History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 206

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton)
Publication date: 1889
Publisher: Philadelphia : J.W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1576

USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I > Part 206

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1 The sermon was printed, and a single copy of it still survives, in possession of Mr. George Sumner, of Worcester.

that a new house of worship was needed. The town had grown, and, notwithstanding it had been divided into two parishes, the old house was too small. The building of the second meeting-house was long de- bated at town-meetings. Finally resolved upon, in the spring of 1766, it was commenced in earnest and speedily completed. It was not jobbed off to the lowest bidder, but built by a building committee, who employed Daniel Heminway, of Shrewsbury, the famous meeting-house builder, who built the Old South, in Worcester, and many other meeting-houses and public buildings, to frame it. The committee was instructed, by vote of the town, in employing labor aud in purchase of materials, to give the prefer- ence to inhabitants of the town. All the carpenters of Shrewsbury worked upon the meeting house. All the lumber grew in Shrewsbury woods, and was sawn in Shrewsbury mills. All the nails were made by Shrewsbury blacksmiths. The record of a town- meeting immediately preceding the meeting-house raising reveals the municipal estimate of the magni- tude of the undertaking. The question whether the town would procure a ginn to raise the meeting- house with was debated, and "determined in ye nega- tive." But the committee were directed to procure a lot of new spike poles ; also " voted that ye committy provide Drinks & Provisions," and "voted to com- mence the raising at six o'clock in the morning." And lest ye committee should mistake their instruc- tion-, and also probably to encourage a good attend- ance and make everybody stay till the last rafter was in place and the last pin driven home, it was fur- ther "voted to provide a Good Supper, and to send to Boston for a Barrel of Rhum."

The new house was fifty-five feet in length by forty-three in breadth, and had entrances on the east and west ends and on the south side. Like its prede- cessor, it had neither steeple nor bell. If one take a lantern and go up into the attic and look at the enor- mous plates and roof-timbers, resting where they were raised by the new spike-poles one hundred and twenty-two years ago, lie cannot but wonder how they were ever got there with the use of no other machinery.2 The original site where the house was raised, and stood till 1834, was about fifty feet south of its, present location, and its longest dimension was east and west. Many hands make quick work, and just two months after the raising Dr. Sumner says, "July 16, 1766, Being Lord's day, we met ye first time in the New House, upon wh. occasion I Preached from Genesis 28 chapter & ye 17 verse."

In 1807 the porch on the west end of the meeting- house was replaced by a steeple with a belfry and dials

2 ['nless "rum done it ?" It was at this raising that Artemas Ward, whose active drilling of his regiment directly after passage of the Stamp Act had come to the ear of Royal Governor Bernard, received the revo- cation of his commission as colonel. The reply which the reduced offi- cer sent the Governor that he had been twice honored is worthy of in- scription on his monument-where it is.

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for a clock. The bell, for which the money was raised by subscription, was not hung until next year. The clock was added still later. Why the steeple was built on the west end, thereby giving the building the appearance of facing Dr. Sumner's back-yard, it is difficult to say ; but so it was and so it stood until 1834, when the house was swung quarter round so as to face the south and moved to its present site, raised up so as to construct a vestry underneath and re- modeled. Its porches were taken off so as to conform, outside and inside, to the then prevailing style of church architecture.

In 1801 Jonah Howe and eight others were incor- porated as trustees of a fund for the support of a Con- gregational minister in the town of Shrewsbury, by an act of the General Court passed February 18th of that year. The act recites the former appropriation of cer- tain securities and moneys, amounting to nine hundred and twenty dollars, by the town, and the recent sub- scription of $2,243 for support of the minister, limits the fund to a maximum of eight thousand dollars, the interest of which only is to be applied to the minis- ter's salary, provides for an annual meeting of trustees in April, each year, to elect a treasurer and clerk and fill vacancies in trustees, and makes the trustees re- sponsible to the town. If the interest should ever amount to more than enough to pay the salary of the minister, it was to be applied to the schools of the town. Dr. Sumner has left a memorandum that shows the origin of the fund :

April, 1792 .- According to a vote of the towa of Shrewsbury, the bioder seats in the meeting-house was taken up, and six pews built, wbich sold for about £140, which is to remain as a fund, the interest of which to be appropriated for support of the Gospel.

