USA > Connecticut > Fairfield County > Wilton > Wilton Parish, 1726-1951 : being a brief historical sketch of the Wilton Congregational Church and Ecclesiastical Society from the establishment to the present day : with additional comments concerning traditions, events & personages of the venerable old town > Part 2
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This arrangement did not last long. The next year, as the Parish was divided into three districts, it was provided that school was to be taught on Belden's Hill in June and July, in Pimpawaug in August and September, and in Kent and Chestnut Hill "as long as the money holds out!" (In 1792 came the further division into nine school districts-fragmenta- tion which was not overcome until the relatively recent consolidation.)
As the second Meeting-House and cemetery. were now completed, another building was built nearby at a cost of thirty pounds, for a Society and school house combined. The records mention the holding of a Society meeting here in 1741.
Members of the Congregation who came from any distance must have found this build- ing even more important as a kind of com- munity center on Sundays. The long morning and afternoon services were held in a Meeting-
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House which, in winter, was without heat. But at noon, in this first "Parish House," the families could get together before a fireplace filled with burning logs, eat "pot luck," com- pare farming notes-and gossip. This building, apparently becoming unnecessary later, was sold two years before the Declaration of In- dependence.
This concern of the Church with public school matters was only one of many indications of the way government and religion merged in Wilton's early decades.
Today, newcomers have to learn that the "Church" is really two entities-an Ecclesiastical Society, concerned with temporal affairs; and a Church, concerned with spiritual affairs. This division was made necessary in Colonial New England because Churches were not allowed to become incorporated bodies, the feeling being that this would involve them in worldly matters. The Society, therefore, levied the taxes for the support of the Church as well as for the main- tenance of the cemetery, the schools, the roads, and the militia. This arrangement lasted for almost a century until the new State Consti- tution of Connecticut separated Church and State in 1818, after which time Churches were incorporated if they so desired and were sup- ported from that time on by voluntary con- tributions. The Wilton Church through the years has elected to keep its Ecclesiastical
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Society.
The mingling of Society and State was plain in the original charter about a "Village en- joying Parrish Privileges," to be known "by the name of Wilton Parrish." In fact, the Ecclesiastical Society was organized first; it arranged for the building of the first Meet- ing-House; then it hired a Pastor-and not till then was the Church organized.
In its first spring (1727), one of the Wilton Society's earliest acts was to vote "to be free of training" under officers at Norwalk and to set up the Village's own company of militia. The schoolman, Ketchum, became leader of the band, first as lieutenant, then as captain. All the Colonial men from 16 to 55 were liable for service and required to possess a musket, rest, sword and bandolier. They trained at 8 o'clock in the morning during three spring and three fall months.
This company became the seventh in the Ninth Regiment during the fighting at mid- century, and meantime, Wilton contributed also to the "troop of horse" in the same regi- ment.
Throughout the 1700's, France and Eng- land were involved in a struggle of power and, on this side of the Atlantic, their clash over possession of the lands to the West resulted in the French and Indian War. From 1755 to 1758, Connecticut raised 13,500 men for this
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war. The records indicate that five Wilton men were killed in this fighting. One was the Reverend Mr. Gaylord's son, previously men- tioned.
During the Revolutionary War, Wilton sent 300 men to the Continental Army. The war itself came to Wilton in April, 1777, during the British drive to burn the depot at Dan- bury. The Wiltonians having gathered through the night, they formed a line at the bridge near the site of the present St. Matthew's Church. Some shots were fired and some British captured but, flanking the Wiltonians by crossing the river at Mill Road, the main body of the Brit- ish marched off to Saugatuck by way of the present Dudley Road. The term "Tory Hole," still in use, refers to a place down Lovers' Lane behind the Church, which dates from this episode. Several Wilton houses were fired but none destroyed, for the retreat was too fast. It is recounted that, before the British were out of sight, a woman went with a pail of water from a neighboring home and put out flames set to a house near the militia's line. Nearby, a Tory woman and her Indian slave also were helping put out a fire in a barn where Continental stores had been kept.
The British made calls at several homes to re- quest food. They appear to have secured this without incident, except perhaps at the home on Drum Hill of Deacon Daniel Gregory,
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whose aged mother shook a poker at the in- truders "to show them which side I was on."
