IN ENGLAND AND IN AMERICA.

There is a circumstance connected with his history that will be interesting to the friends of African emancipation. He was the owner of several slaves, in one of whom he placed implicit confidence, relying upon him in all delicate and confidential business, and placing in his fidelity, as he said, more unwavering faith than in that of any white man. This negro, Prince Young, was distinguished for his talents and his moral qualities, his honesty, temperance, and prudence, and was left with the sole care of a great estate, and the management of a large farm, while his master was absent at the General Court.

William Buckminster, the son of the above, and the third who held the title of Colonel, was a distinguished man in his day. At the age of twenty-one he removed to Barre, and devoted himself to the business of agriculture. He immediately gained the confidence and respect of the people. His integrity made him friends, and his superior understanding gave importance and consideration to his political sentiments. In the great struggle between this and the mother country, he took a very warm and active part. Decisive in his measures, open and undisguised in his friendships, he enjoyed to an unusual degree the confidence of his fellow-citizens. He signalized himself by his activity in providing arms and ammunition. The minute-men raised in Barre were commanded by him, and immediately after the first blood was shed at Lexington, he marched his company to Cambridge. He was distinguished for prudence and bravery at the battle of Bunker Hill; he was on the field the whole day, and as the Americans were retreating he received a ball in the right shoulder, that

came out at the back. Although thus dangerously wounded, he continued in the army till the close of the war, because of the influence he obtained over the minds of the people. It was said of him, that those who knew him best praised him most, for his inflexible integrity and spotless character.

With him the military spirit ceased, at least in this branch of the family. His eldest brother, son of the second Colonel Buckminster, was born March, 1720. He was the fourth Joseph in direct succession, and the first that entered the ministry. He was educated at Harvard College, and received its honors in 1739. He was ordained at Rutland, Massachusetts, 1742, and continued the faithful and laborious pastor' of that church more than fifty years, highly respected for his usefulness, and deeply beloved and esteemed by his parish. Mr. Buckminster may be considered in some degree a heretic of his day, as he entered into controversy in support of a mitigated form of Calvinism. He did not believe that the elect were elected to grace before the foundations of the world, but were elected from a fallen state, and that election was a remedy for an existing evil. It was not a part of God's original purpose, but such were elected as most diligently used the means of grace. The decrees have no direct positive influence upon men. They are determined by motives, but act freely and voluntarily. Such was his theology.

These controversies were printed, but it must demand a great love of ancestral blood and an enormous amount of patience even to read now what at that and at remoter times was the very milk upon which Christian babes were fed. Mr. Buckminster is called,

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in the theological tracts of the time, a Sublapsarian. It is a comfort to think that the thing itself is not so harsh as its name, for it seems an effort to soften the stern features of Calvinism, and to mingle a little human clay in the iron and granite of its image.

WE come now to the first immediate subject of these memoirs. Joseph, the son of the Rev. Joseph Buckminster, minister of Rutland, was the fourth among nine children. The eldest, a son, lived only a few months; then followed two daughters. Joseph was born October 3d, 1751, receiving the ancestral name, which his elder brother who died had also borne during the few months of his life. His mother was Lucy Williams, daughter of the Rev. William Williams, of Weston, a direct descendant, in the fourth generation, from Robert Williams, of Roxbury, the common ancestor of the wide family of that name spread through the United States. Her grandfather, Rev. William Williams, of Hatfield, was called a man of great abilities. Her own mother was a daughter of Solomon Stoddard, "that great divine, who was considered by many as the light of the New England churches, as John Calvin was of the Reformation."

Rev. Dr. Stiles says, in reference to him, 'I have read all Mr. Solomon Stoddard's writings, but have never been able to see in them that strength of genius some have attributed to him. Mr. Williams of Hatfield, his son-in-law, I believe to have been the greater

JOSEPH BUCKMINSTER.

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man.' President Edwards calls Mr. Williams a man of 'unnatural abilities,' and goes on to say, 'His subjects were always weighty, and his manner of teaching peculiarly happy; showing the strength and accuracy of his judgment, and ever breathing forth the spirit of piety and the deepest sense on his heart of the things he delivered.' Jonathan Edwards was first-cousin to Mr. Buckminster's mother.

It

Colonel William Williams, one of the first settlers of Pittsfield, was the maternal uncle of the subject of this memoir. He preserved the venerable elm-tree that has so long adorned the centre of that town. stood upon land of which he was the owner, and one of his workmen had raised the axe to cut it down, when he ordered him to 'spare that ancient tree.' Its enormous growth must have been the slow work of many centuries. It measures twenty-three feet in circumference only a short distance from the ground, and rises seventy-three feet before it puts out a single limb.

Of the mother of Dr. Buckminster a dim and indistinct image remains in the childish memory of the writer. After the death of her husband, she came to spend the last years of her life near her son, in Portsmouth. She was tall, with rather masculine features, and in the mind of the writer she has left the impression of a stern and rather austere nature. It is remembered that she sat constantly in her easy-chair, usually with a book in her hand, and that no noise was permitted in her presence. Her son, whatever were his avocations, never omitted visiting her a single day, and the grandchildren were often sent to receive her blessing.