USA > Pennsylvania > Wayne County > Honesdale > History of the First Presbyterian society of Honesdale > Part 2
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The Moravian church at Dreher was established in 1828, by the pioneer German settlers at Newfoundland or German Flats. The church was about the first building erected and around it the little colony gathered. The church and Sunday school are both well attended.
PIONEER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCHES.
The first Presbyterian minister in Northeastern Pennsyl- vania, was Rev. John Sergeant, who, in company with Jonathan Edwards, had been laboring among the Housatonic Indians in Massachusetts, who visited Wyoming and preached to the In- dians there in 1741. Of this visit Mr. Sergeant says: "Accord- ing to his purpose he set out on his journey, accompanied by some Indians, to the Shawanoos, May 26, 1741. June 3, 1741, he arrived at Susquehanna. June 7 he preached to the the In- dians living on the Delaware river," as he returned from Sus- quehanna. Mr. Sergeant subsequently wrote an account of his
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HONESDALE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
mission to George Drummond at Edinburgh, Scotland. He was a Presbyterian minister educated at Yale. These facts are taken from Rev. N. G. Parke's Historical Discourse.
This county was visited from time to time by Congrega- tional and Presbyterian missionaries. In 1797, Rev. Daniel Thatcher, a minister sent out by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian church, visited this region and administered the communion to members residing in Mt. Pleasant.
The pioneer Connecticut settlers were largely Congrega- tionalists or Presbyterians. The first Congregational or Pres- byterian church in Northeastern Pennsylvania was organized at Wilkesbarre, in 1763, by the first settlers in the Wyoming Valley. Others were organized at Great Bend, in 1789, Wy- sox, 1791, and Wyalusing, 1793. The first in Wayne county was the church of Salem and Palmyra, organized in 1808 by Rev. David Harrowar, and its constituent members were Heze- kiah Bingham, H. Bingham, Jr., Joseph Woodbridge, Ashbel Woodbridge, Jesse Miller, Rachel Weston, Martha Stevens and Ann Woodbridge. The first settled pastor of the churches in Wayne county was Rev. Worthington Wright. He resided in Bethany and preached in Salem, Palmyra, Canaan and Beth- any. He came as a Congregational missionary from Connecti- cut and after he had preached a few months residents of Dy- berry, Salem, Palmyra and Canaan subscribed $257 for his salary. The persons subscribing were the pioneer promoters of Presbyterianism in Wayne. The parties who contributed from Dyberry were Jason Torrey, E. Kellogg, Isaac Dimmick, Solomon Moore, Randall Wilmot, B. Doughty, Ephraim Dim- mick, Charles Hole, Caleb Hole, Amos Polley, Peter Smith, David Wilder, Ephraim Torrey, Abisha Woodward, Isaac Sea- man, George Seely & Bro., Sylvanus Seely, Isaac Oakley, Cooper Osborn, R. Beardslee, John Woodward, A. Stryker, J. Schenck, Enos Woodward, Timothy Gustin, Lewis Collins, Isaac Brink, Aaron French, Moses Sampson, Stephen Kimble, Walter Kimble, Benj. Kimble, Charles Kimble, Augustus Collins; from Palmyra, H. Bingham, John Pellet, Eph. Kimble, L. Labar,
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PIONEER CHURCHES AND SUNDAY SCHOOLS
George Labar, Robert Rupert, Joseph Atkinson, Jonathan Brink and Simeon Ansley; from Canaan, Thomas Starkweather, Asa Stanton, Charles Stanton, James Carr, Silas Woodward, Jesse Morgan, Conrad Swingle, George Morgan, John Folis, George Rix, Samuel Davis and Fred Swingle; from Salem, Joseph Woodbridge, Seth Goodrich, A. Woodbridge, Jesse Miller, William Woodbridge, Elijah Weston, William Hollister, Aslı- bel Miller, Henry Stevens and Henry Herman. Mr. Wright was installed at the Court House in Bethany, at which place he made his residence. He labored for two years when ill health compelled him to retire from the field. Rev. Phineas
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SALEM PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.
