Tag:

Baptists

Lady Deborah Moody, A Dangerous Woman, Comes to New England

In 1654, when New York governor Peter Stuyvesant needed help collecting taxes, he turned to Deborah Moody. The career of the Salem, Mass., woman then came full circle from outcast to political power broker.

Sketch of a woman in 1640 by Wenceslaus Hollar.

A friend of John Winthrop, Moody came to Massachusetts to escape religious intolerance in England sometime before 1640. Moody’s husband, a baronet, had died 10 years earlier. Her son had sold most of the familial lands in Wiltshire.

In trying to reestablish her life as a widow, Lady Moody had visited London where she attended some of the more exotic religious services of the day among the Baptists and Quakers.

Deborah Moody, Anabaptist

Deborah Moody became an Anabaptist, a school of thought that held people should not be baptized as children but rather as adults.

Anabaptism amounted to heresy in the 1630s. Lady Moody, now a heretic, had to appear before England’s Star Chamber, the high court that heard cases involving the nobility. The court had the power to decide how long nobles could live away from their ancestral estates, and it ordered Lady Moody to go home to Wiltshire.

A 1504 document showing Henry VII in England’s Star Chamber with clerics and the mayor of London.

Moody had considered joining Winthrop and his settlement in America. Though she had long criticized the Church of England, the prospect of joining in the new colony had initially seemed too daunting. But with this new frustration, Deborah Moody decided to move.

At age 54, she pulled up stakes and sailed for America. She first settled in Saugus on a grant of 400 acres for a plantation. Shortly, however, she bought a small house in Salem, and then a farm of more than 1,000 acres from John Humphrey in nearby Swampscott. Humphrey, a one-time deputy governor of Massachusetts, had grown tired of the new colony and was returning to England.

Neighbor Trouble

She had the misfortune of moving into the neighborhood of the Rev. Hugh Peter, also a fellow member of the church at Salem. Given her unconventional beliefs she could hardly have chosen a worse neighbor. Peter was one of the ministers who had successfully prosecuted Anne Hutchinson just two years earlier for her Anabaptist beliefs.

Hugh Peter. Image courtesy of The Public Catalogue Foundation

Peter succeeded in having her banished from Massachusetts for her illegal religious beliefs.

Faced with the increasing hostility, Deborah Moody decided to leave Massachusetts just as Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams had. Rather than head for Rhode Island, however, Moody chose New Amsterdam (now New York).

John Winthrop noted in his journal: “The Ladye Moodye, a wise and anciently religious woman, being taken with the error of denying baptism to infants, was dealt withal by many of the elders and others, and admonished by the church of Salem (whereof she was a member); but persisting still, and to avoid further trouble, etc., she removed to the Dutch, at the advice of all her friends. Many others infected with Anabaptism removed thither also. She was after excommunicated.”

John Winthrop

Gravesend

Moody and a group of her followers who relocated in 1643 to New Amsterdam found the Dutch government much more tolerant. She still had considerable wealth, and New Amsterdam welcomed her. The governor granted her 7,000 acres on the southwestern tip of Long Island.

Lady Deborah Moody Memorial in Gravesend.

She called her new settlement Gravesend. But the new town had a rocky beginning. Though she had cautioned all her fellow settlers to pay the local Native Americans for any land they wanted to use, there were misunderstandings. The indigenous people did not embrace the concept of property ownership. Payments were for fishing rights, they believed, while the colonists expected full ownership of the land they paid for.

Soon, the Natives attacked and the settlers gathered in Lady Moody’s sizable home for protection. Deborah Moody toyed with the idea of returning to her home and land in Massachusetts. Peter had by now returned to England. He would eventually be executed as a regicide for his role in the trial and execution of Charles I.

Old Gravesend Cemetery.

But Peter was not the only enemy Moody had. Moody wrote to Winthrop asking whether she might return, and on-again, off-again governor John Endecott urged him to advise her against it unless she was prepared to renounce her views.

