USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Hartford > Hartford's First Church > Part 7
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This sermon was published by the Church. The fol- lowing abstract summarizes its message and gives its spirit. It brings a contemporary testimony to Washington's great- ness.
"That we may on this occasion honor the supreme Sov- ereign of the world and duly estimate the public loss sus- tained, let us contemplate the providence of God in rais- ing up great and eminent men. Whenever God hath a great work to do in the world, he forms instruments fitted for the trust to be reposed in them, and at no other times,
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The Use of the Meeting Houses
so that we may consider their formation and introduction to the scenes of action, evidential of a Supreme Being.
"When a Moses and a Washington were brought on the stage of action, it was to effect changes in the state of mankind which could not have been done under the auspices of common characters. Much honor is due to them as in- struments of Almighty goodness but let the glory of fashion- ing them be given to God. The highest honor which we can give to mortals, is to say that the Author of life made them greater and more virtuous than other men, inspired them with talents above their brother men, and fitted them with a rare understanding. Moses was formed to rescue the ancient Israel from bondage. Washington was formed to rescue the modern Israel of the Lord.
"It cannot be expected of me particularly to recite the events that made him beloved of his country and owned as their preserver. It must suffice for me to say that General Washington was the point of strength around whom the political fathers and the military defenders of this country have rallied, and where they reposed their earthly con- fidence. In a period of almost thirty years Washington has been the name which would raise a martial spirit by the waving of his sword, or soothe the multitude to peace, quiet- ness and subordination, as his voice and pen advised. His opinions became the opinions of the public body. And every man was pleased with himself when he found he thought like Washington. Our Revolutionary War began suddenly, when the country was wholly disorganized. It was Gen- eral Washington who ordained system, induced regularity, was found capable of reducing a half armed multitude to military bravery and obedience. It since appears that while doing this in camp, his pen was the organ of wisdom and of a persevering firmness to the councils of the several states. The fame, even of historians, will be eternized in
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Hartford's First Church
relating how he, with the band of his brother officers vindi- cated the foundations of American Empire.
"He expressed a reverence for God and resorted to the throne of grace when danger threatened. He had a luminous understanding; a mind above the rustle of passion. Nothing was too small to call his attention if it regarded the public good. At the same time, he was naturally formed to look on great objects and survey in one comprehensive view, an empire in all its civil and military interests. American free- dom and independence was written on his heart. As his enlightened life drew to a close, he had a most deep sense that the people whom he had saved by his sword, could be preserved in future prosperity only by a firm adherence to the principles of their own government and the religion of their fathers."
So through the years the Meeting Houses have served the people of the Church and of the town and the city. In the life of the present its use is somewhat more closely limited to its purpose as a house of prayer, but it stands ready to serve the higher life of the community in the furthering of all earnest effort for the welfare of the people, and for the establishment of that Kingdom of God to which it is dedicated by the prayers and hopes of all those who have crossed its threshold.
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CHAPTER VI The Ecclesiastical Society
THE earliest records extant in the possession of the Church are those of the Ecclesiastical Society, which appears at first to have been a meeting of the men of the Church and its congregation for the transaction of its business when the Church became conscious of itself as distinct from the town. These records begin in November of 1684 and contain the transactions of the Society which were needful for the handling of the so-called temporal affairs of the Church. They continue in unbroken succession, rather meager in- deed, but clear and sufficient through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Society acted on all matters of business, and the corresponding Church records, which are by no means so complete, have to do with the spiritual af- fairs of the congregation, the ordering of the arrangements for the sacraments, for the admission of members and for their discipline. This parallel arrangement in this Church continued throughout its long history until 1903 and it does not appear that in the course of all that time any se- rious difficulty arose between the organization of the Church and that of the Society.
However, many churches were not so happy in their experience and had serious controversies arising out of di-
Hartford's First Church
vergent action. Moreover, there was a feeling that no sep- arate institution should own the property of a Church and that all members of the Church should have opportunity to act on matters concerning its temporal as well as its spiritual welfare. Accordingly the State made provision that a church might receive incorporation and so have the right to hold its own property. From time to time after this pro- vision was made by the Legislature, different churches in the State availed themselves of the privilege.
The matter was not seriously considered in The First Church of Christ in Hartford until 1903. With the begin- ning of that year a committee from the Prudential Com- mittee conferred with a committee of the Society and reached a unanimous decision to recommend both to the Society and to the Church that the Society transfer its property to the Church and that in due course the Society be dissolved, leaving the Church in possession of the prop- erty with responsibility for its administration. The way had been prepared for this action by the incorporation of the Church on February 12, 1895. This incorporation had not been made for the purpose of receiving the funds and property of the Society, but with a view to holding any be- quests that might develop to the Church itself.
