USA > Pennsylvania > Chester County > Brandywine > History of the Presbyterian Church in the Forks of Brandywine, Chester County, Pa. (Brandywine Manor Presbyterian Church), from A.D. 1735 to A.D. 1885 : with biographical sketches of the deceased pastors of the church and of those who prepared for the Christian ministry under the direction of the Rev. Nathan Grier > Part 4
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in October, 1739, had been installed pastor of the church in Pequea. Being a zealous partisan of the New Side, and believing it to be his duty, as he said, to carry the Gospel to a people burdened with a life- less ministry, he intruded without hesitation within the bounds of Black's charge, and caused the es- trangement of many of his flock from their pastor. Black appealed to the Presbytery for redress, but An- derson refused to obey a citation to appear before that body.
In consequence of these alienations and dissensions, twelve charges against Mr. Black were presented to the Presbytery at its meeting in September, 1740. The principal of these charges were drunkenness, sowing dissensions among his people, and a neglect of ministerial work. In the beginning of the Novem- ber next following the Presbytery heard the charges, and rebuked, but did not suspend him.
As the manifest intention of the accusers of Mr. Black was to have his pulpit declared vacant, and the decision of the Presbytery did not accomplish that ob- ject, the charges, accompanied by the assertion that much important testimony had been kept back, were renewed at the meeting of Presbytery, in May, 1741. The Presbytery postponed the hearing until inquiries could be made on the spot, but, in deference to the importunities of his accusers, suspended him until the examination had taken place.
In the mean time the Synod, then the highest ju- dicial tribunal of the Presbyterian Church, met in Philadelphia, the celebrated Protest, signed by Robert Cross and others, was read, June 1, 1741, the New
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Brunswick brethren withdrew and formed a separate Synod, and the Presbyterian Church was "rent in twain."
In the following month the Presbytery met in this place, heard the testimony in support of the charges, and after a careful investigation, considered them unsustained, and restored Mr. Black. As a majority, however, of the congregation had attached themselves to the New Side, and those who remained were too few to support a stated ministry, the Presbytery dis- solved the pastoral relation.
In October, 1738, the people of Conewago asked and obtained leave to be erected into a congregation. They also received permission to build a meeting- house in what is now the southern part of Dauphin County .* August 1, 1741, they presented a call to Mr. Black to become their pastor. This he accepted at the meeting of Presbytery in the October following (27th), and was installed on the second Wednesday of May, 1742.
In 1743 he spent part of his time laboring in Central Virginia, then the missionary field of both branches of the Presbyterian Church. For reasons which have not been stated, he applied for a dissolu- tion of the pastoral relation in June, 1744, which the Presbytery refused.
March 26, 1745, he received a call from the congre-
* The congregation of Conewago remained but a comparatively short time as a distinct organization. The meeting-house, which stood near to where the turnpike road leading from Downingtown to Har- risburg crosses Conewago Creek, has long since disappeared. Traces of the graveyard belonging to it were visible in 1852.
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gations of North and of South Mountain, Virginia, and again asked to be released from his charge at Con- ewago. assigning as reasons for removal the weakness and fewness of the people. The next April Pres- bytery granted his request and assigned him to North and South Mountain. But his people at Conewago, desirous of retaining him, made proposals which were satisfactory, and he remained with them. The Pres- byterv, at its meeting in September, ordered him to be reprimanded for not obeying his instructions, but complied with the request of the Congregation of Conewago and reinstated him as their pastor.
Owing to the loss of a part of the Minutes of the Presbytery of Donegal, it cannot be ascertained when Mr. Black left Conewago. He seems, however, while occasionally supplying vacancies in Virginia, to have remained until the death of Hindman, whom he suc- ceeded in the pastorate of Rockfish and Mountain Plain, Virginia. This was probably in the latter part of 1746, or early in 1747. During his connec- tion with Rockfish and Mountain Plain, he supplied several of the vacant congregations in North Caro- lina.
In 1756 the Presbytery of Hanover, New Side, appointed supplies for Rockfish, and directed them "not to interfere with Mr. Black and his labors." These orders availed but little, for at a meeting, in July, 1759, of the lately reconstructed Presbytery of Hanover, with which he was then connected, "Some charges were brought against him by portions of his congregations as reasons why the Presbytery should send them another pastor." The Presbytery
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proceeded with great tenderness and caution, and the difficulties were in part adjusted, when he resigned. After this, although occasionally occupying the pul- pit, he appears to have remained without any stated charge until his death, which occurred August 9, 1770.
