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 13
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Rev. Otis F. Curtis, Prairieville, (Congregational).
Rev. J. U. Parsons, W. C., (Congregational).
Rev. Solomon Chaffee, Platteville, ( Presbyterian ).
The eight Presbyterian churches which joined it were those of Milwau- kee, Racine, Green Bay, Geneva, Whitewater, East Troy, South Prairieville and Platteville.
In his Wisconsin church history, 1851 (p. 31), Rev. Mr. Peet wrote that in this union the idea of separate organizations was abandoned and the Con- vention was regarded by all concerned as a permanent arrangement. Rev. Cutting Marsh* did not join because he believed that our Wisconsin mission fields needed rather the Presbyterian order. He also feared that this ar- rangement would stimulate (as it apparently did) the formation of Old School Presbyterian churches ; whereas he himself, though a Congregation- alist, preferred the New School Presbyterian church, and afterwards united with it. The Convention Narrative for 1845 declares, "The principles of the Convention are permanently established. * * Congregationalists * and Presbyterians are here emphatically one denomination, and it is hoped ever will form but one great, united brotherhood within our bounds."
This hope was not realized for several reasons.
1. Besides the Territory's rapid growth in population and wealth, which made many communities self supporting and able to afford the luxury of a separate denominational church life, three other causes gradually changed the character of the Convention.
2. Its methods of procedure being naturally Congregational, the officers were almost invariably chosen from those of that denominational experi- ence.
3. Good men, also, who did not seriously differ as to the evil of inten- perance or of slavery, did honestly differ as to what should be done about it. Abolitionists were regarded by many as firebrands.
3. Then the desire and fact of re-union between the severed parts of the Presbyterian body (accomplished at Pittsburg, Pa., Nov. 12th, 1869), led New School Presbyterians to withdraw from the Convention until it finally became as it remains a purely Congregational body.
The plan, however was apparently a wise one for early Wisconsin. We may criticise it from a denominational standpoint, yet as President A. L. ¡Chapin wrote in 1887, "the arrangement did good service in its day, giv- ing unity and efficiency to the founding of churches, and saving our State from the rivalries and jealousies which have marred the peace of other states in the early stages of their religious development." Certainly the spirit and the avowed object of its earnest founders would be worthy of praise in any State and at any time.
*As his daughter, Miss Sarah Marsh of Chicago, informs mne.
+Our Church Work, Madison, Wis., April 15th, 1887.
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Supplementary Record
(Inserted here rather than in the Appendix, for convenience of reference. )
Rev Cutting Marsh (born at Danville, Vt., July 20th, 1800, graduated from Dartmouth in 1826, and from Andover in 1829), intended to go as a missionary to the Sandwich Islands. He came to the Stockbridge Indians expecting to stay but one year, and served them in fact eighteen. Oct. 31, 1837, he welcomed to Green Bay Rev. Stephen Peet, and two days after (Nov. 2d) was married by him to Miss Eunice Osmer. She was born at Whiteston, near Buffalo, N. Y. In 1824 she came to Mackinaw and taught twelve years in the indian mission boarding school of Rev. William Ferry. She had experi- enced also some of the great mis- sionary's " perils in the sea," hav. ing been wrecked in the first steam- er launched on lake Erie, named " Walk in the Water."
Miss O. was an active member of the church at Mackinaw, and coming to Green Bay in 1836 had promptly joined the Presbyterian church there. She became a true missionary's wife, helpful to many and died at Waupaca, Wis., in 1855.
In 1848 a part of the Stockbridge Indians moved to a reservation at Keshena about twenty miles from Shawano, Wis., and eventually *MRS. CUTTING MARSH. came under the care of the Presby- terian Missionary Boards. In 1865, accompanied by the Presbyterian min- ister of Shawano, Rev. W. E. Morgan I visited them and preached in the eve- ning to a well-behaved audience of indians, squaws, pappooses and dogs. There was good singing of Moody's hymns, and the spirit manifested by all the adults was reverent. One elder gave their number as 55 families, com- prising about three hundred individuals, each of whom draws from the gov- ernment six dollars a year Their log cabins are said to be all very com- fortable in winter, but after evening service the writer willingly walked 312 miles by lantern light in order to reach a comparatively new one. As a rule when an indian cabin burns down a good many hundred lives are lost.
