USA > Connecticut > The story of the Diocese of Connecticut : a new branch of the vine (Espiscopal Church) > Part 7
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Before the Revolution, almost the entire colony had been divided into organized missions, and the clergy frequently visited many towns not included in the parishes. In spite of heavy emi- gration and bitter opposition, the Church had become a powerful influence. In Fairfield County the proportion of Episcopalians was about one-third, and in Newtown it was one-half. The percentage dwindled to a small minority in the Congregational and Baptist strongholds of northern Litchfield, Hartford, Windham and New London Counties. As today, the Church's great strength lay in that portion of the State below a line from the northwest corner to the mouth of the Connecticut River, for only ten of the forty-seven parishes lay northeast of that region. Although the parishes were scattered, except in Fairfield County, and some had only occa- sional ministrations, they all had developed a remarkably uniform type of religious observance and spiritual life.
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A TABLE OF MISSIONS AND CHURCHES: 1775 Churches Included
Place Stratford Stratford, Milford Ripton Ripton (Huntington), North Stratford (Trum- bull), Stratfield (Bridgeport)
Fairfield
Fairfield, North Fairfield (Easton)
Stamford
Stamford, "Horseneck" (Greenwich)
Newtown
Newtown, Danbury, Redding
Norwalk
Norwalk
Salem, N. Y. Ridgefield, Ridgebury“
New Milford
New Milford, Kent, Sharon
Woodbury
Woodbury, Roxbury
John Rutgers Marshall **
( Vacant )
Bela Hubbard
Richard Mansfield
James Scovil
Samuel Andrews
James Nichols
Simsbury
New London New London, Chatham (Portland & Easthampton)
North Groton Poquetanuck
Norwich Norwich
Pomfret
Brooklyn
Hebron
Hebron, Hartford
Middletown
* Extinct church
** Not supported by the Society
Missionary Ebenezer Kneeland Christopher Newton
John Sayre Ebenezer Dibblee John Beach Jeremiah Leaming
Epinetus Townsend
Richard Clarke
Litchfield
Litchfield, Cornwall*
New Haven
New Haven, West Haven, Branford, Guilford, North Guilford, Northford Derby, Oxford
Derby
Waterbury
Waterbury, Westbury ( Watertown )
Wallingford Northbury
Wallingford, Cheshire, North Haven
Northbury (Plymouth), New Cambridge (Bristol) North Bloomfield, Granby (Salmon Brook) *
Middletown
William Gibbs* * * Roger Viets Matthew Graves (Vacant) John Tyler Daniel Fogg Samuel Peters Abraham Jarvis *** Incapacitated by illness.
CHAPTER SIX
COLONIAL CHURCH LIFE
N TO task of the historian is so difficult as the description of parish life in a vanished age. It is like attempting to restore the fabric of a worn tapestry, or the faded nuances of a landscape in water color. What did the people see and hear in church? How did they behave during the service? What did they read, think, and believe? What was the quality of religious education?
The story must be pieced together from a variety of sources, including some that are not completely trustworthy. Official rec- ords are often scanty, consisting mostly of minutes of the election of wardens and vestrymen, and financial statements. Colonial par- ish records sometimes were treated in a casual way that would not have been allowed if there had been a bishop to inspect them. Some were destroyed, like those of Trinity Church at Southport in Fairfield, which were burned during General Tryon's raid in the Revolutionary War. The oldest records of St. James's in Poqueta- nuck, including the register, were lost with his furniture after the death of the Rev. Ebenezer Punderson. Matthew Graves, the mis- sionary in New London, was dismayed to discover that he could not tell how many of his people had been baptized because there was no register.
Much of the story of parish life never found its way into records. Customs and usages were taken for granted. The historian must mine the details out of local secular and religious histories, diaries, letters, reminiscences, and the reports of missionaries. The result of this labor is a carefully assembled and yet imperfect mo- saic, and this chapter cannot pretend to be more. The pieces may fit together into a fairly definite pattern, but it still lacks the finer shadings of the inward religious life, the portrayal of the people's intimate thoughts and devotions. The pattern will show that, while Anglican piety was not exciting, it was informed, and in touch with contemporary religious thought.
