Dan Harper | Sermons

Tag: American War of Independence

  • 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.

  • Another View of Easter

    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.

    Easter is one of those holidays that has spread out beyond its original religious setting. For Christians, Easter is the culmination of Holy Week, a week of religious observance. Holy week begins with Palm Sunday, which commemorates the arrival of Jesus of Nazareth into Jerusalem to celebrate Pesach, or Passover (remember they were all observant Jews). Then there’s Maundy Thursday, which according to tradition was when Jesus and his followers had a Seder. Good Friday is a solemn observance of when the Romans executed Jesus. Then Easter Sunday is the joyous celebration of the resurrection of Jesus.

    Now all this was confusing to me as a Unitarian Universalist child. By the rigid religious divisions that existed in Massachusetts back then, Unitarians were called Protestants. But — just like here in Cohasset — the Unitarian congregation I grew up in started out as a Puritan church. For those who inherited the Puritan tradition, there was only one holy day, and that was Sunday; any other holiday was considered to be mere superstition. As a result, when I was a child I didn’t understand Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and all the rest. Even today, I have to admit I still default to the Puritan tradition that says Sunday is the only holy day.

    Some years ago, I was the Director of Religious Education at First Parish in Lexington, which like our congregation started out as a Puritan church. One year, just like this year, Easter happened to fall on the Sunday closest to April 19 or Patriots Day. Most of you probably think of Patriots Day — if you think of it at all — as that three day weekend in April when they run the Boston Marathon. But if you live in Lexington or Concord, you quickly learn that Patriots Day is when all good Americans celebrate the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

    Now as the oldest church in Lexington, First Parish in Lexington was the church of the Minutemen. On the Sunday closest to Patriots Day, there would always be men dressed up in Minuteman costumes, and women wearing 18th century dresses. In my recollection, the Sunday nearest Patriots Day was also the only Sunday during the year when they celebrated communion. In the Unitarian tradition, communion typically is a simple commemoration of the Last Supper. But in First Parish in Lexington, it became more than a commemoration of the Last Supper; with the men and women in 18th century garb, and with the congregation’s 18th century communion silver making its annual appearance, communion also become a sort of historical reenactment of 18th century communion services. Then when Patriots Day fell close to Easter, there would also be an Easter celebration layered on top of all that.

    While this may sound weird and confusing, this is actually the way most religions operate. Pop culture, local history, and religious traditions get all mushed together, making a glorious celebratory mash-up. The fundamentalist Christians and the hard-core atheists are both highly critical of this kind of cultural mash-up, because (as they rightly point out) it does not make rational sense. This is why atheists and conservative Christians criticize Easter eggs, and the Easter Bunny, and Minutemen at Easter services in Lexington. But for the rest of us, cultural mash-ups are loads of fun. We eat our chocolate eggs, we don’t worry about the contradictions, and we welcome the Minutemen on Easter.

    One reason I happen to be thinking about all this is because yesterday was the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, and today is Easter. I went to the celebration in Concord yesterday, and there is something inside me fully expecting someone to walk through the door of our 18th century meetinghouse, all dressed up in 18th century garb.

    Another reason I happen to be thinking about all this is because over the last century or so, liberal Christians have been thinking about Easter and Holy Week in new ways. The Christian tradition makes it clear that Jesus and his followers went into Jerusalem to celebrate Pesach, or Passover. Pesach celebrates the Exodus, when the ancient Israelites escaped from the bondage and political oppression they experienced in Egypt. In the time of Jesus, Jews no longer lived in Egypt, but they were once again oppressed, this time by the Roman Empire. In an essay published last week in the New York Times, Episcopal priest Andrew Thayer wrote that Palm Sunday celebrations “often miss an uncomfortable truth about Jesus’ procession: At the time, it was a deliberate act of theological and political confrontation. It wasn’t just pageantry; it was protest.”(1)

    In this interpretation of the Easter story, Jesus came, not just to save souls for heaven, but also to push back against the economic policies of the Roman Empire that kept so many Jews living in poverty. Jesus may have wanted to get people into heaven after they died, but he was also seriously concerned about the well-being of people here and now, while they were still alive.

