The Frozen Man of Weymouth

Buffalo, New York, 2014. Reuters photo. © 2015 Christy K Robinson   Boston’s Mayor Marty Walsh says people shouldn’t be jumping out of windows or off roofs to land in snow drifts, because it’s dangerous. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/17/boston-jumping-out-windows-into-snowbanks-mayor-speech_n_6699228.html
He’s not the first Massachusetts official to describe the behavior. Governor John Winthrop wrote of it in his Journal (a public history of the colony, not a private diary) in February 1638 (New Style calendar).
There was serious trouble in the Puritan/Congregational churches of the colony, not only from the Anne Hutchinson “Antinomian” controversy drawing off many prominent members of the church and community, but strife from within the approved churches: the clash of salvation by God’s grace versus the “covenant of works,” that is, proving your love for God by strict adherence to Old Testament laws. The churches had stopped approving memberships, which meant the men couldn’t be freemen voters, but worse, as non-members, they couldn’t be saved for heaven if they died by disease, accident, or age. So non-member men and women were deeply perturbed. No matter how they behaved or what they believed, if they didn’t have the approval of the Elect (the ministers and members), they were probably going to hell.

In the extremely harsh winter of January-February-March 1638, Anne Hutchinson was on house arrest in Roxbury between her heresy and excommunication trials, and her adherents were on a real estate trip to scout and purchase Rhode Island, and make a start on surveying and marking land allotments. Back in Boston and Salem, the 25,000-35,000 new emigrants of the Great Migration were existing on short rations and short tempers, and crowded living quarters. If you're not trained as a hungry red fox diving for a vole,
it's probably best not to leap into a snowbank.
One nor’easter after another battered the colony that winter. Probably also a polar vortex or two, if you consider that the Boston Harbor froze over several times. And then a man who couldn’t bear the stress leaped out into a snowbank.
Winthrop wrote on Feb. 7: 

“A man of Weymouth (but not [a member] of the church) fell into some trouble of mind, and in the night cried out, “Art thou come, Lord Jesus?” and with that leaped out of his bed in his shirt, and, breaking from his wife, leaped out at a high window into the snow, and ran about seven miles off, and being traced in the snow, was found dead next morning. They might perceive, that he had kneeled down to prayer in divers places.”

Leaping into a snowbank, dressed only in a nightshirt and stocking feet, in darkness and deep snow: it’s a wonder the man made seven miles, and still kept ahead of the search party. As the song goes, "Lord, have mercy on the Frozen Man."  






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Christy K Robinson is the author of The Dyers trilogy, a deeply-researched series of books and a blog, showing the earliest settlement of Boston and Rhode Island through the eyes of Anne Hutchinson and her son Edward Hutchinson, Gov. John Winthrop, and William and Mary Dyer. The books and Kindle versions may be found at  http://bit.ly/RobinsonAuthor