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 1890 I 
 
 ADDRESSES 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE CELEBEATION OF T3E 
 
 250th anniversary 
 
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 JUNE 12,- 1890. 
 
 PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE COMMITTEE, 
 
 JOHN H. HUNT, rUBLISHER, SAG-HAKBO 
 
 ol, N. Y. 
 
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1640 1890 
 
 ADDRESSES 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE CELEBRATION OF THE 
 
 250th anniversary 
 
 OF THE ^ 
 
 y 
 VILLAGE AND TOWN OF SOUTHAMPTON, 
 
 JUNE i2TH. 1890, 
 
 HON. HENRY P. HEDGES, Bridge-Hampton, N. Y. 
 
 GEOEGE R. HOWELL, A. M., Albany, N. Y. 
 
 WM. S. PELLETREAU, A. M., New-York City, N. Y. 
 
 REV. SAMUEL E. HERRICK, D. D., Boston, Mass. 
 
 InGlucliiig IntrGduGtion, Programme of Pro- 
 ■ oeedings and Original Odos. 
 
 PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE COMMITTEE. 
 
 JOHN H. HUNT, PUBLISHER, 
 SAG-HARBOR, N. Y. 
 
 ^««»»^ 1890- 
 
-^1 
 
 -1- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 At the annual Town Meeting of the electors of the Town 
 of Southampton, on Tuesday, April 2d, 1SS9, it was voted 
 that a committee of five, of which the Supervisor should be 
 one, be appointed by the chair, to make preparations for cel- 
 ebrating the anniversary of the fifth semi-centennial of the 
 settlement of the Town. 
 
 P. R. Jennings, chairman of that meeting, after consulta- 
 tion with many public spirited citizens of the Town, appoint- 
 ed as the committee, in addition to the Hon. James H. Pier- 
 son, Supervisor, Gilbert H. Cooper* of Sag-Harbor, G. Clarence 
 Topping of Sagaponack, James H. Foster of Southampton 
 
 * Gilbert H. Cooper, one of the committee of arrangements, 
 was a lineal descendant, on the father's side, from "Thomas 
 Cooper the elder," and on the mother's side from Thomas Sayi'e, 
 both of them among the earliest founders of the town of South- 
 ampton. He had very efficiently aided in the arrangements and 
 labors preparatory to this celebration, and with all the glowing 
 ardor of his nature was interested in forwarding the publication 
 of the proceedings and addresses. He met with the printer 
 and writer hereof on Satiu'day, the 26th day of July, 1890, to 
 consult on these subjects. By arrangement he was to meet the 
 committee at Sag-Harbor on Satui-day, the 2d of August, 1890, to 
 promote the object desired. He had retu-ed apparently in his 
 usual health on the pre\'ious evening. When, on the morning 
 following, a member of the family called him to rise, the folded 
 bands, the sUent lips, the luimoving eye, made no response. 
 Possibly he would have chosen to avoid the painful parting, the 
 gathering infirmities, the lingeiing pains of dissolution. If his 
 preference was to meet with God's people on that last evening on 
 earth, join in their worship, offer his prayer with theii's, and then 
 hear the Anthem of Heaven, his preference may have been gra- 
 ciously gi'anted. The writer, with the consent of the sur\dving 
 members of the committee, enshi'ines the memory of his old 
 schoolmate and friend with these endui'ing memorials of the 
 Town, and of the memorable event in which he well bore a part. 
 
 H. P. H. 
 
ir INTRODUCTION. 
 
 village, and Erastus F. Post of Quogue. The committee or- 
 ganized by the appointment of James H. Foster as its chair- 
 man, and G. Clarence Topping as secretary. In the autumn 
 of 1889 the committee, in accordance with what seemed to be 
 a general desire of the people, informally invited Hon. Henry 
 P. Hedges to deliver the principal historical address, and 
 early in 1890 invited the President of the Long Island Histor- 
 ical Society, R. S. Storrs, D. D., George R. Howell, the his- 
 torian, of the New-York State Library, William S. Pelle- 
 treau, A. M,, the eminent antiquarian, and Samuel E. Herrick, 
 D. D., of Boston, Mass., to deliver addresses on the occasion. 
 Dr. Storrs declined, assigning as reasons his many existing 
 engagements and expressing his inabihty and his regret. 
 The oiher invited gentlemen all accepted. The latter three 
 named were natives of Southampton. Judge Hedges, al- 
 though a native of East-Hampton, and in 1849 the bi-centen- ■ 
 nial orator there, had been a resident of this town during all 
 his professional life, since 1843, and had done semi centennial, 
 centennial and bi-centennial work here and alsewhere. 
 
 At the Town Meeting held on the 1st day of April, 1S90, 
 the committee, through their chairman, reported their action 
 to the meeting, which accepted and approved their report, 
 and voted to raise $800 to be appropriated, or so much there- 
 of as should be required, towards the expense of celebrating 
 the coming anniversary of the settlement of the town. The 
 date of the second deed for Southampton from James Farrett 
 is 12th June, 1640, which w^as chosen as the day for the 
 celebratiorj. 
 
 The committee at an early day invited attendance from the 
 Historical Societies of the state of Massachusetts, of Plymouth, 
 of Connecticut, New Haven, Hartford, New London, of the 
 *State of New- York, City of New-York, Long Island, Suffolk 
 
 * .The persons or societies foUowing appeared individually or 
 by represoutative. 
 
INTRODUCTION. lU 
 
 County, N. Y., New- York Geographical, Genealogical and 
 Biographical Societies, American Historical Magazine, descen- 
 dants of Lion Gardiner, Judges of the Supreme Court, Super- 
 visors of Suffolk County, the County Judges past and pres- 
 ent. Surrogate, District Attorney, &c. 
 
 It had been a difficult problem for the committee to decide 
 where to hold the celebration. The church would be too 
 small, a tent in a storm would be an insufficient protection . 
 Fortunately the large building, 45x120 feet, then erected and 
 being finished, on the south side of Job's Lane, promised ac- 
 commodation for nearly two thousand people, and was chosen 
 and arranged and magnificently decorated therefor. But even 
 that spacious hall would have proved entirely inadequate but 
 for the ominous thunder and light showers in the early morn- 
 ing and the overcast, threatening look of the heavens during 
 most of the day, preventing a large attendance from remote 
 districts. In the morning and evening the crowd was barely 
 sheltered. In the afternoon not over two-thirds could enter 
 the already packed building. 
 
 The interest of the people of the town in this historic cele- 
 bration grew in intensity until its conclusion. The commit- 
 tee of arrangements labored assiduously to make it the suc- 
 cess which public opinion pronounced it to be, In this they 
 were efficiently aided by the hearty co-operation of their 
 townsmen and of the ladies. The organizing genius of Dr. 
 E. G. Howard was never more conspicuous or more success- 
 ful than in the leadership of the 125 voices that rolled in har- 
 mony as one in the music of this historic day. 
 
 Of the morning exercise, after welcome to the vast audience 
 by the chairman, invocation was offered by Rev. B. F. Reeve, 
 of Sag-Harbor, followed by the Historical Address, occupying 
 notwithstanding much undelivered, one hour and forty 
 minutes. Of the afternoon addresses, occupying some two 
 and a half hours, the reader can properly judge. At the time 
 
rV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of their delivery the audience accepted them as appropriate 
 memorials of the occasion and the memorable event they 
 were designed to commemorate. The exercises of the even- 
 ing were necessarily of a character difficult to define. Long 
 beforehand they were dependent on the attendance of piofes- 
 sional and representative men who at the last moment might 
 be summoned to attend the inexorable calls of business life. 
 Esquire Foster, somewhat wearied with the exacting labors 
 of this and previous days_, had requested Judge Hedges to 
 preside in the evening. The Judge, freed from the responsi- 
 bility of his long address, was in elastic spirit, but soon found 
 of all the invited speakers for the evening, none were present 
 save Judge Howland and General Swayne. Lengthening 
 out his introductions to enliven and interest the audience, he 
 called on Edward F. DeLancey, of the New-York State His- 
 torical Society, who responded for the old and honored socie- 
 ty he represented. Hon. John A. King, president of that 
 society, was present, but preferred not to speak on the occa- 
 sion. Hon. Richard C. McCorraick, ex- Governor of Arizona, 
 next spoke, advocating the preservation of the memorials of 
 the olden time, as eloquently presented in the address of S. E. 
 Herrick, D. D. Nicoll Floyd, of Mastic, L. I., great-grand- 
 son of Wilham Floyd, of this County, signer of the Declara- 
 tion of Independence, was next called on, and responded in 
 behalf of his illustrious ancestor, modestly urging the adop- 
 tion of the plan suggested by Dr. Herrick for preservation of 
 the historic materials and memorials of the olden time. Sur- 
 rogate James H. Tuthill, President of the Suffolk County 
 Historical Society, in well chosen words responded to the call 
 as representative of that society. 
 
 The playful allusion of Judge Hedges to the "supposed dog" 
 which the Judge declared he never owned was to the audience 
 a source of amusement. Evidently the hour for serious his- 
 toric study had passed and the hour for lighter reading had 
 
INTRODUCTION. " 
 
 come. The brilliant epigram and anecdote of the folbwing 
 speaker, Judge Howland, like a succession of exploding fire- 
 works, fascinated and held the audience in good humor. 
 Gen. Svvayne spoke of that tide of emigration moving from 
 Jamestown and Virginia to the territory northwest of the Ohio 
 river, of which his ancestors formed a part, joining there the 
 tide moving from Plymouth Kock and enjoying that exemp- 
 tion from slavery that ensured this Continent for Freedom. 
 An address, based upon the profoundest principles and illus- 
 trated with interesting and amusing event and anecdote. 
 Judge Reid made the closing address with facile word and 
 apt allusion, deploring the lack of historic interest in the 
 town he represented (Babylon) latest organized of all the 
 towns in Snffolk County. 
 
 The display and sale of memorial medals ; the wigwam 
 near at hand constructed by one of the fast vanishing race of 
 Shinnecocks ; the residences tastefully decorated with Hags 
 and banners ; the thunder of cannon at intervals throughout 
 the day ; the parade of one hundred young horsemen on gaily 
 caparisoned steeds ; the moving tlirough the streets of a 
 whale boat on wheels with some of the ancient mariners 
 therein ; were among the novel, interesting and entertaining 
 features of the memorable day. 
 
 The programme following may aid the reader to grasp the 
 spirit of the occasion. 
 
PROGRAMME. 
 
 The 250tli anniversary of the settlement of the Village and Town 
 
 of Southampton, will be celebrated in the spacious hall 
 
 at the head of Lake Agawam, in said village, 
 
 THUESDAY, JUNE 12tli, 1890. 
 
 The ringing of bells and firing of cannon will usher in the day. 
 The exercises will be as follows : 
 
 MOENING— commencing at 10:30 o'clock. 
 
 The meeting in the Hall will open w4th prayer by Rev. B. F. 
 Reeve, of Sag-Harbor, followed with music by the Sag-Harbor 
 Comet Band, accompanied by a large Chorus, all under the di- 
 rection of Dr, E. G. Howard. 
 
 James H. Foster, chairman of the committee of arrangements, 
 will speak words of welcome. 
 
 An Historical Address will be delivered by Hon. Henky P. 
 Hedges. 
 
 An Ode, written for the occasion, will be rendered by the Chorus 
 
 AFTERNOON— commencing at 2:45 o'clock. 
 
 Music by the Band and Chorus. 
 
 Address by George R. Howell, A. M., of the New- York State 
 Library. Subject: "Our Puritan Ancestors." 
 
 Music. 
 
 Address by William S. Pelletreau, A. M. Subject : "Changes 
 in Social and Family Life since the Settlement of Southampton." 
 
 Music. 
 
 Address by Rev. Samuel E. Herrick, D. D. Subject : "Our 
 Relation to the Past, a Debt to the Future." 
 
 Ode. 
 
 EVENING — commencing at 8 o'clock. 
 
 Music by the Band. 
 
 Several gentlemen have accepted invitations to speak in the 
 evening, among whom are Elihu Root, Frederick Betts, T. G. 
 TnoMAS, M. D., Hon. Henry Howland, and Gen. J. Wager Swayne. 
 
 Per order of James H. Foster, James H. Pierson, 
 
 Gilbert H. Cooper, G. Clarence Topping, 
 
 Erastds F. Post, Committee. 
 
ODE,?. 
 
 The pieces sung were " America," Wliittier's " Centennial 
 Hymn," Bacons' "Forefathers' Day," the hymn commencing "Let 
 the Hills and Vales Resound," and the two following odes com- 
 posed for the occasion. 
 
 sma FOR OUR sires. 
 
 Sing a great song for our su-es ! Tell their fame ! 
 
 Heroes of faith were they, true men and brave, 
 Pilgrims of Hope to this lone land they came ; 
 
 Hope, like a star, shone serene o'er the wave. 
 Faithful to conscience, and strong for the right, 
 
 Guiding their steps by the light of God's word, 
 Kept they the faith and fought the good fight, 
 
 Knowing no fear save " the fear of the Lord." 
 
 Sing a great song for our dear native land. 
 
 Glorious heritage, gift of the past ! 
 Countless her sons as the grains of sand 
 Fringing with silver her ocean lines vast. 
 
 Riches and power imbounded increase ; 
 Fair as the sunrise are all her wide fields ; 
 
 Freedom mhabits her borders, and peace 
 Reigns where the freeman the sovereignty wields. 
 
 Smg we this day a great song to the Lord, 
 
 Sing to Jehovah, our forefather's God ! 
 God was the King whom the Pilgrims adored, 
 
 Counting no human king worthy then' laud. 
 Our King is God ! Him we honor and praise, 
 
 He is the giver of freedom and peace. 
 Glorious He, in His wisdom and ways ; 
 
 Sing to His name ! Let His praise never cease ! 
 
ODES. 
 
 TWO HUNDRED YEAES AGO. 
 
 All hail to thee, thou ancient spot, 
 
 The loyal knee we bend. 
 And homage give to Thee, oh God, 
 
 "Who doth such blessings send. 
 These spreading plains were opened first 
 
 By hands long since grown cold. 
 And all the hearts that i^lanned this home 
 
 For us, are 'neath the mold. 
 The God of our forefathers rules 
 
 This spot now as of yore, 
 "When they from home and kinsmen sailed 
 
 To seek this stranger shore. 
 The music of the mighty sea 
 
 The same melodious tones 
 Bears to the loyal heart to-day, 
 
 As ever it has done. 
 And may the next two himdred years 
 
 Still keep true hearts aglow, 
 That they may sing, as we to-day, 
 
 "Two Hundred Years Ago." 
 
 The years are ghding swiftly by. 
 
 And soon will all who raise 
 Their voice to-day, be gathered home. 
 
 That Better Land to praise. 
 But when three hundred years have rolled 
 
 In grandeur all sublime, 
 May many who to-day rejoice, 
 
 Then see that glorious time ; 
 And homage give, to those who won, 
 
 By noble deeds each day. 
 The honors to whom now we give 
 
 The tribute of our lay. 
 May this the footstool of God's thi'one 
 
 Unsullied still remain, 
 "When still another century 
 
 Shall claim a new refrain. 
 And may the voices then attuned, 
 
 With love and joy o'erflow, 
 When they shall sing as we sing now, 
 
 "Two Hundred Years Ago." 
 
A^ REQUEST. 
 
 We the subscribers, residents and citizens (or natives) of 
 Suffolk County, respectfully request that Hon. Henry P. 
 Hedges will consent to having his portrait used for a frontis- 
 piece to the volume of The Proceedings of the Celebration of 
 the 2'50th Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of South- 
 ampton, believing as we do that it will be highly appreciated 
 by the public as a memento of one who has so long been 
 identified with the affairs of Town, County and State. 
 
 ORVILLE B. ACKERLY, 71 Broadway, N. Y. 
 
 JAMES H. FOSTER, ] 
 
 JAMES H. PIERSON, | Committee 
 
 GILBERT H. COOPER, } of 
 
 G. CLARENCE TOPPING, | Arrangements. 
 
 ERASTUS F. POST, J 
 
 WM. S. PELLETREAU, 
 
 M. H. TOPPING, 
 
 S. G. LUDLOW, 
 
 ROBT. E. TOPPING, 
 
 HENRY C. PL ATT, 
 
 J. J. HARRISON. 
 
 WILLIAM J. POST, 
 
 P. R. JENNINGS, 
 
 DAVID H. RAYNOR, 
 
 MARCUS E. GRIFFIN, 
 
 L. E. TERRY, 
 
 E. A. CARPENTER, 
 
 JOHN H. HUNT, 
 
 JOHN SHERRY, 
 
 BRINLEY D. SLEIGHT. 
 
 WM. WALLACE TOOKER, 
 
 THOS. F. BISGOOD, 
 
 SAME. P. OSBORNE, 
 
 JOSEPH S. OSBORNE, 
 
 DAVID J. GARDINER, 
 
 BENJ. H. VanSCOY, 
 
 J. T. GARDINER, 
 
 J. K. PARSONS, 
 
T^M 
 
ADDRESS BY HON, H, P, HEDGES. 
 
 FiiiENfw OF Southampton : 
 
 An eminent New England logician and divine defined Truth 
 as "the reality of things." If Truth be such in its unlimited 
 domain, then History might be defined as the record of the 
 Reality of past things. Born in the beginnings of time, its 
 recording pen has written the story of age after age with 
 augmenting minuteness and light, until it seems as if "there 
 is nothing covered that shall not be revealed." Errors long 
 uncorrected, mistakes long unrectified, events long misstated, 
 characters long covered with unjust disgrace or undeserved 
 applause ; all these the impartial undimmed eye of history has 
 seen and her voice unsparingly declared for the truth. If the 
 myths, the errors, the mistakes, once accepted, now rejected, 
 had been followed by a sound proportioned to the falsehoods 
 exploded, the earth would tremble with the shock. Let us 
 remember that history delights in certainty. The universal 
 patented tradition of pedigree, "there we;-e three brothers 
 came over, one settled in Massachusetts, one in New Jersey 
 and one on Long Island," even that elicits but an incredulous 
 8mile over the obvious illusion and the heavy strain on Long 
 Island. 
 
 THE COMPACT FOR SETTLEMENT. 
 
 In the records of the town of Southampton is an Agreement 
 dated March 10th, 1639, signed by some twenty persons 
 therein proposing a settlement on Long Island. There is no 
 known document so ancient proposing the settlement of a 
 town on this Island by Englishmen. 
 
 To the inquiries of the Antiquarian and Historian this In- 
 strument gives many full clear answers. It blazes with light 
 
10 FIFTH SEMI-CENTENNIAL OF SOUTHAMPTON. 
 
 concerning the origin, the settlers and settlement of the good 
 old town of Southampton. It is entitled ^ 'The disposal of the 
 vessel," because it disposed of it to Daniel How, reserving 
 such u?e thereof as the contemplated colony might require, to 
 found which it had been purchased. Yet it is does more, '»«<^ 
 far more than that. Framed at Lynn, Massachusetts, before 
 the voyage began, which resulted in the removal of the Col- 
 onists with their families and goods to Southampton, it bound 
 the signers to submit to righteous, to a fair division and im- /-ou^-^y 
 provement of the property purchased until a church was 
 founded. It was an organic Instrument or Constitution for 
 the Government of the future colony, as truly as that signed 
 in the cabin of the l\Iayflower. The moment the colonists 
 landed, this compact bound the settlers and never released its 
 hold until some other authority superceded this original or- 
 ganic law. The organizing genius of the Anglo Saxon mind, 
 its capacity to institute and enforce self-government, shine in 
 letters of light in the very origin of the town, and antedate 
 the voyage of exploration for the search and site of the future 
 colony, Since those owning the vessel, thereby might claim 
 exemption from the burdens of taxation, until their advances 
 had been repaid, and dispute might arise, this instrument 
 anticipated and limited such claim. The entire paragraph 
 reads thus : "Forasmuch as we Edward Howell, Edmond 
 Farrington, Edmond Needham, Daniel How, Josias Stanbor- 
 ough, Thomas Saire, George Welbe and Henry Walton and 
 Thomas Halsey, Allen Bread and William Harker have dis- 
 bursed four score pounds for the setting forward a plantacon, 
 and in regard we have taken upon us to transport at our own 
 prop costs and charges all such persons as shall goe at the 
 first voyage when those of our company that are chosen there- 
 unto shall goe upon discovery and search and to begin and 
 and settle a plantation and furthermore in regard all such 
 persons soe goeinge upon our accompt have in our vessel the 
 
ADDRESS BY HON. H. P. HEDGES. 
 
 II 
 
 freedom of half a tunne of goods a person it is thought meete 
 that we the forenamed undertakeis should not at any tyme or 
 tymes hereafter be lyable to any rates, taxes or impositions, 
 nor be put upon any fencing, building of meeting house, 
 erecting fortifications, building of bridges, preparing high- 
 ways, or otherwise charged for any cause er reason whatso- 
 ever, during the time of our discontinuance in our intended 
 plantation except that, in the fencing in of plantinge lots every 
 man shall with his neighbors, fence or cause to be fenced, by 
 the first day of April 10th wch shall be 1641.' 
 
 The extract cited regarding exemption from taxes of the 
 undertakers who were so called because they undertook to 
 found the colony proves more, far more. It shows that some 
 of the company chosen thereunto were to go on a first voyage 
 "upon discovery and search and to begin and settle a planta- 
 tion." Those going on that first voyage, resulting in the 
 landing at Cow Bay and expulsion therefrom by the Dutch, 
 were on a voyage contemplating no ending with that or any 
 future expulsion. They were on a voyage destined to con • 
 tinue, until their commission "to begin and settle a plantation" 
 had been executed. You will remember that no uncertainty, 
 no doubt, no error can find room here. The record is positive, 
 clear, full, unequivocal, as to the intent, purpose and contin- 
 urnce of the voyage. In confirmation of this original declara- 
 tion of purpose the colonial Records of New-lcbrk (Vol. 2, p. 
 p. 144-6, 150, &c.) show that eight or ten pioneers on this 
 voyage landed at Cow Bay, built a house and were building 
 another when expelled therefrom by the Dutch, 19th May, 
 16f 0. James Farrett, agent of the Earl of Sterling, the then 
 grantee of Long Island, had by deed, dated April 17th, 3 640, 
 intended for this company, given them a right to "sitt down" 
 or locate anywhere on Long Island and "enjoy Eight miles 
 square of land." By a supplemental deed from Farrett, dated 
 June 12th, 1639, ("meaning 1640) the location was fixed be- 
 
12 FIFTH SEMI-CENTENNIAL OF SOUTHAMPTON. 
 
 tween Peaconeck, an Indian villlage at the head of the Peconic 
 Bay, and the easternmost point of the Island "with the whole 
 breadth of the Island from sea to sea." 
 
 The deed of July 7th, 1640, from Farrett, limits the eight 
 miles square west of Shinnecock at the place "where the In- 
 dians draw over their canoes" and at the "East," including 
 the Neck or Island (now North Haven) over against Farrets 
 Island now Shelter Island.) The deed of April conveys a 
 right to locate. The deed of June limits the right within the 
 expressed bounds. The deed of July finally and forever fixes 
 the location. The voyage begun under the deed of April was 
 intended to locate the territory conveyed and "to begin and 
 settle a plantation.'"' The locating deed of June after the 
 expulsion in May implies a search and continuance of the 
 voyage, and a location fixed between certain poinds, and in 
 July defined and measured by unalterable natural monuments 
 and bounds. To all objectors and all doubters we say this 
 voyage begun in May was for the declared purpose of begin- 
 ning and settling "a plantation." 
 
 The purpose was a continuing purpose, the voyage a con- 
 tinuing voyage until the chosen pioneers accomplished their 
 mission and "began and settled a plantation." The confirm- 
 ing proof of compact and deeds create a presumptio;i of set- 
 tlement ib June as yet unrebutted and which we submit the 
 objector must rebut or yield his objection. We show a can- 
 non ball rolling down hill and that at some time it reached 
 the foot. If time has effaced its track, if vegetation hid^its 
 course, no known obstacle intervening, the presumption that 
 its course was continuous is irresistible, and not overcome by 
 the objection "No one saw it go there." The May voyagers 
 intending settlement as truly after, as before the expulsion, 
 reached Southamption presumably in continuance of the 
 original voyage no known obstacle intervening. It is incum 
 t)e»t (m the objector to prove that the rolling ball stopped 
 
ADDKESS BY HON. H. P. HEDGES. 13 
 
 lb- 
 
 short of tbetr destination and not demand of us to demonstrate 
 
 that a continuing purpose continues. 
 
