USA > Vermont > Windham County > Brattleboro > Brattleboro, Windham County, Vermont; early history, with biographical sketches of some of its citizens > Part 10
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"The worst of woes that wait on age.
To view each loved one blotted from life's page."
But youth or early manhood could show no greater interest in the events of the day.
When Mr. Webster was seated upon the platform erected in the grove, Judge Whitney instantly threw off his hat, and renewed vigor came to that time-worn frame and face, as, with clear, untrembling voice, he loudly exclaimed : "Ladies and Gentlemen : The Defender of the Constitu- tion."
It was enough. Surely nothing could be said more fitting the occasion. As
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died away the cheers of the multitude, the sound of cannon and strains of music, we felt, though all these demonstrations might be proper from our citizens in deference to this distinguished visitor, Judge Whitney, in the use of those last five words, had paid Mr. Webster the highest compliment of them all.
REV. ALONZO CHURCH, D. D.,
was born in the town of West Brattleboro, April 9, 1793. He was son of one and grandson of another, who, in the war of the Revolution, had done the State service. His boyhood and youth were spent upon a small farm, which his father had settled at the close of the war, and where he learned those lessons of self denial and acquired that stern integrity which served in after life to render him eminently use- ful. His active mind could not long brook the monotony of a farmer's life; at an early age he entered Middlebury college, supporting himself during his college course by teaching in the winter. He graduated in the class of - and soon after receiving his degree his health fail- ing, he emigrated to Georgia.
A stranger in a distant state, the singular purity of his life and his earnest devotion to his chosen profession, soon gained for him the esteem and affection of those among whom he had cast his lot.
The classical school which, as, early as 1818, he established in Putnam, soon be- came famous, and pupils were attached to it from all the adjoining counties of the State. His fame as a teacher was estab- lished on a firm basis before he had reached mature manhood. In a country which at the time was the outpost of civ- ilization, unaided and alone, he built up and maintained a school of which older states might have been proud; began that labor in the cause of education, which ended only with his long life.
Married at an early age to a fair pupil- both sexes were under his tuition-he identified himself at once with the people of his adopted State.
Sincerely pious from his, boyhood, he allied himself with the Presbyterian church, and soon after his arrival in Georgia was ordained a minister of that denomination. Deriving from his profes- sion an income sufficient for his modest
wants, he devoted himself to the ministry without salary, supplying the pulpit of those poor churches whose members were unable to provide themselves with a pastor. His labors as a preacher were not less earnest than as a teacher, and his success was best attested by the devotion shown. him by his humble congregation.
He did not, however, remain long in a: subordinate position. His talents and zeal and the skill and prudence he manifested. in teaching and in the control and man- agement of youth, soon made him widely known, and in the year 1819, he was elected professor of mathematics and astronomy in Franklin college, an institu- tion which had been endowed by the State. of Georgia as early as 1789. This necessi- tated a change of residence-the last he ever made. For more than forty years he lived in the town of Athens, among the foothills of the Alleghanies, and there be- side the Oconee sleeps his last sleep.
For ten years the young professor filled his post so acceptably that at the expira- tion of that time, upon the resignation of Dr. Waddell, the president of the college, he was unanimously chosen his successor, which position he filled for thirty years, and finally, when broken by the long labor of life, he resigned to other hands his post of honor and of toil.
The regret and affection of all went with the faithful teacher to the modest home which he had prepared for his old age, near the town which had so long known him as its ablest, purest and most influential citizen, and his best eulogy is to be found in the devotion which even now his former pupils show for the mem- ory of their teacher.
Among those who received at his hands instruction are many of Georgia's most distinguished sons. Two of his pupils are now United States Senators. A. H. Stevens was among his scholars, and dur- ing his collegiate career was an inmate of his family. Numbers of Georgia's best and oldest men have acknowledged their indebtedness to the wise and good man who directed their education. He was the friend and associate of Crawford and Bowen, of Calhoun and Preston and Mc Duffie, and, although his pursuits were different, he was a peer among them.
