History of Union and Middlesex Counties, New Jersey with Biographical Sketches of many of their Pioneers and Prominent Men, Part 55

Author: W. Woodford Clayton, Ed.
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Philadelphia: Everts
Number of Pages: 1224

USA > New Jersey > Middlesex County > History of Union and Middlesex Counties, New Jersey with Biographical Sketches of many of their Pioneers and Prominent Men > Part 55
USA > New Jersey > Union County > History of Union and Middlesex Counties, New Jersey with Biographical Sketches of many of their Pioneers and Prominent Men > Part 55

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In the summer of 1711 the Rev. Thomas Halliday was sent by the society to take charge of Amboy and Piscataway, and Mr. Vaughan divided his labors be- tween the town proper and that part of it called Rahway, a monthly lecture being given to the latter place. Shortly after the decease of Col. Townley the congregation obtained from his son Charles a clear title to the church lot, for want of which the interior of the church had not been " fitted according to the rules of decency and order."

Owing to a serious disaffection in the Presbyterian Church of Woodbridge a few families withdrew and

+ Clark's St. John's Ch., pp. 35, 36. 5 Ihid., p. 36. 6 fbid., p. 38.

1 Humphreys' His. of S. P. G. F. P., pp. 188-90.

2 Clark's St. Juhn'a, pp. 24-32. N. Y. Col. Docmts., iv. 1077.

3 Clark's St. John's, p. 25. Humphreys' S. P. G. F. P., p. 190. N. Y. Col. Docmts., v. 318.

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HISTORY OF UNION AND MIDDLESEX COUNTIES, NEW JERSEY.

formed an Episcopal society. Mr. Vaughan was re- quested to officiate there occasionally in a house built for the purpose, "probably the smallest you have ever seen, but amply sufficient for the congre- gation at this day."

Mr. Halliday proved to be utterly unworthy of his office, and in 1713 was obliged to leave Amboy, when Mr. Vaughan was requested to include that place within his parochial district. Mrs. Mary Emott, the widow of James Emott, of New York, and a daughter of Mrs. Philip Carteret, had been, doubtless, a fre- quent visitor at the house of her step-father, Col. Townley. Her husband had died in April, 1713, leaving her with four sons and a handsome " fortune of £2000." She was about forty-eight years old, and of high social standing. Mr. Vaughan was ac- cepted as her second husband. They were married at the close of the first year of her widowhood.1

By his marriage he came into possession of the house and grounds afterwards owned and occupied by Col. William Ricketts, on the Point road.

At or soon after his marriage he removed to Am- boy, for the benefit of his health, " which," he says, "was much impaired during my abode in Elizabeth Town, where I still do and shall continue to officiate in the fore and afternoon three Lord's Days succes- sively in every month," the other being given to Amboy. The society seem not to have favored this plan of non-residence, and he returned to his former charge, and was residing here in 1721. He continued to divide his time between the several stations as be- fore, giving the chief attention to this town. Writ- ing, July 8, 1717, he says,-

" Elizabeth Town itself is a considerable village, and equals if not exceeds any in the Province as well in bigness as in number of Inhabit- ants. Custom and education has engaged them for the most part in the Congregational way, but notwithstanding they are not so very rigid in that persuasion as altogether to deny their attendance on my ministry."2

The church, which had been erected of brick in 1706, bad not yet been finished. The congregation grew but slowly, and the most they could raise for their minister was thirty pounds, without a glebe or parsonage. Yetthey say of their minister in a letter to the society,-

" We esteem ourselves happy under his pastoral care, and have a thor- ough persuasion of mind that the Church of Christ is now planted among ns in its purity. Mr. Vanghan bath, to the great comfort and edification of our families iu these dark and distant regions of the world, prosecuted the duties of his holy calling with the utmost application and diligence ; adorned his character with an exemplary life and conversation, and so behaved himself with all dne prudence and fidelity, showing upcorupt- ness, gravity, sincerity, and sound speech, that they who are of the con- trary part have no evil thing to say of him." 3

