USA > Vermont > Rutland County > The history of Rutland county, Vermont; civil, ecclesiastical, biographical and military, pt 2 > Part 36
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In 1858, he removed to the residence of his son, John B. Mitchell, at Corpus Christi, Tex- as. During his residence there he organized a church at Casa Blanca, about forty miles from his residence, to whom he preached two Sundays monthly till the war scattered them. About a year before his death he organized a Presbyterian church at Corpus Christi, and by his own exertions secured the funds for a church building, which was partly erected at the time of his death. He died Aug 1, 1867, of the yellow fever, which also carried off two others of his household.
April 21, 1847, Rev. Henry Hurlburt was unanimously given a call to become pastor of the church. In pursuance of this call Mr. Hurlburt came to Rutland and preached some time, but, on the second of October, 1848, he informed them that owing to the condition of his health he must decline the call. He, however, remained here and occu- pied the pulpit some weeks longer.
Rev. Silas Aiken, D. D., son of Phineas and Elizabeth (Paterson) Aiken, was born at Bed- ford, N. H., May 14, 1799, and graduatei at Dartmouth College in 1825, with the high- est honors of his class, being veledictor:an. He studied theology with Rev. Bennett Ty- ler, D. D., and Prof. Howe, and was ordained pastor of the Congregational church in Am- herst, N. H., March 4, 1829, and was dismiss- ed, March 5, 1837, having accepted a call to Park Street church, Boston. He was install- ed over that church March 22, 1837, and re- signed his pastorate and was dismissed in July, 1848. March 28, 1849, he was installed over the Congregational church here, Kev. Benjamin Labaree, D. D., President of Mil- dlebury College, preaching the sermon, and was dismissed at his own request, July 1, 1563, from which time until his death he remained
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in Rutland without a charge. He had been at different times Chaplain of the Massachu- setts Senate, Trustee of Dartmouth College, Member of the Prudential Committee of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Director of the Prison Discipline Society, etc. He received the honorary de- gree of Doctor of Divinity from the Univer- sity of Vermont, in 1852. He died here, April 14, 1869.
Rev. Norman Seaver, D. D., son of Nor- man and Anna Maria (Bigelow) Seaver was born in Boston, Mass., April 23d, 1834, and graduated at Williams College in 1854. He studied theology at the Andover Theological Seminary, graduating there in 1860. He was ordained here as colleague pastor with Rev. Dr. Aiken, Aug. 29, 186C. On the resignation of Dr. Aiken, July 1st, 1863, he became sole pastor, and was dismissed in September. 1868, ai his own request. December 30, 1868, he was installed pastor of the First Presbyterian church ( Henry street ), Brooklyn, N. Y., where he now is. He received the honorary degree of D. D., from Middlebury College, in 1866.
Rev. James Gibson Johnson, the present and sixth pastor, is a native of Providence, Rhode Island. He prepared for college at Washington, D. C., (where his mother now resides ), and, entering Union College, at Schenectady, N. Y., graduated there in the class of 1863. He studied theology at the Princeton (New Jersey) Thelogical Seminary, and graduated in 1866.
He was ordained at Newburyport, Mass., Dec 27, 1866, and was settled over the second Presbyterian church in that city, where he re- mained until Oct. 1, 1868, when he resigned.
Immediately after his resignation he em- barked on a tour through Europe and the East, and was absent about a year. Return- ing, Oct. 7, 1869, he took up his residence in New York City, where he continued to reside antil his acceptance of the call, April 1, 1870, to the pastorate of the Congregational church here and was installed April 21st.
In 1788, a petition was presented to the Legislature of Vermont from a part of the in - nabitants of Rutland and Pittsford, being in what is known as "Whipple Hollow," asking for the establishing of a parish by the name of "Orange Parish." The petition was refer- redto a committee, and on their report the request was refused. They however organi. inordersat the dates specified. ED.
zed themselves into a parish, built a meeting- house and employed the Rev. Abraham Car- penter as their pastor, who remained with them until his death. He was what was called "a strict Congregationalist," and, in 1773 or 1774, was settled according to the rules of that denomination in Plainfield, N.H., without any action on the part of the town. In March, 1779, the town voted to accept him as the minister of the town, and by this action he received the right of land belong- ing to the first settled minister, consisting of 860 acres, and worth probably about the same number of dollars. He continued to preach there eight or ten years longer, preaching in his own kitchen, in private houses or in the open air, until he was dismissed and came to this town. He remained connected with the "Orange Parish" until his death, which Oc- curred in September, 1797.
PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH.
The first notice that we have of the Protes- tant Episcopal Church in Rutland, is a notice that appeared in March, 1784, that Rev. Mr. Chittenden would deliver a sermon to the Episcopal society, in the State House, Rut- land, and on the 30th of September of the same year it was announced that " A Prot- estant Episcopal Church is formed in Rutland and vicinity under the pastoral care of Mr. Ogden .* No results appear to have followed from this organization, although the annual conventions of the Church were held in Rut- land, and the parish was represented by lay delegates in 1795, 1802 and 1807. In 1817 another attempt was made, and February 19th of that year " The Protestant Episcopal Society of Trinity Church, Rutland," was organized by the Rev. George T. Chapman, then of Greenfield, Mass. On the 13th of September, 1818, Bishop Griswold, of the Eastern Diocese, visited Rutland, and in his annual address says that this Church " have been very desirous to obtain the permanent services of a settled minister, and have man- ifested a very laudable liberality in offering to subscribe for his maintenance. They have been disappointed and disheartened."
In 1826, " St. John's Church, Centreville, Rutland," was received into connection with the Convention, and Rev. Louis Mc Donald,
* There must evidently be some mistake here as to daten an neither Mr. Chittenden nor Mr. Ogden were
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as Minister, in June, 1826, reports that " serv - ices have been kept up between this and the East Parish alternately since February last." In 1831, Rev. Moore Bingham officiated for some time, but for how long I have been un- able to ascertain, as " Visiting Minister " of St. John's Church, and from this time that Church seems to have ceased to exist.
In January, 1832, Rev. John A. Hicks ac- cepted the Rectorship of Trinity Church,- and from that time the real existence of the church may be dated,-a church building was soon erected, which was consecrated by Bishop Hopkins in May, 1833. The Rev. Mr. Hicks married, September, 1823, Lucy, daughter of George Cleveland of Middlebury, Vt. Mrs. Hicks died at Rutland, August 10th, 1860. Dr. Hicks left a family of nine children.
On the resignation of Rev. Dr. Hicks, the Rt. Rev. John Henry Hopkins, D. D., LL.D., D. C. L., Oxon., officiated until the first of October, 1860, when he was elected and accepted the office of Rector for two years.
Bishop Hopkins was born in Dublin, Ire- land, January 30, 1792, and came to America with his parents in 1800, and was educated chiefly by his mother. He was originally a maker of iron, then studied law and was ad- mitted to the bar and practiced his profession at Pittsburg, Pa., and was rapidly rising to eminence, when, in 1823, he left the bar for the ministry, and was ordained a Deacon by Bishop White, December 14th, 1823 and a Priest in May, 1824, and immediately became Rector of Trinity Church, Pittsburg. In 1831 he resigned, and became Assistant Minister of Trinity Church, Boston, where he re- mained until he was elected the first Bishop of the separate Diocese of Vermont, in May, 1832, and was consecrated in New York, Oct. 31 of the same year, by Bishop White. He immediately came to Vermont, accepting, at the same time, the Rectorship of St. Paul's Church, Burlington. He resigned the Rector- ship of that Church in 1856, in order that he might devote himself more unreservedly to Diocesan works and the building up of the " Vermont Episcopal Institute." He died at Burlington, Jan. 9, 1868.
Rev. Roger S. Howard, D. D., succeeded Bishop Hopkins, and became Rector Dec. 1, 1861, and remained until June, 1867, when he resigned. Rev. Dr. Howard was a native
of Vermont,* and graduated at Dartmouth College in 1829. He represented the town of Thetford in the Legislature of Vermont in 1849. He subsequently studied for the min- istry. Before coming to Rutland, he was the Rector of St. Stephen's Church, Portland, Me. From here he went to Woodstock, and on the first Sunday of July, 1867, became Rector of St. James' Church. He remained there some over a year, and then resigned to accept the Presidency of Norwich University and the Rectorship of St. Mary's Church, Northfield. Dr. Howard resigned his offices at Northfield in 1872 and is now (1875) Rec- tor of the Church of the Reconciliation, Web- ster, Mass. Rev. Dr. Howard, was succeeded by Rev. John Milton Peck, who assumed the Rectorship of the Church, August 1, 1867, and remained three years.
