USA > New Jersey > Middlesex County > Piscataway > History of the First Baptist Church of Piscataway : with an account of its bi-centennial celebration, June 20th, 1889, and sketches of pioneer progenitors of Piscataway planters > Part 11
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Though the past has its annals and this day its cheer, What lies in the future doth not wholly appear : But we're treading the pathway which leads np the height ; We have reached each a lookout, and oh ! what a sight ! At the top of the mount is the cloud that conceals, The glorious vision faith only reveals ; But into that cloud that concealeth God's face, The footsteps of glorified spirits we trace :
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And lo, others are passing on up out of sight,
And out of earth's darkness on into God's light ! As we look down the mountain on those coming after.
There are sighs, there are tears, there is joy, there is laughter ; But mingling along with that laboring train, We behold on the steep and out over the plain, The Elect, the Lord's Chosen ; - He knoweth His own ; He is guiding their foosteps safe up to His throne.
And shall we too ascending this mountain of Time, Attain to the heights of the glory sublime ? And into that cloud that concealeth God's face, Shall we follow the spirits whose footsteps we trace ? This mountain enshrouded shall not always stay ;
For the Scriptures declare, Time shall vanish away.
ADDRESS BY REV. Um. ROLLInson.
Pastor of the Rahway Baptist Church.
BRETHREN AND FRIENDS :
From the programme you learn that as one of the senior pastors I am desired to speak a few congratulatory words at the closing up of these delightful services, but I prefer to base my privilege on the right of kinship rather than on that of seniority. My good friend, Dr. Parmly (we were boys together) suggested that I should forecast the future, since so much has been said of the past of this honored Church, but as I have not yet reached an age when
" The sunset of life gives us mystical lore, And coming events cast their shadows before."
I will spare you any prophecies save those uttered by the voices of the past, which clearly and loudly predict a prosperous future as the natural outgrowth of a noble and devoted past.
I said I claim kinship with this Church. I do, and I will tell you how and why, for the kind of relationship I claim has been urged by no other to-day-I am a great-grandchild of Piscataway Church.
We have heard much and very pleasantly, both morning and afternoon, of the family connections of this ancient Church. Her children, all of whom are themselves venerable for age, and her grand- children, each one of whom has attained to full spiritual stature, have come up to the bi-centennial feast prepared by the mother Church, and as one after another they have spoken to us, through their respec- tive pastors, so numerous has been the spiritual progeny that as we have listened to their loving words and their filial greetings, we might be excused for feeling that it would not be strange were most of those
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present to search out their genealogys if they should say of Piscataway Church what Paul said of the Jerusalem from above,-"She is the mother of us all." In my ministerial capacity I myself, am a great- grandchild, as it was the First Baptist Church of New York City, a child of the Scotch Plains Church, itself the oldest daughter of this Church, which called me into the gospel ministry, and were this all I would rightly feel myself one of the family. But many other things fit me to rejoice with the brethren here and with their loved pastor. For the whole period of my ministerial life I have known and loved this Church ; during twenty-seven years of my pastoral life it has been, as it is now, the Baptist Church nearest in one direction, to the one I have served, and every pastor it has had for the last fifty years, I have personally known and esteemed, while with the present pastor my re- lations have been peculiarly intimate and interesting. In youth we were converted under the same ministry ; were baptized in the same pool; belonged to the same church, taught in the same Sunday-School and sat together under the ministry of that Prince in Israel, Spencer H. Cone ; and since then we have stood together, holding fast to the form of sound words received from those honored lips, contending for the same principles, defending the same truths and preaching the same old gospel, so that personal reasons, in addition to the interest belong- ing to the occasion which has drawn us here, make me glad to par- ticipate in the joy of this pastor's heart and to join in the hearty con- gratulations offered to him and to the church he so loyally and lovingly serves, on an event which but once before, on this Continent at least, has occurred in the history of our denomination-the bi-centennial of a Baptist Church.
In the deeply interesting historical paper prepared and read by Dr. Brown, we have been shown something of the meaning of a bi- centennial anniversary, and it has come to my mind with almost startling force that the period of church life enjoyed by this Church covers more than one-tenth of the entire Christian era. Ten such periods would take us back to a time a hundred years and more before the angels sang the first gospel hymn on the hills of Bethlehem, or the magi followed the star which led them to the manger-cradle of the Son of God.
