USA > New York > Kings County > Brooklyn > Old Sands Street Methodist Episcopal Church, of Brooklyn, N.Y. : an illustrated centennial record, historical and biographical > Part 16
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William Thacker
REV. WILLIAM THACHER.
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Record of Ministers. 157
Methodist.1 There he saw a member of the Methodist Episco- pal Church, who lived seven miles away, and who invited him to a meeting held by that people near his home. He soon re- moved to New York, taking with him the following letter, writ- ten by the apostle of Methodism in the New England States :
The bearer, William Thacher, calls himself a Methodist, and I hope he is a steady, well-meaning person. JESSE LEE.
He joined a class in the John-street church which met Sab- bath morning at sunrise. He married Miss Anna Munson, of New Haven, and took up his residence there. His wife was converted one year after their marriage. He states that he heard the first Methodist sermon in New Haven,2 and was one of five to form the first Methodist class in that place in 1795, of which he was appointed the leader.3
He was greatly exercised about preaching the Gospel. He writes :
N. Snethen, who was then our preacher, advised me to exhort, but it soon appeared that I could not talk extemporaneously without a text. How dis- couraging ! for how shall a man preach a sermon who cannot talk common sense five minutes by way of exhortation ?
Another preacher advising him to take a text, he did so, and he gives the following account of his first effort :
The text came, the day came, the people came, and I came trembling-the Lord came and helped me so that I was astonished at my liberty of speech.
His wife was at first unwilling that he should join the confer- ence, but very soon gave her consent, and he entered upon his long and useful itinerant career.
MINISTERIAL RECORD: 1797, (New York Conf.,) Litchfield cir., Conn., with Ezekiel Canfield-the last few months, Pittsfield cir., Mass., with
1 Manuscript autobiography. His memoir in the Conf. Min. (1857, p. 319) locates this incident in New Haven. This is probably a mistake, His own record makes no such reference to New Haven.
2 Jesse Lee was the man who preached the first Methodist sermon in New Haven, June 21, 1789. See Stevens' Ilist. M. E. Church, vol. ii, p. 421.
3 New Haven was a conference appointment in 1790, and at the close of the year reported nine members. If the class formed in 1795 was the first, then the membership in 1790 belonged in New Haven circuit, but outside the limits of New Haven, which is probably true. It is possible that a class had been organized and afterward disbanded, and then it would remain true that Thacher and his wife were members of the first permanent class in that place.
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Old Sands Street Church.
Cyrus Stebbins ;4 1798, Redding cir., Conn. ; 1799, ordained deacon by Bp. Asbury,-Pomfret, cir., Con, R. I. and Mass. ; 1800, Dutchess cir., N. Y., . with P. Jayne .; 1801, ordained elder by Bp. Whatcoat,-Dutchess and Colum- bia cir., with David Brown and Lorenzo Dow ; 1802, New Rochelle and Cro- ton cir., with Geo. Dougharty ; 1803, New Rochelle cir., with A. Hunt ; 1804-1 1806, presiding elder, New York Dist. ; 1807, Middletown, Conn. ; 5 1808, New York city, with E. Cooper, John Wilson, F. Ward, L. Andrus, and P. Peck ; 1809, ditto, with Eben Smith and Wm. Keith ; 1810-1811, Brook- lyn, the first year he was to change with F. Ward, of Jamaica cir .; 1812, Jamaica cir., with Theodosius Clark ; 1813, New Rochelle cir., with Wm. Phoebus and O. Sykes; 1814, ditto, with J. Lyon ; 1815, New York, with Wm. Phœbus, E. Washburn, M. Richardson, and A. Scholefield ; 1816, ditto, with L. Andrus, A. Scholefield, and D). Ostrander ; 1817, Poughkeepsie. did not go ; 1818-1819, Schenectady ; 1820-1821, New Haven, Conn. ; 1822, (Phila. Conf.) Philadelphia, St. George's, with T. Miller and H. G. King; 1823, ditto, with T. Burch and D. Parish ; 1824-1325, Newark, N. J. ; 1826, Trenton and Bloomsburgh ; 1827, Trenton station ; 1828-1830, presiding elder, Phila. Dist. ; 1831-1832, (New York Conf.,) Poughkeepsie ; 1833, New Haven, Conn. ; 1834, Newburgh cir., N. Y., with P. R. Brown ; 1835-1836, Hudson and Print Works, with J. Carley ; 1837-1838, Flushing and Hallett's Cove, L. I. ; 1839, Williamsburgh and Newtown, with J. Rawson ; 1840, Norwalk and New Canaan cir., Conn., with J. A. Silleck ; 1841, Woodbury ; 1842-1843, Milan and Pleasant Valley cir., N. Y. ; 1844-1845, Dutchess cir., with Thos. Sparks ; 1846-1856, superannuated, residing at Poughkeepsie, N. Y.
