USA > Massachusetts > Norfolk County > Bellingham > History of the town of Bellingham, Massachusetts, 1719-1919 > Part 8
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The church grew slowly but steadily. More than three of its attendants were arrested for not supporting their parish churches. In 1753 Eleazer Adams of Med- way, sixty-six years old, who had come regularly to the Bellingham church for years, was imprisoned in Boston. John Jones and Jesse Holbrook of Bellingham, who had been assigned to the west precinct of Wrentham (Franklin now), but had not attended there for two years, were summoned by the Wrentham collector. On April 23 he started to take them to the "common goald," and they
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HISTORY OF BELLINGHAM
were on the road "near 24 hours." Sometimes he rode ahead of them, sometimes behind. When they had not seen him for an hour, they supposed themselves free, and returned home. But he appeared again with the same demand for the tax, they absolutely refused to pay it, and that is the end of the story as told in a letter signed by two of the Bellingham Baptists of May 4, 1753.
Many protests at such treatment were made in many towns, and at a general meeting of Baptists in Bellingham an agent was chosen to go to England to appeal to the King, and one hundred pounds subscribed for the purpose. The Revolution was approaching, and he never went, but the proposed memorial was presented to the General Court here instead. It was endorsed, "Read and as it contains indecent reflections on the Laws and Legislature, it is dismissed." Their agent appealed again, disclaiming any intent of improper criticism, and the case was again dismissed.
In 1757 vessels for the Lord's Supper were bought for the Bellingham church with a small legacy from Peter Thompson.
A history of the early Baptist churches calls Mr. Wight "a pious and useful man." His salary was forty or fifty pounds a year, but he was comfortably off without it. He filled his office faithfully till his early death in 1761. His people afterwards practised close communion like regular Baptists. Mr. Wight married in 1754 the widow Abigail Blood, and had one daughter and two sons, Nathan and Eliab. His widow married Nathan Mann of Franklin, who brought them up. Nathan went to New York State, but Eliab remained on the homestead, and became a deacon in his father's church.
Several persons in town have some of Mr. Wight's original sermons. They are neatly written and very
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THE BAPTIST CHURCH, 1736-1819
logical and systematic in form. The inventory of his estate, amounting to fifty-seven pounds, mentions about sixty books, including a Greek Testament and a Latin Bible. The gravestone of our first Baptist minister and his wife is in the North Bellingham cemetery, and has this inscription:
While you are standing here to read
Prepare for Death with care & speed
For sure it is that you must die And hasten to Eternity.
Prepare for Death he often said
Who in this silent Grave is laid.
Elnathan Wight 1715-1761
For five years after Mr. Wight's death the church had no pastor.
"Oct 28 1762 the Baptist Church in Bellingham Regularly met together and voted to send Ebenezer Holbrook up to the Jersey to see if said Holbrook can git a minister to be with us to Preach the Gospel with us in Bellingham." Mr. James Mellen was called, but he declined, and the second pastor was Noah Alden, the great grandson of John Alden, the Pilgrim of Plymouth. The Pilgrim's grandson, John of Middleboro, had thirteen children, of whom Noah was the youngest. John's will in 1730 disposed of a large estate of twenty-eight hundred and ninety-three pounds, and it says: "And my will is that my son Noah be brought up in learning at the col- ledge." The little boy was then five years old, and his mother died only two years later. His father's liberal plan was not realized, for with both parents gone the property disappeared too, and he could not go to college.
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HISTORY OF BELLINGHAM
He was fond of study, and said he would rather have the expected education than his father's house full of silver and gold, but he had to leave school and live with a brother-in-law and then with other relatives. When fourteen years old he chose a guardian with whom he lived two years, but thinking himself abused, he left him and shifted for himself.
As young as eighteen years old he thought of becom- ing a preacher, but he gave it up, for his lack of education and of friends to advise him, and he married at twenty. Both he and his wife joined the Congregational Church at Middleboro. At twenty-four he moved to Stafford, Connecticut, and bought a farm, and four years later he became a Baptist. His quickened interest in religion revived his feeling that it was his duty to preach, and he was ordained there in 1755 at thirty years of age, where he preached for ten years, till the people were unable to support him. After a stay at another small town, he came to Bellingham in 1766, where he ended his days. The church promised such support as they could give, but no definite amount. The Congregational party in town probably had some hope of their own revival, as their petition in 1764 suggests, and were rather jealous of the Baptists. They are said to have begun a violent oppo- sition to Mr. Alden at first, but he overcame it entirely, and became highly respected as the first citizen of the town in public affairs.
