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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
3 1833 03359 1279
Gc 974.402 017s Smith, Cora Hitt. A history of Dalton Methodism
GEN
Methodist Episcopal Church Dalton
A History of Dalton Methodism
By CORA HITT SMITH
1927
Allen County Public Library 900 Webster Street PO Box 2270 Fort Wayne, IN 46801-2270
"The best of all is, God is with us." John Wesley
Methodist BY1670 DI52 5644h
To My Mother MAHALA TOWER HITT
288064
Allen County Public Library 900 Webster Street PO Box 2270 Fort Wayne, IN 46801-2270
Contents
PAGE
I FOUNDATIONS
7
II
METHODIST BEGINNINGS IN DALTON
PAGE
13
DALTON METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH
III
THE FIRST CHURCH
19
IV
THE SUMMER OF 1894
27
.
37
VI
NAMES OF PASTORS .
47
VII LIST OF ORGANIZATION DATES
.
49
VIII
1927 OFFICIALS
50
.
Illustrations
Frontispiece
THE FIRST CHURCH, REMODELED
.
19
PLAN OF AUDITORIUM, 1869 .
20
V
THE PRESENT EDIFICE
.
·
INTERIOR VIEW, CARSON WINDOW
39
FAHOLA BIBLE CLASS GROUP
.
51
I
Foundations
3 OHN WESLEY towers above his generation and our own because he had the courage to be what so few of us are -independent of the ordinary standards and opinions in the midst of which he lived. From the society by which he was surrounded, a society false to God and false to man, one turns with relief to this pure-eyed prophet of the flaming heart and logical head." Dr. S. Parkes Cadman offers this tribute to the founder of Methodism. In all the history of the church, there never was a time when the oft-quoted words of St. Augustine were more true: "Man's extremity is God's op- portunity." Chill and gloom were settling on England; Vol- taire and his like were poisoning France; and Frederick of Prussia, with the Rationalists, was desolating the Faith in the very home of Luther. But the God who reared and trained Moses was preparing a man to rescue His church and bring into the world a new evangelism.
The Wesley history can be traced as far back as the 14th Century, and it is interesting to find in almost every gen - eration an eminent clergyman and scholar. John Wesley was born on June 17, 1703, in a family of high respectability in the south of England. God's hand leading Wesley in all the events of his life is clearly seen, but more especially in the preservation of his physical life in the burning of the Epworth parsonage when a child of six years, and in the revival of his spiritual life when he was directed in 1735 to the States, where the mission to Georgia failed but his acquaintance with the Moravians proved the turning-point in his religious history. After his return to England, he had much prayerful intercourse with Peter Böhler, a Moravian missionary, who under God turned the Oxford Methodist who had not suc- ceeded in America into the London Methodist whose work fills the world. Wesley was fully convinced that the Christian
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faith was not the intellectual acceptance of orthodox opinions, but "a vital act, and afterward a habit of the soul, by which man, under the spiritual influence of the Spirit of God, trusts in Christ and enters into living union with Him." The day on which this conviction laid hold on the heart and life of John Wesley, leading him to new trust and conse- cration and power, marks the birth of Methodism, and Wes- ley gave the date as May 24, 1738. The first Watch-Night in Methodism was January 1, 1739, and because of the power and spirit manifested in the meeting of John and Charles Wesley and Whitefield with some sixty brethren at love-feast, this date is often given as the time when Methodism truly began.
Beneath Wesley's calm exterior slept a very volcano of devotion to God and love to man, and his appeal was always directly and unmistakably to the human conscience. He never hesitated to depict sinfulness, while with the same breath and with manly and irresistible tenderness he en- larged upon the all-embracing love of God. The result was wonderful and unexampled. He had such audiences every- where as speakers in England have seldom addressed before or since. During Wesley's itinerancy of half a century, thousands would come together and wait patiently for hours, until, with unfailing punctuality, the expected horseman ap- peared. Then followed the sermon, the effect of which was unparalleled. When Wesley died on March 2, 1791, in the eighty-eighth year of his age and the sixty-fifth of his min- istry, he left a complete organization, amply endowed with modest equipment for effective working. A band of itinerants, five hundred and fifty in all, with veterans tried and true at its head, was in condition to operate the system, and one hundred and forty thousand living members were giving it loyal support. Today Methodism numbers approximately thirty million professed followers. Well may one say in the words of the founder: "What hath God wrought!"
