USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Hartford > History of the Second church of Christ in Hartford > Part 17
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obstinate sort. The writer has been told by those who were members of the Church from 1820 onward, that "petticoat influence " was banefully strong then in the Parish. What- ever that may mean, it has a sinister sound. Perhaps the Society was never in a lower condition, socially, than when Mr. Linsley vainly strove to harmonize and elevate it. The rural element in it was predominant.
In 1824 the Church voted that "the choir of singers be allowed to hold a meeting for singing in the South Chapel on Sabbath evenings after religious services are over." That same year Mr. Linsley undertook to inaugu- rate a system of "Gospel discipline" in the Church, and almost immediately thereafter, sundry persons were brought into discipline and solemnly excommunicated. Doubtless the persons thus dealt with deserved their sentences, and the whole process seems to have been regularly and faith- fully carried on, but whether the course thus taken was dis- creet is open to doubt. It certainly increased the good pastor's difficulties.
In 1825 the Church was invited to attend, by pastor and delegate, a council in New Haven for the purpose of ordain- ing the Rev. Leonard Bacon as Pastor of the First Church in that city.
In 1827 the Church voted to "purchase a flagon, a baptismal font, and four new cups, to be paid for out of the proceeds of the sale of the chapel." As will be seen, a new meeting-house had been built, with chapel accommodations, and there was no longer any need of the chapel on Bucking- ham Street. What became of that building is unknown. The proceeds of its sale were probably not much more than was required to pay for the flagon, font, and cups.
JIn 1827 there were six Sunday-schools in the city, and that of the North Church was the largest, numbering two hundred scholars and forty teachers. The South Church school was next in numbers, having one hundred and fifty scholars and forty-one teachers. In all the schools there were seven hundred and fifty scholars and one hundred and
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ninety teachers. (Memorandum by Dr. Linsley in Ch. Records.)
In 1824 the Society voted that henceforth warnings of its meetings published in one or more of the city news- papers should be considered as legal. It was also voted to reserve a certain number of pews in the meeting-house, for the use of such persons as the Committee think best to seat therein, and to sell the residue at auction to the high- est bidder, on a specified day.
It was also voted that "this Society will not consent to the Town of Hartford holding their meetings in the 2d Ecclesiastical Society's House of Worship, after this date (April 10)." It was also voted " to allow five per cent. to all purchasers of pews if they make payment to the Treasurer within thirty days from the date of said sales."
It has been already remarked that the meeting-house of the Society was in bad condition, and that its removal had been more or less earnestly advocated. It was in the high- way, and was regarded as an obstruction to the increasing travel and traffic of the city. The time had come for a new house of worship, and in January, 1825, at a Society meeting, two-thirds of the members thereof being present, it was unanimously voted "to build a new Meeting House and to establish a place where it shall be erected."
The place fixed upon was "a certain piece of land front- ing east on Main Street and north on Buckingham Street, and bounded south on Daniel Wadsworth's land, and west on Ward and Bartholomew's land,"- the site of the present house of worship. The old way of making out a rate-bill and assessing each member of the parish his proportion of the sum required, and so paying for the meeting- house, was no longer practicable. Nor was it possible to raise the money requisite for such a building by voluntary subscription. But it was possible to induce the people who could not or would not give the needed money, to lend it to the Society, especially as they were promised six per cent. interest on their loans. Accordingly, with much verbiage of
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a legal sort that need not be quoted, the Society authorized and directed their committee to issue certificates of stock to the amount of $12,000 to defray the expense of purchas- ing a site and erecting a meeting-house, and appointed Chauncey Barnard, Charles Butler, and Henry Kilbourn a committee to build the meeting-house, to make all neces- sary contracts, carry them into execution, settle them and all demands of building, and to draw orders on the treas- urer for the payment of all such expenses, and generally to do all such lawful acts as might be necessary to carry into effect the main purpose of erecting a house of worship.
This building committee was also authorized "to sell and dispose of the present Meeting-House belonging to the Society and apply the avails thereof towards paying the necessary expenses of building the Meeting- House to be erected according to the foregoing votes."
