USA > Connecticut > New London County > A modern history of New London County, Connecticut, Volume I > Part 37
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Dr. McGuigan was a graduate of the Connecticut Normal School at New Britain, of the Mystic Valley Institute at Mystic, and of the Woman's Med- ical College of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia. She had taught in the public schools of Ledyard and Groton, and had been principal of the Ivoryton School in Essex. She had been resident physician for fifteen months in the City Hospital of Philadelphia, and had received special training in work with the deaf from both Zerah and Frank Whipple. She was the wife of a physician, and was not dependent upon the school for her support, consequently she could and did use the State money for the betterment of the school instead of taking an adequate salary.
Dr. McGuigan at once engaged Miss Ella Scott as principal, a teacher who had had eleven years experience teaching in the Clarke School at North- ampton, Massachusetts, probably the best school for the deaf in the world.
KOVINSTITUTE
1902
MYSTIC VALLEY INSTITUTE, MYSTIC.
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Miss Scott came to Mystic full of courage and enthusiasm, with the deter- mination to make the Mystic School as much like her model at Northampton as possible. She taught trained teachers to assist her, and did brave work. The school was soon incorporated, and in five years had doubled in numbers. More room was needed, so a large addition, subscribed to by friends of the school, was built and occupied. The work of reorganizing and building up the school had worn upon Miss Scott so that when she was offered a fine position as a private teacher of a little girl in Canada she resigned to accept it.
Other efficient principals followed Miss Scott, but owing to lack of funds the work was arduous and discouraging, so no one held the position longer than five years. The principals under Dr. McGuigan's superintendency were as follows : Miss Ella Scott, 1895-1900; Miss Alice H. Damon, B.A., 1900-04; Miss Frances E. Gillespie, 1904-07; Misses Jane and Eleanor, associate prin- cipals, 1907-12; Mr. Tobias Brill, 1912-17; Dr. C. M. H. McGuigan, superin- tendent and principal, 1917-18; Mrs. Sara Small Temple, 1918-19; Miss Addie L. Landers, acting principal, 1919-20; Mr. Walter J. Tucker, 1920-21.
In 1895 the school numbered 18 pupils; in 1900 there were 36; in 1910 it numbered 54, and at the present time there are 82 pupils in school, and about 50 on the waiting list.
The per capita apportioned by the State of Connecticut for the support of the school has been as follows: 1872-95, $175; 1895-1901, $200; 1901-03, $225; 1903-07, $250; 1907-15, $275; 1915, $300; in each of the last four periods there was an allowance of $20 for clothing when necessary.
By 1909, the building with its addition was inadequate. It was unsafe to house so many deaf children in a frame building, so the State Legislature was appealed to and eventually $17,000 was appropriated for a fireproof dormitory. This was built and occupied in September, 1911. This was built for fifty or sixty children, and not for eighty, so another new building is now needed to relieve congestion and to form the first unit of a model school on the cottage plan.
Four States have sent their deaf wards to the Mystic School : Connecticut, 1872 to the present time; New Jersey, 1876-1882; New Hampshire, 1897-1902; Vermont, 1898-1912.
A member of the Board of Charities of Massachusetts visited the Mystic School and recommended sending its pupils to Mystic when it hadn't accom- modations for them within its own borders, but as the room at Mystic was limited, no effort was made to secure Massachusetts pupils.
The course of study prescribed includes lip reading, speech, language, technical grammar, arithmetic, geography, United States, General and English history, physiology, American and English literature, and some algebra. In 1904 one pupil, having completed the course, graduated. In 1907 two pupils graduated. In 1910 there were two graduates; in 1913, two graduates; in 1918, three graduates; and in 1919, one graduate. Three of these pupils afterwards entered high school for the hearing.
In addition to the speech, lip reading and academic studies taught, each child is trained along one or more industrial lines. The various industries that have been taught in the school are as follows : For boys-Printing, farm-
NEW LONDON COUNTY
ing, cabinet work, carpentry, chair caning, hammock netting, cobbling, tree pruning and spraying, waiting on table, assisting cook, cooking, etc. For girls-Gardening, basketry, pottery, embroidery, crocheting, knitting, sew- ing, dressmaking, housework, cooking, millinery and weaving.
