USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Essex > Two centuries of church history : celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the organization of the Congregational church & parish in Essex, Mass., August 19-22, 1883 > Part 8
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"4. Resolved: That we will yield such Obedience to the commands of the Officers that shall be chosen and shall accept of the choice, as the Pro- vincial Laws respecting the Militia require; and submit to such punish- ments, in case of Delinquency in us, as the said Laws also require."
After the Lexington and Concord fight we find Mr. Cleaveland at Watertown, June I, to tender to the leaders
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such services as he could render, and the next month acting as chaplain of Col. Little's regiment, the 17th Foot, Conti- nental army (enlisted July 1), with his quarters in Hollis Hall, one of the College buildings at Cambridge ; his youngest son, a boy of sixteen, as his attendant and his three other sons and his two brothers (one a Colonel) also among the host gathered about Boston. A few of his letters of this time are extant.
Aug. 28, he writes to Dr. N. Daggett, President of Yale College :
"An unnatural war! We hear its confused noises and see garments rolled in blood. Yesterday the cannon roared all day long from both sides. Two of our men killed. one wounded. We killed some of the enemy; sunk one of their floating batteries and disabled another. Our people in high spirits and extremely impatient to be at the enemy. This moment the drums are beating an alarm. It is said the enemy are coming out. I wish they would, but doubt about their having courage to leave their lines to attempt to force ours."
Obliged to return to his parochial duties, he writes, Nov. 28, 1775, from Chebacco to his three sons, John, Parker and Ebenezer, who were then in the Army :
" I hope you are all well. Our love is to you all; wish you to write and let me know what is passing in the army, and your circumstances. I don't know when I shall come again to the army. The weather is such that I cannot perform the duties of a chaplain abroad, if I was present. It is somewhat likely I shall come week after next."
Dec. 8, he writes that he is going to camp as soon as his surtout is made.
Dec. 10, 1775. To his son John, he writes :
"I suppose your campaign is now expired and your face set homeward. But I hope you will soon return to the help of the Lord against the mighty. God has done great things for us by sea and by land, since we have en- gaged in defence of our rights; and though the wickedness of the army is great, I hope and believe that God will plead our cause ; but the wicked he will punish for their wickedness. The Lord keep me, my brother, and our sons from having any fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness.
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but that we rather reprove them and be made instrumental of procuring temporal salvation.for the land, and be made subjects ourselves of eternal salvation."
To Col. Phinney he writes :
" Chebacco, Dec. 13, 1775. Dear Sir. By reason of the coldness of the weather being such that I could not perform Divine service abroad in the open air at camp, I have been at home for some time. I shall come to camp again shortly, but don't expect to tarry in winter season, for the above mentioned reason." "It grieves me that there is so much profaneness in our army. I should think officers might do much to suppress it, and trust . there is not so much in your regiment as in those where some of the chief officers don't set the best example before their men, relative to it; yet I hope God will appear for us, ere the spring comes."
- In the autumn of 1776 when the militia were called out to protect the frontiers of Connecticut and aid in guarding sup- plies, Mr. Cleaveland again took the position of chaplain, in the Third Essex Regiment commanded by his young par- ishioner and friend, Col. Jonathan Cogswell, and containing the Chebacco company of over sixty men, among them the chaplain's youngest son. The regiment marched from home Sept. 25th and was stationed for a time at Fairfield on the Sound. Mr. Cleaveland joined it Oct. 9th, on the 15th wrote to his son Parker as follows :
"I arrived six days ago in health and found Nehemiah and all our Ipswich company in health : and the little army, stationed in this town consisting of two regiments is in general in very good health and behaves well. We hear no profaneness amongst them and they attend divine service in the meeting house night and morning very cheerfully and seriously, to all appearance."
The regiment was also in the battle of White Plains, Oct. 28th, in which though many were killed and wounded on both sides, the British failed of their object, which was to get possession of the eastern roads and cut off supplies. After occupying post with most of the New England troops under Gen. Lee at North Castle, the regiment was ordered home carly in the winter, when New Jersey had become the chief seat of war.
