USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Guilford > A history of Christ Episcopal Church in Guilford, Connecticut : an address delivered by the Rector, Rev. William G. Andrews, in September, 1894, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the parish > Part 5
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I Autobiography, (MS.) sect. 54.
2 Conn. Ch. Docs., ii. 81, 106-7, etc.
3 Ibid., ii. 102-3 ; Beardsley, Hist. of Ch. in Conn." i. 102.3.
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and the fear lest Bishops should be sent to America, to be sup- ported by general taxation and to exercise secular authority as at home, became a very active element in the popular discon- tent. The fear, though not warranted by the attitude of sober- minded Episcopalians, was neither unnatural nor wholly unrea- sonable, and the willingness of the home government to set aside colonial rights, which was betrayed in the Stamp Act, made a farther violation of rights seem more probable. Guilford itself was the scene of a most important step in the struggle against an American episcopate when, in 1766, the General Association of Connecticut sat here, with Thomas Ruggles as its moderator, and received, and readily responded to, proposals from the Pres- byterian Synod for an alliance in the struggle. Altogether, the brief period of Mr. Hubbard's ministry abounded in evil portents for the future of the Church of England.
Nevertheless this was the brightest period in the history of the parish during the last century, as it was the only one, as far as I can learn, when it had a resident minister. And when, in the summer of 1767, acting under the advice of his clerical brethren, Mr. Hubbard took charge of the mission at New Haven, to be honored and loved there for nearly half a century, the people were heart-broken. His removal seems to have been inevitable if he were to have a home of his own. Dr. Johnson testifies that the people could not "provide a tolerable support for Mr. Hubbard," though neither could "bear part." He Jong hesitated, and even at one time felt "compelled to tarry among them."1 As his marriage took place in less than a year after he left Guilford (May 15, 1768), it is probable enough that his purpose to marry finally settled the question.2 There is a pathetic letter to the Society from the churchwardens, Nathaniel Johnson and Samuel Collins, written in July, 1768, a year after Mr. Hubbard's removal, of which I have made much use, which vividly portrays the sorrow of the congregation. The loss, say the writers, was " so distressing to us, that words cannot express it. . Some of us are almost ready to say our wound is incurable. The removal of Mr. Hubbard has given the Church the heaviest blow that ever it received."3
I Conn. Ch. Docs., ii. 103, 107.
2 Talcott's Guilf. Geneal .; Sprague, Ann. of Amer. Pulp., V. 235.
3 Conn. Ch. Docs., ii. 129.
5I
Christ Church Parish, Guilford, Conn.
The new family names appearing in the records during these three years, and which I can do no more than mention, are Bradley, Ludinton, Shelley, Fairchild and Campbell. It will be remembered that these names are not taken from lists of parishioners, which do not exist for this period, but are given as they occur for various reasons in the records. There were probably some members of the congregation whose names do not appear at all, and some may have entered it long before there was any occasion, such as the baptism of a child, for recording their names.
We have traversed less than half the first fifty years of our parochial life, but we can make a briefer passage through the rest. And the next stage shall be a long one, of seventeen years, carrying us through the Revolution, and ending in 1784. This period, the fourth, has its limit defined for us with toler- able accuracy by the continuance of Mr. Hubbard's pastoral oversight in such measure as his new duties permitted him to imaintain it. This parish, however, and doubtless the whole cure of three congregations, naturally desired more constant ser- vices than he could possibly give, and made an effort to secure thein. And the leaders of our congregation, with those whom they led, never appear to better advantage than when all hearts were still aching with the wound inflicted by Mr. Hubbard's removal. The veteran churchwardens, both now past sixty, spoke in the spirit of Thomas Hooker of Hartford when, testify- ing for the "Congregational way," he declared that "Christ, the King of his Church and Master of his House, he only in reason, can make laws that are Authenticke for the government thereof.''1 To these Guilford Episcopalians, presumably drawn towards the Church of England, at first, by their desire to enjoy the sacraments on Catholic terms, the order of that Church, the liistoric order of Christendom, had come to seem that which their King and Master had established. And so they were "assured," they "firmly believed," that theirs was " the cause of Christ ;" they might well, with the same Thomas Hooker, have regarded church government as "a fundamentall point of Religion." In the strength of this conviction, much stronger in them than in those who then controlled church action in Eng-
I Survey of the Summe of Church Discipline, Pt. I., 5.
