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 3
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From the same letter we learn that the number of male members in the new organization was seven; but of this leading event in the history of
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the Waterbury church we have no further informa- tion that is very definite. One of these men was undoubtedly Isaac Bronson, who with Mr. Peck signed the application addressed to the General Court. "There can be but little doubt," says Dr. Henry Bronson, the historian of Waterbury,* "that John Stanley and Thomas Judd, senior, were also of the number." Other male church members in the settlement were Obadiah Richards, Abraham Andruss, John Hopkins (probably), Joseph Gaylord, Thomas Judd, Jr., Benjamin Barnes and Thomas Judd, son of William. All these, except Hopkins, had sat under the ministry of Samuel Hooker. The last named four had been admitted to church membership at Farmington within two years, two of them indeed within a few months. But it would have been in keeping with the method adopted in New Haven and elsewhere if these twelve men had selected seven of their own number as specially well fitted to carry spiritual burdens, and had made them the "seven pillars of the church." We are informed by Trumbull in his "History of Connecti- cut " that a church was organized by subscribing to a confession of faith and a covenant upon a day of fasting and prayer. "Neighboring elders and churches were present on these occasions, assisted in the public solemnities and gave their consent."} If the organization of the Waterbury church took place on the 26th of August, it must have been on a Sunday ; but provision must somehow have been made for the attendance of delegates from neigh-
*"The History of Waterbury, Connecticut; the Original Township; with an Appendix of Biography, etc. By Henry Bronson, M. D. Waterbury, 1858."
+ Vol. I, p. 285.
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boring churches-perhaps Farmington and Wood- bury and Derby and New Haven, and possibly Milford and Hartford-and the usual discourse must have been preached, and the initiatory acts solemnly gone through with. The minister's house, which Mr. Peck had already been occupying for some time, was probably large enough to accom- modate the worshippers who came together, without the slightest inconvenience.
Such was the origin of the First church in Water- bury, and such was the world in which it was established. The town as originally incorporated (in May, 1686) measured about seventeen miles from north to south and nine miles from east to west through its widest part. It embraced an area of one hundred and thirty-three square miles or eighty-five thousand acres. And since in those days parish and town were one and the same, these were the dimensions of the parish. It was a large piece of territory and suggested large opportuni- ties; but everything else was small. The population was scanty, the means of subsistence were limited and uncertain, and the life of the people, barring their outlook toward God and heaven, was as narrow and hard as we can well imagine. I wonder whether these men and women who had turned their backs upon the European world and had left it so far behind them, with its great evils and its great sorrows, and the younger ones who knew it only by occasional and brief report, troubled them- selves about what was going on across the sea, except when, now and then, it concerned their personal interests. I wonder whether they gave much thought even to colonial affairs, save when
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these were forced upon their attention by some threatening of Indian outbreak or by "the soldiers passing to and fro." "We live remotely," they said, in one of their appeals for aid, "in a corner of the wilderness, which in our affairs costs us much charge, pains and hardships." The clearing away of the forest, the breaking of the new soil, the pro- viding shelter for themselves and their cattle, must have engrossed time and effort and thought. That they should have done so much for the support of the ministry and for schools and in due time should have proceeded to erect a meeting-house for the community, is much to their credit, even if they failed in broad views of the world behind them or were lacking in novel philosophic theories.
The theories, however, and the larger life came all in good time; for the germs and principles of true growth were in these men. It was a very vital thing, this Anglo-Saxon stock that had been trans- planted so strangely to a new world, and it was sure to become great and mighty.
Even if I had referred only in the briefest way to the birthday which we are celebrating, I should still have had but scant space in which to narrate the story of two hundred years. I cannot paint a picture, I can only sketch an outline. Details give a certain kind of interest, but on a small canvas there is not room for details, and we must aim at a general effect. It will perhaps help us to see things more clearly if we recognize certain large divisions in this period of two hundred years through which our church has lived, and fix our thought upon certain familiar lines of life and action. Let us remember, then, that there was a
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period of small beginnings, which was also a period of hardships and hopelessness; that this was followed by a period of improvement, in which plantation and church became thoroughly estab- lished. Then, about 1740, came the era of disin- tegration, when the old parish was divided into societies, and new centres of life were developed at points remote from the old centre of the town ; when ecclesiastical dissent also began to manifest itself and to demand legal recognition. Then came the Revolutionary period, the significance of which to the community and to the church can not be easily over-estimated, and following closely upon that, the period of religious decadence. Here in Waterbury the era of renewed prosperity in church life cannot be said to have begun until 1816, when the famous Dr. Asahel Nettleton preached here, with his well-known evangelistic fervor, for nearly a year .* We cannot say that it has continued unin_ terrupted through the seventy-five years that have since elapsed, but it has been great enough to place this latest era in contrast with all that preceded it. It has been an era not only of renewed prosperity in temporal and spiritual things, but an era of good feeling and mutual toleration, of missions and multiplied churches, an era of progress and hope.
