MAYHEW, EXPERIENCE
(5 February 1673, Chilmark, Martha's Vineyard, MA-29 November, 1758, Martha's Vineyard). Education: Local schooling, Martha's Vineyard. Career: Preacher and missionary, Martha's Vineyard, with support of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England,1694-1738.
Experience Mayhew is generally regarded as the ablest missionary in a family that ministered to the Indians of Martha's Vineyard throughout the colonial period. As a boy he learned the Vineyard dialect from his father and local Indians. He preached to the Indians for more than half a century and translated the psalms and a lecture by Cotton Mather into the Massachusetts tongue. The Indians on Martha's Vineyard were organized into several congregations, served by native priests. Mayhew went from one to the next to preach and to catechize the young. His Indian Converts, published in 1727, tells the stories of many natives and is one of the best accounts we have of the Christian Indians of New England. Although Mayhew did not receive a college education, he is credited -with having one of the best minds of his day and was awarded an honorary M.A. by Harvard in 1720. He wrote a tract criticizing George Whitefield· because of the excesses of the Awakening, but he also published a treatise on the doctrine of grace.
The island domain of Martha's Vineyard was a remote part of New England in those days and had been an independent colony for a time. But Mayhew's career shows how persons in all areas of New England were part of a common religious culture.
Bibliography
A: Massachuset Psalter (Boston, 1709); A Discourse Showing That God Dealeth with Us as with Reasonable Creatures (Boston, 1720); Indian Converts (London, 1727); Grace Defended (Boston, 1744).
B: AAP I, 133; DAB 12,453-54; SH 7, 264; C. E. Banks, The History of Martha's Vineyard, 3 vols. (Boston, 1911-25), vol. 1: 249-54.
Experience Mayhew is generally regarded as the ablest missionary in a family that ministered to the Indians of Martha's Vineyard throughout the colonial period. As a boy he learned the Vineyard dialect from his father and local Indians. He preached to the Indians for more than half a century and translated the psalms and a lecture by Cotton Mather into the Massachusetts tongue. The Indians on Martha's Vineyard were organized into several congregations, served by native priests. Mayhew went from one to the next to preach and to catechize the young. His Indian Converts, published in 1727, tells the stories of many natives and is one of the best accounts we have of the Christian Indians of New England. Although Mayhew did not receive a college education, he is credited -with having one of the best minds of his day and was awarded an honorary M.A. by Harvard in 1720. He wrote a tract criticizing George Whitefield· because of the excesses of the Awakening, but he also published a treatise on the doctrine of grace.
The island domain of Martha's Vineyard was a remote part of New England in those days and had been an independent colony for a time. But Mayhew's career shows how persons in all areas of New England were part of a common religious culture.
Bibliography
A: Massachuset Psalter (Boston, 1709); A Discourse Showing That God Dealeth with Us as with Reasonable Creatures (Boston, 1720); Indian Converts (London, 1727); Grace Defended (Boston, 1744).
B: AAP I, 133; DAB 12,453-54; SH 7, 264; C. E. Banks, The History of Martha's Vineyard, 3 vols. (Boston, 1911-25), vol. 1: 249-54.