Led by the vivid descriptions of the accomplished historian of this Church, we have lived in fancy through two centuries of the buried past, and have shared, sympathetically, in the toils, struggles and sac- rifices of the noble men and women who were the pioneers of our Baptist faith, as they opened the path for Christ's truth to advance- only a woodman's trail at first, but steadily broadening as they toiled, till it has become like the King's highway, with a score and more of churches like their own in faith and practice gracing its borders ; and in thus living over again the years of past faith and heroism, we have learned the significance of this bi-centennial occasion, and have felt how fitting it was for the old mother to call us to rejoice with her on the completion of the two hundredth year of her life, ere she again sets her face towards the future still "strong in the Lord and in the
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power of his might," feeling as did Paul at Appii forum, when the brethren came to meet him, " whom, when he saw, he thanked God and took courage."
I have spoken of this as an old church, but we have felt the pulse of its bounding life to-day, and as we look on the gay and costly attire in which the aged mother is arrayed for her birthday festival, she seems to have found what Ponce de Leon vainly sought-the fountain of rejuvenescence. But how can she ever feel the palsy of age who draws her life from the great lifegiver ? After two hun- dred years we find the old church as Moses was in his age, with eye undimmed and vigor unabated ; still she sees the truth as the father's saw it, and grown but the stronger because of her years, she keeps in the van of her offspring no one of whom will she suffer to excel her in zeal and devotion to God's truth and Christ's honor. All this we have seen to-day, and I am sure I express no more than the universal feeling, when I say of the Piscataway Church, that it has been to this entire region like a spring of living waters, forth from which have flowed streams which have made spiritual deserts blossom as the rose, and that her past centuries are the sufficient pledge of her power and potency in future ones. And I think of no more fitting words to speak in closing than those it will be the rapture of the re- deemed to hear when spoken by the Master's lips : "Well done ! good and faithful servant."
The following letters were read during the day.
TRENTON, N. J., June 1, 1889. MY DEAR DR. SARLES :
It would be a great pleasure for me to be present at the Bi-Cen- tennary Anniversary of the Church and to meet with so many of the families endeared to me by professional relations and by personal friendship. I have always been glad that I was born in Piscataway Township, and that my maternal ancestor Griffith, who is buried so close to the meeting house was a Baptist deacon. Although absent I shall thank God and rejoice with you in all the blessings and precious memories of the past, and anticipate still greater prosperity and grace for the future. With kindest regards to all,
I beg to remain, EZRA M. HUNT.
PHILADELPHIA, June 20, 1889.
Too weak to meet with you in person to-day. We send our cordial greeting.
C. L. LEE, C. P. FARSON.
OUTLINE SKETCHES
- OF THE- PIONEER PROGENITORS OF THE PISCATAWAY PLANTERS
1666-1716.
BY OLIVER B. LEONARD, ESQ. PLAINFIELD, N. J.
THE names of the first pioneers to settle on the Raritan were Hugh Dunn, John Martin, Hopewell Hull and Charles Gillman, with their families. On the 21st of May, 1666, they were granted the right as associates of the Woodbridge patentees, and December 18, following. were deeded by these New England neighbors from New- bury, one-third of their purchase obtained the week before. During the next year there came other members of the Gillman and IIull families, also Robert Dennis and John Smith. So cheerful were the prospects and complete the liberties established ; so peaceful the plantation and so generous the inducements offered, that additional emigration soon followed by friends and neighbors of the original pioneers. Before the year 1670 passed, the settlement of Piscataway had been increased by many new arrivals of associate planters from New England. Among them were Francis Drake, Benajah Dunham, Henry Langstaff and John Martin, with their families, from New Hampshire ; John Fitz-Randolph, with his brothers, Thomas, Joseph and Benjamin, and sisters Elizabeth and Ruth, with their parents ; Geoffry Manning, Nicholas Bonham, Samuel Walker and John Smalley, with their wives and children, from other New England districts, where the intolerance of the established Church order had restricted and restrained the exercise of free conscience and subjected them to many indignities and deprivations.
