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CHRISTIANITIES IN THE TRANS-ATLANTIC WORLD

Records of Trial from

Thomas Shepard’s Church
in Cambridge, 1638–1649
Heroic Souls

Lori Rogers-Stokes
Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World

Series Editors
Crawford Gribben
Department of History
Queen’s University Belfast
Belfast, UK

Scott Spurlock
Department of Theology and Religious Studies
University of Glasgow
Glasgow, UK
Building upon the recent recovery of interest in religion in the early
modern trans-Atlantic world, this series offers fresh, lively and inter-­
disciplinary perspectives on the broad view of its subject. Books in the
series will work strategically and systematically to address major but
under-studied or overly simplified themes in the religious and cultural
history of the trans-­Atlantic.
The series editorial board includes David Bebbington (University of
Stirling), John Coffey (University of Leicester), Susan Hardman Moore
(University of Edinburgh), Andrew Holmes (Queen’s University Belfast),
John Morrill (University of Cambridge), Richard Muller (Calvin
Theological Seminary), Mark Noll (University of Notre Dame), Dana
L. Robert (Boston University) and Arthur Williamson (California State
University, Sacramento).

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14892
 Lori Rogers-Stokes

Records of Trial from

Thomas Shepard’s
Church in Cambridge,
1638–1649
Heroic Souls
Lori Rogers-Stokes
Arlington, MA, USA

Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World

ISBN 978-3-030-50844-9    ISBN 978-3-030-50845-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50845-6

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
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 Acknowledgments

An independent scholar is never independent. I began my research in

Arlington, Massachusetts, where Doreen Stevens, then director of the
town’s historic house and museum, welcomed me, then redirected me to
the Andover-Harvard Theological Library. There I received expert assis-
tance from Fran O’Donnell, then curator of manuscripts and archives. It
was from Ms. O’Donnell that I learned the ropes of working with fragile
artifacts; whenever I visit another library I compare their procedures,
watchfulness, and level of care with hers.
Rose Doherty, then president of the Partnership of the Historic
Bostons, took an active interest in my work and suggested me as a speaker
to a wide range of organizations. I am grateful to those generous and
engaged audiences at the Boston Public Library; Lynnfield Historical
Society; New England Historic Genealogical Society; Newport Historical
Society in Rhode Island; Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UMass
Boston; House of Seven Gables in Salem, Massachusetts; Deane Winthrop
House; Massachusetts Historical Society; Historic Newton; and Arlington
Historical Society.
Peggy Bendroth, then executive director of the Congregational Library
and Archives in Boston, also engaged me for a talk; it was there that I
became aware of New England’s Hidden Histories (NEHH), the digitiza-
tion project sponsored by the Library, which is making tens of thousands
of pages of previously lost records from colonial Congregational churches
in New England available online. I began working with Helen Gelinas,
editor-in-chief of NEHH, in 2013, as one of many volunteers. Helen
became a friend as she led me into and through the sink-or-swim

v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

immersion process that is transcribing seventeenth- and eighteenth-­

century manuscripts, and widened the frame of my scholarship.
I published my first journal article in the New England Quarterly. As an
unpublished public historian, seeking to publish a first article, based on a
contrarian reading of an already well-studied set of records, in a major
academic journal, I might have had many strikes against me. Instead,
Leonard von Morzé and Jonathan Chu gave me fair consideration, and a
moment of great pride when my article appeared in that venerable journal.
I found the Deacon’s Books, whose first nine leaves contain the only
existing Shepard-era records we have from First Church Cambridge, aside
from the records of trial studied here, at the Houghton Library at Harvard.
My thanks go to John Overholt, curator of the Donald and Mary Hyde
Collection of Dr. Samuel Johnson and Early Books and Manuscripts, and
Susan Pyzynski, associate librarian of Houghton Library for Technical
Services, who made themselves available to me time and again as I
expanded my work transcribing these nine leaves.
Ashley Cataldo, now curator of manuscripts at the American Antiquarian
Society (AAS) in Worcester, was an invaluable resource as I transcribed the
Shepard leaves of the Deacon’s Books. She embodies the AAS’ commit-
ment to public scholarship.
The special manuscript collections room of the New England Historic
Genealogical Society (NEHGS) is where the earlier Shepard manuscripts
transcribed by Selement and Woolley are kept. My regular visits to look at
the same small notebook over and over must have aroused some curiosity.
I am grateful to all the staff at NEHGS for their help, but particularly
Timothy Salls, then manager of Manuscript Collections, American
Ancestors & New England Historic Genealogical Society.
David Powers, Lee Wright, and Sarah Stewart are all fellow indepen-
dent scholars who encouraged me, took an interest in my work, pointed
me to resources, and offered advice. David in particular inspires me with
the depth of his scholarship and his robust good cheer. My first talk on the
heroic souls of the Cambridge women was at History Camp Boston, the
un-conference Lee founded, where I got thoughtful questions that helped
shape my thinking. I deeply appreciate Sarah’s evergreen interest in and
deep enthusiasm for the world of the seventeenth-century puritans.
Dorothy Feldman, Rebecca Wolfe, Connie Mooney, Maria Flanagan,
Mae Klinger, and Patricia Garcia-Rios are all non-historians who asked me
good questions and showed real interest in the women who lived in
Cambridge nearly 400 years ago. Their interest confirmed my belief that
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii

this book has something of value to offer to a general audience, and that
all scholarship should speak to the wider world.
Francis Bremer commented on an early chapter of this book, providing
invaluable feedback. We last met at History Camp Boston, which befits his
tireless and genuine commitment to making history accessible to the gen-
eral public.
When I think about where my scholarly interest in the puritans began,
I quickly locate it in reading James F. Cooper’s book Tenacious of Their
Liberties: The Congregationalists in Massachusetts. Years afterward, I met
Jeff, now director of NEHH, at a Congregational Library event, and he
welcomed the acquaintance in the most generous way. Much of my schol-
arship since then has been touched in some way by Jeff; most crucially, he
read two rounds of drafts of this book. His ability to confirm my deeply
contrarian reading while holding me to my obligation to honor the sec-
ondary literature has been priceless. I’m deeply grateful to Jeff for his
continued friendship and mentorship.
All of my family have followed my scholarly progress with interest, but
I especially thank my parents, Jim and Irene; my brother Jim; my husband
Peter; my son Paul; and my daughter Juliette. Since I was ten years old, my
father has asked me when I was going to write a book; I’m very happy to
tell him that the day has finally come.
 Contents

1 Re-reading, Re-interpreting, and Recovering Priceless Texts  1

2 Close-Reading the Shepard Manuscripts 39

3 “Venture and Try”: Women Taking the Ultimate Leap of

Faith 81

4 The Shepard Context103

5 Heroic Souls: Reading the Cambridge Women’s Records131

6 Conclusion175

Index187

ix
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Mrs. Crackbone’s narrative. (“Image courtesy of American

Ancestors—New England Historic Genealogical Society”) 49
Fig. 2.2 Close-up of the Crackbone narrative. (“Image courtesy of
American Ancestors—New England Historic Genealogical
Society”)50
Fig. 2.3 Conclusion of the Crackbone narrative. (“Image courtesy of
American Ancestors—New England Historic Genealogical
Society”)51
Fig. 2.4 Start of John Stansby’s narrative. (“Image courtesy of
American Ancestors—New England Historic Genealogical
Society”)52
Fig. 2.5 Christopher Cane’s narrative. (“Image courtesy of American
Ancestors—New England Historic Genealogical Society”) 53
Fig. 2.6 Ruth Ames’ struck-through narrative. (“Image courtesy of
American Ancestors—New England Historic Genealogical
Society”)54
Fig. 2.7 Q&A in Goodman Daniell’s narrative. (“Image courtesy of
American Ancestors—New England Historic Genealogical
Society”)55
Fig. 2.8 Close-up of Q&A. (“Image courtesy of American Ancestors—
New England Historic Genealogical Society”) 56
Fig. 2.9 Close-up of Jane Stevenson’s narrative. (AAS “Courtesy
American Antiquarian Society”) 61
Fig. 2.10 Q&A in Jane Stevenson’s narrative. (AAS “Courtesy American
Antiquarian Society”) 61
Fig. 2.11 Heading for Isabell Jackson’s narrative by unknown writer.
(AAS “Courtesy American Antiquarian Society”) 64

xi
xii List of Figures

Fig. 2.12 Shepard’s heading for Jackson’s narrative. (AAS “Courtesy

American Antiquarian Society”) 64
Fig. 2.13 Continuation of Jackson’s narrative recorded in a third hand.
(AAS “Courtesy American Antiquarian Society”) 64
Fig. 2.14 Editorial arrow at the end of the page. (AAS “Courtesy
American Antiquarian Society”) 68
Fig. 2.15 Close-up of Jackson’s narrative. (AAS “Courtesy American
Antiquarian Society”) 70
Fig. 2.16 Close-up of Daniel Gookin’s narrative. (AAS “Courtesy
American Antiquarian Society”) 72
 CHAPTER 1

