2
10
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Bicentennial sermon : preached before the First Congregational Church, August 24, 1904 by the Pastor Rev. Henry Tucker Arnold, together with the proceedings at the anniversary. / by Rev. Henry T. Arnold
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F104.P53 A76
34023001505900
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30 p. 19 cm
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Witter, Henry M
Church buildings -- Connecticut -- Plainfield
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S.l. : s.n.,
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The First Church of Christ of Plainfield was established in 1705. The Town of Quinebaug, now Plainfield, had already been incorporated in 1699, although it did not yet have an established church or meeting house. The first meeting house was begun in 1702 on Black Hill and took seven years to be finished. In 1720, the church was moved to a more central position on the turnpike and that structure lasted sixty years. In 1784, a new church, half a mile to the south, was completed, but was blown down in the September gale of 1815. A new and sturdier church, constructed of stone, was completed on the same spot in 1819 and continues today as the First Congregational Church of Plainfield.<br /><br />This volume contains a detailed history of the parish from its founding to 1904.<br /><br /><a title="http://historicbuildingsct.com/?p=7352" href="http://historicbuildingsct.com/?p=7352" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://historicbuildingsct.com/?p=7352</a>
Contains Poem" by Henry M. Witter"
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Arnold, Henry T
Date
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1905
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cfdff1b9-5cd4-47b7-98da-61d4a5c4a99c
Connecticut Churches
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T
HE
. ONE
HUNDRETH
A N N I V E RS A RY of the
Wapping Congregational Meeting House
Erected
1801
and Occupied
1802
in South Windsor,
Connecticut
OCTOBER ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH
NINETEEN
HUNDRED
& TWO
���..
���REV.
J.
E. HURLBUT.
��3
SATURDAY MORNING.
Service at 10.30.
Organ Voluntary.
Doxology.
Rev . F. R. Waite
Scripture Reading,
Gloria.
Rev. E. E. Colburn
Prayer-(Response
by Choir), ·
Anthem-"Great
is the Lord."
Opening Address,
The Pastor, Rev. J. E. Hurlbut
Responses. Rev. Roscoe Nelson
Rev. D. E. Jones
Rev. C. A. Jaquith
Rev. E. W. Burch
Rev. W. F. English, Ph. D. Rev. W. Stanley Post
Hymn 603--"Glorious
Things of Thee are Spoken."
Benediction.
SATURDAY AFTERNOON.
Service at 2.00.
Organ Voluntary.
Anthem-"Praise
God."
Prayer-(Response
by Choir),
Rev. W. B. Tuthill
Address,
Rev. C. H. Barber
Historical Addresses,
Dea. C. C. Vinton and W. A. Howe
Anthem-"Let us Kneel before the Lord."
Reminiscent Addresses,
J. M. Talcott and Mrs. E. S. Bissell
Hymn 597-"Blest be the Tie that Binds."
Benediction.
SUNDAY MORNING.
Service at 10.45.
Organ Voluntary.
Doxology.
Invocation.
Gloria.
Bible Reading-(Response
Anthem.
Baptism of Children.
by Choir).
�4
Prayer.
Mrs . Alice Ewell
Solo--''The Planes of Peace, "
Rev.
W . S. Hawkes
Sermon,
Lord
God
Almighty
.''
Hymn 1-"Holy,
Holy, Holy!
Benediction.
Sunday School Service.
SUNDAY EVENING.
Service at 7 .00.
Praise Service--Old Time Hymns and other selections .
Sermon,
Rev . E . N. Hardy
Hymn 599-"I Love Thy Kingdom , Lord."
Benediction.
�s
PASTORS.
1765---1800
MATTHEWROCKWELL, \
MosEs TUTHILL,
f
July 10, 1829-1832
HENRY MORRIS,
July, 1832-May 1, 1835
DAVID L. HUNN,
June 29, 1836--April 29, 1840
Installed,
MARVINRooT,
Jan.-,
1843
Supply,
0. F. PARKER,
o. F. PARKER, Ordained and Installed,
Jan. 3, 1844-Oct. 24, 1848
WM. WRIGHT,
Installed,
Aug. 22, 1854-May 1, 1865
W. S. HAWKES, Ordained and Installed,
Nov. 12, 1868-Mar. 31, 1871
CHARLESDRAKE, Supply,
1871
STEPHEN FENN,
1873; died Feb. 19, 1875
HENRY E. HART,
June 20, 1875-June,
1878
CHAS. N. FLANDERS,"
Nov., 1878-Jan.6,
1884
GEO. A. BRYAN,
May 1, 1884-Nov. 1, 1886
DANIEL PHILLIPS,
April 1, 1887-April 1, 1388
G. 0. McINTYRE,
May, 1888-Aug. 1, 1889
E. N. HARDY,
Aug., 1889-Sept.
1, 1890
F. M. HOLLISTER,Ordained and Installed,
Dec. 31, 1890--Apr. 5, 1892
C. A. REDGRAvE, Supply-,
June 1, 1892-June
1, 1895
W. STANLEYPosT, "
Oct. 1, 1895---April 1, 1900
Oct. 1. 1900JOHN E. HURLBUT, "
THE CENTURY CYCLE.
The centuries have run their round,
The Fathers sleep beneath the ground.
God's acres hold their precious dust,
While God, in whom they put their trust,
Their spirits keep against that day
When heaven and earth shall pass away
And kingdoms be, by promised word,
The kingdoms of His Christ, our Lord.
Whence came these men of courage tried
Who for their faith had gladly died
If by their death that faith could be
God's gift to lands beyond the sea?
In ancient annals we may read,God sifted nations for this seed.
The rack, the dungeon, sword and stake,
Where martyrs died for Jesus' sake,
This dreadful work of sifting did.
�6
Then God, in Holland, this seed hid
Until, beyond the swelling wave,
Columbus to the old world gave
A continent so grand and great
That God no longer had to wait.
His time had come to plant this seed,
The world's great hope, the world's great need,
That long to Him for help had cried,
In Pilgrim met and satisfied.
These men of sturdy faith and mold
Sought not this land for greed of gold,
But love of God and truth and right,
And as God said, "Let there be light,"
And on creation's night there broke
That light that into being woke
Those starry hosts that made this world,
As round the throne of God it whirled,
The home of races yet unborn:
So broke for liberty God's morn.
From tyrant's shackles faith set free
When God said, "Let the Pilgrims be."
'Tis true that with the Pilgrim band
There later came to this fair land
The Puritan of faith the same.
From this twin stock the courage came
That made the Saxons pioneers,
Not taking counsel of their fears,
But westward pressing, thither led,
By Southern Cross above their head
Last seen by eyes in Eastern sky
When Christ upon the cross did die,
Till globe encircled this hosts' van
Came back where journey they began.
Not here need we these names rehearse,
For oft before, in poets' verse,
These names with reverence have been told,
As novice counts her beads of gold
And with each bead, breathes forth a prayer,
So midst the nations everywhere
These names are found as incense rare.
Thus has it come to pass that we
From all these lands those rivulets see
That have been as a river grand
To water and enrich this land,
For when Old Glory waves above
With liberty men's hearts must move,
And peoples of all clime and race
�7
With those to manor born take place
As citizens, their lives to give
To make America to live,And while this alchemy shall hold
To change all metals into gold,
The gold of character and right,
We still shall be the beacon light
Of hope to nations yet unborn
And lead to God's Millennial Morn.
But let us now a short time look
Upon the page of open book
That gives us views of long ago,
That these men we may better know.
Not palaces of marble white
That shine as pearls in sunshine bright,
Or blaze at night with lights that seem
Creations of Aladdin's dream,
Filled with a furniture so fine
That in its making and design
Artistic skill its zenith found.
Not this, but huts of logs, where ground
Made hard by usage was the floor,
No glass for windows or for door,
With furniture of homely make,These were their homes where morn did wake
The hymn of praise to God who gave
His Son from sin the world to save,
And with the hymn the heartfelt prayer
For this, God's fellowship and care
In all the work of each new day.
At night, e'er head on pillow lay,
The praise again for blessings brought,
The prayer that for protection sought
As night, with perils new, drew nea,r.
Not that these men knew aught of fear,
But in new countries, with the fight
To wrest from Nature in her might
The treasures of her wooded soil
That call for sacrifice and toil,
Another conflict must be fought
As savage beast and foe oft sought
Their life blood. What! have we forgot
The Deerfield massacre?
That spot
But one of many in this land
Where suddenly an Indian band
From far off Canada swooped down
As hawk on prey, and morning found
But smoking ruins left to tell
�8
Of those who in death's struggle fell,
Or captive to a cruel foe
Stained with their blood the winter's snow,
Till Canada was reached to be
The place of their captivity.
Have we forgotten this? Then we
Know naught of cost of liberty .
.And with these homes of praise and prayer
Went meetinghouse that everywhere
Was centre of each hamlet's life,
I ts presence stilling angry strife,
As mother, 'mid her girls and boys
With loving counsel, keeps peace poise,
And helps her children strong to grow,
And in the ways of wisdom go,
The meetinghouse and home to be
The hands of Christianity;
And here in W apping hamlet came
This meetinghouse that place to claim
One hundred years ago, for then
We find, writ by a woman's pen:
"Today, for which let God be praised,
A meetinghouse was safely raised."
June third that day, yet year went by
And fall with flaming torch drew nigh
As forest trees with colors bright
Flashed with a thousand rays of light
Before the house completed stood
Pronounced by those who saw it good,
For if we should this house compare
With meetinghouses everywhere
One hundred years before this day,
Then of this building we would say,"A palace as compared with hut."
Of course with architectural strut
Of present day, this is not true,
But I would rather this church view
Than many that this name now bear
Whose wondrous shapes not anywhere
In earth or sky or sea are found,
And which with echo so abound
That preacher's voice is made to be
As droning bug or buzzing bee.
�9
Since then, some changes have been made,
The floor been lifted up and laid
Where it is now; below you see
The old floor as it used to be,
The old square pulpit, where the Word
With no uncertain sound was heard,
But with heart passion all aflame,
"Thus saith the Lord," the message cameThe galleries that circled round
Where unnailed floors gave out a sound
Quite deafening, as the youngsters' feet
Their tipping surface used to meet.
For here it was the children sat
To often feel the warning pat
Of tithing master's ruling stick
'Gainst which it was no use to kick,
For no despotic prince or king
Did rod of might or justice swing
With more determined zeal and sway
Then tithing master of that day.
And of these boys one pastor said
That oft, into temptation led
By jackknife, of the ancient kind,
"Much ingenuity of mind"
Did show, constructing their profile
On wall in quaint artistic style.
Which was but their prophetic ken
Of what they did when they were men
To make their mark in Church and State.
So if development be late,
These noisy boys,-yes,
girls as well,Will yet to generations tell
What good New England stock can do
When time and tact has worked it through.
These both long since have passed from view:
Like preacher and like people too,
They had their day, their work did well,
And we are here of this to tell
And honor give to these true men
Who served their age with sword and pen,
And hoes as well, for we of late
Have had this man brought down to date,
"The man with hoe," by poet's ken
The grandest of God's noblemen.
�IO
One hundred years they worshipped here:
The bridal train, the funeral bier
Passed up these aisles. The words were said
Before men laid from sight their dead
In graveyard, as in England found
To compass meetinghouse around.
That comfort gave and hope and life
When soul was tost with passion's strife,
Or godly counsel well applied
To hearts of groom and blushing bride,
That joy which overflowed them then
Might not rest in the hope of men
But God, whose joy could only be
That which should last eternally.
From out these homes, the children went,Their strength and wisdom gladly lent
To make the town, the city, state,
To be as they today are ·great,
This nation of all nations found
In liberty to most abound,
In righteousness and justice too,
Its part in God's great work to <lo.
We have not time today in verse
These noble deeds to all rehearse,
But what is better, let men see
Their virtues in our lives to be,
And when this Anniversary Day
Of century that has passed away
Will blossom in the centurv new .
To make us noble, strong and true,
Our work for God to grandly do.
This is the welcome we extend
As you these services attend.
Our Church, our homes, our hearts, throw wide,
While as our guests you here abide.
JOHN E. HURLBUT.
�9
PAPER
BY DEACON
VINTON
In the history of the settlement of the Town of East Windsor, the people living on the east side of the "great River" had
become so numerous that they petitioned and obtained leave
of the General Court to establish separate worship.
Some of the names of the forty-four men who signed this
petition were Nathaniel Bissell, Samuel Grant, Samuel Rockwell, Thomas Stoughton,
John Stoughton,
Simon Wolcott.
Such liberty was granted by the Court, May 10, 1694, under the
name of Windsor farm.
The services of Timothy Edwards were secured the November following, and he commenced his labors among this scattered
people.
The families to which Mr. Edwards ministered were scattered
upon one long winding path, a little way back from Connecticut
Meadows, which reached from Hartford town line, four miles
below his home, to an equal distance above.
This road, which
at the first was only a rude bridle path, was gradually improved
and enlarged, as the years passed on, until it became to be
known at the Street, a name which still continues in common
use and distinguishing it from all other roads in this vicinity.
Mr. Edwards was ordained in 1698-his
ministry lasting
more than sixty-three years-only
ending by his death in 1758during which time parishes had been established, one in Ellington, in 1735, and another parish on the east side of the river
under the memorial of Thomas Grant and others, subscribing
thereunto, inhabitants
of Wapping, on east side of second
Society in Windsor.
Leave was granted in 1761, in consequence
of their distance from the place of public worship, that they
might be a half ecclesiastical parish, and for five months in the
year might procure preaching themselves, and be exempt from
taxation in the old parish during that portion of each year.
This peculiar organization long ago ceased to exist, but may be
regarded as a forerunner of the present Congregational Church
in Wapping.
We have
then the somewhat
remarkable
fact of four
ecclesiastical parishes existing upon the east side of the Connecticut River, within the limit of the ancient town of Windsor,
before the Town of East Windsor itself came into being.
About the year 1700, and following, settlements were being
made in Wapping and vicinity, which for a time made themselves accommodated
by attending
services in the Second
Society, but as the roads were extremely bad they petitioned
for winter privileges-that
is-hire
a minister for six months
in the year-or,
during the winter months.
This seemingly
reasonable request was for many years neglected, but was finally
conceded.
�10
The first meetinghouse
was under the title of a schoolhouse,
about 1765, and it stood near the present parsonage
of the
Congregational
Society.
The windows were boarded up above
and only those below were glazed.
This church edifice became so dilapidated
that the six
months' winter privileges were extended to eight by leave of
the General Court; the warm weather
was substituted
for
winter.
The people worshipped
the rest of the season with
the Society in the "Street,"
which invited them to do so, free
of tax.
Their edifice was us ed onl y spring, summer and fall,
until it became so entirely out of repair , as to acquire the appellation of the "W apping barn" and was pulled down in 1789,
by some young men, out on a frolic.
After some delay a church edifice was designed, and the
frame for the structure
was raised in 1801, and is the one in
which we now worship.
rt · stood a year without
covering.
In 1802, a subscription
was raised to cover the building and
glaze the windows.
The pulpit and seats were rough and
unfinished.
A pillow with clean case was carried ever y Sunday
and placed on the pulpit for a cushion.
The building was
erected by people of different denominations
living in Wapping
on a mission plan.
The Congregationalists
were to become sole proprietors b y paying the others - which they did in 1816 and 1817.
In 1829, money was raised by subscription
to lath and
plaster the house, build a breast work around the gallery ', and
a pulpit, at which time the settees were removed and the repairs
which were contemplated
were completed.
Services
were
continued in the house during the following years, up to the year
of 1843, when the Rev. 0. F. Parker commenced
his labors
here, and through his efforts the building was changed to its
present plan and shape.
1
PAPER
BY WM. A. HOWE.
We celebrate today the Centennial of the occupanc y of this
house of worship, and though for thirty years it was in an
unfinished
state, here worshipped
the fathers and mothers,
and today their children meet to recall the past, and to look
forward with hope to the future.
It is well for us to remember those who laid the foundations
of our Church and of our State, those who, amid perils and
privations,
planted what we are now enjoying, the fathers and
mothers of our own goodly Connecticut.
The Pilgrim Fathers came to New England first, and we
give them due honor, but there were others beside those who
came in the Mayflower.
New England had its Winthrops,
its
Cotton, its Hooker, its Eaton, its Davenport,
and others, the
Puritan Fathers of Massachusetts
Bay and of Connecticut.
There were wide diversities of view, not only as between the
�II
Pilgrims and the Puritans, but equally wide differences among
the Puritan Fathers of Massachusetts Bay. John Cotton and
Thomas Hooker were the leaders in opposing views concerning
both church and civil affairs. Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield were settled by those who were in sympathy with Hooker,
corning mostly from Dorchester, Newtown, now Cambridge,
and Watertown.
We have descendants of the early settlers
of each of these towns in our church and congregation.
Thomas Hooker and his friends did not favor independency,
so we find in the further development of the Connecticut church
order, a closer relationship between the churches than prevailed
in the mother colony of Massachusetts, and under the Consociation System our churches grew and prospered, and when
many of the old churches of Massachusetts became Unitarian,
our Connecticut churches , with but one exception, stood firm
on the old foundations.
The three towns in 1639, formed the first known written
Constitution in the world. Here in Connecticut were laid the
foundations of our State and of the Nation.
Our fathers of Connecticut gave the right to vote in civil
affairs to those who were not members of the church, while
Massachusetts restricted it to church members only, and very
naturally Connecticut attracted rnany settlers who were not
members of churches.
Though the settlers of these three towns
brought with them churches already organized, these churches
were very small as compared with the number of inhabitants.
Wethersfield in 1640, with more than sixty families, had but
seven male church members, and the churches of Hartford and
Windsor, though probably larger, were also small, though no
very definite statement as to numbers is given.
In some of our early settlements the church organization
did not come in till several years after. In a Connecticut town
settled in 1640, there was no church organization for a period
of sixty-seven years, though there was a succession of ministers
and a house of worship.
Our Puritan forefathers insisted on having the meetinghouse
and the public worship of God, even when they were not associated together in church estate, and the towns not only supported the same, but compelled attendance on the Sabbath
Day. In 1669, one town was negligent in the matter, and the
General Court or Assembly of Connecticut resolved, "if the sayd
people's prudent consideration do not move them to make such
provision of a suitable person, sound and orthodox in his principles and apt to teach, so approved by 'four neighboring ministers who were named,' the Court will themselves procure and
settle a preaching minister amongst them and take sufficient
order that he be maintayned by them at their next session."
It was not the idea of our fathers that the church organization alone was responsible for the support of public worship,
but it was like the school, a public necessity, for the benefit of
�12
all , and to be paid for from the public treasur y, and the rates
paid by those who w ere Episcopalians
or Baptists were paid
for the support of tho se churches; all oth ers paid to the Congr egationalists,
and this was the law till 1816.
In 1694, the part of Windsor on the east side of the river
was incorporated
as a distinct societ y, and after 1700 the mor e
eastern portion of Windsor began to be settled . In 1735, th e
northeastern
section was made a society b y the name of Ellington , and in 1757 the societ y of North Windsor was incorporated.
The di v iding line began at the mouth of Scantic River , following
it to the crossing of th e road leading to Enfield , thence following
the line of the Stiles lot to the east end of the three mile lots,
thence on a lin e parallel to th e north line of Hartford to th e
east part of the town and the Ellington line. This line runs
by Mr . Nevers' place, farther east b y Mr . Hosmer's and a little
below Mr. J. A. Belknap 's, to a point just north of W. A. Howe 's,
which point is the southeast corner of the old North or Scantic
parish; thence the line ran northerly
past the house of Mrs.
E. S. Bissell to the southwest corner of Ellington .
The same year, 1757, Benjamin Stoughton, Dani el Rockwell ,
Daniel Skinner, Samuel Smith, Daniel Bissell, Thomas Bissell ,
Thomas Grant, Thomas Sadd, John Rockwell, Rockwell Grant,
John Boynton, Robert White, Aaron Strong, James Fitch and
George Smith, inhabitants
of Wapping, petitioned the General
Court for the privilege of separate religious worship and to be
made a society . They speak of the difficulty of going to the
street, especially in the winter, that there were thirty-eight
families with 250 souls living at a distanc e of from four to eight
miles from their present place of worship.
The General Assembly did not grant their request.
In 1760, another petition was sent, which was also refused,
and again in the spring of 1761, thirty-three
persons petitioned
with the same result, but in October following the fourth petition
was successful, and W apping was made a half society or winter
parish , and was permitted to have preaching for five months
in the year.
A petition to the General Assembly soon followed,
asking for another month, but it was not granted .
Services were held at first in private houses till in 1765 the
first house of worship was built on or very near the site now
occupied by our parsonage.
It was left in an unfinished state,
and was not fit for winter use, and the five months were changed
to a more favorable season, the people going to the Street
during the other seveff months.
Five famiiies living west of the east end of the three mile
lots were included in the half society, the bounds on the west
going in and out on the three mile line to include these families.
There were no easy carriages or even wagons in those early
days, and the fathers and mothers went to meeting on horseback, taking such of the children as could be carried in front on
the horse or behind; the rest of the family walked, and the road
�to the Street must have been in very bad condition at times.
Some of us remember seeing the very first road vehicles our
grandfathers had.
There was preaching in Wapping as early as 1762 . Matthew
Rockwell, son of Deacon Samuel Rockwell of East Windsor,
a graduate of Yale in 1728, preached to the people, for how
long a period is not known . Services were for a part of the year
only , and for this reason Wapping could not well have a resident minister.
Mr. Rockwell, living at the Street, could come
ov er and preach for so long a time as he was wanted.
Rev . Moses Tuthill preached here for three years. His wife
was of the Edwards family.
He graduated at Yale in 1745.
He died at Southold, L. I., 1785.
His first ministry was at Granville, Mass.
Then he
preached in Delaware, and later came to East Windsor.
He
appears to have been here in 1769. He is said to have been a
man of talent, though eccentric, and if he was eccentric, his
wife was not less so . When in 1745 or '46 he asked of Rev.
Mr . Edwards, the hand of his daughter Martha, Mr. Edwards
assured him that she would be a thorn in his flesh; that God's
grace might perhaps liv e with her, but that no man could with
any comfort.
He took the risk, and married her. He is said
to have been a faithful and acceptable minister of the Gospel,
his ministry "blessed with prosperity and peace."
One Sabbath Mr. Tuthill did not appear in the pulpit, and
after waiting for some time , his wife, who was present, was
asked where Mr. Tuthill was? She said that, as she had stayed
at home to take care of the children long enough, she told him
it was his turn now, so he stayed at home in her place.
At another time Mr. Tuthill failed to appear in his pulpit,
and after waiting a while, inquir y was made as to his absence.
His wife sa id that he went off down to the woods on Satu r day
and he had not come back. She did not know why. So some
of the men went to find him and in the woods they came to a
hollow log with a man's feet sticking out. Mr . Tuthill had
followed something which had run into the log, and he having
a long surtout with cape , it had rolled up when he tried to back
out an.d he was fast. The men pulled but could not get him
out, and they had to split the log before he could be released.
After his death his family came to live in W apping in a
house near Mr. Waldo Belcher's and where Mrs. Tuthill died
in 1794. TwQ daughters lived there for some years after.
In April, 1772, thirty-one persons petitioned the General
Assembly for eight months' preaching, which was granted.
The petitioners
were Benjamin Stoughton,
Ezra Rockwell,
John Rockwell, Thatcher Lathrop, Samuel Smith, Isaac Rockwell, Nathan Kingsley, Gideon Grant, Justus Loomis, Daniel
Rockwell , Daniel Rockwell, Jr., Ebenezer Rockwell, William
Grant, Oliver Skinner, Abner Rockwell, Noah Barber, Barzillai
Green, Matthew Sadd, Isaac Grant, John Skinner, Timothy
�14
Skinner, Daniel Skinner, Daniel Skinner, Jr., Timothy Bissell,
John Bowlen, David Wright,
Alexander
Elmer, Rockwell
Grant, Benjamin Smith, Zalmon Kingsley, Phineas Strong.
With no services for four months in each year, it is evident
that no permanent ministry could be secured.
In January, 1799, the old house of worship was torn down,
and it was not till 1802, one hundred years ago, that the present
one was occupied.
Various ministers preached to the people.