Camp preached occasionally about 1818. The Salem and Pal- myra church was organized in 1832, as the Presbyterian church of Salem. Rev. Moses Jewell was the first installed pastor in 1833. He was followed by Rev. Joseph Barlow. Rev. A. R. Raymond preached in this church from 1844 to 1863. He remained in the place after he stopped preaching and died there at an advanced age. Students from Princeton and Union Semi- naries have supplied the pulpit summers in recent years. Its
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HONESDALE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Elders have been George Goodrich, Luther Weston, Elijah Weston, John A. Cook, A. M. Nicholson, John Nash, Thomas Cook and J. T. Stocker.
A number of ministers labored in Bethany until Rev. E. O. Ward was called to the pastorate in 1853 and continued in that field until old age compelled him to discontinue preaching. During the forty years or more in which he was connected with the church he was a model of earnestness, consistency and perseverance. The Elders of this church have been Virgil M. Dibol, Jason Torrey, Pope Bushnell, Loring Parsons, T. S. McLaughy, A. Collins, Eli Henshaw, E. Dimmick, S. Bartlett, S. Langdon, N. Kellogg, E. D. Bunnell, E. Reed, E. S. Day, J. Bodie, J. B. Ward, L. C. Fuller, S. R. Isham. The present Elders are D. W. Henshaw, Theodore Day, John Lippert and L. O. Mumford. The Bethany church was erected in 1822-3 and it is probably the oldest church building in the county. A Congregational church was organized in Mt. Pleasant by Rev. Ebenezer Kingsbury in 1814 at the house of John Tiffany. The constituent members were Anson Chittenden and wife, James Bigelow and wife, Polly Tanner, Mary Freeman, Lydia Tiffany, Edward Dimmick and wife, Ransford Smith and wife, A. Hubbell and wife, B. Burritt and wife and Ruth Bucking- ham. In 1831 this church was re-organized as a Presbyterian church. Its first session was Elders A. Chittenden, E. Wilcox, J. Eaton, Dr. Urial Wright, H. W. Stone, M. Dimmick and Asa Smith. The following ministers have served the church: Reverends Kingsbury, Wright, Williams, Goodman, Thompson, Campbell, Richardson, Boyce, McReynolds, Higbie and Rev. Samuel Whaley who served eleven years. There have been many others since then. The present session is composed of Elders James H. Kennedy and E. A. Wright. Their first church was erected in 1830. The second in 1867.
Rev. Joseph Barlow, of Salem, ministered in Sterling about 1827. The Presbyterians or Congregationalists were Phineas Howe and his wife, L. B. Adams, Margaret Adams and Henry Adams. Rev. A. R. Raymond continued to preach there and a
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BETHANY PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
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HONESDALE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
church was erected in 1850. The church was re-organized as Presbyterian church in 1871 by Rev. Yates Hickey, Presby- terian missionary, and Benjamin Correll was installed as Elder.
The Hawley Presbyterian church was organized by Rev. Burr Baldwin in 1849. Its Elders since its organization have been John Decker, E. G. Coutant, Abraham Eade, John Nyce, S. Z. Lord, Joseph Solliday, Allyn Babcock and M. M. Tread- well.
A Presbyterian church was organized at Waymart in 1835 and there are Presbyterian societies at Prompton, Sherman, Little Equinunk, Damascus and Cold Springs.
In noting the struggles of these pioneer missionaries one can but feel that it took great courage and perseverance, as well as faith and piety, to lead them to travel through dense forests and face untold dangers and hardships to preach the gospel to the Indians and among the settlers. Count Zinzendorf, that remarkable convert to Christianity, crossed the ocean and braved many dangers, in his great zeal for his Master. In one of these trips he passed through Cobb's Gap and if he followed that old Indian trail that leads through Salem he came within fifteen miles of where Honesdale now is. He traveled through that dense forest of hemlock with laurel and rhododendron under- growth known as the Great Swamp. As he pursued his jour- ney through this lonely wilderness, he must have felt his need of Divine guidance and may he not have been inspired by his own beautiful hymn, "Jesus, still lead on"-
Jesus, still lead on, Till our rest be won ; And although the way be cheerless, We will follow, calm and fearless : Guide us by thy hand To our fatherland.