Re-reading, Re-interpreting, and Recovering

Priceless Texts

A sample exploration of the records suggests that a thorough study

would answer some old questions and provoke new ones. (Edmund
S. Morgan, “New England Puritanism: Another Approach,” The
William and Mary Quarterly 18, No. 2 [April 1961]: 238)
—Edmund S. Morgan

Fifty-seven years ago, the renowned puritan scholar Edmund Morgan

published a short piece in the “Notes and Documents” section of The
William and Mary Quarterly, in which he suggested that a “thorough
examination of the records of a large number of towns—records of births,
marriages, and deaths, of baptisms, admissions to communion, and church
discipline” would allow historians to “test our current assumptions” about
puritan religion and society in New England.1 One respected scholar,
Darrett B. Rutman, responded a little over a year later in the pages of the
same journal by tearing Morgan’s hypothesis to shreds.2 Unpersuaded as
he was by Morgan’s suggestion that scholars revisit their certainties about
puritan next-generation declension, Rutman did agree with Morgan’s call
for a re-examination of the primary records. “There should be no argu-
ment with Morgan’s method,” he stated on his first page. “Advocates of
one school of thought or another regarding New England Puritanism and
the section as a whole have long drawn generalities from generalities;
Morgan would have generalities built upon specifics.”3

© The Author(s) 2020 1

L. Rogers-Stokes, Records of Trial from Thomas Shepard’s Church in
Cambridge, 1638–1649, Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50845-6_1
2 L. ROGERS-STOKES

I am in good company, then, in writing this book. It is dedicated to

re-­examining records which are very familiar to scholars of puritan New
England, to provoking new questions, and, unavoidably, to arguing force-
fully against long-established hypotheses about those records. My respect
for the scholars I argue with is real, but my opposition to their hypotheses
is often fundamental.
My arguments are drawn from the specifics provided by the transcrip-
tions of two sets of manuscript records, one published in 1981 by George
Selement and Bruce C. Woolley and another published in 1991 by Mary
Rhinelander McCarl. Each was described as a transcription of puritan min-
ister Thomas Shepard’s on-the-spot recording of oral relations of faith
delivered by candidates for full church membership in the town of
Cambridge, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Selement and Woolley pre-
sented fifty-one narratives dated roughly 1638–1645 as The Confessions of
Thomas Shepard. McCarl published sixteen later Shepard-era narratives as
“Thomas Shepard’s Record of Relations of Religious Experience,
1648-1649” and presented them as the copies Shepard made of his own
on-the-spot dictation at some point afterward. Scholars ever since have
accepted them as such.
My study of both sets of records has led me to a bold conclusion: they
are not in fact relations of faith, and they were not written down in the
moment as people made their bid for church membership. They are
instead records of trial sessions—the multiple private or semi-private meet-
ings between a New England puritan seeker and their minister, elders,
and/or selected laypeople, during which relations were developed over
time as seekers shared their progress and their problems. This fundamen-
tally changes our approach to and understanding of the Shepard manu-
scripts. As records of relations, they present a congregation of lost and
miserable souls struggling and failing to express assurance of grace—yet
somehow granted church membership. As records of trial, they reveal an
amazing snapshot of puritan spiritual seeking, a “you are there” glimpse
into a specific moment in time: an intimate meeting between seeker and
minister where the ongoing work of discovering grace is reviewed, picked
up, and carried forward.4
The misrepresentation of the manuscripts as relations of faith set in
motion a domino effect: scholars read them as such, were baffled by the
fact that so few of them expressed assurance of grace, and developed theo-
ries to explain this that demonized Shepard, his congregants, the
Congregational church in New England, and the puritan society within
 1 RE-READING, RE-INTERPRETING, AND RECOVERING PRICELESS TEXTS 3

which the church stood. I will refer to many of these theories in this book.
Before I do that, however, I will give a brief overview of why the rediscov-
ery, transcription, and publication of these records were so exciting to
scholars, what led me to the understanding that they are records of trial,
and why reading them as relations warps our understanding of Shepard,
his congregation, and the only existing records they left us.
To understand why these finds were so exciting, one has to understand
a little of the process through which early puritan, or Congregational,
church-goers became full church members. In early puritan New England,
all inhabitants of a town were expected to attend church, but only those
who were able to narrate a persuasive personal history of their successful
spiritual seeking were granted the full church membership that allowed
them to baptize their infant children and to take communion. (These were
the only two sacraments the puritans observed.) These spiritual autobiog-
raphies, called conversion narratives or relations of faith, were delivered in
front of an audience of other church members and the minister. We know
this from descriptions of this requirement given by contemporary
Congregational ministers and New England observers.5 But for a few cen-
turies, actual records of these relations were scanty. There were a wealth of
publications arguing about this unique requirement for church member-
ship in New England, but very few examples of the relations themselves.6
Thus when Selement and Woolley published what they described as a
set of fifty-one relations from early Cambridge, and McCarl followed with
sixteen more ten years later, the impact on scholarship was substantial. The
notebook of Thomas Shepard, where the Selement and Woolley records
are found, had technically been available to scholars at the New England
Historic Genealogical Society in Boston, Massachusetts, for about a cen-
tury by 1981, but Shepard’s handwriting was difficult, and small, and it
seems that either few people managed to decipher it, or few people made
the attempt. The refusal of NEHGS’ turn-of-the-twentieth-century lead-
ership to allow the transcription and publication of this notebook reserved
it to those few scholars who traveled to Boston and attempted to read it.7
The records McCarl found had been similarly lost to scholars when they
were misfiled in a past century into the Mather Family papers at the
American Antiquarian Society and described partly as “visits to prisoners.”
When at last the modern NEHGS allowed Selement and Woolley to tran-
scribe and publish the records, and McCarl found the AAS notebook,
realized what it was, and transcribed and published it, both collections
were eagerly devoured by scholars of puritan New England.
4 L. ROGERS-STOKES

In part, that eagerness was rewarded. Here was a priceless opportunity

to read the stories average people told about their lives—a window into
the lived experience of common English puritans in the seventeenth cen-
tury. Here were mostly average people telling personal, even intimate,
stories of their personal search for God’s will. Farmers, students, house-
wives, and servants described their efforts to discover whether God had
granted them salvation through predestination.8 They talked about the
sermons they heard, the conversations they had, their highest moments of
triumph, and their lowest moments of despair. They recorded the impact
of epidemic sickness, personal bereavement, and political upheaval on
their individual lives. They explained the thought processes that led them
through what the puritans called spiritual preparation—preparation to
receive God’s message of salvation or damnation. Reading the descrip-
tions that average women and men gave of this journey toward God’s will
was revelatory. Principles expounded in sermons were seen for the first
time through the immediate lens of common listeners’ real-world applica-
tion. Learning how the people understood and used the tools of spiritual
seeking was powerful for scholars of puritan New England, who had been
brought up in the historical school of Perry Miller and Samuel Eliot
Morison, which taught roughly that puritan ministers exerted dictatorial
control over their congregations, telling them what to think and what to
do at every turn.9 Instead, the Cambridge records showed people thinking
deeply on their own about the path of spiritual preparation that they fol-
lowed as puritans, people actively engaged with sermons and other means
of godly instruction, and relating them to their own life circumstances.10
But this upside was paired with a powerful downside: the records were
very difficult to understand. The language was compressed, sometimes to
the point of being impenetrable. Sentences were missing key words. The
text ran in long blocks down the printed pages of both Selement and
Woolley and McCarl, unrelieved by paragraph breaks or organization of
thought. Many sentences were fragmentary, and some seemed nonsensi-
cal. Attempting to parse what exactly people had meant became a full-time
job of dismayed historians approaching the Cambridge records.
Scholars concluded that the compressed language of the records was
the result of Shepard taking dictation, as it were, as a candidate made their
formal relation to the church.11 As Michael McGiffert put it,
 1 RE-READING, RE-INTERPRETING, AND RECOVERING PRICELESS TEXTS 5

