USA > New Hampshire > Hillsborough County > Bedford > History of Bedford, New Hampshire, from 1737 : being statistics compiled on the occasion of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of the town, May 15, 1900 > Part 37
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" How intensely interesting it would be to-day if some man, who by means of the occult sciences, had found the secret of living on beyond the allotted age of human beings, could rise here and give us the early history of this town and church; paint a word picture of this historic town and society! He would probably tell us who the pioneers were who drifted here in search of a home in the wil- derness ; how they looked ; how they dressed ; what their character ; and what they sought. He would tell us how they felled the forest, and built the rough but serviceable log houses and barns ; he would point out just where the first houses stood, just where the garrison house for mutual protection was erected, and most certainly where the first church spread wide its doors. He would tell us of the trials and dangers, the midnight attacks, the sudden alarms, the times of prosperity, the seasons of failure and bitter disappointment, but he would show us how from the first and from very small be- ginnings they had gone steadily onward and upward, every year a few new faces, every year a few additional farms, every year a larger clearing and a wider horizon.
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" And the most prominent thing in his story would be the history of this church, of this old and honored society, for the history of this church is the history of the town. I do not personally know its history, but it is safe to say that the settlement was not very old before it had its minister and its church, and every man and woman in the town attended it and helped support it, and every child went to its services and its Sunday-school. The minister was undoubt- edly the man of learning of the community, the court of last resort for all questions, a man whose word was law.
" Religion meant something then. It was a very real part of life ; it entered into every act and thought of daily existence. Agnosti- cism was yet to be born. The Higher Criticism had not shed its withering blight over sensitive minds. It may be that the religion of the Puritans was hard, severe, unlovely, but it was a reality. It meant something ; it stood for something ; it had a body and a sub- stance-you could lay your hand upon it and find it when needed. It stood out before these rugged people as a sure guide in the wil- derness, a strong arm upon which they could unfailingly rely. They would have spurned some of the colorless substitutes in use nowa- days. They would tell you that the pith and strength and vitality had all been strained and refined away, and that nothing was left but the chaff clothed in the phraseology of a by-gone age. They would show you that reverence for holy things had largely passed away-that children no longer venerated their fathers and mothers, to say nothing of the church-that the Bible had become a thing to jest about, and the minister simply a man to be good-naturedly smiled upon. And we should point to our schools, our hospitals, our charitable and philanthropic institutions, and say, 'These are our religion,' and they would sadly shake their heads and say, 'They largely indicate a certain form of selfishness, an insurance of the body politic against the criminal, the diseased, the insane-they do represent advance and improvement and do you credit, but they are not religion. You have followed the Master's teaching in this one line, but how far have you drifted from it in others.'
"I am not defending Puritanism-there was much about it that was repellent and unlovely, and I do not know that I would wish it back, but the contrast between the sure, steady, unwavering belief of those days, the daily carrying out of the teachings which they revered, and the vagueness, uncertainty, shifting, and hollowness of some of the creeds of to-day is appalling. The ground work and foundation of the church of the future would seem to be good natured tolerance-the blind leading the blind.
"Perhaps we are progressing, perhaps we are working upward toward new light and better things, perhaps this is a transition period, and we are to discover some new ark of the covenant. But it seems to me that when you once begin to question, when you loosen the moorings of a man's faith, and set him adrift upon the sea of doubt, you have done him an irreparable injury. What is
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there in the world so sweet and pure and upholding as faith- whether it is faith in God or in one's fellow-man ? And when you shake a man's faith, you twist and ruin his whole nature. Let us grant for the sake of argument that God is a dream, man's desire for the unattainable personified. What then ? Destroy this belief and what will you put in its place ? No one has even suggested a substitute. Yet, the whole drift of mankind to-day is away from this strong belief. Every year some part of the Biblical story is explained away, and thrown into the refuse pile of exploded myths. One by one the truths we were taught by our mother's knee are shattered. So I say that Puritanism, with all its bigotry, its narrow- ness, its cant, was a better religion than much of the religion of to- day which leads-God knows where.
