ci c:.. d ' d^-.^A5- rd, which will ho given later. The 840th Hymn was sung to Coronation between these papers, and the Doxology at the close, after which Rev. Mr. Jewett pronounced the benediction. After dinner the audience re-assembled and services were resumed at 2 o'clock. The choir sang " Jerusalem, my glorious home." " Father " Gleason led in prayer. The Pastor, Rev. G. 0. Wilson, then read the following paper on the HISTORY OF THE CHURCH FROM THE FIRST. It would be impossible to give anything like a complete history of this ancient Church in the time allotted to this paper. It has had a continuous existence for two and a half centuries. Its history is therefore intimately connected not only with the history of the town, l)ut with tliat of New England from its earliest settlement. But time and the occasion will forbid any digression from the straight line of facts which are necessary to indicate the course of tlie Church itself from its organization to the present time ; I shall only attempt therefore to state in the briefest manner possible what is known about its formation in England, and its re- moval first to Massachusetts Bay and then to Connecticut, with a mere outline of its subsequent career. Its liistory as may l)e gathered from wliat has been already intimated is in some sense unique. Its migrations alone would make it such, if in no other way it differed from others of the early Churches of New England, for it has been like a groat Apostle, '' in journey ings often " — if not " in labors more abundant." I need not recite the familiar facts wliich antedate and exi»lain the exodus of the Puritans. To the steadily rising tide of reformation in England, the ruling powers in Church and State had opposed many ol)stacles until at length by their '^ Act of Uniformity " they said to the reform, " Thus far shalt thou go and no farther." And this edict they at- tempted to enforce hj aid of the Star Chamber, with fine and imprisonment. It was a bitter struggle, with the King- dom of England on the one hand and the Kingdom of God on the other. But the stronger of course prevailed. Eng- lishmen who had at last the word of God in their own tongue, and in their own hands also, with, something of the spirit of it in their hearts, were bold to say to their rulers as Peter and John said to theirs, " Whether it be right in the sight of God to harken unto you more than unto God judge ye." But acting upon their oum judgment, they had fully determined they would not conform to aiiy regulations of the Church which seemed to them in conflict with the spirit and letter of the New Testament. Early in the seventeenth century a considerable party was formed, not of non-conformists simply, who were set upon reforming the the Church from within, but of separatists who had cut themselves loose entirely from the national Church, and formed Churches of their own which acknowledged no head but Christ. In a manuscript sermon which I have by me, preached in England in 1629, in the 4th year of Charles I, — the preacher being himself a non-conformist no doubt, and I think without much doubt, our Mr. Warham — it is said, "Our former sovereign succeeded a blessed Deborah, who in the purity of doctrine and orderly discipline established true religion amongst us, but were we content with this ? Many were not. For were it in me to have observed, as it is well known, I could tell you of many schismatics that at the be- ginning of our late king's reign, of a turbulent spirit, carried headlong with precipitate zeal, formed a strong party for innovation, — not of doctrine yet of discipline, to the great disturbance of the peace of the Church. This could not but be displeasing to God." But these schismatics and innovators whom they so strongly disliked were destined to be the Joseph to go before their brethren into Egypt and to bring their brethren at length, not to the same land alone, but to the same opinions also. For the success of the separatists 2 10 who had fled first to Holland, and afterwards to America, where they formed a colony at Plymouth, furnished the Puri- tans of England a solution to tlie hard problem which they had set before them, and they applied at once to Charles I for a Charter to settle Massachusetts Bay, which was granted in 1628, and a company formed somewhat like the East India company, with powers of self-government. Says Green, in his History of the English People, " By the Puritans at large this grant was at once regarded as a providential call, and ^ conclusions ' for the settlement of a great colony on the other side of the Atlantic were circulated among the gentry and traders, and descriptions of the new country of Mass- achusetts were' talked over in every Puritan household." In 1629 three ships were sent over with between three and four Imndred persons, who set down at a place wiiich they called Salem, for they hoped to find there a home of peace, where persecution would no longer harass them. In the Spring of the following year it was decided to remove the Government of the colony to America, and a compact was signed by great numbers in different parts of England who engaged to remove thither, and a large fleet was collected for their transportation. " These," says Green, " were not like the early colonists of the South, broken men, adven- turers, bankrupts, criminals, or simply poor men and artizans like the Pilgrim Fathers of the Mayflower, They were in great part men of the professional and middle classes, some of them of large estate." Indeed, they desired "only the best as sharers of their enterprize, — men driven forth from their fatherland not by earthly want, nor by the greed of gold, nor by love of adventure, but Ijy the fear of God and the zeal for a godly worship." Of this fleet of seventeen shi})s which in 1630 l)rought over Gov. Winthrop with his deputy and assistants, together with about fifteen hundred souls, the first to sail was the " Mary and John " of four hundred tons, with one hundred and forty passengers from the southwest part of England. These gathered at Plymouth early in March. The company had been carefully made up with all the elements needed for an independent colony. Two mem- 11 bers of the government were with them, Messrs. Ludlow and Rossiter. They had also a military man of some ex- perience, Capt. John Mason, besides two clergymen under whose ministry many of them had set in the land which they were about to leave. While they tarried at Plymouth, making ready for departure, it was thought best to gather the Church and set over it these ministers as pastor and teacher. The reason for this step is not positively known, but it has been suggested, and with some probability at least, that it may have been through fear of the influence of the Separatists in America. The first company, after landing at Salem, had fraternized with the Plymouth men when they came to meet them and understand their views ; and when a Church was to be organ- ized at Salem, Gov. Endicott received messengers from the Church at Plymouth, who gave them the right hand of fel- lowship. This Church, though it still professed " not to separate from the Church of England, but only from its cor- ruptions," may have seemed to their brethren at home a little too cordial towards the schismatics : and since their next ship, the Mary and John, was likely to arrive somewhat in advance of the Arbella, in which Gov. Winthrop was to sail, it is not improbable that Rev. John White and others of the company advised the organization of the Church in England to forestall the evil influences of Plymouth. The only de- tailed account which we have of the organization of the Church is that given by Roger Clap, then a young man al)out twenty-one years of age. He had joined the company from admiration of Mr. Warham as a preacher, having heard him in Exeter, England. And in an account of his life, written when an old man for the benefit of his children, he says, after describ- ing the company gathered at Plymoutli, '' These godly people resolved to live together, and therefore as they had made choice of those two Reverend Servants of God, Mr. John Warham and Mr. John Maverick, to be their ministers, so they kept a day of solemn fasting in the New Hospital, . . . spending it in preaching and praying, where the worthy man of God, Mr. John White of Dorchester, in Dorset, was 12 present and preached unto us the fore part of the day, and in the latter part of the day, as the people did solemnly make choice of and call those godly ministers to be their officers, so also the Rev. Mr. Warham and Mr. Maverick did accept thereof and expressed the same." Beyond this, Mr. Clap tells us nothing, and perhaps we should expect nothing further from one who was present as a youth, and not a member of the Church. But Prince, the learned pastor of the Old South Church, Boston, in his Annals of New England, writ- ten only a hundred years after, says, on the authority of a manuscript letter then in his possession, that Messrs. War- ham and Maverick were then re-ordained as their ministers ; and in a note then added, says : '•'• These had also been or- dained ministers by Bishops in the Chui'ch of England, and they are now only separated to the especial care of this people." Just so they ordained Mr. John Wilson, pastor of the Church in Charlestown. A few months later making this minute : " We used imposition of hands, but with the protestation by all that it was only as a sign of election and confirmation, and not of any inteut that Mr. Wilson should renounce his ministry which he received in England." Thus far in every respect the proceedings at the formation of this Church in Plymouth, England, was followed by the churches formed under the same supervision, and but a few months later, both in Cliarlestown and also in Watertown, where Mr. Phillips was set over a part of the company that arrived with Gov. Winthrop only a few weeks after the Mary and John. But as no mention is made of any covenant which was sub- scribed to by this Church at the first, it has been doubted by some if they had any ; Mr. Clap's silence proves nothing. He was then but a young man and not himself a member. But these people had come together comparative strangers from different towns and counties, and were entering into Church relations with intent to live together in Christian fel- lowship ; and though they may not have attached the same significance to a covenant then as later, the probability is that they had one, if not at the very first, yet shortly after, when other churches of their company and under the same 13 government were so organized. It would be only a simple form of agreement, however, similar to that signed at Charles- town on the 30th of July hj Gov. Winthrop and Rev. John Wilson and two others, and by more than fifty in all before August, when the Church was fully organized. That cove- nant read thus : " In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in obedience to his holy, wise, and divine ordinances, we, whose names are here underwritten being by his most wise and good providence brought together into this part of America, in the Bay of Massachusetts, and desirous to unite into one Congregation or Church under the Lord Jesus Christ our Head, in such sort as becometh all those whom he hath redeemed and sanctified to himself, do hereby solemnly and religiously, as in his most holy presence, promise and bind ourselves to walk in all our ways according to the rule of the Gospel, and in all sincere conformity to his holy ordinances, and in mutual love and respect to each other, so near as God shall give us grace." A somewhat similar covenant was signed at Watertown by about forty men besides women. In these two places together there must have been more than a thousand people at this time, and most of them baptized persons no doubt, yet only about a hundred entered into cov- enant with the churches at first, and the same thing was probably true of the Dorchester company when they organized a few months earlier. Roger Clap himself was not a mem- ber at first, though no douljt a baptized person as all the children of the church were in those days. And he describes his father as " a man fearing God and in good estate among God's faithful servants." If this moral and religiously in- clined young man though Imptized was not accounted a mem- ber of the church, there must have been something to dis- tinguish its members from others. It could not be mere con- firmation by a Bishop. The Puritans had little to do with Bishops in that country and none in this. Milton, writing of them in 1641, says, "• What numbers of faithful and free- born Englishmen and good Christians have been constrained to forsake their dearest home, their friends and kindred, whom nothino- but the wide ocean and the savage deserts of 14 America could hide and shelter from tlie fury of the Bishops." But once on this side the ocean they no longer recognized the authority of Archbishop Laud or any other Bishop of the National Church. And as souls were born again and received into church fellowship, it must have been done by the lirotherly recognition of the church after suitable exam- ination, and almost of necessity l)y assent to some form of covenant. Mr. Clap was probably the first one received to fellowship on this side the Atlantic. He says, " After God had brought me into this country, he was pleased to give me room in the hearts of his servants so that I was admitted into the church fellowship at our first V)eginning in Dorchester, in the year 1630."' Then he proceeds to say, " Jesus Christ being clearly preached, the way of coming to him by believing was plainly shown ; yet because many in their relations (^. e. accounts of experience) spake of their great terrors and deep sense of their lost condition, and I could not so find, as others did, the time when God wrought the work of con- version in my soul, nor in many respects the manner thereof, it caused in me . . . doubtings how it was with me, whether the work of grace were savingly wrought in my heart or no." And Mr. Clap shows still farther what kind of people were admitted to the church in those days when he says, " The Lord Jesus Christ was so plainly held out in the preaching of the Gospel unto poor lost sinners, and the absolute necessity of the new birth, and God's Holy Spirit in those days was pleased to accompany the word with such efficacy upon the hearts of many that our hearts were taken off from old England and set upon Heaven." "■ Many were converted .... and joined unto tlie several churches where they lived, confessing their faith publicly, and showing before all the assembly their experiences of the workings of God's Spirit in their hearts to bring them to Christ." And he adds, " Oh I the tears that have been shed in Dorchester meeting- house at such times both by those that have declared God's work in their souls and by those that heard them." Such accounts as these go to show that there was a church in Dorchester, as in Boston and Watertown, and tliat its mem- 15 bers were admitted upon evidence of conversion ; and some form of church covenant would seem indispensable. I dwell upon this point Ijecause it has been denied not only that we had a covenant previous to 164T, but that we were a church at all before that date. But before citing- further proof that we were a church, and so recognized by all other churches of the colony, it should be said that with such organization as we have described, the company set sail from Plymouth, England, just two hundred and fifty years ago to-day. For we celeljrate the day of their sailing, partly because it is the first exact date known. The organization occurred previous to their embarkation, but just how close upon it we cannot now tell. The first meeting- house of the church was therefore the cabin of the ship in which they crossed the Atlantic. Mr. Clap says, " We came by the good hand of the Lord through the deeps comfortably, having preaching and expounding of the word of God every day for ten weeks together by our ministers." This was a protracted meeting indeed, and no doubt a season of rich spiritual blessings. They landed on this side May 30th (0. S.), and set down at Mattapan, which they named Dor- chester. New England was then a complete wilderness. Two settlements only had been made by previous comers — one at Plymouth and the other at Salem. But what is now Boston was without an inhabitant, except a little company at Charlestown, who were making preparations to receive Gov. Winthrop on his arrival. But before the close of the year a goodly colony was established in that neighborhood, and there were in full operation three churches, at Dorchester and Watertown and Boston (for Wilson's Church at Charlestown was soon removed to Boston). The Government in August 23, 1630, voted salaries to Mr. Wilson and Mr. Phillips, and ordered that all the inhabitants of the Colony be assessed for that purpose — '' Mattapan and Salem only excepted." By which it appears that the people of Dorchester, as well as Salem, were supporting their own ministers without the care of the Government. And it appears that these four churches were living on terms of mutual recognition, while all were in practical fellowship with Plymouth. 16 The ubiquitous Dr. Samuel Fuller, who was also deacon in the Plymouth Churcli, was on hand as soon as a new company- arrived, and besides "letting blood" in cases where it was needed after the long voyage, he labored as at Salem the year before to disabuse the minds of the brethren of their Puritan prejudices against separatists. In a letter to Gov. Bradford of Plymouth, dated June 28, 1630, he says : " I have been at Mattapan at the request of Mr. Warham, where I let blood of twenty persons. I had conference with them till I was weary. Mr. Warham holds that the visible church may consist of a mixed people, godly and openly ungodly, upon which point we had all our conference, to which I trust the Lord will give a blessing." Mr. Warham appears by this to have argued for that church theory which was then accepted in England, and indeed I think everywhere in all Protestant lands of that day. They had none of them settled upon a definite form of church government at that time. Says Cotton Mather : " The great Mr. Hildersham had advised our first planters to agree fully upon their form of church government before their coming into New England, but they had indeed agreed little farther than this general principle :, ' that the reformation of the church was to be endeavored according to the written word of God.'" And Mr. Warham as well as Wilson and Phillips, and Higginson of Salem, was doubtless arguing this question in order to determine what the word of God taught concerning church membership. Hitherto the question of including the openly ungodly with the godly in church bonds could not have been a practical one, however, with him. His was called a "godly company," and surely none else would have banished themselves from their native land through simple love of a pure worship. But it is evident that God did add his blessing to Dea. Puller's discourse, for it is recorded in Bradford's History of Massa- chusetts that " Rev. Mr. Warham of the Church in Dorchester also expressed a desire to one of Plymouth Church in 1630 to l)e on friendly terms with that church and people, and he declared himself satisfied with their ecclesiastical government and proceedings." 17 And so the church in Dorchester, like all their neighbor churches, came to fellowship the separatists as soon as they knew them. John Robinson had said to his flock years before this, " There will be no difference between the conformable ministers and you when they come to the practice of the ordinances out of the Kingdom" [of England]. And so it proved. Our own Dr. Bacon has sagely remarked that the Puritan when once in this country found himself " separated from the national church, not by schism, but by a thousand leagues of ocean." And this alone was sufficient to make them separatists. It is needless to say that for the first few years the people that came out from the National Church of England were not full-fledged Congregationalists ; for there was no Congregationalism then, or any other known polity outside the English Church and the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, except this Plymouth movement, which was then but in the gristle. It was not until a few years later, when Hooker and Shepherd and Mather came over with more positive ideas than their predecessors, that the church polity began to crystalize into what is now known as Congregation- alism. Nevertheless, there were churches, of which Dor- chester was one, and it was so recognized by all the other churches of the time, as it has been by all who have written the history of that time. Its members were made freemen under the law of the Colony that none but those who were members in recognized churches could be so admitted. Cot- ton Mather, writing of that period, says, " After Dorchester there followed another (church) at the town of Boston. To Boston soon succeeded a church at Roxbury ; to Roxbury, Lynn ; to Lynn one at Watertown ; so that in one or two years there were to be seen seven churches (Salem and Plymouth included) in this neighborhood, all of them attending to what the Spirit in the scripture said unto them ; all of them golden candlesticks, illustrated with a very sensible presence of the Lord Jesus Christ among them." This is testimony sufficient of itself to settle the early status of this Church beyond any reasonable doubt. Never- theless, a doubt and even a denial of the fact has been started 3 18 of late by one whose authority on matters of actual history is worthy of the highest respect. And this is grounded upon the sermon* which Mr. Warham preached August 15, 1647, from 1 Cor. i, 2: "Unto the Church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints.'" This sermon must have been preached after hearing Mr. Hooker's " Survey." The circumstances which led to the sermon were these : There had been among the churches of the colony a growing agreement as to the true idea and polity of a church of God, as taught in the scriptures, but as yet no formulating of it as a basis of Church unity. But in 1646 a Synod or Council of the churches met in Boston for this purpose, and after a fortnight's session adjourned for a year : then, on account of a prevailing sickness, a new ad- journment was made to 1648, when the Cambridge Platform was adopted. But in the meanwhile all the leading men in both Colonies were discussing the subject. Hence this ser- mon, which lays down the fact as is stated in Hooker's Sur- vey, and afterwards in the Platform : that the Covenant is the real basis of church fellowship and discipline, and without a special church covenant, the covenant of grace entitles no man to church-membership. " A church becomes a church by reason of its covenant." But then in each of these docu- ments it is protested that there is an implicit covenant, if no explicit one, when a body of Christians unite together to worship God and enjoy the ordinances of the gospel. This is evidently inserted with chief reference to the Church of England, that they might not seem to deny to that body the right to be called a church because it had no written cove- nant. But the language is general ; and in Mr. Warham' s sermon the reference to the Church of England as thus organized stands alone, where we would surely expect some reference to his own church if that had been until then in the same category. But one of the chief uses of the sermon goes far toward explaining it. " It is," he says, " to persuade men not to be content with visible saintship, but labor to be *Hon. J. H. Trumbull kindly loaned me a copy of this sermon, which he hj^d made from Matthew Grant's Notes. 