UCC Young Samuel Gilman

YOUNG SAMUEL GILMAN

Continuing the story of Samuel Gilman’s childhood, disaster struck the Gilman family when Samuel was perhaps seven years old. Henry Wilder Foote recounts in his address at the 1916 dedication of the Gilman Memorial Room in our church tower, that Samuel’s father, Frederick Gilman, “had been a prosperous merchant who…suffered severe losses by the capture of a number of his vessels by the French in 1798.” This was during the so-called "Quasi-War" when French privateers seized American ships trading with their enemies, the British. Frederick died not long thereafter.

According to Daniel Walker Howe in A Connecticut Yankee in Senator Calhoun’s Court (New England Quarterly, June 1971), Frederick “(f)ortunately left enough real estate so that his family never suffered want.” Gilman himself advises that when he was “about seven years of age”, his father “had recently died insolvent.” At any rate, Frederick’s widow Abigail placed Samuel, the eldest of four children and the only male, in the home of an Arminian Congregational clergyman to be prepared for college (eventually Harvard Class of 1811)….Samuel became a member of the household of the Reverend Samuel Peabody (who was also connected with a school) and his wife in Atkinson, NH whose quaint primitive ways ”are described with inimitable humor in a biographical sketch by Mr. Gilman, published in the Christian Examiner of May 1847. (Stephen Peabody was John Adams’ brother-in-law; they married sisters).

The opening pages of Gilman’s essay, Reminiscences of Rev. Stephen Peabody and Lady (see them below), begin with the rather heartbreaking account of the 40 mile carriage journey he took to get to Atkinson, his mother uncharacteristically at the reins of a horse and chaise, a massive jaunt for a lady in those times (Mapquest describes the route from Gloucester, MA as consisting of 52 miles over today’s roads). Heartbreaking because you know this fatherless child is on his way to separation from his mother and three siblings, but seven year old Samuel is a complete stoic about his situation. Samuel Gilman is definitely a “glass half full” kind of guy. Howe says that, “As a good Arminian, Gilman rejected the doctrine that all men were totally depraved: ‘The world could not move one step further if such were not the case.’” Of course, Gilman writes fifty years after the fact, and time softens all pain.

Howe accuses him of allowing his writings to become “a curious blend of southern sentimentality and nostalgia for New England.” Indeed in his adult work, especially in his fiction and poetry, Gilman often writes longingly of his native region: eastern Massachusetts/southern New Hampshire. But he should not be faulted for undue sentimentality in this piece, because as you read it, you realize that he is writing about his discovery of a second father and mother. Please have forbearance for the generic nineteenth century clergyman’s convoluted prose and with Gilman’s own natural verbosity, to say nothing of the archaic spellings and punctuation…and enjoy his words; at least read about the trip of mother and son, enjoy the new village which will become the boy’s new home and learn about the father figure he will come to know. In the words of Samuel Gilman writing at age 56:

REMINISCENCES OF A NEW-ENGLAND
CLERGYMAN AND HIS LADY,
LIVING AT THE CLOSE OF THE LAST CENTURY

BY

SAMUEL GILMAN, D. D.
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IMAGINE, nearly fifty years ago, a youthful widow left with four small children in the town of Gloucester, at the head of the harbor at Cape Ann, one of the arms enclosing Massachusetts Bay. Her husband had been a very successful merchant in that place, but had recently died insolvent, his insolvency arising from the capture of several vessels by the French in our war of 1798 with that nation. She had heard of an excellent academy in the township of Atkinson, New Hampshire, not far from the boundary line between that State and Massachusetts. Thither she resolved to carry her son, her "only son," the writer of these memoirs, who was then about seven years of age, - not as Abraham carried Isaac, to the altar of sacrifice, but with the purpose of obtaining for him the blessing of an education. She had learned much of the parental and benevolent character of the minister of the town and his lady, whose house was filled with boarders in attendance at the academy, of which, however, the clergyman was not the preceptor, but only the leading patron and trustee. So, one summer morning, she leaves the sea-shore with a horse and chaise, taking her boy as her only companion, over an untried and intricate road of forty miles. She passes through the pleasant town of Ipswich, so quiet at that time, that the whimpering of their chaise's whippletree (a whip), and the occasional hammering of the village blacksmith in the sultry noon, were the only noises which they heard; and then, leaving Newburyport far to the right, arrives late in the day at the beautiful village of Haverhill, on the Merrimac, with its noble bridge over the river, and situated on the northern boundary of Massachusetts. Six miles farther north, through a perpetually ascending region, conduct her to the wished-for mansion of the venerable and hospitable clergyman. Here she tells her story of sorrow, declares that she must return the next day to seek by trade a livelihood for herself and her little ones, confesses that she owns not at present a single dollar for their support, and waits to learn the determination of her reverend new acquaintance. The answer is not long in coming. " Madam," said he, in tones which still ring musically in the ears of the writer, and with a cordial smile which seems to shine on the memory as but of yesterday, — " Madam, leave your little boy with us. He shall be one of our family, and enter the academy. If Providence blesses your efforts to secure for yourself a livelihood, well and good; you may remunerate us in the usual way. But if you are doomed to struggle with adversity, be not anxious about your son; here you may be sure that he shall have a home and an education." The charming though elderly lady of the clergyman, who sat silently knitting in the corner of the room during the conversation, with an elegant cap on her head, which won my boyish admiration, and a more attractive countenance beneath it, smiled all along in perfect approval of her husband's generous proposal, and closed the interview by a few kind and precious words of assent and comfort. Romantic as this incident may seem, since the widow had not the slightest claim of any kind on her new-found friends, nor had even her name been known to them until that very day, yet is the relation literally true.

