USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Framingham > Memorial of the bi-centennial celebration of the incorporation of the town of Framingham, Massachusetts, June, 1900 > Part 5
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18
When in death's dark shade we grope, Seeking for the Christian's hope, May we see its heavenly ray Shining to the perfect day.
54
TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY
14. ADDRESS. "Recollections of some Prominent Men and Women of Framingham." By Rev. Henry G. Spaulding, D.D., Pastor of First Parish, 1868 - 72.
15. HYMN. "O where are Kings and Empires Now?"
16 ADDRESS. " A Seer's Vision of the Future." By Rev. Frederick E. Emrich, D.D., Pastor Grace Church, South Framingham.
17. PRAYER. By the Pastor of Plymouth Church.
18. HYMN. " My County 'Tis of Thee."- America. By Choir and Congregation.
19. BENEDICTION. By Rev. George J. Sanger of Danvers.
CHURCH LIFE IN FRAMINGHAM IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
BY JOSEPH PARKER WARREN.
Mr. Warren said, in part :
"It has been said, and it was a bold saying, that 'New England was a plantation of Religion, not a plantation of Trade,' and the early history of Framingham bears out this statement. The Town was incorporated in 1700, the first public provision for education was made in 1706, but the people began to build their meeting-house in 1698. The first insti- tution in the Town was a religious institution, a fact of which we have no cause to be ashamed. It was a very small begin- ning which the eighteen members who organized the church could make. Ten years of persistent effort were needed to complete their meeting-house - a little unpainted building, thirty feet by forty feet in size, afterward enlarged and made forty feet square. The internal arrangements would seem very curious at the present day. From the 'great doors ' in front, an aisle ran across to the pulpit. The people sat on benches, the men at the right of the pulpit, and the women
-
Plymouth Church. Erected 1830. Enlarged 1848 and again in 1869
55
PLYMOUTH CHURCH
at the left, while the aisle and the tithing-man kept them strictly separated."
The speaker described the curious custom of cutting doors and windows in the walls of the meeting-house, the length and nature of the services, the enforcement of order, and the singing. For the last the barbarous verses of the Bay Psalm Book were used, and were lined off by one of the deacons, until the custom was overthrown by a rebellion of the choir. The history of the early pastorates and church edifices was briefly traced, and the address concluded as follows :
" Such was church life in Framingham in the eighteenth century. Trivial, you may say in its details, unlovely some- times in its incidents, narrow in its conception of the king- dom of God. But we judge the religion of our fathers by the conditions of their age, and not of ours. They were called to face a stern and unrelenting life, and they looked for strength to a stern and unrelenting creed. Theirs was a hand to hand struggle for existence, with the wilderness. Why did they not become brutalized, like many other pion- eers ? Because their religion kept alive in them the capacity to live for the ideal, . . . 'Worldly gain,' said Rev. John Higginson, 'was not the end and design of the people of New England, and if any man make religion as twelve, and the world as thirteen, let such a man know he hath neither the spirit of a true New England man, nor of a sincere Christian.' "
PASTORS AND LAITY OF FRAMINGHAM AT THE BEGINNING OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
BY REV. ADDISON BALLARD, D.D.
I am asked to give my own personal "Recollections of the Religious Life of this, my Native Town." This is well put, for I do go back in memory to the time when not only certain inhabitants of the Town, but the Town itself may be said to have had a religious life ; when the Town was one organized religious community ; when in its organized capacity the Town recognized and emphasized the importance of religion
56
TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY
by providing for the erection of a house of worship and for the support of a minister ; when, in a sense, the church was the town and the town the church; when "whoever by residence or birth became an inhabitant of the town, was liable as such to be taxed for the support of preaching, and, if a voter, had a voice and a vote in town meeting upon ecclesiastical as upon other questions ; and when the principles of compulsory contribution, by taxation, for the support of public worship still remained in the constitution and statutes of the state."
No doubt it will, to many, seem almost incredible that such a virtual union of the church and state actually existed within the memory of any one now living ; but such, on the author- ity of Hon. James M. Barker of the Supreme Court, from whom I quote, "was the legal status until the year 1834;" and I remember distinctly my father speaking of the change of sentiment which had resulted in the abrogation of what used to be called " The Standing Order" in church organ- izations.