19 in covenant where they dwell." He suggests that a man may say he is " a member already by reason of his father's right in England." To which he replies : " He that is a member of the Church in England is a memljer of a particular church and not a member of the church congregational all the world over, though mystical." " He that is a member of one con- gregation," he adds, " is not a member of another congrega- tion." Probably here in Windsor there were, or had been, such men connected with the English Church, and therefore wishing to be accounted members of this church without entering into special covenant with it. The fact that a full and explicit Church Covenant was adopted by this Church only about three months later may be explained on the supposition that the covenant previously in use needed to be made more explicit after this emphasizing of the fact that it was the very basis of all church organization. Besides, the churches while in this embryotic state did often change the form of their covenants, — as at Salem in 1636. Weld, who was in Boston from 1632, wrote twelve years later, " Any Church hath and taketh liberty as they shall see just cause to alter their cove- nant and renew it before the Lord." And for this new Cov- enant of 1647 there was just cause in the circumstances, if not in the need of a more explicit Creed, which is here in- serted as a kind of preamble to the Covenant. The earliest covenants were brief and simple ; and as a rule no special church creed was adopted ; the New Testa- ment probably being simple and explicit enough, in their opinion, as a statement of doctrine in which they could pro- fess their faith. This sermon of Mr. Warham, and the adoption of a lengthy Creed and Covenant soon after, seem therefore instead of diminishing to increase the probability that the Church had a covenant previously. The fact of its standing, however, is sufficiently attested by such explicit statements as that of Cotton Mather, the grandson of Richard, of Dorchester, and by the mention of it as a church by Prince and all the learned writers of those early days, besides the unquestioned accept- ance of it as a church on a par with others of its time by 20 such accurate and studious writers as Drs. Clark and Felt, and others who have compiled the annals of that time. Next wc come to consider the fact of the removal of the church in a body to Connecticut. The continued persecution of the Puritans in England caused a rapid emigration to America, until, as Cotton Mather says, " The Massachusetts Colony was become like an hive over-stocked with bees." But information was received, through Indians at first, of the rich open lands along the Connecticut river, only a hundred miles farther on ; and the earlier settlers in Newtown, Watertown, and Dorchester be- came restless and sought consent of the Court as early as 1634 to remove. At length, in May and June, 1635, consent was granted them on the supposition that it was not beyond the jurisdiction of that Colony. At once the removal com- menced of individuals from each of these towns, and begin- nings were made at Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield, which towns bore the names of those their people came from, for a year or more. But the question which most interests us to-day is. Did this Church come through the wilderness as it had crossed the seas without losing its organization ? This point has been thoroughly treated hj Dea. J. H. Hayden in articles repul> lished in the appendix to Stiles' History of Windsor. I need only re-state some of the facts there recorded. But first we must understand what sources of information are open to us. To illustrate the inaccuracy of writers from a hundred to a hundred and fifty years after the events of the removal, I will first quote Dr. Trumbull, who says, " The removal of the Dorchester people to Windsor is said to have been disa- greeable to their ministers, but as the whole Church and con- gregation removed it was necessary that they should go with them. However, Mr. Maverick died in March, before prepara- tions were made for his removal." This has a certain apoc- ryphal value, showing the tradition as it was received in Windsor at the time; for Dr. Trumbull is known to have come to this town and consulted its ancient men for his facts. But it is certain that the whole of the Dorchester congrega- 21 tion never came to Windsor ; for Dorchester was then the largest town in Massachusetts Colony, and it was ordered by the Court in March, 1635, that " persons who absent them- selves from church on the Lord's day be censured and fined or imprisoned." This must have given Mr. Warham a large though listless congregation, not one half of which ever came to Windsor. Then to cite another account but a little earlier and no less inaccurate, I quote from the Annals of Blake, the town clerk of Dorchester, left in manuscript until after his death. He says : " Mr. Warham and about half the Church removed to Windsor, and Mr. Mather and his people came and joined with Mr. Maverick and that half of the Church that were left ; and when those two companies of people were thus united they made one Church with the said Rev. Mr. John Maverick and Rev. Mr. Richard Mather for their pastors." To show the value of this, which was evidently the tradition in Dorchester, it is only necessary to state the facts concerning the formation of the second Church in Dorchester, as we shall presently do, and to mention that Mr. Maverick died in Boston, it is supposed, at the house of his son, February 3, 1636, two months before any attempt was made to form the Church of which Mr. Richard Mather was pastor, and nearly seven months before it was formed. He was probably sick there from about the time of the first movement toward Windsor in the fall of 1635. Mr. Mather landed in Boston in August, 1635, and remained there, it is said, six months, where, with his wife, he united with the Church before going anywhere to exercise his gifts. A tradition that did not know such facts as these can be of no value whatever as history. There are three accounts only which are left us by men then living and thoroughly conversant with the events which they record. First, Gov. Winthrop, in his account of the Council at Dorchester, April 1st, for the formation of a new church, says : •"' A large part of the old Church had gone to Connecticut ; " and second, the author of the Life of Richard Mather, of whom Increase Mather, his son, says in the preface, " He hath had the reviewing of my father's man- uscripts, from whence, as well as from personal and intimate 22 acquaintance, he hath been truly furnished Avith the knowledge of what is here reported ; " writing, too, when all the older members of both churches were still living, says that Mr. Mather while in Boston received invitations from Plymouth, Dorchester, and Roxbury, " to employ the talent which the Lord had enriched him with for the work of the ministry among them." Being uncertain as to his duty he advised with friends, among whom Messrs. Cotton and Hooker were chief, and on their advice " set upon that great work," as the writer expresses it, •* of gathering a Church in Dorchester, the Church which was first planted in that place being removed with Rev. Mr. Warham to Connecticut."' Then, thirdly, we have the records of Matthew Grant, one of the first members of this Church, who, about 1667, sets down a list of- twent}^- four persons whom he describes as " members of the Church that were so in Dorchester, and came up here with Mr. War- ham and are still of us ;" after which he gives a list of those who. as he says, '' have been taken into full communion since we came here." Then again, under date of Dec. 31, 1677, he gives another list of fifteen names under the following heading : " Only yet living that came from Dorchester in full communion." This latter list was made out forty-two years, and the earlier perhaps about thirty-two, after the removal of the Church. The scribe says expressly that he does not mention any who have died or have gone from us to other places. And according to the lowest estimate it would seem probable tliat the numljer of those who came from Dorchester with Mr. Warham must have been five times that of the first list, or seven times that of the last. (That is, not those who came in his immediate company alone, but who in the course of a few years joined liim here, having been members of his Church previous to coming.) This would give us, as a mini- mum, more than one hundred persons. Though Gov. Winthrop doubtless spoke accurately in April, 1636, when he said the larger part of the Church had removed, others came later as we know, so that only a remnant of the original body could have been left behind. Neither Mattbew Grant, who was here as early as September, 1635, nor anybody else intimates 23 anything of a reorganization of the Church in Windsor ; but, on the contrary, Mr. Grant ahnost fully asserts the opposite fact. The original records, now lost, were doubtless brought here by Mr. Warham, for Mr. Grant says in the opening of his minutes, " The Elders of the Church have a record of Church proceedings in some things as they had;" and new church records were begTin in Dorchester with the formation of the new church, and are still preserved entire. Some few members of the old church as we know were left behind. Mr. Roger Clap was one. And of the seven members who formed the foundation or pillars of the new Church, three are known to have been in Dorchester a year or two before the removal ; whether members of the Church there we cannot tell. Other settlers had been coming into Dorchester from year to year, besides the " great numlier of godly people who came with Mr. Richard Mather." Yet when the council met in April, 1636, and they proceeded to examine the seven pillars who were selected no doubt with an eye to their supposed fitness for foundation stones, though they gave " good proof of their gifts," and made a satisfactory confession of their faith when they came to " manifest the work of God's grace in themselves," only Mr. Mather and one other were approved by the council. It had been ordered by the court but a month previous " that no Church be gathered without notifying the magis- trates, and the approval of the major part of the Churches in the commonwealth." Gov. Winthrop, who was there- fore in all probability present at this council, writes con- cerning the remainder of the proposed foundation : "They had builded their comfort of salvation upon unsound grounds, viz., some upon dreams and ravishes of spirit by fits, and others upon reformation of their lives." However, after an adjournment of the council, April 1st to August 23d, Mr. Mather's historian says : " A Church was constituted in Dorchester according to the order of the Gospel, with confession and profession of faith." The removal of the old Church to Connecticut cannot be said to have occurred before the spring of 1686, though a 24 large company came in the autumn of 1635, and returned in the winter, because of the detention of their goods and pro- visions which were to come by water. Others who liad come earlier and cstahlished themselves remained, however, and the company that had been driven l)ack in the winter, having disposed of their homes there, only tarried until they could return in safety. The winter had set in early, so that the Connecticut River was frozen over by the 15th of November (0. S.) , and probably the spring was equally early, for the report shows them gone from Dorchester on the 1st day of April. They returned largely re-enforced in numbers, while others still, as they could dispose of their property, followed them in the course of a year. The Church at Newtown had in similar manner determined to remove, and, though delayed for some reason until June, another church was formed in that place under the care of Rev. Mr. Shepherd, as early as the 1st of February preced- ing. The mere fact of the organization of a new Church in Dorchester would not be sufficient evidence of the removal of the old, had it not been expressly stated then that they had gone ; and if we had not other evidence from the journal kept by Gov, Winthrop, and from the doings of the court held in Hartford in April, and in Windsor in June, that they were then on the ground. Of these men, who came through the wilderness and settled this town, Dea. Roger Clap, the old historian of Dorchester, says : " Taken as a whole, and judged by their day and their light, they were the most distinguished persons that have ever lived in that town." Prominent among these were Roger Ludlow, who drafted the first constitution of Connecticut, adopted in 1639, and Capt, John Mason, who delivered the colony from fear of the terri))le Pequots ; both of whom were members of the Church. But for want of time particular mention can be made only of the early ministers who gave to the Church its strength and character. Mr. Maverick was older than Mr. Warham, and died at about sixty, just before the Church came to Connecticut. But Mr. Warham continued with the Church thirty-four years after its removal, and died an old man 25 in 1670. Cotton Mather says of him, " The whole colony of Connecticut considered him as a principal pillar and father of the Colony." He thinks also that Mr. Warham was the first who preached from notes in New England, for " which some faulted him," he says ; Yet, he adds, " when once they came to hear him they could not but admire the notable energy of his ministry. He was a more vigorous preacher than most of them who have been applauded for never look- ing in a book in their lives," by which he means probably looking in a sermon-book while preaching. Mr. Cotton remarks in this connection : " If a minister use his notes as a lawyer does his minutes, and carry a quiver full of them into the pulpit with him, from whence he may with one cast of his eye (after the lively shooting of one arrow,) fetch out the next it might be a thousand ways advantageous." . . . The only other thing noted of him by this author is stated thus, " Know then that though our Warham were as pious a man as most that are out of heaven, yet Satan often threw him into most deadly pangs of melancholy, that made him des- pair of ever getting thither." The " dreadful darkness," he says, " which overshadowed this child of light in his life, did not wholly leave him until his death, though some have asserted that the cloud was dispelled before he expired." The Covenant adopted by the Church in 1647 was probably of his framing, as seen by its agreement with the sermon preached on the subject a little before. It was drawn while the West- minster divines were yet in session, and the creed is attached as a sort of preamble. This very interesting document Hon. J. H. Trumbull deciphered and published in the Congrega- tional Quarterly for April, 1862. It is a covenant both of faith and of fellowship. There are six articles beginning with " We believe," and the seventh, containing the covenant, with " We bind ourselves," etc. Mr. Warham was the first of the four Elders appointed by the General Court to attend the Synod at Boston in June, 1657, which, to meet certain difficulties and demands of the time, devised the half-way covenant system, a practical return to the idea of church membership which prevailed 4 26 in England, and whicli had been advocated by Mr. Warhani in 1630. Althungh there was great opjiosition to this new- way on the i)art of the clmrches as a whole, Mr. Warham began at once to practice it in his Church, and continued it for seven years, when he announced to his people that he had met with such difficulties concerning that way that he could not conscientiously practice it until they were removed. And it was not returned to until his colleague and successor, Mr. Chauncey, set it on again three years later. It continued in use, however, in this Church as late as the time of the younger Rowland, and there are members of the Church now living who in infancy were baptised under that Covenant. The de- scendants of Mr. Warham are numerous, and many of them are filling honorable posts in the church.* One at least is now a member of the Church in Windsor. Mr. Hewet was settled as teacher in the Church in 1639, and the quaint epitaph on his tombstone in our old burying ground tells about all that need be said of him. Though but five years with the Church they declare his virtues thus : ''Who wlien hee lived wee drew our vitall breath Who when hee dyed his dying was our death Who was ye stay of state, ye churches staff Alas the times forbids an epitaph." He was the last settled in this Church distinctively as teacher and not also pastor. I shall not name the several pastorates in their order ; their names, and their terms of service, are set before us in the panels around the gallery. Of Mr. Nathaniel Chauncey, who was Mr. Warham's suc- cessor, and for a few years his colleague, special mention must * Among the many noted persons who have descended from Rev. John Warham may be mentioned Rev. Jonathan Edwards, and son, Jonathan 2d, Rev. Timothy Dwight, D.D., Judge John Trumbull, LL.D., Rev. R. S. Storrs, D.D., of Brooklyn, Stoddard the missionary, " Grace Green- wood," Gen. Wm. T. Sherman, Bishop Williams of the Episcopal Church, Mrs. Prof. Yardley of Berkeley Divinity School, and her sister, " Susan Coolidge,"Alsop the poet, Dr. Gardiner Spring, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and Rev. Dr. Todd of New Haven. His sister, wife of Rev. ]\Ir. Hill of Middletown, notes that the female descendants have many of them mar- ried distinguished men, as examples of which we may name Mrs. Horace Bushnell, Mrs. John Todd, D.D., JVIrs. Prof. Wm. S. Tyler. 27 be made, however, on account of the division in the Church which his settlement occasioned. He was fourth son of Rev. Cliarles Cliauncey, second President of Harvard College. He was highly recommended, by such men as Rev. John Wilson of Boston and Richard Mather of Dorchester, for his " learn- ing, studious diligence, hopeful piety, and grace, and peacea- ble demeanor." Nevertheless, for reasons not wholly known to us, there was great opposition to his settlement. The Gen- eral Court had to interfere, and, on the 14tli of October, 1667, in obedience to its order, the people of Windsor voted on the question. And Mr. Henry Wolcott returned eighty- six votes for Mr. Chauncey and fifty-two against him. This seems to have secured his settlement, but the dissatisfied minority soon after obtained permission of the court to pro- cure for themselves an able ortliodox minister and have wor- ship by themselves, which they did later, under the ministry of Mr. Woodbridge. Though the decree of court says, " This Court leaves the Church at liberty for settling Mr. Chauncey and calling him to office, some have doubted if it was ever done, yet the probability is that he was regularly set over the Church as pastor. The explanation of this division is not fully known. Since the Synod of 1662, which endorsed and authorized the half-way Covenant system, proposed at first in 1657, there seems to have been a great division in the churches.* One party here was called the Presbyterian party. Dr. Parker of Hartford, in his discourse at the two-hundredth anniversary of the South Church, says, " within a month from the time when the second Church in Hartford was formed, the party in the Church at Windsor that dissented from the strict Congregationalism of old Mr. Warham withdrew, and Mr. Woodbridge was ordained as minister of the Pres- byterian party of Windsor." It is known that the Presbyter- ians of England had exerted themselves to induce the Coun- cil at Boston, in 1648, to frame the platform of the New England churches in accordance with their ideas, — and doubt- * This was a time of disturbance in many of the churches throughout the colonies. Not only in Hartford, but in Boston, also, there was a secession of a portion of the old church, and a new one formed, which is now known as the Old South. 28 less many within the colony were then favorable to the polity of that Church which under Cromwell had Ijeen made for a time the established Church of England. But the disagreement was not all between these two factions of the church. There could not have been perfect peace in the main V)ody if it be true, as reported, that " When a sermon was preaclied in the pulpit in the forenoon concerning doctrines to which Mr. C. was opposed, he would in the afternoon preach to the same audience, from the same text, a regidar logical confutation of these doctrines." It was evidently a time of great trouble and disturbance in the Church, and it is not very strange that Mr. Chauncey remained only a little more than twelve years. He is the only pastor, however, in the first two cen- turies of the Church who did not remain and die among the people of liis charge. Another fact is worthy of mention here. For two years and twelve weeks, before February, 1669, while matters were unsettled, and the minority of the Church, though worshiping apart, had not yet obtained leave to form a separate Church, and the General Court had the matter in hand with intent to heal the division, Matthew Grant records that the Church held no communion service. An interesting question concerning the mode of administering the communion is suggested by tlie account of Dea. More with the Church about this time. The charge for wine used at a single sacrament, August 14, 1670, is 18s., — and the average cost for the next six is about 14s., and the price per gallon is set down in one instance as 4s., which would allow about four gallons to one communion. But the mem- bership at that time according to the records could not have been more than sixty or seventy, — and this would have allowed a small glass of wine to each person. In the same way it can be shown that the bread eaten would have been sufficient to give to each person more that two ounces apiece. From this it would seem that they must have made more of a supper of this sacrament than we now do. Among the names of those added to the Church year by year we have this entry under date of " January 12, 1667. Mr. Nathaniel Chauncey made public declaration of his faith in Christian principles and the manner of God's workings in 29 his soul," — l^y which I infer that he then united with this Church, since he was not settled as pastor of the Church until some time after this date. But, since he must have been a member somewhere else previously, it would seem as if members were not then received by letter from one Church to another, but entered a Church only by profession of faitli.* The division in the Church at this time was great and grievous and was by no means healed when, in 1679, Mr. Chauncey left the church to accept an invitation to Hatfield, Mass. The Court and Councils tried in vain to restore harmony, until at last, worn out with wrangling, the town voted unanimously, in 1681, to call Mr. Saml. Mather, who was grandson to Richard Mather of Dorchester, and cousin to Cotton Mather. And at length, in 1684, he was settled and peace restored. Mr. Mather's ministry was a very fruitful one. It began with a revival, which brought into the Church 28 the first year and 36 the second, more than doubling its numbers ; for there were but 54 members when he came. The records of this time, in his own handwriting, have such remarks as these at the close of the yearly entries : After the first year — "The Lord make the next year also a good year." And at the end of the fourth — "Not so much as one added to the Church, but as many died out of it as were added the year before. The Good Lord awaken and humble us." It was probably in the latter part of his ministry here that he preached the one discourse which has come down to us. It is from Jas. 2:20, and is entitled, "A Dead Faith Anato- mized — A discourse on the Nature and the Danger, with the deadly symptoms of a Dead Faith. . . In those who profess the faith of Christ." This was published at Boston in 1697, the preface being written by his cousin Cotton Mather, wherein he says: "This discourse is what was delivered to a popular audience. And such was the savour which it left on * Letters of recommendation were given by this Church as early as 1685, as appears from the following record in the old books of First Church, Hartford, under that date : " Daniel Clark upon letter of recommen- dation from the Christian Church in Windsor ou-ned the comnant^^ from which it appears also that the letter did not do away with the necessity of a covenanting with that church on admission. 30 the minds of its hearers where it was declared, as that the notes thereof are here come abroad." And of the autlior he says : " He is known throughout the Churches of the famous and happy colony (of Connecticut), to none of the least whereof he hath for many years been a faithful Pastor — known for his Piety, Gravity, and Usefulness, more than any recommendations of mine can render him." Then he remarks further, and it is a happy way of putting the compliment, " My relation to him will excuse me, as well as his modesty forbid me, for saying more." I may remark here that three hours would be a short time for the delivery of this sermon, though I believe it was the custom often to deliver so much of the sermon as contained the argument in the fore part of the day, and give the uses in the after part, that is, perform- ing the pai't of Teacher in one part of the day, and that of Pastor in the other. It was during his ministry that the first permanent division of the society was effected. At his settlement the parish included what is now Windsor, with Bloomfield, Windsor Locks, Suffield, East and South Windsor, and a portion of Ellington. The new meeting-house which was at once built, after the two parties united, stood out here on the green. And that was the one place of worship in all this region ; The Temple at Jerusalem whither the tribes went up. But the settlement on the east side of the river, then called Windsor Farms, had so increased that by 1694 they obtained leave of the court to sustain a minister among them, and Timothy Edwards, the father of Jonathan, came with his wife Nov. 14, 1694. Later a meeting-house was built, but as yet there was no Church and no territorial division of the town into separate parishes. Each man paid his rate where he chose. But in May, 1696, the Court record reads, " Upon motion of divers of the inhabitants of Windsor living on the east side of the river, this Court granted to said inhabitants free liberty in an orderly way, with the consent of neighbor Churches to involve themselves into Church estate, and to pro- ceed to the ordination of their minister, having first obtained the free consent of the Church of Windsor." But this would involve the division of the parish ; and that was a new thing. This was one of the earliest instances in the Colony when 31 one town was thus divided territorially into two parishes. And it is probable that " the free consent of the Church in Windsor " was not so easily obtained, for although a vote was passed in that society May 3, 1697, that Mr. Edwards should be called to office, as soon as conveniently may be, Mr. Stough- ton makes charge in his account book; May 28, 1698, for Provisions laid in the house of Mr. Edwards for his ordina- tion. The list includes rum and wine, with butter, cheese, eggs, and wheat-meal.