“Going to Mendon to put himself under the Care of Dr. Pope”

Yesterday we left Mary Forbes, wife of the Rev. Eli Forbes of Gloucester, being treated in Boston by the cancer specialist John Pope for a tumor in her breast in the spring of 1775.

On 15 April, news came that the lump “came out in a Body, near of the Bigness and Shape of a Sheeps Kidney.”

It’s not clear whether the Forbeses were still in Boston when the war began four days later. If so, they still had access to Dr. Pope, but he might not have had the materials to make his medicines. And of course there were the dangers of attack and starvation.

The Forbeses may have left just before the war began or soon after, but in any case they were in the countryside by June. So was Dr. Pope. On 30 June Mary’s father, the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman, wrote in his diary:

My Daughter Forbes goes to Mendon in search of her Doctor, Pope: her Breast has Twinges, and she wants some of his [??] salve.

On 19 July, Isaiah Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy, now relocated to Worcester, published this notice:

This is to inform the public, that John Pope who of late years hath been much noted for curing inveterate Cancers, and the most malignant Ulcers at Boston, hath by reason of the deplorable situation of that town removed to Mendon, where any who want his assistance may by enquiring at George Aldrich’s of said Mendon find the place of his Residence.

Aldrich (1715–1797) was a Quaker, son of a prominent Quaker preacher.

On 13 September, Parkman reported on a sermon, adding: “Mr. Forbes [and Mrs. Forbes?] (having been to Dr. at Mendon about her Breast) came.” 

Pope continued to have a reputation as a healer, and on 17 Feb 1776 the minister wrote: “Mr. Edwards Whipple here. He has a Cancer on his Lip—is going to Mendon to put himself under the Care of Dr. Pope—and desires public prayers tomorrow for him.”

However, by that time Mary Forbes was dead. On 19 January her father wrote:

Billy comes from Concord—with The Heavy News, and Letter from my dear son Forbes! Of my most dear Child Mary’s Departure on the 16th at Eve, between 9 and 10 o’Clock! O Lord, Help!

Mary Forbes was fifty years old when she died.

The Rev. Eli Forbes married three more times, and his last wife was Mary’s younger sister Lucy, who by that time was widow of the military engineer Jeduthan Baldwin.

TOMORROW: John Pope’s travels.

(The picture above shows Gloucester’s first meetinghouse as depicted by Fitz Henry Lane.)

“To consult him on her Sad Case, of her Breast”

Here’s another clergyman’s account of how John Pope, a cancer specialist, treated a patient in pre-Revolutionary Boston.

These extracts come from the diary of the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman of Westborough, which is all transcribed and analyzed at its own website. These extracts were found and organized by Ross W. Beales, Jr., Professor Emeritus at Holy Cross, and his colleagues.

Parkman knew of John Pope by May 1772, when he wrote of “Mr. Smith being at Boston under the operations of Mr. Pope (a Quaker) for the Cure of his Cancer.”

However, Pope’s skills became personal when Parkman’s oldest daughter Mary (Molly), who had married the Rev. Eli Forbes (1726–1804, show here) of Gloucester in 1752, developed some form of breast cancer.

On 10 Jan 1775, Parkman wrote in his diary:

My Son Forbes and his Wife came from Cape Ann, but last from Mr. Brooks’s at Medford.... My Daughters Trouble in her Breast somewhat mitigated, by Methods used by Friend Pope of Boston. Thanks to the Supreme Healer!

The month of March brought lots of news, not all good.

[13 March:] Mr. Forbes and my Daughter Set out on their Journey to Boston, designing to go to Mr. Pope, to consult him on her Sad Case, of her Breast. . . .

[22 March:] A Second Letter from my Son Forbes at Boston, that his Wife has gone through a Second Dressing by the hard Plaister and “by appearance these two have en[crusted?] the Schirrous Tumor about 1/4 of an inch. This dead mass must be separated from the live Flesh by digestive lenient Dressings before another hard Dressing is applyed: which will require a Week or ten Days.” . . .

[24 March:] Received another Letter from Mr. Forbes, dated the 20th…that “moment” whilst She was actually “under the painfull Operation of the 2d hard Plaister, and is as full of pain as She can well bear, though She endures (he writes) with more patience and fortitude than I feared. The Doctor says all Things work very kindly, and he doubts not with the Blessing of God he shall be able to effect a Cure: but will require some time, at least two Months.

[“]At present she is extremely agitated. Last Night she had no sleep, and this Night (Sabbath 2 o’Clock) She has been much worse -- but by the help of an Anodyne she gets a little sleep—hope She will be supported and carryed through—I am encouraged, but verily Sir, it is hard Work—and we hope in God.”

“Six o’Clock in the Morning. We have got through the Night. It has been pritty distressing, though through the great Goodness of God mine and your dear Molly has had several refreshing Naps of Sleep, and is now Comfortable—and does not expect to have any more of these hard Plaisters for a Week or ten Days, and I hope the worst is past. However, Sufficient to the Day is the Evil thereof.” . . .

[28 March:] Put up at [Joshua] Bracketts [tavern]: hastened to Samuels to see Mrs. Forbes. She was under the lenient Plaister—was calm and easy. I saw the sore dressed. . . .

[29 March:] Mrs. Forbes has Comfort, and is cheerfull. We lodged there.

Parkman went home, so the next news came by post on 15 April:

A Letter from Mr. Forbes (by Ripley, who is come to us from Boston and Cambridge) that on the 13th the Remainder of the Cancer in my Daughters Breast came out in a Body, near of the Bigness and Shape of a Sheeps Kidney—the Breast in an healing way. All Praise and Thanks to the glorious God our Healer!

Four days later, war broke out, cutting off Boston from the countryside.

TOMORROW: Can this patient be saved?

Darius Parkhurst, “deprived of Sight and hearing”

On 27 May 1774, the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman of Westboro wrote in his diary about a trip to Boston:

At Mr. Joseph Coollidge’s bought me a new pair of Gold Buttons, and paid him for them 8£ 6/. Undertook my Journey home. Called at Mr. [most likely the minister Amos] Adams’s at Roxbury where I saw Mr. [blank] of Woodstock [Connecticut], who was blind and deaf. The way to Converse with him, was by writing in his hand.

Parkman had forgotten the name of the deaf and blind man he met, and mistaken his home town. But the minister still remembered that encounter months later because on 12 August he wrote:

Mr. [the minister Aaron] Putnam of Pomfret and his Sister Bethiah dined here.

N.B. He gave me a further account of Mr. Darius Parkhurst of Pomfret (whom I saw at Mr. Adams’s at Roxbury last May) and his accomplishments though deprived of Sight and hearing about 11 AEts [i.e., age eleven]. Is now about 34. You must write in his hand, with your or his finger, to convey your meaning. Blessed be God for my sight and hearing! May I have grace to improve them!

