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The Brahmin Celebrity Priest Who Wrote O Little Town of Bethlehem

O Little Town of Bethlehem was written by a parish priest considered to be the greatest preacher of his day. His name was Phillips Brooks, and a visit to the Church of the Nativity in 1865 inspired him to write the beloved Christmas hymn.

Though best known for O Little Town of Bethlehem, another of his creations enjoys worldwide fame—Trinity Church in Boston.

Trinity Church in Boston

Brooks especially loved Christmas. “The earth has grown old with its burden of care, but at Christmas it always is young, the heart of the jewel burns lustrous and fair, and its soul full of music breaks the air, when the song of angels is sung,” he wrote.

And he believed that Jesus Christ was the son of God, which is why a five-hour Christmas Eve Mass in the Church of the Nativity inspired him to write O Little Town of Bethlehem.

Phillips Brooks, Author of O Little Town of Bethlehem

He was born Dec. 13, 1835 in Boston to a prosperous Brahmin family. His ancestors included the Rev. John Cotton on his father’s side and Samuel Phillips, the founder of Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., on his mother’s. His great-uncle, Peter Chardon Brooks, had more wealth than anyone else in Boston. Brooks also had a famous son-in-law: Charles Francis Adams.

Phillips Brooks at 22

His parents sent him to Boston Latin School to prepare for Harvard. He graduated from college with class members who would achieve distinction. Alexander Agassiz, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, his second cousin Henry Adams and H.H Richardson, who would later design Trinity Church.

Brooks then got a job as a school teacher at Boston Latin, but failed miserably. He got fired. So he decided to enter what became the family business: the Episcopal clergy.

The Episcopal Church

He went south, to the Episcopal Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Va., in 1856. Three of his brothers followed him into the Episcopalian priesthood—Arthur, Frederic and John Cotton.

New England had not embraced the Episcopal religion anywhere near as much as the South (or even New York) had. But after the War of 1812 it started gaining in popularity. Eventually it became the preferred religion of upper-class Boston ladies, according to Cleveland Amory. “This much I know,” Amory once said. “God is an Episcopalian. From Boston.”

“Although Episcopalians constitute less than 2 percent of the country’s population,” reported the New York Times in 1981, “their social and economic impact is rivaled by few other groups, if any.”

A Giant

Phillips Brooks was ordained as a priest in 1860, just in time for the Civil War. “He was very tall and well proportioned, with a full, round face beaming with health and good nature, a broad forehead, and an erect carriage of the body, with the head thrown slightly backward,” wrote the Times in his obituary. “He had the appearance of a giant, and wherever he went the people were sure to stop in the street and look after him. At 6 feet, 4 inches, he urged his parishioners to pray big. “Pray the largest prayers,” he liked to say. “You cannot think a prayer so large that God, in answering it, will not wish you had made it larger.”

Phillips Brooks

In 1862 he began seven years of service as rector of the Church of the Holy Trinity in Philadelphia. He preached against slavery, delivered a eulogy for Abraham Lincoln and exhorted his parishioners to do charitable works.

O Little Town of Bethlehem

After the end of the Civil War, Brooks took a vacation he’d long dreamed about. He traveled across the Atlantic to Europe and then made a pilgrimage to Bethlehem.

He believed that Christianity was supernatural or it was nothing, wrote his biographer, Giles J. Harp. “For Brooks, the final, non-negotiable bedrock doctrine was the Incarnation. God the Father sending his eternal Son, the Logos, to be born a man in first-century Palestine was the heart and soul of the Christian message; without the Incarnation, there really was no gospel to preach.”

View of Bethlehem, Christmas Day 1898

Brooks described his trip to Bethlehem in a letter home:

“After an early dinner, we took our horses and rode to Bethlehem,” he wrote. “It was only about two hours when we came to the town, situated on an eastern ridge of a range of hills, surrounded by its terraced gardens. It is a good-looking town, better built than any other we have seen in Palestine…

“Before dark, we rode out of town to the field where they say the shepherds saw the star. It is a fenced piece of ground with a cave in it (all the Holy Places are caves here), in which, strangely enough, they put the shepherds…As we passed, the shepherds were still “keeping watch over their flocks or leading them home to fold”.”