The story has come down of another woman, Mary Cole, who acted courageously during this war when she heard that her husband was sick or wounded at White Plains. Braving the possibilities of meeting the British or the "cow- boys" on the New York-Connecticut "border," she rode over on horseback and brought him back to Wilton "on the same steed."
It was commonly believed that the lead statue of King George III at Bowling Green, New York City, was taken to Litchfield, Conn., and melted down into bullets to greet his soldiers. However, digging in Wilton years later revealed that at least part of it had been secretly buried here. Four hundred twenty- five pounds of lead were turned up, and pre- sumably more may still lie in the Town's soil to this day.
The only other Revolutionary War incident involving Wilton came in the summer of 1779, when British raiders from the sea burned Nor- walk. Wilton's third Minister, the Reverend Mr. Isaac Lewis, who had succeeded Mr. Gaylord and had in 1776 been chaplain of a Connecticut regiment, headed a company of men which went to Norwalk at that time. A cannon ball struck within three feet of him -but after the attempt to sack Wilton, even this must have seemed anti-climactic to the
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Parish.
Mr. Lewis served the Church from 1768 to 1786-from the early days of complaint about the tax on tea to the latter days of the Articles of Confederation, and the battles of the Revolution. After a ministry of eighteen years, he was dismissed in a dispute over bap- tism and Church membership, and he became a Pastor at Greenwich for thirty-two years.
For eight years following, the Church could not agree upon a Minister who would accept. Several calls were issued, but perhaps because of the divisions and the small salary, no Min- ister would come until the Reverend Aaron Woodworth of Coventry, a recent Yale gradu- ate, accepted and was ordained in 1794.
One of the most remarkable events in the Church's history was the erection of the present Meeting-House during this period of un- certainty without a settled Pastor!
In 1773, a vote had been taken to build a new Meeting-House. The Sharp Hill build- ing was getting into bad repair, and the center of population had shifted further north. On Dec. 28, 1789, a decision was reached to erect it "on the Hill at the South Easterly part of Daniel Gregory's woodland." The Church was built with public funds, instead of by voluntary contributions, a special tax being levied over ten years to pay for it.
As far as possible, timbers of the old Church
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were used in building the new one during the year 1790. The pulpit and seats were also transferred, and employed for thirteen years. The foundation stones of the old Meeting- House were used in fencing the Sharp Hill Cemetery.
There were three aisles in the Church ori- ginally, and the ceiling was arched. Four large pillars supported the galleries. Two pillars also supported a lofty, conical and ornamented sounding-board above the high pulpit. This sounding board was "painted a beautiful blue, with gilt bands and a bouquet of grain in gilt."
The Parish voted not to build a steeple un- less "any man or men would build it at their own expense;" but somehow it was built. There is no record of a bell until 1801.
In spite of the tradition of the early white frame Church of New England, it was voted to paint this "with yellow ochre, and the roof Spanish brown." But happily, the new Meeting- House was actually painted white.
As the cornerstone indicates, the Meeting- House was dedicated in 1790 in December. The sermon was preached by the Reverend Mr. Timothy Dwight, who later became President of Yale. He took as his text the exclamation of Jacob after he had wrestled with the angel, "How dreadful is this place! This is but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!"
This Meeting-House is the oldest in Fairfield
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County and one of the dozen oldest in the State.
During its long history, the pulpit has been filled by many distinguished visiting clergymen: The Reverend Mr. Josiah Sherman, Wilton- born brother of a signer of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution; the Rever- end Mr. Zachariah Lewis, tutor to George Washington's family, and the Reverend Mr. Moses Stuart, also born in Wilton, the first great Hebrew scholar of the country.
Signaled by a growing dissatisfaction with some of the rigid rules of the past, the time had now come when a break with the early Colonial customs was inevitable. Church dom- ination of the Town's life was no longer feasible. So, in the year 1802, two major steps were taken to transform the Colonial Wilton into a modern community much more as it is today. The State legislature in this year incorporated what had been the "Parish of Wilton" into a Town, and thereafter public Town business was no longer transacted in the Meeting-House. Now marriages and deaths were recorded in books of the Town.
