History of New London county, Connecticut : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 135

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton)
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Philadelphia : J.W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1317


USA > Connecticut > New London County > History of New London county, Connecticut : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men > Part 135


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In 1754 one Barnabas Tuthill offered to give a bell to the society if the people would build a steeple for it to hang in. A steeple was accordingly built, and the first bell began to summon the people to meeting, in lieu of the horn or trumpet, which, tradition says, they had been accustomed to hear.


This bell rang in the independence of the colonies in Lyme, and in default of any record as to its final disposition, I suggest the probability that it was given, with others throughout the colonies, to make cannon for the Revolution, for in the year 1780 the society voted " to procure a bell for the steeple," thus signifying that the old one had been disposed of in some way. I do not offer it as a historical fact, but make the suggestion that the old bell was melted up for war purposes.


This same year, 1780, the third meeting-house caught fire in the roof from the tow wad of the old- fashioned flint-lock musket which one of the guar- dians of the house used to shoot some woodpeckers that were boring holes in it. The fire was extin- guished by the light-horsemen stationed in the town, or, as tradition says, by the Hessians, who clambered on the roof like squirrels. The society voted twenty pounds on this occasion "to such persons as danger- ously exerted themselves to extinguish the late fire."


In the year 1815, after standing seventy-six years, this house was struck by lightning and burned to the ground, very little of the material being saved.


The present meeting-house, the fourth built by this society, was erected in 1817, near the south end of the main street, a model of architectural beauty in those days, a beautiful and graceful building for any age.


The corner-stone was laid in 1816, with imposing ceremonies, a copper plate being deposited in it, in- scribed as follows :


" Old meeting-house burnt by lightning, July 3, A.D. 1815. This corner-stone laid with religious ceremonies by the Rev. Lathrop Rockwell, Pastor, June 10th, A.D. 1816. Sam. Belcher, Architect. Eben Smith, Master mason."


The names of the building committee were in- scribed on the other side of the plate. The house


was seated at first with the old-fashioned square pews at the sides, and "slips" in the centre.


The first pulpit was a high, circular one, reached by a flight of steps from either side. Those who re- member it describe it as a beautiful and costly ma- hogany pulpit, and lament its destruction. In 1836 it was first lowered. In 1850 it was removed alto- gether, and a high platform was built, and the present pulpit set upon it. At the same time the square pews were removed, and the modern ones substituted in their stead.


The church was at first surrounded by a picket- fence, which was repaired from time to time, but was finally removed.


In one corner of the churchyard stood that old relic of primitive times, the whipping-post, the indispen- sable ornament of every New England village. But all traces of it have long since vanished, and the present generation has fortunately only the memory of it, not the fact.


The stocks were erected on the opposite side of the main street, but the memory of the oldest inhabitant serves only to recall their use as a plaything for the boys.


The present church has stood sixty-one years, and is now in an excellent state of preservation.


These grand old elms that so beautify and adorn the churchyard were planted in the year 1828, when the society appointed a committee "to procure orna- mental trees to set about the meeting-house."


If we have to thank the fathers for anything, we surely have to for this beneficent act. He who plants a tree scarcely realizes the bounty of his deed : future generations will rise up and call him blessed.


The aggregate number of years that this town has had a meeting-house for the worship of God is two hundred and eight, although the society is but one hundred and eighty-three years old.


In its one hundred and eighty-three years of life the society lias had eight pastors, and in reviewing the record the observer is struck by the conviction that it has been wonderfully blessed in the selection.


First is the veteran founder of the society, Moses Noyes, a faithful minister to Lyme for twenty-seven years of the infant life of the settlement, and after- wards pastor of the church for twenty-eight years.


The best blood of England was the best blood of America, well illustrated in the case of Moses Noyes, who was the son of James Noye, of Wiltshire, who was the son of William Noye, of Salisbury, who was attorney-general of England from about 1608 till after 1620, whose wife was sister of the Rev. Robert Parker, "one of the greatest scholars of the English nation."


