855 Stoughton.

856 Easthampton.

857 Danvers.

858 Boston.

859 Lowell.

860 Concord.

861 Farm of Henry Bullard, Holliston.

862 Boston.

863 Boston.

864 Boston.

865 Fall River.

866 Plymouth.

867 Boston.

868 Chicopee.

869 Boston.

870 Rowley.

871 Plymouth.

872 Boston.

873 Boston.

874 Boston.

875 Boston.

876 Boston.

877 Boston.

878 Boston.

879 Boston.

880 Boston.

881 Boston.

882 New Bedford.

883 Boston.

884 Chelsea

885 Boston.

886 Worcester.

887 Sandwich.

888 Expired October 1, 1914.

889 Salem.

890 Boston.

891 Expired December 31, 1915.

892 Boston.

893 Billerica.

894 Worcester.

895 Letters from New England (Prince Society), p. 75.

896 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vii. 57.

897 Quincy, History of Harvard University, i. 513.

898 Mather’s list has the following indorsement, not reproduced in the facsimile:

Catalogue of Books
bought by D^r Cotton
Mather of Harvard
College.
22.
Presented by Mrs. Crocker.

899 See p. 262, line 10, above.