 If the voyage continued the settlement was in June. To 
 prove Southampton settled by some subsequent voyage and 
 not by this, the objector must overthrow the record and over- 
 come all the probabilities of the case. In that day and for 
 fifty years after, a voyage to Boston was so perilous that be- 
 fore sailing, the prudent landsman made his will and the 
 pious seaman asked the prayers of the church for deliverance 
 from danger. In 1676 Ephraim, son of this same Daniel 
 Howe, in command of a vessel bound from Boston to New 
 Haven, was shipwrecked and all on board including his two 
 sons and three others perished, leaving him the sole survivor. 
 (See Atwater's His. New Haven p. 190, and His. of Lynn, p. 
 124.) Our pioneers had cleared the jutting points of Nahan^ 
 and Nantasket, crossed the extended shoals of Nantucket, 
 rounded the long Sandy Hook of Cape Cod. The Gay Head 
 Indian may have seen their vessel enter the Vineyard Sound, 
 evade the fearful rocks and reefs that lie North and West and 
 South from that bold headland, steering wide from the sunken 
 shore of No Mans Land. The gleaming eye of the Narraghan- 
 sett might see them off the stormy Point Judith ''high on the 
 broken wave" and his tongue mutter malediction. In 
 spite of sunken rock and hidden reef and jutting point, of 
 yawning billow and muttered curse, they hold their way into 
 and along that magnificent Sound that since has born«the 
 commerce of a continent. Does the objector insist that these 
 men, again false to duty, voluntarily returned and encountered 
 the perils they had overcome, when the perils before them, 
 great as they were, might be little in comparison with those 
 they had passed. There must be no unfair arguing by the 
 objector from the present. The Beacon Lights that in 1890 
 flash warning from every point on our coast and illuminate 
 our harbors and bays and sounds, the tolling bells that planted 
 
14 FIFTH SEMI-CENTENNIAL OF SOUTHAMPTON. 
 
 on our shoals tell us to sheer away from death^ the lowing 
 horn that sends its sounding signal through miles of mist and 
 fog, not all or any of these in 1640 guided our fathers to these 
 shores. Thus the conditions of the times, the circumstances 
 of the case, rebut the presumption of a return voyage. And 
 the records of the town of Southampton, earliest and first 
 born of the English settled towns on Long Island and in the 
 State of New- York, dissipating myth and conjecture and 
 doubt, commencing the earliest of any town on Long Island 
 continuing in unbroken succession to the present day demon- 
 strate her title to priority of Settlement. 
 
 Wider refl>;ction, ampler research and crucial controversy, 
 confirm this title. Hence this memorable fifth semicentennial 
 date, and this glad commemoration day. 
 
 THE SETTLEMENT ORGANIZED. 
 
 At the first the colonists occupied the rudest dwellings, 
 the poorest among them partly or wholly underneath the sur- 
 face of the enrtJi. (See Records vol. 1 p 79 vol. 2 p. 232 and 
 A.twater's History New Haven p. 523). Within a few years 
 thereafter comf>rfab]e and substantial houses were built. 
 Edward IIuwcll first of all the company styled gentleman, 
 seems to have been the most wealthy and the Father of the 
 Colony, (Records vol. 1 p. 40). Before the erection of a 
 church edifice, Sabbath worship may have been held at his 
 house as the amplest for tne purpose. As early as 1645 al- 
 lusion is made in the town records to a church previously 
 built, probably in 1641 (Vol. 1 p. 37 and 3S). Abraham 
 Pierson the first minister held to the exclusive right of the 
 church to govern, in both church and state. Adhering to 
 this theory of government adopted by the colonies of Massa- 
 chusetts and New Haven, which admitted only church mem- 
 bers to vote or hold office, we can s»e why he was an ardent 
 advocate for the union of Southampton by confederation with 
 New Haven. Dissenting from the more liberal constitution 
 
ADDRESS BY HON. H. P. HEDGES. 15 
 
 of the colonies of Plymouth and Connecticut, he would con- 
 sent to no alliance or confederation with either. On this 
 question the minister and his flock differed, and their majority 
 decision for union with Connecticut led to his early removal 
 from Southampton. The antiquarian consulting the Plym- 
 outh Colony Records of acts of the Commissioners of the 
 United Colonies of New England, might be perplexed to find, 
 that at their meeting in Boston in September, 1G43, New 
 Haven had liberty to receive into her jurisdiction the Town 
 of Southampton, and at a meeting of the Commissioners at 
 Hartford in September, 1644, the tib© same liberty was 
 granted to the jurisdiction of Connecticut. (See Vol. IX, pp. 
 10 and 21.) The adverse views of pastor and people is the 
 key to the conflicting applications and actions of the Com- 
 missioners. Going back in fancy a little less than five half 
 centurios to some bright Sabbath morning, we might see some 
 forty rude dwellings sheltering as many families, compactly 
 clustered on either side of the then Southampton street. 
 Each dwelling is fortified by enclosures of palisades, and all 
 are guarded by a like surrounding fortification. Near the 
 centre are both watch house and church. The rolling drum- 
 beat of Thom.is Sayre calls the worshipers, (Records, Vol. I, 
 p. 51). Parents preceding children and servants move to 
 the church. The deacons sit fronting the audience, who are 
 seated according to rank and station, the men and women 
 divided by a centre line. The soldiers with their arms are 
 placed conveniently for defence near the door. Minister 
 Pierson, serious, spiritual, severe, just, learned, logical, posi- 
 tive, presides over the assembly ; with solemn air they await 
 his utterance ; with accent stern he invokes that Jehovah 
 who thundered from Sinai. Perhaps his prayers, his exhorta- 
 tion, his sermon, declare his unalterable conviction concern- 
 ing the foundations of human government. "The seven pil- 
 lars," "wisdom hath hewn out," he interprets to mean seven 
 
16 FIFTH SEMI CENTENNIAL OF SOUTHAMPTON, 
 
 men by whom authority is to be instituted and organized 
 within the church, within it to be perpetuated forever. We 
 know historically that the founders of Southampton resisted 
 this narrow theory. Perhaps Henry PiersoUj sometimes as 
 positive and unyielding as the minister, Edward Howell, de- 
 vout and self controlled, Thos. Coooper "the elder," Thos. 
 Halsey, self reliant, aggressive, and others unconvinced, repel 
 the argument. He the hammer, they the anvil from which 
 every hammer's blow rebounded. Thus the minister of mas- 
 terly logic, father of the first president of Yale college, born 
 here during the father's ministry^ (See Dexter's graduates of 
 Yale College, p. 59,) failed to convince and carry with him 
 his people. So failing, after some years he removed. All 
 honor to that first band of English patriots, who in this their 
 earliest experience, called to choose between the great princi- 
 ples of civil liberty and partiality for their minister, preferred 
 principle above friendship, freedom above tyranny, the rights 
 and manhood suffrage of the many, above government of the 
 few, the rule of the people before the rule of the church. 
 This resolve, made nenrly five half centuries gone by, has 
 been affirmed by a liku long experience. For once the peo- 
 ple, this people, our fathers, were right, and their minister, 
 transcendently great as he truly was, was wrong. 
 
 THE EXPERIMENT SUCCESSFUL. 
 
 The colony at Southampton, remote from any other Eng- 
 lish settlement, divided by Peconic Bay from Southold and 
 yet farther removed from the island stronghold of staunch 
 Lion Gardiner, surrounded by wild beasts and wild Indians, 
 set in the wilderness, was like a ship adrift on the ocean, its 
 company uncommanded, unofficered, undisciplined, its course 
 undetermined, its voyage undecided, its destiny unknown. 
 Will the company select and submit to the command of the 
 best men ? Will they enforce discipline? Will they project 
 a practical and practicable voyage 1 Will they steer straight 
 
ADDEESS BY HON. H. P. HEDGES. 17 
 
 for the destined port ? Will they with united will man the 
 yards, and as the elements permit or compel, spread the can- 
 vas or furl the sail I Shall they anchor in the desired haven ! 
 Or shall disunion and division leave them victims of their own 
 folly, to founder in mid ocean ! 
 
 With such anxious forebodings the friends of the South- 
 ampton colony might have watched its fortunes, waited anx- 
 iously for tidings from the lone settlement and heard with fear 
 lest the news bring the story of disaster and distress, instead 
 of hope and cheer. Plas famine, gaunt and ghastly, thinned 
 or exterminated their ranks I Has internal strife blotted out 
 its victims from the face of the earth ? Has imprudence and 
 improvidence lost to them the means of sustenance and de- 
 fence I Has wasting disease cruelly called them to untimely 
 graves ? Has some sleeping sentinel let in the watchful, 
 prowling foe ? Has the savage blotted out the light of civ- 
 ilization, the English set in his native wilds ! Has the victor 
 whoop of the Shinnecock drowned the battle cry of the An- 
 glo Saxon? These are not only the inquiries of friends, but 
 of the great heart of humanity, enlightened and elevated, the 
 world over. At this distance of time, with little remnant of 
 their surroundings but the solid earth whereon we stand, the 
 vital air we breathe, the heaving ocean whose roar they heard, 
 with bated breath we fancy their exposure, their solitude, 
 their danger, and ask tidings of their well being or their 
 doom. This colony may lose the knowledge of Jehovah and 
 worship the unknown God. It may frown on schools and 
 foster ignorance and vice. It may become besotted in in- 
 temperance, darkened in superstition, blind to the rights of 
 freemen, unfaithful to human liberty, incompetent for self- 
 government, the plaything of the demagogue, the object of 
 scorn to the good and wise. It may transmit to future times 
 the priceless treasures of ancestral piety, free born citizenship, 
 enlightened intelligence, enlarged education, beneficent gov- 
 
18 FIFTH SEMI-CENTENNIAL OF SOUTHAMPTON. 
 
 ernment, equal laws, organized industry. Unfaithful to its 
 Iiigh mission it may blight and blast all these, and transmit 
 to coming generations, the curse of aims, duties, privileges, 
 possibilities^ postponed, perverted, perished. 
 
 As time progressed all these questions were favorably an- 
 swered. The company of settlers were brave, vigilant, intelli- 
 gent, self-controlled, self-reliant, self-governed. Southampton 
 contained witliin itself the powers of self-government ; and 
 more, it was capable of sending forth colonies endowed with 
 like capacity and thus indefinitely multiplying government 
 by the people. It was like the first tree created by the Lord 
 "yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself." 
 
 THK CHURCH IN 1690. 
 
 If after the lapse of the first half century from the founding 
 of the colony we in 1690 survey the situation, there appears 
 more commodious and comfortable dwellings. The houses 
 in the site of the town are multiplied. The old palisades, 
 mementos of impending peril, have decayed and disappeared. 
 There are flourishing outlying settlements at North Sea, 
 Wickapogue, Water Mill, Cobb, Mecox and Sagabonack. 
 There are scattered wigwams sheltering the dwindUng rem- 
 nant of the once powerful Shinnecock tribe, '*at Sebonac," 
 in the "Neck and on the Hills" ; but west of that the territo- 
 ry of the town is an unsettled wilderness. 
 
 Cromwell and the commonwealth have flourished and fallen. 
 The axe has struck off the head of the 1st King Charles. 
 The 2d Charles, trifling, deceptive, dissolute, has figured on 
 the stage. The 2d James, arbitrary, narrow, treacherous, 
 has fled to France before the Revolutionary storm of 1688. 
 Mary and the Prince of Orange hold the throne of England. 
 On a June Sabbath morning we look and find a larger and 
 better church has replaced the second and smaller church of 
 1651, (Records, Vol. I, p. 90.) The Rev. Robert Fordham, 
 minister from 1648 to 1674, amiable, serene, spiritual, has 
 
ADDRESS BY HON. H. P. HEDGES. 19 
 
 rested from his labors. The short terms of Harriman, Fletch- 
 er and Taylor are passed. Not by drum beat, but by the 
 bell, sent in 1693 to be recast in London, are the people called 
 to worship. Not as in early days when but a handfull respond- 
 ed to the call, but now in thronging numbers, from village and 
 hamlet, in all the four quarters of the heavens, the people 
 gather for worship. I see the bowed form, the trembling 
 limbs, the lingering feet of Job Sayre, sole survivor of the 
 original band of planters, move with feeble tread to the house 
 of God. The Rev. Joseph Whiting, called from Lynn, the 
 port of their embarkation, is minister. Learned, devout, 
 sympathetic, he leads the worship in deep felt invocation, in 
 solemn exposition, in yearning entreaty, in song of praise, in 
 divine benediction.' The hardy sons of the pioneers reverently 
 listen to the voice of prayer, attend the preaching of the word, 
 join in the song of praise. The ardent zeal^ the sublime hope, 
 the fervent faith of the fathers animate the sons. Fifty years 
 of toil in subduing the wilderness, of battle with the wild 
 beasts, of culture of the soil, of adventure on the sea, have 
 not subdued the spirit, dimmed the eyes, or quenched the 
 courage of these descendants of the band of pioneers who first 
 founded this town. Temptation has not overcome them, 
 unbelief has not depressed them, the world has not corrupted 
 them, infidelity has not poisoned them. Strong arms, clear 
 heads, brave hearts, lofty spirits here live to do honor to the 
 memory and the name of their fathers. 
 
 THE CHURCH IN 1740, 1790, 1840. 
 In another half century ending in 1740 tlie commodiuus 
 church building of 1707 stood in fair proportions. The Rev. 
 Sylvanus White was minister, son of that Ebenezer, who was 
 the first settled minister in Bridge-Hampton in 1695. The 
 father was pastor there over half a century, the son here 55 
 years, both "faithful unto death." After another half cen- 
 tury, a vision of the church, in 1790, would exhibit little 
 
20 FIFTH SEm-CEN'TENXlAL OF SOUTHAMPTON. 
 
 change. The unmelodious, inartistic hymnology of 1G90, has 
 partially passed away in 1740, and in 1790 the reconstructed 
 harmonies of "Watts had expelled the barbarous verses of the 
 former age. Although in 1790 there was no settled minister, 
 some supply often officiated. Tlie lifted curtain of an hun- 
 dred and fift}^ years would show an audience large, devout, 
 intelligent, clad in homespun^ starr'd with revolutionary sol- 
 diers. We hear the pitch pipe's sound floating clear the key- 
 note over gallery and aisle. We hear the hymn loved of the 
 fathers, then so often, now so seldom sung : 
 
 " Lord, in the morning Thou shalt hear 
 My voice ascending high. 
 To Thee will I dii'ect my prayer, 
 To Thee lift up mine eye." 
 
 The church of 1S40 is more the subject of memory than of 
 history. Yet justice demands mention of the then minister, 
 Hugh N. Wilson, D. D., who filled the pulpit, with emphasis 
 on the word filled. His profound learning, powerful logic, 
 mellow wit, strong fiiith, have made an impression, indelible 
 upon his people. 
 
 THE TOWS HAS INTIMATE RELATIONS WITH NEW ENGLAND. 
 
 The relations of the settlers with the Indians were generally 
 peaceful. Both Pequots and Narraghansetts had invaded the 
 tribes residing on the East End of Long Island, and at times 
 extorted the payment of a tribute. To them the coming of 
 the whites gave promise of an alliance that might shield the 
 Island tribes, from the galling yoke and tributary burden, of 
 Pecquet or Xarraghansett oppression. Hence in the deed of 
 13th December, 1640, the provision tiiat the grantees, "the 
 above named English shall defend us, the said Indians {grant- 
 ors) from the unjust violence of whatever Indians shall ille- 
 gally assail us." (Records, Vol. I, p. 13.) But the Indian 
 was a barbarian, fickle, proud, selfish, resentful, subtle, wily, 
 
ADDRESS BY HON. H. P. HEDGES. 21 
 
 scheming, of uncertain temper when left to himself. Both 
 Pequot and Narraghansett intrigued and conspired with the 
 Island tribes to provoke war with the English. Thus the 
 Shinnecocks, from fear of the tribes on the continent to which 
 they were tributary, and suspicion of the English, whose 
 power they dreaded, were as a magazine which the smallest 
 spark might kindle to explosion. Each party were carefully 
 watching the other. Hence the order on the records of Jan- 
 uary 21sfc, 1642, for training, and of October 9th, 1642, for a 
 nightly watch. (Records, Vol. I, pp. 26, 27.) 
 
 In May 1645, probably influenced by Poggatacut, Sachem 
 of Shelter Island, then the royal sachem, he, the sachems of 
 Montauk, of Shinnecock, and Corchaug. offered their services 
 as against the English to the Dutch. (See foot note by my 
 friend, Wm. W. Tooker, of Sag-Harbor.) 
 
 The Older of October 29th, 1645, as to bearing arms to the 
 meeting house on the Lord's Day, directs that ''the one side 
 of the town shall bear armes the next Lord's daye and the 
 other side of the town shall bear armes the next Lord's daye," 
 &c. (See Records, Vol. I, p. 3S.) The order of November 
 ISth, 1644, enjoins those that bear arms "sliali have a suffi- 
 cient coslet of clabboard or other wood in continual readiness." 
 (Vol. I, p. 34.) The word "coslet" is evidently a misspelHng 
 of corselet, denoting a breastplate or like defence against ar- 
 rows. By order of May 6th, 1647, all were summoned to 
 bear arms on the Sabbath. (lb, p. 46.) 
 
 The order of October Sth, 1650, enjoining the frequent 
 training of soldiers and choice of officers, shows the sense of 
 impending peril. (lb. p. 67.) The direction in 1653 for dis- 
 tribution of powder and shot, again indicates the presence of 
 danger. (lb. p. 94.) In 1657 the town had been assailed 
 and the assault repelled. The houses of Thomas Goldsmith 
 and Mrs. HoweU were burned. (lb. p. US.) The contribu- 
 tion to Goldsmith on account of this loss and ''the fire money" 
 
22 FIFTH SEMI-CENTE^'NIAL OF SOUTHAMPTON. 
 
 named in the deed of John Ogden, refer to the tax levied on 
 the Shinnecock tribe, to compensa^te the inhabitants for 
 their loss. (Tb. pp. 65, 1G7.) 
 
 In 1655, at the meeting of the Commissioners of the United 
 Colonies of New England, at New Haven, Capt. Topping, of 
 Southampton, and John Young, of Southold, appeared with 
 letters, &c., and urgently asked for powder and shot and aid, 
 against Ninigret and the Narraghansetts. (See Plymouth 
 Colony Records, Vol. X, p. 149.) The murder, by Indiana, 
 at Southampton, was incited, if not perpetrated, rather by 
 Narraghansett than Shinnecock malice. (lb. p. 9S.) 
 
 The commission to Major Mason to go to Southampton 
 with 19 men, &c., is dated May 15, 3 657. (See Conn. Colo- 
 nial Records, Vol. I, p. 299.) The vote of this town of 10£ 
 to Major Mason, March ]6, 1S57, "given him as a gratuity," 
 evidently relates to the hostilities of this period and the de- 
 sired aid of this old Indian fighter. (See Records, Vol. I, p. 
 119.) Southampton and the neighboring towns of Southold 
 and East-Hampton were all within the Narraghansett scheme 
 of universal extermination of the whites, and devoted to des- 
 truction. Lyon Gardiner, hero of Saybrook Fort, first Eng- 
 lish planter resident of the state of New- York, and Wyan- 
 dance, great sachem of Montauk, and finally of the wliole 
 Island, were fast friends to each other and to the whites. It 
 is not improbable that their aid alone saved these towns from 
 destruction. The blood of the sachem has long been extinct. 
 To the many descendants of the honored Island Pioneer, we 
 express our tribute of grateful remembrance. Gardiner may 
 have approved and controlled the choice of site for settlement. 
 His prior residence, knowledge of the country and Indians, 
 and friendship with Wyandance, would impel the locating 
 company to consult him. The eastern shore of North Haven 
 runs southerly in a line almost straight to the foot of Division 
 street in Sag-Harbor, and thence to the ocean, marking, sub- 
 
ADDRESS BY HON. H. P. HEDGES. 23 
 
 stanfcially, the dividing line of the towns of East and South- 
 ampton, and of the Montauk and Shinnecock tribes. If the 
 friendship of the Indians could be attained, their hostility ap- 
 peased or repelled, Gardiner wonld probably know. He 
 knew that the waters, rolling without and within Southamp- 
 ton swarmed with fish, that her forests abounded in game, 
 that flocks of fowl hovered in the air, that her magnificent 
 ocean plain was unsurpassed for the production of corn and 
 /fn^its life-giviog summer breeze, that the outlook from the cliffs 
 and headlands of her northern shore over her majestic Peconic 
 Bay, was inimitable, and knowing would commend. 
 
 THE TOWN HAS INTIMATE RELATIONS WITH NEW EK GLAND. 
 
 In the enterprise of colonizing Long Island, the aspiring 
 minds of New England men engaged with zeal. How the 
 Captain of the vessel was a freeman in Lynn as early as 1636, 
 and in 1638 Lieutenant of the artillery company. Edward 
 Howell was a freeman in Boston, who removed to Lynn and 
 owned five hundred acres of land there. In the order of the 
 General Court of 22 October, 1644, there is reference to the 
 ten acre lot of Mr. Winthrop, and eight acres which was ap- 
 pointed unto Mr. Cole, of Hartford. (Vol. I, p. 33.) Win- 
 throp was the referee chosen in the first Farret deed to fix 
 the rent. James Hampton was from Salem. (lb. p. 130.) 
 Appeals to the General Court at Hartford, were frequent, 
 (lb. pp. S3, 84, 122, &c.) Delegates from this town went 
 regularly to the General Court at Connecticut. (lb. pp. 119, 
 Vol. II, p. 22.) Soldiers as Major Mason defended this town 
 — soldiers from this town went to the Main. (Vol. I, p. 103.) 
 Ministers from New England preached here. The like con- 
 ditions, the like faith, similar purposes, pursuits, perils, 
 thoughts, aspirations, predominated here as there. First of 
 all and over all, was the same religious creed. Second and 
 only second to that, was the like desire of great souls for po- 
 litical freedom in larger degree. 
 
24 FIFTH SEMI-CENTENNIAL OF SOUTHAMPTON. 
 
 PURITAN THEORY OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 Persecution confirms, consolidates and strengthens the per- 
 secuted. All history shows that it defeats itself. The perse- 
 cution of the Puritans in England is no exception. Organized 
 for mutual help, they fled to Holland, to Plymouth and else- 
 where. Disowning all priestly authority they chose their 
 minister from their own numbers and at will they deposed 
 him. The church was one of equals, holding all powers with- 
 in itself; a pure democracy. The duty of bearing one an- 
 other's burdens, of mutual aid, of universal love, was of uni- 
 versal obligation. This theory, as they believed, derived and 
 derivable from the Decalogue and the precepts of the Gospel, 
 constituted every church an organic body, vitalized, perpetu- 
 ated, controlled within itself. The logic of this theory of 
 church organism and church constitution led to the like theory 
 of civil government. Who could not see, that if within the 
 church itself, independent of Priest or Hierarch or Ecclesias- 
 tical d^jrfomination, by the equal suffrage of her members, 
 ministers could be chosen, government instituted, order estab- 
 lished, organic life born and perpetuated ; so in the colony or 
 town, the suffrage of the people could organize government, 
 create order, elect magistrates, enact laws. If within the 
 church and by its suffrages power ecclesiastical was derived, 
 the like powder in the state from the suffrage of the communi- 
 ty was derivable. The eagle eye of Elizabeth, the learned in- 
 stincts of the 1st James, the presentiments of the 2d James 
 and both the Charles' had discerned danger to the throne in 
 the prevalence of Puritanism. The antipathy was not un- 
 natural and not unfounded. If language had not formulated 
 the epigram, ^'a church without a Bishop, a state without a 
 King," they understood the tendency of Puritanism, and ar- 
 rayed their royal power to drive it from the earth as a foe to 
 be destroyed. Puritanism was ever a foe to tyr^n^and des- 
 potism, a friend to the people and their rights. 
 
ADDEESS BY HON. H. P. HEDGES. 25 
 
 TOWN MEETINGS. 
 
 The political, organizing, governing genius of the Pioneers 
 j^n^ conspicuously in their Town Meetings. This meet- 
 ing was composed of that body of Freemen accepted as such 
 by the voters themselves, and those only. It was required 
 that a Freeman be 21 years of age, of ^'sober and peaceable 
 conversation, orthodox in the fundamentals of religion," and 
 have a rateable estate of the value of twenty pounds. (See 
 Baylis' History of New Plymouth, Vol. I, p. 230.) The suf- 
 frage was limited but not so far as to prevent the government 
 in the main from being the wisest expression of the popular 
 will. Six Freemen and one Magistrate being present consti- 
 tuted a quorum for business. (See Records, Vol. I, p. 8S.) 
 This Town Meeting, called the ^'General Court," because in 
 the first instance it tried important cases, above the Magis- 
 trate's jurisdiction and heard appeals from their decisions, 
 elected all town officers, and when convened for such electio; . 
 was called a '-'Court of Election." (See Records, Vol. I, pp. 
 76, 83, S6, 87, 105, 108.) Of necessity the meeting must 
 exercise powers of the widest scope, comprising subjects do- 
 mestic, foreign, civil, martial, military, commercial, religious, 
 national, sovereign. At the commencement, in Jan. 1641, 
 (p. 25) the powers of the General Court are defined, includ- 
 ing power to ordain magistrates and ministers of justice, to 
 punish offences, and execute the decrees of court ; "to make 
 and repeale laws," to levy taxes, to hear and determine all 
 causes, whether civil or criminal, &c. (Vol. I, p. 26, &c.) 
 But even this definition was imperfect aud limited. Who 
 could correct the errors of the Town Meeting except the 
 town itself? "It's a far cry to Lochaw !" The colony swung 
 free and solitary, as an orb in space, must control itself or fall. 
 Practically it did so govern. If an unwelcome inhabitant 
 sought to intrude himself into their community they would 
 not accept him as snch. Whom they would they accepted. 
 
