USA > New Jersey > Mercer County > Trenton > History of the Presbyterian Church in Trenton, N.J. : from the first settlement of the town > Part 13
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In 1781 the Legislature of New Jersey appointed Com- missioners to "procure an estimate of the damages sus- tained by the inhabitants of this State from the waste and spoil committed by the troops in the service of the enemy, or their adherents." Peter Gordon, Sidney Berry, and Joseph Phillips were the Commissioners for Hunterdon county. From their report we can ascertain minutely the loss suffered by Dr. Spencer, and also that of the Church corporation. In the return of the former are given, "five hundred and twenty-four panel fence, four rails with post ;" "one hundred and sixty-seven panel of red cedar post and rail-fence, good as new;" agricultural implements, wheat in the stalk and in the ground, cattle, furniture, maps, clothing, china, glass, three spinning-wheels, provisions; "stable totally destroyed." To this inventory Dr. Spencer adds :
II PRES
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"A large chest and barrel of books, packed close, but the particular volumes I can not remember or fully recollect. Among them were all the school-books and classics in Greek and Latin; a large collection of Hebrew books, French dictionary, grammar, and Bible, and several other books in French; Pool's Annotations on the Bible, Bates' Works in large folio, Willard's Works, with his Body of Divinity; six large volumes of Caryl upon Job; Pope's, Swift's, and Addison's Works; Mr. Edwards's Works, of Northampton, with a number of mathe- matical and philosophical books; Dr. Witherspoon's Works, a good many of Wall's Works, several volumes of Doddridge's Works, be- sides his Family Expositor, and a great number of volumes on different subjects, which I can not recollect. The estimate of these books I leave to the discretion of the Commissioners, not being able to give a more particular account, but beg leave to say, I have always estimated the loss of the library to be one hundred pounds at the least."
His affidavit was made September 6, 1783. Putting the books at eighty pounds, the total of the Commissioners' appraisement was £387 17s. 9d.
The parsonage was used by the Hessians for an hospital. The communion plate was plundered. The particulars of the loss sustained are given as follows :
"An inventory of damages done to the Presbyterian Church in Tren- ton, and public property destroyed by the enemy in December, 1776:
"303 feet of board fence three feet high, 45 round posts and
rails, which was round the burying-ground,
£6
0 0
II panel post and 4 rail fence, I 20
140 panes glass,
4
I 8
Large gates, hooks, and hinges, I IO O
A silk damask curtain and hangings, 12 0 0
A silver can with two handles, and large plate, 20 0 0 Damages done to the parsonage house whilst an Hessian hos- pital, (app'd by Miss Axford,) 19 5 0 1400 feet of boards stript off the stable, 5 5 0 310 feet board fence, five feet high, 40 posts and rails, round the parsonage garden, 6 16 4
2 large front gates, hooks, and hinges, I 00
I well-curb, bucket, and chain, I IO O
I table-cloth and about ten yards diaper, 2 00
V
£80 10 0
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FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.
"Alexander Chambers being duly sworn, deposes and says, that the within inventory is just and true, to the best of his knowledge, and that no pay or compensation hath been received for the same or any part thereof.
"In behalf of the congregation,
"ALEXANDER CHAMBERS, Trustee."
"Sworn this seventh day of September, 1782. "Jos. PHILLIPS."
On the second January, 1777, Cornwallis entered Tren- ton. One of the members of our Presbytery was a victim to the barbarity of the troops under his command. This was the Rev. John Rosborough, pastor of Allentown, Penn- sylvania, who was received as a candidate May 22d, 1762; licensed a probationer, August 16, 1763, and ordained December II, 1764. He was Moderator of the Presby- tery in 1776. According to the report made to Synod, he was "barbarously murdered by the enemy at Trenton on January second." In a letter to Richard Henry Lee, of January 14, Dr. Rush wrote: "The savages [Hessians] murdered a clergyman, a chaplain to a battalion of militia, in cold blood, at Trenton, after he had surrendered himself and begged for mercy. His name was Rosborough."* It ought, however, to be mentioned that before he was com- missioned as chaplain, Mr. Rosborough had united with his neighbors in forming a company to recruit Washington's forces on their retreat through New Jersey, and from a sentence in a letter to his wife, a few days before his cap- ture, it seems probable that he was even then "riding with a French fusee slung at his back."3
The particulars of the outrage are given by Dr. Sprague as follows :
"Mr. Rosborough proceeded with his company to Trenton; and, as he was going towards the river in search of his horse, he was met by a company of Hessians under British command. He immediately gave himself up as a prisoner, but begged, for the sake of his wife and chil-
* Memoirs of R. H. Lee, vol. ii. 165.