In 1859, an Episcopal Church and Society was organized at West Rutland, by the name of Grace Church, and was admitted into union with the Convention of the Diocese, June 6, 1860. This church never had a resi- dent Rector, but Rev. D. Willis of Granville, N. Y., had pastoral charge during a portion of the years 1859 and 1860. After him, Rev. Albert H. Bailey took charge of the pari-h as its Rector, commencing June 17, 1860, offi- ciating one half of the time. Since the close of his labors the parish has become practically extinct.
[We here omit Mr. Williams' account of the Baptist Church, as also of the Methodist Church, having fuller histories prepared par- ticularly for the Gazetteer by their Rever- ened pastors, Mr. Mills and Mr. Hall. And the history of the Roman Catholic Church, having in hand a paper for the same prepar- ed by the Bishop of the Diocese .- ED.]
UNIVERSALIST CHURCH.
The Universalists organized a society here about the year 1853, Rev. Charles Woodhouse supplying the pulpit. He remained here some two years, and was succeeded by Rev. H. P. Cutting, who only remained a short time. Their place of meeting was in the hall of the building on the corner of Merchants' Row and West Street. After Mr. Cutting left, the society became practically extinct.
In February, 1858, a religious society call- ing themselves "Christians," founded by El- der Miles Grant of Boston, was organized by
* Thetford, Orange Co .- ED.
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the name of "Christ Church." They, in 1860, built a church or chapel on West Street, which is now known as the " Free Christian Chapel." The first regular preach- er was Elder Matthew Batchelder, who re- mained about three years, and was succeeded by Elder H. F. Carpenter, who was followed by Elder George W. Stetson. The church is now, and has been for some time vacant."
LIBERAL CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
A Liberal Christian Society was organized in Rutland, July 20th, 1867. Since the soci- ety was organized it has been supplied from one to five Sabbaths each by Rev. Dr. Steb- bins and Rev. William Tilden of Boston, Rev. J. F. Moors of Greenfield, Mass., Rev. Mr. Reynolds of Concord, Mass. In addition to these temporary supplies, Rev. C. A. Hay- den of Boston supplied the pulpit one half of the time for six months. Rev. F. W. Holland was employed by the society from the second Sunday of February to the second day of August, 1869. He was succeeded by the Rev. L. W. Brigham, who commenced his labors on the third Sunday of September, 1869, and remained until the second Sunday of September, 1870."
We have thus imperfectly passed in review the different religious societies in Rutland and their several pastors, and trust that we have succeeded in rescuing some facts and dates from oblivion, and placing others, which would soon be forgotten, in a form in which they may be preserved.
THIRD DAY. OLD FOLKS' CONCERT AT RIPLEY OPERA HALL. From the Rutland Herald.
It was a happy conception, most admirably carried out. Not a little of the praise is due to the Wales Cornet Band. North Benning- ton may well be proud of it, as we are of our Rutland Choral Society. To say there was a full house does not at all express the idea It was packed, jammed, and long before the curtain rose hundreds had gone away, unable to gain a foot place on the floor. The orches. tra consisted of the above named band, Mrs. W. N. Oliver of our town, soprano soloist, Mr. S. C. Moore of Burlington, pianist, our townsman, Mr. J. N. Baxter, solo flutist. with our Rutland Choral Society, under the direction of R. J. Humphrey, for the chorus. Of the band we have only good words. They have most agreeably disappointed our com- munity.
complished by our Rutland choral Society. Mr. R. J. Humphrey, their indefatigable con- ductor, identified with the society from its beginning, and without promise of reward has labored incessantly for its welfare. From feeble beginnings he has seen the society come to be one of the established institutions of our county. Their performance last night was truly gratifying to all who listened. We noticed that many tearful eyes bore testi- mony to their effective singing, among the older portion of the audience, while the old fugue tunes were being sung, their memory doubtless quickened by the quaint tableau of the spinning wheel and yarn-swifts in the corner. But the grandest, noblest feature of the entertainment was when, in instant recog- nition of the first notes of the closing piece of the evening, the entire audience, without a word or hint, voluntarily rose and joined in our sublime national anthem, "The Star Spangled Banner."
A rich display of the occasion, which we had almost omitted to mention, was the dis- play of the " Flood-wood Militia," dressed and undressed, between the first and second parts of the concert. Their drill, perhaps though not according to Hardee's tactics, was for the occasion much more pleasing, eliciting ROUNDS of applause, and though they beat a hasty retreat, there was none able to CHASE 'em.
