USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Waterbury > The churches of Mattatuck : a record of bi-centennial celebration at Waterbury, Connecticut, Novermber 4th and 5th, 1891 > Part 16
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tan conscience,-though it has made me a great deal of trouble; but I thank him for that. I thank God for the inheritance from my father, whom I remember rising often in the early twilight and joining with a few of the neighbors in praying for the coming of God's kingdom. I remember waking often and hearing his voice leading in prayer. I thank God for the solemn influences of my mother; how prayerful she was none but her children knew. I sometimes wonder,-if it had not been for the influence of one who was buried in 1861 by the pastor who spoke last this afternoon, one whose words never fell in sharp condemnation on any body, whose letters, written in fine writing, I cher- ish to-day as more precious than rubies,-I some- times wonder whether the real expansiveness and gentleness of the gospel would ever have come into my life but for her. Some of you will remember her, and I desire, now and here, to acknowledge my debt to that sister, and to say of her life that it was not local or provincial, despite her narrow sur- roundings, but that she had the transparency of heaven, she had the depth of heaven, she had the arching tenderness of heaven. From her I learned, as I never could have learned from any one else, that which does not enter into the life of most of us and certainly has not entered into mine,-that we are not to cherish resentment, no matter what the injury is; that it is the noble thing, the Christlike thing, to forgive whatever comes, and to cherish only love for the evil-doer,-a view of duty that was enforced by her life.
I remember Judge Bennet Bronson, as he used to rise over in that corner, in his blue cape-coat, look-
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ing out from under his shaggy eyebrows, standing during prayer, and giving the impression that he was the only one that knew how things should be done; and I thought it was so. He died when I was thirteen years old, and there was no one left after he went away to stand up for the old methods. I remember how Deacon Aaron Benedict used to come in at the door yonder, and take his muffler off (he was always afraid of sore throat), and walk slowly up the aisle; and after Judge Bronson died it seemed to me that the dignity and position of the church centred in him. There was another man -Mr. Greene Kendrick-who sat almost opposite. He was never a deacon, was not even a member of the church; but I remember at one time, when aid was asked for the relief of sufferers in Kansas, his quoting Scripture so correctly and in such amounts that I felt that nobody but a Scotch Cove- nanter or a New England Methodist or a Southern Presbyterian could do that. Then there was Mr. Edward Scovill, who was called Deacon, although I believe he never functionated. His ready, sonor- ous speech made the impression on me as a boy that he was not afraid of the minister,-which I was. One of my neighbors was John Stocking, afterwards a deacon, and I used to play with his boys. I remember that at one time, as I was rather given to getting up plans for amusement and he thought I was in the habit of leading his boys off, he said to me he didn't wish me to hatch up any more new projects. I thought the language rather vigorous and not altogether proper. I was with his boys one afternoon, when Mr. Under- wood, who was then conducting revival meetings
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in this place, came down the street. I had had some conversation with Mr. Underwood, and when I saw him coming, somehow I felt in awe of him, and crept into an ox-cart, and hid till he went past. I had not been doing anything very bad, not hatching up any very bad project; but I have learned since then, in my college life, that young men don't care to meet those of whom they stand in awe, especially if they don't know them very well. Then there was Zenas Cook, and there was Benjamin Andrews; and the Browns-the four brothers, Philo, William, Augustus and James ; and my uncles, Israel Holmes and Samuel J. Holmes. As I look back upon all that company now (and I might name many others), it seems to me that this church, if it did not have all the brass, certainly had all the cream of the com- munity.
But I want to speak a word of one or two men whom I have come to know in later times, who were not members of this church, but were descended from it.
