Jeremy Belknap

IN an address delivered in 1854 before the New York Historical Society, at the close of its first half century, William Cullen Bryant said that Jeremy Belknap had “ the high merit of being the first to make American history attractive.” This is a deserved tribute, happily expressed. It furnishes an apt text for the enlargement now to be made upon it. At the recent observance of the completion of a century of its existence by the Massachusetts Historical Society, —the first of the large number of state and other general and local organizations, with like objects, in the United States, — Dr. Belknap was recognized as its founder, its most earnest, efficient, and able associate, its master spirit in counsel and work. To him belongs even a higher distinction, more comprehensive and fruitful in its reach and influence. Nor does even the tribute paid him by Bryant by any means exhaust the merits of Dr. Belknap in the claims which he has among the historians of our country. For he was not only the first among us to make our history attractive ; he was also the first to bring to the search and securing and identification of the prime materials of history, and to the judicious use of them, a thoroughly historical taste, full fidelity and impartiality.

There was much in the character and career of Dr. Belknap to make them interesting and instructive. His ancestry, from English stock, was in this colony in 1637. By industry and thrift it had prospered, and was held in good repute. His own progenitors were among the founders of the Old South Church. A street in Boston bears his family name, as does also a ward in the Massachusetts General Hospital, endowed generously by two Belknaps. He was born in Boston in 1744, trained in the town’s famous Latin School, and graduated at Harvard in 1762. In his early boyhood he showed the proclivities which so largely directed his subsequent life. In the tower of the venerable meeting-house which stands on Washington Street is a spacious square apartment, in which was once gathered by the diligent and learned pastor, Thomas Prince, the largest collection and the most valuable that had then been brought together here of books, tracts, records, and manuscripts relating to the history of this country. Before he had entered college, the boy, by the indulgence of his minister, was allowed to browse among these treasures. When, afterwards, at his home in Dover, he heard of the evacuation of Boston by the British army, which had been rioting in the town for a year, and had used the meeting-house as a riding-school, his anxiety was roused about the fate of the precious contents of the tower chamber. What is left of that so-called £" New England Library ” is now in our Public Library.

The youth’s purpose, like that of so many of the scholarly and able graduates of the college at that time, was to become a minister. So he pursued the usual course of teaching school for a maintenance while continuing his studies, helped by the sympathy and advice of those already in the ministry. Interleaved almanacs, commonplace books with extracts from books which he could not purchase, and diligent correspondence give us the method of his life. His happening to serve as a teacher in a New Hampshire town, and his occasional office as a preacher, led to his unanimous call by the church in Dover. He accepted the invitation, and wras there ordained early in the year 1767. He tells us that a council, composed of the ministers and delegates of twenty-two churches, was called together for the ceremonial. It was most unfortunate for Mr. Belknap that his lines fell to him in just those places. The expectation and usage then were that the minister of a parish should retain his office for life, — like a wedded couple, “ for better for worse, for richer for poorer.” He found it so much for the worse that eighteen years of such service, with full fidelity and respect from all around him, compelled him to seek a release, as a necessary security against penury. His experiences were simply an aggravation of those of very many of his contemporaries in the ministry, at that particular period, and they offer us an interesting historical episode.

The years of Mr. Belknap’s residence in Dover — 1767 to 1786 — covered all the incidents, distractions, and trials preceding the opening of our Revolutionary War, running through it, and following the long unsettled and threatening period of the Confederation till the adoption of the Constitution, and even some time after. Those who could profit by privateering, and those who by grasping and forestalling could avail themselves of opportunities of self-enrichment, were the few who alone escaped the losses and pinches of the time. The country towns of New England were well-nigh exhausted of men and means. Constant drafts upon them for soldiers, with merciless taxation for the army, laid heavy burdens on those least able to bear them. The future would have looked most dark had not the passing years been so gloomy. To go into the forests, to cut a load of wood or to burn a mound of charcoal, teaming the wood or charcoal to a place of marketing, was to very many the only way to secure any real money, while all other traffic was by barter. As to this real money, there was very little of it. As the substitute for it, the epithet lawful attached to the terms of a worthless currency only mocked the promise of a steadily depreciating medium, when a bushel measure emptied of corn would scarcely contain the paper certificates crowded in, in payment for it.

There was as steady a demoralization of character and habits among the inhabitants of these towns. It is only when, turning from the summary pages of digested history of that period, we penetrate the privacies of home and the daily experiences of the people, men and women, the aged and children, that we can appreciate the contrast with the general prosperity and comfort before the war. All the previous humdrum order, routine, and simple mechanism of toil and thrift were rudely displaced. The town schools, the pride and glory of New England, were in many districts left to neglect, partly from indifference by absorption of interest in the excitements of the time, and partly from the poverty of the people. The minister of a town stood charged with the chief responsibility in the prosperity and oversight of the public schools, and a good education for his own children was set by him on a level with the training of a good character. One of the most plaintively sad utterances of Dr. Belknap in his correspondence was drawn from him by his poignant regret on this account in the case of his eldest son when he was fourteen years of age. Through the aid of a friend in Philadelphia, the boy had been received as an indentured apprentice by a printer and bookbinder who published the first volume of the History of New Hampshire. The master wrote Dr. Belknap that he was sorely disappointed by his apprentice’s lack of the attainments which might reasonably have been expected of him. Belknap admits the fact with deep regret and even self-reproach. The straits and circumstances of his condition had compelled him to use the boy as a farm laborer. It must have cost him pain and mortification that he could not send a son to college, a privilege which his clerical brethren, however frugal their lot, regarded as a matter of course. A long and noble line, in the past, of men most useful, honored, and distinguished in all the ranges of life has come from country parsonages.

