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Plymouth Colony Absorbed Into Province of Massachusetts Bay

Massachusetts takes its name from the Massachusett tribe of Native Americans, who lived in the Great Blue Hill region, south of Boston. The Indian term is roughly translated as “at or about the Great Hill”.

There are, however, a number of interpretations of the exact meaning of the word. The Jesuit missionary Father Rasles thought that it came from the word Messatossec, “Great-Hills-Mouth”: “mess” (mass) meaning “great”; “atsco” (as chu or wad chu) meaning “hill”; and sec (sac or saco) meaning “mouth”.

The Reverend John Cotton used another variation: “mos” and “wetuset”, meaning “Indian arrowhead”, descriptive of the Native Americans’ hill home. Another explanation is that the word comes from “massa” meaning “great” and “wachusett”, “mountain-place”.  (Secretary of the Commonwealth)

Massachusetts Bay Colony

While it is well known that the Massachusetts Bay Company, under the leadership of John Winthrop, ultimately settled Massachusetts Bay in 1630, it is less well understood that the Massachusetts Bay Company’s claim on New England was preceded by those of two other joint stock companies.

The first of these belonged to an association of “Adventurers” known as the Dorchester Company, organized by the Anglican minister John White. Although it succeeded in launching a settlement on Cape Ann in 1623, the Dorchester Company went out of existence in 1626.

In 1627, the Council for New England issued a land grant to a new group of investors, including a few from the Dorchester Company, to establish a for-profit enterprise, “The New England Company for a Plantation in Massachusetts Bay” (better known as the New England Company), led by John Endecott.

Endecott would ultimately found the town of Salem, Massachusetts, in 1628.  Endecott’s shares and those of fifty-six other New England Company investors would ultimately be absorbed into those of the Massachusetts Bay Company in 1629. (Genealogical-com)

The Massachusetts Bay Colony was a colony located near modern-day Boston and Salem Massachusetts.  It  was the first English chartered colony whose board of governors does not reside in England, thus paving the way for permanent settlement. (Native Philanthropy)

The Puritans used the royal charter establishing the Massachusetts Bay Company to create a government in which “freemen” – white males who owned property and paid taxes and thus could take on the responsibility of governing – elected a governor and a single legislative body called the Great and General Court, made up of assistants and deputies.

In April of 1630, the Puritans, led by one of the company’s stockholders, John Winthrop, left their homes in Boston, England and gathered at a dock in Southampton to set sail for the New World.

The fleet of 11 ships, now known as the Winthrop fleet, set sail and finally reached the shores of Massachusetts on June 12 and landed at Salem.

The Puritans established a theocratic government with the franchise limited to church members.  Bending the charter to their own purposes, the Puritans transformed the company into a religious commonwealth.

Their ambition had been to establish an ideal Christian community — a “city on a hill,” as Winthrop called it — with the eyes of England and the entire world on it. Winthrop was reelected governor, and a theocracy was in fact established.

In May 1631 the Puritan leaders agreed to recognize only church members as freemen (those entitled to vote and hold office). The company’s officers became the colony’s magistrates. The ministers of the church defined orthodoxy, and the colony’s magistrates enforced it. Dissenters were suppressed or banished.

Conflicts arose over the arbitrariness of the assistants, and in 1641 the legislature created the Body of Liberties. This document was a statement of principles for governance that protected individual liberties and was the basis for the guarantees later expressed in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution.

Early challenges to the charter were averted by the outbreak of the English Civil War in the 1640s; for about 50 years, with little interference from England, the Massachusetts Bay Colony developed into a Puritan commonwealth.

The Massachusetts Bay Colony flourished with literacy, schools, town meetings, longer lives, clean drinking water, a cool climate, and a variety of crops. Though the Puritan faith eventually waned, the Massachusetts Bay Colony thrived and was a strong start for the New World.

In 1684, however, the government of Charles II revoked the company’s charter. The colony was merged briefly into the extensive but short-lived (1686–88) Dominion of New England, which included New Hampshire and New Jersey and the colonies lying between them.  (Oscar Zeichner)

Plymouth Colony

On September 6, 1620 (Old Style; September 16, New Style), the Mayflower departed from Plymouth, England, and headed for America.

After 65 days at sea, the Mayflower dropped anchor near present-day Provincetown on November 11 (OS; November, 21, 1620, NS), and 41 male passengers signed the Mayflower Compact, an agreement to enact “just and equal laws for the general good of the colony.”

