November 23, 2014 by pbagger

A 19th Century Thanksgiving

In 1857, eleven year-old Francis Lincoln of Hingham described his family’s Thanksgiving in a school essay. As we would today, he writes of roast turkey, a multi-generational family gathering, and giving thanks to God:

Thanksgiving was the day set apart from work by our forefathers to worship God, after they had gathered in their harvest, and it has been celebrated ever since their time. It is the occasion when Grandmothers, Grandfathers, Uncles, Aunts, Cousins, Brothers and Sisters gather together and have a good dinner of Roast Turkey and Plum-Pudding. I have generally dined at my Grandfather’s, but since he has been unwell and rather old, I have remained at home. I will give you an account of my last Thanksgiving Day. In the morning, I attended church and heard the Rev. Calvin Lincoln preach an excellent sermon. In the afternoon my Father, two brothers and I started on a walk to World’s End, which is more than two miles from our house, but we went to the point which made the walk about one half a mile longer. Solomon then loaded his gun and fired at a target, he also let Arthur fire at an old stump. We got home at about five and a half o’clock having been gone three hours. I therefore spent a very pleasant Thanksgiving.

Yet, from our 21st century perspective, two things are missing from Lincoln’s essay: football, of course, which did not yet exist in its modern form, and any mention of the Pilgrims –because the now-universal association of Plymouth, the Pilgrims, and Thanksgiving Day is a relatively recent phenomenon.

“The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth” (1914) By Jennie A. Brownscombe

The Puritan settlers of New England had a tradition of “providential” holidays: days of fasting during difficult times for the community and days of thanksgiving to celebrate times of plenty or deliverance from strife. In the years following the American Revolution, our federal government adopted this practice and held periodic thanksgiving holidays, including one declared by newly-elected President Washington in 1789. The practice gradually became institutionalized, and in 1816 Massachusetts and New Hampshire became the first two states to establish late fall state holidays of Thanksgiving. During the depths of the Civil War, in a bid to foster unity, Abraham Lincoln declared a national Thanksgiving holiday. All were framed in religious terms not unlike the early settlers’ days of thanksgiving.

The Pilgrims were not ignored in 18th and 19th century New England; we just did not always think of them and turkey dinners at the same time. Rather, in Plymouth, Boston, and other Massachusetts towns, dinners, speeches, parades, and other celebrations were held on December 22, the anniversary of the date in 1620 when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth (having already spent several months on Cape Cod). Speeches and sermons were given, on what came to be called Forefathers’ Day, by South Shore ministers and politicians, as well as the occasional national luminary, such as John Quincy Adams (1802), Daniel Webster (1820), Edward Everett (1824), and Lyman Beecher (1827). The focus, however, was on the Pilgrims’ landing at Plymouth Rock and their role as our nation’s “founding fathers.”

So, what led to the rise of the popular story of the “first Thanksgiving?” To a great extent, it was the product of social and political currents in post-Civil War America. Interest in the Pilgrims and our “founding fathers” grew with white Protestant America’s increased anxiety over immigration and the influx of newcomers with diverse backgrounds. A myth of non-violent colonialism was a balm to the conscience of a nation that had achieved its “manifest destiny” of expansion across the continent.

First National Day of Mourning, Plymouth, Mass., 1970

In 1970, 350 years after the Pilgrims’ landing at Plymouth, representatives of the Wampanoag declared a National Day of Mourning on the fourth Thursday in November, to honor their ancestors and educate those celebrating a “traditional” (though no more than 100 year-old) Thanksgiving about white America’s treatment of their people. This “counter-commemoration” has its own 50th anniversary as Plymouth observes its 400th this year. Growing recognition of the checkered history that lies behind the “First Thanksgiving” is the result of the attention that has been paid to Native American history in New England and a more critical examination of the late 19th and early 20th century version of that story. This itself is resulting in a further evolution of the holiday’s meaning, including a greater emphasis on celebrating our families and fellowship in the present day.

[First posted in Nov. 2014; edited in Nov. 2020]

September 13, 2014 by pbagger

A Schoolboy Fan of the “Boston Game”

Artist’s rendering of the Oneida Football Club in match play on Boston Common

Those interested in the history of American football know that the Oneida Football Club of Boston is often given significant credit for the development of the modern game. That team was formed by Gerrit S. Miller, one of a number of Boston schoolboys who played what was sometimes called the “Boston game” on Boston Common during the early 1860s. The game involved both running and kicking plays and developed a more consistent set of rules than prior versions of American football.

