USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Roxbury > Eliot memorial : sketches historical and biographical of the Eliot Church and Society > Part 14
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Young Andrew Marshall seemed to inherit student tastes and ambition. His teacher, Peter MacGregor, was desirous that he should be educated for the ministry, but family circumstances would not permit. The habit of read- ing and a desire for improvement continued through life. A tenacious memory characterized him in boyhood. One Sabbath morning he learned by heart the fifth chapter of James' epistle while breakfast was being prepared.
In 1851 Mr. Marshall, then twenty years of age, came to Roxbury. He was a thoughtful young man of correct habits, but parental prayer and training had not yet resulted in decided Christian living. After a season of earnest religious thoughtfulness he devoted himself unreservedly to the service of God, came out of spiritual darkness into light, made public profession of faith in Christ, and joined the Eliot Church, November 2, 1866. Thence onward he
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commended himself to all as faithful -faithful in business relations, faithful in all domestic duties, faithful in Bible- class instruction, and the various requirements of church life, including those of the diaconate. He was deeply and wisely interested in the cause of temperance. His zeal did not expend itself in speech-making. He labored kindly and persistently with the victims of strong drink. Among those thus reclaimed two cases may well be mentioned. One
man, thoroughly reformed and restored to respectability, prospered in business and amassed a fortune. The other, after reformation and spiritual conversion, continued for twenty-five years a valued church member. When looking at the portrait of his benefactor, he said, " That man saved me." Mr. Marshall's character partook of independence without arrogance, of firmness without obstinacy. There was the grace of a poetic element. To his last days he could repeat the Assembly's Shorter Catechism, questions and answers, as well as "The Cotter's Saturday Night," and other favorite poems.
When the fatal issue of Mr. Marshall's last sickness was announced, the universal thought was, A good man has left us, a man deeply respected by all. That was a Lord's-day morning, to him the day of all the week the best for life on earth and for entering heaven. Most unfeigned was the mourning of the company which followed his remains to Cedar Grove Cemetery, April 4, 1883.
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I 2. WILLIAM FRANCIS DAY.
After a course at the Grammar School and High School, it was Mr. Day's purpose to enjoy the advantages of collegiate education, and accordingly he began prepara- tion. Weak eyes and a delicate condition of general health, which continued for many years, obliged him to relinquish the coveted prize. He took a position in the Cordage Factory of Sewall, Day & Co., as clerk and pay- master. Upon the decease of his brother Henry, he be- came President and General Manager of the company. When the business was disposed of to the National Cord- age Company, Mr. Day was asked to remain in charge and to act as Treasurer. But it had become a growing custom with manufacturers to mix goods and to label them as if unmixed. In a very exemplary manner Mr. Day carried his conscience with him into business trans- actions. One proceeding will illustrate. After the con- cern was merged in the National Cordage Company he had occasion to say repeatedly to friends, “ When I can- not manage affairs according to the dictates of my con- science, I shall resign my position." The old firm had a wide reputation for perfect integrity ; but a quality of hemp was sent to him to be worked up and put on the market as "Sewall and Day's Rope " or " Twine," the fibre of which he considered to be inferior to that which had secured for the firm its good name. He could not be accessory to such fraud and sent in his resignation ' (1894).
I See Cordage Trade Journal, Vol. IX., No. 11. Dec. 1, 1894.
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Home was Mr. Day's paradise, and he gave himself assiduously to all domestic interests, and especially to the religious training of his children. In all church affairs he took the liveliest interest. His active participa- tion in devotional services was such as drew the hearts of others at once to the mercy-seat. He was twice elected Deacon of the Eliot Church, though not till after Dr. Hamilton became associate pastor in 1871. His church membership dates from 1857. Besides other responsible positions, he was a trustee of the Roxbury Latin School, of the Hartford Theological Seminary, and a corporate member of the American Board.
His entrance into rest on the afternoon of March 8, 1899, was especially sudden. Happily it was at his own home in Boston. He had been out on business and in apparent usual health. The event was not wholly a sur- prise to those who were acquainted with the delicacy of his constitution, and with his liabilities in recent years. It is seldom that a family, a church, and a community suffer so great a loss in the removal of one member. Mr. Day was in the sixty-first year of his age.
CHAPTER XVI.
MINISTERIAL PARISHIONERS.
