History of Chicago. From the earliest period to the present time, Part 84

Author: Andreas, Alfred Theodore
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Chicago, A. T. Andreas
Number of Pages: 1340

USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > History of Chicago. From the earliest period to the present time > Part 84

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).

303

PROTESTANT DENOMINATIONS.

ter went directly to Mr. Schoolcraft's house, where he met with a most cordial welcome. Snow then covered the ground and did not disappear until April, IS32. The boat that carried Mr. Porter also carried up the last mail of the season, and mail was received but three times during the ensuing five months. At the Sault, Kev. Mr. Porter found a Baptist mission to the Indians in charge of Rev. Abel Bingham. Rev. Mr. Bingham with his family lived in the mission house and had a school-room for a place of worship for the Indians, and such Americans as chose to attend. Invited by Mr. Bingham, Mr. Porter preached in this school-room the first Sunday after reaching the Sault, to Indians, officers and soldiers. This was Sunday, December 4, 1831. Mr. School- craft soon had a store vacated, and fitted up with seats and a pulpit, and this building so transformed was used as a church. A Presbyterian Church was at once organized, composed of three men who had been members of Mr. Ferry's church at Mackinac, Pres- byterians; Mrs. Schoolcraft, an Episcopalian, two of her sisters received on confession, and one Methodist woman. Mr. Porter and Mr. Bingham co-operated with each other in religious and moral work, and encouraged by the officers at Fort Brady, enjoyed a re- vival. Dancing which had been indulged in winters previous was given up. The Post Commandment with Mr. Schoolcraft took the lead in furthering temperance, and all the officers and their wives took the temperance pledge, except one family, and before spring all expressed conversion to Christ except this one Lieutenant and his wife. One officer and his wife united with Mr. Bingham's church. Most of the others united with the Presbyterian Church. In the spring of 1832, this church numbered thirty-three, and the Baptist Church about the same number. On account of the breaking out of the Black Hawk War in 1832, one of the companies of soldiers under Captain J. B. F. Russell, was ordered to join General Win- field Scott's army at Mackinac, on its way to Chicago. The Post Commandant, Major De LaFayette Wilcox, was succeeded by Major John Fowle, who in the spring of 1833 was transferred to Fort Dearborn, Chicago, and Mr. Schoolcraft was transferred to the Indian Agency at Mackinac. Thus Mr. Porter's Fort Brady church was broken up, by the removal of its members to other fields of duty, and Mr. Porter considered it his duty to accept the invitation of Major and Mrs. Fowle to accompany them to Chicago, leaving the few remaining members to unite with Mr. Bingham's Baptist Church. On the 4th of May, 1833, Major Fowle with his company and Rev. Jeremiah Porter, left Fort Brady, and spending one day at Mackinac, proceeded up the west shore of Lake Michigan to Chicago, perceiving on the voyage no human habitation between the two points except at Milwaukee, where lived Solomon Juneau, the trader of the American Fur Company, with his Indian wife. On Saturday, May II, the schooner dropped anchor opposite the mouth of the Chicago Kiver. On Sunday the lake was so rough and Mr. Porter so sea-sick, that he remained on board over that day, and until about noon on Monday the 13th, when he was rowed in the ship's long-boat to the mouth of the river, about a mile south of Fort Dearborn, up the stream, and around Fort Dearborn to the junction of the North and South branches of the river, and to Wat- tle's small tavern on the West Side. Here Mr. Porter met many of the business men of the village, wbo had come there to dine, as it was their boarding house, and among them John Wright, an ac- count of his meeting with whom may be found in the history of the First Presbyterian Church. At this time there were about three hundred people in Chicago, many of whom had fled from the country during the war of 1832, to secure pro- tection in and around Fort Dearborn. Among these was P. F. W. Peck, who invited Mr. Porter to make his temporary lodging place and study in the unfinished loft of his two-story store, standing on the southwest corner of South Water and La- Salle streets. The first building in the rear of this store was the log house of Rufus Brown, where Mr. Porter found table board. From this time forward until Mr. Porter left Chicago, in Septem- ber, 1835, his history is substantially that of the First Presbyterian Church for the same period (q. v.). In that month, having accepted a call to a small new church in Peoria, he immediately commenced his labors there. In the fall of 1837, Mr. Porter attended the Synod of Illinois at Springfield, and there preached the opening sermon, an anti-slavery one ; the Rev. Dr. Gideon Blackburn, a venerable Father in the church, acting as a shiell to the young preacher against a pro-slavery mob. When the Synod adjourned many of its members went to Alton on horseback, where they held an anti- slavery convention for the purpose of sustaining Lovejoy in war- fare against slavery and for the freedom of the l'ress. After pass- ing strong resolutions in favor of the objects for which Lovejoy was fighting, the ministers, including Mr. Porter, returned to their homes. This was but a few days before the murder of Lovejoy by a pro-slavery mob. On the first Sunday subsequent to this murder, and doubtless sustained by the excitement consequent upon it, Mr. Porter preached twice to his congregation under a burning typhoid fever. - For weeks afterward he was prostrated, and for some time