Picture the scene at Cambridge at the moment we cut in. The church mem-
bers [pack] the benches of the small, plain meetinghouse. The minister sits
at one side, quill pen poised. The candidate for admission stands, takes a
breath, gets ready—no speaking had even been so hard.12

This scene makes sense as an explanation of Shepard’s compressed lan-

guage. Why else would he fail to write out the important Bible verses that
the candidates recite or reference, or even give the book and verse? Why
would he skip so many words, creating jazz-like sentences where one must
hear the words that were not spoken as much as those that were? He must
have been in a hurry to keep up as each candidate’s narrative spilled out.
Yet McCarl explicitly argued that both sets of records served an official
purpose. “Shepard made his original notes on separate pieces of paper,
which he later copied into his notebook. [This] was a formal record kept
for a formal parochial purpose on the model of the notebook kept by John
Fiske of Wenham and Chelmsford.”13 The question McCarl’s theory begs
is this: if Shepard were carefully recording a “formal record” of a relation
for a “formal parochial purpose,” why didn’t he do a better job? He had
been present at the live relation, so when he set out to write a formal
record of it at some later point, he could have filled in the gaps of his hur-
ried transcription with what he remembered. Then the record would have
made sense as a formal, parochial resource—something later pastors, or
elders, could easily read and understand. He could have properly cited
those all-important biblical references. As it is, the records we have are not
clear and easily usable as formal records.
Scholars developed one theory to explain why a supposedly formal
record from an early puritan church in New England would be so difficult
to make sense of, which was that even a full record of the candidates’
speech would have revealed much the same thing as the compressed
record: a miserable people unable to understand or accurately identify or
express their deepest emotions, a people controlled by their powerful min-
ister, and in particular, miserably oppressed and inarticulate women.14
These were a hopeless people striving for a salvation that did not and
could not exist, and deep down, they knew it.
It was, ironically, this theory in the secondary material that began to
change my mind about the primary material. When I first approached
these records, I too found them disappointing, as I struggled to make
sense of the language in so many of them. Yet something kept pulling me
back to these voices.15 A passage I could not understand in the Cambridge
6 L. ROGERS-STOKES

records, when explained by another scholar as a proof of the misery of

puritanism, and particularly its sexism, seemed to me to stubbornly resist
that reading.16
In this context, I began to read the women’s records almost exclusively.
Most of the records in both collections are women’s, and as I read them,
new features began to leap out at me. As I will document at length below,
they are astoundingly anachronous. Most are completely unbounded by
sex or gender—without Shepard’s labeling (“Mistress Gookin” or
“Goodman Fessingdon”), a reader could not tell whether the speaker was
a man or a woman. To find seventeenth-century women’s narratives that
are missing the basic markers of sex is amazing.17 They are also unbounded
by traditional roles of parent, spouse, child, relative, or even parishioner.
In these narratives, there is only the individual woman and her God, and
her search for that God’s will, informed by others along the way who offer
help or harm, but in the end completely reliant on that individual wom-
an’s ability to read, listen, and talk, to interpret and decipher scripture, to
make use of sermons, and to enter into counsel with others, sometimes in
the form of the minister or elder, but often in the form of her female
friends and relatives. This strong individuality in the primary records con-
tradicted the secondary literature’s descriptions of women crippled by sex-
ism and self-doubt. The voices of the women reasserted themselves over
the joined voices of their later readers.
As I re-read the records, I began to recognize the language in many of
them that signaled assurance, and my perception of the stories they told
was slowly transformed. Fortified by new insights, I published an article
on the Cambridge records in which I confidently stated that all of them
manifested assurance of grace.18 It was not until I was finishing a new
article on the women’s relations that my perception was fundamentally
altered by a visit to NEHGS to photograph a few pages of the original
manuscripts for illustrations. What I found forever changed my perspec-
tive and my work, and transformed that article into this book. In short,
despite years of studying these records, I found that when I looked at the
original manuscripts, I was in the same position as Georgiana Darcy at the
end of Pride and Prejudice: my mind received knowledge which had never
before fallen in my way.
For those original manuscripts were so different from the published
versions as to tell a completely new story than the one that I—and other
scholars—knew. First, the lines of Shepard’s writing throughout the note-
books are perfectly even; blots and smears are almost nonexistent;
 1 RE-READING, RE-INTERPRETING, AND RECOVERING PRICELESS TEXTS 7

cross-­outs and added words are few; there is little uneven ink flow show-
ing that a quill was running dry with no time to dip it. Shepard’s writing
is small, and he makes time-consuming long tails on the letters. In a few
of the records, his writing is very tiny but perfectly formed. This could not
be done in the rush of writing as a person made a live speech without stop-
ping. Mary Rhinelander McCarl is the only scholar who acknowledges
this, albeit about the later book of 1648–1649 records only, noting “the
neatness of the writing, which is cramped but not untidy, the interpolated
words and letters, and the minuteness of the script.”19
More importantly, the manuscript pages were replete with crucial punc-
tuation and paragraphing that showed long pauses or even full stops in the
narrative, new trains of thought, and perhaps even recorded bits of con-
versation. Shepard worked hard to make these breaks and pauses very
clear, to emphasize places in their stories where people stopped to take
stock, regroup, consider a new idea, or break down. Yet in the transcrip-
tions, the records are presented in long blocks of text unbroken by para-
graphs, and the voices of the speakers seemed to drone on endlessly.
Separate thoughts or topics were connected by the transcribers. Questions
from listeners were often transcribed as if they were still the candidate
speaking. In transcription, each person speaks in one unstoppable, incom-
prehensible flow. In the manuscripts, the opposite is true. The manuscripts
also contained words, sentences, and even whole paragraphs that were
later struck through, yet there was no trace of these in the transcriptions—
except for a few instances where struck-through words were included, thus
obscuring meaning. The modern transcribers sometimes omitted super-
scripted words, which altered and sometimes corrupted the meaning.
Finally, the transcribers sometimes created new sentences at will, and
sometimes ignored clear end stops to join two sentences.
Baffled by this incongruity between the original manuscripts and the
transcriptions, I wondered why the transcribers had made these editorial
decisions. The manuscripts were clearly records of works in progress, care-
fully structured to show breaks between thoughts, iterations of spiritual
seeking, nagging doubts, and new progress. Why transcribe them as blocks
of text? Only the pressure of the assumption that they were records of rela-
tions, taken down as someone spoke, with no time to create paragraphs
and use lots of punctuation, would lead someone to ignore the structure
on the page and create a printed version that flowed out as one long, unin-
terrupted speech act.
8 L. ROGERS-STOKES

But if they were not relations, what were they? It became clear that
these records were Shepard’s personal records of sessions of trial. Trial was
an iterative process in the early New England Congregational churches in
which people met repeatedly in conference with friends and fellow congre-
gants, elders, and the minister to share their experiences and their progress
toward understanding God’s will (and, hopefully, the discovery of assur-
ance). Their listener(s) made “trial” of their statements, testing them
through questioning.20 Sisters and brothers of the church who knew the
candidate well might testify on their behalf. Everyone present had the
opportunity to ask questions. At a session of trial, a candidate might even-
tually offer a rough draft, as it were, of their eventual relation, and they
anticipated—and counted on—the thoughtful reactions of their advisers
to confirm their statements or help them to reconsider them.
John Fiske, the minister at Wenham and Chelmsford in the mid-1600s,
described the system of trial in his own personal notebook in June 1656:

[W]hen any such person [as] yet no member to any Church congregated
orderly propounds himself[,] the same [will] be propounded to the Church
privately, [where] Testimony concerning their life & conversation [will] be
enquired into, sd persons be assigned to be joynd with the officer the day set
& liberty for any other the brethren or sisters to be present at the first Tryall.

