James Freeman, D.D

PEOPLE MENTIONED IN CAPE COD:

THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Cape Cod: Rev. James Freeman HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

CAPE COD: The sea is not gaining on the Cape everywhere, for one PEOPLE OF man told me of a vessel wrecked long ago on the north of CAPE COD Provincetown whose “bones” (this was his word) are still visible many rods within the present line of the beach, half buried in sand. Perchance they lie alongside the timbers of a whale. The general statement of the inhabitants is, that the Cape is wasting on both sides, but extending itself on particular points on the south and west, as at Chatham and Monomoy Beaches, and at Billingsgate, Long, and Race Points. James Freeman stated in his day that above three miles had been added to Monomoy Beach during the previous fifty years, and it is said to be still extending as fast as ever. A writer in the Massachusetts Magazine, in the last century, tells us that “when the English first settled upon the Cape, there was an island off Chatham, at three leagues’ distance, called Webb’s Island, containing twenty acres, covered with red- cedar or savin. The inhabitants of Nantucket used to carry wood from it”; but he adds that in his day a large rock alone marked the spot, and the water was six fathoms deep there. The entrance to Nauset Harbor, which was once in Eastham, has now travelled south into Orleans. The islands in Wellfleet Harbor once formed a continuous beach, though now small vessels pass between them. And so of many other parts of this coast.

JAMES FREEMAN HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1759

April 22, day: James Freeman was born, a son of sea captain turned merchant of Charlestown, Massachusetts named Constant Freeman, with Lois Cobb Freeman. James would be educated at the Boston Latin School, headmaster John Lovell, “the pride of Boston’s parents and the terror of its youth.”

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Cape Cod: Rev. James Freeman HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1773

Suddenly at some point during this year, President Locke of Harvard College tendered his resignation without either giving a reason or expressing any regret. The Reverend Asa Dunbar commented to his journal: “O Locke! How soon and how shamefully art thou fallen from ye highest pinacle [sic] of prosperity into ye lowest abyss of adversity!”

James Freeman matriculated at Harvard.

Charles Stearns graduated at Harvard. He would become a minister in Lincoln.

Tilly Merrick of Concord, son of Tilly Merrick, graduated from Harvard. Tilly Merrick, son of Tilly Merrick, was born January 29, 1752; grad. Harvard, 1773, now (1835) resides in Concord, the oldest native living graduate.1

1. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1776

March: Private Charles Miles, the son of Captain Charles Miles and himself later a militia captain, served as a private in a Concord company stationed at Roxbury, blocking the British army’s access to the mainland across Boston Neck.

Dr. John Cuming of Concord had evidently overcome his Royalist scruples — as he at this point became a member of the local Committee of Correspondence, Inspection and Safety. The committee of correspondence, etc., chosen March, 1776 [for Concord], were John Cuming, Esq., Ephraim Wood, Jr., Esq., Capt. Jonas Heywood, Capt. Joseph Hosmer, James Barrett, Esq., Capt. David Brown, and Capt. George Minot. In 1777, Colonel John Buttrick, Josiah Merriam, Isaac Hubbard, Capt. Abishai Brown, Capt. David Wheeler, Mr. Ephraim Potter, and Lieut. Nathan Stow. In 1778, John Cuming, Esq., Colonel John Buttrick, Ephraim Wood, Jr., Esq., Jonas Heywood, Esq., James Barrett, Esq., Capt. David Brown, and Mr. Josiah Merriam. These were re-elected in 1779, 1780, 1781 & 1782. In 1783, James Barrett, Esq., Jonas Heywood, Esq., Ephraim Wood, Jr., Esq., Capt. David Wood, and Lieut. Joseph Hayward. This committee was not chosen afterwards.2

2. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

When Lord Howe’s army evacuated Boston, the Rector of King’s Chapel, Henry Caner, a Loyalist, needed to flee with the British troops (after the departure of his assistant a few months later, the Chapel would be closed for about a year). In addition, both the Lovells, loyalist father teacher of the Boston Latin School and patriot

son assistant teacher, would sail with the fleet to Halifax, Nova Scotia (the father as Howe’s guest but the son as his prisoner). The son, the patriot James Lovell, would be exchanged and would become a delegate to the Continental Congress. The father, the loyalist John Lovell, would live out his life in Canada, dying at Halifax in 1778. Schoolmastering responsibilities were picked up by Samuel Hunt, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody’s uncle, who would be Master there, with some difficulty, for 36 years. Out of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, five would have attended this school: • John Hancock • Samuel Adams • Robert Treat Paine • Benjamin Franklin • William Hooper of North Carolina

LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Cape Cod: Rev. James Freeman HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1777

James Freeman graduated at Harvard College. He would pursue theological studies as a graduate resident.3

The proprietors of King’s Chapel in Boston gave permission to the members of the Old South Church (Congregational), who had been displaced from their own meetinghouse by the British, to worship at their edifice. Due to anti-British sentiment, it was popularly being termed the Stone Chapel. Before long the original congregation would return and the two societies, one Episcopalian (Church of England) and the other Congregational, would be sharing the facilities.

Captain Joseph Butler was the current owner of the Jonathan Ball House in Concord, with its commodious cellar and cave in the retaining wall stretching back into the body of the ridge. The Provincial Congress met in the church across the street and ordered supplies to be brought from nearby towns for safer storage. When General Gage learned where the hiding places were he gave instructions to Lieutenant Colonel Smith to lead an expedition to destroy said military stores. Since we find Captain Butler’s name in these instructions, we may presume that he was storing some of these military supplies in his cellar and in the cave, one of several such that the settlers had dug into the base of the ridge.

Peter Clark of Concord,4 son of Benjamin Clark, and Ebenezer Hubbard of Concord, son of Ebenezer Hubbard, graduated from Harvard.

PETER C LARK [of Concord], son of Benjamin Clark, was graduated [at Harvard] in 1777, was a lawyer in Southborough, and died in July, 1792, aged 36.5 EBENEZER HUBBARD [of Concord], son of Ebenezer Hubbard, was graduated [at Harvard] in 1777, ordained at Marblehead, January 1, 1783, and died December 15, 1800, aged 43.6

3. After graduation James Freeman prepared a company of men from Cape Cod for service in the Revolutionary army. 4. This is not the Reverend Peter Clark of Salem. 5. Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;.... Boston: Russell, Odiorne, and Company; Concord MA: John Stacy (On or about November 11, 1837 Henry Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of this historical study.) 6. Ibid. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1780

Publication, in London, of AN IMPARTIAL HISTORY OF THE WAR IN AMERICA, BETWEEN GREAT BRITAIN AND HER COLONIES, FROM ITS COMMENCEMENT TO THE END OF THE YEAR 1779 (Printed for R. Faulder, New Bond Street, 1780. Attributed to Edmund Burke. Folding map and 13 engraved portraits which include George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Sir William Howe, Robert Hopkins, General Putnam, Charles Lee, Horatio Oates, a real American Rifleman, and others.)

