USA > New York > Nassau County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume II > Part 6
USA > New York > Suffolk County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume II > Part 6
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* So Reverends Magnis, of Jamaica, Pomarary, of Newtown, and Woolsey, of Oyster
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Bay, were chosen to listen to the arguments, for and against the two locations, given by ten men, representing the Meeting- House Brook site, and ten men, representing the East Hill site. This resulted in a report presented to the trustees, in part as follows" (Mary Banks Rogers) :
"These presents testify that * the Inhabitants of the west part have submitted and condescended unto and agree with the Inhabitants of the east part that full liberty be granted to remove the frame of the new meeting-house erected in 'the hollow' so called unto the 'East Hill'. Signed this 14th day of June in the first year of the reign of King George of Great Brittain & Ireland" (Huntington Town Records, Vol. II, Pg. 324).
Seven men from both east and west parts placed their signatures. The "trustees" to whom the foregoing "report" was presented were officers of the town. It was not until April 6, 1784, when the State of New York enacted a law-probably written by State Senator Ezra L'Hommedieu, a member of the Southold church-"whereby religious societies were enabled to elect trustees as bodies corporate for the administration of their temporalities", that a separation of church and town was completely effected (Rev. E. Hoyt Palmer and Miss H. Maud Terry). But in the meantime such informed and far- sighted ministers as Jones, and the practices of Presbyteries, were gradually preparing the churches to evaluate their new freedom.
It will not do to pass from the Colonial period without a glance toward the equipment, usages and customs of the pre-Revolutionary churches, and some further estimate of the stature of their ministers.
Most of the first church buildings were small, some even tempo- rary and unfinished. Such was that built by Southampton in 1644. Southold's first house of worship was probably made of logs, but it stood from 1641 to 1684. In 1653, Easthampton erected a thatched church 20 by 26 feet in floor area. When slightly bigger and much better structures were built a perfectly square ground-plan was sometimes favored. Brookhaven's, built in 1671, was 28 feet square. Its second, considerably larger, was erected in 1710 and stood for a century, almost to a year. The "Old Stone Church" at Jamaica, 1699-1813, was 26 by 26. These square churches were of the Hing- ham, Mass., "meeting-house" type. They were called so "not because the people went to church to meet each other, but to meet God". Huntington's first -1665 - beside "Meeting-House Brook", was "capable to receive and accommodate 200 people". Easthampton's thatched church stood in use 65 years, when it was replaced by "the largest and most splendidly built of the kind on Long Island", with galleries, clock and bell. A comparable and larger church was erected in Huntington in 1715, a date with which we are now familiar. Not to be outdone-perish the thought-it, too, had a bell, a great bell cast in England.
Smaller or larger, these buildings were jam-packed. Drummers paid by the towns summoned to meeting the folk within earshot. But churches were far apart and few between and the people came
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from great distances, and Southold solved the problem of communica- -tion with a large wrought-iron triangle struck with a sledge hammer and heard for miles. To the Huntington church the folk came from Huntington-South, later Babylon. Until 1729, it was the only church in some 150 square miles and almost everybody attended. Attendance on such a scale was maintained until long after the Revolution, but with the coming of other denominations Nathaniel Prime lamented, in 1844, the good old days when churches were filled.
In some places it was the custom to "seat" the church, the men on one side, the women on the other. Men who paid, say, two pounds in taxes had seats nearest the pulpit. Behind them sat those who paid less, in their order. Behind these sat the sons of those who paid more, then the sons of those who paid less. On the other side and nearest the pulpit the wives of those who paid most were placed, then the wives of those who paid less, then the daughters in similar order (Kate Strong, H. D. Eberlein). The custom that separated male and female persisted at great length in one form or another.
There was no heat in churches, except from foot-stoves for the women, the only concession to human frailty. There was no need for lights. Churches were used only for morning and early after- noon services. The order of worship was of the simplest; an exposi- tory reading of the Bible, very instructive and never omitted, a long pastoral prayer, hymns keyed to a pitch-pipe, and a sermon sometimes continuing for an hour or more. Much the same order was followed at the second service. For noon intermission the people were gathered on the green or in the church yard, conning epitaphs, or clustered around horse blocks or hitching posts in restrained gossip about crops and the neighbors. Then back to the benches or-later-box pews.
