USA > New York > Kings County > Brooklyn > Old Sands Street Methodist Episcopal Church, of Brooklyn, N.Y. : an illustrated centennial record, historical and biographical > Part 36
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While many questioned the wisdom of Dr. De La Matyr's ac- ceptance of the civil promotion which his political friends saw fit to confer upon him, it cannot be doubted that he followed conscientiously the guidance of his judgment in the matter. As the foregoing record shows, he now has pastoral charge of a church in one of the great and growing centers of the West.
Dr. De La Matyr is a man of pleasing manners, a genial friend and companion, quiet in his movements, but always ter- ribly in earnest. When he speaks " his lower jaw closes like a vise, and seems to open sparingly for his words, which he utters in a deep bass voice that gets lower instead of higher when he reaches a climax."
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Record of Ministers. 383
His first wife, LUELLA C., was with him at Fort M'Henry, in Baltimore, and the writer was very favorably impressed with her piety and intelligence. Her health was then feeble, and continued to be until her departure to that land where " the inhabitants never say, I am sick," on the 29th of January, 1866, aged forty-three years.
MARYETTE, his second wife, a native of Lima, N. Y., was an occupant of the parsonage of the Sands-street church. They were married April 28, 1868. She was converted at fifteen. Previous to her marriage she was enthusiastically devoted to her profession as an artist, and her paintings were much ad- mired. Her memorial says :
She possessed beauty of person, unusual force of character, excellent judg- ment, and cultivated taste. She had little hesitation in approaching persons privately on the subject of personal religion, but found it difficult to take much part in public religious services. Those who knew her best esteemed her most highly.
She was ill for about four years, and for more than a year before her death an acute sufferer, having endured several painful operations for the cure of cancer. Her faith grew as the end approached, and toward the last she was flooded with the most glowing emotions. She spoke of what she saw and heard as indescribable in human language; and thus she passed away in Indianapolis, Ind., August 18, 1877, aged forty-two years. Her remains were taken to Albion, N. Y., for burial. She left a little boy, whose real loss was only increased by the fact that he was too young to comprehend it.3
3 Rev. J. II. Bayliss in The Christian Advocate.
LXXXI.
Gro T. Ketuce
INCE the preparation of this work was begun three hon- ored ministers of the Sands-street church-Fletcher, Weed, and Kettell-have been summoned from active service to their heavenly reward, making the whole number of the deceased sixty-six, and leaving about one third as many survivors, namely, twenty-three. Of each of those so lately called hence the author has exceedingly pleasant per- sonal recollections. Their relations to the Sands-street people were exceptionally interesting, one (Dr. Weed) having been their pastor two full terms, and the other two (Mr. Fletcher and Dr. Kettell) having had charge, first of the station, and after- ward of the district of which it forms a part, on which district they both performed their last work as ministers of Christ.
An admirably written memoir of the REV. GEORGE FRED- ERICK KETTELL, D. D., adopted by the New York East Confer- ence, contains the following :
George F. Rettell was born, May 18, 1817, in Boston, Mass. ITis earliest New England ancestors settled in Charlestown, Mass., in 1630. Thomas Pren- tice, the patriotic pastor of the Congregational church of that place during the war of the Revolution, was his great-grandfather. At the battle of Lun- ker Hill the parsonage which he occupied and the church in which he lad preached many a powerful sermon were destroyed by fire. From the burn- ing home an infant was rescued. The child, when grown to manhood, be- came the father of the subject of this memorial sketch. In carly infancy our friend was baptized in the " Old South Church " of his native city.
Ilis father at that time, and for years afterward, maintained successful mer- cantile connections with Germany ; and the home of his boyhood, which he gratefully remembered, was one which afforded every facility for the proper training of his richly gifted nature. Then followed reverses, and the Boston merchant removed with his household to Hamburg. For five years his son en- joyed the rare advantages of instruction and discipline in the schools of that famous free-city of Germany.
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At the age of fifteen he returned to his native land, and we find him in Danbury, Conn., for the first time in his life, fully thrown upon his own re- sources. He entered the employ of a thrifty hatter, who being an old-time family friend, treated him with unusual consideration.
From a few facts which have floated down to us it is made evident that he was an uncommonly brilliant and attractive lad. He was a Puritan in his upright, downright love for honesty and truth ; his German culture had trained and quickened his naturally acute powers, and the inimitable humor which fascinated his friends to the last, threw a charm over all his words and ways.
