Higginson

account of the voyage, was sent back to England
and published (1630) under the title, New-Eng-
lands Plantation, or, A Short and True Descrip-
tion of the Commodities and Discommodities of
that Countrey. It went through three editions
within a year. Although when he left England
Higginson disavowed any intention of separat-
ing from the Established Church, he soon be-
came practically a separatist. The leading men
of the settlement formally elected him to be their
teacher and Rev. Samuel Skelton as their pastor,
and each was ordained by the laying on of hands.
Higginson drew up a confession of faith and
covenant for the church which were adopted.
He was not strong physically and appears to
have had a tendency to tuberculosis. The ex-
treme hardships of the first winter proved too
great for him and he died the following summer.
His wife moved to New Haven, and died there
in 1640. Although Higginson was only about a
year in the colony he left a strong impress upon
its ecclesiastical history.

[See John Venn and J. A. Venn, Alumni Canta-
brigienses, pt I, vol. II (1922) ; J. B. Felt, Memoir of
the Rev. Francis Higginson (1852); Cotton Mather,
Magnolia Christi Americana (1702); T. W. ^Higgin-
son, Life of Francis Higginson (1891), which con-
tains a number of documents and references to much
source material, and reprints the journal and New-
England's Plantation; New-Englands Plantation was
reprinted also in Mass. Hist. Soc. Colls., i ser., vol. I
(1792), and in Peter Force's Tracts and Other Papers,
vol. I (1836). Higginson's agreement with the Mass.
Bay Co., his journal of his voyage, and the Generall
Considerations for the Plantation in New England, are
in Thos. Hutchinson, A Collection of Original Papers
Relative to the Hist, of the Colony of Mass.-Bay
(1769)-] J.T.A.

HIGGINSON, HENRY LEE (Nov. 18,1834-
Nov. 14, 1919), banker, Union soldier, founder
and patron of the Boston Symphony Orchestra,
inherited from a Puritan ancestry his vigorous
physique and a simple, somewhat naive person-
ality. His father, George Higginson, was a
grandson of Stephen Higginson [q.v.] and a de-
scendant of Rev. Francis Higginson [#.v.], a
colonist whom Cotton Mather called "the first
in a catalogue of heroes"; his mother, Mary
Cabot Lee, was similarly well born. Henry was
born, as it chanced, in New York City, where
George Higginson was for a time a commission
merchant; but the family returned to Boston af-
ter the panic of 1837. There the father, his re-
sources impaired, took a small office on India
Wharf and a very small house in Chauncy Place.
"We lived in the narrowest way/' the son wrote
afterward, "and got on very well; went into a
house a little bit larger in Bedford Place; went
to a good school, then to the Latin school and
had a pleasant boyhood" (Perry, post, p. 6).
Like both parents Henry Higginson showed

Higginson

sturdiness and steadiness of character rather
than extraordinary mentality. He was indus-
trious, but his scholarship was only fairly good.
Summers he earned spending money by picking
fruit and doing other chores on farms near
Boston. He was thoughtful, an avid reader, and
by 1848 he was a convinced abolitionist. In
1851 he entered Harvard College, in the same
class with Phillips Brooks, Alexander Agassiz,
and George Dexter. His eyes, meantime, had
begun to give trouble, and midway in his fresh-
man year he was withdrawn and sent to Europe
in charge of a clergyman. The boy kept a diary
of their extensive walking tours which shows
that his life-long interest in music began when
he first went to the opera in London. He at-
tended concerts' in Munich and Milan, and at
Dresden, where he paused to study German, he
heard Tannhauser with delight. He wrote home
that he might make music his profession. Upon
his return in September 1853, however, after an
eighteen-month period of study under Samuel
Eliot he assumed a clerkship which his father
had secured for him in the office of Samuel &
Edward Austin, India merchants. This position
he held some twenty months. He was not a born
business man. His youthful interest was in re-
form movements and music. His anti-slavery
enthusiasm led him to equip "a good-looking
Irishman with his family to go to Kansas to
settle/' but the fellow deserted his family and
disappeared.

In November 1856, he inherited $13,000 from
an uncle, gave up his clerkship, and went to
Europe purposing to make music his life work.
He took lodgings at Vienna, but unexpected ob-
stacles then, as throughout his life, kept him from
doing what he really wanted to do. An injury to
his left arm prevented him from becoming a
pianoforte virtuoso; studies in harmony and
composition, faithfully pursued, disclosed, ac-
cording to his instructors, no great creativeness
or originality. In 1860 he returned to Boston,
still undecided as to his future. He had made a
little money through sale of German wines, and
he planned to become a wine merchant. The out-
break of the Civil War interfered with that de-
sign. Higginson was among the first to enlist
and had an honorable military service, but one
full of the frustrations to which he was liable.
Commissioned second lieutenant in Col. George
H. Gordon's regiment, the 2nd Massachusetts
Infantry, in May 1861, he was promoted to first
lieutenant in July. He found conditions at Ha-
gerstown, Md, unfavorable, however, and re-
joiced at securing transfer to the ist Massachu-
setts Cavalry of which he was commissioned

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