USA > West Virginia > Memorial of the centenary celebration of the French Creek Presbyterian Church : August twenty-third & twenty-fourth nineteen hundred and nineteen > Part 3
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The boys began to plan and work to get him ready. They catherc | piles of pineknots for light to study by. Grandmother moulded candles of deer's tallow and wild beeswax. She raised flax and prepared, spun and wove it for Loyal's shirts and towels. She and Sister Annie spun wool and knit it for his socks, and wove it into jeans and flannels
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for his clothes. A cowhide, tanned in the little French Creek tan- nery, furnished his shoes. Annie, said to have been a very beautiful girl, and certainly in her seventies the handsomest old lady I ever saw, taught the first school on French Creek and gave of her scanty salary.
But Festus and Loyal themselves earned the most of the money necessary to pay the first year's expenses at Jefferson College. They took the most available means. In Uncle Ed's phrase, they "went asangin". There has been from time immemorial a steady demand in China for that strange aromatic root of the forest called ginseng. The Celestials use it as a general cure-all, although white doctors have never discovered its medicinal value. The Young boys couldn't shoot, but they could dig ginseng. They worked hard and saved. the whole community helping, and so it came about that Loyal, after a year or two of preparation, was able to start one morning from the home cabin, his old carpet bag containing his scanty wardrobe slung over his shoulder, his precious shoes in his hand, and enough money to pay a year's tuition in his pocket. He has told me that that barefoot walk of two hundred miles to Canonsburg was the happiest trip of his life. He felt himself dedicated by French Creek to the glad work of preaching the Gospel. He couldn't sing, but the aisles of the forest rang with his shouts as he spun the miles behind him.
That same simple faith remained in him and his kinfolk here through all their lives, and some of those present this morning remember the time of summer drought fifty years ago when the congregation assembled at father's call under a hot cloudless sky, to pray for rain; and he and my sister, and I think some others, took their big umbrellas with them. The sequel that they were needed very soon did not surprise these men and women of faith. They prayed, believing.
We of this matter-of-fact age may well ask, "What has become of this simple and direct faith of our fathers?" I tell you, my kinsfolk, we do not possess it. Whatever we may have that they lacked, we have lost our firm grip on God's promises. Let us study, imitate, get back to it.
II .- The courage, fidelity and integrity of our fathers were no less conspicuous than their faith. Indeed they may be said to have been the natural result of it. One of the first material results of the "faith that worketh by Love" was the first house of worship, built of logs, just in front of this building. It was erected about the year 1823. The people simply got together and put it up. In their own saw mill they sawed the lumber necessary for the floors, pews, window sash and doors. At the "raising" the usual custom was observed of banding about to the workmen the jug of genuine, pure whiskey. One of the young men stood far out on the end of the collar beam and drank to the prosperity of the new church. Nothing incongruous in this act was seen by the assembled congregation. It was the inevitable custom of the day.
The only money needed in the erection of this building was for the
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purchase of nails and glass. The ladies of the congregation solved the problem. From their own fields they reaped the flax, hackled it, spun it and wove a great web of linen. Augustus W. Sexton (Uncle Gusty, as we afterwards called him) took the linen to Frazier's storc, near Stanton, 150 miles, and brought two boxes of glass and a keg of nails, packing these on his horse and himself walking back the whole distance. There was no chimney or fireplace in the church, and stoves were not yet invented. Therefore in winter the people shivered in their seats through the long sermons read or delivered. But they came. Every Sabbath they were there, with a fidelity to duty altogether admirable.
I think we can boldly say that French Creek was the most pro- gressive community in the State of Virginia and one of the most forward in the whole United States. The sermons of Asa Brooks may seem very stern and even medieval, but really they were ahead of the times. Mr. Brooks was a leader of his age and his people followed him closely.
