USA > Connecticut > Middlesex County > Haddam > The two hundredth anniversary of the First Congregational Church of Haddam, Connecticut, October 14th and 17th, 1900. Church organized, 1696. Pastor installed, 1700 > Part 9
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Cyprian Strong Brainerd was a tall man of graceful presence and pleasing address. In early years he was a teacher in the public schools, having taught in Higga- num, Portland, and other places. Later he was engaged in quarrying with his brothers, furnishing stone for New York, New Orleans, and other cities, and for heavy masonry at Fort Schuyler, Fort Hamilton, Governor's
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Island, Fort Pulaski, and other fortifications. This brought him into contact with prominent army men. Among them he used to mention General (then Colonel) J. K. F. Mansfield, and General (then Major) Robert E. Lee, as being gentlemen with whom it was pleasant to do business. Deacon Brainerd was quite an enthusi- ast in the practical study of astronomy, and was familiar with the constellations, the fixed stars, the planets and their motions.
He was one of the original trustees of Brainerd Acad- emy, and the last survivor of the old board. He was for many years the efficient superintendent of the Sabbath- school, in which he took a great interest. For more than forty years he was the leader of the choir, and a most efficient chorister. He was a sweet singer and a general favorite with the choir, and the old gallery used to be filled with fine singers. Prompt and punctual, Mary Brainerd always presided at the instrument, performing with such grace, devotion, and with such skilful touch, as to make music that lifted the heart to sublime and devout praise. Deacon Brainerd only wanted a pipe- organ to make him content. How much he knows now of what is transpiring among us we do not say, we do not know, but if he is aware of this fine instru- ment, the gift of his son, Cyprian S. Brainerd, Jr., as a memorial of the father and mother, he must regard this act of filial piety with the greatest satisfaction and delight. However that may be, it will bring to the mind of this appreciative people these old, tried friends, and will cause the name of parents and son to be remem- bered by coming generations.
Deacon Brainerd died at the house of a son in Brook- lyn, July 18, 1880, at the age of seventy-five. His
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modest, faithful wife survived him and died in 1896, at the age of ninety. She bequeathed to the church $500.
Oliver Phelps Smith, who died March 14, 1877, had the office of deacon thrust upon him. He was a modest, diffident man, an able, honest merchant, and universally esteemed. He was devout, sober, grave, temperate, sound in the faith, charitable, patient. At our social meetings he made short prayers and brief exhortations, and they are remembered.
Elihu Bigelow Rogers served as deacon from 1879 to 1881, when he resigned. He had a great affection for the young converts of the revival of 1876, attended their meetings, and afforded them much comfort and encour- agement. By reason of infirmities he has been con- fined to his house for several years past. He is eighty years of age.
Arnold Hazleton Hayden was chosen deacon March 24, 1881, and served until his resignation, May 21, 1885. His mother was a granddaughter of Deacon Eliakim Brainerd.
Deacon John Henry Odber was appointed in 1881, and has earned a good degree by a faithful service of nineteen years.
Miner C. Hazen, M.D., was a deacon for a total of about thirteen years between his first election, August 20, 1885, and his retirement from office in 1899.
Alpheus Williams Tyler has served the church as a deacon since December 20, 1893.
Ephraim Pierson Arnold, our junior deacon, was ap- pointed December 20, 1899.
Three of the deceased pastors and several deacons are buried in the old yard east of the court-house. I viewed the ground yesterday, and read these inscriptions. On
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the monument to the second pastor, Rev. Mr. Fiske, the scholar and teacher, the gentle, faithful, zealous min- ister, and the beloved physician :
Here lyeth the body of ye Rev. Phinehas Fiske. A learned faithful and zealous minister of Jesus Christ and pastor of ye first Church in Haddam who Departed this Life October ye 17th 1738 Etatis suae 56
Adjoining is the stone of Deacon Hezekiah Brainerd, Dr. Fiske's son-in-law, the brother of the great mis- sionary :
In memory of Colonel Hezekiah Brainerd who departed this Life Dec. 14, A.D. 1774 in the 67th year of his Age Death conquers all.
Longfellow has better said :
There is no death. What seems so is transition. This life of mortal breath Is but a suburb of the life Elysian, Whose portal we call Death.
