best to be done with the Estates of those men which are Gone from their Estates to General Gage and to whose use they shall Improve them whether for the proviance or the town where sd Estate is. EBENEZER ALLEN, Lancaster June 7 day 1775. The Selectmen of Lancaster. beth Rogers, daughter of the loyalist To the Honourable Provincial Congress minister of Littleton. His name was now holden at Watertown in the Proviaffixed to the address to Governor ance of the Massachusetts Bay. We the subscribers do request and Gage, June 21, 1774, and he was forced to sign, with the other justices, desire that you would be pleased to direct or Inform this proviance in General or the a recantation of the aspersions cast town of Lancaster in Partickeler what is upon the people in that address. He has the distinction of being recorded by the leading statesman of the Revolution- John Adams-as his personal friend. So popular was Abel Willard and so well known his character as a peacemaker and well-wisher to his country, that he might have remained unmolested and respected among his neighbors in spite of his royalist opinions; but, whether led by family ties or natural timidity, he sought refuge in Boston, and quick-coming events made it impossible for him to return. At the departure of the British forces for Halifax, he accompanied them. A letter from Edmund Quincy to his daughter Mrs. Hancock, dated Lancaster, March 26, 1776, contains a reference to him: "Im sorry for poor Mrs Abel Willard your Sisters near neighbour & Friend. Shes gone we hear with her husband and Bro and sons to Nova Scotia P'haps in such a situation and under such circumstances of Offense respecting their Wors Neighbours as never to be in a political capacity of returning to their Houses unless wth power & inimical views weh God forbid should ever be ye Case." In 1778, the act of proscription and banishment included Abel Willard's name. His health gave way under accumulated trouble, and he died in England in 1781. The estates of Abijah and Abel Willard were confiscated. In the Massachusetts Archives (cliv, 10) is preserved the anxious inquiry of the town authorities respecting the proper disposal of the wealth they abandoned. The Provincial Congress placed the property in question in the hands of the selectmen and Committee of Safety to improve, and instructed them to report to future legislatures. Finally, Cyrus Fairbank is found acting as the local agent for confiscated estates of royalists in Lancaster, and his annual statements are among the archives of the State. His accounts embrace the estates of "Abijah Willard, Esq., Abel Willard, Esq., Solomon Houghton, Yeoman, and Joseph Moore Gent." The final settlement of Abel Willard's estate, October 26, 1785, netted his creditors but ten shillings, eleven pence to the pound. The claimants and improvers probably swallowed even the larger estate of Abijah Willard, leaving nothing to the Commonwealth. Katherine, the wife of Levi Willard, was the sister, and Dorothy, wife of Captain Samuel Ward, the daughter, of Judge John Chandler, "the honest Refugee." These estimable and accomplished ladies lived but a stone's throw apart, and after the death of Levi Willard there came to reside with them an elder brother of Mrs. Ward, one of the most notable personages in Lancaster during the Revolution. Clark Chandler was a dapper little bachelor about thirty-two years of age, eccentric in person, habits, and dress. Among other oddities of apparel, he was partial to bright red small-clothes. His tory principles and singularities called down upon him the jibes of the patriots among whom his lot was temporarily cast, but his ready tongue and caustic wit were sufficient weapons of defence. In 1774, as town clerk of Worcester, he recorded a protest of forty-three royalist citizens against the resolutions of the patriotic majority. This record he was compelled in open town meeting to deface, and when he failed to render it sufficiently illegible with the pen, his tormentors dipped his fingers into the ink and used them to perfect the obliteration. He fled to Halifax, but after a few months returned, and was thrown into Worcester jail. The reply to his petition for release is in Massachusetts Archives (clxiv, 205). Colony of the Massachusetts Bay. By the Major part of the Council of said Colony. Whereas Clark Chandler of Worcester has been Confined in the Common Prison at Worcester for holding Correspondence with the enemies of this Country and the said Clark having humbly petitioned for an enlargement and it having been made to appear that his health is greatly impaired & that the Publick will not be endangered by his having some enlargement, and Samuel Ward, John Sprague, & Ezekiel Hull having Given Bond to the Colony Treasurer in the penal sum of one thousand Pounds, for the said Clarks faithful performance of the order of Council for his said enlargement, the said Clark is hereby permitted to go to Lancaster when his health will permit, and there to continue and not go out of the Limits of that Town, he in all Respects Conforming him self to the Condition in said Bond con tained, and the Sheriff of said County of Worcester and all others are hereby Directed to permit the said Clark to pass VOL. I.