USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Granville > History of Granville, Massachusetts > Part 17
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So it is to be seen what changes had taken place in Granville in
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the course of half a century, in the matter of churches. Five churches instead of one.
The meeting house of the First Church was away off to one side of the Parish instead of being approximately at the center of popu- lation, as it had been when erected, due to the division of the Town into three Parishes. It was not long before the proposal for a new meeting house to be at the village of East Granville, now Granville Center, was heard. It became more and more insistent and indeed it was entirely reasonable. So it was decided to build a new house of worship. Land was secured from Richard Dickinson as appears by his deed to the Inhabitants of the East Parish of Granville dated April 26, 1802, which is recorded in Hampshire County Registry of Deeds in Volume 56 at page 597. This plot of land was nine rods square and is described as "beginning at a stake on the south side of the highway near Doct. Aaron Bigelow's now dwelling house and five rods twenty links west of land owned by Dan Bissell." Work on the new meeting house was pushed along so rapidly that on May 27, 1802, the frame of the new building was raised and it was dedicated November 10, of the same year. Daniel Bushnell, of East Hartland, Connecticut, was the builder. The pulpit in the present meeting house is the same one which had graced the former house of worship, for it will be recalled that Dr. Cooley, in his address delivered at the Granville Jubilee, said "A half century has passed away since, with trembling, inexperienced steps I entered this pulpit for the first time." The tradition is that it was brought from England soon after 1750 to be installed in the house of wor- ship at that time being finished and in use. Formerly there was a huge sounding board behind the pulpit, but long ago it was removed and it has disappeared. The bell in the present meeting house was donated by the ladies of the parish. The venerable pipe organ now silently reposing in the gallery of the meeting house is one of the first to be used in western Massachusetts. It was built in Granby, Connecticut, and dedicated in 1835. The late George W. Rose, who for many years conducted a music store in Westfield, and who was born in Granville in 1810, said he assisted in constructing it and setting it up. In this connection an interesting side light about this ancient meeting house and its organ appears in an entry in the
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private journal of Dr. Cooley under date of July 28, 1840, which is as follows :--
"The meeting house having been remodeled & repaired, was dedi- cated anew to Almighty God. Invocation & reading select passages of scripture by the pastor. Prayer by Rev. Isaac Knapp. Dedication sermon by Mark Hopkins, D. D., President of Williams College. Prayer by Rev. E. Davis. Benediction by Rev. Aaron Gates. The sermon by Pres. Hopkins, by great originality, held a crowded assembly in fixed attention.
The performance of the choir accompanied by a well toned organ added special interest to the occasion.
The dressing of the pulpit, and means in part, for purchasing the organ were furnished by youthful emigrants from Granville."
The organ's present state of decrepitude is due to acts of van- dalism of irresponsible youth. It was used at the adjourned Jubilee in 1895 and thereafter until the organ in the choir loft was given by the late Francis B. Cooley, of Hartford, Connecticut.
A curious custom of earlier days, memory of which ought not to be allowed to lapse into oblivion, is one recalled by the late Milton B. Whitney. He said he remembered that when he was a boy (he was born in 1825) all "intentions of matrimony were posted in the porch of the meeting house."
It is said that the old meeting house near the Great Rock was torn down in 1802, but the writer has been unable to discover any data concerning this. However, it is interesting to know that the land on which the old meeting house stood was sold by the Parish Committee on September 4, 1805, for the sum of $32.00 to Lemuel Storrs of Middletown, Connecticut, a deed of which was recorded in Volume 46 at page 422, in the Hampshire Registry of Deeds. From this fact it would seem that the old meeting house had been razed prior to that date, otherwise the purchase price would have been greater than that stated in the deed.
Still another blow was to fall upon the historic old First Church. It came in 1805 in a rather unusual form. The group of men and women who had decided to go to Ohio and establish a new settle- ment there as related in previous pages, caused a council to be held in East Granville on May 1, in that year, and with due formality, twenty-four members, some of whom had been largely instrumental
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in getting the new meeting house built, with sundry others, were organized into a church, with all the usual officers, which was to be transplanted bodily into the "western wilderness." This took about one third of the old church ! Thus more of the wheel horses of the old First Church departed. In his sermon at the 1845 Jubilee, Dr. Cooley said: "This was a great loss to us, but as the hand of God was in it, we said to them, 'Go, and we will pray for you.' " This last loss reduced the membership to about fifty.
