USA > Ohio > Cuyahoga County > Cleveland > The Old stone church; the story of a hundred years, 1820-1920 > Part 4
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Until the dedication of this first edifice the service of song had been confined mainly to the use of Watts' hymns. In 1827 Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Rouse came to Cleveland from New York City. They were Bap- tists, but as agent of the American Sunday School Union, Mr. Rouse at first became a strong supporter of the work in the Stone Church. Later he organized Trinity Sunday School in 1830, and the First Bap- tist and First Methodist Episcopal Sunday Schools in 1833. He was a fine singer, and brought to the religious life of Cleveland a needed inspiration in all musical services.
This Sunday School missionary of musical ability became in course of time Deacon Rouse of the First Baptist Church, a citizen of considerable influence in the growing community. The story has been told that this good deacon began to construct in 1858 a family vault in Erie Street Cemetery. The work did not progress as he desired to see it advance, and not feeling well he exclaimed one day to the workmen, "I shall be dead before this vault is done." He then began to visit the cemetery every working day and was finally tempted to join the workmen in labor. The exercise gained through the daily walk and
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manual toil brought immediate improvement in health, and in his case thirteen years passed before the vault was needed.
Not only the coming to Cleveland of Deacon Benjamin Rouse, but also the arrival of Mr. Truman P. Handy in vigorous manhood, gave fresh impetus to the musical part of public worship. Mr. and Mrs. T. P. Handy became great favorites in musical circles within and without the church. Anthems having been introduced into church worship, at the time of the dedication of the first Stone Church edifice, one was rendered with special effect. With Mr. Tuttle as choir master, Mr. and Mrs. T. P. Handy and a full choir of voices occupied the singers' seats, while Mrs. Tuttle sat in the audience a couple of pews from the pulpit. The audience had been accustomed to face the gallery during the singing. From the choir there came the anthem, "Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted up ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in." In response to this volume of music from the gallery there arose a sweet voice from the front of the audience, "Who is this King of Glory?" and the choir made answer, "The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle."
Thus the transition from the more simple praise of Watts' hymns was safely made in the Stone Church at the dedication of its first home. The minister and official boards wisely followed the natural vantage of the dedicatory occasion with a series of protracted meetings. These special services continued nineteen days and were well attended, and
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as a result the membership was greatly strengthened. Among those who united with the church at the time of this marked influx was Mr. John A. Foot, a mem- ber of a distinguished Connecticut family, his father having been governor and United States senator. The famous Admiral Foot of Civil War times was a brother. Having graduated from Yale College, Mr. John A. Foot practiced law seven years before coming to Cleveland in 1833. He formed at once a partner- ship with Judge Sherlock J. Andrews. His life was characterized by a wonderful fidelity to every interest of the Stone Church, in which he served as ruling elder forty-six years, a term extending through the pastorates of Drs. Aiken and Goodrich, and through a goodly portion of Dr. Haydn's service, including the pastorate of Dr. Arthur Mitchell. He died June 16, 1891. His sainted wife, formerly Mrs. A. D. Cutter who died a year later, was also a remarkable worker in the church.
Prominent among the earliest families were those of Orlando and Abilene Cutter, brothers who came to the Reserve as early as 1818. They were merchants of prominence. The second wife of Orlando Cutter was the daughter of Richard Hilliard, the pioneer merchant; while the widow of Abilene Cutter became in later life Mrs. John A. Foot. Members of the Cutter families were for many years prominent workers in various Cleveland Presbyterian churches.
