USA > Vermont > Early history of Vermont, Vol. II > Part 19
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most exalted, in every sense, in the house, except the dignity-bearing foreseat and a few private pews.
The matter of seating was a great source of disappointment, jealousy, offended dignity and unseemly pride. This contention resulted in "dig- nifying the meeting," which was to make certain seats, though in different parts of the house, of equal dignity. In the matter of "seating the meeting-house," age, office, military service and the amount paid towards building the house, counted. This custom of seating extended well into the 19th century. After a while the practice of selling the pews at vendue was gradually adopted, which served to allay much unpleasant .
feeling.
The first religious services ever held within the bounds of the territory now called Vermont, was held at Fort St. Anne about the year 1666, on the Isle La Motte. It is said that the French viceroy in Canada, De Tracy, detailed Captain Pierre de St. Paul Sieur de La Motte with a force of 300 men to establish a military post on the island. This fort built by the French was garrisoned by them for some twenty years and was often visited by the Catholic fathers; religious services and communion were held there during that period. The Catholic historian, O'Shea, says, that the chapel in Fort St. Anne was the first erected in Vermont, and one of the first Roman Catholic chapels erected in New England.
The next religious services held in the territory now called Vermont, were at Fort Dummer. This
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Fort was on the meadow, between Venter's Brook and the Connecticut River, now a part of the town of Brattleboro. It was a block house built on the west bank of said river, by Sir William Dummer, then Lieutenant-Governor and acting Governor of the Province, then embraced within the limits of Massachusetts Bay. This fort was begun Febru- ary 3, 1724. Timothy Dwight of Northampton was the first commander and he superintended its building. It was built of native pine.
Dwight wrote Governor Dummer they would live a heathenish life unless a chaplain be allowed, and gave as one of the advantages of having a chaplain that there would "be an opportunity to Christianize the Indians." Rev. Daniel Dwight was nominated and approved as chaplain and was al- lowed 100 pounds as salary. Timothy Dwight, the commander, became through a son born at the Fort Dummer, grandfather of the first President Dwight of Yale College. In 1730, Rev. Ebenezer Hinsdell was made chaplain of the fort and the In- dians came to the fort to hear him preach on the Sabbath. Rev. Andrew Gardner afterwards be- came chaplain at the fort.
The garrison had become derelict and careless, resulting in several disastrous surprises to parties in various directions from the fort, causing great alarm and discouragement; thereupon, Chaplain Gardner on Sunday, July 17, 1748, preached from the text, "If thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee." He was the last chaplain at the fort. The first church in Benning-
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ton was organized in 1763, with Rev. Jedediah Dewey as pastor. Preaching services were begun at Westminster in 1766, and at Brattleboro in 1768.
In the early days of Vermont the building of houses of worship and the support of the minister was not left to the option or discretion of each in- dividual in the town or parish as is now the rule, but they were compelled by law to contribute for such expense and support.
The General Assembly at its October session of 1783, held at Westminster, enacted in substance that it was the duty of the parish clerk on the ap- plication of seven freeholders of the parish or town to warn a meeting of the legal voters, to ap- point a place of public worship of God, fix on a place of building a house and vote a tax sufficient to defray the expenses of building; and also to agree with a minister to preach in the town or parish, and vote him a settlement in money, all to be assessed on the polls and rateable estate within the limits of the town or parish. If there were persons in the town or parish who were of different religious sentiment from the prevailing or ruling church in the town or parish, who desired to escape taxation, it was provided by the act that such persons should bring a certificate, signed by some minister of the gospel, deacon or elder, or a moderator in the church or congrega- tion to which they pretended to belong, that they were of different persuasion. Until such certifi- cate was shown to the clerk of the town or parish such persons should be subject to be assessed on their polls or rateable estate, with the majority.
