USA > Connecticut > Litchfield County > Cornwall > Historical records of the town of Cornwall, Litchfield County, Connecticut; > Part 8
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On meeting him in his house, he seized the hand of his minister with much emotion, while tears rolled down on his wrinkled cheeks, and said to him : "I have hated to see your face, but O, how glad I am now to see you !" sobs and crying checked further speaking. He then stated that he had been some time before made to think that he had become a very old man, and must soon die ;- that he was an old and great sinner against God, who had borne with him in his sins with astonishing patience, and these impressions filled him with great horror. He said, that as long as possible he had endeavored to conceal his distress of mind, there-
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fore he went often into the woods alone to think on his wretched condition. He felt so guilty that he did not dare to offer one petition to God for mercy. At length, a few days since, he, when in the woods, was so entirely overwhelmed with distress, that he thought his heart would break. Then he was compelled to cry out for the mercy of God. Soon he was led to reflect on the long- suffering goodness and patience of God toward him, and to other sinners. It seemed to him most wonderful. Also, at the same time, he saw God in every object around him, and as he expressed himself : "God was in all the rocks and trees." Having stated these facts, he added that he loved to think of God, but if he looked on himself, he was distressed. As yet, the old man did not seem to have any peace in believing in the pardon of his sins through Christ. But from instructions, accompanied with the influence of God's good Spirit, he very soon enjoyed great peace and even joy,-as Christ, no doubt, was formed in him the hope of glory. Now he greatly loved christians, and was much en- deared in his feelings to his pastor, whom, a few months before, he so much hated.
After a trial of the continuance of his faith, which was accom- panied with a corresponding deportment, he was, from his earnest request, received into the visible church. He was, indeed, a won- der to all who had before known old Mr. Samuel Abbott.
During the remainder of life, there was nothing in his conduct that could justify any doubts of the sincerity of his faith and pro- fessions. His mental powers had been decaying for some time, when he died in peace in July, 1816.
The deacons of the north church were, Beriah Hotchkiss, Heze- kiah Clark, and David Clark, two brothers, Jesse Hyatt, Eliakim Mallory, Titus Hart, Noah Rogers, 2d, Nathan Hart, and James Wadsworth. The two last mentioned are at present officiating.
Invidious comparisons among characters of worth are to be wisely avoided. But without reflecting at all on the worthiness of the deacons of North Cornwall, all of whom have been not a little respected by their christian friends, Deacon Hyatt and Deacon Titus Hart deserve more than ordinary notice.
The former was eminently amiable and meek, and few chris- tians have lived and died with fewer enemies than Deacon Hyatt. Until the latter part of his life, he did not believe that infants should be baptized ; but before his death he was convinced of that duty; yet he was never a close communionist, but with the utmost
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cordiality was ever glad to receive everyone that loved the essen- tial doctrines of the cross. He removed to Georgetown, Che- nango County, N. Y. There his light shone with mild and amiable lustre, until in good time he was summoned to the church triumphant.
Deacon Titus Hart was truly a good man, an Israelite indeed, and ever firm and steadfast in duty; possessing the qualifications which Paul required of the office of deacon.
For thirty-six years from the election of Judah Kellogg, Esq., until 1812, no deacon was chosen by the South Church. Capt. Seth Pierce and Col. Benjamin Gold acted in some sort as dea- cons; they waited on the church at the communion table, but did not formally accept the office of deacons.
The church was three times larger than it was six years before, and these three deacons were chosen July 9, 1812 : Josiah Hop- kins, Sen., Benjamin Gold, and Abel Carter. Deacon Hopkins possessed a sound judgment, but he was slow in speech, having no eloquence, and his education had been no more than ordinary. He could not plead a cause before an earthly court to any advan- tage; but his eloquence in the court of Heaven, with which he maintained an invincible intercourse by prayer, was mighty. Very few disciples of Christ imitated their Master more than Deacon Hopkins. His pastor ever regarded his secret prayers in the closet, and in the retirement of the woods, one of the most im- portant means of bringing down the rich effusions of the Divine Spirit, with which South Cornwall was favored.
