USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Branford > A history of the First church and society of Branford, Connecticut, 1644-1919 > Part 8
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time, sat in the front seats of the galleries, both on the sides of the building, and facing the pulpit.
A tax was laid (1791) "for the purpose of hire- ing a teacher of Musick or Instructor of singing in public Worship." By January, 1792, the singing school was in full swing and liberty was granted to "ye Singing Schollers to get eight loads of wood on the Society's land for the use of ye Sing- ing School." In 1795, a room for the school was also provided and "some few singing Books for such scholars as be destitute." Captain Gould and Simeon Coan were engaged as teachers and "were desired to use their influence to procure as many of the young Gentlemen and Ladies to engage in the school and obtain the art of Singing (which is con- sidered an accomplishment) as may be, and also to Instruct the Scholars (especially new beginners) as far as they can with convenience to themselves."
The book which was used at this time may well have been, "Urania-A Choice Collection of Psalm Tunes, Anthems & Hymns. To which are prefixed the plainest and most Necessary rules of Psalmody. James Lyon, A.B. 1761." A number of these ancient books are still in existence in Branford, and are of great interest because of their unusual nota- tion, script characters, and for the strange themes and words of certain of the anthems.
Mr. Atwater found some sixty members, accord- ing to his estimate, in the Branford church at the time of his ordination. During the ten years of his service, he added seventy-eight more, forty-three
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within the first year of his service. Soon after 1790 he became infected with tuberculosis and was soon incapacitated by the disease. The Society declared his contract terminated, towards the close of the year 1793, during which year he had been able to do little preaching, and arranged with his wife for a settlement. Mr. Atwater succumbed rapidly to the disease, and grew steadily worse until his life ended, June 10, 1794.
The next to take his place in the line of the Bran- ford ministers was the Reverend Lynde Hunting- ton, a native of Norwich, Connecticut. He was the son of Oliver and Anna (Lynde) Huntington, and was a graduate of Yale. He was called by the church on July 20th, 1795, by a unanimous vote, and the call was seconded, by the Society, on August 7th. After some discussion about financial terms, these were fixed at three hundred pounds, as a settlement, ninety-five pounds yearly, for salary, and firewood. The call was accepted, and Thursday, October 22d, was set apart as a day of fasting and prayer. On this day Rev. Nicholas Street and Rev. Matthew Noyes delivered sermons, and upon the Ordination Day, the Wednesday following, Rev. Zebalun Ely came down from Lebanon to preach the Ordination Sermon.
The new minister was a man of large promise and of much talent. He was a strong Calvinist and, in his preaching, returned to the theology and exegesis of the seventeenth century. One of his
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first acts was to abolish the Half Way Covenant in his church, and to demand specific and deepseated experience of personal regeneration as the only basis for church membership. This drawing fast of the lines is probably responsible for the fact that only fifty were added to the church in the nine years of his pastorate, and is certainly the explana- tion for there being only about one hundred bap- tisms during that period.
For many years the Branford people had desired to have a steeple upon their meeting house. In 1751, the Society had voted that one should be erected "if suffitient contributions be forthcome- ing," but nothing came of the endeavor at that time. Then came the Revolution, and the minds of men were turned to other things and their purses emptied in defence of liberty. So it was not until the new Republic had been born that the resolve to add to their meeting house one of those steeples, which were becoming characteristic of church architecture in New England, was revived.
The first mention we find of this resurrected desire is in a vote of the Society (January 13, 1797), "that this Society will sell & dispose of all the wood standing & growing or lying on the lower end of Indian Neck, as it is called, belonging to this Society for purpose of and to be solely applied to repairing the Meeting House, and in erecting a handsome and decent Steeple, in addition to said house, in convenient time." The wood was sold, as ordered, and the Meeting House was thoroly
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repaired. Doubtless it had been almost entirely neglected during the years of war and the equally stringent days just beyond. The house was also painted, or whitewashed, both inside and out, and the roof was coated "with Spanish Brown laid on with Linseed oil." But the new steeple was not added until after the dawning of the new century.
