An Obituary for Mr. Cheever

On the death of Ezekiel Cheever, noted schoolmaster, Samuel Sewall composed this obituary:

He was born January, 25. 1614. Came over to N-E. 1637. to Boston: To New-Haven 1638. Married in the Fall and began to teach School; which Work he was constant in till now. First, at New-Haven, then at Ipswich; then at Charlestown; then at Boston, whether he came 1670. So that he has Labour'd in that Calling Skillfully, diligently, constantly, Religiously, Seventy years. A rare Instance of Piety, Health, Strength, Serviceableness. The Welfare of the Province was much upon his Spirit. He abominated Perriwigs.

No higher praise.

Samuel Sewall on Mourning Executed Criminals

On Thursday, we saw the family of convicted pirate John Lambert successfully lobby Judge Sewall for permission to bury Lambert in King's Chapel burying ground. Today, I would like to highlight another example of a Boston family going into public mourning after an execution.

On November 13, word reached Boston that Lady Alice Beckenshaw Lisle had been beheaded in Winchester, England. Lady Alice (age 68) had given shelter to fugitives from the Battle of Sedgemoor, the last battle in the Protestant Duke of Monmouth's campaign to depose his Catholic uncle, James II. Lady Alice claimed that she did not know that the fugitives had been involved in the Monmouth Rebellion. Nevertheless, she was tried and convicted at the Bloody Assizes on August 25, 1685 and sentenced to be burned to death. King James II commuted her sentence to death by beheading, an order that was carried out on September 2.

Most Puritan Bostonians had been horrified by the ascension of a Catholic king and were in sympathy with Monmouth's Rebellion. The same ship that brought news of Lady Alice's execution also brought "a Rumor that the Government [of New England] will be Changed, this Fall or Winter, by some Person sent over, or a Commission to some here." This rumor proved true with the establishment of the Dominion of New England a few months later.

None in Boston mourned Lady Alice's death more deeply than did her daughter, Bridget Lisle Usher, widow of late Harvard president Leonard Hoar and wife of Boston merchant Hezekiah Usher. The week after the news arrived, Sewall noticed that "Madam Usher, her Daughter and Husband" attended Rev. Cotton Mather's Thursday lecture "in Mourning." I don't know whether their presence in the audience influenced Mather's choice of material at all, but Sewall's notes indicate that the content of the lecture would have called attention to Lady Alice's case and the plight of Protestant New England more broadly:

Mr. Mather Preaches from Numb. 25. 11. Shewed that Love was an ingredient to make one zealous; those that received good People received Christ, Mat. 25. Said that if the Government of N.E. were zealous might yet save this People. 2d Part of 79th Ps. sung. Madam Usher, her Daughter and Husband in Mourning.

Imagine Bridget Usher and her family dressed in mourning as the congregation around them sang the 79th Psalm, which begins with,

O god, the heathen are come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled; they have laid Jerusalem on heaps.

If they sang the second half, they sang,

 Let the sighing of the prisoner come before thee; according to the greatness of thy power preserve thou those that are appointed to die;

Mather's other texts were similarly on-point. Numbers 25:11 concerns the actions of Phineas, a grandson of Moses' brother Aaron, who saved the Israelites from God's wrath by proving his zealousness. Matthew 25 is the famous parable of the wise virgins and the foolish virgins, which contains well-known passages on preparedness and hospitality:

For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

I am not a scholar of Puritan worship practices, so I don't want to jump to the easy conclusion that Mather chose this passage to comment on Lady Alice's righteousness. Yet, it seems to me that all this talk of extending hospitality to those in need had to have focused the congregation's attention on her case, especially with her family sitting there in mourning.

In any case, this is an instance where Boston's religious and political loyalties allowed the family of someone executed for treason to mourn that death brazenly in public.

Samuel Sewall on Burying Executed Criminals

We have already seen what Samuel Sewall thought about commemorating executed criminals. In the case of the executed Quakers, he argued that people who died on the gallows should have no monuments erected to their memory. This is of interest to me because you would think that you would want to drag out the example as long as possible, so Sewall's opposition to any marker shows that marking a grave was considered a sign of respect.

The executed Quakers were not buried in a graveyard — they were buried near the gallows on Boston Common. Presumably, burial within the graveyard was also a sign of respect, though Puritan graveyards were not formally consecrated. This also comes up in the case of burials for people who committed suicide. In 1688, an Indian servant named Thomas hanged himself, and the Boston coroner "ordered his burial by the highway with a Stake through his Grave." Earlier the same year, the wife of Samuel Marion had hanged herself, but she was given a graveyard burial after three witnesses testified that she had been insane for some time preceding her death.

From the evidence I have gathered, it seems that executed criminals were not generally buried in graveyards, but there are some exceptions. In 1704, for example, Sewall allowed the family of John Lambert, a convicted pirate, to claim and bury his body in the Kings Chapel burying ground. 

