THE REVEREND SAMUEL RIPLEY
SAMUEL RIPLEY
1783
March 11, Tuesday: Samuel Ripley was born in Concord, elder brother of Daniel Bliss Ripley, son of the Reverend Ezra Ripley, D.D.
General George Washington forbade meetings at Newburgh of the discontented officers who had not received their back pay. AMERICAN REVOLUTION HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: REVEREND SAMUEL RIPLEY
1804
Samuel Ripley of Concord, son of the Reverend Ezra Ripley, D.D., graduated from Harvard College. He would become the minister of the first religious society in Waltham, Massachusetts.
SAMUEL RIPLEY [of Concord], son of the Rev. Ezra Ripley, D.D., was born March 11, 1783, graduated [at Harvard College] in 1804, and was ordained over the first religious society in Waltham November 22, 1809, where he still [1835] resides.1
At the age of about 17 Cynthia Dunbar produced a piece of needlework –a mourning picture– that is now in the collection of the Concord Museum. In this year, possibly, or by 1806, this Concord family visited the studio of the Boston hollow-cut profile-taker William King, who was said to have a knack for “seeing people agreeably,” and the three silhouettes that were produced are also now in the Museum’s collection — one of Cynthia, one of her mother Mary Jones Dunbar Minot, and one of her step-father Captain Jonas Minott:2
THE GRADUATING CLASS
Year Occupation Occupation of Student after of Father Departure Graduation
1642 John Bulkeley Minister Medicine
1643 John Jones Minister 1. 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. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.) 2. At the time Cynthia was attending the Bridgewater Academy, 20 miles inland from Plymouth, in the south parish of Bridgewater. This institution of education had been established when on February 28, 1799 the half township of land granted by the General Court as an endowment had been sold for $5,000 and individuals had subscribed $3,000 toward the erection of a schoolhouse. The school had a reputation of training toward the ministry and Bridgewater had a reputation for forwarding many of its sons to Harvard College. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: REVEREND SAMUEL RIPLEY
Year Occupation Occupation of Student after of Father Departure Graduation
1645 Samuel Stow Minister
1655 Gershom Bulkeley Minister Minister
1659 Samuel Willard Soldier, Merchant Minister
1660 Peter Bulkeley Minister Lawyer
1664 Joseph Estabrook Farmer Minister
1690 Benjamin Estabrook Minister Minister
1695 Joseph Smith Minister
1696 Samuel Estabrook Minister Minister
1709 Benjamin Prescott Minister Minister
1718 Timothy Minott Minister Minister
1727 Jonathan Miles
1727 John Prescott Medicine Medicine
1730 Peter Prescott Medicine Law
1730 Nathaniel Whitaker Minister
1733 Ephraim Flint Farmer
1734 Aaron Whittemore Minister
1740 Jonathan Hoar Army Officer
1747 Timothy Minott Teacher Teacher
1749 Israel Cheever Minister
1749 Oliver Merriam Minister
1749 Samuel Brooks Register of Deeds
1751 Stephen Minott Teacher Minister
1751 George Farrar Minister
1751 John Monroe Minister
1755 William H. Wheeler Minister
1757 Joseph Wheeler Minister HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: REVEREND SAMUEL RIPLEY
Year Occupation Occupation of Student after of Father Departure Graduation
1760 Daniel Bliss Minister Lawyer
1765 Joseph Lee Physician Minister
1770 Joseph Hunt Farmer Medicine
1772 Nathan Bond Trader Merchant
1773 Tilly Merrick Teacher Trader
1775 Thomas Whiting Magistrate Teacher
1776 Samuel Lee Physician Teacher
1777 Peter Clark Lawyer
1777 Ebenezer Hubbard Minister
1781 Abiel Haywood Farmer Medicine
1781 Timothy Swan Medicine
1784 Ezra Conant Minister
1784 Silas Lee Physician Lawyer
1784 John Merrick Trader Lawyer