Sundry contributions have, from time to time, been made by different persons to this fund, and the amount of it is now more than double the maximum prescribed in the original act. By chapter 50, Acts of 1866, its name was changed to a " Fund for the Support of a Congregational Minister in the First Congregational Parish and Religious Society in the Town of Shrews- bury," and the limitation of the original act to eight thousand dollars was raised to twenty thousand dollars, and the trustees are made accountable to the parish, instead of the town. Jonathan H. Nelson, who died in 1872, gave this fund a legacy of five thousand dol- lars, the largest contribution given by any donor at any one time, but less than the aggregate sums given by Amasa Howe, who in his lifetime (1869) gave eighteen hundred dollars, and who, dying in 1883, was found hy his will, made in 1872, to have given a legacy of twenty-two hundred dollars to this fund, and also by a codicil made in 1882 another legacy of two thou- sand dollars,1 making a total of six thousand dollars.

And Thomas Rice, who died May 29, 1888, has left a legacy of one thousand dollars in trust with the trus- tees of this fund, one-half of the interest of which is to be applied by the trustees to the care of the testa- tor's lot and monument in the cemetery, and the other half to be applied to the payment of the salary of the minister of the Congregational parish. I am unable to give the amounts of any other donations or the names of the donors. The present total of the fund is about eighteen thousand dollars and its income about nine hundred dollars.

CHAPTER CIII.

SHREWSBURY-(Continued.)

THE FIRST PARISH AND ITS MINISTERS: CUSHING, SUMNER, INGERSOLL, WHIPPLE, GEORGE ALLEN, AVERELL, WILLIAMS, MCGINLEY, DYER, SCUDDER, FRANK H. ALLEN.

THE three years within which Shrewsbury was required to have at least forty families and an ortho- dox minister began to run November 2, 1717. The forty families were here in due season, but the first minister, Rev. Job Cushing, was not settled till Dec- ember 4, 1723,-more than six years after the time began to run. It would seem from the church records that the church was organized and a covenant adopted at Mr. Cushing's ordination. Let us note in passing that this covenant does not contain any credo -unless the following be regarded as such :

" We resolve to make the blessed Scriptures our platform, whereby we may discern the blessed mind of Christ and not the new-framed inventions of men." -a favorite form of words with those who did not wish either to commit themselves to dogmatic theology nor to repel others from uniting with them by an iron-clad creed. This liberal covenant, probably drawn up by Mr. Cushing himself, closely resembles that of many of the early churches of New England, commencing with the earliest, whose platform, brought in the " Mayflower" and landed in 1620 on Plymouth Rock, remains unchanged in any clause or letter, the creed of the liberal First Church of Plym- outh, to this day.

It does not appear that at Mr. Cushing's ordination or afterwards any question was raised as to his being an "orthodox minister," within the meaning of those words in the act of the General Court, but tradition is that some of the brethren suspected him of favor- ing the Arminian heresy. During his ministry only one controversy arose of which any memory has reached our times. This was not theological.

always has been, no matter how many rum-sellers and Roman Catholics come into the town." And he brought his aged fist dowo upon the table at which we were sitting with a vigor that silenced all further advice of that kiod.

1 The writer, who was the testator's nepbew and one of his executors, beiag consulted by his nacle about this legacy, advised him against it. His reply, characteristic of the whole life of the mao-tben eighty-eight years old-will interest all who knew bim : "I want the same kind of preaching kept up in Shrewsbury after I am dead and gone that there

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HISTORY OF WORCESTER COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

One Simon Goddard, who came to Shrewsbury in 1731, from Framingham, with the aid of his two brothers, who were here before him, and five or six others, whom he converted to his views, kept Mr. Cushing and the whole church in hot water for more than ten years about ruling elders. According to Brother Goddard, it was indispensable that every Christian church should have two elders to rule both it and the minister, and he wrote to Mr. Cushing and the church long letters about it and talked about it till one wonders at the long-suffering patience of pastor and people with such a crank and such a bore as he was. This contemptible controversy finally resulted in an ecclesiastical council, but what was the "result " of the council was unknown at the time and has never been discovered to this day.

