Deacon James III Chute [56657]

  General Notes:

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~chute/gp55.htm#head4



Deacon James Chute III and Mary Thurston Chute:

WEC: "Deacon of the Congregational Church. "An honest, pious, sober citizen." Died "very suddenly, of apoplexy."

"We read in the Chute Genealogies, page 15, of James Chute who was born in 1686 in what became Byfield: "He lived there more than eighty-two years, an honest, pious, sober citizen; more than half of this time deacon of the Congregational Church." According to this statement he was deacon as early as 1727. His last child was baptized January 1, 1727, as the child of simple James Chute, but this does not disprove his election as deacon the same year; but what of Dea. Daniel Jewett? The last entry of a baptism of a child of his is in 1725. We may infer that he ceased to be deacon probably through death and was succeeded by James Chute about 1727. Miss Emery says (Reminiscences of a Nonagenarian, p. 325) that the Joshua Boynton who was born in 1677 and who died in 1770 was deacon of the Byfield church for forty years, but the facts here presented show that this statement is altogether a mistake, and that he cannot have been deacon at all, for there is no question who were deacons after 1763. So the list of deacons for Mr. Hale's pastorate according to my present knowledge stands thus:
William Moody, 1706-1730.
John Cheney, 1706 ( ? )-1723 (?)
Daniel Jewett, 1723(?)-1727(?).
James Chute, 1727 ( ? ) -1763.
Samuel Moody, 1730 (? ) -1763.

Source: The Story of Byfield, John Louis Ewell.

The 1727 New England Earthquake
Most of us now know that the smell of sulfur or "rotten eggs" accompanying an earthquake (if there are no pipelines nearby that might have ruptured) would be methane gas, released into the atmosphere by the ground shift. Now imagine you're an 18th century Puritan and smell what you know to be "fire and brimstone" just before the ground started shaking underneath your feet. An earthquake centered off Cape Ann, Massachusetts struck the area on October 29, 1727, the same year that James assumed his role of Deacon of the Byfield-Newbury Parish church, and his wife Mary Thurston Chute had lost their son David Chute at birth. The family's youngest living son, Daniel Chute <gp70.htm> was a little over five years old when they all heard a thundering boom from the direction of the ocean, and the earth under their feet suddenly began to move.
"American colonists responded to their next severe earthquake with something less than equanimity. The 1727 earthquake, now believed also to have been centered at sea off Cape Ann, was a brief but noisy event, beginning with "a pounce like great guns," as a Newbury record notes.
But by the time the last aftershocks subsided, the worst reminders of a violent evening were broken stone walls and chimneys in New England and a pervading smell of sulfur, known better in those times as brimstone and widely believed to provoke earthquakes. "There's certainly a trail of sulfur under the earth from Lima to Lisbon," Voltaire's demoralized Candide learned as the optimist Pangloss assessed the benefits of the Lisbon horror. The Reverend John Burt of Bristol, Rhode Island, adopted the Panglossian perspective about the American tremors. "What a happy Effect had the Earthquake in 1727," he told his congregation, "to awaken the Secure, to reform the Vicious and to make all solicitous about their spiritual and everlasting Concerns." Source: "The Great Earthquake", Jourdan Houston, American Heritage Magazine, August-September, 1980.
"They were no doubt driven to prayer, like all the neighboring settlements, by "The Great Earthquake" of October 29, 1727, which was most severe in this region." Source: The Story of Byfield, John Louis Ewell.

"Mary, wife of Deacon James Chute died Aug 12 1760 about 4 o'clock a.m. of fever and bloody purging, aged about 67. She was a very useful woman as a midwife; and as she lived desired, so she died much lamented." (Source: Rowley Records).



Type: GEDCOM File
FILE Through the Ages: Mayberry Clan
Date: 8/3/2000
Submitter: Doreen H. Russell

Type: Book
Author: William Edward Chute
Title: Chute Genealogies: A Genealogy and History of the Chute Family in America
Title: 1894
Location: Privately held

Type: Book
Author: Charles H. Pope
Title: THE CHENEY GENEALOGY: Descendants of WM. of Roxbury and John of Newbury
Publisher: Boston: Charles H. Pope
Date: 1897, September 1995
Page(s):
Location: Chute Family Records

Type: Book
Author: Abraham Hammatt
Title: The Hammatt Papers: Early Inhabitants of Ipswich, Masssachusetts 1633-1700
Publisher: Genealogical Publishing Company
Date: 1880-1899; 1991
Page(s): 53
Location: Chute Family Records


<http://service.bfast.com/bfast/click?bfmid=2181&sourceid=41626167&bfpid=0897250273&bfmtype=book>

Early Settlers of Rowley, Massachusetts <http://service.bfast.com/bfast/click?bfmid=2181&sourceid=41626167&bfpid=0897250273&bfmtype=book>
Type: Book
Author: George Brainard Blodgette, Amos Everett Jewett
Title: Early Settlers of Rowley, Massachusetts
Publisher: New England History Press, Somersworth
Date: 1933; 1981
To Purchase Source: Click on graphic.
Location: Chute Family Records

Type: Web Site
Author: Paul Noyes
Title: Noyes Family Web Site
URL http://genweb.net/~paul noyes/wgal18.html#I4277

  Noted events in his life were:

• Appointed, 1727-1763. Deacon of Byfield Parish, Byfield-Newbury, Essex County, Massachusetts, American Colonies

James married Mary Thurston [56656] [MRIN: 551615036], daughter of Daniel Thurston [56650] and Mary Dresser [56651], on 26 Jan 1714/15 in Newbury, Essex County, Massachusetts, American Colonies. (Mary Thurston [56656] was born on 7 Jan 1692/93 in Byfield Parish, Newbury, Essex, Massachusetts, American Colonies and died on 12 Aug 1760 in Rowley, Essex County, Massachusetts, American Colonies.)