In 1721 his audience had increased to two hundred souls, and the communicants were more than forty in number. For ten years no memorial of him is found. But Oct. 6, 1731, he writes,-

" My congregation encreaseth not only in this Town, but in the neigh- boring Towns of Newark, Whippany, and the Mountains [Orange] where I visit and preach toa numerous essembly occasionally and in the wilder- ness and dispense the Sacrament tu them. I have baptized here and elsewhere within the compass of two years last past 556 children besides 64 adults, and find in the people a general disposition to receive the Gog- pel according to the way and manner taught and established in the Church of England." +

In 1734 the communicants were seventy. In the year ending May 29, 1739, he baptized one hundred and twenty-nine infants and three adults, and the number of communicants was eighty-four. A glebe "of nine acres of good land, with a fine orchard thereon," had been acquired " by the Piety and favor of a very worthy widow, Mrs. Anne Arskins [Erskine], of Eliz- bethi Town." 5

Mr. Vaughan continued in the work of the minis- try, as the rector of St. John's Church, until his de- cease about the 12th of October, 1747, “ far advanced in years." The memory of Mr. Vaughan was very precious to the people of his charge.

The vacancy in the rectorship caused by the death of Mr. Vaughan was not easily filled. Hitherto all Episcopal clergymen had either come from Englaud, or had been obliged to go there to receive orders. In these circumstances the vestry of St. John's were ad- vised to secure the services of a catechist, or lay reader, which they did in the person of Thomas Brad- bury Chandler, who had been teaching a school at Woodstock, Conn., and studying theology at intervals with the Rev. Dr. Johnson. He was a young man of good promise, who had graduated at Yale College in 1745, and was twenty-two years old when he came to this town, about the 1st of December, 1747. In com- mending him at the " request of the good people of Elizabeth Town," Dr. Johnson spoke of him as having " known him three years at least," and as "a truly valuable person, of good parts, and competent learn- ing for his time and our circumstances, and of good morals and virtuous behaviour." He was conse- quently appointed by the " venerable society" in May, 1748, their " catechist at Elizabeth Town, in New Jer- sey," on a stipend of £10 a year, the church obliging themselves that, in case he should be appointed to the mission, to " raise the sum of £50 Current Money of the Province per annum, and to provide him a con- venient parsonage." 6

Mr. Chandler prospered well in his vocation as catechist and lay reader. But St. John's was urgent for a resident rector, who should give them his whole time. Among the reasons assigned was the fact that " the Dissenters in this town have five Ministers set- tled, constantly to officiate in publick, to visit them in private, ready to serve on any particular occasion, and, in a word, that are always with and among them." These five Presbyterians were Messrs. Spen- cer, of the First Church; Symmes, of New Provi-

1 Clark's St. John's Chh., p. 42.

2 Ibid , pp. 44, 45.

3 Ilumphreys' Ilist, of the S. P. G. F., p. 77.

+ Clark's St. John's Church, pp. 48, 49.

6 Ibid., pp. 50, 51, 55.

6 Ibid., p. 59. Hatfield's Elizabeth, p. 593

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THE CITY OF ELIZABETH.

dence and Springfield ; Grant, of Westfield ; Thane, of Connecticut Farms ; and Richards, of Rahway.

In the summer of 1751, Mr. Chandler repaired to England, was admitted to the priesthood by Dr. Thomas Sherlock, Bishop of London, and early in September sailed again for America, arriving at home after a passage of nine weeks, about the 1st of No- vember. His salary or stipend was fixed at thirty pounds sterling from the society, and sixty pounds New Jersey currency (valued at little more than thirty pounds sterling) with a house and glebe from the people. The communicants had increased from forty to sixty.