his recovery was doubtful. About the first of January, 1838, he removed to Farmington, Ill., where he remained two years, wit- nessing here as at Peoria a revival and numerous accessions to his church. During these years he labored in revival work with Revs. John Spalding, Flavel Bascom, and Lucien Farnham, at Peoria ; J. J. Miter, at Knoxville, and George W. Gale and Horatio Foot, at Galesburg. Upon retiring from the church at Peoria, Mr. Porter preached the sermon at the installation of his successor, Rev. John Spalding. In 1840 he accepted a call to Green Bay, Wis., where four years before some of his early friends from Mack- inac had been organized into a church. He arrived at Green Bay in the summer by way of Chicago and Mackinac. In the succeed- ing winter he was installed and remained pastor of the Presbyterian Church eighteen years. In 1840 the " Presbyterian and Congre- gational Convention of Wisconsin " was formed, composed of the churches of the two denominations. In 1858, after a happy pastor- ate of eighteen years in Green Bay, Mr. Porter asked this convention to dissolve his connection with his church, which request was granted against the wishes of the majority of his church. Attending the Gen- eral Assembly at Chicago that year he was invited to become pastor of the Edwards Congregational Church. Here he labored until the breaking out of the war in IS61, observing the results of the city's progress during its first twenty-five years, as depicted in his histor- ical lecture delivered before the Chicago Historical Society in 1859. Four of Mr. Porter's family, a son and three nephews, entered the Union army, and Mrs. Porter said that if she had a hundred sons, and they prepared to die, she would give them all for the cause of their country and freedom. In March following, Mr. Porter was appointed by Governor Richard Yates, Chaplain of United StatesVol- unteers, in Colonel J. I). Webster's regiment, Chicago First Light Artillery, in which his son, James W. Porter, and one of his nephews had enlisted. Mrs. Porter thinking she could be more useful near the soldiers, left her place in the Chicago Sanitary rooms to MIrs. Hoge and Mrs. Livermore and went, in IS62, with' Mr. Porter to Cairo. Here she ministered to the sick from Forts Donelson and Henry after Grant's first decided victories, and then aided in caring for the wounded from the battlefields of Pittsburgh Landing and Shiloh ; among the latter one of her nephews. From Cairo Mr. and Mrs. Porter followed the Union army to Paducah, Ky., to Pittsburgh Landing, Tenn., to Corinth and to Memphis, where they spent the winter of 1862-63 and spring of 1863. A " convalescent camp " was established south of and in sight of the city, on the river bluff. Dr. Edmund Andrews, surgeon of Colonel Webster's light artillery, was one of the surgeons in charge. With his approbation MIr. and Mrs. Porter opened the first school for freedmen on the borders of the Mississippi River. Fort Pickering was, during that winter, a scene of much religious interest, Mr. Porter preaching regularly at the convalescent camp and occasion- ally at the batteries. As the army proceeded southward MIr. Por- ter accompanied it to Vicksburg, and after its capture was immedi- ately installed chaplain in the city hospital, and being granted by General Logan the use of the Presbyterian church, preached there- in until the spring of 1864, alternating with Chaplain Joseph War- ren, D. D., who had been a missionary in India. He then, by order of General Webster, followed General Sherman in his marches toward Atlanta, Mrs. Porter being already with that army with sanitary stores and supplies. Mr. Porter joined her at Big Shanty. From Kenesaw Mountain Mr. and Mrs. Porter went with the wounded to Marietta, Ga., and remained there in the hospital until the fall of Atlanta. On the Sunday following Mr. Porter preached to the soldiers in hospital at Marietta from the words of David, asking so anxiously after his son Absalom, " Is the young man safe?" his own son having participated in the battle be- fore Atlanta, and no word from him having been received. He afterward heard of his safety and of the bravery exhibited by him in that battle. Chaplain and Mrs. Porter. instead of following Sherman to the sea, returned to Chicago, and in the following winter went to Washington to aid in urging President Lincoln to use all his official influence to have the sick and wounded Union soldiers in Southern hospitals sent north to recover or to die and be buried by their friends. While in Washington Mrs. Porter showed to Miss Dix, the carliest mover in the magnificent Sanitary Com- mission, two letters-one signed by five Confederate officer-, the other by twenty Confederate soldiers-testifying to the uniform kindness with which they had been treated by Mrs. Porter, while sick in hospital at Marietta, Ga. Mr. and Mrs. Porter then set sail from New York for Savannah, reaching there ten day - after that city had surrendered to General Sherman. Here they re- mained until Sherman started for Richmond, when they proceeded by water with General Webster to Wilmington, N. C., and thence to Goldsboro hy rail, overtaking General Sherman at that point. They then went to a hospital on the coast at Newbern, remaining there in attendance upon the sick until the surrender of General Lee. Their work at the South being now accomplished, they took a small steamer through the canal to Norfolk, Va., thence to .Alex-