When he started out to preach he paid $30 for a horse, and bought a second-hand saddle, bridle, and portmanteau. He was obliged to leave home with less than a dollar in his pocket, and to leave his wife nearly destitute. She and their child boarded in her father's family at $t a week for both, and he was to be allowed only $128 salary, with little prospect of ob- taining more than one half of that ; but he writes;
God had called me, and I must obey, nor did I stagger through unbelief.
He thus describes himself beginning the round of his circuit :
On a little gray mare, whose bones were prominent, sits a small man, pale and thin, dressed in a second-hand gray coat, and light-colored overcoat. The people say, " Brother Thacher, neither you nor your horse will stand this cir- cuit. The rides are long, roads rough and mountainous-you must both fail." In a few months they say, " You have grown as fat as a farmer, and you've got a new horse, ha?" The itinerant answers, " No, the same horse and the same rider."6
' Manuscript autobiography.
" In his MS. autobiography he states that Middletown was then a station and not a circuit, as would appear from the Conference Minutes.
6 Manuscript autobiography.
159
Record of Ministers.
A year or two later on the Pomfret circuit, he rejoiced in the conversion of many, among whom were four young men who afterward became itinerant preachers.7
As presiding elder he had charge of " the first camp-meeting ever published and held east of the Hudson River." It was held in Carmel, N. Y., Sept. 14-17, 1804. He writes concerning it :
We had endeavored to prepare the ground beforehand, but who had ever seen a camp-meeting ? Who could show us how to work it ? It was like put- ting out to sea with captain and crew, all raw hands. But the Lord provided for this, also. Rev. Nicholas Snethen, a southern campaigner, and a large number of brethren came from New York, with sails of shipping for tents, and all provisioned for the four days. What a good instructor was Brother Snethen ! Where could I have found such another ? He gave directions in every thing pertaining to the meeting, and as for preaching, he was a host in himself.
In the following May he held another camp-meeting on Long Island. He says :
We threw the Long Island quarterly meeting into a camp-meeting form, and held it in a place that we knew only by the name of Mosquito Cove.
Lorenzo Dow was at this meeting, and gives a thrilling ac- count of it in his Journal. The New York preachers, Wm. Phœbus and Daniel Smith, judging from reports of such meet- ings, had been outspoken against them ; but Thacher says :
They came, they saw, they were conquered ; and is it wonderful that these good and wise men should yield to a divine influence which has conquered thousands of foolish, bad men ?
Another meeting in September, the same year, was held in Croton, N. Y. An old Methodist writes :
I heard the Rev. Wm. Thacher give an account of the original act of locat- ing the place of the meeting. A large forest had been designated by the proprietor for the purpose, and a committee, consisting of Mr. Thacher, the presiding elder, J. B. Matthias, then a local preacher of Tarrytown, and Na- than Anderson, of Callaborg, a layman, went out to fix the site for the meet- ing. When that had been done, and its chief points properly marked, they gathered at the foot of a great tree to offer up together a prayer of consecra- tion, and to invoke God's blessing upon the work ; and such was the baptism of the Spirit they received, that " Barney " Matthias sprang to his feet and ran about the grounds, gathering up stones with which to set up an " Ebenezer."b
7 Stevens' Hist. M. E. Church, vol. iii, p. 441.
8 The Methodist, New York, Sept. 17, 1881.
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Old Sands Street Church.