“The officer” who would oversee this step in the membership process was
generally the minister, sometimes joined by an elder, and church members
seemed to have exercised their “liberty” to participate. In fact, Fiske notes
that on the same day this exact process was agreed upon by the church,
“testimony was given touching John Nutting & his wife who had pro-
pounded themselves to or fellowship. viz. Isa: Lernet Simon Thomson
Abram Parker.”21 Fiske’s reference to a “first” trial reveals that were usu-
ally multiple sessions, over which a candidate worked with church officers
and lay members to reach a clear and convincing description of their spiri-
tual assurance.22
Records follow in Fiske’s notebook of individuals being propounded to
the church for membership, then scheduled for trial, and then received
into the church after giving their relation. For instance, we see Brother
Blogged’s wife propounded to the church on July 27, 1656; in August,
unidentified persons gave testimony “of the conversation of Bro: Bloggeds
wife, such as wch was satisfactory, & the 3d day set for the Tryal &
Examination.” We can take this “trial and examination” to mean that the
 1 RE-READING, RE-INTERPRETING, AND RECOVERING PRICELESS TEXTS 9

candidate was questioned (“examined”) by the minister and perhaps by

the elders, and also by any other church members who either chose to
attend or were asked by Mrs. Blogged to be present. On August 10, the
trial and examination was held, and Mrs. Blogged was admitted into the
church a week later, on August 17, 1656.23
Peter Thacher, minister in Milton, left brief notes: “Good-wife Keney
came to speak with mee and gave an account of much workings of spirit
toward the Lord and her desire to Injoy god in all his ordinances. I went
to prayer with her and soe dismissed her”; “Father Vose came to my house
and Brother Tucker soe I took them up into my study and went to prayer,
Then father Vose told his Experiences and Brother Tucker and I were
satisfied and I concluded with prayer.”24
Shepard himself references trial twice in a letter he wrote to minister
Richard Mather in April 1636. Mather and his flock had attempted to
gather as a Congregational church in the town of Dorchester, but the
attending ministers, led by Shepard, called off the proceedings because
they felt that the prospective members (except for Mather) had not pre-
sented convincing grounds for their salvation. In a long letter he wrote to
Mather the next day, Shepard explained that he found “diverse weaknesses
in most” and “three of them, chiefly, that I was not satisfied scarce in any
measure with their profession of faith. Not but that I do believe upon your
own trial of them—which, I persuade myself, will not be slightly in laying
a foundation.” Later in the letter, Shepard urged Mather to revisit church
formation once his people were better-prepared and recommended very
careful vetting of prospective members, as “by this means others will not
be too forward to set up on this work, who, after sad trial, will be found
utterly unfit for it.”25 Clearly Shepard, whose church had been gathered
just two months before the Dorchester attempt, under the new require-
ment of giving a convincing relation of God’s work upon the souls of
prospective members, had used trial to sound out those members before
attempting to gather the church.
One convincing piece of evidence that the Shepard’s records are of ses-
sions of trial is hidden in plain sight: they begin after a notebook page
entitled “The Confessions of diverse propounded to be received and were
entertained as members.” Selement and Woolley reasoned that if these
people were accepted (“entertained”) as members, the records must be of
the successful relations that resulted in membership. But the word “pro-
pounded” leaps out at us: Shepard is clearly tagging these records as those
of people propounded for membership. He would not have done this if
10 L. ROGERS-STOKES

these were actual relations—he would have simply written “The

Confessions of members.” Instead, we have the records of people who
were, as Fiske put it, “propounded to the church privately” who then went
through sessions of trial. Yes, they were eventually accepted as members,
but the records that follow are of their trial sessions.26 I will show in Chap.
4 that these records were collected by Shepard into a notebook of doubt
about the spiritual health of New England as a striking proof of the uncer-
tainty and weakness of his flock: these people eventually found assurance,
but their trial sessions convinced Shepard that their journeys were longer
and more difficult than they should have been in a truly godly common-
wealth. Just as he found Mather’s candidates for membership lacking in
convincing proofs of assurance, so he found his own candidates lacking.
By writing explicitly that these are the confessions of those propounded to
be received, Shepard himself finally removes the possibility that these are
relations. In the chronology of propoundment-trial-relation, Shepard’s
records document trial.
If it is easy to picture the tense scene McGiffert describes of Shepard,
“quill pen poised,” at a live relation, it is at least as easy to imagine a dif-
ferent scene: seated together, perhaps in the meeting-house, perhaps in
Shepard’s home, Shepard, and perhaps one or two other people, listen as
a brother or sister speaks. Shepard takes notes, not in an official record-­
keeping capacity, but to document this individual’s story for his own refer-
ence. They may begin well, but as they approach the all-important moment
of assurance, they falter. As the candidate’s narrative breaks down, Shepard
records questions from the listeners or, as in the case of Ellen Greene,
records those listeners stepping in unanimously to offer their own testimo-
nies of her righteousness, which “testimonyes caryed it,” as Shepard wrote
after the few short lines of Ellen’s narrative. Shepard recorded the pauses,
the stops and starts, the places where people gave up, and the places where
they began again. Not yet ready to give a relation, but fortified with advice
and targets for prayer and meditation from their church family, the candi-
date leaves, to return another day for another session or to at last make
their relation.27 This is much more hopeful than the dire picture that
David D. Hall once painted, of “men and women [who] were listened to
in silence by most of their neighbors, who went home year after year with-
out ever qualifying for full membership. … Too much striving after grace,
too much straining for assurance, could have sad consequences.”28 This
was exactly the situation that sessions of trial were meant to forestall.
 1 RE-READING, RE-INTERPRETING, AND RECOVERING PRICELESS TEXTS 11

Rather than deliver multiple failed relations, one could work out one’s
salvation in a more private, more forgiving environment.
Selement himself skirts the boundary of the idea that these are records
of trial but does not see where his own argument is leading:

[The] great strength [of the “Confessions”] is that Shepard faithfully

recorded their testimonies, thus preserving the minds and experiences of his
parishioners. He did not revise their public narrations, opting to miss a few
words and phrases rather than risk editorial distortions. Or course, many of
the laymen, probably testifying without notes and in fear of an embarrassing
long pause, were like Nathaniel Sparrowhawk, an affluent landowner, who
admitted: “I cannot remember many things which I cannot now express
myself” … Other laymen, whose relations end abruptly, even sometimes in
mid-sentence, may have been prompted by Shepard, who stopped writing in
order to lead them with questions and answers. After all, these narrations
served a didactic function, and Shepard wanted each one to be exemplary
for the sake of both the confessor and the congregation.29

All of Selement’s rationales for the records as relations actually prove them
to be records of trial. First, these cannot be faithful recordings of narra-
tives when their language is so often compressed to meaninglessness.
Next, to say that Shepard “opted to miss a few words and phrases” is a
gross misrepresentation of the many fundamental gaps in his written
record. Finally, to claim that writing in complete sentences would, for
Shepard, be an “editorial distortion” is to claim that his parishioners were
indeed so incoherent and inarticulate as to defy imagination. And as I will
show in Chap. 2, long pauses were indeed common and fully represented
by Shepard with clear spacing and punctuation, because they were not an
“embarrassment” in a session of trial, but an open and honest communica-
tion of struggle. It is Selement who is embarrassed by them, and this is
perhaps why he scrubbed them from his transcription. Meredith Neumann
writes pauses into the relation as well: “Not all lapses in a confessor’s abil-
ity to provide particulars correspond to the early stages [of preparation] …
the lacuna in John Sill’s narrative corresponds to the onset of assurance for
the hopeful saint. After speaking ‘some of the promises that did stay me
formerly and then,’ Sill admits that ‘there was more than I can now
remember or call to mind.’”30
Long pauses would not be acceptable in a final relation; neither would
saying “I cannot remember.” People simply could not say “I don’t remem-
ber” during an actual relation, in response to important questions about
12 L. ROGERS-STOKES

how they discovered God’s grace. One could only say that in private or
semi-private sessions of trial. Sill’s forgetfulness was indeed manifested not
during a relation, on the brink of assurance, but at an earlier stage of
preparation, during a trial session with Shepard.31 I will illustrate this
throughout, but particularly in Chap. 2 by closely reading of Isabell
Jackson’s record, which is plagued with the same forgetfulness during
trial—and dotted with the worried editorial comments this drew from the
elders who met with her.
Shepard’s notebooks contain a priceless record of the content of early
Congregational sessions of trial—what people actually talked about, where
they shone, and where they struggled. As records of trial, that content
begins to make sense. Many records end abruptly, or begin well and then
devolve into uncertainty. A few are stronger, more polished and complete
all the way through; these represent either a very strong first trial or (more
likely) a second or even a third session. Some of the Cambridge records
seem to represent multiple trial sessions—in Isabell Jackson’s case, it is
almost certain that we are reading the record of three separate trials. In
these sessions, Shepard took rough notes of the narrative; since they were
his personal notes, he could make them as compressed as he liked. He was
the only person who needed to understand them, and so they could be
little more than shorthand references to statements. His memory would
fill in the blanks when necessary.
As records of trial, the Cambridge records gain rather than lose in
importance. They are glimpses into the process of puritan spiritual prepara-
tion, of very intimate and often gritty encounters between candidates,
church officers, and lay members. They reveal the unfinished, in-progress
seeking of average puritans in Cambridge, and the counsel they received
not only from their minister but from their lay sisters and brothers (which
they recount in their narratives).32 Shepard’s records of these intimate trial
sessions provide a snapshot of seeking-in-progress, of people still working
out their salvation.