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Unable at his age to endure the exposures to health, of life in camp and on the march, or even to be absent from his parish for any great length of time, by the example he had already given as well as by his words he inspired his sons with a patriotic spirit and gave them to his country.
The oldest, Lieut. John Cleaveland, served through the whole war, and was the rest of his life a faithful soldier of Jesus Christ in the gospel ministry. Ebenezer was first a private in the army, afterwards served on a privateer, was taken prisoner, exchanged or liberated, and died of fever on board a continental ship on his return home from the West Indies .*
The other two were also in the service for a considera- ble time, one as surgeon-in-chief of a Continental regiment. Afterwards through long lives they were among the most emi- nent physicians of. their day in Essex county, serving also with marked ability and influence in public life-both of them often in the Legislature, one in the State and United States constitutional conventions, and the other a judge and afterwards chief justice of the Court of Sessions for a long period. They were both conscientious christian men of strong religious convictions.
*Respecting his death Mr. Cleaveland wrote a characteristic and touching letter to another of his sons, which is in part as follows :
"Chebacco, April 25, 1780. My dear Son. How fading are all things here below ! On Friday last we had the heavy and certain news of the death of your brother Ebenezer. He dyed, according to Capt. Odle's book, the 30th of March, on board the continental ship Eustis, Capt. Samuel Bishop, in latitude 25°, coming home from Eustatia, last. The Captain said your brother rejoiced, or was glad the time of his departure had come. Capt. Odle and several others said Ebenezer had his reason to the last, but was not able to speak much the day he died. Your brother being dead yet speaketh and preacheth a lecture 'Be ye also ready' -louder than ever your father preached, or than ever we heard thunder roar. Oh that it may touch the heart to the centre and rouse up all the powers of the soul! to what? Why to be still and know that the Supreme Being is God, and to glorify him as God, by a life of faith in him and obedience to Christ, who is the head over all things, and does all things well. Let us think and speak well of him and of all his administration in providence and grace."
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A remark sometimes made by aged persons, seventy years ago, who remembered the days of the Revolution, that he "preached all the men of his parish into the army and then went himself," also attests Mr. Cleaveland's zeal for the cause as well as his great influence over the people of Chebacco. And so what his eulogist, Dr. Parish, declared after his death was literally true :
"Active and enterprising, he repeatedly left the silence of his study for the din of war; the joys of domestic peace for the dangers of the bloody field. The waters of Champlain, the rocks of Cape Breton, the fields of Cambridge and the banks of the Hudson listened to the fervor of his ad- dresses."
And his patriotic example, together with his preaching, helps us more clearly to understand why President John Adams once said to a French statesman, that "American in- dependence was mainly due to the clergy."
Such was Mr. Cleaveland's zeal in his religious work; and such his services in uniting the two Chebacco churches and in his two army chaplaincies.
REV. MR. CLEAVELAND'S LATER YEARS.
The remaining years of the century after the war of Inde- pendence was over, he seems to have passed in quiet and serenity, dwelling among his own people, like a sort of patri- arch, active and energetic to the last in all the duties of his ministerial calling.
In 1790 the pleasant relations between him and his parish were illustrated by their movement to build a new and com- paratively costly meeting house. This they completed within about three years and on the 8th of October 1793 he had the great satisfaction of preaching to a large audience the dedi- cation sermon, from Acts x: 33.
*Mr. Cleaveland's Revolutionary camp-chest is in the Essex Institute; and the rude buck-horn handled sword, which he wore in all his campaigns, has been preserved and is now in the possession of one of his descendants.
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It was not until about this time that hymns began to be read by the minister in the Sabbath worship, as they are now ; and · not until about five years earlier than this that choirs began to do the singing. On this occasion, "the singing was con- ducted with great animation and power, the choir being led by Mr. Isaac Long of Hopkinton, N. H., one of the builders of the meeting-house."
