1630-1005
 
 THE FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST 
 
 IN 
 
 WINDSOR CONNECTICUT 
 1630-1905 
 
 THE TWO HUNDRED 
 
 AND SEVENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 NOVEMBER 19 TO 26 1905 
 
 ADDRESSES AND SERMONS 
 
 HARTFORD, CONN.: 
 
 Press of THE HARTFORD PRINTING COMPANY, 
 (ELIHU GEER SONS.) 
 
 igo6.
 
 THE MEETING HOUSE, ERECTED 1794. 
 
 2012434
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 The Two Hundred and Seventy-fifth Anniversary 
 of the founding of the First Church of Windsor was felt 
 by some of its members to be a date too significant to 
 be passed over without some public observance. In 
 this feeling the exercises of which this little book is a 
 report may be said to have had their beginning. Plans 
 began to assume definite form in July, 1905, when a 
 joint meeting of the standing committees of the 
 Church and Society voted to recommend that the 
 anniversary be observed by appropriate public ser- 
 vices. Later, formal action was taken by the Church 
 and the conduct of the celebration was placed in charge 
 of the two committees just referred to. 
 
 As soon as the fact became known that so unusual 
 an event as the celebration of the Two Hundred and 
 Seventy-fifth Anniversary of a church, in this new 
 and changing country, was to occur, liberal notices 
 were given in the public press in Hartford, Spring- 
 field, and elsewhere. Thus, when the time arrived, 
 an interest and enthusiasm quite unexpected per- 
 vaded the local community, and extended to many 
 in other places, who, for ancestral and other causes, 
 have affection for the Windsor Church. The first 
 service on Sunday morning was attended by about 
 four hundred persons, including many from out of
 
 town, and interest and attendance were finely sus- 
 tained to the closing impressive service on the fol- 
 lowing Sunday night. The occasion was greatly 
 favored by the perfect weather conditions of the 
 entire week. 
 
 It will be noted that the program was shaped with 
 a view toward the present life and task of the church, 
 as well as the past history and achievement. There 
 is a looking back which results in the condition of 
 Lot's wife; and there is a looking back which affords 
 guidance to the mind, inspiration to the heart and 
 vigor to the will for pressing forward. The latter 
 result seemed to be secured, in some measure, by 
 this anniversary; and this booklet is issued in the 
 hope that it will help to make permanent the im- 
 pressions of this happy occasion.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 JOHN WARHAM, . Address by Rev. Roscoe Nelson, 7 
 
 OUR PURITAN INHERITANCE OF PRINCIPLES, 
 
 Address by Rev. Oliver H. Branson, 28 
 
 GREAT NAMES IN OUR HISTORY, 
 
 Address by Rev. Charles A. Jaquith, 32 
 
 THE UNREMEMBERED, Address by Rev. George L. Clark, 39 
 
 THE TRUE USE OF ANCESTORS, 
 
 Address by Mr. Edward W. Hooker, 44 
 
 REV. GOWEN C. WILSON, MEMORIAL SERVICE, . . .50 
 
 Addresses by Rev. Evarts W. Pond, . .53 
 
 Rev. Edwin P. Parker, D.D., 60 
 
 THE CHURCH TODAY, 
 
 Sermon by Prof. Clark S. Beards lee, D.D., 66 
 
 THE APOSTLE'S HOPE FOR A CHURCH WITH A HISTORY, 
 
 Sermon by Rev. Rockwell Harmon Potter, 76 
 
 As TO ORIGIN AND EARLY MIGRATIONS, 81 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 THE MEETING HOUSE, Facing 2 
 
 REV. ROSCOE NELSON, " 16 
 
 PARISH HOUSE, "26 
 
 REV. GOWEN C. WILSON, . ... "50
 
 SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 19. 
 
 Motto for the day : ' ' Remember the days of old, consider the 
 years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will shew 
 thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee." Deut. 32: 7. 
 
 ORDER OF MORNING WORSHIP. 
 
 Prelude. 
 
 Doxology. 
 
 Invocation. 
 
 Anthem, Jerusalem my Glorious Home, 
 
 Lowell Mason. 
 Psalter. 
 Hymn, 1287. 
 
 Scripture Lesson, Deut. xi. 
 Prayer, Rev. William B. Gary. 
 Hymn, 1312. 
 Offering. 
 
 Choir, The Breaking Waves Dashed High. 
 Address by the Pastor, Rev. Roscoe Nelson. 
 
 Subject: John Warham. 
 Anthem Sound the Loud Timbrel, 
 
 Charles Avison. 
 Prayer and Benediction.
 
 ADDRESS BY REV. ROSCOE NELSON. 
 JOHN WARHAM. 
 
 The task which I set for myself on the program of 
 this Two Hundred and Seventy-fifth Anniversary 
 is to lift up before your minds the personality of the 
 first pastor of the Church, the Rev. John Warham. 
 Reason enough for doing this is the fact that he was 
 the first in point of time. But fortunately there 
 are other reasons. Of all the line of faithful ministers 
 who have served the Church, Warham probably 
 deserves to rank first on the merits of his character 
 and service. In fact, his position as minister at the 
 very beginning of the Church's life invests him with 
 an interest that can scarcely attach to any successor. 
 Such is the honor deservedly bestowed upon the 
 founder. Such the importance attached in our 
 feeling to beginnings and to the early guidance and 
 shaping of an institution of beneficence to mankind. 
 
 I shall invite you, then, this morning to attempt 
 with me to make the acquaintance of Mr. Warham; 
 to bring ourselves as far as may be into the presence 
 of the man, to sense the quality of his character and 
 ministry, to subject him, in a word, to that process 
 of analysis to which he was accustomed from his 
 own congregation, from Sunday to Sunday, and to 
 which his successors in the ministry have ever since 
 been exposed.
 
 8 
 
 The material available for such an attempt as I 
 am to make is none too abundant. The imagination 
 must play some part in what I shall say, though, I 
 trust, in a manner fully in accord with such facts as 
 are known of Mr. Warham's history. You can imag- 
 ine that it is not a little tantalizing to one preparing 
 such an address to hold in his hand a volume con- 
 taining numerous sermons and lectures of the man 
 about whom he is to speak, but not one word of which 
 he can read. That was exactly my situation a few 
 days ago. In the safety vault of the Connecticut 
 Historical Society's library in Hartford is a choice 
 volume. It contains the short hand notes of sermons 
 by Mr. Warham and Thomas Hooker, preached from 
 April, 1639, to April, 1640. There are seventy-five 
 of Warham's sermons and lectures in the volume. 
 The notes were made by Henry Wolcott the second. 
 These sermons would, perhaps, reveal Mr. Warham 
 better than all else that is known of him. But you 
 cannot read a word of them. Probably no man living, 
 now that Mr. J. H. Trumbull is gone, could read them 
 without a great deal of study. So it is with this 
 treasure locked up in the safety vault, and even more 
 securely locked up in the short hand characters of 
 Mr. Wolcott, that I must proceed with my task. 
 