FOURTH AND LAST DAY.
At ten o'clock on Wednesday a large au- dience assembled at the Opera House, to hear the Rev. James Davie Butler, LL.D., a native of Rutland, but now a resident of Madison, Wis.
EXTRACTS FROM THE ADDRESS OF REV. MR. BUTLER.
Eighteen hundred and eighty-seven years ago, and perhaps on this self-same day, im- perial Rome was celebrating one of her cen- tennials. The cry of the heralds was, con- venite ad ludos spectandos quos nee spectavit quisquam nec spectaturus est, " Assemble yourselves and behold a spectacle which no one has ever beheld, or will behold again." The festival lasted three days. Every night was elivened by dances, every night and every day was solemnized by sacrifices. The choral ode had been composed by the poet Horace, then at the height of his fame. Its intrica- ces made Byron, and still make classical tyros hate its author, but its patriotic and exultant strains were equally perspicuous and welcome to thrice nine youths and as many maidens, no one of them bereaved of either father or mother, who formed the choir which
Last not least, we desire to say a few words in honest praise of what has been ac- I rung them out in the Circus Maximus. It
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was a happy era. Legenis regarding the Trojan origin of Rome had just been crystal- ized, as in a mammoth Kohinoor, in the Æneid of Virgil. The city which Augustus had found brick he was fast transforming to marble. The temple of the war-god, Janus, was shut, for there remained no foes to con- quer worthy of the Roman steel. Rome was the only universal empire the sun ever shone upon, and hence was greater than all which had gone before, or that were to come after her. She only wore without co-rival all its dignities. Such was a centennial in the most high and palmy state of the Cæsars.
What is ours to-day ? We celebrate the arrival of the first pilgrim train which here settled. One century ago a dozen people entered this valley with a view to make it their home. They brought with them noth- ing save what they could carry, either on their own backs or on pack horses. No farmer's ox-team had as yet been driven over the mountain. They had not much of educa- tion or property. Their houses were of logs, low, narrow, and destitute of furniture. For 20 years the title to their lands hung in doubt before them. They were far from markets where they could sell what they did not want, and buy what they did. War to the scalping-knife soon raged around them, and that for 7 years. For 49 years there was no church really in this village. The recruits who joined the first comers, some of them outlawed by New York,-others desert- ers from more than one army,-others leav- ing their country for their country's good, or having lost caste there, remind one of David's partisans when " if any man was in distress, or if any man was in debt, or if any man was discontented," they betook themselves to his cave in the cliff. Moreover, during 40 years of the nineteenth century Rutland was notorious as a case of arrested development, like the legendary monkeys who were in- tended for men, but whose creation being be- gun on Saturday afternoon, was stopped in accordance with the Connecticut Blue Laws, by the coming on of the Sabbath, while they were still " scarce half made up." Hence a satirist would say that Rutland was fitly named after the smallest county in England, and one chiefly famous for producing the smallest specimen of a British dwarf. It is clear, therefore, that the pompous ceremonial of this week, in honor of the birth of a town
so insignificant long after its cradle years, may appear the comedy of " Much ado about Nothing,"-like the sacrifice of an ox on an altar dedicated to a fly. To what purpose is this waste ? Imperial Rome and Infantile Rutland ! That was to this, Hyperion to a Satyr.
Nevertheless, townsmen, you, like me, have beheld with equal wonder and delight the primitive pettiness of Rutland after long burial come forth in a better resurrection and swelled to fair proportion.
In my western home striving to vie with Mr. Hall in reference to those local details by which he has made the past re-live and look us in the face, I should be dropping buckets into empty wells, and growing old with drawing nothing up, while my chroni- cles of Rutland, through lack of local coloring, would resemble that picture of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea which was all one dead wall or barn door of Spanish brown. When the artist was asked, " Where are the Child- ren of Israel ?" the answer was, " They have all passed over "-and when the question re- curred, " Where are the hosts of' Pharaoh ?" "Why they," said he, " they are all drowned.""
After all, as a child of Rutland, as the son of a man who settled in this town in the second decade of its existence, and made it his home during more than half a century,- yes, as myself a Rutlandor who, while travel- ing more than half roun i the world, has still retained an untraveled heart, I would fain speak to you as I can,-though I cannot as I would. * * *
The Rutland pioneers brought with them not a little that no sharp eye could detect in their scanty outfit. Those of them who were most eager to escape from the past, those who had deserted their native lands lacking both inheritance and occupation there, as it were instinctively, established institutions analo. gous to those on which they had turned their backs.