In this edifice, also, Mr. Cleaveland preached, March 8, 1797, a half-century lecture from Acts xxvi: 22; which he concluded with these words ;
I am now near the close of the seventy-fifth year of my age, and have especial reason with uniform gratitude to the Supreme Disposer of all good events, to say: 'Having obtained help of God I continue unto this day.' For near fifty-five years since, while at college, I was taken sick of a violent fever, which deprived me of my reason and ran high upon me for forty days; and for near a fortnight my life was despaired of by my attendants and all who saw me. Even the President of the college was so apprehen- sive of my dying then, that he prepared a funeral sermon to be preached on account of my expected decease. But in the moment of extremity the Lord appeared and plucked me as a brand from the burning, and having obtained help of God I continue unto this time, to my surprise as often as I think of it. While that president and two presidents besides, and a large number of my fellow-students are gone to their long home. And this day, fifty years ago I was ordained a pastor of a flock of Christ in this place, and here have continued to preach the gospel half a century."
That Mr. Cleaveland, with all his influence among his peo- ple, never arrogated to himself any authority over them, but continued to the last to recognize the supremacy of the broth- erhood and the responsibility resting upon them in all eccle- siastical matters, (things which it has been aptly said are "fundamental in the constitution of Congregational churches, and essential to the success of this form of church polity,") is well illustrated by a vote of the church of April 30, 1797 on receiving an invitation to join other churches in an ordaining council. It was voted to comply with the invitation but not to choose a delegate, "until the church should hear the can- didate preach a sermon or two." Having, May 28th, heard
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him preach "to good acceptance three sermons," they chose their delegate, both they and their pastor, then as always, considering the participation of the church in such an affair to be no mere form, but a transaction in which the whole body was a responsible party.
Living on still longer and completing the fifty-second year of his ministry and the seventy-seventh of his life, and on the last Sabbath but one before the end preaching with his usual animation, he died on the twenty-second of April 1799, coming to his grave in a full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in, in his season.
After such a career, "eminently a faithful watchman, being ever ready and apt to teach," an eloquent man and mighty in the Scriptures, full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, as he had been, no wonder that Rev. Mr. Dana of Ipswich took for the text of his funeral sermon the cry of Elisha at the translation of Elijah: "My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof."
And most fitly did the Rev. Dr. Parish of Byfield, in his memorial discourse from Psalms cxvi : 15, delivered in the de- ceased pastor's pulpit on the second of June following, rise to a lofty strain of glowing eulogy in his appreciative delin- eation of the character of his venerated elder in the ministry.
With the published descriptions of Mr. Cleaveland's per- sonal appearance all are familiar,-his erect muscular form, his stature of nearly six feet, his florid complexion and blue eyes, his amiable and benevolent face into which every body loved to look. According to his own memorandum he weighed in 1769 two hundred and seven pounds, and in 1773 two hundred and thirty pounds. He was a man of strong con- stitution and ardent temperament; his voice heavy and of great compass.
One of his younger contemporaries said of Mr. Cleaveland as a preacher and writer :
"An earnest spirit, an unpolished energy and a sincerity which none
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could question characterized him in the pulpit. His familiarity with the Scriptures was proverbial ; his general learning respectable. His writings though often forcible and fervent could lay no claim to elegance."
One of his descendants refers to some of the most prominent qualities of his character in these words: "An earnest and honest man, conscientious, faithful and affectionate, acting and speaking always under a high sense of duty and throwing his whole heart into everything he said or did."
III. The last, and of course the briefest, division of this historical review has to do with the present century, a period less eventful than the two preceding, but, in decided contrast with them, distinguished on the whole for calm, steady, spir- itual progress and for the great activity of the church in all good works, the successive pastors preeminently zealous and ·leading the way but the brotherhood cooperating and exer- cising their varied gifts for the same end.
Out of all that has taken place during this period two things at least should be specified as conspicuously characterizing the life of the church, and therefore as worthy of record.
1. As has been true everywhere else in New England, this has been in this community, on the whole, emphatically the era of seasons of special and sometimes intense but thought- ful and rational religious interest.
