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EZEKIEL • CHEEVER
HVIVS • SCHOLAE • PRAECEPTOR
PER • ANNOS • PROPE • OCTO • ET • TRIGINTA
LONDINII-NATVS-A.D. MDCXIV- VIII-KAL. FEB.
IBi • EDVCATVS • IN • SCHOLA • CHRISTS • HOSPITAL- DICTA
IN • NVMERVM • QVIVM • ACADEMICORVM • COLLEGII
EMMANVEL-IN-VNIVERSITATE-CANTABRICIENSI
ASCITVS-A.D. MDCXXXII'PRIDIE-ID. IAN.
HANG-PETHT-TERRAM-A.D. MDCXXXVII
FRAEPOSITVS-HVIC- SCHOLAE -A.D. MDCLXX -VIII-ID. IAN.
OBIIT-A.D. MDCCVni-XII-KAL. SEPT.
VIXIT • PIE • ANNIS • LXXXXIV
COTTON • MATHER • DISCIPVLVS • GRATVS • HVIC
OMNEM • NOVAE • ANCLIAE- ERVDITIONEM • ASCRIPSIT
m \
TABLET IN THE BOSTON LATIN SCHOOL
iB^chicl Cbeever
Scboolm aster
INTRODUCTION BY
EDWARD EVERETT HALE, D.D.
The PALMER
COMPANY
50 Bromfield
St., Boston
Big Elisabeth porter (Boulb
Author <>/■ "John Adams and Daniel Webster as Schoolmasters;"
"The Brownings and America;" "Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whit-
man; " " A Pioneer Doctor; " " One's Self I Sing and Other Poems."
Copyright 1904.
BY
Thk Palmer Company
First Edition
ITnttobuction
WAS greatly pleased when I learned that
Miss Gould had consented to write the
life of Ezekiel Cheever, for I knew how
careful had been her study of the career
of this interesting man. She knew more
of him than anyone did ; and now that I have read this
valuable book, I need hardly say that I am delighted
with her success.
I thought I knew something of Cheever myself. In
one of the Prize Books, Mr. Benjamin A. Gould, the
head master of the Latin School after 1816, had given
a little sketch of Cheever' s career; and as schoolboys
in that old school we knew of his Accidence, and that
he was one of the heroes of the school. I graduated at
that school in 1835. The exhibition exercises of our
class marked the second centennial anniversary of the
school. In 1840 the Latin School Association was
formed, of which I have now the honor to be Presi-
dent. I was the first Secretary of that Society and I
edited its first catalogue. It thus became my pleasant
duty to find what I then could of Cheever' s life, and I
like to acknowledge here the help which I received
from that distinguished historian, Mr. Samuel Francis
Haven, the accomplished Librarian of the American
Antiquarian Society.
I say all this because it is with peculiar satisfaction,
I may even say surprise, that in reading Miss Gould's
book I see that she has found clues which we had not
1rntro^uction
suspected, and has so followed them back that she pre-
sents Cheever to us in our generation as a character
much more real than he was even to the Latin School
boys of fifty years ago. The history of New England
is much better known than it was sixty years ago ; and
whoever traces the annals, which are so interesting, of
the steps which made out of a trading corporation an
independent state in one hundred and fifty years, has to
consider among the initial agencies of that advance the
education freely given by the State. Miss Gould has
done me the honor to print at length in her Appendix
a paper of mine prepared for Education. I have said
in that paper that I do not believe that any other trading
village in the world in the eighteenth century gave to
one third of its boys and young men such instruction
in the Latin language as Boston did. Whether trade
carried them to Cadiz, to Lisbon, to Havana, to Brest,
or anywhere else in the world, they could speak in
the Latin language to the foreigner. No man can fol-
low the history of the American Revolution without
accounting for the make-up of such men as Sam Adams,
James Bowdoin, Henry Knox, Joseph Warren, John
Hancock. Four of these were pupils of the Boston
Latin School, and Warren would not have been Warren
but for its avail as a metropolitan school.
When one says this, he ought to know what made
a school like that. Mr. Emerson left to us no wiser
phrase than when he said, " It does not matter so much
what you study as with whom you study." Who gave
the Boston Latin School its repute ? Who set the stand-
1^ntro^uctlon
ard for the little village, which, at the common charge,
gave every boy the best training of which that time had
any idea ?
Simply it was Ezekiel Chkever, in the years be-
tween 1639 and 1708.
A first-rate life of such a man makes a very important
addition to the history of New England.
Edward E. Hale.
Eseliiel Chccvct
Scboolmaster
Esekiel Cbeevec
>HEN Agassiz requested to go down the
ages with no other name than " Teacher,"
he not only appropriately crowned his
own life work, but stamped the vocation
of teaching with lasting honor. In this vocation, Eze-
kiel Cheever stands out especially clear. Born in
London January 25, 16 14, in 1637, at the age of twenty-
three, he came to Boston, seven years after its settle-
ment. He did not remain there long, however, for the
following year he is in the Indian region of Quinnipiack
helping John Davenport, Theophilus Eaton and others
found what was afterwards called the New Haven Col-
ony. He was one of the famous little band who in 1639
in Mr. Newman's barn signed the compact for the
religious and civil government of the colony ; a " Fourth
Colony of New English Christians," which, as
Cotton Mather says in his Magnalia^ was " under the
Conduct of as Holy and as Prudent and as Genteel
Persons as most that ever visited these Nooks of
America." Referring to Mr. Eaton, who was chosen
the first governor, he declares it was "the Admiration
of all Spectators to behold the Discretion, the Gravity,
the Equity," with which for about a score of years
until his death he, as the " Glory and Pillar" of the
colony, managed its public affairs. Doubtless the
lo fisefttel Cbeever
young Cheever heard him say what Mather says was a
favorite aphorism of his, " Some count it a great
matter to Die well, but I am sure 'tis a great matter to
Live well."
While Governor Eaton as the ' ' Moses of the
Christian Colony" was particularly engaged in civil
affairs, John Davenport, as "the Aaron," was leading
in church affairs, — his ministry, his discipline, his
government and his universal direction continuing, as
Mather says, for many years, even till after the resto-
ration of Charles II., when the Connecticut and New
Haven Colonies became one. He was a close student,
so much so that the Indian savages called him, ♦' So
big study man." A graduate of Oxford University, he
naturally desired to have a classical school for the
youth of the new colony. Governor Eaton, who was a
companion of his in their English life, sympathized
with his idea. Who could better manage such than
the young Ezekiel Cheever, who had been educated at
an English university. He had married and settled
down among them in a home of his own. Having been
a student at Emmanuel College, " that Seminary of Pu-
ritans in Cambridge," as Cotton Mather called it, pos-
sibly he was better fitted for the work than if educated
at other colleges. But whether so or not, in the same
summer as the signing of the compact (1639) a school
for boys, for " boys only as were to be taught to make
Latin," was opened in New Haven in his own home,
said to have been at the corner of Grove and Church
Streets. Little Michael Wigglesworth, afterwards
Scboolmaater n
famous as the author of the Day of Doom, was one of
the pupils, his father being one of the townspeople. In
his Autobiography he tells of being sent to school to
Mr. Ezekiel Cheever, who " taught school in his own
house," and of profiting so much in a year or two,
''through ye blessing of God," that he began "to
make Latin and to get forward apace." The records
of the colony tell that this school was for the ' ' better
training up of youth in the town, that through God's
blessing they may be fitted for public service hereafter
either in church or commonwealth."
For several years Mr. Cheever received for his teach-
ing twenty pounds a year, when, that " not proving a
competent maintenance," it was increased to thirty
pounds. A schoolhouse came later into being, said to
have been built on the Green near Elm Street, a little
west of Temple. (Blake.) Votes of both town and
colony are on record for the grade of the school to be
raised, and for Mr. Cheever' s salary to be increased
from the public treasury.
The young teacher was not blessed with riches.
In 1643 his name is sixth in the list of planters and
their estates, his estate being valued only at twenty
pounds. Dr. Leonard Woolsey Bacon, in his "Histori-
cal Discourse of New Haven in i860," declared that he
was the " most picturesque character " in the history of
the New Haven Colony. Though he came from an
accomplished education in London, a contemporary of
Milton and other classically educated young men, he
did not, he said, '• hesitate to apply himself to the small
12 fijcfttel Cbeever
things of colony life." He noted the repeated indica-
tions of the esteem in which he was held, " not only for
his work's sake, but for his own. His pupils did not
caricature him on the blank pages of his Accidence^
and call him ' Old Cheever ' below their breath, as
long as they went to school to him."
While he was teaching the New Haven school, Mr.
Cheever was an efficient helper in other directions, be-
ing one of the twelve men chosen as ' ' fitt for the f oun-
dacon worke of the church." He was a member of the
court for the plantation at its first session, and in 1646
was one of the deputies to the General Court. This
was an important position, since, there being no written
code of laws until later, the court then determined all
differences. As an educator, the young master was
doubtless interested in the order of the General Court of
the Massachusetts Colony in 1647 that there should be a
school for every township of fifty householders, and a
grammar school for every hundred. He must have
been conversant with the career of Roger Williams.
Massasoit, then in his old age, may even have told him of
the visit of the banished minister to his Rhode Island
home. Would we could know what he thought of
Harry Vane, of Anne Hutchinson and her independent
action ! But all is silence.
Although never ordained to the ministry, Mr. Cheever
occasionally preached. His Christian spirit is seen
when, being brought up before the church for dissenting
from its judgment concerning some cases of discipline,
he said, "I had rather suffer anything from men than
Scboolmaetet 13
make a shipwreck of a good conscience, or go against
my present light, though erroneous when discovered."
But while not wholly freeing himself from blame as to
his " want of wisdom and coolness in ordering and utter-
ing his speeches," yet he could not be convinced that
he deserved the censure which the church had inflicted
upon him ; and he could not look upon it as " dispensed
according to the rules of Christ." But he concluded
by saying that he could " wait upon God for the discov-
ery of Truth in his own time, either to myself or church ;
that what is amiss may be repented of and reformed ;
that His blessing and presence may be among them, and
upon His holy ordinances rightly dispensed, to His glory
and their present and everlasting comfort, which I
heartily pray for."
At this time (1649) he was afflicted by the death of
Mary, his wife. Six children — Samuel, Mary, Ezekiel,
Elizabeth, Sarah and Hannah — had been bom to them,
Ezekiel dying in infancy.
A cherished hope of the founders of the New
Haven Colony was to found a college "for the good
of posterity." For this, even land was set apart
in the formation of the town; but circumstances
did not favor the desire. Disappointment, however,
only turned the attention of the people to Harvard Col-
lege, then struggling into life under President Dunster;
and there a good number of the New Haven Colony
boys were sent to be educated. It speaks well for the
educational influences at work in that vicinity that of
the Harvard graduates, from its beginning to 1700, as
14 leseRiel Cbeevet
many as one in thirty came from New Haven.*
It is supposed that during his residence in Ne\v
Haven Ezekiel Cheever wrote his Accidence^ a short
introduction to the Latin tongue for the use of schools.
This little book of less than one hundred pages was
called the "wonder of the age," and is said to have
been used as generally as any elementary work ever
known; indeed, it is thought to have done more "to
inspire young minds with the love of the study of the
Latin language than any other work of the kind since
the first settlement of the country." It passed through
eighteen editions before the Revolution, the last being
published in Boston in 1838.!
In a prospectus, containing commendations of the
work from many eminent men of learning, the Hon.
Josiah Quincy, LL.D., President of Harvard Col-
lege, said of it : *' A work which was used for more
than a century in the schools of New England as the
first elementary book for learners of the Latin language ;
which held its place in some of the most eminent of
those schools, nearly, if not quite, to the end of the last
century ; which passed through at least twenty editions
in this country ; which was the subject of the successive
labor and improvement of a man who spent seventy
years in the business of instruction, and whose fame is
second to that of no schoolmaster New England has ever
* For some interesting details of this early colonial life, see
Stories of Old Netu Haven, by Ernest H. Baldwin.
t Harvard College has several editions, the earliest being the
tenth, printed by Edes & Gill in Queen Street, in 1767.
Scboolmaeter 15
produced, — requires no additional testimony to its worth
or its merits. It is distinguished for simplicity, compre-
hension and exactness." Mr. Quincy knew of what he
spoke, for from six to fourteen years of age he studied
the Accidence at the Phillips Academy at Andover,
Mass., where, he tells us, he was obliged with the rest
of his classmates, *'to get by heart passages of a book
which he could not, from his years, possibly understand."
But by means of this Accidence^ or in spite of it, as his
son Edmund says in his biography of him, he laid a
foundation of Latin knowledge which was a help and
delight to him to the end of life ; indeed, it became his
amusement in old age.
Other testimonies of its value have come down to us.
Samuel Walker, having had it in constant use for his
pupils for more than fifty years whenever it could be
obtained, found it to be the *' best book for beginners in
the study of Latin " that had come to his knowledge,
" no work of its kind containing so much useful matter
in so small a compass." Another testimony (Rev. T.
M. Harris) declared there was " no elementary work
so well calculated for the beginners as Cheever's
Accidence — pre-eminently perspicuous, concise and
comprehensive."
That Ezekiel Cheever also wrote on religious subjects
is seen in a little book containing three short essays,
under the title. Scripture Prophecies Explained,
The first one is " On the Restitution of all Things," the
second "On St. John's First Resurrection," and the third
*'On the Personal Coming of Jesus Christ, as Com-
i6 EseFitel Cbecver
mencing at the Beginning of the Millennium described in
the Apocalypse." Although the book did not attain to
so many editions as the Accidence^ it continued to be
issued after the death of Mr. Cheever; as late as 1757
an edition being printed by Green & Russell at their
printing office in Qiieen Street. (Found in the Boston
Athenaeum.)
There are also in existence two manuscript books
which the schoolmaster owned : one of about four hun-
dred pages of Latin dissertations, with an occasional
mathematical figure drawn, — now in possession of the
Massachusetts Historical Society, — and one kept in the
safe of the Boston Athenaeum. One handles reverently
this little brown, leather-covered book of about one
hundred and twenty pages, on the first of which is the
year " 1631," and on the second, in his own handwrit-
ing, " Ezekiel Cheeuer, his booke." In it are nearly
fifty pages of Latin poems, besides two in Greek, copied
before the life in America began ; also a few shorthand
notes which have been deciphered as Scripture texts.
Printed in full for the first time, they formed an appen-
dix to one of Mr. John T. Hassam's valuable papers in
the Nev) England Historical and Genealogical Reg-
ister (April, 1879). On the last page of this quaint
little treasure are written in English some verses, one of
which can be clearly read as, '* Oh, first seek the kingdom
of God and his Righteousness, and all things else shall
be added unto you."*
* For further details see "The Cheever MSS." in the New
England Historical and Genealogical Register for January,
1903-
ScbooIma0ter 17
After Mr. Cheever had taught in New Haven for
about twelve years, he left in 1650 to become master of
the grammar, or free, school in Ipswich, Mass. If
one can judge by salary received, the schoolmaster
was appreciated in New Haven, for the town was not
willing to pay his successor as " large a salary as it had
done to Mr. Cheever." The successor received only
ten pounds a year.
Ipswich (or Agawam) was then a town of less than
twenty years' experience. Within ten years of its settle-
ment its " renowned church," Mather tells us, consisted
mostly of " such illuminated Christians that their pastor
in the exercise of their ministry had not so much disci-
ples as judges." By petition of Zaccheus Gould and
others, that pait of the village some seven miles to the
westward called "New Meadows" had that year
become incorporated as a town under the name of
Topsfield. Salem was not far away. Wenham and
Manchester were neighboring townships striving to
grow. In the Wenham church, founded six years
before, the Rev. John Fisk was doing faithful work,
content, as Cotton Mather says in his Magnalia^ " with a
very mean salary, and consuming his own fair estate for
the welfare of the new plantation." Governor Endicott
owned land on the south side of the pretty river which
still winds its course through the village. Samuel
Appleton was a large landowner. Thomas Dudley,
Simon Bradstreet, Richard Saltonstall, and others,
whose descendants are well known to-day, were identi-
fied with the town. Governor Winthrop had not been
i8 j63ehtel Cbeever
long dead, while his son John, the founder of the town,
had special interest for the schoolmaster for his more or
less connection with the Connecticut and New Haven
life.
