Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume One).djvu/51

Rh and children died. He wrote two romances founded on Western primitive life, and a history of the Mississippi Valley. Time may give to his works a value that they did not appear to possess when they were published. Flint was recognized in the town as a man of ability, but he failed to secure the affections or even the confidence of the people. He was a man of ready faculty, being able to write his sermons Saturday evening, with his children around him.

Parson Adams, a cousin of John Adams and the predecessor of Flint, had lived among his people as a chieftain. He was not only the spiritual teacher, he was supreme in most other matters. Unlike the Adams family generally, he had a rough wit and a sententious practical wisdom about common things not unlike the kindred conspicuous qualities in Dr. Franklin. If the traditions that existed in my boyhood were trustworthy, he said and did things that would have ruined an ordinary minister. Adams gave an earnest support to the Revolution, and one of his sermons delivered at the opening of the war contained a view of the coming greatness of the country that was truly prophetic.

Samuel Dexter studied law at Lunenburg. He was there married by the Rev. Zabdiel Adams to a Miss Gordon, a daughter of an English lady.

The successor of Mr. Damon was the Rev. Joseph Hubbard, and during his ministry the old society that represented the town of former days came to an end. The first error was the scheme for erecting a new meetinghouse. The larger part of the village is on the southern side of a hill, and the first meetinghouse was midway on the slope and facing the south. The site was a triangular piece of land, of more than one hundred rods in extent, on which were shade trees planted in other days. If the whole town had been at command not another equally good site could have been selected. A spirit, called the spirit of progress, had seized the leaders and it was resolved