The colonists who traveled to the New World on the Mayflower were a small group of Separatists who had fled to Holland from England to practice their religion without official interference. Economic hardship and a desire to establish an identity free of Dutch influence prompted them to seek out America.   Most of the Separatists had been living in exile in Holland for ten years before sailing for America, and the rest of the passengers were drawn from the greater London area.

The area around Plymouth and Cape Cod, settled by the Pilgrims, was known as Plymouth colony, or the Old Colony.  By the mid-1640s its population numbered about 3,000 people.

The Pilgrims were never granted a royal charter; their government was based on the Mayflower Compact. The compact was hardly democratic, since it called for rule by the elite, but it established an elective system and a basis for limited consent of the governed as the source of authority. The Old Colony was rapidly overshadowed by its Puritan neighbor to the north, the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Massachusetts Becomes a Royal Province in 1691

After losing its charter in 1684, Massachusetts continued to oppose the will of the Crown.  The Puritan government often operated as an independent state, to the point of minting its own money and even conducting its own foreign affairs.

In 1686, the British king canceled the Massachusetts charter that made it an independent colony.

When James II fled in 1688, the Puritans failed in their attempt to revive the Massachusetts Bay Company, and Massachusetts, in 1691, became a Royal Province under a Governor appointed by the Crown. 

To let more control over trade with the colonies, the King combined British colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth and Maine and the islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard into a single territory governed from England in 1691.  The religious laws instituted by the Massachusetts Bay Company were largely repealed. 

In this new Massachusetts, the franchise was given only to those who owned property or paid taxes. Continued lack of interference from Great Britain allowed the colonists to gain a tradition of self-reliance and self-government. (Maine remained a part of Massachusetts until 1820, when it was established as a separate state.)

The Massachusetts Charter of 1691 was a charter that formally established the Province of Massachusetts Bay.  The charter provided for the Governor’s appointment by the Crown rather than local election, and at the same time broadened the Governor’s powers.

Two legislative houses were permitted, however, and the requirement that every voter must be a church member was abolished.

The new restrictions incidental to the status of a Royal Province, applied in Massachusetts and elsewhere, provoked the series of controversies that culminated in the Revolutionary War.   During the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century, Massachusetts grew in population and in maritime trade.

These were the years of the so-called Second Hundred Years’ War between France and England. In these wars, 1688-1760, Massachusetts played an important part. Its crowning feat was the capture in 1745 of the fortress of Louisburg on Cape Breton Island (NS), a fortress so strong it was known as the Gibraltar of America. At the same time, Massachusetts’ maritime trade, especially with Caribbean ports, rose to the point that Boston was known as “The Mart (or market town) of the West Indies”. (Mass Facts, Secretary of the Commonwealth)

Click the following link to a general summary about Plymouth Colony Absorbed Into Province of Massachusetts Bay:

Click to access Plymouth-Colony-Absorbed-Into-Province-of-Massachusetts-Bay.pdf

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Body of Liberties

The Mayflower is “indissolubly linked with the fundamentals of American democratic institutions. She was the wave-rocked cradle of our liberties.” (Henry B. Culver, Naval Historian, 1924)

Mayflower Compact

The Pilgrims established a government of sorts under the Mayflower Compact of 1620, which enshrined the notion of the consent of the governed.

It agreed to pass “just and equal laws for the good of the Colony”. The first experiment in New World self-government, some scholars even see it as a kind of American Magna Carta, a template for the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.  (Bryant, BBC)

The legacy of the pilgrims is foundational. The work ethic. The fact Americans don’t take much annual holiday. Notions of self-reliance and attitudes towards government welfare. Laws that prohibit young adults from drinking in bars until the age of 21. A certain prudishness. The religiosity.

Americans continue to expect their presidents to be men of faith. In fact, no occupant of the White House has openly identified as an atheist.

Also the profit motive was strong among the settlers, and with it the belief that prosperity was a divine reward for following God’s path – a forerunner of the gospel of prosperity preached by modern-day television evangelists. (Bryant, BBC)

Julia Ernst noted, the crux of the Mayflower Compact was to establish a common agreement among all the people in the colony, “mutually” and “in the presence of one another,” to “Covenant and Combine ourselves together into a Civil Body Politic.” This is the beginning of a democratic form of governance established by the people and for the people under the principle of majority rule.

