 |
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
“Some of them had their speech
strangled from the depth of
their inward dolor with heartbreaking sobs…adding many drops of salt
liquor to the ebbing ocean.” “You
are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.”
JOHN WINTHROP JOHN WINTHROP'S CITY UPON A HILL Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck and to provide for our posterity is to follow the Counsel of Micah, to do Justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together in this work as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly Affeccion. We must be willing to abridge our selves of our superfluities, for the supply of others necessities. We must uphold a familiar Commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other, make others Condicions our own, rejoice together, mourne together, labour, and suffer together, always having before our eyes our Commission and Community in the work, our Community as members of the same body, so shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God and delight to dwell among us as his own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of his wisdom, power, goodness and truth then formerly we have been acquainted with. We shall find that God [ ] is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies, when he shall make us a praise and glory, that men shall say of succeeding plantations: 'May the Lord make it like that of New England.' For we must consider that we shall be as a City Upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us; so that if we shall deal falsely with our god in this work we have undertaken and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God and all professors for God's sake. We shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into Curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whither we are going: And to shut up this discourse with that exhortacion of Moses, that faithful servant of the Lord in his last farewell to Israel Deut. 30: Beloved there is now set before us life and good, death and evil, in that we are Commanded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another, to walk in his ways and to keep his Commandments and his Ordinance, and his laws, and the Articles of our Covenant with him that we may live and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may bless us in the land whither we go to possess it: But if our hearts shall turn away so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced and worship other gods our pleasures, and profits, and serve them, it is propounded unto us this day, we shall surely perish out of the good Land whither we pass over this vast Sea to possess it; Therefore let us choose life, ***** "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. " - John 15:5
RALPH OF ROXBURY Ralph Hemmenway is the progenitor of the majority of Hemenways, Hemingways, and Heminways in America. Little is known of Ralph's origins. He is not listed on any ship’s documents nor has any record of his birth in England been found to date. It is known, however, that he was part of the Great Migration of Puritans (Independents) to New England that began when John Winthrop's fleet landed in 1630. The Puritans were largely of the English middle and upper middle classes. Unlike the Pilgrims who were humble, relatively poor people who wanted to be left alone, the Puritans were by and large substantial men. They were farmers, artisans, merchants, lawyers, landed gentlemen, and well educated. They were accustomed to using worldly power and desired to use it to serve God's will. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were periods of wrenching social change and political dislocations in Europe. Armies raped and pillaged. Public immorality and corruption were rampant. The Puritans saw both church and state rulers participating in this hell on earth rather than acting to restrain man's evil as they should. They sought to purify the Church and create a renewed "New" England. "Under...Archbishop Laud, every corner of the realm was subjected to constant and minute inspections. Every little congregation of dissenters was tracked out and broken up. Even the devotions of private families could not escape the vigilance of his spies, and many thousands of upright and industrious men, among them nearly eight clergymen, were driven by persecution to emigrate to New England...A large number of them were educated, and to their influence it is owing that schools were so early established, and that so much attention was paid to instruction in every New England community. Said one of their number, in the quaint language of those days, "God shifted three kingdoms that he might send over choice grain into the wilderness" - Francis S. Drake 1878
The tyrannical Archbishop Laud See Worldly Saints: The Puritans as They Really Were by Leland Ryken ***** The emphasis of their religion on Bible reading and the proliferation of it, caused them to establish "Free Schools" and made New England one of the most literate societies in the world. These were the precursors of our public school system, which was, in the past, wildly successful. They established Harvard only six years after they landed. In 1672 Ralph, along with about 23 others, endowed Harvard College with "liberal contributions."
Rev. Asa Hemenway wrote in 1880: "It is difficult to trace the family prior to 1634. The same difficulty is found by all whose ancestors immigrated about that same time, as the time 1632 to 1636 was the period of the great rush of immigrants to New England, and many expedients were resorted to to get passage. Many unmarried men and women were entered as "servants", no name being given, and they cannot be traced by either ship or nativity." Whatever Ralph's origins, it is clear that he rose rapidly. He came as a young single man, about 22 years of age, in a migration of primarily intact families. While he is listed as a "man servant" in 1633, he was already one of the larger landowners and taxpayers in Roxbury by 1639. He married Elizabeth Hewes in 1634, whose family was of some means. Her brother Joshua soon became a prominent man in Roxbury. He is listed in the records of the First Church in Roxbury as:
Ralph
Henningway, a man servant, came to Roxbury in 1633. ROXBURY"...Then may we ever loyallymake Roxbury our boastLet deeds that were and deeds that areBe sung from coast to coast."- Mary C. Gourley 1930The exact date of the arrival of the first settlers of Roxbury is not known. A large number of vessels came out in 1630. The first arrived in May, and the arrivals continued till the fall of the year. The trials of that season fell heavy. "We found the colony in a sad and unexpected condition," says Thomas Dudley, "above eighty of them being dead the winter before; and many of those alive weak and sick; all the corn and bread amongst them all hardly sufficient to feed them a fortnight." Contagious diseases seized on the emigrants on their voyage that year. When they arrived they were feeble, sick and dying daily of fevers and the scurvy. The exposure and hardships they were forced to endure after landing only multiplied their affliction. They were so weak that they could not carry their baggage to the place where they meant to build a fort and settle together. Having no time to deliberate, being forced to provide some shelter before the winter should surprise them, they dispersed themselves in small bands about the bay, to shift as best they might. One of these bands, whose head is said to have been William Pynchon chose a place midway between Dorchester and Boston, for their habitation, a spot two miles from Boston, which they named Rocksbury. - from The History of Roxbury
The lord is my shepherd, I shall not want
|
|||||||||
 |
|||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