If the way be drear, If the foe be near, Let not faithless fears o'er take us, Let not faith and hope forsake us, For, through many a foe, To our home we go.
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HONESDALE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
PIONEER SUNDAY SCHOOLS.
The movement started by Robert Raikes in 1781 soon crossed the ocean and January 11, 1791, a First Day or Sun- day School Society was formed in Philadelphia. The Sunday School as it now exists is a developement from the Raikes idea of paid teachers. He gathered poor children into schools for instruction in the rudiments of an education not neglecting Bible instruction. There was great opposition to the Sunday School movement at first, and the Sunday School Magazine in 1827, in an article designed to answer objections, sums them up as follows: "It is suggested that as the children of drunkards will be amongst the first served, drunken parents, being thus more at liberty, will become more drunken. 2. That children of the poor will thus be in a measure provided for, poor peo- ple will become more improvident, and the number of paupers will increase. 3. That children being removed so long and so frequently from their mothers, the fine chord of mutual sympathy, which naturally exists between them, and which is the security of their virtue, will be weakened or broken. 4. That such schools will conduce to improvident marriages by removing anxiety respecting children. 5. That the pres- ence of children imposes much restraint upon the wickedness of parents, this wickedness will increase when that restraint is removed by the absence of children." We smile at these puer- ile suggestions today. In some parts of the state there was objection to women teachers especially for boys. In the days when the school teacher with his ferule and bundle of sprouts from the neighboring woods was a terror to the unruly, the boy who would be controlled by a woman was looked upon as un- worthy to be classed as a boy. The floggings of those days was the heroic part of a boy's education, but our Yankee ances- tors had fought that battle and won in New England, before they came into the Beech Woods; and females were recognized as being the best of teachers. But some conscientious people were troubled about having a school on Sunday. Sally Brown,
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PIONEER CHURCHES AND SUNDAY SCHOOLS
now Mrs. Weston, aged 100, faithfully kept her promise to notify her schoolmates to meet at Mrs. Woodbridge's to organ- ize a Sunday School in Salem in 1818 but she says she was troubled all the week, feeling that it was wrong to have school on Sunday.
The General Assembly of the Presbyterian church in its narrative of the state of religion in 1816 refers to the Sunday Schools as follows: "Sunday Schools also, occupy a promi- nent place in the debates and occurrences of the past year. In several portions of our land these schools have been constituted for the instruction of the poor and ignorant. The moments of holy leisure which occur on the Lord's day are appropriated to this laudable undertaking. Multitudes of the young have been led to the fountains of human knowledge and taught to read the word of life." After stating that there were 5,000 children and aged persons in Philadelphia and 4,000 in New York, taught in this novel manner, they conclude by awarding a meed of applause where it has been so richly merited by de- claring that "the daughters of Zion have done nobly in this undertaking." Two years after this, in 1818, the Sunday School movement reached the Beech Woods. Considering the fact that telegraphs, telephones, railroads and newspapers in the modern sense, were unknown, that it took three months for the news of the battle of Waterloo to reach this region, the Sun- day School movement made rapid progress in this new country.
The first Sunday Schools in Wayne county were organized in the year 1818. There were three Sunday Schools organized that year at Bethany, Canaan and Salem-and the Sunday School at Montrose, Susquehanna county, was organized the same year. The Sunday School at Canaan was held in a log school house near Canaan Four Corners and in 1886 there were living of those who attended the school, Moses Swingle, Polly Griffing Bidwell, Elijah A. Freeman, Abigail Frisbie and Har- riet Watts. They came from long distances, some traveling six miles. A reward was offered for the one who would com- mit to memory and recite the most verses. Abigail Frisbie
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PIONEER CHURCHES AND SUNDAY SCHOOLS.
recited 3,062 verses on eight Sundays, beginning with the first chapter of Matthew and ending with the eighth chapter of John, for which she received a bible and hymn book furnished by the Ladies' Bible class of Philadelphia. When 82 years of age as she related this incident she could still repeat many of these verses.