Because we do not find any such revivals taking place in the two earliest pastorates of the century, that of Rev. Josiah Webster, extending from Nov. 13, 1799 to July 23, 1806, and that of Rev. Thomas Holt from Jan. 25, 1809 to April 20, 1813, it would be an unwarrantable inference and most unchari- table to impute any lack of faithfulness or of pious earnestness to these ministers. The condition of the times, just then, was most unfavorable to the spiritual life and prosperity of society everywhere. Some of the demoralizing influences resulting from the Revolutionary war and from contact with French infidelity still remained; political party spirit, the animosity between Federalists and Republicans, was intense,
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exceedingly bitter and often personal ; there was great excite- ment throughout the land occasioned by the encroachments of England upon the rights and interests of this nation, in- creasing from the noted attack upon the Chesapeake in 1807, down to their culmination in 1812, and the outbreak of war; and in part as a consequence of this state of things, the churches generally were in a condition of stagnation and deadness.
Through the preaching of some Christian Baptist ministers in the south part of the town, beginning with 1805, and the interest awakened in their meetings, (which resulted in the formation of the Christian society in 1808), our parish was somewhat weakened, and the congregation diminished in numbers, near the close of Mr. Webster's pastorate.
REV. MR. WEBSTER'S PASTORATE.
We have however the testimony of some of those who were his parishioners, that he was an acceptable and inter- · esting preacher, a zealous christian leader, exerting all his energies for the promotion of godliness in the community and greatly beloved by his church and people.
At Mr. Webster's settlement here there were forty-seven members of the church, only thirteen of whom were men, several of these quite advanced in years, and one of them a non-resident.
One of these aged disciples was Dea. Jonathan Cogswell, at that time seventy-four years old, who died in 1812 aged eighty-six. Another of just about the same age was Capt. Aaron Foster, a soldier at the taking of Louisbourg in 1745 and a member of the church from the year 1763, who lived to the age of eighty-seven.
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Almost the only other man active in religious matters was Dea. Grover Dodge, a native of Hamilton but a resident of this town from his youth, always and universally respected as a citizen, a convert in the great revival of 1763, acting as deacon from 1812 till 1821 and later, a consistent christian,
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'an Israelite indeed in whom was no guile,' through a long life which ended in 1831.
Among the substantial and influential men in the parish in this earlier part of the century, mention should be made in particular of three. One of these was Mr. David Choate, a soldier in the Revolution, always deeply interested in the cause of education and a successful school teacher, and often chosen to fill places of responsibility and trust as a man of unswerving integrity and weight of character. Though not a member of the church, he gave during the latter part of his life strong evidence of possessing a genuine christian spirit. Soon after his death in 1808 at the age of fifty-one, Dr. Mussey wrote :
"Mr. Choate was a man of uncommon intellectual endowments. Though denied the advantages of a regular education he arrived at a degree of im- provement often unattained by men of the first opportunities, and possessed talents which would have been an honor to a statesman. In the social circle none were his superiors. He lived the friend and supporter of virtue and order, and died in hope of a happier state through the mercy of a Redeemer." -
Another was Col. Jonathan Cogswell, Sen., an officer in the Revolution, who died in 1819 at the age of seventy-nine. A sketch of him written soon after his death describes him as
"A useful citizen and magistrate, a devout christian and an excellent man. In public life he manifested a sound judgment and unshaken integ- rity and executed every trust with scrupulous fidelity. Free from all ap- pearance of selfishness. the happiness of others seemed the study of his life. His religion, as it had been the guide of his youth, became the com- fort of his age. The poor man's gratitude acknowledged his benevolence and the uniform uprightness of his department declared his fervent piety."
Still a third was George Choate, Esq., a man who also gave his hearty and constant support to the institutions of religion ; and who held various parish offices-that of treasurer for a number of years ending with his death in 1826, when he was at the age of sixty-four. As a citizen, magistrate, town-
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officer and legislator he deservedly enjoyed the highest confi- dence and respect of his fellow-townsmen; and his name has been perpetuated and adorned by his son, Dr. George Choate the eminent physician in Salem for a long period, and by his still more distinguished grandsons of the same profession and at the bar, of the present generation.
