USA > New Hampshire > Coos County > Lancaster > History of Lancaster, New Hampshire > Part 20
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COMMON SCHOOL MASS CONVENTION.
Said Convention met agreeably to previous notice at the Academy Hall, in Lancaster on Wednesday the 11th day of November, at one o'clock P. M., and was organised by the choice of the following officers.
BARKER BURBANK, Esq., President.
Rev. DAVID PERRY, Vice
REUBEN STEPHENSON, Presidents.
Rev. H. H. HARTWELL,
GEORGE A. COSSITT, Secretaries.
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HISTORY OF LANCASTER.
Voted, That a Committee be appointed by the chair to draft resolutions for this convention.
S. A. Lord, Benjamin F. Whidden and Wm. A. White were appointed said committee.
Mr. S. A. Lord in behalf of said committee presented a report and resolutions, and on motion, it was voted that they be taken up separately.
Voted, That a committee of three be appointed by the chair to nominate a cen- tral committee.
Lord, Hartwell and Cossitt were appointed said committee.
Voted, That this Convention adjourn to meet at the Court House, at 6 o'clock, P. M.
EVENING.
Met agreeable to adjournment.
The committee appointed to nominate a Central Committee reported as fol- lows :- William Burns, William A. White, George A. Cossitt, which report was accepted.
Voted, That Mr. Wm A. White be invited to give an address to this Convention.
After listening to the spirited address of Mr. White, the following resolutions were separately discussed by the following gentlemen, in a manner able, spirited, and worthy the importance of the subject before the convention :- Rev. H. H. Hartwell, Cossitt, Benton, Lord, Rev. D. Perry, Whidden, Rix, & Fletcher, and were adopted, viz :---
I. Resolved, That it is the imperious duty of every true citizen and philanthro- pist, to deeply interest himself in and for the cause and advancement of Common Schools,
2. Resolved, That the cause of Common Schools most emphatically calls upon all parents and guardians, to engage with great earnestness and constancy in seek- ing to promote the advantages, and increase the benefits, which should result to their children from their schools.
3 Resolved, That any and all means, designed for the good of our young peo- ple in this way, such as conventions for discussions, Committees for examination, State enactments, &c., &c., ought to be encouraged.
4. Resolved, That it is with great pleasure we witness the course taken at the late session of the Legislature, to encourage and strengthen our system of Common Schools, and that it is the duty of every town to yield a hearty response to the enactments then and there made on this subject.
5. Resolved, That it is the duty of every town to take measures according to law, by which it may be enabled to receive its proportion of the Literary Fund.
6. Resolved, That it is the duty of all the separate districts of this county, to take immediate and vigorous measures by which the schools in these districts may be improved.
7. Resolved, That more care should be exercised in obtaining SUITABLE and COMPETENT TEACHERS.
8. Resolved, That it is the imperative duty of all parents and others, to co-operate with their Teachers in sustaining an efficient and thorough system of instruction and discipline, in our various schools.
9. Resolved, That it is the duty of every town to appoint, encourage and sus- tain a Superintending Committee in the faithful discharge of all their duties as designated by law.
10. Resolved, That the present low condition of the Common Schools in this county, demands of every citizen immediate action ; therefore we will unite in the commendable work of renovating them, and not cease our efforts till they give to our children a thorough, practical education.
II. Resolved, That we will never abandon this reformation; we pledge to it
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our minds and hearts in an unwavering purpose to promote the interests of educa- tion, the happiness of the rising generation and the prosperity and welfare of society. In view of a work so important, so worthy the co-operation of all good citizens, we now invite such, without distinction of party or sect to enter our ranks and aid us by their counsel and wisdom.
12. Resolved, That all Teachers are unworthy our confidence and esteem who do not in a good degree govern themselves-who do not carry out the spirit of the law, which requires of them diligently to impress upon the minds of the young, the principles of piety and justice ; a sacred regard to truth, love of coun- try, humanity and benevolence ; sobriety, industry and frugality ; chastity, mod- eration and temperance ; and all other virtues which are the ornament and support of human society ; and to endeavor to lead them into a particular understanding of the tendency of all such virtues to preserve and perfect a republican form of gov- ernment, to secure the blessings of liberty and to promote their future happiness, and the tendency of the opposite vices to degradation, ruin and slavery !