James Noye came to New England because, as Cotton Mather says, "he could not comply with the ceremonies of the Church of England." He had two sons, James and Moses. James, the elder, was mod- erator of the Saybrook Synod of 1708, and Moses,


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himself a member of the Synod, was, according to Dr. Bacon, " a man of great and extensive learning, an excellent Christian, and a judicious divine."


He was followed by Samuel Pierpont in 1722, a young man of great promise, son of Rev. James Pier- pont, of New Haven, a member of the Saybrook Synod, the one who it is said, drafted the articles of its platform, who also laid the foundations of a "col- legiate school" which afterwards grew into Yale Col- lege. " His beautiful and gifted daughter Sarah," as Dr. Bacon says, "a great-granddaughter of Thomas Hooker, was like a ministering angel to her husband (the great President Edwards), that wonderful preacher and theologian, whose name is to this day the most illustrious in the history of New England, but who could never have fulfilled his destiny withont her."


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Such were the family connections of Samuel Pier- pont, whose short pastorate of three months in Lyme closed with one of the most romantic yet sad incidents in history.


In March, 1723, he crossed the Connecticut River to Pettipaug (now Essex) to visit his lady-love living in Middletown. The ferriage was made by the Indians in canoes from near Higgins' Wood to Ferry Point. Returning, young Pierpont embarked on one of these canoes, and had nearly crossed the river when a sud- den squall rendered the canoe unmanageable among the floating ice, and finally capsized it, when, not being able to swim, he was lost, although his Indian guide saved himself.


This was Lyme's shortest pastorate.


Next came the theologian and revivalist, Jonathan Parsons, in whose writings we learn there were seven hundred and sixty-eight inhabitants in the parish in 1735. The parish comprised about the same limits as at present,-the North Society having been formed in 1727, the East Parish in 1719,-so that since 1735 this parish has increased in numbers five hundred and eighty-two.


When Whitefield preached in Boston, in 1740, Par- sons, from the strange accounts brought to him of the man and his methods, was inclined to regard him with distrust, and to satisfy himself made the journey to New Haven, and afterwards to other places where Whitefield preached, to hear him. Acquaintance with the great preacher undeceived him, and a close friendship sprang up between the two men which lasted till death.


Tradition says Whitefield came to Lyme to visit Parsons, and preached to the people, gathered beneath, from the great rock in the rear of the present church ; and this tradition is probably correct, for he was a great friend of Parsons, who was dismissed from the pastorate of this church in 1745, and followed the fortunes of his friend till his death, which occurred in Parsons' own house, in Newburyport, Mass., on the 30thi of September, 1770, and was buried, accord- ing to his own desire, in front of the pulpit of the church of which Parsons was the pastor.


A glance at Parsons' itinerary work is interesting. About the time of the "great awakening" several pastors united to invite him to preach for them. He did so. On the Sth of June he preached at Salem, on the 9th at the North Parish of New London. From thence he went to Norwich ; thence to Stoning- ton on the 11th. Returning, he preached at Groton on the 12th, Norwich on the 13th; remained there over the Sabbath, when there was a powerful exhibi- tion of contrition and repentance in the congregation. On the 15th he preached to the "New Society" in Norwich, on the 16th in New London, where he was invited by Mr. Adams, whose church was divided by the preaching of Davenport, an inflamed orator, against everybody and everything not in accord with himself.


Mr. Parsons endeavored to promote harmony in the churches and establish the Word in its purity and simplicity.


A singular mania possessed the people of Lyme under his preaching to publicly confess their sins. We find, for instance, a record of July 11, 1733, one " Thos. Graves offered a confession for breaking the peace and contemning the church, which was ac- cepted ;" "Jan. 9, 1732, -- made and offered a confession for giving way to passion, evil speaking, and intemperate drinking, which was read and ac- cepted." Another confession was made by a woman for abusing her neighbors.


Many confessed the sins of drunkenness and forni- cation, evil speaking, railing against neighbors, etc., and Mr. Parsons himself read a confession of some dereliction of duty, in which he " severely re- flected upon himself."


These confessions being read before the church, the offending members, upon expression of their peni- tence, were received again into its charity.


Next comes the longest pastorate of the eight, stretching over forty years, the most trying, in many respects, of the years of its existence. They were those between 1746 and 1786, those years that marked the hardships of the French and Indian war and the struggle of the colonies for freedom from the oppres- sion of the British crown.