-No. VI.-D. He was allowed to visit Boston, and Joseph Wilder, Jr., colonel, and judge of the court of common pleas of Worcester County, as his father had been before him, - was prominent among the signers of the address to General Gage. He apologized for this indiscretion, and seems to have received no further attention from the Committee of Safety. In the extent of his posses sions he rivaled Abijah Willard, having Black List." Joseph House, at the evacuation of Boston, went with the army to Halifax. He was a householder, but possessed no considerable estate in Lancaster. In 1778, his name appears among the proscribed and banished. The Lancaster committee of correspondence, July 17, 1775, published Nahum Houghton as "an unwearied pedlar of that baneful herb tea," and warned all patriots "to entirely shun his company and have no manner of dealings or connections with him except acts of common humanity." A special town meeting was called on June 30, 1777, chiefly "to act on a Resolve of the General Assembly Respecting and Securing this and the other United States against the Danger to which thay are Exposed by the Internal Enemies Thereof, and to Elect some proper person to Collect such evidence against such Persons as shall be demed by athority as Dangerous persons to this and the other United States of Amarica." At this meeting Colonel Asa Whitcomb was chosen to collect evidence against suspected loyalists, and Moses Gerrish, Daniel Allen, Ezra Houghton, Joseph Moor, and Solomon Houghton, were voted "as Dangerous Persons and Internal Enemies to this State." On September 12 of the same year, apparently upon a report from Colonel Asa Whitcomb, it was voted that Thomas Grant, James Carter, and the Reverend Timothy Harrington, "Stand on the It was also ordered that the selectmen "Return a List of these Dangerous Persons to the Clerk, and he to the Justice of the Quorum as soon as may be.". This action of the extremists seems to have aroused the more conservative citizens, and another meeting was called, on September 23, for the purpose of reconsidering this ill-advised and arbitrary proscription, at which meeting the clerk was instructed not to return the names of James Carter and the Reverend Timothy Harrington before the regular town meeting in November. Thomas Grant was an old soldier, having served in the French and Indian War, and, if a loyalist, probably condoned the offence by enlisting in the patriot army; his name is on the musterroll of the Rhode Island expedition in 1777, and in 1781 he was mustered into the service for three years. was about fifty years of age, and a poor man, for the town paid bills presented "for providing for Tom Grant's Family." He Moses Gerrish was graduated at Harvard College in 1762, and reputed a man of considerable ability. Enoch Gerrish, perhaps a brother of Moses, was a farmer in Lancaster who left his home, was arrested and imprisoned in York County, and thence removed for trial to Worcester by order of the council, May 29, 1778. The following letter uncomplimentary to these two loyalists is found in Massachusetts Archives (cxcix, 278). Sir. The two Gerrishes Moses & Enoch, that ware sometime since apprehended by warrant from the Council are now set at Libberty by reason of that Laws Expiring on which they were taken up. I would move to your Hon's a new warrant might Isue, Directed to Doc'. Silas Hoges to apprehend & confine them as I look upon them to be Dangerous persons to go at large. I am with respect your Honrs. most obedient Hum. Sert. JAMES PRESCOTT. Groton 12 of July 1778. An order for their rearrest was voted by the council. Moses Gerrish finally received some position in the commissary department of the British army, and, when peace was declared, obtained a grant of free tenancy of the island of Grand Menan for seven years. At the expiration of that time, if a settlement of forty families with schoolmaster and minister should be established, the whole island was to become the freehold of the colonists. Associated with Gerrish in this project was Thomas Ross, of Lancaster. They failed in obtaining the requisite number of settlers, but continued to reside upon the island, and there Moses Gerrish died at an advanced age. Solomon Houghton, a Lancaster farmer in comfortable circumstances, fearing the inquisition of the patriot committee, fled from his home. In 1779, the judge of probate for Worcester County appointed commissioners to care for his confiscated estate. Ezra Houghton, a prosperous farmer, and recently appointed justice of the peace, affixed his name to the address to General Gage in 1775, and to the recantation. In May, 1777, he was imprisoned, under charge of counterfeiting the bills of public credit and aiding the enemy. In November following he petitioned to be admitted to bail (see Massachusetts Archives, ccxvi, 129) and his request was favorably received, his bail bond being set at two thousand pounds. Joseph Moore was one of the six slave-owners of Lancaster