The fitness of the man for an instructor-
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of the young was acknowledged by all who knew him. While courteous and kind to such a degree as justly to entitle him to the appellation given him, "the Chesterfield of Georgia," upon occasion lie could be firm and decided.
His sense of justice was so strong that he was never accused of partial or preju- diced action.
In his intercourse with others he was ever kind, while his charity covered the follies of youth with its mantle; and, best of all, he was imbued with the spirit of a pure, earnest and consistent Christian. With an intuitive knowledge of his pecu- liar fitness for the work, he adopted teach- ing as his profession, and for more than forty years he devoted his life and energies to that pursuit.
He loved with the attachments and strength of his manhood the home and state of his adoption, but never ceased to remember the land of his nativity. In the sunny clime which he chose for his life-long home, his heart turned often to the green hills among which his boyhood was spent, and the friends of his youth were never forgotten.
His Alma Mater conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Divinity, and, though there may on its alumni be names more widely known to fame, there is not one whose life has reflected more honor upon her teaching.
To him Georgia owes a debt of grati- tude. To him more than to any other is due the intellectual developement of her citizens and the silent influence of his teaching.
Dr. Church died May 18, 1862, aged 69.
Vermont may proudly claim him as one of her purest and noblest sons.
[Furnished by a Descendent, Wm. Henry Wells, of N. Y.]
THE REV. WILLIAM WELLS, D. D.
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The Rev. Wm. Wells, D. D., first min- ister of the church of the East Village of Brattleboro, was born at Biggleswade in Bedfordshire, England, in 1744. He was the only son of Richard Wells, who was also the only son of Richard Wells. His father and mother both dying in his child- hood, he was brought up by his uncle, Ebenezer Casterson, as his own son.
His thoughts were early turned to the ministry, for which he was prepared in the
Dissenting college at Daventry, and he was encouraged and assisted in his pur- pose by John Howard, the celebrated phi- lanthropist, an intimate acquaintance of his uncle Ebenezer, after whom he named one of his sons, long a resident of this town. Another son was named after Howard.
In the year 1770, he was invited to preach at Bromsgrove, where he was afterward settled as a minister of a Dissenting con- gregation, a ministry in which he contin- ued to officiate during his residence in England.
In January, 1771, he married Jane Han- cox, daughter of the Rev. James Hancox of the neighboring town of Dudley, who pos- sessed what was considered at that time a handsome fortune. Mr. Hancox had been destined to be a clergyman of the Estab- lished church, and to hold the living of Kidderminster, which was in the gift of his grandfather. Even as a boy, however, he had formed opinions in favor of non-con- formity, and finally declined to accept the living (of £800 a year), although his grand- father declared his intention of disinherit- ing him. in such a case, of his clainis as eldest son, a threat which he carried out for a time, but relented in his last illness. Mr. Hancox was admired for his power of pathos in the pulpit, but was in the habit of saying he should do injustice to his people if, while he attempted to move their passions, he neglected to inform their minds. He appears to have been, as one might expect, a champion of freedom, whom anything like the appearance of oppression roused to a noble wrath.
A letter is extant from a friend of the lady, a clergyman, from which we take an example of letter writing a century ago:
"I acknowledge I was not quite ignor- ant of Mr. Wells's attachment before I received your favor, and I am confident it is as strong as it is reasonable. I do not wonder that a man of his taste should soon be convinced that the half had not been told him. Kindred minds soon at- tract each other, and we who know both have often thought and said that if any two minds were cast in the same mold they were yours and his. And really, my dear Miss Jane, as to Mr. Wells. mere justice obliges me to say that I never knew a man better formed by nature and
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grace for being happy and making others so who are most nearly connected with him. His natural temper is excellent, sedate and even, always easy and cheerful, inclined to think well of and be pleased with everybody and everything that is tolerable, obliging, tender and affectionate, yet active, manly and prudent, remark- ably free from caprice and affectation and every turbulent passion.