It was at this period of early church building and of preparation for the calling of the first installed pastor, that Judge Sherlock J. Andrews commenced
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THE ORIGINAL OLD STONE CHURCH
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his long helpful connection with the Stone Church. He had come from Wallington, Conn., in 1825, and although only twenty-five years of age he had grad- uated from Union College and had completed his legal studies. He maintained a pew in Trinity as well as in the Stone Church, having been reared in the Protestant Episcopal faith, but his greater religious activity was in the Stone Church, of which Mrs. An- drews was a devoted member. They first resided on Water Street near the old lighthouse, and then they moved two doors west of the Stone Church on the Public Square. As a member of the bar, a congress- man and a judge on the bench he attained a high reputation; while his influence in the Stone Church continued to the close of life. He served a number of years as president of the Board of Trustees and was a warm supporter of Drs. Aiken, Goodrich and Haydn. His daughter Ursula Andrews married Mr. Gamaliel E. Herrick, who for many years was also a worthy official of the Stone Church. Mrs. Elisha Whittlesey of New York City is the only surviving child of Judge Andrews, but two grandchildren, Mr. Frank R. Her- rick and Miss Ursula Herrick, are now members of the Stone Church, while the late Mrs. Andrew B. Meldrum was also a granddaughter.
It may be instructive, as well as interesting, to see the Village of Cleveland, at the time of the erection of the primitive edifice of the First Presbyterian Church, as the incipient city was viewed by a North Ireland emigrant who came to the Western Reserve about 1832. He resided in Cleveland until after 1834,
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and then removed to Newburgh, where for many years he was a member of the Miles Park Presby- terian Church. The greater part of his farm is now occupied by Harvard Grove Cemetery.
This Mr. Isaac Reid left a ledger in which not only various financial accounts are to be found, but also copies of letters which he sent to friends in Ireland. A few extracts are given :
We are now on the high and sandy banks of Lake Erie. Fifteen years ago this village had a few shanties, and not far away were Indians. Land prices around the border of this town are so high as to sell at $20 per acre, and within four miles of the village you pay from $8 to $16 per acre, according to improvements. Beef is three and four cents a pound; potatoes two shillings a bushel; butter one shilling; tea and coffee the same as at home. We have rented a house and a good sized lot [River Street] for $65 a year. This is a fine place for young men and women. Young men get from $10 to $15 a month and board. Young women from $4 to $6 a month and they live better than the best farmers' daughters in Claughen. They are not treated like servants here. This is a country far preferable to Ireland. I went to work for Mr. Andrews at $20 per month in his engine-shop. He is a fine man, a deacon in the Presbyterian Church. South of here lies the canal, three hundred miles to Portsmouth. There is great business on this canal, the boats passing and re- passing like the stages with you on the Dublin Road. A multitude of schooners come in every day, and from here the goods go to the Ohio River, a great place of business, and beautiful I am told. There are upwards of three hundred steamboats on this river, and they trade from Pittsburgh to New Orleans, and from there to all places of the world. There are twelve steamboats
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on Lake Erie, and we have from two to four a day. The Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists and The Church [Episcopal] are here, and every one has its own bell. There is also a Bethel Church. This last summer the Presbyterians built a new church and it is twelve days since the first sermon was preached in it, and during that time there have been twenty-four sermons, besides two to three prayer-meetings and lectures every day. It is not for money the preachers preach here. All they want is a living. I have attended these meetings, as often as convenient, and during that time there has been more good done the sinner than I ever saw in all my life. There is a sect of people here called Baptists. They go into the water and a few days ago they baptized four and there was a great crowd of spectators. December 8th they baptized four men and two women. After the sermon the minister and the whole congregation went down to the lake. The minister went four feet into the water and dipped them right under. This we think strange to see. This country differs far from home.
The statement made by Isaac Reid, in enumerating the early churches of Cleveland, that each had its own bell, suggests a peculiar task imposed by law upon the sextons of those times. The village ordi- nance ran:
The sextons of the several churches which are now, or may hereafter be furnished with bells, shall, immediately on the alarm of fire, repair to their several churches with which they are connected, and diligently ring the bells of said churches, during twenty minutes, and in such manner as directed by the chief engineer, unless the fire be sooner extinguished, with penalty of $2 for every omission.
In case of a prolonged conflagration there must have been strong temptation on the part of sextons to
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choose the fines, in preference to the physical exer- cise, but in all probability the village youth flocked to the churches to take turns at the bell-ropes.
