USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Worcester > Historical discourse at Worcester, in the Old south meeting house, September 22, 1863; the hundredth anniversary of its erectiion > Part 1
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Go 974.402 W89bac 1847510
M. L.
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01068 4758
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D. C. folos archy,
A
HISTORICAL DISCOURSE
DELIVERED AT WORCESTER.
IN THE
OLD SOUTH MEETING HOUSE,
SEPTEMBER 22, 1863;
The Hundredth Anniversary of its Erection. 100 th
BY LEONARD BACON, D. D. PASTOR OF THE FIRST CHURCH IN NEW HAVEN, CONN.
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WITH INTRODUCTORY REMARKS BY. HON. IRA M. BARTON, THE PRESIDENT ON THE OCCASION.
AND AN APPENDIX.
THE NEWBERRY LIBRARY CHICAGO
WORCESTER: PRINTED BY EDWARD R. FISKE. 1863.
1847510
Worcester Sept. 20, 1863.
REV. LEONARD BACON, D. D. DEAR SIR,
By the unanimous vote of the committee of arrangements for commemo- rating the hundredth anniversary of the erection of the house of worship of the First Parish in Worcester, we have the honor to communicate to you their thanks for the valuable and interesting discourse delivered by you on that occasion, and to request a copy of the same for publication.
We are, very truly and respectfully, Yours, &c. IRA M. BARTON, ALLEN HARRIS, CALEB DANA.
New Haven, Oct. 19, 1863.
HON. IRA M. BARTON, ALLEN HARRIS, ESQ., CALEB DANA, EsQ.
GENTLEMEN,-In compliance with your request, I now submit to your disposal a copy of the Discourse which was delivered at your late Centennial Celebration. Please to accept my grateful acknowledgment of your courtesy and kindness.
While I accepted as an honor the invitation to perform that service, I could not but be somewhat embarrassed by the consideration that I had no particular acquaintance with your local and parochial history. Your kindness relieved me of that embarrassment by providing that the details which are the special interest of such an occasion should be collected and narrated by one of your- selves, who has performed that service much better than I could have done. ` With this understanding I accepted your invitation, considering myself as in some sort a substitute for my young friend and late parishioner, your pastor, to whom such a duty so soon after his installation might have been burdensome. May his ministry, beginning a new century in your venerable sanctuary, be commemorated with praise to God, when the second century shall be completed.
Respectfully, Yours.
LEONARD BACON.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
BY
HON. IRA M. BARTON.
FRIENDS AND FELLOW CITIZENS :
You are all aware, I presume, of the object of the occa- sion on which we have assembled. One hundred years have elapsed since the erection of the walls of this Church ; and the Parish worshipping here, have thought the event worthy of grateful commemoration.
The Church was erected in 1763, by the inhabitants of Worcester, then acting in their municipal as well as parochial capacity ; and it was, therefore, originally the property of the town. But after the incorporation of the Second Parish , in 1787, the First Parish became the proprietors of the House as the legal successors of the town, and their records as a parish, separate from those of the town, commenced Dec. 24, 1787.
At an adjournment of the annual meeting of the First Parish in the Spring of 1863, upon the recommendation of a committee that had been previously appointed to consider the matter, it was voted to commemorate the Centennial Anniversary of the building of their Church, and to appoint
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a committee of seventeen to make the necessary arrange- ments for the occasion. And this large gathering, not only of present and former members of their own parish, but from other parishes in the city, is one of the results of their labors.
The committee found, upon the authority of a memoran- dum left by the Rev. Thaddeus Maccarty, the minister of the town, that the erection of their Church was commenced June 21, 1763, and that it was so far finished that public religious services were held in it December 8, the same year, being the day of the annual Thanksgiving. It does not appear that the Church was ever formally dedicated. A Thanksgiv- ing and historical discourse was delivered by Mr. Maccarty on the occasion referred to, which, it is a source of great regret, was not published, and is irrecoverably lost.
Under these circumstances, the parish deemed it not ma- terial that the day for this commemoration, should coincide precisely with the day of the first occupancy of their Church. And the committee accordingly fixed upon this day, at this genial season of the year, as more agreeable, especially for our friends from abroad to visit us, than any day nearer the usual period of our annual Thanksgiving.
