USA > New York > Kings County > Brooklyn > Old Sands Street Methodist Episcopal Church, of Brooklyn, N.Y. : an illustrated centennial record, historical and biographical > Part 24
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Like Nathan Bangs, Elijah Woolsey, Thomas Burch, William Ross, Laban Clark, and many others who came to be princes in Israel, he received his early training as an itinerant in a foreign land. Not every young man would have accepted with- out flinching an appointment to Ottawa, Lower Canada ; but
Bishop Asbury had an interview with young Luckey after conference, and, finding him firm and dauntless, with only about twelve shillings in his pocket, opened his purse, which in those days was the missionary treasury of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and increased his frugal supply. A tedious journey on horseback of four hundred miles lay before him, and a poor and scattered flock awaited his arrival.3
He took with him his text-books in Latin and Greek and a few theological works, and diligently applied himself, both to immediate soul-saving effort and a thorough preparation for the work of future years. The following paragraphs afford us a very pleasing glimpse of him in his far-off post of labor :
Samuel Luckey, a young man, was sent to range the picturesque banks of the rapid Ottawa, among their simple, loving inhabitants. His youth, his comeliness, his pleasing manners, his piety and devotion, joined to his pre- cocious ability as a preacher, took amazingly with the people. They spoke of him twenty-one years afterward, when the writer traveled the same inter- esting ground, with rapture. This young man was afterward known as the Rev. Dr. Samuel Luckey.4
On one of his long journeys Mr. Luckey suffered from hun- ger and cold. He stopped at a house in a French neighbor- hood and asked for food, and, as Mr. Carroll relates,
Not being sufficiently acquainted with the French language to indicate what he wanted, he pointed to his mouth. The Frenchman, observing the.
8 Minutes of Conferences, 1870, p. 280.
4 "Case and his Contemporaries," by Rev. John Carroll, vol. i, p. 249.
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gesture toward his face and the length of Mr. Luckey's beard, arising from want of facilities to perform his toilet for some days, inferred that he wished to shave himself, and, with true native alacrity and politeness, ran and brought him his razor. This was asking for bread, and receiving something worse than a stone. Whether he obtained the bread in the issue we did not distinctly learn.
The war prevented his going to his charge in 1812, and he seems to have spent most of that year in eastern New York and New England. While in Troy, in 1817, he witnessed, per- haps, the greatest revival which attended his ministry. Nearly one hundred and fifty members were added to the church. He recognized Noah Levings among the youthful helpers in the meetings, and gave him license to exhort." About that time he published his book on " The Trinity," a work which increased his fame. Union College, by whose officers he was well known, honored him with the degree of A.M., and subsequently with the degree of D.D. These honors were unsolicited.
We have already alluded to his successful ministry in Brook- lyn. An excellent sermon on "The Sure Word of Prophecy," printed and published while he was stationed there, may be re- garded as a specimen of his discourses. It is stated by W. H. Dikeman, of New York, that Samuel Luckey was the first cler- gyman outside of "the standing order " to preach the sermon at the opening of the assembly in the Connecticut legislature. In 1847 Dr. Luckey was elected by the legislature of New York to the important and honorable position of regent of the State University, and it is a noteworthy fact that he was the first clergyman holding office in the State under the amended con- stitution rendering clergymen eligible to civil offices. To the close of his life he remained one of the most active members of the board. He was a delegate to the General Conferences of 1828, 1836, and 1840.
As pastor, presiding elder, editor, principal of a seminary, regent of a university, chaplain to a prison, almshouse, insane asylum, all at once, " he performed," as Stevens has truly said, " an amount of public labor hardly surpassed by any of his con- temporaries in the ministry." He wrote, in later life, an excel- lent treatise on " The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper," also " Ethic Hymns and Scripture Lessons for Children." When
5 See sketch of Noah Levings in Sprague's Annals.
" See Methodist Magazine, 1828, p. 41.
:
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almost at the close of his long and active life, he preached three sermons every Sabbath, besides devoting an hour in each of the institutions in which he preached in visiting and conversing with the inmates. When seventy-five years of age he said to the editor of The Christian Advocate that his work during the last twenty years had been performed with as much ease as at any preceding period.
But the end came at last, and " in peace, assurance, and vic- tory, he passed away," October 11, 1869, aged seventy-eight years. The Rev. Geo. G. Lyon, pastor of the First Methodist Episcopal church in Rochester, visited him in his sickness, and wrote to The Christian Advocate :
His mind is clear and vigorous. He speaks calmly and intelligently of his approaching dissolution, and confidently and joyfully of his prospects beyond the grave. He has no will with respect to himself, but he inquires earnestly about the welfare of Zion. He is wrapped in his warrior's mantle, and is surveying the field of conquest and the embattled host before he retires to rest.