* And so it seems that the real divis- ion of Church and Parish did not take place until the year 1698, the same year that the Suffield Church was formed. Before this date many of the persons received to member- ship here by Mr. Mather are recorded as " of Suffield." Mr. Jonathan Marsh was ordained associate Pastor in 1709, yet Mr. Mather lived eighteen years longer and probably performed still some of the ministerial duties. Of Mr. Marsh's ministry we have no records, but the tradi- tion is that it was a fruitful one. And it is known that Windsor shared liberally in the great revival which attended the preaching of Rev. Geo. Whitefield, who, according to local tradition, preached here as well at Suffield and Enfield. During the ministry of Mr. Marsh the Church and Parish suffered further diminution by the separation of Poquonnock and establishment of an independent Church and Society in 1724, and a similar secession of Bloomfield in 1736. Each of those cleavages, as that of Windsor Locks in 1844, was natural and necessary, from the growth of population around new centers, but each was resisted as long as possible by the mother Church, as it is natural for any mother to delay as long as possible the separation of her family, and the depart- ure of her daughters to found new homes elsewhere. The chief event which made memorable the next ministry, that of Rev. Wm. Russell, was the struggle between the two extremes of the parish with regard to the location of the new meeting-house. As a result of the decision to build on the South side of the rivulet, the opposing party, by consent of * Some of these facts were kindly furnished by Mr. John A. Stoiighton, who has of h\te come into possession of a lot of Edwards manuscript. 32 the Court, separated themselves from the Church and built them a house about two miles north of the other, and for thirty-three years worshiped by themselves, with Rev. Tho. Hinsdale for their Pastor, This division, as also the earlier one in 1667, would doubtless have been permanent, as was that between the 1st and 2d Churches in Hartford, if the population of Windsor had increased as in Hartford, so as to warrant its continuance. In the midst of this period of divi- sion the war of the Revolution was fought. Until then we had owned as our Sovereigns the successive Kings of England, and lived under protection of the British flag. But this di- vision in the territory of England by which we became an independent government, has proved a more permanent one than the contemporaneous division in our old Church. For, shortly after the estalilishment of peace, a reunion was brought about and the body has ever since remained without open schism. The Pastorates of the two Rowlands, father and son, both of whom were men worthy of extended mention and praise had we time to devote to it, extended seven years beyond the close of the second century of our history. Up to this time the Church had had but seven Pastors, besides the two Teachers who labored with Mr. Warham. The average length of a pastorate up to this point had lieen about thirty-one years. In the last fifty years, less seven, there have been five pastors, making twelve in all for the 250 years, though by the overlapping of some pastorates it makes more than 250 years of service. One of these was for a single year, yet the average length of pastorate from the first is about twenty- one years. Of this apostolic twelve, it may be said at least that there has been no Judas among them. All who have completed their pastoral service have been earnest, faithful preachers of the Word, and some of them men of power and influence. None have made their names famous through their published works. None have received from the schools those honorary titles which are designed to indicate rare scholarly attainments, but all have, or will, we trust, secure the Lord's "Well done, good and faithful servant." The last three of the ex-pastors are still living, and two of them 33 with us to-day. Of the deacons of the Church nothing can be said but in praise. There are twenty-two whose names are in our manual. Eight at least of those who have gone to their reward will be remembered by some who are present here to-day. The last one who was removed from us by death was good Deacon Barber, who certainly had the quali- fication which Paul names when he says " It is required of a deacon that he be found blameless." The venerable and courteous Deacon Morgan we all remember also with tender regard. And Deacons Phelps and Rowland, and Gillet and Mills, and Sargeant, some of the older persons can recall, and we hope to listen to reminiscences of some of them this evening, as well as of other worthies of the past, of whom some of our older members or guests have many pleasant recollections. The Church as a body has not been a large or conspicuous one in the State, except at the first. But it has kept on the even tenor of its way, doing faithful work in its limited sphere. It has had a share in other revivals which have been general throughout the State, besides the one in 1740, when Whitefield preached. In the years of the revolutionary war, and for some time after, there seems to have been a great spiritual dearth here, as there were added to the church on profession of faith during the whole fourteen years of the elder Rowland's ministry, from 1776 to 1790, only five per- sons — all women. Mr. Hinsdale's Church, to the north, seems to have been more prosperous. Its additions, at least, were more numerous. But in 1799, after the reunion, there was a large ingathering, as also in 1821. Both which revivals were somewhat general. At Hartford, at least, many were added to the Churches both in 1800 and in 1821. The First Church, Hartford, received 147 to membership in 1821. Again, in 1831, and later in 1838 and 1841, and 1858, as also in 1876, there were seasons of refreshing, and large additions, we will trust, of such as shall be saved. Some of the men who have been enrolled as members in this Church have filled honored and influential positions in the Government. It is enough just to mention such names as Ellsworth, and Wolcott, and 5 34 Newberry. But when the honored of God shall be known in His kingdom, we trust that it may be said of very many whose names shall shine for ever, This and that man were born there. I will not waste your time with apologies for this meagre and imperfect sketch of the past career of the old Churcli. It has been a delight to me to study its early records, and in imagination live among the noble and devoted men who founded it, and bore such witness to their love for the truth, and for purity and freedom of Christian worship, by the sac- rifices they were willing to make in its behalf. And as they were wont to watch so reverently and believingly for indica- tions of God's personal presence and providence in the various events through which they passed, I have felt to apply to this Church the motto of our State, Qui transtulit siistinet. For I have seemed to see continued proof of his Fatherly care and guiding hand throughout all the way by which it has come, until now it has completed one full quarter of a thousand years of living and of labor, lighting up with its testimony to the truth its own little corner of this great dark world besides sending out streams of influence through its continu- ous gifts of money and men, to help enlighten large spaces beyond its own boundary. For at least nineteen ministers have been raised up here, many of whom have gone out to do faithful work, besides many good and efficient ministers' wives, one of whom we have lately sent forth with our prayers to the great dark empire on the other side of the globe, which is celestial only in name, but which we trust soon to see filled with celestial light. And so the good Lord has blessed and honored us by accepting our services in the doing of His work, and assisting to accomplish his purposes of grace. The noble old river, on whose banks we dwell, has kept on through flood and drought, steadily pouring its waters into the sea, ever since our fathers emerged from the eastern forest and beheld with delight its broad and open meadows. Its channel has been changed somewhat, as well as broadened by the wear and wash of its banks ; and, not unlike it, this old Church has been all the time changing its membership as the 36 generations have followed one another to the great sea toward which we are all hurrying. It has had its droughts and floods also, and perhaps we may say that its channel too has broad- ened somewhat — we dare not say that it has deepened. But He who twice transplanted it still sustains, and will, we trust, continue to sustain it. But the methods of His work- ing are the same from age to age, and we can only hope that He who wrought so mightily in our fathers will inspire us and those who come after us to emulate them in their love for his truth and their readiness to sacrifice all things to pre- serve its purity and to practice and publish it. Then when the five hundredth anniversary of the Church is celebrated, though we will have been so long with our fathers that most of our names will be forgotten, and our times will seem as remote and strange as theirs seems to us to-day — yet will the old Church still continue green and flourishing, and, may we not hope, ere that the true millennium will have dawned fully upon our earth. In the middle of this paper the choir was called upon to sing Mrs. Hemans' old hymn, " The breaking waves dashed high, On a stern and rock-bound coast," And at its close was sung Dr. H. Bonar's hymn, " Far down the ages now, Much of her journey done, The pilgrim Church pursues her way. Until her crown be won. The story of her past, Comes up before her view. How well it seems to suit her now, Old, and yet ever new. It is the same old tale Of sin and weariness, Of grace and love yet flowing down, To pardon and to bless. No wider is the gate, No broader is the way ; No smoother is the ancient path That leads to life and day. 36 Still faithful to our God, And to our Captain true, We follow where He leads the way, The kingdom in our view. The Pastor then introduced Rev. Dr. Bacon by saying : Just fifty-six years and six months ago yesterday, the Con- sociation met here in this house with Rev. Mr. Henry A. Rowland, and a young man came in before them to be ex- amined, and, if they thought proper, there ordained to the gospel ministry. Here he was ordained and he is with us to-day — not an old man yet, as you will see when I introduce to you Dr. Leonard Bacon. Dr. Bacon then made one of his characteristic addresses, substantially as follows : * DR. BACON'S ADDRESS. When the hay has been gathered, and the well-loaded cart is moving from the meadow, there follows in its track, as you know, a boy, or perhaps an old man with a rake. Such is my duty on this occasion, namely, to rake after the cart. I have been invited to remark on the paper which has just been read in our hearing, or to follow it with a statement of any additional facts. Having heard the paper only this once, and having had beforehand no definite knowledge of what your pastor would tell us, I may be excused from offering any commentary other than that "Well done" which is already in the thoughts of every hearer. But, trying to gather up a few straws in the track of the discourse, I may begin by saying that my atten- tion, as I listened, was particularly drawn to what was said about the original "Covenant" of this Church, and about the question whether, at its beginning, it had any covenant. Let me say, then, that it was simply impossible for a Church to be constituted there in Plymouth Hospital, on the day which we commemorate, by any other method than a free agreement of its members to perform toward each other, and * The address was extemporaneous, but, by request, the speaker has written out this report of it from memory. 37 toward the body which they were constituting, all the duties of membership in a Christian Church. Whether that agree- ment was in one form of words or another, whether it was subscribed with pen and ink or only assented to by some significant gesture, whether it was written, to be kept on perishable paper, or oral, to be recorded only in God's book of remembrance, are questions of little moment. It is enough that they agreed and consented to be a church of Christ. That agreement and consent of theirs was a mutual engage- ment in the presence of God, that they would render to each other and to Him the duties of the sacred relation into which they were entering. That mutual agreement was a Covenant ; and no Church Covenant can be, legitimately, either more or less than such an agreement. A Church Covenant is like a marriage covenant. A cove- nant between competent parties is the essential thing in a wedding. The marriage is made, a family is instituted, the relation of husband and wife is established, when the parties, in the presence of God and of competent human witnesses, covenant with each other and with the commonwealth that they will be, not at some future time, as in a promise of marriage, but from that hour till death shall part them, a wedded pair, husband and wife. Whether the Covenant be expressed in a certain printed or written form of words, or in words that are only spoken, whether the parties express their assent and consent by vocal utterance, or silently by some sufficient symbol, as of a ring, or of clasped hands, will not affect the reality of the contract or the sacred validity of the relation. Every Congregational minister who officiates at weddings has his own form, and a different form perhaps on different occasions, but in every instance the par- ties make a Covenant with each other before God ; and in every instance the Covenant, whatever the form of it, is the same. The Covenant, whatever the solemnities that sur- round it, is simply a mutual engagement to be, the one a lov- ing and true husband, the other a loving and true wife. Anything less makes the contract an abomination. Anything more is superfluous, and may be mischievous. 38 I remember that one day, when I was a boy, I was looking on wliile an elderly gentleman was splitting wood in his back yard ; and seeing his next-door nciglibor pass by, who was not addicted to such amusements, he hailed him with the question, " Was there a clause about oven-wood in your mar- riage contract ? " " No," was the answer. Allow me to say that whether that particular item of a husband's duty was mentioned or not, in the administration of the Covenant at that gentleman's wedding, made no difference with his duty as a husband. When he undertook to be a husband, he took upon himself every duty involved in that relation ; and it is as much the husband's duty to provide good flour and good oven-wood as it is the wife's duty to make good bread. So of a Church Covenant. The member who " sticks in the letter " of the formula, and argues that this or that particular of duty is not "nominated in the bond," deludes himself. Let him rather remember that he has taken upon himself a sacred Covenant to perform all Christian duty as a brother among brethren in a Christian Church, nothing more, nothing- less. Just that was the Covenant which the first members of this Church made with each other at that meeting in Plymouth Hospital two hundred and fifty years ago. The moderator of that meeting was a beneficed clergyman in the Established Church of England, John White. He was at that time fifty-five years of age, and had been for five and twenty years rector of Trinity parish in Dorchester. He was honored for his godliness and for his leadership in relig- ious affairs ; and it was in kindly remembrance of him that the first members of this Church gave the name Dorchester to the place of their settlement in Massachusetts, and after- ward for a time to this place. That John White, whom his friends in all Dorsetshire loved to speak of as " Patriarch White," has been fitly called " the father of Massachusetts Colony, " for the measures which resulted in the founding of that Puritan commonwealth were begun by him and were carried forward by his persistent faith and courage. The rector of Trinity parish in Dorchester was a Puritan and a leader of the Puritans. Perhaps somebody here is ready to 39 exclaim, How could that be ? I answer, he was a conform- ing Puritan, and his dislike of certain vestments and cere- monies had not let him into any eccentricity for which he could be silenced or deprived of his living. As a Puritan he held that separation from the National Church was the sin of schism ; but he was not therefore an Episcopalian. Conform- ing or non-conforming, the Puritans held fast the principle of a National Church; and therefore, while they demanded a further return toward primitive purity, they were obedient, so far as each man's conscience would permit, to all existing regulations. Recognizing the National Church as the one Church of Christ in England, they regarded themselves as true and loyal members of that Church, and not the less loyal for desiring improvements, and some of them great improvements, in its government and in its forms of worship. Men unable to distinguish — as the Puritan party could and did distinguish — between the Church of England and the then existing hierarchy and liturgy in that Church, have argued that because Winthrop and his associates, before sail- ing from Yarmouth for the Massachusetts Bay, sent back a loving farewell to their bretliren of the Church of England, they must have been Episcopalians. Whereas the simple and notorious fact is that their dislike of Episcopalianism in the Church of England, hardly less than their dislike of the absolutism in the State of England, was an impelling motive of their migration. Why then, you may ask, did they insist on being members of the National Church ? Why did they not withdraw and become a Church or a " denomination" by themselves? Just for two reasons: They believed that to separate from the National Church, while they remained in England, would be a sin ; and they knew that Separatists were liable to be hanged. Therefore they determined to separate (as they said) "from the corruptions of the Church" by going out of the realm. So soon as a propitious wind should bear tliem out upon the ocean, so soon as they should be no longer floating in English waters, they would be beyond the jurisdiction of Bishop Laud. They were sailing forth to plant the Church of Christ beyond the ocean. When they 40 touched tliese shores and began to invade the continental wilderness, they saw by faith a new and better England ; and the Church which they brought with them was simply the Church of Christ without the distinctive regulations by which it was manacled and fettered in old England. They trusted that the Church wliich they were planting would be purer than that which they had left behind them, and would do better work for Christ and for humanity than the Church of their native land with its unfinished reformation had done or could do. Fearing what seemed to them the sin of schism, they did not secede ; but they put three thousand miles of ocean between their worshiping assemblies and the corrup- tions against which they protested. Instead of seceding, they succeeded, and their success has become a momentous fact in the world's history. Look back to what the world was on the day which we are commemorating — that day of prayer in the Plymouth Hos- pital two hundred and fifty years ago. What changes be- tween that day and this ! In the time of Charles I. and his chief counselor Laud, it was a question, not only on the European continent, but in England, whether the Protestant Reformation should be abolished, and the religion of the dark ages re-established with its spiritual and intellectual despot- ism. Where is that question now? It has been tried on many a field of battle as well as in many an intellectual con- flict ; and the victory is not yet on the side of mediseval civili- zation or mediaeval religion. Think of the world as it is to-day. Where are we ? The place to which so many of us have come as on wings of fire from distant homes, that here with you we may reverently call up these dim and fading memories ; where was it and what was it two hundred and fifty years ago ? What was this continent then ? Where on the face of the earth had liberty so entrenched itself as to defy assault? How stupendous would the thought have been to tlie men who, just ready to set sail for the New England wilderness, were ordaining their pastor and teacher, could they have foreseen what we see and enjoy, this civil and re- ligous liberty, these institutions of religion and of learning, 41 this diffusion of knowledge, this flag with all that it signifies to us of history and of promise, and with all that it signifies to the nations as they see it floating in the winds of every sea, and shedding light from its constellation upon every shore ! How great would their amazement liave been could they have had a momentary vision of the railways that trav- erse our continent and hold our States together as with iron bands; a vision of the engine, which in the fields and the mines as well as in factories augments beyond all com- putation the productive power of human labor ; a vision of the steamships that plough our inland waters, or go forth upon the ocean without asking leave of wind or tide I Could they have been told of the contrast between their ten weeks' voyage in the Mary-and-John, and the ten-days voyage over the same ocean now, the tale would have been to them less credible than the wildest oriental fiction. Could they have had for one short hour a foresight of the things which we see, — the way opened for the gospel into every land, the gospel spreading among the nations and finding utterance in every language — converts to Christ multiplied in every region and of every race and kindred — they would have said. Behold the glory of the latter days ! Samuel Hopkins, the great theologian of New England at the close of the last century, appended to his System of Divinity a Treatise on the Millennium. To me that treatise is an interesting study. Its author was not eminently learned. He knew no Hebrew, and little Greek. But he knew the English Bible ; he had his share of common sense ; and he lived in communion with God. In his devout study of the prophetic Word, he saw a glorious future for the world; ages of peace and knowledge ; ages of light and blessedness under the reign of Christ. He foresaw that there would be great inventions to facilitate intercourse, to increase the productive- ness of labor, to fill the earth with riches, to give time and means for the improvement of men's minds and hearts. Of course he did not foretell what the inventions were to be, for could he have done so he would have been himself the in- ventor. But he foresaw a time when a few hours of daily 42 labor, perhaps even less than the eight-hour system tolerates, would bring to every man an adequate supply of things need- ful to the body ; and he could believe that under such condi- tions there would be a daily resort of joyful multitudes to hear good preaching. The good man perhaps was not aware that in the advance of Christian civilization there would be new wants, so that what were once the luxuries of the few, would become the necessaries of comfortable living for the many. We do not yet see the daily assembling of husband- men and artisans, after their morning work, to enjoy the privilege of united worship and of the daily sermon ; but as we study the Newport theologian's idea of the Millennium, and think of man's increased and ever increasing dominion over nature, do we not see something of that millennium already begun ? The world as it was in 1630, — Oh how unlike this world of ours in 1880 1 Nay, how great the difference between that world which some of us remember, and this world in which we are noAv living I I am sometimes sorry for young people that their conception of what God hath wrought in these last days is necessarily so inade(iuate. A morning newspaper, with information of what happened yesterday in the remotest regions of the "world, touches them with no electric thrill of wonder. The telegraph, flashing its messages over the continents and under the oceans, is nothing new to them. The photograph is not more wonder- ful to them than the sight of their own faces in a mirror. I am sorry for them; they cannot enjoy life as we do who are old. Men travel far to see the pyramids, the ruins of Grecian temples, the world-famous works of art in European galleries. A great railway is more stupendous than the pyramids. A rushing train of cars is a work more glorious than the collected glories of picture and sculpture in any royal palace. I am sorry for the young to whom such things — sublime poetry to us old men — are only common prose. They cannot dream as we do of what may be when the cycle of five hundred years from 1630 shall be complete. They can- not stand in such awe and adoration as ours before the thought of what the world will be, and what the kingdom of 43 Christ on earth will be in the year of our Lord two thousand one hundred and thirty. The men whom we commemorate were serious men. Their thought was that life is a serious thing — not amusement but duty; not play but work. Let us be in that respect like them. Let us work while it is day, working for those who shall come after us, working for Christ, working as those who must give account to God. So shall the world in years and ages to come be the Ijetter for our having lived in it. Rev. L N. Tarbox, D.D., was then introduced and read the following poem written for the occasion : OT.D WINDSOR, CONN. 1630—1880. 