Nancy (Ann Hasseltine: 1810)

C H A P T E R I X

Nancy

[ Ann Hasseltz’ne: 1810 ]

HAT noon Adoniram had been invited to dine at the home of Deacon John Hasseltine, who was boarding a number of the delegates during the convention. Hasseltine’s big, comfortable house stood only a little west of the Academy grounds, looking northward across the Andover road toward the Merrimack River flowing in the valley below.

A table had been set in the west front room. As the guests filed in, urged by the hOSpitable deacon, Adoniram noticed a girl of about twenty bent over a huge pie which she was cutting into generous slices. Instantly he decided she was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. Her jet-black curls, clear olive complexion and dark, lustrous eyes would have made her appearance striking in any case. But there was something about the irrepressible smile lurking on the full curve of her lips—a certain gay impertinence, almost, in her dancing eyes—that hinted a vivacity and even mischievousness, under the conventional demureness, that were new and attractive to Adoniram. He had never seen a girl like her.

He was anything but shy, yet when Parson Allen introduced him and she looked him full in the face, he was struck dumb. From then on he was extraordinarily aware of every move she made about the room as she served the guests, but he was unable to unglue his eyes from his plate. He could hardly make an intelligent reply when he was asked a question about the missionary movement at the Seminary. Perhaps, thought his questioners kindly, the young man was intimidated by the august gathering he was about to address. The truth was that, instead of thinking about the memorial in his pocket, he was preoccupied with the phrasing of a poem which kept composing itself, almost against his will, to this raven-haired beauty.

Her name was Ann Hasseltine, but people usually called her “Nancy.” She was the youngest of the deacon’s four daughters. She had heard of Adoniram Judson and the storm he had been stirring up in ecclesiastical circles, and had been curious to see what he looked like. And now that she saw him she was disappointed. He was fairly good— looking, of course, but perhaps a little too short and slight. His nose was somewhat too prominent, although that curly chestnut hair was rather attractive. And above all, where were the wit and liveliness she had heard about? His replies were nothing but abstracted monosyllables. Most of the time he spent staring into his plate. When the meal was over and young Mr. Judson mumbled his thanks and went out the door, she wondered why everybody made such a fuss about him.

Later, hearing about the impression he made in church that afternoon, she may have changed her mind.

Nancy Hasseltine was a year and a half younger than Adoniram. She had been born in Bradford December 22, 1789. With three sisters and a brother ahead of her, she was the pet of the family. She may have been a little spoiled. She certainly had a determina—tion to get her own way. But she was so cheerful and lively that it was hard to stay angry with her. She seemed to have no fear. Punishments and restraints brought no reform, nothing but resentful grief. When she was not underfoot, she would be gone no one knew where until her exasperated mother would burst out, “Ann, I hope one day you will be satisfied with rambling.”

~To her father she was a joy. He was amused by what neighbors remembered for years as “her fertility in devising schemes for the attainment of her wishes.” He could not punish her even when at sixteen she was seen in the unladylike activity of chasing thirteen—year-old Rufus Anderson around the Academy grounds with a stick. For Mr. Hasseltine was a man who liked to be gay himself, and who liked to see other people gay. When he had built his house at the upper end of the farm that sloped down to the Merrimack he had included a wing at the rear which had a spacious second—floor room for entertainment, games and dancing. The Hasseltine “dance hall,” as everybody called it, immediately became a social center for Bradford’s youth, which was numerous and lively. All the Hasseltine children attended Bradford Academy at one time or another, and all the boys and girls in the Academy—about eighty when Nancy was in her teens— attended the Hasseltine “dance hall.” In no village for miles was there such fun and excitement. Bradford was a bright Spot against the soberer, drabber pattern of Essex County rural life. Even the church was affected -—even good Parson Allen, whose conservative garb matched the conservative Hopkinsianism he had learned studying his theology under Ephraim Judson, Adoniram’s uncle. Though he took the most serious view of his Christian duties, he was less solemn than his sermons. It is written that, “It was not an uncommon thing for Parson Allen to call for his deacon to go and Spend the evening at the dance hall.” But then, Parson Allen’s vivacious daughter Betsey was a student at the Academy herself, and a good friend of the Hasseltine girls.

Of course, some disapproved. Even Parson Allen came under attack from certain quarters. One anonymous pamphlet, published in nearby Essex but inspired in Haverhill across the river, accused him of “doctrines of Arians and Socinians which are infinitely below the true standards of gospel and morality.” Worse, he had, it was averred, at a meeting of 77zi72isters, “zealously advocated the cause of frolicing and dancing!” In fact, “In seasons past, Mr. A has attended frolicings and dancings with his young people, not only till nine o’clock, and ten o’clock, and eleven o’clock, and twelve o’clock at night, but even till one o’clock in the morning.”

