The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss | Page 4

THE GIRL.
1818-1839.
I. Birth-place and Ancestry. Seth Payson. Edward Payson. His Mother.
A Sketch of his Life and Character. The Fervor of his Piety.
Despondent Moods and their Cause. Bright, natural Traits. How he
prayed and preached. Conversational Gift. Love to Christ. Triumphant
Death.
Mrs. Prentiss was fortunate in the place of her birth. She first saw the
light at Portland, Maine. Maine was then a district of Massachusetts,
and Portland was its chief town and seaport, distinguished for beauty of
situation, enterprise, intelligence, social refinement and all the best
qualities of New England character. Not a few of the early settlers had
come from Cape Cod and other parts of the old Bay State, and the
blood of the Pilgrim Fathers ran in their veins. Among its leading
citizens at that time were such men as Stephen Longfellow, Simon
Greenleaf, Prentiss Mellen, Samuel Fessenden, Ichabod Nichols,
Edward Payson, and Asa Cummings; men eminent for private and
public virtue, and some of whom were destined to become still more
widely known, by their own growing influence, or by the genius of
their children.
But while favored in the place of her birth, Mrs. Prentiss was more
highly favored still in her parentage. For more than half a century the
name of her father has been a household word among the churches not
of New England only, but throughout the land and even beyond the sea.
It is among the most beloved and honored in the annals of American
piety. [1] He belonged to a very old Puritan stock, and to a family noted
during two centuries for the number of ministers of the Gospel who
have sprung from it. The first in the line of his ancestry in this country
was Edward, who came over in the brig Hopewell, William Burdeck,
Master, in 1635-6, and settled in the town of Roxbury. He was a native
of Nasing, Essex Co., England. Among his fellow-passengers in the
Hopewell was Mary Eliot, then a young girl, sister of John Eliot, the
illustrious "Apostle to the Indians." Some years later she became his
wife. Their youngest son, Samuel, was father of the Rev. Phillips
Payson, who was born at Dorchester, Massachusetts, 1705, and settled
at Walpole, in the same State, in 1730. He had four sons in the ministry,
all, like himself, graduates of Harvard College. The youngest of these,

the Rev. Seth Payson, D.D., Mrs. Prentiss' grandfather, was born
September 30, 1758, was ordained and settled at Rindge, New
Hampshire, December 4, 1782, and died there, after a pastorate of
thirty-seven years, February 26, 1820. His wife was Grata Payson, of
Pomfret, Conn. He was a man widely known in his day and of much
weight in the community, not only in his own profession but in civil
life, also, having several times filled the office of State senator. When
in 1819 a plan was formed to remove Williams College to a more
central location, and several towns competed for the honor, Dr. Payson
was associated with Chancellor Kent of New York, and Governor John
Cotton Smith of Connecticut, as a committee to decide upon the rival
claims. He is described as possessing a sharp, vigorous intellect, a
lively imagination, a very retentive memory, and was universally
esteemed as an able and faithful minister of Christ. [2]
Edward, the eldest son of Seth and Grata Payson, was born at Rindge,
July 25, 1783. His mother was noted for her piety, her womanly
discretion, and her personal and mental graces. Edward was her
first-born, and from his infancy to the last year of his life she lavished
upon him her love and her prayers. The relation between them was very
beautiful. His letters to her are models of filial devotion, and her letters
to him are full of tenderness, good sense, and pious wisdom. He
inherited some of her most striking traits, and through him they passed
on to his youngest daughter, who often said that she owed her passion
for the use of the pen and her fondness for rhyming to her grandmother
Grata. [3]
Edward Payson was in all respects a highly-gifted man. His genius was
as marked as his piety. There is a charm about his name and the story
of his life, that is not likely soon to pass away. He belonged to a class
of men who seem to be chosen of Heaven to illustrate the sublime
possibilities of Christian attainment--men of seraphic fervor of
devotion, and whose one overmastering passion is to win souls for
Christ and to become wholly like Him themselves. Into this goodly
fellowship he was early initiated. There is something startling in the
depth and intensity of his religious emotions, as recorded in his journal
and letters. Nor is it to be denied that