Between 1640 and 1747, thirty-three ministers had been settled in the Presbyterian churches. Seven of them had degrees from Yale, three from Harvard, two from Cambridge University and one from the University of Glasgow. Thus 42.9% of all ministers had received the best education possible. The rest had had sufficient theological training to pass the customary thoroughgoing examinations for ordination. In the next fifty years graduates of Harvard, Dartmouth, Yale and Nassau (Princeton) came in greater numbers. The Presby- terians believed in an educated ministry.
Outstanding ministers of this period were Denton, Prime, Buell and Woolworth-omitting Jones, of whom some account has been given. But high on the roster Thomas James and Nathaniel Huntting must appear, if for no other reason than that each of them served the Easthampton church with distinction for half a century; also the name of Ebenezer White, for 53 years pastor at Bridgehampton; and no list of the exceptional would be complete without the names of Azariah Horton and the extraordinary Sampson (or Samson) Occum, minister to the Montauks.
In Bernice Marshall's Colonial Hempstead, Denton is spoken of as "the first figure to detach itself from the shades of the past with its struggle against King and Bishop and to anticipate the unfamiliar antagonists of the future in a wilderness to be conquered
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and adapted to human needs and happiness". Cotton Mather wrote: "Among these clouds (of witnesses) was one pious and learned Mr. Richard Denton, a Yorkshire man, who, having watered Halifax in England with his fruitful ministry, was by a tempest hurried to New England, where first at Wethersfield then at Stamford (then at Hempstead) 'his doctrine dropped as the rain * * as showers upon the grass'." Part of the Latin inscription upon his monument, in Essex, England, is translated thus: "Here lies the dust of Richard Denton. O'er his low peaceful grave bends the perennial cypress, fit emblem of his unfading fame".
Ebenezer Prime, minister in Huntington for sixty-two years (1721-1783), would have been a notable man in any generation. Over his own, or so much of it as dwelt here, he towered, a man of great strength of character, unusual intellectual ability and conspicuous fidelity. He began as the associate of Mr. Jones, the second minister, and served with him two years. Continuing then alone he had 42 members, 15 men and 27 women. He added 216, about the usual small portion of the whole population, but he baptized about 2550 infants and married about 850 couples. Hence his records, published by Moses Scudder in 1898, are of almost unparalleled value to gene- alogists, containing as they do the baptism and marriage dates for practically every family in Huntington during his time.
Prime's diary, now in the Gardiner wing of the Easthampton Library, is a disclosure of the otherwise secret prayer-life of a devout but often stormswept spirit. Mostly the diary recounts his experi- ences in preparing for administering the Lord's Supper. It was a soul-searching time with him. He laments the "horrible temptations" that assail him, periods of testing "lasting a fortnight". He hopes for times of "enlargement" at the Communion Service but repeatedly reports only "deadness and coldness", evidently his own, rather than that of his people. This introspection characterizes his entries for at least fifty years, relieved but rarely by brief seasons of "refreshing". Ferris "had not committed a sin in six years". Prime, of the diary, was full of sin, a miserable, wretched body of sores, crying out over his blotted pages. Ferris flew off on tangents. Davenport sowed the seed of dissension. Prime found an outlet at the point of his goose-quill pen and kept his congregation together, tenderly shepherding his people, come earthquake, Redcoat or half- baked evangelist. Excepting an occasional "event in the family" earthquakes appear to be about the only sublunary phenomena he was moved to make note of in his personal reflections. They impressed him, no doubt, as marks of divine disapprobation. That was the traditional interpretation.
Perhaps the perpetual solemnity of Prime was partly tempera- mental. He had neither the wit nor the exuberance of Buell. Buell, an avowed Whig, was nevertheless a favorite of Sir William Erskine, commander of British forces at Easthampton, and thus in a position to mitigate the severities usually inflicted upon rebellious communities, and he could banter his way out of a dangerous encounter with Lord Percy. But Prime lacked such savoir-faire and suffered with his congregation. On account of this they thought no less of him.