REV. THOMAS BRADBURY CHANDLER was a de- scendant of William Chandler, who, with his wife, Hannah, and four children,-Hannah, Thomas, John, and William,-came to this country from England, and settled at Roxbury, Mass., in 1637. His son John, born in England in 1635, married, Feb. 16, 1659, Elizabeth, daughter of William Douglas, and had eight children,-John, Elizabeth, John (2d), Jo- seph, Hannah, Mehitable, Sarah, and Joseph, all born at Roxbury. In 1686 he united with several of his neighbors in the settlement of Woodstock, Conn., of the church of which he was chosen deacon, and where, too, he died, April 15, 1703. His son John, born April 16, 1665, married, Nov 10, 1692, Mary, daughter of Joshua Raymond, of New London, and had ten children,-John, Joshua, William, Mary, Elizabeth, Samuel, Sarah, Mehitable, Thomas, and Hannah. His son William, born at Woodstock, Nov. 3, 1698, married Jemima Bradbury, who is thought to have been a daughter of Thomas Bradbury, of Salis- bury, Mass., whose father, William, married, March 12, 1672, Rebecca, the widow of Samuel Maverick, and daughter of the Rev. John Wheelwright. Her father was born Dec. 24, 1674. Her son, Thomas Bradbury, was born April 26, 1726.

Mr. Chandler's early years were spent on the pater- nal farm, and, as we have said, he entered Yale Col- lege, where he graduated at the age of twenty in 1745. His settlement here as catechist was in 1747, and as rector in 1751, on his return from England.

His first official act after his return was the bap- tism, November 3d, of Matthias, the son of Matthias Williamson and Susannah Halstead. His first mar- riage service was on the 10th, and the parties were Robert Milbourn and Mary, daughter of Elias Thomas, both of Elizabeth Town. In the course of the following year, 1752, he was himself married to Jane, the daughter of Capt. John Emott, and Mary, the daughter of Elias Boudinot, Sr.

At the close of 1754 the congregation included eighty-five families, and the communicants numbered ninety. But the pecuniary strength of the parish had decreased. Of the sixty pounds engaged by sub- scription, twenty-eight pounds had dropped by deaths and removals ; most of the principal parishioners had died or moved off, and the greater part were poor,

many of them being "the proper objects of every kind of charity." The missionary was in straits, pro- visions of all kinds being as dear in this town as in the most populous cities of the land, meat of all sorts being actually dearer here than in the New York market. On these accounts he asked for an increase of his stipend from the society in England, which was probably granted.

In 1757, during the prevalence of the smallpox, of which President Edwards and his daughter, Mrs. Burr, died in the spring of 1758, Mr. Chandler was prostrated by the terrible scourge, and did not re- cover from its ill effects for nearly three years, his face retaining its footprints to the end of life. In 1766 the University of Oxford conferred upon him the de- gree of Doctor of Divinity. For some time after this Dr. Chandler was engaged quite largely in a pamphlet controversy with several leading Dissenting divines on the merits of Episcopacy and anti-Episcopacy, having in 1767 issued an " Appeal to the Public in behalf of the Church of England in America : Where- in the Original and Nature of the Episcopal Office are briefly considered, Reasons for sending Bishops to America are assigned, The Plan on which it is pro- posed to send them is stated, and the Objections against sending them are obviated and confuted. With an Appendix, giving a brief account of an Anonymous Pamphlet. pp. 118."

This was replied to by Rev. Dr. Chauncy, of Boston, in 1768, and Dr. Chandler rejoined in " The Appeal Defended," which was soon answered by Dr. Chauncy in a " Reply to Dr. T. B. Chandler's Appeal," which drew forth a rejoinder from the latter comprising 240 pages, entitled "The Appeal farther Defended, in Answer to the further Misrepresentations of Dr. Chauncy."

Notwithstanding this pamphlet controversy, Dr. Chandler continued in the regular discharge of his parochial duties, occasionally going forth on mis- sionary tours, and once, November, 1769, far up into Sussex County, then almost the outer edge of civili- zation. In July, 1770, he refers to the fact that " the Dissenters of late have become more friendly in ap- pearance than ever," sometimes exceeding in number, in their attendance on special occasions, his own people. In the course of the two or three following years the congregation had so much increased as to determine the people to enlarge the capacity of the church edifice. But in 1774 it was resolved to rebuild entirely ; the foundations of a new building, eighty by fifty feet, were laid around the old building ; ma- terials were collected, and money subscribed to defray the expense. But the first shock of war put an end to the work, not to be resumed by that generation.

