USA > Wisconsin > Rock County > Beloit > Past made present : the first fifty years of the First Presbyterian Church and congregation of Beloit, Wisconsin together with a history of Presbyterianism in our state up to the year 1900 > Part 12
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NOTE 2 .- Benjamin Gilbert Riley was born at Middlefield, Otsego Co., N. Y., Aug. 7th, 1810. A graduate of Williams College in 1834, he spent one year at Andover, another year as principal of Oxford select school, and graduated from Union Theological Seminary, New York city in 1839. Au- gust 31st of that year he married in New York Miss Anna Farrell of Detroit, Mich. Taking first a Congregational church at Hartwick, N. Y., and then serving at Livonia, Livingston Co., 1843-1855, he afterwards became princi- pal of Genesee Model School, Lima, N. Y., for a year, when ill health led him to resign. In September, 1857, he came to Lodi, Wisconsin, was pastor of that Presbyterian church six years, and then was appointed New School Synodical Missionary for Wisconsin, and served thirteen years, 1864 to July 1877. After that long and arduous work he still preached at various places, especially in Waunakee, Wis., one of the many churches he had founded. His death occurred at Prairie du Sac, Sauk Co., Wis , Sept. 11th, 1884, and his remains were buried at Lodi, Wis. He left a daughter, Laura E., and two sons, Edward F. Riley, now secretary Board of Regents, Wisconsin University, and Charles P. Riley, M. D., of Baraboo, Wis.
NOTE 3 .- The successive Presbyterian Synodical Missionaries for Wis- consin have been D. C. Lyon and Stuart Mitchell, B. G. Riley, J. W. San- derson of Janesville, W. D. Thomas of La Crosse, W. F. Brown of Beloit, and the present S. M., Lowell C. Smith of Oshkosh.
The Synod of Wisconsin, 1870-1895,
INCLUDING THE PRESBYTERY OF LAKE SUPERIOR IN NORTH MICHIGAN. (From the S. M. report for 1895, and tabulated records.)
Ministers
Churches
Members
S. S. Members
Church Expendti's
Home Missions
Foreign Missions
1870
83
88
5,098
5,761
$ 66,270
1890
124
156
11,745
15,968
143,375
$5,850
$5,904
WISCONSIN, WITHOUT LAKE SUPERIOR PRESBYTERY IN N. MICHIGAN.
1890 1895
111
137
10,318
13,456 18,515
$121,676 183,543
$4,915 8,782
$5,103 6,880
145
159
13,960
The progress made by the Presbyterian church in Wisconsin during the quarter century following the Reunion is outlined in the above table.
Our State is still a Home Missionary field, not only because of its size, 320 miles long by 250 wide, and 380 miles from north-west to south-east, but because of the fact that Wisconsin has and uses five of the original sources of supply. Mining ore, quarrying, lumbering, fisheries and farming, have brought to our State many unskilled laborers of various nationalities, with foreign tongues and prejudices. As Germans, Irish, Danes, French, Scan- dinavians, Finlanders, Cornishmen, Bohemians, Swiss, Welshmen, they came, but they are here as Americans, and some of them make the best of christians and Presbyterians. Their children also render the field still more
156
hopeful. Through a single church in north Wisconsin (at Wausau), by its missions and Sunday schools, about a thousand children are being thus taught.
Another feature of our Home Mission field results from the uncertain fortunes of mining and lumbering. At times these cause quite sudden chan- ges in the population and prosperity of the towns depending on those in- dustries, and of course our Home Mission churches are affected.
Making farms among the forests of north Wisconsin is different from farming on our rich prairies. It means pioneer work and some privation. We have in charge also the Indians at Odanah and at Stockbridge, a bit of Foreign Missions here at home.
Most of these hard workers are at present poor. They want christian teaching, but need help in order to get it.
Then too ours is still a rapidly growing State. During the last five years the population of Wisconsin has increased 245,000, or 1472 per cent. and is now 1,931,000, (that is, in 1895).
