USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > First Church of Christ in Pittsfield, Mass. : proceedings in commemoration of its one hundred and fiftieth anniversary, Feb. 7th and 8th, 1914 > Part 2
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The relations of the church and town are inter- esting from the fact that practically up to 1788 the church was the town and the town the church. When, however, members of other denominations became citizens of the town, they naturally resented being taxed for the support of a minister and a church with
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whom they had no religious affiliations and to whose creed they might strenuously object. This was one of the main issues in the separation of the parish in 1809. The vexed question was finally settled by a con- stitutional amendment in 1834, enacting a statute which " freeing towns from the obligation to support re- ligious teaching and worship, left everyone free to withdraw from his parish or society without joining another, and declared that no person thereafter should be made a member without his own express consent."
To re-unite the warring factions in the two churches, that the political differences should be smoothed over, that the wounds of conflict should be healed, and that brotherly love should dwell among the hearts of men, Rev. William Allen resigned his pastorate and petitioned for his dismissal. This was duly acted upon, and on February 25th, 1817, Mr. Allen was relieved of his pastoral duties. After some deliber- ation and an ecclesiastical council, duly convened in July, 1817,-carefully and prayerfully reviewing the causes of the estrangement, and the reasons why the two bodies should again be united,-it was voted by the council that the union of the churches should be estab- lished and it besought "the Great Head of the Church to cement it with that love which suffers long and is kind." "Soon and permanently the Congregational Church and Parish in Pittsfield became as distinguish- ed for peace and harmony as it had long been for the reverse."
In order that the complete union of the two churches should be perfected, Rev. Mr. Punderson re- signed his pastorate and was dismissed May 5, 1817. His successor was the Rev. Heman Humphrey. He came here from Fairfield, Conn., where he had been settled for ten years. The call from the now-united
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churches to act as their pastor was to the young clergy- man a serious matter for consideration. He was aware of the differences that had occurred, and shrank from the prospect of a possible failure as a peacemaker and a strong and forceful leader. That he, however, did accept the call, and that under his wise guidance the church in its re-united strength became again a vital factor in the affairs of the town is well known. Mr. Humphrey was installed in 1817, and after six years of arduous work in the upbuilding of the church, was dismissed in 1823 to become the President of Amherst College. Of Mr. Humphrey, Dr. Jenkins says, "Many honors came to the man of whom I speak. His name is held in dear esteem in college halls, among philanthropists, among a great host of friends and by descendants proud of his blood in their veins, who do him honor. We take no leaf from all his wreaths: but the First Church of Pittsfield, re- members, reveres, loves Heman Humphrey as the man who made her peace, in virtue of whose bene- diction there can be no more variance or strife in the brotherhood he served." His home when he first came to Pittsfield was upon the land which was later owned by the Campbell family now included in the street, Willis Place, and the home of Dr. William L. Paddock. He resigned from the presidency of Am- herst College in 1845, and "his former parishioners plead with him to return to Pittsfield not now as pastor, but as friend" and he so decided. A new house adjacent to the Allen property having been built, it was bought by his sons for his home. The house is now occupied by Dr. Brace W. Paddock. He lived here revered by his former parishioners and townspeople until his death, 1861. His successors were: Rufus W. Bailey, installed April 15, 1824,
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dismissed September 27, 1827; Henry P. Tappan, D. D., ordained September 16, 1828, dismissed No- vember 1, 1831; John W. Yeomans, D. D., installed March 7, 1832, dismissed in 1834; Horatio N. Brins- made, D. D., a most beloved pastor, installed Febru- ary II, 1835, dismissed September 9, 1841 ; John Todd, D. D., installed February 16, 1842, and who died when Pastor Emeritus, August 24, 1873.
