USA > New Jersey > Mercer County > Trenton > History of the Presbyterian Church in Trenton, N.J. : from the first settlement of the town > Part 15
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We find Mr. Armstrong returned to New Jersey in 1782, as in the June of that year he began to supply the church of Elizabethtown, made vacant by the assassination of the Rev. James Caldwell. In the month of August he was married, by Dr. Witherspoon, to Susannah Livingston, a daughter of Robert James Livingston, whose widow, Mrs. Armstrong's mother, was residing at Princeton for the education of her sons, three of whom, William Smith, Peter R., and Maturin, graduated at that college. Mr. Arm- strong's service at Elizabethtown was terminated in 1783, by an illness which required him to suspend his labors.
Upon Dr. Spencer's death in Trenton, in December, 1784, Mr. Armstrong preached his funeral sermon, and afterwards frequently supplied the vacant pulpit. At a meeting of the Trustees, October 17, 1785, they "agreed to present a call to the Presbytery at Pennington, to-morrow for the Rev. Mr. Armstrong to settle in this congregation, and appointed Mr. Benjamin Smith [one of the elders] to present the call to the Presbytery." It is probable that there had been a previous election by the congre- . gation, at which the Trustees were empowered to take the regular steps for effecting the call. The minutes of the meeting at Pennington were never recorded. When the Presbytery met in Trenton,8 April 25, 1786, Mr. Armstrong being present as a corresponding member, it is recorded :
"On the call offered to the Rev. Mr. Armstrong at the last meeting of Presbytery, Mr. A. informed the Presbytery that several steps have been taken towards obtaining his dismission from the Presbytery of Newcastle, and preparing the way for his settlement in the congre- gation of Trenton; and that he hoped soon to give his final answer."
On the day he made this statement the Newcastle Pres- bytery complied with his request, and on the seventeenth October, his name appears among the members of the New Brunswick Presbytery, without any preceding record of his formal reception. The question of the call being up:
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"Mr. Armstrong being not yet prepared to accept this call from the congregation of Trenton, requested longer time to consider the matter, which was granted."
The impediment seems to have been indefiniteness as to the salary. Mr. Armstrong was, however, considered so far committed to the congregation that as early as Feb- ruary 14, 1786, his name appears in their minutes as present as "the minister," who, according to the charter, was united with "the elders and deacons" in the election of Trustees.9 It was not until April 26, 1787, that,
"The congregation of Trenton having informed Presbytery of the sum annexed to their call, presented to Mr. Armstrong some time ago, and having given written obligation for his support, Mr. Armstrong accepted of their call."
There is no record of the installation.
From the earliest date of his residence here, the church was open for the commemoration of the national anni- versary, and other acknowledgments of the divine provi- dence in public affairs. In the Gazette of July, 1786, it is published that on the fourth instant the inhabitants at eleven o'clock attended the Presbyterian Church, where they heard "an animated address by the Rev. Mr. Arm- strong ; after which they met at the house of Mr. Drake, partook of a cold collation, and retired to their several em- ployments."
In August, 1786, a subscription of one hundred pounds was directed to be undertaken for the repairing of the par- sonage for the new pastor.10 Two thirds of the sum were assessed on the town church, and the other third on the country church, and in this proportion the two divisions of the congregation were to receive the Sabbath services of their minister. The salary was two hundred pounds, pay- able in the same ratio. In April, 1787, "the old house con- gregation" informed the Board of Trustees that they could
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not raise their third of the salary for only a third of the pastor's time; whereupon the town congregation offered to pay one hundred and fifty pounds salary, and have the ex- clusive services of the minister. In the following October a motion was made in the Board,
"By Mr. William Burroughs, Mr. John Howell, and Mr. Ebenezer Rose, for a separation; and that we join with the country part to give up the present charter, and endeavor to get each a separate charter, and divide the property belonging to the present congregation; which was postponed for further consideration."
When the Board met, March 12, 1788,
"The gentlemen of the country part of the congregation agree to give their answer on Wednesday next, the nineteenth instant, what they can and will do with the town part."
On that day, it being reported to the Board that "fifty pounds can not be raised in the country part of the congre- gation belonging to the Old House," a new modification was suggested, namely, that "the congregation of Trenton" should pay the pastor one hundred dollars yearly for one- half of his time, and consent "that he may dispose of the other half between Maidenhead and the Old House, as he and they may agree."
