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Under this administration the library comes within the limit of my personal recollection. The meetings were held on the first Sunday evening of the month immediately after the monthly concert. To this missionary meeting came the patrons of the library from the Eastern Farms, from
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THE TUNXIS LIBRARY IN 1882 Miss Julia Brandegee, Librarian is standing at the foot of the steps. Hlouse is known as the Daniel Curtis Place built in 1752. Farmington Avenue opposite High Street.
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The LIBRARIES of FARMINGTON
White Oak, and from most of the districts of the town, each with his four books tied up not unsually in a red ban- danna handkerchief. Here we waited, more or less patiently, the men on the right hand and the women on the left, while Deacon Hart gave us a summary of mis- sionary intelligence for the month, and the Rev. William S. Porter elucidated his views of family government and the divine promises to faithful parents. Then, when Dr. Porter had expounded some suitable portion of the Scrip- tures and invoked the blessing of God on us and on all dwellers in heathen lands, when the choir in the northeast corner of the hall had concluded our devotions with the Missionary Hymn, a large part of the meeting repaired to the library room below. Here were the books, a thou- sand or more, some in cases, some on benches, some on a big table, some in rows, some in piles, - but all scattered without regard to character or size or numbering in a confusion that would have astounded the orderly soul of Deacon Elijah Porter. The books purchased during the last month were announced and the first reading of each was determined by a spirited auction at which every book was described as a "very interesting work." Then after tumbling over the book piles with varying success, and with the excitement unknown in more orderly collections, of possibly unearthing some unexpected treasure, each had his four books charged, and departed to enjoy the spoils of his search.
This chapter in the history of the library was abruptly terminated in 1851 by a change in the ownership of the building in which it had its temporary home. The old building and the adjoining premises were owned jointly by the Academy Proprietors, the First Ecclestiastical So- ciety, the Middle School District, and the town. The upper
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room was used for all sorts of purposes. The Sunday- school boy saw its walls adorned with the big placards which taught him "Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth," and that " The wages of sin is death," but his mind was much more apt to dwell on the grotesque exhibitions he had seen and heard from the same benches the evening before, - the political orator, the ventriloquist, the negro minstrel, the mesmerist, the uncouth magic lan- tern pictures, and the war dance and war-whoop of imitation red men. The situation became so intolerable that the Ec- clestiastical Society, after no end of skillful diplomacy and hard work on the part of Deacon Simeon Hart, bought out the other owners, and the upper room was dedicated to religious uses only, by a vote which will not seem strict to those who remember the abominations of the past. The money changers in the holy temple at Jerusalem were most respectable by contrast. From the Academy building the books were removed to the office of Deacon Simeon Hart, who was appointed librarian once more, February 7, 1853, only twelve weeks before his death. He was succeeded by Austin Hart, Esq., who had charge until the office build- ing was sold and moved away. The library, once more homeless, was moved across the street into the stone store which stood, before the great fire, on the site of the present parsonage. Finally, in 1855, the town gave it a resting place for the next thirty-five years in the new record build- ing, it being agreed in consideration therefor, " that any responsible person belonging to the town may have the right of drawing books from the library upon paying a reasonable compensation."
Mr. Chauncey D. Cowles, the town clerk, was librarian for the year 1855. In February of the following year, Mr., now Dr., James R. Cumming, then the very success-
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انعدام بلـ
MISS JULIA BRANDEGEE IN THE TUNXIS LIBRARY (about 1885) (opened 1882)
The LIBRARIES of FARMINGTON
ful principal of the Middle District school, was appointed librarian. With his habitual energy and exactness he brought order out of confusion, and the library became once more a very useful and prosperous institution. Dur- ing the next ten years nearly all the most valuable books of the library were acquired, thanks to the fine literary taste, the generous gifts, and the practical good sense of Deacon Edward L. Hart.
Such, then, was the library, which for a century has been no mean adjunct to the pulpit and the school-house, in giving to the citizens of this village whatever claims to intelligence and uprightness may justly belong to them. And now, after its wanderings from one temporary resting place to another, it has found an honorable and fitting place of abode. May it with many additions and with a gen- erous care continue for another century to bless this village.
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LIBRARIANS.