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ATTENDANCE
One thing is certain: it often required great effort and even courage to observe the minimum requirement of formal attendance at church. It is hard now to imagine the sheer geographical size of colonial parishes, and the hardships of travel over wretched roads. The West Haven mission in 1740 included several churches served by one pastor, who called it "large enough for a Diocese"1 and lamented its atrocious roads. About the same time John Beach of Newtown served several towns and administered the Holy Com- munion oftener than was customary, because the communicants were so widely scattered that he never had more than fifty at once.
Distant parishioners sometimes arrived on Saturday night with a supply of food, and slept in the houses of local Churchmen. In the early years of Christ Church, Redding, people traveled six, eight, or even ten miles. Some parishes with dispersed flocks had "Sabbath-day houses," where the congregation could go between the morning and afternoon services to rest, eat lunch, and talk by a cheerful fire.
CHURCHES
It must have been hard, especially in winter, to leave that warm and friendly atmosphere and return to the church, which generally was much less cheerful. The earliest churches were in- variably of wooden construction; there is no record of a brick or stone Episcopal church in Connecticut during the colonial period. The first church, erected at Stratford in 1723, was typical and a stranger approaching it would not have distinguished it from a Congregational meeting-house. The cost was met by the subscrip- tions of the parishioners, liberal gifts from devout Churchmen in neighboring colonies, and presents from occasional traveling Episcopalians. Shortly after it was opened on Christmas Day, 1724, Doctor Johnson described it as "a very pleasant and comfortable building."? That was a generous tribute to the plain little meeting- house, only forty-five feet long by thirty wide, and twenty-two feet to the eaves!
The descriptions of other early churches - in local histories and the reports of missionaries - generally depart little from this picture of stark simplicity. The first one at Newtown was only twenty-eight by twenty-four feet, about the size of a large living
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room. The timber frame was raised on a Saturday, the roof boards were laid in the evening, and next day the congregation sat on timbers and knelt on the ground.
The "raising" of the massive frame of a church was a red- letter day in parish life. The timbers would be assembled and pegged together on the ground, and then lifted into position by sheer human muscle. The women brought refreshments (generally meat and the inevitable rum) to refresh their perspiring spouses, and bills for such collations are found in parish records. When the frame went up there was great rejoicing. It is a tradition that at the raising of Christ Church in Middletown, in 1749, the shout could be heard about a mile away.
After the first triumph, the completion of the edifice often was a long and vexatious task. While the Congregationalists could rely upon a parish tax to furnish funds for their buildings, the poor Churchman had to depend entirely upon subscriptions and gifts, and sometimes also pay for his neighbor's meeting-house. The money generally came hard, and churches stood unfinished for many years. St. Peter's in Hebron was begun in 1735 but not fin- ished until 1766. After about a dozen years, the Rev. William Gibbs of Simsbury complained that his church was still open and unfinished, partly because the people were not generous enough and partly because of financial oppression by the established churches.
The small church in Tashua was ready for worship in about six weeks, but for a long time had only rough slab boards for seats and probably was never plastered. The one at Gilbert Town in Easton, raised in 1762, was a rude meeting-house, and although it stood until about 1850, was never plastered or painted. It re- sembled an early Methodist chapel and was nearly square, without tower or spire, or any outward indication that it was an Episcopal church. The interior was more churchly, with a chancel, a high pulpit at the west end, box pews in the center, side aisles, and an overhanging gallery on three sides.
The poverty of the early Churchmen permitted little con- sideration of architectural style or luxury. The church in Norwich, a comparatively wealthy place, was built by only eighty-seven sub- scribers. Although it was small, plain, and unplastered, it required nearly three years to complete. The first Christ Church in Sharon,
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erected about 1755, was a plain meeting-house daubed on the out- side with a homely coat of mortar. The first St. Peter's in Cheshire was square like a Puritan meeting-house, so high that it had an awkward appearance, and had no steeple until 1795.
As parishes increased, some of the simple buildings were made still more unattractive by galleries. This was done at Water- bury, Ripton, North Fairfield, and other places where the small early churches became uncomfortably crowded. The pastor some- times expressed a hope that the galleries would hold the overflow for a long time. Fortunately, he was sometimes agreeably dis- appointed, and cheerfully wrote "home" that his people were about to build a larger church.
