The long, and yet unbroken, "era of good feeling" was fully inaugurated. It was a day of great rejoicing. Old men and matrons, young men and maidens, met together in happy union. Tradition says that they carried their grateful festivities to the highest point allowable by the proprieties of that period. Having witnessed this scene, and beheld the church and village of his affections start on a new and sure career of peace and prosperity, the Good Parishioner folded his mantle and departed from sight. He died in 1719, in his eighty-fifth year. He was truly the "Man of Ross." The celebrated portrait, which poetry has drawn under this name, was from an actual example in real life, not more shining than his. He left no issue; but his brothers were the founders of a family[i.172] widely diffused, many members of which have, in every subsequent age, contributed to the honor of the name. Innumerable branches have spread out from the same stock under other names. The children of the late Dr. Nathaniel Bowditch, through both father and mother, have descended from a brother of Nathaniel Ingersoll. Citations and extracts from documents on file will justify all I have said of this man. His wife was a spirit kindred to his own. Their only child, a daughter, died when quite young. Their hearts demanded an object on which to exercise parental affection, and to give opportunity for benevolent care, within their own household; and they induced their neighbor, Joseph Hutchinson, who had several sons, to give one of them to be theirs by adoption. When this child had grown to manhood, a deed was recorded in the Essex Registry, Oct. 2, 1691, of which this is the purport:— "Benjamin Hutchinson, being an infant when he was given to us by his parents, we have brought him up as our own child; and he, the said Benjamin, living with us as an obedient son, until he came of one and twenty years of age, he then marrying from us, I, the said Nathaniel Ingersoll, and Hannah, my wife, on these considerations, do, upon the marriage of our adopted son, Benjamin Hutchinson, give and bequeath to him, his heirs and assigns for ever, this deed of gift of ten acres of upland, and also three acres of meadow," &c. When Mr. Parris was settled, it occurred to Deacon[i.173] Ingersoll, that it would be very convenient for him to have a certain piece of ground between the parsonage land and the Andover road; and he gave him a deed, from which the following is an extract. It is dated Jan. 2, 1689.