THE EARLY RECORDS OF THE TOWN OF DEDHAM, MASSACHUSETTS. 1636—1659. A COMPLETE TRANSCRIPT OF BOOK ONE OF THE GENERAL RECORDS OF THE TOWN, TOGETHER WITH THE SELECTMEN'S DAY BOOK, COVERING A PORTION OF THE SAME PERIOD, BEING Volume Three OF THE PRINTED RECORDS OF THE TOWN. ILLUSTRATED WITH FAOSIMILES OF THE HANDWRITING OF FOUR TOWN CLERKS AND OF AUTOGRAPHS OF FIFTY OF THE EARLY SETTLERS. EDITED BY THE TOAVN CLERK, DON GLEASON HILL, PRESIDENT OF THE DEDHAM HISTORICAL, SOCIETY, MEMBER OF THE NEW ENGLAND HISTORIC GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY, AND OF THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. DEDHAM, MASS. PRINTED AT OFFICE OF THE DEDHAM TRANSCRIPT. 1892. Published by Vote of the Town; Passed April ii, 1892. OHiQHAM YOUNG PROVO, UTAH ; ®c t\)t JHemorg of ELEAZER LUSHER, OF DEDHAM, For many years chosen to " Keepe tlie Towne Booke : A man of diverse talents, frequently employed by trie General Court in important public affairs of the Colony, and at the same time a leader at home in all matters religious, civil and military, Stjjte Uolume i* i&egpectfuUjj ffletncatetr* ]Jj/[AN was at first a perfect upright Creature, The lively Image of his Great Creator : 1 When Adam fell all Men in him Transgress d, \ And since that time they Err, that are the best V The Pri7tter Errs, I Err much like the Rest. J Welcome s that Man, for to complai7i of me Whose Self & Works are quite from Error free. Nathaniel Ames {Almanack), 1729. INTROD UCTION. THE year of the two hundred and fiftieth Anniversary of Dedham, 1886, the Town published its first volume of printed Records, comprising the Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1635-1845. Two years later it published a second volume, comprising records from the several churches, and inscrip- tions from the cemeteries, 1638-1845. At the last annual Town meeting the Town made another appropriation towards printing a third volume, to com- mence with the earliest general records of the Town, by means of which this book is published. It contains the whole of Book One of the Town Records, also, commencing with page 150, is a transcript of the Selectmens' Day Book, a very interesting little book, which has seen hard service, and which has not been so faithfully cared for in the past as the other record books of the Town ; by its paging it would appear that at least seven leaves are gone at the beginning and probably a few at the end of the book. In cases where the entries made in the Dav Book were found entered in Book One, and printed therefrom, they have not been again reprinted, references only having been made thereto. September, 3, 1635, the Court ordered a plantation to be settled about two miles above Charles River. Mass. Col. Rec, Vol. 1, page 156. Prepa- rations for the settlement were soon made, and we have a recorded meeting Aug. 18, 1636, [p. 20]. At the third recorded meeting, Sept. 5, 1636, e ch •' all y names of them w are admitted into our Society are subscribed" (twenty-two in all) to a petition to the Court for an additional grant of land, and praying that the Town might be distinguished by the name of Content- ment. As a copy of this petition appears at the beginning of Book One, this printed volume begins with that petition. The prayer was granted except in regard to the name, which was called Dedham.—Mass. Col. Rec, Vol. \,p. 179. At the beginning of the record of the first two meetings, however, the name Contentment was written and afterwards erased and the word Dedham written over it. When Book One was put into its present binding, some of the leaves at the beginning seem to have been put together arbitrarily. As now bound, after the petition and the Court order thereon, are eight orders that might now be called by-laws, passed at different dates, and in the arrangement of the matter for this volume it has been thought better to print the Covenant before these orders, and also to include with these eight orders others now bound into Volume three of the Records, as explained by a note on page 4. The record proper begins on page 20 of this printed book. vi DEDHAM TOWN RECOEDS. These Records are important to the student of early Colonial history. Dedham was particularly fortunate in having at the beginning men who under- stood the importance of carefully written records. This book contains the Records of four different clerks,—Edward Alleyn, Eleazer Lusher, Michael Powell and Joshua Fisher, and a specimen of the handwriting of each is given. The excellent style of making up the records of the meetings commenced by Alleyn was continued by his