On March 19, 1903, at a special meeting of the Church held in the Meeting House, formal transfer was made of the properties of the Society to the Church. The occasion was signalized by an address by Professor Williston Walker upon the Ecclesiastical Society, its history and significance in the church life of New England.
In preparation for this transfer of properties a careful study of the rules of the Church had been made and they had been adapted to the new situation which would obtain when the Church should hold title to property and be
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The Ecclesiastical Society
charged with its administration. The significant features of these rules, which were drawn by a competent committee, and which were made to conform carefully with the pro- visions of the Connecticut statutes concerning such matters, were the lodging of the title to the Church property in the hands of the Church as a corporation, the placing of re- sponsibility for the administration of such property in the hands of the Prudential Committee and the creation of a Business Committee of two members to act as agents of the Prudential Committee in carrying out these respon- sibilities. Subsequently the number on the Business Com- mittee was increased from two to three.
The First Ecclesiastical Society continued its corporate existence for a few years after the transfer of property was made. The final dissolution of the Society took place January 28, 1910, when it was deemed wise to take this step and to certify to the office of the Secretary of the State of Connecticut that such dissolution had taken place and that the First Church of Christ in Hartford had been defi- nitely designated as a corporation to receive and hold not only all the properties that had been transferred but also any properties that might in the future develop as proper- ties of the First Ecclesiastical Society.
It is interesting to note that at the time when the trans- fer of property was made there were registered ninety- nine members of the Society. Four or five of these were non-resident. With one or two exceptions all the remain- ing members were also members of the Church. It is prob- able that this fact rendered the Ecclesiastical Society more ready to take the step involved. In the years that have fol- lowed, the directness and simplicity of the single organiza- tion handling the Church and its property has greatly ap- pealed to all those who have had to do with these matters.
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The example of the Church has been widely quoted and its method of procedure has been frequently followed by other churches of Connecticut seeking to take the same step. While there are a considerable number of these which retain the double system of organization, it is being gen- erally conceded that the system of single control is pref- erable and increasingly churches are coming to recognize this.
Throughout its history from the beginning of its rec- ords in 1684 to their conclusion in 1903, The Ecclesiastical Society was much concerned with the seating of the congre- gation in the Meeting House and with the support of the Church. In the course of three hundred years these two have borne varying relations to each other which it may be interesting to sketch briefly.
The earliest records give little hint as to how the con- gregation was arranged when gathered for public worship. Presumably early in the story before the original Meeting House was replaced by the house of worship built in 1640, the congregation gathered and disposed themselves with no other arrangement than a division between the men and the women. When the Meeting House of 1640 had been built and the congregation had adjusted itself to its use, the difficulties of keeping the boys in order began to ap- pear and also the problem of arranging for regular places for members at all assemblies of public worship. Not long after the building of this Meeting House, the original divi- sion between men and women was abandoned and husbands and wives took their places together at the hour of wor- ship on each Lord's Day. The older boys exercised their gregarious instincts by grouping themselves in the rear pews or in the galleries and two problems were thus de- veloped.
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The Ecclesiastical Society
The first of these was the question of precedence in the seating of the adults. Attempts were made to solve this problem by the appointment from time to time of commit- tees which undertook to allocate pews to the different fam- ilies. In January, 1685, we find in the records, "It was voted by the Society that they desired Capt. John Allen to seat the people in our Meeting House according to his Judgment and Discretion, Bothe in ye lower Rooms and in ye Gallery." A similar vote occurs often throughout the records. Such seating comimttees had their difficulties as they were supposed to consider the age and general social standing of all members of the congregation and to arrange their positions in the Meeting House with this in mind. All through the earlier years of the Church life and indeed well through the eighteenth century this problem was re- current.
So far as the records show, it appears that the adults and the girls of the congregation were subject to these rules made by the seating committees but that the boys, either by consent or in rebellion, were accustomed to group themselves in the galleries or the back pews and often- times to disturb the seemly decorum of the public assem- blies. Accordingly officers were appointed to take note of the situation and to keep the boys in order. We find, for example, that in 1709-to select one of many-it was voted "that Henry Bracy shall take Care to keep the boys in order that sit up in the gallery in the Time of Divine Worship (and not to suffer them to Sit only in the South Side gallery), also James Ensign to take the Same Care of the boys that Sit below." No one seems to have proposed that the boys could be directed to take their places with their parents in the assigned pews and thus transfer the problem to the family for solution.