Growing interest in other denominations al- so culminated in the formation of Wilton's second Church. With a liberal attitude toward other groups, the Wilton Church as early as 1764 had abated the tax for the Minister's support owed by Mr. Whelpley, "so long as
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he attends the Baptist meeting and no longer." After 1772 the Society's collector turned over to the rector of St. Paul's Protestant Episcopal Parish in Norwalk the Minister's "rate" col- lected from that Church's members in Wilton.
Now members of this Norwalk Parish, on July 1, 1802, established St. Matthew's Parish. Interestingly, the civil authority called this organizational meeting, according to the law, and the next year they erected their first Church building.
These important changes in Wilton came during the three-year pastorate of the Reverend Mr. John I. Carle, the Church's fifth Minister. He asked to be dismissed in 1804, but the Society refused such an orderly break and made charges of "irregularities in his Christian life and moral habits." In a word, it disapproved of his drinking. Mr. Carle left anyway and, according to tradition, died in New Jersey, a victim of intemperance.
Heavy and widespread drinking appears to have been the custom during these early dec- ades. In addition to the shoe, hat and textile factories which Wilton had at the beginning of the nineteenth century, five distilleries were operating here. Even when the temperance movement got underway in the Town, it ban- ned only distilled liquors.
By 1829, this reformation had gained enough strength that one man tried to get workmen
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to build a barn for him without the aid of alcohol, but so many men refused to complete the work in these dry conditions, that he was obliged to send for strong drink. A few weeks later, however, another man managed to get his barn built without supplying anything stronger than ale. This was said to be the first large building in Wilton to be built without the assistance of hard liquor!
The Church's next Pastor was an enthusiastic supporter of the temperance movement, the Reverend Mr. Haight. He was Minister for 21 years, but his outspoken convictions appear to have made an increasing number of enemies toward the end of his pastorate. In Mr. Wil- lard's rather quaint language, "perhaps a greater prudence of speech, when silence had been golden, had enabled him longer to escape some of the unfriendliness." Nevertheless he was dis- missed in 1831 and thereafter preached in Bethel and South Norwalk and lived a time in Wilton itself.
Dr. Sylvester Willard, a Wilton-born phy- sician, has left a striking impression of this Pastor's towering figure:
"Mr. Haight was a man of quick impulses and ponderous energy . His person was massive, his head large, and his skin bronzed. When in after years I saw and heard Daniel Webster, I was greatly impressed with a simi- larity between them.
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"I remember the beautiful summer afternoon in August, 1831, when a mere child, I went with my father to hear his farewell sermon. He was in the lofty pulpit of the old Church, which was very high and seemed to my childish eyes a great deal higher than it really was . . When he concluded his sermon the people wept; his heart was swollen with emotion, and his voice faltered, but with immense power and solemnity he concluded, 'Amen! and amen to this Bible,' at the same time laying his hand with heavy emphasis upon it. I was frightened, and thought the world was coming to an end. On the way home, I remember, I asked my father if there were to be no more Sundays! He replied: 'Yes, but Mr. Haight is not to be our Minister any longer.' "
During Mr. Haight's ministry there had been two powerful revivals, and many families were added to the Church. In the Church at large during this period, there was a general religious enthusiasm which brought the estab- lishment of Sunday Schools and the foundation of Congregational mission work; and in Wil- ton, about 1816, a Sunday School was started to offer organized instruction in religion to the Parish children for the first time. Special Sab- bath garments and shoes were prepared, and on Sundays the children flocked to the Nathan Davenport home to put them on and march in order to Sunday School, and later they would
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return to the house, exchange the new garments for their old ones, and go on to their homes.
One of the first steps after the installation of Mr. Haight's successor, the Reverend Mr. Samuel Merwin, was the construction of the present parsonage in 1832-3. The lot was pur- chased from Nathan Comstock with funds made available through the sale of a piece of prop- erty and a gift of $800 previously willed to the Church by Deacon Jonathan Middlebrook. Mr. Merwin and his family were the first oc- cupants of the parsonage, which has been in continuous use to the present day. Due to im- paired health, Mr. Merwin was dismissed at his own request after a pastorate of six years during which time the Church had a large growth in membership and a deepening of its spiritual life.
