USA > New York > Kings County > Brooklyn > Old Sands Street Methodist Episcopal Church, of Brooklyn, N.Y. : an illustrated centennial record, historical and biographical > Part 37
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49
The three wives repose side by side in the cemetery in Riverhead.
Children deceased : Thomas G., infant, died December 21, 1853 ; Isabel C., died March 7, 1865, in the eleventh year of her age.
3 Notice by Heman Bangs, in The Christian Advocate.
4 Dr. 1 .. S. Weed, in The Christian Advocate.
LXXXIII.
FREEMAN P. TOWER.
HE REV. FREEMAN PRATT TOWER is of the seventh generation descended from one John Tower, who was born in England in 1609, and who came to this country in early life and settled near Boston. Those familiar with the genealogy say that all the " Towers " in this country are the posterity of this man.
F. P. Tower was born in Eastford, Conn., February 13, 1838. When he was two years old the family moved to Dudley, Mass., and three years later to Southbridge, in the same State.
He studied awhile in Rawson's family school, in Thompson, Conn., but his preparation for college was chiefly made at the Nichols, Academy, in Dudley, Mass. He was assistant princi- pal of this academy several terms, and one term principal of a public school in Pomfret, Conn.
Most of the good and useful men whom God has chosen to be his ministers were converted in very early life, and Mr. Tower is not an exception to this rule. It may prove to be one part of the mission of this series of biographies to furnish examples of the great honor Christ confers upon those who seek him in early life. From eight years of age, and even farther back in unremembered infancy, to the ages of sixteen and eighteen, by far the larger number and the best and most useful of the Chris- tians herein mentioned, gave their hearts to the Lord. At Southbridge, Mass .. under the ministry of the Rev. W. R. Bag- nall, in the year 1850, at the age of twelve, Freeman P. Tower exercised saving faith in Christ. He was licensed as a local preacher when nineteen years of age, and very soon thereafter his presiding elder, the Rev. Jefferson Hascall, employed him as pastor of one of the churches on his district.
Mr. Tower entered the Wesleyan University a sophomore in 1860, and was graduated in 1863. He was pastor of a church during two years of his college course.
-
0
lower
REV. F. P. TOWER, M. A.
Record of Ministers. 395
MINISTERIAL RECORD : 1859-1860, Hardwick, Mass., a supply ; 1861-1862, Plantsville, Conn., a supply : 1863-1865, (New York East Conf .. ) Cheshire ; 1865, ordained deacon ; 1866-1868, Meriden ; 1867, ordained elder ; 1869-1871, Brooklyn, Greenpoint Tabernacle ; 1872-1873, Brooklyn, Sands-street ; 1874, South Norwalk, Conn. ; 1875, (California Conf., ) Alameda, Cal .; 1876-1878, (Oregon Conf.,) Salem, Oregon ; 1879-1884, agent, Willamette University : 1880, also presiding elder, Portland Dist.
Mr. Tower's pastoral labors in the East, beginning with his youthful ministry in Hardwick, were signally blessed in the conversion of sinners. The young, especially, were won to Christ in great numbers. While in Meriden, besides witnessing spiritual prosperity, he gained great credit for his successful management of an important church-building enterprise, and in his later charges he has proved himself " the right man in the right place," by his persevering energy in promoting the financial interests of needy churches, and of the oldest Protest- ant institution of learning on the Pacific coast. The church in Alameda nearly doubled its membership and began to build a new church edifice during his administration. The carpen- ters were putting the roof on the building when he was invited to Salem, Oregon, and appointed by the bishop to that place. The church had been struggling for six years, with partial suc- cess, to erect a house of worship, and he found the congrega- tion holding services in the lecture room. The church edifice, the best in the state of Oregon, was completed during his second year, and a new parsonage built, the total cost being about $40,000.
While he has been the agent of Willamette University, the financial condition has been improved to the amount of about $40,000, more than $10,000 of which was raised in the Eastern States. He is at present (1884) engaged in raising $20,000 to endow a Bishop E. O. Haven memorial professorship in this institution.
