USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Salem > The first centenary of the North church and society, in Salem, Massachusetts > Part 2
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I am impressed with the honor and fairness which charac- terized these proceedings. It is rarely that a church falling into division hopeless of cure, and coming to be cut in very halves, still bears itself with a patience and generosity such as were here exhibited; or that a seceding body carries its difficult purpose through with so little record of passion and acrimony, so much of honorable feeling.
This general maintenance of a spirit of good-will was no doubt aided much by the relationship existing between two of the three men about whom these movements and interests
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principally centred : the crippled father, pastor of the First Church, fully possessing the love and respect of both sides, and his son, the warm-hearted young man, minister-elect of the church that was to be, who had so gained the affection of those who adhered to him, that they were willing to encounter the costs and risks of founding a new church (and that, be it remembered, when the times were troubled and the future uncertain) as well as to take the pangs of breaking old bonds, numerous, close and sacred, rather than forego the ministrations of the man they had chosen.
As a proof of the interest taken by the senior pastor of the First Church in the new enterprise that made his son the shepherd of half the flock he had himself lately tended, and as showing how the joint possession, as it were, of the father, by the two churches, and their common love and veneration for him, would tend to bridge the chasm naturally widening between them, it may be mentioned that Rev. Mr. Barnard, senior, invalid as he was, copied the entire body of the records of the First Church into the volume which was to contain the records of the North Church; so that we have the records of the First Church complete, as introductory to our own, written out fairly and legibly by the elder Barnard's own hand, making one hundred and sixty-seven closely written foolscap pages.
I shall find no better place than this, though a little in anticipation of the natural progress of my narrative, to tell how well justified was the judgment of either party in the matter at issue, and how fully the ancient communion was before long restored between them, and how faithfully it was maintained afterwards.
Mr. Dunbar proved himself the well-furnished and com-
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petent minister that his supporters took him to be; while the long and useful pastorate of Thomas Barnard, junior, in the North Church, showed that the devotion with which he had inspired his early friends was no ephemeral enthusiasm ; it became a steady and life-long esteem founded upon the substantial qualities of personal worth.
When Mr. Barnard (of the North Church) gave the Hand of Fellowship to Mr. Dunbar's successor, Mr. John Prince, in 1779, the act was made more than usually graceful and cordial by his reference to the man who had been the pre- ferred and successful candidate for the place, which it had once been hoped that he might himself fill. He mentions him as the "pastor uncommonly dear" to his people, and adds : "I feel peculiarly happy this day, when I consider , that this event unites our churches together, which were originally of the same body, in every christian office of love and friendship." And he went home to record upon the church book : "Every lover of peace rejoiced heartily on this occasion, for it settled a long difference which had sub- sisted between them, and united them in the bonds of friendship."
The ministers of these two churches, Thomas Barnard and John Prince, were from that day fast friends. Their friendship endured unbroken for a period of thirty-five years, till the minister of the First Church came to comfort the people of the North, suddenly bereaved, by death, of their beloved minister; when he betrayed, in word and manner, that his own sense of loss was scarcely less, if less, than that of the most attached parishioners of his friend. They two had been of one mind and one heart. Both liberal, practical, valuing personal character and honest devotion to
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truth above the formulated doctrines of church creeds, they had been sincere fellow-laborers in the christian church, giving and receiving sympathy in severe personal trials, which had come to each in turn. The friendship which found expression in the sermon preached by Dr. Prince, after the death of Dr. Barnard, tender in feeling, and warm with discriminating praise, was a fit and beautiful ripening into expression of that fraternal spirit which had at no time been fatally ruptured between the First and North Churches, and was now cemented more closely than ever .*
On the 14th of February, 1772, a piece of land on the corner of North and Lynde streets, where the dwelling house of the Hon. Otis P. Lord now stands, was bought for a meeting house lot, in anticipation of the wants of the future society. ยก There were forty-two associates in the pur- chase, and John Nutting, who sold the land, made the forty-third proprietor. On the 3d of March following, the proprietors of this land met at the Town Hall, in obe- dience to a warrant issued by Peter Frye, Esq., a Justice of the Peace, and served by Clark Gayton Pickman, one of the proprietors, and proceeded to an organization. This was, in fact, the legal institution of the society known as The Proprietors of the North Meeting House, by popular designation "the North Society," although the major part
* In a note, Dr. Prince records the following interesting particulars :- " It is a singular concurrence in our walks of life, and one that has some effect upon the social feelings, that we were educated at the same university, and after we graduated kept the same schools in the same town; studied divinity with the same clergyman; settled in the ministry in the same town; the same person preached our ordination sermons; and we received honorary degrees from the same university."
