Dan Harper | Sermons

Category: Life Issues

  • What about Assisted Dying?

    Sermon copyright (c) 2025 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The text below has not been proofread. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.

    Sermon

    This is a sermon that grew out of the concerns and interests of people in First Parish. It began with questions a couple of you have asked me about assisted dying. And then after I announced this topic, quite a few of you sent me articles and other material about assisted dying. Thank you to everyone who sent me those materials, and to everyone who talked with me about the topic.

    My goal this morning is not to give you an exhaustive overview of the topic of assisted dying. Instead, what I’d like to do is to consider what it means to make personal choices around assisted dying. As usual, I’m not going to try to give you any final answer; I’m merely going to try to lay out some of the main ethical issues. It will then be up to you to figure out how to address these ethical questions in your own life.

    When talking about ethical issues, it often helps to have a concrete case study to consider. For a case study about assisted dying, I’m going to give you the story of the death of Scott Nearing, as told by his wife Helen Nearing. Soctt Nearing was a well-known figure in the twentieth century, though he is mostly forgotten today. He first came to prominence during the First World War, when he was fired from his position as college professor because of his public support of pacifism during that war. (Pacifism was essentially illegal during the First World War; the First Amendment was ignored, and anyone who spoke publicly in favor of pacifism risked job loss, imprisonment, and officially sanctioned harassment.) After the First World War, Nearing became a Socialist, and then during the Great Depression a Communist. Then he and his wife Helen decided that they wanted to live by the efforts of their own hands, first moving to a farm in Vermont. When a ski resort opened next to their farm, they felt they had to move, but rather than sell their land to the ski resort, which would have made them millions of dollars in profit, they gave it to the town as conservation land. They then moved to Maine, where they wrote a book “Living the Good Life” describing how they lived off the land, and how they followed what we would now call a vegan diet. This book became a sort of Bible for the 1960s “Back to the Land” movement, and the Nearings had many visitors who came to their farm to learn how they, too, might live off the land.

    I tell you all these details of Scott Nearing’s life to help you understand that he was an independent thinker who was not bound by a conventional religious worldview; he was a freethinker. This will become important later. Now I’ll give you the story of his death, as it was told by Helen Nearing:

    “A month or two before Scott died, he was sitting at table with us at a meal. Watching us eat he said, ‘I think I won’t eat anymore.’ ‘All right,’ said I. ‘I understand. I think I would do that too. Animals know when to stop. They go off in a corner and leave off food.’

    “So I put Scott on juices: carrot juice, apple juice, banana juice, pineapple, grape — any kind. I kept him full of liquids as often as he was thirsty. He got weaker, of course, and he was as gaunt and thin as Gandhi.

    “Came a day he said, ‘I think I’ll go on water. Nothing more.’ From then on, for about ten days, he only had water. He was bed-ridden and had little strength but spoke with me daily. In the morning of August 24, 1983, two weeks after his 100th birthday, when it seemed he was slipping away, I sat beside him on his bed.

    “We were quiet together; no interruptions, no doctors or hospitals. I said ‘It’s all right, Scott. Go right along. You’ve lived a good life and are finished with things here. Go on and up — up into the light. We love you and let you go. It’s all right.’

    “In a soft voice, with no quiver or pain or disturbance he said ‘All … right,’ and breathed slower and slower and slower till there was no movement anymore and he was gone out of his body as easily as a leaf drops from the tree in autumn, slowly twisting and falling to the ground.

    “So he returned to his Maker after a long life, well-lived and devoted to the general welfare. He was principled and dedicated all through. He lived at peace with himself and the world because he was in tune: he practiced what he preached. He lived his beliefs. He could die with a good conscience.” (1)

    Thus ends Helen Nearing’s story of how Scott Nearing died. Now let’s consider this story as an ethical case study that might shed some light on assisted dying.

    First, let’s ask: Was Scott Nearing’s death suicide? I would say: yes, it was. He starved himself to death. Think about it this way: if Helen Nearing had called 9-1-1, when the EMTs came they would have given him intravenous feeding; that is, a third party would see that Scott Nearing was dying, and they would have done what they could to stop him from dying.

    Second, let’s ask: Was this assisted dying? Again, in my opinion the answer is fairly clear: yes, it was. Helen Nearing helped Scott Nearing to die. She assisted him in reducing his food intake, first to juices, then to only water. When Scott Nearing was bed-ridden, she had to care for him, but she did not force him to eat, nor did she take him to the hospital. She assisted him in dying.

    This is not the usual way we think about assisted dying, of course. We usually think about assisted dying as a patient asking for the assistance of a doctor or other health care professional in finding a way to end their life. And certainly when a health care professional is involved, that raises other ethical questions for the professional. But assisted dying can also take place at home, without medical supervision or assistance.

    Now that we’ve determined that this was assisted dying, let’s consider some of the ethical issues that arise in this case study. And the first issue that has to be considered when considering any form of assisted dying is whether the person dying has given their full consent. When it comes to assisted dying, this is perhaps the trickiest of all ethical considerations. Often, we try to dodge this question, as when we say that assisted dying is acceptable if a doctor determines that the person who wishes to die has only a few months left to live. In such a situation, more people are inclined to say that assisted dying is acceptable; even if someone is unable to give their full consent, perhaps we don’t worry so much about consent because after all the person is going to die soon anyway; and in such cases perhaps assisted dying allows the person to die in dignity, without unbearable suffering and pain.