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Cape Cod: Rev. James Freeman HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1782

Peter Thoreau purchased a home on Cambridge Street in Boston.

With the Revolutionary hostilities more or less over, James Freeman was able to return from Canada. After having been tried out in various Boston pulpits as a supply preacher, the Episcopalians (Church of England) at King’s Chapel offered him a 6-month contract to officiate, but only as their reader.

The British government was finding the political beliefs of the Reverend Joseph Priestley to be unsettling. Church leaders also were being disturbed, by the manner in which this author was attacking such closely held doctrines as the Virgin Birth and the Holy Trinity in books such as this year’s THE HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTIONS OF CHRISTIANITY.

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Cape Cod: Rev. James Freeman HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1783

A consignment of convicts transported from England was refused entry into the United States of America, and the ship conveying them needed to return to England. “Thank you, we’ve already taken delivery of your garbage.”

During the Revolution the proprietors of the King’s Chapel had allowed the members of the Old South Church (Congregational), displaced from their own meetinghouse by British troops, to worship under their roof. Because of anti-British sentiment, the structure had come to be popularly known as the Stone Chapel (think, “Freedom Fries”). Before long the original Episcopal (Church of England) congregation had returned to the Chapel, and the two societies, Episcopalian and Congregational, had shared the venue. In this year, however, the Old South Church congregation was able to recover control over its newly renovated building and no longer needed access to the Stone Chapel facility.

James Freeman got married with the widowed Martha Curtis Clarke, and accepted her nine-year-old son Samuel Clarke as his own (since this adoptee Samuel Clarke would father James Freeman Clarke, eventually James Freeman would be also serving as James Freeman Clarke’s grandfather, or grandfather surrogate).

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Cape Cod: Rev. James Freeman HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

April 20, Easter Sunday: The congregation of the Stone Chapel liked their contract reader James Freeman so much that when his six-month contract was up, they had the proprietors ask him to take on the duties of Pastor of their Church. Before he had accepted the position of Reader at the Stone Chapel, however, he had requested that he not be required to read out the Athanasian Creed (as the Episcopalians were not particularly fond of that creed anyway, the congregation had readily consented to that stipulation). But after studying the Reverend Joseph Priestley’s A HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTIONS OF CHRISTIANITY, which had appeared during the previous year,

and the Reverend Theophilus Lindsey’s AN HISTORICAL VIEW OF THE STATE OF THE UNITARIAN DOCTRINE AND WORSHIP FROM THE REFORMATION TO OUR OWN TIMES, which had been issued during this year, Freeman

had even begun to doubt their doctrine of the Holy Trinity and was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with their liturgy in the Book of Common Prayer.7 Embracing the Socinian Unitarianism of the Reverends Priestley and Lindsey, he found himself rejecting the belief in the pre-human existence of Jesus (others who were soon to be known as Unitarians, the Arian liberal Congregationalists of New England, did however accept this pre- human existence of Jesus). He advised his closer friends at the chapel that he could not conscientiously perform the service as it stood — ought he therefore to relinquish his position as pastor? One of these friends suggested that he present his dilemma to the congregation as a whole, and allow them to render their own verdict.8

7. Unfortunately, the sermons of the Reverend Freeman on the Trinity have not been preserved. 8. Note that unlike the New England liberal Congregationalist ministers who would approach Unitarianism through Arianism, the Reverend Freeman was Socinian in theology and had developed his links with Unitarianism through influences in England. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1784

The Reverend James Freeman offered a series of sermons at King’s Chapel on the unity of God, stating his dissatisfaction with certain parts of the liturgy, and giving his reasons for rejecting the Trinity. He was presuming that these would be the last sermons he would be allowed to deliver at the Stone Chapel, but to his surprise was heard patiently, attentively, and kindly. He persuaded the chapel to alter its liturgy, eliminating all references to the Trinity and addressing all its prayers to God the Father. The Stone Chapel was the first religious edifice in America to make such changes and on that ground it might well be construed as the initial Unitarian church in the country.9 When the English Unitarian, the Reverend William Hazlitt, visited Boston during this year, the Reverend Freeman found him sympathetic and supportive. Hazlitt promoted Freeman’s ministry and told him that he considered lay ordination to be scriptural. While the liberal Congregationalists tried to distance themselves from Hazlitt, both personally and theologically, Freeman gave him his friendship and said, “I bless the day when that honest man first landed in this country.”

9. The Reverend Freeman was in fact the initial preacher, at least on this side of the pond, to refer to himself as “Unitarian.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1786

The Reverend Joseph Priestley’s HISTORY OF EARLY OPINIONS CONCERNING JESUS CHRIST developed his ideas on Unitarianism. King George III and many other Englishmen were convinced that Priestley had gone atheist. Priestley moved to Birmingham where he became friends with businessmen and scientists such as John Wilkinson, Josiah Wedgewood, Matthew Boulton, and James Watt. Whereas Priestley’s scientific work, for example, his discovery of oxygen, was welcomed, his religious and political views were constantly getting him into trouble. The Reverend and his friend Richard Price became leaders of a group of men known as the Rational Dissenters. I consider my settlement at Birmingham as the happiest event of my life. THE LUNAR SOCIETY OF BIRMINGHAM As the congregation at the Stone Chapel in Boston wished to remain connected with the Episcopal Church, in this year they sent a request to Bishop Samuel Seabury to have the Reverend James Freeman ordained as their rector. Because of the controversy surrounding the changes that had been made to the chapel’s liturgy, Bishop Seabury replied that he would require the recommendation of his presbyters. After interviewing the Reverend Freeman and confirming that he did not subscribe to the Trinity, the presbyters denied his application for ordination. A more liberal-minded clergyman, Dr. Samuel Provoost, bishop-elect of New-York, also declined his support — but all this meant was that the determined wardens of the chapel would need to take it upon themselves to arrange a lay ordination.

WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Cape Cod: Rev. James Freeman HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1787

The Reverend Jeremy Belknap became the pastor of the Federal Street Church in Boston.

The Reverend James Freeman was made “Rector, Minister, Priest, Pastor, and Ruling Elder” of Boston’s Stone Chapel.