Events of real importance are not many in this pastorate, but two matters, both connected with the Lord's Supper, are worth noting. It had been the custom from the beginning, in the Branford church, and in most of her sister churches, to defray the expense of the Communion Service by a special tax, or "rate" assessed against each member of the parish. This old practice was done away with December 3d, 1795, and the cost of the sacrament was henceforth met by a special offering, taken at the Communion Service. As time passed it became common for this special offering to amount to more than the cost of the service. So, in 1796, the dea- cons were authorized to "make distribution" of such money as should remain after defraying the expenses of the Communion table, "to such mem- bers of this chh as they shall judge, after making suitable inquiry, to be most necessitous." This vote was reaffirmed in 1803. Both of these innova- tions proved popular and remain in force at the present day.
Mr. Huntington also was instrumental in the abolition of the Half Way Covenant. It will be remembered that this covenant was that measure
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which had been adopted in the days of Abrahamn Pierson, and which permitted a "half way" mem- bership in the church, consisting of those who desired to be church affiliated but who had never experienced personal vital regeneration. The meas- ure was fast becoming unpopular in the New Eng- land of the close of the century, for it was felt, and rightly, that it was responsible for much of the laxity and lack of interest in religious life and thought of that time. But the Branford church had decisively reaffirmed their allegiance to the Covenant, when it had come before the members on a sort of referendum as to its continuance, in Atwater's pastorate, and there is no reason for failing to believe that it was the personal influence of the strongly Calvinistic Huntington which turned the tide against it in this town.
The closing years of Mr. Huntington's pastorate were marked by a series of efforts to purge the church of immorality and of worldliness by the exercise of her disciplinary powers. Page after page of the records is filled, at this point, with the minutes of meetings which were called to consider and try the cases of offenders against the good name of the Church of Christ. They are not espe- cially interesting pages, and the names and offences there recorded have been long since forgotten, and may be best left in oblivion. It was not wholly their fault, neither was it that of the church, which realized too late the perils of indiscriminate admis- sion to membership and endeavored, thus sharply,
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to purge itself of impurity and dishonor. The fruits of the Half Way Covenant were to be reaped for many years, as we shall see, and some of them, alas, were unripe fruit.
But eight short years were allowed for the min- istry of Mr. Huntington. His youth was marked by talent and his growing years brought signs of greater promise. But the disease which had cut down his predecessor soon claimed him also and his life was terminated by it, September 20, 1804.
It is difficult to make a fair estimate of his pas- torate because it is so evidently incomplete. Some good he did; much more he tried to do. We may best characterize him as a reformer, whose fairest dream was to restore the Calvinistic sternness of thought and conduct which had so nearly vanished from the churches of his day. To that end he labored earnestly and strongly. Much of what could be done, he did, and, since his task was a hopeless one, and the past is never reproduced, once it be vanished, it may be that his end was a happier one than it might perchance have been had he lived to see the defeat which must have come with added years. At any rate it would appear to have been because he had been nominated therefor by Destiny, rather than from lack either of talent or of merit, that his part in the ministry of Christ was that of a Minor Prophet.
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THE MINISTRY OF "FATHER" GILLETT
In our review of the one hundred-sixty years of the history of the church which grew from the small beginnings made at "the place of the tidal river," in 1644, we have made mention only of men known to us by the written word alone. No man or woman lives whose eyes ever beheld the living features of Samuel Russell or of Philemon Robbins. Far otherwise is it with him of whom we now shall speak. "Father" Gillett is nearer to us than tradition, or even mere written record. Men and women still active in our church remem- ber well the features and the personality of this minister of God. It is with temerity that we may venture to place the printed word beside their living memories. Yet the time has come when we must do for him even as did he for his predecessors in the prophetic office, in his classic "Semi-Cen- tennial Discourse." May our portrait be as just as were his.
