USA > Pennsylvania > Luzerne County > Luzerne > History of the Presbytery of Luzerne, state of Pennsylvania > Part 11
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Mr. and Mrs. A. J. Welles had two children, viz : Mrs. Caspar R. Gregory, and Albert, who resides in Scranton and is Professor of Chemistry in the High School in Scranton. Another grandson of Mr. Hunt is a medical student in Philadelphia. This young man bears the name of his grandfather, Thomas P. Hunt.
X.
LACKAWANNA VALLEY.
THE REV. NATHAN GRIER PARKE, D. D.
T HIS organization, as we have already shown, was constituted by the Presbytery of Susquehanna more than a year before the erection of the Presbytery of Luzerne, and had for its field the entire valley of the Lackawanna, except what was covered by the Carbon- dale church. The settlements at that time were sparse, and the aggregate population small. The territory yielded but a meagre living to the inhabitants, but the resources of the valley are at this time known, and are attracting men and money for their development.
To meet this change, in the spring of 1844, the pastor of the Wilkes-Barre church, who still had a fatherly regard for the wants of that extended part of his field for which the Lackawanna church was organized, was looking about earnestly for a suitable man to take the . pastoral charge of it, and had fixed his eye upon Mr. J. W. Sterling, a member of his own church who had taught in Wilkes-Barre Academy, and was now completing his theological course in Princeton. Mr. Sterling had made temporary engagements to act as tutor in the College of New Jersey, which he did not feel at liberty to abandon at once, but being interested in the field and disposed to take up the work proposed, he used his influence to have
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it supplied until he could himself take hold of it. He in- duced a son of the manse, a Seminary classmate, to undertake the work which had been offered him, viz : Nathan Grier Parke, a suggestive name to such as are familiar with the history of the Presbyterian church in this country. Mr. Parke's home was in York county, Pa., near the Susquehanna and the Maryland line. His father, the Rev. Samuel Parke, was an able, influential minister and life-long pastor of the "Slate Ridge " Pres- byterian church, which has become the mother of several churches. The Rev. Samuel Parke maintained an Academy also at Slate Ridge. This school made at least one State Governor and United States Senator, Samuel J. Kirk- wood, of Iowa. The writer also found, while a citizen of Iowa, that the influence of another ministerial school in the bounds of the Susquehanna Presbytery, gave Iowa another Governor. This was the Hartford school, which was an efficient cause leading C. C. Carpenter to the exalted office which he occupied, but more by induction than by actual personal training. The parents of young Carpenter both died while he was a mere child, but they and his older brothers had been led, by the influences and instructions which had been brought to bear upon them by this institution of learning, to highly prize education. Young Cyrus had imbibed from this home atmosphere that which, as the writer knows, caused him to make heroic struggles to gain knowledge,-an effect certainly traceable to the noble work of the Rev. Lyman Richard- son and his brothers at Hartford Academy.
Senator Kirkwood, who received the training in early life to which he directly attributed all his success in the world, said to the writer, when speaking of the im-
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portance of environments, " It is a good thing for a boy to be brought up in the family of a Presbyterian elder, if he is able to stand it. It was good for me; " alleging that without the training to which he had been subjected, he never would have reached the honorable positions which he had occupied. He had then retired from public life. At the same time he related an incident which took place at Slate Ridge in his youth. In that community innovations were not readily received or adopted. It seems, however, some were more rigid than others. For in the matter of church music, there was a desire on the part of some, principally the young, to introduce new tunes, from time to time. On one occasion, one of the leaders in singing introduced a new tune, whereupon one of the elders, a Mr. Talbot, arose and trotted out of the house. Henceforth the young people called that tune " Talbot's Trot." Sometime afterwards, just as another new tune was beginning to attract attention, elder Kirk- wood observed, through the window, that his horses had become entangled in their harness, and left the house more rapidly than elder Talbot had done. Therefore the second new tune was named " Kirkwood's Canter." It is from this community, where innovations were somewhat restrained by careful conservatism, that our young mis- sionary, mounted upon a young horse, the gift of his father, turns his course to the upper waters of the Susque- hanna, bearing with him the paternal blessing. While he leaves a Christian home, he carries with him its genial, sanctified atmosphere, which has been retained through the trying days of College and Seminary life. Youthful, hopeful, patient, he goes forth, not knowing all the Lord had in store for him, cheerfully following the cloud and
