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 III > Part 39
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The next author in our list* is the Rev. Holland Weeks, who was pastor of the First church at the beginning of the present cen- tury, and whose biography is given in Volume I. His wife was the daughter of Moses Hopkins of Great Barrington, and the grand-
* Reference should be made incidentally to a discourse by the Rev. Israel B. Woodward, A. M., deliv- ered at Watertown, July 4, 1798, and published by request, on " American Liberty and Independence "; also to a " Narrative of a Revival of Religion in Middlebury, a Parish of Waterbury, in the years 1799 and 1800," by the Rev. Ira Hart, published in the Connecticut Evangelical Magazine of August and September, 1802.
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daughter of Dr. Samuel Hopkins. Mr. Weeks was ordained Novem- ber 20, 1799, and the ordination sermon of that occasion, by the Rev. Ephraim Judson of Sheffield, Mass., was printed at Stock- bridge in 1801. Mr. Weeks's own published discourses belonging to his Waterbury pastorate are two, the titles of which are as fol- lows:
The Peaceful End of the Perfect Man. A Funeral Sermon, occasioned by the Death of Thomas Lewis, A. M., Candidate for the Gospel Ministry; delivered by the Desire of his Bereaved Parents and Friends, at Salem, in Waterbury (Con.), April 30, A. D. 1804. Published by Particular Request. New Haven: 1804. pp. 16.
Sobriety, Watchfulness and Prayer, illustrated and urged in a Farewel Sermon, delivered, Waterbury, Connecticut, December 21, A. D. 1806. Published by Desire. New Haven: 1807. pp. 23.
After his removal to Pittsford, Vt., he published a discourse on "Election the Foundation of Obedience," which is included in a collection of "Sermons on Some of the Distinguishing Doctrines of Divine Revelation," published at Stockbridge in 1812. But the most important of his printed productions is the following, which has not only biographical, but historical value as marking Mr. Weeks's transition from the old faith of the Congregational churches to the tenets of Swedenborg:
The Lord's Words are Spirit and Life; illustrated in a Duplicate Discourse, delivered in Abington (Mass.), on the Lord's Day, May 21, A. D. 1820-64. By Holland Weeks, A. M., at that time pastor of the First Church in said Place. . Boston: 1820.
This was the sermon which was read, entire, before the ecclesias- tical council by which the pastoral relation existing between Mr. Weeks and the Abington church was dissolved. His contributions to the press after his entering the "New Church" need not be enumerated here.
The relations of the Rev. Tillotson Bronson, D. D., to literature have already been partly indicated on page 928. Dr. Henry Bron- son's statement may, however, be added-that the volumes of the Churchman's Magazine that were published under his supervision "are regarded as the ablest and most valuable of the whole, and credit- able to American literature." The Rev. Dr. Beardsley says of him: " His love of the classics increased with his years; but his favorite studies were mathematics and natural philosophy. His lectures on the manual arts were so highly esteemed by his pupils that the project was suggested of securing the publication of the whole series." Other clergymen who have lived in Waterbury for longer or shorter periods, and have published sermons-in some cases volumes of sermons-or contributed in some way to swell the
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stream of religious literature are: Jonathan Judd, Isaiah Potter of Northbury, Dr. Asahel Nettleton, the famous evangelist, Alexander Gillet of Farmingbury, Bennett Tyler, D. D., Daniel A. Clark and his son Frederick G. Clark, D. D., Amos Pettengill of Salem society, Joel R. Arnold, Henry N. Day, LL. D., Eli B. Clark, Abner J. Leavenworth, Elijah B. Huntington, W. W. Woodworth, D. D., George Bushnell, D. D., and E. G. Beckwith, D. D. Most of these men have been mentioned elsewhere in this History, and in the sketches of their lives or in foot-notes their published writings have been definitely referred to. Mr. Pettengill, who died in 1830, published " A View of the Heavens, or Familiar Lessons in Astron- omy, for the Use of Schools," in 1826; "The Stellarota," a rotary celestial map, with a movable horizon, in 1827; "The Spirit of Methodism " in 1829, and several " occasional " sermons .* Of Dr. Woodworth's published discourses two, besides those mentioned heretofore, belong to his Waterbury ministry: "The Time of Christ's Second Coming unknown to Man," preached December 25, 1853, and printed here, and " The Great Question Answered, or, The Way to be Saved made Plain," printed in Hartford in 1858. The Rev. George A. Starkweather, pastor for some years of the First Baptist church, published while here a "Sunday School Geography" (New York, 1874); the Rev. R. W. Micou contributed, during his residence in Waterbury, various articles to "church " magazines and society publications, and wrote the brief article relating to Waterbury in the last edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Dr. F. T. Russell has published " The Juvenile Speaker " (New York, 1849), "The Practical Reader" (Boston, 1850), "Vocal Culture," based upon a work by his father, in co-partnership with J. E. Mur- doch (Boston, 1820), and "The Use of the Voice in Reading and Speaking; a Manual for Clergymen and Candidates for Holy Orders " (New York, 1883; second edition, 1894). + The Rev. W. P. Elsdon published in 1876 a " Memorial of Mrs. Abigail Baker," and an essay on the "Relation of Discipleship to Church Membership." During the same year he contributed to the Barnstable Patriot a series of papers on the history of the Baptist church in Hyannis, Mass .; he contributed to the Chicago Standard, December 21, 1886, an article on the "Meaning of the Manger," and one on "Mental Telegraphy " to the Boston Watchman on January 21, 1892. The Rev. Isaac Jennings, D. D. (page 530), has published " Four Ser-
* See Sprague's " Annals of the American Pulpit," Vol. II, p. 524, note. A memoir of Mr. Pettengill was published by the Rev. Luther Hart of Plymouth, in 1834.