In justice to Mr. Black, it should be borne in mind that although his conduct on some occasions was blameworthy, yet his ministry was embraced in a period of extreme agitation, when the bitterness of controversy divided not only every congregation of which he was the pastor, but also every congregation connected with the Presbytery of Donegal, and even the whole Presbyterian Church. A period when ac- cusations were preferred and placed on record which in " peaceful times" would never have been made.
Dr. Foote, in his " Notices of Virginia," states that Mr. Black " was Orthodox in doctrine, and correct in his views of religious action and Christian principles, as was proved by the fact that a goodly number of pious people were found at Rockfish, and his succes- sors in the pastorate there saw evidence that God had blessed the ministry of His word by him."
In 1740 he was directed to supply the church at Norriton once a quarter until the next meeting of Synod ; and in 1744 was appointed one of the
* Norriton, the oldest Presbyterian Church edifice in Montgomery County, and now in ruins, was built abont 1720. Like many of the Churches of that denomination, it was injured during the Revolutionary war, and money was raised to repair it by a lottery. It was probably placed on land which had been previously set aside and used as a
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Trustees of the school established by the Synod at New London, Chester County .* He was reappointed in 1745 and 1746, and in the latter year was placed on the committee chosen to answer the letter of President Clapp, of Yale College, respecting the admission of students to that institution. The next year he, Thompson, and Craige were directed by the Synod "to have the oversight of the vacancies in Virginia."
The remains of Mr. Black were interred on a farm which he purchased after his permanent settlement in Virginia, where his grave, with no other me- morial than an unlettered stone, may still be seen. The farm, now in the possession of his only surviving grandson, Thomas Black, lies in Albemarle County, Va., a few miles from the eastern base of the Blue Ridge.
He left a family of four sons and two daughters. Some of them settled in Kentucky and other Western States. The youngest, Samuel, remained at the home- stead. Many of his descendants still reside in that part of Virginia, and it is due to them to state that a majority of them adhere to the church of which their great-grandfather was a Pioneer Minister in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina.+
graveyard. The Centennial Presbyterian Church, dedicated in 1876, was erected on ground belonging to the Norriton Church.
* See Appendix C.
+ Minutes of the Synod of Philadelphia; of the Old Presbytery of Donegal ; of the Presbytery of Hanover; Com. from Rev. Hugh Henry ; Foote, " Sketches of Virginia, Second Series."
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REV. ADAM BOYD.
Died 1768.
Born 1692.
During the closing years of the Seventeenth Cen- tury and the first quarter of the Eighteenth, a num- ber of emigrants from Scotland and the North of Ireland landed in New England. Owing, however, to the country being, to a considerable extent, pre- occupied by other denominations, and to some legal restrictions on religious freedom, the Irish and Scotch- Irish Presbyterians found a settlement there less con- genial than they had anticipated. Many of their clergymen, as a consequence, became dissatisfied, and either returned to their native land, or chose the la- borious duties of a pioneer minister, in comparatively unsettled colonies, where greater opportunities for the establishment of churches were afforded.
Among the latter was the Rev. Thomas Craighead, who came to New England in 1715, but, near the close of 1723, removed to Southeastern Pennsylvania, now the State of Delaware.
About seven years after Mr. Craighead's arrival in New England, Adam Boyd came as a probationer from the North of Ireland. Where Mr. Boyd was educated is not known, but as a majority of the Pres- byterian clergymen, who first emigrated to America from Ireland and Scotland, were graduates of the Uni- versity of Glasgow, he may have been an Alumnus of that venerable institution.
He supplied, for some time, the pulpit left vacant
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at Dedham, Mass., by the death of the Rev. Joseph Belcher, and also officiated in other churches near Boston ; but, having been disappointed in his ex- pectation of a settlement, he concluded to return to his native country. An attachment, however, to a daughter of Mr. Craighead caused him to relinquish his design and seek a pastorate near to that gentleman in Pennsylvania.