IT is not always the case that ordained men are partic- ularly acceptable as private members of a church. They are sometimes reputed to be officious and opinionated, a thorn to the pastor and an annoyance to associates. Here it has been entirely otherwise. Clerical members have, without exception, approved themselves as sympathetic with the pastor and the whole brotherhood and in appropriate ways helpful. In the course of the first twenty-nine years of my ministry (1842-71) there were twenty-five such connected with the congregation, two of whom, each over eighty, died the same year. Besides the following there were seven or eight other clergymen whose names will be found among missionary officials or among educators.
I. REV. STEPHEN SANFORD SMITH.
Haverhill, New Hampshire, was Mr. Smith's birthplace, April 14, 1797, Rev. Ethan Smith being his father. He was early in the office of Horace Greeley as a printer's boy. Having prepared for the ministry, he preached in different places. Together with his wife he was received to the Pres- byterian Church, Fayetteville, New York, from the North Congregational Church in New Bedford. After his ministry at Fayetteville the private relationship of Mr. and Mrs. S. S. Smith was transferred to us in 1837.
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On returning to Massachusetts Mr. Smith acted as agent for the American Sunday School Union, for the American and Foreign Christian Union, and the Bible Society; he also held one or two pastorates. His death came suddenly at the house of a relative in Worcester, October, 1871. He had engaged to preach the next Lord's Day at Medway Village and had selected a sermon from the text, "I shall be satisfied when I awake in thy like- ness," and that discourse was read at his funeral. These circumstances are strikingly similar to those which occurred at the death of Rev. S. F. Smith, D.D., author of the hymn, " My country, 'tis of thee." Mr. S. S. Smith was a man of activity and of advanced views in various departments of reform. During his connection with the Eliot Church his agency took him away on the Sabbath, and that was a reason for his acquaintance in Roxbury being compara- tively slight. The family, however, were much interested in the welfare of this church and contributed liberally to its support ; but before long they removed to Newton.
2. REV. HUNTINGTON PORTER.
Mr. Porter became pastor of the church in Rye, New Hampshire, December 29, 1784, but had a colleague for several years before his death (March 7, 1844), and hence was at liberty to spend time in Roxbury with his daughter, Mrs. Charles K. Dillaway. Mr. Porter was not long a member of our congregation. He was a son of Rev. John
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Porter, of Bridgewater, Massachusetts, where he was born March 27, 1755; and with two of his brothers graduated from Harvard College the same day. Each of the three brothers not only received his degree of A. B. at the same time with the others, but also had a pastorate of more than half a century, coincidences probably without a parallel.
3. REV. EZRA CONANT.
Mr. Conant was born at Concord, Massachusetts, in 1763. He graduated from Harvard College with the Class of 1784, and then studied theology with Rev. Ezra Ripley of his native place. He was installed pastor of the church in Winchester, New Hampshire, 1788, where he remained for eighteen years. After a short residence with his son, Mr. Caleb Conant, a member of the Eliot Church, he died at the age of eighty-one, and I attended his funeral October 5, 1844. Owing to infirmities the old gentleman had not been able to worship with us in public. It attracted attention at the time that two ministers, the one eighty-nine, the other eighty-one years old, departed this life the same year.
4. REV. CHARLES BAKER KITTREDGE.
Mount Vernon, New Hampshire, was the native place of the Rev. Mr. Kittredge as well as his brother, Deacon Alvah Kittredge. It was on an anniversary of our National Independence, July 4, 1806, that the former was
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born, and in his character there was a good degree of in- dependence, which manifested itself by a quiet self-reliance. As a student he supported himself by teaching music. After graduating from Dartmouth College and from the Andover Theological Seminary he became pastor succes- sively and usefully at Groton, Westborough, and Munson in Massachusetts. One who in early life had been a par- ishioner, and afterwards a valued minister of the gospel, remarked, " I never sat down by a fresher or sweeter foun- tain." A small volume of his, entitled Harvestings ; or Reminiscences of a Country Pastor, indicates fidelity in ministrations, and a happy use of the pen. The same is true of frequent articles in Sabbath School and other journals.
Mr. Kittredge knew what it was to experience the chastening strokes of our Heavenly Father in the loss of four children, as well as in other trials. He was a modest man, of retiring habits, never given to display, and least of all, display by himself or in connection with himself. Humility was a characteristic. Modesty may be only a natural trait ; humility is a product of divine grace, one that does not seem to be eminently peculiar to American Christians.
