USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Waterbury > A narrative and documentary history of St. John's Protestant Episcopal Church (formerly St. James) of Waterbury, Connecticut > Part 7
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Joseph Davis Welton, son of Richard Welton, was baptized June 1, 1783. He was ordained deacon December 18, 1808, and priest December 23, 1810. He preached at Woodbury and at Easton. He was compelled by illness to give up preaching, but taught school for a while, and died at Waterbury, January 16, 1825.
Ransom Warner, son of Obadiah Warner, was born May 6, 1795. He was ordained deacon December 29, 1822, and priest November 4, 1823. He was for many years rector of St. Andrew's, Bloomfield, and died there June 18, 1856.
Anson Clark, son of John and Mille (Munson) Clark, was born in Waterbury, December 10, 1806. He entered Kenyon college in the class of 1836, but at the close of his Sophomore year entered the Theological seminary of the Diocese of Ohio. He was rector for several parishes in Ohio and Illinois.
The Rev. Herman Munson Clark, born August 29, 1789. I have no record of his services, which I think, were in Ohio.
George Jarvis Geer, second son of the Rev. Alpheus Geer, was
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THE NEW ERA.
born here in 1820; graduated at Trinity College, 1842. He was ordained deacon June 29, 1845. He was rector of a church in New York city, where he died March 16, 1884.
Abram Joseph Warner, youngest son of Ard Warner, was born July 1, 1821. He graduated at Trinity in 1842, and was tutor in Jubilee college from 1842 to 1845. He has since been rector of several churches at the West, and is now residing at Angelica, N. Y.
The Rev. William Augustus Hitchcock, D.D., was the second son of William Rufus and Mary (Hull) Hitchcock, and was born January 29, 1834. He graduated at Trinity College, 1854. He graduated at the Berkeley Divinity school in 1857, and was chap- lain in the United States Navy for five years. He was afterwards rector at Portsmouth, N. H., at Pittsburg, Pa., at Batavia, N. Y., and at Buffalo, N. Y. He has several times represented his dio- cese in the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church. He died in New York from the effect of an injury re- ceived on the railroad, February 10, 1898.
Charles C. Coerr was born at Woodbury, August 12, 1848. He was a student of the Yale Medical school in 1867, but decided to become a candidate for orders, and graduated from the Berkeley Divinity school in 1871. From that time until 1882 he was con- nected with parishes in Brooklyn, Binghamton, Whitney's Point, where he was ordained deacon December 20, 1871, by Bishop Huntington, at Morris, N. Y., where he was ordained priest March 18, 1873, by Bishop Doane, and at Shakopee and Rochester, Minn. From 1878 to 1882 he was secretary of the Minnesota diocese. Since then his parishes have been Warsaw and Pal- myra, N. Y., and Wilmington, N. C., Renovo, Penn., and is now (1906) at Marshall, Tex.
Frederick R. Sanford, son of Rufus B. Sanford, was ordained deacon June 1, 1881, and priest June 23, 1882. He has been rector at East Haddam, at Warehouse Point and in California, at St. Paul's, Riverside, Conn., and is now at St. John's, North Haven.
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CHAPTER IV.
ADDITIONAL MEMORANDA.
T HE ecclesiastical corporations of Connecticut were modelled on Congregational forms, and the societies of other denomi- nations were created by giving them similar powers. As a consequence the governing officers of a society were called the society's committee. Some of the early records of St. John's parish speak of meetings of the "vestry," but the designation of vestrymen appears first in 1831, and does not appear again until 1838, when it was voted "to appoint two wardens and five vestry- men, including the secretary and treasurer, and that the rector should be chairman of the vestry and parish meetings." It was not, however, Dr. Clark's custom to attend these meetings, unless some special business required it, nor did he then preside. In 1878 an act was passed by the legislature authorizing the Diocesan Con- vention to regulate the organization of parishes, and a canon was adopted by the Convention, making the rector the presiding officer.