But the required number of actual settlers had not yet purchased land in Piscata- way and made such improvements as were contemplated and specified by the Wood- bridge grant of 1666, and the previous charter of 1664 to the Elizabethtown colony. Four years had now intervened without realizing the necessary accessions to the popu- lation or the required development of the territory. On the 20th of October, 1670, Governor Carteret made a public proclamation waiving all objections that might be made against the Piscataway settlement "on account of their not having come in exactly according to the time limited." Stimulated by this official concession, renewed efforts were immediately made resulting in the greater improvement of the country and an increase of emigration thither. By 1675-6 Piscataway had attained a notable promi- nence in the civil affairs of the province, and that year sent for the first time two depu- ties to the General Assembly, which had been held but twice before, (during the
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Spring and Winter of 1668) The few accessions made during the five years succeed- ing-1676-81-may have been caused by the disputed title of boundaries between Piscataway and Woodbridge, and the division of ownership in the colony and the unsettled condition of proprietorship, which was not definitely determined till 1682.
QUAKER GOVERNMENT.
At this date additional impetus was imparted to emigration thither. William Penn, at the head of a real estate syndicate of Friends, purchased all of the unoccu- pied land of East Jersey at an auction sale in London, on the 2d of February, 1682. These Quaker proprietors were not slow in making known in England and Scotland the remarkable advantages of this new country. They gave reassurance that the liberal terms of the Constitution formerly granted, would be assiduously maintained, as well as the unrestricted rights of all settlers in matters of religion.
By this time-1682-'89, the date of the organization of the Piscataway Baptist Church-the limits of the township had been enlarged, and fully eighty families were occupying the territory. The following names are then found among the prominent freeholders as recently arrived citizens, whose religious affiliations were with the Bap- tist people : Vincent Runyon, Nicholas Mundy, James Giles, Andrew Wooden, and representatives of the Suttons, Holtons, Daytons, Mollisons, and others. Up to this period nearly all the planters had come from plantations in New England or Long Island, and been under the influence of instruction tending to Baptist doctrines. Most all of the first original settlers in Piscataway were imbued with religious princi- ples of this denomination, which had been discernable among the earliest adventurers to New England, and been preached by Hanserd Knollys in New Hampshire and taught by Roger Williams in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and advocated by William Wickenden among the towns on Long Island.
By the time the government of East Jersey passed into the hands of the Crown -1702, and a few years thereafter at the distribution of the back lands-local history of Piscataway becomes familiar with the names of the Stelles, Blackfords, Clarksons, Piatts, Coriells, Brokaws, Boices, Bishops, Fords, Merrells, Higgins, Hendricks, Slaters, Fields, Laings, Websters, Pounds, Clarks, Thorns, Lupardus's and others.
THE DUNNS AND DUNHAMS,
with the Drakes, shortly after them, came to this township from the Piscataqua district in New England.
HUGH DUNN, the founder of this family name in New Jersey, was devoutly religious, and encouraged the early settlers by exhorting them to a holy living. His advocacy of an untrammeled conscience in the worship of God, greatly aided in the enjoyment of the Gospel in purity and peace. He lived through all the trying times of establishing a new colony, and died in 1694. This was five years after the public organization of the Baptist Church, of which he was a constituent member, and for the realization of which he toiled and prayed. His descendants have always been prominent members in the faith of their mother Church, and that of the sister branch observing the seventh day as their Sabbath.
The Dunhams, of Piscataway, (for there was a different lineage of same name at Woodbridge), had as their progenitor a worthy sire in the person of BENAJAI DUN- HAM. Their family tradition asserts that he settled in this vicinity several years previous to its formal occupation by any other Englishmen. His first child born was Edmund, whose birth in 1661 was the earliest of any white child born in the town- ship. Edmund Dunham grew to be an influential member of society, and became a lay preacher, helping to mould the tender consciences and direct the religiously in- clined of the pioneer community. In 1681 he married Mary, or Elizabeth Bonham, a member of another early planter's family. Their son, Jonathan, in after years, succeeded his father in the ministry of the Seventh-Day Baptist Church, of Piscataway, of which the father may be said to be the founder in 1705-7.