In 1819 he resigned his office, and Deacon Jedidiah Calhoun, in December, was elected.
In Nov. 1824, Deacon Hopkins peacefully exchanged earth for heaven.
Deacon Gold, after a long, active, and useful life, having been much employed in public business, died, May, 1847, with great calmness and peace, relying on his Saviour.
The people of South Cornwall, and of the north society, also, were generally interested in the promotion of an institution called "The Moral Society," which had excited not a little attention in New England. Between 1812 and 1816, many meetings were held in this State, and in various places, also very extensively throughout the country, to promote this cause. Probably it pro- moted morality and good order. But previous to this voluntary organization, the temperance cause had secured a large share of
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notice, and soon superseded "The Moral Society." The authority of this town, at its annual meeting on the first Monday of June, 1814, was respectfully solicited by the minister of South Cornwall to favor the moral society; and all the gentlemen of that meeting signed their names to the moral society. For a time, this society flourished.
The standing in which baptized children are to be regarded in their relation to the church in which their parents are members, had been seriously attended to by the church here in the ministry of Mr. Weston. His successor often brought to view this highly important subject in the pulpit. It weighed very heavily on his mind. The greal neglect of pædobaptist churches to their baptized children, seemed to him an aggravated sin, and their amazing inconsistencies of conduct, as one great cause of many sincere christians renouncing infant baptism. The subject having been once and again pressed on the church, a meeting, in March 6th, 1814, was held, in which thirty-four brethren gave their assent and signatures to a system of discipline of baptized children. This is on the records of the church; and in a future period, this church, (which no doubt will, with her sister churches, become obedient to God's institutions and laws, much more than any now are,) will duly regard the important duty the church owes to her baptized children.
All members present at that meeting gave their consent; a few brethren were absent; and some felt uninterested in the subject, but no one opposed it. Such had been the harmony of the church on every subject, excepting in regard to the ecclesiastical fund, that the pastor indulged considerable hope of seeing baptized children more faithfully trained up "in the way that they should go," and "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." The sub- ject was brought, not long after, to the consociation to be consid- ered. They generally approved of a system somewhat similar, and suggested it to the consideration of the churches. But nothing was effected.
Not long after this act of the churches of South Cornwall, the plan of union of the two churches and societies engrossed all the attention of the people of the town for many months in the year 1815, and directly after, in 1816, the Foreign Mission School was instituted in Cornwall Valley. These things tended directly to turn off the mind from the duties devolving on believing parents and the church in respect to their baptized children.
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The North church and society demands now our attention.
The church of Mr. Hawes and his society were favored with a good share of the revival of religion enjoyed in 1806 and 1807, and also in 1811 and 1812, that commenced in South Cornwall. There was a harmonious feeling between Mr. Hawes and his flock. But the people felt a considerable burden in supporting him. Without any unpleasant feelings toward each other, in July, 1813, at an extra meeting of the consociation at Ellsworth, which was convened to hear an appeal of an excommunicated member from the Ellsworth church, Mr. Hawes and his people were amicably disunited. In the ensuing winter, efforts were made by some of the neighboring ministers to induce the people of the north society to recall Mr. Hawes, but without any success. He was, in a year, settled at North Lyme, in this State, where, for more than eight years, he was beloved by his flock. He eventually removed to the the State of New York.