“I shall desire that she may not have advice to return to this jurisdiction, unless she will acknowledge her evil in opposing the churches and leave her opinions behind her, for she is a dangerous woman,” Endecott wrote.

Deborah Moody, Brooklynite

Moody and her fellow Gravesend villagers fortified their small town and dug in. Over the coming years, the town grew and Deborah Moody earned widespread respect. Gravesend did not adopt a single, sanctioned church. Rather, people worshiped as they wished with many, like Lady Moody, simply conducting services in their homes.

As stability set in, Lady Moody emerged as a major power in the town. She had so much influence that in 1654 Gov. Stuyvesant had to call on her to mediate a dispute over taxes.

Dahill Road and Kings Highway in Gravesend, Brooklyn.

Lady Deborah Moody died in 1659 at 73, and Gravesend — now part of Brooklyn — bears her stamp to this day. You can still walk some of the streets she laid out in 1643.

With thanks to Liz Loveland for her editorial suggestion. This story about Deborah Moody was updated in 2023.

Images: Lady Deborah Moody Memorial by By Jim.henderson – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23005948. Old Gravesend Cemetery By Jim.henderson – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23005944. Brooklyn roads by CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1335607.

10 comments 773 views

Thomas Macy Fined for Befriending Quakers

In the summer of 1657, a rainstorm drove four men to the home of Thomas Macy in Amesbury, Mass. They sought shelter and directions to Hampton, N.H., and to Casco Bay. Macy was wary, but he let them stay a short time while the rain let up.

Macy was a founder of the town of Amesbury and its first town clerk, having moved from Salisbury. His position, however, did not place him above the law, and Macy was very much breaking the law by opening his home to the visitors.

Puritans landing in the New World.

Macy was a Baptist. That already placed him in a difficult position with the Puritan leaders of Massachusetts, who banned Baptists from preaching. But to make matters worse, the men now seeking shelter in his home were Quakers. One was Edward Wharton; some sources say the others included William Robinson and Marmaduke Stephenson.

Stephenson and Robinson, Quakers banished from Massachusetts, had chosen to return. They did it to protest a recent law that ordered the death penalty for banished Quakers without property who returned to Massachusetts. In October of that year, that’s exactly what happened to Robinson and Stephenson. Two others, known as the Boston Martyrs, suffered the same fate. A statue to one of them, Mary Dyer, now stands in front of the Massachusetts Statehouse.

Statue of Mary Dyer in front of the Massachusetts Statehouse.

Thomas Macy

For Thomas Macy, the consequences of his actions were less severe. A 1657 law made it a crime to entertain Quakers. Macy’s neighbors notified the Rev. Worcester of the infraction, and he placed the matter before the General Court.

Thomas Macy’s house, known as the Macy-Colby House, now on the National Register of Historic Places.

Macy pleaded innocent of holding Quaker leanings. “On a rainy morning there came to my house Edward Wharton and three men more; the said Wharton spoke to me, saying they were travelling eastward, and desired me to direct them in the way to Hampton, and asked me how far it was to Casco Bay.

“I never saw any of the men before except Wharton, neither did I inquire their names or what they were; but by their carriage I thought they might be Quakers and told them so, and desired them to pass on their way, saying to them I might possibly give offence in entertaining them; and as soon as the rain ceased (for it rained very hard) they went away, and I never saw them since.

45 Minutes

“The time they stayed in the house was about three quarters of an hour, but I can safely affirm it was not an hour. They spoke not many words in the time neither was I at leisure to talk with them, for I came home wet to the skin immediately before they came to the house, and I found my wife sick in bed. If this does not satisfy the Honored Court I am subject to their sentence.”

The explanation did not satisfy the honored court, which fined Macy 30 shillings and admonished him. The episode inspired John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem, The Exiles.

With the increasing intolerance of the Puritans, the finding could not have surprised Macy. He had apparently already been plotting an escape.