The free school to which Mr. Cheever came was not
a public school as we mean it today. A forerunner of
the academy, it was one endowed with grants of land
and bequests, in which Latin and Greek were taught,
supported in part by the parents' fees. We are told
that the schooling of Simon Bradstreet, when placed at
the "free school" in Ipswich by his father after his
removal to Andover, was " more chargeable."
In 1653, while Mr. Cheever taught in Ipswich, a phi-
lanthropic citizen, Robert Payne, gave to the town, in
addition to a schoolhouse, a dwelling house with two
acres of land for the use of the schoolmaster. This was
in line with the accepted idea that a house as well as a
school building should be provided for the teacher.
The school so prospered that neighboring towns sent
pupils to it. Nathaniel Saltonstall was there prepared
for Harvard, then under the presidency of Charles
Chauncy. In the class of 1659, Master Cheever must
have been especially interested, for it contained the name
of his son Samuel — Samuel Cheverus. This firstborn
son seemed to be a favorite of his father. It was to him
he wrote the epistles in Latin — now in the Massachu-
setts Historical Society — which the Rev. William Bent-
ley, D.D., of Salem, Mass., said " were worthy of the
age of Erasmus and of the days of Ascham." We are
indebted to a descendant of this firstborn, Mr. John T.
Scboolmaeter 19
Hassam, for giving to the public for the first time in full
a facsimile of one of these Latin letters. Its history is
interesting. In 1879, failing to find what he wanted, Mr.
Hassam printed in one of his valuable articles on the
old schoolmaster a fragment of a letter in the hope it
might lead to the recovery of the whole. Some twelve
years later, at a sale of autograph letters and historical
documents collected by Prof. E. H. Leffingwell, of New
Haven, Conn., the city of Boston purchased some, among
them being the original letter in a good state of preser-
vation. (Appendix I.) Although the year is not on it,
Mr. Hassam thought that since it was dated November
24th impost festurn)^ it must have been written on
Thanksgiving day of 1670, since, with a single excep-
tion during the colonial period, only in that year did
Thanksgiving come on that day of the month. The let-
ter, which begins with " Chare Jili" and ends with " Tui
studiosissi -pater ^ Ez. Cheever," reveals the father
going to Cambridge to negotiate as to the marriage of
Samuel with Ruth, daughter of Edmund Angier, and
granddaughter of the Rev. Dr. William Ames of Hol-
land University fame, whose portrait is in Memorial
Hall, Cambridge. (Appendix II.) Not finding the
father at home, he writes that he communicated with the
mother ; but she, not being willing to commit herself,
referred him to her husband and daughter. It was con-
ceded that the young lady was superior; indeed, was
hard to win. On the way back to Boston the master
says he met the father, who also was averse to commit-
ting himself. He referred all to the daughter. A year
20 lescFitel Cbeever
before this, the father had written a letter to the son from
Charlestown about the young woman, which Mr. Has-
sam has also printed in full. But it all came out right ;
for in June, 1671, the summer after the father's visit to
Cambridge, Samuel, then nearly thirty-two years of age,
is married to the Cambridge young lady. He was
then preaching in Marblehead as the first settled minis-
ter of the town. There, after a ministry of over fifty
years, he died and was buried.
During Master Cheever's eleven years of service in
Ipswich as schoolmaster, Thomas Dudley and John
Endicott were among the governors of the Massachu-
setts Colony — then under its first charter — and William
Bradford and Edward Winslow among those of the Ply-
mouth Colony. John Eliot had begun his monumental
work among the Indians ; Louis XIV. was working
out his career in France ; and Oliver Cromwell was end-
ing his heroic struggle in England. If only the school-
master had jotted down his thoughts of the strange power
of this wonderful man of the people ! or, if he had
left on record some of the things he must have heard of
the " Tenth Muse," Anne Bradstreet, who, though then
living in Andover, had written most of her poems while
residing in Ipswich ! As they were published the year
of his arrival there, possibly he was familiar with them.
He may have discussed them with her. Who knows?
She may have told him of one of her admirers, the Rev.
Nathaniel Ward, who a few years before had published
what was perhaps the most peculiar book of the colo-
nial era, " The Simple Cobbler of Agawam ;" for, though
ScbooIma0ter 21
now gone to England, he had been a neighbor of hers
while pastor of the Ipswich church. The school-
master must have known the Rev. Nathaniel Rogers,
who died while he taught in the town ; also Pastor Nor-
ton. One wonders if he ever met that " godly man of
Ipswich" of whom Cotton Mather tells, who, after Mr.
Norton was settled in Boston, where he went from
Ipswich, would travel on foot to that town, almost
thirty miles, " for nothing but the weekly lecture there."
He declared it was "worth a great journey to be a par-
taker in one of Mr. Norton's prayers."
But if the practical schoolmaster was not so much in-
terested in the prayers of the Rev. John Norton, he was
doubtless a reader of his Latin book, which he wrote in
1645 by order of the New England ministers, to answer
the question of divines in Zealand concerning the New
England church government. He may also have read
The Orthodox Evangelist^ which he dedicated to his Ips-
wich church, and other of his treatises. {Magnalta.)
Would we had some of the opinions of this learned, re-
ligious schoolmaster concerning the books of that day !
What did he think of the popular Day of Doom^ which
his little pupil of years before published in his later
years? Did he enter into the spirit of the Bay Psalm
Book^ which must have been known and used during
his Ipswich life ? Did he enjoy the Ames's Almanacks,
with their literary and amusing quotations? Was he
conversant with Shakespeare and Cervantes, who had
been dead only a little over thirty years ? Had he ever
heard of Raphael, Michael Angelo and other great
22 jB^c\{icl Cbeever
painters? But if we do not know this, we do know
that he was interested in the village, for he planted an
orchard and built a barn on the land he owned ; all of
which, on his removal from the town, was purchased
by the Feoffers and added to the grammar school
property. We know, too, by an ancient petition signed
by him while teacher there (now owned by the Ipswich
Historical Society), that he prayed for a withholding of
an innholder's license from an unworthy innkeeper;
indeed, it is thought he wrote it.
We also know that while living in Ipswich he married
(1652) for his second wife, Ellen Lathrop, sister of
Captain Thomas Lathrop of Beverly, who, two years
before, had brought her from England with the promise
of being a father to her. Of the children born there, —
Abigail, Ezekiel, Nathaniel and Thomas, — Ezekiel ap-
pears in the annals of the village parish of Salem as late
as 1731 ; while Thomas, after graduating at Harvard in
1677, became a clergyman in Maiden, Mass., and later
at Rumney Marsh (afterwards Chelsea), where he died
at the age of ninety-one. His son Ezekiel became an
honored resident of Charlestown, to whom was granted
the building of the tomb on old " Burial Hill" (at the
end of Phipps Place) , where John Harvard was buried
the year after Master Cheever came to Boston. Stamped
with armorial bearings and the inscription "Ezekiel
Cheever, Esq. His Tomb, 1744," it has not only a
special interest to Cheever descendants, but to all inter-
ested in colonial affairs.
Today, a visitor to Ipswich sees on a granite monu-
\ .
IPSWICH MONUMENT
Scboolmaeter 23
ment erected in 1896 on the pretty green where he
taught and lived, the name of Schoolmaster Cheever
as one of the ever-to-be-remembered influences in the
development of the people. It has even been said that
his labors there were chiefly instrumental in placing
that town "in literature and population above all the
towns of Essex County." (Bentley.) In his address
upon the unveiling of the memorial (a gift of an
Appleton), Rev. T. Frank Waters, President of the
Ipswich Historical Society, said that "were those
eleven years in which he wrought the end of that fine
effort for advanced education in our midst, it would be
a luminous epoch in our annals. But the school con-
tinued when he was called to Charlestown. The town
granted for its support a great farm in Chebacco.
William Paine made gift of Little Neck^ and the
revenue from these properties made helpful contribu-
tions to its support, as it does still to our High School.
Yonder corner," he declared, " is forever hallowed by
the memories of the prayers and toils of that one great
teacher."
After a record of eleven years in Ipswich, Mr.
Cheever removed to Charlestown (1661) to become
master of the school there at a salary of thirty pounds a
year. This salary seems small indeed ; but when we
read that this faitMul teacher was at last obliged to
petition the selectmen for even this small pay, " since
the constables were much behind with him," the situa-
tion becomes pathetic. He asked later that the school-
house be repaired. In 1669 he is again before the town,
34 jescf^tel Cbeever
asking for a "piece of ground or house plott whereon
to build an house for his familie," which petition he
left for the townsmen to consider. They voted in favor
of the request, but as Mr. Cheever was called the fol-
lowing year to Boston, it is probable that his successor
had the benefit of it.
After teaching in Charlestown nine years, Mr.
Cheever accepted the invitation of Boston town to
become master of its Latin School. This was in Jan-
uary, 1 67 1. He was then fifty-seven years old, and had
taught school over thirty years. He had seen the de-
velopment of his own land, and had doubtless felt the
pulse of his native England, where Milton, old and
blind, was still living. Perhaps he had read the Para-
dise Lost of his English contemporary, since it had
been published several years. He doubtless knew of
Dryden, who, two years before, under Charles II., had
become poet laureate. Alexander Pope was not born.
Louis XIV. was still ruling France. Richard Belling-
ham was Governor of the Massachusetts Colony, which,
before Master Cheever' s long service should end, would
become one with the Plymouth.
The Boston school to which Mr. Cheever now came
had been in existence thirty-five years. It remained for
a descendant of the old master, the Rev. Henry F.
Jenks, to give to the public in his " History of the
Latin School," an interesting account of the time-
honored institution. Founded by an agreement among
the first citizens of Boston led by Governor Win-
throp, it antedated even Harvard College. Dr. Edward
ScbooIma0ter 25
Everett Hale, as President of the Boston Latin School
Association, has also told of its history. (Appendix
III.) A bronze tablet in the rear of King's Chapel
now marks the spot where the first schoolhouse stood ;
later it was across the street. The different names of
this street — School-House Lane, South Latin Grammar
School, etc. — were in 1708 by vote of the town, merged
into that of the one it bears to-day — School Street.
Prominent men of the day lived near. Judge Sewall
was a familiar figure walking from his home, not far
away, to the meetinghouse on what is now Washington
Street. As a personal friend of Master Cheever, he
visited him in the schoolhouse. In his Diary (dated Sep-
tember 13, 1686) he says that as he went " in the morn
to hear Cotton Mather preach the Election Sermon for
the Artillery at Charlestown," he "had Sam to the
Latin school, which is the first time." He declares
that " Mr. Cheever received him gladly." Together he
and the master may have gone to hear the son, the Rev.
Samuel Cheever, preach the Artillery Election Sermon
(1684) from the text Hebrew ii. 10, "For it became
him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all
things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the
Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings."
Or they may have gone together to the weekly Thursday
lecture, for which the school was dismissed at ten
o'clock; on other days it closed at eleven. With an
attendamus to a short prayer, it opened at seven in
the morning during summer and at eight in the winter.
All the year round it began at one in the aftei'noon, and,
26 EjcFitel Cbeever
with a deponite libros^ closed at five. Here boys learned
their Latin Accidence^ and went to Harvard, which for
two generations was the only college in New England.
In Greek they read mostly the New Testament. Cotton
Mather says it was noted that when " Scholars came to
be admitted into the College, they who came from
Cheeverian Education were generally the most unex-
ceptionable." Sibley tells us that an Ipswich pupil,
Simon Bradstreet, of Harvard, 1660, was not only noted
as defending the position, Omnes Artes Accidentur
Theologicc^ but, when he '♦ went out Master of Arts"
in 1663, as defending the thesis, Discremen Boni et
malt Cognoscitur a lege Naturce. Another pupil,
John Leverett, of the Boston Latin School, was the
Latin salutatorian of his class of 1680. We are also
told {^Historical Register) that when Nehemiah
Walter, who married a daughter of Increase Mather,
was taken to the " famous Mr. Cheever with a view to
his preparing him for college," Mr. Cheever returned
him to his father, after a "short examination and ex-
periment," with a "great encomium, pronouncing him
already well stocked with classic learning, and abun-
dantly finished to enter upon academical studies." Such
results would be natural from the fact which Mather
tells, that his " Master went thro' this Hard Work with
so much Delight in it, as a Work for God and Christ
and his People."
Besides their book knowledge, the old master had an
interest in his pupils' personal welfare. Possibly he was
reminded of his own young days, when, asa " Blue Coat
Scboolmaeter 27
Boy" in London, with the tails of his long blue coat
tucked up under his leather belt, he had played in the
open space of the school buildings in Newgate Street in
the same " Christ's Hospital " which we know today.*
Doubtless he told them of his annual Easter march with
the boys to the Mansion House, where the Lord Mayor
gave them buns, coins, etc., with elaborate ceremony;
a march taken by Charles Lamb, Coleridge, Leigh
Hunt, and so many other little Blue Coat Boys in the
many years since Edward VI., in 1552, founded the
school. However this may be, in his service now as
schoolmaster, this seven years' experience as a Blue
Coat Boy (1626-1633) must have allied him more
closely to a schoolmaster in the neighboring town of
Cambridge, Elijah Corlet, who, Waters tells us, was
also a Blue Coat Boy.f
For his service as Latin School master in " the Metrop-
olis of the English America" — as the pastor of the
North Church called Boston — Mr. Cheever received a
salary of sixty pounds a year. This was more than his
friend Elijah Corlet received ; for according to the town
records, only a few years before, Cambridge had voted
him an annual salary of twenty pounds so long as he
should continue to be schoolmaster in that place ; and
there seems to be no evidence that this man of ♦' learn-
ing, piety and respectability," of "abilities, dexterity
and painfulnesse " in teaching youths for over forty
* The hospital was removed to Horsham, Sussex, in 1902.
t For further particulars of the Blue Coat Boys see Annals of
Chrisfs Hospital, hy E. H. Pearce; also TroUope's History of
Chrisfs Hospital.
38 fi3cFiiel Cbeever
years as master of the grammar school by the side of
Harvard College, ever received more. But for his
*' extraordinary paines" in teaching the Indians designed
for Hai-vard he received compensation from the Society
for Propagating the Gospel.
But if Master Cheever had the name of receiving a
salary of sixty pounds a year in Boston, as in Charles-
town, he had difficulty in getting it; for in 1687-1688 he
is sending the following petition to His Excellency Sir
Edmund Andros, "Knight, Governor, and Captain
General of His Majesty's Territories and Dominions in
New England," for the fifty-five pounds due him,
" having been near fifty years employed in the work and
office of a public Grammar Schoolmaster " : —
" The humble peticon of Ezekiel Cheever of Boston,
Schoolmr. Sheweth that your poor peticoner hath
now fifty years been employed in ye work and office of
a publick Grammar-Schoolmr. in several places in this
Country, with what acceptance & success I submit to
the judgment of those that are able to testify. Now
seeing God is pleased, mercifully yet to continue my
wonted abilities of mind, health of body, vivacity of
spirit, delight in my work, which alone I am in any way
fit for, & capable of, & whereby I have my outward sub-
sistance. I most humbly entreat your Excellency, yet
according to your former kindness often manifested, I
may by your Excellencies favor, allowance, & encour-
agement still be continued in my present place. And
whereas there is due to me about fifty-five pounds for
my labours past & ye former way of that part of my
maintenance usually raised by a rate, is thought good to
be altered, I with all submission beseech your Excel-
Scboolmaeter 29
lency that you would be pleased to give order for my
due satisfaction, ye want of which would fall heavy
upon me in my old age, and my children also who are
otherwise poor enough.