    But Scott Nearing did not have a terminal diagnosis, so in this case study we cannot dodge the issue of consent. I would say in Scott Nearing’s case that yes, he was able to give full consent. Not only that, but he gave consent repeatedly over a period of time: he gave consent every time he chose not to eat. Furthermore, by putting him on a juice diet at first, Helen Nearing gave him the option to revise his decision; he got terribly thin on that juice diet, but he could still have changed his mind and begun eating once again. So in this case, by choosing this method of dying, Scott Nearing gave the fullest possible consent.

    Consent is very important for at least two reasons. First, obviously we should be concerned about the possibility of family members pushing someone to commit suicide for reasons of their own — they want the person’s money or property, or whatever less-than-savory motivation that might exist. Second, it turns out that many people change their minds during or after a suicide attempt. Back in 1981, Art Kleiner wrote an article titled “How Not To Commit Suicide.” In that article, he documented how when suicide attempts fail (and they often fail), those who attempted suicide decide afterwards that they really wanted to live. (2) Thus consent cannot arise from a momentary impulse; consent can only arise from a carefully considered decision.

    It’s both critically important and quite difficult to determine whether consent has been freely given. Was the person forced into the decision by others? Would the person change their mind if you gave them time to think about it? These are two key questions. In the Scott Nearing case study, we can be about as certain as it’s possible to be that consent was freely given.

    Next we have to consider how a decision to die affects all those around the person who is dying. I assume that we are isolated individuals, but rather that each one of us is a part of the interdependent web of existence, and what we do with our lives will have distinct and definite effects on other people. We especially have an effect on those who are closest to us, but when a person dies by suicide they also have an effect on the wider society, especially those who are required by law and custom to investigate such deaths.

    In the story of Scott Nearing’s death, he did take into account those around him. In particular, he had to take into account his spouse, Helen Nearing. What would Helen think if Scott decided to die? Helen Nearing tells us that several years before he died, Scott Nearing told an interviewer: “‘I look forward to the possibility of living until I’m 99.’ His blue eyes twinkled. ‘It is a precarious outlook, I assure you. … I have almost nothing left but time. But if I can be of service, I would like to go on living.’” Helen then said that Scott “did more than his share of mental and physical work up to his last years.” Helen implies that it was only when Scott felt unable to contribute as much as he felt he should to their partnership that he decided to die; and that, while she may not have fully agreed with him, she understood and supported his decision; supported it to the point that she was willing to care for him in his last couple of weeks when he was bed-ridden. When we consider how a person’s death affects those around them, this helps us understand the difference between assisted dying and other types of suicide. Assisted dying is a decision made in partnership with others, with full awareness of the emotional toll on others, full awareness of the help that will be needed from others, and full awareness of all the impacts on others.

    One should also consider carefully how the means of death will affect others. One brief example: I was on a train once that someone used to die by suicide. When that happens, the train becomes a crime scene, and all of had to stay in the train for a couple of hours. I have a vivid memory of watching the train crew as they walked down the train to talk with the police, of seeing their expressions of pain and shock. You simply do not want to do that to anyone. Then too, there is the impact on the first responders, and all those who will have to investigate. By contrast, Scott Nearing chose a means of assisted dying that was not going to traumatize other people.

    In addition, there are other impacts beyond the emotional impacts. For example, there may be financial impacts. Consider the way assisted dying happens in Switzerland. The legal situation around assisted dying in Switzerland is complex — I don’t pretend to understand all the ins and outs — but from a practical standpoint, while assisted dying is allowed, every unnatural death has to be fully investigated. Those organizations that provide assisted dying in Switzerland charge their clients a fee that covers not only the assisted death, but also the investigation that has to happen afterwards. That way, Swiss taxpayers don’t have to pay every time an assisted death is investigated.

    And then there are the legal implications of assisted dying. But I don’t have time to go into the complicated question of the subtle differences in assisted dying laws in different jurisdictions. Here in the United States, assisted dying is legal in California, Colorado, Hawai’i, Maine, Montana, New Jersey, Oregon, Vermont, and the District of Columbia; yet each jurisdiction has slightly different laws. In other ocuntries, assisted dying is available in Austria, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland; in all Australian states except the Northern Territory; and in the United Kingdom in England, Wales, and Scotland. (3) Each of these jurisdictions has significantly different laws for assisted dying, and each set of laws results in different ethical issues, and I don’t have the time or the expertise to talk about these differences. Beyond the legal questions of assisted dying, there are many other ethical issue that arise. We don’t have the time to cover them all, so I’m going to stick to my purpose: trying to consider the personal choices around assisted dying.

    Thinking about personal choices raises one last question, and that’s the question of religious ethics. In our case study, Scott Nearing did not have a conventional religious perspective, which may have allowed him to perceive options that would not have been apparent to a more conventional religious worldview. So what religious stand do Unitarian Universalists take on assisted dying? There is no simple answer. Ours is a religion that does not have a creed or dogma to which we all must assent. Instead, we leave ethical matters to a person’s individual conscience, while also acknowledging that a person’s individual conscience only exists as a part of a larger community.

