APRIL MEETING, 1920 A STATED MEETING of the Society was held, at the invitation of Mr. Henry Herbert Edes, at No. 62 Buckingham Street, Cambridge, on Thursday, 29 April, at eight o'clock in the evening, the President, FRED NORRIS ROBINSON, Ph.D., in the chair. The Records of the last Stated Meeting were read and approved. The PRESIDENT appointed the following Committees in anticipation of the Annual Meeting: To nominate candidates for the several offices, Dr. CHARLES LEMUEL NICHOLS, and Messrs. RICHARD CLIPSTON STURGIS and JULIUS HERBERT TUTTLE. To examine the Treasurer's accounts, - Messrs. JOHN ELIOT THAYER and JOHN LOWELL. The CORRESPONDING SECRETARY reported that a letter had been received from Mr. GEORGE RUSSELL AGASSIZ accepting Corresponding Membership. The PRESIDENT announced the death at Cambridge on the 29th of March of ANDREW MCFARLAND DAVIS, a Resident Member.1 1 At a meeting of the Council held 1 April, 1920, the following minute was adopted: The Council have learned with sorrow of the death of their honored colleague ANDREW McFarland Davis, the Senior Vice-President of the Society, and for many years a member of this Board. Although the state of Mr. Dayis's health has deprived us of his presence at our meetings during the past three years, his wise counsel has always been at our service, and his kind and cordial greeting has been sent to us on more than one occasion. We shall long miss him, and we deplore the loss of his advice and coöperation in the varied interests of the Society. Nor can we say farewell to our old associate without an especial tribute of gratitude and appreciation for his unfailing loyalty and help in the early days of the Society before it had attained the recognized position which it now enjoys. Mr. HENRY H. EDES read the following letter: DEAR MR. JOHNSON 3, BUCKINGHAM GATE, S. W. 25th March, 1920. Thank you for your letter. I am greatly interested to hear of the progress you are making with the celebration of the landing of the Pilgrims. That event is one of the great events in the history of the Englishspeaking world, which well deserves to be commemorated, and I heartily hope that the spirit shown by the Pilgrims will maintain itself on both sides of the Atlantic, in your people and in ours. I wish I could think that that particular spirit was having the influence in Continental Europe among the new states that are rising there, which I see that you wish it should have. Some of them, so far, at any rate, do not seem to me to have imbibed or to be giving effect to the great principles for which the great minds of both Britain and America have so long stood. We must hope that this will come in due course. Believe me, Faithfully yours, JAMES BRYCE. Alfred Johnson, Esq. Mr. ALBERT MATTHEWS made the following remarks on A GHOST BENEFACTOR OF HARVARD COLLEGE As there are ghost words and ghost books - that is, words and books which have no real existence1- so too are there ghost benefactors of Harvard College. Writing about 1831 Peirce remarked: A legacy of £40 was bequeathed to the college by Deacon William Trusdale, and one by Mr. Henry Ashworth 2 of £100 sterling. Whether these two legacies were received, it does not appear.3 In 1840 Quincy, after naming certain benefactors, went on to say: Besides the above, the following donations appear on the books of the College, from which it is not known that any thing has been received, viz.. • Oddly enough, "Ashworth" was also a ghost benefactor, the name evidently being an error for "Henry Ashurst:" cf. our Publications, xx. 201–202. • History of Harvard University (1833), p. 50. 4 History of Harvard University, i. 510. In his pamphlet on Harvard College and its Benefactors, published in 1846, Samuel A. Eliot was silent as to such a legacy; but in a book published two years later, he recorded the following: 1683 Deacon William Trusedale bequeathed £40-"and still remains due to the College," says the record.1 These statements had for their basis three items found in the College records. The first item, appended to "Sundry Donations to the Colledge received by Capt John Richards Trear.," reads as follows: 1683 More Donations not containd in Capt Richards Account. & are yet resting due to the Coll. 040 00 00 2 The second item, dated March 5, 1683, in "An Accot of the Estate belonging to Harvard Colledge under the Care of Sam1 Nowell Esq'. delivrd unto him by Thomas Danforth," is this: Legacy of Deacon Trusedall. Exc's of Wm Gilbert. The third item reads: 1683 Deacon William Trusdale bequeathed forty pound. 