During Mr. Webster's seven years' ministry, twenty-one persons united with the church. One of the eight men was Dr. Reuben D. Mussey, a graduate of Dartmouth College in 1803 and engaged in the practice of medicine here from 1805 through 1808, who filled for a time the office of church clerk and was a member of the Sabbath choir-a skilful player upon the bass-viol. The late President Lord of Dartmouth College wrote of him :
"He was sometimes brusque in his manner, but he had heavenly music in his soul. A discord or an untimely movement fretted him. But when, as sometimes in the congregation or the social circle, a glorious harmony went up, then the strain rose from his, as if impassioned viol, in enlivening concert; and his chastened spirit seemed to go with it, into communion with the choir above."
After further special study in Philadelphia and the prose- cution of his profession in Salem five years, he was a professor in the Medical Schools of Dartmouth and Bowdoin Colleges and at Cincinnati, O., in succession. He then founded and lectured in the Miami Medical School six years; and after thus spending forty-six years in medical instruction lived in retirement in Boston until his death in 1866, at the age of eighty-six.
It is certainly an interesting fact to us and to this commu- nity which he several times revisited in his later life, that this eminent physician, among the foremost in his profession in scientific knowledge and skill, began his religious life, a young man of twenty-five years of age, while practising his profes- sion in this parish ; that such a surgeon, attaining a national reputation, "who" as his biographer-a distinguished medical
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professor-states, "believed much in skilled surgery, some- thing in nature but most of all in God, so that on the eve of a great operation he frequently knelt at the bed-side of the patient and sought skill and strength and success from the great source of all vitality," first bowed the knee in social prayer with the members, few though they were, of this Che- bacco church; that the strong and noble character of the man, whom the same writer describes as "a devoted member and officer of the church all his days, a constant observer of the Sabbath, an earnest defender and propagator of the faith, a gratuitous adviser and benefactor of the poor," was nurtured in its early unfolding and growth under the influences of the sanctuary and the people of God in this village.
Two others who were active, working members of the church, forsaking not the ways of Zion, in those days when few came to her solemn feasts, were Mr. John Mears, a native of Che- bacco (born June 20, 1777), converted under Mr. Webster's preaching, steadfast and faithful in sustaining the social relig- ious meetings of the church, keeping up almost to the time of his death, (Sept. 7, 1865 at the age of eighty-eight), his regu- lar attendance upon the Sabbath services though in his later years totally blind, exceedingly painstaking in the religious training of his children, -all but one of the ten of them who reached maturity entering the church in their early years, - and Mr. Nathan Burnham, a man of very much the same stamp, quiet and undemonstrative but a pillar in the sacred temple, not often making exhortations but frequently taking part very acceptable in the devotional exercises of church- meetings, especially active in times of religious interest later on, and a deacon from 1821 until his death in 1860 at the age of eighty-four.
All honor to the memory of these few who guarded and bore onward the ark of the Lord, almost alone, down to about the year 1815, when the voice of war was again hushed and peace reigned throughout our borders.
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THE REVIVALS OF RELIGION.
Prior to that date we have record of only three marked and extensive revivals of religion in the entire history of . the church,-in 1727, 1741 and 1763-which have been already mentioned.
Of the six of which the community has had experience since then, four took place during the pastorate of Rev. Robert Crowell which extended forty-one years, from Aug. 10, 1814, when there were only six male members of the church and thirty two in all, to his death, Nov. 10, 1855.
On the third of the next January after his ordination the church voted to hold a meeting on the first Tuesday in every month for prayer and religious conversation, at the house of the pastor, at which some of the topics considered were : "the nature and duty of prayer," "the church covenant as a rule of duty," and "the importance of religious instruction for children and youth."
From the church records it appears that the very next month after that, some religious interest began to manifest itself which continued more than two years ; one or two per- sons at least, (not members of the church) attending at many of the meetings for religious conversation or to relate their experience and ask admission to the church. Under date of March 10, 1816, mention is made of the admission of two persons to the church and the record reads :
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