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The Rev. Samuel Buell, D.D. (Princeton), third pastor at East- hampton (that church had but three ministers in a century and a half, each serving about 50 years) was a "gifted" man. His preach- ing appealed. In a day when most were confined to manuscript he spoke often without notes and had in general the skills of the unique orator. He was vigorous to the end. At eighty he was keeping preaching engagements after hours in the saddle and at the age of 82 lie ministered in his own pulpit the day before he died. More- over, he walked in the way of John Knox, marrying a youthful wife in advanced age, and the marriage was blessed by the birth of a daughter. Commenting upon this incident the historian Prime remarked: "He had his weaknesses; but who has not?"
Charlestown, S. C., is not alone in supplying examples of lengthily worded epitaplis. The tablestone over the grave of Aaron Woolworth, D.D. (Princeton, 1809), at Bridgehampton was inscribed with 218 words. N. S. Prime says he deserved every one of them, and that "he was one of the most able, discriminating and pious divines that Long Island was ever blessed with". He was Bridgehampton's third pastor. In 1844, that church had had but four.
Work among the Indians had been begun by Thomas James, the first minister at Easthampton, and by the Southampton church, but nothing achieved compares with the success of Azariah Horton, a native of Southold, appointed a missionary to the Indians by the New York Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in 1747. Thoughi much of his time was spent with the Shinnecocks he made a 100-mile stretch, from Shinnecock Hills to Far Rockaway, his parislı for eleven years. He lived with the natives in their wigwams, taught them faith- fully with the assistance of an interpreter, at a snail-like pace com- pared with which the leisurely progress in the United Nations Coun- cil is as the speed of a greyhound, and actually managed to reach with a real understanding of the gospel a people who for 100 years had resisted foreign doctrine of every sort. Lives were actually changed. Savage though he was, the Indian was capable of appre- ciating a better way. And more, he could stand before white men and edify them!
"In the library at Dartmouth College hangs a portrait of a dark, longmaned Colonial preacher, bearing the legend 'Samson Occum- The Indian Mohegan' " (John C. Huden). If the reader, who has not seen the portrait, can imagine a short, stocky figure, with full firm face, square head and oval chin, wide eyes and the slender hands and tapering fingers of a gentleman, and dressed in black brocade and knee-britches, all topped by broad white clerical bands, he will have some notion of the appearance of a Connecticut aborigine who could "walk with kings, nor lose the common touch". Possibly the painter conventionalized his subject, particularly about the hands, but Occum was one of nature's noblemen, or the gospel's, and needed little idealization. If he did not walk with kings he stood before them, and not merely as a curiosity, as the first Indian ever seen in England, but in some honor, as the representative of Moor's Charity School, for the extension of which he was sent to England to raise funds. The "common touch" brought $40,000 back to America, but
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to Occum's disappointment it was primarily useful in the founding of Dartmouth, he thinking it should have been used to enlarge Moor's, the school he had attended.
Dr. Timothy Dwight, famous President of Yale, possibly with the slight lift of the eyebrow he sometimes employed, as we shall see,
(Photo Courtesy of The Historic American Building Survey, Library of Congress)
First Presbyterian Church, Huntington
when he alluded to Long Island inhabitants, stated that he had heard Oceum twice. "His discources, though not proofs of superior talents, were decent, and his utterances in some degree eloquent." Never- theless, Occum wrote verse and at least one hymn, "Awaked by Sinai's Awful Sound", that was in use in church hymnals as late as the close of the 19th century, probably after some alterations.
The Revolution being ended the congregations began at once to build churches to replace those demolished. Both Babylon and Hunt- ington erected new buildings in 1784. Formerly, but for rare excep- tions, a tax on the town had paid for such construction. In the new
L. I .- II-4
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order the money was to be raised by subscription. The churches were free and, so it proved, self-sustaining. Despite the impoverishment by war the funds were made immediately available. Some of the sub- scription lists, with names and amounts, are preserved. With one possible exception, all the oldest Presbyterian church buildings now standing were erected after the Revolution. All were larger and new sorts of furnishings came into use, but no novel architectural method had come into vogue, such as would turn churches into amphitheaters. Most of the buildings of the period would be specimens of good design that barring fire would stand for centuries.