1789 William Emerson Minister Minister
1793 William Jones Blacksmith Law
1794 James Temple (Dartmouth) Farmer Lawyer
1798 Samuel P.P. Fay Lawyer Lawyer
1800 Rufus Hosmer Farmer Law
1801 Stephen Minott Farmer Lawyer
1804 Samuel Ripley Minister Minister
1805 Daniel Bliss Ripley Minister Lawyer
1805 Benjamin W. Hildreth Trader Medicine
1805 John White Trader Minister
1810 Jonas Wheeler Lawyer
1810 John Barrett (Williams) Farmer Minister HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: REVEREND SAMUEL RIPLEY
Year Occupation Occupation of Student after of Father Departure Graduation
1810 Joshua Barrett (Dartmouth) Farmer Minister
1813 John Brown Farmer Medicine
1819 Ephraim Buttrick Farmer Lawyer
1819 Benjamin Barrett Farmer Medicine
1821 Charles Jarvis Baker/Farmer Medicine
1821 John M. Cheney Farmer Lawyer
1826 George W. Hosmer Farmer Minister
1826 Edward Jarvis Baker/Farmer Medicine
1829 Reuben Bates Sea Captain Minister
1829 Jonathan Thomas Davis Trader Teacher
1829 Horatio C. Merriam Farmer Lawyer
1833 Marshall Merriam (Yale) Farmer Medicine
1833 William M. Prichard Trader Lawyer
1833 William Whiting Carriagemaker Lawyer
1834 George Moore Sheriff Minister, Mason
1835 Hiram Barrett Dennis Farmer Editor, “died a drunkard’s death when about 30” 1835 Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar Lawyer Lawyer
1836 J. Gardner Davis (Yale) Trader Minister
1837 Henry David Thoreau Pencil Maker Author
1841 John Shepard Keyes Lawyer Lawyer
1844 Edward Hoar Lawyer
1844 George M. Brooks Lawyer Lawyer
1845 Gorham Bartlett Medicine Medicine
1845 George Frisbie Hoar Lawyer Lawyer
1848 George Heywood Medicine Lawyer HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: REVEREND SAMUEL RIPLEY
Year Occupation Occupation of Student after of Father Departure Graduation
1849 Joseph Boyden Keyes Lawyer Lawyer
1850 Ephraim Merriam Ball Trader
1850 Sam Barn (Bowdoin) Trader
1851 Nathan Henry Barrett Farmer Government Clerk
1851 Francis Charles Browne Merchant
1851 William Watson Goodwin Minister Greek Professor
1854 Charles Pickerig Gerrish Teacher Merchant
1856 Nehemiah Ball Trader
1858 Henry Walker Frost Minister Lawyer
1862 Charles Follen Folsom Minister Doctor
1863 William Brown (Amherst) Farmer Minister
1864 G.W. Lawrence Farmer Lawyer
1864 Charles F. Hildreth Trader Lawyer
1866 Edward W. Emerson Author/Minister Medicine
1867 Samuel Hoar Lawyer Lawyer
1867 George C. Mann Lawyer Teacher
1869 William H. Simmons Minister Medicine
1870 Charles E. Hoar Lawyer Engineer
1870 Charles H. Walcott Trader Lawyer
1870 Benjamin P. Mann Lawyer Naturalist
1871 Henry W. Wheeler Farmer Tutor
1871 William Wheeler Farmer Engineer (Agricultural college)
1873 Francis H. Bigelow Blacksmith Minister
1874 Edward E. Simmons Minister
1876 Frank W. Barrett Secretary of Lawyer Insurance Company HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: REVEREND SAMUEL RIPLEY
Year Occupation Occupation of Student after of Father Departure Graduation
1874 Prescott Keyes Lawyer Lawyer
1874 Woodward Hudson Editor Lawyer
1882 Sherman Hoar Lawyer
1882 Ivan Parriss
1882 Herbert Myrick Teacher (American Agricultural)
1882 Mary B. King (Vassar) Lawyer HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: REVEREND SAMUEL RIPLEY
1809
November 22, Wednesday: The Reverend Samuel Ripley was ordained over the first religious society in Waltham.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day 22nd of 11 Mo// The day has again passed & perhaps I may say a little of the divine life has moved on my mind especially this evening — Sister mary spent the day & evening with us ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: REVEREND SAMUEL RIPLEY
1811
May: John Edleston died while George Gordon, Lord Byron was on the island of Malta.