At a similar meeting conducted by Mr. Thacher in Tucka- hoe, N. Y., in 1806, Marvin Richardson was converted. Many preachers were there, among whom was Bishop Asbury, who said that it excelled any camp-meeting he had ever attended, and from it most wonderful revivals spread in every direction.3
Wm. Thacher buried his wife in 1807, and in December, the following year, he married again. He states that Bishop Asbury publicly expressed his disapproval of this marriage, which was a sore trial to Thacher. He believed that the bishop was " ill- informed by some unfriendly tongue." Thenceforward for sixteen consecutive years his family resided in New York, his oldest daughter sometimes keeping house for him when his sta- tions were distant from that city.
During his second year in New York, (1809,) Allen-street and Bedford-street churches were built. He carried the same en- thusiasm for church-building to Brooklyn, and it was almost solely through, his influence that the " old white church " was erected. Not a few were converted under his ministry in Sands- street. Among these were Judge Dikeman, who said to the author that he was led to seek the Lord under a sermon by Mr. Thacher from the text, "For Zion's sake will I not hold my peace." Of his appointment to Brooklyn with a monthly change for Jamaica circuit, he writes :
As to the monthly change, we made short work of it. I had the good for- tune to be yoked with an unaccommodating and somewhat imperious brother, and I chopped the yoke in two, and told him to attend to his circuit, and I would mind my station, and risk the issue at the next annual conference: This ended the chapter of monthly changes, perhaps at the expense of peace, and the cost of some brotherly love.
He collected money for the rebuilding of John-street church in New York in 1816 and 1817, and was afterward active in church-building in Poughkeepsie, Newburgh, and Hudson. He was called " a bishop's favorite," and had a good deal of trouble at one time and another. He applied for a supernumerary re- lation in 1817, but the conference, in his absence, refused to grant it. His health, as he said, forbade his attending to his appointment at Poughkeepsie that year. In 1818 charges were brought against him for deserting his post, but they were not sustained. His next appointment was Schenectady, where two
9 See Richardson's statement in Stevens' Hist. M. E. Church, vol, iv, p. 253.
16I
Record of Ministers.
revivals occurred in two years, and the membership increased from 54 to 190.
· Concerning a public discussion which he held with a Univers- alist preacher in Newark, N. J., while stationed there, he says that the Universalists themselves acknowledged a defeat. Of his relation to the people on the Williamsburgh circuit, his last charge on Long Island, he says :
The leaven of abolition was unhappily working among some of the mem- bers. I understood that my colleague [Jas. Rawson] was of that sentiment which might be the reason why they were so studious to show that they pre- ferred him. This, however, gave me no displeasure. * * * A eireum- stance occurred that threw light on this mystery. On March 1, 1840, an or- der from the presiding elder made me a member of the committee to investi- gate charges brought against LeRoy Sunderland, of the New England Con- ference, who was editor of the abolition paper, entitled Zion's Watchman, then published in New York. The proceedings of said committee were can- vassed by that conference, and L. Sunderland had to locate From the time that I was appointed on that committee, a change of behavior on the part of many of the brethren was visible, resulting in the prevention of my re-appoint- ment.
When he wrote his autobiography, (about 1850,) he said con- cerning " abolition " preachers :
If they are contending for the truth once delivered to the saints, and their salvation depends on their boldness and perseverance, they will be worthy of the crown for which they contend ; but if at last it shall be said, " Who hath required this at your hands ?" alas for them !