In 1925, a marker was erected on Boston Common to commemorate the Oneida Football Club. It reads, “On this field the Oneida Football Club of Boston, the first organized football club in the United States, played against all comers from 1862 to 1865. The Oneida goal was never crossed.”

Oneida Football Club members at the dedication of the monument on Boston Common. Lincoln's classmate, Gerrit S. Miller is immediately to the right of the monument.

Oneida Football Club members at the dedication of the monument on Boston Common. Lincoln’s classmate, Gerrit S. Miller, stands immediately to the right of the monument. (Photo from W. Scudder, An Historical Sketch of the Oneida Football Club of Boston: 1862-1865)

Miller and other early players attended Epes Sargent Dixwell’s Latin School, a Boston preparatory school. Francis Lincoln of Hingham was a classmate of theirs at Mr. Dixwell’s School and, if not a football player, certainly a fan. His high school diary, which is preserved in our archives, reports on football at Mr. Dixwell’s School. Here, on October 18, 1862, he reports on some intramural play:

The first class were challenged by the second for a match game of football. The first class were assisted by Thies and the second by G. S. Miller.
Two games out of three.
The second class beat. The first game was very hard and long—1 h. 6 m. with considerable lurking by Frank Peabody.

Louis Thies, like Gerritt Miller, was a member of the Oneida Football Club. Both student coaches’ names appear on the Boston Common marker. (“Lurking,” of which Frank Peabody was guilty, was an early word for “offsides.”)

Lincoln also reports on a June 1862 football match between Mr. Dixwell’s School and the Boston Latin School. This was clearly considered an important event by more than young Lincoln, who pasted into his diary the results reported in four different newspapers:

The Boston Evening Traveller, June 6th:

MATCH GAME OF FOOTBALL.—A match game of football came off yesterday afternoon, on the Common, between the Latin and Mr. Dixwell’s school. The Latin school boys won three games in five, and were the challenged party. The best feeling prevailed on both sides. Each game was a specimen of splendid playing, and the last was prolonged to the unusual time of forty-two minutes—resulting in the victory of the Latin school.

The Boston Herald, June 6th:

FOOTBALL MATCH. A football match between seventeen boys of the Public Latin School and the same number from Mr. Dixwell’s school took place yesterday afternoon on the parade ground. The Latin school boys won three games in five and were therefore victorious.

The Boston Daily Advertiser, June 7th:

FOOTBALL MATCH.–A football match between seventeen boys of the Public Latin School and the same number from Mr. Dixwell’s school took place on Thursday afternoon on the parade ground. The Latin school boys won three games in five and were therefore victorious.

The Boston Journal, June 6th:

MATCH GAME OF FOOTBALL.–Seventeen boys of the Public Latin school, and a like number from Mr. Dixwell’s school, played on the parade ground on Thursday afternoon a match game of football, which resulted in the Latin school boys winning three games in five. Each game was a specimen of splendid playing, and the last was prolonged to the unusual time of forty-two minutes—resulting in the victory of the Latin school.

Francis Lincoln also gave an eyewitness report of this match in his diary. He can be forgiven if he has a slightly different take than the Boston newspapers on the disappointing result for his classmates in his entry for Thursday, June 5, 1862:

Seventeen fellows from our School challenged the same number of the Latin School to kick a match game of football. Our fellows beat the first game; Latin school, second; Our fellows, third; Latin School, fourth & fifth.
Some foul play on side of Latin School.

August 7, 2014 by pbagger

Our Religious Pamphlets Collection

Up in the archives, we have been busy indexing a collection of over 300 different religious pamphlets from the 18th and 19th centuries. Most of these soft-cover, professionally printed booklets contain a single sermon given in a Hingham or South Shore church, although there are also religious tracts, catechisms, devotional literature, and Sunday School texts. There is even a pamphlet of marital advice to husbands and wives.

Pulpit in Old Ship Church (1941 photograph from Branzetti, Historic American Buildings Survey)

Our religious pamphlet collection provides a useful complement to the Hingham church records preserved both in our archives and at other institutions. They tell an important story of the development of Protestant Christianity in this small corner of the country from the Great Awakening to the rise of liberal Christianity and Unitarianism to the evangelical reaction of the Second Great Awakening. As the 19th century progressed, social issues such as abolition, temperance, and social inequality increasingly became the subject of sermons in Hingham and South Shore pulpits.