The resolutions adopted by the Rochester District Ministe- rial Association, while in session at Lima, Oct. 13, 1869, indicate that the preachers proceeded in a body to Rochester to attend his funeral. A grave marked by a head-stone in the Mount Hope cemetery, in Rochester, N. Y., contains the mortal remains of Dr: Luckey.
He is described as handsome in person, commanding, earnest, eloquent in delivery, respected in scholastic attainments, and firm in his religious convictions. Although he had been called no less than eight times to change his conference relations, thirty years of his ministry had been spent in the two Genesee conferences. When his brethren of the East Genesee Confer- ence assembled after his death, they said in their report con- cerning him :
Ile was a thorough Methodist, and with the genius and historic develop- ment of his church he was as familiar as with the alphabet. He long stood among the magnates of his people, and his history is woven into the history of the church.7
His first wife, ELIZA, was a daughter of Richard Jacobs,8 the heroic Methodist preacher who sacrificed his life in his perilous
7 Minutes of Conferences, 1870, p. 280.
¿ Park's-Troy Conf. Miscellany, p. 35.
. 3
Record of Ministers. 25I
mission as the advance-guard of the Methodist army in the northern counties of New York State in 1796. It was no small honor to be the child of such a father. Stevens says :
He belonged to a wealthy Congregational family of Berkshire county, Mass., which had cast him out and disinherited him at his conversion to Meth- odism. "With his young wife he was thrown penniless upon the world." He joined Garrettson's famous young band of northern pioneers, and, in 1796, left his family at Clifton Park to make an expedition as far as Essex and Clif- ton counties, proclaiming the gospel among the scattered settlers in that re- mote region. Many were awakened and converted at Elizabethtown, and, promising them a pastor, he pushed along the western shore of Lake Cham- plain, preaching as he went, till, joined by a lay companion, he proposed to make his way back to his family through the Schroon woods to the head of Lake George. For about seven days the travelers were engulfed in the for- ests, suffering fearful privations and struggling against almost insurmountable obstructions. "Their provisions failed ; they were exhausted with fatigue and hunger ; and at last, in trying to ford the Schroon, Jacobs sunk beneath the water and was drowned. " All his family," adds the narrator of the sad event, " were converted," three of his sons became ministers, and two of his daughter? married Methodist preachers.9
The widow of Richard Jacobs afterward married Judge Moe.1º Eliza Luckey died in 1832, and was buried in Troy, N. Y."
Samuel Luckey's second wife, LIDA M., was converted when very young. She shared her husband's lot for nearly thirty years, and died, of cancer, July 25, 1863, in the fifty-eighth year of her age. She was considered " faultless," a woman of pleas- ing person and address, attracting many friends. She met death in holy triumph." She is buried beside her husband in Mount Hope cemetery.
His third wife, MARIA, after his death married a Mr. Utley. She died in Rochester in 1882.
Two children died in infancy. Freeborn Garrettson, a lawyer, resides in New York ; Caroline Amelia, married Stephen B. Reynolds, of Danbury, Conn. ; Samuel Merwin, died in 1883, in Rochester, N. Y. These are children by the first marriage. John died in Rochester ; Joseph L., the only living child by the second wife, is a lawyer and editor in Rochester.
9 Hist. M. E. Church, vol. iii, p. 165.
10 Statement of F. G. Luckey.
11 J. L. Luckey -- Letter to the author.
12 J. R. in The Christian Advocate. 18
*
XLIX.
SEYMOUR LANDON.
HE REV. SEYMOUR LANDON is the first on our chron- ological list of the Methodist preachers of Brook- lyn who was personally known to the writer. To have been favored with the counsel and blessing of so noble a patriarch as Father Landon, is a privilege to be highly es- teemed.
Seymour Landon was born in Grand Isle, Lake Cham- plain, Vt., May 3, 1798. His father, Asahel Landon, first a- mong the Methodist converts in that region, is mentioned in Stevens' "Memorials" as an honored local preacher. Dur- ing Seymour's boyhood his father's house was a home for the pioneer Methodist itinerants, and "his barn and orchard their places of worship."'