+ " The Young Communicant's Manual," by Mrs. F. T. Russell, ought not to be overlooked; nor the " Letters of Life," in the preparation of which she assisted her mother, Mrs. Sigourney.
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mons to Young Men," to say nothing of his other contributions to the press, and the Rev. Dr. Davenport, besides his poems already referred to, has produced other literary work of which mention has been made on page 641. The latest addition to the list of Water- bury clergymen who have wrought chiefly in the field of religious literature is the Rev. James H. O'Donnell (formerly an assistant priest in this city and now pastor of St. John's parish, Watertown), who has published "Liturgy for the Laity," and " One Hundred Interesting Points for Catholics," and whose "Studies in the New Testament " (New York, 1895, pp. 177)-a popular, but scholarly, handbook, in catechetical form, to be followed by a similar work on the Old Testament-has aroused much interest alike among Roman Catholics and Protestants. The introduction is from the pen of Vicar General Mulcahy, so long a Waterbury pastor, Father O'Don- nell's share in this History of Waterbury must also be borne in mind. Of clergymen whose literary work has been " secular " rather than religious in the stricter sense of the word, may be men- tioned (besides the Rev. Dr. Anderson) the Rev. Ashbel Steele, author of "The Chief of the Pilgrims; a Life of Elder Brewster;" the Rev. E. B. Huntington, author of a "Genealogical Memoir of the Huntington Family in this Country" (Stamford, 1863, pp. 428), and of a valuable History of the Town of Stamford (1868, pp. 492); also the Rev. A. N. Lewis, already mentioned among our poets, and the Rev. H. B. Buckham-these last three, principals of our High school. An able paper by Professor Buckham, entitled, " Relative Contribution of Scholarship and Methods to the Power- of the Teacher," was published while he was principal of the state Normal school at Buffalo, N. Y .*
Thus far our list of prose writers has been drawn exclusively from the clerical profession. It was natural that the chief contri- butions to literature in our earlier time should come from the minis- try. Soon after the opening of the present century, however, men
* In this connection may be mentioned one of the rarest and most interesting books belonging to the bibliography of Waterbury, the character of which is indicated by its long, old-fashioned title (surmounted, by the way, by a skull, with cross-bones on either side of it). It runs as follows :
"A Sermon Preached at the Execution of Moses Paul, an Indian, who was executed at New Haven, on the 2d of September, 1772, for the Murder of Mr. Moses Cook, late of Waterbury, on the 7th of December, 1771. Preached at the Desire of said Paul. By Samson Occom, Minister of the Gospel, and Missionary of the Indians. Boston : Printed and Sold by John Boyles, next Door to the Three Doves, in Marlborough Street, 1773." pp. 32, including preface, introduction and appendix.
There are several reprints, one of which, issued in England, is bound up with Dr. Jonathan Edwards's " Observations on the Language of the Muhhekaneew Indians," referred to in Vol. I, p. 16.
Here, also, mention may be made of the well known story by the Rev. Israel P. Warren (formerly a pastor at Thomaston) entitled, "Chauncey Judd; or, The Stolen Boy." It is a story of the Revolution, based on one of the noteworthy incidents of the border warfare between the Connecticut coast and Long Island, Chauncey Judd was a Waterbury boy, and the narrative is in all essential respects true.
