Electronic Texts in American Studies

The Records of the First Church in Boston 1630-1868, volume 1

Richard D. Pierce , editor — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 14:59:33 PST

PREFACE
ILLUSTRATIONS
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

LISTS
Pastors and Teachers
Ruling Elders
Deacons
Meeting Houses

CHURCH RECORDS
VOLUME ONE
Admissions to Membership, 1630-1778; Church Discipline, Dismissals; Occasional Church Votes, 1630-1738
Church Votes, 1719-1785
Baptisms, 1630-1847 [1666]

Volume 1 of 3; contains baptisms through Sept. 25, 1666

A Knickerbocker tour of New York State, 1822: "Our Travels, Statistical, Geographical, Mineorological, Geological, Historical, Political and Quizzical"; Written by Myself XYZ etc.

Johnston Verplanck et al. — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:28:07 PST

In late August 1822, at the height of a yellow fever epidemic in New York City, an alarmed resident of the lower city resettled his family in the Bedford section of Brooklyn Village. With two male companions, he then boarded the steamboat Chancellor Livingston on August 28 and sailed up the Hudson River to Newburgh. There they boarded a stage and travelled across New York State to Niagara Falls and the adjoining area. They returned along the "psychic highway" of western and central New York to Albany, thence down the Hudson to New York City by steamboat. In the course of the month-long trip, the gentleman who had fled the city maintained a journal. He titled it "Our Travels, Statistical, Geographical, Mineorological, Geological, Historical, Political and Quizzical." This anonymous manuscript was acquired by the New York State Library in 1958.

An abridged version of "Our Travels" appeared in the New York American, in serialized form, from August 23 through September 8, 1825; there were fourteen installments. It, too, is of anonymous authorship.

Editor Louis Tucker prepared the text of the journal for publication (in 1968) and established the account's authorship as belonging to Johnston Verplanck (1789-1829), scion of an eminent Dutch lineage and one of the founders of the American.

The work is a satirical travel narrative in the New York Knickerbocker style. It includes 10 watercolor illustrations.

A History of the Churches of Christ in Morgan County Kentucky

Luke Bolin — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 11:36:16 PST

This thesis is the presentation of the history of the Churches of Christ in Morgan County, Kentucky, from their beginning to the present day. Although the term "Church of Christ" predominates in Morgan County, it will be used synonymously with the Christian Church in this thesis. The term "Disciples of Christ" will not be used, although it is the name of the brotherhood as given in the United States Census reports and the name on the Year Book. Morgan County has an area of 413 square miles and a population ot 16,327. It is located in the central eastern part of Kentucky, in the northwestern section ot the southern Appalachian mountains known as the Cumberland Plateau. The Licking River, creeks and branches have dissected it into low and narrow ridges until it retains little of the plateau character. The ridge lands rise to elevations ranging from 1200 to 1300 feet above sea level. The inhabitants of Morgan County are of British Isles ancestry with a sprinkling of Germans and French Huguenots. The present population is 100 per cent American born with the exception of about half a dozen people. "Nigger Liz" is the only colored resident of the county. My interest in the county, especially the churches, has existed for several years. This interest has been intensified by the utterly talse conception that many outsiders (even the most of those who have written about the hills) have of the actual conditions in the southern Appalachian highlands. While my first concern in this thesis is to present a history of the Church of Christ, the necessity of placing the church in its environment will not be overlooked.

1609-1909. The Dutch in New Netherland and the United States

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 11:34:25 PDT

CONTENTS
Directors of the Chamber
Constitution of the Chamber
Contract with Henry Hudson (Original text)
Contract with Henry Hudson (English Translation)