In the early life of every old New England parish there are two concrete facts which stand forth con- spicuous, the minister and the meeting-house. They are as prominent in the history of the Water- bury church as elsewhere, and as well worth con-
* See " Memoir of the Life and Character of Rev. Asahel Nettleton, D. D. By Bennet Tyler, D. D. Hartford : 1844." The account of Nettleton's work in Waterbury is on pp. 92-94.
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sideration, if we would learn what the church signified in the early days and how the people lived and struggled.
I have already quoted an appeal made by Water- bury for state aid, in which it is said, "We live remotely in a corner of the wilderness." In this appeal, which prayed for assistance in erecting a meeting house, special hardships are spoken of : " The providence of God, and that in several ways, hath brought us low-by losses of the fruits of the earth, losses in our living stock, but especially by much sickness among us for the space of the last four years." The troubles here referred to were greater even than those to which new settlements are commonly exposed. In the same year in which this petition was presented-it was a few weeks after the organization of the church-the "great flood " had occurred, a disaster which devastated the settlement and came near destroying it alto- gether. But without this misfortune there would have been enough to discourage the inhabitants ; for it was a time of war, and many of the evils of war were familiar to them. From 1689 to 1713 there was war between England and France, except for about four years, and the colonies were necessarily involved in it. Crops were destroyed by hostile savages, cattle were driven away, dwellings were burned, men and women were murdered or carried captive ; so that for a series of years the settlements were kept in a state of alarm. During this whole period Waterbury was a frontier town, and espe- cially exposed to depredations. It does not appear that it was actually invaded except in one instance, but it was impossible to avoid anxiety, and the
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daily life of this peace-loving people was shaped with reference to the perils of war.
The gloom was increased by a movement which set in as early as 1686; I mean the emigration of some of the first settlers to more fertile and pros- perous parts of the country. One by one the old proprietors withdrew, until eleven of them had left the settlement. Ten of the proprietors had died, and only fifteen of the original thirty-six remained. The young men were naturally reluctant to stay, and the tide of emigration could hardly be checked. To all the rest was added the "great sickness " which broke out in October, 1712, and prevailed for nearly a year, carrying off one-tenth of the popula- tion.
It was during such a period as this that the Waterbury church was organized, and in such dark days as these the devout men of the community decided to build a meeting-house. "The encour- agement which we do particularly petition for," said the selectmen, "is that our public rates may be given to us for the space of the four next ensuing years." The modest request was granted, and the meeting-house was begun. It was finished ere the end of 1694, and continued to accommodate the church and the town for thirty-five years, or until 1729. It stood near the east end of Centre square-a small building with doors on the east, west and south sides.
In this house, which Mr. Peck had labored to secure, he probably did not preach more than a year or two. He was " by a fit of the appoplex dis- enabled for the work of the ministry, and some years after (June 7th, 1699) left this world, in the
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seventy-seventh year of his age." Those must have been dark days for the invalid pastor, and the out- look must have been dark for his successor. Perhaps it was because the field was so unpromis- ing that John Southmayd, a graduate of Harvard, young and ambitious, hesitated so long about settling in it. But he waited and worked, and the tide turned. In 1713 the misfortunes of the settle- ment reached their culmination. This year of the "great sickness " was the year of the restoration of peace between England and France, and the begin- ning of new life for the colonies. The population of Waterbury began now to increase, and with it the membership of the church. Some of those who had gone away returned; the young men were more inclined to remain (Mr. Southmayd was hardly twenty-four when he came to them), and new settlements were begun at points a little removed from the centre. The meeting-house was repaired and its seating capacity increased at an expense of fifteen pounds, and ere long it was voted that a new edifice must be built. The town had evidently entered the path of progress, and the church, so far as appears, kept pace with it. It had passed from dawn to daylight, and at the time Mr. Southmayd laid down his pastoral office (in 1739) it was enjoying a career of prosperity.
Ten years before this, after the usual prolonged struggle between the party of progress and the party of economy, it was decided that a new meet- ing house must be built. This second edifice was finished in 1731. It was fifty feet long and forty feet wide,* and if the dimensions seem insignificant
* Smaller by one hundred square feet than the present conference room of the First church.
