P.A. Archives. Galen Ware (b. 1789) worked in Andover as a printer in 1810-1811, i.e., just as briefly as the partners in the firm Ames & Parker had a decade earlier. How Ware found his way there is not discoverable in any of the documents I have read so far. However, he apprenticed with William Hilliard, who Eliphalet Pearson had hired to be Harvard's printer. Pearson may have known him in Cambridge, and suggested he come here when his obligation to Hilliard was met. And a Hilliard graduate so to speak would have appealed to Pearson in his quest to create a Harvard rival in Andover. What is more, notes in the P.A. Archives show his name at the top of a list of Andover printers. [1] It is a list that omits Ames & Parker. I know that all the other printers on the list had some affiliation with P.A. and the seminary. This may indicate that Ware did, too. In any case, at age twenty-one, Ware began to operate a printing press somewhere in town. [2]
Only two items he published are extant. One, A Sermon [on Exod. xx. 13] delivered at Bedford, Mass., by Samuel Stearns on July 1, 1810 after the death of Mr. David Bacon who was shot through the body, June 25 by Mr. William Merriam, relates the details of what was then a notorious homicide case. It then becomes a sort of Murder 101. E.g., murder is more than killing a person, which may occur by accident, in time of war, or in self-defense. There are discussions of suicide and of dueling, the insanity defense, and of intemperance, “not a vice by itself,” but one that leads to vice, crime, via passion, rage, and fury.
The other publication, A Collection of Letters Relative to Foreign Missions; Containing Several of Melvill Horne’s “Letters on Missions,” and Interesting Communications from Foreign Missionaries. Interspersed with Other Tracts, is much more pertinent to my story. It seems ready-made for seminary students.
Horne (c. 1761-1841) was a British Methodist, who went as a missionary to Sierra Leone. The letters implored others to follow his example: “Speak ye desolate shores of Africa; declare ye bloody fields of Indostan; bear your impartial testimony, ye numerous islands of the Western and Pacific oceans!” He decried “the Scarlet Whore with whom the nations of the earth have committed spiritual fornication.” He recommended the formation of “Associations, for collecting money, obtaining information, procuring missionaries…” He addressed the objections, lack of success being “the most fatal [one].” To that, he retorted, “We have not taken proper steps to insure success. We have hardly dared to hope for it.” He said those who become missionaries should expect “to die in the harness,” and if he can’t imagine doing so, “that man has not the soul of a genuine missionary.” Then he issued a kind of dare:: “… men whose minds are of a common cast are unfit for it.”
He was not in favor of married men and fathers as missionaries: “The health, strength, and habits of a mother and her children are to be considered…” He believed that if a missionary wanted a wife, he would be better served to marry a native convert who was already accustomed to the lifestyle and climate of the region.
To the argument that there were plenty of heathens at home to be converted, he declared: “… ministers who go abroad so far from being felt as a loss at home, will be the means of doing more good among us, than if they had continued in England. For foreign Missions will have the same influence on religion, as foreign commerce has upon agriculture and manufactures. As Christianity prevails abroad, so it will flourish at home.”
Difficulties? “The Jesuits surmounted them all. The Moravians have done the same.” To the idea that missionaries would produce a revolt in the African colonies: he asked for an example, claiming he had never heard of one.
He wasn’t optimistic about American converts: “I think the Society would do well to keep their eye towards Africa, or Asia: these countries are not like the wilds of America, where long labor will scarcely collect sixty people to hear the word…” India, by contrast, was an ideal mission, in his opinion, because of the uniformity of the language: “The language of Bengal is spoken over a vast extent of country. The preacher on the coast of Africa, in America, in Greenland, who has learned the language of the Heathen, finds himself confined to a few hundreds or thousands of miserable Pagans; and when he goes beyond the narrow limits of his tribe, or horde, is a barbarian to neighboring nations.” Having once learned Bengal, he “will have more millions to address than the others can find hundreds or thousands.”
***
Records shows that on May 11, 1811, a son was born to Ware and his Cambridge-born wife in Andover. [3] So he was still here then, but gone by 1812, when he is known to have worked as a printer in Northampton, Massachusetts. From there, he was called to fight in the War of 1812. By 1813, he was back living in Cambridge at least until 1822. [4] I could not find a published death date for him.
Emma Forbes Ware, who produced a Ware family genealogy, knew even less about him than we do. Although she recorded his 1810 marriage, her text says that Galen Ware "left home" -- i.e., Framingham, Massachusetts -- "and was never heard from again." [5]
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1. PAA, Warren Fales Draper vertical file, correspondence, retyped, not original ms., J. D. Flagg in a November 14, 1903, letter to Warren F. Draper.
2. A typed copy of a press clipping in a file on "Early Printers" at the Andover Center for History and Culture says that Ware worked out of a one-story building at the corner of Main Street and Chestnut Street. It was the same building that housed the post office, according to the unsigned piece: "Recollections of Old Andover as it was Fifty Years Ago," presumed to be from the Andover Advertiser, dated July 24, 1858.
