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HARTFORD'S FIRST CHURCH
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REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01150 5564
Hartford's First Church
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The fourth Meeting House of the First Church of Christ in Hartford 1932
HARTFORD'S FIRST CHURCH by ROCKWELL HARMON POTTER The Sixteenth Minister
With an Appreciation of the Author by HENRY AUGUSTUS PERKINS
HARTFORD CONNECTICUT
October 1932
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Published by The First Church of Christ, Hartford, and printed at the press of The Case, Lockwood & Brainard Co. Hartford, Conn.
1
1895574
Dedicated to The First Church of Christ in Hartford
in grateful remembrance and with confident hope on the occasion of its Three Hundredth Anniversary
Preface
IN OBSERVING the three hundredth anniversary of its begin- nings in Newtown in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, it has been the expressed desire of the First Church of Christ in Hartford to issue a volume which may summarize some- thing of the history of the Church and present an interpre- tation of its life and work.
The history of this Church has been adequately told by the Reverend George Leon Walker D. D., the Minister at the time of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary observance in 1883. His volume "History of the First Church in Hartford 1633-1883", published in 1884, will remain the authoritative account of the life of the Church during those two hundred and fifty years. It is based upon a careful study of the available original records and is told with clarity, directness and adequate historical per- spective.
The facts of the history set forth in these pages are taken from Dr. Walker's admirable record, from the Records of the Church and of the First Ecclesiastical Society, from the "Magnalia" of Cotton Mather, from published anniversary and other occasional sermons, from the files of the Con- necticut Courant and from such biographies of the ministers of the Church as are available.
The chapters which follow seek to summarize briefly the more significant phases of the life of the Church and its activity through its long and noble history, and to interpret the continuing spirit of its message and its ministry. I have not attempted to tell the story in chronological order, as Dr. Walker has so ably done this. I have sought, rather, to make each chapter a unit in itself, carrying its own story through the three hundred years. This has necessarily re- sulted in some duplication where different phases have
touched each other. I have not undertaken to appraise and pronounce upon the historical questions concerning which authorities differ or the theological positions which have been taken by the successive ministers. I have not in- cluded reference by name to the scores of devoted men and women who have filled responsible positions in the work of the Church, and the hundreds of those who by their Chris- tian experience and character have borne witness to its message in their lives.
A chronology of the more important events of the last fifty years is included in an appendix, and records the serv- ice of interim pastors, assistants to the ministers, organists and other members of the Staff.
Generous, diligent and efficient service in the gathering of the material presented and in the preparation of these pages for the press has been given by Miss Helen Everton Brown and Miss Alice Lyon Hildebrand of the Staff of the Church. Mr. Charles B. Woods has made the sketches of the second and third Meeting Houses which appear among the illustrations. The Reverend Warren S. Archibald, Min- ister in the Second Church of Christ in Hartford, my friend and colleague, has read the proof and made helpful sug- gestions. The Church will share with me in gratitude for these contributions to the observance of its anniversary.
R. H. P.
Contents
Chapter
I. IN THE BEGINNING
Page 1
Chapter II. THE MEETING HOUSE AND THE MAIN STREET .
9
Chapter
III. THE MINISTERS
.
.
16
Chapter
IV. THE MEETING HOUSES .
63
Chapter
V. THE USE OF THE MEETING HOUSES
.
75
Chapter
VI. THE ECCLESIASTICAL SOCIETY
.
87
Chapter VII. THE ANCIENT BURYING GROUND AND CENTER CHURCH HOUSE . 96
Chapter VIII. EDUCATIONAL AIMS AND ACHIEVEMENTS 105
Chapter
IX. THE WOMEN'S ORGANIZATIONS
.
.
114
Chapter
X. THE CHURCH IN THE DENOMINATION
119
Chapter
XI. THE CHURCH AND ITS GROWING FAITH
126
Chapter XII. THE GOSPEL-THEN AND NOW
133
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Appendix
I. CHRONOLOGY 1879-1932 .
.
139
Appendix
II. A RECORD OF THE MINISTERS .
145
Appendix III. MEMORIAL FUNDS AND GIFTS .