26 FIFTH SEMI-CENTENNIAL OF SOTTIIAMPTON. 
 
 and whom they would they rejected. A power as sovereign 
 as that of naturalization, they exercised without scruple or 
 doubt, and often forbid the entrance of convicts and tramps 
 into their community. No drone was allowed in their hive. 
 No crime escaped its prescribed penalty. The Records 
 abound in instances of exercise of the highest powers. By 
 the terms of the Indian deed of 13th December, 1640, the 
 grantees were bound to defend the grantors "from the unjust 
 violence of whatever Indians shall illegally assail us." This 
 league or alliance, agreed to in the purchase of the territory 
 and made a condition, was binding or considered so on the 
 town or Town Meeting, which made or authorized its Magis- 
 trates to make regulations, rules, treaties or ordinances as a 
 Sovereign Power dealing with the Indians. (See Records, 
 Vol. I, pp. 22, 30, 37, 89, 90, 114, &c.) 
 
 It is intensely interesting to study the workings of this 
 town government, by Town Meeting. The meeting all the 
 while assuming increasing power because the circumstances 
 required it and because no power was near enough to be felt, 
 to reverse its acts. If an inhabitant desired to sell his land to 
 a stranger, unless allowed by the town, he could no more tlien 
 invest an alien with title than he can now do so under our 
 present law of escheat. The power of the Town Meeting 
 over the town territory, to prevent transfer of title to a stran- 
 ger or unaccepted unnaturalized inhabitant was exercised as 
 absolutely then as now by the State. (See Records, Vol. I, 
 pp. 25, 49, 78, 90, 111.) The Town Meeting, composed 
 wholly of proprietors, regulated the inprovement, fencing, 
 pasturage and division of lands. (lb. pp. 34, 38, 42, 76, 77, 
 78, 79, 84, 85, 91, 98, 115, 129), imposed taxes, (lb. pp. 39, 
 44, lis), directed the laying out of highways and labor there- 
 on, the building and repair of bridges and sidewalks, (lb. pp. 
 24, 53, 103, 114, Vol. II, p. 110.) It elected delegates to 
 the General Court of Connecticut, (lb. p. 119), it provided 
 
ADDKESS BY HON. H. P. HEDGES. 27 
 
 for the settlement of estates of persons, deceased, (lb. pp. 64, 
 65, 95, 109), it provided property inducements for the settle- 
 ment of mechanics and ministers, (lb. pp. 81, 84, 102,) it or- 
 dered a prison built, (lb. p. 37), it voted a bounty for the 
 destruction of wolves and wild cats, (Eb. pp. 31, 85, 185), it 
 commanded aid to be given to the miller to obtain a fall of 
 water, (lb. pp. 7S, 94), it regulated trade with the Indians, 
 (lb. pp. 22, 30, 60, 89, 90, 114), it controlled the whaling 
 enterprise, (lb. pp. 23, 91), it prescribed a watch and ordered 
 a watch house built, (lb. pp. 89, 164.) 
 
 These are but a few cases of the exercise of power by Town 
 Meeting, and could be almost indefinitely multiplied. At an 
 early day our ancestors had acquired experience in the method 
 of conducting this meeting. In the Record of July 7, 1645, 
 we read this : ''It is ordered for the prevention of disorder in 
 the Court that no person whatsoever, except the magistrate 
 or magistrates, shall speak in any business which concerns 
 the General Court unless he be uncovered during the tyme of 
 his speech. And not to move or speak to any other matter 
 until the former matter be ended. And that there be noe 
 private agitation by any particular person to prevent the pro- 
 ceedings or issueing of any matters. And whoso shall make 
 default shall be lyable to paye sixe pence and the constable 
 shall distress upon the goods of the offender and to present 
 the said fines to the next General Court." 
 
 Absence from the Town Meeting, or neglect to vote when 
 there or refusal to accept office were punishable by a fine, 
 (lb. pp. 23, 30, 76, 103, etc.) That government by the peo- 
 ple might not fail, attendance at Town Meeting, voting there, 
 and acceptance and service by an elected officer, were com- 
 pulsory, neglect finable. The fathers permitted no shirking 
 of duty. Their system was thorough. Let it not be thought 
 that order cost no struggle. Sometimes the authority of 
 magistrates and the town itself was ridiculed and defied. 
 
28 FIFTH SEMI-CENTENKIAL OF SOUTHAMPTON. 
 
 Even the most respected pioneers would be overcome by 
 wrath to unjust expression. But if Thomas Halsey "obsti- 
 nately hindered the time of the Court," if Henry Pierson, 
 venerated name ! threatened if any man should strike his dog 
 "lie would knock him down," if Arthur Bostic challenged Mr. 
 Stanborough "to fight," and if Mr. Stanborough unlawfully 
 "rescued a distress," the strong hand of the magistrates, and 
 Town Meeting as a General Court, censured and fined the 
 transgressor. The heavy arm of Justice, embodied in Town 
 Meeting, fortified by public sentiment, irresistible by public 
 approval, compelled the delinquent to submit to the sentence, 
 and acknowledge his fault or pay the fine. All resistance to 
 the will of the people was overcome. All individual defiance 
 and disorder was crushed out. (lb. pp. 39, 401.) The Town 
 Meeting moved with the momentum of the many and put 
 down private and personal opposition. Fist law and shot 
 gun law and chaos failed. Town Meeting reigned. Some 
 of the most strong-willed, pugnacious, combative souls that 
 first trod this continent, tried their individual strength against 
 the collected will of the town. The beating wave no more 
 moves the unshaken rock, than the individual wave of wrath 
 moved the Town Meeting from its fixed position. The au- 
 thority of government by the people for their good stood like 
 a pyramid on its base, unmoved by all individual assault. 
 The fiery chieftain whose pugnacity was a proverb in 1656, 
 "for his unreverent carriage toward the magistrates, contrary 
 to the order, was adjudged to be banished out of the town, 
 and he is to have a week's liberty to prepare himself to de- 
 part," &c. (lb. p. 112.) 
 
 After this signal failure to resist or subvert the authority of 
 the Town Meeting, resulting in the inexorable sentence of 
 banishment, who could hope to overthrow an authority so 
 firm, so invulnerable. If the Bull Rider of Smithtown failed 
 to batter down the citadel of town authority, no one giant 
 
ADDRESE BY HON. H. P. HEDGES. 29 
 
 hand could do more. The American boy who remembers the 
 Town Meeting of three and four score years gone by, its ma- 
 terial and appetizing attractions, its atliletic sports, the col- 
 lected might of the yeomanry, the exalted wisdom and dread 
 majesty of the moderator, the imposing array of strength and 
 numbers, the overcoming vote of the majority, the shrinking, 
 dwindling vote of the minority; to him, the colossal propor- 
 tions of Town Meeting as a vital political force in the public 
 history of the town, is not fancied or unreal. The French 
 writer DeT^queville, some half century since, philosophizing 
 concerning this subject, saw Town Meeting from the undis- 
 coyerable standpoint of France. Bryce, the late English 
 writer on the American commonwealth, looking from the 
 standpoint of the British Isles, saw through the splendors of 
 the British throne . that original foundation political institu- 
 tion known as Town meeting, and declared it ^'has been the 
 most perfect school of self government in any modern country." 
 (Vol. II, p. 27G.) To the born American, undazzled by the 
 splendors of the throne, unaffected by the electric light of 
 rank, living 
 
 "Where none kneel save when to Heaven they pray, 
 Nor even then unless in their own way." 
 
 To him, the Town Meeting is the bed rock of American free- 
 dom, on which her free institutions and the fair temple of her 
 liberties were reared. Child of the people ! born in the wild- 
 erness, cradled in peril, trained in hardship, surviving the 
 challenge of disorder, the seductions of wealth, the arts of the 
 demagogue, the frown of royalty, the cynic's sneer ; may it 
 live forever ! the beneficent gift of America to the unborn 
 millions of every age, of every clime. 
 
 SOUTHAMPTON CONFEDERATES WITH CONXECTICUT. 
 
 May 'iOth, 1643. the colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth, 
 Connecticut and New Haven, with the plantations in combi- 
 nation with them, adopted Articles of Confederation for thei 
 
30 FIFTH SEMI-CENTENNIAL OF SOUTHAMPTON. 
 
 mutual welfare and protection. (Palfrey's History of New 
 England, Vol. I, p. 2G2, &c. Atwater's History of New Ha- 
 ven, pp. lSl-2.) 
 
 "March 7th, 1643-4, it was voted and consented unto by 
 the General Court that the town of Southampton shall enter 
 into combination with the jurisdition of Connecticit." (Rec- 
 ords, Vol. I, p. 31.) The order of Town Meeting of June 
 20th, 1G57, fixes the date when the town was received into 
 the combination, as '^May 30th, 1645," (lb. p. 136.) The 
 combination with Connecticut made Southampton not only a 
 member of the colony of Connecticut but also a member of 
 the general confederation of the four colonies. Thereby, 
 while Southampton was bound to aid in defending Connecti- 
 cut and the whole confederacy, they were pledged, with all 
 their power, to aid in her defence. (Palfrey's History of 
 New England, Vol. I, p. 263, &c. Atwater's History of New 
 Haven, pp. IS 1-2. Howell's History of Southampton, p. 5.) 
 The confederation was called "The United Colonies of New 
 England." It was represented and spoke by two commis- 
 sioners chosen from each colony. The internal affairs of each 
 town an(' colony wore kft to their control. Question of "of- 
 fence and defence, mutual advice and succor upon all just 
 occasions, both for preserving and propagating the truth 
 and liberties of the gospel, of their own mutual safety 
 and welfare," were controlled by Commissioners repre- 
 senting the colonies so leagued and and confederated. Ex- 
 cept "the exigency constrained, one colony might not 
 engage in war "without the consent of all." Except "by 
 consent of all," no two members shall be united in one 
 and no new members shall be received, (lb.) The ap- 
 pointment of men, money and supplies for war, were to be 
 assessed on the respective colonies in proportion to the male 
 population, "between the ages of sixteen and sixty," and "the 
 spoils of war were to be distributed to the several colonies on 
 
ADDRESS BY SON. H. P. HEDGES. 31 
 
 the same principle." The .concurrence of six commissioners 
 controlled, and failing this, the questions being referred to 
 tiie general courts of the several colonies, the concurrence of 
 them all was binding. The Commissioners were to meet 
 yearly on the first Thursday in September, and oftener if oc- 
 casion required, at places prescribed. The choice of a Presi- 
 dent, the general policy of proceedings toward Indians, the 
 return of fugitives from justice or service, the remedy for 
 breach of the alliance by an offending colony — all these sub- 
 jects were included in and provided for in the Articles of Al- 
 liance and Confederation (lb.) Thus early on American soil, 
 was instituted this first of all confederacies of the colonies, so 
 complete in its anticipation of contingencies, in its conception 
 of surroundings, in its adaptation to circumstances, that it 
 endured assaults, external and internal, for twenty years, un- 
 til tiie invasion and subjection of New Netherlands by the 
 English, and the enforced rule of Royal Governors under the 
 then Duke of York, in 16G4, afterwards King James the 2d. 
 This league so complete in its extent, so just in its provisions, 
 so wise in its principles, so practical in its policy, comprised 
 in its scope the democracy of the Town Meeting, the repre- 
 sentation of Towns in the Colonial Assembly, (called also the 
 General Court,) the representation of the united colonies in 
 the body of Commissioners. Seemingly com^/lcx, it was in 
 in reality simple. Its machinery was well fitted for the work 
 it had to do. 
 
 In all local and town affairs the practical knowledge of the 
 yeomanry of the town, assembled in Town Meeting, was su- 
 perior to that of any non-resident, however wise. They 
 knew their wants, their grievances, their interests, their 
 ability and inability, their circumstances, and could best de- 
 vise measures for relief or redress. The delegates of the towns 
 composing the colony assembled as its legislature and highest 
 court, representing the whole and every part of the colony, 
 
32 FIFTH SEMI CENTENNIAL OF SOUTHAMPTON, 
 
 could wisely legislate and decide for all. The Commissioners 
 of the united colonies representing their union and clothed 
 with powers that covered and only covered subjects of general 
 concern, affecting the welfare and safety of all the so united 
 colonies, could best legislate for the union. It is needless 
 that I stop here to show that this machinery of government 
 by towns, by colonies, by confederated states foreshadowed 
 what was to come. The thought of the hearer outstrips the 
 words of the speaker. Before the recital ends comes the 
 flashing conviction that in the early history of these colonies 
 the free institutions of this wonderful nation of the United 
 States was born. The self-constituted government of South- 
 ampton and other early settlements in their Town Meetings 
 or general courts was an ancestral immunity transmitted to 
 posterity out of which the modern Town Meeting was born. 
 
 The delegates from all the towns in a colony assembled as 
 its Legislature, to ordain and enact laws for the general 
 good, and called the General Court of the colony, foreshadowed 
 tiie stnte governments which were born of the colonies. The 
 coiifcdnation and union of the four colonies of New England, 
 including in ilu; colony of Connecticut the towns of South- 
 ampton, East-Hampton, and afterwards Huntington and Se- 
 tauket, predicted the coming union of the colonies and of the 
 Independent States. By the laws of growth, by organic de- 
 velopment, in modern scientific terminology by evolution, this 
 transfiguration must transpire. The Provincial Congress 
 must grow out of the Colonial Assembly. The Continental 
 Congress and Confederation must grow out of the root of the 
 New England confederacy and union. By a logic and a law, 
 in politics as universal as simple, as immutable, as eternal, as 
 the law of attraction, the one must precede and produce the 
 other. At the time of this confederacy in the New England 
 colonies, of which our town was part and parcel, the civil 
 war was raffing in P^nsrland. The Lonor Parliament was sit- 
 
ADDRESS BY HON. H. P, HEDGES. 33 
 
 ting. The first Charles was claiming as regal the same power 
 which Parliament; under the British constitution, claimed as 
 pre-eminently its own. The conflict between these two in- 
 volved all the strength and energies of old England. New 
 England unhelped, nncared for, unnoticed, must defend, pro- 
 tect, pres3rve herself, or perish. Thus in 1G43, out of the 
 necessities of the case, the impending peril so near, the far off 
 absence and constrained neglect of old England, was born the 
 union of the New England colonies. 
 
 REPRESENTATION. 
 
 Writers upon Representative and Confederated Government 
 have sought by the analogies of the Achoean League, of the 
 Grecian and Roman Republics, of the Swiss Cantons, of the 
 Dutch RepubHc, of the Iroquois or six Indian allied nations, 
 of Ecclesiastical and Church government, to derive therefrom 
 the origin of the Government of these United States. Theo- 
 ries these, all far fetched. Our magnificent constellation of 
 republics and their union were born upon our own soil, nur- 
 tured by successive generations of freemen, evolved from col- 
 onial childhood and ''The United Colonies of Neiv England" 
 
 CAUSATION. 
 
 At the time of the Union the colony of Plymouth contained 
 eight towns ; Massachusetts thirty ; Connecticut, including 
 Saybrook and Southampton, six; and New Haven, including 
 Southold, five. (Palfrey's History of New England, p. 275.) 
 Forty-nine organized democracies, represented in four colonial 
 assemblies, and all in the Commissioners delegated to act for 
 the union, the seed corn which planted grew from ocean tu ^^iy~" 
 ocean. It is improbable that the early colonists had any 
 thought of an independent republic in voyaging over the At- 
 lantic, or in their exile on its western shore. To Wiiithrop, 
 compeer of our fathers, came the vision of a renovated Eng- 
 land in America, enlightened, purified, spiritualized, domi- 
 nated by loftier principles, aiming at higher results, moving 
 
34 FIFTH SEMI-CEMTENNIAL OF SOUTHAMPTON. 
 
 towards a higher destiny. (lb. p. 110.) Independence, as 
 an object attainable, and to be attained, came as the hard al- 
 ternative of degradation and servility, postponed until forced 
 to command regard. Sudden as the lightning flash it broke 
 out of the clouds and storm of war, and the whole electric air 
 of the continent felt its flame of fire. Yet sudden, and start- 
 luig, and surprising, as was the battle cry of Independence, 
 who can doubt that the long school of hardship^ the long ex- 
 perience of Freemen in the government of their towns, the 
 early estabhshment and maintainance of churches and schools, 
 the training of their militia, the constant watch and guard 
 against tiie savage, the conflict with the Pequot, and Narra- 
 ghansett, and Mohawk, the wars with France and Spain, the 
 siege and capture of Quebec and Louisburgh, the temerity 
 and defeat of Braddock, the masterly retreat of the young 
 Provincial Washington ; the whole antecedent history of the 
 settlements on the western shores of the Atlantic, from Plym ' 
 outh Rock, for over three half centuries, was but an augment- 
 ing stream of causation that burst all barriers of thrones or 
 dynasties, cast away all obstacles of Kings or Nobles, called 
 for the reign of the people and that only. Even Franklin 
 and other great souls, laboring earnestly for the redress of 
 wrongs, like the prophets of old, unknowing the meaning of 
 the revelations made to them, awoke as from the profound 
 sleep of submission to the battle call for Independence. 
 
 THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR. 
 
 The wave of the Revolution found the Town of Southamp- 
 ton comparatively populous. The census of 1776 showing 
 J, 434 people residing east ol the Watermill, and 1,35S west 
 tlieieof All were animated by the burning spirit of Patriot- 
 ism. All who were liable to military duty were enrolled, 
 officered, organized, armed. The second regiment of Suffolk 
 County counted nine companies of 7G0 officers and men, com- 
 manded by David Mulford, of East-Hampton, Colonel, and 
 
ADDRESS BY HON. H. P. HEDGES. 35 
 
 Jonathan Hedges, of Bridge-Hampton, Lieutenant Colonel. 
 East-Hampton furnished two companies, Bridge-Hampton 
 two, Sag-Harbor and Bridge-Hampton jointly two, and South- 
 ampton three. In addition to this the regiment of minute 
 men commanded by Col. Josiah Smith, of Moriches, called 
 from Southampton one company commanded by Capt. Zeph- 
 aniah Rogers, numbering 61 officers and men, and another 
 from Bridge-Hampton numbering 59 officers and men. Of 
 these selected minute men, Elias Pierson, Corporal in Capt. 
 Rogers' company, stood 6 feet 6 inches high, tallest of the 
 tall. The relative importance of the county of Suffolk and 
 the early history of its towns is shown by many facts, and 
 briefly thus, ^^581 quota of Suffolk, 200 of Queens, 175 of 
 Kings, 58 men to reinforce the Continental aimy at New- 
 York, June 7th, '76." (See Onderdonk's Revolutionary inci- 
 dents of Suffolk and Kings counties, p. 27.) The latest re- 
 search shows that the whole force of Eastern Long Island 
 was engaged in the disastrous battle named from the Island 
 whereon it was fought. Thereafter very many joined the 
 Continental army, and the defence of the people and stock on 
 Long Island required the presence there of every available man. 
 The subsequent military occupation of the Island by the Brit- 
 ish, broke up the regiments organized or organizing by the 
 Americans there. Time fails to tell the story of that armed 
 occupation. Who can photograph the depression of defeat, 
 the confusion of the fleeing, the consternation of the defence- 
 less, the quartering of hostile troops, the extorting of supj'lies 
 by the British, the destruction of supplies by Aniejicans, each 
 grasping to starve the other and thereby starving the people, 
 plundering by the lawless of both, insults of the brutal, the 
 provoking exultation of the foe, the sullen submission of the 
 subjugated, their fears for the safety of absent friends fighting 
 for freedom on land and sea, defeats of the American army 
 magnified, their victories belittled, every aspiration for inde- 
 
36 FIFTH SEMI-CENTENNIAL OF SOUTHAMPTON. 
 
 peiideuce answered by the raven cry "Nevermore." If the 
 amenities of Gen. Erskine sometimes let in a gleam of light, 
 the barbarities of Major Cochrane soon transposed darkness 
 for light. For seven years after the battle of Long Island her 
 patriot people endured the blighting scourge of the conqueror, 
 tlje gnawings of unsatisfied hunger, "the pinching hand of 
 poverty," the shivering, vi^intry blast, the horrors of hope de- 
 stroyed ; seven vials of wrath poured out upon her inhabitants 
 and he r soil. W ashington said that Long Island furnished 
 )f all placesj)the earliest and most correct intelligence of 
 moveinents^oTthe foe. Not until Evacuation day were the 
 pent-up patriot passions of this people released from the hy- 
 drauhc pressure of British power. No town in the old 
 thirteen states welcomed Independence with a louder shout 
 than Southampton. 
 
 CELEBRITIES. 
 
 Nor is this town undistinguished by men whose names have 
 been illustrious. Is a councilor wanting in 1665 ! Capt. 
 Thomas Topping of this town is chosen. Is a speaker re- 
 quired for the Assembly in 1694? Henry Pierson of this 
 town is chosen. Does the great city of London in 1773 re- 
 quire a High Sheriff to repress disorder and execute decrees 
 of courts? This town supplies the officer in the person of 
 Stephen Sayre, a native born citizen, friend of Franklin, friend 
 of freedom. Does the Empire State demand a chancellor to 
 preside over its High Court of Equity ? Nathan Sandford, a 
 native of this town, is appointed thereto. Does the old coun • 
 tv of Suffolk summon her selectest sons to preside over her 
 courts ? What town but Southampton can furnish in succes- 
 sion judges like Hugh Halsey, studious, upright, learned, or 
 Abraham T. Rose, eloquent, gifted, accomplished. For three 
 successive Presidential campaigns the village of Bridge- 
 Hampton supplied tlie successful candidate for elect^^^ii, in 
 IS40 Gen. Abraham Rose, in ] 844 Judge Hugh Halsey, in 
 
 ffV 
 
ADDRESH BY HON. H. P. HEDGES. 37 
 
 1848 Judge Abraham T. Rose, each actually voting for the 
 elected candidate. Does Japan seal her ports against all 
 Christian intercourse and commerce ? Mercator Cooper, 
 master mariner, stem of the old Southampton stock, rescues 
 from starvation and death twenty-two Japanese, and in 1845 
 boldly eni,ers the prohibited port and returns them to their 
 native land, bearing in his mission of humanity at the mast 
 head of the whaleship Manhattan, the stars and stripes, (ex- 
 cepting the limited Dutch traffic) the first Christian flag that 
 floated in Japan air, the first Christian ship that entered a 
 Japan port, the first Christian master who dare defy the na- 
 tion's sentence of exclusion. What shore so desolate? what 
 solitude so secluded ? what island so remote, that the ships of 
 Sag-Harbor have not visited ? In all her long history the 
 sons of Southampton have upheld her honor, in the sphere of 
 adventure, of music, of painting, of the arts, of learning, of 
 legislation, of the legal, the medical, tne ministerial pro- 
 fessions. 
 
 THE puritans' MERITS. 
 
 Let it not be said that the theme is hackneyed, that lan- 
 guage has acquitted itself in proclaiming the sublime self-de- 
 nial, the heroic fortitude, the Spartan courage, the devoted 
 patriotism, the steadflist faith, the fervent piety of the Fathers, 
 that art has paid its debt in monuments of magnificence to 
 commemorate their virtues, that learning has meted its full 
 measure to perpetuate their remembrance. Neither language 
 nor learning nor art can adequately express the lofty ideal 
 they attained ; the self-consecration they made. Early in 
 the dawn of historic light, the patriarchal characters stand out 
 like giant profiles ; masterly types of personified virtues, 
 priest and prophet, sage and lawgiver, hero and bard, at long 
 intervals succeed each other. It was not inappropriate that 
 the pen of Jehovah should outline the perfected piety of 
 Enoch, the persevering obedience of Noah, the un/^serving hi ^, 
 
38 FIFTH SEMI-CENTENNIAL OF SOUTHAMPTON. 
 
 faith of Abraham, the unfalterhig trust of Job, the great lov- 
 ing heart of Joseph, the lofty patriotism of Moses, the resist- 
 less valor of Joshua, the superhuman strength of Samjison, 
 the strategy and songs of David. 
 