This was the pastorate of him whom Bancroft well calls " the incomparable Stephen Johnson."


It is the glory of this town and of this society that while among its pastors it has numbered one whose stirring appeals awoke not only the people of this town to righteousness, but also those of a large sec- tion of Connecticut and Massachusetts, through which he itinerated ; it has also numbered one whose clear, bold eloquence, coupled, as it was, with a searching, irresistible logie, discovered to the people of New England God's primal heritage to man, viz. : freedom from oppression, and the inherent right to worship Him, untrammeled by State laws or the decrees of kings.


Nowhere in this New World was the clarion note


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OLD LYME.


of a people's freedom more fearlessly or faithfully sounded than from the pulpit of the First Congrega- tional Church of Lyme.


'Twas fitting that God's minister, while teaching the fatherhood of God and the equality of man before him, should proclaim this freedom, and the patriot breast of Johnson, fired with a noble enthusiasm, offered itself to the brunt of regal tyranny in defend- ing and encouraging the liberties of the colonies.


The next longest pastorate is that which has so lately closed. Davis S. Brainerd began and ended his ministerial life in this church, a life which was given to the work of quiet upbuilding and strengthen- ing of the kingdom of God. Under his pastorate it was that the church passed through the trials of the late war, and steadily prospered from first to last. He was a finished scholar, found worthy to be enrolled among the Fellows of Yale College, whose faculty testified their deep sorrow at his death by their presence at the funeral. He was a man beloved in his parish, and leaves blessed memories behind him.


The present pastor is Rev. Wm. B. Cary, who was installed Nov. 22, 1876.


There is unfortunately no record of church mem- bership during the ministry of either Mr. Noyes or Mr. Pierpont, at least none that has come to light as yet, but from Mr. Parsons' time till now the total membership is eleven hundred and eight.


The largest number added at any one time was during Mr. Parsons' ministry in 1741, when one hun- dred and forty-eight members were received, and during his entire ministry of fifteen years he received two hundred and eighty-eight persons into the church. This was the period of religious awakening.


During Mr. Johnson's ministry of forty years there were added to the church two hundred and four members. This was the exciting period of civil and political commotion; it is marked by the finger of war in all its length. There was no special religious awakening during these forty years of co- lonial struggle, but a steady, slow growth through- out.


In 1817, during Mr. Rockwell's ministry,-in the year when the present meeting-house was finished, -- there were eighty-two members received.


In 1832, under Mr. Colton, there were twenty-three additions.


During Mr. Brainerd's ministry of thirty-five years there were two hundred and sixty-five additions. The largest number received in any one of these years was in 1858, when sixty-one persons were added to the church.


Since January, this year, there have been added to the church twenty-eight members, the present total active membership being one hundred and forty- eight.


Thus it will be seen the years of special interest were 1741, 1817, 1832, 1858, and the present, years which marked a religious interest in all the country.


1876 is but half gone; may we hope that it will not close without witnessing large additions to the church of Christ, here and elsewhere, of such as shall be saved ?


A few interesting notices in regard to the member- ship I will cite in passing. In 1740 the society ap- pointed a committee to "seat men and their wives together ;" thus in the year of the " great awakening" the old, senseless custom of separating husbands and wives in church was broken up.


In 1798 the society set apart the fore seats in the meeting- house for the use of "men over seventy-two years of age and women over sixty-four." In read- ing such a society vote as this the inquiry naturally suggests itself, where are the aged men and women nowadays ?


We are apt to think there was a larger percentage of these venerable ones in those days than now. Per- haps there was. Yet on the Centennial Fourth of July there was one man on the grounds, entering heartily into the spirit of the day, whose age was eighty-six.


Besides him there were a number who are past eighty, while those fathers and mothers present aged between seventy and eighty years might easily be mistaken, from their youthful bearing, for men and women in the prime instead of in the decline of life.