The next morning, the stranger, with a face beaming with joy, eyes glistening with tears, and a heart filled with gratitude and hope, re-ascended the chaise to pursue her homeward journey alone. Such instances of female enterprise are not at all uncommon in New England, even at the present day. The subsequent exertions of our adventuress in trade were abundantly favored by that benignant Being who, throughout the volume of revelation, so frequently and tenderly promises his especial protection to the widow and the fatherless. During the space of ten or twelve years, every one of her children enjoyed, for a greater or less period, the advantages of the family and the institution at which she had placed her son, and she ever regarded it as one of the most cherished blessings of her life, that she was amply enabled to remunerate her disinterested benefactor. To him, and to all connected with him, let us now return. I will do what may be in my power, before we part, to make my readers well acquainted at least with good old “Sir Peabody " and his lady.

The township of Atkinson is one of those numerous subdivisions, of about six miles square, into which nearly the whole of New England is parcelled. The inhabit ants of each township form a distinct corporation, all its fiscal, police, and general affairs being conducted by a body called the Selectmen, usually consisting of three persons elected at an annual town-meeting, which assembles at the church, or rather the meeting-house. Atkinson, though far below the summit of that granite territory which swells gradually upward from the Merrimac River until it reaches the Monadnock and White Mountains, still occupies a most commanding position. Looking round on its immense horizon to the south, you might easily fancy yourself on the central apex of the land. With an ordinary telescope you can discern steeples some fifteen or twenty miles distant, counting more than a dozen of them within the whole field, while those of Haverhill, only six miles removed, seem lying comparatively at your feet; and when a warm, gentle south wind prevails, they send up the faint yet clear tones of their distant evening-bells, so magically soft, that you know not whether they are floating from earth or heaven. To the north, or back of the settlement, appear ascending forests and cleared lands, with here and there a distant steeple, until the eye rests at last on the shadowy outline, scarcely distinguishable from the sky itself, of the Grand Monadnock Mountains. What an object for the daily contemplation of an enthusiastic, imaginative youth! How they speak to him of eternal solidity and repose! How they grow into and become a part of the stamp of his being, their dim and far-off grandeur shedding a mystic influence on his soul, which no remoteness of years or situation can efface! When, after dwelling for a long time in some level country, he again sees their forms or similar ones near the horizon, he thrills with the sensation of a new return to life.

