USA > Ohio > Medina County > Wadsworth > Wadsworth memorial; an account of the proceedings of the celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of the first settlement of the township of Wadsworth, Ohio > Part 6
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
A godless science may see only a fortuitous evolution, working life out of death, and anon death resuming its ancient dominion. It sees only a universe going to decay and ruin. But true science takes account of the demands of our higher nature, and looks for the wisdom and power that is behind all phenomena, and moving them, and hav- ing found an infinite God there, sees in all these changes, the working out of a great and glorious plan, worthy of & God. This thought comforts in the consideration of the fact that the world is thus changing, and that we are changing with it. That though youth is bright and joyous, we can not stay young. That though middle-age is strong and hopeful, we can not retain our manly vigor. Nor can we even settle down in the tranquility of old age, for the inevitable law can never change.
68
WADSWORTH MEMORIAL ..
The earthly mission must close. The hands must wax feeble. The strong must bow. The vital current must cease to flow, and the wheels of life must stop. The dust return to dust again ; and the demands of the soul of man, siding with revelation, tells us, that, though matter must change, there is a higher nature, that must still live, to ex- perience new changes, in conscious existence forever. It is this nature that makes us so fond of living ou in the hearts of those with whom we were associated, and desir- ous of leaving some memorial of ourselves, something to keep the name on earth, sometimes to be repeated, though it be only a name, carved on a stone, to be read by genera- tions who knew nothing of him who bore the name.
" E'en from the tomb, the voice of nature rries.
E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires."
But there is another inevitable law ; that we value the memory of the dead only by the consideration of what the life was worth. A worthless life can have only a worth- less remembrance. Hence, it is a merciful Providence that provides in our nature, as declared in revelation, that, "The name of the wicked shall rot ;" while all nature says amen to another declaration-"The righteous shall be had in everlasting remembrance."
We pass among the gorgeous mausoleums of Mount Au- burn, and Greenwood, and how soon the eye tires with the sight. The mind wearies with the contemplation of the folly of lavish wealth, trying in vain to counteract the law of nature. Rich worthlessness, by money alone, keeping up a mute contest with the oblivion that claims all that can leave no worthy memorial behind. Not only are monu- ments proverbially false, but proverbially neglected. Yet you will see in Greenwood a plain shaft, unpretending enough, compared with its highly wrought surroundings, around which the path is ever well worn. It perpetuates only a name and a decd -- the fireman, who sacrificed his own life to save an unknown infant from the flames. Though
WADSWORTH MEMORIAL. 69
only an unknown laborer, that one worthy act will leave a remembrance that will far outlive the name of him who only represented a mass of wealth. Though the world eagerly pursues after wealth as the chief good, how little interested is the world in knowing who held the coffers in which the gold of other days was hoarded. Yet, when a great or good work is done, all desire to know who did it.
Men are, after all, "only remembered by what they have done." If they have been monsters in wickedness, they live " in the long-lived annals of infamy," to become"a by- word and an execration. If they have lived to bless the world, though they have rested from their labors, their works do follow them, and their memory is blessed.
We have been for a few days recalling the history of the years that have passed, calling to remembrance the toil, the labors, the self-denials, sacrifices done;and endured by dar- ing and hardy pioneers, who opened in the wilderness these pleasant homes of yours, in the first of these three-score years since this became the abode of civilized man. We have recalled the long and toilsome journeys from their former Eastern homes, of those who came, impelled, some of them by necessity, some by the spirit of adventure, some in the pursuit of wealth, and some, as we may believe, with a sincere desire to extend their opportunity to do good to their fellow-men, and bless the world.
All tell a similar story, of hardships, privations, and labor; yet all, of the happiness they enjoyed, in that which dignifies man far above empty titles, or ill-gotten honors --- the nobility of honest labor. The fruits of all this you see in a beautiful and flourishing town, an enterprising and intelligent community, and material prosperity on every hand, and you have vied with each other in bestowing honor upon the memory of those who have passed away.
But when we consider how transient is everything earth- ly ; when we think of ourselves as beings not of this
1
70
WADSWORTH MEMORIAL.
alone, but of other worlds : not of time, but of eternity, we see that there are interests that rise above these mate- rial ones, as far as spirit is above dead matter : that reach beyond these years, as eternity out-measures time. The most important historical question concerning the annals of this place, then, is the one which we have reserved as the last : What is the spiritual heritage left you, by the pioneers of this community ?