Rev. Mr. Blakely, a Baptist minister, preached for two years,
1816, '17, and with considerable
success, though there was
s~me dissatisfaction with him on the part of some of the congregation.
The close of his ministry here marks also the end of
the W apping Half Society.
With the new State Constitution,
the Ecclesiastical
Society of the . Standing Order, as it was
called, was changed to a voluntary organization, and the School
Society was separated from the Ecclesiastical, retaining the old
Society boundaries.
For about nine years following there was no preaching
service in Wapping.
The people who attended church, went
to the Street, and some, perhaps, to Scantic.
Some of them
were members of the First Church.
Intemperance
came in
and made sad havoc in the community.
About 1826, Rev. V. Osborn, a Methodist minister, began to
preach to the people of W apping, and continued for two years.
He was disposed to be controversial and there was friction and
dissatisfaction
in his congregation.
In 1827, he organized
the Methodist Episcopal Church in this place with eight members, and which in 1833 erected its present house of worship.
Today the pastors and people of the two churches are in harmony, working together in this vineyard of the Lord.
It was a time of theological controversy, not only as between
Arminians and Calvinists, but there was a sharper and more
bitter one, even, between the old and new schools, both in the
Presbyterian
and in the Congregational
churches.
The East
Windsor Hill Seminary was founded to combat the heresies
of the New Haven Seminary.
Drs. Tyler and Taylor, now we
trust of one mind and knowing more than they could know
when on earth, were leaders of opposing forces. Men contended
earnestly for the faith which was supposed to have been once
delivered to the saints, and in our churches "the doctrines"
were made promiIJ-ent in religious teaching.
In 1838 at the examination
of a young girl of fifteen for
admission to this church, one of the deacons questioned her
as to her belief in foreordination.
Some of the people here
were members of the First Church, and in discussing this question, "Must our children be brought up under a religious belief
different from the one which we and our fathers embraced?"
resolved to make an effort to sustain a minister of their own,
and Rev . Hiram N. Brinsmade labored among them for six
months.
A revival commenced in the North School District,
�among children belonging to the school, which soon spread to
the adults, anri. the organization of a church began to be talked
about.
Mr. Brinsmade closed his labors here in the spring of 1829.
Mr. Roland and Mr. Kennedy supplied till July when Rev.
Henry Morris began his work here. A Council met at the house
of Mr. Samuel Hall, February 2, 1830. Rev. Samuel Whelpley
of the First Church was moderator.
The Council proceeded
to organize a church.
Twenty-five persons were received by
letters from the First Church and three from the Second or
Scantic Church, a total of 28. In April, 22 united on profession
of faith and four by letter, making a total of 54 members at the
beginning of this church.
The next year there was a powerful
work of grace, beginning with a protracted meeting of six days
conducted by Mr. Barrows, an evangelist, commencing August
30, and before Mr. Morris closed his pastorate
in 1832, 28
persons united on confession.
Rev. David L. Hunn began his ministry here July, 1832,
coming from the neighboring church at Vernon, and the church
soon received several families from the North or Scan tic parish
and from Vernon.
Deacon Anson Bissell from the Scantic
church, became a deacon of this church.
Deacon Bissell had
three sons who became ministers.
Rev. Dr. Lemuel Bissell
for many years connected with the Mahratta mission in India,
and whose children, Rev. Henry and Misses Julia and Emily
Bissell are prominent in missionary and medical work in that
mission. Rev. Henry N. Bissell was a pastor in Michigan and
Rev. Sanford Bissell, in Illinois.
In September, 1832, and January, 1833, the church received
14 by letter, 11 of whom were from the Scantic church and
three from Vernon.
Four united on profession, two of whom
were from Scantic.
By 1836, the southern portion of the North parish had been
transferred to Wapping, and from these families we have today,
some of those who are active in our church work.
June 29, 1836, Rev. Marvin Root was installed as pastor.
September 26, 1837, the church became connected with the
Hartford North Consociation.
Mr. Root resigned April, 1839,
but the resignation was not accepted.
He was dismissed April,
1840.
The church was supplied by various ministers and in the
latter part of 1841 when the church was still without a pastor,
21 persons were received on profession of faith.
The early period of the church was marked by most wonderful
seasons of revival.
January 1, 1843, Mr. 0. F. Parker began
to supply the pulpit and January 3, 1844, he was ordained and
installed pastor.
In 1846, 13 persons united with the church,
the fruits of a revival.
About 1845 or '46 the church edifice had come to be unsatisfactory, and the question of repair or rebuilding was agitated
�and with differing minds, but in January, 1849, the remodelled
church was dedicated . Mr. Parker's health failed and he was
dismissed a few months previous to the dedication.
For the next following years there was no settled pastor.
Rev. John Frazer supplied for two years.
Rev. Mr. Strong,
one, and Dr. Tyler and others from the Seminar y supplied till
the coming and installation
of Re v. William Wright, in 1854 .
Mr. Wright was dismissed aft er a pastorate
of nearly eleven
years . When th e church was without a pastor in 1852, 14
united on prof ession and again in Janu a r y, 1868 , six more wer e
added.
Rev. Winfield S. Hawkes was installed pastor in 1868 and
in January, 1869 , 13 more were receiv ed , the fruit of his labors .
He was dismissed March, 1871.
Rev . Charl es W . Drake follow ed and was succe eded by R ev.
Stephen Fenn, who died here three years later.
Rev . Henry
E . Hart, his successor, received 29 to the church in the three
years he was with us.
Our next pastor , Rev. C. N. Flanders , was with us six years,
and in this time th e afternoon services were given up.
Rev. G. A. Bryan was here for eighteen months and in thi s
time the Christian
Endeavor
Societ y was formed.
Rev.
Daniel Phillips served here one year.
Rev. 0. G. McIntyre
followed and in August, 1889, Rev . Edwin N . Hardy came to us ,
quickening into new life the Endeavor Society and the church ,
and during that one year 19 new members were added to the
church .
Rev. F. M. Hollister 's pastorate of a year and three months
followed . He was dismissed April , 1892, being called to Waterbury.
Rev . C. A. Redgrave
supplied for the next three years,
followed by Rev. W. S. Post as acting pastor till April, 1900,
a pastorate of four and a half years.
Mr . George B . Hawkes, son of our former pastor , supplied
during the summer, and October 1, Rev . John E. Hurlbut
came to us, from the Church of the Cov enant, Worcester, Mass.
In February
of last y ear the church became incorporated
under the state law , and the Society transferred
to the church
the real estate, house of worship and parsonage , the trust funds
which were then in its possession and the support of public
worship here . Fourteen
of our young people came into the
church during the pastorate of Mr. Post, and since our present
pastor came 15 more have professed their faith in Christ.
The hope of our Church is in its young people who are coming
in to take the places of some of us who will soon pass away.
We owe much to those who have sustained our Christian Endeavor Society, and the Junior Society, the nursery from which
this church has received some of its fruitful members .
In January,
1833, after the accessions from Scan tic and
Vernon, there were 98 members, since which there have been
�received 223 by profession
number is 124.
PAPER
and
151 by let ter.
Th e present
BY MRS. E. S. BISSELL.
In vis iting the home of his childhood a celebrated physician
once said, . "It surprises me how the sight of these familiar
fields, rocks and brooks bring back to my mind impressions
made upon me by my famil y training.
I suppose they are the
friends to whom I uncon sciously told my joys and so rrows .
But the straRgest part is that they bring back so vividly m y
fat her , mother, brother and sister, that they seem to be present
with m e now , I hear m y father telling of the building of that
ho us e, our home, till I realiz e more fully than in m y childhood
days the tremendous power of his muscular frame, his indomnitable will and his loving heart."
And so my friends within these walls and listening to the
history of effort, discourag emen t and final success in obtaining
per mission to build a house of worship, we feel the very presence
of those resolute m en and women who gave us this heritage .
Though memory cannot quite reach the beginnings, we look
upon the faces of those who were there, and many incidents of
the past come floating through our minds as recounted to us in
our youtn by those "gone before ."
William Sadd, one of the original members of this church,
te lls of the hard work and scant gatherings of money that they
might have a home place of worship .
Lyman Sadd, a young man of 28 or 29 years, the first superintendent of Sunday school which was formed before the church
was organized, with the woman of his choice, Mary Skinner ,
as his wife, devoted their energies for years to the best interests
of church and Sunday school.
Aunt Mary Lyman-as
we familiarly ca lled h er-I can see
her with the little ones gathered around her , looking up lov ingly in her face, as she told them of the love of Jesus, and of
the necessity of always doing right .
She was never too old to be wanted as a te ac her. Class
after class passed into life's arena and still she was at h er post.
Some of the oldest here present were doubtl ess among h er bo ys
and girls .
Rosina Green tells of the la ck of cushioned pews and plastered
walls. No smoke troubled
the singers' voices.
Footstoves
contained the only artificial heat . Home-made woolen stockings
in cowhide boots kept the feet of the sturdy farmers warm ,
while their hearts glowed with spiritual fire kindled at the famil y
altar , and fanned by the preach er's words of exhortation
and
warning.
Was it a hardship for those men and women to gather within
that desolate room , and, seated on the rude b enches made of
slabs, listeD. to long doctrinal sermons, for enoon and afternoon,
�18
and Sunday school, with only time in the intermission
to eat a
cooky or two and replenish coals in footstove from neighboring
fires?
If a hardship it was a hardship they loved, made bearable'
by looking forward to a better condition of creature comforts
and an expectation
of the continued
presence of God's Spirit.
Religion to them was life.
As George McDonald says, "Religion is not an addition to
life, or a starry crown set upon the head of humanity . The
man to whom virtue _is but the ornament of character, something
over and ·above and not essential to it , is not yet a man ." So
their life was growth and when the meetinghouse
becam e the
home of one denomination
they grew united in effort to better
their home.
Instead
of rough slab seats with men on one side of the
room and women on the other, and children in the gallery, they
wanted family pews and pews they had.
Instead of galleries
with floor boards unnailed,
they wanted them finished and so
it was.
The opportunity
for the children to devise mischief
was great.
And whether the stick of timber that fell from the
side gallery into Priest Root's pew, where his wife was sitting,
was aided by the kick of little toes will probably never be known.
Those square pews!
They embody my first recollections
of
church going, and the minister, who wore the first pair of gold
spectacles
I had ever seen, was a terror to my childish imagination.
I thought his double pair of eyes could tell even my
thoughts.
But seated on a low stool behind the high back of
the pew with father and our family and Uncle Kellogg and his
family, I thought
I could escape his vision.
My little cousin
Jennie, younger than myself, now risen to the dignity of Grandma
Howe, beguiled the time by playing bopeep with her handkerchief.
I essayed to do likewise, but a reproving
glance from
Aunt Margaret convinced
me that the minister could see me
through
the boards.
As Nicholas Minturn,
who was always
studying cause and effect, looking from a garret window, seeing
the tree tops in the distance swaying in the breeze, concluded
it was the trees that caused the wind to blow, so I concluded
that my misdemeanors
had come to be unbearable
and father
suddenly
decided to take us to Vernon to church.
Alas! I
never saw those square pews again.
Progress was the watchword . Life was growth, and the church home was again to be
renovated.
Some wanted
the old building removed
and a new one
built on a hill to the northeast,
claiming it would be more
nearly the center of the parish.
Mr. Parker preached a sermon
on "Sanballat
and Tobiah hindering
the work of the Lord,"
which caused offense not only to the High Hill people who
seceded, but to some who remained.
The subsequent
history
of those who seceded justifies us in believing that they were not
lacking in Christian love and service.
I am told that three heads of families left the room in sermon
�time. James Skinner said he did not blame them and felt
inclined to do the same thing himself.
My sister, Mrs. Par so ns ,
to ld me that she remember ed that when father drove home
that da y he plied the whip with unusual v igor, say ing , "Get up,
Sanba llat , go it Tobiah."
He with William Kello gg and Oliver Dart, unlike Tobiah
and Sanb allat, had their part and lot in the remodelling, inasmuc h as the y paid th eir full quota in money for the repairs,
but the y and their families left and went to Vernon. Just here
I wo uld like to r ead a portion of a letter received from my sister
in Milwaukee.
"My recollections of th e old church as it was in the times
befo r e th e advent of Mr. Parker, through whose endeavors it
was remodelled are restricted to the ex terior with the exception
that on th e day of the sermon where in the High Hill people
were scored for " hind eri ng the work of the Lord." I distinctly
remember sitting in a high backed, square pew next the wall on
the right hand aisle about a third of th e way from door to pulpit.
All the pews b y the wall were of the square, old fashioned kind,
but I think those in the center of th e building were like the
mode rn slip though short and narrow.
The exterior as I recall
it to my mental vision, was a ve ry model of ugliness, high,
sq uare and somewhat weather beaten , wi th a multitude
of
cur tainless windows that seemed to stare reproachfully at the
little reprobate, who at an early age developed a dislike of long ,
doc trin al sermons and of th e books in the Sunday school library.
"A t that tim e, th e only Looks she could get hold of were memoirs of good little children who suffe red so patiently that they
died young.
"To my childish mind the logic of it all was that it didn't pay
to be good and patient in illnes s.
" I wanted to live and grow up and I hated those scenes so
thoro ughl y that eve n the walls of the old church where the books
were kept nev er failed to arouse m y " innate cussedness" and
at the same time to awaken my New England conscience to such
an extent that I felt as though the Day of Judgment was staring at me through th e ugly , curtainless windows.
To this day
I am inclined to shiver at th e thought of the old church as it was,
and without entering into the wh ys and wherefores of the oppo sition movement , which took us children from ·w apping at an
ear ly age, I am trul y grateful to those who persist ed in their
efforts to transform the ugl y old building into a n ea t , tasteful
modern church .''
Staunch members continued the building.
Herman Hall,
who lived on the sit e of the present high sc hool building, gave
th e stone underpinning , and was always active in the interest of
the edifice. H e took care of the bui ldin g, in other words was
janitor for upwards of tw ent y years, and received in compensa tion one dollar a year.
It was the custom for the congregation to stand during the
�20
long prayer (said sometimes to be an hour long, timed by the
watch).
After the custom..,.ceased.,..Deacon
Horace..,,_Stoughton
always reverently stood facing the minister with his head slightly
bowed, while John Stoughton also stood with his back to the
minister and looked out of the window.
The children, both boys and girls, went barefoot in the
summer both at their homes and at school, but it was out of
character to appear on holy ground without shoes on their feet.
They carried them in their hand till within sight of the church
when they would put them on, much to their discomfort.
One
lady here present tells me that she remembers when she was
four years old,walking over two miles to church and wearing a
blue dress with polka dots, and when near here, put on her shoes
as was the custom, as did her sister with her.
This little girl was in after years assistant superintendent
of
the Sunday school and was also secretary of the Ladies' Sewing Society eight years.
Cora Martin, living with her grandmother,
was dressed ready
for church and then required to sit • still till all were ready to go.
That to her was the most tedious part of the day.
A penny for
keeping quiet in service time was a compensation.
Then in the
intermission
a walk to the graveyard was enlivening.
Doubtless heads of dill, caraway seed and fennel (meeting
seed as it was called), beguiled the time for many little ones.
You who pity those children for being made to go to church,
please remember they could not have been hired to stay at home.
They were used to hardships and were not carried around on
pillows till they were six years old.
It seems strange to us to think of our late Deacon Collins as
a little boy, but Mrs. Alonzo Barber tells me she remembers
at the time Mr. Barrows held protracted
meetings, that he and
his sister Henrietta, with other children, were baptized.
He was
then about ten years old. She also remembers Mrs. John Collins
(the deacon's mother), Mrs. Eldad Barber (my grandmother),
and Mrs. William Sadd, going forward for prayers.
The singing in church was an important
feature, and was
at one time led by Colonel Frederick H. Sadd, who, with his
tuning fork pitched the tune, beat the time, and the choir followed his lead with uplifted voices as near together as possible.
The "Psalms and Hymns" was universally used and had to
be set to appropriate
music by the chorister.
If the leader was absent an attempt would be made to start
the tune, sometimes pitched so high that at the second verse
another member of the choir would hurriedly start on a lower
key, and "others boldly waded in and chased each other" till
they triumphantly
:finished the tune.
I do not know just when instrumental
music was introduced
but the need of a reliable guide was felt and a bass viol played
by A very Stoughton was used, though I think a euphoniad was
tried first.
�21
Mr. Lorin Loomis had a small melodeon which he brought
to church with him, taking it home at night.
He took it to rehearsals also. It was a happy day for the choir (and congregation too) when they were able to purchase their first organ .
The donation party was one of the events of the year. Perhaps not so much to the minister and his family, as it is possible
Will Carleton went behind the scenes in many a parsonage
when he wrote "Elder Lamb's Donation."
But to the young
people it afforded a social opportunity unequalled by any other
event.
Sleighing parties were planned and singing schools started
when all met together at the minister's and weddings were the
outcome.
The monthly missionary concert was a regular part of the
service, and not to be interested in foreign missions was falling
short of duty and bordered on heathenism.
Doubtless interest
in the subject was increased by the fact that Deacon Anson
Bissell's son Lemuel, went out as a missionary to India.
The young ladies who were appointed by the church , among
whom were Harriet Green and Fanny Skinner, to canvass the
parish and collect money for the American Board sometimes
met with sharp rebuffs as though begging money for themselves,
but oftener found members ready with money laid by in store
for those who should gather the Lord's tithes .
In order to preserve due decorum during divine service, a
tithing man was annually appointed.
He was to have special
care of the boys and girls in the gallery and also to waken sleepers in the congregation . The boys and girls naturally found
playing and whispering more interesting than the sixthlys and
tenthlys of the sermon, but Laura Ann, Amelia and Miranda
The boys who
found the reprimand at home not so interesting.
were taken by the coat collar down the gallery stairs dreaded
the approach of the tithing man and were made glad to keep
their ears busy and their tongues idle . Sometimes the pastors
took matters in their own hands and publicly rebuked disturbers.
Mr. Root once, when annoyed by whisperers, stopped in his sermon and in his deep toned voice said, "Boys, keep your tongues
between your teeth ." I can remember when the tithing man's
labors were confined to the singers' gallery, where the boys liked
to sit behind the singers.
Lorenzo Crane as tithing man was
not so much feared, as he persuaded to good behavior by sugar
plums instead of force. Perhaps the removal of the singers to
the front in the audience-room made the office less onerous.
The youth of today are more angelic and only need a figure head,
the present tithing man never exercising the power of his office.
Well do I remember those singers in the gallery, Chauncey
Stoughton, Wolcott, Gertrude, Charlotte, Cornelia, Sarah, Alice,
Laura, Josie, Helen, Edith, Henry, Frank, Revillo, Seth and
many others.
I think one only remains in the choir who was
among the gallery singers.
�22
I have mentioned the custom of standing in prayer time.
It was also the custom for the congregation
to rise when the
choir sang and turning with their backs to the preacher face
the singers in the gallery.
But there • came into our midst a
lady from the city unused to the custom, who stood facing the
minister and remained so in her decided but unobtrusive manner.
The next Sabbath and succeeding ones many followed her example until half turned one way and half the other.
The pastor
asked for uniformity and all quietly gave up the old custom.
So
much for the force of Mrs. H. W . Sadd's example.
Does memory bring back to us the sermon preached?
It
certainly does many texts . "And lo, a cake of barley bread
tumbled into the host of Midian," was the text of the first sermon Mr. Hawkes preached
here.
Mr. Winch
from Enfield
preached here one Sunday from the text, "Thou fool."
Others
had this text, "Speak unto the 'children of Israel that they go
forward;"
and another, "First cast out the beam out of thine
own eye and then shalt thou see clearly to pull the mote out of
thy brother's eye."
Rev. Daniel Phillips, whose stay here was only too short,
gave a discourse one fast day on the political phase which was
much enjoyed.
Mr. Hardy's prayer meeting talks made us feel the necessity
of our own right living and our responsibility
for our neighbors
conversion.
Mr. Wright in his farewell sermon spoke of the impossibility
of pleasing everybody . One wanted the minister to do things
in his way and another in his way, and perhaps he commits the
unpardonable
offense of having a mind of his own.
While the Seminary was located at East Windsor Hill this
church had the benefit 'of weighty instruction.
Doctor Tyler
and Doctor Thompson, professors in the Seminary, frequently
discoursed on Foreordination,
Total Depravity,
Perseverance
of the Saints, Original Sin, Future Punishment,
Sanctification
and Redemption.
Were candidates for admission to the church
supposed to fully understand
these subjects?
I remember talking with two daughters of a former member
here.
One joined the Congregationalists
and one the Methodists.
When asked why they did not both join the same church
the reply was, "I believe in total depravity and live up to it.
She believes in falling from grace and practices it."
Method"Assurance of 1:wpe," was a subject often discussed.
ist camp meetings were held in neighboring woods.
One year
the camp meeting ground was near where Elam Belknap now
lives.
A crowd had gathered when a down pour of rain drove
them to their tents and then from their tents to houses in the
neighborhood.
Lorenzo Dow, an eccentric preacher with great
force of character, with other Methodist brothers, found grandfather's hospitable
roof a shelter from the storm . Naturally
conversation
at meal time was upon the all engrossing topic of
�religion.
The great man insisted on ones knowing that he was
saved, and exclaimed, Oh, ye miserable, whining Presbyterians,
you hope and hope and are always hoping you are saved.
Now
I am just as sure of going to Heaven as I am of eating that piece
of meat.
In his earnestness
he gesticulated
so forcibly with
his hand that held the fork, that the piece of meat became
loosened and fell to the floor and the dog ate it up. This story
has been told with variations but Mrs . Howe will vouch for its
actual occurrence, as related, in the house now her home.
One hundred years is a long time in the retrospect and we are
obliged to pass over many familiar incidents , but the Civil War
was a time that touched men's hearts and tried men's souls.
From this church and community
went many of manhood's
fairest promise.
Forty years ago on the 25th day of August,
1862, a war meeting was held in the basement of this church.
At that time quite a number from this place signed their names
to the roll and enlisted for the army.
This was one of the most
solemn meetings ever held in this house.
The music was a drum
corps, but it brought tears from a great many of those present,
for it was almost certain that some of those boys would never
come back to meet with us again in the old meetinghouse.
With them went the prayers of those left behind.
With the
prayers went work and sometimes twice a week did the sewing
society meet to lay out and do work for the suffering soldiers.
Stockings were knit, bandages made of lint prepared with careful hand, and contributions
received and forwarded, not only to
personal friends but for the common cause in which our boys
enlisted.
There was no time or inclination
for church dissension.
The most important
feature in church work is spiritual prosperity.
In union is strength and strength means growth and
growth means not only increase in numbers but increase in
creature comforts in our place of worship, a sense of home life.
We are growing to feel the need of a place of social prayer.
Some of the best prayer meetings that I remember were
held in homes of the the people.
This audience room is too
large for our best social prayer.
Unless there is the heat of
brotherly love (and he that loveth God lovet h his brother also)
the prayers freeze in the atmosphere.
We should hate to find
ourselves in the condition of the church whose roof leaked badly.
Patching was of no avail, so they had to tear off the whole roof.
There they found accumulated
prayers that had ascended no
higher than the roof and had mildewed.
When the mid-week service is held there is a dampening
influence in the scattered
audience and we earnestly desire a
cozy, warm prayer meeting home and a place for our best social
development.
To that end we are working to collect funds
In building it we want the foundation laid firm
for a chapel.
and solid on the ;Rock Christ Jesus and its structure such as
shall contain only the Spirit of the Lord, even the Holy Spirit.
�24
Then shall we all agree that our church is a part of the new
Jerusalem.
That in its construction are the elements of strength
as of iron, the brilliance of the ruby, the transparence
of the
sapphire, the lustre of the diamond, and the ductility, softness
and malleability of gold. "Instead of our fathers shall be our
children."
They began worship in an unfinished building but they did
not hold that they had more religion on account of it. They
knew that their religion would enable them to carry forward
the work.
Their steadfastness
was such as progressed.
George McDonald says, "Some apparent
steadfastness
is
but sluggishness and comes from incapacity to generate change
or contribute
toward personal growth."
When Rev. W. S. Hawkes first came among us we felt our
weakness, then began our strength.
From paying a salary of $500, we agreed to pay $800.