"I suppose this church in this lovely old town, with its conserva- tive people, descendants of the good old stock, has retained as much of the essentials of the religion of their fathers as any, and I con- gratulate you upon it and upon your anniversary, and I trust that the man who addresses this church on its 300th anniversary may still find its communicants strong in the faith which built up and made possible our noble country."
Brief exercises by the Sunday-school came next on the programme. They included the reciting of the Ten Commandments, the Beati- tudes, and the singing of several songs, all of which was done in a manner that reflected credit on those who have that branch of church work in charge. The superintendent, Arthur W. Holbrook, then addressed the audience as follows :
" A few weeks since I was requested by the anniversary committee to prepare a historical sketch of Bedford Sunday-school. I fully realize the difficulty of doing justice to the subject, as records and reports are so meager, for the Sunday-school has been sadly neglected in regard to having any records kept.
" I have found some interesting points, however, from different sources which I presume are correct, and will give a few extracts here.
"On Sunday, December 24, 1882, during the pastorate of the Rev. D. H. Colcord, there was held in the church very interesting anniver- sary exercises commemorating fifty years from the dedication of the meeting-house. Among other interesting remarks and papers was a paper entitled 'Reminiscences of Bedford Sunday-school,' pre- pared by the late Elder John Hodgman, from which I quote the following :
"' At the centennial celebration of the town, May 19, 1850, the Rev. James T. Woodbury, then of Acton, Mass., in his remarks referred to the Hon. John Orr as being present to assist in organiz- ing a Sabbath school in the Old Square schoolhouse at the Center. It was on a rainy Sabbath morning in May, 1818. Dr. P. P. Wood-
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bury was also present. This, in all probability, was the first Sun- day-school instituted in town. A little later there was one in dis- trict No. 2 conducted by Mr. Orr and Miss Ann Orr. Also one in district No. 3 conducted by Elder Stephen Thurston. The schools were held on Sabbath evenings. I have been informed by aged persons that there were many of the older persons at that time who did not regard the institution of these schools with favor. They considered them an innovation upon the regular services of the sanctuary. They were also afraid that the boys and girls would be noisy in going to and from school.'
" It may be remarked here that the Sabbath was more strictly kept then than now, no noise or loud talking being allowed.
"'My earliest recollection,¿ he continues, 'of attending the Sab- bath school was in 1827 or 1828 in the old schoolhouse at the Cen- ter. I do not remember the superintendent, but easily recall the clerk, whose duty it was to keep a record of the school and call the roll at each session. The principal exercise was reciting verses that we had learned during the week. We were required to commit to memory seven or more. There was no library, no singing, and but little to interest us, but we were obliged to go, willing or not. The school was not in session during the winter months until it was removed to the old meeting-house, when it was held at noon between the services. Here we had singing, a small library and question books; and here the school received a large accession from the congregation, the older members joining it.'
"Probably at this time occurred the organizing referred to in a record made by Dr. Peter P. Woodbury and found recently among his private papers, which reads as follows :
"'Bedford Sabbath school, organized May 3, 1829, Deacon John French, superintendent; Peter P. Woodbury, assistant ; Stephen French, Jr., librarian.' Then follows a list of the teachers and the number in each class, footing up : Number of members, 221; teach- ers, 21; officers, 3, making a total of 245.
"In January, 1833, the Sabbath-school was removed to its present quarters in the then new meeting-house. The superintendents from that time, to 1861, I have been unable to ascertain, or any records during that time. Dr. Peter P. Woodbury was superintendent at the time of his death in 1861. In 1864, so Elder John Hodgman states, when he returned to Bedford to live, Deacon Benjamin Hall was superintendent, and he was succeeded by John Hodgman, who served three years. During his term of service his record shows a total membership of 365 members, with 25 teachers and an average attendance of about 200. I think Mr. Hodgman was followed by Solomon Manning, who served two or three years. I am unable to give the names in order of Mr. Manning's successors, but I think they were F. R. French, Silas Holbrook, E. G. Newton, Deacon S. C. Damon, and Samuel Seavey ; possibly there were others. In May, 1881, Fred A. French was elected and served eleven years, or until
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January, 1892, when Jasper P. George served one year. William B. French served during 1893. James R. Leach then served four years, during 1894-'97. In January, 1898, Arthur W. Holbrook was elected and is the present superintendent.