The Question of Assurance

Understanding Shepard’s records as records of trial also answers an impor-
tant concern: why do the majority of the narratives fail to document assur-
ance? It is crucial to understand that a Shepard-era Cambridge relation
was only successful if it described assurance—closing with Christ. This was
the necessary final result of the process of puritan spiritual preparation. It’s
 1 RE-READING, RE-INTERPRETING, AND RECOVERING PRICELESS TEXTS 13

important to fully explain preparation, since the narratives are focused on

moving through its stages.33 Preparation was the process by which puri-
tans seeking to know whether God had granted them grace (salvation)
through predestination prepared their soul to receive that knowledge.
Preparation began with someone realizing their own sinfulness, and
moved through iterative emotional cycles in response to this realization.
At first, the person might be afraid of going to hell for their sinfulness. But
then they might have the equal and opposite reaction of scorning the
whole concept as fanatical religious nonsense. Then the fear recurred,
leading them to take the step of praying or asking someone godly for help;
thus began a long cycle of making progress toward the goal of preparing
their soul for God’s will. A fully prepared soul was able to receive the all-­
important message from God about their salvation.
This cycle was marked by repeated failures and backslidings and con-
tinuous doubt. For every moment of certainty and closeness to God, there
might be two moments of gnawing doubt and the feeling of “deadness of
heart,” as the Cambridge puritans so often put it.34 Doubt and failure
were not signs of damnation—quite the contrary. A willingness to keep
fighting the battle against sin was encouraging evidence that someone was
sincerely motivated to get closer to God. This sincere motivation might
well be a sign of grace.35 Being a hypocrite—going through the empty
motions of preparation—was the greatest fear of the New England puri-
tan; failing and admitting your spiritual failure and doubt was convincing
proof that you were not just a hypocrite pretending to make progress. In
fact, weakness, failure, and doubt were doors through which God could
pour his consolation and power. As Shepard said, “God doth show his
power by the much ado of our weakness to do anything … the more weak
I, the more fit I to be used … When I was most empty, then by faith I was
most full.” And Michael McGiffert notes that “these polarities were
instrumentally connected in God’s soteriological strategy: for the saint to
be raised up, the Old Adam had to be laid low. … In this dialectic of con-
trarieties resided the secret of assurance.”36 Failure, and the will to over-
come it, moved the seeker closer to God. As the English puritan Katherine
Sutton put it, “I can truly say from real experience that the worst weather
I went through, the more of God I met.”37
The cycle of preparation ended only when God’s will was revealed. Ideally,
God’s will was to grant the seeker salvation, which the puritans called assur-
ance. This was an overpowering emotional and physical moment of union
with Christ, in which he provided the individual with incontrovertible evi-
dence of their salvation. The seeker was joined with Christ, never to be parted.
14 L. ROGERS-STOKES

They were assured of grace. Once a person received assurance, they could
never again doubt their salvation, and their eternal future in Heaven.
One of the most obvious features of most of the records in Shepard’s
notebook, after their language compression, is the lack of a clear moment of
assurance. To be very clear, I am not talking about moments of assurance
that are then followed by more doubt and trial. That was a natural part of
the soul-searching that took place after assurance to continue to bring the
earthly saint ever closer to Christ before they were at last fully joined in
Heaven. People who described assurance and its transcendent joy often fol-
lowed this moment with accounts of deep despair and distance from God.
This was not a fall from grace but a proof of it: only a soul that was united
to Christ could perceive new levels of sinfulness—being closer to Christ
made a person more aware of the distance that still remained between them.
The closer to Christ one became, the more soul-­searching one performed,
and the more awareness of sin one developed. Again, this was blessed evi-
dence that one was not a hypocrite; in fact, persons with assurance were
clearly avoiding the hypocrisy of believing they were perfect, and free of sin.
Thomas Goodwin described this process well: “I knew no more of the work
of conversion than these two general heads, that a man was troubled in
conscience for his sins, and afterwards was comforted by the favor of God
manifested to him.”38 Assurance brought both the certainty of grace and
further soul-searching and grief over sin; as Mary Gookin of Cambridge put
it, “I heard that assurance which makes us slacken our watch, tis not of God
but Satan.”39 Being troubled for sin and comforted by assurance—the
“favor of God manifested”—was the spiritual state puritans sought. It was
the closest to God they could be on Earth.
That said, most of the Cambridge records still do not describe assur-
ance. They detail soul-searching and grief for sin, along with moments of
hopefulness and joy, but not the overwhelming moment that removes
forever the fear of eternal damnation and sets the seeker on a new path of
moving ever closer to Christ. Many scholars, believing that these are
records of successful relations of faith, are confounded by this fact.40 Many
try to square this circle by claiming that Shepard was lenient with people
who had not found grace—that he granted them church membership
because they were hopeful that they would someday find assurance. In this
theory, sincere belief and a hopeful feeling would be rewarded or encour-
aged with church membership, as this would strengthen the seeker on the
path of preparation.41 This “mustard seed” theory seems to be confirmed
by the pre-eminent New England Congregational minister John Cotton
 1 RE-READING, RE-INTERPRETING, AND RECOVERING PRICELESS TEXTS 15

of Boston when he says “We refuse none for weaknesse, either in knowl-
edge or grace if the whole be in them;” this has been interpreted to mean
that someone without assurance could become a Congregational church
member.42 But there is a crucial difference between granting church mem-
bership to someone whose assurance is relatively untested and fragile and
granting it to someone who has no assurance at all.43 When Cotton refers
to “weakness” he doesn’t mean the applicant has no assurance, but that
their assurance is new, and fragile—vulnerable to its first bouts of doubt
and despair. But it is present—it is “the whole” that is within them. If the
applicant is not completely certain of their assurance, that is where trial
comes in: an audience of saints will help the seeker to perceive whether or
not assurance exists.
If Shepard were to accept a relation without assurance, it would be
disastrous to both the individual and the entire church.44 As Thomas Weld
argued, “[some] upon due trial may be found too light, when weighted in
God’s ballance, and its better for such to be discovered here, then hereaf-
ter, to their eternall ruine.” Weld also negates the “mustard seed” theory
when he specifies that “…Where we see any breathings of Christ in any, we
esteeme them as Christian, we love them dearely, and carry our selves
accordingly to them and theirs, though not yet in Church fellowship with
us[.] Where we see no grace as yet wrought, we labour in all meeknesse to
bring them to Christ…”45 There may be “breathings of Christ” in a seeker,
but they cannot enter into church membership until they possess clear
assurance. Church members of Cambridge did not mistake someone
hopeful for Christ with someone who had closed with him, and Shepard
did not accept seekers without assurance as members out of pity or
compassion.

Misreading Misery
The lack of assurance in many of the records has led many scholars to
describe them—and the speakers themselves, and their society—as thor-
oughly depressed. Andy Dorsey calls the speakers “dubious converts,”
people who despaired of the possibility of assurance and turned away from
its pursuit, choosing instead an endless spiritual self-flagellation that was
approved or even mandated by their church and society.46 If this was the
pinnacle of puritan preparation, if perpetual, unrelieved misery was the
longed-for, ideal condition of the saint, then puritanism was indeed a
bleak and inhumane religion. Shepard’s compressed language contributes
16 L. ROGERS-STOKES

to this mindset, as it has been read by most scholars as proof that Shepard’s
candidates were so miserable as to be unable to express themselves at
length—unable to speak clearly. This, in turn, is described as the end result
of a long parallel process of stripping authentic human emotion out of the
puritan soul, a deliberate deadening of the heart in an attempt to wean it
from the love of earthly pleasures. Patricia Caldwell describes “Shepard’s
saints” as people “whose emotions [were] almost never directly or simply
expressed in [their] conversion stories.” She states that “the emotionalism
of ‘tears’ is unwelcome [and] ‘brokenness within’ is the desired condi-
tion,” and concludes that

[the] burden of a hard, dead heart is precisely what kept the saints in a dead-
lock of inexpressible pain … Burdened as well with strictures against too
much emotional subjectivism … where were they to find an expansive,
imaginative vocabulary, a lexicon of images, a dramatic vehicle to carry the
weight of their experiences?47

