One Colonial Woman's World: The Life and Writings of Mehetabel Chandler Coit

4. Establishing Roots, 1697–1706

ChaPter FoUr Establishing Roots, 1697–1706 Mehetabel had married into one large and established new London family and was related through her mother to another. nonetheless, it may have taken her some years to set down her own roots in the community. her involvement with the Puritan church, which she seems to have attended regularly even though she did not become a full member, likely facilitated the process. during Mehetabel’s first years in new London, the congregation was engaged in building a new meetinghouse, as the previous structure had burned down. arson was the suspected cause, and although the charges were never proved, several members of a local religious sect known as the rogerenes, followers of the dissenter John rogers, were prosecuted for the crime.1 The rogerenes had become notorious for their rejection of infant baptism , of the sanctity of the Sabbath, and of an established ministry, among other heresies. new London was a more tolerant community than many of its neighbors, but the rogerenes actively sought confrontation with those who disagreed with them, lecturing passersby on the street and occasionally interrupting services at the meetinghouse. in March 1694, for example, John rogers’s sister bathsheba barged into a church meeting to proclaim that she had worked on the Sabbath—an offense for which she was subsequently put into the stocks. Later that day, John rogers disrupted the same service by attempting to auction off a wheelbarrow full of merchandise he had carted into the meetinghouse. (he had earlier managed to break out of jail, where he had been incarcerated himself for working on the Sabbath.)2 The reverend Gurdon Saltonstall, a harvard graduate who in 1691, at the age of twenty-five, had begun leading the new London congregation, did, 57 Chapter Four 58 despite his traditional views on obedience to authority, attempt to compromise with the rogerenes. according to John rogers Jr., at one point after Saltonstall became governor of Connecticut in 1708, he even promised them that if they would only “be quiet and worship God in [their] own way according to [their] Consciences, he would punish any . . . that should disturb [them] in [their] Worship.” (The rogerenes, however, declined to be “quiet.”) Mehetabel, unfortunately, left no firsthand account of the rogerene controversy, and she was equally silent on the topic of her minister. one admirer of Saltonstall’s, however, was the travel diarist and later new London resident Sarah kemble knight. after passing an evening with Saltonstall and his family in 1704 on a journey to new haven, knight commented that she had been “very handsomely and plentifully treated and Lodg’d; and made good the Great Character i had before heard concerning him: viz. that hee was the most affable, courteous, Genero’s and best of men.”3 by the time Mehetabel began attending the new London church, she had undoubtedly spent innumerable hours in prayer, private meditation, and religious reading. her diary does not provide specific information regarding her personal spiritual beliefs, but it does contain a variety of biblical excerpts, religious musings, and quotations from contemporary theological works that help shed some light on them. (all of these entries are undated.) The first such example lists the ten plagues visited upon the egyptians for not releasing the israelites, as related in the old testament’s book of exodus: the ten plagues of egypt 1 all waters turnd to blood 2 frogs numberless do sworm 3 lice loathsom thick as dust 4 flys numberless do sworm 5 a murrin bests disstroys 6 blains vex boath man & beast 7 hail & fire spoil somthings 8 strang locust spoil the rest 9 thick darkness palpable 10 the egytians first born die these ten plagues [of] egypt felt rewards of Cruelty4 The egyptians’ oppression of the israelites and Pharoah’s obstinacy in failing to heed God’s many “signs and wonders” result in terrible punishments: starvation, pestilence, festering boils. in its most basic form, this story’s les- Establishing Roots, 1697–1706 59 son—that disobeying God’s will can only lead to destruction—was one that every Puritan would have learned at a young age. Mehetabel’s inclusion of this passage in her diary can also be considered in light of the Puritans’ consciousness of themselves as God’s chosen people, like the israelites. as the Puritan minister John Cotton once wrote, “The same covenant which God made with the national church of israel and their...