Ann Woodbridge, widow of Joseph Woodbridge, a lead- ing Congregationalist, went to Connecticut after her husband's death in 1816, and while there she attended a Sunday School in Hartford. After she came home in 1817 or 18 she asked Sally Brown then aged about 14, to notify her young friends and come to her house the following Sunday for the purpose of organizing a Sunday School. Miss Brown consented to do so and appeared the next Sunday with her little friends Laura Goodrich, Ambrose Nicholson, Malvina Potter, Betsey Hollis- ter, Abigail Hollister and Anna Wright. The school was held in Widow Woodbridge's log house. She had the children all stand in a row and read the Testament, of which she had a few copies. She also had several John Rogers' primers, con- taining catechism and commandments, which she loaned to them. The Sally Brown that notified the children is Sally Weston still living in Salem aged 100. Nearly all who at- tended this school as well as that in Canaan and Bethany lived to advanced ages. Surely all the good children do not die young.
Bethany was the county seat and the school organized there was more influential than the schools at Canaan and Salem. Virgil M. Dibol, one of the Elders of the Bethany church, in passing through Florida, Orange county, N. Y., first learned of Sunday Schools in 1818, and when he came home he told Jason Torrey, Sheldon Norton and others and they decided to organ- ize a Sunday School in the Court House. Pursuant to notice July 19, 1818, there assembled in the Court House some five or six teachers and about thirty scholars who organized a school under superintendence of V. M. Dibol. The teachers were Sheldon Norton, William and Ephraim Torrey, Josiah Purdy,
THE FIRST PARSONAGE
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PIONEER CHURCHES AND SUNDAY SCHOOLS
Miss Lydia Muzzy, afterwards wife of Dr. Wright, of Salem, and Miss Maria Sandford. Among the pupils were John, Stephen and Asa Torrey, Nathaniel A. Woodward, George W. Woodward, afterwards Chief Justice of Pennsylvania, John Miller, Jr., Albert Jones, Erwin Jones, Alva N. Jones, David Wilmot, of Wilmot Proviso fame, Rockwell Bunnell, Henry Bunnell, Reuben Gleason, Daniel Blandin and many others. This school organized an Association in 1819 for the organiz- ing of schools elsewhere and through the work of this organ- ization Sunday Schools were started in other parts of the county. Rev. E. O. Ward superintended this school for more than thirty years, and it is still in existence. There was a Sun- day School Union movement in the county about 1830, but the greatest organized Sunday School movement in Wayne was in 1871 when the Wayne County Sabbath School Association was organized in the Presbyterian church at Honesdale. Rev. J. O. Woodruff was the first president and W. B. Holmes was secretary. Conventions were held throughout the county and nearly every township was organized. This Association did good work for about fifteen years when it ceased to exist. Dr. Dunning, Rev. W. Gallant, S. D. Ward, Stephen Torrey, George F. Bentley and many others worked in these conventions. Among the presidents were J. O. Woodruff, S. D. Ward, H. M. Crydenwise, W. B. Holmes, Rev. J. A. Metz, John T. Ball, several times; W. D. Curtis, James T. Rodman, H. B. Larabee. Wayne county is well supplied with Sunday Schools and the International System of Sunday School lessons is generally in use. Among those who planted schools in the county, Rev. Stephen Torrey stands preeminent as an untiring worker and organizer of schools.
It is remarkable that the Sunday School in the Wilkes- barre Presbyterian church was organized in 1818. One of the most prominent men in this school was Judge Oristus Collins, who lived to be 92, being a son of Dr. Lewis Collins, of Wayne county. The Sunday School in the old historic church at Wyalusing was also started in 1818.
