USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Dedham > Brief history of the last three pastorates of the First parish in Dedham, 1860-1888 : a sermon preached November 11, 1888 > Part 1
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.
Go 974.402 D36b 1989011
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01145 5455
A BRIEF HISTORY
OF THE LAST
3 THREE PASTORATES
OF THE
1st.
FIRST PARISH IN DEDHAM. Maul ..
1860-1888.
A SERMON PREACHED NOVEMBER 11, 1888,
By REV. SETH C. BEACH, Pastor.
DEDIIAM : PUBLISHED BY THIE PARISH. 1888.
BURTON HIST, COLLECTION DETROIT EXCHANGE DUPLICATE
1889011
" Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation."-Joel, i: 3.
THE history of this parish during its first seven pastor- ates, covering a period of two hundred and twenty-two years, has been written with a fulness and ability which, however much might be desired, leave little to be supplied. For the commemoration of the two hundredth anniver- sary of the gathering of the church, my predecessor, Dr. Lamson, prepared with painstaking care three ser- mons, in which, and in the notes to which, was told not only the story of this parish but the religious his- tory of the town, to the beginning of his own pastorate in 1818. On the fortieth anniversary of his settlement, Dr. Lamson continued the history in a sermon, supplemented at the time of his resignation, in 1860, by another, in which was told most that is given a later generation to know of his long and fruitful ministry. We have also had prepared an interesting and valuable biographical sketch of Dr. Lamson, which, with other matter, we have printed in a small book entitled, "The First Church in Dedham." These sermons, with this biographical sketch, make together a very complete history of what is of most interest in the religious life of this parish during something more than six generations.
It is not my purpose to retell a story which has been told so well, but in taking leave of the period and of its names of blessed memory, we may be allowed to bear testimony to the reverent and loving appreciation in which the name of Dr. Lamson is still held by the generation that knew him in the flesh, and by the later generation that is not without some knowledge of his gifts. " He was a man of most lovable nature ; he was our best patristic scholar," is the testimony of one of his intimate and scholarly associates .*
* Rev. George E. Ellis, D. D.
4
Upon his resignation, in 1860, Dr. Lamson left the parish at what I should suppose was very near the climax of its strength. Both as suggestive of the strength of the parish at that date and of the changes which have taken place in a generation, the names signed to a memorial of regret at the resignation of Dr. Lamson, found upon our parish records, are of great interest. They are, they say, " Members of the First Parish in Dedham and other wor- shippers there." The names are : Thomas Motley, Charles B. Shaw, John Gardner, Jeremy Stimson, Enos Foord, Alvan Fisher, Thomas Barrows, Henry Cormerais, Martin Marsh, Edward M. Richards, Ezra W. Sampson, William R. Sumner, William Chickering, Anna L. Rodman, Thomas Sherwin, Eben S. Fisher, Jonathan H. Cobb, Nathaniel Clapp, Waldo Colburn, Edward B. Holmes, William Whit- ing, Ira Russell, Calvin F. Ellis, Henry W. Richards, Henry (). Hildreth, William B. Tower, Danforth P. Wight, William Field, Alfred Hewins, Eliphalet Stone, Gershom J. Van Brunt, Luther Eaton, Isaac C. Bosworth, Jesse Farrington, Benjamin Weatherbee, John D. Runkle, George Coolidge, William J. Adams, Joseph W. Waters, Franklin Kimball, Abner Alden, John B. Henck, Joel Wight, George F. Wight, Charles H. Titcomb, Sanford Carroll, John E. Weatherbee, Henry Smith, Sanford Howard, Eben Wight, Eben W. Keyes, William F. Haynes, John Deane, Jesse Weatherbee, James Foord, Augustus B. Endicott, George F. Fisher, Lemuel Dana, Hezekiah Onion, Samuel G. Whiting. A list of sixty heads of families, of whom we can count only ten, or possibly twelve, today.