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dren, that they would spare his life. He quickly found, however, that his request was to be denied, and that the bloody deed was to be per- formed without delay. He instantly knelt down, and, in imitation of his blessed Master, prayed for the forgiveness of his murderers, and scarcely had this prayer passed from his lips before a deadly weapon pierced his body, and he lay struggling in death. They then took his watch, and part of his clothing, and left him weltering in his blood. The wretched creature who had committed the act, or had had a prin- cipal part in it, went immediately after, with the fury of a madman, into one of the hotels in Trenton, and profanely boasted to the woman who kept it, that he had killed a rebel minister, and showed her his watch; but he added that it was too bad he should have been praying for them when they were murdering him. A young man by the name of John Hayes, of Mr. Rosborough's congregation, took charge of the corpse, and buried it the next day in an obscure place in Trenton. The Rev. George Duffield, of Philadelphia, having heard of the sad event, took measures to have the body removed to the churchyard for its final interment."*
Mr. (afterwards Dr.) Duffield, mentioned in this extract, was one of the chaplains of the First Congress. He would occasionally leave his congregation for a short time to serve as a missionary to the troops when they were within easy reach. It was probably during such an errand as this that he became acquainted with Mr. Rosborough's death; for, according to the annalist just quoted :
"He was with the army in their battles and retreat through Jersey, and was almost the very last man that crossed the bridge over the stream immediately south of Trenton, before it was cut down by order of the American General. For this preservation he was indebted to a Quaker friend, whom he had essentially aided in his hour of trial- though of politics opposed to his own-and whose deliverance he had been the means of securing. The British officers had put a price upon his head, and were particularly anxious to destroy him, because of the influence he exerted among the soldiers of the American army. After the retreat from Princeton, he had retired to a private house in Trenton to seek repose, and was not aware that the American army had taken up their line of march, and had nearly all crossed the bridge, until his Quaker friend sought him out and gave him the alarm, just in time for him to escape, before the bridge was destroyed by the retreating army of Washington."4
* Annals, vol. iii. 254. I am sorry to say that there is no trace of the chap- lain's grave in our grounds.
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FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.
From the blanks in the minutes of the Trustees, it ap- pears that there was no meeting of the Board in 1776. In that eventful year the Presbytery held five sessions: at Bound Brook in April, at Philadelphia (during Synod) in May, at Princeton in June (to receive Mr. Armstrong as a candidate), at Amwell in July, at Basking Ridge in Octo- ber. The State was the seat of war. In the beginning of December, Washington and a large body of troops were at Trenton. Later in the month a brigade of three Hessian regiments, one of them Colonel Rahl's, was stationed here. The Colonel kept the town in commotion, even before he thought of being attacked.
"The cannon," said one of his lieutenants in his journal, "must be drawn forth every day from their proper places, and paraded about the town seemingly only to make a stir and uproar. There was a church [the Episcopal] close by his quarters, surrounded by palings; the officer on guard must march round and round it, with his men and musicians, looking like a Catholic procession, wanting only the cross, and the banners, and chaunting choristers. The hautboys-he could never have enough of them."*
On the twenty-sixth was the famous battle. Rahl was carried mortally wounded to his quarters in Warren street5 -the residence of Stacy Potts.6
The journal of his Lieutenant, as translated in Mr. Irv- ing's work, says:
"He died on the following evening, and lies buried in this place which he has rendered so famous, in the graveyard of the Presby- terian Church. Sleep well! dear commander! The Americans will hereafter set up a stone above thy grave with this inscription :
"Hier liegt der Oberst Rahl, Mit ihm ist alles all !"
"Here lies Colonel Rahl; all is over with him." The Americans have delayed the fulfillment of the prediction until it has become impossible to identify the "hier" for the epitaph.
* Irving's Life of Washington, ch. xliii.
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The first mention of celebrating the anniversary of the battle of Trenton which I have found is in 1806, December 26, when the Trenton Light Infantry had a parade and a dinner, and in the evening the Rev. Mr. Stamford preached in the Baptist Church, from the text, "I was free-born." The observance afterwards degenerated into an annual sham-fight.