 These great spirits gave for their posterity and for the race 
 their utmost in word, in deed and life. The long self-denial, 
 the unfailing patience, the undoubting faith, the stern justice, 
 the high resolve, the pure patriotism of our fathers, seem 
 allied to the greatest and first-born of the sons of earth. No 
 mere human words, no monuments of art, no expression of 
 human learning, however exalted and however graceful, will 
 exhaust the subject or overpay the debt humanity owes to 
 the founders of the infant colonies of this transcendently great, 
 free and happy nation. Let music sing its highest harmonies^ 
 let eloquence attain its loftiest utterance, let painting portray 
 its most exquisite lines, let statuary unfold its grandef^t con- 
 ception, let monumental art lend its perfected ideal, let poetry 
 breathe its seleccest sentiment, let piety consecrate her purest 
 offering, and then, ah, then, the light that shines from the 
 Pilgrim's tomb, the song his soaring spirit sings, the senti' 
 ment his life made real, shall be more radiant, more elevated, 
 more pure, than all expression of art, of music, of eloquence. 
 Since the founders of this town first landed on its shores, eight 
 generations have come and gone. The innocence of infancy, 
 the joy of youth, the vigor of maturity, the decay of strength, 
 the decrepitude of age, the inevitable end, have chased each 
 other. On this fleeting hour, and on us now living, has de- 
 volved the sacred duty of celebrating this day, and commem- 
 orating the memory, the history, the solid worth of our an- 
 cestors. Standing over the crumbling consecrated dust of 
 eight generations who have followed them, as wave follows 
 wave, the solemnities of the occasion are severe. To the ears 
 of their dying came the ocean's moan ; with the ebbing of its 
 tides their lives went out j over their burial place sounds its 
 
ADDRESS BY nON. H. P. HEDGES. 39 
 
 unceasing requiem roar. Inheriting their names, receiving 
 the fruit of their toils, depositors of their fame, entrusted with 
 their free institutions, children of their affection, guardians of 
 their graves, let us cherish their achievements ; let us treasure 
 their traditions ; let us preserve their principles ; let us honor 
 their memory ; let us transmit, unsullied and unimpaired^ our 
 bright inheritance to succeeding generations. 
 
 One of our own untiring antiquarians has recorded the tra- 
 dition, that at the first landing of the Pioneers one of the 
 number, a woman, said : "For conscience sake, I'm on dry 
 land once more !" This expression of a past disquiet, of a 
 present gratification, is impressed upon the spot, which from 
 that day to this has borne the name of "Conscience Point." 
 Name not inappropriate and not unknown to the Argonauts 
 of Southampton. For •'conscience sake" their fiitherland is 
 forsaken. For "conscience sake" they crossed the stormy 
 ocean. For "conscience sake" they suffered and they toiled. 
 In all her long career, inscribed on the banner that floated 
 over Southampton, that streamed in her pure air, that signi- 
 fied her ruling motive, that impelled her to action, was writ' 
 ten her watchword, "Conscience." No insignia of rank, no 
 emblazoning of heraldry, no bearings armorial, no symbol of 
 command, so appropriate and so true. Till time shall end, 
 till the earth shall be dissolved, till "the elements shall melt 
 with fervent heat," let her watchword be unchanged. Aye! 
 in that grand concurrence of the Nations called by the Arch- 
 angel's trump to hear the eternal equities, inscribed on her 
 banner, may there be nothing more unworthy than her own 
 glorious countersign, "Conscience." 
 
 As if responding to the utterance of the mighty shades of 
 of the dead, let us live as they lived, let us look as they long 
 looked for the coming triumphant march of their principles. 
 Burdened with the weight of years, your speaker in this pub- 
 lic utterance, (possibly his last), cannot forget the generations 
 vanished, the mutability, the mortality of all humanity. 
 
40 FIFTH SEMI-CENTENNIAIi OF SOUTHAMPTON. 
 
 "A few more ntorms shall beat 
 On this wild rocky shore, 
 And we shall be where storms shall cease, 
 And surges swell no more." 
 
 Nor will we forget the cheering promise our history por- 
 tends. Rescued from all perils, triumphant over all foes, un- 
 divided by all differenceSj you, with me, will look forward to 
 advancement of the nations, to the progress of humanity, the 
 elevation of mankind ; you with me will say : — 
 
 "Hail ! to the coming singers ! 
 Hail ! to the brave light bringers ! 
 Forward I reach and share 
 All that they sing and dare. 
 The aii'S of heaven blow o'er me ; 
 A glory shines before me 
 Of what mankind shall be, 
 Pure, generous, brave and free. 
 A di'eam of man, and woman 
 Diviner, but still human, 
 Solving the riddle old, 
 Shaping the age of gold ! 
 
 The love of God and neighbor ; 
 An equal-handed labor; 
 The richer life where beauty 
 Walks hand in hand with duty. 
 Ring, bells in um-eared steeples, 
 The joy of unborn peoples ! 
 Sound, trumpets far off blown ; 
 Yovu* triumph is my own ! 
 I feel the earth move sunward, 
 I join the great march onward. 
 And take by faith while Hving, 
 My freehold of thanksgiving." j . • 
 
 The natives of the east end of Long Island made frequent visits 
 to New Amsterdam, Hartford, and sometimes as far north as 
 Boston. On the 2-4th of May, 1645, the Sachem of Shinnecock, 
 Witaneymen, with forty armed Indians, appeared before the 
 Director and Council of New Netherland, at Fort Amsterdam, 
 Manhatten Island, and offered their services. Therefore he and 
 his Indians were permitted to embark in one of the Company's 
 
ADDEESS BY HON. H. P. HEDGES. 41 
 
 vessels and were sent up the Hudson river to discover the Lidians 
 who were then at war with the Dutch. Having discovered their 
 whereabouts, he was to attack them, and to return, when he 
 would be rewarded as he deserved. This duty he performed, and 
 five days later brought in the head and hands of one of the 
 enemy. Wittanymen is the Sachem, called in the East-Hampton 
 deed of 1G48, Nowedonah — the "seeker." It is probable that he 
 derived this latter title from the above fact, that he was to spy 
 and to seek out the enemies of the Dutch, who were Indians liv- 
 ing about Esopus Creek. The Indians frequently changed their 
 names from similar haj^penings in their lives. On the same day, 
 (May 29th, 1645) havmg shown what he could do, Wittanymen 
 again appeared before the Council of New Netherland, declaring 
 to be empowered by his three brothers, to mt : Rochkouw, the 
 greatest Sachem of Ahaquatuwamuck (Shelter Island and parts 
 adjacent), Momoweta, Sachem of Curchaug, and Wyandance, 
 Sachem of Montauk, and stated m his own name, as well as in 
 that of his brothers that they had taken under their protection 
 the villages named Unkechaug (on Mastic Neck, Brookhaven,) 
 Setauket, Secatogue, (Neck at Ishp,) Nissequogue (a locaUty on 
 the river of the same name,) at which place the Mattmecocks then 
 resided, and Rockaway, and requested to walk in friendship. 
 The Council promised them peace and protection as long as they 
 and the villages named, remained in theii- duty. These 47 armed 
 Indians, were probably not all from the Shinnecock tribe, but 
 were culled from the bands ruled by the foui- brothers. (Col. 
 His. N. Y. Vol. XIV, p. 60.) 
 
 The year previous (1644) the brothers, with Yoco or Rockouw, 
 at their head appeared before the Commissioners of the United 
 Colonies of New England at Hartford, on the same errand, and 
 asked for a certificate of protection, which was given them. 
 (Plymouth Col. Records, Vol. IX, p. 18.) 
 
 That both the Dutch and English considered it policy to pro- 
 pitiate the Indians of Long Island in every way that lay in their 
 power, is amply proven by many of the early records. In 1647 it 
 came to the notice of the Council of New Netherland that the 
 Sachem of Massapeag m what is now South Oyster Bay townshij?, 
 had excited, by gifts, some Indians to war against the Dutch and 
 EngHsh, and that they were resolved to destroy the English at 
 Hempstead, while they were in theii- fields harvesting, to which 
 plot the chief of Curchaug (Southold town,) Momoweta and his 
 brothers at Montauk, Shinnecock and Shelter Island had agreed. 
 Although the Dutch considered this an idle report of the English, 
 they believed it to be of sufficient importance to send Sec'y Van- 
 
42 FIFTH SEMI-CENTENNIAL OF SOUTHAMPTON. 
 
 Tienlioven, wlio understooJ the Indian language, in a sloop to the 
 east end of Long Island to enquu-e of the chief Momoweta of 
 Curchaug, whether the report be true or not, and to present the 
 chief and his brothers with three cloth coats and some trifles. 
 This record from the Dutch archives seems strange when we 
 consider the proximity of the English settlements, but the fact 
 remains that at this period harmony did not prevail between the 
 nations and the settlers. At this time the Shinnecock Sachem 
 and probably most of the tribe were residing on the north shore 
 at or near Sag Harbor. (Col. His. N. Y. Vol. XIV, p. 79.) Even 
 as late as 1G75 Gov. Andros wovild not permit the Indians of 
 Rockaway, Unkechaug and parts adjacent to assemble at Seca- 
 togue (West Islip) for a Kintecoy, "to sing and to dance," and 
 du'ected the constable of Huntington to take away their arms and 
 to order the Sachems to proceed to New- York to meet the Gov- 
 ernor. (Col. Hist. N. Y. Vol. XIV, p. 709.) 
 
 Complaints were frequently made against the Dutch, Avho at 
 that period, as well as to-day, were born traders, eager and gTeedy, 
 for the sldns, wamjDum and other commodities that were prodviced 
 by the red men and procured by easy barter. This greed often 
 led them into waters not under their jurisdiction, thereby causing 
 trouble and annoyance to the English settlers who found their 
 red neighbors in possession of implements of war, obtained in 
 some way unknown to them, thus becoming a constant source of 
 worry and anxiety to the simple tillers of the soil. The following 
 is the result of a complaint from the town of Southampton 
 against Govert Loockmans, of the sloop Good Hope ; he m oiUm 
 mentioned in the Dutch records. On Sej^t. 28th, 1G48, two 
 sailors appeared before Cornelis Van Tienhoven, the Secretary 
 of New Netherland, and declared it to be true that they had been 
 in the months of October, November, 1647, with Govert Loock- 
 mans in his bark along the coast from New Amsterdam, Pehehe- 
 tock, (Peconic) Crommegouw, (Gardiner's Bay) and New Haven, 
 during which voyage they did not see^ nor even know that Loock- 
 mans himself, nor any of his crew, had du-ectly or indii-ectly, 
 traded or bartered with the Indians, there or elsewhere, any 
 powder, lead or gims, except that he made a present of a poimd 
 of powder to the Chief Rochbouw in Gardiner's Bay, and bought 
 two geese "from him, and half a deer at Pahetoc, (Peconic or 
 Pehik-konuk, probably Indian Island, Eiverhead town. It means 
 a "small plantation or village'') with powder without having 
 given or exchanged anything else. — (Colonial History N. Y. Vol. 
 XIV, p. 94.) 
 
 The complaint is referred to in a letter from Gov. Eaton, of 
 
ADDKESS BY HON. H. P. HEDGES. 43 
 
 New Haven, to Gov. Stuyvesant, at New Amsterdam, dated May 
 31st, 1648, as follows: 
 
 "Janiia. the 3d, 1G47, a complaint was brought from the 
 Eughsli att Southampton, that Govert Lockoman had bynne 
 latelie trading with the Indians of those ptes, who reported that 
 after he had sould them some coates he declared that if they 
 would buye more, with everie coate hee would giue a pound of 
 powder, which pcured him a quicke markett and soe furnishes the 
 Indians with powder that they could sell to the EngHsh ; and the 
 same Indian further testified that Govert wisth them to cutt of 
 the English and the Dutch (to such a worke) would furnish them 
 with peeees, powder and shott enough, wch soe provokes the 
 Engl, at Southampton, that had they order they would have 
 ptaide Govert and his vessell." — Now Haven, Col. Records, Vol. 
 I, Appendix p. 524. 
 
/ 
 
 ADDRESS BY GEORGE ROGERS HOWELL 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: A few days after I received the 
 courteous invitation to take part in the exercises of this occa- 
 sion, I wrote to Judge Hedges, who deservedly was chosen as 
 orator of the day, inquiring what was to be the theme of his 
 address, inasmuch as I did not wish to be in danger of select- 
 ing by accident the same subject for m)?^ own remarks. You 
 shall judge if I did not receive a characteristic answer. **If a 
 whale," said he, "should swim in the ocean from Wainscott 
 to Seatuck in the forenoon, in the afternoon four more whales 
 would find the ocean left and could swim the same. So you 
 will find in the afternoon the ocean left." 
 
 Now as it really happened, my caution was justified. If I 
 had not done this, one whale would have been grounded. 
 For, after casting about for a theme, I had concluded to make 
 prominent the theory that our national republic had been the 
 natural outgrowth of the early Southampton Town Meefino;. 
 But I feel sure that this question or theory has been the more 
 ably treated by one who has had the benefit of a legal train- 
 ing, and of whose attainments and judicial fame the town and 
 county are justly proud. His familiarity with the law indeed 
 is such that I doubt not his earnest advice to his neighbors is, 
 always to keep entirely out of it, and to settle their disputes 
 over a glass — of lemonade. Perhaps the best thing I can say 
 for his perspicacity is in matters theological. If the system 
 of marking in the schools were carried out in manhood, in all 
 the various relations of life we should have to give him the 
 perfect mark, save one. In church doctrine, by his superior 
 spiritual insight, he has been all his life heterodox, until at 
 last the church has caught up with him and made him ortho- 
 
ADDRESS M GEORGE R. SOWELL. 45 
 
 dox. As his modesty is equal to his worth I will spare his 
 blushes and proceed. 
 
 The celebration of the day, among other things, furnishes 
 opportunity to commemorate the settlement of the town and 
 to consider the character ot our ancestors. In rearard to the 
 first I have but little to say. My labors in this field are al- 
 ready in print. According to that old manuscript that I migJd 
 have found in the old writing desk of my grandflither, and ac- 
 cording to other and abundant evidence, two hundred and 
 fifty years ago to-day, then or thenabout, the first ship-load 
 of Englishmen with their wives and children to found a colo- 
 ny in the State of New-York, was landed at North Sea, or 
 Cold Spring Harbor. They were here in June, and in time 
 to raise a crop of Indian corn, barley, beans, pease, turnips, 
 and pumpkins. Potatoes were not known to the world until 
 more than a hundred years later. Their numbers were con- 
 tinually increased by accessions of families. The rapidity of 
 the colonizing is clear from a comparison of the names of the 
 signers of the articles of settlement and of the list of watchers 
 on the beach for whales in March 1G44-5. Of the twenty 
 signers in March 1639-40, only six remained as settlers, and 
 of the fourteen who thus intended to come, most never came 
 at all, or removed during the first year. On March 7th, 1644- 
 45, we find 2T additional family names not on the list of 
 signers before mentioned, and all or nearly all of these were 
 probably married men. Of these 27 additional names eleven 
 men with their families left the plantation to become the 
 founders of East-Hampton, in 1348. In the list of March 
 1648-49 or 1649-50, we find eight other flmiil} names added 
 to the settlement. Thus it grew by steady gradual accessions 
 and by the natural growth and increase of population. ' For 
 many years in the first cei?tury of its life it was the second 
 town in population, weulth, trade and importance, in what 
 now constitutes the state of New- York. The county courts 
 
46 FIFTH SEMI-CENTENNIAL OF SOUTHAMPTON. 
 
 were held here. It is the only town on the east end that is 
 found on many of the early maps, even after the settlement of 
 Southold and East-Hampton. Cargoes of whale oil were 
 shipped directly from Southampton to London. Later on, to 
 be sure, a number of other towns either grew up or sprung 
 up, such as Brooklyn, Buffalo, Albany and Rochester, whose 
 population according to the last census is somewhat greater 
 than that of Southampton. But, a rediscovery of the town 
 about 1877 by some wealthy navigators, or other citizens of 
 New-York city, has resulted in making the village a second 
 Newport. It was a creditable discernment on their part, as 
 a more genial summer climate, or a more healthful or lovelier 
 villafire it would be hard to find within two hundred miles of 
 the metropolis of America. What it is to-day needs no words 
 of mine to delineate. It lies before you. It certainly is not ij 
 the sleepy hollow of my boyhood days, and if it be a summer 
 resort, it is a matter for congratul)/tion, as it grows fairer to d-/ 
 the eye with its elegant residences and ^green lawns, no ' 
 drunken brawls make night hideous, but the ocean lulls to 
 repose, a village whose denizens have earned a rest by honest 
 work of hand and head. But we must be retrospective to- 
 day. We must call up in imagination, as best we may, our 
 ancestors and ask ourselves what manner of men and women 
 they were. What had they in common with us ? On what 
 points do we touch them and they us ? Are they to-day 
 nothing but names and intangible shadows ? Let us apply a 
 test. Do we sympathize with them, or have any feelings in 
 common with them, when we mention railroads, the tele- 
 graph, or Browning or evolution. No. Unless their gaze 
 has swept down on the earth and followed the march of the 
 race, these are meaningless words to them. But ask them, 
 did you love the Christ ? Yes, .they say, and our hands are 
 grasped in quick sympathy. They are our brothers and sis- 
 ters as well as our ancestors. Ask them again : Do you love 
 
ADDRESS BY GEORGE R, HOWELL. 47 
 
 man ? '^Yes, yes ; see what from scanty means we raised to 
 redeem Christian captives from Algerine slavery." Did you 
 love your country ? "Let the soldiers who went from our 
 midst to defend the remote borders of the north from the rav- 
 ages of the French and Indians answer. Let another genera- 
 tion of our patriots in the revolution tell you the story of their 
 marches and battles and the sufferings of Valley Forge." Ask 
 them still once more : Did you love your wives and children ? 
 "Did we love them ? For them we left our English homes 
 to brave the perils of the ocean, and the unknown dangers of 
 the wilderness, to found a shelter for them and to transmit to 
 our children both lands and liberty." 
 
 Here, then, we find, in all the essentials of true manhood, 
 grounds of sympathy full and perfect. John Cooper, Christ- 
 iopher Foster, Thomas Halsey, James Herrick, Edward How- 
 ell, Richard Post, Thomas Sayre, John White and others are 
 then no longer mere names — they are strong sympathetio 
 men, laying the foundations of a new republic and doing their 
 work well. They were puritans. Of late years there has 
 been, I think, an attempt to draw too great a distinction be- 
 tween the Pilgrims and the Puritans. The so called Pilgrim 
 fathers came hither from Holland in 1620 and settled Plym- 
 outh and the surrounding country. Up to their union with 
 the Massachusetts Bay colony in 1692, they o;ily numbered 
 13,000. The fiercest and most unrelenting of the Indians 
 lived far to the south of them, beyond the Puritan settlement 
 of Massachusetts Bay, so that their situation saved them from 
 the wars of self-defense waged by their sister colony. It has 
 been said that they learned religious toleration from the Dutch 
 during their residence in Holland, and that in their dealings 
 with the Indians they were less cruel, and with other religious 
 sects they were less intolerant than their Puritan neighbors. 
 It must be remembered that they also were Englishmen, 
 smarting no less than the Puritans under persecution at home. 
 
48 FIFTH SEMI-CENTEKNIAL OF SOTTHAMPTON. 
 
 Their residence in Holland was but ten or twelve years, and 
 that time was certainly too brief to change their character, 
 and for one, I doubt if the Dutch was at that time the nation 
 to teach toleration, when for twenty-five years in Albany the 
 same Dutch people did not permit public worship by any 
 denomination except their own. In religious doctrine and 
 church government the members of both colonies yre Presby- LArty 
 terians and Independents, living, not as some have described 
 them, as cats and dogs, but in good harmony together. 
 
 The movement for greater religious freedom in England 
 began under the teaching of Wiclif in 1378. His translation 
 of the Bible into the. English language sustained the new 
 doctrines, and the reading of the same vrrsion, revised later 
 by Cranmer, carried on the good work. The people were on 
 fire for knowledge of the word of God and for a public wor- 
 ship in their own tongue, without ritual. The potentates of 
 the English churchy then severed from Rome, resisted the 
 inovemcn!: and burned the Bibles. Under the protection of 
 tii<; reformation on the continent the printing presses of Ger- 
 many Hooded the market with English Bibles, which were 
 bouglit by the nui ( li.iiits of London, and by them dissemin- 
 ated throughout England. Under the short reign of Edward 
 the VI., the movement flourished, and the hopes of the Lol- 
 lards, as the reformers were called, grew brighter. The ac- 
 cession of Mary the Saturnine hghted the fires of Smithfield, 
 and checked the advance of the reformers. Under the long- 
 reign of her sister Elizabeth, persecutions ceased and the 
 reformation was firmly established. As the years went on 
 from the dawn of the English reformation, the cause gradual- 
 ly but surely advanced. Like a rising tide, while there is a 
 constant backflow of the waters, yet each incoming wave 
 creeps up a little higher than the last. Under the Stuarts 
 came the high tide of Puritanism, — but, to drop the figure, 
 there was then no room for them longer in England. " No 
 
ADDRESS BY GEOKGE R. HOWELL. 49 
 
 bishop, no king," said James the First. " Unless they con- 
 form," said he again, "I will harry them out of the kingdom." 
 And so they left their native land to found a church without 
 a bishop, and a country without a king. So flir as royalty 
 and its complicated supporters in church and state were con- 
 cerned, there was also a relief. A disturbing element was 
 removed. People who think for themselves are apt to dis- 
 turb tyrants. And then, there came from the distant colonies 
 a steady stream of gold from taxation, from the sale of lands, 
 and from trade. Puritanism 2000 miles away was also more 
 easily tolerated, and shocked no man's sensibilities. But 
 these men, these Puritan colonists were terribly in earnest. 
 They had a rugged theology, born of their history, and the 
 central idea of their government was a theocracy, and God 
 was their king. In our day only has the idea of the great 
 fatherhood of God been made prominent. They had always 
 lived under kings, and in their minds God was but a bigger 
 king. As evidence of this, note the preface to the code of 
 laws under which the Southampton colonists lived during 
 the first four years of the settlement while they formed an 
 independent republic. " An abstract of the lawes of judg- 
 ment as given by Moses to the commonwealth of Israel, soe 
 farre foarth as they bee of rnorall, that is, of perpetuall and 
 universall equity among all nations, especially such where 
 the church and commonwealth are complanted together in 
 holy covenant and fellowshippe with God in Jesus Christ, 
 being jointly and unanimously consented unto by the inhabi- 
 tants of this colony of Southampton." With all tlic'ir laults 
 the Puritans were the best men and women the world had 
 ever seen. Their principles M^ere not for sale. They were 
 unsafe men to attempt to bribe. They weie just men and 
 carried out their idea of justice in the minutest details of life. 
 The possible vagaries and mental obliquities even of dogs and 
 little pigs were subjects of legal enactment. They bad a 
 
50 FIFTH SEMI-CENTENNIAL OF SOUTHAMPTON. 
 
 high sense of justice and in some things at least, a liberal 
 spirit. Witness how in their articles of agreement they de- 
 clared that no man should '' claim any exclusive interest in 
 seas, rivers, creeks or brooks howsoever bounding or passing 
 through his grounds, but freedom of fishing, fowling -and 
 navigation shall be common to all within the banks of said^lWlAa 
 whatsoever." They recognized the old principle of English 
 law that the fish running wild in the waters, and the game 
 in the forest, were the property of him only who caught 
 them. They allowed a margin even for the improvident man 
 to secure a dinner if he could and would, from the common 
 storehouse of nature. 
 
 I have said that they were the best men and women the 
 world had ever seen, [f you doubt it, search all the records 
 or the past for better types of manhood and womanhood, and 
 you will search in vain. But I believe their descendants are 
 both better and superior to them in many ways. We have 
 in the main inherited and practice their virtues. We may 
 have a mild belief that those who differ in opinion from our- 
 selves are cranks or old fogies, yet we do not persecute or 
 even tithe them. We would not if we could. We have 
 good authority for holding charity to be the greatest of 
 christian virtues. That flower of Christianity blossoms best 
 in a land of liberty^ and was reserved for our day and is to 
 some extent an evolution of our free institutions. The char- 
 ity I mean includes toleration and every grade of kindly 
 feeling from mere benevolence to a universal mighty love for 
 the brotherhood of man. I cannot stop to elaborate this. 
 This charity is not perfect, but it is abroad in the world and 
 growing daily. I have marked its growth in my own life- 
 time. I picture to you a scene that was once witnessed 
 doubtless by some before me. A good woman died in this 
 village within a month of her 78th year. The relatives and 
 friends were gathered to pay the last rites of earth to the 
 
ADDRESS BY GEORGE B. HOWELL. 51 
 
 deceased. She had lived a pure sweet life, her soul filled 
 with charity and her life with good deeds. But her name 
 was not on the roll of the visible church. Years and years 
 ago some peripatetic revivalist visited the east end of Long 
 Island and frightened two generations with his denunciations 
 of those who dared enter the church without certain and 
 sure evidences within their souls of their personal faith and 
 holiness. Abashed by the terrors awaiting those who might 
 unworthily partake of the communion, she never dared to 
 confront the session, but lived along, indulging a secret hope 
 in the savior of an invisible church. The mistaken soul who 
 did the alleged preaching at her funeral, confined, as he was, 
 in the straight jacket of a medieval theology, consigned her 
 to everlasting flames and held up her example as a warning 
 to the unrepentant. Now I say no such ghastly scene is 
 possible in this church to-day. We are wiser and better than 
 our Puritan ancestors in that we have a broader charity and 
 more trust in the father-love of the Almighty. We recognize 
 elements in the problems of life and morals that they either 
 did not perceive, or if they did, they refused to take into ac- 
 count in their estimate of human character and responsibility. 
 Inherited tendencies for good or evil, the circumstances and 
 environment of early life, all of these contribute largely to 
 the formation of character, and for not one of these is a man 
 or woman personally responsible. A man is the result of his 
 antecedents modified by his environments. Let me men^ 
 tion one other point in honor of our ancestors. The degree 
 of civilization of any country is measured by its treatment of 
 its women. They came from a country where wife-beating 
 was common, and where it is legally permitted to this day, 
 when in the judgment of the husband correction is needed. 
 But I do not remember to have seen a single case in the 
 American history of the Puritans where this brutal treatment 
 was ever imposed on a woman. The fact is, the men saw 
 
62 FIFTH SEMI-CENTENNIAL OF SOUTHAMPTON. 
 
 their wives and mothers and sisters bravely accepting the lot 
 of colonists, performing cheerfully their duties with a dignity 
 and self-reliance thac won their respect. For obedience with- 
 out discussion, there came to the wife a responsibility with- 
 out limit. The women grew equal to the demands upon 
 them. Their facile fingers wrought the little ornaments, and 
 their fertile brains susrarested the little comforts that made the 
 first rude houses into attractive homes. They were the in- 
 tellectual efjuals, and in devotion, often the superiors of their 
 husbands. As the years went on, instead of losing this hon- 
 orable position, the women of the country won still higher 
 honor. European travellers in America about the time of 
 the revolution write of their surprise at the attainments and 
 the brilliant conversation of the women they met in public 
 assemblies, surpassing the female leaders of society in the 
 capitals of Europe. When at a brilliant assemblage of the 
 President and high government officials and foreign ministers 
 at Philadelphia in 1790, the English minister said courteously 
 to Senator Tracy, of Connecticut, "Your American women 
 would be admired even at St. James." " Yes, I have no 
 doubt of it, — they Lire admired even at Litchfield Hill." 
 
