USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Newington > Early days in Newington, Connecticut, 1833-1836 > Part 4
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began to endear him to all. Still it was clear that it was the smiles of the eldest daughter which the young man especially sought. Little lame Joab asked why that man was so much in the parlor with Mary. Martha asked with anxiety in her eyes why that homely man remained with them so long. Mary only replied that she did not think him so very homely. There began to be talk in the parish. The beautiful Mary Brace shared with Delia Whittlesey the idolatry of the people. The general opposition of the community to the suspected designs of the ungainly divinity student upon their admired and beloved Mary Brace, good and learned though he might be, was very pronounced. What Mr. Todd said to Mary I am unable to tell, but I know that when he believed the time was ripe he made known his wishes to Mr. Brace, and, having gained his somewhat reluctant consent to a correspondence with his daughter, he returned to Andover.
Grinnell, Iowa, February 4, 1895.
X.
But Newington's excited curiosity respecting the progress of this interesting romance was not destined to be immedi- ately satisfied. The community was not taken into the con- fidence of the family at the parsonage with reference to any correspondence which may or may not have been carried on with the absent divinity student, and the post-office officials were very properly dumb upon the subject. Certain informa- tion as to some of the details came to me during my residence in Newington, but it was not until forty years had passed that full particulars were given to the world by the Rev. John Todd, D. D., himself, in that fascinating autobiography, "The Story of My Life." There we may read many extracts from the letters which passed between the lovers and other members of the interested family, and we may trace the progress of the courtship which resulted in the loss to Newington of the lovely and beloved Mary Brace. It was a pretty serious correspon- dence at first, to judge from those portions of the letters which appeared in print. Here are a few lines from one of the first re- ceived by the fair Mary from her absent admirer: "From the very nature of my situation and circumstances I know not what
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is before me in life. I know not, and I care not, where my life is spent; and if the good of the church demands it, I care not how soon it is spent. My object in living is but one-to do good. To this every subordinate desire, every panting of ambition, every longing after fame, must and shall be sub- jected." Such a spirit was certainly noble and must have commanded the approval of the family at the Newington parsonage. As time passes we have reason to conclude that matters between the young people have become fully settled, for Mr. Todd proceeds to enlighten his future wife as to what will be expected of her in that relation: "You need not that I tell you that a minister's wife is often as useful as the man himself. Your own good mother has taught you this by her example. She can be active herself, and by example and precept she can do immense good among the people of his charge. Add to this, she is to be the adviser of her husband, is to sympathize with him in his sorrows and trials, to cheer him under discouragements and despondency, to check all his improprieties, to mend his weaknesses, to soften all his as- perities, to help him grow in piety and holiness. You will doubtless find many frailities in me. My pride you must turn to humility; my ambition you must curb and restrain." This is surely requiring a good deal of a wife, but I have no doubt that Mr. Brace's accomplished daughter was able to fully carry out the programme. I hope however, that she gave him in reply to this letter an outline of what an intelligent, high-minded girl has a right to expect from the man who exacts so much of her. To my disappointment, no extract is given us from that reply.
