The Great Newburyport Fire, May 31, 1811. Historic Ipswich. Judge Samuel Phillips died in 1802, four years before his long-time friend Eliphalet Pearson returned to Andover. On the occasion of the judge's death, Reverend Bentley observed in his diary: “His political influence with the majority in Andover has long been lost.” [1] Maybe so. But he wanted to be remembered. In his will he bequeathed to P.A. £1000, “a part of the interest of which [was] to be expended in the distribution of pious books in Andover.” He also gave £3000 for “a more general distribution of like pious books, specifically the Westminster Assembly’s Shorter Catechism, Philip Doddridge’s A Plain and Serious Address to the Master of a Family on Family Religion, Doddridge’s Sermons on the Religious Education of Children, William Law’s Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, and John Mason’s Treatise on Self Knowledge. These were “to be distributed among poor and pious Christians, to whom such writings may be peculiarly grateful, and also among the inhabitants of new towns and plantations, or other places, where the means of religious knowledge and instruction are but sparingly enjoyed.” [2]
Pearson was one of those who had witnessed Phillips's will [3], but for himself, he had no real interest in the townies of Andover or townies elsewhere for that matter. He was aiming higher; his thoughts were global. He wanted Calvinists to conquer the world. First, though, a seminary to train would-be conquerers was required. There was one immediate problem, however. Like-minded people in Newburyport, Massachusetts, especially Reverend Samuel Spring, a follower of Samuel Hopkins, were thinking of combating Unitarians and their ilk by founding a seminary of their own. Both factions knew two seminaries wouldn't do. The Hopkinsonians [4] and the Calvinists needed to join forces against their common enemy. But how did Andover win the location debate? Pearson was the negotiator, who, reportedly, rode to Newburyport thirty-six times, some twenty miles each way, to convince Spring and the others of what he believed to be the better choice. [5]
One selling point may have been that it would be easier for the group to establish themselves as part of the already existing P.A., since they may have run into unsympathetic parties while trying to incorporate as a separate entity. In any case, I do wonder how a seminary of any sort in Newburyport would have weathered the series of calamities that nearly destroyed the economics of the city in the early years of the nineteenth century. First, there was the Embargo of 1807, imposed by Thomas Jefferson during the Napoleonic Wars. Next, on May 31, 1811, the Great Newburyport Fire ravaged some 250 buildings over sixteen acres. (It led to the Brick Act of 1811 and the Brick Act of 1812, which are the reasons why downtown Newburyport is largely brick today. [6]) Then came the War of 1812 and in its aftermath a boycott of English goods -- more woe for all of New England's port cities. As Van Wyck Brooks wrote of that immediate period in Salem, Massachusetts: "[It] had an immemorial air, the air that gathers about towns which, having known a splendid hour, shrinks and settles back while its grandeur fades.” [7] Meanwhile, the region's factory towns were on the rise. In Brooks's words: "Every village with a waterfall set up a textile-mill or a paper-mill, a shoe-factory or an iron-foundry.” [8] As it happened, Andoverites established one of each.
Reverend Bentley had nothing good to say about the founding of the seminary. Of course, he was a biased Unitarian, but his comments bear their measure of truth. He especially had it out for Pearson. “Pearson is guilty of “Religious Ambition,” he wrote, [9] The seminary opened because {Pearson was “not promoted to the Chair of Camb.” [10] “The known desertion of Pearson from Camb., under disappointment, & the want of harmony between the Theological interests at Camp. & And., it is expected will occasion some serious embarrassments to the new institution.” [11] “The popular papers in Boston, tho they continued favorable to Calvinism, do not conceal their enmity to the spiritual tyranny of the sect & still continue their remarks upon Dr. Pearson’s Sermon… He is not very fond of giving his compositions to the world [it] having been hypercritical & [he having been] odious for his severity.” [12] And: “When the Institute at Andover was contemplated to gratify the vanity of Pearson, & the zeal of the fanatics against the Institute at Cambridge…” [13]
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1. Bentley, February 12, 1802.
2. A Brief History of the American Tract Society, Instituted at Boston, 1814: and its Relations to the American Tract Society at New York, Instituted 1825 (Boston: Press of T.R. Marvin), 5.
3. HUA, Eliphalet Pearson papers, HUM 79, Box 1, Folder 73.
4. Gordon S. Woods gives us a good definition of "Hopkinsianism," as it was sometimes called, in Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 603-604. It was, he writes, “an uncompromisingly rigid brand of Calvinism in which sinners could do absolutely nothing to bring out their salvation.” And yet one’s benevolent character presumably would give one assurance that one was saved, although there were no guarantees. Hopkins himself believed that in the millennium all people would again speak and read one universal language and that they would learn it via cheap books. I.e.,tracts. So they were in complete agreement with the Calvinists there.