This progressive, courageous spirit had its expression along several lines. First, the community, although in the heart of the slave state, was openly and boldly anti-slavery. Whether the "Underground Railroad" had a station on French Creek I am not able to say, but I have heard hints of its existence. These New Englanders were out- spoken in their abhorrence of slavery at the time when to voice such a sentiment was perilous. In 1856, when the great issue was coming to a head and General John C. Fremont, the Pathfinder, was nomi- nated for President on the "Free Soil" ticket, the only votes cast for Fremont in that region were ten polled on French Creek. It is worth while to record here the names of these brave and conscientious citizens. They were Dr. Amos Brooks, Alva Brooks, John Phillips, Jason Loomis, Franklin Phillips, Gilbert Young, Adolphus Brooks, William Loomis, David Phillips and J. T. Brooks. To show what it meant thus to stand against the universal sentiment of the State I quote a paragraph from an editorial published December 1, 1856, in the Herald, of Weston, Lewis County. The heading of the editorial was "Infamous":
"We regret, deeply regret, that there should be in our midst those who sympathize with a sectional party in the North, whose greatest ambition is to encroach upon our institutions, and who, in the madness of their fanatic hate, stealthily seek to jeopardize a property guaranteed to us as sacredly by the Constitution, as is the right to them and to us of worshipping God according to the dictates of our own conscience. They have the impudence, the brazen-faced effrontery, here in Virginia, to speak their odious and seditious sentiments through the ballot box, and attempt to infuse their abolition poison into the minds of our people."
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Dr. Amos Brooks, the father of Adolphus, replied to the editorial in part as follows :
"A few weeks ago I was shown an editorial in your dirty sheet with the word 'Infamous' for a caption. Are you too thick- skulled to know that if the freedom of speech, and of the press, and of the ballot box, is taken from the people, then there can be no republicanism? But it seems you are striving to have it so. Are you then not a traitor? If so, do you not deserve the fate of traitors ? If Arnold deserved to be shot, do you not deserve to be hung?"
We do not have any record of this letter being published in the Herald, but the incident shows something of the courage of this little New England community in what was then the heart of the South.
It is appropriate to speak here a word about that great man and great physician, Dr. Amos Brooks. He was forced into the profession by the needs of the community and for about forty years was the only resident physician of French Creek. His practice extended many miles in every direction and he often spent days and nights with his patients, nursing the sick, administering medicines and offering words of Christian consolation to the suffering and dying. Many times he cooked the food for convalescents and made coffins for the dead. At one time he made forty trips on horseback to attend a sick fellow physician at Clarksburg, each round trip covering eighty miles. For his services and the total distance of 3,200 miles traveled he observed the professional courtesy and made no charge.
At the election of 1860 French Creek went almost solidly for Abraham Lincoln. And when the Civil War broke out five or six times as many Union soldiers went from Upshur County as those who joined the Southern Army.
French Creek was always steadfastly loyal in the war of 1812. although the settlement was very raw, new and scattered. A number of the settlers joined the American Army for the defense of our northern frontiers. Capt. Gilbert Gould, Daniel Gould and Aaron Gould were of the number.
One of the first Bible Societ'es of the State was organized on French Creek as early as 1829. In the Semi-Centennial sermon occurs this paragraph :
"A letter from my father, Mr. Robert Young, dated October 10, 1830, says :
"The Bible cause prospers here. I found that there were about 380 families destitute of the Bible when I took in the property of Lewis County (as assessor) last spring. We have passed a vote to endeavor to supply this county by the first of next March. Festus Young is corresponding secretary of the Bible Society here. He received a letter by the last mail from the City
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of New York. informing him that they had lately sent on 300 Bibles, which, with those sent before, make nearly 450, besides 200 Testaments."
Grandfather seems to have combined his office of assessor of Lewis County, of which Upshur was then a part, with that of Colporteur, taking a bunch of Bibles with him for sale or free distribution whenever he went upon his public duties. (I wonder what would be said if the present assessor of Upshur County would pursue the same course ?) Who can measure the influence of this early Bible Society upon the then rather godless region ?
A still more remarkable evidence of the progressive character of French Creek is shown in the fact that here was organized one of the first (if not the very first) Total Abstinence Societies in the United States. I quote again from the Semi-Centennial sermon:
"A temperance society was organized about the first of October. 1828, 'on principles of total abstinence from ardent spirits, except as a medicine.' At the first meeting 26 males and 27 females put their names to the temperance pledge. A letter from Mr. Brooks to the speaker says: 'Our constitution prohibits selling and dis- tilling ardent spirits. All who joined, I think, were actuated by a correct principle, which leads me to hope they will be true and faithful to the cause.' Nearly a year afterwards, Mr. Uriah Phillips wrote to me as follows: 'That deadly curse, Intemperance, has taken up its march, and made a rapid retreat from this settle- ment. Some would stop the progress, but in so doing they only expose their weakness and help the cause. The Temperance Society here has exceeded the expectations of every one. I believe that there is not one-tenth the spirits consumed here that there has formerly been'."