There on the wall is a date away in 1739, when the church at Watertown went off from the old church. There was a boy born in 1739, named Mark Hopkins, who was a younger brother of Samuel. He was a son of Timothy, who was one of the "messengers " when the church up the river at Plymouth was organized, and who died in 1749. At that time the elder brother Samuel was settled in Housatunnuc (now Great Barrington), and he took this boy, ten years old, up there to be with him, and fitted him for college. That boy became one of the most distinguished lawyers of that
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period. He was a member of the convention which was held in Berkshire county, in the early summer of 1774, for the purpose of considering what should be done in regard to the mother country, and in which resolutions were passed that were taken up and imitated in various other counties of Massa- chusetts, and became the preliminary note of the War of Independence. He died afterwards of typhoid fever while in the service, at White Plains. He had two grandsons whom I knew well. One of them was the fifth president of Williams College, a man of majestic presence and majestic character, a man whose endurance might well bring back to our thought the endurance of the early Puritans. I could hardly help thinking, when my friend Zelie (who was one of the guard of honor at Dr. Hop- kins's funeral in 1887, being of the last class at col- lege that had the privilege of his instructions)-I could hardly help thinking, when he spoke of its being so difficult to recall those men, that he had seen one of them. For Dr. Hopkins represented, in every inch of his body and in every inch of his mind, the old Puritan conception.
Let me give you just two anecdotes of him; and first, to illustrate his endurance. After his election as president of the college, having made up his mind that some knowledge of anatomy and physi- ology was desirable, he purchased a manikin, imported for Dr. Armsby of the Albany Medical school, at the price of six or seven hundred dollars, and gave his own note for it, because the college was too poor to pay for it. He made up his mind that the manikin should pay for the manikin by lectures; so in December, 1842, he started down
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through Berkshire county for Stockbridge, where he was born, having packed that manikin in a box, and having laid that box in a sleigh, thus filling the sleigh so full that it was impossible for him to sit in it except with his feet hanging outside. He 'had decided to go down and, by giving lectures and illustrating them, earn money enough to pay for the manikin. That is the old Puritan, through and through.
Now, let me give you an idea of his sagacity as a teacher. He was very fond of dwelling on the dif- ferences between man and the lower animals. He said, one distinction was that the lower animals did not laugh. A student who was fond of asking questions raised his hand and said to him, "Dr. Hopkins, I have a little dog at home, and when I am there this little dog runs up to me and puts his paws on my knee, and looks up into my face, and really, I think he laughs." By that time the atten- tion of the class was somewhat absorbed in this dialogue, and Dr. Hopkins in a very benignant way said, "When a man laughs, he usually laughs at something; will you tell me what your dog was laughing at ?"
One more illustration of his endurance. When death came to him, it came in the silence of a June morning. He had been sitting up more or less through the night, trying to get breath. As the birds were singing all around him, he felt that there was a power going from him, and as he sat on the edge of the bed, erect and majestic, he said to his beloved wife, "Mary, this must be death." In a moment his head dropped and he was gone. It has reminded me of that striking passage in Browning,
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I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forebore, And bade me creep past.
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers,
The heroes of old,
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears Of pain, darkness and cold.
He had a brother who was equally distinguished, and I could tell you many stories of him. The most remarkable thing about him was that as a college professor he had the most intense religious interest in his pupils and showed it more conspicu- ously than any college professor I have ever known. These two men-the one an Old Testa- ment prophet, the other a reasoner on the law of God and on its universal presence, a reconciler of the Old Testament and the New, a man who could persuade into acceptance of Christ-these two men did more for the honor of religion in our colleges than any men of their day. In their presence no student could despise Christianity, nor could any atheist, however aggressive, refuse to acknowledge the development of character, as produced by a Christian faith, in these men. They were the grandsons of that Mark Hopkins who was born in 1739.
Now, my dear friends, there have gone out in that way, from this church, multitudes of whom we know little; but just as every atom in this uni- verse responds to every other atom, so every soul that rests its faith in Christ responds to every other soul. Electric thrills are passing to-day between the two worlds, the living and the dead, binding us all into closer relations with those who have been, and those who, though we have never heard of them, have received inspiration from this
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fountain, and have drunk of that water of which if a man drink he shall never die.
