Part 1 (1/2)
Memoir of Rev. Joseph Badger.
by Elihu G. Holland.
PREFACE
The present volume is the Memoir of a man and a minister whose character was strikingly individual, whose services to Religion in its more liberal and unsectarian form were large and successful; and in the denomination to which he belonged, no man was more generally known, and none, we believe, ever acted a more prominent and effective part. The writer of this has endeavored to set forth the life and sentiments of Mr. Badger, to a large extent in his own language. Much of his journal must be new even to old acquaintance, as it was written many years ago, and no part of it has ever been published. To those who would be pleased to read the outlines of the greatest theological reformation among the ma.s.ses which the nineteenth century may justly claim, we trust this volume will be welcome; likewise to all those who may be liberal and evangelical Christians. Aged men, contemporaries with him, will rejoice in the revival of past scenes, and the young will be taught, encouraged, and warned by the paternal voices of the departed.
Two cla.s.ses of great men figure effectively on the stage of the world.
One cla.s.s are strongest in writing. Their written words embody the entire elegance and power of their minds. Such were Webster and Channing. The other cla.s.s are strongest in speech. Their personal presence, their spontaneous eloquence in oral discourse, alone express their mind and heart. Such were Clay, Henry, and Whitfield. To the latter cla.s.sification Mr. Badger unquestionably belongs. Though the marks of superiority are variously apparent in his papers, it was in the more natural medium of oral speech that his genius shone. Having now completed the task demanded by my duty to the family of Mr. Badger, I would, in the name of the self-sacrificing, trusting faith of which he was no common example, send forth this volume to the world, hoping that in an ease-loving age, the presentation of a Lutheran force in the example of a son of New Hamps.h.i.+re may serve to awaken in others a kindred energy.
CHAPTER I.
BIRTH AND ANCESTRY.
In so young a world as America, it has been held unsuitable for persons to spend much time in the tracing of pedigree, or to found important claims on family descent; nor can it accord less with the common sense of mankind than with the republican genius of the world, to say, that every genuine claim to human esteem is founded in character. In this is rooted every quality that can, of right, command the reverence of man.
But, as character is not exactly isolated and independent of ancestral fountains, from which the innate impulses, capacity, and tendency to good and evil have flown, the subject of ancestry justly belongs to the history of every man's mind and life. Our ancestors flow in our veins.
We retain them more or less in our characters always, so that the great stress which different countries have put upon this theme, rests on other than artificial and ostentatious reasons. In nature, below man, the various circuits and orders of being do nothing more than to repeat ancestral forms and habits, to which the sweet rose, the eagle, and the strong-armed oak, are perpetual witnesses; and though man, by his G.o.d-like faculty of will is lifted out, in a great measure, from this necessity, he is so far a derivation from the past, that he ought to be seen in his connections with it. We therefore introduce the subject of Mr. Badger's ancestry as the chief part of the first chapter of this book.
Joseph Badger, the subject of this memoir, was a native of Gilmanton, Strafford county, New Hamps.h.i.+re, born August 16th, 1792. From an early ma.n.u.script of his I copy the following lines:--
”My father, Peaslee Badger, was born at Haverhill, Ma.s.s., 1756. He was the son of General Joseph Badger, who was a native of that place. When my father was nine years of age, his father removed to Gilmanton, N. H., where his family was settled, and where my grandsire, General Joseph, ended his days in peace, in the year of our Lord 1803. The good instruction I received from him, before my ninth year, will never be effaced from my memory. His name will long be held in remembrance as a peacemaker, and a great statesman.
Every recollection of him is a fulfilment of the sacred pa.s.sage--'The memory of the righteous is blessed.'
”In 1781, my father was married to Lydia Kelley, born in Lee, N. H., 1759. She was the daughter of Philip Kelley, who, in the triumphs of faith, departed this life the 11th of June, 1800, at New Hampton, N. H. For the s.p.a.ce of thirty-six years my father resided at Gilmanton. In our family were nine children, five sons and four daughters. I was the fourth son, and the old general, of whom I have already spoken, selected me as the one to bear up his name.
I was accordingly named for him; but alas! I fear I have fallen greatly below his excellent examples.”
Among his ancestors, there can be no doubt, that he most resembled, in mind and body, the venerable man whose name he bore. The personal form of Gen. Joseph Badger, as described in history, in which he is represented as nearly six feet in stature, somewhat corpulent, light and fair in complexion, and of dignified manners, answers most aptly to the subject of this memoir; nor is the correspondence less perfect, when his mental qualities of foresight, order, firmness, tact, and generosity are considered. ”As a military man,” says the faithful pen of history, ”General Badger was commanding in his person, well skilled in the science of military tactics, expert as an officer, and courageous and faithful in the performance of every trust. With him order was law, rights were most sacred, and the discharge of duty was never to be neglected.”