He writes at some length of the New York Conference ses- sion of 1838, and the abolition discussion. He was strongly on the side of the conservatives. He records the suspension of three of the score of " abolition preachers " till they should give satisfaction to the conference, and says :
The screws of our government were judiciously applied to some of our good brethren, which proved salutary to them and poor Zion's Watchman's ed- itor, and all were subjected by able hands to a most severe and just castiga- tion. * * It was time to put in the subsoil plow, in hope of eradicating the snap-dragon from the soil. The effect of our measures was salutary. " As the partridge setteth on eggs and hatcheth them not," so these zealons men have had a long incubation ; there has been warmtl. enough, and feathers in abundance, yet where are the freed men ? What chickens have they hatched ?
The above reads strangely to us in the light of subsequent history. It is not often that our eye falls on a paragraph that so clearly unfolds the real animus of the opposition to the anti- slavery agitation of those days. Thacher and the larger major-
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Old Sands Street Church.
ity of the conference, whose sentiments he thus boldly repre- sents, all claimed, of course, to be antislavery men.
On the day of the seventieth anniversary of his birth, he wrote :
Shall I superannuate? No; my powers, physical and intellectual, are not withered, and my heart is still delighted with the work of the ministry. My ability for pedestrianism and for mental labor was never better. Three serv- ices every Sabbath, and the usual meetings during the week, all give proof of this.
He continued to travel until he was seventy-five years of age, and retired to a, comfortable home in Poughkeepsie, where he was cheerful and happy, and remarkably active, taking up the study of French, reading the Bible in the original tongues, and writing a history of his life. By invitation of the Rev. M. L. Scudder, he preached a semi-centennial sermon in Poughkeep- sie, in 1847, which was repeated in other places. He wrote, July 6, 1848 :
I have now in my old age the satisfactory reflection that I entered the trav- eling connection in the spirit of sacrifice, in full faith in the promise of God for all necessary supplies of both the upper and the nether springs-spiritual and temporal grace, * * * and during my forty-eight years of effective serv- ice in the Church, God has liberally provided for me, and now my circum- stances are as pleasant as heart could wish.
He recognized a kind Providence in all the events of his life, and recounted, with gratitude, twelve narrow escapes from death. His triumph culminated at the last, and often, in the midst of his severest agonies, he shouted, "Glory to God ! I am happy in Jesus." Thus he finished his course with joy on August 2, 1856, in the eighty-eighth year of his age. His mortal remains yet slumber in a vault in the old Dutch burial-ground east of Pough- keepsie.
William Thacher was below medium size, possessing remark- able vigor and endurance, a close observer of men, sensitive, frank, fearless, and extremely positive in his opinions. "He was sometimes petulant-did not like to be contradicted."1º
He took advanced ground in the temperance reform, lectur- ing on the subject in Poughkeepsie, Hyde Park, and Rhine- beck, as early as 1833, and although the pledge that was offered in those days was the old pledge against ardent spirits only, he writes .
10 Statement of Judge Dikeman to the author.
163
Record of Ministers.
I then advocated the teetotal principles before they were commonly known to be essential to the cause of temperance. The Holy Spirit set me right on the principles of temperance.
Few men ever had the ability to quote the Scriptures with greater pertinency and force. His brethren of the Conference adopted the following testimony :
His pulpit efforts were characterized by great earnestness, by clear exposi- tion of the Scriptures, by terseness, brevity, and point. The general cast of his sermons was practical, while his closing appeals to the heart were often overwhelmingly effective. 11
Chief among his published literary productions are " William Theophilus," (an autobiographical sketch,) and a sermon on secret prayer." He was a member of the General Conference of 1808.
ANNA (MUNSON,) wife of William Thacher, was a holy woman. She "died happy," February 18, 1807, aged nearly thirty-four years.13 She is buried in the old part of New Haven cemetery.14
MARTHA (OAKLEY,) his second wife, sought the Lord at the long-to-be-remembered camp-meeting in Croton, N. Y., in 1806, and first received the witness of her acceptance on board the returning sloop. She joined the Duane-street church in New York. She was married to Mr. Thacher Dec. 29, 1808. She shared the sorrows and rejoiced in the success of her husband. She was sick four days, and slept in Jesus, January 19, 1848, aged sixty-three years. She is "buried in the family vault of Josiah Williams," in Poughkeepsie, N. Y.