And to these human attributes, valuable as they are, divine grace has added, what you still more highly prize, a rational and warm piety. This, you will think, is saying a great deal; but really, Miss Jane, I cannot in conscience say less. This is the light in which his character appears to me. This is the character his tutor and his most intimate friends universally give him." * * *
In the summer or fall of 1782, as we learn from a memoir written by his son Hancox, a companion of his voyage, Mr. Wells determined to remove with his family to the United States; before leaving England, he made up his mind that he would not take his family to a slave state, and would not establish himself in the wilderness. For many years he had taken a warm interest in the country, and dur- ing the Revolutionary war he was decided- ly on the side of the colonies. The state of the political world in 1792 was gloomy. The French Revolution caused fear and great excitement in England. The Bir- mingham riots took place in the summer of 1791. Several dissenting meeting- houses and a number of houses belonging to opulent dissenters were destroyed and openly plundered by a brutal mob, and all this was done with the almost open ap- proval of the High Church party. The watch-word of the mob was "Church and King," and the dissenters felt that they were frowned on by the government, and not protected as they ought to have been by the civil authorities, against a mob who were too ready to suppose that their excesses were, to a certain extent, at least, agreeable to their superiors.
Birmingham was only thirteen miles from my father's house at Bowenheath, his meeting-house was at Bromsgrove, two miles off. The destruction of the meeting- house was openly threatened. He feared at one time that his house was in danger,
and he removed some of his most valuable goods. All sorts of absurd reports were circulated respecting the dissenters. Men of the most blameless and benevolent characters were suspected of forming secretly the most wicked and despicable conspiracies. These were some of the circumstances that determined my father to quit his native country and remove to the United States.
In addition to what is said above of Dr. Wells's attitude during the Revolutionary war and his life as an English dissenting minister, we quote from a sketch of his life written by his son, William Wells, Esq., for Dr. Sprague's Annals of the American Pulpit, Vol. viii, p. 257.
"At the commencement of the move- ments which preceded the American Rev- olution, he took a strong interest in favor of the colonies. He exerted himself, with Dr. Price, Dr. Wren of Portsmouth, &c., in collecting subscriptions for the relief of the American prisoners. When Mr. Lau- rens, upon his liberation from the Tower, passed through Bromsgrove, on his way to Bristol, he inquired for Mr. Wells, stating that he wished to return his own and his country's thanks to him for this service.
My father's health had been affected by his residence in the town, and he removed to a hamlet distant about two miles, where he cultivated a small farm. This was an occupation which he well understood, and in which he much delighted. He had in his house several boys from respectable dissenting families, some of whom be- came attached friends.
Notwithstanding these laborious avoca- tions, no one thought his people or study neglected. He commonly rose at 4 o'clock, and in the tardy mornings of an English winter his candle might be seen three hours before daylight. At the academy and in early life, he was a hard student, and, though he never claimed the reputa- tion of a learned man, he had read much and carefully. I cannot be mistaken when I state that at that time the education of dissenting ministers, under Dr. Doddridge and others, his contemporaries and suc- cessors, was far superior to that common- ly acquired at the universities.
My father was always a student. He had in England a very good library, and
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to the latest period of his life his study was his resort when leisure allowed.
His memory was tenacious. He was well acquainted with ecclesiastical history, that of the Reformation, and especially of the Puritans and Dissenters. He had in his library many of the best writers belong- ing to the established church. Burnet, Tillotson and Clarke were his favorites. No man was less of a bigot, but the idea of submission to articles of faith he never could endure."
During the ravages of the small-pox, contrary to the prevailing popular preju- dice, he inoculated his children. The operation succeeding, he was beset with requests to inoculate others, which he complied with as respects some of his poor neighbors, who could not afford to pay doctors' bills. He carried through the disease 1300 persons, a work which occu- pied much of his time. during two years. An eminent physician at Worcester, with whom he was intimate, used to call him in jest "Brother Doctor."
At the time of the Birmingham riots, and the destruction of Dr. Priestley's church and residence, Mr. Wells's house and church were also threatened, and this persecution decided him to emigrate to America.
