History of the Second church of Christ in Hartford, Part 7

Author: Parker, Edwin Pond, 1836-1920
Publication date: 1892
Publisher: Hartford, Conn., Belknap & Warfield
Number of Pages: 496


USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > Hartford > History of the Second church of Christ in Hartford > Part 7


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1 Charles Dudley Warner, Mem. Hist. of Hart. County, p. 349, vol. I.


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were they duller boys and girls than some of later genera- tions.


There is no little difficulty in speaking of the dress of that period, for the severer styles of Mr. Hooker's day had gradually developed into brighter fashions much lamented by the surviving elders. Nor is it quite safe to assume the existence here of such attire as is seen in contemporaneous pictures and portraits of English Puritans. The inventories of estates made in the later years, 1685-90, afford some in- formation. Viewed with kindly eyes, from our safe distance, something picturesque - sedately so - which has not escaped artistic recognition, is observable in that Puritan attire. It was an age of homespun, of hands busy with wheel and loom in almost every house, and of prodigious knitting-work at odds and ends of broken time, yet the firm fabrics were not chiefly of funereal hue, but of warm gray made warmer still with rich red dyes for hose and tasseled caps and other use. Shoes were coarse but often comely. The common linsey- woolsey trousers had bright stripes, and the better knee breeches showed off a shapeliness of sturdy limb. The stuff coats and stouter doublets, and the top coats of various skins defied the winter cold.


A common dress of women was a blue or whitish linen waist with short sleeves, joined to a skirt of stuff or serge, and a snow-white flaxen apron stiffly starched and smoothly ironed. The short gown with scant sleeves, laced in front, with white kerchief about the neck and bosom, joined at the waist with stuffed petticoat or skirt, with "mits" for cover- ing the forearm, and bits of ribbon here and there, and, in cool weather, a short cloak with capacious hood, gracefully attired the goodwife as she went abroad to meeting or more formal visitation. The matrons wore muslin caps, the maid- ens curled or dressed their unhidden hair. Now and then might have been seen the Cromwellian style of muslin ruff about the neck, the broad-brimmed and peaked hat, and the plain, straight dress of stuff or serge.


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There was no such thing then known as an umbrella, although in 1676 an English traveler saw in France "a pretty sort of cover for women riding out in the sun, made of straw, something like covers for dishes," and called para- sols.


However unrelieved of black the minister's attire may have been, save for white bands, the magistrate, the deputy, and those to whom the distinction of being called " Mr." be- longed, had gayer garments than their descendants. Purple, plum-colored, and blue coats were theirs, and broadcloth coats lined with red, and often gold-laced waistcoats, and laced ruffles on bosom and wrist, and the knees of their small clothes were fastened with ribbon, or with buttons of silver or gold. Their shoes were adorned with bows of ribbon, and possibly with silver buckles, though these were probably of later date. The broad-brimmed and conical hat was but little severer in shape than a Mexican sombrero, and certain- ly might vie for beauty or comfort with the hat of this cen- tury. Citizens of lesser distinction and fortune, but yet of moderate means, had serge and kersey coats, red waistcoats, and stuff breeches. A few had silver watches. Nothing more graceful could be desired than the long-flowing, wavy hair and the neat dress of swarthy, handsome John Bunyan, as his portrait in Bedford Chapel shows him at this period.


The ladies of quality, on good occasion, appeared in flow- ing brocades, or with gowns of cashmere or silk, with em- broidered stomachers, silk scarfs, fine laces, and manifold finery of adornment. If matrons, they wore laced caps, but the younger were allowed in pretty dress or curl of uncov- ered hair.


The prevailing fashions in England, both as regards cos- tumes and furniture, found their way with incredible swift- ness to Massachusetts and Connecticut. The colonial records afford ample evidence of a continuous and irresistible ten- dency on the part of the colonists to improve and enrich their dress. The restoration of the monarchy under Charles


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II brought in new and beautiful forms of household furni- ture, and brighter, gayer, richer styles of raiment. And so it came to pass that in Hartford, as in other colonial towns, the dress of the people took on new variety and decoration, and many of their houses were enriched with articles of furniture of tasteful designs and admirable workmanship. Thus, be- fore Mr. John Whiting ceased from his labors, the "wilder- ness condition " of the people among whom he was born and with whom he labored began to outgrow its primeval sim- plicities and poverty of accommodations and conveniences, and to show signs of blossoming like the rose, many of which signs the elders regarded with a vain grief.


