History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II, Part 135

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton)
Publication date: 1889
Publisher: Philadelphia : J.W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1464

USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II > Part 135

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became a maker of books; his school histories were in their day greatly in vogue, and of one more than one hundred thousand copies were printed. A list of his principal works is to be found in the "Worcester Pulpit."

The sixth pastor of the Old South and the next after Mr. Goodrich was the Rev. Arætius Bevil Hull. Born at Woodbridge, Conn., in 1788, graduated in 1807 at Yale, where he was a tutor for six years, he was ordained and settled at Worcester on the 22d of May, 1821. He came to his new calling with a high reputation both as a scholar and as a teacher. Ill healtlı, however, kept him down, and after a protracted sickness he died in office on the 17th of May, 1826. His virtues as a man and a minister were celebrated by his contemporary neighbor, Dr. Nelson, in a funeral sermon. He was eminently social, simple, refined, charming in conversation and "a welcome friend to the poor." A quarter of a century after his death men often spoke of him "with kindling emotion." His church attested their affection by erecting to his memory a monument inscribed all over with elaborate encomium. In 1827 the church and parish united in a call to the Rev. Rodney A. Miller. The call was accepted and he was ordained on the 7th of June in that year. For nearly seventeen years he remained pastor of the church. During this period more than four hundred were added to its communion. At length differences arose between Mr. Miller and mem- bers of the church and parish ; in consequence, a mu- tual council was called and the result of its advice was the dismission of Mr. Miller. For many years after, he continued to reside in Worcester, but in the end returned to Troy, N. Y., his native place, where he died at an advanced age. Mr. Miller was the first presi- dent of the first Temperance Association ever formed in Worcester. For some years he was one of the overseers of Harvard University and had a zeal for the rectification of its theological standards.

A series of seven pastorates followed that of Mr. Miller. The first was that of the Rev. George Phil- lips Smith, a graduate of Amherst in 1835. He was installed on the 19th of March, 1845, and died at Salem, while in office, on the 3d of September, 1852. His ministry was a happy and successful one. Fol- lowing him came the Rev. Horace James, a graduate of Yale in 1840, who was installed on the 3d of Feb- ruary, 1853. Mr. James was full of devotion to his charge, but when the Civil War broke out, devotion to his country overbore the former and issued in his ap- pointment as chaplain of the Twenty-fifth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, and his consequent dis- mission from his pastoral charge. This event occurred on the 8th of January, 1863, and his death on the 9th of June, 1875. Rev. Edward Ashley Walker, who had been ordained chaplain of the First Connecticut Heavy Artillery in June, 1861, was installed as Mr. James' successor on the 2d of July, 1863. Like some of his predecessors, he was compelled by ill health to

retire altogether from the ministry. His death oc- curred on the 10th of April, 1866. During his min- istry, September 22, 1863, the one hundredth anni- versary of the building of the Old South meeting- house was elaborately commemorated. At the meet- ing-house the Hon. Ira M. Barton made an introduc- tory address, and Leonard Bacon, D.D., of New Haven, gave a historical discourse; while at Mechan- ics Hall, in the after part of the day, much reminis- cent discoursing was had. The old meeting-house, a typical specimen of New England church architecture of the last century, with its elegant slender spire aud faithful weathercock, was suffered to remain for nearly a quarter of a century longer before its demolition in August, 1887, under a municipal decree.

After Mr. Walker's dismission the Rev. Royal B. Stratton was installed on the 2d of January, 1867. Serious disability, more or less impairing his useful- ness, led to his dismission on the 25th of April, 1872. His death occurred in this city on the 24th of Janu- ary, 1875. On the 21st of May following Rev. Wil- liam M. Parry, of Nottingham, England, received a unanimous call to the pastorate. He practically ac- cepted the call and performed his duties as acting pastor, but was never installed. On November 3, 1873, he " resigned," but the resignation, taking the church by "surprise," was not accepted. On the Ifth of December it was withdrawn, but on the 4th of January following he preached his farewell ser- mon. His preaching had been both dramatic and eccentric and consequently had drawn crowded houses. Leaving the Old South, he drew after him nearly one hundred and fifty of its communicants, and to- gether they at once proceeded to organize a new church in Mechanics Hall by the name of the Taber- nacle Church. Without loss of time a Congrega- tional Council was convened for the purpose of recog- nizing the church and installing Mr. Parry as its pastor. The council received the church into fellow- ship but refused to install Mr. Parry. The church then proceeded to violate the principle of the fellow- ship, to which it had just been admitted, by an auto- cratic installation. The services on the occasion were performed by lay members of the church ; and in that fashion Mr. Parry became the first and, as it proved, the only pastor of the Tabernacle Church in Worcester. Church and pastor both came to a speedy end. Mr. Parry suddenly died in his chair while making a call upon two of his female parish- ioners, and the church, already grown disgusted and disintegrated by his gross and increasing eccentrici- ties, vanished into the inane.

