esteem for his sterling qualities. Like most
worthy citizens of the perioil, he was a member
of the Orthodox Congregational church; but,
having read reports of the doctrines preached
in England by John Murray, he pondered over
the new faith, and finally went into his regular
church prayer-meeting and said, "Brethren,
I have seen a great light." He then stated the
new belief of the so-called " Universalists,"
that a loving God would, in his own good time,
bring back all sinners to himself; and he added,
" I have reflected upon it, and I think it may
be true." The shock to his fellow church mem-
bers, that so good a man should thus depart
from the faith of his fathers, was very great.
At his funeral, in the presence of the twelve
surviving children, the minister extolled his
.virtues, but said, "We don't know where Major
Flanders has gone." Miss Eastman's mother,
one of the younger of the twelve, remembers
the shock which fell upon them at such a decree.
On the next Sunday, however, in a funeral
discourse, the same minister said, referring to
the fact that Mr. Flanders was member-elect
of the New Hampshire Legislature, " Brother
Flanders will not represent us in the courts
of earth, but we know that he represents us
in the courts of heaven."
The simple trust which characterized the father descended to all but one of his many children, and the courage of conviction seems to have done so likewise, so that succeeding generations have rejoiced in any light which broke for them from the clouds of error, and, like him, they "were not disobedient to the heavenly vision."
In reading the history of the persecutions our Puritan ancestors inflicted on Quakers, Baptists, and others who did not conform to the strict rules of the standing order, one can- not help hoping that one's own kindred were superior to the delusions and exempt from the antagonisms to other faiths than their own that marked our Puritan ancestors. Miss East- man finds in Hoyt's "Old Families of Salisbury and Amesbury" something conhrmatory of her hopes as to her own forbears in the report of a famous witch case: —
Thomas Bradbury was one of the most promi- nent citizens of Salisbury — town clerk, school- master, Representative in General Court for a number of years, as.sociate judge, etc. Most of the ancient records of Salisbury and many of the county were written by him. He dietl in 1694. Two years earlier Mrs. Brad- bury, his wife, was tried for witchcraft and ably and courageously defended by Major Robert Pike. She was condemned, but not executed. A petition was presented in favor of Mrs. Bradbury with eighty-seven signers, one of whom was an ancestor of John G. Whit- tier, and ten of whom were Eastmans male and female.
The father of Mary F. Eastman, Gardner Kimball Eastman, was born in Boscawen, now Webster, N.H. The "Genealogy of the Eastman Family in America," by Guy S. Rix, says he was called "Bonus." Her mother, Mary Flanders, was born in Warner, N.H., the daughter of Philip Flanders, one of the sixteen previously mentioned in this sketch. She was an earnest student, and on one occa- sion appealed to an older cousin and her brother to clear the mysteries she found in studying interest and "the rule of three." They replied that they were ashamed of a girl that wanted to study interest. She became a successful teacher, and, if not the first, she was among the first to be thought competent to teach and control the tall youth of a winter school in her native town. Her later teaching was in Charlestown and Somerville, Mass.
Shortly after her marriage to Mr. Eastman they came to the young city of Lowell, where their four children were born, and where Mr. Eastman passed a long business career. He also represented his constituency in the Mas- sachusetts Legislature in his younger years, but later was too avowed an abolitionist to represent any party of the time.
In speaking of her home life Miss Eastman says: "In our homo, while we lived in the practical and real, we lived also in the ideal. We lived in a (luiet way, but in the most pro- gressive ideas and leading movements of the time. I think of nothing which marks the advanced thought and outreach of our later times which my mother's thought and desire did not foreshadow, except the great work of organization, especially that among women,