A group of Episcopal clergymen in the area published a statement protesting “against the aforesaid proceedings, to the end that all those or our communion, wherever disposed, may be cautioned against receiving said Reader or Preacher (Mr. James Freeman) as a Clergyman of our Church, or holding any communion with him as such, and may be induced to look upon his congregation in the light, in which it ought to be looked upon, by all true Episcopalians.” A flurry of letters ensued, many of which were published in the local newspapers. One man even suggested that the “heretics” ought to be burned at the stake, as in the old days. The wardens of Stone Chapel, as well as the majority of the congregation, supported their new pastor in every way they could. Freeman himself kept aloof from the dispute and the controversy gradually subsided.

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Cape Cod: Rev. James Freeman HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1791

A continuation of Benjamin Franklin’s Massachusetts Magazine, or, Monthly Museum of Knowledge and Rational Entertainment subsequent to his death, that would be prepared at Boston, initially by Isaiah Thomas and Ebenezer T. Andrews (1789-1793), Ezra W. Weld (1794), Samuel Hill (1794), William Greenough (1794- 1795), Alexander Martin (1795-1796), Benjamin Sweetser (1796), and James Cutler (1796), as edited by Isaiah Thomas, Thaddeus Mason Harris (1795-1796), and William Biglow (1796).

Henry Thoreau would extract from the February/March 1791 issue (Issue #3) the Reverend James Freeman’s “A Description of Cape Cod, and the County of Barnstable” for CAPE COD, pages 119-20 and 175. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1792

The Western Inland Lock Navigation Company was formed by General Philip Schuyler, to dig a 3-mile Little Falls, New York canal, and another linking the Mohawk River with Wood Creek. Elkanah Watson was named to the commission. ELKANAH WATSON

The small canal that had been being dug in the Bath area of the district of Maine was in this year completed.

A Unitarian congregation was formed at Portland in the district of Maine by an Episcopalian minister and friend of the Reverend James Freeman, Thomas Oxnard, to whom the reverend had given books by the Reverends Lindsey and Priestley.

The Reverend Freeman began to serve on the Boston School Committee (he would serve for many years).

In Dennis on Cape Cod, as Henry Thoreau would note as he passed through this town on the stagecoach, was supposedly constructed in this year an elegant meeting-house with a steeple:

A WEEK: There were almost no trees at all in this part of Dennis, nor could I learn that they talked of setting out any. It is true, there was a meeting-house, set round with Lombardy poplars, in a hollow square, the rows fully as straight as the studs of a building, and the corners as square; but, if I do not mistake, every one of them was dead. I could not help thinking that they needed a revival here. Our book said, that, in 1795, there was erected in Dennis “an elegant meeting-house, with a steeple.” Perhaps, this was the one; though whether it had a steeple, or had died down so far from sympathy with the poplars, I do not remember.

Levi Whitman provided, in an open letter to the Reverend James Freeman, recording secretary of the Massachusetts Historical Society, an “Account of the Creeks and Islands in Wellfleet and Observations on the Importance of Cape Cod (Provincetown) Harbor” (Volume IV of the Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, pages 41-44, printed by S. Hale of Boston). HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1798

The Reverend James Freeman enlisted as one of the early members of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and would be serving until 1812 as its recording secretary (many of the articles on Cape Cod in the Massachusetts Historical Review from which Henry Thoreau would quote would be by him):

THE HUMANE SOCIETY DESCRIPTION OF SANDWICH DESCRIPTION OF DENNIS DESCRIPTION OF CHATHAM THE HISTORY OF EASTHAM DESCRIPTION OF ORLEANS NOTE ON WELLFLEET DESC. OF PROVINCETOWN DESCRIPTION OF TRURO MASS. HIST. SOC., VOL. III MASS. HIST. SOC., VOL. VIII HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

JAMES FREEMAN HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

The Formation of Historical Societies

1791 Massachusetts Historical Society

1804 New-York Historical Society

1812 American Antiquarian Society

1820s Maine and Rhode Island Historical Societies

1830s Virginia, Vermont, Connecticut, and Georgia Historical Societies

1840s Maryland Historical Society

1845 New Jersey Historical Society

1849 Minnesota Historical Society

1850s South Carolina Historical Society

1859 Historical Society of the Territory of New Mexico

“The chief practical use of history is to deliver us from plausible historical analogies.” — James Bryce, 1888 HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

Here is what Henry Thoreau would make of this historical-society phenomenon:

A WEEK: Strictly speaking, the historical societies have not PEOPLE OF recovered one fact from oblivion, but are themselves, instead of the fact, that is lost. The researcher is more memorable than the A WEEK researched. The crowd stood admiring the mist and the dim outlines of the trees seen through it, when one of their number advanced to explore the phenomenon, and with fresh admiration all eyes were turned on his dimly retreating figure. It is astonishing with how little co-operation of the societies the past is remembered. Its story has indeed had another muse than has been assigned it. There is a good instance of the manner in which all history began, in Alwákidis’ Arabian Chronicle: “I was informed by Ahmed Almatin Aljorhami, who had it from Rephâa Ebn Kais Alámiri, who had it from Saiph Ebn Fabalah Alchâtquarmi, who had it from Thabet Ebn Alkamah, who said he was present at the action.” These fathers of history were not anxious to preserve, but to learn the fact; and hence it was not forgotten. Critical acumen is exerted in vain to uncover the past; the past cannot be presented; we cannot know what we are not. But one veil hangs over past, present, and future, and it is the province of the historian to find out, not what was, but what is.

SIMON OCKLEY HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1802

October: The Reverend James Freeman, recording secretary for the Massachusetts Historical Society, presented “A Description of the Coast of the County of Barnstable from Cape Cod, or Race Point, in latitude 42º. 5'. to Cape Malebarre, or Sandy Point of Chatham, in latitude 41º. 33'. Pointing out the spots, on which the Trustees of the Humane Society have erected huts, and other places where shipwrecked seamen may look for shelter” (pages 110-119 of Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Volume VIII (first series). Boston: Printed by Munroe and Francis). THE HUMANE SOCIETY

JAMES FREEMAN HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1809

At the request of the Reverend James Freeman, the proprietors of the Stone Chapel in Boston hired Samuel Cary as his colleague (Samuel would, however, die in 1815 at but 30 years of age).

1 Edward Cotton’s BOSTON DIRECTORY included a new 15 inch by 9 /2 inch plate of the Osgood Carleton map of Boston, engraved by Joseph Callender.10

10. This would continue in use until superseded in 1829 by one engraved in 1828 by Hazen Morse. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1811

From this year until 1816, the gradual founding of Harvard Divinity School as a non-sectarian school of theology and of a liberal Protestantism, to become generally Unitarian after the formation of the American Unitarian Association.

