Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Chapter III SECRETARY RAWSON AND HIS FARM Edward Rawson, the first white owner of Caryville and North Bellingham the Puritan Secretary of the Colony of Massachusetts, whose portrait hangs in the Registry of Deeds in Boston, was born in England in 1615. He married Rachel Perne, granddaughter of a sister of Edmund Grindal, a famous Archbishop of Canterbury, who was too friendly to the Puritans to please Queen Elizabeth, so that she suspended him from the duties of his high office for several years. Edward Rawson's mother was the sister of John Wilson, the first minister of Boston. The young couple came from England to Newbury, Mass., in 1637, and he was the second town clerk there for nine years. He became a selectman and a judge, and a member of the General Court at the age of twenty- three. After serving as clerk of the General Court, he became Secretary of the Colony in 1650, and held that high office till his death. Johnson's " Wonder Working Providence" says: "Mr. Edward Rawson, a young man yet employed in Commonwealth affairs a long time, being of ripe capacity, a good penman and eloquent inditer, hath been chosen Secretary of the Colony." His position now required him to live in Boston, and his house stood on Bromfield Street, which was called Raw- son's Lane till 1800. He sold house lots there bordering on the Common. His salary gradually rose from twenty 1615—1693 L... ' " iiiii " pounds to eighty pounds, and his fanrly increased to twelve children. He was one of the twenty-eight persons who left the First Church in 1660 to form the Old South Church.. He served as a steward for the English Society for Propagating the Gospel especially among the Indians- One thing to be regretted in his long and honored life was his zeal in persecuting Quakers, for his name ...