172O-1766 Congregational Revolutionary

Early Training.

Jonathan Mayhew was born on the small island of Martha's Vineyard, off the Massachusetts coast, on 8 October 1720. His father, Experience Mayhew, was the missionary to the Indians there, a post the Mayhew family had filled since 1641. The Vineyard mission was one of the few successful English ventures to Christianize Native Americans, and during Jonathan's youth the Chilmark congregation, as it was called, was a peaceful church, although its numbers were declining as the Indian population decreased. Experience nurtured his converts faithfully, defending them against spurious land claims and the rigors of orthodox Calvinism, which he came to see as too harsh a system of religion for Indians and whites alike. He struggled to obtain adequate funds to support his work. Jonathan's elder brother Nathan was marked to attend college and follow in his father's footsteps as a missionary, but his early...