The Reverend Mr. John Smith, who had been born in Wethersfield and had studied at Yale, Andover and Princeton, was installed as the new Minister in 1839. He had been an agent of the American Tract Society, and three years after his coming to Wilton, ninety-five persons came into the Church on a single Sun- day, most of them by profession of faith. About fifty of them were baptized at the same time. This appears to have been the biggest revival in the Church's two hundred and twenty-five years.
The evangelical interests were carried on
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by the man who succeeded Mr. Smith in 1848. He was the Reverend Mr. Gordon Hall, son of one of the first five missionaries which the Congregational Church had sent to India. The new Minister had been born in Bombay, and while he was still a boy, his father died of cholera on the veranda of a Hindu temple. The son had managed to go to Yale, where he was graduated with high honors. After about four years in the Church, he accepted a call to Northampton, Mass.
Slavery now became a burning issue in Wil- ton, and one of its homes (at Danbury and Westport Roads) served as a station on the "underground railway" to help escaping slaves. When Civil War came, one-hundred and forty- one Wiltonians served in the War-five of them being Negroes out of a population of twenty- five Negroes. Thirty-five substitutes were hired by individuals or by the Town.
The profits from wartime production of shirts, shoes and woven-wire were a boon to the Town, and indirectly to the Church. Dur- ing the War, the Town reached a population peak of more than 2,200-a total not reached again until the 1930's. Following the Civil War, a decline in the population set in which was to last for more than half a century. But, as if unaware of it, the Church went on to days that were among its most energetic.
Certainly one of the highest points was
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the celebration of the 150th anniversary in 1876. The vigor of the Church in that era is indicated clearly by the 112-page hard-covered book giving an account of the observance. John Gaylord Davenport later recalled that gala event of forty years before:
"The midsummer day was perfect, scarcely a cloud veiling the intense blue of the skies . . . At an early hour people from many another locality came pouring into the center, on foot or brought by teams of every description, and with not a single automobile or motorcycle to disturb the serenity of the well-groomed horses . . .
"As we entered the vestibule the word 'WELCOME' touched our hearts, and a glimpse of the audience-room showed it to be elaborately decorated with evergreens and flowers, roses in profusion in every part of the room, blushing like the brides who dur- ing the years had passed up the aisles on one of the most serious errands of their life. Floral festoons swept gracefully from a point above the pulpit, while the figures '1726' and '1876', skilfully fashioned of flowers appeared upon the wall on either side . . .
"Soon the house was filled to its utmost capac- ity, almost every face seeming to beam with a peculiarly joyous light."
The 150th observance was held during the pastorate of the Reverend Mr. Samuel J. M.
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Merwin, son of the Church's eighth Pastor. He was succeeded in 1881, after 12 years in which the Church grew markedly, by the Reverend Mr. Frank Thompson of Windham, Conn.
An Englishman by birth, Mr. Thompson had gone to sea as a young man and became captain's mate on a packet ship. During one of the voyages, he experienced conversion to Christianity. However, at Wilton he contracted a lung illness and so, in 1883, he left to be- come seaman's chaplain at Valparaiso, Chile. During this pastorate, a zealous new band of children called the "Light Bearers" was or- ganized to support foreign missions.
It was now decided to make the labors of future pastors less arduous by reducing the Sunday services from three to two! The Church voted in 1884 "to commence the Morning Service at 11 o'clock, having the Sunday School follow, after a recess of ten minutes, and in the evening a regular service to be conducted by the Pastor or the Preacher in charge, either as a prayer or conference meeting, or as a formal preaching service."
Later that year, the Reverend Mr. Charles E. Upson began a two-year pastorate here, and, in 1885, the Parish engaged in one of its oc- casional programs of Church remodeling.
The first remodeling had been done when the building was fifty-four years old. Up until
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then, the original high pulpit and sounding- board had been the most striking features of the auditorium. Some apparently liked this very well. One member later described "its plain walls and lofty pulpit, with its majestic sounding-board above it, and the square, straight-back pews." Another wrote fondly of "the old pulpit in the shape of a goblet, with the stem for a support, and the high uncarpeted stairs, with a door to enter the pulpit, which was shut tight when the Minister got in."