In 1767 an association of Baptist churches in New England was formed, but they were so afraid of the tyranny of authority that only four churches joined it, of which this was one. The others were at Haverhill, Middleborough and Warren, Rhode Island. Each one was a center for a considerable region, and the pastors at Middleborough and Bellingham were their leaders in a
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THE BAPTIST CHURCH, 1736-1819
long struggle for religious freedom. Benedict's "History of the Baptists " says: "Bellingham was for many years the favorite resort of the few Baptist ministers in the country." The members of a Baptist church in Boston were not taxed to support any other, and the people of the other towns wanted the same right.
"Mar 24 1774 Voted First we do believe the apostels did not alow the Sisters To examine or ask questions publicly in the church of those that are come to joyne the Church Neither to be called upon by the Church to know whether they Are Satisfied with them that are received by the Church Seconly We believe that Elder Noah Alden holding that gospel invitashions were not to be aplied to sinners in the carricter of sinners as such is agreable to the form of sound words and not corrupt as has Ben alidged."
In 1773 Elhanan Winchester 1751-1787 joined the Bellingham Church. He was the son of a farmer of Brookline, the oldest of fifteen children, a youthful prod- igy at books. He married at nineteen and joined the Congregational Church, but soon after he was immersed and joined a "New Light " Baptist Church at Canterbury, Connecticut. The next spring he began to preach with great success, and started a church of that belief at Rehoboth, with about seventy members. Within a year he changed his view to close communion, and his own church excluded him. Then he came to Mr. Alden and joined this church. A council met to ordain him, but they were not satisfied in regard to his theological views, and refused to do it. He met with success as a traveling preacher, however, and was settled for some time in South Carolina. Later, while settled in Philadelphia, he became a Universalist, and no preacher of that denomination ever had a greater reputation. He preached in England six
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years, and even in France, and ended his life in Hartford. Connecticut. One library has about thirty sermons and other books of his.
The next year after Mr. Winchester, another famous preacher joined this church, John Leland, 1754-1841. He was born at Grafton of Congregational parents, and had only a common school education. When he was twenty-one years old his father's house contained only three books, the Bible, "Pilgrim's Progress," and Doddridge's "Religion in the Soul." He was baptized with seven others at Northbridge by Mr. Alden. One day he was present at a meeting where the expected preacher did not appear, and he found himself talking freely for a half hour. He then began to preach where he was invited. Within a year after joining the Bellingham church he was licensed to preach, and served poor churches in Virginia and neighboring states, which could not support a settled pastor. He traveled as far north as Philadelphia, and in 1788 he baptized three hundred persons.
When the new constitution for the United States was to be voted on, he was the candidate of those opposed to it in his county in Virginia, and his opponent was the future President Madison. Madison explained the case to him so satisfactorily that he announced publicly that he should vote himself for Madison at that election. The decision was very uncertain, and if Virginia had voted No, the constitution would have been lost, and the new nation would have been in great peril at the very start. A eulo- gist of Madison wrote that a Baptist minister named Leland deserved the credit of saving the constitution.
Mr. Leland baptized seven hundred persons in Vir- ginia, and in 1791 he returned to Massachusetts to live. Like many of the Baptist preachers who opposed the State Church of Massachusetts, he was a Democrat in
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THE BAPTIST CHURCH, 1736-1819
politics, and in 1801 he carried a cheese of one thousand four hundred fifty pounds, made of one day's milk in his town of Cheshire, Massachusetts, to President Jefferson "as a peppercorn of their esteem" for the new President, and he preached along the journey both ways.
