Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 6.djvu/367

 WILTON. N. H.— A CORRECTION.

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��found in some old papers. It is now in the hands of Wellington Frye, of Wilton, a great-grandson, who highly prizes it.

No mention is made in the article of Wilton's great educator, one who has done more for the town than any other man. From the gifted pen of Gov. Isaac Hill the following extract is taken :

" Thomas Beede, as a clergyman and guide, as the pattern of christian peace and usefulness, respected by all, beloved by all, who for the space of twenty years was never known to utter a reproach, or to deserve or re- ceive reproach, the name of Thomas Beede, not only in his own town of Wilton, but in all adjacent towns within a compass of twenty miles, is embalmed in the memory of the oldest inhabit- ants. Our residence was at first ten miles from Wilton, and the last thirty years forty miles from Wilton ; yet we have had frequent opportunities to ' read, learn, mark, and inwardly di- gest,' his many excellent precepts, and to admire both his social and religious character. He frequently supplied the pulpit at Amherst, where we resided in our minority ; we have not only lis- tened to his sermons, but the many which his hearers have called into print, the hand which now writes has composed almost exclusively the types of several in each year for seven suc- cessive years ; and we never saw from his pen or heard from his mouth an unmeaning, a weak, an ill-natured, or an immoral sentence or idea. If any m m has lived in this state whose power of ' moral suasion ' has been exercised beyond that of another, and exercised to be felt, the esteemed clergyman of Wilton who has been named is that man.

" The usefulness of Mr. Beede was not confined to the desk ; it was directed to the worldly not less than the spiritual welfare of the generation which has been born and grown up since the commencement of the cen- tury. Though living on a small salary he was a finished scholar — a writer with

��all the ease and purity of style of an Addison. He was the voluntary in- structor of the young men of the town and vicinity.

"No clergyman of New Hampshire was better known in his native state than Thomas Beede ; there are few men who have written and delivered sermons of greater practical utility — better adapted to the improvement and edification of both youth and age ; few who have better or more frequent- ly, than he has done, gladdened the hearts of the disconsolate, assuaged the grief of the mourner and the dis- tressed, and administered the comforts of a holy hope to the sick and the dy- ing."

He was frequently chaplain of the legislature, and preached the election sermon in 1815. He founded the first lyceum in the state, taught the first Bible-class, and was the first to in- troduce the Sunday-school into the state. He fitted for college some of the first men and authors of the state — Barrett, Greeley, Burton. His beau- tiful penmanship he imparted to his scholars, and the copy-like handwriting of the late Hon. Isaac Spalding was traced to his instruction. It is hoped that some memoir of this great and good man may be prepared some day. His grandson, Rev. Samuel Barrett Stewart, of Lynn, should attend to this, and he would be assured that his work would be fully appreciated.

e. h. s.

Gov. John Wentworth, in his annual message to the General Assembly of New Hampshire, thus speaks of our schools, 1 771 :

" Among other important consider- ations, the promotion of learning very obviously calls for legislative care. The insufficiency of our present laws for the purpose must be too evident, seeing nine tenths of your towns are wholly without schools, or have such vagrant foreign masters as are much worse than none, being for the most part unknown in their principles and deplorably illiterate."

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