They would be built as before by native carpenters, the "boss carpenters" probably drawing the plans, some of them following New England types that had begun to show the Christopher Wren influence, others on lines that may have been indigenous to Long Island. For the best carpenters of Long Island were shipbuilders and their work on churches bore the marks of their trade. The great sills, a foot square or more, rested on low stone walls extend- ing downward a short distance into the sand, or into soil when the location afforded it. No cellar would be dug under a church until furnaces came into use, in the middle of the 19th century. The weight of huge timbers bearing on the sills would steady the craft in any hurricane. The braced frame would be as that of a tall ship, all weatherboard and drawing hardly so much as a foot, resting on sand instead of water. To the ship carpenters the studding would be like so many ribs. Also, for example, the "barrel-ceiling" of the Old First Church in Huntington (1784) actually resembles an inverted hull, with single-jointed ribs, the joints forming the lines of a couple of- imaginary bilge keels. The oak timbers of this church were hauled from Lloyd's Neck, seasoned long, finished with the adze, mortised and tenoned with chisels and mallets and fastened with oak pins. The under-gallery knee braces suggest hackmatack deck supports, but on a slightly acute angle.
Even more impressive is the restraint-the simplicity, delicacy and grace-in the details of both the exterior and interior finishing of this church. Nothing is adventitious or overdone. The column casings are octagonal and plain, the capitals and cornice conservatively moulded. So too are the gallery panels. Incidentally, the inside of the gallery rail is quaintly disfigured by the carvings of many, resolved to "hand down their names to posterity .on an ash chip". At the rear of the "barrel" are three semi-circular openings to what were originally slave galleries, now closed with wide boarding. At first there were two long north-end windows, later removed and replaced by paneling. The original pulpit may have been gallery high, but from many of the box pews the preacher would have been invisible. Possibly when the box pews gave place to long straight pews the pulpit was lowered. At some early day whale-oil lamps were introduced and were probably supported by long, exquisitely wrought iron brackets from which electrically lighted lanterns are now suspended. Later a central chandelier held 24 kerosene lamps. When the chandelier was removed and concealed lighting installed the workmen attempted to cut through the iron rings from which
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the chandelier hung. No saw would do it. Of course a blowtorch could not be used. So the rings in the barrel ceiling remain. Hun- dreds of the original bubble-glass panes still admit a pleasantly dis- torted daylight.
This is one of the oldest Presbyterian buildings on Long Island, although others have claimed a greater antiquity. The first building at Middle Island was erected in 1766, but it was "rebuilt" in 1837, with how extensive changes the writer does not know. The building at South Haven is admittedly old and is said to be the most ancient of all (Eells). If the present building is the original, it was built in 1728. Old First, in Huntington, has suffered no changes in struc- ture, being in that respect always the same for 162 years.
The only Long Island church building included in Embury's Early American Churches is that at Sag Harbor, built in 1844. It is there discussed as something quite unique. The facade and 135-foot spire-the 1938 hurricane tore off the spire-were designed to display a combination of Greek and Egyptian decor most unusual. The interior is equally elaborate with Corinthian capitals and fluted columns, all beautifully kept a gleaming white. A vast amount of labor went into it, which the third most important whaling port in the world could well afford, with a heart to put of its best into the House of God.
The Smithtown church, built in 1827, is a gem. Rather of the New England type, set well back on a locust-studded lawn and flanked by ancient horsesheds, it is as vivid a reminder of a past dignity and beauty as can be found anywhere. Interiorly, straight pews have replaced a central block of box pews, but the box pews under the galleries have been kept. The pulpit is at the entrance end and the worshippers pass the pulpit on the way to their pews.
The present Southold church, originally 40 by 60, to hold 400, was built in 1803. The frame raising required three days. Its lines and proportions resemble those of the Setauket church, a type often preferred by Long Island builders, but it has its own definite indi- viduality, like every other of the early buildings. The congregation preserves as highly valued relics a cello, the first instrument to follow the pitchpipe, the wrought-iron triangle-that preceded the bell and superseded the drum, for calling worshippers-a tile from the floor of St. Edmund's, in Southwold, England, and communion cups fash- ioned by Simeon Soumaine, early American silversimth, and in use until recently.