To return to the Old South : The Rev. Nathaniel Mighill, a graduate of Amherst in 1860, was installed as Mr. Stratton's successor, September 25, 1875. The fate of so many of his predecessors overtook him also, and because of ill health he was dismissed on the 15th of June, 1877. Then followed the Rev. Louis Bevier Voorhees a graduate of Princeton in

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1867. After occupying the pulpit for six months, a nearly unanimous call led to his installation on the same day on which his predecessor was dismissed. But neither in this instance did a change of ministers secure the church against the fate which so inveter- ately pursued its chosen pastors. After preaching for a time Mr. Voorhees was compelled to relinquish his charge, but his formal dismission did not take place till the 5th of May, 1880, when his successor, the Rev. Joseph F. Lovering, was installed as the four- teenth pastor of the church and so remained.

A question had long been in issue between the city and the First Parish touching their respective estates in the land occupied by the Old South. The city claimed the land and wished to remove the building, and the parish resisted the claim and wished to pre- serve the building. Things remained in this condi- tion until 1885, when the city obtained from the legislature authority to take all the title and interest of the parish. In May, 1886, the city council voted to take under the act. Thereupon the parish made an overture to the city towards an agreement upon the amount of damages. The city having declined to entertain the overture, the parish then proceeded, under the provisions of the act, to ask the Superior Court for the appointment of commissioners to award damages ; and this was done. The case came on to he heard in July, 1887, when the city solicitor, Frank P. Goulding, appeared for the city, and Sena- tor George F. Hoar for the parish. An exhaustive preparation and all the legal learning and skill of the respective advocates went into the case. After weeks of deliberation the commissioners brought in an award of $148,400. The city refused to pay the award, and under the act claimed a trial by jury. A compromise followed resulting in the payment of $115,395.25. With this money the parish pur- chased a lot on the corner of Main and Wel- lington Streets, and proceeded to erect thereon a church worthy of its history and rank as the First Parish in the city of Worcester. The corner-stone was laid on the 4th of July, 1888, and the exterior walls, of red sandstone throughout, were substantially completed by the end of the year. It is, without doubt, the most imposing church edifice in the city. A massive central tower, forty feet square and rising on four square marble pillars to the height of ont hundred and thirty-six feet above the pavement, is the dominating feature. Another feature, appealing to a different sentiment, is the low belfry at the northeast corner, of architecture curious and fine, in which is suspended, as the sole relic connecting new and old, the bell (cast in 1802) that swung for eighty- five years in the old belfry on the Common. A par- ish-house at the rear, adding to the mass and architec- tural completeness of the whole structure, contains a variety and abundance of spacious apartments snited to all the multiplied and multiplying requirements of modern church life. The cost of this New Old South

at its completion is reckoned at one hundred and forty thousand dollars.