It is a foundational document – not a set of specific rules, but a charter creating the polity (the public relationships among the members of that community) and the government to institute and maintain order in that society.

They agreed to “Covenant” with each other – to enter into a formal and fundamentally sacred reciprocal promise with every other member of the community.

This form of agreement reflected the earnest solemnity of the covenant theological system and the covenant political system with which most of them were probably accustomed. The Separatists utilized covenants in their religious beliefs and practices, as mentioned previously.

Not only did they make a formal promise to each other through the “Covenant,” but they also pledged themselves to “Combine” with each other – to work together as one unit for the common good of all members of the diverse community, both Saints and Strangers.

The Mayflower Compact was not so named until 1793 – it was originally called the Plymouth Combination, reflecting the coming together of all individual members into one cohesive, collective, egalitarian unit.

The Mayflower Compact does not contain all the elements of a written constitution, such as fleshing out the form in which the new government will take shape. However, it forms the basis for such a government through their agreement “to enact, constitute and frame such just and equal Laws Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions and Offices, from time to time.”

Thus, the Mayflower Compact was in effect a pre-constitutional agreement, as it expressly envisions that the members of the civil society will jointly create “Constitutions and Offices.”

“The Mayflower Compact reaffirmed one of the fundamental ideas of the Magna Carta; namely, that no political society could flourish without respect for the rule of law,” said Kim Holmes, executive vice president of The Heritage Foundation.

Body of Liberties

Next, in 1630, the Puritans used the royal charter establishing the Massachusetts Bay Company to create a government in which “freemen” – white males who owned property and paid taxes and thus could take on the responsibility of governing – elected a governor and a single legislative body called the Great and General Court, made up of assistants and deputies.

Conflicts arose over the arbitrariness of the assistants, and in 1641 the legislature created the Body of Liberties. This document was a statement of principles for governance that protected individual liberties and was the basis for the guarantees later expressed in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution.

The Massachusetts Body of Liberties was the first attempt in the colonies to restrain the power of the elected representatives by appealing to a fundamental document that lists the rights and duties of the people. The document, drafted and debated over several years, combined the early American covenanting tradition of the Mayflower Compact with an appeal to the common law tradition that crossed the Atlantic from Britain.

In 1644 this single body became an entity made up of two chambers: the House of Assistants (later the Senate) and the House of Deputies (later the House of Representatives). This set the precedent of bicameralism for most governmental legislatures in the United States, including the eventual federal legislature. (Britannica)

At first the right to vote was limited to the “chosen” – those whose religious background was thought to ensure salvation – but, after the original charter was revoked and a new one established in 1691, the franchise was extended to property owners and taxpayers. (Eventually, amendments granted all men and women the right to vote and hold office.)

The Body of Liberties is the first legal code established by European colonists in New England and was composed of a list of liberties, rather than restrictions, and intended for use as guidance for the General Court of the time.

This document is considered by many as the precursor to the General Laws of Massachusetts and the Massachusetts Constitution. It incorporates rights that were later judged to be ahead of their time, with some of these rights eventually appearing in the Bill of Rights.  Scholars do not agree as to whether these liberties were ever adopted, adopted provisionally or approved of by the General Court.

On December 10, 1641, the General Court established the hundred laws which were called the Body of Liberties. They “had been revised and altered by the [General] Court, and sent forth into every town to be further considered of, and now again in this [General] Court they were revised, amended, and presented.”  (Mass-gov)

Click the following link to a general summary about the Body of Liberties:

Click to access Body-of-Liberties.pdf

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Mary Had a Little Lamb

Mary had a little lamb;
Its fleece was white as snow;
And everywhere that Mary went,
The lamb was sure to go.

It followed her to school one day,
Which was against the rule;
It made the children laugh and play
To see a lamb at school.

And so the teacher turned it out;
But still it lingered near,
And waited patiently about
Till Mary did appear.

This poem is a true story … Yes, there really was a ‘Mary’ and she did have a ‘Little Lamb’. The lamb became her pet, and has always been known everywhere as ‘Mary’s lamb.’

Mary Elizabeth Sawyer was born on March 22, 1806 on a farm in Sterling, Massachusetts. Her father was Thomas, the son of Ezra Sawyer, and her mother was Elizabeth Houghton.

