USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Grafton > History of Grafton, Worcester county, Massachusetts, from its early settlement by the Indians in 1647 to the present time, 1879. Including the genealogies of seventy-nine of the older families > Part 15
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* Dr. Palfrey's Letter.
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Leicester was present, and took one of those parts." He was succeeded by Rev. Edmund B. Willson.
REV. EDMUND B. WILLSON, A. M., son of Rev. Luther and Sally (Bigelow) Willson, was born in Petersham, August 15, 1820. He entered Yale College, but on account of ill health, did not graduate with his class. He studied divinity in Cambridge with the class of 1843, and received the honorary degree from Harvard College in 1853. He was ordained January 3, 1844, as minister of this Society, and after a useful ministry of over eight years, in which he had endeared himself to his people, and made himself favorably known in the neighboring churches, he was dismissed, at his own request, July 1, 1852. He published a valuable historical discourse entitled the " Church Record," delivered here December 27, 1846. He now resides in Salem. The installation services were as follows :- Introductory prayer, Rev. William Barry, of Framingham ; reading of Scriptures, . Rev. Samuel May, of Leicester ; sermon, Rev. George R. Noyes, D. D., of Cambridge ; ordaining prayer, Rev. Alonzo Hill, of Worcester ; charge, Rev. Luther Willson, of Peters- ham; right hand of fellowship, Rev. John Weiss, of Water- town ; address to the people, Rev. Cazneau Palfrey ; con- cluding prayer, Rey. Henry A. Miles, D. D., of Lowell.
The minority that withdrew comprised the church. The records and furniture of the church were removed by them. They were asked to return these to the Congregational Church, but refused. This church, although believing that they needed only to insist upon the restoration of this property to recover it, were disinclined to prosecute their claims by litigation. The matter rested till near the close of the year 1845, when it was again taken into consideration by this church. It was then voted to choose a committee to communicate with the Evangelical Congregational Church on the subject. This led to the following correspond- ence :-
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" GRAFTON, Jan. 20, 1846.
To THE EVANGELICAL CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH IN GRAFTON :
Christian Brethren and Friends :-
At a recent meeting of the Congregational Church in said Grafton, we were appointed a committee to address a communication to you respecting certain Records of the Congregational Church supposed to be now in your possession and subject to your control. In obedience to our instructions, we proceed to lay the matter with which we are charged before you.
You are aware that in the year of our Lord 1832, a part of the Con- gregational Society, and all of the members bnt one* of the church con- nected with the Society, seceded from that parish. You are aware that the seceding members of the church took with them in their removal all the records of the Congregational Church, which had been made up to the time of their secession. You are aware that a demand of those records was soon after made by a deacon of the Congregational Church, upon one who had been its deacon, but who had seceded from the Congregational Society, and that that demand was not complied with.
These records we consider ever to have been, and still to be, legally . and rightfully the property of the Congregational Church, -by which we mean the church connected with the Congregational Society. This church has forborne hitherto to press its claim to this property to the utmost by bringing the matter before a legal tribunal. It has forborne to do this, not from any doubt of the validity of its claim, nor any doubt as to what the decision of such a tribunal would be; for wc sup- pose there can be no question that the law, as it has been uniformly expounded in our Courts, would award these records to the church connected with the Congregational Society. But we have been unwill- ing to provoke dissension or bitterness of feeling. We have suffered what we have deemed our rights to be long withheld fromn us, from reluctance to exact them at the expense of peace. It is repugnant to our minds as Christians, to present to the community the spectacle of two Christian churches resorting to litigation to settle their differences. We are still, as we have always been, solicitous to avoid giving any cause of acrimonious or unfriendly feelings, In that spirit we now
* The records of the church being beyond the reach of this committee at the time their letter was written, they may be pardoned a slight mistake in supposing that one member was left behind by the seceding church, when in fact the one member who did not withdraw in their company had been excommunicated, as a step preliminary to their seces- sion. The excision of this member took place after the actual separa- tion of the church from the society, though before the formal dissolu- tion of the connection.