When they moved to Boston, Samuel Clarke and Rebecca Hull Clarke left their 3d son, James Freeman Clarke, who would later become an influential Unitarian minister, under the care of the Reverend James Freeman and his wife, James’s grandmother, Martha Curtis Clarke Freeman. Although this arrangement was supposed to be temporary, the lad would end up remaining in this Freeman family for the remainder of his childhood.

The Stone Chapel revised its liturgy once again, incorporating changes that the Reverend James Freeman had wanted to make in 1785 but for which he had then considered the congregation unready. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

Harvard College awarded to the Reverend James Freeman an honorary Doctor of Divinity D.D. degree.11

NEW “HARVARD MEN”

11. The Reverend James Freeman was in the habit of contributing to the General Repository and Review and the Christian Register. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1812

The Reverend James Freeman published SERMONS ON PARTICULAR OCCASIONS, although without placing his name on it (this would pass through successive editions under various titles). HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1815

The Universalist preacher of Boston, John Murray, died.

After the death at an early age of Samuel Cary, the Reverend James Freeman would again served the congregation of the Stone Chapel alone (until 1824, when Francis W.P. Greenwood would be brought in to assist him).

Thomas Belsham’s AMERICAN UNITARIANISM, OR A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE PROGRESS AND PRESENT STATE OF UNITARIAN CHURCHES IN AMERICA. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1816

The preaching of Thomas Oxnard in Baltimore led to the organization of the Unitarian church there, at which the Reverend William Ellery Channing would deliver his famous 1819 sermon. He met every two weeks with about 20 liberal ministers in the Boston area, mostly Congregational, for discussions relating to religion, morals, and civic order. Freeman was appointed to a committee charged with considering the creation of a formal body. The work of this committee led, in 1825, to the founding the American Unitarian Association. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

Little Harriet Beecher, five years old, was fascinated with the Reverend Cotton Mather’s MAGNALIA CHRISTI AMERICANA; ORTHEECCLEFIASTICAL HIFTORY OF NEW-ENGLAND, FROM ITS FIRFT PLANTING IN THE YEAR 1620, UNTO THE YEAR OF OUR LORD, 1698. IN SEVEN BOOKS. (Well, the mentality of the reverend author of this tome was approximately the mentality of a five-year-old, so there you are.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

Meanwhile, her daddy the Reverend Lyman Beecher, who had done so much to safeguard Boston against the spiritual errors of the Unitarians, was urging that to counter the threat of Roman Catholicism there should be created a Protestant school for each district of the community, and that there should be at least one Protestant minister available for each 1,000 residents, and that –since Roman Catholicism feared the common man with his Holy Bible and his ability to read and understand it for himself– there must be a copy of the Holy Bible in each and every home. The Reverend, it is to be mentioned, was not a member of the Know-Nothing Party: he approved of their objectives but he thought of himself nevertheless as standing aloof from the “hatreds” which that political group tended to nurture and he thought of himself as standing aloof from the “violence and secrecy” of the means they tended to employ. ANTI-CATHOLICISM

(I think it is important for me here to emphasize this for you, because my sense of the matter is that very few of us now think of the development of 19th-Century “bible societies” as in any sense prejudicial or partial or sectarian. This was the year in which, in New-York, the American Bible Society was being founded and of course that was righteous. Of course it was. This was the year in which Noah Webster not only was helping found and write the constitution for a “charitable society,” but also was becoming a director of the New Hampshire Bible Society, and of course that was righteous. –It is relevant for you to recognize that what you are gazing at is the kindly countenance of American anti-Catholic prejudice.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1820

The Reverend James Freeman and Samuel Cary co-wrote FUNERAL SERMONS PREACHED AT KING’S CHAPEL, BOSTON.

This was the year of the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention, and one of the delegates to this convention was the Reverend Joseph Tuckerman, who had gotten the blues in the previous year by witnessing a slave auction in Charleston, South Carolina. An interesting factoid is that, despite what he had just witnessed, at this convention he assumed that free black citizens would not be eligible for state office, just as he assumed that white women would likewise be ineligible (some habits of mind don’t go away very easily, or, at least, don’t go away very easily when they maybe disturb somebody else’s life agenda but fail to disturb one’s own personal life agenda).

(Lemuel Shaw, who had been a state senator, was another delegate to this convention for amending the Massachusetts Constitution. When he would become Massachusetts Chief Justice and serve in that capacity for three decades — would he be less of a fool in regard to race than this reverend?)

(Charles Turner, Jr. was another delegate to the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention)

(John Keyes was another delegate to the convention for amending the Massachusetts Constitution.)

(During this year and the following one, the Reverend James Freeman was serving as another delegate at the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention.)

Although nonsubscribers to the official state religion had been barred from holding public office and had been obligated by the letter of the law to pay taxes and penalties to the state for the maintenance and support of the established commonwealth church, at least the tax provisions had been unenforced since 1799, and in this year the new state constitution eliminated at least the test of religious affiliation for office. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1824

William Henry Furness became minister of the 1st Unitarian Church in Philadelphia. He would be the author of some thirteen Transcendentalist hymns.

Francis W.P. Greenwood was brought in to assist the Reverend James Freeman at the Stone Chapel (Greenwood eventually would succeed him).

In Medford, Massachusetts, the Unitarians situated themselves as the “First Congregational Church” while the Trinitarians situated themselves as the “Second Congregational Church” (the Unitarians purchased, for $450, an organ). HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1826

For reasons of health the personal physician of the Reverend James Freeman urged him to retire. He would reside in Newton, and be often visited by parishioners and friends.

The Reverend Lyman Beecher relocated from Litchfield, Connecticut to Boston in order to provide leadership in the struggle against Unitarianism. He converted Richard Henry Dana, Sr. to Congregationalism.

Henry Ward Beecher graduated from the Boston Latin School.

Francis Joseph Grund relocated from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to Boston.

The Quincy Market opened across from Faneuil Hall. Three long market buildings were constructed in downtown Boston by order of Mayor Josiah Quincy, on the basis of a design by Alexander Parris. (These three buildings now constitute what is referred to as the “Marketplace.” While you are there be sure to dine in style, upstairs at the Durgan Park restaurant.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

The doors of the Union Oyster House in Boston were opened for customers for the first time.12

In order to create a supply of cheap teachers for the burgeoning school systems of New England, the Girls High School opened its doors in Boston. At this point, about 55% of the school-age children of Boston were enrolled in a school, while the other 45% had to work for a living and pick up whatever fragments of education they could pick up, as part of this work. By the year 1838, as males were driven out of the profession by falling 2 wages, all the primary school teachers and /3ds of the grammar school teachers of Boston would be female.