By my Order, the diggers of Mm Paiges Tomb Dugg a Grave for Lambert, where he was laid in the Old burying place Friday night about midnight near some of his Relations: Body was given to his Widow. Son and others made suit to me.

Even if he was willing to let the family bury the body with some sort of dignity, Sewall did not want them to flaunt their actions. Most funerals took place in the late afternoon, but John Lambert was buried at midnight.

This makes me wonder: was Samuel Sewall — who is famous for repenting his involvement in the Salem witch trials — involved with the burial of Rebecca Nurse? Family legend says that the Nurse family exhumed and re-buried Rebecca's body under cover of night after she was executed for witchcraft in 1692. The circumstances seem similar. Might Sewall have given his blessing to the Nurses as well as the Lamberts? Or might the mercy he showed to the Lamberts have been inspired by his guilt over doing nothing for Rebecca Nurse?

Samuel Sewall on Hortatory Names

In 1701, Samuel Sewall was one of the judges who heard the case of Esther Rogers, accused of murdering an infant daughter born out of wedlock. Rogers was found guilty and Sewall chastised her for not living up to her name:

I told her . . . Esther was a great saviour; she, a great destroyer. Said did not do this to insult over her, but to make her sensible.

So it seems that at least some people were thinking about first names as exhortations to good behavior. It makes the Jezebels and Vajezathas all the more perplexing.

Beer Summit, 1689-Style

I've been enjoying Samuel Sewall's accounts of sightseeing in England during his trip in 1689 (he was part of the delegation attempting to renegotiate Massachusetts' charter). Along with the great buildings and libraries, Sewall visited plenty of graveyards and churches. One of these was the Jewish cemetery in London:

Went and saw the Jews burying Place at Mile-End: Some Bodies were laid East and West; but now all are ordered to be laid North and South. Many Tombs. Engravings are Hebrew, Latin, Spanish, English, sometimes on the same stone. Part of the Ground is improv’d as a Garden, the dead are carried through the keepers house. First Tomb is abt the year 1659. Brick wall built abt part. Ont’s two sides 5444, Christi 1684, Tamuz 21, June 23, as I remember. — I told the keeper afterwards wisht might meet in Heaven: He answered, and drink a Glass of beer together, which we were then doing.

Sewall still wanted to convert the Jews — his famous hymn, "Once More Our God Vouchsafe to Shine," contains a verse praying that the "harde'ned Jews" will learn to worship " their Rightful Lord" — but, apparently, beer has some sort of mystical power to unite people (briefly).

Illegal Quaker Burying Ground, 1685

Samuel Sewall did not like Quakers. This was hardly an extraordinary position among Massachusetts Puritans, but Sewall was particularly strong in his disapproval, going out of his way to oppose Quakers even when his fellow Puritans were willing to give them a chance. In 1708, when a group of Quakers petitioned the Governor and Council for permission to build a meeting house in Boston, Sewall opposed the measure, saying that he, "would not have a hand in setting up their Devil Worship" (Sewall Diary 23 Aug. 1708).

Sewall's diary is full of references to Quakers — he clearly kept a keen eye out for them. Of particular interest to me are his references to Quaker burials.

In June of 1685, a small group of Quakers asked Governor Simon Bradstreet for permission to build a fence around the graves of the "Boston Martyrs" — Marmaduke Stephenson, William Robinson, Mary Dyer, and William Leddra — on Boston Common. These four Quakers had been executed in 1659 (Stephenson and Robinson), 1660 (Dyer), and 1661 (Leddra), for the crime of returning to Massachusetts to proselytize after being banished on a previous occasion. Their fellow Quakers wished to honor them and, no doubt, draw attention to their own continued presence in the colony. This was a particularly sore subject in 1685, as the colony's charter had been revoked the previous year, partially due to concerns about the lack of religious toleration in Massachusetts. When Governor Bradstreet brought this request before the Council, it was unanimously denied. Sewall, writing in his diary, noted that, "it is very inconvenient for persons so dead and buried in the place to have any Monument" (Sewall Diary 17 June 1685).

The Quakers were not big on obeying earthly authorities, so they went ahead and built the fence anyway.

In August, Sewall passed by the gravesite on his way to Dorchester and saw

a few Feet of Ground enclosed with Boards, which is done by the Quakers out of respect to som one or more hanged and buried by the Gallows: though the Governor forbad them, when they asked Leave.

Of course, today, there is a big statue of Mary Dyer next to the State House, but this commemoration was a dramatic gesture of defiance in 1685.

A Meeting of Two Funerals

"We met a Niger Funeral."

- Samuel Sewall, 20 October 1721

In 1721, a virulent smallpox epidemic ravaged the city of Boston. Between April and December, 5,889 Bostonians contracted the disease and 844 died of it. The danger peaked in October, with 411 deaths.