For these our Presbyterian church has done and is doing the share of christian service barely indicated above. Originally our Synod included the northern peninsula of Michigan, but in 1891 that field was transferred to the Synod of Michigan. Within our State from 1890-1895, while the general population increased 1472 per cent. the number of our Presbyterian church- es increased 16 per cent., ministers 30 per cent., church members 35 per cent., and Sunday school membership 3712 per cent During the same pe- riod also our general expenditures increased 50 per cent., contributions to Home Missions 78 per cent., and to Foreign Missions 32 per cent.
For several years efforts to advance have been hindered by the heavy indebtedness of our Boards of Benevolence, especially the great burden on the Home Mission Board. It is an honorable historical fact, therefore, that in this year 1899 every Benevolent Board of our Presbyterian church in the United States has been enabled to report that it is out of debt.
157
The Wisconsin Presbyterian and Congregational Convention of 1840, and its Pioneers at Green Bay.
As our Beloit Presbyterians were all connected at first with this Conven- tion, which also vitally influenced the character of our city, that early Wis- consin church arrangement and its founders may fitly be noticed here.
The Jesuit mission on the present site of Ashland, Wis., in 1660, and the Xavier mission established by Allouez at De Pere, 1699, both ended long before the close of French occupancy in 1761. The first Prostestant church within the bounds of our State was that of the Christian Stockbridge Indi- ans, who, led by John Metoxen, came from New York to the Fox river (at Statesburg, now S. Kaukauna, 40 miles south-west of Green Bay), in 1822 Their missionary (from July, 1827), Rev. Jesse Miner, having died, March 22d, 1829, was succeeded by *Rev. Cutting Marsh, who reached Green Bay April 30th, 1830, and served them for the next eighteen years. In 1832 Dr. Richard Satterlee and his wife, Presbyterian members of the little church at Mackinaw, came to Green Bay, earnest christians both.
During the summer of 1834, Rev. Jeremiah Porter, a young home mis- sionary, who was then stationed at the military post called Chicago, visited Green Bay, held a preaching service and baptized three children of Lieut. R. B. Marcy. One of these (says Davidson) afterwards became the wife of Major General Geo. B. McClellan.
Early in 1836, by request of certain Presbyterian church members in Green Bay, Rev. Cutting Marsh came and organized there, Saturday even- ing, January 9th, the First Presbyterian Church of Green Bay, with twelve members, whose names are recorded. The leaders in the movement seem to have been Dr. Richard S. Satterlee (military surgeon at Fort Howard, 1832-1837), with Mary his wife, and William Mitchell and Sophia his wife. Two of the twelve were elected elders and a strict creed was adopted with a covenant. The next day, Sunday afternoon, January 10th, (as Mrs. Satter- lee remembered and stated in 1876), public services were conducted by Mr. Marsh in the military hospital at Fort Howard, and the two elders were duly ordained. The church also engaged Mr. Marsh to come and preach there every sixth Sabbath, and to conduct a communion service once in twelve weeks. The Journals of Cutting Marsh are preserved at the rooms of the State Historical Society, Madison, Wis. In that for 1836 is the entry, "May 1836 (1st Sab.) The Pres. church had its season of Communion. I pr. fr. 1 Cor. 11:23. The meeting was held at the Fort. In the P. M. I preached at Navarino," (the village across the river. )
Mr. Marsh seems to have served that First Church as arranged until Oc- tober, 1836. According to their record book, on the 28th of that month, (literal transcript) "the church was convened by request ; and the Rev. Moses Ordway being in the place, church agreed to invite him to stop as stated supply for the present." Ordway was a New School Presbyterian. He agreed to stay but not permanently (remaining in fact only about six months) and would take besides his living only what they might choose to give him. Moses Ordway thus became the first resident Protestant minister
*Unnamed Wisconsin, Davidson, pp. 115, 116. 205.