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Puritanism, disappointed in old England, came to New England to found a home for itself; Methodism, transplanted hither in the hearts of a few humble immigrants, established foundations upon which God and man have built through the years. An oft-quoted utterance of John Wesley reveals a wonderful breadth of vision for the growth of his own work and insight into the boundless opportunities for the future --- "The World is My Parish." Methodism has advanced stead- ily until now all the countries of the world have been reached.
The event officially chosen from which to reckon the age of Methodism in America is the preaching of the first sermon by Philip Embury in his own house in New York in 1766, but there is no doubt that for several years before this there were homes and small settlements in which Wesley's doc- trines were taught. With Embury had come his cousin, Bar- bara Heck, and a small party of settlers to New York in 1760. Mrs. Heck assembled four persons, who with herself formed the first Methodist congregation in America. A class was started with these five members and they met at Em- bury's house weekly. Thus Barbara Heck was distinctively the first American Methodist. Soon there were two classes of seven each. Three regimental musicians became exhorters and Methodist singing drew many to the meetings.
For a number of years after Methodism was firmly estab- lished in other parts of the United States, especially in the South, even its name was scarcely known in New England. The itinerants had early marked out their circuits, but it was not until the year 1791 that Francis Asbury, who had been sent from England by Wesley and became the "Bishop of North America," finally ventured to explore Massachusetts. By this time there were a good many "believers in free grace" scattered along the valley of the Connecticut, and the appointment of Jesse Lee to New England at the New York Conference of 1789 had much to do with the growth and success of Methodism in the East. Possessing a courage that nothing could daunt, he fearlessly presented his message
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3 1833 03359 1279
to the Boston mind, which was calm, logical, and averse to religious excitement. At the Conference in 1791, which opened in New York May 26th, the appointments for New England were headed by Jesse Lee, Elder, with eleven circuit preachers in charge of six circuits, one of which was Stock- bridge, with Robert Green as leader. The first conference in New England was held in Lynn, commencing August 3, 1792. There were eight persons present besides Bishop As- bury, among whom were Jesse Lee, who was now exulting in having gained a permanent foothold, and Menzies Raynor, fresh from the revivals of the Hartford Circuit. Extensive revivals were reported in the regions of Lynn and Pittsfield in Massachusetts, of Hartford in Connecticut, and of Albany in New York, and the number of members reported was one thousand three hundred and fifty-eight, a gain of nearly nine hundred for the Conference year. Jesse Lee now re- turned for another year as Presiding Elder over all New Eng- land, in which territory were the following circuits: Lynn, Boston, Needham, Providence, Fairfield, Litchfield, Middle- town, Hartford, and Pittsfield. This last circuit was, however, on the Albany District, and from that early period until the present time, Berkshire County charges have been part of the Troy and New York Conferences.
Throughout all New England, local histories show that churches were established soon after towns were settled. This was a legal requirement. Dalton proves no exception to the rule, and a year after the town was incorporated, a meet- ing for church organization was held. But Dalton has not always been known as Dalton. It was originally called Ash- uelot Equivalent. In 1739, a number of towns in southern New Hampshire and Vermont were claimed by Massachu- setts, and a controversy immediately arose over the claim. The dispute was taken before the British council, which decided against Massachusetts and gave all the territory in dispute to New Hampshire and with it a few odd thousand acres more than New Hampshire had claimed. Massachu-
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setts had given many grants of land within this territory and had received money or services for them, but the decision of the council made these grants void. New Hampshire was glad to make the grants good in order to keep the settlers whom she had gained, and among those who received these grants were a number of men from Hatfield, who had land in the Ashuelot valley. These men, when their grants were transferred to New Hampshire, applied for others in this state, as they wished to hold their land in Massachusetts and not in New Hampshire. The General Court, therefore, allowed them to take an equal amount of land in the western section of Massachusetts, and they selected for their equiv- alent the land in the Housatonic valley on which Dalton is now located. They chose Ashuelot Equivalent for the name of the town. The settlement did not begin until 1755, but the Indian massacre at Stockbridge made things look so black in that section that the attempt at settlement at that time was only half-hearted, and it was not until five years later that the permanent settlement of Equivalent occurred. The records of Ashuelot Equivalent were unfortunately lost, so that not much of its history is known until its incorporation as a town on March 20, 1784. Its growth before that time had been rather slow, and most of the settlers had come through the influence of prominent families in the Connecticut valley. By an act of the Legislature the town was incorporated as Dalton, in honor of Tristram Dalton, who was then the speaker of the House of Representatives and who was later one of the first senators from Massachusetts. It is hard to tell why he was thus honored, except that he was exceedingly popular among the settlers.