 Of Mr. Warham's family in England there is 
 little that can be said. The name was common 
 enough, and those who bore it, so far as appears, 
 worthy people. I find a town on the map of England, 
 near Dorchester, by the name of Warham. One 
 William Warham, who died in 1532, probably of the 
 same family stock as our Mr. Warham, was Arch-
 
 bishop of Canterbury; which fact need not be 
 reckoned against him as he was otherwise a good man. 
 We shall not be far wrong in imagining John Warham 
 growing up a good boy in a pious household, educated 
 for the church at one of the universities, in due time 
 ordained by the bishop, and set in one of the churches 
 of the city of Exeter as the vicar or rector. There 
 is where we find him when our knowledge of him 
 begins. From his pulpit in Exeter, where he was 
 undoubtedly a success, he came to join in that won- 
 derful emigration to Massachusetts Bay. Charter 
 for the settlement of this region had been obtained 
 of the King. The new enterprise was a subject of 
 conversation in many a household and meeting place. 
 Reports from the colony in Plymouth had been more 
 or less spread abroad in England, and the agitation 
 of the question of removing to America made more 
 than a ripple on the surface of English society. Under 
 this Massachusetts Bay Charter seventeen ships came 
 over during the year 1630, bringing some sixteen 
 hundred to seventeen hundred people. The first of 
 these ships to sail for the Massachusetts coast was the 
 Mary and John, which arrived at Nantasket, the 
 thirtieth day of May, bringing Mr. Warham and his 
 associate Mr. Maverick, and the worthy people, one 
 hundred and forty in number, who made up the first 
 members of this Church and congregation. They 
 effected their settlement, as you well know, at Dor- 
 chester, whence in 1635-6, they removed to this place, 
 leaving some of their members still in Dorchester, 
 where a new church was immediately formed. 
 Thus Mr. Warham was set into the ministry of this
 
 10 
 
 church in a building called the New Hospital in Ply- 
 mouth, England, March 20, 1630; he had for his first 
 meeting house the Mary and John, where, in the 
 quaint record of Roger Clap, "They had preaching 
 and expounding of the word of God every day for 
 ten weeks together," and continued in the pastorate 
 till his death here in 1670, a term of forty years. 
 
 Now in making the acquaintance of Mr. Warham, 
 what first impresses us? 
 
 The first thing is what is first in most leaders of 
 men, the fact that he inspires faith in himself. Some 
 men are centers of gravity. Others revolve about 
 them, like to be near them, delight to follow them. 
 You can not explain this power. It is a gift. This 
 gift Mr. Warham possessed. 
 
 There is a passage in Roger Clap's memoir, which 
 very finely illustrates this. Roger Clap was a young 
 man about twenty-one years of age, who came in 
 the Mary and John. He was a young man of promise, 
 was first to unite with the church after landing on 
 this side, and became a prominent citizen of Dor- 
 chester, and head of a numerous and worthy family. 
 This Roger Clap tells in some detail the story of his 
 own adventure into America. He says : 
 
 "I did desire my dear father (my dear mother 
 being dead) that I might live abroad, which he 
 consented to: (that is, away from home.) So I 
 first went for tryal to live with a worthy gentleman, 
 Mr. William Southcot, who lived about three miles 
 from the city of Exeter. He was careful to keep a 
 Godly Family. There being but a very mean preacher 
 in that place, we went every Lord's Day into the City, 
 where were many famous preachers of the Word of
 
 11 
 
 God. I then took such a liking unto the Revd. Mr. 
 John Warham, that I did desire to live near him: 
 so I removed (with my Father's consent) into the 
 City, and lived with one Mr. Mossiour, as Famous a 
 
 Family for Religion as ever I knew 
 
 I never so much as heard of New England until I 
 heard of many godly Persons that were going there, 
 and that Mr. Warham was to go also." 
 
 Later he adds : 
 
 "God by his Providence brought me near to Mr. 
 Warham, and inclined my heart to his ministry." 
 
 These statements of Mr. Clap open a window for 
 us into that most interesting process of selection by 
 which the passengers of the Mary and John were 
 drawn together out of the mass of English society. 
 Here we see the organizing principle that made 
 them a community and a church instead of an aggre- 
 gation of individuals going in the same direction. 
 In Mr. Clap's case the process is as plain as day, and 
 it is as fine and beautiful as it is plain. We need not 
 say that Mr. Clap and others like him were not moved 
 by the possibilities and prospects of life in America. 
 They were practical men, setting a proper value upon 
 the present world. Very little fanaticism mingled 
 in their spirits. They were conscious, in some dim 
 way at least, that they were called of God to be pio- 
 neers in a new era of this world's life. They went 
 feeling no doubt that a rich land of promise lay before 
 them, even as Abraham came out of Ur of the Chal- 
 dees, and, not knowing whither he went, was borne 
 along by the promise that in his seed all nations 
 would be blessed. But it was no dream of gold and 
 empire that drew these men together and knit them
 
 12 
 
 into unity. Speaking generally, the organizing prin- 
 ciple was their common religious life and their com- 
 mon desire for a free exercise thereof. But the gen- 
 eral motive of religious freedom, in the person of 
 Roger Clap and others of his like, becomes concrete 
 and effective by their enthusiastic attachment to 
 Mr. Warham. There was here operative the prin- 
 ciple of the Master and His disciples. Peter, on a 
 memorable occasion, did not say in a general way, 
 "Lord, I will be a good Christian;" but, "Lord, 
 with thee I am ready to go both to prison and to 
 death." His enthusiasm for the Master was the 
 motive most immediately present and powerful. 
 Thus it was not wholly the general desire for religious 
 freedom that constrained Roger Clap to join in that 
 emigration ; but the affection he had for Mr. Warham. 
 "I never so much as heard of New England, until I 
 heard of many godly persons that were going there, 
 and that Mr. Warham was to go also." Thus he is 
 drawn into the company of emigrants by first being 
 drawn to the leaders thereof. The process is one in 
 which affection and personal attachment play a 
 major part. The selective process is the process of 
 friendship. The leaders are the personal magnets 
 who draw others of like spirit to themselves. 
 
 What was true of Mr. Clap was undoubtedly 
 true, with individual variations, of others in the com- 
 pany. And the same was true of Hooker and his 
 people in Hartford. Both Warham and Hooker 
 were men gifted with the power to win the loyalty 
 of others, to awaken and hold the faith and affection 
 and enthusiasm of those, who looked to them as
 
 13 
 
 leaders and teachers. Indeed the same fine personal 
 attachments and friendly enthusiasms characterize 
 the New England settlements generally. Cotton 
 Mather says : 
 
 Most, if not all, of the ministers who then visited 
 these regions, were either attended or followed with 
 a number of pious people who had lived within reach 
 of their ministry in England. These, who were now 
 also become generally non-conformists, having found 
 the powerful impression of those good men's ministry 
 upon their souls, continued their sincere affections 
 unto that ministry, and were willing to accompany 
 it into these uttermost ends of the earth. 
 