In pursuance of this determination Mr. Boyd came to this State, and having presented credentials from Ireland, and commendatory letters* from Cotton Ma- ther and other clergymen of New England to the Presbytery of New Castle, he was received as a licen- tiate by that body, July 29, 1724. At the same time he was sent as a supply to Octoraro, and di- rected to collect a congregation at Pequea. His la-
bors at both places were so well received that at the meeting of the Presbytery in the September imme- diately following, Arthur Parke and Cornelius Ro- wan, Commissioners from Octoraro and Pequea, pre- sented a call for him to become their pastor. This he accepted on the 6th of October, 1724, and as the rep- resentatives of the congregations urged his immediate installation, the Presbytery appointed Wednesday of the next week for that purpose.
In accordance with this arrangement the Presby- tery met at Octoraro the 13th of October, 1724, and ordained and installed Mr. Boyd as pastor of the congregations of Octoraro and Pequea.
Craighead presided, and Hook, of Drawers, preached
* See Appendix D.
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the ordination sermon. The other members of the Presbytery, present, were Gillespie, Thomas Evans, and Hutchinson.
The country being, at that time, sparsely settled, the ministry of Mr. Boyd extended over a large area. A score of Presbyterian Churches, and upwards of eighty belonging to other denominations are now or- ganized in what were the bounds of his charge. He was truly a pioneer minister of the Gospel; in fact, the only stated pastor in all the territory now in- cluded in the Western part of Chester County, and what was then settled of the present county of Lan- caster .*
In the large field thus intrusted to his care, his industry, zeal, and faithfulness produced abundant fruit. Donegal became able to sustain a pastor in 1727. Middle Octoraro was organized in the same year, and Fagg's Manor in 1730. Bertram was set- tled at Paxson and Derry, and Thompson at Chestnut Level, in 1732. Craighead was installed at Pequea in 1733, and the Forks of Brandywine obtained the ser- vices of Black in 1736.
But while the bounds of his charge were diminished by the organization of churches, and the settlement of pastors over congregations which he had been largely instrumental in gathering, his labors were interrupted by the division of the Presbyterian Church, which took place in 1741.
This Schism, which was caused chiefly by a differ- -
* At that time there were no settlements " over the river," that is, West of the Susquehanna.
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ence of views in regard to revivals and the qualifica- tion of candidates for the ministry, though ultimately overruled by the Great Head of the Church for good, retarded the progress of Presbyterianism in America. " Congregations were divided. Two churches were established in many places where there was not sup- port for one. Clergymen personally esteeming one another were debarred from an exchange of pulpits,"* while energy and ability which should have been em- ployed in the furtherance of the Gospel were wasted in needless debate and acrimonious controversy.
But, in time, both parties saw their mistake. The New Side, or those who had considered a liberal edu- cation of minor importance as a qualification for the ministry, acknowledged their error by founding the College of New Jersey, with the avowed purpose of preparing young men to become heralds of the Gospel. On the other hand, their opponents, the Old Side, were convinced by the increasing number and ability of those who were leaders of the "great awakening" in the churches that learning, unaccompanied by earnest, vital piety, is insufficient for the extension of the Redeemer's Kingdom.
As a consequence, after seventeen years of separation, the breach was healed.
In the mean time, Mr. Boyd ministered to the members of his flock who had not wandered from the fold, and on the 11th of August, 1741, accepted an invitation to preach one-half of his time to those in this place who had been left without a pastor by the withdrawal of Mr. Black.
* Dr. Miller's Life of Rodgers.
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As a majority of the congregation had seceded, the number that remained was not large; but after the death of Mr. Dean, and the failure of the New Side to obtain a settled pastor, the attendance on Mr. Boyd's ministrations increased. Indeed, it could hardly have been otherwise, since many of them had been brought to a knowledge of the Saviour by his preaching before the organization of a church in this part of his charge. During his connection with the congregation upwards of one hundred and twenty, many of them heads of families, contributed toward the payment of his salary, and they may not have been a majority of his hearers .*
In October, 1758, the pastoral relation was, as he has recorded, " dissolved in a most irregular manner." Why is not known. Perhaps some members of the church were displeased with his assent to the terms of the Union, and requested that another should be sent in his stead, or the Presbytery may have acted without being fully acquainted with the wishes of the larger portion of the congregation. But whatever may have been the cause of his irregular and abrupt dismissal, all will admit that it was undeserved. He surely was worthy of kind and respectful treatment who, during seventeen years, had travelled ten miles every other Sabbath and conducted religious services for the annual stipend of a little more than fifty dollars.