" And your poor peticoner shall ever pray.
" I am Excellencies most humble servt.
EZKKIKL ChEEVER."
It is thought that Mr. Cheever lived in the school
building, since besides his salary he was to have
" possession and use of ye schoole-house." But after a
while the selectmen were making arrangements for a
house to be built for him, in accordance with the vote
of the town (March, 1701) that a " House be built for
Old Mr. Eze'k Cheever, the Latin School-Master," and
that the " Selectmen Take Care about the Building of
it." The following details of the agreement made with
Captain John Barnet concerning the house as found in
the old records are suggestive indeed : —
" That the said Barnet shall erect a House on the Land
where Mr. Ezekiel Cheever Lately dwelt, of forty foot
Long Twenty foot wide and Twenty foot stud with
four foot Rise in the Roof, to make a cellar floor under
one half of S* house and to build a Kitchen of Sixteen
foot in Length and twelve foot in breadth with a
Chamber therein, and to Lay the floors flush through
out the maine house and to make three paire of Stayers
in y® main house and one paire in the Kitchen and to
Inclose s^ house and to do and complete all carpenters
worke and to find all timber boards clapboards nayles
glass and Glaziers worke and Iron worke and to make
one Cellar door and to finde one Lock for the Outer
door of said House, and also to make the Casements for
30 jes^ifttel Cbeever
S* house, and perform S* worke and to finish S** build-
ing by the first day of August next. In consideration
whereof the Selectmen do agree that the S** Capt.
Barnet shall have the Old Timber boards Iron worke
and glass of the Old house now Standing on S^ Land
and to pay unto him the Sum of one hundred and thirty
pounds money, that is to say forty pounds down in
hand and the rest as the worke goes on."
Then follows the agreement for the " masons' worke"
in all its details. Later on, in March, 1702, there is
some discussion as to how far back from the street the
house should be placed. But in June of that year the
house is up, for the worthy dignitaries order that " Capt.
John Barnard do provide a Raysing Dinner for the Rays-
ing the Schoolmasters House at the Charge of the town not
exceeding the Sum of Three pounds." This was done,
for later they order the " noat for three pounds, ex-
pended by him for a dinner at Raysing the School-
masters House," be paid him.
After Mr. Cheever's house had received all this pains-
taking attention, the town voted that a " New School
House be built instead of the Old School House in
which Mr. Ezekiel Cheever Teacheth, and it is Left
with the Selectmen to get the same accomplished."
The particulars of this work are given with as much
detail in the Selectmen's Minutes of July 24, 1704, as
those of the House : —
"Agreed w* M' John Barnerd as followeth, he to
build a new School House of ft»rty foot Long Twenty
five foot wide and Eleven foot Stud, with eight win-
dows below and five in the Roofe, with wooden Case-
Scboolmaster 3^
ments to the eight Windows, to Lay the lower floor
with Sleepers & double boards So far as needful, and
the Chamber floor with Single boards, to board below
the plate inside & inside and out, to Clapboard the Outside
and Shingle the Roof, to make a place to hang the Bell
in, to make a paire of Staires up to the Chamber, and
from thence a Ladder to the bell, to make one door next
the Street, and a petition Cross the house below, and to
make three rows of benches for the boyes on each Side
of the room, to find all Timber, boards. Clapboards
shingles nayles hinges. In consideration whereof the
s^ M' John Barnerd is to be paid One hundred pounds,
and to have the Timber, Boards, and Iron worke of the
Old School House."
Would we had :oday the names of the boys, some-
times over a hundred at a time, who sat on these
benches, as well as a record of the daily events ! If
we have not these, we have the schoolmaster and the
school, as pictured by Hawthorne in his " Grandfather's
Chair," where on a winter's day he takes a peep into
the schoolroom — "a large, dingy room, with a sanded
floor, lighted by windows that turn on hinges and have
little diamond-shaped panes of glass." From the large
fireplace at one end of the room a bright blaze went
leaping up the chimney from the great logs of wood.
Every few moments a cloud of smoke is puffed into the
room, sailing "slowly over the heads of the scholars
until it gradually settles upon the walls and ceiling,
already blackened with the smoke of years." On long
benches with desks before them sit the pupils before
the "venerable schoolmaster, severe in aspect, with a
black skull cap on his head, like the ancient Puritan,
32 lescKiel Cbeever
and the snow of his white beard drifting down to his
very girdle. ... A rod of birch is hanging over the
fireplace, and a heavy ferule lies on the master's desk.
, . . Buz ! buz ! buz ! Amid just such a murmur has
Master Cheever spent above sixty years ; and long habit
has made it as pleasant to him as the hum of a bee-hive
when the insects are busy in the sunshine. . . . Now a
class in Latin is called to recite. Forth steps a row of
queer-looking little fellows wearing square-skirted coats
and small-clothes, with buttons at the knee. They look
like so many grandfathers in their second childhood.
These lads are to be sent to Cambridge and educated for
the learned professions. Old Master Cheever has lived
so long, and seen so many generations of schoolboys
grow up to be men, that now he can almost prophesy
what sort of a man each boy will be. One urchin shall
hereafter be a doctor, and administer pills and potions,
and stalk gravely through life, perfumed with assafcEtida.
Another shall wrangle at the bar, and fight his way to
wealth and honors, and, in his declining age, shall be a
worshipful member of His Majesty's Council. A third
— and he the master's favorite — shall be a worthy suc-
cessor to the old Puritan ministers now in their graves ;
he shall preach with great unction and effect, and leave
volumes of sermons in print and manuscript for the
benefit of future generations. But, as they are merely
schoolboys now, their business is to construe Virgil.
Poor Virgil, whose verses, which he took so much pains
to polish, have been mis-scanned, and mis-parsed, and
mis-interpreted by so many generations of idle school-
ScbooIma0ter 33
boys ! There, sit down, ye Latinists. Two or three of
you I fear are doomed to feel the master's ferule. . . .
Next comes a class in arithmetic. These boys are to
be merchants, shop-keepers and mechanics of a future
period. Hitherto they have traded only in marbles and
apples. Hereafter some will send vessels to England
for broadcloths, and all sorts of manufactured wares,
and to the West Indies for sugar and rum and coffee.
Others will stand behind counters and measure tape and
ribbon and cambric by the yard. Others will upheave the
blacksmith's hammer or take the lapstone and the awl
and learn the trade of shoemaking. Many will follow the
sea, and become bold, rough sea-captains. This class
of boys, in short, must supply the world with those
active, skilful hands, and clear, sagacious heads without
which the affairs of life would be thrown into confusion
by the theories of studious and visionary men. Where-
fore, teach them their multiplication table, good Master
Cheever, and whip them well when they deserve it ; for
much of the country's welfare depends on these boys.
But, alas ! while we have been thinking of other matters
Master Cheever' s watchful eye has caught two boys at
play. Now we shall see awful times. Master Cheever
has taken down that terrible birch rod ! Short is the
trial — the sentence quickly passed — and now the judge
prepares to execute it in person. Thwack ! Thwack !
Thwack! In these good old times a schoolmaster's
blows were well laid on. See ! the birch rod has lost
several of its twigs. Mercy on us, what a bellowing
the urchins make ! My ears are almost deafened,
34 i63efttel Cbeever
though the clamor comes through the far length of a
hundred and fifty years. There, go to your seats, poor
boys ; and do not cry, sweet little Alice, for they have
ceased to feel the pain a long time since. And thus the
forenoon passes away. Now it is twelve o'clock. The
master looks at his great silver watch, and then, with
tiresome deliberation, puts the ferule into his desk.
The little multitude await the word of dismissal with
almost irrepressible impatience.
"'You are dismissed,' says Master Cheever. The
boys retire, treading softly until they have passed the
threshold ; but fairly out of the schoolroom, lo, what a
joyous shout ! what a scampering and tramping of feet !
what a sense of recovered freedom expressed in the
merry uproar of all their voices ! What care they for
the ferule and birch rod now? Were boys created
merely to study Latin and arithmetic? No. Happy
boys ! Enjoy your playtime now, and come again to
study and to feel the birch rod and the ferule to-morrow ;
not till to-morrow ; for today is Thursday-lecture, and
ever since the settlement of Massachusetts there has been
no school on Thursday afternoons.
" Now the master has set everything to rights, and is
ready to go home to dinner. Yet he goes reluctantly.
The old man has spent so much of his life in the smoky,
noisy, buzzing schoolroom, that when he has a holiday
he feels as if his place were lost, and himself a stranger
in the world. But forth he goes — and then stands our
old chair vacant and solitary."
This is the school as seen by the eye of genius. But
Scboolmaeter 35
what is even better, there are some reminiscences pre-
served by old pupils. Cotton Mather, recalling these
days of his master to his son Samuel in a manuscript
left him i^Paterna)^ tells how at the age of a little more
than eleven years he had composed many Latin exer-
cises, both in prose and verse, and could speak Latin so
readily that he could write in it notes of sermons of the
English preacher. He also declares that he had con-
versed with Cato, Corderius, Terence, Tully, Ovid, and
Virgil ; had made epistles and themes, presenting his
first theme to his master without his requiring or expect-
ing any such thing of him. For this he had been com-
plimented by the master with, Laudabilis diligentia
tua (Your diligence is praiseworthy). Besides going
through a great part of the New Testament in Greek,
he had read considerable in Socrates and Homer, and
had made some entrance in Hebrew grammar. And all
this " laudable proficiency," as his son calls it in his
biography of him, was made under the "famous Mr.
Ezekiel Cheever," whom he calls "a very learned,
pious man, and an excellent Schoolmaster." Cotton
Mather still further tells how his loved master prayed
with them every day, and catechised them every week ;
how he "let fal. such Holy Counsels" upon them,
took so many occasions to make speeches unto them
*'that should make them afraid of sin, and incurring
the fearful judgments of God by sin," that he felt
impelled "to propose him for Imitation." Out of
the school he said he was " A Christian of the Old
Fashion ; An Old new English Christian . . . well
36 jescFitel Cbeever
Studied in the Body of Divinity ; an able Defender of
the Faith and Order of the Gospel ; notably Conversant
and Acquainted with the Scriptural Prophecies ... as
Venerable a Sight as the World since the Days of Prim-
itive Christianity has ever looked upon."
Another pupil, Rev. John Barnard, of Marblehead,
in his Autobiography (now in the Massachusetts His-
torical Society) tells of having been sent as a boy "to
the Grammar school, under the tuition of the aged,
venerable, and justly famous, Mr. Ezekiel Cheever."
" Once in making a piece of Latin," he says, " my
Master found fault with the syntax of one word which
was not so used by me heedlessly, but designedly, and
therefore I told him there was a plain grammar rule for
it." He angrily replied there was no such rule. I took
the grammar and showed the rule to him. Then he
smiling said: "Thou art a brave boy. I had forgot
it." "And no wonder," Mr. Barnard lovingly adds,
"for he was then above eighty years old." A Latin
School boy of this latter day (Phillips Brooks) calls this
incident, after letting the "serious face of the school-
master pass smiling out of our sight," the " very hero-
ism of school-teaching." Mr. Barnard also refers to
the turning of y^sop^ s Fables into Latin verse as one
of the " exercises Master put our Class upon."
Not only as a pupil, however, but as a colleague of
his son Samuel in the Marblehead church did Mr.
Barnard have special remembrance of the old school-
master. It was he who preached the funeral sermon of
Samuel — his predecessor — to whom, years after the
Scboolmaster ^^
father had been laid to rest, he refers in his Sketch of
Eminent Ministers as "of great classick learning, a
good preacher, a thorough Christian and a prudent man."
(Appendix IV.)
In his Literary Diary (April 25, 1772) Ezra Stiles,
President of Yale College, tells of seeing in the rev-
erend and aged Mr. Samuel Maxwell, of Warren, R. I.,
a man who had been acquainted with one of the " origi-
nal and first settlers of New England, now a rarity,"
who told him that he well knew the famous grammar
schoolteacher Mr. Ezekiel Cheever, of Boston, author of
the Accidence; that he wore a long white beard termi-
nating in a point ; that when he stroked his beard to the
point, it was a sign for the boys to stand clear.
With increase of pupils, Mr. Cheever began to hire
an assistant at his own expense. But in March, 1699,
at a public meeting of the inhabitants of Boston, it
was voted that the selectmen arrange for such. Thus
it happened that not long after, Mr. Ezekiel Lewis, a
grandson of the old master then eighty-five years old,
became his assistant, at a salary of forty pounds a year.
This, however, not proving sufficient, his request later
(1701) for forty-five pounds a year was granted. Two
years after this, the town is paying Mr. Nathaniel Wil-
liams, the assistant who took his place, eighty pounds
a year. This Boston boy had been a pupil of the school
and of Harvard. In the funeral oration which the
pastor of the Old South, Rev. Thomas Prince, de-
livered at the time of his death years after (1738), he
declared that in this " laborious and important service "
38 jescftlel Cbeever
as colleague and successor of Master Cheever, "by an
agreeable mixture of majesty and sweetness, both in his
Voice and countenance, with a mild and steady conduct,
he happily ruled and was generally both reverenced and
beloved." He referred to the Latin School as being
then "the only Publick and Free Grammar School of
the Great Town, the Principal School of the British
Colonies, if not of all America."
The last two years of Mr. Cheever' s life were made
more lonely by the death of his wife. But he had the
loving care of his youngest daughter, Susannah, who
had married, in 1693, Mr. Joseph Russell. He had
also faithful friends. Judge Sewall gave him his
affection to the end. In his Diary he tells of his
visiting him when he had entered his eighty-eighth year,
being the oldest man in town. At another time he
says: "Master Cheever, his coming to me last Satur-
day, January 31, on purpose to tell me he blessed
God that I had stood up for the Truth is more com-
fort to me than Mr. Borland's unhandsomeness is dis-
comfort." Again he speaks of him as being a bearer
several times at funerals, where at one he, with
others, received a scarf and ring which "were given
at the House after coming from the Grave." He
refers to a peculiarity of the venerable schoolmaster
when he says : ' ' Mr. Wadsworth appears at Lecture
in his Perriwig; Mr. Cheever is grieved at it." Mr.
Cheever, however, was not the only one who was
opposed to periwigs. The apostle Eliot preached and
prayed against them. Even Judge Sewall himself
JUDGE SEWALL
(As copied from portrait in Massachusetts Historical Society Rooms)
Scboolmaeter 39
had a religious abhorrence of such, being frank and posi-
tive in his denunciations to friends who wore them. He
took special pains to copy some reasons he saw against
♦' mens wearing of Perewigs made of Womens hair, as
the custom now is, deduced from Scripture & Reason."
In his Journal of 1699 he refers to going to lecture
wearing his black cap, and we see him today in the
Massachusetts Historical Society rooms, painted by Smy-
bert, in a black skullcap crowning his white locks.
But if in his old age Master Cheever was grieved at
the use of periwigs, he was doubtless pleased with the
work of his children ; for his son Samuel, besides being
one of the ministers consulted concerning the witchcraft
trials in Salem, was one of those who petitioned the
General Court in 1 703 in behalf of the witchcraft suffer-
ers. Had the father lived a few years longer he would
probably have been an eager listener to the election
sermon this son preached in the Old South Meeting-
house, the first one preached in that building. (Ap-
pendix IV.)
Then the master must have congratulated his grand-
son, Ames, the son of Samuel, upon his graduation from
Harvard in 1707. He certainly would have given him
his blessing had he lived to see him become the first
settled minister of Manchester, Mass., where he died
and was buried. (Appendix V.)
