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cured it against the claims and petitions of Wenepoykin-old George No Nose-of Rumney Marsh, and his progeny. Aboriginal rights were those of the wild beasts to the forests in which they prowled, and little else than that was really considered by the settlers of Massachusetts Bay.

Ownership implied an early improvement of the lands above the Mystic; and in 1640 may be found the first definite record of an actual settlement. Then John Greenland built

THE GRAVE OF MICHAEL WIGGLESWORTH.

and Philip Drinker began to keep "a sufficient boat" at Penny Ferry, a service which was continued by his successors for one hundred and fortyseven years, until it was superseded by Malden Bridge. Later, Thomas Call began, by authority, to sell "bread and beare"; and with houses and a mill, a ferry and an inn, the beginnings of a settlement were complete.

Others came over the river and, pushing by those who had already planted upon the uplands of the Mystic, built at the head of the North River, near Sandy Bank and not far from Bell Rock; others passed down

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SANDY BANK BURYING GROUND.

upon his lot at the present easterly corner of Ferry and Chelsea Streets in Everett, near to the great South Spring; and others accompanied or followed him, building near by. An earlier settlement may have been made by Thomas Moulton at Island End or Moulton's Island, and, perhaps, some one had built upon Sweetser's Point near by. At this time, Thomas Coytmore built a dam and a corn-mill on Three Mile Brook,

into the valley of Pemberton's Creek,

Harvell's Brook; while others ventured up the valley of the Three Mile Brook and improved the lands above Wayte's Mount. Farther north, at the Charlestown head-line, the Greens and others rested, coming in, perhaps, with their neighbors of Lynn, who around Lake Quanapowitt laid the foundations of the town of Reading.

Among those who came into the

THE DEXTER ELMS.

valley of Pemberton's Creek were Joseph Hills and his son-in-law, John Wayte. The one, settling on the northerly side of Salem Street, brought the name of Maldon, his English home, into the forests of New England; while the latter built on his grant at the foot of the great rock which bears his name. A leader in church and state was Joseph Hills, to whom posterity still owes a debt as the compiler of the Massachusetts Laws of 1648, the first code of enacted laws printed in New England. These men were the fathers of the town, bearing together its heaviest burdens. The elder, as a representative of the town of Charlestown, was speaker of the House of Deputies, while the younger closed a long series of public duties in the same honorable office, after having been denounced to the British government by the infamous Randolph as one of "a faction in the Generall Court."

Separated from the parent town by the wide river, and with a little community of farmers scattered over a territory which extended about seven miles into the country, the foundation of a town seemed most desirable.

Apparently it had been contemplated from the first, as a necessity when a sufficient number of inhabitants should be gathered to form a church, the first requisite to the establishment of a town government. Some attempts towards the gathering of a church appear to have been made in 1648; and the Word was preached at times by William Sargeant, who was afterwards a ruling elder of the church, and by students from Cambridge. The next year the church was instituted, and an agreement of separation, which was entered into with the inhabitants of Charlestown, was ratified by the General Court, May 11, 1649, O. S.; and the men of Mystic Side were "granted to be a distinct towne, & the name thereof to be called Mauldon."

This division left to Charlestown about one-half of the territory of the present city of Everett, which under the old name of Mystic Side continued to be a part of the mother town until 1726, when it was annexed to Malden.

The early years of the new town were years of discouragements and heartburnings. Hindered by the neighboring churches in their attempts to obtain a pastor, the brethren took the matter into their own hands and ordained, as their first pastor, Marmaduke Matthews by the earlier and disused practice of lay or

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THE OLD HILL TAVERN.

On the site of City Hall.

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dination. The new pastor had been under the ban of the authorities at Hull and elsewhere; and to the offence of an irregular ordination was soon added that of "unsafe and offensive expressions," which involved both pastor and people in trouble.

This was an important and celebrated case in the history of the colony. Pressed by civil and ecclesiastical authority, the little church fought single-handed for the independence of the churches, which had been recognized by the Bill of Rights and the Cambridge Platform. Its members asserted the freedom of individual thought, limited by conscience and the Word of God. They were worthy of the convictions for which they persistently stood. They were overthrown; but the principles for which they suffered are now recognized by the laws and the churches of New England.

The troubles occasioned by the Matthews affair distracted the town for many years, and its baneful effects outlasted the

generation to which generation to which it belonged. After many trials and disappointments, the church called Michael Wigglesworth, then a tutor at Cambridge, to be its teacher; and he was ordained in 1657. The life of this man was a sombre one, filled with misgivings and pain. Physical ills added miseries to a mind without hope; and the spiritual condition of his people and their indifference or opposition cast him still lower. All the minor ills of life pressed closely upon matters of moment and became of equal importance in his gloomy mind. "Mr. Hills marrying of himself" "Mr.Hills and "his judgment about baptism" came to trouble him with "a multitude

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MAIN STREET IN 1867.

of great black buggs" that swarmed all over the house and ate the food, and, perhaps, "some cloathes also."

Out of his weakness came in 1662 the great New England epic of the Day of Doom, with its mighty subject and its fearful denunciations to the sons of men. This book attained a popularity which was not exceeded by that of any other work published

REV. ADONIRAM JUDSON.

in New England before the Revolution; it has hardly been exceeded. since.* Its influence was widespread and deep; and it was remembered and quoted with reverence by a generation which has barely passed away. It was the utterance of a sincere belief which to-day finds little acceptance; and its awful warnings and its vivid description of the fate of sinners of all grades and conditions, terrifying as they were to a former generation, now excite our curiosity or evoke a smile. Besides the Day of Doom, Mr.

Wigglesworth wrote another "composture," Meat out of the Eater, which, without the great subject of the former, entered the popular heart and passed through more editions than any poetical work published during the colonial and provincial periods, with the exception of the Day of Doom and the Bay Psalm Book.

During the physical incapacity of Mr. Wigglesworth, colleagues as pastors were settled at Malden from time to time; and Benjamin Bunker, Benjamin Blakeman, and Thomas Cheever ministered to the people with varying success. The coals of the Matthews fire were still warm. Thomas Cheever, a son of the famous Latinist, Ezekiel Cheever, the schoolmaster of Boston until his ninetyfourth year, was dismissed by the advice of a council in 1686; but he retired to Rumney Marsh, afterwards Chelsea, and became the faithful and honored first pastor of the church at that place.

Meanwhile, Mr. Wigglesworth had been neglected, or perhaps sometimes wholly set aside, and for more than five years after the departure of Mr. Cheever he is not mentioned upon the

records of the town. But the load which had rested upon his life was finally removed. With health restored in a wonderful manner, vigor came to both body and mind. Most or all of those who had been prominent in the church and town during the pastorate of Mr. Matthews had passed away; and the remembrance of the troubles of that period had become softened by time or existed only in the traditions of the elders. His sickness had induced the study and

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REV. GILBERT HAVEN.

See article on "An Old Puritan Poet," by Helen Marshall North, in the NEW ENGLAND MAGAZINE, October, 1890.

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