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trusting the guide. While the young missionary looked forward with hope, he looked back with gratitude to his Christian home and his careful training. Especially has he ever been ready to arise and called her blessed who had so lovingly cared for him and trained him for his future career. So also with all her children. This mother, revered by her children, and indeed by all who knew her, was also a child of the manse. Her father, the Rev. Nathan Grier, D. D., one of the early graduates of the University of Pennsylvania, was pastor of the Brandy- wine Manor church. Of him, Dr. David McConaughy says in his sketch of his life, " Dr. Grier was not only eminently honored of God as a pastor in his congre- gation, and as a faithful and very acceptable preacher of the Gospel in the churches generally, but had an im- portant instrumentality in directing and aiding young men in their studies preparatory to the gospel ministry." This was before the organization of Princeton Theo- logical Seminary. His own sons became ministers. The younger of the two succeeded him as pastor at the Forks of the Brandywine. The father and the son both spent their entire ministerial lives in that one congregation. He had three daughters ; two of these married ministers, namely, Mrs. White and Mrs. Parke. The other married a physician, Dr. Thompson. All of them were highly useful and greatly honored, especially by the piety and usefulness of their children. As we have already seen God's covenant honored in the families which have passed under our notice, so in this one and its extended branches yet to be noticed.
Mrs. Parke seems to have been an eminently wise and prudent mother, whose influence and prayers her
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son, Nathan Grier, ever felt and remembered with the deepest gratitude. From the Academy at Slate Ridge he had been sent by his parents to Jefferson College, then under the presidency of Dr. Mathew Brown, whose memory is so revered by his students. His college life seems to have been tranquil and prosperous. So also the Princeton Seminary course, which was completed in the spring of 1844, he receiving the regular certificate of graduation. Mr. Parke had been licensed by the Pres- bytery of Donegal, April, 1843, at Columbia, Pa.
After a brief visit to the home of his youth, Mr. Parke was carried upon his faithful steed to the home of Dr. Dorrance, in Wilkes-Barre, where he arrived about the first day of June. The pastor was in attendance at the General Assembly, and the young missionary supplied his pulpit on the first Sabbath of June. The next Sabbath found Mr. Parke in Pittston, then a small and unimportant village, near the confluence of the Lacka- wanna with the Susquehanna, and therefore at the southern entrance of the Lackawanna Valley and northern termination of the Wyoming Valley, a strategic point, the advantages of which were but faintly foreshadowed at that time. It was, however, one point designed to be embraced in the operations of the little church which had been organized some 6 or 8 miles up the Lackawanna Valley, the name of which it received. This gives an idea of the extent of the field our young missionary was about entering. Assuming that the central point had been selected for its organization, namely Scranton, and that it was to be spread out nine miles in every direction, this fact assumed, Mr. Parke entered upon a three months' engagement to supply the place of another.
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That engagement extended to more than a half a century, and the little church became a mother church, the centre and source of life and nourishment to other outlying communities. / In tracing the history of what was originally the Lackawanna Church under the pastorate of one man, we have indeed a theme of no little magnitude.
We have already spoken of the organization of the Lackawanna Church by the Presbytery of Susquehanna, February, 1842, composed of the Presbyterians scattered over almost the entire Lackawanna Valley, of which one man had the pastoral oversight, until the Scranton Church was organized in 1848, when the field was divided.
The original population, or the greater part of it, was similar to that which occupied the Wyoming Valley. Afterwards a considerable element came into the Lacka- wanna Valley from Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, d counties south in Pennsylvania, so that at the time Mr. Parke entered the Lackawanna Valley, the population had become more mixed; yet it was a population that seemed to have a general respect for sacred things. Mr. Parke says, upon the authority of Hon. Charles Miner, historian of the Wyoming Valley, "In Pittston the leading families were during the Revo- lutionary war, the Blanchards, Browns, Bennetts, Silbeys, Marcys, Benedicts, St. Johns, and Swoyers, not omitting the gallant Cooper." Many of those with whose names we became familiar in Wilkes-Barre and vicinity are found later in the Lackawanna Valley.