    By contrast, many Christians are able to fall back on a simple and straightforward dogma or belief system regarding assisted dying — they would say assisted dying is a sin. Many Buddhists would also feel that assisted dying is unacceptable, since it could affect a person’s next birth. Many Hindus and Jains feel that assisted dying is wrong because it can be seen as a form of violence directed against the self, which goes against the principle of ahimsa, or non-violence. In other words, some religious traditions have firm teachings on assisted dying that are easy to understand and follow.

    In some ways, it would be easier if we Unitarian Universalists had a simple and straightforward perspective on assisted dying. But we don’t. From our religious perspective, we can imagine situations in which assisted dying is quite acceptable — when someone is suffering too much, when life has become a burden, and so on. We can also imagine situations in which assisted dying gets ugly — when it looks too much like eugenics, or when it looks too much like an excuse to get rid of people who are old or disabled, and so on.

    I would say that most of us Unitarian Universalists feel that some kind of assisted dying should be available to those who want it. And most of us probably agree that there should be some limitations to assisted dying and some protections — and I suspect many of us have known someone who died by suicide when that was probably the wrong thing to do. So we want the possibility of assisted suicide, with appropriate protections in place — protections like ensuring consent, and considering the impact on other people.

    Thus we Unitarian Universalists do not have a single straightforward teaching or doctrine that covers assisted dying. Our religious worldview doesn’t force us to find one simple, final answer to every question. Instead, we try to think carefully about difficult ethical questions, to understand our feelings about those difficult questions, and to understand the feelings of those around us. Then we do our best to live out our beliefs, living lives that are in tune with our highest principles, at one with the interdependent web of all existence.

    Notes

    (1) Helen Nearing, “At the End of a Good Life,” In Context, summer, 1990, p. 20. https://www.context.org/iclib/ic26/nearing/
    (2) Art Kleiner, “How Not To Commit Suicide,” CoEvolution Quarterly, summer 1981, pp. 88-109. https://archive.org/details/coevolutionquart00unse_26/page/88/mode/2up
    (3) See, e.g., Fergus Walsh, “How assisted dying has spread across the world and how laws differ,” BBC News website, 29 November 2024. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1dpwg1lq9yo — N.B.: since this article was written, assisted dying has been legalized in England, Scotland, and Wales.

  • Your Job as a Calling (No, Really)

    Sermon copyright (c) 2025 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The text below has not been proofread. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.

    Reading

    The reading was from “Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation,” by the Quaker author Parker Palmer.

    “Vocation does not come from willfulness. It comes from listening. I must listen to my life and try to understand what it is truly about — quite apart from what I would like it to be about — or my life will never represent anything real in the world, no matter how earnest my intentions.

    “That insight is hidden in the word vocation itself, which is rooted in the Latin word for ‘voice.’ Vocation does not mean a goal I pursue. It means a calling that I hear. Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am. I must listen for the truths and values at the heart of my own identity, not the standards by which I must live — but the standards by which I cannot help but live if I am living my own life.”

    Sermon

    Let me tell you a brief story about how someone I know lost their vocation, their purpose in life, and finally found a new purpose.

    My father had a job he absolutely loved, working as an electrical engineer. It was more than a job for him, it was a kind of vocation or calling, and he worked long hours at it, sometimes six days a week. But in his mid-sixties, his energy began to flag a bit, so he asked his employer if he could work part-time. Since that was against company policy, at age sixty-seven, he retired. I still remember the sign he put up over his desk in the basement, which read “Retire — and Die.”

    He moped around for several months, and I think that was the most downbeat I ever saw him. Then two disasters struck which gave him no time for feeling downbeat. The first disaster was a house fire, which meant he had to oversee rebuilding the house. The second disaster was my mother’s terminal diagnosis, giving her a life expectancy of about six years, which meant he had to spend more and more time being a caregiver. Both these disasters provided him with a vocation or calling; maybe not the vocations he would have chosen, but vocations nonetheless.

    After my mother died, my father once again felt himself adrift. The house had been rebuilt long ago, and he was no longer a full-time caregiver. He had to figure out what he was going to do with his life all over again.

    At about this time, he found a book in the local library called “Let Your Life Speak,” written by the Quaker author Parker Palmer (that’s the book this morning’s reading came from). I happened to discover this book at just about this time, and my father and I wound up talking about this book. I was in the middle of my own slow career change right then, a multi-year transition from the residential construction business to working in congregations. As I recall our conversations, there were two things about that book that both of us particularly liked.

    First, Parker Palmer, good Quaker that he is, consistently assumes that a person’s individual vocation has to help wider society in some way. Here a problem arises for many of us: the jobs we have don’t necessarily help wider society. Much of my father’s work as an electrical engineer went towards military applications, and he was entirely not comfortable with that. This is a common problem where many jobs in our society have at least some ethically challenging aspects.