"Our present membership is about 150, with an average attend- ance of about 80 in ten classes.
" Within the past few weeks we have started a home department under the superintendence of Mrs. Eunice Kinson. This is designed for those who cannot, or do not, attend the regular school, but agree to study the lessons at home.
" There has been Sunday-schools in different parts of the town at different times ; some of the places have been already named, also in district No. 8 and Joppa. At the present time there is only one other school in town to our knowledge, that in district No. 4, under the superintendence of Mrs. John Lodge.
"This brief glance at the past of Bedford Sunday-schools does not show the amount of good that has been accomplished as no human being can estimate that, but we hope and pray that Bedford Sunday- school may still continue to prove a blessing to Bedford in genera- tions to come."
The Rev. Ira C. Tyson, of Shawneeville, Ill., a former pastor, was next presented, and delivered the historical address of the day. He spoke as follows:
" Christian Friends and Citizens of Bedford : I cannot express to you the unmingled pleasure I experience to-day in meeting you again in this earthly life. Ever since I determined to accept the invitation of your honorable committee to participate with you in these anniversary exercises, I have been striving to recall your faces, and wondering how many I should be able to recognize of those with whom I was so intimately associated more than twenty years ago. While recognizing with pleasure the familiar faces of so many, there is yet a tinge of sadness as I note the absence of some whose greetings I shall receive no more. As I recall their friendship, their kindly interest in me for the sake of Him whom I served, and the delightful fellowship we had together, I feel and can appreciate those tender words of Tennyson,-
' O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still.'
"As I cast my eye over this audience and recognize the faces of many friends of former years, I notice that you, as I, have had your encounter with old Father Time. There are a few more fur- rows on the brow, a few more gray hairs, and with some, perhaps, that crown of glory has nearly all departed. And so, perhaps, there is a fellow sympathy between us, and as we recall the memory of past years, and how differently we appeared to each other, we can
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solace ourselves with the lines of the Scottish bard, so familiar to us all,-
' John Anderson my Jo John, When we were first acquent, Your locks were like the raven, Your bonny brow was brent, But now your brow is beld, John, Your locks are like the snow, But blessing on your frosty pow, John Anderson, my Jo.'
" But I see in this assembly younger faces, those of a generation that has come since I left Bedford. Some of them were perhaps infants while I was here, others have been born and grown up to manhood and womanhood during the twenty years that have inter- vened since 1879. Of these I can only say that I knew their par- ents, but I shall need a formal introduction before I can say even that much. But these swiftly changing pictures of young and old, and generation succeeding generation, in life's kaleidoscope, do but illustrate and confirm what I have so often tried to impress upon the minds of old and young during my ministry, that soon, very soon, these little years that have been cut out of God's eternity for each one of us, must fade and vanish away in the eternity yet to come, and whatsoever is done in life to make ourselves and the world bet- ter must be done in the little now.
' Not enjoyment and not sorrow, Is our destined end or way, But to act that each to-morrow Find us farther than to-day; Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime; And departing leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time.'
" Citizens of Bedford, scions of the old Scotch-Irish stock, whose spreading branches of influence have extended over every section of this great Union, and penetrated every department of church and state, I wish to speak to you to-day of some of the striking features of your ancestry. I take it that you have arranged this anniversary for the purpose of recalling to mind the characters and the deeds of the heroes who have contributed so much to make this magnificent country what it is, the home of civil and religious liberty, and to per- petuate their memory in the hearts and lives of their posterity. This is the duty of a generation that appreciates what their forefathers have done. Says Lord Macaulay : ' A people which takes no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestors, will never achieve anything worthy to be remembered with pride by remote descend- ants.' You have shown by your centennial, and by this semi-cen- tennial anniversary, that you do not belong to such an ungrateful posterity. .