Facade of the Church of the Nativity, 1940

Then on Christmas Eve, he assisted at a service in the Church of the Nativity, built over the traditional site of Jesus’ birth. The ancient basilica dated to 326 A.D.; the service lasted from 10 PM to 3 AM, wrote hymnologist Albert Bailey.

Songwriter

Brooks returned to Philadelphia in September. It wasn’t until three years later that he wrote O Little Town of Bethlehem, no doubt remembering what he had seen and felt in the Holy Land.

He asked his organist, Lewis Redner, put the words to music. Brooks told Redner that he had written a simple little carol for the Sunday school service at Christmas and wanted him to write a tune for it.

“Mr. Brooks came to me on Friday, and said, ‘Redner, have you ground out that music yet to “O Little Town of Bethlehem”? I replied, ‘No,’ but that he should have it by Sunday.”

By Saturday night he hadn’t come up with the tune. “But I was roused from sleep late in the night hearing an angel-strain whispering in my ear, and seizing a piece of music paper I jotted down the treble of the tune as we now have it, and on Sunday morning before going to church I filled in the harmony.”

Neither he nor Brooks had any idea of the popularity the song would achieve.

Boston

O Little Town of Bethlehem turned out to be a popular hit and Brooks’ farewell gift to his Philadelphia parish. Trinity Church in Boston named him pastor in 1869 at the relatively young age of 33. He became such a popular idol in that city his photograph was sold in stores. He worked hard, answered every one of his many letters and gave money to just about any poor person who asked, according to his obituary.

The rectory of Trinity Church, where Phillips Brooks died

Known the world over, he grew into one of the most popular preachers in America. He built the Trinity Church building, considered an architectural masterpiece, in Copley Square.

In 1891, he was consecrated Bishop of Massachusetts. He only held that position for a short time, as in 1891 he died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 57. Brooks never married.

Statue of Phillips Brooks in Boston

You can hear O Little Town of Bethlehem here.

In the United Kingdom, people sing O Little Town of Bethlehem to a different tune—Forest Green. You can hear it here

* * *

The Christmas holiday actually began in ancient Rome — and so did Italian cookies. The New England Historical Society’s new book, 24 Historic Italian Christmas Cookie Recipes, tells you how to make those delicious treats. It also bring you the history of the Italian immigrants who brought them to New England. Available now on Amazon; just click here.

Images: 233 Clarendon St. By Swampyank at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20434478.

With thanks to Giles J Harp, Brahmin Prophet: Phillips Brooks and the Path of Liberal Protestantism. This story updated in 2022.

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The Confessions of Moses Paul

These are the established facts about why Connecticut executed Moses Paul: On the night of December 7, 1771, Paul visited David Clark’s Tavern in Bethany, Conn. and had a drink. Moses Cook, a cobbler from Waterbury who was travelling through Bethany, was also at the tavern.

It was Saturday, and sale of alcohol was prohibited on the Sabbath (from sundown Saturday to sundown Sunday) – with the exception of travelers who could buy a drink at a tavern. Both Paul and Cook qualified as travelers, but the tavern was banned by law from serving Paul – as he was an American Indian. The law against serving Indians was often overlooked, however, and it was not unusual for a tavern to serve them.

In colonial America, the myth was widely believed that Indians were particularly susceptible to drunkenness and misbehaving badly when intoxicated. Among whites, society held the view that excessive drunkenness was a failing of an individual. Among Indians it was ascribed to the entire race.

Moses Paul Overserved

At some point in the evening of December 7, Mrs. Clark decided to stop serving Moses Paul. She believed he had consumed too much alcohol. What happened next is not clear.

