The several Reports were accepted and referred to the Committee of Publication. On behalf of the Committee appointed to nominate officers for the ensuing year, Mr. JOHN TROWBRIDGE presented the following list of candidates; and, a ballot having been taken, these gentlemen were unanimously elected. PRESIDENT FREDERICK JACKSON TURNER VICE-PRESIDENTS MARCUS PERRIN KNOWLTON RECORDING SECRETARY HENRY WINCHESTER CUNNINGHAM CORRESPONDING SECRETARY CHARLES EDWARDS PARK TREASURER HENRY HERBERT EDES REGISTRAR FREDERICK LEWIS GAY MEMBER OF THE COUNCIL FOR THREE YEARS GEORGE VASMER LEVERETT Mr. GEORGE LYMAN KITTREDGE offered the following appreciation of the services rendered by HENRY LEFAVOUR, who had declined re-election to the presidency of the Society; and it was unanimously adopted: HENRY LEFAVOUR has served the Colonial Society of Massachusetts for seven years in the office of President,-an honorable position, which any scholar may feel proud to hold, but which demands much sacrifice of ill-afforded time, and involves many complicated and delicate responsibilities unsuspected by the casual observer. Of the zeal, the fidelity, and the success with which he has administered our affairs the Council has already spoken with the authority of intimate knowledge. Yet we, the members of the Society, assembled in unusual numbers at our yearly festival, cannot rest content with passive concurrence. Though we can add nothing to what our representatives have expressed, we are impelled to speak for ourselves, and to put on record our deep feeling of gratitude and affection. We are thankful to our President for what he has done, still more thankful for what he has been. Under his leadership we have been happy and prosperous, and our confidence in the future is the measure of our debt. After the meeting was dissolved, dinner was served. The guests of the Society were the Rev. Dr. Samuel McChord Crothers, the Rev. Dr. James De Normandie, Dr. Henri Lichtenberger, and Messrs. Augustus George Bullock, Edward Channing, Charles Robert Cross, Edward Bangs Drew, William Trowbridge Forbes, Samuel Henshaw, Charles Francis Jenney, Alfred Johnson, Alexander George McAdie, Elihu Thomson, George Henry Tripp, Harry Walter Tyler, and Winslow Warren. Dr. LEFAVOUR presided. 1 At an adjourned meeting of the Council held on 19 November, 1914, the following minute was unanimously adopted: The Council has learned with deep regret of Dr. LEFAVOUR'S decision not to be a candidate for re-election to the Presidency of the Society at its approaching Annual Meeting. During the seven years of his service he has been brought into more intimate relations with this Board than with the Society at large, and its members have therefore been able the better to appreciate those qualities of mind and heart which he brought to his work, and which have endeared him to us all. Dr. Lefavour's devotion to the Society's every interest and the dignity with which he has presided over our deliberations have been exceeded only by his uniform courtesy and urbanity. In taking leave of him in this special relation, we cherish the hope that his interest in the Society and its work will persist, and that we shall often enjoy his presence and hearty greeting at the meetings of the Society. In retiring from the office he has adorned he will carry with him the respect of every member of the Council and their earnest wish for the long continuance of his career of usefulness in many fields of public service. DECEMBER MEETING, 1914 ASTATED MEETING of the Society was held at the house of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Boston, on Thursday, 17 December, 1914, at three o'clock in the afternoon, the President, FREDERICK JACKSON TURNER, LL.D., in the chair. The Records of the Annual Meeting were read, and, after being slightly amended, were approved. Mr. ALBERT MATTHEWS made the following communication: THE TERM PILGRIM FATHERS AND EARLY CELEBRATIONS OF FOREFATHERS' DAY Under the auspices of the Cape Cod Pilgrim Memorial Association, on August 20, 1907, was laid the corner-stone of the monument at Provincetown commemorating the landing there of the Mayflower passengers on November 11-21, 1620. In his address delivered upon that occasion, President Roosevelt said: The coming hither of the Puritan three centuries ago shaped the destinies of this continent, and therefore profoundly affected the destiny of the whole world. . . . We cannot as a nation be too profoundly grateful for the fact that the Puritan has stamped his influence so deeply on our national life. . . . The splendid qualities which he left to his children, we other Americans who are not of Puritan blood also claim as our heritage. You, sons of the Puritans, and we, who are descended from races whom the Puritans would have deemed alien we are all Americans to-day. We all feel the same pride in the genesis, in the history of our people; and therefore this shrine of Puritanism is one at which we all gather to pay homage, no matter from what country our ancestors sprang.1 In the early part of this address, which later became political, the