USA > New York > Kings County > Brooklyn > Old Sands Street Methodist Episcopal Church, of Brooklyn, N.Y. : an illustrated centennial record, historical and biographical > Part 11
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While my heart sank within me, I ventured out of self and all self-depend- ence. Heaven seemed to stoop and pity the sinner in distress. My burden was removed, and all was light; I clasped my hands, and walked, and said, "Glory, glory to God!" ,
He immediately began to lead others to Christ. His burn- ing zeal constrained him to establish family prayer in the home of an older brother with whom he was boarding. The cross was very great. He took a candle and started for his room, but replaced it, saying, "May I pray?" When he rose from his knees after an earnest prayer, his sister-in-law sneer- ingly said, "Aaron has been to the Methodist meetings, and wants to show us how well he has learned to pray." But his
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Aaron Hunt_
REV. AARON HUNT, 1st.
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brother in penitence accompanied him to the meetings, and was converted. Thenceforward Moses and Aaron were united heart and hand in the service of Christ. About this time, in a prayer-meeting, he first met Benjamin Abbott. When he heard that wonderful man give out and sing the hymn,
"Refining fire, go through my heart,"
he and nearly all others present were seized with "an awful trembling," and he "agonized for a clean heart." Having re- turned from New York to his native town, he was soon made leader of a class. With his conversion came a conscious call to the ministry. He preached his first sermon near his home, on the New Rochelle circuit in 1790, from Rom. xiii, 12 : " The night is far spent," etc .; and in the latter part of the same conference year, (January, 1791,) encouraged by his friend and pastor, Jacob Brush,' he went to serve as a supply on Long Island circuit, which then included Brooklyn, and extended eastward to the farthest outposts of Methodism in Suffolk county. He was young and inexperienced, but in his journal he writes :
As I went round the circuit, I found the people not only willing to bear with my weakness, but apparently glad to hear me. I saw fruits of my en- deavors, and enjoyed many gracious seasons.
Thus began an extended and useful ministry, which is briefly sketched in the following
PASTORAL RECORD : 1790, list part of this conference year, sup- ply on L. I. cir., N. Y., with W. Phoebus and D. Kendall ; 1791, (joined the itinerancy,) Fairfield cir., Conn., with N. B. Mills ; 1792, Middletown cir., with R. Swain; 1793, ordained deacon-Fairfield cir., with J. Coleman; 1794- 1799, local; 1800, (N. Y. Conf., re-admitted,) ordained elder, -- Litchfield cir., Conn., with E. Batchelor; 1801, no appointment, by request; 1803, New Lon- don cir., with M. Coate; 1804, New Rochelle cir., with Wm. Thacher; 1805- 1806, New York city cir., with F. Garrettson, N. Snethen, and John Wilson; 1806, ditto, with T. Bishop, S. Crowell, F. Garrettson, and John Wilson; 1807, Litchfield cir., Conn., with J. Lyon; 1808-1810, presiding elder, Rhine- beck Dist .; 1811, Redding cir., Conn., with O. Sykes and J. Reynolds; 1812, Middletown cir., with A. Scholefield; 1813, Redding cir., with II. Eames; 1814, Croton cir., N. Y., with Eben Smith; 1815, ditto, with E. Canfield; 1816, Stamford cir., Conn., with Theod. Clark; 1817, Bridgeport cir., with F
I See Stevens' Hist. M. E. Church, vol. iii, p. 221, where Hunt is quoted as saying that Jacob Brush was his presiding elder. I find no other evidence that Brush had charge of the district that year, or that he was presiding elder until 1792.
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Garrettson-sup'y .; 1818, Courtlandt cir., N. Y., with B. Northrop; IS19, New York, with S. Merwin, Laban Clark, B. Hibbard, T. Spicer, and N. Morris ; 1820, ditto, with J. Soule, B. Hibbard, T. Spicer, and E. Hebard ; 1821, Redding cir., Conn,, with Laban Clark; 1822, ditto, with S. Coch- ran; 1823, sup'y, Danbury cir .; 1824, Kedding and Bridgeport cir., with M. Richardson, H. Humphreys, and F. W. Sizer; 1826, sup'y, ditto, with M. Richardson, II. Humphreys, and O. Sykes, sup'y ; 1827-1839, sup'y, Amenia cir., N. Y.,-his colleagues were Wm. Jewett, J. C. Bontecou, A. S. Hill, F. Reed, Lorin Clark, S. Cochran, F. Donnelly, S. U. Fisher, E. Washburn, R. Wymond, D. G. Sutton, D. Holmes, J. P. Ellsworth, G. L. Fuller, B. Sil- leck, D. Keeler, and W. K. Stopford; 1840-1857, superannuated.
