USA > Connecticut > New London County > A modern history of New London County, Connecticut, Volume I > Part 39
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From the first the Saybrook settlement and its parish included all the territory east of the Connecticut river and south of East Haddam as far as Bride brook in Niantic. But the broad estuary of the Connecticut made it very difficult for the settlers east of it to attend their church at Saybrook. Occasional preaching services were held in that eastern section of the parish, and in 1666, the very year New London county was legally constituted by the General Assembly, Rev. Moses Noyes began to preach regularly east of the river. In 1668 a log meeting house was erected, which served the purpose until 1689. Then a more fitting structure replaced the original crude edifice. Its site was determined by lot, after the usual sharp differences of opinion. After Mr. Noyes had been preaching for twenty-seven years at Black Hall or Old Lyme, on March 27, 1693, he was installed and the church regularly organized. His very distinguished pastorate lasted until 1722. He played a most important part in the founding of Yale College (at Saybrook from 1701 to 1716) and was a leader of cminence throughout the county and the colony.
Rev. Jonathan Parsons, the third pastor, was an ardent participant in the movement of the Great Awakening, which spread throughout New
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England. He was eminent as a theologian and a revivalist, receiving into the membership of his church 288 members within fifteen years. A successor, Rev. Stephen Johnson, was also eminently successful in his pastorate of forty years. The outcome of these labors and the increased opening up of the county to settlers were the organizations of the Niantic church (1724), that at Lyme (1725), at Hamburg (1727), at Salem (1728), and Grassy Hill (1746).
Indeed, the religious activities in the southwestern part of what is em- braced in New London county of our day were more notable during its colonial history than those found in any other section of Southeastern Con- necticut, as the result of revival interests prevalent there. It was to have been expected that this region would be a stronghold of Congregationalism. But the early pre-Revolutionary promise was not fulfilled. A large colony of religious recalcitrants migrated as a body to the Western Reserve in Ohio and founded the town of New Old Lyme in Ashtabula county."
But we are far afield from the story of the "Old First" at New London,
" The writer is familiar with the modern New Old Lyme, where only in recent years has there been established an "Orthodox" church. "Free Love" and "Spiritualism" and other "isms" originally prevalent there seem to indicate that the inhabitants went westward partly at least to escape the moral restraints of religion. The writer knew the clergyman who founded the Presbyterian church in New Old Lyme about 1895. He was generously assisted by a thoughtful local merchant nominally a Spiritualist, who endowed the Academy there and eventually left his homestead for a parsonage.
Rogerenes, Rogerene Quakers, Rogerene Baptists .- This peculiar sect or social group under one or other of these names took its name from John Rogers, son of James Rogers who came from Milford, Connecticut, at the instance of Governor John Winthrop, Jr., about 1655. John Rogers, the son, grew up in the membership of the First Church of Christ in New London. He seems to have been a man of a strong, eccentric nature, who, in 1674, while at Newport, Rhode Island, came under the influence of a small Sabbatarian church and there experienced a marked religious upheaval, which set him off in his new career. Later he formally united with that body by immersion. Still later he was much influenced by preaching of the Friends (Quakers). Finally he broke with the Sabbatarians and established his own order, which was neither Sabbatarian or Quaker.
Among the tenets of the new sect were the following items of creed and practice :
I. Theologically it held to the orthodox views concerning God and the Trinity.
2. It sought to follow literally the teaching of Jesus Christ and the Apostles.
3. It put aside the Puritan "Sabbath" (Lord's Day) as a day of the week more sacred than the other six and it inveighed against what it called the "idolatry" of Sunday, although holding its stated services on that day.
4. It emphasized the sacredness and lawfulness of work on all seven days of the week, and boldly practiced it on Sunday as against colonial law.
5. It abjured priestcraft and the salaried profession of the ministry, and refused to pay the legal church tax.
6. It proclaimed public prayers to be pharisaic, especially the "long prayer."
7. It undertook to oppose the whole scheme of the regularly established church and welcomed punishments, fines, imprisonments. A craze for persecution led to most extravagant practices.
