Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1877-08-10
NUMBER 7.


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The Rev Samuel Peters, Ii. D., was an
Episcopal clergyman, Of Connecticut, who
claimed, In his day, to have been the first
clergyman who visited Vermont This was
in October LES, vhon he said he climbed to
the top Of one of the peaks of the Green
Mountains, and there in sight of Lake
Champlain on the west and Connecticut riv-
er on the east, and looking over interminable
forests, north and south, proclaimed the
name Of "Verd-mont" for the territory
around him. DR.. Peters spent eight weeks,
preaching in the New Hampshire Grants at
that time, during which he claimed to have
baptized trelre hundred children. Thomp-
son, in his Vermont, pronounces this to have
been "a number very remarkable, certainly,
considering the sparseness of the popula-
tion." DR.. Peters was subsequently, in
1874, elected the first Episcopal bishop Of
Vermont, by convention representing
some eight parishes but he was never con-
secrated, the American bishops, then three in
in number, declining to consecrate him on
the ground that it was inexpedient to cOnse-
crate bishop for diocese that contained
but one presbyter,-which was the case with
Vermont because there were personal
objections" Among their objections, doubt
less, was the fact that DR.. Peters was bit
ter royalist. The circumstance that there is
no spot in Vermont from which Lake Cham
plain and the Connecticut river are visible,
and other instances Of marked discrepancy
between DR.. Peters statements and well set
tied facts, have discredited him as a histO-
rian and there are those who doubt that
he first gave the name Verdmont to our State,
or baptized 200 children in half a dozen
little pioneer settlements, at time when the
total population of Vermont, probably, did
not exceed 5000.
Mr.. j. Hammond Trumbull, it seems, in
his recent work, entitled I" The True Blue
Laws of Connecticut, and the False Blue Laws,
Invented by the Rev. Samuel Peters, goes
the length of calling DR.. Peters sc liar and
rogue" This has moved Mr.. Samuel
Jarvis Mccormick, of New Rochelle, n. Y,
who signs himself "great-grandson of DR..
Samuel Peters," to come to the defence Of
his great-grandiather, in the ChurchDidH,
published at Hartford, Conn. We have
read Mr.. Mccormick S article with some
interest. 1t shows that Gov. Trumbull, of
Connecticut, having recommended that
general collection be taken up in the churches
for the relief of the patriots shut up by Gen.
Gage, in Boston, DR.. Peters opposed the re-
commendation, and further took the ground
that g the teas wickedly destroyed in Bos-
ton harbor should be paid for by the authors
of that horrible crime" 1t reproduees from
DIR. Peters papers, an account of how he
was personally maltreatcd and threatened
with tar and feathers by a mob, headed by
Gov. Trumbull's son David, because he (Dr.
Peters, would not sign paper justifying the
Boston tea party, and declaring King George
I'LL. " Roman Catholic, tyrant and IDIOT -
1t mentions other facts of history, showing
that no good will existed between the
Trumbulls, OF Revolutionary fame, and DR..
Peters, the tory. 1t charges the carly set
tiers of Connecticut with 'ianaticism," big
otry and " eanting hypocrisy" 1t asserts
that the parsimonious saints of New Eng
land divested Dr.. Peters of every acre Of
his large estates, and that % to this day fam
lilies in that State are fattening on lands
flched from the Rev. Samuel Peters by their
yOracious ancestors" But We cannot see
that it disproves the charge Of lying brought
against d" the Rev Samuel Peters, Ii. D."