In an early day a number of Baptist families found their way to Pittston and vicinity, among them were the Giddings, Benedicts and Blanchards. The first church
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organized in Pittston was a Baptist Church, as early as 1776. The people composing it were principally from Orange County, New York. The organization, however, soon scat- tered, or was abandoned, for the Baptists of Pittston after- wards are found associated with the church of Abington, the sub-strata of which consisted of emigrants from Rhode Island. In 1844 a Baptist minister, familiarly known as Elder Mott, resided in Hyde Park, now a part of the city of Scranton. He had appointments for the alternate weeks at Pittston, which was the only regular service held there. / While there were but three members of the Presbyterian Church at that time in Pittston, Mr. Parke found a Sabbath School conducted by a truly competent business man, who has been up to this date an active, earnest and universally esteemed Christian man, of extensive influence, still a citizen of Pittston and pillar of the Presbyterian Church, not only in Pittston and vicinity, but in the church at large as well, viz., Theodore Strong, a younger brother of the late Chief Justice William Strong.
Several other Sabbath Schools had been previously started in different places in the Lackawanna Valley, e. g., the school at Providence was started by Isaac Hart, father of Professor John S. Hart. He resided, in 1820, near Providence, and was a school teacher and a Justice of the Peace. He subsequently removed to Pittston, and in 1825 established a Sabbath School there. "The first Sabbath School in Pittston township was established in the old log school house on the premises of Peter Winters, Esq., four and a half miles south of Pittston, by Miss Mary Bowman, who superintended the same, assisted by Messrs. John and Lord Butler." Squire
lego
3 1
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Hart subsequently moved further down the Susquehanna, nearer Wilkes-Barre, on Laurel Run. While he resided at this place, Mary Gardner, afterwards Mrs. W. C. Gildersleeve, Susan Mitchell and Mary Bowman, with other ladies from Wilkes-Barre, became interested in John S. Hart, the son of Squire Hart, and encouraged him to prepare for college with a view to entering the ministry. To the Pittston Sabbath School, and the devoted Christian ladies who conducted it, Professor Hart often referred with gratitude in his mature life."* The church and the cause of Christian education, as well as Prof. Hart, owe a debt of gratitude to these pious ladies.
Incidentally we have been led nearer to Wilkes- Barre, and there is no impropriety in looking in that direction again from the Lackawanna, for it was from thence the influence had come which had been preparing the way for the establishment of the new centre of life and power we are to describe. We have already seen that until the Lackawanna Church had been constituted, February, 1842, the pastors of the Wilkes-Barre Church generally regarded the Lackawanna Valley as a part of their pastoral charge. The Sabbath Schools we have referred to, and others, owed their origin to the labors, especially of pastors Hoyt, Gildersleeve, and Dorrance, labors which were abundant (in view of all things) in this new field we are entering, and which prepared the way for the new departure soon to be made by our young missionary.
It is proper that the efficient aid rendered to Dr. Dorrance in caring for his outposts, especially that which *Rev. N. G. Parke's Historical Sermon.
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was so abundantly and freely rendered by the Rev. Thomas P. Hunt, in this and in other parts of the new Presbytery, should be noted, and from time to time young men, as Messrs. Thomas Owen and John Turbitt, had under Dr. Dorrance's supervision done more or less preaching during their probation in this general region. The Rev. Oren Brown may also have put in a part of his time in this section of the Presbytery, but as far as we can ascertain his time was mostly devoted to Falls and Northmoreland Churches. After the organization of the Lackawanna Church, Mr. Charles Evans was employed more definitely for a part of his time in this valley. Now, however, Mr. Parke's labors were designed to cover all the ground, as he informs us in a historical sermon, referring to the points occupied. He says, "I was expected to preach once in two weeks in Pittston, and as often in Scranton. Then I was expected to preach in Providence and Hyde Park, and Taylorville, and the Plains, and in Newton and Abington as often as I could find it convenient to do so." No contraction of this extended field was made till the spring of 1848. Upon this work we find him entering on the ninth of June, 1844, in the little Red School House in the little village of Pittston.