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HONESDALE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
YOUNG PEOPLE'S SOCIETIES.
The first Young People's Society in Wayne county was organized during Dr. Dunning's pastorate in the Presbyterian church at Honesdale in 1876, and John T. Ball was its first president. It had a membership of 136 persons. This Society was reorganized under a new constitution modeled after the Young People's Society in Dr. Cuyler's church in Brooklyn, in 1884. It had a membership of 134 and prayer meetings were conducted according to a printed list of topics very similar to the Christian Endeavor meetings. In 1889 this Society was changed to a Christian Endeavor Society with Rev. W. H. Swift as president. The first Christian Endeavor Society in Wayne county was organized in the Presbyterian church at Hawley, April 8, 1886. The second was at Starrucca, April 17, 1888. There are in the county societies at Hawley, Honesdale, Star- rucca, Bethany, Milanville, Seelyville, Pleasant Mount, Clinton, Aldenville, Cold Springs, Newfoundland, Maple Grove, Riley- ville, Prompton, Jones Lake, Hollisterville, Lake Ariel, Gravity, East Sterling, Tyler Hill, South Clinton, Pink, Sherman and Winwood, with an aggregate membership of about 900.
A district organization was effected at Hawley in 1893, W. W. Wood being the first president. Miss Ella Teeter acted as secretary for a number of years. The Christian Endeavor Societies are interdenominational, each society being subject to the particular church to which it is attached.
Epworth League-Shortly after the Christian Endeavor movement began the Methodist organized the Epworth League movement and there are societies at Beech Lake, Bethany, Ariel, Arlington, Canaan, Carley Brook, Damascus, Gouldsborough, Hawley, Honesdale, Lake Como, Pleasant Mount, Rileyville, Salem, Sterling and Waymart, with an aggregate membership of about 700. The Epworth League like the Christian En- deavor movement is intended to train young people in church work.
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THE CHURCH AND SESSION
CHAPTER II.
THE CHURCH AND SESSION.
Let children hear the mighty deeds Which God performed of old; Which in our younger years we saw And which our fathers told.
He bids us make his glories known, His works of power and grace; And we'll convey his wonders down, Through every rising race. -Watts.
One hundred years ago, the valley where Honesdale is now so neatly nestled beneath the hills, was an unbroken wilderness. Here the panther screamed and the wolf howled unmolested by man. The pioneers that found their way up the Lackawaxen river followed a path around Irving Cliff. In 1811 the Beth- any and Dingman's Choice Turnpike was incorporated and a road was built up along the east side of the Lackawaxen and Dyberry rivers to Bethany, but Dyberry Forks remained a wilderness until 1815 when the timber was felled on two or three acres at the forks on the north side of the Lackawaxen near its junction with the Dyberry, but still nothing further was done until after Maurice Wurts and others had determined to build a slack water canal from this point to tide water on the Hudson; then the work of clearing off the forests began in earnest.
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HONESDALE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
THE OLD TABERNACLE.
NOTE .- The above cut of the Old Tabernacle is from a free hand draw- iug by William H. Ham, reproduced from recollection and description as given in Dr. Duuniug's Historical Discourse. Also from the recollections of George H. Mayhew, John Geary, T. J. Ham, Horace C. Hand and Alfred Hand. The dimensions of the building, as originally erected, were 16 feet by 48 feet with a shed roof. It was in this condition when Rev. Gideon N. Judd preached in it; also when Rev. Joel Campbell organized the First Presbyterian church of Honesdale. It was enlarged by building the other half making a building 32 feet by 48 feet. The strip down through the center of the gable shows how it was spliced together. The entrance was from the gable towards the river. The view given is from the road which is now very much as it was then as you approach the building from Main street with Irving Cliff for a back ground, The oak and pine on the point are remembered by old residents. After the Presbyterians abandoned the building it was used by the Baptists and others. Lorenzo Dow, that eccen- tric Methodist preacher held a service here and in order to escape the curious crowd jumped out of the window and passed on his way. Rev. William Raymond is remembered by L. S. Collins as holding revival meet- ings here. The green about the Tabernacle would be filled with vehicles and teams, some of them ox teams, on such occasions. It was also used for a school house, and youthful oratory in declamation and debate was heard here. As churches were erected the glory departed from the Old Tabernacle and it was put to baser uses such as storage of hay, etc. Evidence of the foundations still remain and the location in the picture is correct. The building is gone, together with those that worshipped there, but the church organized by nine persons with great faith in the future of the town as well as of the church, still remains, a monument to their faith and devotion.