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we must remember that the population of the entire town, scattered over its one hundred and thirty-three square miles, was not more than three hundred souls. This was the second of four church edifices which preceded the present one, and it had a longer life than either of the others. With occasional alterations and amendments it served the purposes of the town, and afterward of the First society, until near the end of the century. It stood, beneath storm and sunshine, through all the era of disintegration and dissent of which I have spoken, through the Revolutionary period, through the period of political reconstruction and religious decline, and was not superseded by anything better until 1796. It must have been some such edifice as this, surviving to a still later day, and forming the centre of a multitude of associations and memories, that prompted Emerson to write :
We love the venerable house Our fathers built to God; In heaven are kept their grateful vows, Their dust endears the sod.
Here holy thoughts a light have shed From many a radiant face, And prayers of tender hope have spread A perfume through the place.
From humble tenements around Came up the pensive train, And in the church a blessing found Which filled their homes again.
They live with God, their homes are dust, But here their children pray, And in this fleeting lifetime trust To find the narrow way.
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If we could look in upon one of those assemblies that gathered in that eighteenth century meeting house, any time between 1740 and 1790, how strange it would seem to us! How quaint the minister in his professional garb, looking down as a divine herald from the lofty desk! how sober and dignified the congregation, seated according to age and rank in the high backed square pews ! how motley the gathering of young people in the galleries, each betraying in his own way the inward conflict between the exuberance of youth and the fear of the swift-coming penalty. From Sabbath to Sabbath they assembled thus, and from year to year, listening reverently in the sanctuary and lunching solemnly in the "Sabba'-day house," while Mr. Southmayd, growing feeble, gave place to Mr. Leavenworth, and Mr. Leavenworth in his turn grew old in one of the longest pastorates on record.
At the time when the Rev. John Southmayd laid down his pastoral office-that is, in 1739-there was much that was promising in the condition of ecclesiastical affairs, and very little that was dis- couraging, either in Waterbury or in the colony at large. Ten years previously the town had been annexed to New Haven county, and now the Waterbury church was in close and advantageous alliance with the New Haven Association and formed one of the compact group of churches which constituted the "establishment" in Con- necticut. The group was more compact and more thoroughly organized than it otherwise would have been, because of the work accomplished through the adoption of the "Saybrook platform" in the
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commonwealth. It was in 1708 that the General Court, "being made sensible of the defects of discipline in the churches of this government," convened the famous synod by which the Saybrook platform was constructed-a platform including a confession of faith, heads of agreement and articles of discipline. The new constitution thus prepared marks the beginning of a new era in the history of the Connecticut churches. " A uniform standard of faith and action being thus agreed upon, a period of harmony and good feeling followed, such as had not been experienced for many years." The churches, and especially the ministers, were brought into closer union, and prepared for perils and conflicts and achievements of which they had little anticipation.
But underneath these tokens of prosperity cer- tain new tendencies were already at work, and these ere long produced results which to those who clung to the old order of things must have been a severe trial. The first of these-inevitably in- volved in the increase of population and the exten- sion of the settlement over a wider area-was a tendency to territorial division and to a disinte- gration of the original parish; the second-of vastly greater moment than any territorial changes -was the development of " dissent" and the forma- tion of new sects and churches within the limits and in the very strongholds of the old Congrega- tionalism. It would be interesting to follow out both of these movements. The first will be so fully illustrated in the several histories of our "daughter churches" that I need not dwell upon it; but I must touch, however briefly, upon the history of dissent in the old Puritan town,
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For seventy years the only form of church gov- ernment known in the colony of Connecticut was the Congregational. The Congregational churches constituted in fact, if not in theory, an "establish- ment," and the prejudice of the people against other forms is illustrated by an incident mentioned in Winthrop's journal, or rather, by Governor Win- throp's interpretation of it. In his son's room, he says, there was a volume containing the Greek Testament, Psalms and Common Prayer, and he solemnly avers that the "mice," having access to the volume, "ate every leaf of the Common Prayer, but touched not the other parts of the book."* In various places, however, there were
persons of good repute who had been educated in the Church of England, and who had little sympa- thy with the rigid doctrines and discipline of the New England churches. In Stratford there were a good many such, and the Rev. Timothy Cutler of that place must have come under their influence, for not long after his appointment as rector of Yale college he embraced Episcopacy, to the dismay of the college corporation and various other friends. Mr. Cutler and several others, including the Rev. Samuel Johnson of West Haven, visited England to receive Episcopal ordination, and Mr. Johnson in the course of time returned to America, and be- came president of Columbia college. Among the inhabitants of West Haven when Mr. Johnson preached there as a Congregationalist, was a per- son named James Brown. Whether he had come under Episcopal influence through Mr. Johnson, I
* Quoted by C. W. Elliott in "The New England History," Vol. I. p. 414.
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can not say; but not long after his removal to Wa- terbury, which was in 1722, he was an Episcopalian, and appears to have been the first of that persua- sion in the town. In 1737 there was about half a dozen Episcopalian families in Waterbury, and in that year divine service was performed here for the first time according to the rites of the Church of England. It was the small beginning from which large results were to flow.