It was in such a community, and one conspicuously marked by the exhaustion and demoralization just noted, that Mr. Belknap found his lot to be cast. He had acceded to it with a purpose of lifelong constancy, for himself, his wife, and the children who should be born to him. The terms of his contract with town and church were, a salary of one hundred pounds lawful money, then rated at $333.331 3/1, and, after the usual custom, one hundred and fifty pounds of the same currency for what was called a “ settlement,” with which to provide a house and furnishings for a start, — a sum wholly insufficient for the purpose. He was settled as colleague with an aged and infirm predecessor, who was still dependent on the parish. In delicate consideration for him, temporarily, as he supposed, Belknap waived his claim for the usual supply of firewood made to ministers. It was not till five years after the decease of the elder that Belknap was moved to renew his claim for wood. He had ground enough, such as it was, for farm and garden, but his pasture was two miles distant. We have to pick from his correspondence those hints and details which reveal the petty and the very grave trials and experiences of his position. He does not yield to any peevish outbursts or any acerbity of complaint on the failure of his parish to pay him his meagre stipend, yet he says he had to face the fact of his real inability to provide the necessaries of life. There were a very few persons in his flock who, appreciating his singular excellence of character, his devotion to them, and his abilities, so sympathized with him as to offer to assume the pecuniary obligations of defaulters ; hut to this he would not consent.

An amusing incident gives us a hint as to the intellectual calibre of the people around him. When proposals were circulated in his neighborhood for subscriptions to the first volume of fils History of New Hampshire, prices were specified for copies in sheets, in hoards, or bound. Some of his parishioners, knowing more about lumber than literature, thought “in boards ” meant that payment might be made in that material. The president of Dartmouth College wrote him that possibly a subscriber or two might offer in that neighborhood, if payment would be received in country produce, — say, corn, a pig, or shingles. Mr. Belknap said that there was not a single person within twelve miles of him with whom he could hold intellectual converse. Even in tlie famous old seaport and court town of Portsmouth, a dozen miles from him, he affirmed that there were not more than twelve or fourteen " readers.” He found, however, a most warm-hearted, appreciative friend in tlie royal Governor Wentworth till his Toryism drove him away in the Revolution, when, as lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia, lie continued correspondence and intimate relations with Mr. Belknap, to whom he gave many valuable historical papers.

Well might this country parson say of himself that he led at Dover “ the life of a cabbage,” save that a cabbage needed to be hoed, rather than to hoe, as Belknap did. The chief resource he enjoyed in his condition was in friendly correspondence, extended beyond common details by craving for information and for books. But this correspondence was carried on under great embarrassment. There was no post office in Dover. Letters went to and came from Portsmouth by private hands, and often, when the ferry was impassable and roads were mired or snowbound, they were withheld for long periods. A coaster was sometimes availed of for small parcels. When Belknap was to send his apprenticed son to Philadelphia, there was long delay for such conveyance, a land journey being out of the question.

The severest trials incident to his experience from the failure of his people to fulfill the terms of their contract with him were concentrated in the last four years of his connection with them. The good man would have wished that all the knowledge which posterity should have of this matter would avail not at all for any personal sympathy for him as a sufferer, but wholly as an historical illustration of what might be and what was the experience of other country ministers like himself, in hard places and hard circumstances. So he wrote out, in his excellent chirography, a detailed and authenticated statement of the unjust and harassing treatment which he received when he urged upon his people his necessitous condition, and the iniquity of their action, or lack of action, to right the wrong. We have to remind ourselves that the minister of a town was the only one of its inhabitants or citizens, whatever their office or occupation, to whom was assured by written contract a stipulated annual salary. This was apportioned and collected as a part of the general tax covering all town charges, for highways, for the poor, for schools, and other matters. All the inhabitants were held, pro rata, taxable for the ministry in the old parish church, unless, as the phrase was,they signed off ” by proving that they contributed towards the support of some other pilace of worship. Belknap affirms that his parish were really able to meet their obligations to him. He writes : “ Was it owing to their poverty or sufferings in the cause of the country, I could not only bear it patiently, but should think it my duty to partake of their sufferings to the utmost possible degree ; but the truth is, they have been growing rich on the spoils of their country. There are, at this day, hundreds of bushels of bread corn withheld for a price. It is with difficulty I can get a supply. I am actually obliged to plant my own bread corn this year, and expect to handle the hoe as a common laborer, as my wife is forced to do the wheel.” From his narrative which, after a hundred years, is now printed in full as an historical document by the Massachusetts Historical Society, in its third volume of the Belknap Papers, and which we can only summarize here, one may learn how through a tedious series of parish meetings, with provoking and evasive delays, procrastinations, adjournments, references to committees, and results in nothing, the patient petitioner and remonstrant was trifled with. One signally impressive lesson may be drawn from it, and that is of the serene and magnanimous spirit preserved by Mr. Belknap through the whole controversy. No sign of acerbity, no token of an unkind or unchristian resentment, no reproachful expression, but only, and most touching, a tender, elevated, and selfrespectful bearing, considerate and dignified, marks all his utterances.

