USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Bethany > Story of a rural church; [papers read at a parish dinner 1960, on the occasion of the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the consecration of Christ Church, Bethany, Connecticut.] > Part 2
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1919
Bronze tablet in memory of Leonard Todd, for 78 years a communicant of this church, given by his family.
1920
Bethany census, 411 persons, lowest point since census first taken of Bethany in 1840.
1923-1924
Rectory empty.
1930
Bethany census, 480 persons.
1932
Rectory empty, later rented to a parishioner.
16 June 1935 1940
125th Anniversary celebrated. Bethany census, 706 persons.
1950
Bethany census, 1,318 persons.
1952
Church had 45 voting members.
1954
72 voting members.
1954
Marguerite Henry gave processional cross.
1955
Wells Organization engaged for fund raising.
1955
Church had 161 communicants.
1956
Old organ from Christ Church, Sandy Hook, Connecti- cut, purchased for $200.
1957
Church had 76 voting members.
1957
Church restored under the supervision of the late Henry Schraub Kelly, architect, of New Haven, at the cost of $7,816.54.
1957
Organ installed by members of the parish.
1957-1959
Church sponsors a refugee Hungarian family, the Laszlo Bodos.
1957
Full time minister.
1957
Rectory restored at the cost of $22,497.46.
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1958 1959
Rectory re-used by minister.
Shrubbery for Church and Rectory given by Mrs.
Howard Bliss in memory of her husband.
Church becomes full self-sustaining parish.
1959
Bethany census, 2,245 persons.
1960
Church exterior repainted by men of the parish.
1960
Church had 133 voting members.
1960
A sign, standing in front of the Church, carved, painted and presented by Theodore Sizer.
17 September 1960
150th Anniversary Celebration.
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1960
List of Ministers
CHRIST CHURCH, BETHANY, CONN.
SOME of the following were resident, others came from nearby churches and had supervisory powers and still others were unordained divinity students. (The church has been a mission, an aided parish and a parish.) It would not be possible to compile an accurate list of lay readers, though many names appear in the records. Most of the dates (which differ slightly from previous listings) can be verified from the parish records.
Rev. Bela Hubbard of Trinity Church,
New Haven, missionary
1770-1807
Rev. Isaac Jones
1809-18II
Rev. Edward Blakesley ?
Rev. Ambrose Todd, Senior ?
Rev. Reuben Ives
Rev. Alexander V. Griswold ?
Rev. William A. Curtis
1813
Rev. Asa Cornwall
1813-1815
Rev. William J. Bulkley
1815-1816
Rev. Chauncey Prindle .
1819-1825
Rev. Joseph T. Clark
1825-1830
Rev. William A. Curtis
1830-1832
Rev. Thomas J. Davis
1833
Rev. Oliver Hopson
1833-1835
Rev. John D. Smith
1835-1836
Rev. John H. Rouse
1836-1840
Rev. Isaac Jones
1840-1842
Rev. Frederick Bird Woodward
1842-1846
Rev. Dexter Potter
1846-1848
Rev. Harry Zell
1848-1853
Rev. John M. Guion
1853-1855 1855
Rev. Charles J. Todd
1855-1856
Rev. James Adams
1858
Rev. Frederick Bird Woodward
1858-1863
Rev. Harry S. Attwater 1863-1868
Rev. Martin Moody
1873-1875
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Rev. Henry Townsend
Rev. Clarence W. Colton, Rector Rev. Lewis Foster Morris, Rector
Rev. Walter D. Humphrey, Rector Rev. W. B. Allen
1876-1880 1882-1887 1888-1890 1890
Rev. Edmund C. Bennett, Rector
1891-1894
Rev. Josephus Tragitt, Rector 1894-1897
Rev. Lewis Foster Morris, Rector
1897-1906
Rev. Dr. Archibald MacDougall, Rector
1907-1913
Rev. Willett H. Mills, Minister in charge 1915-1916
Rev. Arthur H. Kinney, Minister in charge
1918-1923
Rev. Archibald Filby Stebbing, Minister in charge
1924-1932
(ordained deacon Dec. 1, 1924-ordained priest the day before his death)
Rev. Leonard Todd 1932
Rev. Harold J. Edwards, Priest in charge (while Rector of Trinity, Seymour)
1932-1945
Rev. Winfred Bernard Langhorst, Priest in charge (while Rector of St. Michael's, Naugatuck)
1945-1952
Mr. Robert K. Thomas (Berkeley Divinity School Stu- dent) 1946
Mr. John Mangrum (same)
1947-1949
Mr. Donald H. Marsh (same)
1950-1951
Mr. Wendell Hainlin (same)
1951
Rev. Donald W. Greene (Diocesan missionary), Priest in charge
1952-1955
Rev. Richard Sherman Beattie, Vicar Orange-Bethany
1952-1953
Mr. Bardwell Smith (Yale Divinity School Student)
Rev. John C. Hurd, Priest in charge 1953
1956-1957 1957-
Rev. William Stanly Brison, Rector
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Sources
Parish Record Books, 1799 to 1960, in seven volumes, the first two of which are deposited in the State Library. Photostatic copies of these and the other five unphotostated volumes are in the Rectory.
Miscellaneous papers, bills, receipts, pew plans, etc. in the Rectory. Diocesan Journals
Letters of Bela Hubbard and other records in the hands of the Archivist, Diocese of Connecticut, Hartford.
E. Edwards Beardsley, The History of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, New York, 1865, vol. II, pp. 56, 58, 59, 153.