With the approach of the year 1845, members of the church began to consider the question of a fitting observance to celebrate the completion of fifty years service among them by their beloved pastor, Rev. Timothy Mather Cooley. It was decided to have a sort of old home day on a grand scale. Accordingly on January 1, 1845, the church voted to have the celebration on the last Wednes- day in August (Aug. 27th). Committees were appointed. The scope of the work was outlined and the workers organized. At a meeting of the Town in the early part of April, another committee, repre- senting the Town, was appointed to cooperate with the church in the forthcoming celebration. Arrangements progressed to their appointed ends. Invitations were sent out. When the chosen day came, it proved to be a pleasant and delightfully warm summer day. The highways and byways were filled with people, all journeying to East Granville. That little hill-top village was visited by more people on that day than had ever, prior to that time, been in the town on any one day since the creation of the world, and no such multitude assembled there again in the following half century. Three thousand, or more, were there to make the occasion a memor- able one, and they certainly succeeded, for it is talked about even to this day, nearly one hundred years later. The Granville Jubilee was a real event for this historic old town. The good old meeting house could not begin to hold all the assembled multitude. Addresses, music by a choir of fifty voices, a big dinner for all, original poems for the occasion by that sweet singer, Mrs. Lydia H. Sigourney, of Hartford, Connecticut, and to cap the climax, a wonderful his- torical discourse by Dr. Cooley wherein he expressed many of his personal recollections and experiences of the past half century. He had been personally acquainted with all the early settlers, from that
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first pioneer, the redoubtable Samuel Bancroft, to those then living, except the few who had died during the first forty years or so after the first settlement. In speaking of the East Granville Parish at the time of his ordination, he said: "The parish was small, comprising 877 souls, 438 males and 439 females," and "The number of mem- bers in this church, when I took the oversight of it, was fifty-nine, twenty-four males and thirty-five females. Admission since then by examination 333. The present number (of members) is one hun- dred thirty three, forty-one males and ninety-two females." In con- sidering this growth of the church, it must be borne in mind that not only had it lost members to the colony which went to Granville, Ohio, but also to the Baptist church, and also that the population of the Town had for some years been diminishing. During the half century, Dr. Cooley had conducted ten revivals. In reviewing his work among his parishioners, it is well to let him set forth some of his prodigious labors. "I have met you at every communion season, six times a year, with the exception of four and a half months when on a mission trip to the west, and three months on a pastoral visit to our brethren in Granville, Ohio. With few exceptions, I have supplied this pulpit on the Sabbath. Five times I have by previous appointment performed a visitation of the entire parish, making a record of the name and age of each individual, conversing and praying with parents and children. In addition to weekly and dis- trict meetings for prayer and preaching, I have attended as many as 1400 bible class lessons for the benefit of the youth. In seasons of revival, meetings have been multiplied as the exigency required.
Besides the supervision of common schools as Town Committee 48 years, and of the higher institutions of learning the greatest part of that time, as many as 800 pupils have received instruction from my lips, preparatory for college, and for business, sixty of whom have entered the ministry.
Besides meetings of Associations and County Benevolent Societies, I have attended sixty ecclesiastical councils. I have solemnized two hundred and forty-four marriages, attended about five hundred funerals and usually preached a sermon on the occasion."
Granville may well, even to the remotest posterity, remember and render homage to such a servant.
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At the close of the afternoon services, it was voted unanimously that this Jubilee be adjourned to the last Wednesday in August, in the year 1895, at ten o'clock in the forenoon, at this place, and the meeting was adjourned accordingly.
So many former residents and friends remained in town that some three hundred or more assembled at the meeting house the next day and enjoyed themselves in visiting and listening to former resi- dents who had attained leadership in other places. Another grand dinner and then the farewells. The Jubilee was over. Both church and community had done themselves proud in honoring this remark- able man, one of their own people.