152
Illustrations
THE FOURTH MEETING HOUSE OF THE FIRST CHURCH
OF CHRIST IN HARTFORD 1932
. Frontispiece
THOMAS HOOKER'S HOUSE IN NEWTOWN
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4
TABLET ON BOYLSTON HALL, HARVARD COLLEGE YARD
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4
THOMAS HOOKER'S HOUSE IN HARTFORD
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THE FIRST MEETING HOUSE IN HARTFORD
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12
NATHAN STRONG
36
JOEL HAWES
. 40
GEORGE LEON WALKER
42
CHARLES MARION LAMSON .
48
ROCKWELL HARMON POTTER
52
JOHN MILTON PHILLIPS
.
62
.
THE SECOND MEETING HOUSE
76
THE THIRD MEETING HOUSE 76
THE ANCIENT BURYING GROUND .
96
CENTER CHURCH HOUSE
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.
100
INTERIOR OF FOURTH MEETING HOUSE .
134
Hartford's First Church
CHAPTER I
In the Beginning
THE FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST in Hartford had its origin in Old England. It was born in the Puritan Movement among the churches of Essex County.
The Reformation had been at work among earnest and eager spirits in these churches for more than a generation. Throughout the spacious days of Queen Elizabeth the spirit and purpose of the new and freer forms of the Christian faith had been moving toward expression in shaping the organization and procedure of the ancient churches in the towns and countryside. The Bible had been published in what we know as the "authorized version" in the time of King James and had been in the hands of the ministers of the churches and the more intelligent folk of their parishes for nearly a full generation. Protest was made in many churches against the formality of the ritualistic services which prevailed as the expression of Christian faith and were offered to the people as their means of guidance in the Christian way.
In the third decade of that great seventeenth century Thomas Hooker, a Fellow of Emmanuel College of Cam- bridge, was asked to serve as lecturer in the ancient parish Church of St. Mary's at Chelmsford. He had been a diligent
Hartford's First Church
and faithful student in his course at Emmanuel and upon his graduation had been appointed to a fellowship, one of the duties of which was to serve as occasional lecturer in parishes within the reach of Cambridge where his services might be desired.
The occasions of his lectures were probably special meetings on Sunday afternoons in the parish church together with an opportunity now and then to take the place of the preacher in the regular services on Sunday morning or evening. The thoughtful people of the parish of St. Mary's were not slow to recognize that in the voice of this young scholar from Cambridge the old gospel was being presented with new meaning. He spoke directly to their hearts with the vitality of his message and awakened their minds to an ardent quest for the larger meanings of the faith which they cherished and by which they sought to live. Many of the congregation came to feel that their church life needed for its continuance the guidance and inspiration of this new voice.
Accordingly when ecclesiastical authority denied the con- tinuance of this ministry to the church in Chelmsford, these who had been won to it sought some means by which they might have this privilege granted to them for the future. The news had come to them of the new world overseas which was being opened to English settlers, and in which there was the opportunity for a larger economic life, for political freedom and for a religious liberty, which they came to feel they could not enjoy in the church of their birth and early training.
A group of those stirred by this hope proposed to Mr. Hooker that they would make the great adventure to the new world and establish themselves there as a colony on condition that he undertake to go with them as their min-
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In the Beginning
ister, or at least to follow them and assume leadership as their Pastor and Teacher as soon as the way might be opened to him.
The hand of ecclesiastical authority was by this time being felt by Mr. Hooker. He gave a tentative assent to the proposals made to him and left England to take refuge in Holland from the authorities of State and Church, whither many refugees from civil and religious restrictions had preceded him.
In 1632 the group of those who were moved to under- take this adventure carried out their plans and set sail for the new world. They arrived in Massachusetts Bay and began "to sit down at Mount Wollaston". They found wel- come from the settlers that had preceded them and later were assigned to the land bordering the north side of the Charles River where now the city of Cambridge stands. There they established themselves, calling their community the New Town to distinguish it from earlier settlements which were nearer the shores of the Bay.
During the winter that followed we may imagine them facing the severities of the New England climate, the bleak northeast winds and the Atlantic storms, and living upon the provisions they had brought with them or depending upon their neighbors in Boston and the other towns of the Colony to supplement the scanty store which they had been able to secure from the soil or from the forest in the late months of the summer and during the autumn.