April 13, 1868, this parish adopted the following rules:
Whereas it is desirable that changes should from time to time be made in the members of the Vestry so that a greater number of persons may become familiar with and interested in the man- agement of its affairs, and whereas it is also desirable that a suffi- cient number of Vestrymen should be continued in office from year to year so that the Vestry may always contain persons of experience in the transaction of its business, therefore, Resolved, that hereafter and until otherwise ordered we will adopt the following rules, viz:
1. The Vestry shall consist of fourteen persons for this year, and hereafter of twelve persons.
2. Those persons chosen at the present meeting shall be divided by lots into three classes; the first class to consist of six
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ADDITIONAL MEMORANDA.
for the purpose of complying with aforesaid rule, and the other classes of four each.
3. The first class shall not be eligible to re-election in 1876. The second class shall not be eligible in 1877 except as herein- after provided.
4. No person shall hereafter be eligible for more than three successive years, unless for any reason more than four new mem- bers may be required.
This rule is still in force and at each annual election the four members who have served for three years are dropped from the Vestry and new members elected in their place.
Prior to 1833 the expenses of the parish were met by a tax laid on a list made from the grand list of the town. In October of that year a vote was passed to sell the slips, in order to raise money to defray ordinary expenses, and this course has since been adopted with the exception that in 1870, while the temporary chapel was occupied, the plan of free sittings and voluntary contributions was tried for six months, but it was not found satisfactory.
In 1851 St. Paul's chapel at Waterville was consecrated as a chapel of St. John's church. A successful mission had been sus- tained there for some years, but it had outgrown its accommoda- tions. A flourishing Sunday school was in progress, and it was deemed advisable to build a chapel. For some time it was in charge of an assistant minister, Rev. Charles G. Acly, who resided there. In June, 1893, the anniversary of the establishment of the chapel was celebrated with special services, a report of which was published in a handsome pamphlet of 38 pages. A brief account of its change to a parish is given in another chapter under the head of St. Paul's, Waterville.
On Easter Monday, 1852, the vestry by vote of the parish was authorized to light the church with gas. Prior to that time there was no gas for lighting purposes in the town, oil lamps being used. So long as the old church (of 1795) stood, it was the cus- tom to illuminate it on Christmas eve by placing a candle at every alternate pane of glass. The effect, especially when the ground was white with snow, was brilliant and beautiful; but the fasten-
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HISTORY OF ST. JOHN'S CHURCH.
ing to the windows of the wooden strips on which the candles were placed injured the church, and the tallow made a great many grease spots. When the new church was built the custom was abandoned, to the great regret of many children and some grown people .*
With occasional breaks, "tithingmen" were usually elected until 1849. Their duties were supposed to be to preserve order in the galleries, but the office had been a sinecure for a long time. The inference is-although we are little accustomed to think so- that there had been a gradual improvement in behavior among the children who attended church. It should, however, be noted that in the early days it was the custom for all the children, after they were eight or ten years of age, to sit in the gallery, and prob- ably the temptation to disorder was greater than when it became the custom for most of them to sit with their parents.
SUNDAY SCHOOL.
Just when the Sunday School was established does not appear from any known record. Mr. Barlow had one, as Mrs. Marcia Warner Bolster remembers, when he and William H. Scovill, William R. Hitchcock, Misses Caroline and Mary Scovill were in the habit of coming to Waterville to hold a Sunday School in some of the private houses.
In 1869, Dr. Clark held what he called the 34th Anniversary of the Sunday School, but this probably meant the 34th public anniversary.
The Sunday School did not begin to play a conspicuous part in church work until after Dr. Clark's arrival.
In his plan it took the foremost place. Every child was ex- pected to be a pupil and all persons who were so situated as to attend it were expected to act as teachers. The Doctor himself
*"Aunt Sue" Bronson, widow of Ezra Bronson, Esq., was an ardent churchwoman, but she thought "Christmas greens" savored of popery. The boys used to amuse them- selves by putting the rails of her pew full of them, boring holes for the purpose in the rails of the pews with gimlets, and she would not take her seat until she had pulled them all out and thrown them on the floor. She lived to be 93 and was very active almost to the day of her death. Her house was near the church, directly on the street in front of the present Kendrick block.
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ADDITIONAL MEMORANDA.
was always superintendent. The instruction was along the pre- scribed lines, but in many cases the inspiring influence of intelli- gent men and women was brought to bear on classes and on individuals to their lasting benefit.
