After Mr. Cheever had been in Ipswich two years, Robert Payne, a philanthropic man, gave to the town a dwelling-house with two acres of land for the schoolmaster; he also gave a new schoolhouse for the school, of which this man was the appreciated teacher; for many neighboring towns sent scholars to him, and it was said that those who received “the Cheeverian education” were better fitted for college than any others.

In November of this same year he married Ellen Lathrop, sister of Captain Thomas Lathrop, of Beverly, who two years before had brought her from England to America with him, with the promise that he would be a father to her.  While living in Ipswich they had four children, Abigail, Ezekiel, Nathaniel, and Thomas; two more, William and Susanna, were born later, in Charlestown.  Their son Ezekiel must have lived to a good old age, at least seventy-seven years, for as late as 1731 his name appears in the annals of the village parish of Salem, where he became heir to Captain Lathrop’s real estate; while their son Thomas, born in 1658, was graduated at Harvard College in 1677, was settled as a minister at Malden, Massachusetts, and later at Rumney Marsh (Chelsea), Massachusetts, where he died at a good old age.

After having thus lived in Ipswich eleven years, Mr. Cheever removed, in 1661, to Charlestown, Massachusetts, to become master of the school there at a salary of thirty pounds a year.  The smallness of this salary astonishes and suggests much to the modern reader; but when he is informed that the worthy teacher was obliged during his teaching there to petition the selectmen that his “yeerly salarie be paid to him, as the counstables were much behind w’th him,” the whole matter becomes pathetic.  Mr. Cheever also asked that the schoolhouse, which was much out of order, be repaired.  And in 1669 he is again before them asking for a “peece of ground or house plott whereon to build an house for his familie,” which petition he left for the townsmen to consider.  They afterward voted that the selectmen should carry out the request, but as Mr. Cheever removed in the following year to Boston, it is probable that his successor had the benefit of it.

When Mr. Cheever entered upon his work as head master of the Boston Latin School, in 1670, he was fifty-seven years old; and he remained master of this school until his death, thirty-seven years later.  The schoolhouse was, at this time, in School Street (it was not so named by the town, however, until 1708) just behind King’s Chapel, on a part of the burying-ground.  It has been said that the building was of two stories to accommodate the teacher and his family.  This seems probable when we read that Mr. Cheever was to have a salary of sixty pounds a year, and the “possession and use of y’e schoole house.”  But if he lived in the building at all, it was not very long, for he is later living in a house by himself; and in 1701 the selectmen voted that two men should provide a house for him while his house was being built.  The agreement which the selectmen made with Captain John Barnet with reference to this house is given in such curious detail in the old records, and suggests so much, that it is well worth reading.  It is as follows:—­