1827 medal depicting Tristram Coffin

He had joined with Tristram Coffin in planning a new settlement — out of the reach of the Puritan extremists. Coffin, also a Baptist, had left England at the start of the English Civil War in 1642. He had gathered a group of like-minded investors and had arranged to purchase the island of Nantucket from Macy’s cousin, Thomas Mayhew.

Nantucket

Mayhew had settled on Martha’s Vineyard where he served as governor. He acquired Nantucket via a grant and purchase from Native Americans, and he was ready to sell the whole of Nantucket less a portion he retained for himself.

With Nantucket falling under the jurisdiction of New York, the new residents hoped to make it a more tolerable place. For the sum of 30 pounds and two beaver hats, the investors bought Nantucket in July of 1659 and made it their new home. The island did become the tolerant locale that the founders envisioned, with Quakers making up a large portion of the population.

Macy remained a lifelong Baptist. The Macys established a family there, and he died at 74 in 1682 after a successful career. His wife Sarah lived on another 24 years, and she did in fact become a Quaker late in life.

This story was updated in 2022.

Images: Macy-Colby House By Daderot at the English-language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17590751.

9 comments 547 views

Dr. Calvin Cutter and the New Hampshire Baptists who ‘Murdered’ his Wife

In 1835, the Baptists in Nashua, N.H., grew in numbers so fast they began planning a second church in the city. The pastor was overjoyed that his flock had multiplied so. Calvin Cutter, a young doctor, supported the project enthusiastically.

Before all was said and done, however, the new building would generate such hostility and acrimony that Cutter grew convinced the Baptist Church had killed his wife. He took his grudge against the Baptists on the road and to a bizarre tombstone inscription.

Calvin Cutter

Nashua

Nashua, then called Dunstable, enjoyed a boomtime in 1835. The Middlesex Canal, opened in 1803, allowed the city to trade with the cities and ports of Massachusetts, especially after expansion of northern access to the canal in the 1820s.

New Hampshire producers could easily and affordably export raw materials. But more importantly, to a group of forward-thinking residents, they could now create a manufacturing center along the lines of the prosperous new city to the south, Lowell, Mass.

Powered by the Mine Falls on the Nashua River, Nashua Village was created and a wide variety of industries sprang up almost overnight. The activity brought a great influx of people to the area. Powered by America’s Second Great Awakening, demand grew stronger than ever for new churches, built upon the Baptist and Methodist traditions.

Prior to 1819, establishing a new church was difficult. The laws in New Hampshire allowed the dominant church in a town to tax residents for the construction and maintenance of a church, as well as to pay the salary of a preacher. That meant, for many of the smaller sects, members paid for a church they neither wanted to attend nor support.

The 1819 Toleration Act passed by the New Hampshire legislature put an end to this practice. Churches were all to be treated equally and supported through voluntary contributions.

Calvin Cutter, Baptist

In 1822, a group of industrious men that included the father of the first mayor of Nashua formed a Baptist society. Over the next 10 years, meeting in private homes and other temporary spaces, their numbers grew. Then in 1833 they finally opened the doors of their new church, the First Baptist. Membership would quickly swell to more than 500 members.

With the rapid growth, talk turned to the idea of a Second Baptist church, more conveniently located for some parishioners. Dr. Calvin Cutter, an enthusiastic proponent, readily put up funds for the church.

The Second Baptist Church was erected in 1836 on Chestnut Street at a cost, some said, of $30,000. A congregation of 30 members left the First Baptist Church to launch the new church. The Rev. Dura Pratt of the First Baptist preached the inaugural sermon.

The booming economy of 1836 quickly shriveled, however, with the financial panic of 1837 and 1838. At the startup of the second church, several members did not buy the stock used to raise funds for the building. Dr. Cutter said Pratt and others asked him to borrow money to pay their shares, with the promise that they would pay him in a year’s time.