The Dutch in New Netherland and the United States -- pp. 19-73

NEW NETHERLAND
Exploration of the Hudson in 1609
Fur traders 1609-1612
Block's exploration of Long Island Sound and formation of the United New Netherland Company
Chartering of the West India Co. in 1621
First settlers arrived under leadership of Jesse de Forest
Claims of Holland and England
Captain May, first head of the Colony
Pieter Minuit, first Governor
Erection of Fort Amsterdam
Patroons and the Act of Privileges and Exemptions
Settlement of Rensselaerwyk
Wouter van Twiller, second Governor and arrival of the first garrison
Origin of Governor's Island
Troubles with the English in Connecticut
Governor Kieft and the Indian Wars
Bronk's Treaty
Pieter Stuyvesant appointed Governor
Religious intolerance of the Governor
The patroons and the Governor
The capture of New Sweden
Fall of New Netherland
Anton van Korlaer and Spuyten Duyvel
Recapture by the Dutch
New Netherland exchanged for Surinam
The Dutch and English people and representative Government
Religious freedom and Public Schools
The Church and the Dutch Domines
The Democratic Dutch
Troubles of the housewives
The remaining years of Stuyvesant
The Dutch under English rule
King James II. dethroned
The Jacob Leisler episode
Leisler and his son-in-law executed
Destruction of Schenectady
Captain Kidd
Mutual friendship of the Dutch and English people
The Dutch during the Revolutionary War
Support from Holland
The Dutch language ceases to be spoken in America
The Dutch Reformed Church

THE UNITED STATES
Holland Land Company
Emigration under the rule of King William I.
Settlers in Iowa under Domine Scholte
Michigan and Chicago
Fruit growers in California
Paterson, N. J.
Sayville, L. I.
Philadelphia, Pa.
Extradition treaty made in 1872
Holland America Line
West India Mail
Holland newspapers in America
Conditions in New York City
Professionals as emigrants
Eendracht Maakt Macht
The Netherland Chamber of Commerce in America
The Netherland Club of America
The Netherland Benevolent Society of New York
Our Consul-General
Advice to newcomers

Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic

Thomas Wentworth Higginson et al. — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 08:57:04 PDT

The wondrous tales that gathered for more than a thousand years about the islands of the Atlantic deep are a part of the mythical period of American history. The sea has always been, by the mystery of its horizon, the fury of its storms, and the variableness of the atmosphere above it, the foreordained land of romance. In all ages and with all sea-going races there has always been something especially fascinating about an island amid the ocean. Its very existence has for all explorers an air of magic.

The order of the tales in the present work follows roughly the order of development, giving first the legends which kept near the European shore, and then those which, like St. Brandan's or Antillia, were assigned to the open sea or, like Norumbega or the Isle of Demons, to the very coast of America. Every tale in this book bears reference to some actual legend, followed more or less closely, and the authorities for each will be found carefully given in the appendix for such readers as may care to follow the subject farther.

Contents:

The Story of Atlantis
Taliessin of the Radiant Brow
The Swan-Children of Lir
Usheen in the Island of Youth
Bran the Blessed
The Castle of the Active Door
Merlin the Enchanter
Sir Lancelot of the Lake
The Half-Man
King Arthur at Avalon
Maelduin's Voyage
The Voyage of St. Brandan
Kirwan's Search for Hy-Brasail
The Isle of Satan's Hand
Antillia, the Island of the Seven Cities
Harald the Viking
The Search for Norumbega
The Guardians of the St. Lawrence
The Island of Demons
Bimini and the Fountain of Youth
Notes

A Divine and Supernatural Light, Immediately imparted to the Soul by the Spirit of God, Shown to be both a Scriptural, and Rational Doctrine

Jonathan Edwards et al. — Fri, 13 May 2011 08:10:07 PDT

The early stirrings of the Great Awakening were intensified by Edwards’ famous sermon A Divine and Supernatural Light, Immediately Imparted to the Soul by the Spirit of God (1734). Through a fascinating process of canceling out his opponents’ positions, Edwards clearly defines the workings of God’s grace in the human soul. He distinguishes between “Common Grace” (intrinsic to virtually all unregenerate), which acts upon the mind of natural man and assists the faculties of the soul in their natural course; and “Special Grace” (intrinsic to true saints only), which acts in the human heart and unites with the mind of the saint as a new supernatural principle of life and action that restores human faculties to their proper place. God’s spiritual light therefore does not consist of making impressions on the Imagination nor does it teach any new dogmas; it only gives a due apprehension of God’s beauty. Hence a saint with indwelling grace does not merely believe rationally that God is glorious, but has a due sense of God’s glory in his own heart. Whereas the head can merely sustain a speculative or notional knowledge of beauty, the heart delights in the idea of it, and the will prompted by the affections for the highest good embraces the virtuous act. In Edwards’ illustration, the unregenerate can rationally attain a sense of God’s beauty, but only the sanctified can attain full conviction and immediate evidence of God’s grace: one can have a rational sense of the sweetness of honey, but the true sense of its taste can only be attained through experience. Edwards’ distinction is echoed in what Samuel Taylor Coleridge would call primary and secondary beauty.