In January, 1793, he wrote to his son:
" We design to land at or near Boston, and where we shall pitch our tent it is hard to say. * * I have, as may be supposed, a good opinion of America, but yet my expectations are not raised unreasonably high. I know, like every other land in this world, it must be subject to affliction, disappointment, pain and death. But let it be remembered, also, that there is the same kind Providence to attend us there as here, and as to government, liberty and the prospect of getting a comfortable live- lihood. I think the advantage lies on the other side of the Atlantic."
Dr. Wells set sail from Bristol May 8, 1793,-the ship in which he sailed being towed down the Avon by several boats to get it through at high water,-and after a passage of 32 days cast anchor in Boston harbor.
Eight children came over with their parents, William and Jane Wells, among whom may be mentioned William, his eldest son, who spent two years at Har-
vard college, where he was afterward tutor, and subsequently the head of the publishing house of Wells & Lilly, in Bos- ton,-among the publications of which house may be mentioned Griesbach's New . Testament in Greek, at the time an extra- ordinary enterprise for America, and which was revised and carried through the press by Mr. Wells's own supervision; James Hancox, long a successful merchant in Hartford; and Ebenezer Casterson, who married Mary Chester of Weth- ersfield, continued to reside in Brattleboro from his conng over with the family in 1793, at the age of sixteen, until his death in 1850. He was universally estcemed as a man of modest, straight-forward and generous character, and was twice the rep- resentative of the town in the State Legis- lature.
It is remarkable that these eight children were all living in 1834, 41 years after the voyage (the first death was that of his youngest son, John Howard, in 1844, aged 60), and met to welcome their oldest sister, Mrs. Martha Freme, when, after marriage and widowhood in England, she returned, shortly after the death of her father, to settle in Brattleboro. The remarkable character of this lady, the generous hospi- tality which her means enabled her to exercise, and her tragic end, when the mansion house in which she lived, and which had been her father's before her, was destroyed by fire in May, 1849, are still well remembered in the town.
Dr. Wells had for a long time taken great interest in the history of New En- gland, and had corresponded on that sub- ject with the Rev. Dr. Morse of Charles- town, historian and geographer, and father of the inventor of the telegraph. After visiting Dr. Morse for a few days, he went to a house which the former had taken for him in Medford. With his eldest son, William, he made a carriage tour through Connecticut to the Hudson and Mohawk valleys, to inspect his adopted country, and went as far as the Whitestown coun- try, now called Clinton, where he made a stay with Rev. Samuel Kirkland, mission- ary to the Indians, and father of John Thornton Kirkland, afterward President of Harvard coliege.
The next year he purchased a farm of 400 acres in Brattleboro, to which he re-
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moved his family by sleighing. He wished to settle where he could occupy a farm and be useful in preaching. In Brattle- boro he found both.
For some time the family felt severely the difficulties and discouragements . of their situation. He was invited to become the pastor of the society, but declined, feeling that he would be more indepen- dent as a preacher than if he were formal- ly settled. He, however, acted as minister, and accepted the remuneration voted him by the town, by which he was annually chosen for about 20 years.
At that time the character of the popu- lation was extremely mixed, and the tone of manners rough (notwithstanding the presence of some educated and elegant families), and the moral and religious character of the people as a whole much below that which he had left in England.
When he first preached, the young men of the village were accustomed to pass the hour of service in amusing themselves under the trees, while the young women would wander from pew to pew during the exercises. Dr. Wells made no com- ment whatever on these liberties, but went on in his duties with the courtesy that was characteristic of him. In three years time the congregation had become remarkable for order and attention. The misrepresen- tation and prejudice which he encountered he overcame by quiet wisdom and by the influence of a pure life. His salary, which was never regularly paid, was £80 (about $260) of continental currency.
After this time, he sent in his resigna- tion, and the East village people, who had always been his best parishioncrs, built for him the first meeting-house in that village, where he preached for some years. He went to England on a visit in 1818, and while abroad received very unexpectedly the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Harvard university.
Dr. Wells, although the least controver- sial of men, was affected by the Unitarian controversy, which began with an article in the "Panoplist" in 1815,-a popular periodical of the Calvinistic sect,-which article was answered by Dr. Channing.