“The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, Piety, and Charity,” a group which since 1806 had published Boston’s The Christian Monitor, included among other members the Reverend William Emerson, Jr. of Boston (who was dying), the Reverend President Professor John T. Kirkland of Harvard College in Cambridge, the Reverend Professor Henry Ware, Sr., D.D. of Harvard College in Cambridge, Samuel Edmund Sewall, A.M. of Cambridge, Andrews Norton of Cambridge, the Reverend Samuel Ripley of Waltham, and
Francis Parkman, Sr., A.M. of Boston. The members of this society from Concord, Massachusetts were the Reverend Ezra Ripley, Tilly Merrick, esq., Mr. John Thoreau, Mrs. Rebecca Kettell Thoreau, Mr. John Vose and Mr. David Vose, Deacon John White, Dr. Isaac Hurd, Jr., and Deacon Francis Jarvis. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: REVEREND SAMUEL RIPLEY
1818
Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley got married with the Reverend Samuel Ripley, the half-brother of Mary Moody Emerson, and moved into his new home in Waltham. She took with her 3 younger sisters and a brother, because
their mother had died of “lung fever” in the previous year and because she was providing these children with their education. Her nephews William Emerson and Waldo Emerson took turns as her teaching assistant. Between 1819 and 1833, as she was giving birth to 9 infants 7 of which would survive, she heard the students’ recitations in Latin and Greek. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: REVEREND SAMUEL RIPLEY
1819
June 23, Wednesday: Under the pseudonym Geoffrey Crayon, Washington Irving put out the 1st American installment of his THE SKETCH BOOK, including “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”3 In this text this racist author (the same racist author who announced that a Negro was “an abomination”) regurgitated our “Philip of Pokanoket” legend dating to “King Phillip’s War,” titillating us yet again with our very precious memory of a dead Indian chief. READ THE FULL TEXT
At Concord, John D. Folsom of Concord got married with Betsy W. Dakin of Concord.
The newly minted Reverend Convers Francis, Jr. became the pastor of the 1st Parish Congregational (Unitarian) Church in Watertown.
3. There is in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s THE SCARLET LETTER a literary reference to Irving’s headless horseman figure:
THE SCARLET LETTER: Meanwhile, the press had taken up my affair, and kept me for a week or two careering through the public prints, in my decapitated state, like Irving’s Headless Horseman, ghastly and grim, and longing to be buried, as a political dead man ought. So much for my figurative self. The real human being all this time, with his head safely on his shoulders, had brought himself to the comfortable conclusion that everything was for the best; and making an investment in ink, paper, and steel pens, had opened his long-disused writing desk, and was again a literary man. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: REVEREND SAMUEL RIPLEY
The Reverend Ezra Ripley of Concord gave the charge and the Reverend Samuel Ripley of Waltham and
Concord led the prayer. The Reverend Convers Francis would remain pastor of this Watertown flock until 1842.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day 23rd of 6th M 1819 / Our Meeting this Afternoon was a very triumphant one. Truth rose into dominion in a very remarkable manner. The meeting was as large as it ever is on first day at Yearly Meeting time, & more quiet than usual at that time. The Govoner of this state with both Houses of the Legislature attended & sat in a body. — Elizabeth first appeared in humble prayer, chiefly on behalf of those placed in Authority over us. Then in a very pertinent address to the members of the Legislature on the subject of intemperance & War. Then the current of testimony run chiefly to the female part of the Audience & lastly to an hardened, rebelious state which she felt to be present. & the latter part of her testimony in particular came with such living power & gospel Authority that it seemed to me, that had she preached before the Apostle Paul he would at least have qualified his charge, forbidding Women to “preach or to teach” &c. — The Audience was all attentive & many deeply impressed with the Power of her ministry, as was evident in many who took her by the hand at the close of the Meeting with tears in their eyes. — The Govoner observed that he never heard Such HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: REVEREND SAMUEL RIPLEY
preaching before. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
The Supreme Council of the Province of Texas declared the independence of Texas from Mexico: As all Governments were originally established by the will of the people for the benefit of society, whenever the existing Government, in any community, fails to effect the purposes for which it was instituted, it is competent to the community at large to rescind its express or tacit allegiance to the ruling power, and to organize a new constitution and form of government, more consistent with its interests, and more consonant with its feelings. In exercising this unquestionable right, an independent people have only to consult their own discretion. But, though amenable to no tribunal for its municipal acts, a free state, in claiming admission to the immunity of nations, owes of itself an exposition of the motives which have prompted it to the assertion of its rights, as well as of the principles which it assumes to vindicate. The citizens of Texas have long indulged the hope, that in the adjustment of the boundaries of the Spanish possessions in America, and of the territories of the United States, that they should be included within the limits of the latter. The claims of the United States, long and strenuously urged, encouraged the hope. An expectation so flattering prevented any effectual effort to throw off the yoke of Spanish authority, though it could not restrain some ineffectual rebellions against an odious tyranny. The recent treaty between Spain and the United States of America has dissipated an illusion too long fondly cherished, and has roused the citizens of Texas from [the] torpor to which a fancied security had lulled them. They have seen themselves, by a convention to which they were no party, literally abandoned to the dominion of the crown of Spain and left a prey not only to impositions already intolerable, but to all those exactions which Spanish rapacity is fertile in devising. The citizens of Texas would have proved themselves unworthy of the age in which they live, unworthy of their ancestry, of the kindred of the republics of the American continent, could they have hesitated in this emergency what course to pursue. Spurning the fetters of colonial vassalage, disdaining to submit to the most atrocious despotism that ever disgraced the annals of Europe, they have resolved under the blessing of God to be free. By this magnanimous resolution, the maintenance of which their lives and fortunes are pledged, they secure to themselves an elective and representative government, equal laws and the faithful administration of justice, the rights of conscience, and religious liberty, the freedom of the press, the advantage of liberal education, and unrestricted commercial intercourse with all the world. Animated by a just confidence in the goodness of their cause, and stimulated by the high object to be obtained by the contest, they have prepared themselves unshrinkingly to meet and firmly to sustain any conflict in which this HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: REVEREND SAMUEL RIPLEY
declaration may involve them. Done at Nacogdoches, the 23rd day of June, in the year of our Lord 1819.