t On the western line, I am told by one of our most indefatigable and trustworthy antiquarians, Wm. P. Upham, Esq., of what was early known as Sharpe's Training Field.
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of those who constituted its membership were still mem- bers of the First Church or Parish.
The first vote after organization was "that the land aforesaid be improved by erecting thereon a meeting house for the public worshipping of God, for the use of the pro- prietors." The second : "That William Browne, Edward Augustus Holyoke, Joseph Blaney and Samuel Curwen, Esqs., and Messrs. John Felt, and Richard Ward, and Clark Gayton Pickman, be a committee for the building of said meeting house," and "the question being put whether the proprietors would give any particular directions to the com- mittee about the building said house-it passed in the negative :" an instance of rare and commendable absti- nence from the exercise of that careful scrutiny so natural to the New England mind, which trusts nothing to official agents, loves to see to everything for itself, not neglecting to inspect, supervise and advise concerning every minute detail, however unfamiliar, of which the pages of early records, both ecclesiastical and municipal, bear such ample testimony.
On the 11th of May the laying of the foundation for the new meeting house was begun. It was first opened for public worship on Sunday, Aug. 23, 1772, though not yet nearly completed. After occupying it three Sundays the proprietors determined to add side-galleries, which had not been originally contemplated in the plan of the building committee, and which added thirty-eight pews to the one hundred and one which took up the space upon the lower floor.
Early in October, the bell, which had been ordered from London, arrived. On the 19th of October the spire was
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raised. It was not till the early part of the following year, however, that the house was considered finished, and that the pews were sold; nearly five months after the society began to meet in it.
This was called "the large new meeting house" in the papers of that time. From the frequency with which it was asked for for civic celebrations on the 4th of July, and for other public days, it is inferred that it must have been - and indeed it is well remembered by many of you to have been- one of the most spacious and commodious churches of the town. Its precise dimensions we do not find : we should probably have had them among the records, to the size of every joist, if the proprietors had not given everything in such a trusting manner to that Building Committee. Its one hundred and one pews on the lower floor were square and roomy, and four broad aisles ran lengthwise, north and south, giving eight tiers of pews in width. Its tower end, the front, was upon Lynde street, the tower itself rising from the ground, and containing the vestibule to the church on the first floor, and the entrance to the organ and singing gallery on the second floor. Originally, it was surmounted by a spire ; but this being regarded as insecure some twenty years after, and requiring frequent and costly repairs, it was taken down in 1796, and replaced by a simple cupola, or dome, covering the belfry, the form in which it is remembered by those who look back thirty-eight years. The outside entrances were five ; three into the tower on its north, east and west sides, and two on the southern end of the main building, near the corners. One broad entrance led from the porch in the tower to the interior of the house. There was no side entrance to the body of the building. The pulpit
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was on the southern end. A carriage-way passed around on the eastern and southern sides, the sides not lying on the broader streets. That first meeting house continued to be used as a house of worship till this house was built, in 1836. It was afterwards appropriated to manufacturing and other purposes for a while, and after some years was taken down .*
The corner-stone of this church building was laid May 16, 1835 (sixty-three years, almost to a day, from the laying of the foundation of the first building). It was dedi- cated June 22, 1836. Its interior, at first finished very plain and without ornament, was renewed and brought into its present tasteful form, under the cultivated eye and expe- rienced direction of that lover of the beautiful, the late Francis Peabody, Esq., in 1847. The plat of ground on which it stands is bounded on its eastern side by land which was once in possession of Roger Williams : his homestead.
