Portraits of Eminent Americans Now Living

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: WILLIAM L. MARCY, SECRETARY OF STATE. The first settlers of the northern shores of our country were stem men, who, refusing dictation as to their manner of worshipping the Supreme Being, became voluntary exiles from their native land, that in the New World they might offer up their supplications in such a...
More Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: WILLIAM L. MARCY, SECRETARY OF STATE. The first settlers of the northern shores of our country were stem men, who, refusing dictation as to their manner of worshipping the Supreme Being, became voluntary exiles from their native land, that in the New World they might offer up their supplications in such a manner as would best conform to their own views of addressing their Creator. And, truly, no grander temple could they have selected?no better cathedral built than the eternal forest surrouuding New England's rock-bound coast? where the everlasting anthem ascended from Old Ocean's bosom, and blended with the hymns of praise from those primeval woods. It is not asserted that the ancestors of the subject of this sketch were numbered amongst the pilgrims of Plymouth rock, or that they there offered up their first thanksgiving; but it is certain that they rank among the first of those who chose New England for their home, and were of that Puritan stock, which, disguise tho fact as you ma)', has given a name and standing to this Confederacy, which only men of such iron will and determination could give. Cast your eye over the illustrious of this Union, and frame a list of those Names that were not born to die, and note what proportion can be traced back to this old Puritan stock. From Maine to Texas, from Carolina to California, you find its offshoots filling the judicial benches, prominent as merchants, useful as mechanics, and in every way performing the duties of good citizens. In tracing back the ancestry of our distinguished fellow citizen as far as is necessary for us to go, we find a paternal progenitor, Moses Marcy, born in Woodstock, Connecticut, who married there in the year 1723, and removed in 1732 to New-Medfield, afterwards called Sturbridge, where he...