Francis Dane: 1615-1697
Learning About My 8th Great Grandfather Through His Own Words and In His Own Hand
I knew exactly what I wanted to
write about when I saw this week’s 52 Ancestors theme. I made the most incredible
discovery while researching my eighth-great-grandfather, Reverend Francis Dane.
I had already learned
amazing things about Reverend Dane and his life in Andover, Massachusetts. Due
to his vocal objections to the witch trials in the neighboring village of
Salem, he is in the history books and even has his own Wikipedia page. His
family members were targeted by the Salem investigators in retaliation for his
outspokenness. Several of his daughters, daughters-in-law and granddaughters
were accused, put on trial, and some were even convicted of witchcraft.
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| Reverend Francis Dane |
My discovery last year had nothing to do with that horrible period of his life. I happened upon a reference to the restoration of a commonplace book written by him. The volume was available to the public as part of the Digital Collection of the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS), so I immediately looked at it.
I
already knew what a commonplace book was, and I’d actually begun my own version
of one a few years earlier. A commonplace book is, according to one dictionary,
“a book in which quotes, extracts, poems, aphorisms, etc. are copied down for
future reference, often together with one’s ideas and reflections.” My own
commonplace book is a collection of quotations that strike my fancy.
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| NEHGS website description of the Dane Commonplace Book |
The NEHGS has collected some early American commonplace books for preservation, and one of the earliest is Francis Dane’s. They believe he used the book for nearly 40 years, from 1648 to shortly before his death in 1697. It contains extracts from his clerical reading, drafts of sermons, recipes for medications and dye colors, and was also used for penmanship practice by young family members.
The NEHGS has digitized the entire
200 page volume. It was in a severely damaged condition; many pages have been
torn out entirely or partially. However, the pages that remain have been
scanned in a high resolution format, so the images are rich and sharp. The pages
are packed with handwriting; Reverend Dane would even turn the book to the side
to make use of the margins, so many pages have entries on a variety of topics
written in various directions on the page. Paper was difficult and expensive to
acquire in that era, so Reverend Dane was careful to utilize every inch of his
book. His students’ penmanship lessons are often scrawled atop his own entries.
I was amazed at the clarity of his
penmanship. I can read most of the text, only stumbling on archaic 17th
century language and usage, as well as the era’s tendency to write certain
letters like the small “s” and “f” nearly identically.
I have been eagerly downloading the
images into a Dropbox file, and now I am starting to upload the images to
Shutterfly so I can make a print copy of some or perhaps all of the pages. It’s
an odd feeling to look at my eighth great grandfather’s actual handwriting—to see
the inkblots and the careful cross-outs as he edited his material, to read his
thoughts and see what excerpts from the Bible and other books he copied. It
makes him so real—a man who was far more than a rural minister preaching to a
tiny community on the edges of a new world. He was a man who helped out with
household chores like dying fabric and with tending to the sick. He was a man
who was sharing his education and knowledge with the next generations. He was a
man who wrote poetry and hymns, and pondered the arguments and ideas of England’s
theologians.
I can’t wait to see what new
discoveries I make as I begin to transcribe his book. This is a discovery that
will bring me delight and wonder for years to come.
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