His people hired preaching; two very respectable candidates were employed for a season in the two years after Mr. Hawes' dismission, viz .: Rev. Francis L. Robbins, settled at Enfield, and Rev. Mr. Hawley, who settled at Hinsdale, Mass. In the year 1815, serious efforts were made to unite the societies and churches, it being intended that the minister of the South society should take the charge of them both, they forming one society and church. The north parish and the church were apparently unani- mous, and a large proportion of the south concurred; but three very respectable members of the South church, Capt. Seth Pierce, Col. Benjamin Gold, and Samuel Hopkins, Esq., opposed through fear of the removal of the meeting house, and the consequent loss of the ecclesiastical fund. For a short season, there was a very fair prospect of success. Had the minister of the South society been active in promoting this design, and had he not thrown some obstacles in the way, probably a compromise of the two parties would have been effected. No one was more urgent than Gen. Sedgwick, who was a member of the South church, and a sincere friend of the pastor; he was desirous to hasten on the union by an immediate application to the State legislature, to pass an act of uniting the two ecclesiastical societies into one. Had this been done without any specific arrangement, as for who should be the minister, the pastor of the South church would have been without a society, and the society without a minister. But this obstacle having been stated in a letter sent to the members of the joint
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committee of the two societies, broke up the project. A large proportion of the North church and society were, it is believed, no way insincere in their professed desire that the minister of the South society should be the pastor. Some living in the south of the town were willing to have the fund destroyed, and to run the risk of losing the meeting house in Cornwall Valley. Cornwall is not favorably located for one society. Not only its length from north to south is about double its breadth, but, also, the mountains and valleys are so located that a convenient center cannot be found to accommodate. the inhabitants in assembling in one place for public worship. Experience has clearly proved that it is highly expedient for this town to have two distinct societies, and nearly two thousand people demand two ministers.
When this plan of union was agitated, Mr. Grove Brownell, of Vermont, a graduate at Burlington College, Vermont, who afterward was the minister of Woodbury, (north society,) Conn., and more recently of Sharon, was employed as a preacher in North Corn- wall. He continued there for some months in the winter of 1816, and his ministry was much blessed with a special revival of reli- gion. Quite a considerable number were eventually united to the north church.
A revival also was then enjoyed in the south society, but it was somewhat subsequent to that of the north. A considerable addi- tion was made at that time to the south church. From this period all serious thoughts of union of the societies was given up.
The revival of religion in North Cornwall, through the instru- mentality of the Rev. Mr. Brownell, was not only highly auspi- cious in promoting piety, but also, it animated the hopes of the friends of the ecclesiastical society, and excited their efforts to support and elevate it. Occasionally their pulpit was supplied, but until June, 1819, no pastor was obtained. At that time, the Rev. Walter Smith, a native of Kent, who graduated at Yale col- lege, 1816, and had studied theology under the guidance of the Rev. Dr. Perrine, of New York, was installed by the consociation as pastor; the society had engaged his support for five years at a salary of $500. At his ordination, the Rev. Asa Blair, of Kent, the pastor of Mr. Smith, preached the ordination sermon, and the minister of South Cornwall was appointed to give the right hand of fellowship, as he was fourteen years before at the installment of Mr. Hawes.
During a few years previous, after the plan of union of 1815,
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the two churches and societies had not been so perfectly harmoni- ous toward each other, as they had been before. A military union, occasioned by a new arrangement of the militia companies, produced unpleasant consequences; and as it ought not to have been, soured the feelings of several professed christians of the respective churches. This, though very unpleasant, was only temporary.
The two ministers were not at all drawn aside from each other in their cordiality as brothers in the ministry. Mr. Smith's minis- try in North Cornwall was not limited, as it was first proposed, to . five years, but he continued in his office until 1838. For the nine- teen years of his pastoral duties, Mr. Smith was an able and useful minister, being a respectable scholar no less than a faithful pastor. He was the means, under God, of enlarging his church not a little; as he received, during his ministry, a hundred members or more. Repeatedly his ministry was blessed with hopeful conversions. Not improbably he would have continued longer with his people, had he not been deranged in mind, produced by ill health. He was constitutionally, and in a measure hereditarily, prone to men- tal derangement; and he was four times placed in the Hartford retreat for the insane, and by medical aid was restored. In the summer of 1838 he was dismissed. In the spring of 1840 he removed to Vernon, in Ohio, and while occasionally he preached, he became an instructor, and eventually a merchant with his eldest son. Previous to his dismission the enterprise of North Cornwall erected a very commodious and handsome house for divine wor- ship, now standing toward a mile north of the former house that was demolished.