The Calvinist or Central Church. - The second church of this order was first named the Calvinist Church. It was an outcome, but not an outgrowth, of the First Church. As we have already seen, the settlement of Mr. Goodrich resulted in a serious dis- affection towards his ministry. Among the disaf- fected and aggrieved were Deacon David Richards, his wife and eight others. In their extremity these persons summoned a council (the third) to advise them in the premises. This council was convened on the 16th of August, 1820, and having heard the case and approved a Confession of Faith and a Cove- nant which had been presented, proceeded on the 17th to constitute the applicants into a separate church under the name of the Calvinist Church in Worcester. It is worthy of note that the moderator of this council was the Rev. Nathaniel Emmons, D.D. For a certain length of time the new church maintained public worship in private places. The house of its first deacon, David Richards, seems to have been the first and principal place of worship. This house stood near the site recently purchased by the United States for the new post-office building. In this private way, without any pastor or parish, the church held itself together until 1822. In that year "articles of association " looking towards a par- ish organization were drawn up and signed. The first signature was that of Daniel Waldo, under date of April 3d; others of the same date followed, and within the next nine years more than two hundred and sixty others were added. On the first Sunday following, April 3, 1822, regular public worship was commenced in the court-bouse. This continued until October 13, 1823, when the society took possession of its meeting-house, which had been erected by Mr. Waldo at a cost of fourteen thousand dollars. The sermon at the dedication of this house was preached by Dr. Austin, who was in sympathy with the new church. In the next year the property was conveyed to trustees for the use of the church and society. Early in 1825 the organization was perfected by the incorporation of the Calvinist Society. Meanwhile, on the 15th of April, 1823, the Rev. Loammi Ives Hoadly, who had supplied preaching for the pre- vious year, was ordained as the first pastor. His ministry was embarrassed by the unhappy relations which continued between this church and the Old South, but still went on with increasing success until a severe sickness brought it to a close. His dismis- sion, by a vote of the church, took place on the 19th of May, 1829. Recovering in a measure, he engaged in various activities,-as pastor again for a brief period, editor of The Spirit of the Pilgrims, assistant editor of the " Comprehensive Commentary," teacher and farmer. His last residence was in Northfield, Conn., his native place, and there he died quite re- | cently at the great age of ninety-one, having outlived

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all his successors in the pulpit of the Calvinist Church but the last two.

During Mr. Hoadly's ministry Mr. Waldo made a further addition of five thousand dollars to the re- sources of the society. Its growth continued un- checked, and iu 1830, and again in 1832, the church edifice was variously enlarged and improved. This prosperity was due, in no small degree, to the popu- lar ministry of the Rev. John S. C. Abbot, who became the successor of Mr. Hoadly on the 28th of January, 1830. During five years Mr. Abbot con- tinued to go in and out among his people with great acceptance. While discharging his pastoral duties, he found time to write and publish two books which made his name known in both hemispheres. These were "The Mother at Home" and "The Child at Home," the former of which has been translated and published in nearly all the languages of modern Europe. In 1835 Mr. Abbot asked and obtained a dismission on account of ill health. After recupera- tion by a year of travel in Europe, he spent the remainder of his very active life in various pursuits, but became known to the wide world chiefly as the author of many popular books. Mr. Abbot was born in Brunswick, Me., and graduated at Bowdoin in 1825. He died at Fair Haven, Conn., on the 17th of June, 1877. His successor was the Rev. David Peabody, who was installed in 1835 witbin six months after the pulpit had become vacant. His ministry was short and much interrupted by ill health. In the year following his settlement, under the advice of his physicians, he sailed for the South, where he spent the winter. A temporary improvement enabled him to resume his pastoral duties in Worcester. But the attack on his lungs -for that was his malady-again enforced cessa- tion from pulpit labor. He improved the time in travel. Arriving in Hanover the day after com- mencement, he learned to his surprise that he had been appointed Professor of Rhetoric in Dartmouth College, his alma mater. This, taken with the state of his health, determined his course. He obtained a dismission from his pastoral charge and in October, 1838, entered upon the duties of his new office. His tenure of this, however, was brief. His death occurred on the 17th of October, 1839, after one year of college service much interrupted by illness. The career of Professor Peabody was as brilliant as it was brief. His intellectual powers were of a high order. His mental discipline was.thorough, his scholarship fine. His character was " a rare combination of strength and loveliness." With a figure and face of manly beauty and a rich and mellow voice, he stood before his people in the pulpit a preacher of singular at- tractions. His memory long continued to be fragrant in Worcester.

The next pastor of the Central Church was the Rev. Seth Sweetser. His pastorate covered a period of forty years. It began on the 19th of December,