Especially after the Great Awakening caused many converts, several of the larger and wealthier parishes undertook new build- ings at great expense. By that time somewhat greater wealth and a more cultivated taste produced a few really handsome churches. The homebred designers and local craftsmen strove to emulate the classical elegance of the London churches designed after the great fire of 1666 by Sir Christopher Wren and other noted architects. They abandoned the square form and stark plainness of the primi- tive New England meeting-house, and introduced the chancel and the correct eastward orientation of the building.
Fortunately, there were tasteful models in New England, particularly Trinity Church in Newport, and Christ Church and King's Chapel in Boston, all built after 1720. The Congregational- ists also recognized the charm of the new style. When their meet- ing-house in Guilford was adorned with a belfry and spire in 1726, they voted to follow the design of Trinity Church, Newport.
Connecticut Episcopalians began a new era of building in 1743-44, with the erection of the second church at Stratford, which was modeled after Christ Church, Boston. Its mere size was re- markable: sixty by forty-five feet, with walls twenty-four feet high, a tower sixteen feet square, and a steeple shooting up to one hun- dred and twenty feet. The most striking innovation was a chancel eight feet deep, with a vestry room on one side and a library on the other. The town was proud of this handsome church, and Doc- tor Johnson delightedly wrote to the Society that it was "finished in a very neat and elegant manner, the architecture being allowed in some things to exceed any thing before done in New England."3
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The interior reflected the arrangement of the newer English urban churches. In front of the chancel, at the head of the center aisle, stood a pulpit raised on pillars so that the rector could pass under it to the chancel. At one side stood the reading and clerk's desks. The floor was covered by spacious square pews built at the expense of the occupants. Other notes of elegance were the clock placed in the tower in 1751, and the gilded weathercock topping the slender spire. Credit for the building's beautiful proportions and chaste refinement was due largely to Thomas Salmon, an ama- teur architect, who also served as a warden and at one time taught in the parochial school. Johnson's parishioners, mostly of slender means, contributed nobly; and one, a brother of the Rev. John Beach of Newtown, gave over £3,000.
Christ Church stood as an ideal in the great burst of build- ing that accompanied the establishment of new parishes and the growth of old ones, between the Great Awakening and the Revo- lution. By 1750 Middletown had "a beautiful timber building."4 Two years later Trinity Parish in New Haven undertook one with a chancel correctly placed at the east end, and boasting the town's first spire. The weathervane, in the form of a crown, was appropri- ately removed after the Revolution. Danbury caught the new spirit and built a church for a congregation of four or five hundred, with a "decent" steeple given by a prominent citizen, John McLean.
In the last colonial church - old Trinity in Brooklyn - built in 1770, Georgian elegance attained its full flowering. It reflected the good taste and loving care of the Church's local patron, Colonel Godfrey Malbone, and the name was adopted from his former church in Newport, Rhode Island. In one of his stately letters the Colonel confided his dream of a church on the plan of Bos- ton's King's Chapel - "neat, plain and elegant."" The building's general appearance and proportions, however, suggest also the Georgian churches of Tidewater Virginia, with which he was fa- miliar. The chancel was located at the east end according to tra- dition. The pulpit with its sounding board, and the reading and clerk's desks, were a third of the way down the center aisle, as in some of the Virginia churches. Today the building is considered a gem of colonial architecture, and is usually described in books on New England churches.
With steeples came the increasing use of bells. This was a
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remarkable innovation in Puritan New England, where bells had been regarded as rather "popish," and religious services like town meetings were called by drum beat. Again Stratford led the way, with a bell cast in Fairfield and costing the then startling sum of £300. Before the Revolution silenced the steeples of Episcopal churches, bells sounded also in the parishes at Southport in Fair- field, Redding, Norwalk, and New London. The one in St. Paul's, Norwalk, was a monster of 600 pounds, contributed partly by the rector, Jeremiah Leaming, and partly by liberal gifts from the parishioners.