304

_ HISTORY OF CHICAGO.

andria and Washington. Logan's corps was then ordered to I.ou- isville, Ky. Chaplain and Mrs. Porter, with others of the Sani- tary Commission, reported for duty at that place, and after short and pleasant service once more in Kentucky, Mr. l'orter was hon- orably mustered out at Springfield, Ill., July 31, IS65. After visiting among friends a few months, Mr. and Mrs. Porter were requested by the Sanitary and Christian Commission to proceed with sanitary stores, then at Chicago, to three regiments retained on the borders of Mexico to protect the border from any encroach- ments of France under its Mexican emperor, Maximilian. Arriv- ing off the coast of Texas, ten miles from the mouth of the Rio Grande, they landed at Brazos St. Iago, and waited for a small steamer from Brownsville to take them to the Kio Grande and up the river to that city. In the night a " norther " struck this small steamer, and as a measure of safety it was driven ashore on the beach of Mexico. There was so little water on the beach that the yawl could not reach the shore, and the ladies on board had to be carried to the shore on the backs of the sailors. Such was Mrs. Porter's entrance into Mexico. This was at Bagdad. Crossing the river to meet the steamer which had succeeded in entering the river's mouth, Mr. Porter found assembled at Clarksville some United States colored troops, whom he addressed. From that first religious service on the Rio Grande he proceeded on the steamer up the very crooked river one hundred miles to his destination, Brownsville, Texas. Mr. and Mrs. Porter and Miss Lizzie Garey. who had accompanied them from Chicago, went into camp at the Soldiers' Hospital, Mr. Porter preaching, and Mrs. Porter and Miss Garey teaching the colored soldiers in addition to their sani- tary work. MIrs. Porter soon opened a school under the name of the " Rio Grande Seminary " for boys and girls, which had been started by Miss Matilda Rankin, as the Rio Grande Female Insti- Sute, some years before the war.