Those details about the man match genealogical records of a Darius Parkhurst born in Pomfret on 7 June 1739 and dying there on 12 May 1792. His gravestone appears above, courtesy of Find a Grave.

Now it’s possible there was a cousin or other man of the same name and approximate age in Pomfret, but I haven’t come across one. So for the rest of this posting I’m going to assume that all the sources refer to one man. There are no mentions in newspapers, but he does appear in government records.

In September 1776 Darius Parkhurst of Pomfret married Joanna (sometimes called Anna) Sabin. Darius’s mother had also been a Sabin, but I can’t trace the family link to his wife.

The Parkhursts started having children, including a little Darius (1777–1778) memorialized on the same stone as his father. There were three more kids by 1785: Darius, Simeon, and Sarah.

In 1783, the town paid Darius Parkhurst for “keeping Seth Sabin.” That might have been Joanna’s father, then nearing seventy.

Joanne Pope Melish’s Disowning Slavery mentions another member of the household:

In 1790, when Jacob Dresser of Thompson, Connecticut, apprenticed “a Negro Girl Named Peggy” (apparently a child of his slave) to Darius Parkhurst of Pomfret, he wrote, “During the aforesd term Sd Dresser Doth fully impower Sd Parkhurst to Control, order & command said Peggy in all Respects, and to all Intents & Purposes a sthrough She were born his Servant.”

This reflected Connecticut’s slow move away from slavery. If Peggy had been born after 1784, she was legally free and would become a free adult at the age of twenty-one. Until that time, however, she was a child (of an enslaved woman, furthermore), and therefore not free but in need of both care and governance.

Remarkably, none of those local and legal records say anything about Darius Parkhurst himself being disabled. (Once again, assuming there was only one man in town by that name.) Legally Darius was the recipient of the town’s relief payments and the master of Peggy, but it seems likely that Joanna provided most of the care and oversight. In fact, the household might have received that money and that indentured child because people knew Darius couldn’t do ordinary farm work.

Still, Darius Parkhurst must have had some way to support himself since he did inherit land, marry, raise kids, travel as far as Roxbury, and so on. His minister told Parkman about “his accomplishments.” Yet he doesn’t seem to have been remembered in any local history. Without Parkman’s diary entries, we’d have no way of knowing that he’d lost his sight and hearing.

“Hostilitys have commenced at Cambridge”?

Here’s another primary source on the “Powder Alarm” of 1774 that I’ve quoted before, but only eight years ago.

These are two entries from the diary of the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman of Westboro.

Parkman really didn’t like conflict, so he hung back from political actions his parishioners and even his sons advocated. I recently traced his losing battle to keep people in town from committing to the Solemn League and Covenant boycott; that comes up here, too.

Naturally, Parkman was most uncomfortable with the idea of his farmworker, neighbors, son, and others marching off to confront the redcoats.

But the real story of these entries is how much misinformation and confusion the people of central Massachusetts were dealing with. The false rumor that the regulars had killed people in Cambridge on 1 September ended up reaching Westboro first as a false rumor that there was shooting on 2 September and “Some [victims] at least may be of Westborough.” That wasn’t completely refuted until the next day.

1774 September 2 (Friday). This morning was ushered in with Alarms from every Quarter, to get ready and run down to Boston or Cambridge. The Contents Magazine of Powder at Winter Hill had been carryed off — namely [550?] Barrells; by Treachery; etc. This is told as the Chief Affair.

72 of our Neighbours marched from Gales (tis said) by break of Day; and others are continuely going. My young man [Asa Ware] goes armed, with them.

About 5 p.m. Grafton Company, nigh 80, under Capt. Golding, march by us.

N.B. Squire [Francis] Whipple here. Says he is ready to sign [the Solemn League and Covenant] etc.

It is a Day of peculiar Anxiety and Distress! Such as we have not had — Will the Lord graciously look upon us; and grant us Deliverance — for we would hope and trust in His Name! We send for Mrs. Spring and her two Children to be here with us, while her husband is gone with the People. Breck [the minister’s son] returned from Lancaster.

At Eve we have most sorrowful News that Hostilitys have commenced at Cambridge, and that Six of our people are killed; that probably Some at least may be of Westborough. Joshua Chamberlin stood next (as it is related) to one that was slain. We have many Vague accounts and indeed are left in uncertaintys about Every Thing that has occurred.

Sutton soldiers — about 250, pass along by us — but after midnight are returning by reason of a Contrary Report. Mr. Zech. Hicks stops here. Breck is employed in the night to cast Bulletts. A Watch at the Meeting House to guard the Town stock etc. Some Towns, we hear, have lost much of theirs, as Dedham, Wrentham etc.

Westboro was using its meetinghouse as its militia armory, as Lexington would do in April 1775.

1774 September 3 (Saturday). Capt. Benjamin Fay came here between 2 and 3 o’Clock in the morn in much Concern and knew not what to do. After Light and through most of the forenoon, vague uncertain Reports. Sutton men that had gone to Deacon Wood, came back to go down the Road again.

My son Breck with provisions, Bread, Meat, etc., Coats, Blanket etc., for it was rainy, rides down towards Cambridge to relieve Asa Ware, Mr. Spring, and others who were unprovided.

About noon the Sutton Companys come back again and go home, Rev. [Ebenezer] Chaplin among them. So do the Grafton men.

Mr. Abraham Temple relates to me, that he, having been as far as to Cambridge and himself Seen many of the Transactions, that there were no Regulars there, no Artillery, no body Slain — but that Lt. Gov. [Thomas] Oliver, Messrs. [Samuel] Danforth, Joseph Lee, Col. [David] Phips (the high Sheriff) had resigned and promised that they would not act as Counsellors — that Mr. Samuel Winthrop computed there were about 7000 of the Country people had gathered into Cambridge on this Occasion — that it was probable, as he (Mr. Temple) conceived, that the Troubles would subside.

N.B. When the Sun run low, Our Company returned (consisting of Horse and Foot about 150). With them were my Son and my young man — all without any Evil Occurrance. To God be Praise and Glory! I Suppose Capt. [Jonathan] Maynard and those who were with him are returned also.

It’s also notable that the Sutton minister Ebenezer Chaplin accompanied men on this militia alarm. He was much more politically active than Parkman, chosen for the 1779 convention to write a constitution for Massachusetts and the 1788 convention to consider the new U.S. Constitition.

Chaplin also seems to have been a volatile man. In 1775 Isaiah Thomas declined to run some of his essays in the Massachusetts Spy, and the minister responded by preaching that the printer was an atheist and a Tory.

In 1791, the Rev. Mr. Chaplin locked up his daughter when she wanted to marry a popular young man. She died. The parish (which eventually became Millbury) dismissed Chaplin from their pulpit. Quite a change from seventeen years earlier, when they went off to possible war together.