Joseph Richardson’s “A Sermon in Two Parts,” delivered Sunday, June 28, 1856

Preaching—whether written or delivered from the pulpit—was popular in 19th century Hingham, as the many multiple copies in our collection of certain “favorites” by local preachers Joseph Richardson (Pastor of First Parish or “Old Ship” Church from 1805to 1868) and Oliver Stearns (Pastor of Third Parish or “New North” Church from 1839 to 1856) attest. Many of our copies of the sermons of Ebenezer Gay (Pastor of First Parish from 1718 to 1787) are reprints, demonstrating that he retained an audience for his sermons 50 years after his death.

Even in the mid-19th century, attending Sunday church services in Hingham was an all-day affair, and preaching was a central part of the services in our Protestant churches. (The pulpit of Old Ship Church in the photo at the top of this post attests to this.) These sermons are long by contemporary standards, most of them 25-30 pages long. A number of the sermons are in two parts: one for the morning service and one for the afternoon. They are dense and closely-argued, raising the unhappy suspicion that our ancestors’ attention spans, or at least their listening skills, were better developed than our own.

Sunday, June 28, 1858. The morning’s sermon . . .

. . . and the afternoon’s sermon

July 19, 2014 by pbagger

Message in a Bottle

Between 1832 and 1841, forty vessels foundered on the rocks at Minot’s Ledge off Cohasset and Scituate, and in the late 1840s, a lighthouse was built on the ledge. It was lit for the first time on January 1, 1850.

A fierce nor‘easter hit Cape Cod Bay on April 16, 1851, bringing with it the highest seas ever recorded to that time. Late that night, the newly-constructed Minot’s Ledge Lighthouse collapsed and toppled into the surf.

The lighthouse was manned that night by the lighthouse keeper’s two young assistants, Joseph Wilson and Joseph Antoine. They kept the light burning into the night.

At some point in the evening, Antoine and Wilson placed a note in a bottle and dropped it into the waves below. The note was found the following day by a Gloucester fisherman. It read:

The lighthouse won’t stand over to night. She shakes 2 feet each way now. — J.W. + J.A

The tide reached its height around midnight and around 1:00 a.m., the lighthouse’s bell was heard to ring repeatedly. Soon thereafter, the iron supports of the lighthouse snapped, and it toppled into the sea.

It appears as if Wilson and Antoine escaped the lighthouse structure into the water, although neither survived. Antoine’s body washed up at Nantasket; Wilson made it alive to Gull Rock in Cohasset Harbor but died of exposure before he was discovered the next day.

The note in the bottle was given to the Hingham Historical Society in the 1920s by a local historian from Gloucester.

June 29, 2014 by pbagger

Visiting the Misses Barker

When she was young, Eliza Robbins of Milton enjoyed visiting the Barker sisters of Hingham. As an adult, she wrote a fond memoir of her visits to “The Misses Barker,” which she addressed to her younger sister, Sarah. Her essay, a typescript of which was placed in our archives by early society benefactress Susan Barker Willard, consists mainly of fond character sketches of the three maiden sisters who lived together on North Street in Hingham during the late 18th and early 19th centuries but also provides interesting glimpses of the Town of Hingham during that era. According to Miss Robbins,

Deborah, Sarah and Bethiah Barker were daughters of Captain Joshua Barker of Hingham, Plymouth County, Massachusetts. Captain Barker belonged to a good family, when all the families were good—descendants of those primitive and pious colonists who first settled New England. He was a man of high honour, great benevolence and most amiable manner. . . . Mrs. Barker was the cousin of her husband and was the second of three sisters; the eldest died the widow of General Winslow and the youngest, Elizabeth, died single in the house of her nieces. The three sisters, especially the subject of this brief memo, never married.

Miss Robbins’ grandmother, Elizabeth Murray Inman, had owned a millinery business in Boston with the Barker sisters’ “Aunt Betsy” during the mid-1700s and, she explained, “between [the Murrays] and the Barkers an intimacy then commenced that was hereditary to the descendants of both the parties.”

