Seventh Day Baptists and Maxson Connections

   The residents of Rhode Island believed in freedom of religion much to the dismay of the Puritans of Massachusetts. Cotton Mather called the colony "a cesspool" of religious practice. He wrote that it held Antinomians, Familists, Anabaptists, Anti-sabbatarians, Arminians, Socinians, Quakers, Ranters----everything in the world but Roman Catholics and real Christians.
   
   
   There is a monument in the Hopkinton, Rhode Island Cemetery that is dedicated to the early ministers of the Seventh Day Baptist Church of that town, which began as part of the Westerly settlement. The monument stands on the site of the original Seventh Day Baptist church building. The names of John Maxson, 1638/39-1720, his sons, Rev. John, Jr. 1666-1748 and Rev. Joseph Maxson, 1672-1750 are among those carved on the granite obelisk. The remains of these men and their wives have been re-buried in a circle around the stone.

   John Clark founded the Baptist Church in Newport in 1644. The distinction between Baptists and the Church of England was their rejection of infant baptism. They believed instead in believers¹ baptism. A Baptist became a member of a covenanted community by a profession of faith, not simply by being born into a Christian family.

   The Seventh Day Baptists, or Sabbatarians, began as Baptists "In the age when scriptures were being constantly reexamined, it is not surprising that a person or church should conclude that keeping the Sabbath (or seventh day) was an inescapable requirement of Biblical Christianity." In 1665 some of the Baptists began to worship on the seventh day. The two groups shared the same church until they separated in 1671, "though not in haste or without consultation with others" and the first Seventh Day Baptist Church was organized.

   John Maxson was one of the early settlers of *Misquamicut in 1661. In 1669 there were twenty-four freemen listed as living in Westerly. John Maxson was among them. In his book Westerly and Its Witnesses, published in 1878, Rev. Frederick Denison writes about the ministers of the early churches in the settlement. Of the Seventh Day Baptists he says, "They were Baptists save for their Sabbatarianism. They were the first to organize a church in this town. The first meeting house is believed to have been built about the year 1680." At that time it was considered a part of the Newport church.

    "The [Westerly] organization was formed when the the town numbered but 580 inhabitants, in 1708 under Rev. John Maxson, Sen. as pastor and is still existing as the First Hopkinton Seventh Day Baptist Church. . . This being the first church on this border of the colony, it became a large and influential body. For a whole generation no church was formed within ten miles of it and it numbered members in adjoining towns." The first three ministers were the first John Maxson and his sons.
   
               Rev. John Maxson, 1st
   On the organization of the Sabbatarian church in Westerly in 1708, John Maxson was ordained to the place and office of elder. "He was then an elder indeed, being seventy years of age." In 1710 at his request, the church invited John Maxson 2nd and five other men to assist him in public ministrations. The venerable pastor "sank peacefully to his rest on the 17th of December, 1720, aged eighty two years."

               Rev. John Maxson 2nd
   Rev. John Maxson 2nd, son of the first pastor was born in 1666, and in 1687 married Judith Clarke. He was ordained a deacon in August 1712 and proposed as an elder in 1719.  He succeeded his father in the pastorate. In 1739 his brother Joseph Maxson was appointed an elder to assist the senior elder. John Maxson 2nd died in July 1747 in the eighty first year of his age.

               Rev. Joseph Maxson
   Reverend Joseph Maxson, son of the first and brother of the second pastor was born in 1672. In 1732, Mr. Maxson was ordained an evangelist or traveling minister. In 1739, Mr. Maxson was appointed for ordination as an elder to assist his brother in the pastorate. On the death of his brother, he succeeded to the pastorate office, though he was seventy-five years of age. His pastorate was short and he died in September 1750 in the seventy eighth year of his age.

   The first John Maxson had a son, Jonathan, whose son, John was called from Westerly  to become pastor of the Newport church. His pastorate began in 1754 with the start of the French and Indian War and ended in 1778, when the outcome of the Revolution was in doubt. During the British occupation of Newport, his congregation was scattered. Rev. Maxson went from house to house throughout the  city encouraging  all, regardless of their church affiliation to stand firm.

    The Seventh Day Baptists joined the westward migration. A group of Sabbatarians, which included Joseph, 1692- 1747 and Bethiah, 1693-1747 (Maxson) Maxson and some of their children sailed to Shrewsbury, N.J. where a church had been established. Later members traveled to New York, settling first in Madison County, then, as the trails opened, moving to Allegany County.

   In each town that these Seventh Day Baptists settled, they established a church. In some towns academies were begun, several of them turning into colleges and universities. Of the latter, Salem (now Salem-Teikyo) College in West Virginia, Alfred University in New York and Albion College in Wisconsin were all founded by Sabbatarian congregations.

   The Hopkinton Seventh Day Baptist Church  still holds services each Saturday in the village of Ashaway, R.I. If you have a Hiscox, Burdick, Coon or Stillman in your family tree, chances are that your ancestors ministered in this congregation along with the early Maxson men.
                                                                                                                                                Jane Hoxie Maxson

*Note: The Misquamicut purchase included the present day towns of Charlestown, Hopkinton, Richmond and Westerly.
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Conscience Taken Captive, a Short History of Seventh Day Baptists, by Don A. Sanford, Seventh Day Historical Society, Janesville, Wisconsin, 1991
Newport History, Bulletin of the Newport Historical Society, Entering Into Covenant: The History of Seventh Day Baptists in Newport, by Don A. Sanford, Newport Historical Society, 1994.
Westerly (Rhode Island) and Its Witnesses For Two Hundred and Fifty Years. 1626-1876.  by Rev. Frederick Denison, A. M. Providence, 1878