Early New England Catechisms

Wilberforce Eames — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 15:06:17 PST

The early New England Catechisms--forerunners of the New England Primer--form a branch of the literature of education in America which is worthy of retrospective study. Although the subject offers an interesting field for bibliographical research, a satisfactory treatment is difficult because of the scarcity of material. Notwithstanding the many catechisms that were printed, both in this country and abroad, for the use of children here, but few copies have come down to our own times, and of many editions nearly every vestige has been lost. It has been truly said of these early books for the education of youth, that "they were considered too small and unimportant to be preserved in the libraries of the learned, and the copies that were used by children, were generally worn out by hard service or otherwise destroyed."

My remarks will relate chiefly to some of the catechisms for ehildren and older persons, which were used in New England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It would not have been possible to gather material, in the way it is here presented, without the use of the remarkable collection of catechisms brought together half a century ago by Mr. George Livermore of Dana Hill in Cambridge. When his library was dispersed by public sale in 1894, the collection referred to was secured almost intact for the Lenox Library, now a part of the New York Public Library. The credit for this paper, therefore, is largely due to Mr. Livermore, to whom we are indebted for gathering the material and saving it from destruction. There was, moreover, an earlier owner of a portion of this collection of catechisms, a contemporary of the Rev. Thomas Prince, in the last century, to whom we are under obligations for the preservation of some of the oldest American catechisms now extant. I do not know his name, and can only say that he had nine of these little publications, dating between 1656 and 1740, bound together in one volume. The catechisms are now separate, having been broken apart some time before the Livermore sale, but the evidence of their former condition still remains.

The Kingdom, The Power, & The Glory: The Millennial Impulse in Early American Literature -- Questions for Discussions, Research, and Writing

Reiner Smolinski , Editor — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 13:51:13 PST

The following questions are designed to help each student focus on crucial issues in each text during the initial reading process, stimulate class discussion, and suggest essay topics for term papers. For the most part, the answers to these questions require no other reading than the General Introduction and close analysis of the selections themselves. Nevertheless, each set of question is followed by a brief list of secondary sources taken from the Selected Bibliography to accommodate the documentation of research papers. The blank spaces below each question allow for brief written responses and brainstorming exercises to outline research papers.

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. A Sermon Preached at Enfield, July 8th, 1741.

Jonathan Edwards et al. — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 11:58:31 PST

The God that holds you over the Pit of Hell, much as one holds a Spider, or some loathsome Insect, over the Fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his Wrath towards you burns like Fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the Fire; he is of purer Eyes than to bear to have you in his Sight; you are ten thousand Times so abominable in his Eyes as the most hateful venomous Serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn Rebel did his Prince: and yet ‘tis nothing but his Hand that holds you from falling into the Fire every Moment: 'Tis to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to Hell the last Night; that you was suffer’d to awake again in this World, after you closed your Eyes to sleep: and there is no other Reason to be given why you have not dropped into Hell since you arose in the Morning, but that God’s Hand has held you up: There is no other reason to be given why you han’t gone to Hell since you have sat here in the House of God, provoking his pure Eyes by your sinful wicked Manner of attending his solemn Worship: Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a Reason why you don’t this very Moment drop down into Hell.

A SERMON Preach’d at The Election of the Governour, AT BOSTON IN New-England May 19th 1669.