In 1844 the growth of the church and parish had assumed such proportions that it was deemed wise by several influential members that a second Congre- gational church should be organized. In 1848 the movement was definitely started. A building fund was inaugurated, and later the old lecture-room on South Street was purchased for the sake of the land on which it stood, and a strip thirty feet wide from the northern end of the parsonage garden was given to the new society to enlarge the original purchase. Thus the South Congregational Parish entered into the town's history. The church building was com- menced and was nearing completion, when it was de- stroyed by fire September 15, 1849. The rebuilding of the church was at once undertaken and it was com- pleted and dedicated November 10, 1850, by one hun- dred and thirty members who had been dismissed for that purpose from the First Church. Its first pastor was the Rev. Samuel Harris, of Conway, who was installed March II, 1851. The offspring of the Mother Church waxed strong and sturdy, and to-day, self-reliant, growing in numbers, proud of its history, it stands with its face to the East ready to do valiant work for the best interests of the town.
John Todd was born October 9, 1800; he was a friend and classmate at Yale of Rev. Dr. Brinsmade. He came here from Philadelphia, where he had been
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pastor for six years. For thirty-one years he was at the head of this church, devoted to the people, to the town and his country. A prolific writer apart from his strictly ministerial work, a lecturer, a skilled craftsman with tools and lathe, "a true son of the forest and mountains " loving the camp fire, the lakes and streams of the Adirondack wilderness. His " Students' Manual " met with instant success and was a very popular work in its day. A large number of men doubtless owe to this one book their first im- pulses toward valuable educational ideas. To the writer as a lad, Dr. Todd's personal appearance was somewhat forbidding; tall, spare of frame, complex- ion swarthy, bristling, spiky, white hair, black frock- coat, a white neck cloth, a face rugged of feature, wearing glasses, with eyes keen but kindly, frequently twinkling with humor. After coming here, he writes to a friend of the conditions as he finds them: "It is a great, rich, proud, enlightened, powerful people. They move slowly, but they tread like the elephant. They are cool but kind, sincere, great at hearing, and very critical. The ladies are most abundant, intelligent, refined and kind. A wider, better, harder or more interesting field no man need desire." During his long pastorate the church increased greatly in num- bers and in Christian influence. On account of failing health, in 1870, Dr. Todd in a communication to his people requested to be released from the responsibility and active duties of the pastorate, but desiring to con- tinue with them as pastor emeritus, " so that he might not feel that he was cut off from their sympathy." His request was acceded to, but with the condition that his resignation should be postponed for two years : but in May, 1872, a sudden illness warned him that to continue longer in his active work would possibly en-
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danger his life. His request for release again being presented, it was at once granted with the most fer- vent expressions of love and sympathy. During his last, long and painful illness he dictated one Saturday evening the following note which was sent the next morning to every pulpit in town :
"Rev. Dr. Todd having come to that border land which lies in a deep valley before we reach the new Jerusalem, and where he waits in entire uncertainty to know whether he is to dwell under the light of the Sun of Earth, or whether he may soon expect the full-orbed rising of the Sun of righteousness upon him: in either case he desires your prayers that, whatever may be the will of God, his soul may rejoice in it, and that his sins unnumbered may be all taken away by the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world."
He passed away Sabbath morning, August 24th, 1873, in the parsonage on South Street, which had been his home during all his life in Pittsfield. During the last year or two of Dr. Todd's retirement, the active pastorate was filled by the Rev. Edward O. Bartlett, who came here from Providence, R. I. He resigned in January, 1876.