A son, named William, was adopted and educated by an uncle. He died at the age of thirty-four. Another son, Israel, died at the age of thirty-three. Mary Ann, one of the two daughters of William Thacher, married Luther Gilbert, of New Haven, Conn. One of her sons, William Thacher Gil- bert, is a minister in the New York East Conference; another, Luther Munson Gilbert, is a physician in New Haven. Wm. Thacher's only surviving daughter, Amanda, married Wm. W. Reynolds, of Poughkeepsie, N. Y. A daughter, Eliza, married D. D. Richman, of Avondale, N. J. She died leaving a son, who is a physician in West Virginia.
11 Minutes of Conference, 1857, P. 320.
12 See Methodist Magazine, May, 1828.
13 Thacher's manuscript. 14 Mrs. W. W. Reynolds, letter to the author,
XXVIII. SAMUEL MERWIN.
HE name of the REV. SAMUEL MERWIN is honorably connected with the history of Brooklyn Method- ism. Few men were better known in his time, or are better remembered to this day throughout the extensive region embraced in the old New York, New England, Phila- delphia and Baltimore Conferences. His ancestors came from England, and settled in Milford, Conn. Daniel, his great-grandfather removed to Durham in the same state, where that branch of the family afterward resided. There Samuel Merwin was born, September 13, 1777, and when he was seven years of age, his father, Daniel Merwin removed his family into New York state, and with some of his former neighbors established the settlement of New Durham.
He was piously trained by his parents who were members of a Congregational Church: yet, like too many others, they were not "thoroughly furnished unto every good work," for his conference memorial states that he "fell back" from a relig- ious life begun when a lad, "having no one to take him by the hand."" He was studious from boyhood, and taught school when eighteen years of age. About that time a Methodist itinerant dismounted in front of his father's house, and was invited to preach there. Samuel was brought back to the fa- vor of God, and he and his parents united with the Method- ists. With unquenchable zeal the young man engaged in the work of leading his neighbors to Christ, and the church soon discovered that he was called of God to a larger field of usefulness, "and thrust him out into her vineyard." The following is his
MINISTERIAL RECORD: 1799, a supply on Delaware cir., N. Y .; 3 1800, (New York conf.,) Long Island cir., with James Campbell; 1801, Red-
1Sprague's Annals.
2 Conf. Minutes, 1839, p. 670.
3Sprague's Annals. Stevens, following memoir in Minutes, says "Delaware
District." There was a circuit, but no district by that name in 1799.
J. Mmain
REV. SAMUEL MERWIN.
165
Record of Ministers.
ding cir., Conn., with Isaac Candee; 1802, ordained deacon, -Adams, Mass .; 1803, ordained elder,-Montreal, Canada; 1804, New York city eir., with N. Snethen and M. Coate; 1805, Redding cir., Conn., with Peter Moriarty,- last quarter, Brooklyn, with, or in place of, Ezekiel Cooper;4 1806, (New England Conf.,) Boston, Mass., with Peter Jayne; 1807-1808, Newport, K. I .; 1809, Bristol and Warren;5 1810, (New York Conf.,) Albany cir., with John Crawford; 1811, Schenectady cir., with H. Stead; 1812-1813, Albany city; 1814, Brooklyn; 1815-1817, presiding elder, New York Dist .; 1819, New York city cir., with A. Hunt, Laban Clark, B. Hibbard, T. Spicer, and N. Morris; 1820, Albany; 1821-1823, presiding elder, New Haven Dist .;. 1824, (Balt. Conf.,) Baltimore city, with Y. T. Peyton and N. Wilson; 1825, ditto, with B. Waugh, Y. T. Peyton, J. Summerfield, N. Wilson; 1826, (Phila. Conf.,) Philadelphia, St. George's, with L. Prettyman, R. Lutton, E. Cooper, sup'y; 1827, ditto, with S. Doughty and J. Lednum; 1828, (New York Conf., Troy, N. Y .; 1829, ditto, with J. C. Tackaberry ; 1830, New York, with S. Luckey, L. Pease, S. Martindale, B. Goodsell, II. Bangs, and S. D. Fergu- son; 1831, ditto, with L. Pease, S. Martindale, B. Goodsell, S. Landon, John Clark, B. Silleck, and C. Prindle; 1832-1835, presiding elder, New York Dist .; 1836, New York, east cir., with J. Kennaday, S. Remington, H. Brown, and D. Smith; 1837-1838, Rhinebeck, N. Y.