8. It used strictly New Testament methods in dealing with the sick, and would not call in the aid of the regular physician. The reader has noticed that many clergymen practiced medicine on occasion.
9. The matrimonial experiences of John Rogers, leading him to practice what he considered to be plurality of wives with an Old Testament sanction, and the ignoring of the legal colonial ceremony of wedlock, offered an example fruitful of unfortunate family conditions outside the law among his followers.
It will be seen at once how inevitable was the conflict between the ordered evolution of ecclesiastical life in New London, Connecticut, and this erratic movement. Refusal to attend church services or to pay the ministerial tax, working in the fields on the Lord's Day as well as traveling on Sunday, all were indictable offenses calling for fine or imprisonment. Often the acts committed were so contemptible that justice had hard work getting seasoned with mercy. No orderly assembly of Christians in the county could reckon on an undisturbed meeting. Violent noises outside the buildings were indulged in. The mischief-makers boldly came into the services, arose in their places and undertook to dispute with the preacher,
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which we left just as it was calling Rev. Simon Bradstreet to its pastorate in 1666. This was the very year that New London county was fully consti- tuted under the new colonial charter, embracing the four townships of Say- brook, New London, Stonington and Norwich. Mr. Bradstreet served the church as preacher four years before his regular ordination in 1670. Here begin the first obtainable records of the church. The threatening "Half-Way Covenant," though spreading among the Connecticut churches, was not yet preached or practiced in the New London church. It was under this pastorate that the Rogerene disturbances began to be troublesome, gradually spreading throughout the county and among all denominations."
The ordination of Mr. Bradstreet in October, 1670, was the first of many succeeding such services to be held in New London county. During his pastorate (about 1685) ministers were given legal right to officiate at wed- dings, although this privilege did not take from the civil authorities their prior right. During his ministry a new church edifice was erected, not with- out serious differences of opinion as to the location, high up on the southwest corner of Meeting House Green, now Bulkeley Square. The tower still retained the aspect of a watch tower, looking far down the estuary of the Thames and about among the hills and valleys surrounding the little settle-
brought in all sorts of handwork and flaunted their illegal industry before the worshipers: and in every other conceivable way attempted to spoil the service. On one occasion a Rogerene trundled a wheelbarrow filled with saleable goods into the morning worship of the old First Church, and, before anyone could hinder, reached the communion table and the obtruder turned and in stentorian voice offered his wares for sale. On the whole the entire community and the churches and the ministers were more persecuted than the Rogerenes, who were in a fair way to make all law contemptible.
New London county today is filled with stories true and apochryphal as to the strange and often ridiculous doings of these social conspirators. It cannot be seen that their outrages hastened the abatement of the Puritanical scheme of compulsion. They continued until the death of John Rogers in 1721, which was soon followed by the death of Governor Saltonstall.
For forty years thereafter the Rogerenes kept out of the court records. The leadership was then in the hands of wiser men, such as John Bolles, John Waterhouse and John Culver. The conciliatory attitude of Rev. Eliphalet Adams of the First Church had much to do with this interregnum of hostility between the Rogerenes and their neighbors. Printed pamphlets and books and itinerant speakers carried their doctrines widely in New England. Settle- ments were made as far afield as in portions of the Western Reserve in Ohio. One of these may have been New Old Lyme, of which mention has been made. In the meanwhile gradual intermarriages led to a less acute contention. The Rogerenes seemed to have prospered in business ways in spite of all financial requisitions upon their property for fines and taxes.
The coming to New London as pastor in the First Church of Rev. Mather Byles, Jr., in 1757 soon brought on a "counter-move" on the part of the Rogerenes which was at its zenith in 1764-66. Mr. Byles began to preach against the Rogerenes and to incite renewed discipline against Sunday labor and travel, the holding of unauthorized meetings, abstention from regular church services and the administration of the sacraments by unauthorized per- sons. Court records once more abound with cases of trial, fine and imprisonment. But the close of Mr. Byles' ministry (1768) largely brought to an end the offensive tactics of the Rogerenes. A general plan prevailed among the churches to ignore utterly the disturbances of the malcontents. The Revolutionary War now impended. Many Rogerenes proved patriots to the American cause. The sect seems to have subsided, as the freedom of church attend- ance and voluntary payment for church expenses and a simplification of ecclesiastical pulpit garments and ministerial manners prevailed.