By an Act of March 16, 1786, the Legislature of New Jersey changed the law of corporations (which had hitherto required a special application for each new charter ) so that any Christian society, numbering at least thirty families, upon the election of trustees, and their qualification by oath, and the filing of a certificate to that effect with the County Clerk, should, by that process, be admitted to be fully in- corporated. The town part of the Trenton congregation soon took advantage of this provision to obtain a charter to supersede that of George II .; and for which they had ineffectually applied to the Legislature of 1781, through Dr. Spencer. The congregation met May 4, 1788; "having
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previously agreed to admit and receive the inhabitants of Lamberton, and those between that and Trenton, who may at any time join said congregation, as entitled to all the rights and privileges of their Act of Incorporation;" and elected as their Trustees, Alexander Chambers, Samuel Tucker, Abraham Hunt, Moore Furman, Isaac Smith, Ber- nard Hanlon, and Hugh Runyon. The corporate title as- sumed was, "The Trustees of the Presbyterian Church of Trenton." The device adopted for the seal ( 1790) was an open Bible with a burning lamp suspended over it, and the motto, "Light to my path." Around the edge is, "Pres- byterian Church of Trenton."
In September, 1788, "The Board of Trustees from the country" met with the town Board, for the purpose of an equitable division of the bonds and other securities of the old corporation ; and in April, 1790, the town church bought the third of the parsonage of their late co-partners for one hundred pounds.11
On the twenty-third April, 1790, the congregation were called together in reference to a proposal from the Maiden- head church; the result of which is seen in the proceedings of the Presbytery of the twenty-eighth April :
"A call from the congregation of Maidenhead, in due form, signed by their Trustees, stipulating the payment of one hundred pounds in gold or silver, in half-yearly payments, for half of the ministerial labors of the Rev. James F. Armstrong, accompanied with a certifi- cate from the congregation of Trenton, of their willingness that he should accept of it, was laid before Presbytery, and the Presbytery having presented the said call to Mr. Armstrong, he declared his acceptance thereof."
This arrangement continued until 1806; the pastor resid- ing in Trenton and giving his attendance on the Lord's day alternately at the two churches. In assenting to the plan, the Trenton people stipulated for "the privilege of present- ing a call at some future time to Mr. Armstrong for the
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whole of his labor, if Providence should continue him in this part of his vineyard."
NOTE.
In August, 1785, the Trenton Gazette announced the death of "EBENEZER ERSKINE, nephew to the late Robert Erskine." He died "at the seat of Robert Lettis Hooper, near Trenton, and was interred in the Presbyterian ground." In his will, made in his last illness, he describes himself as "late of the city of Glasgow, in Scotland." "Being weak in his hand, he had not strength to write his Christian name," but after a legacy to a poor boy at the Iron Works in New- foundland, Morris county, he bequeathed his property to his sister, Nancy Erskine, of Edinburgh. Mr. Hooper and Samuel W. Stockton were his executors.
The will of the uncle, Robert Erskine, is somewhat of an autobiog- raphy. It was made in New York, Ringwood, and Philadelphia in 1776-9, and proved at Gloucester, N. J., November 21, 1780. It begins : "I, Robert Erskine, son of the Rev. Ralph Erskine, author of the Gospel Sonnets, etc., by the providence of God at present in America for the purpose of directing, conducting, and taking charge of several Iron Works, and other lands and property belonging to gentlemen in England, who style themselves the Proprietors of the New York and New Jersey Iron Works." It further transpires through his will, that the testator, having sunk his patrimony in his London trade, became a surveyor and engineer, and was the author of several inventions, especially of a centrifugal engine, of the success of which he was so sanguine as to leave detailed directions how his widow should share the profits with his old creditors. Mr. Hooper was connected with these Iron Works. Advertisements in 1782-3, signed by him, in be- half of "the American Ringwood Company," in Bergen county, refer to Ebenezer Erskine as on the premises at Ringwood, and to Robert Erskine as "the late agent for said company."12
In the Trenton Gazette of October 18, 1780, is this notice: "Died the second instant, at his house at Ringwood, ROBERT ERSKINE, F.R.S., and Geographer to the Army of the United States, in the forty-sixth year of his age." Some of the military maps in Mr. Irving's Life of Washington give credit for their origin to Mr. Erskine's manuscripts, which are now in the possession of the New York Historical Society.