    If we think about Palm Sunday in this way, we might think about Easter differently, too. Instead of making a theological point about the salvation of individuals, we could also think of Easter as a holiday that celebrates the resilience of an entire community. Although it sometimes gets obscured, the central purpose of Christianity is to be a community with the goal to take care of all who are poor and downtrodden. The Romans could kill Jesus, but they could not kill an entire movement devoted to taking care of those who are less fortunate.

    When we think about the Easter story in this way, then it doesn’t seem quite so odd that First Parish in Lexington sometimes had men in Minuteman suits show up on Easter Sunday. Even thought the political situation at the time of the American Revolution was very different from the political situation in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus — even though the underlying philosophies of the Jesus movement and the American Revolution had important differences — nevertheless, both Jesus’s followers, and the architects of the American republic, had a sense that each and every human personality was something to be cherished. When the founders of the United States said that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights,” they were drawing on an ethical tradition that goes back to Jesus; that tradition goes even further back, to the book of Leviticus in the Hebrew Bible, where it says: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (2). This is the ethical tradition of the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do to you; and this same idea is not exclusive to Judaism and Christianity, but appears in somewhat different forms in nearly every human culture throughout history.

    We live in a time when there are deep divisions in our country. I think most Americans still profess devotion to the Golden Rule — whether we use the words of Leviticus, or one of the other great ethical and religious traditions where the same principle is articulated. But we are deeply divided about how to apply this principle in real life. Does the Golden Rule apply to LGBTQ people? Does the Golden Rule apply to people who are poor? Does the Golden Rule apply to immigrants? Does the Golden Rule apply to both Republicans and Democrats?

    While most Americans seem to agree that we should love our neighbors as we love ourselves, we currently have bitter disagreements on how this might play out politically. And in our bitter disagreements, some of us have been descending into outright hatred. Sometimes we seem to forget that the Golden Rule applies not just to people who share our religion and our politics, but also to the people of other religions, and to people from other countries, and even to people who belong to a different political party.

    This country experienced similar deep divisions back in the 1960s and 1970s. I was a child and teenager in those decades, and I remember listening to the news on television and hearing about the assassinations, the bombings, and the people throwing rocks at school buses right here in eastern Massachusetts.

    Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., captured the feeling of that era in his 1968 speech at Grosse Point High School, when he retold the story of the Good Samaritan. This is the story, as you may remember, of the man who was going over the dangerous mountain road from Jerusalem to Jericho. This man was attacked by robbers, severely beaten, and left to die by the side of the road. A priest and a Levite — both solid upstanding citizens — walked by, saw the man lying there, and hurried away; King says that no doubt they both worried that this was a trap set by robbers to lure them in so that they would be robbed. Then a Samaritan — a member of a despised religious minority — came by, but he stopped to help. King concluded the story by saying: “…the first question that the Levite asked was, ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’”(3)

    By telling this story, Dr. King revealed an essential problem of human ethics. We know from the Golden Rule that we are called upon to help others; but over and over again, we think only of what will happen to us. Considering just our own country, we have seen this happen again and again in American history: over and over again, we have forgotten this high ideals of the American Revolution, and we have reverted back to a primitive selfishness. In a sermon he gave in 1967, Dr. King said that over and over again Jesus tried to show human beings how to follow the Golden Rule, but that over and over again we turn away from the truth — just as the priest and the Levite turned away from the man who had been beaten and left lying by the side of the road — just as the Roman Empire turned away from the truth of the golden Rule when they executed Jesus on trumped-up political charges. But although too often we turn away from the Golden Rule, we also feel that there is another way. Dr. King put it this way: “[People] love darkness rather than the light, and they crucified [Jesus], and there on Good Friday [when Jesus died] it was still dark, but the Easter came, and Easter is an eternal reminder of the fact that the truth crushed [to] earth will rise again.”(4)

    And that is my Easter hope for you. Even though the deep divisions in our country are crushing the truth of the Golden Rule at the moment — even though the hatred that exists in our country is crushing the truth of this ancient teaching from the Hebrew Bible that we should love our neighbors as we love ourselves — despite everything that’s going on around us, Easter is an eternal reminder that the truth crushed to earth will rise again.