It fell to his lot to deliver the principal address at the funeral of Bishop Haven-" a very able paper, which gave a full state- ment of the bishop's career, and a just analysis of his char- acter." 1
We might content ourselves with this brief outline of facts, and leave the rest to the memory of Mr. Tower's friends. They will not fail to call to mind occasions when the gospel
1 Rev. George W. Woodruff, in The Christian Advocate. 27
.
396
Old Sands Street Church.
message from his lips was attended with marvelous power; for example, the sermon on "the judgment," at the Forestville camp-meeting, in 1864. His sermons are intellectual and log- ical, and extemporaneously delivered ; his manner is earnest and persuasive ; his voice full and clear. In conversation and in preaching he speaks with deliberation, and in company has an air of abstraction, which is sometimes very noticeable. A more conscientious Christian, and a more unselfish, honorable friend, one rarely finds.
Mr. Tower was married, August 20, 1863, to MISS JULIA A. CLEVELAND, of Barre, Mass. She was educated at Mt. Holyoke Seminary, and has been a devoted Christian from her childhood. They removed to the Pacific coast in search of a friendlier climate, and mainly for the benefit of Mrs. Tower's health. Only one of their three children survives, namely, Olin Freeman, now twelve years of age.
3
3
George Taylor .
REV. GEORGE TAYLOR
LXXXIV.
GEORGE TAYLOR.
HE REV. GEORGE TAYLOR is a native of the village of Honley, near Huddersfield, Yorkshire, England. He was born on the 12th of May, 1820. His godly Methodist parents taught him the fear of the Lord, and with them he went very early to class and prayer meetings and the public worship of God. Through their efforts and the pious influence of Sunday-school teachers, and especially of an earnest local preacher named Edward Brooks, little George Taylor, at the age of eight years, became a happy Christian and joined the class. He received his first love-feast ticket from the hand of the Rev. John Bowers. We have here an- other example of the reality and blessedness of childhood con- version. Not only do most of the subjects of these biograph- ical sketches stand forth as witnesses of the adaptation of converting grace to the heart of a child, but they show that of all who believe in Christ, the very young, when properly cared for, are most likely to steadfastly maintain their faith. We have no backslidings of this little eight-year-old convert to record, nor of scarcely any other who made a like early and noble choice.
lle attended the common school, and received classical in- struction from the Rev. J. Lowe, of the Episcopal Church. In his eighteenth year he began to labor as a local preacher on the Glossop circuit, in the Manchester district. After attend- ing the Rev. Thomas Allin's theological school in Altringham, (now merged into the college of the Methodist New Connec- tion, in Sheffield,) he came, in 1843, to this country, recom- mended to the Methodist Episcopal Church, there being no opening for young men in the ministry of his church in En- gland at that time. He became a member of the Second- street church in New York city, of which Dr. Bangs was pas- tor. After a few months he entered upon the pastoral work.
APPOINTMENTS: 1843, Wolcottville, Conn., a supply ; 1844, (New York Conf.,) Harlem, N. Y., with R. Seaman, sup'y ; 1845, Westerlow; 1846, ordained deacon ; 1846-1847, Delhi ; 1848-1849,
398
Old Sands Street Church.
(New York East Conf.,) Astoria, L. I. ; 1849, ordained deacon ; 1850, Bris. tol, Conn .; 1851-1852, Brooklyn, Eighteenth-street ; 1853-1854, Bridg .- hampton, L. I .; 1855-1856, New York, Twenty-seventh-street ; 1857-1858, Rye, N. Y .: 1859-1860, Brooklyn, First Place; 1861-1862, Greenpoint ; 1863- 1865, Williamsburgh, Grand-street (Gothic) ; 1866-1868, Jamaica, L. I .; 1869-1871, Flushing ; 1872-1873, New York, Willett-street ; 1874-1876, Brooklyn, Sands-street ; 1877-1879, Greenwich, Conn. ; 1880, Parkville, Ł. I .; 1881-1883, Patchogue : 1884, Southold.