Though applying for aid to the H. M. S. we were persuaded
by Mr. Hawkes that we could do the work ourselves and we did
it and not only paid his salary with reasonable promptness
but built a parsonage and gave more to missionary work than
in previous years.
Following this effort which some criticised as unwise and
impossible was a sifting of hearts as to whom the gold and
silver belonged, also a question as to whom the hearts belonged.
The barley loaf overturned the tents and revealed the insecurity
of our reliance.
Church members were pricked in their hearts
and the unconverted
said, "We would see Jesus."
Friends
near and dear to us accepted Christ as their Saviour and established the family altar, for Mr. Hawkes insisted on a thorough
consecration.
Our hearts go out with a bound of joy and thankfulness,
first to our Heavenly Father, then to our earthly fathers who
gave us this heritage.
And we would pass on to our children
more than we have received and cement the bond of Christian
love and fellowship.
MRS.
E. S.
BISSELL.
Exodus 22:12.-"Honor
thy father and thy mother; that
thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God
giveth thee."
Genesis 17:16.-"I
will bless her, and she shall be a mother
of nations."
Judges 5:7.-"Deborah
arose .....
a mother in Israel.."
The Bible gives great prominence
to the family; every
reader must have noticed it; almost at the beginning we have the
institution of the ideal family; one man and one woman, united
for life, thenceforward
one, so far as aims, interests and rewards are concerned.
At the two beginnings of the race,
Adam and Noah, it was "father and mother," two, not three
or more, father and mother; not a hint of more than one wife.
All nature exhibits the male as physically stronger, and the
�leader, which is also assumed in the Bible regarding man; and
often when the man is spoken of he stands for the whole
family . But while this is constantly so, there are not wanting
records of women of such individuality
that they are accorded
special notice; and wifehood and motherhood
are constantly
honored in the history of God's people . Sarah, Abraham's wife,
is particulariy named and promised blessings.
It is one peculiarity of our Holy Book, the Bible, that it makes prominent
mention of women and children; no such records are found in
the holy books of any other religion . Although in most of the
Bible history it is assumed that women exerted their due influence and performed their tasks, yet a multitude are named;
we readily recall Eve, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Jocobed, the
mother of Moses, Zipporah his wife and Miriam his sister ,
Deborah, "a mother in Israel," who was 9ne of the Judges or
Rulers, the mother of Jabez, whose name is not given, but whose
prayer shows that she was a notable woman; Ruth the Moabitess, Hannah the mother of Samuel, Abigail the wife of Nabal
and afterwards of David, the woman of Shunem of Elisha's day,
and others.
The stories of Ruth, Naomi, Abigail and the Shunemite show us a glimpse of the rural home life of those days, and
that in some cases, if not in many, it was sweet and godly; from
which we may gather that all through those troubled days there
were some who kept the traditions of the Fathers and feared
God; and it was just so in Europe preceding the Reformation;
through those Dark Ages there were among the people pure
he.arts and homes where the fire of Pentecost was kept burning.
During the later years of the Hebrew kings, preceding the Captivity, we hear little of the women; but we may be sure there
were good mothers to have produced Daniel, Shadrach, Meshack
and Abed-Nego.
At a later period the story of Zacharias and
Elizabeth and Mary the mother of our Lord, show us that good
women were not wanting in Canaan at that time . The Hebrews
had always honored women as other nations, as a rule, did not;
and the coming of the Savior put special honor on them;
and
from Mary of Nazareth down through the Christian Ages woman
has been receiving her right.
And it is along this particular
line of thought I am to speak today . From the sermons of
Stephen, Peter and Paul we see how much the early Christian
preachers dwelt on the story of the Fathers of the Hebrew people; the Fathers of the Christian church are just as worthy
of mention, and were as truly called of God as were the Patriarchs; and the leaders of the Reformation were their rightful
successors; and the Fathers and Mothers of America, those who
first came to these shores, and their immediate children, who
were the pioneers of these towns where Christian institutions
were planted and have flourished, are as worthy of mention on
the Lord's Day in Church service as those whose names are
written in the Bible. These are later Worthies of Faith, some
of whose names would undoubtedly
have been included in the
�XI th of Hebrews had that narrative been written one hundred
years ago instead of eighteen hundred years ago . In that remarkable
chapter women are named and others referred to .
On such occasions as this it is more common that the Fathers
receive mention; although often the term is used generically,
and the Mothers are just as much meant as the Fathers.
I love
and honor the Fathers; none more than I; but today I am to
speak particularly
of the Mothers-the
women of our early history; to emphasize what we of America owe to them.
Most of you must be aware that many of the first attempts
of Europeans to colonize America were made by " men only."
The Spanish colonies around the Gialf of Mexico were thus started
and only succeeded after many failures . The ever recurring
story makes it almost seem as though Spaniards thought men,
monks and the Inquisition
were enough , without good women
to be honorable wives and mothers . And what was true of the
Catholic Spaniards at the south was also true of the Protestant
English in Virginia, and at several places on the coast of Massachusetts, New Hampshire
and Maine . And in Canada Louis
XIV followed the Catholic Spanish method.
When the term of
service of his soldiers expired, which he had sent to Canada, he
used his influence to induce both officers and men to settle in
that land; but after a time that astute monarch was quite surprised and pained to learn that the French population was not
increasing, although half-breeds were multiplying
from Indian
mothers; Louis at once set about correcting his mistake, and
proceeded to provide French wives and mothers by Government aid; the prospect of a husband, a home, and a dower of
money was held out as an inducement
to women and girls to
cross the ocean to Canada ; and many ship-loads were thus sent
over; while much the larger number were respectable, yet among
so many thus secured, of necessity, there would be some of indifferent physical, mental and moral quality, which accounts
for the complaint of one of the prominent Nuns who had charge
of these immigrant women, who wrote of one ship's company
as a "cargo of mixed goods ." The historian Parkman says of
this movement of Louis XIV, "It is a pecularity of Canadian immigration, at its most flourishing epoch , that it was mainly an
immigration
of single men and single women.
The cases in
which entire families came over were comparatively
few."
The Protestant
English settlements
which were attempted
on the same plan, with "men only" were failures, all except
Jamestown which almost failed, and was only saved by the coming of virtuous women , the story of which is told in the popular
novel "To Have and to Hold."
The first English settlement which had a healthful and unfaltering growth from the start was that at Plymouth;
and the
women of the Pilgrim band, as wives, mothers,
sisters and
daughters, had been in consultation
with the men before they
left England for Holland, and while in the Low Countries they
�27
were in all the consultations
about coming to the:New World;
and the social unit that came in the Mayflower was not the individual, a man, and he perhaps, a poor debtor, a rake, or a
"ne'er
do well," but the social unit of the Pilgrims was the
family, the Christian family of father, mother and children; and
while there were some young men and women of marriageable
age in that company, they were not sent because of that fact,
but because they were members of some family.
And it is significant of the character of the Pilgrim band that a woman was
in the first boat-load sent ashore for final location at Plymouth,
and a woman, Mary Chilton, was the first to step on historic
Plymouth Rock.
Thomas Weston, a London merchant,
who posed as a good
Puritan, advanced money for the outfit and vessels of the Pilgrims; but soon became disgusted with the small and slow profits; it was his belief that the Plymouth party was hindered by
having their families with them; and he determined
to try for
quicker returns, and sent over a colony of men without family
incumbrance,
who located on the shores of Massachusetts
Bay;
but they soon so rioted among themselves
and so abused the
Indians that they came near causing their own destruction
and
that of the Pilgrims also, who saved them from the Indians and
then from starvation,
and I imagine it was the tender-hearted
Pilgrim women who prompted
the men to their rescue.
As the years went on the large and rich party in England
known as Puritans, found their lot under James I growing harder
and harder to bear; he seemed determined to keep the promise
he had once made that he would "harry them out of the land."
And when he died in 1625 it was soon seen that their lot would
be no easier under his son Charles I; they were now hearing
much about the success of the Plymouth
colony, and in 1627
and 1628 there were many deliberations
among them whether
considerable numbers should not emigrate to this new land; the
historian Green says these matters "were talked over in every
Puritan household;
it is certain that the women of these households knew all about the plans and purposes, and when all was
ready to begin, John Endicott was sent ahead to prepare the
way, and Bancroft significantly says that Endicott's
"wife and
family were the companions of his voyage, the hostages of his
fixed attachment
to the New World."
So woman was at the
first permanent settlement of Massachusetts
Bay as she had been
at Plymouth;
and when the Connecticut
Colony was about to
begin, the advance party was sent by sea and the Connecticut
River, and, as at Plymouth, it was a woman, Rachel Stiles, who
first stepped ashore at Old Windsor.
And it was the same at
New Haven, the godly and refining English woman was there.
Virginia, with its contract women for wives and mothers,
had a dubious growth for many years; what afterwards
gave
that Colony its distinguished
character was the fact that during
the Commonwealth
times in England many of the Cavaliers took
�2S
their families, wives and children, to that Colony, and their
women were among the very best of Old England; and in this
we see again the distinctive English Christian social unit-the
family.
The Pilgrim and Puritan women who helped make these New
England settlements a success from the start were some of the
very best of women-kind of any race or age. One has but to
read their record to admire them, and to discover the secret of
the dominance of their descendants in the making of this Nation.
In the Puritan party of England were many representatives
of the nobility, and some of them were planning to come to
America with their wealth, retainers and titles; but the major
part of the would-be settlers would not agree that the titles and
special privileges of the nobility should be recognized and continued in the new settlements; and so most of them held back
from coming; but quite a number of relatives and some of their
daughters came, and among them Lady Arabella, daughter of the
Earl of Lincoln, and wife of Isaac Johnson, an excellent man and
a great helper of the colony with money and service; in letters
of the time we read much of Lady Arabella's gentle Christian
graces; she and her husband were not rugged enough to endure
the hardships and were among the first to die. Bancroft says
of those early Puritans and their efforts, "Woman was there to
struggle against unforeseen hardships, unwonted sorrows."
As
half the Pilgrim band died that first awful winter at Plymouth,
so about 200 of the Puritans at Salem, Charlestown and Boston
during that first summer.
After describing their sufferings,
Bancroft says, "Their enthusiasm was softened by the mildest
sympathy with suffering humanity, while sincere faith kept
guard against despondency and weakness.
Not a hurried line,
not a trace of repining appears in their records.
. . . . .
For that placid resignation which diffuses grace round the bed
of sickness, and makes death too serene for sorrow and too
beautiful for fear, no one was more remarkable than the
daughter of Thomas Sharp, whose youth and sex, and, as it
seemed, unqualified virtues, won warmest eulogies. . . . .
.
Even little children caught the spirit of the
place; and in their last hours, awoke to the awful mystery of
the impending change, awaited its approach in the tranquil confidence of faith, and went to the grave full of immortality."
It
is easy to see that such men were made what they were, not
only by their faith, but by that faith shared and sustained by
their sweet, intelligent and godly women. If any of you are curious to know more of just what those women were, read the story
of Margaret Tyndall, third wife of Governor John Winthrop. Her
letters show the strong and beautiful character which sustained
and encouraged her husband during the planning for the Puritan
colony. He was a prominent lawyer of good estate and social
standing, and she from a family of still higher social grade; she
not only intelligently counselled him in advance, but cordially
�29
assented to his going at first alone when she must remain behind
for motherhood,
and afterwards
when he had not hidden one of
the trials from her, she was anxious to join him that she might
share them with her beloved husband and so help and cheer him
and advance
the great cause.
It is clearly evident that Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts
Bay and the Connecticut
Colonies
would never have been embalmed in song and story if it had not
been for the quality of our foremothers,
who possessed "unfeigned faith" like that of Lois and Eunice, the grandmother
and mother of Timothy.
And with their assured faith was their
placid devotion, their quiet but deep enthusiasm,
their unrepining endurance,
their gentle ministrations,
and their fervid love,
all of which made the men what they were-good
men nobler.
The story of some of those women has been written and given
the world; the story of many more ought to be carefully gathered
together and published to the world before the records are lost.
A concrete case often impresses us more than general facts; and
for my purpose today I have one at hand that is peculiarly appropriate for this place and occasion; for the "mother in Israel"
of whom I am about to speak was born in the town of which
Wapping and South Windsor was a part, and many of her descendents
have lived in this town; and some, I think, in this
parish, and some of them are, I think, here present today.
She
was not one of the first settlers of Plymouth
or Massachusetts
Bay, but the daughter of one of them, who soon left the seaboard
settlements
and came to this Valley and helped to make this
town and surrounding
region; so this woman and her descendants are a part of your history, and her story peculiarly appropriate to this occasion.
I refer to
ESTHER
W ARHAM.
Esther, or as sometimes written in the old records, Hester
Warham,
was born in Windsor, where her remarkable
father
was the first pastor.
It would be highly interesting
to speak
of that Forefather,
but I am to tell of his daughter, a Foremother.
Before her father came to this town he lived a short time in Dorchester, Mass., whose first minister was Richard Mather, another
remarkable
man.
His son Eleazar was called to be the first
pastor of the Northampton,
Mass., church, and needing a wife,
sought her in the family of his father's friend, John Warham;
and having wooed and won the young and attractive
girl, the
impatient
lover hastened
the marriage,
and Esther became a
bride when a month or two less than 15 years of age.
This need
not surprise us, for the character,
mission and environments
of
those first settlers hastened development
of body and mind, and
the Puritans in a corrupt age looked on early marriage as a safeguard of the purity of the home.
Some time before this Governor John Winthrop
of the Massachusetts
Bay Colony, was
�not yet 18 years old when first married in England, and his
second brid e was but 17 y ea rs old at marri age, and both unions
were looked upon with appro v al by all concerned at the time ;
and 70 y ears after the time of E sther's marriage Sarah Pierrepont ,
was onl y 17 years of age wh en sh e m a rri ed Jonathan Edwards ,
th e grandson of our Esther.
Anoth er common practice in those
early New Engl and da ys wa s th e interm arriage betw een
minister s ' families; Esther, a minist er 's d aughter was marri ed
to a minister , th e son of a mini ster , and afterwards six of h er
se v en daughters marri ed minist ers , and some of her sons took
minist ers' daught ers to wif e. This girl wife liv ed happil y with
Mr. Mather 'almo st ten ye ars , and after a widowhood of five
y ears married her husband's
succe ssor in the pastoral office ,
Solomon Stoddard , with whom sh e live d in happin ess 55 y ears.
H e was no common man; th e gr andson of Go v ernor Winthrop's
sis te r , he p os sessed gr eat abilit y.
The President Timothy Dwight of Yale College , one hundred
ye ars ago , said that h e "possessed , probabl y, mor e influence
than an y other clergyman in the Pro v ince during a period of 30
y ears.
He was regarded with a re v erence which will scarcely
be rendered to any other man."
Another said of him, " His look and behavior was such as
gave those who conversed with him, occasion to say of him, as
the woman of the prophet , 'I perceive that this is a man of
God.'"
The Indians called him "The Englishman's
God," and
his grandson, Edwards, said he was a "ver y great man."
Yet
it was he, more than anyone else, who introduced into the New
England churches what was called the "Half-way
Covenant,"
which was accepting
church m embership
before conversion,
whence it was called "a half-way covenant ."
Stoddard was a m an of intell ect and faith, and came to his
belief in the "Half-way
Covenant"
in a singular manner, in
which his remarkable
wife, without intending to lead to that
It is said that, in the common acresult, played a leading part.
ceptation of the term, he was not a converted man when he
began his Northampton
pastorate, and that when that change
did come to him the human agent that led to it was Mrs.
Stoddard.
The way in which the stor y has come down to us
shows how near we really ar e to those days.
My great-grandfather
was born in 1715 , and it is as though
he. having known some of the parties, told the story to his son,
my grandfather,
and he to m y father, and my father to me. We
are onl y three lives, if long ones , away from it . Dr. Increase N . Tarbox , who was born in East Windsor, so a son of
Windsor town, had the story from Dr. Thomas "\iVilli ams of
Providence,
who had it from Dr . Joseph Lath ro p of West
Springfield, who was ordained about the tim e E dwards left
Northampton,
when some must have been still liv ing who readily
recalled Stoddard and his wife Esther.
The nub of t h e story is
that as time went on Mrs. Stoddard feared that h er abl e husb and
�31
had not an experimental
knowledge of Christ as a Savior, which
opinion was shared by some of her intimate friends, a company
or godly women; and Mrs. Stoddard began praying with these
women for her husband's
conversion;
after a while he noticed
that his wife was keeping an appointment
a certain day of the
week, and asked her about it. ' Mrs. Stoddard frankly told him
the burden of her heart which deeply affected him.
Not long
afterwards,
when officiating
at the communion
table,
he
had a new view of Christ as his personal
Savior,
which
produced
a radical
change in his thinking
and preaching.
And it is a curious
and
interesting
fact, showing
how
personal
experiences
are apt to color
and
shape
our
thinking
and conduct, that that experience having come to
Mr. Stoddard
at the communion
table
he ever after
attached a new and deeper meaning to that rite, thinking it almost, if not quite, a saving ordinance.
There is much reason
to accept this story; and it shows both the strong individuality
and the deep spiritual piety of Esther W arham.
Mr. Stoddard
was an advocate
of the Half-way Covenant,
and practiced it; but through the influence of his wife he was so
spiritual minded, and his preaching so pungent, that it undoubtedly saved his congregation
from the spiritual deadness which
prevailed in most of the churches where the Half-way Covenant
was practiced;
and there was a spiritual
atmosphere
in that
town which was ready to be affected by the searching preaching
of Edwards, who succeeded Mr. Stoddard, and whose grandson
he was.
Esther survived her husband seven years, and thus as wife or
widow of pastors she was identified with that church for 77
years.
She was the mother of 13 children, some records say 15;
but 13 grew up, married and had families.
Hers was a remarkable
experience
and hers a remarkable
family.
Of some of the daughters a few words should be said:
The oldest was Eunice Mather, 'who married Rev. John Williams,
first pastor of the Deerfield Church; when that town was captured by the French•and
Indians in 1704, the whole family were
made captives and started for Canada; Mrs. Williams had a babe
but a few days old, and could not endure the hardship;
knowing
that she would soon fall out and probably be at once killed by
the Indians
she took a tender
and affectionate
farewell
of her husband,
in which the same strong
faith of her
mother Esther was prominent,
and calmly waited for her fate
which for her and her babe soon came from the merciless Indian.
Mr. Williams and the other children were carried to Canada.
All but one daughter· were afterward ransomed;
that daughter
would not be given up by the Indians,
afterwards
married
among them, and many of her descendants
are today numbered
among the Canada Indians.
Stephen,
one of the boys was
afterwards the first pastor of the Longmeadow
Church.
Esther
W arham's eldest daughter by Mr. Stoddard was named Esther
�32
after herself, and became the wife of Rev. Timothy Edwards,
first pastor of the first Church of this town; she is spoken of as
having been stately, handsome, of polished manners, thoroughly
educated, having a "business head," being an earnest Christian,
and altogether a strong character;
she and Mr. Edwards lived
together 64 years and she was the mother of 11 children, of
whom the fifth, and the only boy, was the distinguished
Jonathan Edwards; one boy among ten sisters! and perhaps that
was a reason of his sweetness and gentleness of character, for
although as bold as a lion, he was a man of exceeding gentle
spirit and breeding.
Those ten sisters were thorough scholars
and assisted their father in teaching the boys he fitted for Yale
College; like their mother they were tall, all six feet or more
in height! and Mr. Edwards used to facetiously
say he "had
sixty feet of daughters!"
Seven of the ten married in Connecticut, and from them are descended some of the most prominent
families of this town and State.
The youngest of them was Martha, who was the erratic wife
of Rev. Moses Tuthill, the second pastor of this parish, who, I
understand
preached here some time before the church was
organized.
Two of their daughters
inherited
some of their
mother's erratic ways, and lived in this part of the town, the
last of the two not dying till 1837. During my pastorate the
aged people used to tell me anecdotes
of the family, one of
Martha Edwards Tuthill who was a "thorn in the flesh" to her
husband; and perchance, a "means of grace" to him.
Passing over others mention should be made of another
granddaughter,
Jonathan Edwards' daughter Esther, who married Rev. Aaron Burr, President of Princeton,
N. J., College,
who was the father of Aaron Burr, Vice-President
of the United
States; a man of whom many strange things not to his credit
are told.
It has often excited wonder that Aaron Burr should
have been the unprincipled man he was with such a godly ancestry behind him.
But during my studies the past year I have
discovered that Jonathan
Edwards'
grandmother,
mother of
Rev. Timothy Edwards of our First Church, was a woman of
deranged mind, as well as other members of her family; and if
we accept the teaching of heredity we need not be surprised
that some strange and dark individuals appeared among her descendants, as three notable ones did; one each in three successive generations, of whom her granddaughter,
Martha Edwards
Tuthill of this town was one; her great-grandson,
youngest son
of Jonathan
Edwards,
was another; and Aaron Burr, her
great-great-grandson
was a third.
However we view her, Esther Warham was a remarkable
woman; of her mother we know little; but history says her
father was an uncommon
man; being sometimes called "the
gentle Warham," but a noted preacher, who left his impress on
Old Windsor.
It is of local interest to us today that Jolin Warham's daugh-
�33
ter next older than Esther was Sarah.
Her granddaughter
was
Elizabeth Moore Foster, whose body was one of the first buried
in the yard directly back of this meetinghouse.
not far from
where I stand.
I understand
that all the Fosters of this part
of the town, and all the descendants
of Edward Chapman
Grant, are descendants of this woman, granddaughter
of Sarah
Warham, sister of our Esther.
We have seen that Esther was wife of the first and second
pastors of the Northampton
Church and that the third was her
grandson, Jonathan
Edwards;
the fifth was her great-greatgrandson, who was the pastor 56 years, and a grandson of his
was, in our day, pastor 14 years; which shows that the husbands
or descendants of Esther Warham have been pastors of that one
church for 158 years of its history; or 160 if we count the two
years when another was associate pastor with one of the others.
A vast host of her descendants have been Congregational ministers; a half dozen have been College Presidents, some United
States Senators, some Governors, others representatives,
judges,
lawyers, physicians, and many others prominent
men and women of this country.
Among the families descended from her who have furnished
many noted ministers have been two lines of the Williams family,
the Edwards, Dwight, Mather, Stoddard, Hooker, Strong, Porter, Parsons, Baccus,
Hopkins,
Woodbridge,
Park, Hawley,
Sheldon, and Storrs families, and others I have not recalled;
and General W. T. and Hon. John Sherman,
outside the pulpit,
and who -can tell how many others?
As we read her story it not hard to trace her influence; we
see it through her uncommon daughters in the parsonages to
which they went in different parts of New England; her spirituality was felt in many parishes beyond Northampton.
It
reached the parsonage in South Windsor Street in a letter which
she sent her daughter Esther after the birth of Jonathan
Ed wards, congratulating
her on the birth of her son, and referring
to the death of her own daughter Eunice by the Indians, which
breathes a spirit of strong faith and implicit trust in the divine
wisdom.
But, womanlike, there is a postcript to the letter, in
the thoughtful
mother
appears. She says, "P. S. I would
have sent you a half a thousand pins and a porringer of marmalat if I had an opporturtity."
Her influence is clearly seen in
Jonathan
Edwards; many of her traits reappear in him, and it
is interesting
t,o know that he was her pastor some years and
that she lived to see the first great revival that came under his
preaching at Northampton.
How that must have rejoiced her
devotedly pious soul? When we become acquainted
with Edwards' grandmother
and wonderful wife we are not much surprised that he was the man he was. Of him Whittier wrote:
�34
"In the church of the wilderness Edwards wrought,
Shaping his creed at the forge of thought;
And with Thor's own hammer welded and bent
The iron links of his argument,
Which strove to grasp in its mighty span
The purpose of God and the fate of man!
Yet faithful still, in his daily round.
To the weak, and the poor, and sin-sick found,
The schoolman's lore and the casuist's art
Drew warmth and life from his fervent heart.
Had he not seen in the solitudes
Of his deep and dark Northampton
woods
A vision about him falI?
Not the blinding splendor that fell on Saul,
But the tenderer glory that rests on them
Who walk in the New Jerusalem,
Where never the sun nor moon are known,
But the Lord and His love are the light alone!