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Whether wise or unwise, the statute and the sentiment of the people were very strict on the ob- servance of the Sabbath. The General Assembly at its February session in 1779, enacted in sub- stance, that no person shall upon land or water, do or exercise any labor, business or work (except works of necessity and mercy) nor engage in any game, sport, play or recreation, on the Lord's Day, or day of public fasting and thanksgiving, on pain, if convicted thereof, of forfeiting not ex- ceeding the sum of ten pounds. And any person found guilty "of any rude, profane or unlawful be- havior on the Lord's Day, either in words or ac- tion, by clamorous discourse, or by shouting, hollooing, screaming, running, riding, dancing, jumping, blowing of horns or any such like rude or unlawful words or actions in any house or place, so near to or in any public meeting-house for divine worship that those who meet there may be disturbed," shall incur the penalty of forty shillings for every such offense, and be whipped on the naked back, not exceeding ten stripes, nor less than five.
Nor shall any person drive a team or droves of any kind, or travel on said day (except on busi- ness concerning the then present war, or by some adversity they were belated, and forced to lodge in the woods, wilderness or highways the night before, and in such case travel no farther than the next inn or place of shelter on that day) on the penalty of forfeiting not exceeding ten pounds. And the act further declared, "nor shall any per- son keep or stay outside of the meeting-house.
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during the time of public worship, nor unnecessa- rily withdraw themselves from the public worship &c. on the penalty of paying a fine not exceeding three pounds. And if any number of persons shall convene and meet together in company or compa- nies, in the street or elsewhere, on the evening next before or after the Lord's Day, and be con- victed thereof, shall be subject to the same pen- alty."
It was further provided that the grand-jury- men and tithing-men, and constables of each town, shall carefully inspect the behavior of all persons on the Sabbath and due presentment make, of any profanation of the worship of God on the Lord's Day or any day of public fast or thanksgiving, to the authorities, and if convicted of any profanation they were subject to be pub- licly whipped not exceeding twenty strips. Where minors were guilty of such offenses, their parent or guardian might administer the proper punish- ment, and if they failed to do it they were subject to be fined themselves. The officers and tithing- man were required to restrain all persons from un- necessary walking in the streets or fields, swim- ming in the water, keeping open their shops or fol- lowing their occupation or recreations, in the evening preceding the Lord's Day or in the even- ing following. No appeal was allowed under the act from any conviction.
In the days of the tithing-man he was prom- inent in connection with public worship, and was both feared and hated by the uneasy and fun-lov- ing boys and girls and sleepers during the church
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service. The appearance and action of the tith- ing-man in a church in the present age would be ludicrous indeed ; it would seem out of place to see him with his wand of office, fringed at one end with a dangling fox-tail and the other end fitted as a sharp goad, strutting through the house, peering around. prodding and rapping the rest- . less boys, and waking the drowsy sleepers. Some of the Colonial sleep banishers were equipped with a long staff, heavily knobbed at one end with which he severely rapped the heads of the sleepy men, and from the other end of the staff depended a fox tail or a hare's foot, which he softly thrust into the faces of the sleeping women that startled them into wakefulness. One tithing-man in his pious ardor applied the wrong end, the end of the heavy knob, to a drowsy matron's head, for which he was severely cautioned by the ruling elders to use "more discresing and less haist."
A. M. Earl relates an instance where Roger Scott of Lynn, in 1643, struck the tithing-man who thus roughly and suddenly wakened him, who for the act was soundly whipped, as a warn- ing both to keep awake and not to strike back in meeting. And another case of an old farmer by reason of a hard days work the day before had fallen asleep, was hit by the tithing-man, but not wholly awakened. The bewildered farmer sprung to his feet, seized his wife by the shoulders and shook her violently, shouting at the top of his voice, "haw, back! haw, back! stand still will ve?" The ministers urged the tithing-men to faithfully perform their allotted work.
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It was a common thing in an early day through Vermont and all New England for the minister to make pointed remarks in a loud voice to awaken those who were asleep. Mr. Moody of York, Maine, to awaken sleepers in his meeting, shouted, "fire, fire, fire!" and when the startled, sleepy men jumped up, calling out "where?" the minister roared back, "in hell, for sleeping sin- ners." Some ministers called to their sleeping parishoners by name to "wake up." A church at- tendant of considerable dignity and standing on being thus spoken to immediately answered back, "mind your own business, and go on with your sermon."
