Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 4).djvu/311

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MAYES
MAYHEW

honor from Harvard on the ground that he was too young, and he also declined the provostship of the University of Pennsylvania in 1823. Dr. Mayer was active in benevolent enterprises in Philadelphia. In 1808 he was associated in the formation of the Pennsylvania Bible society, the first institution of the kind in the United States, of which he was for many years an active manager and at the time of his death its presiding officer. He was for many years a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania. In 1817 he did much to establish the system of public education in Pennsylvania. For many years before his death he was president of the board of managers of the Institution for the deaf and dumb. In 1812 the ministerium of Pennsylvania appointed a committee to prepare a suitable collection of English hymns for public worship, to which was to be appended a liturgy, and Dr. Mayer was intrusted with this work. In 1833 a new and enlarged edition was issued, of which he again had charge. He published the sermon that he delivered at the fiftieth anniversary of his pastorate in Philadelphia.


MAYES, Joel Bryan, b. in the Cherokee reservation, Ga., 2 Oct., 1833; d. in Indian territory, 14 Dec., 1891. His mother was of mixed blood and descended on the paternal side from James Adair, an Indian agent under George III. Joel was removed in his youth to the Cherokee reservation in Indian territory, was graduated at the Cherokee male seminary in 1856, and taught until the beginning of the civil war, through which he served as quartermaster in the Confederate army. He returned to his farm on Grande river in 1865, was county commissioner and chief clerk of the Cherokee court for many years, and county judge for two terms. While holding the latter office he was chosen associate and subsequently chief justice of the supreme court. In August, 1887, he became chief of the Cherokee nation.


MAYHEW, Thomas, governor of Martha's Vineyard, b. in England in March, 1592 ; d. in Martha's Vineyard in March, 1682. He was a merchant in Southampton, England, but, having obtained a grant of Martha's Vineyard and the neighboring islands from Lord Stirling in 1641, he emigrated with his son Thomas to Massachu- setts and settled at Edgartown the following year. Together they organized a mission to convert the Indians, and induced them to adopt the English code of justice and finally to submit to the crown. After his son's death Mayhew began at the age of seventy to preach to them as well as to the Eng- lish, and organized an Indian church. At the be- ginning of King Philip's war the English on Mar- tha's Vineyard numbered about one twentieth of the Indian population ; but through his influence the latter took no part in the conflict, and even in some instances served as his guard. — His son, Thomas, missionary, b. in Southampton, England, in 1621 ; d. at sea in November, 1657, accompanied his father to Martha's Vineyard in 1641, and, hav- ing acquired the language, began his labors among the Indians in 1646. By 1650, 100 Indians had be- come converts, and after his death, in 1662, 282, including eight pawaws or priests, had embraced Christianity. He sailed for England in 1657 to obtain aid from the Society for propagating the gospel, but the vessel was lost. Cotton Mather said of him that " he was so affectionately es- teemed by the Indians that many years afterward he was seldom named without tears." He wrote, in connection with John Eliot, " Tears of Repent- ance, or a Narrative of the Progress of the Gospel among the Indians in New England" (London, ). — The second Thomas's son, Mathew, succeeded the elder Thomas as governor of Martha's Vinevard, occasionally preached to the Indians, and died there in 1710.— Another son, Thomas, was a judge of the court of common pleas for the county; and a third, John, was a missionary to the Indians on Martha's Vineyard, and left at his death, in February, 1689, a native church of 100 members and several well-instructed teachers. — John's son. Experience, missionary, b. in Martha's Vineyard, 27 Jan., 1673 ; d. there, 29 Nov., 1758, succeeded his father in the charge of five or six Indian congregations. Having acquired the Indian language in childhood, he was employed by the Society for the propagation of the gospel in New England to translate into that tongue a new version of the Psalms and of the Gospel of St. John, which he executed in 1709. He wrote strictures on the conduct of George Whitefield in 1743,. numerous sermons of a controversial character, and "Indian Converts " (1727), in which he gave an account of the lives of thirty Indian ministers and eighty Indian men, women, and children who- were converts to Christianity. Harvard gave him the degree of M. A. in 1720. Dr. Charles Chauney said of him : " Had he been favored with the ad- vantages of education he would have ranked among the first worthies of New England." — Expe- rience's son, Zecharia, missionary, b. in IVlartha's Vineyard in 1717; d. there, 6 March, 1806, was from" 1767 until his death a missionary under the Massachusetts society for propagating the gospel among the Indians. He received literary honors from Harvard in 1820. — Another son, Jonathan, clergyman, b. in Martha's Vineyard, 8 Oct., 1720 ; d. in Boston, Mass., 9 July, 1766, was graduated at Harvard in 1744, and three years later ordained pastor of the West church in Boston, in which he continued until his death. Dr. Mayhew was distinguished as a preacher and a con- troversialist. His re- ligious opinions ap- proached rationalism to such an extent that he was excluded from the Boston association of Congregational min- isters. His opposition to the proceedings of the British society for the propagation of the gospel in foreign parts, and the introduction of bishops into the colo-

nies, involved him in a

controversy with the archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Seeker, and the Rev. East Apthorne, Episcopal missionary to Boston. He was an ardent patriot, co-operating with James Otis and other early opponents of English oppression, and in the ' pulpit and through the press taught resistance to the •' first small beginnings of civil tyranny." In January, 1750, he delivered a sermon on the execution of Charles I., in which he advocated setting limits to allegiance. In his Thanksgiving sermon for the repeal of the stamp-act in May, 1766, he pleaded fervently in behalf of civil and religious liberty. On his death-bed he wrote to Otis, urging the union of the colonies as the only means of perpetuating their liberties. Bancroft says of him : " From his youth he had consecrated himself to the service of colonial freedom in church and state. He died, overtaxed, in