Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 5.djvu/77

 WILLIAM H. Y. HACKETT. 6i

but the life of every church, the soUdity and welfare of every community, rests upon those few persons who choose out of conviction, and then by their example show that the church really "has a place in their being, in their affec- tion, in their necessities, and out of this conviction Mr. Hackett was hardly absent from his accustomed pew, mornnig or evening, for nearly fifty years. In the easy-going faith of our day, which means no concern for religion at all, it is strange how persons forget that real character, intiuence, position, comes from conviction, and though the doctrines may be erroneous, the life which conscientiously holds them, and proves their vitality by integrity, is the immor- tality which living men honor, and dying desire.

There is another feature m the life of Mr. Hackett. With no remarkable ad- vantages for an early education, but with that same patient industry which he carried into all his affairs, he passed a long life in the accumulation of historical and biographical knowledge, until his mind was stored, and his conversation rich and interesting with reminiscences of leading characters in the immediate or more distant past. The settlement at the Piscataquain the interests of Episco- pacy, at the time of the settlements in Massachusetts in the interests of Puritan- ism, and at the very culmination of the religious troubles in England, and the building of the first chapel for worship, the very year that Episcopacy was abol- ished in England, open to the careful historical inquirer and observer of human nature so much the same in hke exigenices in every age, an explanation of the misrepresentations of one colony by the other, to which due attention has not yet been given. The early histories ha\'e all been written in the interests of the Bay Colony and the Massachusetts ; and their biased statements have been followed without due examination ever since, and the setdement at the Piscataqua re- garded as less religious, because it was of a different religion. But without mak- ing any special boast of the piety and godliness of the settlers at the Piscataqua, there is ample evidence that they had just as much interest in their kind of religion, and the heat of ecclesiastical troubles in the old country was reproduced in these neighboring settlements. In these historical ques- tions Mr. Hackett had always the greatest interest. The two hundredth anniversary of the Piscataqua settlement, at Odiorne's Point, was perhaps the occasion of the organization of this society,* at whose first meeting, held in Portsmouth, on the 20th of May, 1823, Mr. Hackett happened to be present, but was then too young to be identified with its plans, which at a later period and for years he heartily embraced.

A long association with the principal jurists, lawyers, and pohticans of this State, many of whom combined great ability with a rugged and uncouth manner, gave to Mr. Hackett a fund of anecdotes which was an exceeding enjoyment to his friends, for he remembered with accuracy and repeated with zest. An evening with him and Chief Justice Bellows, when each was relating personal reminiscences of the men of two generations past in the State, was not to be soon forgotten.

On the 2ist of December, 1876, there was the happy celebration of the golden wedding, when the couple, venerable, but still unbroken by the experi- ences and cares of half a century, stood in the room of the same house to which they repaired upon their marriage, consecrated by so many home asso- ciations, while friends, relatives, and children, and children's children came to bring their offerings ; and the house was thronged with the few who could go back over the whole period, and the many who were friends of later years.

In the midst of our restless and sensational ways, it is no light matter when a citizen who has gone in and out before us in so genial, regular, temperate,

��* The New Hampshire Historical Society.

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