    Notes

    (1) Andrew Thayer, “Palm Sunday Was a Protest, Not a Procession,” New York Times, 13 April 2025.
    (2) Leviticus 19:18.
    (3) Martin Luther King, Jr., “The Other America,” speech at Grosse Point (Mich.) High School, 14 March 1968. In the opening sentence of this speech, King recognized the minister of the Unitarian Universalist church in Grosse Point, Rev. Harry Meserve; Meserve had served as the minister of First Parish in Cohasset in the late 1930s. Text from the Grosse Point Historical Society website: https://www.gphistorical.org/mlk/mlkspeech/index.htm accessed 19 April 2025.
    (4) Martin Luther King, Jr., “A Christmas Sermon,” Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia, 24 December 1967.

  • What about land acknowledgements?

    Sermon copyright (c) 2023 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. As usual, the sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.

    Reading

    The reading this morning is a poem by Lucille Lang Day. The poet says her “mother, who was one-quarter Wampanoag, was raised from age seven by a couple who taught her that Native American ancestry was something to hide.” The poem tells a little bit about how she found out about this family story that had been intentionally suppressed.

    “I Always Knew It” — link to the full poem

    Sermon — “What about Land Acknowledgements?”

    I’d like to talk with you this morning about land acknowledgements. A land acknowledgement is one of those statements, which are now commonly given at the beginning of events, or which appear on websites of organizations, that go something like this: “We acknowledge we gather on land that is the traditional and ancestral homeland of the so-and-so people.” Sometimes these land acknowledgements consist of just a bare statement that Native Americans once lived wherever you are. But the more interesting land acknowledgements include some of the history of the Native Americans in question.

    At this point, I could go into the ethical, moral, and political arguments for and against land acknowledgements — and there is real debate about their value. (1) Yet while these ethical, moral, and political arguments about land acknowledgements might be fascinating to some, I’d rather start with the stories of some of the individual Native Americans we’re thinking about acknowledging. So I’d like to tell you some stories about Native Americans from Cohasset.

    (A word about terminology: Since we’ll be talking about the time before the United States of America was a country, it’s anachronistic to refer to “Native Americans,” because there was no country called America. Since the Native American groups that currently exist in our area often refer to themselves as “Indians,” I’ll use the term “Indian.”)

    Our story begins in the early seventeenth century as Europeans first began to make contact with the Indians who lived in coastal Massachusetts. Some time in the years 1616 to 1619, a contagious disease wept through the Indians who lived here on the South Shore. Scholars continue to debate about what, exactly, the disease was. It could have been smallpox, measles, or some other highly contagious disease from Europe for which the Indians had no immunity. (2) A huge percentage of the coastal Indians of Massachusetts died — no less than four out of five Indians died, and in places as many as 19 out of 20 died.

    Because so many of their people died, the Indians living along the coast found themselves vulnerable to attack by their traditional enemies from further inland. This helps explain why, in 1620, the Wampanoag Indians in the Plymouth area were keenly interested in allying themselves with the Pilgrims. That military alliance lasted for about fifty years, until King Phillip’s War in 1675. After that war, Indian military power in southeastern New England was essentially broken. The Indians who remained here had to figure out to adapt to European social norms.

    By 1640, there were about 300 Europeans living in Cohasset — then called the Second Precinct of Hingham. (3) The history of Cohasset in the eighteenth century tends to focus on those Europeans. But Indians also continued to live here, and I’d like to tell you about three of them.

    Mary Judah

    First, I’d like to talk about Mary Judah.