Voted, That the proceedings of this convention be published in the Coos County Democrat.
Voted, That this meeting adjourn to the 2nd day of Dec'r next at the Court House in Lancaster at one o'clock, P. M. at which time Prof. Haddock, of Dart- mouth College is expected to deliver an address before said convention.
BARKER BURBANK, President.
H. H. HARTWELL, Secretaries.
GEO. A. COSSITT,
This convention continued to meet and hear able addresses upon the subject of common schools for some years. Sometimes the speakers were educators from away, but quite as often some man in town would address the convention on some feature of the common schools. Much good resulted from those discussions, particularly in the matter of inducing better management of the schools, and the selection of better teachers.
There were then few normal schools in the country; and New Hampshire did not establish her state normal school until 1870. There was, however, a "Teacher's Seminary " conducted at Ply- mouth, N. H., from 1837 to 1839, by Rev. Samuel Read Hall. Aside from the training of the colleges and academies, teachers were not regarded as a peculiar product of the schools of a higher grade. It was supposed that anybody able "to read, write, and cipher," and keep order was capable of teaching, or rather as they expressed it in those days, " keeping school." The people had found out that teaching, and "keeping" school were not synony- mous terms, and set about correcting the mistakes they had fallen into. The personal influence of the teacher was not overlooked, as we see in the twelfth resolution of the convention's report above.
These popular movements were productive of much good at a time when the states were not exercising the same effective admin- istration of the public school system that they are now.
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HISTORY OF LANCASTER.
CHAPTER XIII.
RELIGION AND CHURCHES.
No New England town in the eighteenth century was so fully a civil body politic as now. Most of the early towns were founded by the church, and grew up about it as a sort of physical nexus that connected the church as a spiritual republic with the world. Very naturally in such communities the church was older than the civil organization and functions of the community. The church by its prior existence largely dominated the civil functions of the towns.
Although this condition of affairs was largely changed, and break- ing down at the time Lancaster was founded, and the civil organiza- tion and functions of the state were coming more into prominence and freeing themselves from ecclesiastical control, yet religion as a social force exerted a great influence in every community. Church and state were still connected by ties that, while they were growing weaker all the time, still held them together. In different commu- nities first one and then the other was most prominent in control- ling affairs.
The first towns founded in New Hampshire, Dover, Exeter, Hamp- ton, and Portsmouth, were religious republics. Exeter, the asylum of the persecuted Antinomians, under the leadership of the pious Wheelwright and his sister, Anne Hutchinson, laid the foundation of that form of government that has prevailed, with but slight changes in New Hampshire, for more than two hundred years. In these first towns the church was considered the most important institution ; but the civil functions of the town were never dominated by ecclesiastical interference as in most of the older Massachusetts towns. By a sort of good fortune, Lancaster was largely controlled in its settle- ment and for some years afterward by men who had been either bred in those lower towns, or had been much about them. The portion of its settlers who came from Massachusetts had come under an influence that, at that time, was considerable in the northern and western part of that state. They were religious men, or at least men who regarded religion as of first importance to a community. They were the offspring of Puritans who, being bred under more favorable conditions than their fathers, had learned to be tolerant. Their religious character had been softened through the absence of intolerance. All the hard views and practices that prevailed two generations before, they had outgrown. New political and religious questions had come to the front in their day, and they had, or at least the leaders among them had, come to be liberals in both politics and religion. They were loyal as long as the king and his government did not trample upon their rights to live for the comfort and happi-
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ness that they regarded as the reward of honest toil; they were loyal to the church so long as it did not ask them to violate their conscience to support its dead doctrines and practice perfunctory morals out of keeping with the wants of their lives. It may be doubted if Emmons Stockwell, Edwards Bucknam and David Page knew much of what constituted orthodoxy of belief, or if knowing they cared anything for it. They were yet men who had a pro- found respect for religion and morality, and none did more, or more willingly, than they did to build a church and support it These were thoughtful men, who did not take their opinions from other minds, ready-made precepts that must be obeyed in an unquestioning ser- vility of disposition. They were not scholars, but men of practical common sense, who knew what constituted right between man and man, and trusted what we of to-day have come to call "the larger hope,"-that honest men stand the best chances in the courts of heaven.
