Jonathan

Dressed for church at the Plimoth-Patuxet Museum, much as Jonathan and Grace might have.

I’ll begin with a reminder: Jonathan and his wife, Grace, were the first in a long line of Fairbanks descendants that led to my mom, then to me—and to you. They arrived with their six children in New England in 1633, having come from Yorkshire, a county in northern England. (1) They appear to have settled first in Watertown, just west of Boston. Jonathan was probably in his late thirties, Grace a few years younger. Their four sons and two daughters were all born in England, and Watertown was already too crowded with incoming colonists to be their permanent home. After three years there, Jonathan and Grace chose to settle in Dedham, following the Charles River upstream, west and then south, inland from Watertown by twenty miles or so. Moving to Dedham was a two-way proposition. The founders of Dedham chose them too.

These founders intended to call their community Contentment, which says a lot about the life they intended to build there together. But in granting them land on which to build, the colony’s lawmakers imposed the name of a town in England instead, tying the founders to the old world rather than the new. The founders took the good with the bad and got to work. They set about creating what amounted to a gated community, open only to those willing to sign a covenant that put words to their aspirations.

This notion of covenant—a written contract, a commitment to each other and to God—was central to social and spiritual life in Puritan New England. Jonathan Fairbanks became the thirty-first man to sign the document, the first member of a second wave of settlement in town. It was an invitation-only proceeding. He was recommended by an original founder and accepted by a public vote.

“We whose names are hereunto subscribed,” the Dedham covenant begins, “do in the fear and reverence of our almighty God, mutually and severally promise amongst ourselves and each to other, to profess and practice one faith, according to that most perfect rule, the foundation whereof is everlasting love.” There’s a lot packed into that single sentence, but I’m drawn to its closing words. In moving to Dedham, Jonathan signed us up to live in a spirit of everlasting love. And when I say “us,” I mean it. The covenant’s fifth and final clause says that, by signing, Jonathan was “thereby obliging both himself and his successors after him for ever, as we have done.” 

I can’t think of a better family foundation than everlasting love. 

But—and it’s a big but—Dedham’s founders weren’t willing to embrace everyone who came their way. The covenant’s second clause drives that point home: “That we shall by all means labor to keep off from us, all such as are contrary minded,” it says; “and receive only such … as may be probably of one heart with us.” Only by admitting those who would walk “in the knowledge and faith of the Lord Jesus” as they understood it could they be assured of living in “true peace.” (2)

One faith, perfect rule, true peace. Their utopian ideal.

Looking back, you can see the seeds of independence and democracy in the Dedham covenant and its spirit of governance by mutual consent. You can also see the seeds of trouble, not only for the region’s thousands of indigenous inhabitants, but for fellow colonists who sought to worship the same God in a different way. For a time, Jonathan had his doubts too. His issue wasn’t the town and its covenant, but the expectations embodied in Dedham’s First Church and its own covenant, which followed.

Jonathan prospered in Dedham, pitching in from the first. After voting to admit him in 1636, his neighbors promptly assigned him to help harvest the timber for a communal hog yard. He and his family probably spent their first winter crammed into the house of a neighbor, perhaps the man who had recommended him. Jonathan had enough money and the good sense to hire a carpenter to build his house the next year, probably one of two local men who came from a shipbuilding region of England, where they had mastered a technique called post and beam construction. This remains a living art in New England, practiced by notching and joining massive timbers with wooden pegs in a frame so strong it can withstand the pounding of heavy seas—or the passage of centuries on land.

Get this: The Fairbanks home still stands, which makes it not just a miracle but our family’s claim to fame. Now a museum, run by a family nonprofit, it’s the oldest surviving wooden frame structure in North America. The old place dates to 1637 and pretty much looks its age; you might think the only thing holding it up is memory. It owes its longevity to good fortune as much as sturdy construction, having survived everything from a termite infestation to an assault by a 1957 Chevy with a teen at the wheel who lost his brakes as he hurtled through what’s now a busy intersection.

Originally built with two rooms up and two down, along with glass windows imported from England, the Fairbanks home was among the more valuable properties in town. My favorite aspect of the homestead is a faded red polka dot on what was once a whitewashed wall in the parlor, rediscovered when a section of dark paneling was removed not long ago. Red paint was expensive, and the dots were a common and socially acceptable way of showing off. The parlor was the ideal room for doing just that. It’s where the museum welcomes visitors, where the Fairbanks family received guests, and where Jonathan and Grace slept too. As with Henry Travers, their bed, stowed in the hold of the ship that delivered them from England, was their single most valuable possession. (3) If the old place is still around by the time you read this, it’s well worth a pilgrimage.