1838, and ended with his decease, in 1878. During this period, in 1845, occurred the death of Daniel Waldo, in a large sense the founder of the society. In his will he continued to remember it for good by devising to it, in connection with the church, a valu- able real estate upon which stood the chapel of the society and a dwelling-house. In 1858 occurred the first interruption to the prevailing harmony. Until then the expenses had been defrayed by a tax on the polls and estates of the members. Under a new statute the expenses were raised by an assessment on the pews. This change caused the withdrawal of a considerable number of rich and influential members. But the vital forces of the body soon healed the breach and supplied new strength. Forty additional pews were provided to help bear the burden of the new tax. Dr. Sweetser was not a magnetic preacher ; he had not the gift oratorical, but his compositions for the pulpit were of rare finish. He published occasional sermons which amply repaid perusal. On the death of President Lincoln he gave a discourse which had no superior, whether of pulpit or platform, in the whole range of productions called forth by that event. It was sought for from distant cities and the edition was exhausted before the demand was supplied. In his last years Dr. Sweetser's health declined until he was at length compelled to surrender the pulpit. But church and parish were unwilling to sunder the tie which had bound them so long together, and though his service ceased, his support (not his salary) was measurably continued until his death. Dr. Sweetser was born at Newburyport in 1807 and graduated at Harvard in 1827. For a time he was a tutor in the university, and in after years a member of the Board of Overseers. He sustained the same relation to An- dover Seminary. Of the Polytechnic Institute in Worcester he was an original corporator and trustee, and to it he gave his best thought and work. Of the city he was an unobtrusive leading citizen, and among the clergy of the State he was a power. The bases of his influence were wisdom and reserve.

On the 19th of November, 1874, the Rev. Henry E. Barnes, a graduate of Yale in 1860, was installed as junior pastor. On the 3d of May, 1876, after a year and a half of service, he was dismissed, and soon set- tled in Haverhill, Mass., where a large measure of success rewarded his labors. For nearly two years the pulpit was supplied by candidates and quasi-can- dates. Many were called, but few chosen. Then the Rev. Daniel Merriman, a graduate of Williams Col- lege, united all voices in calling him to the vacant place. The call was accepted, and in February, 1878, he was installed, the Rev. Dr. Richard S. Storrs, of Brooklyn, N. Y., preaching the sermon. Within a month came the death of Dr. Sweetser. In no long time after, the subject of building a new church be- gan to be agitated, and foremost in the agitation was the new pastor. A conditional subscription was set on foot and the required amount was provided for ; but the

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enterprise developed antagonisms, which, in the inter- est of peace, made it necessary and certain that one party or the other should and would withdraw. Accord- ingly, four-fifths of the trustees, all but one of the dea- cons, the men whose money had been chiefly relied on, and a large body of others, old and young, quietly left their church home of a generation, voluntarily sur- rendered all the property and dispersed themselves among the other churches. But Providence, " from seeming evil still educing good," inspired the crip- pled church with courage to arise and build, and the result was one of the most beautiful churches in the city or elsewhere. It stands as a conspicnons monu- ment of the recuperative power of a Christian denioc- racy under adverse conditions. At its completion uo root of bitterness remained to bear evil fruit, and those who withdrew and those who remained sat amicably side by side at the dedication of the new house. Its beauties were afterwards celebrated hy the graceful pen of Prof. Churchill in the Andover Review.

The Union Church .- In the autumn of 1834 a few young men, chiefly from the Old South Church, con- spicuous among whom was Ichabod Washburn, laid their plans for a new church. The need of it had been felt for several years, and it seemed to them that the time to act had fully come. Accordingly, the preliminary steps were taken, and on the 11th of March, 1835, they were duly incorporated under the name and style of the "Proprietors of the Union Meeting-honse." At a meeting held in December of the same year it was voted that the name of the new church should be "The Union Church." In January, 1836, Articles of Faith and a Covenant were unani- mously adopted, and on the 3d of February follow- ing a council constituted the new church with the customary formalities. On the 5th of March the society held its first meeting, and on the 6th of July its new house of worship was dedicated. It was a plain brick structure of 90 teet by 54, sitnated on Front Street, opposite the historic Common. Made more commodious in 1845-46, it was superseded in 1880 by a more beautiful but not more spacious edi- fice erected on the same site. The first pastor of the Union Church was the Rev. Jonathan E. Woodbridge. His installation took place on the 24th of November, 1836. His ministry began when the anti-slavery movement was burning its way through the churches. Union Church did not escape. Mr. Woodbridge took one side and the society took the other on the ques- tion of opening the church to anti-slavery lectures. On the 19th of Jannary, 1838, the society, by a vote of forty-five to twelve, decided to open the house to the famous anti-slavery agitators, James G. Birney and Henry B. Stanton. Mr. Woodbridge thereupon promptly tendered his resignation, and on the 2d of February the society as promptly accepted it, and called a council to dissolve the relation between them. The first call to this pastorate, though unanimous on