There was in those days a county clerical meeting held from time to time, several times in a year at different places, corre- sponding somewhat to our present Archdeaconry meetings. Sometime in the fall one was usually held in Waterbury, and Dr. Clark so arranged it that the Anniversary of the Sunday School should be held at the same time. The whole afternoon was given up to it. The children assembled in the church and marched, with the county clergy at their head, to some public hall, where hymns were sung, speeches made, and last but best of all, cakes, candies, oranges and various small gifts that delight children were freely distributed; also the names of those who had not missed any Sunday School exercise during the year were publicly read. It was the great day of the year for the Sunday School children and it certainly was not the smallest day for Dr. Clark. On these occasions he was ubiquitous. He knew every child. He had something to say to each, and it had a personal and peculiar tone so that each child felt that he or she was known and reckoned on as part of the organization.
Mr. Nelson J. Welton says he was eight years old when Dr. Clark came here and had been in the Sunday School for two or three years; that the Doctor said to him, "Now you know all these people and I want you to take charge of the distribution of this magazine." Of course he felt at once that he was an impor- tant factor in the establishment. This is so characteristic of Dr. Clark's method that I have thought it worthy of preserva- tion ..
Since Dr. Clark's day the Sunday School has remained a promi- nent feature in the Church's work, but the growth of the city and the change of customs has rendered this great show day of the Sunday School year impracticable. At present it claims to be the largest organization of the sort in the Diocese, and as already noted, Dr. Clark made the same claim for it twenty years ago. The Sunday School is divided into three sections; there
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HISTORY OF ST. JOHN'S CHURCH.
being a primary department; each section has a superintendent. The present number of pupils is 550.
The Life of Archbishop Cranmer by the Rev. John N. Norton, D.D., rector of Ascension Church, Frankfort, Ky .; N. Y. General Protestant Episcopal Sunday School Union and Church Book Society, 1863, is stated on page 5 as published through the offerings of the Sunday School of St. John's Church, Waterbury, Conn. This is evidently Dr. Clark's work, but I do not know the history of it.
The Sewing school of St. John's parish was organized about the year 1864, Mrs. Anna G. Clark and Mrs. William Lamb being the ladies most active in its formation. In its first corps of teachers were Miss Ann Ophelia Sperry, Mrs. Elizabeth Smith, Misses Susan Cook, Etta Scovill, and Charlotte B. Merriman. Until the end of 1868, the school was carried on in the chapel of the old church, afterwards in the upper chapel of the present church, and since 1890 in the assembly room of the parish house.
Mrs. Clark was its superintendent until the autumn of 1880, when Miss Alice Kingsbury took charge of it for a year. Since that time it has been conducted by Misses Helen Merriman, Mary Barlow and Alice Field. During the last year there were 143 names on the record of children who attended the school, and there was an average attendance of over sixty. The expenses of the school are met by offertories taken in the church. Within the last year, 1906, this school has been united with a larger and more general organization, which is held in the Leavenworth Hall on Holmes avenue and known as the Industrial School.
The "Brotherhood of St. Andrew" was established on St. Andrew's day, 1883. Chapter No. 313 was organized in St. John's church on March 15, 1889, under the name of St. John's chapter. Eight young men were enrolled by the rector at that time, on their taking the vows of the brotherhood. The active members numbered at one time sixteen.
The order of "Daughters of the King" came into being in New York city in 1885 .*
*This order, which is confined to the Protestant Episcopal church, must be distin- guished from the order of "King's Daughters," which has circles in most of the other Protestant denominations.
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ADDITIONAL MEMORANDA.
St. John's chapter was organized in May, 1891, through the influence of a member of the order residing in New Haven. Thirty- nine members have been invested with the badge of the order,- a cross, bearing the inscription, "Magnanimiter crucem sustine."
The Diocesan Conventions for 1821, 1851, 1858, 1876 and 1897 were held in Waterbury, also a convention of lay delegates in 1788.
In April, 1872, John H. Sandland, after forty-two years of continuous service, resigned his position as the leading tenor singer, and the rectors and the parish united in a testimonial in recognition of his long and faithful service.