ELIJAH PORTER, -
-
elected
1795
LUTHER SEYMOUR,
-
Dec. 28, 1812
ELIJAH PORTER, -
Feb. 12, 1814
SELAH PORTER, -
April 2, 1826
SIMEON HART,
-
-
66
1836
WILLIAM S. PORTER, - ABNER BIDWELL,
Jan. 5, 1840
SIMEON HART, -
-
-
Feb. 7, 1853
AUSTIN HART, -
Sept. 26, 1853
CHAUNCEY D. COWLES,
66
1855
JAMES R. CUMMING, -
Feb.,
1856
JULIUS GAY,
Jan.
2, 1860
WILLIAM E. HART,
-
Jan.
6, 1868
THOMAS TREADWELL, -
Jan.
4, 1869
THOMAS L. PORTER, -
Jan.
2, 1882
MISS JULIA BRANDEGEE,
1882
MRS. TIMOTHY ROOT, -
1890
MISS HELEN M. SCARTH, -
1919
MISS ALICE K. O'CONNOR -
Sept.
1924
-
-
April 4, 1835
RUFUS COWLES, - -
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Feb. 18, 1839
-
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AN HISTORICAL ADDRESS DELIVERED AT
THE ANNUAL MEETING
of the
VILLAGE LIBRARY COMPANY
OF FARMINGTON, CONNECTICUT
May 6, 1891
by Julius Gay
CHURCH MUSIC
delivered May 6, 1891
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Village Library Company of Farmington: -
We have been called together this evening, in accord- ance with the articles under which we are associated, to hear of the prosperity of our library, and to select those who for another year shall care for its well-being.
In bygone times, whenever the citizens of this state were called upon to exercise the elective franchise, it was customary to designate some learned divine to deliver for their guidance and encouragement an annual election ser- mon. Far be it from me to invade the sacred office or to assail your ears with lessons of such ponderous wisdom. Some, however, who heard the account of the library of a century ago have desired to go back with me another century and hear something of that still older time. A rude age it was, but rudeness seen through the mists of two centuries ceases to be repulsive. The petty discomforts of life are forgotten, and even the uncouth becomes pic- turesque. There is a strange fascination in looking back on the deeds of your own ancestors; and the very local- ities where they lived - trivial to all others - seem sacred in the sight of their descendants.
You will hear of no libraries in their rude cabins. They deemed the Bible and the Psalm-Book sufficient for their wants. The one was for a time their only law book, and with the other their souls rose on the wings of song out
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of their gloomy surroundings to the God who had brought them hither, and who they believed would still sustain them.
What, then, was the music which was as dear to them as the breath of life ?
Rude it may seem to our ears; trivial it could not have been. The gay soldier of King Charles's court derided it. Tennyson tells how -
" The Roundhead rode, And hummed a surly hymn."
but when on Marston Moor the Ironsides of Cromwell raised their battle psalm and, roused to frenzy, rushed upon the Cavaliers, they learned full well the power of Puritan psalmody.
No doubt many of you say, " Have we not heard this old music over and over again, and, dressed in the very apparel of our ancestors, ourselves helped to sing it? " By no means. The music of the Old Folks' Concert is all comparatively modern. This town had been settled more than a century when William Billings was born in Boston, in 1746, and in due time gave to the world those strange tunes which suited the taste of a former generation, and have not yet wholly lost their charm: Majesty, in which the vision of Ezekiel is portrayed, David's Lamentation, The Anthem for Easter, and numerous other pieces, well known to you all. Still later -was it when Timothy Swan, born in Worcester in 1758, and living now in Northfield and now in Stamford, inheriting a tinge of insanity from his mother, wrote that wild, weird tune, Ocean, in which he strives to picture how, while -
" The winds arise, And swell the towering waves, The men astonished mount the skies And sink in gaping graves."
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Daniel Read who sang -
"O may my heart in tune be found, Like David's harp of solemn sound."
or again, in the plaintive minor strains of Russia, com- pares man, whether of high degree or of the baser sort, to a " puff of empty air," or in triumphant notes rejoices -
" While shepherds watched their flocks by night, All seated on the ground ;"
or shrinks with horror at the dreadful end of the wicked as he sees them stand on slippery rocks while "fiery bil- lows roll below," died in New Haven so lately as 1841.