Father does not go quite far enough in this passage. In Mont- gomery's "Leading Facts of American History" occurs the following:
"In 1826, the 'American Society for the Promotion of Tem- perance' was formed in Boston; and a number of years later (1840) six men, who knew the evils of the vice of intemperance from their own sad personal experience, met in Baltimore, signed a total-abstinence pledge, and founded the 'Washingtonian Tem- perance Society'.'
A footnote adds: "The first temperance societies did not insist on total abstinence from all alcoholic drinks, but only from the use of distilled spirits, such as whiskey, brandy and the like. Later, they required-like the Washingtonians-a pledge of 'total' abstinence from all that can intoxicate."
It is more than probable that to French Creek belongs the proud distinction of leading the whole United States in the Total Abstinence
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Movement. For many of the founders of this church, in spite of the fact noted above that there was liquor at the church raising, never knew the taste of whiskey.
But the intellectual and moral pre-eminence of French Creek from its first settlement has made it conspicuous in county and state. The colony brought books with them, and this has always been a reading community. From Martin's Gazetteer of Virginia and The District of Columbia, published in 1835, we take this paragraph: "On the banks of the creek is situated French Creek settlement, comprizing about eight miles square, containing 66 scattered dwellings, occupied by an industrious and enterprising people, who have imigrated from the New England States within the last fifteen (should be twenty-five) years. There is one house of worship (Presbyterian), one tanyard, a number of wheelrights, house carpenters, cabinet makers and joiners, and one temperance society, one tract and one Bible society. The principal pursuit of the people is agriculture. The settlement is divided into five school districts where the common branches of English education are taught six months in the year; the state of education being far superior to that which exists in the country adjacent. Population, 400."
The reasons for this pre-eminence in education were many, but I think the principle one has been an educated ministry. The center of the community's life was this church, and it was open every Sabbath, and its ministers were all educated in college and theological seminary. Listen to the splendid roll: Asa Brooks, Ezekiel Quillin, Edward Brooks. Ebenezer Churchill, Enoch Thomas, James Young, Orr Lawson, C. P. French, C. S. Faris, Loyal Young, Calvin C. Gould, Ceorge M. Fleming, William O. Phillips, Julius Spencer, E. P. Sloan, W. J. Hazlett, C. L. Luther and A. C. Powell. Ministerial students who have from time to time supplied the church are S. Hall Young, L. A. Lindemuth, Basil R. King, J. W. Kirke, Earle A. Brooks, David Graham, Frank B. Llewellyn, Roy F. Miller and W. H. Lyon. In addition to these, Dr. Asabel Bronson and Dr. Elias Bronson often preached for the congregation during the absence of a regular minister.
And in the frequent intervals when the church was without a pastor a stately procession of eminent divines uttered their great thoughts here through the lips of such appreciative readers as Robert Young, Festus Young, W. O. Phillips, Marshall P. Wingrove and Fred E. Brooks.
The pastors taught some of the higher branches to the most promis- ing young people and started them on their way through college. French Creek furnished many school teachers for the schools of Upshur and the surrounding counties. The sons of the old families began to find their way to Washington, Jefferson, Marietta, Wooster, and West Virginia State colleges, and the daughters to Steubenville, Washington and Oxford.
Soon after the war Miss Myra . Brooks opened a select school on French Creek where many of us got our first real start towards a Christian education; and in 1871 the French Creek Institute was
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founded and a building erected. The first principal was Dr. Loyal Young, and Miss Myra Brooks, J. Loomis Gould, Rhoda Gould, R. A. Armstrong and S. Hall Young were among his successors. This academy taught a full high-school course, and its influence was strongly Christian. Many of the pupils, who came for the light of knowledge, found here also the "Light that lighteth every man."
I hear, with surprise and disappointment, that French Creek has of late somewhat fallen away from the high intellectual standard which distinguished it in former days, and that recently a proposition to establish a high school here was voted down. Let us hope that the community will "repent and do the first works," and take again the position that rightly belongs to it-that of the leading community of the State in education and religion.