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of a somewhat different stamp began to appear in the literary field. One of the first of these was Stephen Upson, who is mentioned (on page 826) among the lawyers. As early as 1808 (see Bronson's History, page 444) he wrote a series of noteworthy articles, signed "Lucius," which were published in the Georgia Express and the Savannah Advertiser, on the "stay laws," then just enacted in Georgia. They were entitled, "An Enquiry into the constitutionality, the necessity, the justice and policy of the Embargo lately laid upon Law in this State." They "denounced in unmeasured terms the obnoxious laws and the men who concocted them, and evince," says Dr. Bron- son, " a good deal of legal knowledge and argumentative force for so young a man." Mr. Upson died at the age forty-one. "Had he lived ten years longer," said one of his admirers, "he would have been the great man of the South." Bronson adds: "He was a fine scholar, an arduous student of law, an eloquent and persuasive speaker and a high-minded, honorable man." About the same time another Waterbury man was exerting considerable influence as an editor in the city of Philadelphia. This was Enos Bronson, of whom some account is given in the following chapter. It is said of him: " He wrote with great directness, in a pure, lucid and simple style, wielding old Saxon with great effect." Already, at a somewhat earlier date than these, Samuel Miles Hopkins, of whom it is said, on page 825, that he "wrote much on various subjects," had appeared in print. He contributed to the newspaper press a series of letters which were issued afterward in pamphlet form, with the following title:
Letters concerning the General Health; with Notes and considerable Additions to the numbers as they lately appeared in the New York Gazette By a House Holder. New York: 1805. pp. 52.
A few years later he published "An Oration delivered before the Washington Benevolent Society in the City of New York ... on the twenty-second of February, 1809" (pp. 20), and after 1826 he gave to the press various essays on prison discipline and reform. An inter- esting passage from his unpublished diary appears in the first volume, Chapter XXXVI, page 545 .* Of Jesse Hopkins, author of " The Patriot's Manual; comprising various Standard and Miscel- laneous Subjects, interesting to every American Citizen," (Utica: 1828, pp. 220), perhaps sufficient mention has been made on page 928. He published also in 1823 a pamphlet in his own defence.
* By an unfortunate error, on page 825, Colonel Woolsey R. Hopkins is spoken of as the grandson, instead of the son, of Samuel Miles Hopkins. There seems to be no authority for the statement on page 823, that his Waterbury ancestors subsequent to the first were millers. For his lineage see Vol. I, Ap. pp. 69, 70.
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A few years after this appeared a curious little book (now scarce) which by its associations brings us at once into the modern period. It is entitled, " Record of a School; Exemplifying the Gen- eral Principles of Spiritual Culture " (Boston, 1835). No name appears upon the title page, but it was written by Elizabeth Pea- body, and consists of minute and interesting reports of the conver- sations of A. Bronson Alcott with the children at that time under his charge. Of Mr. Alcott's poetry we have already spoken. His activity as an author began thirty years later than the period which the "Record of a School" represents. His "Tablets" appeared in 1868; his "Concord Days" in 1872; his " Table Talks" in 1877, and in 1882, " Ralph Waldo Emerson, Philosopher and Seer; an Estimate of his Character and Genius in Prose and Verse." Dr. William A. Alcott, whose right to recognition in Waterbury history rests on the same basis as his cousin's, although making no claim to the title of "man of letters," fills a much larger place than his Concord kinsman in the realm of authorship. He was born in 1798, and, having become a physician and practiced in Wolcott for three years, became in 1832 engaged with William Woodbridge in the preparation of a series of school geographies. Later in life he devoted his time almost entirely to writing and lecturing on various reforms, especially in the field of physical and moral edu- cation. "On these and related subjects he wrote more than a hun- dred volumes."
Our next step forward brings us to men who belong to Water- bury in the fullest sense of the word-men, too, who are still with us as residents of the town, or have recently passed away. Fred- erick J. Kingsbury, whose youthful ventures in the realm of verse have already been recorded, began writing for the press at the age of seventeen in the Virginia Times, at Warrenton, Va. He published in February, 1841, in the Petersburg (Va.) Intelligencer, a series of articles on "the year 1840." During his college course at New Haven he contributed several papers to the Yale Literary Magazine (Volumes X, XI and XII), one of which, in June, 1846, was a serious essay on "Tendencies in Government." The class oration, the same year, was by him, and was published by his class in pamphlet form. Ten years later he contributed to Putnam's Monthly (Volume VII) an article on "Chicago in 1856," which proved to be the first of a long series of papers on historical and sociological subjects. His productiveness in these fields can best be illustrated by giving in chronological order a list of the articles he has published, and adding to these the chapters prepared by him for this History of Waterbury:
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Our National Banks. New Englander, October, 1872. Also in pamphlet form.
