[The following printed article was found in the Taft Public Library in Mendon, MA. The source, pages 15-22 of a book or journal, was not given. Handwritten comments on the article are enclosed in square brackets. —D. Pane-Joyce, June, 2000.]

[page 15]

Reverend Grindal Rawson, the fifth son and the eleventh child of the distinguished Edward Rawson, who was for many years the secretary of the Massachusetts Colony, was born January 23,1659, on what is now Bromfield street, Boston, then called Rawson’s lane, in compliment to the secretary, whose estate was situated thereon. His mother was Rachel Perne, whose ancestry can be traced back to the most worthily renowned Edmund Grindal, the Archbishop of Canterbury in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

I have been unable to find anything of the early life of Mr. Rawson, either in the shape of narrative or anecdote, prior to his graduation at Harvard College in 1678. That he was a classmate of Cotton Mather was considered glory enough then without other adjunct, for New England at that period revolved around that distinguished but sincere religious bigot. Grindal Rawson, however, did not depend upon the influence of friends or family for promotion. He possessed those gifts of mind and soul which surely ennoble and exalt. At his graduation, President Oakes, in a Latin oration, complimented him in a marked manner, and such was Mr. Rawson's proficiency that after he had taken his first degree, he was invited by his brother-in-law, the Rev. Samuel Torrey, to come to his house in Weymouth and study divinity, which he did with such success that he was advised to enter at once upon preaching.

He delivered his first sermon at Medfield, Mass., with great acceptation; and, says the ancient Chronicler, "After two months’ occasional performances at other places," speaking [page 16] of him as though he was an actor or trapeze performer, he received an invitation on the 4th of October, 1680, to Mendon "for this yere," as it reads, "in order to his further settlement." It was voted to give him twenty pounds in current New England money, and his board, with a horse to be kept for his service. Ten pounds of the said money to be paid at or before the 25th of March, the other ten pounds at or before the 25th of September next ensuing. Deacon Stephen Cook, Sergeant Joseph White, Ferdinando Thayer and Sergeant Abraham Staples engaged to see this money paid.

The annals say the town agreed with Samuel Reed "for to board Mr. Rawson for the yere insuing, and it passed by a clere vote of the town that the said Reed shall have thirteen pounds in country pay current at the prices following, Wheat five shillings, Rye four shillings, Indian Corn three shillings a bushel, Butter six pence a pound, Polk three pence a pound, Beef two pence ha’ penny a pound, and twelve pound of tallow beside the thirteen pound." "Again the fourth of second month, It passed by a clere vote that if Mr. Rawson settle with us he shall have his doubling lote laid out before any of the great lots, and also that he shall have his great lote before any of our great lots be laid out that are not already laid out." A committee comprising Walter Cook, Robert Taft, and Samuel Hayward were chosen, "for to take care that the Minister’s house be carried on and furnished at or before the 25th of next December."

We find in the annals the following description of the house and church. (The latter was the second church erected in the town, and stood near where now stands the Taft Public Library building [in Founders’ Park].) "On Jan. 13, 1680, att a general Town Meeting It passed by a clere vote to build a hous for the Minister 26 foot in length, 18 foot in breadth, 14 foot between joynts, a girt house, and a Gabell end in the roof, and a lean towe at one end of the house, the breadth of it twelve foot wide and 6 foot between joynts." The dimensions of the meeting house are as follows: "20 foot in length and 24 foot in breadth, a girt house 14 foot between joynts." It was voted that "a transportation of Mr. Rawson’s goods shall be upon the town charge, and tha that fech them up to be repaid out of a town rate." [page 17] "This," says the chronicler, "allows how earnest they were to have Mr. Rawson with them as their Minister."

The first serious thorn in the flesh experienced by Mr. Rawson seems to have been from the chimneys of his new house. Whether they were unsafely built, or through some flaw Mr. Rawson and family were smoked out, does not clearly appear. At any rate a committee was chosen to take them down and rectify them. "On the 16th of October, 1683, it was voted that Mr. Rawson shall have the improvement of the minstry's land and meadow, and what it shall be bettered by Mr. Rawson's improvement as Rationall men shall judge, shall be reimbursed to him or his hairs if he should leave the land after preaching three years."