In 1815, Mary, then nine, was helping her father with farm chores when they discovered a sickly newborn lamb in the sheep pen that had been abandoned by its mother. After a lot of pleading, Mary was allowed to keep the animal, although her father didn’t hold out much hope for its survival. Against the odds, Mary managed to nurse the lamb back to health.

I’ll let Mary tell the rest of the story (from books by Dickerson and another by Ford) …

“One cold, bleak March morning I went out to the barn with father; and after the cows had been fed, we went to the sheep pen, and found two lambs which had been born in the night. One had been forsaken by its mother, and through neglect, cold and lack of food was nearly dead.”

“I saw it had still a little life, and asked to take it into the house; but father said, No, it was almost dead, anyway, and at the best could live but a short time. But I couldn’t bear to see the poor little thing suffer, so I teased until I got it into the house.”

“Then I worked upon mother’s sympathies. At first the little creature could not swallow, and the catnip tea mother made it could not take for a long time.”

“I got the lamb warm by wrapping it in an old garment and holding it in my arms beside the fireplace. All day long I nursed the lamb, and at night it could swallow just a little. Oh, how pleased I was!”

“But even then I wasn’t sure it would live; so I sat up all night with it, fearing it wouldn’t be warm enough if there was not someone at hand to look out for its comfort.”

“In the morning, much to my girlish delight, it could stand; and from that time it improved rapidly. It soon learned to drink milk; and from the time it would walk about, it would follow me anywhere if I only called it.”

“My little pet was a fast grower, as symmetrical a sheep as ever walked, and its fleece was of the finest and whitest. Why, I used to take as much care of my lamb as a mother would of a child. I washed it regularly, kept the burdocks picked out of its fleece, and combed and trimmed with bright-colored ribbons the wool on its forehead.”

“When that was being done, the lamb would hold down its head, shut its eyes, and stand as quiet as could be. From the time it could walk until the season came for the sheep to go to pasture my lamb stayed in the woodshed.”

“It did not take kindly to its own species; and when it was in the field, it preferred being with the cows and horses instead of with other sheep.”

“’The lamb was a ewe and became the mother of three lambs, a single one and twins, and her devotion to her little family was as strong as could be.”

“We roamed the fields together and were, in fact, companions and fast friends. I did not have many playmates outside the dumb creatures on the place. There were not many little girls to play with, and I had few dolls; but I used to dress up my lamb in pantalets, and had no end of pleasure in her company.”

“Then I had a little blanket or shawl for her; and usually when that was on, she would lie down at my feet, remaining perfectly quiet and seemingly quite contented.”

“The day the lamb went to school, I hadn’t seen her before starting off; and not wanting to go without seeing her, I called. She recognized my voice, and soon I heard a faint bleating far down the field. More and more distinctly I heard it, and I knew my pet was coming to greet me. My brother Nat said, ‘Let’s take the lamb to school with us.’”

“Childlike, I thought that would be a good idea, and quickly consented. The lamb followed along close behind me. There was a high stone wall to climb, and it was rather hard work to get her over. We got her on top, then clambered over to take her down.”

“She seemed to understand what was expected, and waited quietly for us to take her off the wall. When the schoolhouse was reached, the teacher had not arrived, and but few of the scholars were there. Then I began to think what I should do with the lamb while school was in session.”

“I took her down to my seat – you know we had old-fashioned, high, boarded-up seats then. Well, I put the lamb under the seat and covered her with her blanket; and she lay down as quietly as could be.”

“By and by I went forward to recite, leaving the lamb all right; but in a moment there was a clatter, clatter, clatter on the floor, and I knew it was the pattering of the hoofs of my lamb.”

“Oh, how mortified I felt! The teacher was Miss Polly Kimball, who was afterward married to a Mr. Loring, and became the mother of Loring, the circulating-library man of Boston. She laughed outright, and of course all the children giggled.”

“It was rare sport for them, but I could see nothing amusing in the situation. I was too ashamed to laugh, or even smile, at the unlooked-for appearance of my pet. I took her outdoors, and shut her in a shed until I was ready to go home at noon. Usually I did not go home till evening, as we carried our lunch with us; but I went home at noon that day.”

The poem

There are a couple stories about the poem, and who wrote it.  Mary said the author was John Roulstone … “Visiting the school that morning was a young man by the name of John Roulstone, a nephew of the Reverend Lemuel Capen, who was then settled in Sterling.”

“It was the custom then for students to prepare for college with ministers, and for this purpose Mr. Roulstone was studying with his uncle.”