The memoir prefixed to the two great folios of the Glasgow edition (1764) of the Rev. Ralph Erskine's Works, opens thus: "The Rev. Mr. Henry Erskine, the author's father, was amongst the younger of the thirty-three children of Ralph Erskine, of Shielfield." The celebrated sonnetteer had three sons in the ministry : "his only son now
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in life is Robert, a merchant in London," who died in New Jersey, as stated above. Lord Campbell (himself a son of the celebrated Pres- byterian divine, Dr. George Campbell, of Aberdeen), in his Life of Lord Chancellor Erskine, says: "The Earl's [Buchan, the Chancel- lor's father] great-grandfather had suffered in the Covenanting cause in the preceding century; and those pious men, Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine, who had recently seceded from the establishment, and whose sentiments have been adopted and acted upon by the Free Church of Scotland, were his 'far-away cousins.'" (Lives of the Lord Chancel- lors, chap. clxxvi.)
CHAPTER XVI.
THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY-NEW CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH-NOTES.
1785-1790.
Mr. Armstrong was active, both in Synod and Presby- tery, in the measures which resulted in the formation of the General Assembly.
In the year 1785 the Synod of New York and Philadel- phia was the Supreme Judicatory or Court of our whole Church in the United States. It comprised fourteen Pres- byteries ; namely, Suffolk, Dutchess, New York, New Bruns- wick, First Philadelphia, Second Philadelphia, Newcastle, Donegal, Lewes or Leweston, Hanover, Abington, Orange, Redstone and South Carolina. Every minister and one ruling elder from each session were then, as now, entitled to seats in the Synod; but the list shows how distant were the extremes of its bounds, and the roll of that year's session in the central city of Philadephia shows how this distance prevented a full representation; for on the first day there were thirty ministers present and sixty-eight absent, not counting six entire Presbyteries without a single commis- sioner. There were only six elders; and during the session no more than twelve of both orders dropped in. The over- ture was therefore timely which was then presented, pro- posing a division of the existing Synod into several, and the formation of a new delegated body, as a General Synod, Council or Assembly, out of the whole. The subject being deferred until the session of 1786, a resolution was in that year passed in favor of the overture, and a committee ap-
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pointed to report a plan of division. Their report recom- mended a new arrangement of the bounds of the Presby- teries and the formation of four Synods, to be subordinate to a General Assembly. The proposed alterations in the Presbyteries were adopted, and the remaining suggestions postponed for another year. At the same session a com- mittee was raised to digest a system of government and discipline, which was to be printed and distributed among the Presbyteries for their opinion.1 This pamphlet was introduced into the New Brunswick Presbytery April 25, 1787, when it was referred for examination to Dr. Wither- spoon and Mr. Armstrong, together with James Ewing, Esq., an elder of the Trenton Church, and Mr. Longstreet, an elder of the Princeton Church, to report in the next month; but the elders not attending the committee, the clerical members did not offer any report. On the seven- teenth May, 1787, the committee of Synod reported the draught of the government and discipline, and it was daily discussed by paragraphs until the twenty-eighth, when a thousand copies of the work, as amended, were ordered to be distributed before final action. The same committee were directed to revise the Westminster "Directory for Public Worship," and add it to the printed volume to be submitted to the judgment of the churches.2
The last meeting held by the Synod of New York and Philadelphia was opened in Philadelphia, May 21, 1788. Mr. Armstrong was clerk, and was one of a committee to select and publish the most important proceedings of the two closing sessions of the Synod, with certain statistics of the churches. On the twenty-third the draught of the new system came up for consideration, and on the twenty-sixth it was completed. On the twenty-eighth it was ratified and adopted as "the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in America." A correct copy was ordered to be printed. together with the "Westminster Confession of Faith. as making a part of the Constitution."
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The Synod proceeded to consider the draught of the "Directory for the Worship of God," contained, like the basis of the parts already adopted, in the standard books of the Church of Scotland, and after revision this was adopted. The Westminster Larger and Shorter Catechisms were then sanctioned as they stood, excepting a slight amendment of the former on a point referring to civil government, and were ordered to be inserted in the same volume with the confession, form of government, and dis- cipline-the whole to be considered "as the standard of our doctrine, government, discipline and worship."