 Our ancestors have been charged with vanity in perpetu- 
 ating, or their friends for them, their titles, military, civil or 
 ecclesiastic on their tombstones. Why not ? All the world 
 does it and always has done it. The epitaphs of European 
 cemeteries show more titled names than are found in the 
 official blue-books fresh from the printing press. Why should 
 not these sturdy captains and good deacons be recognized on 
 the mortuary tablet! Why should any one grudge them the 
 honors which their virtues, their integrity and their intellect 
 had won for them from their fellow men ? Who calumniates 
 the oak for towering above his fellow ? Let the little oak 
 push up, if it will, the sky is broad and there is room enough 
 for all in the upper heights. 
 
ADDRESS BY GEORGE R. HOWELL. 53 
 
 Southampton people have done their work in the world, 
 and have passed on. Their descendants are in half the states 
 of the union, and are generally among the most intelligent 
 and substantial citizens of the state in which they live. Has 
 the town furnished any great men in the history of tne na^ 
 tion ? What is greatness, anyhow ? How do you measure 
 it ? Events, circumstances beyond their control^ and oppor- 
 tunities make so called great men. Furthermore, great men 
 are like objects in a fog, — the nearer you approach them the 
 less like giants they appear. I believe you may duplicate 
 the heroes of our five wars on land and sea, in every State in 
 the Union. There are Hampdens and Sidneys in every vil- 
 lage. It was not Corliss alone who made the great engine 
 that Gen. Grant set in motion at the centennial exhibition of 
 1876. Knowledge is cumulative, growing like a big snow 
 ball rolled in soft snow. It took 6,000 years and 500 gen- 
 erations back of Corliss to make the work possible. But, it 
 is moral greatness, after all, that carries the brightest light 
 into the other world and there receives the greater honor. 
 And high moral worth has no sex. Among women there are 
 moie martyrs now living than have ever died at the stake. 
 Let it be remembered to-day, that for moral heroism, for all 
 in human character that is worthy of our respect and admira- 
 tion, our foreniothers are in no whit inferior to our fore- 
 fathers. 
 
 As to success in accumulating wealth, — you remember 
 Bunyan's man with the muckrake. He stepped down from 
 the highest plane of manhood, he lost sight of the beauty and 
 glories of the world, and the satisfaction of benevolence and 
 the sacred ministrations of charity, but, — he raked up the 
 dollars. Observe a group of boys playing with their marbles. 
 One has half a dozen, another a score, and another a hundred. 
 The latter may have used the muckrake or he may have in- 
 herited them. What matter I You a man look at them. A 
 
54: FIFTH SEMI CENTENNIAL OF SOUTHAMPTON, 
 
 farm absorbs your cares — that means a larger horizon, pro- 
 vision for yourself, your wife and children. The interests of 
 a family or a community are interwoven with yours. Or 
 you are engaged in still larger enterprises, or making laws 
 for States, or defining the policy of nations. Do not the 
 marbles seem a very trifling affair, fit only for children 1 
 Now turn to the works of the Almighty, see the million 
 forms of organic life, all interdependent, growing up under 
 mysterious laws, perpetuating themselves and dying to make 
 room for others, — is there not here a field for a reverential 
 student's devotion ! Study the globe itself, a mausoleum of 
 whole races of living creatures and unfamiliar vegetation, and 
 you will find you need many lifetimes to read its history. 
 Point your telescope to the heavens and watch the march of 
 suns and constellations into distance beyond distance, with 
 other planetary systems traihng in their wake, many or all 
 inhabited by intelligent beings, — and the boys with their 
 marbles, and the man of the muckrake appear to shrink in 
 value and importance. And what is this world, or all worlds 
 compared to a good man or a good woman ? The worlds 
 will perish^ — they are even now occasionally snuffed out of 
 existence, — but the children of God live, live, live. And 
 these are the men and the women who for eight generations 
 have been going up higher from your midst. The question 
 is answered. They are now great, beyond all earthly greats 
 ness^ these Puritan ancestors of Southampton. 
 
/ 
 
 ADDRESS BY WILLIAM S. PELLETREAU, 
 
 Fellow Citizens of Southampton : 
 
 When our esteemed friend, Mr. George R. Howell, was 
 about to prepare his address, he wrote to the Hon. Henry P. 
 Hedges to inquire as to the principal points of his oration, 
 in order that they might not trespass on each other's ground. 
 He received the characteristic reply, '^ If a whale from Ama- 
 gansett meets another whale coming from Seatuck, they will 
 both find plenty of room to swim." That letter was in this 
 case our salvation. It seemed to say, ''play the part of a 
 little fish and take good care not to get in the whale's way." 
 When one whale meets another in our vast ocean, they pass 
 by in silent majesty, but if they meet the little fish, — the 
 little fish finds himself inside the whale. Jonah was a great 
 man and he left an immortal name, but I would not go 
 through his experience to be called a prophet, even in my 
 own country. With this in view, I very willingly yield to 
 my honored associates the field of eloquence and theory, and 
 content myself with the simple facts that make up history j 
 being comforted by the consoling thought that little fish can 
 swim where great whales would certainly run aground. 
 
 Returning to our native town after a lengthened absence, 
 we feel like a son (I trust not the Prodigal) returning to his 
 father's home. And all the villages that we have known so 
 long and so well — Bridge-Hampton, Sag- Harbor, North 
 Haven, Sagg, Good Ground, Atlanticville, Quogue, West- 
 Hampton, Speonk, Eastport, Flanders, North Sea — South- 
 ampton welcomes you all. 
 
 The stranger who visits this ancient town, cannot fail to 
 notice first of all, the solid and substantial nature of the 
 
66 FIFTH SEMI-CENTENNIAL OF SOUTHAMPTON, 
 
 dwellings that remain as relics of the clays when the settle- 
 ment was in its infancy. Houses still exist that sheltered 
 men who could remember the dawn of our history. One, 
 the oldest of all, has passed its two centuries of existence, 
 and with care and attention may see another. We once 
 asked a practical carpenter why it was, that people in the 
 olden time used such immense timbers when half or a quar- 
 ter of the size would answer the purpose. His reply was, 
 that timber was plenty in those days and they might just as 
 well use it as not. There is a much better reason than that. 
 During the past few years it has been our fortune to reside 
 in various portions of the State. Not like the ordinary 
 traveler who passes through on a railroad train, stops at a 
 hotel, looks around for an hour or two and thinks he has 
 seen the whole ; but living long enough in each particular 
 locality to gain a kuowledge of its history and of the inner 
 life of the people. In one section we noticed with surprise 
 the very inferior character of all the old buildings. Every- 
 thing built previous to the early part of the present century, 
 if made of wood, was sure to be in the last stages of dilapida- 
 tion, and if built of stone there was an unmistakable air of 
 cheapness about it. The first impression was that they must 
 have been built by a poverty-stricken class of settlers who 
 could afford nothing better. A more careful examination 
 showed an entirely different reason. That entire section of 
 country was embraced in an immense land grant covering 
 thousands of acres, and formerly owned by one of the famous 
 historical families of the State. The arable portion of this 
 land grant was divided into farms of two or three hundred 
 acres each, and leased to tenants on life leases, leases for one, 
 two, and sometimes three lives. Now here was a system of 
 land tenure based upon the most uncertain of all contingen- 
 cies, the duration of human life. The man who took the 
 \ease and built his house had, of course, no assurance as to 
 
ADDKESS BY WILLIAM S. PELLETREAU. 57 
 
 how long he might enjoy it, and the lives that came after his 
 were equally uncertain. Accident or disease might cut them 
 short at any moment; an epidemic might extinguish the titles 
 of half a neighborhood, and as the three lives were sometimes 
 running simultaneously, the time at best could not be very 
 far in the future when the land would revert to its original 
 owner. Occasionally a man would sell his lease with the im- 
 provements ', this was invariably done at a loss, for the time 
 that had elapsed took away just so much from the sum total, 
 and besides there was the element of uncertainty, which was 
 a most important item in the calculation. The natural result 
 was that anything that looked like permanent improvement 
 was very carefully avoided. Houses and buildings of all 
 kinds were put up as cheaply as possible, and without the 
 slightest regard to durability. If they lasted their time, it 
 was enough ; beyond that they had no care. In a region 
 where fruit trees will grow with a luxuriance and produce 
 with an abundance, which we, accustomed to Southampton 
 soil and Southampton climate cannot understand, it required 
 tlie most stringent clauses to be inserted in the leases, in or- 
 der to compel tenants to set out orchards, the benefits of 
 which they would be almost certain to enjoy. 
 
 Now, when we come to Southampton, we find an entirely 
 different state of things. From the very earliest settlement 
 down to the present day, every man owned his laud in fee 
 simple absolute. When a man built his house he did it, not 
 only with the assurance of enjoying its shelter while life to 
 him remained, but with an equal assurance of transmitting it 
 to his descendents, or if he wished to dispose of it, he was 
 equally certain of obtaining a fair valuation. Now, when we 
 look upon these ancient houses with their massive frames and 
 solid covering that has withstood the storms of two centuries, 
 it is not "because timber was plenty and they might just as 
 well use it as not," but because the men who built them 
 
58 FIFTH SEMI-CENTENNIAL OF SOUTHAMPTON. 
 
 knew that they were building for posterity. Timber was 
 just as plenty in Ulster County as in Southampton, and stone 
 was infinitely plentier, but here there was every inducement 
 for permanent improvement; and there, there was no induce- 
 ment at all. 
 
 What was true of this place was equally true of all the 
 New England settlements^ and had no small effect in determ- 
 ining the character of the people, and if there is any trait that 
 has marked the people of the east end of Long Island in the 
 past, and in the present, and we trust will continue in the 
 future, it is stabiHty. 
 
 The first settlers broughL with them all the customs and 
 modes of thought and action to which they had been accus- 
 tomed in their native land. Men may change their locality, 
 but in all other things they do not change ; the truth is that 
 wherever a man goes he carries himself with him, and tne 
 same peculiarities and habits that mark him m his native vil- 
 lage will mark him at the North Pole or in Central Africa. 
 Perhaps this is what the Ancient Poet meant when he said : 
 
 "The skies above us change, but we change not," 
 
 and, 
 
 "What exile from his country can flee himself as well?''' 
 
 Most of the early settlers of East-Hampton were originally 
 dwellers here, and their separation and departure is the first 
 event of importance in our history. Most of them appear to 
 have come from Kent, while those who remained were prob- 
 ably from Yorkshire and the adjoining regions. The individ- 
 ual members of the two settlements do not appear to have 
 been connected by the bonds of relationship, and from that 
 time forth they formed two distinct colonies. Considering 
 that East-Hampton was the nearest settlement, it is surpris- 
 ing how little communication there was between the two 
 places during the colonial period, and the separation has been 
 quite as complete in later time. It is difficult to imagine a 
 
ADDRESS BY WILLIAM S. PELLETEEAU. 59 
 
 town more completely isolated from the rest cf the world, for 
 a period of several generations. If the comm-inication with 
 East- Hampton was little, that between Southampton and the 
 next western settlements in the town of Brookhavet: was still 
 less. A long journey through a dense forest separated them 
 from Setauket and the Manor of St. George, and the Patent- 
 ship of Moriches. Between the inhabitants of the two towns 
 there was neither relation or acquaintanceship, and the occa- 
 sions when they came in contact were few and far between. 
 On the south there was the barrier of the mighty ocean, while 
 on the north the wide bay which, in contradistinction from 
 the ocean, they called the "North Sea," (a name perpetuated 
 by a village on its shores), separated them from the equally 
 early settlement of Southold. Within these narrow limits the 
 Colony grew and flourished, the sons and daughters of the 
 settlers intermarried, and in the early part of the last century 
 there was scarcely a family which was not more or less closely 
 connected with the rest. The natural result was a fellow 
 feeling of sympathy, based on the well known principle that 
 "blood is thicker than water." The few who went away did 
 not materially decrease their numbers. The few who came 
 from abroad soon made the manners, customs and mode of 
 thought of the new home, their own, and so for a long series 
 of years they formed a typical community, apart from all the 
 world, and where 
 
 "Far from the madding crowds' ignoble Btrife, 
 Theii- humble wishes never learned to stray. 
 Along the cool, sequestered vale of life 
 
 They took the noiseless tenor of tlieii" way." 
 
 In such a community permanence of customs would be the 
 rule, and changes the exception, and any important change 
 would come from causes outside of themselves. 
 
 We have said that the founders of the towns brought with 
 them the ideas and modes of thought to which they had been 
 accustomed in the old country. One of these was the respect 
 
(){) PlfUti SEMI-CENTENNIAL OF SOlTTSAMtTON. 
 
 for lawful authority, which had been impressed upon the 
 minds of so many generations of Englishmen that it had be- 
 come a second nature. During the Cew years that Southamp- 
 ton was a government by itself, the General Court, consisting 
 of the freemen of the towns, elected all officers, and to these, 
 the people readily and without reserve, transferred the respect 
 and obedience which they had so long been accustomed to 
 yield to the officers appointed by the British Crown. It 
 should be noticed that no new officers were made. The of- 
 ficers with their titles and their duties were precisely the 
 same as those to which they, and their fathers before them, 
 had rendered obedience, and honored as standing in the place 
 and representing the authority of the King. The highest of 
 these in tlie new settlement were the Magistrates, the Cons- 
 tables and the Captain of the train band. To the first of 
 these as Justices of the Peace, honor and respect has been 
 justly given through all the long period that has elapsed since 
 the founding of our town down to the present day, and the 
 office for two centuries and a half has been filled by men who 
 have commanded the respect and esteem of their fellow citi- 
 zens, from their innate worth, integrity and nobility of clmr- 
 acter, as well as from their official position. But it would be 
 curious indeed to trace the office of Constable from the time 
 when it was the highest office in the town, and sought for 
 and held by the best citizens, down to the present day, 
 when it is not always easy to find a suitable person wil- 
 ling to accept the position. It was a high office when the 
 town was independent. It was higher still when under the 
 dominion of the Duke of York ; the ''Court of the Constable 
 and Overseers" was the highest tribunal of the town and the 
 Constable was the head of this tribunal. No wonder then 
 that the most prominent citizens were appointed to the office. 
 He was on a level with the minister, which was saying a 
 great deal in those times. A curious illustration of tiiis is 
 
ADDEESS BY WILLIAM S. PELLETREAU. 61 
 
 found in the record of the laying out of Hog Neck in 1680 ; 
 when it was expressly stipulated that no man should sell his 
 lot to any one "who was not approved of by the minister 
 and the constable." Now Hog Neck (or North Haven as it is 
 now called) has a pretty respectable class of inhabitants, but 
 we greatly feai that if this rule were enforced, some would 
 find it necessary to move to the Sag-Harbor end oi the bridge. 
 In those days if the pulpit was vacant and a new minister re- 
 quired, the Constable would be considered a very proper 
 person to send for one. It would hardly be thought so now. 
 He was probably the only civil officer who wore a uniform, 
 and carried a sword as part of the insignia of his office. Little 
 by little in after years the powers of the office were lessened, 
 and upon the formation of counties the Sheriff succeeded to 
 the power and dignity that the constable had once enjoyed ; 
 and though, at the present time, the office in this town is 
 filled by good and worthy men, yet they cannot be said to 
 derive much honor from their official positions. 
 
 While our neighboring town of Southold was founded with 
 the avowed intention of strictly uniting Church and State, 
 our own town was not founded on any such plan. From the 
 statement in the Agreement of the first settlers, or "under- 
 takers" of the plantations, "that when it should please the 
 Lord to add to their number men who should be fit matter 
 for a Church," they would submit to them "to be, or not to 
 be, received as members, according as they should perceive 
 the work of God to be in their hearts," we should conclude 
 that the founders of the town were not Church members. 
 However that may be, it remains certain that when it might 
 seem as if all their time and labor would be fully required in 
 prepareing homes and shelter for themselves, the minister and 
 the Church were provided for first of all. From that time 
 until after the Revolution the minister, without exception, 
 was in all social matters, the foremost man in the community, 
 
62 FIFTH SEMI-CENTENNIAL OF SOTTHAMPTON. 
 
 He was the only man of liberal education and this, in itself, 
 placed him far beyond the rest, for learning was scarce, and 
 valued accordingly. A comfortable home was provided, and 
 the stipulated salary always promptly paid ; small as it might 
 seem now, it was large in proportion to the means of the 
 people, and ample for the wants of the times. 
 
 As the Church and the minister have ever formed so im- 
 portant a portion of the social life of our community, any 
 attempt to describe the social changes of the past, which 
 would not be largely devoted to them, would certainly fail of 
 its object, for there is nothing that shows in so marked a 
 manner the contrast between the past and the present. When 
 the Rev. Samuel E. Herrick, D. D., whose eloquence has 
 charmed us all, and to whom no one has listened with greater 
 pleasure than myself, had arrived at the ripe and matures age 
 of nine years, and was consequently fully competent to grap- 
 ple with all the problems of life, he communicated to us his 
 grand plan for getting rich. He assured us that "as soon as 
 he was a man" he intended to start three businesses at once, 
 and be a shoe maker, a store-keeper and a minister. His 
 plan, wliich \\v. cNi.l.iiiied with much earnestness, was to have 
 a store w iih a shoe-maker's bench at one end. When there 
 were no customers to wait upon he could make shoes, and on 
 Sundays, when, of course, he could neither make shoes nor 
 *"tend store," he could preach. Circumstances, it seems, 
 have prevented him from carrying out two-thirds of this in- 
 genious scheme ; but the other third has been accomplished 
 with such marked success that we can readily pardon the 
 omission of the rest. But the curious part of it is that there 
 was a time in the history of Southampton when such a 
 scheme, which might now seem so ludicrously impracticable, 
 was not only perfectly practicable, but actually put in prac- 
 tice. All of our early ministers had the use of the Parish 
 farm, and cultivated it with their own hands. Rev. Sylvanus 
 
ADDRESS BY WILLIAM S. PELLETREAU. 63 
 
 White, who was identified with this town and parish for a 
 greater length of time than any other pastor, was born in 
 1704; graduated at Harvard in 1723 ; settled in Southampton 
 as minister in 1726, and, after an unbroken pastorate of bt> 
 years, died in 1782 ; his mind not enfeebled by age. Of all 
 that he must have written during his long career, it is pass- 
 ing strange that not a scrap remains, except his Day Book of 
 accounts, which, fortunately, still remains, a most interesting 
 relic of the past. {Sec note A.) Every item of income and 
 expenditure appears to be entered in a most methodical man- 
 ner, and aftbrds abundant data for estimating the cost of sup- 
 porting a family of prominence and respectability. To this 
 we will allude more at large when we come to speak of the 
 changes in family life. In addition to carrying on his farm, 
 he kept a boarding school on a small scale, aid taught a few 
 boys, sons of wealthy and prominent men, in this and the 
 neighboring towns, the elements of the Latin language. Min- 
 ister White could say with the utmost propriety and the 
 strictest truth, "I am a flirmer, a school-teacher and a minis- 
 ter ; during week days I 'farm it' and teach boys Latin, and 
 on Sundays I preach." It would be difficult to find any radi- 
 cal difference between this plan, actually carried out, and 
 the one that existed in the youthful mind and vigorous 
 imagination of his eloquent and talented successor. This plan 
 of uniting pastoral labors with manual work, continued till a 
 comparatively late date. When the Rev. Mr. Babbitt came 
 to Southampton in 1816, he was (without having learned a 
 trade), a mechanic of no mean ability. His wife was a skilled 
 tailoress. Neither of them hesitated to earn an honest dollar 
 by these means 5 and this, in connection with the fact that 
 board was two dollars a week, explains the fact that he was 
 able to lay up money on a salary of Three Hundred Dollars a 
 year. {See note B.) Times have changed (o such an extent 
 that any such arrangement, at the present day, would be de- 
 
64 ADDRESS BY WILLIAM S. PELLETREAU, 
 
 rogatory to both minister and people. One of the greater 
 changes in connection with pastoral life, is in the nature and 
 amount of personal intercourse between minister and people. 
 This, in the old times, was of the closest kind. The pastor 
 was the personal friend and acquaintance of every person in 
 his extensive parish ; the counsellor of the old ; the adviser of 
 the young ; the assistant of the widow 5 the protector of the 
 fatherless. From the cradle to the grave, their lives and ac- 
 tions were his care and solicitude. When books were few, 
 and of newspapers none, the sermon was remembered and 
 discussed during the week, with an earnestness that cannot 
 now be realized. Ministers' sons were always supposed to 
 set a good example to godless youth ; and their wives and 
 daughters were always expected to be the visitants of the 
 sick, and the comforters of the afflicted. It would be better 
 for all concerned if we had not left these things behind. 
 
