USA > Connecticut > Litchfield County > Cornwall > Historical records of the town of Cornwall, Litchfield County, Connecticut; > Part 34
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The deacons at present are Edwin Dwight Benedict, Frank Stone Baldwin, Charles Cyrus Marsh, Royal Keith Southwick.
SERMON PREACHED AT NORTH CORNWALL AU- GUST 18, 1895, BY THE PASTOR, REV. JOHN PIERPONT.
Deut., 4: 32. "For ask now of the days that are past.""
In Ecclesiastes we are told that God seeketh again that which is passed away. He must find it in the present, which should show the effect of all the influences of the past.
A man or a church having a good record is expected to live up to it, and ought to do so. Hence the necessity of an occasional backward look, that we may understand the demands our record makes upon us.
The Rev. Chas. N. Fitch, then pastor of this church, preached a memorial sermon in this house on the ninth day of July, 1876, reviewing the history of the church up to that date. Making that date our starting point I would ask you to look with me through the past nineteen years, that we may derive what help we can for the proper performance of our part in the living present. As we all know the church is the Lord's Body, but it is made up of men and women who are controlled by the spirit of our Lord. The history of a church must be for the most part a history of the in- dividuals in it, and it involves an estimate of their characters as well
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HISTORY OF CORNWALL.
as the story of the results produced in the world by their lives. At this point I would acknowledge my indebtedness to the late Russell Rogers Pratt, a former deacon of this church, and for many years superintendent of the Sunday-school in West Corn- wall, who has prepared a record of the church and Sunday-school down to April 1, 1893, which will prove a mine of information to all future historians of the church. Deacon Pratt delighted in historical research, and during the last years of his life his time and thought were absorbed in preserving for future use a record of those events in which he had been so greatly interested. We look back today at the church as it was in the midst of the pastorate of Mr. Fitch. If you will permit a few words as to this pastor and his talented wife, I imagine that some of the people felt almost as if a pair of butterflies had come to settle among them when . this young couple came here to do the Lord's work. The pastor was an elegant gentleman of some means, very nice in all matters relating to his personal appearance, his hands unused to toil, and yet he proved to be just the man to be summoned from the parsonage at midnight to aid in quieting a drunkard's ravings, or to vigorously pursue a thief who had made off with some of his property under cover of the darkness, and get the stolen goods. Of Mrs. Fitch I have been told that when she entered Oberlin one of the gravest among the seniors was assigned as her room-mate, lest her gayety and liveliness should prove too much for that sober institution. No birds ever enjoyed building a nest more than' these young people enjoyed fitting up a home upon this hilltop. At the time Mr. Fitch preached his memorial sermon the church had just passed through a most gracious revival, and though he had been here less than three years the additions to the church by letter and con- fession already numbered sixty-nine, which number was increased to one hundred and five before he went away in October, 1881. Mr. Fitch was a man whom no amount of labor could discourage if he thought that the performance of it would aid in the Master's work. Hence, with the approval of the church, he began in April, 1879, to preach twice a month in Cornwall Hollow, and kept it up a little more than a year, when he found that the tax on his strength was too great. So vigorous was the spiritual life of this church during this pastorate that other churches were quickened by it. In January, 1877, during the week of prayer,
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HISTORY OF THE SECOND CHURCH.
union services were held with the First Church of Cornwall, and as a result of those meetings some fifteen united with that church. There is recorded in our church records a vote of thanks passed by ยท the First Church for the manifestation of Christian love on the part of this church and her pastor, all of which goes to show that the utmost cordiality existed between the churches, and that the pastor of this church could work well with others.
Doubtless the greatest work of Mr. Fitch while here was aiding in the preparation of so many living temples for the in- dwelling of the Spirit of God, but from a more materialistic point of view, the chapel in West Cornwall may be regarded as his best monument here.
The corner-stone was laid August 9, 1877, and it was dedi- cated free from debt January 3, 1878. From that time on the religious work of the village has had a home, and yet, so far as I can judge, the two parts of the parish have not been widely sun- dered in sympathy by this division of forces. Any tendency in this direction must ever be resisted.