Nothing seems to me so glorious as the anniver- sary of a church. Standing here and recalling the multitude of little children-the thousands of little children-that have been baptized here "into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost," and many of us among them; remem- bering those who have here stood up and professed Christ, generally in youth, but sometimes in maturer life, and occasionally in old age on the verge of death; remembering those who in their sick rooms have illustrated the dignity of patience and endurance, the peaceable fruit of righteous- ness; remembering the multitude of those who have been buried with the prayer of faith, and in whose hearts and in the hearts of whose friends the hope of the resurrection was kindled by the ministers of this pulpit; recalling how in battle- fields, in high and lowly places, self-denials have been made for the Master, may we not feel our hearts kindled anew with the thought that Chris- tianity is not dead, that Christ is not dead; that he was dead, but is alive forevermore ?
I wish to express my great pleasure at being per- mitted to come back here and acknowledge my recognition of obligation to the ministry of this church, and to the influences that surrounded me as a boy. The old house where I was born has long since disappeared; the church in which I was married has given place to this edifice; but the springs of life have been touched in me here, as they have in every one of you, by these exercises during the last day or two. The follies, the
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anxieties, the hopes of my boyhood, have come back to me, and looking through the tangled web of life I have felt the goodness of God.
It is no small thing for you or me or any of us here, that we were identified with those sturdy pioneers who built up the business of this city. It is no evil fortune that we have been identified with those men of thrift, far sighted and shrewd, who stretched their vision out into the illimitable and up into the infinite. It is no small thing to be grateful to God for, that we have inherited the faith and the endurance and the thought of those men; we are better men, and have done our work better, for having entered into their labors. Let us see to it that the granite which they laid does not become in our structure pudding-stone. Let us remember that our problems are as difficult as theirs, and that we have need of the same sense of nearness to God which they had. Is it not enough
That more and more a providence Of love is understood, Making the springs of time and sense Sweet with eternal good;
That death seems but a covered way Which opens into light, Wherein no blinded child can stray Beyond the Father's sight;
That care and trial seem at last, Through memory's sunset air, Like mountain-ranges overpast, In purple distance fair;
That all the jarring notes of life Seem blending in a psalm, And all the angles of its strife Slow rounding into calm.
ADDENDA.
ADDENDA.
I.
In response to the circular sent out before the bi- centennial celebration, letters were received which might well be reproduced in full. A few extracts are all that can now be given.
The Rev. A. W. Hazen, D. D., pastor of the First church in Middletown, wrote as follows :
The church to which I minister was organized on the fourth of November, 1668. It was therefore twenty-three years of age when yours was formed. Still, we are glad to recognize you as born in the same century with us! Since institutions like these venerable churches took their rise so long ago, we must not claim that everything beneficent dates from the nine- teenth century.
I trust your honored church may receive from the coming festivities a fresh impulse which it shall feel in all the next hundred years. May the Holy Spirit abide in the church and its ministry, to make Christ a vivid reality therein, to the end of the ages.
Mr. J. H. Morrow wrote from Rialto, California:
Distance of course makes it impossible for us to be with the First church in the joyful celebration of November 4th and 5th. But I can assure you that upon the dates mentioned our minds and hearts will dwell pleasantly upon the events taking place in our old New England home, across the continent. We pray for the old First church of Waterbury a continuance into the coming centuries of the career of Christian usefulness it entered upon two hundred years ago.
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From a widely known pastor in Bath, Maine, whose pulpit he "supplied " for three months just before his settlement in Waterbury, Dr. Anderson received a letter full of reminiscence and affection, a part of which follows:
I tender my hearty thanks for a programme of the proposed exercises of the bi-centennial anniversary of the founding of your church, and regret that I am not able to be "there to see " and hear, and eat sandwiches. I will thank you again, if it should be practicable for you to send me a copy of your dis- course to be then delivered, and also other literature connected with the occasion.
I am now an " old chap " of more than seventy-two years, and in very feeble health Still, though profoundly unworthy, I have a good hope of heaven, and ten thousand daily mercies and comforts, and, as Mrs. Stowe once wrote to me about herself and husband, "an angel coming over the river on the banks of which I am camping, bringing once in a while a message of love."