It is asked what were the antecedents which will, in some measure, account for these traits? He had a most decidedly Christian mother, Mary Baker, one of the rare daughters of New Hampshire; gentle, modest, industrious, cheerful, her piety deep, well-balanced, and marked by a
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faith unwavering as the hills of her native state. In the home at Mount Vernon was a little room under the stairs, into which, when closed, sunlight could not enter, but into which, unobserved except by Him who seeth in secret, she entered three times a day for prayer. He who seeth in secret rewarded openly. All of her seven children were prayed into the kingdom, two of whom became ordained ministers, while one of the daughters, wife of the Rev. E. W. Clark, became in the language of her associates, " The model missionary wife and mother " at the Hawaiian Islands. This son Charles was naturally drawn to special acquaintance and interest in foreign missions. Six of his classmates in Andover, the class of 1832, devoted themselves to that department of labor - Ashur Bliss among the Seneca Indians; B. W. Parker at the Sand-
wich Islands; Ira Tracy in China and India; Henry Ly- man and Samuel Munson, martyrs in Sumatra; and Dr. Elias Riggs, now in his ninetieth year, and still useful at Constantinople. To the close of life Mr. Kittredge kept himself familiar also with the proceedings of our various societies which are devoted to religious work at home.
His death occurred at Westborough, in November, 1884. The last letter from him received by the writer, which was written just before decease and with refer- ence to the funeral, had this sentence : " I am most anxious that the service should be as private as the circumstances will permit, and that Christ only be exalted, through whose infinite merits I have hope of pardon and eternal life."
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REV. WILLIAM HENRY PORTER. 5.
Rev. Huntington Porter was his father, and his mother was a daughter of Gen. Jonathan Moulton, of Hampton, New Hampshire, the Rev. John Porter, of Bridgewater, Massachu- setts, being a grandfather, and Mary, a daughter of Deacon Samuel Huntington, of Lebanon, Connecticut, a grand- mother. Rye, New Hampshire, was his birthplace, Septem- ber 19, 1817. Mr. Porter and his twin brother, Charles Henry, entertained the Christian hope at the age of nine years and soon after entered the academy at Andover, having in view preparation for the ministry. They entered Yale, but the twin brother Charles died midway in his college course. William Henry Porter, after graduating (1841), spent two years in the New Haven Divinity School and a third year at the Union Theological Seminary, New York (1844). The next four years he was pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Litchfield, New Hampshire. He contributed articles to the Christian Alliance, a paper edited by Dr. Dorus Clark. Pulmonary consumption was at length devel- oped, and, leaving a widow and two interesting sons, he died at Roxbury May 26, 1861.
6. REV. CHARLES SHAW ADAMS.
A descendant of Henry Adams, who came from Eng- land (1640); a son of Dr. Samuel and Abigail Dodge Adams, born in Bath, Maine, May 3, 1797. He studied at Phillips Academy, Andover, and graduated from Bowdoin College
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with the class of 1823. More immediate preparation for the ministry was made with a Congregational pastor.
Mr. Adams' pastorates were with churches in Newfield and Wells, Maine; Harwich and South Dartmouth, Massa- chusetts ; South Coventry, Rhode Island; Westford, Con- necticut; Strongville, Ohio; and Quincy, Michigan. His death from brain fever took place at Hillsdale, Michigan, July 29, 1873; and by a noteworthy coincidence, on the same day and only nine hours after his wife's decease.
7. REV. DAVID MEAUBEC MITCHELL.
The year 1853 was not signalized by large accessions to the Eliot Church - the whole number being a little over thirty - but some in that group were persons of marked Christian excellence. Such an one was the Rev. David M. Mitchell - a man of rare modesty, great gen- tleness, most serviceable common sense combined with steadfast religious principle and conscientious fidelity in the discharge of duties. His coming was felt at once as a benediction, and was so regarded by all during the period of his residence and labors in Roxbury.
Mr. Mitchell's immediate ancestry had their home in North Yarmouth, Maine, which looks out upon Casco Bay. They were Pilgrims of the Pilgrims, his earliest paternal forefather in this country having arrived at Plymouth, 1623, and from him there had been an uninterrupted line of respected office-bearers in evangelical churches. His
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father and grandfather bore the title of Honorable, having been for many successive years members of the Legis- lature - its House of Representatives or its Senate - before the separation of Maine from Massachusetts. The father was a physician of high standing and of a Chris- tian character not less eminent. The Bible was the family text-book, and the Assembly's Catechism, thor- oughly committed to memory, an invaluable auxiliary.