After traveling five years he was married to MISS SUSAN HATFIELD, of Delhi, N. Y. Their living children, Josephine, Jennie L., and Susie H., are members of the Methodist Episco- pal Church. The records of the Sands-street church and Sun- day-school show that Mr. Taylor received in that place (as elsewhere) no little assistance from the several members of his family.
Mr. Taylor is singularly modest, and his voice is rarely heard upon the conference floor, yet his talent and useful- ness are well known. His countenance, voice, and manner are exceedingly attractive. He stands very high in the confi- dence and esteem of the preachers and people within the bounds of the New York East Conference. His brethren elected him a delegate to the General Conference in 1868.
LXXXV
12 aves
HE REV. ALBERT SCHUYLER GRAVES, D. D., was born of Methodist parents, Augustus and Lydia (Kelsey) Graves, in Salisbury, Vt., January 17, 1824. In 1839, at the age of fifteen, he was baptized and received into the Methodist Episcopal Church, in Salisbury, by the late Rev. David P. Hurlburd, of the Troy Conference. Ile pre- pared for college at West Poultney, Vt., and was graduated at Wesleyan University in 1846.
MINISTERIAL RECORD: 1846, West Troy, N. Y., a supply; 1847, Groton cir. N. V., with W. N. Cobb; 1848, ditto, with Alonzo Wood; 1849, ordained deacon by Bishop Janes; 1849-1850, Moravia, 1851, ordained el- der by Bishop Hamlin-Ithaca, Seneca-street; 1852-1853, Oxford; 1854, Uti- ca, Bleeker street; 1853-1856, Cortland; 1857-1858, Auburn, North street; 1859, ditto, sup'y; 1860-1863, presiding elder, Cortland Dist .; 1864-1869, Principal of Oneida (now Central New York) Conf. Sem., Cazanovia, N. Y .; 1870-1871, ' (New York East Conf.,) Fair Haven, Conn .; 1871, traveled in Europe; 1872- 1873, West Winsted; 1874-1875, New Rochelle, N. Y .; 1876, presiding el- der, L. I. South Dist .; 1877-1879, presiding elder, Brooklyn Dist,; 1880- 1881, Brooklyn, South Third-st .; 1882-1883, Southold; 1884, Port Jefferson.
Hle was secretary of the Oneida Conference several years, and was honored by that body with a seat in the General Conference in 1864 and in 1868. He was also a member of the New York East Conference delegation in 1880. That same year the preachers of the Brooklyn District presented him with an elegant watch as a token of their esteem. Mr. Graves is an able minister, and as teacher, pastor, and presiding el- der, has been uniformly successful. He has a genial coun- tenance and a pleasant voice, and his manner is attractive both in and ont of the pulpit.
On the 19th of October, 1851, he was married by the Rev. Elias Bowen, to MISS HARRIET A. GRANT, of Ithaca, N. Y., who died July 20, 1858. He was married to MISS ISABELLA G. MCINTOSH, of Vernon, N. Y., April 19, 1862. Of the children, seven in number, a son and a daughter alone sur- vive. Their names are Arthur Eugene and Belle Evangeline.
7
LXXXVI.
AMES PARKER, father of the REV. LINDSAY PARKER, was a Methodist and a "prayer leader" in Ireland. Hle married Miss Jane Lindsay, an Episcopalian, who joined the Wesleyans with her husband. Lindsay, their son, was born in Dublin. He attended the Wesleyan school in that city, of which the Rev. Robert Crook, LL. D. was head master. Young Parker was converted when about fifteen years of age. After spending some time in a law- yer's office, he yielded to the carnest solicitation of the Rev. Charles Lynn Grant, superintendent of Abbey-street circuit, Dublin, and joined the Irish Conference of the Wesleyan Methodist Church. Having preached in his native country nearly four years, he came to America in August, 1873, and joined the Twenty-seventh-street Methodist Episcopal church in New York city, whose quarterly conference immediately licensed him as a local preacher, and recommended him to the traveling connection. He rendered efficient service in the Methodist ministry about ten years longer, and then joined the Protestant Episcopal Church, in which he has been advanced to full orders.
