USA > New Jersey > Essex County > Orange > History of the Oranges, in Essex County, N.J., from 1666 to 1806 > Part 8
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I. See Dr. Stearns' First Church in Newark, N. J., p. 127.
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him ; some being his zealous friends and others his more zealous opponents." Dr. Stearns, in trying to fix the date when the Newark Church united with Presbytery, remarks: "The incipient steps towards it may have been taken during the contentions about Mr. Bucking- ham." It would thus appear that during the few months of the ministration of the latter, the two op- posing elements were crystalizing, each into its chosen form of ecclesiastical polity. The withdrawal of Mr. Buckingham from the Newark pulpit was nearly co- incident with the fact that "in 1718 many of the in- habitants of the Mountain broke off and formed a new society."1 Mr. Mc Whorter says of Mr. Webb that "he was settled here with great unanimity ; and for some years there was much tranquility and comfort in the town." Unanimity in settling Mr. Webb by Presby- tery in 1719, seems to verify the statement of Stearns, that the people of the township had withdrawn before that time to form a society at the Mountain.
We sum up the events now recorded :
1. The four years succeeding the death of Mr. Bow- ers, the fifth pastor of the Newark Church, were years of contest upon the question of Church order.
2. The people of Newark were substantially a unit in favor of Presbytery, and those of the Mountain were united in favor of the old Congregational basis.
3. Mr. Buckingham was engaged as supply for a time, as a candidate for settlement in the old church. He served it during the last of 1716, and the early months of 1717, having "zealous friends and more zealous opponents."
I. "That part of the town, (the Mountain) having become somewhat nu- merous, formed a distinct religious organization, which was known at first, and for many years, as the ' Mountain Society,' and afterwards as the Second Church in Newark. It is now the First Presbyterian Church in Orange." Dr. Stearns' History of the First Church, Newark, p, 121.
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4. Mr. Buckingham withdrew from the church dur- ing the year 1717, and in 1718 a new society was organ- ized at the Mountain.
5. Mr. Webb, in December, 1718, was selected and engaged for three-quarters of a year on trial, and in October, 1719, was chosen pastor with great unanimity.
Our conclusions are, that Dr. Stearns' History of the Newark Church is correct, when he says that a new society was formed at the Mountain in 1718, and that the "unanimity" with which Mr. McWhorter, in his Century Sermon, says Mr. Webb was settled, grew out of the previous withdrawal of the dissentients.
During this period, 1716 to 1719, Rev. John Prud- den, who was settled as the third pastor of the Newark Church in 1692, and who served the parish for seven years, was a resident of Newark, quondam minister, as John Prodden he is styled in a deed given to him. His pastorate was not a smooth one, because of a diversity of ecclesias- tical views between his people and himself. He con- tinued to live in Newark till his death in 1725, aged 80. He was much esteemed by the people, and preached for and served them as occasion might call. He had two grand-daughters living at the Mountain, children of James Nutman. Their names were Abigail, who married Matthew Williams, and Mary, who married his brother Amos. Their grand-father was a frequent visitor at their homes and spent much of his time at the Mountain. He was possessed of a considerable estate, and lived at his ease and on the most cordial terms with his former parishioners. A tradition, quite reliable, in the family of Williams, 1 to which Mr. Prudden was allied, that he was the first minister of the Mountain
I. Related by Hon. Jesse Williams, who was great-grand-son of Abigail Nutman.
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Society, may have arisen from his frequent services · there, and from the interest he may have taken in the formation of a new religious society. Though he was the son of Rev. Peter Prudden, a rigid Puritan Pres- byterian, and, before he was settled at Newark, in 1692, was pastor of a Presbyterian Church on Long Island, so strongly Congregational was he in his views that he endeavored to convert the people of that church to his system of church order. Having, by his efforts to this end, obtained a following among the people, he addressed a petition to Gov. Dongan in 1688, requesting that if a considerable number of "the Congregational profession and persuasion should be desirous that he would continue to be their minister and maintain him at their own cost & charge by a voluntary contribution, your Excellency and the Hon- ored Council would pleas to give approbation." 1
The zeal of Mr. Prudden for the Congregational polity and the great respect in which his counsels were held, could not fail, as we can readily understand, to lead his followers to the adoption of measures for the formation of another religious society. Such action had been taken.