At seventeen years of age Mr. Mitchell experienced the great spiritual crisis which used to be called regenera- tion - a term now seldom heard. The year follow- ing (1808) he joined the church and also entered Yale College. That he was the only professing Christian in the entering class, and that there were only three or four church members in all the classes, suggest the re- ligious character of the institution at that time. His roommate, Ralph Emerson, afterwards a professor in the Theological Seminary at Andover, found a special bless- ing in that connection. The late Sidney E. Morse made a third associate in the same room for a time. Mr. Morse bore written testimony to Mr. Mitchell's high standing as a scholar, the universal respect for him in college, and the circumstance that he was expected to lead in all the movements of the revival (1808). Fifty or more converts were fruits of that season of special grace.
After graduating at the Andover Seminary (1814), Mr. Mitchell labored for a year in the service of the Maine Missionary Society, and then became pastor of the
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church in Waldoborough. Twenty-six years of indefatigable labor followed. The parish had an area of eight miles by sixteen, the population was very sparse, and his nearest clerical exchanges were forty miles on the east and sixty miles on the north. In the church there were only twenty members, and they had no meeting-house. But seasons of spiritual refreshing came; more than two hun- dred additions to the church were made; and a commo-
dious place of worship was erected. Pulmonary con- sumption carried away one after another of his family, and threatening farther inroads, a change of climate seemed imperative. After a time Mr. Mitchell entered upon city missionary work in Portland, and continued it with much acceptance for five years. Then upon invitation from the city mission society of the Eliot Church, he removed to Roxbury, and spent eight years here in most faithful and well-directed labors. Criticism of his methods or his spirit was heard from no quarter. All hearts warmed toward him.
The remaining years of a life that extended somewhat beyond four-score were spent under the roof of his son-in- law, Rev. E. E. Strong, D. D., then pastor in Waltham. Saturday morning, November 27, 1869, he pronounced a blessing on the beloved family standing round him, " May the God of all grace keep you, and bring us all to His eternal glory through Jesus Christ; " and the man who for more than sixty years had walked with God " was not, for God took him."
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8. REV. L. BURTON ROCKWOOD.
If rare excellencies of character and rare fidelity in church relations entitle one to a memorial, then Mr. Rock- wood deserves mention. He was born August 8, 1816, at Wilton, New Hampshire, where childhood and youth were spent with his widowed mother in the family of his grandfather, a physician and leading Christian man in that town. At fifteen this grandson united with the church and at nineteen entered Dartmouth College, where he graduated in 1839. Having spent one year at the Andover Theologi- cal Seminary he joined the Union Seminary, New York, where he graduated in 1843.
Mr. Rockwood performed some Christian labor in Vir- ginia, after which he was for seven years occupied as finan- cial agent of his theological Alma Mater. In 1850 he was installed pastor of the church in Rocky Hill, Connecticut, as colleague with Dr. Calvin Chapin, where during a minis- try of eight or nine years his labors were much blessed. In the course of that connection he became a valued member of the Board of Trustees of Hartford Theological Seminary. He was next selected as District Secretary of the American Tract Society, for Connecticut, and one year later, 1860, became Secretary of the New England Branch of that society, in which position he remained for twelve years till his death. It was with no small self-denial that he under- took labors which required an absence from home of the fifty-two Sabbaths in a year. Few ministers have been more
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cautious and conciliatory in such visitation of the churches, or have left an impression that made a second visit more to be desired.
In the devotional meetings of the Eliot Church Mr. Rockwood was always ready to take his part. Devoutly earnest, reverent and self-forgetful, his sole aim seemed to be to honor the Saviour by promoting the spiritual wel- fare of himself and others. "The memory of the just is blessed."
