Historic leaves, volume 2, April, 1903 - January, 1904

[33] and may still be preserved from a wilde wilderness state through God's blessing upon the same, and from becoming a land of darkness and of the shadow of death. Cherish them therefore and the College in especial.’

At this time, also, 17: 2 mo., 1673, ‘it was voted that the persons hereafter mentioned were appointed to look after ye boys and keep them in order in ye meeting house upon ye Sabbath & Lecture Days, 24 persons being ordered to set two for each month with them.’ The list included many of the solid men of the town, and a similar vote was passed for several years thereafter.

Mr. Thompson (Tompson) achieved no little distinction as a schoolmaster, physician, town cerk, and even as poet. He was the son of the Rev. William Thompson, and was born in Braintree July 14, 1642. He graduated from Harvard College in 1662, the second in his class, and was appointed to, the master's place in the Boston school August 26, 1667. While teaching there, he had among his pupils the celebrated Cotton Mather, and thus ‘had the honor of helping forward that precocious youth, who, in burdensome gratitude, enlivens his “Magnalia” by references to his old master's poetry.’

After leaving Charlestown, we next find Mr. Thompson teaching in his native town, where he engaged March 3, 1678,9, at a salary of £ 30. The town is to give him a piece of land to put a house on, and every child is to carry to the schoolmaster one-half cord of wood, besides the quarter money every year. 1688, Mr. Benjamin Thompson, physician and schoolmaster, is mentioned on the Braintree records, and 1696 he is the town clerk of that place. He was keeping school in Roxbury from 1700 to 1704. Mr. Thompson was twice married, first, to Susanna Kirtland, of Lynn, secondly, to Prudence Payson. He died April 13, 1714, in his seventy-second year, leaving eight children and twenty-eight grandchildren. Of these, a daughter, Susanna, was born in Charlestown June 10, 1673. The birth of a daughter, Anna, February 21, 1676, is also assigned to Charlestown. If so, the family must have lived here after his services as schoolmaster had ended.