As this Church was originally of a municipal character, and the property of the town, the committee thought that the occasion called for something more than a mere parish observance. They have therefore invited the attendance not only of members of their own parish that have gone out from them, but other prominent and ancient inhabitants of the town. As the representatives of the city, they have also invited the presence of the Mayor and his predecessors, and the Clergymen of the different religious communions. And as the organ of the committee, it is my agreeable duty to
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express to each and all of you on this occasion, their very sincere welcome and congratulations.
I said that the walls of this House were erected in 1763. Those remain much as they were originally; while the inte- rior has been renovated and fitted up with some of the dec- orations and conveniences demanded by more modern taste. The original interior construction of the House, is indicated by the diagram suspended from the centre of the east gal- lery, as copied by an ingenious member of the parish, from a folio leaf of the town records. This gallery, however, is a modern intruder. In the centre of the space now occupied by it, stood the spacious pulpit, and the ponderous sounding board suspended over it, while the galleries were confined to the other three sides of the House.
From the pulpit extended the broad aisle to the ample and lofty porch upon the west side of the Church, fronting on the " country road," now Main Street. This porch gave access to both, the floor of the House and the west gallery. And it was from its roof, as his rostrum, that Isaiah Thomas, on the 14th of July 1776, proclaimed to the assembled people, the Declaration of Independence, after the document had made a laborious journey of ten days from the city of Philadelphia, where Congress was then sitting.
There were also entrances to the floor and the galleries of the House, by way of another porch at the south, and the bell tower at the north end of it.
The audience room upon the floor of the House was laid out into the large, square, social pews of the day, excepting seven free seats upon each side of the broad aisle, in front of the pulpit; those upon the right hand side, as they enter- ed the House, being appropriated for the men, and those upon the left, for the women. But the increasing demand
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for new pews, afterwards usurped the place of all those seats except the two front ones.
At the time of the erection of this Church in 1763, the Rev. Mr. Maccarty, the minister of the town, was in the prime of life, being about forty years of age. He was prominent amongst the provincial clergy, having been the successful rival of the Rev. Jonathan Mayhew, of Martha's Vineyard, afterwards the distinguished minister of the West Church in Boston. After having ministered to the united inhabitants of the town for thirty seven years, he died July 20, 1784, and was interred in the ancient burial place on the Common, near the Church where he so long labored. The town caused a handsome headstone to be erected at his grave, with an inscription since substantially transferred by one of his descendants,* with the approbation of the parish, to the mural tablet, upon the east side of the pulpit of this Church, where the successors of the people of his charge still worship. Higher evidence of his "peaceful Christian virtues," will not be sought by this community.
The portrait of Mr. Maccarty, upon the opposite side of the pulpit, has been kindly loaned for this occasion, by his great-grand-daughter, Mrs. Henry K. Newcomb. It indi- cates, strikingly, the clerical costume of his day, and is, probably, as good a likeness of the original, as the state of the arts in this country, at that period, could afford.
The candelabra suspended upon either side of the pulpit, furnished also by Mrs. Newcomb, derive their interest from having been decorations of the ancient parsonage, and that the ornamental part of them, was the handy work of Mrs. Maccarty. . Tradition testifies to her eminent piety and
*IIon. Dwight Foster.
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virtue ; and we here have proof of her superior accomplish- ments for the age in which she lived.
Time does not allow me even to name the prominent members of Mr. Maccarty's congregation. The names of the pew-holders appear on the diagram referred to, inseribed upon their respective pews. Conspicuous amongst these, was the pew of honor at the right hand of the palpit, assigned to John Chandler, Esq., in recognition of the bequest of forty pounds to the town, by his father, Judge Chandler, to alleviate the taxes upon the poorer inhabitants, for building the Church. The whole sixty-one pews were appraised, and the choice of them was offered to the people in the order of the amount of taxes paid by them upon their real estate, respectively, beginning with the highest. In that way, tlc proprietors of the pews probably became those who were then regarded as the solid men of Worcester. Several of them are noticed by William Lincoln, Esq., in his model his- tory of the town, while there are others, equally worthy of remembrance, respecting whom we dilligently seek materials for genealogical and personal history. Any such materials derived from family records, well authenticated traditions or otherwise, if communicated to Deacon Allen Harris, the chairman of a committee appointed for that purpose, will be gratefully received and appropriately preserved.