THE DRAKES.
The Drakes of this part of New Jersey are the direct descendants of Francis and Mary Drake, who moved into this township about 1667-8 from the New Hampshire district of same name. The ancestors of Francis Drake had lived there on the banks
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of the swift-flowing Piscataqua River since 1635. Among the first of this name to settle in the new world in that New England locality was Robert Drake, a man of eminent piety. At his death in 1667 two or three sons survived him-Nathaniel, Abraham and probably Francis, the progenitor of the New Jersey line. By some it is claimed that Francis, last named, was the grandson of Sir Francis Drake's brother Thomas, to whom the Admiral left his valuable estate, by others he is believed to have been his nephew. Robert Drake, first mentioned, was co-temporary with Sir Francis, his birth occurring in 1580, the same year the great navigator sailed around the world, in honor of which marvellous circuit of the globe at the age of thirty years, Queen Eliza- beth knighted hin. Both Robert and Sir Francis belonged to the original family of Devonshire, Eng., where the Drake estate was established shortly after the conquest of William of Normandy.
In 1556 there was a Robert Drake living, who suffered as a martyr-minister in a neighboring county for conscience's sake, and was burned at the stake April 23 of that year. It is recorded of him that he said, when exisorted by the priest to renounce his faith: "As for your Church of Rome, I utterly deny its works and defy its power, even as I deny the devil and defy all his works."
FRANCIS DRAKE, who was the founder or the family in New Jersey. was a peti- tioner in 1665 at Dover, N. H , for protection to his property and religious rights. But the province being settled entirely as a trading interest, all laws were disregarded and a permanent residence there by peaceful citizens became unendurable. This same year the liberal concessions by the East Jersey proprietors were proclaimed in that region and Francis Drake, with others, shortly afrerwards availed themselves of the generous invitation and moved to these quiet fields, where he spent the rest of his life till 1687, the year of his death. His sons. Francis, George and John, born in New England, came with him, and their posterity has materially assisted in peopling this province for generations past. Of George, it is known that he married, in 1677, Mary Oliver, of Elizabethtown, and was a useful public servant of the township and colony. He was appointed supervisor of many important local matters and served as a legislator in the General Assembly for 1684 and several successive years following. From his sons George and Andrew many useful and industrious citizens have descended who helped to make the Church and community an honor and a blessing. The Rev.George Drake and Simeon J Drake were descendants of this line.
JOHN DRAKE, the most distinguished son of Francis, became a lay preacher in the early days of the settlement, and in after years, as is generally known, was the regular pastor of this Church. He married, in 1677, Rebecca Trotter, his first wife, daughter of one of the original associates of Elizabethtown, who came from Newbury, Mass. Pastor Drake had, by this and two other marriages, thirteen children, whose names are recorded as John, Francis, Samuel, Joseph, Benjamin, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, Ebenezer and Ephraim. These and the childre.1 of George and Francis Drake have left numerous and worthy descendants whose many virtues of mind and heart have always endeared the name to this and every locality where they have taken up a home. Time will not permit even an allusion to the honorable and eminent positions of usefulness attained by them in the different professions, and the progress made in the arts and sciences through the influence of those who have borne the name.
THE GILLMANS.
The Gillmans of New Jersey are descendants of John and Charles Gillman, two of the original patentees of Piscataway plantation in 1666-8. They came from the Piscataqua district of New Hampshire, where their ancestor, Edward Gillman, of Norfolk County, England, had settled shortly after his landing in 1638, in Massa- chusetts. The father had been a near neighbor of godly old John Robinson, of dis- senting notoriety before separating from the Church of England, and was heartily in sympathy with non-conformists.
THE HULLS AND LANGSTAFFS
came to Piscataway from the district in New Hampshire of the same name. In the pioneer days of that early New England settlement Benjamin Hull was a preacher of the gospel there. Whether he is the same person as the Piscataway patentees of that
.