In April, 1877, the church was most fortunate in its selection of a successor to Mr. Bartlett in the per- son of Rev. Jonathan L. Jenkins, then settled over the Congregational Church in Amherst. Mr. Jenkins was born in Portland, Maine, November 23, 1830, a son of Rev. Charles Jenkins, who died when the son was thirteen months old. The grandmother of Mr. Jenkins on the maternal side, was a daughter of Presi- dent Stiles of Yale; and a cousin of President Stiles was one of the eight founders of this church. Mr. Jenkins graduated from Yale in the class of 1851, also from its theological seminary, and was for a
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short time at Andover. His first pastorate was at Lowell, where he remained seven years. Following the Lowell pastorate he was called to the Pearl Street Church in Hartford and later to the Church in Am- herst where he remained ten years. In July, 1877, he was installed over this church, the Rev. Dr. Storrs, of Brooklyn, preaching the installation sermon. After serving this church for fifteen years, he accepted a call to the State Street Congregational Church in Port- land, his native city. He most acceptably presided over this large, influential church for nearly ten years, and then decided to relinquish active ministerial work. The later years of his life were spent in or near Boston, with frequent visits here, preaching in differ- ent pulpits to the great delight and edification of his former parishioners, and leading the serene, peaceful, cultivated life of a gentleman and ripe scholar. Here in this town which he loved, near the church of whose history he was so proud, surrounded by those most near and dear to him, he quietly passed away, August 15, 1913, in the eighty-second year of his age. Much could be said of Mr. Jenkins as a man and Christian minister, of his keenness of mind, his unusual gift of expression, his convincing logic, and that wondrous gift, the gift of humor. He was tender in speech and action when tenderness and sympathy were most needed, seeing the best in men and women and shun- ning that which was distasteful and of evil repute. In connection with the celebration of twenty-five years ago it was written of Mr. Jenkins: "He is one of the most genial of men, and any wholesome occasion that is social and familiar, that brings people together, that makes and renews, and strengthens, friendships, he enjoys with all his soul. * * * He is delighted with good old books, quaint furniture,
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ancient portraits, and yet no man reads with more alertness the new thoughts of the day, or keeps better informed of discoveries in the widening fields and the fresh developments of the world as they touch humanity, science and religion. The simplicity of the old homes, characters, ways, beliefs, charms him. The grandeur of the opportunities and achievements of to-day thrill him." The celebration in which he took such a prominent part was a rich treat to him, and the strength and glory of the First Church of the day were a satisfaction and a pride. In the intimate relations with his friends, and in the charming circle of his home life, Mr. Jenkins was at his best. Formal- ity, when necessary and wise, he respected and ad- judged highly; but the informality of the open fire. the presence of congenial and intimate associates was a stimulant to high thought and flashing wit. To the natural courtesy of a man richly endowed by educa- tion and social environments, was added a kindliness of nature and expression that drew men and women to him. In 1892, when Mr. Jenkins severed his con- nections with this church, the record of the Parish reads : " He has with rare intellectual power upheld the dignity and influence of the pulpit in this com- munity. He has not been content to give valuable service to this Parish alone, but he has in many ways contributed to the forwarding of good works in the community of which the Parish is a part." In the records of the ratification by the ecclesiastical council of the action of the Church and Parish appears the following: " We cannot dismiss our brother without making common confession with the church which has had the honor of his long and able service and with the community distinguished by the luster of his pow- ers and by his help in many good ways, that we are
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losers of rare treasure. We shall miss a stimulating and enlightening mind gifted with wisdom which is according to godliness and with forms of sound words. We shall be poorer in riches of grace and brotherly kindness. We shall lose a preacher of Jesus Christ, skillful to unveil before men the beautiful, command- ing face of divine truth. Fortunate, indeed, will be that people which shall receive the ministry of his good words and good works making our loss its gain."
In 1894, on the 130th anniversary of the founding of the Church, Dr. William V. W. Davis was installed as its pastor. To another has been delegated the op- portunity and privilege of expressing the appreciation of his service to the Church and city.
Of the meeting-houses of this Church there have been three. The various incidents relative to their building, site, size and structure have been admirably set forth in the paper by Mr. William L. Adam read at the anniversary twenty-five years ago. To briefly recapitulate may be of interest and value. The First Church described in the beginning of this paper, built in 1764, rough, crude, severe in its extreme simplicity, served as a meeting-house for town and church until 1790. Then a little north of the old Church was erected the second building. Its architect was Charles Bul- finch, " the impress of whose skill," Mr. Adam says, " is upon the enlarged Faneuil Hall, upon the State House in Boston and upon the Capitol at Washington." " This new building could have held within it three houses as large as its little predecessor still standing but a few feet in front of it." In 1834 it was slightly damaged by fire, and again in 1851 fire wrought havoc with its interior. It was deemed unwise to expend further sums upon its repair and alterations and it was accordingly sold and moved from its foundations. It finally became the property of Wellington Tyler,
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who then conducted a successful young ladies' board- ing-school, called the Maplewood Young Ladies' In- stitute, and was used for a gymnasium and class rooms. It is still to be seen forming a part of the Maplewood Hotel property on North Street and used principally as a music room. The third structure you see here to-day, admirable in its architectural design with its graceful springing arches, and well proportioned in- terior; the most churchly building in town, a delight to the eye, unconsciously demanding reverential demeanor by its very beauty. The recent remodeling has taken on the original design, harmonious in line and detail. It was work well carried out, and due credit should be given those who spent much time and thought and love in making this house a fitting place for the worship of God.