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REV. DAVID B. HUBBARD
M OSES said, "The secret things belong unto the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever." I suppose Moses was right. But I find myself wondering where the fathers are, and how much they know of what is taking place in Haddam to-day. My grandfather and grandmother Brainerd, my grandfather and grand- mother Hubbard, my father and mother, all of them, I think, at one time members of this church; have they moved so far out into the other world, or become so ab- sorbed with the joys thereof as to have lost sight of the ups and downs, the joys and sorrows of this church, and of the boy who has come on this anniversary occasion to stand in their place? I know not; but this I know, that if we are in truth the children of God, somewhere and somehow, in the no very distant future, we shall meet, and "We 'll know each other there."
Among the very first things I learned, after I was so kindly invited to come to the old homestead to-day and speak of the early missionaries of this church, was the fact that a niece of David Brainerd, who was the wife of the Rev. Thomas Minor, the first and for over fifty years pastor of the church I am now serving, lived in the same house I have occupied for the last fifteen years. The dust of their bodies lies in the cemetery only a few rods from my door.
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I think a very general impression, among our Congre- gational people at least, has been that the missionary spirit began to be felt and manifest itself about the time of the organization of the American Board, viz., in the early part of the present century ; but this is a mistake. This work began when Christ was on earth. He said to his disciples, "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." And Christians have never wholly forgotten this command, and it is very clear that in the early part of Haddam's history it had unusual force in the minds of some of its inhabitants.
Just above where we now are, perhaps a mile and a half, on the right-hand side of the road, stood a house, back at the first of the eighteenth century, and how long before I know not, in which Hezekiah Brainerd and his wife, formerly Mrs. Daniel Mason, of Lebanon, and a daughter of Rev. Jeremiah Hobart, pastor of this church, began housekeeping, October 1, 1707. Mr. Brainerd was a man of more education than those around him, honored and trusted in political life, and died in the Capitol while attending in his place as sena- tor, May 24, 1727. To this Hezekiah and Dorothy, his wife, nine children were born-five boys and four girls ; the first, October 26, 1708, the last, June 7, 1725. Of those five boys it may be said, all were honored, noble men. The oldest, Hezekiah, became prominent in town and State matters, a deacon in this church, and died at the age of sixty-seven. The second, Nehemiah, gradu- ated at Yale College, settled in the ministry at Glaston- bury in 1740, and died in 1742. The fifth son and youngest child, Israel, entered Yale College, evidently with the purpose of fitting himself for the ministry, but was not permitted to complete his course of study,
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dying of a nervous fever, January 6, 1748. The third and fourth sons, David and John, are the ones with whom I have principally to do on this occasion.
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David was born April 20, 1718. Nine years later, his father died, and his mother died when he was but four- teen years old. Thus orphaned, he was cared for by Christian friends in East Haddam until he was nine- teen. Then for about a year he seems to have labored on a farm in Durham, his portion or a part of his portion of his father's large estate. In April, 1738, he came to the house of Rev. Phineas Fiske, pastor of this church, evidently for the purpose of fitting for college. In the October following, Mr. Fiske died. He then studied with his brother Nehemiah. His training here with Mr. Fiske was of an ascetic nature, he being advised "wholly to abandon young company and associate himself wholly with grave, elderly people," which counsel he followed, in my judgment greatly to his detriment physically and spiritually. David Brainerd did not need that kind of counsel. Weak physically, naturally inclined to seclu- sion and gloomy forebodings, he should have had the brightest pictures and the richest promises of God's love continually before him. As it was, we find him from the first to the very last of his religious life wearing himself out with cares and burdens he ought to have cast upon the Lord. His manner of life while with Mr. Fiske, and some months after, he says, "was now wholly regu- lar and full of religion, such as it was; for I read my Bible twice through in less than a year, spent much time every day in prayer and other sacred duties, gave great attention to the preached word, and endeavored to my utmost to retain it; in short, I had a very good outside and rested entirely on my duties, though I was insensi-
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ble of it." But with these exercises he was not content. Who could be? He experienced nothing from which he could venture to hope that he was a child of God, until Sabbath evening, July 12, 1739. Then, a little more than twenty-one years old, he was attempting to pray in a discouraged state of mind, as if there was nothing in heaven or earth that could make him happy, when "The glory of the Lord shone," not so much "round him" as within him. He saw "light in God's light," and marvelled that he had not done so before. He says, "I felt myself in a new world, and everything about me appeared with a different aspect from what it was wont to do." Surely he was a "new creature." But here the wonder begins. Read his diary and you will have the blues from the start almost to the finish. "A consecrated man," you will say, with purpose firm to serve the Lord; "hungering and thirsting after righteousness," while all the time looking backward and inward as though God remembered everything and laid it up against him. Sweet glimpses he had now and then of love and brighter things beyond, and these always strengthened him for greater strides in the heavenly race.