    Our church was formally organized in 1721, and the first minister’s record book contains a sad entry for Mary Judah from which we can reconstruct a bit of her life: “Feb. 1, 1739 [New Style]. Long Mary, alias Mary Judah, was found Dead in the woods upon the High Way between this & Hingham and as tis supposed Perished in a storm of cold & snow the Sabb[ath] before. An elderly Indian [woman].” (4)

    February 1, 1739, was a Sunday, meaning Mary Judah’s body wasn’t found for a whole week. If she had been enslaved, surely her enslavers would have noticed, and gone to search for her. Or if she had lived with someone else, again they would have noticed. So it seems she was an elderly woman living entirely alone. Since she was older, Mary Judah would have been born in the mid-seventeenth century, a time when the Indians of Cohasset were still living in the traditional way. Most likely, Mary Judah was keeping to the old Indian ways as best she could. As a result she wound up living on the margins of European society, both economically and politically — eking out a subsistence existence in the face of encroaching European agriculture, with essentially no political rights, though at least she was not enslaved.

    Photo of an old handwritten record book.
    Minister’s record of Mary Judah’s death. Image copyright (c) 2024 First Parish in Cohasset, used by permission; all rights reserved.

    Sarah Wapping

    The second person I’d like to talk about is Sarah Wapping.

    On November 25, 1736, the minister of our church wrote in his record book that he officiated at the marriage of Sarah Wapping, an Indian from Cohasset, and “Cesar,” a man of African descent (who, according to the custom of the time, was allowed no last name). Cesar was enslaved by Captain Caleb Torrey of Scituate, and his and Sarah’s marriage intention was recorded in the Scituate town records. (5) We can assume that Sarah was either enslaved, or functionally became enslaved upon her marriage.

    After her marriage, Sarah attended services at our church here in Cohasset; we can assume that she went to live with Cesar and his enslaver, but for some reason Sarah was willing to walk several miles to the Cohasset church each Sunday. Sometime in 1736, she decided to join our church. Remember that in 1736, this congregation was one of the established Christian churches of Massachusetts Bay Colony; we became Unitarian a century later, but back then we were a liberal Christian church.

    There are many reasons why Sarah Wapping, an Indian living in Cohasset, might decide to become a Christian, that is, become a member of one of the established churches of Massachusetts Bay Colony. First and perhaps most obviously, Sarah Wapping probably felt genuine sympathy with the Christian ideals of the church. Beyond that, she may have been attracted to our church’s eighteenth century covenant. In that old covenant, church members promised to one another “that with all tenderness & Brotherly Love we will with all faithfulness watch over one anothers Soul.” To someone who was enslaved, perhaps that covenant offered a recognition of their essential humanity, or as we’d say today, their inherent worthiness and dignity.

    More pragmatically, becoming a member of the church may have been a smart move for Sarah Wapping, in that it helped to raise her social status in the community. Many people in those days were reluctant to become members of the church, because they would be held to a higher standard of moral behavior; men, in particular, were likely to put off becoming church members until they knew they were dying, at which time they didn’t have much opportunity to engage in sinful behavior. Thus if you became a member of the church, you entered a morally elite group, which gave you a certain social status.

    Sarah Wapping was baptized and formally joined the church on January 7, 1738 (N.S.) — 296 years ago today. The fact that Sarah Wapping had to be baptized before joining the church tells us that she probably didn’t come from a Christian family; otherwise she would have been baptized as a child. So it seems likely that she was raised in a traditional Indian family.

    In the months before January 7, Sarah would have met with the minister at least once — probably more than once — as part of her preparation for baptism and full church membership. On January 7, she would have been required to stand up before the rest of the church and give a public statement of her moral failings. This would have happened in the old meetinghouse, which stood south of here on Cohasset Common, across from the present Parish House.

    That’s all I was able to find out about Sarah Wapping. After this event, she apparently disappears from the historical record. But we can speculate that she probably had children. Her children would have been born into slavery, and they were might have been considered black, while also maintaining their connection with the Indian communities in southeastern Massachusetts. Sarah’s children, or at least her grandchildren, would live to see slavery abolished in Massachusetts in the late eighteenth century. It is entirely likely that at least some of her descendants live in southeastern Massachusetts to this day.

    Photo of a part of a handwritten document.
    Minister’s record of “The Names of Those Adult Persons who Owned the Covenant” — Sarah Wapping’s name is at lower right. Image copyright (c) 2024 First Parish in Cohasset, used by permission; all rights reserved.
    Photo of part of a handwritten document.
    Minister’s record of Sarah Wapping’s marriage. Image copyright (c) 2024 First Parish in Cohasset, used by permission; all rights reserved.
    Part of a microfilmed handwritten document.
    Digitized copy of the marriage records of the Town of Scituate, with Sarah Wapping’s marriage intention.

