New England only, but throughout the land and even beyond the sea. It is
among the most beloved and honored in the annals of American piety. [1]
He belonged to a very old Puritan stock, and to a family noted during
two centuries for the number of ministers of the Gospel who have sprung
from it. The first in the line of his ancestry in this country was
Edward, who came over in the brig Hopewell, William Burdeck, Master, in
1635-6, and settled in the town of Roxbury. He was a native of Nasing,
Essex Co., England. Among his fellow-passengers in the Hopewell was Mary
Eliot, then a young girl, sister of John Eliot, the illustrious "Apostle
to the Indians." Some years later she became his wife. Their youngest
son, Samuel, was father of the Rev. Phillips Payson, who was born at
Dorchester, Massachusetts, 1705, and settled at Walpole, in the same
State, in 1730. He had four sons in the ministry, all, like himself,
graduates of Harvard College. The youngest of these, the Rev. Seth
Payson, D.D., Mrs. Prentiss' grandfather, was born September 30, 1758,
was ordained and settled at Rindge, New Hampshire, December 4, 1782, and
died there, after a pastorate of thirty-seven years, February 26, 1820.
His wife was Grata Payson, of Pomfret, Conn. He was a man widely known
in his day and of much weight in the community, not only in his own
profession but in civil life, also, having several times filled the
office of State senator. When in 1819 a plan was formed to remove
Williams College to a more central location, and several towns competed
for the honor, Dr. Payson was associated with Chancellor Kent of New
York, and Governor John Cotton Smith of Connecticut, as a committee to
decide upon the rival claims. He is described as possessing a sharp,
vigorous intellect, a lively imagination, a very retentive memory, and
was universally esteemed as an able and faithful minister of Christ. [2]

Edward, the eldest son of Seth and Grata Payson, was born at Rindge,
July 25, 1783. His mother was noted for her piety, her womanly