The “seeming elision of emotional markers and subjective perspective”

that “suggests an absence of interiority” that Neumann notes is affirmed
by Caldwell, who concludes that the Cambridge records describe an inevi-
table misery “where disorientation and guilt paint the whole world gray,
and where in their confusion they keep bumping into their own sinful
selves.”48
The records we have, however, are indeed filled with strong emotion,
as I will demonstrate. Indeed, most are dominated by lengthy descriptions
of powerful bouts of joy, pain, hope, impatience, resolve, confusion, frus-
tration, jealousy, despair, surprise, love, and excitement. The published
transcriptions thwart our perception of many of these emotional moments
by removing their physical markers from the page. Mrs. Crackbone’s
record, for example, shows a hopeful narrative stopped dead by a sudden,
painful memory of how her spiritual journey estranged her from her par-
ents. Shepard sets this moment—“& so I wisht my parents knew
mee;//”—apart on a single line, a mournful orphan on the page. Later in
the same narrative, Mrs. Crackbone expresses a wild, joyful moment of
excited hope as she watches her house burn down; she urges the flames on
as she realizes “my Sp[irit] was fiery so to burne all I had; and h[ence I]
prayed [Lord] would send fire of word and baptize me [with] fire, & since
the [Lord] hath set my hart at liberty.”
 1 RE-READING, RE-INTERPRETING, AND RECOVERING PRICELESS TEXTS 17

When we read the original manuscript records, these moments of

strong emotion appear much more clearly. When we understand the com-
pressed language of the records as Shepard’s personal shorthand rather
than the actual finished speech of his flock, we regain a rational perception
of the puritans of New England as articulate people who lived lives not
entirely devoted to misery and despair. We recover their strong and heroic,
detailed and emotional life stories.

Why Not Record the Actual Relations?

If Shepard recorded sessions of trial as a way to document someone’s spiri-
tual progress and remind himself of where one session ended and another
began, why, then, did he not record their final, triumphant relation? The
simplest answer may be that he did not formally record relations because
he would not have seen any reason to do so.49
First, relations were considered semi-private, in that they were heard
only by the gathered congregation. This was one of the reasons why
women were allowed to make them even though this violated the Pauline
prohibition on women speaking in church that the puritans upheld in
other contexts, like church voting and committee work.50 If final relations
were written down, the main reason would be for future reference and
edification, and this would transform public speaking into printed edifica-
tion—into formal teaching. Words captured for eternity gained the power
to teach; they could be consulted as a form of means, like a sermon. This
pushed women’s speaking into the forbidden realm of teaching men, but
even more importantly, it violated the nature of a relation. While it was
supposed to prove assurance, a relation was not supposed to be the final
word on the candidate’s spiritual journey. It affirmed salvation, but the
saint was meant to continue refining their soul and moving ever closer to
Christ. A relation they gave in one year should not accurately represent
their spiritual state the next year. The relation was transient, capturing the
moment of assurance and allowing the saint to move into the post-­
assurance work of coming as close to Christ as was possible on Earth.
Thus, there was no real need to write out a “perfect,” final relation of
faith, and every reason to prohibit it. When candidates met for trial, to
gauge and share their spiritual progress, Shepard wrote down their words
for his own personal use. If a candidate came to him for private counsel,
he could consult this record. Once the person gave their relation, the
record of trial was put aside. The final product of a public relation was not
18 L. ROGERS-STOKES

a written artifact but a new saint—a person whose intangible spiritual

identity was forever changed. Just as assurance was an intensely emotional
and personal inner experience, so a relation was not a physical artifact—a
piece of writing—but a verbal act transfused with spiritual power.51 Words
spoken and heard in a live, transient moment best represented this spiri-
tual event. Transforming and reducing this intangible, sensual event into
a paper-and-ink record, frozen forever on the page, was not only unneces-
sary but inappropriate.52
I want to avoid giving the impression that because they were the end
result of iterative conference and trial sessions, actual live relations were
not extemporaneous and personal, heart-felt, and high-stakes. Relations
were not merely over-rehearsed narratives from sessions of trial; as live
public speaking, they must have been fundamentally different from private
narratives that were attended by the minister, or perhaps a few other peo-
ple.53 If, as Caldwell says, “the people of New England experienced some
trauma when they were called upon to give a relation,” it would make
sense to try to relieve some of that trauma by going through trial.54
Delivering an early version of a relation to the minister and supportive
peers was preparation for delivering a relation to the church.
Going forward, the Shepard records will be referred to as records of
trial. As they stand on the page, these are not successful relations. Nor do
they read like formal records. None of the explanations scholars give for
their failure to describe assurance—namely, that assurance was impossible,
or that spiritual self-flagellation was the only goal, or that Shepard was an
easy grader—square with an objective study of Shepard’s approach to
assurance and the actual content of the records. What does make objective
sense is that the pages in Shepard’s notebooks read like early- or mid-cycle
progress toward relations recorded by the minister in sessions of trial. By
facilitating the admission of the fact that the narratives found on the pages
of Shepard’s notebook are often not clear, often not complete, and often
clearly unacceptable as final relations, this theory can help to bring clarity
to our study of them, and help us to present a more logical and accurate
picture of the people working toward church membership in early
Cambridge.
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WITH THE RANK

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 THOS. J. FORD,
Sergeant Company H. Twenty-fourth Wisconsin Infantry.
 WITH THE RANK AND FILE.

Incidents and Anecdotes During the War of the

Rebellion, as Remembered by One

of the Non-Commissioned
Officers.

By THOMAS J. FORD,
Sergeant Company H, Twenty-Fourth Wisconsin Infantry.

1898.
Press of the Evening Wisconsin Co.,
Milwaukee.
Copyright, 1898,
by
Thos. J. Ford.
 TA B L E O F C O N T E N TS

INCIDENTS AND ANECDOTES 5

ON THE BATTLEFIELD 32
PULPIT AND PRESS 61
THAT LEXINGTON IMPUDENCE 70
SHOULD EDUCATION BE COMPULSORY 77
WASHINGTON AND LINCOLN 82
AS TO PENSIONS 87
DEPARTURE OF THOMAS J. FORD 91
COMMENDED BY HIS SUPERIORS 93
 I N T R O D U C TO RY.

My Dear Reader: Among the many publications which the late war
has drawn forth, I present you with something which you have never
read, nor which has ever been in print, until the issue of this little
book. The sketches contained herein have been carefully revised and
made as brief as possible, with the object of bringing before you the
privations and hardships of the rank and file. A few of the amusing
incidents of life in the army are also chronicled, as they occurred in
Camp, on the March, or on the Battlefield. Papers on compulsory
education, the pulpit and the press, farm life, and one on the merits
of America's two grandest men (George Washington and Abraham
Lincoln) will also be found herein.
Thomas J. Ford.
Milwaukee, May, 1898.
 I N C I D E N TS A N D A N E C D OT E S.

Sketches of Army Life from the Viewpoint of a Non-Commissioned Officer

During the Rebellion.

An Address Delivered at E. B. Wolcott Post, G. A. R., Hall, Milwaukee,

Wis., November 19, 1897, by Thomas J. Ford.