My address is already too long, and yet many points omitted crowd upon my memory. Of Patriotism-One of the old settlers, David Phillips, gave twenty sons and grandsons to the Union Army during the Civil War, and a very large quota of the young men of French Creek went as officers and soldiers to the cause of Universal Freedom in the World War.
Of Temperance -- The only attempt ever made to start a saloon on French Creek came to a speedy ending, when the indignant citizens assembled at night and threw all the gathered materials into the creek ; and when, in 1912, a prohibition amendment to the State Constitution was submitted to the vote of the people, there were cast at French Creek 251 votes for and only 8 votes against the amendment.
Of Education and Religion-French Creek has produced more physicians, teachers and preachers, in proportion to its population, than any other community in the State.
The foundations of intellectual, moral and spiritual greatness were laid broad and deep by these sturdy ancestors of ours. The thrifty and steady Goulds, the gentle and pious Youngs, the patriotic and venture- some Phillipses, the industrious and reliable Sextons and Morgans, the intellectual and studious Brookses, these, and other no less worthy names of our ancestors, call to us through the peaceful and troubled years of their history to emulate their virtues, and above all, to have abiding in us, controlling us, developing us, the unfeigned faith that dwelt in our grandmothers and our mothers; our grandfathers and our fathers.
Let us take for our own again the closing words of my father, Loyal Young, in his Semi-Centennial sermon:
"It is ours to work for the future as our fathers worked for us. They laid foundations; let us rear the superstructure, and the topstone shall be laid with shoutings "Grace, grace unto it!" At some future day, on the sunny plains of Paradise, we may be per- mitted to look down upon our work st.ll carried on in this place by other hands; and give God the praise that we were permitted to take a humble place in its advancement."
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THE HOME OF OUR FATHERS Bu REV. EARLE A. BROOKS. D. D.
OR a hundred years and more the theme of many a discussion and of interesting comment has been the old home in New England from which many of our ancestors came. Our fathers and mothers, our grandparents and others whose memories extended far into the past have entertained the young folks with many stories of the old home from which they made a long journey into the wilderness to establish a new home. Throughout the century just coming to a close the young people of French Creek have talked and dreamed concerning the land, far to the north, from which their fathers came. To a number of you who are present this afternoon has come the privilege of visiting the New England States and of seeing the very places in which our parents and grandparents lived. To me has come the pleasant duty of speaking especially of this home of our fathers.
In some of our historical records, such as Dr. Loyal Young's famous sermon on "Fifty Years in the Wilderness" and in various papers published at the time of the recent French Creek Home Coming, as well as in various addresses that have been made during this Cen- tennial of the French Creek Church, such places as Dedham, Wey- mouth, Ashfield and Brookfield, Massachusetts; Halifax, Vermont, and various localities in Connecticut and elsewhere in New England have been mentioned. Frequent reference has been made to Charle- mont, Mass., as that is the little town from which the Goulds and Youngs started on their long journey into the wilderness. As Charle- mont is the place of greatest importance to this assembly as a whole, since some one of the ancestors of almost all who are present today came from this beautiful town, I shall speak of it as typical of the rest and describe it in some detail.
Charlemont is located in the northwestern part of Massachusetts. a little east of the Hoosac Mountains, in a most beautiful section of the famous Berkshires. In sight of the hills near Charlemont is Grey- lock, the most famous of the Berkshire peaks. Through the Hoosac Mountains passes the Hoosac Tunnel, the longest tunnel in America. Near it are still to be seen most beautiful forests and, not far away, flows the Deerfield River. The scenery is most inspiring and the young men and young women there must be constantly thrilled with the most noble thoughts that such surroundings suggest. I have thought that the love for the forest that has been present in the lives of so many of our French Creek people must have come as an inherited instinct from the impressions made upon our fathers in beautiful Charlemont many years ago. As is true of almost all New England villages, Charlemont is a quiet place with broad streets that are bordered with giant elm trees.