MINISTERIAL RECORD: A few years prior to 1873, (Irish Conf.,) Dungannon; Portadown; Knock, a suburb of Belfast; 1873, supply, Hoboken, N. J .; 1874, (New York East Conference,) ordained deacon by Bishop Wiley- Darien, Conn .; 1875-1876, Ansonia; 1877, ordained elder by Bishop Peck; 1877- 1879, Brooklyn, Sands-street; 1880-1882, New York, Sixty-first-street; 1883, withdrew; 1884, first assistant of the Rev. W. S. Rainsford, rector of St. George's Protestant Episcopal Church, New York.
Mr. Parker was married in Darien, Conn., to Miss Fran- ces A. Reed. His pulpit talent and his fine social qualities render him exceedingly popular, especially with the young. Ile writes to the author concerning the transfer of his church relations as follows: "The main cause of my change of base was dissatisfaction with the itinerancy.
-
MOSS-FR
J.J. Breckiunge
REV. JOHN S. BRECKENRIDGE, M.A.
LXXXVII.
JOHN S. BRECKINRIDGE.
PROMINENT place on the roll of the pastors of old Sands-street church belongs to the REV. JOHN STORRY BRECKINRIDGE, A. M. He was born July 12, 1837, in Augusta, N. Y., and named after the Rev. John Storry, an eminent English clergyman.
His father, the Rev. E. W. Breckinridge, is a native of Dover, England, and came to this country while yet a young man. He was already married. and a local preacher in the Wesleyan Church. Having united with the Dnane- street Church in New York city, he was soon urged to give himself wholly to the ministry, and in 1836 joined the Onei- da Conference. In the year 1876, after forty years of faithful service, he was entered upon the list of the retired and su- perannuated ministers of the Wyoming Conference.
The mother of J. S. Breckinridge was born in Ramsgate, England, and died in 1867. She was a woman of superior mind and profound piety. She took her son with her when a child to class meeting, and counseled him in his youth, and prayed with him always. She was a strict disciplinarian, and taught her children to fear God and honor their parents, and before she died, saw them all happily converted and received into the Methodist Church.
Mr. Breckinridge experienced religion at the age of six- teen years. The immediate agent, next to his praying moth- er, was the Rev. Mr. Francis, a Baptist evangelist, who held a series of meetings in Gibson, Pa., where young Breckin- ridge resided. His conviction was pungent, his deliverance was complete. For three weeks he had been fighting the sug- gestion that if he experienced religion, he would have to preach. He prefered any other occupation. At last he yield-
402
Old Sands Street Church.
ed and exclaimed, "Lord, save me, whatever the consequences may be !" The power of Satan was broken, and his heart was thrilled with unspeakable joy. In some of the circumstances his conversion bore an exact resemblance to that of Freeborn Garrettson.
He was on horseback at the time, riding through a bit of woods, and he could hardly keep his seat, so overcome was he with heavenly emotion. The forest seemed illumined by a thousand suns, so brilliant was the light which broke upon his mind. He longed for an auditor to whom he might tell the glad tidings, and found his first one in the blacksmith who shod his horse. He seemed amazed, but said nothing. In the evening, before a school-house full of people, the young con- vert stood and tremblingly told "the old, old story," while some wept, and others shouted. His father received him on probation in the church, and six months later extended to him the right hand of fellowship.
He soon became anxious to obtain an education, and entered a select school for boys, taught by a Mr. Judd, near Berkshire, where his father was then stationed. On the removal of his father to Binghamton, he entered the Susquehanna Seminary, superintended by the Rev. Dr. J. W. Armstrong. Prof. J. C. Van Benschoten, now of Wesleyan University, was one of the teachers, and when he went to the Oxford Academy, as princi- pal, Mr. Breckinridge followed him thither. He entered Wes- leyan University in 1857, taught school each winter during his college course, and, being licensed as a local preacher in Mid- dletown, in 1858, he frequently occupied the pulpits of neighbor- ing churches. In his freshman year he was elected orator of his class, and in his sophomore year he won the prize for clocu- tion. In his senior year he was elected a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society as a recognition of superior scholarship.