Today a small remnant of the sect may be found in the southeastern corner of the township of Ledyard, popularly known as Quakertown. Education in public schools, the modern newspaper, less stringent sumptuary laws and the new age, have combined to make the Rogerenes practically indistinguishable from their neighbors. "Quaker Hill," "Bolles' Woods" and many another local designation, recall to mind the places and personalities connected with this strange and often amusing religious episode in the long story of New London county.
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ment. The building was not completed until 1682, at the very close of Mr. Bradstreet's ministry.
As we have seen, the eldest daughter of First Church of Christ in New London had been fully established in Stonington in 1674, not without friction with the mother church or among its own membership. The dividing line between the two parishes was placed at the Mystic river. But even this did not stop the restiveness of the increasing numbers dwelling on the east side of the Thames. These more distant families were under the leadership of Captain James Avery. In 1684, as soon as the old "Blinman Church" building in New London was superceded by the "Bradstreet Church," this strong man of the eastern part of the parish bought the old church building for six pounds sterling, separated it into parts and floated them one by one around to his farm in Poquonnock, and set it up as a part of the homestead he was erecting. At one time or another this famous landmark was used for informal religious services.
In 1687 there came to the New London church by far the most outstand- ing ecclesiastical figure ever connected with the county, the Rev. Gurdon Saltonstall, then a man of twenty-one years of age and only three and a half out of Harvard College. He was not ordained in the pastorate of the First Church until November 25, 1691, and remained in that position until elected Governor of the Colony in 1708. An aristocrat by birth and tempera- ment, large, tall and commanding in person and voice, a natural leader among men, he began at once to exercise qualities of personal initiative which spread his reputation throughout the colony. Early in his ministry the first bell in the county was hung in the church tower and used both for church services and for civil functions.
The "Half-Way Covenant" had, by this time, spread widely in Connecti- cut and Massachusetts, and there was a serious declension in spiritual power clearly discernible everywhere it went. The low morale led in 1692 in Massa- chusetts to the Salem witchcraft delusion. New London county was for- tunately free from that most unchristian religious and civil declension. Mr. Saltonstall was the first clergyman in New London actually to take advantage of the new law permitting a clergyman to perform the marriage ceremony. He was a powerful preacher, somewhat stern in church discipline and provoca- tive of trouble with the Rogerenes. His severe attitude toward restive parish- ioners east of the Thames, especially toward Captain James Avery, widened the previous estrangements. These culminated in 1702 in a request to the General Assembly for a separate church organization in that portion of the parish and township. This was consummated in 1704. On the 8th of No- vember of that year, Rev. Ephraim Woodbridge was ordained as the first minister and the First Church of Christ in Groton fully organized. In 1705 Groton township was set off from New London, and the Ecclesiastical Society of the church received its permanent name. On the year following (1705) the First Baptist Church of Groton was organized at Old Mystic.
But in spite of elements that awakened opposition within and without the church, Mr. Saltonstall was a man of singular power as a preacher and as a man. His influence spread throughout the colony to such an extent that
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at the death of Governor Fitz-John Winthrop (1698-1707), his parishioner, all eyes turned to this pastor as the most fitting successor in the guber- natorial chair. This political advancement occurred on January 1, 1708, after a pastorate of nearly twenty years, or sixteen years after his ordination.8
In the meanwhile, matters of very considerable moment had been occur- ring in the northern portion of the county. The First Church of Christ at Norwich Town, after the disturbances of the Indian wars, had experienced a notable expansion. To the east across the Shetucket river on land purchased from the Mohegan Indians, the inhabitants were granted a township charter under the name of Preston, in 1687. They set at work at once to have an organized church of their own. They were a sturdy band, with household names such as Brewster, Standish (of "Mayflower" descent), Park, Tracy, Richards, Tyler, Fobes, Morgan, Witter, Wetch, so ran the names, who cleared the forests and tilled the rich lands of Preston. In faith they built a church and, after long search, secured Rev. Salmon Treat to be their minister. He was ordained at the organization of the church on November 16, 1698. This was the beginning of a fruitful pastorate extending through forty-six years. One of the important results of his ministry was the peaceful estab- lishment of the North Church of Preston (now Griswold) in 1720.
