18 THE MASSACHUSETTS SOCIETY 



prospered as a farmer in the town of Hallowell and is 

 recorded as having been a promoter of schools and 

 agriculture there. 



Thomas L. Winthrop (1760-1841) graduated at 

 Harvard in 1780, was state senator and lieutenant 

 governor from 1826 to 1833 and president of the 

 Massachusetts Historical Society, of the American 

 Antiquarian Society and of the Massachusetts Society 

 for Promoting Agriculture. 



Soon after the organization of the Society large 

 additions were made to the list by admission of new 

 members, comprising names not less eminent. Among 

 these were John Hancock, John Adams, Fisher Ames, 

 Nathaniel Gorham, Robert Treat Paine, Nathan 

 Dane, Timothy Pickering, James Bowdoin, Increase 

 Sumner, Caleb Strong, Elbridge Gerry, Gen. Henry 

 Knox, Gen. William Heath, Gen. John Brooks, Gen. 

 Artemas Ward, Rev. Manasseh Cutler, Rev. J. T. 

 Kirkland, Rev. William Emerson, Rev. J. S. Buck- 

 minster, Levi Lincoln, Loammi Baldwin, Josiah 

 Quincy, Israel Thorndike, George Cabot, Theodore 

 Lyman, James Warren of Plymouth. The list might 

 easily be extended by adding other contemporary and 

 more modem names, which would in like manner be 

 significant of the character of the membership. Those 

 cited, which mostly or wholly may be found on the 

 pages of the recognized text books of history, will 

 warrant at once a presumption, of which the record 

 gives proof, that from the start the society exerted a 

 wide and effective influence. 



A study of the circumstances amidst which the 

 society began its work brings conviction that those 

 concerned in it were prompted by sentiments of pa- 

 triotism and philanthropy. Their method of philan- 



