USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Waterbury > The town and city of Waterbury, Connecticut, from the aboriginal period to the year eighteen hundred and ninety-five, Volume I > Part 65
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94 | Part 95 | Part 96 | Part 97 | Part 98 | Part 99 | Part 100 | Part 101 | Part 102 | Part 103 | Part 104 | Part 105
Mr. Peck was sixty-seven years old when he came to undertake the organization of a church in a territory but fifteen years out of wilderness-estate-a task of no small dimensions even to a young and vigorous man. Having been born in the city of London, Eng- land, or its vicinity, in 1623, Mr. Peck came, with his father, to this country when a boy of fourteen years. Before 1660 he was preach- ing, or teaching school, in Guilford. In that year he was invited to take charge of the collegiate school at New Haven, which was a colony school instituted by the General Court in 1659. In 1661 he was invited to preach at Saybrook, and was there settled as a min- ister. In 1666, early in the year, he removed to Guilford. Together with certain other ministers and churches in the New Haven and Connecticut colonies, Mr. Peck is said to have been decidedly opposed to the " half-way covenant " adopted by the General Synod of 1662, and to the union of the two colonies under the charter of Charles II,-which union was effected in 1665. So great was the discontent of Mr. Peck and others that they resolved to emigrate from the colony. Removing from Guilford in 1666, he became one of the first settlers of Newark, N. J. He preached to the neighbor- ing people of Elizabethtown and settled there, as their first minis-
605
THE FIRST CHURCH TO 1825.
ter, in 1669 or 1670. In 1670, and again in 1675, he was invited by the people of Woodbridge, N. J., and in 1676 by the peo- ple of Greenwich (Conn.), to settle with them in the minis- try, but he declined these several invitations. The invitation to Greenwich was repeated two years later, and he had a similar call from Newtown on Long Island. Late in the autumn of 1678 he became the first settled minister in Greenwich, where he re- mained (despite at least one urgent "call"-to Barnstable, Mass.) until his removal to Waterbury, in 1689. He is said to have refused to baptize the children of non-communicants, at Green- wich, in 1688 .*
It will be readily understood that Mr. Peck's life and energies must have been well-nigh spent when he came to his final pastorate. A review of the events that occurred between the date of his arrival and the organization of the church will give convincing proof that his work here was not less trying than in any one of the frontier towns where he had served, and he seems to have fallen before the burden of it. We learn that "some years " before his death he was " disenabled from the work of the ministry by a fit of the appoplex " (see p. 229). Accordingly, we find that but four years after the church was organized and Mr. Peck was ordained as its pastor, another minister is mentioned as the "present minister," and in 1696 that the children of Waterbury were taken elsewhere for the rite of baptism.
Mr. Peck's will (in the form of a deed of gift) is recorded at page 6 of Volume I of Waterbury Land Records. It is a long and interesting document, dated January 14, 1696, and acknowledged the next June (1697). It affords abundant evidence of an ample estate. Mr. Peck still held forty acres of upland and ten of meadow in the town of Greenwich "in a place called Biram," and a two- hundred acre farm which had been given him by the General Court, besides his numerous holdings in Waterbury lands. He bestowed all his "husbandry tools, as carts, plows, axes, hoes, chains, or other implements," with "all the stock, horses, oxen, cows, sheep and swine," without enumerating them. He left to his wife "all his movables within doors, excepting a silver tankard," which he gave to his son Jeremiah. +
* See " A Genealogical Account of the Descendants of William Peck of New Haven, Conn. By Darius Peck of Hudson, N. Y."
+ Mrs. Joanna Peck executed a will in the form of a deed of gift, October 7, 1706, leaving all her estate to her sons, Jeremiah and Joshua, except that she gave to her daughter Anna, "a wainscot cupboard, the great table, the biggest pewter platter, and the choice of two more platters;" to Anna's daughter, " the draw box and a two-year-old heifer;" to Jeremiah's daughter (Johannah, then eighteen months old), the brass pan.
For other items relating to Mr. Peck's will, and to his last days, see pp. 233 to 235; also "The Churches of Mattatuck," pp. 173 to 183.
606
HISTORY OF WATERBURY.