While we can see the moulding influence of Massachusetts in the political and civil development of the town, we see no vestige of her religious exclusiveness manifested by the pioneers of Lancaster. Congregationalism had secured the support of the province, and in every town of any importance in the province the church of the Orthodox Congregational body had the town's support by taxa- tion. The civil authorities laid a tax for its support, and the peo- ple in their civil corporate capacity as a town had the right con- jointly with the church to call a minister. The church and town stood so nearly on a level of authority that the church had but one point of advantage over the town-the right to call on the town for the support of its minister. Neither one, however, could act in the matter without the concurrence of the other. The laws sustained this relation between the religious and civil bodies with as much appar- ent sincerity as they provided for the regulation of other matters considered wholly secular. In fact, the terms secular and sacred did not stand in antithesis to their thought, as they have come of late years to ours. With them things were either sacred or profane. Secularism is a term that came into use after the separation of church and state took place.
In the matter of these old laws the interior and northern towns had no part. The older towns on the sea-board had secured their enactment; but at the time of which we are speaking even they had come to regard their religious statutes as a sort of Trojan Horse they had mistakenly drawn into their camp to repent of in sackcloth and ashes at a later date, for New Hampshire was slow and long in removing certain barriers it had erected against religious toleration. The last of these were removed in 1819.
The law to which we refer is this, passed in the provincial assem-
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HISTORY OF LANCASTER.
bly in 1714. It was enacted for the purpose of securing the support of the ministry and the public schools. Section I, relating to the support of the ministers, was as follows :
" It shall be lawful for the Freeholders of every respective Town within this Province convened in public Town Meeting, as often as they shall have occasion, to make choice of, and by themselves or any other person by them appointed, to agree with a minister or ministers for the supply of said Town and what annual salary shall be allowed him or them; and the said minister or ministers so made choice of shall be accounted the settled minister or ministers of such town; and the selectmen for the time being shall make rates and assessments upon the in- habitants of the Town for payment of the minister's salary, in such manner and form as they do for defraying the other town charges. Provided always that this act do not interfered with her Magesty's Grace (Queen Anne) and favor in allowing her Subjects Liberty of conscience; nor shall any person under pre- text of being of a different persuasion. be excused from paying towards the sup- port of the settled minister or ministers of such town; but only such shall be excused as conscientiously and constantly attend the Public Worship of God on the Lord's Day according to their own Persuasion."
This law was liberal for the times. It contains no intention of being used for the support of a bigoted institution, or for persecu- tion. It aimed at the encouragement of religious life under some form. There was freedom for those who held views different from those of the orthodox church, but it must be used in the building up of an actual church.
This law had become, at the close of the eighteenth century, a mere check against irreligiousness and immorality. It had ceased to be applied aggressively, though it remained in force until after the province had become one of the states of the Federal Union. It was repealed in 1791.
When Lancaster was settled, the older towns had discovered that they had made a mistake in securing such rigorous laws in relation to matters of religion and the church. These hardy, practical men were not going to act unwisely in the matter. They had reserved an equal share of town lands for the first settled minister, and set apart a lot for a meeting-house. The way was open for the settlement of a minister; from the first had they chosen to take advantage of the provisions of the laws regulating the matter; but as the people were the town, the tax for the support of the church would have fallen on the people had they as a town voted to settle a minister earlier than they felt able to contribute to that purpose. It was just as lawful to vote a sum of money to settle a minister as one for build- ing roads. A majority voting for such appropriations to the church secured its collection and use for that specified purpose. No pro- test that did not change the minds of the majority was of any avail in such matters. It mattered not whether a respectable minority were of another religious belief than that of the Orthodox Congregational
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church, they had to pay the tax so long as it was decreed by a ma- jority vote.