19th century photo of North Street Bank, 115 North Street, formerly the Joshua Barker home

Remembering her visits to the Barker home, which was located on North Street in Hingham Square (next to the present-day Post Office), Miss Robbins wrote:

That parlour was a delightful south room. The fervent heat of the summer sun was broken by the thick shade of a wide spreading plane tree that stood near the house and the glossy tresses of a dangling woodbine hanging over the windows softened the light that entered it, leaving spaces sufficient to look through upon the street to which the ground before the house covered with short velvet grass descended in a gentle slope. On the further side of the street lay the vegetable garden of the neighbor, along the borders of a little brook that ran through them toward the sea, which though out of sight was not far off. Beyond the gardens lay another street—behind that stood a hill on the top of which the villagers bury their dead. On the right hand—onward to the limit of vision, along the path way ran houses, those of traffic and mechanic art—the Academy and the spire of an old Church. None of these objects were picturesque but they had a character, they represented life and death, learning and religion, industry and competency, security and contentment. . . .

Detail from a map of historical names and places in Hingham. (“Barker Shipyard” belonged to the sisters’ uncle, Francis Barker.)

The basic layout that Miss Robbins describes is remarkably unchanged: the house faces North Street, the bed of the former “Town Brook” (now the capped Greenbush train tunnel), and then South Street. On the far side of South Street, Hingham Cemetery, Old Derby Academy, and Old Ship Church run south along Main Street ahead.

Hingham Square, looking south on Main Street, 1861.

Hingham Square looking south on Main Street, today

June 8, 2014 by pbagger

“Harrison Melodies” in Hingham

Solomon Lincoln’s copy of “Harrison Melodies.” Lincoln, a lawyer and banker, was active in Hingham politics.

We recently blogged about Jairus Lincoln’s 1843 “Anti-Slavery Melodies”—an anthology of songs to sing at abolition rallies (see The Songs of the Abolitionists). We were delighted to learn that the political singing did not end there, having recently discovered in our archives a second political songbook, only three years older, published by local supporters of William Henry Harrison during the 1840 Presidential election campaign. This compilation of the lyrics of seventy pro-Harrison songs, the authors explained, filled a pressing need: “The want of such a compilation has been for some time sensibly felt at . . . ‘Whig gatherings’” around Boston.

The Whig party was born out of opposition to Andrew Jackson’s Democratic party. The ‘Age of Jackson” and “Jacksonian democracy” were built on increasingly broad white male suffrage as states eliminated poll taxes and property ownership requirements that once limited the vote to wealthier men. Long before Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson was famously born in a log cabin. Jackson’s veto of a bill renewing the charter of the Second Bank of the United States divided Eastern mercantile interests and western farmers, debt-ridden in a tough economy. Not surprisingly, Hingham was “Whig” country: in their Hingham history Not All Is Lost, Russell and Lorena Hart report that Andrew Jackson won only 28 votes from Hingham during his first Presidential run and 32 votes as the incumbent four years later.

“Old Tippecanoe.” The campaign slogan “Tippecanoe and Tyler too” is still remembered.

William Henry Harrison (1773-1841) was the Whig candidate for President in 1840. He had gained national fame defeating Native American forces at the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe, served as the first territorial delegate to the U.S. Congress from the Northwest Territory, and was later elected congressman from the new State of Ohio. Taking a page from Andrew Jackson’s book (although he had been raised in a wealthy Virginia family), Harrison ran for President as a war hero and a man of the people. His supporters impugned his opponent, incumbent President and Democratic candidate Martin van Buren, as a New Yorker and wealthy elitist. The Democrats in turn ridiculed Harrison as old and provincial, suggesting that he was most fit to sit in his log cabin, drinking hard cider. Harrison and as his vice-presidential candidate John Tyler seized upon these symbols, using images of log cabins and cider jugs in their campaign.

“King Martin’s Soliloquy.” The Whigs chose the name of their party from that of the 18th century opponents of King George III.

The “Harrison Melodies” return repeatedly to the log cabin and hard cider theme, as well as Harrison’s Indian wars nickname, “Old Tippecanoe.” Van Buren is referred to as “King Martin,” a reference to the Whig objection that Jacksonian Democrats wielded a dangerous amount of executive power. (Jackson had killed the Second Bank of the United States not because he believed it unconstitutional but because he disagreed with it as a matter of policy. This was a departure from prior Presidential vetoes.)