    Naomi Isaac

    The third person I’ll tell you about is Naomi Isaac.

    On September 19, 1736, Naomi Isaac, another enslaved Indian, became a member of our church. I was able to find out a bit more about Naomi Isaac, and based on some admittedly slender historical evidence, I’ve pieced together a hypothetical life story for her.

    Naomi Isaac became a church member about the same time Sarah Wapping got married; the two women would have been rough contemporaries. When Naomi joined the church, the minister’s record book refers to her as “an Indian girl.” If we guess that she was roughly eighteen years old, she might have been born somewhere between 1716 and 1720. Since she did not need to get baptized before she joined the church, it seems probably that she came from a family of Christian Indians.

    Assuming she had been raised as a Christian, her decision to join our church was not as big a step as it was for Sarah Wapping. Naomi Isaac must have liked the religion in which she had been raised, and wanted to commit more deeply to it. Then too, like Sarah Wapping after her, Naomi Isaac might have been attracted to our congregation by the wording of the covenant. She may also have desired the increase in social standing church membership would bring.

    As did every church member, Naomi Isaac would stood in front of the hundred or more people who came to services each Sunday and confess her moral failings. Again, this was in the old meetinghouse. At about 25 by 35 feet, that first meetinghouse was smaller than our present meetinghouse, and more intimate. I like to think that Naomi Isaac served as an inspiration for Sarah Wapping. We can imagine that Sarah Wapping was in the congregation that day, looking down from the balcony where enslaved people and Indians had to sit (but no more than twenty feet away from the pulpit), watching as the young Naomi Isaac become the center of attention of the entire church.

    On February 7, 1737, four and a half months after Naomi Isaac joined our church, someone named Naomi Isaac got married to a man named Caesar Ferrit in Dorchester. I could not confirm that this is the same Naomi Isaac. In fact, in the mid-nineteenth century, there was a romantic story told of how Naomi was the ward of a rich man in Boston who had arranged a wealthy marriage for her, but she chose instead to marry Caesar Ferrit, the coachman for the rich man; and some have interpreted this to mean that this second Naomi Isaac was White. (6)

    I think there may be a tiny nugget of truth in that romantic story, some of which got covered over by later romance. Naomi Isaac of Cohasset was either enslaved or an indentured servant. I speculate that her master moved to Boston, taking her with him. Then she decided to marry Caesar Ferrit against the wishes of her master. I like to think my speculation is correct, because it shows both Caesar and Naomi to be resourceful and forceful people. I also imagine that Caesar managed to purchase Naomi’s freedom, for she was able to leave her master and go with him. While I believe my interpretation fits the historical evidence, I cannot say with complete certainty that Naomi Isaac of Cohasset is the same woman as Naomi Isaac who got married in Dorchester — yet I think later events in Naomi’s life bear out my interpretation.

    After Naomi Isaac and Caesar Ferrit married, they lived in Milton, where their first children were born. Around 1750, they moved to Natick, where their youngest children were born. The town of Natick had been founded for the so-called “praying Indians,” that is, Indians who had become Christian. While Natick was intended to be an Indian town, in practice other non-White people wound up living there too — people like Caesar, Naomi’s mixed-race husband. But Caesar could also claim Indian ancestry. Although he had been born in the West Indies and came to Massachusetts later on, he said that he had two European grandparents — one Dutch, one French,— an African grandparent, and an Indian grandparent. (7)

    Naomi Isaac Ferrit appears in the written record eight times — first when she joined our church, next when she got married, and then in the birth records for six of the seven or so children she had. After the birth of her children, she disappears from the historical record. But let’s assume that she lived until April 19, 1775. In the early morning of that historic day, she would have helped her husband Caesar, then aged 55, get ready to respond to the alarm that the British regulars were on the move. She would have watched as Caesar, and their youngest son John, marched down the road towards Lexington with the rest of the Natick militia company.