But the majority tired of the old style. At the Annual Meeting of 1844, the Society voted to remove the sounding-board. Even before the meeting adjourned, one member, who was expert with tools, appointed himself a commit- tee of one, got a saw, and carried the vote into effect.
Even with this "crowning glory" gone, it seemed necessary to those of that day that more had to be done. The Church vigorously went to work. It took out the box pews and pew doors, removed the columns supporting the vaulted ceiling, installed a flat ceiling, put in a new pulpit, and added the Greek influenced "false front" of the present Meeting-House. Tradi- tion says that in the next decade an Italian artist, who boarded nearby and who entertained Wil- ton with operatic singing, frescoed the ceiling ornately, and the Romanesque style was carried also into painted arch and columns behind the
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pulpit. A few years later a Wiltonian spoke of a "comely sanctuary ... with its new-fangled fresco and organ, with its modern pulpit and pews."
If somewhat lower than the present one, the pulpit then was still high enough that a mid-nineteenth century Pastor took note of the height. An old member of the Church re- called that the Reverend Charles B. Ball, of- ficiating at a child's funeral, said "I prefer to stand upon this platform rather than in the pulpit, that I may come nearer your hearts."
But now again in 1885, reconsidering the ef- forts of four decades before, the Society voted to renovate the interior. So $1,469.81 was raised, and the interior walls were redecorated, the woodwork painted, new cushions and carpets provided, the pulpit removed, and a platform built with "modern desk and chairs" upon it. The oil lamps for illumination bore the name of a Pittsburgh Lamp Company in letters two to three inches high.
Most significantly of all, perhaps, the stoves which had heated the building were taken out, and a furnace put in for central heating.
Meanwhile, the Parish remodelled the par- sonage as well. With its additions and subtrac- tions, it has variously had a pantry which was back of the present kitchen; a long kitchen, now gone; a large pantry which is now in- corporated into the living room; and front
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and side porches and a bay window, all removed within the last decade.
Along with the changes in the architecture of the Church came changes in the music. In his 150th anniversary poem, the Reverend Mr. John G. Davenport described this "evolu- tion":
I thought that Darwin's great idea Was scarcely proven true,
But surely here's a striking case That bids us think anew! Consider the "development" Within so brief a while,
Of this Grand Johnston Organ From Dr. Mead's bass-viol!
This refers to the fact that, early in the nineteenth century, a big choir, a fiddle and a bass-viol had provided the music from the lofty galleries of the original building. From the early days, there had been singing, with the pitch originally set by ear. Probably a tuning fork was the first musical instrument to have been introduced. Records of 1812 show that a committee was named to appoint a singing master, and a quarter century later a paid direc- tor for "leading the sacred music" was em- ployed. Later he was engaged to teach a sing- ing school in addition.
The new organ which was now installed, under the initiative of Mr. Johnston, the chorister, was built on Long Island. Some of
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the more mature members of the Church to- day can recall how, as boys, they tried to keep awake long enough to hand-pump it at the right times. Only the experienced organist at the time, who presided for 40 years, knew how to control this instrument's squeaks and squeals, and installation of an electric pump did not completely remove the problem.
Meanwhile, women were beginning to come into their own in the Church. Beginning in 1879, the annual meeting passed an invitation to "the female members" to vote. For the first time, in 1892, three women were elected to the building committee, and in 1924 six women were elected members of the Ecclesiastical Society.
Even before they got an opportunity to help govern the Church, women had an important place, however. At about the time one of the Church's daughters, Susan Comstock, left for a mission to the Indians in Missouri and Ar- kansas, "thirty-one ladies" organized the Ladies Home Missionary Society in 1836. A Mission Band for foreign work was organized in 1880, and through the years it sent aid literally around the globe. These groups sent yearly donations away, earning many a dollar by stitching fine shirts for bachelors and widowers, and by quilt- ing.
As the Church, in its early days, had spon- sored the schools so during the nineteenth cen-
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tury the Parish was closely related to education in Wilton. Hawley Olmstead, who had taught district school and had become the foremost student of Yale's Class of 1816, started the Wilton Academy in 1817 in a small Ridgefield Road building, later used by Nathan Comstock as a store.
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