158
Cutting Marshy 1800-1873.
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in Green Bay, and first also in the State excepting the missionaries to the Indians, (and possibly Rev. David Lowrey, who in 1834 organized a Cum- berland Presbyterian church at Prairie du Chien, and was for a while its minister. )
Mr. Ordway at once (Nov. 4) started a weekly Wednesday evening prayer-meeting. He seems to have also promptly re-formed or reorganized the church by strengthening the original creed and covenant, and cutting down the roll to nine members, and soon after by even trying and dismiss- ing one of the first elders. ( His private journal, now in the hands of Rev. T. S. Johnson, of Beaver Dam, Wis., says, pp. 56 and 57, " I found 60 who had been professors somewhere before. Bro. Cutting Marsh had been there and looked up a few. We finally found nine out of the sixty who were willing to be formed into a Presbyterian church, and before the meeting-house was finished this was done. Brother Marsh and myself formed the church, the first Home Missionary Church in the Territory, November, 1836." That was Ordway's remembrance of it when he wrote up this journal apparently in after years. The account of the original organization (as having occurred January 9th, etc.) given above, *was copied exactly from the record book of the church, (in which the records up to August 7th, 1837, are in Mr. Ord- way's own handwriting), and in 1876 was confirmed as correct by one of the surviving charter members, Mr. Satterlee.
A newly built store (north side of Walnut Street, midway between Washington and Adams) was secured and fitted up for a meeting-house, and there, beginning the latter part of November, were held three services each Sabbath. His first public discourse, he says, "was on the subject of the carnal mind being at enmity against God," as illustrated by the daily con- duct of the people of Green Bay.
t"In person Mr. Ordway was a rather short, thick set man, with light complexion and keen eye. In character and office he was a John the Baptist. Eccentric, blunt, rigid energetic, outspoken, and also a man of much origi- inal power, he made a deep impression, and at the same time awakened ma- ny enmities. On being asked on one occasion at an evening meeting to lead in prayer, his gruff answer was, "No, I wont." Intense in his devotion to his own church, he used very free expressions about other churches. A Methodist clergyman who was introduced to him, remarked that he hoped they might work together in harmony. Ordway replied, " A sheep and an ox cannot pull together."
" He was a great man," says one, "to throw fire into shavings." And another wrote, " He hunted up the hidden church members as with a fire- brand." Men would go to hear him and swear when they went away, and yet go again. Not popular with the public, he was sustained by the church because they believed that he was doing a good work." His preaching was positive, pungent and offensive to many, but it was blessed with genuine revivals. The result of his six months' service in Green Bay was the addi- tion to this church of nine members on profession of faith and thirty by let- ter. The testimony of one of the survivors of his preaching is that he in-
*God's Providence for Forty Years. Rev. Wm. Crawford, Green Bay, 1876, p. 7. Also letter. Oct. 2, 1899.
+Pamphlet of Wm. Crawford, 1876, p. 8.
160
MOSES ORDWAY. 1778-1870.
161
fused a tonic element into the church which kept it braced up for years. The members were a unit after his departure.
Ordway's journal says, " At this time I had a call to go to Milwaukee to form a church, and as we had already received a line from Stephen Peet, from Buffalo, a professed Presbyterian of the right stamp, * * about * the middle of February, 1837, I took Bro. Cutting Marsh, we mounted our ponies and started, and after sleeping two or three nights in the snow we arrived safe at Milwaukee."
After Rev. Mr. Ordway had gone the church held public services every Sunday, with a sermon read by the post surgeon, Dr. Satterlee. August 4, Rev. Cutting Marsh conducted a communion service and received ten new members by letter.