As illustrative of the ignorant and bigoted intolerance of those days, I remember the lessened esteem in which, even then, those Baptists were held who had so little regard to the real propriety of things as to leave the Old First Church and build a house of worship and have a minister of their own. Children quickly catch the spirit of their elders and I remember, as a boy, the feeling I had almost of disdain when, of a Sunday morning, I would see the members of a certain Baptist family, who had come up from some benighted quar- ter or other, somewhere in the north part of the Town, passing right by the old First Church and crossing the common on their way to what then seemed to me the almost out-of-the- world Baptist meeting-house; how the Methodists were looked down upon as just about nobody and nowhere; also the horror with which I, who had eagerly drank in "Fox's Book of Martyrs," watched shrinkingly the tall form of one solitary man who came and went, no one knew whence or whither, who used now and then to stride up and down through the little park, and who, we were told with bated breath, was a Roman Catholic!
57
PLYMOUTH CHURCH
The old white, two-storied Meeting-House I remember well - open belfry and graceful spire; solid, inch-thick iron lightning rod down which harmless bolts descended and up which daring youngsters climbed; the cracking of the old bell, and, after a fruitless attempt at restoration, the imposing ceremony with which the new two-thousand pounds "Hol- brook " was, by means of "shears," lifted reverently to its place; the semi-circular row of horse-sheds flanked at the south end by the little common-house wherein were kept the town's two brightly burnished dogs of war.
Now, as then, the church bell is a herald and harbinger of rest ; only that then it sounded out its call not only on Sun- day to rest from the toil of the week, but on every week day, at noon, from the work of the morning and at nine in the evening from the work of the day, and again it told the story of final rest when all the work and care and pain of life were ended forever. The funeral peal then gave added significance to life and solemnity to death and to the life beyond. Had a death occurred in any part of the Town the faint peal herald in the bell tower gave public notice of the fact.
The congregation rises clearly to view, the body of the house occupied by families sitting together, fathers at the aisle end, mothers at the far end of the pew, and children between, the tithing man with his staff of office, a decisive thump of which on the floor, and which resounded through the building, at once brought the unruly boy in the gallery to the attitude of attention; the square framed tin foot-stove, which it pleases me even now to think of having filled for my mother with live coals and dead ashes on top, from the huge box-stove standing in the southwest corner of the audience room.
With equal distinctness I remember the Pastor, Rev. Dr. David Kellogg. A boy of six or eight years could not be expected to take in much of his, no doubt, deeply-reasoned theology, but I do remember the solemnity of manner which inspired us children with a feeling toward him of reverence akin to awe. Dr. Kellogg's manner of praying in the pulpit was noteworthy, and, so far as my experience goes, was abso- lutely unique. As he began to pray he stood erect, but as he
58
TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY
proceeded, it was with a slowly swaying motion of the head and at the same time a downward inclination of it until, with the finishing of the long and stately sentence, it was bending over the communion table below. The erect posture was again assumed and in like manner the succeeding sentences of the prayer were uttered.
Of the singing in the old church I have most delightful recollections, - the large chorus choir led by Dr. Simon Whitney and Deborah Sanger, and for instrumental accom- paniment base-viol, double-bass, violin, flutes and flageolets ; no other church or orchestral music since heard by me to compare with that by which my childish heart seemed lifted out of the body and wafted upward in a kind of spiritual ecstasy. Also, the exquisite sweetness of the singing, the strains of which used to come floating across the " common" from the open windows of the old Academy Hall, where the choir would sometimes meet of a summer Sunday afternoon for rehearsal.
Dr. Kellogg was a conservative of the conservatives. Per- haps this trait of his character cannot be better illustrated than by the following incident :-
"There were plenty of New England ministers who kept on opposing the Total Abstinence movement long after Dr. Lyman Beecher, with the bugle-blast of his celebrated " Six Sermons " had set it fairly going. With some of the oppo- sers it was, they maintained, not so much a matter of physical appetite as it was of spiritual freedom.
