Woburn Splits into Parishes and Factions

As I described yesterday, in 1736 Jonathan and Esther Poole of Woburn were reportedly hoping their nineteen-year-old daughter would marry the first meeting’s junior minister, the Rev. Edward Jackson. (The thumbnail here shows what’s left of the gravestone of the couple’s son Eleazar, born in 1734, courtesy of yeoldewoburn.net.)

Instead, the younger Esther Poole preferred a younger Harvard graduate, Joseph Burbeen (1712-1794). In October 1736 they eloped to Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, and got married there. According to a descendant writing about 1830, the Pooles were at first upset at their daughter and Burbeen, but then reconciled themselves to the match.

Meanwhile, resentment was growing between Jackson and the ailing minister he’d been hired to assist, the Rev. John Fox. The older man refused to leave his pulpit or the town-supplied parsonage, despite often being unable to preach because of poor health and encroaching blindness. When the town was slow to pay him in the 1730s, he petitioned the Massachusetts General Court and filed a lawsuit, winning a judgment of over £164.

The expense of two ministers actually helped to split up Woburn. The new town of Wilmington broke off in 1730, and some of its citizens asked for refunds of what they’d just been taxed for Jackson’s salary. (Woburn refused.) Soon afterward, another part of town officially became a “second precinct,” with its own meeting-house and minister; this section eventually became Burlington.

That left the old part of Woburn paying both Fox and Jackson, and they were feuding. There’s no sign of a theological difference between the two men. Rather, both had quirks that made them tough to work with. Families started to take sides. The Pooles, after their daughter’s marriage, ended up in the anti-Jackson camp—which was awkward since they were still Jackson’s landlords.

One night in October 1744, the junior minister was hosting the Rev. Ebenezer Wyman of Union, Connecticut, who was a Woburn native and had taught school there a decade earlier. Between eleven and twelve in the evening, according to a later legal complaint, Poole threw Jackson and his guest out of the house “with out hat or Coat” even though “the Night was Cold and the Latter part Stormy.” Wyman was an avid hunter, so he probably fared all right; but he died fifteen months later of pleurisy from hunting too long that winter.

In the summer of 1745, Jonathan Poole, his in-laws, and other prominent citizens took steps to leave Fox and Jackson’s parish and set up a third Woburn meeting-house. That fall, Poole also gave Jackson an invoice for “six years board due from him.” Jackson retaliated by sending Poole a bill of his own, listing food, liquor, laundry, tobacco, pipes, “fresh sowering,” candles, and cash, totaling over £150. Reportedly a magistrate refused to let the minister enter that document in court, saying it would amount to perjury. But a higher court accepted it, making Poole liable for a large sum plus legal costs.

Poole and his friends retaliated by having Jackson’s outlandish accounting published in 1750. Their anonymous pamphlet concluded: “You may possibly think the above affair alone was sufficient for our withdrawal from such a spiritual guide.” Jackson, they hinted, was a liar with extravagant tastes.

Thus, the Rev. Mr. Jackson had plenty of critics and enemies in Woburn when folks started hearing whispers that Kezia Hincher had named him as the father of her child.

TOMORROW: The Cotton brothers spread the rumor.

The Midwife and Mr. Jackson

Early in 1752, Kezia Hincher of Woburn gave birth to a child. As I described yesterday, Kezia was an unmarried widow living with her older sister Rebecca and her brother-in-law, Ebenezer Richardson.

Kezia was also working as a housekeeper for the Rev. Edward Jackson, the unmarried minister of Woburn’s first parish. People whispered that he was the new child’s father. In particular, Roland Cotton, a militia colonel and town representative to the General Court, wrote to Jackson on 28 August that he had seen

a Writeing Purporting a Certificate Under the hand of Mrs. Hannah Poole of Reading a Midwife “That she Diliverd the Widow Keziah Hincher your late housekeeper of a Bastard Child and That ye Said Hincher in the Time of her Travil Charged You with being the Father of it”

Hannah Poole, the midwife, was married to a cousin of Jonathan Poole, a Woburn justice of the peace. And the Pooles had a long and complex history with Jackson.

In 1728 Woburn invited Edward Jackson, who had graduated from Harvard in 1719, to become their town’s junior minister. Clearly most parishioners wanted him to replace the Rev. John Fox, who was going blind and often unable to preach—but also would not give up his post or his salary demands.

When a new minister was ordained in colonial New England, it was traditional for the town to invite the minister, elder, and “Messengers” from each nearby town to attend the ceremony. Jonathan Poole was responsible “for subsisting the Ministers and Messengers and Gentlemen in the time of Mr. Jackson’s Ordination,” and then sent the town a bill for:

• 433 dinners
• 178 breakfasts
• 6.5 barrels of cider
• 25 gallons of wine
• 2 gallons of brandy
• 4 gallons of rum
• loaf sugar and lime juice (for punch, most likely)
• pipes
• keeping 32 horses for four days

The total was more than £83, or about two-thirds of what the town had promised to Jackson for his annual salary. Since the town was now supporting two ministers, that seemed extravagant.

Poole and his wife, Esther, apparently had hopes that Jackson would eventually marry their only daughter, also named Esther (1717-1776). She would have been a good catch for a man with expensive tastes, being heir not only to her father’s estate but also to property from her maternal grandfather.

TOMORROW: But young Esther wasn’t interested in the Rev. Mr. Jackson.