Nancy was a good student and an avid reader, but, as she later wrote remorsefully, by her teens study was running a poor second to entertainment. “I soon began to attend balls and parties of pleasure and found my mind completely occupied with what I daily heard were ‘innocent amusements.’... I was surrounded with associates, wild and volatile like myself, and often thought myself one of the happiest creatures on earth.” Of course, she had been carefully taught by her mother to pray, not to lie, not to steal, not to disobey her parents. If she met these requirements, she believed, “I should, at death, escape that dreadful hell, the thought of which filled me with alarm and terror.” So, like the good girl she was, she always said her prayers night and morning and left off playing on Sunday, “not doubting but what such a course of conduct would ensure my

NANCY 75 salvation.” In her teens, however, she began to backslide. She stopped saying her prayers and reading her Bible when she returned at night from a party. At times her conscience disturbed her, but she consoled herself “by thinking, that as I was old enough to attend balls, I was surely too old to say prayers.”

This was Nancy Hasseltine to the age of fifteen. As her friends said, “Where Ann is, no one can be gloomy or unhappy.” To Nancy and her friends there seemed no reason why this pleasant existence should ever change.

In May of 1805, however, when Nancy was fifteen—and five years before Adoniram met her—a new preceptor came to take charge of Bradford Academy. His name was Abraham Burham. The son of a farmer of Dunbarton, New Hampshire, he had achieved his education by grinding toil and rigid self-denial. He was near thirty when he graduated from Dartmouth in 1804 and even more mature than his years. He was determined to become a minister. To accumulate money he not only taught at Bradford but used the vacations to teach in Concord, New Hampshire. Until he could begin his theological studies he looked upon his preceptorship as an opportunity to guide his students into religious experience as preparation for a Christian life. He was an unusually good teacher, but he considered this aim fully as important as secular instruction.

Burnham’s influence soon began to be felt by the students, Nancy among them. At first the effect was so subtle, however, that she was not aware of what was happening to her. It first manifested itself one Sunday morning when she was dressing for church. On her dresser lay a copy of Hannah More’s popular Strictures 072 Female Education. As she idly opened the book one italicized sentence caught her eye: “She that liveth in pleasure, is dead while she lz'veth.” The line jumped out at her so startlingly that she felt as if an invisible power had brought it to her attention. Though the effect of the warning wore off after a while, she did not forget it. A few months later, reading Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress as “a Sabbath book” she was struck by the final impression it left, “that Christian, because he adhered to the narrow path, was carried safely through all his trials, and at last admitted into heaven.”

This time Nancy promptly went to her room and prayed for help in leading a religious life. But after the prayer she had no more idea than before what to do to be saved. She finally decided that the correct conduct was to stay away from parties “and be reserved and serious in the presence of other scholars.”

But lighthearted Nancy Hasseltine was incapable of keeping any such resolution. The very next day she was invited to a party, refused, invited to another, decided the second was really only a family gathering, and went to it. “Dancing was soon introduced; my religious plans were forgotten; I joined with the rest — was one of the gayest of the gay— and thought no more of the new life I had just begun.”

Then when she returned home late that night, her conscience began to reproach her with breaking her “most solemn resolutions.” Knowing full well she would break them again on the slightest temptation, she was afraid to make any more. She decided that since she could not reform, she might as well try to suppress her conscience. “From December, 1805, to April, 1806, I scarcely Spent a rational hour. My studies were slightly attended to, and my time was mostly occupied by preparing my dress, and in contriving amusements for the evening, which portion of my time was wholly spent in vanity and trifling. I so far surpassed my friends in gaiety and mirth, that some of them were apprehensive, that I had but a short time to continue in my career of folly, and should suddenly be cut off.”

But her conscience insisted on asserting itself. The more feverish her aCtivity, and the more successful she was in denying it during the day, the more it filled her with anxiety and foreboding during the quiet moments of the night.

Meanwhile, under Mr. Burnham’s stimulus a religious revival was beginning to occur in the town. That spring Nancy began to attend the meetings. She felt torn apart by her inner conflict. She did not see how she could be a Christian “in the midst of my gay companions,” but she did not want to give them up. Her behavior was as contradictory as her feelings. At the meetings she would sit in the most remote corner of the room so that no one could see her tears. Yet afterwards she would pretend a lightness of heart she did not feel.

Such a masquerade could not be kept up forever. In a little while she had “lost all relish for amusements.” She could not evade facing the fact, as it appeared to her, that she “must obtain a new heart, or perish forever.”

Mr. Burnham often visited the Hasseltine home. No house in Bradford was more hospitable, and probably no other—with four charming daughters ranging in age from sixteen to twenty-four—offered a greater attraction to a thirty—year-old bachelor. On one of these evenings the discussion turned to the manner in which the Holy Spirit works on the hearts of sinners. This was a subject Nancy had never thought about. One thing Satan does, Mr. Burnham remarked, is tempt us “to conceal our feelings from others, lest our conviction should increase.”

All at once Nancy saw how this statement applied to her. Quietly she left the room and went into the garden, where she began to weep uncontrollably. She felt that she was a captive of Satan, who was leading her wherever he wanted; yet she still was not willing to have any of her friends know that she was considering religion seriously.

