USA > Vermont > Bennington County > Bennington > The one hundred year old meetinghouse of the church of Christ in Bennington, Vermont: being a record of the centennial of the same held in the meetinghouse, August the 19th and 20th, 1906 > Part 2
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izes the use of the civil law in support of the gospel and allows to the civil magistrate coer- cive power, that I suppose to be in the matter of compulsory church support.
But in the first instance church and town were one. All matters pertaining to either were settled in so-called "Proprietors'" meetings,1 and a simple family life they seem to have had of it in those early days.
They built their humble square meeting- house in the place they had cleared for it out on what is now the "Green," 2 midway between this building and the Walloomsac Inn, but a little north.3 In conformity with the spirit of the times it might have nothing churchly about it. In shape, in appointments, even in location and character of pulpit, there must be nothing to suggest the churches against whose vain form of worship they thus raised visible protest.
Sunday after Sunday "the rude forefathers of the hamlet" gathered there for the discussion of the knotty problems of their somewhat som- bre faith, and there, at other times, they gath- ered for such public meetings as the occasion required. Thither the wounded and prisoners were brought after the battle of Bennington, though a hospital, improvised for the occasion
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not far from the southwest corner of what is now known as Council Place, "Landlord Fay's," re- ceived the wounded soon. In this meeting- house sat some of the earlier meetings of the men who made the state and legislated for its wel- fare.1 But the size of this house was only forty by fifty, and it could not always supply the needs of a growing community, nor could a house, built under the primitive conditions this was, stand the stress that it should outlast the cen- turies. So thirty years later, when the number of inhabitants had grown to two thousand three hundred and seventy-seven,2 we find an article introduced into the warning of the town meet- ing, March, 1792, "To see if they will agree to build a new meeting-house."
Such propositions usually awaken, to say the least, a difference of opinion, and this was no exception. It was voted at once to dismiss this article. In 1793 a similar attempt met with like fate, and for three succeeding years the attempt was not renewed. The subject again coming up in 1797, it was voted: "Not to act any further on the matter but to dismiss the same." The next year, however, it was voted, at the March meeting, " To choose a commit- tee, according to statute directions; to stick a
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stake where the new meeting-house shall be," but alas, at an adjourned meeting it was voted: "To reconsider the above vote," and then voted: "Not expedient at the time to erect a meeting- house."
Now this apparent vacillation of purpose cov- ers a struggle; that struggle to which I referred a moment ago, to get separated forever ques- tions of church and state. They objected to being taxed by law to support the church or to being compelled by law to go to any particular church. To begin with, as I have said, town meetings and their records were all there was of it, and at "Proprietors' meetings" (town meet- ings) every question was settled. They sought from the general court of New Hampshire, back in 1763, authority to tax all owners of land in Bennington, resident and non-resident, for building a meeting-house, schoolhouse, mills, and highways. They laid and collected that tax and later a tax to support the minister. They even voted in town meeting in 1777, "That such persons as do continue playing in the meeting-house on the Lord's day or in the worship of God be complained of to the Com- mittee of Safety of said town, who are author- ized to fine them discretionary." This was the
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year that the proprietors held a meeting "To see to laying out the burying-ground," 1 and only twenty years prior to the heat of the contest for taking from the state or anybody else the right to compulsion in religious matters.
The first state constitution was formulated and made operative by the legislature two years later, though never ratified by popular vote.2 In this the right to freedom in religious worship is recognized, but with some limitations. The battle is on, and the question unsettled comes up again and again in one form or another; that question which we see delaying the build- ing of the meeting-house, a recognized need. But with our fathers, "a crying need" could wait until questions of principle were settled, and so we read from year to year of the post- ponement of this important work.
Other questions, too, occupied the prior thought of those old fighters. They wanted the question of their right to their lands, the lands they had bought and improved, settled with New York.8 They wanted admission to the United States, which was delayed.4 They wanted their independence at home and abroad, and they got it, and when finally they had compelled the settlement of these questions to their sense
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of right, they were ready to consider the smaller matter of a little more luxury and convenience in their house of worship.