“Instead of the Agreement which the people have signed”

By the first week of July 1774, people in Westboro had started to sign the Solemn League and Covenant, promising not only not to buy goods from Britain but not to do business with anyone who did.

The town’s minister, the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman, had shown that he didn’t think that was a good idea. He wasn’t coming out and condemning this latest boycott, either, though. He just wanted to avoid controversy.

Supporters of the non-consumption movement kept up pressure on Parkman, presumably because if he came out on their side it would be even easier to sign up everyone else in town. Members of Westboro’s committee of correspondence visited Parkman again on 7 July, as he recorded in his diary:

Messrs. Daniel Hardy, Edwards Whipple etc. here. The former is disturbed that I would not so much as read, at the late Town-Meeting, what their Committee had prepared to be signed. I gave him some Reason for my refusing: namely that I was aware that if I heard it, I must either approve or condemn it — but do which I will, I must of necessity be blamed.

If I approved of their Draught, I must have exposed my Self to the resentments of Authority which I must teach all Men to avoid: for I must teach and injoin that “every soul be subject to the higher powers” — “to obey Magistrates” — as Rom. 13.1 and Tit. 3.1. If I Should dislike it, I was aware that they would not be easily turned aside notwithstanding from what they had done. I was not o’ mind to render my Self Obnoxious either way.

Soon Parkman received word from his son that “at Boston and other Towns, they did not conform to the Governors late proclamation etc.” Gov. Thomas Gage’s threats were having little effect.

Rather than openly oppose the boycott, some people suggested that communities shouldn’t commit to any action until they heard what the upcoming Continental Congress recommended. But that body wouldn’t meet for another two months. Some towns instead added clauses to their Solemn League and Covenant votes saying that they could revisit the details based on that congress’s resolves.

Parkman continued to try his own delaying tactics on 18 July:

The Town Met again on the Article of Signing the Engagement to break off the Commercial Dealings with Great Britain. They Send their Committee to Me to let me see what they have drawn up; and if I pleased in Order to my Signing it. I sent my Regards to the Town, with my Request, that it might be suffered in my Hands a little while for my Review, and I will make them Some Return before or at their next Meeting.

Nine days later, Dr. James Hawes of the town committee and his wife visited the minister in the afternoon. Avoiding another political sore spot, Parkman offered chocolate instead of tea. Hawes left a copy of Westboro’s agreement.

The next day, Parkman wrote:

Transcribed the Towns Agreement for my own use. I cannot, as it is, like it: It is ill draughted.

Ah, there was the problem! The prose. (Not.)

On 1 August, the minister once again recorded a gathering “on the Affair of Subscribing the Agreement” that didn’t make it onto the official record of town meetings. His own son Breck “found it necessary to subscribe,” he wrote.

By this point Parkman had come up with his own form of the pledge (which I don’t think survives). But the men of Westboro no longer cared about what their minister thought. “I went to the Meeting House with a paper fit to be subscribed and read it to a Number of persons,” he wrote; “but the Town were busy and did not call for it.”

At that same meeting, Westboro agreed to help pay for the Massachusetts delegates’ expenses going to Philadelphia; that money was being collected outside the province’s regular taxation process to avoid the governor’s veto. Ministers were usually exempt from taxation, but Parkman wrote: “I sent my Quota thereto.” He was willing to avoid this extralegal equivalent of tax to avoid controversy. (This was also the day Calvin Piper got badly hurt falling from a horse.)

Finally Parkman recognized he wouldn’t convince anyone but himself about the boycott. On 4 August he wrote:

N.B. Instead of the Agreement which the people have signed, I have drawn up what I think may be more Safe for me, if I shall be obliged to Sign any thing.

The town had yet another unrecorded meeting “upon some of their Liberty Affairs” on 8 August. Four days later, Parkman stated that he had received an issue of the Boston Gazette with news of the Massachusetts Government Act.

For years the province’s Whigs had been warning people that there was a conspiracy to take away people’s legal rights. This new law curbed town meetings, eliminated the elected Council, increased the royal governor’s appointive powers, and limited jury pools. The radicals’ dire warnings, which moderates like Parkman had thought overblown, appeared to be coming true. In his diary he wrote: “May God Sanctifie to us this heavy stroke! and help us rightly to improve such privilege and Libertys as remain!”

“I prayed they would not be hasty in signing”

Gen. Thomas Gage’s 30 June 1774 proclamation against the Solemn League and Covenant boycott reached the town of Westboro on 2 July.

The Rev. Ebenezer Parkman wrote in his diary: “N.B. Governor Gage has issued out a Proclamation against Combinations—Assemblys for signing a solemn League and Covenant etc.”

By that point, the townspeople had been debating the call for a strict non-consumption pact for two weeks. They were looking at both the Boston and Worcester versions. Their new committee of correspondence had already spoken with Parkman, as well as hearing from the Rev. Nathan Stone of Southboro.

So what effect did the governor’s royal proclamation have? It certainly slowed down one important person in town, but he was already leery of anything that might be controversial. That person was the Rev. Mr. Parkman himself.

On 4 July he wrote about a meeting never entered into the official town record:

Town Meet on the Affair of signing some Draught, for the public Relief. Old Mr. Whitney and Capt. Jonas Brigham are sent to me to desire me to go and assist ‘em, by prayer and advice. Went and prayed.

After prayer the Moderator (Mr. Daniel Forbes) requested me to communicate to them my Thoughts, if I had prepared something etc. I told him I had made no formal Draught: but read the Introduction and some other parts of my Remarks on the Covenant from Boston. Also what I wrote at Bottom of the Letter signed William Cooper.

Sundry persons urged my tarrying and advising them with respect to what their own Committee had drawn up, but I answered that I did not care to meddle with it; for I conceived it was not safe for me to do it, Safe either for me or for them, especially by reason of the Governors Proclamation. I craved the Liberty to retire; not but that I was heartily ready and willing to improve my small Abilitys to my utmost in their service.

It was asked me whether I would read their paper if it were Sent Me. I did not refuse to do that in [onelay?] for them and I said I had no desire or Intention to offend any one of them all, not the least; but intreated, and challenged the Liberty of Briton and a New Englandman: and I prayed they would not be hasty in signing every thing; I could not advise to signing any Thing Seeing there was no immediate Necessity; Boston itself had not and their meeting was adjourned to the 19th.

I conceived they would know better how to conduct if they waited a while, and had better perhaps till after the proposed Congress. I observed that there was not such an Alternative as was mentioned in the Covenant, viz. of Suffering Blood-shed or slavery, unless we would withdraw Commerce with Great Britain; for by the News from Newport it appeared that their Messengers to the Congress would propose a general Address and Supplication to the King from all the Colonys jointly.