040 00 00 8 Mr Henry Ashworth bequeath'd one hundred pounds Sters in 5 No trace of a William Trusedale can be found in New England at that time. But the designation of "Deacon," applied to Trusedale in all these items, sufficiently proves that the person meant was not William Trusedale but Richard Trusedale, who joined the First Church on July 27, 1634,6 became a deacon of that church in 1650,7 1 Sketch of the History of Harvard College (1848), p. 166. 2 College Book, iii. 60. • iii. 83. • Donation Book, i. 19. This was compiled about 1773. There was a William Trusedale in England, who never came to this country. He is supposed to have been a brother of Deacon Richard Trusedale and the father of the Richard Trusedale who died in 1676 or 1677: see 2 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, iv. 78. Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, iv. 335. 7 A. B. Ellis, History of the First Church, p. 328. in 1669 was one of the seceders to the Third' (Old South) Church,1 and died in 1671. But in his will, dated September 9, 1669, and proved January 4, 1671, there is no mention of a legacy to Harvard College.2 But if Deacon Richard Trusedale was not the benefactor, who was? Previous to 1834, only three Trusedales are to be found in the Suffolk Probate Files. On January 30, 1677, "Power of Administracon to the Estate of the late Richard Truesdail of Roxburough deed is granted unto Katharin his Relict." This Richard Trusedale was a nephew of Deacon Richard Trusedale; but, like his uncle, could not have been the benefactor. Here, There remains Mary Trusedale, the widow of Deacon Richard Trusedale. Her will, without specific date but drawn up in 1672 by John Hull, contains these items: morover I doe give unto Harvard Colledge at Cambridge forty Pound in money... Moreover I doe ordaine Constitute & appoint my Couzen William Gilbert sole Exec' of this my will . . . I do Desire that all my Legacies may be paid in money & within six months after my decease." then, is revealed the identity of the benefactress who for two hundred and thirty-seven years or more has masqueraded as "Deacon William Trusedale." Even if the money as in the case of too many other legacies in the early days-was never received, it is just that in future the name of Mary Trusedale should take its place beside those of Lady Ann (Radcliffe) Mowlson, Bridget Wines, Judith Finch, Mary Anderson, and perhaps one or two others, as one of the few benefactresses of Harvard College during the seventeenth century. Mr. ARTHUR LORD exhibited a forgery which purported to be a document signed by Myles Standish and remarked upon its having been facsimiled by John Fiske and Woodrow Wilson in their historical publica 1 Hill, History of the Old South Church, i. 117–118. 2 Suffolk Probate Files, vii. 176, 177. That this Richard Trusedale was the deacon is shown by the fact that he is so called in several depositions and in the inventory. • Suffolk Probate Files, no. 885. • Suffolk Probate Records, v. 230, vi. 73. tions before the spurious character of the paper was discovered. Mr. Lord also discussed several signatures of John Robinson, claimed to be autographs of the Rev. John Robinson, and announced the recent discovery in Holland of a letter bearing what is probably a genuine autograph of the Leyden pastor. Mr. WORTHINGTON C. FORD remarked upon the injury which can be done by the suppression of names that occur in diaries and letters through a mistaken oversensitiveness for the feelings of the persons mentioned or of the members of their families, and cited instances that occur in the Life and Letters of John Hay and in Colonel Thomas L. Livermore's Days and Events, 1860-1866. Mr. PERCIVAL MERRITT gave an account of a hitherto unnoted clergyman of King's Chapel in Boston the Rev. Robert Boucher Nickols, who was curate to Dr. Caner just before the Revolution and was subsequently settled in Salem. Mr. Merritt traced his later career in England until his death in 1814. Mr. JULIUS H. TUTTLE made the following communication, written by Professor Howard J. Hall of Stanford University: TWO BOOK-LISTS: 1668 AND 1728 A search of the Suffolk County Probate Records for the first forty years has brought to light some interesting book-lists. The recorded wills and inventories of these years show the high importance of books in the minds of the planters and their children. Generalities and statistics both are liable to mislead, but it may be noted that a search for book items through year after year of this period shows books mentioned in between forty-five and fifty per cent of all the inventories, including those lumped under such inclusive heads as personal and real property and those itemized in painful detail, with a range in value from a few shillings to thousands of pounds. To the searcher it is rewarding to come across two or three books in inven |