What, then, was the music of our forefathers in their first sanctuary ?
It was simply the music they had been accustomed to sing in the churches of Old England. The settlers of this town came from Hartford, and were, for the most part, members of the so-called Braintree Company, which came from the County of Essex in England. They did not, therefore, like the Plymouth Colony, spend twelve years on their way in Holland until, as Winslow said, they were like to lose their language and the name of English, but brought straight from the village churches of England the songs they had learned in their youth. Cotton Mather tells of their neighbors of the Salem church, that the Rev. Mr. Higginson, calling up his children and other pas- sengers into the stern of the ship, to take their last sight of England, said, " We will not say, as the Separatists were wont to say at their leaving of England, 'Farewell, Baby- lon! Farewell, Rome!' but we will say, 'Farewell, dear England! Farewell, the Church of God in England, and all the Christian friends there. We do not go to New England as Separatists from the Church of England, though we cannot but separate from the corruptions in it.' "
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They brought with them two metrical versions of the Psalms; that of Henry Ainsworth which was used mostly in Massachusetts, and that of Sternehold and Hopkins which found favor in this State. I have myself a copy brought over by one of the first settlers of this town. Its quaint old title is worth repeating.
" The Booke of Psalmes : Collected into English Meeter, by Thomas Sternehold, John Hopkins, and others : conferred with the Hebrew; with apt Notes to sing them withall. Set forth and allowed to be sung in all Churches, of the people together, before and after Morning and Evening Prayer : As also before and after Sermon: and moreover in private houses, for their godly solace and comfort, laying apart all ungodly Songs and Ballads, which tend onely to the nourishment of vice, and corrupting of youth."
It has, besides the metrical version of the Psalms, sev- eral pieces of Old English Church Music, a few of which I name because they form part of a book actually in use in this town nearly, if not quite, 250 years ago. The following certainly do not sound much like the music of the conventicle as the author of Waverly loved to describe it: The Benedictus or Song of Zacharias, The Magnificat or Song of the Blessed Mary, The Nunc Dimittis or Song of Simeon, The Athanasian Creed, The Pater Noster or Lord's Prayer, The Ten Commandments, and many other set pieces. The music, of which there was a considerable variety, was printed with the old-fashioned square-headed notes and without bars except at the end of each line of the words, the C clef being invariably used, a sore puzzle to modern performers. Only the melody was given which was to be sung by the whole congregation in unison. Some few of the more rigid Puritans objected to congregational
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singing, and argued that, as one man prayed and preached, so only one should sing; a refinement of solo music which did not prevail. That these men looked upon singing simply as an act of devotion, without the slightest thought of anything æsthetic in it, appears when they proposed to exclude female voices, and argued further : "Because it is not permitted to a woman to speak in church, how then shall they sing? Much less is it permitted them to prophesy in the church. And singing of Psalms is a kind of proph- esying." These objections, though not sustained by the great body of the worshipers, were nevertheless answered at length by the Rev. John Cotton, in a tract published to help the introduction of the famous Bay Psalm Book, which was compiled by about thirty New England divines, and was printed at Cambridge in 1640, the year in which this town was settled. It was the first book printed in the United States, and has become so rare that a copy was sold in 1879 for $1,200. It lacked the musical notes in the early editions, a most disastrous omission, as will soon appear.
A few years later, in 1718, Cotton Mather, best known by his famous Magnalia, published the Psalterium Amer- icanum, which also lacked the printed notes. It was a very exact translation of the Hebrew, written in smooth and elegant English blank verse, but people missed the rhymes and the rude vigor of the old version, and would have none of it. It possessed one remarkable provision, said to have been invented by Richard Baxter, by which a number of the Psalms could be sung to any of the meters then in use, Long, Short, or Common, - a device which would commend itself to any luckless leader of a prayer meeting, who has come to grief in attempting to sing a Long meter hymn to a Short meter tune.