This record covers the long period of sixty-eight years, but shows that he was on the effective list less than half of that time. A small farm in Redding, Conn., having fallen to him by inheritance, it became, for the most part, the permanent home of his family ; but during each of the twenty-seven years when he was appointed to a charge, he devoted himself faithfully to his ministerial work, submitting ofttimes to long and trying absence from home-his receipts sometimes not exceeding twenty dollars a year.
His location in 1794 was not intended to be permanent. He preached statedly on the Sabbath, and sometimes during the week, and when his health and his business permitted him to resume regular pastoral work, he declined favorable opportuni- ties to enter the ministry of another denomination, and returned to the itinerant ranks. Right nobly he endured the hardships and fought the battles that fell to the lot of the pioneer Meth- odist preacher.
In 1792 he preached the first Methodist sermon in Danbury, Conn. The meeting was held in the court-house. No one spoke to him, and he put up at a tavern, at his own expense. That was a common experience, But he soon saw a society organized there, and a little chapel erected, toward which he contributed one hundred dollars, taking the deed in his own name, and conveying the property to the trustees, "according to the Discipline." The watch-word of his ministry appears to have been, " According to Discipline !"
During the following year, while on the Middletown circuit, he was sent forward to plant the standard of our denomination where no Methodist preacher's voice had been heard. His journal says :
In May, 1793, my presiding elder directed me to go across the Connecti- cut River, and " break up new ground," as he expressed it. This was very
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trying, but to obey them that had the rule over me was my determination. I again renewed my covenant with the Lord and set forward, and traveled through the counties of New London and Windham, making a small excur- sion into the State of Massachusetts. An itinerant preacher was a new thing in those lands. Some inquired whether I was sent by the president, or by Congress, or by what authority.
In 1793 he was married to Miss Eunice Sanford. She died in 1805, leaving him sorely bereaved.
Mr. Hunt was the originator of the motion to adopt the two- years rule in the itinerancy-a law enacted by the General Con- ference in 1804. It is well known that previous to that date there was no specified limit to the pastoral term. It was not uncommon to change preachers even oftener than every year, while some remained longer than two or three years. Concern- ing the circumstances which led to the adoption of the two- years ruile Mr. Hunt writes as follows :
Soon after the commencement of the present century, two or three cases occurred that gave the bishop great annoyance. Some preachers, finding them- selves in pleasant stations, and by the aid of self-constituted committees-be- lieving, of course, that they could do better in the place than any one else- objected to removal, while the more pious part of the society would have pre- ferred a change; but the officious committee prevailed.2
One case to which he specifically alltides was that of the Rev. Cyrus Stebbins. He had been pastor of Albany City station four years, (1800-1803,) many of the leading members having wished him to remain, while many of the more humble desired a change. Asbury felt that it would be for the general good to remove him, but, finding that he could not do so without causing a rupture, he was greatly perplexed as to what course to pursue. He spoke to his son, Aaron, as he always called him, concerning this case, and what followed is thus narrated by Mr. Hunt :
In conversation with the bishop, I suggested the two-years rule, to which he pleasantly replied : "So, then, you would restrict the appointing power ?" "Nay, sir," was the reply, " we would aid its execution, for in the present case it seems to be deficient." His laconic reply of " So, so," encouraged me, at the ensuing General Conference of 1804, to present the resolution signed by my- self, and seconded by the Rev. Joseph Totten, of the Philadelphia Conference. When it was read by the secretary, one observed that such a rule would limit the Episcopacy ; another, that it would tacitly station for two years. Of course it was laid on the table. It was talked over out of doors, and scanned in all its bearings by the firesides, and when called up again [by George Dougherty, ] it passed after some discussion by a very general vote.
2 The Christian Advocate and Journal, March 6, 1851. .
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During his first term as preacher in charge of New York city circuit, he introduced the custom of inviting penitents in our churches to come forward and kneel at the altar. His own written statement of the matter is as follows :
In September, 1806, I appointed a prayer-meeting, particularly for those who had been at the camp-meeting [at Cow Harbor, I .. I.] Many attended in the church in Second-street, [better known as Forsyth-street church.] It was a time of great power. Many wept, and cried aloud for mercy. Soon the cry of mourners became general throughout the church, and many prayers were put up in their behalf. It was in this revival needful to regulate our prayer-meetings by calling the mourners to the altar, and inviting the praying brethren into the altar.