1. Roll back the curtains of the years, and let our eyes behold The distant times, the ancient Avays, the sturdy men of old ; Across the stormy deep they came, the forest wilds they trod. To find a home for Liberty, a temple for their God. 2. They rested V>y the rocky shore, till shone the western star. To point them to a fertile vale, a peaceful home afar ; They struggled through the pathless woods, till full before their sight Spread the fair valley broad and green, bathed in its vernal light. ?>. They saw the river flowing by, fed from its ancient rills, Bearing its wealth of waters down from the far northern hills : In silence and in solitude for ages had it flowed, To make these lowlands beautiful, most meet for man's abode. 4. And now they heard the voice of God, as Israel heard of old, Saying : Be strong and fear ye not, let all your hearts be bold ; This swelling .Jordan ye shall pass beneath my guiding hand. And here your weary feet shall rest, within this goodly land. 5. The Lord thy God he giveth thee this laud of brooks and rills, Of fountains and of depths that spring from valleys and from hills: A land of barley and of wheat, of corn and wine and oil ; In plenty shalt thou eat thy bread, upon this fruitful soil. 44 G. When thou liast eaten and art full, then shalt thou bow the knee, And bless the Lord for this good land He giveth unto thee : Let not thine heart be lifted up in boastful pride, to saj', Mine own right hand hath gotten me tlie wealth I share to-day. 7. Thou shalt remember all the way the Lord thy God has led, To point thy pathway through the sea, through deserts wild and dread ; If thou forsake the Lord thy God, His favor He will hide, And thou, like nations gone before, shalt perish in thy pride. 8. What brought these way-worn wanderers, these weary households here. So far from home and kindred ties and all they held most dear? What nerved their hearts to cross the sea and tread this forest path To brave tlie hungry beasts of prey, the savage in his wrath ? 0. A tyrant king had risen up to rule with iron rod: A haughty priest had strode between their consciences and God : To haughty priest or tyrant king they would not bend the knee ; Come exile, chains, or prison walls, their souls should still be free. 10. Such was the cup of bitterness our fathers had to drink, Such was the penal doom prepared for men who dared to think ; So was the good seed sifted out by God's mysterious baud, To plant this empire of the west, this joy of many a land. IL And now behold these exiles here, John Warham and his flock, Made up of good old English names, and good old English stock ; They come with hearts that trust in God, and hands made strong for toil. To build their rude and humble homes, and break the waiting soil. 12. They clustered on this rising ground, where now their ashes rest, They saw the valley's outmost bounds, the blue hills east and west ; The little I'iver at their feet in quiet murmured by. And the great river, broad and deep, lay full before their eye. 13. The dusky children of the woods were glancing to and fro. With faces like the mystic sphinx, whose meaning none might know ; They thronged about these river lands, tliey wandered by the streams. They rambled through the forest paths and dreamed their forest dreams, 45 14. They sowed these broad and fertile fields with arrow-heads and spears, A liarvest for the farmer-boys to crop in after years ; The plow-share still shall turn them up, while centuries roll apace. Or sifting winds on sandy knolls make bare their hiding-place. 15. And not their arrow-heads alone, — their ancient names are found Still clinging to the modern soil in all the region round ; Podunk and old Poquonnoc, Scantic and Scitico, Recall to us that dusky race that vanished long ago. 16. But who shall paint those earliest years and bring their dark to light. The heavy burdens of the day, the watches of the night :' Those nights when mothers dared not close their weary eyes to rest, But clasped their babes with every noise more closely to their breast. 17. The first foundations were not laid wiien war's wild notes were lieard. And dire alarm and tragic fear through every household stirred ; And well the stoutest heart might quail, the boldest hold their bicath, A bloody challenge had been given, — its issue, life or death. 18. But soon the black cloud rolled away, the bright sun shone again. When crowned with victory homeward came John Mason and his men. That bloody Pequot race was gone, — had perished past recall. The infant towns kept jubilee, in gladness at its fall. 19. Their Indian neighbors too were glad, and danced with forest mirth. For now their hateful, cruel foe was blotted from the earth. The good news ran along the shore to Plymouth and the Bay, And all New England joined to keep a glad Thanksgiving Day. 20. In modern " piping times of peace," around our genial fires. Their puny sons may criticise and harshly judge their sires ; But that wild tribe had sowed the wind along its bloody path, And now had reaped the whirlwind in all its direful Avratli. 31. The years passed on. The little one became a thousand strong, The small one stretched its growing length the river sides along. The gloomy shadows disappeared before the woodman's blows, The wilderness began to bloom and blossom as the rose. 46 33. They sowed and reaped, they Ijought and sold, they wedded and were wed, The gray-liaired fathers passed away, and children rose instead ; The catechism taught them all about the Moral Plan, And every little child could tell the chiefest end of man. 3:5. Their toils were rough, their gains were small, but still with courage stout. They ta.xed themselves in every war to help old England out. They fought the Indians and the Frencli on many a stubborn field, They fougjit the Saybrook Platform too, and made the clergy yield. 34. And when Sir Andros came in state, to take their charter back, The lights went out, the charter too, and none could tell its track. When Andros left for Boston town, defeated in his plan, 'Tis safe to say, he rode away a madder, wiser man. 35. They tired the Primer at him then — they taught the boys to say Those rliymes about the Royal Oak in quite another way: His Royal Majesty was dropt, and by a rendering free, The Charter Oah it was that saved the People\s Liberty. 36. Then came the news that James had gone, — last of the Stuart Kings; Tlie joyful tale flew o'er the land, as on an eagle's wings: The modest charter ventured out from its dark hiding-place, .\nd for a hundred A^ears shed down its mild, benignant grace. 37. Beneath its just and peaceful sway the people dwelt secure; Tiieir Governors were righteous men, their magistrates were pure: They did not look across the sea to wait the royal nod. They chose for office whom they ^Aoiild, their chartered rights were broad. 38. And so the strange thing came to pass, in seventeen seventy-five. That Brother Jonathan* was found head of the patriot hive; In all the thirteen colonies, no Governor but he Was ranged upon the people's side, a friend of liberty. * At the breaking out of the revolutionary war, in 1775, Jonathan Trum- bull of Lebanon was Colonial Governor of Connecticut, having been in office since 17(59, and continuing till 1783. By the Charter of Connecticut, obtained by the younger John Winthrop in 1G63 from Charles II, England 47 29. The women of tlie olden times were busy as tlie men. For liome-made clotlies and household cares were all in order then : The maidens spun the fleecy wool, the mothers spun the flax, What time the men folks were abroad and busy witli the axe. 30. The big wheel and the little wheel kept up their buzzing sound. Till all the yearly stock was sjiun, and all the yarn was wound. And then the ijounding loom began, beneath each rustic roof. With fl3'ing shuttle to and fro, to join the warp and woof 81. And many a Windsor lad at Yale, some Ellsworth, Rockwell, Stiles, A Wolcott or an Edwards boy, begirt with ladies' smiles, Has mounted up to speak his piece upon Commencement Day, Proud in his brand-new suit of clothes, made in this simple way. 32. The ruddy maidens of tliose years, had they been bought and sold, If judged by any modern rate, were worth their weight in gold; No foreign Bridgets can be hired to do as much as they. Wlio did it all for kindred love and iai a fllial way. 33. Wliat tliough their hands were hard with toil, with household work and care, No worthier damsels could be found man"s destinies to share; For they could fill whatever j^iace unto their lot might fall. And give to life a dignity in cottage or in hall. 34. Great was the old Town-meeting day, and high was the debate, Touching the questions which arose on Town, or Church, or State. To build a bridge, or meeting-house, the voters were the same, Only the latter clause came up under the parish name. 35. And great was old Election Day, and great was 'lection cake. No nourishment for growing boys a prouder rank could take. Greatest of all. Thanksgiving Day ; that glad day of the year. When roaring fires and chicken-pie filled every house with cheer. lield no veto on the action of the people in their choice of Governor. In tlie other Colonies the Governor? were of foreign appointment, and of course were with the King. But Gov. Trumbull was with the people, and Washington when in doubt, used to remark, " We must see what Brother Jonathan will say." Hence the term "Brother Jonathan." 48 36. A\'liat bard sliall sing, in titting strains, the olden district school'^ The benches small and l)enches big, the masters wooden rule, The meaning glances round the room, which passed and made no noise, Tlie nascent loves that grew and died among the girls and boys : 37. The tiijelling-school on winter nights, — the clatter and the din Which raged before the hour had come for spelling to begin: The hard words flying to and fro to knock the dunces down, The bright-eyed girl or bright-eyed boy that waited for the crown : 88. The phiin old-fashioned meeting-house, with square and pen-like pews, Where winter cold was kept condensed, all prime for Sunday use : The ty thing-man that sat in state on some high gallery perch. Who rattled round and made more noise than all the jjoys in cliurch : 39. The minister who stood aloft in pulpit quaint and tall. Above his head a sounding-board, which seemed al)out to fall : The chorister, who gave the pitch and led the waiting choir. Beating the time with outspread arms to lend the needful fire : 40. The singing-school to teach tlie youth tlie mysteries of song, When young men saw the maidens home and made the journey long : The sleigh-ride on a moonlight night, the passage out and back, When jingling bells on frosty air gave note to clear the track. 41. But time would fail us to pursue this airy, trilling strain. And so, in parting, let us take our solder song again : For though life everywhere puts on its lilayful, sportive side. In earnest thoughts and earnest deeds our lathers lived and died. 42. Let us upraise that olden song, — the ancient psalm, once more. Which first our fathers sang when they had reached New England's shore. Let us with voice and heart unite before our fatliers' God, Tiiat He would give us strength to tread tlie ways the fathers trod. 49 43. Thou, Lord, hast been our dwelling-place ere mountain tops were reared, Before the rolling earth was shaped, our ancient hills appeared, Through countless generations past tliy goings were abroad. From everlasting thou art known, the ever living-God. 44. Thou turnest man again to dust, frail child of earth and clay, While in thy sight a thousand years are counted but a day; To Thee tlie ages come and go, in never ending flight, As yesterday when it is past, or as a watch by night. 45. Our days are three-score years and ten, or, if Thou givest strength. So that they reach to four-score years, how Aveary is their length ? For heavy burdens clog their path, and sorrows cloud their way. And soon, how soon, the day is done, wc haste and fly away. 46. So teach us. Lord, to count our days, daily to grow more wise, And let thy glorious work appear before our children's eyes, Th« beauty of the Lord our God, upon us may it rest, That all the labor of our hands may be conflrmed and blest. Prof. William Chauncey Fowler, D.D., of Durham, was introduced as a descendant of President Charles Chauncey, whose son Nathanael was second pastor of this Church. He spoke briefly of the place which the Bible held in the hearts of the Puritans, and how often they read it through in order, and closed with a eulogium on the women of Connecticut as wives and cooks, and remarked that we had enjoyed splendid proofs of this in our entertainment here to-day. Following Prof. Fowler, William Frederick Holcomb, M.D., being called upon, exhibited an old Geneva Bible which was brought to Windsor by Jonathan Gillet, Sen., one of the original members, and had been in the hands of the family ever since. He said it was called a " Breeches Bible," because the - garment made of fig-leaves in the Garden which in King James' is translated "apron" is here given "breeches," and in the family it was known as the Bear Bible, because it was once placed under a window in the old days to keep up the sash, when a bear clawed it, leaving the marks of his claws so 7 50 deep upon the edges of the leaves that they are very plainly seen still. Dr. Holcombe afterward suggested that a bear came to examine the family records and not being able to write his name, left his "mark." The exercises of the afternoon closed with the singing of a part of the 90th Psalm, from the old Sternhold & Hopkins edition, as our fathers sung a century and a half ago. The deacon lined it off, and all the people sung two lines at a time to the tune of old Dundee, which is more ancient than the Church. This Psalm is said to be the first they sung upon these shores ; and the old Psalm Book from which it was read was one tliat had come down from that time, bound together with a Hebrew Bible. The paper read in the morning by Deacon J. H. Hayden of Windsor Locks, was upon the old meeting-houses. He said: DEACON J. H. HAYDEN'S ADDRESS. The Puritans held that an organized body of Christians constituted a church, but they never designated their place of worship by the same name. When the first settlers of New England were able to erect public buildings for their religious and secular meetings they called them Meeting- houses. These houses were built by the town, and were con- trolled by the town. They were not the exclusive property, as now, of the church and congregation worshiping in them. Here the church and congregation worshiped on the Sabbath and on lecture-days, — on all other days, as occasion required, the town in its corporate capacity met here for the transac- tion of public business. Here the town voted on ecclesiastical affairs, raised taxes for the support of the ministry, for the public schools, and for town expenses; here they voted for civil and military officers, for the care of the " burying-yard," and for the disposal of the public land belonging to the town, and liere they discussed measures for the public defence in times of Indian disturbances. The meeting-house was the accepted center of the town. 51 The people had paid tithes in England for the support of the Church, and no country, Protestant or Catholic, at that time ventured to leave the support of religious institutions to voluntary contributions, and it should not seem strange that our fathers associated the civil government with the ecclesi- astical, in the support of their churches. Their dissent from the Church of England had led them to look upon the brotherhood of the church as equals, entitled to an equal voice and vote on all matters pertaining to their organization, and applying the same principle, it was fitting that those who paid the same tax, for the support of religious institutions, should also have an equal vote, and out of the logic of this reasoning grew the republican form of our civil government. It wrought some evil to the church, but it was of inestimable value to the State in that formative period of our present republic. The rising generation can hardly realize how recently all this union of Church and State has passed away. Since my own recollection these walls have echoed to the efforts of town-meeting orators. I have seen men stand here to air their eloquence on all questions proper to come before a town meeting.* I am set to speak of the Meeting-houses in which this Church has worshiped. Passing over the new hospital in Plymouth, England, where they were organized, and passing over that seventy days' meeting on board the good ship Mary and John, an account of which falls within the province of another to speak, we will begin with this Church and people after their arrival at Dorchester, Massachusetts. We have no record of their first meetings, but one of their number in speaking of the Boston church, which was organized that summer says, "their Meeting-place was abroad, under a tree, where I heard Mr. Wilson and Mr. Phillips preach many a * After the church at Windsor Locks had built a house of worship in 1847, an old man who had long neglected public worship, but who had lost none of his zest for town-meeting debate, gravely rose and moved that the town meetings in future should be held one-third of the time at Windsor Locks; when questioned about accommodations, he answered with some surprise, "Why, ain't we got a meeting-house there? " J 52 good sermon," and we doubt not this church had a similar meeting- place at first. On their arrival, not a family had a house in w^aiting for them. The trees of the forest, which cumbered the ground and shut out the sunlight, were to be felled and shaped, and built into houses before their wives and little ones could be provided with shelter, and none could be spared to build a meeting-house until this work was done ; consequently, when this church met for worship, they had no choice left but the forest shade, or the open sky. If the poet had this Church in his mind's eye he could hardly have given a more graphic picture of the contrast in its outward surroundings that first summer, and to-day. I " The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave, And spread the roof above them, — ere he framed The lofty vault, to gather and roll hack The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood, I Amid the cool and silence, he knelt down And oftered to the Mightiest, solemn thanks, And supplications." No forest shade or memorial stone now marks the spot where this Church first offered up her prayers and praises " on the wild New England shore." But there is a forest which remains, almost unchanged, when a church, gathered largely from the descendants of the original members of this Church, " met abroad under a tree." A company of people who lived in Dorchester and its vicinity, who thought to escape the rigors of a New England climate, and still enjoy New England institutions, met in 1696 and organized a Con- gregational church, chose a pastor and installed him, and as this church had done sixty-six years before, left their homes and sailed away. They reached their destination in due time, and settled down eighteen miles from the present city of Charleston. Nearly forty years ago I stood under the tree where that church held its first communion service — the first ever administered in the Carolinas. It was in the midst of a forest, hoar and gray; beneath it stood their little square meeting-house with its peaked roof, — 53 built soon after their arrival. No public highway ran before it, there was no dwelling-house in sight, the early graves of those who fell victims to the climate were scattered around — while overhead the branches were draped with sombre moss, and silence brooded over the scene. The first record evidence we have that a meeting-house had been built in Dorchester we find in Winthrop's journal under date of March 19, 1631-2, he says: " Mr. Maverick, one of the ministers of Dorchester, in dry- ing a little powder (which took fire by the heat of the fire, pan), fired a small barrel of two or three pounds, yet it did no other harm but singed his clothes. It was in the new meeting-house which was thatched, and the thatch was only blackened a little." This was but a year and nine months after their arrival — how much before this it was built we know not. When this Church and people came up to Windsor, they were obliged to begin anew the work already accom- plished at Dorchester, but doubtless their five-years' experi- ence there had qualified them to meet the task before them more intelligently. Their first step was to send on pioneers, who came early in the summer of 1635, to select a place, and provide shelters for their families who were left l)ehind at Dorchester and came on in October. These first houses were only intended to serve their occupants until they could build more substantial and convenient ones. They were of one style of architecture, standing along the brow of the meadow-hill, extending from the little river to the Chief Justice Ellsworth place. Beginning a few feet below the brow of the hill they excavated a space the size of the proposed house, throwing up the earth at the sides and west end — on the embankment thus made, they laid a plate on which they rested the foot of the rafters. Instead of shingle, the roof was thatched with a coarse wild grass. The east end was probably made from plank, hewn or sawn by hand; the floors and ceiling were probably made from clove boards — boards cloven or split from short logs and 54 hewn into shape. Only the east end and the roof appeared above ground.* It will be recollected that this people erected a meeting- house within two years of their arrival at Dorchester. But the first notice we have that a meeting-house is being ])uilt here is more than four years after they reached Windsor.f But we should remember that in the interval the Pequot war had made it necessary to erect a palisade, remove their fami- lies into it, provide shelters there, and remove back again *When stone were convenient, a wall was laid under the plates which received the foot of the rafters, but as no stone were at hand, here they must have dispensed with them. The company sent hy Sir Robert Salton- stall to provide near the little river for coming emigrants, arrived after the Dorchester men that summer of 1635, and, the Dorchester men claim- ing that land, the Saltonstall men provided winter-quarters for themselves at or near the Chief Justice Ellsworth place. In 1636 we find settlers on the south side of the river, and so far as we know their houses were situated on the brow of a hill, like those on Sandy Bank. Several houses were built along the brow of the first rise from the meadow, where the road now runs at and south of the David Rowland place, which " houses were drowned very deep " in the flood of 1639. The first houses on the east side of the present Broad street were at first built on the brow of the hill on the west side of the railroad. When H. S. Hayden built his barn a few years since he dug up some of the remains of one of those houses. The Loomis place, on the Island, still shows the place where the first house was built. Houses in several other localities in Wind- sor were built on the brow^ of the hill. Matthew Grant, in an account of the Pequot war and the building of the Palisade 1637 says, "Our inhabit- ants on Sandy Bank gathered themselves nearer together from their remote dwellings to provide for their safety, set upon fortifying with Palisade," etc. The brow of the meadow hill not being known to later generations by the name of " Sandy Bank," led to the conclusion that Sandy Hill was meant, which lies about a mile to the west. I was told by an old person forty years ago, that at first there were more people settled at Sandy Hill than on Main street, while in fact not a person settled there. f The following from the Colonial Records is all the record evidence we find relating to the time of the building of the first meeting-house. We think it was several years before it was fully completed : " Feb., 1639-40. Mr. Hull moved the Court in behalf of Thomas Ford of Windsor, that in regard the workmen are much taken up and employed in making a bridge and a meeting-house with them, and his work hindered of impaling in the ground which was granted him by the Court for a hog park, that there may be granted to him a year longer time for fencing it in," etc. 55 after the war was ended, so their work had been much hin dered. In modern times the first settlers in forests often build log cabins, and even log meeting-houses. A recent letter from Missouri says that the first meeting-house in Hartford was a log house ; but this is a mistake. The first settlers here did not build log houses ; and it will help us to appreciate the great labor of building a framed meeting-house, to remember there was not a saw-mill in town, probably not in the Col- ony, when this first house was built, and I find no mention of a saw-mill for more than forty years after. Every plank and every board was sawed by hand, if sawed at all. The nails were made one by one, on a blacksmith's anvil. Unfor- tunately the record of town votes and town accounts, the first fifteen years, have crumbled to dust, and we have no record of the meeting-house during this period, except this simple reference to it on the Colony records. Probably the records once told its cost, and perhaps its dimensions ; but we have built a theory from such facts as we gather under later dates, and feel confident that we know nearly its dimensions, how it was covered, how it was seated, who sat in the wall slips, who sat in the body of the house, and who sat in tlie Great Pew. Under date of 1658 (eighteen years after the house was built), we find among the recorded acts of the Townsmen, now called Selectmen, the following item : " The Townsmen desired Lieut. Newbury to get such sills * for the meeting- house as are wanted and bring them to the water-side." In the town accounts, 1659-60, is a credit to Mr. Newbury, " For the remainder of the work to the silling and underpinning of the meeting-house, <£10 9s. 6(^." They evidently dispensed with underpinning at first, and probably built the house with- * Sills were not always used as a support for the floor, but in early times the floor was often on a level with the bottom of the sills, making a step down from the door sill into the room. An example of this style of house was the Gaylord House of Windsor Locks, built about 1711, and pulled down about 1820. The sills projected into the rooms, as the corner posts and " summer beams" did, the sills forming a low, narrow seat, very convenient for children. Mrs. Albert Denslow, of Windsor Locks, still remembers this house, and the seat along the side of the room in which she and her little friends played. 