Dr. Duffield, Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Ashbel Green3 were made the committee to superintend the publication of the whole work. Mr. Armstrong was also associated at this time with Dr. Witherspoon, Dr. S. S. Smith and others on a delegation to the convention, with corresponding dele- gates from the Synods of the Associate Reformed and the Reformed Dutch Churches, which had been already hold- ing several conferences with a view to some systematic intercourse of those three Presbyterian bodies.
On the twenty-ninth day of May the Synod was dissolved. It had then one hundred and seventy-seven ministers, eleven probationers, and four hundred and nineteen congregations. Fifteen ministers and twenty-six congregations were in the Presbytery of New Brunswick.
By the new arrangement the Presbyteries of Dutchess, Suffolk, New York and New Brunswick constituted the "Synod of New York and New Jersey." It held its first meeting in New York, October 29, 1788, when Mr. Arm- strong was one of the clerks. The Synod taking "into con- sideration the distressed state of the people of the Presby- terian denomination on the frontiers," resolved to send missionaries among them the next summer, and appointed Dr. Macwhorter and Mr. Armstrong to spend three months in this service. For satisfactory reasons the first appoint-
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ment was not carried into effect, but for several sessions an annual delegation of missionaries was made. In 1794 the Synod resolved to establish "a standing and continued mission on the frontiers of New York," and Mr. Arm- strong, who was the Moderator of that year, was by the house placed upon a committee to initiate it.4
The three other Synods into which the parent body was divided were named Philadelphia, Virginia and the Caro- linas. "The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America," which was the style given to the chief judicatory, was required to be composed of delegates from each Presbytery, in proportion to their num- bers. The first Assembly met in the Second Church (Arch Street) of Philadelphia, on "the third Thursday of May" (twenty-first), 1789.
The first ratio of representation in the General Assembly was one minister and one elder, where a Presbytery con- sisted of not more than six ministers; double the number where it consisted of more than six, but not more than twelve, and so on. New Brunswick, consisting of fifteen ministers, was entitled to three commissioners of each order, and their first representatives in the Assembly were Dr. Witherspoon, Dr. S. S. Smith, and Mr. Armstrong, with elders John Bayard of New Brunswick, John Carle of Baskingridge, and Nehemiah Dunham of Bethlehem.
Mr. Armstrong's associations with the Presidents With- erspoon and S. Stanhope Smith were those of neighbors and strong personal friends. The names of the three constantly occur on the same committees of the ecclesiastical bodies of which they were fellow-members. The ancient custom of making a formal acknowledgment of the civil authority was continued, for some time after the Republic was founded; and in 1790 the three friends were part of a dele- gation of Presbytery to present a congratulatory address to Governor Paterson on his accession. In 1799 Smith,
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Hunter and Armstrong were appointed to report on a recommendation from the superior judicatories favoring the formation of societies to aid the civil magistrate in the suppression of vice. The next year a majority of the com- mittee reported adversely to the proposition, on the ground that the civil and religious institutions of our republic being totally separate, the best way left for ecclesiastical bodies and men to aid the laws is fidelity in pastoral duties and in strengthening moral and religious principles by the exten- sion of religious knowledge. Mr. Armstrong entered his dissent, not from the principles of the report, but because he regarded it as contravening the recommendations of Synod and Assembly.
In the classical Academy which was founded by the "Trenton School Company" in 1781, Mr. Armstrong took an active interest. In 1786 he furnished the trustees with a draught of laws for the government of the schools. In June, 1787, he was engaged, on a salary, to take the gen- eral superintendence of the Academy, giving direction to the studies and discipline, attending in person as occasion required, and employing a master. This plan was relin- quished in September, 1788, but resumed in March, 1789, and continued until his resignation in January, 1791. Upon his withdrawal the Trustees granted him the privilege of sending two of his children to the school; and in the news- paper of January 6, 1797, is printed an oration delivered at a late public examination of the Academy by his son, Robert Livingston Armstrong.
NOTES. I.