One of the outcomes of this celebration was the donation of a complete set of communion silver, two tankards and eight goblets, by three former Granville men, Rev. David B. Coe, Mr. Jesse B. Spelman and Mr. Joseph J. West, all then living in New York City, a concrete evidence of their steadfast loyalty.
Another reminder of the Jubilee is the monument, bearing a properly inscribed bronze medallion, which now stands near the northwest corner of the meeting house, erected to commemorate this grand festival.
Dr. Cooley was spared fourteen more years to serve his parish. One of the latest entries in his handwriting in the records of the First Church is the following :
FAREWELL TO THE PULPIT.
First sabb. in April,* 1795, the Pastor brought his first Sermon into the ancient pulpit. First sabbath in April, 1855, carried into the same pulpit his Farewell Sermon.
Lines of the occasion by Mrs. L. H. Sigourney.
O Friends! the tie is breaking That closely bound our hearts, And from the walls of Zion Our aged watchman parts. And to the sacred pulpit Where three score years he bore Salvation's glorious message His feet return no more.
* April must be an error. His first sermon as stated by himself at the 1845 Jubilee was on the first Sabbath in June.
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Farewell ! A blessed service
It hath been his to pay In prayer and praise and duty
To strive to lead your way. Farewell ! your kind affection So constant and so sweet Shall still be fondly cherished
While memory holds her seat.
Dear Flock ! the heavenly pastures Are ever green and fair, Eternal waters gently flow,
Meet your Old Shepherd there.
Many changes have come to the old meeting house, as well as to most other things in Granville. In 1840 a gale of wind carried away all that portion of the steeple which was above the roof. This dam- age was repaired, but it is thought the steeple was not restored till 1862, when the meeting house was moved back from near the road where it originally stood, to the place where it now stands, in accord- ance with a vote of the Parish June 18, 1860, "to move the church the length of the building to the south." At that time (1862) the remainder of the old belfry, which stood on the ground and adjoined the north side of the meeting house, was taken down. This belfry was twelve feet eight inches square and even today its outline may be traced on the north end of the meeting house by the lines where the new clapboards were butted aganst the ends of the old clapboards. The present portico with its pillars was then added, as well as the present steeple. At the time of the Jubilee in 1845, Dr. Cooley referred to the "ancient pulpit" in which he was then stand- ing as "his for more than half a century." This would seem to indicate that the pulpit was the same one which had been in the former meeting house by the Great Rock. The pews originally in the present meeting house were the old style square ones, but after a time they were removed, probably in 1862, and others of more modern style put in their places. In the summer of 1870 the meeting house was again "closed for repairs." And again in 1890, extensive repairs and changes were made, the second style pews were removed and replaced by the present chairs, and a memorial window to Dr. Cooley was set in the south wall of the building behind the pulpit.
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Also in 1901 changes were made, the pulpit platform was lowered fifteen inches and it was extended to the west as it now is, to make accommodations for the choir and a new organ.
During the ministry of Dr. Cooley, the church was not called upon to consider the necessity for a parsonage because he owned the house in which he lived, but on his retirement from most of his active duties in 1855, and the subsequent securing of an assistant pastor, the question of a parsonage became important and acute. In 1857 one Rev. Mr. Page was serving the Parish and he had established himself in the house formerly owned by Dr. Lewis Harvey, but at that time owned by Charles F. Bates. It so happened that Mr. Bates wished to sell the house, so negotiations were not difficult, and in the early summer he conveyed to "the Congregational Society of religious worship in the East Parish of Granville" the land and buildings now known as the Parsonage. The land is described as being "near the Congregational meeting house, bounded south on the highway, east on land of Lucius Gibbons, north on land of Lucius Gibbons, and west on land of Levi Brown." This deed is dated May 15, 1857, and is recorded in Hampden County Registry of Deeds in Volume 189 at page 213, and reserved to Rev. Mr. Page the part of the house he then occupied until April 1, 1858. Until 1946, the property was used as a parsonage, and the west wing was re-arranged and equipped with a kitchen and a small hall for parish purposes.