Before I retired I openly declared, for the Ease and satisfaction of all their minds, that I had signed no paper of Address or Recommendation of the late Governor and that I could not but take it ill that numbers of persons had been ready to take up a Reproach against their Neighbour.

When I retired, they, as I understood went on to ripen for signing, and that many did sign.

Despite Parkman’s clear reluctance, men at that (unofficial) gathering joined the boycott. Two days later, the minister continued to fret: “all Conversations are upon the Governors Proclamation prohibiting Combinations and Covenants against Great Britain.” But, like Gage, he had lost his sway over his parishioners. Now he was trying to preserve his standing.

TOMORROW: Holding out to the last.

(The picture above shows the Jonah Warren House in Westboro, the oldest part estimated to have been built in the 1720s.)

“They came to hear my Sentiments of the Covenant”

The town of Westboro provides a good look at how one rural community responded to the invitations from Boston and Worcester to join the Solemn League and Covenant boycott in the summer of 1774.

The Boston committee of correspondence sent out its call on 8 June. Five days later, the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman (shown here) wrote in his diary:

Town Meeting to consider a Letter from the Town Clerk of Boston and there is come also a printed Covenant for them to Sign, in which they are to join with Others, and Solemnly bind themselves to renounce all Trade with Great Britain till the Bill for blocking up the Harbour of Boston Shall be repealed.

N.B. Little is said about supplicating the Throne of Grace on this Great Occasion. But they Chose a Committee to consider what is best to be done, and report to the Town.

The town meeting record for that day shows that Westboro set up a committee of correspondence. Legally, the warrant for that meeting didn’t mention the proposed non-consumption agreement, only Boston’s 12 May plea for support. But Parkman’s diary shows the Solemn League and Covenant was part of the discussion.

It’s notable that most of that 13 June meeting addressed military preparation, approving the purchase of a “4 Pounder and 4 Hundred Wt of Ball,” a carriage for that artillery piece, and gunpowder, and generally getting ready for “an allarum.” In “this dark and distressing Time of Perplexity,” the town majority already saw armed defense as worth spending money on.

Westboro didn’t record another town meeting until October, when men chose representatives to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. But Parkman’s diary shows how his parishioners continued to discuss the non-consumption agreement—two committee members visited him the next day. 

On 17 June, the minister wrote that six of the town’s committee came to him:

They came to hear my Sentiments of the Covenant which they had received from Boston and another from Worcester, which I, in part gave them. It was Said from among the Committee that they Should be glad I would be at the Town meeting, when they were to report.

Parkman then stated—and underscored—that on the afternoon of 20 June “The Town Meet on the Affair of Signing a Covenant of Non-importation etc.” That gathering didn’t make it into the official record. Perhaps it was deemed a committee meeting, or perhaps conversations without votes weren’t thought to need an official record.

Jonathan Bond, the first man designated for the town’s committee of correspondence, visited Parkman on 27 June:

Deacon Bond came and delivered me 4 Papers of the public affairs relative to Signing a Covenant etc. I copyed the Covenant with alterations.

Parkman probably diluted the text, given his reluctance for confrontation. The next day, the deacon’s son came by:

Thomas Bond here about the Boston papers, Covenant etc. Read him my Draughts: he Seems to fall in with them. He carrys back those I borrowed.

With Parkman’s blessing Westboro observed a fast on Thursday, 30 June. The Rev. Nathan Stone came from Southborough to preach. Parkman wrote:

Mr. Stone preached a.m. on Deut. 29.24.25. [Even all nations shall say, Wherefore hath the Lord done thus unto this land? what meaneth the heat of this great anger? Then men shall say, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them forth out of the land of Egypt]

N.B. At the End of the Sermon he delivered his Mind concerning the Covenant that is going about the Country to be Signed in all places by all persons, on highest Penalty. May God add His Blessing!

Discussions continued on 1 July:

N.B. Mr. Daniel Forbes one of the Committee of Correspondence here. Shewed him my Remarks on the Covenant etc. He desires me to let Dr. [James] Hawes (who is another) See some of my papers concerning those Matters.

But then another voice entered the conversation.

TOMORROW: Here comes the general.

Calvin Piper in Sickness, War, and Peace

Yesterday we left eleven-year-old Calvin Piper of Westborough in bed after falling off a colt and banging his head in August 1774.

Dr. James Hawes gave the boy a poor prognosis. The Rev. Ebenezer Parkman came to pray with him.

After a few days, Hawes gathered some medical colleagues to consult and perhaps perform surgery to relieve pressure in Calvin’s skull.

But on that morning of 6 August, Calvin woke up feeling much better than before. He was no longer delirious or babbling. The surgeons reconsidered.

The Rev. Mr. Parkman wrote in his diary:

It was feared the Trepan must be used: but it was first determined to take off part of his scalp and examine his Head. We began with prayer. Dr. [Charles] Russel [shown here] performed the Operation, and finding the grumous Blood, and that there was no Fracture, desisted from any thing further.

So Calvin was sewn up and allowed to keep recovering on his own. Parkman visited him again a couple of days later, and then Calvin drops out of the minister’s diary, presumably going back to normal farm boy behavior.

Nearly two years later, as the British military was preparing to leave Boston, Parkman had to visit the Piper family again. On Sunday, 10 Mar 1776, he wrote:

At Even went to see Mrs. Piper, newly brought to bed, and is very low; prayed with her in her Distresses.

The next day, Parkman added, “She is in a dangerous state.” And on Tuesday:

Capt. Wheelock early, Suddenly, hastily calls me to Visit Mrs. Piper as being near her End. I rode speedily (before Breakfast — nay before Family Prayer), found her groaning as in very great Distress. Prayed with her, Commending her Case to God, most gracious and compassionate. . . .

Mrs. Piper dyed about noon, about 42 and an half.

The funeral was on Thursday, 14 March. The minister noted, “her Father Whitcomb and one of her Brothers were there.”

The Parkman diary thus contains some clues to the Piper family history. The mention of “Father Whitcomb” might indicate Mary Piper’s surname at birth. There were Mary Whitcombs born in Bolton and its parent town, Lancaster, in the 1730s. However, none was born in 1733 and thus “about 42 and an half” in 1776. It’s also possible that “Father Whitcomb” was a stepfather.

In addition, Parkman’s record confirms that this Mary Piper died in 1776. John Piper remarried the next year to a woman from Templeton named Mary White. That means there were two wives named Mary Piper having John’s children in quick succession, and some genealogies don’t recognize they were separate women.

Back to Calvin Piper: As he reached his late teens, he had a new stepmother. Did that push him to leave the house? Or did he want some adventure, or just need money? Whatever the combination of reasons, on 1 July 1780 Calvin enlisted among the “men raised to reinforce the Continental Army for the term of 6 months.” When he reported to the camp at Springfield, Calvin was recorded as seventeen years old, 5'4" tall, with a ruddy complexion.

