The Younger Samuel Dana

I’ve been tracing the Revolutionary experiences of the Rev. Samuel Dana of Groton, from comfortably ensconced minister to reviled Loyalist who nonetheless declined to leave town, to Presbyterian preacher, and finally to respected jurist in New Hampshire.

The former minister’s younger son, also named Samuel, was only eight years old when his father lost his pulpit. He continued growing up in Groton, went to Harvard, and in 1789 returned to his home town. This Samuel Dana became a prominent attorney, a representative in the state legislature and in Congress, and a judge. As a result, nineteenth-century Groton historians couldn’t say too many bad things about his father.

One thing chronicler Caleb Butler did write about the son was:

In the latter part of his life there seemed to be a want of fixedness of purpose in Judge Dana’s pursuits. . . . He was occasionally subject to undue elevations and depressions of spirit, which caused instability in his undertakings and pursuits.

That sounds an awful lot like what we’d call manic-depressive or bipolar disorder. Perhaps both Samuel Danas had the condition, and it was a factor in how the father defied his community’s political and religious unity.

(The picture above comes from the Find-a-Grave page for the younger Samuel Dana. I don’t know the source, and the hairstyle, clothing, and pose seem more appropriate for a man of his father’s generation.)

“Should Forget and Forgive Every Thing of a Political Nature”

Despite being voted out of the pulpit and reportedly shot at, the Rev. Samuel Dana never moved out of Groton during the Revolutionary War. He apparently accepted the political changes that followed. But he didn’t keep quiet on religious matters. In 1778 Dana even wrote a letter to the Groton church objecting to the ordination of Daniel Chaplin as his successor. There was also the issue of a bequest:

At a church meeting, July 5, 1782, the four deacons Farwell, Stone, Farnsworth, and Bancroft, with Israel Robert, Esq., were chosen trustees of the twenty pounds given by Jonathan Lawrence for the benefit of the ordained minister or ministers of Groton, with power to take and receive the same of Samuel Dana, the late pastor; if need be, to sue him upon his bond given therefor. Also to offer the same to Rev. Daniel Chaplin, if he will receive it, otherwise put it out upon interest, and pay over to said Chaplin the interest thereon.

The church records don’t mention that money again, suggesting that Dana turned it over as asked.

Later that year, a deeper dispute erupted. Josiah Sartell, who back in 1775 had been a member of the committee of correspondence who met with Dana, helped to found what the majority Congregationalists called “an irregular society.” Sartell and a number of other citizens had become…Presbyterians.

Presbyterianism seems to have spread to Groton from Londonderry, New Hampshire. Some adherents went over the state border for services, but Sartell and others asked Dana to preach to them in Groton. He reportedly did so for about a year and a half.

Caleb Butler’s history of Groton states:

In December, 1785, the Rev. Samuel Dana asked a dismission [as a member] from the church in Groton, and a recommendation to the church in Amherst, New Hampshire. He also communicated a letter addressed to the church in Groton, from the Presbyterian churches in Boston, Peterboro’ and others, informing, that they had taken the Presbyterian church in Groton under their care.

Whereupon, the church chose a committee to consider the application of Mr. Dana, and said letter, and also to consider what measures should be taken with other members of this church, who had partaken of the ordinances with Presbyterians. This committee afterwards reported in substance, that the church should forget and forgive every thing of a political nature where Mr. Dana had offended, while their pastor; but that his conduct since his dismission, in preaching and administering the ordinances to the Presbyterians, they could not forgive; but recommend, that a committee be chosen to confer with him on the subject, whenever he should come to Groton. Accordingly, a committee of ten were chosen for that purpose.

By then Dana was already settled in Amherst. Reportedly he was named executor for the will of a lawyer, took that man’s books into his house, and started studying. Soon he was practicing law himself. Eventually Dana became a probate judge for Hillsborough County, a state legislator, and a master in the local Freemasons lodge. When he died in 1798, Dana was buried with full Masonic honors, attended by members from Groton as well as other towns.

TOMORROW: The minister’s second son.

“To Preserve Him and His Family and Substance from Injury and Abuse”

At the top of New England rural society were a town’s wealthy landowners and professionals, its selectmen, its militia officers, and—once political turmoil reached its boiling point in 1774-75—its local committee of correspondence. Those groups overlapped a lot, and they and their children tended to intermarry.