To the gross mind, who can see no good but in material things, this may seem an unimportant question. But to those who have studied the history of communities and States, in the light of their religious and moral principles, the question is not unimportant. Thave heard the remark made, sinco I came here, " It is our railroad that has created our prosperity." But, though not as large a place, it was the center of a prosperous community, before a railroad was thought of in the dreams of the most sanguine.
It has been my lot to have lived the life of a pioneer. To have been borne on the advance wave of emigration ; to have seen the beginning of things, and actively to have participated in them, in five States; and I have learned that it is not richness of soil, or material wealth alone, that make a prosperous community. I can point you to towns situated on leading thoroughfares of business and travel, with material advantages equal to this, that never can be prosperous till a better raco, like Israel, shall crowd off those miserable Canaanites, and form a better community.
The founders of communities leave their impress upon those communities, that seems ineffaceable from generation to generation. It seems to have been incorporated with the laws of our being, that what was the free will of the ancestor, becomes the destiny of his posterity. It was not an arbitrary decree, that "the iniquities of the fathers should be visited npon the children, unto the third aud fourth generation." It was, rather, the enunciation of an existing fact, growing ont of the nature of man, discerni -
71
WADSWORTH MEMORIAL.
ble without the light of revelation; seen more clearly, indeed, where that light has never shone ; like the writing with phosphorus upon the wall, the more legible the thick- er the darkness ; while with a free Bible and the Sabbath worship, if there has ever been an exception to the script- ural rule, "Happy is the people whose God is the LORD," the historian has failed to record it. I can see where the elements of prosperity came from, long before the build- ing of the railroad, or the discovery of your mines.
I will suppose-a thing that I have more than once seen -- that the first business house had been only a grog-shop, and the people for miles around had had no other resort on the Sabbath than that sink of pollution; that the Sabbath worship had been only Bachanal orgies-would it have been the prosperous, pleasant, desirable location we now find it ? It might have attracted business and intelligence by its natural advantages, but it would have obtained u good and desirable population only by a better class buy - ing out the impoverished settlers, who, with their equally worthless children, whose only inheritance had been sin and shame, would have moved on, to curse some other place. You have, many of you, seen just such places. I have seen scores of them.
Though, before the agitation of the temperance question. ardent spirits were in common use, the town never had one of those unmitigated curses, that, fifty years ago, made so many neighborhoods to be moral wastes; that brought a thriftless, hopeless, drunken rabble around them, as crows and buzzards flock around a putrid carcass. I mean a country distillery, or "stillhouse." as it was then called. Instead of that, from the first. the worship of God was established. To-day, all unite in the most affecting trib- ute of respect to those old Christian pioneers, who, like the father of the faithful, erected the altar of God wher- ever they went. The foundation of the prosperity of the place was laid in the observance of the Sabbath, and the
72
WADSWORTH MEMORIAL.
erection of the log schoolhouse, in the wilderness, to serve the double purpose of a seminary of learning, and a sanctuary for the pure worship of God.
The first religious meeting was held at the house of Oli- ver Durham, in July, 1814. The attendance was by the families of Messrs. Dean and Durham, and Mr. Salmon Warner, a brother-in-law of Mr. Dean, and father-in-law of Mr. Durham, who had visited the place to select a farm for himself. Moving there the next February, regular prayer-meetings were established at his house ; so that pub- lic worship may be considered to have been established in February, 1815, the familes of the first three settlers composing the assembly ; that of Mr. Dean being of the Baptist, and those of Mr. Warner and Mr. Durham of the Methodist denomination. These meetings were continued at the house of Mr. Warner, until the erection of the first schoolhouse, in 1816. In May of that year, emigrants from Connecticut, the families of Frederick Brown, Benjamin Agard, and Joseph Loomis, having arrived, they with some other new arrivals, helped to sustain these meetings.
I have heard my father, in my youthful days, relate the pleasing incident of his first introduction to Mr. Warner, and the arrangement they made together to set up the Sab- bath worship, in a more public and permanent manner. He had just arrived the previous week, and with his fam- ily was staying at the house of Benjamin Agard, who had preceeded him a few months. Hearing that religious meetings were then held at the house of a man by the name of Warner, the three families went on Sabbath morn- ing, through the woods to his house. The meeting was conducted by Mr. Warner : those who were singers assist- ing in that part of the worship, and my father taking part in speaking and prayer.
After the meeting. Mr. Warner called my father into the other part of his double log house, for private conference. "First," said he. " I wish to know who and what you are."
73
WADSWORTH MEMORIAL.