The following, from "The Churches of Mattatuck " (pages 184, 185) is descriptive of this period:
In the year 1699, and before the death of Mr. Peck, this church received the ministrations of a young man who became the most learned and distinguished lawyer in New England. When he came to Waterbury he was fresh from Harvard college. It is pleasing to know that this people appreciated the ability of the Rev. John Read before opportunity had been given him to prove it elsewhere. He made a deep impression. The town was stirred to activity. There was a determination and an earnestness in its efforts to secure Mr. Read " for the work of the min- istry " that the years have not obliterated from the records. It is almost pathetic to read of the inducements offered by a people whose ratable estate was but {1700, and the number of whose taxable citizens was but forty-seven. He was offered £50 by the year in provision pay, {10 in wood and {20 in labor, in the same year that the salary of the governor of the colony was but {120 in provision pay. It must be remembered that this town, as a town, was less than fourteen years old, and that less than forty men had built one house for the minister, in which his life (for he was an invalid) was drawing to its close. Undaunted by the magnitude of the undertaking, the town promised to build a new house for Mr. Read. It was to be thirty-eight feet long, nineteen feet wide; to have two chimneys from the ground, and, apparently, a chamber chimney. The town agreed to " dig and stone a cellar, clapboard the house and shingle it, and make one end of it fit to live in." As a present gift, independent of the town's action, the proprietors gave him ten acres of upland. Yet more was there in the heart of this generous people to do for him. After he had been ordained two years the house and the house lot of two acres at the southwest corner of West Main and Willow streets, with a {150 propriety, was to be his own. Negotiations went on. From time to time another persuasive voice was added to the committee, to entreat Mr. Read to dwell here, but, at last, as winter was drawing near, Mr. Read drew away, for the old record bears witness to the fact in these words: "Deacon Thomas Judd was chosen a committee to endeavor by himself and the best counsel he can take, to get one to help him in the work of the ministry, and to bring a man amongst us, upon probation, in order to settlement, if he can.
The Rev. John Southmayd, who came to Waterbury to preach when he was but twenty-three years of age, wove the pattern of his life so closely into the history of the town, that it is impossible to separate the one from the other. The young town and the young minister grew side by side. The story of the New England minister before 1740 vibrates with life for the coming historian, and few clearer, steadier, more benign leaders may be found than our own Southmayd. The reader is referred, for his life and work, to the history of the town from 1699 to 1755, and also to " The Churches of Mattatuck," pp. 187 to 196. He was the ordained pastor of the First church from May 30, 1705, to March, 1740 (p. 335), and acting pastor for forty-one years. His resignation of the pastorate may be found on page 321. It occurred six months before the formal organization of a second ecclesiastical society within the township (Chapter XXV). His legal pastorate probably continued until the ordination
607
THE FIRST CHURCH TO 1825.
of the Rev. Mark Leavenworth in 1740. Owing to a chasm in our town records, covering the period including Mr. Leavenworth's advent into the pastorate of the church, we have little knowledge of its accompanying events (see pp. 335, 338). Mr. Southmayd was a strong man in character and intellect, a man of wealth and of great influence in the community. He lived seventeen years after his resignation of the pastoral office, acting as magistrate and fill- ing various positions of public trust, and doubtless remaining by far the most influential member of the church to which he had ministered.
He was succeeded by Mark Leavenworth, who, after preaching a few times on trial, was in June, 1739, unanimously invited to the pastorate .*
Mr. Leavenworth was the sixth son of Dr. (and Deacon) Thomas Leavenworth of Stratford, where he was born in 1711. His mother was Mary, daughter of Edmund Dorman. He graduated at Yale college in the class of 1737, under the presidency of the Rev. Elisha Williams. Having secured one of the Bishop Berkeley scholar- ships, he remained in New Haven two years, studying theology, and was licensed to preach October 10, 1738. His ordination took place in March, 1740, several months after his removal to Water- bury. He received a £500 "settlement," and his salary was fixed at £150 a year. But recent conversions of prominent men to Epis- copacy had created distrust in the minds of cautious Congregation- alists, and Mr. Leavenworth was required to give a bond for £500, to be paid to the society "if he should, within twenty years from that time, become a churchman, or by immorality or heresy render himself unfit for a gospel minister,-to be decided by a council." Undoubtedly the becoming a churchman was the thing to be specially provided against. In about nine years, however, the society, apparently of their own motion, released him from his bond. In February, a month before the time for his ordination, he married Ruth Peck, daughter of Deacon Jeremiah Peck of North- bury parish, and granddaughter of the first minister of the church.