The Lafayette Button. Iron Age, November 18, 1876.
An American Manufacturing Town: City of Waterbury. Translated into Por- - tuguese and published in the " Trade Handbook " for Brazil, 1878.
Watertown, Conn. An Address at the Centennial Celebration of the Incorpora- tion of the Town, June 17, 1880. Waterbury American, June 18; also History of Litchfield County, p. 661.
The Copper and Brass Industry. Proceedings of the National Tariff Conven- tion, New York, 1881.
Interoceanic Canals. Address before the Young Men's Christian Association. Waterbury American, January, 1885.
The Period of 1789. Waterbury Republican, July 5, 1889.
South Middle College. Kingsley's History of Yale College, Volume I.
Old Connecticut. Papers of the New Haven Colony Historical Society, Vol- ume III.
Remarks upon Dutch Words and Names. Papers of the American Historical Association, Volume I, page 469.
Mr. Kingsbury has published also the following papers on sociologi- cal subjects:
Pensions in a Republic. Journal of Social Science, September, 1880.
Building Associations. Same journal, 1881.
Factory Labor. Same journal, 1882.
Public Amusements for Laboring Men. Johns Hopkins University Studies, 1887.
Profit Sharing. New Englander, November, 1887.
Discontent among the Laboring Classes. Report of the Connecticut Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1888.
The Development of an Original Industry. Shoemaking in Connecticut. Jour- nal of Social Science, October, 1891.
The Reign of Law. President's Address at the annual meeting of the American Social Science Association, Saratoga, September, 1894. Journal of Social Science, November, 1894.
The Tendency of Men to Live in Cities. President's annual Address, Social Science Association. Journal of Social Science, November, 1895.
He has also given to the press various biographical sketches and papers of reminiscence, some of which follow:
Recollections of James G. Percival. Putnam's Monthly, for December, 1856 (Volume VIII).
Jeremiah Day, D. D., President of Yale College. New Haven Palladium, August 29, 1867.
Chief Justice Joel Hinman. "Connecticut Reports," Volume XXXV.
Calvin Holmes Carter. Papers of the American Historical Association, Volume III, part 1, 1889.
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The Boston Bar Forty Years Ago. Webster, Loring, Choate, Bartlett and Curtis. Western Law Journal, 1889.
Charles Loring Brace. Journal of Social Science, 1890.
One of the Lost Geniuses; a notice of Henry Ward Poole. Atlantic Monthly, January, 1891.
Mark Leavenworth; an address at the celebration of the Bi-Centenary of the First Church. "The Churches of Mattatuck," pp. 197-208. 1892.
Some Reminiscences of the New Haven Bar. Yale Law Journal, June, 1892.
The Pequot Fight. Published by the Connecticut Society of Colonial Wars. 1895.
Mr. Kingsbury contributed also various biographical notices to the "Leavenworth Genealogy " (1873), and has published in the Water- bury American notices of the Hon. Charles G. Loring (1867), Chief Justice Samuel Alfred Foote (1873), the Hon. William Brown (1881), John R. Grout (1882), the Hon. William E. Curtis (1889), Dr. Gideon L. Platt (1889) and Abner L. Train (1891). He contributed to the New Englander for January, 1883, an ingenious essay on "St. Luke, Physician, Painter and Poet," and has written at long intervals reviews of books, as follows:
The New England History, by Charles Wyllis Elliott. Waterbury American, September, 1857.
History of Wallingford and Meriden, by C. H. S. Davis, M. D. New Haven Palladium, 1870.
The Unknown God, by Charles Loring Brace, Hartford Courant, April 8, 1890. Mark Hopkins, by President Franklin Carter. American, February 22, 1892.
About the time of Mr. Kingsbury's contributions to Putnam's Monthly a young man was travelling in Europe who, as the result of temperament and training, came nearer to being a litterateur and an artist than any one whom Waterbury had thus far produced. This was C. U. C. Burton, whose life is outlined in the chapter on art. It may be mentioned here that before his second visit abroad (1852) he contributed to Harper's Magazine two articles, illustrated by his own pencil, on "The Washington Family," and that after a tour through Scandinavia he published in the National Magazine illustrated articles on that interesting region. After his return home he prepared for the National Magazine a valuable series of papers, especially deserving of notice in such a work as this, on "The Valley of the Naugatuck." These are articles of reminiscence, description, biography and literature, the first two (September and October, 1857) relating to Waterbury, the others to the lower Naugatuck valley. Together they fill forty-six pages, and are illustrated by thirty-three wood cuts from his own drawings.