speaker used the words Puritan and Puritanism frequently, but the terms Pilgrim and Pilgrim Fathers not once; and his hearers listened in vain for a contrast between the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony and the Puritans of the Massachusetts Colony. There was considerable dismay in this part of the country - a dismay not allayed when it became known that the President had only just learned of the existence of such a distinction.2 1 Boston Evening Transcript, August 20, 1907, p. 1/7. An editorial note in the Boston Evening Transcript of August 23, 1907, reads: The Springfield Republican says: "It is as much popular impression that the Pilgrims were Puritans as that the witches of Salem were burned at the stake." If so, it is a good thing the mistake has been publicly made in high circles. It will tend to dispel a gross popular error (p. 8/2). This paragraph is so awkwardly expressed as to leave its precise meaning somewhat uncertain, but apparently the "gross popular error" is the belief that the Pilgrim Fathers were Puritans. The following skit appeared in the New York Sun of September 10, 1907, p. 4/6: THE REVISED CONSTITUTION. I, the President of the United States, in order to form a more decent government, provide for the common regulation, promote the welfare of desirable citizens and secure the blessings of My Policies to posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America: . . ARTICLE VI. ... Section 1- The "Pilgrims" shall be called "Puritans" after this date. 2 I refer to and quote from the speech as actually delivered and given to the press by Mr. Roosevelt. It appears, however, that the two following remarks were made by the President as an extemporaneous introductory to his oration: Men and women of Massachusetts: Let me at the outset ask to be excused for one error in my speech of which I was unaware until I read it to a Massachusetts man. I have mixed up the Pilgrim and the Puritan. Out in a remote region like New York we tend to confound men. I ask your pardon for not having appreciated the difference between them. When, therefore, I speak of the Puritan, I speak in the large generic sense that takes the Pilgrim in (Boston Herald, August 21, 1907, p. 31). And in the speech as afterwards (1911) printed in E. J. Carpenter's The Pilgrims and their Monument, the first sentence quoted in the text was altered so as to read as follows: "The coming hither of the Pilgrims three hundred years It is perhaps well for us New Englanders, who are too apt to insist that the Mayflower Compact' was the beginning of constitutional government in this country, and too prone to forget that a legislative assembly met in Virginia a year before the sailing of the Mayflower, to have our cherished notions challenged or ignored. For, after all, the distinction that we in New England now so sharply draw between the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony and the Puritans of the Massachusetts Colony is one of somewhat recent growth, is more or less local, and is still far from being universally recognized. It is not a little singular that, in spite of the numerous volumes that have been written about the Pilgrims and the Puritans, it has hitherto occurred to no one to investigate the term Pilgrim Fathers. What is the history of this term? What is its origin? Is its application appropriate? What is its precise meaning? Why are the settlers who came before 1692 to what is now the State of Massachusetts differentiated as the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony and the Puritans of the Massachusetts Colony? The present paper is an attempt to answer these questions. HISTORY OF THE TERM Forefathers' Day was first celebrated at Plymouth in 1769 and in Boston in 1797 or 1798. Accounts in some detail will be given of the celebrations at Plymouth down to 1820 and of the early Boston celebrations. It will perhaps be thought that these accounts are unnecessarily long. Ordinarily, in illustrating the history of a term, it is necessary to quote only the sentence containing the term in ago, followed in far larger numbers by their sterner kinsmen, the Puritans, shaped the destinies of this continent, and therefore profoundly affected the destiny of the whole world" (pp. 74–75). 1 The word "compact" was first applied to this document, as I am informed by Mr. George E. Bowman, in 1793 (1 Massachusetts Historical Collections, ii. 6 note). A few earlier terms may be given: "an Association and Agreement," 1622 (Mourt's Relation, in Arber's Story of the Pilgrim Fathers, p. 409); "a combination," 1630, Bradford (History of Plymouth Plantation, ed. Ford, i. 189), and 1636 (Plymouth Colony Records, xi. 6, 74); "a Solemn Contract," 1736 (T. Prince, Chronological History of New-England, i. 73; "the covenant," 1773 (C. Turner, Sermon, 1774, p. 21 note); "a solemn contract," 1793 (C. Robbins, Sermon, 1794, p. 33). The exaggerated language usually applied to the compact apparently originated with John Quincy Adams in 1802 (Oration, 1803, pp. 17-18, 20), before which time little attention was paid to it. |