Pvt. Piper served a little more than five months at West Point, New York, before being discharged. He liked the experience enough to reenlist the following June. By now he was an inch taller and had been trained as a tanner, perhaps in a family shop. This time there was a dispute about whether he was counted in the quota for Lancaster or Templeton—not that it mattered to him. Piper agreed to serve three years, but the war ended before that term was up.

The twenty-year-old veteran moved to Norridgewock in the district of Maine. In April 1785 he married Zeriah Parker there. Five years later, however, Mrs. Zeriah Piper remarried, indicating that Calvin Piper had died in his late twenties—about fifteen years after he escaped having a hole drilled in his skull.

“The Case of the poor Boy, Calvin Piper”

In 1758, a young man named John Piper bought farmland in Bolton. He married around the same time, and from 1759 to 1765 Mary Piper had four children in Bolton. The third was a boy named Calvin, born 11 Apr 1763.

In 1764 John Piper, alongside his brothers and several neighbors, started buying farmland to the west in the town of Templeton. The next year, John moved his family onto sixty acres there.

After another few years, the Piper family moved again, this time back east to Westborough. A family genealogist found no evidence John Piper bought land in that town and guessed he “had decided to rely on his work as a tanner to support the family.” It’s also possible that the Pipers were now poor enough they had to work on other people’s land.

On 29 Apr 1774, Westborough’s minister, the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman, wrote in his diary:

At Eve came Mr. John Piper who is newly come to live among us, and asks the privilege to communicate with us, as also that his Wife Mary, may; they being Members of the Church in Templeton.

The Pipers were trying to fit into the Westborough community and congregation.

That summer, many Massachusetts towns became even more roiled in imperial politics than they were already. On 1 August, Westborough had a town meeting about “Subscribing the Agreement” and “bearing of the Charge of the Congress.” 

On that same Monday, Parkman wrote:

Martin Piper, a Lad in his 12th Year, was thrown by a Colt, and his Head came down on a Rock, nigh Mr. Newtons. He was carryed in there. It was feared to be a mortal Blow. Mr. Newton came in haste for me. I went. He was delirious. Dr. [James] Hawes soon blooded him. He bled well. Vomited Several Times — inclined to sleep; when any thing was given him, he cryed out bitterly, but could not speak. I prayed with him. What a Warning! Especially to Youth! But how great the Mercy he was not killed! His parents much distressed.

As subsequent journal entries make clear, this was Calvin Piper. In his distress, and not knowing the family well, the minister mistakenly called him “Martin” (after another Protestant leader?).

Delirium, vomiting, sleepiness—those are all symptoms of a serious head injury. Parkman was not optimistic (but then he rarely seems to have been). The next day, the minister visited the house of militia lieutenant Joseph Baker “to see young Piper”—despite his injury, the boy had been moved. Parkman wrote, “He is no better. Prayed with him.”

On Saturday morning, a coterie of rural surgeons came to Baker’s house. In addition to the local Dr. Hawes, Parkman also listed Charles Russell of Lincoln (politically a Loyalist, but still valued as a doctor), Edward Flynt of Shrewsbury, and “a Number of Doctors besides being there on the Case of the poor Boy, Calvin Piper.”

Fortunately, there were now good signs. The minister reported that the boy “last Evening began to recover his senses and to Speak—and is this morning composed and utters himself pertinently.”

Still, those doctors had come prepared to trepan the kid—to drill a hole in Calvin’s skull to remove fluids and relieve pressure on his brain. They had no doubt brought their drills and other tools. It would have been a shame not to use any of that equipment.

TOMORROW: The operation and the aftermath.

“Money to pay said Company for said service”

Yesterday we reached the moment in Westborough’s town meeting on 30 Dec 1774 when the town voted not to pay its minute men anything extra.

Someone at the meeting then asked “if the Town expected any thing more of the Minit men than they did of other men.” The clerk’s notes don’t say who, but I can’t help but imagine it was Edmund Brigham or some other officer of the minute company, possibly working hard to keep his temper. After all, those men had already been training for months. Other towns had chosen to pay for extra training.

But that question, too, “past in ye negative.” Westborough officially decided to make no distinction between the minute company and its other militia companies aside from the name that the minute men had apparently taken for themselves.

Another town meeting stretched over 7 and 8 Feb 1775. Some citizens again brought up the question of special duties or pay for Westborough’s minute men. Ultimately the town “Voted at that all the Soldiers both minit men and others Train once a Fortnit four hours in a Day without pay.” This was a significant increase from the usual pace of four militia training days a year, but the majority of the town still wouldn’t expend any extra money or grant the minute company special status.

Someone—again we don’t know who—asked the town to reconsider that vote. The attendees agreed and went home for the night. Perhaps they agreed in order to go home for the night.

Official town records don’t describe any other meeting until March. However, on 20 Feb the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman wrote in his diary about an imminent “Town Meeting on many Accounts, viz. whether they shall pay Minute Men; Contribution to Relief of Boston etc.” Charity for Boston’s poor was another financial question.

Parkman attended what he called a “Town Meeting and Training” the following afternoon. He spoke in favor of charity. He also told his congregants “exerting themselves to obtain Military skill, Arms, Ammunition etc., to improve their Time Well when they have T[own]. Meetings and Trainings — to endeavour after Unity and Harmony (for I perceived there were Jarrs).” One of Samuel Johnson’s definitions for the word “jar” was “Clash; discord; debate.”

That public discussion never went on the records as an official town meeting. There’s still no record of Westborough deciding to treat the minute company differently. People appear to have tried to get along.

On 6 March the town had its traditional big meeting of the year, electing officials and handling other annual business. That long gathering decided to make the men training on the town’s cannon part of the minute company.

Then war broke out on 19 April. Three Westborough militia companies mobilized, as David A. Nourse’s thorough research has shown. Some of those men signed on to serve for the rest of the year as part of the Massachusetts army, then the Continental Army. Others turned out for later militia duty on behalf of the state.

On 27 November, Capt. Brigham tried one more time. He submitted a document to the Westborough selectmen that said:

Gentlemen

The following is an Exact Acct. [of] what Service the Minute company performd in the training field according to the vote of the Town pass’d sometime in the last winter, and desire you wd. give me an order on the treasurer for the money to pay said Company for said service.

The document then listed forty-six men. Most were labeled as having served seven days, a couple six or five.

Notably, Westborough had just convened another town meeting on 13 November to discuss town bills, including extra pay for the Rev. Mr. Parkman, but pay for militia training didn’t come up.

At the big town meeting on 4 Mar 1776, the town elected Edmund Brigham as a constable. One of his new duties was to collect taxes. There was still no official mention of pay for his company.