successors. The members of the whole "society," as it was called, were interested to know that their conclusions were properly recorded, for the custom was early established of reading at each meeting " that which was agreed upon at the last meeting," and confirming the same. Edward Alleyn was probably the ablest man in the original company, but an important addition was made July, 1637, when twelve new men were ad- mitted, including the first pastor, Rev. John Allin, and Eleazer Lusher, and from that date Eleazer Lusher was an important man in the company. Upon Alleyn's death, 1642, Lusher was chosen as the keeper of the Town Book. Lusher was a member of the first board of seven men chosen to order the affairs of the Town, May, 1639, and from that date during nearly the whole period covered by this book, and for many years after, he was one of the seven men, selectmen as they are now styled, and for many years he was also chosen to keep the Town Book. The interesting sketch of Major Lusher following this introduction, written by Erastus Worthington, shows what an important man he was in the Colony. Under such skilful hands our records read from the very beginning more like the complete records of a modern corporation than like those of a little company of hardy settlers, struggling to make for themselves a home in the wilderness. Indeed so minute in detail were the records made of their early proceedings that over two hundred lar^e pages are required to print the records of less than a quarter of a century (and this does not include the Register of Births, Mar- riages and Deaths, or Record of Grants of Land). In the second volume of the Printed Records, the whole of Book One of the records of the First Church in Dedham was published, containing a minute history of the formation of the Church, written by Rev. John Allin, the first pastor. Mr. Allin's Ms. is quoted in Felfs Ecclesiastical History of New England, Vol. I, pp. 374-5, and Rev. Henry M. Dexter, D. D., in his exhaustive work on Congregationalism, page 571, says: "One of the best minute descriptions of the methods in use in New England is that of the or- " dination of Rev. John Allin over the First Church in Dedham, April, 1639. The late Wm. F. Allen, A. M., Professor of History in the University of Wis- consin, wrote the Editor — "It seems to me one of the most valuable docu- ments, as illustrating the religious life of our fathers of the seventeenth century which I have ever read." A rare opportunity is thus offered in these two volumes of printed Records to study the relations of the Town and the Church to each other in the earliest days of the Colony. INTRODUCTION. vii This printed volume will also be found interesting to students of family- history, 'especially to such as trace back into the early Dedham families. It has been repeatedly stated that the period of greatest immigration to the New England Colonies was between 1630 and 1640: that at the latter date there was a population in New England of about twenty-one thousand, and that after 1640 more persons went back from New to old England than came from old England to New. " Yet so thrifty and teeming have been those New Englanders that from that primeval community of twenty-one thousand persons have descended the three and a half million who compose the present population of New England, while of the entire population now spread over the United States, probably every third person can read in the history of the first settlement of New England the history of his own progen- itors." — Tyler's History of American Literature, Vol. 1, p. 94. An examination of the index to the Births, Marriages and Deaths, Dedham [printed] Records, Vol. 1, will show that there are very few large fam- ilies there recorded, the original progenitors of which (having the family sur- name) are not to be found upon the general Records of Dedham within the period covered by this printed volume. The transcript of this Volume of Records for the printer has been made by Miss Martha A. Smith, the Assistant Librarian of the Dedham Historical Society, who has performed her work with intelligent skill in reading the ancient manuscript, and with a full appreciation of the importance of accu- racy in such work, and who has also assisted the Editor in reading proof. The fac-similes of autographs, fifty in number, which are found on pages 221-3-5, have been copied with great pains from various sources, from what purported to be original signatures ; the one of Ezekiel Holliman was fur- nished by Edward Field, one of the Record Commissioners of Providence R.