But the old schoolmaster could not go on teaching for-
ever. He had taught seventy years when his last illness
came upon him. In the following touching account in
his Diary, Judge Sewall says of his friend : —
40 jejcJ^tel (Tbeever
^* Aug: 12, 1708. — Mr. Chiever is abroad & hears
Mr. Cotton Mather preach. This is the last of his
going abroad. Was taken very sick, like to die with a
Flux. Aug-. 13. — I go to see him, went in with his son
Thomas and Mr. Lewis. His Son spake to him and he
knew him not ; I spake to him and he bid me speak
again; then he said, Now I know you, and speaking
cheerily mentioned my name. I ask'd his Blessing for
me and my family ; He said I was Bless' d, and it could
not be Reversed. Yet at my going away He pray'd for
a Blessing for me.
''^ Aug-. 19. — I visited Mr. Chiever again, just before
Lecture ; Thank' d him for his kindness to me and mine ;
desired his prayers for me, my family, Boston, Salem,
the Province. He rec'd me with abundance of
Affection, taking me by the hand several times. He
said. The Afflictions of God's people, God by them did
as a Goldsmith, knock, knock, knock ; knock, knock,
knock, to finish the plate ; It was to perfect them not to
punish them. I went and told Mr. Pemberton (the Pas-
tor of Old South) who preached.
" Aug-. 20. — I visited Mr. Chiever who was now
grown much weaker, and his speech very low. He
call'd Daughter! When his daughter Russel came, He
ask'd if the family were composed; They apprehended
He was uneasy because there had not been Prayer that
morn ; and solicited me to Pray ; I was loth and advised
them to send for Mr. Williams, as most natural, homo-
geneous ; They declin'd it, and I went to Prayer.
After, I told him. The last enemy was Death, and God
hath made that a friend too ; He put his hand out of the
Bed, and held it up, to signify his Assent. Observing
he suck'd a piece of an Orange, put it orderly into his
mouth and chew'd it, and then took out the core. After
dinner I carried a few of the best Figs I could get and a
dish Marmalet. I spake not to him now.
Scboolmaeter 41
"^a^. 21. — Mr. Edward Oakes tells me Mr. Chiever
died this last night."
Then in a note he tells the chief facts in his life,
which he closes with : —
" So that he has Laboured in that calling (teaching)
skilfully, diligently, constantly, Religiously, Seventy
years. A rare Instance of Piety, Health, Strength, Ser-
viceableness. The Wellfare of the Province was much
upon his spirit. He abominated Perriwiggs."
Thus the old schoolmaster died in the harness, teach-
ing up to his last illness, when almost ninety-four years
of age.
His funeral was from the schoolhouse, when — ac-
cording to Judge Sewall — the governor, councilors,
ministers, justices and gentlemen were present. Mr.
Nathaniel Williams, his successor as master of the
school, " made a handsome Latin oration in his Honor."
After naming the bearers, the judge adds that he was
earnestly solicited after the funeral " to speak to a place
of Scripture, at the private Quarter Meeting in the room
of Mr. Cheever." It seemed to be a joy to him that
the old schoolmaster began and ended his "American
Race in Boston;" that his "holy, useful life was a
married life ; he married and then fell to keeping
school." He evidently was pleased with his earthly
habitations, for in writing to Increase Mather of the
town expenses, he refers to the " very good school-
house and dwelling-house" which had been built for
him, adding "Our late excellent master, Mr. Ezekiel
Cheever, went to his heavenly mansion from a very
pleasant Earthly Situation." {Letter Book.)
42 jeseftiel Cbeever
At the time of his death, Joseph Dudley was governor
of the colony, and Queen Anne ruled in England.
During his thirty-eight years' service in Boston, the old
schoolmaster had seen the administrations of Governors
Bellingham, Leverett, Simon Bradstreet, Sir Edmund
Andros, and other prominent men. He had been a
friend of the Boston pastors. But the most stirring
days of America's struggle had not arrived. Washing-
ton, John Adams, Jefferson, Paul Revere, John Han-
cock and other leaders were not born. Franklin had
been baptized in the Old South Meeting House only
two years before. But enough had been acted to arouse
the attention and interest of the successful master. The
troubles and sorrows of the Indians had been revealed in
King Philip's War (1675-1676.) The fanaticism and
horror of the Salem witchcraft of 1692 had shocked
the finest minds, and the career of George Fox and the
Quakers was claiming attention.
Governor Hutchinson in his History of Massachusetts
refers to his departed master as ' ' venerable, not merely
for his great age, ninety-four, but for having been the
schoolmaster of most of the principal gentlemen in
Boston who were then upon the stage." His young
Harvard Latin salutatorian, John Leverett, was then
president of the college at a salary of one hundred and
fifty pounds a year. Another pupil. Cotton Mather,
who felt sure he had " as much Reason to appear for
Him as ever Crito for his Master Socrates," preached
his funeral sermon. Printed in Boston in 1708, and
later in 1774, its title page called him the "Ancient and
Scboolmaeter 43
Honorable Master of the Free School in Boston, who
left off but when Mortality took him off in August, 1 708."
The "Historical Introduction" to the sermon, in
giving the main facts of his life, closed by saying that
•' He had been a Skillful, Painful, Faithful School-
master for Seventy years, and had the singular favour
of Heaven that the' he had Usefully spent his Life
among Children, yet he was not become Twice a child
but held his Abilities with his Usefulness, in an unusual
degree to the very last."
In the sermon proper he testified to the intellectual
force of his master, which was " as little abated as his
natural." He exemplified the fulfillment of that word,
♦' As thy days so shall thy strength be." Before clos-
ing with a Latin epitaph, he gave an essay in rhyme,
to the memory of his " Venerable Master," which he
hoped might " in any measure animate the Gratitude of
any Scholars to their Well-deserving Tutors."
It began as follows : —
" You that are Men, and Thoughts of Manhood know,
Be just now to the Man that made you so.
Martyred by Scholars, the stabbed Cassian dies,
And falls to cursed Lads a sacrifice.
Not so my Cheever, not by scholars slain,
But Praised and Loved and Wished to Life again.
A Mighty Tribe of Well-instructed Youth
Tell what they owe to him, and Tell the Truth ;
All the Eight parts of Speech he taught to them
They now Employ to Trumpet his Esteem.
With interjections they break off at last.
But Ah, is all they use, Wo, and Alas I"
44 jeseFilel Cbcever
In over 200 lines the memorial rhyme goes on.
" Do but name Cheever and the Echo, straight
Upon that name, Good Latin will Repeat.
And in our School a Miracle is wrought.
For the Dead Languages to Life are brought.
How oft we saw him tread the Milky Way
Which to the glorious Throne of Mercy lay !
Come from the Mount he shone with ancient Grace,
Awful the splendor of his Aged Face.
His Work he loved ; Oh had we done the same !
Our Play-Dayes still to him ungrateful came ;
And yet so well our Work adjusted Lay,
We came to Work as if we came to Play.
'Tis Corlet's pains & Cheever's we must own.
That thou, New England, art not Scythia grown.
You that in t'other Hemisphere do dwell
Do of Old Age your dismal stories tell.
To weak Old Age you say there must belong
A trembling Palsey both of Limb and Tongue.
Dayes all decrepit ; and a Bending Back,
Propt by a Staff, in Hands that ever shake.
Nay, Syrs, our Cheever shall confute you all,
On Whom there did none of these Mischiefs fall.
He lived and to vast Age no Illness knew.
Till Time's Scythe waiting for him Rusty grew.
He Lived and Wrought ; His Labours were Immense,
But ne'er Declined to Praeter perfect Tense.
Death gently cut the stalk and kindly laid
Him, where our God his Granary has made."
(Appendix VL)
Scboolmaeter 45
" The muse was never more modish and self-con-
scious," declared Phillips Brooks in referring to this
essay in rhyme; "poetry never labored under such
mountain-weight of pedantry ; conceits never so turned
and returned and doubled on themselves ; the flowers
of rhetoric never so ran to seed, as in these marvelous
verses in which this minister of the North Church did
obituary honor to the Master of the Latin School."
" And yet it shows," he concluded, " that the reality of
his pupil's tribute to his greatness pierced through all
his absurd exaggerations, and made him walk grandly
even in these preposterous clothes."
The delivery of this essay in rhyme evidently brought
to mind other elegies which had been written in honor
of the faithful ; for there was published upon the death
of Master Cheever one which his immediate predecessor
as master of the school, Benjamin Tompson * had writ-
* Benjamin Tompson, schoolmaster, physician and poet, the
son of Rev. William Tompson of Braintree, was born July 14,
1642 ; graduated at Harvard College, 1662. In the Eustis Street
burying-ground in Roxbury, where he lies buried, is the follow-
ing inscription to his memory : —
SUB SPE IMMORTALI YE
HERSE OF M' BENJ THOMPSON y*
LEARNED SCHOOLMASTER
e
& PHYSICIAN & Y
RENOUNED POET OF N : ENGL :
OBIIT APRILIS 13 ANNO DOM
1714 & ^TATIS SU^, 72.
MORTUUS, SED IMMORTALIS
HE THAT WOULD TRY
WHAT IS TRUE HAPPINESS INDEED
MUST DIE
46 jQ-scf^icl Cbeever
ten upon the death of another schoolmaster, John Wood-
mancy. Dr. Samuel A. Green, of the Massachusetts
Historical Society, in his contribution of the elegy to
the Proceedings of the Society (Second Series, Volume
v.), thinks that without doubt Mr. Woodmancy was a
master in the Latin School, though he had been unable
to connect him either with Robert Woodmansey, head
master of the school, who died in 1667, or with John
Woodmancy, merchant, who died in 1684. At least
the subject of this elegy was a schoolmaster in Boston,
as told by the title: "The Grammarian's Funeral, an
Elegy composed upon the Death of Mr. John Wood-
mancy, formerly a schoolmaster in Boston ; But now
Published upon the Death of the Venerable Mr. Ezekiel
Chevers the late and famous schoolmaster of Boston in
New England ; who Departed this Life the twenty-first
of August 1708, Early in the Morning, In the ninety-
fourth year of his age." That Mr. Woodmancy taught
Latin is evident from the tenor of the lines themselves.
How could otherwise such a personification of Latin
speech have come into being?
" Eight Parts of Speech this day wear Mourning Gowns,
Declined Verbs, Pronouns, Participles, Nouns.
And not declined, Adverbs and Conjunctions
In Lillies Torch they stand to do their functions
With Preposition ; but the most affection
Was still observed in the Interjection.
The Substantive seeming the limbed best
Would set an hand to bear him to his Rest.
The Adjective with very grief did say,
Hold me by strength, or I shall faint away.
Scboolmaetcr 47
The Ponds of Tears did over-cast their faces,
Yea, all were in most lamentable Cases.
The five Declensions did the Work decline,
And Told the Pronoun Tu, The work is thine ;
But in this case those have no call to go
That want the Vocative and can't say O !
The Pronouns said that if the Nouns were there,
There was no need of them, thej might them spare.
But for the sake of Emphasis they would
In their Discretion do what ere they could.
Great honor was conferred on Conjugations,
They were to follow next to the Relations.
Amo did love him best, and Doceo might
Alledge he was his Glory and Delight,
But Lego said by me he got his skill,
And therefore next the Herse I follow will.
Audio said little, hearing them so hot.
Yet knew by him much learning he had got.
O Verbs the Active were. Or Passive sure,
Sum to be Neuter could not well endure.
But this was common to them all to moan
Their load of grief they could not soon Depone.
A doleful day for Verbs, they look so moody.
They drove Spectators to a mournful study.
The Verbs irregular, 'twas thought by some.
Would break no rule, if they were pleased to come.
Gaudeo could not be found ; fearing disgrace
He had with-drawn, sent Mceceo in his Place.
Possum did to the utmost he was able.
And bore as Stout as if he'd been A Table.
Volo was willing, Nolo somewhat stout,
But Malo rather chose not to stand out.
Possum and Volo wished all might afford
Their help, but had not an Imperative Word.
Edo from service would by no means swerve ;
Rather than fail, he thought the Cakes to Serve.
48 lescfttel Cbeever
Fio was taken in a fit and said
By him a mournful POEM should be made.
Fero was willing for to bear a part,
Altho' he did it with an aking heart.
Feror excused, with grief he was so Torn,
He could not bear, he needed to be born.
Such Nouns and Verbs as we defective find.
No Grammar Rule did their attendance bind.
They were excepted, and exempted hence,
But Supines, all did blame for negligence.
Verbs^ Offspring, Participles, hand-in-hand.
Follow, and by the same direction stand ;
The rest Promiscuously did croud and cumber
Such multitudes of each, they wanted Number.
Next to the Corps to make the attendance even.
Jove, Mercury, Apollo came from heaven,
And Virgil, Cato, gods, men. Rivers, Winds
With Elegies, Tears, Sighs, came in their kinds.
Ovidirom Pontus hast's apparelled thus
In Exile-weeds bringing De Tristibus :
And Homer sure had been among the Rout,
But that the Stories say his Eyes were out.
Queens, Cities, Countries, Islands, Come,
All Trees, Birds, Fishes and each Word in Um.
What Syntax here can you expect to find,
Where each one bears such discomposed mind ?
Figures of Diction and Construction
Do little; Yet stand sadly looking on.
That such a Train may in their notion chord
Prosodia gives the measure Word for Word.
Sic Mcestus Cecinit.
Benj. Tompson."
It is possible that Mr. Tompson wrote these lines
while little Cotton Mather was his pupil in the Latin
School; for we are told by his biographer-son that
Scboolmaater 49
before he was " under the famous Mr. Ezekiel Cheever,"
whom he calls a " very learned, pious man, and an ex-
cellent schoolmaster," he had been, "first, under the
care of Mr. Benjamin Tompson, who," he says, "was
a man of great learning and Wit, well acquainted with
Roman and Greek writers, and a good poet."
The reference in the Essay in Rhyme to Master Chee-
ver* s being "kindly laid where our God his Granary
has laid" seems to be confirmed by a small stone,
marked "Mr. Ezekiel Cheuer," seen today in the Old
Granary burying-ground, Boston, near the stone of his
daughter, Susanna Russell.*
His will, written in 1705, a short time before his wife
whom he mentions, died, as seen today in the Suffolk
Probate Office, Boston, was offered by this daughter Su-
sanna and the son Thomas, a few days after his death.
In his clear handwriting it reads : —
" The Last will and Testament of Ezekiel Cheever:
In Nomine Domini Amen. I Ezekiel Cheever of
the towne of Boston in the County of Suffolk in New
England, Schoolmaster, being through great mercy in
good health & understanding wonderful! in my age, do
make & ordain this my last will & Testament : as fol-
loweth. First. I give up my Soule to God my Father
in Jesus Christ, my body to the earth to be buried in
a decent manner according to my desire in hope of a
blessed part in the first resurrection & glorious kingdom
* In a most extensive research, I find no proof whatever
for the statement that has been publicly made that he v^as buried
in the Roxbury burying-ground, or that afterwrards he was
removed from there to the Cheever tomb in Phipps place on
Burial Hill, Charlestown.
50 leseftiel Cbeevcr
of Christ on earth a thousand years. As for my out-
ward Estate I thus dispose of it. First, I give to my dear
wife all my household goods & of my plate the two-ear' d
cup, my least tankard, porringer, a spoon. It : I give
my son Thomas all my books saving what Ezekiel may
need & what godly books my wife may desire. It : I
give to Mary Philips ten pounds. It : I give to my
grandchild Ezekiel Russell twenty pounds. Item : I
divide all the rest of my estate into three Parts ; one third
I give to my dear wife Ellen Cheever, the other two
thirds to my other children, Samuel, Mary, Elizabeth,
Ezekiel, Thomas, Susanna, equally part just alike the
Legacies, debts, & funeral expenses deducted & dis-
charged. Marie's portion I give to her children as she
shall dispose. The Land Elizabeth purchased with my
money I give to her and to her children forever. If my
wife dies before me, all given her shall be given to
my six children equally. If any of my children die,
their portion I give to their children equally. It : I give
to the poor five pounds as part of my funeral charges.
