USA > Connecticut > Hartford County > The memorial history of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633-1884, Vol. I > Part 38
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1 Hubbard's " History of New England," p. 182.
2 Dr. Leonard Bacon, "Centennial Address, General Conference," pp. 152, 153.
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of sixty-one years, leaving behind him the memory of one of the best and greatest of men.
Upon the death of Mr. Hooker various endeavors were made for a successor in the vacated office. The Rev. Jonathan Mitchell was invited to the pastorate in June, 1649. With similar intent, at different periods later, the pulpit was supplied by Michael Wigglesworth occa- sionally in 1653 and 1654, by John Davis in 1655, and by John Cotton, son of the Boston minister, in 1659.
But the period covered by these years between Mr. Wigglesworth's and Mr. Cotton's services in Hartford is chiefly memorable for a quar- rel in the Church, led by Teacher Stone on the one side and by Elder William Goodwin on the other, and of which it seems probable that the candidacy of Michael Wigglesworth was the provoking occasion. Into the perplexing and prolonged details of this controversy it is impossible here to enter.1 It must suffice to say that after the first recognizable point of difference, in Mr. Stone's refusal to allow the Church to vote on Mr. Wigglesworth's " fitnes for office in ye church of Hartford," and Mr. Goodwin's opposition to this restraint as an infringement of the rights of the brotherhood, the subsequent progress of the quarrel was attended by such incidents as these : the indignant resignation of his office by Teacher Stone, yet his resumption of his functions as if he had not resigned ; the practical deposition from office of Ruling Elder Goodwin by the Church's choice of a " moderator;" the withdrawal of Mr. Goodwin and his party from the Church; successive ecclesiastical councils ; days of humiliation and prayer appointed by the Massachu- setts churches in the Hartford Church's behalf ; repeated blundering attempts of the General Court to interpose, resulting in aggravation rather than healing of the strife; the final review and "determina- tion " of the matter by a council at Boston in September and October, 1659; the acceptance of the "sentence" by both parties, and the re- moval of Elder Goodwin and most of his party to Hadley. The quar- rel brought up many interesting questions of polity, but was to be deplored as centring, after all, in the personal element implied in the opposition of two able and excellent but obstinate men.
About a year after the settlement of the long quarrel the Rev. John Whiting was ordained colleague with Mr. Stone. Mr. Whiting was born in England in 1635, but educated at Harvard, graduating in 1653. Three years subsequent to his establishment here, Mr. Stone the teacher died, July 20, 1663.
The dual idea of the New England ministry was still strong; and the Church, upon the old teacher's death, proceeded almost immediately to associate another man with Mr. Whiting. This was the Rev. Joseph Haynes, born about 1641, graduated at Harvard in 1658, and like Mr. Whiting, a son of one of Hartford's foremost citizens. This association of the two young Hartford townsmen in the ministry of the Church to which their fathers had belonged, and in which they themselves had been nurtured, seemed auspicious of peaceful times. Nevertheless, two years after the settlement of the younger man the two pastors were in open conflict, the Church was divided into parties; an
I See, for recently discovered papers in this controversy, the second volume of the Con- necticut Historical Society publications, pp. 51-125; and for a general account of the affair, the "History of the First Church in Hartford," pp. 146-175.
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ecclesiastical warfare was in lively progress, which in 1670 resulted in the division of the Hartford Church into two permanently sundered organizations.
This time, however, the controversy was not to any extent a per- sonal one, but one which to a degree agitated New England. It grew ont of divergent views of the two pastors of the Church, and of parties in the Church, respecting the proper scope of baptism and church- membership.1 Mr. Whiting the senior pastor, and the minority of the Church with him, held, at least at the outset of the controversy, to the doctrine of Hooker and Davenport, that only " visible saints " consti- tuted " fit matter " for church-fellowship, and that only the children of such were to be baptized. Mr. Haynes and the majority of the Church accepted the principles of the Ministerial Assembly Joseph ftaines. of 1657, and of the Synod of 1662, which introduced the practice of what came to be known as the half-way covenant system, allowing baptized persons, not professing experimental piety, to assent to a modified church covenant and to have their children baptized.