“The young man was very much pleased with the incident of the lamb; and the next day he rode across the fields on horseback to the little old schoolhouse, and handed me a slip of paper which had written upon it the three original stanzas of the poem.” (Mary, in Dickerson)

However, in 1830, Sarah Josepha Hale, a renowned writer and influential editor (she’s also known as the “Mother of Thanksgiving” for helping making the day a holiday), published Poems for Our Children, which included a version of the poem.

According to Mary herself, Roulstone’s original contained only the three stanzas, while Hale’s version had an additional three stanzas at the end.

Mary admitted she had no idea how Hale had gotten Roulstone’s poem. When asked, Hale said her version, titled “Mary’s Lamb,” wasn’t about a real incident, but rather something she’d just made up.

Soon the residents of Sterling and those of Newport, New Hampshire, where Hale hailed from, were arguing about the poem’s provenance – something they continued to do for years.  Later, Henry Ford sided with Mary’s claim that Roulstone wrote the first three verses.

There’s a third version of how the Mary and her lamb story came to be. Mary Hughes, of Llangollen, Denbighshire, Wales, was credited with being the subject of the nursery rhyme supposedly penned by a woman from London by the name of Miss Burls.

The only problem with the UK version of events is that Mary Hughes wasn’t born until 1842, twelve years after Hale’s poem was published.  (Andrew Amelinckx)

Some Interesting Side Stories

Some say Mary and her lamb helped save Boston’s Old South Meeting House (Church).  The Congregationalists built Old South Meeting House in Boston in 1729. Judge Samuel Sewall publicly apologized for taking part in the Salem Witch Trials there. Benjamin Franklin was baptized on the site. Phyllis Wheatley thought about freedom while attending services at Old South.

It is just down the street from Park Street Church where the first American Protestant missionaries to Hawai‘i gathered in 1819 to receive their instructions before departing on their mission.

In 1876, the building was to be sold for scrap (for $1,350, the value of its parts).  The people of Boston organized to save it and, on July 13, 1876, the congregation’s leaders agreed to postpone the sale of Old South for two months, but the buyers had to come up with $420,000 and ask for no further delay.

Mary Sawyer Tyler, then living in Somerville, helped with the cause.  As she noted, “From the fleece sheared from my lamb, mother knit two pairs of very nice stockings, which for years I kept in memory of my pet.”

“But when the ladies were raising money for the preservation of the Old South Church in Boston, I was asked to contribute one pair of these stockings for the benefit of the fund. This I did.”

“The stockings were raveled out, pieces of the yarn being fastened to cards bearing my autograph, and these cards were sold;” cards were attached the wool that said, “Knitted wool from the first fleece of Mary’s Little Lamb.” (New England Historical Society)

First Phonograph Recording

The poem was one of the oldest audio recordings of a musical performance — and possibly the oldest ever of an American voice.  The audio, recorded on tin foil by Thomas Edison using one of his early phonographs, was made during a 1878 museum demonstration in St Louis.

Edison recalled the first words he spoke into the phonograph, a recital of the “Mary Had a Little Lamb” nursery rhyme. In his writings, Edison recounts further the 1878 recording:

“I designed a little machine using a cylinder provided with grooves around the surface. Over this was to be placed tinfoil, which easily received and recorded the movements of the diaphragm … Kruesi (the machinist), when he had nearly finished it, asked what it was for.”

“I told him I was going to record talking, and then have the machine talk back. He thought it absurd. However, it was finished, the foil was put on; I then shouted ‘Mary had a little lamb,’ etc. I adjusted the reproducer, and the machine reproduced it perfectly.”

“I was never so taken aback in my life. Everybody was astonished. I was always afraid of things that worked the first time.”  (Edison)

This original recording was thought lost until scientists at the University of California Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in collaboration with the Library of Congress had a go at recreating it using “optical imaging”.

Despite Edison’s account of shouting a nursery rhyme on a recording, it’s somewhat unclear if it’s his voice on this recording. (Some experts believe the voice is actually that of political writer Thomas Mason.”

The Old Redstone Schoolhouse

Built sometime in the late 1700s, the tiny, one-room schoolhouse was in use from 1798 up until 1927, when it was finally closed (for the first time). The little schoolhouse takes its name from its original location, as opposed to its color, having been located on Redstone Hill in Sterling, Massachusetts.

