[GEORGE FULLER was born in Deerfield, Massachusetts, in 1822. He was descended from old Puritan stock, and his ancesters were among the early [pg 377] settlers of the Connecticut River valley. He inherited a taste for art, as an uncle and several other relatives of the previous generation were painters, although none of them attained any particular reputation. He began painting by himself at the age of about sixteen years, and at the age of twenty entered the studio of Henry K. Brown, of Albany, New York, where he received his first and only direct instruction. His work, until the age of about forty years, was almost entirely devoted to portraits; but he is best known, and will be longest remembered, for his ideal work in figure and landscape painting, which he entered upon about 1860, but did not make his distinctive field until 1876. From the latter date, to the time of his death, he painted many important works, and was pecuniarily successful. He received probably the largest prices ever paid to an American artist for single figures: $3,000 for the Winifred Dysart, and $4,000 each for the Priscilla and Evening; Lorette. He died in Boston on the twenty-first of March, 1884, leaving a widow, four sons, and a daughter. During May, a memorial exhibition of his works was held at the Museum of Fine Arts.—EDITOR.]
THE LOYALISTS OF LANCASTER.
By HENRY S. NOURSE.
The outburst of patriotic rebellion in 1775 throughout Massachusetts was so universal, and the controversy so hot with the wrath of a people politically wronged, as well as embittered by the hereditary rage of puritanism against prelacy, that the term tory comes down to us in history loaded with a weight of opprobrium not legitimately its own. After the lapse of a hundred years the word is perhaps no longer synonymous with everything traitorous and vile, but when it is desirable to suggest possible respectability and moral rectitude in any member of the conservative party of Revolutionary days, it must be done under the less historically disgraced title,—loyalist. In fact, then, as always, two parties stood contending for principles to which honest convictions made adherents. If among the conservatives were timid office-holders and corrupt self-seekers, there were also of the Revolutionary party blatant demagogues and bigoted partisans. The logic of success, though a success made possible at last only by exterior aid, justified the appeal to arms begun in Massachusetts before revolt was prepared or thought imminent elsewhere. Now, to the careful student of the situation, it seems among the most premature and rash of all the rebellions in history. But for the precipitancy of the uprising, and the patriotic frenzy that fired the public heart at news of the first bloodshed, many ripe scholars, many soldiers of experience, might have been saved to aid and honor the republic, instead of being driven into ignominious exile by fear of mob violence and imprisonment, and scourged through the century as enemies of their country. In and about Lancaster, then the largest town in Worcester County, the royalist party was an eminently respectable minority. At first, indeed, not only those naturally [pg 378] conservative by reason of wealth, or pride of birthright, but nearly all the intellectual leaders, both ecclesiastic and civilian, deprecated revolt as downright suicide. They denounced the Stamp Act as earnestly, they loved their country in which their all was at stake as sincerely, as did their radical neighbors. Some of them, after the bloody nineteenth of April, acquiesced with such grace as they could in what they now saw to be inevitable, and tempered with prudent counsel the blind zeal of partisanship: thus ably serving their country in her need. Others would have awaited the issue of events as neutrals; but such the committees of safety, or a mob, not unnaturally treated as enemies.
On the highest rounds of the social ladder stood the great-grandsons of Major Simon Willard, the Puritan commander in the war of 1675. These three gentlemen had large possessions in land, were widely known throughout the Province, and were held in deserved esteem for their probity and ability. They were all royalists at heart, and all connected by marriage with royalist families. Abijah Willard, the eldest, had just passed his fiftieth year. He had won a captaincy before Louisburg when but twenty-one, and was promoted to a colonelcy in active service against the French; was a thorough soldier, a gentleman of stately presence and dignified manners, and a skilful manager of affairs. For his first wife, he married Elizabeth, sister of Colonel William Prescott; for his second, Mrs. Anna Prentice, but had recently married a third partner, Mrs. Mary McKown, of Boston. He was the wealthiest citizen of Lancaster, kept six horses in his stables, and dispensed liberal hospitality in the mansion inherited from his father Colonel Samuel Willard. By accepting the appointment of councillor in 1774, he became at once obnoxious to the dominant party, and in August, when visiting Connecticut on business connected with his large landed interests there, he was arrested by the citizens of the town of Union, and a mob of five hundred persons accompanied him over the state line intending to convey him to the nearest jail. Whether their wrath became somewhat cooled by the colonel's bearing, or by a six-mile march, they released him upon his signing a paper dictated to him, of which the following is a copy, printed at the time in the Boston Gazette:—
STURBRIDGE, August 25, 1774.