After the close of his pastorate at "the Forks," the members of the Old Side congregation at Octo-
* See Appendix E.
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raro agreed to pay for two-thirds of his time, instead of one-half as they had previously done. This ar- rangement continued until April, 1768, when Mr. Boyd, " by reason of his feeble health, requested the Presbytery to send supplies for his pulpit as often as possible."
A few months afterward, the congregation united with the New Side in a call to the Rev. William Forster to take charge of both congregations. This call, which Mr. Boyd heartily approved, Mr. Forster accepted, and on the 19th of October, 1768, was in- stalled pastor of the "United Congregation of Upper Octoraro."' On account of his long connection with the congregation and his faithful services, the pastoral relation of Mr. Boyd was not dissolved, and his people agreed to pay him twenty-five pounds yearly during the remainder of his life. But the "time of his departure was at hand." He died on the 19th of November, 1768, in the forty-sixth year of his min- istry.
His remains were interred in the adjoining grave- yard, and the record on his tombstone states that he was " eminent through life for modest piety, diligence in his office, prudence, equanimity, and peace."
He left a widow, five sons, and five daughters. His widow survived him nearly eleven years, or until November 9, 1779. His eldest son, John, studied for the ministry, but died shortly after his licensure.
Thomas was settled by his father on an adjoining farm. He died in 1778. The property is still in the possession of his descendants.
Andrew inherited the homestead. He was an ar-
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dent patriot during the Revolutionary War, attained the rank of colonel, and acted as commissary for Ches- ter County nearly the whole of that trying period.
Adam became a resident of North Carolina, was editor of the Cape Fear Mercury in 1767, a leading member of the Committee of Safety of that State, and, in 1776, chaplain of a North Carolina Brigade.
Samuel pursued his preparatory studies at MeDow- ell's School, Maryland; entered the Medical Depart- ment of the University of Pennsylvania in 1764, and settled as a physician in Virginia.
Three of the daughters were married to clergymen : Janet to the Rev. Robert MeMordie, then pastor of Marsh Creek and Round Hill, in Lancaster, now York, County ; Agnes to the Rev. Sampson Smith, pastor at Chestnut Level; and Margaret to the Rev. Joseph Tate, at that time pastor of Donegal.
The Rev. Matthew Tate, son of the last mentioned, was licensed by the Presbytery of New Castle, and employed as a supply by that and other Presbyteries. He subsequently entered the Episcopal Church, and some years previous to his death, in October, 1795, was rector of a parish in South Carolina.
The Rev. Andrew B. Cross, an able and popular clergyman of Baltimore, Mrs. Webster, widow of the lamented historian of the Presbyterian Church, and many of the most influential and respectable citizens of Sadsbury, and the adjoining Townships of Chester County, are descendants of Adam Boyd.
In the management of his worldly affairs, Mr. Boyd was economical, exact, and careful. Although his salary never exceeded three hundred dollars a year,
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and was frequently less, and a part of that was paid in produce and some in labor, yet he acquired considera- ble property. His daughters received marriage por- tions, which were regarded as large "in those days." Three of his sons were educated for the learned profes- sions, and his other sons were comfortably settled on farms which their father had purchased.
Like pioneer ministers in general, Mr. Boyd was too much occupied with the discharge of his pastoral du- ties to prepare any of his discourses for the press. Some of his sermons have been preserved, but they are written in a kind of short-hand, which is difficult to decipher. We are, therefore, without the means of knowing either the arrangement, style, or tenor of his pulpit exercises ; but his discretion, piety, and faith- fulness lead to the conclusion that his remarks in the pulpit were well calculated to confirm the faith, arouse the conscience, and enliven the hopes of those whom he addressed. Following the example of the Apostle to the Gentiles, he, no doubt, "reasoned of temperance, righteousness, and judgment to come." But his hear- ers, unlike the profligate viceroy of the Roman Em- peror, were not ignorant of that blessed Gospel for whose sake many of them had abandoned the land of their birth and made the wilderness their home .*
* Futhey, " Hist. of Upper Octoraro Church ;" Webster, " Hist. of Presb. Church ;" Minutes of Donegal Presbytery; Com. from Rev. Andrew B. Cross.