He accepted the call for a final settlement, and on the 7th of April, 1684, the following terms relative to his settlement were agreed upon: First, he was to have a yearly salary of fifty-five pounds. Second, he was to have one cord of wood for every forty-acre lot. Third, his salary was to be paid semi-annually on the 25th of October and March. Fourth, the selectmen were annually to make a rate for his salary, with a prospect of increase if necessary. Fifth, if he became their minister, he was to have the house and forty-acre house-lot, which he is now in possession of, with all the privileges connected with similar house-lots. To these terms Mr. Rawson agreed, and soon afterwards was ordained.

Now that we have got him finally settled, his chimney rectified, and his wheat, Indian corn, butter, pork, beef and tallow all pledged ready for use, we will go on with his history. It seems that previous to his settlement in Mendon he had received more ambitious calls, but as the proverb says "coming events cast their shadows before," he had doubtless then some glimmering of the interest his life would afford the Mendon Historical Society of 1896. At the time Mr. Rawson was settled there were about twenty families recovering themselves from a tedious war, which fact emphasized all the more the great unselfishness of the man in thus consenting to settle in the wilderness, as Mendon was then termed, and still is, I regret to say, by some of her smarter children.

From time to time during his pastorate he received distinguished [page 18] honours. In 1692 the General Court appointed him, with a few other clergymen, as chaplain in the army sent into Canada to carry out the worship of God in that expedition. Next to John Elliot, Mr. Rawson’s work among the Indians exceeded all others. Having a good knowledge of the Indian tongue, which he learned in nine months, he ever instructed and ministered unto them most faithfully. During the summer and after the close of the regular Sunday services, he was accustomed to go about five o'clock and hold religious services with them.

In 1698 he, with Rev. Samuel Danforth of Taunton, was instructed by the commissioners for the propagation of the Gospel to visit the Indian plantations in Massachusetts. From the following reports it would not appear that they entered upon this trip in any light and festive spirit. They were in search of souls, not pleasure. The latter was unthought of in those grim days, when earthly delights were ignored and heaven was the sole object of desire. Mr. Rawson visited Little Compton, Dartmouth, Acushnet, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, Sandwich, Eastham, Harwich, Assawaumsket, and Natick, and on their return they made a valuable and interesting report of the numbers and condition of those visited.

From an ancient document I quote an account of one or two of those settlements: "At Little Compton we find two plantations of Indians who keep the two distinct assemblies for the worship of God, and are constant therein. The first assembly dwells at Saconet, Samuel Church has for more than one year endeavored their instruction, and is best able to perform that service. He has about forty auditors, and many times, more. Of these above twenty are men. Divers here are well instructed in their Catechisms, and above ten can read the Bible. At Natick we find a small church consisting of seven men and three women. Their pastor was ordained by that reverend and holy man of God, Mr. John Eliot, deceased." By the several reports we find that this hard and uncompromising work was not without good results.

Mr. Rawson was the author of a confession of faith written in the Indian and English languages. He also translated into the Indian tongue John Cotton’s catechism entitled "Milk [page 19] for Babes," which a modern publisher changed into "Milk for Babies." On June 7th, 1703, Mr. Rawson was invited to preach a sermon in Boston before the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, it being the day of the election of their officers. The subject was "Christians Treated in the Quality of Soldiers." The text was taken from Ephesians vi.: 11–"Put on the whole armour of God that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil." Another notable sermon was that which he preached in Boston on May 25th, 1709, before "His Excellency the Governor, the Honourable Council and Representatives of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay in New England." The text on this occasion was taken from Jeremiah xiii.: 16–"Give glory to the Lord your God before he cause darkness and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains, and while ye look for light he turn it into the shadow of death and make it gross darkness." This sermon was regarded at that time as a very able and valuable paper, and is now preserved with the other above-mentioned in the Antiquarian Library at Worcester, Mass. Both are considered important state papers. From looking them over I judge that Mr. Rawson's distinction as a sermonizer consisted in the direct and logical manner in which he presented his subject, in pleasing comparisons, well-chosen similes, and in his power of exhortation.

In returning to his work at Mendon I find that he had little trouble in the church during his pastorate, but that he was seriously annoyed by outsiders; sectaries, so called, who came in from the neighboring town of Providence and tried to lead his people aside. While he had his meetings at one end of the town they held theirs at the other. A commission was finally appointed by the court to adjust this ecclesiastical disturbance. Soon after the sectaries left the town. In vain I have investigated to find out what sect they were, but to no purpose. I infer, however, that they must have been the followers of that somewhat irregular and heretical preacher, Roger Williams, the only clergyman of that time in New England who dared even to look out of his window on the Sabbath day.