In reference to law. their spirit was that of the forefathers of Connecticut, who voted to be bound by the laws of Moses till they had time to make others better. As to the erecution of law, they appointed the needful officers and backed them up by the whole force of the community. A convicted crim- inal could not get reprieved for a second trial unless some reliable man would volunteer to be hanged as his substitute if legal trickery
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should clear him, as Ethan Allen once vol- | unteered in Bennington. Some of them were ignorant, but you have heard how early they established a school and built a school-house. Too many of them were personally irrelig- ious, but they soon called a minister and reared a sanctuary, though rather far off,- and out of the way. Moreover, the Rutland- ers brought with them to their new abode the township system in which they had been nurtured. That style of local government for maintaining the neighborhood poor, as well as for providing roads, bridges, police, schools and churches, in the way which seems best to a majority of the citizens convened in a town or church meeting, was long deemed an expedient too simple and natural to de- serve any fame, but since the eulogies of the philosophie De Tocqueville it has become famous as the best illustration extant of pure democracy States made up of such elements are immortal, and
" Vital in every part, Cannot but by annihilating die"
The word "Town," which Texans to this day define "a place where whiskey is sold," to. a Kutlander meant protection, education, sociability, religion.
The event which we have gathered to hold in remembrance has come to seem to me more memorable than I at first thought it, as a representative specimen of colonization.
One of the great means by which man has improved his condition. Such has been its tendency among Jews downward from when Abraham heard the voice of God, saying, "Get thee out of thy country, and I will make of thee a great nation."
Just one century ago England essayed by paper proclamations and surveyors' chains to dam up the migrational wave which then first began to roll inward from the Atlantic States.
"She might as well go stand upon the beach,
And bid the main flood bate its usual height."
No sooner are farmers established in any region than all varieties of artisans, traders and professional men flock thither-to build their houses, furnish them clothing, furniture, foreign gewgaws, buy their produce, as well as dose thein with pills and preaching, pumps and politics, lectures and liquors.
In new communities wages, measured by the price of wheat, are enormous. They are also high in money. With a view to keep
them down, one of the earliest laws in Mas- sachusetts forbade any one to give or take more than two shillings for a day's work. Mauger all this, prices went up. When the carpenter had finished the town stocks, his charge seemed so exhorbitant that the indig- nant magistrates forced him to sit as the first culprit, with his own feet fast in his own handiwork.
In States new born no tall trees keep down the underbrush,-every man's energies Gal ample room. * * A boy who had grown up in Ticonderoga as a pauper migrated to St. Louis and there became worth more than all the inhabitants of his native town. * *
The first steps of the movement for coloni- zation intra-continental and trans-continent. al, I date just one century ago, and simulta- neous with the planting of Rutland.
"Two years before, in 1768, Carver returned to New England from exploring the upper Mississippi, and first proposed opening a passage across the continent, as the best route for communication with China and the East Indies. In 1769, Pontiac, the evil genius so long repressive of western advent- urers, perished. In the same year, Daniel Boone first saw the Kentucky. In 1770, forty Virginians reached the Cumberland, Carolinians penetrated to Natchez, Connecti- cut men were at Wyoming,-were seeking land grants on the lower Mississippi,-were claiming 800 miles west of the Alleghanies. Hear the prophecy of these last knights errant. *
"In fifty years our people will be more than half over this tract, extensive as it is ; in less than one century the whole may be- come even well cultivated. * *
Besides all this, I have changed to dis- cover an event that took place on the self- same year and month and day which we now commemorate,-one hundred years ago this day,-and which emphatically marks that era as the day-spring of colonization break- ing over the limits of the Atlantic colonies.
In the very hours* when the first comers to Rutland were here arriving, George Wash- ington, on horseback, was making his first day's march in a nine weeks' expedition be- yond the Virginia mountains in search of western lands, farms which had been grant- ed his soldiers by the Legislature.
* October 5th, 1770, Washington's Journal,
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This coincidence in the movements of | vision. Washington and of the Rutlanders should seem to us as remarkable as a cat's eyes com- ing just where there are holes in her skin then seemed to the liege lord of both of them, George III. Neither Rutlander nor Wash- ington was content to vegetate like the rhu- barb pie-plant under a barrel and see the world only through its bung-hole.
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