Mr. Spencer was present at the election of Trustees of the congregation, September 2, 1777, "at the house of Mr. John Chambers." He attended the sessions of Synod and Presbytery in Philadelphia, May, 1776, and of Presbytery, at Amwell, July 31, on which day he presided and preached at the ordination of Mr. Warford, and his installment over the congregation of Amwell. In April, 1782, this minute is found :
"The Presbytery thinks it proper here to note that the trouble occasioned by the war has been the general reason why the members of Presbytery have attended with so little punctuality for a number of years past-this State having been either the seat of war, or con- tiguous to it, since the year 1776."
To the ravages of war is probably owing the order of the Trustees in August, 1780, that "a subscription be opened in town and country for repairing the parsonage house, which at present is in a ruinous condition." A committee of 1792, to search for missing records, reported "that none were to be found, and that there is much reason to believe that those minutes were lost during the late Revolution among the papers of Dr. Spencer and Mr. Halsey." And in their reply, through the Rev. Mr. Armstrong, to the requisition of the General Assembly for historical materials, the Presbytery of April, 1793, report: "They labor under peculiar difficulties, in this respect, from the extent of the ravages of the enemy in the State of New Jersey during the late war. The minutes of the Presbytery have been lost with the papers of the late Dr. Spencer, down to a late date." As early as 1779, Mr. Spencer himself,
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FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.
"As Standing Clerk, is requested to collect all the papers belonging to this Presbytery, from the several members or others in whose hands they may have been heretofore deposited; to be complied with by our next Presbytery."
Nine years after Spencer's death,
"Mr. Woodhull informed the Presbytery that the old minutes, [prior to 1771,] so long searched for in vain, were known to be in the posses- sion of Mr. Warford, of the Presbytery of Albany, and it was ordered that Mr. Woodhull take suitable measures to procure them," (Sep- tember 18, 1793).
As a further illustration of the hazards of ecclesiastical records of the times, and a probable explanation of the fate of many documents of the Trenton congregation, I produce the substance of an affidavit presented to the New Jersey Legislature, in February, 1777, by Samuel Tucker, who was both a Trustee and Clerk of the Board. A's Treasurer of the State he had a large amount of the paper currency, and other valuable public property in his custody. Hearing that the British army, under Howe, was likely to pass through Trenton, he removed his effects to the house of John Abbott, five miles off. Howe arrived in Trenton December 8, 1776, and next day Lieutenant-Col- onel Abercrombie sent Lieutenant Hackshaw with a detach- ment to Abbott's under the guidance of one Mary Pointing. where they captured Tucker's property and carried it to New Brunswick. On the 14th of December, Tucker, on his way to Trenton, was met near Crosswicks by a party of horsemen, who took him prisoner, and detained him until a protection was obtained from the Hessian Colonel Rahl. He lost all the papers, public and private, which were thus removed. This statement of Tucker's was the cause of a controversy between him and Governor Livingston (who wrote under the signature of "Scipio") in the New Jersey Gazette of 1784.
I suppose they were our pastor and trustee whose names occur in the diary of John Adams, September 19, 1777,
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when Congress were withdrawing from Philadelphia on the approach of the enemy. He says: "We rode to Tren- ton, where we dined. Drank tea at Mr. Spencer's; lodged at Mr. S. Tucker's, at his kind invitation."
The journal of the next day may have its local interest for some of my readers :
"20th. Breakfasted at Mrs. J. B. Smith's. The old gentleman, his son Thomas, the loan officer, were here, and Mrs. Smith's little son and two daughters. An elegant breakfast we had, of fine Hyson, loaf-sugar, and coffee, etc. Dined at Williams's the sign of the Green Tree; drank tea with Mr. Thomson [Charles Thomson?] and his lady at Mrs. Jackson's; walked with Mr. Duane to General Dickinson's house, and took a look at his farm and gardens, and his green-house, which is a scene of desolation; the floor of the green-house is dug up by the Hessians in search for money. Slept again at Tucker's."