On December 29, 1872, Theodore Ives Driggs, after serving as organist for twenty-nine years tendered his resignation on account of physical infirmity, and resolutions were passed recognizing his long and useful service. Charles H. Smith was appointed in his place, but resigned September 13, 1874, on account of illness, and died soon after. After a brief term of service by Charles H. Hendee, Mr. Driggs having in a measure regained his health returned to his position, and retained it until about a year before his death.
Mr. Driggs deserves something more than a casual mention in the History of St. John's Church. He was the son of Dr. Asa Johnson Driggs of Cheshire, and was born there October 25, 1829. His mother died soon after, and his father, leaving home for a prolonged absence, placed him with Mr. Adna Whitin, of Whitin's Basin (now Plainville), where he remained until he was twelve years old. Mr. Whitin owned boats on the canal and one of Mr. Driggs early recollections is of going to New Haven on the boat with the Amistad negroes when they were being returned under decision of the U. S. Sup. Court. He particularly remembered Cinquez, the leader, with his filed teeth.
When Mr. Driggs was twelve his father returned and took him home where he fitted for college and graduated at Trinity in 1848, before he attained the age of nineteen. The same year he came to Waterbury as assistant to Charles Fabrique in the High School and remained until 1852, when he relin- quished the place on account of some trouble with his throat and took a place as bookkeeper with Abbott & Wardwell.
In September, 1855, he entered the employment of the American Pin Company and as bookkeeper, secretary and president he remained with the Company until his death. He took an active interest in educational matters and the schools of the town are largely indebted to his energy and ability.
He was secretary and trustee of St. Margaret's School for girls from its organization until his death. He was also a member and secretary of the
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HISTORY OF ST. JOHN'S CHURCH.
Board of Agents of the Bronson Library. During the greater portion of this whole time he was organist and musical manager for St. John's, a teacher in the Sunday School and for many years agent of the parish and vestry. He died June 28, 1893.
On March 29, 1875, John W. Smith, after a service of more than a quarter of a century as leading singer, resigned his position. His prolonged, gratuitous and faithful services were recognized in suitable resolutions. He died at Brooklyn, N. Y., Dec. 5, 1905.
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CHAPTER V.
THE LAITY.
N looking over what has already been written this history appears, mainly, to be an account of the clergymen who have officiated here and of the various church buildings which have been erected and of the church lands which have been bought and sold.
It would seem as if more should be said of the people who con- stituted the church and for whose training in grace and religious intelligence and for whose moral uplifting the church was founded, and by whose labors and prayers and contributions it has been sustained.
The church records do not show much of the church life. They are the bald records of votes taken to render action legal. They show nothing of the private and public discussions of which these votes were the outcome; nor of the power of the personal equation, of the yielding of preferences, of submitting to the inevitable, of afflictions and hopes and prejudices, jealousies, spites and hatreds, which swelter and ferment in all communities and finally all simmer themselves down into a well rounded "whereas" or "forasmuch" or "be it considered" which some shrewd brother has drawn up as representing as near as may be a consensus of opinion.' All these other things, if we are to have them at all, must be constructed from detached fragments and by imagination.
In the early days of the church, agriculture was the chief occupation and main dependence of the people and their property was mostly in land. Waterbury was a rather poor township of land and the people were relatively poor. Watertown and Ply- mouth were both better townships than Waterbury.
The Rev. Dr. Clark, in a history of St. John's which he prepared to read before the New Haven County Convention, held at West Haven, December, 1863, says, "the place itself, it should be remembered, though now a thriving city, was at one period, if tradition speaks truly, lower than either of the six
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HISTORY OF ST. JOHN'S CHURCH.
towns colonized from it, in business, talent, credit and morals. The venerable Dr. Holcomb, who has been for more than fifty years a resident of Watertown has told me with a coolness and appearance that could admit of no question that he could remember the time when no prudent farmer in Watertown would trust any man in Waterbury the price of a load of hay over night; and aged men in Wolcott have assured me that at one time Wolcott would have felt disgraced had Waterbury been placed in favorable. comparison with her "in any of the elements of municipal dignity and prosperity."
The late Judge Holbrook Curtis of Watertown also told me that in his early practice the only way to get anything out of a Waterbury creditor was to get the deputy sheriff to take a receipt for property attached and then sue the sheriff on the bond; and he named one young man who was ambitious to serve as deputy sheriff who spent a very handsome inheritance in paying other people's debts.