Most Baptist churches were too small and poor to own buildings, and their preachers had to use school- houses, taverns, and dwelling houses. A Congregation- alist once declared to a Baptist that John Leland could not preach so well unless he committed his sermons to memory beforehand, and offered him the use of a Congregational building if he would use a text given him on the spot. The offer was accepted, and when he read the text aloud in the pulpit it was: "And Balaam saddled his ass." He remarked that it could hardly have been more appropri- ate: Balaam the unrighteous prophet represented the oppressive Congregational Church, the ass the patient endurers of its oppression, the Baptists, and the saddle the unjust exaction of taxes from the oppressed denom- inations. The sermon was a great Baptist success.
The Governor of Massachusetts visited Mr. Leland when he was eighty-five years old and his wife eighty-three, and they lived happily by themselves. All their thirteen children had other homes, and there had not yet been a death in the family. He was a man of tall, commanding figure, with many eccentricities, widely known for his shrewdness and his great interest in politics. He out- grew his inclination for doctrinal controversy after his early years of preaching, but he liked to tell how when the town minister came to his house to baptize him in his early childhood, he ran away, fell down, and got a bloody nose, but the hired girl caught him, and he had to submit. He remarked that little saints generally offered all the resistance in their power to this Congregational sacrament.
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HISTORY OF BELLINGHAM
In 1782 the Bellingham church bought a ten-acre wood lot for the use of the minister with money given partly by legacies of Eleazer Hayward and Brother Hill of Sherborn.
In 1785 the church was joined by Aaron Leland, 1761 to 1833, in a time of revival, and he was soon after licensed to preach. He was called to serve a few people at Chester, Vermont, and after a short visit there, he returned to Bellingham to be ordained, and then settled in his new home. With nine other persons he formed the Baptist Church there in 1789, which grew fast, especially in a revival in 1799. In 1803 four other churches were set off from this one, reducing its members from two hundred and fifty-three to seventy-nine, and he started others in the territory near by. He had only a common-school educa- tion, and always worked without a fixed salary. Besides preaching, he served in the legislature, as speaker, coun- cillor, and lieutenant-governor, for twenty-one years in all; in 1828 he declined a nomination for governor, not considering the office compatible with his profession as a preacher. He was a Jeffersonian Democrat.
Mr. Alden's labors reached beyond his own church and town. He preached abundantly to vacant congre- gations, and where neighborhoods invited him. He was a member of the Massachusetts convention to form the Constitution, and was the leader of the friends of religious liberty in that body. He was also one of the convention to ratify the new Constitution of the United States. He preached till late in 1796, even after a stroke of paralysis, and died the next year. He was a short man, and grew fat in later life. He was friendly and sociable with every one in town. His family contained eleven children, but some of them died young.
The hard times after the Revolution caused great dis-
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THE BAPTIST CHURCH, 1736-1819
tress, and something new appeared in country towns like this, namely beggars. The story is told that Mr. Alden met a "shack" one day, and gave him only a penny. When he threw it on the ground in anger, the minister showed him a silver dollar which he had been ready to give, but he did not then add it to the penny.
Noah then 1725-1797
Though the church always had some members in other towns, its whole number was never large. The greatest membership at one time was fifty-eight, about 1783. Ninety-three persons had been baptized by 1797, sixty-seven of them by Mr. Alden. His salary was usually thirty pounds or thirty-six pounds a year.
After his death the pulpit was supplied by Mr. Moffit, and then by Valentine W. Rathbun. When he had served six months, the male members were just equally divided in regard to him. Two or three councils were called, but they were unable to unite the people. He accepted a call to Bridgewater, and his opponents kept up independent religious services for a while in private houses. His supporters never acted as a church after his departure, but the Baptist Society provided occasional preaching in the old church. In this town as in others, the Baptist Religious Society was joined by those who were willing to support Baptist worship, whether members of that church or not. Sometimes Congregationalists belonged to it to protest against the state-supported church, and here when that church came to an end, many wished to maintain Baptist preach- ing in the town rather than none. The Baptist Society
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HISTORY OF BELLINGHAM
therefore was much larger than the church. With about forty-eight members the church seemed to die out in 1799.