Over a parish so represented Mr. Benjamin Holloway Bailey, then fresh from his studies at Cambridge, was called to preside. The resignation of Dr. Lamson took effect the 29th of October, 1860, and the call to Mr. Bailey is dated January 7th following. The parish had the good fortune or the wisdom to agree upon a candidate for the pastorate
5
within the space of a little more than two months. At the ordination of Mr. Bailey, March 14, 1861,* Prof. Convers Francis, D. D., of Cambridge, preached the sermon, Dr. Lamson offered the ordaining prayer, Dr. Joseph Allen, of Northboro', gave the charge to the pastor, and Dr. George E. Ellis, then of Charlestown, made an address to the people. Others who took part in the services were : Rev. Dr. Morison, of Milton ; Rev. T. B. Forbush, of North- boro'; Rev. John D. Wells, of Quincy, and Rev. Calvin S. Locke, of West Dedham. We get a further idea of what transpires in a generation when we note that of these men then in conspicuous service, only Mr. Forbush, now of Milwaukee, is in active ministry, and of the others only Dr. Ellis, Dr. Morison, Mr. Wells, and Mr. Locke survive.
Of Mr. Bailey, the time to write a biography happily has not come. When called, as very often during the last twenty years it has been his fortune to be, he is still able to speak for himself and for us. He came here a young man, a fine scholar, of noble presence, in exceptionably vigorous health, with great strength of feeling, and rare readiness and aptness of utterance. He won a warm place in the hearts of his parishioners which it has given me great pleasure to witness he still retains. His pastorate covered a period little short of seven years, except the period of the war for Independence the most eventful in our national history. They were also eventful in the his- tory of the parish. The guns of the Civil War, - consid- ering the number of men engaged, the battles fought and
It happened that this date was the fortieth anniversary of the ordina- tion of Rev. Ebenezer Burgess, D. D., of the First Congregational Church, as also the termination of his ministry. A signal act of courtesy appears in the Records in the minutes of a parish meeting hell March 4th pre- ceding: "Voted, That the parish committee be instructed to have the usual services in the church omitted on Sunday next, that being the time appointed by Rev. Dr. Burgess for preaching his farewell discourse."
6
the blood spilled, the greatest war of modern times and certainly the nearest to us, - opened with the second year of what had promised to be a serene and tranquil ministry.
During the next four troubled years it may be said in gen- eral of our churches at the North, that their attention and interest were absorbed by the humanities and inhumanities of battlefields to which so much of their best life had gone, and on which so much of their precious blood was spilled. The churches of every name were local sanitary commis- sions already organized, feeders to hospitals, sometimes themselves hospitals. The evidence is that in such patri- otic Christian service this parish was not wanting. It could not be, for it had thirty-three of its sons in the service, - four in the navy and twenty-nine in the army,- all of them at posts of hardship and danger.
Sunday, August 31st, 1862, following the second battle of Bull Run, is one the experience of which still vividly haunts many of your memories, and the tradition of which quickens the pulse of a hearer after the lapse of twenty-five years. You had gathered here on that Sunday morning with hearts lightened by the news of the day before, which had encouraged you to believe that the enemy was in full retreat. In the midst of your service a messenger arrived with intelligence that a great battle had been fought, with its usual consequences, and that hospital supplies were wanted in unlimited quantities. The announcement from the pulpit at the close of the service called you to duty of another kind. One of your homes, always open for good works, was transformed into a factory for the afternoon, filled with generous hearts and busy fingers from other congregations as from your own, and before nightfall, we are told, twenty- seven cases of all sizes, among them "sixteen large pack- ages of clothing, bandages, lint, jellies, cordials, and other necessaries and comforts," were on their way to the hospi- tals. I recognize the name of one of the sons of the parish
1
7
who fell on that bloody field, Charles Whiting Carroll ; " the brave and patriotic captain," I find him called.
The crisis of the Civil War, in reference to which it is to some of us matter of easy memory that all citizens of equal patriotism did not think alike, was a trying time for many churches at the North, and especially so for our more lib- eral and unconventional churches. Those churches that did not allow in their pulpits allusions to political events more recent than the Jewish captivity or the destruction of Jerusalem, in that fermented era fared best, and their immunity from disaster may be taken as some vindication of their reserve. It is said that this parish had its hour of heart-burning, and that it had to mourn some losses besides those it suffered in the field, but, thanks to the wisdom of the pulpit or the forbearance of the pews, it was not wrecked.