It : I make and appoint my dear wife, Ellen Cheever,
& my two children Thomas and Susanna joint executors
of this my last will. In witness whereof, I have here-
unto set my hand and Seal this Sixteenth Day of Febr.
1705-6. Signed, sealed, declared in presence of Eze-
kiel Cheever.
Benjamin Dyer,
Henry Bridgham,
Henry Bridgham.
HERB.
The estate, appraised at ^£837, 19s. 6d., consisted of
Purse & apparel (£46) Household Goods (£165,
13s. 8d.), Plate (nearly £35), Cash (£245, 9s. 8d.),
Peasable Bonds (over £400), Debts received (nearly
Scboolma0ter 51
The words of Cotton Mather in his memorable sermon
concerning schoolmasters and the "Blessed Cheever,"
are as true today as when they were uttered. "'Tis
a justice to them," he said, " that they should be had in
everlasting Remembrance : and a Place and a Name
among these Just ?nen does particularly belong to that
Ancient and Honorable Man^ a Master in our
Israel.'^ He felt that having under him " Learnt an
Oration made by Tully in praise of his own master,
namely, that Pro Archia Poeta^^^ they should not be
outdone by a " Pagan in our gratitude to our master."
"Neither as an example should the famous Christian in
the Primitive Times, who wrote a whole Book in praise
of his Master Hierotheus" be forgotten. Indeed he
wished more — even a statue to his Master. " Verrius,
the Master to the Nephews of Augustus ^'^ he was proud
to say, " had a Statue Erected for him ; and Antoninus
obtained from the Senate a Statue for his Master Pronto.
I am sorry that Mine has none." But he comforted
himself with the thought that " Cato counted it more
glorious than any Statue to have it asked, Why has he
none?" He felt that in the " grateful Memories of his
Scholars" there had been, and would be, " Hundreds
erected for him." And as with the old Romans, so
with the new Americans ; grateful memories of Boston
Latin School scholars for Master Cheever have come
down the years. Nearly one hundred and eighty years
after his death, his faithful service was recalled by them
on the occasion of the two hundred and fiftieth anniver-
sary of the Latin School, when Dr. Edward Everett Hale
52 jejcFitel Cbeever
presided, and its historian, the Rev. Henry F. Jenks,
John T. Hassam, Henry W. Haynes, Grenville H. Nor-
cross and others were moving spirits. Robert Grant, as
poet of the occasion, offered the following tribute : —
" Ezekiel Cheever ! would that we knew more
Of him who lived to teach at ninety-four
Beside a senile but historic knee
The fathers of the men who made us free.
Perpetuated by a Mather's pen
His pious learning prompts his countrymen
To cast a backward glance on history's page,
And reverence the Nestor of his age.
Within the sacred shade the chapel flings,
Called ' Stone ' by patriots, and by Tories ' King's,*
He reared his scholars on the deeds of Rome
To emulate antiquity at home.
And drew for salary, as the Records say,
The rental of Deer Island down the Bay.
When Death had taken Cheever to himself,
Nathaniel Williams had his place and pelf."
But this was not enough. The orator of the occasion,
Phillips Brooks, desired more, even a visible remem-
brance ; he could not but remember what Cotton Mather
had said, — that when scholars saw what Quirimis put on
his Monument for his Master, " Invisunt Locum Stud-
iosi Juvenes frequenter^ ut hoc Exemplo Mdoctty
quantum, Discipuli ipsi pr<sceptortbus suis debeant,
perpetuo meminisse velint,'^ they learnt from the
sight what " acknowledgments were due from Scholars
to their Masters." So he dared hope that the time
would come when "some poetic brain would figure to
itself, and some hands alert with historical imagination —
Scboolmaeter 53
perhaps the same which had bidden John Harvard live
in immortal youth in Cambridge — would shape out of
vital bronie what sort of man the first great school-
master Ezekiel Cheever was." He felt it would be
well worth doing, and not be hard for genius to do — for
" whoever knows the seventeenth century, will see
start into life its typical man, the man of prayer, the
man of faith, the man of duty, the man of God." He
might well have added the inscription appropriate for
such which Mather told of being on the monument
Aristotle set up for his Master Plato — "He was one
whom all good men ought to imitate as well as to
celebrate."
The days went by. No genius took up the work.
But in 1899, nearly two hundred years after Master
Cheever ceased his labors on earth, the Boston Latin
School Association, of the same school he honored with
his service, placed in its building on Warren Avenue
through the generosity of Mr. Grenville H. Norcross, a
tablet inscribed as follows : —
Ezekiel Cheever
hvivs scholae praeceptor
PER ANNOS PROPE OCTO ET TRIGINTA
LONDINII NATVS A. D. MDCXIV VIII KAL FEB.
IBI EDVCATVS IN SCHOLA CHRISTS HOSPITAL DICTA
IN NVMERVM CIVIVM ACADEMICORVM COLLEGII
EMMANVEL IN VNIVERSITATE CANTABRIGIENSI
ASCITVS A. D. MDCXXXII PRIDIE ID IAN
HANG PETIIT TERRAM A. D. MDCLXXVIII ID IAN
PRAEPOSITVS HVIC SCHOLAE A. D. MDCXXXVII
OBIT A. D. MDCCVIII XII KAL SEPT.
VIXIT PIE ANNIS LXXXXIV
COTTON MATHER DISCIPVLVS GRATVS HVIC
OMNBM NOVAE ANGLL/VB ERVDITIONEM ASCRIPSIT.
54 fiscFilel Cbecver
And today it is gratifying to see in the city of New
Haven, where Master Cheever not only began his voca-
tion as teacher but which he helped to found, a large
brick schoolhouse on the corner of Lombard and Fil-
more Streets, bearing on its front since its opening in
1897, the honored name, Ezekiel Cheever.
Hppenbix
HppenMi
I.
Latin letters of Ezekiel Cheever to his son, the Rev.
Samuel Cheever, of Marblehead : —
BosTONij Nov. 24'' hora io» vesp.
Chare fih : Accepi ab hospite epistolium tuum 24^ Nov.
post festum, ex quo priores firas te salut&sse literas, interci-
dentibus nullis, cognosco, Optatum iter hor& institute perfeci.
Cant, ad patrem profectus sum. Quern verb k fronte quaerebam,
a tergo Bostonij inscius reliqui. Ne tamen iter ex toto infelix
et invitum esset, visum est negotium cum matre comunicare ;
quam etiam si rem totam celassem, subverebar ne ipsam aliena
et minus amicam haberem. Ex colloquio intellexi duos prius
tibi significatos virginem petijsse, quoru neutr. vel addicta, vel
facilis ee videtur. Ista objecit in illis, uno saltern, quae in te
non competunt. Mater nihil impedimenti praestruxit, sed via
apertam, et aditum liberum ut sperem, induxit. Totum tamen
negotium marito et filiae comittendum censuit. Valedicens
tandem domum redeo. In reditu ecce, obviam venit quem
quaerebam, ffelix interpretabar auspicium occursum ejus. Virum
aggressus sum, comiter salutavi, paucis itineris causam dixi, et
quicquid in rem visum est, de fortunis tuis narro, interna ali-
orum judicio et testimonio mandans. Amice me tractavit vir
prudens vultu et voce. Ne verbum quidem alienum et adversum.
Sed totum consilium ad filiae sententiam referebat. Hoc tamen
mihi exoranti concessit, ut ipse Bost. revertens (quod fore sub
mediam septimanam credebat) me domi meae conveniret, et de
toto negotio certiorem faceret. Ex quo ipsum non vidi, nee
quicqua audiva ; sed in horas singulas expecto. Quid quaeris ?
Si me audis, quae apparent invitare videntur omnia. Successus
est penes Deum. Prudens futuri temporis exitum caliginosa
58 HppenMx
nocte premit deus. Qui jubet, et melius, quam tu tibi, consulat,
opto. Si quid interea clarius eluxerit, modo nuncius contingat,
tibi praemittam. Haec caenatus et dormitans scripsi. Vale.
Nos adventu tuu maturum et jucundu expectamus.
Tui studiosissi : pater
Ez : Cheever.
This other letter, dated Charlestown, Dec. 31st, 1669,
was found after the death of the Rev. John Eliot, D.D.,
of Boston (to whom it was given by a descendant of the
schoolmaster, the Rev. Isaac Mansfield of Marblehead) ,
and, later, presented to the Massachusetts Historical
Society ; —
DuLCE Caput : Redditae mihi sunt pridie quae ad me dedisti
hospiti literae, ex quibus judicium et consilium tuum facilfe
perspexi, nee contemnendum esse puto. Hiberna itinera sunt
semper injucunda, plerum autem gravia, et molesta, viatori
praecipufe moUi et inexperto. In magnis negotijs salubris est
cautela, mora tamen periculosa, saepe lethalis. Cavendum est,
ne praeda, quam secteris, in alienos incidat casses. Num virgo
sic procorum expers, et nulli obnoxia, me quidem praeterit.
Nee res est tuli indagini matura. Hoc unicum accepi. Multi
illam petifire, ilia aversata petentes. Causam vero repudij
prorsus ignoro. Prior morum et virtutis fama novis ornatur
testimonijs, et receptae fidei authoribus. Laudum tamen splen-
dor h&c nubecula obumbratur, ipsa scilicet, (asserente quadam
vicina) parca nimis et tenax esse videtur. Quod vitium fallit
specie virtutis et umbra. D» Hamond inter sermones de te, et
tuo conjugio ortos, quos cum hospite vestra apud se pernoctante
habuit, exconjecturS. temerfe affirmavit, te domi, non foras spon-
sam reperturum. Quod dictum vestra silentio excepit. Nihil
praeter auditum habeo, sed ipse vir, audiente uxore, banc fabulam
recitavit. Divino, consilio te totum trade, et coelestis provi-
appenMx 59
dentiae vestigijs inhaere, et ad optatum exitum pervenies. Nihil
aliud, quod scribam, occurrit. Tui omnes valent, et te ex
animo salutant. Plura coram, et otiosus. Vale.
Dat : Dec : ultimo. 69.
Carolotonia. Tui amantissimus Pater
Ez : Cheever.
Hospiti tuae me omnino excusatu habe, quod ilia in equo
transeuntem, et me comiter appellante, in aedes ne quidem in-
vitavi, putavi n. ipsa Bost ; euntem ne descensura, instante
nocte, et reverb uxore condelis condendis occupata, nee ipsa erat
visu facilis, nee domus hospitio idonea.
These
For his dear son Samuel
Cheever
at Marblehead.
II.
Dr. TldiUiam Hmes
Dr. William Ames (1576-1633), or Amesius, as the Dutch call
him, was for years a valued professor in the Franeker University
in Friesland, which, dating from 1585, and closed by Napoleon
in 181 1, was noted for its enthusiastic recognition of the Ameri-
cans in their struggle for liberty. The theological writings of
this Cambridge graduate in various editions are still read in the
Netherlands. Cotton Mather, in his Magnalia, refers to his
controversies with John Robinson, when, in his "younger time,"
he published treatises, and made no scruple to call the incom-
parable Dr. Ames himself Dr. Amiss for opposing such a degree
of separation as he then advocated. Being later convinced, how-
ever, by this '* learned antagonist," he came to retract what his
mistaken zeal had advocated. Mather also refers to Dr. Ames'
friendship with Thomas Hooker, a founder of the Hartford
Colony, and tells that when Mr. Hooker was called to Rotter-
dam, he the "more heartily and readily accepted," because it
6o HppenMx
renewed his acquaintance with his invaluable Dr. Ames, who
had newly left his place in the Frisian University. With him
he spent the residue of his time in Holland, and assisted him in
composing some of his discourses, which are, " His Fresh Suit
Against the Ceremonies" ; for such was the regard which Dr.
Ames had for him, that, notwithstanding his vast ability and
experience, yet when it came to the " narrow of any question
about the instituted worship of God," he would still profess him-
self conquered by Mr. Hooker's reason, declaring that though
he had been acquainted with many scholars of divers nations,
yet he never met with Mr. Hooker's equal, either for preaching
or for disputing. And such was the regard which on the other
side he had for Dr. Ames, that he would say, " If a scholar was
but well studied in Dr. Ames, his Medulla Theologiae and Casus
Conscientias, so as to understand them thoroughly, they would
make him (supposing him versed in the scriptures) a good
divine, though he had no more books in the world." After this
Mr. Hooker went to Boston. Dr. Ames had a design to follow,
but death prevented; or, as Cotton Mather says, he was "on.
the wing for this American desert, but God then took him to
the heavenly Canaan." But his widow and three children —
William, John and Ruth — came to New England, where, "having
her house burnt, and being reduced into much poverty and afflic-
tion, the charitable heart of Mr. Hooker, and others who joined
with him, upon advice thereof, comfortably provided for them."
(Book III, Magnalia.) The General Court of Massachusetts
gave forty pounds to her, — " the widow of Dr. Ames of famous
memory." She had also a grant of land that year (1637) in
Salem, where she lived ere moving to Cambridge. Motley tells
us that the family library was used in the education of American
youth. This recognition of the widow of a man who never
stepped on American soil argues to the feeling felt for him.
Cotton Mather calls him the " Phoenix of his age." He recalls
the farewell words to him of Mr. Paul Bayne when he was about
leaving his native England for Holland. Perceiving him to be
a man of extraordinary parts, he said: "Beware of a strong
HppenMx 6i
head and a cold heart. It is rare for a scholastical wit to be
joined with an heart warm in religion." He was forced to
declare, however, that this was not the case with him.
III.
3Bo6ton Xatin Scbool
(From Education of June, 1903.)
EDWARD EVERETT HALE, D.D., BOSTON, MASS.
The graduates of this School, if they know anything about it,
are in the habit of saying that their School is the oldest School
in the United States. By this they mean that no other School
organization now existing in America can trace its existence,
from year to year, back to a period so early as the 13th day of
February, 1635, when at a meeting of the more intelligent people
in Boston, this School was established. Philemon Pormort or
Portmort, Pormont, Portmont, Permont, Purmount, was ap-
pointed as Master. The official spelling, as the School Cata-
logue shows it, is Pormort. He seems himself to have spelled
the name in various ways. He was one of the conscientious men
whom we rejected in the ecclesiastical fury which was aroused
by the preaching of Anne Hutchinson and other intelligent and
unintelligent assistants of hers. In the frenzy which led to this
banishment of some of the best citizens of Boston, Pormort
shared the fate of many excellent men.
I am at the present time, 1903, President of the Boston Latin
School Association, which is made up from the graduates of the
School. I received a letter not long since from a gentleman in-
terested in the oldest school in Albany. He challenged our
right to say that we were the oldest school in America, and cited
the authorities which show that the founders of Albany had
established a school before 1635. To which I replied that I did
not doubt this ; that there were undoubtedly schools in Virginia
or in Plymouth before 1635 ; that I supposed there were schools
62 HppenMx
in St. Augustine and Santa F^ long before that. But I said that
neither at Albany, in Virginia, in Florida, or in New Mexico had
any one shown the existence of a school in those early periods
which has been continually carried on from those times to this
time.
Much closer to us is the Town of Dorchester, which is now a
part of the municipality of Boston. The people of Dorchester
in the year 1639, passed a vote taxing the owners of Thompson's
Island — which was part of their territory — "for the maintenance
of a School in Dorchester." The antiquarians of that town say
that this is the earliest record of public taxation for education.
Our Pormort money was raised by subscription and not by taxa-
tion. All the same our School seems to have been managed by
the town meeting from the beginning.
It is evident from the Dorchester and from the Boston records
that the hope and wish of the leaders was, that certain special
properties, like Deer Island and Thompson's Island, should be
set apart as the " foundation " of these schools. But this system,
borrowed from the old country, soon gave way, and all the
schools were supported by taxation. As late as 1652, Rev. John
Cotton of the First Church left half of his estate to the support
of a Free School in Boston, under conditions named by him.