The story that a colonial judge accepted was that Paul had left the tavern angry and threatened revenge. He found a flat iron and lay in wait outside. Moses Cook was the next man to leave the tavern, and Paul attacked him in revenge. He struck a blow so fierce that Cook instantly collapsed and “his brains spilled out.”

Paul was arrested. When Moses Clark died on Dec. 12, Paul was charged with murder. The court at New Haven found him guilty later in December, and he was sentenced to hang.

Executions were rare events, and they were a cause of particular interest to Colonial clergy. Once a man was condemned, he was urged to confess his crime and plan for his eventual execution. Confession, he was told, would help assure merciful treatment in the afterlife.

Rev. Samson Occom

Stereotype

Moses Paul’s case confirmed the fears that settlers had of the dangers of the drunken Indian. Four ministers from New Haven took an interest in Paul’s case and began visiting him. A sermon was expected at any execution, and in a case as famous as Paul’s, the sermon would undoubtedly be published.

But the ministers visiting Paul apparently were motivated by more than a desire for fame. They also (probably) arranged for him to have good legal representation. At his trial, Paul had stood silent and his defense offered little testimony to challenge the case against him.

But in an appeal to the Connecticut General Assembly, Paul told a different version of events.

Another Version

“[Paul] called for a Dram and being denied, soon got angry and the more so because the said House owed him Money,” argued his counsel. He admitted he spoke unadvisedly, and “behaved too unmannerly.” Then Moses Cook “reprimanded him in a most threatening imperious manner.”

With one end of a cart rope, Moses Cook tied his legs, and with the other beat and bruised him. Then he drew him out at the door and pitched him down a steep bank headlong. Moses Paul lay there for about a quarter of an hour until Moses Cook, with a whip in hand, came and told him to get up.

Calling him a drunken dog, Cook again whipped and beat him” in a most cruel barbarous manner.” Paul then got up, obtained leave, and went into the house to get the rest of his clothing. But “the said Cook following him into the house, there began again to Insult him and then and there further abused him and laying violent Hands upon him again thrust him out of doors and as he was putting him out at the door said to one Mr. Hurlbutt (who was Standing near with a large Cane in his hand), ‘Give me your cane and I’ll still the dog’.”

“Your petitioner then being greatly exasperated and the more so as he knew not but that he had as good a right to be there at the said house as the said Cook and also being in some measure Intoxicated with spirituous liquors, at that Instant in the heat of passion and expecting a sudden blow from the said Cook as he then saw him take the said cane out of the hands of the said Hurlbutt.

Self-defense

“[Paul] did then and there with a stick or club which he then saw lying in his way, and not with any Iron nor piece of Iron as was represented, strike the said Cook before ever the door was shut upon him, in a sudden heat of passion, with an Intent to hurt, and thereby to defend himself; but not with any intent mortally to wound; but this alas proved to be the fatal blow.”

Paul also claimed that the indictment against him was legally inadequate because it gave the wrong date for Cook’s death.

The General Assembly did not strike down Paul’s conviction, but it delayed his execution date to September of 1772. That gave Paul more time to prepare and an opportunity for an appeals court to take up the case.

Paul and his lawyers promised to bring forward witnesses, including Hezekiah Hurlbutt, to support his version of events at appeal since they were not heard at the original trial. He would make the case that he was guilty of the lesser crime of manslaughter, not murder. And, Paul suggested that any idea that he had set an ambush outside the tavern was never in evidence and a pure prejudice of the court.

Failed Appeal

The Appeals Court declined to take up Moses Paul’s appeal leaving him to be executed in September of 1772.

By 1772, Rev. Samson Occom was something of a celebrity. Occom was a Mohegan Indian educated by Eleazar Wheelock, a Connecticut minister who had established a charitable school for Indians.

Eleazar Wheelock

Wheelock had sent Occom to England to raise funds for his charitable school, and Occom was wildly successful. He returned with ₤12,000. Wheelock, however, changed the focus of his school. He relocated to New Hampshire, where his school became Dartmouth College, and its central mission became educating white missionaries, not Indians.