In the government school house near the old church building a primary school was being taught by a capable catholic young lady, and the young indian boys and girls in attendance seemed as bright as the average of school children anywhere. Those two days experience gave me a new appreciation of and respect for the eighteen years' indian mission work of Cutting Marsh. Mr. and Mrs. Marsh moved to Green Bay and lived there three years, Mr. M. serving the A. H. M. Society as a home missionary evangelist. And af- ter his removal in 1851 to Waupaca, Wis., where he had organized a church
*From an old daguerreotype, which is responsible for the many spots.
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and bought some land, he continued that itinerant missionary service for many years. As Rev. J. E. Chapin says, he did for central and north-east Wisconsin just such invaluable foundation work as Mr. Peet did for south- ern Wisconsin. In 1851 also he helped form Fox River Presbytery, and thereafter continued in that connection.
Cutting Marsh was a tall, gaunt, angular man, earnest and kind, a de- voted humble minister. During a conversation shortly before his death at Waupaca in 1873, he said to his daughter, "It seems as though I was less than the least of all Christ's children. I dare mention nothing that I have done."
REV. MOSES ORDWAY,
PIONEER PRESBYTERIAN MISSIONARY IN WISCONSIN, 1836-1870.
BY REV. T. S. JOHNSON, BEAVER DAM, WIS.
Rev. Moses Ordway was born December 27th, 1788, in Haverill, Mass. He worked his way through Middlebury College and graduated in 1819. He studied theology with Rev. Moses Sawyer, Henniker, N. H., and Rev. John M. Whiton of Antrim, N. H. He was licensed by the Hillsborough Associa- tion in April, 1822, and ordained as an evangelist by St. Lawrence Presby- tery in 1824. He labored for twelve years in Newton, N. Y., and in October 1836, came to Green Bay, Wisconsin, and organized the Presbyterian church there, where he labored with great success for several months. In 1837, in company with the Rev. Cutting Marsh, of the Stockbridge Mission, he or- ganized the First Presbyterian Church of Milwaukee (April 13. 1837), and did extensive missionary work at Waukesha and other settlements in south- ern Wisconsin. He came to Beaver Dam, Wis., in 1843, and formed the First Presbyterian Church, July 1, 1843. He preached to this church three years, and engaged in a general missionary work until 1855, when he moved to Rockford, Illinois, with his family. From Rockford he went out to Pop- lar Grove, Durand and various settlements, to hold revival meetings and to organize the work. He was appointed Synodical Missionary of the Peoria Synod, and in 1862 returned to Beaver Dam. There he labored as a Presby- terian missionary for one year, and then settled down in his comfortable home at the age of 75, to do good as he had opportunity, and preach as his strength would allow. On a missionary tour to Cambria, Wis., he was suddenly called to his eternal home, Jan. 24, 1870. He was buried in Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee, where his only son, Hon. David S. Ordway, resides. He was an earnest man of God, and a fearless preacher of the gos- pel of our Lord.
STEPHEN PEET*
Was born in 1797, at Sandgate, Vermont His parents moved the next year to Lee, Massachusetts, where at the age of 16 he united with the church. In the course of the following year the family removed to Ohio, and his father died. Though now at the age of 17 almost entirely dependent upon his own earnings, he resolved to obtain a liberal education for the ministry. His preparation for College was completed at Norfolk, Connecticut, un-
*Republished by permission, with slight corrections, from the Memorial by Prof. Jo- seph Emerson in the Beloit College Monthly, of July, 1870.
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der the guidance of Rev. Ralph Emerson, then pastor there, and afterward professor in Andover Theological Seminary, whose remains now rest with those of his early pupil and constant friend in the cemetery at Beloit.
Mr. Peet entered Yale College in 1819, and graduated with honor in 1823. He studied theology in part with Mr. Emerson at Norfolk, and in part at Princeton, New Haven, and Auburn Theological Seminaries, and was ordained as pastor at Euclid, Ohio, February 22, 1826.
On the first of the next May he was united in marriage to Mrs. Martha Denison Sherman, who died at the home of her son Joseph Barr Peet, in Be- loit, November 13th, 1877.
He remained in Euclid seven years, and his influence was felt through- out the region, in revivals of religion and in various christian efforts. It is stated that one sermon at Hudson was the means of numerous conversions, including five prominent lawyers. President Storrs remarked that he never witnessed such effects from a single discourse.