While the laws practically established and protected this one par- ticular church, they made no provisions for the punishment of what the church might consider heresy. Such disregard of its orthodoxy it had to deal with without state interference. The laws as they stood at that time, secured both the church and the individual citi- zen from any injury without respect to motives protecting or assail- ing an opinion. The law took cognizance only of acts affecting the welfare of either. For this reason New Hampshire has not to an- swer in the court of public opinion any charges of persecution for conscience's sake. The first settlers of Lancaster seem to have aimed to avoid any conflicts over the matter of religion and church.
The body of Congregational clergymen of that day were educated men. Most of them were college bred. Many of them were grad- uates of Harvard college. They, and the people, too, recognized the fact that they belonged to a learned class to whom everybody might look for enlightenment and trustworthy moral guidance in the social relations.
Lancaster was most fortunate in her pioneers. They came here free from all narrow and bigoted policies. They were tolerant and charitable men and women; and when they formed a church under the name of the regular order, it was wisely framed to keep out bigotry and intolerance, and had it not been for coming of less lib- eral men, at a later time, in such numbers as to outnumber the original representatives of that church, it would have probably re- mained the one church of the town for many years longer than it did.
The people of this Upper Coos country had learned to cherish political liberty, and that and religious bigotry could not get on together.
The amended law of 1791, while it still continued the public sup- port to the churches of the established order, left a way for those who did not wish to support it to get released from the obligation by giving notice that they were of some other sect; and in 1819 the Toleration Act put all churches on an even footing, except that con- tracts existing between any church and the town could not be broken without the consent of the interested party-the church.
As nearly as can now be learned there was no preaching in Lan- caster until the summer of 1787. At the annual town-meeting of 1786, it was " voted to assess thirty-two dollars to hire preaching the ensuing summer." Maj. Jonas Wilder, Emmons Stockwell, and Edwards Bucknam were chosen a committee to engage the services of a minister. It does not appear that the committee succeeded in finding a minister that year ; and at the annual meeting, March 27,
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HISTORY OF LANCASTER.
1788, it was voted to raise the nine pounds and twelve shillings appropriated for preaching last year and "hire Preaching this year." That year Rev. Lathrop Tomson preached six Sundays for five bushels of wheat per day. In 1788, fifty bushels of wheat were voted raised for preaching, with Col. Jonas Wilder, Edwards Buck- nam, Esq., and Dr. Francis Wilson a committee to engage a minis- ter's services. The committee were instructed to " hire preaching " about eight Sundays. That ministerial service was regarded as well paid, is seen from the fact that when the minister got five bushels of wheat a day for preaching, the highway surveyor only got one bushel a day for his services with a yoke of oxen.
The early religious services were generally held in the large house of Maj. Jonas Wilder (the Holton place). The terms of engage- ment of a minister were short those times, and at irregular intervals. There was no public action taken on the matter the following year ; but in 1790 sixty bushels of wheat were appropriated for preaching, and to defray town debts. At a special meeting, April 13, 1790, it was voted,
" That the town will well and truly pay to the Rev. Benjamin Bell, three hun- dred bushels of good wheat, annually, on the following conditions : That he, the said Rev. Benjamin Bell, shall settle in this town of Lancaster, in the work of the Gospel ministry, and that he preach a certain portion of the time in the towns of Northumberland and Guildhall, as the towns may agree, saving to the right of the said Rev. Benjamin Bell three weeks annually for the use of visiting his friends and relations, if he see occasion, and that the Town will unite with the first Church that may be hereafter formed in the Town of Lancaster on the conditions in this vote mentioned."
To this vote Joseph Brackett, William P. Hodgdon, and Walter Philbrook entered their dissent. We do not know why this vote was not carried out, unless the dissent of three prominent men was evidence that the gentleman was not capable of satisfying the relig- ious thought of the community.
