USA > New Hampshire > Grafton County > Plymouth > The story of the Old White Church, Plymouth, New Hampshire > Part 5
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Moreover, the members of the Cent Society evidently did not fear the "shame" according to St. Paul, of speaking for home missions, since their books prove that they must have solicited the $1891.36 from the Congregation after they were "aroused from the slumber of ages" according to their Consti- tution's preamble.
Until 1882 the Cent Society continued its work with a mem- bership that decreased to twenty-six in that year. Not too long ago mention of this Society was printed in a religious paper indicating that it is still in existence in some of the churches.
On the cover of one of the record books in the trunk, a Women's Foreign Missionary Society is reported to have organ- ized in 1875 and ended in 1902, which sent to the Women's Foreign Missionary Board the amount of $902.10. Many wo- men of the present time will recall other missionary meetings which were finally merged into one organization of church wo- men several years ago.
It may be wise to consider, briefly, events that were claim- ing the attention of citizens other than the denominational divisions in the religious life of Plymouth which included the advancing status of the women of the churches.
Already mention has been made of the visit of the abolition- ist, William Lloyd Garrison, in the home of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers. Also, the poet, John Greenleaf Whittier, frequented this valley to unite his voice in the anti-slavery controversies. For a time, he boarded in the house now owned by Mr. and Mrs. Leon Worthen on the Fair Ground Road which he named, "Under Croft."
Another famous preacher and lecturer was Thomas Starr King, who stopped at the hotel, then recently named the Pemi- gewasset House by its proprietor, Mr. Denison R. Burnham. Rev. King walked up the valley to sit in meditation on the roadside to contemplate the landscape, now known as "The
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Starr King View" just south of the West Campton schoolhouse. Beneath the tree on the grounds of the hotel, The Starr King Elm, he sat while writing his book, "The White Hills" published in 1859, just previous to his departure for California where his eloquent addresses became most influential in adding this vast Territory to the list of Free States, and where he died in 1864.
Fugitive slaves had been hidden in various secret chambers, not only in the dark closet in Mr. Rogers' home, but in farm houses along the valleys, one said to have a bricked shelter in the huge chimney for a refuge. The atmosphere was charged with political unrest.
People turned to God for guidance and the custom of mid- week prayer meetings was established by men and women, many of them said "to be able in prayer." The necessity for a smaller room than the church was evident. A subscription paper that was passed among the congregation produced $600.00 to erect a chapel in 1851 on the lot between the church and the former bank building, belonging to Grafton County, loaned for this purpose and a right of way from Main Street to its door.
As women participated increasingly in the work of the church, they decided upon an innovation. On a Thursday eve- ning, March 11, 1858, a group met in the home of Mrs. John Keniston (great-grandmother of Miss Miriam on Thurlow Street) where the Gulf filling station now is located on South Main Street, to organize The Woman's Social Circle. The sixty- six charter members paid annual dues of twenty-five cents, fifty per cent of the value of their missionary Cent Society's pledge.
Their first concern was the Sunday School. Question Books were purchased for the Bible lessons that were arranged quar- terly for the pupils. Then a Sunday School Library was estab- lished. Possibly in somebody's attic may be stored copies of the "Elsie Books" or the "Pansy" series that girls enjoyed, and the Rollo travel stories for boys.
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By the year 1868, when extensive renovations were ac- complished for the church building, the women had discovered their powers. Then the annual fairs, still continued, were origin- ated and earned surprising amounts (some years over one hun- dred fifty dollars) when the value of a dollar of that period is calculated. Popular lectures were promoted and the various suppers were introduced where everybody ate all that each de- sired, not "for a dollar," but for a dime.
Perchance the writer may be pardoned if she inserts mem- ories of three quarters of a century of the harvest, oyster, strawberry, maple and baked bean and brown bread suppers, with loaves of pound cake, or spiced, sponge and marble recipes and all varieties of pies covering the tables, so vividly recalled by a minister's daughter.
