AL 4162.546 HARVARD Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1849, by in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. BOSTON: THURSTON, TORRY AND COMPANY, 31 Devonshire Street. NOTE. THE intelligent reader of the following record cannot fail to notice occasional inaccuracies in respect to persons, places, and dates; and, as a matter of course, will make due allowance for the prevailing prejudices and errors of the period to which it relates. That there are passages indicative of a comparatively recent origin, and calculated to cast a shade of doubt over the entire narrative, the Editor would be the last to deny, notwithstanding its general accordance with historical verities and probabilities. Its merit consists mainly in the fact, that it presents a tolerably life-like picture of the Past, and introduces us familiarly to the hearths and homes of New England in the seventeenth century. A full and accurate account of Secretary Rawson and his family is about to be published by his descendants, to which the reader is referred who wishes to know more of the personages who figure prominently in this Journal. LEAVES FROM Margaret Smith's Journal IN THE COLONY of MASSACHUSETTS. Boston, May ye 8th, 1678. I REMEMBER I did promise my kind cousin Oliver, (whom I pray God to have always in his keeping,) when I parted with him nigh unto three Months ago, at mine uncle Grindall's, that, on coming to this new Countrie, I would, for his Sake and perusal, keep a little Journal of whatsoever did happen both unto myself and unto Those with whom I might sojourn; as also, some account of the Countrie and its Marvels, and mine own Cogitations thereon. So I this Day make a beginning of the Same; albeit, as my Cousin well knoweth, not from any vanitie of Authorship, or because of any undue confiding in my poor Abilitie to |