Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 2.djvu/233

 MANNERS AND CUSTOMS IN HOPKINTON.

��217

��after line of Lee's veterans surges for- ward ; they intermingle ; halt, yell, fire ; then rush on like a mob. It is not un- til they have fairly run over us that we realize our position — that capture is in- evitable. Two lines pass us unnoticed, when a squad of skirmishers who have hung on our flank come up and de- mand our surrender. There is no al- ternative, and that brand-new blade goes into the hands of a rebel sergeant whose straight, black hair runs up through a rent in his hat like a plume. We are taken to the rear amid a rain of shot from our batteries, three men helping me along and two keeping close guard over my companion. They seemed in a hurry to get out of range, and glad of the opportunity our capture afforded them of retiring with eclat from the strife. Soon we came upon Gen. Wilcox and staff nicely ensconced in a position not accessible to Yankee bul- lets. He questioned us, but not getting satisfactory replies, sent us still further to the rear (after his Adjutant-General had purchased my sword of the hatless sergeant), where we were placed under guard near a field hospital. Here I found, upon examination, that I was not injured, but that my inability to

��walk without help was due to fatigue and a slight abrasion on the hip, occa- sioned probably by a spent ball. We were courteously treated by our guards but could get no food, Stoneman's raid having sadly interfered with the rebel commissariat. Next day we were taken to Spottsylvania court-house where we met nearly half of the nth corps and learned for the first time the disaster that had befallen " Fighting Joe " Hooker. Of the kindness of one of my captors, Billy Peyton of Mem- phis, Tenn., but a member of the 9th Alabama, and his peculiarities, I should like to speak, but this sketch has grown on my hands, and I am com- pelled to omit an account of my first visit to Richmond, introduction to Ma- jor Turner, and incarceration in Libby. Should this sketch please the readers of this Magazine, I may essay another de- scribing my prison life, and how near I came to being annihilated by a fierce Virginia home guard officer who com- manded the escort which conducted thedetatchment of prisoners, of which I made one, to the flag of truce boat on the James, going by the way of Petersburgh.

��MANNERS AND CUSTOMS IN HOPKINTON— No. 2.

��BY C. C. LORD.

��RELIGIOUS.

��At first, worship, both private and public, was conducted in the primative homes of the settlers of the township. On the erection of military posts, or forts, such edifices became natural, so- cial centres, and worship was conduct- ed in one or more of them. Rev. James Scales, first minister of the town, was ordained in Putney's Fort, in 1757. During the ministry of Mr. Scales, pub- lic worship was sometimes conducted

��at the Parsonage. The erection of a church determined a permanent place of public religious services.

The first meeting-house in Hopkinton represented a much larger territorial ex- panse of population than any church now extant. Denominational contro- versies had not divided the ranks of the worshipers, nor had local patrons of the one church demanded special privi- leges of their own. The distance to church was long in many cases, and

�� �