When Mr. Fitch went away in October, 1881, to begin pas- toral work in Norwalk, Ohio, he took with him the affectionate regard of this people, and their loving interest has followed him to every field in which he has since been engaged, and the work of the Congregational S. S. and Pub. Society appeals more strongly to this church because at date, 1893, he is missionary under that society in Colorado .*
The present pastor, John Pierpont, preached to this people for the first time June 10, 1888, was ordained July 26th, and has had the pleasure of welcoming to the church thirty-five in all, though the church has had no general revival. In his history Mr. Fitch remarks upon the revival habit of the church. There are at present many indications that a harvest is about to be gathered, and the voices of the past urge us all to be faithful in seeing to it that none of the precious sheaves be lost.
* Mr. Pierpont here gave in detail statistics of the church from the retirement of Mr. Fitch, October, 188r, with account of stated supplies, including the short pastorate of Rev. Wm. H. McDougal, from Septem- ber 11, 1884, for less than two years. The most important work of Mr. McDougal was the formation, January 20, 1886, of a Society of Christian Endeavor, the first to be founded in this part of the state. - ED.
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HISTORY OF CORNWALL.
The benevolences of the church for the eighteen years during which the record is given amount to some $5,300, an average of almost $300 per year, while during that time a $4,000 chapel has been built and paid for with the help of Mr. C. P. Huntington and other friends, and in addition more than $2,000 has been spent on repairs. The church has ever maintained a lively interest in matters of social and political reform, an interest which I be- lieve does not grow less with passing years.
On Fast Day, in 1879, Mr. Fitch preached on bribery at elections from the text, "Ye have sold yourselves for naught." Doubtless it was partly owing to that sermon that the fall elec- tion was one of the cleanest known for years. In the matter of plain speaking on the temperance question this pulpit has a record and seeks to live up to it. All the time this church has been eminently conservative in loving what was old and seeking to preserve it, while at the same time it was willing to try anything new that had proved its value. In May, 1878, the question came up as to the value of that form of union among our churches which was called a consociation, it being held by many that it had out- lived its usefulness. This consociation was a kind of standing council for the ordination or dismission of ministers, except that it had more authority over the churches than our councils. This church is on record as having voted with the minority for its re- tention.
To most people a church means those connected with it, or those who have been connected with it. Those still with us speak to us by living examples of consistent Christian living, and those who have passed on speak to us through what they accomplished and by what they were. Some of them I never knew, but feel sure I can detect the influence of their lives upon us for good today.
Among those who have passed away since I came to this church as pastor the figure of Deacon Ezra Dwight Pratt is perhaps most prominent. Deacon of this church for some thirty-five years he had magnified his office. A man of deep spirituality, his visit to a home left a benediction there. His prayers were such as to draw all who heard them nearer to their God. He was a link connecting us with the type of piety the fathers exemplified, yet he was in full sympathy with the church life of today that makes so much of the young. Personally I feel greatly indebted to this
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HISTORY OF THE SECOND CHURCH.
man, crowned with silvered hair, who so sustained by his counsel and his prayers the young and inexperienced pastor. Mrs. Dwight Pratt, called home about a year before her husband, was one who in the days of her strength gladly welcomed to her home any ministers who chanced to visit the parish, that they might enjoy her hospitality. Born in the same town as John Brown (Torrington), and under the same influences, her native strength of character and education gave her great power in the family and the church.
Another veteran in the Master's service was Mrs. Sabra Smith Baldwin, who at the time of her death had been a member of this church for sixty-eight years. A sister of Rev. Walter Smith, so long pastor of this church, she occupied a unique position, and identified herself with every form of good work open to her. Chastened by sorrow, her character ripened and mellowed by pass- ing years, she seemed like one who, called to be a saint, had responded to the call. Such lives are the best support of any church. The names of Mrs. Anson Rogers, Mrs. Noah Rogers, Mrs. Harvey Baldwin, Mrs. Horace Hart, Mrs. Wm. C. Hart, Mrs. Isaac Marsh, Mrs. Chas. W. Hall, Mrs. John Wood, Mrs. Dwight Rogers, Mrs. D. F. Smith, and Mrs. John Hall occur to me as belonging to those whose faces we no longer see. You called them by the more endearing titles of mother, wife, daughter, friend, and I need not assure you that they are more than names to me. One embodied for me a living interest in the life and work of the church ; another stands in my thought for devotion to the family; a third represents sympathy for the needy and practical helpfulness. Each that I have known stands for some grace of the Christian character. We miss them on an occasion like this, and vainly ask ourselves, Who will take their places? We console ourselves with the thought that our Heavenly Father has but one family on earth and in heaven.