And watching the sweet, still countenance
Of the wife of his bosom rapt in trance,
Had he not treasured each broken word
Of the mystical wonder seen and heard;
And loved the beautiful dreamer more
That thus to the desert of earth she bore
Clusters of Rschol from Canaan's shore?"
This "wife of his bosom,"
"the beautiful
dreamer,"
was
Sarah, daughter of Rev. John Pierrepont of New Haven, who,
when but 13 years of age, had such remarkable religious experiences; "trances" Whittier calls them, but wholly unlike those
of so-called "mediums;"
but such religious exercises that the
repute of them went far and wide; and Edwards, before he ever
saw her wrote about them and her in his diary, and she became
his wife when but seventeen years of age, and seemed from the
first a matured character; and when the mother of six children
George Whitefield wrote, after a visit to her home, that she was
the most beautiful woman he had ever known; and who, from
abundant testimony, was as practical and winsome, as beautiful. She was a woman after the own heart of Esther W ar:rnm,
her grandmother-in-law.
And while the great men, the Fathers of New England, were departing into cold formality in
preaching and life, it was such women as this foremother and
her daughters
and others like them, who prayed, saw by intuition, and held by mighty but intelligent faith, the great center
of the gospel; and through Esther W arham, her daughter Esther
Stoddard Edwards, and her daughter-in -law, Sarah Pierrepont
Edwards, an influence was exerted on Jonathan
Edwards, by
grandmother, mother and wife, by whom more than by any other
man, the church of New England was brought back.
"
�-
�
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The one hundreth anniversary of the Wapping Congregational Meeting House : erected 1801 and occupied 1802 in South Windsor, Connecticut
Identifier
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b30921557
F104.W24 W37 1902
34023001507658
Description
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34 p., [3] leaves of plates : ill., port. 26 cm
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Wapping Congregational Church (Wapping, Conn.) -- History
Wapping (Conn.) -- Church history
South Windsor (Conn. : Town) -- History
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[South Windsor? Conn. : s.n.,]
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A program of the celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of the building of the Wapping Congregational Meeting House in South Windsor, Connecticut. It contains the program of the ceremonies and several papers on the history of the Congregation church in the area dating back to the 18th century.<br /><br /><br />The Church in Wapping, a section of South Windsor, was built in 1801 and initially served several denominations. The Baptists and Methodists later founded their own churches, so that by 1817, only the Congregationalists remained. They eventually organized as the Second Congregational Church in South Windsor in 1830. The Congregationalists later merged with the Methodists to found the Wapping Federated Church, which became the Wapping Community Church in 1936. The original appearance of the church is not known. It was altered to its current Greek Revival style in 1849.<br /><br /><a title="http://historicbuildingsct.com/?cat=9" href="http://historicbuildingsct.com/?cat=9" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://historicbuildingsct.com/?cat=9</a>
October eleventh and twelfth, nineteen hundred & two.
Pagination irregular pages 9 and 10 repeated
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Wapping Congregational Church (Wapping, Conn.)
Date
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[ 1902]
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8b5fdf17-d429-411f-8b0f-4e390e750893
Connecticut Churches
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96c1adbab36f629170a8b34b8f2e2008
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Text
1ItSTORICAL
SKETCHOF UNIVERSALISM
,
IN NORWICH ; CONN .
.A SERMON
DELIVEltED
BEFORE
THE
UNIVERSALIST
THE 5TH
OF ll!AY,
SOCIETY IN THAT PLACE,
1844 .
BY R. 0. WILLIAMS,
PASTOR .
'Tis from the past we shadow forth the land
Where smiles, long lost, again shall light our way ;
The past shall teach us vices to withstand,
And truth receive and wisdom's voice obey .
NORWICH, CONN.
GEO, W ; CONCKLIN,
1844.
PRINTER
,
ON
��TO
THE
READER
.
THE
following discourse has been written under many disadvantages.
The facts presented hav e been collected with considerable difficulty from
the verbal statements of old people in this town,~nd from other sources that
have come within my reach. I have aimed to give an accurate sketc h of
facts as they ·have come to my knowledge. Still I may ha ve fallen unconsciously into errors. The mode in which the facts were obtainedthe only mode in which they could be obtained-renders
it almost impossible to avoid all errors in giving a continuous chain of history. But such
.as it is, the Discourse is offered to the public, with the hope that its errors,
if any, may be freely pointed out, so as to be corrected at some future
time. It is respectfully dedicated, generally, to the members of the First
Universalist Society in Norwich, and specially, to the Secretary of the
Universalist Historical Society, Rev. T. J. Sawyer, of New York.
I take this opportunity to express my obligations to many valued friends
of different denominations to whose courtesy and kindness I am indebted
for much that is contained in this Discourse. It would be improper -p erhaps invidious to mention names. All are rememb ered with pleasure and
gratitude for their kindness,
If I have been so unfortunate as to wound the feelings of any in my
,sketch, I hope for their indulgence. I have deemed it proper to state
facts important and useful to the denomination to which I belong, whether agreeable or . disagreeable to any. If I have spoken with severity, of
any class of Christians, it should be rememb ere d that there are always
exceptions to general rules, and those in the wrong alone are the objects
of censure. While I regret that ther e are many formal professors who
degrade the Christian religion , I am happy to ackn owledge, that I find
,some in my intercourse with other sects, whose candor, liberality and
truly Christian feeling do honor to the nam e of Christ. Such instances
are truly refreshing amidst the continual turmoils of party strife and sec-tarian bitterness. I pray God that there may be more such, and that all
classes of people may come nearer to each other in spirit and feeling, if
they cannot in creeds and theories,
THE AUTHOR.
��DISCOURSE _,
"In qui re, I pray thee, of the former age, and prepare thyself to the search of
!heir father s.-J ob, viii, 8.
THE entreaty in this passage, addressed to Job by one of his
three friends, may not be inappropriate for the consideration of
peopl e in other ages and different circumstances . All of us
:mrely have need enough of the wisdom and instructio n to be
gained from the generations of our fathers ; but, in order to
gain that wisdom, we must consult their actio ns, and make
inquiry concerning the events of former times. As a denominati on, it is important for us to ascertain those things which
relate to the condition and progress of our distinct iv e views in
times past, particularly in our own neighborhood.
We have
all a common int erest in the inh eritance left us by our ancestors: and to all, I doubt not, it affords a melancholy pleasure
to look back through the dim domains of the past, an d ascertain how they lived, thought and felt with reference to the
great subject of religion.
Our Puritan forefathers crossed the untravelle d expanse of
Atlantic waters, and braved the dangers of the ocean, the vicissitudes of the seasons, and the perils of interm in able forests,
for the sake of enjoying unmolested their own religious opinions . They bore with them and tral'l.splanted into a new and
virgin soil the severe principles of Calvinistic theology fresh
from the author, and enforced by the stern simplici ty of Puritan worsh ip. The country was rapidly settled by a devout
.and pious people. Religion urged them from their yo uthful
hom es ; and to enjoy and preserve it unimpaire d appe ared to be their chief concern. A few bold and ad.venturous
spirits, crowded" and oppressed even in their new home, pene ,
trated into this State and settled on the borders of the Connecticut. And from thence, in 1660 , by a singular incident regar- •1·rumbull's Hist. of Conn., V. I, I'· 58,
�6
ded as a spe cial evidence of divine favor, a settlement was ef~
fected in this town under the auspices of a Mohegan chief.*
On th e settlement of th e State, its ecclesiastica l affairs were
arranged accordin g to the views and feelings then existing
among th e peopl e; and, for nearly an hundred years thereafter, remained u nchanged in all their essential feat ur es. Calvinism, modifi ed ind eed by the petty superstitions of the age,
held dominion ov er th e common mind . The immigrants,
just emerged from the thralldom of Popery, still retained that
superstitious reverenc e for the clergy imposed by the mothe r
church.
Co nsequently, to the clergy were comm itt ed chiefl y
the care and oversi ght of their souls, and the ge n eral concer ns
of religion.
F ew took upon themselves the responsibili ty of
thinking in a chann el different from the common train of
thought~ and of con.seq uence, there was little or no diversity of
faith-no
colli sion of mind with mind,and no jarring interests
or principl es to dcaw out and sharpen the sword of controve rsy. Here sies, which might occasionally spr ing up in indiv id ual minds, w ere imm ediately suppressed, by phys ic al, rather
than intellectu al or moral force . The whipping post was one
of the mild est arguments used to suppress them.
The cree ds
and systems of discipl ine became a matter of S tate po licy and
were sustai _ned by civil enactments.
The p eop le w ere wi llingly taxed for th e support of the clergy, and those taxes were
scrupulously
exacted, even to the sacrifice of the po or man's
cow, or hi s la st bu shel of grain .
Nor wa s r eli gion protected with refer ence merely to its pe~
cuniary support.
Laws were enacte d comp elling attenda nce
on church servi ces, and imposing fines and other penalt ies for
neglect.
Ev en Le g islative resolves were passed, ca ll ing upon
the "Reverend Eld ers" to make inquiries concerning the sta te
of religion and "s end in to the h on orable, the Governor , wha t
they find. " And th en other laws were added to prevent the
profanation of the Sab bath , and espec ially "the unseasona ble
meeting of young people on th e evening af ter the Sabba th day
and at oth er tim es ."t
Thus the church continu ed for a long
"In their wars with the Narragansetts,
the Mohegans were besc iged in their
fort on the banks of the Thames, and reduced to great extremity . Informed of
their condi tion, a Mr . Thomas Leffingwell of Saybrook found means to re lieve
them, and for this service he received from Uncas, the Mohegan chief, a deed of
the town of Norwich.
This probably strengthened the friendship between th e
Mohegans and En gl ish . Soon afte rwards, the deed was confirmed to a com pany
in Saybrook, and Rev. Mr. Fitch, with most of his church r emoved from tha t
place and settled in this town.
tTrumbull' s Hist. of Conn., Vol. II, p . 20, 21. This law seems to haveoee n
pften put in force. Som e years before the war of the r evolut ion. the mot her of
�7
tim e in the same unb roken current, agitated indeed , by vario us
quar~els and minor difficulties on unimportant points; but its
general faith, its ~ode of wors~ip, clerical in~uence and even
superstitions remamed unquest10ned and undisturbed .
,
It was not until about the year 1740, that this deep drea m of
listless quietude in religion was disturbed, and the peop le
aroused with wonder at the appearance of something new .--T his was the great revival that forms so conspicuous a pa rt in
the ecclesiastical history of New England, sometimes calle d,
in the expressive langu age of that age, the "New Light S tir. "
I t commenced simultaneously
in different parts of the coun try ;-- in Massachusetts under Rev. Jonathan Edwards th en of
N orthampton-in
New Jers ey under Rev. Geo rge T enn ent
and others; and was greatly advanced by Rev. George Whit field, who visited this country during its progress.
It spr ead
th rouo-h the country in a manner which indicated the power
of Gtd at work for the accomplishment
of wise an d ben evo lent purposes.
People were aroused as from a long dre am 1and
looked around in vacant amazement upon the wonde rs of the
scene. All classes were affected with a common feeling offear '
and solemnity.
The old citadel of Connecticut orthodoxy
was shaken to its base and trembled to its topmost stone. Even
its celebrated " Platform" was agitated by the interna l move ment.
No one, however, at first entertained fears for th e
creeds or the interests of religion.
But it soon beca m e man i•
fest that this strange work was undermining the long est ab-,,
lished customs of the church.
An alien spirit was silently in sinuating itself into the revered institutions of the land , and
in terrupting the unbroken repose of other yea rs. St anding
upon the present point of time to survey the past, the Ch ris tian,
of liberal and comprehensive views, may well ask, w h ether'
this revival was not one of the best things for the rea l int erests
of religious truth that ever occurred in New Engla nd ? It
surely broke the enchantment of the times, and gave impetu s
to a spirit of inquiry which subsequent ages have not suppressed.
People who had long embraced a mere formal iteli-gion, and were embraced by it with open arms, now began to
look around, inquire into the reality and think for therns eh res·.
I n discreetly for th eir own inter ests , did some of the clergy encourage lay exhortation and public dissections of te lhrfous
feeling. Others objected.
The people, however, soon found
Mr. George Moore, then a girl spent the night, one Saturday nig h t in th !! spring
of the year, at a neighbor's house. Returning early in the morn in g she loitei-ed
by the way to see the ice move down the Shetucket, which was the n breaking
up. Here she was discovered with others, by a special guard ian of the law and.
:fined in the sum of five shillings.
'
�sthat they could speak and exhort to good acceptance
them ~·
selves;
and they improved
their gifts with little reserve or
caution,running
even into extravagances
of almost every kind.
But these were ultimately
advantageous
to the cause of religion.
They served to unveil the follies and formalities of the
existing order of things ; diminish the mawkish veneration in
which that order was held, and show the people their right
and ability to think and act for thems elves.
.
Nor was it lon g before they began to be dissatisfied
with the
old " standing order," and to withdraw
from it and form other
churches.
Those who seceded were called Separatists.
As
their numb ers increased a deep spirit of inquiry spread through
the country,
Never had there been a period, in this country,
of so much and so va1ied inquiry on the subject of religion as
resulted from that revival.*
These things seem to · have been:
divinely ordered for the purpose of preparing
the minds of the
community
for the reception of a new truth from a messenger
of univers al reconciliation.
The power and fruit of this revival had been greatly manifr.sted in the counties of vVindham and New London.
Many
churches of the Separatists
had been formed in various parts .
Some of these became Baptist in faith and discipline;
but generally they adopted the old doctrinal
platforrns of the New
England churches,
and aimed in their reform, only at a higher
degree of practical
and experimental
religion . Churches
of
this kind were formed at New London,
Stonington,
Preston,
Norwich, Lyme and some other places in this neig-hborhood.t
Besides these there ·were a few Quakers,
and at Groton there
appeared a singular sect called Rogerenes.
Th.e controversy
between
the Separatists
and the standing
churc h es, like most other religious
controversies,
was violent
and acrimonious.
The former were unsparing
in their cen-:
sures, and severe in their accusations
of pride, hypocrisy,
and
other vices; and, having by such improper
charges awakened
resentment,
doubtless
experienced,
on that account,
much
abuse and persecution.
As the breach became wider,
the
standing churches gradually
lost their- hold on the public mind, .
fewer superstitions
were interposed to arrest inquiry 1 and the
mass of people seemed to enjoy mor-e freedom
of thought
and of conscience.
At an early period, a church of the Separatists
was formed
"'See a Sermon on the" Vanity and mischief of presuming
on things above
our measure, " delivered in Norwich in 1774, by Rev. Joseph Huntington,
authoi.,
of "Calvinism
Impro ved."
tTrumbull'e
History, Vol. II, p. 538.
�9
or a congregation collected in th1s town, which had Its chief
seat in the neighborhood of the village now called Bean Hill. -tt
Ther e th ey held their meetings whenever they cou ld find a
kindred spirit to dispense to them the wo rd of life. A Mr .
Gamaliel R eyno ld s,a resident of the town and a mason by trade,
but a man of strong tho ug h 1.u1cultiv ate<l mind, usually officiated as their minister.
Th eir ffi1mbers were small, and the
treatment w hi c h they r eceived was not always suc h as th e
Christian r elig ion enjoins, or they had a right to expec t. The
oppr ess ion and severity which th ey experienced made them
liberal towards all seriou s and pious innovators on the estab~
lished church es. Dr . Lord, however, the pastor of the first
church, pursu ed towards them a wiser policy--tteating
them
with uniform kindness-and
thereby secured th eir attac hment
.
in a m eas ur e, to himself and his church .
Before the r ev iv al alr ea dy mentioned, an Episcopal society
had been organ ized in th is town, undet the patronage of the
British government.
In 1769, a fe,v years before the war of
the R evolution, R ev . John Tyl er became its priest, About the
same time, th e church; now ca ll ed the 2d Con g regat ional soNeiciety, was und er the pastoral care of Rev. Mr. Judson.
ther the Baptists nor Methodists had any existence in town as
a separate society at that time.
.
. .
.
Such was th e state of r eligious affairs in Norwich and th~
towns adjoining, when, in th e autumn of 1772, Mr. John
Murray, a pr eache r of univ ersa l salvatio n first made his ap ~
pearance among th e citizens and called their atte nti on to a new
and peculiar doctrine.
Having b een about t\vo ye~rs in
America and pr eac h ed in several pl aces south of Ne\v York,
he had started from that city with a view of going to N ew~
port, R. I. Pa ss in g by land throu gh Connecticut, he stopped
with a friend at Guilford, \v h ere h e was invited to d eliver his
message.
Her e he tnet With several ge ntl emen from Norwich,
who had b een to New H ave n on busin ess and were then on
their return. t Among th em ·was Mr. Samu el Post, who invi ~
ted him to visit this town and spea k to tbe people on the great
subj ec t that engaged hi s attent ion.
On his arrival, a small
~
house of worship , probably the . Separatists' meeting house a.1
ready referr ed to, was provided for him ; but not being- suffi ciently sp ac iou s, the doors of the great m eet ing house occupied
by Dr. Lord w ere thrown open, and, as h e observes, were
.. Th e old school hou se or aca demy recently pulled down at that plac e to make
room for another building, is said to have belonged originally to the Separatists 1
and was used as their p lace of wors hip .
tSee life of Mur ray, page 168.
2
�lb
never afterwards shut against him."
Here he delivered his
message of lov e to a large and attentive audience, equally de ~
lighted with his matter and his manner.
Here he discoursed
upon an important point of theology, which, though interwo~
ven with the whole texture of divine revelation, had been allowed no place in the religious platforms of this new country.,.
After a short stay he resumed his journey to Newport;
but
he left behind him :ci. ~eerl fhat was not sbon to perish.
He
found many warm friends whose hearts were open both to receive his doctrines and m.inister to his necessities.
His second visit was probably made late in the fall of 1773;
on his return from Boston, where he had been for the first
time.
In July, 1774, he left New York in order to make an~
other visit to Boston, and other important places in New England ; and during that journey he came to this place again. Every succeeding visit increased the number and the attachments of his friends, and extended the influence of his senti ment in the community.t
From that time his visits to this
town became more and rnore frequent-as
often as once or
twice a year for several succeeding years.
These gave occasion to many interesting incidents which are still remembered
with much pleasure by some of the older inhabitants
of the
town.
On one occasion he had a meeting appointed at the old
meeting house of the seyond Congr egationa l Society, now under the care of Rev. Mr. Bond.
When he arrived at the place,
he found a lar ge number of people assen1bled ai-ound the
house , but the door was shut and no one could find the key to
gain admission.
Some of his enernies had taken this rr,ethod
to preve 'nt his entering and desecrating
the church.
Soon ,
however, a ·window was raised and a young man lifted in;
the door was opened and l\Ir. Murray mingled with the crowd
as they entered, and ere his enemies were aware of his entrance, he had taken procession of the pulpit and commenced
his sermon.
But the most important event that occurred in ·his ministry
in this place, was a discussion which he held, about the year
·11
"His first sermon is said to have been delivered from Gen. xlix; 10. "The
sceptre shall not depart from _Judah nor a Lawgiver from between his feet, until
Shiloh come, and unto .him shall the gathering of the people be." ·
• tSome evidence of the extent of his influence and the number of his friends
may be found in the number of books circulated among them.
In 1 776 an edition _of the Hymns of James and John Reily was published by subscrlption at
Burlmgton, N. J. A copy of that _edition now in town contains, among the
names of subscribers, about forty who are set down as residents of this town.Probably Relly's Union, Dr. Chauncey's anonym ous works, and some others of-a
·· sim ilar kind had a circulation equally extensive.
�11
1779. with the R ev. N ath anie l Niles," a gentleman of consid o.
erab le talents and acquirements who was then a resident of
this town. Th is originated in some doings of the Second Society with refer ence to Mr. Nathaniel Shipman, father of the
pres en t Jud ge Shipman, who was then a member of that society and even a deacon of the church.
It seems that Deacon
Shipm an had depar ted, in a measure, from the doctrinal platform s of th e church,and imbibed the sentiments of Mr . Murray.
For entertaining such heretical views, he was called to an account by th e pa s tor in charge of the second society, who appears to h ave been less liberal and lenient than either Dr. Lord,
or Mr. Strong who h ad now become his colleague.
When
the tri al of his case was had, he was permitted, singularly
enough to be sure, to call on Mr. Murray to assist him in the
defenc e.t After consid erabl e debate, in which Mr. Murray
took a conspicuous part, the case seems to have been dropped
without any decid ed action upon it. .Mr. Shipman absented
Jtims elf, in a great m eas ure , from the church and its meetings;
and some years afte rw ards, _if I mi stake not, he became a Swedenbor g·ian.
Mr. Niles, with perhaps Dr. -Lord, appeared at the meeting
to assist the church against its delinqu~nt deacon. But not .
satisfied with th e result, h e proposed an arrangement with '
Mr. Murray for a public discussion of the chief question in
dispute at another time. A meeting was accordingly held for
that purpo se, thou gh , probably without any formal adjustmen t
of preliminaries.
The discussion wa s brief, but character ized
with much tact, and acuteness of reasoning on both sides ; and
result ed, whatev er might have been its true m erits, in secu"Mr. Niles was not settl ed here as a mini ster but engag·ed in. sec ular business.
H e was born in Braintree, M ass ., and educated for the ministry.
He afterwa rds
came to this town, m arried a young lady of wealth, a sister of our fellow citizen
Simon L ath rop, and th en turn ed his attention to secular pursuits.
After the war
of the revolution h e remo ved to Fairl ee, Vt. H ere h e become distinguished as a
politician and was elected a member of Congress. Hi s popular talents gained him
friends, and set him forth as a mark for th e shaf ts of his politica l enemi.es. Aft er
filling some oth er stations of honor and trust, he died in 1828 aged 86 years, -
All en's Die . of Am . B iography.
·
On e of th e writers of a political and lit erary satire called the "Echo," originally
publi shed in the secular papers in thi s State, between 1790 and 1800, h as the following languag e with reference to Mr. N iles and hi s conn ection with politics,
•• In V ermont where the R everend N iles
To hi s own State confines his wiles."
t See Mr. Murray's accoun t of this transaction in hi s Lett ers and Sket ches, Vol.
I, p . 65. Old people acqua int ed w ith the facts say that this was the meeting de,
scribed in tha t L etter.
�12
ring a popular influence in favor of Mr. Murray and the cause
he had espoused.*
But still dissatisfied,Mr. Niles appears to have been desi:irous
of making another attempt to gain his point. What could
not be obtained in open conflict. was sought for by a resort to
stratagem. Accordingly, when ·Mr. Murray had a meeting appointed at the old church of the second society, several of
the neighb_oring clergymen ~oak adv'.1ntage ~f the oppor~unity
to attend m order to surpnse and silence him. Mr. Niles, if
not the' instigator of this movement, was at least among the
number present.
They entered the church and seated them~elves in a single pew, where they could look the speaker full
m the face. lt had been the custom of Mr. Murray to select
custom which he adhis subject before entering the church-a
hered to on this occasion.
But when he came and found these
clergymen all there, knowing many of them, and suspecting
their designs, he dropped the subject which he had chosen, and
took for his text the passage in Math. xxiii, 2. '' And the
Scribes and Pharisees sat in Moses' seat." And he managed
th€! subject so adroitly to their disadvantage and threw them
into such a confusion that no one attempted a reply.
Among the early and steadfast friends of i\ifr. Murray was
Rev. John Tyler, formerly rector of Christs 1 Church in this
city. He has long been claimed. and not without reason, as a
believer in the final salvation of all men.
Mr. Murray speaks
of him in connection with others, as "among the number of
those who, if they were not fully with him in sentiment, have
uniformly
discharged
to,.vards him the duty of Christian
friends."t
He wrote a series of sermons in defence of the doctrine which were afterwards published anonymously,
nnder
and Salvation clearly
the title of " Universal Damnation
proved by the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament."They were first published in Boston, without the author's consent, from a manuscript copy "found among the papers of a
deceased member of the first Uni versalist church in that city. 11t
In 1815 an edition was published in this town by Gurdon Bill,
Esq., now of Lee.yard, under a different title. This gentle"Some time after the discussion, Mr. Niles met with a Mr. Bellamy, a brother
clergyman of Preston, who said he wished he had been present at the time, he
would have silenced the brawler.