This view of the major part of the Church came to be the prevalent view throughout New England, and resulted in a practical separation of every church into two parts : one of experimental or full-communion members, the other of members in " a state of education," or half-way covenant members. The controversy as it progressed here in Hartford was complicated by differences of opinion about synodical authority and right of self-government. And it would appear that in the end this element of the controversy almost obliterated the other. But the result was a rupture in the Hartford Church, which was consummated by the constitution, on the 22d of February, 1670, of Mr. Whiting and thirty-one withdrawing members into the Second Church of Hartford, on a platform of original Congregationalism. This sound platform did not, however, avail to prevent the immediate adoption of the half-way covenant practice, which had become an irresistible tide.
The old Church, meanwhile, committed to the " large Congrega- tional " way and inelined to synodical supervision and clerical authority, floated on without much that was memorable in its experience until the death of its pastor, Mr. Haynes, May 24, 1679, at the age of thirty-eight years.
The Rev. Isaac Foster succeeded to the pastorate sometime in 1679 or 1680. Mr. Foster was born at Charlestown, Mass., probably in 1652. He graduated at Harvard College in 1671. On a voyage to Bil- boa he was captured by the Turks ; but being ransomed in 1673, he held a fellowship for some years in the college at Cambridge. An invitation to settle with the just then rather striet Congregational church at Wind- sor was made to him in 1679, but was declined by him. The death of Mr. Haynes at that juncture opened the way for overtures to Mr. Foster by the more " Presbyterially " inclined First Church of Hartford. But exactly when he was invited or when he came cannot be told; and his ministry was short. He died Aug. 21, 1682, in one of those epi-
1 The general questions in issue, and the local applications of them to the controversies in the Hartford community, are discussed in the "History of the First Church," pp. 180-211.
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demical sicknesses with which early Hartford was so often afflicted. Mr. Bradstreet, of New London, records in his journal, " He was a man of good Abylities. His death has made such a breach yt it will not easily be made up."
The young pastor was succeeded by the Rev. Timothy Woodbridge, who took not only his office but his widow, thus doubly displacing his memory from men. Timothy Woodbridge was born in England, and Timothy Wood Bridge baptized at Barford St. Martin's, in Wiltshire, on Jan. 13, 1656. His father, the Rev. John Woodbridge, had been ordained at Andover, Mass., Oct. 24, 1645, but returned to England. Coming again to America in 1663, young Timothy was brought with him, and was grad- uated at Harvard College in 1675. His earliest appearance at Hartford seems to have been about the middle of 1683, from which date he ministered regularly, but was not ordained pastor until Nov. 18, 1685. With Mr. Woodbridge's pastorate something like regular church and parish records first begin, previous church records having perished, and parish records in distinction from town records not having been needed previous to the separation of the two churches in 1670. Mr. Woodbridge was voted by the Society £100 a year, and had the use of the Church lands. He was now about thirty years old. The time of his entrance on the ministry was one of religious depression. The wars with the Indians had spread the vices of camp-life through the community. The half-way covenant was filling the churches with people sufficiently religious to claim baptism for their children, but not enough so to have or profess any experience of piety, or to come to the Lord's Supper.
Political disturbances added their influence to hinder religious pros- perity. The death of the profligate King Charles and the accession of James II. the same year Mr. Woodbridge was installed pastor, the arrival of Andros in Boston in 1686 and in Hartford in 1687, the ex- citement attending and following the hiding of the charter, the English revolution, the accession of William and Mary, and the declaration of war between England and France, were all unfavorable to the preva- lence of religious life or even of good order in the town and colony. The winter and spring of 1695-6, however, saw the community under unusual religious impression. Between the 23d of February and the 5th of April, 1696, one hundred and ninety-four persons, an equal num- ber of either sex, gave assent to the covenant. It is, however, a signi- ficant commentary on the imperfection, perhaps of the reviving itself, and certainly of the religious system under which it took place, that when those admitted to " full communion " as the result of this winter's awakening were gathered in, they were but twelve.
Among the events of Mr. Woodbridge's pastorate was the setting off of the East and West Hartford churches and societies. The sepa- ration of the East Hartford organization was accompanied by consider- able controversy, and the exact date of the organization of the Church is not ascertained ; but March 30, 1705, saw the ordination of the Rev. Samuel Woodbridge, a nephew of Timothy of the First Church, over the new church in that place. The West Hartford organization was set off with less difficulty in 1713.