There was then set before him an open door which he cheerfully and hopefully entered, in the name of the Master. Not many greeted him at first, but he was cordially welcomed by a few choice spirits. Friendships were then formed which lasted through the long drawn out three months of Dr. Parke's ministry. To these friends very many more were added, and few, if any, estranged, by the amiable young minister, who never
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became old, in feelings, yet, in the course of a few years did not appear quite so boyish as in 1844.
The Lackawanna Church was scarcely conscious of church life when Mr. Parke came into its bounds, through the agency of Dr. Dorrance acting for the Presbytery and for the church recently organized. Therefore he had not received a call from the people, backed up by a promise of support. Nor had the Board of Domestic Missions (such was the corporate name of the Board at that time) held out encouraging promises of support. One hundred dollars it had promised. The young minister having no entangling alliances, was not anxious about the question of support, and there was a sentiment in his field, although as yet animating few, that the Lord's servants should be provided for while doing His work. The first year, however, less than one hundred dollars in money was contributed on the field. Mr. Parke was never heard to complain, nor was he ever known to want. Among other good results of his long pastorate, a wholesome, generous sentiment was developed in his people with regard to the proper provision for maintaining the means of grace among themselves, and the duty of aiding in sending the gospel where its divine benefits were not so well known as to be appreciated.
Taking Pittston as the starting point, let us follow Mr. Parke, in 1844, around his circuit. The services, beginning at 10:30, a. m., have closed. We start up the Lackawanna three miles and a half, dine with Mr. Atherton, return half a mile and attend services at a school house in the vicinity of what is known as Taylorville, where another service is held at 3 p. m. Then follow the river some four or five miles further
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towards its source, over densely shaded and rough roads to near the mouth of Roaring Brook where the forest is somewhat subdued; for efforts have been made there to mine coal and make iron, and quite a little village has sprung into life. This is "Slocum Hollow," where a few choice spirits are met. We are cordially received and entertained, and at the regular evening hour another service is held, with an intelligent little congregation, observing all the proprieties of an older community of Christians. We worship in a little union church building, which afterwards passed into the possession of the Methodist Episcopal brethren, but by just what process is not a matter of record. The night is pleasantly spent in the Hollow, among friends. On Monday, all necessary pastoral work is attended to before returning to the new found home of the young minister.
The next Sabbath, the work is begun at Slocum Hollow. After the first service and a hasty dinner, the minister mounts his horse and leaves the river, turning his face towards the mountain westward, and by a bridle path scales the Moosic range. Both the ascent and descent are abrupt, but the spirited, steady-footed steed quickly makes the passage, and at the end of about nine miles another service at 3:30 p. m. is held at the *Newton Centre school house; and thence the mounted minister makes his way to Pittston, the place of beginning, and at 7:30 holds another service. , The next week with Pittston and Slocum Hollow, Providence is perhaps taken in, and then Hyde Park, and Abington, some five miles northwest of Scranton, or rather Slocum Hollow, for Scranton had not yet been born.
*This is the Fallstown church, afterwards changed to Newton.
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At this time, no house of worship had been erected by any denomination, except the little union church at Scranton, and perhaps a Baptist church at Abington.
The Pennsylvania canal had reached Pittston a short time before, and the coal trade was stimulated. The Butler and Pennsylvania Coal Companies were already in operation, and other companies were soon formed. The population began to increase rapidly. Of the thirty members who were, in Feb., 1842, organized as the Lackawanna Presbyterian church, five of these seem to have resided in Pittston, viz., Mrs. Giddings, her sister Fanny McCalpin, James Helm, Sarah Blackman, and Sarah Austin. It was soon made evident to Mr. Parke that that point was to become to him his most important centre of operations, and measures were soon inaugurated for the erection of a Presbyterian church there. The work was carried to completion during the summer of. 1846. A neat, comfortable brick building was erected in the northern part of the village, and dedicated free from debt, the cost being about $2,000. Rev. Dr. David X. Junkin preached the dedication sermon. The Rev. T. L. Cuyler, then doing his first preaching at Kingston, was present at the service.