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Hartford's First Church
The seating arrangements of the congregation seem to have had no direct relation to the amounts raised by taxes or otherwise contributed for the support of the Church. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the sup- port was cared for by the "rates" or taxes levied for the Society by the authorization of the General Court or As- sembly. The Society was responsible for the collection of these "rates." The work of collection was difficult, appar- ently, even when enforced by civil authority, for the records show that often those appointed to this duty declined to serve, making it necessary to appoint others in their places. The town was divided into two districts, "on the north Side of the little Rivulet" and "on the south," for the task of collection.
For a time at the beginning of the eighteenth century it appears that the Minister was paid in provisions rather than in money, for we find a vote in 1710 that Mr. Timothy Woodbridge should be paid "in provision pay," and the next year, more definitely, "one hundred and four pounds, in Indian corn at three shillings, wheat at six shillings, Rice at three shillings and six per Bushell."
When the present Meeting House was built in 1807 a practice was adopted which presumably had become com- mon in other communities, of securing funds for the project by the sale of rights to the pews. These rights became deeds of possession when the house was built and the pews in the present Meeting House were actually owned by the people who subscribed the funds for its building. Now this was an effective way of securing funds for the initial project but manifestly it provided no revenue for the current work of the Church. Accordingly the Ecclesiastical Society made va- rious efforts to provide a scheme which would meet the needs of the organization each year. During the first years
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The Ecclesiastical Society
of the use of the present Meeting House funds were raised by a tax of one or two cents on the dollar "on the rateable estates of the inhabitants belonging to said Society," as had been the method from the beginning. We find, how- ever, in a review of the whole situation in the Society rec- ords that "about the year 1822 many members of this So- ciety had become dissatisfied with the private ownership of seats in the meeting house and with the practice of rais- ing money by taxation to defray current expenses." A spe- cial committee was therefore appointed to procure leases from the owners of pews to the Society, that the Society might annually rent the pews. Seventy-five per cent of the rental was to go to the pew owner and twenty-five per cent was to be used for parish expenses. This plan met with various vicissitudes and finally, after some years of debate, during which various proposals were made and found in- adequate, the Society in 1828 voted to borrow money and buy outright all the pews whose owners would sell. In the course of time all the deeds were transferred to the So- ciety and it became the actual owner of the property rights in the Meeting House.
The problem of support, however, was still to be met and under this new arrangement the Society undertook to assess the pews in proportion to their value. This came to be practically a system of rentals and the pews were an- nually offered to the congregation at the assessed valuation. Sometimes there was rivalry for the possession of the more desirable pews in the center of the Meeting House and in time the annual rental became an auction and members of the congregation made bids for the use of a pew which they particularly desired. The amount the pew would bring at this semi-public auction, over and above the sum fixed by the Society as the proper rental, was known as a pre-
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Hartford's First Church
mium. When the congregation was large such premiums added materially to the income for the year.
The spectacle of a public or semi-public auction for the disposal of the right to use pews in the Meeting House for the worship of God and for instruction in the Christian re- ligion became more and more distasteful to many in the con- gregation. In 1897 the practice of such annual sale was discontinued and arrangements for the rental of the pews were made by the committee of the Society with each pew holder individually. The rentals were determined on the basis of the needs of the Church for the current year, modi- fied by the possibility that all the pews might not be in demand. These rates carried over with them certain inequal- ities that had been developed through the years of the public sale. In the course of time these inequalities were adjusted by a careful study of the situation and a wide vari- ety of rentals was arranged so that the system became really a method of subscribing for the support of the Church and it was possible for any member of the congregation to find a sitting which would correspond to his desire and ability to contribute.
Meanwhile the membership had been called upon to provide funds for support in addition to the amounts avail- able from pew rentals, particularly through the "every member canvass" which was initiated for the year 1916.
During the year 1927 a careful study of the whole situ- ation resulted in a recommendation that the system of pew rentals be abolished, that the entire support of the Church be raised by voluntary contributions from all members of the congregation and that the pews in the Meeting House be opened freely to everyone on equal terms.
Thus after nearly three hundred years the Church re- turned to the arrangement that apparently obtained at the
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The Ecclesiastical Society
very beginning of its history when seats in the Meeting House were free and unassigned. The pew system had de- veloped certain values. It emphasized responsibility on the part of the members to the organization and it emphasized also the family as a unit in the congregation. The first of these values is being reasonably secured by the present day methods of preparation for the annual subscriptions through the "every member canvass." The second is being con- served for our modern time by the development of the Church School with its provision for adequate religious opportunity for children and youth, which it is to be hoped will lead to the right evaluation of the family in the life of the Church.
