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1831 Letter of Eliashib Adams

Eliashib Adams, 1855
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Bangor [ Maine ], [Wednesday] March 30th 1831

Dear Son, [Rev. George E. Adams [1] of Brunswick , Maine ]

[Your sister] Mary [2] has written you of her safe arrival at home, & I suppose has given you all the news, but will mention that the subject of religion is becoming more interesting in Bangor than it has been for several years past, tho’ there is not that deep feeling in the church that usually precedes a revival. A few money drops have fallen. Mr. [William] Davenport , Catherine Poor (his wife’s sister, living with them), and a hired girl of theirs, have all obtained a hope that they have been born again within the last week. Also a girl living at Mr. [Daniel] Pike’s & one or two others. Mrs. Davenport has been and still is under deep convictions. Twelve attended the meeting for enquiry at Mr. [Swan Lyman] Pomroy’s last Thursday evening. I hope the good work continues in College, [3] & that your people will share largely in it.  

I write you at this time particularly on account of [your younger brother] Henry’s [4] old complaint. I am at a loss whether to send him over to obtain the benefit of Dr. Delamater’s skill or not. Could I consistently come on with him, I should not hesitate, but it is difficult for me to make the journey at this time. It is doubtful if he would let it be known at your house, should he have one of his most severe turns. The more he suffers, the more he is inclined to sing, play, read or tell stories, or go to evening meetings, or engage in any thing that will divert his mind. When he is in such pain that he won’t roll upon the floor should you try to keep him still, he will stand and sing by the hour & make no complaint.

I will endeavour to describe his complaint as near as I can, tho’ it will be very difficult for me to give such a statement, as to be fully understood. The first knowledge I had of it was when he was about two years old. He then had a very severe turn of pain & complained that he was sick behind your mother & myself after finding the pain to be [centered] at the lower part of the bowels, concluded it must be the piles, & applied a poultice which shortly gave relief.

From that time to the present he has been frequently severely afflicted. Very few months have passed without his suffering greatly from the same compliant. We have used various means to relieve him at those seasons. Sometimes we have turned boiling water to bitter herbs, & set him on a vessel over it, which for the time being has eased his pains; & again have used poultices which have had the same effect, but nothing removes the cause. Within the last year I have conversed with several physicians. No one that I have stated his case to appears satisfied that it is the piles. Some have [said] that it may be occasioned by pin worms, or the Scrofula [5], but no one appears to understand his case.  

It may be worthy of remark that when his general health has been the most feeble, he has been troubled the least with his complaint. Three years since he was brought very low with a complaint on the liver, as you will remember, during that summer he was very little troubled with his old disorder. His general health is now greatly improved but he is afflicted greatly with severe pain. I have given him daily since last autumn a strong tea of the Pyrola [6] or winter green, which I think has been useful to him, but I fear will not effect a cure.  

I ought to mention that we never have been able to discover any worms of any descriptions, that he has taken almost all the different kinds of medicine used to destroy them, & there has not any swelling appeared externally, nor any discharges of blood, & I do not learn that any soreness continues long after one of those seasons of pain. Dr. Poor of whom you have some knowledge [says] that it might be owing to the state of the nerves & that he might out grow it should he live four or five years.  

[Saturday] April 2nd [1831].  Since I commenced my letter we have had a most powerful rain which fell on Wednesday. The roads & bridges have suffered greatly. There is scarce a bridge standing within forty miles of this place excepting the Stillwater & the Bangor bridge [7] which suffered considerably. The side walks, & the stringers & planks in the center were wholly carried away. The ice was unusually strong & the freshet was so great as to force it out when even after it started, teams might have passed with safety. It jammed down at Dutton’s head [8] & flowed back so as to rise about a foot a minute till it was five or six feet over the wharves on the west side of the stream. Those who neglected to secure their lumber have lost much of it [9]. There were some buildings of small value carried off but no lives lost.  

The attention to religion increases. There has been two or three cases of hopeful conversion these weeks past & seventeen attended the enquiring meeting [10] at Mr. [Swan Lyman] Pomroy’s the evening before last.  

Doctr Smith I learn to day is more unwell & his cough has returned. Fears are again entertained respecting his recovery.  

I wish you to consult your Physicians & write me soon. If it is thot expedient, I will endeavour to send him on as soon as the traveling will justify it.  

Much love to all my children.  

Eliashib Adams [11]

[1]     Rev. George Eliashib Adams was the oldest son of Deacon Eliashib Adams, and was born in Worthington , Massachusetts , October 27, 1801. Two years later, his father removed to Bangor , Maine , with his family. The son fitted for Yale College , and graduated in 1821. He graduated also from Andover Theological Seminary in 1826, and was appointed the very next year Professor of Sacred Literature in Bangor Theological Seminary. He retained this position until 1829, when he was called to the pastoral charge of the First Parish Church in Brunswick . This charge he resigned in June, 1870, and assumed that relation to the Trinity Congregational Church in Orange , New Jersey . Although his health was failing, he continued to minister to that growing church, even after he had swooned away in his pulpit with the exertion, until he was forced to yield to the effects of disease and suffering, and tendered his resignation in 1875. The church where his late labors had been so signally blessed clung to him with singular affection. But he desired to come hack to Brunswick to spend his last days. "This brief appearance among his old people and in his old pulpit seemed like the visit of an angel." Returning to Orange in the autumn, his health failed rapidly, and he passed away December 25, 1875.