By the time a year passed, the men refused to pay. They said they never promised the funds in the first place. For Cutter, the loss was steep. His property was seized to pay the loans for the project and he and his wife were excommunicated from the church. The Baptists sold the Second Baptist Church to a Methodist congregation for less than half what it cost to build.

Things Get Nasty

The First Baptist Church, which had taken in those members who had left for the Second, declared that both the Cutters had threatened to destroy the church if they weren’t made whole. Further, they charged Caroline Cutter had lied in church when she read out the charges against the men she said owed the money for the outstanding shares.

The Cutters also brought forth a somewhat more serious charge, as well. Pratt, they said, had bought shares in the church at a discount for himself and resold them at full price to mill girls.

The Death of Caroline Cutter

Caroline Cutter couldn’t handle the stress, according to Dr. Cutter. She died in 1841, only 33 years of age and leaving one young daughter behind.

The Milford Baptists didn’t want to intervene in a dispute with another church and they grew tired of Cutter pestering them and badmouthing the church. One church deacon declared, “they’ve got Cutter down. Best to keep him down.”

Dr. Cutter did not turn the other cheek, however. He published all the allegations in a pamphlet, Murder of Caroline H. Cutter by the Baptist Ministers and Baptist Churches:

In the case of Mrs. Cutter, Pratt and the church intentionally and maliciously destroyed her character and standing in the church and society — they with malicious intent destroyed her peace of mind, her happiness. They thus impaired her health, caused suffering and sickness, and destroyed her life. As their acts were deliberate and malicious, pursued without mitigation or relaxation while she lived, it is as clearly a case of murder as if they had given arsenic to effect their purposes.

Going Public

He took his allegations public further by giving speeches condemning the church, expanding his charges to sexual and political misconduct.

One flyer advertising a speech read:

Baptist Controversy! Progress Reported: This Evening, at the [blank] Hall, There Will be an Exposure of the Cheating, Lying, Condemning Persons Unheard, and Fornication and Adultery Countenanced by the Members of the Nashua Baptist Church … The Secret Doings of D.D. Pratt, in 1837–38, to Break Down the Democratic Party in Nashua, and Charles G. Atherton, Will be Exposed.

Another:

Truth! truth!! “Tell the truth and shame the devil.” At the town hall in [blank] [blank] evening. Dr. Cutter will give his annual exposition of the pious doings of the religious Baptists.

Moving On

After several years, Cutter did move on with his life. He dedicated only a small part of his time to attacking the church and Pratt, who would remain the pastor at the First Baptist Church for 22 years.

In the years after he left Nashua, Cutter would write a textbook, Cutter’s Physiology, used to train students of medicine. It would sell several hundred thousand copies, and Cutter traveled the country lecturing on new techniques in medicine.

Cutter also became an active and outspoken abolitionist who served as a battlefield surgeon during the Civil War. During the battle of Bull Run, his belt buckle was nicked by a shot, and he was briefly taken prisoner.

Throughout his diverse life, however, he never dropped his dispute with the Nashua Baptists. He made sure no one would ever forget it, for he had it chiseled onto his wife’s tombstone:

Caroline H. wife of Calvin Cutter, M.D. Murdered by the Baptist Ministry of the Baptist Church as follows…Sep’t. 28, 1838; aged 33She was accused of lying in church meeting by the Rev. D. D. Pratt and Deacon Albert Adams Was condemned by the church unheard. She was reduced to poverty by Deacon William Wallace When an ex parte council was asked of the Milford Baptist Church, by the advice of their committee, George Raymond, Calvin Averill, and Andrew Hutchinson They voted not to receive any communication on the subject. The Rev. Mark Carpenter said he thought as the good old Deacon said, “We’ve got Cutter down and it’s best to keep him down.” The intentional and malicious destruction of her character And happiness as above described destroyed her life. Her last words upon the subject were “Tell the Truth and The Iniquity will come out”

You can find it in the Elm Street Cemetery in Milford, N.H.

