The prevailing view of New England Puritans is that they were rigid, humorless automatons, grimly proceeding through a life divided strictly between work and prayer.
But not everyone was on the same page. Consider Samuel Danks, a resident of Northampton who in 1743 was excommunicated by the town’s First Church of Christ and its now-famous minister, Jonathan Edwards, for Danks’ refusal to acknowledge his “Guilt of Fornication” — presumably not with a spouse.
Then there was Abigail Bridgman, also excommunicated from First Church in 1739 for “Irreclaimably Persisting in the sin of drunkeness.” Meantime, a servant named George was “Publickly admonished” in 1734 for his love of the bottle and “running away from his mistress” — and doing it on the Sabbath, which made his transgressions even worse.
These portraits of less-than-upright behavior come from a worn, leather-bound copy of First Church records from 1661 to 1845, in which a succession of early Northampton ministers and other church officials logged births and deaths, baptisms and marriages, personal troubles of parishioners and other church business, such as debates about theological interpretations.
Those records, kept in Forbes Library for the last several years, have until recently only been available for viewing at selected times. But now they’ve been digitized and placed online by an historical organization that’s on a mission to secure church records from across the state — and with them a distinct portrait of colonial and early American life.
For over 10 years, researchers with the Congregational Library & Archives in Boston (www.congregationallibrary.org) have been visiting Massachusetts churches and sifting through old documents in basements and attics, closets, file cabinets and other storage areas. It’s something of a race against time to preserve the records, as the archivists battle church closings, fires and floods, and the deterioration or loss of centuries-old materials.
“These documents tell us more about early New England life than any other source,” said James Cooper, director of the Congregational Library’s program to secure church records. The work primarily concerns records of Congregational churches, as they were the first denomination to be established in Massachusetts.
It’s a topic Cooper, a former professor of early American history at Oklahoma State University, has been pursuing since the 1980s, when he began his graduate work. He’s written a number of books on that era, and he notes that before local governments and police departments were established, the church was the center of community — and also played an important role in maintaining order — in early Massachusetts towns.
“If you had a problem with a neighbor or a local business, if there were issues between family members, the minister was who you would turn to,” said Cooper. “In that sense, these records give us a wonderful window into early colonial life.”
Elise Bernier-Feeley, who oversees local history and genealogy at Forbes Library, agrees. “The church and town were essentially wed” in colonial Massachusetts, she said. “And the minister was generally the most educated person in town, so people turned to him with their problems.”
“A minister was hired by a town, not by the church,” Bernier-Feeley added during a visit to her office, where she displayed the church records. “He had considerable authority.”
During the course of their research, Cooper and other historians with the Congregational Library have uncovered numerous examples of how ministers recorded people’s personal issues, such as a couple who confessed to having sex before marriage, to people who had come to doubt their faith, only to rekindle it during a “conversion” experience.
Northampton’s First Church records include a lengthy covenant drafted by the founders in 1661 that lays out their goals and beliefs; as well, there’s a note from 1739 that marks Edwards’ ordination as minister. Then there’s a passage about the punishment in 1697 of one Jacob Root for “Abusing his Cousin Thomas Root using such violence & threatinings as gave him to feare he would have killed him.” Jacob Root was excommunicated but then pardoned “on his repentance.”
What also comes through these records is something hard to grasp in the 21st century: the sense of life playing out under the eyes of an all-powerful and watchful God. A 1757 letter from Edwards to his daughter Esther Edwards Burr provides a glimpse of that; the letter is part of the Congregational Library’s collection.
“I thank you for your most comfortable Letter;” Edwards writes, “but more especially would I thank God that has granted you such Things to write. How good & kind is your heavenly Father! how do the Bowels of his tender Love and Compassion appear, while he is correcting you by so great a Shake of his Head!”
Yet the church records also make clear, Cooper says, that the Puritans were more than the rigid stereotypes painted by history — that colonial life had its share of humor, passion, lust, anger and other emotions.
He points to an account from Falmouth in 1746 that details an argument church members had with one of their number, Brother Hatch Rowley, who during a winter fishing trip “appeared to have drank more strong drink then was convenient. and that in a matter Relating to … Fishing, He had trespassed upon the Law of Truth in his Speaking.”
One possible translation? Brother Rowley had gone on a drunken rant, for which he later apologized.
As Bernier-Feeley puts it, the Puritans “were human.”
To keep unearthing these kinds of stories and history is an ongoing challenge, said Cooper, who spoke at Forbes Library late last year about his work. The Congregational Library has digitized records from over 40 Massachusetts churches, and a few from Maine and Connecticut. But Cooper estimates there may still be useful records remaining in 200 colonial-era congregational churches in Massachusetts alone.
Cooper has found records in strange places — he’s recorded those finds in numerous photos — like a pastor’s closet where they were stored next to garment bags, and a church in Ipswich where papers were stuffed behind the church Christmas trees.
In some cases, he’s convinced church officials to let the Congregational Library take custody of records, as it’s much better equipped to preserve fragile documents. For Northampton’s First Church (now called First Churches after combining with First Baptist Church), he photographed the records but left them with the library, which stores them with other local historical documents and books.
First Church officials turned the records over to Forbes several years ago after Bernier-Feeley and then library archivist Julie Bartlett Nelson convinced them the library would be better able to preserve the documents, while also making them available to scholars and genealogists.
Cooper’s fear is that documents will be lost forever to natural disasters and church closings. He points to a fire that gutted a church in Putnam, Connecticut, earlier this month.
Aside from preserving and digitizing church records, researchers at the Congregational Library have taken on the laborious task of transcribing the hand-written documents, tackling faded ink, erratic punctuation, and the cramped, ornate script of the time. The library plans to post some 3,000 transcribed pages on its web site over the coming months.
That said, the library is looking for volunteers for additional transcription; anyone interested can contact Helen Gelinas, the library’s director of transcription, at hgelinas@14beacon.org.
In the meantime, the search for the past goes on. “It’s a fascinating project,” Cooper said.
Anyone with questions about the project or about early New England churches can also contact James Cooper at jcooper@14beacon.org.