THE

NEW-ENGLAND MAGAZINE.

JULY, 1834.

ORIGINAL PAPERS.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF THE THACHER FAMILY, FROM THEIR FIRST SETTLEMENT IN NEW-ENGLAND.

IT has been the anxious desire of all nations, in all ages of the world, that family genealogies, from their original foundation, should be correctly recorded and transmitted to future generations; and posterity love to trace back their progenitors, in an uninterrupted line, to the earliest periods. The descendants of the puritan fathers of NewEngland have a peculiar interest in the character and transactions of their ancestors, and they are happily furnished with ample data for the purpose of tracing the course of the founders of an empire. When the Saxons came over and settled in England, the British sirnames were immerged, and no records of the original inhabitants, by their own sirnames, were to be found on the page of history; but in our favored country by far the largest proportion of our sirnames are those which were precious to our puritan fathers, and ever will be to their grateful posterity. The spreading branches of the genealogical tree, from the stock of the pilgrims, will ever command admiration and respect; and, among these, the name of Thacher is not the least deserving of a grateful and perpetual remembrance.

Whether the Thacher family were ever entitled to the distinction of ancient and honorable, the writer has not been ambitious to ascertain. The first of the name, of which we have obtained any account, is the Rev. PETER THACHER, a distinguished minister of the gospel, who resided in Sarum, in England, in the seventeenth century. He was a man of talents, and possessed a liberal and independent mind; he dissented from the established church, and being, in consequence, harassed by the spiritual courts, he resolved to turn his back on royal and ecclesiastical folly and persecution, and emigrate to New-England, for the enjoyment of religious freedom; but the death of his wife altered his determination. There is now a letter extant, which he wrote to the bishop of the diocese, begging that he might be excused from reading certain directions of the vicar-general, which, he said, were against his conscience, and would tend to disturb the order of worship. In his address, he says, "I never neglected the order aforesaid out of contempt of ecclesiastical discipline and jurisdiction, as has

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for the enjoyment of religious freedom; but the death of his wife altered his determination. There is now a letter extant, which he wrote to the bishop of the diocese, begging that he might be excused from reading certain directions of the vicar-general, which, he said, were against his conscience, and would tend to disturb the order of worship. In his address, he says, "I never neglected the order aforesaid out of contempt of ecclesiastical discipline and jurisdiction, as has

been affirmed," &c. This may, perhaps, account for the puritanical zeal, with which so many of the family have opposed the prelatic power, and may be one, among other causes, of the strong attachment of the descendants to good New-England principles.

THOMAS THACHER, son of the above Peter, was born in England, May 1, 1620. In his early minority he appeared to have imbibed true puritan principles. Having received a grammar-school education at home, his father intended that his education should have been completed at the university, either of Cambridge or Oxford; but, disgusted with the prevailing ecclesiastical tyranny, to which he must have been subjected, he was induced to decline the proposals of his father, preferring to cross the Atlantic, that he might enjoy liberty of conscience in the wilds of New-England. To this determination his parents readily consented, as they themselves intended to have followed him; but this was prevented by the death of his mother. At the age of fifteen years, this enterprising young puritan embarked in company with his uncle, Anthony Thacher, and arrived in New-England, June 4, 1635. Shortly after their arrival they had occasion to pass from Ipswich to Marblehead; Anthony, with his wife and family, embarked on board a bark, belonging to Mr. Allerton, of Plymouth; they were overtaken by a tremendous tempest in the night, and shipwrecked on an island in Salem harbor, and twenty-one out of twenty-three persons were drowned, August 14, 1635, Mr. Thacher and his wife being the only persons saved. Thomas Thacher "had such a strong and sad impression upon his mind," says Dr. Cotton Mather, (Magnalia,) "about the issue of the voyage, that he, with another, would needs go the journey by land, and so he escaped perishing with some of his pious and precious friends by sea."* Being thus providentially preserved, young Thacher became an inmate in the family of the Rev. C. Chauncy, who was afterwards president of Harvard College; under the tuition of that eminent scholar he received his education, and was prepared for the duties of the ministry. He was not long an idle candidate. Such was his pious deportment, and so manifest his qualifications for a gospel teacher, that he was soon invited to become the pastor of the church at Weymouth, where he was ordained, January 2, 1644. In his ministerial labors he was most faithful and affectionate; among his excellencies was a peculiar spirit of prayer, and he was remarkable for the copious, fluent, and fervent manner of performing that sacred exercise. Having acquired a knowledge of medicine, Mr. Thacher united the practice of that profession with his ecclesiastical vocation, in which he was greatly useful. He married the daughter of the Rev. Ralph Partridge, the first minister of Duxbury, who, among other pious ministers, was, to use his own expression, "hunted like a partridge on the mountains," and driven from his native soil to seek an asylum in this land of religious freedom. Mr. Thacher married, for a second wife, a lady belonging to Boston, and became an inhabitant of that town, where he acquired eminence in the medical profession. He was conspicuous as a learned divine; and when the third, or Old South church, was founded, in Boston, he was chosen their first pastor, and installed February 16, 1670, and continued in that

