USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Suffield > Celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of Suffield, Connecticut, October 12, 13 and 14, 1920, with sketches from its past and some record of its last half century and of its present > Part 12
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17
When the West Society was set off in 1740, the old burying ground fell to the charge of the First Society and gradually im- provements were made. From time to time after 1830 about three acres were laid out on the south, bringing it down to the highway and in 1850 the grounds were enlarged westerly by the purchase of one hundred and forty-six rods of land. The retain- ing wall on the south and the vault, the latter built in 1887 at a cost of $2386.71, and the arch, the gift of Mrs. Cornelia Pomeroy Newton, were among the later improvements.
The records of the West Society show that on December 15, 1749, it was voted to purchase a place for a burying ground, and in February of the next year Samuel Harmon, Jonathan Sheldon and Philip Nelson were chosen a committee to purchase the land. They bought and fenced in one square acre on Ireland plain. In 1844, the cemetery having meantime passed to the control of the school society, a half acre was added on the east side, and in 1850 one-fourth of an acre adjoining on the east was purchased and laid out in twenty private lots, the owners being chiefly members of the Congregational Society. In 1867 the school society added an acre in a narrow strip on the north side and the whole, about two and three quarters acres, was enclosed by a substantial fence.
The land of the burying ground in the rear of the First Bap- tist church on Zion's or Hastings' Hill was owned by Joseph Hastings when in 1769 he established and became the first pastor of the church. In the same year he gave a plot of it for a burial
I34
SUFFIELD OLD AND NEW
place for himself and his flock. Here he and his son John, who followed him in the ministry, and Rev. Asahel Morse, the third pastor, were buried. As more space became necessary, additions were made from time to time. In 1905 the management was in- corporated in the Zion's Hill Cemetery Association. The ceme- tery contains the graves of many descendants of old Suffield families and graves of soldiers of the wars of the Revolution and 1812, and of the Civil and World wars.
The Suffield mountain and the land lying west of it consti- tuted common land until divided among the proprietors in suc- cessive tiers of allotments, the last being made in 1759 when the valley of about seven hundred acres lying west of the foot of the mountain was divided into one hundred and twelve lots, repre- senting the number of the proprietors, in the proportion of six acres to every original fifty acre grant. At the same time the north half of Manituck mountain was granted to Captain Abraham Burbank and the south half to Samuel Kent to pay claims of eight pounds eight shillings of each, probably for services.
To the south of this "over-the-mountain" valley was Copper Hill with its mine, afterwards Newgate prison; to the west Mani- tuck mountain and to the north Lake Congamond, both Indian named and both, as relics show, favorite localities of the tribes. Just when the lands so divided began to be taken up by settlers is not known, but probably in the period between the French and Indian Wars and the Revolution. Certain it is that in 1788 there came into use a little plot of land in the center of the valley for a burial ground. Probably it was so used for a time pre- viously, for there are graves bearing no markers and others hav- ing markers beneath or on a level with the sod. There is a marker bearing the initials "M. C. 1788" which the late Capt. Apollos Phelps, getting his information from the fathers of his boyhood, used to say stood for Moses Cadwell. Tradition has it that about 1790 Elijah Phelps gave this plot of land of about one acre to the people of the valley as a common burial ground. In the records is a subscription paper of 1793 for the maintenance of the lot. There have been some changes in the boundaries but the area remains about the same. The cemetery is now in control of The Burial Ground Association of the West Side of the Moun-
I35
SUFFIELD OLD AND NEW
tain and Judah Phelps is the sexton and caretaker. It has a fund of $300, the income of which is for the care of the grounds.
Each ecclesiastical society controlled its burying ground until about the year 1821 when a state statute gave school societies limited powers relating to burying grounds and, whether fully authorized or not, the school societies appear to have taken com- plete control of the old burying grounds in 1844. This method has remained, the cemetery associations being really functions of the school societies. Under an act of the Legislature author- izing towns to hold trust funds for the care of family lots, the trust was accepted by the town in 1895, and the aggregate funds so contributed by different people now amounts to over $7,000.