Mr. Adams's first sight of Trenton was in August, 1774, when his diary records :
"Rode to Trenton [from Princeton, where he heard Dr. Wither- spoon preach] to breakfast. At Williams's, the tavern at Trenton ferry, we saw four very large black walnut trees, standing in a row behind the house." The town of Trenton is a pretty village. It appears to be the largest town we have seen in the Jerseys. We then crossed the ferry over the Delaware river to the province of Pennsylvania."8
In the Presbytery of August, 1776, a singular complaint was presented against Mr. Spencer, arising out of his visit to North Carolina. Mr. John Debow, who had just been called to Eno and Hawfields, submitted a letter from the Presbytery of Orange, in North Carolina, complaining that Mr. Spencer had baptized a child of the Rev. Mr. Lisle, a minister from Scotland, who, without joining the Pres- bytery, was preaching in some of their vacant congrega- tions and gathering a new parish out of them. The minutes proceed to narrate that :
"After diligent inquiry of Mr. Debow, concerning what he knew of the life and conversation of Mr. Lisle, and having received all the light he was able to give them, the Presbytery judge that Mr. Lisle
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hath a right to Church privileges, and that Mr. Spencer, in baptizing his child, has done no more than what the laws of charity and church- fellowship required of him, and that the complaint against him is without foundation."
The States were divided into three military departments. The middle department comprised New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, the lower counties on the Delaware (now the State of Delaware), and Maryland. In October, 1776, William Shippen, Jr., was directed to provide and superin- tend an hospital for the army in New Jersey, and on Octo- ber, 20, 1777,
"Congress proceeded to the election of a chaplain for the hospital in the middle department, and the ballots being taken, the Rev. Elihu Spencer was elected."
In May, 1780, Mr. Spencer was afflicted by the death of his daughter, Mrs. Sarah Lowrey, in her twenty-fifth year. She was buried from her father's house. She was one of the ladies of Trenton who sympathized in the measures which originated in Pennsylvania for the relief of the suffering troops by raising contributions to add to their slender wages. Active measures were taken here on the fourth of July of that year, to effect this object. A gen- eral committee was then appointed, composed of Mrs. Coxe, Mrs. Dickinson, Mrs. Furman, and Miss Cadwalader, and another committee for each county. That for Hunter- don consisted of "Mrs. Vice-President Stevens, Mrs. Judge Smith, Mrs. Charles Coxe, Mrs. R. Stevens, Mrs. Hanna, Mrs. T. Lowrey, Mrs. J. Sexton, Mrs. B. Vancleve, Mrs. Colonel Berry, Mrs. Doctor Burnet." Mrs. Moore Furman was Treasurer, and Miss Mary Dagworthy, Secre- tary. A letter is preserved in Washington's correspond- ence, from Miss Dagworthy, dated at Trenton, July 17, 1780, which transmitted to the Chief the sum of $15,488- allowing for the depreciated currency, actually about $390 .*
* Sparks's Writings of Washington, vol. vii. 90.
CHAPTER XIV.
CLOSE OF DR. SPENCER'S MINISTRY-HIS DEATH.
1780-1784.
Throughout the years of Mr. Spencer's ministry in Trenton he was a prominent member of the different church-courts, and often served as Moderator, Clerk, Treasurer, and Committee man. When the Synod (1769) regarded the College of New Jersey so much of a church institution as to divide themselves into committees for col- lecting donations from all parts of their territory, Mr. Spencer and Mr. McDowell, had Chester and parts of Lancaster county, in Pennsylvania, assigned to them. In 1770 and the five consecutive years Spencer was a delegate from the Synod to the Congregational and Presbyterian Convention, which met alternately in Connecticut and New Jersey. He was frequently called to take part in collect- ing and disbursing the Students' Fund, and Widows' Fund, and was an official visitor of Mr. Brainerd's Indian School. In the absence of the Moderator he opened the Synod of 1782 with a sermon. His name then appears for the first time with the title of Doctor of Divinity, which degree was given him by the University of Pennsylvania, in March, 1782, at the same time with the Rev. William White, who was afterwards so distinguished as a Bishop of the Protes- tant Episcopal Church.1
In 1782 Dr. Spencer was associated with Dr. Wither- spoon and Joseph Montgomery, in a committee "to prepare an address to the Minister of France, congratulating him on the birth of a Dauphin, son and heir to the crown of his royal Master; expressing the pleasure the Synod feel on
(171)
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this happy event."2 The last office assigned to him by the Synod was in 1784, the year of his death, when he was made one of the committee of conference and correspondence with the Synod of the Reformed Dutch Church.
There being extant no record of the proceedings of the Session during Dr. Spencer's ministry, nor any registry of the communicants of that period, it is not in my power to furnish such statistics as might show the progress of the three churches in those relations. The minutes of the Trus- tees have been preserved, but are meager in their details. The following persons were members of the Board during Dr. Spencer's incumbency :
Charles Clark, Alexander Chambers,
Obadiah Howell,
Daniel Clark,
Abraham Hunt,
Joseph Tindal,
Joseph Reed, Jr.,
Nathaniel Furman.3
Samuel Tucker,
Moore Furman.