*This journey was a very hazardous one, it being through an unsettled wilderness, and full of Indians.

station till his death, October 15, 1678. Having visited a patient in a fever, he was himself seized with the disease, which terminated his existence at the age of fifty-eight years. President Stiles speaks of Mr. Thacher as the best Arabic scholar known in this country, and states that he composed and published a Hebrew Lexicon. According to Dr. Cotton Mather, he was a great logician, and well versed in mechanics, both in theory and practice, and could make all kinds of clock-work to admiration. In 1677, he published a work entitled a Brief Guide in the Small-pox and Measles, which was the first medical work published in America. Mather says he was a most incomparable scribe; he not only wrote all sorts of hands in the best copy-books then extant, with a singular exactness and acuteness, but there are yet extant monuments of Syriac and other oriental characters, of his writing, which are hardly to be imitated. He left two sons who were by his first wife.

2d Generation. PETER, the eldest son of Thomas, was born July 18, 1651. Graduated at Cambridge college, 1671; was ordained over the church at Milton, June 1, 1681; and died December 27, 1727, aged seventy-seven years, having been the honored and beloved pastor of that church near forty-seven years. He married the daughter of the Rev. John Oxenbridge, pastor of the first church in Boston.

RALPH, the second son, settled in the ministry at Martha's Vineyard; but little is known of his life or death.

3d Generation. PETER, son of Peter, of Milton, was born in that town, October 6, 1688, graduated 1706, ordained at Middleborough, November 2, 1709, and died April 22, 1744, aged fifty-six, having sustained a ministerial character of great respectability, and received a large number of members to his church, during the later years of his ministry. His descendants are numerous, many of them through successive generations, have been educated in the ministry.

PETER THACHER, Jun. son of Rapir, graduated in 1696, ordained at Weymouth, November 26, 1707. Having in 1723 received a call to settle as pastor, of the New North church in Boston, about fifty members of that church and congregation, were dissatisfied, that the invitation should be given to Mr. Thacher, who was then the settled minister of Weymouth, and that he should leave his flock. "They separated from the society, and built a new meeting-house, which received the name of Revenge. At the time they met to install him, the disturbance was so great, that the services could not be regularly performed. After a public declaration of the majority of the society, in the meeting-house, that they accepted Mr. Thacher, the moderator announced him to be their minister, and the meeting broke up." He died March 1, 1739.' OXENBRIDGE THACHER, Son of Peter, of Milton, was graduated at Cambridge, 1698. He for many years sustained the office of selectman, in the town of Boston, and representative to the general court, but removed to Milton, his native place, and, for several years, was a representative from that town. He died in 1772, aged ninety-three years. He devoted some part of his early days to the ministry, and preached the first sermon that was delivered to the settlers, at Punk apog, now Stoughton. One of the old settlers of the place, in a kind of rapture, addressed Rev. T. Thacher, of Dedham, upon hearing him preach," Your grandfather Oxenbridge, was the first man that brought a bible among us."