USA > Maine > Kennebec County > Gardiner > Christ Church, Gardiner, Maine : antecedents and history > Part 3
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Notwithstanding the advance of religious freedom in the col- onies, it is said that, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, there were no more than forty Anglican priests on the American shores from Maine to the Carolinas. Some localities, however, en- joyed the ministration of divines, whose soundness of doctrine and learning made them apt teachers for a generation that was to avail much in the founding of the Church in what were then only dense woodlands.
CHAPTER 1I.
DR. GARDINER AND HIS SURROUNDINGS.
A famous clergyman of the olden time, with whom our history has connection, was Dr. James McSparran. He was among the first of the emissaries sent to this country by the English "Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts," and was, in the opinion of many, its ablest missionary. He became, in 1721, the pastor of St. Paul's church, of South Kingston, R. I., which is now the oldest building of its kind in the United States north of the Potomac River. Of Scotch descent, though born in Ireland, he showed the qualities of his sturdy race in his zealous and untir- ing work among the Narragansett people, who, to this day, hold his memory sacred. He founded five churches, baptized nearly six hundred people, and, when offered a bishop's mitre in Eng- land, fearing that America would dislike an English ordination, he refused it, saying, "I would rather live in the hearts of my parish- ioners than wear all the bishops' gowns in the world." Dean Berkeley was the friend of Dr. McSparran, though it would appear as if the practicality of the good Doctor could have led him into no great sympathy with the Berkleian philosophy, or the schemes of the idealist to extend "the course of empire." The curious title of one of his books bears evidence to his plainness of speech : "America Dissected, being a full and true account of all the Amer- ican colonies, showing the intemperance of the climates, excessive heat and cold, and sudden violent changes of weather; terrible and murderous thunder and lightning ; bad and unwholesome air, destructive to human bodies ; badness of money ; danger from ene- mies ; but, above all, to the souls of the poor people that move thither from the multifarious and pestilent heresies that prevail in these parts. Published as a caution to unsteady people, who may be tempted to leave their native Country."
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In the great days of Narragansett hospitality and elegance, the congregation of "old St. Paul's" numbered the noblest of the land. The Phillipses, the Balfours, the Robinsons, the Hazards, the Potters, the Updikes, and the Gardiners, were among those who sat in the square, high-built pews, and listened to the vigorous tones of the good Doctor. There were at that time no carriages in use, and history has drawn us a pretty picture of the trip to Church on Sunday mornings ; each grave settler, with his wife be- fore him on a pillion, urging his careful-stepping saddle-horse over the narrow paths between crowded tree-trunks and through rough country fields. With them rode Dr. McSparran himself, and the fair lady whom he had taken from the Gardiner family to be his helpmeet in the rural pastorate. Of him, as well as of his wife, there remains a portrait, painted by the celebrated Smibert, who came to America with Dean Berkeley. So that we can picture him, round of face, sturdy of figure, invested with all the dignity of curled wig, gown and bands, bending from the clumsy pulpit above the heads of dames in scarlet cloaks and floating plumes, and cavaliers in gold-laced coats and snowy frills, with a background of dusky figures, the slaves-for whose welfare Dr. McSparran was always zealous.
As we have seen, the pastor's attention was drawn at an early date to the Gardiner family. William Gardiner, called " William of Narragansett," was the father of Mrs. McSparran, and a leading citizen of South Kingston. He united the callings of a lawyer and a farmer, which blending of the material and the intellectual was common in colonial days. In the exercise of his profession he had acquired considerable wealth, and was the owner of much real estate, which included land on Boston Neck, and extended farther towards the west. Among the bequests of his will, is a farm of a thousand acres, left jointly to three of his grandsons. William Gardiner was the fourth of the fourteen children of Benoni Gardiner, the son of "George the Emigrant," who died in Narragan- sett in 1679 ; and he was himself the father of seven children, six of whom grew into positions of influence. Indeed, the Gardiner family as a whole attained a degree of prosperity rare in those olden times. One of them rejoiced in the name of "Four Chim- ney Amos," and this, at a day when one chimney was a cause for great thanksgiving, may be supposed to imply the affluence of its possessor.
