USA > Connecticut > Litchfield County > Warren > The Congregational church, Warren, Connecticut, l750-1956 > Part 10
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The school that the two boys attended was small and the conditions primitive, but of his teacher Dr. Sturtevant later wrote: "Ours was one of the best teachers I ever had. She was a product of the New England common school." Recog- nizing their character and ability, the principal of the school and the minister both urged the boys to prepare for college and the ministry, the school offering them free tuition. "So preposterous was the suggestion", wrote Dr. Sturtevant, "we expected and even wished our parents to reject this pro- position, but the suggestion was favored by both."
Six years passed and the boys were ready for college. A swarm of bees had made the seemingly impossible dream come true. While they were building their cabin, the family had stayed at the home of Deacon Salmon Sackett, an earlier migrant from Warren. Late in the summer, when a swarm of bees appeared, Mr. Sackett hived them and gave them to the boys with the remark that though they probably wouldn't live through the winter, perhaps they would furnish a bit of sweetening. The boys tended the bees carefully. Honey and beeswax were cash articles, and with the money they brought Julian and his brother began their college career.
In company with two other boys they bought an old horse and a disreputable one-seated wagon into which they put their few possessions and food for the journey. Then, bidding farewell to their parents and the younger children, they headed toward Connecticut. The method was "ride and tie". Two of the boys rode for three or four miles, hitched the horse to a tree, and walked on; the others came up, climbed into the wagon, passed the first pair, and again tied the horse and plodded on. In this m'anner they traversed the five hundred miles from Ohio to Connecticut. Excitement
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was high when they finally reached Warren and presented themselves at Uncle Joseph's tavern as strangers asking lodging; but when their identity was revealed, the entire town turned out to welcome them, and Uncle Joseph himself carried them on to Yale.
Earning their way as they went along, the brothers fin- ished their course, graduating in the class of 1826. Julian then entered the theological school, and three years later he was ordained at Woodbury.
Julian had joined "The Yale Band", which was dedicated to education and missionary work at home and abroad, and he was chosen to participate in one of the first projects of the Band, namely the establishment of a college in Jacksonville, Illinois, a town scarcely four years old, located in the heart of the prairie. On the way west he and his bride, Elizabeth Fayerweather of New Canaan, whom he had met while he was teaching in that town, stopped in Tallmadge where, after seven years' absence, a joyous family reunion took place.
Arriving in Jacksonville, he found himself a "Professor" in a college which consisted of a president-Dr. Edward Beecher, formerly pastor of Park Street Church in Boston- nine pupils, one unfinished building ,and almost infinitesimal financial resources. Dr. Sturtevant devoted himself loyally to the building up of the infant college and soon became its president, a position which he held until his resignation in 1882. He died four years later at the age of eighty-one and was succeeded by his cousin, Dr. Edward Tanner.
DEACON JOSEPH TANNER-Founder of a Church DR. EDWARD A. TANNER-College President
In his centennial sermon of 1876 Mr. Bassett wrote: "Fresh in the minds of our older inhabitants is the memory of the departure of one and another of their neighbors to New Connecticut. Quite an assembly is gathered at the house
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when the minister offers prayer for the departing friends, and all bid them God-speed on their way. One, two, or three covered wagons, drawn sometimes by horses, sometimes by oxen, are driven up before the door, and, when all is ready, their friends bid them good-by, never expecting to see them any more, as they start on their long journey of six weeks it may be."
Perhaps a few of his listeners remembered a May morn- ing sixty years before when Warren Sturtevant and his brother, with their families, had set out for the distant land of Ohio. More remembered a Monday morning nineteen years later (1835) when Lucy Sturtevant's brother, Deacon Joseph Tanner, with his wife, Orra Swift, a son Elisha and two daughters, a brother Cyrus and his friend Theodore Curtiss, had started for the more distant Illinois .* The pre- ceding day Mr. Talcott had closed his sermon with an earn- est exhortation to those who were about to leave the land of law and order never to depart from the ways of righteous- ness. During the intermission between services Deacon Tan- ner had taken an affectionate farewell of the Sunday School, which he had gathered and led for many years, disclaiming any desire for sympathy but urging those there assembled to prepare themselves for the next meeting, "which in all prob- ability with most of us will be at the bar of God". That was a Sunday which would not soon be forgotten.