Occom became disillusioned with his situation in New England and moved to Long Island where he was instrumental in helping Indians assimilate into the colonial culture.

The Sermon

With the support of New Haven clergy, Moses Paul reached out to Occom and asked him to preach the sermon at his execution. The two men had lengthy discussions, and ultimately Occom agreed to preach.

Occom was well aware of the bias against American Indians. He felt that Wheelock had taken advantage of him by promising to use his fundraising efforts to found a school for Indians, only to later change that. He also noted that he had never been paid as much as white ministers, despite promises that he would be.

In his sermon, Occom made note of the positions Indian’s held in society, at one point saying: “I speak plainly to you. You are the bone of my bone and the flesh of my flesh. You are an Indian, a despised creature, but you have despised yourself.”

Occom’s sermon pointed out that had Paul eschewed alcohol and led a more Godly life, he would not be facing execution.

Historians have never concluded whether Paul would have received different treatment were he not Indian. Paul had poor legal representation at his first trial, but that was not unique to his case. The rules governing who was entitled to an appeal based on new testimony were not firm. Still, the myth of the dangerous drunken Indian was well established, and his case played into that preconceived notion.

A Warning

For his part, Paul’s own remarks to the crowd at his execution were directed at the many Indians who attended. He, like Occom, warned them that drinking had been the source of his problems. He acknowledged that he had killed Cook and that it would not have happened had he not been drunk.

But Moses Paul never confirmed the case against him. In fact, to the end he said that he never struck Cook with an iron but instead with a club, which reflected his story of how the fight had broken out between he and Cook. Thousands of people attended Moses Paul’s execution, and Occom published the sermon he delivered.

Thanks to The Execution of Moses Paul: A Story of Crime and Contact in Eighteenth-Century Connecticut by Ava Chamberlain for many of the details of Moses Paul’s story. This story was updated in 2022.

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Boston’s John Allen: The Uncool Revolutionary

John Allen was one of the first American churchmen to declare that King George III was so badly managing colonial affairs that he had abdicated his right to govern the American colonies. Not only that, he hinted that if George wasn’t careful, he might wind up like King Charles I – beheaded for treason.

King George III

Allen’s ideas would eventually turn into conventional thought, and propagandists such as Thomas Paine would expound on them. But in 1772, Allen had crawled out on a limb with his ideas, and as it turned out the limb couldn’t hold him.

An obscure minister in a non-mainstream religion, he had financial trouble in England and few friends among Boston’s elite. He made John Adams uneasy. But for one shining moment — the aftermath of the Gaspee Affair — he found his audience.

A passionate and controversial Baptist, Allen delivered his fieriest speech at a Thanksgiving celebration in December of 1772. He turned the speech into a pamphlet: Oration Upon the Beauties of Liberty, or the Essential Rights of Americans. It became one of the best-selling political pamphlets in America before publication of the Declaration of Independence. It passed through seven printings in four cities.

John Allen, Baptist Minister

The Baptist pulpit was an odd place for such radical thinking to spring up. Baptist leaders of the day focused on obtaining parity and equal treatment with other religions in New England. They rarely ventured into the squabbles between the colonies and the mother country. But Allen’ had a much bigger vision. He railed against taxation, parliamentary shenanigans and even took shots directly at the king. He even criticized Britain for allowing slavery in its colonies, though his publisher couldn’t include that issue in the first editions of the Oration. It made it only into later printings.

Allen was born in England and had been driven from the pulpit there because of his radical thinking. Among other issues, he refused to condemn the Sandemanians, a religious sect that preached the Bible gave no basis for granting authority to a central church.

By the time he left England, Allen had also been tarred with allegations that he tried to pass a bogus check. He cleared his name, but the incident called into question his fitness as a minister.

John Davis, pastor of Second Baptist Church in Boston, learned that Allen had departed England and arrived in Boston. In 1772, Davis was dying. He requested that the congregation invite Allen to preach at the church and potentially take over the pulpit.