Action for the establishment of a new cemetery at the Center was taken in 1871, and in April of that year twenty acres were purchased from Thomas Archer & Sons at a cost of $4,263.75. The committee consisted of Henry Fuller, Dr. M. T. Newton, Albert Austin, Byron Loomis, William L. Loomis, J. M. Hathe- way, George A. Douglass, R. T. Mather, and William H. Fuller. The ground was laid out and fenced and in August 1872 it was dedicated as Woodlawn cemetery. In 1920 eight more acres were added by purchase from John Merrill. In the fifty years many handsome monuments have been erected. The beauti- ful gateway was the gift of Charles L. Spencer in memory of his daughter Julia Spencer Goldthwaite.
CHURCH, SCHOOL AND LIBRARY
To the first settlers of Suffield, as of other early towns in the New England colonies, civil and ecclesiastical affairs were, practically coterminous. The body of voters within the town- ship settled civil and ecclesiastical affairs in the same town meeting. The church really began with the settlement. The act of incorporation of Suffield required that the settlers "take care for the procuring and maintayning some able minister there." At the first meeting of the committee appointed by the General Court at Boston to lay out the plantation, it was ordered that "a Convenient allotment of 60 or 80 acres near the Centre of the Town be Reserved for the property of the first Minister;" and that "a convenient allotment of 80 acres be set apart for the ministry and to continue and be improved for that use forever & not Granted away or sold or any way alienated therefrom." It was further stated that the true intent of the order and grant was to continue it for the maintenance of such minister as from time to time should "preach the Word of God to the inhabi- tants."
First Congregational Church
Not until the return of the settlers after King Philip's war and the later acquisition of several new inhabitants from other towns could provision be made for either church or minister, but at a meeting in Suffield in 1679 Major Pynchon, George Colton and Rowland Thomas, of the committee in whose hands the plantation was still lodged, granted eighty acres "for In- couragement of Mr. John Younglove to come to Suffield, who hath beene sought to which respect to being their Minister & to Preach ye word of God to ye People there." The degree of en- couragement may be measured from the fact that the committee was selling home lots at about six cents an acre. At this time Mr. Younglove was a teacher in Hadley. He had probably come to Suffield to preach on Sundays for a period before the grant. The first Meeting House was probably built in 1680 but no mention is made of the building until five years later. It was of the type common to all the Meeting Houses of the period- a
138
SUFFIELD OLD AND NEW
square wooden building usually unpainted, crowned with a truncated pyramidal roof.
For some reason the services of Mr. Younglove became un- satisfactory in 1690 when the town petitioned the county court at Northampton against his preaching longer, and, pending action, he died. After five years of unsuccessful efforts to obtain another minister, in 1695 Benjamin Ruggles, who had been graduated from Harvard two years before, became pastor. A new Meeting House and the first school house were built in 1700 or shortly after his settlement. There is little record of his min- istry except as it appears in the town records but he was an ac- tive leader in the town. He died in 1708 at the age of thirty- two.
The third minister, Ebenezer Devotion, was obtained in 1709. He came from Roxbury, where his parents lived, and had been graduated from Harvard two years before. He was ordained in June 1710, and in the fall of that year went to Boston to be married. The town voted "to allow John Rising 3 shilling per day for himself and his horse for ye nine daies he was out, when he went to ye Bay with Mr. Devotion, the when he went to be married." The pastorate was a successful one of more than thirty years and was terminated by his death in 1741.
Extensive revivals prevailed throughout New England in the latter part of Mr. Devotion's ministry, and 327 names were added to the church roll. This revival had notable effects, one of which was the division of the church, and the formation of the West Congregational Society and another was the accel- erated development of the Separatist movement and the es- tablishment of other denominations.
The fourth minister, Ebenezer Gay, a graduate of Harvard in 1737, preached his first sermon in Suffield August 9, 1741 and was acting pastor for more than fifty years. He came, at the time of the division of the church; the West Suffield church had been incorporated but not yet organized. The project of build- ing a new and larger church was given up for the time, though from the town records it appears that some of the timber had been already provided, and the town expressly voted that the West Society should not share in its ownership. In the report of the "One hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Decease
I39
SUFFIELD OLD AND NEW
of Benjamin Ruggles" it is stated that "the Meeting House survived some alterations and resolutions to build a successor, until 25th April, 1749, when it was laid prostrate." The sills for a new Meeting House were laid May 8, 1749 and the steeple raised on August 22 following. The edifice was forty feet wide and fifty-seven long and stood north to south parallel with the burying ground. The steeple stood at the north end.