The chief source of Mr. Rawson's discouragement and discomfiture [page 20] in Mendon was in his work among the Indians who were settled there. His people, I regret to say, were in the habit of selling the Indians whiskey or rum. I am not certain which; at any rate it was a beverage very inflammable to the Indian brain; so much so that poor Mr. Rawson had no end of trouble in patching up their quarrels, and keeping them from actually breaking the Sixth Commandment. Finally he made it an article of the church covenant that whoever sold them liquor should be counted a covenant-breaker, a fate in those days as much to be dreaded as death by electrocution is at the present time [1896]. He also labored earnestly for the intellectual welfare of his people. In 1709 he offered to board without charge for four years a Latin schoolmaster. The town accepted his proposition, and thus we find that more than one hundred and eighty-five years ago boys were prepared for college at the public charge in Mendon.

We find mention in the ancient annals of a farm which Mr. Rawson owned in what is now Uxbridge, showing that he had some taste for agriculture. I also find mention of a place of relief, as it was then styled. Later it was called "a noon-house," which stood about half way between the meeting house and the town pound. [Probably just south of the Museum (1960's) as there was a pound in vincinity of the present Baptist church.] It consisted of one room with a large hearth in the centre and a square hole in the roof directly over the hearth. When the weather required it a fire of charcoal was kindled upon the hearth in the morning, and the baskets and pails containing the dinners were arranged upon its outer edge. At noon the room would be warm, or at least so that water would not freeze in it, and the occupants having eaten their frugal meal returned to the meeting-house to partake of the spiritual food in the afternoon service. As there was then no means of heating the churches, what a trial it must have been to leave the comfortable noon-house for the spiritual food served up in globules of ice.

Mr. Rawson’s ability as a sermonizer was not his only recommendation in the pastoral office. In fact, in all his relations he proved one of the most untiring and excellent of pastors and friends. It is said there was not a council in all the neighboring towns but what he attended. He catechised first in public on the Lord’s day in the afternoon; afterwards he [page 21] had set times to catechise in the week. He divided the town into five parts, and every Friday there was a meeting in one or the other of them, where he preached the sermon and catechised the children. When he visited the sick the whole neighborhood were wont to gather to listen to his prayers. He sympathized largely with the people in all of their plans, and was ever a great peacemaker. It was said that so loving was his spirit that even a child in distress could talk with him.

His wife says in her own quaint language: "He was the strictest observer of the Lord’s day that ever I took notice of in my life, that neither child nor servant nor stranger within his gate was permitted anything but what tended to religion." Alas! how the good Mendon people must have sighed for the free and easy town of Providence, where the comfortable belief of Roger Williams guided in things spiritual. Mr. Rawson, however, only expressed the prevailing strictness of the religious thought of that period.

During the latter part of his life Mr. Rawson suffered severely from a long illness, which proved almost chronic in its nature, and which left him after a depleting medical treatment in a very feeble condition. He was partially restored to health, however, and continued to preach until three weeks before his death. His last words were, "Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly." In the funeral sermon which Cotton Mather preached at Mr. Rawson’s decease, he characterizes him in the following words: "We generally esteemed him a truly pious man, and a prudent one, and a person of temper, and every way qualified for a friend that might be delighted in. We honored him for his industrious oversight of the flock in the wilderness which had been committed unto him, and the variety of successful pains which he took for the good of those to whom God had therefore exceedingly endeared him. We honored him for his intellectual abilities, which frequently procured applications to him, and brought him sometimes upon our most conspicuous theatres, and we usually took it for granted that things would be fairly done where he had a hand in the doing of them. We honored him for doing the work of an evangelist among our Indians, of whose language he was a [page 22] master that had scarce an equal, and for whose welfare his performances were such as render our loss herein hardly to be repaired. Such services are Pyramids."

Mr. Rawson married in 1683 Susannah Wilson, the daughter of the Rev. John Wilson of Medfield and the grand-daughter of the Rev. John Wilson of Boston, who was the great-uncle of Mr. Rawson. She survived her husband thirty-three years, and died July 8th, 1748, having been born in 1664. They both lie in our ancient graveyard beneath the hill. The monument over the Rev. Grindal Rawson’s grave has carved on it the coat of arms of the Rawson family. Very few mortuary monuments in New England possess this mark of family distinction. The monument itself was erected by a vote of the town in 1743 as a tribute of respect to his many virtues and faithful and distinguished services. [In the 'Old Cemetery' at the head of George St. on Main Street.]

His body has long since crumbled to dust, but the story of his life shines as a bright light among the dim shadows of our early New England history.