An Oration, Upon the Beauties of Liberty, Or the Essential Rights of the Americans by John Allen

Bad Reports

The congregation disagreed about letting Allen should speak. Churchman Isaac Backus noted in his journal: “Met with Mr. John Allen a noted writer from England, who has been preaching in Boston lately, but we have some very bad reports about him; how they’ll turn out I know not.”

Meanwhile, Allen had friends among the Sons of Liberty and among American sympathizers in England. With a little back room pressure, he got his chance in the pulpit.

Sons of Liberty pouring hot tea down the throat of the customs commissioner after tarring and feathering him.

Allen chose the 1772 Thanksgiving address – guaranteed to be widely attended and noted – to deliver his Oration. The colonies were in an uproar over the king’s appointment of a Commission of Inquiry to investigate the burning of the British ship Gaspee in Rhode Island. The commission planned to send the Rhode Islanders who burned the ship to England for trial, and Allen used that as the springboard for his rant against the English government.

Allen, like all speakers of the day, never declared his disloyalty to the monarchy. But he made his opinion clear. “An arbitrary despotic power in a prince, is the ruin of a nation, of the King, of the crown, and of the subjects; therefore it is to be feared, abhorred, detested and destroyed. . . The King of England has no power to enact, or put in force any law that may oppress (the Americans); his very attempting to do it, at once destroys is right to reign over them.”

Too Radical?

He went on to call for a sort of American parliament to make rules to govern the colonies. He also declared that if the king persisted “in being influenced and dictated by his Ministry,” he might well risk the same fate of his predecessor Charles I, overthrown by revolutionaries.

James Otis by Henry Blackburn

Many people read Allen’s pamphlet, though not everyone found his hostility to their liking. John Adams, in his diary, noted James Otis “reads to large Circles of the common People, Allen’s Oration on the Beauties of Liberty and recommends it as an excellent Production.”

Adams felt such radical ideas as giving voting rights to un-landed citizens took democracy too far. Still, he noted, Otis’ devotion to the rights of Americans was unquestioned.

Allen published his pamphlets under the nom de guerre British Bostonian. He proposed one last pamphlet in 1774, The Patriotic Whisper in the Ears of the King; or the Grand Request of the People of America Made Manifest. Intended as a Chariot of Liberty for the Sons of America. But if it was ever published, it was lost. Allen slipped into obscurity – his position as radical pamphleteer filled by thinkers such as Thomas Paine.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Samuel Danforth, Star-Gazing Puritan, Sees A ‘Herald of wrath to a secure and impenitent World,’ aka, A Comet

When a mighty comet streaked across the night sky in 1664, Samuel Danforth predicted a series of catastrophes for his fellow Puritans who lived in the howling wilderness of New England.

He even did it in some of the first verses published in the New World:

There, with long bloody Hair, a Blazing Star
Threatens the World with Famine, Plague & War :
To Princes, death ; to Kingdomes many crosses : To all Estates, Inevitable Losses …

Danforth, both an astronomer and minister, created the first known almanac in America. He also delivered sermons described as powerful, eloquent and tearful.

In a pamphlet published about the comet of 1664, Danforth wrote the Bible made the purpose of comets very clear: as signals of great and notable changes.

And bad things had already started to happen in New England.

Samuel Danforth

Samuel Danforth was born Oct. 17, 1626 in Framingham, England. He migrated with his father and five siblings to Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634. He studied astronomy at Harvard College. After graduation in 1643 he stayed on as a tutor and published almanacs in 1647, 1648 and 1649. Those are the earliest surviving almanacs in America.

Ordained a minister in 1650, he became pastor of the church in Roxbury, Mass.

In 1670, he delivered one of the most famous sermons in history, A Brief Recognition of New-Englands Errand into the Wilderness, to the Massachusetts General Court.

