USA > Connecticut > New London County > New London > History of New London, Connecticut, From the First Survey of the Coast in 1612 to 1852 > Part 57
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1 He removed to Saybrook, where he died in 1837. He spent one year, (1828,) after his removal, with his former flock at New London. Elder West was born in Hopkinton, R. I., and brought up in the Seventh-Day principles. The small brick house in Union Street, near the Baptist church, was his dwelling-house in New Lon- don
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HISTORY OF NEW LONDON.
In the year 1840, Rev. C. C. Williams, the officiating pastor of the church, and a considerable number of the members, withdrew and organized the second Baptist church and society in New London. This society erected a house of worship in Union Street, on another part of the same ledge of rock upon which the other is founded,1 which was dedicated Dec. 16th, 1840, and the church recognized by a council convened for the occasion, the same month. The with- drawal of this colony was in the first instance displeasing to the main body of the old church, and they excluded Elder Williams and six of the chief supporters of the enterprise, from their fellowship ; but in 1842, a reconciliation of the two churches was effected by the media- tion of Elder John Peck.
The second church has had four pastors ; the present one is Rev. Edwin R. Warren. In 1850, the number of members was four hun- dred and eight.
A third Baptist church was constituted March 14th, 1849, by a division of one hundred and eighty-five members from the first church. This society purchased the brick church in Huntington Street, built six years previous by the Universalist society, for $12,000, and dedi- cated it as their house of worship, March 29th, 1849. Sermon by Rev. J. S. Swan, who was the chief mover in the enterprise, founder and pastor of the church. In 1850, the number of members was three hundred and eleven.
Universalists. A Universalist society was formed in New Lon- don in the year 1835, and occasional services held, but no church was erected or regular ministry established, till 1843, when an edifice of brick was erected on Huntington Street, and dedicated March 20th, 1844. Rev. T. J. Greenwood was its pastor for four years. In 1849, it was sold by the trustees, in order to liquidate the debts of the society, and was purchased by the Third Baptist Church. In August, of the same year, the Universalist society purchased the former Epis- copal church on Main Street, for $3,500. As this was thoroughly
1 During the year 1850, when the city authorities were lowering Union Street, the Second Baptist Society had the rock in front of their church cut down, and an excava- tion made beneath the building, where a neat and commodious lecture-room has been finished. In accomplishing this, about two thousand loads of solid stone were re- moved.
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HISTORY OF NEW LONDON.
repaired and improved in 1835, it is still a valuable and commodious edifice.
Rev. James W. Dennis is their second and present pastor.
Roman Catholics. A small Roman Catholic chapel was built on Jay Street, in 1842, and dedicated May 13th, 1850, by Rev. Dr. Fitzpatrick, of Boston.
NOTE .- It has been mentioned in the foregoing chapter, that the remains of Bishop Seabury had been removed from the burial-ground to the vault of St. James' Church The tablet which covered his grave still remains. The epi- taph, which has been much admired for its classic purity and neatness of ex- pression, is attributed to Jolin Bowden, D. D., Professor in Columbia College. It is as follows :
Here lieth the Body of SAMUEL SEABURY, D. D., Bishop of Connecticut and Rhode Island, Who departed from this transitory scene Feb. 25th, 1796, in the 68th year of his age. Ingenious without pride, learned without pedantry, Good without severity, he was duly qualified To discharge the duties of the Christian and the Bishop. In the pulpit he enforced religion, In his conduct he exemplified it. The poor he assisted with his charity, The ignorant he blessed with his instruction. The friend of man, he ever desired their good, The enemy of vice, he ever opposed it. Christian ! dost thou aspire to happiness, Seabury has shown the way that leads to it.
CHAPTER XXXV.
Ecclesiastical notices of Groton .- Villages of Groton .-- Ledyard made a town. Pine Swamp .-- Pequot reservation .-- Remains of the tribe .-- Montville made a town .- Succession of ministers .-- Churches struck by lightning .-- Bap- tist churches .- Decline of Congregationalism .-- The Huckleberry meeting- house .-- Miner meeting-house .-- Waterford made a town .- Niantic Bay .-- The Darrow church .- Jordan church .-- Seventh-day church .- East Lyme made a town .-- Niantic Bar or Nahant .- The old synagogue .- Black Point.
IN this chapter, the ancient town will be resumed, in order to give a brief sketch of the recent history of those offsets which are now independent towns.