A few words touching religious usages must suffice. On each Lord's Day the people assembled for public wor- ship at about nine o'clock in the forenoon, and about two o'clock in the afternoon. There was also a mid-week lec- ture. In some towns the hour of worship was announced, and the signal for assembling given by beat of drum or blast of horn. Hartford had a town-crier and bell-ringer as early as 1641. In 1643, the town ordered "a bell to be rung by the watch every morning, an hour before day- break," and that there "should be in every house one up and have made some light, within one-quarter of an hour of the bell-ringing." The following passage from Letchford's Plain-Dealing (Dr. J. H. Trumbull's edition), probably gives a correct account of the general practice in the churches of that age :


The publique worship is in as faire a meeting-house as they can provide, wherein, in most places, they have beene at great charges. Every Sabbath or Lord's Day, they come together at Boston, by wring- ing of a bell, about nine of the clock or before. The Pastor begins with solemn prayer continuing about a quarter of an houre. The Teacher then readeth and expoundeth a Chapter ; then a Psalme is sung, which ever one of the ruling elders dictates. After that the Pastor preacheth a Sermon, and sometimes ex tempore exhorts. Then the Teacher concludes with prayer, and a blessing.


Once a month is a Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, whereof notice is given usually a fortnight before, and then all others ceparting save 6


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the Church, which is a great deal lesse in number than those that goe away, they receive the Sacrament, the Ministers and Ruling Elders sitting at the Table, the rest in their seats, or upon forms. . The one of the teaching elders prays before, and blesseth, and consecrates the Bread and Wine, according to the words of Institution : the other prays after the receiving of all the members ; and next communion, they change turns ; he that began at that, ends at this; and the Ministers deliver the Bread in a charger to some of the chiefe, and peradventure give to a few the Bread into their hands, and they deliver the charger from one to another, till all have eaten ; in like manner the cup, till all have dranke, goes from one to another. Then a Psalme is sung, and with a short blessing the congregation is dismissed. . About two in the after-noone, they repaire to the meeting-house againe; and then the Pastor begins, as before noone, and a Psalme being sung, the Teacher makes a Sermon. . After and before his Sermon, he pray- eth. After that ensues Baptisme, if there be any, which is done by either Pastor or Teacher, in the Deacons seate, the most eminent place in the church, next under the Elders seate. The Pastor most com- monly makes a speech or exhortation to the church and Parents con- cerning Baptisme, and then prayeth before and after. It is done by washing or sprinkling. One of the Parents being of the church, the childe may be baptized, and the Baptisme is into the name of the Father, and of the Sonne, and of the Holy Ghost. No sureties are required.


Which ended, follows the contribution, one of the Deacons saying, " Brethren of the congregation, now there is time left for contribution, wherefore as God hath prospered you, so freely offer. Upon some ex- traordinary occasions, as building and repairing of church or meeting- houses, the Ministers presse a liberall contribution, with effectuall ex- hortations out of Scripture. The Magistrates and chiefe Gentlemen first, and then the Elders, and all the congregation of men and most of them that are not of the church, all single persons, widows, and women in absence of their husbands, come up one after another one way, and bring their offerings to the Deacon at his seate, and put it into a box of wood for the purpose, if it bee money or papers ; if it be any other chattle, they set it or lay it downe before the Deacons, and so passe another way to their seats againe. . Which moneys and goods the Deacons dispose towards the maintenance of the Ministers, and the poor of the church, and the churches occasions.


The prayers were "unstinted," both as to length and freedom from all trammels of ritual. The gift of continu- ance in prayer was rated highly. The liturgical service of


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the English church was remembered, if at all remembered, with something like abhorrence. The younger Winthrop kept his books, at one time, in a room used for a granary. One volume contained the Greek Testament, the Psalter, and the Common Prayer. Mice got at this volume, and pretty much ruined the Common Prayer portion, leaving the other parts untouched. It was a Providential sign !