Cheerful notes, however, mingled with the sad ones. Son Elisha greatly desired to take a young lady named Lucy Carter to Illinois with him, but her father was vigorously opposed. But Lucy, being a determined young woman, had, unknown to her father, contrived a plan-to be married at the parsonage the next morning before the party should set forth. When he heard the banns being read from the pulpit, Colonel Carter, accepting defeat, rose in his pew and issued an invitation to all concerned to assemble at his home when
*Preface to Baccalaureate and Other Addresses. Edward Allen Tanner, D.D .- Fleming H. Revell, 1892.
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the sun had set upon the Sabbath, to celebrate the wedding. It is easy to imagine the flurry of final preparations, the en- forced gaiety, the inevitable solemnity of that family party. Early Monday morning the travelers gathered at the par- sonage, together with a goodly company who had come to see them off, and Mr. Talcott again addressed them as they de- parted "in tears".
After a journey of several weeks the party arrived at "Apple Creek", later Waverly, a location that had been selected for them by President Sturtevant. The only sign of habitation was a deserted log cabin, around which stretched the seemingly limitless prairie. There each Sunday Deacon Tanner conducted Sunday School, and the following year a Congregational church was organized in the same log cabin, now improved and enlarged and christened "Log Range". The church consisted of eight members, all connected by blood or marriage; and until a pastor was obtained the little group, gradually increasing in size, met twice each Sunday-in the morning to listen to the reading of a sermon and in the eve- ning for a prayer meeting. When fifteen years later (1851) a church building was erected, the hearthstone from the log cabin on the Range became the cornerstone of the new build- ing. Truly, a worthy daughter of the Warren church!
Gradually, new settlers arrived. Not all of them, how- ever, were from New England, for southern slave owners were trying hard to take over the territory and two ways of life were struggling for supremacy. Indeed, it was the aware- ness of this danger and the feeling that it was their duty to help establish a Christian community there that had been the controlling motive for the migration of Deacon Tanner and his companions into the heart of this border state.
Two years after their arrival the youngest son, Edward, was born. It was the grief of his boyhood that he alone of the entire family had not been born in Warren. "The first enigma of life to perplex my childish mind", he wrote, "was the query, why did not Providence ordain that I should be
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born a little sooner, that my eyes should open to the light of Litchfield County, Conn., and not Morgan County, Ill. ? That mystery, with raven wing and dismal croak, overshadowed boyhood." When a little later in a Springfield school the boys hailed the new scholar with the inevitable question, "Where did you come from, youngster?" his instant reply was, "We came from Warren, Litchfield County, Connecticut", and his nickname from then on was "Yankee Tanner".
But the great grief of his life was that he had never known his father-for three years after reaching Illinois, when his youngest son was but six months old, Deacon Tanner was suddenly taken ill and died.
Even those inhabitants of the town who had little liking for the "Yankees" had come to know and respect him. His nephew, President Sturtevant, characterized him as "one of the noblest contributions that Connecticut ever made to the valley of the Mississippi, thoughtful, intelligent in the Chris- tion faith, tranquil in temper, and wholly consecrated to his country, to the church of Christ and to God."
Five years later Orra Swift Tanner followed her husband. Brother Elisha and his wife Lucy took the six-year-old Edward into their home and did all that they could do to take the place of his parents. Then Elisha and Lucy moved to Oregon and Edward, a lonely, homesick lad of thirteen, went to Jacksonville to live with his cousin, President Sturtevant, and enter the preparatory department of Illinois College.
After his graduation Edward spent a number of years teaching, some of the time in Oregon. Meanwhile he con- tinued his education including the study of theology, and secured a license to preach. Then came the invitation to be- come professor of Latin in his old college. He married Marion Brown, daughter of the well-loved physician who had come to Waverly from Goshen, Connecticut, and in 1883, upon the resignation of Dr. Sturtevant, he was elected president of the college, a position which he held until his death ten years later.