    Yet as we talked it over, my father pointed out that a big part of letting your life speak was how you treat other people in your life. You let your life speak when you treat everyone the way you yourself would like to be treated, especially to people who were lower in social status than you were. As an example, my father talked about the social and class divide that existed in his workplace between the technicians who worked on the shop floor, and the managers and engineers. My father drew a contrast between a manager, known as “Nasty Frank,” on the one hand, and on the other hand an engineer he greatly respected. Nasty Frank was notorious for his obscenity-laden tirades, which he unleashed at anyone subordinate to himself. Nasty Frank was letting his life speak in a way that gave him no credit. By contrast, the engineer who treated the technicians on the shop floor with respect was letting his life speak in ways that reflected a higher moral ideal.

    There was a second aspect of Parker Palmer’s book that we both liked. Parker Palmer did not try to pretend that letting your life speak was going to be easy or straightforward. At one point in the book, Parker Palmer describes a vocational crisis that he was going through, where he felt he needed to change jobs but he had no idea what job he should try to get. There’s a traditional Quaker saying that, in difficult times like that, you should have faith and “way will open.” But Parker Palmer had no sense at all that some kind of way was opening before him. So he turned to an older Quaker friend, and asked her about this notion of “way opening.” She replied, “In sixty-plus years of living, was has never opened in front of me”; then she added with a grin, “but a lot of way has closed behind me, and that’s had the same guiding effect.”

    This was true for both my father and for me. Neither one of us had had the experience of “way opening” before us. Neither one of us had ever had some delightful opportunity dropping into our lives just when we needed it. But both of us had had the experience of “way closing” behind us. When my father was forced to retire, way closed behind him. He could no longer do the thing that had given his life meaning and purpose for several decades. Way closed behind him, as Parker Palmer would say, and my father was forced to find a new vocation, a new way to let his life speak. Then again, after my mother died and my father was no longer a caregiver, way closed behind him, and he felt adrift for a time — until he volunteered through the League of Women Voters to monitor the meeting of the town’s municipal plant, which in turn led him being appointed to that board, eventually serving as its chair, and allowing him the opportunity to help move the municipal light plant to buy as much renewal energy as possible. My father’s experiences also make clear that sometimes your life speaks, not through paid employment, but through your family responsibilities or through your volunteer work.

    The Quakers talk about letting your life speak, but this notion that everyone has a vocation in life is widespread throughout Protestantism, and throughout Western societies that have been shaped by Protestant values. It is not just clergy and monks and nuns who have a religious vocation — so said the Western Protestants — everyone has a religious vocation, because every human being is a part of God’s vision for the universe. This Protestant Christian understanding has permeated even secular Western institutions, so that it is commonplace for all of us, theists and atheists, to talk about having a purpose in life; and that purpose is to make the world a better place — not just a better place for me and my family, but a better place for all human beings. And some Christians and some atheists have extended this vision of a better world beyond just human beings. There are Christians who hope to make the world a better place for all living beings, since every being is a creature made by God; and there are atheists who hope to make the world a better place for all living beings, since all living beings are connected through their existence in earth’s ecosystems. This strand of Western culture sets a very high ethical standard for each and every one of us.

    Based on my own experience, I’d say that it’s incredibly difficult to live up to this very high standard. If you have any humility at all — that is, if you’re not a pathological narcissist — then knowing that you’re supposed to live your life in such a way that you make the world a better place is knowledge that can easily overwhelm you. Yet at the same time, a sense of humility requires us to acknowledge that each of us, as an individual, has very little impact on the world. Because of that, many people give up on trying to attain such a high ethical standard in their lives. But it becomes easier if we understand that that same sense of humility also teaches us that we’re not supposed to save the world all by ourselves. That sense of humility allows us to understand that each individual only has to do their small part of the greater whole. Together, all these little efforts will eventually make the world a better place, but it’s not up to just one person.

    Thus as we think about how to let our lives speak, it’s probably a good idea to recall that we only have to let our lives speak; we don’t have to make our lives shout. You don’t have to amplify your life’s voice so that it’s louder than everyone else’s. In fact, you really only have to live your life so that it speaks to those immediately around you. You may have a job with no morally redeeming features — I’ve had jobs like that — but you can let your life speak in other ways. Any one of us can let our life speak by treating the people immediately around us with respect and dignity. Nor is that an easy task. Many of us men have been caught out by women who drily point out those moments when we men were talking down to women. And when I worked in service-class jobs, I was all too aware of the managerial-professional class people who thought they were treating me with respect, but weren’t. At the same time, we don’t have to like everyone we come into contact with. My father didn’t like Nasty Frank, that obscenity-prone supervisor, but my father did his best to treat him as a human being. Jesus of Nazareth, echoing generations of rabbis, summed it up neatly when he said: Love your neighbor as yourself. If my life speaks in no other way, it is enough that my life speaks through loving my neighbor as I love myself.

    Loving one’s neighbor is something you can do no matter what job you have, where “job” can mean paid employment, or volunteer commitments, or caregiving, or maintaining a household, or simply engaging in essential day-to-day tasks. And it is also possible to have a job where you’re literally helping to save the world, but if you treat the people around you with contempt, you’ve still failed ethically. If you want to let your life speak in the best possible way, it’s probably a good idea to reflect on how you conduct yourself in your job. Personally, I ask myself questions like this: In my job, am I mindful of how what I do affects others? When it comes to my work life, am I mindful of seeking clarity in matters of conscience? Am I mindful of how others around me might be struggling with matters of conscience, and can I perhaps help them seek clarity? Am I mindful of how my actions affect not just the immediate circle of people around me, but wider circles beyond that? These are just some of the questions a person can ask when thinking about whether one actually loves one’s neighbor as oneself.