He was compelled to ask, and, against the remonstrance and opposition of his people, to insist upon, a release from his eon tract with them. This was effected by the regular usage of the time. And, as if in charming illustration of the new assurance of their respect and love for him drawn out by his own bearing in the contention, no sooner was his release ratified than he was earnestly urged to enter upon a new contract with his people. He was too sagacious, however, for that. In conducting his part in the correspondence with such delicacy he avoided giving his society “a bad name.”

It was under these anxious and oppressive experiences that Mr. Belknap planned and wrote, and in 1784 published, the first volume of his History of New Hampshire. It involved a vast deal of labor in collecting and consulting original documents, and in wide correspondence. Time, toil, and patience must have been given to it. He informs a correspondent that “ the rascally sheet of paper ” on which he was writing cost him “ three dollars a quire; ” meaning, of course, the currency of the time, for that in honest coin was then the price of a ream in Philadelphia, where it was made. Now it is observable that, during the controversy with his people, not only not one single word of complaint or censure is cast upon him for personal or ministerial failings, or for any qualification of the highest standard of exemplariness and fidelity, but no murmur is uttered because he had given so much time and pains to historical work. It would have been contrary to all the usage and traditions of the New England ministry for a people to have censured their minister on that score. Belknap would have been sure to write the history of any State in which he might happen to have his home, for the instinct and aptitude were in him, like an appetite and digesting and assimilating functions. And not only that; it was not exacted as the standard of duty and fidelity for New England clergymen in the olden time, nor is it in these modern days, that a minister’s whole time and thought should be absorbed exclusively in his pulpit and pastoral work. In such absorption his mind and spirit would become rusty, unwholesome, working with tiresome inefficiency in the ruts of a secluded routine. It was expected that he should be a reader, a thinker, and a scholar, exercising and airing his mind, seeking fresh light and truth, and leaving some increment after him for posterity. It was thus that ministers were to get free of limitations and formalities. So it was that nearly everything written for record or print in our early times, in the shape of history or as material for it, was by ministers. The case was an exceptional one in which a minister did not leave behind him something that was or would help for history, if it were only a diary, an interleaved almanac, or a church record.

Most of the historical works in this as in all other countries have been produced by men who, while at work upon them, have won their subsistence in other callings. It is pleasant to take note of this, as showing a better than mercenary impulse in such writers. The period connected with and immediately following upon our Revolutionary War was marked by a most quickened activity of the intellect of the people. The famous Dr. Rush, of Philadelphia, wrote that activity of intellect had increased twenty fold, and acquired knowledge a hundred fold, between the opening of the war and the close of the century. There never was a civilized community on the globe more fully or richly furnished with the materials, actors, events, and records of history, from its origin all through its course, than New England.

Dr. Belknap enjoyed for twenty years, covering the whole period of his historical work, the warmest and most intimate friendship, the continued correspondence, the sympathy and most efficient aid and coöperation of Ebenezer Hazard. The larger part of this correspondence, on both sides, has been published by the Massachusetts Historical Society in the first two volumes of the Belknap Papers. Though many of the letters are fragmentary, they yet afford a mine of curious and valuable information about the quickened intellectual activity and fresh literary enterprise of our country.

Mr. Hazard came from an honored family stock in Pennsylvania, dating from 1636. He was born in the same year as Belknap, and they graduated in the same class, 1762, from Princeton and Harvard respectively. Hazard entered into business as publisher and bookseller, showing zeal as a collector of books and records. He was appointed in 1775, by the Committee of Safety, postmaster at New York and for the eastern district. He was confirmed in office by the Continental Congress. When the Americans evacuated New York, he was transferred to Dobbs Ferry. As surveyor of post roads and offices in 1777, he often traveled the whole route between Georgia and New Hampshire. In 1782 he was appointed postmaster-general of the United States, succeeding Bache and Dr. Franklin. He filled his office through the period of the Confederacy, and was displaced, to his great disappointment, by the first Congress under the Constitution, by the complaints of malcontents. Returning to a business life in books and insurance in Philadelphia, engaged in all that would advance science and culture, and in the preparation of his valuable Historical Collections, he was just the person, and in just the situation, to be the most valued and efficient friend of Belknap. The correspondence was begun, as preserved, in 1779, when Hazard, on an official visit to Portsmouth, had made the acquaintance of Belknap at Dover. It is pleasant to note that in the extreme impecuniosity of the latter his correspondence enjoyed the franking privilege. The friends were of thoroughly congenial tastes and pursuits, equally conscientious in their regard for accuracy and thorough research, devoted in service to each other, knit in family interests, and mutually helpful in seeking out and lending to each other desirable books and documents. Both were men of a rich and overflowing humor, indulging in jokes and anecdotes. It must be admitted that Belknap, though ever courteous, apologetic, and grateful, did tax rather heavily the good will of Hazard in commissions and services. But it is to be added, as a token of the scrupulosity of each in their need and practice of economy, that the most rigid reckoning and acknowledgments were kept between them in matters of shillings and pence. Neither would be under the most trifling pecuniary obligation to the other. All the bargaining and arranging for the printing and publication of Belknap’s first volume in Philadelphia were made, through correspondence, by Hazard. Perplexing and even vexatious the negotiations must sometimes have been. All the money, and that real and ready money, had to be furnished by Belknap, in his utmost straits. Proposals and subscription papers, left with friends to procure subscribers, to be called in when there were but few names upon them, — a few paying a trifle in advance, — passed in a lively way between the two.