This story was updated in 2022.

0 comment 385 views

The Pemberton Mill Disaster

On a wintry evening in 1860, textile workers in the huge Pemberton Mill in Lawrence, Mass., heard an odd rattle followed by a long, ear-splitting crash. Part of the building’s brick wall bulged and exploded, and then within seconds the mill collapsed. Tons of machinery fell through disintegrating floors, bringing screaming millworkers with them.

The Pemberton Mill, collapsed.

The collapsed building formed a pyramid 50 feet high, the Boston Journal reported.

“The moans and cries for help of those in the ruins whose lives had not been immediately crushed out, mingled with an alarm rung out by the factory bells, called almost the entire community to the spot,” reported the Journal. “Darkness lent additional horror to the scene, for while a thousand hands were ready to rescue it was impossible to know whence the calls for assistance came.”

The Jan. 10, 1860 collapse of the Pemberton Mill was the worst industrial accident in Massachusetts history, rivaling the Triangle Shirtwaist fire 50 years later. Between 90 and 145 people were killed, and another 166 injured.

A Fortune To Build

The Pemberton Mill was built by John Lowell and his brother-in-law, J. Pickering Putnam. It was five stories high, 280 feet long and 84 feet wide. It cost $850,000 to build, a fortune.

The mill was built by the Essex Company under the supervision of Capt. Charles Bigelow, a highly regarded engineer. In Lawrence he had built a dam and canal, a machine shop and mills.

During the financial panic of 1857, Lowell and Pickering sold the Pemberton Mill to George Howe and David Nevins for $500,000. (The Nevins Memorial Library in Methuen is named after him.)

The partners crammed more heavy machinery into the building to increase their profit. At the time of the disaster, the mill held 2,700 spindles and 700 looms. It earned the owners $1.5 million a year.

Pemberton Mill Collapses

The mill collapsed with 800 millworkers, mostly women and children, working inside. They were Yankees from Maine and New Hampshire as well as recent immigrants. More than half had come from Ireland during the potato famine, but natives of Scotland, Germany and Switzerland also perished.

Dozens died within minutes of the factory’s collapse. More than 600 agonized workers could not escape the wreckage of twisted iron, smashed bricks and splintered beams.

George Howe escaped before the building collapsed.

Rescuers took more than 200 people out of the building using ropes to move beams and pillars. The rescuers called out to the trapped workers and gave them water, coffee and encouragement.

When the sun set, rescuers built bonfires to light their way. The fires revealed “faces crushed beyond recognition, open wounds in which the bones showed through a paste of dried blood, brick dust and shredded clothing.”

Fire!

Around 10 p.m. two men climbed through a crevice with lanterns to rescue a young woman. One of the lamps broke. The flames raced across the cotton waste and wood, some of it soaked with oil. The Boston Globe reported 14 people were burned to death in front of their loved ones, who could do nothing to help them.

One man cut his own throat rather than burn to death. He survived, but later died of other injuries.

The new Pemberton Mill

By midnight the screams of the trapped and burning victims fell silent.

Many of the bodies were mangled beyond recognition. They were laid out in a large room on an upper story of Lawrence City Hall so their friends and family could try to recognize them.

Every church in Lawrence had parishioners to console, including Baptists, Catholic, Congregationalist, Episcopalian, Methodist, Presbyterian, Unitarian and Universalist. Many families who lost their wage earners fell into poverty.

Blame

After the disaster, Jesse Glover, overseer of repairs, testified he always thought the building weak, with its thin walls and huge windows. John B. Tuttle, superintendent of brickwork, told architect Charles Bigelow he thought the walls insufficient.

A jury found Charles Bigelow responsible for the collapse because he allowed malformed cast-iron columns to support the structure. Bigelow claimed he didn’t know of any problems with the pillars. The original owners, he said, bought the building materials and approved their use. Bigelow did not go to prison; in fact, no one received any punishment for the preventable disaster.

