void of tears, but fill’d with fears,
And dreadful expectation
Of endless pains and scalding flames,
Stand waiting for Damnation.15
In case anyone missed the point, the main textbook taught in the region’s schools and homes, The New-England Primer, reproduced Wigglesworth’s poem and emphasized many of its themes. Foremost was a simple one: “In Adam’s Fall, We Sinned all.” The Primer consisted of verses, catechisms, and religious lessons, among other things, and it stressed that “the Fall brought Mankind into an estate of Sin and Misery.” Human beings were depraved, and all faced eternal damnation, even young children. Catechisms and verses warned New England’s youth that death was not just for the old and the infirm: “From Death’s Arrest no Age is free, Young Children too may die.”16
Such was the religious milieu that Jacob Green lived in; along with the death of his father and the teachings of his mother and sisters, it made an exceedingly strong impression on him. The Day of Doom was especially important in shaping his outlook. “Before I was seven years old, I was at times much affected with the thoughts of the day of judgment, and future misery. At that age, I used with attention to hear my sisters read Mr. Wigglesworth’s verses upon The Day of Doom,” Jacob recalled. “That book used much to awaken and affect me: I have always had a peculiar regard for it.” Its warnings and dark language helped to launch Jacob on a seven-year journey of exploration where he examined his “soul and future state. But my corruptions were much stronger than my convictions—In early life I discovered a nature wholly degenerate. . . . I often dreamed that the day of judgment was come.”17
To deal with these fears, his mother, his congregational church, and The New England Primer taught him the importance of prayer. As the Primer described it, “Come unto CHRIST all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and He will give you rest.” Jacob took these admonitions to heart, especially his mother’s, and at eight years old he began to pray in secret. Praying brought him little comfort, however, and during these early years Jacob said he “had no religion but slavish fear, and [my] corrupt nature was all the while growing stronger and stronger.”18
Struggling in the spiritual realm, tormented by the Calvinistic thought that he was destined for hell, Jacob was not much happier in the material world either. His family expected him to do what countless generations of Greens had done—to take his rightful place as a farmer and craftsman, and young Jacob tried to fulfill their wishes. When he was fourteen years old, he went to live with his uncle Henry Green in Killingly to learn a trade, but owing to “some difficulties,” according to Jacob, he failed. So Jacob then went to live with another uncle, Daniel Green, in Stoneham. There, an indenture was drawn up, binding Jacob as an apprentice until he was twenty-one. “Pecuniary difficulties,” however, defeated this latest arrangement, and Jacob packed his bags once again to move in with yet another uncle, Thomas Lynde of Malden. This arrangement lasted only a year.19
It soon became apparent to his family that Jacob had little desire to learn a craft; in fact, in his autobiography, he did not even specify the trades he attempted to learn. His real passion was for books and reading, and Jacob’s family and friends came to recognize his intellectual abilities. When he turned sixteen, Jacob began to think about attending college—an audacious dream, because no one in his immediate family had ever gone to college and because he lacked the money to pay for it. His half brother Bixby Barret came up with a clever plan, however: when Jacob turned twenty-one, he was to inherit land from his father’s estate, and Bixby suggested selling this land immediately and using the proceeds to pay for Harvard.20
To execute this plan, though, Jacob would need a new guardian, who would then sell the land for him. The probate court approved the arrangement, and “the thing was accomplished,” Jacob reported in his autobiography. He marveled at his good fortune. “I viewed it as a favorable providence, that three times I missed being bound out till I was twenty-one years old, which would doubtless have prevented a liberal education.” With the money in hand, the seventeen-year-old’s next challenge was to prepare for Harvard, and that involved enrolling in a grammar school, where Jacob boarded with a minister and undertook the study of Latin—standard practices at the time for those students interested in attending college.21
Students seeking admission to Harvard had to pass an oral exam given by the college’s president and its tutors shortly before commencement was held for graduating college seniors. The exam tested whether an applicant could, in the words of the college’s laws, “read, construe, and parse Tully, Virgil, or such like common classical Latin authors.” The incoming freshman was also expected to be able to read Greek and be able to “decline the paradigms of Greek nouns and verbs.” These entrance requirements reflected conventional notions of what constituted a classical education: scholars should be able to read the ancients. If the applicant passed the exam, he received a copy of the college laws and was required to pay all expenses for one quarter.22
Jacob did not record his experiences, but he likely passed the exam easily because the test focused on languages, his core strength as a student. Six weeks after taking the test, he returned to Cambridge for the fall term. He received his housing assignment and met his two “chums,” or roommates. Then he braced himself for the arrival of the upper classmen, who treated freshmen like plebes in a military academy. The upper classmen made them run errands and serve as their servants. Tasks included fetching bread and beer and washing clothes. Decorum also dictated that the freshmen not wear hats at meals or “lean” at prayers or toss a ball in the yard.23
Harvard in 1740 was becoming a modern college, albeit slowly. Founded in 1636 in a cow pasture, the college was located in a struggling frontier town, then known as New Town, that had been abandoned earlier that year by most of its Puritan inhabitants, who migrated to the Connecticut frontier under the leadership of the Reverend Thomas Hooker. By the time of Jacob’s enrollment, Harvard consisted of three main buildings grouped in a courtyard called the College Yard. The original Harvard Hall, completed in 1677, was a four-story brick building with a gambrel roof that was both imposing and practical. It was a self-contained structure, holding classrooms, library, buttery/kitchen, and living quarters for two tutors and for students. Twelve years later the college constructed the middle building, called Stoughton Hall, and in 1720 it built Massachusetts Hall. The latter faced Harvard Hall and was erected for the princely sum of 3,500 pounds, Massachusetts currency. Harvard’s leading historian praised the craftsmanship of these buildings: “These ‘colleges’ . . . were built of the best materials and in the best style of which the colonists were capable. They contained every comfort known to the times, for the notion that college students should ‘live like gentlemen’ came over with our founders.” Indeed, college life did carry a whiff of gentility—heady stuff for a farm boy from Stoneham. Students were trained to take their place among New England’s elite, and they lived and dined in some comfort (although, like their modern counterparts, they complained incessantly about the food): the college laws specified that the tables in the “scholars’ Commons,” as the dining hall was known, “shall be covered with clean linen cloths of a suitable length and breadth . . . and furnished with pewter plates.”24
In its aspirations for gentility, Harvard had an Old World feel to it. The college, however, did not forget its Puritan roots. The Harvard of 1740 still served to train Puritan ministers (as well as to prepare leaders for the colonies), and religion still dominated academic life despite the arrival of Enlightenment values. The college laws informed the class of 1744 that “all scholars shall behave themselves blamelessly, leading sober, righteous, and godly lives.” All students were to “seasonably attend the worship of God in the hall morning and evening.” Those late to prayers would be fined four pence per infraction. “And every scholar shall on the Lord’s Day carefully apply himself to the duties of religion and piety,” strictures that