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THE CHURCH AND SESSION
This region was not neglected by the settlers because it was unknown, for John Penn, a grandson of William Penn, had issued a warrant for the Indian Orchard tract to Jonas Seely, of Berks county, and the survey of that tract extending about seven miles down the Lackawaxen river, and containing 8,373 acres, had been made. In 1789 the title of Jonas Seely was sold by the sheriff of Northampton county to William Moore Smith, who, in 1791, sold it to William Hamilton, of Philadelphia. In 1810 William Hamilton sold 152 acres from the northwestern corner of this land to Mordecai Roberts, a Quaker who had acted as a messenger for General Washington during the Revolutionary war, and who as a consequence, had a price set on his head by the British. In 1822 he conveyed this land to his son Mordecai Roberts, Jr., who cut some of the heavy timber on the tract and in June 1823 conveyed it to Samuel Kimble, who appears to have commenced immediately to make a clearing in the forest, and in 1824 or 25 had erected a house on the land. This house was made of thick plank halved together at the corners of the building and was built in the form of what is known as a blockhouse. It stood back from Church street between Fifth and Sixth streets and was the first house in Honesdale. In a short time Kimble sold 107 acres from the northern part of this land to Maurice Wurts, who in turn conveyed it to the Delaware and Hudson Canal Co. The northern line of this tract extends nearly east and west through the center of Central Park.
The northern part of the town is located on a tract sur- veyed on a warrant from the Surveyor General's office, in March 1803, to William Schoonover, who on the 23d of April 1804, conveyed the southern part, including the portion within the present boundaries of Honesdale, to Jason Torrey. Central Park was donated to the borough by Jason Torrey and the Delaware and Hudson Canal Co.
The definite location of the canal, making Dyberry Forks the point where the boats would be loaded, gave an immediate
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HONESDALE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
impetus to the work of felling the timber and clearing the forest from the ground where Honesdale now stands. Jason Torrey had his son Stephen Torrey here superintending the work, and in April and May of 1826 a portion of the land, at the junction of the rivers where the trees had been felled in 1815, was cleared of logs and brush and cultivated, and in the autumn of that year a boarding house was erected on the Lackawaxen not far from the Dyberry, and William R. McLaury and his wife occupied it and kept boarders. This house, which was subsequently enlarged and known as the Tabernacle, was the first house north of the Lackawaxen and the second in Honesdale. If a monument is ever erected to the memory of the pioneers of Honesdale, this is the spot where it should be located. January 1, 1827, the felling of timber north of the Lackawaxen was prosecuted with vigor, and during the sum- mer of that year the village was plotted north of the West Branch, as they called it then. Charles Forbes erected the Wayne County House in the fall of 1827, and Isaac P. Foster built the substantial residence, now owned by his granddaughter Mrs. Horace Weston on the corner of Main and Park streets, the same fall. Early in 1828 the Delaware and Hudson com- menced to clear their land south of Ninth street, and late in that year that portion of the town south of Ninth street was plotted and building upon it commenced. In fact there were two villages started, the one situated north of the Lackawaxen on the Torrey land, and the other situated mostly south of Ninth street on the Delaware and Hudson land, but in the summer of 1829 the central part of the town, comprising the lands extending from Ninth street to the Lackawaxen was laid out. The first bridge across the Lackawaxen where Main street crosses it was built with log abutments and a log pier in the middle, in October 1827. This bridge connected the two villages which were rivals for many years.
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