Rev. Job Cushing, whose father and grandfather were both named Matthew Cushing, and the latter of whom came from Norfolk, England, in 1688, was born at Hingham, July 19, 1694, and graduated at Harvard College in 1714. He was a farmer as well as minister, and at the moment of his death he was at work in his field binding sheaves of grain, where, without sickness or premonition, he fell dead. The minister's lot, No. 22, laid out on Meeting-house Hill when it was expected that the meeting house would be built there, being found after it was built on Rocky Plain too remote for the minister to live on, Mr. Cushing bought twenty acres and one hundred and fifteen rods of William Taylor, adjoining on the east side the meeting-house lot or Common, and built his house where Mrs. Arunah Harlow now lives. Mr. Cushing also bought of Nahum Ward fifty-six acres and seventy-one rods on the south side of the road opposite his house.1 What with these purchases and his lot (No. 22), " made up the full of ninety acres," and second and third division lands received "in right of his lot " he became in time the owner of considerable real estate, which he cleared and tilled as well as any of the other original farmers nf Shrews- bury. A portion of Mr. Cushing's land on both sides of the Great Road, together with a moiety of Jordan's Pond laid out to him as second division land " equal," say the records, " to six acres of valn- able meadow," has descended to his great-grandson, Mr. Josiah G. Stone, and still remains io his posses- sion. At the time of Mr. Cushing's settlement in Shrewsbury he was twenty-nine years old, and at his death, which occurred August 6, 1760, he was sixty- six.

In the interval between the decease of Mr. Cushing and settlement of his successor, the church covenant was re-enforced by the addition of the Calvinistic tenets. After the words in the extract before given, " new-framed inventions of men," were added the following, " And yet we are of the judgment that the whole of the well-known Westminster Catechism, as

explained by Calvinistic divines, contains a just summary of Christian doctrine as revealed in God's Holy Word," and after the name of Christ was inserted the words, " whom we believe to be God, equal with the Father and the Holy Ghost." Among the minority who protested and voted against these additions to the fair original, as incongruous therewith as patch of sow's ear upon silk purse, I note the name of Colonel Job Cushing, true to the teachings of his sainted father.

Before settling or even calling another minister, being jealous not only of ruling elders, but of the minister as well, the church voted not to settle any minister with power to negative its vote. At the same meeting when this vote was passed the church ex- tended a call to Rev. Joseph Sumner as pastor, and his ordination took place June 23, 1762. For want of room in the old meeting-house, and because it was not considered safe to crowd the old house with a large audience, the ordination services were conducted in the open air on a platform erected on the Common. Rev. Joseph Sumner was born at Pomfret, Conn., June 30, 1740, being son of Deacon Samuel Sumner, of that town, and graduated at Yale College in 1759. The degree of D.D., was conferred on him by Harvard College in 1814, and shortly afterwards by Columbia College, S. C. Like his predecessor, he was a man of liberal views and tolerant practice, and if all the minis- ters of New England had been like them, no division of the churches on the basis of mere theological dogma would have ever taken place. During Dr. Sumner's time the Calvinistic additions to the covenant were erased by vote of the church-doubtless through his influence. He was a man of great authority with his people, and of great personal dignity and weight of character. Of colossal stature-six feet four inches in height-he presented a most imposing presence. To the last he wore the costume of the last century : knee-breeches, silver buckles, cocked hat, white wig and all. A child was once so awe-stricken at sight of Dr. Sumner, as to run away and tell his mother that he had seen God. A characteristic story is told of him and Dr. Samuel Austin, of the First Worcester Parish. In a conversation at the house of the former, in Shrewsbury, where the latter had made a call, Dr. Sumner said, " I was brought up in the orthodox faith, and have always lived in it, and I expect to die in it." " But," said Dr. Austin, " you clipped off its corners." " Yes," was Dr. Sumner's reply, " and they need clip- ping more." Let me add another story characteristic of Dr. Austin as well as Dr. Sumner. At a meeting of the Worcester Ministerial Association Dr. Austin and Dr. Aaron Bancroft, pastors respectively of the First and Second Parishes in Worcester, were both proposed for membership. Dr. Anstin having been admitted without objection, he vehemently opposed the admission of Dr. Bancroft, and a majority of the association voted against it, whereupon Dr. Sumner arose, and declaring that he would not belong to such

1 Middlesex Registry of Deeds, Book 25, Pages 123-124.

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an illiberal body, withdrew from the association, and it never met again.