3. Essex Institute Historical Collections, Vol. 16 (Salem: Printed for the Essex Institute, 1879), 120-121.
4. Email to author from Kevin Wisniewski, American Antiquarian Society, October 30, 2019.
5. Emma Forbes Ware, Ware Genealogy: Robert Ware of Dedham, Massachusetts, 1642-1699, and his lineal descendants (Boston: C.H. Pope, 1901), 21.
Only two items he published are extant. One, A Sermon [on Exod. xx. 13] delivered at Bedford, Mass., by Samuel Stearns on July 1, 1810 after the death of Mr. David Bacon who was shot through the body, June 25 by Mr. William Merriam, relates the details of what was then a notorious homicide case. It then becomes a sort of Murder 101. E.g., murder is more than killing a person, which may occur by accident, in time of war, or in self-defense. There are discussions of suicide and of dueling, the insanity defense, and of intemperance, “not a vice by itself,” but one that leads to vice, crime, via passion, rage, and fury.
The other publication, A Collection of Letters Relative to Foreign Missions; Containing Several of Melvill Horne’s “Letters on Missions,” and Interesting Communications from Foreign Missionaries. Interspersed with Other Tracts, is much more pertinent to my story. It seems ready-made for seminary students.
Horne (c. 1761-1841) was a British Methodist, who went as a missionary to Sierra Leone. The letters implored others to follow his example: “Speak ye desolate shores of Africa; declare ye bloody fields of Indostan; bear your impartial testimony, ye numerous islands of the Western and Pacific oceans!” He decried “the Scarlet Whore with whom the nations of the earth have committed spiritual fornication.” He recommended the formation of “Associations, for collecting money, obtaining information, procuring missionaries…” He addressed the objections, lack of success being “the most fatal [one].” To that, he retorted, “We have not taken proper steps to insure success. We have hardly dared to hope for it.” He said those who become missionaries should expect “to die in the harness,” and if he can’t imagine doing so, “that man has not the soul of a genuine missionary.” Then he issued a kind of dare:: “… men whose minds are of a common cast are unfit for it.”
He was not in favor of married men and fathers as missionaries: “The health, strength, and habits of a mother and her children are to be considered…” He believed that if a missionary wanted a wife, he would be better served to marry a native convert who was already accustomed to the lifestyle and climate of the region.
To the argument that there were plenty of heathens at home to be converted, he declared: “… ministers who go abroad so far from being felt as a loss at home, will be the means of doing more good among us, than if they had continued in England. For foreign Missions will have the same influence on religion, as foreign commerce has upon agriculture and manufactures. As Christianity prevails abroad, so it will flourish at home.”
Difficulties? “The Jesuits surmounted them all. The Moravians have done the same.” To the idea that missionaries would produce a revolt in the African colonies: he asked for an example, claiming he had never heard of one.
He wasn’t optimistic about American converts: “I think the Society would do well to keep their eye towards Africa, or Asia: these countries are not like the wilds of America, where long labor will scarcely collect sixty people to hear the word…” India, by contrast, was an ideal mission, in his opinion, because of the uniformity of the language: “The language of Bengal is spoken over a vast extent of country. The preacher on the coast of Africa, in America, in Greenland, who has learned the language of the Heathen, finds himself confined to a few hundreds or thousands of miserable Pagans; and when he goes beyond the narrow limits of his tribe, or horde, is a barbarian to neighboring nations.” Having once learned Bengal, he “will have more millions to address than the others can find hundreds or thousands.”
***
Records shows that on May 11, 1811, a son was born to Ware and his Cambridge-born wife in Andover. [3] So he was still here then, but gone by 1812, when he is known to have worked as a printer in Northampton, Massachusetts. From there, he was called to fight in the War of 1812. By 1813, he was back living in Cambridge at least until 1822. [4] I could not find a published death date for him.
Emma Forbes Ware, who produced a Ware family genealogy, knew even less about him than we do. Although she recorded his 1810 marriage, her text says that Galen Ware "left home" -- i.e., Framingham, Massachusetts -- "and was never heard from again." [5]
_________________
1. PAA, Warren Fales Draper vertical file, correspondence, retyped, not original ms., J. D. Flagg in a November 14, 1903, letter to Warren F. Draper.
2. A typed copy of a press clipping in a file on "Early Printers" at the Andover Center for History and Culture says that Ware worked out of a one-story building at the corner of Main Street and Chestnut Street. It was the same building that housed the post office, according to the unsigned piece: "Recollections of Old Andover as it was Fifty Years Ago," presumed to be from the Andover Advertiser, dated July 24, 1858.
3. Essex Institute Historical Collections, Vol. 16 (Salem: Printed for the Essex Institute, 1879), 120-121.
4. Email to author from Kevin Wisniewski, American Antiquarian Society, October 30, 2019.
5. Emma Forbes Ware, Ware Genealogy: Robert Ware of Dedham, Massachusetts, 1642-1699, and his lineal descendants (Boston: C.H. Pope, 1901), 21.
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