We have quoted what Bryant said of Belknap’s History. As completed in its three volumes, having taken the place assigned to it on library shelves, M. de Tocqueville wrote of it: “ The History of New Hampshire, by Jeremy Belknap, is a work held in merited estimation. The author gives extremely precious details concerning the political and religious principles of the Puritans; on the causes of their emigration and their laws. The reader of Belknap will find more general ideas and more strength of thought than are to be met with in other American historians, even to the present day.” This encomium from an honored source is but a specimen of the many tributes of hearty and respectful homage which have been rendered to Dr. Belknap as an historian. These, and the reading of his works by any one of a discriminating mind, whose acquaintance with our historical literature from the earliest times qualifies him to pronounce an intelligent opinion on the subject, will warrant the assertion that Dr. Belknap holds a place of preëminence when he is measured by those who preceded him, and that his claim for distinction is not lessened by a comparison with those who have followed him. By the composition and harmony of his mental qualities ; by his love of research, and his patience and thoroughness in pursuing it; by his intelligent apprehension of the sources from which original and authentic information was to be obtained, and his application in person and by wide correspondence to those who had important documents in their keeping ; by his very guarded confidence in tradition, and his rigid conscientiousness, fidelity, and impartiality, he assured for his historic pages the true value and charm of fairness and authority. Midway in the preparation of the three volumes he received from John Adams a critical and instructive letter, containing these pregnant passages : " My experience has very much diminished my faith in the veracity of history : it has convinced me that many of the most important facts are concealed; some of the most important characters but imperfectly known ; many false facts imposed on historians and the world ; and many empty characters displayed in great pomp. All this I am sure, will happen in our American history.” All this has happened abundantly, in American and all other history. But Belknap stands as free as any of his fellow-historians from the burden of such charges. Belknap was not the first to write a history of our colonies, provinces, or States. William Stith had published a history of Virginia in 1747. Chief Justice Smith had published an excellent history of New York in 1757. That grotesque fabulist Samuel A. Peters, the Tory parson of Hebron, Conn., had indulged his fun and malice in A General History of Connecticut, in 1781, in which he printed the famous Blue Laws which he concocted. Always with full and hearty appreciation of their great merits should the volumes of the laborious and faithful Governor Hutchinson, in his History and Collection of Papers, be valued and honored in Massachusetts, Belknap held him in high regard; perhaps he found in him a prompter to his own work.

It must have been quite early in his more than twenty years’ residence in New Hampshire that Belknap’s interest was engaged in his subject. He tells us that, some old manuscripts coming to his hands,—we maybe sure that they did not come of their own accord, — he began to use and study them in the exercise of what he called his " hobbyhorse.” Friends prompted and helped him to continue his interest. He soon sought and obtained access to the public records both of New Hampshire and of Massachusetts. To seek for and wisely use information and private papers in the repositories of individuals, leading characters and their families, was his next resource, and all proved serviceable to him. He was a shrewd and sagacious winnower and sifter of these papers, and he set a mark of interrogation after all traditions. His first volume was devoted to the history of his State for its first century. It led him through a succession of controversies and strifes about proprietary and administrative governments, complications with the often arbitrary interference of Massachusetts, and harassing Indian raids and wars. He rejoiced when at last, lie reached the settlement of the protracted “ Masonian controversy.” So much of passion and rancor mingled in it that all his judicial fairness was required to make him only its historian.

A word should here be said of the strong, simple, and direct style of English which Belknap wrote. It had been formed on the best models of the sterling English literature, which with a fair classical culture made up the highly creditable scholarship which he possessed. A pleasing illustration of this may be noted. He may have been the first of our writers — many of whom have since been challenged by English critics — to be charged with using words and phrases of the good mother tongue which our fathers brought with them from across the seas, but which, having fallen into disuse “at home,” have been pronounced corruptions or inventions in America. In a paper descriptive of his visit of exploration with some scientific friends to the White Hills, sent for publication by the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, he had used the word freshet. A London review, quoting the paper, said, " We are not acquainted with this word.” A correspondent of the review suggested that it might have been an error of the press for fresh, which would have made nonsense. Belknap replied, " Our forefathers brought the word from England,” citing high authority in Milton —

and other old writers. Well might Belknap say, " If some of the words which our fathers brought from Britain, and which were in vogue a century ago, be there lost or forgotten, it is no reason that they should be disused here, especially when they convey a definite sense.” It was not wholly in humor that Edward Everett affirmed at a London dinner party that better English was spoken and written in New than in Old England.