When the Jubilee in 1845 was adjourned for fifty years, it seemed as though fifty years was an endless period and far beyond the imagination. The days dragged slowly by, but the years sped swiftly, and in due time the last Wednesday in August 1895 arrived, and the day for the Adjourned Granville Jubilee had come. Again the highways were filled with travellers journeying to the old meeting house on the hill. Again the residents and many non-residents who, or whose ancestors, were born among, or were otherwise interested in, the Granville hills, assembled to honor the historic town, its ancient church, and the memory of its great leader, Dr. Cooley. The weather man again smiled and sent a wonderful summer day with sunshine and light breezes. The old meeting house was again filled to overflowing, but there were plenty of grand old trees, in
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the shade of which rest and renewal of old acquaintances could be enjoyed. J. Henri Brown, son of the late Ralph S. Brown, delivered the address of welcome. Rev. Edward B. Coe, of New York, a descendant of James A. Coe of Middle Granville, was the principal speaker and delivered the historical address in the forenoon. The principal speaker in the afternoon was Dr. Franklin Carter, Presi- dent of Williams College, who delivered an eulogy on Dr. Cooley. Letters were received and read from Gen. George B. Wright, a nephew of Dr. Cooley; Dr. Austin Scott, President of Rutgers Col- lege, a grand-son of Reuben Ranney; Hon. E. B. Gillett of Westfield, a grand-son of Jacob Bates, one of the officers of that company of Minute Men who marched to Cambridge under command of Capt. Lebbeus Ball in 1775 ; Prof. Charles H. Hitchcock, of Dartmouth College, a great-grand-son of Luke Hitchcock who lost his life in the Revolution; and many others. A complete and minutely detailed account of the occasion can be found in the (Westfield) Times and News Letter of September 4, 1895. It was estimated that 1000 visitors were present at the celebration. And there was added to the stone monument at the corner of the old meeting house another bronze medallion of commemoration. Soon it will be August, in the year 1945.
In tracing the growth of the service rendered by the church, it is interesting to note an unusual, and probably unique, feature intro- duced by Dr. Cooley. This he called a "Moral School," and it was composed of the younger members of his congregation. It was formed in 1812 and the record shows fifty-three were in attendance at the first meeting on February 10th of that year, thirty-six of whom Dr. Cooley stated "had attained the necessary qualifica- tions and were presented with a Bible." Others were accepted and admitted to the School from time to time. At first, sessions were held only four times a year, but later they were more frequent. The Bible was the text book, supplemented by talks and comments by Dr. Cooley, who appears to have based his instruction broadly upon the theme of clean, upright living. This School flourished many years, its meetings becoming more and more frequent until finally they were held every week, and gradually the School became the nucleus of the Sunday School. In 1845, the year of the Jubilee, Dr. Cooley said : "In 1812 my Bible Class, which has existed thirty-three
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years, was organized and enrolled. Terms of admission: recital memoriter of the Assembly's shorter catachism and a perusal of the whole bible in course. On admission each one received a Bible with this inscription : Read the Scriptures daily."*
A copy of an original letter of Dr. Cooley's has recently come to light wherein he states some interesting facts. This letter has no date, but from the appearance of the handwriting must have been written in his old age, long after the establishment of his Moral School.
To the Secretary of the Massachusetts Sabbath School Society. Rev. and Dear Sir :-
The Sabbath School Union is paramount in its benign influence, to any of the benevolent institutions of the past age. The Bible, Missionary, and Tract Societies are indispensable. The same is true of Sabbath Schools. In my own Parish I formed one when not another was known to exist in New England.
In 1816, while attending the General Assembly, I first became acquainted with Sabbath Schools. They were then in a rude state. The pupils comprised only the children of the poor of the city. My host had a small (school) in a remote alley, and one evening invited me to accompany him to his school. He gave them Literary and religious instruction.
My own Sabbath School was soon organized, comprising children of all classes. My Bible (Class) had been formed in 1812, four years previous, and furnished with a library of 100 vol. and each pupil a bible of his own. Do you ask the effect of Sabbath Schools on my Parish ?