The tithing-men were men of authority not only on the Sabbath, but during the week to see to it that the children in their neighborhood learned their catechism, and reported whether all the members of the several families attended public worship, gave in the names of "idle tipplers and gamers," and warned tavern-keepers to sell no more liquor to any toper who was drinking too heavily. He warned all new comers out of town. In Vermont this warning-out process was by virtue of the early statute law of the State. This was done by the Constable serving notice on the new comer. This notice was not because the new comers were objectionable or undesirable, necessarily, but was simply a legal form of precau- tion, so that if they became paupers, standing in need of relief, the town could remove them on legal process to the town from which they came and throw the burden of their support upon the latter town.
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The tithing-man watched to see that no young people walked abroad on Saturday evening, he re- ported all those who stayed at home or profanely behaved or lingered without the doors at meeting time on the Lord's Day. The latter class if they did not heed the warning of the tithing-man, were "set in the stock or cited before the Court, or confined in the cage, constructed for the purpose, on the meeting-house green. The tithing-man could arrest any person who walked or rode at too fast a pace to and from meeting. A. M. Earle. relates an amusing instance, viz: Two young men who were driving through the town on the Sab- bath were stopped by the tithing-man; one of the offenders gave as an excuse for his Sabbath travel, "my grandmother is lying dead in the next town" and hence was allowed to drive on; when at a safe distance, he stood up in his wagon and shouted back, "and she has been lying dead in the grave yard there for thirty years."
It is no great wonder that the young people were restless in church and sought opportunities to be absent during the service, and that the hard working elderly people fell asleep during the ser- vices, when we remember the great length of the sermon and their prosy character, some of which would run up to the "twenty-eighthly." The sexton or clerk sat near the desk to turn the hour-glass as often as the sands ran out, which was to re- mind the clergyman how long he had preached, but he seldom took the hint to bring his sermon to an end. The prayers of the minister were long. It is said that a Dr. Lord always made a prayer
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one hour long. Long prayers were highly es- teemed. A poor gift in prayer was treated as a short-coming.
A. M. Earl says, that "everywhere in the Puri- tan church, precatory eloquence as evinced in long prayers was felt to be the greatest glory of the minister, and the highest tribute to God." . The congregation had the custom of standing in prayer-time, until quite a recent date. Sermons that took two hours to deliver were frequent, and ministers did not approve, in those early times, of having their time for sermonizing cut short. In the early years of the 19th century an old Scotch clergyman in Vermont, bitterly and fiercely re- sented the establishment of a Sunday School, for the children, which was proposed by some pro- gressive parishioner during the nooning; and this parson craftily and somewhat maliciously pro- longed his morning sermons to shorten the time of the nooning and thus crowd out the Sunday School.
This Vermont congregation, after enduring for two or three years the tedious three hours of the first preaching service of the day, arose in a body and crowded out the prolix preacher and estab- lished the Sunday School. This parson sullenly spent the noonings in the horse-shed that he might not be at the Sabbath School service.
One peculiarity of the meeting-house at an early period in Vermont, and in Colonial days throughout New England, was, it was destitute of any warming apparatus in winter. The long. tedious services must have been hard to endure in
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the unheated churches during the cold winter weather. Judge Sewall made record in his diary of the fact that came under his observation in the early days of Massachusetts Bay, that "the com- munion bread was frozen pretty hard and rattled. sadly into the plates." This hints at the comfort- less church-life of our ancestors.
Rev. Mr. Wigglesworth preached on the text, "Who can stand before His cold?" Then by his own and his people's sickness three weeks passed without public worship; then on February 20, he preached from these words: "He sends forth His word and thaws them." And the next day the thaw set in, and it was regarded as a direct an- swer to his prayer and sermon. People now-a days, except the superstitious, would suggest that he chose well the time to pray for milder weather. Some ministers preached with their hands cased in woolen or fur mittens or heavy knit gloves, and wore in the pulpit in the bleak meeting-houses a long camlet cloak, and covered their heads with skull caps.