Satisfaction at the conclusion of this part of his task, and the warm appreciation of a few readers and friends, among them Washington, had to serve with Belknap as an offset to the balance against him of the expense of publishing his first volume. Though it appeared in a second edition, he was never fully remunerated by its sale. The wonder is that it came safely through the struggling and bargaining, the risks of a poor mail, and the transmission of copy and proofs by the hands of ignorant skippers of coasters, to a publication by Aitken in Philadelphia, the paper for it having been made there. The effort to work it off, the pleadings for subscribers, the lingering of copies in the hands of friends, and the payments sent in small dribblets, long delayed, to the publisher tasked the patient persevering agency of Hazard.

After the harassing experiences and pecuniary sacrifices through which Belknap got his release from Dover, new anxieties beset him. Various propositions were made to him. He might have found another country parish. He was then forty-two years of age, with a wife and several children. It was suggested that he open a school for advanced instruction in Boston, where were his kindred and friends, and where some faint signs of a returning prosperity began to appear. That was the period when here and in Philadelphia began the tentative enterprises in what has since become so multiform and fruitful through our whole country, — the production of magazine literature, in all the specialties of science, politics, economy, socialism, history, and belles-lettres. The beginning was feeble, though from the first promise was given of strength in its development. Many offers were made to Belknap to secure his cooperation as editor or contributor by those who were planning such magazines in Philadelphia. Doubtless, if he had not retained a strong attachment for the ministry and a residence in Boston, he might, by removal to Philadelphia, have met there much success in such forms of literature. The project of an Annual Register was entertained. As it was, besides other contributions to magazines, he published in 1787-88, in successive numbers of The Columbian, portions of a humorous work which, afterwards completed and issued in Boston under the title of The Foresters, in 1792, and reaching a second edition, had considerable popularity. He at first sought the concealment of his name as its author ; and for some time his friends were puzzled about it. It professed to be a “ Sequel to [Arbutlmot’s] the History of John Bull.” The American States are personified in the pages of the work under characteristic names, easily identified, and the causes and methods of the Revolution are vividly presented in it. It has throughout many quaint, shrewd, humorous, and satirical touches. Bryant, in the address already quoted, referring to the pleasure with which he had read it as a youth, calls it “ a work which sought to embellish our history with the charms of wit and humor.” It found great favor with boys in country homes.

Early in 1787, Mr. Belknap, by an invitation from the church and society, became pastor of a congregation worshiping in a meeting-house in Federal Street, Boston. This society was afterwards ministered to by Dr. William Ellery Channing. It was small and feeble when Belknap first served it. The frugal salary offered him would be promptly paid, and there was a promise, which was kept, of increase as the society strengthened. Belknap for a while received at his home a few pupils for advanced education, but he could soon dispense with this aid to his resources, as, under his faithful, able, and well-appreciated labors, his high qualities of character, and his earnest interest in every measure for the improvement of the town in education and benevolence, his society soon became a strong one, embracing some of the foremost citizens, He was, by virtue of his clerical position, an Overseer of Harvard College, and in 1792 received from it a doctorate in divinity. This honor he was disposed, in his modesty, to decline, but was induced to accept. He certainly had the countenance of brethren bearing it not so fitly as himself. He took a high position among those brethren for his wisdom, learning, and strength of judgment. Boston had always been a pleasant abiding-place for men of fidelity and solid worth in the ministry, living in harmony and friendliness together. Their respective more prosperous parishioners vied with each other in kindly private gifts to them of comforts and luxuries, to help out their slender stipends. There was not one among them but had in his cellar some choice and pure liquors, for discreet and comfortable use; coming with the compliments of some thrifty importer.

Now that Boston, with the floods of Irish immigrants which have poured into it in the last half century, followed by their priests, presents its numerous and stately Roman Catholic churches, it is curious to recall allusions in the Belknap Papers to the first strange sight of a priest in the old Puritan town. While Belknap lived in Dover, his busy correspondent, John Eliot, wrote to him from Boston, in 1782, of the number of Frenchmen in the town, and his wish that he might be rid of them, though their fleet in the harbor had been of such service in our cause. He tells him, as of a rare curiosity, of “ a monk of the order of St. Francis in town, a young fellow of sense, taste, and liberality of sentiment in religious opinions as well as other matters, who speaks in raptures of the Bostonian misses. ‘ The women.”he says, ‘ are sensible, virtuous, discreet, constant; they are faithful in their friendships and matrimonial connections, etc., as the French women are not.’ The French abbé comes to meeting often, and I have been to hear mass on board his ship. We discourse together about our persuasions, when he delivers such sentiments as these: ‘I love a good Protestant as well as a good Papist. The disciple of Christ cannot be of a persecuting spirit, and every good member of the Church of Rome must condemn the Inquisition.’ In public he appears with great dignity and devotion, and is a very fine-looking man. In private he is the merry, sociable, facetious companion, dresses like one of us, and is fond of associating with the clergy of the town. I suspect whether he ever means to return to his convent.”