Whereas I Abijah Willard, of Lancaster, have been appointed by mandamus Counselor for this province, and have without due Consideration taken the Oath, do now freely and solemnly and in good faith promise and engage that I will not set or act in said Council, nor in any other that shall be appointed in such manner and form, but that I will, as much as in me lies, maintain the Charter Rights and Liberties of the Province, and do hereby ask forgiveness of all the honest, worthy Gentlemen that I have offended by taking the abovesaid Oath, and desire this may be inserted in the public Prints. Witness my Hand
ABIJAH WILLARD.
From that time forward Colonel Willard lived quietly at home until the nineteenth of April, 1775; when, setting out in the morning on horseback to visit his farm in Beverly, where he had planned to spend some days in superintending the planting, he was turned from his course by the swarming out of minute-men at the summons of the couriers bringing the alarm from Lexington, and we next find him with the British in Boston. He never saw Lancaster again. It is related that, on the [pg 379] morning of the seventeenth of June, standing with Governor Gage, in Boston, reconnoitring the busy scene upon Bunker's Hill, he recognized with the glass his brother-in-law Colonel William Prescott, and pointed him out to the governor, who asked if he would fight. The answer was: "Prescott will fight you to the gates of hell!" or, as another historian more mildly puts it: "Ay, to the last drop of his blood." Colonel Willard knew whereof he testified, for the two colonels had earned their commissions together in the expeditions against Canada. An officer of so well-known skill and experience as Abijah Willard was deemed a valuable acquisition, and he was offered a colonel's commission in the British army, but refused to serve against his countrymen, and at the evacuation of Boston went to Halifax, having been joined by his own and his brother's family. In 1778, he was proscribed and banished. Later in the war he joined the royal army, at Long Island, and was appointed commissary; in which service it was afterwards claimed by his friends that his management saved the crown thousands of pounds. A malicious pamphleteer of the day, however, accused him of being no better than others, and alleging that whatever saving he effected went to swell his own coffers. Willard's name stands prominent among the "Fifty-five" who, in 1783, asked for large grants of land in Nova Scotia as compensation for their losses by the war. He chose a residence on the coast of New Brunswick, which he named Lancaster in remembrance of his beloved birthplace, and there died in May, 1789, having been for several years an influential member of the provincial council. His family returned to Lancaster, recovered the old homestead, and, aided by a small pension from the British government, lived in comparative prosperity. The son Samuel died on January 1, 1856, aged ninety-six years and four months. His widowed sister, Mrs. Anna Goodhue, died on August 2, 1858, at the age of ninety-five. Memories of their wholly pleasant and beneficent lives, abounding in social amenities and Christian graces, still linger about the old mansion.
Levi Willard was three years the junior of Abijah. He had been collector of excise for the county, held the military rank of lieutenant-colonel, and was justice of the peace. With his brother-in-law Captain Samuel Ward he conducted the largest mercantile establishment in Worcester County at that date. He had even made the voyage to England to purchase goods. Although not so wealthy as his brother, he might have rivaled him in any field of success but for his broken health; and he was as widely esteemed for his character and capacity. At the outbreak of hostilities he was too ill to take active part on either side, but his sympathies were with his loyalist kindred. He died on July 11, 1775. His partner in business, Captain Samuel Ward, cast his lot with the patriot party, but his son, Levi Willard, Jr., graduated at Harvard College in 1775, joined his uncle Abijah, and went to England and there remained until 1785, when he returned and died five years later.