The south church and society now demand attention.
After the project of the union of the two societies was in 1815 given up, the people of the south were much involved in debt, by the neglect and inattention of those who had the charge of their financial concerns. By this means many of the people were dis- satisfied. There was such an unpleasant set of feelings as threat- ened almost the dissolution of the ecclesiastical society. There were many that had greatly desired a union with the other society; and they earnestly wished the ecclesiastical fund to be destroyed. Therefore there were jarring opinions and feelings among those who were members of the church. Hence religion did not prosper.
Notwithstanding the considerable revival enjoyed in the winter of 1816, when the same blessing was granted, and to a greater
11
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extent, to North Cornwall, spirituality in religion was now much diminished in this church. The prospect was indeed gloomy. About that time, the pastor, with the concurrence of the church, instituted meetings to be held once in two weeks in different parts of the society, to consist of members of the church and of baptized children. The places of the meetings were so allotted as to accom- modate in their rotation all the various church members and their families. One great object was to lead baptized children to consider their peculiar relation to God to whom they had been dedicated, also to impress on believing parents their solemn obligations to train up their dedicated children in "the nurture and admonition of the Lord." This plan was prosecuted for a considerable time; and several of those meetings were deeply interesting. Such should have been the conduct of this church long before; and every pedo- Baptist church, to be consistent with their views of infant bap- tism, ought ever to regard their dedicated children in a very dif- ferent manner from what any church has ever done. Let this subject be treated as God, and the conscience of a well-informed believer in Christ, and in infant baptism dictate, and infinite and most glorious consequences would unquestionably follow. God would then turn the hearts of parents to their children, and chil- dren to their parents, in a way that has never yet been seen. In the blessed and approaching period, when all shall know the Lord, something like such meetings will be regarded universally by all the churches of the Lord Jesus. Then the baptism of infants will be viewed as something infinitely more important than a mere ceremony, and to give a name to a child, and which, according to the solemn working of almost all christian churches holding to infant baptism, very significantly is called christening. Such a term is very appropriate when baptism is regarded as the same as that regeneration which is requisite to reach heaven.
In the autumn of 1816, an event interesting to the people and church of South Cornwall, excited their feelings and greatly ab- sorbed their attention. The foreign mission school was by the American Board of Foreign Missions located in Cornwall Valley. This place was chosen because of its retirement, the salubrity of air, and the moral character of the people, and especially of the youth; many of them, more than almost in any other society, were professors of religion. The youth of the society were then un- usually sober and promising, and many of them were, more than in most other places, informed in books, and had a respect-
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able library of their own, most of which books were chosen by their pastor.
Few of this village were at first pleased with the proposal of this establishment among them. The committee appointed by the American Board of Foreign Missions came to propose to the people this seminary when the minister was abroad, and they received very little encouragement from the inhabitants of the village.
But on the return of the minister, and on his giving informa- tion of the design, and of its high importance, the people of the vicinity altered their opinion concerning it, and several were very liberal in their donations to it.
Henry Obookiah, with Thomas Hoppoe, his countryman, who a few years before came from Hawaii, were instructed in New Eng- land, and were patronized by the ministers and religious people of Litchfield County, especially those of the north consociation of the congregational churches. A few other Sandwich Islanders, with some other pagan youth, were collected at the school of James Morris, Esq., of Litchfield, South Farms, in 1816. But the decision of the American Board of Foreign Missions, from the report of their committee, at their meeting at Dr. Dwights', at New Haven, in October of that year, placed the institution at Cornwall Valley. Rev. Mr. Harvey, of Goshen, who was the most active in promoting this design, was appointed the principal of the school. But the great unwillingness of the people of Mr. Harvey to lose their pastor decided the consociation not to allow his dismission.