GROTON.
Rev. Aaron Kinney was ordained over the south Congregational church in Groton, as successor to Mr. Barber, Oct. 19th, 1769. He was a native of Lisbon, Ct., and graduated at Yale College, in 1765. The circumstances of his family were such as to render an ample in- come necessary, while his actual receipts were scanty. The total inadequacy of his salary to his support, led to his dismission, Nov. 5th, 1798, at which time his family consisted of an invalid wife and eleven children under seventeen years of age. His subsequent life was filled with wanderings, trials and removals ; he died in Ohio, in 1824, aged seventy-nine.1
After the departure of Mr. Kinney, both the north and south Con- gregational societies were left without a minister, and the sacred edi- fices in both places falling into decay, that forlorn aspect was pre- sented which called forth the animadversions of Dr. Dwight, who in his travels written at that period, censures the inhabitants of Groton
1 Allen's Biographical Dictionary,
51
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HISTORY OF NEW LONDON.
for their indifference to religion, and their negligence in the support of public worship.
North Groton remained without a ministry and the ordinances of religion, from 1772 to 1810. When at length the spirit of other and better days revived, the old church could not be found-not a mem- ber remained. A reorganization was effected Dec. 12th, 1810, with five new members, one male and four females. Perhaps no smaller number was ever regularly embodied into a church.1 This society, uniting with the first or south society, called the Rev. Timothy Tut- tle to the joint charge of both parishes. He was ordained in the south church, August 14th, 1811.
Mr. Tuttle continued pastor of the associated churches for twenty- three years ; occupying alternately houses of worship five miles apart. In 1834, his relation to the south society was dissolved, and he be- came the exclusive pastor of the northern parish, now Ledyard. The old meeting-house in this parish, after keeping its station through the storms of one hundred and sixteen years-a period which in our young country seems like a great antiquity-has given place to a neat and commodious edifice, which was dedicated Dec. 6th, 1843. " Beautiful for situation," on the central height of the town, this little church stands with its spire " a pencil in the sky," pointing toward . heaven, and its bell wafting solemn sounds among the everlasting hills.
The south church, after the harmonious separation from the north, remained destitute of a settled minister five years. Rev. Jared R. Avery, a native of Groton and graduate of Williams College, was installed October 9th, 1839; dismissed at his own request in April, 1851. Rev. George H. Woodward was installed the same year.
The ancient Baptist church of Groton, have relinquished their former sacred habitation on Wightman Hill, and removed to a new house of worship at the Head of Mystic. Four other Baptist churches have been established within the bounds of Groton; two of them at Noank and Groton Bank, in 1843. The house of worship on Gro- ton Bank was dedicated June 4th, 1845. The present pastor is Rev. N. T. Allen.
1 " We had not, like our Puritan fathers, seven pillars to begin with. We had but one main pillar, and even that one, before another could be joined with it, was removed by the hand of death." (Sermon of Rev. T. Tuttle at the dedication of the new meet- ing-house, 1843.)
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HISTORY OF NEW LONDON.
A Methodist society was established at the village of Galetown, soon after the commencement of the present century, which owed much to the fostering care of Rev. Ralph Hurlbut, a native of the place, and a local preacher of the Methodist connection. The num- ber of members in 1851, was seventy-six. There is also a church of this denomination at Mystic Bridge, of about one hundred members.
Groton Bank, opposite New London, is noted for its beautiful and conspicuous situation. Owing to the regular and rapid slope of the ground, the whole village, and almost every building in it, can be seen at one view.
Mystic River, the eastern boundary of Groton, is remarkable for its villages, and the villages for the enterprise of their inhabitants. At Lower Mystic and Noank, houses are perched upon cliffs, and in the hollows and crevices of naked rock ; streets seem to run perpen- dicularly, and the churches sit like eagles upon the tops of the rocks. The choicest gardens and the richest farms of this energetic people are at sea. They are the founders of Key West, and the skillful navigators of Floridian reefs. Their enterprising seamen double Cape Horn in fishing-smacks, and are at home on all oceans and in all latitudes.
John Ledyard, the noted traveler ; Col. William Ledyard, of Fort Griswold ; Rev. Samuel Seabury, Bishop of Connecticut and Rhode Island, and Silas Dean, envoy to France during the Revolutionary War, were natives of Groton.
LEDYARD.