What we of the Boston Latin School say to our Dorchester
friends is that they have not in Dorchester any list of the Mas-
ters of their school from that day to this day, such as we have,
and they cannot name to us any one of the Dorchester public
Schools which, as our Episcopal friends would say, can show an
unbroken Pedagogical Succession.
The name of Philemon Pormort does not appear in the cata-
logue of either Oxford or the English Cambridge. His immedi-
ate successor in the School was Daniel Maude, who was a Master
of Arts of Emanuel in Cambridge ; and after him in rapid suc-
cession came John Woodbridge, who was of Oxford, Robert
Woodmansey, Benjamin Tompson, a poet of his day, a Harvard
graduate of 1662, Ezekiel Cheever, who learned his Latin at
Christ's Hospital in England. With Tompson and Cheever the
HppenMr 63
history of the School connects itself with the lives of the leaders
of the Colony.
I used to encourage the belief among our boys that Cheever
and Milton were fellow-students in St. Paul's School in London.
I went so far as to make an unfortunate offer to give some prize,
I forget what, to anybody who could prove that Ezekiel Cheever
blacked John Milton's boots, or in any way served him as fag at
school. But it proved that the two boys did not even go to the
same school. I have been more shy of my historical prizes from
that day to this. Would it have been better perhaps to have
doubt than certainty? However this may have been, Cheever
came to this country as early as 1637. He was in Davenport's
Seven Pillared State at New Haven. The New Haven people are
proud of him as we are. Perhaps through Davenport's influence,
when he came from New Haven, at the eager request of our First
Church in Boston, Cheever also removed from Connecticut to
Massachusetts, and here " the dear old man," as they called him,
lived to a great age. He was first a teacher at Ipswich and
Charlestown, and then was invited to take charge of our Boston
School. Judge Sewall was one of his friends, and in a modest
way intimates that he and some of the rest of them contributed
a sort of old age pension to the decline of the old man's years.
Following him as a Master for twenty-six years, was Nathaniel
Williams, whose name, like that of Tompson's, will be found
among the earlier poets, so-called, of the infant State. He also
lived to a good old age. He had but little more than six months
in which to teach Franklin Latin. And Franklin speaks of him
somewhere with respect. Franklin was himself withdrawn from
this School to that other university known as a tallow chandler's
shop, in which he went on with all the practical learning which
made him of so much use for nearly a century. His statue now
stands in what was the school yard at the time when Franklin
played marbles, and it is, according to me, the best of the bronze
statues in public places in Boston.
Nathaniel Williams was immediately succeeded in the office of
Head Master by John Loyell. John Lovell, for the last years of
64 Hppenbix
his administration, had as his principal assistant his own son
James Lovell. When the American Revolution approached, in
the times which tried men's souls, John Lovell held to his King
and to the gentlemen who represented his King in the local gov-
ernment of the State, not yet new born, while James Lovell, the
son, was on the Patriot side. Harrison Gray Otis, afterwards
Senator of the United States, told me in 1840, how he himself, a
little boy of nine years old, entered the schoolroom in School
Street, on the 19th of April, 1775, just in time to hear old Lovell
say, "War's begun and School's done, deponite libros." This
shows that they still used the Latin language in the work of the
School. It also shows a certain fear on Lovell's side that the
pupils would not have understood if Lovell had said, " Initium
belli, scholcB finis."
At all events, he did not say that. Otis went home and did
not go to school again till the Evacuation of Boston, March,
1776. Samuel Hunt, the Master of the North Grammar School,
was then ordered to take charge of our School, and he remained
in office till 1805. After his death William Biglow reigned,
whose name is still recollected as the author of some good Maca-
ronic poetry. Then came Benjamin Apthorp Gould, Frederic
Percival Leverett, Charles Knapp Dillaway, Epes Sargent Dix-
well, Francis Gardner, Augustine Milton Gay, Moses Merrill,
and Arthur I. Fiske, who have been the Head Masters of the
School. In many of these cases the Head Master has continued
his direction of the School for a large part of his life.
It has had at times almost a national reputation. Boys were
sent from a distance, even from other provinces, to have the ad-
vantage of its discipline. It is one of our boasts at the School
that five of the forty-five signers of the Declaration of Independ-
ence were our boys. These were Benjamin Franklin, Samuel
Adams, Robert Treat Paine, John Hancock, and William Hooper,
of North Carolina.
The founders of this School in the seventeenth century were
educated English gentlemen. Under the lead of the same men,
and men like them, the General Court of the Colony established
HppeuMx 65
the Public School system of Massachusetts, which is, I suppose,
the first Public School system established by law in the world
after the decay of the schools in Sybaris and the other Greek
cities of Southern Italy and of Sicily. Of the State of Thurii,
planted on the foundations of Sybaris, it is recorded that under
the laws of Charondas, "All citizens should be instructed in
letters, the city paying the salaries of the teachers. For he held
that the poor, not being able to pay their teachers from their
own property, would be deprived of the most valuable discipline."
I have met with no similar record of Legislation till the act of
the General Court to which I refer. The founders of the Latin
School undoubtedly had in mind the English Grammar Schools
of their own time ; and where they speak of the Free Schools of
those days, they do not mean necessarily schools in which the
pupils paid no scot to the teacher or to the government of the
school. The English term Free School meant then and means
now, a school to which any boy might be sent on equal terms
with any other boy. That is to say, the English Free School,
so called, corresponded and corresponds with any "academy"
in New England. The word means that it was not a school for
the cutlers' guild, or the shoemakers' guild, or any other guild,
nor was it a school under the patronage of this or that college or
church, but it was a school "free" for any person who wished
to send his son there, subject to the conditions of the establish-
ment. In a Democratic colony like Massachusetts, which was
in fact a Democratic State from the very beginning, a Free
School soon came to mean a school which was supported at the
public charge. But in the beginning the pupils themselves or
their parents paid more or less toward the cost of the conduct of
the school. Well down in the eighteenth century, the parents
were assessed for the wood which was burned in the school fires,
and to a period comparatively recent, the boys themselves were
expected to make the fires, to sweep out the schoolroom and to
do other similar services. So far removed were they from the
customs of our times — where it has been truly said of one of our
larger cities, that the janitors of the Public Schools have more
66 appenbtx
to do with their management than the School Committee has.
On the other hand, every boy in Massachusetts might present
himself at the town school. Ours was at first the only public
school in the town. As population increased, and the demand
increased, another free grammar school was opened at the North
End, so that the two were designated as the North Free Gram-
mar School and the South Free Grammar School ; the word
grammar implying not that English Grammar was taught, for
it was not, but that Latin and Greek were taught, and the boys
obtained a considerable facility in the use of the ancient languages.
Indeed the requisition of the Colonial law, which is so often
cited, is a requisition for such schools as prepare boys for col-
lege ; the primitive notion being that Satan could be resisted by
a proper knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages in which
were contained the weapons for the fight against him. In study-
ing the lives and histories of the men who made the American
Revolution, and who afterwards carried the commerce of America
into every seaport of the world, you will get a glimpse every now
and then of the result of the early education in such a Grammar
School. I mean by this, that there is more evidence of an ac-
quaintance with the Latin and Greek classics in the writings of
those men than there is in the writings of an equal number of
men of affairs today. Governor Hancock, who signed the Dec-
laration of Independence, as Governor of Massachusetts main-
tained a fine hospitality, and received at his house the French
officers of D'Estaing's Fleet, when that Fleet lay in Boston Har-
bor. But Hancock could not speak French, and there are anec-
dotes on record which intimate that he did speak Latin with the
gentlemen whom he met there. There was in that century un-
doubtedly, more occasion for maintaining a colloquial knowledge
of the language than there is now. And while Franklin never
makes a quotation from the Latin or the Greek, and while he
speaks of the few months at our Latin School as containing all
his school education in such matters, it has seemed to me that
there is evidence that he was acquainted with the Latin Classics.
I think he knew what the famous epigram meant which says of
HppenMx 67
him, " Eripuit coelo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis." He did not
object to the Latin inscriptions on the Continental Medals.
Ezekiel Cheever wrote and printed, " The Accidence," a Latin
Grammar which was used in our schools nearly to the end of the
century in which he died. There were one or two traces of such
books in Adam's Latin Grammar, which in Mr. Gould's edition
of it was the book put into the hands of schoolboys as late as
1830 ; a book without any philological value, but to this hour not
a bad monument of what was the scholastic treatment of the
Latin language. It would seem as if the boys of the eighteenth
century carried their Latin reading before entering college quite
as far as such reading is carried now.
Even a rough computation of the population of Boston and the
pupils in the two Latin Schools, shows that some knowledge of
the classical languages must, on the whole, have been an accom-
plishment much more general in 1750 than now in any com-
mercial city of America. That is to say, in a town of fifteen
thousand people, there were at any given moment more than two
hundred boys in attendance at these schools. Now, the whole of
what we call the school population of Boston, if we speak of
boys only, would have been fifteen hundred boys of all ages from
five to sixteen. Of the ages from ten to sixteen, when they
would have attended Latin Schools, there can hardly have been
more than seven hundred boys in the town. Now in fact, it
seems that two hundred of these boys were studying the Latin
language. They had enough knowledge of it, at least, to put
away their books when John Lovell used to say, " Deponite
libros." They had so much knowledge of it that a member of
the Legislature would not have been afraid to make a quotation
in the Latin language. On the other hand I think no one would
say today that one third of such boys of Boston or New York
have had training in Latin or in Greek. Perhaps this knowledge,
even superficial, of the Latin shows its result in the literature of
the time. I have thought that one detected Latin idioms in the
English of the Revolution which he would not find in the lead-
ing editorials of today.
68 HppenMx
From 1776, when the two Latin Schools were united, in the
extreme stringency of the times, to the year 1816, when Benjamin
Apthorp Gould was made the Head Master of the School, is the
period when the record of the School as a force in the public edu-
cation is comparatively poor. I have wondered whether the
eager and strenuous mercantile life of the town, turning from
being a ship building town with some interest in the Fisheries,
into a rich and commercial city, did not for the moment show
itself in a diminishing interest in classical study. But with
wealth and commerce with all the world, the interest of the larg-
est education asserted itself. The School Committee of Boston
adopted measures to " give an additional impulse to the school."
The most important of the changes made was a regulation " re-
newing the ancient usage of the school," that boys should be
admitted only once a year. This regulation has been retained
to this time. The greatest credit is due to the executive ability
and to the careful learning of Benjamin Apthorp Gould, who at
the age of twenty-seven was appointed the Head Master of the
School, and after the new arrangement was made, he placed
it at once at the very head of classical instruction in New
England.
Mr. Gould's five essays, published in five successive annual
numbers of what is known as the Prize Book, are dignified dis-
cussions of methods of education, and, in especial, of the prog-
ress of what is called Classical Education. The title of the book
itself indicates the renewal of interest in the careful school work.
Some prizes had been instituted, in the fashion of the day, for
the best work done in the school. The essays or translations
which the boys made were printed, or some of them were, as
indication to the world of Boston of what their boys could do.
It is interesting now to find the names of Robert C. Winthrop,
Charles Sumner, Wendell Phillips, and James Freeman Clarke
put in print for the first time as they appeared at the ages of
thirteen or fourteen among the competitors for School Prizes.
Mr. Sumner received two prizes in 1824 ; one for a translation
from Sallust and one for a translation from Ovid. In printing
HppenMi 69
these essays, Mr. Gould would make a handsome book with the
results of his own studies on what we now call the higher educa-
tion. The dignity and prestige which the School had at that
time was not easily lost. The school authorities of the city have
always been proud of it, and have maintained a line of teachers
whose work is well known among the people who take any inter-
est in the history of American schools. Mr. Frederic Percival
Leverett was the accomplished and accurate author of a Latin
Lexicon which in one form or another still holds a place among
the working books of Latin Schools. Francis Gardner, who
was foi forty years head master of the School, abridged this
Lexicon so that it might be used more conveniently, and his
work held its place in use till quite recently. Mr. Leverett's im-
mediate successor was Charles Knapp Dillaway. I was one of
his pupils, and it happened to me, therefore, to be called to assist
in the services at his funeral. He died in 1889. He had been a
schoolboy in this very school, when he was nine years old, and
his connection with the Public Schools of Boston had been un-
interrupted except by the four years that he spent in Harvaid
College, from the time when he was nine years old till the time
when he died. That is to say, in the two hundred and forty-nine
years of the histoiy of Boston, this gentleman had been more or
less closely connected witli our education here for more than a
quarter of the time. He was then the working member of the
Trustees of the Roxbury Latin School. So recent is what we
call our ancient history.
Mr. Dillaway was followed in his charge by Epes Sargent Dix-
well, a grandson of Hunt, who was one of the earlier teachers.
Mr. Dixwell had every qualification for such a post. He was
intelligently enthusiastic about the Latin language and its litera-
ture. He is the only old man whom I remember, who till after
he had passed four score years wrote on any fit occasion his little
Horatian ode in the Latin language. Some unfortunate disa-
greement with some committee now forgotten led him to resign
his place and to establish a private school for precisely the pur-
pose of the Boston Latin School, which has led the way in several
70 appenMi
private schools which have maintained the standard of scholar-
ship which Mr. Gould and Mr. Leverett had fixed at our School.
Mr. Dixwell's immediate successor was Francis Gardner. I
speak of him with regard, not to say tenderness, because I was a
pupil under him, and like all of his other pupils I had a great
respect, not simply for his knowledge of the Classics, but for
the moral standard of life which he held before us. I have often
said in public addresses that at the time when I was a schoolboy,
there was no boy in school that would have dared to tell a lie.
The moral tone of the School was so high that any liar would
have been sent to Coventry, and a boy who had transgressed
would have compelled his father to take him away from the igno-
miny which awaited him in the school room. Mr. Gardner him-
self was severe in his dealings with laziness or with anything
which offended his sense of morals. But as the schoolboys say,
he was "fair," and every boy under his rather strict administra-
tion recognized the fact that the law was the same for one as for
another, and that Gardner's favor was to be won simply by in-
dustry and purity of life. He had no veneration for the person
whose success was simply in working out the difference between
the Subjunctive and the Optative. On Mr. Gardner's death, for
a few months only Mr. Augustine Milton Gay was the Head Mas-
ter. Mr. Moses Merrill, the sub-master, succeeded him as Head
Master, and on his resignation, the present principal, a sub-
master, was promoted in the same way. The School has noth-
ing to fear in his administration of it.
Such are the condensed annals of the oldest school in America.
Unfortunately, its catalogues from 1635 to 1730 were not pre-
served. It is due to the diligent affection of the alumni of the
last generation that there have been collected from the family
traditions and the histories of Massachusetts the names of some
of the hoys who were trained there. That list begins with John
Hull, the goldsmith who stamped the silver of Massachusetts
when she assumed that royal prerogative in 1652. On the same
list is the name of Benjamin Franklin, who has made an affec-
tionate allusion to the School in his Autobiography.
HppenMx 71
As soon as John Lovell was made the Master, the regular
catalogue of the School began, which lasted all through his dy-
nasty. The earlier a boy presented himself at Lovell's house
for examination, the better was his chance for a good seat in the
schoolroom, so that the little fellows rose early on that morning
and reported there just below the schoolhouse in hope of obtain-
ing this privilege. On the catalogue of Harvard College for the
same year, the boys were rated according to the social rank of
their parents. But under the more democratic system of the
Town of Boston, the boy who rose earliest in the morning and
washed his face earliest and arrived at Lovell's house earliest, is
first upon the list. This list fortunately was preserved by Lovell
and his son. It breaks off with the American Revolution, and
again the complete catalogue list of the School is broken. But
with Mr. Gould's more accurate history it begins again, and we
have the names of thousands upon thousands of the alumni of
the School, for many of whom it was the only University. They
have extended a knowledge of it to all parts of the country. The
boys of the School to this day are proud of course that five of
their own number were among the forty-five signers of the Dec-
laration of Independence. Indeed, we are fond of saying that
what the old writing masters used to call " the Boston style of
writing " may be traced among the signatures of the nation's
charter.
