#148 RESEARCH VISIT TO EARLY PURITAN ROOTS
Massachusetts Bay Colony — Brief Timeline as generated by chatgpt
- 1620 — Plymouth Colony founded. The Mayflower arrives at Plymouth. This was a separate colony from Massachusetts Bay.
- 1628 — Massachusetts Bay Company established. Puritan investors begin settlement at Salem.
- 1629 — Royal charter granted. King Charles I grants the Massachusetts Bay Company a charter. The company unusually transfers its government—and the charter itself—to New England.
- 1630 — The Great Migration begins. John Winthrop leads a fleet carrying roughly 1,000 Puritan settlers. Boston is established and becomes the colony's principal town.
- 1630s — Rapid expansion. Towns including Boston, Dorchester, Roxbury, Watertown, Cambridge and others develop. Thousands of English Puritans migrate to New England.
- 1634 — Representative government develops. The General Court comes to include elected representatives from Massachusetts towns.
- 1635–36 — Religious dissent produces conflict. Roger Williams is banished and eventually helps establish Rhode Island. Anne Hutchinson banished for her anti-Puritan views. Harvard College is founded in 1636.
- 1643 — New England Confederation formed. Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven establish a defensive alliance.
- 1640s–60s — Massachusetts Bay matures. Boston becomes an important commercial centre. The colony remains strongly Puritan, although tensions grow between colonial authorities and the English Crown.
- 1675–76 — King Philip's War. One of the most destructive conflicts in colonial New England.
- 1684 — Massachusetts Bay charter revoked. King Charles II's government successfully challenges the colony's charter, ending the original charter government.
- 1686 — Dominion of New England created. Massachusetts is incorporated into a much larger royal administration.
- 1691 — New royal charter issued. Massachusetts Bay Colony, Plymouth Colony and several other territories are combined into the Province of Massachusetts Bay.
- 1692 — New government begins. Sir William Phips arrives as royal governor. The Salem witch trials occur the same year.
So, strictly speaking, the Massachusetts Bay Colony under its original charter existed from 1629/30 to 1684. The Province of Massachusetts Bay that replaced it from 1691 onward was quite different: the governor was appointed by the Crown and the old Puritan charter government was gone.
JOHN LEVERETT
I have made a tenuous connection to some more New England/Massachusetts Bay Colony roots. One possible 9x great grandfather is John Leverett (1616-1679).
He was born in Boston, Lincolnshire, England and immigrated to Massachusetts with his father in 1633. Leverett married Hannah Hudson in 1639 and had three children Hannah died in 1643. In 1640 Leverett was made a freeman of the colony, meaning he had the right to vote and participate in the colony's government.
Leverett returned to England to serve for Oliver Cromwell in the English Civil War. In 1648, he returned to the Massachusetts Bay Colony and married Sarah Sedgwick, daughter of his business partner. The couple had 12 children of whom 6 lived to adulthood. (Five daughters were named Sarah; four of them died young, so the name continued to be given to the next baby girl.)
Leverett was a leading merchant in the colony. He was also involved with land surveys in Maine. And for three years, from 1654 to 1657, he was the commander of the English-held forts in occupied Acadia (Nova Scotia) during colonial conflicts with the French Empire. He personally advanced substantial funds to maintain the English occupation of Acadia. Cromwell's government authorized reimbursement, subject to an audit of his accounts, but the required audit apparently was never completed. Leverett continued to petition for compensation after the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, but no evidence has been found that his claim was ultimately paid. He was, however, knighted by Charles II, but he kept this honour hidden from public knowledge.
Leverett served the colony as an ambassador, messenger, and "silencer to the war-like and rebellious". He was a major-general in the Massachusetts militia, was a frequent deputy to the general court, served as the Deputy Governor from 1671 to 1673, then became Governor of the Colony from 1673-1679.
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As Governor, Leverett is noted for his success with the King Philip’s War (1675-76), fought between English colonists and a coalition of native American tribes. This was the most destructive and deadly conflict in early American history; over half of New England’s towns were raided, burned or abandoned during the conflict. Leverett drew on his military experience to successfully lead the colonial forces and because he was widely popular with his troops, he was able to maintain political and military cohesion.
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Native American attack on English settlement as imagined by a 19th century coloured woodcut print
Leverett framed the war, not as a clash between sovereign nations but as a simple rebellion; he stated that since the native peoples had signed an agreement in 1671 recognizing the authority of the English crown, their uprising was an action of treason and thus the colonial government could justify severe punishments, executions and enslavement. To offset the crushing economic costs of the war, Leverett authorized the capture and forced sale of Native Americans. In a signed certificate of September 12, 1676, Leverett condemned at least 70 indigenous men, women and children to “perpetual servitude” and authorized their transport to the Caribbean where they were sold as slaves.
Leverett died in office, supposedly from kidney stone complications, on March 16, 1679, aged 62-63.
