921.73 W589w.pdf - Mesa FamilySearch Library

Sccoml Genera[io_. 197
while his father was minister there, on the 25th
of March, 1633. He was the eldest of three
sons, all of whom graduated at Harvard. He
was educated for the ministry, and commenced
preaching about the year 1656. The same
year, he was admitted freeman of the Massa-
chusetts colony. He went to Bitlerica in
I658, then a new town, having been settled but
five years, and was employed as a preacher
from year to year, until Nov. I I, 1663, when he
was ordained pastor of the church which was
organized about that time. Here he remained
almost fifty years from his ordination, and was
esteemed, as Dr. Cotton Mather says, 'a rev-
erend, holy, and faithful minister of the gospel.'
Although a man of respectable talents, and
sometimes called to preach on public occasions,
I do not find that he published any thing. He
preached the artillery election sermon in 1682.
A manuscript volume of his sermons is in the
library of his descendant, Rev. Moses G.
Thomas of Concord, N.H. I have in my
possession part of a folio manuscript, of sev-
eral hundred pages, containing sketches of his