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pounds (old tenor) as annual salary, in order to make his salary now equal to what it was when he settled among us.
May 15, 1749:
Mr. Turell's salary was raised to five hundred pounds (old tenor). These votes reveal the perilous changes in the value of money, which then so perplexed and distressed the colonies.
It made it necessary to vote the minister's salary each year: accordingly, in 1751, we find the salary stated in the
new, or, as it was sometimes called, the
middle tenor, £ 73. 6s. 8d.
It was the custom of those days to introduce domestic joys and sorrows into the pulpit.
A slave, named
Sharper, and owned by
Mr. Turell, was very ill, and his master preached on the Sabbath from these words: “My servant lieth at home sick.”
Sharper died just as the sermon was ended.
When
Mr. Turell wooed and won the beautiful
Miss Jane Colman, daughter of
Rev. Dr. Colman, of
Boston, whose graceful form and brilliant eye allured one's attention from the exceeding brunette in her complexion, he preached on the first Sabbath after his marriage from this text: Cant.
i. 5: “I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of
Jerusalem.”
Mr. Turell lost the children he had by his first wife.
His second wife was
Miss Lucy Dudley, by whom he had no children; and his third wife was
Mrs. Devenport.
He died childless.
On the occasion of his “publishment” to
Mrs. Devenport, Sept. 28, 1735, he preached from Cant.
III. 3: “Saw ye him (her) whom my soul loveth?”
On the Sabbath after his marriage, he preached from Cant.
v. 16: “He (she) is altogether lovely.
This is my beloved and this is my friend, O daughters of
Jerusalem.”
Mr. Turell was not more fond of good company, good wine, and good dinners, than most people of his day; and to them it did not seem strange that he should preach from Cant.
v. 1: “Eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved.”
Among the preachers of that time, there was some rivalship of ingenuity in extracting godly morals and even Christian doctrines from Solomon's epithalamium.
It is true that rich jewels are sometimes found in
very unpromising places.
Mrs. Turell, whose poetic invitation to the country, like Horace's, speaks of motives, has these lines:--
To please the taste, no rich Burgundian wine
In crystal glasses on my sideboard shine;
No wine, but what does from my apples flow,
My frugal house on any can bestow.