Of this latter number was our old and universally revered Dr. David Kellogg. When urged again and again to help on the good cause by signing the pledge, the doctor took repeated occasion to let it be understood that he, for one, did not propose to give up his fourteenth of Romans "liberty of the Gospel " at the dictation of any persecuting set of reforming fanatics. And so, although the current of reform had begun to set in dead earnest against all anti-reformers, the vener- able pastor, with his three cornered hat, knee-breeches, black silk stockings, silver kneebuckles, shoebuckles and gold- headed cane, was still to be seen coming up on pleasant forenoons from the stately parsonage, half a mile away, to the
59
PLYMOUTH CHURCH
old "Eaton Tavern" in the public square, for his morning glass of brandy - the liquor dispensed to him over the bar being then pure and unadulterated.
But although for a long time thus indifferent to the grow- ing dissatisfaction among his people, he was at length induced to give ear to a committee of influential parishioners, who labored to show him the absolute necessity of his "falling into line," if he would longer keep the respect of his people or his pastoral influence over them.
" Very well," cried the doctor, now comprehending for the first time the real gravity of the situation, "very well, what is it that you want me to sign ?" When told that it was a pledge to abstain from all intoxicating liquors unless pres- cribed by a physician-"All right, gentlemen, he replied, "I'll sign it, but mind ye, I'll be my own physician ! "
And that was the way, as my father used to tell it to us boys, in which our dear old doctor solved for himself, at least, the knotty problem of harmonizing the principle of progress with the right of private judgment.
Of course I cannot but remember the split in the Old Parish, the withdrawing of the "Orthodox," as they were styled, and the forming of this, the Second or Plymouth Church. But even about that I had at the time a pleasant experience which many years after was deepened into most grateful recollection. My father continued his connection with the First Parish, my mother joined the Second Church and we children were allowed, without prejudice or special solicitation, to follow the bent each of his own mind. So far as I can recall the time, not a single word of even friendly discussion was ever spoken by my father or mother in the family about the division or about the differences in theolog- ical belief which caused it. The expectation I then had of entering Harvard College was probably the chief reason why I alone of the children, kept going with my father to the First or Unitarian Church. Rev. Artemus B. Muzzy was their first pastor, to whom, for his warm interest in the children of the congregation, I became tenderly attached. Young as I was, I taught with heart-felt devotion for my little pupils (we were all little together), a class in that Sunday School.
60
TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY
Failing to profit by the prudent example of my parents, I fell to urging the Unitarian views on my mother, but she would never gratify my fondness for disputation or ambition to carry a point. I used to read Unitarian tracts. Once I got hold of a tract entitled, "One Hundred Questions for Trinitarians to Answer." I charged my forensic rifle with some of those questions and went down stairs, from my study- chamber, to fire them off at mother. Mother was ironing, I remember. The irons were hot, and so was I. Mother was very peaceful, as it was her wont to be. In reply to those (as I eagerly believed) unanswerable questions, she said in her sweet way, " I don't know about those things, Addison ; I only know that Christ is a very precious Saviour to me."
If it were asked how the strong, deep, earnest Religious Life of those earlier days was nourished, in those days when the almost numberless modern accessories of church societies, leagues, clubs and associations, and of the manifold issues of the religious press, were unknown, the answer will prob- ably be found in the deeper reverence then felt for God's Day, God's House, God's Messengers and God's Word, in the almost universal attendance on the exercises of Public Worship, on the more general observance of Family Devo- tions and especially, perhaps I ought to say, on the more habitual resort, on the part of a greater number of professing Christians, to that most hallowed and heart-satisfying and heart-assuring of all places of Heavenly Communion - the Closet of Secret Prayer.
THE BEGINNINGS OF SUNDAY SCHOOLS IN FRAMINGHAM.
BY MR. CHARLES S. WHITMORE.
Mr. Whitmore said, in part :
In speaking of the early "history of Sunday Schools in Framingham," it is well to remember that at that time there were but two meeting-houses and but two churches in the Town, one building standing where the present First Parish house now does, and the other at Park's Corner, and that the first Sunday School was begun in the first named.