Danforth, typical of the Puritans frightened by the frontier that crowded in on them, asked a question in the sermon. “What is it that distinguisheth New England from other Colonies and Plantations in America? ” The answer: They entered the “waste and howling wilderness” to “walk in the Faith of the Gospel with all good Conscience according to the Order of the Gospel, and your enjoyment of the pure Worship of God according to his Institution, without humane Mixtures and Impositions.”

Danforth was also a true product of the Puritan culture of condemnation. He rebuked tavern-goers when he saw them through his study window. When a young man named Benjamin Goad was hanged for having sex with a ‘lady horse’ in broad daylight, Danforth delivered a sermon justifying his execution as essential to preserving the church and society.

Comet of 1664

In the winter of 1664, a comet crossed the night sky and caught the attention of such European notables as Christopher Wren, Samuel Pepys and Isaac Newton. Pepys, in his diary, recorded “mighty talk” about the comet, and the king and queen had stayed up to watch it. Ordinary people went into a frenzy, prophesizing awful events – which did happen. They included one of the coldest winters in history, the plague and the Great Fire of 1666.

In New England, Danforth couldn’t resist offering a theological interpretation to the comet in a pamphlet. He gave it the daunting title An Astronomical Description of the Late Comet or Blazing Star; As it appeared in New-England in the 9th, 10th, 11th, and in the beginning of the 12th Moneth, 1664. Together with a Brief Theological Application thereof.

Though he lived in a howling wilderness, his conclusions about the comet conformed to contemporary scientific thought in Europe.

This Comet is not a new fixed Star, but a Planetick or Erratick Body, wandring up & down in the etherial firmament under the fixed stars.

The rest of it revealed pure Puritanical thinking. He wrote, for example,

The Holy Scriptures, which are the Authentick and un- erring Canon of truth, teach us to look at Comets, as Portentous and Signal of great and notable Changes.

Earthquake

Danforth also noted that an earthquake provided a similar warning four years earlier. The earthquake of 1663 caused some houses to be “rock’t like cradles” and might portend the “Lords shaking the foundations of our Churches and of our civil state.”

And he offered several examples of recent calamities: The death of Puritan ministers. Mr. John Norton, “translated into an higher Orb” and of whom New England was not worthy. Also the death of Samuel Stone, “the strength and glory of Connecticut” who “fell a sleep sweetly and placidly in the Lord.” (Stone was assistant to Thomas Hoooker, and Hartford was named for his home town.)

Their principal grain was turned into “an husk and rotteness” by “the sad Mildew and Blasting.”

A severe drought the previous summer burnt up their pastures, and early frosts “smote our Indian corn.”

He then concluded:

God forbid that any of us, should be Ασε΄ρες πλανη˜τας wandring Stars, Eccentrick and Erratick in our motions, as all Seducers and Impostors are for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.

Samuel Danforth lived another 10 years, dying on died November 19, 1674 at the age of 48.

This story updated in 2021.

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William Fry, Pirate, Finds a Permanent Home – Gibbeted on Nixes Mate

In July of 1726, William Fry stood trial in Boston for murdering a ship’s captain and embarking on a monthlong piracy spree. The trial lasted but two days, and Fry was convicted. Within days, he would be paraded to the gallows and hanged.

But he didn’t go as most did, remorseful and tearful. Rather, when the cart arrived to haul him off, he jumped up and enjoyed the parade, waving flowers in one hand. When asked for his final words, he sought no forgiveness. Rather, he warned other ship captains to treat their crews well if they wanted to avoid being killed at sea.

And as the hangman dropped a poorly made noose over his head, Fry scoffed at the man. He informed him: ‘You do not know your trade.” Fry adjusted the noose and slipped it into place before dropping to his death.

The flamboyant Fry’s body would soon hang on Nixes Mate, a small island in Outer Boston Harbor near Long Island. It serves as a navigational aid to sailors.

