Person Page - 422

Moody attended Harvard College, where he experienced conversion from reading Joseph Alleine's An alarm to unconverted sinners. He graduated in 1697 and the following year accepted the chaplaincy of York in northeastern Massachusetts (now Maine). Only a man inured to the prospect of hardship and possessed of exceptional courage would have agreed to go to a place where the previous minister and a number of inhabitants had lately been murdered by Indians. Moody declined a regular salary, believing that the Lord would provide. Once he gave away his wife's shoes to a poor woman, but a neighbour gave her a new pair before the day was out. Anxious to divest himself of the love of created things, he gave away his most prized possession, his horse, saying, "He goes right up with me into the pulpit, and I cannot have him there ...". Although he never failed in the performance of compassionate acts on behalf of the unfortunate, he nevertheless was a man of violent temper, as he showed when he visited the alehouses, driving home the tosspots whom he found idling there. Many of the tales told of him throughout New England and his strange utterances found their way into Agamenticus, a work of fiction.

Ministering to a people who knew the horrors of the petite guerre waged by the French and their Indian allies, Moody volunteered as a chaplain to John March's ill-fated expedition to Port-Royal (Annapolis Royal, N.S.) in 1707. In 1712 York was attacked by Indians and some of Parson Moody's parishioners were killed. The following year, however, he signed a treaty with the Abenakis, which gave some temporary respite. The year before he died, the members of his congregation still found it necessary to go to church under arms.

Moody was a powerful preacher and took part in the religious revivals of his time, including the Great Awakening, which helped to give the expedition to Louisbourg, Île Royale (Cape Breton Island), in 1745 something of the character of a crusade. The fishery in which Maine settlers were so much engaged was threatened by the destruction of their station at Canso, Nova Scotia, and the attack on Annapolis Royal in 1744 by detachments from Louisbourg. Thus a third of the Massachusetts contingent sent to reduce that fortress in 1745 was drawn from Maine, the whole force being placed under the command of Moody's neighbour, William Pepperrell.

Moody joined the expedition as senior chaplain, and when he boarded the transport at Boston he seized an axe and exclaimed, "The Sword of the Lord and of Gideon," predicting that Louisbourg would be taken and that he would cut down the objects of papal worship. "O that I could be with you and dear Mr. Moodey in that single church," wrote Deacon John Gray to Pepperrell, "to destroy ye images their sett up, and hear ye true Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ their preached." It is said that following the siege Moody did attack the altar and images in the French church with his axe. He subsequently gave the first Protestant sermon preached within the precincts of Louisbourg. Though he had always been a long-winded and extemporaneous speaker, at the banquet tendered by Pepperrell to the British naval forces he astonished all present by the brevity of his thanksgiving.

Moody was in his seventies at the time of the capture of Louisbourg, the oldest man in the army. He died two years later at York in the arms of his son, the Reverend Joseph Moody. His first wife, Hannah, had died in 1728; he married Ruth Newman, née Plummer, in 1732 or 1733. The other surviving child by Moody’s first marriage, Mary, was the great-grandmother of Ralph Waldo Emerson.¹⁰

     The death of Mrs. Harriet Sterling Moor Sewall took place on Saturday afternoon, July 30, in her home on Stillwater avenue, where she had lived for 52 years.
     Born in Old Town, Nov. 10, 1860, the daughter of Dudley Watson Moor and Ann Lovinia Hunt, she was married to the late James Wingate Sewall, on March 27, 1883.
     She is survived by her children, Katherine Moor Logan, Harriet Sydney Whittier, and James Wingate Sewall; by her grandchildren: Katherine Bewail Whittier, Nancy Ellen Whittier, Sydney Ince Whittier, Virginia Ellen Eddy, George Tingey Sewall, Mary Braley Alden, Margaret Grazebrook Sewall, Elizabeth Gray Sewall, and by her great grandchild, Susannah Sewall Alden.      Mrs. Sewall was of Scotch and English stock, a direct descendant of Francis Cooke and Stephen Hopkins, of the "Mayflower," and of Governors Dudley and Winthrop, of the early Massachusetts colony. Her great great grandfather was Capt. Daniel Moor, of the American Revolution, and in her veins ran the blood of the Scotch Sterlings, Starks and Millikens.
     She was a communicant of St. James' Episcopal church and a member of the Neeburban Club. In her younger years she took an active part in community affairs, but after the death of her husband, in 1905, devoted herself to the management of his estate, and the further developing and beautifying of the grounds which surrounded the house to which she had come as a young married woman, and in which she died.
     The funeral services were conducted by the Rev. Gordon Gillett at her home, at 11 a. m., Monday. Aug. 2, with committal and burial at Forest Hill cemetery, beside her husband. The bearers were Messrs. Joseph W. Brown, Arthur Wright, Louis J. Freedman, Henry J. Wheelwright, A.G. Averill, Esq., and Dr. E. A. Merrill.⁵

He graduated from Colby University, A.B., 1831 and A.M., 1834, and was admitted to the bar in 1833. He practised in Waterville, 1834-49; was a representative in the state legislature, 1839-42; Attorney-General of the state, 1844-48, and was appointed U.S. senator by Governor Dana to fill the vacancy caused by the death of John Fairfield, serving from January to June, 1848, when Hannibal Hamlin was elected to fill the balance of Senator Fairfield's term. He practised law in Bangor 1849-52, and in Waterville, 1852-57, and in 1857 was appointed by President Buchanan, U.S. Consul-General at Montreal, Canada, where he served until the inauguration of President Lincoln in 1861. He engaged in furnishing army supplies and in the tobacco business, 1861-69. He removed to Lynchburg, Va., in 1866.³