The building Committee of the Church, chosen May 17, 1762, embracing probably the more active business men of the town, were; John Chandler, jr., Joshua Bigelow, Josiah Brewer, John Curtis, James Putnam, Daniel Boyden, James Goodwin, Jacob Hemenway, David Bigelow, Samuel Mower, and Elijah Smith.
It has been ascertained by our respected fellow citizen, Dr. George Chandler, a collateral kinsman of the Chandler
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family, that Judge Chandler, the first of the name in Wor- cester, died August 7, 1702. ITis son, John Chandler, jr., succeeded to both the civil and military offices of his father, and was described in the same manner upon both the town and Probate records. Hence, to prevent confusion in iefer- ing to those records, it becomes necessary to note the day of the death of the father, ascertained from his obituary in the Boston News Letter.
Of the other members of the Building Committee, Joshua Bigelow was repeatedly a representative of the town in the Provincial Assembly. James Putnam was a distinguished lawyer, with whom the first President Adams read law while keeping school in Worcester, a few years before the erection of this Church. David Bigelow was an elder brother of Col. Timothy Bigelow, a member of the Provincial Con- gress, and, in 1779, the colleague of Levi Lincoln, sen., and Joseph Allen, as the delegate to the Convention for framing the Constitution of this Commonwealth. The Hon. George T. Bigelow, the present Chief Justice of our Supreme Ju- dicial Court, is a grandson of this David Bigelow.
At the time of the election of the Building Committee, they were limited by the town to an expenditure of twelve hundred pounds ; and afterwards at a meeting of the town, May 18, 1763, it was voted " that said committee hire a suit- able number of men to raise the new meeting house in the cheapest manner they can, and that there be no public en- tertainment." The frugality and temperance of the town compare somewhat to the disadvantage of the parish, which, in 1790, at the installation of Rev. Dr. Austin, expended ten pounds seven shillings and sixpence, and that for articles which it would be unseemly to name in this presence.
Such was this House, and such some of the worshippers in
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it, one hundred years ago. A further notice of them, with their contemporaries, would constitute a service interesting to the present and future generations of this city.
The first alteration in the interior of this House, was made by the town in 1783. Two of the back free seats of the men, upon the right hand side of the broad aisle, and the two corresponding seats for the women on the side opposite, were taken out, and four new news erected in their place. They were erceted under the supervision of Timothy Paine, Joseph Allen, and Joseph Wheeler, Esq'rs, as a committee appointed by the town for that purpose. This was regarded as a matter of so much importance, that the pews were sold, in presence of the town, at a largely enhanced price; the two upon the women's, or left hand side of the broad aisle, to Daniel Waldo, sen., and Isaiah Thomas ; and the two upon the men's side opposite, to Dr. Elijah Dix and Nathan Patch. Subsequently, in 1805, the parish removed eight more of the free seats, giving place for eight additional pews, and, leaving two free seats in front for aged people. Benjamin Heywood, Samuel Flagg and Oliver Fiske, Esq'rs, were appointed to erect and make sale of these pews. They appear to have been sold to John Green, Ephraim Mower, Daniel Denny, John Mower, Samuel Harrington, Edward Knight, Oliver Fiske and Moses Perry, for the aggregate sum of $946; indicating that, at that period, the meeting- house stock was in good demand.
But the more radical change in the internal arrangement of the House, was reserved until the year 1828. The sixty- one ancient pews then all gave place to the ninety-two modern slips on the floor, and forty-two in the galleries, as we now find them. The ancient pulpit and sounding board, with its pendant dove and olive branch over the minister's
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head, all disappeared ; the eastern gallery was constructed, and the modern pulpit found its place at the north en l of the audience room. The porch upon the west side of t'. e House was at the same time removed, and wings being placed on each side of the bell tower, gave to the structure a come- ly northern, instead of the former western front.