John Davenport et al. — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 07:21:54 PST

John Davenport’s A Sermon Preach’d at the Election is a notable and fascinating document on numerous counts. As a statement of Puritan political theory, it outlines the rights of the governed to self-preservation from abusive authority—a subject that would be more extensively explored in the years leading up to the Revolution. But as a document of its specific place and time—Boston in 1669—it bore a large part in the politico-theological controversies that followed the Synod of 1662 that recommended the adoption of the so-called Half-Way Covenant. Davenport’s long digression on the proper role of the state in convening “Councils” on religious matters, and on the proper relation of those Councils’ authority over individual church congregations, provoked a reaction that ultimately led to the defeat of his conservative Anti-Synodist party.

Sketch of the Life and Writings of John Davenport

Franklin B. Dexter — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 10:45:01 PST

SOME three or four years ago, I was invited to prepare for this Society a list of the writings of the founders of the New Haven Colony, John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton, with the understanding that if material throwing new light on their characters should be found, the Rev. Dr. Bacon would sum up the results. In fulfilling, in part, my share of the undertaking, I find at the outset this embarrassment, that if I limit myself to the mere titles and dates of Davenport's writings, nothing can excuse the tediousness of the enumeration: on the other hand, I am precluded from encroaching on the province of another paper which is to follow. I shall endeavor to confine myself to a chronological outline of facts, with such explanations as are needed at the distance of two centuries; and I am well aware that the bare outline may disappoint, both those whose lack of knowledge will lead them to expect too much, and those who know the story already, and who know that interesting material cannot be manufactured to order.

Depositor's note: This is still the most complete published biography of John Davenport (1597-1670); it runs 29 pages, plus a bibliography of his works.

A REVIEW Of the Cattle Business in Johnson County, Wyoming SINCE 1882 And the Causes that Led to the Recent Invasion

Oscar H. "Jack" Flagg — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 08:09:04 PST

"A Review of the Cattle Business in Johnson County, Wyoming, Since 1882, and the Causes That Led to the Recent Invasion" by Oscar H. Flagg has been ignored by every historian of the period until now with the exception of one who borrowed extensively from it without acknowledgment. Never yet between covers, it ran serially in the weekly Buffalo (Wyoming) Bulletin for eleven installments in 1892, the first appearing when Nate Champion was scarcely three weeks in his grave. The book is biased where its author's personal conflicts are involved but is largely accurate in regard to general facts, as revealed by crosschecking with other sources. It gives the best close-up picture in existence of the feuds on Powder River, and it is a remarkable piece of work in view of its author's lack of training.

"Jack Flagg was born in West Virginia in 1861 and left home as a lad to go to Texas at the height of the cow-trail fever. He came up to Wyoming with a herd in 1882 and thereafter punched cows in Johnson County, working at least three years for the English-owned Bar C outfit on Powder River. Then he was blackballed by the all-powerful Stock-Grower's Association, which amounted to declaring him an outlaw. In return he declared war on the big outfits. From their point of view they were quite right in calling him a dangerous man." -- Helena Huntington Smith in her War on Powder River (McGraw-Hill, cl966)

America's Mission to Serve Humanity: (Wilson a Prophet, in a Line of Prophets)

Frank Moss — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:31:51 PST

America's divinely-ordained mission is to serve humanity; Germany's ruler-imposed mission was to dominate mankind. America's galaxy of prophets culminates in the president, whose voice is heard throughout the earth; Germany's line of prophets crashes to ruin in the kaiser; "Deutchland ueber alles" has become a dirge, but rescued peoples are singing "Sweet land of liberty."

This address shows that a continuous voice of prophecy has rung out from American leaders, from the nation's beginning to the present time, proclaiming the mission of America to Humanity, -- culminating in the tremendous movement of 1918-19, when she undertakes to save democracy, and to deliver the world from autocracy and the rule of force. It shows that the prophecy has come out of the consciousness of the people.