- As for the Psalm-singing of that day, it may have been devout, but it could not have been very musical .- Sternhold and Hopkins's versions were bad enough, but those in the Bay Psalm Book were far worse, and it is difficult to understand how even expert singers could have adjusted their irregu- larities of construction, to say nothing of their jejune qual- ity, to any rhythmical cadences. Tuneful motion over such corduroy roads of rude rhythm must have been painful, however useful for purposes of spiritual digestion.


The good people here in Hartford could not have sung their psalms much better than they of Massachusetts churches, and, as for that, could not have sung them much more dolefully or discordantly. They knew only a few sad tunes, which became so corrupted by gradual variations, that anything but concord was the result of their improve- ment. One of the " directions" in the Bay Psalm Book of 1689, instructs how people may sing within the compass of their voices, "without Squeaking above and Grumbling below." The irregularity of the rhythm in the Psalms must have added to the discordance, as the Squeakers and Grum- blers wrestled with redundant syllables. It was no uncom- mon occurrence for the congregation to switch off from one tune to another while singing one hymn or psalm. Judge Sewall writes, "I set York tune and the congregation went out of it into St. Davids in the very 2nd going over." He set Windsor tune, and the people "ran over into Oxford do what I could." Indeed the singing was very bad, and grew worse as the few tunes sung "by rote " became distorted by variations and quavers, according to "odd humours and fan-


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cies," until no two voices quavered alike or together, but the singers proceeded with "perpetual interfearings with one another," and the loudest-voiced carried the day. It was inevitable that a reformation should be made, but, as will be seen, it was made against sternest opposition, and with many pathetic and ludicrous encounters between the adherents of the old way and the champions of the new.


The sermon held on, as it would seem to us, intermina- bly, reaching up through divisions and heads to "twenty- seventhly," with "improvements " still to come. Nathaniel Ward said truly, "Wee have a strong weakness in New England that when wee are speaking, wee know not how to conclude ; wee make many ends before wee make an end." The prayers were likewise very lengthy, and however tedious they may have been, the minister who should have made a short prayer would have been lightly esteemed as lacking the "gift " of prayer.


The meeting-houses were not warmed, and, as Charles Dudley Warner has said, "if the preacher did not make it hot enough for his congregation, nothing else could." Foot- stoves were in use, but often objection was made to these, through dread of fire. Judge Sewall's Diary has this: "The communion bread was frozen pretty hard and rattled sadly into the plates." And again he writes: "Bread was frozen at Lord's Table. Though 'twas so cold, John Tucker- man was baptized." The first congregation to have an iron stove in their sanctuary, so far as records show, was that of Hadley in 1734. But the innovation was roundly denounced, and into most meeting-houses stoves found way at a much later date, and against stern opposition.


The afternoon service differed little from the morning, except that the reading of Scripture was omitted, baptism was administered on occasion for it, and a contribution was taken, the people coming forward in due order to deposit their offerings with the deacon. There is evidence that blemished offerings were sometimes made in those days, and


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that the hypocritical button-contributor of our times had his prototype in the giver of broken wampum of the seventeenth century.


The delicate and difficult duty of "seating the meeting- house " was not discharged without causing much jealousy and ill-feeling. The pews were "dignified," and persons were seated according to their social standing or official rank. The men and women were seated separately, on op- posite sides of the house, and the boys were gathered by themselves, requiring continual supervision and discipline. Evidently the seating-committee had a hard duty to perform, and, in every age, the Scribes and Pharisees are numerous who crave the highest seats in the synagogue. As for the boys, they gave a vast deal of trouble, then, as now. The tithing-man was often at his wit's ends because of them, and the Hartford boys who were caught playing or mis- behaving in the time of public worship, "whether in the meeting-house or about the walls," were liable to be "pun- ished at the present publickly before the assembly depart."