There is in Atkinson nothing, properly speaking, like a village. No stream collects there a factory's little population on its banks. The houses are scattered over the whole domain, generally within sight of each other. Every variety of architecture prevails, from the low red cottage, to the ambitious, white-painted, and very sizable mansion; there being, I presume, even here, as in other parts of New England, aspiring souls, who, when about to erect a dwelling-house, might possibly go by night and measure the exact length of their neighbor's residence, for the pleasure of boasting that their own should be six inches larger. The gable-roofed meetinghouse, without a steeple, and painted in fading white, stood on an elevation which commanded a large part of the town. At the distance of half a mile on one side appeared the academy, of more modern and ambitious pretensions, and surmounted by a well-proportioned cupola. The township was set off from some adjoining settlements, and incorporated a few years before the Revolution, receiving its name from the Hon. Theodore Atkinson, at that day one of the leading men in New Hampshire. The population has been nearly stationary for-half a century, and an idea of its fixed character may be conceived from the fact, that in 1830 it amounted to 555, and in 1840 to 557. Thus Atkinson seems to stand like some individual being, and we may well suppose certain original peculiarities to be developed from this unchanging and undisturbed position. There are, I believe, few smaller towns in the State. The gazetteers represent the ground as uneven in its surface, but as being of a superior quality and well cultivated, and state that the cultivation of the apple has received much attention there; a fact to which I can testify by many savory juvenile reminiscences. The gazetteers also mention a remarkable floating island on a bottomless pond, near the outskirts of the town; but they do not mention the large and delicious cranberries growing upon it, which concur with the very danger of the enterprise in tempting many an adventurous youth to explore its perilous recesses. Hard by the meeting-house stood, and I trust stands yet, the modest but not inelegant mansion of the pastor, -rather the handsomest, perhaps, in the whole town, —with a neat court-yard before it, surrounded by lilacs and roses, various snow-white articles of apparel surmounting the fence on every washing-day, and with a small fruit and flower garden extending still in front of that, on the opposite side of the road. This house will be the central point of interest in our sketches. Few private dwellings in our country, I imagine, have sent out more genial and extensive influences, or have gathered to themselves a richer abundance of delightful recollections and elevated sympathies.

Its occupant and proprietor, Rev. Stephen Peabody, possessed a character so remarkable, and in some respects so unique, as to deserve being rescued from gathering oblivion. He was a native of Andover, Massachusetts, ten miles to the south of Atkinson. He graduated at Harvard College in 1769, in the same class with the celebrated Chief Justice Theophilus Parsons, and with Colonel Scammell, a brave soldier and early victim of hostile treachery in our Revolution. Mr. Peabody delighted, like a true son of his own and of every other Alma Mater, to take down his College Catalogue from the nail behind the door, on which it hung with the Farmer's Almanac, and entertain all who would listen with the individual biographies and characters of his classmates. He would sooner dispense with his humble salary (to be hereafter mentioned) than fail of his annual visit to Boston and Cambridge during every Commencement week. It was customary, up to the time of the Revolution, to arrange in the printed Harvard College Catalogue the names of the alumni belonging to each class, not in alphabetical order, but according to their rank in society. Every modern edition of this document, even in our own time, preserves the same arrangement in the lists of the older classes; so that whoever may have had an ancestor that graduated at that college, can easily learn his relative social position by consulting the Triennial Catalogue. My venerable clerical friend was certainly not at the summit of his class in this respect, neither was he quite at the bottom of the scale of respectability. I have heard him describe the pecuniary difficulties and struggles he was obliged to undergo, in order to procure his education. His sisters had kindly made him up twelve very important articles of linen, and at the beginning of each term he would take them to Cambridge in his saddlebags, all clean-blanched by their own fair hands, and would wear each of the garments one week, bringing the whole number home again at the end of the term, in a condition fit for the purifying cares of his affectionate laundresses. Throughout his college life, he secured his own diet by waiting on his classmates at table; an office which has been borne by some of the most eminent men in our country, and was not abolished from our colleges until a recent date. He felt the disadvantage of commencing his literary career late in life, being nearly thirty years old at the time of his graduation, and having borne among his classmates the title of Pater omnium (everybody’s Dad).
Those were not the favored days of Theological Seminaries, or of charitable Education Societies. He therefore entered, as was customary for divinity students, into the family of some distinguished minister of the Gospel, on whose farm he labored for his board, and defrayed his other expenses by teaching a winter school. While he was yet a candidate for the ministry, the Revolutionary war commenced, and Mr. Peabody served for a time as chaplain in the regiment of Colonel Poor of New Hampshire. There might be some affinity between the name of this officer and Mr. Peabody's subsequent settlement at Atkinson, since that town abounds in the name of Poor, which, together with those of Page and Noyes, used to comprise about one half of the inhabitants. Towards the close of the war, he was ordained as the first minister of the town. His salary was eighty pounds, or about two hundred and fifty dollars, per annum, with the addition, I believe, of a few cords of wood; and it was never increased one farthing during his ministry of more than forty years. It was his custom, on a particular day in the year, to wait at his own house on his parishioners, for the purpose of receiving their minister's tax. As he had open accounts with almost all of them, for labors rendered him, or provisions supplied, or articles manufactured, during the year, the cash balance which he was enabled to sum up and count over after their departure would rather amuse him by its exceeding littleness, or nothingness, than weigh upon his conscience for services overpaid. His farm contained about fifty acres. To liquidate his debt for it, which I believe he was never quite able to effect, the severest privations and hardest toils were cheerfully borne by himself and his first wife, who was renowned for the number of rolls of wool and flax which she would card in a given time. The early years of his ministry must have been well illustrated (I do not mean paralleled) by a picture I have somewhere seen of a poor English curate, and described underneath by the following lines:

Though lazy, the proud prelate's fed,
This curate eats no idle bread:
His wife at washing, 'tis his lot
To pare the turnips, watch the pot.
He reads, and hears his son read out,
And rocks the cradle with his foot.

I have heard him mention, that, after having wrought in the field the whole day, he has often sat up all night to compose and finish his sermon; which, by the way, he wrote in a small, distinct, and beautiful hand.

In person Mr. Peabody was large and commanding, having attained full six feet in height, and being otherwise of very portly dimensions. His eye was black, and his face was swarthy but well-proportioned. His hair was bushy and curling, swelling out to an ample rotundity behind, like that of Mirabeau. I believe he never followed the coxcombry of our reverend forefathers in wearing a bushwig, or a wig of any other kind. Though in general courteous and bland in his address, yet when he heard profane language, or received a personal insult, an awful shadow would gather on his visage, his eye would roll fiery glances in every direction, and the dauntless volley of rebuke would be poured from his lips. His passions were naturally strong, and he feared no human being alive. Had any of his parishioners dared to attack his person (since he had his quarrels sometimes), I have not the least question that they would have bitterly rued the moment, for his physical powers were mighty, and in his youth he had been the invincible wrestler of many parishes round, and being now fresh from the Revolutionary War, he had not yet learned to identify the higher Christianity with non-resistance.

His conversation was enlivened with innumerable anecdotes, which he related with surpassing glee and humor, reserving the contagious laugh until the closing point, and using all sorts of dramatic accompaniments, frequently rising from table in the midst of a meal, and taking the floor, if he could thereby set off the action to better advantage.

His musical powers and habits were extraordinary, and he almost reveled through life in an atmosphere of sweet sounds of his own creating. On rainy days, when unlikely to be disturbed by captious or narrow-minded visitors, he would take out his golden-toned violin from a little closet, and draw from its strings the richest and most bewitching notes, a sweet and serene half-smile all the time playing over his lip and cheek and eye. His voice was of vast compass, and exquisitely flexible. He was at home in every part in music. When there was no choir in the meeting-house, he led the singing himself; and when there was one, he supplied the deficient parts, rolling out a mellow and deep-toned bass, or warbling with his treble or counter over the whole concert, like an animated mocking-bird. He sang on week-days at his work, and sometimes talked aloud to himself most agreeably. He would sing on his rides about the town, or when traveling in his chaise, alone or accompanied, by night or by day; and all the solitudes and echoes of that region have many a time rung with his loud and melodious voice. He was most fond of sacred music, but did not disdain a scrap now and then of secular. He would sing you, in perfect taste, with graceful gesture and a happy look, either sitting or standing, various extracts from the delightful old anthems of Arne or Purcell, or from the oratorios of Handel. Coming home from public worship, if a favorite tune had just been sung there, he would repeat it over and over as he entered the house, stopping you in a companionable way, looking you smilingly in the face, and asking if it was not beautiful. He would, except on Sunday mornings, awaken the whole household of sleepers at sunrise, or as soon as he had made the fires, by singing up and down stairs, " The bright, rosy morning peeps over the hills," "The hounds are all out," or some other huntingsong equally stirring. He would take into his lap a little round, favorite dog, and, commanding it to sing with him, he would begin by roaring some tune aloud, the dog immediately joining in with a louder and responsive roar. The only inconvenience from this practice was that the dog one Sabbath followed his master unperceived to the meeting-house, and up to the platform of the pulpit-stairs, and too zealously practised there the musical lessons which he had been taught at home. On some warm summer afternoon, when all the windows of the house were open, and one of his young boarders, far up in the garret at his studies, might happen, for variety's sake, to burst out in some cherished tune or strain, such, for instance, as old St. Anne's, his venerable friend, in the lower story, awaking from his transitory nap, would fall in with his mellifluous bass, and so would they sing for a long time together, until, looking out of their respective windows, they would smile upon each other, as who should say, "L Were there ever two better friends than we? "