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The metrical version of the Psalms was usually bound up with the great family Bible, and was too heavy and costly a book for common use in the churches. It was the custom, therefore, in the scarcity of singing books, for one of the deacons to read the Psalms a line at a time, and when the singers had finished that line, to read the next, and so on until the Psalm was concluded. There were no hymns in use and no favorite Psalms which the congrega- tion, becoming familiar with, could in time sing without the book. "They deemed it their solemn duty to sing all the Psalms in course, just as they read their Bibles through from Genesis to Revelation, and then began again; and it worried their consciences not a little that in the early editions, Sternehold and Hopkins had not rendered all of the one hundred and fifty Psalms into meter. Still, as several had more than one hundred lines, and one over seven hundred, " deaconing out of the Psalm," in this lack of books, was an evident necessity.
Let us now spend a Sabbath in the first meeting-house which stood on our village green, and, so far as may be, learn how our fathers worshiped within its walls. As all days are alike open to our choice, we select the year 1676 for our visit. You need not listen for the signal of the bell; you will have to wait 44 years for that sound; but the drum will be beaten at the time of divine service, and also an hour before.
Let us join the train of worshipers as they approach the sanctuary from all parts of the little village. They are, for the most part, on foot; but some from the outlying farms are on horseback - the good wife on a pillion be- hind the good man, with the youngest child in her arms, while the rest of the family - the sturdy sons and daughters - follow on foot, family intermingled with fam-
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ily, and much paired according to the law of a natural selec- tion older than Darwin. The meeting-house stands where the second and third house were afterward built. Doors open to the east and south, and very likely to the west. Within stands the lofty pulpit, directly beneath and in front of which is the deacons' seat, where the two deacons of the church - Deacon Stephen Hart and Deacon Thomas Judd - are already sitting. Above, running part way around the house, is a gallery, where the youth of both -sexes are divided off from the rest of the assembly, - a most ingenious device for setting their high animal spirits and inherent love of mischief at constant war with the solemn decorum demanded by the tithing-man. The rest of the people are seated according to the custom of Puri- tan churches soon afterward formulated on our records, with “ respect to age, office, and estate, so far as it tendeth to make a man respectable, and to everything else which hath the same tendency." Prominent we shall see the civil magistrate, in the person of his Honor John Wadsworth, Commissioner of the General Court, and next in rank that majestic personage, the captain of the train-band, whose office every boy looks forward to as the goal of his youth- ful ambition. Behind them sit the lesser dignitaries, the Lieutenant, the Sergeant, the Ensign, the Corporal. I must humbly beg their pardon if I have not set them down in the proper order, for you might as well address one of them without his exact title as to salute the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, by her family name, simply as Mrs. Guelph. It is well that you have entered among the first comers, for the house is filled to its utmost capacity. Every available nook and corner is made to yield a seat for some devout worshiper. Soon after this, to relieve somewhat the pressure, "the town
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FARMINGTON PAPERS
gave unto Ebenezer Steele, Joseph Judd, Thomas Lee, Nathaniel Lewis, and Samuel Judd, a liberty to build them a seat over the short girt at the easterly end of the gallery, on the condition that they do not damnify the other seats in the meeting house." This was but a temporary relief. There was no longer room for the youth in the gallery, and to let them sit with their parents in the Holy of Holies below was not to be thought of. It would interfere with the etiquette of precedence in the seating of the house, and no European court ever was more rigid in this than were the worshipers in the old Puritan meeting-house. Never- theless something must be done to accommodate the patri- archal families of our ancestors. The problem of how Noah stowed away all the animals in the ark, proposed by Dr. Johnson to little Miss Thrale as a pretty question in arithmetic, was as nothing compared to it. At length a compromise was effected by which some of the older and more sedate of the young women were admitted below, and " the town by vote gave liberty to Lieutenant Judd's two daughters, and the Widow Judd's two daughters, and the two eldest daughters of John Steele to erect or cause to be erected, a seat for their proper use at the south end of the meeting-house at the left hand as they go in at the door, provided it be not prejudicial to the passage and doors."