Modern analysts also found the owners crammed too many heavy textile machines onto the fourth floor.

After the Pemberton Mill collapsed, the owners completely rebuilt it. The mill still stands today.

To see a documentary, The Case Against Capt. Bigelow, click here. You can take a self-guided walking tour of the disaster site. Click here.

This story about the Pemberton Mill disaster was updated in 2023.

Images: New Pemberton Mill By CSZero – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5691855.

9 comments 1.9k views

The Pledge of Allegiance Debuts in a Boston Magazine

The Pledge of Allegiance was written by a Christian Socialist minister who didn’t include “God” in the original version.

And for the first 50 years, people recited the Pledge with a Fascist salute.

The Pledge of Allegiance

In 1892, the Pledge of Allegiance, a staple in school classrooms for more than 100 years, made its debut in the Youth’s Companion magazine.

Students performing the Bellamy Salute

Francis Bellamy wrote it.

He was the son of a Baptist minister, born in upstate New York on May 18, 1855 in the Great Burned-Over District. His cousin, Edward Bellamy, wrote the popular novel Looking Backward. The book promoted a utopian vision of a society in which the state owned industry and eliminated war, poverty, crime and inequality. Beginning in 1888, it inspired Nationalist Clubs, which sought to realize that socialist ideal. They claimed 500 clubs, but then disappeared around 1896.

Francis Bellamy

Like his father, Bellamy trained as a Baptist minister. And like his cousin, he embraced the idea of a society in which government controls capital and spreads the wealth equally, known then as Christian socialism.

As a young man, Francis Bellamy traveled New England preaching. Then in 1891 he landed a job with the Youth’s Companion magazine in Boston, a popular family magazine that began publishing in 1827 by the Perry Mason & Co.

Americanization

At the time, the arrival of millions of immigrants alarmed citizens born in the United States. They thought foreigners should adopt American ways, and so campaigns for “Americanization” began. Schools began to teach patriotism and American values. Manufacturers found a lucrative market creating school supplies with patriotic images like flags, eagles and George Washington.

Youth’s Companion then jumped on that bandwagon. The magazine publisher, Daniel Sharp Ford, and its promotions man, James B. Upham, launched an effort to sell flags to schools, with the idea that every school room should have one as a way to revive patriotism. Youth’s Companion then sold flags to children at cost. In one year, the promotion resulted in 25,000 schoolhouses acquiring flags.

Pledge of Allegiance Becomes Official

It was 1892, the year of the wildly successful World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Ford and Upham sought to link their flag campaign with the fair. They wanted schoolchildren to participate in a flag-related ceremony on Oct. 12, 1892, the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ arrival in the Americas.

Bellamy worked on the campaign, lobbying lawmakers, governors and even President Benjamin Harrison to support a flag-raising ritual on Columbus Day. It worked. Harrison issued a declaration that said on Columbus Day 1892, The Youth’s Companion had “an official program for universal use in all the schools.”

The magazine’s publisher pondered, however, once the flag was in the room, what should be done with it? And so the pledge was born.

Bellamy sat down and wrote 22 words.

I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Jeffrey Owen Jones, in The pledge: a history of the Pledge of Allegiance, called it a “clean, easy-flowing and pleasantly cadenced piece of writing.”

“The kind of compact prose that trips off the tongue as the Pledge does is deceptively difficult to craft,” wrote Jones.

Bellamy later said he wanted to find a way to express “intelligent patriotism.” That meant awareness of the nation’s ideals as well as love of country.

The Bellamy Salute

Southington, Conn., Schoolchildren reciting the pledge of allegiance in 1942. Photo by Fenno Jacobs, courtesy Library of Congress.

Along with the pledge came the Bellamy salute — right arm raised toward the flag with palms out. For 50 years, the Bellamy salute accompanied the Pledge of Allegiance.

But then during World War II, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler adopted the Bellamy salute. They incorrectly attributed it to an ancient Roman salute.