Bot Mr. Niles shook his head and dryly observed in reply, "I don't know about that - he was the worst fis)l that ever I har\dled in my life!"
tSee Life of Mµrray p. 185.
=tSee the preface to the edition published in Boston in 1826. It seems that
there were two editions published prior to that of Mr. Bill-one
41 Bo,stQn, an~
�i3
man before their publication , called on Mr. Tyler to ascertain,
frorr; his own mouth whether the sermons were actually writ ten by him , and contained hi~ views at ~hat tiine on the suh ~
jects discuss ed . And he received uneqmv~cal _assurances that
such was th e fact . But Mr. Ty ler, at this tun e appeared to
manifest an unwillingne ss to appear before the public as their
author or even as a full believer in the final sa lvation of all
manki~d.*
In 1809, he delivered a Chri _stmas Se rmon , which
for its liberal principles, caused some xc1ternent amon g his pa rishion ers and ·was mad e an occasion for charging him with
Universalism.
As th is his supposed heresy was industriously
whispe re d about to his disadvantage , he was probably induced
to p11blish the sermon wit h some exp lanations for the pm 'pose
of quietirw the fears of hi s people and stilling the tongne of
common g~ssip. To the printed copy he added a note denying
that Universalism is taught in it, but carefully avoiding any
In this
denial that he hi1m-elf was a believer in the doctrine.
note he professed to think his h eare rs had base d th eir charges
on a mis conception ofhis m ea niug, in" not distinguishing be tween universal Redemption and universa l Salvation." The
former , h e maintains is taught, both in the Scr ipture s and by
the Liturgy and Creed of the chur ch of England.
But he is
singularly careful not to say that the latter is not taught in the
Scripture11, or not believed by himself. He m erely affirms
that" ther e is not one sente nce of Universalism (i e 'universal
salvation ') in the sermon.t
And in this he was correct; for
surely no candid churchman could h ave found fault with it
unless there had been some previous indications of his incli :
ning towards that doctrine. The extreme sensitiveness of the
people, therefore, on this occasion, together with his own
course, does, of its elf afford proof of his faith in the final salvation of all men. But, though such was h is faith, and though
the other some years afterwards, in Salem . Mr. T yler had no connexion with
the ~dition published here, other than to affirm the aut h enticity of the sermons ;
~or 1s it certam that they were ever deliv ered before his congregation in this city;
1f _s~,th ey _must have been delivered prior to the yea r 1800. They were delivered
ongmall y ma town n ear Boston, probabl y Sa lem.
*This edition, ent itled" The Law and the Gospel, clearly demonstrate d in
si~ serm?ns," was printed from a manuscript copy which Mr . Bill obtai ned in a
ne1~hborm? town. He knew not th e autl10r at that time, except from rumor
which ascribed them to Mr. Tyler; and he went to Mr. T. to ascertain the facts
and get permission to place his name in the tit lepageas author. But while Mr. T.
fran kly confessed tha t he wrote the Sermons, h e chose to withhold his name from
the publi c,_as its appe~rance mig~t involve him in a controversy which, in his old
age, he wish ed to avoid. Such, 1f I have not mistaken him is the substance of
Mr. Bill 's _statement with reference to this subjec
'
tSee Discour se on the Nat ivity of Christ, Norwich, 1810 .
�14
he had been a strong friend of Mr. Murray and Mr. ·winchester, yet, during th e latter part of his life, he probably gave but
little encouragement to their views.
After a faithfu l and laborious ministry of fifty-four years he di ed in 1823, * and I may
presume th at he died, as h e had lived, in the belief that all
mankind will :finally be restored to holiness and happiness.t
During th e ear ly part of Mr. Murray's minist r y in this town,
several gentlemen who had become his followers, and were
captivated with his sent im ents, made at tempts to preach the
rro this th ey were probably influenced in some
doctrine.
n1easure, by the Separatists' movement which enco ura ge d lay
exhortation, and the success of Mr. Murray, who, with no human authority,t had entere d up on th e work of the ministry;
but chiefly by the solemn impressions of their own obligations
to serve God in promotin g what th ey believed to be truth.§,.--Among this number was a gentleman named Daniel Hall, who
was devout and sincere in his profession, but not possessed of
very popular talents as a public speaker.
He was not a r eg ular preacher while he believed and patroniz ed the sentim ents
of Mr. Murray.
He merely made an a ttempt at the ministry
of reconcili at ion; but his success was no t equal to his desires,
his zeal or his ex pectatio ns. After preaching a few times, he
relinquished his und ert ak ing. But subsequently he changed
his views of theology , and became a preacher of the Congrega·
tional order. I\
The doctrine of univ e rsal sa lvation in this town found a more
efficient and steady-minded
advocate in Mr. Gamaliel Reynolds already noticed.
As he had been conn ected with the
Separatists, and accustomed to thinking for himself, his mind
"The
inscription
on hi s tombstone
states that, "Having fulfilled his ministry
His soul took its flight from this vale
of misery Jan. 20, 1823, in the 81st year of his age."
tHis friends and relativ es at th e pre sent time, seem disinclined to admit that he
was a full believer in Universal Sa lvation, especia lly towards the close of his life;
but the evidences are quite conclusive that suc h was th" fact. He is said to have
confessed it a short time before his d eat h to Mr. David Tracy and so me others.
tMr. Murray, while in town was onc e asked for his commis sion to pr eac h, and
immediately drawing from hi s p oc ket , the Bibl e." There," said he, "is my commission; I own no hum an authoritv."
<§Dea. Cl eve land and 'Nm. Pitt Turn er are said to have spoken some in public in favor of Mr. Murray's doc trine. But the former, unsuccessful in his efforts,
soon renounced it; a nd the latte r, from eccentricity an d the want of piety and perseverance rather than the want of talent was incapacitated for th e mini sterial profession, or at least did not see fit to pur sue it.
flAfter be became a Congregational pr eac her, h e removed to Long Island-was
at Sagharbor for a time, and finally settled over a church on Shelter Island where
he died.
he was ready to depart and be with Christ.
�was doubtl ess mor e easily i11fluenced in favor of the sentiments
of Mr. i\11.urray. At what time he embraced the doctrine, I
hav e not been ab le to ascertain; and there is som ething indefinit e in every one's recollection respecting the length of time
that he preached it-the
gene r al impr ession, however, among
old peo ple, is, some fifteen or twenty years . He pursued his
usual avocations during th e wee k, and on the Sa bbath exercised
his gift in speaking-sometimes
in private dwellings and someA small circle of
tim es in schoolhouses and othe r places.
friends usua lly attende d his m eetings and listened with devout
attention to his discourses.
His communications, though often
charact e rized with strength of mind, originality of thought,
and striking illustr a tion, were much less grace ful and attractive
than those of Mr. Murray and other s, But his sincerity and
piety served to make some amends for his lack in other respects.
Mr. 1\1urray speaks of him as a sincere and amiable man,
somewhat unacquaint ed with the do ctrin e and unpoli shed in
his manner of communicating it." After he became a Universalist he was called to experience some of the common buffetings of unpopular sects. But these he bor e w ith patience, always content ed with his lot, a nd even me t with some happy
incid ents to ch ee r and e ncour age him. Among other things,
while he was a Separatist, he enjoye d the fri end ship of a Mohegan preach er name d John Cooper, who en tertained the same
religious sentim ents, They both freely applied to each other
the tit le of broth ei·. But after Mr. Reynolds had changed his
views, his tawny friend cam e to see him and converse with him
on the subject. Mr. R. r eceived him with g rea t cordiality and
still applied to him the affectionate appellation of brother. After hearing it awhile, Coop er started back and observed with
an arch smile, '' Not quit e so fast, I guess it is not more than
cousin now!"
Mr . Reynolds was a poo r and hard working man ; but he
live d to a very advanced age and died as he had lived, in the
•The following from Mr. Murray's" Letters and Sketches," Vol. II , page 345,
is sa iil by old people in town to refer to Mr. Reynolds:
" I rejoice much to see our fri en d R., he did us th e favor to preach for us ; he
is anbonest soul and we all Jove him . But so lon g has h e dwelt among those
who are, as yet, unacquainted with God as manifested in th e flesh, that although
this God in his abundant mercy, hath at length manifesteu himself to his soul,
h e can yet hardly sp eak the lauguage of heaven.
1f he could conceive more
readil y and utter with Jess rapidity, he wo uld be abunda ntly more useful. But
his own soul is greatly refreshed, and whenever he can get the better of himself
in word as well as deed, h e will he better calculated to hold forth the words of
life."
�18
be for many years afterw ards. Mr. vVinchester was a popular
spe ak er, a man of pecuEar talents and fervent piety, comprehen si ve in his vi ews, and solemn and impressive in his manner.
On this account he was received with great cordiality by those
who sympathiz ed w ith his sentiments.
Mr. Tyl er particularly, treat ed him with marked att ention and kindness, and allow ed him to preach in bis church, as he had previously ex!ended the same courtesy to Mr. Murray.
He visit ed this tow!1.
several ;times in the cour se of two or three years previous to his
death ; and, during that time,an edition of his "Lectures on the
Prophesies" was published here.*
In 1795, he was invited to
d eliver an address before the Masonic fraternity on the occasion
of celebrating the festival of St. J ohn.
This performance was
highly spoken of and well received by all classes, and served
to render him 1nore popular and increase the number of his
friends.
He finally went to Hartford where he di ed in 1797,
beloved and r es pect ed ev en by his religious opposers.t
In the year 17 96, the po sthumous work of Dr. Joseph Huntington, entitled" Calvinism Improved," was published at New
London.
Dr. Huntin g ton w as a native of this town, and had a
large cir cle of friends and r elativ es here by whom he was much
beloved and respected . Cons equently,
his work, though a
source of great mortification to them, was extensively
circulated her e, a nd performed its part in advancing the doctrine of
uni versa! salvation.
After the death of Mr. "\Vinehester, the doetrine seemed, for
a number of years, to take rather a backward movement ; at
least it did not advance as it had done for some years previous.
Several causes contributed to produce this result.
Dr. Strong
who had now become the sole pastor of the first church, was
mild and liberal in his treatment of Mr. Murray's followers, and
thereby retained some of them in attendance on his meetings.
"In 1792, Mr. John Trumbull published a pamphlet of 80 pages containing
two of these Lectures;
and in that pamphlet he gave notice of his intention to
Jrnblish the whole work, "in monthly numbers, each number to contain two
lectures, the whole course comprising eighteen numbers besides the two just published."
This intention was carried into execution during the years 1794-5.
The work was issued in four volumes.
The name of Thomas Hubbard
appears as printer.
His widow continued in Hartford until the fall after his death; and then she
came to this place, where she spent several months in the family of Mr. Simeon
Hubbard.
She was here probably on b11siness connected with the publication
of his Lectures.
She afterwards went to Philadelphia,
and thence to New York
where she kept a boarding house for a time, said, perhaps falsely, to have been
not of v ery good repute.
Her subsequent history is involved in obscurity. - -See
Stone ' s Biography of Winchester,
p. 233.
t
�19
l\'Ir. 'fyler wa s him self a Univer~alist, and of consequence ma ny, who were di ssatisfie d w ith other church~s, went to his
m eeti ng, wh en th ey had no m eeting of their own sentiments. The liberality exten ded towards them rendered them easy and
less aaxious to estab lish a society of th eir own views. Meantime Mr. M urra y had ceased to visit the place as often as usual, and the separa te inter est in favor of his sen tim ents began to
dis appear. His friends, who were a ch urch- going people, with
their families, fell in with other churches, excep t the few who
gathered around Mr. Reynolds ; and, in process of time, they
out-gr ew rath er than rejected the doctrine. _It is th us th at th e
kincl,11essand sympathy for th e sentiment, manifested by other
denominations seemed to retard its progress in this town.
To this should be added th e fact that no preacher of eminence
appeared amon g th em in its defence for many years, to awaken
n ew inter est in its favor.
The only individun,j. who attempt ed to pr each the doctrine for a long time, was a mannam ed John Foster*; and h e, it appears, had been deposed from
the Congregational ministry and proved to be unworthy of hi s
profession. From the death of Mr, Winchester to the adoption
of the present constitution of this State in 18 18, I find but few
traces of any public advocates of th e doctrine in this town. It
is not to be supposed that all its friends had renounc ed it; they
had merely becom e inactive in their efforts to promote it.
Meantime the Bapti sts and Methodists had respectively organiz ed societies of their own peculiar vi ews . The first systematic orga nization of a Baptist church in this town, was in
the year 1800. From that time, for upwa rds of twenty years,
the church thus formed was under th e pastoral care of .Elder
Sterry. And even prior to 1800, the American vVesleyans had
made some convert s and ran ge d th emselves into a class chiefly
under the fostering- care of Eld er Bentley ; and this has continued to grow, until it has formed the present Methodist Soci ety
in this town .
The rise of these new sects gave a differ ent turn to public
This Mr. Foster was the son of a Cong rega tional Cl ergyman in Sta fford
who him self became a Universalist nea r the close of his life . After the son
had been deposed from the mini str y he beca me a Univer salist and preached se veral tim es in this town; once or twice in the Episcopal Church, by the cons ent
of .Mr. Tyler. He then extended his labor s to the neighboring towns . Bat hi s
mora ls were not consistent with th e mini ste rial office,and conseque ntly he was not
counte nanc ed after he became known. He, how ever, settled in town and taught
a ~chool with considerable suc cess for a time; but at lengt h abandoned it fo,·
some oth er pursuit, H e finally became intemper ate. turn ed fortune-teller , a nd
died last winter a degraded old man at the age of 90.
�2a
thou g ht and raised additional enemies to th e doct rfne of imp ar tia l grace . That doctrine , in the contentions that followed , bet ween these and old er sects, came in for a la rge share of abuse 'firn opposition was strong imd vehemen t, and people b egan to
b e called Univ ersalists as a term oheproa ch . The Christma s
S ermon of Mr. Tyler, already noticed, occasioned some feelin g
in his church on the subj ect , but it was soon quieted by his evasive explanation in the appendix to the printed copy. When
Mr. Bill in 1815 publish ed his edition of Mr . Tyle r' s si x ser mons, it called out n ew and more vehement opposition to th e
cloctrine -l:tnd its patrons . Then the bigotry and bitt ern ess of
se ctarian ism were industriously fastened upon the publi c mind ;
th e youn g were indoctrinated with the here sy of endle ss mise -liY, and the fountains of liberality were dri ed' up . Among th e
few professing a p:irtial faith, who retained the spirit of Chris tian liberality was Elder Bentley :-who, though a man of strong
r eligious prejudices, and an inveterate hater of what he dee m ed
heresy, still seemed to recognize the common rights of man and
even the ti es ofa universal broth erhood under every variety of
faith .
The first clergyman , after this season of spir itual declension ,t o pr each th e r estitution of all things and arouse the sleeping
brotherhood of that faith, seems to have been Rev. Edward
Mitchell of New York . On his vi siting the place, applicatio n
was made by his friends for one of the houses of public wor sh ip: and that of the Baptists was at length obtained for hi s ac commodation . But Elder Sterry made so great an outcry at
th is pr etended de secration of his pulpit tha t he seemed to fr igh ten his people, and with some exceptions, filled them w ith tha t
spirit of bitterness and unrelenting enmity against U niv ersalist &
and th eir sentiments which continues to this day , and seems
l atterl y ,a mong a portion of them , to-be waxing worse and wors e .
B ut w hile th e Baptists were ~naking so mu ch damor about the
occupancy of their church, the new meeting-house of the Meth odist s, then chi efly under the care of Elder Bentley was opened
for the u se of Mr. MitchelL*
Here he pre ached on sev eral oc ca sions to the no small annoyance of some very bigoted Christ ians of other d enominations.
Of course he excited new enm ities in such minds, and the choicest langna g e of v it upe rat ion
an d slander was fully applied both to him and h is friends .E ve n Mr. Bentley did not escape reproach for adm ittin g hi m
., Thi s meeting house stood on what is called Wha rf :Bridge. It was built in
18 16, chiefl y through the efforts of Elder Bentle y, and was u su all y call ed" E lder
Be ntle y's Ch urch. "
�21
But when he was severely censured for hi s
into the church.
courtesy to l\Ir, Mitchell, he evinced an independence worthy
of the man and the Christian. He replied that Mr. Mitchell's
doctrine would not hurt th e walls of the church and he was sure
he had much rather have such doctrine pr eached there than
old fashioned Calvinism,
The labors of Mr. Mitchell seem to have put new life and
vigor into the sleeping believers of universal salvation, and they
began to bestir themselves for another effort. Accordingly
Rev. Hosea Ballou, 2d, then of Stafford, was invited to visit
them a few times. He came for the first time in August, 1817,
and preached in the old meeting house of the first society,•Afterwards he preached several times in town, and some times occupied Mr. Bentley's church in the city. Meantime
Mr. Mitchell and some other clergymen were making occasional visits to this place until 1820, when Rev. Fayette Mace ,
then merely a licentiate, came into this region, spent several
months itinerating in various towns in this neighborhood, and
preached considerab ly in this town.
Hitherto the doctrine of universal salva tion, as manifested in this town, had been decidedly of the Trinitarian cast.
All its early advocates adhered • to that system and framed their views in adaptation to it. They differed from
other christians merely by attaching a little more efficiency to their systems, and to the operations of divine grace sery and substitu ting in its stead the ultiby r ejecting en d~s!i
mate restoration of
men . .•.'I.hey believed that Chr ist died,instead of sinners, to ffer the full penalty of the divine law, and
satisfy the demands of justice, and that the benefits of th is vicarious atonement were to be extended to all mankind in their actual pardon and final salvation. Mr. Murray did not indeed admit that there was any outward infliction of punishment in the
future world for the sins of this life. He assumed that the unbelievers would be made to suffer for some unknown period i11
another life- not, however, strict ly as an extrinsic punishment
- a purgatorial infliction and satisfaction of the divine law, but
as the natura l result of his unbelief; and that this would continue until he should see his error and turn to God. Mr. Winchester took a somewhat different view. He contended for a
long period of purgatorial punishment in a future existence for
" The first time Mr. Ballou preach ed in Mr. Strong's Church, a clergyman,
~hen living i~ to_wn, but prea_ching in a neighboring town, made some remarks
rn reply to !us discourse, which created some interest and to which Mr. Balloll
rejoined. "I think," sa ys Mr. B. "his name was Rev. David AusLin." Mr .
Ballou ' s last visit here was in 1820.
�22
the sins of this life, by which sinners would be purifi ed, '' yet so
as by fire." The transition, therefor e, was very easy and natural from the stern and useless dogma of endless torment, to th e
milder sentim en t of univ e rsal restor ation.
Mr. Ballou appears to have been the first clergyman of Unitarian views who ministered to the people in this place. Those
views had indeed made their appearance in some degree in this
pa rt of the state.
A Mr. Sherman, Congrega tional clergyman
at Mansfield, and a l\1r. Abbot at Coventry, had resp ective ly
been dismissed, the one in 1805, and the ot her in 1811, for holding Unitarian sentiments.
But in this town, the time honored
platform of Connecticut orthodoxy does not seem to have been
disturbed, on this point, by the introduction of any new opinions. Of course when Unitarianism made its appearance a new
field of investigation was to be passed over, and a new ground
of opposition was presented.
It is not probable that the dt)Ctrine of the trinity was agitated to any consid e rable extent; but
its rejecti on would naturally give tone and direction to the whole
current of sermonizing, and fresh energies to the spirit of opposition.
Mr. Mace was succeeded by Rev. Charles Hudson, then a
young man just entered upon the ministry of reconciliation.He came to Preston, [Long Society,] in the spring of 1821. He
spent two years in this region, teaching school and preaching in
the neig hboring towns. During the first year he was employed
one fourth of the time in thi s town.
~•
Towards the clo se of the
year ::i he present society
of Uni versa lists in this town, was organiJS under the name of
the '' Society of United Christian Friends in the towns of Norwich, Preston and Groton."
The first meeting for consultation
was held-to
use the language of the old record-''
at brother
Paul Harvey's in Preston.''
Of this meeting David Tracy was
chosen Moderator, and Gu rd on Bi ll, cler!{. A committee, consisting of David Tracy, Gurdon Bill, and H. K. Park, was appoint ed to draft a constitution, and the n the meeting adjourned
to Poquetanoc.
There the committee reported n constitution
which was amended somewhat, and then adopted, and the society was fully organized by the choice of proper officers.
1\1:easures were taken during the next year to build a church.
A meeting of the society was held on the 12th of March for the
'' purpo se of devising ways and m eans."
The '' ways and
at this meetino- were simply the appointment
means" "devised"
ofa committee empowered to ra~e funds by subscription and
At the first meetbuild the church without further ceremony.
�23
ing in 1822 held on the 10th of Feb ., a committee was appointed
to take up a subscription for the support of preaching for one
year from the first of April following. This subscription seems
to have been r aised and an engageme nt was made with Mr.
Hudson, to preach a part of the time. In June of the same
year the society met again, approved the doings of the committee appointed to build the meeting house, and sanctioned some
negociations which they had made. The hous e was soon after
completed, and on the 21st of July was solemnly dedicated to
the worship of the one true '' God who is the Savior of all men,
especi ally of thos e that believe." Rev. Edward Mitchell preached the dedication sermon.'"
On its completion the society was considerably involved in
debt, and was obliged to give a mortgage of the buildin 6 for the
sum of $900, to Mr. Samuel Odiorne, who had done much towards its erection.t This mort gage afterwards gave gi-eat uneasiness to some of the members ; but was finally settled by a
sort of specia l providence in their favor. Before its settlement,
however, the society appointed a committee to solicit subscriptions in New York, Providence, Boston, and Charl estown .
In the spring of 1822, by the judicious labors of Mr. Hudson,
a sabbath school was opened-the first in the order in this State,
if not in the United States. It continued with a small number
of scholars through the summer-perhaps
until the expiration
of Mr. Hudson's term of service in this place, It was a source
of much good , not only in systematizing the efforts of the society, but in making impressions on the young mind which were to
be developed in riper years, Mr. Hudson's labors were blessed
in giving a healthy tone and character to the society. They
"Mr. Hudson who was expected to be present, was' then at Preston, confined
by sickness.
On the death of Mr. Odiorne, which happened but a few years after th e
church wa s completed, his estate went into th e possession of those who were
opposed to Universalism.
But he had requested, befor e his death, that the bonds
against the society should be cancelled, and all claims on it relinquished, design ing to present the whole sum as a donation to the society. Some delay occurred
and some efforts were doubtless made to prevent the consummation of his dying
request.
At this time the opponents of Universalism had almost unlimited control over the destinies of the society. They might have taken and sold the
church, and thus have paralyzed its efforts, perhaps forever. But a kind Proviid ence ordered otherwise.
No effort of persuasion could in duce the widow to
violate the dying request of her lamented husb and. She is said to have spent
many clays of anxiety and nights of slee ples s inquietude, in a conflict of mind
between complying with the entreaties of friends, and yieldino- to the dyinovoice of her departed. At length she resolved on the latter a~d acc ordino-]y
from her own portion of the estate, she relinquished all claims, and made the
society free again.
t
�24
were dosed in April 1823. His farewell sermon which was
published breathes a warm and affectionat e spirit, and recomme nds a const ant regard for virtue and piety. Happy would
it hav e bee n for the society, if men of equal worth h ad succeeded him in his pa stor al labors ; and happy if the members tbemsel ves had been mor e faithful and devoted to th eir di vine
Master !~'
E arly in the year 1823, the denomination in this region received a considerable accession in the conversion of Rev. N ehem iah Dod ge of New L ondo n. who had been a Bap tist minister of some distincti on. His conversion served, in a measure, to
encoura ge the friends of truth in this town. and call down upon
his uwn head some violen t denunciations from his form er friends.
Soon after the close of Mr. Hudson's labors, the soci ety held
a m ee ting and resolv e d "to issue subscriptions in favor of Rev.
Zephaniah Crossman."
Accordingly, he was invited and his
services secur ed for one fourth part of th e time for a year.