Another reference to a Roman Catholic priest in Boston shows matters a little more mixed. There was here in 1789 the Abbé Claude de la Poterie. He was soliciting help for a chapel from the Protestants of Boston. Belknap says he came to his lecture on an evening, " dressed in his toga, but I have never had any conversation with him, nor have I ever attended any of his exhibitions.” Belknap had entered in his interleaved almanac for October, 1788, the following: “ The first Sabbath in this month, a popish chapel was opened in this town: the old French Protestant meeting-house in School Street. A clergyman who was dismissed from the Freach fleet in disgrace officiates.” Belknap says that Poterie, by begging, collected sixty dollars for repairing the chapel, buying candles, etc., but that his clerk decamped with the money. In 1790 this chapel was in charge of the Abbé John Thayer, a young man who, having preached as a Congregationalist, had been converted abroad and trained for the priesthood. Belknap, in a letter to Hazard, December, 1790, gives the following narration : “ We have had an exhibition in this town of a singular nature. A Monsieur L’Arève, from Guadaloupe, died here, about a month ago. At the time of his death, Mr. Rouselet, the French priest, was absent on a visit to the Indians of Penobscot, and the French here do not approve of Abbé Thayer, so they got Dr. Parker to read the Protestant Church service at his funeral. When Rouselet came home, he persuaded the widow to let him perform a requiem, after the Roman model. For this purpose they obtained leave of Dr. Parker and his vestry to use his church. Accordingly, last Thursday, Trinity Church was decorated with the insignia of popish idolatry, in the chancel, directly under the second commandment ; and after the mass was said a sermon followed, the whole composing as complete a farce as can well be conceived.” Belknap speaks of strifes between the few Roman Catholics then in Boston. He says “ the French and Irish Papists cannot meet in the same place without quarreling. Once the peace officers were called in to prevent them from coming to blows.”

As was said above, Belknap’s historic instincts and tastes were such that, in whatever State of the Union he might have had an abiding - place, he would have been sure to concern himself with its past and its annals; it was quite as natural for him, as a citizen of Boston, to prompt and guide the measures for forming the Massachusetts Historical Society, when as yet there was no kindred institution in the country. He could not have done this while living in Dover. He needed the sympathy and coöperation of men, even if but few in number, — and perhaps under the immediate circumstances few were better than many, — of similar tastes, of cultivated and appreciative minds, and with strong local attachments, to engage with him in the object. These he found in the four, soon increased to nine, associates whose names appear with his as the original founders ; he himself from the first and always being regarded as the primus, the master spirit and guide, cheerfully followed. These associates were ready at his call, and they were in training, with mental furnishings and material resources. Having passed through the anxieties and sacrifices of the Revolution with the ardent spirit of patriotism, and with full knowledge of and attachment to their ancestral past, they believed that history had been in the making here, and they would have it recorded. Those who are familiar with the contents of the shelves and cabinets of the society are aware that many of them which have the highest value for their purposes were the deposit of its earliest years. As tributes and offerings are brought to a shrine, so, as the records of the society show, the few members never came empty-handed to its meetings; they drew from their own private and ancestral stores, and they -were wise solicitors from the stores of others. Massachusetts and New York took steps nearly at the same time to form an historical society ; but circumstances deferred for a few years the result in the latter State. Belknap mentions, having received in Boston, in 1789, a visit, which he had much enjoyed, from Mr. John Pintard, a business man in New York, intelligent, earnest, and generous, but, as it afterwards proved, somewhat lacking in balance and judgment. His visit was followed by correspondence and kind offices between the friends. Pintard was interested in the formation of an American Museum in New York, in connection with a society started there in 1789 as the St. Tammany Society, at first having as a cognomen the title of an Indian sachem, but for unknown reasons canonizing the savage. The saintly title has wisely been dropped, as, by a singular train of circumstances, the original purpose contemplated by Pintard, in his interviews with Belknap, of an antiquarian society, with interests of civil and natural history, has been turned to the service of political and social democracy. In this capacity and as a club, Tammany has done but little in the service of history, except to provide material for discreditable annals.

Belknap’s first intention, like that of Mr. Pintard, —who was soon whelmed in mercantile misfortunes, — was to found an “ antiquarian ” society, but he was not long in defining for it specific historical purposes. He was himself an honorary member of the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, founded before the war, largely for scientific objects, and had made communications to it. On coining to Boston he had been chosen a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, instituted in 1780. By a provision in its charter, this academy might have been regarded as superseding the functions of a special historical society, for it recognized history, natural and civil, among its objects, and has always had a class and section of its members under that designation. But Belknap had formed in his mind a very distinct, even if limited idea of the purposes of his new association. It is true that he admitted subjects of natural history as within its range, and that the society welcomed contributions and specimens in that department. Older members of the society will remember certain objects of a musty and unfragrant odor — some may even still linger in recesses — which were of that sort. But the Boston Society of Natural History, now so prosperous and effective, has become the better repository for them. In Dr. Belknap’s researches for materials for his own History he had come to the saddening knowledge of the perishing, by dispersion, fire, and neglect, not only of single papers, but of collections of books and documents of the best character and of supreme importance. The multiplication of copies of such papers by the press, in those frugal times, had to be indefinitely deferred; but he urged that, as rapidly as possible, a copy of each of them should be taken by the pen and preserved. It was at a most interesting period that he and his associates began their earnest enterprise. The close of the war had relieved the States of what they had denounced as despotism, but the years that immediately followed, under the weak Confederation, with rival and antagonistic aims and confusion, threatened to result in anarchy. The new constitutional government under Washington gave promise of peace and security.