 The next thing to impress us in making the ac- 
 quaintance of Mr. Warham is his preaching. What 
 sort of a preacher was he ? 
 
 An interesting description of Mr. Warham's method 
 of preaching is found in Cotton Mather's Magnalia. 
 He says, "I suppose the first preacher that ever 
 thus preached with notes in our New England was 
 the Reverend Warham; who, though he were some- 
 times faulted for it, by some judicious men who never 
 heard him, yet 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 
 the most of them who have been applauded for never 
 looking in a book in their lives." 
 
 From this passage in Cotton Mather, it has been 
 said that Warham was the first to preach from man- 
 uscript in New England. I hardly think, however, 
 that Mather intends to convey the idea that Warham 
 had his sermons written out in full and read them 
 every word from the manuscript. Just before the 
 passage quoted, Mather says:
 
 14 
 
 "Indeed I would have distinction made between the 
 reading of notes and the using of notes. It is pity 
 that a minister should so read his notes as to take 
 away the vivacity and efficacy of his delivery; but 
 if he so use his notes as a lawyer does his minutes 
 whereupon he is to plead, and carry a full quiver into 
 the pulpit with him from whence he may with one 
 cast of his eye, after the lively shooting of an arrow, 
 fetch out the next, it might be a thousand ways 
 advantageous." Then he adds: "I suppose the first 
 preacher that ever thus preached in our New England 
 was the Reverend Warham." 
 
 So we are not to think of Mr. Warham as prosily 
 reading sermons an hour long to a wearying con- 
 gregation; but rather, we may think of him with 
 written notes in front of him, or with small sermon 
 book in one hand, of which he makes use as he pro- 
 ceeds with his vigorous discourse. 
 
 This fact of Warham 's use of notes in preaching 
 gives us a strong hint as to the preacher himself. 
 Why did he use notes? It was entirely contrary to 
 the prevailing custom. The fact itself is evidence 
 of a certain independence and originality. But more 
 than that it indicates a certain intensity of feel- 
 ing and spiritual passion in the man. Perhaps 
 we may say with truth that he did not dare trust 
 himself to preach without the curb of written notes. 
 The business of preaching with him was not the 
 cold and logical statement of the puritan doctrine. 
 It was the utterance of truth that burned within his 
 soul. It was the surging oft-times of a great tide of 
 feeling too rapid and volcanic for ordered expression 
 in words, at the moment, and sometimes almost 
 beyond the control of the preacher. I suppose such,
 
 15 
 
 carried to the pitch of ecstasy, was the speaking in 
 tongues of which we hear in the Apostolic church. 
 Some persons seem to have been possessed by spir- 
 itual feelings and ecstasies of which they could not 
 give expression in ordered speech. Of course, an 
 emotionally intense type of person was the subject 
 of this gift. I venture to think that Mr. Warham's 
 personality was somewhat of this order. At times 
 so fervent were his feelings, so intense his spiritual 
 passion that he felt the need of the reins of written 
 notes as he went into the pulpit to preach. Thus 
 he was an inspired and an inspiring preacher. 
 
 The following from Roger Clap bears in part at 
 least upon the ministry of Mr. Warham. 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." 
 
 "Oh the many tears that have been shed in Dorchester 
 Meeting House at such times, both by those that have 
 declared God's work on their Souls, and also by those 
 that heard them." 
 
 The impression seems to prevail that the Puritan 
 preaching was harsh as well as stupid. Not such 
 is the import of Roger Clap's words. As a matter 
 of fact, the Puritan preaching of this period glowed 
 with Apostolic freshness. Preaching in the English 
 Church at the time was generally at a low ebb. The 
 Puritan preachers of the period were men who felt 
 the fresh breath of the Spirit upon them annointing 
 them to preach good tidings of Salvation. Their
 
 16 
 
 message came with heavenly joy to souls that were 
 hungering for the words of eternal life. Such a 
 preacher was Mr. Warham. 
 
 Mr. Warham seems to have had the habit of preach- 
 ing a number of sermons from the same text. Of 
 seventy-five sermons and lectures in Mr. Wolcott's 
 note book, twenty-four were from the ninety-fourth 
 Psalm, verses four, five and six, and nineteen from 
 I Cor. 6:11. One can imagine few severer tests of 
 preaching than to interest the people during twenty- 
 four sermons on one text. But this test our first 
 minister seems to have stood. 
 
 One of the sermons preached that year was on the 
 occasion of the betrothing of two young men of the 
 parish and two young women. The men were Ben- 
 edict Alvord and Abraham Randall. Mr. Warham 
 made use of the occasion to give instruction upon 
 the important subject of matrimony. One wonders 
 how the prospective young husbands and wives 
 felt when the Pastor announced his text, Eph. 6: 11: 
 "Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be 
 able to stand against the wiles of the devil?" And 
 still more one wonders what was the feeling of the 
 congregation when the minister came out with the 
 proposition that marriage is a warfaring condition 
 and those who contemplate entering thereon, need 
 something more than the consent of their parents? 
 We can hardly doubt that Mr. Warham gave whole- 
 some instruction on this very vital theme. If such 
 instruction were more in vogue at the present time 
 the divorce courts would be less busy. One can 
 easily imagine that these young lovers, as well as
 
 REV. ROSCOE NELSON.
 
 17 
 
 the whole congregation, were brought face to face 
 with the truth that marriage is a state in which ser- 
 vice and sacrifice and spiritual conquest are required ; 
 a state in which the word duty should be written 
 with large letters ; a state for overcoming the obstacles 
 to domestic happiness, rather than yielding to them. 
 
 Such a sermon, one can scarcely doubt, was felt 
 in every home in the community as a force making 
 for domestic stability and happiness. 
 
 The temple of fame has found room for the name 
 of only one parson from the first period of this Con- 
 necticut settlement, and of course that name is Thomas 
 Hooker, the first pastor of Hartford; a forceful, pos- 
 itive, clearsighted, virile personality. Perhaps it 
 is too much to expect that Warham should be remem- 
 bered alongside of Hooker. History is rigid in its 
 exclusions. The one man is remembered as a house- 
 hold name, while others who were with him, and 
 perhaps only a little in the rear in public service, 
 are put into the shadow. Of course, Mr. Hooker is 
 known everywhere as the preacher of the sermon 
 that inspired the first Constitution of Connecticut, 
 and uttered the principles of American Democracy. 
 But in all likelihood, Roger Ludlow of Windsor 
 wrote the Constitution, and Mr. Warham was Lud- 
 low's pastor. It is taking nothing away from the 
 fame of Hooker to suppose that Warham was with 
 him, perhaps a close second in the creative work of 
 that remarkable epoch. 
 