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Mr. Woodbridge was one of the "ten principal ministers of the col- ony " nominated in 1700 as " trustees, or undertakers, . .. to found, erect, and govern a college." But in sympathy with Mr. Buckingham of the Second Church, who became a trustee in 1715, and in sympathy with Hartford County people generally, Mr. Woodbridge desired the permanent location of the college to be fixed at Wethersfield. And perhaps the most dramatic incident of Mr. Woodbridge's whole history may be found in that passage of it, when, having in various ways voted, remonstrated and labored against the location of the college at New Haven, he presided, on Sept. 18, 1718, at a rival commencement at Wethersfield, in defiance of the plain votes of the trustees and of the General Assembly fixing the college at the former place. The town of Hartford sympathized with its ministers in their rather irregular and excited procedures, and elected them the following year as repre- sentatives to the Assembly. Mr. Woodbridge prayed at the opening of the session on the 14th of May, but on the 18th his seat was challenged on account of his alleged charging the " Honourable the Governor and Council" in the college affair "with breach of the 6th and 8th com- mandments." Just how the matter resulted cannot be determined.
Mr. Woodbridge was active also in originating and maintaining the Consociational System established by the adoption of the Saybrook Platform in 1708. Among the Hartford County delegates to this synod were the pastor of the First Church, and John Haynes, one of its mem- bers, son of the former pastor. The system thus adopted continued the legally recognized one in the State till 1784, and remained the vol- untarily accepted method of the majority of the churches much longer, and of some to the present time. Of the local County Asso- ciation organized under the Saybrook system Mr. Woodbridge was gen- erally moderator until his death. That event occurred April 30, 1732, at the age of seventy-six years and six months, after serving the Church in a ministerial capacity forty-eight years and eight months, and being forty-six years and three months its installed pastor. Three hundred and sixteen persons were admitted to "full communion," and four hundred and seventy-eight " owned the covenant," in Mr. Woodbridge's ministry.
The Rev. Daniel Wadsworth succeeded to the vacated pastorate on Sept. 28, 1732. He was born at Farmington, Nov. 14, 1704, and gradu- ated at Yale College in 1726. The coming of a new pastor was laid hold of as the opportunity for agitating afresh two questions which had been to some extent mooted before. One was the question of a new meeting-house, the other of the meth- Daniel Wasforth . od of singing. The latter problem was first settled, though not without some struggle. The old pastor, Mr. Woodbridge, had wanted a reformation in the method of singing in his day, and had preached a singing-lecture at East Hartford in June, 1727, in favor of the " new way " of singing by " note " instead of by ear. But he died without witnessing the change. With the coming of Mr. Wadsworth, however, enthusiasm enough was kindled to induce the Society on the 20th of June, 1733, to take this cautious and tentative action : " Voted and agreed that after the expiration of three months, singing by Rule shall be admitted to be practised in the Congregation
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of this Society, and until their Annual Meeting in December next; and that then a Vote be Taken whether the Society will further proceed in that way or otherwise." Tried thus prudently for four months, the Society saw its way in December to vote "that singing by Rule be admitted to be practised in the Congregation of this Society," and Mr. Gilbert was empowered "to sett the psalm."
The meeting-house question was of more difficult solution. The old situation in Meeting-House Yard was by common consent dis- approved for the new structure, but agreement on a new one was a matter of eleven years' conflict. Two locations on the east side of the " great street," near where the Athenaeum now stands, given by Mrs. Abigail Woodbridge and accepted by the Society, were successively abandoned, and a location on the west side of the street, partly on the burying-ground, finally chosen. Work began on the new house June 20, 1737, and it was dedicated Dec. 30, 1739; the sermon by Mr. Wadsworth, from Haggai ii. 9, being printed. This house stood side- wise to the street, its steeple on the north end. It was sixty-six feet long and forty-six feet in width. There was a door at the south end, another on the east side, and another under the steeple, on the north. The pulpit was on the west side, and over it a sounding-board. Gal- leries were on the ends, and on the side unoccupied by the pulpit. And so at last the new edifice, which succeeded to the one which stood, as Mr. Wadsworth says, "99 years " in Meeting-House Yard, was finally entered.