"To trace God's hand and His Providence in the raising up and transfer of the Scotch-Irish to this country, and the influence they
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have exerted in moulding our civil institutions, and infusing their religious life into the church of Christ in this country, must always be an interesting subject to us, who to-day are reaping the fruits of their labors, their sacrifices and trials, and feel the consciousness that * their blood is coursing in our veins.
"The character of the Scottish Presbyterians was fully developed during the long years of persecution to which they were subjected by the house of Stuart. To that natural persistence of purpose, which was a national trait, were added that clear perception of the nature of the divine government which made them Presbyterians, and that deep devotional spirit that made them Christians. These traits of character carried them successfully through the long strug- gle for civil and religious liberty in Scotland from the days of Knox till the time of Oliver Cromwell. Sometimes it was Romanism, sometimes Episcopacy that was the persecuting power, but rather than submit to a religious system which they abhorred, the Scottish Presbyterians suffered the loss of all things. They were hunted like beasts of prey; they were shot down with remorseless cruelty, their property was seized, their houses burned, and themselves expatriated. But they clung to the faith delivered to them by Knox and his com- peers. They had imbibed the spirit of John Knox, at whose funeral Morton testified, 'There lies one who never feared the face of man." In that spirit they went with even step to the block and the gibbet. A Presbyterian youth was dragged before Claverhouse. The guns were loaded and he was told to pull his bonnet over his face. He refused, and stood confronting his murderers, with his Bible in his hand. He said, 'I can look you in the face, I have done nothing of which I need be ashamed. But how will you look, in that day, when you shall be judged by what is written in this book?' He fell dead,. and was buried on the moor. The age of the early martyrs did not show a grander heroism than this, and that which was shown by the Scottish covenanters throughout their long and bitter persecutions. They were planting the seeds of civil and religious liberty, whose fruits were to be seen later, flourishing upon the soil of a new world.
""'The wheels of Providence,' says Jonathan Edwards, 'are not turned about by blind chance, but they are full of eyes round about, and they are guided by the spirit of God. Where the Spirit goes they go.' Seldom has God's overruling Providence been more signally illustrated than in the results of those persecutions, both in England and Scotland, which succeeded the reformation, and prepared the way for American emigration. There were many happy Christian homes, both in England and Scotland, during the early part of the seventeenth century. Despite the cruelties of a persecuting hier- archy, those homes to their inhabitants were the dearest places on earth. The green hillsides and mountain streams were endeared to the heart by the tenderest ties. The 'banks and braes o' Bonny Doon,' were as dear to the Scot as Tennyson's 'Babbling Brook' to
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the Puritan. There, among those hills, and along those streamlets, they and their forefathers had dwelt, till every moor and crag and burn had its association of hallowed memory. But there was a new world waiting to be occupied. It might become peopled with wild adventurers, seeking its shores in quest of gold, or it might be seized and possessed by that same intolerant religious system by which they were oppressed at home. But that new country belonged to Christ, and it must be taken and held in the interests of His King- dom. So the Puritans of England and the Presbyterians of Scot- land alike believed, and only the high resolve of planting in the new world a home and a church that should be exempt from the persecu- tions to which they had been subjected, could ever have induced them to leave the land of their forefathers and the happy homes of their early years, to dwell among savages and endure the hardships of a life in the wilderness.
" But God employs the element of time in the execution of His purposes. The events of His Providence are best understood in the light of their results.
"Although the Scotch-Irish arrived in this country nearly 100 years after the Puritan fathers, it was in reality their second emigration ; the time of their leaving Scotland nearly synchronizing with the de- parture of the Leydon company from England-the English leaving in 1608, the Scotch in 1612.