During the year of dedication of its first church home, the Stone Church congregation was challenged to adopt a permanent attitude, not only toward the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors, but also against the use of "ardent spirits," as a beverage. The challenge came in a manner thus described:
E. F. G. appeared before the executive committee and gave his reasons for vending ardent spirits, having pre- sented a letter for admission to the church. Question, Shall a person who vends ardent spirits be received as a member of this church? Unanimously the opinion of the committee was that E. F. G. should not be received as a member, as long as he vends ardent spirits.
The executive committee's action reported to the congregation received this ratification :
Resolved, that in the opinion of this church, with the light now shed upon the subject, the use of ardent spirits as a drink, or the making and trafficking in the article, except as a medicine, is an immorality. Resolved, that henceforth candidates for membership in this church and persons received by letter from other churches be required, as a condition for reception, to abstain them- selves from the use of ardent spirits, as a drink; not to furnish it to those in their employment, nor to vend or make the article, nor in any way, except as a medicine, or for chemical purposes to encourage the use of it.
Such a position, taken eighty-six years ago, did not leave the outside world in doubt regarding the atti- tude of the Stone Church in reference to the manu- facture, sale, or use of ardent spirits.
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Seldom do the official minutes of a church record weddings, but one held in the Stone Church Sunday evening, November 2, 1834, was of such importance that the secretary of the society made this minute:
N.B. Sarah Van Tine a member of this Church was married in the Church on Sabbath evening November 2, 1834, to Dr. Newton Adams, preparatory to their going on a Mission to the Zoolahs of South Africa. The outfit contributed by the Church and Congregation amounted in Value to upwards of Four Hundred Dollars.
Miss Sarah Van Tyne (also spelled Van Tine) was born April 2, 1800, at Auburn, N. Y. At fourteen years of age her mother's death placed the care of her father's family upon her. After having taught in Auburn and Oswego, N. Y., she came in 1831 to reside with a brother in Cleveland. Asiatic cholera raged at the time, and this young lady was among the few who nursed victims fearlessly. The Bethel Sunday School enlisted her interest, and there she became the teacher of poor children, as no public school for their educaton existed. The work became, however, the first school to be supported by public funds.
Dr. Newton Adams came to Cleveland in 1834 to study medicine, preparatory to his going as a medical missionary to the Zulu tribes of South Africa. Having become prominent in the Young Ladies' Missionary Society of the Stone Church, Miss Van Tyne came into intimate association with Mrs. Samuel Hutch- ings, who, with her husband was anticipating mission- ary service in Ceylon. After Dr. Adams left Cleve-
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land and had received his appointment under the American Board, he proposed to Miss Van Tyne that she join him as his wife in the foreign work. The Reverend John Keep, concluding that the wedding might increase popular interest in foreign missions, announced the Sunday evening event which was largely attended.
The Zulus were a superior class among the African tribes, and the young missionaries had become in- terested in Africa by reason of the growing anti- slavery sentiment in this country. Dr. Adams, physi- cally the stronger of the two workers, died in 1851 after seventeen years of service; whereas the wife labored three years longer, when ill health forced a return to this country. The closing years of her con- secrated life were spent in four different Cleveland families, in each of which she proved a blessing. At seventy years of age she passed away, November 1, 1870, in the home of her friend of many years, the late Mrs. Mary H. Severance.
This missionary left a legacy of one thousand dollars, the first gift toward the founding of the Woodland Avenue Presbyterian Church, in which there is a memorial window, the gift of the "Sarah Adams Band." She was buried in Woodland Ceme- tery.
In more recent years one of the missionary homes at Wooster, Ohio, the gift of the late Elder Louis H. Severance, was named in honor of this friend of his mother.
During the ministrations of the Reverend John
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Keep the first colony departed to help form another church. Nineteen members were granted letters December 17, 1834, to the "Brooklyn Church," not the Archwood Congregational Church, originally known as the Brooklyn Church, but a new religious enterprise across the Cuyahoga River on Detroit Street. It became popularly known as the "Village Church," in Ohio City, and was the beginning of the present First Congregational Church of Cleve- land.