Dr. Fisher brought back with him to Boston from a tour in Europe the astounding news that a way had been found to grant an education to people who were blind. PERKINS INSTITUTE FOR THE BLIND

12. And these doors’ve evidently been open ever since, for the place now lays claim to being the oldest continuously operating restaurant in the US of A. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1829

As a special gift to his former congregation at the Stone Chapel, the Reverend James Freeman revised his 1812 volume SERMONS ON PARTICULAR OCCASIONS, as ONE VERSION, EIGHTEEN SERMONS AND A CHARGE.

At this point the church that had gathered on September 9, 1739 as the Second Church in Cambridge, in Cambridge’s Second or North-West Precinct which was often referred to as the Menotomy Precinct, took the step of calling its first Unitarian minister, the Reverend Frederic Henry Hedge. (In 1867 the town’s name would be changed from West Cambridge to Arlington, and the church would come to be called the First Congregational Church and Parish (Unitarian) of Arlington, and then in 1965, the First Congregational Parish (Unitarian) and the First Universalist Society of Arlington would merge to form the present day First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington.)

(no “k”) HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

In what is now Arlington, a set of hayscales was procured for general town use and was erected near the wall of the Burying Ground. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1833

The Female Anti-Slavery Society was founded at Boston by Friend Lucretia Mott and others.

From this year until about 1838, Frederick Goddard Tuckerman would be attending the Boston Latin School.

Charles Henry Appleton Dall graduated from the Boston Latin School at the head of his class with honors in Latin, Greek, and mathematics. SVMMVS PRIMI

While a student at Harvard College and divinity school, he would be directing the Sunday School at the Hollis Street Church in Boston.

F.W.P. Greenwood’s A HISTORY OF KING’S CHAPEL IN BOSTON.

Francis Joseph Grund’s EXERCISES IN ARITHMETIC (Boston). EXERCISES IN ARITHMETIC

Grund’s POPULAR LESSONS IN ASTRONOMY ON A NEW PLAN: IN WHICH SOME OF THE LEADING PRINCIPLES OF THE SCIENCE ARE ILLUSTRATED BY ACTUAL COMPARISONS, INDEPENDENT OF THE USE OF NUMBERS HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

(Boston: Carter, Hendee & Co. 33 pages). LESSONS IN ASTRONOMY

Grund’s ELEMENTS OF CHEMISTRY, WITH PRACTICAL EXERCISES, ILLUSTRATED BY ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD. FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS (Boston: Carter, Hendee and Co.). ELEMENTS OF CHEMISTRY

(The above volume would be in the personal library of Henry Thoreau.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1835

November 14, Saturday: James Freeman died at the age of 76. He had been the minister at King’s Chapel in Boston for 43 years. The body would be interred at Newton Cemetery. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1836

January: Francis Parkman’s “Review of Greenwood Funeral Sermon,” Christian Examiner and General Review.

The Reverend James Freeman Clarke’s “Character of James Freeman, D.D.,” Western Messenger.

January 9, Saturday: “Biographical: Rev. James Freeman, D.D.,” Christian Register and Boston Observer.

William Gooding was hired by the canal commission as Chief Engineer on the Illinois and Michigan Canal.

Richard Henry Dana, Jr. and the Alert were rounding Point Conception when they encountered the brig Convoy from the Hawaiian Islands, engaged in otter poaching. It is interesting that at this early point the author pays not attention to depletion of the otter population due to this uncontrollable poaching –to the ecological devastation of the California coastline– but instead is totally preoccupied with the niceties of the evasion of Mexican taxation.

AND NOW, FOR SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A REPORT FROM OUR SAILOR: The second morning after leaving Monterey, we were off Point Conception. It was a bright, sunny day, and the wind, though strong, was fair; and everything was in striking contrast with our experience in the same place two months before, when we were drifting off from a northwester under a fore and main spencer. “Sail ho!” cried a man who was rigging out a top-gallant studdingsail boom.– “Where away?”– “Weather beam, sir!” and in a few minutes a full-rigged brig was seen standing out from under Point Conception. The studding-sail halyards were let go, and the yards boom-ended, the after yards braced aback, and we waited her coming down. She rounded to, backed her main topsail, and showed her decks full of men, four guns on a side, hammock nettings, and everything man-of-war fashion, except that there was no boatswain’s whistle, and no uniforms on the quarter-deck. A short, square-built man, in a rough grey jacket, with a speaking-trumpet in hand, stood in the weather hammock nettings. “Ship ahoy!”– “Hallo!”– “What ship is that, pray?”– “Alert.”– “Where are you from, pray?” etc., etc. She proved to be the brig Convoy, from the Sandwich Islands, engaged in otter hunting, among the islands which lie along the coast. Her armament was from her being an illegal trader. The otter are very numerous among these islands, and being of great value, the government require a heavy sum for a license to hunt them, and lay a high duty upon every one shot or carried out of the country. This vessel had no license, and paid no duty, besides being engaged in smuggling goods on board other vessels trading on the coast, and belonging to the same owners in Oahu. Our captain told him to look out for the Mexicans, but he said they had not an armed vessel of his size in the whole Pacific. This was without doubt the same vessel that showed herself off Santa Barbara a few months before. These vessels frequently remain on the coast for years, without making port, except at the islands for wood and water, and an occasional visit to Oahu for a new outfit. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1838

December: “Unitarian Reform: Number 2: History,” Western Messenger. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1841

July 24, Saturday: The widowed Martha Curtis Freeman died at the age of 86 and her body was placed in Newton Cemetery next to the grave of her husband the Reverend James Freeman. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1849

October 9-17: As Henry Thoreau would relate in CAPE COD, he and Ellery Channing left Concord on the morning of the 9th with the agenda of taking the steamer from Boston to Provincetown and walking “up” Cape Cod (walking, that is, toward the south, toward its connection with the mainland). This was his initial excursion to the Cape, probably upon wrapping up work on Draft C of WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS. The storm had, however, interrupted the steamer schedules and had caused, at Cohasset, the wreck of the St. John, one of the “coffin ships” loaded to the gunnels with Irish refugees. Changing their plans the duo boarded the southbound railroad for Cohasset to observe the aftermath of the shipwreck before continuing on to Bridgewater, where they spent the night.13

TIMELINE OF ACCIDENTS

13. With whom did they spend the night in the little town of Bridgewater MA? Did Thoreau perchance have any Dunbar cousins still residing in this locality? Or, possibly, would the duo have stayed with Thoreau’s Harvard classmate William Allen there? HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