After he had begun his work among the Indians, ex- tracts from a letter to his brother John, who was at Yale College, will, I think, give a fair index to his experience.
DEAR BROTHER: I long to see you, and to know how you fare in your journey through a world of inexpressible sorrow, where we are compassed about with vanity, confusion, and vexation of spirit. I am weary of life, more so, I think, than I ever was. The world appears to me like a huge vacuum, a vast empty space, whence nothing desirable or at least satisfactory can possibly be derived, and I long daily to die more and more to it, even though I obtain not that comfort from spiritual things
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which I earnestly desire. Let us faithfully perform that busi- ness which is allotted to us by divine Providence, to the utmost of our bodily strength, and mental vigor. Death and Eternity are just before us; a few tossing billows more will waft us into the world of spirits, and, we hope, through infinite grace into endless pleasures and uninterrupted rest and peace. .
Brainerd gave himself wholly to convincing men of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment to come, and to show- ing them the way of life. It mattered not whether he was traveling by day or stopping by night, whether there were few or many, he seized the opportunity to converse with his fellow-creatures on the subject of religion.
His principal business, however, was with the Indians. He began laboring at Kaunaumeek, about twenty miles from Stockbridge, April 1, 1743, and stayed there a year. Afterward, he labored at Crossweeksung, eight miles southeast of Trenton; then at Cranbury, about fifteen miles distant, until the spring of 1747. Then, a feeble man always, his little strength completely failed, and he bade farewell to the church he had formed and the In- dian people who had learned to love him for his works' sake. Slowly and painfully he made his way home, thence to Northampton to the house of President Edwards, thence to Boston, where for a time he hovered between life and death, finally rallying and doing much work. Afterward he returned to Northampton and breathed his life out sweetly in the home of President Edwards, October 9, 1747, at the age of twenty-nine. So young ! and yet so old ! To read his diary, learn where he went, how he labored in weakness and in pain, and not read the date, you would surely say, "He must have been three score years and ten."
But did he do the Indians any good? Oh, yes! Many
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of them were converted; there was a powerful revival among them, and such as were not converted were brought into a much better condition for future work among them.
John Brainerd, two years younger than David, gradu- ated at Yale in 1746. He took his brother's place among the Indians while his brother was sick, and after his brother's death, was commissioned to go on with the work. He continued as a missionary to the Indians until 1777, covering a period of about thirty-one years. The last three years of his life he spent as pastor of the church in Deerfield, N. J. It is said he would have died with his Indian people, but war came, and a British army, reckless and cruel, broke in upon the field of his labors, and, to mark their special vengeance on the out- spoken and active patriotism of the pastor, burned down his church, and also, it is said, his dwelling. Expecting no mercy at the hands of British or Tories, he felt justi- fied in retiring until the storm was past. He died March 18, 1781, and his ashes rest beneath the aisle of the same - old church in which he preached the gospel.
He is said to have been his brother's equal in piety. I should say his piety was of a more cheerful kind, and yet even here he was evidently David's brother. He shared, we fear, in the feeble constitution that carried his brother David to the grave at twenty-nine, Nehemiah at thirty-two, Israel at twenty-three, and his sister Je- rusha Spencer at thirty-four. Though he himself reached sixty, his whole life seems to have been a strug- gle with physical infirmity.