in 1771, possessed a farm and a mill, and was ranked a "gentleman." On September 20, 1777, being confined in Worcester jail, he petitioned for enlargement, claiming his innocence of the charges. for which his name had been put upon Lancaster's black list. His petition met no favor, and his estate was duly confiscated. (See Massachusetts Archives, clxxxiii, 160.) At the town meeting on the first Monday in November, 1777, the names of James Carter and Daniel Allen were stricken from the black list, apparently without opposition. That the Reverend Timothy Harrington, Lancaster's prudent and much-beloved minister, should be denounced as an enemy of his country, and his name even placed temporarily among those of "dangerous persons," exhibits the bitterness of partisanship at that date. This town-meeting prosecution was ostensibly based upon certain incautious expressions of opinion, but appears really to have been inspired by the spite of the Whitcombs and others, whose enmity had been aroused by his conservative action several years before in the church troubles, known as "the Goss and Walley war," in the neighboring town of Bolton. The Reverend Thomas Goss, of Bolton, Ebenezer Morse, of Boylston, and Andrew Whitney, of Petersham, were classmates of Mr. Harrington in the Harvard class of 1737, and all of them were opposed to the revolution of the colonies. The disaffection, which, ignoring the action of an ecclesiastical council, pushed Mr. Goss from his pulpit, arose more from the political ferment of the day than from any advanced views of his opponents respecting the abuse of alcoholic stimulants. For nearly forty years Mr. Harrington had perhaps never omitted from his fervent prayers in public assemblies the form of supplication for divine blessing upon the sovereign brought him "under ye censure of ruler of Great Britain. It is not strange, shutting up ye Kingdom of Heaven although he had yielded reluctant sub- against men." To this, calm answer mission to the new order of things, and is given by a review of the whole conwas anxiously striving to perform his troversy in the Bolton Church, closing clerical duties without offense to any of thus: "Mr. Moderator, as I esteemed his flock, that his lips should sometimes the Proceedings of these Brethren at lapse into the wonted formula, "bless Bolton Disorderly and Schismatical, our good King George." It is related and as the Apostle hath given Direction that on occasions of such inadvertence, to mark those who cause Divisions and he, without embarrassing pause, added: Offences and avoid them, I thought it "Thou knowest, O Lord! we mean my Duty to bear Testimony against ye George Washington." In the records Conduct of both ye People at Bolton, of the town clerk, nothing is told of and those who were active in settling a the nature of the charges against Mr. Pastor over them in the Manner SpeciHarrington, or of the manner of his fied, and I still retain ye sentiment, defence. Two deacons were sent as and this not to shut the Kingdom of messengers "to inform the Revd Timo° Heaven against them, but to recover Harrington that he has something in them from their wanderings to the agitation Now to be Heard in this Order of the Gospel and to the direct Meeting at which he has Liberty to way to the Kingdom of Heaven. And attend." Joseph Willard, Esq., in I still approve and think them just." 1826, recording probably the reminis- The second charge, in full, was as cence of some one present at the follows: :dramatic scene, says that when the venerable clergyman confronted his accusers, baring his breast, he exclaimed with the language and feeling of outraged virtue: "Strike, strike here with your daggers! I am a true friend to my country!" Among the manuscripts left by Mr. Harrington there is one prepared for, if not read at, this town meeting, containing the charges in detail, and his reply to each. It is headed: "Harrington's answers to ye Charges &c." It is a shrewd and eloquent defence, bearing evidence, so far as rhetoric can, that its author was in advance of his people and his times in respect of Christian charity, if not of political foresight. The charges were four in number: the first being that of the Bolton Walleyites alleging that his refusal to receive them as church members in regular standing "It appears to us that his conduct hath ye greatest Tendency to subvert our religious Constitution and ye Faith of these churches. In his saying that the Quebeck Bill was just-and that he would have done the same had he been one of ye Parliament-and also saying that he was in charity with a professed Roman Catholick, whose Principles are so contrary to the Faith of these churches,-That for a man to be in charity with them we conceive that it is impossible that he should be in Charity with professed New England Churches. It therefore appears to us that it would be no better than mockery for him to pretend to stand as Pastor to one of these churches." To this Mr. Harrington first replies by the pointed question: "Is not Liberty of Conscience and ye right of judging for themselves in the matters of Religion, |