These Trustees served for the country and town congre- gations, but not for Maidenhead. Their meetings were held in town, and either at the church or parsonage. Mr. Cham- bers was uniformly chosen Treasurer, Mr. Tucker, Clerk, and Mr. Spencer, President, until May, 1783, when he ceased to be a Trustee, and Mr. Chambers was both President and Treasurer. The proceedings were not of much greater importance than to build "a shed between the parsonage- house and the stable, out of the six pounds rent put at in- terest ;" "to repair the roof of the stable," "to rent out and agree for the several pews that at this time are vacant, and get the two long seats made into four small pews, and rent them out also;" to order "that all the pews shall pay the annual assessment as they may be stated-not under forty shillings per annum the smallest."
The heirs of Daniel Howell and Joseph Green claimed a right to the pews "built by their ancestors, without being
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FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.
liable to pay the annual assessment;" on this question the yeas and nays were called at two different meetings, and both times the claim was refused by the casting vote of the President. The salary accounts of the two churches were separate : "Ordered, that the Treasurer do pay the Rev. Mr. Spencer fifty-five shillings towards the deficiency of his salary for last year for Trenton, and fifteen shillings towards the salary for the last year for the old meeting- house." There were "collectors" for each house.
On the sixth of June, 1781, it was resolved,
"To petition the Legislature to confirm by law the charter granted by Governor Belcher; a memorial was accordingly drawn and signed by the President and all the Trustees. The President being desired, readily agreed to wait on the Legislature, and took with him the original charter to lay before them."
On the twenty-fifth March, 1782,
"The President informed the Board that agreeably to the order of this Board, of the sixth of June, 1781, he waited on the Legislature, and took with him the original charter, which he has since returned to the Clerk, which was laid before the Board this day, and that the Legislature told him they did not think proper to take the same into their consideration at present."
I do not find any note of this application in the Journals of either branch of the Legislature. On the seventh June, 1781, an act incorporating the Second Presbyterian Church of Newark, which had passed the Assembly, was brought into the Council, and after a second reading, was postponed until the next sitting; immediately after which it was "Or- dered that Mr. Frelinghuysen and Mr. Caldwell be a com- mittee to prepare and bring in a bill upon a general plan for incorporating religious societies." On the next day, a petition from the Baptist Church of Pittsgrove, Salem county, was read, "praying a law to incorporate them as well as all other religious societies," which was referred to
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yesterday's committee. The general law was not passed until March 16, 1786, when it was adopted under the title of "an act to incorporate certain persons as trustees in every religious society or congregation in this State, for transact- ing the temporal concerns thereof."
As the Treasurer was directed in 1771 to fund and loan any sums that might come into his hands, it looks as if there were occasionally some receipts beyond the pew-rents, of which there was certainly no surplus for investment. Sev- eral small legacies were realized besides those already men- tioned. By the will of Jethro Yard, proved February 16, 1761, seven pounds were left "to the Presbyterian Congre- gation of Trenton, to be paid to the overseers of the poor of said town." In 1780, John Howell, one of the executors of his brother Daniel, gave notice that the testator had given twenty pounds for the use of the congregation.4
Dr. Spencer's name is usually found in connection with such patriotic demonstrations of his times as were consistent with his profession. When the surrender of Cornwallis was celebrated in Trenton, October 27, 1781, the Governor, Council, Assembly, and citizens, went in procession to the Presbyterian Church, where Dr. Spencer delivered a dis-
course. On the fifteenth April, 1783, similar ceremonies were observed upon the conclusion of peace with Great Britain. The Governor, Vice-President of the State, Mem- bers of the Legislature, Judges, and other public officers met at Williams's hotel; the trustees, teachers, and students of the Academy joined them there, and proceeded to the Court-house, where the Governor's proclamation of the cessation of hostilities was read. At noon divine service was attended, when a discourse was delivered by Dr. Spen- cer. Public dinners followed at Witt's, Williams's and Cape's hotels. A few days afterwards, when the Governor (Livingston) was about to leave the capital for his resi- dence at Elizabethtown, Dr. Spencer's name was at the head
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of a committee of citizens who presented him a valedictory address.5
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