Neither John nor David became a missionary to the Indians because there was nothing else for him to do. Both had urgent calls to prominent churches. Theo-
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logical dandies would have said they were the "calls of God." These consecrated brothers gave themselves and their substance to God and the red man, and at the time of John's death the Indian church at Brotherton em- braced by one account one seventh, by another one third, of the entire population. This is probably as large a proportion as is found to-day in our New England vil- lages. The manner of work, or style of preaching among the Indians, according to David's language, was "To lead them into a farther view of their utter undoneness in themselves ; the total depravity and corruption of their hearts; that there was no manner of goodness in them; no good dispositions or desires; no love to God nor de- light in his commands; but on the contrary, hatred, en- mity, and all manner of wickedness reigned in them. And at the same time to open to them the glorious and complete remedy provided in Christ for helpless perish- ing sinners, and offered freely to those who have no goodness of their own, no works of righteousness which they have done, to recommend them to God." I doubt if there has been any improvement since upon this gen- eral plan for the salvation of either Indians or white men.
From the position of trust John Brainerd occupied in connection with Princeton College, from his writings, such as I have been able to read, and from the testimony of eminent men concerning him, I judge him equal, if not superior, in intellect and good common sense to his brother David. Of both of them it should be written, "Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from hence- forth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them."
The biographer says, "Crossweeks, Bethel, and Bro-
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therton, like Ephesus, Antioch, and Thyatira, have lost the praying men and women who once dwelt there; but these places still constitute sacred shrines in the memory of the church, and by the recorded history of the holy men who labored in them, will to the end of time radiate light upon the world. Henry Martin, Carey, and many other missionaries, Robert Hall, Thomas Chalmers, and other great minds of earth, have borrowed inspiration and models of holy living from the lives and labors of the Brainerds among the pines of New Jersey." Here in the Haddams they speak yet.
I was surprised to learn that they head the list of thirty-two ministers, possibly more, who have been raised up on the original territory of this town. The record is a good one, for it includes such names as Henry M. Field, D.D., Joseph Harvey, D.D., Elihu Spencer, D.D., H. M. Parsons, D.D., Nathaniel Emmons, D.D., and Edward Dorr Griffin, D.D. But this is not all, neither is it half. The thousands of Christians who have lived and are still living have had breathed into them a little more of the "Breath of Life," and have gone in the strength thereof with a little more zeal than would have been the case had David and John never lived.
These men sleep, and, no one doubts, "the sleep of the just." White men praise and magnify their names. Old Haddam is glad to call them her sons, and would do herself honor to mark the place of their birth with some lasting memorial. Indians many have died who were taught by those apostles that there was something better than chasing the deer and scalping the foe, and who for many a long year have been having greater delight in the heavenly fields than they ever dreamed of having in their "Happy hunting-ground." No good
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Indian except a dead Indian! The Brainerds did n't think so, and we would n't think so had the Indian al- ways been treated as he should have been. I sympathize with the Indian. I am told there is Indian blood in my veins. I don't doubt it, for I feel the blood boil, Indian fashion, within me when I think of the wrongs done that people. Had there been more Davids and Johns, there would have been more praying and laboring and saving, and less cheating and shooting and driving the poor red man and his squaw from the land to which they had the first and best claim.
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EVELINE WARNER BRAINERD
M UCH has been said of those who laid out the home lots of Haddam; little is known of those who car- ried on the homes. Much is told of those who preached on Sunday ; little of the wives who criticized the sermons on Saturday. Elizabeth Hobart, Mrs. Fiske, Sybil Huntington May, Submit Dickinson Field, Mrs. Marsh : these were names that in their own times meant to the people of our town what the names Mrs. Cook, Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Lewis are in the memory of those here to-day.
So usual has church ownership of the manse become that it seems as though this had been always the cus- tom, and it is a surprise to find that here at least the possession of a minister's house by the church or eccle- siastical society dates back but about sixty years. This is the latest of three methods of providing the minister's home. The others, that of giving a house and lot, or giving settlement money wherewith the clergyman might purchase his home, were the arrangements belonging to the days of long pastorates, when the settlement was the commencement of a life work.