Of course it is not to be supposed that the above remarks applied with strictness to every resident in Waterbury, but there was sufficient truth in the general statement to render it not open to the charge of malicious slander, although perhaps the charge of a healthy jealousy might have held.
Probably the best tract of land in Waterbury was on Buckshill and here were a few of the most thriving citizens. Still, for some reason which is not fully clear to me, the village, the center, seems always to have held a social pre-eminence.
Probably it was because this was the residence of the pro- fessional men; the clergy, doctors and lawyers, also the merchants -people who had more ready money than the farmers, although their property may not have been so valuable; perhaps the greater educational facilities of the village had an influence.
More of the people of superior intellect were also gathered here, although others who were their equals were scattered in the outlying districts. But Parsons Southmayd and Leavenworth, who were over the Congregational Church for one hundred years, and Parson Scovill, who was over the Episcopal Church for twen- ty-six years; Daniel Southmayd, son of the parson, who though he died young had achieved a sterling reputation, and Judge Hopkins, who was judge of the County Court, and Dr. Baldwin, who was a man of ability and who married a daughter of Parson Leavenworth, were all men of mark, men of learning, acquainted with and known to the outside world, and whose families were brought in contact with the cultivated people of the State.
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THE LAITY.
It may be that we can find here sufficient reason for this social pre-eminence. Now aside from Parson Scovil and his family and Captain George Nichols and his family, there do not appear to have been any people of social prominence, in the village, connected with the Episcopal Church.
Mr. John Cossitt was a worthy man living in the village and a prominent Episcopalian, but not prominent socially. I think he went West about 1820.
James Brown has already been mentioned. The Gunns, who are noticed as having a child baptized in 1734, lived at Gunntown, the western part of Naugatuck. They must have been Episco- palians for sometime, possibly were before James Brown's advent. We have no information in regard to this. The Gunns were forehanded people and large landholders, but not socially promi- nent. They were people who had the courage of their convictions and were mostly tories during the Revolution.
Captain John Welton and Richard Welton of Buckshill have already been spoken of and there were several other families of Weltons in that vicinity who were highly respected members of the Episcopal Church, although not especially active. There were several families of the name of Warner in the eastern part of the town, some of whom were quite active in church matters. Several of these moved to Ohio in the early part of the last cen- tury. Mr. Edmund Austin of East Farms was a highly respected farmer and a churchman. He had a number of daughters, one of whom married Rev. Ransom Warner of Simsbury, whose grand- daughter is the wife of Bishop Woodcock of Louisville, Ky. Another daughter married Samuel W. Hall, who gave the money which led to the founding of Trinity Church.
These people all attended church regularly, many of them driving several miles (or sometimes walking) in order to do so (there were usually three services each Sunday besides Sunday School); and they trained their children to the same habit of attending services.
Elias Clark of Buckshill and Humphrey Nichols of Horse Pas- ture were very regular church goers and represented a class of people which in these days seldom go to church anywhere.
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HISTORY OF ST. JOHN'S CHURCH.
Perhaps Mr. Barber exerted as strong an influence in the town as any clergyman about that period, but it was through his school, which was excellent and was attended by children of all denomi- nations. Although a very intense churchman, I never heard of any attempt on his part to proselyte.
For many years prior to 1830 very little change had taken place in the population of the town; there were no new people for a clergyman to work for or upon except as the children grew up. Now and then some man, sometimes three or four men, would dislike the clergyman or the taxes or something else and would leave the Congregational Church and join the Episcopal; now and then an Episcopal man or woman would marry a Congrega- tionalist and bring him or her into the Church. The late Dr. Leonard Bacon of New Haven said "Anger and marriage were always converting ordinances," and it is very true.
About 1830 a very noticeable change began. Mr. William H. Scovil, a grandson of the Rev. James Scovil, had been for a num- ber of years a successful merchant in North Carolina. He returned to Waterbury in 1827. He was not only a zealous churchman, but he was an active worker in anything in which he took an inter- est. He had what is called the power of the initiative. His brother Lampson (J. M. L.) was a man of much energy, although having less of this peculiar power, and was always ready to assist William in his plans and was soon aroused to an active interest in church matters.
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