As it is the custom of this church to record the names of any of her sons or daughters who have given themselves to religious work, I would note the fact that Dwight Leete Rogers, after a two-years course at the Training School for Christian Workers at Springfield, Mass., is successfully performing the duties of a Y. M. C. A. secretary at Northampton, Mass. Surely this brief review gives us abundant occasion to thank God for His past goodness, and leads us to hope that since He has so blessed us in the past, as a
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HISTORY OF CORNWALL.
church, He still has favors to bestow, so that we need not doubt concerning that future yet to be.
LETTER FROM REV. CHAS. N. FITCH.
So. KAUKAUNA, WIS., 2-3-02.
THEO. S. GOLD, EsQ. My dear Mr. Gold:
I was very glad to get your letter, and to hear from your family, and that you are to bring records of Cornwall to date, and that it pleases you to regard me and Mrs. Fitch as a part of Cornwall's history. I have served churches as follows: North and West Cornwall, eight years; Norwalk, O., one year; Wauseon, O., two years; Spencerport, N. Y., five years, nearly; superintendent of Sunday-school work for Cong. S. S. and Pub. Soc., eight years; pastor of Milbank Church, S. D., four years ; and now pastor South Kaukauna, Wis., with no interval between but one of two months in twenty-eight years.
Mrs. Fitch has been president of Woman's Foreign Branch in Col- orado and South Dakota, and had to retire to rest at Oberlin, to regain her health. She is doing well, and with very fair prospect of again soon returning to the church work and helping me.
Newton is a civil engineer, building new roads in Texas and Mis- souri on a good salary. James Monroe is in Washington, D. C., pro- moted from one position to another until his salary is $100 per month, and spends part of the day in editorial work in the beautiful Congres- sional Library. He studies some law in the evenings at law school. His appointment came through friends, but promotion by hard work.
Very truly yours, CHAS. N. FITCH.
LETTER FROM REV. JOHN PIERPONT.
WILLIAMSBURG, MASS., Jan. 28, 1902.
My dear Mr. Gold:
Your letter came this morning, and I thank you for permitting me to furnish a few items for your forthcoming book. I was sorry to hear of the Howe's misfortune. I remember taking the family to ride once along the road where they lived, and we ate our lunch near their house, getting water from a spring. Rev. Sam. Scoville used to call on them occasionally, when he came to Cornwall. I am glad the tie of neighborliness can be stretched over hills and on to remote places in Cornwall .*
Coming to Cornwall as a candidate for the pastorate of the Second Church in June, 1888, I was ordained and installed July 26th of that year, and during the summer and early fall I lived at North Cornwall, boarding with Henry Rogers. Nov. 8th I was married to Mary L. Bas- sett of New Haven, and we boarded at two or three places in West Cornwall till the summer of '89, when we began housekeeping. John Edwards Pierpont was born there Aug. 21, 1889, and Mildred Pierpont Oct. 2, 1892, and there we continued to live till June, 1897, when we removed to Massachusetts, that I might assume the pastorate of the Congregational Church of Williamsburg. Here, July 18, 1897, Sarah Pierpont was born.
During my stay of nine years in Cornwall it became my sad duty to have a part in the funerals of many men and women prominent in the work of the church or in the affairs of the town. While the in-
: The sad accidents in this family have appealed to friends and neigh- bors, whose hearts and hands have ministered to their necessities.
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HISTORY OF THE BAPTIST CHURCH.
fluence of many of these lives on in the church, the present pastor must greatly miss the help and inspiration of their living presence.
Very sincerely and gratefully yours,
JOHN PIERPONT.
Mr. Pierpont was dismissed at his own request, to take charge of church at Williamsburg, Mass., June 28, 1897. He was suc- ceeded by Rev. Will Chester Ferris of Waupun, Wis .; ord. May 19, 1898; dismissed at his own request to church at Great Falls, Montana Sept. 3, 1901.
All of these pastors were much esteemed and beloved, and their labors and memory will always be cherished in this parish.
Rev. Carl Stackman of Amherst, Mass., ord. July 24, 1902. According to terms of settlement a parsonage was to be provided, and one was purchased near the chapel in West Cornwall to suit the convenience of the pastor.
During the fall and winter of '91-2 the church at North Corn- wall was reshingled and repaired, and a wood furnace took the place of the wood stoves, much to the comfort of the audience.
EAST CORNWALL (COLLEGE ST.) BAPTIST CHURCH.
Condensed from historical address at memorial service of the Col- lege St. Church, E. Cornwall, by W'm. G. Fennell, D.D.