The Rev. Herman Daggett, who then was engaged for a year as teacher of a respectable academy at New Canaan, in Conn., and had been both a pastor on Long Island, and a distinguished in- structor of youth, was by Rev. Mr. Beecher, then at Litchfield, recommended and immediately appointed to take the charge of the infant institution of Cornwall Valley. But the instruction of it was committed to Rev. Edwin Dwight, who came with the for- eign youth to this place from South Farms in May, 1817. The school flourished under his care. The death of Obookiah, in Feb- ruary 18, 1818, and the narrative of him, written by Mr. Dwight, excited very uncommon interest in the minds of all friends to the foreign missionary cause throughout our country. This school had a celebrity beyond all expectation. The vale of Cornwall became known in almost all the world by this singular, interesting, and highly prosperous seminary.
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In May, 1818, Mr. Daggett came here, and with very uncommon prudence, piety, and wisdom from above, guided and instructed for six years between eighty and one hundred youth of various foreign and pagan nations. There were here more languages spoken than are specified in the account of the various tongues at the day of pentecost at Jerusalem, which we read in the 2d of Acts.
The blessings of God's spirit were very unusually sent down once and again on this school. Many of Mr. Daggett's scholars were baptized and received in the church of South Cornwall. And most of these conducted consistently with their holy profes- sion.
It was regarded as an honor, and no small benefit to our church, that a man of Mr. Daggett's intelligence, wisdom, and uncommon piety, was received as a member. His opinion and judgment were highly estimated, and indeed in one instance, in a case of very difficult and unhappy controversy and discipline, it was believed by the pastor, too much confidence was placed in that wise and good man's guidance, which led the church to an error of judg- ment.
Still the example and advice of this good man was a great blessing, and had his practical illustration of vital piety been much more regarded and imitated, the church of South Cornwall would have been immensely more benefited. This school was almost continually more or less visited by the divine Spirit,-at times it resembled a green oasis amidst a sandy desert .*
In 1822 and until 1824-5, the Foreign Mission school in Corn- wall Valley was highly prosperous, and was of great celebrity among all friends to the cause of protestant missions. In the winter of 1823-4 the marriage between John Ridge, a Cherokee youth, who had been a pupil of Mr. Daggett, and had gone home, and had now returned to Cornwall, and Sarah Northup, a daughter of Mr. John Northup, steward of the mission school, produced much agitation in South Cornwall; an agitation which
* We omit an account occupying eight closely written pages, of a difficulty between two church members, names not given, in which one sued the other in the courts, resulting in the excommunication of one of them from the church. Fourteen meetings of the church and one council of ministers were held on the case. Mr. Stone closes his account of the affair thus : "But the church has never enjoyed as much internal peace, united with so much spiritual vigor since that period as before."
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would not have been, had all the people been more wise, and if both the friends of the connection and the opposers of it had possessed more discretion. Many things are lawful which are far from being expedient. Had such who wished this connection to take place, known more of human nature, and the prejudices of society in which they lived they would not have involved them- selves and others in such evils as actually took place. This event greatly embarrassed the mission school, and led to great evil in the church and society. Especially, the repetition of a similar connection between Elias Boudinot, a most promising and pious · Cherokee youth who had been a pupil of Mr. Daggett, with Har- riet W. Gold, a young lady of no small excellence, and of one of the most respectable families in the county of Litchfield had a fatal influence in the community of South Cornwall. Enemies to the missionary cause, and who had ever disliked the Cornwall school, exulted in these things as they well presumed that they would exceedingly injure the school.
The impartial and well-informed friends of this missionary institution, who were personally acquainted with the operations of these concerns, being eye-witnesses, were much grieved, and involved in great embarassments. The interests of the church in South Cornwall were hurt extremely, as unpleasant feelings were cherished toward the respectable family connected with this last Indian marriage, it being believed that there was not that sincerity maintained, which ought to have been, in so long conceal- ing from public view the intended design.
A large proportion of the young females of the vicinity of the F. M. School, were worthy members of the church, and most favorably disposed to the missionary institution. Their fair char- acters were grossly calumniated by enemies to the seminary. All our youth were excited to a spirit of indignation and tempted to some acts of impropriety.
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