Hundreds, into whose hands this volume will fall, will never forget the promptness and the courageous efficiency with which Rev. Joseph Badger met every public duty, and every great emergency; and though his field was the ministry, and his soldierly skill that which referred to the Cross, none who ever knew him can cease to remember the ready, natural, and commanding generals.h.i.+p by which his entire action and influence in the world were distinguished. He did not float with the wave of circ.u.mstance, but carefully laid out his labors into system, always having a purpose and a plan; and not unfrequently did his active energy and position in life, amidst many difficulties, remind one of a campaign. No mind, acting in the same sphere, was ever more productive in ways and means. Though a clergyman, he was a general, and one, we should say, of no common tact and skill.
His father, Major Peaslee Badger, with whom the writer of this memoir was acquainted, was a man of strong mental powers, quick perceptions, and of great vivacity. The quality last named, for which the subject of these biographical sketches was so generally distinguished, is readily traceable to his father; and the same remark in regard to quickness of perception might also apply, but for the fact that the mind of the son was more intuitive, and that he possessed both the qualities spoken of in a greater degree. Joseph Badger, though at heart deeply imbued with the solemnity and importance of all that belongs to the Gospel of human salvation, was no anchorite in spirit, no desponding meditator on man or his lot; he wore no formalities of a pretending sanct.i.ty. He had the good fortune never to have lost his naturalness; and I think I never saw one in whose nature was treasured a greater fulness of social life. It was apparent that Major Badger had a memory that was strong even in advanced years; that he was a general reader, and had reflected very independently; that, though capable of tender emotions and kindness of heart, the intellect had pretty full ascendency over his sympathetic nature; and that, in social feeling, in affection, in fineness of nature, and in general sympathy, his son possessed the richer inheritance.
His mother was a Christian, and judging from her letters, was an affectionate woman, of good plain sense, and rich in sympathy and maternal care. Father, mother and son are now in the spiritual world.[1]
As there are several public men wearing the family name of Badger, and as there are different branches of the same original family that in an early day exchanged their home in England for the then comparative wilderness of New Hamps.h.i.+re and Ma.s.sachusetts, in obedience to the spirit of adventure that drew, in those times, the most earnest and enterprising persons to the New World, I have thought it proper briefly to present the lineage of Rev. Joseph Badger from the settlement of the first family of this name in Ma.s.sachusetts; in doing which I shall not rely on uncertain tradition, but on the published history of Gilmanton, N. H., and on the Memoir of Hon. Joseph Badger, both of which are now before me. From these authorities it appears that the Badger family is of English origin, that its founder was Giles Badger,[2] who settled at Newbury, Ma.s.s., previous to June 30, in 1643, only twenty-three years after the landing of the Pilgrims. His son, John Badger, a man of much respectability in his day, was by his first wife, the father of four children, only three of whom, John, Sarah and James, lived to arrive at years of responsibility, the first having died in infancy. His first wife, Elizabeth, died April 8th, 1669. By his second wife, Hannah Swett, to whom he was married February 23d, 1671, he had Stephen, Hannah, Nathaniel, Mary, Elizabeth, Ruth, Joseph, Daniel, Abigail and Lydia.
Both of the parents died in 1691. John Badger, Jr., a merchant in Newbury, married Miss Rebecca Brown, October 5, 1691; their children were John, James, Elizabeth, Stephen, _Joseph_, Benjamin and Dorothy.
Joseph was born in 1698.
Joseph Badger, son of John Badger, Jr., was a merchant, in Haverhill, Ma.s.s.,[3] and married Hannah, daughter of Col. Nathaniel Peaslee. Among his seven children was General Joseph Badger, whose usefulness and excellence of character are strongly expressed in the pages before me.
He married Hannah Pearson, January 31st, 1740; their children were twelve in number, among whom was Major Peaslee Badger, the father of the subject of this memoir, and the Hon. Joseph Badger, Jr., the father of Hon. William Badger, late Governor of New Hamps.h.i.+re. Several of this name have been distinguished for ability, and have held important positions of public duty. Some have been active in the defence of their country, some in the cause of education, the administration of justice, and the affairs of political life; and like the distinguished men of New Hamps.h.i.+re generally, they mostly seem to have had strong natures, with characters marked by native vigor and original force.
South of the White Mountains some fifty miles, and near the Lake and River Winnipiseogee, is the old town of Gilmanton. As the mind of Mr.
Badger, during his childhood in this place, was lastingly impressed by the society and instruction of his uncle, I have thought best to copy the presentation of his character as found in the published history of Gilmanton.