This church was constituted in the town of Warren Nov. 15, 1787, under the name of the Warren Baptist Church. There were many Baptists among the early settlers of Warren, and, hitherto worshiping with the Congregationalists, they desired to form a church of their own denomination, and on the 29th of October, 1787, they sent a request to the convention met at Miry Brook, Danbury, to be constituted as a church. Accordingly they ap- pointed Nov. 15, 1787, for that purpose. Elder Waldo preached a sermon suitable to the occasion from Proverbs xxiv, 3-4: " Through wisdom is an house builded, and by understanding it is established, and by knowledge shall the chambers be filled with all precious and pleasant riches."
A church was there formed of twenty-two members. For wor- ship they met at private houses. Truman Beeman was appointed clerk and Asahel Wedge deacon.
In 1788 they called Isaac Root, a licentiate, from Danbury, and he was ordained September 25th.
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HISTORY OF CORNWALL.
In 1790 this church reported eighty members, scattered in the towns of Warren, Cornwall, Washington, Goshen, Kent, and Sharon.
Salary of Elder Root, twenty pounds.
Later there was dissatisfaction with the minister, and Jan. 28, 1793, by vote, members living in Sharon were constituted a church by themselves, and all who wished of the members outside were at liberty to join that church. Eighteen members, including Elder Root, the pastor, were dismissed for that purpose.
As the Warren church was now destitute of a pastor, for twenty-four years meetings were irregular, and little record was kept.
Ananias Diettrick became pastor in 1817 -'till his death in 1828.
The place of meeting was changed from Warren to E. Corn- wall; service in schoolhouse.
Other pastors recorded : Silas Ambler, Daniel Baldwin, Thomas Benedict.
From 1847-50 the church almost ceased work. Then the name was changed to the College St. Baptist Church of Cornwall, and in 1850 successful efforts were made to build a church at E. Cornwall - dedicated June 19, 1851 - and Luther B. Hart was ordained pastor, Andrew B. Holmes and Beecher Perkins deacons, Hiram G. Dean clerk, which office he held for twenty- nine years. Mr. Hart resigned in 1853.
The following served as pastors to present time: Revs. E. F. Jones, Richard Thompson, Jackson Ganun, Thomas Benedict, C. W. Potter, J. Fairmore, D. F. Chapman, Edwin D. Bowers, H. G. Smith, Walter B. Vassar, E. B. Elmer, '84-'95, S. J. Smith, C. Malley.
The present officers are Richard F. Thompson and Frank A. Whitcomb, deacons, and Ralph Tibbals, clerk.
This church has had to struggle with those difficult material conditions which now afflict so many of our rural churches: a scattered population in a large territory away from business centers; but Mr. Fennell's record shows the power of faith and righteousness to sustain a people even in such discouraging cir- cumstances.
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INDIANS.
Indians.
I remember two families of Indians in Cornwall. They were of the Scatacook tribe.
Jerry Coxell, or Cogswell, was a cooper. Had several children, among them Nathan, who has left a more permanent mark of his skill upon the farms of Cornwall than any other man. His stone walls attest his exact eye and honest work. Wm. H. Cogswell was a son of Nathan: a noble soldier ; a true hero. En- listed as private, Co. I, 5th Reg., June 22, '61 ; 2d Lieut., Co. B, Heavy Artillery. Died of wounds Oct. 7, '64. Col. Wessells said : " He was one of ten thousand as a soldier." Rufus Bunker was another, and Bunker Hill on the Goshen turnpike was named after him, for there he had a comfortable house and farm of fifty acres in good cultivation. As laboring men, they were always in demand. The children of these families had the same ad- vantages of education in the common schools as other children. They were highly respected, temperate, and honest, and some were church members.
Once when caught in a storm as a boy I did not hesitate to borrow an overcoat of a young Bunker, and the mother, Roxa, al- ways remembered me kindly for doing so; and this feeling was reciprocated. She never brought her baskets for sale but that I was a liberal purchaser.
Other Scatacooks from Kent have been in my employ, and I have never found more trusty and reliable workers. They were pleasant companions, and I learned much from them about farm work and common things.
I offer no apology for giving here this valuable paper of Dr. Andrews, for every bit of Indian history should be studied and treasured.
EXTRACTS FROM DR. WM. C. ANDREWS' PAPER, "THE MORAVIANS AT SCATACOOK."