He was a leader among scores of fellow-workers, but the leader was led one day to the old Methodist meeting-house. A turning-point in his history was thus reached. The pungent appeals to the conscience, and the winning words of invitation which he heard from the pulpit and in the prayer- meeting brought him very soon as a penitent to the Saviour. When he was sixteen years of age, though sternly opposed by all his kindred, he identified himself with the Methodist Episcopal Church. He kept himself at this period under self-appointed rules of study, and the fruits of his efforts were mani- fest to all. There is a tradition that at the age of eighteen he delivered an address in Danbury, upon a topic of public interest, which a high officer of the State pronounced a most extraordinary production. At this time, too, he seemed, without loud professions, to have made steady progress in the Chris- tian life. Upon a fly-leaf of one of his private note books, he wrote, in a bold hand, this brief but characteristic prayer: "O, for wisdom, for heavenly wisdom !" In the social meeting he would now and then speak briefly, but always to the point, and sometimes with great power ! 1
January 5, 1836, before he was nineteen years of age, he was married to LUCRETIA HAWLEY, in Danbury, Conn. All this time he was advancing toward the point of applying himself to the great life-werk to which God had called him. Dr. Hunt writes further :
Not hastily, but after long consideration, he accepted from bis pastor, the late Rev. John Crawford, a license to exhort. This paper bears the date of April 26, 1840. On the 19th of September, 1841, he received a license to preach. This document bears the honored name of Charles W. Carpenter, who was always regarded by our brother as a model presiding elder. Six months later he removed to New York city, and became a member of the Forsyth-street church.
PASTORAL RECORD : 1842, supply, Haddam, Conn. ;. 1843, (New York Conf., ) returned to Haddam cir., with C. Brainard ; 1844-1845, Madison; 1845, ordained deacon; in 1846, Windsor cir., with C. Brainard; 1847, ordained elder; 1847-1848, New York, Vestry-street; 1849-1850, Poughkeepsie, Can- non-street ; 1851-1852, (Phila. Conf .. ) Philadelphia, Union church, with James Mitchell, sup'y ; 1853, (New York Conf.,) sup'y at Poughkeepsie, Cannon- street, with R. A. Chalker; 1854, sup'y, ditto, with John W. Beach; 1855-
1 Rev. A. S. Hunt, D, D., in Minutes New York East Conference, ISS3, p. 57.
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Old Sands Street Church.
1856, agent Tract Society, practically sup'y ; 1857, sup'y, Poughkeepsie, Can- non street ; 1858, Poughkeepsie, Cannon-street; 1859-1862, presiding elder, Rhinebeck Dist., N. Y .; 1863-1865, Rhinebeck; 1866, stationed at Peekskill- went to Europe; 1867-1868, sup'y, in Europe : 1869 (latter part)-1871, Brooklyn, Sands-street ; 1872-1874, Hartford, Conn., First ch. : 1875, presiding elder, New York Dist .; 1876-1878, Brooklyn, Summerfield ch. ; 1879, Brooklyn, Greene ave .; 1880-1882, presiding elder, Brooklyn Dist.
He was assigned, as we have seen, to an important pastorate in the city of New York (Vestry-street) after a brief experience in small country charges, but "he promptly impressed the entire Methodism of the city as a remarkably gifted and effi- cient preacher of the gospel." A serious accident in his child- hood, by which one eye was lost and the other injured, accounts for the appearance of his name on the supernumerary list for a number of years.
His wife died in Poughkeepsie, November 2, 1858, and he was again united in marriage to MISS MARY A. ANDREWS, on the 11th of December, 1860, in the town of Richmond, Mass. In 1866, he was appointed United States consul at Carlsruhe, Germany, where he received skillful and successful treatment for the improvement of his sight. The Wesleyan University conferred upon him the degree of Doctor in Divinity in 1873.