Jonathan and his family probably focused first on establishing their farm, but they surely contributed to building the homestead too. Jonathan was a woodworker, gifted with skills that help explain his prosperity. (4) He crafted graceful spinning wheels, an elegant and essential frontier tool for the women of Dedham and beyond. “I’m sure he was killing it with the spinning wheels,” said Justin Fairbanks Schlesinger, a family member of the nonprofit’s board and our tour guide on one visit. (5) Jonathan also appears to have been gifted with responsible habits and a mind for mathematics. He managed the finances of a friend and merchant when he went out of town, measured unclaimed land for distribution, and surveyed public roads, bridges, and causeways. He was well read too. By the end of his life, he owned fifteen books and two pairs of spectacles. Among them, surely, was the Bible. Just as surely, Jonathan knew it well—and it appears that he may not have understood it as Dedham’s church leaders did.

The eight men who set out to establish the church devoted eighteen months to debating thirteen questions of faith before crafting a second covenant, this one for its members. They began with the fundamentals, asking themselves whether the Bible actually authorized them to establish a church and select their own minister in the first place. Having settled that question—affirmative!—and others, they concluded by evaluating each other’s suitability for membership. A historian named Kenneth Lockridge, who wrote a book about early Dedham, presented the dual covenants this way: the first served to define the policies of perfection—the town—and the second the heart of perfection, the church. (6)

Something about that second covenant troubled Jonathan.

Remember, the church founders believed in a God who had already determined who was saved and who was not. In the Church of England back home, no one attempted to sort the pure from the impure in life. But the founders of Dedham’s church, like their contemporaries across Massachusetts, were determined to limit membership to those who enjoyed God’s favor. That raised an essential question: how could they tell? The church covenant captures their best guess. On the one hand, there was your public behavior: those who were quick to anger, abrasive, overly ambitious, or absorbed in the pursuit of material riches revealed their destiny, as did the humble, the willing, the wise and good-natured. Of equal importance was your innermost self, and your willingness to lay it bare. Joining the church amounted to a ritual of purification, beginning with a public confession of past sins and a compelling description of God’s emergence in your heart, making clear the “inward work of faith and grace.” Saying the expected words without feeling was not enough. The process was intimidating, and the results could be awkward. When one Dedham couple applied for church membership, the wife got in. The husband didn’t. He tried again and succeeded, but some churchgoers never pursued membership.

For years, even as more neighbors joined, Jonathan held back. Having committed to the town covenant in 1636, he did not take the second step—seeking to become a church member—until 1646. For almost a decade this left him short of full citizenship, one notch below what the colonists called a freeman, eligible to vote in colonial elections. (7) His reluctance didn’t discourage his eldest daughter, Mary, who became the first Fairbanks to join the church in 1640, at the same time as her fiancé and his family. It may not have stopped Grace either. Someone in town named Grace became a member in 1643, but her last name isn’t listed.

Why join a religious commune but not join the church at its center, around which all else revolved? Jonathan’s hesitation once led a curator of the Fairbanks homestead to describe him as “Puritan-ish,” almost as if he was going through the motions. The curator raised a question and left it hanging: was he admitted to town with a wink and a nod because everyone needed spinning wheels and he could supply them? 

I don’t think so. First of all, I can’t imagine many winks and nods were involved in Dedham’s founding. No one who played a part in it left evidence of anything but commitment to their calling. And the record of Jonathan’s eventual admission to church membership in 1646 suggests that, if anything, he was recruited, and the reluctance his alone. 

“Jonathan Fairbanks,” it begins, “notwithstanding that he had long stood off from the church upon some scruples about public confession of faith and the covenant, yet after divers loving conferences … made such a declaration of his faith and conversion to God and profession of subjection to the ordinances of Christ in this church that he was readily and gladly received by the whole Church.”

So: Jonathan stood off from the church as a matter of principle. But exactly what might “scruples about public confession of faith and the covenant” mean? I’ve learned a lot about Puritan life in researching this story, but I am no expert. I emailed someone who is—a scholar at the Harvard Divinity School named David B. Hall—to ask how he read those words. (8)

“His hesitancy suggests a reflective capacity that may have two dimensions,” Hall replied. I liked that: a reflective capacity. That suggests Jonathan was independent-minded, thoughtful … and perhaps a bit stubborn. But what was his hang-up?

In Hall’s view, the first of the two possibilities was personal. Jonathan may have been reluctant to make a public confession because he was a private man, not one to tell all. Even today, New Englanders are known for their reticence. He could also have been among the many Puritans who struggled with feelings of inadequacy, fully aware of their failings and thus the first to question their own worthiness. If so, how sad. That’s a painful way to walk through life.

The second possibility was his own reading of the Bible. If the justification for a religious practice couldn’t be found in its pages, Puritans rejected it. That’s why they considered the priests, bishops, and adornments of the Church of England to be nothing more than a watered-down version of Catholicism, a tool of royal politics rather than a valid expression of faith. But the Bible contains contradictions, so even the most literal-minded reader has to make judgments. Might those loving conferences with the minister and church elders have revolved around matters of interpretation? Could Jonathan’s reading of the family Bible have led him to question whether it actually required him to demonstrate his worthiness as the church covenant demanded? 

“The bar was being raised—and raised rather significantly,” Hall wrote, referring to church membership in New England. “JF was among many who had to reflect on whether he accepted the new standards (or could satisfy them).”