 We have spoken of books as being few ; they were few 
 iiid( eJ ; and it is very characteristic of the times that, previ- 
 ous to the Revolution, a very large proportion of them were 
 religions works ;ind volumes of sermons were more numerous 
 than uU others TIkjsu were generally published by subscrip- 
 tion, and contained at the end a list of the subscribers. 
 Benjamin Franklin was a free thinker, but more than half the 
 books he printed v^^ere rehgious works. A few volumes of 
 history were owned by fortunate persons ; these were care- 
 full}'' studied, and to say of any one that he was a ''well read 
 man" was a mark of distinction. A college education was 
 something very rare. In the burying ground at Sagg there 
 is a moss grown tombstone with the inscription "Here lies 
 the body of Mr. Henry White, Student of Yale College, who 
 died May 5, A. D., 1748, in his 23d year." {See note C.) 
 The fact that he was a student being considered of sufficient 
 importance to record in that lasting manner. When Capt. 
 John Wick died in 17 J 9 he made provision in his will that 
 
FIFTH SEMI-CENTENNIAL OF SOUTHAMPTON. 65 
 
 one of his sons should be sent to College, and sets aside a 
 certain amount of property for that purpose, a sum which 
 would not be sufficient to defray six months' expenses at the 
 present time. Notwithstanding the veneration in which 
 learning was held, very little money was spent on schools till 
 within the last fifty years ; and what little was spent, was 
 done grudgingly and, to use the common expression, "came 
 like drawing teeth." There never was a time when it would 
 not be twice as easy to raise money to build a new Church, 
 as to build a new school house. The wretched shanties that 
 passed under the name of school houses, and the last of them 
 has very recently disappeared, were sad exemplifications of 
 that fact. To fully understand the reasons for this requires a 
 careful study of the inner life of people in the olden times. 
 Our first settlers came here and found a wilderness to conquer. 
 All their time and labor were required to gain a living ; their 
 homes, their clothing, their food were of the plainest kind, 
 and, from the day they landed till long after the Revolution, 
 there was not a man or woman in Southampton who did not 
 earn their daily bread by their daily labor. The class, now 
 quite numerous, who, fike the lilies of the field "toil not, neither 
 do they spin," have only existed here for a very few years. 
 Every thing was done by hand ; their food, their clothing, 
 the tiling of the soil, and the making of the tools with which 
 their daily work was done ; every thing was performed by 
 manual labor ; a day's labor meant from early in the morning 
 till sun down ; and, as for woman's work, that was never 
 done. A few generations spent in this manner, and work 
 became a second nature. To work was considered the natural 
 lot of all ; to say that one was a "hard-working-man" was 
 high praise ; whether he made anything by it was of much 
 less consideration. Under these circumstances, anything that 
 interfered with work, and called a man or boy away from it, 
 was looked upon with suspicion. When the first settlers 
 
66 ADDRESS BY WILLIAM S. PELLETREAU. 
 
 came here they brought minister and Church with tliem. 
 Connected, as they were, with all their hopetj of the eternal 
 world, they became part and parcel of themselves, and were 
 as necessary as the breath of Hfe. The minister must be sup- 
 ported, no matter how hard they might toil ; the Church 
 must be built at any sacrifice ; but schools and education were 
 looked upon, either as luxuries they could do without, or as 
 necessary evils. It was considered necessary tliat a boy 
 should learn to read and write, but the time spent in learning 
 was just so much tai\en from farm labor. It was not con- 
 sidered necessary that a girl should learn these things , the 
 large number of women who made their marks, when signing 
 Deeds, is ample proof of this. The pay of the school master 
 was small, even for those days. In 1694 Mr. John Mowbray 
 engaged "faithfully to teach ihe school in Southampton" for 
 six months for 12 shillings per scholar ; he was guaranteed 
 twenty-two scholars, which would make his salary about 
 Forty Dollars, and he boarded himself. It would be curious 
 to compare the school of those diys with that of the present 
 time. The first qualifications of the school master was to be 
 a good penman. The autographs of some of them are to be 
 seen among our Town Records, and their complicated flourish- 
 es must have excited much admiration. Beyond this, Httle 
 was required, except a fair knowledge of arithmetic. His 
 salary was increased by small sums for writing Deeds and 
 Wills, and he would assist the Town officers in settling Town 
 accounts. The school books were very few in number, but 
 we know that slates and spelling-books were used in the 
 middle of the last century and they cost two shillings, six 
 pence apiece. Boys who studied arithmetic had a bhmk 
 book, in which "sums" were carefully copied, after having 
 been wrought out on a slate. It seems to have been the pride 
 of a good scholar to have a neat copy-book. Some of these 
 we have seen, with examples illustrating all the rules of the 
 
FIFTH SEMI-CENTENNIAL OF SOUTHAMPTON. 67 
 
 arithmatic, especially the '^Rule of Three," or, as it was then 
 called on account of its supposed importance, the ^'Golden 
 Rule," which is now superseded by the more rational process 
 of analysis. Geography and grammar were only studied by a 
 few; and if any were ambitious to go beyond these, they had 
 to employ the minister as a private teacher. 
 
 And speaking of geography reminds us of the wonderful 
 changes of the last century. Prior to the Revolution there 
 was no Western country. After that, the "West" meant the 
 middle of the State of New- York. To the next o:eneration, 
 the "West" was the Ohio region. When the oldest persons 
 present were boys, the "West" meant Illinois and Indiana, 
 and the Mississippi was the boundary of an unknown land. 
 When the middle aged were children, the "West" was Kan- 
 sas and Nebraska. For the children who now throtig our 
 schools, the circle has returned to its beginning, and there is 
 no "Western country." 
 
 Next to the minister and the school master comes the doc- 
 tor, for the former were here long before the latter. For long 
 years after the settlement, there appears to have been no phy- 
 sician in town. A "Dr. Craig" is once mentioned, but he 
 certainly was not a permanent resident. Families then "doc- 
 tored" their ailments with domestic remedies. It was a part 
 of the duty of a good hourewife to lay in a good stock of 
 herbs at the proper season. "Yarb teas" of all kinds were 
 given in cases of sickness; and, if they did no good, they cer- 
 tainly did no hurt. It is quite a question whether many of 
 these herbs were not brought with the first settlers from 
 England, with the traditional knowledge of their efficacy. 
 Some of them are never found, growing wild, far from the 
 haunts of men. However this may be, each plant had, in 
 their idea, a peculiar good quality. Catnip was "soothing to 
 the nerves." Indian Posy "good for colds." Comfrey was 
 "strengthening." Boneset (which is certainly indigenous) 
 
68 ADDRESS BY WILLIAM S. PELLETREAIT. 
 
 was "good in fevers." Skunk Cabbage (the first flovver that 
 blossoms) was used for rheumatism, but never cured it ; nor 
 did any other of the thousand-and-one remedies for that pain- 
 ful complaint. The first physician who appears to have set- 
 tled here was Dr. John Mackie, who was here previous to 
 1736 ; he died in 1758, and of his medical practice we have 
 no knowledge whatever. Succeeding him came Dr. Wilham 
 Smith, son of Nathaniel Smith, Esq., who owned a very large 
 estate at Moriches ; he first came to Southampton as scholar 
 to Rev. Sylvanus White, in 1742 ; (see note D) he studied 
 medicine in Philadelphia, and settled here in 1751, and re- 
 mained until his death, 1775. His son, Dr. John Smith, was 
 physician here for many years, but the real successor? of Dr. 
 William Smith were Drs. Henry White and Silas Halsey ; 
 the latter removing to the western part of the State after the 
 Revolution. Of a doctor's practice, during the latter part of 
 the last century and the early part of the present, we have 
 a very full knowledge from the account book of Dr. White, 
 which is still in existence. If the present physicians followed 
 their scale of prices, we could almost afford to be sick. 
 Phlebotomy and cathartic medicines, or as he expressed it in 
 much plainer English, "bleeding and a purge," was the be- 
 ginning, the middle and the end. No matter what the dis- 
 ease might be, a purge was the first remedy they administered. 
 His prices certainly were moderate ; a visit in the vicinity 
 was one shilling ; for a visit at more than a mile distance, 
 three shilHngs ; and four shilling for going in the night ; a 
 visit to North Sea would be five shillings ; and if he stayed 
 there all night, and furnished medicines, it would be nine and 
 six pence; it would be seven shillings to Seth Squires at 
 Squiretown ; and eight shillings to Wakeman Foster's at Pon 
 Quogue ; and the same to Red Creek. A visit, with paregor- 
 ic, cost 'Squire Herrick (a near neighbor) two shillings, and 
 for three visits, with spirits of nitre, he charged three and six 
 
FIFTH SEMI-CENTENNIAL OF SOUTHAMPTON. 69 
 
 pence ; a visit to Wickapog in the night, with castor oil and 
 paregoric, was ten shillings. He made a good many visits to 
 Mr. kSamuel Jagger's, at Long Springs, at three shilHngs each. 
 His son, Sylvanus, made a good many more, but he got a 
 wife by them. The fee for extracting a tooth was one shil- 
 ling ; a 'Spurge" was one shilling four pence -, an emetic the 
 same ; also a dose of rhubarb. Two visits to Shinnecock 
 with sundry medicines, cost some Indian twelve shillings ; a 
 visit to North Sea, with bleeding thrown in, was four shillings. 
 A large part of his pay was taken in barter and days' work. 
 At one time he gets a load of sea-weed for a visit with the in- 
 evitable "purge"; and again, he brings home a fine bass, at 
 a cent-and-a-half a pound. We have no doubt but that his 
 successors in the profession would be glad of such a chance 
 occasionally. In one instance a wealthy family at North Sea, 
 for divers visits and doses, had run up a bill of nine pounds, 
 seven shillings and six pence ; this was paid in what the doc- 
 tor, very justly, calls "sundries," and includes apples, flax, 
 wood, pears, timothy seed, beans, clams, fish, eels, pigs, water- 
 melons and geese. Plis accounts show that all the medicines 
 he used were of the very mildest kind ; and it is doubtful if 
 they ever killed or cured. If the patient recovered, the 
 doctor had the credit of it ; if he died, it was charged to 
 Providence. 
 
 When Dr. Smith wished to replenish his stock of drugs, he 
 saddled his horse, fastened his saddle-bags and started for 
 New- York. The end of the first day found him at Patchogue, 
 where he "tarried" at the tavern over night. The next even- 
 ing found him in the City, which then extended almost to 
 Canal Street. Having accomplished his business, he started 
 on his return ; and Saturday night found him safe at home. 
 
 There is no word, once in such general use, and occupying 
 so large a share of public attention, that has so completely 
 fallen into disuse, as the word ^'Tavern." At the present 
 
70 APDBESS BY WILLIAM S. PELLETKEAU. 
 
 time, every house of entertainment, no matter how meager 
 its accommodations or limited its capacity, rejoices in the 
 title of "Hotel." Most of our social changes came gradually, 
 but this came all of a sudden. The word "Hotel" was im- 
 portedfrom France about the beginning of the present century. 
 It found its way into the Dictionary in 1S06, and was defined 
 as "an inn for genteel people." 
 
 This, at once, accounts for the change. Between the tav- 
 ern keepers in any village there was an intense rivalry. Each 
 one thought that Ms Inn furnished the "best accommodations 
 for man and beast." His house was the one for "gentlemen" 
 to stop at on their travels. As for the lower class, the place 
 for them was "the tavern across the way," or "down the 
 street." 
 
 When "Hotel" was introduced as an "Inn for genteel peo- 
 ple," each one was convinced that his house was just the one 
 that answered that description, and the sign was changed ac- 
 cordingly. The neighbor, who entertained precisely the 
 same idea concerning his own establishment, promptly fol- 
 lowed suit, and "Taverns" quickly became obsolete. 
 
 When Rip Van Winkle waked from his twenty years' sleep, 
 one of the changes that astonished him was to find that Nich- 
 olas Vedder's "Tavern" had vanished and Jonathan Doolittle's 
 "Union Hotel" was in its place. 
 
 We may state that, in the old times, the charge for horse 
 and man, over night, with meals, was three shillings. 
 
 On a cold winter's day the tavern fireplace (for there were 
 no stoves in those days) would be a very comfortable resort. 
 The well known story tells us of a half frozen traveller who 
 on coming in and finding every seat in front of the fire occu- 
 pied, and no chance to thaw himself, loudly called out, "Host- 
 ler, give my hoise a peck of oyster shells." When the curious 
 crowd had gone out to see the horse devour this new kind ot 
 provender, the traveller comfortably ensconced himself in the 
 
FIFTH SEMI-CENTENNIAL OP SOUTHAMPTON. 71 
 
 warmest corner, and when the hostler reported that the horse 
 refused to eat them, calmly said, "then give him his oats." 
 
 The minister, the school master and the doctor have been 
 for long years among us, but the lawyer is a modern intro- 
 duction. When Rev. Dr. Dwight, of Yale College, travelled 
 through Long Island in the early part of this century, he re- 
 ports thiit no lawyer had ever yet been able to get a living in 
 Suffolk County. But times have changed, (some say for the 
 worse), and the legal profession is now prominent, and its 
 individual members appear to be prosperous. One day, when 
 this century was young, there was a boat on the shore of Me- 
 cox Bay and some oysters in it. There was also disputed 
 ownership, high words, a quarrel, a fight, a suit for assault 
 and battery : all these followed in natural and rapid succes- 
 sion. The defendant hastened to Abraham T. Rose, then just 
 fledged as a lawyer, and ready to defend injured innocence, 
 for a consideration. The suit came off in Southampton before 
 Squire Jonathan Fithian, then a young Justice of the Peace. 
 With the eloquence that in after years made him the bright 
 and shining light of the Suffolk County bar, the young lawyer 
 pleaded the cause of his client so successfully that the jury 
 brought in the verdict '^not guilty." Th»; over-joyed but un- 
 sophisticated client promptly sought his counsel and asked his 
 fee, and was told Two Dollars. "Two dollars ! Heaven and 
 airth ! Why, here I have to take my hoe and hoe corn all 
 day long for fifty cents, and you just come here and stand up 
 and talk two hours, and charge two dollars. I'ts outrageous, 
 and I won't pay it !" "Very well, what will you pay ?" 
 The client's hand went down into the depths of his trousers 
 pocket, fished out an eel skin purse, and taking fifty cents 
 tendered it as the "fair thing." The young lawyer accepted 
 it and both adjourned to Herrick Rogers' bar room, where it 
 was quickly exchanged for "liquid refreshments," of which 
 the client had a full share, and that was the end of the first 
 
72 ADDRESS BY WILLIAM S. PBLLETREAU. 
 
 lawyer's feet hat we have any account of in this village. Now 
 doctor's disagree, and ministers dispute, but lawyers will al- 
 ways stand by each other, and I do not suppose there is a 
 member of the legal fraternity present but will declare by his 
 faith in Blackstone, that two dollars pay for two hours talk, 
 was a fair and reasonable charge, and the service well worth 
 the money. 
 
 We cannot conclude this part of our discourse without of- 
 fering our slight tribute to the memory of a man who in his 
 day found few that could equal him, still fewer to surpasss. 
 In the northern part of Bridge-Hampton there is still standing 
 a farm bouse of the ancient kind, that has endured for more 
 than a century in its plain and homely solidity. In the vil- 
 lage of Flushing, there is a mansion, one of the most magnifi- 
 cent erected in this country prior to the middle of the pres- 
 ent century. When we saw there the doors of solid mahoga- 
 ny, the walls, floors and pillars of polished marble, it seemed 
 indeed as if one there might "dream that he dwelt in marble 
 halls" and wake and find his dream a reality. Such was the 
 birth place, and such the dwelling place, in the after days of 
 his glory, of Nathan Sandford, Chancellor of the State of New- 
 York, and Senator in the Congress of the United States. 
 Like too many in high stations he builded the palace unmind- 
 ful of the sepulchre, and the home with all its magnificence 
 has long since passed into the hands of strangers. {See note 
 E.) It is no injustice to the dead, nor disparagement to the 
 living, to say that Chancellor Nathan Sandford was the most 
 distinguished and eminent man ever born within the limits of 
 the town of Southampton, and of his greatness and his fame, 
 his native town, his native county and his native State may 
 well be proud. 
 
 The changes in social and family life are so closely con- 
 nected that it is sometimes difficult to determine in what class 
 certain changes should be placed. It might seem to some 
 
FIFTH SEMI-CENTENNIAL OF SOUTHAMPTON. 73 
 
 that an old account book would be the dryest acd most un- 
 interesting reading that could well be imagined, yet from 
 these almost all our facts are derived. The Day Books of 
 Rev. Sylvanus White, Capt. Elias Pelletreau and his son John 
 Pelletreau, form an unbroken series, from the early part of the 
 last century down to a period within the remembrance of peo- 
 ple now living. They tell us the prices of labor and all the 
 commodities used and dealt in at that day. They tell us what 
 was high and what was low. What was in daily use, and 
 what was seldom used, what were considered necessaries and 
 what were luxuries. In fact a complete picture of family life 
 can be drawn from them. The most remarkable of all changes 
 has been in the price of labor. For a period of 100 years the 
 wages of a laboring man were 3 shillings a day or 37 J cents. 
 It is perhaps unnecessary to state that until the Independence 
 of the United States all accounts were kept in pounds, shil- 
 lings and pence, or the English currency. Even after the 
 new order of things, when a Federal currency of dollars and 
 cents had been established, old people still clung to what 
 they had learned when boys, and had always been used to, 
 and kept their accounts in pounds, shillings and pence to the 
 end of their lives. The pound was two dollars and a half, 
 the shilling 12 J cents, and the penny a triffle more than a 
 cent. The Spanish dollar was 8 shillings, and this is our 
 unit of value. The reason why wages were so low, and re- 
 mained so for such a lengthy period, was owing to the fact 
 that there was no diversified industry, the whole community 
 was engaged in farming, and there was nothing else for un- 
 skilled labor to do. The old adage says, ''where all shovel 
 and hoe, wages must be low." On the other hand everything 
 produced by the community was also low, for there was no 
 outside market, and the supply was equal to the demand, and 
 generally in excess. Still more remarkable has been the 
 change in the price of female labor. During all the long 
 
74 ADDKESS BY WILLIAM S. PELLETREAU. 
 
 period we have mentioned, a woman's wages were one*shilling 
 or 12^ cents a day, and young .girls who could not do a full 
 day's work, had less. As a shilling a yard was the price paid 
 for weaving flannel we might conclude that a yard was a fair 
 day's work. A man hired by the month had 7 dollars and a 
 half, and a man could be hired to work a year on a farm for 
 22 pounds, or 55 dollars. In the early part of the present 
 century wages were 4 shillings a day. As late as 1S17 the 
 wages of a hired girl were 5 shillings, or 62^ cents a week, 
 and up to the time of the war a dollar a week was good pay. 
 The price of a shilling a day for women's work continued till 
 after the Revolution. In 1814 it had risen to one shilling 
 and sixpence. In 1832 the wages of a v^'oman for cleaning 
 house were two shillings. Skilled labor among men was a 
 trifle higher. During the last century, carpenter's wages 
 were 4 shillings a day. In 1767 a carpenter and his appren- 
 tice worked at a building three days for one pound six shil- 
 lings, or at the rate of 85 cents a day for both. In 1805 
 wages had risen to six shillings a day, and they soon after 
 rose to seven, and finally about 1825 reached a dollar a day, 
 which was then the price of a bushel of wheat. A ranson's 
 wages in 1762 were five shillings a day, and rose to seven, in 
 the early part of the present century. All other kuids of 
 mechanics, as tailors and shoemakers, worked by piece work, 
 their prices being equally low. In women's woik there seems 
 to have been no difference between skilled and unskilled labor, 
 the tailoress and the woman who sewed on a "gown" had the 
 same wages as the woman who helped clean house. Twenty- 
 five cents a day was the usual price till after the War of 1812, 
 and a day's work at sewing meant from early in the morning 
 till the tallow candle burnt out at night. Dressmakers' wages 
 rose gradually to 50 cents. At the time of the war, like 
 other things, they made a sudden bound. What they may be 
 now we cannot tell, as we have very slight personal interest 
 
FIFTH SEMI-CENTEFNIAL OF SOUTHAMPTON. 75 
 
 in the matter, but there are doubtless plenty of unhappy- 
 married men present who can testify with sadness of heart 
 that they have not grown any less. We regret that we can- 
 not offer them any consolation. So far as we can judge of 
 the future from the past, it is "bad times and worse a'coming." 
 The great characteristic of those days was that everybody 
 worked. Every man and woman and the children who were 
 large enough, earned their daily bread by daily labor. It was 
 reserved for the folly of modern times to discover that it was 
 derogatory or degrading for women to worii for themselves or 
 other people. Every family expected to do its own work, but 
 if hired help was needed, all that was necessary was to go to 
 the nearest family that had grown up daughters. The person 
 who should try this now might possibly escape with his life, 
 but the experiment would be what the Insurance Companies 
 call "extra hazardous." In 176S the daughter of one of the 
 wealthiest men in the town, purchased of Capt. Elias Pelle- 
 treau a pair of silver shoe-buckles for 19 shillings. She 
 paid for them by spinning 33 days at 7 pence a day. {See 
 note F.) Most of our young ladies, if required to get them 
 on those terms would probably conclude thafc shoe buckles 
 were something they could do without. Although every- 
 thing produced here was low, yet wages appear to have 
 been lower than anything else. The laboring man with 
 his three shillings a day could buy 3 pounds of butter. It 
 would take him two days to earn a bushel of wheat. A day's 
 work would not buy a bushel of corn. He could buy 12 
 pounds of pork, or a pretty good sized pig. He could get 12 
 pounds of beef or 12 pounds of mutton, or a bushel-and-a-half 
 of potatoes. As for fish he could get the best for a cent-and- 
 a-half a pound, and oysters for long years were 25 cents a 
 bushel. If the Town Trustees will only bring back that hap- 
 py time, they are welcome to Mecox bay. Rye he could get 
 for four shillings a bushel, a goose could be bought for a shil- 
 
76 ADDRESS BY WILLIAM S. PELLETREAIT. 
 
 ling. So much for his food. Lot us see how the price of 
 labor compared with the cost of clothes. Tow cloth, then 
 quite generally worn in the summer, was two and sixpence a 
 yard; so two days' work would not buy him a pair of trousers 
 even of this course material. Common woolen cloth was 
 three shillings a yard, and fustian (a coarser kind of cloth) 
 was three and sixpence. Flannel was four shillings, and 
 linen three shillings and sixpence a yard. 
 
 There is an idea quite prevalent, that in old times people 
 were more on an equality and that social distinctions were 
 less marked than at present. The truth is just the reverse. 
 Our first settlers come from a country where social lines were 
 very closely drawn ; they brought with them a veneration for 
 aristocracy and high family. It would be useless to attempt 
 to convince us (possibly more difficult to convince their des- 
 cendents) that Edward Howell, Gentleman, and Capt. Thomas 
 Topping were not several degrees higher in social life than 
 Goodman Jones or Goodman Brown. "Mr." was something 
 more than an idle compliment, and "Esquire" was not an 
 empty title. Everything goes to show that the deference due 
 to superior rank was willingly paid. When in our earli sf 
 days persons were appointed to seat people in the meeting 
 house in accordance with their rank and station, we find no 
 complaint. It was well understood who were entitled to the 
 higher seats in the synagogue, and who should take a lower 
 place. Just imagine the result if anything of this kind was 
 attempted now. The distinction between high and low, rich 
 and poor, was then far greater. Instead of growing more 
 aristocratic we have grown more democratic. Some of the 
 settlers brought with them more ample means than others. 
 This gave them a head start in the race and they kept it. 
 Their descendants had, through the division of lands, large es- 
 tates, and became wealthy families. While everything that 
 was raised here was cheap, everything that was not produced 
 
ADDEESS BY WILLIAM S. PELLETEEAU. 77 
 
 here was high. Domestic cloth made in families was low, 
 but cloth imported from England was very expensive. It 
 was the policy of Great Britain to discourage manufactures in 
 the Colonies, and to make there a market for her own produc- 
 tions. Everything that looked like luxury, either in dress or 
 living, had to come from abroad and be paid for at a high 
 price. The '^Gentleman" then was known by his dress. To 
 be clothed in imported goods was a sign of wealth or extrava- 
 gance. To be clothed in homespun was an evidence of thrift 
 and economy, and at the beginning of the Revolution was a 
 proof of patriotism as an encouragement of home productions. 
 Times have so changed that for any family at the present time 
 to attempt to make its own clothing, instead of being an evi- 
 dence of thrift and ecmonoy would be proof of extravagant ec- 
 centricity, for the same amount of labor necessary to prepare 
 the wool, from the time it came off the sheep's back till it 
 goes on to the back of the man, would at modern wages buy 
 the finest broadcloth. 
 
 We have seen the price of necessaries, let us now observe 
 the price of imported luxuries. In 1767 a watch was worth 
 seven pounds, or about eighteen dollars, almost the price of 
 an ox. Silk for a cloak was fourteen shillings a yard, more 
 than four times the price of flannel. A silk handkerchief was 
 worth seven shillings and seven-and-sixpence ; a liank of sew- 
 ing silk four shillings. A paper of pins in ]7G0 cost one shil- 
 ling four pence ; better ones can now be had for two cents. 
 What becomes of all the pins is a question no one seems able 
 to answer, but we know what became of some of those. One 
 hundred and twenty years ago the owner of the account book 
 pinned some of his bills fast to the pages, and they are there 
 to day. The heads of these ancient pins are made of fine 
 wire. Solid headed pins are a late invention. Now if a la- 
 boring man wished to indulge in these foreign luxuries he 
 would have to count the cost. A day's work would buy him 
 
78 FIFTH SEMI-CENTENNIAL OF SOUTHAMPTON. 
 
 a thimble. It would take four day's work to buy a yard of 
 Taffety, but he could earn a gallon of molasses or four pounds 
 of sugar in one day. It would take fifty day's work to buy a 
 watch. It was then a rich man who could sport one. Tea 
 and coffee were not then necessary comforts, they were un- 
 necessary luxuries to be used on rare occasions. The best 
 part of a week's work would be necessary to buy a pound of 
 each. If he kept a gun it wouLl take a day's work to buy a 
 pound of powder. If he was hired to do mowing, it would 
 take two days and a half to pay for the scythe. It seems that 
 they were made in this country, and to get a 'Thiladelphia 
 scythe," he would have to sweat in the field three days. A 
 hoe would cost him five shillings, but probably the village 
 blacksmith made that. It would take two days and a half 
 to earn a pair of shoes for himself, and they were not fancy 
 ones either. Probably none of the young ladies present 
 would feel particularly proud of being the owner of a calico 
 thcss, but they would be if it cost five shillings a yard, and 
 they had to work fifty days to get it. Let any young lady 
 imagine working linrd for 50 days to get a calico dress, and 
 then Li«lk of "tl.f !;('<)(I ohi times when everybody was happy." 
 When pofetuge to iMevv-York was 22 cents, people did not 
 write oftener than necessary. It would take a man's labor 
 five days to get an iron pot to cook his dinner in. If he was 
 ambitious, or foolish enough to wish to dress like a "gentle- 
 man," it would take him nearly a month's work to buy the 
 broadcloth for a coat, to say nothing of the other expenses. 
 It is not so many years when ''to be able to wear broadcloth" 
 was synonymous with wealth. We need not go further, to 
 show how utterly impossible it was, in those times, f')r a large 
 part of the community to possess things which we call nec- 
 essaries. 
 