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land, and hoping against hope, they appealed once more, in 1768, to the Venerable Society. They had unanimously invited John Tyler of Wallingford, a candidate who had been serving among them as lay-reader, "to go home for orders," and he had consented to come back to Guilford if the Society would grant only a small addition to the salary which could be given by the people of his cure. Before the letter was written Mr. Tyler had received priest's orders, and then the Society sent him to Norwich.1
But Mr. Hubbard had stipulated with his New Haven flock that he should visit his old parishioners four times a year,2 and he was their minister in as real a sense as Mr. Punderson had been. Our records show that he was often here on Sunday, and we may fairly suppose that he went sometimes to North Guil- ford and Killingworth. He gave the Holy Communion to the people, he baptized their children, he married their young peo- ple, he buried their dead. He was even recognized by the civil authorities as the incumbent of the parish ; rates were paid to him in 1770 and 1776 ; in 1780 he presided at a parish meeting. His ministrations did not wholly cease until near the close of the century,3 if they ceased then, but during the present period cf seventeen years, it does not appear that this parish secured, or, after the failure of Mr. Tyler's case, attempted to secure, any other minister than Bela Hubbard. His, however, were not the only clerical services which were rendered here. Seven of the Connecticut clergy besides Mr. Hubbard are recorded at least once as visiting Guilford, often on a Sunday. Among them were Abraham Jarvis, afterwards our second Bishop, Jeremiah Leaming, the first choice of the clergy for our first Bishop, and Roger Viets, uncle and early instructor of Bishop Griswold of the Eastern Diocese. But I may be pardoned for speaking with pleasure of the fact that the first clerical name thus introduced into our records, and the name which occurs oftenest, is that of Samuel Andrews, the missionary at Wallingford. He had promised a yearly visit on a Sunday or a Holy Day,1 and he evidently kept his promise until his loyalist sympathies, as tradi-
I Conn. Ch. Docs., ii. 129; Life and Corresp. of Samuel Johnson, 333-4; Hist. of Ch. in Conn., i. 270.
2 Lett. of S. P. G. (Harwood MS.), vol. B., 23 (16S).
3 Dr. Hubbard's Notitia Parochialis, at New Haven, contains the record of many official acts performed here, as well as elsewhere out of New Haven.
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Christ Church Parish, Guilford, Conn.
tion says, limited his journeys to his own premises, except by written permission of the Wallingford selectmen. Among the children baptized by him was Roxana, daughter of Eli Foote, who became the wife of the famous Lyman Beecher, and the mother of children still more famous. I venture to think of this kinsman of mine as for about seven years Mr. Hubbard's chief assistant in the care of Christ Church, Guilford.
CHRIST CHURCH, GUILFORD, CONSECRATED DEC. 12, 1838.
Loyalist sympathies undoubtedly prevailed in this congre- gation, to its detriment, when the war broke out, although Guil- ford Episcopalians and their sons were found among the patriot soldiers. And I imagine that we should obtain a nearly com- plete list of the men of the parish if we could find an enrollment made by the town's order on the twelfth of July, 1781. This was less than a month after a marauding expedition, in which were some refugees, had landed at Leete's Island, and Simeon Leete and Ebenezer Hart had lost their lives in beating the
I Conn. Ch. Docs., ii. 192.
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plunderers off.1 Doubtless under an angry impulse given by this tragedy, "Sundry inhabitants" were put on record "as Inimical to the Liberties " of their country. I trust that nobody now believes that this was a fair description of men many of whom, however mistaken in opinion, loved American liberty with all their hearts, but believed, with that spotless patriot, William Samuel Johnson, that liberty might be safe under the free constitution of the mighty empire of which they all had long been proud of being subjects. And in less than nine years the town of Guilford seems to have come to this view of matters. On the twelfth of April, 1790, it was ordered that the names thus enrolled be expunged, and that the "sd enrollment no longer form any part of the Records of this Town." The expunging process must have consisted in burning a loose sheet of paper, for there is no space for the enrollment in the existing records, and it can never have been placed there. Even in an hour of intense and natural exasperation the Guilford instinct of justice was too strong to permit good neighbors and true friends to be branded for life.