During his second seminary year, Mr. Todd's preaching began to attract attention, and his services were soon sought for the filling of pulpits in the larger towns and cities. Settle- ments were offered him by some of the leading New England churches, to take effect as soon as his seminary studies should be completed. Newington people watched his rising fame, and began to be proud of his anticipated connection with their village. A bright and happy spirit pervades his own letters to Mary, though his genuine earnestness is only thinly veiled by his playful tone. While still a student he writes thus: "It was Thursday, about 11 o'clock in the forenoon, that I was
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sitting at my writing-desk, thinking of you. 'Come, come!' says old Mr. Conscience, 'you must commit your piece to memory, which you have to speak at 2 o'clock in the chapel.' 'Oh, yes, Mr. Conscience, but it is a great while since I have heard from Mary; just let me look at her last letter.' 'Your speech, your speech!' 'In a moment; but just let me look at that letter in which the girl told me, for the first time, that she loved me-only a minute!' So I began to read that letter, and the next, and the next. 'Stop, stop!' cried Conscience, 'you'll be disgraced! your piece!' 'In a moment, sir; just let me read our engagement, and her next letter. Ah, here is a good letter, old Quig-a very fine letter!' 'Nonsense, nonsense! Commit your piece!' 'Oh yes, but doesn't she write good letters?' 'Your piece!' 'Aye, but doesn't she gradually show how she loves me better and better?' 'Your piece, your piece!' 'Yes, but this is a sweet girl; how I wish I could see the creature!' 'Hold,' cries Conscience. 'Your piece is not committed; the dinner bell rings, and you must speak at 2, before the seminary! See what your foolish love costs you!' 'Right, right, Mr. Conscience; but she is a lovely girl, say what you will, ·as the dozen letters I have just read prove.' Here the dialogue closed, and went to dinner, while old Conscience took a nap. After 1 o'lcock Brother Howe comes in. 'Do be well prepared, Brother Todd; we are to have a host of ladies to hear you. Ah, I have not committed a word of my piece!' 'Ay, ay. I told you so,' says Conscience, just waking up; 'I told you you would be disgraced.' 'Be still, Mr. Conscience, I will go to work; but-she is a fine girl.' So, pulling off my coat, I took to my work-forgot you, forgot everything. The bell rings. 'Ah, now for it!' cries my old tormentor. 'Cease, Conscience, let me alone!' I go in; the ladies are there; I mount the stage, go through without tripping, without hesitating. They listen silently, and I come off well. 'See, now, old fool of a Con- science!' I say, 'see how I have got along and thought of Mary too.' 'Yes, but you are too bold, too daring; you may one day get yourself into difficulty with this foolish love of yours!' 'Never, never, old friend: but don't say anything about this escape : she is a sweet girl.' "
Having graduated from Andover Seminary among the first of his class, John Todd was soon settled over the church
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in the beautiful town of Groton, Mass. After a time he visited . Newington and preached in the old church. He was no longer the plain and awkward youth whose aspirations had excited the resentment of the people. He was the brilliant and scholarly young preacher whose reputation was already wide- spread in the land. The congregation was charmed by his eloquence and power. His homely face and ungainly figure were transfigured. Deeply spiritual and tender, his speech full of pathos and glowing with true poetry, he moved the hearts of his hearers at his will to enthusiasm or to tears. Mary Brace sat entranced, and even her honored father, not easily overcome by pulpit oratory, was scarcely less affected. Not one of that audience but felt that their beloved Mary was happy to be the chosen of one so gifted.
The wedding day drew on. It came upon a Sabbath. The bridegroom was not too much excited by the near approach of his new happiness to give to delighted congregations, morn- ing and afternoons, sermons of great force and beauty. In the evening he led, as he himself tells us, "the fairest girl in the village, and the sweetest singer in the choir, to the front of the pulpit, and they were married by her father, 'with appropriate remarks.' After a wedding tour, by stage, to Boston, and a brief visit there, the young couple settled down to their busy, useful life in Groton. It is pleasant to know that the bride was loved and honored there'as she had been in Newington, for her husband takes space to make mention of numerous whispers of admiration, which he was so fortunate as to overhear, re- specting the pastor's wife.
It would be interesting, did space and time permit, to follow these friends through their after career, and show the worth to the world of the life and work of one of Newington's daughters. Not only should she be credited with what she was able to accomplish directly and personally in the churches and communities where Dr. Todd was settled, but she had also a large share in the literary and other public labors of her husband, while as wife and mother in the home her success and usefulness were beyond estimation.
Dr. Todd's greatest life-work was doubtless his preaching, and how much of his inspiration, and wisdom, and success was due to the wise counsels, the tender sympathy, and the ju-
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dicious guidance of the excellent helpmeet whom he had found in Newington, the world can never know.
In addition to his sermons, Dr. Todd wrote and published many books. His works for children were considered mar- vellously adapted to their purpose. His "Student's Manual" is one of the most successful works ever produced, and has passed through 150 editions in Europe alone.