However, if we look on the back of Brigham’s request for training pay, there’s a date of 16 Mar 1776 and the signatures of all the men named on the front, attesting that they had indeed received pay. Somehow, fourteen months after the issue was first raised, despite two town meetings voting to the contrary and no recorded vote in favor, Westborough officials came up with money for the minute men.

“To yncorage ye minit men so called”

In the fall of 1774, as I described yesterday, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress invited towns to form militia companies of “fifty privates, at the least, who shall equip and hold themselves in readiness, on the shortest notice.”

These special companies became known as “minute companies” or, alliteratively, “minute men.”

Not every town acted on the congress’s suggestion, however. For example, the smallish town of Lexington never formed a minute company. Technically, none of the militiamen on Lexington common during the first skirmish of the war were minute men.

Towns also differed in how they defined their minute men. Braintree, a larger town, fielded several companies of militia. Its town meeting decided to pay all members of the militia the same hourly rate for extra drills, but it asked ordinary companies to train for three hours every week and the minute company to train for four hours. Everyone was doing more military training that winter.

For Westborough we have two sources of information now handily digitized and on the internet. One is the handwritten record of the town meetings. The other is the diary of the town’s longtime minister, the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman.

As early as June 13, Westborough started to beef up its military defenses, approving the purchase of a cannon and the equipment to use it. In September, men from the town participated in closing Worcester County’s court and in the county convention that issued the first call for minute companies. But the meeting records don’t mention starting a minute company that summer or fall.

On 28 November, the Rev. Mr. Parkman wrote that there was a “Training of the Company of Minute Men, and Capt. [Seth] Morse’s Company.” Other entries identified the captain of the minute company as Edmund Brigham, who at the time was involved in a simmering dispute with the minister over a church matter. Evidently Brigham and his men had decided on their own to start doing more drills.

The Parkman diary mentions other groups, including “two artillery companys” active by August and “the (more Elderly) Alarm Men.” The alarm list was a standard part of the militia system, composed of men over age fifty and generally assigned lighter duties close to home.

Parkman also noted “a Number of Boys under their Capt. Moses Warrin.” Moses Warren (1760-1851) was only fourteen and not yet eligible to serve in the militia. His gang was probably just playing at being a military company, learning the drill to show off.

The first time the Westborough town records explicitly mention the minute company came on December 30. A town meeting on that date addressed the question:

To see if ye Town will grant any money to yncorage ye minit men so called to Train & Exercise themselves so that they may be fit & Quallified for Public Service if called there unto.

Everyone understood that “money to yncorage ye minit men” meant paying those men for their extra training. How Westborough defined its minute company thus came down to the issue that always roils town meetings—money.

The records show that proposal “past in the Negative”—i.e., the voters of Westborough chose not to pay the town’s minute men.

TOMORROW: Reconsidering.

The Mystery of Dr. Martyn

As I described yesterday, in the late 1760s Nathaniel Martyn held a respected position in rural Massachusetts society.

Youngest son of the minister at Northborough, he had become a physician and landowner in Harvard and married a young woman from Bolton. They had two young children. When they needed household help, the Harvard selectmen had assured Boston officials that Dr. Martyn was a suitable person to raise an orphan boy from the port town.

And then Dr. Martyn ran away. The Rev. Ebenezer Parkman of Westborough, who had seen Nathaniel Martyn grow up, wrote in his diary on 16 Aug 1770 that the physician had “absconded.” His wife had returned to her parents with the two little children.

When I read that in the excellent Ebenezer Parkman Project website, I hoped to find other sources that filled out the Martyn family’s story. Was there another woman? Another man? Money troubles? Religious conversion? Psychiatric difficulty? I’m sad to say that I haven’t found any further comment on why Dr. Martyn left his family.

I unearthed only two tenuous leads. In the 1921 book Northborough History, the Rev. Josiah Coleman Kent wrote that Nathaniel Martyn “resided for a time in Harvard, and later went south.” That could refer to the family’s move to Bolton, just south of Harvard, or it could refer to a longer journey. This statement came with no indication of its source, and of course Kent was publishing a century and a half after the event.

That statement is, however, consistent with the one other reference to a Dr. Nathaniel Martyn in North America that I’ve found after 1770. In 1775 Robert Hodge and Frederick Shober of New York published a collection of theological essays by the Rev. Dr. Hugh Knox, and the list of subscribers included Dr. Nathaniel Martyn of Hertford, North Carolina.

As for the family Martyn left behind, information about his wife Anna and son Nathaniel is sparse. But in 1790 his daughter, then twenty-three years old, married George Caryl from the Harvard College class of 1788. Caryl was like Pamela’s father in a couple of ways: youngest son of a town minister and trained in medicine, in his case under Dr. Samuel Willard of Uxbridge.

But unlike Nathaniel Martyn, Dr. George Caryl was firmly attached to his native soil. He brought his bride home to his father’s house in the part of Dedham that would become the town of Dover in 1836. Caryl was the only doctor in that district for a long time, and he also had patients in neighboring towns.

George and Pamela Caryl had nine children between 1797 and 1808, four surviving to adulthood. Inheriting the family homestead, Dr. Caryl lived and worked in Dover until 1829. His widow lived on until 1855.

The Caryl family house, shown above, is now owned by the Dover Historical Society.

TOMORROW: What about the orphan boy?

How Natty Martyn Grew Up

Last September, we got a passing glimpse of fifteen-year-old Natty Martyn, youngest son of the minister in Northborough in 1756.

Natty had a bad sore, and his family had begun to despair for him. The Rev. John Martyn took his son to Dr. Ebenezer Dexter in the neighboring town of Middleborough, and he recovered.

Natty Martyn’s father was a Harvard graduate, though he didn’t go into the ministry until fifteen years after graduating. In the early 1760s the family also hosted the retired Harvard Hebrew instructor Judah Monis, who had married Natty’s maternal aunt. But neither Natty nor his older brothers went to college.

Instead, Nathaniel Martyn became a physician, training in the field like most other country doctors of the time. He set up a practice in the town of Harvard, where his father had been the first town clerk and filled other offices in the 1730s. The doctor was assigned “ye Sixth Seat Below” at the Harvard meetinghouse.

On 23 Dec 1765, the twenty-four-year-old Dr. Martyn married twenty-year-old Anna Townsend of Bolton. Their first child, named Michael after one of his paternal uncles, arrived in September, but died within two weeks.

In his diary for 16 June 1767, the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman of Westborough recorded that he “rode by the way of Dr. Martyns to see him—and the fine Farms at Still River Corner.” Martyn had bought the large farmhouse built in 1749 by Moses Haskell. The Massachusetts Historical Commission called this property “One of Still River’s earliest and largest farms.” The house still stands on Still River Road, as shown above, though altered considerably for use as a Benedictine chapel.

