By Dan Hinchen,

Over the last couple of weeks, we in Massachusetts were reminded of the unpredictability and harshness of the winter in New England. Of course, we are not alone and a significant portion of the rest of the country received an even greater shock. Still, the driving snow, sub-zero temperatures, and bitter winds force us to remember what a coastal winter can be. But if you think your commute was bad, the experience of Roger Williams might make you turn up the heat and clutch your hot chocolate a bit more tightly.

In October of 1635, after various hearings and disputes over intersecting matters of theology and secular power, Massachusetts Bay banished Roger Williams forcing him to leave the colony’s borders. But with winter coming on and Williams falling ill the court allowed him the courtesy of commuting the sentence until spring on the condition that Williams would not speak publicly in the interim. He consented to this term and agreed not to publicly proclaim his views.

This agreement did not prevent Williams from welcoming his friends and followers into his home and holding private discussions. However, the Massachusetts court viewed even this as a breach of his promise and, in January, 1636, sent armed soldiers led by Captain John Underhill to Williams’ home in Salem to arrest him and put him on a ship bound for England.

As a blizzard and accompanying gale blustered out of the northeast, the ailing Williams received a secret message from none other than Governor John Winthrop, alerting him to the approaching soldiers. By the time Underhill and his men arrived, Williams had been gone three days.

Williams escaped with his life, liberty, and little else. Leaving his wife and children behind until he could find a new home, he plunged into the winter woods by himself. “He entered the wilderness ill and alone…Winthrop described that winter as ‘a very bad season.’ The cold was intense, violent; it made all about him crisp and brittle…The cold froze even Narragansett Bay, an extraordinary event, for it is a large ocean bay riven by currents and tidal flows.”ⁱ

“But the cold may also have saved his life: it made the snow a light powder . . . it lacked the killing weight of heavy moisture-laden snow. The snow also froze rivers and streams which he would otherwise have had to ford.”ⁱⁱ A silver lining to the winter clouds is one that we benefited from during our last storm and surely made our shoveling much easier.

That Roger Williams endured his trek from Salem to Narragansett Bay is no doubt a testament to his personal relationships with the native peoples and their willingness to give him shelter. Yet, “There was no comfort in this shelter. For fourteen weeks he did ‘not know what Bread or Bed did meane.'”ⁱⁱⁱ

And yet Roger Williams survived this ordeal and soon thrived in his new home of Providence, itself a further attestation to the good relations that Williams shared with the indigenous tribes. While Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies both were formed by English settlers putting roots down in a spot without much thought for the original inhabitants, Williams was able to secure a piece of land with the blessing of the Narragansett sachem Canonicus and his nephew Miantonomi, two men who were otherwise ill-disposed toward the English.

“Canonicus and Miantonomi gave Williams permission to settle there after negotiating what seemed clear boundaries. Williams later declared that Canonicus ‘was not I say to be stirred with money to sell his land to let in Foreigners. Tis true he recd presents and Gratuities many of me: but it was not thouhsands nor ten thouhsands of mony could have bought of him and English Entrance into this Bay.’ He said the land was ‘purchasd by Love.'”^iv

Though we grumbled about the cold and snow that we experienced last week, chances are the memories are already fading. Williams’ journey, though, had a lasting effect: “Thirty-five years later he would refer to that ‘Winter snow wch I feele yet.'”

To find out more about the life of Roger Williams, try these biographies:

• • – Barry, John M., Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Chuch, State, and the Birth of Liberty (New York: Viking Penguin, 2012).
    – Gaustad, Edwin S., Roger Williams (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
    – Winslow, Ola Elizabeth, Master Roger Williams: a biography (New York: Macmillan, 1957).

Also, visit our online catalog, ABIGAIL, and search for Williams, Roger as an author to see what works the MHS holds written by Williams or where he appears in other manuscript collections.

ⁱBarry, John M., Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, state, and the Birth of Liberty (New York: Viking Penguin, 2012) 213.

ⁱⁱBarry, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul, 213.

ⁱⁱⁱBarry, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul, 214.

^ivBarry, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul, 217.