In 1836, the northern part of Groton, comprising a tract about six miles square, was incorporated as a separate town, by the name of Ledyard. In this township there is but one village, that of Gale- town, or Gale's Ferry, situated on the Thames, seven miles north of New London, and containing about twenty houses. It received its name from a former proprietor, who established a ferry at the place, and during the Revolutionary War had a ship-yard on the point, where vessels were built to cruise against the British.
Ledyard is in general a hilly, wood-land township, with many ledges of rock and steep declivities, that no attempt has been made to cul- tivate. But the farmers are a race of true-hearted men; their houses and barns large and comfortable : their corn-fields, their pastures, and their herds spreading orderly over the hills, speak of intelligence, prosperity and independence.
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HISTORY OF NEW LONDON.
The ancient mast or pine swamp, belonging equally to the towns of New London and Groton, was in Ledyard. It was divided in 1787, by a line running due north "from Kennedy's great spring to Williams' Island," and botli parts soon afterward sold to individuals. A large portion of it has since been reclaimed and cultivated, and there is nothing left to recall the dark and dismal ideas that were connected with the Ohomowauk or Owl's Nest of the Indians. The vicinity is known as a favored locality of the rose-bay laurel, rhodo- dendron maximum, and people resort thither in the early part of July, to admire this beautiful shrub and gather its flowers. In for- mer years many of these laurel clumps could be found, with the cen- tral plants twenty feet in height, and when these were crowned with large clusters of rose-colored blossoms, the dense and miry swamp was transformed into a magnificent flower-garden.
Mashantucket, the last retreat of the Pequot Indians, is in Led- yard. The reservation consists of about 900 acres, and is for the most part, a region of craggy, well-forested hills, with valleys so deep as to give rise to the popular exaggeration that in winter the day is but an hour long, from sunrise to sunset. That portion of the res- ervation which has been cleared, is leased to white tenants. Only sixteen of the tribe, in 1850, were regarded as regular Pequots, that is, inheriting by the mother, which is the Indian law of succession, and on that side of full blood. These sixteen belong to five families ; eight more, (the George family,) are of mixed origin ; two families of the Stonington tribe are residents on the land, making in all seven families, and about thirty persons.1
In 1766, the whole number of the tribe was 164, of whom only thirty were men. Of the forty-six females over sixteen years of age, thirteen were widows. Several of these had undoubtedly been be- reaved by the French War, in which a number of the tribe had served as soldiers.
The most striking fact connected with this remnant of the red race is, that they do not advance. They are just what they were two cen- turies ago. The Pequot of the present day is just the Pequot that Winthrop found at Nameaug; he has perhaps taken a step down- ward, but none upward, except in the case of a few individuals who have become thorough Christians. The last full-blooded Pequot of
1 Most of this information respecting the present state of the tribe was gathered on the spot, and principally from Col. William Morgan, the present overseer of the In- dians.
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HISTORY OF NEW LONDON.
this tribe, pure both by father and mother, was Frederick Toby, who died in 1848.
In North Stonington only three families are left, comprising from fifteen to twenty persons, on a reservation of 240 acres, which is leased out to white tenants. Several families from these two reser- vations have at different times removed to the west, and settled among other Indian tribes. In 1850, certain Indians dwelling in Wisconsin, and bearing the surnames of Charles, George, Poquonup and Ske- sooch, applied to the Connecticut legislature for a share of the rental of the Groton lands ; but they were not able to prove the purity of their descent.
MONTVILLE.
In 1786, those portions of New London that had been known as the North Parish and Chesterfield district, were incorporated into a separate town, called Montville, a name descriptive of its elevated and retired situation. The first town meeting in this new organiza- tion was held in November, 1786.
Joshua Raymond, Moderator. John Raymond, Jr., Town- Clerk. Selectmen.
Nathaniel Comstock, Stephen Billings,
Asa Worthington, Joseph Davis,
Peter Comstock.
Rev. David Jewett, second minister of the North Parish, died in 1783, aged sixty-six, after a ministry of forty-five years' duration. The admissions to the church during that time were 136 whites, and twenty-one Mohegan Indians. A considerable breach occurred in his church between 1742 and 1750; from eighteen to twenty mem- bers withdrew, and ultimately united with the Baptist denomination. Isaac Hammond and wife were the first to secede, and were called Congregational Separates ; but their son Noah afterward became a Baptist preacher.