Episcopalians lavished as much expense on their churches as they could afford. Unlike the Congregationalists, they regarded them not as meeting-houses but as places invested with a sacred quality. A quaint story illustrating that feeling is related by the Congregational minister, Noah Porter, in his essay The New Eng- land Meeting House. A group of boys once were sitting in the gallery of a new Episcopal church. When some of them became boisterous and irreverent, one remonstrated angrily, "I say, boys, I'd have you to know that this is not a Presbyterian meeting house!"6
Because there was no colonial bishop, churches were never consecrated, but were simply dedicated or "set apart" by a special service. The first one in Fairfield, at Southport, was "set apart" for worship on Thanksgiving Day, 1725. St. John's in North Haven was dedicated on the feast day of its patron saint in 1761, and was elaborately decorated with evergreens. Christ Church, Watertown, was dedicated in October, 1765, with a sermon by the Rev. Samuel Andrews of Wallingford. The same solemn ceremony took place in St. George's (now St. Peter's), Milford in March 1775, with the Rev. Bela Hubbard of New Haven officiating, assisted by the Rev. Dr. Kneeland of Stratford, the Rev. Richard Mansfield of Derby, and a large congregation.
A typical stately dedication was that of Trinity Church, Brooklyn, in April 1771. The Rev. John Tyler of Norwich and the Rev. Samuel Peters of Hebron performed the rite, and Tyler preached a notable sermon on The Sanctity of the Christian Temple, taking as his text the prayer of King Solomon at the dedi- cation of the temple of Jerusalem - II Chronicles, 6: 40, 41.
Fourteen years and a great revolution passed before Con-
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necticut witnessed the consecration of a church. In 1785 Bishop Samuel Seabury consecrated St. Paul's in Norwalk, rebuilt from the ashes left by Tryon's raid. That was the first consecration of an Episcopal church ever performed in the United States.
ORNAMENTS
Even when churches were completed and dedicated, they were often without suitable ornaments of worship. It was difficult to secure proper ones in the colonies and, as the rector of Fair- field mourned, heavy taxes to support the Standing Order kept Church people so poor that they were unable to afford them.
In spite of the Churchmen's general poverty, parishes tried to secure all the utensils and embellishments they could. Every church wanted to have a handsome Communion set. The concern for this among the clergy is revealed by Doctor Johnson's plea to the Bishop of London that Christ Church in Stratford might be allowed to keep a set that had belonged to Narragansett Church in Rhode Island. The vessels had been given to Stratford by order of Bishop Compton, when the other parish had lapsed for a time because it lacked a missionary.
Most churches followed the custom of the eighteenth cen- tury in providing a surplice for the priest, also the black silk gown which he wore while preaching. The women usually provided red velvet or damask cushions for the pulpit and the reading desk, and the S. P. G. would send a large folio Bible from England for reading the lessons, and a folio Prayer Book. The Communion table, usually called the "Holy Table," ordinarily was covered by a red velvet or damask cloth. The fair linens for Communion some- times were imported, and sometimes were of local manufacture. The first linen for St. Paul's in Woodbury was spun and woven by the wife of the Rev. John Rutgers Marshall. That parish still possesses its first Communion set, and the semicircular table used as an altar.
CONTRIBUTIONS
The heavy expenses of erecting a church and contributing to support the missionary usually left slight means for special gifts or endowments. Churchmen generally were less opulent than their long-established Congregational neighbors. There is no more
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mistaken notion about colonial Episcopalians than that they were an exclusive society of the "rich and well-born." The mass of Churchmen north of the plantation colonies were in moderate or poor circumstances, except in such thriving seaport and capital towns as Philadelphia, New York, Newport, Boston and Portsmouth.
Letters to the Society from Connecticut missionaries abound in references to the poverty of their flocks, which kept their contri- butions low and hindered the erection of churches and the pur- chase of glebe land. The poverty of his congregation was pain- fully obvious to the first settled rector at Stratford, George Pigot, who had to solicit funds in New York City to aid in erecting his little church.
It was the same at Fairfield, and Caner frankly told the So- ciety that their expectation of contributions was very optimistic. The people were "low and poor in fortune," and so ground down by exactions of the established church that their offerings were small and the church was unfinished. The wardens and vestry- men canvassed the parish to raise the sum expected, but found that while the spirit was willing the purse was weak.
Doctor Johnson was grateful for a small increase in his stipend; he could not expect more than £5 sterling a year from the parish in Stratford, because the people were "mostly of the poorer sort." A few years later he revealed the scarcity of rich men in lamenting the loss of Mr. Loring, who apparently had been the only really influential parishioner. He had been the most able and eager in promoting the Church's cause, "and always at the head of every good design," a tower of strength to the other parishioners, who were "generally poor tradesmen, and, conse- quently, apt to be despised and dispirited."