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address you, and, as we are authorized to do, submit to your considera- tion the following proposals :- First. We respectfully ask you to sur- render to us the records of the Congregational Church before referred to ;- because we regard the church now connected with the Congrega- tional Society as the true Congregational Church, and the rightful pos- sessor of the same.
Such a request has once been refused. It may be again. We are therefore willing iu the spirit of compromise and concession to make other propositions. We do not forget-although it does not affect the questiou of rights-that the seeeders from the Congregational Society embraced almost the entire church. We consider that it is possible you may have incorporated the records of your own church with those of the Congregational Church iu the same volume, so that you cannot give up the latter without the loss of the former. We consent then, for the sake of peace, and to relieve you from any inconvenience or embarrass- ment, to relinquish altogether our claim to the said records upon either of the following conditions, viz. : that you will furnish us with a com- plete copy of them, giving us the privilege of comparing it with the original; or, that you will allow us to take the original records, and keep them for such length of time as shall be sufficient for making a copy of them, we pledging ourselves that they shall he safely returned to your possession when copied.
In making these proposals we conceive that we ask nothing which is not clearly reasonable and just. In thus offering to yield that to which we consider ourselves fully entitled, we desire to eviuce the sineerity of our wish for harmony and peace. That which we ask, ean be, we are sure, no loss to you, though it will be of great value to us.
Wishing you all spiritual blessings in Christ, we subscribe ourselves,
ISAAC W. WOOD, CHARLES BRIGHHAM, JR., & Committee." HILLEL BAKER, -
The Reply.
" GRAFTON, Feb. 10, 1846.
To MESSRS. ISAAC W. WOOD, CHARLES BRIGHAM, JR., AND HILLEL BAKER :
Gentlemen :-
Your communication of January 20th, relative to the Records of the Evangelical Congregational Church, was laid before said church at their preparatory lecture on Friday last; whereupon, after consultation, without expressing their views as to their right to the Records, it was voted to accede to your last proposition made in your communication, and loau you the first two volumes of the Records, one at a time, and furnisb you with a copy of what is contained in the third volume up to the time of the separation of the church from the Congregational Soelety ;
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and that you have opportunity of comparing it with the original If desired. At the same time we were chosen a committee to communi- cate to you the above proceedings.
The Records are with our Pastor who will deliver them to an authorized agent.
With sincere regard, We are, Gentlemen, Yours, OTIS ADAMS, HOLLAND GREENWOOD, OLIVER M. BRIGHAM,
Committee."
After Mr. Willson's dismissal the church was without a pastor until 1858-six years. During this interim the pulpit was supplied by REV. FARRINGTON MOINTIRE, A. M., who was born in Fitchburg, June 29, 1819, was graduated at Harvard College in 1843, and at the Divinity School in 1846. In June, 1847, he was ordained over the Unitarian Society in Brattleborough, Vt., where he remained one year. July 1, 1849, he sailed from New York for California, where, more fortunate than many adventurers, he recovered his health, and accumulated a handsome property. Return- ing after a residence of a year and a half, he was married April 23, 1851, to Caroline C. Frost, who died in three years. While living on his farm in this town on Brigham Hill, he was at the head of a family school. In 1857, he married for his second' wife, Caroline Fisher of Lancaster, Mass. In 1858, Rev. William G. Scandlin was ordained the next minister.
