Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Blackstone, William (d.1675)
BLACKSTONE or BLAXTON, WILLIAM (d. 1675), one of the earliest episcopal clergymen resident in New England) as distinguished from the puritan founders of New England, must, according to the records of Massachusetts, have arrived in the colony between 1620 and 1630. In the ‘Literary Diary’ of President Stiles he is called ‘an episcopal clergyman’-his name being variantly spelled Blackstone, Blackston, and Blaxton. He was found by the Massachusetts Bay colony, on their arrival in 1630, settled on the peninsula of Shawmut, where the city of Boston now stands. He had had a pleasant cottage built and a garden planted. Difficulties beset him with the newcomers. As a consequence he sold his property and removed to the more tolerant colony of Roger Williams in 1631, observing that ‘he had left England to escape the power of the lord bishops, but he found himself in the hands of the Lord’s brethren.’ According to Stiles’s ‘Diary’ he ‘removed to Blaxton river, and settled six miles north of Providence.’ Elsewhere in the same diary we learn that he was ‘a great student with a large library,’ that he ‘rode a bull for want of a horse,’ and ‘preached occasionally,’ and that his home and library were burnt in King Philip's war. He married, 4 July 1659, widow Sarah Stephenson, who died in June 1673. Blackstone died 26 May 1675. ‘He was buried,’ says the ‘Massachusetts Historical Collections’ (2nd series, x. 710), ‘in classic ground, on Study Hill, where it is said a white stone marks his grave.’ President Stiles visited his grave in 1771, and left a careful map of the whole region, marking the homes of Blackstone, Roger Williams, and Samuel Gorton, the patriarchs of New England (local) history. The high ground on which his second New England home was built-about six miles from Providence-still bears the name of ‘Study Hill,’ because it was on this hill that Blackstone pursued his studies which gave him a wide reputation. The Blackstone river (formerly Pawtucket) and the Blackstone canal also preserve his name. Dr. Samuel Hopkins speaks of Blackstone as ‘a man of learning,’ and doubtfully adds: ‘He seems to have been of the puritan persuasion, and to have left his country for his nonconformity.’ He tells us also that ‘he used to come to Providence and preach, and to encourage his hearers gave them the first apples they ever saw’—his orchard having been as celebrated as his library. Lechford, who wrote in 1641, thus mentions him: ‘One Mr. Blackstone, a minister sent from Boston, having lived there nine or ten Years, because he would not join the church; he lives with Mr. [Roger] Williams, but is far from his opinions.’
[Massachusetts Historical Collections, iv. 202, x. 710; Johnson’s Wonder-working Providence, where is to be found a notice of one who sympathised with Blackstone: ‘Mr. Samuel Maverick, living on Noddle’s Island in Boston Harbour . . . an enemy to the reformation in hand, being strong for the lordly prelatical power;’ Holmes’s Annals, i. 377; Savage’s Winthrop, i. 44; Everett’s Address, Second Century, 29; Sprague’s Annals of the American Pulpit, v. 1–3.]