Suspicions of his theological soundness were entertained by the neighboring clergy. He thought proper to deliver an
address to his people, on the Sabbath of the first communion, in the new meeting- house at the East village, in which he de- clared his sentiments and opinions in regard to doctrines. His address was. highly satisfactory to his people.
During his absence in England, how- ever, in consequence of intrigues arising from these doctrinal disputes, Dr. Wells having left his parish free to choose anoth- er minister, a young man was settled in. his stead by the agency of some managing persons. Dr. Wells, by the exercise of great prudence and Christian charity, checked those who were disposed to be indignant on his account, and filled the pulpit without remuneration during the illness of his successor, continuing to the end of his life in peace and friendship with his people. His own religious opin- ions were what are called Arian, but he considered all doctrinal differences of trifling consequence in comparison with purity of life.
An admirable anecdote is told of this indifference to theological speculations in " Sprague's Annals":
"In those days, when every minister's house was regarded as an inn or refectory by every other minister, whether known or unknown, who wanted rest or refresh- ment, a young man called upon him and, soon after the introduction, a dialogue- ensued much like the following:
Stranger-"Are there any heresies among you ?"
Dr. W .- "I know not whether I under- stand the drift of your question."
Stranger-"I wish to inquire, Sir, wheth- er there be any Armenians, Socinians, or Universalists among you?"
Dr. W .- "Oh, Sir, there are worse here- tics than any of these."
Stranger-"My dear Sir, what can be worse?"
Dr. W .- " Why, there are some who get drunk, and some who quarrel with their families, or their neighbors, and some who will not pay their debts when they miglit do it, and some who are very profane. Such men I think far worse heretics than those for whom you in- quire."
Dr. Wells is described by all who have seen him as of a very noble person, unit-
,
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ing dignity and sweetness in a remarkable degree. He was 6 feet in height, well made and very erect. He is the subject of one of Stewart's finest portraits,-present- ing a countenance of such benevolent radiance as not to be easily forgotten. He commonly wore a black velvet cap over his flowing white locks, which gave him a priestly and patriarchal appearance.
While he was visiting England, it was currently reported among the populace, anxious in respect to Catholic aggressions, that the Pope of Rome was making a journey through Great Britain. Children who saw him for the first time, even babies, would manifest a desire to sit on his knee, and the elder ones would sit to look at and listen to him. This regard of children he valued highly.
Even at the age of 80 years he would read for two hours in the evening, holding his lamp. His temper, though ardent by nature, was chastened by gravity and seriousness; and he is described as abound- ing in the thoughts which might serve to mitigate trouble, and as having an especial faculty in prayer. He died in peace of mind, Dec. 9, 1827.
[From the Obituary Notice, written by Hon. James Elliot, in the Brattleboro Messenger, Dec. 14, 1827.] "Although his mind was stored with those rich treasures of theological informa- tion which are the products of a long and studious life, he had none of the pride or pomp of education; and, although he was blessed with ample powers of argument, he did not feel it his duty to expatiate in the thorny tracts of controversy, believing that he could better serve the great cause of truth and piety by preaching Christ and Him crucified, by plain and practical illustrations of the pure morality and per- fect purity of the Christian system. Sus- taining through life the reputation of liberal principles and comprehensive views, he was not understood to adopt, in ali their amplitude, the peculiar doctrines of any of the contending sects that occupy the extreme points of the vast field of relig- ious contemplation. While his capacious mind embraced in its benevolent wishes, and in its fervent aspirations, the whole family of man, he acknowledged no human master of the human mind, and still less did he presume to mark out the limits of either the power, the justice, or the mercy
of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 1
The daily beauty and moral elevation of his character were of course more peculiar- ly obvious to his family, his intimate friends, and the circle of his neighborhood. But he had a name and a praise in many of the congregations on both sides of the Atlantic. To the church he was a shining light, and to the world a bright example. It is known that many able and candid men of different denominations regarded him as combining, with a degree very un- usual in this late age of the world, the primitive simplicity of the patriarchal, with the paternal simplicity of the apos- tolic character."
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