One reason for this decline was the uncertain relation between the church and the town. In 1797 the town was asked to repair the Baptist meeting house, which it had used regularly for town meetings, but it voted not to do it and not to build another. Yet the next year it voted to call Mr. Rathbun for one year, to be supported by voluntary contributions. In 1799 a town committee on building a new meeting house reported, "It would be inexpedient to build a house for public worship," but as they "are not possessed of any building answerable to their dignity and suitable to assemble in from time to time, having for so many years used a house for public occasions barely by permission, we are therefore unanimously of opinion that it is the duty of the Town in support of their dignity and for their own accommodation and benefit to erect a building suitable to transact the public concerns in. A house which these circumstances will both admit and require will cost $1000." The site of the present town hall was recom- mended, and the Baptist Society might be allowed to assist in the work, but not to increase the town's investment beyond $1000.
At the annual town meeting of 1800 Laban Bates, Elisha Burr, John Chilson, Samuel Darling, Jr., Joseph Fairbanks, Seth Holbrook, Simeon Holbrook, Stephen Metcalf, Jr., John Scammell and Eliab Wight agreed to build such a town house forty-five by fifty feet, with twenty-five foot posts and a porch fourteen feet square, if the town would pay them $500 in April, 1801, and $500 in April, 1802, and grant them the right to sell pews in it for the use of the Religious Society, meaning the Baptist Society. These men were mostly Baptists, but probably
THE TOWN HALL, BUILT IN 1802
DIVH NAOA
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THE BAPTIST CHURCH, 1736-1819
not all. Eliab Wight advised Mr. Jones not to give the proposed land, because the majority might some time favor a different sect, but others of them were ready to build first and then vote the town's money for any preach- ing which the majority desired. Mr. Wight is also quoted as saying at this time: "We can have such preaching as we like; the house don't belong to any society; it belongs to the town." In September, 1802, the town voted to ask Dr. Thomas Baldwin, 1753-1825, of Boston to preach the dedication sermon, and to state to him that the building was not intended for use by only one denomination, as the sermon itself showed. He had been a travelling Baptist preacher in New Hamp- shire till 1790, when he came to Boston, where he became the leader of his denomination in the country. He edited the American Baptist Magazine till his death, and published many sermons and religious books. His dedication sermon here was printed and it contains the words: "These doors shall be cheerfully opened to the faithful ministers of the gospel of different denominations."
The ten builders paid the expenses of the dedication and proceeded to sell the pews at auction. They were all bought by Baptists, though any one else had a right to bid. The building was accepted by the town in December, 1802.
It was voted to procure Baptist preaching, and that any inhabitant who is a pew owner may invite a minister of good character to preach there, with the consent of the selectmen or the town's supply committee at the time, and that the selectmen should keep the key. The next year thirty men voted to raise $200 for preaching for one year and eighteen were opposed, but at the next meeting this vote was rescinded by thirty-six votes to twenty-four.
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HISTORY OF BELLINGHAM
Nathaniel Kendrick, 1777-1848, preached here about this time for nearly two years. He began to teach school and attend an academy at twenty years of age. He studied the question of baptism nine months before he decided to be immersed, in 1798. He then studied theology with several ministers, one of them Dr. Emmons of Franklin. He was licensed to preach at twenty-six, and began his work here. He received $4 and then $5 a week, and was invited to settle here at a salary of $260. He served several other small churches in New York State and Vermont. His mind worked slowly and his sermons were long and heavy, very strict in doctrine. He said that Dr. Emmons told him that a man who preached less than half an hour had better not have gone into the pulpit at all, and he who preached more than an hour had better never come out of it. In 1822 he became a professor of theology at Colgate University, Hamilton, New York, where he spent the rest of his life. He declined the presidency of it, saying that the only reason for his choice must have been that mentioned for Saul, because he was six feet three inches tall.
In 1805 the town voted to collect $100 for preaching and in 1806 $300, and to admit an organ, and to ask Mr. William Gammel, 1786-1827, to remain as preacher. He was born in Boston, and baptized in the First Baptist Church there in 1805. He studied with Mr. Williams of Wrentham, and so naturally supplied the pulpit here for about two years, but some persons disliked him greatly and in 1807 the town voted his dismissal when his time was up. He was ordained here in 1809 and went to Medfield, where he preached till 1823, when he went to Newport. He was a trustee of Brown University, and his son became a prominent professor there.