Massachusetts gave him an elaborate funeral at public expense; the Massachusetts General Court voted a substantial 100 pounds (over $300,000 today) towards its expenses. An "Order of March" is a written plan specifying exactly how people were to be arranged in a formal procession--who walked where, in what sequence and what each person carried or did. The surviving Order of March for Leverett's procession, probably prepared under civil and military direction, specified exactly who was to march in the procession and who (including substitutes) was to carry each piece of his armour and other ceremonial objects. Men walked at the four corners of the hearse carrying banners. Immediately before the hearse came men carrying pieces of Leverett's military equipment--his helmet, armour, gauntlets, sword, shield and spurs. Another man led a horse. There is even evidence that Harvard students, grammar-school boys and military companies participated in the larger procession. All this emphasized Leverett's position both as Governor and his long military career. Leverett was buried "with great pomp" in Kings Chapel Burying Ground in Boston.
artist's reconstruction of Governor John Leverett's funeral procession, Boston, March 25, 1679 based on the surviving Order of March
A recent visit to his burial site led me to a greater understanding of more specific Puritan practices.
KING'S CHAPEL BURYING PLACE
The English Puritans who established Boston in 1630 needed a place to bury their dead. King’s Chapel Cemetery, established on the outskirts of the new Puritan settlement, was first called “The Old Burying Place”. After 1760, it started to be called the Chapel Burying Ground, borrowing the name of its neighbour, King’s Chapel, even though it was never affiliated with that or any church. (This was a town burial ground, not a churchyard and it is still owned by Boston.) Those buried here in the first thirty years were predominantly English-born immigrants who came to the New World seeking religious freedom and new economic opportunity. For the first generation, there are few gravestones; people were buried there for decades before stone markers became common. Today there are 505 headstones and 29 tabletop tombs left to mark the more than 1000 people buried in this small place. Among the best-known people buried here are John Winthrop, Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, influential Puritan minister John Cotton and Mary Chilton, a Mayflower passenger traditionally said to be the first European woman to step ashore at Plymouth.
Originally graves and tombstones were scattered through the ground without any orderly pathways but during the 19th century, Americans began treating cemeteries as landscaped public places; King’s Chapel Burying Ground acquired walkways, pathways and an ornamental iron fence. And many of the gravestones were moved into neat rows. Thus, the stones therefore, do not necessarily stand over the people whose names appear on them.
John Leverett and members of his immediate family are buried here (originally in tomb No. 30) Historical accounts state that there was a horizontal slab over the Leverett tomb bearing an eleven-line inscription to Governor Leverett. But by 1902, the stone had become so badly worn that the inscription could no longer be deciphered. Could it be one of the remaining old horizontal slabs? There is a marker on the iron fence indicating that Governor Leverett is indeed buried in this cemetery.
A walk through this cemetery is a study of the Puritan view of death. Skulls, bones and hourglasses from the 1600s represent death and judgement; winged faces or cherubs from the early-mid 1700s refer to the souls and resurrection; urns and willows from the late 1700s to early 1800s suggest mourning, memory and grief.
The early stones at King’s Chapel do not show crosses; instead, you see the death’s head, a skull, often with wings. This wasn’t intended to be frightening but rather to communicate something like, “you will die, your body will decay but your soul will continue, so prepare yourself.” The wings are particularly significant; a winged skull combines the mortality of the body with the flight of the soul.
And the stones do not state that the deceased is in Heaven. Inscriptions are factual “Here lies the body of…who died…aged…” Here (this particular place) Lyes (the remains are physically below) The Body (not necessarily the soul) … of the identified person…Who Died (death is recorded as fact). The message is: The body is here. The soul is elsewhere. Death is certain. Be prepared.
This is another feature of Puritan theology which emphasizes God’s sovereignty in salvation; human beings cannot guarantee another person’s salvation merely by praising them after death. Thus, stones don’t announce affectionate thoughts like “She is now an angel in Heaven”, “loving father, beloved mother or child”. An early Puritan gravestone isn’t telling how much the family loved the deceased. Later New England gravestones became more sentimental and confident about reunion, heaven and personal virtues.
Early Bostonians called these places burying grounds, not cemeteries—literally just a place where bodies are buried.
Puritans avoided an elaborate religious funeral because they did not believe that the living could assist the dead spiritually. They believed that once death occurred, a person’s eternal fate was settled. Thus, praying for the dead had no purpose in their theology. A funeral was mainly for the living—an occasion to confront one’s mortality and God’s judgment, not a religious service intended to help the deceased reach Heaven. And thus, the gravestones speak to the passer-by. A skull looks outward at you, an hourglass tells you that your time is running out, an inscription that says “here lies the body of…” makes one confront the reality of death.
An early Puritan funeral, like John Leverett’s in the 1670s, was deliberately stripped of all religious ceremony. The body normally remained at home before burial. Family or friends prepared it—washing it, arranging it, and wrapping it for burial. Coffins were plain and locally-made.
Nonetheless, a Puritan funeral could still be a major social event. Plain Puritan theology did not necessarily mean a tiny or emotionally-restrained funeral. John Leverett’s funeral in 1679 was described as one with considerable ceremony. As Governor, he would have had an impressive public funeral, while the religious understanding of burial remained distinctly Puritan.