In the spring of 1866 President Juarez, having taken and shot Maximilian, United States troops were no longer needed on the border, the Christian and Sanitary commissions recalled their agents, and Mr. and Mrs. Porter returned to Chicago, where a reception was given them at the Sherman House. That summer while visit- ing his old parishioners at Green Bay, Mr. Porter received a call to a vacant church at Prairie De Chien. This he desired to make his permanent home, but after different members of his family had located in business in different parts of the country, and his daugh- ter had in 1868 gone to Pekin, China, as a missionary, he him- self at the earnest solicitation of friends from Brownsville, Texas, returned thither, accompanied by Mrs. Porter to rebuild the church that had been demolished by a tornado, and to preach in place of Rev. Hiram Chamberlain, who had died in 1867; taking with them generous donations from Chicago to aid in that and other enter- prises. In February 1869, the new brick church was dedicated. Mr. and Mrs. Porter remained in Brownsville except during the summer of 1369, he to preach and she to teach, until 1870, when he was appointed Post Chaplain, at Brownsville, U. S. A., and assigned by General Augur to Fort Brown. In addition to his duties as Post Chaplain Mr. Porter preached in the afternoon to a church of colored people organized by himself from among the colored peo- ple of Brownsville and Matamoras, Mexico, and whose church edi- hice was built by the Freedmen's Bureau at a cost of $4,000. MIrs. Porter remained actively engaged in the work of teaching until the school funds of Texas became available, when the schools in Brownsville became public schools, and she severed her connection therewith. In the winter of 1873 Mr. Porter was assigned to the Chaplaincy of Fort Sill in the Indian Territory. Here he remained until the winter of 1874, when MIrs Porter, who had here, as else- where, engaged in teaching, was suffering from an attack of mala- rial fever, and in order to regain her health, she, accompanied by Mr. Porter, returned to Chicago, and again visited friends in Green Bay. Mr. Porter then returned to Fort Sill, leaving Mrs. Porter in Chicago, and in the winter of 1876 was ordered to report to (ieneral J. J. Reynolds for service at Fort D. A. Russell, Wyoming Terri- tory. There in improved health Mrs. Porter joined him from Chicago. For four years Mr. Porter remained in active service at Fort Russell, maintaining regular services on Sunday, a Sunday and a day school for children, and part of the time an evening school for soldiers. In November, 1876, Mr. Porter's daugh- ter, Mary H1. Porter, arrived at Fort Russell, from China, after an absence of neariy nine years. She remained at Fort Russell until the following March, when she proceeded to Chicago, her return to the United States being in quest of health. Mr. Forter obtaining leave of absence from his post, overtook his missionary daughter at Chicago, made visits to various prominent educators and private persons in the East, where Miss Porter by her report to the \. B. C. F. M., which ten years before had sent her to China, and by her representations of the con- dition and needs of the heathen in China, awakened renewed inter- est in missionary labor both in the East and the West. A reunion of Mr. Porter's family occurred in Uchoit. Wis. in the spring of

IS79, the first in twelve years. At this reunion were-Miss Mary

HI. Porter, whose health was sufficiently recovered for her to return to

her missionary work in China, and Rev. llenry D. Porter, M. D., a son of Kev. Jeremiah Porter, who had also been a missionary to China for six years, and who had returned to America and was at

this time married to Elizabeth, the eldest daughter of Dr. A. L. Chapin, president of Beloit College. After this reunion Mr. and Mrs. Porter returned to Fort Russell and soon after went to San Francisco on leave of absence to see Dr. Henry D). Porter and his wife depart therefrom to their missionary labor in China, their daughter having returned thither three months before. They re- mained in California fourteen months and in the autumn of ISSo returned to Chicago. Mr. Porter was on a leave of absence from the army until he was retired on the 30th of June, 18S2, when all officers over sixty-four years of age were retired. Since then he has been seeking health, making his home with his son in Detroit. Both Mr. and Mrs. Porter were present at the semi-centennial cele- bration of the organization of the First Presbyterian Church in Chi- cago, in quite vigorous health. Rev. Mr. Porter was married June 15, 1835, at Rochester, N. Y., to Miss Eliza Chappel. They have had nine children, three of whom died in infancy-one in Peoria. Ill., in 1837 ; two at Green Bay, Wis., one in t843 and one in IS49. Two others died in Chicago-Robert Otto, September 25, IS59, and Charlotte Elizabeth, October 31, 1859. The four living are as follows : James W., Edwards W., Henry Dwight and Mary Hatriet. Rev. Henry Dwight Porter, M. D., has been a mission- ary in China since 1872, and Mary Harriet since 1868.

