GENEALOGIES AND THEIR MORAL.

We were carelessly looking over a genealogy of the "Minot Family," in the second number of the "New England Historical and Genealogical Register," when suddenly our eyes were suffused with tears, as they rested on the following sentence in the catalogue of the children of Capt. John Minot, who died in Dorchester, 1669 :

"Martha, born Sept. 22, 1657; died, single, Nov. 23, 1678, aged 21. She was engaged to be married, but died unmarried, leaving a will in which she directed that at her funeral her betrothed husband, 'John Morgan, Jr. be all over mourning, and follow next after me."

What a history is there in these few words about Martha Minot, who lived almost two centuries ago! The mind runs back in a moment to those times, when almost all New England was a wilderness to those days of the old Indian wars, when no man could be a "captain" without being a man of some rank and consequence. Just after the close of King Philip's war, when the villages of New England were all in peace, Capt. John Minot's daughter Martha, twenty-one years of age, and having come into possession of her share of her father's estate, had plighted her troth to one she loved, and was expecting to be married too, when disease fastened upon her young frame, and would not be repelled. In the chill November air, when

"The melancholy days were come, the saddest of the year,"

she faded like a leaf. And at her burial there followed, nearer than brother or sister, nearest to the hearse, the one whom, of all the living, she loved most, from whom to part had been to her more painful than the death-pang, and who had been in her thoughts till "the love-light in her eye" was extinguished. That single item in her directions for her funeral, that "John Morgan, Jr., be all over mourning, and follow next after me," tells the whole story.

Nothing seems, at first sight, less interesting or less instructive, than a genealogical table, a mere register of names and dates. But such a passage as that which we have quoted-so picturesque, so suggestive, so touching, so dramatic - when it occurs in the midst of these dry records, throws out an electric light at every link in the chain of generations. Each of those names in the table is the memorial-perhaps the only memorial-of a human heart that once lived and loved; a heart that kept its steady pulsations through some certain period of time, and then ceased to beat and mouldered into dust. Each of those names is the memorial of an individual human life that had its joys and sorrows, its cares and burthens, its affections and hopes, its conflicts and achievements, its opportunities wasted or improved, and its hour of death. Each of those dates of "birth," "marriage," "death," O how significant! What a day was each of those dates to some human family, or to some circle of loving human hearts!

To read a genealogy then may be, to a thinking mind, like walking in a cemetery, and reading the inscriptions on the gravestones. As we read, we may say with the poet —

"To a mysteriously-consorted pair,

This place is consecrate-to Death and Life."

The presence of death drives the mind to thoughts of immortality. Memorials of the dead are memorials not of death only, but of life. They lived, and therefore they died; and as the mind thinks of the dead gathered to their fathers, it cannot but think of the unseen worlds which they inhabit. All these names are memorials of human spirits that have passed from time into eternity. Ready or unprepared, in youth or in maturity, in childhood or in old age, they went into eternity, as we are going.

"The nursling, and the tottering little one
Taken from air and sunshine when the rose
Of infancy first blooms upon his cheek;

The thinking, thoughtless schoolboy; the bold youth
Of soul impetuous, and the bashful maid,
Smitten when all the promises of life

Are opening round her; those of middle age,
Cast down while confident in strength they stand,
Like pillars fixed more firmly, as might seem,
And more secure, by very weight of all
That for support rests on them; the decayed
And burthensome; and lastly that poor few
Whose light of reason is with age extinct;
The hopeful and the hopeless, first and last,
The earliest summoned and the longest spared,
Are here deposited."

The genealogical chapters in Genesis and Chronicles are commonly and very naturally regarded as being almost if not quite an exception to the testimony, "All Scripture is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." But the story is told of a man who had long been irreligious and thoughtless, that in some vacant hour he happened to open his Bible, and began to read the catalogue of antediluvians, in the fifth chapter of Genesis. As he read that one lived so many years and he died, and another lived so many years and he died, the uniformity of the record arrested his attention, his mind was awakened to new thoughts of the significancy of death and life, and thus he was led to realize the ends of his existence, and to dedicate himself, in penitence and trust, to a forgiving God.— New York Evangelist.

FIRST SETTLERS OF RHODE ISLAND.

BY THE LATE JOHN FARMER, ESQ.

Edward Hutchinson, Jun.

John Coggeshall,
William Aspinwall,

Samuel Wildbore,

Philip Sherman,

John Walker,
Richard Carder,
William Baulston,
Henry Bull,

William Coddington,
John Clark,
Edward Cope,
Chad. Brown,
Daniel Brown,
Henry Brown,
John Brown,
Samuel Bennett,
Hugh Bewett,
Adam Goodwin,

Henry Fowler,
Arthur Fenner,

Henry Reddock,
Thomas Sucklin,
Christopher Smith,
Richard Pray,
Nicholas Power,
Stephen Northup,
Edward Hart,

Benjamin Herenden,
Edward Inman,
John Jones,

James Matthewson,
Henry Neale,
William Man,
Jinckes,

Roger Mawry,

Edward Manton,
Shadrach Manton,
George Shepard,

Edward Smith,
Benjamin Smith,

John Smith, (the Mason,)
John Smith, (Sen.)
John Smith, (Jun.)
John Smith, (Jamaica,)
Epenetus Olney,
Lawrence Wilkinson,
Daniel Williams,
Christopher Onthank,
Joshua Verin,
John Sayles,
Richard Scott,
Joan Tyler,
Joshua Winsor,
Valentine Whitman,

George Way,
William White,
Thomas Walling,
John Warren,
John Whipple,
Matthew Waller,
Robert Williams,
Joseph Williams,
William Wickenden,

Robert R. West,

Pardon Tillighast.