In closing this fragmentary sketch may I quote from the paper on the relations of the Church and Parish, read by the late Judge James M. Barker twenty-five years ago? "For more than a century and a half this ground has been set apart for religious uses. Never has it known the ownership of a private individual for private ends. No plough held by hus- bandman seeking earthly harvest has scarred its sur- face. By no structure reared for man's own gain, or pride, or pleasure, has it ever been polluted. * * Even as this site has been saved throughout the ages for its present use, so, by His Providence, have the Parish and the Church been kept, and are today here! Strong! But now with no strength borrowed from the arm of civil authority, and in the present rather than the standing order, ready and able, without forced or extraneous human aid, to spread abroad yet more effectually the 'glad tidings of great joy to all men.'"
Long live the First Church of Christ (Congrega- tional) which is in Pittsfield !
-
Jonathan
B. Jenkins. 9. 9.
THE ORIGIN, HISTORY AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE NEW YEAR'S SUNRISE PRAYER MEETING
By MISS JULIA WALLACE REDFIELD
The origin of an idea is always interesting,-the steam engine, the wireless telegraph, town meeting and representative government, a free church in a free state. Some origins are known, some disputed, some duplicated, some legendary or unknown. In this last category we must place the origin of the idea of a New Year's sunrise prayer meeting. I have had ex- pert help, from the Congregational Library in Boston, from Yale, Hartford and Union Seminaries, but with no results. Tradition says the idea came from Cole- brook, Connecticut, but an antiquarian, old enough to remember 1845, to whom an interested Colebrook man referred me, writes: "I am sure you will find Cole- brook an absolutely barren field for your purpose." A possible clue in Goshen, Connecticut, was also bar- ren. Somewhere in the Litchfield County hills there may be a trail, but it is blocked by the fallen trees of a century, and there is no thoroughfare.
In Pittsfield the path is plainer. My father moved here in 1867. In the fall of that year, he was told that the New Year's prayer meeting originated as a conse- quence of the great Nettleton revival. It was a new idea to him though he came from Cromwell, Middle-
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sex County, Connecticut. The Nettleton revival was well worth celebrating. It lasted in Pittsfield from the spring of 1820 to October, 1821, and occupies a large place in the religious histories of the time. This re- vival was in the pastorate of the Rev. Dr. Humphrey of the First Church, 1817 to 1823.
Carlyle says somewhere that all history is a mis- take. The first suspicion that this tradition was not true came from reading the histories of this revival, and then Dr. Humphrey's biography by his son, Rev. Dr. Zephaniah Humphrey and his son-in-law, Rev. Dr. Henry Neill. Dr. Neill was pastor of the church in Lenox, and later lived in Pittsfield several years. If an institution so honored and loved as this had been founded in Dr. Humphrey's pastorate, it could not have escaped notice in this biography. Some years later his daughter, Miss Sarah W. Humphrey, of radiant memory, wrote the sketch of her father's life for the Humphrey genealogy, but she has no word of the establishment of the New Year's prayer meet- ing. Family and local pride would have ascribed the prayer meeting to his pastorate if possible. The mis- take probably arose from the confusion of the Nettle- ton revival with another great one, which lasted at intervals from 1812 to 1816. The Pittsfield Sun of February 17, 1875, has a leading article on " Some Great Revivals." After telling of the origin of the Methodist Church in Pittsfield, it continues: "The spirit of the Lord was at work in all denominations, but with no marked effect in Pittsfield. There were too many dissensions among His people. These dis- sensions, mostly of a political character, began to abate at the close of the war of 1812. Pittsfield churches shared in the great refreshing of 1815, and manifested their harmony by uniting in instituting the New
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Year's prayer meeting, January first, 1816, which has since become one of Pittsfield's most cherished insti- tutions."