 It is only recently that the real greatness and public 
 service of Oliver Ellsworth has begun to be appre- 
 ciated; and this, in the judgment of his recent bi-
 
 18 
 
 ographer, is due to the overshadowing greatness of 
 Washington and Franklin, and a few others of that 
 period. Now without subtracting from the fame of 
 Washington, or any other, it is seen that Ellsworth 
 deserves the lasting gratitude of Americans. Thus, 
 I shall be pardoned, I think, if today I am bold enough 
 to associate the name of Mr. Warham with that of 
 Thomas Hooker, in the creative work of the period 
 to which they belonged, and to say that in Windsor, 
 at least, Mr. Warham deserves to be held in perpetual 
 remembrance. 
 
 In his day, Warham was widely and highly es- 
 teemed. Cotton Mather says: "The whole Colony 
 of Connecticut, considered him a principal pillar, and 
 father of the Colony." He was repeatedly ap- 
 pointed to important tasks by the General Court. 
 In 1656 he was sent to Boston to take part in the 
 conference that resulted in the so-called half-way 
 covenant. The record reads thus: "This court doth 
 order that Mr. Warham, Mr. Stone, Mr. Blinman, and 
 Mr. Russell be desired to meet the fifth day of June 
 next," etc. Mr. Warham's name comes first on the 
 list. 
 
 Here is another item in the records of the General 
 Court, 1660. It concerns the town of Middletown. 
 The Court ordered that the town "shall have liberty 
 to provide for themselves another able, orthodox 
 and pious minister, as soon as they can, who is to be 
 approved by Mr. Warham, Mr. Stone and Mr. 
 Whiting, taking in ye help of ye worthy governor 
 and Mr. Willis." Mr. Warham was one of a commit- 
 tee appointed by the General Court to draw up an
 
 19 
 
 address and petition to Charles II, which, with the 
 adroit diplomacy of Governor Winthrop, resulted in 
 the charter of 1662. 
 
 One could wish that Mr. Warham's ministry, 
 which had been so full of valuable service to the 
 Church and Colony, might have ended in peace. 
 But unhappily, such was not the case. About the 
 year 1663, disturbances appeared in the Church. 
 It was the same time that the First Church of Hartford 
 was similarly afflicted, and the Second Church was 
 formed. Like disturbances were experienced in 
 other places. 
 
 Under date of March, 1663, there occurs in the 
 records of the General Court: "The Church of Christ 
 of Windsor complayned of James Enoe and Michael 
 Humphrey, for several things contained in a paper 
 presented to the Court, Mr. Clark in behalf of the 
 Church withdraws the charge." 
 
 But though the charge, whatever it may have 
 been, was withdrawn, the Court saw fit to take 
 action as follows: 
 
 "This court, having seriously considered the case 
 respecting James Enoe and Michael Humphrey, do 
 declare such practices to be offensive, and may prove 
 prejudicial to the welfare of this Colony, and the court 
 expects they will readily come to the acknowledge- 
 ment of their error in the paper presented by them 
 to the court." 
 
 What the offensive practices were, does not appear. 
 But it is not difficult to imagine that this paper 
 presented to the Court, was something that threat- 
 ened the peace of the Church, and was more than
 
 20 
 
 likely in opposition to Mr. Warham's doctrine of 
 church order. 
 
 About the same time the record states: "This 
 Court approves the prudent care of Windsor in 
 looking out for an assistant for Mr. Warham." In 
 1667, Rev. Nathaniel Chauncey, son of the President 
 of Harvard College, after extended controversy, 
 was settled as Mr. Warham's associate. His settle- 
 ment was the occasion of a disagreement which 
 resulted in a temporary division of the Church. 
 Probably it would be too much to say that Mr. Chaun- 
 cey caused the split. No doubt there were lines of 
 cleavage ready to form, and Mr. Chauncey seems not 
 to have been the man to heal the incipient division, 
 but rather was the occasion of an open rupture. The 
 vote that settled him is a prophecy of what followed. 
 Henry Wolcott returned to the General Court eighty- 
 six votes for Mr. Chauncey and fifty-two against 
 him. The minority afterwards obtained permission 
 to go out and worship by themselves and have a 
 minister of their own, which they continued to do 
 for some thirteen years. 
 
 The last years of Mr. Warham were saddened by 
 these bitter wranglings and division. By tempera- 
 ment he was a man to be deeply pained by such 
 things. For, if we may trust the words of Cotton 
 Mather, he was subject to melancholy moods and 
 capable of great suffering. No doubt he was deeply 
 sensitive to anything that disturbed the peace and 
 unity of the church of his early love, which he had 
 served for the term of near forty years. Such an expe- 
 rience could not but be painful to any man; it was
 
 21 
 
 peculiarly so to a man of Mr. Warham's tempera- 
 ment. Cotton Mather says of him: 
 
 "Know then, that though our Warham were as pious 
 a man as most that were out of heaven, yet Satan 
 often threw him into those deadly pangs of melan- 
 choly, that made him despair of ever getting thither. 
 Such were the terrible temptations, and horrible 
 buffetings undergone sometimes by the soul of this 
 holy man, that when he has administered the Lord's 
 supper to his flock, whom he durst not starve by 
 omitting to adminiser that ordinance, yet he has 
 foreborne himself to partake at the same time in the 
 ordinance through the fearful dejections of his mind, 
 which persuaded him that those blessed souls did 
 not belong unto him. The dreadful darkness which 
 overwhelmed this child of light in his life did not 
 wholly leave him until his death. It is reported that 
 he did even ' set in a cloud ' when he retired unto the 
 glorious society of those righteous ones that are to 
 shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their father, 
 though some have asserted that the cloud was dis- 
 pelled before he expired." 
 
 If it is true, as Mr. Mather indicates it may have 
 been, that Mr. Warham "set in a cloud," we can not 
 doubt that the dissensions in his Church during his 
 latter days were largely responsible for the cloud. 
 For a man naturally sensitive and subject to depress- 
 sion would feel bitterly such a situation in the Church 
 in which his affections had so long centered. Mr. 
 Chauncey, one easily suspects, was not an unmixed 
 comfort to his old age. In Mr. Wilson's historical 
 address, given here twenty-five years ago, occurs 
 this statement: "When a sermon was preached in 
 the pulpit in the forenoon concerning doctrines to 
 which Mr. Chauncey was opposed, he would in the
 
 22 
 
 afternoon, preach to the same audience, from the 
 same text, a regular logical confutation of those 
 doctrines." Mr. Wilson evidently had some author- 
 ity for this statement, but what it was I have been 
 unable to find. Neither does it appear who the 
 preacher was whom Mr. Chauncey so logically re- 
 futed in the afternoon. The supposition that first 
 comes to mind is that it was Mr. Warham, since 
 no other man, so far as I am aware, was associated 
 with Mr. Chauncey, at least regularly, as preacher 
 for the fore part of the day. But whether Mr. 
 Chauncey thus dealt with his venerable colleague 
 or with some other man, the least that can be said 
 of him is that he was not an eminent peace maker, 
 and that his zeal for the truth was, quite probably, 
 well matched by his contentiousness of spirit. 
 