9. REV. EDWARD WILLIAM HOOKER, D.D.
The son of Rev. Asahel Hooker, of Goshen, Connecti- cut, where he was born November 24, 1794. He belonged to the seventh generation of direct descendants from the celebrated Puritan, Rev. Thomas Hooker, of Hartford; but stood in a third remove from Jonathan Edwards, of North- ampton, Massachusetts, his mother being Mrs. Phebe Ed- wards Hooker, afterwards Mrs. Farrar, of Andover, Massa- chusetts. He graduated at Middlebury College with the class of 1814, and at the Andover Theological Seminary three years later. His successive pastorates were one of eight years with the church in Green's Farms, Connecticut ; one of twelve years with the First Congregational Church in Bennington, Vermont; another of six years with the church of South Windsor, Connecticut, and yet another of equal length in Fairhaven, Vermont.
In the meantime he became editor of the Journal of Humanity, which was among the earliest temperance papers
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in the country. For four years he was professor of Sacred Rhetoric in the Theological Institute of Connecticut, and he also supplied different pulpits for varying periods. One of them was that of the Eliot Church during my absence of more than a year while visiting missions of the American Board in the East. It was a gratifying coincidence that the son of my father's first pastor, and himself my father's pastor in old age, should have held this position. He was elected a corporate member of the American Board in 1840; but did not join the Eliot Church till the spring of 1871.
In boyhood Dr. Hooker was unusually amiable and lovable. In adult years he was regarded as a man of deep piety, to whom severe domestic trials were evidently blessed. Refinement of taste and fondness for music were character- istics. Tears would often testify to his appreciation of good singing and of softer instrumental music. He played the flute with exquisite skill.
A charming serenity marked his later days. When four-score years of age he made the following entry in his diary: " My birthday shined upon me in life and health, able still to preach the blessed Gospel, and to pray and labor for the good of my children, friends, and a dying world, feeling as yet but few of the infirmities of age, though feeling increasingly the infirmities and sins of my spiritual condition." His death occurred April, 1875, under the roof of a son-in-law, Rev. E. J. Montague, at Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin.
Several of Dr. Hooker's occasional sermons were pub-
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lished ; also several addresses delivered before musical asso- ciations ; besides tracts which were issued by the American Tract Society. His larger works were a Memoir of Sarah Lanman, wife of Dr. Eli Smith, missionary in Syria, and a Life of the Rev. Thomas Hooker. A smaller book bears the title, Elihu Lewis ; or the Fatal Christmas. His closing literary labor was the preparation of the memoir of his son, Rev. Cornelius Hooker, the printed pages of which did not reach him till after his pen had been laid down for the last time.
CHAPTER XVII.
MISSIONARY OFFICIALS.
IT is noteworthy and an occasion for thanksgiving that the Eliot Church early became interested in missions, both foreign and domestic. This was due in part to local circumstances. Boston being an administrative center, it was almost inevitable that those holding official positions connected with certain benevolent societies should have their homes in or near the city. No other church in the land has had occasion to record among its members two secretaries and a treasurer of the American Board, three members of the Prudential Committee, three other cor- porate members of that Board, and yet five others who, while on the ground or after removal, became corporate members. Two of our number were also successively Secretaries of the Massachusetts Home Missionary Soci- ety, and one for a long time treasurer of that institu- tion.
A word should be devoted to the prevailing tone of evangelistic interest in this church. It was apparently well balanced. The presence of officers of the American Board, so far from overshadowing or in any way hindering the cause of home missions, was an effective help. Those men knew well the bearing of evangelization in our own
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land upon the same work in foreign lands. Their deep settled conviction, also inculcated from the pulpit, was that the great salvation had no more reference to the people of America than to the people of Asia and Africa; that it is impossible to point out a heathen or Moham- medan on the globe who is not as truly entitled to the gospel as any native or immigrant in the United States; that there are simply two departments of the one great field which is the world; that the warrant for entering either is our Saviour's command, "Go, teach all nations " - a commission never yet withdrawn or modified. Chris- tian home-work is indeed imperative, but not so much because in and for our own country, as because our coun- try lies between the river and the ends of the earth, according to bounds laid down in the churches' Magna Charta. To perform one duty furnishes no authority for neglecting another. The liability is to an underestimate of remoter claims. To disregard such claims is sure to imperil domestic interests; to sow sparingly in either field is to reap sparingly in both; the hope of converting men in our own land is not strengthened by neglect of our antipodes; local enterprise is stimulated by the thought of regions beyond. To carry the war into Africa is a pledge of triumph at home. America for the world - Christ for all, and all for Christ was the sentiment. Narrowness makes the individual and the world poorer. Whatever widens the field of thought and Christian interest fosters spiritual power; elevation, breadth and strength of char-
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