It makes one shiver to think of those gloomy and cold churches that grew colder as the winter advanced and until they bore the icy chill of death itself. One cannot but believe that the practice of sitting through the long winter service was the cause of much of the New England consumption. In the severe winter weather the women carried to meeting little foot stoves, being tin or metal boxes which stood on legs and were filled with hot coals at home, and replenished them during the day from the hearthstone of a neighboring farm house
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or from the noon-house. The children would sit around their mother's foot stove on their low crickets, warming their half frozen fingers.
In some places foot stoves were forbidden to be taken to the church for fear of setting the house on fire. In one town in 1792, it was ordered that no stoves be carried into the new meeting-house with fire in them, which left the women of that town, Hardwicke, to contrive some other way to keep their feet warm, as appears from the follow- ing lines, viz :
"There to warm their feet Was seen an article now obsolete, A sort of basket tub of braided straw Or husks, in which is placed a heated stone, Which does half-frozen limbs superbly thaw, And warm the marrow of the oldest bone."
Some people made fur bags of coarse skins into which worshippers thrust their feet for warmth. In some communities it was a custom for each family to bring, on cold days, their dog to church to lay at his master's feet to keep them warm, but after a time they became such a nuisance that a dog whipper was appointed to serve on Sundays, to drive out the dogs. The first church of Boston was the first New England congregation, except the church in Hadley, to have a stove for heating the meeting-house; this was in 1779. In 1783, the old South Church of Boston introduced the stove which brought out in the Evening Post of January 25, 1783, the following lines, viz :
"Extinct the sacred fire of love, Our zeal grown cold and dead. In the house of God we fix a stove To warm us in their stead."
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The settlements in Vermont and other New England communities followed this innovation and warmed their churches by stoves, though with great misgivings in some localities. Samuel Goodrich has given his recollections of the suffer- ings endured by the wife of an anti-stove deacon. It shows how imagination affects some people. After the stove had been set up in the church, she came in and swept by the unwelcome intruder with averted head into her pew. She sat through the service growing paler with the supposed unac- customed, unhealthy heat from the stove, till she fainted. She was carried out of church and upon recovering said languidly that "it was the heat of the stove," when she was informed that no fire had been built in the new stove.
Many amusing instances are related of the op- position to the introduction of the stove with which to suitably warm the church. The stern, pleasure-hating Puritan left their English homes and native land for the love of God and the free- dom of conscience to come to the wild, barren and unwelcome shores. They endured with fortitude and with seeming satisfaction personal discom- forts and contempt of luxury, and it took nearly two hundred years of gradual softening and mod- ifying of character to prepare their minds for so advanced a reform and luxury as proper warmth in meeting- houses.
The noon-house was a long, low building with a rough stone chimney at one end. The end next the chimney was used as a place of refuge in the winter time at the noon interval between the two
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services by the suffering members of the pious con- gregation who found there in front of the huge fire place the necessary warmth that could not be had in the meeting-house, and where they enjoyed their noon day meal brought from their respective homes, consisting of bread and cheese, doughnuts, pork, peas and pie. Horses were kept in one end of this house to shelter them from the storm and cold. The noon-house continued to be used in some parts of New England till after the Revolu- tion and until the commencement of the 19th century.
The common horse sheds were not built to any considerable extent till a later date. The boys, even in the noon-houses were not allowed to talk or play. Some old patriarch even then, would ex- plain to them the notes that he had taken during the morning sermon. It hardly seemed fair to cheat the boys of their noon-time rest and relaxa- tion, and compel them to listen to another long exposition of the Scripture from an unlearned expounder.
In many communities the noon-houses were to the town people what a Sunday newspaper is to Sunday readers now-a-days, and where they learned the news of the week and events to come; the men talked in loud voices the points of the ser- mon, and in lower voices of wolf and bear killing. of taxes, crops and of domestic animals, and many a sly bargain was made in the noon-house. The shivering women gathered about the blazing fire, talked of their household affairs, and dis- coursed in low voices of their spinning, weaving
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and candle-making, and their success or failure in the different kinds of work.