Mr. Buckingham came to the Mountain and minis- tered to the wants of the infant society in 1718. He had proved himself acceptable to them as a preacher, and was in sympathy with them in their views of church order. He remained with the society proba- bly till his death, certainly till five months before his death. A monumental inscription in a graveyard in Norwalk, Conn., thus speaks: "Here lyeth the body of Mr. Jedidiah Buckingham late preacher of the Gospel at the west part of Newark in East Jersey who departed this life March 28, 1720, atatis (snæ) 24."
I. Doc. Hist. of New York, III., p. 122.
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Mr. Buckingham was born at Saybrook, Ct., Octo- ber 2, 1696, the third son of Thomas Buckingham, Jr., of Saybrook. He was graduated from Yale College, 1714 ; studied theology, and in 1716 began to preach, as we have before stated, in Newark as a candidate. Before 1718 he withdrew from the pulpit there. He continued to reside in Newark, where his only son was born October 14, 1719. Five months after the birth of his son, while visiting at the house of his uncle, Rev. Stephen Buckingham, 1 the minister of the town of Norwalk, Conn., he rested from his earthly labors. ?
The Mountain Society having taken organic form in 1718, its subsequent acts were in logical sequence. On January 13, 1719, a purchase of twenty acres of land was made for a glebe. The grant was made to Samuel Freeman, Samuel Pierson, Matthew Williams and Sam- uel Wheeler, and the Society at the Mountain associated with them. They received the trust for a society al- ready formed. In the same year, tradition says, a
I. Rev. Stephen Buckingham and Thomas B. Jr., were sons of Rev. Thomas Buckingham, who was minister of Saybrook, and died there April I, 1709. He was a trustee of the College, and under his inspection and direction it seemed to be placed. He was a delegate from the New London Council, and one of the moderators of the Convention which adopted the Saybrook Platform in 1708. His son, Thomas, was born September 29, 1670, and married, December 16, 1691, Margaret Griswold, by whom he had Jedidiah and others. His son, Stephen, was born September 4, 1675, and died at Norwalk, Ct., February 3, 1746, aged 70. He married Sarah, daughter of Rev. Samuel Hooker, son of Rev. Thomas H. and Mary, eldest daughter of Capt. Thomas Willett, the first English mayor of New York. After the death of Samuel Hooker, November 16, 1697, his widow, Mary (Willett) Hooker, married, August 10, 1703, Rev. Stephen Buckingham, of Saybrook, when 67 years of age, and upon his death, in 1709, she removed to Norwalk, and made her home with Rev. Mr. Buckingham, the son of her second husband, and the husband of her daughter by her first marriage. She resided with them three years, and until her death. Her grave is in Norwalk. "Here lies the body of Mrs. Mary Buckingham, aged 77 years. Died June 24, 1712." See Savage's Genealogical Dictionary ; also New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, April, 1887, p. 73.
2. Sce Dexter's Biographies and Annals of Yale College, p. 120.
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plot of ground was given to the parish, as a burial place. In the next year, when the success of the new enterprise was established, a lot was selected for a house of worship, and in that same year, 1720, it was probably erected. Its style of construction, of which we shall speak hereafter, was such that it could be built in ninety days or less. It was ready for a pas- tor's use at the close of that year, and was then, or very soon after, occupied by the first installed pastor of the church.
The inhabitants of the whole township down to 1718, when Mr. Buckingham ceased to minister to the church at the river, constituted one parish. The time had come when the outlying population in Caldwell, Montclair, Bloomfield, and the region now covered by the Oranges, was large enough to sustain a church organization in a location sufficiently central for their accommodation. Under the ministry of Mr. Bucking- ham, they had become consolidated as a religious body, and were in a condition to settle a pastor. It does not appear from the sketch we have given of Mr. Buckingham, that he had withdrawn from his ministry at the Mountain. He ceased his life-work while visit- ing a relative at a town which was of easy access and to which he might readily go for recreation. Mr. Hoyt, in his History of the First Presbyterian Church, Orange, N. J., p. 58, says : "There is a tradition in the parish that before the settlement of Mr. Taylor, the society had a minister who was drowned, with his son, at Say- brook, on a visit to his friends." He then states, by way of explanation, that the tradition relates to the sudden death, by drowning, at Saybrook, of Mr. Webb of the Church at Newark in 1741, which is a well au- thenticated fact. The sudden death of Mr. Bucking- ham, while on a visit to his father at Saybrook, and his
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dying at Norwalk, where he probably stopped on his way, confirms the tradition that a minister served the Society before Mr. Taylor, and that he died unex- pectedly while on a visit to his friends. The fatal accident to Mr. Webb at the same place may have confounded the tradition with the sudden death of their first minister, which could not have failed to make a lasting impression, with the equally startling death of Mr. Webb. We do not know whether his early death thwarted the expectations of the people to have him as their pastor. We do know that very soon after his death the pulpit was filled by the Rev. Daniel Taylor, as the settled incumbent.