Congress officially adopted the Pledge in 1942, along with the instructions that it be recited “by standing with the right hand over the heart.” Then in 1954, amid the fear of “godless Communism,” Congress added “under God.” Francis Bellamy, who believed in the separation of church and state, would not have approved. He died in Tampa, Fla., on Aug. 28, 1931.

This story was updated in 2022.

7 comments 609 views

Before the Famine Ships, The Irish Made Their Mark in New England

When the Irish famine ships arrived in Boston in the 1840s, tens if not hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Ireland already made their mark on New England.

Henry Knox, successful Scots-Irishman

By 1790, there were 400,000 Americans of Irish birth or ancestry out of a population of 3.9 million. Half were Scots-Irish from Ulster, the other half were Catholics from southern Ireland.

Before the American Revolution, the Irish population in America was second only to the English, with 70 Irish settlements in the British colonies.

It is far more difficult to find information about the Irish Catholics of colonial New England than about the Scots-Irish. Puritans persecuted Catholics, while they more or less tolerated the Scots-Irish. But so absent were Irish Catholics from the historical record that some historians – and a Scots-Irish society – claim few Irish Catholics lived in New England before the Revolutionary War.

It isn’t so. Protestant and Catholic immigrants from Ireland taught the Puritan children, settled the Maine and New Hampshire frontiers, built roads, wharves and warehouses, led armies and became successful merchants. Eight of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence had Irish birth or ancestry, as did seven of the 54 framers of the Constitution. They governed states, wrote laws and fought in the Revolution.

The First Great Migration

The first great migration to New England began in 1628, when King Charles granted a new charter to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Between 1629 and 1640, 20,000 people crossed the Atlantic. They weren’t all Puritans. Immigration fever had caught hold of Anglicans, Irish Catholics and Scots-Irish Protestants. They came to escape religious persecution, high rents, crop failures and poverty.

The Puritans in charge scrutinized the new arrivals. ‘Persons unmeete to inhabit here’ were sent back over the Atlantic. And since the Puritans wrote history from their own intolerant viewpoint, the Anglican and Irish experience of that era is less well – and less accurately – known.

In 1640 the great migration ended with the outbreak of the English Civil War, and some of the Massachusetts Bay colonists returned to England to fight with the Parliamentarians. New England fell into an economic depression, and the first wave of immigration ended for at least a decade.

By 1650, a steady stream of Boston-bound ships began to leave Ireland filled with redemptioners – indentured servants who agreed to near-slavery for seven years in exchange for passage, food, shelter and clothing. That stream would become a flood.

Scots-Irish

King James I had encouraged Scottish Protestants to move to Ulster in the 16^th century as a cure for overpopulation and to discourage further rebellion. They lived there for generations, where they clashed with the Catholics, but prospered from the manufacture of textiles.

Then in 1698 the English government banned the export of wool, destroying the Ulster wool industry. Crop failures inspired an exodus. The first major migration of Scots-Irish to America was a group that came with Rev. James McGregor from County Londonderry to Boston in 1718. Many of them moved to New Hampshire, establishing the town of Londonderry.

The Puritans accepted the Scots-Irish because of their Protestant religion and because they arrived in organized groups, often led by clergy. Plus, they were useful as pioneers in the forests of New Hampshire and along the Kennebec and Eastern rivers in Maine. There they acted as buffers from Indians.

Many place names in Maine and New Hampshire reflect their Scots-Irish roots: Derry, Antrim and Londonderry, N.H.; Belfast and Limerick, Maine; Colrain, Mass.; and Londonderry, Vt. (Maine today ranks seventh in the percentage of residents of Scots-Irish descent. )

As individuals, though, the Scots-Irish didn’t always receive a welcome. Their Presbyterian meetinghouse was burned in Worcester, an early harbinger of Know Nothingism.

