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--in short, seeing that every one was attentive in meeting except himself,--and the duties and powers of the office varied in different communities. Several of these officers were appointed in each parish. In Newbury, in 1688, there were twenty tithingmen, and in Salem twenty-five. They were men of authority, not only on Sunday, but throughout the entire week. Each had several neighboring families (usually ten, as the word
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would signify) under his charge to watch during the week, to enforce the learning of the catechism at home, especially by the children, and sometimes he heard them
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Say their Chatachize. These families he also watched specially on the Sabbath, and reported whether all the members thereof attended public worship. Not content with mounting guard over the boys on Sundays, he also watched on weekdays to keep boys and
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Do you think his duties were light in July and August, when school was out, to watch the boys of ten families? One man watching one family cannot prevent such
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in country towns now-a-days. He sometimes inspected the
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and made complaint of any disorders which he there discovered, and gave in the names of
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and he could warn the tavern-keeper to sell no more liquor to any toper whom he knew or fancied was drinking too heavily. Josselyn complained bitterly that during his visit to New England in 1663 at
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The tithingman had a
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on all bachelors, who were also carefully spied upon by the constables, deacons, elders, and heads of families in general. He might, perhaps, help to collect the ministerial rate, though his principal duty was by no means the collecting of tithes. He
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This warning was not at all because the new-comers were objectionable or undesired, but was simply a legal form of precaution, so that the parish would never be liable for the keeping of the
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ones in case they thereafter became paupers. He administered the
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to new inhabitants. The tithingman also watched to see that
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--that is, on a Saturday night. He also marked and reported all those
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and others who
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all the
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These last two classes of offenders were first admonished by the tithingman, then
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Sett in stocks, and then cited before the Court. They were also confined in the cage on the meeting-house green, with the Lord's Day sleepers. The tithingman could arrest any who walked or rode at too fast a pace to and from meeting, and he could arrest any who
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Great and small alike were under his control, as this notice from the
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Columbian Centinel of December, 1789, abundantly proves. It is entitled
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The President and the Tything man:
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The President, on his return to New York from his late tour through Connecticut, having missed his way on Saturday, was obliged to ride a few miles on Sunday morning in order to gain the town at which he had previously proposed to have attended divine service. Before he arrived however he was met by a Tything man, who commanding him to stop, demanded the occasion of his riding; and it was not until the President had informed him of every circumstance and promised to go no further than the town intended that the Tything man would permit him to proceed on his journey.
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Oldtown Folks. A similar one really happened. Two gay young sparks driving through the town on the Sabbath were stopped by the tithingman; one offender said mournfully in excuse of his Sabbath travel,
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My grandmother is lying dead in the next town. Being allowed to drive on, he stood up in his wagon when at a safe distance and impudently shouted back,
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And she's been lying dead in the graveyard there for thirty years.