When Parkman visited, Anna Martyn was expecting another child. The couple had two before the end of the decade:

• Pamela, born 24 Aug 1767.
• Nathaniel, baptized 13 Aug 1769.

There was at least one other member of the household. In May 1767, the selectmen of Harvard signed a printed form for Boston’s Overseers of the Poor certifying that Dr. Nathaniel Martyn was “a Man of sober Life and Conversation; and in such Circumstances, that we can recommend him as a fit Person to bind an Apprentice to.” On 19 November, those officials indentured a boy named Ebenezer Dumaresque to the doctor. Ebenezer was to come of age on 25 Nov 1781, meaning he was six years old when he moved out to Harvard, most likely to work as a household servant.

Sometime in 1769, it appears from real estate records, Dr. Martyn sold his property in Harvard to Peter Green, a younger physician from the Harvard class of 1766. The Martyn family moved to Bolton, Anna’s home town.

On 16 Aug 1770, the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman wrote in his diary:

Dined at Mr. Harringtons, who acquainted me with the proceedings at Bolton and with Mr. Goss’s present Case under Confinement to his Bed, by Lameness. N.B. Dr. Wait has the Care of him. The brief Story of Dr. Wait. Called at Mr. Josh. Townsends by reason of what has occurred lately relative to Dr. Nat. Martyn, who has lately absconded. His wife and two Children at Mr. Townsends.

Anna Martyn was back home in her father’s house. And Dr. Nathaniel Martyn was nowhere to be found.

TOMORROW: Can this marriage be saved?

Young Doctors in Marlborough

Yesterday I introduced the figure of Dr. Ebenezer Dexter, Marlborough’s leading doctor in the 1760s.

On 3 May 1769, however, the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman of nearby Westborough wrote in his diary: “Dr. [Edward] Flynt came from Dr. Dexter, and says the latter will hardly live through the Night.”

Indeed, Dr. Dexter died the next day. On 6 May Parkman reported: “Dr. Dexter was buryed at Marlborough.”

The doctor’s gravestone, shown here courtesy of Find a Grave, says, “He was an Eminent Physician but was Subject unto Death even as other men.”

The doctor’s death left an opening in his town. Two young physicians soon moved into Marlborough, hoping to establish their own practices.

One was Amos Cotting, born in Waltham in 1749 (under the name Cutting, which would have been apt for a surgeon). He graduated from Harvard College in 1767 and then earned his M.A., presumably while studying medicine. Charles Hudson’s history of Marlborough said Cotting came to that town “On the death of Dr. Ebenezer Dexter, 1769,” but he wasn’t on the list of men paying the poll tax in 1770, so he may have arrived later.

The other young doctor was Samuel Curtis, eldest son of the Rev. Philip Curtis of Stoughton. He graduated from Harvard a year before Cotting and also gained an M.A. Curtis was apparently starting to practice medicine in Roxbury when he learned about the sudden opportunity in Marlborough. Hudson quoted from the town’s warning-out records to reveal what happened next:

Dr. Samuel Curtis came to town, June, 1769; came last from Roxbury. Taken in by widow Dexter.

The following month, the Rev. Mr. Parkman rode to Marlborough to see a sick relative, and he also recorded: “Visit Mrs. Dexter and Dr. Curtis who lodges there.”

Curtis had advantages over Cotting in any competition to become the town’s favorite physician. He was slightly older, and as son of a minister instead of a farmer he was probably more genteel. But the big edge appears to have been that he was now living in Dr. Dexter’s house, thus endorsed by Dr. Dexter’s wife, all ready to see Dr. Dexter’s patients.

The widow Dexter was still only in her early thirties, with four young sons to care for and an estate to maintain. Then, in early 1771, Lydia Dexter became pregnant.

TOMORROW: Can this marriage be saved?

Dr. Ebenezer Dexter Practicing Medicine in Marlborough

Ebenezer Dexter was born in 1729, son of the Rev. Samuel Dexter of Dedham.

Ebenezer chose to go into medicine, and after marrying Lydia Woods, daughter of a selectman in Marlborough, he set up his practice in that town. In 1754, the year of their marriage, Ebenezer was twenty-five and Lydia was eighteen.

We can glimpse Dr. Dexter at work in the diary of the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman in nearby Westborough. That minister is shown here, and his diary is fully transcribed and annotated at this website.

Westborough’s northern precinct, which would eventually split off as Northborough [stay with me here], had its own meeting and minister, the Rev. John Martyn. On 13 Aug 1756, Parkman wrote about his colleague’s fifteen-year-old son Nathaniel being ill:

Sarah and Suse undertake to go to Mr. Martyn’s: they return at Eve Well. They tell me Natty Martyn, tis feared, grows bad.

Twelve days later, the father traveled to see Dr. Dexter:

Mr. Martyn has carryed down his Son Natty, to Marlborough to Dr. Dexter’s, who gives great Encouragement concerning the Sore, that he Shall effect the Cure of it.

And indeed, almost a year later Parkman mentioned the son again, apparently healthy: “Natty Martyn brought a Letter from Leominster.” Nathaniel Martyn survived and eventually became a doctor himself.

(The trouble in Leominster was that the Rev. John Rogers had turned into an Arminian, or what a later generation would call a Unitarian. This required a council of other ministers and eventually an approval to allow the Leominster congregation to split. But I digress.)

Dr. Ebenezer and Lydia Dexter had four sons between 1755 and 1762: William, Samuel, John, and Jason Haven, the last named after the minister who had succeeded the doctor’s father in Dedham. Dexter also served Marlborough as the town clerk starting in 1768.

But in May 1769, Dr. Dexter, still only thirty-nine years old, fell seriously ill.

TOMORROW: Opening for a young doctor.

The Powder Alarm Viewed from Westborough

Earlier in the summer I took note of the online edition of the diary of the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman of Westboro.

One of the events Parkman lived through and recorded was the “Powder Alarm” of September 1774. In fact, by writing down news at different times, the minister preserved the rumors that motivated that militia uprising.

1774 September 2 (Friday). This morning was ushered in with Alarms from every Quarter, to get ready and run down to Boston or Cambridge. The Contents Magazine of Powder at Winter Hill had been carryed off — namely [550?] Barrells; by Treachery; etc. This is told as the Chief Affair.

72 of our Neighbours marched from Gales (tis said) by break of Day; and others are continuely going. My young man goes armed, with them.

About 5 p.m. Grafton Company, nigh 80, under Capt. Golding, march by us.

N.B. Squire Whipple here. Says he is ready to sign etc. It is a Day of peculiar Anxiety and Distress! Such as we have not had — Will the Lord graciously look upon us; and grant us Deliverance — for we would hope and trust in His Name! We send for Mrs. Spring and her two Children to be here with us, while her husband is gone with the People.