Rev. Rozel Cook, previously minister in Watertown, Litchfield county, succeeded Mr. Jewett, and was ordained June 30th, 1784. In 1789, a fund was raised by subscription for the support of the minister, and the system of taxation, which had become odious and burdensome, was abandoned. The sum raised and funded was £1,067; the subscription list comprises ninety-one names, which was probably
51*
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HISTORY OF NEW LONDON.
the full number of families belonging to the congregation. Mr. Cook died April 18th, 1798, in the forty-second year of his age.
Rev. Amos G. Thompson was installed September 26th, 1799. He had previously belonged to the Methodist Episcopal denomina- tion, and had been ordained elder by Bishop Asbury, at Leesburg, Virginia, in 1790. Withdrawing from that connection in 1798, he offered himself as a candidate for the Congregational ministry, and was examined and approved by the association of Windham county, Connecticut, which accepted his ordination as valid. His ministry in Montville was short; he died October 23d, 1801, in the thirty-eighth year of his age.
Rev. Abishai Alden, installed August 17th, 1803; dismissed in 1826.
Rev. Rodolphus Landfear, installed August 21st, 1827; dismissed in 1832.
Since this period the society has settled no minister, but has been served by pastors engaged by the year, or for a series of years.
The first meeting-house built for Mr. Hillhouse, was taken down in 1770, and a second, which we may call the Jewett meeting-house, erected in a more central position, on land given by Joshua Raymond, and vested in the society by deed of April 23d, 1772. This building stood just seventy-five years. It was much shattered by a thunder- bolt that descended and struck the house, during the afternoon service, Sunday, May 25th, 1823. By this awful stroke two persons were killed, Mrs. Betsey Bradford, and a child of Capt. John R. Comstock, aged nine years; the former perhaps by a blow from the shivered tim- bers, but the latter by the lightning. Several others were wounded and stunned. The bolt struck the steeple, and entered the house at the pew where the persons killed were sitting, shivered the post to splinters, and entirely demolished the pew. The side of the house was riven, and windows broken in all parts of the building.
Several churches in this vicinity have at various times suffered by lightning. The Congregational church in Lyme town was consumed by fire, kindled by a thunderbolt, July 3d, 1815. The calamity which befell the old meeting-house in New London, that stood on the town square, has been noticed. Its successor, on Zion's Hill, has been twice struck within the memory of the present generation. May 2d, 1804, the bolt descended upon the spire, partly melted the vane, tore off the points of the conductor, and passed off by the elec- tric rod, tearing up the ground with a tremendous force, in two direc- tions. July 13th, 1825, the fluid descended along the rod to the
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HISTORY OF NEW LONDON.
lower floor, then entered and passed off at the doors and one window, which were much shattered. It struck at the same time the corner post of a house in the neighborhood, passing over an intermediate building, (Masonic Hall.) May 27th, 1850, the Universalist (for- merly Episcopal) church, in Main Street, was struck by lightning, and considerably injured. The lightning passed off by the stove-pipe, or the house would probably have been burnt. These are but a few illustrations of the danger to which high buildings are exposed from the electric element. We may add that the flag-staffs of Forts Gris- wold and Trumbull, have both been shivered by lightning ; the latter on the 31st of July, 1821 ; and that the court-house has also suffered in the same way.1
The Montville church was taken down in 1847, and a new one built on the same site. Under the old church, lying flat upon its face, was found the gravestone of a young maiden of the name of Bliss, who died in 1747, just one century before. No record or tra- dition could give any account of it. It was replaced in the same position, and left under the new church.
A small society of Separates was gathered in the North Parish, in 1750, and Joshua Morse ordained their elder, May 17th. They kept together about thirty years; but Elder Morse removing in 1799, to Sandisfield, Mass., the society became extinct. They were Baptists but it is understood that they held to open communion. From the seed sown by Elder Morse, the Palmer Baptist church of Montville is supposed to have sprung. This latter church began with twelve per- sons, in 1787. Elder Reuben Palmer was the founder, leader, and in fact, the sole pastor of this society, as after his death in 1822, they never chose a successor. It gradually declined, and was soon con- sidered extinct, though not formally dissolved by its own vote till 1842.