On February 16, 1785, a meeting for church organization was held in the eastern part of the town of Dalton at the home of Captain Abijah Parks, and twenty-five persons sub- scribed to the confession of faith and the covenant, seventeen men and eight women. Thus began the Congregational Church in Dalton. The location of the first building caused
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much controversy. Several votes were taken in town-meeting from 1786 to 1791, when a board of arbitration was appointed to settle the location of the building, which was soon after erected near where is now the east entrance to the Protestant Cemetery on Main Street. Recently the spot has been marked by a stone, bearing a bronze tablet with this inscrip- tion :----
Site of the First Meeting House In Dalton-1791-1812 Congregational Church Organized 1785.
As the meeting-house was built by the town, it was used for its town-meetings as well as for worship. This church stood until 1812, when a much larger building was erected on the hill where Otis Street is now located, and not until 1825 was the parish separated from the town. The Congregationalists occupied this East Main Street church until February, 1889, when their present stone edifice was erected.
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II Methodist Beginnings in Dalton
N THE year 1788, or 1789, Rev. Samuel Smith preached the first Methodist sermon which was ever heard in Dalton or its vicinity. Mr. J. E. A. Smith in his "History of Berkshire County" is the authority for this statement, but whether the sermon was called "Methodist" as decidedly different from a Congregational sermon, to which the set- tlers were by this time accustomed, or whether it was called "Methodist" because preached by a clergyman of that de- nomination, it is not stated. This historian gives the date for the introduction of Methodism into Dalton as 1788, just three years after the organization of the Congregational church. Rev. Samuel Smith was an itinerant minister in the Albany circuit, which in its immense territory included Berk- shire County. In his travels he visited the settlers in the south western part of Dalton near the Washington and Pitts- field line, and this spot may be called the birthplace of Meth- odism in central and northern Berkshire. Mr. Smith's sermon was preached at the house of Zebulon Herrick, which stood very nearly in the southwestern corner of Dalton and close to the Pittsfield line. The appointment was continued at the house of Mr. Herrick until the ensuing fall, when it was changed to that of Nathan Webb, about a third of a mile farther west, but in Pittsfield. There it was continued for several years and until separate appointments were made for each place. Soon after the first sermon, a class was formed which included residents of Pittsfield, Washington, and Dalton, where, in the center of the town, another class was formed and meetings began to be held regularly.
The oldest church record in the possession of the local church contains the following account by Rev. Elijah B. Hubbard, Methodist preacher in Dalton in 1839 :-
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A BRIEF HISTORY OF DALTON CIRCUIT
"Dalton Circuit belongs to Troy District, Troy Confer- ence, and is situated in the western part of the State of Massa- chusetts. It includes a part of two counties, viz .: Berkshire and Hampshire, and embraces four towns, viz .: Dalton, Hinsdale, Washington, and Middlefield. Methodism was probably introduced into Dalton, Hinsdale, and Washington about the year 1795, and into Middlefield, (by Bro. E. Wash- burn) January Ist, 1800. In the June following, the first class was formed, consisting of four members, viz .: Thomas Ward, Daniel Folley, Betsy Folley, and Mary Holland. Middlefield was formerly a part of Granville Circuit, sub- sequently of Buckland, Adams, and lastly of Pittsfield, from which it was separated in 1831, and assumed its present name. The Centenary of Methodism was celebrated on this circuit on the 25th day of October, 1839, and sermons preached by Bro. E. B. Hubbard and Bro. Ensign Stover, Preachers on the circuit; and subscriptions subsequently taken up for the objects contemplated by the Centenary Celebration." This Centenary Celebration commemorated the one hundred years which had passed since John Wesley's conviction led him into a broader life.
The year 1795, to which Rev. E. B. Hubbard refers as the time when Methodism was introduced into Dalton, is probably the year that Menzies Raynor came as the first Methodist preacher to speak in the center of the town, in the small wooden schoolhouse which stood on land which is now the west end of Center Park. His name appears in the list of eight men present with Bishop Asbury at the first Conference held in New England in 1792, and that year he was appointed to Lynn. In the General Minutes of 1795, "Bro." Raynor is noted as having withdrawn during that year, so that the probabilities are that this Methodist preacher visited Dalton as early as 1795. Rev. E. A. Blanchard, pastor of the church in 1875, recorded that Menzies Raynor was the first Meth-
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odist who preached in Dalton, his informant being Dr. Ferry, who seventy-five years ago owned the Booth place on Main Street and was the only physician in town.