John L. Rockey, History of New Haven County, Connecticut, New York, 1892, vol. II, pp. 318-320.
Rev. L. F. Morris, "Christ Church, Bethany," 372 column article in the Seymour Record for 21 February 1901.
Two volumes of newspaper clippings, 1901-1913 owned by Harland Tuttle, Bethany.
One volume of clippings, early 1900's, Clark Memorial Library, Bethany. Joseph Hooper, The Records of Convocation, 1790-1848, New Haven, 1904.
Mrs. Eliza J. Lines, Bethany and its Hills, New Haven, 1905, pp. 4-6. W. C. Sharpe, Bethany Sketches and Records, Seymour, 1908, pp. 25-32. (unsigned) "Country Church a Century Old," Seymour Record, ? Septem- ber 1910.
(unsigned) "Centennial of Christ Church," Seymour Record, 28 Septem- ber 1910.
Samuel G. Davidson, "Historical Address," Seymour Record, 28 Septem- ber 1910.
Treat Baldwin Johnson (editor), Bethany's First Century, 1832-1932, Bethany, 1932, typescript copy in the Clark Memorial Library, Bethany.
Origen Storrs Seymour, The Beginnings of the Episcopal Church in Con- necticut, Tercentenary Commission, New Haven, 1934.
Rev. William A. Beardsley, D.D., sermon delivered Sunday, 16 June 1935 on the occasion of the 125th Anniversary of the Consecration of Christ Church, Bethany, Conn., 17 typescript pages in the Rectory.
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Inventory of Church Archives: Connecticut, "109. Christ Church, 1800, main road, Bethany, New Haven County," mimeographed, 1940. J. Frederick Kelly, Early Connecticut Meetinghouses, New York, 1948, vol. I, pp. 21-25.
The League of Women Voters of Bethany, Bethany is your Town, 1954, 27 mimeographed pages.
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The Occupation of Bethany.
CLARENCE W. MENDELL
1937186
The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold, His cohorts all gleaming with purple and gold, And I heard him remark as he passed out of sight: Merry Christmas to all and to all a good-night.
Listen, my children, and you shall hear Of doings solemn and sometimes queer, Of a trek from New Haven to bring the light To Bethany, plunged in darkest night.
Twas seventeen hundred and eighty-five And not one man is now alive To question the tale I have to tell; So hearken ye all and mark me well.
Some people think that the world's a mess These modern days, and I must confess That, what with Lumumba and Castro, say, And Khrushchev, of course, and Chou En-lai,
With hydrogen rockets and atom bombs And satellites buzzing their inter-coms, There's trouble enough without racial planks . And Nixon and Kennedy's verbal pranks.
But I ask you now to turn your gaze On the seventeen eighties. Those were the days When Catherine of Russia moved to the west And swallowed Poland-but couldn't digest,
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When Turkey bowed to Russia's might And France lost Canada over night, When Britain bitterly signed away Her rebellious cousins of yesterday.
To make the confusion more confounded Prussia and Austria wildly pounded Each other's heads with every device Known to Papal and Protestant vice.
While across the Rhine the gay duet- Louis sixteenth and Marie Antoinette- Were playing the game that set off the mine Of the French Revolution of eighty-nine.
So it wasn't a world of peace profound. But Bethany, Conn. could hear no sound Of Europe's uproar : radio, phone And television were all unknown.
Ethan Allen and Washington Had gone back home and the war was done And Bethany basked in her innocence With never a rumpus of consequence.
But Ezra Stiles who kept the door Of Yale, some twenty years before, Locked against Unitarians And worldly Episcopalians
Wrote to a friend: The time is right To don the armor of Truth and fight The knavish Anglican reprobate Who would join together Church and State.
What Ezra did we may never know But he roused up Trinity Parish so That we find them presently riding down To establish an outpost in Bethany Town.
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In August, seventeen eighty-five Bela Hubbard who made the drive Wrote in his diary: "Opened to-day An Episcopal church out Woodbridge way
In Bethany township. As I could see, More cows than people there seemed to be. But Ezra Stiles had better look out: Those folks aren't people to push about.
I preached a sermon and gave the name Christ Church to this group of humble fame But sturdy promise. As omen fair, I baptized seven small infants there."
He gives no names but I'll bet my wad One was a Lounsbury, one a Todd, Another a Tuttle, one Nettleton And-well with that my guessing's done.
Things don't move fast in Bethany Town. It takes five years to get ideas down, Ten more to digest and another decade To carry them out with the bills all paid.
So it was with Bela's new minute men. They took their time to decide and then In eighteen ten their church was done, Built and paid for and ready to run.
To-day when the scrapping is over and done It may be clear that it was no fun To be a Churchman in those old days When Puritan bigotry burned ablaze.
And Episcopalians had to take Enough name calling to make them quake: Tory and Papist and many a term To raise their hackles and make them squirm.
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Now, Theodore Sizer has told you well How those Bethany troops of the Lord fought Hell And kept the faith that Bela extolled For a hundred and fifty years all told.
It makes us proud to think of the men And women of Bethany working then To hold the sector. But don't forget We've builded a bit and we're building yet.
The fight for the Rectory drew no blood But look what we've got-and the lawn's no dud. The paint on the church-and a bit on the barns --- May turn for our children to "Daddy's yarns."
So, from Bela to Bill it's all one tale: Holding the beach-head in calm and gale. And now we're ready to honor our dead, Push through to the heights that beckon ahead.
It's a tale to be proud of. None can say That Bela or Bethany faded away, And Ezra Stiles will turn in his grave When Bill and the Parish House ride the wave.
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