USA > Rhode Island > Newport County > History of Newport County, Rhode Island. From the year 1638 to the year 1887, including the settlement of its towns, and their subsequent progress > Part 42
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First Cavalry .- Thomas C. Moore, December 14th, 1864; Company A: George HI. Harris, May 19th, 1864, at hospital; Philip B. Smith, December 1st, 1863, at Andersonville, Ga .; Company C: James P. Taylor, August 10th, 1862.
Fifth Cavalry .- Company A: Amos B. Sherman and Edward Bass, March 18th, 1862, at Newbern, N. C .; William F. Caswell, December 12th, 1862, at Newbern, N. C .; Company C: John W. Allen, October 10th, 1864, at Newbern, N. C.
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Seventh Cavalry .- Company I: John Kilroy, Jannary 30th, 1864, at Petersburg; Samuel F. Simpson, May 26th, 1864, at North Anna River.
Twelfth Cavalry .- Company D: John Caswell, January 5th, 1863, at Falmouth, Va.
Fourteenth Cavalry .- Company G: George H. Jackson, Oc- tober 15th, 1864, at Fort Jackson, Fla.
CHAPTER IX. CHURCHES AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF NEWPORT.
BY JOHN AUSTIN STEVENS.
Baptist Churches .- The Society of Friends .- Congregational Churches .- Protest- ant Episcopal Churches,-The Moravians .- Methodist Episcopal Churches .- . Jews' Synagogue .- Catholic Churches .- Public Schools.
T HE spirit which moved the English emigrants to leave their native land and make their settlements on the savage coast of America was a religions spirit. A phase of the revolt against form, which began with the burning of the Pope's bull by Inther, has continued through various evolu- tions and has not yet reached its legitimate conclusions in any land; the absolute freedom of the mind from priestly leading strings. Indeed, if the motive which directly governed the emigration be carefully studied, it will be found to have been a revolt against the manner of the form rather than against form itself. The colony founded was a religions colony, the majority of whose members were as thoroughly attached to uniformity as the English church establishments from which they broke away. Yet while the colonies agreed in this pro- test in kind, they differed in degree. The Puritans, as it is the habit to call all the early settlers, were by no means of one mind.
The Plymouth colony were of the sect of dissenters known as Separatists; that which settled about the Massachusetts bay held more nearly to the communion of the Church of England. While they were in near accord as to the nature of the Lord's kingdom, they were by no means in harmony among them- selves as to the manner in which it should be "externally man- aged and maintained in his church." On one point, however, there was agreement; the interdependence of church and state; the supremacy of the church over the state and the consequent need of a theocratic form of government. Heresy or "errone-
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ous opinions," to use their own gentlest form of condemnation, was therefore criminal-punishable by imprisonment, by exile and even death. Intolerance accompanied uniformity as its natural corollary and, in accordance with the universal law of the moral as of the physical world, pressure developed resistance in the precise ratio of its force. At first the conditions of the settlement, isolated in an unknown country under a severe climate, and among savage tribes, compelled submission in practice if not acquiescence in spirit to the established forms of the theocratic rule. The age was an age of religions inquiry. Religious inquiry was the very reason and cause of the Puri tan settlement. It was the life, the business, the amusement, after a grim fashion. of the Puritan fathers.
But difference, not uniformity, is the underlying law, and it is not surprising to find even among these people the tendency to divergence from the common center of faith-a divergence the expression of which was at first restrained by the physical condition of the settlement. As their numbers increased by the continuous flow of emigration from the mother country and they grew more self reliant, measures restrictive not only of independent action but of expressions of independent opinion were now rigidly enforced, until at last intolerance reached its extreme limit in an inquiry into opinion itself, regardless of its expression. To hold "erroneons opinions " was an offense against their theocratic law. In the beginning revolt, even re- sistance to this oppression of the dominant theocracy was mad- ness. There was no escape but to return to England, which would be to put themselves again within the fangs of the san- guinary land or in exile among the savages of the interior. In- deed this casting from them of the offender into the outer dark- ness was the favorite punishment of our sanctimonious fore- fathers. At first this seemed a terrible outlook, but as ac- quaintance with the Indians reassured them as to their friendly disposition toward the invaders of the soil, exile lost its hor- rors and even took on the pleasing guise of adventure and the chance of profit.