Henry Ford acquired the old schoolhouse to be a part of his Wayside Inn historic district.  Ford moved the schoolhouse around 20 miles to nearby Sudbury.  The school reopened again in 1927, at its new location, teaching grades 1-4 to the local children.

This second life lasted until 1951, when the school was closed a second time and converted into a solely historical site.  (Wayside Inn)

Death of Mary’s Lamb

Mary said, “I have not told you about the death of my little playmate. It occurred on a Thanksgiving morning. We were all out in the barn, where the lamb had followed me. It ran right in front of the cows fastened to the stanchions, built along the feed box.”

“One of the creatures gave its head a toss, then lowered its horns and gored my lamb, which gave an agonizing bleat and came toward me with the blood streaming from its side. I took it in my arms, placed its head in my lap, and there it bled to death.”

“During its dying moments it would turn its little head and look up into my face in a most appealing manner, as if it would ask if there was not something that I could do for it.”

“It was a sorrowful moment for me when the companion of many romps, my playfellow of many a long summer’s day, gave up its life; and its place could not be filled in my childish heart.’ (Mary; quoted in Dickerson and Ford)

Mary herself lived until 1889. (Ford)  There’s a statue of the famous lamb in town, and a restored version of Mary’s home (the original was destroyed by a pair of arsonists back in 2007). Her descendants continue to farm the land that gave birth to the most famous nursery rhyme of all time. (Andrew Amelinckx)

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Heathen School at Nantucket

“If there is a missionary ground on earth it is here (in Nantucket).” (Christian Herald and Seaman’s Magazine; April 6, 1822)

The headline ‘Heathen School at Nantucket’ in The Religious Intelligencer, May 4, 1822 would suggest the possibility of a second Foreign Mission School was in Nantucket (to the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall). It possibly served as a feeder to the Cornwall school.

It appears plausible, given Nantucket’s early American leadership in the Pacific whaling fleets following the first American whalers’ visit to Hawai‘i in 1819 (Edmund Gardner, captain of the New Bedford whaler Balaena (also called Balena,) and Elisha Folger, captain of the Nantucket whaler Equator).

Nantucket emerged as the world’s most vigorous whaling port in the colonies, with a substantial fleet dedicated exclusively to pelagic sperm and right whaling on distant grounds, and a highly developed network of merchants and mariners to prosecute the hunt. (Lebo)

Gardner, like other whalers “shipped two Kanakas from Maui and had them the remainder of the Voyage and took them to New Bedford.” (Gardner Journal)

Many Nantucket captains, returning home from their Pacific whaling voyages, also recounted their Hawaiian adventures. Some brought back objects of Hawaiian manufacture, as well as Native Hawaiian seamen. Other Native Hawaiians landed in Nantucket, New Bedford, and nearby ports almost immediately after.

There were more than three hundred Nantucket whaling voyages to Hawai‘i and the Native Hawaiian crewmen aboard. Thousands of Hawaiians shipped out as seamen aboard the whaling ships, so many that the crews were often half Hawaiian. (NPS)

Within a few years, over fifty “natives of the South Sea Islands” reportedly served aboard Nantucket whaleships. By the 1830s, Nantucket whalers employed about fourteen hundred seamen, including Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders. Four or five hundred men arrived or departed annually. (Nantucket Historical Association)

Whaling had been “an economic force of awesome proportions in these Islands for more than forty years,” enabling King Kamehameha III to finally pay off the national debts accumulated in earlier years. (NPS)

In part, it seems that some of the Islanders were also coming for Western education and were part of the enrollment in the First Congregational Church’s Sabbath School. (Nantucket Historical Association)

“Very little is known relative to the history of the first Congregational church and society in Nantucket, (anciently called Sherburne,) prior to the year 1761. The oldest church records that have been preserved, commence June 27th, of that year.”

“The original meeting-house was first located on a spot about a mile from the town in a northwesterly direction, and in 1765 it was moved into town and rebuilt.”

“It has since that period undergone various repairs and alterations, and in 1834 it was moved a few rods from the spot on which it was re-erected.”

“On that spot, called Beacon hill, now stands the new meeting-house built and dedicated in 1834. The old meeting-house has been fitted up in a commodious style, and is now used as a vestry for the church, and is also used for the Sabbath school.” (Deacon Paul Folger; American Quarterly Register, May 1843)

An unknown number of the Hawaiians attended local schools or temporarily resided in town with local families. In 1822, three of the “Heathen Youth” aboard an outbound whaler formerly attended the Sabbath School at the First Congregational Church.