56 out sills, resting the posts on some temporary foundation. It seems improbable that sills eould have decayed within eighteen years. January 7, 16G0-1, " The Townsmen met and agreed that the meeting-house should be shingled, all the gutters on both sides of the lanthorn, and not alter the form of the roof." A few weeks after we have the following entry : " The Townsmen made a bargain with Samuel Grant to shingle the inside roof [west side] of the meeting-house, from end to end, on both sides of the lanthorn, with 18-inch shingle. He is to get the shingle in the woods, and cut them and hew them, and lay them on one inch and a quarter thick, generally, and seven inches in breadth, one with another, and he is to liave 4s. per 100 for all plain work, and for the gutters, because of the more difficulty of laying these, he is to have what he shall in equity judge to be worth more than 4s. per 100 ; and for the time, he is to do the north side of the lan- thorn before midsummer next, and the other side by October following." Like the Dorchester meeting-house, this one was at first thatched. The contractor was given from February to October to shingle one side, and this twenty-six years after the house was built. We are not surprised that they did not shingle it at first. But what of the lantern spoken of on the roof ? It has been referred to before. In 1658, " it was determined that provision should be made upon the top of the meeting-house, from the lanthorn to the ridge of the house, to walk con- veniently, to sound a trumpet or drum to give warning to meetings." This lantern was an architectural ornament, a little dome set on the ridge, in the middle of the house. They had no bell for it, but built a platform out from it on the ridge of the house, for the convenience of the man who "• beat the drum to give warnings to meetings on the Lord's Day, twice in the morning, seasonably, and once after dinner." I think you still follow their example, — " giving warnings to meetings on the Lord's Day, twice in the morning, seasonably, and once after dinner." You have simply substituted a bell for their drum or trumpet. 57 Farther extracts from the town records are as follows : 1667. " The Townsmen agreed with Benjamin Griswold to get some good timl)er fallen and cloven into bolts, and brought home by the latter end of the week following, for the use of the meeting-house, and Samuel Clrant is to cleave them when brought home, and tit them, and nail them about the meeting-house. Benjamin was to have for his timber, when fetched and brought home in l)olts, one length with another, Ss. 6d. per 100 as they would rise in number when cloven by Samuel Grant." 1668. " Also, George Griswold is to get somebody to clal) up the walls of the meeting-lujuse that are broken. 1669. Among the town expenses are these : " To John Grant, for carting bolts from Pipe-stave Swamp* for the meeting-house, 76-. 6c?." " To John Owen, for the clab]»ing he did the meeting-house before winter, 7s. 4c?." These items for repairs, made twenty-five to thirty years after the meeting-house was built, show us that the outside was at first covered with clapljoards, or, as they were at first called, cloveboards, because they were cloven or split. They were to be brought from the woods in " bolts," — logs of suit- able length for splitting; then "cleave them" and "fit them," — split and hew them, — and " nail them about the meet- ing-house," and so " clab up the walls that are broken." This must have made a somewhat rough exterior, which could not have been marred by whittling. Possibly the innocent indul- gence of this propensity on the clapboards, early crept into the boys' gallery, and remained there through half a dozen generations. 1668. "Deacon Moore is to speak with John Gibbard to get him to come and mend the glass of the meeting-house windows." The next year " Wm. Buel came and brought two new casements for the corner windows of the meeting-house." I * Pipe-stave Swamp, near the southwest comer of the town, as now bounded. * .58 have as yet been unable to learn the number or style of the windows. We have now given you a rough outside view of the first meeting-house. It stood about the middle of Palisado Green, (as it then was,) in front of the Crcneral Pierson place. It had a thatched roof with a cupola on the ridge. The sides were covered with clapboards split from the log. Let us now go inside. I find this item in the town accounts in 1661. 1661. "For lath and nails for meeting-house, £5." The house had not all l)een plastered before, and probably none of it. 1665. " For other work done, as carting of timber out of the woods to the pit, and from the pit to the meeting-house." Now the pit was a saw-pit, such as I think is still used in ship yards for some special work. A pit was dug, timbers laid across it to support the log when rolled over the pit. One man stood below, the other on top of the log, the two per- forming in a small way the work of a modern saw-mill. We readily see that it required long and patient toil to produce one thousand feet of boards.* Let us premise that the churches in which they had wor- shiped in England had no seats for the common people, or at most, but simple benches. The gentry, at their own expense, put in pews for themselves. So here, the town built the meet- ing-house, and laid a tax on the grand list to pay for it, but laid a poll-tax, a given sum on each householder, or man and his wife, to meet the expense of putting in the seats. But let first learn where they were to get the lumber to make pews and slips. The cloven boards would not answer this purpose ; they must have sawn lumlter, — something they could plane both for ceiling and for seats. * In the inventory of Rev. Mr. Huit's estate, 1644, we find this item : Two thousand planks at Elias Parkman's, and 500 feet at the falls, £8 10s. " Elias Parkinan's " was in the northwest corner of the palisado, where tliere certainly was no water-power for a saw -mill, and the 500 feet at the falls were probably sawn there because of some excellence in tin; timber which grew there. In a memorandum of his property Mr. lluit says, "A rafte of Plank is going down, I think will be £40." 69 Our first item relative to the provision for seats in the house liears date 1652, twelve years after that first notice that a meeting-house was being built. " Accounts made with Wm. Buell for work done on the meeting-house. The Elder's Pew, Deacon's Pew, Magistrate's Pew, and their wives' Pew, formerly paid, and for the four rows of seats in the house, when the doors are up we find the work comes to £28 19.s'." At a later date, but referring to the same " four rows of seats," we have a note of explanation, showing how many seats there were, and who had neglected to pay the car- penter for his work. Jan. 18, 1650-60. "A note taken what dwelling-houses are in town, that the owners of them have paid for seats in the meeting-house, and how much and by whom; for those that have been placed in the two rows of long seats were first seated by five in a seat, and were to pay Wm. Buell 3s. a person, or 6s. for a man and wife; and that made up his pay when he had finished them with doors. Also those that were placed in the short seats, at the first were to pay 3s. a person, as they in the long seats ; but when it was agreed that those seats should be raised higher, for more convenient hearing, they were to pay Wm. Buell 6d. a person more ; so that for a man and his wife 7s." "9 long seats with six in a seat." "13 short seats with o in a seat." " First I set down those that have paid, and were placed in the long seats when they paid." * * Thos. Ford, Bray Rosseter, •John Porter, Stephen Terry, Henry Wolcott, John Bissell, Thomas Nowell, Thomas Thornton, Arthur Williams, .John Rockwell, John Hakes, John Stiles, Sen., Philip Randall. Josiah Hull, William Buell, Samuel Pond, Nathan Gillett, Thomas Parsons, Thomas Hoskins, Anthony Hawkins, Peter Tilton, Joshua Carter, Abraham Randall, Matthias .Johnson, Geo. Phillips, Geo. Phelps, Humphrey Pinney, John Moore, Roger Williams, Matthew Grant, Aaron Cook, David Wilton, Thomas Dewey, William Hubbard, Richard Vore, Thomas Bascom, Nicholas Palmer, William Thrall, Richard Oldage, 60 Then follows a list of fifty-five men, one more than the seating capacity; nearly all of these paid Gs. " Those that were placed in the short seats, what they have paid." * Then follow the names of thirty-nine men, just the seat- ing capacity; about half of these paid 7s., others smaller sums. These men take the whole seating capacity of one side, and I suppose their wives occupied corresponding seats on the other side, — the men and women sitting apart as they were known to have done three-fourths of a century later. Then 13 men are named, who sat in the Pews, and 3 aged widow women, Goodie Denslow, Goodie Gibbs, Goodie Hos- kins, and Dea. Gaylord's wife.f It will be remembered that the short seats were "raised higher for more convenient hearing." Let us suppose these Thomas BucklaBd, Thomas Gunn, Begat Egglestone, Thomas Holcomb, Robert Wiuchel, Walter Fyler, Jonathan Gillett, * William Haj^den, Daniel Clarke, Henry Newbury, Henry Stiles, William Gaylord, Jr., Simon Wolcott, by Thomas Orton, .John Hosford, by his mother, Geo. Crist. Wolcott. Rob. Wilson, Miles Mcrwin, Thomas Barljer, [Rolx'rtj Watson, Mr. Mlyn, Mr. T.,oomis, Mr. IJohn] Witchfield, Goode Denslow, Goode Gibbs, Goode Hoskins, Samuel Allen, Mr. (Francis) Stiles, John Drake, Sen. , Jeffrey Baker, John Rockwell, by liis mother, Eltwed Pomeroy, Thomas Dib])lc, Samuel Phelps, Nath. Phelps, Richard Birge, Henry Curtis, R. Taylor, Edward Griswold, •John Drake, Job Drake, Joseph Tjoomis, William Philips, Stephen Taylor. Samuel Gaylord, Benedick Alvord, f " In the Pews." Deacon Gaylord's wife Mr. AUyn, Mr. Phelps, Mr. Clark, C. (Jook, Mr. Wolcott. John Young, Owen Tudor, Simon Hoyt. Jacob Drake, Robert Hay ward, Simon Mills, James Eno, William Filley, Mic. Johnson, Thomas Gilbert, Richard Weller, William Hannum, Alexander Alvord, John Osborn, George Alexander, Anthonj' Dorchester. Mr. Terry, .John Hissell, Mr. Clark. Mr. Mason, Mr. Stoughton, 61 short seats are the wall slips a little raised, as your wall slips are now. We learn elsewhere that the magistrate's pew was "raised equal with the short seats." Let us place 13 slips 3ft. 2 inches apart along the south wall occupying 61 ft., an aisle 4 ft. between them and the magistrate's pew, and 5 feet the width of the pew, and we have the length of the room, 70 feet. There are sittings for 3 in each of the wall slips, and six each in the long seats, 18 sittings abreast ; allowing 19 inches for a sitting, and we have 28 ft., with two aisles of 4 ft. each, and we have a width of 36 ft., — an audience-room of 36x70. If we put the magistrate's pew on the south side of the pulpit, we put their wives' pew on the north side ; these pews extended from the side walls nearly to the pulpit, and afterward each pew was made into two. We have still to locate the elder's pew, and the deacon's pew. We have four more wall slips than we have slips in the center. Let us put the two pews in front of the long seats, (they are not raised like the magistrates,) then leave a space between them and the pulpit to be occupied by the communion-table and chairs or a bench ; — and we have the fathers and the mothers provided with seats, but where are the children and the servants? There is a unique order* in 1650 relative to children and servants crowding into the ferry-boat before the elders and magistrates on their way home from meeting, — so we know they went to meeting. When we come down to 1065, we find a number of young men who have married recently, paying for seats, several of them "in the gallery" — so that first house had galleries — and it was in the gallery that the boys and girls and servants sat. So long as the meeting-houses were seated, the boys * "Oct. 23, 1650. It was ordered by the townsmen that upon the Lord's days meetings, and all other days of public meetings, none shall go into the canoe before the magistrates and elders when any of them go, and there shall not at any time go above 35 persons at a time into the great canoe, and not above six persons at a time in the little canoe, upon penalty of 5c/. for every such transgression ; and if any children or servants trans- gress this order, their parents or masters shall pay the penalty aforesaid, or if they refuse to do it the name of the person so offending shall be re- turned to court." 62 and girls had no seats assigned tliem beside their parents, and the custom preAailed to a considerable extent long after the custom of seating the meeting-house had gone out of date. When a lad I sat in this front slip, and on one occasion received a sharp reprimand at home for not sitting still. I had climbed so far over to see who sat directly under me, that my mother was alarmed, lest I should lose my balance and intrude myself among the old people below. The little boys occuj)ied the front slip on the south side, and the little girls the one on the north side ; those of larger growth occu- pied the pews which were ranged along against the wall. In due time I was promoted by some unwritten law from the front slip to the pews. I fear if I should tell of the carvings which ornamented those pews, so like the carvings to be seen in the school-houses of those days, the modern boy would judge us harshly. Tything-men were a necessary provision for the well-being of the galleries, yet their authority was rarely exercised I remember the first piece of anthracite coal I ever saw, I saw in one of those gallery pews, — a big boy brought it in his pocket, l)ut none of us believed tliat would burn. This seating the boys by themselves was a crying evil con- tinued through two centuries. Its origin is found in the measures adopted to secure a seat for each adult, according to his official dignity, his age, personal worth, and estate. Possibly "there is yet light to break out"' on this question of seating the meeting-house, and the historian of the semi-mil- lennial of this Church may have occasion to speak of an old time custom, of selling seats at auction to enable each man to rate himself according to his own estimate. The first notice I find of " Seating the meeting-house," bears date of 1655, when " The townsmen met and appointed somewhere to sit in the meeting-house." It seems a little strange that it should have been thought necessary to carry these distinctions into the church — into a church which knew no distinctions among the brotherhood. The dignitaries of the church and the State had their pews, which were conspic- uously placed, and into which tbey were duly promoted when 63 elevated to office. In 1651 Mr. Clark was elected a magis- trate, and at once the Townsmen met, and " Mr. Clark was appointed to sit in the great pew." But the seating of the common people was a more difficult task, which taxed the wisdom and the patience of the Com- mittee. The difficulty was largely owing to the fact that individuals estimated their own rank higher than the com- mittee or their neighbors rated them, and we must bear in mind that all the community must have a voice in the matter, for the meeting-house belonged to all, and all were taxed for the support of the ministry. After one or two generations had passed away, there w^as a large class who were not mem- bers of the church, who had a pecuniary interest in the mat- ter which took them to meeting, and who were likely to be tenacious of their rights to a proper recognition when there. Before the end of twenty-five years after tlie first meeting- house was l)uilt we find that " a request was made l)y some to set a housel to shelter their horses in on Sabbath days, and other days when they ride * to meeting, on one side of the street, against Begat Egglestone's orchard, about 9 or 10 feet in breadth by his fence, and in length 23 or 24 feet, and it was granted." Those who came from a distance and had horses came horseback. The man in the saddle, with his wife behind him on a pillion, and not unfrequently with a baby in her lap. Sometimes a led horse and two or three more children represented a single family. People also came to meeting from great distances on foot. When this house was new, Horace Birge of Windsor Locks, who died but a year ago, walked with his father and brothers to this place to attend meeting, tlie distance being about six miles. Tradi- tion says that a Suffield woman, a member of this church before 1698, was a regular attendant here on tlie Sabbath, walking the whole distance. * One-horse road wagons were not in use until since 1800. The tirst one owned in Windsor was made by David Birge of Windsor Loclvs. Pung sleighs were in general use ; the runners were made of plank, the \ body much like a "lumber box wagon" body of to-day. Less than a hundred years ago Seth Dexter and wife of Pinemeadow [Windsor Locks] returned to Kochester, Mass. , to visit their parents. She rode on a pillion behind him, and carried her babe in her lap. 64 After tlie call extended to Mr. Chauncey, in 1667, a party who were aggrieved thereby wei-e authorized by the (Jeneral Court to withdraw and call an orthodox minister for them- selves. They met in the town-house, which stood on the lot where your {)arsonag(' now stands. It was originally l>iiiltfor a dwelling-house, and bought by the town from Capt. Samuel Marshall, in 1654. The seceders called themselves the New Society, and their place of meeting the "new meeting-house." When Mr. Mather was settled they returned to the old church. 1684. It was " voted by the town that a new meeting- house be ))uilt for the more comfortable carrying on the wor- ship of God, and the form of the house to be according to the meeting-house at Springfield, unless the committee chosen do see cause to make alteration in height or Ijreadth." The Springfield house was built seven years before, by authority of a vote which specified that it should be " 50 feet long, and 40 feet wide, to be built so high, as it may be accommodated for galleries when the town shall see need." It will be seen that this model was smaller than our estimate of the first house. But our committee may have built higher and broader ; the house had dormer windows, and it is not un- likely the tradition is true that this second meeting-house, built on Palisado Green, "'had two tiers of galleries." January, 1716-17. The Ecclesiastical Society voted "that the north and south sides of the meeting-house, and the east end be made into pews." The expense of this alteration was not to be borne by the individuals who were to occupy them, as in the first house, but " the society shall be at the charge of making the pews around the meeting-house." We think this change marks progress towards equality in the house of God — a leveling up of the people — not by pull ing down the pews of the dignitaries, Init Imilding pews for the untitled. A venturing to relax a little the outward defer- ence paid to official station, a process which has been carried so far in our day that the governor of the commonwealth sits in church among the people who elected him ; but for a long time after 1716 the dignitaries continued to sit in the highest seats, and the common people continued to be seated. 65 1718. A committee was appointed to " seat the meeting- house," and a committee to " dignify the seats." The meet- ing which appointed these committees also prescribed " rules for the seaters," viz. : " age and estate to be considered, none to be degraded " ; that is, none to be assigned a less honora- ble seat than they had previously occupied. Twelve years later we have the items of expense paid by the society* for " seating the meeting-house." " To Jonathan Gillett for warning pew men to meet the seaters, to consider what to do. "To Dea. Thomas Marshall, 5 days at 3s., seating the meeting-house, - -• - - 15s. " To John Palmer, Sen., 5 days " " - 15s. " To Israel Stoughton, " " " - 15s. " To Capt. Moore, " " " " To Dr. Samuel Mather for part of a day seating the meeting-house, and a copy of the dignification, " The Soc'y is indebted to Eliakim Marshall for 19 dinners to seaters of the meeting-house, from Feb. 23, to March 18, - - - - - 19s. " " For drink, - - 4s. id. * Ecclesiastical Societies were constituted when there were two or more societies in the same town. The State defined their boundaries, and within their own limits each society had all the powers relative to Eccle- siastical affairs, the schools, and the "burying yard," which the towns before exercised. The society was organized after the parish of East (now South) Windsor was set off, though not until about 1703. All the property within the Society was subject to a tax, by vote of the Society, for the support of the gospel and for schools. This was modified after- wards; the first to be exempted from the tax laid by the Congregational Society were members of an Episcopal Society, located in the southern part of the State. Later still the exemption included all persons who belonged to any religious society, and by certificate notified the Clerk of the Congregational Society in which they lived of the fact, then such person was subject to the taxes laid for the support of such other society as they belonged to, and so all property was taxed, directly or indirectly, for the maintenance of religious institutions. The new constitution of 1818 exempts every one from an ecclesiastical tax unless they voluntarily assume it. The school system instituted by the same generation, and on the same principle, yet remains unchanged. Parties who maintain private schools must still pay their tax to support the State system of public in- struction. 9 66 " To John Palmer, Sen., for warning persons where to sit in the meeting-house, _ . . 6s." 1737. " The Heaters " were to add to " each man's estate 20s. for eacli year of his life past." From time to time for more than a century there were In- dian outbreaks, which called for strict vigilance on the part of the whites. At times bodies of soldiers patroled the towns ; all the males between the ages of sixteen and sixty were required to serve. In 1648 the general court or legisla- ture passed the following order : " Whereas it is observed that the late order for one in each family to bring arms to the meeting-house every Sabbath and Lecture day, has not been attended to by divers persons. It is now ordered that whosoever hereafter shall at any time neglect the same, shall forfeit 12d. for every neglect." About a dozen years later we find this town voting " that the guard that carried arms to meeting should have half a pound of powder for the two years now past, and so likewise those now presently appointed for the year to come, and so afterwards." This shows several years in succession that a guard was stationed during service to prevent a surprise, and we have little doubt they were perched up in that lantern on the roof, or out on the plat- form where the sexton stood " to sound the trumpet or drum to give warnings to meetings." Let me say for the Indians, that the little remnant of them left here when this church was planted on the Connecticut were, so far as I can learn, friendly to the last. Perhaps I should except Nassehegan, Sachem of Poquonock, who for a time during King Philip's war was held a prisoner at Hart- ford. It was the distant tribes who caused alarm and com- mitted depredations. I was told by one who received the story from the mother of the late Ezra Hayden, born 1712, that on one occasion when she was present during the Sunday service, the con- gregation was startled by a file of unknown Indians who strode past the meeting-house and stopped for water at Walter Fyler's, now Miss Stiles', well, and then continued on. The number of Indians living in Windsor, at the time of 67 its settlement, lias been greatly exaggerated. They were very weak before they invited the white men to come here to help them, and the winter and spring after the Plymouth Trading House was built they nearly all died of the small-pox. There was a little remnant of a tribe who reserved " a part of a meadow " at Poquonock, but I doubt if there were thirty in all. The survivors at Plymouth meadow returned with their remaining Sachem Aramamet, to their old home at Wilson's Station, 1639. The Rev. Frederick Chapman once told me that when a boy he lived in the south part of the town and saw at one of the neighbors an old Indian woman, the last of Aramamefs trilie, who was supported by the town. When we come down to 1754 the second meeting-house had stood seventy years, and seems to have been in want of con siderable repair, and the question was agitated whether to build a new house. A committee was called from adjoining towns to report wliether the old one was worth repairing, and if so, what it would cost. Nothing seems to have come of this, for the same year we find a vote " to notify the committee ap])ointed by the county court to affix the place for building the new meeting-liouse." To ascertain the center of travel, the distance was measured from every liouse on the north side of the river to the meeting-house, and the sum of these distances added together ; then the numl)er of houses multi- plied by the distance from the meeting-house, via the ferry road, the ferry, thence to the David Rowland house, then south, thence west, to the north end of Broad street, and the sum of these distances added to the former, then the dis- tances from all the houses on the south side to the north end of Broad street, and thence via the ferry to the meeting- house, were measured, and it was found that the people on the north side could reach Broad street with less travel than those on the south side must travel to reach Palisad(j Green. Mr. Frederick Chapman,* whom some of you remember, once told me that tlie people from the vicinity of the old mill, and between there and Poquonock, came down a road " through the hollow fall" to the river (above the railroad bridge), and * Born, 1760. 