At a special meeting, April 12, 1791, Col. Jonas Wilder, Elisha Wilder, and Stephen Wilson were chosen a committee to " hire preaching." The committee was instructed, October II, to " apply to Mr. Thursting (Thurston?) whom is preaching with us, to preach with us another term as soon as may be after his engage- ments are out other where; to preach with us on probation as we have a view of settling the Gospel with us." At this same meeting it was voted to proceed to build a meeting-house, and a committee of seven men was chosen to look into the matter, and report a place for it. The meeting was adjourned to November 8, 1791, when the committee made a report recommending the plain on the south side of Isreals river as the most suitable place for such a building. The committee consisted of Col. Edwards Bucknam, Col. Jonas Wilder, Capt. John Weeks, Lieut. Emmons Stockwell, Lieut. Joseph
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RELIGION AND CHURCHES.
Brackett, Lieut. Dennis Stanley, and Capt. David Page. The com- mittee was continued, and instructed to lay out six acres as a meet- ing-house lot on the plain as recommended, and inspect its clearing. The meeting was adjourned to December 13, 1791, at which time it was "voted that John Rosebrook, Jonathan Cram, and Doct. Zadoc Sampson be admitted as voting in all matters respecting building a meeting-house." The meeting then adjourned to December 22, 1791, when it was "voted to accept the plan of the meeting-house with this alteration, the length of the posts to be 26 ft., and the jet 26 inches." Lieut. Emmons Stockwell, Capt. John Weeks, Mr. Jonas Wilder, Lieut. Jeremiah Wilcox, and Jonas Baker were chosen a committee to build the meeting-house. They were instructed by the following vote that passed unanimously :
" That the pews be sold at public vendue. That each person give his note to the committee, who shall be authorized to receive the pay and appropriate the same. That each person be subjected to the following method of payment. That the whole sum be divided into four parts, to be paid the four next succeeding years. That each person pay six shillings and eight pence on the pound the first year, one half in June, the other in November, the rest to be divided into three equal parts and paid in November of each year. That four shillings on the the pound be paid in cash, or salts of lye, and the rest in wheat at four shillings per bushel, or beef at seventeen shillings and six pence per hundred weight, with this restriction, that the committee shall receive each man's equal proportion of timber, boards, clapboards, shingles, etc., if good and merchantable, and deliv- ered when the committee shall call for them. That each person who buys a pew, shall procure sufficient bonds for payment, and his obligation to be lodged in the hands of the chairman of the committee, which shall be taken up or endorsed by a receipt from the committee."-Town Records.
The committee proceeded with their task; but it was no ordinary undertaking for a small community to build so large a structure. It required over three years to complete the building. We have no records of the conversion of the salts of lye, beef, and wheat into money ; but we know that those articles were a common substitute for money. The people wisely gave themselves three years in which to pay their indebtedness to the committee. The building, which we have described elsewhere, was sufficiently completed to hold a town-meeting in it March II, 1794.
While the building of the meeting-house progressed the town continued to vote appropriations of money and wheat to pay for preaching. In 1792 fifty bushels of wheat were voted for preaching and the next year nine pounds were voted to pay for preaching and town debts. In 1793 the sum of nine pounds was voted to fell trees on the minister's lot. There was a purpose to get ready for a minister; and as he would have to help himself to some extent it was a matter of prudence to begin a clearing on his lands so as to have them ready for a crop to piece out his living.
At a meeting held April 28, 1794, it was voted " to raise Nine 13
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Pounds ' solly' for preaching the present season." On July 28 of that year a special meeting was held, at which it was voted to settle the Rev. Joseph Willard, and a committee of nine men was ap- pointed to draw up proposals for the settlement and salary of Mr. Willard. The committee consisted of "Col. Edwards Bucknam, Col. Wilder, Capt. Stockwell, Capt. Weeks, Lieut. Brackett, Lieut. Rosebrook, Elisha Wilder, Capt. David Page, & Jonas Baker." It was further
" Voted to clear the fell trees on the minister's right and fit for the harrow by the Ist. of Oct. in the year 1795, and give 20 pounds in lumber towards building on demand, and including rights given by charter to the first settled minister, to be given to Mr. Willard if he settles with us in the ministry."
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