OLD COLONY IRON WORKS. — LEONARDS.

1652.] 529 working that it extended to several of the towns, and developed allied branches of the business. The production of bog-iron is not now mentioned in the statistics; but the census does show that in the Old Colony, less the slices taken off by Rhode Island, the products of iron reach some $10,500,000 yearly, a sum more than a half greater than the reported value of all the domestic manufactures and agricultural products. How much of this immense business is due to that pioneer mill at Taunton of 1652, and the gencrations of skilful, thoughtful men there graduated, no one can tell; and while the name of Robinson is of highest honor among the iron-workers of the Old Colony, that of Leonard is pre-eminently worthy of some conspicuous memorial from the disciples of Tubal Cain.2

1 In 1665 three men of the Taunton iron-works were excused from "training," when their work needed. The same year the Court ordered that better iron be made.

The first fire-arms made in this country were by Hugh Orr, a Scotch inhabitant of Bridgewater, Mass. In 1748 he made for the province five hundred mus. kets, which having been stored in the castle at Boston, were carried away by the British at the evacuation in 1776. The Bridgewater iron-works made cannonballs and anchors for the patriots.

The first cast-iron tea-kettle was founded at Carver about 1760. Open kettles were long made of wrought-iron, brass, or copper, as a general thing. The French ship's kettle found on Cape Cod by the Pilgrims was probably of wrought-iron; if cast-iron, it would have been too heavy, filled with corn, to be carried on a wilderness march by two men in armor. In 1647 certain Nipmucks complained that Uncas' brother, in a raid, had carried away ten of their copper kettles. Yet where portability was unimportant, cast-iron pots must have come into use, to some extent, soon after Child's successful attempt at casting them. But who used his "stoves"?

2 There is a tradition that Philip's gratitude to the Leonards for kindnesses led him to prevent his people from molesting Taunton. Unfortunately for this pleasant story, Taunton was attacked very early, and people were killed there; but their half-dozen blockhouses, and the soldiers usually present, afford a more probable explanation of her partial immunity. Yet the Leonards' blockhouse is said to have been attacked, and two of its young women having been killed, were buried under the doorstone, lest the savages exhume and dismember the bodies.

Ability of Clergymen

CHAPTER LXI.

- John Cotton, Jr.' Ralph Partridge. — John Holmes. Ichabod Wiswall. Thomas Walley. — Jonathan Russell. – William Leveredge. — Captain Tupper. — Richard Bourne. — John Smith. George Shove. Samuel Danforth. Marmaduke Matthews. John Miller. Thomas Thornton. Richard Blinman. — Edward Bulkley. Theodore Samuel Arnold. - James Keith. Edson. Samuel Treat.-John Mayo. Thomas Crosby. — John Sassamon the Martyr. The Mayhews.

THE

HE pulpits of the four "United Colonies of New England" were more generally filled by University men than were the pulpits of Old England. Even in the least wealthy Colony (New Plymouth), the best scholarship of the day was represented to an extent which leaves our own complacent generation small room for boasting. Mention has been made of Pastors Smith, Williams, Raynor, Chauncey, Lothrop, Wetherell, Dunster, Newman, Myles, Hooke, and Street (some may add Blackstone), — all but one from English universities, and coming quite directly from the pulpits of the Church of England. Of the laity, Brewster had been at Cambridge, England; Bradford would have honored any of the colleges, while Winslow and Standish, if not scholars, were scholarly. There were also many other preachers whom lack of space alone excludes from the extended notice their merits would justify.

JOHN COTTON, JR., AND OTHERS.

For thirteen years, from Raynor's exit, Plymouth was without a pastor. Elder Cushman preached acceptably; but the

1637-75-1

COTTON. PARTRIDGE. WISWALI..

531

pulpit was for a short time occupied by two clergymen,James Williams and William Brimsmead. In 1667 it came under the ministration of John Cotton, Jr., a Harvard scholar, and son of the famous preacher of the two Bostons. After highly successful labors, he left in 1697, not free from a moral taint. From 1664 to 1667 Cotton had served under Mayhew as a missionary to the Indians, whose tongue he had so mastered that he subsequently became the reviser of Eliot's Indian books.1

Duxbury's first pastor was Ralph Partridge, a scholar from the English Cambridge, and a former rector. He was of such repute that the Bay Synod of 1646-9 solicited his advice on certain points. He served Duxbury from 1637 till 1658, in which latter year he died, full of honor. His successor was John Holmes, who in 1658 was called from Harvard College to this charge. He honored himself by condemning the treatment of the Quakers, a wrong which he feared God would specially rebuke; in 1675, only three weeks before his death, he declared in a Fast-day sermon that the passing years had not changed his feeling on this point. (His wife [married 1661], Mary Atwood, daughter of John, became Deputy-Governor Bradford's second wife.)