    These are the kinds of questions anyone can ask of themselves, whatever their work situation. These are the kinds of questions my father confronted during his long work life. He confronted these questions while working as an engineer, knowing his actions had an effect on both his managers and the technicians on the shop floor. After his forced retirement, he confronted these questions as he struggled to figure out how best to care for my mother’s deteriorating health. Then, after her death, he struggled to figure out how to find some volunteer work where he could mindfully affect the people around him, and maybe even the wider circle of his local community.

    You’ll notice I haven’t tried to answer the question of how a person can find work that’s meaningful. That’s because I don’t have an answer to that question. There have been so many years in my own work life when I had to hold onto a meaningless job; including, if I’m honest, some of the church jobs I’ve had. Yet you don’t have to have a job that will put you in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize, you don’t have to have a job where you save the world. If you have a job like that, that’s fabulous, and congratulations! But the thing to remember is that the most important vocation is to let your life speak in the way you live your life. Each of us can strive to do whatever little bit we can to make this a gentler, kinder world where we really do love our neighbors as we ourselves hope to be loved. This is how everyone can let their life speak. This is the true vocation that everyone has.

  • Remembering the American Revolution

    Sermon copyright (c) 2025 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation. The text below has typographical errors, missing words, etc.

    Readings

    The first reading was the well-known poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson called “Concord Hymn,” which was written in tribute to fallen Revolutionary War soldiers. This poem was first read in public on July 4, 1837, at the dedication of a monument to those soldiers.

    By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
    Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
    Here once the embattled farmers stood
    And fired the shot heard round the world.

    The foe long since in silence slept;
    Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
    And Time the ruined bridge has swept
    Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

    On this green bank, by this soft stream,
    We set today a votive stone;
    That memory may their deed redeem,
    When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

    Spirit, that made those heroes dare
    To die, and leave their children free,
    Bid Time and Nature gently spare
    The shaft we raise to them and thee.

    The second reading was a poem written by Captain George Bush, an officer in George Washington’s army.

    How luckless the fortune we soldiers endure.
    Uncertain our pleasures, mischances are sure.
    If friendship should bind us, or love’s softer tie
    The drum beats; from friendship and love we must fly.

    Submissive to fate, then adieu to the fair.
    Peace, smile on our friends, and redeem them from care.
    May angels indulgent detach’d from above
    Soon vanquish fell discord with friendship and love.

    The third reading told the story of Persis Tower Lincoln, a Revolutionary War heroine whose husband died in military service in about 1776. This comes from Narrative History of Cohasset by Victor Bigelow.

    “[An act of] blockade running… is credited to a Cohasset heroine, Persis (Tower) Lincoln…. Persis had been married to Allen Lincoln, November 23, 1775…. Allen Lincoln was a seaman, and tradition says that he was taken from a vessel which the British captured and was carried to England, where he was placed in Dartmoor prison, from which he never returned. The wife of this absent seaman knew how to sail a boat and was not afraid of the sea. In that year when Boston was besieged by our soldiers on land and when the harbor was filled with British vessels, it is said that Persis did the work of our absent men by sailing one of our vessels across the bay to Gloucester to get supplies that could not be had in the blockaded port of Boston. This daring deed makes her properly a Revolutionary heroine.”

    Sermon: Remembering the American Revolution

    Originally, Memorial Day was called Decoration Day. It was the day when families would tend to the graves of loved ones who had died in military service. But of course, as long as you were tending to the grave of a dead soldier, you would also tend to the other graves in your family’s plot in the cemetery. Thus by the mid-twentieth century in the New England town I grew up in, Memorial Day had become a day when many families would see the Memorial Day parade in the morning, and then in the afternoon would head to the cemetery to put flowers on all the family graves. Now, of course, many of us — perhaps most of us — live far enough away that we can’t go tend to family graves. Nevertheless, Memorial Day is still a day for us to remember those who died in military service, and additionally all those who have died.

    I’ll take some time tomorrow to remember my parents, grandparents, cousins, and others in my life who have died. But I’m one of the people who can’t actually go and visit any of their graves tomorrow; the closest graves I could visit are more than a day trip away. And given the busy-ness of life, I know it’s going to be hard to carve out any time to just sit and remember. I suspect many of you are in the same boat — you live too far away to go and visit family graves, and your life is so busy that it might be hard to some quiet time to just sit and remember. (If that’s true of you, maybe you could take the next fifteen minutes to remember — just tune out the rest of the sermon and devote the next fifteen minutes to your memories.)

    But what I’d like to talk with you about this morning are the veterans of the American Revolution who died in military service. I’d like to talk about these people for three main reasons. First, as of April 19 this year, the American Revolution began 250 years ago; this significant anniversary is a good time to reflect on the sacrifices that were made by Revolutionary War-era soldiers and sailors. Second, in a time of deep cultural and political division, one thing that nearly all Americans hold in common is a respect for the people who fought in the American Revolution; remembering the soldiers and sailors of the American Revolution could be a way for all of us to begin to reach across some of the divisions that lie between us. Third, it turns out that we don’t know as much as we think we know about the soldiers and sailors of the American Revolution. We don’t have very good records of exactly which soldiers and sailors died during the Revolutionary War; there simply weren’t full and accurate records of military service,(1) and we don’t even have accurate figures for how many military deaths there were in the Revolution.(2) Yet by digging in to the historical record, historians have been able to recover some remarkable stories that had been forgotten or mis-remembered.