Throughout life John Todd carried in his heart a sense of obligation to Mr. Brace, who had been willing to give him his daughter, while he was yet young and poor, and had only begun to build up his great reputation. The following letter bears witness to the fact:
"My Dear Father,-Should it afford you any gratification to know that a college standing high and very sparing of its honors has conferred on you the title of D. D., and if this has been brought about by any little agency and influence of my- self-if, at a time when the shadows of earth seems less and less to you, the good opinion of men comes to you in a form new and unexpected-you may feel assured that your friends who know you best feel that you deserve all that you receive, and that, for myself, the gift of your child to me, at a time when I had neither character nor influence, has laid me under ob- ligations which I can never express."
When that honored father had rounded out the full half century of his work in Newington, and his home was broken up by the death of his wife, it was the great pleasure of John and Mary Brace Todd to minister to his declining years, and, · as the time of his departure drew near, to stand beside the dying saint and receive his parting blessing.
Grinnell, Iowa, March 5, 1895.
XI.
"I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread." Psalms, XXXVII, 25.
"To the righteous good shall be repaid. A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children." Prov., XIII, 21-22.
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One of the old sayings, familiar to me from my earliest remembrance, is that "ministers' children are the worst children in town, and depart farthest from the teachings of their fathers." Many such "sayings" are found upon careful investigation to have but slendor support of fact, and I am convinced that this is one of the number. My own conclusions, based upon a long life of observation in various places, and especially upon the following of the history of the families of more than forty ministers who went out from my native town of Hollis, N. H., are the precise opposite of the above. A review of the his- tory of five generations of the family of the Rev. Joshua Belden of Newington still furthers strengthens my conviction upon the subject.
Good Pastor Belden was the third of the ministers who have been settled over the Newington church. His pastorate began about the middle of the last century, and lasted fifty- six years, when, because of the frailties of advanced age, he was released from active service, and the Rev. Joab Brace was ordained as his colleague. Mr. Belden lived ten years as pastor emeritus. In the interim of one year between Mr. Belden and Mr. Brace, the Rev. Aaron Cleveland, great grand- father of President Grover Cleveland, occupied the pulpit to the acceptance of the people.
In "The Annals of Newington," compiled by Mr. Roger Welles, I find extracts from a valuable manuscript history of Wethersfield, written by Hezekiah Belden, Esq., a son of the Rev. Mr. Belden, and preserved by the Historical Society in Hartford. From the passage referring to the Rev. Mr. Belden I will quote briefly. "He was educated at Yale College, graduating in 1743. He was a plain, practical preacher of evangelical truth and 'shunned not to declare the whole counsel of God.' A man scrupulously conscientious, of deep humility, and of devoted and ardent piety. He was married twice." Of the eleven children born to Mr. Beldon, only four daughters and one son survived him. "He was a man of sorrows, but he bore them like a Christian, his faith was triumphant. On the death of his second wife, standing over her lifeless body and gazing in silent grief for a short time on her placid counten- ance, he exclaimed, raising his hands and eyes to heaven, 'I am dumb-I open not my mouth, for the Lord hath done it.'
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Then kneeling with his weeping family around him he poured forth his soul in prayer for resignation and support, and in thanksgiving that the object of his affection had been so long spared to him as the solace of his life, and of assured hope in her death.'
From this blessed ancestry are decended various worthy families scattered through the land, but it is with the line represented by Pastor Belden's elder son, Joshua, that we are especially concerned.