REV. DANIEL TAYLOR.
According to the records, the Rev. Daniel Taylor was the first pastor of the Society. He was a native of Saybrook, Ct. The date of his birth does not ap- pear in the town records. He was the son of Daniel Daniel Taylor, Taylor, Justice, and of the Quorum, of that town. It is supposed that his moth- er was a daughter of Humphrey Davie, of Boston, later of Hartford, who was a gentleman of high re- spectability, and possessed of a large estate. He was a personal friend of Gov. Winthrop, who named him, with two others, as a fit counsellor to settle any diffi- culties in the winding up of his estate.
Mr. Taylor received his degree of A.B. from Yale College, in 1707, when he was sixteen years of age. He was fitted for the ministry of the Gospel six years thereafter. Those years of study were also spent in
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teaching in his native town. Its records of April 23, 1713, note his engagement as school-master. 1
He migrated in that year to Smithtown, L. I., where he had been invited to preach the Gospel, by the four sons who inherited the large property of Richard Smith, of which he was the grantee in 1677.
They gave him fifty acres of land on the Nissaquag River, in consideration of his services in the work of the ministry for four years, "which services," the town records say : "we acknowledge to have been faith- ful performed." While there he married Jemima, a grand-daughter of Richard Smith, the patentee. Her monumental inscription, now in the Smith burial place, gives the date of her death as April 16, 1716. There is no attainable evidence that he remained in Smith- town after his engagement with the Proprietors there was fulfilled. His native town was less than a day's sail across the Long Island Sound, to which it is not improbable he resorted in 1717. He was now twenty- six years of age. It is worthy of our notice here that Saybrook was the birth-place of Mr. Buckingham. He and Mr. Taylor were boys together, the latter being five years the elder. They were educated in the same seminary of learning; and, pursuing the same calling in life, their relations to each other were more or less intimate. It is reasonable to infer that they were informed of each other's current history, and that they were in cordial sympathy in their ecclesiasti- cal opinions, being brought up in a town where high Congregationalism ruled, and was equally opposed to Presbytery and Prelacy. Whether the death of Mr. Buckingham became the occasion of bringing Mr. Taylor to the knowledge of the Society, we do not know. That he was settled at the Mountain "in 1721,
I. See Dexter's Biographies and Annals of Yale College, p. 67.
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er earlier," appears from the sketch of his life in Dexter's Biographies and Annals of Yale. 1
The meeting-house in which Mr. Taylor was in- stalled pastor, as we suppose, in the latter part of the year 1720, would not be esteemed very inviting or at- tractive in this day to either pastor or people. Its location was in the centre of the highway to the moun- tain, its west end being about ten feet east of what is now Day Street, opposite Music Hall ; the entrance door on the south side. The road was open on both its north and south sides. Rev. James Hoyt, in his History, says that it was a frame structure, and a heavy beam of white oak taken from it forms to this day a part of a barn on the Valley Road. Its architecture and appointments have not come down to us. We may form a correct idea of what they were, when we remember that the second meeting-house in New- ark, where the people of the Mountain had formerly worshiped, was built twelve years before, and at a time when the popular taste had undergone no process of refinement. It was, doubtless, a plain wooden struc- ture, roofed with cedar shingles, sided with boards from the saw-mill, floored "with good chestnut or oak two and a-half inch plank, edged and laid on good sleep-
t. The author has a copy, made by himself, of an old manuscript, with- out date, or name of its writer. It was evidently penned in the latter part of the last century. It was found among the MSS. of Dr. Hillyer, a few years ago. Its title is : " Churches in Newark and (Mountain Society,) to 1783." It contains a succinct history of the churches in Newark from 1666. In noticing the Mountain Society, it says that it was formed in or about the year 1718, and that its formation was according to the tenets of inde- pendency, or Congregationalism, " which the Presbyterian Minister of New- ark and others joining him, looked upon so different from their principles and form of church government that they absolutely refused to ordain a minister for them, and they were obliged to go to N. England for the purpose, and not having a sufficient number, they were at last under the necessity of making use of a layman."