In October, 1761, application having been made by the rector, church wardens, and vestry of St. John's to Governor Josiah Hardy for a charter, the same was granted, bearing date July 20, 1762. It appoints " John Halsted and Jacob De Hart to be the first

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HISTORY OF UNION AND MIDDLESEX COUNTIES, NEW JERSEY.

and Present Church Wardens of the said Church, and Henry Garthwait, Jonathan Hampton, Amos Morss, Ephraim Terrill, Matthias Williamson, John De Hart, John Ogden, Cavalier Jouet, and John Chetwood to be. the first and Present Vestrymen of said Church,"

The only changes made in these names for the next fifteen years were in the substitution, from time to time, of John Herriman, Edward Thomas, and George Ross for Cavalier Jouet and John De Hart, the latter serving as secretary.

About the year 1779 or 1780 the congregation be- gan to assemble in a private house " for public wor- ship on Sabbath."? Worship was soon resumed at the church. An impostor for a brief time obtained pos- session of its pulpit. He was soon after exposed, and fled from the odium and punishment he had merited. The church was then occasionally supplied by the Rev. Uzal Ogden, of Newark. Mr. Ogden was well liked, and being a cousin of Mrs. Caldwell, wife of the late murdered pastor, many of the Presbyterians, whose own church had been burned by the British,

PARSONAGE OF ST. JOHN'S CHURCH, ERECTED 1696, ENLARGED 1765.

Dr. Chandler continued to officiate here until the middle of May, 1775, when probably alarmed at the sacking of the house of his friend, Dr. Myles Cooper, at New York, on the night of the 10th of May, he found refuge with him on the "Kingfisher," Capt. James Montague, a British ship-of-war in the harbor of New York. On the 24th of May, in company with Dr. Cooper and the Rev. Samuel Cook, he sailed in the " Exeter" for Bristol, England.1

The church was left without a rector or a supply for the pulpit, and its members were consequently greatly scattered, more especially after the declara- tion of independence. Public worship was at length suspended, and as houses were needed for hospitals and barracks, churches were not too sacred to be used for that purpose. Fences were converted into fuel, nor were the graveyards spared. St. John's suffered most as it was not used on Sundays, the wood-work in the interior being wholly destroyed, and two attempts to burn it being discovered in time to save the building.

resorted to the Episcopal Church. Mr. Ogden was chosen June 8, 1784, one of the assistant ministers of i the Trinity Church, New York, with a salary of five hundred pounds a year, with leave of absence for two- thirds of the year for four years, and to receive one- third of the salary. The remaining portion of the year he preached for St. John's parish and at Newark, with occasional visits to Sussex County. During the latter part of this period (1788) he had become the rector of Trinity Church, Newark.

Dr. Chandler remained in exile the full period of ten years, his family continuing to occupy the rectory as before through all the gloomy period of the war. He labored during his absence, raising funds for his destitute brethren in New Jersey. Dr. Berrian says, " He was received with such marked and universal respect into the society of the most distinguished per- sons as has very rarely been rendered to any one from our country in private life." He continued to cherish to the last the expectation of the restoration of royal

! Dr. Rudd's Discourse, 18, 19.

2 Ibid.

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THE CITY OF ELIZABETH.

authority in America, writing to Rev. Dr. Beach Dec. 3,1781 :

" The late blow in Virginia [Cornwallis' surrender] has given us a shock but has not overset us. Though the clouds at present are rather thick about us, I am far, very far, from desponding. I think matters will take a right turn and theu the event will be right."