According to the customs of the age, Dr. McSparran received
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into his family for classical teaching a few of the more wealthy colonists' sons. Among his pupils were Thomas Clapp, afterwards a famous President of Yale College, and the rector's young brother-in-law, Silvester Gardiner, who, at the opening of Dr. McSparran's ministry, was a slight lad of thirteen years. Much to his father's regret the boy lacked the physical strength which might have made a farmer of him, but he soon showed such aptitude for study, and such longing to embrace the medical profession, that it was manifestly impossible to destine him for other pursuits. For a medical student, however, there existed in America the gravest obstacles. Anatomy was then almost un- known, and dissection a forbidden topic. Dr. McSparran saw these difficulties, and, appreciating the talent of his pupil, induced Mr. Gardiner to give up to the young man his share of the pater- nal estate, that he might continue abroad the studies which he had already begun in his native town and in Boston. Once upon the Continent, the mind of the student, imbued with the firm prin- ciples of his brother-in-law, received a severe shock in the licen- tiousness of Parisian customs. His sojourn in France was dur- ing the minority of Louis XV., when the agitation of the South Sea Bubble and the shameless profligacy of the nobles were sow- ing the seeds of the terrible Revolution. The sterling piety and good sense of the youth carried him in safety through all the dan- gers to which he was exposed, and he returned to America with "a degree of professional knowledge unexampled at that period." He married for his first wife Anne Gibbins, the daughter of a wealthy physician of Boston, in which city he soon acquired a wide practice. He also carried on a large business in the importation of drugs, and, succeeding, as he did, in great land investments, became rich and influential.
As long ago as 1640, the land, including what is now the city of Gardiner, Maine, and extending "from the Cobbosseecontee River to the Western Ocean, fifteen miles on either side the Kennebec," had been granted by Governor William Bradford to "the freemen of the colony of New Plymouth." This company made various at- tempts to settle the country, which proved failures for several rea- sons ; among which were the severity of the climate, the number of hostile Indians, and the company's monopoly of trade and fish- ing, at a time when monopolies were particularly distasteful to England, where they were giving way to freer systems. For near- ly a century the land in our vicinity, only occasionally leased, and
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then under restrictions, was held mainly as a hunting and fishing ground.
In accordance with the progress of the nation, an increase of settlers was deemed desirable, and, in 1749, a corporation was formed under the name of the "Plymouth Company," consisting of nine proprietors who immediately set about the improvement of the "Kennebec Purchase." The company, for the most part, was made up of staunch adherents to the English crown, who at once chose Dr. Gardiner perpetual moderator of their meetings, and committed to him trusts calling for the most judicious manage- ment. Still, there was no great influx of settlers, and, in 1754, Dr. Gardiner determined to take more energetic measures. He obtained a grant of the land embracing Gardiner and Pittston, though its limits were not included in these towns. He had se- lected the situation with a practical eye, because of the facility for mills afforded by the waters of the Cobbossee. Already a large sloop, which he had built, was running from Boston to the Kenne- bec ; and, before long, he had cleared a farm of four hundred acres in Gardinerstown, as Gardiner was then called, and had erected upon it a suitable dwelling-house, in which lived his son, William, charged with the care of the estate.
Even then, it was not easy to procure settlers ; especially so as the tide of immigration from England had been checked by her war with France. But Dr. Gardiner spared no efforts in this direc- tion, and gradually increased the size of the little colony, at great expense and trouble to himself.
In other localities he encouraged the foreign element ; Dres- den, for instance, being colonized by Germans and Irish ; but it seems to have fallen to the lot of Gardinerstown to attract, for the most part, an English speaking population. Of all his vast estate in Maine, which, even then, was valued at $140,000, and which in- cluded much of Dresden, Pittston, Chelsea, Augusta, Hallowell Norridgewock, and Winslow, Dr. Gardiner showed an especial preference for the growing town which bore his name ; and, though the money which he spent to aid the settlers was often a total loss to him, he was unwearied in his efforts for their comfort and en- couragement. So energetic was he that, before 1772, he had built in Gardinerstown two saw-mills, a grist-mill, a fulling-mill, a potash manufactory, a wharf, and many houses and stores.