After much consultation with architects and study of plans, a contract was made with Col. William Hayden for the entire work of constructing the meeting-house, and for the specified work he was to receive in payment the sum of $13,000 and the old meeting-house. Col. Hayden entered at once and vigorously upon the work.
As the work went on many alterations, involving addi- tional expenses, were deemed necessary, and the Society, in 1828, authorized the issue of stock certificates for the further sum of $11,000, making the total sum for which such certifi- cates were issued, for the purpose of paying for the sanctu- ary, $23,000. But this estimate included the price of an organ, which was ordered by vote of the Society, at a cost of $3,000.
That same year the Society formally released to the city of Hartford all its right, title, and interest to the land on which the old meeting-house had stood, in consideration that the city should convey to the Society a certain piece of land belonging to said city, on which the meeting-house now stands, "commencing 16 feet from the North East cor- ner of said Meeting House and running west to the land of
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Ward and Bartholomew, the same width parallel with said house."
Buckingham Street originally joined Main Street by a a southerly curve. The Society exchanged its land in the old highway, where its old house had stood, for a strip of the city street north of its present house ; and thus Buckingham Street was made to intersect Main Street at a right angle.1 So the old wooden meeting-house, completed in 1754, dis- appeared in 1827.
In 1826 the sum of one hundred and seventy-five dol- lars was appropriated for music, and the same year the 1 South Singing Society was organized, of which the Ecclesi- astical Society expressed its cordial approval.
Mention has been made of the sale of the old chapel on Buckingham Street, which belonged to the Church. In 1826, while the new sanctuary was building, the Society graciously leased to the Church "the west room in the base- ment story of the new Meeting House " for a merely nomi- nal rent, on condition that the Church should "finish off said room fit for occupation in three years," and that the room should be used only for religious meetings, and that the Church should keep the room in repair. The Church did "finish off" this basement room, and for many years used it as a chapel. The signs of such a chapel are still to be traced there, but, with defective drainage, that basement chapel must have been a miserable place for church meetings. It was low, damp, dark, and ill- ventilated, and must have been unwholesome.
The meeting-house thus begun in 1825 was completed early in 1827, for it was dedicated on Wednesday, April 1I, 1827, probably in the afternoon. The Courant of April 16th says :
" The new Meeting House lately erected by the South Ecclesiastical Society was dedicated on Wednesday last. The introductory prayer was made by the Rev. Dr. Perkins. The Rev. Mr. Linsley, Pastor, preached
1 The map or sketch of the Buckingham property given to the Society, page 127, will show how the land lay previous to this change.
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the Sermon from Gen. 28: 17, and the Rev. Mr. Hawes made the conclud- ing prayer. All the services on the occasion were highly appropriate and interesting. The Building itself is finished in elegant style, and the Society deserves credit for the laudable spirit and enterprise manifested in its erection."
All this is doubtless true, but it may not be ungracious to add here that the credit for paying for the meeting-house belongs to a later generation.
The sermon preached by Dr. Linsley on that occasion is in the archives of the Society, and is in all respects an ex- cellent discourse. At a fitting moment, during his sermon, the Pastor paused, and invited the congregation to rise and unite with him in a solemn act of consecration. The con- gregation arose and reverently stood while Dr. Linsley offered a fervent prayer, from which the following dedica- tory sentences are quoted :
" To Thee, the only living and true God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, we dedicate this pulpit for the preaching of Thy word - for the promulgation of Thy pure and holy gospel. To Thee we dedi- cate this altar, to bear the sacred vessels of the sanctuary, the water of baptism, and the symbols of a Saviour's dying love. To Thee we dedi- cate these seats, these walls and gates, with all that pertains to this sacred edifice, for the performance of Thy worship, for the sanctification and improvement of Thy Sabbaths, for the advancement of Thy glory and the salvation of redeemed sinners."