William Henry Harrison was elected President in 1840. The Whigs’ joy was short-lived, however. Harrison died after only a month in office.

April 18, 2014 by pbagger

Happy 300th Birthday, Madame Sarah Langlee Hersey Derby

Today is the 300th anniversary of Madame Sarah Derby’s birth and a good time to post about a woman whose name looms large in Hingham history—and legend.

Portrait of Sarah Derby

Born Sarah Langlee, daughter of a Hingham tavern keeper, she married well—twice. Her first husband was Dr. Ezekiel Hersey, a prominent and affluent Hingham physician. After his death, she married Richard Derby, a wealthy ship captain and merchant from Salem. (Richard Derby built Salem’s Derby Wharf in the 1750s.) She outlived Captain Derby as well and returned to Hingham to live on the large farm she inherited from Dr. Hersey.

Dr. Ezekiel Hersey of Hingham

Local legend created from this a “rags to riches” story (in their Hingham history Not All Has Changed, Francis and Lorena Hart dub Sarah Derby “Hingham’s legendary Cinderella”): a beautiful young girl growing up poor on the islands of Hingham Harbor, whose names—Ragged, Sarah, and Langlee—described her as a young girl. Edward Rowe Snow, in his History of the Harbor Islands, put to rest the idea that the islands were named after “ragged Sarah Langlee,” however; these islands bore those names on nautical charts as early as 1700–well before Sarah Langlee was born.

Captain Richard Derby of Salem

But her portrait (made in later years) suggests youthful beauty, as do perhaps the two good marriages. When he died in 1770, Ezekiel Hersey left his substantial estate to his wife on the condition that she give £1000 to Harvard College. Sarah Derby added to this her own bequest in the same amount, and together their gifts endowed the Hersey Professorships of the Theory and Practice of Physic and of Anatomy and Surgery at Harvard, laying the foundation for the establishment of Harvard Medical School.

She remarried, to Captain Richard Derby, in 1771. It is also a common misconception that this second marriage is what made her a wealthy woman. In fact, she waived her dower rights when she married Captain Derby, who left his fortune to his family and bequeathed to Sarah Derby only an annual income (and two slaves, also commonly glossed over in legend).

When she returned to Hingham in 1783, Madame Derby was persuaded to endow a new school for Hingham. The school would be co-educational (one of the first co-educational schools in the country) for the instruction of boys “in the Latin, Greek, English, and French languages, and the sciences of Mathematics and Geography” and girls “in writing, and in the English and French languages, arithmetic, andthe art of needlework in general.” As discussed in a prior post (“A Trip to the Principal’s Office—in 1799”), a single preceptor had the charge of both sexes, although a “sensible, discreet woman” taught the girls their needlework.

Sarah Derby’s Gravestone, Hingham Cemetery

Madam Derby died in 1784 and is buried in Hingham Cemetery, not far from the site of her school. She provided further funding for the school in her will and instructed that her clock and her portrait (the one appearing at the top of this post) be placed in the school building. The original school building was replaced, in 1818, by a Federal-style structure—Old Derby Academy, current home of our Hingham Historical Society.

One hundred years ago today, on April 18, 1914, the Town of Hingham joined Derby Academy in celebrating Madame Derby’s bicentennial. A “Birthday Celebration” was held in her honor at Loring Hall. The program for the evening’s entertainment, preserved in our archives, included a local chorus, the Martland Band, from Brockton, English and Latin declamations by alumni, and poetry, essays, and other literary and musical offerings.

Happy Birthday, Madame Derby!

April 13, 2014 by pbagger

The Songs of the Abolitionists

Jairus Lincoln of Hingham published his song book “Anti-Slavery Melodies: For the Friends of Freedom” for the Hingham Anti-Slavery Society in 1843. Music was an important part of abolitionist meetings and rallies. In the foreword to his anthology, Lincoln noted the success that the temperance movement had enjoyed incorporating music into its message and urged the anti-slavery movement to follow the example: “[t]here are many who have not the gift of speech-making, but who can, by song-singing, make strong appeals, in behalf of the slave, to every community and every heart.”