New London was a seaport and comparatively wealthy, but evidently did not breed rich Episcopalians. The prospect of a good salary from the people must have seemed rather bleak to the Rev. Samuel Seabury, Senior. In 1735 he wrote to the Society that of the parishioners who had petitioned for a missionary, "not one of any considerable estate or circumstances" was then living.
Jonathan Arnold had barely settled in West Haven when he found that while he had a numerous and attentive congregation, eager to learn Christian ways, they were "commonly the poorer sort of people." His wardens, a few years later, were dismayed
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by the shaky financial condition of the parish. The Congrega- tionalists had raised an endowment to support their minister, from the sale of glebe land and gifts from the people and the colonial treasury. People therefore would not readily become Episco- palians, because they would have to dig into their own pockets to support the parish. Years later Bela Hubbard encountered the same poverty in Guilford and Killingworth, and could not expect more than £50 a year.
If conditions were such in the old coastal towns, it may be imagined what they were in the newly settled Litchfield hills and the country towns of Hartford County. Solomon Palmer, the in- trepid missionary in Litchfield, quickly discovered that he would never be a rich person. Removal to New Haven did not brighten the prospect, for although the people did what they could, they were few and mostly "of but moderate fortune." It was a great effort for them even to buy an acre of land and complete a rectory.
ENDOWMENTS
The comparative poverty of country Churchmen is illustrated by a report to the Society in 1766 from the Rev. Roger Viets of St. Andrew's, Simsbury (now North Bloomfield). The town then included Granby, East Granby, Canton, and part of Bloomfield, and the assessment for taxes was almost £24,000. Although the Episcopalians were about one-third of the people, they had only about one-quarter of the wealth.
Naturally, gifts to the Church for endowment were com- paratively rare and came hard. When George Pigot was the missionary in Stratford, he was surprised by a visit from a wealthy New Yorker, Mr. Richard Sackett, who wanted to give several hundred acres of land he claimed there for endowment and to finish the church. Although he based his title on a deed from the Indian sachems in 1661, the Connecticut government took a dim view of it, and Pigot saw that he would have a tough court battle on his hands.
Doctor Johnson was disappointed by the entire lack of gifts to the parish, the rector, or the schoolmaster, except the people's small regular contributions. Perhaps after a hint from him, the parish later tried to accumulate an endowment. One communi- cant bequeathed twenty acres of valuable pasture about two miles
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from town. Another, a brother of the Rev. John Beach of New- town, intended to give a perpetual annuity to keep the church in repair, and gave land for a glebe.
Trinity Church in Fairfield adopted an endowment plan, about 1730, with the idea of supporting the rector. Every mem- ber would give a bequest to the parish to be invested by the war- dens. The fund got off to a good start with gifts amounting to £500; it continued to increase slowly over the years.
Parishioners occasionally made special gifts to the clergy and in New London gave Samuel Seabury, Senior, something in addition to his salary. St. Peter's, Hebron, received £300 to finish the church by the will of a wealthy widow in Boston, who owned a large tract of land in Canterbury. The executors took their time in selling the land, and it was more than twenty years before the parish could get its hands on the money and use it to complete St. Peter's "in a decent manner for Connecticut."7
No layman was more generous to the Church in Connecticut than the rich Mr. St. George Talbot of Westchester County, New York, who showered largesse upon the parishes in Fairfield County. He was a bachelor who had come from England early in the eighteenth century, and devoted his time and means to promoting the Church. He lived in some state, with a housekeeper, and in the course of his travels became a parishioner and an intimate friend of Ebenezer Dibblee, rector of St. John's in Stamford. At the age of one hundred, he used to travel with Dibblee.
On one of those occasions Dibblee frankly told his good friend about the financial troubles of his parish, and so inspired a stream of gifts that did not cease even after Talbot's death. He contributed generously to complete the church and the chapel at Greenwich, and gave St. John's a glebe and a Communion set which the parish used for generations. In his will he bequeathed £600 to support the rector or to educate the parish children. To St. James's parish in Derby he bequeathed a large sum to be managed by trustees appointed by the S. P. G., to purchase a glebe to support the rector and to be deeded to the Society. As a patron of the Church he had no rival, except possibly Colonel Godfrey Malbone in Brooklyn. But such zealots as Malbone and Talbot were scarce, and missionaries continued to complain about the generally cau- tious financial disposition of the people.
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