The Hall of Fame in New York has twenty-nine names agreed
upon by ninety-seven judges. It does not include any person
who had died after 1890. Of the twenty-nine names who received
the majority of votes, three or four were Latin School boys, —
Benjamin Franklin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, perhaps Samuel
Breese Morse, and Henry Ward Beecher. And William Ellery
Channing was on our school Committee in the days of Gould.
These five names are in a list of Heroes which can afford to omit
our Samuel Adams, John Hancock and Charles Sumner.
72 HppenMx
IV.
IPttnetal Sermon ot 1Rev» Jobn BarnarD on
IRev. Samuel Cbeever
The funeral sermon Rev. John Barnard preached on
that "aged and faithful servant of God," the Rev.
Samuel Cheever, of Marblehead, under the title,
"Elijah's Mantle," was printed in Boston by " S.
Gerrish near the Brick Meeting-House in Cornhill 1724.**
(Found in the Boston Public Library.)
After generalizing somewhat on the text, II. Kings
ii. 14, he finishes the sermon as follows : —
And this leads me into the mournful Theme which this day
calls for, occasioned by the removal of that Man of God, the
aged Reverend Mr. Samuel Cheever, from among us. It pleased
God, from whom comes down every good and perfect Gift, to
furnish him for the work of the Ministry, with no small Abili-
ties, both natural and acquired, being owner of a solid Judgment,
a copious Invention, and a tenacious Memory, which were im-
proved in him, by a due application of himself to Reading,
Meditation and Prayer.
God brought him among you some time in November, 1668,
from which Time, those of you that are advanced in Years,
know how much he has been a common Father to the whole
Town, in the many temporal Advantages which you have
received from him ; he truly went about doing good, and serving
you in all your Interests.
But as preaching is peculiarly the Minister's Work, so he was
well fitted herefor by an uncommon Knowledge in the Holy
Scripture, being an excellent Text-man, and carrying a Body of
Divinity in his Head, which he would often say to me, it was
good for a Divine to be well furnished withal.
Hppenbtx 73
In his publick Discourses to you he endeavored to preserve
the truth, purity and simplicity of the Gospel, teaching you the
Truth as it is in Jesus. He made it his great care to shew you
your Sin and Danger, and where your only Remedy lies ; that
you might be directed to flee from the wrath to come, and lay
hold on the Hope set before you. And as he aimed at the
winning of Soals to his great Master, so he sought not to please
your Fancy and tickle your ears with studied Elocution and
formal Periods, but delivered the Mind of God to you with such
plainness and urgency of Argument and Persuasion as becomes
the Gospel of Christ ; and he shunned not to declare unto you
the whole Counsel of God.
And how fervent was he in treating with your immortal
Souls, delivering himself to you with that flame and heart, that
earnestness, and vigour which shewed his sincere Zeal in his
Master's Service, and his hearty desire that you all might be
saved. He plainly shewed the lively Impressions of the Truths
he preached to you upon his own Heart, while the fervency of
his Voice pierced your ears, that the united Light and Heat
might strike the more forcibly upon your Minds, and gain the
more ready Compliance with the great Truths that were delivered
to you.
And he was as constant and assiduous, as fervent and zealous
a Preacher of the Word of God among you ; so that, if I mistake
not, from his first coming among you until the time that Age
had worn him out, you never were, more than once, without the
constant Entertainments of your Sabbaths, your stated Feasts
and 3'our New Moons, tho' he was alone for about 48 Years :
God so graciously confirmed his Health that for more than 50
Years he never was hindered from coming to you in the Name
of the Lord by any Sickness.
Indeed, the infirmities of Age obliged him to take leave of his
publick stated Exercises in October, 1719, which he did, from
those Words of our Saviour, John ix. 4, " I must work the works
of him that sent me while it is day ; the night cometh when no
man can work." And yet, about a Year after this, upon a special
74 appenbtx
Occasion, he entertained us with a short but plain and fervent
Excitement, to be Zealous of Good Works.
While his strength and vigour continued he was a very just
and methodical Preacher (and doubtless had he been fixed in a
politer Place he would have made a brighter Figure), tho' in his
latter days he gave more into an expository way of treating the
several Texts that occurred in his preaching ; and to the last he
could make no publick use of Notes, but delivered all memoriter.
And yet, after Age had laid him aside from publick Labour,
he was still at his Work, and his Mind so intensely set upon it,
that I scarce ever came into his Company at any time without
finding him at his Study, or his Mind taken up with the publick
Duties of the Sabbath ; and he would be continually expressing
his concern lest he should not be able to do anything of it, and
desiring me to prepare for all the Day, lest he should not be able
to come out, which plainly shewed the hearty Delight he took
in his Work.
He was a Man of Peace, of a Catholick Mind, and extensive
Philanthropy and good Will to all Men, without confining
Religion to a particular Sect; a great Peace-maker among his
contending Neighbors, and never made, or excited Parties, or so
much as joined himself to any (that I can learn) but those that
were for God and Religion, against Vice and Immorality.
His Conversation was grave, yet pleasant, suitable to a steady
composure of Mind, which he usually enjoyed, though at proper
Seasons he knew how to be warm.
His life among you has been the life of a Christian, and the
whole tenor of it a manifesting an entire Submission to and
Satisfaction in the disposing Providence of God ; and you your-
selves are Witnesses how ho lily and unblameably he hath
behaved himself, walking before you in the paths of serious
Godliness, a plain and a humble Man.
When you called me to the pastoral Office with him, a few
Years ago, tho' his own Delight in the work of the Lord among
you made him not so forward as some might have expected, to
have an Assistant joined with him, yet he evidenced to you an
HppenMx 75
entire Satisfaction in your Proceedings ; and I have cause to
acknowledge the goodness of God to me herein, that as a Son
with a Father, so he received me, repeating the Words of good
old Simeon upon his return to his House from my publick Or-
dination, " Now, Lord, lettest thou thy Servant depart in Peace."
It was a signal and uncommon Favour of God to him, that
tho' he lived to the Age of fourscore and almost five, yet he had
so settled a Constitution and firm a Health as to be able to say,
that he never was Sick in all his Life ; a day's Indisposition and
some small touches of the Sciatica, he has sometimes known.
And as his Health was firm, so at upwards of fourscore he could
read without the help of Spectacles, and had his Hearing quick
as Youth to the last week of his Life ; but the Powers of his
Mind, for some few Years before he died, failed, especially his
memory, whereby he was greatly unfitted even for common Con-
versation ; and yet his constant Family Prayers were orderly
and regular ; so did Grace shine in the decays of Nature.
And while the decays of Age laid him by from publick Serv-
ice, how exemplarily Patient was he under such a Rebuke ? He
would often say to me : "Age is too heavy for me, but I must
bear it. I can't die when I would. I must patiently wait God's
Time ; my Times are in His Hands ; I rejoice to see that God
has provided for His People before I go. God has satisfied me
with long life."
Thus continued he at Work, and patiently submitting to the
Will of God, till a few days ago his senses wholly left him, and
the Night before last he died, and truly died ; his Lamp of Life
fairly burning out, without being put out ; for he felt no Sick-
ness nor Pain to the last, nor shewed any the least tokens of
them even in his expiring moments.
So, while by the Grace of Christ in him, he was secured
against the Terrours of the second Death, thro' the Favour of
God to him, he knew nothing of the usual ghastly Harbingers,
nor the shocking Terrours of a Natural Death ; but as he was
always calm and easy, in the possession of a comfortable Hope,
without strong emotions of Joy, or the distress of anxious Tears,
76 BppenMx
so he quietly fell asleep in Jesus, and is gone to receive the Re-
wards of his long and faithful Services.
I will only add, that the little Time I have had will sufficiently
apologize, that I have given no better Account of this aged and
faithful Servant of Jesus Christ ; and yet, such as it is, I know
his humble, modest Tho'ts of himself would not have been easily
prevailed upon to have allowed it ; for I well remember, that
about a Month or two ago, upon my asking him a Question,
which he happened to misunderstand, he replied to me, with
some warmth, " Prithee, don't go about to flatter me ; 'tis eno'
that I stand to my own Master ; my greatest care is to be ac-
cepted of him."
And now may the God of all Grace and Consolation afford
his most compassionate Regards unto the devout and meek
Hand-maid of the Lord, who has been the Companion of his
Days for about fifty-four Years ; comfort her under her Sorrows,
and give unto her an happy and endless meeting with him in Glory.
May God be a Father unto the mourning Children, and more
abundantly enrich them with the Blessings of Goodness, and
return into their Bosome the many Prayers their ascended
Father hath laid out for them.
May God take care of this bereaved Town and Flock of His,
and always shower down of the Gifts and Graces of His Spirit
upon it ; and especially may I take hold of Elijah's Mantle, and
say, Let a double portion of his Spirit rest upon me.
My Brethren, call to Mind the Things which you have here-
tofore heard and learned from your deceased Pastor ; and so let
aged Samuel, now dead, yet speak unto you ; and be you follow-
ers of him wherein he followed Christ. And may God reward
your Kindness and the good Will of the Town, in the Support
which, to their Honour, they have continued to afford to him,
notwithstanding his being called off from Publick Usefulness
for some Years past.
Now make your earnest and daily Prayers for your surviving
Pastor, that he may be strengthened to his Work, and succeeded
therein.
BppenMx 77
And let it be the care of us all so to live, that we may die in
Peace, like him that is now gone before us ; that when our Dust
returns to its Dust, our Spirits may ascend to the Lord God of
Elijah ; that we and our departed Father, may have a happy
meeting at the Right Hand of Christ, that we nuiy be a Crown
of Rejoicing to him in the Day of the Lord, and he may be able
to say concerning us, Behold /, and the children -which God has
graciously given to me; and we may mutually be employed in
the everlasting Services of the Redeemer, and be together un-
speakably and forever happy in the possession of the Crown of
Glory, which fadeth not away.
The Election Sermon Mr. Cheever preached, May 28,
171 2, which Drake's History of Boston says was the
first one preached in the Old South Church, the others
having been preached in the First Church, was titled
thus: " God's Sovereign Government Among the iVa-
tions Asserted in a Sermon Preached before His Excel-
lency the Governor^ the Honourable Council^ and
Representations of the Province of the Massachusetts
Bay in New England on May 28, 171 2, being the
day for Election of His Majesty's Council for that
Province. By Samuel Cheever, Pastor of the Church
in Marblehead. Psal. xcv. 3, 6 (Text in full) ; Psal.
ii. 12. (Text in full). Boston: Printed by B. Green.
Sold at the Booksellers Shops. 171 2."
At a Council held at the Council Chamber in Boston,
June 23, 1713, it was voted to pay " Five pounds, two
shillings and ten pence for printing Mr. Cheever's Elec-
tion Sermon and making it up."
In his Autobiography Mr. Barnard refers to Mr.
Cheever as wholly a "memoriter preacher."
78 appendix
V.
Through the marriage of the Rev. Ames Cheever to Sarah
Choate, of Ipswich — the daughter of "Gov." Thomas Choate,
of Hog (now Choate) Island — these two prominent pioneer
families of Essex County were allied. Their descendants have
filled important positions in the world, as have those of the Rev.
Thomas Cheever and others of the schoolmaster's children, as
seen in records given by John T. Hassam, of Boston, Deloraine
P. Corey, of Maiden, Elisha D. Eldridge, of Boston, Dr. David
B. Cheever, of Boston, Mr. Ezekiel Cheever Whitman (who
changed his name to Ezekiel Cheever), and others who might be
mentioned. Nor should we forget descendants of Susanna Rus-
sell, the daughter who ministered to the venerable master in his
last days.
VI.
Hn Bssai? on tbe /IDemor^ of m^ IDenerablc
ObaBtcx, leseftiel Cbccper
BY COTTON MATHER
Augusta ;perstringere Carmine Laudes.
^uas nulla Eloquij vis Celebrare gueat.
You that are men & thoughts of manhood know,
Be Just now to the Man that made you so.
Martyr'dhy Scholars the stabb'd Cassian dies,
And falls to cursed Lads a Sacrifice.
Not so my Cheever ; Not by Scholars slain,
But Prais'd and Lov'd, and wish'd to Life again.
A mighty Tribe of Well-instructed Youth
Tell what they owe to him, and Tell the Truth.
All the Bight parts of Speech he taught to them
They now Employ to Trumpet his Esteem,
They fill Fames Trumpet, and they spread a Fame
To last till the Last Trumpet drown the same.
EppenMx 79
Magtster pleased them well, because 'twas he ;
They saw that Bonus did with it agree.
While they said Amo, they the Hint improve
Him for to make the Object of their Love.
No Concord so Inviolate they knew
As to pay Honours to their Master due.
With Interjections they break off at last,
But, Ah, is all they use, Wo, and Alas !
We Learnt Prosodia, but with that Design
Our Master's Name should in our Verses shine.
Our Weeping Ovid hut instructed us
To write upon his Death, De Tristibus.
Tully we read, but still with this Intent,
That in his praise we might be Eloquent,
Our Stately Virgil made us but Contrive
As our Anckises to keep him Alive.
When Phcenix, to Achilles was assign'd
A Master, then we thought not Homer blind :
A Phoenix, which Oh 1 might his Ashes shew !
So rare a Thing we thought our master too.
And if we made a Theme, 'twas with Regret
We might not on his Worth show all our Wit.
Go on, ye Grateful Scholars to proclame
To late Posterity your Master's Name.
Let it as many Languages declare
As on L,oretto-Ta.h\e do appear.
Too much to be by any one exprest :
/'// tell my share, and jom shall tell the rest.
Ink is too vile a Liquor ; Liquid Gold
Should fill the Pen, by which such things are told.
The Book should Amyanthus-PnT^er be
All writ with Gold, from all corruption free.
A Learned Master of the Languages
Which to Rich Stores of Learning are the Keyes ;
8o HppenMx
He taught us first Good Sense to understand
And put the Golden Keys into our hand.
We but for him had been for Learning Dumb,
And had a sort of Turkish Mutes become.
Were Grammar quite Extinct, yet at his Brain
The Candle might have well been lit again.
If Rhet'rick had been stript of all her Pride
She from his Wardrobe might have been supply'd.
Do but Name Cheever, and the Echo straight
Upon that name, Good Latin, will Repeat.
A Christian Terence, master of the File
That arms the Curious to Reform their Style.
Now Rome and Athens from their Ashes rise ;
See their Platonick Tear with vast surprize :
And in our School a. Miracle is wrought ;
For the Dead Languages to Life are brought.
His Work he Lov'd : Oh ! had we done the same I
Our Play-dayes still to him ungrateful came.
And yet so well our Work adjusted Lay,
We came to Work, as if we came to Play.
Our Lads had been, but for his wondrous Cares,
Boyes of my I^ady Mores unquiet Pray'rs.
Sure were it not for such informing Schools,
Our La f ran too would soon be fill'd with Owles.
'Tis Corlefs pains, and Cheever's we must own,
That thou, Ne-w England, art not Scythia grown.
The Isles of Silly had o'er-run this Day
The Continent of our America.
Grammar he taught, which 'twas his work to do ;
But he would Hagar have her place to know.
The Bible is the sacred Grammar, where
The Rules of speaking -well, contained are.
He taught us Lilly, and he Gospel taught ;
And us poor Children to our Saviour brought.
Master of Sentences, he gave us more
HppenMx
Than we in our Sententiae had before.
We Learn't Good Things in Tullies Offices ;
But we from him Learn't Better things than these.
With Cato's he to us the Higher gave.
Lessons of Jesus, that our Souls do save.
We Constru'd Ovid's Metamorphosis,
But on ourselves charg'd, not a change to miss.
