Background
John was born on April 25, 1708 at Medford, Massachussets, United States, son of Peter and Hannah (Willis) Seccomb, and grandson of Richard Seccomb, who settled at Lynn about 1660.
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John was born on April 25, 1708 at Medford, Massachussets, United States, son of Peter and Hannah (Willis) Seccomb, and grandson of Richard Seccomb, who settled at Lynn about 1660.
John Seccomb graduated from Harvard in 1728. While at the college he had written poems for the amusement of his friends.
In 1730 when Matthew Abdy, college bedmaker and sweeper, died, Seccomb was inspired to write "Father Abbey's Will, " a humorous poem in fifteen six-line stanzas cataloguing the objects which Abdy might have bequeathed to his wife. It was printed in December of that year.
He afterwards added "A Letter of Courtship to his virtuous and amiable Widow, " twelve stanzas supposed to be written by the sweeper at Yale. They were published together in Boston in 1731, were dispatched to England by Governor Belcher and printed in 1732 in both the London Magazine and the Gentleman's Magazine. They were reprinted in the Massachusetts Magazine in November 1794, and privately in Cambridge by John L. Sibley in 1854.
Seccomb was ordained minister in the town of Harvard, Massachussets, on October 10, 1733. In 1739 there was a revival of religion in his congregation, which, stimulated by the Great Awakening which began in New England in 1740, continued for four years. Writing to The Christian History (March 17, 1743/44), Seccomb reported that nearly one hundred had been converted, chiefly among the young people; some, he added, had been "so sensibly affected with their Danger that they dare not close their Eyes to sleep lest they should awake in Hell; and would sometimes arise in the Night and go to the Windows expecting to hear the Sounding of the Trumpet to summon all Nations to appear before him. "
In 1763 he went as minister to the Congregational church at Chester, Nova Scotia, probably on the invitation of Jonathan Belcher, Jr. , lieutenant-governor of the province, whom he had known at college. His income was only twenty pounds a year, and he was compelled to appeal for help in Boston; his difficulties were finally ended by an inheritance, and he stayed at Chester until his death in 1792. While there he published three sermons, somewhat pompous in tone and quite undistinguished.
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Doctrinally, he was an old-fashioned Calvinist.
Seccomb had been married on March 10, 1737, to Mercy, daughter of the Rev. William Williams of Weston and had had four children. In 1757 she accused him of misconduct; a church council acquitted him of all charges.