Towards the close of his engagement, he had bee n absent for
some weeks and returned early in August, 1824. Notice was
given that he was to preach on the following Sabbath, and no indication appeared of any change in his views or feelings; The
Sabbath came, and he preached in his u sual mann er ; and at
the close of the afternoon di scourse, he carn.e out, to the utter
astonishment of his hearers, with a formal r enunciation of Universalism.
The Baptists, to whom he gave hims elf, were
thrown into an ecstacy of joy at this singular st ep. They were
then smarting under the loss of two of their popular preachers,
who the year before had b ecome Universalists, v~z: Mr. Dodge
already mentioned, and Rev. Walt er Balfour of Charlestown.
It
is not surprising, then, that they should be greatly rejoiced, on
receiving even a poor return in the d efection of Mr. Crossman.t
According ly an account of the affair was sent to the Christian
'Secretary, the Baptist p aper published at I;Iartford, full of exultation, and containing some glaring mis-statements of facts,
said to have been authorized and approved by Mr. Crossman
himself.
As a specimen, it was stated that "for several years
past he had preached in the new Universalist
Church
in Norwich " - an extension of truth by no means uncommon with that class of Christians when
speaking
" After h is i-emoval from this region, he became enlisted in politics, was for
•several years elected a member of the Legislature of Massachusetts, and is now
a representative in Congress from that state.
.
. .
t Mr. Crossman had been a Baptist in the early part o'. ~1s min 1str,:; but afterwards renounced his Baptist views and became a Christian.
Having some
<li:fficultywith this sect through his own miscon duct, he left it nnd profe ssed to
�25
of Uni versalists. But when the excitement of the event had
passed away, it was found that th~ Universalists h~d experi enced no serious loss, and the Baptists had made no important
gain. He was not a man of very great talent, or prudence, or
weight of character : and consequently, his defection did littl e
injury to the cause of truth.
In March, 1823, the Methodist meeting house on the wharf
bridge was carried aw:ay by a freshet -_and eve~ swept down
the river and thence rnto the Sound, without berng broken to
pieces : and thus presente~ the sing~lar spe?tacle of a chu!ch
o-oing to sea i-• And while, by this calamity, the Methodists
~ere left destitute of a place of worship, they were permitt ed
the use of the Universalist church, which they occupied occasionally, when not otherwi se used, for several months.
It was not until April or May , 1825, that the society obtained
the services of another preacher, after the defection of Mr.
Crossman . At that time , an arrangement was made with
Rev. Zelotes Fuller to preach h alf of the time for a year . At
the expiration of that term his labors were continued by mutual agreement until July 1827. But unfortunately for th e interests of the society, his moral character was not above reproach. Whether he was guilty of actual crime, or not , it
may be diflicul t to say: but he did not "avoid the appearance of
evil," nor refrain from giving occasion for unfavorable reports,
especially during the latter part of his mini stry here. Though
a man of some talents, he lack ed other qualifications indispensible to the prosperity of the cause. His connection with the
society was at length dissolv ed, with no regr et on the part of
its best members, except that he had been employed for so long a
time .
After the publication of Mr. Balfour's works, the tone of feeling in the denomination became more favorable. to the doctrin e
which confines all punishment to this life. That doctrine had
indeed made some progress at a previous date ; but it was not
probably inculc ated or believed to any extent in this town, un be a UniversaliEt. Buth~ soon chan ged again, without any assignable cause,
and went among the Baptists; and he seems after this to have left the mini stry altogether. He wa~ a man of very questionable veracity and integrity. He
was free to say that he had preached the doctrine of endless misery 24 years
'
and at the same time did not believe it.
•It was discovered by the capt ain of a coasting vessel, and excited much surprise, as well as mirth, among his crew-being a kind of craft with which the y
were not familiar upon the waters. The account of this .singular occurrence af•
t erward s called forth a very fine poetical effusion from the pen of J. G. C. Bmina_~d, poet born in this State. Wh eth er the affair wns ever regarded as a· div me Judgme11tsent upon the Methodists for their sins, does not appear.
4
�28
p reach er of the re stitution, having , at its comm encement about
eig ht een members.
Sinc e that tim e it has incr eased considerably and still continues its efforts and its influenc e for th e pro motion of truth and virtue.
In July of the same year, Rev. Henry Lyon was settled as
pastor of the society, and continued his labors until April 1840,
when, from causes which it would be scarcely po ssible to de fine, he was dismissed.
He was a young man of good talent ,
and irreproachable character; but when the excitement of his
first effort wasgone , and the society began to grow cool and inactive, the members seemed to think that the proper remedy
was to make a chang e. Societies in our denomination ar e very
apt to pursue this cours e of poliey. If at any tim e, their affairs
-are not prosperous, if their success is not equal to their expectations, or if coldness comes over them-and
what societies
have not their languid seasons?-they
seek to cure the evil in
the mere excitement of novelty.
Some popular speaker is ear -·
nestly sought for ; and if he cannot be obtained, there is apt to
be a dissatisfaction with the minister actually settled , and a con tinual yearning and sighing for the beau ideal that stands in
the distance, under the impr ession that if lie could be had most
wonderful things would follow . There can be no question
that this state of feeling is a serious fault which ought to be
corrected,
In the summer of 1840. Mr. Lyon was succ eeded by th e
Rev . J. V . Wilson , who, though said to be a little incorrect as a
speaker, was a zealous, active and useful minister; but his con nexion with the society was as brief as that of his predecessor
in office. It was under his ministry, however, and in some
m.easure through his instrumentaliy, that the new and beautifu l church in which the society now worships was erected .It was completed and dedicated in the fall of 1841 : the sermon
was delivered by Rev. W. S. Balch, ofN. York. In other respects
also the labors of Mr. vVilson were successful, particularly
in the cause of temperance, of which he was a warm friend and
an indefatigable advocate. His connexion with the society
was dissolved in the early part of 1842; and in May of the
same year your present speaker commenced his labor here.
Such is the brief statement of the introduction and progress
of the doctrine of universal salvation in this town. Scarcely
any candid mind can review the facts here presented without
feeling that there has been a singular interposition of divine
providence in its favor . It has moved along quietly and un ,obtrusiv ely without the aid of w ealth , fashion or popular in .:
�29
fluence • all th ese indeed have been arrayed against it. It s
early advocates wer e -po~r, ~umble and m~lettered, lik e th e
ear ly prop agators of Chn stmmty ; and they mtroduced a system that wa s n ew and opposed to the prejudices of the people.
But th e way seems to have be en prepared for its reception by a
pow er and a wisdom from above. From its first appearance to
the pr esent time, it has met with stern opposition from the devotees of another faith : but it has, at the same time, been bless with th e smiles of heaven as its only support. Its singular preservation on several occasions, when its enemies seemed to have
almost en tir e control of it destinies, and might have crushed
it at a blow, . conclusively shows that the hand of God is with
it. These things shonld serve as mi encouragement to all the
friends of in1partial grace to persevere in their labors with uni ted action for th e advancement of the doctrine. These indeed
furnish assurances, that no difficulties from ·without can ever
ext ino-uish the truth or essentially retard its progress in the
world. Th e only difficulti es which we have to fear w ill be
found among ourselves-in
a want of unanimity and concert
of purpose and action on the great subjec ts that claim our attention. And here perhaps there may be proper ground for apprehension.
This society in times past may have been too
changeable in its purposes and inconstant in its modes of operation-too
fickle in its friendships and too easily swayed by
the clamours of religious opposers, working covertly and craftly against their minister, and. the~eby against the cause itself .
And it should be the solemn mqmry of every member, whether this be a fault at the present time? If it be so, it should by
all means be corrected ; for it is the only vul nerable part of
the fortress, through which an enemy can enter and destroy or
injure the cause of eternal truth in this town. Steadiness of
purpose, concert of action, kindness of admonition, and an af fectionate regard for each other's welfare, are the means of our
If, in these particulars, as well
future growth and prosperity.
as others, we are true to ourselves, the Father of mercies will
be faithful and constant in his smiles , and his own right arm
will be extended to advance the cause of truth in our midst.
Wi th th ese impressions I close the subject, devoutly prayingthat th e blessing of heaven may rest upon the society and
church with which I have the happiness at present to be connected ; and that these may continue to prosper, whatever may
be the course of events with reference to myself, until the truth
of God shall exert its saving influence upon every heart , and
pure religion be enjoyed by all people .
�30
APPENDIX.
UNIVERSALISM IN THE UNITED STATES.
Prior to the year 1770, Universalism was but litle known in
this country.
The few who embraced it were mostly obscure
individuals, and did not engage zealously in its promulgation.
During that year the Rev. John Murray landed upon the shores
of New Jersey, and, by a most singular providence, was induced to preach it. He then commenced anew the labors of
the ministry in which he continued to the period of his death,
in 1816, travelling and preaching in the principal places along
the coast from Chesapeake Bay to Piscataqua River.
About
the same time, two or three humble individuals in the interior
of the country, without any concert of action or knowledge of
each other, began to proclaim the "restitution of all things."•rhese continued laboring patiently in the cause they had espoused for sorne ten years or more, when Rev. Elhanan Winchester: a popular clergyman among the Baptists came out in
favor of the sentiment.
Shortly afterwards the different advocates of the doctrine having heard of each other, began to take
measures to form acquaintances and act more in concert. For
this purpose several individuals, both ministers and laymen,
zealous in the cause, met together in the year 1785, at Oxford,
]\Jass. Here in be}ialf of the churches that had been collected
in New England and elsewhere, they formed themselves into
a Convention or association for mutual assistance and encouragement, under the name of" Independent Christian Universalists."
Meetings of this Convention have been held annually from that time to the prei=ient. It is now called the "Gen
eral Convention of Universalists for the United States.''
_ From the organization of this Convention to the commencement of the present century, the doctrine increased as
�31
fast as could be expec ted . It had much to encount er, and but
few advocates in its defence. As late as the yea r 1810 , there
were not probably 30 pr eachers in the denomination in the
whole country: but these, though ge nerally un educated, were
very zealou s and did much for its promotion . vVithin th e last
thirty or forty years, howev er, a great change has taken place
in th e condition and prospect s of the denomination.
Th e press
has been faithfully at work , in co-operation with the humble
voice of the ministry for its promotion. It has mad e some
progress in almost eve ry State in the Union ; but has increased much more rapidly at the North than at the South. It
find s its most congenial soil among a people of intelligence
and virtue . It commends itself to the understanding and the,
heart; and where there is th e greatest amount of ignorance·
and wickedness, it has most to enc ounter and of course makes:
the least progress. 'l'he ignorance of the great mass of people ·
at the South, the looseness of their :r.orals, and the institution
of slavery are all favorable to the growth and prevalence of endless misery. That doctrine lives and riots in the midst of
such influences, while the doctrine of the Restitution grows
pal e and languid.
Within th e last fifteen years, the latter sentiment has advan- ced more rapidly than at any previous dat e. In 1830, there
were nearly three hundred societies in the denomination in this :
country, and less than two hundred preachers. But accurate
statistics of a recent date, show that, within the United States,
ther e are now near seven hundred preachers actively engaged '
in proclaiming the restitution of all things as an essential part
of Christian theology. And setting aside the Dunkers and all
secret believers am ong other sects, there are very near a thousand societies which enjoy the ministrations of the gospel, either constantly or occasionally. Besides the General Convention already mentioned, there are State Conventions formed in
fourteen States : and connected with these are near seventy
Associations h eld annually.
Within the limits of each and all
these Associations are more or less clergymen settled and societies located which are ther e represented.
Of the preachers already mentioned, above sixty who are ·
now advocating the salvation of all men are converts from the
clergy of other denominations . We hear much said, and great
exultation mad e, when a single preacher of Universalism hap pens to renounce his doctrin e and go over to the opposite faith.
But it so common a thing for preachers of other sects to re--
�32
nounce their faith in endless misery and embrace Universalism
that but little is said or thought of it. We can now number
among us clergymen who have come from the Baptists, Methodists, Unitarians, Christians , Congregationalists, and Episcopalians: and these too were in good standing with their respective denominations when they left to unite with us. Occasionally the denomination loses some of its preachers by renunciation or otherwise : but the accessions far exceed the losses,-so much so that for the last fifteen years the increase has
been above three hundred per cent. And. the same increase and
prosperity have been enjoyed in the number and standing of societies. 'l~heir character, influence and means of sustaining
themselves and supporting the gospel have improved in the same
proportion.
And we humbly hope that in fervent piety and
sterling virtue, the denomination has made equal progress.These facts show that it has been greatly blessed, with the favor of God and the smiles ofhis love. We have certainly no
reason to complain, but every inducement to thank God and
take courage ,in prosecuting the great work before us.
��
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A historical sketch of Universalism in Norwich, Conn. : a sermon delivered before the Universalist Society in that place, on the 5th of May, 1844 / by R.O. Williams
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F104.N93 W55 1844
<span>34023001507641 </span>
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32 p. 22 cm
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Universalism -- Connecticut -- Norwich
Norwich (Conn.) -- Church history
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Norwich, Conn. : G.W. Concklin,
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Williams, Rufus Orland, 1805-1889
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1844
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The Unitarian Universalist Church of Norwich began in 1820 as the “Society of United Christian Friends in the Towns of Norwich, Preston and Groton.” The Society erected a church in 1821, but did not have a settled pastor, the pulpit being occupied by temporary ministers. A church was finally organized in 1836, when the “First Universalist Society in Norwich” was established. A new brick church replaced the old one in 1841 on the same site on Main Street, facing Franklin Square. It was enlarged and rededicated in 1848. The church was demolished for the construction of the Chelsea Savings Bank. A new church, later called the Unitarian Universalist Church of Norwich, was erected in 1910 at 148 Broadway. Constructed of random granite ashlar, the church is also known as the Church of the Good Shepherd for the subject of its large stained glass window. The church’s bell, earlier located in the congregation’s Franklin Square church, was one of several bells salvaged from sacked churches after an uprising in Spain in 1833 that were shipped to New York for sale. With a dwindling congregation, the Unitarian-Universalists sold the church in 2009. It then became the Fount of Salvation Missionary Church.<br /><br /><a title="http://historicbuildingsct.com/?cat=125" href="http://historicbuildingsct.com/?cat=125" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://historicbuildingsct.com/?cat=125</a>
<p>The Universalist Church of America was a Christian Universalist religious denomination in the United States (plus affiliated churches in other parts of the world). Known from 1866 as the Universalist General Convention, the name was changed to the Universalist Church of America in 1942. In 1961, it consolidated with the American Unitarian Association to form the Unitarian Universalist Association.</p>
<p>The defining theology of Universalism is universal salvation; Universalists believe that the God of love would not create a person knowing that that person would be destined for eternal damnation. They concluded that all people must be destined for salvation. <br /><br />American Universalism developed from the influence of various Pietist and Anabaptist movements in Europe, including Quakers, Moravians, Methodists, Lutherans, Schwenkfelders, Schwarzenau Brethren, and others. Pietists emphasized individual piety and zeal and, following Zinzendorf, as a "religion of the heart." Early followers were most often German in ancestry. The majority of the early American Universalists lived in the Mid-Atlantic colonies, though Rhode Island also had a fair amount of followers.</p>
<p>The Universalist Church of America involved itself in several social causes, generally with a politically liberal bent.</p>
<p>Universalists, along with various other denominations, vigorously opposed slavery as immoral. They also favored postbellum legislation such as the Fifteenth Amendment and the Freedman's Act to enfranchise all American citizens.</p>
<p>Like many American religions, Universalism has generally been amenable to church-state separation. In New England, Baptists, Universalists, and Quakers provided some of the loudest voices calling for disestablishment of the government sponsored churches of the standing order.</p>
<p>On June 25, 1863, Olympia Brown became one of the first women in the United States to receive ordination in a national denomination, Antoinette Brown having been the first when she was ordained by the Congregational Churches in 1853.<br /><a title="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universalist_Church_of_America" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universalist_Church_of_America" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universalist_Church_of_Americ</a>a<br /><br /></p>
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}
,(/
Qtge,r.otesfait±®iiis,coµnlQtgnrrgin feiu Jnbcn nnb
for j eiu®ngla:n
'tr.
A
SERMON
PREACHED
A'l'
THE
SEMI·CENTENNIAL
CELEBRATION
OE' I'l1E
NEW
Wednesday
I-IAVEN,
, Febru a ry 16th , 1866 ,
BY
EDWIN
HARWOOD,
D. D.
RECTOR.
--
PUBL
-+••+--
ISH ED
--
BY
-
'l'HE
-+••+--
VESTRY.
-
NEW HAVEN.
~rinft~ b!Jiituftlt, fill1ottg
onst & i!In1;
lor.
1866 .
�3/o32-
�TRINITY CHURCH, NEW HA VEN.
I.
The earliest reco rds of Trinity Church, N ew Haven, known to be in existence,
go back as far as the year 1767. Serious efforts wer e made to esta bli sh the
Church in th is city as e1>rlyas 1752 . In the following year the Church appears
to have been built (see Dr. Beardsl ey's Hi story, p. 173). The Rev. Mr. PUN·
DERSO
N was in charge of the congregation from 1752 to 1763. H e was succeeded oy the R ev. Mr. PALMER, who found the Church in a languishing condition. (See Beardsley, p. 222.) In th e year 1767 the Rev. BELA HUBBARD
became Rector of the Church, and he retained the Rectorship until his death in
1812. '!.'he Rev . HENRY WHITLOCKsucceeded him, but was compelled to
resign the charge of the parish, through ill health, in 1814. The Rev. HARRY
CROSWET
,L ente red upon his duties Jan. 1, 1815, aud died in March, 1858. In
1859 the Rev. EDWIN HARWOODwas elected R ector.
Strictly, the Church has had but four Rectors.
It has had the serv iceR of the following clergymen as Assistant Minister s,
Assistant Rector, and Associate Rector.
The Rev. FRANCISL. HAWKS, D. D., from 1828 to 1829.
The Rev. JOHNS. STOKE,D. D., from 1830 to 1832.
The Rev. WM. LUCAS,from 1832 to 1833.
The Rev. W. L. KEESE from 1833 to 1835.
The Rev. L. T. BENNETT,from 1835 to 1840.
The Rev. J. H . NICIIOLS,from 1841 to 1846.
The Rev. W. F. l\foRGAN,D. D., from 1841 to 1844.
The Rev. T. C. PITKIN, D. D., from 1847 to 1856.
The Rev. S. BENEDICTfrom 1856 to 1858.
The above were elected by the Parish. Other clergyme n, from time to tim e,
have serve d the congregation as Assistants to the Rector .
II.
A. D. 1816.
The present Church wa8 consecrated by the Rt . Rev. JOHN HENRYHOBART,
then Assistant Bishop of New York, on Wedn esday, Feb. 21, A. D., 1816 . The
Rev. HARRYCROSWELL
was Rector ; Messr s. JONATHANINGERSOLL
and WILLIAM
WALTERwere Wardens; ELIAS SHIPMAN,NATHANSMITH, CHARLESDENISON
N Cor.LIS, SAMUELHUGIIES, Jon~
ANDREWKIDSTON,WM. McCRACKEN,SOLOMO
, JorrN H. JACOCK
S, and JEREMIAH M. ATWATER
,
HUNT,Jr. , WARD ATWATER
were Y estrymen.
�,
4
III.
A. D. 1866.
The semi-centennia l anniversary of the consecration of the Church was celebrated on Wedn es day, Feb. 21st, A. D. 1866. Th e Rt . Rev. JOHN WILLIAMS,
D. D., was present, also BISHOP SMI'fH of Kentucky , and BISHOP QUINTARDof
Tennessee, about forty clergymen. and a larg e concourse of people. Morning
prayer was begun by the Rev . L. T. BENNETT,of Guilford; the first lesson was
read by the Rev. Dr. BEARDSLEY
, of New Haven; the second le sso n by the
R ev . W. H. VIBBERT, of Fair Haven; the creed and prayers by the Rev . Dr.
T. C. PI1'KIN, of Buffalo. Th e Rev. Dr. Jorrn S. STONEread the ante-communion
service, Bishop QUINTARDreading the epistle. The sermon was preached by
The Holy Communion was then celeb rated, the Bishop of the
the Rector.
Diocese , Bishops SMITH and QUINTARD,Drs. STONE and w. c. MEAD taking
part in the service.
The Offertory was devoted to the purchase of a stained glass window for the
chancel.
RECTOR.
EDWIN
HARWOOD,
D. D.
WARDENS.
BERIAH
BRADLEY,
WILLIAM
W, BOARDMAN.
VBSTRYMEN.
JOHN S. BEACH,
JUDSONOAKFIELD,
WM. S. CHARNLEY,
WM. 0. DEFOREST,
K K. FOSTER, Jr. ,
PHILIP S. GALPIN,
HENRY B. HARRISON,
BDWARDHOTCHKISS
,
HENRY HOOKER,
CHARLESR. INGERSOLL
,
ANDREWL. KIDSTON,
HENRY vr. MANSF'IELD
,
JAMES M. MASOK,
GARDKERMORSE,
STEPHEND. PARDEE,
JOHN P. TUTTLE.
�•
SERMON.
STAND FAST, TH8REF0RE,
IN THE LIBERTY
FREE.-Gal.
WHEREWITH
CHRIST HATH MADE US.
v: 1.
HE who is able to look back over fifty years of his
own life, feels that he has reached or is entering upon
the autumn of his existence. There is a touch of
melancholy in his reflections. 'l'he productive activities of his life are bounded by this narrow span.
Friends have disappeared; the heat and burden of
the day have been borne; character has beenJormed,
the successes and illusions of time alike have been
felt, and life in its aggregate has brought the most
of what he can expect from it. For him there can
be little that is new, because old age clings especially
to the past, and its own experiences are the measure
of its judgments.
There is, therefore, something
sombre in the review of fifty years by a single life.
It means the beginning of the end !
But with the community, whether society or
church, the case is otherwise.
It celebrates the
flight of time. While the feeling of the individual
2
�6
Churches and States made great by Sacrijice.
1s sombre, the society rejoices ; because, to be able
to look back for a century, or even for fifty years,
suggests at once something historical, as well as permanent.
Commonwealths and churches are erected
by the efforts, the labors, the prayers and the sacrifices of individual lives. They are fed and they grow
upon the vital forces of men, singly considered. They
demand sacrifice for their own perpetuity and glory.
They arc enriched by human blood: their splendor
comes from it. Hence the measure of their existence
cannot be computed by the term of a man's mortal
career. They have their own eras. Their own
memorable events are illuminated and pictured in
their calendar. A great deed is done, a great word is
uttered, a great result is secured: and these have
places in their history, so that the memory of them
does not perish.
This explains why we, to-day, following the pious
usages of men every where, have met to celebrate
the semi-centennial anniversary of the consecration
of this Church.
In our country, where so. much is
new, this Church is already old. It is associated with
the relig10us history of thousands of immortal souls .
They who have worshipped within its walls have witnessed events and changes in our own and in foreign
lands, which if fully told would seem more startling
than the legends of the remotest ages gone. I cannot undertake even a bald enumeration of them; for
�Tlie Consecration of Trinity Cliur:cli.
7
I must speak to you more especially of New Haven,
and of the Church in this quarter of our vast coun try. We must devote our thoughts chiefly to the
associations and the men connected with this parish ;
to those who have supported it and managed its affairs ; to the worshippers who have been blessed
through it, and to the work which has been done
here: and I shall also embrace the opportunity now
afforded, to state some reasons why our Church certainly ought to grow and acquire great strength in
New England
Fifty years ago this day,* and at this hour of the
day, an immense concourse of peoplet was assembled
within these walls. The all-active and vigorous HoBAnT, then assistant bishop of New York, was here
to consecrate the Church, to preach the sermon, and
to exercise his episcopal functions in the inetitution
of the rector, and in a service for confirmation.
Nearly all the clergy of the diocese were present,
then in his ninetyand among the rest, Dr.MANSFIELD,
third yea r. Dr. CROSWELLhad been in the rectorship since the first of January, 1815; and in the list
of th e names of the officers of the pari sh, I find seven
whose famili es are still connected with this Church,
viz :--JONATHAN INGERSOLL, senior warden, and
* Wednesday,
February 21st, A. D. 18 I 6.
t People came from the neighboring towns, and prominent church-
men from all parts of the diocese.
�8
The Consecration of Trinity Church.
