Author: Topliff, Nathaniel
Biography:
TOPLIFF, Nathaniel (1757-1819: findmypast.com)
The title-page of his only publication identifies him as "a farmer of Dorchester"; the contents portray an American patriot and a contented countryman. The Topliff family had been farmers in Dorchester since the 17th century when the first Puritan settlers arrived there. (Dorchester was absorbed into Boston in 1870 but retains a Topliff Street.) Nathaniel was the son of Samuel Topliff and his wife Mary Hall; one of the poems in his collection is an elegy in her honour. In 1798 he married a local woman, Sarah Leeds ("heaven's gift from above"), with whom he had two children. He must have had a local reputation for his writing: one of his hymns was sung at the dedication of a new building for the First Church in the town in 1816. He died and was buried in Dorchester, with the funeral on 8 Dec. 1819. (findmypast.com 26 Nov. 2020; ancestry.com 26 Nov. 2020)