When speaking of death he had often expressed a preference for a sudden departure, and this desire was not denied him. He died of neuralgia of the heart at his home in Brooklyn, March 19, 1883. It was the day after a Sabbath of very wearisome labor; he went home to take a little rest before holding a quar- terly conference in the evening, but before the sun set "he passed out of our sight." His funeral service was held in the Summerfield church. The pall-bearers were the Rev. Dr. J. O. Peck, Mark Hoyt, the Rev. George E. Reed, Judge Reynolds, the Rev. I. Simmons, W. W. Wallace, the Rev. J. S. Breckin- ridge, and ex-Mayor Booth. The exercises were under the direction of the Rev. Thomas H. Burch, presiding elder of the New York District, and the other preachers who participated were G. P. Mains, W. T. Hill, G. A. Hubbell, W. D. Thomp- . son, Henry Baker, W. L. Phillips, A. S. Hunt, Thomas Stephen- son, H. A. Buttz and O. H. Tiffany. Mr. Burch said :
Twelve months ago there were four of us, members of the same conference, dwelling not far apart, and closely related to each other; at least I felt the . three to be closely related to me. Two of them were my friends of thirty years' standing; the other I had known scarcely a third of that period, but so sweet
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and tender had been the fellowship between us as to seem equally long-es- tablished. One of the four, Dr. George W. Woodruff, died last March. At the funeral services which followed, the other three officiated, one of them, Dr. Weed, directing the exercises. Less than four months afterward Dr. Weed died suddenly, passing, apparently, without a pang to his rest. A great throng gathered in the church of which he was pastor to give him reverent and tender burial. Dr. Kettell presided at those services, and I was permitted to take part. The sad year, well-nigh spent, had yet a day to run, when, un- anticipated by himself or his family, and to the sore amazement of us all, Dr. Kettell ceased to breathe. And now, the survivor of the four, I am charged with the direction of these funeral rites.2
The following day the remains were taken to Poughkeepsie for burial. Dr. Buckley, who was one of Dr. Kettell's Sunday- school boys in Philadelphia, in 1852, wrote as follows, in The Christian Advocate :
The editor of this paper has seen Dr. Kettell as the pastor of his youth, twice as his presiding elder, once as his successor in the pastorate, in the busi- ness of the annual conference, the less formal debates of the New York Preachers' Meeting, and the stately proceedings of the Board of Managers of the Missionary Society. He has wandered with him among the hills and valleys and along the waters of Mount Desert, and at all times admired his remarkable clearness of intellect, his unusual felicity of statement, his wide range of thought, his abundance of instructive anecdote, his genuine humor, his candor, his marked ability in the pulpit, his unfailing good temper, his easy refinement of manners.
The results of his life-work are not to be measured by statistics. He was not a pioneer; he was not one who burst upon a community like an army in battle array ; he did not excel in the " management of meetings." But the sim of his influence was to command respect for the church, reverence for the truth, esteem for himself as a minister and a man. A philosophie and semi- humanitarian vein, doubtless. to some extent traceable to his New England originand his long residence in Germany, ran through his preaching, which made it very interesting to the intellectual, but diminished its immediate effects. Fear in the utterance of what he believed true he seemed never to know.
His conference memorial says :
Ilis mind was one of great breadth and fullness, and was well poised. He had keen analytic power, a wonderful memory, especially for matters of history, in which he found perpetual delight. He was loyal to truth as he saw it, and if he sometimes saw as we could not see, we knew, nevertheless, that his integrity and genuineness were unimpeachable. The law of conscience was to him clothed with the might of God. To his health- ful sense of humor, allusion has already been made, and it may be added that his conversation and his extemporaneous utterances sparkled at times with
2 The Christian Advocate, March 29, 1883.
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Old Sands Street Church.
dignified but pungent wit. He was master of terse and idiomatic English, exhibiting in his chain of words the most extraordinary felicity. Large words and high-sounding words he did not use, but fitting words, so fitting that or- dinary men might search for hours and yet fail to find the delicately-shaded epithets which fell from his lips with perfect naturalness and inimitable grace.
In the pulpit he was, perhaps, less skillful in his appeals to the unconverted than in his addresses to believers. It must not be understood from this state- ment that he did not sometimes stir the consciences of sinners, for he certainly proved his ability to do this, but as a preacher upon themes aiming at the edification of the church he was one of a thousand.
LUCRETIA, his first wife, was a native of Danbury, Conn. She was nine years his senior-a woman " of a very quiet, retiring disposition, and faithful to her duties." She died in Pough- keepsie, N. Y., as already stated, in the forty-second year of her age. Three daughters were the fruit of this union. They are all married, and are still living. Dr. Kettell left a widow, who, with their only son, resides in Brooklyn, N. Y.
30
REV. T. G. OSBORN, M. A.
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LXXXII.
THOMAS G. OSBORN.