That year, the Nantucket Inquirer reported “7 natives of the Sandwich Islands” at the school, while the Boston Recorder indicated “twenty Society or Sandwich Islanders” in attendance.

Two years later, Henry Attvoi (or Attooi) left for a whaling cruise aboard the Nantucket ship Oeno; he probably lived in the largely nonwhite section of town called New Guinea before his Oeno voyage began. (Nantucket Historical Association)

(The label “New Guinea” was used in numerous cities and towns to designate the section in which people of color resided.) (MuseumOfAfroAmericanHistory)

The Boston Reporter noted, Nantucket “has long been the resort of youth from pagan countries … there resided here twenty Society and Sandwich Islanders, who, on stated evenings when the sky was clear, assembled in the streets, erected the ensigns of idolatry, and in frantick orgies paid their worship to the host of heaven.”

“(A) kind of school has recently been instituted into which 15 natives of Owhyhee and other islands of the Pacific, have been received.”

“ Of these, 7 are still here are mostly between 14 and 17 years of age and generally remarkable for mildness of disposition, cleanliness of person, and symetry and activity of body.”

“They are anxious to learn, but as yet, ignorant of the true God and eternal life, and more or less addicted to idolatry. … Others have discovered emotion at religious truth.”

“Could one of the pious youth in Cornwall School be placed in our academy, he would enjoy the instruction of an able and devoted preceptor, late of the Theological Seminary in Andover, and perhaps render at his leisure as great service to his countrymen, as though he was stationed in Owhyhee.”

“We lamented to hear of the lack of means for the support of a greater number at Cornwall, since it has frustrated our hopes of introducing a very promising candidate from Chili, and another from the Sandwich Islands.”

“Such as might be given up by their master to receive an education, will if permitted to remain here, be sent to sea. Could they therefore be taken into the pious families of pious mechanics in the country, they might earn qualifications for future and extensive usefulness in connexion with some foreign mission.” (Boston Recorder copied in The Religious Intelligencer, May 4, 1822)

There appears to be some connection between the Nantucket and Cornwall schools, The Report of the 15th Annual Meeting of the ABCFM (Pecuniary Accounts, 1824) noted “Expenses of four youth from Cornwall; to Nantucket, and provisions and clothing for three of them, and their passage to the Sandwich Islands $183 55”.

By the 1840s, with Nantucket harbor no longer deep enough to handle newer, larger whaling ships, most of the vessels relocated to New Bedford, while most of the financiers and much of the money and good life stayed in Nantucket. (Lebo)

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First Congregational Church Nantucket-North Vespry-1820-WC
First Congregational Church Nantucket-North Vespry-1820-WC

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Maritime Massachusetts Meets a Man from the Islands

“Massachusetts has a history of many moods, every one of which may be traced in the national character of America. By chance, rather than design, this short strip of uninviting coast-line became the seat of a great experiment in colonization, self-government, and religion.”

“For a generation, Massachusetts shared with her elder sister, Virginia, leadership in the American Revolution. For another generation, with her off spring Connecticut, she opposed a static social system to the ferment of revolutionary France.”

“With the world peace of 1815 she quickened into new life, harnessed her waterfalls to machine industry, bred statesmen, seers, and poets, generated radical and revolutionary thought.”

“For two hundred years the Bible was the spiritual, the sea the material sustenance of Massachusetts. The pulse of her life-story, like the surf on her coast-line, beat once with the nervous crash of storm-driven waves on granite rock; but now with the soothing pour of ground-swell on golden sands.”

Captain John Smith, in 1614, was the first Englishman to examine the Massachusetts coast, and to give it that name. (Morison)

“After Jamestown, Smith pushed the English to settle the northeast, identifying Plymouth as a suitable harbor four years before the Pilgrims landed there. He coined the region ‘New England’ in 1616.” (Smithsonian)

Shortly thereafter (1620,) the Plymouth Colony arrived. “The Pilgrim fathers sailed with high hopes and a burning faith, but with few preparations and no clear idea of how to make a living on the Atlantic coast.” (Morison)

“In 1630, ten years after its settlement, the Plymouth Colony contained but three hundred white people. At that time the Colony of Massachusetts-Bay, founded only at the end of 1628, had over two thousand in habitants.”