REV. FLAVEL BASCOM, D. D., was born June 8, 1804, at Leb- anon, Conn. His parents were Abiel and Sybil ( Roberts) Bascom. His childhood and youth, until he was seventeen years of age, were spent upon a farm with such advantages for education as were af- forded by a rural public school. His preparation for college was under private instruction. He entered Vale College in 1824, and graduated with honor in 1828. For the next year he was principal of an academy in New Canaan. Conn., and then pursued his theo- logical studies in New Haven, where, in 1831, he was licensed to preach. From 1831 to 1833 he was tutor in Yale College, and in the latter year cast in his lot with the "Yale Band," who had de- voted themselves to Christian education and home evangelization in Illinois. In the summer of 1833 he arrived in Illinois under com- mission by the American Home Missionary Society, and spent five years in pioneer missionary work, mainly in Tazewell County. He then labored two seasons in northern Illinois, as Home Missionary Agent, exploring new settlements, organizing churches and intro- ducing missionaries to new fields of labor. In December, 1839, he became pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, was in- stalled November 10, 1840, and remained pastor until December, 1849. He then accepted a call to the First Presbyterian Church at Galesburg, 111., remaining there until IS56. After spending a year as agent of the American Missionary Association he becan:e pastor of the Congregational Church at Dover. After serving that church seven years, he accepted an invitation to the pastorate of the Con- gregational Church at Princeton, where he remained until 1369. Thence he removed to Hinsdale, where for several years he was in charge of the Congregational Church. Since relinquishing this charge he has been almost constantly engaged in filling vacancies and aiding destitute and feeble churches. He has been one of the executive committee of the Illinois Home Missionary Society since it became an independent auxilliary to the A. 11. M. S. in IS78 ; was one of the founders of the Chicago 'Theological Seminary, and is a member of the Board of Directors and Executive Committee ; has been for twenty-five years a trustee of Knox College, and was one of the founders and one of the charter trustees of Beloit Col- lege, which institution in 1869 conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Divinity. Mr. Bascom has been married three times. His first wife was Ellen P. Cleaveland, daughter of William P. Cleaveland, of New London, Conn. They were married April 30. 1833, and Mrs. Bascom died at Pekin, IH., December 10, 1837. Mr. Bascom's second wife was Elizabeth B. Sparhawk, daughter of Dr. Jonathan Sparhawk, of Hartford, Conn., to whom he was married August 16, 184t. She died March 27, IS51, at Galesburg, Ill. Ile was again married on the 21st of June, 1852, to Ruth S. Pomeroy, daughter of Samuel Pomeroy, of Southampton, Mass., and sister of Ilon. S. C. Pomeroy, of Kansas. llis surviving chil. dren are three sons, two of whom, the children of his second wife, are graduates of Beloit College, and one, the son of his present wife, is a physician at Ottawa, II. Rev. Mr. Bascom, though in his eightieth year, is still able to meet the frequent calls made upon him to supply temporarily vacant pulpits in his vicinity.