the part of church and parish, had been declined by Mr. Woodbridge. Upon a second and more urgent call he had consented to come, only to discover in one short year that he and his people could never agree on the great divisive question of the day. His dismission took place on the 14th of February. After leaving Worcester he became more widely known to the churches as editor of the New England Puri- fan, afterwards made one with the Boston Recorder under the name of the Puritan Recorder. The second pastor of the Union Church was the Rev. Elam Smalley, who was installed on the 19th of September. 1838. For nine years previous he had been associate pastor with the Rev. Nathaniel Emmons, D.D., of Franklin. Doubtless he had profited by such a long association with that remarkable divine, but no two persons could be more unlike in their mental charac- teristics. Reasoning, so eminently characteristic of the Franklin doctor, was not Dr. Smalley's forte or aspiration. He sought rather to edify by pleasing. If he did not prophesy smooth things, he yet prophe- sied in a smooth way. What he aimed at he accom - plished. The church was built up, and his ministry of fifteen years was a success. The society testified its appreciation by repeated additions to his salary. In due time he was decorated with the doctorate of divinity. After seven years the meeting-honse was altered so as to secure one hundred additional sittings, while Deacon Ichabod Washburn at his own cost provided a vestry and Sunday-school room in the basement. In 1844 the society accepted from the "Proprietors of the Union Meeting-honse " a deed of all their corporate property and assumed all their corporate liabilities. On the 8th of May, 1854, Dr. Smalley asked a dismission, in order "to enter another field of labor." The request was granted, and he shortly after became the pastor of the Third Street Presbyterian Church in Troy, N. Y., and there, on the 30th of July, 1858, he died. In 1851 he published "The Worcester Pulpit, with Notices Biographical and Historical." The plan of the work included a sketch of each church and pastor in each denomina- tion, with specimen sermons. It is a valuable source of information touching the churches of Worcester. The Rev. J. W. Wellman, a graduate and afterwards a trustee of Dartmouth, was the next choice of Union Church. He justified their choice by declining the call from a sense of duty to the obscurer church of which he was then the pastor. Dr. Wellman at a later day became conspicuons as the only trustee of Andover Theological Seminary who resisted the " new departure." Failing to secure him, the church next extended a call to the Rev. Ebenezer Cutler, of St. Albans, Vt. The call was accepted and the pastor- elect was installed on the 6th of September, 1855. At the same time a subscription for a pastor's library was set on foot which resulted in a substantial snm for that essential bnt much-neglected furnishing of a church. In 1859 began a series of efforts, continuing

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through several years, for either the enlargement of the old or the building of a new house of worship. Votes were passed to mortgage, to sell the old house, to examine sites, to build a new house, to raise money by subscription. An abiding feeling that the church was not well housed for doing its most effective work lay at the bottom of these spasmodic efforts. But out of it all the chief thing realized at the time was only a small addition to the rear for the organ and choir. The new church was still in the future. Dr. Cutler continued his ministry with growing reputation until 1865, when he was elected president of Vermont Uni- versity. This called forth an urgent appeal from his people not to leave them, and he consequently de- clined the flattering offer. Shortly after, he received a tender of the Professorship of Ecclesiastical History in Hartford Theological Seminary, hut this also he promptly put aside without waiting for it to take for- mal shape. In the autumn of 1874 he initiated the proceedings which resulted in the organization of the Worcester Congregational Club, of which he became the first president. The subsequent history of the club amply vindicated itself and him. In the winter of 1877 a bronchial trouble compelled him to seek relief in other climates. First going to Florida, and in the summer to Europe, he was absent from his pulpit until the following October, when he resumed preaching, though not fully recovered. Early in 1878, under stress of circumstances, he finally resigned his pulpit, retaining, however, his office. The pas- toral relation was not dissolved until the 11th of Octo- her, 1880, just before the installation of his successor. The council, in dismissing him, made mention of his "wide usefulness " and " profound scholarship," and gave him the name of "a Christian man without fear and without reproach." He continued to worship with the Union Church which subsequently testified its affection and esteem by honoring him with the title of pastor emeritus.

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History of Worcester County, Massachusetts : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Vol. II, Part 135

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) Publication date: 1889 Publisher: Philadelphia : J.W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1464

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton)
Publication date: 1889
Publisher: Philadelphia : J.W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1464