Almost without exception, the pupils of this school have gone out into the world well equipped to earn their own living and to be a credit to their school, their families and their State.
Practically from the time of its organization the school has maintained a small normal class. Over fifty teachers have finished the course and ren- dered valuable service in bringing speech to deaf children in this and other States.
During all the years Dr. McGuigan superintended the school, she looked forward to the time when either some wealthy person would endow it or the State would purchase it so its work could go on unimpeded by private man- agement and lack of funds. The endowment did not materialize, so in 1919 a bill for the purchase if the school by the State of Connecticut was passed by the legislative body, and the school would at once have become a State school had its board been assured it would be continued. This assurance was not given, so the deeds were not signed. Dr. McGuigan continued the work and waited for a more auspicious time.
Before the legislature of 1921 came into being, the new governor, Hon. Everett J. Lake, expressed himself as favorable to the continuance of the Mystic School, so relying upon the hope that he and the new legislative body would make proper provision for the future of the Mystic Oral School, the deeds were signed and the school passed over to the State. It is now a State School. It is the only Pure Oral School in the State. It represents the most advanced method known in the education of the deaf. Its situation for such a school is ideal, and with proper provisions for its future, new buildings and equipment. it can be made the equal of the best school for the deaf in the world.
Dr. McGuigan resigned as superintendent, and Mr. Walter J. Tucker was appointed to the place. He was an oral teacher of long standing. He had held the position as principal of the Wright Oral School of New York, and his wife was also an experienced oral teacher of the deaf. They seemed particularly fitted to go on with the work.
Though not the first oral school in America, it was one of the first. Hampered always by lack of funds, it has grown and has done good work. Its influence has been far-reaching and its pupils are its best advertisement.
CHAPTER XI RELIGION IN NEW LONDON COUNTY
The following History of Religion in New London County, beginning on this page and ending on page 314, is by the Rev. W. Huibert, pastor of the First Church of Christ, in Croton. 'The remainder of the chapter is by contributors and staff writers:
In this southeastern corner of Connecticut, religion of an advanced type has for these two hundred and seventy-five years and more proved its funda- mental place in human society. The Indian tribes preceding foreign settle- ments had their peculiar religious cults which doubtless were also basic to their political and social life; but as far as we can know these show no trace of development in form of worship or substance of creed, and especially interest us only in their contacts with the more advanced faiths of their suc- cessors. For more than a quarter of a millenium, now, New London county has witnessed almost every development of religion characteristic of the New World, and especially of New England.1
It is true, the temporary decline in ethical ideals did not afflict the infant seventeenth century settlements here with anything like the fanatical craze which would burn a "witch" or smother a "Quaker," or even exile a Roger Williams, as was the case in the Massachusetts colony. Indeed, at intervals we note, on the contrary, an unexpected breadth of handling of issues that might easily have taken a harsher turn; as when in 1702 the Rev. John Keith and the Rev. John Talbot, working under the auspices of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, coming from Providence, crossed the Ferry (Groton Banks) to New London and were graciously received, particularly by the authorities, even though they came to champion the Church of England. The first mentioned of them says in his journal :
"September 13th, Sunday, Mr. Talbot preached there (New London) in the forenoon and I preached there in the afternoon, we being desired to do so by the minister, Mr. Gurdon Saltonstall, who civilly entertained us at his house, and expressed his good affections to the Church of England. My text was Romans viii:9. The auditory was large and well affected. Colonel Winthrop, Governor of the Colony, invited us to dinner at his house and kindly entertained us, both then and the next day."