CONFERENCE RECORD : 1861, (New York East Conf.) Middle- bury, Conn .; 1862, Plymouth; 1863, ordained deacon ; 1863-1865, Bethel; 1865, ordained elder ; 1866 1868, Norwalk, Second, ch .; 1869-1871, Birming- ham ; 1872-1874, Middletown ; 1875-1876, Brooklyn, Greenpoint Tabernacle; 1877-1879, Brooklyn, Seventh av., known as Grace Church in 1879; 1880- 1882, Brooklyn, Sands-street church ; 1883-1884, Meriden, Conn.
During his pastoral term in Bethel a revival began in his church which swept over the town, and resulted in one hundred and fifty conversions, abundant fruit of which is still to be seen. About $1,200 was paid on the church debt. At Norwalk he
4º3
Record of Ministers.
found a revival in progress; the religious interest continued throughout his three-years' term, and about one hundred were added to the church. A beautiful parsonage was built, and the debt considerably lessened. While at Norwalk he was elected a delegate to the International Convention of the Young Men's Christian Associations of the United States and Canada, held at Montreal, and was also made a life-member of the American and Foreign Christian Union.
During his pastorate in Birmingham about one hundred were converted, and the entire indebtedness of the church, amounting to nearly $6,000, was canceled, and a surplus of $500 left in the treasury. His appointment to the city of Mid- dletown, within less than eleven years after his graduation at its college, was accepted in a full sense of the peculiarly trying character of the position, and there, as in other fields, he en- joyed a prosperous ministry. Fifty were added to the church and over one hundred received on probation. While pastor there he visited Europe, and in company with- Professors Har- rington and Hibbard, and the Rev. Arza Hill, he traveled through the British Isles and over the continent as far as Vienna. An interesting account of the trip was written by him, in a series of magazine articles, and published in Phila- delphia. He also prepared two lectures on the tour, one en- titled " European Odds and Ends," and the other " European Cities," which were delivered in Middletown and elsewhere. Hle preached in Middletown a series of sermons which were largely attended, and extensively reported in the Hartford Post and other papers. The one on " Eternal Punishment " aroused much interest, and was replied to by the Universalist minister of Middletown.
His administration as pastor of the Greenpoint Tabernacle was in every respect successful. He was placed in charge of the Seventh Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church, in Brooklyn, by the unanimous desire of the official board of that church, after the resignation of the Rev. Emory J. Haynes, who united with the Baptist denomination. The church was in financial trouble and in danger of going to pieces. He remained three years, and during that time it was re-organized, placed upon a sound footing, and $8,000 was secured in cash and reliable subscriptions toward the payment of its debts. Old Sands- street church prospered under his administration.
404
Old Sands Street Church.
While in college Mr. Breckinridge enlisted at the beginning of the war as a three-months' volunteer, but shortly afterward all the three months' troops were disbanded, and he was not called into service. Later he spent several weeks in Chesa- peake Hospital, near Fortress Monroe, as an agent of the Christian Commission. Some years since he was constituted a life director of the American Bible Society, and he has been, since 1876, one of the managers of the Tract Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
Mr. Breckinridge is a valuable contributor to the department of Christian experience in the literature of our church. The following brief extract concerning religious growth is taken from The Christian Advocate :
One state of grace differs from another only in degree. A river is like a rivulet, only larger. As water is water, whether it be an ocean or a drop, so religion is religion, whether it be that possessed by an ignorant beginner or a matured saint.
