Passing It Down
Sometimes writing history feels like a treasure hunt. I learned a wonderful story of faith last week while writing a lesson about Cape Cod. Several islands lie near Cape Cod. Martha’s Vineyard is the largest. English colonists settled on Martha’s Vineyard in 1641 and 1642. At first they called their village Nunnepog, an Algonquian word for Fresh Pond. The first leader of Nunnepog was Governor Thomas Mayhew. Mayhew is an example of an English settler who treated native people well. He had good relations with the Wampanoag and did not use their land without their permission.
A Wampanoag named Hiacoomes lived near the English settlement. Thomas Mayhew’s son Thomas Jr. was a minister. Hiacoomes began to stand outside English worship services, while Thomas Jr. preached. Each Sunday he moved closer. Finally, Hiacoomes came inside and sat in the back. Hiacoomes and the minister became close friends. Hiacoomes came to believe in Jesus. He was the first Wampanoag to become part of the church at Nunnepog. Hiacoomes taught Thomas Mayhew Jr. his native language. Soon Thomas Jr. taught other Wampanoags in the home of Hiacoomes. Later Thomas Jr. traveled all over Martha’s Vineyard, teaching the Wampanoags. His meetings lasted well into the night, as he taught Bible stories to adults and children.
By 1657 there were 1500 believing Wampanoags on Martha’s Vineyard. That year Thomas Jr. sailed for England to tell about his work with this native nation. He planned to purchase books and to bring more teachers and ministers to the island. The ship on which Thomas Jr. sailed was lost at sea.
Thomas Mayhew Sr. was 65 years old when his son died. He continued the work Thomas Jr. had begun. He preached to Wampanoags once a week until his death at age 92, sometimes walking 20 miles to do so. Thomas Jr. had a son John, who also carried on his work, as did John’s son Experience, and John’s grandson Zachariah.
I learned this story in Martha’s Vineyard, written in 1923 by Henry Franklin Norton.
Before Thomas Mayhew Jr. left for England, the 1500 believers came together to say goodbye. As they stood in a semi-circle around him, Thomas Jr. led them in prayer and preached a sermon from Psalm 1 and Psalm 23. They sang a hymn. Hiacoomes cried and placed a stone at Thomas Jr.’s feet., telling him that whenever he passed that way, he would place a stone there in his memory until he came back. Thomas Jr. told him not to do that in his memory but in the memory of Christ. All of the nation’s leaders placed a stone with Hiacoomes’ stone.
When Henry Norton was a child, a native woman worked for his family. One day Henry drove the native woman in his family’s wagon to the place where she would catch a stage to visit her family. Soon Henry and the native woman came near the place where Hiacoomes had placed his stone. The native woman told young Henry that one time when she was a girl she walked with her grandmother from Martha’s Vineyard’s Gay Head . . .
. . . to visit their relatives who lived on the small island of Chappaquiddick.
When she and her grandmother came to the place where Hiacoomes placed the stone, they stopped and placed “a stone in memory of the Saviour and of the first white man who taught them to know him.”* The native woman was the granddaughter of the last sachem of the Wampanoags who lived at Gay Head and the great-granddaughter of the last Wampanoag sachem of those who lived on Chappaquiddick.
On the day that young Henry drove her to meet her stage, 240 years had passed since Thomas Mayhew Jr. had taught her ancestors about Jesus. When the Nortons’ wagon reached the spot, she got out, laid a stone on the pile, said a prayer, and returned to the wagon.
One generation shall praise Your works to another,
And shall declare Your mighty acts.
Psalm 45:4
*Quote from Norton, Henry Franklin. Martha’s Vineyard. Henry Franklin Norton and Robert Emmett Pyne, Publishers, 1923.