In 1797 the state law of "Voluntary Asso- ciations" was passed, containing most of the principles they contended for, though not all. Modifications appeared in subsequent legis- latures, and at the close of the year 1803 they were ready, met and appointed a committee of building, a building agent-in-chief, and were soon at work.
A notice in the "Vermont Gazette" of Febru- ary 14, 1804, is interesting, as asking for propo- sals for building the meeting-house and signed by Moses Robinson, Jr., as agent. It runs for three weeks and then disappears. It is there- fore presumed that some one had made a satis- factory proposition and a contract or agreement had been signed, perhaps the work at once begun, though we know that the winter was an unusually severe one, snow falling as late as April; while in the road in front of Gen. David Robinson's house in the middle of March it was so deep that a tunnel was dug through the snowdrift for yards and a circular room dug out at one side, in which a fire was provided and hot toddy and flip furnished to those who chose to
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gather there and sit on the hard snow benches cut for this purpose.
It will interest you to know the contents of this advertisement put forth by the committee, which consisted of Isaac Tichenor, David Rob- inson, Jr., Thomas Abel, and Jesse Field, with their agent-in-chief, Moses Robinson, Jr., who was to make the contracts and draw on the Treasurer, David Fay, Esq. They also had assessors, a remaining hint of the old usage, David Robinson, Andrew Selden, William Henry, Jr., and Jonathan Wentworth, Collector. Their advertisement consisted of three parts. First, proposals are asked for framing a meeting- house seventy by fifty-two, with porch and cupola and tower, according to plan open for inspection by interested parties. Such proposal to include necessary superintendence of master workmen and assistants; the frame to be put up complete, fit for covering, by the fifteenth of June.1 Also proposals for covering and fur- nishing within and without, including glazing, all to be done January 1, 1805. To these was added a request for proposals on the mason work, plans to be submitted by the committee.2
You will note that a hundred years ago time limits in contracts and the dates of the comple-
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tion of the work did not always coincide. In this case there seems to have been a discrepancy of twelve months.
The material for building was, according to the proposals, to be delivered on the Green by the fifteenth of June, 1804. Whether this was accomplished we have no means of knowing. It is said that the lumber was cut and brought from no greater distance than six miles from the site, somewhere in the southeast part of the town. Good lumber was standing in the woods nearer by than to-day.
All must, of course, be worked out by hand. Even these graceful pillars were cut out of solid logs, not by a lathe, -for there were none in those days,1-but by axe and chisel and plane, and much of this smaller and finer decorative work by penknife.
Just when the work began we know, for Mr. Benjamin Harwood, that faithful chronicler of the times, in his diary, says: "Messrs. Abel & Philemore 2 began to build this edifice on the twenty-fifth of June, 1804." It is presumed Mr. Philemore in charge of the mason work, and Mr. Abel as builder-in-chief. This Mr. Abel was Oliver, brother of Thomas Abel, whom you will recall as of the building committee, and
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it is believed he came on here from Norwich, Connecticut, at the instance of his brother for this purpose, bringing with him Mr. Asa Hyde, a cabinet maker of Norwich, to whom was in- trusted the finer decorative work of pulpit, gal- lery, and pews. It is also recalled, as tradition, that the spring of the arches, the form of the dome, and the outline of the ceiling was the work of David Palmer, a resident of Bennington and a member of this church.1
But we are getting ahead of our story. We must first have a site and then a plan before we can build, even if we have material and builders right at hand.
Some time since we noted a vote in town meet- ing ordering a committee to stick a stake on the site selected, but as this came to nothing at the time we have no means of knowing whether the present was the site then chosen or not. As Clio Hall,2 however, the first school of higher order in the state, was then standing on this site, it is presumable the stake was hardly driven here. We do know that in the history of se- lecting sites for meeting-houses in those days there were often pronounced differences of opin- ion issuing sometimes in the division of the so- ciety.3 In this case, however, there seems to
INTERIOR OF THE MEETINGHOUSE Looking toward the Choir
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have been little opposition; what there was cen- tring around the question of putting the meet- ing-house over the graves of some who had been buried in that part of the burying-ground, laid out nearly thirty years before, as we have seen. The argument that churches were often the rest- ing-place of the dead in the old home in England seems to have rendered this objection of little weight. However, those who wished were al- lowed to remove their dead, and the headstones were taken out in all instances. In some cases the footstones remaining marked the location of graves undisturbed. In my boyhood some of these headstones still leaned up against the church or lay at its foundation, waiting, as it seemed, like faithful watchdogs, to identify their owners when the time for resurrection should come.