The largest hall in the village was loaned, without price to the church. Dressed in starched white aprons that covered their voluminous skirts, each apron adorned with an elaborate pat- tern of knitted lace, the women assembled in the early after- noon, bringing their plates, cups and saucers, cutlery, etc. since such utensils were not then purchased by the Circle. Not the blue or mulberry patterns of their prized Staffordshire porce- lains, but iron stone ware, with one half inch thickness, was loaned, the everyday dishes that could withstand even the abuse of a church supper. Long linen tablecloths, ironed to satin smoothness, were also loaned, proudly, many of home spun designs with fringed borders. The iron cook stovė was heated with a wood fire and the oven made ready for whatever hot dishes would arrive before the hour of five P. M.
If the main dish was an oyster stew, a tin wash boiler was filled with milk to be slowly heated and at the last minutes be- fore the supper hour, one or two gallons of oysters and several pounds of butter were added, since the word, dieting, was not included in the daily vocabulary.
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A bean supper meant that pea and yellow eye beans were baked to please all preferences. Later the red kidney varieties were developed and became the popular demand. In brown pot- tery bean pots or iron kettles, the steaming beans arrived from the ovens of the neighborhood and loaves of brown bread al- ways accompanied them. After the main dish was consumed, then slices of cakes and all the varieties of pies were sampled while the young men rushed about with pitchers of coffee, tea or milk, until everybody was too filled for utterance.
Then came the washing and sorting of the dishes, a con- fusing process, and usually several days elapsed before every woman had found her entire property.
Thus the Social Circle earned $500.00 to purchase the first carpet that the floor had received, and in addition, the chairs and plush for the pulpit and chandeliers and wall bracket lamps for the illumination by kerosene.
Far more ambitious was the undertaking in 1872 when the Social Circle purchased the pipe organ from a church in Fall River, Massachusetts at an expense of $1050.00 and paid an- other thousand to provide the alcove for the organ and choir in the rear of the pulpit platform.
Within the old trunk, carefully folded in an envelope, marked: "This paper was presented to the Plymouth Congre- gational Church by Mr. Dean S. Currier on October 14, 1936" was discovered a most precious relic of the enterprise of the Social Circle. This is a four page newspaper, its title HELP FOR THE ORGAN, in inch high letters across the top of the front page. This edition was printed by M. A. Haynes in Lake Village on March 8, 1872. The price was ten cents.
Eleven of the twenty columns are filled with advertisements from far and near. Bankers, merchants for every sort of goods, apothecaries (no druggists), schools, and many individuals pa- tronized the paper. Most appealing is: "W. Z. RIPLEY. We
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would be happy to be informed of a sure cure for Rheumatism! Corner of High and Summer Streets, Plymouth." Another states: "I am in favor of good music in Churches, therefore I advertise. Thos. P. Cheny, Ashland." One manufacturer offered BLACK STOCKINGS and underneath he stated, "In all col- ors." Several inches, printed in Spanish, advertised goods from all parts of the world by "Juan P. Rogers y Ca. Boston, Com- mercial Commissioners."
THE CHANCEL OF 1872 AND THE ORGAN THAT THE WOMEN'S SOCIETY PURCHASED.
The remaining columns contain the story about the organ, poems, and brief paragraphs and short stories.
On the fourth page is an article that contains valuable facts about the present library building. This was written in 1872, before readers of today were born, probably by a person who had seen and heard Daniel Webster. The building was then a
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THE COURT HOUSE OF 1774
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paint shop, dilapidated and dishonored. Four years later it was purchased by Senator Henry W. Blair who moved the frame, at least, to the County site and repaired its walls and roof and presented it to the Young Ladies Library Association for 99 years, beginning in 1876.
A small wood cut illustrates the appearance of the shop at that time. The roof is much higher and more steeply inclined, a chimney stands half way up the front roof above the door- way, and the cupola is missing. In the year of 1774 it is re- ported that a fireplace was built in the front corner next to the present Court House.
Because the contents of this column is a personal story by a forgotten author, the entire piece is re-printed here.
THE OLD COURT HOUSE
"Few are the relics of antiquity of which Plymouth can boast. These we treasure rather on account of their associations, than for their intrinsic value. The Car of Progress has rolled by both the old Meetinghouse and Old Court House; but at the latter it stops occasionally for repairs.
"Almost a hundred years ago did our fathers gather at the raising of this Temple of Justice, a square, low building with an oddly shaped roof, then located near the center of the village. When it was no longer used for judicial purposes, the district school was held in it; and schoolmasters reigned with birchen scepters, and the children of fifty years ago took with patience doses of Murray's mysterious Grammar, and Morse's Geo- graphy, figured with abnormal zeal according to the Rule of Three.