 Mr. Warham died April 1, 1670, but the grievous 
 state of division and contention continued till Mr. 
 Chauncey was called to another field, and afterwards, 
 till the coming of Rev. Samuel Mather, in 1684, 
 under whose sensible and spiritual ministry, unity 
 was restored and a new era of prosperity begun. 
 One would like to speak of Mr. Warham from the 
 point of view of the every day industrial affairs of 
 the town. He was a considerable owner of real 
 estate. His name occurs twelve times in the early 
 records as a party to real estate transfers. He was 
 the owner of the grist mill, on the site where Mr. 
 Lewis' grist mill now stands. This mill he deeded 
 to his wife in 1664, and calls it in the deed of gift, 
 "my corn mill." He was without doubt the first 
 owner of it. Nothing is positively known as to the
 
 23 
 
 reason of his possession of this property. Mr. Stough- 
 ton, author of "Windsor Farms," told me that 
 probably Mr. Warham had some property when he 
 came from old England. If such was the case, it is 
 more than likely that he invested some of it in machin- 
 ery and a building for doing the grinding of the peo- 
 ple. It is thought this was the first mill in the 
 colony, and there are traditions that people came 
 from Hartford and Wethersfield, and as far away as 
 Middletown, to do their grinding. I do not know 
 how much profit came to Mr. Warham from this 
 mill. The business was a sort of monoply, but the 
 rate of toll must have been satisfactory to the people, 
 for the rate was fixed by the town meeting, not a 
 bad suggestion for dealing with monopolies in gen- 
 eral. The mill was a public institution and a blessing 
 to every family. 
 
 If the women had the grinding to do in the families, 
 as was probably largely the case before the mill 
 was set up, we can see how much the mill meant to 
 the wives and daughters of the Windsor households. 
 Imagine the situation here in 1637, when the Pequot 
 War was declared. Windsor was to furnish for 
 that campaign, thirty men, sixty bushels of corn, 
 fifty pieces of pork, thirty pounds of rice, four cheeses. 
 They were to "bake in biscuit the one half if by 
 any means they can, the rest in ground meal." 
 Think of the women here engaged in grinding sixty 
 bushels of corn and baking half of it into biscuits 
 No man felt the hardship of this household task more 
 than the pastor. And it would not be beyond reas- 
 onable probability to suppose that Mr. Warham, the
 
 24 
 
 other men of the settlement being already over- 
 loaded with work, took upon himself the task of 
 establishing the mill as a practical form of service to 
 his people. The Son of Man who came bringing the 
 bread of eternal life, did not conceive it to be beyond 
 his province or beneath his dignity to feed the hun- 
 gry multitudes with barley bread and fishes ; and does 
 it not mark Mr. Warham with the sign of the true 
 minister of Jesus Christ, that here in this wilderness, 
 he not only divided unto his people the word of 
 divine truth, but also had regard to their temporal 
 straits and necessities, and set himself to the benefi- 
 cent ministry of the "corn mill?" In this service 
 he lightened the heavy burdens of every household, 
 and showed himself the practical builder of the new 
 community here as well as the inspiring prophet of 
 the glories that are to be hereafter. 
 
 To speak of the family of Mr. Warham and of his 
 descendants goes beyond the limits of my address 
 this morning. That would be more than enough 
 for an address in itself. His first wife died in Dor- 
 chester, in 1634. He afterwards married Jane 
 Newbury, the widow of Thomas Newbury. This 
 second wife was the mother of four daughters, Abi- 
 gail, Hepzebah, who died at the age of seven, Sarah, 
 and Esther. Mr. Warham's name thus was not 
 perpetuated, as his children were daughters, but his 
 family became a multitude whom no man can num- 
 ber. The descendants of Abigail and Sarah are 
 still with us. Two of them are officers in the church 
 and society, and several others esteemed members 
 of the church and congregation. Esther, at fifteen
 
 25 
 
 years of age, married Rev. Eleazer Mather, of 
 Northampton, who shortly died leaving her a widow. 
 She afterwards married Mr. Mather's successor in 
 the Northampton pastorate, Rev. Solomon Stoddard, 
 and was the mother of twelve children. One of the 
 twelve was named Esther after her mother. This 
 Esther Stoddard married Timothy Edwards of East 
 Windsor and was the mother of eleven children, 
 one of whom was Jonathan Edwards, the most 
 widely famous of a long and numerous line of tal- 
 ented and eminent and noble men and women in 
 all walks of life. Mr. Warham was thus not only 
 a principal pillar of the church and colony in his day, 
 he was the father and founder of a house which in 
 service to the country and church can scarcely be 
 excelled by the houses of Europe's royalty. We do 
 well to reverence his memory. We may be thankful 
 to belong to the church he served. May we have 
 grace to emulate his virtues and profit by the exam- 
 ple of his piety and his fidelity to truth and God. 
 
 Plutarch, at the beginning of one of his famous 
 biographies quotes a couplet from an ancient poet 
 which runs thus: 
 
 "What children do their ancestors commend, 
 But those whose life is virtuous to the end?" 
 The biographer adds that this proverb stoppeth the 
 mouth of those who of themselves are unworthy of 
 praise, and yet are still boasting of the virtues of 
 their ancestors, whose praise they highly extol. 
 Then he quotes Pindar as saying that they worthily 
 commend their forefathers, who
 
 26 
 
 " Do match their noble ancestors in prowess of their own, 
 And by their fruits commend the stock whence they them- 
 selves are grown." 
 
 Not all of us of the present generation here are 
 descendants of these early founders. But we are 
 their successors in the procession of the church's 
 history. May we honor them by a Christian life 
 and service of which they will not be ashamed, when 
 we meet them in the glory of the church triumphant. 
 
 SUNDAY EVENING, NOV. 19. 
 
 The service was held in the Parish House, which 
 was well filled with an interested congregation. 
 After brief reading of Scripture and prayer by the 
 pastor, Professor Waldo S. Pratt, Mus. D., was 
 introduced as the speaker of the evening and the 
 service placed in his charge. The subject of the 
 address was, "The Growth of Church Song Since 1630." 
 The speaker gave a sketch of the advance in both 
 hymns and tunes, from the time of the old Psalters, 
 (1630 to about 1750), through the era of the Watts 
 hymns and the singing school tunes (about 1750 to 
 1850), to the advent of the modern hymn and tune 
 books. The different types of hymns and tunes 
 were illustrated by the choir and congregation, in- 
 cluding the lining out of a hymn by the leader. 
 