The tithing-man, the " Puritan Bumble," as he has been called, was one of the most remarkable creatures of the com- munity. He was pompous and servile, independent and obsequious, dignified and fussy, and, on the whole, a neces- sary sort of nuisance, like the English beadle. He sadly in- terfered with the slumberers in the sanctuary, prodding them with his wand or brushing the women's faces with his feathery fox-tail. Most amusing stories are related of his endeavors with the somnolent saints and the playful and mischievous lads; and not only with them, but with young people walking abroad on the eve of Sabbath, with suspi- cious bachelors, with strangers in inns, and with travelers on the Lord's Day. He must needs report such as "lye at home," and such as "lingered without dores at meeting- time," and all "sons of Belial, strutting about, setting on fences, and otherwise desecrating the day." This highly impertinent official whom everybody must have cordially dis-


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liked and feared, lingered long in the Puritan communities, in fact, long after his authority had declined and his terrors vanished.


Funeral services were then attended without much cere- mony in a plain and silent reverence. No scripture was read, no prayer was made, lest the popish error of praying for the dead should be countenanced, but the bell was tolled, and devout men quietly bore the dead, laid upon a bier, to the burial.' This seems severe, but our good forefathers of that day at least escaped the tortures suffered by many of their posterity, in the harrowing "remarks " and agonizing prayers too frequently poured out on similar occasions. After the burial, refreshments were commonly served to the bearers and friends, and, if tradition may be credited, sorrow was sometimes turned to joy by another spirit than that of consolation.ยบ Marriage was then regarded as a civil contract, in reaction from the sacramental doctrines of Popery and Prelacy, and the marriage ceremony, such as it was, was per- formed by the magistrate, and not by the minister. The first marriage, ratified by a minister in Massachusetts, was in 1686.3 It is noteworthy that in 1653 the English Parliament ordered that after the 20th of September all marriages should take place "before some Justice of the Peace." In 1694 the General Court of Connecticut granted ordained ministers of the several towns of the colony permission to join in mar- riage such as were legally qualified for the same and were desirous of a religious service.


The Puritan's poetic instinct or impulse found expres- sion in curious rhymed verses which were scribbled on the margins of Psalm Books and on the blank leaves of books, and cut on the sombre tombstones. In her charming book


1 Laudatory and lachrymose verses were sometimes circulated among the friends, and fastened to the bier. Sewall says of Rev. Thomas Shepard's funeral, "There were some verses, but none pinned to the Herse."


2 The use of liquor at funerals was not discontinued until a comparatively recent date, and then there were stout protests against the inhospitable reform. One old gentleman is on record as having remarked with equal bitterness and wit, " Temper- ance has done for funerals !"


3 Walker's Hist , p. 235.


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entitled "The Sabbath in Puritan New England," Alice Morse Earle tells of a copy of the Bay Psalm Book which belonged to Cicely Morse in the year 1710, and which bears on many a page her name and this couplet : -


" In youth I praise 1 And walk thy ways."


And she sketches a pretty picture of fair Cicely, "clad in her sad-colored gown and long apron, with a quoif or ciffer cov- ering her smooth hair, and a red whittle on her slender shoulders, a-singing in the old New England meeting-house through the long, tedious psalms"; - singing with dim feel- ing of its symbolic meaning the following version of Solo- mon's ardent song : -


" Let him with kisses of his mouth Be pleased me to kiss, Because much better than the wine Thy loving kindness is. My love as in Engedis vines Like camphire bunch to me, So fair, my love, so fair thou art Thine eyes as doves eyes be."


Staid Puritan youth may have glanced soberly across the old meeting-house at the fair girl as she sung, "and the glamour of eternal, sweet-voiced youth hangs around the gentle Cicely, through the power of the inscription in the old psalm book, - the romance of the time when Cicely, the Puritan commonwealth, the whole New World was young."


And this I quote because, though purely imaginative, it doubtless suggests, yea depicts, an aspect of life which was most real and common here in Hartford two hundred years ago. For love and song, and praise and youth are insepara- ble in every age, and if the psalm was rude and the music harsh, there were pure and praiseful youth who knew all the tenderness of love and all the power of grace, to whom "the wilderness condition " was full of beauty and of hope.


These worthy people of Hartford, whom we have thus somewhat considered, were by no means of sour and forbid-


.


