VOL. LIII.

APRIL 17, 1845

He was born in Sullivan, N. H., April 17, 1845, of David and Arvilla (Matthews) Seward, of English stock, and worthy members of the sturdy and brave yeomanry of New England. The emigrant ancestor, Thomas Seward, came to Pepperell, Mass., about twenty years before the Revolutionary War.

In the paternal line, Josiah L., was a lineal descendant of Thomas Morse, the first permanent settler of Dublin, N. H., who had a captain's commission sent him to keep him loyal. The doughty Morse in

JULY 14, 1917

No. 7.

dignantly spurned this, and trained his three sons to volunteer at the first call, and he himself did all he could to aid the patriot's cause.

Another kinsman of Josiah Seward was the well known General James Wilson of Keene. There were at least five ancestors who served in the Revolutionary War, a record of which, as a member of the Sons of the American Revolution, Josiah was justifiably proud.

The mother of Josiah was a descendant of Robert Matthews, the ancestor of the Hancock, N. H. families of that name.

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As a lad, Josiah remained under my tutelage several terms, and was highly esteemed by both teachers and scholars. Then he went Exeter Academy, where he ranked among the best in scholarship and deportment and graduated with honors. In 1871 he graduated from Harvard Divinity School with the degree of S. T. D., and the professors spoke of him as a learned preacher and a wise man.

For a year after leaving the Divinity School he preached most acceptably to a church in Springfield, Mass., when he was called to settle over the First Unitarian church of Lowell, Mass., where he remained fourteen years, making himself known and felt as an eloquent preacher, a good pastor and an enterprising citizen.

From Lowell he was called to

settle in the college town of Waterville, Me. Here he remained ten years, became popular as a religious teacher, and, as he mingled with the students of Colby University, was often asked to address them, in the different departments, on various subjects. While he remained there he was loved and honored.

From November 26, 1893, till October 8, 1899, he was pastor of Unity Church, Allston, Mass., doing successful work in and out of the pulpit.

But his hair was becoming somewhat silvered, his heart waxed warm for his native state, his beloved New Hampshire, and this induced him, against the wishes of his church, to break off his connection with them as pastor and to the Granite State turn his steps for his last settlement.

Really New Hampshire had become somewhat of a Holy Land to him. Keene seemed his New Jerusalem; Ashuelot River his Jordan; Sullivan his Nazareth; Dublin his Mount Zion, and Monadnock Mount Sinai.

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He had scarcely got settled in his home at Keene before he was urgently requested to supply the Unitarian pulpit in Dublin, which he did to the great delight of the people there, and fathfully served them up to the time of his illness-some fourteen years-preaching to them. many an able sermon and giving them an abundance of large hearted sympathy in their sorrows.

As a writer and contributor to the press there are many good things that might well and truly be said of him. Suffice it to say that the one great Memorial to his

credit is a most glorious one, and that is the Sullivan Town History. From boyhood, as he was doing chores, picking flowers, planting potatoes, husking corn, mastering history in school, solving in his head the hardest problems in Colburn's Arithmetic, he was all the while storing up facts, to write out the history of his native town.

No other person could have done the immense undertaking so well and attractively as he, for he was especially fitted by inheritance, education and inclination for such work. The town of Sullivan has cause to feel greatly honored and most devoutly grateful that it has produced such an eminent historian. His name will long be remembered there, and will abide as a distinguished man and a famous scholar.

He was a broad-minded, consecrated Christian, wishing to help everybody. He built upon the solid rock, while on earth, a monument to himself out of kind and noble deeds, which remain intact when bronze has corroded into dust and granite dissolved to ashes. His character must be beautiful in the mansions above.

He believed intensely in the Fatherhood of God, the Sonship of Christ and the Holy Spirit. As he dropped his sickle, 72 years old, he was still an intense almoner in blessing others religiously, educationally, and socially. He was a remarkably wise and cultured man, wishing to help all souls, believing most devoutly that one is to reap just what he sows.

So, friends, let him not be lifeless,
But more alive and active henceforth
Than ever while in mortal mold
Doing works of very high worth.

"A fair, sunny valley rests, the placid hills among."

**Afar, Monadnock, fair and grand,

Of all our hearts the pride, Lifts toward the sky his sun-kissed crest, While vale and lake, in beauty drest,

Lie slumbering at his side.'

day

Here the actual characters of Seward's Village lived and died; about this little village cluster memories and tales that will always delight the hearts of home. loving people in any day or generation. It has been portrayed in poetry; the verse quoted above was by one of the villagers. Another has said in eloquent every prose, "We shall always carry some of Sullivan with us. Wherever we go, we shall have Sullivan blood in our veins; we shall have Sullivan counsels and Sullivan precepts and Sullivan virtues in our memories; we shall dream of our old Sullivan homes in the night and we shall speak of her to our friends by day. We cannot forget our homes."

No town historian has more faithfully, lovingly and interestingly depicted the growth of a town from its earliest settlement than has been done in the Sullivan town history; no author has put more eloquent feeling and real heart interest into his writing. We rightly think of this little New England town as Seward's Village, and yet he has only described in wonderful language what all Sullivan sons and daughters have felt, but could not so expressively put into words.

THE FIRST SETTLERS. "Through summer's heat and winter's snow They toiled these hills among; They laid the towering forest low, They watched the grain and grasses grow, As rolled the years along.

*By Mrs. Ellen S. (Keith) Edwards.

Humble their homes, but strong and brave
Each heart and toil-worn hand;
Cheery their songs that rose and fell
And echoed through the mossy dell―
Songs of their native land."

From Massachusetts and Connecticut came these earliest settlers. The cart wheel that brought the goods of the first White family is. still kept. This family came from Uxbridge, Mass., and the American emigrant ancestor was none other than the Peregrine White of Mayflower fame.

The Adams family had the same emigrant ancestor as Presidents John and John Quincy Adams. The Bradford family had William Bradford, the Mayflower passenger, and second Governor of Plymouth Colony, for an ancestor.

Abraham Browne, from Hawkedon, England, was one of the first settlers of Watertown, Mass., and the first recorded birth in Watertown was of his daughter, Lydia; the Brown family of Sullivan are his descendants.

The Buckminster ancestral goes back to a Wales family. Rev. Thomas Carter, born in England in 1610, came to America in 1635, and was ordained in Woburn, Mass., in 1642; his descendants were among the early settlers in Sullivan.

Hon. Charles Carter Comstock, a native of Seward's Village, was elected to Congress from Michigan. He was also mayor of Grand Rapids, Mich., in 1863 and 1864. He began his business life as a farmer on the old homestead, removed to Grand Rapids, grew up with the city and inaugurated the first wholesale furniture establishment in that city which has since been famous for the large number of such establishments. He was an eminently suc