Young Austin wept, when he saw Dido dead,
Tho' not a Tear for a Lost Soul he had ;
Our Master would not let us be so vain,
But us from Virgil did to David train,
Textors Epistles would not Cloathe our Souls ;
Pauls too we heard ; we ivent to School at Pauls.
Syrs, Do you not Remember well the Times,
When us he warn'd against our Youthful Crimes ;
What Honey dropt from our old Nestors mouth
When with his counsels he Reform'd our Youth ;
How much he did to make us Wise and Good ;
And with what Prayers, his work he did conclude.
Concern'd that when from him we Learning had.
It might not Armed Wickedness be made !
The Sun shall first the Zodiac forsake.
And Stones unto the Stars their Flight shall make ;
First shall the Summer bring large drifts of Snoiv,
And beauteous Cherries in December grow ;
Ere of those Charges we Forgetful are
Which we, O man of God, from thee did hear.
Such Tutors to the Little Ones would be.
Such that in Flesh we should their Angels see ;
Ezekiel should not be the Name of such;
We'd Agathangelus not think too much.
Who Serv'd the School, the Church did not forget ;
But Thought, and Pray'd, and often wept for it.
82 BppenMx
Mighty in Prayer: How did he wield thee, Pray'r!
Thou Reverst Thunder : Christ's-Sides-piercing spear?
Soaring we saw the Bird of Paradise:
So Wing'd by Thee, for Flights beyond the Skies.
How oft we saw him tread the Milky Way,
Which to the Glorious Throne of Mercy lay !
Come from the Mount, he shone with ancient Grace,
Awful the Splendor of his Aged Face.
CloatKd'\n the Good Old Way, his Garb did wage
A War with the Vain Fashions of the Age,
Fearful of nothing more than hateful Sin ;
'Twas that from which he laboured all to win,
Zealous; And in Truths Cause ne'r known to trim ;
No Neuter Gender there allow'd by him.
Stars but a Thousand did the Ancients know ;
On later Globes they Nineteen hundred grow ;
Now such a Cheever added to the Sphere
Makes an Addition to the Lustre there.
Meantime America a Wonder saw ;
A Youth in Age, forbid by Nature's Law.
You that in t'other Hemisphere do dwell.
Do of Old Age your dismal Stories tell.
You tell of Snowy Heads and Rheumy Eyes
And things that make a man himself despise,
You say a. frozen Liquor chills the Veins,
And scarce the Shadow of a man remains,
Winter of Life, that Sapless Age you call,
And of all Maladies the Hospital ;
The Second Nonage of the Soul ; the Brain
Cover'd with Cloud ; the Body all in pain.
To weak Old Age, you say, there must belong,
Trembling Palsey both of Limb and Tongue ;
Dayes all Decrepit ; and a Bending Back,
Propt by a Staff, in Hands that ever shake.
HppenMi 83
Nay, Syrs, our Cheever shall confute you all.
On whom there did none of these Mischef s fall,
He Liv^d and to vast Age no Illness knew ;
Till Times Scythe waiting for him Rusty grew.
He Liv'd and Wrought ; his Labours were immense ;
But ne'er Declined to Praeter perfect Tense.
A Blooming Touth in him at Ninety-Four
We saw ; But Oh ! when such a sight before !
At Wondrous Age he did his Touth resume,
As when the Eagle mews his Aged plume.
With Faculties of Reason still so bright,
And at Good Services so Exquisite ;
Sure our sound Chiliast, we wondering thought,
To the First Resurrection is not brought !
No, He for That was waiting at the Gate,
In the Pure Things that fit a Candidate.
He in Good Actions did his Life Employ,
And to make others Good, he made his Joy,
Thus well-appris'd now of the L,ife to Come,
To Live here was to him a Martyrdom,
Our brave Macrobius Long'd to see the Day
Which others dread, of being Call'd away.
So, Ripe with Age, he does invite the Hook,
Which watchful does for its large Harvest look ;
Death gently cut the Stalk, and kindly laid
Him, where our God His Granary has made.
Who at New-Haven first began to Teach,
Dying Unshipwreck' d, does White-Haven reach.
At that Fair-Haven they all Storms forget ;
He there his Davenport with Love does meet.
The Luminous Robe, the Loss whereof with Shame
Our Parents wept, when Naked they became ;
Those Lovely Spirits wear it, and therein
Serve God with Priestly Glory, free from Sin.
But in his Paradisian Rest above
To Us does the Blest Shade retain his Love.
84 appenMx
With Rip' tied Thoughts Above concern 'd for Us,
We can't but hear him dart his Wishes, thus.
' Tutors, Be Strict ; But jet be Gentle too,
' Don't by fierce Cruelties fair Hopes undo,
* Dream not, that they who are to Learning slow,
* Will mend by Arguments in Ferio,
' Who keeps the Golden Fleece, Oh, let him not
' A Dragon be, tho' he Three Tongues have got.
' Why can you not to Learning find the way,
' But thro' the Province of Severia.-'
' 'Twas Moderatus, who taught Origen ;
' A Touth which prov'd one of the Best of men.
* The Lads with Honour first and Reason Rule;
' Blovjes are but for the Refractory Fool.
* But, Oh ! First Teach them their Great God to fear j
' That you like me, with joy may meet them here.'
H' has said! —
Adieu a little while, Dear Saint, Adieu ;
Your Scholar won't be long. Sir, after you.
In the mean time, with Gratitude I must
Engrave an Epitaph upon your Dust.
'Tis true. Excessive Merits rarely safe ;
Such an Excess forfeits an Epitaph ;
But if Base men the Rules of Justice break,
The Stories (at least upon the Tombs) will speak.
Et Tumulum facite, et Tumulo superaddite carmen.
(Virg. in Daphn.).
EPITAPHIUM
EzEKiEL Cheeverus ;
Ludi-magister ;
Primo Neo-portensis ;
Dinde, Ipsuicensis
Postea, Carolotenensis
Postremo, Bostonensis :
cujus
appenMx 85
Doctrinam ac Virtutem
N6sti si Sis Nov-Anglus,
Colis, si non Barbarus ;
Grammaticus,
a Quo, non pure tantum, sed et pie,
Loqui
Rhetoricus
a Quo non tantum, Ornate dicere
coram Hominibus,
Sed et Orationes coram Deo fundere
Efficacissimas ;
Poeta,
a Quo non tantum Carmina pangere,
Sed et
Caelestes Hymnos, Odasq : Angelicas,
canere,
Didicerunt,
Qui discere voluerunt :
Lucerna,
ad Quam accensa sunt,
Quis queat numerare,
Quot Ecclesiarum Lumina?
Et
Qui secum Corpus Theologiae abstulit,
Peritissimus Theologus,
Corpus hie suum sibi minus Charum
deposuit.
Vixit Annos, XCIV.
Docuit, Annos LXX.
Obiit, A. D. M. DCC.VIII;
Et quod Mori potuit,
Heic
Expectat Exoptatq :
Primam Sanctorum Resurrectionem
ad Immortalitem.
Exuvijs debetur Honos.
Inbex 87
A.
Accidence, Cheever's . . . .12, 14, 15, 16, 26, 37, 67
Adams, John ......... 4^2
Adams, Samuel 64, 71
Agassiz .......... 9
Agawam .17
Ames, Almanack . . . . . . . . 21
Ames, Dr. William I9» 59
Andover 18, 20
Andros, Sir Edmund ....... 28, 42
Angier, Edmund 19
Angier, Ruth . . 19
Anne, Queen 42
Appleton, Samuel . 17
Artillery Election Sermon ....... 25
Ascham 18
Athenaeum, Boston . 16
Autograph, Cheever 16
B.
Bacon, Leonard Woolsej 11
Baldwin, Ernest H 14
Barnard, Rev. John 36, 72, 77
Barnett, John 29
Bay Psalm Book . . . . . . . . 21
Bellingham, Richard 24, 42
Bentley, Wm,, D.D 18
Biglow, William 64
Blue Coat Boys 27
Boston 14, 19, 24, 42, 49
Boston Latin School ... 24, 26, 38, 45, 46, 48, 51, 61
Boston Latin School Association . . . .25, 53, 61
Bradford, William 20
Bradstreet, Anne .20
Bradstreet, Simon i7i 18, 26, 42
88 llnbei
Brooks, Phillips 36, 45, 52
"Burial Hill," Char lestown 22,49
C.
Cambridge, Mass 19, 27, 60
Cambridge University, England .... 10, 62
Channing, W. E. 71
Charlestown, Mass. ... 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 38, 49, 58
Charles II 10, 24
Chauncy, Charles . 18
Chebacco 23
Cheever, Abigail ........ 22
Cheever, Ames . 39i 78
Cheever, Dr. David B 78
Cheever, Elizabeth ....... I3> 50
Cheever, Ezekiel, of Salem 22
Cheever, Ezekiel, Schoolmaster,
9, 10, n, 19, 23, 25, 35, 38, 46, 53, 54
Cheever, Ezekiel, of Charlestown 22
Cheever, Hannah ........ 13
Cheever, Mary ......... 13
Cheever, Nathaniel ........ 22
Cheever, Samuel - . 13, 18, 19, 20, 25, 36, 50, 57, 72
Cheever, Sarah ......... 13
Cheever, Susannah 38, 49, 50
Cheever, Thomas 22, 49, 50, 78
Choate Island 78
Choate, Sarah 78
Choate, Thomas 78
Christ's Hospital, London 27, 62
Church Street, New Haven lO
Clarke, James Freeman 68
Corey, Deloraine P 78
Corlet, Elijah 27
Cotton, Rev. John 62
Cromwell, Oliver ........ 20
89
ln^er
D.
" Day of Doom " ii, 21
Davenport, John 9i 10
Deer Island 52| 62
Diary, Sewall's 25, 38, 39
64, 69
37
64, 69
62
H
42
20
13
17.
Dillaway, Charles Knapp
Diary, Stiles'
Dixwell, Epes Sargent
Dorchester, Mass
Dryden .
Dudley, Joseph
Dudley, Thomas
Dunster, President of Harvard College
E.
Eaton, Theophilus 9, 10
Eldridge, Elisha D 78
Election Sermon in Old South Church .... 77
Eliot, John 20, 38, 58
II
71
10
20
18
78
49
Elm Street, New Haren
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
Emmanuel College
Endicott, John
Erasmus ..........
"Essay in Rhyme" 43,44,49
Eustis Street Burying Ground, Roxbury ... 45
17.
Feoffers
Fox, George
Fiske, Arthur I. .
Fisk, Rev. John .
Franeker University
Franklin, Benjamin
Free School
Funeral Sermon of Rev. John Barnard
42, 63, 64
17. 18, 43
22
42
64
17
59
66, 71
62,65
36, 72
9° 1^n^eI
6.
Gardner Francis 64, 69, 70
Gay, A. M. 64, 70
General Court 12, 13, 39, 60, 64, 65
Gould, Benjamin Apthorp .... 64, 68, 70, 71
Gould, Zaccheus 17
" Grammarian's Funeral " — Tompson . . .46, 47, 48
Granary Burying Ground 49
" Grandfather's Chair " 31
Grant, Robert 52
Greek . . . 16, 26, 35
Green, Dr. Samuel A. 46
Green and Russell, Printers 16
Grove Street, New Haven 10
n.
Hale, Edward Everett 24, 25, 51, 61
Hall of Fame, New York 71
Hancock, John 42,64,66,71
Harris, T. M 15
Harvard, John . 22,53
Harvard University . . 13, 14, 18, 24, 26, 28, 39, 45, 69
Hassam, John T. 16, 18,52,78
Haynes, Henry W 52
Hawthorne, Nathaniel 31
Holland University 19
Hooker, Thomas 59i 60
Hooper, William 64
Hull, John 70
Hunt, Samuel 64
Hutchinson, Anne 12, 61
Hutchinson, Governor 42
I.
Ipswich, Mass 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 38, 78
Ipswich Historical Society 22, 23
llnt)cx
91
J.
Jefferson, Thomas
Jenks, Rev. Henry F.
4*
34
King's Chapel 25
King Philip's War 42
Lathrop, Ellen
Lathrop, Thomas
Latin Epistles
Latin Epitaph
Latin Letters
Leffingwell, E. H.
Leverett, F. P. .
Leverett, Governor
Leverett, John
Lewis, Ezekiel
Lombard Street, New Haven
Lovell, John
57
63
22,50
22
18
85
58.59
19
64, 69
42
26, 42
37.40
54
67,71
M.
Jl/a^«a/»a, Cotton Mather 9,17,21,59,60
Manchester, Mass 17. 39
Mansfield, Isaac, Rev. 58
Marblehead 20, 36
Massachusetts Colony 12, 20
Massachusetts Historical Society . . 16, 18, 36, 39, 46, 58
Massasoit 12
Mather, Cotton .... 26, 35, 42, 48, 51, 53, 59, 78
Mather, Increase 26, 41
Mather, Samuel 35
Maude, Daniel 62
Maxwell, Samuel 37
Memorial Hall, Cambridge 19
92 1rn^er
Merrill, Moses 64, 70
Milton, John 11,24,63
Monument in Ipswich . . . . . . 23
N.
New Haven . . . . 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 17, 18, 54
* ' New Meadows " 17
Newman's Barn ......... 9
Norcross, Grenville H 52» 53
Norton, Pastor 21
o.
Oakes, Edward ......... 41
Old South Meeting-house . . . . 37, 39, 40, 42
Otis, Harrison Gray ........ 64
Oxford University lo, 62
P.
"Paterna" 35
Paradise Lost, Milton ....... 24
Paine, Robert Treat 64
Payne, Robert 18
Pemberton (Rev.) 40
Phillips Academy 15
Phillips, Wendell 68
Philips, Mary 50
Plymouth Colony . 20, 24
Pope, Alexander 24
Pormort, Philemon 61,62
Prince, Thomas 37
Q.
Queen Street, Boston 14
Quincy, Edmund 15
Quincy, Josiah I4i ^5
Quinnipiack 9
•(in^ex 93
B.
Register, Historical and Genealogical . . . . i6
Revere, Paul 42
Rogers, Nathaniel 3i
Rumney Marsh ........ 22
Russell, Ezekiel 50
Russell, Joseph 38
Russell, Susannah 38, 40, 49, 50, 78
s.
Salem, Mass 17, 18, 22, 42
Saltonstall, Nathaniel 18
Saltonstall, Richard 17
School, South Latin Grammar 25
School Street, Boston 25, 64
School-house, Ezekiel Cheever 54
School-House Lane 25
" Scripture Prophecies Explained " 15
Sewall, Judge 25, 38, 41
Smybert 39
Stiles, Ezra, President Yale College 37
St. Paul's School, London 63
Sumner, Charles 68, 7 1
T.
Tablet of Ezekiel Cheever 53
Temple Street ......... 11
" The Simple Cobbler of Agawam " 20
Thursday Lecture 25, 34
Tomb of Ezekiel Cheever, Esq., on Burial Hill, Charles-
town 22, 49
Tompson, Benjamin 45, 49, 62
Topsfield 17
W.
Wadsworth, Mr. ......... 38
Walker, Samuel 15
94 Inbex
Walter, Nehemiah 26
Ward, Nathaniel 20
Warren Avenue, Boston ....... 53
Washington, George .... ... 42
Waters, Rev. T. Frank 23
Wenham, Mass 17
Whitman, Ezekiel Cheever 78
Wigglesworth, Michael 10
Will, Ezekiel Cheever's 49
Williams, Nathaniel 39, 40, 41, 52, 63
Williams, Roger ......... 12
Winthrop, John 17. 24
Winthrop, John, Jr .18
Winthrop, Robert C 68
Win slow, Edward 20
Witchcraft, Salem . 42
Woodbridge, John 62
Woodmancy, John ........ 46
Woodman sey, Robert 46, 62
Z.
Zealand . ax
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