PART I
CHAPTER 1.
ALBERT R. PARSONS' ANCESTORS
HEROES OF TWO CENTURIES FOR RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL FREEDOM—HIMSELF THE MARTYR OF THE NINETEENTN CENTURY FOR INDUSTRIAL LIBERTY—LETTER FROM A NATIVE OF NEWBURYPORT, MASS.—NEW ENGLAND FOREFATHERS HONORABLE AND HEROIC MEN OF THEIR TIME.
A descendant of New England parentage, A. R. Parsons' ancestors figured conspicuously in the seventeenth century in the contests of religious liberty in England, and on the second voyage of the Mayflower landed on the stern and rock-bound coast of New England, having found what they sought here—"freedom to worship God according to the dictates of their own conscience."
In the eighteenth century they were conspicuous in the struggle for political liberty. The Rev. Jonathan Parsons,[1] of Newburyport, Mass., the Whitfield of the time, preached a war sermon against British tyranny from his pulpit, and raised a company in the aisles of his church, which marched to the trenches of Bunker Hill; there a grand-uncle of Albert lost an arm in the first battle of the Revolution. Maj-Gen. Samuel Parsons, after whom Albert's father was named, served in the New England division of the Revolutionary army.
On his maternal side, his great-grandfather Tompkins was a trooper in Washington's body guard—served under him at Trenton, Brandywine, and Monmouth, shared the winter horrors at Valley
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[1] This is the"Uncle Jonathan" whom America makes its patron saint.
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