The distinctions made by theologians between little piety and much are often merely nominal. They are like the different terins given by geograph- ers to varied formations of land, such as istlimus, cape, mountain, etc. These are all in reality one, and the drowning man who reaches either is saved, and may, by traveling on, reach the rest. Ile who has become in the lowest de- gree religious, has touched the shore-the continent of all spirituality. * * Religion is, from beginning to end, not only the same in kind, but the way in which we obtain one degree of it is the only way in which we can obtain any degree of it, even the most exalted. As the earth grows lustrous by steadily turning toward the east, so Christians grow pure by steadily approximating God. The price paid by one who rises in the scale of experience becomes constantly larger, but it is ever one currency-the gold of self-surrender ; that, and that only, is legal-tender, and must be paid whether the blessing sought be initial or completive. One progresses in spirituality as in any thing else, by a process of repetition. * * * We receive Christ by faith, and can grow up into him only by a repetition of that exercise. It is the alphabet of all religion, and spells every possible experience.
His sermons abound in metaphor, and are always interesting, practical, useful, and often truly eloquent. He is rather below the medium height, and stouter than the portrait would indi- cate ; of blue eyes and light complexion.
Mr. Breckinridge was married, in June, 1863, to MISS MARY ADELINE ASHLEY, daughter of the Hon. R. T. Ashley, of Sus- quehanna County, Pa. Their children are Rollin Ashley B., aged seventeen, and Florence B., ten years of age.
REV. ICHABOD SIMMONS, M. A.
LXXXVIII.
ICHABOD SIMMONS.
ANDS-STREET CHURCH has enjoyed the services of thirty-one different presiding elders. After the saint- ly Foster and Willis came Garrettson and Morrell, and other high-minded and noble men, who " haz- arded their lives for the name of the Lord Jesus Christ." A little later the district was placed in charge of such royal pre- siding elders as Samuel Merwin, Peter P. Sandford, Laban Clark, Daniel Ostrander, Buel Goodsell, John Kennaday, and others of equal fame and power. The last in the succession thus far is the REV. ICHABOD SIMMONS, M.A.
He is the son of Ichabod and Marcia B. Simmons, and was born in Duxbury, Plymouth County, Mass., December 24, 18.31. His strong attachment to Methodism is not an inheritance, his father having been a Universalist, and his mother not a mem- ber of any church. He was converted in Newport, N. II., in October, 1852, before he was twenty-one years of age. The pastor was the Rev. S. Holman, by whom he was shortly after- ward baptized, received into the Methodist Episcopal Church, and licensed to exhort. His first license to preach bears date February 4, 1854.
He had learned the cabinet-making trade in Newport, but a divine voice bade him seek an education and enter the work of the ministry. He spent two terms at Newbury Seminary, Vt., and two years at the Biblical Institute, Concord, N. H., after which he completed his preparation for college at the seminary in Northfield, N. H. He then took a four years' course in the Wesleyan University, where he was graduated in 1860. The de- gree of M.A. he received in 1863. For some months he taught a Bible class in the State-prison in Concord, N. H., but he had the responsibility of a pastorate nearly all the time while pur- suing his studies. The following is his entire
406
Old Sands Street Church.
MINISTERIAL RECORD: 1854, supply, Pembroke, N. II. ; 1855, (N. II. Conf.,) Amherst ; 1856, (conf. relation discontinued at his request,) supply at Amherst a few months ; 1856-1857, supply, Saybrook, Conn. ; 1858, ordained deacon by Bishop Baker,-supply, Vernon Depot ; 1859, supply, West Meriden (Hanover) and West Rocky Hill, alternating with W. H. Wardell ; 1860-1861, (New York East Conf.) Simsbury; 1862-1863, New Haven, George-street ; 1863, ordained elder by Bishop Baker; 1864-1865, Bridgeport ; 1866-1868, Birmingham; 1869-1871, Norwalk, Second Ch. ; 1872-1874, Brooklyn, Eighteenth-street ; 1875-1876, Brooklyn, South Third- street ; 1877-1879, Brooklyn, Fleet-street ; 1880-1882, Brooklyn, Janes church, Reid Ave. ; 1883-1884, presiding elder, Brooklyn Dist.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.