Rev. WILLIAM G. SCANDLIN was born in Portsmouth, England, Feb. 16, 1828. He left home at the carly age of seven years and a half; previous to which time he had attended a primary school in that place. "The balance of his education," he said, "I obtained from eleven years experience on the ocean, where I came in contact with the customs of the different nations of the world; and, in the language of the Psalmist, became familiar with the works and wonders of the Lord on the deep." Before he became of age, he landed on our shores, made a voyage to the West Indies, and on his return to Boston found a temporary
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home for himself, and as many of his comrades as he could pursnade to join him, in the Sailors' Home. He had, by this time, become deeply interested in religion ; and he now formed the purpose to devote himself to the Christian ministry. He entered the Meadville School in 1850, and graduated in 1854. In November of the same year, he began the Hanover-street mission, under the auspices of the Boston Fraternity of Churches; and was ordained as a minister at large at the Hollis-street church, Jan. 14, 1855; Dr. Gannett preaching the sermon on the occasion. In this service he continued till the end of May, 1858. The duties of this office proving too arduous for his health, and having received an invitation to settle over the First Congregational Church here, he removed to this place, and was duly in- stalled June 23, 1858. At the breaking out of the late rebellion Mr. Scandlin offered his services to Governor Andrew, and was appointed chaplain of the Fifteenth Regi- ment of Massachusetts Volunteers ; at the same time re- signing his charge of the society. His resignation was not accepted ; but his people gave him leave of absence for twelve months, thinking, as we all did, that twelve months would suffice for the overthrow of the rebellion. At the expiration of his leave of absence, he returned to his parish ; soon after which, in 1862, his church was destroyed by fire. After making arrangements for erecting a new building, at the solicitation of the American Unitarian Association, he obtained another leave of absence for three months, to go on a missionary expedition to the army ; and, to facilitate his movements, he became a member of the United States Sanitary Commission. In this service, while engaged in conveying food and comforts to the sick and wounded at Gettysburg, he was taken prisoner by Stewart's cavalry, and with many others conveyed to Richmond, and confined nearly three months in Libby Prison, and subsequently in Castle Thunder. " I look upon the opportunities," he onee
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said, " opened to me during my imprisonment, as the richest of my experience."
Dr. McDonald, a fellow-prisoner, wrote to the Sanitary Commission Bulletin as follows :- " Mr. Scandlin proved to be all, and more than all, lie professed. Constantly engaged in some good work, cheerful under the most adverse circum- stances, ever ready to render aid and comfort to all in distress, he has become endeared, not only to the agent of the commission, with whom he has been so long associated, but to most of the officers and men whom chance and the fortunes of war have placed in his path. He sought out the sick and inquiring, gave them freely, cheerfully, tem- poral and spiritual comfort, at all times and in all seasons. He has proved himself to be an honest, faithful worker, and a TRUE man,-' the noblest work of God.' "
The difficult position of chaplain, he bore as if it was the place for which he was specially fitted. Hearty and genial in his manners, irreproachably correct in all his habits of speech and conduct, fearless of danger, indefatigable in duty, which, from his point of view, included all that he could do to help or relieve any, tender and sympathetic with the suffering, he was beloved and trusted by every soldier in the regiment and was the most valued companion of the officers, with whom from the nature of the case his social relations were more intimate than with the rank and file. On the march it was his delight to change places with the exhausted soldier, and his saddle was occupied more of the time by others than by himself. At the close of the disas- trous day at Ball's Bluff when the wounded were brought down to the boat to be carried across the river, some un- harmed stragglers tried to force their way into the boat. Chaplain Scandlin stood at the water's edge and at first tried expostulation ; when that did not avail, he is said to have made vigorous use of the strong muscles with which nature provided him, and to have struck out from the shoulder in a way that was more pleasant to spectators than to those
27
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who felt the foree of his blows. This exploit gave him the name of the " fighting chaplain " throughout the division in which he served, for his name and good deeds were known not by one regiment only. His coolness in danger was remarkable, and he was often a most valuable auxiliary to the surgeons in attending the wounded on the field and under fire.
In his parish, as in his regiment, he bound all hearts to him by his faithfulness, zeal and kindness. No organized effort for doing good in which his aid conld be of use was asked for in vain. He married December 13, 1853, Christiana S. Adrain, who died the following April. April 25, 1855, he married Mrs. Eliza M. Sprague, at Eastport, Me., by whom he had Willie I., Lizzie F., Tannie M., John Winthrop, Hortense A. and Mable E. Mr. Scandlin died at his residence on the Saundersville road, March 17, 1871, of typhoid fever, after a painful illness of a few days.