James Long, President of the Supreme Council Bis[en]te [sic] Tarin, Secretary
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
Reverend Samuel Ripley “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: REVEREND SAMUEL RIPLEY
1826
Early in this year the newly minted Reverend Waldo Emerson would be preaching his first sermon, while later on, in mid-October, he would be borrowing for that purpose the pulpit of his great-uncle the Reverend Samuel Ripley.
However, during the spring and summer, there would be less grand things that needed to be accomplished: at his mother’s home near Harvard College he would be occupied in teaching boys (one of these lads was Richard Henry Dana, Jr.).
THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
Reverend Samuel Ripley “Stack of the Artist of HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: REVEREND SAMUEL RIPLEY
October 15, Sunday: The Reverend Waldo Emerson preached his first sermon, “Pray without ceasing,” at his step-uncle the Reverend Samuel Ripley’s church in Waltham, Massachusetts.
In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 15th of 10 M / Father Rodman had a good testimony in the Morning Meeting — Silent in the Afternoon — Took tea & set the eveng at D Buffums with my H & Sister Ruth — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: REVEREND SAMUEL RIPLEY
1834
Not earlier than Thursday, November 13: The Reverend Waldo Emerson received Thomas Carlyle’s packet containing the four stitched pamphlet copies of the complete SARTOR RESARTUS: “one copy for your own behoof” as the author had phrased it, plus “three others you can perhaps find fit readers for.” Emerson would pass on these extras to the Reverend Frederic Henry Hedge in West Cambridge, to Mrs. Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley in Waltham, and to Lydia Jackson in Plymouth. Mrs. Ripley’s home in Waltham was functioning not only as a school for young women and a parsonage for her husband the Reverend Samuel Ripley, but also as a general clearinghouse for Transcendental thought. Carlyle’s opus would be read aloud there on winter evenings, and the Reverend Ripley definitely read it. Young Lydia’s circle in Plymouth included not less than 7 others (Elizabeth Davis, Abby Burr Hedge, Eunice Dennie Hedge, Hannah Hedge, Andrew Russell, LeBaron Russell, and Nathaniel Russell) all of whom would presumably read or be hearing much about Carlyle’s opus. Lydia’s friend George Partridge Bradford, Mrs. Ripley’s younger brother and thus Emerson’s half-uncle, would definitely be reading it. It is a wonder these enthusiasts didn’t wear the print right off the page!
SARTOR RESARTUS STUDY THIS STRANGENESS
On this day the remains of Francois-Adrien Boieldieu were being laid to rest in Rouen, his birthplace. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: REVEREND SAMUEL RIPLEY
1841
October 12, Tuesday: The combined British detachment that had ventured out from the relative safety of the metropolis, Cabul, Afghanistan, by this morning had become large enough to transit the pass of Khoord-Cabul, and this was effected with some loss due to long range sniper fire down from the rocks at the sides of the defile. The force then set up a defensive camp perimeter on the far side of the defile at Khoord-Cabul and the 13th light infantry again subjected itself to losses due to its exposure to this unrelenting rifle fire, by returning through the pass to its defensive camp perimeter at Bootkhak. For some nights the camps would repel attacks, “that on the 35th native infantry being peculiarly disastrous, from the treachery of the Affghan horse, who admitted the enemy within their lines, by which our troops were exposed to a fire from the least suspected quarter. Many of our gallant sepoys, and Lieutenant Jenkins, thus met their death.”4
Frederick Douglass addressed the Middlesex County Anti-Slavery Society at the Universalist meetinghouse in Concord.