No attempt was made to incorporate a Methodist society until 1804, when the people of that faith in Dalton were joined with Hancock, Pittsfield, and Washington. Mr. J. E. A. Smith in his history gives a list of thirty-seven incorporators. The Legislature, during the same and next ensuing sessions, passed three acts supplementary to the act of incorporation and favorable to the new society.
Rev. Ebenezer Jennings, who became pastor of the Con- gregational church on September 8, 1802, wrote this in his "History of Dalton" in 1829: "There is a small society of Methodists, who commonly have preaching semi-monthly on the Sabbath, in each alternate week. They arose princi- pally in 1812, though there were some before that time." As Parson Jennings was pastor of the Congregational society when the new church building was erected on "the hill" in 1812, he no doubt witnessed the new growth and activity in the neighboring church in that year and thoroughly appre- ciated this statement in another early record: "The Meth- odist Episcopal church located on Main Street was started in 1812, composed chiefly from dissenters from the Con- gregational church, on account of that society moving their church building to a new site, while some attached them- selves to the church from political motives, connected with the late war with Great Britain."
About 1800, Lorenzo Dow was admitted to the Methodist Conference and did immense labor in western Massachusetts. He has been called the first Methodist evangelist in this country. His energy was intense; he would ride fifty miles and preach five times in a single day. A few of the older members in the Dalton Methodist church of today remember that they often heard their parents speak of Lorenzo Dow and of his preaching in this neighborhood.
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Another preacher, whose name and work in Dalton are recalled, is Rev. Billy Hibbard. It is known that he preached in the schoolhouse at the center, and that he received fifty dollars for one year, for one sermon once a fortnight on Sun- day afternoon. This was probably about 1814 when he was pastor in Pittsfield. Billy Hibbard was known as a circuit- rider, a man "most devoted, useful, and entertaining." He was named from a Governor of a state and put on the Con- ference roll as "William." He would not answer when that name was called. "Is not that your name?" asked Asbury. "It is Billy Hibbard." "But Billy is a little boy's name." "I was a little boy when my father gave it to me." The Con- ference was convulsed with laughter. In "passing his char- acter," he was charged with practicing medicine. "Are you a physician?" asked the Bishop. "I am not. I simply give ad- vice in critical cases." "What do you mean by that?" "In critical cases I always advise them to send for a physician." His wit was always ready.
Billy Hibbard was born in Norwich, Connecticut in 1771, but after a few years, his father moved his family to Berk- shire County, where Billy was sent to school. On the 10th day of January, 1793, he married a young woman in Hinsdale, and later in that month he was converted at his father-in- law's home, though he writes in his "Memoirs" of an intense religious experience at the age of twelve. "The impression to preach I construed to mean only exhortation, for I could not believe myself qualified to preach, nor believe that I could acquire qualifications which could do honor to the cause of God in that station," he humbly records. In October, 1793, Hibbard went from Hinsdale "to the Methodist meet- ing, seven miles off, and there joined the class," which prob- ably means the class started by settlers in the southwest part of Dalton. Because of Hibbard's distance from this society, he exhorted in Hinsdale, where "several experienced religion, formed a class of fifteen, and appointed him as leader." Con- versions followed his earliest efforts, but he felt weak and
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unworthy. At Pittsfield, he heard preach "a weak, a very weak, brother," who weakened as he went on. " _He is weaker than I am, or, if I am as weak as he, I will never try to preach again," said Hibbard. The next morning he learned that five were converted under that sermon of "the very weak brother." "I hid my face in my hands and said, 'O Lord, marvelous are Thy works.' " He saw th= at the power was of God, and he never again spoke of weakn ess.