Messrs. DENISON,CoLLrs, HuGHES,JAcocKs, KmsToN,
and SHIPMAN. A grandson of ,Lieut. Gov. Ingersoll,
and the son of Mr. Kidston, are now in the vestry.
The day for the consecration had been anxiously
looked forward to. Men wondered at the size, the
proportions, and the appearance of the Church. It
was the largest Gothic structure in Kew England,
It was said that New
if not in the country.
Haven would never supply " enough Episcopalians" to fill it. But the congregation had a wise
rector and skillful officers. They at least had fait h
in their own work. They believed that the Church
would grow and flourish. They never quailed before
the animosity and prejudice of which at that time it
was the special object. And it ought to. be said, that
up to that time, no bolder enterprize had been undertake n within the limits of our communion in this
country, than the erection of this building. During
three days, -one devoted to the consecration, one to
the in stitut ion of the rector, and the third to the
confirmation of a large class of candidates, *-the
churchmen here held high festival.
And then the
* More than one hundred persons (one liundred and seven) were
confirmed at that time. For several years previous, there had been
no confirmation. A large proportion of the candidates embraced
heads of families : many others were of mature years : two at least
were iu their old age,-Dr. £1.'iEAS MUNSON,.iEt. 82; and Capt.
DAVID PHIPPS, u. s. N., .iEt. 75.
�The last Fifty Years of its History.
9
bishop, after having won all hearts by the charms
both of his eloquence and of his personal manners,
took his departure, and the rector was left alone
with his congregation, to go forward in the work
which had been committed to him. He was then in
the early prime of a vigorous manhood, and his ministry at once was marked by unceasing labor, and rewarded with unusual success.
The history of the parish, from that time, falls
naturally into three divisions, or periods. The first,
from the year J 816 to 1829; the second, from the
year 1820 to 1845; that is, from the date of the
erection of St. Paul's Chapel to the establishment of
the congregation worshipping there as an independent parish; and tlie third, from the year 181_5,when
the parish again consisted of but one congregation,
down to the present time.
I. THE FmsT PERIOD. In the year 1816, New
Haven contained about seven thousand inhabitants.
The distances from the centre of the city to any point
of its circumference were short, and it was comparatively easy for a clergyman to ascertain the ecclesiastical relations of the people, and to discover families
as well as individuals who did not consider themselves
attached to any religious society or church. Both public opinion and statute law moreover, may be said then
almost to have forced every one into some sort of con-
�10
Trinity Church from 1826 to 1829.
nection with a professedly christian congregation.*
Dr. CRoswELL appears accordingly to have seized
every opportunity to be of service to all who were
either dissatisfied with the then prevailing religious
teaching, or whose connection with any religious society was fluctuating or desultory.
He toiled in t he
spirit of a missionary, and by his unwearied efforts
he gathered numerous families into the parish. In
fact his great strength lay in the skill and assiduity
with which he fulfilled the duties of the pastorate .
The Church therefore became aggressive in its move ments. It received constant accessions. 'rlie current
of parish life was tranquil indeed, but it became
broader and broader, through the tributaries empty ing themselves into it.
During this period, nothing interfered either wit h
the growing prosperity or the internal peace of t he
parish. The old zeal for church-going, fostered by
public sentiment and the traditions of New Eng land,
had not abated. The life of the community was ~ot
stimulated then by a sensation press, nor a sensatio n
literature, nor sensation lecturers. Consequently, the
gathering together of the people in their churches
each Lord's day, was an affair of common interest-
* In fact the old law was then in force which required every citizen
who did not belong to any ecclesiastical organization, to pay a tax
for the support of the "standiug order," i. e. the congregationa l
denomination, which in so far was the state cliurcli.
�Trinity Church from 1826 to 1829.
11
was, in fact, the most noticeable event of the week,
except during heated political contests. How simple,
how severe their manners were, contrasted with our
own. They had no apparatus for warming churches,
beyond the little foot-stove ! In the sharp winter
days, when the thermometer was almost as low within
the Church as in the open air,--when the hands of
the clergyman were stiff with cold, and his vocal organs benumbed, the congregation, wrapped in furs
and coats and shawls, would sit through the long service and sermon, without feeling that they had been
undergoing any special hardship. Were there no fire
here to-day, hundreds would quit the Church, fearing
an attack of some one of the many diseases which
exposure in this climate is liable to entail. In the
year 1818, ;~he vestry discussed gravely the subject
of hiring a stove for the Church ; and at length, in
1822,--the very year in which our present senior
warden was elected vestryman,-it
was "voted that
it is expedient to erect four stoves in the Church, provided that the same ( exclusive of pipes) be furnished
by private subscriptions."
'!'heir action was singularly deliberate.
There must have been strong prejudic e against the novelty of heating a Church. I
have heard of congregations being divided most seri ously on the subject of the introduction of a stove
into the house of God.
Your fathers of the last generation were suspicious,
�12
Changes of Customs.
moreover, of night services.
The vestry, howeve r ,
in the year 1819, were induced to pass a vote allow ing certain persons to place: at their own expense ,
patent lamps on the walls of the Church, provided no
injury were done; and also that the Church shou ld
be opened in the evening, on extraordinary occasions
only, and not more than twelve times in a year. And
still further, they reserved to themselves the right 6f
taking down the lamps, if at the expiration of a yea r
the experiment were found unsatisfactory.
Rea lly ,
we seem, in these quaint votes and proceedings, to
catch glimpses of an old world; and yet fifty years
have not gone! Manners and customs, in -door life
and pub lic life, forty years ago, were so un like our
own, that we seem to be separated from our fathers by at least a century.
There was with the m
more dignity and courtesy of manner in private, and
in their deliberate bodies ; with us there is mor e
earnestness, and perhaps vehemence, in the endeav or
to seize the realities of things.
There is more of
iron in our thoughts, and more of clay in our pe rsonal habits.
We are more luxurious, we live in •
warmer houses, we worship in warmer churches, an d
we have learned to fear a climate which breeds ty phoid fever, and bronchitis and consumption!
Honorable and prominent mention shou ld be ma de
of the fact that Dr. CROSWELLwas among the first t o
appreciate the use and worth of f?unday schoo ls, an d
�Sunday Schools.
13
as early as in the year 1818, he wrote to the late Dr.
MILNOR,of New York, that a flourishing Sunday
school had been established in his parish, in which
religious instruction exclusively was given. Opinions
varied respecting the proper method and line of instruction to be followed in Sunday schools.
Originally, they differed in little from the ordinary primary
schools of the time. In fact, the chief difference lay
in the spirit and airns of those who were willing to
engage in them. Their labor was a labor of love.
Soon, however, it became manifest that opportunities
were presented, through the Sunday School, for imparting religious truth and affecting spiritual character. ·Hence it has become, everywhere, a marked featul'e in parochial work. Dr. Cn.oswELL,in this com- .
munity, led public opinion in this matter.
His school
was the first in New Haven. He saw that instruction
in the elements of christian doctrine, for the children
not only of the members of the parish, but of persons
who themselves were not specially intelligent and
grounded in the faith, must tend to the increase and
vigor of the Church. He prepared brief manuals of
instruction, and to his latest day he always felt an
intere st in this department of his work.
In the mean while the names of men who had
served the parish long and faithfully, begin to disappear from the 1:ecords. Lieut. Gov. INGERSOLL,who
had been in the vestry since 1789, was elected semor
�14
Old Officers and New in the Parish.
warden for the last time at the Easter
meeting
m
1822. In the following winter he died, regretted and
honored by the community.
He was succeeded by
GILBERT TbTTEN, who was re-elected
annual!y, unt il
his death in 1839, and the vestry made a record
of
their sense of the loss which both they and the par ish met with in his removal.
In 1825, CHARLESDENISON,who had been clerk of
the parish since 1813, and a man of influence in the
vestry for a long time, died.
There is a blank in the
records for nearly a year after his death.
His suc cessor was Mr. SEELEY,who was elected at the ann u al
meeting held Easter Monday, 1826.
We find offices filled by new names, but names
familiar to us, because several are still living, whil e
others have been called hence.
You will not expec t
me, to-day, to read the roll of our dead-nor
to
enumerate
the
remembrance
living.
We hold, indeed,
the departed
of a past generation
served the parish
long
trust
But there
and honor.
forgotten,
in pio u s
and faithfully
who
in offices of
are, it should not be
men now living who themselves
have for .
many years, borne the same offices with fidelity and
with a desire to subserve
the best interests
of the
church.
There are seven members of the parish now
living, who held office between the year 1816 an d
1829,-Mr.
BRADLEY,our senior warden, Mr. BoARD-
MAN,our junior
warden;
Mr. P. S. GALPIN, now in
�Few Surviving Parisliioners of the Period.
15
the vestry, and Messrs. R. I. INGERSOLL,
JoHN BEACH,
ABRAHAM
HEATON,and HENRYHUGGINS. Mr. Samuel
Short is still a member of the parish; and as far as
the record shows, these are the only survivors of the
generation that managed the affairs of this Church
immediately previously to the erection of St. Paul's
Chapel. I use the word parish here, in its technical
legal sense. In the congregation there are at least
thirty families who have worshipped in this Church for
two or more generations. In these years, long gone to
those of us who were children then, without recourse
to any ecclesiastical machinery, and by untiring devotion upon the part of the rector, the congregation
became larger and larger.
In 1828, the vestry
resolved to bui ld a Chapel of Ease in that part of the
city which was then called the New Township. The
population of New Haven had increased from 7,000
to 10,000 inhabitants.
The communicants of the
Church had more than doub led in number. At a
meeting of the wardens and vestry, held on the
12th of April, 1828, it was " Voted, that the rector
and wardens of this Church be, and they are hereby
authorized to employ the Rev. FRANCISL. HAWKS,as
an assistant minister for the term of one year ;" and
on the 10th of May following it was voted, that in the
opinion of the wardens and vestry, meas ures ought
to be taken to erect a new chapel so as better to accommodate the members of this Church with pews,
�16
Tlie Church Flourishing:
and with the further
Second Period.
view to sett le the Rev. Mr.
as an assistant minister of this Church.
Our
present junior warden was one of the committe e
appointed to carry the project into executio n.
Clearly at that time the parish acquired additio nal
momentum.
The site selected for the new chape l
HAWKS
was at the corner of Olive and Chapel streets.
The
corner stone of the new bui lding was laid Ap ril
18th, 1829. Mr. HAWKS preached as assistant in t he
parish Church, but resigned, to the great regret of t he
vestry, before St. Paul's Chapel was completed.*
II. We are brought now t9 THE SECONDPERIODof
this h istorica l review. The design of the rector an d
vestry was that St. Pau l's Chapel should remain pe r manently and forever as a po rtion of Trinity par ish .
The Rev. JoHN S. STONE was elected in Decemb er,
1829, assistant rector of this Church. The pa ris h
started upon a new course, the vestry was called
upon to act for two church buildings and two congregations, and to provide for the support of t wo
clergymen.
The growth of the Church became acceler ated.
The congregat ions at St. Pau l's were
large. The great relig ious awakening which fair ly
startled the country in the year 183 1, was felt in t he
par ish, and large accessions to the commun ion were
the res ul t, - with a proportionate
increase of pa ro -
*Dr.Haw ks resigned, to accept the rectorship of St.James',
Ph ilad.
�Second Period : Assistants.
17
chial activity. The work of the ministry became
more arduous, the devotion and christian efforts of
the people more zealous, and the truth seemed winged
with power. The course of the Church was onward
here, as also elsewhere. The parish was in a condition of vigorous strength.
Dr. STONEwas induced,
in the spring of 1832, to accept the rectorship
of St. Paul's Church, Boston, and the letter of the
vestry in accepting his resignation shows how
strongly he had bound them to him. The assistantship in the ministry of the parish devolved successively upon the Rev. Messrs. LucAs, KEESE, BENNETT,
N1cH0Ls and MoRGAN. It may not be known to a
majority of my audience, but it deserves mention here,
that our reverend father, the bishop of this diocese, was also elected assistant minister of the parish
in March 1841, but he declined the appointment.
I must not dwell too long upon these details. I
cannot write the annals of the parish in a sermon. I
seek simply to bring certain points in its history to
your remembrance.
I must speak briefly, however,
of a great loss sustained by the Church in this period,
in the death of the Hon. NATHANSMITH,who had
been in the vestry for thirty years. His devotion to
the Church, and his influence in its deliberations, had
been most conspicuous. He had been the friend and
counsellor of the rec~or for a long time. He had
used his influence to strengthen his hands in the
�18
Laym en can Upliold their Pastors.
work of the ministry. He was a man of whom his
pastor said that "his whole conduct furnished abun dant proof that he was not ashamed of the gospe l of
Christ. Regular, uniform and constant in his obser vance of all the external forms and ordinances of his
Church, he presented him self as a humble and devoted supplicant at the foot of the Cross. He looked
for salvation through the merits of Christ Jesus, and
in His mercy he manifestly placed the most implicit
trust and confidence."* I can only add, that the elder
members of the parish to this day cherish the recollection of Mr. Smith, and they are most explicit in
their testimony of his worth as a christian man and
of his unwearied devotion to the interests of the
Church. He was certainly a conspicuous example of
chivalric devotion to his rector; and if laymen,
whose character and talents entitle them to influence
in the community, would remember how much and
how well they can assist their pastors by words and
deeds which need not occupy much of their time,
nor encroach seriously upon hours devoted by common consent to business, their pastors would not
be compe)led to complain, or to feel, without compla ining, as often as now, the loneliness of their position.
The parish had become large, and I suspect cum brous. The rector, however, had set his heart upo n
retaining St. Paul's Chapel as an integral portion of
* From
a Funeral Sermon, by Dr. Croswell.
�St. Paul's Chap el-St.
Paul's Church.
19
his cure, but a considerable number of the worshippers there were becoming restless. They began
to think that the chapel should be set apart, and
erected into an independent parish. The resistance
of the rector could not put an end to the movement.
He had never bef<?re, I believe, met with any serious
or protracted opposition to his wishes. The period
of old age was approaching indeed, suggestive of repose rather than of enlarged labor, yet his natural
force was not at all abated. But the movement day
by day acquired strength.
The persons most interested were determined to agitate the matter until their
purpose should be a,ccomplished. Many who opp?sed
it were governed by a desire to gratify their beloved
pastor, rather than by the conviction that it was in
itself either injudicious or inexpedient.
At last, as
might have been foreseen, the parish gave its consent
to the separation of St . Paul's Chapel, and it became,
when certain formalities and transfers of property
had been complied with and made, St. Paul's Church.
And as a church it has had a most honorable record
amongst the churches, and a course distinguished by
unbroken prosperity.
Surely, on this day, we who
knew nothing personally of the conflicts and debates
of the hour, and who rejoice in the progress of the
Kingdom of Christ, may extend our cordia l congratu lations, and our best wishes and hopes for the continued well being of the daughter Church.
I.
�20
The Third Period.
III. THE THIRD PERIOD IN THIS REvrnw. There
were two ~arishes.
But a great impet~s was given
to the work of church extension.
The rector _ of
Trinity, with his assistant, the late Rev. Mr. NICHOLS,
retired
to the parish Church, the worship pers
gathering within these walls comprised, once more,
his entire flock. But the Church was not deserte d.
The venerable pastor, nearly seventy years of age,
was not left alone . His old friends and people were
still in great force, strong in numbers, in influence,
in ·wealth, in moral and christian worth. Th e old
Church was the spiritual home of hundreds of communicants.
In 1846 Mr. NrcHOLS resigned his pos ition, and in the year following the Rev. Dr. PITKIN,
a grandson of BELA HuBBARD, was chosen associa te
rector.
He entered upon his work with hearty zeal,
and the congregation accepted readily the new order
of things. It may be said that the parochia l work
was carried on with decided vigor and success. The
Sunday school increased : the interior of the church
was newly decorated, and the expense was lib erally
borne by the peop le. In the year 1848, howeve r,
thirty families withdrew from Trinity Church. These
were the nucleus of sti ll another parish, organize d in
that year, under the name of St. Thomas' Churc h, * a
parish in whose continued, quiet progress we all re-
* About t hree thousand dollars have been given by members of
the congregation towards the building of St. Thomas' Church.
�The Parish School-Chri'.st
Ckurch.
21
Joice. Trinity Church may be said to have suffered
a little while, at least, by the establishment of these
rrhe withdrawal of many worshippers
new parishes.
necessarily created a gap, and besides, strangers of
our communion coming here, could choose now between churches and clergymen,-formerly
there was
no choice. In new undertakin gs, more zeal is apt to
be shown than in the conservation of old institutions.
Th e old institution, however, is sure to revive, and in
the inevitable reaction it renews its youth.
A school was established in the year 1851, and
through the liberal gifts of a member of the parish* from time to time, it has been in so far forth
endowed, as to ensure its permanen.ce as one of the
agencies of this church for reaching the children of a
neglected class of our population . Much unobtrusive, self-sacrificing labor has been done within the
school, not only by the teachers, but by other christian women, whose charity has prompted them to
work for their Lord in that direction
So, also, Christ Church, begun as a missionary
effort, was built during this period. t Fostered at its
start by members of this congregation, it became m
*Mr. Joseph E. Sheffield.
tChri st Church parish has bad two buildings ; the first was erected
by the Misses Edwards, upon a lot purnhased by Trinity parish.
Th e first building forms the transept and chance l of the new church.
3
.
�22
Dr. Oroswell's Death.
due time an independent parish, several families having left th~ Church to connect themselves with it .
Thus Trinity Church has been drawn upon from
all quarters, as if the supply of its population were
inexhaustible.
But we hold on our way in strengt h,
and, thank God! the number of worshippers here
never fails.
Dr. PITKIN,having served the Church in the associate rectorship nine years, resigned, leaving behi nd
him many friends, to whom he . had endeared himse lf
by the fait hfulness and zeal with which he had toi led
for their spiritual welfare. Then the infirmities of age
began to make themselves felt, upon even the rob ust
frame of your late rector, and he could not carry on
his work without an assistant. Your choice- it was
the last time you have elected an assistant minister fell upon the Rev. SAMUEL
BENEDICT. The brave old
man, who had served you so long,-whose zeal knew
no abatement to the end,-fe ll asleep in March, 1858.
Mr. BENEDICTremained with you until the Whits untide following. Of Dr. CrroswELLI have spoken fully
and at length, upon another occasion. I will not repeat what I Lhen said. He needs to -day no eulogy
upon his character.
He lives in your hearts and in
yo ur tender remembrances . You knew him personally, so well, and your attachment to him was so
strong, t hat it may be said- Ye are his epist le, read
I
and known of all men.
�Changes.
22
It is propel! that I close at this point my observations about the parish. I know that thousands rejoice now in its prosperity and vigor. It is fitting
th~t before long, I should ask you to weigh well the
great matter of your duties and responsibilities as a
parish, in this community. Time has wrought rapid
changes. Trinity has become the mother of churches,
and you are aware that New Haven is not what it was
twenty years ago, and that the especial work to which
we are called must be modified accordingly. We have
seven places of worship in,this city, and the aggregate
of worshippers and communicants is larger now than
at any previous time. You have been blessed in many
ways. You are at peace amongst yourselves. Your
history is remarkably free from discord and strife.
Bitterness of feeling cannot take root here. It withers beneath these arches. You are prosperous as a
people. You are numerous. You have great possibilities of influence ; and remember, that for these
blessings you must give account . As surely as New
Haven lasts, our successors fifty years hence will
judge us. They will wish to know what we did for
the glory of the Lord ; what evidence we furnished
of a living, loving faith. Let us labor, then, for the
approval of our God, in our own salvation, in the
salvation of others, and in the trust we must hand
down to them that shall come after us.
I
11
�24
The Protestant Episcopal Church.
To-day, celebrating and surveying the past in this
parish, we become naturally thoughtful touching the
future.
Memory, in some respects, is the reverse
side of Hope. History is the fountain of prophet ic
feeling, and we may most justly think, therefore, of
the future of the Church, not simply in t]:iis city,
nor in this diocese, but in New England generally.
And, moreover, remember that here in New Eng land
your forefathers were called upon to face a spirit of
distrust, suspicion and animosity, which is not ent irely
extinct, though it no longer persists in showing its
rough edge. The wealth and culture of New En gland were against the Church. Dr. MANSFIELD
said
in this building, fifty years ago, that he could reme mber when there were but two or three Church families
of reputation in all New Haven. The social feeling, the
religious temper of the people, the schools and colleges, and learning, were all against it ; yet it took
root and grew, not only here in New Haven, not only
in this State, but eve rywhere in New .Eng land. Bear
in mind, too, that it rarely recedes.
Its moveme nts
were never characterized by grand enthusiasms of
peoples or populations ; for they were cautious, prudent, and perhaps even slow. Its legislation was, and
is sometimes, timid; is never very pronounced, and
yet it continues to take hold of the affections of large
number~ in every class of the community.
The progress it has made is marvellous, especially when you
�7
Th e Church over against Indepenclenr;y.
25
consider that it has been forcing its way into a hostile
country, and certainly it bas not in times past been
led by m en who, as a body, have been distinguished
for their personal gifts of eloquence or of greatness
of thought,
or for their accomplishments
in learning
or of theological science. Its conflicts and progress
illustrate the difference between the strength of an
institution and the power of mere individual effort.
There is, indeed, a difference between us and the
New England pastors and teachers, not, be it understood, respecting the work of our redemption through
our blessed Lord, nor our hope of salvation, but
touching the relation of christian theology to christian faith, and the terms of communion.
In New
England, christianity; to all intents and purposes, has
been identified with a system, or sys tem s of theology.
Christianity, accordingly, in the public mind, has
meant a scheme of doctrine.
I do not mean to assert
nor to imply that the pastors of the congregational
churches have overlooked the moralities of the New
Testament; but simply that the one overshadowing
characteristic of the New England method and spirit,
must be found in the doctrinal instruction
by the people, and in their doctrinal belief.
received
This in-
struction led to confessions of faith, more or less
elaborate, which were proffered to candidates for admission into membership with particular congregation s, as tests, or conditions, or absolute prelimina-
�26
Disintegration in New England.
ries to full communion and fellowship . These confessions of faith contained, of course, theological propo sition s, which, wh en they were prepared, were the
full expression of the belief of the congregations. But
it has happened with them, as with all other kindred
documents, that a generation came, and then another,
no fonger in sympathy with them. What is the natural movement of the mind, in this sphere of its action? First, there is indifference ; next, there is silent
dislike ; and lastly, there is open war. The Unitarian outbreak in Massachusetts was the grand climax
of the protest against the prevailing teaching.
The
people, in certain other portions of New England, in
certain portions of Massachusetts itl:!elf, as well as in
C()nnecticut, fell, in large numbers, under the influence
of the methodists, with their broad assertion of the freedom of the human will, while others sought the communion of our Church. The breaking away from the
rigid doctrinal system which had been all powerful,
was deep and thorough.
The granite rock of a
united public sentiment in matters of religion was
split ; and a process of disintegration is still going
on.
serve.
I do_not, at this time, wage war ; I simply obAnd observation
makes clear that this di~in-
tegrating, disorganizing process is powerfully at work.
I am not aware that the fact is even questioned, and
I point to it as the inevitable
result of identifying
�The Demand of the Church.
27
christianity with a system of theology. In so far
as facts like the one under consideration have come
to the surface of society in other lands, they are attributable to the like cause. The law of cause and
effect-the logic of Church life and thought-knows
nothing of degrees of latitude_, knows no geographical lines or circles.
And so we witness, in a measure, the breaking
away from all systems; preachers even becoming as it
· were tribunes of the people, devoting themselves to
a sturdy advocacy of right, in matters touching the
public life of citizens, while, ho\vever, it remains cer tain, that the great public is becoming more and more
unsettled, and even disturbed, on the momentous
question of faith in a revealed God. Hence, I say,
there is a difference between ourselves and the New
England pastors. For we plant ourselves, and stand
firmly upon the simple creed of the Church, as the
condition of communion, and as the true embodiment
of what constitutes the unalterable christian faith.
Do you ask what I mean by the simple creed of the
Church ? I mean the apostles' creed, which shou ld
be considered as the expansion of the original baptismal formula. By it we assert our faith in the Fatherhood of Almighty God, in the Sonship and redemptive work of Jesus Christ, in the Holy Ghost,
the Sanctifier, and in His work in the Church; and in
the life everlasting.