Lincoln included the words and music to 57 anti-slavery songs, some original, some “standards” in the movement, and some taken from a previous anthology, “The Anti-Slavery Pick-nick.” Many of the melodies are based on hymns that would have been very familiar to the audience, with lyrics based on anti-slavery poetry by John Pierpont, Elizabeth Margaret Chandler, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, among others. (To our 21st century sensibilities, the absence of any music influenced by the rich music–spirituals and field tunes–of the enslaved peoples themselves is striking.)

A few songs stand out. Lincoln included a sharp parody of a familiar patriotic hymn:

My country! ’tis of thee,
Stronghold of slavery,
Of thee I sing:
Land where my fathers died,
Where men man’s rights deride,
From every mountainside,
Thy deeds shall ring.

My native country! thee,
Where all men are born free,
If white their skin:
I love thy hills and dales,
Thy mounts and pleasant vales,
But hate thy negro sales,
As foulest sin. . . .

One well-known anti-slavery anthem, “The Song of the Abolitionist,” was written by William Lloyd Garrison, to be sung to the tune of “Auld Lang Syne”:

I am an Abolitionist! I glory in the name;
Though now by slavery’s minions hissed, And covered o’er with shame;
It is a spell of light and power, The watch-word of the free;
Who spurns it in the trial-hour, A craven soul is he.

I am an Abolitionist! Then urge me not to pause,
For joyfully do I enlist In Freedom’s sacred cause;
A nobler strife the world ne’er saw, Th’ enslaved to disenthral;
I am a soldier for the war, Whatever may befall. . . .

Words and music to “Song of the Abolitionist,” from Lincoln’s Anti-Slavery Songbook

In From Abolition to Rights for All: The Making of a Reform Community in the Nineteenth Century, Professor John Cumbler writes that “[t]he social world of abolitionism also had its lighter side.” The two examples with which he supports his assertion are close to home: an 1844 meeting in Hingham, where New England abolitionists enjoyed a boat trip from Boston, the seaside, and the country air, and a “fishing party” to Cohasset during those same years. Perhaps after enjoying sunshine and a good meal, the abolitionists pulled out their copies of Lincoln’s “Anti-Slavery Melodies”–perhaps even the copy that is now in our archives.

A few years ago, a choral ensemble from Arizona State University recorded a number of the songs from Lincoln’s “Anti-Slavery Melodies.” Click here and scoll down the page to listen.

April 2, 2014 by pbagger

A Trip to the Principal’s Office — in 1799

Old Derby Academy, soon to become the Hingham Heritage Museum and Visitors Center. It was built to house Derby Academy in 1818.

Derby Academy in Hingham, founded in 1784, is one of the oldest co-educational schools in the country. Its founder, Madam Sarah Derby, stipulated that the boys were to be educated in “the Latin, Greek, English, and French languages, and in the sciences of Mathematics and Geography”; the girls in “writing and in the English and French languages, arithmetic, and the art of needlework in general.” She directed that a “preceptor” be hired to teach these subjects to male and female students alike—with the exception of needlework, for which a “sensible, discreet woman” should be retained. At Mrs. Derby’s request, the first Preceptor of Derby Academy was Abner Lincoln of Hingham. One of the many documents concerning Derby Academy found in our archives is his April 16, 1799 report to the Trustees of Derby Academy. Mr. Lincoln started his report with the academic progress of the school’s pupils:

The attention & improvement of the Lads, during the last term, have been pretty much as usual, no material difference. Some have been very industrious & some have been slack. The young ladies have been more attentive than usual when they could attend with propriety. But a want of health & the peculiar badness of the passing, have caused many absences. I have not been able to pay them that attention which I expected.

The “principal’s office” in the 18th century does not appear to have been so different from the principal’s office today: by far the largest part of Lincoln’s report to the trustees involved disciplinary reports. “[T]he Lads” broke “a number of windows in a fit of snowballing” and were required to mend the windows. It was discovered that two boys had been stealing from local shops. Lincoln was ready to expel them l when he learned that

[t]heir mother was dead, their father absent at sea & they left under the care of their grandfather, Mr. Stephen Hall of Boston. He repeatedly urged me in a very earnest & feeling manner to receive them again. I finally consented on condition that the Lads would come & make a public confession of the enormity & heinousness of their crime, ask forgiveness of the scholars for the very bad example exhibited in their conduct & pray them to receive them again into their friendship. This was done & their request granted in a very affecting manner. . . .

