May 15, 1754

1754 May 15 (Wednesday).  Mr. Hezekiah Pratt plough’d at the Island.  I was at t’other House.  Ebenezer has begun to plant one piece.  I was at Mr. David Maynards with old Mr. Green.  N.B. I wrote to Colonel Chandler concerning my Collection of Poems and sent him the Paper of Subscriptions.[1]  Wrote also to Mr. Forbush of Brookfield.  These were sent by Elisha Jones.  Mr. Baldwin and John Woods begin to work at the Meeting House.  They undertake the Pulpit in the first place.  Frequent Showers of Rain, rendering it a wonderful season, thanks be to God!  O that Grace might Spring in our Hearts!  Mr. Nathaniel Whitney here and seems very Calm.  I read him a paper containing Several Offers which I make him.  To which he makes me no Reply.

[1]Parkman’s hopes of publication of his poems, which have been lost, never did materialize.  [Additional note: Parkman proposed “a Collection of the most ingenious celebrated English Poems, collected from divers Poets of the greatest Fame”; Boston Gazette, July 24, 1753.  Parkman’s Commonplace Book (Massachusetts Historical Society), 44, contains a list of poems that, while undated and appearing between copies of letters dated 1779, probably represents the poems that he hoped to have printed in the early 1750s.]