 The service closed with benediction by Rev. W. M. 
 Fanton.
 
 PARISH HOUSE, ERECTED 1902.
 
 27 
 
 TUESDAY EVENING, NOV. 21. 
 
 The meeting on Tuesday evening was designed 
 for fellowship with sister churches and for sociability. 
 The Parish House was completely filled and the 
 evening a marked success. Special invitations to 
 this occasion had been issued to the Daughter 
 Churches, in Simsbury, South Windsor, Bloomfield, 
 Poquonock, and Windsor Locks; to the Grand- 
 daughters in East Windsor, Wapping, and East 
 Granby; to the First Church, Hartford; the First 
 Church, Wethersfield; to Grace Episcopal and Meth- 
 odist Episcopal, Windsor; to the Union Church of 
 Christ, Wilson. Generous delegations were present 
 from these churches. After the formal program, 
 refreshments were served in the dining room, where 
 a social time of unusual delight was enjoyed. 
 
 After reading of the Scripture and prayer by Rev. 
 David W. Goodale, four brief addresses were made, 
 which follow:
 
 28 
 
 ADDRESS BY 
 
 REV. OLIVER HART BRONSON 
 
 OF SlMSBURY. 
 
 OUR PURITAN INHERITANCE OF 
 PRINCIPLES. 
 
 Fathers and Mothers, Sisters and Brethren of 
 this Honored and Ancient Church: 
 
 I deem it no small honor to be invited to your two 
 hundred and seventy-fifth birthday party. I have 
 been asked by your minister to speak as the minister 
 of your oldest daughter, and that oldest daughter 
 has further honored me by asking me to present her 
 compliments and congratulations, and to express to 
 you her most affectionate wishes for most happy 
 and useful days and years and centuries to come. 
 
 Eight years ago, we in Simsbury celebrated the 
 two hundredth anniversary of our organization as 
 a church, but here in the bosom of the family we may 
 refer to the fact that you know we are older than 
 that. In 1642, only seven years after you came to 
 Windsor, we were given authority by the General 
 Court to acquire "ground uppon that part of the 
 Tunxis River cauled Massacowe." And between 
 1664 and 1669, about twenty families moved from 
 Windsor and settled in what is now Simsbury. 
 
 The new settlement was officially spoken of as an 
 "Appendix to Windsor." Who was responsible for
 
 29 
 
 the diagnosis which declared Windsor affected with 
 appendicitis I do not know, but the now popular 
 operation is an inheritance from these Puritan ances- 
 tors, for the appendix was cut from ancient Windsor 
 in 1670, and became the town of Simsbury. From 
 that time on we had a minister and preaching and 
 built our first meeting house in 1683. In 1676, when 
 King Philip burned our new settlement, in the persons 
 of our ancestors we fled and spent several months 
 with our hospitable mother until the winter should 
 pass, and we could return and rebuild. 
 
 In the two hundred and thirty years since we spent 
 the winter with you, we have only visited you through 
 occasional representatives. You will pardon me 
 now, I am sure (since it happened over one hundred 
 years ago) , if in passing I refer to the fact that one of 
 my predecessors in the Simsbury pastorate, exchang- 
 ing with your minister, felt called upon to preach 
 from the text, "Surely the fear of the Lord is not in 
 this place." Perhaps it was with that incident in 
 mind that your pastor selected my text for me tonight. 
 I assure you it was unnecessary. 
 I am asked to speak for ten minutes on "Our Pur- 
 itan Inheritance of Principles." First of all we are 
 grateful for and should make every effort to preserve 
 the faith of our fathers. That faith which refused 
 to be discouraged with conditions as they found them 
 at home, but imagined large possibilities in this new 
 land. That faith which did not fail them under the 
 hardships of the forest life in New England, but 
 led to a greater faith expressed by our State motto: 
 " Qui transtulit, sustinet."
 
 30 
 
 Again we are grateful for their independence, 
 born of that faith, and its deep convictions. It 
 led them at times into inconsistency. They were 
 often obstinate and intolerant in their zeal for pop- 
 ular liberty. But the stubbornness and intolerance 
 were but by-products in the process which has brought 
 or is bringing liberty into all the world. 
 
 One of our most valuable inheritances from those 
 fathers is the spirit of progressiveness, call it expan- 
 sion if you like, which characterized them. Nothing 
 could be more wonderful than the rapidity with 
 which those early settlers spread out over these New 
 England hills. I find that before 1700, there were 
 thirty-four Congregational churches (which are 
 still in existence), in Connecticut, each one repre- 
 senting a strong colony. Talk about an anti-ex- 
 pansion movement. Expansion has been a domi- 
 nant note in Puritanism from the beginning and 
 must ever remain so. Simsbury, as the mother of 
 three of your granddaughters, East Granby, Granby 
 and Canton Center, giving you also three great- 
 granddaughters, Collins ville, the South and the 
 Swedish churches in Granby, and one great-great- 
 granddaughter, the Swedish church in Collinsville, 
 rejoices in her inheritance of this Puritan spirit of 
 expansion and commends it to her children. One 
 feature of this progressiveness was the strong mis- 
 sionary spirit which characterized so markedly our 
 fathers, has always characterized our New England 
 churches, I trust ever will characterize them. Our 
 modern missionary movement is part of our Puritan 
 inheritance. Read the records of their doings before
 
 31 
 
 leaving England, as well as their early records here, 
 and be impressed with it. 
 
 We thank them again for that spirit of fellowship 
 which our Congregational churches have inherited, 
 which has not only been a beautiful fellowship be- 
 tween the churches of our own order, but has led 
 them to further and foster interdenominational fel- 
 lowship as I believe no other denomination has done. 
 
 We thank them for that educational spirit which 
 placed a school house beside every church, founded 
 Harvard and Yale, and the long line of colleges and 
 academies which have accompanied the descendants 
 of the Puritans throughout the United States, and 
 with their missionaries to all corners of the earth. 
 We thank them for their shrewd business sense 
 which sometimes has led to that close fistedness and 
 false thrift associated with wooden nutmegs but 
 generally has meant a large and foresighted practi- 
 cality in State, Church and home. 
 
 I have said enough. Surely we have a goodly 
 inheritance. May the God of the Fathers grant the 
 people of this ancient church and all those who 
 honor her grace to conserve and to expand it in 
 their spirt.
 
 32 
 
 ADDRESS BY 
 
 REV. CHARLES A. JAQUITH 
 
 OF SOUTH WINDSOR. 
 
 GREAT NAMES IN OUR HISTORY. 
 