The misbehavior of one of the girls at the school was particularly noteworthy:

Complaint was made by the Preceptress that Sally Wilder’s conduct in the Academy was very exceptionable & improper. After stating the charges, I observed that I could not with propriety make any inquiry respecting them, but begged that she would, which she accordingly did. It appeared by ample evidence that her conduct at times was such as will hardly bear explaining, that she had paid no regard to truth, that no Language, neither obscene nor profane was too gross for her frequently to use; some of the Misses absented themselves on her account; many were late because they did not wish to be entertained by her. The general character was despicable & there appeared no probability of reformation. It was our united opinion that she ought not to remain in the Academy . . . .

Co-education fell into the category of novel experiments when Abner Lincoln found himself confronted with Sally Wilder’s misbehavior, and his discomfort is evident. We are left wondering whether there were appeals for clemency, explanations in mitigation, or a decision by the trustees that she should remain in school after all. One suspects not.

March 25, 2014 by pbagger

Battling “that Old Deluder, Satan” with a School

On April 6, 1714, a grand jury in Boston presented a series of charges against a number of individuals and entities. Many of the offenses were exactly what we would expect from a group of 17th century Puritans: “Richard Hancock of Boston for Selling Drink without license sundry times since last Session,” “Seth Smith of Boston for allowing unlawfull gaming,” “Nathaniel Ford of Weymouth for nott attending the publick worship of God,” and—a hat tip to Nathaniel Hawthorne—“Hannah Hall of Boston for fornication.”

One of the charges explains why this single-page manuscript came to Hingham, to be preserved in our archives: “the Town of Hingham for not keeping a school according to law.” This offense, as it turns out, is as characteristic of the Massachusetts Bay Puritans as the others charged on that day.

Education was very important to the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The first public school in this country, Boston Latin School, was established in Boston in 1635, and the nation’s first university, Harvard College, was founded in Cambridge the next year. In 1642, Massachusetts passed a law requiring parents to ensure that their children could read English or face a fine.

This concern with education grew from the very roots of Protestant theology: the belief that Christian laity had the right–and a duty–to read the Bible in the vernacular and participate directly in the affairs of the church. These fundamental goals are explained explicitly in the preamble to Massachusetts’ 1647 statute, sometimes called “The Old Deluder Satan Act,” that shifted the responsibility of education onto the growing towns:

It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former times keeping them in an unknown tongue, so in these later times by perswading from the use of tongues, that so at least the true sense and meaning of the Originall might be clowded by false glosses of Saint-seeming deceivers; and that Learning may not be buried in the graves of our fore-fathers in Church and Commonwealth, the Lord assisting our indeavors: it is therefore ordered by this Court and Authoritie therof;

That every Township in this Jurisdiction, after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty Housholders, shall then forthwith appoint one within their town to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write and read, whose wages shall be paid either by the Parents or Masters of such children, or by the Inhabitants in general, by way of supply, as the major part of those that order the prudentials of the Town shall appoint. . . .

And it is further ordered, that where any town shall increase to the number of one hundred Families or Housholders, they shall set up a Grammar-School, the Masters thereof being able to instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for the Universitie. . . .

Hingham town records reference schoolteachers and a school building as early as the mid-1600s. According to Francis Lincoln’s chapter on education in the 1893 History of the Town of Hingham, the increasing size of the town led to disagreements as early as 1708 and 1709 over where the school should be held. Second Precinct—later Cohasset—wanted a rotation, so that school would sometimes meet in its area, as did “Great Plain”—South Hingham. But there is no suggestion that HIngham’s school was ever closed. Indeed, in a comprehensive list of the schoolmasters in Hingham from 1670 on, Lincoln reports that Jonathan Cushing was the schoolmaster from 1712-1713, after which the 1712 Harvard College graduate became the minister in Dover, New Hampshire. Twenty-year old Job Cushing, Harvard College Class of 1714 succeeded him, remaining four year before becoming the first minister of the Shrewsbury church.

Perhaps there was a lapse while the Town waited for Job Cushing to graduate. There may have been complaints. 17th century grand juries could “present” charges based on their own knowledge and did not, as today, have to wait to be asked to hand down an indictment. Was a disgruntled Hingham parent on that grand jury? Perhaps we will learn more as we continue to dig through the archives.

Out of the Archives

Exploring the Archives at the Hingham Heritage Museum

Author Archives