CAPE COD: We left Concord, Massachusetts, on Tuesday, October 9th, PEOPLE OF 1849. On reaching Boston, we found that the Provincetown steamer, CAPE COD which should have got in the day before, had not yet arrived, on account of a violent storm; and, as we noticed in the streets a handbill headed, “Death! 145 lives lost at Cohasset!” we decided to go by way of Cohasset. We found many Irish in the cars, going to identify bodies and to sympathize with the survivors, and also to attend the funeral which was to take place in the afternoon; –and when we arrived at Cohasset, it appeared that nearly all the passengers were bound for the beach, which was about a mile distant, and many other persons were flocking in from the neighboring country. There were several hundreds of them streaming off over Cohasset common in that direction –some on foot and some in wagons– and, among them, were some sportsmen in their hunting jackets, with their guns and game-bags and dogs. As we passed the grave-yard we saw a large hole, like a cellar, freshly dug there, and, just before reaching the shore, by a pleasantly winding and rocky road, we met several hay-riggings and farm wagons coming away toward the meeting-house, each loaded with three large, rough deal boxes. We did not need to ask what was in them. The owners of the wagons were made the undertakers. Many horses in carriages were fastened to the fences near the shore, and, for a mile or more, up and down, the beach was covered with people looking out for bodies and examining the fragments of the wreck. There was a small island called Brush Island, with a hut on it, lying just off the shore. This is said to be the rockiest shore in Massachusetts, from Nantasket to Scituate –hard sienitic rocks, which the waves have laid bare, but have not been able to crumble. It has been the scene of many a shipwreck.

ELLERY CHANNING HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

Meanwhile Ellen Fuller Channing and the Channing children Margaret Fuller Channing and Caroline Sturgis Channing were visiting for three weeks in Rockport, Massachusetts and Mrs. Lidian Emerson and the Emerson children Ellen Emerson and Edith Emerson and Edward Emerson were spending time in Plymouth.

Lidian and Eddie Thoreau walked the shore at Cohasset with the Reverend Joseph Osgood, husband of Mrs. Ellen Sewall Osgood, seeing the gashed bodies of the drowned from the St. John. Thoreau and Channing walked via Cohasset and Sandwich MA, returning on the Provincetown/Boston steamer, and Thoreau, at least, perceived the shore as “naked Nature, –inhumanly sincere, wasting no thought on man.”14

14. If you have scuba gear, you can swim in Henry Thoreau’s and Ellery Channing’s footsteps: the track taken in 1849 by these hikers is now more than 400 feet out, beyond the breakers at the bottom of the ocean. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

WISHING to get a better view than I had yet had of the ocean, which, we are told, covers more than two-thirds of the globe, but of which a man who lives a few miles inland may never see any trace, more than of another world, I made a visit to Cape Cod in October, 1849, another the succeeding June, and another to Truro in July, 1855; the first and last time with a single companion, the second time alone. I have spent, in all, about three weeks on the Cape; walked from Eastham to Provincetown twice on the Atlantic side, and once on the Bay side also, excepting four or five miles, and crossed the Cape half a dozen times on my way; but, having come so fresh to the sea, I have got but little salted. My readers must expect only so much saltness as the land-breeze acquires from blowing over an arm of the sea, or is tasted on the windows and on the bark of trees twenty miles inland after September gales. I have been accustomed to make excursions to the ponds within ten miles of Concord, but latterly I have extended my excursions to the sea-shore. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

THOREAU’S 1ST VISIT TO CAPE COD

1st visit, 1849 — by train — by stage — on foot 4th visit, 1857 — on foot HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1850

circa June 25, Tuesday: Henry Thoreau made a 2d brief visit (of a total of four) to Cape Cod.

He took a steamer from Boston to Provincetown, to walk the outer shore to Chatham and spend time at the Highland Lighthouse.

CAPE COD: All sailors pause to watch a steamer, and shout in welcome or derision. In one a large Newfoundland dog put his paws on the rail and stood up as high as any of them, and looked as DOG wise. But the skipper, who did not wish to be seen no better employed than a dog, rapped him on the nose and sent him below. Such is human justice! I thought I could hear him making an effective appeal down there from human to divine justice. He must have had much the cleanest breast of the two. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

In the illustration of Provincetown given, the windmills are pumping sea water into evaporation ponds, for the curing of fish. In CAPE COD, Thoreau would provide some information about these windmills:

CAPE COD: The most foreign and picturesque structures on the Cape, to an inlander, not excepting the salt-works, are the wind-mills –gray looking octagonal towers, with long timbers slanting to the ground in the rear, and there resting on a cart-wheel, by which their fans are turned round to face the wind. These appeared, also, to serve in some measure for props against its force. A great circular rut was worn around the building by the wheel. The neighbors, who assemble to turn the mill to the wind, are likely to know which way it blows, without a weathercock. They looked loose and slightly locomotive, like huge wounded birds, trailing a wing or a leg, and reminded one of pictures of the Netherlands. Being on elevated ground, and high in themselves, they serve as landmarks –for there are no tall trees, or other objects commonly, which can be seen at a distance in the horizon; though the outline of the land itself is so firm and distinct, that an insignificant cone, or even precipice of sand is visible at a great distance from over the sea. Sailors making the land, commonly steer either by the wind-mills or the meeting-houses. In the country, we are obliged to steer by the meeting-houses alone. Yet, the meeting- house is a kind of wind-mill, which runs one day in seven, turned either by the winds of doctrine or public opinion, or more rarely by the winds of heaven –where another sort of grist is ground, of which, if it be not all bran or musty, if it be not plaster, we trust to make bread of life. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1855

July 5, Thursday-19: Henry Thoreau made the 3d excursion of 4 to Cape Cod, with Ellery Channing by schooner from HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

Boston to Provincetown and back: TIMELINE OF CAPE COD

Aerial View of Provincetown MA

Cruickshank commentary

Ross/Adams commentary HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

THOREAU’S 3D VISIT TO CAPE COD

1st visit, 1849 — by train — by stage — on foot 4th visit, 1857 — on foot

July 5. In middle of the forenoon sailed in the Melrose. We hugged the Scituate shore as long as HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

possible on account of wind. The great tupelo on the edge of Scituate is very conspicuous for many miles about Minot’s Rock. Scared up a flock of young ducks on the Bay, which have been bred hereabouts. Saw the Petrel. [Cape Cod, p. 264; Riv. 320.] Went to Gifford’s Union House (the old Tailor’s Inn) in Provincetown. They have built a town-house since I was here — the first object seen in making the port. Talked with Nahum Haynes, who is making fisherman’s boots there. He came into the tavern in the evening. I did not know him — only that he was a Haynes. He remembered two mud turtles caught in a seine with shad on the Sudbury meadows forty years ago, which would weigh a hundred pounds each. Asked me, “Who was that man that used to live next to Bull’s, — acted as if he were crazy or out?” Talked with a man who has the largest patch of cranberries here, — ten acres, — and there are fifteen or twenty acres in all. The fishermen sell lobsters fresh for two cents apiece HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1857

June 12, Friday to June 22, Monday: During this 11-day period Henry Thoreau was making his 4th and last excursion to Cape Cod. He took the train to Plymouth and visited Clark’s Island, Manomet Point, Salt Pond, and Scusset; took train to Sandwich and walked to Highland Light and Provincetown; then took the steamer to Boston. The account of it is in his Journal (9:413-55).