By Susan Martin

On friday evening came the chunky, fat, merry, rosy cheeked dutchman Santa Claus, who makes an annual visit to good children, who have loving parents, on Christmas eve, bringing with him his pack of all sorts of nick-nacks to put into the Christmas stocking. How he makes out to get down our narrow throated chimneys, and these obstructed by grates or stoves, I dont know, unless he and his pack can be contracted and expanded by volition, like Miltons fallen angels, who reduced their gigantic forms to the size of bees, that they might be accommodated in Pandamonium…

This Christmas letter from Jacob Newman Knapp (1773-1868) to his son Frederick, written on 27 Dec. 1852, is just one of many interesting letters in the Knapp family correspondence, a new collection at the MHS.

Jacob’s long life stretched from the American Revolution to the Civil War. He had been a teacher for many years and now lived on a farm in Walpole, N.H. with his wife Louisa (Bellows) Knapp and Frederick’s younger brother Francis. Frederick was minister of the First Parish Church in Brookline, Mass. The family was obviously very close, and letters were frequent and affectionate. Jacob’s in particular, though not short on paternal advice, also reveal a playful and endearing sense of humor.

Christmas at the Knapp home that year was a big event. The guest of honor was a young girl named Rebecca. Rebecca’s name had suddenly appeared in the correspondence just a few days earlier, and any letter indicating who she was or why she was staying with the family has since been lost. Neither Frederick nor Francis was married or had children yet, so I assumed Rebecca was the daughter of a friend or distant relative, or perhaps the child of a servant. The Knapps were known for their hospitality, and Jacob and Louisa seem to have taken this girl under their wing. Whoever she was, she was fêted in grand style, with her very own Christmas tree, a Queen Mab doll, sleigh rides, and afternoon tea with seven other children of Walpole.

One of my favorite passages in the letter is Jacob’s description of a sleigh ride with Rebecca and the other children. He was obviously a natural storyteller, painting a vivid picture for us:

They were as full of happiness, as they could hold. The people in the street stared at the passing show, for the children, comely by nature, were bright, and cleanly dress’d. There were so many little heads peeping above the sleigh, that you might have imagined it a man and horse running off with a birds nest.

Then this fascinating detail:

Ah! a certain friend of ours would say, “you are spoiling that little coloured girl, if you have not already done it.” That we cannot readily assent to. Goodness, in every condition of life, should be encouraged, merit rewarded, and practical reform be prefer’d to theoretical and visionary. When our dignity requires to be enclosed in a glass case to guard it from plebean contact, we shall distrust in generousness, and we prefer being obeyed by love, rather than by fear.

I was more intrigued than ever. Who was Rebecca? A few other letters in the collection contain passing references to her, but nothing more. I consulted published biographies of the Knapps, but turned up nothing.

On 27 June 1853, Rebecca left the Knapp household under the care of a Mr. Makepeace, probably Walpole resident George R. Makepeace. The last letter in the collection is dated a few days later. In it, Jacob tells Frederick: “Rebecca’s safety was well cared for, as much so, as if her complexion had been a combination of white and red. She is a good girl, and will, I hope, continue so.”

By Andrea Cronin

In a prior post about American Sericulture, Dr. James Mease of Philadelphia wrote to Colonel Timothy Pickering about his sericultural pursuits in 1826. Small American sericulture experiments such as Dr. Mease’s endeavor gave way to industrial enterprise by the 1840s. In Northampton and its surrounding towns, businessmen Samuel Whitmarsh and Samuel Lapham Hill spun the necessary structure for the Nonotuck Silk Company and its Corticelli production line of sewing silk.

Though Samuel Whitmarsh gave Nonotuck Silk Company its name, the company did not survive the mulberry speculation bubble and subsequent implosion in the late 1830s. The Northampton Association of Education and Industry purchased the remains of Whitmarsh’s operations but struggled to produce raw silk until the ultimate dissolution of the association in 1846. 

Samuel L. Hill converted the silk production operations of Northampton Association of Education and Industry into manufacturing mills. The company began importing the silk from China and Japan thereafter. Hill began to manufacture a new silk sewing thread known as “machine twist” that was durable enough to be used in mechanical sewing machines. Hill sent sewing machine inventor Isaac M. Singer some of his entrepreneurial “machine twist” silk spools in 1852. Singer was so impressed that he requested all of the company’s silk spools stock. The silk thread market blossomed under the influence of these two businessmen.

Samuel Hill remained president of the Nonotuck Silk Company until his retirement in 1876. At the 1876 Centennial International Exposition in Philadelphia, the Nonotuck Silk Company presented this gorgeous 1876 broadside that depicts twelve steps in silk production process from silkworms to raw silk.

What step in this broadside interests you the most?