    And so I’d like to tell you a couple of stories about people from First Parish who served in the American Revolution, stories that have been partially forgotten then recovered through the efforts of historians..

    First I’d like to tell you the story of Persis Tower Lincoln, a story which some of you may have come across in the book Narrative History of Cohasset by Victor Bigelow (this was the third reading this morning). Persis Tower’s story is dramatic enough by itself. During the occupation of Boston, which lasted from spring of 1775 into 1776, Persis was married to Allen Lincoln, a seaman; Persis was then 16 years old, and Allen was 20; John Browne, minister of First Parish, officiated at their wedding. Allen then left Persis to go off on a voyage. While he was away, Persis sailed a small boat across Massachusetts Bay to Gloucester to get supplies through the British blockade, so we remember her as a heroine of the American Revolution. Meanwhile — so the traditional story goes — Allen’s ship was captured by the British, and according to local tradition he was taken to Dartmoor prison in England where he died.(3)

    Persis’s story appears to be true. Unfortunately, Allen’s story has been remembered incorrectly. Dartmoor Prison wasn’t completed until 1809, so he couldn’t have been imprisoned there during the Revolution. Then too, Allen and Persis had daughter together, who was was born in 1778.(4) Finally, military records show that Allen Lincoln of Cohasset served in the Continental Army after his purported death, in 1776, 1777, and again in 1778.(5)

    A more accurate history of Allen Lincoln appears to be something like this: After serving in the military for several months in both 1776 and 1777, Allen re-enlisted in the Continental Navy with the rank of Seaman. Then on March 17, 1778 he was taken prisoner by the British — this happened about a month after his daughter Sally was born. Allen was initially imprisoned at Rhode Island.(6) Subsequently, he was probably taken to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he died in 1778.(7) It’s not surprising that he died while he was a prisoner of war; the mortality rate was notoriously high among prisoners of war held by the British, and more Revolutionary War soldiers and sailors died in prison camps than died in battle. Allen died when he was 22 years old, leaving behind an 18 year old wife and an infant daughter whom he probably only saw for the first few weeks of her life.

    Allen Lincoln’s story is worth remembering on its own merits. But it’s also a reminder of how much has been forgotten or mis-remembered about the sailors and soldiers who died during military service in the Revolution. Indeed, historians aren’t even sure how many prisoners of war died while being held captive by the British; it may have been as many 19,000 men.(8) At a local level, it seems that we’re not even sure of how many people from First Parish served in the Revolution. It should be simple to generate such an honor roll of military service — First Parish was the only church in Cohasset, everyone in town belonged to the church, so all we’d need is a list of Cohasset residents who served. However, the only such list I found lists almost certainly includes men from other towns who were recruited by Cohasset to help fill the town’s quota.(9) Given the incomplete records that remain, we may never know exactly how many people from Cohasset served in American Revolution — nor how many of those soldiers and sailors never returned from their military service.

    Yet even though the historical record has gotten a bit muddled over the past two and a half centuries, what’s remarkable is how much we still remember. We still remember Allen Lincoln and Persis Tower, and we still tell their stories when we talk about the history of First Parish. Even if some of the details of the story have been confused or forgotten, we still remember this young couple from First Parish who can be counted among the heroes and heroines of the American Revolution. Memories are passed down in communities like this one, and through such communal memories individuals can achieve a kind of immortality.

    For my second and final story, I’d like to tell you about another veteran of the American Revolution, a man who because he lived in Cohasset belonged to First Parish. I find this story especially interesting because of the way historians have been able to connect separated facts in the historical record, and then tell a fuller story of a Revolutionary War soldier.

    In the historical record, you can find a list dating from July 19, 1780, giving the names of nine men from Cohasset who began six month’s military service on that day.(10) One name on that list, the name of Briton Nichols, stands out for two reasons. First, he had a very unusual name; the written record shows no other man in Massachusetts with the first name of Briton. Second, Briton Nichols is identified as being Black, the only person on that list whose race is given, and (as near as I can tell) the only Black man from Cohasset who served in the American Revolution.

    Because Briton Nichols had such an unusual first name, and because his race is given, historians have been able to trace his life in more detail.(11) Historians discovered that in 1760, he published a book in which he told of thirteen years worth of adventures.(12) As a boy, he was enslaved by the Winslow family of Marshfield. At that time, he called himself Briton Hammond. On December 25, 1747, with the permission of his master, Briton left Marshfield to go on a sea voyage; perhaps his master hired him out as a sailor, taking a cut of his salary, a common practice in those days. Briton doesn’t say how old he was when he sailed, but later sources give his birth year as roughly 1740, so he may have been a boy or a young teen. The ship Briton was on sailed for Jamaica, took on a cargo of wood, and sailed north. Having struck a reef off Florida, the ship was attacked by Native Americans who killed everyone except Briton, and then set the ship on fire. After being held captive by the Native Americans for five week, he was able to make his escape on a Spanish schooner, whose captain recognized him, and took him to Havana, Cuba. The Native Americans followed and demanded the Governor of Havana return Briton to them, but the Governor paid ten dollars for him and kept him. A year later, Briton was caught by a press gang, but he refused to serve in the Spanish navy and was thrown in a dungeon.