Ebenezer Gay, Jr., became his father's assistant and succeeded him, being ordained March 6, 1793. His active pastorate con- tinued until 1826, and he remained senior pastor until his death in 1837; father and son together, therefore, lacked but four years of serving the church a full century. Ebenezer Gay, Jr., kept a school in the Gay Manse in the chamber over the kitchen and in the small chamber adjoining was kept the town library.
Joel Mann was installed as active pastor of the church in 1826 but was dismissed in 1829, and was succeeded by Henry Robin- son whose pastorate ended the year in which Ebenezer Gay Jr. died. The fourth church edifice, the one for the past fifty years serving as the freight house at the railroad station, was built in 1835. Asahel C. Washburn was installed in 1838 and was followed by John R. Miller in 1853.
Walter Barton became pastor in 1869 and the present church edifice was dedicated just previous to the Bi-Centennial cele- bration at which Mr. Barton delivered the address of welcome. He closed his pastorate in 1875 and his successors in the past fifty years have been: William R. Eastman, Charles Symington, Hiram L. Kelsey, Archibald McCord, David W. Goodale, Dan- iel R. Kennedy Jr., and Victor L. Greenwood.
West Suffield Congregational Church
From the settlement of the town until the beginning of the ministry of the first Ebenezer Gay, about seventy years, there was no other church society. During the last years of the success- ful ministry of Mr. Devotion, however, agitation for a division of the church society and the formation of the West Congrega- tional society began. It appears to have had a combination of causes. Extensive revivals occurred throughout New England and many new members had been added to the Suffield church. The second Meeting House had been built in 1701 and accord-
140
SUFFIELD OLD AND NEW
ing to the record of the town vote was forty feet square, but it may be presumed that pew room had become a problem, if not a cause of dissatisfaction. The seating of the people in the old New England Meeting House was always a delicate and diffi- cult matter. "Our Puritan forefathers," says Mrs. Alice Morse Earle, "though bitterly denouncing all forms and ceremonies, were great respecters of persons and in nothing was the regard for wealth and position more fully shown than in designating the seat in which each person should sit during public worship." Whittier wrote of this custom:
"In the goodly house of worship, where in order due and fit,
As by public vote directed, classed and ranked the people sit;
Mistress first and goodwife after, clerkly squire before the clown,
From the brave coat, lace embroidered, to the gray frock shading down."
In the records of the town meetings are many indications that the seating was causing trouble. When the question of division was first brought up in town meeting in August 1735 it failed to pass and at a meeting three years later a majority, strongly against the division, voted to build a new Meeting House sixty feet in length and forty feet in breadth, the stated purpose being to accommodate the larger number and avoid a division.
Meantime certain people in the west part of the town peti- tioned the General Court at Boston to be set off as a separate society and the town appointed Joseph King as an agent to go to Boston and oppose it on the ground that the "low circumstances of the inhabitants of Suffield rendered them incapable to main- tain two ministers and two Meeting Houses." The dispute was later referred to a committee consisting of John Stoddard of Northampton, William Pitkin of Hartford and William Pyn- chon, Jr. of Springfield. They met in Suffield and decided that the West society should be set off and the General Court incor- porated it January 1, 1740. At this time the town had about two hundred families. The West Suffield church was organized
141
SUFFIELD OLD AND NEW
November 10, 1743. The first Meeting House was erected the next year; the second in 1795 where the present edifice now stands; the present building was dedicated in 1840-the same year as the present Second Baptist church. It was a period of church building in Suffield, the First Congregational society having built five years before, 1835; the present First Baptist church was built six years later, 1846.
The first minister at West Suffield, John Graham, served from 1746 to 1796 and he was succeeded by one of the noted ecclesias- tical figures of the period, Daniel Waldo, a contemporary in Suffield of Ebenezer Gay, Jr. He was born in Windham and was a soldier in the Revolutionary War; taken prisoner and confined in the sugar house New York where he was treated with great cruelty. He graduated from Yale in 1788 and became pastor in West Suffield in 1792, serving eighteen years. For a period after- wards he was a missionary in Pennsylvania and New York State and later was settled in other churches in New England. In 1855 at the age of ninety-three he was chaplain of the United States House of Representatives; He died in 1864, lacking a few weeks of being one hundred and two years of age. He revisited Suffield occasionally in his long career and preached his last sermon shortly before his death.