Oct. 3d, 1837, Rev. Stephen Peet having just arrived by boat preached to them in the evening from Romans 8:9. Very few were present, but the church requested him by all means to come "among these Macedonians." He left by boat next day for Buffalo, promptly returned during the same month with his wife and five children, and was their minister two years. He was not installed pastor, probably because Wisconsin had then no Pres- bytery, and the only other Presbyterian ministers in the Territory at that time, excepting possibly Aratus Kent and a Mr. Bonham near Prairie du Chien, were Moses Ordway with Gilbert Crawford at Milwaukee, and Cyrus Nichols at Racine. Peet seems to have corresponded with some of them about it, for Rev. Mr. Crawford wrote Dec. 18th, 1837, to excuse the Mil- waukee brethren, saying, "to attend installation would keep us nearly eight days on the road going and coming."
Energetic and persevering, by January 1838, Mr. Peet had his people working for a new building. Among the subscribers were John Jacob Astor of New York, $300, and Washington Irving, $50. Green Bay was an im- portant post of the early fur trade which Astor carried on, and part of the town was called by his name, Astor.
*The new Presbyterian meeting house measured 54 by 36 feet, had 50 pews calculated to seat three hundred, (people sat closer then), and the contract price with extras was $2,600.
On Saturday evening, Sept. 8th, 1838, the new Presbyterian meeting house was opened for public worship, and Rev. Cutting Marsh preached from II Cor. 5:7. Sabbath morning, the 9th, his journal reads, "A steam- boat came in, but no ministers came. In the A. M. I preached from Luke 20; 34-46. In the P. M. (afternoon) the house was dedicated, and brother Peet preached the dedicatory sermon from Isaiah, 33; 20. Rev. Mr. Nich- ols of the Methodist church made the first prayer, and myself the dedicato- ry prayer. The thought of what that place so little time since was, the greatness of the change. the history of the Presbyterian church from its commencement, which was formed only two years ago last Feb. * * seemed for the time to overwhelm me." * " In the eve. I preached from II Kings, 5; 10-12, Naaman."
The Stockbridge mission school, (a log house), built in 1828, where Cutting Marsh preached, was the first Protestant church building in the Territory. The M. E. church of Green Bay, also, was dedicated a little ear-
*Rev. Wm. Crawford's pamphlet, 1876, p. II. Peet's Hist., p. 122.
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Huhu Peet. 1797-1855.
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lier than Peet's church. But this was the first Presbyterian house of wor- ship completed in Wisconsin excepting that small temporary home of the First Presbyterian church of Milwaukee, (costing *$619.91), which was ded- icated in July, 1837.
In October, 1838, J. J. Astor of New York, gave and sent to the new church a +bell of 696 1bs., and in the P. S. of his letter to William Mitchell wrote, "You will please settle the account of freight and expenses." In 1846 Astor, then the richest man in the United States, with others deeded to that Presbyterian Society their church lot, and wrote to his agent at Green Bay, "You charge in your account 87 cents for recording deed from the Presbyterian church of lots 7 and 8 in block 27, which the church ought to pay. Please collect it."
In the winter following that dedication the earnest labors of Rev. Mr. Peet, temporarily assisted by Mr. Marsh, were blessed with a (for them) great revival, which resulted finally in forty additions to their church, nine- teen on conversion and twenty-one by letter. Among others helpfully in- fluenced was the minister's own little boy (now the Rev. Stephen D. Peet, editor of the Antiquarian Magazine, Chicago), who then received, he tells me, the permanent religious impression of his life.
During the summer of 1839, June 10 to July 11, Mr. Peet made a Wis- consin tour of 575 miles on horseback, finding at Beloit a population of ¿250 and a church of thirty members, (see page 35 ) In his published re- port of that journey he said, ?"Ten ministers are wanted for Wisconsin im- mediately. Send us good ministers. Send them now."