Always alert to see and energetic to do the work that was needed, he left his church in 1833 to organize and operate labors for the sailors and boatmen on the western waters ; four years were spent in this cause.
In October, 1837, he came to Green Bay as pastor of the only Presbyte- rian church then existing within the present limits of Wisconsin. In two years of labor here he saw a house of worship erected and heard the tones of the first church bell in Wisconsin, and had the satisfaction of receiving large accessions to his church on profession of faith. His journal of a tour in June, 1839, presents an interesting view of Wisconsin as it then was. The journey commenced on horseback in the morning of the 10th of June, and the first incident after entering the woods was to find in the road a rattle- snake four feet in length. The omen, however, was changed for good-as such omens are-by bruising the serpent's head. Passing through a lonely country, with houses far between and occasional groups of men laying out roads, he came on the second day to the settlement of the Stockbridge In- dians beside Lake Winnebago, and on the third to Fond du Lac, where he found nine or ten families.
The next day he "rode eighteen miles without seeing a house," reached Frankfort on Fox Lake in the afternoon, and preached the first sermon in the country. Thirty miles more, "twenty-three without a house," brought him on June 14th to Fort Winnebago, now Portage ; then on, "across a roll- ing prairie twenty miles long, without a tree or bush or stone to be seen," for forty miles beneath a hot summer's sun, he arrived Saturday night, June 15th, at Madison, the "beautiful capitol of the Territory, population 250 "
Three days of journey and labor through Aztalan, Fort Atkinson and Whitewater, bring him to East Troy, "sick and unable to travel or preach." After three days of rest with beloved friends, he goes to Prairie du Lac, " Milton" and Janesville, which was then but a small village.
In Beloit, which he reached on June 25th, were a "population of two hundred and fifty, and a church of thirty members ; mills, three stores, two taverns and several frame buildings." Rockton was then called Pecatonica, and was a small place with a mill and a store.
Through Delavan, where was "no church ;" Elkhorn, Geneva, Burling- ton, Kenosha, then known as Southport, having a population of 300, and
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three churches. He came on July 3d to Racine, a village of two hundred and fifty, and on the 5th to Milwaukee, where was a "church of about thirty members." Leaving Milwaukee on the 7th, he passed through Prai- rieville (Waukesha) to Watertown ; thence to Fox Lake-"thirty miles by trail, without house or company ;" then to Brothertown and Stockbridge, reaching his home at Green Bay July 11th, at half-past nine o'clock in the evening. "Heard the bell about two miles distant ; first sound of the kind for nearly five weeks !"
If the tones of that evening bell filled the weary heart with rest and dreams of home, the report of his journey, which went back to the land of christian homes, had much to do with the realizing of those dreams of fu- ture, which always filled his mind and inspired his life. In this report he laid out the map of the country, and named ten places for which he wanted ten good men, and the men came. That was always his way, and a secret of his efficiency ; his zeal led to study, and his study to a practical point. These three-zeal, thought, work-heart, mind, hand-make and rule his- tory. It is so in large things and in small. In every frontier church to which Mr. Peet's instinct for new work brought him, there arose a house of God. And now he was brought into a new region. The results were seen, not only in that church and church bell at Green Bay, but in those ten mis- sionaries for Wisconsin ; then in the Wisconsin Convention of churches ; then in Beloit College and in the Chicago Theological Seminary.
In the autumn of 1839 he took charge of the First Presbyterian church in Milwaukee, where he labored faithfully and successfully until June, 1841, when he was appointed general agent of the American Home Missionary So- ciety, for Wisconsin. Of his labors in this capacity, Rev. Dr. J. J. Miter said :" He taxed his energies to the utmost, and with pre-eminent success. He visited all parts of the Territory from the lake to the Mississippi, and from its southern boundary to the farthest settlement on the north, through all kinds of weather, and beyond the endurance of horse-flesh ; while horse after horse broke down, he bore up under the fatigue, and accomplished his noble ends."
"In the ecclesiastical arrangement of the State, he must be regarded as the originator and most able defender of that Plan of Union which secured such harmony and efficient co-operation between the early Presbyterian and Congregational churches of Wisconsin ; the plan itself is a noble monument of the catholic spirit of our deceased brother, and its benign workings reflect his wisdom in so nearly adjusting its several parts."