Timothy Phelps Gillett was born in Farmingbury (now Wolcott), Connecticut, on June 15, 1780. His father, Alexander Gillett, was then minister in that place, and was a man of learning beyond the ordinary. He had begun his education by graduat- ing from Yale, in 1770, had continued his study of the classics, and, not satisfied with Latin and Greek alone, had commenced the study of Hebrew, in late middle life, and had pursued it so ardently that he
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was able, some years later, to modestly confess to a friend that he had read thru the entire Hebrew Bible three times. Nor, with all his studiousness, was he a recluse, for he had a more than average success in his profession and his ministry was unusually blest.
From all that we can gather of the testimony of those who knew them both, Alexander Gillett and his son Timothy were shaped in the same mould of character and personality. The mother was Adah (Rogers) Gillett, the third daughter of Deacon Josiah Rogers, of Farmingbury, and inherited the Mayflower blood of Thomas Rogers, member of that famous company.
Timothy was the oldest of six children and had been set apart, from his birth, in his father's prayers, for the ministry. This consecration of his life to that profession had not, however, been revealed to him, nor was it, until his ordination day; it being his father's cherished desire that he might be moved of his own will to choose the holy office. With this end in view, he was sent to Wil- liams College in 1800, after having been prepared therefor in his own home. It is said that Williams was selected, rather than Yale, the usual training school for Connecticut students, for financial rea- sons. After graduating from the College, in 1804, he taught in Cornwall for one year and then returned to Williamstown where he served first as a teacher in the Academy and, later, as a Tutor at his Alma Mater.
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During the year and a half in which he held this latter office, the young man formed associations which had a profound influence over his subse- quent life, and which, we may well believe, were the immediate cause for his change of profession. At that time Gordon Hall, James Richards and Samuel J. Mills (grandson, by marriage, of Phile- mon Robbins) were undergraduates, at the College, and were holding their missionary prayer meetings ; and Mr. Gillett tells us that they frequently met in his room. In these meetings of the "Williams- town Band" the call to a larger service came to him. He did not enlist in the world conquest pro- gram which they had initiated beneath the historic Haystack, but he did give himself unreservedly to the work of Gospel ministry in the homeland, and he ever was a loyal supporter, both by word and act, of the apostolic labors of the missionary pioneers.
Timothy Gillett was no stranger to theology, even at this time, for he had not spent his youth within constant contact with the stern Edwardian- ism of his father without becoming rather thoroly saturated with its teachings. His after preaching bears abundant witness to this. But he now began to supplement his knowledge by further studies under the direction of President Fitch. He was an apt pupil, and was soon licensed to preach by the Litchfield North Association. This was on Sep- tember 30, 1806. In the winter of 1807, he resigned his Tutorship and, that same winter, he
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was invited to preach, for two Sundays, at East Haven. While keeping this engagement, his destiny became intertwined with that of the church at Branford.
After the loss of their promising young minister, Mr. Lynde Huntington, the Branford people were almost four years without a pastor. Not since the time of Samuel Mather and the "ten year famine" had they known such difficulty in filling the pulpit of their Meeting House. This time there was no dearth of candidates but there was an exceeding scarceness of anything approaching unanimity of opinion. Man after man was given a hearing, but none seemed to meet with universal approval. At last they managed to agree upon a Mr. Bennet Tyler, but Mr. Tyler failed to agree with them; so that also fell thru.
As a sort of last resort the Society instructed a committee (December 1807) to supply the pulpit with some satisfactory man, but to fix upon some- one who had never preached in Branford before, that there should be the less chance for further dis- agreement. The committee appear to have come in touch with Mr. Gillett, at East Haven, and invited him to preach for them. Accepting, he came to Branford on the second day of January and, as he quaintly puts it, "having obtained help from God," "continued there ever since."
The more detailed truth is that he was not called until the following April; by the Society on the thirteenth, and by the Church on the eighteenth.
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Under the terms of the call, which he accepted May 4, 1808, his yearly salary was to be five hun- dred dollars, with the privilege of cutting firewood on the Society's lands "sufficient to supply his own fire, until from continued ill health or infirmity he is no longer able to perform his duties."
