Nehemiah Adams

The life of John Eliot Nehemiah Adams

John Eliot (c. 1604 - May 21, 1690) was a Puritan missionary to the American Indians whom some called "the apostle to the Indians" and the founder of Roxbury Latin School in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1645. John Eliot was born in Widford, Hertfordshire, England and lived at Nazeing as a boy. He attended Jesus College, Cambridge. After college, he became assistant to Thomas Hooker at a private school at Little Baddow, Essex. After Hooker was forced to flee to Holland, Eliot emigrated to Boston, Massachusetts, arranging passage as chaplain on the ship Lyon and arriving on November 3, 1631. Eliot became minister and "teaching elder" at the First Church in Roxbury. From 1637 to 1638 Eliot participated in both the civil and church trials of Anne Hutchinson during the Antinomian Controversy. Eliot disapproved of Hutchinson's views and actions, and was one of the two ministers representing Roxbury in the proceedings which led to her excommunication and exile. In 1645, Eliot founded the Roxbury Latin School. He and fellow ministers Thomas Weld (also of Roxbury), Thomas Mayhew of Martha's Vineyard, and Richard Mather of Dorchester, are credited with editing the Bay Psalm Book, the first book published in the British North American colonies (1640). From 1649 to 1674, Samuel Danforth assisted Eliot in his Roxbury ministry.......... ........... Reverend Nehemiah Adams (February 19, 1806 - October 6, 1878) was an American clergyman and writer. Biography: He was born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1806 to Nehemiah Adams and Mehitabel Torrey Adams. He graduated from Harvard University in 1826, and from Andover Theological Seminary in 1829. That same year, he was ordained as co-pastor, with Abiel Holmes, of the First Congregational Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1832, he married Martha Hooper. In 1834, he became pastor of Union Congregational Church in Boston, Massachusetts. He would remain in that position until his death in 1878. In 1850, he married again, to Sarah Brackett. In 1854, he took a trip to the American South, and wrote a book entitled A South-Side View of Slavery (Boston, 1854). In the book, he lauded slavery as beneficial to the Negroes' religious character. This book was one of several polemic works he wrote. It caused a great sensation, and he received much hostile criticism. The book was attacked by abolitionists for its perceived moderation; the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator called it "as vile a work as was ever written, in apology and defence of 'the sum of all villanies'". In 1861, Adams wrote a successor volume, The Sable Cloud, a Southern tale with Northern Comments, to answer his attackers, and it was met with a similar response. He also wrote The Cross in the Cell, Scriptural Argument for Endless Punishment, Broadcast, At Eventide, and a Life of John Eliot. He was a member of the American Tract Society and the American Board for Foreign Missions. In 1869, in consequence of his failing health, his people procured an associate pastor and gave Adams a long leave of absence. He made a voyage round the world and described it in Under the Mizzenmast (1871). Adams died in 1878, aged 72. He left nine children. ...........