Person:John Odlin (5)

Shipton's Sketch of Rev. John Odlin

John Odlin, minister of Exeter, was son of Elisha and Abigail (Bright) Odlin of Boston. The father was a deacon of the Old South and a friend of Judge Sewall, and the family was one of the oldest of Boston, but for two generations somewhat touched with Antinomianism and Quakerism. John was born on November 18, 1681, undoubtedly in the family mansion on what is now Washington Street, between Summer and Essex. At the College he was relatively quiet and either frugal or frequently absent from commons. He left in July, 1703, but returned to take his second degree in 1705, on that occasion arguing that the doctrine of the Trinity could not be known from nature.

During that year Mr. Odlin taught school at Hingham and preached at Groton, Massachusetts, with sufficient success to receive a call to the pulpit on July 3, but he chose not to accept. Probably he went thence directly to Exeter, for that town the next April voted that he be offered a permanent settlement. He accepted, making an arrangement that was advantageous to every one concerned, and particularly to the town: on October 21 he married the widow of his predecessor, John Clark (a.b. 1690). The lady was Elizabeth, daughter of the Reverend Benjamin Woodbridge of Medford. She was eight years his senior, and the mother of four small children. Thus equipped, Mr. Odlin was ordained on November 12, 1706. The town gave him a settlement of 100l and 200 acres of common, and promised the use of the parsonage lands, a salary of 70l, and all of the money that strangers put into the collection. It was unusually considerate in raising his salary as the currency depreciated, although there are evidences that it at times owed him considerable sums.

In 1707 or 1708, Mr. Odlin signed a petition which the ministers of New Hampshire got up protesting the removal of Governor Joseph Dudley from office. A few years later the government exempted from taxation during his lifetime the lands which he owned in Stratham and in the Swampscutt patent. Either he inherited money or was thrifty, for he bought considerable land in Brentwood and was a proprietor of the town of Gilmanton.

We owe to a Quaker, Benjamin Holme, a glimpse of John Odlin in 1716:

At a Place called Exeter I had a publick Dispute with the Priest of the Place, named John Adlin, concerning Water-Baptism and Bread and Wine, the Resurrection of the same Fleshly-body, and some other Things; the Dispute was held … in the Presbyeterian Meeting-house, to which many People came … I believe we were about seven Hours in the Meeting-house.

In the matter of baptism the parson was noted for being a little lax:

Mr. Odlin sen. always said publickly to the Parents at baptizing a first child 'you covenant & promise to bring up this Child in the Nurture & Admonition of the Lord' — this he never repeated but afterwards baptized all their subsequent children.

Mrs. Odlin died on December 6, 1729, after bearing five children to her second husband. On September 22, 1730, the parson married Elizabeth, daughter of Samuel Leavitt and widow successively of Lieutenant James Dudley and Captain Robert Briscoe.

For thirty-five years the ecclesiastical affairs of Exeter moved with a placidity unusual in those days, and it was not until Parson Odlin was beginning to feel the weight of years that the pent-up fury of economic and religious change broke upon him. The trouble began when two new parishes were set off in the western part of the township, Epping in 1741 and Brentwood in 1742. Of course the inhabitants of the older part of the town resisted a secession that increased their burden of maintaining the ministry. Then the religious revival began, with its enthusiasm and its excesses. Mr. Odlin did not like to see one of his leading parishioners grovelling on the floor before an exhorter, and he took to himself the advice which he had given to Ward Clark (a.b. 1723) some years before: 'The Ministers of Christ should not like Snails put out their Heads to see what Weather is abroad, (what countenance Religion hath among those whose Names are written in greater Letters. …)' He put out his own head, therefore, and roared, unsnaillike, at the countenance which religion was then putting on. The Reverend Mather Byles (a.b. 1725), who appreciated liberalism in dogma and a conservative way of preaching it, did him the honor of having one of his sermons printed in Boston in 1742.

So strong was Mr. Odlin's hold upon his parish that he could have weathered the storm without serious distress, had he not procured the ordination of his son Woodbridge (a.b. 1738) as his colleague on September 28, 1743. About one-third of the congregation determined to secede because Woodbridge, like his father, was an Old-Light. Both sides referred the matter to hand-picked ecclesiastical councils, and of course both were vindicated, Mr. Clark being especially eloquent on behalf of his old friend. This did not free the New-Lights from paying rates for the support of the Odlins, and they appealed to the General Assembly, expressing their grief at Mr. Odlin's conduct 'with regard to the work of Gods Glorious Grace in the Late outpouring of his Spirit.' They got no satisfaction, and although they set up a church of their own, they were compelled to pay taxes for the support of the First Church until after the death of the elder pastor.

Fuel was added to the flames when George Whitefield appeared in March, 1745. Mr. Odlin met the evangelist at the town line and adjured him not to trespass upon his parochial domain, but the great man marched into the Odlin pulpit and preached two sermons from it, a story which he omits from his journals. The Odlins opposed the settlement of radical preachers like Joseph Adams, a.b. 1742, over rival churches in the parishes of their friends. It was to prevent such cuckoo eggs from being laid in their nests that the conservative ministers founded the New Hampshire Association. Mr. Odlin took a leading part in the movement and usually moderated the meetings. Despite this, Daniel Rogers, a.b. 1725, was called to the ministry by the New-Lights of Exeter in 1748. The angry Odlins and their friends tried to carry the matter to the Association, where John Rogers (a.b. 1711) of Kittery, a New-Lighter, happened to be moderator and refused them a hearing. After that the difficulties died down. When Woodbridge Odlin had been settled, his father had allowed his salary to be cut to 50l, but now the town voluntarily raised it as the value of the currency declined until the older man was getting 600l. Undoubtedly the members of the First Church enjoyed voting this unusually large salary, because the parishioners of Daniel Rogers had to help pay it.

John Odlin lived to see the menace of New-Lightism paled by that of Anglicanism. In 1751, on behalf of the Association of Ministers, he wrote to the dissenters of England begging for assistance and union:

There may be secret designs against our Constitution & Liberties: which may require the utmost Care & vigilance & call for powerful advocates among you: We therefore intreat you to have a tender Concern for us to give us timely notice of Every danger which may threaten us & to act for us in any affairs of moment in which your interest may be serviceable. We heartily thank you for all your endeavors to prevent the sending a Bishop into these American Colonies. … We now Conclude with our ernest desires of a strict Union & correspondence with you. …

Two years later he was urging the union of all dissenting churches against the Church of England, and asking the English dissenters to prevent the appointment of Anglicans to the New Hampshire Council. His last years were quiet, the majority of his parishioners showing the same confidence in his theology that they accorded to the time-keeping qualities of the great grandfather clock which Governor Benning Wentworth (a.b. 1715) brought him from England, by which the watches of the town were regulated. But the man's life stopped, on November 20, 1754, before the clock's had fairly begun. The town expressed its grief by voting 100l for the funeral. Two sons were graduated at Harvard, Elisha in 1731 and Woodbridge in 1738, the former becoming minister of Amesbury."^[1]

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6} John Odlin, in Sibley, John Langdon, and Clifford K. (Clifford Kenyon) Shipton. Biographical sketches of those who attended Harvard College. (Cambridge [Massachusetts]: Harvard University Press, 1933-1975)
   5:168-72.