It is stated by those who were personally acquainted with Methodist usages in those days that penitent persons were ex- pected to kneel down in whatever part of the house they hap- pened to be. The Christians present would then gather around them and pray. Thus several little prayer-meetings were held at the same time in various parts of the congregation. Mr. Hunt, as preacher in charge, was not willing that this disorderly cus- tom should any longer prevail. About that time he received a letter from his friend and former colleague, the Rev. Nicholas Snethen, describing the custom which had just been adopted at the camp-meetings in the South, of inclosing a space in front of the stand, called an altar, where mourners and those who were considered capable of instructing them and praying with them, were invited to meet apart from the great congregation. After much consideration and prayer, he determined upon adopting a similar course in the church, and at the "second camp-meeting prayer-meeting " he invited all who were seeking the Saviour to come forward and kneel at the altar, but not one person complied with the request. The three preachers met the next day in con- sultation, Mr. Hunt assigned as his reason for proposing to in- troduce the altar service, that the confusion. of previous meet- ings would thereby be avoided, and the name, residence, and spiritual condition of each convert and seeker could be ascer- tained, making it possible to watch over them more success- fully. Truman Bishop, one of the colleagues, concurred, but Seth Crowell, the other preacher, put in a stern remonstrance, and in the evening took a back seat to watch the result of what he considered an interference with God's order, and a steadying of the ark. But the penitents, having reflected on the propriety
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of gathering about the altar, pressed forward as soon as the invita- tion was given, filling the entire kneeling place about the altar rail, and several of the front seats. Many of these rejoiced in the pardon of their sins, and Mr. Crowell, witnessing the happy result, discontinued his opposition, and joined zealously in the work.
From this experiment the custom soon came to be generally adopted in the Methodist revival services throughout the land. In later years Mr. Hunt expressed concern lest the usage might degenerate into a forni in which some might trust rather than in the Saviour, and of which others might take advantage in hy- pocrisy to impose upon the Church.
Aaron Hunt was at first very strongly opposed to the presid- ing elder's office, but his experience in his large district con- vinced him of the necessity of some sort of supervision. His appointment to the district was much against his desire. He says :
Bishop Asbury knew well my objections to the office of presiding elder. At our Annual Conference in Amenia, in 1808, all things progressed pleasantly to the reading of the appointments, when my name was reserved to the last. Then came out, "Aaron Hunt for Rhinebeck District." Instantly I rose to my feet requesting to be heard. The reply was, " No time to be heard now -let us pray ; " and such a prayer us Asbury ouly could offer, followed by a score of loud " amens," almost stunned me. I was somewhat offended at the strange movement, but Asbury came along, and said, "Come, Aaron, I am going home with you." This in some degree softened my feelings, and led me to conclude that perhaps he had some reasons for making the appointment that I did not see.
The trouble among New York Methodists, resulting in the Stilwell secession, occurred during his administration. A cir- cumstantial history of these events, written by Mr. Hunt, ap- peared in " The Christian Advocate and Journal," and the fol- lowing extracts will enable the reader to form an estimate of his rigid adherence to the Discipline of the Church. He writes :
I was stationed in New York in 1819 and 1820, with the care of all our societies, then in the circuit form, consisting of six or seven churches. Our people had been in a state of turmoil for several years, which had for its pre- text the erection of the second John-street church, but, in fact, arose from a disposition in some " to have the pre-eminence." My predecessor in charge [Dr. Bangs] had labored in vain to restore harmony. Having been previ- ously in the station, I had some knowledge of persons and circumstances, and felt it a heavy trial to enter on so important a charge. Looking for divine direction, with the Bible and Discipline in my hand, I determined to follow peace with all men.
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Old Sands Street Church.
By bringing some of the estranged parties together in the con- ducting of revival meetings, he succeeded in allaying the ill feel- ing to a large extent; but how the strife was renewed and con- tinued is narrated as follows :
Previous to the annual election of trustees, some restless spirits began to electioneer. By this course the Stilwellites (or up-town party) succeeded in getting a majority in the board of trustees.