It is observable that it seems never to have been thought or proposed to put Belknap at the official head of the society. Most probably he selected for himself the office of corresponding secretary. He would have been such, in fact, under any circumstances, for he knew where to address his appeals and what to ask for. Ever since the society was formed, its most laborious and efficient work has been done by its secretaries and librarians. Belknap addressed his intelligent and earnest circulars to persons almost at the ends of the earth; and throughout the century of its existence the publications of the society have drawn from sources directly or indirectly furnished from his diligent and valuable stores. Very soon after the society was formed, he delivered, at its request, a commemorative address, in 1792, on the discovery of America by Columbus, a piece of able and thorough work. No one who is to stand as preacher or orator on the coming completion of another century will do wisely if he fails to read that address.

It is easy to trace in the early activity of the society, and in other wise exercises of his intelligent and large mind, the influence of Dr. Belknap in this community. His correspondence gives us many lively indications of the workings of individualism in opinion, and of a general loosening of old rigidness and austerity of creed and usage among his clerical associates. Questions of the wise use of the Bible in public schools, of the daily distribution of rum to farm and other laborers, of the iniquities of slaveholding, of the formation of town libraries, and like matters present themselves. Mr. Murray had come to preach in Boston the doctrine of universal salvation. The ministers, not prepared for that, entered into a vigorous discussion, suggesting relief by a theory of the annihilation of the impenitent. A margin was even then left for the extension of mercy, as advocated in our day, through the possibility of penitence after death. Dr. Belknap maintained a singularly perfect poise in his moderation of spirit, soundness of judgment, and comprehensive charity.

That sturdy clerical Tory, Dr. Mather Byles, minister of Hollis Street Church, scholar, poet, and wit, correspondent of Pope and Swift, was an uncle of Belknap’s mother. Dismissed from his parish in 1776 for outspoken contempt of the patriot cause, he was denounced at town meeting, and sentenced to a guardship and exile, but respited. Under military guard in his own house, he once relieved the sentinel, and, taking his musket, marched with it before his own door. Left to neglect after the peace, he died in 1788, at the age of eightytwo, a humorist of a rollicking sort to the last. His two spinster daughters, living to a great age, continued to keep the king’s birthday and to drink his health. Belknap, in frequent visits to his quaint kinsman, drew from him amusement, at least, if not also wisdom. He gives this partial inventory of the rubbish found in Dr. Byles’ repositories after his death: “ Five or six dozen pairs of spectacles, of all powers and all fashions ; above twenty walking-sticks, of different sizes and contrivances; about a dozen jest-books; several packs of cards, new and clean ; a quantity of whetstones, hones, etc., — as much as a man could carry in a bushel-basket; a large number of weights for shops, money-scales, etc.; a large collection of pictures, from Hogarth’s celebrated prints down to the corners of newspapers and pieces of linen ; a large parcel of coins, from Tiberius Cæsar to Massachusetts cents ; a parcel of children’s toys, among which two bags of marbles; a quantity of Tom Thumb books and puerile histories ; about a dozen bird-cages and rattraps ; a set of gardeners’ and ditto of carpenters’ tools; a parcel of speakingtrumpets and hearing-tubes, etc., etc., etc., etc.” Dr. Byles said “he had been guarded, regarded, and disregarded.”

The second volume of the History of New Hampshire was published in 1791. The author had less of annoyance and labor in carrying this through the press, as he had Boston publishers. It contains an excellent map of New Hampshire. The volume covers a period of seventy-five years, 1715—1790. It begins with a correction of errors in George Chalmers’ Political Annals, and deals very largely with distracting times, animosities, controversies, and political struggles; the separation from the mother country ; the formation of the state constitution; the matter of a depreciated currency; the contentions about, the territory which is now Vermont, and the method by which it was brought into the Union. Having to thread his way as a dispassionate and impartial historian through matters and strifes the fire of which had by no means cooled while he was writing, Dr. Belknap won commendation and esteem from all parties for his moderation, candor, and judicial spirit.

The third volume of the History, published in Boston in 1792, was printed by his son Joseph and partner Young. It is devoted to valuable and interesting matter, such as a geographical description of the State ; its natural history, productions, improvements, society, manners, laws, and government. Statistics that were trustworthy were then obtained with great difficulty. Belknap spent much labor on such as he gives, and in securing them, besides his own researches, he put to service intelligent and friendly helpers through a wide correspondence. At that time pioneer works of this sort had none of the labor-saving aids which so abound now. The volume contains a list of subscribers to the work, numbering four hundred and seventy sets. The names of Washington and John Adams head the roll, followed by those of Senators of the United States and men of the highest distinction in various walks of life. Of course New Hampshire and Massachusetts contribute the most; Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and South Carolina furnish patrons ; and sixteen sets go to the loyalist exiles of Nova Scotia.