The most important public part of the Puritan funeral was the procession. Everyone wore black or somber colours. Pallbearers carried the coffin while respected members of the community carried the black pall cloth which was draped over it. Bells likely tolled as the procession moved through Boston from the family home to the burying ground. Family, neighbours and prominent members of the community followed in order reflecting their relationship and social position. (Governor Leverett’s coffin would have been followed by civic and military officials, prominent Bostonians, family, neighbours and townspeople.) The procession, not the graveside service, was the central ceremony. There was almost nothing at the gravesite—no prescribed burial service, no minister saying prayers over the coffin, no sacrament, no sermon. People stood silently together while the coffin was lowered and the grave filled.
The family might have distributed mourning gloves, particularly to ministers, pallbearers and important participants. Mourning could become surprisingly expensive for while
Puritans distrusted religious pomp for death, Boston eventually became famous
for expensive funerals. By the late 1600s, prosperous families distributed souvenirs like mourning gloves, scarves, rings, heraldic escutcheons; these weren’t
religious objects but symbols of family standing and social relationships. The pressure to host a respectable funeral could become overwhelming; families sometimes mortgaged property or went into debt to meet community expectations. Widows and children often inherited not only grief but crushing funeral expenses. Food
and drink might be offered at gatherings, but these were social customs rather
than rites for the salvation of the deceased
KING’S CHAPEL
King’s Chapel Cemetery (aka The Old Burying Ground) is adjacent to King’s Chapel church. The day I visited the cemetery, the church was open and I was fortunate to get a one-on-one personal tour by a very knowledgeable and passionate guide.
For sixty years, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was governed by Puritan leaders who sought to create a society based on Puritan religious principles. Religion and government were deeply intertwined. Church membership was initially required for full political participation and religious dissenters could be banished, executed or fined.
In 1686, a small Anglican congregation formed in Boston and was given powerful support from the English Governor who simply took a portion of the Old Burying Ground and gave it to the Anglicans for their new chapel. (Several graves were disturbed and the remains reburied in a mass grave.) In 1754 a stone structure replaced the wooden church, but as the congregation ran out of money, the intended tower and steeple were never completed. Eventually the cemetery next door assumed the name of the church, although there was no affiliation; the cemetery today is run by the Parks authority; the church is a Unitarian church. Today the National Park Service considers King’s Chapel one of the finest surviving colonial church interiors in America.
My tour guide gave me a wonderful history of the church. For instance, in 1714, it became the first church in New England to install an organ. Puritans of early Massachusetts did not celebrate Christmas which they regarded as unspiritual but because the Anglicans did observe Christmas, they decorated the church with evergreens and introduced formal Christmas worship to Boston. After the American Revolution, King’s Chapel rejected some of their Anglican practices and became America’s first Unitarian Christian Church. The congregation today describes itself as Anglican in worship, Christian Unitarian in theology and congregational in governance.
A unique feature of the chapel are the numbered box pews--small, enclosed compartments, which could be purchased, transferred, and willed/inherited by individual families. Wealth, social standing, age, public position (a process known as “seating the meeting house”) influenced where people sat. Not everyone needed to own a pew as they could sit in the gallery or along the sides. Indigenous and both free and enslaved black worshippers had to sit in designated gallery areas. (More than 200 people have been identified as slaves of the church congregants and clergy.)
A prosperous family might arrive together, open the little pew door and settle into their family’s private space in the church. Children could sit with their parents and because the sides were relatively high, a restless child could be somewhat contained. Depending on the design, benches could run along several sides of a box pew so some worshippers might be sitting sideways or facing each other, rather than facing the minister. People could bring cushions, footstools and other small comforts. There was no central heating in colonial churches, so pew boxes offered some protection from drafts and helped retain the warmth generated by people sitting together. Women sometimes brought foot warmers, small metal containers holding hot coals, which could be placed on the floor of the pew.
Another interesting feature of King’s Chapel is the crypt; this is different from the old burying ground beside the church. The burying ground belonged to the town; the crypt beneath the church was created for those wealthy congregants who wished to be buried in consecrated land. The crypt contains 21 vaulted brick tombs; 20 were private family tombs, arranged along the walls beneath the church and, if possible, right beneath the family’s box pew. The 21st tomb was called the Strangers’ Tomb for people without a family tomb including travellers, sailors, and unclaimed bodies.
There was no
lighting in the crypt, individual tombs had gates or doors. And because there
was no embalming, the smell of decomposition in the crypt and in the chapel
above would have been overwhelming. (Apparently, this was just something the
congregation learned to lived with.) The crypt was not a place where families
went to sit beside deceased relatives, so memorial tablets were placed in the
church above. By 1853, Boston prohibited open-air tombs and King’s Chapel began
sealing the tombs and closing the crypt for burials. Recently, the church
realized the educational value of its history and began offering guided tours.
I can’t believe how much information I learned in 45 minutes.
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