Mr. Parke was ordained by the Luzerne Presbytery July 7th, 1846, as an evangelist, and was formally installed pastor of the Lackawanna church in 1847. In 1848 the field was divided by the organization of the Harrison church. The name Harrison had been given to Slocum Hollow, but was soon after changed to Scranton.
This new organization was separated, ipso facto, from the Lackawanna church, and possessed all the functions
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of a local church. Mr. Parke, of course, remained pastor of the rest of the field, but the new church invited him to continue as its stated supply through the remainder of the current year, which he did.
About this time, by the action of the Presbytery, the name of the Lackawanna church was changed to the First Presbyterian Church of Pittston, and was regularly incorporated.
Formal articles of incorporation were adopted by the Pittston church in 1848, in the summer of which year another house of worship was erected and dedicated in what was known as the Atherton neighborhood, in which the major part of the original Lackawanna church resided. The place is now known as Taylor. The church, however, which was for many years occupied as a regular preaching station by Mr. Parke, was for a time abandoned by the Presbyterians. It is now again occupied by them, and a new church organized. During the same year, 1848, the Newton Presbyterian church was erected, the work having been inaugurated by Mr. Parke while it was still a part of his field, and provision was made for its completion before he relinquished his care of the Newton church. Dr. Parke says in his Historical sermon that this church was erected in 1850; but, as to date, this is a mistake.
Thus stakes were being driven and preparation made for future successful work. Another arrangement of no little importance to the young pastor and his work had been proceeding quietly, by which the ties between Wilkes-Barre and Pittston were to be strengthened, and the Levitical succession honored, which was, on the 8th of June, 1847, proclaimed to the world and solemnly
it.
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sanctioned, viz., the marriage of the Rev. Nathan Grier Parke, in Wilkes-Barre, by his father, to Miss Ann Elizabeth Gildersleeve. Many still living in Lackawanna valley remembered her grandfather, the Rev. Cyrus Gildersleeve, the faithful Wilkes-Barre pastor of former years; and many there were who respected the sterling qualities of her father, Mr. W. C. Gildersleeve, a man in some respects, especially on the subject of the abolition of slavery, in advance of his generation; and they hailed the advent of the young minister's wife. When they knew her, they also hailed her presence for her own sake; nor did they ever change their just estimation of her excellence. And doubtless she made him whom they had longer known and loved still more worthy of their regard. Of the immediate parties in the transaction we are noting, the Hon. Alfred Hand says, twenty-five years after this important event, upon the occasion of the celebration of a quarter of a century of the life of the Scranton Presbyterian church, the offshoot from the church of Lackawanna :
"The Rev. N. G. Parke, who has the honor, not simply of laying the foundation walls, but of clearing away the scrub oak, and digging the foundation trench, is entitled to all honor for his faithfulness. We welcome him here with warm hearts to-night. 'How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace.' In mountain paths, over rough roads, at far distant stations, in stormy and fair weather, he served his Master, and we are reaping the fruits of his labors. While Mr. Parke labored here, Elisha Atherton generously gave him a home at his house, and stood by him until he married a wife, and then Mr.
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Out
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Atherton very reasonably concluded that Mr. Parke could stand without him, a conclusion which subsequent events have fully verified." It may be added that the wives of the pastors generally, of Luzerne Presbytery, have enabled their husbands to stand firmly where perhaps they would have stood feebly without them. 1
Dr. Parke was, at the time of his marriage, a settled pastor on a pledged salary of $400 per year. His installation took place July 7th, 1847. A commodious parsonage was built on lots contributed by Miss Mira Giddings, which was completed in the spring of 1851, and was the first parsonage in the Presbytery. This located the pastor in the new centre of his field. In securing this advantage the congregation is understood to have been liberally aided. It was an expression of paternal regard, fraternal sentiment, and Christian zeal.
When the Pittston church was built, Mr. Strong's Sabbath School was moved into it. Not only was this school maintained in vigor and prosperity, but other schools were established at different points in the valley, where they are now organized churches with pastors.
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