This desire for freedom from the established formalism cul- minated in two separate movements, which were respectively the origin of the Connectiont and Rhode Island colonies. These movements differed as much in purpose as in scope. Hooker led his Newtown charge to the Connecticut valley,
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there to found at Hartford a colony on church tenets not in conformity with those of the established church in England certainly, but not so far removed in practice as that of the church established in Massachusetts bay. Thus the beginnings of Connecticut, as those of Massachusetts before it, were relig- ious beginnings-a schism within a schism, but nevertheless a theocratic government in which the clergy and the civil magis- trates were either identical or held equal coordinate powers. This hegira of Hooker was in the summer of 1636. He had already been preceded in his flight into the wilderness by a clergyman of his own faith; not like him, however, a voluntary exile from the home of his adoption, leading to a field promis- ing profitable enterprise a select band of the best and foremost of the New England settlers, but an exile by the law, a solitary pilgrim, an exile from the pilgrims' land.
The edict of banishment of Roger Williams bears date of the 3d of November, 1635. Summoned from his charge of the church at Salem before the general court in October, he de- l'ended himself of his "errors." Hooker was chosen to dispute with him, but could not "reduce him from any of his errors." All the ministers of the colony were present, and all save one concurred in his sentence. The names of Hooker and of Wil- liams are not mentioned here either in antithesis or opposition, but simply to bring to attention the fact that the wilderness was by no means so dangerous to either of them as might be supposed. Williams had already made himself the friend of the Indians. "living in their huts about Boston and learning their language," and Ousamequin (Massasoit), the great chief of the Wampanoags, who welcomed him to the Narragansett waters, was his personal friend. It is of history also that John Eliot, later the apostle of the Indians, was an intimate com- panion of Hooker, and had been his assistant teacher at a school in London before their emigration. Eliot and Williams came to America the same year (1631) and alike were earnest in their desire to benefit the Indian tribes. They were probably the only two educated white men who understood the language of the natives.
The habitation of Williams at Seekonk and his later settle- ment at Providence must of course be held the beginnings of Rhode Island; and the liberty of conscience, which he later in- sisted upon as the religious motive upon which the civil govern-
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ment of the colony was to hinge, may likewise find in him its first representative. The early records of Providence seem to contemplate a future settlement, but in the agreement of the thirteen "inhabitants, masters of families incorporated together in town fellowship, and others whom they shall admit unto them only in civil things" (four of whom it may be said passim only signed their marks), there seems to have been no thought except of the simplest form of patriarchal regulation; none whatever of any religious organization. In point of fact the true political beginnings of the Rhode Island settlement are found in the establishment on the island of Aquidneck of the lit- tle colony which followed John Clarke. Here also will be found the beginnings of religions observance, tenets and rules. In the agreement entered into at Portsmonth on the 7th day of the first month (March, 1638), signed by Williams, Coddington, John Clarke and their seventeen associates, they solemnly incor- porate themselves into a "Bodie Politick," submitting their persons, lives and estates unto the Lord Jesus Christ and "to all those perfect and most absolute laws of his given in his holy word," and to make more explicit their understanding of the laws intended they name Exodus, 24, 3, 4, Second Chronicles, 11, 3, and Second Kings, 11, 17, and the same day electing Cod- dington to be their judge, " covenant to yield all dne hononr unto him according to the lawes of God;" and again, at their next general meeting, upon " publick notice 3d month, 13 day, 1638," require submission to the government that is or shall be established on the island according to the word of God; and by further resolution order that the meeting house shall be set out on the neck of land that goes over to the main of the island.
At the synod held in Newtown in August, 1635, preceding that meeting of the general court in October and November which passed the sentence of banishment on Roger Williams, no less than "eighty erroneous opinions" were presented, de- bated and condemned. The majority of the court, after a three days debate and some change of sides, determined to stand by the synod and carry its judgment into effect by legislation or rules, whereupon Mr. John Clarke, one of the remonstrants, made proposal to which a number agreed, to seek out a place where they might govern themselves and worship God after their own manner. Yet that this manner was not that entire liberty of conscience which Roger Williams later claimed to
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HISTORY OF NEWPORT COUNTY.
have been the purpose of settlement, appears in the banishment of Gorton a year or so later on contention because of religious opinions peculiar to himself and his followers.