His successors in the early period were Joseph Mix, 1814-29; John A. Hemstead, 1832-33; Erastus Clapp, 1833-39; Benjamin I. Lane, 1839-41; Joseph W. Sessions, 1843-52; Henry J. Lamb, 1853-57; Henry Cooley, 1857-64; C. B. Dye, 1864-65; William Wright, 1866-69; and Stephen Harris, 1869-71. The pastors of the past fifty years have been Augustus Alvord, Austin Gard- iner, John Elderkin, E. G. Stone, N. A. Prince, C. B. Strong, J. B. Doolittle, J. B. Smith, S. A. Apraham, William William and William A. Linnaberry.
First Baptist Church
Until 1769 these Congregational Societies of Suffield and West Suffield were of the Church of the Standing Order under which the ecclesiastical and civic affairs were identical. All persons were taxed for the church as well as for state. The civil power collected the taxes for the church by restraint and, under the laws of both Massachusetts and Connecticut, no person could form
142
SUFFIELD OLD AND NEW
a new church within the colonies without consent of the General Court and of the neighboring churches.
But this effort for conformity became an increasing cause of dissension and was the ultimate undoing of the Standing Order. So-called "New Lights" arose in the ministry and, when a min- ister was disbarred, that portion of his flock which agreed or sympathized with him left the church with him. Meantime Baptists, who had been exiled from England, had come to this country with the seed of their persuasion and, except in Rhode Island, the colonies made strict laws against them. Up to the early part of the eighteenth century they were banished from Massachusetts, and it was not until 1729 that Connecticut loosened the tie between church and state so that the Baptists were not taxed for the support of the Standing Order, which, however, continued to collect for its own support taxes from all who belonged to no church. The Massachusetts laws still con- tinued rigorous. In 1747 Suffield succeeded in detaching itself from Massachusetts and came under Connecticut jurisdiction, but it was not until 1769 that the First Baptist church in Suffield and the first in Hartford county was organized, with three con- stituent members, Joseph Hastings, Mrs. Mary Hanchett and Mrs. Theodosia Bronson. Joseph Hastings was a son of Deacon Thomas who settled at Watertown, Mass., and went to North- ampton where Joseph was born and whence he removed to Suffield, settling in the west part of the town, He became an elder and exhorter in the Separate or New Light movement in 1750, and organized the First Baptist Church in 1769, or almost one hundred years after the settlement of the town.
The first Meeting House was erected in 1777 on the triangu- lar green midway between the present residences of Albert and G. D. Austin. The second was erected on the site of the present structure in 1793 and was used for fifty years. The present church was built in 1846. The most notable of the pastors have been Joseph Hastings and his son John, who together served the church for forty years; Asahel Morse, pastor for twenty years and a resident of Suffield for the remainder of his life; James L. Hodge, who after three years service became a promi- nent preacher in Brooklyn; A. M. Torbet, who led the church in a revival and an increase of membership requiring the larger
I43
SUFFIELD OLD AND NEW
house of worship then built, and who later became a pioneer preacher in Minnesota; Erastus Andrews, who served for a con- siderable period and was the father of Dr. E. Benjamin Andrews, who after service in the Civil War was graduated from Brown University, became principal of the Connecticut Literary Insti- tution, later President of Brown University, chancellor of the University of Nebraska, and one of the American commissioners to the International Monetary Conference in Brussels in 1892; and Charles M. Willard, 1867-72. Five former pastors are still living, F. T. Latham, 1880-83; J. G. Ward, 1884-7; Harvey Linsley 1895-1902; A. R. McDougall 1905-6; and C. L. Buck- ingham 1913-86. Jesse F. Smith, a teacher at the Suffield School, is the present acting pastor.
Second Baptist Church
Four other churches may be said to have grown directly from the First Baptist church in Suffield-the Baptist churches in Southwick and in Westfield, the Second Baptist in Suffield, and the First Baptist in Hartford. To the Suffield church in its early days came several families from Southwick, Westfield, Bloom- field, Windsor and other neighboring towns. It is said that Deacon Bolles of Hartford used to walk the eighteen miles to Suffield every Sunday, returning after the afternoon service. In 1789 he invited his Baptist neighbors to his house and the next year they organized into the First Baptist church in Hartford.