Seven years of labor in organizing the churches and the ecclesiastical system of the State, prepared the way for the next great work of his life- the establishment of a christian college for the region. His study and work brought out very distinctly the peculiar gifts by which the man had been prepared for them : First, with an eye single to the end, and yet vigilant of the conditions and the means, he studied the map of the country, and the inflowing tide of settlement.
A homogeneous population of New England sympathies was spreading over the region between lake Michigan and the Mississippi river. These people always form around the school-house and the church, "therefore a college must be thought upon."
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And these men thought upon a college, and Mr. Peet as a representative man among them, thought with them, with a mind simply intent like others upon the end.
On the State line, and midway from lake to river, lay a beautiful vil- lage, in which the sympathies which were to form the college were already prevalent ; and when Mr. Peet unrolled his map, showing, as was said at the time, that " Beloit was just eighty miles from everywhere," he had only anticipated the conclusion of all.
So in all his life, the explanation of his apparent leadership was the same ; it was no power of self-will or main force of urging by which he bent men to his own way. He simply had his heart full of the general sympathy and ready to do the best thing, and so he found the right way as the needle finds the pole, or as the single eye is full of light.
In the foundation of the College as in everything else, he gathered the sympathies of good men in their natural forces for their right object. He was instrumental in securing the subscription by the citizens of Beloit which accompanied the first proposition for the location here ; then. in obtaining the donation of the "Williams Professorship" from a generous eastern friend and relative of his family, and of the morally grand subscription of $10,000, principally from the self-denying home missionaries of the region, which forms such a precious apostolic foundation for all the superstructure of the College.
The Board of Trustees of the College, in resolutions adopted respecting the death of Mr. Peet, thus express their appreciation of this part of his work :
" We record our conviction that to the sagacity and wise christian per- severance of our departed brother, is this College, under God, pre-eminently indebted for its existence and the success of its early history, and in his re- moval we mourn the loss of a judicious counsellor and efficient helper, and of a personal friend."
In the fall of 1850, after two or three years of effort had given the Col- lege a position which appeared to ensure its permanence, he was prostrated with what seemed to be his last sickness. His physicians had despaired of his life, he had arranged his affairs and given directions for his funeral. It seemed that he had done a man's work in this world and was ready for his discharge. But at this point he desired to be left alone ; he prayed, and af- ter that he told his friends that "the Lord had still more work for him to do," and he recovered, so that we have yet other labors to record.
His next field of effort was Batavia, Illinois, where in connection with the charge of the Congregational church, he projected and conducted to success a plan for an academical institution.
One crowning member of the system of christian and educational in- strumentalities still remained to be supplied. The last crowning work of his life was the Chicago Theological Seminary.
Here again the man and the work illustrate each the other. There was the same study of the field, in its breadth, its capacity, its wants and its centre, the same faculty of combining old thoughts with new ones in the plan, and veteran devotions with young enthusiasm in the execution.
In a few months after his mind began to gather and organize the ele-
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ments which were preparing for such an enterprise in the northwest, the plan was matured, the board of trust appointed, and subscriptions secured to the amount of about $50,000.
On the 14th of March, 1855, he reached Chicago on his return from a journey to the East, which had been full of incessant labor and intense thought in behalf of the work he had to do.
On the same day he sent out a call for a meeting of the Directors of the Seminary on the 27th, " to organize under the charter, elect professors, and do whatever business may be necessary.
On the night of the 15th he was attacked with chills and fever, which resulted in inflammation of the lungs, and on Wednesday morning the 21st, at three o'clock, "he breathed his life away as gently as a child goes to sleep."
His family and his associates in his new labor, accompanied the remains to Beloit, where, on Friday, the funeral services were attended in the old Congregational church-now no more-by very many, who within those same walls had taken counsel with him on the great matters, and especially in the conventions which matured the plan of the College.
In the procession from the church was a long line of those who were enjoying in the Collego the fruits of his labors. Those remains rest in the cemetery on the same hill with the College. But the procession of those who perpetuate his work still moves on. Class by class of the College takes its place in it ; and with them class by class of the Seminary.
Churches are there which he planted in the wilderness, and the whole christian culture of the northwest continues the usefulness of the man who in simple, practical earnestness laid here the foundation of many genera- tions. The Board of Directors of the Seminary met in accordance with this call and passed resolutions of sorrow for him who had called them, and in approbation of the design to rear a monument to his memory.