It seems as though this air of the mountains and verdant plains, mingled with the sea breezes, has a wonderful influence in preserving the buoyancy of life. Facts seem to warrant the saying, ascribed to Baron Von Humboldt, that the healthiest district in the United States is the stretch of coast from the Connecticut River to Narragansett Bay. Ponce de Leon, in his search for the fountain of perpetual youth, was seven hundred miles too far south when he entered the Everglades of Florida. He never would have made the fatal mistake of entering be- hind " death's curtains" in Florida if his brigantine had coasted along our shores.


Our mothers in the olden time braved the cold of winter to enter a church unheated. They carried with them their brass foot-warmers, and ever as they were cooled had them replenished with fresh coals from the neighboring fireplaces.


Stoves were first introduced into the church in 1829, when the stove-pipes were run out of the windows. Not without opposition, however, were the stoves ad- mitted, yet the people seem readily to have become reconciled to an innovation which soon proved itself a blessing.


It is not well to make a vain parade of our ancestry, even though it be noble, nor to speak boastingly of our antecedents before strangers, yet in the family it is proper and beneficial to recount the worthy deeds of our immediate predecessors, and to speak in praise of memorable men, if at the same time we inculcate the principles upon which their lives were founded, and exhort the hearers to emulate them.


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HISTORY OF NEW LONDON COUNTY, CONNECTICUT.


Inasmuch, then, as it is in the family, let me recall to you the fact that many worthy and honorable men have sat in the councils of this church.


In the meetings of the society, and serving on its executive committees, we read the names of those whom the State and the whole country delighted to honor, men whose names are linked with the best of modern times.


That the race of noble bloods is extinct we cannot for a moment believe, but alas ! alas! they are very much hidden in the background of private life. Let our prayer and our endeavor be to bring them to the light, that they may take the active part in our poli- tics that their fathers did.


And here let me urge those who are just entering upon manhood's duties to heed the lives of these men of old, these giants of worth and of work, whose deeds beautify history's page; let me urge you to emulate them. The lesson of the past will be lost to us, and our rehearsal of its worthy deeds will be vain parade, except we profit by it in shaping our lives according to the pattern displayed. Oh, let not the story of the past be fruitless! But let the seeds of honesty, integ- rity of purpose, and virtue take deep root in your hearts and spring forth in fruit such that the coming time may recount with pride, and say to the children of that day, as we say to ours, "Strive to imitate the virtues and the activities of the fathers."


During the one hundred and eighty-three years of this church's life it has been officered by eighteen deacons, elected for life. These officers, no less than the pastors, have contributed to the permanent wel- fare and prosperity of the church by their upright- ness of character and the wisdom and justice of their dealings.


As rapidly now as I may I will sketch the outline of the church's life.


When the country was almost an impenetrable wilderness from Saybrook to Boston, and the Western Nehantic Indians, associated with the remnant of the once powerful tribe of Pequots, held this whole stretch of coast as their own peculiar property, and the dif- ferent tribes from the interior came yearly down to the beach to feast upon clams and fish and bathe in the waters of the Sound, crossing the country on the top of the ridge known as Meeting-house Hills ; when these dusky warriors battled with each other, and especially with the white man, whom they regarded as an unwarranted intruder, then it was that a party of resolute men crossed the Great River and formed a settlement here ; then it was that the pioneer preacher, Moses Noyes, ministered to them in the little log meeting-house on the hill, and after twenty-seven years of labor formed the First Congregational Church of Lyme.


By the laws of Connecticut the church society was authorized to tax the people for its support, and em- powered to collect said taxes before the courts. There seems to have been no trouble about the collection of


these taxes until the year 1738, when the society ex- cepted from its levy "all those persons called Bap- tists."


At what time the Baptists were here first in any strength it is difficult to determine, but about the year 1727, Mr. Noyes was much troubled by the preaching of their peculiar tenets here, and conferred with Cotton Mather, of Boston, who came to Lyme at that time, in regard to it, and they jointly held some discussion with the Baptists, who, however, continued to increase, and were exempted in 1738 from taxation to support the Congregational Church.


Religious liberty began to dawn in the colonies, and the right of their own form or method of worship seems to have been easily and gracefully granted to the Baptists in Lyme by the Congregationalists, who were then the dominant sect.


In 1792 we see a still greater advance of religious liberty. Heretofore a tax had been levied to support the ministry, but in this year the pews of the church were sold for this purpose.