 Tonight, we of the Windsor Farms, have crossed 
 the Great River that we may attend the services of 
 this church as was the custom so many years ago. 
 Gladly do we come, bringing most cordial greetings 
 from a daughter church. When a church is so old, 
 so unsurpassingly old, as is this Congregational 
 Church of Windsor, it rightly feels the responsibility 
 of holding up before this much tempted generation 
 the piety and heroism of an earlier age. 
 
 Those who with unwearied tongue magnify the 
 greatness of the Mayflower and her one hundred pas- 
 sengers, must this week hold their peace, while we 
 set forth the claims of the Mary and John and her one 
 hundred and forty passengers. Not all the early 
 heroes landed at Plymouth, nor even Salem and 
 Boston; some landed at Nantasket and were glad to 
 remove from Dorchester a few years later to settle 
 in the beautiful and fertile Connecticut valley at 
 Windsor. This company was carefully selected in 
 England with the thought of being ready for any and 
 all the requirements of the American wilderness. 
 Two clergymen of acknowledged ability, Warham
 
 33 
 
 and Maverick, were to convert the Indians, if they 
 were docile, but if not, John Mason, who had fought 
 with distinction in the Netherlands, was to use such 
 force as was necessary. The Psalm book and the 
 "big stick" were both on board the Mary and John. 
 A lawyer, also, business men and farmers of ample 
 means accompanied the expedition. "They were a 
 very godly' and religious people" as the old record 
 says, "and many of them, persons of figure and note, 
 being dignified with the title of Mr., which few in 
 those days were." The whole company rose to a 
 certain greatness of soul, because following a high 
 ideal. Their work was crowned with true success, 
 "for what is worth Success' name, unless it be the 
 thought, the inward surety, to have carried out a 
 noble purpose, to a noble end?" 
 
 It is not my task to speak of the unremembered ; 
 but to notice a few of the greater names in your his- 
 tory, as we recall the words of Carlyle: "We can not 
 look, however imperfectly, upon a great man, with- 
 out gaining something by him. He is the living 
 light fountain which it is good and pleasant to be 
 near." 
 
 One name stands out conspicuously in the military 
 history of New England. Captain John Mason was 
 perhaps the most renowned military leader of his 
 day. The Indians in 1636-7 kept the Connecticut 
 towns in constant alarm, and after the massacre at 
 Wethersfield, the General Court called out forty-two 
 men from Hartford, thirty from Windsor and eighteen 
 from Wethersfield, to proceed against the Pequot 
 Indians. Captain Mason had, however, but seventy-
 
 34 
 
 seven men when he surprised the seven hundred 
 Pequots in their entrenched fort. With fire and 
 fire-arms he carried out David Harum's new version 
 of the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as they would 
 do to you and do it first." The result was the Pequots 
 were annihilated and the Connecticut colonies 
 enjoyed comparative peace from the Indians forever 
 after. Prompt, vigorous, and brave, John Mason 
 put Connecticut under lasting indebtedness to him. 
 From a legal standpoint, too, Windsor's contri- 
 bution was a large one, both to state and nation. 
 Among the original settlers was Roger Ludlow, who 
 had been bred to the law in England and was a 
 deputy-governor in Massachusetts, before leaving 
 Dorchester. When the freemen of the three towns 
 of Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield met in Hart- 
 ford, January 14, 1639, a constitution was adopted 
 which John Fiske says was "the first written consti- 
 tution known to history that created a government." 
 This famous constitution according to Stiles was 
 drawn up by Roger Ludlow, although the most 
 powerful democratic influence in the settlements 
 was Thomas Hooker. Ludlow has also been credited 
 with being the^ author of the first school law in Con- 
 necticut, wherein is prescribed: "That the selectmen 
 of every town shall have a vigilant eye over their 
 brethren and neighbors to see first that none of them 
 shall suffer so much barbarism in their families as 
 not to endeavor to teach, by themselves or others, 
 their children and apprentices as may enable them 
 perfectly to read the English tongue." It also pre-
 
 35 
 
 scribed that any town of one hundred families should 
 set up schools able to fit for the university. 
 
 The greatest name in Windsor's history her 
 greatest contribution to the nation is unquestionably 
 Oliver Ellsworth. Most highly commendable it is 
 that his home in Windsor should be so well preserved, 
 that it may speak to coming generations, not only of 
 the time long past, but of the man who rendered so 
 great service to our country in its early and formative 
 period. During the closing years of the Revolution 
 from 1778-83, when the personnel of the Continental 
 Congress had seriously declined in ability and patri- 
 otism, he was one of the most loyal and useful mem- 
 bers and gave the army support where it was sorely 
 needed. In the Constitutional Convention of 1787 
 his part was by no means a small one. Hon. Henry 
 Cabot Lodge, in an address on Ellsworth at the Yale 
 Law School in 1902, shows conclusively that assisted 
 by Roger Sherman, also of Connecticut, he was 
 chiefly responsible for the great compromise between 
 the large and small states, whereby the Convention 
 was saved from failure and the present Constitution 
 proposed. That a Senate composed of an equal 
 number of members from each state, elected by the 
 Legislatures, was added to a House of Representa- 
 tives, chosen by popular vote, was due chiefly to the 
 wisdom and practical sagacity of Oliver Ellsworth. 
 To his everlasting honor be it said, he performed a 
 most important service at one of the most critical 
 moments in all the history of our country. As a 
 senator under the Constitution from 178994, his 
 influence was so great that Aaron Burr said that "if
 
 36 
 
 he should chance to spell the name of the Deity with 
 two d's, it would take the Senate three weeks to 
 expunge the superfluous letter." John Adams af- 
 firmed that he was "one of the pillars of Washington's 
 administration." His greatest service as Senator 
 was the drafting of the Act upon which the judicial 
 system of the United States has rested ever since. 
 From 1796-1800 he held the highest judicial posi- 
 tion in the land, Chief Justice of the United States. 
 An important work in the negotiation of a treaty 
 with France, in 1800, whereby a most threatening 
 discord was brought to a close, was the last of his 
 services to the nation. After some further service 
 in the counsels of Connecticut, he died here in Wind- 
 sor, November 27, 1807. His identification with 
 this church is shown by the fact that he was on the 
 building committee in 1794 when the present struc- 
 ture was erected. 
 
 " Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, 
 So didst them travel on life's common way 
 In cheerful godliness ; and yet thy heart 
 The lowliest duties on herself did lay." 
 
 One of his sons, Wm. Wolcott Ellsworth, governor 
 1834-42, declined election to the Senate and later 
 was Judge of the Supreme Court. 
 
 Such a contribution to our legal and political 
 history reflects enduring honor upon this town and 
 church. 
 