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"In the south wall of the college chapel", writes his bio- grapher, "there is embedded a marble slab, upon which, in plain raised letters, are the words, 'Edward Allen Tanner, D.D .; Student, Professor, President'. These words make over to Illinois College thirty-three of the fifty-four years of his life. They speak of a manhood chiseled fine by mastery of self and devotion to a cause."
CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY Evangelist and College President
In the western part of the town near the Kent line, on a spot originally described as "West of the Spruce Swamp" and reached now by a nearly impassable road, stands a pillar of field stone set upon a large flat rock. On the face of the pillar is a tablet bearing the following inscription :
Birthplace of Rev. Charles G. Finney Noted Evangelist President of Oberlin College 1851 - 1866 Born August 29, 1792 Died August 16, 1875
This memorial was erected in 1933 by representatives from Oberlin in connection with the college centennial.
Charles was next to the youngest of the eight children of Sylvester and Rebecca Rice Finney. We could wish that when, after his retirement from Oberlin, President Finney wrote his autobiography,* he had seen fit to include a larger amount of personal information about himself and his family ; but his purpose in writing was to describe his own religious experience, explain the theology which he had preached, and record the results that had followed his preaching. What-
*Memoirs of Rev. Charles G. Finney, written by himself-Fleming H. Revell, 1876.
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ever failed to relate itself to this theme he discarded as irre- levant.
It will be recalled that the Finneys were among the ear- liest settlers of Warren and that the first meeting of the Ecclesiastical Society was held at the home of John Finney, which was located "east of the Spruce Swamp". Also that Olive and Elizabeth Finney were among the six "females" who "owned the Covenant" when the church was gathered. It would seem, however, that in the following generations re- ligion had worn thin, at least in one branch of the Finney family.
The family left Warren when Charles was about two years old and settled in Oneida County, New York. Here the boy attended the common school until he was fifteen or six- teen, at which time he was considered competent to teach in similar schools. When he was about twenty, according to his account, he "returned to Connecticut" (apparently to Warren) and twice thereafter he "returned to New England and attended a high school for a season". Perhaps he lived with his Aunt Lucinda Starr, since we know that he and his cousin, Frederick Starr, were schoolmates.
Surely no one suspected that he would some day become a minister-least of all Charles himself. Neither one of his parents was a church member, and there had been no reli- gious influences in his home. He had lived for the most part in communities where there was no church, and where the only preachers were occasional itinerant ministers, often so crude and uneducated that they were objects of ridicule rather than of respect.
In Warren he found himself for the first time in "a pray- ing community". He obediently attended church, but the services left him unstirred. "The preaching", he wrote, "was by an aged clergyman, an excellent man, and greatly beloved and venerated by his people; but he read his sermons in a manner that left no impression whatever on my mind. He placed his manuscript in the middle of his Bible, and in-
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serted his fingers at the places where there were to be found the passages of Scripture to be quoted - - - - and would liber- ate one finger after another until the fingers of both hands were read out of their places. When his fingers were all read out, he was near the close of his sermon." Little did this callow youth, quick to ridicule the foibles of the venerable Peter Starr, realize that one day his own ministerial or pro- fessional attitudes and mannerisms would be subject to the criticisms of a younger generation !
Returning to Adams, New York, young Finney entered a law office to "read law". In his studies he often found refer- ences to the Bible, especially to the laws of Moses, and to satisfy his curiosity he bought a Bible. The more he read and thought, the more perplexed he became. At last, really troubled, he began to go to church but he found no help in the "hyper-Calvinism" preached by the highly orthodox Presby- terian minister in Adams, or in the prayer meetings at which long prayers were uttered with little apparent expectation of result. "You have prayed enough since I attended these meetings," he told one faithful attendant, "to have prayed the devil out of Adams if there is any virtue in your prayers" -but the devil obviously remained quite unperturbed.