68 crossed in tlieir own boats, rather tlian go down to Broad street and around by the ferry ; that if the distances for these people had l)een measured by the route they took, instead of the public highway, the meeting-house stake would have been pitched where the old house stood. There was bitter opposition on the north side, and an im- mediate application to the legislature to be set off into a sep- arate society, which after a few years was granted. In 1755 the society went forward and appointed a committee to build a meeting-house, " where the county court had set the stake." In 175G they voted that the house should be 60 feet by 45, and 24 feet in height. April 28, 1758, they voted " to meet for worship in the future in the new meeting-house. July, 1758, it was voted " to give the Rev. Mr. Russell that timber that was picked out for him a barn, out of the old meeting- house timber."" There is little dou])t that the tradition which points out Horace Ellsworth's barn as the veritable one built out of the timber of the old meeting-liouse erected one hund- red and ninety-six years ago on Palisado Green may l^e ac- cepted as true. This meeting-house, built 1757, stood at the north end of Broad street Green, near or on the site of the old Academy school-house, in front of the present residence of Mr. Horace Bower. As the division of the society did not occur until after the meeting-liouse had been located on the south side of the river, the seceding body left the first society and church there, and the new society took the name of the 7th Society. The society north of the river built their meeting-house on the west side of the highway, a little north of Mr. Strick- land's barn, about a mile and a half north of Palisado Green. When the two societies reunited, after a little more than thirty years, the house was moved off, and is now the dwelling- house of Mr. Parsons. To illustrate the custom of the day to raise all funds by taxation, however insignificant, we copy a vote of the first society to procure step-stones for the meeting-liouse (on the south side of the river), seven years after the house was first occupied. 69 1765. " Voted to raise two farthings on the pound on the polls and rateable estate of said society, as set in tlie list of 1764, for the payment of the step-stones, wliich the meeting- house committee had not money to pay ud." The two societies were both weak, and l)oth lamented the perversity of the other in refusing to come across the river. This first society, from their home south of the river, under date of 1766, but five years after the church on this side was organized, sent a pathetic appeal "to the 7th Society, or our brethren on the north side." They premised that in 1754 they agreed to build a meeting-house ; that a committee ascer- tained that the site should be on the south side ; that the north side tried to get it reversed ; that in 1757 the meeting- house was built, and that in 1759 the north side was set off, " which we then took to be a groat misfortune to both, which experience proves to 1)C true." They then go on to say, " If the north side will annex themselves to us, we will finish the meeting-house where it now stands at our own cost within five years, and exempt the brethren on the north side from taxes to support the ministry for four years." This proposi- tion to go on and finish the meeting-house, shows that after they had occupied it nine years it was still so far from comple- tion that they wanted five years more, and there is a tradition that it never was completed, as originally proposed. This unfortunate division continued thirty-five years. Two years before the reunion was consummated a proposition was made to unite the two societies, on condition that a fund be raised to support the ministry, a causeway and bridge built to connect the two sides of the river, all tlie school funds on both sides be put together for the support of an academy ; then the meeting-house should be put on one side and tlie academy on the other. This happy suggestion united all par- ties ; the meeting-house and the academy were balanced, one against the other. But to build the causeway was looked upon as a great work, too great for the town to Imild, so the State was asked for a charter for a grand lottery, which was granted, and it was then considered the duty of every good citizen to work out the price of as many tickets in the lottery 70 as there were members in his family. My grandfather came down here day after day, witli his team and his nciiro slave, Tom, and earned enough to buy one ticket for each member of liis household — all of whom drew blanks. The academy was set on the south side of tlie river on the site of the old meeting-house, and the meeting-house was brought liome again to the palisado. You have the date of the erection of this meeting-liouse on one of your miderpinning stones, 1794 ; also the date of its predecessor, built in Broad Street, 1757. I need not tell you of the changes made in this house during this generation — of the square pews changed to slii)s. The change on the outside at the front end, which carried with it the removal of the square tower, and tlie cupola, which stood on columns over the belfry, an architectural crown of the house, whicli was built from plans procured by Chief Justice Ellsworth,* from tlie meeting-house in Pittsfield, Mass., and I think the model of the rest of the structure was procured MEETING-HOUSE AS BUILT IN from the same source. The conference-house, or chapel, south of the river, was built in 1822, and tlie Hayden Station chapel in 1876. This latter was built by individual subscrip- *Told me by Hcrlchigh Haskell. 71 tions, and deeded to this Ecclesiastical Society, and I think the other has a similar history, but I have not had time to examine the records. A word in closing. I have come up here, with others, more or less nearly connected through their ancestors with this church, to celebrate with you this glad day. I am proud to trace my descent from the godly Warham, from his dea- cons, Gaylord and Moore, from some who had seats in the " great pew," from others who sat in the " short seats," and and from others still in the " long seats," in that first meeting- house ; and I am proud of my Puritan blood. I count my ancestors among tlie communicants of this church, in each and every generation, from that day until my sainted motlier "fell on sleep." Here I entered into covenant with my father's God and this cliurch, in my early manhood, and from hence, nearly forty years ago, I went out with ten others of your membership, bearing with us your commendation, to found another church, the youngest of your planting. Since that day it has been my privilege to come in here from time to time and look into your faces, until nearly all I once knew here now "sleep in the dust of the earth," — are "gathered to tlieir fathers." But their places are filled by their children, by their children's children, and by others, and the church itself abides from generation to generation, and is this day, as of old, permitted to look up, reverently, and repeat, Qui transtidit sustinet. I love this church for its history ; I love it because of my own connection with it in my earlier life. The fragrance of the memories that cluster round it " is as the smell of a field which the Lord hath blessed." The paper by Deacon J. B. Woodford of this Church fol lowed. It was prepared largely from the old town and society records to show how the ministers of the Church were supported of old, and how its friends had aided it by bequests from time to time. 72 ADDRESS BY DEACON J. B. WOODFORD. Inasmuch as deacons are required to look after the tem- poral affairs of the church, it may he fitting that on this occasion to me has been assigned the somewhat laborious part of collecting from our Colonial, Town, Society, and Church Records such facts as will depict to us the financial condition and history of this Church and its ministry. It would at least gratify a laudable curiosity to be informed on good authority what pecuniary arrangement was made between Rev. John Warham and Rev. John Maverick and the Church which was organized in Plymouth, England, in 1630, of which they were chosen and installed pastor and teacher. In the alisence of such information, we may refer to the first Court of the Massachusetts Colony, held in Charlestown "August 2:'), 1030, (Present, Gov. Winthrop, Deputy Gov- ernor Dudley, Sir Richard Saltonstall, Mr. Ludlow, Mr. Ros- siter, Nowell, T. Sharp, Pynchon, and Bradstreet,) wherein the first thing propounded is, how the minister shall be main- tained. Mr. Wilson and Phillips only proposed; and the Court ordered that houses be built for them with convenient speed at the public charge. Sir R. Saltonstall undertook to see it done at his plantation (Watertown,) for Mr. Phillips ; and the governor at the other plantation (Boston,) for Mr. Wilson ; Mr. Phillips to have thirty pounds a year, beginning at the 1st of Septcml)er next; Mr. Wilson to have twenty pounds a year till his wife come over — beginning at the 10th of July last; all this at the common charge, those of Matta- pan and Salem excepted." The fact that the ministers of Dorchester (alias Mattapan) did not propose, at this Court, indicates that they were satis- factorily provided for by their church. After the removal of the Church and their pastor, Mr. War- ham, to this place, about four years pass before the date of our earliest records. Then we find the following: "Oct. 10, 1640. John Wai-ham hath granted from the plantation a home Lott witli addition, and some meadow vy adjoining — sixteen acres more or less." "In the Great Meadow Twenty-four acres ; the breadth Twenty Rod more or less, the length from the Rivulet West, back to the Great River." " Over the Great River for meadow, towards Podunk, three acres, the breadth nine rod, more or less, the length from the River, back to the swamp seventy-eight rod more or less." "Over the Great River, forty rod in breadth, more or less, the length from the River back, east, three miles, con- taining 240 acres," which added to the preceding lots equals 283 acres. The mill (sometimes called the Old Warham Mill) and land about it is fourscore and two acres, more or loss." In Stiles' History of Windsor we find the following, re- spectingthis milL ~" MrrWarliam was its first owner, probably , by gift from the town, and calls it, in a deed to his wife in \ 1664, '' My Corn Mill." According to tradition this was the first grist-mill in Connecticut, and was resorted to by the peo- ple of all the neighboring towns, even from Middletown. Be this as it may, it is evidently one of the oldest of Windsor institutions." Whether the town gave it to him as a source of revenue, or because being Pastor of the Flock they deemed him most fit to minister, not only the spiritual, but also the temporal Unread, does not clearly appear. But that he did not make excessive gains, either from full tolls or extensive pat- ronage, is evident from the fact that in 1651, "October 8th, after lecture it was voted by the inhabitants then present, that Mr. Warham should have one hundred pounds for his labors for this year ensuing, and for after time as the town shall see meet." " In the year 1656, March 3d, was a day of training, and it being propounded to the company there assembled, what they would give Mr. Warham for this year, that is, from Sep- tember to September, it was jointly voted that they would give him fourscore and ten pounds." "June 1, 1659. This day, in Town-meeting, terms agreed upon about the tolls at the mill. Mr. Warham is to have the sixteenth part, or two quarts upon a bushel of all English and malt grinding, and for Indian Corn a twelfth part, or three quarts upon a bushel grinding." 10 74 'Mil 1 Bf)* I, Rohoi-t Hayward was Miller. In 1659 Peter JBrowii kept the mill;" thus indicatiiiii- that Mr. Warham did not devote his time chiefly to grinding corn. "In 1(361, Nov. 11th, The Townsmen met and took into consideration how to proceed to know the Town's mind, what they would give Mr. Warham for his ministry this year, and we judge it meet, rather than warn a town-meeting, to ap- point some men to go from house to house and speak with every man that pays rates, to know what each man will vol- untarily and freely give Mr. Warham for this year ; and the men to go ahout to take down on a paper what sum tliey would be rated, and whether as formerly or what." This system was continued several years ; the name and amount of each subscription is still on record. " In 1663, Oct. 31st. This was a Town-meeting, and all that were present voted, that Mr. Warham should have for this year following, as formerly, ninety pounds. Also mani- fested themselves willing that there should be a looking out for a help for him." Matthew Grant's account. " In 1665, Nov. 30th, an item as follows: For drawing up Mr. Warham's pay into a method, that he might understand what he was to receive of each man by his free-will offering, which cost me a great deal of time. I had better to have made two rates as formerly, yet I set down but 6s. 6(i." " In Nov. 30, 1668, The Townsmen met, and it was desired of all that were at this meeting, that they would give in their papers that we might know their minds, what they would give to Mr. Warham for this year going, which ends tlie 25th of next March; and some persons to the number of fifty did give in ; and the sum of all which they presented rose to twenty-seven pounds; what more will be done, I yet know not." (Mr. Chauncey was then here.) Mr. Warham bought land of several persons, so that, in addition to what we have already noticed, he i)robal)ly owned a large portion of the land between the Rivulet, (or Farm- ington River) and Mill Brook, east of the mill. Mr. Warham's first wife died in Dorclicster in 1634. His 75 second wife Jane (probably Newbury, widow of Thomas New- bury) was the mother of the following children, — Abigail, baptized May 27, 1638 ; Hepzi) )ah, l»aptized Aug. 9, 1640, died in 1647 ; Sarah, born Aug. 28, 1642 ; Hester, born Dec. 8, 1644. Abigail, married Thomas Allyn, Oct. 21, 1658 ; Esther married Rev. Elcazer Mather, Sept. 29, 1659, and second, his successor in Northampton, Rev. Stoddard. Sarah married Return Strong, May 11, 1664. In Oct. 9, 1662, Mr. Warham married Abigail, widow of Mr. John Branker. She had property valued at five hundred pounds, a part of which was a house which he sold to his son-in-law, Thomas Allyn, and in April, 1664, he deeded to his wife Abigail his own house, orchard and homo-lot, with thirty-three acres of meadow ; his corn-mill with all the land thereto belonging, the land of her former husband, except the home-lot and house. Mr. Warham died. April 1, 1670. Rev. Ephraim Huit came to Windsor August 17, 1639, and was called to the office of teacher in this Church December 10, 1639. We are not told* what terms of settlement were proposed to him, but we find on record several grants of land, as follows: "Mr. Ephraim Huit in his lifetime had several parcels of land granted to him, but he not having finished the bounding out all as he desired, omitted the recording of any before his death ; and none for him, put it in never since, — now 24 years, — and now I am desired by Mr. Daniel Clark to record what land was granted to him, and is not yet disposed of. He liad granted from the Town on the East side of the River, sixty rod in breadth, and Mr. Henry Clark liad forty-two rod in breadth, granted next to Huit's, and upon exchange Mr. Huit was to have that also, and Mr. Clark had some of him in another place, so that now the whole breadth is a hundred and two rod and bounds west by the Great River, and is to rmi in length Easterly, from the River, three miles." Also he had lands granted to him at Paquanack which he exchanged for other lands to accommodate the neighbors who settled there. As we have no full and definite record of 76 the financial arrangements made between him and the people, perhaps his will, made probal)]}' a little previous to his death in 1644, will reveal to us a liberal provision for himself and family by the Church and town. "The last Will and Testament of Mr. Ephraim Huit of Wyndsor in Conectecotte. Impri. — I give unto my loving Wife my dwelling-house and home-lot, down unto the swamp, with all tlie houseing thereon ; also I give unto her my meadow-lot containing by estimation fourteen acres more or less ; likewise I give unto her my lot of fifteen acres with the vast swamp adjoining thereto. Ite. — I give unto her Tho, Staires his house and the square plot of gardens lying beyond the swamp to the highway. Ite. — I give unto my daughter, Susanna, and to my daughter Mercy, my great lot lying behind the hog-pen, adjoining to Daniel Clark on the one side, and Humphrey Hide's on the other, to be divided between them equally. Ite. — I give unto my two younger daughters, Lydia and Mary, my great lot at the Falls containing fourscore and two rod in breadth, to make them two lots, together with the meadow ground that lies therein, to be divided also equally between them. Provided always, and it is my full intent, that these my four daughters shall not enter upon these said portions of land until they each of them sliall come to the age of one and twenty, and in the meantime it shall be to my beloved wife whatever profit shall accrue thereby ; and as each of them shall come to the age of one and twenty, so each shall enter accordingly upon her portion. Provided also, that if either or any of them shall die before they come to the said age of one and twenty, then the portion intended to her or the so dying, sliall descend upon my Wife and be at her dispose. Also, 1 give unto my daugh- ters, Susanna and Mercy, all my interest, right and benefit that shall arise from the grant of the Town, made me, of fifteen acres of meadow, when it shall come first into their hands, about Pequanucke, if tbey shall live to the age of one and twenty years ; if either die in the interim her portion to descend uj)on my wife. 77 Ite. — My great Island at the Falls, I give to the Court at Hartford, for the use of the Country. Ite. — I appoint that my debts be paid out of my personal estate, and all the rest, both within-doors and without, wliat- soever, I wholly give to my beloved wife, whether land or goods. Lastly, I appoint David Wilton and Daniel Clarke to be the Executors of this my last Will and Testament, only they shall not meddle with anything within doors. And the Overseers of this my Will, I intreat the Deacons of our Church to be. Ep: Huit." The inventory of his property is <£633 19s. \d. of which <£259 Is. Id. is the value of his lease for the "Tole" at the mill. The records of the town show that an annuity of twenty pounds was paid to the widow of their beloved teacher from the time of his decease in 1644 to 16o6, or thereabouts. Respecting the conditions on which Rev. Nathaniel Chauncey came to Windsor (in 1667) our town records give very little information. There was so large and strong a minority opposed to him that the General Court interposed, and, by its decrees, and the appointment of an ecclesiastical council, endeavored to unite the people, and in the early stages of the controversy ordered that " all persons at Windsor shall con- tribute, according to their proportions, to the maintenance of Mr. Chauncey." In October, 1670, the townsmen made a contract with Mr. John Witchfield for the use of his house and living for Mr. Chauncey ; but this was soon made void, and Mr. Chauncey purchased of George Phelps and wife a house and lot, and afterward a five-acre pasture, situated probably next north of our present parsonage. In Deceml)er 2, 1679, the town voted "to allow eighty pounds to be divided between Mr. Chauncey and Mr. Wood- bridge, according to their respective times and pains in the ministry." In Novemljer, 1679, Mr. Chauncey received a call to •Hatfield, Mass., which he accepted. In July, 1681, the town voted "to have the Town-House 78 (previously occupied hj the Second Church) finished and made suitable for the entertainment of Mr. Samuel Mather, if God in his Providence sends him amongst us." "Also voted to give him One Hundred pounds upon his settlement, and the use of the House and lands belonging to it." This provision, for some cause, seems not to have been satisfactory, as in the succeeding October we find on record the following deed: "Know ye, &c., that I, Tahan Grant, of Windsor, in the County of Hartford, and Colony of Connecticut, 131ack- smith, for and in consideration of the sum of One Hundred & Eighty pounds to me in hand, paid by the Town of Windsor and inhabitants of the same upon the account and for the use of Mr, Samuel Mather, of Windsor, &c., do grant, bargain and sell unto him the said Mather one dwelling-house and })arn witii four acres of land adjoining, wliich I purchased of Lieut. Whiting," etc. In December, 1684, " Mr. Samuel Mather hath granted from the Town of Windsor One Hundred acres of land at a place commonly called and known by the name of Salsbury Plain." He also had two hundred acres granted him by the General Court, east of the Great River. In January, 1684, " In consideration of One Hundred pounds to me secured to be paid by Capt. Benjamin Newbery and others as agents in behalf of Mr. Samuel Mather, Tahan Grant deeds to Mr. Samuel Mather one piece of land being partly pasture and part arable land, containing eight acres ; also one lot in the Great Meadow, five acres ; also, one other parcel in the Great Meadow, three and a half acres." Mr. Mather bought various other pieces of land, some l)y liimself and some in company with his brother, Atherton Matlier. The records do not give his annual salary until 1712, at which time Rev. Jonathan Marsh was his colleague. In 1712, Mr. Mather's salary was £50; Mr. Marsh's £114. In 1713, Mather's salary was £60 ; Marsh's £124 los. Qd. In 1714, Mr. Mather was voted £45, annually, during his life. He died March 18th, 1728, aged 77. In 1741, by a division of the common lands, a lot contiiin- ing eighty acres was laid out to Rev. Samuel Mather's heirs. 79 111 171 T) the Society voted to give Rev. Mr. Marsli .£70 this year; in 1718, X85 this year; in 1719, X90 this year; in 1720, X95 to be paid in money or grain ; in 1721, XlOO to be paid in money or grain ; in 1722, £100 in money this year; in 1724, c£ll0 in money this year ; in 1727, £125 in money this year ; in 1730, X130 in money this year ; in 1735, X160 in money this yeai- ; in 1736, X165 in money this year ; in 1737, £180 in money this year ; in 1739, £190 in money this year; in 1740, £200 in money this year; in 1741, £200, and £30 for wood; in 1744, £240, he furnish wood; in 1745, £250, he furnish wood ; in 1746, £260, old tenor. The town of Windsor, by votes bearing date December, 1713 and 1716, did give to the Rev. Jonathan Marsh sixty acres of land within the township of Windsor, which land was surveyed out to him in 1722. In January, 1726, Mr. Marsh bought, for £36, of Daniel and Thomas White, six acres of land north of the rivulet. In April, 1736, Thomas Shepard, in consideration of a certain sum of money paid to him by Jonathan Styles of Windsor, quit-claimed unto the Rev. Jonathan Marsh all his right and title to a certain piece of land in Windsor, containing seventy- five acres. In May, 1740, Rev. Jonathan Marsh purchased a lot of seven acres on the west side of the Great River ; thus showing him to have in possession at least 140 acres of land. Mr. Marsh died September 8, 1747. The society voted to pay his salary in full up to the time of his death, and at a society meeting held in April, 1748, " Voted that Considering the late depreciating of our Paper Currency and the charge of the decent Interment of the Rev. Mr. Jonathan Marsh, our Late Worthy Pastor, to Grant to his Heirs £175 money. Old Tenor, in addition to what has been hitherto granted." After making liberal propositions to two candidates, which for some reasons were declined, in February, 1751, the society voted " To raise Sixteen Hundred pounds to give Mr. William Russell encouragement to settle with us in the work of the Gospel Ministry ; Eight Hundred to be raised on the List of 1750, the other £800 on List of 1751. In addition to this an 80 annual Salary of .