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ers"-"lathed and filled in with thin stone and mortar below the girts." These were the provisions ordered by the town for the Newark meeting-house in 1708. There is no mention made of paint or the erection of a chimney. Both these were superfluities in those days. The seats were of the mountain timber, whether sawed, or hewn with the broad-axe, we do not know. "A hovel built to shelter horses" was probably conven- iently near, as it was at the house by the river. When the house was completed and ready for use, it was the custom to appoint a committee of three to assign seats where persons shall sit according to "office, age, estate, infirmity, descent or parentage-all which are left to the discretion of the committee to act according to the best of their judgment."1 That the rights and dig- nity of the three committee men should not suffer, two men were, at town meeting, "chosen to seat the three men that were chosen to seat the meeting- house." 2 This action was taken in Newark four years before the house at the Mountain was made ready for the rendering of the same important service. By the method above detailed, families were divided. The sexes were seated apart on their respective sides of the house. Boys had a place separate from both, and a tithingman appointed to keep them in order. Two services were held on the Sabbath day, always by day- light. They consisted of extemporaneous prayers, singing of psalms in a metrical version, without instru- mental accompaniment. A sermon was delivered, of which one hour was the approved length by an hour- glass on the pulpit. The reading of Scripture with- out exposition was not approved, nor were notes and reading of sermons popular. 3
I. See Newark Town Records, p. 94.
2. Ibid. p. 127.
3. Palfrey's History of New England.
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The Bay Psalm Book, which was in general use in New England, and in the New Haven Colony from 1640, when the churches of Branford and Milford mi- grated to Newark, probably, continued in use in the service of song at Newark and in the Mountain So- ciety.1 It was the first book printed in America, and was in such demand in the churches that it passed through seventy editions. 2
The service of song in the early churches would seem to us of the present day a very imperfect service and the music rudely rendered. Three or four tunes were about all the congregations were able to sing through- out New England in the latter part of the seventeenth
I. Of this we have no certain knowledge. No old Psalm book has been found in Newark, or at the Mountain, which would give light on the subject. A letter from Dr. Hatfield to this writer in 1882, says the version of Stern- hold and Hopkins was uniformly printed at the end of all the Bibles in use from the seventeeth century, into the first years of the eighteenth. He was "inclined to think that our forefathers in New Jersey praised God after that fashion."
2. The book was first printed åt Cambridge by Stephen Daye. He began business in America in the first month, 1639. The following passage con- cerning him is from an old manuscript copy of the records : "Att a Gen- eral Court held at Boston on the eighth day of the eighth month (October), 1641, Steeven Daye being the first that sett upon printing, is granted thre hundred acres of land where it may be convenient without prejudice to any town." Though so numerous in former days, copies of this Psalm Book are now extremely rare. There is one in the British Museum, one in the Lenox Library, and another was bought a few years since, at the Bentley library sale in New York, by W. H. Vanderbilt, for $1,200. He stored it in New York with many other of his valuables, all of which were consumed by fire the year after his purchase.
Two stanzas of the 19th Psalm, rendered by Addison in his beautiful lyric, " The Spacious Firmament on High," were sung :
" The heavens do declare The majesty of God ; Also the firmament shows forth His handiwork abroad.
Day speaks to day, knowledge Night hath to night declared ;
There neither speech nor language is, Where their voice is not heard."