The position of the United States to-day, is founded solidly on the teachings of the fathers and follows a consistent and continuous instinctive belief, -- never absent from the people, -- that a divine charge rests upon the nation, to safeguard liberty for the world. Since this address was placed in the printer's hands, Germany has surrendered and a crisis has arisen in her internal life. The spirit of democracy, long suppressed, is bursting up as kaiser and kinglets flee. The opportunity and the duty of America are deepened and increased, and there is more need now than in the days of fighting, for clear understanding of the nature, and the greatness of America's mission of service to humanity. Hers will be the privilege and the duty in the difficult days ahead in the councils of the nations, to secure peace forever and to make certain the everlasting triumph of the principles of true democracy throughout the earth.

The Conspiracy of Kings; A Poem: Addressed to the Inhabitants of Europe, from Another Quarter of the World.

Joel Barlow et al. — Wed, 06 May 2009 15:12:13 PDT

The Conspiracy of Kings, published in February 1792, is very much a work of its time, the first months of the constitional monarchy in France. Louis XVI and the new Legislative Assembly began their uneasy relationship in October 1792. Outside France, exiled members of the nobility campaigned to persuade the sovereigns of Europe to intervene and restore them to their privileges. On the other side, friends of the French Revolution sought to discourage intervention and to discredit the principles of legitimacy and social hierarchy that supported the old order.

Joel Barlow had arrived in France in 1788 to act as the representative of a scheme to at-tract French settlers to the western territories, in what is now Ohio. After some initial success, difficulties at the American end caused the scheme to fail, and Barlow left France for England in 1791. Having observed events in France at close hand, he had become an ardent supporter of the Revolution, and set himself to advance the cause by writing. He began his prose work, Advice to the Privileged Orders in the Several States of Europe, Resulting from the Necessity and Propriety of a General Revolution in the Principle of Government, the first four parts of which were published early in 1792; the title might serve as a summary of The Conspiracy of Kings.

For English readers, the debate over the revolution was essentially a debate over the views advanced eloquently in Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, pub-lished in November 1790. Many of the books that attacked the Reflections were published by Joseph Johnson, a well-established London bookseller and publisher with a long history of taking the dissenting side in politics and religion. (He had published the English edition of Barlow's The Vision of Columbus in 1787.) For Barlow, Burke was a particularly troubling opponent because of his earlier support of the American Revolution. The attack on Burke that makes the centerpiece of the poem is a conflicted one that shows Barlow's regret as well as his scorn for what Burke has become, and stands in sharp contrast to the ironic footnote dismissals of the Vicomte de Calonne and the Comte D'Artois, the leading figures among the exiled nobility.

Barlow has gibes for the Frederick William II of Prussia, Catherine the Great of Russia, and Leopold II of the Holy Roman Empire, but two sovereigns are conspicuous by their absence: George III of Britain and Louis XVI of France. An attack on the first would have exposed Barlow to prosecution in England. As for the second, the jury was still out on the constitutional monarchy as Barlow wrote; his objective was to direct attention from what is happening now in France to the significance of what has happened in France for the rest of Europe. There he sees much to denounce, but the poem ends on a note of hope: the enlightened king Stanslaus Poniatowski has promulgated the Constitution of May 3, 1791 to move Poland toward a more egalitarian society, and on the other side of the Atlantic the United States provides the example which may yet move the nations of Europe to reason their way to governments of that rare union, Liberty and Laws.

ETERNAL Truth, thy trump undaunted lend,
People and priests and courts and kings, attend;
While, borne on weﬅern gales from that far shore
Where Justice reigns, and tyrants tread no more,
Th' unwonted voice, that no dissuasion awes,
That fears no frown, and seeks no blind applause,
Shall tell the bliss that Freedom sheds abroad,
The rights of nature and the gift of God.

Press figures and catchwords have been omitted, but otherwise this is a page-for-page and line-for-line reproduction of the original first edition as reproduced in ECCO.