My father replied, " We are Congregationalists, from Con- necticut." Mr. Warner replied, "My parents were Con- gregationalists ; I am a Methodist, and have been almost alone in keeping up meetings the year past; and now I propose that we unite, and we can sustain meetings every Sabbath. I see you are singers ; that will be a great help. And now your people have a practice that I like; that of reading a sermon when you have no preacher. Have you any volumes of sermons you can bring to read from ?" My father replied, "I have, but many of the sermons are highly Calvinistic, and you may not approve their doc- trine ; so I will hand you the book beforehand, and you may select, such as you can call orthodox, and they shall be read." The next week, he handed Mr. Warner this vol- ume of sermons I have in my hand, and here exhibit to you. (Holding up an old volume of sermons, printed by Hudson and Goodwin, Hartford, Conn., 1797).
The meetings were conducted jointly by those two men, in the manner agreed upon, at the house of Mr. Warner, until the erection of what was called the south school- house, in the autumn following (1816), when they were held in the schoolhouse. Here began a fraternal union be- tween those two old pioneers, who may, without any injus- tice to others, be termed the first founders of the Method- ist and Congregational churches. A union that was never broken. Though then, as now, and always, there were narrow-minded bigots who sought to break up such a union ; though an outside influence was brought to bear so powerfully as to compel a separation about a year after- wards, the particulars of which I need not give to the pub- lic, nothing ever occurred to create any estrangement or jealousy between those two old fathers. To the end of their pilgrimage, they loved each other as brothers, and consulted together for the social, moral, and religious wel- fare of the settlement.
In 1816, a Methodist class was formed, consisting of Sal-
74
WADSWORTH MEMORIAL.
mon Warner, Mrs. Lucina Warner, Miss Harriet Warner, Oliver Durham and Mrs. Lamira Durham, Wm. H. Wright and wife, and Mrs. Polly Kirkum. As no record remains, the name of the minister who organized the class is not preserved, nor can I learn the names of the first Methodist preachers, except Ezra Booth, and Wm. Eddy.
The Congregational church was organized August 8, 1819, Rev. John Treat the officiating minister. The origin- al members were Frederick Brown, Mrs. Chloe S. Brown, Augustus Mills, Mrs. Martha Mills, George Lyman, Mrs. Ophelia Lyman, Benjamin Agard, Sherman Loomis, and Jacob Lindley.
On the 25th of Aug., 1817, a Union church and society was formed, by members of the German Reformed, and Lutheran denominations. The names of the original mem- bers can not be obtained. The elders were Peter Waltz, sı., and Christian Everhard. Trustees, Jacob Everhard, Adam Baughman. Benjamin Faust, first pastor.
A Baptist church was organized under the pastoral charge of Obadiah Newcomb, in 1821. This was afterward the nucleus of the Disciple church. Of its original mem- bers were Obadiah Newcomb and wife, William Eyles and wife, Samuel Green and wife, and Mrs. Battison and Mr. and Mrs. Donor, of Chippewa. Another Baptist church was afterwards organized in the northwest part of the town, by Elder Dimmock, in 1836. The original members of the Disciple church were Obadiah Newcomb, Satira Newcomb, Matilda Newcomb, Victory Clark, Samuel Green, A. B. Green, and Polly Eyles.
About the time of the separation of the Methodists from the Congregationalists, Mr. Brown was joined by George Lyman, a young man, from Torrington, Connecticut, who took an active part in sustaining the meetings. They were held every Sabbath, twice a day, in the old style of New England. After singing and prayer, and singing again, the leader either read a sermon, or called upon some other
75
WADSWORTH MEMORIAL.
to read. The most frequent reader was Sherman Loomis, whose musical voice and rhetorical delivery is still one of the pleasant memories of those days. Of those who were occasionally readers, I can recall George Kirkum, Harry Lucas, Lemuel North, John Sprague, Allen Pardee, Dr. Geo. K. Pardee, Aaron Pardee, and George Lyman.
On the erection of the next schoolhouse, then called the north schoolhouse, the meetings were held alternately in each place. From 1821 to 1824, Mr. Lyman was absent from the township, and Mr. Brown was assisted in con- ducting the meetings by Ebenezer Andrus and William Graham, of Chippewa, a portion of the time being occu- pied by Rev. Obadiah Newcomb ; the Baptists and Congre- gationalists uniting in his support. He preached a part of the time in Norton and Coventry. He was a man of abil- ity, much respected, and his services much demanded on funeral occasions.