The following notice appeared in the Courant of April 9, 1827 :
" A CONCERT OF SACRED MUSIC
will be given on Wednesday, 11th April, the evening of the dedication of the New South Meeting House in Hartford. Tickets, twenty-five cents - and may be had at the bookstores of Goodwin & Co .; P. B. Gleason & Co .; H. Huntington Jr, and D. F. Robinson & Co. Exercises to com- mence precisely at seven o'clock."
Only a little later the North Singing Society gave an oratorio concert in the North Church, and similar concerts were frequently given in the First Church.
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From the report of the Building Committee it appears that about one thousand dollars were expended in furnish- ing the house with stoves, cushions, desk, sofa, lamps, table, and chairs. The committee had, as has been sug- gested, exceeded the first estimates and provisions by about eight thousand dollars, and the organ had cost three thousand dollars more, but no one seems to have complained. The committee reported that the sales of pews or "slips" the last year were fully adequate to pay the interest on the whole amount of indebted- ness, and to leave a surplus of six hundred dollars, although only three-fourths of the slips had been sold. And they were pleased to think that, with the same success from year to year, in twenty years the house would pay for itself, over and above the interest. This hopeful view was not, how- ever, justified by subsequent events.1
On the 6th of April, 1830, Dr. Linsley addressed a letter to the Committee of the Parish, requesting them to call a special Parish meeting, for the purpose of receiving and act- ing upon a communication which he would make to that meeting. The meeting was duly called, and the written communication which Dr. Linsley then and there made to the members of the Parish, dated May 1, 1830, is now before me. It is a long document, in which the writer discloses, with almost too great frankness, the story of his financial embarrassments, and of his ineffectual endeavors to live within the limits of his salary. It is evident that he had been charged with extravagance, for he rebuts this accusa- tion in words that show how keenly he felt its injustice. Several facts of interest are mentioned. He had left a lucrative legal business to enter the ministry. He had been obliged to draw upon a little property acquired in the prac- tice of law to eke out his annual expenses as a minister. The rent of the parsonage consumed one-fifth of his salary.
1 The pulpit originally built in this meeting-house survives, in part, in the Sun- day-school room. The mahogany sofa that was placed in the pulpit at first has re- cently been discovered and rehabilitated, and is in the writer's possession.
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His expenses for fuel were upwards of one hundred dollars, wood then being two and a half dollars a cord. He says that, having lived awhile in Dr. Flint's family, he knows that Dr. Flint was obliged to engage in teaching and in literary work in order to meet his current expenses. It is a pathetic document. "Irretrievable embarrassments are the price I must pay for continuing as I am, much longer."
But meanwhile the financial embarrassments of the So- ciety were becoming serious. Several persons withdrew from the Society and went elsewhere to worship. Pew rents were not paid, and the revenue was decreasing. The meet- ing-house was clearly not paying for itself.
The crisis came in 1832.
It was proposed to lay a tax of five cents on a dollar on the polls and rateable estate of all members of the Society, but this old-fashioned and heroic treatment was declined and rejected. Then it was proposed to sell the pews outright, but this was declared inexpedient. Finally a committee, con- sisting of D. F. Robinson, Horace Seymour, Horace Goodwin, Captain Chauncey Barnard, and Nathan Morse, was ap- pointed to raise by subscription, if possible, $4,000, to apply on the debt of the Society. The money was raised, the members of the committee subscribing liberally, and for a while the financial distress was relieved.