And now the guard of eight men with muskets at shoulder march in at the door, and stacking their arms within reach, take the seats assigned them on either side. Why this armed invasion of the house of God? Simply because the noble savage is on the warpath. News has just reached the town that Hezekiah Willet, brother of the pastor's wife, has been slain by the savages over at Swansea. Only a few months since Jobanna Smith of this
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town was killed at Hatfield, and Roger Orvis wounded. Nor have people forgotten the murder in their midst a few years before of a woman and her maid, and the burning of several houses. True, the murderer had been duly exe- cuted at Hartford in a manner too brutal to relate, and, if tradition be correct, his head had been set up on a pole, - an object-lesson for the instruction of the untutored savage. Just now they are unmindful of the lesson, and any moment King Philip and his warriors may fall upon the village. Now that the last roll of the drum has sounded, and all are in their places, with stately step and reverend demeanor the pastor, Samuel Hooker, walks up the aisle and ascends the lofty pulpit. He comes fresh from the honors of Harvard, where for his graduating thesis he has argued in the affirmative one of those subtle metaphysical questions so delightful to the early New England mind, " Whether an all-perfect being can be perfectly defined." More recently a fellow of that college, he declined a call by the church in Springfield, and was here installed as the successor of his brother-in-law, the Rev. Roger Newton.
The service begins with a prayer continuing about a quarter of an hour. The pastor then reads and expounds a chapter and announces the forenoon psalm. One of the deacons, or some devout man of sufficient musical gift, arises and reads, in a sonorous voice, the first line of the psalm -
"The man is blest that hath not bent,"
and, sounding the first note as near D as his skill admits, launches out bravely in the old choral. One by one the assembly join their voices until the line is finished, when the leader reads again the second line -
"To wicked reade his eare,"
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and the whole congregation having now caught the melody, join in the tune, only resting their voices for a mightier shout, while the deacon reads the third line -
"Nor led his life as sinners do;"
and so alternately reading and making the forest echo with their song, they conclude with -
" And eks the way of wicked men Shall quite be overthrown; "
and sitting down, with their souls, if not their voices, at- tuned to the praise of God, await the discourse of the beloved Hooker as he turns the hour-glass and announces his text. I cannot describe his sermon. Twice he preached the annual election sermon, and twice the General Court ordered it printed, but no copies are known to have ever existed. After a concluding prayer and a blessing the people retire for a little time to their homes to eat their frugal Sabbath meal and talk over the lessons of the day.
The afternoon service is like the morning, except, after the concluding prayer, all children born since the last Sabbath are presented for baptism, no matter what the weather, no one daring to incur, what seemed to them, the terrible responsibility of deferring this solemn rite. One of the deacons now arises and announces: " Brethren of the Congregation, now there is time left for contribu- tion, wherefore as God has prospered you, so freely offer." The magistrates first, and others in the order of their rank, now come forward and bring their offerings to the deacon at his seat. Then new members, if there are any, are admitted, a concluding psalm is sung, if time permits, and with a blessing the congregation is dismissed.
I have said that the first editions of the Bay Psalm Book were printed without the music. As a result the
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people sang by rote, forgot in time all but three or four of the tunes, and sang these in as many ways as there were singers. To remedy the evil the publishers of the Bay Psalm Book began about 1690 to add the notes of the only twelve tunes then in use, viz .: Litchfield, Canterbury, York, Windsor, Cambridge, the 100th Psalm Tune, and six others, the names of which have ceased to be familiar.
So little was known of musical notation that such direc- tions to the leader as these were printed:
· "First observe the place of your first note, and how many notes above and below that, so as you may begin the tune of your first note, as the rest may be sung in the compass of your and the people's voices, without Squeaking above or Grumbling below."
For six of the twelve tunes "a cheerful high pitch " is recommended for the first note. For the One Hundredth Psalm Tune " a note indifferent high," and a low note for the remainder; and these directions were as concise as would be understood.
By the year 1720 the singing in all the churches had become so desperately bad that ministers began to preach in earnest the need of reform. Cotton Mather published his " Accomplished Singer " in 1721 for the encourage- ment " of those who are learning to sing by Rule and seek- ing to preserve a Regular Singing in the Assemblies of the Faithful." The Rev. Thomas Walter of Roxbury the same year published a singing-book in the introduction to which he says, " At present we are confined to eight or ten tunes, and in some congregations to little more than half that number," and as for the ornamental notes introduced ac- cording to the individual taste of each singer, he says "much time is taken up in shaking out these turns and quavers; and besides, no two men in the congregation quaver alike or together, which sounds in the ear of a good judge
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