Dr. Belknap’s correspondence affords many, and some very lively, allusions to his contemporary workers in various literary enterprises: such as the historians Ramsay and Gordon ; Dr. Rush, the philanthropist; Dr. Morse, the thriftiest of all as a geographer; Bartram, the naturalist; and Noah Webster, who appears in the character which is now called a crank, and as the butt of much raillery between Belknap and Hazard. Our historian had to find his chief and most substantial reward in the warm regard and appreciation of the foremost men of his time, like John Quincy Adams. He had given twenty-two years of his life — bounded within fifty-four years — to his historical work, which in its results was not remunerative. But for kind personal friends he would have been a pecuniary debtor. The legislature of New Hampshire made him a grant of fifty pounds.

After the publication of the completed work, the editor of a weekly newspaper in Keene, N. H., proposed, as an inducement to subscribers, to reprint the history by sections in his columns. Belknap, when his subscription to the paper was solicited, replied that he was himself peculiarly interested in the project, and offered to send to the editor for publication the certificate of the clerk of a federal court securing to himself the copyright. This good-humored turn stopped the trespass.

An admirable characteristic of Belknap’s was his independence and stout individualism. His friend Hazard, after the release from Dover, had proposed to Belknap, in his forlorn condition, that he should obtain the pastorate of a Presbyterian church in Philadelphia. In reply, Belknap inquired if any creed formula was imposed, and was of course informed of the requisition of assent to the Westminster standards. In further reply, Belknap said he would give no such assent; that he had never committed himself to any expression of belief, except to a form he had himself drawn up at his entrance on the ministry, and that he could not accept that now.

Soon after Belknap entered upon the labors preparatory to writing the History of New Hampshire, he conceived a purpose of composing a series of biographies “of those persons who have been distinguished in America.” He announced his purpose and scheme in his correspondence with Hazard in 1779. His plan was extensive and comprehensive, including adventurers (or, as we should say, navigators and explorers), statesmen, philosophers, divines, authors, warriors, and other remarkable characters, with a recital of the events connected with their lives and actions. Indeed, his view of the inclusiveness of the scheme, of the number of the subjects to be admitted to the list, and of the extent of the sphere in which men had distinguished themselves was so generous and exacting that he had no intent of undertaking the work as its sole author. He sought for and expected the coöperation of friendly laborers. He even anticipated the modern usage in editorial rooms, by which biographical sketches of living persons are prepared in advance and disposed in pigeon-holes, awaiting their use in obituaries. He tells Hazard that there are, among their contemporaries, those who will be fit subjects for memoirs when they shall have passed away, and about whom it will be easy to obtain from themselves authentic information which might perish with them. Belknap has had a long succession of followers in this biographical work, of which he was every way worthy and competent to be an exemplary leader. Had he lived to carry on his labors beyond the two volumes, — the first, of which was published in Boston in 1794. and the second, in press when he died, in 1798, — he would doubtless have had joint contributors. The reader of these volumes will be impressed by the evidence they afford both of the extensive learning of their writer, and of the number and rarity of the works which he used as authorities. His quotations and citations from classical and other writers in the marginal notes show how faithfully his text was wrought. He adopts a chronological order for his subjects. The first volume has a preliminary dissertation giving a condensed sketch of the history of maritime adventure, beginning with that of the Phœnicians and ending with the voyages of Columbus. This is followed by a table, in chronological detail, of adventures and discoveries by Europeans, from the Northman Biron (or Biorn), the supposed discoverer of Newfoundland, in 1001, to the establishment of the Council of Plymouth by James I. Biron, Madoc, Zeno, Columbus, Cabot, Cartier, De Soto, Gilbert, Raleigh and Grenville, De Fuca, Gosnold, John Smith, De Monts, Champlain, Gorges, and Hudson make up the starry list in the first volume. The second is devoted to the earliest historic names connected with Virginia, New England, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. Had Belknap been privileged to continue his work, either with or without the assistance of others, it would have been chronologically easier than was the dealing with the subjects of six hundred years of shadowy history. His two volumes appeared in a new edition from the press of the Harpers in 1842. Only from documents that had come to light since Belknap’s day were materials to be drawn for trifling variations from his text.

It is to be remembered that the historical and biographical labors of which we have given this brief sketch were accomplished by one held to a round of varied and exacting professional duties, which he magnified rather than slighted. The personal esteem in which the writer was held, first by his own people, then by his most intimate associates, and at last by the whole community, — an observant and critical one, — was emphasized in the tributes paid on his decease, and renewed whenever his name is recalled in the line of “ the works that follow ” him. He was never favored with robust health, and was often an invalid. He indulged himself in rhythmical utterances. Among his papers was found one of these, in which he craved a swift and easy relief from life, without pain or delay. This was granted him, by apoplexy, June 20, 1798.

George Edward Ellis.