HIE ancestors of the REV. THOMAS GILBERT OSBORN, A.M., were among the early settlers of East Hamp- ton, Long Island. They came from Lynn, Mass., but were originally from Maidstone, in Kent, En- gland. Thomas Osborn and John Osborn were named in the char- ter of East Hampton when it was incorporated under the co- lonial government of New York by a patent from Governor Nicoll, March 13, 1666.1 From one of these was descended Daniel Osborn, of East Hampton, who was born before 1700, and to whom the ancestry of T. G. Osborn is definitely traced. Daniel Osborn, grandfather of Thomas G., was a graduate of Yale College. He practiced law in Cutchogue, L. I., and was a member of the New York Legislature in 1787 and 1788. His son, Dr. Thomas Osborn, of Riverhead, had an extensive prac- tice in Suffolk County for many years. Elizabeth, wife of Dr. Osborn, and mother of the subject of this sketch, was grand- daughter of Colonel Phineas Fanning, of the Revolution. Her father was Deacon Enoch Jagger, of the Presbyterian church in West Hampton, L. I. Being always of Arminian views, Deacon Jagger at once hailed the coming of the Methodist preachers into his neighborhood, joined their communion, and assisted in building the first Methodist Episcopal church in the town. Dr. and Mrs. Thomas Osborn, although educated in the strictest creed of the Presbyterian Church, were always Arminian in be- lief, and for years before they united with the Methodists, their house was a home for the itinerant preachers. Their son writes :
1 See Bayles' History of Suffolk County.
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Old Sands Street Church.
Richard Wymond used to tell, with a good deal of pleasure, the story of his first meeting with my father. He had been sent to a large circuit on the east end of Long Island, including no small part of Suffolk County. He was an entire stranger in those parts. As he drew near to the pleasant village of Riverhead he drove into the pond to water his weary horse. He was feeling lonely and sad. Just then a portly man in a gig drove in from the opposite side. Looking keenly at his broad-brimmed hat and strait coal, he said, "You are a Methodist preacher. Just drive up to the house you see there ; give your horse to the men, and make yourself at home until my return. I am Dr. Osborn, and my house is a home for all the preachers."
My mother united with the church under the ministry of the Rev. John Trippett, and my father became a member while Dr. James Floy was pastor in Riverhead. My father contributed most of the funds to build the original Methodist church in that place. He died in peace in 1849, aged seventy years, and my mother died triumphantly in 1867, while visiting her daughter, the wife of Professor T. Stone, in the Cooper Institute, New York. ?
Thomas G. Osborn was born in Riverhead, L. I., October 15, 1820. He prepared for college at the Franklin Academy, near Riverhead, where he remained three years under the instruc- tion of the Rev. Phineas Robinson, of the Presbyterian church, and a graduate of Hamilton College. Having spent four years in the Wesleyan University, he was graduated in 1840, with J. W. Lindsay, Joseph Cummings, Chauncey Shaffer, and other men of note. While a thoughtless youth in college, he and young Lindsay, his intimate friend, by mutual agreement gave their hearts to Christ. He was then about nineteen years of age. Dr. Francis Hodgson, pastor in Middletown at the time, was the chief agent in his conversion.
Mr. Osborn was made a member of the Phi Beta Kappa So- ciety after he left the university, and received the degree of A.M. in 1843. His time, for the first three years after gradua- tion, was divided between the law office of Judge Miller, of Riverhead, the Harvard Law School at Cambridge, Mass., and the Union Theological Seminary in New York. He received an exhorter's license June 27, 1843, and two months later he was licensed to preach, the paper being signed by the presiding elder, Stephen Martindale.
CONFERENCE RECORD : 1844-1845, (New York Conf.,) Sonth- ampton, L, I .; 1846, ordained deacon by Bp. Hedding ; 1846-1847, Bridge- hampton ; 1848, ordained elder by Bp. Waugh ; 1848-1849, (New York East Conf.,) Patchogue ; 1850, sup'd ; 1851-1852, Birmingham, Conn .; 1853, ' Bridgeport and East Bridgeport ; 1855-1856, Waterbury; 1857-1858, New
" Letter to the author.
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Record of Ministers.
York, Twenty-seventh-street ; 1859, New York, Allen-street ; 1860, ditto, with J. Ellis; 1861, Brooklyn, Summerfield ch .; 1862-1863, New Haven, St. John-street; 1864, sup'd one month, then presiding elder, Bridgeport Dist .; 1865-1866, sup'd, residence New Haven ; 1867-1868, Riverhead ; 1869-1871, presiding elder Bridgeport Dist .; 1872, presiding elder, Long Island South Dist .; 1873- 1874, Portchester ; 1875-1876, sup'y ; 1877-1879, Riverhead, L. I. ; 1880- 1884, sup'y.