Again we have the story of Jesse Lee, the pioneer of Methodism, in 1789 preaching with popular acceptance in the identical county court house our eyes rest upon today in New London. A few years later, Bishop Asbury,
' New London county as constituted in 1666, when the Connecticut Colony was divided into four counties under the new charter obtained in England by Governor John Winthrop, Jr., in 1662, embraced a much larger area than it does today. It stretched from the much disputed Rhode Island boundary westward across the Connecticut river to the Hammonasset river, being the western border of the modern Clinton, taking in all the Saybrooks (Killing- worth and Chester). To the north it embraced gradually (until 1726) the larger part of the modern Windham county (with the exception of Woodstock, claimed by Suffolk county, Massachusetts) and a small part of the modern Tolland county. We must be content with a hazy notion of this whole northern border. When Windham county was established in 1726, the Northern townships of New London county were added to several from Hartford county to constitute the new area. When Middlesex county was formed in 1785, New London county lost historic Saybrook, with Killingworth and Chester, retaining all east of the Connecticut up to East Haddam.
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of the same Communion, had a similarly favorable reception. In 1793 the Rev. John Thayer, a Roman Catholic missionary, was allowed the use of the old First Church at Norwich Town by Rev. Joseph Strong, its pastor, in speaking to a miscellaneous audience, when he undertook to prove that the Roman Catholic was the only true church of Christ. The discourse was accounted by the local press to be "learned and vigorous," and the speaker was given a further hearing in the same place on the following Sunday evening.
These incidents are typical of the freer conditions that generally prevailed in the Connecticut Colony, following the Plymouth precedent and doubtless influenced to a degree by the still freer attitude of the Rhode Island Plantation, Voting, in New London county, was never confined to church members, as was the case in Massachusetts and New Haven, but the suffrage was open to all reputable male citizens. While the historian of New London county has to call attention to many instances of narrowness and petty religious persecutions in the earlier colonial life, he can yet report better conditions in these respects than were customarily found in other parts of New England or in the British Isles and the continent of Europe.
The first religious organization in the county (the First Church of Christ) came to New London as an already organized body from Gloucester, Massachusetts, bringing a modified connection between Church and State. To these virile, simple-hearted founders the Bible was a law-book for the infant colony, as well as a book of religion, and many decisions in the early courts took their precedents direct from Scripture. All freeholders originally were taxed for the support of the churches, and many of the disturbances and quarrels which arose were essentially economic; for a parish was loath to lose any of its paying constituency through the secession of outlying com- munities who claimed the right to carve out their own parishes. Indeed, the location of churches seems to have caused more trouble than any other question that arose in those early days.
Church attendance at the first was compulsory, and a large number of cases of discipline came about thereby. "Separatism" caused the nearest approach to martyrdom to be found in all these annals, bringing to the front men and women who claimed the right to worship as their consciences dic- tated. The record gives us case after case of that form of persecution. Extreme personalities were ready to go the limit in self-assertion. Possibly the still freer conditions that prevailed in Rhode Island may have helped to this end. The famous Rogerenes boldly denounced what they called "the idolatry of the Sabbath," and took delight in disturbing meetings, and in the punishments which inevitably followed. New London county took its full share in the long contest which at last brought complete separation of Church and State (about 1750) and placed on a voluntary basis both church attend- ance and church support. But in the meanwhile, Baptists, Adventists, Roman Catholics, Episcopalians and Friends, as well as all free thinkers, had, for the most part, a hard time of it during the first century of the local history.
We get a happier outlook on things when we note that New London county shared in all the theological movements that helped fashion the re-
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ligious, educational, social and political life of Southeastern Connecticut. Whatever our modern outlook may be, all this past now seems to have been essential and fundamental in the developing life. The looser bonds of the Cambridge Platform (1648) which fostered the spirit of independency gave place gradually to the closer associational and constitutional ties of the Say- brook Platform (1708). The more formal life of the churches, that succeeded the pioneer fervor, and under which the "half-way covenant" allowed a kind of church membership which did not necessitate deep religious convictions, was powerfully invaded by the preaching of the Great Awakening in the third, fourth and fifth decades of the eighteenth century, when Jonathan Edwards, George Whitfield and Eleazar Wheelock championed reasonable evidence of true "conversion" as essential to church membership.