The second Joshua Belden was a physician of large and successful practice. By his marriage, in 1797, to Dorothy, a daughter of Lemuel Whittlesey, the Belden blood was united with that of a family endowed with traits equally strong and pronounced. Mrs. Belden was noted, like her father, for independence and self-reliance and for excellent judgment. Her physical presence was fairly typical of her mental endow- ments. Of splendid and commanding stature, along with great personal beauty, she was one to whom all yielded ad- miring honor even when age had striven to rob her of her youthful charms. Even the burden of many years never deprived her of her stately bearing or of that proud self-de- pendence sometimes rather haughtily disdainful of proffered assistance to manifest feebleness. It is a pretty story that her grand-daughter tells me of the loving pride with which her four sons regarded their handsome mother. The family pew was one of those on the south side of the pulpit in the old church, and sometimes only three of the boys were to be seen in attendance upon the doctor's widow as she trod with queenly step and mien the long aisle from the church door to her pew. The other son had slyly slipped off to church before the rest that he might see his beautiful mother walk down the meeting- house to her seat. To Dr. Joshua Belden's home came Pastor Belden in his enfeebled age to spend his last days, and, though the son died soon after of typhus fever, yet the old minister remained with his son's widow and her children till his own translation, in 1813. Such a woman as Mrs. Belden could not but be an earnest, faithful mother and well able to meet the re- sponsibility so early thrust upon her by her husband's death. She was one of those early interested in foreign missions, and a strong advocate of temperance principles while that cause
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was yet unpopular. She knew the value of a thorough edu- cation, also, and two, at least, of her sons were graduates of Yale College. The eldest, L. W. Belden, became a prominent physician in Springfield, Mass. Joshua, the second son, after finishing his college course, came to the West and settled in Missouri. Chauncey, the third, practiced medicine in West Springfield, while Mason, the youngest, remained upon the home farm. All of them are said to have been fine-looking men.
Among the relics of early days still preserved at the Newington home of the Beldens is an old letter which was received by Mrs. Dorothy Belden in September, 1814. It involves a mystery which, so far as I can learn, was never solved. This was the tenor of the anonymous missive: "Mrs. Belden, you are requested to leave $25, this week, under a reddish, flat stone marked 'B.,' in Roger Welles's lot at the corner next the meeting-house, and we shall thank you if it is found there, and not told of; it will save you much pro- perty, and you will have your money in about a year, if we live." Anonymous letters and attempts at blackmail were not common in those far off days, and even the strong nerves of stately Madame Belden were a little shaken by the uncanny communication. Not that she at all considered the possibility of yielding to any such demands, however! She very sensibly set a watch upon her buildings, which was maintained for some time, but without any important discoveries.
I think I have already alluded to the work of the great evangelist, Dr. Nettleton, in Newington. Mrs. Belden was evidently a leader in the various worthy enterprises of the village, and her interest in Dr. Nettleton's labors is evinced by the fact that she opened her house (the one now occupied by Olin L. Wetherell) for the "sunrise prayer-meetings" held in connection with the revival which followed the preaching of the mighty man of God.
When I first knew Newington (in 1833), the noble, queenly widow still presided over the Belden home, but the three elder sons had gone out into the world, leaving only Mason, who had charge of the business of the farm. I think he could not have been far from 30 years of age, but he had not seemed in haste to bring a bride to the old home, so content was he with the white-haired mother as head of the household. But
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that same year I helped to place the timbers of a new house which Mason Belden had begun to build on the place where his Grandfather Belden so long lived.
General Kellogg had a niece who, in those days, was wont to visit occasionally at her uncle's home, coming from her residence in Glastonbury. I distinctly remember her as a lovely and attractive girl, and distantly related to Mason Belden. Perhaps it was something connected with the build- ing of the new house which took the owner so frequently across the river to Glastonbury, or so often to the Kellogg homestead, when sweet Mary Hale chanced to be a visitor there. But be- fore long it began to be rumored that the fair Mary was her- self the magnet toward which the steadfast heart of modest Mason Belden constantly turned. The house was finished, but the quiet courtship still fared sedately on, with a delibera- tion more common in those days than in these more impatient ones, and it was not until 1838 that the bride came to the Belden home. If there were those who looked for friction between the new mistress and the old one who had so long ruled all about her with the rod of universally acknowledged superiority, they were doomed to disappointment.
Madame Belden was great in her magnanimity and good sense, as well as in other commanding gifts, and she loved and admired her new daughter. Shortly after the marriage, Mason's mother said to an intimate friend, "If you ever hear of any difficulty between Mary and myself, you may know that I am to blame." I never knew that there was any difficulty, though the elder woman carried with her to her death, in 1846, through all the increasing feebleness and infirmity of age, the decision of character which marked her earlier years.