At this last-mentioned church the Rev. Hezekiah Lord, immediately on its organization, took up the pastorate, which lasted until 1761. These were
" Gurdon Saltonstall was re-elected colonial Governor from year to year until his death in 1724. The unprecedented elevation of a clergyman to this high office was fully justified by the wise statesmanship exhibited by the incumbent. Thomas Hooker, Gurdon Saltonstall, Lyman Beecher and Horace Bushnell are four out of a score of Connecticut clergymen who proved powerful factors in the building up of the State and the nation. As Governor, Mr. Saltonstall at once exercised his leadership by summoning at Saybrook, with the assent of the General Assembly, a Synod to examine "the defects of the discipline of the churches of this government arising from the want of a more explicit asserting of the rules given to that end in the Scriptures." Hence that memorable though small ecclesiastical gathering at the next Commencement season of the Collegiate Institute (later Yale College) then estab- lished at the mouth of the Connecticut river. On September 7, 1708, this Synod brought forth the famous "Saybrook Platform," which was successfully to contest place with the "Cam- bridge Platform" (1648) in the approval of the great majority of the churches of Con- necticut. An important exception to this approval occurred in the Governor's old church, New London First, of which he still remained a member and a regular worshipper. Nor did it stand alone. The "Saybrook Platform" was accepted by the General Assembly, which "ordained that all the churches within this government that are or shall be united in doctrine, worship and discipline, be and for the future shall be owned and acknowledged by law; pro- vided always that nothing herein shall be intended or construed to hinder or prevent any church or society that is or shall be allowed by the laws of the government, who soberly differ or dissent from the united churches hereby established, from exercising worship and discipline in their own way according to their consciences."
By law, the churches of each county were to form one or more "consociations" or Standing Councils before which all cases of discipline, difficult of settlement by the local church, should come, as well as certain matters having to do with ordinations, installations and dismissions. In similar fashion the ministers of each county were to be formed into "Associations" which should in turn send delegates annually to a "General Association" of colony-wide representations. The latter is still in existence, though now not a delegated body, except as any regularly settled Congregational minister in the State is invited to attend. The Saybrook Platform remained legally in effect until 1784, and as a recognized standard for more than a half century after that.
Governor Saltonstall also was influential in the final settlement of Yale College at New Haven. At its first Commencement at that place he pronounced an oration in Latin (Sept. 12, 1718) and its Latinity was accounted of high grade. He ever stood high in the councils of the College. What with Indian and French wars, Colony disputes, high prices, territorial adjustments with Massachusetts and Rhode Island, the times called for leadership of a high order, and the Governor was easily the foremost man in the colony in his time.
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the difficult pioneering days at that end of the county. Mr. Lord was suc- ceeded by Rev. Levi Hart in a still more distinguished ministry lasting from 1762 to 1808. Mr. Hart had studied theology with the famous Dr. Bellamy, of Bethlehem, Connecticut, and married his daughter. He had one of those remarkable life-ministries in Griswold, exerting a lasting influence in his own parish and widely over the State. His wisdom and charity handled the "Separatist" movement in his section so effectively that no opposition congre- gations were "gathered" there. He took great interest in Home Missions in Connecticut and northern New England, resulting in the organization of the Missionary Society of Connecticut, the oldest one in the country.
Between Norwich and Preston, on a narrow strip of territory about twelve miles long, later joined to Preston, in what was before that called East Norwich, we find the "Long Society" (Fifth Congregational Church of Norwich), established in 1726. Rev. Jabez Wight was pastor there for fifty- six years.