It is well known that the first beginning of such schools, was made in England in 1781, by one Robert Raikes, and
61
PLYMOUTH CHURCH
that the first effort did not embrace much religious instruction. What is more strictly termed secular education and church going habits, were only attempted. In 1782 the religious part was added.
The first School started in this part of this Country was at Bath, N.H., in 1815 or 1816. In the Summer of the year last named Miss Abigail Bent of this Town visited Bath and became interested in its Sabbath School work. Immediately on her return she began to interest others in the same work and got a few children together on Saturday afternoon for instruction. Very soon the Sunday School idea was adopted, only girls being gathered, holding their session in the Hall of the Old Brick Academy Building. The lessons were principally the questions and answers found in the old "Assembly's Shorter Catechism." The schools of the first years were held only from May to November on account of the cold weather.
The Catechism answers were committed to memory, as were Bible verses and Hymn verses, and a record was kept of the number of each so recited, and credit given therefor. At the end of each term, prizes of Bibles, or other books, were given to those who had showed by such recitations, the greatest diligence or the possession of the best memories. There were some remarkable feats of memorizing, as instan- ced by the credit given to one Nancy Hill, being for 1,048 verses of Scripture, 142 answers from the Catechism, and 558 stanzas of hymns ; and to Emily Conant, 2,018 answers in Cumming's questions, 223 verses Scripture, 491 hymns. Besides the Academy Hall, the old Town House, which stood on the grounds near where we are now gathered, was opened for Sunday School uses.
The School connected with the Baptist Church was opened in 1817 for six months in the year only, and for several years was placed under the care of three brethren. The plans of instruction were the same as before described. Its ses- sions were held in the Brick Schoolhouse adjacent to the meeting-house. After entering their new house of wor- ship at the Centre, its sessions were held through all the year.
62
TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY
Such were the beginnings, very easily recorded, but the promptings to such beginnings and persistence in them, seem to have been an outgrowth of a wonderful general revival of religious interest in this Town, and in other places, and none have ever doubted that the influence exerted by those early efforts had a marked effect on the people in elevating the general moral character of the whole community. Such was, indeed, the conviction of the generation succeeding that which first began the work.
RECOLLECTIONS OF SOME PROMINENT MEN AND WOMEN OF FRAMINGHAM.
BY REV. HENRY G. SPAULDING.
I have been asked to give some personal recollections of a few of the men and women of Framingham whom I knew a generation ago. I came here at a transition period in the history of the Town. The old order was changing, yielding place to new. Framingham was becoming a suburb of Bos- ton and offered many attractions as a country place of resi- dence. Some of the old farms had been bought by men who were generally spoken of as "gentlemen farmers"; while other estates passed into the possession of men doing business in the city. Along with these new comers who were begin- ning to identify themselves with the varied interests of the Town, were the older inhabitants, some of them of an ad- vanced age, solid and substantial citizens who by their good works in private and in public seemed to say to the world : The last of life is that for which the first was made.
It is not easy to classify the men of whom I am to speak. The New England Pilgrim stock was not only "pithed with hardihood "; it was also stamped with individuality. No two New Englanders were ever exactly alike; their being of New England lineage made it certain that they would be themselves and like nobody else. In my gallery of verbal pictures you will see more differences than resemblances among the portraits. If any of you miss familiar faces it
Rev. Josiah H. Temple
Rev. William Barry George Phipps
Hon. James W. Clark
Former Distinguished Citizens of Framingham
63
PLYMOUTH CHURCH
will be for the obvious reason that both my time and your patience have limits.
COL. MOSES EDGELL rises before my memory as a man of marked individuality. By all who knew him he was sure of being long remembered. Cautious and conservative he yet believed in progress and took a genuine interest in young people. Simply by the force of his character land the benef- icence of his life he became the first citizen of his town. I recall him as one whose old age was serene and bright, beautiful and free ; an age exempt from strife but not exempt from service. In my early manhood he taught me that Providence meant that a man's last years should be his best years; and he showed how the ripe experience, the sunny faith and the tested love of a good old man are among life's richest treasures, blessing him who has them and blessing even more all those who come within their influence.