Dr. Chandler remained in England two years after the restoration of peace, suffering much of the time from a cancer on his nose,-a relic, it was thought, of the smallpox of 1757. His former parishioners in- vited him to return and resume the rectorship of St. John's. But other friends were busy in seeking for him the episcopate of Nova Scotia, whither many of his former friends had gone as refugees at the close of the war. He reached New York on Sunday, June 19, 1785, but too infirm to resume his parochial charge. In the course of the following year the appointment of Bishop of Nova Scotia was tendered him, but his health was too much impaired to admit of his per- forming the duties of the office. At his suggestion it was conferred upon the Rev. Charles Inglis, D.D., one of his friends who had removed from New York to Nova Scotia at the close of 1783, and who was con- secrated at Lamberth, Aug. 12, 1787. Dr. Chandler, at the request of the vestry, returned to the rectory, where he died June 17, 1790, in the sixty-fifth year of his age. He left a wife and six children. Mrs. Chandler, to whom a pension was allowed by the British government after her husband's death, sur- vived him till Sept. 20, 1801, when she died in her sixty-ninth year.

Dr. Chandler is represented as having been "a large, portly man, of fine personal appearance, of a countenance expressive of high intelligence, though considerably marred by the smallpox, of an uncom- monly blue eye, of a strong commanding voice, and a great lover of music. He had fine powers of con- versation, and was a most agreeable companion for persons of all ages. He was very fond of home, fond . of retirement and of study, and was greatly beloved by his congregation. His antipathy to anything but British rule continued to the last."

REV. SAMUEL SPRAGGS was the successor of Dr. Chandler. He had been an assistant minister of the parish for over a year previous to the death of the rector, and on the Ist of January following that event (1791) was chosen hy the wardens and vestry to fill the vacancy. He was then in the forty-fourth year of his age, and had for a considerable period been a preacher in the Methodist Episcopal Church, having been admitted on trial at the second Confer- ence, held in Philadelphia, May 25, 1774. No record remains of his parentage or place of nativity. His first appointment appears to have been at Brunswick, S. E. Virginia, May 25, 1774; then, May, 1775 (hav- ing been admitted to full connection), at Philadelphia, and reappointed for the same place in May, 1776. In May, 1777, he was appointed to the Frederick Circuit,

Maryland. After the capture of Philadelphia by the British army, Sept. 26, 1777, he found his way again to Philadelphia, and in the course of the following winter or spring to New York, where he was the only traveling preacher in the connection, and had charge of the old John Street Chapel from that time till 1783. In common with his fellow-itinerants, he was regarded by the British authorities as a loyalist, and so neither he nor his chapel was disturbed during the war. He married subsequently to 1783, and settled at Mount Holly, N. J. Where or precisely at what time he took orders in the Protestant Episcopal Church is not known, but it was previous to his settlement here as an assistant in 1789. His salary at first was £120 a year, but was increased to £150 in 1793. He died in September, 1794, having been rector about three years and a half. Dr. Rudd says of him, "Mr. Spraggs was an affectionate and useful pastor, and enjoyed the confidence and regard of his flock, with whom he was on terms of affable and cordial intercourse." 1 His widow left a small legacy to the parish. She died in New York in the eighty-seventh year of her age, June 27, 1821.

REV. MENZIES RAYNER received a call from St. John's Church in February, 1795, but did not at that time accept. On the 6th of April, 1795, a call was extended to the Rev. Joseph Pilmoor, who declined in favor of Christ Church, Ann Street, New York. The call was then renewed to Mr. Rayner, and was accepted. Like his predecessors, he was a Methodist, and had preached on the Elizabeth Town Circuit, having entered the ministry in 1790. Mr. Rayner was a native of Hempstead, L. I., and is spoken of at the time of his settlement here as "a young man of promise, and very acceptable among the people as a preacher. Having engaged himself to marry a young lady whose family was unwilling that she should share his privations as an itinerant, he chose the alterna- tive of resigning his ministerial post. It was done with deliberation, with frank notification of his pur- pose to his presiding elder, Rev. George Roberts, and with the avowal of undiminished confidence in the doctrines and discipline of Methodism."