In his Bible, on the other hand, he found the simple promise, "Ask and you shall receive", and his perplexity and distress increased. Finally one day he slunk away into the woods, fearful of being seen, and wrestled with his doubts as Jacob wrestled with the angel. There followed an experience as real and almost as dramatic as that of Paul on the road to Damascus, an experience that transformed his whole life. Such new-found faith and joy he could not keep to himself; he proclaimed it everywhere, and so convincingly that friends and acquaintances, amazed by the transformation, began to search their own consciences and convictions. He gave up the law, studied all available theological books but especially the Bible, entered with zest into the theological controversies that were so popular in his day, and finally applied for and
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received a license to preach. To us in our generation his theology seems harsh and uncompromising enough; but he staunchly opposed some of the sternest doctrines of Calvin- ism, cut fearlessly through much of the meaningless verbiage with which men had clothed the simple Gospel truths, and preached with a force and personal conviction which mightly impressed his hearers.
At first he preached in small, scattered communities, riding horseback from town to town and holding meetings in churches, schoolhouses, or barns, or in the open air; and wherever he went amazing results followed. As news of the revivals spread, he was invited to preach in the large churches of Philadelphia, Providence, and Boston. To accommodate the crowds in New York, the Broadway Tabernacle was built, a huge circular building with the pulpit in the center and rows of seats around it, and Mr. Finney became its first settled pastor. He made two trips to Great Britain and revivals spread through England and Scotland.
Then came a call to a different kind of service. In 1835 a theological seminary was opened in Oberlin, Ohio, and to it went a group of anti-slavery students from Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, indignant because the trustees at Lane had sternly forbidden the students even to discuss slav- ery issues. Mr. Finney, whose anti-slavery sentiments were as well known as his religious beliefs was invited to become professor of theology at the new institution. Sixteen years later he became its president.
A recent writer* has described him as "a big man with a big voice, a big mop of hair, big eyebrows and big deep set eyes". Of his anti-slavery methods this writer says, "Finney's theory of Abolition was to convert the slaveholders and leave the rest to them and God - - and his peaceful method of persuasion had an ultimately greater effect on history
*Yankees and God, by Chard Powers Smith, Hermitage House, New York, 1954.
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than did the violent and provocative vituperation of William Lloyd Garrison and his radicals."
Professor Finney believed wholeheartedly in the admis- sion of Negro students on the same basis as white students, but equal rights for women was another matter! When An- toinette Brown, (later Mrs. Blackwell) already a graduate of Oberlin College, applied for admission to his classes in theo- logy, he looked upon her with disapproval and sternly quoted Saint Paul regarding the position of women in the churches. "She thought she had never seen any one so cross looking", writes her biographer*, "his black brows drawn together in deep disapproval of the whole world." Though Dr. Finney allowed her to sit in class, he refused to call upon her or to consider her a registered student; and upon completion of her course, although by general consent she had proved herself superior to many of the men, he refused to grant her a license to preach. Clearly, freedom had its limitations !
For thirty years Dr. Finney remained at Oberlin as Pro- fessor and President. For fifteen of those years he acted also as pastor of the local Congregational Church. He con- tinued his evangelistic campaigns, not only in this country but also in England, and wherever he went revivals occurred. Moreover, Oberlin graduates went everywhere, especially through the rapidly developing West, spreading the gospel of personal religion and of freedom for the slaves.
Dr. Finney died in August, 1875, just before his eighty- third birthday. One may well stand before the simple pillar that marks his Warren birthplace and pay silent tribute to one of the great men of the nineteenth century.
*Lady in the Pulpit, by Laura Kerr, Woman's Press, New York, 1951.
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JOHN SMITH GRIFFIN Missionary to Oregon
Warren may justly claim John Smith Griffin as one of her sons although, according to Oregon records,* he was born in Castleton, Vermont, November 23, 1807. Whether the Griffin family had joined the Vermont migration and later returned to their homestead near the Kent line, we do not know; but it is certain that "Smith", as he was called, spent most of his youth in Warren and that he thought of that town as his boyhood home. A Warren resident remembered his returning as an old man to speak in the Sunday School; and in a letter to the Sunday School which he wrote in 1894 when he was over eighty-six, he said: "It is now about sixty- eight years since I was a member of John Taylor's Bible class in your Sunday School," and he gave Deacon Taylor credit for inspiring him with the determination to enter Christian work. He joined the Warren church in 1826 during Mr. Tal- cott's ministry.