The inevitable demoralization of the war of the American Revolution struck the religious life in New London county hard, in spite of the patriotic fervor that centered about the celebrated Land Office in Lebanon and the heroic defence of New London in 1781. The massacre at Fort Griswold took every male member of the Groton church except an aged invalid who could not get out to share the glory of that September day. Loss of life generally in the homes in the county, abject poverty, the emigration of many enterprising families to newer settlements in Vermont, New Hampshire, New York and Ohio, laxness of morals and the inroad of a deistical philosophy from France and England, as well as lack of well-equipped men for the ministry, the taking of many efficient pastors for much-needed chaplains in the army, the tem- porary clouding of the loyalty of those churches in the county planted and fostered by the Church of England, and the loss of substantial citizens who could not go back on the old flag of England, and who, often as the result of bitter handling by their neighbors, migrated to Canada-all these and many more obstacles like them contributed to give an alarming setback to organized religion in New London county. We may well be astonished that the com- bined results were not worse than they were, and that the recovery, checked by the alarms of the War of 1812, was as good as it was. It all shows a virile stock of men and women who could think through the changing, freer con- ditions into the larger life of our day.
To the aid of the traditional Congregational churches came that of other types of religious life and feeling, which, in turn, laid solid foundations of religious faith and greatly stimulated, directly and indirectly, the older forms Particular attention here is called to the conscientious contentions of the various types of the Baptist invasion from Rhode Island, which rapidly per- meated the whole county as soon as the initial friction quieted down, and affected especially the sections east of the Thames river. Social ostracism, oft imprisonment as "Separatists," fines, nor any other obstacles, could keep these sturdy contenders for freedom of worship and a literal obedience to the commands of their Master from swinging forward, often with a marked evan- gelistic force, in all these communities. With these came the Adventists of various hues, who seemed still more extreme in their ideals and methods.
At the opposite poles came the liturgical groups, on ancient and approved foundations, which sought to build solidly the Kingdom of God. The Episco- N.L .- 1-18
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pal churches established their orderly worship in all the centers and with chapels in selected rural places. They had the honor of presenting to their American communion its first Bishop, who, as an infant, had been baptized in a Congregational church (North Groton or Ledyard) by his own father, then a temporary supply there. (See page 305.)
As immigration brought in ever-increasing numbers of followers of Rome from Ireland and the Continent of Europe, Catholic churches thoroughly organized their constituencies throughout the county and rendered an ines- timable aid to law and order, as well as to religious fervor.
The Methodist Episcopal churches sprang up in the tracks of Jesse Lee and Bishop Asbury, the pioneers of Methodism. They did vital service in all the centers and reached out to the farthest limits of the rural districts. Their freer expression of religious life and feeling brought a general benefit to all the communities where they were established.
In the deistical atmosphere of a century and a half ago, when the con- ception of an absentee God had so generally displaced that of the immanent, Divine Personality of the Bible for both orthodox and free thinker, the stage was set for a battle royal in New England, as well as old England, between the somewhat decadent orthodoxy and the many who styled themselves "Unitarian" as against the semi-theistic tendency of the traditional theology, under the soubriuet of "Trinitarian." New London county was not markedly influenced by this movement, which in many other sections swung the leading Congregational churches under the lead of Harvard College over onto the Unitarian side of the controversy. Doubtless the Saybrook Platform (1708) (see page 287) and its Consociation organization kept the churches of Con- necticut more in line.
In this connection, however, it should be noted that for nineteen years the First Church of Christ in New London had a pastor, Rev. Henry Chan- ning, just out of Yale College, who during his pastorate from 1787 to 1806 held views that later were counted "Unitarian," but yet which, with only slight modifications of phraseology, do not seem far from modern orthodoxy.'
But at the close of the ministry of Mr. Channing in 1806, the religious leaders of the orthodox Congregational churches of New London county set
"Profession and Covenant" used by Rev. Henry Channing at the First Church of Christ" in New London from 1790 to 1806:
"In the presence of Almighty God, the Searcher of hearts, and before this assembly, you profess your unfeigned belief in the Holy Scriptures as given by divine inspiration, your acceptance of all the doctrines contained in them and your submission to the whole will of God revealed in His Word.