The fragment that remained of the Palmer church was merged in a new one gathered in 1842, under the name of the Union Baptist Church of Montville. A house of worship about a mile distant from the Palmer church, was dedicated October 4th, 1842. Elder Levi Meach was instrumental in the formation of this church and was its
1 Several of these disasters were undoubtedly owing to imperfections in the lightning rods, or want of skill in setting them. Where the buildings stood on a substratum of rock, care was not always taken to lead the conductor to a sufficient stock of earth and moisture. In the case of the court-house, it is said that the lower end of the rod was actually fixed in a hole bored in solid rock.
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HISTORY OF NEW LONDON.
first pastor. Nicholas T. Allen, now of Groton Bank, was ordained in this church August 12th, 1846.
The Methodists have two societies within the bounds of Montville, one at Uncasville, with sixty-five members, and one near Salem, with seventy-nine members.1
In a large part of the ancient North Parish of New London, Bap- tist and Methodist societies have taken the place of Congregational- ism, which in the early age of the town was the sole denomination. This is also the case in that part of the old town which is now Water- ford. An aged inhabitant of the latter place, whose memory reached back to 1750, and whose residence was upward of four miles from the New London church, said that in his younger days he had fre- quently walked into town to meeting, with forty persons who came from beyond him. These were the early settlers of Chesterfield dis- trict, and consisted in great part of Latimers, a tall and robust race, to whom a walk of eight miles was but an agreeable recreation. As they passed along, the number was continually increasing by streams that flowed in from either side, till as they came down by the old pound corner to the meeting-house green, they seemed a congregation of themselves.
In those days the ride-and-tie system prevailed to some extent. It was no uncommon thing for a farmer who had a good family horse, to take his wife behind him and ride about half the distance to meet- ing ; then dismount and walk the remainder of the way, leaving the horse fastened to some bar-post, for the use of a neighbor and his wife, who were privileged to share the accommodation, and were on the road behind.
To attend Sabbath worship at such a distance was a heavy bur- den, and in some cases too grievous to be borne. Most of the Ches- terfield people afterward went to Mr. Jewett's church, but this also was a weary distance ; and in 1758, the following persons were re- leased from the obligation of attending meeting and paying rates in the North Parish, " in consideration that they heard preaching else- where:" Capt. Jonathan Latimer, Samuel Bishop, Sen. and Jun., Richard Chapel, Walter Chappell, and James Johnston.
Soon after this the Chesterfield people made an attempt to found a Congregational church in their own neighborhood. It can not now be determined when the society was constituted ; it took the desig- nation of " The Ecclesiastical Presbyterian establishment of Chester-
1 Minutes of Conference, 1851.
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HISTORY OF NEW LONDON.
field Society." Land for the site of a meeting-house, and for a burial-ground adjoining, was given to the society by Jonathan Lati- mer, in 1773, at which time it is probable that the meeting-house was built and opened for service. Jesse Beckwith was one of the chief promoters of the undertaking.
Who were the pastors of this church, how long it held together, when embodied or when dissolved, or, in point of fact, whether any church was ever regularly constituted by the society, are points in- volved in obscurity.
The meeting-house stood on Latimer Hill, overlooking the fair Chesterfield valley, but in the midst of fields so rugged and primitive in their aspect, and so hedged around with tree, bush and briar, that it acquired the name by which it is now only remembered, the old Huckleberry meeting-house. In the latter years of its existence, the services held in it were principally by Baptists. It was occupied on the whole, for occasional meetings, sometimes by preachers and some- times by lay-brethren, for nearly fifty years. The house of worship has entirely disappeared, but the graveyard where the members of the congregation, the Beckwiths, Bishops, Chapells, Deshons, Holmes's, Latimers, Moores, Tinkers, repose in their silent chambers, points out its situation.
About the year 1825, another attempt was made to found a Con- gregational church in Chesterfield district. A new house of worship was built, and a church constituted, of which the Rev. Nathaniel Miner was ordained pastor, in 1826. Its members were few and widely scattered; at the end of five years it was completely over- shadowed and consumed by a Baptist church that rose and flourished by its side. Mr. Miner removed to Millington society, East Haddam, in 1831, and the church became extinct. The sacred edifice still re- mains, unglazed, black and ruinous, a melancholy witness, and the only one remaining, to testify that a church was once gathered on the spot.
WATERFORD.
In the year 1801, New London was restricted to such narrow di- mensions, as to render her, in point of domain, the smallest town in the state. All north and west of the city limits, comprising more than two-thirds of the whole area, was, by act of the Legislature at the May session, constituted a distinct town by the name of Water- ford. The petition upon which the act was grounded, was presented
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