The board of trustees claimed the legal right to receive and control the moneys collected for the preachers. It had been cus- tomary in New York for the trustees to do all the business, but the new board refused to provide for the preachers, yet they pro- posed to receive the class money from the leaders, and when they paid it over to the stewards, who might be appointed, to take their receipts, and the amount the stewards would receive would depend on whether they would comply with that condi- tion. Having obtained the opinion of high legal authority that this claim of the trustees was not valid, Mr. Hunt had a board of stewards appointed, and called "a general leaders' meeting." He says :
When convened, about seventy were present ; and after singing and prayer we proceeded to read the Discipline-stewards' duties and leaders' duties, ob- serving that, as Methodists, both preachers and people were under obligation to adhere to these rules. One leader said he did not care what the Discipline said -- he would go according to law, for that was his plea. I said, " Brother, please give me your class-book." He gave it up. This gave a check to some of the warm heads. Brother Soule, [afterward bishop, ] my right hand colleague, remarked, " That is right."
Mr. Hunt and those who were with him perseveringly resisted the claim of the trustees to receipts for money paid over to the stewards, declaring the stewards to be amenable to the Quar- terly Conference and not to the trustees. Hunt's journal thus informs us what followed :
The morning after the general leaders' meeting, two of the trustees, a num- ber of leaders, and private members to the number of thirty called on me for certificates of dismission from the Church. Under the circumstances I did not think it proper to give them certificates, but as they persisted in leaving, we wrote on the records against their names, "withdrawn." They poured upon us a torrent of misrepresentation and falsehood, making every effort to draw off all they could, and finally they succeeded in obtaining about two hundred members and one hundred probationers. To me these were days and years of no ordinary toil and anxiety, which often deprived me of sleep, and wore upon my health. At the ensuing Annual Conference we [meaning
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himself and colleagues] suggested the propriety of a committee to investigate our proceedings; but it was refused, the conference being satisfied with our course.
In contending for their rights the early Methodist preachers found a brave champion in Aaron Hunt. George Roberts, when presiding elder, had been fined one hundred dollars by a court held in Middletown, for solemnizing a marriage ceremony in the State of Connecticut, but that did not frighten Mr. Hunt into employing the parish minister at his own wedding. He in- vited his presiding elder, Jacob Brush, to officiate, and when the elder hesitated on account of the law, he assured him that if he were brought to account, he would meet all the charges, and pay all fines and costs. Subsequently, when legal proceedings for the same offense had been instituted against one of the preachers, Mr. Hunt appeared on his behalf, and made the law appear so odious that the suits were withdrawn.
He represented his brethren in General Conference in 1804, 1812, and 1816. About 1828 he sold his property in Redding, and purchased a small farm in the town of Sharon, Conn., near Amenia Union, N. Y. There he resided until his removal to Leedsville, N. Y., a few years before his death. He spent his last winter with his son, Zalmon S. Hunt, in Sharon. As death approached, his mind was clear, and he was often favored with seasons of great tenderness and rapture. He passed away on the 25th of April, 1858, past ninety years of age, and was buried in the ground which he had given for a Methodist cemetery, in Sharon, Conn. His grave is marked by a marble slab, appro- priately inscribed.
For many years Aaron Hunt was recognized as " the patri- arch of the New York Conference." In their published memo- rial its members say :
Ile was strongly attached to the Discipline of the Church, and watched with jealous anxiety any deviation from the old ways, but always indorsed those new measures that seemed likely to increase the spirituality and strength of the Church. He was plain and neat in appearance, and prompt in the dis- charge of his ministerial duties.
EUNICE SANFORD, sister of the Rev. Aaron Sanford, Sen., was the first wife of Aaron Hunt. Their union was happy, but not long-from their marriage, in 1793, to her death, on the 6th 9
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of February, 1805, she lived well and died in peace, com- mending her husband and her four little children to our heaven- ly Father's care. A head-stone marks her grave in Redding, Conn., where she had spent most of her life.
HANNAH SANFORD, daughter of the elder Aaron Sanford, and sister to Hawley Sanford, was married to Aaron Hunt about two years after the death of his first wife. She was possessed of a very sweet Christian spirit, and chiefly through her instruc- tion and example all the children were converted in youth, and joined the Methodist Episcopal Church. She was in feeble health many years, and died September 18, 1831, aged forty- eight years. Her body is buried beside her husband's.