John Clarke was a Baptist and may fairly be claimed to have founded the first Baptist church in America. Benedict, in his history of the Baptist denomination in America, claims that the church founded by Roger Williams at Providence in 1639 was the first of the Baptist denomination in the American continent and assigns the second place to that founded by John Clarke in Newport in 1644. The Massachusetts hierarchy had consented to no such heresy. That the beginnings were in the Rhode Is- land settlement there is no doubt, but the order of precedence is not so certain. It is certain, however, that John Clarke, as the leader of the little colony and a man of letters, carried on public worship. A survey of New England in 1641 records " the religious condition of Aquidneck as broken and precarious; the Newport church where one Master Clark was Elder as dissolved; at the other end of the island a town, Portsmouth, but no church-a meeting of some men who there teach one another and call it prophecy; at Providence Master Williams and his company of divers opinions, most are Anabaptists."
Tradition is so uncertain and history in matters of religion so takes its color from the opinions of the reporter, that it is vain to attempt to settle these discordant opinions, but whatever date may be assigned to the earliest beginnings of John Clarke's preaching, there is no doubt that he was the first who taught the Baptist belief in America, that his first open teachings were in Rhode Island and that the meeting or church, or whatever name may be given it, was in full operation in 1648, when the names of fifteen persons appear in the list of the members of the church on occasion of the baptism of Samuel Hubbard. This worthy had fled from Hartford, being threatened with imprisonment because of his holding with his wife to " the holy ordinance of baptizing only visible believers." The chief helpmate of Clarke in his early teachings was Robert Lenthal, who was admitted a freeman of the town of Newport in 1640. He had come from Weymouth because of his inability to found a church there; the common people embracing his opinions but the authorities re- pressing his efforts with a stern hand. On his arrival he opened a public school which is said to have been the first attempt of the kind in this country, if not in the world. He soon drifted into the-
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ology and aided Clarke in a public controversy of the two fun- damental questions which then convulsed the Puritan world; namely. the sufficiency of scripture as a rule of faith and prac- tice and the existence on earth of a visible church with visible ordinances.
The Antinomian heresy, which claimed exclusive possession of an inner light which, rather than the teachings of the serip- tures, is the true rule of action, was spreading its convenient doctrine far and wide. At Newport it became the cause of con- tention ; Coddington, Coggeshall and others of the foremost men holding to the new theories ; Clarke, their minister, Len- thal and others vigorously dissenting from and strennously op- posing them. Hence a schism in the infant church.
In 1649 the members of the church were, however, increased by numerous additions. These removed from Seekonk ( Reho- both), where their attempt to found a church had been merci- lessly throttled by the Plymouth magistrates, within whose jurisdiction the town lay. Some of these new comers became pillars of the church and eminent in the Narragansett colony. Of Mr. Clarke's connection with their entrance into the new or- der of religion there is evidence in a letter of Williams to Win- throp, in which he says, "at Seekonk a great many have con- curred with John Clarke and onr Providence men abont the point of a new baptism and the manner by dipping, and Mr. John Clarke hath been there lately (and Mr. Lucar) and hath dipped them." But Williams adds (and this of itself seems sufficient evidence that he had not established a Baptist church at Providence), "I believe their practice comes nearer the first practice of our great fonnder Christ Jesus than other practices of religion do, and yet I have not satisfaction neither in theau- thority by which it is done nor in the manner. In 1649 also Mr. Clarke preached and baptized in the neighborhood of Prov- idence.
John Clarke continued to minister to the Newport church until his death in 1676, in the sixty-sixth year of his age. He was succeeded by Obadiah Holmes. Holmes was a native of England and emigrated to America about 1639, and was a com- municant of the Pedobaptist congregation first at Salem, later at Seekonk, or Rehoboth, where he was baptized by Clarke. Visiting Boston he was arrested by the authorities and terri- bly scourged for his heresy. He was glad to escape the vin-
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HISTORY OF NEWPORT COUNTY.
dictive pursuit of the Plymouth government by moving to Newport, which was beyond the pale of their authority. The Narragansetts were still the undisputed masters of this soil. On Clarke's visit to England on the affairs of the charter for the colony Holmes was made pastor of the church, and held the charge until his death in 1682, at seventy-six years. It is not necessary here to enter into details of the ministry of his successors, but an exception must be made in the case of the sixth pastor, John Callender, A. M., who was called to his charge in 1731, and continued in it until his death in 1748. He was a graduate of Harvard College, and to him we owe the "Century Sermon," a sketch of the history of Rhode Island for a hundred years. This discourse, preached, or rather de- livered, in 1738, and printed at Boston in the following year, is the undisputed text book of the historical student, and an ad- mirable summary of the traditions of the fathers for the cen- tury elapsed from the beginnings of the plantation to the year of its preparation.