4. Lieut. V. Eyre (Sir Vincent Eyre, 1811-1881). THE MILITARY OPERATIONS AT CABUL: WHICH ENDED IN THE RETREAT AND DESTRUCTION OF THE BRITISH ARMY, JANUARY 1842, WITH A JOURNAL OF IMPRISONMENT IN AFFGHANISTAN. Philadelphia PA: Carey and Hart, 1843; London: J. Murray, 1843 (three editions); Lieut. V. Eyre (Sir Vincent Eyre, 1811-1881). PRISON SKETCHES: COMPRISING PORTRAITS OF THE CABUL PRISONERS AND OTHER SUBJECTS; ADAPTED FOR BINDING UP WITH THE JOURNALS OF LIEUT. V. EYRE, AND LADY SALE; LITHOGRAPHED BY LOWES DICKINSON. London: Dickinson and Son, [1843?] HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: REVEREND SAMUEL RIPLEY
We very much need to know who was in town at the time, and who did and who did not attend this meeting: • Bronson Alcott ? • Abba Alcott ? • Anna Bronson Alcott ? • Louisa May Alcott (8 years old)? • Phineas Allen ? • Perez Blood ? • Mrs. Mary Merrick Brooks ? • Squire Nathan Brooks ? • Caroline Downes Brooks ? • George Merrick Brooks ? • Deacon Simon Brown ? •Mrs. Lidian Emerson ? • Waldo Emerson ? • Reverend Barzillai Frost ? • Margaret Fuller ? • William Lloyd Garrison ? • Nathaniel Hawthorne ? • Judge Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar ? • Edward Sherman Hoar ? • Senator George Frisbie Hoar ? • Elizabeth Sherman Hoar ? •Squire Samuel Hoar ? •Dr. Edward Jarvis ? • Deacon Francis Jarvis ? • John Shepard Keyes, Judge John Shepard Keyes ? • John M. Keyes ? • Reverend George Ripley ? • Mrs. Sophia Dana Ripley ? • Reverend Samuel Ripley ? • Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley ? • Lemuel Shattuck ? • Daniel Shattuck ? • Sheriff Sam Staples ? • Henry David Thoreau ? • John Thoreau, Senior ? • Cynthia Dunbar Thoreau ? • John Thoreau, Jr. ? • Helen Louisa Thoreau ? • Sophia Elizabeth Thoreau ? • Aunt Maria Thoreau ? • Aunt Jane Thoreau ? • Alek Therien ? • Miss Prudence Ward ? • xxxxxx ? HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: REVEREND SAMUEL RIPLEY
1845
October 2, Thursday: The Hawthornes departed from Concord’s Old Manse, on their way to Salem to move in with the husband’s mother. Waldo Emerson commented in his journal: “Mr Hawthorne leaves Concord today. Mr Ripley comes not till spring.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: REVEREND SAMUEL RIPLEY
1847
November 24, Wednesday: The Reverend Samuel Ripley died suddenly of a heart attack, leaving Sarah, 7 sons and daughters, a son-in-law, and a grandchild. In his letter of condolence to Sarah, Ralph Waldo Emerson would write, “I know not where we shall find in a man of his station & experience a heart so large, or a spirit so blameless & of a childlike innocence.” Preaching to the Lincoln congregation, the Reverend Convers Francis would say that his longtime friend and colleague had brought to his ministry “an open and practical mind. His preaching was direct, earnest, plain, faithful [and] frequently left the most salutary and long remembered impressions.”