£67, Coined Silver money at eight shillings per ounce, and a suitable supply of Fire-Wood. " In 1760, voted, ''To give Rev. William Russell i:lo as a pledge to be paid out of money now in Committee's hands." In December, 1762, voted, " To give Rev. William Russell Ten pounds more than the original Covenant was, for the ensuing year." In December, 176b, voted, "To give Rev. William Russell Twelve pounds more than the original covenant was, the ensuing- year." October, 1768, voted, " To give Rev. Mr. Russell for salary the ensuing year, .£67 8s. Id.'' Voted, " To get Mr. Russell's Wood by a Spell of Sledding." In 1774, voted, " Rev. Mr. Russell's Salary, £57 Ss. Id., and X12 for Wood, if he will get it himself." Mr. Russell died April 19, 1775. In 1758 Dea. Samuel Owen sold him two pieces of land ; one, about an acre and a quarter lying in the Palazadow on the Westerly side of the Old Meeting House, the other lying- near Kettle Brook, containing five acres. In 1771 his second Wife, Abigail Newberry, bought one acre of land in the Great Meadow. In May 1775, the Society voted — " That the Society Com- mittee let out the Church land and Town Lot, reserving so much of said land as to keep one Cow for Mr. Russell's chil- dren if they should keep house here this summer, or hire it to be kept, if that should be thought l)est." August 14, 1775, voted — " That this Society give the Rev, Mr. David Sherman Rowland, for his encouragement in tak- ing the Pastoral care and charge of this Church and Society, the full and sole use of the Church Lands and Town Lot so called, according to the design of the Donor, and in addition thereto, the sum of Sixty pounds Lawful money and Thirty- five cords of wood for his annual Salary so long as he con- tinues liis ])astoral relation to this Church and Society." Mr. Rowland's reply — " To the First Society in Windsor, Gent. — Your Vote relative to the stipulated sum and other considerations particularly expressed in said vote as encour- agement for my taking the pastoral care and charge of your Church and Society, I have endeavored maturely to consider 81 and must think them inadequate for the proposed purpose. But relying upon it that you mean and intend a Decent and comfortable support and considering your professed unanimity, I do hereby accept of your invitation and close with your proposals, Cheerfully taking upon me the pastoral relation of your Church and Society depending upon the power of Divine Grace, the aid and assistance of the Blessed Spirit of God, to enable me faithfully and impartially to discharge the respec- tive duties of a minister of the New Testament to which office I have solemnly been set apart according to Apostolic direction and am yours in the faith and fellowship of the Gospel. Dated Windsor, Oct. 16th, A. D. 1775, David Rowland." Oct., 1776, Voted— "That Elisha More and Austin Phelps, or either of them, inspect the Wood brought to Mr. Rowland the ensuing year and see that its good wood and good measure " October, 1778, Voted — " That the Rev. Mr. Rowland's Salary fur the year should one-half be paid in Provisions, or other necessarys, viz : Wheat at 5s. per bushel ; Rye at 3.s.-6(£. per bushel ; Indian Corn at 2s.-6fL per bushel ; Pork, at 3d. per pound. Beef at two pence half-penny per pound, and other things in proportion." Nov. 11, 1779, Voted — "• To pay unto the Rev. Mr. David Rowland the sum of Ten Hundred pounds. Continental Money as it now passes, for his Salary for the year 1779, in lieu of the Sixty pounds money due to him for his Salary 1779, or to be paid on the 20th day of Jan. next, — Provided nevertheless that if any person shall choose to pay his proportion of said Sixty Pounds in Wheat, Rye, or Indian Corn by said 20th of Jan, next, at the price as stated by law by the General Assembly at tlieir session at Middletown ; or in any other articles of food or clothing that Mr. Rowland shall want, to be computed at said stated price and to be paid by said time, such payments shall be in lieu of all the moneys voted before this time, for tlie payment of said Sixty Pounds that shall be due to Mr. Rowland for his Salary for the year 1779." At the same Soc. Meeting, Voted, — " That the Society Treasurer shall not receive in, any more of the principal of the money due for 11 82 the sui)port of Schooling in this Society, or any other use ; and that tlie Society will bear what loss shall be, on account of any part of said moneys due to said Society that has been or shall be tendered and not received." This vote indicates that some of the holders of greenbacks, in those days, did not anticipate their permanent use and value, and were anxious to pay their loans speedily. In Oct. 1780, Voted, — '■• To raise Sixty Pounds, hard money, for Mr. Rowland's Salary." From this time onward to the date of his death, Jan. 13, 1794, the Society voted sixty pounds annually for Mr. Rowland's salary. At a meeting of the first Society, March 3, 1790, Voted— " To invite Mr. Henry Augustus Rowland to settle in the work of the minis- try in this Society as Colleague with the Rev. Mr. Rowland our present Pastor, provided the Church shall desire the same and agree with him upon the plan of Church Government and Discipline, and in case he shall accept of this invitation and be regularly ordained, Minister and Pastor of this Church and Society, we by this vote covenant and agree to give him, during the lifetime of his father, our present Reverend Pastor, Fifty Pounds, Lawful Money, per annum, and Twenty Pounds per annum for the term of ten years, to commence on the death of our present Reverend Pastor, for, and in lieu of settlement, and we further covenant and agree with him that after the death of his said father his annual Salary from this Society, shall be Eighty Pounds, Lawful Money, (exclusive of his settlement and the use of the Parsonage Lands, to wit : the Hoit's Meadow and the Town Lot so called,) during his relation as Pastor and Minister of the said Church and Society." Rev. Henry A. Rowland seems to have ac- cepted this call and these terms and received his salary accordingly until Dec, 1801, when we find a vote of the Society (indicating some dissatisfaction,) as follows : " If the Rev. Mr. Rowland will relinquish his present Contract with this Society, the Society will give him five hundred dollars a year, in Coin, during the term of his Ministry with them ; subject, however, to a Deduction of one-half for such part or parts of said term, if any, as he shall not be able to supply the Pulpit." 83 Whether, or not, he accepted this proposition, we are not informed. That financial affairs were not entirely satisfac- tory, appears from a vote at a Society's meeting in Dec, 1803, as follows : " Oliver Mather, Benjamin Allyn, James Hooker, and Levi Hayden were chosen a Committee to consult with Rev. Mr. Rowland and see on what terms he will be satisfied, and to see what the neighboring Clergy have for their Salaries and the amount the several Lists are in this Parish." It is not improljable that Mr. Rowland intimated that since his ordination the Parish had greatly changed and the de- mands upon his pastoral labors had multiplied, and the ability of the society to pay a larger salary had increased. There had indeed been a great change. The revolt, after a growth of thirty years, had been lovingly subdued ; and the Church and Society north of the rivulet had returned and united with the first Church and Society. But this union had not been secured without money and taxation and pledged notes. A new meeting-house had l)een built and a union school-house provided. Rev. Mr. Hinsdale, who had been pastor of the Church north of Little River, was bought off, and discharged the First Ecclesiastical Society from further obligations to him on the receipt of notes for =£325, and an order on their treasurer for £55. A bridge and causeway had been built nominally by the Toum, but mostly at the expense of this first Society ; as another bridge was built at Poquonock at the same time. In 1804, Voted — " To give the Rev. H. A. Rowland Twenty Pounds in addition to his permanent Salary, during the pleasure of said Society." In 1812, the Society voted — "to give the Rev. H. A. Row- land, in addition to what said Society now give him, the re- mainder of the Interest on the Ministerial Fund in said Society, during the pleasure of said Society, after the debt due to the Heirs of Oliver Ellsworth, deceased, is paid in full." (Perhaps it will surprise some advocates of an afternoon preaching service to hear read the following, — Voted — " That this Society do recommend to the Rev. Henry A. Rowland to have but one exercise on Sundays, from December 1, 1820, 84 to March 1, 1821, and the same to commence at lialf an hour past Eleven o'clock.") Al)out this time, the degenerate children of the hardy Puritans began to agitate the subject of having stoves in the Meeting-House ; but as it would affect the finances of the society, UV»erty was given, to the advocates of this innovation, to put in stoves without expense to the Society. However, in 1822, December, it was voted — " That two Stoves be purchased for the Meeting-House in this Society." In December, 18o4, the Society voted — " To rescind the two votes giving to Mr. H. A. Rowland an addition to his Salary, which votes were passed in 1804, and 1812." This seems to have been a not very gentle hint to the pastor, that after forty-four years of service he was worthy of an honora- ble retirement on half pay. In March, 1835, the Society voted — " To authorize their Committee to expend a sum not to exceed two hundred dollars for procuring more ministerial aid during the year." In the following June they instructed their Committee to offer Mr. Rowland il250 as the condition on which he will relin(|uish his pastoral relation to this people. Mr. Rowland accei)ted this offer, and was soon after dismissed by a council. This arrangement was not made and executed without some disagreeable friction iji the Society's action and spirit ; and, apparently to avoid the like in future, the Society, in Jan., 1836, voted — " To give the Rev. Charles Walker an invitation to settle in the ministry, on condition that he is to receive the annual interest of tlieir Funds and the rents of their lands, and that his Salary be rt()50 per year, provided the deficiency of said -^650 be paid V)y Subscription, or with- out any Tax u]ton the Society; and that said Contract be dissolved whenever Mr. Walker or the Society give six months notice thereof." This contract was dissolved after an ex istence of about one year ; by whose yxotice^ the record saitli not. After trying various candidates, the Society next invited Rev. S. D. Jewett to became pastor of this Church and Society on a Salary of tdSO per annum. Inasmuch as Mr. Jewett and his successors in the pastorate are still living and 85 some of them with us to-day, I need not further pursue this theme. As we have ah^eady intimated, jthe principal source of revenue to supjiort the temporal life of the Church and its ministry, has been taxation direct down to about 1840. This was done by the town until 1712, when our Ecclesiastical Society records begin. Yet our records and our present fund bear testimony to the deep and loving interest in its growth and permanence, cherished by many of its earlier members, " whose works do follow them." Among these the earliest is Mrs. Jane Hosford. She was the widow of Henry Foukes, who died here in Sept. 1640, and left to his widow twenty acres of meadow, and swamp adjoining in the lower end of the second meadow. "• This land was reserved to herself in her own propriety and Dispose," when she married the widower, William Hosford. The following is a copy of her will in part : " July 23d, 1655. This is the last Will and Testament of Jane Hosford, the Wife of Mr. Wm. Hosford — I, being going- after my Husband into Old-England, and not knowing when God may take me out of this Life, do dispose of my Goods as followeth : Imp"", I do bequeath and it is my will that after my decease the Church of Windsor, of which I am now a member, shall have aijd forever enjoy that piece of Meadow Land which belongeth unto me called Hoytes-Meadow, for the use of Pastor or Teacher as the Church shall see most need, and when one dead to go successively always." John Warham was one of the three witnesses to this Will. Mrs. Hosford afterwards gave the use of this land to her stepson, John Hosford, (during her life,) who, claiming that he had no knowledge of her death in England, held on to the use of the land, until legal proceedings on the part of the Society compelled him to relinquish it in Sept., 1695. This meadow land was sold in 1861 by this Ecclesiastical Society to the Thrall brothers, for $2,000, and the interest of this is still applied to tlie support of Jolm Warliam's (not immediate ) successor. Sometime previous to 1740, Lieut. Aln-aliam Phel}>s in liis 86 will gave twenty pounds for the use of schooling to that part of Mr. Marsh's society north of the Rivulet. Benoni Bissell, who died in 1761, made certain bequests to relatives: — he says in his will, " After my just debts, Funeral Expenses and the Legacies above given are paid, I give and bequeath unto the First Society in Windsor all the remaining part of my Estate both real and personal that I have not before dis- posed of, to be to them and their successors forever to be disposed of in the following manner, viz : That after my just debts, funeral expenses and legacies are paid, the remainder to be sold in a convenient time as the Society shall agree, and the money that the same sliall sell for to be loaned out by said Society and the interest thereof be used and improved yearly for the supporting of schooling in said First Society forever." Most of the present Union School Fund (82,080) is the result of Benoni's gift. Dr. Timothy Mather, who died April 5, 1788, provides in his will as follows: He gives to his wife Roxanna his house and the land on which it stands, so far as it belongs to him, and her heirs forever. Also one cow and the whole of his household furniture, and one-third part of all the remainder of his personal estate. To his son Timothy all the residue of his estate, and if this son ^die before the age of twenty- one years, then he gives to his wife the use of one quarter of the son's portion while she shall remain his widow, and the other three-quarters he gave to the First Ecclesiastical Society in Windsor to be loaned, and the annual interest tliereof applied to the support of the minister of said Society. And the said quarter given to his wife during her widowhood as aforesaid he gave to said society, for the purpose aforesaid, after she shall marry or die. This son died in 1792 or 1793, six or seven years of age, and the widow married in 1802, when the son's entire portion of the estate belonged to this Church and Society. Dr. Mather's whole estate was inventoried at .£1,882 13s. Joseph Marsh, a son of Rev. Jonathan Marsh, in his will gave the use of all his property to his wife Elizal)eth during 87 her life, and after her decease he gives the same to the Society of North Windsor, where he then lived, to l)e improved by them for the support of the Gospel ministry or schooling in said Society as they judge best. The inventory of his estate amounts to £205 lis. Id. In 1794, after five conditions or articles of agreement for the union of the First Society and the Society of North Wind- sor is the following : These conditions being performed, we sev- erally engage to pay or secure to be paid, to the treasurer of the First Society for the sole and perpetual use of supporting the Gospel ministry in the same, the sums respectively affixed to our names, provided however that the bonds we may give shall not be liable to be sued so long as we shall annually pay six per cent, interest on the same, and stand ready to give such further reasonable security as may at any time be requested by said Society's Committee. Hezh Chaffee, X60 Oliver Ellsworth, £100 Horace Hooker, 50 James Hooker, 100 Alex. Wolcott, Jr., 20 Jerijah Barber, 100 Hez'i Chaffee, Jr., 30 Daniel Phelps, 25 Josiah Allyn, 30 Asa Moore, 7 Johnth Ellsworth, 60 Increase Mather, 12 Elijah Mather, 40 George Phel[)s, 10 W'". Russell, 20 George Loomis, 10 Sam'i W. Allyn, 30 Roger Moore, 50 Giles Ellsworth, 50 Edward Moore, 30 Roger Newberry, 50 George Warner, 6 Oliver Mather, 50 Phineas Wilson, 25 Ozias Lomis, 50 John Filley, 30 Roger Phelps, 25 Eliakim Marshall, 10 Gideon Barber, 10 Elisha Moore, 30 Daniel Gillett, 20 Elihu Drake, 10 Sirajah Loomis, 10 Benj. Allyn, 15 Chas. Wolcott, 15 Elnathan Filley, 10 Abel Strong, 5 Philip Halsey, 5 Austin Phelps, 10 =£1220 The above, so far as I know , was the last contril)ution to the fund for the support of the ministry, and the entire 88 fund for this purpose now amounts to |il0,953, of which $1,700 is invested in the parso]iaj2,(', and the remainder, 5f9,2o3, is loaned on mortgaged security. The interest on the ahove, and about $1,000 received annually for the rent of slips, now furnish the means of paying the ordinary c\|)enses of this Ecclesiastical Society. Incidentals, repairs and im- provements require an occasional subscription-paper and the ingenious devices of the Ladies' Society. In Dec, 1805, the Society voted that, as a token of respect to the memory of the late Henry Allyn, Esq., the l)ell which he gave to this society be tolled one hour at the setting of the sun, on the 8th day of May, in each year perpetually — that being the day of his decease. December 25, 1871, Mr. William S. Pierson proposed that he and his sister Olivia, would place an organ in the church of the First Ecclesiastical Society in Windsor, and give it to said Society on condition that a fund to be called "• The Music Fund," of at least $1,500, shall be raised and j)aid to said Society in trust, etc. A fund of $1,555 was raised by sub- scription, and the beautiful and valuable organ before our eyes is a present and constant testimonial to the fidelity and gen- erosity of the donors. Yet not fully satisfied with what he had already done, our lamented benefactor, a little previous to his death, in his last will added $2,000 to this Music Fund. Althougli we sadly miss his i)rescnce with us, still the Cluirch and Society have unmistakable evidence that his si)irit of lib- erality still survives in his bereaved household. When our sanctuary is illumined by the brilliant chandelier, depend- ing from its arched ceiling, we are agreeably reminded of our neighbor, Mr. Oliver R,. Holcomb, who gave $150 toward its purchase. In conclusion, I may recall the name of a beloved sister of this Church, Miss Mary Ann Hayden, who, before going to the mansions above, manifested her deep interest in the Sal)bath-school l)y giving $200 as a fund for its benefit in furnishing suitable books for its library. 89 The evening services at 7 o'clock were deeply interesting. The first address, after the singing of Old Denmark, was by Rev. Dr. Tarbox, on Ancient Singing. He said : SINGING CUSTOMS IN THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. When the Pilgrims came from Holland to Plymouth in 1620, they brought with them Henry Ainsworth's metrical version of the Psalms, for use in their public worship. Ains- worth was one of the pastors of the English Church at Amsterdam. Like the Pilgrims, he had been driven out of England by persecution, and Holland was then an asylum for the oppressed. This book, first published in Holland in 1612, the Pilgrims used in their pul)lic worship at Plymouth for more than seventy years, or down to the year 1692. When the Puritans ten years later came to the Massachusetts Bay, they brought with them the version of the Psalms by Sternhold & Hopkins. They came directly from England and from the parish churches, and so they brought along the book to which they had been accustomed. This version was Ijegun by Thomas Sternhold in the reign of Heniy VIII. He was of the court of Henry, but being a man of a sober, religious character, he was disgusted with the silly songs which were sung about the court, and he versified some of the Psalms of David to take their place. The plan was successful. The idea was a novel one and was favorably received. From their use in the court they passed into the churches. Sternhold himself only versified about forty of the Psalms. He died in 1549. But the enterprise was followed up by John Hop- kins and others, till in 1562 the whole book of Psalms was completed and published. This book held its place among the Established Churches of England for one hundred and forty years, or till 1698, when it was superseded by the version of Tate & Brady. But the early Puritan divines of New England were not satisfied with the version of Sternhold & Hopkins which they brought with them. It was not literal enough. They had '12 90 only been hero seven or eight years, when they set al)Out the task of i)rci»aring- a version of their own. The book was completed and })ublished in 1G40. It was the first Ijook issued from the new printing-press which had just been brought over. This book has been called the Bay Psalm Book, a term applied to the first edition ; more generally it is known as the New England Psalm Book. These are the names in popular use ; but the real title page reads, " The whole Book of Psalms, faithfully translated into English Metre." Among the Puritan churches of New England this book by degrees displaced Sternliold & Hopkins ; and yet it is very difficult to tell exactly when, in the case of an individual church, the one went out and the other came in. Our fathers were very busy, and all these matters came along in their course, and were seldom committed to writing. I have no doubt that when Warham and his congregation reached here in 1636 they brought with them, bound up in their bibles, this version of Sternhold & Hopkins. I have no doulit that before a great many years had passed they took the New England Psalm Book ; but it would probably be difficult to find the exact date of the change. At whatever time the new version came, it stayed probably till the year 1766. In some extracts from your church records on this general subject (kindly sent me by Mr. J. H. Hayden), I find that in the year 1766 this Church voted to use " Watts' Psalms in the public worship in this Society in the future." The New England Psalm Book was here probably more than a hundred years. Almost all the psalms in these old versions were put into what we call common meter. It was a simple succession of alternate lines in eight and six syllables. A very few were cast in other meters. Thomas Lechford, in his "• Plaine Deal- ing, or Newes from New England," written in 1640, gives us an exact account of the order of public worship in Massachu- setts Bay in the earliest years. He says : " The publique worship is in as faire a meeting-house as they can provide, wherein, in most places, they have been at great charges. Every Sabbath or Lord's day they come together at Boston 91 by wringing of a bell about nine of the clock or before. The Pastor begins with solemn prayer, continuing about a quarter of an houre. The Teacher then readeth and expoundeth a Chapter ; then a Psalme is sung, whichever, one of the ruling Elders dictates. After that the Pastor preacheth a Sermon, and sometimes extempore exhorts. Then the Teacher con- cludes with a prayer and a blessing About two in the afternoone, they repaire to the meeting-house againe ; and then the Pastor begins, as before noone, and a Psalme being sung, the Teacher makes a Sermon. He was wont, when I came first, to read and expound a Chapter also before his Sermon in the afternoone. After and before his Sermon he prayeth." This description refers to the old First Church of Boston, in which Mr. John Wilson was pastor and Mr. John Cotton was teacher. It will be noticed that tliere was only one singing in the forenoon and one in the afternoon. That was the early custom. But it must be borne in mind that they usually sang the whole psalm through, whether longer or shorter. The singing, too, was rather slow in its motions in those old times, so that the singing of the one psalm not unfrequently occupied from a quarter to half an hour. In the extract aliove given, one of the Ruling Elders gives out the psalm to be sung. That was a part of liis official duty, and from the wording in the extract it would appear that lie made a selection among the psalms according to his own judgment. Afterward it came to be the custom in many churches, and probably in most, to sing the psalms in their order, from Sabbath to Sabbath, until the book was finished, and then go back again to the beginning. After a while the office of Ruling Elder ceased in most of the churches. (Very few, comparatively, of the New England churches had Ruling Elders later than the year 1700, but in some the office continued even till the present century.) After the Ruling Elder had gone, it was usually made the business of one of the Deacons to give out the psalm. The " deaconing off the psalm," as it was called, reading one or two lines at a time during the singing, was not common in 92 the first generation. It came in afterwards, when hymn-books were scarce, and when some of the congregation who could sing could not read. This custom was not introduced into the Plymouth Church until 1680. It was probably in some churches long before that time, and in the early part of the last century we judge that the practice had become general. Among the Puritans of the Bay a great variety of questions had to be discussed in connection with this matter of singing in the churches. I am not aware that any similar discussions went on among the Pilgrims of Plymouth. John Robinson, their pastor, had laid down in his writings that singing psalms was one of the six parts of appropriate public worship, and the Pilgrims apparently rested quietly in that opinion. But some of the questions which Mr. John Cotton, of Boston, felt called upon to discuss in his tract of 1647 were the following : 1. Whether psalms should be sung with a lively voice (or as we should say with the living voice), or whether it ought not, scripturally, to be confined to " singing and making melody in our hearts unto the Lord." 2. Whether one person ought not to do the singing, and the rest listen and join in their hearts, and say, Amen. 3. Whether women ought to Ije allowed to sing in the churches ; ^. e., whether this is not a violation of the apostle's rule, that the women should keep silence in the churches. 