Some years later a little company of Baptists, fifteen in num- ber, living in the eastern part of Suffield met in the Feather Street school house and considered the convenience of a Baptist church nearer to them. With them met in council on their invi- tation elders and brethren from the First Baptist church, and from West Springfield, Wilbraham, Windsor and Groton. Thus the Second Baptist church was established May 22, 1805. Be- fore the close of the year, thirty-three were added to the original number. For three or four years the people met in the school houses of the different districts-Feather Street, Boston Neck and South Street. They had no pastor but were supplied from other churches.
Meantime over $2,000 had been subscribed for buying a lot and erecting a Meeting House, but there was delay in getting
144
SUFFIELD OLD AND NEW
title to the lot, and the tradition is that the members of the Standing Order threw various obstacles in the way, even the mutilation and hiding of timber collected for the erection of the building, which was located where Charles L. Spencer now lives and was dedicated between 1808 and 1810. The rising revolt against the union of church and state tended to increase the membership of the new society, and not long afterward the change came in the Connecticut Constitution and full liberty was granted to other denominations.
"For eleven years," says the historian of the Centennial of the church in 1905, "the congregation met on Sabbath morning in this Meeting House, called in derision the old barn, the furni- ture of which consisted of rude slab benches, and a few chairs brought in for the aged women from the dwellings of friendly neighbors. The carpenter's bench was still standing in the rear of the minister's desk; no stoves but foot stoves. Not until the year 1819 were pews put in, galleries constructed and a pulpit placed against the wall." Thus it remained without modifica- tion till supplanted by the present church in 1840, on a more central site.
The first pastor was Caleb Green, assistant to John Hastings of the First church. He was succeeded in 1815 by Bennett Pepper of Southwick, who was a revivalist and baptised many as a result of two revivals, but he was later deposed. From 1823 to 1825 were three brief ministries and in the latter year, Calvin Philleo began his labors. He was a man of many remarkable parts, if somewhat eccentric, and was an earnest revival preacher. Under his preaching Dwight Ives, a young man of seventeen and later to become identified with the history of the church more than any other man before him, was convicted of sin. Mr. Philleo's pastorate continued till December 30, 1829.
There were five short ministries from 1829 to 1839 when Dwight Ives began his long pastorate. The church then had three hundred and ten members. During the first twenty-five years of his pastorate there were six extensive revivals and the total number received into the church during the period was one thousand. Dr. Ives continued in the pastorate nine and one half years longer, resigning in 1874 to remove to Conway, Mass. He died in December of the following year. The pastors serving
STONY BROOK. At the Ledges a Short Distance Below the Site of Major Pynchon's First Saw Mill.
First Congregational Church Built 1869
SUFFIELD POUNDED LO70
HONOR OF DUN
PATRIOTIC ANCESTORS OF THE
REVOLUTIONARY JA
PLACED WEAR THE SITE OF THE
SUBIL DWIGHT KENY THANTEN
Boulder Placed on Site of First Meeting House by Sibbil Dwight Kent Chapter, D. A. R.
First Baptist Church, Zion's Hill, Built 1846
Second Baptist Church, Built 1840
1
I
West Suffield Methodist and Congregational Churches
145
SUFFIELD OLD AND NEW
since 1874 were J. R. Stubbert, B. W. Lockhart, D. B. Reed, G. F. Genung, R. C. Hull, W. A. Smith and K. C. MacArthur. The present pastor is E. Scott Farley.
West Suffield Methodist Church
Notwithstanding the act of the Connecticut General Court of 1727 which permitted the establishment of other societies, it was not until after several Baptist churches existed in various parts of the State that the first Methodist Society was estab- lished in Stratford, Conn. But all remained weak and shared in the constant grievances of dissenting sects. The eventual escape was brought about coincidently with the collapse of the Federal party. In 1816 the Republican party that Jefferson fathered made common cause with the dissenters of all denominations, and in the political battles fought on that issue in 1817 dissenters were elected Governor and Lieutenant-Governor of the State and the Republicans had a two-thirds majority in the legislature. It at once put all sects on an equality as to taxation and in the next year, at a convention in Hartford, was drafted the Consti- tution of 1818, under which religious profession and worship were to be free to all, and no sect to be preferred by law. Thus after nearly two centuries vanished the Standing Order and the later "prime ancient societies."
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.