    Briton was finally released from the dungeon four years later, though he was still trapped in Havana. Then a year after his release from the dungeon, he managed to escape from Havana aboard a ship of the British Navy. It appears Brition served in the British Navy for some time thereafter, aboard several different ships, until 1759 when he was wounded in the head by small shot during a fight with a French ship. Briton was put in Greenwich Hospital, where he recovered from his wounds. After additional service on British Navy ships, this time as a cook, he managed to find a berth on a ship bound for New England. By coincidence, his old master, one General Nichols, was on the same ship. Through that chance meeting, Briton was finally able to return to his home in Marshfield after a thirteen year absence.

    Soon after his return from Marshfield, Briton’s account of his adventures was published in Boston, perhaps the earliest published memoir written by an African American. Two years later, in 1762, Briton married Hannah, a Black woman who was a member of First Church in Plymouth (today this a Unitarian Universalist congregation). In the late 1770s, Briton left the Winslow family, possibly upon the death of his master, and moved to Cohasset to join the Nichols family; at this time he changed his last name from Hammond to Nichols.

    In 1777, Briton joined the Continental Army.(13) He must have been around forty years old when he enlisted. We can only speculate as to why he decided to enlist at that age. Most likely, enlisting in the military was a way for him to free himself from slavery. Ambrose Bates, who was one of Briton’s messmates, left a diary that tells a little about their military service.(14) Briton Nichols, Bates, and the rest of their contingent left Cohasset on August 27, 1777, and finally reached Saratoga, New York, in early September. There they joined the conflict between the Continental forces and General Burgoyne’s forces. Much of their military service was filled with boredom. Several days were filled with monotonous marching back and forth from one place to another. On other days, Bates simply records, “Nothing new today.” Those days of boredom were interspersed with days where they had more than enough excitement. To give just one example, on October 7, Bates recorded: “today we had a fight we were alarmed about noon and the fight begun, the sun two hours high at night and we drove them and took field pieces and took sum prisners.” The tide of battle was with the Continental forces, and Burgoyne finally surrendered on October 16. Soon thereafter, Bates and the other Cohasset men marched down to Tarrytown. Their service in Tarrytown was less exciting. Finally, on November 30 their term of military service ended, and they began marching home. They finally arrived back in Cohasset on December 7. So ended Briton Nichol’s first term of military service.

    Briton Nichols enlisted again in 1780, giving his age at the time as forty years old.(15) I suspect he lied about his age, presenting himself as younger than he was. I could find no details of his 1780 military service. The next time I found him in the historical record was in the 1790 federal census. At that time, he was living in Hingham as a free Black man, along with his second wife Experience and one other household member, probably their child.

    The story of Briton Nichols shows how we can recover some of the lost knowledge of Revolutionary War veterans. Briton Nichols was little more than a name on a list of soldiers, until historians were able to deduce that he was almost certainly the same person as Briton Hammond who had had such amazing adventures from 1747 to 1760.

    Of special interest to us here at First Parish, Briton Nichols would have attended Sunday services right here in this very building. We know his wife Hannah was a member of the Plymouth church before they were married. When they moved here to Cohasset, we can imagine them sitting upstairs in the balcony, where people of color and White indentured servants had to sit. We can imagine Briton sitting here on Sunday, August 24, 1777, a few days before he marched off to Saratoga. We can imagine the prayers of the entire congregation centering on the hope that all the Cohasset men marching off as soldiers that week would return home safe and sound.

    We today think of all those from this congregation who have served in the military. We think of all those veterans who are now members and friends of First Parish. We also think of those who grew up in this congregation and went off to join the armed services. And we think of those people from First Parish who died in military service. It is good for us to keep alive the memories of all those who served in our armed forces.

    And because Memorial Day has become a day when we remember not just military personnel, we think of all those who have died — parents and grandparents, siblings and cousins, friends and mentors, everyone whom we remember with love. It is good to keep those memories alive, because it reminds us of the bonds of love which transcend even death.