The idea was that only those who enjoyed the priv- ilege should be obliged to pay for the gospel; but such was the effect of the good old training of families in religious ways that the church was crowded, and the new method of supporting the ordinances gained in favor each year, although it was some time before the formal levy of a tax perished from sight.


One important epoch in the history of this church was that of the "great awakening," in 1740, to which time we can look back with pride and pleasure as we recognize in the pastor, Parsons, one of the great preachers of that great day.


The next great period of the church's history is that of the Revolution.


Into that struggle this church entered with clear knowledge as to its probable hardships, but the men who had planted the standard of Christ in the face of a savage, opposing nation were not the ones to draw back or to yield their liberties.


The society gave to the Continental army officers and men freely, and among them was one of the four celebrated Connecticut fighting chaplains.


It is interesting and instructive to glance at the financial condition of the country at that time, as displayed by our society records. The depreciation of the currency of the country after the late war of the Rebellion has been lamented by some people in the most extravagant terms, they freely asserting that no parallel could be found in history. The fact is it was as nothing compared with the depreciation of the old bills of credit issued during the French and In- dian war, and especially with the depreciation of the paper money of the Revolution.


We find that this society paid its pastor in 1782 twenty-five dollars in these bills of credit for every one dollar of " lawful money" due to him, so that a dollar of that depreciated currency was worth just four cents.


A.S. Bramerce


LITA


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OLD LYME.


Another item of interest is this. In 1776 silver was worth two dollars per ounce. It is now worth one dollar per ounce. It has shrunk in value in the last hundred years just one-half, and at the present rate of production it looks as though it would shrink at least ten times as much in the next hundred years.


The next period was one of peace and retrench- ment of expenses, broken in upon by that ripple of trouble, the war of 1812.


In 1751 wharves were built on the Lieutenant River, near the bridge, for the landing of the ships engaged in the West India trade, whose cargoes were stored in large warehouses built on the shore, but up to the close of the Revolution our merchantmen were constantly harassed upon the ocean; after which, however, Lyme was a thriving mart of trade. Wealth poured into the town, not only from this source, but also from the great transatlantic passenger lines of ships, many of whose captains were natives of Lyme, who adorned their town with beautiful and commo- dious dwellings, in some of which their children live; in others they themselves (having laid down the bur- den of active life) are now spending a well-earned time of quiet and repose.


The next period was one when the tocsin of war again aroused the people into bustling activity. This time it was not a foreign foe who invaded our coasts, but one of those internal retchings and contortions which a nation working out its liberties must un- dergo shook the States from sea to sea.


With a quick patriotism worthy of any time, the people ran the Stars and Stripes to the masthead, and as of yore this society supplied men and money to the government to sustain the shock of war. She sent men who by their valor earned the shoulder- straps on the field, and she gave a counselor to the. nation whose heart was so true, whose judgment so clear, that his merits have been publicly recognized by all the people.


Baptist Church .- The Baptist Church in Lyme was publicly recognized May 11, 1843, the services of the occasion being held in the dooryard of Stephen L. Peck, Esq., the Congregational meeting-house having been refused for the occasion, and the Bap- tists at the time being destitute of a place of worship.


The church consisted of seventy members, forty of whom were received by baptism and thirty by letter. The sermon of recognition was preached by the la- mented Miller, of Essex. A large number of minis- ters and brethren from neighboring churches were present, and the season was one of deep and thrilling interest.


This church had its origin principally in a revival enjoyed under the evangelical labors of Elder A. D. Watrous, in which many were converted; and scat- tered Baptists, who had long resided in the vicinity, were brought together and united in the covenant re- lation. Occasionally, this place has been visited by Baptist ministers for a period of over fifty years.


Elders West, Dodge, Darrow, Wilcox, Palmer, and Shailer and others have here sown much good seed of the kingdom. Elder Brocket became pastor, and remained about two years. A church edifice was erected in 1842-43, and opened for worship May 25, 1843. Among the pastors who officiated since are mentioned the names of Stewart, Brocket, A. D. Watrous, William Smith, J. B. Damon, T. Barber.




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