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This was before Dr. Henry Bronson published his "History of Waterbury"-an epoch-making book in the literary annals of the town. For several years before its publication Dr. Bronson had resided in New Haven, but his interest in the early records of his native place had not ebbed. Reference to some of his contributions to medical science is made in the sketch of his life, on page 856, and there needs to be added here only a mention of his essay on American coinage and of his "Chapters on the Early Government of Connecticut; with Critical and Explanatory Remarks on the Constitution of 1639," published in Volume III of the Papers of the New Haven Colony Historical society (pp. III). In Volume IV of the Papers of the same society appears an essay by another Water- bury man who cherished a great interest in historical subjects, Calvin H. Carter. This essay, quoted elsewhere, is devoted to "Con- necticut Boroughs," and was preceded by a companion essay on the "Township System," which appeared in the Waterbury American of December 2 and 3, 1874 .*
Next to Mr. Kingsbury, however, the chief worker in the his- torical field among Waterbury men has been the Rev. Joseph Ander- son. Among the bound volumes written or compiled and edited by him, and already referred to in other chapters, are "Aaron Bene- dict; a Memorial" (1873), "History of the Soldiers' Monument " (1886), "Book of the Riverside Cemetery " (1889), and "The Churches of Mattatuck" (1892). Of his other published writings, not men- tioned elsewhere in this History, the more important are the fol- lowing:
The Crime of Drunkenness; a Discourse on Preventives and Remedies. Water- bury, 1867, pp. 18. +
. The Temperance Reformation in its Latest Aspects. A lecture delivered in the First Church, January 28, 1872. Waterbury American, January 31 and February I.
The Office of Deaconess in Congregational Churches. A Paper read before the General Conference of the Congregational Churches of Connecticut at Middletown, November 6, 1873. Published by vote of the Conference in the Congregational Quarterly, January, 1874, and in pamphlet form (pp. 20).
Introduction to the Rev. Samuel Orcutt's " History of the Town of Wolcott," 1874.
* The literary work of Mr. Carter's younger brother, President Carter of Williams college, has been mentioned in the sketch of his life on page 559. Another young man devoted to history, of the same age with C. H. Carter (born five days later), was Irving Nelson Hall. A sketch of his life is given at the end of this chapter.
+ An introductory note says the discourse was preached "in response to a request of the Waterbury lodge of the society of Good Templars." The writer adds: " It is published not by request of the Good Templars, but n accordance with the expressed desire of gentlemen who heard it, and who believe that although presenting views not quite in harmony with those advocated by existing societies, it is nevertheless fitted to do good." This was the first (March 17, 1867) of a number of discourses, preached at intervals, that have appeared in print, and have excited much comment, both friendly and adverse.
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The Growth of a Christian Literature. An Address delivered in the Centre Church, New Haven, November 18, 1876, and published in the Centennial Papers of the General Conference.
History of the " Fund for Ministers " belonging to the General Conference of the Congregational Churches of Connecticut, with some account of other Organiza- tions for Ministerial Aid. New York, 1878, pp. 48.
Foot-Prints of the Red Man in the Naugatuck Valley. A Lecture, . Jan- uary 27, 1879. Published in the American, and republished, with additions (pp. xvii-xc), in Orcutt's "History of Derby " (Springfield, 1880) and in his " Indians of the Housatonic and Naugatuck Valleys " (Hartford, 1882).
How the Early Settlements obtained their Political Rights and Church Privileges. An Address delivered at the Centenary of the Congregational Church, Naugatuck, February 22, 1881. Waterbury Republican, February 23.
The Duty of Commemorating the Nation's Dead, and How we may Fulfil it. An Address, . . . May 29, 1881. American, May 30. Reproduced in part in the " History of the Soldiers' Monument."
A Seventeen Years' Pastorate. An Anniversary Address, . February 12, 1882. American, February 14.
" The American Congress of Churches." Proceedings of the Hartford and Cleveland Meetings, 1885 (pp. 149) and 1886 (pp. 212) .*
Twenty-five years. An Anniversary Sermon, February 9, 1890. American, February 10.
The Relation of Culture to Practical Life. Delivered before the American Insti- tute of Christian Philosophy, August 7, 1890, and published in Christian Thought in October following.
Dr. Anderson has contributed to The Nation and The Independent various reviews of books relating to the American Indians, and his minor contributions to Waterbury newspapers have been numer- ous. His editorial connection with the American during 1872 and 1873 is referred to in the following chapter, page 976.
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