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CHAPTER VII
The Ancient Burying Ground and Center Church House
THE ancient cemetery or burying ground of Hartford was set apart by the action of the town as early as 1640 for the use of the primitive Colony. The size of it at the begin- ning was somewhat greater than that which we now rec- ognize by the title "The Ancient Burying Ground." It ex- tended on the east to the main highway which came to be known as Main Street, and probably somewhat farther to the north than the present limits.
Those of the colonists who died during the first four years following the migration of 1636 were buried near the first Meeting House on the square where now stand the Old State House and the Federal Building. These graves were few in number and the space available in that location was limited, so that the act of the town in setting apart the burial place on the west side of Main Street was quite natural as the community sought to prepare itself for the future.
This burying ground was the only cemetery until the setting apart of the old North Cemetery in 1807. Dr. Walker estimated that during the one hundred and seventy years probably as many as six thousand burials took place here. After the opening of the old North Cemetery upon
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The Ancient Burying Ground
The Ancient Burying Ground
Windsor Avenue-now Main Street-and the later open- ing of the old South Cemetery on Maple Avenue, the An- cient Burying Ground fell into disuse. There are no indi- cations of burials there later than about 1820. With the passage of the years, the thought of the community was naturally diverted from the old burying ground save as a place of memory and it would appear that for two or three generations following its disuse comparatively little thought was given to it. It remained in the possession of the city which had succeeded to the town government and was cared for inadequately by successive committees appointed in charge of public property. Encroachments were made upon the land with more or less definite permission of the city government. Building lots on Main Street were sold, pre- sumably by the city in the first instance, to private indi- viduals on condition that for a period of years no excava- tions should be made other than those necessary for the foundations of the buildings to be erected. In the course of time, these private owners of property somewhat ex- tended their holdings into the original burying ground prop- erty and the proscription against excavating was evidently forgotten or allowed to lapse.
It may be that the Church itself was an innocent cause of this attitude toward the burying ground. In 1726 when the second Meeting House of the Church in Hartford was thought to be no longer adequate, it was evidently in the mind of the congregation to provide its successor on some other location than Meeting House Square. As will have been noted in the progress of the story of the Church, there had been a sharp division among its members as to whether they should locate their new Meeting House on the east or the west side of the main street. The party in favor of the use of the west side prevailed upon the town to offer
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Hartford's First Church
to the Church the privilege of building its Meeting House on the southeast corner of the burying ground. So that it was by permission of the town that the first building was erected upon land that had been set aside for purposes of a burial place. Doubtless the community upheld the town committee in its decision to grant this permission for this particular purpose. But it may be that the town, having been generous to the Church in granting such permission, thought that it might well follow the precedent in part and grant the use of land along Main Street to private individ- uals for some compensation. In the course of time the prop- erty next north of the Meeting House, whereon a sizeable structure had been built, which was either originally de- signed for a school or later had been converted to that purpose, was bought by the Church and remains its prop- erty now known as the old Chapel Building. This process of encroachment upon the burying ground quite naturally continued in the nineteenth century when it was no longer used for its original purpose.
So matters continued until Dr. Walker, the historian of the Church, with his fine sense of what is valuable in the records and memorials of the past, called the attention of the community to its duty to this old God's acre, first by a sermon preached from the pulpit of the Church, and later by an address delivered before the Ruth Wyllys Chap- ter of the Daughters of the American Revolution on Jan- uary 24, 1895.
In 1890 an effort had been made to secure municipal action in acquiring a property on the north side of the narrow street known as Gold Street in order to give some restoration to the old burying ground, but it had failed of passage at a town meeting and most citizens had concluded
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The Ancient Burying Ground
that the effort to secure civic action was doomed to defeat.
The appeal of Dr. Walker, however, brought forth fruit. In 1896 the Ruth Wyllys Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution voted to undertake the task of improving the burying ground and of saving the stones in it which were falling into decay. Mrs. Emily Seymour Goodwin Holcombe was at the time the Regent of the Chapter. She appointed a committee for the purpose and presently found herself summoned by a sense of duty to undertake the leadership of the enterprise.
Her leadership was at once diligent, persistent and high- spirited. The Board of Common Council, convinced of the desirability of the proposals, took action establishing new lines for Gold Street. Subscriptions were secured from a large number of citizens and descendants of founders and early residents of the community. The Church itself made a generous contribution and on June 17, 1899 the com- pleted work was recognized with an appropriate public observance. Dr. Walker was present to witness this con- summation of a purpose so dear to his heart and Dr. Lam- son, then Pastor of the Church, offered prayer. Addresses were delivered by Professor Williston Walker, Mr. Arthur L. Shipman and the Honorable Henry C. Robinson. The observance was a fitting crown to a piece of civic work for which both the city and the Church will ever be profoundly grateful.
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