In his History he wrote, "Though my diff iculties were many, by reason of my ignorance and poverty, yet I left all and went into the Pittsfield circuit with "brother" Stebbins, by the direction of the presiding elder in the ye- ar 1797, and travelled with him until sometime in June IT 98." At the Conference in September, 1798, the time of hol ding the an- nual Conference in September was changed to MIay or June. One year, his circuit was five hundred miles around it, and to preach as he did sixty-three sermons in four weeks, and travel five hundred miles, seemed to him "too h=ard," but he adds, "I cried unto the Lord and He heard me= ; for as my day was, so was my strength." He was ordained elder by Bishop Asbury in 1802. Many circuits saw anc I heard this good man, until in 1813 he was stationed at Pittsfield. At the next annual Conference in 1814, he decided to aid the Berkshire regiment as chaplain and offered to go> if the army was called out, which he did in defense of Bosto n, while sta- tioned for his second year on the Pittsfield Carcuit. From June, 1819 to May, 1821 he labored in New York City. Here he suffered an affection of the lungs, and was appointed to Petersburgh Circuit for one year. "It was my design," he writes, "to ask for a superannuated relation at the next Con- ference, but my presiding elder desired me to continue effec- tive, at least so as to fill the station in Dalton; and my desire also was to continue in some easy station, in hopes I might recover my health, and not entirely break down. But all seemed in vain; my labors in Dalton, though moderate, fre- quently brought on an inflamation of my lungs_ _ Wherefore,
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Another preacher, whose name and work in Dalton are recalled, is Rev. Billy Hibbard. It is known that he preached in the schoolhouse at the center, and that he received fifty dollars for one year, for one sermon once a fortnight on Sun- day afternoon. This was probably about 1814 when he was pastor in Pittsfield. Billy Hibbard was known as a circuit- rider, a man "most devoted, useful, and entertaining." He was named from a Governor of a state and put on the Con- ference roll as "William." He would not answer when that name was called. "Is not that your name?" asked Asbury. "It is Billy Hibbard." "But Billy is a little boy's name." "I was a little boy when my father gave it to me." The Con- ference was convulsed with laughter. In "passing his char- acter," he was charged with practicing medicine. "Are you a physician?" asked the Bishop. "I am not. I simply give ad- vice in critical cases." "What do you mean by that?" "In critical cases I always advise them to send for a physician." His wit was always ready.
Billy Hibbard was born in Norwich, Connecticut in 1771, but after a few years, his father moved his family to Berk- shire County, where Billy was sent to school. On the 10th day of January, 1793, he married a young woman in Hinsdale, and later in that month he was converted at his father-in- law's home, though he writes in his "Memoirs" of an intense religious experience at the age of twelve. "The impression to preach I construed to mean only exhortation, for I could not believe myself qualified to preach, nor believe that I could acquire qualifications which could do honor to the cause of God in that station," he humbly records. In October, 1793, Hibbard went from Hinsdale "to the Methodist meet- ing, seven miles off, and there joined the class," which prob- ably means the class started by settlers in the southwest part of Dalton. Because of Hibbard's distance from this society, he exhorted in Hinsdale, where "several experienced religion, formed a class of fifteen, and appointed him as leader." Con- versions followed his earliest efforts, but he felt weak and
[16]
unworthy. At Pittsfield, he heard preach "a weak, a very weak, brother," who weakened as he went on. "He is weaker than I am, or, if I am as weak as he, I will never try to preach again," said Hibbard. The next morning he learned that five were converted under that sermon of "the very weak brother." "I hid my face in my hands and said, 'O Lord, marvelous are Thy works.' " He saw that the power was of God, and he never again spoke of weakness.
In his History he wrote, "Though my difficulties were many, by reason of my ignorance and poverty, yet I left all and went into the Pittsfield circuit with "brother" Stebbins, by the direction of the presiding elder in the year 1797, and travelled with him until sometime in June 1798." At the Conference in September, 1798, the time of holding the an- nual Conference in September was changed to May or June. One year, his circuit was five hundred miles around it, and to preach as he did sixty-three sermons in four weeks, and travel five hundred miles, seemed to him "too hard," but he adds, "I cried unto the Lord and He heard me; for as my day was, so was my strength." He was ordained elder by Bishop Asbury in 1802. Many circuits saw and heard this good man, until in 1813 he was stationed at Pittsfield. At the next annual Conference in 1814, he decided to aid the Berkshire regiment as chaplain and offered to go if the army was called out, which he did in defense of Boston, while sta- tioned for his second year on the Pittsfield Circuit. From June, 1819 to May, 1821 he labored in New York City. Here he suffered an affection of the lungs, and was appointed to Petersburgh Circuit for one year. "It was my design," he writes, "to ask for a superannuated relation at the next Con- ference, but my presiding elder desired me to continue effec- tive, at least so as to fill the station in Dalton; and my desire also was to continue in some easy station, in hopes I might recover my health, and not entirely break down. But all seemed in vain; my labors in Dalton, though moderate, fre- quently brought on an inflamation of my lungs. Wherefore,
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