My mother, Eliza Ward Maxson, was born in Newport, Rhode Island, on September 11, 1783, my father being seven years her senior. The childhood of both was, therefore, surrounded by the facts and associations of the war of American independence. He, in fact, as I have heard him say, was born under the rule of the King of England, and his father considered the Revolution so little justified that to the day of his death he refused to recognize the government of the United States; but, living a quiet life on his farm, he was never disturbed by the pressure which exiled the noted and active Tories.
My mother's earliest recorded ancestor was a John Maxson, one of the band of Roger Williams, driven by the Puritans out of Massachusetts into the wilder parts of "Rhode Island and Providence Plantations," where—in the absence of all established law, as well as government—they might worship God in the way their consciences dictated, free from the restrictions on the liberty of conscience imposed by the Pilgrim Fathers. There, at last, complete freedom of dissent was found, and one of the consequences was that the colony became a sort of field for Christian dialectics, where the most extreme doctrines on all points of Christian belief were discussed without other or more serious results of the odium theologicum than the building of many meeting-houses and the multiplication of sects. Among these sects was one which played an important part in the local theology of that day and for many years afterward, that known as the "Seventh-Day Baptist," to which, it seems, John Maxson belonged. It was not a new invention of the colonists, but had existed in England since the days of early dissent, and it is possible that John Maxson had brought the doctrine with him from England. Adhering to the practice of baptism by immersion, the sect also maintained the immutable obligation of the Seventh-Day Sabbath of the Ten Commandments, the Jewish day of rest.
The grave disabilities imposed on them in Massachusetts by the obligatory abstention from labor on two days, on one day by conscience and the other by the rigorous laws of the Puritans, made Roger Williams's little state the paradise of the Sabbatarians, and the sect flourished greatly in it, while the social isolation consequent on the practice of contracting marriages only in their church membership—made imperative if family dissensions were to be avoided on a question of primary importance to that community, which had sacrificed all worldly advantages to what it believed to be obedience to the Word of God—at once knit together their church in closer relations, and drew to it others from the outside, attracted by the magnetism of a more ascetic faith.
Amongst the emigrants from England on the Restoration were a family by the name of Stillman, who, having had relations with the regicides, went into what was then the most obscure and remote part of New England and settled at Wethersfield, in Connecticut. One of the brothers,—George,—hearing of this strange doctrine denying the sanctity of the "Lord's Day," came to Newport to convert the erring brothers; but, convinced by them, remained in the colony, where he became a shining light. Thus it happened that both lines of my ancestry became involved in the mystic bonds of a faith which was shut off in a peculiar manner from all around them. The consequent isolation, I fear, made much for self-righteousness. In their eyes it was this observance which maintained continuity between the Christian church and the institutions imposed in Paradise, and therefore made them peculiarly the people of God. This amiable fanaticism, fervent without being uncharitable, interfered in no wise with the widest exercise of Christian sympathy with other sects, the observance of the Seventh-Day Sabbath not being held as an essential to godliness or to Christian fellowship, the non-observance being possibly only due to ignorance, so that the relations of the historic First Seventh-Day Baptist Church at Newport with the churches observing the "Lord's-Day Sabbath" were always most kindly. The meeting-house occupied by the Sabbatarians on the seventh day was occupied by one of the Sunday-observing sects on the first, and the preachers of one often officiated for the other. But the worldly advantage enjoyed by the Sunday keeper was so considerable that all who did not hold to the finest scruple of conscience in their conduct passed over to the majority, and were excluded from the communion as a precaution against the Sunday keepers becoming a majority in the church and taking it away from the Sabbath keepers, as did actually occur with one of their congregations in Vermont. In our community generally there was a most scrupulous avoidance of any occupation on Sunday which might annoy those who held it as Sabbath, and though in the State of New York the laws were extremely liberal in this respect, my father in my boyhood always made it a point not to allow in his workshop any work which would be heard by the neighbors.
The absolute freedom of religious belief and practice, for the first time found in this colony, had, as its first effect, the banishment of all forms of sectarian persecution, so that the maxim of the Broad Church—"Freedom in non-essentials"—was here put in practical activity to an extent probably never before known in the Christian world.
It can be readily understood that this continual selection of the most scrupulous consciences, the closest thinkers, and the least worldly characters in the church of my ancestors must have developed a singularly fine and cutting-edge temper in its adherents, and the succession of generations of men and women who had graduated in the school of Scripture dialectics, and knew every text and its various interpretations, made a community of Bible disputants such as even Massachusetts could not show.
