History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts - citizen hylbom blog

190 HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
puts our Election into Mourning." His death
was referred to by Mr. Walter in the Thursday
lecture with reference to 2 Kings ii. His funeral
was attended on Friday by the magistrates and
ministers, six of the latter serving as bearers. The
burial-spot, since then the tomb of the pastors of
the First Church of Koxbury, is in the cemetery,
on the corner of Washington and Eustis streets.
The Natick cliurch mourned their spiritual father
many a day, for no Elisha caught the mantle of
the ascending prophet. In amiability of character
he M'as our New England St. John ; in abundant
labors for an outside race our apostle to the In-
dians was a very St. Paul. Cotton Mather's anagram
on his name reveals his earnest spirit, for
" Eliot," reversed, reads " toile." Three places in
Massachusetts shall ever honor his holy memory, —
Roxbury, Newton, and Natick.
The cloud which Eliot in his later years saw
resting over his cherished work did not lift, but
rather darkened, after his decease. In 1693 one
writes, "Since blessed Eliot's death the Natick
church is much dwindled." Daniel Takawampbait
had been ordained as their teacher, probably when
Eliot's age took him from active service. Judge
Sewall's interleaved almanac, under date of July 29,
1683, says: "The first Ind ordeyned Minest was
Daniel of Natick."
But the light was waning. In 1698 two pas-
tors were chosen by the legislature to visit all the
native plantations and report their state. Here
they found a church of seven men and three
women, "their pastor Dan' Takawampbait (ordained
by the Rev and holy man of God, John
Eliot deceased) who is a person of great knowl-
edge. Here are fifty-nine men, and fifty-one wo-
men, and seventy children under sixteen." In
1699 they inform the legislature that tlicir house
was fallen down, and ask leave to assign John Collar,
Jr., a little nook of land in their plantation, in
recompense for his building another meeting-house.
Two hundred acres, after some delay, weri' granted
him. Takawampbait died Scpirmlirr 17, 171(i,
aged sixty-four, as his humble ^loiic on the side-
walk informs us. Two Indians preached tran-
siently after him ; the last record of such was in
1719. The ten members of IfiDS, as the church
probably added none, may all have jjassitl away
in thenext twenty years.
Natick had been a purely Indian settlement.
The town records were written at one time in their
language by Thomas Wabaii, son of Eliot's first
convert. Besides acting as village clerk, he was a
justice of the peace. One of his arrest-warrants
reads :
—
" You you big constable ;
quick you cafchum
Jeremiah Offscow ; strong you holdum ; safe you
bringum afore me,
" Thos Waban, Justice peace."
At a public meeting. May 4, 1719, certain per-
sons, twenty in all, of those six Speens, and an-
other, a woman, were declared to be " the Only and
True Proprietors of Natick."
In 1720 John Sawin erected a saw-mill first on
the river, but soon removed it to the brook named
after him. His father, Thomas of Sherborn, made
a grist-mill for the Indians as early as 1686.
Some time later the dam just above the bridge
was made. The little island was then the south
bank of the stream, but a freshet once found a
short cut, and to-day the new channel is rather
the wider of the two.
Rev. Oliver Peabody (Harvard, 1721) was en-
gaged as an Indian missionary by the same society
that assisted Eliot. He took a mission service
which eleven men, it is said, had declined. His
first sermon was preached August 6, 1721. A
meeting-house must have been built, as a proprie-
tors' meeting in September granted iloses Smith
of Needham forty acres on the southwesterly side
of Pegan Hill for finishing the meeting-house.
Mr. Peabody found the original church extinct,
and no records preserved. Therefore, December 3,
1729, a new church of three Indians and five
whites was formed. Rev. Mr. Baxter of Medfield,
whose daughter, Hannah, Mr. Peabody had mar-
ried, preaching the sermon. And our Indian mis-
sionary was ordained a' fortnight later at Cambridge.
He built his house on the Sherborn road, on a
knoll commanding a fine river-view. Traces of
the cellar may yet be seen.. The Indians brought
two young elms, and planted them as friendship
trees in his front yard. They stood about a cen-
tury.
in 172S the proprietors had voted " that Rev.
Mr. Peabody, during his continuance in the work
of the ministry in Natick, have tiie sole use and
improvement of the Ministerial Lot," a hundred-
acre tract on Pegan Plain, the very heart and busi-
ness centre of Natick to-day ; also "that there be
a Contribution for y' Rev. Mr. Peabody the last
Sabbath in every month, Lieut. Wamsquan to hold
the box."