After his service in the Stone Church, the Rev- erend John Keep became pastor of this village church west of the river. During his leadership in the Stone Church one hundred twenty-one members were added, increasing the roll to two hundred fifteen per- sons. During the year thirty-seven had been dis- missed; one had died and one had been excommuni- cated, leaving a total membership of one hundred seventy-six, with an average attendance of four hun- dred upon divine worship.
The last of the "six stated supplies," who prepared the way in the Stone Church for the calling of the first installed pastor, was no ordinary home missionary. The Reverend John Keep was the seventh child of a farmer in Longmeadow, Mass., where he was born April 20, 1781. After graduation from Yale College he taught, and then studied the- ology with the Reverend Azel Backus and the Rev- erend Asahel Hooker. Before ordination he had been invited to Blandford, Mass., where a church was divided into warring factions. There he was ordained
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and installed in a pastorate which continued sixteen years. In May, 1821, two calls were considered, one to the Congregational Church at Homer, N. Y .; the other to Brunswick, Maine, where the congregation included the faculty and students of Bowdoin College, and where he would have had to teach moral philos- ophy. The call to Homer, N. Y., to a church of four hundred members, was accepted. Dissatisfaction finally arose over a case of discipline, and in 1833 the pastor's sympathy with the "new measures" adopted by revivalists added more oil to the flames. He was a trustee of Hamilton College from 1827 to 1834, and of Auburn Seminary from 1832 to 1834. Although during his Homer, N. Y., pastorate five hundred forty-two members had been received, he accepted the call to the First Presbyterian Church of Cleve- land. One of the earlier stated supplies of the Stone Church, the Reverend Stephen I. Bradstreet, had taken an important part in the founding of Western Reserve College at Hudson, Ohio.
The Reverend John Keep, a later supply, became prominent in the establishment of Oberlin College. Elected a trustee of that institution in 1834, he was also president of the board of trustees. Although but fifty-three years of age, he began to be called "Father Keep," by which title he was endeared to Oberlin. Having long been opposed to slavery his vote was the one that decided the admission of colored stu- dents to the college classes.
With the abolition of slavery the formal admission of negroes to classes at Oberlin brought considerable
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fame to the college, but without such a formal vote of admission, many northern colleges were at the time educating negroes. One had graduated in the first class at Western Reserve College, while others were in the preparatory department. A negro had graduated in the first class at Lane Theological Semi- nary, from which there was a sensational exodus of students to Oberlin; still the admission by a majority of one gained the greater renown.
In 1836 the financial agency of the college was accepted by Father Keep, but that work was inter- rupted by the panic of 1837, and for two years the supply of churches was resumed. In company with another Oberlin official he went in 1839 to England to secure funds, and after eighteen months abroad they brought back $30,000, which saved Oberlin College from impending bankruptcy. Preaching in Ohio and New York State was then resumed for a decade, when in 1850 Oberlin became his permanent home.
Again acting as financial agent of the college, ninety thousand dollars was raised by the sale of scholar- ships, a financial assistance in its time of immense importance. He published many sermons and ad- dresses, and after a lifetime of uninterrupted good health he died of "old age" February 11, 1870, in his eighty-ninth year.
May this resume of the first fifteen years of the history of the Stone Church enhance in the estima- tion of the present generation the value of the con- secrated labors of the "six stated supplies" who
e
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wrought in the day of small things. The basic work of the ministers who supplied from 1820 to 1835, like the foundation of an imposing edifice, has been in danger of remaining buried out of sight, but the toils of those first fifteen years by no means consti- tuted the least important period in the one hundred years' existence of the First Presbyterian Church of Cleveland.
III. CHURCH DISCIPLINE
Has the exercise of church discipline become a lost art, and have all lines of demarcation between the Christian and the worldling disappeared? Often are these queries raised by those who complain that there is no longer any difference between members of the Christian Church and those without her pale.
