should turn to Smith and say, "Which colony, Captain, yours or mine, has had the larger influence in promoting this fortunate condition of things?" Smith was so intelligent and fair-minded a man that I believe he would reply, "Well, Elder, Jamestown must not be belittled. It has done much and has done it well. But on the whole I will admit that Plymouth has done the most and the best." Mr. HENRY W. CUNNINGHAM made the following communication: DIARY OF THE REV. SAMUEL CHECKLEY, 1735. A short time ago there fell into my hands a copy of The New-En land Diary: Or, Almanack For the Year of our Lord Christ, 17 that was interleaved and filled with comments by the Rev. Sa Checkley on various happenings in Boston during that year. is much in this Diary that has more than a passing interest student of old Boston, and it covers a period when the rec surprisingly meagre. Judge Sewall's voluminous Diary had enu six years before, and by a singular fatality both town and church records during the early part and middle of the eighteenth century are either missing altogether, or else so little is recorded that they are of slight value. The records of Mr. Checkley's church, now in the custody of the City Registrar, contain no records of death, a fact that adds value to the burials recorded in this Diary. The Boston selectmen in the very year of this almanac expressed concern at the neglect of the inhabitants to record births and deaths; and Samuel Gerrish, the town clerk, recorded the negligence complained of, from which it appears that, for the fourteen months preceding, "more than 950 births and deaths" had occurred in the town of which no record had been handed in; "which neglect of theirs," he added "may prove to be of ill consequence to their posterity." 1 1 It is clear, therefore, that when a record of this character, made by an educated man of the dominant class, comes to light, it ought to be printed, that others may benefit by the discovery. From the earliest days, one or more almanacs had been published 1 Drake's History and Antiquities of Boston, p. 599. |