    Notes

    (1) Historian mark Edward Lender states that “…most combat was local and took place without major British or Continental forces on the scene”; in other words, many soldiers served in militia units. Lender, Citizen Soldiers or Regulars? The Revolutionary Militia Reconsidered,” in Jim Piecuch, ed., Seven Myths of American Revolution (Hackett Publishing, 2003) p. 59. Militia units did not necessarily keep accurate records, and even where good records were kept they may not have survived or may be hidden in local archives.
    (2) According to historian Howard Peckham, who carefully reviewed military records kept by the original thirteen colonies, 5,992 soldiers were killed in military engagements, and 832 sailors were killed in naval engagements, for a total of 6,824 battle casualties. In addition, Peckham estimated that 10,00 soldiers died in camp from diseases such as dysentery, and 8,500 soldier and sailors died in British prisoner-of-war camps. Thus, Peckham estimated the total number of probable deaths in service at over 25,000. Source: Howard Peckham, The Toll of Independence : Engagements & Battle Casualties of the American Revolution (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1974), “Summations and Implications.” However, other historians feel that Peckham underestimated the number of deaths among prisoners of war, see e.g., Edwin G. Burrows, Forgotten Patriots: The Untold Story of American Prisoners during the Revolutionary War (Basic Books, 2008), p. 317 n. 12; Burrows places the total number of prisoners of war who died at 19,000, giving a total death toll that is closer to 35,000. (Burrows cites the total number of Americans who took up arms during the war as 200,000.)
    (3) Victor Bigelow, Narrative History of Cohasset (1898), p. 290. The marriage record showing that John Browne officiated at the wedding may be found here: Entry for Allen Lincoln and Persis Tower, 23 Nov 1775, “Massachusetts, State Vital Records, 1638-1927,” archived on FamilySearch website https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FHQY-G2B accessed 23 May 2025.
    (4) According to the Massachusetts State Census of 1855, Sally was born in 1778; so this was not a matter of a christening that was delayed for three years. According to Cohasset Vital records, she was christened on 18 Oct. 1778.
    (5) A search for military records for Allen Lincoln on genealogy website FamilySearch.org turned up two records for military service of Allen or Allyn Lincoln from Cohasset: First, as one of the soldiers who mustered at Hull on June 14, 1776, to serve in the military: Entry for Allyn Lincoln, 14 Jun 1776, “Massachusetts, Revolutionary War, Index Cards to Muster Rolls, 1775-1783″, FamilySearch.org website https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2RC-LHBT accessed 22 May 2025. Second, as serving in “the Northern Dept.” in 1777: Entry for Allen Lincoln, 24 Aug 1777, “Massachusetts, Revolutionary War, Index Cards to Muster Rolls, 1775-1783,” FamilySearch.org website https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2RC-9CH6 accessed 22 May 2025.
    (6) Entry for Allyn Lyncoln, 17 Mar 1778, “Massachusetts, Revolutionary War, Index Cards to Muster Rolls, 1775-1783,” FamilySearch.org website https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2RC-2NLM accessed 22 May 2025.
    (7) The FamilySearch.org entry for Allen Lincoln lists his date of death as 1778, and place of death as Halifax, Nova Scotia, unfortunately with no documentation. See person entry for “Allen Lincoln” FamilySearch.org website https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/person/details/LCZP-2JH accessed 22 May 2025.
    (8) See e.g. Edwin G. Burrows, Forgotten Patriots: The Untold Story of American Prisoners during the Revolutionary War (Basic Books, 2008), p. 317 n. 12.
    (9) See “The American Revolutionary War Honor Roll,” Cohasset Veteran’s Memorial Committee website https://cohassetveteransmemorial.org/the-american-revolutionary-war-honor-roll/? accessed 22 May 2025. I counted 179 names on this honor roll. However, according to Victor Bigelow, it was something more than 120 men from Cohasset out of a total population of 165 adult males who served during the Revolution (p. 309). If there were only 165 total men in Cohasset, we couldn’t have sent 179 men into military service. This should not be taken as a criticism of the efforts of the Cohasset Veteran’s Memorial Committee. I estimate it would take dozens or even hundreds of hours of research among tax rolls and genealogical material to determine which men actually lived in Cohasset, and even then we might not have a final answer. Thus the Cohasset Veteran’s Memorial Committee’s “American Revolutionary War Honor Roll” remains the best list of Revolutionary War veterans.
    (10) Victor Bigelow, Narrative History of Cohasset (1898), p. 308.
    (11) An introduction to a narrative by Briton Nichols, who earlier in life was called Briton Hammond, gives an overview of what historians conclude about his life: “It is accepted that in 1762 Hammon married Hannah, an African American woman and member of Plymouth’s First Church, with whom he had one child. For many years this was all that was known of Hammon’s life after his return to New England. More recent research, however, has revealed that Hammon probably changed his name to Nichols some time in the late 1770s, after the family with whom he and his master were living when Winslow died in 1774. Briton Nichols is listed as having fought for the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War, as did many members of the white Nichols family…. In later census records, Briton Nichols is described as a free husband and father.” Derrick R. Spires, editor, Only by Experience: An Anthology of Slave Narratives (Broadview Press, 2023), p. 54.
    (12) In this paragraph, the details of the earlier life of Briton Nichols/Hammond are taken from his book, A Narrative of the Uncommon Sufferings, and Surprizing Deliverance of Briton Hammon, A Negro Man (Boston: Green & Russell, 1760); as reprinted on the Pennsylvanian State Univ. website https://psu.pb.unizin.org/opentransatlanticlit/chapter/__unknown__-9/ accessed 22 May 2025.
    (13) Victor Bigelow, p. 208.
    (14) Victor Bigelow reprints the text of this brief diary, pp. 299-303.
    (15) Entry for Briton Nichols, 19 July 1780, “Massachusetts, Revolutionary War, Index Cards to Muster Rolls, 1775-1783,” FamilySearch.org website https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QLLS-BBT3 accessed 22 May 2025.