Opinions would differ now, as then, as to what ought and ought not to have been said and done. It may not be amiss to say, however, that by more than one of my seniors whose fortune it was at that time to occupy a pulpit, the period when every one's blood was up, not excepting his own, is remembered as one of peculiar difficulty for a minister. "How I went through it with any credit," says your pastor of that day, "implies rather the mighty tide of patriotism on which we were all upborne than any claim that I can lay. The people were good and kind, as we know they have always been ; quick to accept good intentions as equivalent for real service, and ready to supplement ear- nestness of purpose with amplest good will and endeavor. They needed no prompting to good works ; they were in and of themselves originators and promoters of every kind of beneficence in those dark hours that were shutting down upon the nation's life. Withal, the great things for which the church stood prospered ; its comprehensive unity in the substance of faith ; its enlarged charity ; its worship and
8
its hope. I have always felt that it was largely due to the affluence of Dr. Lamson's spirit overflowing his time and moulding mine."
It was during Mr. Bailey's pastorate that, under the lead of Dr. Bellows, fresh from the activities of the Sanitary Commission, and turning his constructive energies into a new field, occurred that awakening of Unitarian churches to their duty and their opportunity which led, in 1865, to the formation of the National Conference, and which, with a kind of burst of enthusiasm, carried the missionary col- lections of the American Unitarian Association from $10,- 000, for a single year, to $100,000. That this parish shared in that awakening is shown by the record of its con- tribution, $468 for that year, though the contribution upon the same page of nearly the same amount, $450, the pro- ceeds of a fair, to the " Children's Mission" may be taken to indicate the relation in which, at that stage of its devel- opment, the parish held a great general but somewhat intangible interest compared with an object of very limited scope which had the merit of being near, definite and com- prehensible.
It is a curious fact that this contribution to the Ameri- can Unitarian Association in 1865 seems to be the first church or parish contribution of which there appears any record. That contributions had been taken before is mat- ter of tradition, for do we not hear of at least one annually on Thanksgiving Day for the Juvenile Library? Whether the parish took its contributions and, as the saying is, " made nothing" of them, or whether the keeping of a record would have seemed to our predecessors too much like letting the right hand know what the left was doing, is not easy to say. It seems, however, that the contribu- tion of $468 for any purpose, considerably the largest single contribution perhaps since the days of the forefathers, broke down all reserve. It is, however, the only contri- bution recorded for that year.
9
For the year 1866 there are twelve recorded, among them four collections at Communion Service. It is inter- esting to notice that these collections run then very much as they do now : $10.18, $10.55, $11, $9. Our col- lections for the corresponding dates of this year were $10.37, $10.70, $15.55, $11.40. The total for the year 1865 was $1124.13. One is glad to know that our total of last year, $1017.10, did not fall greatly below these figures of the golden age. It is true that our total included $147 of the "Women's Auxiliary," and $157.23 of the Benevo- lent Society, but, perhaps, we may consider these entries offset by $450 in the other total, the proceeds of a fair.
Of other matters of record, I find that in his pastorate Mr. Bailey baptized 65 persons, received into the church 60, officiated at 31 marriages, and attended 98 funerals.
A parishioner speaks of "the warm and active interest Mr. Bailey always took in the Sunday-school," and of " the comfort and help he always carried to those who were called upon to part with their loved ones," concerning which I have heard other testimony. " Very recently," says this writer, " I heard a mother who lost a little boy, while he was settled here, speak of the almost daily calls he made her, and each time brought fresh comfort." Mr. Bailey, in those days of his youth, was a pastor whose example would be the despair of a minister of this later and weaker generation.
At that date the parishioner of the ancient type still survived, of whom mythical stories are told. "Members of the church and parish were regularly in their pews," rows of white heads on either side bordering the aisles with a kind of fringe of age and respectability, children between father and mother filling the spaces as seraphs are clustered on the canvas of an old master, both floor and gallery occu- pied by attentive listeners, never nodding except in assent to the preacher; such is the traditional picture of that ancient day, twenty-five years ago.
10
" It seems to me," says the witness already quoted, " that a history of Mr. Bailey's pastorate is incomplete without some allusion to such men as Mr. William Chick- ering, Mr. Thomas Sherwin, Dr. Eben Wight, and many others who were his warm friends to the last." I find on the records the names of many who must have been strong and valued parishioners, whose presence I do not see today.