4. Whether "carnall men and Pagans" should sing, or Christians only. 5. " Whether it is lawful to sing psalms in Meter devised by men." 6. Whether it is lawful to sing in tunes invented by men. 7. Whether it is lawful to read the psalm in order to the singing. After all these and other similar discussions, it yet re- mained true that many individuals opposed the whole business of singing in the churches. There were repeated instances where men were fined and otherwise punished for speaking contemptuously of the practice. Indeed, one writer at least speaks of the Antipsahiiisfs, as though there were enough of this class of people to be designated by a party name. 93 The Psalm-Books which our fathers brought to these shores were well supplied with tunes, interspersed with the psalms. This was true alike of Ainsworth's book, which the Pilgrims used, and of Sternhold & Hopkins', which the Puritans used. But the New England Psalm-Book was not furnished with tunes. The practice grew up among the people of writing out a few of the old tunes which had been used in the former books, and pasting or stitching them into their psalm-books. This could be done without great labor, as the air only was written. At the same time the practice resulted in having only a few tunes, over against the many that were in the ancient books. Year by year, under the new arrangement, the singing tended to run down and to become more and more restricted, as to tunes, till at length written music was almost wholly abandoned and the congregations came to sing by rote. Only a few tunes were kept alive in the knowledge of the people, and those were passed along from generation to gene- ration. Thomas Lechford, from whom we have already quoted, who was in Boston in 1639 and 1640, saw this ten- dency, even in his day. Thomas Lechford was an English lawyer, of a semi-puritanical turn of mind, who came over with the expectation of making his home in this country. But the early fathers had no place for lawyers, and after some unpleasant experiences he returned to England and published his book entitled " Plain Dealing." We are indebted to him for more minute information, on some points of the early New England history, than to any one else. On the subject of singing in churches he left this wise suggestion : " If Psalms and Hymns and Spiritual Songs are to be sung in the Church, and to sing melodiously and witli good har- mony is the gift of God, and uncomely singing a kind of sin in the holy AssemVilies, why should not the chief leaders and rulers of the Church appoint some, in their stead, to take care of the singings in the Church ? And may not some be fitter to lead in singing than others ? And lest they may fall out of their tunes to jarring, why may they not use the help of some musicall instruments ? And lest they should want able men this way, why should they not take care that some children be trained up in MusiqueV" 94 There were some among the early fathers who had similar ideas, and for a time in Harvard College music was a branch of instruction. Rev. Thomas Symmes of Bradford, who was one of the chief ministers of Massachusetts in the early part of the last century, and who was exceedingly active then as a reformer in singing, says : " It was studied, known, and ap- proved of in our college, many years after its first founding. This is evident from the Musical Theses whicli were formerly printed, and from some writings containing some tunes with directions for singing l)y note." But Dr. Buslmell's famous sermon, — " Barbarism the first danger," — was thoroughly exemplified in the history of New England singing in the churches. From 1650, on till near the close of that century, things went from bad to worse, continu- ally. The people had lost almost all knowledge of written music. George Hood, in his " History of Music in New Eng- land," says : " About the year 1690 there was, for want of a proper supply of tunes, a general dulness and monotony in the music of the church. Many congregations had scarcely more than three or four tunes which they could sing. This great scarcity created the necessity of appending music to the Psalm-Book, which was done about the year 1690. . . . The tunes are named Litchfield, Low Dutcli or Canterbury, York, Windsor, Cambridge, St. David's, Martyr's, Hackney or St. Mary's ; the 100, 115, 119, and 14S Psalm Tunes." But the disease was too deeply seated to be ciired by these means. It was no small task, for people who liad lost or who never had knowledge of written music, to learn the art. Teachers were needful, and it would have been very difficult to procure them. But the worst part of tlie case was tliat the peo]>le did not want any thing better, and did not believe there was any thing l)etter. They did not believe tliat any one could be taught to sing liy note, except lie had first learned tlie tune by rote. There is nothing more self-conceited tlian profound ignorance. No where does light find a harder struggle to effect an entrance than into minds that most need light. And so the old jargon went on, and people found a kind of luxury in gathering together on the Sabbatli, and 95 droning out a psalm for the space of fifteen minutes or so, that must have sounded something like an Irish wake. They sang by rote, by traditions received from the fathers, and traditions are very changeable an,d uncertain. For example : every congregation had some one to set the tune and lead the singing. This man naturally wished to magnify his office. And so we will suppose that he gave out the tune York to be sung. He miglit have his private ideas as to liow rapidly or how slowly it ought to be sung ; he miglit wish to introduce a few quirks of his own to illustrate his genius, and so in his day he would lead the people to sing the tune in such a man- ner that it would hardly be recognized as the tune York in another congregation five miles away. Such was the sad condition of our congregational singing in the early years of the last century. But about the year 1720 several of the prominent ministers in different [)arts of New England determined, if possible, to work a reform, and teach the people again to sing by note, or by rule. Rev. Thomas Walter was a minister of Roxbury, Mass., from 1718 to 1725, when he died. He was one of the early movers toward this reform in Church Singing. The follow- ing is his testimony as to the condition of this part of pub- lic worship in his day. "■ About the commencement of the eighteenth century, music had been so much neglected that few congregations could sing more than four or five tunes, and these few had become so mutilated, tortured and twisted, that tlie psalm- singing had become a mere disorderly noise, left to the mercy of every unskillful throat to chop and alter, twist and change, according to their odd fancy — sounding like five hundred tunes scored out at the same time, and so little in time tliat they were often one or two words apart ; so hideous as to be bad beyond expression, and so drawling that we sometimes had to pause twice on one word to take breath ; and the decline had been so gradual that the very confusion and dis- cord seemed to have become grateful to their ears, while melody sung in tune and time was offensive ; and when it was heard that tunes were sung by note, they argued that 96 the new way, as it was called, was an unknown tongue, not melodious as the old — made disturbance in churches, was needless — a contrivance of the designing to get money, re- quired too mucli time, and made the young disorderly ; old way good enough." A writer in the Nciv England Chronicle^ about the same time (/. f, in 1723), said, "Truly I have a great jealousy that if we once begin to sing by note, the next thing will be to pray by rule, and preach by rule, and then comes Popery." But it is time that we turn from the state of things in general to this particular Church and congregation. This, l)eing one of the very oldest churches in New England, with large historic memories would very naturally incline to con- servatism. It would set its foot down firmly against all loose and fanciful innovations. The daughter, on the other side of the river, sixty-four years younger than the mother, and hardly out of its minority when this singing reform set in, might run after new things, but the mother must be staid and sober, and stand fast " for the faith which was once de- livered unto the saints." At the time when this reform commenced in earnest, in various parts of New England, Rev. Samuel Mather and Rev. Jonathan Marsh were united here in the ministry. Mr. Mather died in 1726, and was never disturbed, probably, by this innovating spirit. He heard the news of it afar off, but the agitation had not begun liere. Mr. Marsh, who was set- tled in 1709, continued till 1747. He was a witness of the strife, though what part he may have taken in it I do not know. To give an exact idea of the contest which was waged here on this subject, nothing can compare witli some extracts from your parish records, which Mr. Hayden sent me. These present the whole matter in a shape which is as clear as a picture. In the early part of the year 1730, everything here seems to have been moving on quietly in the old fashion. Tliougli many other churches in various parts of New Eng- land had, before that time, been subject to strifes and divis- ions over this matter, peace, apparently, had prevailed here 97 up to that time. The first item from the record-book reads as follows: ,111, n 1729-30. Votrd, "That Deacon Thomas Marshall shall set the Psalm on Sabbath days." Between the time of this action and July, 1736, Deacon Marshall seems to have died, and the following record is long and curious. July 1736. " To consider what was to be done respectmg that part of public worship called singing: whether in public as on the Sabbath days, lecture days etc., they would smg the way that Deacon Marshall usually sang in his hfe time, commonly called the 'old way,' or whether they would sing in the way taught by Mr. Beal, commonly called, 'by rule: and when the Society had discoursed the matter, the mod- erator proposed to vote for the two ways as. followeth: Those who were for singing in public in the way practised by Deacon Marshall should hold up their hands and be counted; and then those that were desirous to smg m Mr. Beal's way, called 'by rule,' would after show their minds by the same sign. But when the vote was passed, there beinc many voters, it was difficult to take the exact num- ber of votes in order to determine on which side the maiority was. Whereupon the moderator ordered all the voters to go out of the seats and stand in the alleys, and then those who were for Deacon Marshall's way should go m the men's seats, and those that were for Mr. Beal's way should g-oin the women's seats; and after many objections made against that way-which prevailed not with the i^oderator- itwas complied with, and the moderator desired that those that were of the mind that the way to be practiced for smgmg in the future, on the Sabbath etc., should be the way sung by Deacon Marshall as aforesaid, would signify the same by holding up their hands to be counted; and then the mod- erator and myself went and counted the votes, -^d the mod- erator asked" me how many there was. I answered 42, and he said there was 63 or 64 ; and then we both counted again and agreed in the number being 43. The moderator was about to count the number of votes for Mr. Beal's way of 13 98 singing, called 'by rule,' but it was offered whether it would not be better to order the voters to pass out of the meeting- house door, and then be counted, which method (though many objected against) was ordered by the moderator, and those that were for Deacon Marshall's way of singing as aforesaid were ordered to pass out of the meeting-house door and then be counted, who did accordingly, and the number was 44 or 45. Then the moderator proceeded and desired that those who were for singing in public the way that Mr. Beal taught, would draw out of their seats, and pass out of tho door and be counted. They replied that they were ready to show their minds, in any proper way, where they were, if they might be directed thereto, but would not go out of the door to do the same, and desired that they might be led to a vote where they were, and they were ready to show their minds; which the moderator refused to do. and thereupon declared, that it was voted, that Deacon Marshall's way of singing, called the ' old way,' should be sung in public for the future, and ordered me to record the same as the vote of the society, which I refused to do under the circumstances thereof, and have recorded the facts and proceedings." We do not know who the scribe was, but he certainly de- serves credit for his sturdy adherence to the facts. It is not very difficult, however, from this record to make out on which side the moderator was, and on which side the scribe was. Then follows a brief record for the same year. 1736. "-Voted — That Deacon John Wilson set the Psalm for the future." But the matter could not slumber here. A few months later it came up again. Jan. 1736-7. " It was proposed whether the Society would sing on tlie Sabbath and the public meetings for the year ensuing, only in the way that Deacon Marshall used to sing, called the " old way," — Negative. "• It was proposed &c. as above, to sing one-half the day in the old way, and the other part in the new way, called " by rule " — affirmative. " Voted, That Deacon John Wilson set the Psalm." 99 Then at last comes the triumph of the reformers. " Feb. 1739-40. Voted, That the way of singing in public shall be by the way or method commonly called singing by rule, or the way Mr. Beal taught this Society. " Voted, That Deacon John Wilson tune the Psalm. " Voted, That Deacon John Cook sliall read the Psalm." Some of you may know who this Mr Beal was that stood thus as the representative of the new style of singing. This name, constantly recurring in the foregoing record, brought to my mind a passage which I copied, some years ago, from Timothy Edwards' account book, in preparing an article for the Congregational Quarterly. Mr. Edwards was then in the midst of his ministry on the other side of the river, and was doubtless much more in favor of the new style of singing than many of his brother ministers. He was indeed one who took an active part in the reform. His motive for making his record about Mr. Beal was to keep an exact account of his board. But the passage, in this connection, is interesting. Mr. Edwards writes : " March 18, 1727. Mr. George Beale and his son Matthew came to my house at noon, and went that day to Dinner, both of them, and at night to Supper, and Lay here that night and went to breakfast and dinner the next day : in ye afternoon went to Hartford, viz. on Tuesday. " March 17. Yy both came again on Friday and Supped and Lodged here, and continued here until ye next Tuesday after dinner and y» went again in the afternoon to Hartford. " March "24'^!'. On Friday, in the evening yy came again. Supped and Lodged here and continued with us till Tuesday after dinner, viz. sometime in y" afternoon went to Hartford. "March 31. Yy came again on Friday evening and con- tinued here till Tuesday after dinner as before. " And so Mr. Beale hath l)een here after the same manner ever sines, with his son, only j^ week our Singing Lecture was, his son was here from the Friday night of the week be- fore all ye time to ye next Thursday after dinner. This was written May 9th. 100 " July 12. Mr. Beale and his son went in the forenoon to the west side of y river and came home y^ evening. "July 17. Mr. Beale and his son went again to the west side of the river, and returned July 18, in the evening." Undoubtedly this was the Mr. Beal whose way of singing caused such disturbance in your parish. He and his son were engaged in the business of introducing the new style of sing- ing to the congregations. He was harbored and befriended by Mr. Edwards, who wanted to see the work go on. I have read only a portion of Mr. Edwards' record concerning him. DurinsT the five months while he and his son made Mr. Edwards' house their home, off and on, they went to Hartford, to Springfield, to Willington, and to the west side of the river. They were undoubtedly about this singing business. But I have not been able to find where this Mr. Beal came from, or whither he went after leaving Mr. Edwards' house in July, 1727. It is to be noticed that Mr. Beal's way, commonly called singing by rule, did not fully prevail in this society until twelve years after he tabernacled with Mr. Edwards, — showing that there was a good, strong conservative force in this ancient parish. Under this new style of things the congregational singing of New England was greatly improved. And so matters went on till just before the revolutionary war, when Mr. William Billings arose. He was accounted a great musical genius. He was born in Boston in 1746, and whether for good or evil, certainly wrought a wondrous revolution. Under him came church choirs, fuging-tunes, singing-schools, the bass-viol, and various other appurtenances unknown to the fathers. His music went through the churches like a fresh breeze. There are many here to-day who can at least remember the after- wave of his sweeping influence. His was a very brilliant and showy career, and good and evil were mingled in it. Even our young people have had a taste of this style in Old Polks' Concerts. From a work entitled " Hymns and Choirs," prepared by Drs. Park and Phelps of Andover, assisted by Dr. Furber of Newton, Mass., we take the following extract : 101 " A second period of great musical degeneracy was occa- sioned not as before, by a total neglect of musical culture, but by the introduction of the coarse, noisy tunes of Billings. These tunes brought with them the doom of congregational singing and a general perversion of musical taste. They con- tinued in use about thirty years, just long enough for a sing- ing generation to pass away, and a generation wholly unac- customed to congregational singing to come into its place ; just long enough to break the thread of this mode of praise and abolish a custom which would otherwise have descended by gradual transmission to us." It will be seen by the review now taken, that congregational singing has prevailed through the main part of our New Eng- land history. Choirs were unknown till after the middle of the last century. In conclusion, it is not to l)e denied that the efforts to im- prove the singing in our churches, in the last century and in the present, have been closely allied to an improved condition, spiritually, in our churches. In my early life, when I first learned to sing in Scantic parish, I remember how often good Mr. Bartlett, our life-long minister, used to say, that he always expected a revival of religion to follow the singing- school. As I looked at things then, I know it used to strike me as a little strange that so great a result should follow from such a cause. But later observation led me to think he was correct so far as regarded his own parish, and on the broad scale the history of the churches of New England will bear witness to the general truth of that remark. Were there time the narrative might be continued down to the present day, and a great variety of questions might come up for discussion. The whole field is too large to be fully and properly presented in this paper. But we have brought matters down to the beginning of the present century, and most of us have a general idea of the course of events in these recent times. It is to be hoped that by and by we shall replace in our churches the congregational singing so long practiced by our fathers, with a congregational singing that shall be truly noble nnd worthy. Already in many of our congregations such singing has been fully realized. 102 The choir sung an anthem entitled the " Pilgrim Chorus." Then Rev, Mr. Jewett read a brief paper containing the outline facts of his pastorate, especially with reference to a precious revival of religion which occurred at that time. Rev. Mr. Leete then spoke very briefly of his memories of the fourteen years spent with this people. Here he was ordained to the ministry, here all his children were born. This house had just been renovated, and was then rededi- cated. He alluded to the men then living, who had since passed away, and expressed kind wishes for the future of the old Church. Short addresses were then made by Rev. J. P. Longworthy, D.D., " Father " Gleason, Rev. Francis Williams, Rev. George I. Wood, and Dr. W. T, Holcomb, all of which were of great interest, reviving the memories of former days, and alluding to many honored names with which the past history of the Church is so rich. Many letters of congratulation and reminiscences were received from persons who could not be present at the meet- ing. These were read to the Church on Sunday evening, April 4th. Among the most noteworthy of these were the letters of Rev. Samuel Wolcott, D.D., of Cleveland, Ohio, Henry Lyman of Montreal, Judge Henry Morris of Spring- field, Mass., Prof. Edward Rowland Sill, of University of Cali- fornia; Rev. James Anderson, of Manchester, N. H., Deacon Ebenezer Clap of Dorchester, Mass., Rev. Silas Ketchum of Poquonuck, and Lathrop Stiles Ellis of Manistee, Mich- Others, containing a brief excuse and good wishes were read from Rev. A. C. Washburn, Syracuse, N. Y., J. W. Barber, New Haven, 0. E. Wood, New York, Rev. Charles Ray Palmer, Bridgeport, and others ; also from different descendants of Rev. Mr. Warliam and of Rev. Mr. Hinsdale. The following original hymn sung at the dedication of this church in 1794 was read : O God, our king, tliis joyful day. We dedicate this house to Tliee; Here wouhl we meet to siug and pray, And learn how sweet thy dwellinsjfs be. 103 O King of saints and triune God, Bow the high heavens and lend Thine ear, And make this house Thy fixed abode, And let Thy heavenly Dove rest here. "Within these vralls may Jesus' charm Allure ten thousand souls to love. And all, supported by Thy grace, Shine bright in realms of bliss al)ove. Miss May Talcott of Hartford, another of the many descendants of Rev. Mr. Warham, furnishes additional names to add to those in the foot-note on page 26. Among those who have become somewhat noted, may be mentioned Aaron Burr, Gen. Wm. Williams, signer of the Dec- laration of Independence, Hon. John Sherman, Rev. Samuel A. Worces- ter, D.D., Rev. Jonathan Edwards Woodbridge, D.D. Also ex-President Woolsey, of Yale College, has been mentioned, and Judge Henry Morris, of Springfield, closes his most interesting letter by saying, " Personally, I feel that I may claim some peculiar relations to Windsor, and your an- cient church. I can trace my lineal descent from Rev. John Warham, its first minister." The following extract from the " Dwight Genealogy " has been sent for insertion : " In the history of the opinions and preaching of these three men, re- lated to each other as father-in-law, son, and grandson, John Warham, Solomon Stoddard, and Jonathan Edwards, in a close circuit, surely, both of relationship, and of residence. The great controversy which shook all New England to its center a century ago, had its historical be- ginning, middle, and end. None of their many titled descendants in Church and State have surpassed in wisdom, eloquence, grace, and influ- ence, those untitled giants of the elder days of this their rude, new world." OFFICERS OF THE CHURCH. Pastoe, Rev. GOWEN C. WILSON. Deacons, John B. Woodford, Daniel Payne. Pastors and Teachers from the First. Rev. John Warham, Pastor, - - 1630-1670 Rev. John Maverick, Teacher, - - 1630-1636 Rev. Bphraim Huit, Teacher, - - 1639-1644 Rev. Nathaniel Chauncey, Pastor, - - 1667-1679 Rev. Samuel Mather, Pastor, ■ - - 1681-1727 Rev. Jonathan Marsh, Pastor, - - 1709-1747 Rev. William Russell, Pastor, - - 1751-1775 Rev. David S. Rowland, Pastor, - - 1776-1794 Rev. Henry A. Rowland, Pastor, - - 1790-1835 Rev. Charles Walker, Pastor, - - 1836-1837 Rev. Spofford D. Jewett, Pastor, - - 1839-1843 Rev. Theodore A. Leete, Pastor, - - 1845-1859 Rev. Benjamin Parsons, Pastor, - - 1861-1865 Rev. Gowen C. Wilson began his ministry, March, 1866 Ordained, October, Pastor. - - - 1867 ' c ,c:'^fe:. ci ^< Ci. (?; II c:^'<:: <:: c c OCT. cc; jcc