He had just left the connection when he was called here, in 1795. He was ordained to the priesthood on Wednesday, Nov. 8, 1797, by Rt. Rev. Samuel Pro- voost, D.D., on which occasion the Rev. Abraham Beach, D.D., of New York, read the prayers, and the Rev. Mr. Gardiner, assistant minister of Trinity Church, Newark, preached. His pastorate continued nearly six years. In September, 1801, he accepted an invitation to the rectorship of the Episcopal Church of Hartford, Conn., which position he held about twelve years. Afterwards he took charge of a church in Huntington, Conn. In his later years he with- drew from the Episcopal ministry and became a Universalist preacher. In 1839 he supplied the pul-

1 Dr. Rudd's Notices of St. John's, p. 21.

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HISTORY OF UNION AND MIDDLESEX COUNTIES, NEW JERSEY.

pit of the Bleecker Street Universalist Church of New York.1

At a parish meeting, Sept. 5, 1801, as Mr. Rayner was about to leave his charge, a committee was ap- pointed to wait on the

CRUMP .CEL

ST. JOHN'S CIIURCII, ELIZABETH, IN 1850.

REV. FREDERICK BEASLEY, who was then in town, and invite him to the rectorship of St. John's, with a salary of two hundred and fifty pounds. The call was accepted, and he was instituted in February, 1802.

Mr. Beasley was a native of Edenton, N. C., where he was born in 1777. He graduated in 1797 at the College of New Jersey. In 1798 he was associated with Henry Kollock, of this town, as a tutor in Prince- ton College, and served two years, pursuing at the same time, under the direction of President Samuel Stanhope Smith, D.D., the study of theology. He was employed as a reader for several months pre- vious to November, 1800, by Christ Church, New Brunswick, N. J. In the summer of the following year he was ordained deacon by Bishop Moore of | Locke. Though conscientiously attached to the

1 Recorda of St. John's. Dr. Rudd's Diacourses, pp. 21, 22. Stevena' Memorial of Methodiam, 1. 127. Journals of the Gen. P. Ep. Convention, i. 209, 284, 318. N. J. Journal, No. 735.

New York, and soon after was invited to serve one of the churches of New York City, but declined in favor of St. John's of this town. In February, 1802, arrangements were made for his regular induction as rector, and not long subsequently he was ordained riest also hy Bishop Moore. His salary was two hundred and fifty pounds a year. His college friend, Henry Kol- lock, had, scarcely more than a year previons, become the pastor of the Pres- byterian Church of this town. Their intimacy thus was very happily renewed for a season.

His ministry here was soon termin- ated. He resigned his rectorship June 5, 1803, six months before Mr. Kollock's removal, to accept a call to St. Peter's Church, Albany, N. Y. In August, 1809, he resigned this charge to become the colleague of the Rev. Joseph G. J. Bend, D.D., of St. Paul's, Baltimore, Md.2 This position he resigned in July, 1813, to become the provost of the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia. In 1815 the honorary degree of D.D. was conferred on him hoth by the uni- versity over which he presided and by Columbia College. He retired from the university in 1828, and in 1829 became the rector of St. Michael's, Trenton, N. J. He resigned this charge in June, 1836, and withdrew from public life.

While rector of St. John's in this town he had become tenderly attached to Susan W., daughter of Gen. Jonathan Dayton, whom he married Aug. 22, 1803, just as he was removing to Albany, N. Y. Mrs. Beasley, having given birth to a daughter, died Nov. 27, 1804, in her twenty-second year, greatly lamented. Mr. Beasley subsequently (June 29, 1807) married Maria, daughter of Matthias Williamson, also of this town. On his retiring to private life in 1836 he came hither, and spent the remainder of his days among his relatives by marriage in the prosecution of his studies. His publications had been somewhat numerous, of which the most profound were " A Search of Truth in the Science of the Human Mind," Part I., Svo, 1822 (Part II. was completed, but not published ) ; " A Vin- dication of the Fundamental Principles of Truth and Order in the Church of Christ from the Allegations of the Rev. William E. Channing, D.D.," 1830. He was a superior scholar, but excelled chiefly in the philosophy of the mind, being of the school of

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History of Union and Middlesex Counties, New Jersey with Biographical Sketches of many of their Pioneers and Prominent Men, Part 55

Author: W. Woodford Clayton, Ed. Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Philadelphia: Everts Number of Pages: 1224

Author: W. Woodford Clayton, Ed.
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Philadelphia: Everts
Number of Pages: 1224