    Caesar, John, and the rest of their company arrived in Lexington not long before British regular troops returned through the town on their retreat from Concord. The two Ferrits took cover in a house near the meetinghouse on Lexington Green, and from its cover fired upon His Majesty’s troops. The regulars searched the house to find those two snipers, and the Ferrits hid under the stairs in the cellar to avoid capture. In short, Naomi’s husband, and her child John, were two of the hallowed veterans of the Battle of Concord and Lexington, engaging in an act of bravery at great risk to their lives.

    Caesar Ferrit proved to be quite a Patriot. Although many veterans of the Battle of Concord and Lexington went back to their farms, in late April Caesar enlisted for a tour of duty in the Massachusetts army. Then later in the war, he enlisted once again. His military service was remembered for the rest of his life. In 1796, three years before his death, the town of Natick petitioned the state for a pension for him. (8)

    One of Naomi’s sons-in-law, Thomas Nichols, had a very different experience on April 19, 1775. Thomas was a free Black man who married Patience Ferrit, Naomi and Caesar’s second daughter. On April 19, 1775, Thomas was being held in the town jail in Concord, having been accused of “enticing” enslaved persons “to desert the service of their masters.” While his father-in-law and brother-in-law were firing at the British troops on Lexington Green, he witnessed the events of April 19 from the Concord jail. After being held for three months, the authorities found that there was no evidence to support the accusations against Thomas, so he was sent back to Natick. (9) The story of Naomi’s son-in-law shows how the Indian communities and the Black communities of Massachusetts became intertwined. And I wonder if Thomas really was helping other Black people liberate themselves, and managed to get away with it — if he was one of the early precursors to the conductors of the Underground Railroad. I like to imagine that he was.

    That’s all I was able to find out about Naomi Isaac. After the birth of her children, she apparently disappears from the historical record. Yet her legacy may live on in a very literal way. In our own time, descendants of the Natick Indians gather each year for the Natick Praying Indians Powwow, held on the last weekend of September. I like to think that some of Naomi Isaac’s descendants are among them.

    Photo of part of a handwritten document.
    Minister’s record of “The Names of Those Adult Persons who Owned the Covenant” — Naomi Isaac’s name is at bottom left. Image copyright (c) 2024 First Parish in Cohasset, used by permission; all rights reserved.

    This brings us back to the topic of land acknowledgements.

    I’ve spun out some stories for you about what might have happened to some specific individuals who were Cohasset Indians. I readily admit that my stories are partly speculative. Nonetheless, I believe there’s some truth in the stories I’ve just told. If we were to decide to offer a land acknowledgement, we might want to acknowledge the three women I’ve talked about this morning. And I’ll end this sermon with one of many possible land acknowledgements for our congregation:

    “We gather on land that is the traditional and ancestral homeland of Mary Judah, Sarah Wapping, Naomi Isaac, and other Indians of Cohasset. We think it’s likely at least some descendants of Sarah Wapping and Naomi Isaac, former members of our congregation, are still alive today. We acknowledge the many contributions these women and their descendants have made to our society, including their children’s service in the Revolutionary War. And we wonder how we can ever repay them.”

    Notes

    (1) According to “So you began your event with an Indigenous land acknowledgment. Now what?” reported by Chloe Veltman on National Public Radio, All Things Considered, March 15, 2023
    [https://www.npr.org/2023/03/15/1160204144/indigenous-land-acknowledgments] — some Native American leaders believe land acknowledgements are a waste of time, while others believe they are useful. It’s a complicated issue!

    (2) The debate is very much alive among epidemiologists. E.g., in 2010, a new possibility was outlined by John S. MarrComments and John T. Cathey, in “New Hypothesis for Cause of Epidemic among Native Americans, New England, 1616–1619” (Emerging Infectious Diseases, vol. 16 no. 2, Feb. 2010 https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/16/2/09-0276_article). The authors of this study say: “Classic explanations have included yellow fever, smallpox, and plague. Chickenpox and trichinosis are among more recent proposals. We suggest an additional candidate: leptospirosis complicated by Weil syndrome.”