William Fry

Fry’s story elicited tremendous public interest, as did all cases involving pirates. The prolific minister Cotton Mather had tried desperately to coax a confession and repentance from Fry. Mather took pride in his reputation as a minister who could convert hardened criminals to religion as they headed to the gallows.

Crowds attended the sermons he preached at hangings, where he tried to serve up a cautionary tale for young people. He would often furnish the condemned men with prayers to recite as they went to the gallows.

In Fry, however, he met his match. Fry had a history as a boxer in Jamaica. Though he had sailed with pirates before, he signed on the Elizabeth Snow as a legitimate boatswain. It’s not precisely clear what caused him to turn pirate and lead a mutiny, but he spelled out the facts at trial.

Nixes Mate

Fry and two other men seized control of the ship. They offered the captain a chance to jump overboard, but he pleaded for his life. So Fry and his compatriots shoved him over. As the struggling captain grabbed at a line to save himself, one of the attackers cleaved off his hand with an ax, sending him to his death.

The mate fared no better. When he fought for his life, he was struck with the ax across the shoulder and sent tumbling into the sea.

Poor Pirate

Fry turned into a remarkably poor pirate. After seizing the Elizabeth Snow in May, he attempted to seize another vessel, but ran it aground off North Carolina. He seized a second vessel, but the pilot on board outsmarted him. The pilot deliberately sailed past Martha’s Vineyard, claiming he didn’t know his location. Then, as the vessel neared Boston, he overpowered Fry and with the help of other captives sailed the ship into Boston Harbor. That set Fry’s appointment with the noose.

Cotton Mather

Fry’s standoff with Cotton Mather was equally fruitless. Though Fry never buckled on the gallows, Mather publicized his case in a pamphlet and made him look every bit a dunce. Though Fry insisted he had suffered “bad usage” at the hands of the Elizabeth Snow’s captain, Mather never publicized his complaints. Some historians have noted that the vessel was a slave ship, and the captains of such ships were often ruthless with their crew. Others note that many sailors who turned pirate were impressed into service, inspiring their decision to step outside the law.

Regardless, Mather had his own uses for Fry’s story. He used it to highlight the end that comes to depraved, wicked and stupid people. The town officials had an even more gruesome use for the pirate. Gibbeting was the practice of stringing up a corpse and hanging it in the harbor as a warning to other would-be pirates. And that’s exactly what happened to Fry, on the island of Nixes Mate. (Then called Nick’s Mate.) His bones rattled in the winds for many months.

Display at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. Replica of Edward Jordan’s gibbet.

Nixes Mate

The island itself, now part of the Boston Harbor Islands owned by the National Park Service, has a curious history. Granted to harbor pilot John Gallop in 1636, he used it for grazing sheep. At that time it was reported to be 12 acres in area. Over time, however, the island has been reduced dramatically in size to its present area of about 200-square feet. Upon which stands a granite base and a wooden pyramid that acts as daymarker for sailors trying to navigate into the harbor.

Legend says the island was named for a Captain Nix or Nick, murdered by his first mate. The mate was tried and hanged on the island. In his final words, he protested his innocence. If he was hanged, he warned, the island would sink into the sea as testament to the wrong done to him.

The island did disappear after his hanging.

But a better explanation for the island’s disappearance: People quarried the island for rocks used as ballast in sailing ships.

The actual origin of the name remains lost.

This story last updated in 2022.

Images: Nixes Mate By Eric Kilby from Somerville, MA, USA – Nixes Mate, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44427125. Gibbeted pirate By Dennis Jarvis from Halifax, Canada – DSC07278 – Gibbet, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=66916336.

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Vermont’s Alexander Twilight: The First Black College Graduate in America

One day at the Brownington school in Orleans County, Vt., a youngster approached the front of the class to answer an arithmetic question. His classmates, as a joke, pinned a handkerchief to his back and he unknowingly proceeded to the front of the class with it trailing behind, leaving a ripple of giggles in its wake. The school’s principal, Alexander Twilight, was not pleased.