The influence was happy on the cause of education. They read the books in (the) Library. Our talented Secretary of A. H. M. Sociy. taking up, when here, a book belonging to the Library, and this made me show many others. The books from their share Library made it not easy to teach the youth of both sexes.
This small place, with no advantages for the accumulation of weath, has sent abroad scores and hundreds of emigrant sons and daughters to fill the learned professions and various special business, who are a credit to themselves and their birth place.
They have promoted specially the interests of morality and piety. t
* A Bible presented to Jeptha Rose upon his admission to the Moral School, by Dr. Cooley, bearing the above inscription and his autograph, is now in the possession of Mrs. Lavinia Rose Wilson.
+ This letter is in a manuscript volume written by Dr. Cooley, entitled Gazetteer of the Bible, which is now in the possession of Mr. William G. Snow, of Meriden, Con- necticut.
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The Library of 100 volumes which Dr. Cooley mentions, he has elsewhere stated comprised the writings of Edwards, Proudfit, Lathrop, Baxter, Silliman, Rollin and kindred authors, books which today are read only by the theologic antiquarian. Again quoting Dr. Cooley: "The Library, long since, was worn, and scattered and lost."
Even the overshadowing presence of Dr. Cooley in the pulpit and the straight-laced atmosphere of a New England meeting house could not always prevent a youthful mind from wandering to ideas quite unrelated to the discourse. One such mental lapse from Sab- bath duty has come down to us. Timothy Ranney was the culprit. The following rhyme he scribbled in the hymn book of his good friend :
When old Priest Cooley rises up As bold as any lion And reads the hymn, 8-7s and 4s, We rise and sing old Zion.
Now, if we learn no other tune, But only Zion squall, We'll have to sing that tune in Hell, Or else not sing at all.
The Second Church
It has already been noted that the Second Church of Christ in Granville was organized in 1781 with twenty-eight members, but to have a clear understanding of the situation, both when the church was formed and now, it is necessary to recall and repeat a few facts and correlate them in order not to be confused by the archaic con- dition at present existing in connection with this venerable church.
To begin with it is essential to keep in mind that the term church is used herein to mean the collection of individuals who were, and are, the members of the religious society, and the term church does not mean building in which religious worship is conducted. The building is herein designated the meeting house to distinguish it from the body of worshippers. With this distinction in mind no difficulty will be experienced in following the narrative.
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When the meeting house was erected in 1778, the church did not exist and of course there could be no one to represent it. There was no one to secure a site upon which to erect the meeting house. There was not even a self appointed committee. But the desire to have a meeting house was so universal and so strong that the residents of that part of the District went right on with their wishes regardless of the fact that there was no church. They proposed to have a meet- ing house, and when the opportunity offered, they would organize a church. They would get a cage and trust to luck about getting a bird to put in it. The erection of their meeting house was not authorized by the District nor by any higher authority other than the common desire of the residents of that locality. An exhaustive search fails to find any deed of any plot of ground on which the meeting house was to be built but a little investigation will indicate why they con- sidered a deed was not necessary. Middle Granville had a large open area in the center of what is now the village and this piece of land was common land. Every citizen had a right to pasture his horses, cattle and hogs on this common land. This was used on training days by the militia, and at any and all times when anything of common interest was occurring. What more natural than that in this matter which was of vital interest to all, the meeting house, which was to be used by all, should be erected on land owned by all ? And so it was done. The meeting house was built on the Green, the common land. It stood much to the south of the spot where it now stands. It was on the north side of the main east and west road, but very close to the road and the present front end of the building was toward the east and not toward the south as now. Doubtless all the people in that area furnished labor or material, or both, so that all felt a species of ownership in it. Thus Middle Granville had its own meeting house. A building owned in common built on land owned in common. Very simple. No need for any deed.
In 1781 they had permission to organize a church, which they did. The church, as such, had not built the meeting house, nor had it had any thing to do with it, so how could the church claim to own the meeting house ? It could not and did not. By common consent it used the meeting house, but that was all. Just how this complicated situation was handled in the next three years does not appear, but
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