Usually the town minister was part of that class, but in Groton in 1775 the Rev. Samuel Dana was siding with the Crown, and therefore unpopular. Even so, his genteel neighbors didn’t want to see a mob hurt harm him, for several overlapping reasons: class solidarity, dislike of disorder, a wish to preserve the town’s reputation, &c.

In early May 1775, a committee of local bigwigs met with Dana and brought the following report to the town meeting:

This memorandum witnesseth, that at a conference between Dr. Oliver Prescott, Capt. Josiah Sartell, Dea. Isaac Farnsworth and Benjamin Bancroft, Ensign Moses Child and Mr. Jona. Clark Lewis, on the one side, and the Rev. Samuel Dana, on the other side, it was proposed and agreed to by all parties, that the pastoral relation between the said Samuel Dana and the inhabitants of Groton, should be dissolved, on conditions, the town when properly met shall judge it expedient, and at the same time will restore the said Samuel Dana to the usual privileges and advantages of society and neighborhood, and use their influence to preserve him and his family and substance from injury and abuse, either from the inhabitants of this, or any of the neighboring towns. The said Samuel Dana, at the same time, giving the town the reasonable assurance in his power, that he will not only not oppose their political measures, but will unite with them agreeable to the advice of the Continental and Provincial Congresses, and the votes of the town.

Groton’s official committee of correspondence, which consisted of Prescott, Sartell, Farnsworth, and Child, as well as James Prescott, presented that agreement to the town meeting on 15 May. (That meeting probably took place in the town church, which doubled as the public meeting-house.) The committee also apparently offered a text that Dana would have to sign:

I, The Subscriber, being deeply affected with the Miseries bro’t on this Country, by a horrid Thirst for ill-got Wealth and unconstitutional Power—and lamenting my Unhappiness, in being left to adopt Principles in Politics different from the Generality of my Countrymen; and thence to conduct in a Manner that has but too justly excited the Jealousy and Resentment of the true Sons of Liberty against me, earnestly desirous, at the same Time, to give them all the Satisfaction in my Power do hereby sincerely ask Forgiveness of all such for whatever I have said or done, that had the least Tendency to the Injury of my Country, assuring them that it is my full Purpose, in my proper Sphere, to unite with them, in all those laudable and fit Measures, that have been recommended by the Continental and Provincial Congresses, for the Salvation of this Country, hoping my future Conversation and Conduct will fully prove the Uprightness of my present Professions.

According to the town’s records of that meeting:

the Rev. Samuel Dana came into the meeting, and after some conference with the town, and the memorandum above being read and duly considered, he, the said Dana, desired the town would grant him a dismission from his pastoral relation and office, in the said town; whereupon, the town voted nem. contract, that the said Samuel Dana be dismissed from his pastoral relation and office aforesaid, and he is hereby finally discharged therefrom accordingly.

But that consensus among the gentlemen and yeomen wealthy enough to vote in town meeting didn’t put an end to the troubles. Part of the problem might have been that Dana didn’t sign the document right away.

Around 20 May, Jason Russell and John Tarbell of Mason, New Hampshire, went into a pasture Dana owned in that town and “took from thence a three year heifer, and killed and converted it to their own use.” The Mason committee summoned the men and “required of the offenders full satisfaction therefor.” The two men refused. The Mason leaders called in the committees from New Ipswich and Temple. But Russell and Tarbell, the committeemen reported, “not only neglected to make their appearance before us, but, as we learn, have fled to the Army.”

Ordinary people in and around Groton might have been signaling Dana and his genteel protectors that his property was fair game, and that he might be, too. That in turn might have been enough to make him sign the town’s document on 22 May. It was printed in the New-England Chronicle the following month along with the committee’s report. 

Finally, the Groton church met on 29 May, after a summons by the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper, and voted, “that what Mr. Samuel Dana has offered to the public for satisfaction, for his conduct in political matters, is by no means satisfactory to this church, as a brother.” The congregation formally dismissed Dana from their pulpit.

TOMORROW: Whatever happened to Samuel Dana?

Groton Seeks a New Minister

By April 1775, as described yesterday, the Patriot majority in Groton and their Loyalist minister, the Rev. Samuel Dana, were at a stalemate. Dana refused to call a meeting of the church members, where they could dismiss him. The congregation apparently felt they couldn’t call a meeting on their own authority, at least in part because Dana said he wouldn’t show up.