The Congregational church, through the Deacons' meet- ings, as they were called, was the first to maintain public worship on the Sabbath, for several of the first years of the history of the township. Through these early beginnings I have sketched, the Sabbath has ever been kept as a day of rest and worship, and a moral and reli- gious atmosphere created; the soil broken up and pre- pared, from which the churches of to-day have sprung up and grown. It is no injustice to others to say that Salmon Warner and Frederick Brown were the ones who cast the grain of mustard seed into this field, which their subse- quent co-workers nourished, till it has grown into a good- ly tree, whose various branches have spread far enough to furnish a grateful shelter for Christians of different names.
The Western part of the township, and Eastern part of Guilford were settled by members of the Mennonite de- nomination. I have no record of their churches (embrac- ing each of the divisions known by that name). The Col- lege established by that denomination, stands within th
76
WADSWORTH MEMORIAL.
limits of this village; their only one in the United States. The Universalists maintained preaching for several years, from 1824. Their first minister was a Mr. Williams, who afterwards became a minister of the Disciple church. The next was a Mr. Tracy. The next, a Mr. Rodgers. But no church was ever formed.
The first Congregational minister who preached statedly in Wadsworth, was Rev. Joseph H. Breck, in 1823, altern- ating with Harrisville. In 1826, Rev. Amasa Jerome was settled as pastor of the church. He was installed Novem- ber 1, 1826. The services were held in Benjamin Agard's barn; sermon by Rev. Giles H. Cowles, D. D., of Austins- burg; text-2nd Cor., v : 20. The choir was led by Rich- ard Clark, James Newcomb playing the bass-viol. (This was the first use of a musical instrument in public wor- ship). In 1828, declining health compelled his resignation, and he returned to Connecticut, where he died, about three years afterwards. The next settled pastor was Rev. Gil- bert Fay, from 1830 to his death, in 1835. He was a good man, highly respected by all classes of people. The next year, the pulpit was supplied by Revs. Asaph Boutell, and W. Johnson ; then Revs. Boswell Brooks, and Joel Talcott, each one year; then Rev. A. K. Wright, who died in 1844.
Up to 1828, the Congregational church met, on alternate Sundays, at the the south schoolhouse, on the corner oppo- site the Spragues, and the north schoolhouse, near Judge Eyles's. The Baptists used the north schoolhouse, and the Methodists the south. on alternate Sabbaths.
In 1828, a log house belonging to Judge Brown, at the Center, and used for a schoolhouse, began to be used, and in 1829, the north schoolhouse went out of use, and the meetings were held at the Center alone. The Methodists meeting at the town-line schoolhouse, and the west school- house, on the Medina road, and the Disciples meeting at the town-line, and the north schoolhouse, near Lemuel North's.
77
WADSWORTHI MEMORIAŁ.
The first house of worship was the Lutheran and Ger- man Reformed log meeting-house, built on the Chippewa road, on the line between Wadsworth and Chippewa. The next, the old Congregational church at the Center, on the site of the present one, built in 1830. The Methodist house was built in 1835.
It may be interesting to the present generation to give a history of the building of the first Congregational house ; the first house of worship erected within the limits of the township. In March, 1820, finding a house of worship a necessity, a society meeting was called, and it was resolved to build a house 24 by 36 feet in dimensions, to build it with our own hands. We met at the house of F. Brown, a company of thirteen. Frederick Brown, Joseph Loomis, Sherman Loomis, Benjamin Agard, Roman L. Agard, Geo. Lyman, William Beach, Levi Blakeslee, James Platt, Geo. Walcott, Caleb Battles, John Brown, and Edward Brown. We felled, scored, and hewed the timber, drew it to its place-Mr. Battles and Hezekiah Ward laying out the work-framed it with our own hands, with the exception that some other citizens worked with us a part of the time, of whom, I recollect Cyrus Hard, H. A. Mills, Alvin Agard; Dr. G. K. Pardee, and some others, contributing money and nails. The lumber was procured in the same way ; cutting the trees, hauling them to the sawmill, and each one sawing his own part of the lumber, Messrs. Loomis and Beach, the proprietors, giving the use of the mill. The first lumber was burned in kiln-drying, neces- sitating the hauling and sawing of a new lot of logs, in midsummer. The shingles, also, were made by the same hands, from chestnut trees, and the shingles, siding, and lathing put on by them. A joiner was hired to lay the floor, and make the doors and windows. All else was done by volunteer work.