Before the war the parish must have grown faster than one would have expected, if, as a fragment of a letter apparently written in 1774 reports, it then contained thirty-seven families .? But there may have easily been an abatement of unfriendly feel- ing towards the Church of England after the repeal of the Stamp Act, and in 1772 Mr. Hubbard wrote from New Haven that his congregation had increased one-third in less than five years, and that he had " the happiness to see the greatest unanimity reign- ing amongst " his people and their fellow Christians.3 During the war the parish must have lost ground, and I have the author- ity of Dr. Bennett for the statement, coming down, I suppose, as a tradition, that the church building suffered from lawless violence. The lead of the window sashes (bought, as our records show, from the First Society,) is said to have been appropriated by zealous patriots, and run into bullets to be fired at King George's soldiers. But it is also said that the services on Sunday never ceased, though laymen commonly conducted
I Smith's Hist. of Guilford, 49-50.
2 Christ Ch. Rec.
3 Conn. Ch. Docs., ii. IST.
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Christ Church Parish, Guilford, Conn.
them, and we now know that during all those stormy years a priest of the Church led here from time to time the worship of the congregation according to the order of the Church of Eng- land. One office or another of the Prayer Book, as Bela Hub- bard's New Haven records show, was used by him throughout the period of the war, as well as before and after. And probably 110 year passed without his offering here the memorial sacrifice, to maintain their share in which his friends and kinsmen, fulfill- ing a priesthood as real as his own, had so often and so long offered themselves as a living sacrifice.
In the early part of this period, too, (1769, ) they built the pulpit which could be so seldom filled, and again and again gave permission for the building of pews for worshippers whom their fear of God, and not their admiration for a man, might be trusted to draw to the House of God. And they could not, till they must, relinquish the hope that what they so longed for and had struggled so hard to secure, the regular ministrations of the Church, the Society in England would at last consent to give them. In spite of its resolution to establish no more missions in New England, and suspending its rule requiring a house and glebe as the condition of a grant, the Society had sent a mission- ary to Pomfret in 1772. This exception was made out of regard to the wishes of a wealthy layman, Godfrey Malbone, who him- self gave largely to the new mission, and in the expectation that the usual additional provision for the missionary would soon be made.1 Even before this excuse for a fresh application had been given, or in January, 1771, the parish had directed the wardens to write to the Venerable Society, asking that a mis- sion might be established here .? And after the favorable action in the case of Pomfret, in September, 1773, the principal layman of New Haven, Enos Alling, himself a member of the Society, addressed a letter to the secretary, warmly pleading the cause of Guilford.3 Samuel Johnson, their most influential friend, was dead, but a few days later the clergy of Connecticut, assembled in "a voluntary Convention," mentioned the desires of this
I Abst. of S. P. G., 1773; Hist. of Ch. in Conn., i. 273-5, 281.
2 Christ Ch. Rec.
3 Lett. of S. P. G. (Harwood MS.), vol. B. 23 (2).
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parish to the same official.1 In August, 1774, the parish made, or began to make, what was perhaps its last appeal, in which Abraham Jarvis, afterwards Bishop of this diocese, may have lent his assistance .? But the Society was inexorable, and Guil- ford was left to practice the lesson, for which it has had much use, of self-reliance.
Towards the close of our present period, in November, 1783, we find an entry which suggests that the parish had produced, and was making use of, another candidate for orders. This was young Andrew Fowler, son of Andrew, and grandson of Mrs. Johnson's sister, Andrea Morgan. He had just graduated at New Haven, where for two years he had acted as lay-reader under Mr. Hubbard, with the sanction of President Stiles. He was afterwards ordained in New York by Bishop Provoost, and is remembered for many useful labors, among the rest for having presented the first class for confirmation in the diocese of South Carolina.3 Of the ministers who had thus far been reared with- in the territorial limits of the First Society, at least one-third, as far as I can learn, took episcopal orders.
Seventeen new family names appear on the records between 1767 and 1784, those of Geers, Powers, Ranney, Leete, Ruggles, Hotchkin (Hotchkiss), Ebair, Hill, Miller, Fowler, Foote, Smith, Hall, Cruttenden, Ingraham, Caldwell and Redfield. I cannot be sure, however, that all of them belong to Guilford.
The next and last period of our early history, with which the narrative reaches the point where the old records, newly discovered, meet those long in our possession, measures sixteen years. Opening July 5, 1784, it closes December 22, 1800, within a few days of the beginning of this century. Throughout most of this period the parish was engaged in efforts, more or less successful, and made in connection with other parishes, to secure clerical services. Such efforts, put forth in a time of great weakness everywhere, show the inextinguishable energy and courage with which the children and grandchildren of the founders of the church sought to perpetuate the good work of
I Conn. Ch. Docs., ii. 191.