On the 12th of September, 1814, the day after the naval victory of M'Donough over Downie on Lake Champlain, young Landon, who had witnessed the battle, stood on the gory deck of the flag-ship, Confiance, and said to himself as he looked upon the remains of Downie and his officers laid out for burial: "What is worldly honor to them now? What avails it to them if their souls are lost?" A few months thereafter, when he was seventeen years of age, his pastor, William Ross, preached a sermon which powerfully aroused his conscience, and led him to repentence and faith in Jesus Christ. Mr. Ross received him as a probationer in the church September 12, 1815, exactly one year after the scenes he witnessed on the deck of the Confiance had awakened those solemn thoughts in his mind. The same day and the next he accompanied the preacher to his appointments, and on the third day went with him in a sloop to a camp-meet- ing. On the way his pastor told him he believed God had
1 "Fifty years in the Ministry," by the Rev. Seymour Landon. p. IO.
Suzanne
REV. SEYMOUR LANDON.
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called him to preach. He soon began a course of preparation ' for the ministry, studying at an academy in St. Albans, Vt., and afterward with a Congregational minister, who strove to en- lighten his pupil in Calvinistic doctrines, and succeeded in " confounding " the youthful Methodist. But it happened that young Landon had the company of J. B. Stratton, a sound and intellectual Methodist preacher, for two nights in a week dur- ing that time; and so, hearing both sides, he not only did not. become a convert to Calvinism, but prepared himself to be a more successful defender of Methodist theology.
He was licensed to exhort, " without his knowledge or con- sent," and was soon afterward authorized to preach. Dissuaded from his cherished purpose of going to college, he accepted a recommendation to the New York Conference, which he joined in 1818, when twenty years of age.
CONFERENCE RECORD : 1818, (New York Conf., ) Charlotte cir., Vt., with N. White ; 1819, Ticonderoga, N. Y. ; 1820, ordained deacon,-St. Albans, Vt., with N. White; 1821, Ticonderoga, N. Y., again; 1822, ordained elder,-Chazy cir., with E. Crane ; 1823, ditto, with Wm. Todd ; 1824. White- hall cir., including Poultney, Vt., where he resided ; 1825, Poultney, a station ; ? 1826-1827, Sandy Hill and Glenn's Falls cir., N. Y .; 1828, Brooklyn, with S. Luckey ; 1829-1830, Lansingburgh and Waterford cir. ; 1831, New York, with S. Merwin, L. Pease, S. Martindale, B. Goodsell, John Clark, B. Silleck, and C. Prindle ; 1832, New York, West cir., with P. P. Sandford, J. Bowen, G. Coles, and C. Prindle : 1833-1834, Rhinebeck ; 1835-1836, Newburgh ; 1837, Sugar Loaf cir., with W. Miller ; 1838, ditto, with T. Newman ; 1839-1840, Hudson ; 1841-1842, Brooklyn, 2nd church, (York-street,) and New Utrecht ; 1843-1844, Hempstead ; 1845-1846, Sag Harbor ; 1847, Winsted, Conn. ; 1848-1850, (New York East Conf.,) presiding elder, Hart- ford Dist. ; 1851-1854, presiding elder, Long Island Dist. ; 1855-1856, Brooklyn, Gothic church ; 1857-1858, Greenpoint ; 1859-1860, Southport, Conn .; 1861-1862, Watertown, Conn. ; 1863-1864, Mt. Vernon, N. Y. ; 1865-1866, Astoria ; 1867-1868, Amityville and Newbridge ; 1869-1871, Springfield ; 1872, Orient ; 1873-1880, sup'd.
Here is a remarkable record of fifty-five years of effective serv- ice without a break, followed by eight years of quiet, peaceful waiting for his final remove to the " saints' everlasting rest."
He was married while on his second circuit, and the happy union lasted about fifty-eight years. In reference to his ap- pointment to Brooklyn, in 1828, he writes :
I begged to be excused from being sent there, thinking it perfectly consist- ent with my vow to go wherever sent by the bishop, to decline an appoint- ment which almost every other preacher coveted.
2 Landon's account of the charge, which varies somewhat from the Minutes.
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At the expiration of one year he was removed at his own request. Until the session of his conference, in 1879, the sixty-third from the time of his joining, he had never failed to be present. He spent about one year and three months of his life in attending the sessions of the conference to which he belonged.
He was a man of robust constitution, which did not entirely give way until a few months before his death, when he had been reduced almost to a skeleton by a series of heavy chills. He died at the residence of his adopted daughter, in Jamaica, 1 .. I., July 29, 1880, in the eighty-third year of his age. Hav- ing outlived all the companions of his early ministry, he came down to his grave " as a shock of corn cometh in his season." As he saw death approaching, he exclaimed, " O what a salva- tion is provided for guilty men ! So rich, so full, so free ! I shall be saved ! It is all clear now !" So did " the clouds that often troubled his faith in former years pass away " as he approached the entrance to glory, and heavenly light streamed through the " gates ajar."