This was in the early stage of the temperance reform, and it was resolved to raise the frame without whisky, a
78
WADSWORTH MEMORIAL.
thing that had never been attempted before. Notice was sent throughout the town, inviting everybody to come, say- ing no spirits would be furnished, but a good dinner pro- vided by the ladies. Some refused to come, but when the day arrived, a large crowd was upon the ground, and never had a building been put up with such ease and facility. All repaired to the rich dinner, provided by the Wads- worth ladies, with the best of feeling. The day was closed with an old-time game of baseball, and the new fashion established, of raisings without intoxicating liq- uors.
I have thus given you a sketch of the early religious his- tory of Wadsworth, illustrating these great truths, "that God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation, he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of Him." That costly temples, or an ordained or appointed ministry, though among the important means of grace, are not absolutely essential to the maintenance and true preach- ing of the gospel. The gospel preached in low, hesitating words, in his own house, or by the sick-bed, or at the fune- ral in the log cabin, by Salmon Warner, was refreshing as draughts of pure water to the pilgrim in the desert. And although an ordained minister of the gospel, in due for- mality, I can never feel myself more truly called of God as his minister, than was F'rederick Brown, in these wilds, almost three-score years ago. As I listened to those sweet- toned Sabbath bells that this lovely morning rung their musical call to pleasing, solemn worship, what a mingled train of solemn, pleasing, and sad emotions filled my thoughts! How the buried memories of half a century welled up from the depths of the soul! I was more than twelve years old before I ever heard the sound of the church-going bell, and that in a distant town. It was many years before I ever saw a house that was erected especially for the worship of God. Yet my memory can not go back to the time when I did not expect to repair to
79
WADSWORTH MEMORIAL.
the rough, log schoolhouse sanctuary ; and I have thought that had our spiritual eyes then been opened, as were those of the servant of Elisha, we should have seen angel- ic listeners, as those old sermons were read, and the "Glory of the LORD " resting upon those rude white-wood tables, as truly as on the mercy-seat, in the holy of holies. No memory of my childhood now comes up before me, in the day dream or night vision, surrounded by such a halo of heavenly light as that of the family group-the mother on horseback, the father and children threading their way along that well-worn forest path of two miles to the north schoolhouse. When the squirrel chattered a good-morn- ing from the tree above us, and the wild bird sang a vol- untary, as our prelude to prepare the heart to worship God; when, a barefooted boy, I often stopped and sat down to pick the spines of the chestnut burs from my feet, and then ran on, in gleefulness that would some- times break forth in such boisterousness as to call forth the gentle reminder, from my father, that it was the Sabbath day. And now, let me drop the remark, that I have some- times heard, with pain, the Sabbath keeping views of Judge Brown caricatured, as though he held it a day of such awful solemnity as made it a burden, such as not even a Jew of old could have borne; that even set sacri- fice before mercy ; but the best commentary upon this, as upon most of the caricatures so fashionable upon the Puri- tan Sabbath, is that his own family never made the discov- ery. No day of the week was one of such home delight, towards which we looked with such eager joy, in that day when parents and children must fill up the week with wearisome toil, as the Sabbath.
Then, citizens of Wadsworth, was the seed-sowing time in the wilderness. You are reaping the harvest. The ma- tured fruit always testifies to the sowing, whether the sower wills it or not. You enjoy the fruits. I leave it to you to say whether good seed was sown. Ah! again and
80
WADSWORTH MEMORIAL.
again have I found my self-command of small account to me, as I have grasped the hand of the octogenarian, and as he looked into my face, already beginning to show the furrows of time's ploughing, and the harrowings of care, and said with choking emotion, "How you remind me of your father, that good old man whose memory is so pre- cious ;" fully as often, too, from those who differed from him on almost every subject, in former years. I ask no better monument to his memory. It will live in hearts in higher worlds, long after marble has crumbled to dust. Why do we hear the names of Salmon Warner and Frede- rick Brown still repeated with reverence, so many years after they have rested from their labors? Because their works do follow them. I do not mention them so prom- inently to set them above other noble workers, of differ- ent names and denominations, but because they planted. the first seed. One old veteran,* now beyond four-score years, then a youthful co-worker, who took up the burden after they laid it down, still lingers, waiting to see a few more sheaves gathered, and report the harvest. Other pil- grims, who traveled the same road with them, rest in the land of Beulah, waiting for the messenger. And soon, the company on the shore will wave their adieu as the boat leaves with the last of the pioneer band. May no degen- erate descendant ever bring a blot upon their honored names, and may the time never come when those now liv- ing here, or those to rise up hereafter, shall blush to own that Wadsworth was their birthplace, or their home.
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.