ANNUAL ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT.

[Delivered by JOHN A. Andrew, LL.D., January 2, 1867.]

GENTLEMEN OF THE HISTORIC-GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY

You can hardly appreciate the delicacy of the position involved in the possession of a chair the duties of which are never fulfilled, and which is itself hardly ever occupied. Chosen a year ago to the Presi dency of this Society, to which I had for some time belonged - though an inactive member- there has been one meeting only, during the intervening period, at which I found it in my power to be present. Returning to the profession of the law, after five years withdrawal, you will easily comprehend the necessity which has compelled me to yield both time and thought to its exactions, as the condition of rendering such a return either useful or practicable.

But, the design, the studies, the work and the progress of your Society are, neither of them, without their attractions to my own mind. Nor am I at all insensible of their value. All of knowledge we can gather about our predecessors, their lives, their thoughts, their achievements, their daily practices, their characteristic methods, their industry, their worship, their proficiency in the sciences and the arts, their style of speech, their sympathies and their controversies, the economy of their households and of their civil government, their philosophy and their legislation — and all that we can in like manner garner up, methodize, and transmit to the future, belonging to the life, character and history of our own time, tend, not only to enlarge the formal stock of common learning, but to preserve the treasures of human experience and thought, to diffuse them among men, and to increase, for countless generations, the absolute wisdom of mankind.

The individual man, by memory, observation and reflection, acquires skill, handicraft, education, learning and wisdom as the results of his own life, and the application of his individual faculties to the circumstances of his personal experience. Besides that, he feeds also on the instructions of his parents, the traditions of his elders, and is improved by the observations and experiments of others, his own. cotemporaries. He and they mutually borrow and impart, gaining strength, stimulation and development from the presence and example of each other. And, still beyond all that, there is a certain body of thought, found in the community, of which the individual man is but an inconsiderable fraction, and which is a part of its essential life, not proceeding from any individual source, not related to one more than to others, not traceable, perhaps, to any single mind living in any time, but inherited by the whole people as a part of the wisdom of the nation, the community or the race to which they belong. The discov eries in science, the inventions in the mechanic arts, the improvements in domestic economy, the generalizations of philosophy, the creations of poetry traceable in their origin to great thinkers and actors of a given time- pass out into the minds and become part of the familiar knowledge-modifying the thought, shaping the conduct and enriching the lives of many thousands or millions of men, until, with their reVOL. XXI.

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sults, they become incorporated into the unconscious experience, and help to compose the wisdom of a whole nation, or of a whole age. Transmitted to the next generation, they form a part of its stock of inherited knowledge, as well as of its inherited wisdom. If the story of the when, how, where, by whom, with all their attendant incidents and details, likewise goes down, they become a part of history. And then the succeeding generation possesses, not only the result of the thought of the thinker, of the skill of the actor, and the enlarged wisdom of the generation to whom they were immediately sent, but accumulates also the largest number of facts and phenomena, needful for understanding, interpreting, generalizing, adapting and improving upon the past, so as to enable the men of the present to fulfil their highest mission, and prepare for their own future.

All

Thus History touches all human life, on every side. It instructs the individual. It gives a new tone to a community. It elevates a nation. It enlivens a generation. It inspires the human race. that may be known, remembered, felt, loved, hated, venerated or shunned; all things and all ideas, cognizable by the human mind, or which excite human emotion, all spiritual as well as all material things, are found within its domain. It does not forget the form of a shepherd's crook, nor of the manger in a Syrian stable, while rising to the contemplation of Oriental philosophy two thousand years old, or to the exploration of the astronomy of the Magi. Nor does it forget to preserve the genealogy of Joseph, though soaring to report the song of angels, and struggling to record the sublime story and mystery of redemption.