 There was one article of luxury that the wealthy families 
 always made it a point to obtain, and that was silver plate. 
 
ADDKESS BY WILLIAM S. PELLETREAII. 79 
 
 These articles, many of which remain in the possession of the 
 old families, comprised tankards, porringers, spoons, knee- 
 buckles and shoe-buckles. They were, in fact, the most 
 common sense luxuries that a family could indulge m, for 
 they always had an intrinsic value, and they never wore out, 
 but would go down with unimpaired usefulness to succeeding 
 generations. We have ample data as to the cost of these 
 things. In 1772 Elias Pelletreau made for Hugh Smith, Esq., 
 of Moriches, a three-pint tankard which weighed thirty-five 
 ounces, seven pennyweights, which, at nine shillings four 
 pence an ounce, came to nxteen pounds, ten shillings and ten 
 pence. The making (or "fashioning," as it was called) cost 
 four pounds, eight shillings and eight pence. Engraving a 
 "cipher," or the initals of the owner in monogram, which was 
 done in a very artistic manner, cost six shillings ; the whole 
 cost being twenty-one pounds, five shillings and sixpence, or 
 about fifty-three dollars and eighty cents. This tankard is yet 
 in existence, and we have had the pleasure of seeing it. [ts 
 value represents one hundred and forty-one days' labor of a 
 laboring man, at that time. Of course none but wealthy fam- 
 ilies had tankards. A porringer was a silver dish holding 
 about a pint, and beaten from a lump of silver, with an orna- 
 mental handle added. The silver weighed eight ounces, 
 twelve pennyweights, and at nine shillings, three pence an 
 ounce, was worth three pounds, nineteen shillings ; the mak- 
 ing, or "flishioning," was twenty shillings, making the whole 
 cost four pouiids, nineteen shillings, or twelve dollars and 
 thirty- seven and one-half cents. A laboring man would have 
 to work thirty-three days for one. To say that a person 
 "could e?.t his pudding and milk out of a silver porringer" 
 meant something in those days. Four table spoons cost three 
 pounds, seventeen shillings, or nine dollars and seventy cents. 
 An average set of s>ix tea spoons cost one pound, eight shil- 
 lings and three pence, or three dollars and fifty-three cents, 
 
80 FIFTH SEMI-CENTENNIAL OF SOUTHAMPTON. 
 
 A man would have to work nine days and a half for them. 
 To say that a person was "born with a silver spoon in his 
 mouth" meant that he was a child of wealthy parents, and 
 one to be envied. No gentleman's costume was complete 
 without handsome silver knee-buckles and shoe-buckles. 
 They were made of solid silver, and handsomely wrought. A 
 pair of shoe buckles of the most expensive kind, cost one 
 pound, eight shillings and seven pence, or three dollars and 
 fifty-seven cents. Ladies also wore shoe-buckles of the same 
 style and cost. A man would have to work about ten days, 
 and it wouLJ require a woman's work for more than a month 
 to earn a pair. It is needless to say that every one did not 
 wear silver buckles. Knee-buckles were not as costly as 
 shoe-buckles ; they ranged in value from eight shillings to 
 twelve shillings ; brass buckles could be had for four shillings 
 and six pence. A hat, one of the three-cornered kind, such 
 as gentlemen wore, would cost one pound eight shillings, or 
 three dollars and a half. A man must work nine days for 
 such a hat. Broadcloth was twelve shillings six pence a yard, 
 and tlie fashion required a liberal pattern for a coat. The 
 bullous wci(^ no Mii.iU item in the cost 5 a set of gold ones, 
 (then fashionable), were worth two pounds, five shillings and 
 eight pence, or five dollars and seventy cents. Bright colors, 
 as blue and red w^ere commonly worn. 
 
 It seems that the dictates of fashion, which starts with the 
 "400" and works their w\ay up (or down) to the 400,000, 
 have declared that it is no longer "a:ood form" to call a certain 
 very important article of mens' costume by the name of pant- 
 aloons, but "trowsers," is to be the fashionable name. The 
 arbiters of fashion, and the fools who follow them, certainly 
 hit on nothing new in this case, for that was the name by 
 which they were known here 175 years ago, and they still 
 continue to be called so by old fashioned people down to the 
 present time. Wiien our ancestors left England, "pantaloons" 
 
ADDRESS BY WILLIAM S. PELLETEEAU. 81 
 
 was a strange, out-landish name, recently introduced from 
 France or Italy, and so new as to require a definition. The 
 definition was "a garment composed of breeches and stock- 
 ings, fastened together and made in one piece." We doubt 
 if Edward Howell and his company ever heard the name. 
 Trowsers, on the other hand, is as old as Shakespeare's time, 
 and when this town was settled seems to have been gradually 
 getting into general use ; but the word they brought with 
 them w^as plain and homely "breeches." These, for every- 
 day use were frequently made of leather; and doe-skin was 
 in great demand for them. The old fashion of short breeches 
 and stockings has been partially revived in late years, under 
 the name of "knickerbockers." The general use of panta- 
 loons came about the time of the French Revolution, when a 
 large part of our population was in active sympathy with 
 France. In that country the name "sans culottes," or no 
 stocking people, came to distinguish the Democrats and 
 lower class from the aristocrats. Here the Federalists, who 
 represented the conservative class, and were accused by their 
 enemies with favoring England and aristocratic ideas, still 
 clung to the old style of stockings and knee-buckles. The 
 last man in Southampton who wore them was Deacon Thomas 
 Jessup, who lived where Capt. Barney R. Green now lives ; 
 he died in 1S09. Now, let us «uppose that some of our 
 prominent citizens, (our esteemed Member of Assembly, for 
 example,) should appear in our streets with a large three- 
 cornered hat on his head, a bright blue broadcloth coat, 
 reaching to his knees, ornamented with gold buttons about 
 as large as a twenty-five cent piece, a bright red vest, reach- 
 ing to his hips, with bright silver buttons with his initials 
 engraved on them, black velvet breeches, white silk stock- 
 ings, with large and bright silver knee-buckles and shoe- 
 buckles 5 and last, but by no means least, a long sword at 
 his side ; it is possible — in fact, it is quite probable — that he 
 
82 FIFTH SEMI-CENTENNIAL OF SOUTHAMPTON. 
 
 would attract considerable attention. But tliat is precisely 
 the way he would have appeared, had it been our misfortune 
 that he had lived 150 years ago. And I cannot neglect this 
 opportunity to express my sincere, personal satisfaction that 
 Southampton should have honored herself, by sending to the 
 Legislature of the State one of her noblest sons, and a worthy 
 representative of her oldest families. And, while in common 
 with all others of his ftiends, I cannot but regret that his voice 
 had not oftener been heaid in discussing the great and im- 
 portant questions of the day, yet it is a pleasure to testify 
 that every word and act and vote of his has been an honor to 
 h:s native town and the county that he represents. 
 
 Slavery existed here in the olden time, but in a mild form. 
 It was an unprofitable institution, ar.d when, after the Revo- 
 lution, laws were passed for its gradual abolition, no one lost 
 anything by them. A negro girl, thirty-six years old, was 
 worth thirty-five pounds, or eighty-eight dollars, while a man 
 thirty-three years old was worth two hundred and fifty 
 dollars. 
 
 There are some false notions connected with old times 
 which may be worth mentioning. The first is that people 
 lived longer than now. The old tomb-stones in our ancient 
 burying grounds tell a very different story. Another is, that 
 people in the olden times were healthier and stronger. The 
 truth is that they were subject to all diseases that now afflict 
 humanity, without possessing the knowledge necessary for 
 their prevention j nor the means adapted for their cure. An- 
 other very common belief is that the seasons have changed ; 
 but we find that 150 years ago men were planting corn the 
 first week in May ; hiUing corn the last of June ; mowing the 
 first week in July ; cutting grain the last of July and the first 
 of August ; gathering corn, (which was then allowed to ripen 
 on the stalk), in November. This shows that the seasons 
 have not changed. We once heard a learned physician argue 
 
ADDRESS BY WILLIAM S. PELLETEEAU. 83 
 
 that the climate of Long Island must have changed, as fatal 
 cases of lockjaw are not so common as they once were. It 
 did not occur to the learned doctor that a much simpler ex- 
 planation is close at hand, and is a curious instance of a 
 change in the manners and customs of a people making a 
 change in things not apparently connected with it. Men and 
 boys do not go bare-footed as they once did. It was custom- 
 ary for boys to begin going bare-foot on ''Town Meeting day," 
 (the first Tuesday in April), and it was kept up till frost came. 
 Men always went bare-footed when fishing or engaged in 
 farm work during the summer. A large percentage of fatal 
 cases of lockjaw came from injuries to unprotected feet, and 
 when the practice was discontinued, one of the principal 
 causes of the disease was removed, and the effect was dimin- 
 ished in the same proportion. 
 
 There are two articles of personal luxury and adornment 
 which well deserve mention. War and fighting seem to be 
 the natural life of the Aryan race from which we spring. 
 Everything connected with war and military life has always 
 been held in the highest honor. Once all men went armed 
 from necessity, and they kept up the custom long after the 
 necessity for it had passed away. Even the simple custom 
 of turning to the right when we meet a person is supposed to 
 be derived from the time when men, carrying their weapons 
 on the left, always turned their armed side to whoever they 
 might meet, for they were quite as likely to be enemies as 
 friends. In the old times we speak of, a sword was one of 
 the distinctions of a gentleman, and were not coiifined, by 
 any means, to military men. In old wills men very frequent- 
 ly left their swords as a legacy to a favorite son. Josiah 
 HowelFs silver hilted sword cost him £1 in 1774, or $17.50, 
 nearly the price of 50 days' work of a laboring man. Who 
 the last man was who wore a sword we are not informed. 
 The custom ceased for all but mihtia officers shortly after the 
 
84 FIFTH SEMI-CENTENNIAL OF SOUTHAMPTON. 
 
 Revolution. Among the articles of female adornment was 
 one that was a source of pride to those who wore them, and 
 of envy to those who could not. This was a string of gold 
 beads. Like silver plate they had a constant intrinsic value, 
 and were very durable. A string of beads cost from $10 to 
 $12, and were very highly prized. 
 
 In one thing Southampton and the other towns on the 
 East end of Long Island had an advantage over other settle- " 
 ments in the Colony of New-York. The whales which were 
 plenty along the coast, afforded a constant source of revenue 
 and were looked upon as the special gift of Providence. The 
 oil and bone were sent to England -is an important article of 
 exchange for tlie manufactured goods of the old country. 
 From some items of account we conclude that the consisfnees 
 made every excuse for paying as little as possible for oil, and 
 charged as much as they possibly could for the goods. The 
 first church bell on Long Island, as far as we can learn, was 
 paid for in whale oil. The general price of whale oil during 
 the last century was two shillings and sixpence a gallon. In 
 later times, in the famous year w^hen five dead whales lay on 
 our beach at one time*, the price was three shillings and 
 sixpence or forty-three cents a gallon. Whale bone was 3 
 shillings a pound, a price which seems rather high. Of 
 course in the old times before the days of kerosene, tallow 
 candles and whale oil were the only means of illuminiition. 
 A tin lamp for burning oil cost four shillings. Every family 
 made its own candles. Persons who understood the business 
 made them for a penny and a half a pound, and they were 
 worth a shilling a pound after they were made. In all thrifty 
 families three hundred and sixty-five candles were expected 
 to last a year. It was the custom not to light them until the 
 children, (who were generally on the lookout,) could see three 
 
 * Winter of 1847. 
 
ADDRESS BY WILLIAM S. PELLETREAU. 85 
 
 stars. More economical people never lighted them until it 
 was so dark they could scarcely see their hands before their 
 faces. Lighting candles before it was dark, and especially 
 burning two at a time, were considered extravagences that 
 would certainly lead to ruin. The candles were made by the 
 old process of dipping and suspending from candle rods, until 
 some time in the present century, when some Yankee genius 
 inventrd candle moulds, and then tallow dips disappeared 
 forever. 
 
 We have stated that Rev. Sylvanus White, in addition to 
 his ministerial duties, kept a sort of boarding school and 
 taught the sons of some of the wealthy families the Latin 
 language. The following items from his account book ex- 
 plain themselves. 
 
 Josiah Topping began to learn of, and board with me 
 March 9, 1743, and lived with me a year and a half, till Sep- 
 tember 9 1744, at 4 shillings a week, comes to £15, 12s. 
 His schooling a year and a half £4. 
 
 Wm. Smith, son to Nathaniel Smith, Esq., of ]\[oriches, 
 began to come to school Jan. 4, 1742, went home April 5, 
 about a week. 
 
 Nath. Smith, Esq., Dr. to S. White for his son's board for 
 12 weeks, at 4 shilling a week, £2 Ss. Schooling his son, 
 £\, 5s. 
 
 Now boarding house diet has never been considered condu- 
 cive to corpulency, or dyspeptic diseases, and when we find 
 the charge only 4 shillings a week we might have some sus- 
 picions as to the abundance of his table or the variety of his 
 bill of fare. But at the time every article of food used in the 
 family were raised on ths farm. Things which we consider 
 comforts and necessaries were neither furnished nor expected. 
 Four shillings would buy a large amount of substantial food, 
 and taking everything into consideration, the sum charged 
 was about equal to $4 now. 
 
 Suppose some of our elders and deacons should happen to 
 
8G FIFTH SEMI-CENTENNIAL OF SOUTHAMPTON. 
 
 get a sight of the present clergyman's account book, and find 
 there an item like the following : 
 
 Rev. Sylvakus White to Francis Pelletreau, Dr. 17~9 
 2 pounds of sugar. Is 4d. 
 
 2 gallons of rum, Ss 
 
 3 " '' 12s 
 
 2 pounds of sugar Is 4d. 
 
 3 gallons of rum 12s 
 
 They would certainly stare and gasp and have hard thoughts 
 of the buyer, still worse of the seller. If we can put faith in 
 the entries in the account book, 14 pounds of sugar must have 
 been considered an ample supply for his family a year. The 
 cost of the liquor used vastly exceeded this. The general 
 use of ardent spirits was one of the features of the times. 
 Minister and people, Magistrate and day laborer, there were 
 no exceptions, all considered it as one of the necessaries of 
 life. It is probable that clergymen meet now, occasionally, 
 to talk over church affairs, but we do not think that a pint of 
 brandy and a quart of wine would be considered a necessary 
 preparation for the event. To expect laborers in the harvest 
 field, or engaged in any other fatiguing labor, to do without 
 rum, would be considered the same as expecting them to do 
 without water. New England rum was worth three shillinofs 
 a gallon, but West India rum (a superior article) cost four 
 shillings. When storekeepers, in the early part of the present 
 century, advertised "a good stock of West India goods," this 
 particular item was the most important of the lot. Rum and 
 molasses cost about the same but there were ten gallons of 
 the former sold to one of the latter. Things went on from 
 bad to worse. About 1S20 the United States bid fair to be- 
 come a nation of drunkards, and Southampton was fully up 
 to the times. There is no statement so often made in regard 
 to the past as this, "They had good liquor in old times, and 
 it never hurt anybody." There never was a greater mistake. 
 Human nature is the same, yesterday, to-day and forever, and 
 
ADDRESS BY WILLIAM S. PELLETREAU. 87 
 
 that is the reason why the Proverbs of Solomon are just as 
 applicable to the people of America in the City of New-York, 
 at the present day, as they were to the children of Israel in 
 the City of Jerusalem three thousand years ago. Wine was 
 a mocker and strong drink was just as raging in the old times 
 as they are now. They caused redness of eyes, wounds with- 
 out cause, and laid men in untimely graves the same as they 
 do now. It made widows and orphans, it ruined men in 
 health, reputaticn and property the same as now. Within 
 the space of fifty years all the farms but two, in the most fer- 
 tile portion of our town had changed hands through the help 
 of rum. It was a common saying, that rum had washed the 
 face off Wickapogue. While drunkenness was always con- 
 sidered disreputable, and the better class set their faces against 
 it, yet no effort was made to stop drinking. The moral 
 sense of the people at length became aroused, and the forma- 
 tion of temperance societies accomplished a reform the bene- 
 fits of which we are now enjoying, and the effects of which 
 are seen in the prosperity and in the well established social 
 order of the place. 
 
 About the time of the Revolution, Hon. William Ellery left 
 his home near Boston, and rode on horseback to York, Pa., 
 where Congress was then sitting. The journey lasted about 
 three weeks and the account that he gives of it is one of the 
 most interesting pictures of life at that day. On his journey 
 he stopped over night at a farm house in the south part of 
 Duchess Co, After supper the daughter of the family took 
 her wool cards, and commenced carding rolls, while the moth- 
 er with her spinning wheel began her evening work. The 
 father seated himself on a shomaker's bench and mended the 
 family shoes. In the intervals between the clatter of the 
 shoemaker's hammer, the hum of the spinning wheel, and the 
 noise of the wool cards, Mr. Ellery and his host talked over 
 the aflJairs of the infant republic. A more perfect picture of 
 family life can scarcely be imagined. But if Mr. EUery's 
 
88 FIFTH BEMI- CENTENNIAL OF SOUTHAMrTON. 
 
 journey led him through Southampton he would have found 
 precisely the same. In old times more men learned the shoe 
 maker's trade than any other, the reason being that they 
 could work at that when they could do nothing else. 
 
 We cannot better illustrate the changes in social life than 
 by alluding to several men who in times pa-^t were well known 
 and prominent. They were not men of the remote old times, 
 for they to us would be like persons at a great distance on the 
 surface of the earth. Although we can see that they are 
 men, yet we cannot tell one from the other. The men we 
 mention lived and died when the old times still remained, but 
 when the new order of things was beginning to come. 
 
 During the latter part of the last century ithe rich man of 
 the town was David Howell and from that fact was well 
 known at that time as "Money David." If a man wished to 
 borrow a hundred dollars, "Money David" was the man to 
 apply to. If anything was to be sold "Money David" was 
 the man with ready cash to buy at a bargain. His farm at 
 Wickapogue was one of the best and had come down to him 
 from an honored ancestry. In his will almost all the proper- 
 ty was left to his eldest son, while the younger set out to seek 
 his own fortune. With that energy that never fails to con- 
 quer difficulties, he began trade at Sag-Harbor and during 
 his entire life was prominently connected with its business 
 interests. He was one of the first to engage in the whale 
 fishery which brought so much wealth and prosperity, and 
 when he died he left a fortune large even for those times. 
 The older brother, under the influence of that "good old 
 fashioned rum" which we are told "never hurt anybody," 
 went down in the world faster than the other went up, and 
 at length with property gone, and in the hands of strangers, 
 with health and reputation ruined he died, and was buried at 
 the expense of the younger brother to whom nothing had 
 been left. 
 
 Seventy years ago, theie was no citizen better known than 
 
ADDRESS BY WILLIAM S. PELLETKEAU. 89 
 
 Ephraim White. A man of wealth and of iron constitution, 
 his name has come down to us as a synonym of industry and 
 economy. Labor of the most unremitting kind was to him a 
 source of pleasure, for he had a constant eye to the results. 
 Economy of the closest and most self denying nature was to 
 him not only no discomfort, but a source of enjoyment. His 
 descendants are among our best known and most respectable 
 citizens. They are neither miserly nor extravagant. They 
 are living in a style of soHd comfort suited to their means and 
 worthy of their station. But this style of living is what 
 Ephraim White would have called the most extravagant kind 
 of extravagance. Things which they would consider daily 
 comforts and even daily necessaries, would be to him luxuries 
 that he could never dream of enjoying. He was a man of no 
 small ability and possessed some commendable traics, but the 
 love of money like a whirlpool swallowed up everything else, 
 and when he died his last words showed the ruling passion 
 stronger than ever in death. 
 
 Another person equally well known was Sylvanus Eayner, 
 ' and we have noticed that those who remembered him always 
 spoke of him with respect. A contemporary who knew him 
 well said, '*'Sylvy Rayner was a man who started to get rich 
 by hard work, and did it." It seems almost incredible that 
 one man could have performed so large an amount of physical 
 labor. To hire out his horse to go to Sag-Harbor, for five 
 shillings, while he took his scythe and walked to North Sea 
 meadows, and after mowing all day walked home at night, 
 was one way of getting rich. To fish on a bunker seine from 
 early morn to dewy eve, and then go on a bass seine and fish 
 till early morn came again, was another way. This process, 
 continued year after year, accomplished his purpose. He ac- 
 cumulated property to the value of $10,000, which at that 
 time was considered a very large fortune. But the natural 
 result followed. An overworked body produced aberration 
 of mind, which led to a violent and untimely death, and tlie 
 
90 FIFTH SEMI-CENTENNIAL OF SOUTHAMPTON. 
 
 property for which he had labored so hard passed into the 
 hands of very distant connections. It is safe to say that in 
 the worst days of African slavery, no slave had a master more 
 unrelenting, more unremitting, more exacting than these two 
 men were to themselves. 
 
 In strong contradistinction to these was another man who 
 started to get rich by speculations and other people's labor. 
 Probably no man was more prominent at the time and in one 
 sense he might be called the last of the Gentlemen. He was 
 one who wore the broadcloth coat and top boots. If he was 
 not the last man who wore a sword, he was just the man who 
 was likely to be. Somewhat pompous in his manners, a 
 phrenologist would say that his bump of self esteem was very 
 largely developed. But to get rich by speculation in South- 
 ampton in those days, was starting in the wrong place. Spec- 
 ulation in not mentioned in Poor Richard's maxims. There 
 is nothing said there about buying low and selling high, and 
 Poor Richard's maxims were exactly calculated for the merid- 
 ian of Southampton. If there was anything that was con- 
 stantly impressed on the young it was ''save." "A penny 
 saved is as good as two earned ; for if you save it you have 
 it, and if you earn it you are not always sure of getting it." 
 Speculation was looked upon with great suspicion for it meant 
 getting money without working for it. A speculator was 
 considered something like a horse jockey, a man who might 
 be honest, but was not likely to be. Under these circum- 
 stances to get rich by speculation, would be like expecting a 
 tree that required a deep and fertile soil to flourish on the 
 surface of a barren rock. Although fur many years he en* 
 gaged in more kinds of business than any other man, and con- 
 ducted them on quite an extensive scale, yet at length the 
 fabric of speculation fell, and for a small place great was the 
 fall of it. Many a woman who had worked for a shilling a 
 day lost the result of her labor, and many a man to whom 
 50 cents represented a day's work, was equally the loser. 
 
ADDRESS BY WILLIAM S. PELLETREAU. 91 
 
 We say that the old times have passed away, and so they 
 have, but till very recently a last lingering relic remained 
 among us. The old Jagger homestead, now in the last stages 
 of ruin, is well known to us all. From the time when the 
 land was a wilderness 250 years ago, it has been owned by 
 the same family. From the time when the foundation stone 
 of the house was laid 183 years since, it has been handed 
 down from father to son, all the generations resembling each 
 other in the most remarkable degree. Their faults, their fail- 
 ings and their virtues were all cast in the same mould, and 
 the generation that so lately inhabited it, w^as but a copy of 
 w^hat had gone before. David and Harvey Jagger were the 
 last of the old settlers. Their mode of thought, their style of 
 dress, their manner of living — everything was of an age long 
 anterior to their own. To visit them was to go back to the 
 days of the Revolution, and though surrounded by all the busy 
 world of modern life, they formed no part of it. While they 
 lived the old times still remained ; when they ceased to exist, 
 the old times forever passed away. Like the ruins of an an- 
 cient temple erected in honor of a creed long since vanished 
 from the earth, and to the worship of a god that is no longer 
 adored ; so when we see this ancient dwelling hastening to its 
 fall and destined never more to be an human habitation, it is 
 to us the ruin of the Temple of Old Times, a shrine from 
 which the genius has fled, a temple from which the Gods 
 have departed. 
 
 Note. — The lot on which the old Jagger house stands was laid 
 out in the early days of the settlement, and from a fragment of 
 the Town Records we learn that it was owned and improved by 
 John Jagger, before 1667. In his will (1698) he left it to his 
 sons, John and Jeremiah, and it afterwards appears in possession 
 of the former. He built the old house in the same year that the 
 old Church was built, (1707) and it has descended from father to 
 son, down to the present owner, Mr. Franklm Jagger, who was 
 born in the house one hundred years after its erection. 
 
N'OTES. 
 
 Note A. — Prior to the Revolution the minister's salarj^ was 
 raised by a tax or "rate." Mr. White's accovmt book begins with 
 the followinsr entries : 
 
 Mr. Samuel Jennings, Dr. 
 