I wish I could say that I took the matter of becoming a member of the Canterbury United Community Church in our town as seriously as Jonathan did, but I can’t. I did it because Brenda, whose family life growing up was centered in church, wanted to do it. By and large, I’m glad I joined with her. Like me, the community church is descended from Puritan days and practices. Thankfully, no public confession is required for membership, and the response of the congregation is an affirmation of support rather than an expression of judgment. Each week the minister greets worshippers with open arms and this message: all are welcome here. Still, attendance is dwindling and the congregation is getting on in years. This is typical of mainstream, small-town churches in my time. Although the days when such churches served as the focal point of an entire community are a fading memory, the Canterbury church still plays a positive role in town. It has long sponsored a town-wide newsletter, often at a loss, and the Parish Hall hosts a nonprofit daycare and serves as a busy community center. The church quietly provides support to those in need, and the vibrant, annual town fair grew from the church too. I experience a sense of connection when I attend worship services there, sitting among friends and neighbors. Cushions soften the experience of sitting on the hard wooden benches and the music soars. It’s a setting that invites  contemplation—and sitting with your conscience too.

But I don’t attend as often as Brenda does, and when I do, I wrestle with some of the words we all recite together because I don’t, in my heart, believe them. They render God in our image, not the other way around. My deepest experience of whatever God is comes not inside church but outside in the wildness of the woods. I do believe we all need a North Star in life, as religion provides; mine glimmers with family and community, not rites and rituals. I don’t have an answer to the question of whether Jesus literally rose from the dead, the essential defining belief of Christianity. If I had been as true to my own feelings as Jonathan was expected to be, I’d have remained a friend of the Canterbury church—but not a member.

In the end, Jonathan decided to do what was asked of him. I close my eyes, try to picture him rising from his seat, a mature and successful man, in the presence of the neighbors he knew so well. Some he surely liked and respected, others not so much. Maybe the reason for his hesitation was altogether different than I’ve suggested; perhaps he just didn’t like the minister. I can’t actually know if his heart was pounding or his mouth dry, whether Grace held her daughter’s hand, where the minister stood as Jonathan began to speak of his own failings and the experience of God’s arrival in his heart. The scenes I described in opening this chapter are drawn from my imagination, not the written record. But I do remember my own knees shaking the day I stood in a church to marry Brenda, forging the essential bond of my life. A covenant of two.

What we know for sure about Jonathan’s day in church is that he made the requisite confession, described his “conversion to God,” in the words of the church record, and agreed to subject himself to “the ordinances of Christ in this church.” Having done so, he was “gladly received.” If that change of heart reflects Grace’s reading of the family Bible, earnestly expressed by candlelight in their red-dotted parlor, so be it. I hope the minister and others who joined in those “divers loving conferences” didn’t browbeat Jonathan into submission. When he finally stood in church and said what his neighbors had been waiting to hear, I’d like to think he meant every word he uttered. 

(What now? You can jump to the top of this page, go to the full story index—or read the next story!)

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Footnotes

1. Yorkshire is known for its Roman, Viking, and Norman heritage, traces of which are present in my DNA. Before leaving for their New World, the Fairbankses lived in West Yorkshire, near the city of Halifax, in a town called Sowerby. [Jump back]

2. The Dedham covenant also commits everyone to contribute their fair share in taxes and time toward the town’s wellbeing and spells out a process for resolving disputes. [Jump back]

3. Seeing examples of such beds, ornately carved, in the crude, uninsulated shacks at the Plimoth Patuxet Museums—a living history institution that portrays Pilgrim and Wampanoag life in 1627—is a jarring experience. The beds must have reminded their occupants of all they’d left behind every time they tucked themselves in. [Jump back]

4. Jonathan’s father, who went by John Fairbank, died suddenly in 1625, the same year that the Plague broke out in London. For whatever reason, John did not give Jonathan land, as he did his other sons. He did give him an inheritance, but it was an undersized share. All this suggests that family dynamics may have played a role in Jonathan’s decision to emigrate. (That last bit of speculation is mine. But I’m drawing the factual information from the amazing work of Sharmin Fairbanks McKenny, a distant relative who has devoted herself to documenting, through her blog, fairbankshistory.com, and imagining, through a novel, the early Fairbanks family story.) [Jump back]

5. I’ve toured the homestead twice, most recently with Ben, when that distant relation, Justin Fairbanks Schlesinger, served as our tour guide. A salesman and not a professional historian, Justin wore Bermuda shorts and sandals for the occasion. He wasn’t one for dressing up the tour, either. In pointing out the red spot in the parlor, he added: “Whoever decided that Puritans didn’t like color was far off the dot.” [Jump back]

6. The title of Lockridge’s book is A New England Town: The First Hundred Years. [Jump back]

7. Whether that also cost him a vote in local matters is a question scholars debate. Most seem to think not. [Jump back]

8. I relied on two of Hall’s books in my research: The Puritans: A Transatlantic History, and Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England. [Jump back]