This would be material not used in CAPE COD. Presumably the reason for this is that the manuscript had already been completed; Journal evidence suggests that the manuscript had been completed during the fall of 1855.

It was during this trip that Thoreau, reporting that “Mine was a case of distress,” sought out the Humane House supposedly provisioned in Newcomb’s Hollow for the benefit of shipwrecked sailors. The pamphlet of the HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

Trustees of the Humane Society indicates that they were maintaining at that time six huts: • halfway between Race Point and Stout’s Creek • at the head of Stout’s Creek • on Nauset Beach one and a half miles north of Nauset Harbor (possibly the Newcomb’s Hollow facility entered by Thoreau) • on Chatham Beach about half way between the entrance of Nauset Harbor and Chatham Harbor • a mile north of the entrance to Chatham Harbor • on the beach of Cape Malebarre

The whole of the coast, from Cape Cod to Cape Malebarre, is sandy, and free from rocks. Along the shore, at the distance of a half of a mile, is a bar; which is called the Outer bar, because there are smaller bars within it, perpetually varying. This outer bar is separated into many parts by guzzles, or small channels. It extends to Chatham; and as it proceeds southward, gradually approaches the shore and grows more shallow. Its general depth at high water is two fathoms, and three fathoms over the guzzles; and its least distance from the shore is about a furlong. Off the mouth of Chatham harbour there are bars which reach three quarters of a mile; and off the entrance of Nauset harbour the bars extend a half of a mile. Large, heavy ships strike on the outer bar, even at high water; and their fragments only reach the shore. But smaller vessels pass over it at full sea; and when they touch at low water, they beat over it, as the tide rises, and soon come to land. If a vessel is cast away at low water, it ought to be left with as much expedition as possible; because the fury of the waves is then checked, in some measure, by the bar; and because the vessel is generally broken to pieces with the rising flood. But seamen, shipwrecked at full sea, ought to remain on board till near low water; for the vessel does not then break to pieces; and by attempting to reach the land before the tide ebbs away, they are in great danger of being drowned. On this subject there is one opinion only among judicious mariners. It may be necessary however to remind them of a truth, of which they have full conviction, but which, amidst the agitation and terrour of a storm, they too frequently forget.

Dona Brown has contrasted Thoreau’s visits to Cape Cod with the more fashionable jaunts of his period, which were to the White Mountains of New Hampshire, to the Catskills, and of course to Saratoga Springs and Niagara Falls: Until very late in the nineteenth century, Cape Cod was regarded as a kind of New England outback, inhabited by unschooled savages with almost no contact with the outside world. Henry David Thoreau (who went out of his way to visit places no other tourist would go) visited Cape Cod in the 1850s. Writing about HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

Nauset Beach, now one of the most popular beaches on the Cape, Thoreau reported only “a vast morgue, where famished dogs may range in packs.” Thoreau knew what he was talking about when he predicted that “for a long time [fashionable visitors] will be disappointed here.” The outer Cape remained more or less untouched by tourism for decades. Not until the age of the automobile did Cape Cod really come into its own. [The location of the Catskills] along the heavily traveled Hudson River route between New York City and Albany made them the most accessible romantic mountains in the east and brought them as early as the 1820s into a web of development that included scenic tourism, industrial development, shipping, and suburbanization. For the best account of the Catskills, see Kenneth Myers, THE CATSKILLS: PAINTERS, WRITERS, AND TOURISTS IN THE MOUNTAINS, 1820-1895 (Hanover NH: The Hudson River Museum of Westchester, UP of New England, 1987). Dona Brown continues her observations on the subject of Thoreau’s “tourist non-tourism” of Cape Cod on her pages 64-65, with an endnote on page 228: Some promoters came to see the remaining prosaic names in the region as a great handicap to its development. Starr King was most outspoken in his opposition to the names of the White Mountain region, referring to the names of the Presidential Range as “absurd” and “a wretched jumble,” and calling for a renaming of the peaks. Most writers did not openly attack local names, especially those of the Presidential Range, which possessed at least some meaning for mid-nineteenth-century tourists, but instead opted for a kind of parallel unofficial naming system, based on real or imagined Indian names for places. Many guidebooks opened their first chapters with a discussion of the “original” names of the region and their meanings. It was a convenient way of attaching romantic Indian associations to the region, since the writer was free to embellish the interpretation of such Algonquin terms as “Waumbek,” which means “white rocks” but could be interpreted as something like “Mountains of the Snowy Foreheads.” These shadow names had become so conventionalized by mid-century that Henry David Thoreau could make an inside joke of them. His book on Cape Cod, like many other pieces of scenic writing, began by tracing the origins of a local name. In Thoreau’s hands, it was pure parody: HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

CAPE COD: I suppose that the word Cape is from the French cap; which is from the Latin caput, a head; which is, perhaps, from the verb capere, to take, –that being the part by which we take hold of a thing:–Take Time by the forelock. It is also the safest part to COD take a serpent by. And as for Cod, that was derived directly from that “great store of codfish” which Captain Bartholomew Gosnold caught there in 1602; which fish appears to have been so called from the Saxon word codde, “a case in which seeds are lodged,” either from the form of the fish, or the quantity of spawn it contains; whence also, perhaps, codling (“pomum coctile”?) and coddle, –to cook green like peas. (V. Dic.)