His funeral was held in his old church at Brunswick , where a large concourse of citizens testified their respect and affection. A public meeting was also held, at which resolutions were passed expressive of a deep appreciation of his character and services.

The doctor married early in life Miss Ann Folsom, of Portsmouth , New Hampshire . Having no children, they adopted Frances Caroline Adams, daughter of Asher Adams, of Boston , and now the wife of General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. They afterwards adopted Anna Delamater Davis, who married and died in this town, leaving one daughter, Georgie A. Atkinson.

Mrs. Adams was a woman of remarkable character, and will long be remembered in this place. She died in 1850.

Some years afterward Dr. Adams married Miss Helen M. Root, of Chicago . Their oldest child, George, died at an early age. The daughters, Sarah R. and Mary L., are with their mother in Orange , New Jersey .

For forty years Doctor Adams filled the pulpit, which may well be considered a difficult and trying one, with great acceptance, and managed a parish composed of strong and diverse elements, with consummate judgment and tact. The church grew under his hands by steady, regular increase.

"Doctor Adams was not only a good pastor, be was also a good citizen, alive to the interests of the people among whom he lived, and his eminently benevolent nature prompted him to the discharge of numerous trusts which did not legitimately belong to his calling. Doctor Adams, with great geniality of temper, possessed a reserved fund of humor, which rendered him a charming companion in social life, and which gave to many of his fugitive addresses and writings a point and elegance that few could impart to such efforts. There was about the man so much that was genial and loving, so much of consideration for the rights and opinions of others, that even those who most differed with him could not fail to recognize his sincerity of purpose and his firm intent to do what he honestly regarded for the best."

[2]     Mary Ann Adams was born 1 October 1805 in Bucksport, Hancock County , Maine .  She died 25 June 1867.  Eliashib’s letter was written on March 30, 1831 – 9 days after his daughter Eliza Leland Adams was married to James Crosby in New Brunswick , Canada . Perhaps Mary attended her sister’s wedding and visited with her brother George afterwards in Brunswick , Maine .  

[3]     Probably a reference to Bowdoin College in Brunswick , Maine .

[4]     Henry Martyn Adams, born 1822, was the youngest son of Eliashib Adams [1773-1855] and Anna Leland [1800-1846]. Henry died 25 May 1846 in his early twenties. Henry was probably named after the famous missionary and translator Henry Martyn [1781-1812].  

According to the autobiography of Eliashib Adams, entitled “A Successful Life,” Henry Martyn Adams “had inherited the feeble physical constitution of one parent [his mother], and the strong, hopeful, faithful spirit of the other [his father].” It is further recorded that, “at the age of fourteen [1836], finding that ill health incapacitated him for exertion at home, and being unwilling, without an effort, to relinquish his desire to become a useful man, Henry persuaded his reluctant parents and friends  to allow him the trial of a sailor’s life. At first there seemed reason to hope the experiment would be a successful one. After a severe illness, during his first voyage, which he forgot to mention in his letters, he gained flesh and strength and stature, and continued generally to improve, until at a certain time being in Matanzas [near Havana, Cuba] at a very sickly season, and enduring, in common with his companions, great and needless exposure, through the tyranny of the avaricious captain, he contracted a disease from which he never recovered.” By the age of nineteen [1841], he became a captain of a merchant ship. His last voyage, a journey from Point-Petre, Guadeloupe, to Wilmington , North Carolina , terminated in December 1845 with an illness so severe that he returned, eventually, to his parent’s home in Bangor , Maine where he died 25 May 1846, just five weeks after his mother’s death. His father, the author of this letter, said following the funeral of his youngest son, “I have tried to teach Henry how to live, but he has taught me how to die.”  

[5]     Scrofula is a tuberculosis infection of the skin of the neck. Given Henry’s symptoms, this diagnosis seems highly improbable.  

[6]     Pyrola is the genus name for a number of species in the wintergreen family.  

[7]     The Stillwater is a tributary of the Penobscot River . In 1831, there was a bridge over the Stillwater and over the Kenduskeag, another tributary. In 1828, the Bangor Bridge Company was formed to raise money and build the first bridge over the Penobscot River at Bangor . It is unclear from Eliashib’s letter whether the “Bangor bridge” affected by the freshet in 1831 was referring to the completed bridge over the Kenduskeag or the new bridge, possible already under construction, over the Penobscot River completed in 1832.  

[8]     The ice jammed referred to in Eliashib’s letter occurred near the foot (or the head”) of Dutton Street near the wharves on the west side of the Penobscot River .  

[9]     From the mid 1700’s through the mid 1800’s, Bangor was the lumber capitol of the world. Logs were cut from the forests north of Bangor and floated down the Penobscot River and its tributaries to Bangor where it was processed in mills and sent to eastern markets.  

[10]   Rev. Swan Lyman Pomroy was the second minister of the First Congregationalist Church in Bangor , Maine . He served in the pulpit at First Church from 1825-1848. Eliashib Adams and Daniel Pike, also mentioned in this letter, both served as Sunday school superintendents in this same church during the first half of the 19th century.  

[11]   Eliashib Adams was born 5 June 1773 in Canterbury , Windham County , Connecticut and died in 1855 in Bangor , Penobscot County , Maine . He married Anna Leland, the daughter of John and Hepzibah Leland, on 27 December 1800 in Peru , Berkshire County , Massachusetts . Anna Leland died 18 April 1846 in Bangor , five weeks before her son Henry Martyn Adams.