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ding aspect. Life to them was indeed a serious and solemn concern, abundant in toil and trial, in privation and even peril, but it was sweetened by domestic happiness, lightened by mutual helpfulness, sustained by a lofty purpose, cheered by an ardent hope, and consoled by an undiscourageable faith. Pictures of Puritan life and character drawn from almost ex- clusive studies of their severer aspects are little better than caricatures. It is only under a delusion akin to the evil spell wrought upon Goodman Brown of Salem village, at the midnight witch-meeting in the forest, which made him look askance at all his old associates, that men of this day, like Hawthorne's character, can pass through the Puritan villages of two centuries ago, shrinking with suspicion and aversion from ministers, magistrates, deacons, elders, and citizens generally, as if they all were under a ban of evil, were wrapped in gloom and given up to despair under the notion that to be miserable is the way to be good. There were doleful deacons then, no doubt, and frowning magistrates, and mournful ministers who "walked along the graveyard to get up an appetite for breakfast and meditate a sermon," - elderly men in black, "grave and solemn as tombstones on a ramble from the burying ground." But of those same ministers whom Hawthorne this describes, one was, accord- ing to Hawthorne himself, a good old saint who failed not to give his pleasant greeting and pious blessing to all who met him at his morning ramble ; and another, Mr. Increase Math- er, was a man of great character and learning, who rendered inestimable service to the colony of Massachusetts in its struggles for freedom and to the cause of education therein, and whose life with his family is said to have been most delightful. But there were hearty, healthy, sunny, sweet, good people in abundance, older and younger, of either sex, sane in mind and sound at heart, strong of limb and fair to see, neither ignorant nor uncultivated, possessing the trea- sure of a poetic folk-lore of old-world memories and traditions mingled with new-world adventures, who would not in the


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least have understood the modern commiserations of their lot in life. That picture sketched by Hawthorne in a line or two, of young Goodman Brown of Salem village, turning back on his threshold in the sunset light to exchange a part- ing kiss with his fair young wife, and of Faith, for so she was aptly called, bending forward her pretty head and letting the soft breeze play with the pink ribbons in her cap, - and, later, skipping like a young fawn along the street, with the pink ribbons fluttering about her fair head, and "almost kiss- ing her husband before the whole village," is a truer as well as prettier picture of the young Puritanism of the time than ever was or ever will be sketched by any of the bewitched revilers of their ancestors.1 And so, whether in meeting- house, court, or household, whether toiling in the field or forest, or busy with the manifold duties of domestic service, or following the deadly foe in defense of home and house- hold, this Puritan ancestor of ours, encompassed and threat- ened with a great outlying and inroaring savagery of nature, and set there so determinedly unconquerable and coura- geous in his " wilderness condition," does verily seem a some- what picturesque and romantic as well as truly heroic figure, of whom we may justly be proud, in this our day and gene- ration.


2 Mosses from an old Manse.


CHAPTER IV


THE MINISTRY OF THOMAS BUCKINGHAM, 1694-1731


REV. THOMAS BUCKINGHAM, the second pastor of the Second Church, belonged to a family many of whose members have won honorable distinction in this country. Yale College numbers eleven of them among her alumni, and several have graduated at other colleges in the land. Of this family was the Hon. William A. Buckingham of Norwich, Governor of Connecticut during the trying years of the Civil War, and afterwards United States Senator, whose name and fame are dear to all the citizens of the commonwealth which he most ably and nobly served.


The family name is derived from the county of Buck- ingham, in England, the shire town of which is also Buck- ingham. In 1637, the Puritan settler, Thomas Buckingham, came to Boston in a company that included the merchants Eaton and Hopkins, and the ministers Davenport and Prud- den. In 1638, they went to New Haven. In 1639, with a company having Mr. Prudden for their minister, Mr. Buck- ingham went to Milford, where he was a pillar of the church until his death.


His eldest son, born in England in 1636, was Daniel Buck- ingham, afterwards Sergeant of militia and Elder of the church at Milford. This Elder Daniel Buckingham had for his second wife Mrs. Alice Newton, and their eldest son was Thomas Buckingham, afterwards pastor of this church. Rev. Thomas Buckingham of Saybrook, a student of Rev. Mr. Whiting, one of the founders and fellows of Yale Col- lege, one of the moderators of the Synod which framed the Saybrook platform in 1708, and a man of great influence and character, was the uncle of the Hartford minister. His


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