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Far back from the street, with broad green yards in front, stand the neat houses as white as snow. As I passed through the streets of Charlemont a few weeks ago I was impressed with its quiet beauty, and strange thoughts of boys and girls, who walked through those streets many years ago, came to my mind. I might have sought out old tombstones in the cemetery or looked for the old homestead of Henry Young and his wife Lydia Ross Young, who were the parents of Robert Young, or I might have had strange visions of an oldtime wed- ding journey as Nathan Gould with his bride Martha Gilbert made their way from Brookfield, a little to the south, to their new home in Charlemont. I might have sought to conjure up the past, but I preferred to look, the little while I had, at the hills, fields, forests and rivers that surrounded the little New England village in which a sturdy race developed long ago and sent out their sons and daughters to occupy new lands to the south and west.
Many pages might be written concerning the beauties of the New England States and concerning the children of Pilgrim fathers who inherited strong bodies, strong minds and honest souls from their Puritan ancestry. But these things are known to all of us and may be read in the many books that speak of these interesting subjects.
As we think of the environment that surrounded the lives and the homes of our fathers in Rhode Island, Vermont, Connecticutgand Massachusetts, we wonder why they left the old home to seek a'new home in some wilderness. I have sought here to give some reasons for this change of earthly dwelling place.
There were certain influences that entered into the lives of the New England people at the beginning of the last century that had much to do with their selection of new homes in distant places. Of these I shall speak briefly.
1 .- CLIMATIC CONDITIONS.
Near the time when many of the old families left New England there were two very cold summers-1812 and 1816-which greatly discouraged the people of that region. No doubt they had longings for a more congenial climate and, as soon as opportunity came, they started on a great southward migration.
11 .- ECONOMIC CONDITIONS.
Some one has recently written of this period as follows: "People were migrating from the eastern States into the new land, prompted by the hard times following the Revolution and the disturbed conditions connected with the War of 1812. Profiteering was then in vogue in the East. Prices were prohibitive. Flour was $17.00 a barrel; salt was $5.00 a bushell; sugar was 30 cents a pound; molasses was $2.00 a gallon. The new West was the hope of the people." Finding con- ditions of life hard to bear the men and women of real spirit sought for a home where they might produce new conditions more to their liking-
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where they might produce more food, make their own clothes, build their own homes, clear out their own farms, and thus be independent of old conditions that had been a hindrance to them.
III .- THE SPIRIT WITHIN THEM.
We must bear in mind that these men and women were descendants of the Pilgrim fathers. In their veins coursed the blood of heroes, of Puritans, of travelers of that race which has always pressed on toward the most western horizon of the world. In those days there was much travel. The love of discovery and conquest was warm within the hearts of men. Of this period the historian Elson says-
Quotation from Elson's History of the U. S., Vol. III., page 96.
"A wonderful movement of the population to the west began soon after the war with England had closed. Every road leading westward from the east was covered with lines of moving wagons, plodding t'e'r weary way over hills and mountains, streams and valleys. At Haver- hill, Mass., 450 emigrants passed through the town in 13 days. At Easton, Pa., 511 wagons, bearing over 3,000 persons, passed in one month. These were moving to the great valley of the Ohio River, and. in the south a similar movement to the new States of Alabama and Mississippi was going on.
"A farmer wishing to better his worldly condition would sell all his goods that he could not take with him, and provide himself with a strong, light wagon, covered with canvas. In this he would pack his goods, leaving only room enough for himself and his family. Thus equipped they would bid adieu to their old neighbors, friends, and kindred, often to meet them no more in this life, and started out upon the long and toilsome journey of hundreds of miles through the wild- erness. Sometimes whole communit.es went together and settled in the same neighborhood in the west; but more frequently they moved by isolated families. Arriving in the western wilderness, the pioneers would purchase a quarter-section of land of the Government, of some land company, or of some settler who had preceded him and failed, pay.ng two or three dollars an acre, on the installment plan. If the lands were wholly unimproved, the family would live in the moving wagon until a cabin could be built. The cabin was made of logs, notched at the end so as to fit at the corners, and laid one after another until the house was about ten feet high. There was but one room, one door, and one window. The door was made of rough boards swung on leather hinges, and opposite the door was left an open space on the ground for a fire-place, the chimney being built outside of flat sticks like laths, and plastered with mortar. The floor was made of planks hewn out with the ax, and the roof of lighter planks resting on rafters made of saplings. In such a home many a good family lived for ten or twenty years, the ancestors of many of the leading men of the nation today. The cabin built, the pioneer would begin battling with the forest. clearing a few acres each year, carrying his grain perhaps 20
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