After Mr. Gammel's time there was no regular
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THE BAPTIST CHURCH, 1736-1819
preacher for a few years, but in 1811 the Baptist Society was incorporated by the Legislature with seventy-seven members, and the church was reorganized the next year by a council. It started now with twenty-four members. They recalled their former pastor Mr. Rathbun, who had spent twelve years successfully at Bridgewater, where ninety-six persons had joined his church. But his work here was destined to be short; he met with a fatal accident within a year. He was a modest and peaceful man, who kept his self-control in very trying times.
After a year's interval Stephen S. Nelson, 1772-1853, was the next pastor in 1814 for one year. His first set- tlement was at Hartford, Connecticut, where he was the only educated Baptist minister in the state, and a leader for religious liberty. It was 1818 before all sects became alike before the law there. From 1801 to 1804 he was principal of an academy at Sing Sing, N. Y. When it declined on account of the war with England, he came to Attleboro, a revival sprang up, and over one hundred and fifty persons joined his church. He then preached in Bellingham and other towns a few years, but moved to Amherst for the education of his children, and preached there to small churches as he found opportunity. Eleven persons were baptized by him here, there was unusual religious interest, and he was urged to stay, but refused.
In 1816 Rev. Abial Fisher came to this church, who led in the long legal contest for the town house, and built the present Baptist meeting house. He was born in Putney, Vt., in 1787, and graduated at Burlington Uni- versity at the age of twenty-five. He studied theology under Nathaniel Kendrick, who had preached in Belling- ham in 1808, and this was his first church. His stormy pastorate of thirteen years falls mainly in the town's second century, and is related in Chapter XI.
CHAPTER IX TOWN AFFAIRS, 1747-1819
IN 1747 school was to be kept for ten pounds at only "three housen."
In 1754 of two thousand seven hundred thirty-five slaves in Massachusetts, Bellingham had only two, one man and one woman, both of whom belonged to Dr. Corbett.
A military order of this year is as follows: "To Obadiah Adams Corl. these are to Require you Forth- with to warn all ye training Compain South of ye old Meeting House under my Command to meet at ye new meeting House in Bellingham on ye Six day of november next at eight of ye Clock in ye morning completely pro- vided with arms as ye Law Directs.
"And make Return of your warrant with your doing hereon unto myself at or before ye time of meeting. Dated at Bellingham aforesd october ye 26 1754.
"EBENEZER THAYER, Captain."
In the same year our neighbors on the north suffered from a strange sickness, of which no careful description or explanation has been found. In Medway between January 9 and February 9, 1754, nineteen persons died, and in the little town of Holliston between December 18 and January 30 there were fifty-three deaths. The distress was so great that the General Court voted twenty- six pounds, thirteen shillings, four pence to the Selectmen
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TOWN AFFAIRS, 1747-1819
"for the use and relief of such poor Indigent persons as may most Need the Same." There were no deaths in Bellingham at this time.
In 1755 it was voted not to assess those men that went first into his Majesty's service this year, but to assess those who went last. "N B further voted to stand by the assessors in assessing those who went last."
In 1756 the General Court received a petition from this town praying to be freed from its fine for not sending a representative, (which it had never done yet) by reason of its small number of inhabitants "by so many of their men going on the expedition to Crown Point." It was granted ten pounds to pay the fine. Elnathan Wight's diary says: "Sep 30 1755 Lieutenant Peter Thomson died returning from the army from Crown Point by Lake George."
In 1758 the town meeting adjourned for two hours "by reason of a lecture preached to the soldiers by their desire."
Here is a war letter from another of the Thomson family: "Schenectady July the 4 1758 Loveing brother these few lines to you and I would inform you that I am in a considerable good estate of helth at the preasant and I hope that you are so to and I would inform you that we had a very hard journey a coming throw the woods and I remember my duty to my mother and my love to all my friends and Aaron Holbrook is considerable well and we have very good pork and peas and we have sum rice and sum butter and we have had sum poor bread but now we have flour &c and I would inform you that one or more of our men in this rigement has got small Pox and we do expect to march from hear in a few days and then go to the great Carrin Place to Bild forts all most up to Oswago and no more for the present so
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HISTORY OF BELLINGHAM
I remane your Loving Brother Peter Thomson To Mr Joseph Thomson of Bellingham in nawengland."
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