5. D. Hamilton Hurd, History of Essex County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men (Philadelphia: J. W. Lewis & Co., 1888), 1633.
6. See Particular Account of the Great Fire at Newburyport… Extracts from the Newburyport Herald, the Boston Gazette, and other Local Newspapers (Newburyport, 1811).
7. Van Wyck Brooks, The Flowering of New England (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1936), 211.
8. Ibid., 4.
9. Bentley, September 25, 1808.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid, December 19, 1807.
12. Ibid., December 24, 1815.
13. Ibid., March 14, 1811.
Pearson was one of those who had witnessed Phillips's will [3], but for himself, he had no real interest in the townies of Andover or townies elsewhere for that matter. He was aiming higher; his thoughts were global. He wanted Calvinists to conquer the world. First, though, a seminary to train would-be conquerers was required. There was one immediate problem, however. Like-minded people in Newburyport, Massachusetts, especially Reverend Samuel Spring, a follower of Samuel Hopkins, were thinking of combating Unitarians and their ilk by founding a seminary of their own. Both factions knew two seminaries wouldn't do. The Hopkinsonians [4] and the Calvinists needed to join forces against their common enemy. But how did Andover win the location debate? Pearson was the negotiator, who, reportedly, rode to Newburyport thirty-six times, some twenty miles each way, to convince Spring and the others of what he believed to be the better choice. [5]
One selling point may have been that it would be easier for the group to establish themselves as part of the already existing P.A., since they may have run into unsympathetic parties while trying to incorporate as a separate entity. In any case, I do wonder how a seminary of any sort in Newburyport would have weathered the series of calamities that nearly destroyed the economics of the city in the early years of the nineteenth century. First, there was the Embargo of 1807, imposed by Thomas Jefferson during the Napoleonic Wars. Next, on May 31, 1811, the Great Newburyport Fire ravaged some 250 buildings over sixteen acres. (It led to the Brick Act of 1811 and the Brick Act of 1812, which are the reasons why downtown Newburyport is largely brick today. [6]) Then came the War of 1812 and in its aftermath a boycott of English goods -- more woe for all of New England's port cities. As Van Wyck Brooks wrote of that immediate period in Salem, Massachusetts: "[It] had an immemorial air, the air that gathers about towns which, having known a splendid hour, shrinks and settles back while its grandeur fades.” [7] Meanwhile, the region's factory towns were on the rise. In Brooks's words: "Every village with a waterfall set up a textile-mill or a paper-mill, a shoe-factory or an iron-foundry.” [8] As it happened, Andoverites established one of each.
Reverend Bentley had nothing good to say about the founding of the seminary. Of course, he was a biased Unitarian, but his comments bear their measure of truth. He especially had it out for Pearson. “Pearson is guilty of “Religious Ambition,” he wrote, [9] The seminary opened because {Pearson was “not promoted to the Chair of Camb.” [10] “The known desertion of Pearson from Camb., under disappointment, & the want of harmony between the Theological interests at Camp. & And., it is expected will occasion some serious embarrassments to the new institution.” [11] “The popular papers in Boston, tho they continued favorable to Calvinism, do not conceal their enmity to the spiritual tyranny of the sect & still continue their remarks upon Dr. Pearson’s Sermon… He is not very fond of giving his compositions to the world [it] having been hypercritical & [he having been] odious for his severity.” [12] And: “When the Institute at Andover was contemplated to gratify the vanity of Pearson, & the zeal of the fanatics against the Institute at Cambridge…” [13]
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1. Bentley, February 12, 1802.
2. A Brief History of the American Tract Society, Instituted at Boston, 1814: and its Relations to the American Tract Society at New York, Instituted 1825 (Boston: Press of T.R. Marvin), 5.
3. HUA, Eliphalet Pearson papers, HUM 79, Box 1, Folder 73.
4. Gordon S. Woods gives us a good definition of "Hopkinsianism," as it was sometimes called, in Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 603-604. It was, he writes, “an uncompromisingly rigid brand of Calvinism in which sinners could do absolutely nothing to bring out their salvation.” And yet one’s benevolent character presumably would give one assurance that one was saved, although there were no guarantees. Hopkins himself believed that in the millennium all people would again speak and read one universal language and that they would learn it via cheap books. I.e.,tracts. So they were in complete agreement with the Calvinists there.
5. D. Hamilton Hurd, History of Essex County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men (Philadelphia: J. W. Lewis & Co., 1888), 1633.
6. See Particular Account of the Great Fire at Newburyport… Extracts from the Newburyport Herald, the Boston Gazette, and other Local Newspapers (Newburyport, 1811).
7. Van Wyck Brooks, The Flowering of New England (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1936), 211.
8. Ibid., 4.
9. Bentley, September 25, 1808.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid, December 19, 1807.
12. Ibid., December 24, 1815.
13. Ibid., March 14, 1811.
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