Breck returned from Lancaster. At Eve we have most sorrowful News that Hostilitys have commenced at Cambridge, and that Six of our people are killed; that probably Some at least may be of Westborough. Joshua Chamberlin stood next (as it is related) to one that was slain. We have many Vague accounts and indeed are left in uncertaintys about Every Thing that has occurred.

Sutton soldiers — about 250, pass along by us — but after midnight are returning by reason of a Contrary Report. Mr. Zech. Hicks stops here. Breck is employed in the night to cast Bulletts. A Watch at the Meeting House to guard the Town stock etc. Some Towns, we hear, have lost much of theirs, as Dedham, Wrentham etc.

The initial report of the king’s soldiers taking hundreds of barrels of gunpowder from the provincial storehouse in Charlestown (shown above) on 1 September was correct. The later rumor of six men killed by those troops was entirely false. In his diary entry we can see Parkman struggling to make sense of the news he was hearing from different directions.

Many towns besides Westboro became anxious about their local supplies of gunpowder and other ordnance immediately after the alarm. After all, no one knew what would come next. The towns were preparing for war; descriptions like Parkman’s read very much like descriptions of the more famous Lexington Alarm of April 1775.

The next day the minister gradually realized the crisis had passed:

1774 September 3 (Saturday). Capt. Benjamin Fay came here between 2 and 3 o’Clock in the morn in much Concern and knew not what to do. After Light and through most of the forenoon, vague uncertain Reports. Sutton men that had gone to Deacon Wood, came back to go down the Road again.

My son Breck with provisions, Bread, Meat, etc., Coats, Blanket etc., for it was rainy, rides down towards Cambridge to relieve Asa Ware, Mr. Spring, and others who were unprovided.

About noon the Sutton Companys come back again and go home, Rev. Chaplin among them. So do the Grafton men.

Mr. Abraham Temple relates to me, that he, having been as far as to Cambridge and himself Seen many of the Transactions, that there were no Regulars there, no Artillery, no body Slain — but that Lt. Gov. [Thomas] Oliver, Messrs. [Samuel] Danforth, Joseph Lee, Col. [David] Phips (the high Sheriff) had resigned and promised that they would not act as Counsellors — that Mr. Samuel Winthrop computed there were about 7000 of the Country people had gathered into Cambridge on this Occasion — that it was probable, as he (Mr. Temple) conceived, that the Troubles would subside.

N.B. When the Sun run low, Our Company returned (consisting of Horse and Foot about 150). With them were my Son and my young man — all without any Evil Occurrance. To God be Praise and Glory! I Suppose Capt. Maynard and those who were with him are returned also.

The estimate of “7000 of the Country people” is high, but both Lt. Gov. Oliver and Dr. Thomas Young guessed there were 4,000 militiamen in Cambridge that day.

I started The Road to Concord with the “Powder Alarm” because it marked a turning point in Massachusetts’s conflict with the Crown. That was the moment that Gov. Thomas Gage lost control of most of the province, and the moment that people began to turn to military solutions for the political conflict.

A Taste of the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman’s Diary

Here’s another nifty new online resource on eighteenth-century New England: the diary of the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman (1703-1782) of Westboro, Massachusetts.

It’s part of a larger Westborough Public Library project to make Parkman’s church and family papers available. The diary, which covers sixty-five years, was transcribed by Holy Cross professor Ross W. Beales, Jr., who’s written many papers on it. (Versions have also been published by the Westborough Historical Society and in the American Antiquarian Society Proceedings.)

The other members of the project team include James Cooper of New England’s Hidden Histories and Anthony T. Vaver of the Westborough Library and Executed Today (not that Parkman ever was).

The diary website appears to be built on a blogging platform, with a day for each entry and its footnotes. That allows one to search for names and to look at an entire month of entries at once.

I went to find the month of August 1752, which I’d read about in one of Ross Beales’s articles for the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife.

That was a bad month for the Rev. Mr. Parkman because he was ill. “I had an exceeding poor Night. Feverish, profusely Sweating, and extreme faint,” reads the first diary entry he managed to write that month, on 16 August. Indeed, Parkman felt so sick that he wasn’t able to preach that Sunday or the next (and the replacement he had lined up finked out on him).

On 22 August Parkman wrote:

A pritty good Night for Sleep, and yet this morning full of pain chiefly in my left Hip, Shoulder and Foot. Great Frost last Night. Dr. [Samuel] Scammell came while I was at Dinner.

P.M. pains increase exceedingly especially in my left Shoulder. May God almighty sustain me and prepare me for his sovereign Will. My little Samuel a Twelve Month old. May he be born again in the Blessed Spirit of God!

The Evening and night were most distressing with pain that ceased not, no not in any Situation whatever, a Circumstance which I have not, I think, at any Time had till now. I put on a Blister upon the upper part of my arm

Parkman’s doctor diagnosed both rheumatism and gout. Aside from the blisters he applied, the minister reported taking “A portion of Rhubarb,” which seemed to do some good. Later, he wrote, “My wife stills a miscellany of Meat, Herbs, Roots, seeds etc. by the Doctor’s Direction.” A fellow minister sent an unnamed “remedy,” and a neighbor brought “some bak’d Bear with Sauce which I could Eat of.”

There was another remedy as well. Remember “little Samuel,” who turned one year old on 22 August? Two days later, his father wrote, “Child carry’d away to be wean’d at t’other House.” New England families often physically separated a mother and child to make weaning easier, or at least more certain. The Parkman family tended to wean babies between twelve and eighteen months, so this was a little on the early side.

Hannah Parkman, the minister’s second wife, stayed home to treat her husband. In addition to distilling that mix the doctor prescribed, on 26 August Ebenezer wrote: “My wife tends me o’nights and supply’s me with Breast-Milk.” So that was why they had to send the baby away.

Local Militia Muster in Westboro, 14 Oct.

On Saturday, 14 October, the Westborough Rotary Club and the Westborough Historical Society will present a re-creation of a town militia muster.

Specifically, this event commemorates the 243rd anniversary of the Westborough militia’s September 1774 march to Worcester to help close the county court in protest of the Massachusetts Government Act.

Reenactors portraying Westborough militiamen will perform the manual of arms, the standard military drill from 1774. There will be musket-firing demonstrations throughout the day. A colonial market will display a variety of colonial trades and crafts while citizens of Westborough will make items for barter or sale to the assembled militiamen. Westborough’s own Rev. Ebenezer Parkman will harangue and inform the crowds.

There will also be food trucks and vendors for attendees, displays of artifacts and documents, and eighteenth-century children’s games.

This event is scheduled to take place from 10:00 A.M. to 4:30 P.M. in Veteran’s Freedom Park, 169A West Main Street.

See the town library’s collection of Revolutionary documents here through Digital Commonwealth. Parkman’s diaries have been published, with some pieces freely available and others only in print.