Let us picture to ourselves, for a moment, the Branford to which Mr. Gillett came and the Bran- ford of his early years of ministry. The town had changed somewhat since Samuel Russell's days. The population had increased until (1810) there were 1932 inhabitants in the township. The agri- cultural possibilities of the land had been developed and several small industries begun; among these, besides the old Iron Works, being three fulling mills, one carding machine, and two distilleries. There were also six stores, four Congregational churches (the fourth being the "enrolled" or aggrieved church, at Northford which had a feeble existence for about a quarter of a century), and two Episcopal ones.
But that commercial importance which Branford had once enjoyed had fallen away. Her ships and gallant sea-men had been decimated by the French and Indian Wars, and by our own Revolution, until she had but six vessels left, of greater burthen than forty tons. Her relative importance in the state had also lessened, not so much because of her own loss of strength as because she had failed to grow as rapidly as had certain of her neighbors. But she was a fair town, and she offered a goodly pastorate.
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Branford, (central part.)
THE BRANFORD GREEN OF 1835 Buildings in order from left to right are the Episcopal Church, the Academy, the Congregational Church
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The appearance of the Green is fairly well repre- sented in the cut, which we reproduce, if we remember that the "Academy" was not built until several years after Gillett's arrival. Along the edges of the Green stood a number of "Sabbath- Day Houses." These were interesting adjuncts to the old New England Meeting House, and we are fortunate enough to have, in an extract from the "Semi-Centennial Discourse," a description of them, in "Father" Gillett's own words :
"These were little buildings put up on the skirts of the public green, and in some instances, hard by the house of God, single or double, and designed to accomodate one or more families. Sometimes a kind of patriarchate, and the whole family of two or three generations spent the inter- mission of the Lord's day in them. Here the provisions were deposited in the morning; in the winter season a good fire was made,-and then the Bible or some approved sermon book, produced and read; or perhaps the doc- trines and principles of the morning discourse discussed. Possibly some one of less serious mood might talk with his neighbor of worldly matters, or the news of the day, but these family gatherings, in those small, unpainted, unpretending houses, were far more in accordance with the idea of remembering the Sabbath day to keep it holy, than some of the gatherings of the present day, when modern progress has swept away these appendages of our earthly courts."
There can be no doubt that these Sabbath Day Houses were veritable garden spots in those puri- tanical old Sabbaths. The attractiveness of them grows when we remember that the Meeting House itself had no stove, and when we picture the con- gregation, with numbed feet and chilled faces,
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hurrying forth from the frozen place of worship to find the glowing heat of the noon-day stove and meal. One suspects that there may have been more of the talk of "worldly matters" than good "Father" Gillett dreamed. And what a test of practical Christian faith it must have been to leave the place of comfort and return, with the advent of the hour of afternoon service, to the arctic church, whose refrigerated air knew no warmth save the perfervid imagery of the pictured Hell of the sermon.
The earliest notice which we find of the erection of these Sabbath-Day Houses is in an item of the Society records, of 1798, which grants permission that Deacon Baldwin "and others that are desire- ous of setting up a Sabbath day House or Houses may do it in the most convenient place or places & least detriment to the Public under the inspection of a comtee to be appointed by this Society."
Besides the items noted above, it may be of interest to know that the town had some two- hundred-eighty dwelling houses and two social libraries. There were five school districts in the South Society and, as "Father" Gillett puts it, "five indifferent schoolhouses." Only the three "Rs," and they in their most elementary forms, were taught and the instruction often occupied little more than three months in a year for most of the pupils. High schools were unknown, and even grammar schools were lacking. One of the first efforts of the young minister was to remedy this lack-but more of that anon.
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It was upon the fifteenth of June, that Timothy Phelps Gillett was ordained to the ministry of Christ his Master. His father, Alexander Gillett, was present and delivered the ordination sermon. The title of it was "The Proper Mode of Preach- ing the Gospel," and the text, Matthew XIII; 52- "Then said he unto them, Therefore every scribe which is instructed into the kingdom of Heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old."