The Threefold Paradise of Cotton Mather: An Edition of "Triparadisus"

Reiner Smolinski — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:20:43 PDT

No other American Puritan has fueled both the popular and academic imagination as has Cotton Mather (1663-1728). Colonial America's foremost theologian and historian, Mather was also one of its most powerful voices advocating millennialism. His lifelong preoccupation with this subject culminated in his definitive treatise, "Triparadisus" (1726/1727), left unpublished at his death. In it, Mather justified his ideological revisionism; his response to the philological, historical, and scientific challenges of the Bible as text by English and continental deists; and his hermeneutical break from the orthodox exegeses of his father, Increase Mather, and Joseph Mede. In his critical introduction to this edition of "Triparadisus", Reiner Smolinski demonstrates that Mather's hermeneutical defense of revealed religion seeks to negotiate between the orthodox literalist position of his New England forebears and the new philological challenges to the scriptures by Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, Isaac de La Peyrere, Benedict de Spinoza, Richard Simon, Henry Hammond, Thomas Burnet, William Whiston, Anthony Collins, and Isaac Newton. In "Triparadisus" Mather's hermeneutics undergoes a radical shift from a futurist interpretation of the prophecies to a preterite position as he joins the quasi-allegorical camp of Grotius, Hammond, John Lightfoot, and Richard Baxter. The Threefold Paradise of Cotton Mather also challenges a number of longstanding paradigms in the scholarship on American Puritanism, history, literature, and culture. Smolinski specifically calls into question the consensus among intellectual historians who have traced the Puritan origin of the American self to the Errand into the Wildernessand the idea of God's elect. He also challenges the commonplace argument that New England represented the culmination of prophetic history in an American New Jerusalem for the Mathers and their counterparts. As an important link between Mather's premillennialism in the late seventeenth century and Jonathan Edwards's postmillennialism in the Great Awakening, "Triparadisus" provides important biographical insight into Mather's last years, when, liberated from his father's interpretations, he put forward his own.

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments xi
List of Illustrations xiii
Abbreviations of Cotton Mather's Works xv

PART I: INTRODUCTION
I. The Authority of the Bible and Cotton Mather's "Triparadisus: A Discourse Concerning the Threefold Paradise" 3
2. The "New" Hermeneutics and the Jewish Nation in Cotton Mather's Eschatology 21
3. The Bang or the Whimper? The Grand Revolution and the New World to Come 38
4. When Shall These Things Be? Cotton Mather's Chronometry of the Prophecies 60
5. Note on theText 79

PART II: THE TEXT
The First PARADISE 93
The Second PARADISE 112
The Third PARADISE 153
An Introduction 153
I. The Present Earth, perishing in a CONFLAGRATION 155
II. Plain Praedictions of the CONFLAGRATION, in other Passages of the SACRED SCRIPTURES, besides the Petrine Prophecy 159
III. What may be called, A Digression, [But is none] offering, A Golden Key to open the Sacred Prophecies 162
IV. The Sibylline Oracles, concerning the CONFLAGRATION 194
V. Traditions of the CONFLAGRATION, with All Nations, in All Ages 199
VI. SIGNS of the CONFLAGRATION coming on 202
VII. The CONFLAGRATION described 219
VIII. The CONFLAGRATION, How Reasonably to be look'd for 231
IX. The NEW HEAVENS opened 244
X. The NEW EARTH survey'd 268
XI. A National Conversion of the Iews; Whether to be look'd for 295
XII. WHEN shall these Things be! WHEN the Grand REVOLUTION to be look'd for? 319

Notes 349
Appendix A: Manuscript Cancellations and Interpolations 425
Appendix B: Editorial Emendations 467
Appendix C: Biblical Citations and Allusions 469
Selected Bibliography 479
Index 505

Note: Book is xx + 526 pages; PDF file is 29 Mbytes.

Address Delivered before the Queens County Agricultural Society, at Its Third Anniversary, at Jamaica, Thursday, October 10th, 1844

Gabriel Furman — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:26:40 PST

Furman’s Address includes discussions of pre-Columbian agriculture, the Norse discovery and settlement of North America, the state of New York as it appeared to its first settlers, the manifest destiny of the United States, the early societies to promote agriculture and scientific invention, the promotion of the potato, the growth of population in America, the developments of water and steam power, the prevalence of sugar, the progress of astronomy and geology, cosmological reasons for historical climate change, the discoveries of tropical fossils in the northern latitudes, the growth of wheat from ancient Egyptian seeds, and the role of the educated citizen-farmer:

“The farmer is truly the lord of the soil, and his position in society the most independent of all its members. The leisure which winter affords from the labours of agriculture gives him an opportunity for storing his mind with useful knowledge, which few, very few, in the active pursuits of life can ever hope to gain. There is every opportunity for him in this country to take the lead in all the affairs of the nation if he chooses so to do.”