The 1721 epidemic is most often remembered for sparking a controversy over inoculation. Most Bostonians agreed with Dr. William Douglass that inoculation was a dangerous innovation that threatened to spread disease and kill hundreds.* A few prominent citizens, including Cotton Mather and Dr. Zabdiel Boylston, supported inoculation based on information gathered from slaves (particularly Onesimus, a slave owned by Mather) who had undergone the procedure in Africa and from the Royal Society of London (which, in turn, got much of its information from Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's female informants in Turkey). For a wonderful narrative treatment of this controversy, see Jennifer Lee Carrell's The Speckled Monster.

For me, one of the most interesting things about the 1721 epidemic is that the records it generated allow us to get a glimpse of how white and black Bostonians interacted in the context of illness and death. Onesimus' pivotal role in convincing white elites to adopt African medical knowledge is well documented, but it is far from the only instance of confrontation/collaboration between free and enslaved Bostonians during the crisis.

Samuel Sewall's diary provides a window into the events of that deadly autumn. The diary does not usually pay much attention to the comings and goings of slaves, but in September and October of 1721, they are unusually conspicuous. On September 16, Sewall noted that Jane Hirst had been brought home from her boarding house when she fell ill, and that "Boston carried her in his arms." When she was moved to another house on October 15, "Scipio carried a Note for Thanks." Five days later, Sewall attended a quintuple-funeral at the "South-Burying place" (later Granary Burying Ground), where he and his well-heeled acquaintances "met a Niger funeral."

With so many deaths, it is unsurprising that Sewall's burial party should have encountered another at the burying ground. I find this short entry very suggestive — a cadre of elite, white Bostonians burying five of their dead comes face to face with a group of their black neighbors in a space that is shared by both, yet their rituals are separate. Did the two funeral parties regard one another with hostility? Respect? Indifference? How did they feel about sharing the space of the graveyard? How did they judge each other's performance?

*It should be noted that these fears were not without merit. As Elizabeth Fenn has noted, wealthy citizens were much more likely to choose/afford inoculation than their poorer neighbors. Those who underwent the procedure (including Abigail Adams in 1775) saw no need to quarantine themselves, despite the fact that they were contagious and posed a very real danger to the non-immune public. According to Fenn, variolation "was really as likely to start an epidemic as it was to stop one, unless it was administered under a very strict quarantine."

Samuel Sewall in the Graveyard

I spend a pretty deal of time in the burying place to see to the Graver of the Tombstone: Push Catterpillars off the Apple-trees; goe to the Meeting at Mistress Averyes; read out of Dr. Sibs about submitting to God's Providence, Sing the 110. Psalm.

- Diary of Samuel Sewall, May 4, 1687

From this entry, we learn that the elusive Boston stone carver (or one of his colleagues) sometimes met with clients in the graveyard itself. Since Sewall usually uses the word "tomb" to mean a family tomb and "stone" to mean a gravestone, I suspect that he was overseeing carving on the Sewall family tomb in the Granary Burying Ground on May 4, 1687.

More From Samuel Sewall

Saw the stone of my Aunt Rider's Grave. She died March 21 1687/8. Lies at Baddesly burying place.

- Diary of Samuel Sewall, February 20, 1688/9

On a journey to England, Samuel Sewall took some time to visit his relatives. On the trip, he mentions observing his aunt's gravestone about 11 months after she died. This does not tell us how much time elapsed between her death and the erection of a monument, but it was definitely less than a year.

Samuel Sewall's "Connecticut Stone Post"

I'm reading more of Samuel Sewall's diary today and came across this intriguing entry:

This day, [September] 16 [1721] I set up my Connecticut stone post in Elm pasture, in Remembrance of my loving Wife Mrs. Hannah Sewall.

I don't know what a "Connecticut stone post" is, but since it seems to be a material object dedicated to the memory of the dead, I am interested in finding out.

Little Bits of Evidence

Mrs. Mary Winchcomb was buried in the old burying place, in the 67th year of her age, as her Relations tell me; though the Stone bear 69.: died suddenly.

- Diary of Samuel Sewall, August 22, 1717

I have not been able to find out exactly when Mary Winchcomb (Winchcombe? Whitcomb? Wincom? Winchon?) died, but if she was buried in August, I do not imagine that much time elapsed between burial and death. There seems to have been a carved gravestone present at her funeral. I only have a transcription of Sewall's diary, so I cannot tell if the part about the stone was added in later, but it seems to be integrated into the rest of the entry, so I would venture a guess that it really was written on August 22, 1717.

Happy Birthday, Samuel Sewall!

Samuel Sewall turns 356 today .

Sewall is probably best known as one of the judges in the Salem Witch Trials. He later regretted his involvement and wrote a statement of remorse that was read aloud to the congregation of the Old South Meetinghouse in Boston in 1697.

I haven't read Eve LaPlante's sympathetic biography of Sewall, but I tend to agree with this reviewer: there is something special about a leader who is willing to admit his mistakes.

Sewall is also remembered for being an early opponent of slavery. His anti-slavery pamphlet, The Selling of Joseph was published in 1700, at a time when many of his neighbors (including Cotton Mather) were slave owners.