It must have been a dramatic hour as, there before the flock which his son was called to shep- herd, the father revealed the prayer which had been hidden in his heart since the child's birth, the desire that his son might also serve at the sacred altar, and unfolded and traced God's answer to that con- stant petition-thru the revival at Torrington, when Timothy had been moved by the Holy Spirit to conversion; the days at Williams and the call which reached him, thru the missionary band, for the prophetic office-and then charged him, in words solemn and earnest, to be true and loyal to his ministry. The discourse itself has been pub- lished and, even in its printed form, is afire with the emotions of that dramatic hour. An additional touch of interest was imparted by the fact that it was the young man's twenty-eighth birthday.
This year was one of the red letter ones of Timothy Gillett's calendar, for not only did it see his ordination but also, before its close (November 29th, to be precise), it witnessed his marriage to
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Miss Sallie Hodges. The young couple lived, for two years, in a building on South Street (South Main Street), and were then enabled, by aid of a small legacy, which came to Mrs. Gillett, to pur- chase and renovate the old Parish Tavern. This served for their home thruout the remainder of the long pastorate. It stands yet, on Main Street, three houses west of the Blackstone Library
The long desired steeple had been added to the Meeting House in 1803, and the Society had voted "to purchase a Clock to be placed in the new Steeple" the year after that. Just when this clock was actually purchased and placed in position is open to conjecture, but it was probably very soon. At any rate a bell was purchased, for we know that some public-spirited person provided the funds to pay for its being rung, at twelve o'clock noon and at nine o'clock each evening except Saturday, before the year was ended.
Not until the annual meeting, in 1809, did the Society "procure sum sutable person to ring the Bell." At the next annual meeting the same pro- vision was made and, in addition, the following directions were given as to the hours when it should be rung: "The first bell to be rung on the Sabbath morning, half after ten o'clock & in the Afternoon per quarter of an hour after One o'clock, each of the first bells, on the Sabbath, to be rung fifteen minutes (enclusive the tolling)." In 1812 the body and the steeple of the Meeting House were repainted, white, and, the same year,
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the Society decided to purchase a new bell, "not to exceed eight hundred wait." The old bell was turned in towards the cost of its successor. In 1814, the sexton and bell ringer was not chosen by the Society or its committee but the position was "let out by auction."
The old custom of seating the Meeting House still prevailed, but there were variations in the method from time to time. Thus, in 1808, it was directed that it should be seated "by Age," and this practice would seem to have been followed until 1822, when the mandate given was that the seats be assigned "agreeable to dignification."
The first practice must have been a source of some embarrassment, not to say of irritation, to the feminine portion of the congregation. Can we imagine the Branford ladies of to-day graded by the number of their years in their position in the auditorium; first the nonagenarians, then the octo- genarians, and so on down to the numerous "thirty years" and "sweet sixteen" groups?
But the ladies were not the only ones to be sub- jected to embarrassment. Imagine poor "Father" Gillett's feelings when he was informed, after a meeting in 1809, that the committee had assigned "the Pew west of the Pulpit stairs for Mr. Gillett & Mrs. Anne Huntington," who had been wife, in turn, to both of his immediate predecessors. Or, again, was it entirely diplomatic when, in 1822, he was instructed to share his pew between his wife and "Widow Anna Barker"?
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If some of the customs of the fathers were retained, in these years, others were dropped. One especially obnoxious one, to our way of thinking, was done away with in August of 1810. From the first days it had been the custom, in New England, to require each person, who was a candidate for full membership in the church, to come forward, before the whole congregation, on some Sunday previous to his admission, and to publicly confess, in detail, all of the particularly scandalous sins of his previous life, especially the hidden ones. What a source of constant sensationalism this custom must have proved.
Of course the result was, especially in the more easy going days which followed the early Calvin- istic rigor, that this rule was either not fully enforced, or else that the candidates dishonestly professed to have bared their souls to public gaze without really doing so. The only really surpriz- ing thing is that the custom lived on, in some churches, for so many years. But its end came, in Branford, with the passage, on the above date, of a unanimous vote "to discontinue the practice of requiring of candidates for admission to church privileges confessions for particular scandalous sins committed previous to their becoming hope- fully converted."
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