The creed of the council of
I.
�28
The Faith Req·uired.
Nice, which was_framed to meet a heresy touchi ng
the person of our Lord, we also accept, and recogni ze
as a larger statement of the contents of the apost les'
creed. We demand, then, I repeat, the reception of
the unalterable faith, in this respect following ancient
ptactice; and we leave the question of scient ific
theology, or of systems of doctrines, to the indiv idual judgment.
We do not interfere with the chr istian liberty either of clergy or of people. We do
not identify christianity with a current system of
metaphysics, nor of metaphysical divinity. We distinguish between faith and opinion. We insist upon
the faith, in its historical sense and meaning, while
opinion is beyond or outside of law, and does not
come under the supervision of an ecclesiastical inqui - ,
sition, whether in the form of a board of deacons, or
of a council, or of a standing committee, or of a convent ion.
The mind of New England is intelligent and acute,
and therefore we present this distinction. We seek
to make known the cardina l position of the Church .
We are governed by a principle. We are the exp onents of a great law, to be asserted here, and every where, that the faith of the Church is one, and is
unalterable, while systems of theology* are, from
their very nature, subject to the changes which mark
*"Theo logy"- " Oreed"-what is the difference1 The Creed
is the simple statement, (without any raisonnement) of the artic les,
�The Faith and Life Required.
29
all the efforts of the reflecting mind; and we simply
call men to the reception of the one faith, the creed
of the Church of all past time. We are in sympathy
with the christian past, and we have large hope in
the future, and our Church ought to grow in New
England, because it thus in the sphere of faith and
thought presents distinctly the two poles of stability
and progress. There is stability in its creed ; there
is progress in its thought, under the conditions and
limitations which a general reception of the creed
imposes.
Moreover, as the Church requires the hearty reception only of the ancient creed as the condition of
communion, so it insists upon the broad renunciation
, of sin, and the desire to keep God's holy will and
commandments in every-day life. I am willing to
confess that it accepts the minimum of spiritual atwhich in the judgment of the Church constitute the substance of
the christian faith.
Theology, or dogmatic or systematic divinity, means the scientific
or systematic representation of the truths or facts embraced in the
creed, together with other points of christian belief and christian
feeling, derived in part from scripture, in part from christian usage,
and in part from personal experience.
Of course, this systematic scientific arrangement is the work of
individual minds, and partakes therefore oft .he fortunes of all intellectual endeavor. Its worth changes with changing times and modes
of thought. This is exemplified in the history of christian doctrine,
and in our theological literature.
The sc:ence of one age must
yield to the achievement of another, but the substance of the belief
of the Church remains one, and unchanging . .
�30
Exclusive and Inclusive Methods.
tainment, as the prerequisite to entrance within its
fold and fellowship. For in the minimum you find
the essential, the permanent, and the catholic. It is
the true starting point for the christian ; we holding
that one should not look for the 1.igh-water mark of
piety during the early spring ti\
of a living faith.
The Church does not, it dare no£, erect temporary,
partial, or individual standards of piety, or of feeling, into a public law! It dare not say,-" You
cannot approach the Lord's table, unless you can
state clearly when you were converted !" It demands no history ef the soul, but simply repentance
towards God, the forsaking of evil, and the pursuit
of good, according to the divine Word.
It does not
interfere with the liberty wherewith Christ had made,
His disciples free. It repels from the communion
only those who are known to be living in violation of
the law of Christ.
___
""
But to charge the Church with teaching men to
rest satisfied with the lowest spiritual state reconcilable with their admission to the communion, were
a wicked libel. It exhorts and persuades men against
a lukewarm love and a dead belief. It calls them to
newness of heart and to the life of righteousness. It
sets before them the highest standard of human endeavor.
What duty of love, what penitence, what
sacrifice for the Lord, what effort for men, what worship, what struggle with evil, held and taught by the
�Exclusive and Inclusive Methods.
31
noblest of God's servants everywhere, does it neg·lect, or pass over, or refuse to enforce ? It needs
no apology upon this score.
Now, in so far as there is a ,difference in this re'
spect between ourselves and the New England pastors
and teachers, it concerns the terms and conditions of
comm um on. We, as I have said, require the minimum of spiritual attainments reconcilable with living
christian faith ; they demand the maximum. Their
tendency is exclusive ; ours is inclusive.. They repel
all who fall short of the standard they have adopted ;
we invite all who embrace the law of the universal
Church in this matter.
When we err, we err upon
the side of indulgence ; and I do not see how any
one who reads the New Testament can hesitate to decide which of these opposing tempers most fairly reflects the mind of Christ, and 'perpetuates the prevailing spirit of the apostolic Church and age. I seek,
moreover, to state the point with clearness, because
objections have been and still are urged, tr-· 're are
-----------. of
too ready to open the doors to men, irrespective
their personal qualifications for the communion. The
reply is, that should we go beyond the actual written
requirement of the Church, we should be guilty of
tyranny, and would violate the spirit of the New Testament.
We act upon a principle here, not upon a
worthless expediency to secure converts and _partizans.
Again we appeal to the ancient law of the Church,
'
�32
We .A.sserta Law.
which we follow without reservation
And again we
challenge the recognition of this principle, upon the
part of a people known to be jealou 's of their own
rights and liberties. We never dream of fresh enactmen ts; we do not open inquiry touching the revision
of our terms of communion, because they are, in their
breadth and compass, adapted to men everywhere,
and are not the offshoot of any tyranny, nor the product of a passing feeling.
You must perceive that there is complete harmony
between the demand upon our belief, and upon our
hearts and lives. There is a rhythm of movement
always in ideas,-in
law. Expediency rests upon
shifting sands.
Passion and prejudice write their
enactments in the water! but law is the fruitful
source of order and harmony, in things spiritual, as
in things secular. It continues and is felt from generation to generation, and reveals its power in its ap1
plicability to the new emergencies in which men find
themselves in the conflicts and changes of time.
The principle for which we have been contending,
because it is law, is available at present in two distinct directions.
It affords standing ground over
against the uncertainties, and the doubts, and the
dissolving views, of the present moment ; and it is
one of the factors, one of the elements for the restoration of the unity of christendom, a consummation
which now occupies so many minds, and is the desire
�The Ministry.
33
of so many hearts in all parts of the world. But I
cannot pursue this line of remark any farther. I
ask to-day for justice ! I ask that men not of our
communion shall see, that in the matter under review, we are not governed by expediency, but by law
and principle ; and if they will do us justice in so
far, I believe they will discover that we are right, and
that a Church which hopes to live on from age to
I
age, doing the work of the Lord, must rest upon the
princip 1le we hold, and the law we recognize.
Again: in the common mind of ,the Church, and
by common consent, the constitution ef the ministry is
unalterable.
But there is no cast iron, no rigid, inflexible rule, for all times and all places, touching the
manner in which the ministers of Christ shall exercise
their functions. There is in our worship a severe and ·
stately simplicity. We preach the Word of God, according to individual power, fervor, love of souls, intelligence and ability. We dispense the sacraments
according to the pres,cribed law of the Church. "It
is," says the preface to the Prayer Book, " a most
invaluable part of that blessed liberty wherewith
Christ hath made us free, that in His worship different forms and usages may without offence be allowed,
provided the substance of the faith be kept entire;
and that in every Church, what cannot be clearly determined to belong to doctrine, must be referred to
discipline ; and therefore, by common consent and
,
�34
The Episcopate.
authority may be altered, abridged, enlarged, amended,
or otherwise disposed of, as may seem most convenient for the edification of the people, according to the
various exigencies of times and occasions."
These
particulars, however, do not touch the constitution of the ministry itself . The question is never
raised in our deliberative bodies~ whether, in the abstract, one order in the ministry be bet1 er than three,
or three orders better than one. We have adhered
to, and we perpetuate, the three-fold ministry. We
hold to and have the primitive episcopacy. We jealously guard the sacred office, and we seek to apply
the episcopate to the needs and exigencies of the
modern Church.
The bishop is not a medireval baron,
nor a lord over God's heritage. He is entrusted with
the duties of government.
He 'ordains; he confirms
in the Churches; he exercises a general oversight,
binding together the parts of his diocese, and imparting, under the law of the Church, unity to its action.
He is a link in the great chain which binds us to the
past. He derives his powers from an episcopate whose
beginning must lie in the apostolic age ; otherwise,
explorers starting upon voyages of discovery, with
another theory, would assuredly be able to fix its date.
In the exercise of these powers, he is under the organic
law of the Church, to which he promises loyalty and
obedience. It was no part of the work of the reformed Church to break, but to restore organic law
\
�The Episcopate.
35
in the household of Jesus Christ. Now what is the
especial moral significance of the episcopate, to the
modern man? I ask the question seriously, and I
answer, it is two-fold. It is a protest, a perpetual,
standing protest, against unauthorized and fanatical
assumptions of the ministerial office; and it is equally
a protest against the assumption of an hierarchical
imperialism within the Church.
It is a fact of history, that when men part with the
episcopate, although their opinions touching the
ministerial office be reverent, they who succeed them,
gradually, yet by well defined steps, relinquish their
feeling of its sacredness, and of its divine origin ; they
lower or abandon all conception, in the course of
time, of the need of a lawful ordination, and at last
deem it a matter of no moment who or whence the
person is who may undertake to preach to them.
What inconvenience, what scandal, what evils are
bred!
I observe, therefore, that over against anything like anarchy, in the sphere of religious asso-:;iations, the episcopate is a standing protest.
It tepresents the .fixedness of authority in the Church, touching the admission of men to the functions and work
of the sacred ministry. · I ask you, especially, my
friends, to weigh this, in connection with the " religious notices" you may read each Saturday in the
newspapers of our great cities and centres of population.
�36
Conclusion.
On the other hand, the episcopate is equally a protest against the assumption of imperial power in any
member of the hierarchy.
The primitive episcopacy
insists upon the equality of each bishop with all other
bishops. It is jealous of its own rights. And under
this view it cannot be true to itself, if it submit to
any pretensions of a supreme, or even of a superior
authority, made by any member of the episcopal order. Its existence is a protest, therefore, against all
papal claims. Thus, once more you see in our Church
these two facts and forces-stability
and progress ;
fixedness and movement, law and liberty. Stability,
fixedness, law, in the constitution of the ministry ;
progress, movement, liberty, in its work in the world
for human salvation and the glory of God. We recognize the need of .a cultivated, learned, thoughtful,
devoted clergy, who shall be in full sympathy with
men, laboring for the conversion of the ungodly, and
for the edifying of the body of Christ.
There are, I submit, in these considerations, grave
reasons why the Church ought to grow in New England, why it should commend itself as the ordained
witness for Christ, as in ages long gone, f':O also in
this present time, with all its weight of distraction
and doubt. It meets admitted needs at all points.
It sets forth Jesus Christ crucified among you, in all
simplicity and with godly sincerity. I know that a
new Baptism _of the Holy Ghost upon both clergy
and people, would carry with it a more convincing
�Conclusion.
37
logic; than argument for the Church built upon the
fullness of the truth it embraces and represents.
I
know that a larger missionary spirit, a deeper charity,
a purer life in the members of the Church, would
clothe her with irresistible attractions.
There is
snch a power in virtue, that bad causes are never so
dangerous as when advocated by good men. But a
good cause, a great truth, held before the mind by a
heart filled and overflowing with a holy love, has such
force of argument and holds such sway over the heart
and conscience, as to challenge in grand and almost
peremptory style, an obedient recogn _ition . It conquers by a divine right.
My brethren, let us be faithful witnesses for Christ,
in our daily lives, in our deeds and thoughts.
Let
us turn unto the Holy Comforter for His indwelling
grace, for the light and power of the truth as it is
in Jesus ; then we shall not gather the wages of an
ignoble proselytism, but the fruits of a glorious and
symmetrical christian faith . We shall be able to
say,-" Thanks be unto God, which always causeth
us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of His knowledge by us in every place."
And now, 0 Lord God Almighty, grant us all, the
bishops of thy Church, the other clergy and the peo ple, thy heavenly benediction and grace, that we may
so live and so labor, that thy Son, our adorable Re deemer, "may see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied." Amen.
I
�
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Rare Books
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37d53c9c-6c64-467a-a7d9-7d413a8d8208
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<a href="https://cscu-wcsu-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=01CSCU_NETWORK_ALMA7189922110003451&context=L&vid=WCSU_V1&search_scope=WCSU&tab=default_tab&lang=en_US">Link to Primo record</a>
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The Protestant Episcopal Church in New Haven and for New England : a sermon preached at the semi-centennial celebration of the consecration of Trinity Church, New Haven, Wednesday, February 16th, 1866 / by Edwin Harwood
Identifier
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F104.N662 H37 1866
34023001507609
Description
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37 p. 23 cm
Subject
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Trinity Church on the Green (New Haven, Conn.) -- History
New Haven (Conn.) -- Church history
Episcopal Church -- New England -- History
Publisher
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[New Haven, Conn.] : The Vestry, (New Haven : Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor)
Creator
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Harwood, Edwin, 1822-1902
Date
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1866
Abstract
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<em><strong>Trinity Church on the Green</strong></em> or <em><strong>Trinity on the Green</strong></em> is a historic parish of the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut in New Haven, Connecticut. It is one of three historic churches on the New Haven Green. This landmark building in the "Gothick style" was designed by Ithiel Town in 1813, built between 1814 and 1815, and consecrated in 1816. It is the first example of a thoroughly Gothic style derived church building in North America, and predates the Gothic Revival architectural style in England by more than two decades.Officially known as Trinity Episcopal Church on the Green, New Haven, Connecticut, the parish was organized in 1723 by the Rev. Dr. Samuel Johnson, a recent Anglican convert and a missionary priest of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. Connecticut had been an established Congregationalist church colony since its founding in 1638, with only a single Anglican parish (and no church) in the village of Stratford, Connecticut, that had been only recently founded in 1707.<br /><br />This volume is a sermon preached at the 50th anniversary of secondchurch of the parish. By the early 1800s, the first church building, even after adding galleries, was too small to hold the rapidly growing parish. The earliest records of the intent to build a second church are recorded in notes from the Vestry meeting held October 20, 1810, at the home of Mr. John H. Jacocks. A site on the south side of the town Green was secured at a town meeting on December 14, 1812. That a church of Anglican origin was being allowed on the Green with the established Congregationalist churches was a testament to a growing tolerance of varied forms of worship in the new Republic.<br /><br /><a title="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_Church_on_the_Green" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_Church_on_the_Green" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_Church_on_the_Green</a>
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Connecticut Churches
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Title
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St. John's Parish, Stamford, Connecticut
Identifier
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b30772497
F104.S8 S25 1898
Description
An account of the resource
123 p. : ill., [8] leaves of plates 19 cm
Subject
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St. John's Episcopal Church (Stamford, Conn.) -- Handbooks, manuals, etc
Episcopalians -- Connecticut -- Stamford
Episcopal Church -- Connecticut -- Stamford -- History
Stamford (Conn.) -- Church history
Publisher
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[Stamford, Conn. : The Church], 1898
Creator
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St. John's Episcopal Church (Stamford, Conn.)
Abstract
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According to the Preface to this volume, "the Rectory and Vestry desire that there be issued occasionally a manual like this for the information of all the members of the parish, regarding its organization, the work done in the past year, and the ways of helping the work still to be done." This volume is somewhat unusual in terms of the other church manuals in WCSU's collection in that it comntains much more information about the current (in 1898) orgabization and operations of the parish than do many of the others.
One hundred years after the establishment of Stamford, a group of residents petitioned the Town for a grant of land for an Anglican Church. There had been Anglicans in Stamford as early as 1705, but they had no church building and no settled clergy. In 1742 the Town gave the Anglicans a lot near the corner of present-day Main and Grove Streets where the first St. John’s Church was built. For a more deatailed history of the church, see:<br /><br /><a title="http://www.stjohns-stamford.org/history/" href="http://www.stjohns-stamford.org/history/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://www.stjohns-stamford.org/history/</a>
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Connecticut Churches
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Rare books
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37d53c9c-6c64-467a-a7d9-7d413a8d8208
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Manual of the First Church of Christ, Simsbury, Conn. : containing a brief historical sketch, its articles of faith and covenant and a catalogue of its members
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b3088665x
F104.S6 F60 1897
Description
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39 p. 19 cm
Subject
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First Church of Christ (Simsbury, Conn.) -- History
Simsbury (Conn.) -- Church history
Abstract
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The First Church of Christ of Simsbury, Connecticut was established in 1697. This volume contains a brief history (to 1897), Articles of Faith and a list of its members to 1897.<br /><br />For addtional historical information, see: <a title="http://fccsimsbury.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Our-3-Centuries-of-History.pdf" href="http://fccsimsbury.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Our-3-Centuries-of-History.pdf">http://fccsimsbury.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Our-3-Centuries-of-History.pdf<br /><br /><br /></a>For a current picture of the church, see:<br /><a title="http://historicbuildingsct.com/?p=1111" href="http://historicbuildingsct.com/?p=1111">http://historicbuildingsct.com/?p=1111</a><br />
Organized November, 10th 1697.
Publisher
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Hartford, Conn. : Press of the Hartford Printing Co., 1897
Creator
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First Church of Christ (Simsbury, Conn.)
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UUID
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Connecticut Churches
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���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������
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Deutschland erwacht : Werden, kampf und sieg der NSDAP
Subject
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Hitler, Adolf, 1889-1945
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171 pgs
Date
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1933
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Bade, Wilfrid, 1906-1945
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Donated by Paul Montalto, DSC '69. Acquired by Cpl. Joseph P. Montalto during World War II.
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Germany is awakening: victory, struggle and victory of the NSDAP
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<a href="https://cscu-wcsu-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=01CSCU_NETWORK_ALMA7171503610003451&context=L&vid=WCSU_V1&search_scope=WCSU&tab=default_tab&lang=en_US">Link to Primo record</a>
Title
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The actual government of Connecticut / by Nancy M. Schoonmaker
Identifier
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b29270716
JK3325 1919 .S4
Description
An account of the resource
119 p. 19 cm
Subject
The topic of the resource
Connecticut -- Politics and government
United States -- Politics and government
Abstract
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<p>From the forward, this book is intended for "the use of High Schools, Colleges, Normal Schools, clubs and any other group in which an interest in government could be aroused. We have had especially in mind also that great body of citizens whose enfranchisement may be confidently expected very soon, the women."<br /><br />The author, Nancy Schoonmaker (1873 - 1965) was an author, lecturer and political activist in the womens' suffrage movement. At the time of the publication of this volume, she was Executive Secretary of the Department of Citizenship of the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association.<br /><br /><a title="http://www.cslib.org/archives/Finding_Aids/RG101.html" href="http://www.cslib.org/archives/Finding_Aids/RG101.html">http://www.cslib.org/archives/Finding_Aids/RG101.html</a><br /><br /><a title="http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/traveling-culture/chau1/pdf/schoonn/1/brochure.pdf" href="http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/traveling-culture/chau1/pdf/schoonn/1/brochure.pdf">http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/traveling-culture/chau1/pdf/schoonn/1/brochure.pdf</a><br /><br /><br />This book was reviewed in the Yale Law Journal (Vol. 29, No. 5 (March 1920)):<br /><a title="http://www.jstor.org/stable/787800" href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/787800">http://www.jstor.org/stable/787800</a><br /><br /></p>
Features: includes folded insert regarding author with portrait
Publisher
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New York : National Woman Suffrage Pub. Co., c1919
Creator
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Schoonmaker, Nancy Musselman, 1873-
IIIF Item Metadata
UUID
03a13eac-91bd-4cd0-82f7-1b8a51a9a32e
Rare books
-
https://archives.library.wcsu.edu/omeka/files/original/Rare_Books/2252/hooker_letter_winthrop001.jpg
a21aa022084544430f41440b8b485b9b
https://archives.library.wcsu.edu/omeka/files/original/Rare_Books/2252/hooker_letter_winthrop002.jpg
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https://archives.library.wcsu.edu/omeka/files/original/Rare_Books/2252/hooker_letter_winthrop003.jpg
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Rare Books
IIIF Collection Metadata
UUID
37d53c9c-6c64-467a-a7d9-7d413a8d8208
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples of still images are: paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type "text" to images of textual materials.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Has Version
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<a href="https://cscu-wcsu-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=01CSCU_NETWORK_ALMA7186413480003451&context=L&vid=WCSU_V1&search_scope=WCSU&tab=default_tab&lang=en_US">Link to Primo record</a>
Title
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A letter from the Rev. Thomas Hooker of Hartford : in answer to the complaints of Gov. Winthrop of Massachusetts, against Connecticut
Identifier
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b30838186
F97 .H66 1859
Description
An account of the resource
18 p. 22 cm
Subject
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Connecticut -- Politics and government -- To 1775
New England -- Politics and government -- To 1775
New England -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775
Abstract
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John Winthrop (1587 – 1649) was a wealthy English Puritan lawyer and one of the leading figures in the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the first major settlement in New England after Plymouth Colony. Winthrop led the first large wave of migrants from England in 1630, and served as governor for 12 of the colony's first 20 years of existence. His writings and vision of the colony as a Puritan "city upon a hill" dominated New England colonial development, influencing the governments and religions of neighboring colonies.<br /><a title="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Winthrop" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Winthrop">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Winthrop</a><br /><br />Thomas Hooker (1586 – 1647) was a prominent Puritan colonial <br />leader who founded the Colony of Connecticut after dissenting with Puritan leaders in Massachusetts. He was known as an outstanding speaker and a leader of universal Christian suffrage.<br /><a title="http://josfamilyhistory.com/stories/hooker.htm" href="http://josfamilyhistory.com/stories/hooker.htm">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hooker<br /><br />http://josfamilyhistory.com/stories/hooker.htm<br /><br />T</a>he letter discusses a disagreement between the Hooker and Winthrop regarding a proposed confederation of the colonies in 1637.
From the first volume of the collections of the Connecticut Historical Society, now in press.
gp
Publisher
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Hartford : [s.n.], 1859
Creator
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Hooker, Thomas, 1586-1647
IIIF Item Metadata
UUID
1ee7608c-0492-430c-8357-4a5fc7036b59
Rare books
-
https://archives.library.wcsu.edu/omeka/files/original/Rare_Books/2251/clinton_cannon001.jpg
deb0492c7f3df64bb75ca7f3c1385318
https://archives.library.wcsu.edu/omeka/files/original/Rare_Books/2251/clinton_cannon003.jpg
d3794b29b110fadb9ebee4c90b9e5d5b
https://archives.library.wcsu.edu/omeka/files/original/Rare_Books/2251/clinton_cannon002.jpg
2f455e632b0b8d3001c66c785ad16b00
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Rare Books
IIIF Collection Metadata
UUID
37d53c9c-6c64-467a-a7d9-7d413a8d8208
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples of still images are: paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type "text" to images of textual materials.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Has Version
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<a href="https://cscu-wcsu-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=01CSCU_NETWORK_ALMA991001150519703456&context=L&vid=WCSU_V1&search_scope=WCSU&tab=default_tab&lang=en_US">Link to Primo record</a>
Title
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Clinton Connecticut September 10, 1925 1812-1815
Identifier
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b3093624x
F104.C55 Cxx 1925
Description
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14 p. 18 cm
Subject
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Connecticut -- History -- War of 1812
Clinton (Conn.) -- History
Abstract
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Program of the ceremony of the presentation of a War of 1812 cannon to the Town of Clinton, Connecticut by the Women's Relief Corp. in 1925.<br /><br /><span>The Women’s Relief Corps was an auxiliary of the Grand Army of the Republic (Civil War)</span><br /><br /><br /><br /><a title="http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WMJ0Z1_Clinton_War_of_1812_Monument_Clinton_CT" href="http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WMJ0Z1_Clinton_War_of_1812_Monument_Clinton_CT">http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WMJ0Z1_Clinton_War_of_1812_Monument_Clinton_CT</a>
This cannon a relic of the war of 1812 was 32 years..
Publisher
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[S.l. : s.n., 1925]
Creator
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Cramer, Effie Stevens
IIIF Item Metadata
UUID
00f2baf5-7683-4256-8bb8-bfdcac9ac433
Rare books