A week later Nancy agreed to pay a visit, with several other Bradford girls, to a former schoolmate in another town. At the last moment she made some excuse and instead visited an aunt who lived a few miles away and was reputed to be strongly religious. She found her aunt “reading a religious magazine. I was determined she should not know the state of my mind, though I secretly hoped, that she would tell me something of hers.”

Presently the aunt asked Nancy to read to her. She began, but in a moment broke down, buried her face in her hands, and burst into tears. She could no longer hide what was in her mind. Between sobs, she confessed her agony to her aunt. Her aunt told her to follow the feelings in her heart before it was too late—for if she “trifled with impressions which were evidently made by the Holy Spirit,” she “should be left to hardness of heart and blindness of mmd”

Having made her confession at last, Nancy’s spirits began to rise. “I felt resolved to give up every thing, and seek to be reconciled to God. That fear, which I had ever felt, that others would know I was serious, now vanished away, and I was willing that the whole universe should know that I felt myself to be a lost and perishing sinner.”

For the next two or three Weeks she secluded herself in her room “reading and crying for mercy.” To her surprise and resentment, she felt worse at the end than when she began. She began to blame God for not giving her peace of mind, and, now that she thought of it, found some additional things to blame Him for. “I could not endure the thought that he was a sovereign God, and had a right to call one and leave another to perish.” Not only did she think God cruel, but she hated Him for being so utterly pure and holy. The whole idea of such a God filled her with aversion, “and I felt, that if admitted into heaven, with the feelings I then had, I should be as miserable as I could be in hell.”

After a few days in this hostile frame of mind, however, her feelings began to alter as she considered the character of Jesus. She began to think that “God could be just, in saving sinners through him.” Reading Bellamy’s True Religion, she came to accept God’s hatred as a hatred of sin rather than of sinners, and love for “the good of beings in general.” She realized that she was beginning to have feelings and desires which were new to her and gradually had a hope that she “had passed from death unto life.”

In a short time she had changed completely. “I earnestly strove to avoid sinning, not merely because I was afraid of hell, but because I feared to displease God, and grieve his Holy Spirit. I attended to my studies in school, with far different feelings and different motives, from what I had ever done before. I felt my obligations to improve all I had to the glory of God; and since he in his providence had favoured me with advantages for improving my mind, I felt that I should be like the slothful servant if I neglected them. I, therefore, diligently employed all my hours in school, in acquiring useful knowledge, and spent my evenings and part of the night in spiritual enjoyment.”

Nancy’s conversion had its effect in the family. Her father, who had never had much use for what he called “experimental piety,” began to listen more attentively to Mr. Burnham. One night that summer, the Bradford legend goes, he crossed the field toward the house and through a window saw Nancy kneeling in her room, in tears, praying. Suddenly he was shaken by fear of what could become of him if even his youngeSt daughter, his most dearly beloved, found herself in tears when she approached God. He turned and in the darkness walked out across the farm to a big oak tree. Throwing himself on the ground beneath its broad branches, he “poured OUt his soul in an agony of prayer.”

Thus the legend. It is a fact that on the eleventh of August, 1806, the month of the Haystack Meeting at Williams, John Hasseltine and his wife joined the Bradford church, and Nancy and her twentyyear-old brother John were baptized. A month later Nancy was admitted to the church—but not John; the day before, he had been lost at sea, though none of the family could have known it for some time. The same Sunday that Nancy joined the church, her sister Mary was baptized; and by spring of the following year Rebecca and Abigail, too, had entered the fold.

With her conversion, Nancy quickly put on maturity. That winter she studied harder than ever before in her life. In the spring she began to teach between terms. She opened her first school, probably in Bradford, with prayer, and noted in her journal, from the majesty of her seventeen years, that “The little creatures seemed astonished at such a beginning.”

During the next few years she taught schools in a number of nearby towns -— at Haverhill, across the river; and at Newbury. Her sister Rebecca took a school at Byfield, not far from Bradford, and Nancy spent a term there with her. And at some time she kept a school in Salem.

In Salem she may have lived with her intimate friend Lydia Kimball, whose father Eliphalet had moved from Bradford some years earlier and established a store on Essex Street where he sold “European and India goods,” including cottons, fiannels, broadcloths, satins, muffs and tippets, silk gloves, and miscellaneous notions.

At the Kimball home she muSt have met sea captains and shipowners. Certainly she must have seen their ships at the wharves along Derby Street, and watched the towering white sails move grandly out paSt Baker’s Island and Big and Little Misery. Perhaps she had fleeting wishes she could be a man and sail to the far places she heard of. But, so far as she knew, her destiny lay in Essex County, in teaching and, eventually, marriage.

Perhaps she wished she could marry a minister, as her sister Rebecca did early in I810 when she became the third wife of the scholarly Joseph Emerson, pastor of the Dane Street Church in Beverly. In the spring of I810 Nancy visited the Emersons more than once, and conceived a real admiration for the kindly, stoopshouldered preacher.

But of what was in her mind with regard to these matters we know nothing.

We know only that on June 28, 1810, aged twenty-one, Nancy Hasseltine was at her home in Bradford; and that at noon on that day Adoniram Judson saw her serving dinner and promptly fell in love.