I trust you are " strong in the Lord and in the power of his might." How wonderfully things hold out and live in Connec- ticut! I hope you will live to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of your pastorate, and then, as soon as God shall see best, gather up your feet and other traps, and march on to glory.
Yours affectionately, even to the end, JOHN O. FISKE.
The Rev. C. F. Bradley, formerly of Birming- ham, Conn., wrote as follows from Quincy, Illinois:
Your circular recalls to me many pleasant memories of the Naugatuck Valley Association, and makes me wish I could be present at your commemorative festival. I congratulate the old First church on having attained to the dignity of a venera- ble "mother in Israel." Now, if she carries a youthful brain on her shoulders, alert to the struggles and issues of the com- ing twentieth century, if her heart glows with the enthusiasm of humanity and human brotherhood, she will not have lived two hundred years in vain. I wish her another two centuries of
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hard work to make mankind nobler and happier,-by which time (let us hope) factory and shop and fireside will have become temples of religion.
The Rev. Isaac Jennings, of Elmira, N. Y., who was ordained to the ministry by the First church, in acknowledging the invitation sent to him, said:
I recall with vividness many, if not all of the persons whose names are attached to the letter which has found its way to my hands. To meet them and shake hands once more on this side would be a pleasure to me. I confess that some names which I might reasonably have expected to see on this list are not there. I infer that they have joined the silent majority. There are probably more on that roll than there are of those who will answer when the roll of the living is called; and if spirits take an interest in human affairs they will be interested spectators of your joyful occasion. We may hope that when time is done, and progress is no more measured by centennials, the companies and regiments which shall gather, bringing with them the banner of the old First church, will present a full muster, and raise a glorious cheer in honor of Him who gave his blood for the whole church.
One letter we give in full. It was written on the 2nd of November, by the venerable Israel Coe, a member, at the time, of the Second Congregational church. It was brief, and, notwithstanding its accurate and beautiful chirography, indicated increasing weakness. Mr. Coe died on the 18th of December, 1891, four days after his ninety-seventh birthday. He says :
was a member of the First Congregational church of I Waterbury thirteen years-from 1821 to 1834. The Rev. Mr. Crane was the pastor when I came to Waterbury. The Rev. Joel R. Arnold followed Mr. Crane.
As there was no provision for lighting the church, prayer meetings were held in the school-houses lighted by candles car- ried in for the occasion. I procured lamps, to be held on the
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pillars of the church (I think in 1829), and Deacon Brown put up the hooks. I sang in the choir.
I have lived almost half the time you are to celebrate. I was born in Goshen, the 14th of December, 1794.
What I have written is of little importance. If I can furnish any other facts, it will afford me pleasure.
With much esteem, truly yours, ISRAEL COE.
In such men as Israel Coe, and Tertius D. Potter of Thomaston (whose death, since the bi-centennial celebration, is referred to on page 164), the divine word spoken through the psalmist is illustrated, to-day no less than in the days of old :
With long life will I satisfy him, And show him my salvation.
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II.
In a foot-note on page 7 of this volume a "fuller statement " is promised concerning the disinter- ment of the remains of the early Waterbury pas- tors, in connection with the abandonment of the Grand street burying ground. This promise may be fulfilled, in part at least, by republishing here an article on "The Grave of John Southmayd," published in the " Waterbury American " of April 25th, 1891, the occasion of which was a statement, somewhat carelessly worded, that had appeared in one of the local papers in reference to the disinter- ment of John Southmayd's remains. The article is reproduced as written, except that a paragraph giving the main dates in Mr. Southmayd's life is omitted.
THE GRAVE OF JOHN SOUTHMAYD.