I have mentioned the school building of Clio Hall as standing on a portion of the site chosen for the new meeting-house.1 This school was incorporated November 3, 1780. A grandson of the first pastor of this church was its rector or principal for several years.2 In a program of a sixteenth of August celebration in 1787 the rector of Clio Hall, with his assistants, was assigned a place in the procession, showing its
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social recognition, and quarterly examinations of the students, both morning and afternoon, were held in the old meeting-house, together with public exercises of a literary order, indica- tive of the intimacy between the two institutions.1 But a fire broke out in this building, which de- stroyed it in 1803, thus making way for the pre- sent occupant of the site, although, as I have said, this covers much more ground.
But it is now time to turn to the plan of this building, about which you will have interested questions. You will recall that, in the adver- tisement for a contractor or contractors, refer- ence was made to plans already in the hands of the committee, but diligent search fails to find any such plans or record of them. Still we are not left entirely to guesswork in the matter.
A quarter of a century ago there were many churches in Massachusetts and Connecticut and in our own state, some of which are stand- ing to-day, whose exterior was very suggestive of kinship with ours. It was and is a colonial type belonging to the so-called Georgian period of architecture. In the seventeenth and carly eighteenth centuries the fathers of Separatist and Puritan faith wanted no church edifice re- minding them of the churches and cathedrals
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whose monstrous defection from a simple wor- ship of the true God they had abjured forever. The plain, square building without spire, music, or colored window, with simple, unadorned reading-desk, and with bare floors and far from luxurious seats was their idea of protest. But in the later eighteenth century and at the be- ginning of the nineteenth some departure from these ideas becomes manifest. Inigo Jones and especially Christopher Wren, both noted English architects of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, had been builders for their brethren on the other side. To Christopher Wren is ascribed the remodeling of St. Stephens for the Scottish members of Parliament and of West- minster Palace and Abbey, the cradle of the Westminster catechism. This gave him favor with the Puritans, and modifications of his out- lines in these and other buildings appear in this country. There were no architects as a separate guild in the United States at that time, but there were publications in the hands of the master builders which reproduced for them recent and notable buildings in England, and original sug- gestions of their own adapted for structures in wood.
In the " Country Builder's Assistant," a publi-
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cation put out by Asher Benjamin, (one of the earliest builders, of progressive ideas, in New England,) in Greenfield, in 1797, I find, by reference to the exhaustive work called "Co- lonial Architecture in the Georgian Period," that there was, among other cuts and plans, the exact exterior of our church, and also a cut of the old high pulpit as it has been described to me. This suggestion of Asher Benjamin, I suspect, if I may be allowed the Yankee's priv- ilege of guessing, was the original of many ex- teriors in the Connecticut valley, in western Massachusetts, and in southern Vermont, and one of these our own church.
Many New England parishes, about this time, voted to build a church like one just completed in some nearby town, and thus duplicates appear in many places.
When it comes to the interior, there we can see the play of an individual initiative of a very high order. Though we find other similar exteriors, we hear of no interior which upon examination proves to have been a model for our own.
St. Martin in-the-Fields in London, one of the Christopher Wren churches, has been adapted and copied in this country, and in treat-
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ment of gallery, arches, and dome suggests this, though much more ornate. But we have no reason for supposing any connection between these two, for that copy is in Savannah, Georgia, and was not erected until 1817. To this may be added the fact, which perhaps you noted, that, while in the advertisement for building pro- posals reference to exterior plans is made, there is no such reference to the interior, and hence, it is inferred, what is known to be true in other cases, that here the ingenuity of the builder was allowed a little freer play, for historically it is true that this was the aspiration of ambitious master builders of that day.