In the month of August, 1832, Dea. George Corning and D. F. Robinson were appointed a committee of the Society "to wait on the Rev. Mr. Linsley and inform him of the re- sult of this meeting," but the Society records furnish no ac- count of what occurred at the meeting. The Church records show what the trouble was. In May, 1832, a Church meeting was held, at which regret was expressed at the "occurrence of events which have weakened the bond of love between the pastor and the Church," but at the same meeting, the Church, by a large majority, requested Mr. Linsley not to ask for a dismission, but to remain. July 11th, Mr. Linsley replied to the Church, thanking them kindly for their vote of confi- dence, but asking them to grant his dismission. The Church
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voted, by a large majority, not to do this. Another commu- nication from the Pastor showed that his mind was fully made up to remove, and the Church reluctantly granted his request. By joint action of the Church and Society, a coun- cil was called to consider the case, and the result was that Mr. Linsley's pastoral relation was dissolved, August 21, 1832. The Church voted to give him the unexpended bal- ance of the proceeds of the old chapel. The Council gave a sweet and tender testimony to the departing Pastor, "whose praise is in all the churches," and so ended Mr. Linsley's min- istry here. Just what was the nature of the difficulties that led to this result, it would not be easy to say. It was a diffi- cult parish to get along with. There had been a zeal in dis- cipline that made trouble, and financial difficulties increased that trouble. A letter of Doctor Linsley lies before me, written in August, 1832, to Horace Goodwin, in which he says that the movement for his retirement did not originate with himself, and in which he speaks of "all the unkind speeches that have been made about me and about my labors." He states that there is a well-known disaffection toward him in the Parish and in the Society's committee, and, in a calm and Christian manner, declares that no self-respecting minister could remain in a situation so embarrassing.
One action of the Church which Mr. Linsley was instru- mental in procuring, and which created some disaffection, is of too much importance to be overlooked. Following a pre- vailing fashion of the times, the Church, in 1828, voted to ap- point a committee to revise the articles of faith and Covenant, and report their revision for adoption and printing. Down to this period the Church had cherished and used its ancient and original covenant, nor is there any trace of the use of any other creed or confession before that time. But in 1822, the First Church, in deference to its Pastor's desires, adopted "a long, many-articled confession of faith," as Dr. Walker well describes it. About that time a good deal of that sort of creed-manufacture was going on. Articles of faith were made to order in abundance. The Second Church either
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made or procured some, and a confession of faith, "long and many-articled," and with the stamp of the time upon it, was somehow adopted. And worse than that, the brief, compact, incomparable old covenant on which the Church was founded, and which was hallowed by the use of generations of mem- bers, was foolishly set aside, and a new-fangled, rambling, and altogether inferior composition substituted for it. It was the fashion just then, nor does the fashion speak well of the spirit or culture that suggested it. The new covenant and creed were adopted and continued in use until about twenty years ago, when the old covenant was recovered and restored, and the creed was dropped for the Apostle's Creed.
A curious old fragment of manuscript has recently come into the writer's possession, and is before him as he pens these lines, which shows how some of the older members of the Church regarded this change of covenant, and of the form of admission to Church membership. It is one page of a book in which the venerable Thomas Seymour was accus- tomed to inscribe such things as it pleased him, and was written by him in the ninety-fourth year of his age (1828), and signed with his initials. It begins abruptly, for the pages on which the preceding remarks were written are missing.
find them such as to recommend them, and if no objection is now made, I shall proceed to propose to them the Covenant, in order to their assenting and consenting to it.
No objection made, the Covenant read and assented to by the appli- cants, the Pastor says to them, "May God of His mercy grant that you may have grace given you to live agreeably to the solemn profession you have now made." The time spent in this process did not exceed more than ten or fifteen minutes.
N. B .- This practice has been continued in our Chh. until of late - when, and for what reason it has been laid aside, is not a little myste- rious, but such is the fact - a new prolix creed has been substituted in- stead of our good old Congregational one, and a new mode of introducing and administering it has been adopted. The time spent in this new pro- cess detained the applicants in the face of the congregation, at least three- quarters of an hour. I will not say that this savours too much of a Phari- saical appearance, or that it is a work of Supererogation. Charity hopeth all things.
(Signed) T. S.
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The man who penned this fragment died in 1829, in the 95th year of his age. [See page 134.] The " Memorandum Book," used first by his father, who died in 1767, and after- wards by himself, and to which allusion has been made, is the source from which many facts stated in this history have been derived. It contains several pages of accounts with the South Church for things required at the communion ser- vices, and also pages of accounts with the Society for ma- terials used in building the second meeting-house.