    (3) Bigelow, Narrative History of Cohasset, p. 106.

    (4) Woody Chittick, “Slavery in early Cohasset,” n.d.

    (5) Information from Family Search website.

    (6) The romantic story is in the Natick Bulletin, “Local Centennial Events,” June 18, 1875; quoted by George Quintal, Patriots of Color (Boston Nat. Hist. Park, 2004), p. 102.

    William Biglow, History of the Town of Natick, Mass. (1830) says this about Cesar Ferrit and his wife:

    “April 19th. — On this memorable morning, as one of the survivors lately expressed it, every man was a minute man. The alarm was given early, and all marched full of spirit and energy to meet the British. But few had an opportunity to attack them. Caesar Ferrit and his son John arrived at a house near Lexington meeting house, but a short time before the British soldiers reached that place, on their retreat from Concord. These two discharged their muskets upon the regulars from the entry, and secreted themselves under the cellar stairs, till the enemy had passed by, though a considerable number of them entered the house and made diligent search for their annoyers.

    “This Caesar was a great natural curiosity. He was born on one of the West India islands, and was accustomed to boast, that the blood of four nations run in his veins; for one of his Grandfathers was a Dutchman, the other a Frenchman; and one of his grandmothers an Indian, and the other an African. He married a white New England woman, and they had several children, in whose veins, if Cæsar’s account of himself be true, flowed the blood of five nations. His son John served through the revolutionary war, and is now a pensioner.”

    While this story seems to argue against Naomi Isaac Ferrit being the same as Naomi Isaac of Cohasset, its claims must be weighed against its late date, nearly a century after Naomi would have left Cohasset. Biglow gives no source for this anecdotal evidence, but if this story were told to him by Naomi’s descendants it could well have been to their advantage to have their mother posthumously “pass” as White; many people in Massachusetts considered it shameful to have Indian ancestry, and persons with Indian ancestry were regularly discriminated against, right up through the twentieth century. (Note, too, that Caesar’s wife’s is not named in this account.) For all these reasons, I’m inclined to place little trust in Biglow’s account.

    Also, I was unable to find anyone named Naomi Isaac anywhere in Massachusetts in the usual genealogical records, for this time period. This proves nothing in of itself, but is worth considering when evaluating other evidence.

    (7) J. L. Bell, “Thomas Nichols of Natick,” Boston 1775 blog, April 28, 2016. (https://boston1775.blogspot.com/2016/04/thomas-nichols-of-natick.html). See also the previous footnote.

    (8) J. L. Bell, “The Service of Caesar Ferrit,” Boston 1775 blog, April 30, 2016. (https://boston1775.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-service-of-caesar-ferrit.html).

    See also: entry on Caesar Ferrit in George Quintal, Patriots of Color (Boston Nat. Hist. Park, 2004), pp. 102 ff.; and entry on Caesar Ferrit, Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War: A Compilation from the Archives, Volume 5, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Office of the Secretary of State, 1899, p. 632.

    (9) J. L. Bell, “Reviewing Thomas Nichols’s Case,” Boston 1775 blog, April 29, 2016. (https://boston1775.blogspot.com/2016/04/reviewing-thomas-nicholss-case.html)

    More resources on land acknowledgements

    “Beyond Land Acknowledgements: A Guide,” Native Governance Center website

    One current organization of Native Americans in our area which may include descendants of Sarah Wapping and Naomi Isaac: Praying Indians of Natick and Ponkapoag

    The Massachusett Tribe at Ponkapoag lists last names of tribal members in the 1800s. None of the last names mentioned in the sermon — Wapping, Isaac, Ferrit, or Nichols — appear on their list. However, the time frame they’re looking at is one or more generations later, and thus might include descendants of the people I mention.

    Other Native American groups in our area include the Cothutikut Mattakeeset Massachusetts Tribe, with ancestral lands in Bridgewater

    The indigenous people in Cohasset were most likely part of the Massachusetts people, not the Wampanoag people. There are several well-known Wampanoag groups in southeastern Massachusetts. Descendants of Cohasset Indians might have joined one or more of these Wampanoag groups, through marriage or in other ways.