Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 9.djvu/249

 TJie First Schoolmaster of Boston

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��is uncomfortable) I must either act with their light, or may expect to suffer, as I have done, and do at this day, for conscience' sake ; but I had rather suf- fer anything from men than make a shipwreck of a good conscience or go against my present light, though erro- neous, when discovered."

He then went on to say that, while he did not wholly free himself from blame as to his carriage, and as to his " want of wisdom and coolness in or- dering and uttering his speeches," yet he could not be convinced as yet that he had been guilty of " Miriam's sin," or deserved the censure which the church had inflicted upon him ; and he could not look upon it "as dispensed according to the rules of Christ." Then he closed his address with the following words, which will give some idea of his Christian spirit : " Yet I wait upon God for the discovery of truth in His own time, either to myself or church, that what is amiss may be repented of and reformed ; that His blessing and presence may be among them and upon His holy ordinances rightly dispensed, to His glory and their present and everlasting comfort, which I heartily pray for, and am so bound, having received much good and comfort in that fellowship, though I am now deprived of it."

At about this time of his trial with the church he was afflicted by the death of his wife. Three more children had been born to them — Elizabeth, Sarah, and Hannah. Soon after this, in 1650, — and, it has been said, on account of his troubles, — he removed to Ipswich, Massachusetts, to become master of the grammar school there. His services as teacher in New Haven must have been valued, if one can judge by the amount of salary received, for, in the case of the

��teacher who followed him, the people were not willing " to pay as large a sal- ary as they had done to Mr. Cheever," and so they gave him ten pounds a year.

After Mr. Cheever had been in Ipswich two years, Robert Payne, a philanthropic man, gave to the town a dwelling-house with two acres of land for the schoolmaster; he also gave a new schoolhouse for the school, of which this man was the appreciated teacher; for many neighboring towns sent scholars to him, and it was said that those who received " the Cheeve- rian education " were better fitted for college than any others.

In November of this same year he married Ellen Lathrop, sister of Captain Thomas Lathrop, of Beverly, who two years before had brought her from Eng- land to America with him, with the promise that he would be a father to her. While living in Ipswich they had four children, Abigail, Ezekiel, Nathan- iel, and Thomas ; two more, William and Susanna, were born later, in Charlestown. Their son Ezekiel must have lived to a good old age, at least seventy-seven years, for as late as 173 1 his name appears in the annals of the village parish of Salem, where he be- came heir to Captain Lathrop's real estate ; while their son Thomas, born in 1658, was graduated at Harvard Col- lege in 1677, was settled as a minister at Maiden, Massachusetts, and later at Rumney Marsh (Chelsea), Massachu- setts, where he died at a good old age.

After having thus lived in Ipswich eleven years, Mr. Cheever removed, in 1 66 1, to Charlestown, Massachusetts, to become master of the school there at a salary of thirty pounds a year. The smallness of this salary astonishes and

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