The English Baptists have been described under the name of Congregational Liberalists. There were churches of the order of General Baptists in England in 1608, and of English in Am- sterdam in 1611. A printed confession of the latter in this year affirms the " Magistracy to be a holy ordinance of God, and that every soul ought to be subject to it not for fear only, but for conscience sake," but adds " that the magistrate is not to meddle with religion or matters of conscience."
The doctrines which Mr. Clarke brought with him were those of the English Partienlar Baptist church. The church which he established was early in correspondence with the church in London, but it does not appear that he was ever a preacher except according to the Baptist practice of eldership. Indeed he is always mentioned as an elder. There is little doubt that he was the author of the confession of faith and purpose which was the foundation, not only of the Baptist church of Aquidneek, but of the civil government of the colony.
The terms General and Particular Baptists may be thus de- fined. The Particular Baptists held to the narrow dogma of Calvin and believed in the salvation of the elect only; a doctrine peenliarly acceptable to the New England theocratic hierarchy. The General Baptists on the contrary leaned to the Arminian
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HISTORY OF NEWPORT COUNTY.
belief that salvation was possible to all. It is natural to find that the exclusive doctrine found by far the most adherents, but it is to the credit of the early settlers of Rhode Island that they were of the General Baptist order and not unwilling to share salvation with the outer world.
THE FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH. - Founders : Constituents ac- cording to tradition, Dr. John Clarke and wife, Mark Lukar, Nathaniel West and wife, William Vaughan, Thomas Clark, Joseph Clark, John Peckham, John Thomdon, William and Samuel Weeden (Benedict's History).
Pastors : Elder John Clarke, M. D., 1638-1676; Obadiah Holmes, 1652-1682; Richard Dingley, 1689-1694; William Peck- ham, 1711-1732; John Comer, A. B., 1726-1729; John Callender, A. M., 1731-1746; Edward Upham, A. M., 1748-1771; Erasmus Kelly, 1771-1784; Benjamin Foster, D. D., 1785-1788: Michael Eddy, 1790-1835; Arthur A. Ross, 1835-1840; Joseph Smith, 1841-1849; Samnel Adlam, 1849-1864; Comfort E. Barrows, 1865-1883; Francis W. Rider, 1884-1886; E. P. Tuller, 1886.
House of Worship .- This ancient society has considerable possessions in real estate bequeathed to it by Dr. John Clarke, its founder. Later Governor Lyndon bequeathed to it his mansion house for a parsonage. It is uncertain whether the early members of the society ever carried into effect the early order of the colony to build a meeting house on Ferry neck. The first house of worship in Newport proper was on Tanner street (now West Broadway), which was sold in 1738 and a new edifice erected on the present site. This was taken down and replaced by a new structure in 1841. The lot, according to Benedict, was seventy-three feet by sixty-four, and was given to the church by Colonel Hezekiah Carpenter and Governor Lyndon. The meeting house was forty feet by nearly sixty.
THE SECOND BAPTIST CHURCH was organized by twenty one members of the First, who seceded from it in 1656 for the fol- lowing reasons: 1st. Her use of psalmody. 2d. Undue re- straints upon the liberty of prophesying. 3d. Particular redemption. 4th. Her holding the laying-on of hands as a matter of indifference. The last article was no doubt the chief cause of separation, which might perhaps have been avoided but for the absence of Mr. Clarke in England. Their leader was William Vanghan, who became the first pastor of the new church. He continued his ministry till his death in 1677. His
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HISTORY OF NEWPORT COUNTY.
successor, Thomas Baker, after a short service, raised up a church in North Kingstown. The third pastor was John Harder, a native of England, who died in his charge in 1700. The fourth was James Clarke, a nephew of John Clarke, the common founder of all the Baptist churches.