“Within thirteen years the numbers had reached sixteen thousand, more than the rest of the English colonies combined; and the characteristic maritime activities of Massachusetts – fishing, shipping, and West India trading – were already commenced.”

“God performed no miracle on the New England soil. He gave the sea. … The gravelly, boulder-strewn soil was back-breaking to clear, and afforded small increase to unscientific farmers. No staple of ready sale in England, like Virginia tobacco or Canadian beaver, could be produced or readily obtained.”

“Massachusetts went to sea, then, not of choice, but of necessity.”

“These colonial merchants lived well, with a spacious brick mansion in Boston and a country seat at Milton Hill, Cambridge, or as far afield as Harvard and Hopkinton, where great house parties were given. They were fond of feasts and pageants”.

“The backbone of maritime Massachusetts, however, was its middle class; the captains and mates of vessels, the master builders and shipwrights, the ropemakers, sailmakers, and skilled mechanics of many different trades, without whom the merchants were nothing.”

“Boston became the headquarters of the American Revolution largely because the policy of George III threatened her maritime interests.”

“Then came the worst economic depression Massachusetts has ever known. The double readjustment from a war to a peace basis, and from a colonial to an independent basis, caused hardship throughout the colonies.”

“It worked havoc with the delicate adjustment of fishing, seafaring, and shipbuilding by which Massachusetts was accustomed to gain her living. By 1786, the exports of Virginia had more than regained their pre-Revolutionary figures.”

“At the same date the exports of Massachusetts were only one-fourth of what they had been twelve years earlier. … (However,) By 1787 the West-India trade was in a measure restored.”

“Some subtle instinct, or maybe thwarted desire of Elizabethan ancestors who, seeking in vain the Northwest Passage, founded an empire on the barrier, was pulling the ships of Massachusetts east by west, into seas where no Yankee had ever ventured.”

“Off the roaring breakers of Cape Horn, in the vast spaces of the Pacific, on savage coasts and islands, and in the teeming marts of the Far East, the intrepid shipmasters and adventurous youth of New England were reclaiming their salt sea heritage.”

“One bright summer afternoon in 1790 saw the close of a great adventure. On August 9, Boston town heard a salute of thirteen guns down-harbor. The ship Columbia, Captain Robert Gray, with the first American ensign to girdle the globe snapping at her peak, was greeting the Castle after an absence of three years.”

“Coming to anchor in the inner harbor, she fired another federal salute of thirteen guns, which a ‘great concourse of citizens assembled on the various wharfs returned with three huzzas and a hearty welcome.’”

“A rumor ran through the narrow streets that a native of ‘Owyhee’ – a Sandwich-Islander – was on board; and before the day was out, curious Boston was gratified with a sight of him, marching after Captain Gray to call on Governor Hancock.”

“Clad in a feather cloak of golden suns set in flaming scarlet, that came halfway down his brown legs; crested with a gorgeous feather helmet shaped like a Greek warrior’s, this young Hawaiian moved up State Street like a living flame.”

“The Columbia had logged 41,899 miles since her departure from Boston on September 30, 1787. Her voyage was not remarkable as a feat of navigation; Magellan and Drake had done the trick centuries before, under far more hazardous conditions.”

“It was the practical results that counted. The Columbia’s first voyage began the Northwest fur trade, which enabled the merchant adventurers of Boston to tap the vast reservoir of wealth in China.”

“The most successful vessels in the Northwest fur trade were small, well-built brigs and ships of one hundred to two hundred and fifty tons burthen (say sixty- five to ninety feet long), constructed in the ship yards from the Kennebec to Scituate. Larger vessels were too difficult to work through the intricacies of the Northwest Coast.”

To obtain fresh provisions and prevent scurvy, the Nor’west traders broke their voyage at least twice; at the Cape Verde Islands, the Falklands, sometimes Galapagos for a giant tortoise, and invariably Hawaii.”

“The Sandwich Islands proved an ideal spot to refresh a scorbutic crew, and even to complete the cargo. Captain Kendrick (who plied between Canton and the Coast in the Lady Washington until his death in 1794) discovered sandalwood, an article much in demand at Canton, growing wild on the Island of Kauai.”

“A vigorous trade with the native chiefs in this fragrant commodity was started by Boston fur-traders in ‘the Islands’; leading to more Hawaiian visits to New England”. (Most here is from Morison)

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