You do not yield to the promptings of a mere, intellectual curiosity, nor of local, family or sectional vain-glory- when you devote this institution, with fit instrumentalities for conducting learned researches and treasuring up their results, to the study of the history and genealogy of New England. You would have done enough to merit gratitude and praise-if, out of the pious and heroic times of the colonies, of the Revolution, of the recent war for the Union of the States, the liberties of the people and the rights of human nature— if, out of the biographical annals of sweet and gentle women, of men courageous, tender and true, not known to worldly fame, but still fit companions of the many leaders in thought and action, whose names are a part of the glory of New England greatness-you would have done enough, had you made it your successful purpose to rescue from the common decay those materials from which some future Walter Scott of our own might do for mankind in the treatment of New England story, what the great "Wizard of the North" did for the many million readers of the English tongue, in the treatment of the history and legendary lore of Scotland. Our annalists, genealogists, and antiquaries, with pains-taking, and often with quite unambitious and apparently unrewarded care, furnish not only the threads and clues, the essential details of fact needful for the development of historical truth, and of philosophic history- but they are daily rescuing from remorseless time the materials for song and legend, for poetry and romance, by the aid of which creative Art will reproduce, on its charmed pages, that transcendant form of history, which teaches not by dry narration, but by the resurrection before our very eyes of the living, breathing, moving originals themselves. So, too, you work for juris

prudence, in the interest of the great Science of discerning and administering justice; in the interest of wiser, more equitable and less prejudiced legislation; the reform of manners not more than the reform of those who declare and control their regulation; the amelioration of the estate of the humbler, ruder, more suffering classes of our common humanity, and even of the condition and treatment of the offending and the bad-whom God forever pities and remembers, however, in our haughtiness, we may despise and forget them.

For the sake of History itself, let us deal honestly and fearlessly with the record our predecessors have left behind them. For the sake of every science needful for the development of human society, its emancipation from avoidable error and pain; and for their own sakes too-who, now removed from the distractions of this world's allurements, must desire, more than all things, the universality of Justice. and Truth-let us explore the lives and actions of men, and their generations, with pious carefulness, but with impartial fidelity and independence. While there is no error possible, into which wise men have not at some time fallen; nor any wrong of which even good men have not at some time been guilty, and while-judging the conduct of men in other epochs by the light of our own-we are sometimes compelled both to wonder and to shudder at the audacity with which ignorance has dogmatized, and the cruelty with which poor mortals have assumed to deal the bolts of heaven; the indifference with which the laws of nature and the rights of humanity have been contradicted; the hardness which all they were called to suffer who maintained any protest in their behalf-we are comforted, also, by the exhibitions of heroism, faith, and the sweet fragrance of human love (almost divine) found on the same pages aad exemplified in the same lives. They remind one of the union, five hundred years ago, of that "Hal o' the Wynd," so noble in his generosity, so dauntless in his courage, so terrible in the battle, and so ready to "fight for his own hand"-slaying men, like Samson, without conscious malice, and without remorse-with that "Fair maid of Perth," in whom there spoke refinement, spirituality, and calm philosophy-in the midst of border war, clannish strife, and universal ignorance. But that the heart of the "Fair Maid " had already given itself to the rustic champion of Perth is seen even in her remonstrance against his bearing and fashioning the weapons of bloody strife. She tempered the asperity of her rebukes by applying to Henry himself a charity she would have had him feel towards his foe. "The truth of Heaven," she exclaimed, "was never committed to a tongue, however feeble, but it gave a right to that tongue to announce mercy while it declared judgment."

In order to deal fairly with any high pursuit, the becoming and convenient appliances of study must not be overlooked. The society has not failed to accumulate already a valuable body of material for the uses of the ingenious student, antiquary or historian. It must continue to grow in richness and in volume. And the time has fully come when necessity as well as convenience-when beauty, fitness and order, all combine to demand a new and more commodious depositary. Without more ample accommodations for your library, rare books and manuscripts will serve for but little use. I hope that the zeal of the members of the society, and the enlightened generosity of

liberal men, will give early success to an enterprise, not much longer possible to be delayed, for the procurement of an appropriate and commodious building, to be the permanent home of the association.

I trust that these words, which I have ventured, as introductory to the New Year on which we enter to-day, may be taken as an earnest of more service, which many persons (myself one of them) would gladly render, if we could, in the prosecution of historical and biographical research, and the illustration of the earlier life of New England. The more, that we neglect, may be perhaps forgiven by our fortunate brethren, happy in the indulgence of their taste, and their love of learning, when they remember that we have at least a common sympathy with their pursuit, an appreciation of their useful studies, and that we share with them the spirit of pious veneration for the ancestry from whom we have in like manner descended.

"Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us. The Lord hath wrought great glory by them through his great power from the beginning. Such as did bear rule in their kingdom, men renowned for their power, giving counsel by their understanding, and declaring prophecies. Leaders of the people by their counsels, and by their knowledge of learning, meet for the people, wise and eloquent in their instructions. Such as found out musical tunes, and recited verses in writing. Rich men furnished with ability, living peaceably in their habitations. All these were honored in their generations, and were the glory of their times. There be of them, that have left a name behind them, that their praises might be reported. And some there be which have no memorial; who are perished as though they had never been; and are become as though they had never been born; and their children after them. But these were merciful men, whose righteousness hath not been forgotten. With their seed shall continually remain a good inheritance, and their children are within the covenant. Their seed standeth fast, and their children for their sakes. Their seed shall remain forever, and their glory shall not be blotted out. Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore."

WARWICK, MASS.

[THE following article relating to the early history of Warwick was copied by Samuel Blake, Esq., of Dorchester, from the manuscript left by his brother, the late Hon. Jonathan Blake.]

In the year 1735, June 10th, "At a great and general Court or assembly for his Majesties Province in the Massachusetts Bay," In answer to the Petitions of Samuel Newall, Thomas Tileston, Samuel Gallop and Abraham Tilton and others, in connection with each of them, the said Court voted that four several tracts of land for townships, each of the contents of six miles square, be laid out in suitable places in the western parts of this Province, and that the whole of, each town be laid out into sixty-three equal shares, one share of which to be for the first settled minister-one for the use of the min

istry, and one for schools, and that on the other sixty shares in each town there be sixty settlers admitted, and in the admission thereof, preference to be given to the Petitioners, and such as are the descendants of the Officers and Souldiers who served in the expeditions to Canada in the year 1690 :-viz. one of the said townships to each of the aforesaid persons with such others as joined with them in the Petitions, and in case there be not a sufficient number named in the said four Petitions, as were either Officers or Souldiers in the said expedition, or the descendants of such as were lost, or are since deceased, so as to make sixty settlers for each town, that then such others as were in the expedition, or their descendants, be admitted settlers there, until sixty persons in each township be admitted, and inasmuch as the Officers and Souldiers in that expedition were very great sufferers and underwent uncommon hardships :-Voted, that this Province be at the sole charge of laying out the said four townships, and of admitting the settlers. That the settlers or Grantees be, and hereby are, obliged to bring forward the settlements of the said four townships in as regular and defencible a manner as the situation and circumstances will admit, and that in the following manner, viz:-That they be on the granted premises respectively, and have each of them an house eighteen feet square and seven feet stud at the least, that each right or grant have six acres of land brought to, and ploughed or brought to English grass, and fitted for mowing. That they respectively settle in each plantation or township a learned Orthodox Minister, and build a convenient meetinghouse for the public worship of God in each township. These con ditions to be complied with within five years from the confirmation of the Platts.-Committees were appointed to lay out the aforesaid grants, and bonds were required of each settler, under the penalty of Twenty Pounds, running to the Treasurer of the Province, and if the grantees, or any of them, fail of fulfilling the terms aforesaid, they forfeited all their title back to the Province.

Warwick was one of these four grants, and the one Petitioned for by Samuel Newall and others-and it was first called the Plantation of "Roxbury, or Gardner's Canada."

In June, 1736, Samuel Newall and the Officers and Soldiers in the company under the command of Capt. Andrew Gardner in the Canada expedition were authorized by the General Court to call their first meeting of the Proprietors.

Said meeting was held at the house of James Jarvis in Roxbury, September 22d, 1736. Capt. Robert Sharp was chosen moderator, and William Dudley, Esq. chosen Proprietor's Clerk.

At this meeting a committee, consisting of Capt. Robert Sharp, Ensign Samuel Davis and Mr. Gershom Davis, were chosen, to procure a Surveyor and lay out the "home lots." Each lot to contain

not less than Fifty acres, nor more than Sixty acres, and each Proprietor was taxed twenty-three shillings to defray the expense of laying out said lots, and paying the costs incurred in Petitioning the Court. It is not now known at what time these home lots were laid out, but by the Proprietors' records, on the twenty-fourth of October, 1737, the sixty Proprietors by name, drew for their respective lots, and paid twenty shillings each to defray the expense. The home lots, as they are called, began to be numbered in the southwest part of the VOL. XXI.

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