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REV. WILLIAM DEAN.
Born 1719.
Died 1748.
The exciting controversies, self-denying labor, and severe trials of the Presbyterian Churches in Scotland and Ireland during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Cen- turies were succeeded towards the close of the latter by listlessness and a lack of earnestness. Warm appeals to the impenitent, and the zeal for the extension of the Redeemer's kingdom, which characterized the earlier history of the church, gave place to doctrinal explana- tions and long sermons delivered in a cold and didactic manner. Learning and orthodoxy were more regarded in the selection of pastors than vital piety. As a con- sequence a laxity of morals prevailed. Intemperance became common, and profanity was often heard from those who were the professed followers of the Divine author of the command, "Swear not at all."
This indifference to spiritual interests continued until the close of the first quarter of the Eighteenth Cen- tury, when both pastors and people were aroused from their lethargy by the faithful labors of the Wesleys and Whitefield in the British Islands, and of Whitefield and the Tennents in America. The Log College, es- tablished by the last mentioned, sent forth a number of young men, whose warmth, earnestness, and energy were in strong contrast with learned but frigid dis- courses which failed to arouse the conscience or amend the heart. Their hearers retired not to discuss the bear- ing and correctness of creeds or the errors of Roman-
6
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ism, but anxiously inquiring, "What must we do to be saved ?"
Among those who were deeply imbued with the spirit and zeal of Whitefield and the graduates of the Log College was William Dean, who came from the North of Ireland to America in 1739 or '40. Where he was educated is not known. He probably received his academieal training in his native country, and his theological under the direction of the Tennents.
He was taken on trials by the Presbytery of New Brunswick, August 3, 1741, and assigned the following subjects "to found discourses upon." For an English sermon, Rom. iii. 19; and for an Exegesis, An homo justificatur ab eterno an tempore ?
At a meeting of the Presbytery, held at Frechold, N. J., in October, 1742, he and Charles Beatty hav- ing passed satisfactory trials and examinations, were licensed (October 13) " to preach the everlasting Gospel where Providence may direct then."
Mr. Dean was sent by the Presbytery, immediately after his licensure, to Neshaminy, Bucks County, and the settlements on the Forks of Delaware. These were made, in 1730 or '32, by Presbyterians from the North of Ireland. The one on the West Fork, the Lehigh, being called Craig's settlement, and the one on the North Fork, the Delaware, Hunter's settlement.
The country was mostly a wilderness, inhabited by the Lenni Lenape, or Delaware Indians. Efforts were made by the devoted Brainerd and others to bring them to a knowledge of the saving truths of the Gos- pel, though with little apparent success. They were strongly attached to their favorite places of abode and
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hunting-grounds, and did not abandon them until they were forced to remove by the " Five Nations."
In 1743, Dean was appointed to supply Craig's and Hunter's settlements and Cape May, and in the Fall of the same year he was sent by the New Side Presbytery of New Castle, with which he was then connected, to Pequea and the "Forks of Brandywine."
In 1744 he was directed to preach at Cohansey, now Fairfield, N. J., and the Forks of Delaware, and in the following year he went, with Byram, of Mendham, N. J., to Augusta County, Va., where their labors were followed by a great revival.
In 1745 he received and accepted a second call from the New Side Congregation in this place to become their pastor, and was installed in May or June of that year. But his labor in a field which seemed likely to produce an abundant harvest was soon ended. In a little more than three years his flock was left without a shepherd, and the New Side Presbytery of New Castle had sustained the loss of one of its youngest and most promising members.
The invitations which Mr. Dean received to remain in the settlements to which he was sent as an occasional or a stated supply ; the revival which followed his mis- sionary efforts in Virginia, and the regret expressed on account of his early death by some of the ablest of his contemporaries, confirm the uniform tradition that he was a popular, zealous, and faithful minister of the Gospel.
In 1743 three calls for his services were presented to Presbytery,-one from the Forks of Delaware, an- other from the Forks of Brandywine, and a third from
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Cape May. These he held under consideration for a time and declined. In May, 1748, a few weeks before his death, a similar request* was sent to the Synod of New Brunswick from Timber Bridge and the Forks of James River, Virginia.
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