In the earlier periods of New England Congregationalism, the church as distinct from the assembly of worshippers-or the parish, or town, as the case might be -took the lead in all matters pertaining to public worship, the call and settle- ment of pastors, the determination of the conditions of communion, the use of ordinances, and, indeed, pretty much everything but the raising and appropriation of money.
The parish, for the most part, limited itself in quiet times to concurrence in the doings of the church, in all matters in which they had a common interest ; though the concurrence
* No picture of it has been preserved; but a recent attempt to present a view of its front has been made, and is generally regarded by those who remember its appearance, as a faithful likeness. The drawing of which the cut in the appendix is a copy, now in possession of the Essex Institute, was executed by Dr. George A. Perkins, partly from memory and partly from a sketch made when the church was standing.
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was no mere form, as repeated instances of refusal to concur in church action on the part of parishes sufficiently attest. It was a voluntary thing: this surrender of precedence. Usage alone gave it authority. Moreover, the congregation easily made its wishes known through those who, were members of both bodies, and often took the initiative in accomplishing its objects by prompting the church to act, rather than by asserting absolutely its own coequal power, or even the power of veto. The perfect independency of each congregation in determining its own internal order, and managing its own affairs, was the cardinal and distinctive principle of Congregationalism.
This principle, as such, knows nothing of that division, or distinction, which has usually existed within the congregation, into two bodies : of church and society. Nor, where such two bodies exist, does it settle their relations to each other. But the usage has been, and more especially in former times, as I said, to allow the church not only to organize itself, and conduct its affairs in its own way, but to have habitual prece- dence, where the two had a joint interest or joint obligations. The liability of jar or opposition between them was reduced to a remote probability, by the fact that the leaders in both society and church were for the most part the same persons. The church, it will be seen, was an institution relatively of much more power and importance a hundred years ago than now. It was recognized as the heart of the religious organism, and the seat of its life.
Not unnaturally, therefore, the organization of the North Church occupies a more prominent place, and its doings are more minutely detailed upon the records of our early history, than the organization and proceedings of the society itself. .
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On the 16th of May, 1772, the First Church voted to grant the request of the fifty-two brethren and sisters, who asked a dismission that they might become a church con- nected with this society.
On the 19th of July, the day we commemorate, these fifty-two met at the house of the venerable Col. Benjamin Pickman, senior, for organization. Col. Pickman lived in the house now standing on Essex street, opposite to St. Peter street, built by himself, and at the present time owned by Mrs. Le Masters ; its upper windows may still be seen rising above the row of one-story shops extending along its front ; it was one of the most elegant houses of the town.
The Rev. Dr. Whittaker of the Third Church-afterwards "the Tabernacle"-a noted preacher, then at the zenith of a not long enduring popularity, attended and offered prayer. The church adopted the covenant of the First Church : the same to which, as members of the First Church, they had before subscribed; "hereby," they say, "recognizing and renewing the substance of the First Covenant entered into by our pious ancestors at their first founding a church in New England in this town, Aug. 6, 1629, professing ourselves, nevertheless, to be in charity with all men who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity and truth." This covenant was a covenant, not a creed, nor containing a creed. It simply bound them to walk together in all the ways of God, "as he is pleased to reveal himself unto us in his Blessed Word of truth."
I do not stop to inquire whether they could be sure that they had the very covenant of Aug. 6, 1629, letter for letter. They believed they had the same, as, no doubt,
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they had substantially ; as such they revered and retained it, adding only their broad profession of charity with all lovers of the Lord Jesus Christ.