MARRIAGES AND DEATHS.

[Our authorities for most of our records of Marriages and Deaths are the newspapers. These may not always be correct.]

NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.

The American Loyalists, or Biographical Sketches of Adherents to the British Crown in the War of the Revolution; alphabetically arranged; with a preliminary Historical Essay. By James Sabine. Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown. MDCCCXLVII.

Mr. Sabine, it is believed, is a merchant at Eastport, Me., but still has been in the habit of composing for the press. He has written articles for the North American Review, and is the author of the Memoir of Commodore Preble in Prof. Sparks's American Biography.

The subject of his present work is both novel and interesting, and one upon which we are too ignorant. The most intelligent and best informed among us have but little knowledge of the names and characters of the Loyalists, or Tories of the Revolution, (probably twenty thousand in number,) and of the reasons which influenced, of the hopes and fears which agitated, and of the rewards or miseries which awaited them. Separated from their homes and kindred, outlaws, wanderers, and exiles, they have

left but few memorials to their posterity. The difficult task of collecting and arranging fragmentary events and incidents relating to them, scattered here and there, we think the author has succeeded admirably in accomplishing. We find among the sketches, notices of many distinguished and influential men, and while some were notorious for their want of principle, there were many who, we cannot doubt, were true and honest in espousing the cause of the mother country. Then, though we cannot justify any, let us not censure all. "The winners in the Revolutionary strife are now twenty millions; and, strong, rich, and prosperous, can afford to speak of the losers in terms of moderation."

The Historical Essay, containing one hundred and fourteen pages, which precedes the "Biographical Sketches," indicates much acquaintance with the Revolution and its causes, and is very valuable and highly appropriate.

The work makes a handsome volume of 733 pages, and is well worthy of being perused, and of a place in the library of the historian.

A Genealogical and Biographical Sketch of the Name and Family of Stetson; from the year 1634 to the year 1847. By John Stetson Barry. "Virtus nobilitat omnia." Boston: Printed for the author by William A. Hall & Co. 1847.

The name of Stetson is spelt differently in old records; as Stitson, Sturtson, Studson, Stedson, Stutson, and Stetson. The last is the usual method of spelling the name, though some families spell it Stutson. The first of the name and the ancestor of all in this country was Robert Stetson, commonly called Cornet Robert, because he was Cornet of the first horse company raised in Plymouth colony, Ms., in the year 1658 or '9. He settled in Scituate, Ms., in the year 1634, but it is not known satisfactorily whence he originated, though tradition says he came from the county of Kent, England. Among his descendants are many who have held offices of trust and responsibility, and who have stood high in public esteem.

The pamphlet contains 116 pages, and gives a pretty full account of the Stetson family. We hope it will be an additional incentive to others to prepare memorials of their

ancestors.

An Oration delivered before the New England Society in the city of New York, December 22, 1846. By Charles W. Upham. New York: Published by John S. Taylor, Brick Church Chapel, 151 Nassau Street. 1847.

This is an excellent address, written in a clear, graceful, and forcible manner. After describing the influences, both in the Old World and in the New, which were at work, and the combination of which resulted in the advent of our fathers to these desert shores, the orator remarks upon the Puritans, and the chief elements of their character and the result of their labors. The blessings of a free government and religious liberty are largely descanted upon, and the address closes as follows: "If the sons of New England rear the school-house and the church wherever they select their homes; if they preserve the reliance upon their own individual energies, the love of knowledge, the trust in Providence, the spirit of patriotic faith and hope, which made its most barren regions blossom and become fruitful around their fathers, then will the glorious vision of those fathers be realized, and the Continent rejoice, in all its latitudes and from sea to sea, in the blessings of freedom and education, of peace and prosperity, of virtue and religion."

A Sermon preached at Northwood, N. H., March 12, 1847, on the death of Dea. Simon Batchelder. By Elliot C. Cogswell, Pastor of the Congregational Church. Published by request. Concord: Printed by Morrill, Silsby, & Co. 1847.

"And

The text on which this discourse is founded is contained in Acts viii: 2. devout men carried Stephen to his burial, and made great lamentation over him." It is divided into six heads. When the good man dies the people of God lose, 1. His society. 2. His sympathy. 3. His counsels. 4. His prayers. 5. His coöperation. 6. His admonitions. The subject is well treated, and the language affectionate and appropriate. Dea. Batchelder was born, March 5, 1758. He was the son of Davis Batchelder of Northampton, who moved to Northwood about 1770; who married, 1. Mary Taylor of Hampton, by whom he had four children; 2. Ruth Palmer; and 3. a Widow Marston; by whom, (the last two wives,) he had fourteen children, four of whom survive. Dea. Batchelder at the age of eighteen enlisted in the war of the Revolution, in 1776, and served in Capt. Adams's company and Col. Poor's regiment at Winter Hill in Charles