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name who settled on the Raritan, the writer cannot say. From the earliest colonizations in New England the name has been prominent among the intelligent and outspoken freemen of the New World. A full generation before any of the family moved to New Jersey, Rev. Joseph Hull is mentioned as an original patentee of the town of Barnstable. Mass., where the Fitz-Randolphs, Bonhams, Smiths, and other Piscataway settlers came from. The pastor of the old First Baptist Church, of Boston, in 1675, was Rev. Isaac Hull, the same church whose meeting house doors were nailed up in 1680 by order of the Court of that colony. But few families can produce a longer list of remarkable ministers of the Gospel extending through colonial times to the present.
HOPEWELL and BENJAMIN HULL were the worthy founders of this family in New Jersey, which furnished in subsequent years some of the most influential personages of the local township government. In the peaceful pursuit of industry as well, their name is always found in honorable relations.
HENRY LANGSTAFF, the founder of the family in New Jersey, was the son of Henry, who emigrated to New Hampshire with the colony sent out by Mason, the patentee, in 1630. He lived on the Piscataqua River up to the time of his removal to Piscataway township in 1668-9. Through his son John, born in New England in 1647, the name has been handed down to posterity in this latitude. The marriage of many of the female members into other pioneer families, has given some of the best representatives of this mother Church. The original male line was distinctly identi- fied with the Episcopal Church.
THE MARTINS.
Among the brave and bold passengers of the " Mayflower " was a representative of the MARTIN family, who sought "the wild New England shore for freedom to worship God." One of this familiar name was among the first planters to make a permanent settlement in this colony of conscience. John Martin, a Piscataway grantee of 1666, came here from the Piscataqua district in New Hampshire, where he lived as early as 1648 with the ancestors of the Dunns, Drakes, Langstaffs, and other old and respected families of that locality. The Martins came to stay, as a numerous line of descendants testify from that remote day to the present .
THE SMALLEYS
JOHN SMALLEY, of Plymouth, old England, came over to America in the vessel " Francis and James," 1632, with Edward Winslow and others. His native home was in the same shire of the Drakes, who had lived there from the days of the Norman conquest. Descendants of this name soon found a congenial place with the Baptists in Rhode Island. From that colony of liberty-loving people John Smalley came to Piscataway during its early infancy. His descendants have always held to the views of Christian truth as believed and practiced by the Baptists. The family gave to this denomination and trained in the doctrines by this Church, one of the most useful ministers of the gospel that ever labored in New Jersey-the Rev. Henry Smalley of blessed memory.
THE DENNIS'S.
ROBERT DENNIS, though a Piscataway patentee, lived in the adjoining settle- ment of Woodbridge, was descended from Thomas Dennis, an emigrant with Win- throp, who came to Massachusetts in 1630. The home of this pioneer before coming to New Jersey, was at Yarmouth, on Cape Cod, not far from the residence of other planters living in Barnstable. Several of the female members were united in marriage with the Fitz-Randolphs, Mannings, and others connected with the Baptists.
THE DAYTONS,
of New Jersey, are of New England origin, settling first in Massachusetts colony as early as 1637, and thence to Long Island. Their English ancestry occupied for a long time a homestead on the east bank of the Midway River, in Kent County. The settlement of this family in old Piscataway about the close of the pioneer days-1716- 26-added a valuable element to the agricultural population. Some of their best representatives have had their names on the church roll of this and other neighboring Baptist churches.
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THE CLARKSONS,
of! East Jersey, trace their pedigree through Matthew Clarkson, who was Secretary of the province of New York from 1689 to his death, 1702. The founder of this American line was Rev. David Clarkson, of Bradford, York County, Eng. Many of this family were early identified with the Baptists by their marriage into families of the Stelles, Mannings, Randolphs, and others distinctly connected with this denomination. They removed from the province of New York into this township about the same time the Daytons' settlement here.
THE SUTTONS,
also, came from Long Island, descending from an honorable ancestry in the county of Nottingham, Eng., where the progenitor of Fitz-Randolphs lived before emigrating to this country. This family furnished to New Jersey many excellent Baptist preachers during the Colonial and Revolutionary times, one family had four distinguished sons in the ministry. Some of them were among the first to push into the interior to develop the Passaic valley and the hill country beyond, and at a later date moved to the western part of Pennsylvania.
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