The funeral took place in the Methodist Episcopal church in Jamaica, and the remains were laid away in the family plot in Winsted, Conn.
The character and career of Seymour Landon have been ad- mirably portrayed in a memoir written by the Rev. George Lansing Taylor, D.D., and adopted by the New York East Conference. The following paragraphs are an extract from Mr. Taylor's sketch :
His early ministry was largely blessed with revivals, as was also his maturer work in some signal instances. As a preacher, while he was not remarkable as a profound' or logical sermonizer, he was, nevertheless, a well-prepared, earnest, and often able, herald of the divine message. In his denunciation of popular sins and follies, he had something of the old Hebrew severity, and yet with it enough of the genial, and sometimes humorous, to retain the affec- tion of his hearers.
His life-long regret at his privation of a college education, and the zeal and self-denial with which he and his companion sent all their children through college. are memorable points in his character ; yet, amid the collisions of the controversial times in which his ministry began, he never was put to the worse for want of enough of Greek. Latin, or English for the occasion. In the temperance reform he was prompt to sympathize with Dr. Fisk, when the latter threw his powerful influence info the rising total-abstinence movement, and he ever remained an earnest champion of the cause.
But the firm, though unostentatious, stand he took in the great antislavery
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contest, more than any other occasion of his public life, showed the moral fiber of the man. It is hard for us of this generation to comprehend the des- potism of the pro-slavery sentiment that, to a great degree, ruled all the churches, and the whole fabric of society, North as well as South, in those days. The great struggle which divided the church in 1844 began eight years earlier. The General Conference of 1836, in its Pastoral Address, (see Bangs' History of the Methodist Episcopal Church, vol. iv, pp. 259, 260,) said to the church : " We * * * exhort you to abstain from all abolition movements and associations, and to refrain from patronizing any of their publications. * *
* We have come to the solemn conviction that the only safe, script- ural, and prudent way for us, both as ministers and people, to take, is wholly to refrain from this agitating subject." An advice so contrary to all the primary rights of men, whether clergy or laity, probably no enlightened Christian body could be found on earth to give to-day. It is a phenomenon in religious his- tory and psychology. But the bishops and annual conferences at. once set about applying it as a law, giving it a weight which never properly belonged to any merely advisory deliverance, and enforcing it in an inquisitorial spirit. Following this cue, the New York Conference that year passed a resolution forbidding its members acting in any manner as agents for Zion's Watch- man, the noted antislavery paper, then conducted by the Rev. Leroy Sunderland, of the New England Conference. Such action suggests to us of to-day that the modern term " bull-dozing " was invented forty years too late. It required uncommon manhood for Mr. Landon to stand up in his place and demand of the conference if "the resolution was intended to forbid my tak- ing the paper myself, and paying for it ?" The interrogation was resented as an insult to the conference, and at the following session, when the appoint- ments were read off, Mr. Landon, whose previous charges had been wealthy Rhinebeck and prosperous Newburgh, found himself retired to the sylvan wilds of Sugar Loaf Mountain, where, like John the Baptist, he might riot on locusts and wild honey, and meditate on the folly of having opinions of his own.
At the session of 1838 James Floy, then in the bright promise of his youth, so nobly fulfilled in his manhood, was arraigned with several others at the bar of the conference for attending a Methodist abolition convention at Utica, N. Y., during the previous conference year. Although Floy and his friends took no part in the convention, save as spectators, yet for simply be- ing present, and in the face of his own overwhelming defense for three hours before the conference, he was suspended from his functions as a deacon, by a vote of 124 to 17. Dr. Curry, in his memoir of Floy, (Quarterly Review, 1864. p. 117.) gives the now honored names of the courageous seventeen worthies ; namely, " Daniel De Vinne, Charles K. True, Seymour Landon, Paul R. Brown, Harvey Husted, Cyrus Foss, David Plumb, C. W. Turner, Edwin' E. Griswold, and probably John M. Pease, Humphrey Humphreys, Thos. Bainbridge, and Harvey Brown." 3 It must have brought a touch of honest pride to those brave men when, in after years, the New York Easi Conference sent four of them, Griswold, Floy, Landon, and Husted, to stand
-
3 See sketch of Wm. Thacher in this book, p. 161, where he is quoted as expressing the sentiments of the majority on this subject.
