NEHEMIAH WALTER, BORN IN IRELAND, 1663.
At a meeting of the Cambridge (Mass.) Historical Society held in Cambridge in 1906, a paper was read by William Coolidge Lane, Esq., in which he devoted some attention to the career of Nehemiah Walter. The matter is of so interesting a nature that we here reproduce a portion of the paper, the title of which is “The Nehemiah Walter Elegy on Elijah Corlet.” Walter was born in Ireland in 1663 and came to New England in 1679. Mr. Lane tells us that he became a minister highly esteemed here.
At the age of thirteen he is said to have readily conversed in Latin. He had been apprenticed to an upholsterer in 1674, but it was found that his tastes were altogether literary. After coming to this country, he was at first placed under Ezekiel Cheever, the Boston schoolmaster, but entered college almost immediately, in 1680. He was butler in 1683, and graduated in 1684. Soon after, he made a voyage to Nova Scotia, where he became proficient in French, but returned to study in Cambridge, and was often employed by Corlet as his assistant. “It reflected a luster on his character that the memorable Mr. Elijah Corlet, master of the Grammar School in Cambridge, used to express a distinguishing value for him by employing him to officiate at times in the care of his school when obliged to be absent himself, always esteeming his place well supplied by Mr. Walter, and fully confiding in his skill, prudence and diligence.”
The Elegy was composed when he was but three years out of college, and was still studying for the ministry in Cambridge. In 1688 he was ordained as a colleague with John Eliot in Roxbury, Mass., then 84 years old. His people in Roxbury, and Eliot himself, showed a deep affection for him, and the liveliest satisfaction at having secured him for their minister. Walter continued as the minister of the church in Roxbury up to 1750, so that his ministry and Eliot’s together covered a period of one hundred and eighteen years. He was for many years a member of the corporation of Harvard College, and sided with Increase Mather, his father-in-law. After Mather’s exclusion from the presidency, he attended no more meetings of the corporation, and was considered to have abdicated his office.
HON. EUGENE A. PHILBIN.
A Regent of the University of the State of New York.
A MEMBER OF THE SOCIETY.