SAMUEL RIPLEY [of Concord], son of the Rev. Ezra Ripley, D.D., was born March 11, 1783, graduated [at Harvard College] in 1804, and was ordained over the first religious society in Waltham November 22, 1809, where he still [1835] resides.5 ALL CONCORD COLLEGE GRADS
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. On July 16, 1859 he would correct a date mistake buried in the body of the text.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: REVEREND SAMUEL RIPLEY
1859
BY-LAWS OF CORINTHIAN LODGE, OF ANCIENT, FREE AND ACCEPTED MASONS, OF CONCORD, MASS., WITH CHARTER GRANTED JUNE 16, 1797; CATALOGUES OF THE OFFICERS, MEMBERS AND INITIATES OF THE LODGE, FROM ITS ORGANIZATION TO 1859; A SYNOPSIS OF THE WORK OF TWENTY-TWO PAST MASTERS; A LIST OF THE MEMBERS IN 1858; BIOGRAPHIES OF ALL THE PAST MASTERS; AND A HISTORY OF THE LODGE, INCLUDING BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES, AND A RECORD OF THE DEATHS OF ITS MEMBERS AND INITIATES FROM 1797 TO 1859. TO WHICH IS ADDED AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF MASONRY, BY LOUIS A. SURETTE, MASTER OF CORINTHIAN LODGE FROM OCTOBER, 1851, TO OCTOBER, 1858 was printed up by Benjamin Tolman in Concord. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: REVEREND SAMUEL RIPLEY
A copy of this would be in the personal library of Henry Thoreau, very possibly because it contained valuable factual material about the lives a considerable number of Concord citizens: HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: REVEREND SAMUEL RIPLEY HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: REVEREND SAMUEL RIPLEY
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 2018. 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: April 12, 2018 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: REVEREND SAMUEL RIPLEY
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 CONCORD: REVEREND SAMUEL RIPLEY
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
The Reverend Samuel Ripley (1783-1847) and Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley (1793-1867) were intimates of Ralph Waldo Emerson and friends of Boston area Unitarian ministers and transcendentalists. Their Uncle Ripley hired the Emerson boys as tutors in his school, opened his Waltham pulpit to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s first preaching efforts, delivered his ordination sermon, and remained a close supporter throughout his nephew’s difficulties with the Unitarian establishment. Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley was almost entirely self-educated. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s aunt Mary Moody Emerson thought Sarah responsible for her nephew’s fall from orthodoxy. Samuel Ripley was born in Concord, son of the Rev. Ezra Ripley and Phœbe Bliss Emerson Ripley, half-brother of William and Mary Moody Emerson, and older brother of Daniel and Sarah Ripley. Graduating from Harvard College in 1804, he took a teaching position with a prominent Virginia and Washington DC family. Debating between the ministry and a career in politics, which strongly attracted him, he decided somewhat reluctantly to follow the family calling. In 1807, after completing his divinity studies with Henry Ware at Harvard, he accepted a call to the congregation in Waltham, where it would be necessary for him to take in Harvard preparatory students to supplement his income. Sarah Alden Bradford, descended from prominent pilgrim families, was the eldest daughter of Gamaliel Bradford of Duxbury and Elizabeth Hickling of Boston, members of William HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: REVEREND SAMUEL RIPLEY
Emerson’s 1st Church in Boston. Her sea-captain father sailed out of Boston in the Mediterranean trade, and her mother became an invalid with tuberculosis. By the time she was 14, Sarah had major responsibility for the household and her six younger sisters and brothers, but she seized every opportunity for study. With encouragement from her liberal parents and an unusual schoolmaster, Jacob Cummings, she learned Latin along with her brothers and taught herself Greek with the help of the Duxbury minister and schoolmaster, the Rev. John Allyn. Captain Bradford brought books home from his travels, and soon Sarah was reading French and Italian works as well. Independently she took up physics, chemistry, and botany, the latter as a lifelong study. When her brothers entered Harvard College, she devoured their books and thus gave herself a college education. She tutored the youngest members of the family in an impromptu schoolroom above the kitchen in Charlestown, where Captain Bradford, retired from seafaring, was in charge of the state prison. She was also reading the new German biblical criticism and trading thoughts on theology with Mary Moody Emerson, the Emerson boys’ brilliant and opinionated aunt and Sarah’s self- appointed mentor. Sarah Bradford and Samuel Ripley may well have first met at the Emerson house, where both were frequent callers and helpers with the children after William Emerson’s death. Samuel Ripley was also involved in the split in the Charlestown church under the conservative minister, the Reverend Jedidiah Morse, and in the establishment of the more liberal church where Gamaliel Bradford played a prominent role. After Sarah’s mother died in 1817, Mr. Ripley asked for her hand in marriage. Though she did not look forward to life as a country parson’s wife, her father persuaded her to accept. They were married on October 13, 1818. The Waltham parsonage was a full and