When we consider the difficulty of traveling in the early days, these achievements seem little less than wonderful. If the great
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water-way of the Kennebec was closed, since there were no car- riage roads, then the owner's visits to his estate must have led him through narrow woodland paths, or over the frozen surface of the river, often heavy with drifting snow, and beset by dangers from wild beasts and savage Indians. It was in the eighteenth century that Madam Sarah Knight, the school-teacher of Benjamin Frank- lin, had journeyed along the more populous route from Boston to New York ; and this feat, hitherto unequalled by woman, had given her lasting fame. So wonderful, indeed, did her trip appear, that upon her return the worthy dame wrote an account of her hard- ships and thrilling adventures, and further chronicled her deliver- ance with a diamond upon her school-room window :-
" Through many toils and many frights I have returned. poor Sarah Knights. Over great rocks and many stones God has preserved from fractured bones."
As late as 1750, " chairs " were among the favorite conveyances in towns and cities, though the women still rode much· upon horse- back, and here and there appeared the clumsy calash, or the heavy, square-topped chaise. In 1755, we find recorded a great event in the history of Maine ;- "Judge Paine passed through Wells in a chaise, and all the village thronged to 'Kimball's Tavern' to see it."
Amid the hindrances of such primitive times our city began its steady growth. It is a pity that the old Post Office, built by Dr. Gardiner in 1763, could not have been preserved as a memorial of the olden days in which Gardiner was establishing her reputation for energy and business-like ways ; for she soon gained celebrity among the settlers, who, laden with great bags of corn, were in the habit of toiling on foot through ten or twelve miles of dense forest, to have their grist ground at "Dr. Gardiner's mill." To this period belongs the story of the woman, who, obliged to make the perilous journey alone, was delayed by some accident, and spent the night wandering in the darkness of the frightful woods.
Yet, with all the gratitude which we owe to the founder of our city for his practical business capacity, it is for another and more important characteristic that he still claims our love and venera- tion. That characteristic was his devotion to God and to His holy Church. It was the desire of his hcart to unite the people of his care in the worship which he cherished ; and, though he did not live to complete his plans, we of to-day rejoice in their fruition.
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Among the Churchmen of Boston Dr. Gardiner's name was one of note. Connected as he was with a distinguished colonial clergyman, and commanding the advantages of wealth and educa- tion, he took a prominent place among the members of King's Chapel. Just before the disturbances of the Revolution, when Dr. Henry Caner was the rector of the Parish, Dr. Gardiner was one of the churchwardens .* It was, then, with the sanction and assis- tance of New England's leading Episcopalians that he turned his attention towards the founding of a Church in the Maine wilder- ness.
*From MSS. of the Mass. Historical Society.
CHAPTER III.
POWNALBOROUGH AND THE FIRST CHURCH OF ST. ANN'S.
Until the middle of the eighteenth century there had been few, if any, organized attempts to care for the religious condition of the settlers in the Kennebec Valley. The Jesuit, Rasle, had, it is true, left behind him the record of a life and martyrdom which, years after his death, could rouse to fervor the heart of the Norridge- wock Indian ; but, apart from the invincible devotion of the Rom- anists, the missionary spirit had been of scanty evidence in the chilly field.
In 1755, however, the people of Frankfort and Georgetown sent a petition for a minister to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, who despatched to them the Rev. William Maclenachan, an Irishman, once a Presbyterian minister, who had officiated at Georgetown. A convert to the Church of England, he had taken orders, and, somewhat tardily, came to the uninviting pastorate thus offered him. During his short stay, he made but one report of his parish. In this he speaks of an increase of hearers, of services held on week days as well as on Sundays, and complains bitterly of the hardships to which he and his family were subjected. The Indians, he says, were thoroughly " merciless, no church or parsonage had been erected, and such was the condition of the ruined fort in which he lived that wind and rain were no strangers to its interior."