He was, indeed, the soul of good nature, particularly with the young, and seemed never so happy as when four or five of them were clambering about his person, taking and yielding unrestrained liberties in turn. Like the Apostle Paul's charity, he was "easily persuaded," and you had rarely to ask him more than once to tell one of his inimitable anecdotes, or take down the violin from the closet on a rainy day, or perform his duet with Watch, the overgrown little dog. If a poor and promising young man in the parish was desirous of a liberal education, Mr. Peabody's purse was open for his assistance, with a very distant and precarious chance of being repaid. His hospitality was ungrudging, to the utmost extent of the Apostolic and New Testament standard. Not a day passed that some welcome addition failed of being made to our already crowded table. The parishioner coming to return his book to the Social Library, — the old, familiar acquaintance, — the professed old acquaintance, too, whom the host was sometimes puzzled to recognize, — the travelling brother-minister, stopping with his horse for a week or two, — the passing belated stranger, too far from the tavern for his dinner, — all were cordially invited to partake of the fare for the day. The very doors of the mansion were left unfastened at night, — as, indeed, they scarcely needed locks in that primitive society, — and many a winter traveller from Vermont and Upper New Hampshire, going down in his loaded sleigh to the markets on the sea-board, has come in to warm himself by the midnight bed of embers, held long and pleasant conversations with Mr. Peabody as he lay in an adjoining bed-room, and then retired, the parties being destined never to see or imagine each other's appearance, or to hear each other's voice again.

The titles by which he was designated among his acquaintances were various, according to the degrees of affection, or respect, or indifference, with which he was regarded. By some he was called " Priest Peabody," by others " Parson Peabody," by others " the Reverend Mister," by others again plain " Mister Peabody "; but from all the family, and from all those who were more or less intimately connected with or attached to him, he received the endearing appellation of " Sir Peabody," by which he will generally be distinguished in the remainder of these sketches.

As a divine, he was far from being eminent, though he certainly held in his constitution the elements of a popular preacher, and he exercised, by the force and decision of his character, considerable influence in his own little section of the ecclesiastical world. He was occasionally called on to preach a sermon at an ordination, and once before the legislature of the State; and his few published discourses on such occasions are quite respectable in point of style and matter. In his pulpit manner there was frequently a good deal of animation. He had often heard Whitfield in his youth, and he would sometimes in private imitate that celebrated orator with impressive effect, calling upon the angel Gabriel not to fly back to heaven without carrying with him the tidings of at least one converted sinner, —looking at the same time, in the manner of Whitfield, afar off to the sky, as if he saw the lessening wing of the departing seraph. Approximations to such passages, however, were very rare indeed in his own public performances. In doctrine, he had always been an inveterate Arminian, showing no mercy to Calvinism, or to Hopkinsianism, or Universalism, wherever they might be found. In later life, he advanced still farther into what is denominated Liberal Christianity, having purchased and perused Noah Worcester's "Bible News" with satisfaction, recommending and lending it to his friends, and reading Buckminster's Sermons with delight at his Sabbath family services.

His library, if it deserve such a name, was marvellously small. Besides Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Scriptures, and Cruden's Concordance, I do not think he owned thirty theological books, nor more than that number of any other kind, except a small closetful of the pamphlets of forty years, from which one could catch tolerable glimpses of the political and ecclesiastical matters of New England during that period of time. While studying my Greek Testament at home, to be recited to my teacher at the academy, I always applied in vain to Sir Peabody for a solution of my grammatical and other difficulties, since he candidly confessed that he had grown somewhat rusty on that score.

_______________

This memoir originally appeared in the Christian Examiner in 1847 and was later included by Gilman in his book, Contributions to Literature; descriptive, critical, humorous, biographical, philosophical, and poetical. Samuel Gilman, D. D. (1856). Boston: Crosby, Nichols, and Company. The excerpt above consists of the first 13 pages from that book and is taken from an edition by Making of America Books, an effort to resurrect of out of print books, in a collaborative effort between Cornell University and the University of Michigan. You will find the full text of this autobiographical sketch starting on page 190 at this on-line address:

http://books.google.com/books?id=yV4RAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22Contributions+to+Literature%22+%22Samuel+Gilman%22&ei=7wSZR-SULI_6zQS44bi2Dw

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David Elder, Docent
January 2008