The following evening succeeding his death the citizens held a meeting in the Town Hall. Hon. Jonathan D. Wheeler presided and Henry F. Wing, Esq., acted as secre- tary. The chair appointed Rev. J. H. Windsor, Rev. A. J. Bates and John Wheeler, Esq., a committee on resolutions, who reported at some length. The meeting was fully attended, which showed the high esteem and affection in which the deceased was held by his fellow-citizens.
The funeral took place in the Unitarian Church on Mon- day the 20th. The church was packed to its utmost eapaeity.
The Grand Army, Fifteenth Regiment Association, Free- masons, Unitarian Conference and other organizations of which the deceased was an active member, attended the funeral in a body, and several elergymen of different denominations took part in the ceremonies. During the hours of the funeral there was a general suspension of business in town.
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We append the main portion of Attorney-General Devens' remarks at the funeral :-
" In the difficult task that our friend, as chaplain of a regiment dur- Ing the recent civil war, assumed, no man, I think, attained more com- plete success than he, or was able to effect more for the great objects of his calling. If it be too much to say that no man succeeded as well in the whole army of the Union, it is but just to say that I have never per- sonally known any one whom I felt met with equal success. There has sometimes been a feeling in the community that chaplains did not effect as much as they might in benefiting the men under their charge; and, indeed, I have known most excellent men, chaplains in the army, ex- press strongly their own feeling of discouragement at the little success of their labors. In this matter we have been sometimes unjust to the clerical profession ; we have not always remembered how little educated for the task thrown upon them they were. The position of a clergy- man In New England is one of dignity everywhere. The coarsest men treat him with at least personal respect and consideration, and one is not often brought into immediate contact with the rough, daring and, it may be, profligate men (who must of necessity be met in the army side by side, it may be, with the bravest and truest men), in such a way that he is compelled to attempt to curb and restrain them. Nor have we always reflected how difficult are the surroundings under which the chaplains strive to do their work, nor how thoroughly at variance with the mild and gentle influence of Christianity the whole machinery and the whole spirit of war is.
For mecting his new duties, and dealing with the vast variety of men who go to make up an army, Mr. Scandlin possessed some peculiar ad- vantages. A fine natural physique, a fondness for out-door life and out- door exercise, such as horsemanship, adapted him for the laborious part of his duty, and made to him a pleasure of what to many would have been a toil. Lively and spirited in temper, he took with great ease the various discomforts of the field, and was always ready to make the best of everything; and although these may seem trifles, they are not alto- gether unworthy of notice among the higher qualities he possessed for his position.
In early life he had been a seaman in the British service; he had lived with them and knew what men are, alike their good and bad qualities; he was at home with them, and knew their ways of thinking and look- ing at things, and could make them at home and feel at their ease with him, when others with a different experience would have been unable to approach them. His experience, too, in the missions of Boston, had brought him in contact with life in its worst forms, with all the sadness of poverty, and all the wretchedness and misery of vice. Yet his view of life had never soured, and in the worst of men he found always some
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spot where he would try to plant a seed which should bear fruit in bet- ter things, and often with a success which to others seemed marvellous. He had never lost his faith in man, and in the most unpromising natures he delighted to find something which would encourage and give him hope. Nor was the chaplain's influence less marked among a different type of men from these. A self-educated man, but well educated, he was at home among the most polished and refined ; highly sympathetic in his character he placed himself readily in communication with every class of men, and every circle felt how true and faithful a Christian man he was. His pleasant affability never caused others to degenerate into coarseness or vulgar familiarity in his presence, inconsistent with his sacred calling. He had the art, which all men do not possess, of being easy and affable without losing that proper personal dignity which should mark every man. He is a gentleman who respects himself, and yet equally others and the rights of others, and such a gentleman was the chaplain. Thus it was in all society that his presence was a rebuke to coarseness, ill-manners and profanity, and as I have known the men of our regiment to express to him their regret for it when it had oc- curred, so also I have known a general officer, who, in the excitement of a night skirmish, had beeu betrayed into using profane langnage be- fore him, come the next day to make a personal apology.