Another significant utterance of his has been preserved in a letter writ- ten August 5th, 1839 (from Green Bay) to a gentleman in Southport, now Kenosha. He says, " When I came to this region (Green Bay) I had in view to build up an |institution of learning, and thought this might be a good place But the country around is not sufficiently settled." This is the earliest recorded expression known to the writer, of that definite pur- pose in the mind of Rev. Stephen Peet, which resulted finally in Beloit College, 1847, and Chicago Theological Seminary, 1855. This purpose also, as well as family interests, probably explains the change by which, Oct. 1st, 1839, he began serving that First Presbyterian church in Milwaukee, which had been organized April 13th, 1837, by Ordway and Marsh.
The Green Bay church maintained its public services during the next six months without a minister, having each Sunday a sermon read by an earnest young layman named D. Butler. Then, Jeremiah Porter's one ser- mon (from Zech., 9:12) preached there six years before being still vividly remembered, the church sent to him at Farmington, Illinois, a call which was accepted. The wearisome carriage ride over muddy roads to Chicago, the voyage by steamer to Mackinaw and then by Schooner to Green Bay, including two weeks of tedious delays waiting for boats, occupied seven weeks and four days. June 12th, 1840, he arrived with his wife, little
*See Unnamed Wis., Davidson, p. 218. Green Bay, Wis., Democrat, Saturday, Sept 22d, 1838, on file at State Historical Society Rooms, Madison, Wis.
+Wm. Crawford, 1876, p 12, also 15.
#Memorial by Prof. Joseph Emerson, Beloit College Monthly, July, 1870, p. 235. ¿The Home Missionary for September, 1839.
| Pamphlet of Wm. Crawford, 1876, p. 15.
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Chicago Photo-Gravure Co.
LOOKING NORTH-WEST FROM THE STEEPLE OF THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, BELOIT, WIS.
Verenale Porter. 1859.
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James, two years old, and a sick infant boy who died the next week. Promptly, however, on Sunday, June 14th, 1840, Mr. Porter began that fruitful pastorate, which lasted just eighteen years.
Jeremiah Porter's installation, January 4th, 1841, brings us to the "Con- vention," for which those four pioneers, Marsh, Ordway, Peet and himself had prepared the way, and of which the last three were an important part. That church occasion deserves especial notice also as being the first regular installation of a pastor within the bounds of Wisconsin.
Rev. Stephen Peet of Milwaukee, Rev. Moses Ordway, then of South Prairieville, and Rev. O. F. Curtis of Prairieville (named after 1847 Wauke- sha), having come up through the snowy wilderness for that service, called on Cutting Marsh at Stockbridge, and after a day or two he joined them at Green Bay. The new Presbyterian and Congregational Convention held a special meeting there on Saturday, January 2d. On Sunday about fifty per- sons united in a solemn communion service, and on Monday came the in- stallation. Rev. Moses Ordway presided as Moderator; Rev. S. Peet preached, Rev. Cutting Marsh offered the prayer, Rev. O. F. Curtis gave the charge to the pastor, and Rev. Mr. Ordway that to the people. The Stock- bridge Indian deacon, Metoxen, Wm. Mitchell of Green Bay, and Robert Love of Milwaukee, attended as delegates. Nearly all the visitors stayed about two weeks, there was preaching daily and a revival followed, which brought twenty three into the church that year on profession of faith. Rev. Mr. Ordway spent most of that fortnight helping *Rev. Mr. Marslı at Stock- bridge in a series of meetings, the result of which was sixteen conversions, and two young men led to seek the ministry. The church arrangement which bore such fruit is worthy of notice.
+On the 17th of January, 1839, Revds. Gilbert Crawford, Lemuel Hall, Moses Ordway and Cyrus Nichols, with Elder Samuel Hinman from the Presbyterian church of Milwaukee, and Deacon Asa Clarke from the Con- gregational church of Prairieville (Waukesha) formed at Milwaukee the Presbytery of Wisconsin. This first Protestant ecclesiastical organization within our State adopted as Presbytery the Constitution, Confesssion of Faith and Discipline of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, but was never connected with Synod or General Assembly.