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up once more together as her delegates to the Buffalo General Conference, in 1860, to strengthen our testimony against slavery by passing the Kingsley amendments.
Mr. Landon, with every abolitionist of those and far later days, and as the pioneers of all reforms must always do in all organizations, frequently suffered in his appointments on account of his opinions. But he lived to reap in this life the honors and rewards of fidelity to righteousness ; to witness the tri- umphant overthrow and " extirpation of the great evil of slavery ; " to see his imperiled country free, united, and at peace ; and when he retired from the front of the battle, in 1873, his conference presented him, as an expression of affection, a purse of $1,681, one of the largest testimonials of the kind in the history of the church.
Doubtless the two most marked traits of Mr. Landon's character were his excessive, almost morbid diffidence, or self-depreciation, and his equally marked conscientiousness. His diffidence was so great on all personal points, as to subject him to occasional fits of despondency, and to unquestionably diminish his usefulness and power. It is, however, only in the light of this extreme native modesty that the sternness of his fidelity to great principles can be duly appreciated. These traits and his amiability and other charming personal qualities made him one of the truest and most lovable of personal friends.4 Yet his sturdy honesty and independence were no less marked than his geniality. It is a significant token of his worth as a man, that eleven of the most valuable of the distinguished Olin's printed private letters, are ad- dressed to Seymour Landon.
Mr. Landon's long career-the longest effective ministry in his conference- was crowned with serene brightness in his closing years. His always ma- jestic and handsome face and figure (he was six feet tall and superbly propor- tioned) caught a new grace from that " hoary head," which "is a crown of glory if it be found in the way of righteousness." His presence was a wel- come ornament in every circle of society, and he passed away amid the rever- ent affection of hosts of friends.5
PHOEBE, his wife, daughter of Levi and Charity (Miller) Thompson, was born in Granville, N. Y., Oct. 4, 1796, but, while an infant, removed with her parents to Ticonderoga. There she was received by the young itinerant, Seymour Lan- don, first into the church as a convert, and then into his home as a bride. It has been said that she made that home "a joy to its members, and a model to the parish." Her genial hospi- tality, her pure, sweet sympathies, her abounding good works, her timid and pathetic utterances in the social meetings, her
4 In the New York Preachers' Meeting Dr. Curry said : " I loved Seymour Landon ;" adding, in his own peculiar way, "and the men I can say that of are mighty few."
5 Minutes of the New York East Conference, 1881, pp. 57-59.
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faithful training of her children, all conspire to make her mem- ory precious. She died at the residence of her daughter, Mrs. James R. Alvord, in West Winsted, Conn., May 22, 1878, in the eighty-second year of her age. W. H. Thomas, G. L. Taylor, and R. Codling were the ministers who took part in the funeral services. Her grave is near that of her husband.
Seymour and Phoebe Landon were the parents of four chil- dren : Dillon S. Landon, M.D., whose memoir is found else- where in this book ; Mrs. Louisa E. Burruss, deceased; Mrs. Mary E. Alvord ; and the Rev. Thompson H. Landon, A.M., of the Newark Conference.
Amanda Covert was in her childhood adopted as a member of Mr. Landon's family. She married Jeremiah Hendrickson, and at her home in Jamaica, L. I., Father Landon was tenderly cared for during the last years of his life.
6 For these facts we are indebted to the Rev. George Lansing Taylor, D.D. -sketch in The Christian Advocate.
L.
11
HE REV. NOAH LEVINGS, D. D., received his appoint- ment to Brooklyn in the year 1829. He was a son of Noah Levings, and was born in Cheshire County, N. II., September 29, 1796. His parents moved to Troy, N. Y., when he was but a lad. They were in very humble circumstances, and their boy grew up with exceed- 'ingly limited opportunities, being sent from home to earn his own living at nine years of age, and apprenticed to a blacksmith at sixteen. He heard Peter P. Sandford preach in Troy, and, during a revival under the ministry of Laban Clark, in 1813, he united with the church on probation. He was small of stature, and bashful, and apparently about six- teen years of age. At the close of the second public meet- ing in which he in great simplicity attempted to pray,
The official brethren gathered around the preacher; one inquired who the boy was; another said his forwardness must be checked; and a third that he must be stopped altogether. The preacher simply replied, "No, brethren, let that boy alone; there is something in him more than you are aware of;" and from that time no one questioned the right of the blacksmith boy to officiate in the pub- lic prayer-meetings. 1
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