Furman, a historian, antiquarian, and book collector (as well as a lawyer, judge, and politician), takes the opportunity to mention Adriaen Vanderdonck, Daniel Denton, Hendrick Hudson, Samuel Miller, Charles Apthorp, William Smith, Walter Rutherford, John Morin Scott, James Duane, John Vanderspiegel, Thomas Young, Joshua Clark, Francis Furnier, Robert Livingstone, Ezra L’Hommedieu, Samuel Hartliff (Hartlib), Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, Hugh Miller, John Aiken, Louis Agassiz, John Pringle Nichol, William Long, and Samuel Mitchell.

Printed at the Office of "The Long Island Farmer," by C. S. Watrous, Jamaica, New York, 1845, 22 pages (blanks omitted).

The Widdow Ranter, or, The History of Bacon in Virginia (1690)

Aphra Behn et al. — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 12:20:49 PST

The Widdow Ranter, or, The History of Bacon in Virginia was probably written in 1688, first performed in late 1689, and published in 1690. It is a highly fictionalized drama of Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676 in Virginia, when Nathaniel Bacon (c.1640-1676), commander of a volunteer force of Indian fighters, succeeded for several months in overthrowing the government of Sir William Berkeley, who had declared Bacon a rebel and refused to countenance or commission his actions against the Indians. Mrs. Behn’s play casts Bacon as a classical hero, motivated by “Honour,” and in love with an Indian princess. A variety of supporting characters present a less-than-flattering picture of colonial life and mores. The title character, the young and wealthy widow Ranter, puts on men’s clothes and fights in several battles. The work ends tragically for Bacon, the Indian princess Semernia, and the Indian king Cavarnio; but comically and happily for everyone else. Its treatments of race, class, gender, rebellion, cross-dressing, sexuality, and miscegenation make it full of interest for a wide range of students of early America.

About the Author: Aphra Behn was born Eaffrey Johnson in 1640, daughter of Bartholomew Johnson and the former Elizabeth Denham, of Canterbury. In 1663–64, she spent a year with her mother and siblings in the new British colony of Surinam. Back in London, in 1664 she apparently married a German merchant, Johann Behn, although the union was cut short, whether by death or separation is not known. In 1666, she undertook a spy mission to Antwerp to recruit the dissident William Scot, then in service of the Dutch. By 1670, she had returned to London, and was writing plays for the Duke’s Company. In all, nineteen of her plays were performed, including several that featured roles for the actress Nell Gwyn, the mistress of Charles II. She also published poetry, novels, stories, and translations, and is held to be the first English woman to support herself by authorship. She died April 16, 1689, and is buried in Westminster Abbey.

An online electronic text (77 half-letter pages), based on the first edition of 1690. Includes notes, a note on the text, and an appendix containing John Dryden's original Prologue and Epilogue for the play.

A Discourse concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers: With some Reflections on the Resistance made to King Charles I. And on the Anniversary of his Death: In which the Mysterious Doctrine of that Prince's Saintship and Martyrdom is Unriddled (1750). An Online Electronic Text Edition.

Jonathan Mayhew A.M., D.D. et al. — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 14:09:16 PST

After the Restoration of the English monarchy in the person of Charles II in 1660, the new king and his first Parliament declared the anniversary of the beheading of his father Charles I (January 30, 1649) a religious holiday with a special commemoration in the Book of Common Prayer, naming the late monarch a saint and martyr. This holiday was not generally celebrated in Massachusetts until the emergence of several Anglican churches there in the early eighteenth century. In 1750, Jonathan Mayhew, the twenty-nine-yearold pastor of the West (Congregational) Church in Boston, took occasion to dispute the first Charles’ credentials to saintship, martyrdom, and even his kingship as well. Mayhew’s Discourse is an extremely interesting bridge between the radical Puritan past and the American Revolutionary future. His sermon contains the language, rhetoric, symbolism, typology, and religious and philosophical arguments that would be used extensively in the agitation for American independence twenty-five years later. Mayhew (1720-1766) would subsequently take a leading role in the resistance to the Stamp Act of 1765, and his sermons and writings had an enormous impact on the evolution of New England Puritanism into American republican ideology.