There is evidence that Mr. Bailey's hold upon the parish was very strong, and that the last year of his ministry must have been one of marked religious activity. I have been allowed to copy a memorandum, from which it appears that "Mr. Bailey held prayer or conference meetings in the vestry in 1866 and 1867, at first on Wednesday, afterwards on Thursday, evenings. After the spring of 1867 they were mostly conducted by lay members." Doubtless it was the direct result of these meetings that at the communion ser- vice following the sending in of Mr. Bailey's resignation, twenty-five persons, among them one of its present deacons, united with the church. This was an enviable experience with which to close a pastorate.
From the memorandum just referred to, I learn that " The second Sunday service," then regular, which after moving from the church to the vestry and from the vestry again to the church, we finally discontinued in 1884, "was usually held in the afternoon, only occasionally in the evening, till after the close of Mr. Bailey's ministry."
It was during this pastorate that the parish received a legacy of $6,600, into the possession of which it has come and is to come as the limitations expire, for the improve- ment of singing in the church. To this generous provision may doubtless be traced a revival of interest and an im- provement in quality of music in the parish.
Mr. Bailey resigned his charge in October, 1867, to assume the pastorate of the First Parish in Portland, Maine. In releasing him from his engagements, the parish say " that it is with deep sorrow that we are called upon
.
11
to dissolve the pastoral relation which Rev. Benjamin H. Bailey has so faithfully sustained to this parish for more than six years."
On February 1, 1869, after a vacancy in the pastorate of one year and four months, no doubt with the usual experiences, a call was given to Rev. George Mckean Folsom, then pastor of the First Parish in Groton. Mr. Folsom was a man of another type from that of his prede-
cessor, and very differently circumstanced. " What a contrast in two men," says a parishioner, equally appre- ciative of both ; "the warm, vigorous push of the one, and the quiet, submissive manner of the other; but do not forget the earnest devotion of both the good men." It was my privilege to be a classmate of Mr. Folsom in the Divin- ity School at Cambridge, and to know him as one only knows those of his immediate family. He was simple- hearted even to childlikeness ; I should be tempted to say he was pure and delicate as a woman, if that were not so hackneyed a phrase, and if it were more common to find a woman as pure and delicate as he. He was warm and impulsive in his feelings, very generous in his sympathies and with his means, strong and even chivalrous in his attachments, honest, unstudied and uncalculating in his act and speech .* There was about him a sensitiveness, diffi-
* The following is from a letter, received since the delivery of this discourse, from Mrs. Elizabeth G. Foord, an old resident of Dedham, since removed to California:
" I should be pleased to bear my testimony to the character of the late Mr. Folsom, from judgments formed while he was for some months a member of my famity. He was a man of the greatest purity and sim- plicity, honest and sincere. No offer of worldly profit or advantage could have made him swerve from the path of rectitude. He was a faithful friend, and wise counsellor, a lover of his kind, prompt to follow the dictates of generosity, a cheerful giver. He was ever ready to see the good in the character of others, while his extreme modesty led him to underestimate his own. Incapable of resentment, he was ready to forgive, although slow to perceive the fault affording opportunity for forgiveness. Ile was more apt to take blame to himself than to take offense, a truly unselfish man."
12
dence and retiringness which kept him out of the current of men and things, and made his circle of intimates smaller than it should have been, but when his responsive nature was not weighed down by a burden or congealed as by frost, there was a flow of spirits and a play of humor that made him a delightful companion to those who knew him best. He was a cultivated gentleman, and a finished scholar such as it is rare to find, one who kept up the tradi- tions of this pulpit for culture and scholarship close to the level of its best estate.
