The Puritan Fathers are often blamed on account of their witchcraft persecutions. Long after Massachusetts had confessed her wrong-doing, England and Germany put people to death for witchcraft. Twenty-five years after persecution had ceased in New England, Chief Justice Matthew Hale, of England, sent a mother and her little daughter to the scaffold for the same offence; and one hundred and one years afterwards Germany did likewise. The age in which these men lived is responsible for these things, and not the men themselves. They were founders of schools, and were not intolerant. I do not believe in the cry of the “good old times” simply. There are more good men and women now than ever before. I think it almost unfortunate to explain away witchcraft and some other peculiar things of those times, as then some people would have nothing to talk about and sneer at and criticise the Pilgrim Fathers. Some persons like to continue this. Dr. Blake of Boston, says that a good Baptist brother had often met him and chaffingly asked, “How is Roger Williams to-day?” when Mr. Blake, tiring of the question, answered, “Oh, he is warm and dry by this time.” The Pilgrims had especially three noble qualities: Earnestness, definiteness of belief and stalwartness of spiritual life.
GENERAL WILLIAM EMERSON STRONG.
With the death of General William E. Strong of Chicago, in April of the present year, there passed away another of the distinguished volunteer soldiers of the United States who won distinction during the War of the Rebellion, and at the close of that great conflict returned to civil life to become the flower of American manhood, and a perfect representative of American citizenship. Brave, loyal and patriotic, when the call came for his services in support of the Union he was prompt to respond, and was a faithful and gallant soldier until the struggle was ended and victory achieved. When that time came it found him equally ready to return to peaceful pursuits in which in later years his high character and ability made him both successful and distinguished.
William Emerson Strong was born in Granville, in Washington County, New York, August 10, 1840. The family to which he belonged was one of the oldest and most noted of the Puritan families of New England. Elder John Strong, the founder of the family in America, was a native of Taunton, England—where his ancestors had been honorably mentioned in public records as long ago as 1545. He sailed from Plymouth in the ship “Mary and John,” March 20th, 1630, in company with one hundred and forty other persons. They landed at Nantasket, (twelve miles s. e. of Boston) at the end of a voyage of more than seventy days, and John Strong settled at Northampton, Massachusetts. Here several generations of his descendants lived, and from thence representatives of the family drifted into other States, to become conspicuous in all the walks of life.
One of these descendants, but three or four generations removed from the pilgrim John Strong was Caleb Strong, one of the framers of the Federal Constitution, Governor of Massachusetts from 1800 to 1807, and again from 1812 to 1816, and also one of the first United States Senators from the “Old Bay State.”
Other representatives of the family who have achieved extraordinary distinction have been Gen. George C. Strong, who was mortally wounded while leading the Federal troops in the assault on Fort Wagner, July 18th, 1863, Rear Admiral James Hooker Strong of the United States Navy, Theron R. Strong, at one time a Judge of the Supreme Court of New York State, William Strong one of the most noted of American jurists, and Simeon Strong, who sat on the Supreme Court Bench of Massachusetts from 1800 to 1805.
General William E. Strong was descended on the father’s side from the Emerson family of New England, one of his near kinsmen being Ralph Waldo Emerson, the poet-philosopher, whose name is revered by all those who appreciate the purest and best in intellectual culture.
Gen. Strong’s father, John Emerson Strong, was a wealthy manufacturer and merchant of Granville, New York, up to 1849, when he met with business reverses which changed the character of his business and led him to seek a new location. In the spring of 1853 he removed from New York to Wisconsin, and settled with his family at Jefferson Prairie, in Rock County, where he purchased a farm and turned his attention to bringing it under cultivation. His son William was at this time thirteen years of age. Prior to the removal of the family from New York he had enjoyed all the educational advantages afforded by the excellent schools of the town in which he had lived and had made good progress in his studies. From the time he was thirteen until he was seventeen years of age however, he was busily employed at work on his father’s farm and only attended school during the winter months of each year with the exception of one year, when he had the privilege of spending six months in the preparatory department of Beloit College.
In the fall of 1856 when he was in his seventeenth year, he entered the law office of Strong & Fuller, at Racine, Wisconsin, and under their preceptorship began the study of law. He was at that time an active, manly young fellow, and he entered upon the work of fitting himself for a professional career with all the ardor, enthusiasm and determination which characterized him in later years. Whatever he undertook to do, he endeavored to do better than it had been done before. In everything he strove to excel, and in this he observed the spirit of the old motto “Tentanda est Via,” placed upon the Strong escutcheon three hundred years ago.