In 1758, he abandoned his station, claiming more salary than his due from the Missionary Society, who were in ignorance of his desertion. The little congregation of Frankfort could scarcely have lamented his departure, as, though of impressive appearance and gifted with considerable oratorical power, he was no fit min- isterial character. It was a saying current among his acquaint-
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ances that "when Mr. Maclenachan was in the pulpit he ought never to come out of it, and when he was out of the pulpit he ought never to go into it."
The subsequent career of the reverend gentleman was as erratic as his earlier one. In 1760 the Bishop of London refused to li- cense him as the Assistant Rector of Christ Church, Philadelphia, and rebuked him severely for his uncanonical proceedings. After this there is little known of his personal history.
The next representative of Episcopacy in Maine was the Rev. Jacob Bailey, the famous "Frontier Missionary" of the Rev. Wil- liam S. Bartlett's graphic book. The good people of Frankfort had heard of this young man as "a person of unexceptional mor- als, prudent, grave, and uncorrupt in regard to the Christian Faith," and begged the Venerable Society to appoint him to serve in the place of Mr. Maclenachan on the Eastern Frontier of Mass- achusetts Bay. They had made pledges, as ample as their condi- tion would allow, for the minister's maintenance ;- "they were in- deed very poor, being upon a Frontier Settlement which they have hitherto been prevented from cultivating to advantage, as it is ex- posed to the insults of a Barbarian enemy, but they promise to contribute to the support of such minister as much as they can. They have a Glebe of 200 acres of good Land which, with their contributions in money, will not amount to less than £20 per an- num, and as soon as they enjoy the blessings of Peace they will build a Church and Parsonage House, and in the mean time they can have Richmond Fort for a house for the minister and the Chapel belonging to it for Divine Service, and the Farm around for a Glebe."
It was on the first day of July, 1760, that the new Itinerant Mis- sionary entered the country where he was to do his faithful work. He came with recommendations from Dr. Cutler and Dr. Caner of Boston, and was received into the family of Major Samuel Good- win, whose name and benefactions are so largely associated with the vicinity of this early Episcopal mission. Pownalborough, then including Frankfort, had just been made the shire town of a new county, that of Lincoln ; and, in consequence, was of importance in its growing numbers. "The country," writes the Rev. Dr. Caner, " though a frontier, peoples very fast." In 1761, the Court House, which is still standing, was built upon the bank of the river, and in this Mr. Bailey held the Church services for nine years. Of the condition of affairs within his range he wrote to the Society in
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the spring succeeding his arrival : ".I was received by the poor inhabitants of this and the neighboring parts with manifest tokens of satisfaction, and they appear perfectly affected with the good- ness of the Society in sending them a minister. I found no teacher of any denomination in the County of Lincoln which con- tains 1500 inhabitants, scattered over a country of 100 miles in length and 60 in breadth. There are, however, a number of illit- erate exhorters who ramble about the country, and endeavor all in their power to seduce the people from order and decency.
I found the people in these parts a mixture of several nations, generally those whom vice or necessity had drove from their native countries. They speak divers languages and have been educated in so many different religions that it is extremely difficult to unite them, notwithstanding which they are pretty constant in their at- tendance on Public Worship, and as soon as the Calamity of War is over it seems probable that industry will increase, which will naturally make the people sober and virtuous.
Travelling here is attended with the utmost difficulty, the whole Country being full of rapid rivers and impenetrable forests ; and, in the winter season, the weather is so excessively cold, and the snow so deep that moving from place to place is still more imprac- ticable. I have, notwithstanding these discouragements, travelled six or seven hundred miles back and forward to preach among the people, and to baptize their children, and can witness to their extreme poverty. I have performed divine service every Sunday since my'arrival, and frequently on other days. I have likewise visited Brunswick and Hearpswell, which lay in another County ; in these two settlements are thirty-one families of the Established Church, who earnestly wish to be recommended to the care of the Society, and are certainly in great need of a minister. As to Frankfort, now called Pownalborough, tho' settled about eight years under all the disadvantages of a bloody war with the Indians, it already contains 130 families, about 80 of which are so conven- iently situated and so well disposed as to attend services every Lord's day.