"The present appearance of this building is more sugges- tive of utility than of the beautiful or the picturesque; no ruin- loving ivy or pendant moss clings to it; nor graceful elms or
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poetic lindens overshadow it. Formerly a steeple crowned its roof; but that was taken down, made into a summer house and placed in a garden.
"The Old Court House as we all know, owes its local fame to the fact that in it Daniel Webster made his first plea before a jury in 1806. His father was present and heard his speech, the only time, it is said, that he ever listened to his son's elo- quence at the bar. This was not a criminal case; but he after- ward spoke in defense of a murderer in the old Meeting House, the Court House being too small to accommodate the crowd of listeners.
"Mr. Webster and his brother Ezekiel attended court here several years in succession.
"The old house still stands, where they boarded, and the lady who lives in it, though a child at the time of Mr. Webster's stay at her father's, remembers much concerning his words and ways.
"One day, she says, Mr. Webster was ill and remained at home; sitting in the large arm chair by the fireplace, he fell asleep; frightened, she ran out of the room to her mother, and cried, "Oh, dear, that man is dead!" But that Man's powerful voice was yet to be heard in many cities. His eloquent words were needed in defense of Dartmouth College, at the dedication of the Bunker Hill Monument, and at Washington.
"In 1835, Mr. Webster visited the old Court House-now a shop-and wrote his name on its walls. Though redolent of paint and varnish, and carpeted with chips and shavings, it has many visitors, who come from love of him whose voice is silent, but whose thoughts still live."
On page two of the paper is an editorial with its first para- graph as follows:
"Plymouth is wonderful in winter; delicious in summer; in
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autumn it is a joy to live; and the spring air is exhilarating as the hopes of youth, and as energizing as a laudable ambition. But the dampness of March and April is something deplorable. Our village is then a temporary archipelago."
This was the period when the State Normal School was established. A Village Improvement Association was transplant- ing elms and maples along the streets and the Village Common was purchased by the town and fenced and landscaped.
Dr. George H. Bowles recalled that he and Moses A. Batch- elder followed their grandfathers and helped as much as two small cousins were able to plant the trees. Many of these are standing today while others fell in the hurricane of 1938, par- ticularly along the east side of the Common. Dr. Bowles looked sadly at the fallen giant elms while he described his boyhood memories.
After the middle of the nineteenth century the White Moun- tain ice cream freezer was invented and manufactured by the family of Mr. Harrison F. Sargent who recalls his visits to the factory in his boyhood. In time, two gallon and larger sizes were produced and then the lawn party with ice cream for the attraction at a dime a heaping saucer became a summer event for the Social Circle. The process of preparing the freezers was not easy. The recipes called for dozens of eggs and quarts of real cream and several flavors were always provided. Wild strawberry juice was the favorite, but vanilla and third choice, lemon usually were on sale.
Every home possessed an ice house in a rural village. Great cakes of ice were cut and packed in sawdust during the coldest days of winter. On the day of the lawn party, youths were ex- pected to cut the ice into small chunks, place them in a hemp bag and flay them with the broad side of an ax until small
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pieces were ready for the freezer. Meanwhile the custard, never cooked, was prepared and turned into the metal cylinder ready to be set into the wooden tub and then surrounded with the ice and plenty of rock salt. After the dasher was inside the cylinder and clamped firmly above the cover, then by hand power and slow turning of the crank, the cream was frozen and packed with more ice and covered to ripen for hours.
No modern semi-circular servers were then invented. Strong iron spoons dipped generous heaps of the cream into saucers and seconds were the usual custom, with cakes of all varieties for an accompaniment. Afternoon and evening the lawn party continued with the village brass band to attract the audience. Many, many dollars have been gathered into the treasury of the Social Circle since the ice cream freezers were invented. Yet, long before this day ice cream was concocted. The writer's father, born in 1849, related that his first taste was when a small girl invited him, a very small boy, to join her in a dish that she purchased and called for two spoons.