Alexander Twilight

The year would have been around 1853, and Twilight, no stranger to schoolboy pranks, sat silent for a bit before he spoke up: “It is a fool that laughs at the folly of a fool,” he said. The words were calculated to silence the classroom, and they did. They made such an impression that at least one student carried the lesson his whole life.

The man who delivered the lesson was the first black man in America ever to receive a college degree.

Alexander Twilight

Twilight was a Vermonter from birth. Researchers believe his father was Ichabod Twilight, a soldier who served in the Revolutionary War representing Warner, N.H. Perhaps the chance to earn his freedom as reward for his service as a soldier drew Ichabod into the New Hampshire militia.

Following the war, Ichabod established a family in Corinth, Vt., where Alexander was born on Sept. 23, 1795. As a young man, Alexander worked on a farm as an indentured servant early in his life. But then Middlebury College accepted him as a student on the strength of his strong mind and schooling at Randolph Academy.

Though census records identified him as black, his racial heritage was mixed and he might well have appeared to be white at first glance. It’s not clear whether Middlebury knew it was educating a black man or not. Nevertheless, he graduated and went on to be a minister and teacher.

Brownington

The Brownington grammar school was established in 1823 when the citizens of Orleans County threw open the doors of their newly built schoolhouse and welcomed the first class. The school survived mainly on the funds raised by renting out land that it had been granted for the purposes of supporting education.

In 1829, the school’s trustees reached out to hire Twilight. He was by then a seasoned teacher, with several years’ experience following his graduation in 1823. The school itself was in dire need of new leadership, and Twilight began immediately making improvements.

But without a dormitory-style boarding house, students had to board with local farmers. The environment that Twilight wanted for the school required a more formal dormitory and classrooms. When the trustees declined to fund it, he insisted. Relations grew very tense for several years, but the trustees refused to fund the larger facility.

Twilight decided to build it himself. He paid for it with a combination of his own funds and money borrowed from others. He quarried granite blocks from the surrounding area and, working with an ox to provide pull a system of pulleys, he and anyone he could corral to help built a large stone structure from the ground up.

Athenian Hall, also known as the Old Stone House

By 1836, he finished the structure: a large four-story, granite building with dormitory, kitchen, classrooms and assembly hall. Alexander Twilight named it Athenian Hall.

Athenian Hall

The school would prosper under Twilight’s leadership. Classes cost $2 to $3 each for a term, and Twilight’s reputation kept the school full. Before he departed in 1847, more than 3,000 students would pass through the school.

Twilight would also win election to the state Legislature and represent the county in attempting to stop the state from stripping its school of its funding.

One of his students would recall Alexander Twilight later: “His peculiar gift was in the management of a school. He seldom failed to get the good will and high esteem of his pupils,. His power to stimulate and direct them in regard to their character, studies and future pursuits was very great, He governed them wholly by appeals to their honor and manliness, but could use sterner persuasives when they were called for. Sometimes, when the subject and occasion demanded it, and all other measures failed, his power of invective, sarcasm, satire and ridicule were tremendous. No sensible rogue would wish to encounter it but once.”

Departure and Return

He left in 1847 because of a falling out with the school’s trustees and the deacons of his church. After his departure, the school closed for several years. Orleans residents eventually persuaded Twilight to return from Canada, where he had moved after the dispute, and the school reopened in 1852. Twilight would only preach one more year after his return, but he ran the school through 1855, when he finally closed it for good for lack of students.

Twilight would die two years later, on June 19, 1857, at the age of 62. His wife, Mercy Ladd Merrill Twilight, would live on for 21 more years. When she perished, her body was buried next to his at the foot of the hill below the stone building.

Today, a building at Middlebury College bears Twilight’s name, and his achievements, thanks largely to his own determination and character, are still celebrated to this day. And the stone school house that he built still stands and open for visitors; its website has an interesting collection of his sermons.

This story was updated in 2023. Image of Athenian Hall CC BY-SA 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34745682.

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