"The Trenton School Company" originated in a meeting of citizens, held February 10, 1781. The original capital was seven hundred and twenty dollars, divided into thirty-six shares. Part of the lot still occupied by the Academy in Hanover (then Fourth) street was pur-
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chased, and a stone building erected, one story of which was occupied in 1782.5 The next year it was enlarged, and the endowment increased. In 1785 it was incorporated, and in 1794 its funds were aided by a lottery. In 1800 the girls' school of the Academy was removed to the school-house belonging to the Presbyterian Church. The grammar- school attained a high reputation under a succession of able masters. The public quarterly examinations were usually closed with exercises in speaking in the church. The newspapers tell of the "crowded and polite audiences" which attended, usually including the Governor, Legislature, and distinguished strangers. Among the latter, in 1784, were the President of Congress, the Baron Steuben, and members of the Congress and Legislature. A full history of the Academy down to 1847 may be found in ten successive numbers of the State Gazette of April and May of that year.
II.
One of the most useful and worthy citizens of Trenton in this part of its annals was ISAAC COLLINS, a member of the Society of Friends, and an enterprising printer. He came from Burlington to Trenton in 1778, and resided here until his removal to New York in 1786. His wife, Rachel Budd, was great-granddaughter of Mahlon Stacy, the original proprietor of the land. Mr. Collins was one of the active founders of the Academy, and although nine of his children were pupils, he would not take advantage of his right as a stockholder to have them instructed without further charge. It is a remarkable fact in the history of his family of fourteen children, that after the death of one in infancy, there was no mortality for the space of fifty years. His eldest daughter (still surviving, 1859) was the wife of Stephen Grellet, whose singular career as a convert from the faith of Rome and. the position of body-guard of Louis XVI., to a devoted Quaker minister and missionary, has been commemorated in a printed discourse by Dr. Van Rensselaer. The first newspaper in this State, "the New Jersey Gazette," was issued by Mr. Collins at Burlington, December 5, 1777. It was then transferred to Trenton, and published there from February 25, 1778, to November 27, 1786, (excepting a suspension of nearly five. months in 1783,) when it was discontinued. Mr. Collins was the con- ductor as well as proprietor of the paper. Indeed the title of editor had not then superseded that of "the printer."
Collins's paper was established to counteract the anti-republican tendency of Rivington's "Royal Gazette" in New York. Governor Livingston was a correspondent of the Trenton Gazette as long as it remained in Collins's hands.6
The publication of the entire Bible was, at that period, so adven- turous an undertaking for the American press that it was necessary
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to secure extraordinary encouragement in advance; and the first edition of the Scriptures, that of John Aitkin, was recommended to the country by a resolution of Congress. This was on September 12, 1782, just five years after the report of a committee on a memorial had stated that to import types and print and bind thirty thousand copies would cost £10,272 IOS., and therefore recommended the im- portation of twenty thousand Bibles, which was adopted.
In 1788 Isaac Collins issued proposals to print a quarto edition of the Bible in nine hundred and eighty-four pages, at the price of "four Spanish dollars, one dollar to be paid at the time of subscribing." The Synod of New York and New Jersey (Nov. 3, 1788,) earnestly recom- mended the undertaking, and appointed Dr. Witherspoon, President S. S. Smith, and Mr. Armstrong, to concur with committees of any other denominations, or of our own Synods, to revise the sheets, and, if necessary, to assist in selecting a standard edition. This committee was authorized to agree with Mr. Collins to append Ostervald's Notes, if not inconsistent with the wishes of other than Calvinistic subscribers. In 1789 the General Assembly appointed a committee of sixteen (on which was Mr. Armstrong) to lay Mr. Collins's proposals before their respective Presbyteries, and to recommend that subscriptions be solicited in each congregation, and report the number to the next Assembly. The recommendation was reiterated in 1790 and in 1791.
Thus sustained, the quarto edition (five thousand copies) was pub- lished in 1791.7 Ostervald's "Practical Observations," which added one hundred and seventy pages of matter, were furnished to special subscribers. Collins's Bible was so carefully revised that it is still a standard. Himself and his children read all the proofs; and it is stated in the Preface of a subsequent edition, after mentioning the names of several clergymen who assisted the publisher in 1791, "some of these persons, James F. Armstrong in particular, being near the press, assisted also in reading and correcting the proof-sheets."
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