In 1740 Moravian missionaries made their appearance at an Indian village in Dutchess Co. about twenty miles from Kent, and
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HISTORY OF CORNWALL.
soon won the hearts and began to transform the lives of the inhabi- tants, who were vicious and degraded. In January, 1743, they came to Scatacook to establish a mission by invitation of the Sachem Mauwehu.
Scatacook was not then a part of Kent, which was originally bounded on the west by the Housatonic. First missionary was John Martin Mack, a German; he was soon joined by Joseph Shaw, an English schoolmaster. February 13th Mauwehu was baptized by the name of Gideon, and with him his son Job, who was given the name of Joshua. There were also five or six others. These had been for some time under Moravian influence through their visits to Dutchess Co.
The secret of the Moravians lay in their making the brother- hood of man so intensely real by their own conduct, that the greater reality on which that rests, the Fatherhood of God, was learned easily ; they ate and slept in Indian wigwams, they wore, and Mack himself, probably, the Indian blanket, leggins, and moccasins. Their teaching was of the simplest sort, for it was love, the divine love shown when God became Man and died for men. >
The missionaries unfortunately and unconsciously appeared here as intruders, as the Connecticut Assembly had the year before placed the Indians of the Housatonic Valley under the care of the neighboring ministers and had employed teachers for their children. The minister in charge of the Scatacooks was Rev. Daniel Board- man of New Milford, an excellent man but unable to enter into their life, as Mack did. The Scatacooks were not satisfied with the school and gave their new friend an inaccurate account of the situation.
The Indians had also been visited by the zealous and self- sacrificing evangelist David Brainerd, who preached at Scatacook in 1742, and again when on his way to a mission of his own farther north in April, 1743. His preaching dealt more with God's wrath than with His love, and the Indians clung only the more closely to their gentle Moravian teachers. But, while the latter could not fully approve of Brainerd, they honored him and ascribed the first religious impressions of most of their converts to his teaching. Some indiscretion on the part of the revivalists led to harsh legislation in 1742, which was used against the mission- aries. The Moravians were believed by both promoters and op-
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MORAVIANS.
posers of the revival to hold " false and dangerous doctrines "; they were also suspected of being in the pay of the French (then on the verge of war with England), and of visiting the Indians with the purpose of teaching them to tomahawk the whites.
In May, 1743, the missionaries were forcibly expelled, and their work for the time was at an end. This was owing to an act passed against the Moravians and another act annexing the territory west of the river to Kent, thus bringing the mission and school within the operation of the laws already passed against the revivalists. The Moravian headquarters were at Bethlehem, Pa .; the Indians maintained some intercourse with them, and a portion of the latter removed to Bethlehem for a time. A blind woman eighty years old, after a year's importunity, persuaded her relations to drag her there in a hand-cart (the journey took three weeks) that she might " be baptized and go to God "; she obtained all she desired, for she died a few hours after the baptism.
It must have been clear to the people of Kent that the Indians had been injured morally and religiously by the banishment of the missionaries, but they still distrusted the soundness of their faith.
The war with France ended in 1748, and in 1749, largely through the efforts of Count Zinzendorf, the British Parliament passed an act which secured the Moravian brethren and their missions from further molestation by the authorities. In 1749 a missionary, Abraham Buehninger, was sent to Scatacook, or, as the Moravians called it, Pachgatgoch, and for twenty-one years there was a missionary there. Bishop Spangenberg, then at the head of the Moravian church in America, visited Scatacook in 1752. He was a faithful and wise man, and looked into their temporal affairs and advised them to buy better horses. He also gave a great im- pulse to their religious life, and a chapel with clapboards instead of bark was soon built. Another missionary was David Zeisberger, worthy to be remembered with Eliot and Brainerd as an " Apostle to the Indians." He labored among them for sixty-two years, and founded thirteen Christian villages. I ought also to mention Christian Frederick Post, who married a Scatacook girl.
Probably suspicion and dislike lingered in the breasts of the white people of Kent for a few years after the mission was re- established, but the thoroughly Christian work of the brethren
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gradually overcame every feeling of that sort. Whatever may have been thought of Moravian doctrines elsewhere, the Christians of Kent evidently found no heresy in them. John Martin Mack returned to Kent in 1760, and spent there what he describes as " twenty very happy and blessed months." The commonwealth tried to do what was best for its wards by external authority ; the Moravians supplied the inward impulse, which disposed the Indians to accept the position in which they were placed and to co-operate with the colony in its endeavor to elevate them.
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