REV. JOIN BLATCHFORD, D. D., was born May 24, 1796, at Newfield (now Bridgeport), Conn. His father was the Rev. Sam- uel Blatchford, a clergyman of note in his day, resident pastor in Bridgeport, then pastor of the associated churches of Lansing- burgh, Waterford and Troy. When John Blatchford was eight years old his father moved to Lansingburgh, where he spent his

3º5

PROTESTANT DENOMINATIONS.

childhood. Great interest in his future was manifested by the Rev. J. Romeya, D. D., and through the liberality of William, who sup- plied him with $200 per year, his expenses at Cambridge Academy, Washington Co., N. V., were paid. He entered Union Col- lege, at Schenectady, in 1817, and graduated therefrom in 1820. In the fall of the latter year he entered Princeton College, and after three years' study was licensed to preach by the Troy Presbytery. Immediately after being licensed he accepted a call to the Pittstown

Presbyterian Church, in Rensselaer County, N. Y., where he re- mained until the spring of 1825. On the 20th of April of this year he accepted a unanimous call to the church at Stillwater, Sar- atoga Co., N. V., where he remained until 1829, when he re- ceived a call from the Congregational Church at Bridgeport, Conn., to which place he removed in IS30. In this church he labored successfully for six years, and at the close of this period on account of the illness of his wife, he resigned his charge with a view to for- eign travel. Instead of carrying out this plan, however, he turned his steps westward, and spent the winter of 1836-37 at Jackson- ville, Ill. In 1837 he received a call to the First Presbyterian Church at Chicago, where he labored with great success, and satis- faction to the church until 1840, but his habitually intense applica- tion to the duties of his ministry produced brain fever, from the effects of which he never fully recovered. After retiring from the pastorate of this Church, he returned to the East, with the view to permanent residence there, and spent the winter of 1640-41, in Wheeling, Va., where he was warmly solicited to. remain. From 1841 to 1844 he was connected with Marion College, first as Pro- fessor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy, and afterward as Pres- ident of the institution. After the purchase of the college by the Freemasons, he was requested to remain, but preferred to remove to West Ely, where in impaired health he remained until 1847, when he removed to Quincy. In his later years he was engaged in the enterprise of establishing a Presbyterian theological seminary for the Northwest, and at the time of his death was President of the organization for this purpose. His last discourse was preached in St. Louis, about three months previous to his death, and about two months before he was attacked by his last painful illness. He died Sunday, April 8, 1855.

THE SECOND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH .- The pre- liminary steps to the organization of this church were taken May 5, 1842, on which date a meeting was held to decide upon the question of nrganizing it, with Rev. Robert W. Patterson as pastor. The organization was effected on Wednesday, June 1, 1842, with twenty-six members, and Mr. Patterson preached his first sermon to the new Church June 5, 1842, in the third story of the "City Saloon," which stood on the southeast corner of Clark and Lake streets. Services were held part of the time in the " Saloon," and part in the Unitarian church until in September, on the 13th of which month the society's new church building was dedicated, Mr. Patterson preaching the dedicatory sermon. On the next day Mr. Patterson was ordained. This church stood on Randolph Street, near Dearborn. It was a plain frame edifice and cost the society about $1,600, the lot having cost from $600 to SSoo. The original society consisted of twenty-six members as follows: Mr. and Mrs. William H. Brown, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas B. Carter, George W. Dole, Mrs. A. N. Fullerton, Mrs. Sarah Gage, Mr. and Mrs. John High, Mr. and Mrs. John W. Hooker, Captain and Mrs. Seth Johnson, George W. Merrill, Flavel Moseley, Mr. and Mrs. Ben- jamin W. Raymond, Mr. and Mrs. Charles R. Stark- weather, Mrs. Ann E. Webster, Sylvester Willard, M. D., Mr. and Mrs. John C. Williams, Mrs. John Wright, John S. Wright, and Miss Frances S. Wright. The Church was organized by a committee of the Presbytery of Ottawa, consisting of Rev. Flavel Bascom and Rev.

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.

History of Chicago. From the earliest period to the present time, Part 84

Author: Andreas, Alfred Theodore Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Chicago, A. T. Andreas Number of Pages: 1340

Author: Andreas, Alfred Theodore
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Chicago, A. T. Andreas
Number of Pages: 1340