18th Century New England/Canadian clergyman and comic poet
Father Abbey's Will. woodcut, Cambridge publisher. December, 1791
Rev. John Seccombe (25 April 1708 – 27 October 1792) was an author, a founder of Chester, Nova Scotia and was “the best-known and most highly respected clergyman in Nova Scotia.”[1][2][3] He was also the author of Father Abbey's Will, which was printed as a poem and a broadsheet over 30 times throughout the 18th century in England and America.[4] According to the Manual of American Literature, the poem "was one of the best comic poems of that day."[5] As a result of the poem, the History of American Literature indicated that Seccombe "had an extraordinary notoriety" in America's early literary history.[6]
Harvard, Massachusetts
John Seccombe's mansion, Harvard, Massachusetts
Seccombe graduated Harvard College (1728) and then became the first congregational minister of the town of Harvard, Massachusetts, where he stayed for 25 years (1733 -1757).
[7] While at Harvard, he built the "grandest house" in Harvard at the centre of town and a cottage on one of the two largest islands in Bare Hill Pond (now named Ministers Island).[8][9][10] (He sold the house to Henry Bromfield in 1765.[11][12][13][14] His house in Harvard burned in 1854.[15][16])
As an author, Seccombe’s best known work is “Father Abbey’s will” (1732), which became famous throughout New England.[17] The poem is a 15 stanza nonsense verse, which was turned into a Broadside ballad and published many times. Initially the poem was published in 1732 in the Gentleman's Magazine (June) and the London Magazine (August).[18] It was continued to be republished by the Massachusetts Magazine in November, 1794. The name Abbey was a misnomer for Matthew Abdy, a custodian of the town, and the poem listed an inventory of Abdy's estate.[19] The poetic composition was first published in Weekly Rehearsal (Boston, Mass.), 3 Jan. 1732.[20] He was re-published in the Gentlman's Magazine, May 2, 1732 and London Magazine (October 1732) and continued to be re-published throughout the 18th and 19th century.[21][22] The song was anthologized in Louis Untermeyer's Early American Poets (2001).[23]
In 1736, he married the grand daughter of Rev. Solomon Stoddard. In 1745, he created upheaval in his community by sponsoring Rev. George Whitefield to speak.[24]
Chester, Nova Scotia
He left Massachusetts and helped establish Chester, Nova Scotia with Timothy Houghton (1761). He built a home at Pleasant Point, seven miles from Chester.[25] He also preached at St. Matthew’s Church in Halifax. He ordained the first Presbyterian minister in British North America Bruin Romkes Comingo.[26] In 1769, Seccombe baptized slaves at St. Matthews.[27]
In the wake of the American patriot rebellion in the Siege of Fort Cumberland, in 1776, along with other members of St. Matthew's Church, Seccombe was arraigned by the Nova Scotia Council for having American patriot sympathies.[28]
^Cahill, Barry, "The Sedition Trial of Timothy Houghton: Repression in a Marginal New England Planter Township during the Revolutionary Years". XXIV, 1 (Autumn 1994), p.39
Rev. Joseph Seccombe. Business and Diversion, inoffensive to God and necessary to the Comfort and Support of human society: A discourse utter'd in Part at Ammaukeeg Falls in the Fishing Season, 1739. Boston: Pirnted for S. Kneeland and T. Green in Queen Street, 1743. Reprint 1892, 8 Vo. p. 36[1]
George T. Goodspeed. "Father Abbey's Will". Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Third Series, Vol. 73 (1961), pp. 18–37
Gwendolyn Davies, "Poet to Pulpit to Planter: The Peregrinations of the Reverend John Seccombe", in Margaret Conrad, ed., Making Adjustments: Change and Continuity in Planter Nova Scotia 1759-1800 (Fredericton, 1991), p.. 189-97.
A sermon occasioned by the death of the Honorable Abigail Belcher, late consort of Jonathan Belcher, esq . . . delivered at Halifax . . . October 20, 1771 with an epistle by Mather Byles (loyalist) (Boston, Mass., 1772);[2]