Twenty years later the present chapel was constructed and afterward the records of the Social Circle list gifts of china, furniture, and hundreds of articles that were sold to promote the annual fairs that produced thousands of dollars as the years have passed by. A kitchen and diningroom occupied the upper rooms and conveniences that were modern at that day were in- stalled. What those members of the Social Circle would ex- claim could they enter the present well appointed kitchen of to- day can only be imagined. This illustrates the never ending continuity of the devotion of the women to those departments that the changing customs bring to the churches in the villages of New Hampshire.
A century has passed since 1858 when the Social Circle be- gan to function. Without its assistance, many departments of
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the church would not continue. To the women, the Sunday School owes its present existence. Without their musical talents the organ would remain silent many Sabbaths and the choir seats would be empty. The juniors would not be singing, the Vacation Schools would not flourish, the Thanksgiving and Christmas baskets would not be filled and distributed.
In the community, the women collect the dollars for the many charitable services to the sick and needy. Deeds of love and mercy, of hospitality and friendship, of thoughtfulness for the lonely and sympathy for the sorrowing, claim the leisure time of the organized womanhood of the church.
Without the constant mingling of men and women in the social life of the church, in cultural programs, in the Family Pot Luck and the Men's Club suppers, the progress of modern religious activity would stagnate. Changes advanced when food sales supplanted church suppers to increase the treasury, while rummage sales have proved most profitable in recent years.
The poet was right when he wrote, "Time makes ancient good uncouth." Certainly St. Paul would be obliged to change his mind about women in the churches were he to return to earth today.
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Chapter VIII THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION
This fragmentary history may well close with a brief de- scription of the celebration, on October 18 and 19, 1936, in honor of the close of a century since that New Year's Day in 1837 when the opening service dedicated our sanctuary.
Weeks of preparation had preceded this event with commit- tees arranging the program. Both on the Sabbath and the fol- lowing Monday evening, services were attended by audiences that filled every seat. A choir of thirty-two voices prepared an- thems and appropriate hymns. Mrs. Harl Pease, the leader, played the Skinner organ, Harrison F. Sargent, the violin, Har- old C. Freeman, the cornet and Melvin Otterson, the bass viol of 1837. Rudolph H. Wakefield, soloist in Boston, returned to his home town to add his tenor voice with several solos.
On Sunday morning, Rev. John C. Prince, the pastor, de- livered an historical address about "The Story of the Old White Church in the Heart of Plymouth," which the "Record" pub- lished and which is preserved in many scrapbooks today.
In the evening, Rev. James F. English, Secretary of the Congregational Churches of Connecticut, spoke on the topic, "The Ministry of the Meetinghouse" with all of the ministers of the other churches in Plymouth participating in the program.
On Monday evening, the past and present were combined. The six deacons and a number in the congregation dressed in century old costumes and observed the customs of that period. The choir sat in the gallery during the opening of the service
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while Mr. Wakefield impersonated a deacon and lined out the old hymns and the audience faced the rear during the singing.
Rev. Robert G. Armstrong, Secretary of the Congregational Churches in New Hampshire, spoke about "The Fellowship of our Churches." The choir marched to the front and rendered several classical anthems that closed the two-day programs.
A most important and enjoyable feature of this celebration was the exhibition of hundreds of articles that George G. Clark and his committee collected and arranged by decades beginning with the founding of the town. The list that appeared in the "Record" will be increasingly valuable as the years pass by, for no person except Mr. Clark possessed the knowledge about where to borrow such heirlooms, many of priceless value, that are to be found among the homes of Plymouth.
Over a thousand former residents and visitors from sur- rounding towns attended these events, proving that the power of our church is far reaching and calls homeward those who never forget "The Old White Church."
Within the safe in the pastor's study at the chapel, are records of this centennial that anticipate 1964 when two hun- dred years of history will be reviewed by the loyal citizens of Plymouth.
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THE CENTENNIAL GROUP
FRONT: MRS. JOHN C. PRINCE. FIRST Row: MRS. GEORGE A. BROWNE (EMILY WEBSTER), MISS CAROLINE RUTH LEVER- ETT, MRS. J. J. LOIZEAUX (MARGARET), DEACON CHARLES J. REED. SECOND ROW: MISS ELLEN A. WEBSTER, MRS. GEORGE H. BOWLES (CARRIE E.), DEACON ERNEST B. HARDY. TOP Row: DR. GEORGE H. BOWLES, MRS. RAYMOND E. TILTON (MARIAN FOSTER), GEORGE R. FOSTER.
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