This house was the scene of the Rev. George Whitefield's preaching when, on October 22, 1740, he passed through this place on his first New England pilgrimage. It was also the scene, about seventeen months later, of the trial of the Rev. James Davenport, of Southold, Long Island, for preaching contrary to a statute passed in May, 1742, by which any "foreigner or stranger that is not an inhabitant of this Colony " was made liable to arrest as a " vagrant," should he preach in any parish without the consent of the settled minister and a majority of the people. The trial was attended by much tumult, and resulted in Mr. Davenport's being conducted between " two files of musketiers " from the meeting-house to the Connecticut River, and put aboard a vessel for his home. This exciting episode was but an incident in the generally turmoiled condition of affairs which attended and followed the Whitefieldian pilgrimage. In the divisions of the time the Hlart- ford ministers and churches, as well as the Association to which they belonged, leaned strongly, and it may be thought too strongly, to the conservative side. But the community was at all events spared some of those ecclesiastical scandals which laccrated and dishonored religion in some parts of the colony, where freer run was given to the new meas- ures of the new men.
Mr. Wadsworth died Nov. 12, 1747, at forty-three years of age. The numbers admitted to the Church in his pastorate - seventy-five to the covenant and one hundred and three to full communion - do not appear large for the Great Awakening period ; but the proportion of one class to the other indicates a healthful state of the Church and a right view of things in its pastor.
Mr. Wadsworth was succeeded by the Rev. Edward Dorr. Mr. Dorr was born at Lyme, Nov. 2, 1722. He graduated at Yale College
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in 1742; was licensed to preach by the New Haven Association, May 29, 1744 ; ministered awhile at Kensington ; and was ordained pastor of the First Church of Hartford, April 27, 1748. Mr. Dorr's pastorate fell upon a dull time of New England religious history. The contro- versies of the preceding years, growing to some extent out of the Whitefieldian Edw. Dor. movement ; the separations from many Connecticut churches ; the restiveness of many under the Saybrook Platform, and the determination of others in the maintenance of the discipline es- tablished by that platform ; the distracting influence of the French War, and the absence, however accounted for, of those divine influences which at times triumph over all obstacles, - all combined to make this period of the colony's history one of monotony and discouragement. A larger and larger number of people were contenting them- selves with such merely formal assent to the gospel as carried with it the privilege of half- way church-membership, but im- plied no spiritual change. In the midst of this depressed con- dition of affairs Mr. Dorr exer- cised a laborious and faithful ministry of twenty-four years and five months. In that period fifty-five persons were admitted to full communion, and two hun- dred and seven owned the cov- enant. In 1756 the Society voted that " their committee in- form Mr. Dorr that this Society are desirous that Dr. Watts's THE CENTRE CHURCH. BUILT IN 1807. psalms may be sung in the con- gregation, at least half ye time." In 1767 the meeting-house was struck by lightning, and Sarah, daughter of John Lareum, killed ; where- upon the Society ordered a " rate" of £130 to repair damages and " to procure an Electrical Rod," said to be probably the first one in Hart- ford. It was in Mr. Dorr's day that the attempt to plant an Episcopal church in Hartford was first made. The endeavor began with preaching in this place, in 1762, by the Rev. Thomas Davies. Land was purchased and foundations partly laid. But the enterprise languished and was awhile abandoned, until in 1786, in the days of Mr. Dorr's successor, it was prosperously revived.
Mr. Dorr broke down with a kind of paralytic trouble some two years before his death, and finished his honorable though rather un- eventful course, Oct. 20, 1772, in the fiftieth year of his age. His funeral sermon was preached and published by his aged associate in the Hartford ministry, the Rev. Elnathan Whitman, of the Second Church.
The Rev. Nathan Strong, of Coventry, succeeded to the pastor- ate Jan. 5, 1774, having been invited thereto in June previously.
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Mr. Strong was born at Coventry, Oct. 16, 1748, and graduated at Yale College in 1769, serving as tutor in 1772-1773.