He had hardly become fairly settled in his ministry when all his tact, judgment and influence were put to the test. There had been a great deterioration in morals, and doubtless some lapses in religious doctrine; but when, in 1740, the Rev. George Whitefield went through the country speaking, in words such as few men have the power to utter, of righteousness, temperance and a judgment to come, all New England trembled, and the cry rose up, " What shall we do to be saved?" Young men like Mr. Leavenworth, with high
* The following account of Mr. Leavenworth is abridged from F. J. Kingsbury's paper in " The Churches of Mattatuck," pp. 197-208.
608
HISTORY OF WATERBURY.
hopes and earnest enthusiasm, threw themselves into the move- ment, fully believing that it was the Lord's doing, while the older and more conservative people of longer experience, of whom Mr. Southmayd was a representative, saw in it but a temporary wave of excitement, already accompanied by some excesses, and doubted much whereunto the thing would grow. Cries of heresy were in the air, the odium theologicum was aroused, and in 1744 Mr. Leaven- worth and two others, for assisting at the ordination of the Rev. Mr. Lee of Salisbury, who was supposed to be in sympathy with the new movement, and whose church was gathered under the Cam- bridge platform, were tried and suspended from all associational communion. It does not appear, however, that the relations of Mr. Leavenworth to his people were very seriously affected. He was evidently a man of broad charity, and of a catholic spirit, for in 1747 he declined that part of his salary which was raised by tax on the Episcopal portion of the inhabitants, although his legal right to it was clear; but his sense of justice rebelled, and he seems always to have had the courage of his convictions. In 1749 a great and fatal sickness appeared in the town (p. 370). Dr. Bronson esti- mates the deaths at six per cent of the whole population. There were hardly enough of the well to care for the sick and bury the dead. There was difficulty in getting medicine, and Mr. Leaven- worth volunteered to go on horseback to Norwich and procure a supply.
In 1750, after several years of enfeebled health, the first Mrs. Leavenworth died, and not very long after he married Sarah, daughter of Captain Joseph Hull of Derby. She was a person of much character, dignity and influence. She was the mother of all his children except one. She survived him several years, and died in 1808. She was universally known as Madam Leavenworth, a title which was perhaps due to her position by the etiquette of the time, but was due to her personality also, and perhaps in part to her two-wheeled chair or chaise-the only vehicle of the kind in town.
In 1760, when about fifty years old, he accepted the position of chaplain in Colonel Whiting's regiment, called into service to repel the attacks of French and Indians on our northern frontier. He was away from home on this service eight months. Hollister says :* " The amount of fatigue endured by the Connecticut troops was almost incredible." Putnam was there as lieutenant-colonel, and wherever he went there was very apt to be fighting and sure to be work. Mr. Leavenworth was appointed chaplain again the follow-
* History of Connecticut, Vol. II, p. 97.
609
THE FIRST CHURCH TO 1825.
ing year, but probably felt that he was needed at home. When the Revolutionary conflict came on there was no doubt where he would be found. He threw himself into it with all the enthusiasm and energy of his nature. He was early on the state committee for rais- ing troops. Were it not that he was now well on in years, he would probably have been found again at the front .* In 1793, at the age of eighty-two, when the inconsistency of slavery with freedom began to impress itself on the public mind, we find his name on the list of the new "Society for the Promotion of Freedom "-a fact showing again his ready sympathy with new ideas whenever their tendency was to the uplifting of humanity, and his prompt- ness to act in the line of his convictions.
The last prominent public act of his life was when in 1795, at the age of eighty-four, he laid the corner stone of a new meeting house for his people-the third erected by the old society.