According to historian Caleb Butler, local tradition held that at some point, probably after war began at Lexington and Concord, “the inhabitants were so enraged, that they shot bullets into Mr. Dana’s house, to the great danger of his life and the lives of his family.” Nevertheless, the minister didn’t leave town and seek the protection of the British army in Boston.

Groton’s town leaders sought a replacement. On 5 May, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper (shown here), a Patriot who had slipped out of Boston to Weston just before the war, received a visit from Dr. Oliver Prescott of Groton. The physician “propos’d my Supplying their Pulpit.”

Cooper was apparently reluctant, perhaps because Groton was far from the political action in Watertown and Cambridge. He suggested that his host, the Rev. Samuel Woodward, should handle the Groton job while he filled in for Woodward. But the Weston minister didn’t agree.

As I discussed back here, on Saturday, 13 May, Cooper heard that Concord’s minister, the Rev. William Emerson, “was to supply Groton,” so he promised to preach the next day at Concord, no doubt happy to escape the long trip. Instead, both men showed up at Concord’s meeting-house, and the Groton congregation was presumably left waiting.

On 21 May, Cooper wrote that he preached at Concord and “Mr. Emerson for me at Groton,” indicating that he felt some responsibility to serve that town. On Saturday, 27 May, he finally set out “in my Chaise for Groton,” stopping along the way at Acton, Littleton, and the house of a man named Rogers for coffee. The next day, Cooper wrote, he:

Pch’d all day at Groton; spoke with Mr. Dana after Service a.m. din’d at Dr. Prescot’s baptiz’d a child P. M. Slept and Horse kept at Dr. Prescot’s.

The Groton church record notes that Cooper did something else as well:

Rev. Dr. Cooper, of Boston, preached, and was desired by the deacons and some of the brethren of the church to appoint a church meeting, to be held at the public meeting-house on the next Monday.

Cooper issued that call for a meeting, breaking the stalemate. Between then and 18 October, he preached in Groton on six Sundays, and received £60 Old Tenor. The congregation might have thought that money well spent because they got to fix their Dana problem.

TOMORROW: Class conflict over dealing with Dana.

Rev. Samuel Dana: “not allowed to enter the meeting-house”

In early 1775, the Rev. Samuel Dana (1739-1798) had been the minister in Groton for nearly fourteen years. But in his thinking he was a Loyalist. Caleb Butler’s 1848 town history states:

On a Sabbath in March, 1775, he preached a sermon which gave great offence to the people, who were generally inclined to unwavering resistance. . . . This was called the windy sermon, from the circumstance that it was on a very windy day, and while being delivered one of the horse stables was blown down.

As a result, according to Butler, Dana “was not allowed to enter the meeting-house on the next Sabbath.”

On 21 March the Groton church members met “to transact any matters they may judge proper, to put an end to the unhappy differences subsisting among us.” However, according to the official record—set down by Dana—they adjourned “after a few hours spent in saying but little, and doing nothing.” On the 27th, he wrote:

Church met, had a long conference, but they refusing to make any formal charges against the pastor, and the pastor refusing to make any confessions, till he should first know what would be satisfactory; the meeting was finally dissolved without any vote being called, except to try their minds with regard to deferring the sacrament for the present, and dissolve the meeting, both which passed in the affirmative.

The record was then taken over by someone else, who reported:

After the church meeting, on the 27th of March, 1775, was dissolved, they could not obtain another meeting by the appointment of their late pastor, notwithstanding they had informed him of a great many of their grievances, and repeatedly desired him to call a church meeting, both by verbal and written requests, one of which was signed by a great majority of said church, but received for answer, that he would not call a church meeting, nor attend one of their calling; saying, You may do as you please; I must do as I can.

That spring Groton’s Patriot leaders tried to get every householder in town to pledge not to import goods from Britain or have anything to do with anyone who did. As of 12 April, Dana and three other men were the only inhabitants who refused to sign.

That was the stalemate in Groton when the war began.

TOMORROW: And of course a war makes it so much easier to resolve disagreements peacefully.

(Photograph of Groton’s 1755 meetinghouse as it looks today by James Walsh, via Flickr under a Creative Commons license.)