We have labored under a great disadvantage for the want of a Church we have, however, put forward a subscrip- tion and hope to have a Church and Parsonage House erected in two years on ministerial land. The Rev. W. Maclenachan has taken away the books belonging to the Mission, and I have wrote to him and he have received the letter several months yet he re-
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fuses to auswer it. I humbly conceive that Common Prayer books from the Society would be of great price among the people, as they are desirous of joining in divine service and can not obtain them."
For nineteen years of dangers and difficulties such as we can but faintly imagine, did this sturdy representative of the faith min- ister among the people of these forlorn regions ; and, from a very early period of his rectorship, the name of Dr. Silvester Gardiner became prominent in his assistance. Long before the idea of a Church at Gardinerstown had been proposed, Dr. Gardiner had been as a patron saint to Pownalborough's little congregation. First, he allowed them the use of Richmond House and Farm for the minister ; he contributed much, both in money and influence, for the building of their Church and parsonage, and he published and circulated religious books among them.
Not until 1770, however, was the Pownalborough Church [St. John's] opened for service, when it was already threatened by rumors of the War of Independence. "The dissenters," wrote Mr. Bailey, " both in this and the neighboring settlements, are ex- tremely mortified and incensed at the success we have had in pro- curing benefactions." He lays especial stress upon the generosity of Dr. Gardiner, who gave £50 towards the expenses ; that, too, when he was maturing the plans for the construction of another Church farther to the north.
For ten years the settlement of Gardinerstown had been steady in its growth. The first dwellers upon its soil came in 1760, and numbered only three families, " two of European church people," and the other of Quaker persuasion. By 1770, there were at least three hundred families in the town, which boasted its mill, its " Great House," built by Dr. Gardiner for an inn, and its block- house, erected on Church Hill as a place of refuge from the In- dians. Besides these, the little cottages of the settlers peered here and there from the wooded slopes on either side of the river. These houses were, for the greater part, " of humble build, almost all with two stories in front; the back with roof sloping from the ridge-pole of the front part to the eaves of the one story in the rear." In those primitive days, the wide kitchen was the living- room of the household, and it is there that we may imagine solemn convocations of Gardiner's early inhabitants, as they met to dis- cuss the scheme of their benefactor for building a temple to the Lord. There were no less than eight different sects represented
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in the town in 1770, and those must have been lively theological discussions that went on by the blaze of the back-log in the huge fire-places, while the children, discreetly silent, as we are given to understand they invariably were in past generations, sat upon the blocks of wood placed for their bestowal in shady corners. The legal restrictions upon worship were then so few in Maine, though she was a part of orthodox Massachusetts, that it had become cus- tomary for the persecuted to resort thither ; and it was a proverb among the Plymouth people : "When a man can find no religion, let him go to Maine." That the " Frontier Missionary " disagreed with this opinion as regarded our city, is proved by an extract from a note addressed by him to Dr. Gardiner in April, 1763 :-
"As to Cobbossee (the name which was long borne by the ter- ritory at the junction of the Cobbossee and Kennebec Rivers), I am sorry to find there some of the greatest bigots in the land against the Church of England. I was lately among them to preach a sermon, but the people excused themselves from attend- ing, and desired that I would visit them on a Sunday."
In 1768, the appointment of the Rev. Wm. Wheeler as mission- ary to Georgetown relieved Mr. Bailey of some of his arduous du- ties. His journeys to this part of his pastorate had been regularly made, through heat and cold, mud and snow, swarms of mosquitos, or driving of hail, as the season dictated ; but it must have been with somewhat of gratitude that Mr. Bailey found himself more at leisure to work among his immediate parish, until, four years later, Mr. Wheeler resigned his charge, on the imperative ground of "ill health and a call to Newport." It was during this intermission that Mr. Bailey promised to officiate occasionally at Gardiners- town ; and in January, 1771, he records, with joy, that the people have begun the frame of their Church.
In July of the next year, Dr. Gardiner came to Maine, and is mentioned as a visitor at the house of Mr. Bailey in Pownal- borough. It is probable that he allowed himself a month's vacation from his professional duties in Boston ; for on the sixth of August Mr. Bailey was in Gardinerstown, and assisted at the raising of the Church spire, which occurrence must have marked a great day in the little hamlet, and have called for the presence of the worthy proprietor.
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