To their acceptance of this elder covenant they add somewhat, to be sure, but rather in the nature of reiteration of a few of its obligations, than as adding new ones. While it is true, at the same time, that, incidentally, they show that they believed in God, as "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ;" in "the Holy Scriptures contained in the old and new testaments," "taking them for our [their ] sole and suffi- cient rule of faith and practice ;" and that they relied "upon the atonement purchased by the blood of the great Mediator for the pardon of our [their] manifold sins." Theirs was the faith of their time.
Within the next few months, and before the ordination of the minister, from twenty to thirty more members had been admitted to the church, making a membership of seventy-five to eighty persons.
At a meeting held on the 20th of August (1772), they voted that this should be called the North Church. The same day Thomas Barnard, junior, was formally chosen its pastor. John Nutting, who had held the same office for thirty-five years in the First Church, and Joshua Ward, who for nearly twenty years had been a deacon of that church, were chosen ruling elders, and Samuel Holman and James Gould, deacons. It was voted that the Lord's Supper should be administered on the last Sunday of every month.
The church and society were now fully organized. The meeting house was so far advanced that it was to be used for public worship on the next Sunday, though it required
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extemporized seats and other conveniences for the present. The minister had been unanimously chosen, and was their preacher already, though not to be ordained till the house should be finished. From August to the next January, the time of his ordination, Mr. Barnard preached regularly, and all the usual church rites were duly observed .* 1
The ordination of Mr. Barnard, which took place on the 13th of January, 1773, crowned with fruition the hopes of those who for two and a half years had been so steadily seeking his settlement as their minister; first, if it were possible, in the old church of their fathers ; if not possible there, in a new one.
A little scene which occurred at the ordination must have touched all hearts.
Mr. Barnard's paralytic father, the senior pastor of the First Church, was present and when Rev. Mr. Diman of the East Church, who gave the Hand of Fellowship, had . first welcomed the newly gathered church, and then its young pastor, to the communion of the neighboring churches, he turned to the elder Barnard, saying : "Reverend sir, we heartily congratulate you on the happy settlement of your son. How great is God's goodness ! How doth he bring good out of evil, and turn afflictions into blessings ! The uncommon disorder with which you have been visited and
* The first child of whose baptism in the North Church a record is found was Abigail, daughter of John Holman, presented August 30, 1772, the second Sunday on which the church was occupied. A month later, September 27th, there was a baptism of ten children, nine girls and one boy, which was probably the origin of the statement found in the Salem Gazette of October 27, 1772, that "Last Sunday (i. e. Oct. 25th), were baptized in the new Congregational Church in this town, ten infants, all females." Mr. William Gavet, for many years sexton of the church, whose death took place in January, 1856, at the age of 89, supposed himself to have been the first child baptized in the North Society ; but in this, as we have seen, he was mistaken. He, together with other children of his father, Jonathan Gavet, was baptized in January, 1773.
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taken off from your public labors was very grievous ; but it has made way for the settlement of your son, thus near you, to comfort and cherish you in your declining age, and under your many infirmities ; which is a very great favor of Providence to you. . And then there is this happy circumstance attending your son's settlement, that all his hearers are his friends who hear him with pleasure, and therefore with candor; which must also give him pleasure and likewise freedom in speaking, which is a favor that but few enjoy. And they are not only his friends but yours. They highly esteem you in love, as well as him, for your work's sake. And they have submitted to many difficulties and been at great expense to bring about this settlement. The Lord bless them and abundantly reward them for their kindness to him and to you. We bless God, dear sir, . . that you have the great comfort and satisfaction of seeing the public ministry, which you quitted with so much reluctance, carried on by your son, to the good accept- ance and, we think, to the spiritual instruction and edifica- tion, of so many of your former hearers. As we condoled with you in your trouble, so we now heartily rejoice with you in this goodness of God to you."