Among the numerous gravestones of the Grand street bury- ing ground there are a few that bear names which must always hold a conspicuous place in the history of the town. The most noteworthy of all are the stones which mark the graves of the Rev. John Southmayd, the second pastor of the town, the Rev. Mark Leavenworth, the third pastor, and Thomas Judd, the first deacon. So closely related were these men to the early life of this community and especially of the old First church, that as soon as the abandonment of the Grand street cemetery was seriously proposed I formed the purpose of having these gravestones transferred to some appropriate place in the pres- ent yard of the First church. I had consulted with some of the descendants of these men in regard to the matter, and it was agreed that no disposition of these visible memorials of
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them could be more appropriate than that which I proposed. Partly with a view to this transfer, the headstone marking the grave of the Rev. John Southmayd had already been removed, and a duplicate copy of it was being made at the expense of one of his descendants.
What was done yesterday at the burying ground, under my supervision, was in futher development of the original pur- pose. When I found that the gravestones were being buried out of sight, and that, notwithstanding the facilities for subse- quent identification furnished by Mr. S. M. Judd's map, the graves of the notable men of the town, as well as those of the obscure, must practically disappear forever, the question arose in my mind whether, after the lapse of one hundred and thirty- six years, anything might possibly remain of the mortal part of the Rev. John Southmayd. It seemed to me that if there was anything to be removed, there could be no better time than the present for preserving and transferring it. Accordingly, with the authority of the committee in charge, and in the pres- ence of Mayor Baldwin and myself and one or two others, the grave was reverently opened. No trace of a coffin was discov- ered, but the cranium and the large bones of the skeleton were found in a good state of preservation, and also numerous small bones. These were carefully placed in a new box and con- veyed to the parsonage on Leavenworth street, where they will be cared for until the time of the bi-centennial celebration of the organization of the First church, next autumn.
I should infer from the bones exhumed yesterday that Mr. Southmayd was a large man with a head of moderate size. The forehead was not high, and the head was unusually long from front to rear.
But whatever his physical frame and his external appearance may have been, he was certainly a man of note in the commu- nity, a fine representative of the scholarship of the time amidst the plain and hard-working people of early Waterbury, and a fountain of good influence through many years.
Among the few manuscript relics pertaining to our earlier history as a town, one of the most interesting is a dilapidated volume, at present in my possession, containing Mr. South- mayd's notes of sermons heard by him while a student at Har- vard College.
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It seems to me very desirable that the remains of this emi- nent and excellent man-"relics" of one of our Protestant saints-and the headstone which has marked his grave for so long a period, should for the future occupy some fitting position in the church yard of the church of which he was for thirty- seven years the minister.
Waterbury, April 25th, 1891.
JOSEPH ANDERSON.
A careful examination of several of the skeletons exhumed at the Grand street burying ground was made by Walter H. Holmes, M. D., of Waterbury, who reported the result of his investigations and comparisons in an article entitled " The Condition of Bodies Long Buried," which was published in " The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, " of July 23d, 1891. The account of the condition of Mr. Southmayd's remains is illustrated by engravings in which the cranium of the Waterbury pastor is placed alongside of that of a supposed "Mound Builder" of the Mississippi valley. Dr. Holmes's description-omitting what is too technical for the " general reader "-is as follows:
Another skeleton was that of a minister, eighty years of age, who had been buried for one hundred and thirty-six years, and who is said to have been the principal man in the town dur- ing his life. The skull and many of the long bones, especial- ly the femora and humeri and many of the vertebrae, were in most excellent preservation. The skull was perfect, even the delicate turbinated bones and thin walls of the orbits being whole. The skull is a remarkable one, and is shown [in the engravings] from two points of view,-the skull of a " Mound Builder " from the west being shown by its side for the sake of the contrast. It will be seen at once that the " Mound Builder's " is an extreme example of the brachycephalic type, and the white man's of the dolichocephalic. The extreme length backwards from the foramen magnum is remarkable, by far the greater part of the occipital bone being nearly horizontal, and taking a
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sharp turn upward nearly at right angles at the occipital protu- berance. The distance from the posterior edge of the foramen to the protuberance is two and a half inches; from the anterior edge to the alveolus of the incisor teeth is three and a half inches; so that the centre of the base of the skull is precisely at the anterior edge of the foramen.
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