The wood for the use of the noon-house was given by the farmers of the congregation. Some apple growing farmer would give a barrel of cider to supply the internal warmth, an article of costly luxury in the early days of New England life. This thawed-out Sunday barrel of cider proved a source of much refreshment, inspiration and tongue-loosening to the chilled and shivering dea- cons, elders and farmers who gathered at the noon-house. A hot toddy or punch, a mug of flip, home-brewed beer, and a liberal dash of Jamacia rum were frequent, and taken without hesitation even by the parson. When stoves were intro- duced and used in the Vermont and New England meeting-houses, the noon-houses were no longer needed and quietly disappeared, and the noon-day lunches were eaten in the meeting-houses.
The office of Deacon of the early churches, in the pioneer settlements, was an important one. The deacon had charge of the prudential concerns of the church, and "dispensed the Word" in the absence of the ordained minister. They usually sat near the pulpit in a pew raised above the level of the meeting-house floor; furhished the sacra- mental wines, the cost of which was allowed to them from the church-rates or raised by special taxation, and sometimes the inhabitants of the parish were ordered to pay their share in wheat; they had charge of the communion service-often a pewter service, and had charge of the church contributions, and guarded against gifts such as
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worthless currency and other articles. In Bristol, Connecticut, the deacons wore starched white linen caps in the meeting-house to indicate their office. These venerable men were a group of awe inspiring figures, who, next to the parson, had the respect of the community.
Rules for conducting funerals were very quaint. On May 11, 1780, in one town, a report of a com- mittee, to whom had been referred the conduct of funerals, was as follows, viz :
"Whereas, It is the opinion of this town that funerals ought to be conducted with great decency and decorum in order to impress on rising and risen generations the importance of the awful so- lemnity, and to render the house of mourning bet- ter than the house of feasting. Be it therefore rec- ommended to all the inhabitants of this town to observe the following regulations at funerals :
"First-That the relatives of the deceased fol- low next the corpse, two and two.
"Second-If the deceased was a male person the males are to follow next the mourners, two and two, and the women after them, two and two; but if the deceased was a woman, then the women are to follow next the mourners and the men after them.
"Third-Those on horseback are to follow in after the foot folks, horses two and two, and the carriages are to follow in the rear of the proces- sion. And it is requested that no person walk or ride on either side of the procession from the house to the grave."
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE SABBATH, ITS RELIGIOUS OBSERV- ANCE AND PRIVILEGES IN THE EARLY DAYS OF VERMONT. CONTINUED.
In the early days of New England the music for public worship was indescribably bad, and con- sisted largely in the versification of the Psalms, and, as one described it, as, "squealing above and grumbling below." A few feeble efforts were made at the beginning of the 18th century to "guide the singing." Wretched failures were made in pitching or "setting the tune." But if the quality of their music was not edifying. it was made up in the length of the performance. Some of their pieces were 130 lines long, and occupied when lined and sung, a full half hour.
It is related of Dr. West, who preached in Dart- mouth in 1726, that he forgot one Sabbath to bring his sermon to meeting. He gave out a Psalm, walked a quarter of a mile to his house for his manuscript, and got back to his pulpit before the psalm was finished. Judge Sewall for many years seemed to have the charge of the singing and entered the following facts in his diary, viz: "In the morning I set York tune, and in the sec- ond going over, the gallery carried it irresistibly
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to St. David's, which discouraged me very much." It must have been, at least, interesting to have seen him stamping his foot, beating time and call- ing out York, at the top of his voice, and finally succumbing to St. David's by reason of the strong voiced gallery.
As poor as the singing was it was a source of pure delight to the Puritan Colonists ;
"For all we know Of what the blessed do above Is that they sing and that they love."
It has been well said that in the early commu- nities they reverenced the poor halting tunes in a way quite beyond our modern power of fathom- ing. At length the clergymen arose in a body and demanded better performances, and notes were in- troduced. Still the bands of old fogies were strong, who wished to cling to the way of singing they were accustomed to, and objected to singing by note for that the names of the notes were blas- phemous, and popish, a contrivance to get money. it would bring musical instruments into the church, that no one could learn the tunes; that it they began to sing by rule the next thing would be to pray and preach by rule; but the last and the most prominent reason was, "the old way was good enough for our fathers and therefore good enough for us."
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