Duxbury's third pastor was Ichabod Wiswall, a native of the Massachusetts Dorchester. He entered Harvard when the course was three years (before his graduation it was made four years); but at the end of the three years (1647) he, with Brimsmead (p. 467) and others (including Josiah Winslow, it is said), took their departure. Wiswall was essentially a "political parson." He so vigorously defended the rights of the poor in Clark's Island, which Andros had conveyed to his creature Clarke that Andros had him before his Council, and compelled Wiswall to make three horseback journeys from Duxbury to Boston (228 miles) while so suffering from gout that he could not wear shoes, but must ride with his feet bandaged in towels; before the Council the resolute preacher was kept standing on his inflamed feet

1 4 Mass. Hist. Coll., viii. 228.

until at the point of fainting from the agony. He was also assessed heavy fees. In 1691 Wiswall was sent to London to guard Plymouth's interests, with the partial aid of Increase Mather, who was also there in the Bay's behalf. When, to Wiswall's intense grief, Plymouth had been forced into annexation to Massachusetts, he roundly charged the result to the "impudence" and duplicity of Mather, aided by those "who are wont to trot after the Bay horse." Wiswall was proficient in astrology; and in 1680 both he and Wetherell, in their pulpits, insisted on the connection of Governor Winslow's death with the comet of that year. Yet he was a man of learning, power, and sincerity, and his death (1700) was very widely mourned.1

At Barnstable Lothrop was followed by Thomas Walley (1663-78), and he by Jonathan Russell (Harvard, 1675). Sandwich first settled William Leveredge (about 1638), who led a troubled life, none the more quiet from his adoption of Chauncey's idea of observing the Lord's Supper every Sunday in the night-time. In 1654 he removed to Oyster Bay, Long Island, making the passage with his wife and goods in Samuel Mayo's barque "Desire," under Captain Nickerson. The pastor's disquiet was not ended; for Baxter, a Rhode Island privateer, captured the "Desire," with her lading, taking her to New Haven. Rhode Island disavowed the act, and Baxter was made to restore his plunder. Leveredge eventually became a noble missionary to the Indians.

A curious disposition was then made of the Sandwich pulpit. The people were divided between Captain Tupper, a soldier, and Richard Bourne, a merchant of education and of some wealth. It was agreed that on each Sunday the pulpit be taken by the candidate who had the greater number of adherents present at the time. After four years John Smith, an educated minister, was settled.2 Tupper and Bourne there

1 Wiswall's stone is the oldest in the Duxbury burying-ground.

2 He had left Barnstable through disaffection, largely due to his brother-inlaw, the future Governor Hinckley; he went to Sandwich, 1658, and left through discords, after thirty years' service.

1639-1727.] TAUNTON.-YARMOUTH.—MARSHFIELD.

533

upon devoted themselves to the Indians, and formed several congregations of them. Bourne was still in this work a quarter of a century later, and his descendants nobly befriended the posterity of his dusky disciples. The thrifty town of Mashpee is a memorial of this family.1

At Taunton, Street was followed by George Shove (166587), a native of Dorchester and graduate of Harvard, whose name has worthily descended. Next (1687-1727) came Samuel Danforth, member of a family of rare and varied attainments; he graduated at Harvard (1683), and was proficient in law and medicine, as well as theology. His name is still honorably represented in the Old Colony.

Yarmouth first settled Marmaduke Matthews, a learned but erratic man (Oxford), who probably served 1639–45. John Miller followed (about 1646–52); and in 1662 Thomas Thornton was called, but, like his predecessors, he was plunged into much controversy; he was a man of education, and, like so many of his cloth, practised as a physician. It was in his time that the clergy began to be generally given the title of "Reverend," although Lothrop, of Barnstable, had been so designated.

At Marshfield, several substantial Welshmen settled by invitation of Governor Winslow, and with them came Richard Blinman, who was pastor there in 1641-2; he was a scholar, and may have been in advance of the times, for he was in disfavor as "new cloth on an old garment." He and his countrymen soon went to Cape Ann. Next came Edward Bulkley (Harvard College), the "able and learned" son of the first pastor of Concord, whom he succeeded in 1660. During the writing of this page (1882) a Bulkley of the old stock has

1 In 1794 three of Bourne's great-great-grandsons were in the United States Congress; his grandson Ezra was the first Common Pleas judge in Barnstable County. In 1670 the senior Bourne was regularly ordained at Mashpee by the Apostle Eliot. He loaded one son with the name Shearjashub.

Tupper died April 7, 1676 (N. s.), aged 97, in the height of Philip's War; his wife, Anne, died two months later, aged 90. In 1787 his great-grandson was preaching to the Indians at Herring Pond and River, where his ancestor labored.