That monument erected by many now marks his resting-place, and tes- tifies to a sincere regard with which his memory is cherished throughout the region, where Living Institutions are, after all, his truest memorial.
(NOTE .- The only children now living are Harriet (Mrs. A. H. Gray), Rev. Stephen Denison Peet, of Chicago, and Emerson William Peet, Esq., of St. Paul, Minn. )
JEREMIAH PORTER
Is a name too dear to many to be left without some fuller notice both of the man himself and of his wife.
The son of Dr. William Porter and Mrs. Charlotte Porter (a puritan mother), he was born at Hadley, Mass., in 1804, took the college course at Williams, and graduated at Princeton Seminary. Mr. Porter was promptly ordained and commissioned by the American Home Missionary Society and sent to Fort Brady, Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. On his way thither in No- vember, 1831, he passed through Mackinaw, and there first met at the house of Mr. Stuart the frail little teacher, Miss Eliza Chappell, whose well marked bible, held in her hand seems to have especially attracted his attention.
From Mackinaw he had to go in a birch bark canoe manned by French voyagers, who took three days for the journey to the "Soo," camping each night on the desolate shore.
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Soon after he arrived on the field and b gan his work there was a revi- val, and nearly all the officers with many soldiers united in forming a church of thirty members.
REV. JEREMIAH PORTER, D.D. 1884.
When that detachment was or- dered to Fort Dearborn he went with them, by their urgent request, and landed at Chicago, Monday, May 13th, 1833. On Sunday, May 19th, in the carpenter's shop of the Fort, a suggestive surrounding, Mr. Por- ter preached of Christ, the first ser- mon given in Chicago. The next month it was arranged that he should preach in the village, and later the First Presbyterian Church, organ- ized by him, erected a small church building, which was dedicated in January, 1834.
In the fall of 1832 Miss Chappell had been obliged by failing health to leave her school at Mackinaw and go East, but she returned in the spring of 1833 and met at Mackinaw a Methodist missionary, Mr. Clarke, on his way to Green Bay, Wisconsin. (How those Methodists do get ahead of us.)
July 30th she arrived at Chicago to see about opening a school, and Mr. Porter told her there was not much chance for one. However, in September, 1833, her private school was opened in a log house, just outside the military reservation, and she taught there until the First Presbyte- rian church was built when she got the use of that.
In the revival there of 1834-35, Miss Chappell worked so earnestly as to be- come completely prostrated. Then, if not earlier, Mr. Porter saw the diamond with- in his reach, secured the promise of it and became rich for life.
In May 1835, Rev. Jeremiah Porter, as MRS. ELIZA C. PORTER, 1884. Act. 77. delegate of the Ottawa Presbytery, at- tended the Presbyterian General Assembly at Pittsburg, Pa., and on his re- turn the wedding occurred at Rochester, N. Y. (June 15th, 1835).
In December, 1837, Mrs. Porter's thirtieth year, they moved to Farm- ington, Illinois, where in 1838 was born the son James who is now living in Chicago. The call thence to Green Bay, Wis., has been already noted, and the eighteen years' family life there is described in Miss Porter's book, to which the reader is referred .*
*Eliza Chappell Porter, by her daughter Mary Porter ; Fleming H. Revell Co. Chi- cago, 1892. A beautiful record of a noble life.
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From 1858 to 1861 Rev. Mr. Porter had charge of a mission church in Chicago, ( Edwards Chapel, corner Harrison and Halsted). Then came the war. Mr. P. had always been a strong anti-slavery man, and had several times at Green Bay and elsewhere helped fugitive slaves. His oldest son enlisted. He himself was commissioned Chaplain of the First Illinois Light Artillery. Mrs. Porter became a field Agent of the Northwestern Sanitary Commission and with the now equally famous Mrs. Bickerdyke, served through the war.
During its last year, as will be seen in our war record, their youngest son also served among the hundred days men.
CHAPLAIN PORTER. 1872.
In October, 1864, she was able to be present at the marriage here in Beloit, of her son Edwards W. to the writer's sister, Ellen H. Brown.
In the autumn of 1866 Mr. Porter be- came pastor of the Congregational church at Prairie du Chien, and in Feb- ruary, 1868, their daughter Mary went as a missionary to China. In the fall of that year they moved to Brownsville, Texas, where he preached and she taught school. There in July, 1870, Mr. Porter was commissioned as Post Chaplain in the regular army, an official position which he held until honorably retired in 1882.
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