The movement received aid from an unexpected quarter. In 1740 there came to pass in New Eng- land the "great awakening," or, in other words, a remarkable revival of evangelical religion, under the influence of Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards and other prominent men of the time. Whitefield landed in Boston that year, and at once compelled the attention of the multitudes. He preached to crowds numbering thousands, not only in the meeting-houses, but upon the common. A great excitement followed, and it spread through the colonies. Much good no doubt resulted, and also much evil. For the revival was everywhere accom- panied with errors and extravagances. The "dis- position to follow not truth nor reason, nor any rule of conduct but inward impulses," manifested itself in all quarters ; a class of itinerating minis- ters appeared, who swept across the country, spreading calumny and contention as they went ; indeed, excesses of all kinds became common.
The people of the colonies, judged by their atti- tude toward the new movement, were divided into three classes : Those who accepted it with all its extravagances as a work of God; those who acknowledged God's hand in it, but protested
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against the excesses; and those who looked with no favor upon the new measures, but condemned them as evil and only evil. In this last class were some, of course, who remained in their Congrega- tionalism ; but many found relief for their thought and feeling by abandoning the church of their fathers and becoming Episcopalians. All this was illustrated in Waterbury, no less than elsewhere. The old society was shaken and almost rent in pieces, and the Episcopal parish profited by the confusion and division ; for many, annoyed and disgusted at what they saw, became "churchmen." This was about the condition of things when Mr. Mark Leavenworth, the successor of the Rev. John Southmayd, appeared upon the field of action.
Mr. Leavenworth's ministry is conspicuous not only in the history of the Waterbury church, but in the ecclesiastical history of Connecticut, because of its long duration. It began in 1740 and continued
until 1797. Within the limits of this pastorate, therefore, took place some of the greatest and most critical events of our national life. Chief among these was, of course, the war of the Revolution. I need hardly refer to the events of the Revolution, or the causes that led to it; they are familiar to you and your children. I need only remind you that after an agitation of ten years the Continental Congress in 1774 decreed a general boycott (as we should call it now), a system of non-intercourse with the mother country, and that this plan having been promptly adopted by the House of Represent- atives of Connecticut, the matter came quickly before the towns for action. In Waterbury, action was taken on the 17th of November in the same
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year, and the result showed that a large majority of the people were advocates of colonial rights and ready to suffer for their vindication. The position then assumed was not receded from. The conflict came on, slowly but surely, and Waterbury had her full share in it. "Few of us," it has been said, " have any adequate conception of the disturbed condition of our country in those dark and perilous days," and there was distress here as well as else- where.
But the actual condition of things cannot be appreciated except as we take into account the extent to which the ecclesiastical element entered into the case. There were strong reasons why the Church of England men should sympathize with the mother country. These reasons were in many cases effective, and "churchmen" and patriots found themselves pitted against each other in every community in which dissent had secured a footing. It was certainly so in Waterbury. The patriots early took a decisive stand (as we have seen) against the designs of the mother country, and an equally decided stand against their Tory neigh- bors, and the result was a specially bitter antago- nism between the two churches. It would be inter- esting to show the bearings of the war upon the fortunes of the churches and of their respective pastors, Mr. Leavenworth and the Rev. James Scovill; but I cannot delay, even in this important field. I only remind you that the success of the patriot cause involved not alone the results which the patriots directly aimed at, but others which they hardly dared to hope for. The way was prepared for our noble written constitution, and for
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such legislation as that of 1784, "for securing the rights of conscience "-a law which permitted a man to join any denomination of Christians he pleased, and led on to that beneficent separation of church and state which characterizes our national life.
The effect of the Revolution on the church and religion must, upon the whole, have been good; but its immediate consequences might almost be charac- terized as disastrous. That the Episcopal society should have suffered was a matter of course. But in the Congregational church, where one would suppose the success of the colonial cause ought to have involved an increase of prosperity, the actual result was a long and serious decline in religion. In the "Christian Spectator " for June, 1833, there is an elaborate article* entitled "The Religious Declension in New England during the Latter Half of the Last Century." As this article clearly shows, the declension was very real and very wide- spread, and Waterbury was involved in it. It came partly as a reaction from the violent measures and extreme views of the revival period, and partly as a result of political conditions-the influence of the times upon religion and the church. I cannot give you details, for the records are wanting; but you are justified in thinking of the days which fol- lowed the Revolutionary war as days of decadence and gloom.
But this, of course, was not to last. The era of renewed prosperity may be regarded as dating from the building of the third house of worship (that which afterward became "Gothic hall"), which
* Written. by the way, by the Rev. Luther Hart, formerly pastor of the church in Plymouth.
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