Shubael Dummer

Rev. Shubael Dummer (February 16, 1636 – January 25, 1692) was an American Congregational church minister who was killed in the Raid on York in York, Massachusetts Bay Colony. Described as a man of "beautiful Christian character", Dummer founded the First Parish Congregational Church of York, the oldest church congregation in what is now the U.S. state of Maine.

Family and education

Dummer was born at Roxbury, Massachusetts on February 16, 1636, the son of Richard Dummer (1589–1679) and his first wife Mary Jane Mason. Richard was a settler, who had arrived at Boston from England in May 1632 with Mary, and was an associate of the radical Puritan malcontent Stephen Bachiler. Mary was a follower of Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, leading to her and Richard becoming banished to Boston. Soon after the birth of Shubael, Mary became ill and died in February 1636.

Dummer was brought up under the ministry of Rev. Thomas Parker, one of the most eminent scholars and Christians among the founders of New England, who educated him and prepared him for admission to college. He went up to Harvard, from where he graduated in 1656 at the age of twenty.

Shortly afterwards at Salisbury, he married Lydia Alcock, daughter of John and Elizabeth Alcock.

Richard remarried (to Frances Burr) in 1643 and their first son, Jeremiah, was born on 14 September. He was to become the first American-born silversmith. Jeremiah's sons included William, who became Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, and Jeremiah, who was involved in the foundation of Yale University.

Ministry

At the age of 24, he became a preacher in Salisbury, where he remained for two years,

Dummer was made a Freeman of Massachusetts Colony on 3 May 1665.

On 3 December 1672, he was ordained to the Ministry and settled over the church at York, on the recommendation of Richard Banks, his brother-in-law, and Edward Rishworth. At his ordination, he preached a sermon from Psalm based on the lines: "Return, O Lord, and visit this vine".

At this time, the people of the church were poor with the early settlers in the town being adventurers; the town had had no one preacher for any length of time and was seen as "an asylum for excommunicated and itinerant ministers".

Despite his family advising him to find a safer ministry, Dummer continued to support the people of the town through their various trials and sufferings on account of the Indian wars and urged the townspeople to maintain their ground, and not allow their homes and farms to be destroyed by the enemy, as had some of the surrounding settlements.

Dummer was one of the first to be killed as he was about to mount his horse to visit a sick parishioner. his friends, who escaped by being in the garrisoned houses, or on the west side of the river, later found his body near his own door, "naked and in his blood, with his face to the ground".

Before the invaders marched off their hostages, they sent back the youngest children and the oldest women. Dummer's widow, Lydia, was among those freed, but she shuttled back and forth to the raiders' camp so often, begging for the release of her infant son, that she was taken with the rest of the hostages. B. Banks was married to Elizabeth Alcock, sister of Lydia. He was later to be killed in the January 1692 massacre.