lively place between 1818 and 1846. Four of Sarah’s younger brothers and sisters accompanied her to her new home, joining a dozen or more schoolboys, an occasional college-boy tutor in the person of Ralph Waldo or Edward Emerson, and, within a year, the beginning of the Ripleys’ own family. Nine babies were born between 1819 and 1833, seven of whom lived to maturity. The Ripley school was well-known and respected, largely because of Sarah’s scholarship and teaching skills. President Edward Everett of Harvard said that she could have filled any faculty chair at the college, had women been permitted such a position. The Waltham parish was troubled with splits, petitions to dismiss the minister, and subsequent reconciliations and mergers, caused largely by the conflicting expectations of the growing mill population and those of the longer-term farmers and wealthy landowners. In 1839, Ripley finally brought together the two congregations that resulted from an 1820 split, although the agreement called for his resignation as senior pastor in favor of a younger colleague. In 1841, George F. Simmons was settled HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF CONCORD: REVEREND SAMUEL RIPLEY
in the senior position with Ripley continuing as associate and taking on a ministry to the nearby Lincoln congregation. Throughout the difficulties, Ripley learned to restrain his naturally strong opinions and maintain a tolerant and long- suffering spirit of service to town and church. He earned the affection and respect of his colleagues, both liberal and conservative. In his memoirs, John Pierce, minister of the Brookline church, commented that “Considering the multiplicity of Mr. Ripley’s avocations, he was more than commonly acceptable as a preacher in the surrounding parishes. . . . It is very observable that in a large Association of ministers, on the death of his father he became, as next in age, the moderator.” In his memoir of his father-in-law, James Bradley Thayer wrote: “Mr. Ripley’s sermons are the just and simple expression of his character and of his chief desire, namely, the plain, unambitious, natural expression of a purpose to help forward the spiritual growth of his people, —to help it by pressing home, with ardor and sincerity, the simplest suggestions of piety and good sense.” Samuel Ripley believed that the “character we form on earth is to be our prospect to future joys, or our sentence to future misery.” He did not, however, believe in heaven and hell as physical places: “It is the very nature, the proper office of vice, of malignant passions, to create a hell within the bosom of him who harbours them.” The appearance of Jesus Christ constituted “irresistable evidence that he [God] has not only not appointed us wrath, but that he has willed our everlasting felicity, if we choose to comply with the terms he has prescribed in the gospel of his Son.” Ripley’s God was one “of perfect wisdom, power, and goodness” by whom “all things are created, foreseen, and ordered right.” He served communion regularly as a simple observance in memory of Jesus, helpful in living a Christian life. After hearing his uncle preach, Emerson commented: “I could not help remarking at church how much humanity was in the preaching of my good uncle, Mr. R. The rough farmers had their hands at their eyes repeatedly. But the old hardened sinners, the arid educated men, ministers & others, were dry as stones.” Located near the “great road” from Boston and Cambridge to Concord, the Waltham parsonage was a convenient site for regular meetings of the ministers’ Association as well as informal gatherings of the younger ministers with transcendentalist leanings. Claiming that he could not follow their finer abstract reasoning, Ripley was nevertheless a stout supporter of the “new thought” men in their defiance of his former classmate, Prof. Andrews Norton of Harvard. “It is for his [Norton’s] bigotry & assumption & narrowness of soul, that I condemn him,” Samuel wrote to his half-sister Mary Moody Emerson. Commenting on the pamphlet war between Norton and George Ripley, a cousin, he heartily agreed with “the candid & non-bigoted, that Mr. Ripley HDT WHAT? INDEX
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has completely put Mr. Norton in the background.” For Sarah Ripley, the intellectual excitement of the time and place proved an excellent stimulant. She continued to read widely and think deeply even in the midst of her turbulent household and the long hours of work it required. She suffered a crisis of faith in her thirties, when what she knew of science left no room for belief in a life after death. After struggling for years with skepticism, she came to a reconciliation, describing herself as a deist with a scientific understanding of the natural world and a view of Jesus as an outstanding human being. She exchanged thoughts with Frederic Henry Hedge, Margaret Fuller, Mary Moody Emerson, Elizabeth Peabody, George Ripley, Convers Francis, and Theodore Parker, as well as her lifelong friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson. As time went on, she “felt more than ever how fast I am receding from the church of which Unitarianism is the exponent.... We must have the life of God in the soul. If we find it in the church, how venerable in its environment of olden time, but we eschew the church when it is only a hollow mask to cover the want of it.” Though the transcendentalists had similar feelings, Sarah could not entirely sympathize with them either, being “not quite certain that human reason