Thoreau had not always mocked such scenic conventions. At one time, he had actually anticipated a career like Hawthorne’s or Cole’s, making a living interpreting scenery to readers. Thoreau wrote extensively about his travels and, at least at first, he too attempted to attach romantic associations to the landscape. But by the middle of his traveling career, he had come to see scenery very differently. After his 1846 trip to Mount Katahdin, Thoreau turned against the patching of human associations onto the landscape. He began to portray the places he visited as examples of nature untoured: “vast and drear and inhuman,” like Mount Katahdin; “inhumanly sincere, wasting no thought on man,” like the deserted beaches of Cape Cod.15 He traveled as far away as he could get from genteel tourist regions, and his writing took the form of antiscenery tracts. But Thoreau’s mocking discussion of the origins of the name Cape Cod ended on a serious note, with his famous description of the Cape as the “bare and bended arm of Massachusetts.” Even for Thoreau, writing about scenery led to the irresistible temptation to create serious associations. On pages 201-3 Dona Brown continues her discussion of Cape Cod: Not much of Cape Cod had become familiar tourist ground by the turn of the [20th] century. True, Henry David Thoreau wrote with great admiration of the landscape of the Cape after his walking tours there in the 1850s. But Thoreau’s Cape Cod essays describe a place very different from the Cape of today. The popular beaches of what is now the Cape Cod National Seashore appear in Thoreau’s descriptions, not as lovely scenery, but as an empty and savage land — the “most uninviting landscape on earth.” Thoreau himself preferred the desolation he encountered on Cape Cod to the more civilized charms of heavily traveled regions like the White Mountains or Newport. In fact, he made that contrast a central theme of his Cape Cod essays, playing up the difference between fashionable resorts and the beaches of Cape 15. His experiences on Mount Katahdin or on Cape Cod cannot be categorized simply as encounters with the sublime. In fact, they are a direct repudiation of the language of the sublime, since he described nature as having no human meaning: the sublime in nature, though frightening in its power and “otherness,” was understood to be filled with signif- icance, even messages, for its human viewers. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

Cod: “They commonly celebrate those beaches only which have a hotel on them,” he wrote, “But I wished to see that seashore where all man’s works are wrecks.” Although his essays took the form of the sort of travel writing that was intended to entice tourists to a region, Thoreau emphasized that he had peculiar tastes few travelers would share: “Every landscape which is dreary enough has a certain beauty to my eyes.” He really hoped no one would be converted to his taste for Cape Cod: “I trust that for a long time [fashionable visitors] will be disappointed here.” And for a long time they were. Many of Thoreau’s contemporaries were looking for scenery with a special sort of meaning, for landscapes endowed with the “interesting associations” of poetry or romantic history or legends. Cape Cod certainly possessed the raw material for such a trade: sublime seascapes, native legends, the tales of weather-beaten “old salts.” But, with the notable exception of Thoreau, no one exploited that raw material in the 1840s and 1850s. Mid-century travelers imagined Cape Cod, when they thought of it at all, almost as “antiscenery” — the direct opposite of the kind of nature they craved. One 1863 children’s book, for example, used the Cape’s landscape as a symbol of emotional deprivation: The heroine suffered through a loveless, stunted childhood, growing up where there was “no sweet singing of birds in the air; but the harsh cry of curlews.... No soft murmur of little brooks; but only the measured roar of the wild ocean waves. No rustle of leafy woods ... only the dreary beach-grass and blue moss.” Not all coastal regions appeared so unattractive to nineteenth- century travelers. In fact oceanfront resorts were springing up almost everywhere except Cape Cod in the second half of the century. To the south, on Martha’s Vineyard, the Methodists colonized Oak Bluffs. Their hotels and cottages competed with a variety of nearby Rhode Island resorts, all the way from ritzy Newport to popular Narragansett Pier. Not far to the north, Nantasket Beach and Cohasset on the Massachusetts coast plied their vacation trade with great success. Cape Cod certainly had beaches fine enough to rival any of its competitors. But few promoters saw their possibilities. Twenty years after Thoreau made his famous tramp, the situation had not changed much. National guidebooks gave Cape Cod very little attention. In APPLETON’S I LLUSTRATED H AND-BOOK OF A MERICAN S UMMER R ESORTS, published in 1876, the whole area of the Cape rated only one page. (The White Mountains, in contrast, were allotted fourteen pages; Mount Desert rated three.) The single page devoted to Cape Cod was composed of a series of passages the editor lifted from Samuel Adams Drake’s NOOKS AND C ORNERS OF THE N EW E NGLAND C OAST [1876], a book dedicated to exploring out-of-the-way and quaint sections of the shore. Yet even Drake found it tough going to promote the Cape. “To one accustomed to the fertile shores of Narragansett Bay or the valley of the Connecticut,” he admitted, “the region between Sandwich and Orleans ... is bad enough.” But, as he put it, “beyond this is simply a wilderness of sand.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1873

July: Henry Wilder Foote’s “James Freeman and King’s Chapel, 1782-1787,” Religious Magazine and Monthly Review. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1910

Samuel A. Eliot’s HERALDS OF A LIBERAL FAITH. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1920

July: Albert Perry Brigham’s “Cape Cod and the Old Colony” in Geographical Review, Volume 10, Number 1, pages 1-22: CAPE COD & OLD COLONY HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1925

Arthur B. Darling’s “Outline of the History of the State Church, 1691-1848” in POLITICAL CHANGES IN MASSACHUSETTS, 1824-1848 (New Haven: Yale UP, 1925). Unitarianism is defined (pages 25-27) as an organized religion founded on belief in the existence and all-power of God and on a conviction that not faith alone, but the testing of evidence, must form the basis of individual assent. Darling uses terms such as “realistic deists” and “conservative rationalists” as synonymous with “Unitarians.” He also points out that this is an intellectual faith, historically based upon an intellectual difficulty with the theological notion of Trinity. He quotes O.B. Frothingham’s BOSTON UNITARIANISM: Unitarians were by and large “staunch Whigs [who] hated the very name of Jefferson, dreaded Democracy, abhorred what they called Jacobinism, which seemed to them allied with ‘infidelity,’ and were strenuous upholders of Union and Peace.” Expressly excepting William Ellery Channing, Emerson, and “Transcendental” Unitarians, Darling (page 27) types members of the faith as “ultra conservatives, chiefly interested in maintaining society as it was.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1955

Conrad Wright’s THE BEGINNINGS OF UNITARIANISM IN AMERICA. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1991

Margaret Barry Chinkes’s JAMES FREEMAN AND Boston’S RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

1993

Carl Scovel’s and Charles Forman’s JOURNEY TOWARD INDEPENDENCE: KING’S CHAPEL’S TRANSITION TO UNITARIANISM.

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project People of Cape Cod: Rev. James Freeman HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2010. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: October 26, 2014 HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.

Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with . Arrgh. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF CAPE COD: THE REVEREND JAMES FREEMAN, D.D.