2 Ch. Ch. Rec.
3 Christ Ch. Rec .; Sprague, Annals, v. 428; Perry's History of the American Episcopal Church, ii. 189.
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Christ Church Parish, Guilford, Conn.
their fathers. The effects of the war had been disastrous to the cause of episcopacy, and the Venerable Society could not, under its charter, employ missionaries outside of the British dominions. All stipends were to cease on the twenty-ninth of September, 1785.1 Guilford had never enjoyed a large share of the Society's bounty, and for twenty years it had received nothing. Now, all hope of assistance from that quarter was finally cut off. But many congregations had leaned on the Society too heavily and too long, and it was on the whole a very good thing for Ameri- can Episcopalians that they were at last compelled to pay their own bills .? The stimulating effect of the new situation seems illustrated by the case of Branford, where the parish, flourishing in 1766, then practically disappears from view until 1784, and the organization must have lapsed. Life was not extinct, how- ever, and the names of fifty-four members in the year last men- tioned indicate greater strength than our own parish possessed. And at Branford, on the fifth of July, 1784, a meeting was held for consultation about the employment of a clergyman, in which representatives of North Guilford and, undoubtedly, of Guil- ford took part. The parishes wished to secure the services of Mr. Ashbel Baldwin, of Litchfield, then a lay-reader waiting for the coming of a Bishop to ordain him. Attention may have been drawn to Mr. Baldwin by the fact that he had married, or was soon to marry, a granddaughter of Captain Johnson of Guil- ford. Her father, Mr. Samuel Johnson, was authorized to make terms with Mr. Baldwin, and it would seem that the latter must have shown some disposition to accept the cure, since on the fifteenth of November the parishes voted to offer him, for a year, £80 of the currency of the commonwealth (about £40 sterling). Branford paying half the amount. But by this time he had probably received overtures from his birthplace, and he became the incumbent of St. Michael's, Litchfield, on his ordination a few months later.3 But before the end of November Branford had begun negotiations with another clergyman, the Rev. James Sayre, and on the twentieth of December, 1784, this parish
I Abst. of S. P. G., 1785.
2 Conn. Ch. Docs., ii. 8, 9.
3 Bailey's Trinity Church, 10, 20-1 ; Sprague's Annals, v. 352 ; Bronson's "Conn. Cur- rency," 135-6, in N. H. Col. Hist. Soc. Pap., voli. The date of Mr. Baldwin's marriage is not known.
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appointed a committee to act with representatives of Branford and North Guilford in making an engagement with Mr. Sayre. He appears to have served the three parishes during the year 1785, residing in Branford, and they desired to retain his servi- ces for another year. Guilford, seconded by North Guilford, offered him inducements to remove his residence to the former place. As one of these inducements was the payment of one- fourth of the rent of a house it is clear that at that period (Jan- uary, 1786,) this parish had no rectory, and the presumption that it had never been able to purchase a glebe and house, as required by the Venerable Society, is strengthened. Mr. Sayre, however, could not be persuaded to keep the cure, and in Feb- ruary, 1786, the three parishes were consulting about another minister. Their late incumbent, a Scotchman by birth, though a graduate of the college at Philadelphia, in the class of Bishop White, was evidently a good and long a useful man. But his conservatism was so intense and so stubborn that he refused to accept the Prayer Book as revised in 1789 by the newly formed Protestant Episcopal Church, tempted one or two Connecticut parishes into flat rebellion, and finally died insane.1 For two years whatever pastoral oversight this parish enjoyed seems to have been that of its old friend, Bela Hubbard.
In common with other parishes, however, our own had now a share in the ministrations of a chief pastor. The first Ameri- can Bishop, of what we call the Anglican Communion, Samuel Seabury, had arrived in Connecticut in June, 1785, after having obtained in Scotland, at the request of the clergy of Connecticut, the consecration which was refused him in England. Complete reports of Bishop Seabury's episcopal visitations do not exist, but we know that he came to Guilford in July, 1786. On the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh of that month he had ordained Benjamin Lindsay successively deacon and priest, and Mr. Lindsay was then " Licensed for North Carolina."? «The Bishop of Connecticut had for the time being, and in a certain degree, taken the place once held with respect to the American churches by the Bishop of London, and candidates for orders, from New
I Bailey, 21-3 ; Rec. of Christ Ch .; Rec. of St. John's Ch. (North Guilford); Hist. of Ch. in Conn., i. 415, 421-7; Life and Correspondence of Rev. William Smith, D. D., i. 365. 2 Journal of Connecticut Convention, 1882, p. 154.