A notice of the ordination, in the "Salem Gazette" of the week following, ends with the comprehensive remark that "The whole was carried on with propriety, elegance and solemnity. Genteel entertainments were provided in vari- ous parts of the town for the council, ministers, governors and students of Harvard College and all the company that were present at the ordination."*
* The sermon was preached by Rev. Mr. Williams of Bradford, afterwards Pro- fessor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in Harvard College, with whom Mr.
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Mr. Barnard was to receive a settlement of sixty-six pounds, thirteen shillings and four pence ; thirty pounds a year were to be paid to him besides, unless the proprietors should furnish him with a suitable house, in which case the payment of this sum should cease ; and his "stated salary" was to be one hundred and thirty-three pounds, six shillings and eight pence ; "but in case he be taken off his labor, and the propriety be obliged to supply the pulpit, then the salary" was to be "reduced to one hundred and six pounds, thirteen shillings and four pence." And further he was to receive "all the money that is contributed unmarked."
This unmarked money, of which frequent mention is found in the records, is explained by the custom which prevailed for many years of collecting the taxes for pews in the form, first of a weekly, then of a monthly and finally a quarterly collection taken in church, the sum being wrapped in paper and marked with the number of the pew, or the name of the occupant, or both ; a regular account being kept with each tax-payer and pew, and the account adjusted at the end of the year. If it fell short, the deficiency was to be made up. If a surplus had been contributed, which was not at all unusual, it was credited on the next year's account. And as sometimes a stranger, or an occupant of a pew who was not a tax-payer, desired to contribute some- thing, such sums were put in with no name or mark upon them. They were "the unmarked money," and were the minister's perquisite. Usually they amounted to very little ;
Barnard had pursued his professional studies. The prayer of ordination and charge were by Rev. Edward Barnard of Haverhill, an uncle of the minister elect and brother of the senior pastor of the First Church. The first prayer was offered by Rev. Mr. Tucker of Newbury, who had succeeded Rev. Thomas Barnard, senior, in the ministry at Newbury; the other prayer by Rev. Mr. Swain of Wenham.
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sometimes a few cents ; sometimes a dollar or more; not unfrequently nothing. The amount for one whole year (1801) was $2.24; another year (1802), $3.47.
This society appears to have had no period of weak infancy. It was strong, confident and assured of its sta- bility from the beginning. It boldly built a large meeting house, and sold nearly three-fourths of its one hundred and forty pews without difficulty and at once. Men of wealth sustained it with determination, and it had such credit from the start as to draw the doubting and hesitating to its support.
It had better than financial strength. It was instituted under the lead of sagacious and earnest men, who had had their character and capacity well tried in other positions of trust and honor. There were good men and women of their number, held in esteem alike for their probity and their charity. Among these names are many identified with the most honorable history of the town for the period ; some of them known far beyond the limits of the town. The vener- able Col. Benjamin Pickman, the first of four in lineal order who bore the same name and title, reputed to be, with a single exception, more extensively engaged in commerce than any other man in the province ; a Judge of the Com- mon Pleas ; member of the Provincial Council ; eminent for patriotic services and public spirit, such as to obtain public recognition and a handsome and valuable testimonial from the legislative assembly, while he was no less beloved for his private virtues ; now drawing towards the close of a long, useful and generous life ;- his sons, Col. Benjamin Pickman, junior, William Pickman and Clark Gayton Pick- man, all successful merchants and much respected citizens,
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whose names were familiar to an earlier generation, and are not yet forgotten in this community ;- Col. William Browne, descended from a distinguished ancestry, well-educated, wealthy, benevolent and at the time a great favorite with the people ; a little later a Judge of the Superior Court, and for a short time of the Supreme Bench, by executive appointment, though later still a loyalist and refugee ;* -- Dr. Edward A. Holyoke, the widely-known and skilful
* Judge Browne was a descendant in direct line from the Samuel and the two Wil- liam Brownes, who, with Benjamin, brother of the second William, were benefactors of Harvard College, and founders of the Browne scholarship in that institution. The Brownes were liberal patrons of good learning in the schools of Salem, as well as in the college at Cambridge.
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