Founders : William Vaughan, Thomas Baker, James Clarke, Jeremiah Clarke, Daniel Wightman, John Odlin, Jeremiah Weeden, Joseph Card, John Greenman, Henry Clark, Peleg . Peckham, James Barker, Stephen Hookey, Timothy Peckham, Joseph Weeden, John Rhodes, James Brown, John Hammet, William Rhodes, Daniel Sabear, William Greenman (Bene- dict's History).
Pastors : William Vaughan, 1636-1677; Thomas Baker, 1677 -1679; John Harden, 1679-1700; James Clarke, 1700-1736; Dan- iel Wightman, 1736-1750; Nicholas Eyres, 1750-1759; Gardner Thurston, 1759-1801; Joshna Bradley, 180t-1807; John B. Gib- sol, 1807-1815; Samuel Wydown, 1815-1817; Romeo Elton, 1817-1822; William Gammell, 1823-1827; John O. Chonles, 1827-1833; John Dowling, 1833-1836; Leland Howard, 1838- 1840; Thomas Leaver, 1841-1845; John O. Chonles (2d time), 1847-1856; Charles H. Malcom, 1857-1877; N. B. Thompson, 1878-1881; Frank Rector, 1881-1887; --- Covell, 1887-1887 (a few months); S. W. Stevens, 1888.
House of Worship .- The original building stood on Farewell street on a lot one hundred and forty feet by seventy-five, and adjoining was a smaller lot fifty feet square, on which stood a smaller building, at first occupied as a school house but later de- voted to the housing of poor members of the congregation. The present house is on the corner of North Baptist and Farewell streets, a building of a gothic order eighty-six by fifty-four feet, erected in 1834-5, and thoroughly renovated in 1885. It is finished with a tower and bell, galleries, an organ and conven- ient vestries.
THIRD BAPTIST CHURCH .- The Sabbatarians, as this sect of Baptists were formerly denominated, differ from their brethren of the general name in hardly any other article that the observ- ance of the Sabbath. Holding to the strict text of the Old Tes- tament they believe in the Jewish Sabbath and the observance of the seventh day when the Almighty rested, and not of the first day as ordained by Constantine in the law for the observ- ance of Sunday. There is no precise information as to the ori-
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gin of the sect of the Seventh Day Baptists in England. In America they first appear in Rhode Island. Green (in his short history of Rhode Island) says that in 1667 they were sufficient- ly numerous to justify them in asking that market day might be changed from Saturday, their Sabbath, to some other day, and that the assembly, to quiet their scruples, added Thursday as another market day.
The first Sabbatarian church in America was formed in New- port in the year 1671. Its founder was Stephen Mumford, who came to this country from England in 1665, bringing with him the last variety of Baptist doctrine, viz., that it was an anti- Christian power that had changed the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week. He joined Mr. Clarke's church in which he soon found many who agreed with him in his new opinion, among whom some of its more considerable members. The majority of the church, however, though it seems, concur- ring in the opinion that the change of day was a reformation, did not take the extreme view of the innovators, who in conse- quence, to the number of seven, among whom were William Hiscox, Samuel H. Unbbard and Stephen Mumford, thereupon withdrew. William Hiscox became their pastor. He died in 1704, aged sixty six years, and was succeeded by William Gib- son, an Englishman who was ordained in London before he crossed the seas. The new church grew in influence if not to great numbers and many of their chief characters in Rhode Is- land history are to be found in the list of its communicants, among whom two of the governors of the colony foremost in intelligence and patriotism, among the best of colonial and rev- olutionary worthies, Richard and Samuel Ward. Yet even these strict constructionists had in something to bend to the practical temper of the day; and the more liberal went so far as to contend that they might lawfully ride their horses to meet- ing and do other things which to the Jews were forbidden on pain, not of eternal damnation in the world to come, of which they seem not to have had notice, but of an immediate punish- ment in the world that is.
On the settlement of Misquamicut (now Westerly ) many of the members removed to that place and joined in the organization of the church of this denomination there in 1705. The Newport church was at the height of its membership from the middle of the last century until the revolutionary war. About the middle
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of the present century it had dwindled to such small numbers that services were suspended and for twenty-five years its meet- ing house was closed.
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