Commander and Comrades: The history of the late war is

generally known by the whole civilized world; but the history of each
private individual in that conflict is known much less by others than
by myself.
In presenting to you a few sketches of the many incidents and
privations of my army life, you must not expect me, in my humble
rank as private, corporal and sergeant, to give you as broad a view
of the army in which I served as other men of higher rank and
station can give you. My duty was with my company and its
immediate surroundings, as others in the same rank and file.
The Twenty-fourth Wisconsin Regiment was organized in August,
1862, and on the 8th of October following were engaged in the
Battle of Perryville, Kentucky. Just before starting for the battlefield
that morning (I had not been feeling very well for a week past) I
went to Dr. Hasse, our regimental surgeon, and told him about it.
"Well," he said, "Ford, I don't know what to do for you. All the
medicine is packed away but that five-gallon can of castor oil there.
Just set it on the top of that stump and take a swallow of it."
 I did so. "And now," he said, "I will give you an order to have your
luggage carried in the wagon." I packed up everything that I could
get along without, which left nothing on my person but my red shirt,
pants, shoes and cap. We got into battle sooner than was expected.
As we were in the reserve line of battle waiting for orders the rebel
bullets were dropping thick and fast around us, for they were
preparing to charge on one of our batteries. A brigade orderly rode
up to Col. Larrabee, of our regiment, the Twenty-fourth Wisconsin,
and said, "Colonel, the General wants you to march your regiment to
the left of that battery and hold it at all hazards; the rebels are
about to charge on it."
The Colonel was somewhat hard of hearing. He placed his hand to
his ear and said, "What's that, sir?"
The order was repeated. The Colonel answered, "I will, by God,
sir;" and called the regiment to attention. We marched to the left of
that battery in double-quick time. The size and appearance of the
Twenty-fourth Wisconsin swinging into line with ten hundred and
twenty-four men and firing a few volleys of musketry at them
checked the advancing foe and the battery was saved. I was in the
front rank in my company with no coat on and the only red shirt
visible in the regiment. The order was given to fall back about
twenty paces to the rear. We were too far out near the crest of the
hill looking down on the cornfield where the rebels were, but I did
not fall back. I was so interested loading and firing at the rebels
down in that cornfield that I did not hear the command to cease
firing or to fall back. The regiment was ready to fire in its new
position, but the command was not given until the red-shirted man
fell back into line. The Colonel was calling for me. He sent Adjutant
McArthur out in front after me, at the same time calling aloud, "You
man with the red shirt, fall back."
I knew that meant me, so I looked around and saw Adjutant
McArthur galloping to the front and the regiment was back in the
rear. Too quick did I about face and double-quick to my place in the
front rank of my company. That night I lay on the ground with
nothing between me and the blue sky but my shirt, pants, shoes and
cap.
Another incident. Just before the Battle of Stone River I received a
box of fine cut chewing and smoking tobacco from an uncle of mine
in Milwaukee. We got orders that night to get ready for the march in
the morning. I did not know what to do with my big box of tobacco,
containing eleven dollars' worth, done up in Milwaukee. A rare thing
to get—Milwaukee tobacco. Some of the company boys helped me
to do it up in packages from fifty cents' worth to a dollar and a half
size packages, and we went around and sold all the tobacco in an
hour's time to officers and privates alike, but got very little money,
the regiment not being paid yet, so we had to trust until pay day.
We got into the fight, however, at daybreak, one gray, frosty
morning, after lying on our arms all night, and our fingers were all
benumbed with the cold and frost. As for myself, I can say that I had
to place my finger on the trigger of the gun with my left hand before
I could bring it up to an aim. The rebels came down on us, colors
flying and in solid column, shouting and hollering as if certain and
sure of victory. We fell back before them. They crowded us into a
cedar woods, where there was nothing but cedar trees and rocks,
and it seemed as if all the birds and rabbits in that large field were
looking for protection around our feet. So thick and fast did the
rebels send their shot and shell after us that you might think it
impossible for a bird to escape them. The rebels had us surrounded
for a while. You could see the rebel officers and orderlies galloping
on their horses in the near distance, urging their men on to make a
complete capture, but we got out of that battle all right, as history
fully explains. When we were in the thickest of this fight an incident
took place about that tobacco I sold on time. A comrade of mine,
James Mangan, formerly a school teacher in the Town of Franklin
(and I was a pupil at his school myself), came near me and said,
"Thomas, this is terrible. It seems impossible for any of us to escape
being killed by those shells and bullets, if they continue this way
much longer." (At the same time I noticed one of the boys that I
sold some tobacco to, on time, drop.)
 "Yes," said I. "But what will I do now for the price of my tobacco?
Most of those are killed that I sold it to, and I will never be paid."
"To the devil with you and your tobacco," said he, "if that is what
you are thinking of now, in place of your soul."
We went into that battlefield early in the afternoon, without
anything to eat; lay on our arms all night in line of battle in the
immediate front of the enemy and fought all the next day without
anything to eat or drink. Our supply train was cut off. General
Rosecrans had a large pile of forage corn near his headquarters. The
boys commenced stealing it for food. There was a strong guard
placed around it, and an order issued to give each man one ear of
corn as far as it went until supplies would arrive. In dealing out the
corn the plan was to put one ear of corn into each empty hand as it
reached out. Some got two ears of corn by placing the first behind
their back and thrusting forth the other empty hand. The pile of corn
did not supply one-hundredth part of the vast numbers clustered
around it. We ate the ear of corn, and that was all we had to eat at
that time.
Closing this incident of the Battle of Stone River, I might as well
remark right here that my father and his three sons were in the War
of the Rebellion from 1861-1865, and the first he knew of two of his
sons being in the war and in the Twenty-fourth Wisconsin was after
the Battle of Stone River. He took part in the same battle with
Captain Bridges' battery. Father came to see Col. Larrabee of the
Twenty-fourth Wisconsin with a view of getting his two sons, Daniel
and Thomas, transferred to Bridges' battery, so that we could be
together with him. He told the Colonel about it, and the Colonel said
he would not allow it to be done; they were two good boys and he
was going to keep them.
"But they are my boys," said the old man, "and I want them with
me."
"They are not your boys, by God, sir," said the Colonel; "they are
my boys, and I am going to keep them; you cannot have them."
 The other son was in the Twenty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment,
and at the Battle of Fredericksburg was shot through the heart while
planting the Stars and Stripes on the rebels' breastworks. The color-
bearer being shot down, he picked up the flag and both he and the
flag lay on the rebels' breastworks, our side being repulsed.
There was a general order one time that our boys should not steal
anything in a certain part of the country where we were located
during Col. Larrabee's command over the regiment. The General
ordered the Colonel that he should punish those two men that were
caught as an example for the rest. I heard the Colonel pronounce
the sentence in these words, as I was standing guard near his tent,
"Now, boys, I have to punish you. I am so ordered by the General. I
want you both to understand that I am not punishing you for
stealing, but for getting caught at it, by God." This seemed to be a
common byword of the Colonel.
General Rousseau had command of our division for a short time
near a place in Tennessee that we addressed our letters from as
Camp Starvation, near Cowan's Station. The citizens were nearly all
loyal to the Union cause. It was a rough, stony and hilly country.
They seemed to have only a few sheep for their meat. The General
ordered that the men should not kill any of those sheep. Shortly
after we broke ranks of course some went off foraging, as usual.
They killed a sheep and dressed it and had it on their shoulders
coming back to camp when they met the General and his staff out
reconnoitering.
"Halt those men there," said the General to one of his orderlies,
"and place them under arrest. Take that mutton up to my
headquarters and have it cooked for supper." He released the men
on the promise that they would not do it again. Next day about the
same time the same four boys went out again. They knew where
there was a large, fat Newfoundland dog. They killed him, cut off his
head and legs, skinned and dressed him up nicely in the shape of a
mutton. They met the General nearly in the same place as the day
before.
 "What, those same men disobeying my orders again? Place those
men under arrest and report their commanding officer. Orderly, take
that mutton to headquarters and tell the cook to hurry up with it for
supper." They ate that mutton for supper, and all declared it sweeter
and better mutton than the one eaten the night before.
Everyone in camp knew what had happened. We had those little
dog tents at that time. The General and staff came galloping down
our company streets the next morning, when every soldier, as if with
one accord, thrust his head out of the little tents and commenced
barking like so many dogs. The horses commenced prancing; the
General's hat fell off; he stuck the spurs into his horse's side, and
galloped off to Col. Larrabee's tent, just in front of him.
"I say, Colonel, what does this mean, your men barking at me like
so many dogs?"
"Well, I don't know, General," said the Colonel, "unless you have
some dog in you."
The General scratched his head and said, "Out-generaled by my
own men. That is the last damned 'order' I will ever issue in this
camp."
Col. Larrabee was a good man, but he seemed to get tired of the
war after a certain time when he did not receive a brigadier-
generalship, which he was entitled to by seniority. We were taking a
rest one day under the shade of some trees waiting for orders, lying
down full length, taking the best advantage of the precious moments
given us, when the Colonel raised himself up to a sitting position and
said, "Boys, I brought the Twenty-fourth Wisconsin Regiment into
the field ten hundred and twenty-four men strong. Now I have but