Two or three circumstances weighted Mr. Folsom's pas- torate from the beginning. To one I have already alluded, his natural shrinking and reserve. It was predestinated from the first that very few of his parishioners, not those of a class but those whose contact was nearest and most frequent, should ever know him. Another circumstance was the long and sore affliction of his wife's illness, the tradition of which leaves it to my mind a marvel how, as pastor or preacher, he had time, strength or heart to accomplish anything. A third circumstance was the very delicate and critical condition of things theological at that date prevailing in most of the older Unitarian parishes, from which, if I have been correctly informed, this parish was not exempt. Indicative of what has happened since Mr. Folsom's settlement, there is now, and has been for three years, a volume of Theodore Parker's published by the American Unitarian Association, bearing its imprint and for sale at nominal cost, as one of the recognized rep- resentatives of Unitarian thought. Moreover, at their late October meeting, the directors of the Association gladly and gratefully accepted the trust of a valuable building lot for a church, the deed of which contains the condition that the church erected " shall never shut its doors to those who in their day shall represent the opinions of Theodore Parker," the statement also being inserted that the chief motive actuating the donor in making the gift is regard for Mr.
13
Parker's memory. In the year 1869, that of Mr. Folsom's settlement, we were not doing these things either through the Association or otherwise. On the contrary, in the year 1870, under the illustrious lead of Rev. George H. Hepworth, then a great light in our body, the National Conference re- scinded an article that had been adopted in the interest of breadth, adopted a substitute in the interest of greater nar- rowness, and barely escaped formulating a creed. Those who remember that period will recall that a strong wave of conservatism was sweeping over the average Unitarian consciousness.
Mr. Folsom came here with his theological eyes open, and with much less than most others to learn from the new criticism and speculation which have since taken place. It fell to him to do a work which it is not always pleasant to have done, but which, nevertheless, it was inevitable that some one would have to do.
Early in his pastorate, I am told, he "gave a series of Sunday evening lectures upon the Bible, beginning with the book of Genesis," full of keen insight and good schol- arship I do not doubt, which, it is said, "aroused extreme interest in his congregation, and, to no small extent, in the neighboring one, and which filled many minds with con- sternation at the ideas, then new and startling, that to-day are accepted without question." The same witness speaks of "a very instructive class for Sunday-school teachers which Mr. Folsom conducted fortnightly at his own house. Hase's Life of Jesus' was at one time the subject of study. Mr. William Chickering and Mr. Charles L. Adams were constant in their attendance, and the meetings were of great benefit." Somewhat more revolutionary views of Old and New Testament criticism than Mr. Folsom probably ad- vanced in those lectures and lessons, we have now embodied in text-books for the Sunday-school, and with great happi- ness, and not a particle of misgiving, we put them into the hands of the children.
14
My witness says further that " Mr. Folsom's interest in the Sunday-school was very great ; his love for children and the very happy manner in which he met them at a level and won their affection and interest was unusual and delightful to witness. He had what few men possess, a simple directness of speech which appeals to a child's understand- ing, and a rare manner of entertaining children, whom he would hold spellbound by his inimitable charm of story- telling or poetical recitation, with mimicry of bird-notes and talk of animals. I think Mr. Folsom was very dear to the children."
" It was," says the same witness, "while Mr. Folsom was with us that the need of a more commodious and con- venient vestry was strongly felt and, though the building was not completed till a later day, moneys were raised from time to time for that purpose. Mr. Folsom himself con- tributed largely to the cause by giving public readings, which his remarkable talents rendered very enjoyable occa- sions, and which benefited us by considerable sums of money." It is gratefully remembered by many who have enjoyed our improved social and Sunday-school accommo- dations that the first contribution toward the new or renewed vestry was the proceeds of Mr. Folsom's readings.
Of Mr. Folsom's pulpit ability there is, as I should expect, a diversity of testimony. There are those who did not always, perhaps not often, find exactly what they desired in a sermon ; there were others who listened to him with the delight which they experienced in anything deli- cate and beautiful. Upon the more important question, the actual worth and helpfulness of his ministry, estimates also greatly differ. There were those who were scarcely able to rate the period as one of special edification ; and there are others to whom Mr. Folsom's ministry was an epoch, the time when they experienced the dawn of their own minds and set out upon a voyage of discovery ; when the Bible became a new book and existence a new sensation
15
A matter about which there was no difference of opinion in the parish or out, was the admirable work of Mr. Folsom as member, and for some time chairman, of the town com- mittee for public schools at a time when the duties of that board were more arduous than, since the employment of a superintendent, happily, they are now. I have no details of his work beyond the fact that his service extended from March, 1871, to March, 1875, but I have the testimony of a teacher of that day that of Mr. Folsom, in his relations with the schools, she has "most delightful recollections."
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.