To Mason and Mary Hale Belden were given five daughters and one son. The latter bears the honored name of Joshua. Two of the daughters have passed over the river, the rest re- side at the Newington home. All are worthy descendants of their Belden and Whittlesey ancestors, earnest and intelligent citizens, faithful workers for the best things in church and community and social life.
A few years ago another strain of Whittlesey blood was brought into the Belden family, when a granddaughter of Roger Whittlesey became the bride of Joshua Belden. They have
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been blest with four sons, but the younger two "are not," for God took them. Joshua Herbert, and Charles Whittlesey, lads of fourteen and twelve years, remain to represent the fourth generation of this distinguished Newington family.
Grinnell, Iowa, March 22, 1895.
XII.
Yesterday I passed my 82d "mile-stone" on life's journey in perfect health. The writing of this letter is almost the first work of my 83rd year. It is expected that one will grow wiser as he grows older, and that is what I wish to do.
The modest little cottage with its pleasant surroundings which stood opposite the residence of the family last men- tioned, was occupied by a maiden lady whose name I knew, but with whom I had but slight acquaintance. She resided there till near the close of her life, something more than twenty years ago. She had little to leave but the dear little home which had been her shelter for so many years. Yet that, with the love accompanying it, was a rich gift to the Newington church, to whom it was bequeathed for perpetual use as a parsonage. The generous giver of the "two mites" is ever to be remembered, and, I think, should the pleasant Newington parsonage ever remind the passer-by of the name of Prudence Hall.
On to the south stood the principal blacksmith shop of the town, where bluff, bustling, good-natured, Zaccheus Brown, with brawny arm and powerful frame, hammered away at his anvil when he was not busy upon his farm, for, like many New England villagers, he was both farmer and mechanic. A blacksmith shop is-or was in the olden times-often a pleas- ant, gossipy lounging place for the county folk, and many an hour of neighborly talk concerning matters of village interest or the weightier affairs of church and State had Newington men of the day around the cheery forge of Zaccheus Brown while they watched the shoeing of their horses and oxen, or waited each his "turn" for the blacksmith's service. Mr. Brown himself took much interest in politics, and in the days of Andrew Jackson, when Gideon Welles was a leading man in one of Connecticut's political parties, he was appointed a justice of the peace. Then we knew him as "Squire Brown." New
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England justices were then not very often called upon to perform the marriage ceremony, and when the jolly smith was one day confronted in his shop by a bashful pair, sighing to become one, he was for the moment somewhat nonplused at the unexpected demand. However, he was not a man to shirk responsibilities, and, leading the blushing couple to his house, he made such changes in his toilet as he considered befitting the holy office to which he was called, and screwing up his courage to the point, though with a quaking heart, the mighty deed was done, and the two loving hearts were welded together in a union as solid as that which bound the bars of iron which Zaccheus Brown well knew how to weld. But I have been told that Squire Brown stated in confidence after- ward that "it started the sweat worse than shoeing a kicking colt."
It was about this time that the Methodists began to hold meetings in the south School-house, and the novelty of their methods, along with more worthy motives, drew a large at- tendance. Squire Brown encouraged the new sect, and even suggested that they should build a meeting-house near his home. Some others also advocated the enterprise-among them Mrs. Robert Francis, Jr., who ardently sympathized with the Methodists, and who was in herself a host. The Rev. Mr. Brace held the view which prevailed both in old and New England that the church pastor is pastor of all the souls in his parish, and felt keenly that the new denomination was taking unwarranted liberties with his flock. He argued with Mr. Brown, striving to convince him that he was himself able to furnish all the preaching needed by the people of Newing- ton. Mr. Brown still thought two churches better than one. "Well," said he at last, "I have long been trying to convince the Newington people that I can do all the blacksmithing for the town, but they think otherwise, and have a right to think so. And now Newman Francis has started a shop at The Green.'
The new church was built, and preaching sustained for a few years, when it was abandoned and the house drawn away.
Mr. Brown's sons and daughters were interesting and en- tertaining children, as became the family of such parents- Mrs. B. was Sarah Hale, daughter of James Hale of Wethers-
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