It was during Dr. Sumner's time that division of Congregational Churches into Trinitarian and Unita- rian took place. In the last years of his ministry he had repeatedly suggested to his people the expediency of selecting a colleague pastor, and January 18, 1820, the church chose Rev. Samuel B. Ingersoll as col- league to Dr. Summer, and the parish concurring, the ordination took place June 14, 1820. This ordination being a sort of milestone in the history of the Con- gregational schism then in progress, I must give a brief account of it. Of the fifteen ministers who formed the ordaining council, five-namely : Dr. Aaron Bancroft, of Worcester ; Rev. John Miles, of Grafton ; Rev. Ward Cotton, of Boylston ; Dr. Joseph Allen, of Northborough; and Rev. William Nash, of West Boylston-were Unitarians. At the examination of the candidate it appeared that he was a pronounced Calvinist. To his ordination on this account the Unitarian members of the council made no objection, but asked if he would fellowship with Unitarians. Mr. Ingersoll's reply was " I would not trust a Unita- rian in my pulpit one hour." This was explicit enough for Dr. Bancroft, who arose aud was followed by all the Unitarian members of the council, pastors and lay delegates, nine in number, down the long aisle out of the meeting-house. A majority of the council was still left, and the ordination proceeded Such is the account of this ordination given to the writer nearly forty years ago by Dr. Eleazer T. Fitch, professor of divinity in Yale College, who was a mem- ber of the council.

Mr. Ingersoll, after his ordination, preached but one Sunday, and died of consumption, November 14, 1820, at Beverly, where he was born in 1787. He graduated at Yale College in 1817, and was thirty years old at the time. He was at his death thirty- three. Before going to college he had been a sailor and shipwrecked at sea. It is said that as he lay float- ing and perishing on a piece of wreck in mid-ocean he heard a call to go and preach the gospel, and an- swered it with a solemn vow that if he were saved fram perishing then he would obey the call. A fu- neral service was held simultaneously at Beverly and at Shrewsbury. " I preached and Dr. Bancroft and Mr. Cotton prayed." Such is Dr. Sumner's brief en- try in the church records. 1 wonder if prayer or sermon contained any allusion to the drama played within the same walls only five months before. This ordination of Mr. Ingersoll was followed by important consequences both in Shrewsbury and else- where. Iu Shrewsbury, as we shall see later, a portion of the parish withdrew and formed a new society. Dr. Sumner was greatly annoyed at what had taken place- Doubtless he had hoped, by bringing together the clergy of the vicinity who were of opposing views, to do something towards healing the schism that was dividing and weakening the churches of New England.

After Mr. Ingersoll's death Rev. Edwards Whipple was settled as a colleague to Dr. Sumner. Ile had previously been ordained and settled in Charlton, and dismissed at his own request. His installation took place September 20, 1821. 1Ie died September 17, 1822, of a fever after a sickness of only seven days, aged forty-four years. Ile was born in West- borough, November, 1778, graduated at Williams College in 1801, and studied his profession with the famous Dr. Nathaniel Emmons, nf Franklin. Dr. Sumner continued in his ministry in Shrewsbury till his death, which occurred December 9, 1824, a period of more than sixty-two years, being at the time of his death nearly eighty five years old. His funeral sermon was preached by his life-long friend, Dr. Bancroft, pursuant to an understanding between them that whichever might die first, the other should preach his funeral sermon.

But before Dr. Sumner's death still another col- league to him had been settled in Shrewsbury. Rev. George Allen was ordained here November 19, 1823. He was the son of Hon. Joseph Allen, born at Wor- cester, February 11, 1792, and graduated at Yale Col- lege in 1813. He remained in his pastorate at Shrews- bury till June 18, 1840, when he was dismissed by ad- vice of an ecclesiastical council. For sixteen of the sev- enteen years of his life here Mr. Allen's relations with his church and parish were exceptionally pleasant and amicable. At his funeral said Rev. Dr. Buckingham, of Springfield, formerly settled in Millbury : "Years ago, when Mr. Allen was pastor of the church at Shrewsbury, we" (meaning the clergy of the vicinity ) "remember to have thought that parsonage an ideal one. Looking off from that hill-top with his wife and chi'dren about him and a large and intelligent con- gregation listening to him, it seemed as if such love and influence and happiness ought to satisfy any mor- tal. They did satisfy him so long as he was permitted to enjoy them." But in the seventeenth year of his ministry there arose in Shrewsbury one of the most implacable minister quarrels in the history of New England. It had its origin in a scandal about Mr. Allen's family, of which want of space, if no other reason, would forbid detail here. Indignantly deny- ing the truth of the scandalous stories in circulation, Mr. Allen in the pulpit and out of it castigated their circulators with a severity of language such as few men can equal and none ever exceeded, and his un- sparing denunciations of all who had talked about his family, which included probably the entire inhabit- ants of the town, had the effect to estrange many of his warmest friends and to cause them to become dis- affected. In a few months the disaffected party grew, so as to number full one-half the parish, "signed off," hired a preacher and a hall and had religious services on Sundays by themselves. It was a bitter feud, caus- ing enmity between old friends and near neighbors, and finally resulted in an ecclesiastical council, before which the opposition to Mr. Allen, under leadership