Amongst the refugees for religious liberty who found their billet at Newport were many Jews, between whom and the Sabbatarians the community of the Sabbath was a strong tie, and amongst the formulas of prayer in use even down to my own boyhood I remember a common petition for the restoration of Israel; and the Sabbatarian eye of prophecy looked forward to the day when, in the peace of the millennium, the Jews in Jerusalem should be the witnesses of the faith of the Seventh-Day Baptist Church in the keeping alive the observance of the Eden repose initiated by the Creator. Amongst my own earliest personal recollections concerning Newport is that of a visit of some Jewish friends of my mother's girlhood, who lived there, to my father's house in Schenectady.
My mother's grandfather, on her mother's side, was a clergyman, Elder Bliss, who, though a non-combatant, was a fiery patriot, two of whose sons were in the Revolutionary army. His house was in a valley under the fort held by the British force in occupation, between whose guns and those of a battery held by the rebels there was occasional firing, during which the balls sometimes went through the house, so that when the first shot was heard he used to order all the family down into the cellar, which afforded a valid protection. The girls of the household were patriots, in whom zeal often overran discretion, and the pranks they played on the British officers must sometimes have tasked the gentlemen in the latter to a point on the limits of endurance. I remember one incident recounted by my grandmother to my mother, and by her to me, in which two of the girls stole past the sentry in the British fort, or battery, for I could never learn exactly what was the nature of these two outposts of authority and rebellion, and, running the flag down, tore it into thirteen stripes and ran it up again and escaped unseen. This insult brought the whole force about their ears, and the commandant came, with his staff, to question the household if any clue to it could be found. Fortunately, when the girls had come back from their expedition and went giggling in their glee to their mother, she suspected some dangerous venture and peremptorily ordered them to hold their tongues and not come to her with any of their mischief. She was thus able to reply to the officer charged with the inquisition that she knew nothing of the matter, and such was the rigid obligation of the truth in that Puritan community that even the danger of a court-martial would not have induced her to tell a falsehood, however the truth might compromise the family. The officers, who well knew their sometime hosts, were so well assured of this that the seniors were at once acquitted, and, regarding the girls, they were too gentlemanly to push an inquiry which might have punished a childish freak with the gravest military consequences, for, as the officer on the quest said, "Even it's being a woman would not protect the author of such a grave insult to the flag." Irrepressible as they were, in spite of the danger they had so narrowly escaped, they, not much later, stole the sword of one of the officers when they were all temporarily quartered on the preacher, and, when the island was evacuated by the British forces, brought it out and gave it to the brother, an officer in the American army.
A feat of practical housewifery, which my mother used to tell of, shows another side of the Rhode-Islander, which is not less illustrative of the stock. One of the boys of the pastor's family volunteered, or was drawn, in the militia for active service; but, as he had no clothes fit for the camp, the sisters had a black and white sheep brought from the pasture and clipped, and within twenty-four hours had spun, woven, and made up a suit of mixed gray clothes for the brother to go to the war in. No doubt such things have been done in many another home, even in later times, but this is the home I have to deal with, and in this my mother grew up. She was the eldest of a family of five, left motherless when she was sixteen. Her father was the director of the smallpox hospital in Newport, then an institution of grave importance to the community, as the practice of obligatory inoculation prevailed, and all the young people of the colony had to go up in classes to the hospital and pass the ordeal. Her mother's death left her the matron of the hospital and caretaker of her sister and brothers, and the stories of her life at that time, which she told me now and then, showed that, with the position, she assumed the effective authority, and ruled her brothers with a severity which my own experience of her maturer years enables me to understand. "Spare the rod and spoil the child" was the maxim which flamed in the air before every father and mother of that New England, and my mother's physical vigor at sixty, when her conception of authority began to relax,—I being then a lad six feet high and indisposed to physical persuasion,—satisfied me that when her duty had required her to assume the responsibility bequeathed her by her mother, she was fully competent to meet it.
Accustomed to the hardest life, the most rigid economy in the household, and without servants, for, except rare and lately emancipated negro slaves, there was then no servile class in that colony, the children had to perform all the duties pertaining to the daily life, official or private, and my mother was able to pull an oar or manage the sail-boat with her brothers, and catch the horses and ride them bareback from pasture, when necessary for the daily work, which was not insignificant, for Newport was really the seaport of that section of the State, and as it was on an island of importance, the intercourse with the mainland called for sea and land service. The boys were all fishermen, for a large part of the subsistence of the family came from the fishing-grounds outside the harbor, and, as the oldest brother took early to the sailor's life, my mother had to assume a larger share of all the harder services. The hospital was also the quarantine station, and received all the cases of smallpox which came to the port, and they must have been many and fatal, for I have heard her say that she had to go the rounds of the hospital at night, and that there would sometimes be five or six dead in the dead-room at once.