Mr. Leavenworth is described to us as a man of medium size, erect figure and quick movement. He had much dignity of manner, but a quick sense of humor, and was on terms of familiarity with his people, though the distance which in those days existed between the minister and his flock was doubtless duly maintained. Dr. Bronson has preserved several anecdotes illustrating these traits in his character. t The life of a New England country minister, how- ever busy, useful and influential it may be, leaves behind but a meagre record for historic uses, and it is only by detached facts, accidentally preserved, that we are able to reproduce to any degree the times in which he lived, his influence upon them and his per- sonal character. In an account book of the society, covering the last thirty years of the century, ¿ we get (or think we do) bright little flecks of light on the benevolence of Mr. Leavenworth's nature, through the receipts he gives, sometimes discharging the society from its dues at a time when there was a balance in his favor, sometimes announcing that the rate bill given to an indi- vidual to collect for him had been satisfied, and requesting that the collector be discharged. The unwritten lines that lie only half obliterated beneath the language used, impel the belief that the widow, whose ministerial rate to Mr. Leavenworth was but " seven pence," and who brought " nine quarts of corn " to pay it with, was
* Three of his sons did go-one with Arnold on his first trip to Boston, another serving as surgeon dur- ing the whole eight long, tedious years. All three were graduates of Yale.
+ Bronson's History of Waterbury, pp. 289, 290.
* This volume (about eighteen inches by seven, and containing about eighty leaves) has recently been returned to the church. On the cover is written : " Society's Book." On the inside of the cover is inscribed : " This book belongs to the first Society in Waterbury, and is a gift from the Benevolent Esqr. Hopkins, A. D. 1770." Its first date is January, 1770, and a few accounts are brought to it at that time " from the old book."
39
610
HISTORY OF WATERBURY.
was not sent empty-handed away. He was evidently a man of affairs, and took an active interest in everything relating to the public welfare. That he was a good business manager appears from the fact that he lived in a hospitable and somewhat elegant manner, and sent three of his sons to college. He also became a a large landholder, in the days when land was the principal source of wealth. Dr. Samuel Elton used to speak of the impression made upon him as a boy, when Mr. Leavenworth, then certainly not less than eighty years of age, preached in Watertown. He remembered him as a man of medium height, of erect figure, bright, dark eyes, and a commanding voice. He stood for a moment in the pulpit, looking around upon his congregation, and then announced his text: "Your fathers, where are they? and the prophets, do they live forever?" His theme was the changes that had taken place in that congregation within his own memory, and the impression he pro- duced upon his youthful hearer remained vivid and profound after seventy years.
The long period of Mr. Leavenworth's ministry was one of upheaval and excitement. First came the "great awakening," and soon afterward the seven years' struggle of the French and Indian war; and this had hardly closed when the conflict began with the British government, which ended in the war of the Revolution, when neighbor was set against neighbor and friend against friend. A large part of the Episcopal society, which had now grown to be quite strong, sided with the mother country, and the town was almost equally divided in opinion. There was dissension, friction, and doubtless much hard talking, but on the whole, things went as peacefully as could have been expected. After the Revolution came the perhaps still more trying period of almost anarchy, so that nothing was settled or sure until after the adoption of the con- stitution and the inauguration of Washington as first president, in 1789. What a half century for a man to have lived through! and what an experience-to have borne the burden of responsibility for the religious, moral, social, secular and political welfare and training of two or three generations, in such a time of turmoil and unrest! To have successfully carried a church and a town through such a period and maintained the love and respect of the people implies character and ability well worthy of our admiration and our praise.
Mr. Leavenworth died August 26, 1797, in the fifty-eighth year of his ministry. An obituary notice published at the time of his death closes with these apparently just and well considered words :
6II
THE FIRST CHURCH TO 1825.
To the endearing qualities of a kind and affectionate husband and parent were very apparently united in this reverend father that piety towards God, that diffusive benevolence toward men, that undisguised frankness and dignity of deportment, that persevering faithfulness in office, that unshaken trust in the merits of the Saviour, that heavenly-mindedness and calm converse with death, which abundantly evidenced to all his acquaintance the child of God and the heir of heaven.
The reference to Mr. Leavenworth's connection with the third meeting house leads us naturally to glance backward over the his- tory of the meeting houses which preceded this. The first step toward the building of a house of worship in Waterbury was made in 1691, by petitioning the General Court for assistance in the work. The court granted Waterbury its country rate (see pp. 231-233). Eight years later the pulpit and seats were in course of construction. In 1702-ten years after its foundations were laid-the house was finished (p. 249). It stood about in the centre of the present Green, with its main entrance on the south side, and doors on its east and west sides. It had a pulpit and seats, but no pews, and it had seating capacity for about 300 persons. In July of that year a committee was appointed "to place the people where they should sit." There is, therefore, reason to think that Mr. Peck had no meeting house to preach in during his pastorate here, and that young Mr. Southmayd was the first and only officiating minister in that church edifice. After six years, alterations and improvements were made (p. 278). After six years more, a gallery was built around three sides of the audience room, and other changes were introduced, which occupied four years (see pp. 288, 289, and for further changes, 293, 294).