In 1633 Mr. Hooker carried out his promise and pur- pose and came from Holland by way of England to join them. With him came Samuel Stone who had been a Puritan Lecturer at Towcester, Northamptonshire, and who had been invited to assist Mr. Hooker in New England. On the fourth of September they arrived and were welcomed by
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Hartford's First Church
those to whom Mr. Hooker had ministered under such different circumstances in Chelmsford. On the eleventh of October they assumed the leadership of the community, at least so far as its religious organization was concerned, and we know that they took at once their place as influential leaders among the ministers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
The Newtown community under the leadership of their ministers presumably expected to continue upon the lands which had been assigned to them by the authorities of the Bay Colony, but within a short time the adventurous spirit that was in them began to be restless. As early as 1635 they presented a petition to the General Court asking that they be given permission to re-locate themselves upon the banks of the Connecticut River. One may well imagine the astonishment with which the proposal must have been re- ceived by the Court to which it was presented. The hundred miles of rough and almost trackless forest which separated the Colony from the Connecticut must have seemed a formidable barrier to any such migration as was proposed. Indeed it is difficult for us to understand how such a pro- posal could have matured into form so soon after the com- munity had made its settlement in Newtown.
The text of the petition which was presented to the Court gives us a formal statement of their reasons for re- moval and suggests something of the experiences that lay back of their desires. They represented that they needed land for their flocks and herds. This of course seems absurd to us now, for the few score families could not have had by that time any very considerable number of cattle or sheep, and it would seem as though the hinterland of the Bay Colony might have provided adequate sustenance for sufficient grazing and farming operations to care for the
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Thomas Hooker's House in Newtown
HERE WAS THE HOMESTEAD OF THOMAS HOOKER 1633-36 FIRST PASTOR AT NEWTOWN
Y.
Tablet on Boylston Hall, Harvard College Yard
In the Beginning
community for a score of years. However, when one remem- bers how rocky that land is and tries to reconstruct in thought the difficulties which faced them in finding hidden away on its wooded surface the comparatively meager areas which would lend themselves to their tillage, and when one remembers further that a few adventurers had visited the Connecticut valley and brought back report of broad reaches of tillable land on both sides of its banks and for scores of miles along its course, one does not wonder that the Newtown colonists felt that having come so far, they might better their condition by going a little farther. They doubt- less could look forward to the use of the river as a high- way both to the Sound to the southward, and so to the sea, and to the farther reaches of what they must have expected to become a profitable region with which to carry on trade to the northward. The petition to the Court also stressed the point that if some of the English settlers around the Bay did not take possession of the river lands, they would doubtless fall into the hands of the rival Dutch Colonists who had already made their way up the river and estab- lished a trading post as the possible nucleus of a settle- ment where Hartford was later built.
It was, however, the third reason alleged in the peti- tion which doubtless had the greatest influence. They said, "It is the strong bent of our spirits to remove thither." Here doubtless is reflected something of the rivalry in lead- ership that we know grew up between the ministers who had been a little earlier on the ground in the Bay Colony and Hooker whose vigorous personality at once took prom- inent place among them. There was a divergence of politi- cal ideals between John Cotton, the Minister of the Church in Boston, and the Minister of the Newtown Colony. The former had little faith in democracy and was set upon de-
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Hartford's First Church
veloping political institutions so as to bring about a the- ocracy which would express itself in an aristocracy. Hooker believed in theocracy, but his theocracy was one which sought to express itself through the voice and the vote of the people. Cotton sought to limit the franchise strictly to those who were members of the church as well as property holders. Hooker desired a universal franchise, but it was not so much dissent as to any particular policy that caused the cleavage between Boston and Newtown as a different way of looking at things and different ideals for the devel- opment of the community.
After discussion, the General Court gave them permis- sion to remove to Connecticut, and in 1636 the memorable migration took place. The Church itself moved as a Col- ony along what had been rudely traced out as the Bay Path from the banks of the Charles to the banks of the Con- necticut, and crossing the river somewhat north of the pres- ent site of Hartford, they located where the city that honors them has grown up.