The second meeting, appointed for Racine, July 4th, 1839, was thence adjourned to meet next day at Milwaukee, and during the meeting (July 5th) in Milwaukee, the name was changed to that of "The Presbytery of Milwaukee." Rev. Stephen Peet of Green Bay, then united with the body, and the churches of Green Bay, Geneva and East Troy were received, the two latter being represented by delegates. (At a subsequent meeting a delegate from the Green Bay church was in attendance )
At the fifth meeting of Presbytery, a special, held at Troy, Wis., Oct. 6, 1840, Rev. Jeremiah Porter of Green Bay, Rev. Solomon Chaffee and the churches of Mineral Point and Platteville were received.
Mr. Peet writes : "A union of Presbyterians and Congregationalists was contemplated from the first movement towards an ecclesiastical organi- zation in Wisconsin." He himself is said to have been the originator of,
*MSS. address of Rev J. E. Chapin of Neenah, on file, Historical Society, Madison, Wis. Crawford, 1876, p. 18.
+Peet's church history. 1852, pp. 2 and 3, 10, 22.
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that Plan of Union, and was unquestionably its most active defender and promoter.
As the Stated Clerk of Milwaukee Presbytery, Mr. Peet issued a circular (Aug. 8, 1840) describing the proposed Union, giving all the articles adopt- ed by Presbytery with reference to it, and inviting Congregational delegates to attend the meeting of Presbytery at Troy, Wis., Oct. 6.
The Congregationalists were about to form a separate organization, and Peet, Porter, Ordway and others thought it would be far better for the cause of Christ in this new Territory to combine the limited strength of both de nominations in one practical form of church life.
Rev. Jeremiah Porter, who traveled five days on horseback with his del- egate from Green Bay, to attend that gathering, wrote soon after that the object of the meeting was to see if these two denominations could cause the prayer of the Savior to be answered so far as related to us, " that they all may be one." "Many of us," he says, "deemed it highly important that, while laying foundations in this region so lately redeemed from the heathen, there should be no divisions among us."
The essence of the plan was in this first article : "Churches belonging to this Convention may adopt either the Presbyterian or Congregational mode of government, and shall each be represented at the meetings of the Convention by one delegate."
The proposed organization was to fill the place of a Presbytery for the Presbyterian churches, and that of an Association for the Congregational churches, and it sought to make the streams of the social and benevolent ef- forts of both classes flow in one common channel. On the second day of the meeting at Troy, Wis. (Oct. 7, 1840), after full mutual deliberation and a season of solemn prayer together, the Presbytery of Milwaukee and the Congregational Association, convened at the same time and place, merged their several organizations into a new ecclesiastical body which was called "The Presbyterian and Congregational Convention of Wisconsin." *De- scribing the occasion, Mr. Porter wrote to the Secretaries of the American Home Missionary Society (published in the Hoine Missionary for January, 1841), "God seemed evidently in that place by his spirit, moving upon the hearts of his ministers and members and drawing them together as kindred drops mingle into one."
The secretaries of the American Home Missionary Society said, "We rejoice that so early in the religious history of Wisconsin measures have been taken which it is believed will prevent much of the waste of moral power that has afflicted some portions of the country where no such provision ex- ists " The General Association of New Hampshire ( Congregational ) wrote, "We have no doubt that such a union as you have formed will promote peace and good will. We hail with joy the union in Wisconsin of those churches holding the great principles set forth in the Westminster Assem- bly, and differing only in church government."
The charter members of this Convention were :
Rev. David A. Sherman, East Troy, (Congregational).
Rev. Lemuel Hall, Geneva, (Congregational).
Rev. Moses Ord way, South Prairieville, ( Presbyterian ).
*S Peet, History Wisconsin Churches pp. 26, 27, 29.
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Rev. Stephen Peet, Milwaukee, (Presbyterian ).
Rev. Jeremiah Porter, Green Bay, (Presbyterian ).
Rev. Cyrus Nichols, Spring Prairie, ( Presbyterian ).
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