In 1834 the parish applied to the town for permission to erect a Chapel, or Vestry, as it was called, on the Common, at the south end of their Church. The inhabitants of tl.e town, with the better judgment, refused such permis ion, but granted leave to the parish to extend the whole body of their Church, twenty-five feet to the south, thus making its entire dimensions ninety-five by fifty-five feet. This addi- tion was made the following year, involving the destruction of the ancient porch at the south end of the Church, and affording space for a Chapel on the upper floor, anl an ample vestibule below, without interfering with the audience room or galleries.
In 1846, the parish fitted up the vestibule below for their Chapel ; moved back, in a semi-circular form, the south gallery, from over the rear pews in the audience room, and erected the organ loft upon the floor that had before been occupied as the Chapel, with a convenient committee room for study upon the east side of it. Thus arranged, we find our Church at this commencement of the secon I century cf its existence.
In the summer of 1846, Mr. Appleton of Boston, put up one of his best instruments in the organ loft, at the cost of three thousand dollars. It was in part procured by the subscription of individuals ; but their interest was afterwards surrendered to the parish, which is now the sole owner of it.
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I hardly need say, that these particulars as to the materia I history of our venerable Church, are more for the informa- tion of the generations that are to succeed us, than for any special interest they may possess for the present one.
The situation of the immediate surroundings of this Church in 1763, when it was erected, is worth noting.
In the first place, then, we must annihilate our pleasant Central Park, with its enclosure, and reduce it to a bald Common or training field, for which it appears to have been originally dedicated by the proprietors of the town.
We must next demolish our spacious City Hall, and give the Church an unobstructed northern prospect down the sparse- ly settled Main Street, which was bounded on the north by the ancient Court House, occupying nearly the same site with the present Court Houses on Court Hill.
To the cast of the Church was the Common, with the burying ground upon the east side of it. That ground was generally used for the purpose of burials from about 1730 to 1795, when the town procured the burial ground on Me- chanic Street. Some notice of the disposition that has been made of this ancient ground on the Common, is perhaps due to those having friends interred there. At an early period, a heavy stone wall had been laid around this ground, separating it from the common. This might, indeed, serve as a protection of the ground against desecration from with- out, but it was found also to serve as a concealment of all manner of desecration from within ; and after the ground ceased to be used for burials, it became unsightly and offen- sive. The wall was removed ; and after the organization of the City Government in 1848, it was proposed to remove the bodies to the new rural Cemetery and to level the ground
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where they had been originally interred. The public feeling revolted at that idea, and, by the influence of gentlemen whom I now see before me, the project was defeated.
The City Government then adopted the plan of making a perfect survey of the ground, by placing permanent stone monuments just below the surface, and taking the bearing and distance from such monuments to each grave having a head-stone. The head-stones were then carefully taken up and placed over the graves, about one foot below the surface of the ground. The graves were numbered, and a plan of the ground made, indicating the precise position of each grave, accompanied by an index of the numbers and a copy of the respective epitaphs. Any person desirous of remov- ing the remains of a friend, (an act of questionable good taste,) may thus ascertain its position with mathematical cer- tainty, and accomplish his pious purpose. The survey was made in 1833, by Gill Valentine, Esq. ; and the plan, with an earlier and fuller copy of the epitaphs, published by a young gentleman* of this city, of antiquarian taste, is pre- served with the archives of the city. Pleasant varieties of our native forest trees were set out in the intervals between the graves, and the ground, from a repulsive, has become one of the most quiet and inviting spots in the city. The massive and elegant monument recently erected over the grave of Col. Timothy Bigelow, will forever identify the spot as the ancient burial place on the Common. It is per- haps further due to the memory of those that repose there,
. . that a substantial Cenotaph should be erected near the centre of the ground, with the names of the heads of the families inscribed upon it.
* Wm. Sumner Barton, Esq., in 1818.
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Upon the south side of the Common, near the present junction of Park and Portland streets, was the parsonage of the Rev. Mr. Maccarty.