They came in the early summer and established them- selves east of a road that reached roughly along the line of the present Main Street from the little river northward to what is now the corner of Morgan Street. A rude square structure was erected as a community center, meeting house, court house, arsenal and town house, just eastward of the site where the old State House was to be built about one hundred and fifty years later. Through the winter the col- onists must have endured many distresses and some severe suffering, but their courage was undaunted and in the fol- lowing springtime none were minded to return to the New- town from which they had come out. They began to pre- pare for themselves permanent dwellings, to assign lands for their use and to 'enter into community relationships with
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In the Beginning
the settlers at Windsor on the north and at Wethersfield on the south, who for much the same motives had made the journey from the Bay to the River either directly as the Hartford Colony had come or by the much longer water way around the Cape, through the Sound and up the River.
In 1639 a significant step was taken in the political de- velopment of the towns which constituted the Colony upon the Connecticut. A convention of the representatives of these three towns met in Hartford and framed what they called the "Fundamental Orders," a document which we should now call a Constitution, to order and direct the gov- ernment of their united communities. In the shaping of this document the Minister of the Hartford Church had great influence and it may not be too much to claim for him that it was under his inspiration-perhaps especially under the inspiration of a notable sermon preached by him when these delegates assembled-that this Constitution took form.
Undoubtedly he had strong support from the leaders in the other towns and especially from Roger Ludlow, the civic leader of the Windsor community. It may be that it was Hooker's idealism as to the possibility of a govern- ment wherein every man should find his adequate place that stirred the representatives of the three towns to under- take the framing of this instrument, while it was the trained legal hand of Ludlow that fashioned the precise terms in which it was formulated. There is honor enough in the significance of that event to provide distinction for all those who were parties to its formation and adoption, and cer- tainly enough for the leaders of the three communities who gave their hearts and hands to its fulfillment.
The Church and the community were practically though not theoretically identical. It was not necessary that every
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Hartford's First Church
voter be a member of the Church, and presumably there were some who were property holders in the community and voters in the town who were not members of the Church, but the people came to self-consciousness chiefly as a Church in the regular meetings for worship on Sun- days and for the Thursday lectures in the midst of each week. Vigorous preaching from the pulpit demanded their intelligence. The minister's sermons were not doctrinal in comparison with the sermons of the contemporary Puritan divines. His preaching was the preaching of Christian ex- perience. It grew out of his own experience and it applied Christian truth to the life of his hearers. There was a prac- tical quality in all said from the pulpit which stimulated and stirred Christian life in the congregation and the com- munity and identified the minister with the struggles and aspirations of his people to a marked degree.
Under the guidance of the government thus established, the life of the community in Hartford took its place in re- lation to the towns to the north and to the south and the ordered growth of the settlement went forward. Numbers were added slowly for there was comparatively little migra- tion from England at this period. None of these towns grew rapidly, but they developed in their community life and in their mastery of the conditions by which they were surrounded.
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CHAPTER II The Meeting House and the Main Street
THROUGH all the three hundred years of the life of Hart- ford, from the primitive settlement to the greater Hart- ford of the present time, the Meeting Houses of the First Church have stood at the heart of the town. The location has been changed scarcely more than a city block, and has always been close to what we know as the Main Street. As passive observers of the life of the city streets, and as centers from which much has gone forth that has influenced the individual lives and corporate actions of successive gen- erations of citizens, what tales these Meeting Houses could have told, could they have spoken, or could even now tell, of stirring events, of tragedies, of sorrow and of joy ! What colorful scenes of war have passed before the eyes of these Meeting Houses, the homes of the Church which is dedi- cated to peace on earth ! From the setting forth of the little band of men from the three river towns for the Pequot war, blessed and encouraged by Thomas Hooker, to the wild rejoicings at the news of the signing of the armistice of the World War, many are the events of such a character which have passed in review before the watchful gaze of the old places of worship. -
Hartford's First Church
When that story, known to every Hartford school child, of the stealing of the charter from under the hand of Gov- ernor Andros, was enacted, the Meeting House was there- may even have been the scene of that thrilling escapade, for many were the public meetings held within its walls. When the schoolhouse on the square was blown up at the celebration of the repeal of the Stamp Act, the Meeting House looked on, and when joy was turned to mourning because of the lives lost in that thoughtless celebration, doubtless it was to the Meeting House that the saddened citizens came to pay their last respects to the dead, for even then, one hundred and thirty years from the founding of the town, there was but one other church organization. When General Washington rode through the town to take command of the army at Cambridge, and stopped to rest at the home of Colonel Wadsworth, from its vantage point across the street, the Meeting House watched the proces- sion. When the town resounded with excited talk as General Gates encamped a division of his army on the meadows to the north, it heard the clamor and tumult, and when Yorktown fell and peace was proclaimed, it listened gladly and rejoiced in the end of the conflict.