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Christ Church Parish, Guilford, Conn.
Hampshire to Georgia, now made the journey to Connecticut as they would once have made the journey to England. Bishop Seabury had as yet no jurisdiction beyond Connecticut, but Episcopalians who recognized and sought the benefit of the powers inherent in his office, would respect the licenses to offi-
O
LORENZO T. BENNETT, D. D.
ciate which he gave, as well as his letters of orders. That a man should be made deacon one day and priest the next was in accordance with Anglican usage, when the candidate (as, prob- ably, in the present instance) could not conveniently remain long within easy access to a Bishop. But it shows how little
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importance was attached to the office of deacon, in itself consid- ered, as is unhappily still the case. Whether confirmation was administered at this time I have been unable to learn. But if this was Bishop Seabury's first visit it seems almost certain that Mr. Hubbard, who was present, had the happiness of claiming the apostolic rite for the few surviving founders of the parish, with their children and their grandchildren. Mr. Hubbard's mother was still living, with her husband,1 Captain Johnson, and it would not be very hard to construct a long list of persons who might then have been confirmed. Classes were large in those days, when they often included all or most of the com- municants of a congregation. Bishop Seabury is reported to have found the church building so nearly a ruin that he thought that little remained but to say the burial office over it. And if other information is correct the structure may at least have been reduced to something like the condition in which it was when its builders first began to use it, with unglazed windows. But the " spiritual house," the real church, although it was also weakened, and may even have become weaker, still stood, and continued to stand, on the One Foundation.
Our own records fail us for nearly twelve years after August 28, 1786, or until April 23, 1798. The two Guilford parishes and Branford did not maintain their association throughout this period, and North Guilford, which now had a parsonage to offer, seems to have attempted in 1787 to obtain the ministrations of Ashbel Baldwin, asking two-thirds of his time. Mr. Baldwin, one-half of whose time was required at Litchfield, was present at a vestry-meeting at North Guilford in June of that year, and probably gave the proposal serious consideration. It is not un- likely that our own parish was expected to employ Mr. Baldwin a third of the time, but he decided to remain at Litchfield .? While the matter was pending, as I infer, Branford invited the churchmen of the two Guilfords to share the privilege of listening to the Rev. Dr. Leaming on the Sunday after Easter.
I Her name seems to have remained until her death on the list of members of the First Church. But it appears there only as that of the wife of Daniel Hubbard, and she is likely to have become an Episcopalian with her father, brother and children.
2 St. John's Ch. Rec., North Guilford ; St. Michael's Ch. Rec., Litchfield, communicated by the Rector, the Rev. Storrs O. Seymour.
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Christ Church Parish, Guilford, Conn.
And when we find that in 1788 that parish is believed to have passed under the charge of the Rev. Edward Blakeslee (then in Deacon's orders), who remained there until April, 1790, one conjectures, though one can do little more, that his cure may have included Guilford, if not also North Guilford.1 For the year 1791 we have no information whatever. June 1, 1792, Bishop Seabury visited Killingworth and Guilford for consulta- tion, and as a result the Rev. David Butler, ordained deacon on the tenth of June, was licensed for the old cure of Bela Hub- bard, including North Guilford. A year later, having been ordained priest, he was regularly appointed to the cure.2 Bran- ford probably expected to have a minister of its own, though the hope does not seem to have been realized.3 During Mr. Butler's incumbency confirmation was twice administered in each of his- three parishes. At the first visitation, October 17, 18 and 19, 1792, seven persons were confirmed in North Guilford, one in Guilford and five in Killingworth ; at the second, in June, 1794, twenty-four were confirmed in North Guilford, four in Guilford, and twenty-seven in Killingworth.' The small size of the classes at Guilford strengthens one's belief that most of those of sufficient age had been confirmed in 1786. But it is also probable that this church was at that time the least prosperous. of the three, and that St. John's, North Guilford, was the strongest. And the fact that in 1794 the Bishop remained three days, including a Sunday, at North Guilford, and gave but one day to Guilford, confirms the opinion, otherwise supported, that Mr. Butler's residence was at the former place, where was, apparently, the only parsonage in the cure. At Killingworth, where Mr. Hubbard had doubtless conducted occasional services during the twenty-seven years which had passed since he relin- quished the cure, and whither he took the Bishop in October, 1791, to meet the "scattered Church people," there seems to have been no church building. Bishop Seabury was therefore twice indebted to the hospitality of Congregationalists for a
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