 £ 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 April, 1727. To his rate for the year 172G, 
 
 00 
 
 OG 
 
 
 
 April, 1728. " " " " " " 1727, 
 
 00 
 
 11 
 
 
 
 AprH, 1728. To fatting- a beast, 
 
 00 
 
 9 
 
 
 
 To rate for year 1728 
 
 00 
 
 10 
 
 11 
 
 " To Seponack pasture 
 
 00 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 Cr. To 150 raHs 
 
 1 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 To 80 posts 
 
 00 
 
 18 
 
 
 
 Oct. 1733. To Bushel and half of winter api^les, 
 
 00 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 To Barrel of syder 
 
 00 
 
 9 
 
 
 
 To Bushel of apples 
 
 00 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 To 42 posts holed 
 
 00 
 
 12 
 
 
 
 To Bushel of Beans 
 
 00 
 
 G 
 
 
 
 George Harris, Dr. Rate for 1726 
 
 
 
 13 
 
 G 
 
 1720. Cr. 231 pounds of taUow at 5d 
 
 
 
 9 
 
 10 
 
 To two bushels of wheat 
 
 
 
 9 
 
 00 
 
 To four " " " 
 
 
 
 18 
 
 00 
 
 A large part of his salary was thus taken in trade. 
 
 Note B. — In the account book of Mr. John Pelletrcau appears 
 the following entries : 
 
 1817, July 11. Rev. John M. Babbitt came to my house. 
 Left my house 4th of August. 
 To 3 weeks and 4 days board at $2, $7.00 
 
 Nov. 18, 181G. Rev. John M. Babbitt and wife came to mv house. 
 Jan. 20, 1817. Mrs. Babbitt left my house. 
 
 Cr. By cutting- a great coat 2s. 
 
 By sundi-y of cutting- clothes Gs. 
 
 Mr. Babbitt is said to have made the first yarn reel used in the 
 town, which was fui-nished with a contrivance for making- a click 
 ing- sound indicating- when a knot of yarn had been wound. 
 
Note C. — In Minister WTiite's account book occurs the follow- 
 ing notice of Henry White, who was son of Elnathan White, of 
 Sagg, and grandson of Rev. Ebenezer White. He was conse- 
 quently nephew of Rev. Sylvanus White. 
 
 Jan. 4, 1743. Henry White began to learn of me. 
 Sept. 9, 1744. Went away to New Haven. 
 Dec. 5, 1744. Came again to school 
 
 Aug. 24, 1745. Went away. £ s. d. 
 
 Charges 7 1 11 
 
 Ml'. Elnathan White, Cr. To a steer 4 10 02 
 
 Note D. — From Rev. Sylvanus White's account book. 
 
 Wm. Smith son of Nathaniel Smith Esq. 
 
 Began to come to school Jan, 4, 1742. Went home April 5, 
 absent a week. 
 
 Nathaniel Smith Esq. Dr. to Sil. TVTiite 
 
 For his son diet for 12 weeks viz. from Jan. 4 to April 5 at 49s 
 a week, 2£ Ss. 
 
 Schooling his son 1 5. " 
 
 Note E. — The following inscription appears on his monmneni 
 in the Episcopal Church yard at Flushing : 
 
 In Memory of 
 NATHAN SANDFOED. 
 
 Born at Bridge Hampton 
 L. I. 5th November 1777. 
 Died at Flushing L. I. 
 17th October 1838. 
 Late Chancellor of the State of New- York, and Sen- 
 ator in the Congress of the United States. 
 
 The magnificent mansion still known as "Marble Hall," was 
 built by him at an expense of $90,000, exclusive of the cost of 
 the land. The whole was sold soon after his death for less than 
 $16,000. It is now a private lunatic asylum. 
 
 Note F. — From Capt. Elias Pelletreau's Account Book. 
 1768, October 5th. Mary Scott, Jackson Scott's daughter, Dr. 
 To a Pair of Shoe Buckels £0 IQs. 8d 
 
 Cr. Oct. 1768. By 28 days Spinning at 7d pr day 16 4 
 
 By 6 days spixiaiag, 2 10 
 
ADDRESS BY REV. SAMUEL E. HERRICK, 
 
 Our prevailing sentiment to-day, I am sure, is one of grati- 
 tude — of gratitude touched with generous pride. We rebuild 
 the sepulchres of our fathers, not with Pharisaism, but with 
 devout and humble thankfulness. We rejoice as we ought in 
 our godly ancestry and our goodly heritage. Many of us can 
 look back through an unbroken lineage of six, seven, or eight 
 generations of good and irue men and women to the very be- 
 ginnings of Anglo-Saxon life on this western continent. We 
 are thankful for the "blood of ancestry, in which," as Lamar- 
 tine says, "is found the prophecy of destiny." To-day we 
 trace our connection with the mighty past. We devote the 
 hours to what the conveyancers call "searching the title," 
 generally the most important and the most profitable work 
 which the conveyancer has to do. There is this difference, 
 however, with us. We search our own title, save the con- 
 veyancer's fees, and keep the profit to ourselves. At any 
 rate our legal adviser is one of ourselves, belongs to the fami- 
 ly, and has common interest with us. The Hedges have 
 been kept up well. 
 
 We find ourselves to-day standing it? close connection with 
 all that was greatest, noblest, and best in the mother-land in 
 the most heroic period of her magnificent history. No other 
 period of equal length in that history presents us with such 
 impressive contrasts of good and evil, piety and wickedness, 
 sainthood and diabolism, profound learning and brutish ig- 
 norance, high tragedy and low comedy, as the great central 
 portion of the seventeenth century in which our English 
 towns were colonized. It was an age of immense literary ac- 
 tivity. If we leave out of account the single name of Shaks- 
 peare> the first settlers of Southampton were contemporary 
 
n^TVL SEMI CSSTlNimj. OF SOtTFSASSPf ON, 95 
 
 with a body of men vastly superior in numbers and in weight 
 to those "who gave lustre to the boasted age of Elizabeth. 
 Glance for a nioment at a handful of names caught up almost 
 at random from the century's history— names which must 
 have been as familiar to our fathers as are those of Gladstone, 
 and Grant, and Bismark, and Stanley, and Tennyson, and 
 Longfellow to ourselves. The church was renowned during 
 these years by such a constellation as never shone before or 
 since upon her calendars. There were Jeremy Taylor and 
 Bishop Ken, Tillotson and Barrow and South, Bishop Burnet 
 and Archbishop Usher, Thos. Fuller and Bishop Hall. And 
 the Puritans matched the church, with Baxter and Owen and 
 Buiiyan, John Howe and Philip Henry. Sir Matthew Hale 
 was Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, Sir Isaac New- 
 ton was writing his Principia, Shakspeare had been but few 
 years dead when our settlers came— some of our fathers may 
 have seen and talked with him — Ben Johnson was living, and 
 Sir William Davenant. And then there were a host of poets 
 and dramatists, big and little, ranging almost from the zenith 
 of angelic song down to the nadir of the Restoration gross- 
 ness and blasphemy : holy George Herbert, and Milton sing- 
 ing of Paradise Lost and Regained, and Fras. Quarles and 
 Habington and Crashaw, Dryden and Butler, Cowley and 
 Waller and Lovelace and Prior, Dorset and Roscommon, Sed- 
 ley and Rochester and Etherege and Wycherly. What a 
 list! headed with glory and ending with the stench of the 
 sulphurous pit I And the philosophers and historians— Cud- 
 worth and Hobbes and Henry More, Clarendon and Evelyn 
 and Burnet and Pepys with their scandals and tittle-tattle. 
 And finally, to cut short what might be indefinitely extended, 
 and leave sweeter suggestions in our thoughts — Izaak Wal- 
 ton, angler and contemplative saint, and patient Lady Rachel 
 Russell. 
 
 Our settlers saw the whole wretched career of the Stuart 
 
90 ADDRESS BT Itrr, SAMUEL S. SEEEICE. 
 
 dynasty, its interruption by the Protectorate, iis brief and 
 disgraceful Restoration, its downfall in the Revolution and 
 the safe re-launching of the Ship of State with William of 
 Orange at the helm. In tliis brief space came the plague, 
 the great fire of London, the Westminster Assembly, the long 
 Parliament, the Savoy Conference, and the ejection of two 
 thousand of the best ministers of the Church of England by 
 the Act of Uniformity. The canvass of the century is 
 crowded with notable figures and mighty events. We can- 
 not dissipate time and thought by dwelling upon the general 
 scene. I have hinted at it only by way of furnishing a prop- 
 er background. The central and most important fact is what 
 chiefly concerns us here and now, the evolution from this 
 melange of the Puritan life which gave birth to the New Eng- 
 land colonies, those of Long Island being 'among them. 
 
 At the core of the Puritan movement there was a two-fold 
 protest— against class-privilege in cliurch and state, and 
 against worldliness of life. For several centuries the church 
 of England and the great universities which were its feeders 
 had done little for the great masses of the people. The 
 churc'n cared liti]<> uv nothing for the man who plowed the 
 fields save to be sure of receiving her tithes from his crops. 
 All learning, whether secular or religious, was reserved as 
 the peculiar privilege of the uppermost stratum of society. 
 Church and aristocracy were bound together in closest alliance 
 — were almost identified, indeed, in their mutual and exclusive 
 devotion to each othei's interests. They would christen, 
 mauy, and bury the poor rustic at the times respectively ap- 
 propriate for such slender services, provided the appropriate 
 fees were forthcoming, and God might take care of his souk 
 Sir James Stephen, surely an unprejudiced witness, tells only 
 the sober truth when he says : "To the great, the learned, 
 the world-wise, the church for three centuries afforded a rest- 
 ng-pkce und a refuge. But a long interval elapsed before 
 
FlfTH 8IMI-0EKTEKKIAL Of (SOPTHAMPTOJr. 97- 
 
 the national temples and hierarchy were consecrated to tlie 
 nobler end of enlightening the ignorant and administering 
 comfort to the poor. Kicii beyond all Protestant rivalry in 
 sacred literature, the Church of England, from the days of 
 Parker to those of Laud, had scarcely produced any one con- 
 siderable work of popular instruction. The reigns of Whit- 
 gift, Bancroft, and Laud were unmolested by any cares so 
 rude as those of evangelizing the artisans and peasantry. 
 Jewell and Bull, Hall and Donne, Hooker and Taylor, lived 
 and wrote for their peers, and fi)r future ages, but not for the 
 commonalty of their own."* But Puritanism created a new 
 era. It did something far greater than bring in the common- 
 wealth politically. It revealed "the Republic of God," and 
 insisted u[)on the blessings of Christianity as the rightful pos- 
 session of all human souls — the "commonwealth" — in which 
 no man can cliiim a sliare to the exclusion of his lowliest 
 neighbor. The Pilgrinis Progress threw open not only the 
 mansions of the Celestial City, but all the immunities and 
 piivileges to be found by the way to the tinker* of Bedford. 
 k\n\ i\\Q SainVs Everlasting Rest hYO\v^\\t the brightest cheer 
 and the most lustrous hopes of the Gospel of the blessed God 
 into the cabin of (he humblest weaver of Kidderminster. No 
 wonder our grandmothers were wont to keep these old Pur- 
 itan books where you and 1 used to see them in our child- 
 hood upon the stand along with tJie old family Bible, and 
 venerate them with an almost equal reverence. 
 
 The movement was also a protest against worldliness, 
 formali&m, and immorality of life. With our Puritan fore- 
 fathers, religion and the church meant supremely personal 
 religion and obedience to the personal conscience. "It meant 
 truth and righteousnessj obedience and purity, reverence and 
 
 * Sir James Stephen's Miscellanies, Essay on tJie Xi/e and 
 Times of Hichard JBaxter. 
 
9S ADDSEBS BY RlTV. gAMtfEL E. HEfeBIOK. 
 
 intelligence every where— in the family and in the field, in the 
 shop and in the meeting-house, in the pulpit and on the 
 bench. When they came here it meant compassion and 
 charity toward the savages among whom they found them- 
 selves, and good works as the daily outcome of their faith "t 
 I have heard it hinted that the Puritan was an uncomfortable 
 neighbor, a hard man to get along with. The fact, if it were 
 a fact, came out of this protevt of which I have spoken. A 
 half-dozen unimpeachable yard sticks, I take it, would make 
 uncomfortable companions in a load of very crooked cord- 
 wood. The moral law is an uncomfortable thing in an im- 
 moral community, because by it is the knowledge of sin. 
 But it is too late in the day to set up a defense of the Puri- 
 tans. They need none. Their works have gloriously fol- 
 lowed them. We may be content to leave the charges of the 
 past to the records of history. The gross and festering scur- 
 rilities of Hudibras are abundantly offset by the Pilgrini's 
 Progress, the Paradise Lost, and the SainVs. Rest. Joiin 
 Winthrop and William Brewster and Abraham Pierson : 
 there are no names of kings or courtiers in the seventeenth 
 century to rival these in brightness-— none that in passing 
 have left behind them a track of beauty and of blessing more 
 lustrous, more beneficent, more permanent. We may claim 
 it, for it is easy of demonstration, that the seeds of our liberty, 
 our toleration, our free institutions, our church not estab- 
 lished by law, but establishing itself in the hearts of men, 
 were all in the simple and single devotion to the truth, so far 
 as it was revealed to them, which was the supreme charac- 
 teristic of our Puritan forefathers. 
 
 For two centuries and more the old Puritan spirit and the 
 old Puritan life have been maintained to a very remarkable 
 
 t Bishop H. C. Potter, Address before the New England So- 
 ciety,. New York, December 23, 1878,,. 
 
rrTTH SEM1-CBNTIN!?1AL OF BOfTEAMffCm^ ^ 
 
 de^eo in these eastern towns. It has largely constituted 
 their charm for those who have been so fortunate as to stray 
 in upon them from the outside world. They have been like 
 sheltered nooks of quiet and undisturbed repose to the towns- 
 man wearied by the rub and tear of a more compact and 
 secular life. Our Eastern towns owing to their insular posi- 
 tion have been comparatively isolated. Their inhabitants, 
 marrying much among themselves, iiave strongly preserved 
 hereditary traits and traditions. They have been most naive- 
 ly and attractively siii generis. The influence of these broad, 
 level lands and open-eyed skies has been kindly to the pres- 
 ervation of a religious and worshipful temper never found so 
 dominant where men are shut in between narrow walls of 
 city or even of mountain life. The sailor life of such a large 
 proportion of the population has also conspired to hold the 
 common thought in intercourse with infinity and eternity. 
 The hard work upon the farm and the livelihood wrested 
 from the waves have alike nursed the sterner virtues of pru- 
 dence, economy and independence. 
 
 But the war and the railroad have made a new Long Isl- 
 and. Life is becoming more various and complex, and more 
 completely assimilated to the life of the world. I suppose 
 there are rustlers now in the streets which once knew noth- 
 ing more lively than Deacon John White'*: "schooner," or 
 Captain Bill Green's new horse. There is certainly a new 
 Southampton. And with all our laudation of the past to- 
 day, I do not suppose that any of us desire that the good old 
 town should be remanded to the Puritan times. Many things 
 that were good in their day ought to become obsolete. "God 
 fulfills himself in many ways, lest one good custom should 
 corrupt the world." It is not the good old customs that 
 need to be preserved, but the good old spirit. The essen- 
 tials of true life never change j the forms of life are ever 
 variable. Water, air, light, retain through the ages the 
 
iOO ADUEESa BY EET. eAMTTEL E. SEEBIOK. 
 
 identity of their composition. The cup, the wind, tha lamp, 
 will be adnptable. Out of the old-time life there has come 
 down a shining current of thought, power, purity, and morjl 
 energy. That current, however it may broaden, deepen, 
 strengthen, and cut for itself new cliannels, must not be in- 
 terrupted. Our business is to see to it that these same ele- 
 ments which made our fathers wliat they were and gave us 
 whatsoever virtues we possess, shall go on into tlie future. 
 
 And now permit me to use the few moments that remain 
 to me, in urging upon you the importance of guarding with 
 some greater care the vouchers of your noble descent, the 
 memorials of your venerable history. Our gratitude to-day 
 ouglit to materialize in an endeavor, which shuU reach oown 
 into the future. Lord Macaulay has said that *'any people 
 who are indifferent to the noble achievements of remote an- 
 cestors, are not likely to achieve anything worthy to be re- 
 membered by their descendants," I am sure, from what I 
 have seen both at home and abroiid, that there is no force to 
 hold a community up to virtue like a perpetual impression of 
 noble descent. The memorials of the fathers are the safe- 
 guards of the children. The thought of Westminster Abbey 
 fired the heroism of Nelson at the battle of the Nile. The 
 crossed swords in Prescott's study did not make a soldier of 
 Prescott, but they nursed in him a brave, heroic spirit which 
 enabled him under sorest calamity to win the choicest victor- 
 ies in the battle of a scholar's life. 
 
 Many of our town's most precious memorials have vanished 
 forever. Our fathers were too busy in planting and colon- 
 izing, in wresting life from hard conditions, to think much 
 about leaving behind them personal souvenirs. We have 
 few of their portraits, few of their letters, few of the books 
 they handled, few of the household materials which minis- 
 tered to the narrow comforts of their life. The golden op- 
 portuoities for constructing the infant history of our colony 
 
nrra sEm-oEKTEin?iAL or sou'raAMPToir. 101 
 
 have for the most part passed away. Those which remain 
 ought to be seized' with the greatest avidity. Negligence 
 here and now is criminal. Much has been done by the in- 
 telligent and reverent reseorches of Judge Hedges, Mr. Ho- 
 well, and Mr. Pelletreau. Two hundred and fifty years from 
 to-day the men of Southampton will be more grateful for 
 their work, if possible, than we are. A noble beginning has 
 been made in the History of Southampton and the printing of 
 the town records, woitii more than their weight in gold. It 
 makes one shiver to think how those priceless pages from 
 generation to generation were moved about in an old wooden 
 chest from one garret, to another, now to a grocery store, and 
 now to a shop, and now to some flirmer's bedroom, subjected 
 to the contingencies of flames and to the certainty of rats. 
 "After us the deluge !" 
 
 The present era of historical criticism is giving us back the 
 ages that were beyond the flood, showing us the habitations 
 men lodged in, the garments they wore, the food they ate, 
 the language they spoke, their method of social intercourse, 
 and the sort of government under which they lived. They 
 have resurrected the Pharaoh of the Exodus and given us his 
 photograph. I would give more to see the face of Abraham 
 Pierson and to get a vision of the life ot Old Town as it was 
 in 1G45. But alas for us ! It is far easier for us to get a 
 picture of Zoar or Nebuchadnezzar. Now let us remember 
 that as we feel about the memorials of tlie settlers, the men 
 of the generations to come will feel interested in us. We 
 owe a debt both to the past and to the future, which it is 
 high time for us to begin to pay. Pardon me. We have &e- 
 g%m — but only begun. Shall I give you an outline of what 
 ought to be in this fine old town, of what it will be a shame 
 by and by if it is not, in this oldest English town of the Em- 
 pire State, pace Dr. Whitaker ? 
 
 First then I would like to see the fairest lot of land to be 
 
XOS 4SSBE9S Sf BIT. SAMtTIL 1. S^SICStv 
 
 found between Long Springs and the bench devoted to a me- 
 morial use. Spare an acre or two from your generous farms, 
 upon it to be erected a modest but dignified structure of 
 stone or of brick, fire- proof, which shall contain primarily a 
 public library. Mr. Howell and Mr. Pelletreau, how much 
 do you and I owe to that old district library that used to be 
 kept in Capt. Henry Halsey's back kitchen ! It did not do 
 as much perhaps to fit us for college examinations as the old 
 academy, but that back kitchen was the porch through which 
 we entered into the knowledge of good literature. Let the 
 library room serve also as a memorial hall in whicli tablets 
 shall be placed inscribed with the names of the first colonists, 
 the names, so far as they can now be recovered, of those who 
 served in the wars of the Revolution and of ISJi?, and above 
 all, of those who enlisted in the war for the preservation of 
 the Republic. Let those be thus remembered also who have 
 deserved well of the old town for their conspicuous service, 
 whether in civil, judicial, or executive relations. Let a place 
 be provided also in tiie building for the town clerk's office 
 and for the preservation of its records. Then into this re- 
 pository let every native and every citizen take a pride in 
 gathering whatever shall preserve the memory of tlie past or 
 throw a light upon its life. The place and time to begin are 
 here and now. 
 
 Begin with to-day and work backward as fast and as far as 
 possible. Let the records of this notable anniversary be re- 
 ligiously preserved. Is there in existence a complete file of 
 our town's breezy little newspaper, the The Sea-Side Times f 
 Believe me if it is not gathered at once, in a few years it will 
 be utterly impossible. What would not a perfect file of the 
 old SuJJolh GajBcttef the Sag-Harbor Corrector, or of its 
 younger contemporary be worth t Do you know that for 
 thirty years without a break the old DaboWs Almanac, which 
 ujaed to hang ia the chimney comet of every farm-houae, g:iv» 
 
the namiBS of ships owned in the' port of Sag-Harbor, their 
 tonnage, the names of their agents, the names of their com- 
 manders and their last date ot sailing f Who has a file of 
 them covering that thirty years from '44 to '74 ? I would 
 like to see a complete set of the school-books used by my 
 old grandfather Squire Herrick during the long time that he 
 served in the two-fold capacity of pedagogue and town clerk, 
 to say nothing of the primers and horn-books of a remoter 
 age. But I cannot even find a Peter Parleys Geography with 
 its wonderful poetry, 
 
 « This world is round and like a ball, 
 
 Goes swinging through the air, 
 The atmosphere surrounds it all, 
 
 And stars are shining there," 
 
 which I used to study wearily in the long summer afternooths 
 in the dame-school of good Mrs. Proud. Who can furnish a 
 complete list of Dr. Wilson's printed discourses— two on the 
 death of President Harrison, one on the Rev. Samuel Hunt- 
 ting, one of our most beloved young townsmen, who died 
 when he had barely assumed the pastorate of our sister 
 church of East-Hampton, one on Rev. Amzi Francis, and 
 various thanksgiving and fast-day discourses ? And the ser- 
 mons of Mr. Bogart, to go no further back, that polished gen- 
 tleman and ripe scholar whom we Yankees wooed and won 
 fiom the Dutch at the West. Where mqIXw. Journals of our 
 Early Whalers? Where, O wherCj is the log-book of Gapr 
 tain Alercator Cooper on that historic voyage which gave to 
 Southampton the honor of opening up Japan and introducing 
 the wonderful people to the family of nationtj ? Where are 
 preserved the portraits of Judges Halsey and Rose par nobile 
 fratrum, and I may ask also, of his honor the orator^in-chief 
 of our anniversary ? The best materials for the construction 
 of future history are evanescent. I make a plea for their sal- 
 vation Jo behalf of those who come after us. They cost little 
 
104 ADDBESS BY EEV, SAMUEL E. HEEKIOK. 
 
 or nothing at the time cf their issue, their loss is utterly ir- 
 reparable. Let me note this fact by way of encouragement, 
 a fact abundantly verified in my own experience, of which if 
 there were time I could give you abundant and most romantic 
 illustration. Whenever an individual or a community fairly 
 enters upon tins work of preserving the memorials of the 
 ])ast, a sort of whirlpool current is created about the collect- 
 ion which rapidly brings in the rarest materials, even from 
 the most distant and unpromising quarters. Gradually the 
 past, will be restored, the lost will be found. Long-hidden 
 treasures will leap from their hiding-places to find their com- 
 panions and congenial associates. To him that hath shall be 
 given, hat from Inm tltat hath not shall be taken away even that 
 tvhich he hath. How much of value has been thrown away 
 for want of a place to keep it ! The spaces upon your shelves 
 or in your cases will appeal powerfully to generous posses- 
 sors. In the long run things tend to go where they are 
 greatly wanted and where they ought to be. Thus gradually 
 there will come to be in our midst nothing less than a sort 
 of village university, at once a centre and fountain of rev- 
 erend and patriotic influences, a fostering nurse of afl^ectionate' 
 veneration for the past, of brotheily feeling and social good- 
 will for iha present, of generous forethought for the great 
 future, whose generations will bless us in the coming centu- 
 ries as to-day w^e bless the memory of our goodly ancestors. 
 
 SAM'L E. ilERKlCK. 
 Boston, Massachusetts. 
 
EIIRA.TA.. 
 
 Page 10, 5th line from top, before "does" insert ^^and j" 
 
 9th line from top, after "riglitcous," insert "laws." 
 Page 11, 6th line from top, for '^er" read <-or" ; 10th line 
 
 from bottom, for "Qork" in part of the edition, read '"York"; 
 
 6ih line from bottom, for "IG70" read "1 010." 
 Page 13, J St line, for "theii" read "its." 
 Page 15, 1 1th line from top, strike out "the." 
 Page IG, 12th line from top, ufter "ministry" insert comma. 
 Page IS, 4th line from bottom, for "murning" read "mo/rn- 
 
 in""." ' 
 
 Page 19, 9th line from top, for "origihal" n;ad "originnl." 
 Page 24, IGth line from top, for "denomination" read 
 
 "domination." 
 Page 2^, 2d line from top, for "shown" read "shone." 
 Page 29, 10th line from ton, for "Toqueville" read "Tocque- 
 
 ville." ' ^ 
 
 Page 30, Gth line from top, for "jurisdition" read "juris- 
 diction." 
 
 Page 31, 12th line from top, for "instituted" read "insti- 
 tuted." 
 
 Page 50, Gth line from top, after "ol" insert "the," and 
 after "said" insert "waters."