Upon the west front of the Church was the country road already referred to. Upon the opposite side of the road, the g.oui.ds were all vacant, except the Chandler house, or as it was afterwards known, the Bush house. That is entitled to the distinction of being coeval with this Church. It was noticed by the Rev. Dr. Dwight, in his travels through New England nearly seventy years ago, as " the house erected by the late Gardner Chandler, Esquire, and one of the hand- somest he had met with in the interior of the country ;" the Dr. thus giving a graphic and probably correct idea of the state of rural architecture at that period, by reference to a structure now quite thrown into the shade by the palatial residences upon either side of it. The antiquity of that structure is deduced not only from tradition and the style of its architecture, but from the testimony of the late Judge Nathaniel Paine, who, if now living, would be somewhat more than a hundred years old. In the many pleasant con- versations had with the Judge, after he left the Probate Of- fice in 1836, I once asked him for the history of the Chand- ler house. He premised that "he married his wife from that house; that the main part of it and the north wing were erected before the revolution ; that the plan was to add a south wing corresponding with the north, but the troubles preceding the revolution broke out, and the latter part of the plan was abandoned." Those troubles, it is well known, commenced with the Stamp Aet, which was passed in 1765, but two years after the erection of this Church ; leading to the satisfactory conclusion that the Chandler house and this Church had a contemporaneous origin .*
* At the present time, 1863, Judge Barton is the occupant of this house.
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Those ancient landmarks, the sycamore trees in front of the Chandler house and the estate of the Hon. Isaac Davis, opposite the Church, are perhaps worthy of passing notice. They were transplanted from the valley of the Blackstone river, where the sycamore is a natural growth. Having learned the agreeable associations the venerable Judge must have with those trees, to enable me to answer the constant enquiries made respecting their age, I asked him to inform me when they were set ont ? With a quickness and naivete, which those will appreciate who recollect the Judge, he re- plied, "I can't tell ;- I can remember when the trees were smaller than they are now." This was said in 1836, by a man then eighty years of age, and justifies the conclusion that those trees too must be the contemporaries, if not the antecedents, of this Church.
It would be a pleasant exercise for the imagination to fol- low out the more remote surroundings of this Church, as they existed a hundred years ago. But this is not the time nor the occasion for such a purpose. It is sufficient to say, that almost everything of an artificial origin, is changed. From the fourth or fifth agricultural town in this country, Worcester has become the third city of the State, rejoicing in a population of about thirty thousand. Our gracefully rounded hills, or as Dr. Dwight more graphically described them, "hills moulded into a great variety and beauty of forms," noticed by strangers as the physical feature of our city, still remain ; but instead of the native forest, crowned with the decorations with which the agriculturist and archi- tect have invested them.
On the south we still have the Blackstone and its tributa- ries ; but instead of flowing sluggishly along through their native forests, cultivation has reached their banks, and, at
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the least fall, their waters are disturbed by the wheels of the mechanic and the manufacturer.
. On the east there meets the eye a most beautiful object that remains as it was, and will remain forever. And if, amidst all the changes in our territory, a question should ever arise as to the identity of the location of the ancient and the modern Worcester, I can imagine no way by which that question could be so readily settled, as by reference to our Lake Quinsigamond and this ancient Church.
As the erection and first occupancy of this Church was sig- nalized by a thanksgiving and historical discourse from the Rev. Mr. Maccarty, the committee of arrangements thought that its preservation for a century, under circumstances of so much favor, should be gratefully noticed in much the same manner. At the time the arrangements for this occa- sion were first made, the pulpit of the parish was vacant ; since happily supplied by the installation of the Rev. Ed- ward 1. Walker, from New Haven. And in seeking for a gentleman to address us on this occasion, and while inviting home the pilgrims from this Church, you will think it was befitting that we should invite to the service a distinguished successor of those Massachusetts pilgrims, who aforetime wandere l by the " Connecticut path," over our pleasant hills, on their way to the Connecticut. And I have the pleasure to announce that a discourse may be expected from the Rev. i eonard Bacon, D. D., of New Haven.
The religious services of the occasion will take place, under the direction of the Rev. Mr. Walker.
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HISTORICAL DISCOURSE,
BY THE
REV. LEONARD BACON, D. D.
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A hundred years ago, the people of Worcester, in the ex- ereise of their municipal powers, were building a house for the worship of God. The structure " began to be erected" on the 21st day of June, and it was occupied by the congre- gation on the Sth of December, "the day of public thanks- giving throughout the province." In that house we are as- sembled, at the invitation of its present proprietors, to recall that year 1763, to compare it with this year 1863, and so to realize the difference between the world in which we are living and the world as it was a hundred years ago ..
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