"You do now acknowledge the Lord Jehovah, the one loving and true God, to be your God; and, relying upon divine assistance, do promise to walk humbly with God.
"Professing repentance of all your sins and faith in our Lord Jesus, you sincerely receive Him as He is offered in the Gospel as the Teacher from God-the High Priest of our profession-and the King and Head of the church, believing that there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby you must be saved.
"Depending on the Holy Spirit for sanctification, consolation and spiritual strength; and, receiving the Word of God as the only rule of your faith and practice, you submit to the brotherly care of this church of Christ, and to the discipline He hath established in His church.
"You do now solemnly give up yourself and all that you have unto God, promising that you will endeavor to walk as becometh the Gospel of Christ, that you may give no cause for others to speak evil of it on your own account, but that the name of God may be glorified in you. Thus you profess and covenant."-Blake, Vol. II. D. 22.
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themselves against this plan of church life which seemed to accept member- ship on the basis of a good moral character and not by conversion or deep conviction, and which had little or no interest in missionary endeavor and became more and more self-contained and intellectual. The sterner Calvin- ism of Puritanism had a revival and the Westminster Confession and Cate- chism came again into vogue, as a deeper call of God was recognized in power- ful revival movements that set in. The winning of an expanding continent and of a world lying in sin and misery appealed to the orthodox churches of the county of all denominations. The desperately shattered condition of the post-Revolutionary churches, with the aftermath of the war of 1812, had its healthful reaction. Slowly the churches gathered themselves together for an emphasis upon a Biblical faith, pressing the claims of the Scriptures through the Bible Societies upon every home in the county, and by the establishing of Sunday schools for the organized study of the Bible. The Connecticut Home Missionary Society helped the churches reach all neglected places in the State and county and to reach out to all regions whither Connecticut people had migrated-in Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, and especially in the Western Reserve of Ohio. The best and the worst of humanity fol- lowed the western trail, and the call for the establishment of religion in the new sections appealed successfully to the churches of this county, which sent its finest men and women as pioneers, and, along with them, churches, schools and ministers.
Soon the call came from further afield and the whole world of needy humanity came home to the hearts of these earnest Christians, and the orthodox churches of New London county began that steady and copious stream of benevolence and self-surrender for foreign work which has grown with the years. As the New London and Norwich sea captains took Amer- ica's commerce to the ends of the world, so the educator and missionary took America's deepest religious character and discipline to nations still in the shadow of idolatry.
Closely linked to this broad development, with its wholesome local reac- tion, came the zeal for reform. The Groton Monument was built by a lottery scheme, as were many churches and colleges of those early decades of the nineteenth century. But the conscience of the churches steadily developed until all gambling, like duelling, was outlawed. The same deepening of conscience was stirred by human slavery and did its full share in the awak- ened nation, first with abolition societies and later with the stern tramp of soldiers marching southward. The equally grave curse of intemperance be- came more and more evident. In 1811 we note the occurrence of an ecclesi- astical ordination at the Groton Congregational Church. On the expense account was a large bill for "liquor." That was quite in order in those days. But soon thereafter we see ministers and churches reacting from this growing evil in society, and temperance organizations sprang up throughout the county and made no compromise with the use of alcoholic drink until at length the Eighteenth Amendment made an outlaw of it also. The Groton Banks Temperance Society was one of the earlier active agencies to bring this about. Orphanages, asylums, hospitals, followed with the marked im-
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provements in education. In every one of these vital reforms the churches of the county have taken a leading part, originating most of them.
The distinctive work for young men and later for young women among all denominations seemed to grow out of the needs made manifest by the Civil War. The Christian Endeavor movement came speedily to South- eastern Connecticut, followed by the Baptist Young People's Union and the Epworth League, the Knights of King Arthur, the Camp Fire Girls and the Boy and Girl Scouts. Later the Knights of Columbus and the Holy Name Society took their strong places in the life of the Catholic churches.
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