Of another parishioner, Col. Edgell's friend and my own, MR. GEORGE PHIPPS, it is first to be said that certain peculiarities of speech and manner made him well known. But these peculiarities were not the real man and gave no hint of the nobility of his character in the strength and beauty of its inward fibre. He thoroughly accepted the Apostle's teaching that we are all members one of another ; and his continual acts of benevolence, his deeds of daily kindness, his wise and practical charities were prompted by this conviction. He was also a man of a spotless integrity of character. He could not betray a trust. In handling other men's gold he let not so much as a grain of its dust cleave to his fingers. His upright and downright honesty was such a shining virtue that it helped men to understand just what the poets meant when they said that " An honest man 's the noblest work of God." "He put on righteous- ness and it clothed him, and his justice was as a robe and a diadem." The "Phipps' Poor Fund," and the bronze "Soldier " on the grounds of your Memorial Library will long keep this good man's memory green; even as in your library and in your beautiful cemetery the name of Col. Edgell will endure, written in the books your children's children will read and in the flowers that will blossom on their multiplying graves.
64
TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY
Of the REV. DR. ARTHUR S. TRAIN, who was pastor of the First Baptist Church when I was minister of the First Parish, I wish I could give such recollections as to bring him vividly before your minds. But that was not a time when ministers of different denominations associated as freely with one another as they do today. I recall his fine presence, his ripe culture, his varied accomplishments and his interest in the welfare of the Town. We worked together as members of the Lyceum Committee ; and, as one result of these labors, Framingham had the privilege of hearing, for a series of years, some of the best platform speakers and most eloquent orators of the country. But Dr. Train's best work was done for his parish. Of his ministry he could say: "This one thing have I done." As preacher and pastor he left to his people the rich legacy of his faithful and consecrated service.
Looking for a moment longer beyond my former parish I recall the kindliness, the geniality, the cordial friendliness of MR. JAMES W. CLARK, a man always actively interested in town affairs, holding many positions of trust and honor.
When I came to Framingham the State Normal School enjoyed the distinction of having for its Principal the first woman ever appointed in Massachusetts to such an office, MISS ANNIE E. JOHNSON. She followed a family of teachers, the Bigelows, whose memory is still cherished here. In strength of character, in breadth of culture and in that power of personality which tells for so much in the work of a teacher, Miss Johnson had few superiors. She inspired her pupils to do their utmost best; and their grateful testimony is, that, for the things which are of most value in education, they owe to her a debt they can never repay.
This reference to the Normal School leads me to speak next of one of my oldest parishioners, who took a special interest in the school, MR. I. SUMNER WHEELER. He was a man given to hospitality ; and, in the last part of his life, I think he enjoyed no event of the year more keenly than the reception he used to give at his own home to visitors who came here to the graduating exercises of the Normal School. This interest grew out of his general interest in matters pertaining to the higher education. A graduate of Harvard,
65
PLYMOUTH CHURCH
he was a loyal loving son of his college. He was equally loyal to his church and his town. Such men, who exemplify the graces of a liberal culture, are an ornament to any community.
One of the founders of the Framingham Town Library was MR. CHARLES UPHAM, a gentleman of the old school and a fine example of that kind of man who is always quietly efficient ; doing good without making any fuss about it. The same praise may be given to Mrs. Upham and also to Mrs. Sumner Wheeler. These ladies were two of a band of faithful women who had been untiring in their labors in behalf of our Union Soldiers. During my residence here there occurred the great fire in Chicago ; and the women who before had worked for the Framingham soldiers now worked with equal zeal and intelligence for the Chicago sufferers. I happened to be put in charge of this relief work; and the labor added to an unusual pressure of parish work obliged me to give myself, what ministers are said to be always waiting for and always ready to take, a trip to Europe. An incident which I am glad to recall in this connection is the prompt subscription of nearly a thousand dollars made by gentlemen, mostly of my own parish, in aid of those who were suffering in Chicago. Among the first telegrams received in the burnt city after communication with the East had been reopened, was the despatch I had the honor of sending to Rev. Robert Collyer telling him that Framingham gave a thousand dollars to the Chicago relief fund. The instance was typical of the generosity of Framingham people, who have always known how to do a good thing when they saw a good thing to be done.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.