I have said that the austerity of the preced- ing century in the matter of more ornate meet- ing-houses was waning. The building could now be oblong, with all its entrances at one end instead of one at each of three sides. It might have a steeple and a bell deck with a bell in it. Its pulpit might now be elevated on high and approached by a broad aisle from the "porch," as it was called, and the front doors. Inside there might be columns spreading aloft, in the ceiling above, in graceful arches, and if the con- junction left the outlines of a cross it did not offend the taste nor the conscience. And while
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our ancestors would have banned many of the modern luxuries of our Protestant houses of wor- ship, they were far in advance of their ancestors.
Under these conditions this old meeting-house was worked out and built. Let me try to de- scribe it to you as it was one hundred years ago last January. Outside, I suppose, not essentially different from what it is now, save that there was no entrance at the southwest corner. This was added in 1864, as was also the recess back of the pulpit and the Sunday-school room with these doors.1 There was no bell, and there were no chimneys as yet, but on entering one would see changes. The approaches to the galleries from the porch - now called vestibule - were originally alike and substantially like the one now on the north side, though certain changes, necessitated by the reduction of the negroes' pews, which formerly stood at the head of the stairs, have taken place. These negro pews were square box pews, two in number, of gen- erous size, and sometimes misused later by the boys for playing during sermon time, since they offered some seclusion from the eyes of the minister.
Admission to the auditorium was through double green baize-covered doors which swung
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inward and sometimes came to with a bang as a single belated worshiper passed to his seat. Once inside these, still greater differences would be noted. The prevailing color of the walls and ceiling would be whitewash; there would be no blinds; there would be no carpet. There would be square pews against the walls, where now is an aisle, and a double row of square pews on either side of the main aisle. These were white boxes with doors of equal height with the rest, all about three and one half feet high, and finished with a rail painted dark red.1 Inside these were seats, which lifted on hinges 2 when the worshipers stood for prayer, as the custom was in those days, and which again shut down with a bang that resounded through the bare uncarpeted house, - though a strip of carpet was laid up the main aisle later. These seats were on three sides of the pews, so that when the house was full quite one third, if not more, sat with backs or sides to the minister, who from his lofty perch in the high pulpit was able to see into the pews and detect any departure from due churchly decorum.
This pulpit was as high as the galleries, so that he could also keep his eyes on the worshipers there, and I fear it was necessary, judging from
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the not infrequent reference to disturbances in the old record books of this society. It was a square box with paneled sides and front, about the size of the pews, but with the two front cor- ners so beveled as to give it in reality an octa- gon shape, - its table or top projecting cornice- like, -and ornamented underneath by the little square blocks seen elsewhere in the decoration. This pulpit was approached by two pretty steep flights of stairs, with rail and balusters, which wound about it in conformity to its shape as they ascended aloft. These were carpeted with that familiar striped stair carpeting of our grand- mothers' days.
Back of this pulpit was a window of clear white glass, at least as clear as they made in those days, and of shape similar to the one at the front of the house opposite. It was through this that, according to tradition, that eccentric white-haired clergyman, Father Marshall, in one of his frequently repeated journeys this way, while preaching on the "Claims of God" as a subject, looked out and saw men harvesting grain. Pointing backward to the men in the field he said, "Bennington sinners can trust God to send them rain and sunshine and ripen their crops for them, but they cannot trust him
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after the grain is ripe to keep it for them twenty- four hours, while they shall keep the Sabbath for him." 1
Underneath the projecting front of this pulpit was a double-doored closet, in which, pretty soon, if not at first, was kept that melancholy collec- tion of the lives of noted Christians and martyrs called a Sunday-school library.