When Lafayette visited Hartford, a hundred years and more ago, and small girls strewed flowers in his path, this Meeting House in which we now worship watched the scene, as it has since watched the triumphal processions of many of the great and courageous of the land. And often it has put on the symbols of mourning for the leaders of the nation or for a beloved leader of its own flock. The count- less scenes upon which the successive Meeting Houses have looked can only be suggested here, but before the eyes of a sympathetic imagination, what pictures will rise of three hundred years, not only of events of importance and public
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Meeting House and Main Street
interest, but of the range and the reach of the common life of the common folk who walked the Main Street of the old town, bearing burdens with heavy steps, or treading lightly through joyful days !
When we consider the mere physical growth of the city through three centuries, we are amazed to find that the first three houses of worship looked upon a town which changed comparatively little as the years went by. It is our own Meeting House which has witnessed the great changes in the growth and life of the town. And this in spite of the fact that Joel Hawes, in his address delivered at the close of the second century says, "How changed is the scene around us from what our fathers beheld two hundred years ago. We now behold-the busy mart-the crowded city- splendid public edifices." Yet there were hardly more changes in the first two centuries than we see within a dec- ade now. As Dr. Hawes records, "The progress of change is still going on with constantly increasing rapidity. What new scenes of interest may arise to spread themselves around the city of our abode, or affect the destinies of our common country, before another day like this shall return, is known only to the all-comprehending vision of God." Surely the changes have been marvelous. In the census of 1790, the first federal census taken after the establishment of the nation, the population of Hartford was given as four thousand and ninety souls. In 1830, one hundred years ago, the population was about nine thousand eight hundred, and the town boundaries were scarcely different from those of the original settlement-the river on the east, Park Street and the South Green on the south, somewhat beyond Mor- gan Street in a northerly direction, and the line of the pres- ent railroad tracks and Washington Street on the west. Outside of these limits were found farms, pasture land and
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Hartford's First Church
swamp. The Sigourney homestead, that stately old mansion which the seeking eye may still find facing the railroad south of Asylum Street, hidden and surrounded by warehouses, a pathetic semblance of its former self, was called, one hun- dred years ago, one of Hartford's suburban residences. The old bridge across the Little River at Main Street, one of our ancient landmarks, was scarcely finished when the town celebrated its bicentennial. What more' vivid realization of the size of the city could we gain than by looking at the Directory of 1838-a little volume less than four by six inches, and hardly one quarter of an inch thick !
It was, literally, only a moderate sized village over which our first Meeting Houses watched. Business sections and residence sections were not differentiated when "the new brick Meeting House" was built in 1807. The finest residences and the shops of the town stood side by side. Indeed it is worthy of note that not until 1923 was the parsonage of the First Church more than half a mile from the Meeting House, and until almost the twentieth century the successive parsonages stood but a short way from Thomas Hooker's original homestead site on what is now the corner of Arch and Prospect Streets, where his well is still to be found in the clamoring foundry that covers it. In short, it was a peaceful New England village, with shaded streets, white pillared houses, small one-storied shops and hospitable taverns, before whose doors clattering stage coaches drew up, on which "the new brick Meeting House" looked down at the beginning of the last century. Now, as a treasured historic building, it looks up to the lofty towers and many-storied offices all about it, and remembers the little town in which its life began, and which it has seen grow and change to a great modern city of ceaseless activ-
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