In Southampton, where he began his ministry, he organized the first Methodist society, which has grown to be a large and flourishing church. The friends of Methodism had purchased the Presbyterian church, and were rejuvenating that solid struct- ure. Their young minister preached in the village school- house until the lecture-room of the church was finished. As the fruit of a revival during the first year seventy were added to the church by conversion, and about a dozen by letter from the Presbyterian church. About one hundred and fifty mem- bers were received during a revival in Birmingham, Conn., while he was laboring there. In Allen-street, New York, during his ministry, about two hundred were converted. The most signal outpouring of the Spirit under his ministry was in 1857, in East Twenty-seventh-street, New York. Here, during the revival, more than five hundred professed conversion at the altar, and joined the Methodist church. It was considered the most wonderful work of grace in the city of New York during that year of general revival. The astonishing magnitude of the work was largely due to " unintermitted pastoral visitation." At that time John Stephenson, who was superintendent of the Sunday- school, trustee, steward, class-leader, and chorister, co-operated most heartily with the pastor. Every Monday morning a list of all new scholars who had attended the Sabbath-school was left at the parsonage. The paper was in Mr. Stephenson's hand- writing, and contained the names of all new scholars, and the names, nationality, occupation, and religious preference (if any) of their parents. All these families were systematically visited the same week by the pastor, with this valuable directory in his hand, their temporal and spiritual wants inquired into, and, if they were not attendants upon any place of worship, they were invited to the Twenty-seventh-street church. In this way scores were gathered in who never previously attended any church, and were made happy followers of the Lord. Among the con- verts were Edwin F. Hadley and J. Stanley D'Orsay, who aft- erward became preachers in the New York East Conference.
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Old Sands Street Church.
Joseph Pullman (now the Rev. Dr. Pullman, of Brooklyn) was at that time a Bible-class scholar in Twenty-seventh-street Sun- day-school, and a student in the New York Free Academy.
Mr. Osborn's health was seriously impaired by exposure and incessant labor on the Bridgeport District, on account of which he has been compelled at two different times to resign his place as presiding elder, and to hold a superannuated or supernume- rary relation for several years. He was a delegate to General Conference in 1872. By invitation of the Methodist people of his native village he has been with them two terms-five years in all-as their pastor. He recommended the Rev. E. F. Had- ley as a suitable person to take his place in 1869 and supervise the erection of a new church. Desirous of assisting in the good work, he sent the trustees a check for five hundred dol- lars, and, while serving as pastor there the second time, in or- der to sweep off all the debt from the church and parsonage, he contributed an additional hundred dollars.
The accompanying portrait is a very correct likeness of Mr. Osborn as he appeared when, as presiding elder, he was asso- ciated with the Sands-street church. He is a man of more than medium height, light complexion, blue eyes, auburn hair sprinkled with gray, quick movement, and ready and rapid ut- terance. His sermons are intellectual and practical, and usu- ally delivered with an unction that renders them eminently effective.
Mr. Osborn's domestic life has been one of uncommon be- reavement, as appears from the notices of his three wives and two children, deceased, which are published at the close of this sketch. His present wife, GRACE E., to whom he was married in 1869, was formerly the consort of Captain Elbridge Colburn, of the First Connecticut Cavalry, who died in the service of his country. . Surviving children of Thomas G. Osborn : Mary E., born 1849; Thomas S., born 1857.
JERUSHA L .. (Cook,) first wife of the Rev. T. G. Osborn, was married March 23, 1846, and died in the parsonage in East Twenty-seventh-street, New York, August 25, 1857, aged thirty- one years. On her tombstone are inscribed the precious words, " Forever with the Lord."
MARIA JANE, his second wife, sister of the above, was born
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Record of Ministers.
in Bridgehampton, L. I. She was converted at ten years of age, and joined the church at fifteen. She was married to Mr. Osborn September 1, 1858, and was " a good mother to the chil- dren of her sainted sister." She died in the St. John-street parsonage, in New Haven, March 5, 1863, aged thirty-two years.3
CALISTA E. (BARTON,) Mr. Osborn's third wife, experienced religion at the age of ten years, at South Hadley Falls. She was married May IS, 1864, and died in Riverhead December 22, 1867, aged thirty-three years. Her obituary notice says :
In class her seat was seldom vacant, and one of many similar passages from her Journal will suffice to show her estimate of this means of grace : " At- tended class this evening, and had a blessed meeting ; have felt like rejoicing. all the day long." She was an exemplary Christian, amiable in all the walks of life, and universally beloved. The closing words of her Journal, written but a little while before her death, are as sweetly expressive of her whole life as words can well be : " I will try to submit without murmuring to my heav- enly Father's will, and feel sure that it is right." Her last audible words in reply to her husband, who asked, " Is it all well ?" were, " All is well." 4
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