"God had a particular work to be performed by these two classes of people. The Pilgrim fathers were destined to the work of found- ing a new government in the new world ; of defining its nature, and laying the foundations of civil and religious liberty. They were needed here first and God sent them first. The original colony of Puritans sojourned in Holland from 1608 till 1620. But they never ·felt at home there. There was a divine impulse urging them on to this new world as clearly defined as that which moved Abram from Ur of the Chaldees to the plains of Mamre. Many a difficulty, many a vexatious delay was encountered, but still they persevered, till at length, joining their friends in Southampton, after still farther troubles, they set sail in the famous historic Mayflower, and landed on these shores in December, 1620. The story of their losses and trials during that bitter New England winter are familiar to us all. The mingled hopes and fears, the lights and shadows through which they passed were such as try men's souls and test their faith to the utmost, but did not alter their purpose. Their high resolve was never, except as visitors, to return to their native land. Half their numbers perished during the first winter, but not a word was said about returning home.
" God's time had not yet fully come for the Scottish Presbyterians to emigrate to America. While the English colony was making a way in the wilderness for a future civilization that was to be the wonder of the world, the Scotch were needed for another century to resist the bigoted James in the north of Ireland. And so 'the wheel
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of Providence ' turned them thitherward. The successive Irish re- bellions, during the reign of Elizabeth, were finally suppressed, and the whole Province of Ulster fell to the crown by the attainder of rebels. James I offered liberal inducements to the English and Scotch to settle in Ulster, and from 1612 and onward great numbers passed over and occupied the lands that had been forfeited to the crown. Soon the whole aspect of the country was changed. 'Ul- ster,' says Hume, 'from being the most wild and disorderly province, became the best cultivated and most civilized.' The Scotch brought with them not only their habits of industry and economy, for which they were noted, but that stern devotion to religious principles which afterwards gave to Scotland its solemn leage and covenant, and which was the very element required in the struggle they were so soon to encounter.
" Here they dwelt in comparative peace and prosperity for more than seventy years, until James II sought to recover again the crown he had so ignominiously abandoned. His plan of campaign was to enter Ireland, thence to cross into Scotland, and by the aid of the army he would thus raise from among his adherents in those realms, strike for the recovery of his crown. But he found the Scotch- Irish in the north of Ireland a mighty bulwark to oppose him. He met them at Enniskillen, at Newton Butler, and Londonderry, and the encounters were neither flattering to his pride nor encouraging to his cause. There were men in William's army who understood the animus of James, and to whom the Protestant faith was dearer than life ; men who could die, but who would never submit to a galling tyranny like that which James sought to reestablish over them.
" The siege of Londonderry has passed into history as one of the grandest examples of heroic endurance in British annals. For 105 days the Scotch-Irish, poorly armed and poorly fed, and deserted by their leader, withstood the disciplined army of James till succor reached them from England. By the successful issue of the siege of Londonderry the fate of the house of Stuart was fixed and sealed with the blood of Presbyterian martyrs. The blessings of religious liberty were insured to the British Isles, and the great principles of the Protestant reformation finally established by that memorable siege.
" Doubtless the Scotch-Irish inhabitants of Ulster would have been content to remain where their liberties had been so dearly purchased. But new sources of grievance arose. They held their lands not as original and sole proprietors, but as tenants to the crown. They were subjected to an annual tax for the support of the established church, and dwelt in near proximity to a native population which though subdued, still cherished the spirit of hate and sought to annoy them in every conceivable way. 'They sprang,' says Macaulay, ' from different stocks. They spoke different languages, they had different national characters, as strongly opposed as any two national characters in Europe. They were in widely different stages of civ-
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ilization. There could, therefore, be little sympathy between them, and centuries of calamities and wrongs had generated a strong an- tipathy.' And here let me emphasize a fact. The term Scotch- Irish is somewhat misleading. It was only during the past summer that I met with a Scotchman in Illinois who had always supposed the Scotch-Irish were a mixed race. But the term means only a Scotchman living in Ireland. With perhaps a few exceptions, the Scotch who lived in the north of Ireland were as exclusive and sep- arate as the Jew in Palestine.
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