This online electronic edition contains the full, unabridged text of his sermon, as published at Boston in 1750 (other online and reprint versions contain only excerpts). The work is approximately 18,000 words long and runs 66 half-letter pages (33 sheets) in this edition.

Some Strictures upon the Sacred Story Recorded in the Book of Esther (1775)

Oliver Noble M.A. et al. — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 10:51:20 PDT

Oliver Noble (1733/4–92) was born in Hebron, Connecticut, and graduated from Yale in 1757, but stayed on as a tutor until he received his second degree in 1759. Later that same year, he was ordained a minister in South Coventry, Connecticut, but disagreements with his congregation led to his dismissal in 1761. Noble’s abilities as a preacher must have been well known, for his next installment occurred in 1762 at a church in Newburyport, Massachusetts, where he preached from the pulpit of the fifth parish until 1784. Again dismissed, Noble moved to Newcastle, New Hampshire, six months later, and there supplied the pulpit until his death in 1792.

Of his four published sermons on such topics as soteriology, the doctrine of assurance, church music, and the conflict with Great Britain, Oliver Noble’s Some Strictures upon the Sacred Story Recorded in the Book of Esther (1775)—courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society—is most memorable. The sermon was delivered in Newburyport on the fifth anniversary of the Boston Massacre (1770) and highlights the anxieties and uncertainties of the times. Noble draws his typological parallel from the Old Testament book of Esther to affirm that the events of his day were little more than a reiteration of the events typed out in Medo-Persia more than two millennia before. The biblical account of Esther relates how Haman, grand vizier of King Ahasuerus, deceives his liege and plots to massacre the Israelites of the eastern captivity for reasons of personal enrichment. However, faithful Mordecai and Queen Esther save their people from Haman’s machinations. In Noble’s adaptation of the story, King George III (Ahasuerus) is similarly deceived by the British Parliament (Haman), which tries to disenfranchise his majesty’s faithful colonists (Mordecai and Queen Esther) through the infamous Stamp Act (Haman’s injunction against the Israelites). With such obvious parallels from the Good Book, Noble thundered against Haman’s greed but also prophesied that the present crisis will soon pass over and America be vindicated in the eyes of King George.

Most interesting in this context is that Noble presented the British monarch as a benign ruler, whose cunning advisors kept him ignorant for reasons of personal enrichment. Indeed, until right up to the War, many Americans held fast to their monarch’s benign intentions and blamed parliament for the outbreak of hostilities. Noble’s typological explanation of the war should not lead us to believe for one moment that he was ignorant of its real causes. For indicative of the new age in which he lived, he furnishes his readers with statistical evidence and economic explanations (supplied in footnotes) that traced the present conflict to the insurmountable debt of Great Britain.

A Brief History of the Pequot War (1736)

John Mason et al. — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 14:33:22 PDT

John Mason’s posthumously published account is the most complete contemporary history of the Pequot War of 1636–1637. Written around 1670, and published in part in 1677 (although misattributed by Increase Mather to John Allyn), the complete text was issued by Thomas Prince in 1736. That text is reproduced here in a corrected and annotated edition that includes Prince’s biographical sketch of Mason and various dedicatory and explanatory documents.

John Mason (c.1600–1672) commanded the Connecticut forces in the expedition that wiped out the Pequot fort and village at Mystic and in two subsequent operations that effectively eliminated the Pequots as a recognizable nation. He was among the original settlers of Windsor, Connecticut, and afterwards resided at Saybrook and Norwich. Little is known of his antecedents, except that he had served in the wars in the Netherlands before emigrating to Massachusetts.

This online electronic text edition includes the entire 12,000-word Brief History and runs to 49 pages, including notes and bibliography; it can be printed out on 25 sheets of letter-sized paper.