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HISTORY OF WORCESTER COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.

of Mr. Henry Dana Ward, laid charges against him. The council fully vindicated Mr. Allen from all in- tentional wrong and recommended him to the con- fidence of the churches ; but, on account of the wide- spread disaffection which had impaired, if not entirely destroyed, his usefulness in Shrewsbury, they advised his dismissal with payment of full salary for the cur- rent year. These proceedings were directly followed by a slander suit brought by Mr. Allen against Mr. Ward. At the trial of this suit in the Supreme Court at Worcester, April term, 1841, the town of Shrews- bury turned out and packed the court-house. Nor was interest limited to the town. No trial at Wor- cester, for years, had excited such general interest. Verdict for plaintiff, damages $700, which, at the time, was regarded as heavy and exemplary.

Rev. George Allen was unquestionably the ablest man whom Shrewsbury can boast to have ever had for a citizen. After his dismissal he returned to Worcester and lived there till his death, which oc- curred March 31, 1883. His age was ninety-one years. He had long survived his wife and children, of whom he once had four, two of whom had died within a year and a half before his dismissal at Shrewsbury, and one of whom was the subject of the scandal before referred to. For about thirty years Mr. Allen was chaplain of the State Lunatic Hospital at Worcester. A man of great learning and accurate scholarship, and holding the pen of a ready writer, he became in Worcester a public and influential man. He was interested in and performed efficient service in all the reformatory movements of the times. In the anti-Masonic movement which followed the murder of Morgan in Western New York, where he preached a few years before he came to Shrewsbury, he took an active and prominent part. He was one of the earliest and most pronounced anti-slavery inen, and on formation of the Free-Soil party in 1848 he gave valuable aid to his brother, who, more than any other man, must be regarded as founder of that party. Though maintaining his connection from first to last with the Orthodox Congregational Church, he was a man of extremely liberal views, and had the honor to have his orthodoxy challenged many times in his life. Before settlement in Shrewsbury he was reject- ed by an ordaining council at Aurora, N. Y., where he had received a call, for " unsoundness on original sin." All his life he publicly repudiated the West- minster Catechism, and in 1865 at Plymouth, where the National Council of his denomination met, in eloquent words he solemnly protested against its re- affirmation as being too sectarian for the catholic spirit of the Pilgrim Fathers, over whose ashes they had met, and too narrow to comprehend the breadth of their principles of religious freedom.

Mr. Allen's successor in the ministry at Shrewsbury was Rev. James Averill, who was born at Griswold, Conn., May 29, 1815. He graduated at Amherst College in the class of 1837, studied his profession at the Yale

Theological School and was ordained over the church and parish in Shrewsbury, June 22, 1841. He was dismissed at his own request November 15, 1848. Mr. Averill died in 1863 in the service of his country, chaplain of a Connecticut regiment.

Rev. Nathan Witter Williams was the successor of Mr. Averill. He was the son of Rev. Joseph Williams, and born at Providence, R. I., March 12, 1816; gradu- ated at Yale College in 1842; studied theology with Rev. Albert Barnes, of Philadelphia; was ordained at Shrewsbury, February 28, 1849, and dismissed at his own request April 27, 1858. After Mr. Williams' dis- missal he was elected Representative from Shrewsbury to the General Court and served as a member of that body in the session of 1859.

The next minister of the Congregational Church and Parish in Shrewsbury was Rev. William A. Mc- Ginley, who was ordained June 2, 1859, and dis- missed by his request July 27, 1865. He was an ac- complished scholar and eloquent preacher. He had originally selected the law for his profession and had read a year or more for admission to the bar before he studied divinity. He is now settled in Portsmouth, N. H.

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History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. I, Part 206

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) Publication date: 1889 Publisher: Philadelphia : J.W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1576

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton)
Publication date: 1889
Publisher: Philadelphia : J.W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1576