Biographical Register

Summary

In 1905, R. G. Usher observed that ‘the number of names and persons occurring in the book, their comparative obscurity and often recurrence, have led me to place in alphabetical order in the Introduction such biographical notes as would traditionally have appeared in footnotes’ (p. vi). The present editors, with considerably more evidence at their disposal than Usher believed existed, have followed suit in the following Biographical Register. It includes all those involved in the activities of the two conferences of Dedham and Braintree, either as fully-fledged members or as signatories to documents which the Dedham conference prepared and circulated, as well as notices of the more important of the Suffolk ministers mentioned in Chicago MS 109. The intention is that these entries may be read ‘complete’, as one would read entries in any biographical dictionary, without constant reference to footnotes of the ‘see above’ variety. If this has involved a certain amount of repetition of material deriving from the main texts and from their footnotes, it seems a small price to pay for saving the interested reader from constantly having to move backwards and forwards between the biographies and the body of the book. For the same reason, direct quotations from the Dedham minute book are cited by means of ‘internal’ reference – that is, by following them with an emboldened, bracketed reference to the meeting(s) from which they are taken (i.e., 27M; 35, 36 MM).