Dangerous Catholics

The Puritans treated Irish Catholics even worse. They wouldn’t let people own property or carry on a business in Boston unless they took the Oath of Allegiance to some Protestant faith.

In 1723, Boston selectmen issued an order that anyone who came from Ireland within the past three years must register with the town because they might become a town charge or ‘otherwise prejuditial to the well fair and prosperity of the place.’

Pope Night

A notice from a Boston town meeting in 1746 warns that several Catholics reside in the town ‘and it may be very Dangerous for such persons to Reside here in Case we should be attack’d by an Enemy.’ Three days later, after a committee investigation, the selectmen reported they suspected ‘a considerable number of Roman Catholics to be now in Town.’

From the 1740s to the 1760s, rival gangs fought on Nov. 5 over the right to burn the Catholic pope in effigy, Pope Night.

Oath of Allegiance

The Catholics kept out of the Puritans’ way and they stayed out of the historical record. Historian Michael O’Brien argues that many Irish Catholics abandoned their faith and became Baptists and Methodists. “There was no alternative for them,” he concluded.

In 1678, the men who took the Oath of Allegiance before the Massachusetts governor had such Irish Catholic names as Murphy, Dempsey, Casey, O’Kelly, Hearn and Collins.

Many of the Irish Catholics came as indentured servants. They sailed from Dublin, Cork and Waterford to Marblehead, Boston, Providence and Piscataqua, Maine. Some came from Galway via Newfoundland, where they fished.

Some came by way of Barbados, where Oliver Cromwell had deported 50,000 Irish Catholic peasants as indentured servants in the mid 17^th century. Ann Glover was one. She was living in Boston by 1680 and hanged on Nov. 16, 1688 as a witch. The proof: she could only say the Lord’s Prayer in Gaelic.

Soldiers and Schoolmasters

Another indentured servant from Ireland was Matthew Lyon, born in Dublin on July 14, 1749.. He emigrated to Woodbury, Conn., in 1764, and he fought in the Revolution. Afterward he was elected to Congress, where he started the first brawl.

Records show early 18^th century soldiers and schoolmasters named Kelly, Sullivan, Fitzgerald, Hickey, Murphy, Mooney, Maloney, Lynch and Reilly. And there are plenty of New England towns with Irish Catholic place names, suggesting the Scots-Irish weren’t the only hardy pioneers. There’s Kilkenny, N.H.; the lost town of Cork, Maine; Dublin, N.H., and Dublin, Maine; and three Waterfords – in Maine, Vermont and Connecticut.

Half the Rebels

Washington at Valley Forge

With no love of the English, Irish immigrants and their descendants played major roles in achieving American independence. John Hancock was Scots-Irish; so was George Washington’s trusted adviser, Gen. Henry Knox. A signer of the Declaration of Independence, Matthew Thornton, came from non-Ulster Ireland – in Limerick – though he lived in Londonderry, N.H.

More than 1,200 officers in the American armies came from Ireland, including Gen. John Sullivan, later a New Hampshire governor. And the muster roles of the Continental Army and Navy are filled with Hibernian names. There are 695 Kellys alone who fought against the British.

So many fought, in fact, that one British general testified at the House of Commons that ‘half the rebel Continental Army were from Ireland.’

St. Patrick’s Day

The Continental Army also celebrated St. Patrick’s Day in 1778 at Valley Forge. According to an account of the incident, some of the Pennsylvania German volunteers made a stuffed scarecrow they called a ‘paddy’ and hoisted it on a pole. It attracted a crowd of angry Irish soldiers, who threatened a riot. Their officers couldn’t restore discipline.

Then George Washington arrived on horseback and tried to calm the outraged Irishmen. Finally he said, “I, too, am a lover of St. Patrick’s day, and will settle the affair by making all the army keep the day.”

He then ordered a whiskey ration to every man in camp, and the soldiers long remembered the day as a pleasant episode in camp life.

This story was updated in 2022.

21 comments 1.1k views

Newer Posts

Older Posts