three hundred and sixty men, a regiment that I can take anywhere
and feel proud of them; a regiment that every man of them knows
as much if not more than I do myself."
The orders came to fall in, and right here the curtain drops on Col.
Larrabee. I have never heard of or seen him since. It is true that a
great many different men had their turn in commanding the Twenty-
fourth Wisconsin Regiment, and it is also true that they were all
good men, viz., West, Kennedy, Bombach, Parsons, and last of all
that young and brave boy, Col. McArthur, whose gallantry at the
Battle of Franklin I shall never forget. The rebels had driven our men
out of the breastworks that we were relieved from about an hour or
so before in order to cook some refreshments, for we were on
advance guard duty about 48 hours and were bothered so much
with rebel cavalry that we did not have much time to rest or eat.
Marching into Franklin we were closely followed up, in the rear of
our army, by rebel General Hood's infantry. We stacked arms, after
being "relieved," a quarter of a mile, I should think, from those
breastworks. Our coffee was just beginning to boil and our sow-belly
and crackers frying, when the rebels charged those breastworks and
drove our men out, and followed them up. They came through our
stacked arms and over our fires, upsetting our coffee pots and frying
pans, with the rebels right at their heels and at our stacked arms as
soon as we were. Every one of us was as mad as he could be after
losing his nearly cooked dinner, and we felt as if we could whip the
whole rebel army just at that moment, when Col. McArthur called
out, "Fall in, Twenty-fourth; take arms. Charge. Give um hell, boys.
Give um hell, give um hell, Twenty-fourth." We did "give um hell,"
and drove them back over the breastworks again. When he got the
run on them we commenced shooting as they were jumping back
again over the breastworks, and they'd holler out, "Don't shoot,
Yanks. For God Almighty's sake, don't shoot." Then some of them
would get hit and cry out, "Oh."
We got the breastworks and held them against several attempts to
take them from us, until darkness came and everything was still.
About 2 o'clock in the morning, under cover of darkness, after the
supply train and everything was across the river, we stole away out
of those breastworks without making any noise, crossed the river,
burned the bridge and were safe on our journey to Nashville, where
ended the last of our battle of the war.
Right here I will mention a little incident that happened at one of
the rebel attempts to take those breastworks from us at the Battle of
Franklin. Capt. Fillbrooks, of Company D, a very brave man, noticed
one of his men dodging or ducking his head from the noise of the
rebel bullets. "Mike," said the Captain, "quit dodging your head
there. Stand up to it and take it like a man." The word was no
sooner out of the Captain's mouth when a bullet hit him in the
middle of the forehead and laid him out dead. Mike said to him.
"Why the devil in hell don't you stand up and take it like a man."
And the word wasn't out of Mike's mouth when he got a scalp
wound on the right side of his forehead. "Holy Moses," said he,
"there is nothing like the dodging after all. Every time I heard it
before I dodged it and it never hit me."
The day before the Franklin battle we got into a brush with the
rebel cavalry at a place called Spring Hill. The sun was settling down
in the west. They had been picking at us all day, so they prepared
for a charge. We could see the sun glisten on their swords as they
drew sabers. They were on the east of us and charged across that
plain with a seeming determination to play great havoc in our ranks.
But the old First Brigade let them come near enough to give them
one volley of musketry and then came to a charge against cavalry,
the front-rank men standing firmly placed in proper position all with
fixed bayonets. Here they come hollering like demons, carbines
empty, sabers drawn over their heads ready to come down with a
cut and slash, but they couldn't do it. Every man stood firm. The
Twenty-fourth was in the front of the brigade, facing the enemy.
They tried to force their horses to open a gap, but it was
impregnable. They withdrew in disorder. We lay down and our
batteries played havoc with those rebel cavalry. You could see a
rebel's head falling off his horse on one side and his body on the
other, and the horse running and nickering and looking for its rider.
Others you could see fall off with their foot caught in the stirrup and
the horse dragging and trampling them, dead or alive. Others, the
horse would get shot and the rider tumble head over heels, or may
be get caught by his horse falling on them. I used to think before
that cavalry charge what a terrible thing it would be to get into a
battle with cavalry and imagine how they could cut and slash and
shoot at us and trample us down with their horses; but I thought
different after that experience with the rebel cavalry. Why, it is the
greatest fun imaginable in time of war for a solid column of infantry
prepared for the attack to have a cavalry charge on them. The
horses won't do it for the rider, and the rider can do nothing with a
body of solid infantry.
There was a little incident that happened before the Battle of
Chickamauga in a place we called the Devil's Basin, in Georgia. We
had fifty rebel officers and soldiers as prisoners. There was one rebel
captain who was continually cursing and abusing Abe Lincoln and
the Stars and Stripes. I was sergeant of the guard in charge of the
prisoners. The officer of the day gave me orders to have that kind of
language stopped if I had to do it with the point of the bayonet. I
put a new guard on, a man that I knew would stop it. After a while
this rebel captain thought he would make the acquaintance of the
new guard, and asked him what countryman he was. The guard
replied with great emphasis, "My father is an Irishman, and my
mother is a Dutch woman; the damnedist breed that ever lived; and
if you don't keep your mouth shut I'll run this bayonet right through
you," at the same time going right for the rebel captain. The next
day we let the rebel officers go and withdrew from the Devil's Basin
towards Chickamauga. Our line was too long and weak, a great
mistake of General Rosecrans. We were double-quicked into the
Battle of Chickamauga on the morning of September 20, 1863, and
filled a gap that was wide open right in front of a large body of rebel
soldiers that was lying on the ground waiting for orders to go, as it
appeared to me, when General Little, our brave Brigadier-General,
led us up within plain sight of them. General Little was wounded
slightly in the arm. The rebels peppered it into us, as our brave
Henry G. Rogers can tell you. Little moved his line back, which I
think was wrong, for it encouraged the rebels and they came right
for us. Just when the new line was formed General Sheridan rode by
in a gallop down the right of the line. In passing the Twenty-fourth
Wisconsin he said a word to General Little and went on. A limb of a
tree brushed off his hat, but he did not stop. One of his orderlies
dismounted and made several attempts before he replaced the hat
on Sheridan's head, Sheridan paying no attention whatever to the
hat business, as it appeared to me. The rebs came for us in our new
line. The firing commenced. Our brigade, General Little, was right
behind our colors. I was between him and the colors. Oh, how the
boys did load and fire. I saw rebels crawling on their hands and
knees through the underbrush to get the Twenty-fourth Wisconsin
flag. They never got the flag, neither did they ever go back. A man
in my company was firing high. I drew his attention to the fact, and
ordered him to aim low.
"Sergeant," said he, "I have a son in the rebel army, and I imagine
he is forninst me out and I don't want to shoot him."
"Well, then, aim low," said I, "and shoot the son of a gun right in
the heart." Strange to say the son deserted the rebels and ate
supper with his father that night.
So determined and persistent was the fight in our part of the line,
I heard a voice behind me saying, "Sergeant, what regiment is this?"
I looked around and saw General Little, and said, "This is the
Twenty-fourth Wisconsin, General."
He commenced falling off his horse and said, "Brave boys, brave
boys."
Those were the last words he ever spoke. He had his hand on the
pone of his saddle, and as he was falling his hat fell off, his long
auburn hair hung down, and he seemed to hang on to that saddle
with his right hand until he was nearly to the ground. It is a sight I
will never forget. I then looked to our left, and saw the rebels in our
rear. The troops on our left had left us and we also left. As we were
retreating in pretty good time, one of our boys was just in front of
me, making the best time he could, and I keeping right up with him,
when he was hit and killed. He fell across my track and I fell on top
of him. I thought we were both shot with the same bullet. I got up
again all right and lit out. You could see the rebels and you could
hear the bullets plainer because there was but one side shooting.
The bullets went zip, zip, into the leaves on the ground and around
your ears as thick as bees.
We got down to the turnpike road. General Rosecrans and other
generals were there, and tried to have us halt and form a line and
charge the rebels back. Rosecrans said, "The rebels are defeated
and are retreating at another part of the line, and if you could have
held them here five minutes longer the battle would be ours." Some
stood and listened, and three times as many went on.
The general took off his hat and said, "Boys, form a line here;
there are enough of us to whip those rebels. We have them on the
run in another part of the field. If you won't do it for my sake, do it
for God's sake and for your country's sake." That brought a great
many to halt and ready in line when a rebel solid shot, about a
fifteen-pounder, came along and took off the right hand of one of
the generals and part of the saddle he was resting on. That was
seen too quick. Some one started, and away we went until we found
ourselves near a gap leading into Ringgold.
General Sheridan took command of everything he could find. We
got through the gap and into Chattanooga, and we were not long
there before every man was three feet under ground with a
breastwork against the enemy. We thought they would be right on to
us, but they were too glad to take a rest and too glad to get rid of
us, for they were nearly as badly whipped as we were.
This reminds me of the story of the Irishman and the Georgian
who met and fought until both laid down along side of each other,
completely exhausted. The Irishman threw his hand over on the
Georgian's face and got him by the throat, but the Georgian got the
Irishman's thumb in his mouth. They both held their grip and were
found in that position and taken to the hospital. The Irishman got
better first, but with his hand in a sling on account of his wounded
thumb. He went to see the Georgian, and at first sight greeted him
with, "Give me your hand, be jabers, you're nearly as good a man as
meself."
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