is a turnpike straight down from the divine.” Finally able to reconcile the conflict between science and religion, she wrote: “How the line in life, nature, science, phylosophy [sic], religion constantly returns into itself. The opposite poles become one when the circle is completed. All truth revolves about one centre. All is a manifestation of one law.” Samuel Ripley inherited the manse in Concord from his father, Ezra Ripley, longtime Concord minister. The Old Manse was so named by its interim occupant Nathaniel Hawthorne in Mosses from an Old Manse, published in 1846. Spring of that year found Samuel and Sarah Ripley happily settling into the old house, a welcome retreat from their labors and trials in Waltham. Sarah continued to tutor occasional students, and Samuel continued to preach regularly to the Lincoln congregation. Samuel Ripley died suddenly of a heart attack on November 24, 1847, leaving Sarah, seven sons and daughters, a son-in-law, and a grandchild. In his letter of condolence to Sarah, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “I know not where we shall find in a man of his station & experience a heart so large, or a spirit so blameless & of a childlike innocence.” Preaching to the Lincoln congregation after Ripley’s death, Convers Francis said his longtime friend and colleague “brought to his work an open and practical mind. His preaching was direct, earnest, plain, faithful [and] frequently left the most salutary and long remembered impressions.” Sarah Alden Ripley lived on for two decades in Concord, walking and botanizing in the woods and fields, reading widely, and exchanging ideas with the many who were attracted to her HDT WHAT? INDEX
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company, old friends as well as new, such as Concord’s schoolmaster Franklin B. Sanborn, poet Ellery Channing, and Harvard’s professor of botany Asa Gray. When the Civil War broke into her quiet days, she was horrified at the violence that took the lives of her younger son, Lt. Ezra Ripley, and many of the former schoolboys, northern and southern, who had read Latin and Greek at her knee. Her wartime depression was brightened by visits to and from her youngest daughter, Sophia, married and living in Milton, and by her annual renewal of family ties in Duxbury. A growing number of grandchildren delighted her and provided continuing opportunities for teaching. On July 26, 1867, Sarah died at the home of her daughter Mary Ripley Simmons, next door to the Old Manse, where the burial service was conducted by Frederic Henry Hedge. “Some of her friends have expressed regret that she was not a writer,” said Hedge, “& has left behind no published work to give proof of her powers. It was quite in keeping with her character that she did not rush into print & call the world to witness her intellectual attainments. . . . But in the hearts of those who knew her, she wrote a book whose substance they will remember as long as they remember anything, & whose contents are a commentary on the text: ‘A perfect woman nobly planned.’” She was buried next to her husband and just across the footpath from the Emerson family plot at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord. A typescript of the letters of Samuel Ripley, transcribed from the manuscripts by Joan W. Goodwin, is at the Andover-Harvard Theological Library in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The current location of originals is unknown. Ripley’s sermons, the Bradford family papers, and the Emerson family papers are in the Houghton Library at Harvard University. The Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley Papers reside in the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Many of Sarah Ripley’s letters were printed in Elizabeth Hoar, “Mrs. Samuel Ripley,” in Worthy Women of Our First Century, edited by Mrs. O. J. Wister and Agnes Irwin (1877). Also useful in the study of the Ripleys are The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, edited by Ralph L. Rusk (1939); The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 16 volumes, edited by William H. Gilman et al. (1960-62); The Selected Letters of Mary Moody Emerson, edited by Nancy Craig Simmons (1993); George F. Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years (1903); and John Pierce, “The Rev. Dr. John Pierce’s Memoirs” in Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, second series, XIX (1905). Samuel Ripley wrote, anonymously, a history of Waltham, “A Topographical and Historical Description of Waltham, in the County of Middlesex, Jan. 1, 1815,” Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 2nd. series, 3 (1815). Biographical articles about Samuel Ripley include Christopher Gore Ripley, “Samuel Ripley,” in Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. 2, (April, 1848); and James Bradley Thayer, “Samuel Ripley,” in Memoirs of Members of HDT WHAT? INDEX
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the Social Circle in Concord, 3rd series (1907). Gamaliel Bradford wrote “Sarah Alden Ripley” in Portraits of American Women (1919). The only full-length biography of either is Joan W. Goodwin, The Remarkable Mrs. Ripley: The Life of Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley (1998). See also Sherman Hoar, “The Ripley School,” in Papers Read before the Citizens’ Club of Waltham, 1891-1892, a typescript, in the Public Library in Waltham, Massachusetts; and Guy Woodall, “Convers Francis and the Concordians: Emerson, Alcott, and Others,” in The Concord Saunterer (Fall 1993).