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CHAPTER I.

From yon blue heavens above us bent,
The gardener Adam and his wife
Smile at the claims of long descent.
Howe'er it be, it seems to me,

'Tis only noble to be good.

Kind hearts are more than coronets,

And simple faith than Norman blood.

TENNYSON.

NNE JEAN ROBBINS was born in Milton,

Massachusetts, on the third day of July, 1789. She was the third child of the Hon. Edward Hutchinson Robbins, a man of noble character and warm heart, who has left to his descendants the richest of all inheritances, in the fine flavor of humanity that has kept his memory green, even to the third and fourth generation. The house where Anne Jean first saw the light is still standing on Milton Hill, and is known as the Churchill house. The maiden name of Anne's mother was Elizabeth Murray, and Anne was named by her for two Scotch aunts, Anne and Jean Bennet. She was a woman of great intelligence and force of character, and had passed the greater part of her life in Milton,- marrying in youth the son of the former beloved minister of the town, the Rev. Nathaniel Robbins.

In a sermon preached in Milton at the two hundredth anniversary of the First Church, by

Rev. Frederic Frothingham, occurs this passage: "Mr Nathaniel Robbins was ordained February 13, 1750-51. A long and honorable service was his, running through four and forty years, closing with his death, May 19, 1795,—a period heaving with the agitations of the Revolution. Mr. Robbins was a patriot. At the battle of Lexington, fought when he was fifty years of age, two of his brothers were in Capt. Parker's company. He seems to have been eminently a man of affairs, and in 1788 was sent by the town to the convention which adopted the Federal Constitution. His practical wisdom showed itself in various ways. At his ordination a settlement of £1000 old tenor-equal to $500- was allowed him, and a salary of £500, or $250, per annum, and 25 cords of wood. But he bought land and built him a house and gradually acquired a considerable farm- now owned by Col. H. S. Russell - which doubtless was a faithful friend to him, as well as an abode of hospitality to many others in those distressful days. Then he showed rare tact and skill in adjusting apparently unmanageable disputes. It appeared again in his high personal integrity, which, did men but know it, or would they but believe it, is really wisdom. In his preaching, says Thos. Thacher, 'he refused to call any man master on earth, or to sacrifice truth to prevailing opinions, however conducive to popularity, to consideration and consequence. Such candor and liberal principles were the more deserving of praise, since, in the first period of his ministry, such a spirit and temper were not common.' So, in preaching,

INHERITANCE AND INFLUENCE

19

'plain and pathetick;' in prayer, 'apt and easy;' in charity, so large and just that he would not allow even the good in bad men to be forgotten; in service to the unfortunate, the sick, the sorrowing, and the young, tender and faithful; is it wonder that he kept his church free from fanaticism and united and rational? How much he may have served to prepare for the changes that were to come when the Unitarian controversy broke out, we may imagine, though we can never know."

The history of any life must necessarily include the lives of many others. A friend once said to me, "No one can be a Christian alone." And in fact no human being leads an isolated life. One is as surely all the time acted upon by one's inheritance, surroundings, and companionship, as one reacts on these. In the condition to which she was born, the scenery amidst which she lived, the persons by whom she was surrounded, and the family traditions dear to her childhood, Anne Jean was peculiarly blessed; and I shall tell you all I know of them, because her personal individuality, though striking, was not more so than her quality of family and social affection.

My cousin, Dr. Estes Howe, writes of our grandfather, and the father of Anne Jean, the following sketch:

"Our grandfather I presume you do not remember, as you were so young when he died. He was a tall, large man, very erect and dignified in his look. His face, as his picture shows, was very like his

son's, our uncle Edward's, in his later years. His countenance had the same benign look - a look which I think comes finally to the face of every one who leads, as he did, a life full of good will and good works. He was born as you know in 1757, and graduated at Harvard in 1775, being eighteen years old. He must have taken his degree at Concord, to which place the college was removed when the army were collected at Cambridge. The last time I saw him at Brush Hill was on the 4th of July, when I was a freshman, in 1829. He pointed out to me a wooden-bottomed armed chair as his college chair, and told me that he had only one coat all the time he was in college- this notwithstanding he was the son of a lady who was considered rich.

"He soon became a person of note at home, and was at the age of twenty-three a member of the convention that formed the constitution of the State of Massachusetts. He was married in 1785, and went to house-keeping on Milton Hill, where I believe all his children except my mother were born. She was born in Boston, in a house he inherited from his mother, near Brazer's Building, on State Street. In 1786, he bought a township of land in Maine, and called it Robbinston. He took several Milton families down, whose descendants Brewers, Voses, Briggs, &c.- are still there. built several vessels there, and continued in fact to work busily and earnestly over the enterprise till the day of his death. He always went there at least once a year, a voyage that had to be made in a coasting vessel. His last visit was made only a couple of months before his death.

He

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