Mrs. Abigail Canfield, from whose letter quotations were made in an earlier chapter, says that Smith Griffin "was the son of a poor but worthy Methodist family" and that he studied with her father, the Rev. Harley Goodwin, who en- couraged him in his purpose of going as a missionary to Oregon, though many thought that he was "almost beside himself" to enter upon so difficult an undertaking.
It is quite possible that the young man had lacked the opportunity of formal preparation for college and prepared himself by private study with Mr. Goodwin; at all events, he entered Oberlin, graduating in the class of 1838. He doubtless knew the Finney family, and he probably studied theology under Dr. Finney.
It is no wonder that prudent men advised against the mission to Oregon. It was a country of uncertain boundaries,
*Men of Champoeg, by Caroline C. Debbs, Metropolitan Press, Portland, Oregon, 1932.
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largely unexplored, into which few white men save certain hardy explorers and fur traders had penetrated. It has been estimated that at least 25,000 lives were lost in the various pioneer journeys across the continent. Nevertheless, in 1834 the Methodist Board, its conscience aroused by reports of the low estate of the Indians of the Northwest, had sent five men to Oregon, the first Protestant missionaries to cross the Rockies. Four years later (1838) Dr. Marcus Whitman and his bride Narcissa, with the Rev. Henry Spalding and his wife Eliza, were commissioned by the American Board for the same task.
Upon graduating from Oberlin, Smith Griffin was eager to follow the Whitmans, but the Board felt itself unable to send him. Impatient of delay, he appealed to The Litchfield County Congregational Association, which raised the neces- sary funds and sent him out as an independent missionary. He left for St. Louis in February, 1839. The Association was loath to send out an unmarried man, but this difficulty, too, he managed to overcome. Just as he was ready to leave St. Louis, he met Miss Desire Smith, a native of Boston, proposed to her the same day, and married her the following day. In company with another couple, Mr. and Mrs. Asahel Munger, they set out at once on their bridal trip, on horseback, the young ladies no doubt wearing their fashionably long skirts and modestly riding side-saddle.
It was a grueling journey, across endless stretches of prairie and difficult mountain passes; but early in September they reached the home of the Whitmans, near the present location of Walla Walla, Washington. The Whitmans and Spaldings, responsible to the American Board, were uncertain of the status to be accorded these independent missionaries; but it was decided that, for the winter at least, the Mungers should remain with the Whitmans and the Griffins would assist the Spaldings, who were working with another tribe of Indians in territory that is now Idaho.
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The Mungers proved to be something of a liability, and a few years later Asahel, in a frenzy of religious fanaticism, fastened himself over the flames of his forge, expecting God to perform a miracle, and died in very undramatic fashion as a result of his burns. The Griffins, on the other hand, became loyal and efficient inmates of the Spalding household, Desire assisting Mrs. Spalding in the difficult task of making a home in the pioneer cabin and caring for two young children, and John helping Mr. Spalding develop a farm and dairy and build a church, a sawmill, a gristmill, and other buildings necessary for a new settlement. They all worked loyally in the attempt to educate and Christianize the Indians and teach them the benefits of a settled life; but the Oregon Indians, with a few exceptions, proved difficult and unresponsive and often treach- erous.
In the spring of 1840 the Griffins attempted to establish an independent mission on the Snake River. They set out with several horses loaded with equipment and an Indian guide, but the guide abandoned them in the snow-covered mountains and it was only after almost incredible hardship and danger that finally, worn out and nearly starving, they arrived at a trading post of the Hudson Bay Company. There they were courteously received, but they abandoned all hope of establishing another mission.
