Chronicles of a New England Family

Abstract

W ERE it indeed true that history is made only by great men and that it is nothing but the aggregate of the biographies of heroes, the simple chronicles of an obscure family would have no claim to public attention. But if history is the story of those ordinary people of whom ninety-nine per cent. of society consists, it may not be uninstructive to recall to life and memory a long line of Americans whose records stretch unbroken though sometimes they are very slight -from about 1637 to the present. There has lately come into the hands of the author a mass of unpublished family documents wills, letters, sermons, college exercises, reminiscences which are sufficiently full to give a fairly clear history of the family for the last three hundred years. From these records those portions have been selected which throw light on the ecclesiastical history of western Massachusetts from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth century. Perhaps this candle brought from under its bushel will cast a not unwelcome ray of light upon the religion, the opinions, and the manners of certain of our ancestors. What has been left out has only a personal interest. Records of births, and marriages, and deaths, of income, and small household matters have no real interest for others though they touch the very heart of the life of the persons whom they do concern. Apart from these purely private affairs, however, each man, even the humblest, has some public r6le to play which may happen to be of some slight interest to posterity as well as to his contemporaries. In the whole long line of ten generations there is a common character to be discerned in this New England family. All the men who emerge into suffi-