The foregoing record brings to our view a man whose elo- quence was in demand in all the great centers of Methodism in his day, from Montreal on the north to Baltimore on the south and Boston on the east. While in Boston, in 1806, he dedi- cated the old Bromfield-street church.6 In 1807, when about thirty years of age, he married the widow of his friend and col- league, Peter Jayne. He was a member of every General Con- ference, except that of 1828, from 1812 to 1832.
He preached his last sermon about one month before his de- parture. On the 13th of January, 1839, in Rhinebeck, N. Y., at the age of sixty-one years, he bade a willing farewell to earth. Charles W. Carpenter preached his funeral sermon from Acts xx, 24. His remains were buried in Rhinebeck, and afterward removed to "Greenwood," where a suitable tombstone marks the place of his rest. 1
In the absence of a personal knowledge of Samuel Merwin, who had gone to his reward before the writer of this sketch was born, it will be the more appropriate to present an array of testimonies concerning his character and work by a few of his
4 Church records.
5 Stevens says, erroneously, " Bristol and Rhode Island." See Hist. M. E. Church, vol. iii, p. 455.
6 Stevens' Memorials of Methodism, first series, p. 283.
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Old Sands Street Church.
intimate friends. Bishop Asbury, writing at New Haven, Conn., June, 1802, made the following record :
I was pleased that the students of Yale College, as many as ninety or one hundred, had been under gracious impression. They would come to hear the Methodists, * * * God struck some of the vilest of them by the ministry of Samuel Merwin.
The Rev. Fitch Reed thus describes Mr. Merwin as he was in 1817:
Our presiding elder was at our first quarterly meeting in Westfields, [Long Island,] June 28 and 29. This was my first introduction to him, and any one who ever saw him may readily imagine how a timid, inexperienced youth, constantly fearful of doing wrong, or of not doing right, would be impressed with his appearance and bearing. At that period he was just in his prime, about forty years of age, and in his personal appearance one of the finest and most noble-looking men I have ever seen. He was a little above the medium size, of perfect symmetry, with a high, broad forehead, fair complexion, and a brilliant eye, beaming with intelligence and benignity. His voice, es- pecially when he addressed large audiences in the open air, was peculiar for its clear, rich intonations, and distinctness and force of utterance. Special occasions, which seemed to require special endowments, possessed with him a peculiar inspiration, more so, I think, than with any other man I ever knew; so that no extraordinary exigeney could well take him by surprise. His preaching was often in the demonstration of the Spirit and with power. Ilis memory is very precious to me.7
Just here it will be interesting to hear Dr. Bangs relate an incident in which many think his friend Merwin was quite mis- understood :
Samuel Merwin sometimes became embarrassed in the pulpit. While he was preaching a missionary sermon in Allen-street, New York, feeling some- what embarrassed in mind, and perceiving that his congregation were in- clined to listlessness, he suddenly paused, and calling to a preacher who was in a slip in the body of the church, he said : "Brother B., you must come up here and help me, for I cannot get along with this great subject." The preacher replied with the same freedom with which he had been addressed : " It is in good hands, therefore go on, and you will conquer," This innocent artifice brought him out of the whirling eddies into which he had been carried, and, unfurling his sails, he gently glided off upon the sea of gospel truth.8
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