The great secret of his success was the thorough earnestness and self-devotion which he always exhibited. For his comrades it always seemed that he could never do enough to satisfy himself, although he always did far more than satisfied the just claims of others. He was the friend of every man who was in trouble, ready always to act as mediator between any mau who was in difficulty with his captain, giving always the best and soundest advice, and yet not the less sustaining the discipline of the military system, the stern exigencies of which he fully realized. No one ever expected to be sustained by him unless on his own part he meant to do his own full duty. Into the hospitals, by the bedside of the sick and dying, he came in unwearied zeal with his con- soling hand and more consoling voice, and men loved him as they love a father and a friend-a father who was not afraid to tell them when they went wrong and did wrong, and yet who loved thein still. In those trying hours which came to so many, when he was near, when strengtli was failing and earth was fading away, the last tones that fell upon their ears were the consolations and hopes which his manly, trustful piety inspired.
In his public discourses before the regiment, not less than in his private teachings, the chaplain was singularly happy. It would per- haps, have been a natural course, as it certainly would have been a judi- cious one, for any one situated as he was with a regiment of which a considerable number were Roman Catholics, and a still more consider- able number were Protestants of a different denominatiou from his own, to select rather those great vital truths on which all Christian sects are
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agreed, than those upon which they differ; but the constitution of his mind made this much easier to him than it would have been to many. From the first, every man in the reglment knew that however much the chaplain might seek to induce him to lead a better life, he would never seek to interfere with any of his individual views or tenets. I have known him to ride a half-dozen miles to obtain a Roman Catholic priest, when the men of that faith under his charge felt that they could be com- forted by the last offices of religion administered by a priest of their own church.
Speaking generally without notes, he did not speak without any prep- aration, and no doubt thought out many a brief sermon which he deliv- . ered in front of the regiment, and standing between its colors, as care- fully as those which he has delivered from this desk. He did not speak to display his own graces of speech, although he possessed these, but to achieve the great objects of speech in making the men who heard him better and truer men, and his simple eloquence went home always to those who listened. His sermons were of the best, because so forci- bly and strongly adapted to their object; practical and sensible in their views, illustrated always familiarly, yet so as to be attractive, expressed in those clear sentences which leave no doubts on the mind of the hearer as to their meaning, they struck upon the hearts of his audience with directness and force. With all this it is true that the greatest effect of all the chaplain's teaching was owing to the respect inspired hy liis exalted manly character. Every man in the regiment knew that there was not a mean, selfish or sordid trait about him ; that he did not serve them, or try to serve them, to gain their favor, or from any small personal end, but because he felt it was right he should. Brave men themselves, they recognized him as among their bravest men ; they saw his courage on every battle-field; they knew that wherever his duty to the wounded called him, no matter what the danger, there he would cer- tainly be found. They saw in him that religion made a man not weaker but more resolute and determined in the hour of danger.
He was a true soldier, in the noblest acceptation of the word, and you cannot wonder that his regiment loved him dearly, as they felt that he loved them. You do not wonder that the few survivors who are enabled to be here to-day, not alone on their behalf, but on behalf of their absent living comrades, and on behalf of thelr absent dead who sleep on so many widely scattered fields, desire even in this hour of sadness to express their gratitude that he was permitted to be so much to them, and their feeling that they are better and happier for having known him."
During Mr. Scandlin's last absence the pulpit was sup- plied by Rev. GILBERT CUMMINGS, son of Gilbert and Mar- garet Jane Cummings, who was born in Boston, September
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15, 1825. When nearly thirty years of age he relinquished the business in which he was engaged, entered Meadville Theological School, where he graduated in 1859. He was ordained as minister of the Unitarian Society at Austinburgh, Ohio, October 20th of that year, and was installed over the Unitarian Church in Westborough, January 3, 1860. Here he remained till the breaking out of the late war, when he received an appointment as chaplain of a regiment. Having served in that capacity, he resigned on account of ill-health. At the time he supplied the pulpit he was cashier of the First National Bank, subsequently he was cashier at the National Straw Works, Westborough, and while in that capacity he died.
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