The galleries on either side, at first, were also furnished with pews, so I am assured, which were removed or exchanged for "slips" at the time of the change in the main part of the house. That on the entrance end of the church was reserved for the choir and called the "singers' gallery" from the first, while the one on my left was reserved for the women, and the one on my right for the men who had no seats below, or, if young, had attained the age when it was un- manly longer to sit in their fathers' pews. 2
I wish they had left us some record of the events at the "raising," for those were great days in the olden times. We are told that some writings of "Priest" Dewey and a Bible were placed, in the corner, under or on the corner- stone. But we do not know if the building or frame when raised was anointed with New Eng- land rum, a not uncommon occurrence. Rum
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was a very common factor in the hilarity of an ordination occasion in those days.1
When it came to paying for the building of this meeting-house, the tax of $5000 which had been voted in 1803 was found to have been so unpopular that only $2290 of the amount had been raised, while it was also ascertained that the house, according to the plan adopted, had cost $7793.20. It was therefore voted, in a meet- ing of the proprietors, to surrender this plan of raising the money by taxation and refund that already paid in, and to rely upon selling the pews to raise the amount required. A plan is in existence showing the allotment, the names of the owners, and the amount required for each pew.2 I find a record of one man who paid more than the stipulated sum, and there may have been others.3
It is interesting to look over this old plan and see just where the fathers sat, and how much it cost them. Let me give you two or three of them. Directly in front and at my left was pew No. I, - the numbers were painted in black on the doors of the pews, - purchased by Deacon Moses Robinson, for which he paid at least $500, as that was the valuation. Across the aisle at my right was the pew owned by Deacon Samuel
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Safford; this pew was valued at $475. Around at my left, in the corner and occupying the entire corner, was pew No. 29, owned by Governor Tichenor, Capt. Moses Robinson, and Capt. Samuel Robinson, value $500, while in the other corner was a similar pew for the minister's fam- ily, Dr. Micah J. Lyman, and John Lovett, Esq. This was No. 30, and assessed at $250.1 Just back of No. I was No. 3, bought by Capt. Elijah Dewey, and across the aisle, No. 4, bought by Solomon Safford, Esq., William Henry, Esq., and Eldad Dewey, he whom we have met before as rector of Clio Hall. Back of them, on my left, Capt. Thomas Abel of the building committee, Aaron Hubbell, Esq., and Austin Harmon, and across the aisle, Gen. David Robinson, Judge Jonathan Robinson, and Capt. Jacob Safford. It will be observed that the fathers were not so afraid to get near to the pulpit as their children have be- come, and valued the privilege at a good round sum. From the fact of proprietorship in these pews it is evident that the custom in vogue in many places of "seating the meeting," which con- sisted in appointing to the most prominent seats, that is, the ones in front near the pulpit, the man or men whom the community voted to be most worthy, could not have obtained in this house.2
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The gallery seats were, I believe, free, and there were certain pews on the wall sides re- served for the public. There does not seem to have been a "deacons' pew" or bench directly under the pulpit, as in many other churches of that day, though I presume that the custom of the elderly deacons occupying chairs below the pulpit, as was the vogue here in my early days, had its origin in this general custom.
Gov. Moses Robinson, Gen. Samuel Safford, and John Wood were the deacons at the time, having been elected in 1789, and there may have been others, elected to the diaconate in other churches before coming to this town. The records of the lives of these men and their good works mark them, all three, as men who brought no reproach on the church, which may also be said of their successors, every one.
One reason for giving the deacons this prom- inent pew, in addition to their oversight of the congregation, was that one of their number was to "line out the hymn" for the congregation and choir to sing; for the scarcity of hymn books in those days necessitated this somewhat broken method of making melody to the Lord. I may add, for the benefit of the younger members of my congregation, that this consisted in the dea-
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con reading a line of the hymn, and then the congregation singing it, and pausing to wait until he had read out another line, which they then took up and sang as before. This custom was never followed in this house at the Sabbath service, I am told, though I am informed it was the custom in the social meetings held, at first, in the porch of the church.1 The reason for this is probably to be found in the fact that this old church has always been blessed with good singers and choir leaders, and possibly they had hymn books enough not to need the lining out process so late as 1806, though we are informed it caused quite a struggle in other congregations to give up this custom and adopt the "new-fan- gled singing by note and rule." One man said, "They will have us praying by rule next." 2 Churches are notoriously conservative, and old customs yield to innovation only after a hard struggle.
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