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and in the early years of the eighteenth century. They had no note books. No mention of choirs is made before 1720. All the singing was congregational and led by a precentor, who, in most cases, lined the psalm before singing. 1
Rev. Mr. Taylor came to East Jersey with some worldly means. His name very soon appears in deeds for lands which he had purchased. One of his first purchases was on the south-east corner of Main Street and Oakwood Avenue, in Orange, where he built a house which he occupied until his death. He became early identified with his parish as a man of affairs. The official relations of his father probably led him, after completing his college course, to acquaint him- self with the more common principles and forms of law. Testimony to this is afforded by the numerous legal manuscripts in his own hand, as wills, deeds and other documents, many of which are now in the libra- ry of the New Jersey Historical Society. One quit- claim deed drawn and signed by him as witness, May 1, 1722, shows that at that date he had acquired the confidence of the people, and had become identified with their interests. 2
The records which have come down to us concerning the Rev. Mr. Taylor throw very little light upon his pastoral work. His connection with the civil affairs of the parish in an active form does not appear till
I. The first account of the use of an organ was of one imported for King's Chapel in Boston, 1713. It lay seven months in the porch before it was set up, because of the clamor of the people. In 1743, one was placed in St. Peter's Church, Salem, Mass. (His. Mag., 1868.)
2. The document was a quit-claim of Jolin Ward to Joseph Harrison. It is now in the possession of one of the descendants of the latter. It was common at that day for the clergy to give some attention to the study of the law and the art of pleading, that they might meet the exigencies of the people whom they were called to serve in the Gospel.
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near the close of a long pastorate of twenty-eight years. A manuscript sermon now lies before this writer written by him and delivered January 22, 1743-4. He entitles it: De Vigilantia ; text, Matthew xxvi : 41. It shows a careful study and a clear appreciation of the Scrip- ture truth. His logical and practical method of en- forcing it manifests more than ordinary ability. Few texts of Scripture are better calculated than the one he employed to make manifest the inner life of the preacher. That he was a devout man himself, and that he set forth with much power the value and im- portance of a life of godliness, cannot be doubted. The most of the years of his pastorate were years of tranquility. His parish was not harassed by civil cares. His work, as a pastor, was contemporaneous with the successful labors of Whitfield, Tennent, Cross and others in Newark, Elizabethtown and other neighbor- ing places, and, doubtless, received inspiration and success from their influences. Discourses like the one which has come down to us, preached to a people for a series of years, could not fail to leave upon them an enduring impression for their spiritual good. Evi- dently, the discourse given below is not as fully writ- ten out as it was delivered.
In 1747, December 21, Mr. Taylor "being aged and infirm of body, but of sound and perfect mind and memory," made his last will and testament. In eight- een days thereafter, January 8, 1747-8, he was called to the heavenly rest ; suddenly, as we infer from the record on his gravestone. His mortal remains lie in the old parish burial place. The following memorial, at this writing one hundred and forty years old, is in
Survivers let's all Imitare The Vertues of our Paftor And Copy after him like as He did his Lord and mafter lo us mofe aufull was the Stroke By which he was Removed Unto the Full Fruition of The God he Served and loved
Here Lyes the pious Remains Of the Rev int Daniel Tayler Who was minifter of this Parrifh Years Decd Jan'' 8 A:D 17476 In the $7th year of his Age
TOMB OF REV. DANIEL TAYLER; 1747-8.
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good preservation on a horizontal slab of freestone, raised on piers above his grave :
" Survivers lets all Imitate The vertues of our Pastor, And Copy after him like as He did his Lord and master. To us most aufull was the Stroke By which he was Remove'd Unto the full fruition of The God he Served and love'd."
" Here Lyes the pious Remains of the Revd Mr Daniel Tayler Who was minister of this parrish- Years, Decd Janry 8th A. D. 1747-8 In the 57th year of his Age."
Mr. Hoyt, in his history, gives a short notice of the posterity of Mr. Taylor, substantially as follows: He had children, Daniel and Mary, supposed to have been the issue of a second marriage union. Daniel lived on a farm beyond the Mountain. He died October 17, 1794, aged 74. His grave is near that of his father. Mary became the wife of Deacon Amos Baldwin. She died September 30, 1795, aged 74. Daniel had a son, Oliver, who died, aged 31, August 11, 1785 ; also a son, Daniel, who had children, one of whom, Charlotte, married John Morris Lindsley. She was born 1788, and died in 1859. The descendants of the old pastor are found among the families of Lindsley, Baldwin and Crane. None of the Taylor name, now resident in this region, have been traced to him.
"DEVIGILANTIA :" A SERMON BY REV. DANIEL TAYLOR; "P : PHILAD : JAN. 22, 1742; PH. 1743."
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