The story of the building of the second meeting house-begun in 1727 and finished in 1729-has been fully told by the aid of Mr. Southmayd's little meeting-house book (see pages 283-300 of this volume). Within eleven years of its building there went out from this house, of its members and congregation, a sufficient number of persons to form a church society in Westbury, one in Northbury, one in Waterbury (the Episcopal), and one, in part, in Oxford. Because of these and subsequent departures, the meeting house served to accommodate the people for sixty-eight years. Mr. Southmayd was the only minister of the first church edifice, and he and Mr. Leavenworth were the only officiating pastors of the second.
After 1740, we no longer find on our town records minutes of church or ecclesiastical affairs. Dr. Bronson tells us in 1858 that
612
HISTORY OF WATERBURY.
the society records of the First church were in existence a few years before that date. His father, Judge Bennet Bronson, had made notes from the records, and from these notes Dr. Bronson obtained information that covers the period of thirty years, from 1740 to 1770. He says that in 1752 the town *" voted to repair the meeting house by having windows in front, of twenty-four squares of seven by nine or nine by ten, with window frames." He gives also the following items: In 1769 "those who are seated in the seats " had permission "at their own expense to turn them into pews," and, "that men and their wives may be seated together in the pews." The extant church records begin in 1795, and the society records in 1806. But from the old account book, already referred to, we learn that between 1770 and 1793 frequent repairs and some alterations were made in the meeting house; in 1778, new steps; in 1786, a new window; in 1789 it was shingled, and in 1792 the interior was im- proved. We also learn who furnished the wood for the steps; who put in the new window and many panes of glass; who furnished the "putte;" and, of the shingles, the names of the men who brought them by the thousand, and that 2700 were left, and taken by Mr. Leavenworth at a reduction from the price given by the society. The following items appear in the way of improvements or embellishments in 1792: " Twelve sticks of twist to make a fringe for the cushion for the pulpit, five skeins of silk for the same and three of twist." At about the same time there is an entry that sug- gests the possibility that Benjamin Upson (who was chorister, and who at a later date received the public thanks of the church for his efficient services), was assisted in his songs of praise by the timbrel or small drum, as two " taboreans " are among the articles furnished to the society by him.
The sweeping of the meeting house from year to year was done asa rule by the choice maidens of the church, with an occasional exception in favor of a dignified matron, a lieutenant or other youth, or a poor slave. The first man on the list was Moses Cook, who swept in 1771, assisted by the "Widow Upson." They were succeeded in 1774 by "Silence," a slave of Joseph Hopkins, in 1778 by Dinah Cook, and in later years by Mrs. Susanna Bronson, wife of Captain Ezra, Jesse Hopkins, Lucy, Hannah and Sybel Cook, Aurelia, Rusha and Sarah Clark, Ruth Adams and Lieutenant Samuel Judd. The average payment to each was about LI. Ios a year, sometimes in wheat and rye. But two and sometimes three were engaged in the work at the same time.
* As our town records for 1752 contain no such vote, he must have found the minute on the now missing church or society records.
613
THE FIRST CHURCH TO 1825.
Regarding the first bell in Waterbury, nothing very satisfactory can be said. Lambert, in his "History of New Haven Colony," says:
In 1740 it was voted to purchase a new bell of about 600 pounds weight for the second meeting house in Milford, the old one being cracked. The old bell was taken at the foundry for old metal, in part pay for the new one. It was brazed and sold to a society in Waterbury, and now (1838) hangs in the belfry of the church at Salem Bridge, and is considered to be the best bell in the state."
The second meeting house apparently had a bell, probably the one here referred to. There was no meeting house in Salem until 1782, and the cracked bell did not, we may think, lie forty years in the foundry. In 1788 the following item is found: "By a grant of the society to pay for the bell £3.4s." The school house bell appears by name in 1790, in which year two persons are paid, apparently for ringing two bells. " Africa "* had the pleasure of ringing that early bell for three months. Samuel Harrison is credited in 1791 "for work at the school house bell and wheel."
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.