Mr. Strong entered on his pastoral labor at a trying period. There were only fifteen male members in full communion at the time, and divisions of sentiment on the political questions of the day distracted the community. The feeble confederacies this side of the water were just entering on the protracted struggle of the American Revolution. As the conflict progressed, a tide of infidelity set in under the influ- ence of French associations in the War for Independence, and religion became, to an extent un- known before or since in this land, a matter for gibe and contempt. Mr. Strong vigorously embraced the pa- triotie cause. He served awhile as chaplain to the troops. Especially in the later political discussions connected with the adoption of the Federal Constitution he published a series of about twenty articles in- tended to harmonize public opinion in the ratification of that instrument. Mr. Strong's earlier ministry was complicated by business transactions of a rather questionable and embarrass- ing character. In connec- tion with his brother-in-law, REV. NATHAN STRONG. Mr. Reuben Smith, he was engaged extensively in the distillery traffic, wherein he lost money, had his house attached, and was only by courtesy spared being lodged in jail for debt. But about 1794 a great change came over the character of Mr. Strong's ministry, and over the aspect of his congregation. Revivals began, which continued at intervals through 1798, 1800, 1808, 1813, 1815, and which transformed the whole aspect of the place. In the progress of these religious awakenings Dr. Strong published several volumes of sermons, one polemical treatise on the question of "Future Punish- ment," and, in connection with Deacon Joseph Steward of his own Church, and the Rev. Abel Flint of the Second Church, a volume known as the "Hartford Selection of Hymns." Dr. Strong was the principal founder of the Connecticut Missionary Society, and in its behalf origi- nated and edited the "Connecticut Evangelical Magazine." In 1807 the First Society entered its present house of worship, the dedicatory sermon being preached by Dr. Strong on the 3d of December. In 1814 the Church first enjoyed the use of a conference-room for social religious meetings, - a brick edifice located on Theatre (now Temple) Street.
Dr. Strong died, after an illustrious ministry, on the 25th of December, 1816. He was buried in the Old North burying-ground, the first of
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the Hartford pastors to be interred elsewhere than in the old ground behind the First Church building.
The Rev. Joel Hawes was Dr. Strong's successor. Mr. Hawes was born at Medway, Mass., Dec. 22, 1789. He graduated at Brown Uni- versity in 1813, and Andover Seminary in 1817. He was installed pastor of the First Church, March 4, 1818. The new pastorate, estab- lished just as the lines of controversy in the Unitarian conflict in Massachusetts Abbaues. were being sharply drawn, was marked, near its outset (in 1822), by a substitution for the brief formula, at once creed and covenant, hitherto in use in the admission of members to the Church, of a new, many-articled creed and elaborate covenant, which are still employed. Sabbath-school work began in Hartford in 1818, the year of Mr. Hawes's settlement. The year 1832 put the So- ciety into the possession of a new conference-room in place of the old one on Temple Street; and the years 1835 and 1852 saw various modifications of the internal structure of the meeting-house.
But the chief distinction of the pastorate of Dr. Hawes was the succession of revivals which powerfully pervaded the community and added to the membership of the First Church. Ten distinct periods of religious awakening occurred during Dr. Hawes's ministry, and ten hundred and seventy-nine persons in this period joined the Church by confession of faith. Dr. Hawes was a man of strong sense, devout earnestness, and cogent and persuasive address. His ministry was one of the most useful ever exercised in Connecticut. During its continu- ance the North Church, the Fourth Church, the Pearl Street Church, and the Asylum Hill Church were organized, taking from the First Church as constituents of the new churches a hundred and ninety-seven of the most active and energetic of Hartford Christians.
On Oct. 21, 1862, the Rev. Wolcott Calkins was installed associate pastor with Dr. Hawes, but was dismissed on the 6th of July, 1864. The withdrawal of Mr. Calkins was accompanied by the discharge of Dr. Hawes from all further responsibility for the Church, leaving him in the position of pastor emeritus, which position he held until his death, June 5, 1867.
The Rev. George H. Gould was installed pastor of the First Church Dec. 14, 1864, and dismissed Oct. 11, 1870.
The Rev. Elias H. Richardson followed, April 24, 1872. In De- cember, 1878, he removed to New Britain, where he was installed pastor, and where he died June 27, 1883.
The present pastor, the Rev. George Leon Walker, was installed Feb. 27, 1879.
The First Church celebrated, Oct. 11 and 12, 1883, its two hundred and fiftieth anniversary ; a full account of the proceedings on the occa- sion being published in a memorial volume. The present pastor also published in 1884 an extended history of the First Church of Hartford.
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