Of the land marked off for "the minister," "the first minister," "the parsonage," "the parsonage forever," it is unlikely that any ever served for home lot. It is a curious and pleasant coincidence that the recent be- quest to this church comes from a descendant of the
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man, Joseph Arnold, who gave part of his own home lot for the home of the first minister. This dwelling, built by the town, is the only case, till this century, of the public ownership of the parsonage. Mr. Willoughby used it probably less than two years, and the only sug- gestion of the home, save the fact that two little chil- dren, Mary and Jonathan, Jr., were therein, is gathered from an order in the year following his departure, that out of money still due Mr. Willoughby be deducted Goodman Whitmore's bill for "fearidge," which one fancies to mean the moving of the few household goods across the "great river."
Mr. Willoughby's house became the town meeting- place and, probably, the church for the succeeding six years; for, with the coming of Mr. Noyes, the town promised him the house and lot in case "he should see cause to settle with us six years from this time forward in the worke of the gospell," and it was ordered that "in case Mr. Noyes see cause to make use of the house or lote he give the town convenient warning before taking the house holy to himself." Mr. Noyes gave two years' warning, and in the meantime, perhaps, it was that he dwelt on a "highway on the way to the great hill where persons dig stones." This certainly sounds like the road running from the school-house to the quarries, and on this high land, doubtless lay Aaron Cleveland's lot, described eighty years later as on Noyes's Hill. What was cooked in the wide fireplaces of the Willoughby house and the house "on the hill" can readily be imagined when it is known that Mr. Noyes's salary came in the four forms of wheat, pease, pork, and Indian corn. From the records one learns of the land fever that curiously possessed this bachelor
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parson. Mr. Noyes had uncleared acres given him as "freeman" of the town, but he also bought, and we read of a home lot on the first town road and another, with a house upon it, lying a little north of Benjamin Kelsey's. The history of one piece tells with what affection he re- garded his parish. It was the town's gift to the first minister. On leaving, Mr. Noyes said he should present it to the first young man settled over the Haddam church. Thirty-two years did he hold it, till the coming of young Phineas Fiske.
Rumor says that the Rev. John James was bookish, a statement not contradicted by the negative testimony, that of absence of deeds, suggesting that his tastes did not run with his predecessor's into real estate. The town offered him the house of the former minister, "the horshard," and pasture for one year, and the house was to be fitted up, and the pasture fenced as high as "the horshard," while he was to have the pasture-land or let the town improve it for him. In the spring he was to have twenty-two pounds and the firewood for the next year.
This first parsonage had disappeared before the com- ing of Mr. Hobart, and the year following his arrival a house was built for him. The frame was to be ready in March, the nails in May, and three years later the house and land were given outright to the pastor. If study has not led far astray, this house stood on the corner lot across the turnpike from the church, now the Clark place. Mr. Hobart's widow sold it to her "be- loved son Hezekiah Brainerd," and when he in turn sold it to Benjamin Smith there was reserved on the north- ernmost corner a place for a Sabbath house for him and his family and heirs forever. Fifty pounds a year in
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provision pay had been offered as an inducement to set- tle, and Mr. Hobart had also what seemed to cause much trouble, eighty loads of wood delivered at his house by November tenth each year. He was an elderly man when he came to Haddam. One son was grown and away, but the little girl, Dorothy, wandered among the "fruit trees, fences, herbage, and waters" that the old deed records. In time she, a young widow, brought to the parsonage the little Jeremiah Mason, the grandfather of the renowned lawyer Jeremiah Mason, and by and by, when she had gone to her new home on the bend of the river below Higganum, the children of Hezekiah Brainerd must have brightened what one can but fancy was a sober home.
With the church and the Hobart house together, it was natural that the next parsonage-that for Mr. Ho- bart's assistant, Phineas Fiske-should be near. Its well, allowed by a town vote "provided it be kept well curbed," known, till recent years, as the Fiske well, lies on the highway, north of Mr. Rogers's place. Oppo- site stood the dwelling, near that of Mrs. Williams. Nine acres constituted the original property, but Parson Fiske's orchard and barn were across the road, and there stood the three rows of apple trees especially men- tioned in the deed. The plans for the house were care- fully made and carried out. One town meeting was, called "chiefly for the methodizing the building and finishing of Mr. Fiske's house." Mrs. Fiske is the only one of the parsonage mistresses whose share in its management is visible to the public, but it is easy to imagine hers in the changes in the house plans that the young minister asked. The lean-to became not a mere lean-to, but a shed running up square as high as the
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