NANCY THOMPSON, a native of Goshen, Conn., whose parents were among the earliest converts to Methodism in New En- gland, became the third wife of Aaron Hunt, in 1832, and in his "age and feebleness extreme " her kind hands ministered to his wants. Her writings concerning him evince a remarkable af- fection and veneration for her husband. She was a superior woman-intelligent, pious, very zealous in Sunday-school work, a pioneer in the organization of "infant classes " in New En- gland, a contributor to the columns of the Sunday School Advocate and other periodicals. The tract entitled " Procras- tination ; or, an Echo from the Voice of the Dying," is from her pen. After the death of her husband she removed to Michigan, and subsequently to Leavenworth, Kansas, where, at the resi- dence of her nephew, she died in great peace, September 8, 1867, aged seventy-eight years. She was actively engaged in organizing and conducting an infant class a few months previous to her death. Her remains were deposited near those of her sister, in the town of Schoolcraft, near Kalamazoo, Mich. The Rev. Dr. A. S. Hunt wrote a fitting memorial of her, which was published in The Christian Advocate.
Children of Aaron Hunt by first marriage : Zalmon, died young ; Joseph, father of Andrew and Albert S. Hunt, Meth- odist preachers ; Aaron, more than forty years a member of the New York Conference; Phoebe, who married the Rev. A. S. Hill; William, who left no children. Children by second mar- riage : Sarah Ann, single ; Electa, married George W. Ingraham, of Amenia, N. Y .; Zalmon, who resides at Amenia Union.
XIII. BENJAMIN ABBOTT.
MONG "the most memorable men of early Method- ism" was the REV. BENJAMIN ABBOTT. His father and two brothers were natives of Long Island, but he was born in Pennsylvania, in 1732. This was years before Lee, or Garrettson, or Morrell, or (so far as known) any other native American Methodist preacher was born. His parents' names were Benjamin and Hannah. They died when he was quite young, and he "grew up in great wickedness, drinking, fighting, swearing and gambling."
In his thirty-second year he dreamed an awful dream about heil, and from that time till he was forty years of age, he was troubled at intervals on account of his sins. He was then living in New Jersey. His wife was a Presbyterian, but unconverted, and when they heard the gospel from the lips of Abraham Whitworth, a Methodist preacher,' they were brought into the light and united with the Methodists. Six of their children followed their example, and David, one of the sons, became an itinerant minister."
Soon after his conversion he began to preach at Hell Neck and other God-forsaken places, and gathered around him his astonished comrades who had been the witnesses of his bloody fights and foul profanity.
Ile met with great opposition from the enemies of the truth. At Trenton a false alarm of fire was given to draw the people away from his meeting. He was surrounded by
1 This man departed from the faith, and became a soldier in the British army, and was probably killed in battle. See Stevens' Ilist. M. E. Church, vol. i, p. 203.
2 Life of Abbott, p. IIc.
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mobs, but he awed them by his courage, and preached in their presence with wondrous liberty and power, and many vile sin- ners were awakened and saved.
He contended earnestly for the doctrines and usages of the Methodists, and complained that in one place "the Baptist preacher, who afterward turned Universalist and then deist, stole away nine of our sheep, and ran them into the mill-pond."3
He was a flaming evangelist, going from place to place throughout that portion of New Jersey, seeking the salvation of souls. In 1788, during the last of the sixteen years of his ir- regular but efficient labors as a local preacher, he met with a severe affliction in the death of his faithful wife. The next year he joined conference, and the following is his
ITINERANT RECORD: 1789, Dutchess cir., N. Y., with S. Q. Tal- bot ; 1790, ordained deacon,-Newburgh cir., with Joseph Lovell: 1791, Long Island cir., with Wm. Phoebus ; 1792, Salem cir., N. J., with David Bartine ; 1793, ordained elder ;- 1793-1794, Cecil cir., Md., with Fred .. Curp ; part of this time, as his manuscripts show, he was on Kent cir. ; 4 1795, health failed-not named in the Minutes.
His labors on Long Island, as well as on other circuits, are quite fully narrated in his published memoirs. They are almost without a parallel in "the rough energy, saintly devotion, and apostolic zeal " they display. Fearless, earnest, magnetic, he thrilled his audiences with rapture or terror, exercising an al- most superhuman power on large congregations of various degrees of culture, and he possessed this power in the absence of the ordinary amount of learning which the humbler class of ministers had acquired. One of his contemporaries writes :
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