At the meeting on New Year's day, 1880, Deacon James H. Dunham of the South Church made an ad- dress on the origin of the New Year's prayer meeting, reported in the Sun of the fourteenth of January of that year. Deacon Dunham said: "I will answer the question long and often asked, that according to the in- disputable authority of the late Mrs. Fenn, the custom of holding this meeting was commenced on the morn- ing of the new year of 1816, while the Congregational denomination, which then composed a great majority of the people of the town, was still divided into two parishes. The people had already become sensible of the folly and wickedness of this division, and this New Year's morning union prayer meeting was an in- dication and effect of the new desire for the harmony which in 1817 resulted in the union of the two churches under Dr. Humphrey. It is called the town prayer meeting because when it was established, the First Congregational Parish was a town parish, and its meetings town meetings." The Pittsfield meeting is unique in this respect, that being founded as a town meeting in the old town church, it has continued such, so that all inhabitants of town and city, who profess and call themselves Christians, of every name, and many others beside, have united in sustaining it. All other New Year's meetings are church prayer meet- ings. Deacon Dunham became a resident of Pittsfield in 1819, and attended almost every New Year's prayer meeting from that date to his death in 1890. He was a careful man, whose statements were thoroughly to be trusted. At the one hundred and twenty-fifth anni- versary in 1889, Mr. Dunham wrote the paper on "The Missionaries from the First Church."
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Mrs. Curtis T. Fenn (Parthenia Dickinson) daugh- ter of one of Pittsfield's oldest families, was born here in 1798. She united with the First Church in 1816, leaving it in 1850 when the South Church was formed. She was one of the original members of the Free Will, and in her later life laid the corner stone of the House of Mercy. She died in 1878, honored and respected, keeping her memory and interest in all town affairs to the last.
What were the dissensions which split the First Church, whose quieting was the direct cause of the establishing of the New Year's prayer meeting? They were not theological. The Unitarian controversy which convulsed eastern New England made no trouble here. The division was political, social, financial, based on different theories of government, and different ideas, according to the point of view, of the necessary or un- necessary participation of the United States in the world-politics of the time. I take these facts entirely from a bound volume of contemporary pamphlets on both sides, which is in the Atheneum. The division began in the last days of Washington's administration, and was only quieted after the peace of 1815. The leaders were the Rev. Thomas Allen, for the Repub- licans (the Democrats of to-day) ; and for the Fed- eralists, Woodbridge Little, trustee and benefactor of Williams College, and Ashbel Strong, one of the Mas- sachusetts Committee of Correspondence, to whose potent influence the union of the thirteen Colonies was largely due. New England's fisheries and her ocean carrying-trade were crippled by the Napoleonic wars. A possible port in China was the only one in the world left open to her, while Jefferson's embargo shut up her ships in our own harbors. A grave financial his-
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torian* writes that the efforts of Albert Gallatin, Jefferson and Madison's Secretary of the Treasury, for honest dealing and sound finance, only served to increase the fury of the anti-Federalists. Large in- vestments of foreign capital in our untried securities were denounced as engines designed to overturn our civil liberties. Byron says historians should be made up of wrath and partiality. You may accuse me of both, if I confess entire sympathy with Little and Strong. They were challenged from the pulpit for more than four years before they acted. They were Lowell's men, "stern men with empires in their brains." They could not sit quietly in the circle of these hills, like another Appalachian America, and see the strong currents of new national life run round their citadel. They were of the men of whom Senator Lodge writes in his History of Boston that the action of the New England towns shook the country and forced the repeal of the embargo. They would not have been worthy of Bunker Hill behind them and Gettysburg and Mission Ridge ahead if they had done otherwise.
One of these pamphlets states this was the only church in New England so divided. The trouble be- gan Thanksgiving Day, 1802, when several men left the meeting house during the sermon. In 1803 the Pittsfield Sun writes of the Federalists, " Their party spirit is hostile to all friendly intercourse, destroys good neighborhood, warps the judgment, and under- mines the whole system of moral virtues; makes men ' tygers,' cruel and sanguinary,-that Federal malig- nity, insolence, fine and imprisonment were opposed by Republican meekness, patience and generosity." In a sermon, November 15, 1804, we find this sentence :
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