The following year they took up a land claim in north- western Oregon, near Hillsboro, Mrs. Griffin being the first white woman in the Tualatin Valley. There two children were born to them, a son Homer and a daughter Sarah. A local historian gives the following picture *: "Soon other pioneers arrived and settled throughout the valley. The missionaries then began to ride about and visit these new colonists. Later the pioneers would meet at neighboring homes to hear the missionaries' message, and perhaps there would be a wedding to perform". In 1842 the first Congregational Church of Tua-
Early Church History of Tualatin Valley,
Compiled by David Hill Chapter, DAR. Printed in The Hillsboro Argus, Feb. 8, 1954.
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latin Plains was organized, Mr. Griffin becoming its first pastor.
After the tragic massacre of 1847, when Dr. and Mrs. Whitman and twelve other white people were murdered and sixty-two more taken captive, all mission work among the Indians was abandoned. Fearful for the fate of the Spaldings, Mr. Griffin drove an ox team across the mountains and brought the family safely back to his home in the valley.
Mr. Griffin was a man of many interests. After the Whitman massacre the first printing press of the West, known as the mission press, was transferred to him and for a time he edited and published a periodical known as The Oregon American and Evangelical Unionist. Keenly interested in the political development of the new country, he helped to organ- ize the provisional government. His name was mentioned for the legislative committee, but he was not elected on the ground that clergymen were not qualified "to enact laws adapted to a promiscous community". Probably agents of The Hudson Bay Company had something to do with his defeat.
Desire Griffin died in 1884, after forty-five years in Oregon. A few years after the Spaldings had given up the mission work, Mrs. Spalding died, and Desire's sister, Rachel Smith, came out from Boston to marry the widower. Mr. Griffin played the organ and sang and performed the marriage ceremony, while Mr. Spalding preached his own wedding sermon.
Mr. Griffin survived his wife by fifteen years, dying in Hillsboro, Oregon, at the age of ninty-two. He was remem- bered by a later inhabitant as "a wizened and stooped old man with thin, scraggly chin whiskers, who always wore a silk top hat and a Prince Albert coat,". But John Smith Griffin may well be honored by both East and West for his devotion and heroism. He carried the qualities of his New England herit- age across a continent and played no small part in establish-
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ing a new community and planting Congregationalism in the far Northwest.
Much more might be written of the men and women who went out from Warren, as they did from other New England towns, into all parts of the West, establishing Christian homes, building stable and self-respecting communities, planting schools and churches, developing the resources of this vast region. They left vacant places in the old home towns, places that could never be completely filled; but they carried with them into newer territory the ideals of freedom and integrity, of education and religion which they had inherited from their New England ancestors. Little did the pioneers who settled the Litchfield County wilderness conceive of the vast country that lay beyond; little did the small band of devoted people who laid the foundations of the Warren church realize how far its influence would extend. They could not foresee the daughter churches that would arise to minister to the needs of one community in Ohio and another in Illinois; they could not know of the hundreds of men and women who would go out from the Warren church to share with other New Englanders in the establishment of churches in all parts of the West. For them it was a venture of faith, a venture which the years have amply justified. A seed sown on a Warren hilltop two centuries ago has borne fruit the value of which only eternity can measure.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Records of the Warren Church and Society
Book No. 2, 1757-1850 Book No. 3, 1850-1859 Vol. 5, 1859-1931
Originals in the State Library
Photostat copies in charge of the church clerk Minutes of the Church and Society, 1931-1954
History of Litchfield County, Lewis, J. W. and Co., Philadel- phia, 1881.
Connecticut Historical Collections, Barber, John Warner, Durrie and Peck, New Haven, 1838.
History of Litchfield, Kilbourne, Payne Kenyon, 1859.
Settlement of Litchfield County, Tercentenary Commission of the State of Connecticut, 1935.
Early Connecticut Meetinghouses, Kelly, J. Frederick, Colum- bia Press, 1948.
Half-Century Sermon, Starr, Rev. Peter, preached in Warren, March 8, 1822.
Centennial Historical Discourse, Bassett, Rev. William Elliott, delivered on July 23, 1876.
Historical Address, Strong, Noble B., read at the Sesquicen- tennial, 1906.
History of the Warren Church, Strong, Agnes M., read at the Connecticut Tercentenary Celebration, Warren, July 7, 1935.
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