Malden and Stoneham did not rebel against this congregational world. Indeed, as home to such Puritan stalwarts as Michael Wigglesworth (the best-selling author of a famous religious work) and Joseph Emerson (the stern minister of Jacob’s childhood), they helped to perpetuate Puritan culture. Malden was part of Charlestown until 1638 when the colony awarded Malden’s founding proprietors five-acre lots on the “Mistickside & above the Ponds.” In 1722, the year of Jacob’s birth, it remained a small community of several hundred people. Stoneham was both newer and poorer than Malden, its immediate neighbor to the south. Incorporated in 1725, three years after Jacob’s birth, Stoneham grew only haltingly in the following years. A 1754 tax assessment ranked the town near the bottom of Middlesex County, well below Malden and the wealthy college town of Cambridge.10
Jacob’s exposure to religion and Congregationalism was multifaceted—at home, school, church, and community. The congregational church was obviously one important source of his religious education. Occupying the pulpit during his childhood was the Reverend Emerson, who served Malden’s congregational church from 1722 to 1767. Emerson graduated from Harvard and was a well-educated, scholarly man whose faith rested on Calvinism and a belief in Puritans’ divine mission as a New Israel. He enforced a strict Congregationalism during his forty-five-year tenure that emphasized proper godly behavior and the need for Malden’s good citizens to uphold the covenant—requirements that an adult Jacob Green wholeheartedly supported. In exhorting his flock to lead upright lives, Emerson alternately cajoled and insulted his listeners; one sermon likened the congregation’s spiritual makeup to “a corrupt Fountain, a nest of Serpents, a cage of Unclean Birds, a stie of Filthiness.” He decried weakness and sin, going so far as to sell his chaise because, in the words of one essayist, “of the sinful pride which it awakened in him.”11
The community itself taught Jacob another kind of lesson. In these Puritan bastions throughout New England, all was not peace and love and harmony. Emerson found himself overseeing a devout but argumentative flock. The most troublesome issue was where to locate the meetinghouse: those who lived near it wanted it to stay there, while those farther away wanted it closer. A particularly nasty dispute occurred in 1727, and it directly affected the Greens. The secession of ten families to Reading left the Green clan isolated from Malden’s religious life. In 1734, as a result, when Jacob was twelve years old, the Greens proposed that their neighborhood become part of Stoneham—such a move would reunite the family (some of whom had become Reading residents in the 1727 annexation) and bring them closer to the latter town’s meetinghouse. In a petition dated June 21, 1734, the clan asked the General Court to approve the annexation. They couched their request in traditional terms, citing “their Difficulty to attend the Publick worship of God in their Towns by reason of their Remoteness from the meetinghouse there.” In December, the Court granted the request, including “the land late of Jacob Green, deced.”12
But the biggest influence on Jacob may well have come from books. New England was a literate place, and Jacob had the good fortune to grow up in a village with a direct connection to one of New England’s most famed literary figures, the eccentric Michael Wigglesworth. Wigglesworth preceded Emerson as Malden minister. He was a Harvard graduate and probably outshone Emerson in dourness. As one chronicler of his life noted, “We should scarcely exaggerate, I think, if we described Michael Wigglesworth as a morbid, humorless, selfish busybody” whose passion was haranguing people to reform their ungodly ways.13
How many people Wigglesworth turned off to religion because of his poor people skills and dark sermons is unknown. Yet his influence as a writer on New England Puritanism is indisputable. In 1662, Wigglesworth published a 224-stanza poem called The Day of Doom that remained popular for more than one hundred years (indeed, it was one of the first best-selling books in the colonies) and that scared the wits out of countless generations of New England children—including Jacob Green. The poem was a favorite of his sisters, and they read it aloud to a rapt Jacob. Wigglesworth named his poem well; The Day of Doom was about Judgment Day, and its simple rhymes contained stark warnings about the fate that awaited “Adulterers and Whoremongers” and others:14
With dismal chains, and strongest reins,
Like Prisoners of Hell,
They’re held in place before Christ’s face,
Till He their Doom shall tell.
These void of tears, but fill’d with fears,
And dreadful expectation
Of endless pains and scalding flames,
Stand waiting for Damnation.15
In case anyone missed the point, the main textbook taught in the region’s schools and homes, The New-England Primer, reproduced Wigglesworth’s poem and emphasized many of its themes. Foremost was a simple one: “In Adam’s Fall, We Sinned all.” The Primer consisted of verses, catechisms, and religious lessons, among other things, and it stressed that “the Fall brought Mankind into an estate of Sin and Misery.” Human beings were depraved, and all faced eternal damnation, even young children. Catechisms and verses warned New England’s youth that death was not just for the old and the infirm: “From Death’s Arrest no Age is free, Young Children too may die.”16
Such was the religious milieu that Jacob Green lived in; along with the death of his father and the teachings of his mother and sisters, it made an exceedingly strong impression on him. The Day of Doom was especially important in shaping his outlook. “Before I was seven years old, I was at times much affected with the thoughts of the day of judgment, and future misery. At that age, I used with attention to hear my sisters read Mr. Wigglesworth’s verses upon The Day of Doom,” Jacob recalled. “That book used much to awaken and affect me: I have always had a peculiar regard for it.” Its warnings and dark language helped to launch Jacob on a seven-year journey of exploration where he examined his “soul and future state. But my corruptions were much stronger than my convictions—In early life I discovered a nature wholly degenerate. . . . I often dreamed that the day of judgment was come.”17
To deal with these fears, his mother, his congregational church, and The New England Primer taught him the importance of prayer. As the Primer described it, “Come unto CHRIST all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and He will give you rest.” Jacob took these admonitions to heart, especially his mother’s, and at eight years old he began to pray in secret. Praying brought him little comfort, however, and during these early years Jacob said he “had no religion but slavish fear, and [my] corrupt nature was all the while growing stronger and stronger.”18
Struggling in the spiritual realm, tormented by the Calvinistic thought that he was destined for hell, Jacob was not much happier in the material world either. His family expected him to do what countless generations of Greens had done—to take his rightful place as a farmer and craftsman, and young Jacob tried to fulfill their wishes. When he was fourteen years old, he went to live with his uncle Henry Green in Killingly to learn a trade, but owing to “some difficulties,” according to Jacob, he failed. So Jacob then went to live with another uncle, Daniel Green, in Stoneham. There, an indenture was drawn up, binding Jacob as an apprentice until he was twenty-one. “Pecuniary difficulties,” however, defeated this latest arrangement, and Jacob