The long list of names in this book -names of people in Hartford and in various towns of the colony with whom Thomas Seymour had dealings in his capacity as a lawyer - might be worth copying and listing in alphabetical order. In the settlement of an estate there are forty pages inscribed with names in alphabetical order, which must be of no little genealogical value. Probably no single layman, in the en- tire history of the Church and Society, has exerted so potent an influence in their affairs as this third Thomas Seymour - lawyer, soldier, and mayor of the city - who was a member of the Church for more than fifty years, and a deacon in it from 1794 to 1809.
When Mr. Linsley began his ministry here the Church numbered one hundred and forty members. During his ministry the membership was greatly increased. In 1827 more than fifty, and in 1831 nearly ninety persons united with the Church. And in other years the additions were numerous. His labors were abundantly fruitful in spiritual results. Some who then united with the Church are still living here, and many whom the present members remem- ber as most exemplary and efficient in their christian life and service were gathered into the Church under his minis- trations. It is not easy to understand how a minister so godly, able, and successful could have been so lightly re- garded by many in the Society. Dr. Bacon said of him, in 1870, that of all the men whom he had familiarly known, "Joel Harvey Linsley was most manifestly characterized by godly sincerity, by simplicity, grave and sweet,
Linsley-Vanarsdalen-Daggett-Clark. 209
by all spiritual graces adorning and sanctifying the native strength of a mind well disciplined in various studies."
Of his excellent wife Dr. Brace wrote in the Religious Herald, in 1870 : "She was one of the best specimens of a good pastor's wife that Connecticut ever furnished. She did almost as much for the Lord as her devoted husband, and her memory is embalmed in the hearts of a large number of our citizens."
The following letter written by Dr. Linsley to Mr. Horace Goodwin, one of the Society's Committee, and with- out other date than "Friday morning," seems worthy of pub- lication here, as showing his sound notions concerning the proper use of houses of worship, and also his gentle and conciliatory spirit. Just what sort of meeting he refers to in his letter is unknown.
" Mr. Goodwin :
" I find I must be absent at the hour appointed to see you. I think there are strong objections to using churches (and especially pulpits) for political purposes, or for any merely secular meetings. I would always avoid it when I could. On this subject I am a pretty sound Churchman! Episcopalians never allow political harangues or addresses to be made in their pulpits.
" But if the young men must have a church, they have special claims on the churches up town ; because most of these young men belong to those churches. Probably four-fifths of the principal managers of the celebration belong to the Episcopal and Center churches, and very few of our Society have anything to do with it at all. And yet, as it will dirty their houses uptown, they must, as in former days, go down South, where, it is said, they will let anything be done in their Church! I doubt whether the North Church has ever been used at all on such an occasion. If meetings of this sort are attended in our Church, let it only be in fair proportion with the other churches.
" At the same time, if the young men can get no other place con- venient for holding their meeting, and if there is to be no party politics in it, (and especially, if religious services are to be connected with it) I would not persist in my objections against the opinions of the Commit- tee. I have merely stated my general views on the subject, and I wish the Committee now to act wholly on their responsibility in the matter.
" Your friend,
"J. H. LINSLEY."
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The financial condition of the Second Society, at the time of Dr. Linsley's dismission was, according to the report of the Society's committee, "deplorable indeed." The cur- rent expenses had far exceeded the annual income, and there was division of opinion respecting the best means to be adopted for relief. A general feeling of despondency prevailed, and, in some cases, a lack of all interest was mani- fested, "deeply affecting to those who felt that the responsi- bility rested upon them of sustaining, at all events, the inter- ests and respectability of the Society." The report from which we have quoted is signed, in characters betokening infirmity of age, by Chauncey Barnard, who was one of the few faithful men who stood by the Society through years of great embarrassment. Another, but younger man, to whose sagacity, patience, and wisdom the Society was deeply indebted, was Mr. D. F. Robinson. But the subscrip- tion of more than four thousand dollars relieved the finan- cial distress, and a better feeling and fairer prospects suc- ceeded. On the 25th of November, 1832, the Church voted unanimously to invite the Rev. Cornelius C. Vanarsdalen of Brunswick, N. J., to become their Pastor, and shortly after the Society passed a similar vote, offering him a salary of twelve hundred dollars.
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