Judicial process against those suspected of having dishonored their religious profession was certainly not a lost art in the greater part of the nineteenth century, and many were the social practices, now commonly tolerated, which were then considered in- fallible proofs of a return to the "beggarly elements of the world." The mastery of ecclesiastical law governing the trials of recreant believers became almost a profession, and denominational organiza- tions contained ministers, elders and deacons, pecu- liarly adept either as prosecutors of the accused, or as counsels for their defence.
At stated meetings of a Presbytery the appoint- ment of a "Judicial Committee" is still customary, but frequently years pass without the presentation of any business for this committee's action. Such terms as "citations," "pleas," "witnesses," "hearing of parties," "deliberation and judgment," "sen- tence," "appeal," and "transmission of records" form an unknown tongue in present day ecclesiastical
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gatherings. In the older sessional records, however, hundreds of pages were devoted to the permanent recording of minute testimony, given at the trials of those accused of having dishonored their Christian profession.
The Scriptural basis of the earlier practice of disci- pline was found in the eighteenth chapter of St. Matthew's gospel,
Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone; if he shall hear thee thou hast gained thy brother, but if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established, and if he shall neglect to hear thee, tell it unto the church; but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as a heathen and a publican.
This injunction became of weighty importance in the estimation of the early churches of the Western Reserve. The true end of discipline should ever be remedial, as well as vindicatory, and there was in the pioneer churches the warning that it ought ever to be exercised with discretion. The practice, however, tended to an extreme which often divided congrega- tions, disrupted pastorates and engendered bitter feelings between those always ready to array them- selves either upon one side or the other of a con- troversy.
The evil results of disciplinary efforts often con- tinued for years before they were completely eradi- cated. Thus in the instance of as successful a minister as the Reverend John Keep, it was recorded that at Homer, N. Y., "dissatisfaction began to arise in the
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church in 1828 in consequence of a case of discipline." This does not imply that he had been needlessly in- discreet in administrative matters, but it does signify that whatever the case may have been the pressing of it brought a division in the congregation.
The First Presbyterian Church of Cleveland took congregational action May 24, 1823, regarding the employment of church discipline. The following was adopted (P. B. Andrews dissenting) :
Resolved, that each member of this church be required, and is hereby required, when anything is seen or heard of unseemly or improper conduct of any member, first to mention it to that member, that the peace of the church be promoted.
Almost every villager knew the good and evil quali- ties of his fellow citizens, especially the general weak- nesses of human nature; consequently in the Cleve- land congregation, as well as in all the Western Reserve churches, abundant opportunity arose for the exercise of religious discipline.
In the early minutes of Cleveland Presbytery an appeal was taken by a church member, suspended for having sold milk on Sunday. His village had reached that point of development where every family could no longer keep a cow; hence the increasing depend- ence upon neighbors for a daily supply of the lacteal necessity. The sale of milk on the Sabbath, however, gave offence to good Christians accustomed to a strict observance of the Lord's day. Having been sus- pended by the session of his church, the aggrieved member appealed to Presbytery. After having
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wrestled for some time with the vexed problem, the higher ecclesiastical court ordered restoration of the complainant to church membership, but with the sage admonition that he sell as little as possible on the first day of the week.
A member of a church near Akron, Ohio, was disci- plined for having yielded to profanity at a barn- raising. If the timber had lurched too much toward his post of duty the sin may have been largely of an unconscious, ejaculatory nature, but the guilty mem- ber did not escape official rebuke.
The professing Christian who had apparently pre- sented a Bible to a young lady, and then later having asked her in vain for payment had dunned her par- ents, ought to have been condemned for the employ- ment of such tricks, in prosecuting a book agent's calling.
The church member who admonished the patient of Dr. T. that it would be better for him to employ a rival physician, at the same time guaranteeing a cure, if the advice were followed, was righteously condemned for professional meddling.
No members of a village were ever held to a higher degree of scrupulous honesty in business transactions than were the pioneer ministers and missionaries, and that when they received "bare-bones" support. Congregations, then as now, contained members like the one who prayed, "O Lord, keep our minister very humble in spirit, we can keep him poor." How so many well-educated home missionaries with large families ever kept the wolf from the door, and
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