The fine old building at Setauket was erected in 1811-1812. Kate Strong, in her well documented and extremely interesting Tale of an Old Church (The Long Island Forum), traces parts of the former building into the homes of members of the congregation, representa- tives of a people who wasted nothing-the pulpit stairs to the house of Isaac Brewster, the pulpit rail to the house of Clark Tucker, one of the two builders.
When the growth of congregations made necessary the construc- tion of new and much larger houses of worship there was probably some regret over parting with the former buildings that had been focal points of dear associations. Often several generations of a
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family had occupied the same pew. But such changes were endured without protest. Not, however, the introduction of innovations. These were the cause of great debate. By way of exception, the gradual transition from simple to complicated musical instruments appears to have been effected with little or no disturbance. The related ques- tions of propriety had probably been settled by churches in New England before organs were introduced here. In 1867, Huntington installed an organ by Erben, a well-known New York organ builder; Smithtown likewise, and it is still in use. Huntington, when replacing its Erben with a Casavant, even achieved a mollifying sense of humor. One of the successful advocates of the inclusion of a "harp" made his appeal on the ground that "some of the congregation are dubious of hearing any harps in the next world".
The post-Revolution period was marked not only by the growth of churches but also by a new impetus given to education. From the beginning the schools had been continuously in the control of church- town government. The church had considered the schools its "nurseries". The Bible was the book from which reading was taught. The carefully chosen men teachers began and concluded school ses- sions with Bible reading and prayer. Later the Westminster cate- chism, or some other, was a regular feature of recitations. Even after the Revolution the religious influence remained and the new depar- tures toward "higher" education were initiated in several cases under the leadership of the ministers. Due largely to the efforts of Buell, Clinton Academy, the first institution of that kind to be chartered by the Board of Regents of the State of New York, was erected in Easthampton the very year the Revolution ended. Mr. Faitoute, pastor at Jamaica, was a member of the committee that raised, in 1792, the funds to erect Union Hall Academy, the sixth to be char- tered by the Regency, and he became its principal in 1796.
Thus, insular though the inhabitants are reputed to have been, they had achieved in the latter part of the 18th century an actual priority in respect to establishing secondary schools in the state of New York, all while operating under a theory of the responsibility of organized religion to inform and shape the whole life of the com- munity. This concept proved practical. In 1804, Timothy Dwight made a tour of Long Island. From his famous report of his trip we take the following comments: "The inhabitants * are desti-
tute of other advantages which contribute not a little to diffuse infor- mation and awaken energy. * Comparatively few persons of talents and information reside here. * * * A considerable num- ber of such men born here * are found in New York and elsewhere. The advantages derived from their conservation and example-persons distinguished for superiority of character-are therefore enjoyed in a very imperfect degree." Then another lift of the eyebrow, and a prophecy: "Such it would seem must, through an indefinite period, be the situation of Long Island." It was in 1834 that a Federal Census found here, in Suffolk County, only 2 persons per 1000 who could not read or write, thus giving this county the highest rating in the United States. It will be recalled that
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about that time there could be found in Yale only one student who would acknowledge that he was a Christian.
Insularity may even be thought to have been an advantage. The asperities of institutions coming to be regarded as evil were much modified by the local spiritual climate. Feudalism, as represented by the Lords of Manor, was vastly different from its prototype in Eng- land. As a rule tenants were well treated. Slaves were frequently manumitted, and at any time could effect a transfer of masters upon application to their owners, possibly in some cases because it was believed that the owner of a dissatisfied slave would find his restless servant less profitable than another might prove to be. The names of baptized children of slaves were often entered in family records beside those of the baptized white children of the household. In con- sequence, when by enactment in 1817, becoming fully effective in 1827, New York state freed all slaves within its borders the adjustment to the new status was an easy matter. True, some of the slaves married Indians, but others and their descendants became self-supporting units of the white man's social order, and members of white men's churches and so remain to this day, and they do not sit in slave galleries, but with the congregation on the main floor.
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