But over a quarter of a century before this, came the settlement of Lebanon and the founding of its First Church of Christ in 1700 in what was to become a famous historic center during the War of the Revolution. In 1702 it was included in New London county. The "five-mile" purchase from the Indians had come in 1697. The pioneers began the opening out of the land in the following year and the town was formally organized in 1700, the church being there practically from the first (organized November 7, 1700). The meeting house was built at the west end of the "Green," near what became later the "Land Office" of Governor Trumbull.
Within twenty years the growth of the wide-extended community called for the establishment of a North Parish or Second church, in what was styled Lebanon Crank (now Columbia) (1720). There fifteen years later (1735) Rev. Eleazar Wheelock, son of Deacon Ralph Wheelock and Ruth Huntington (Norwich), was settled. From these two foci of religious life the uplifting influence of the Lebanon churches spread widely. In the First Church there were two remarkable pastorates, together covering over a cen- tury-that of Rev. Solomon Williams, D.D. (1722 to 1771), and Rev. Zebulon Ely (1782 to 1824). From these two churches there grew up the Goshen Church (November 26, 1729), Exeter (1773), and Liberty Hill. Largely owing to the schools established in Lebanon proper (Tisdale's Academy) at North Lebanon (Moor's Charity School) and at Plainfield (Academy) the homes of those pioneers sent forth within a century over forty ministers.
In close connection with this development, the churches of Plainfield and Canterbury were organized. There seems some dispute as to just which county the credit for those earlier years shall go. But it is certain that the impetus came from the south. The Plainfield church was organized in what was then called the Quinebang Plantations, on January 3, 1705. They called their first pastor from Norwich, Rev. Joseph Coit, who originated in New London. He ministered to the church for forty-nine years. The Canterbury church was organized in 1711, while its parish was in New London county. Together with Plainfield, it brought forth men and women of wide influence
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in the nation at large. Moses Cleveland, the founder of the metropolis of Ohio, went forth from Canterbury.
The First Church of Colchester, on the Connecticut river watershed, was organized in 1703, soon followed by the Westchester church in the same township in 1729. Rev. John Bulkeley, son of Rev. Gershom Bulkeley, M.D., whom we met in New London as pastor of the First Church, was the first pastor of the Colchester church, beginning a long line of distinguished min- isters. The temporary house of worship was exchanged for a better after 1709, and in 1771 a new structure came, which was counted "the finest in the colony." The Westchester parish in the northern part of the township had an equally strong development with a faithful series of influential pastors, beginning with Rev. Judah Lewis.
There was a long controversy with the alleged Indian owners as to the southern portion of the town of Colchester, which delayed settlement for many years, but at last a township of Salem was set off by the General Assembly, made up of portions of south Colchester and northern Lyme, and settlers came in. A church was organized in 1728, as previously noted.
The Norwich Town church went strongly forward under the pastorate of Rev. John Woodward for a decade, giving forth helpfulness in every direc- tion, as we have seen. Mr. Woodward was one of the delegates to the Say- brook Synod, of which he was the secretary, and thus largely responsible for the Platform adopted in 1708. On his return he found he could not carry his church with him. The friction thus arising paved the way to a rupture of the pastoral relation in September, 1716. In the meanwhile a new church building was erected, after the usual quarrel over the location, near the site of the old one on the Meeting House Hill. This new house of worship was opened for use in December, 1713. Mr. Woodward retired from the min- isterial profession and spent his last days on his farm in West Haven, Con- necticut.
That section of Norwich called "West Farms," a few miles to the north- west of the Green, constituted the most fertile section of the "nine-mile" tract, and was portioned out in sections to the occupants of the Town Plot. This new region was gradually cleared and settled by some of the leading citizens of Norwich. A notable lot of families established themselves there. Efforts had been making for some years to secure a separate ecclesiastical society in that flourishing section. When two score families there set about getting this done, their requests were granted and on October 8, 1718, Rev. Henry Willis was ordained pastor and a church organized, what is now known as the Franklyn church. The new building was barely housed in, and use was made of the old furniture of the former Norwich church at the start.
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