 Time is lacking for any extended characterization 
 of Henry Wolcott and his illustrious descendants. 
 "One of the most influential leaders of the Connect- 
 icut colony" himself, " there was hardly a time for 
 the next two centuries when a Wolcott was not in
 
 37 
 
 some post of trust and honor in the service of the 
 commonwealth." A grandson named Roger Wolcott 
 was governor, 1751-4; but he lived in what is now 
 South Windsor. Another descendant, Oliver Wol- 
 cott, who moved to Litchfield, was a signer of the 
 Declaration of Independence and governor, 1796-7. 
 His son was Secretary of the Treasury and Governor 
 of Connecticut ten years. Even in our own day, the 
 family has produced a Senator in Colorado, Edward 
 Oliver Wolcott, and a governor in Massachusetts, 
 Roger Wolcott. All honor, then, to Henry Wolcott, 
 the sire of such a race ! 
 
 We can not omit to mention the clergy, "those 
 bold, vigorous, intolerant, able men that set their 
 mark so indelibly upon the early institutions of 
 New England." John Warham, the first pastor, 
 was worthy of that first generation of ministers. 
 They were men who were scholarly and idealistic 
 enough to accumulate libraries equal in value to 
 three or four year's salary; yet vigorous and prac- 
 tical enough to mold the character and institutions 
 of their parishoners. Warham was so humble as to 
 refuse at times to partake of the Lord's Supper 
 which he administered, but was by no means timid 
 or ineffectual when he preached the Word. Rev. 
 Samuel Mather, pastor of the church, 1684-1728, 
 deserves mention for his conspicuous ability, as well 
 as for his service in harmonizing the church and 
 adding largely to its numbers. The great Jonathan 
 Edwards, whom South Windsor is proud to claim, 
 was descended on his mother's side from the first 
 pastor of this church, so you also share in his fame
 
 38 
 
 and indeed you have some claim upon all the great 
 men whom the daughter churches have produced. 
 Doubtless other names are deserving of mention 
 at my hand ; but surely those of whom I have spoken 
 are the choice fruits you hold up before us as your con- 
 tribution to the world. Even the names of such 
 men quicken our pulses and thrill us with the thought 
 of achievement and service. Great things were 
 accomplished by those men of old. They were the 
 men who dug the channels wherein has flowed the 
 stream of New England history. It is due to them 
 that we feel today strongly as we do the moral cur- 
 rents of life. The preachers expounded the greatest 
 Book of all and proclaimed, "This is the way, walk 
 ye in it;" and so it came about that life amid the 
 hardships and simplicities of early Connecticut was 
 dignified by a devotion to principle and a loyalty to 
 the future, which amidst the highest opportunities 
 and luxuries of today can not be relegated to a second 
 place. In the succession of noble patriots you have 
 sent out, is verified Lowell's saying: 
 
 "Freedom is re-created year by year, 
 
 In hearts wide open on the God- ward side." 
 
 We may smile if we wish at the long sermons and 
 the long prayers of those days, their scrupulous ob- 
 servance of the Sabbath and the strictness of parental 
 discipline, but there were produced men not only great 
 in intellect, but earnest in purpose, pure in motive, 
 and noble in character; and we have yet to prove 
 that we can produce the same results with less of 
 self-denial and religious training.
 
 ADDRESS BY 
 
 REV. GEORGE L. CLARK, 
 
 OF WETHERSFIELD. 
 
 THE UNREMEMBERED. 
 
 It is my privilege to speak, not for your notable 
 heroes, your Warhams, Ellsworths and Wolcotts, 
 but for that larger and no less important company of 
 quiet, modest, gentle, resolute, faithful people, who 
 have done most of the work, encountered perils hand 
 to hand and fought the battles through in your fine 
 history, and unsung, but not unwept, dropped into 
 humble graves. Mr. Lincoln said that God, must 
 think a good deal of common people, he made so many 
 of them. I count it a joy to speak, though unworth- 
 ily, of these whose obscurity and silence are more 
 eloquent than words, whose deeds have been wrought 
 into the substance of our history and our faith, "who 
 did great things, unconscious they were great." 
 
 How seldom we think of the thousands who make 
 up the rank and file of the army, who stand on guard 
 while officers sleep, who marched long, weary and 
 footsore, who handled flintlock and Winchester with 
 an accuracy gained among cornfields and forests. 
 Few reached the chair of professor, judge, or legisla- 
 ture, but these men knew how to milk a cow, swing 
 an ax or scythe, wield rake or hoe, raise corn, rye,
 
 40 
 
 oats and beans, and how to face death with unflinch- 
 ing courage. They were the bone and sinew of the 
 land and when Boston was beleagured, the valley of 
 the Connecticut sent its treasures of grain to suffering 
 fellow patriots with a ringing word of courage, and 
 when the call came for soldiers the farmers did not 
 hesitate. 
 
 Only a few men stand out in clear and brilliant 
 outline on history's page; it was the many lowly and 
 persistent souls that cut down trees, made roads, 
 held the ploughs, cast votes, built the home, church 
 and school house and in simple faith and unassuming 
 ways laid the foundations of the Republic. Honor, 
 ceaseless honor, to the self-denying, resolute faithful 
 men, who in cold and heat, darkness and storm and 
 pain, fought the good fight and finished their course. 
 Without them the Shermans, the Hookers and the 
 Putnams were a swift and fleeting dream. Honor, 
 ceaseless honor, to the plain, straightforward common 
 people, the unremembered men. 
 
 And what shall I say of the women ? We read little 
 of them in the histories, but since that day in the 
 autumn of 1635, when agile Rachael Stiles pushed 
 ahead of clumsy men, discussing precedence, and was 
 the first of the bold settlers to reach the shore, planting 
 her foot upon the soil of Windsor, women have had 
 a large part in the struggle with the wolves, bears, 
 Indians, hardships and disappointments of New 
 England. When the brave men of Windsor shoul- 
 dered their muskets or their rifles and went against 
 the Dutch, Narragansetts, British and Rebels, who 
 were more dauntless than the mothers, wives and
 
 41 
 
 sisters, who with sad hearts, yet brave faces, spun 
 the yarn, wove the cloth and made their butternut 
 coat ; filled the knapsack and with a kiss and a trem- 
 bling, a thrilling word sent those men of nerve on 
 their way of duty and death. It was harder, it 
 required more patience and enduring fortitude to 
 hold fast to faith and hope in the lonely home, through 
 long, tiresome days and longer restless nights, than 
 to go out on an expedition which demanded grit and 
 heroism, but it was the lot of women to stay at home 
 and send prayers to the God of Battles and messages 
 of strength and courage to the brave defenders. 
 
 They did stay, they made bread, they washed 
 dishes, made soap, tried out lard, salted beef, con- 
 verted crab apples and golden pumpkins into glorious 
 pies for the young patriots around the table. How 
 steadily worked the old creaking loom; how swiftly 
 flew the spinning wheel! They milked the cows, fed 
 the pigs, coaxed the pullets to lay, with one eye for 
 wolf or Indian. When voices grew harsh who could 
 make peace like a woman? Who quietly dealt with 
 the delirium of stormy adolescence? Who drilled 
 the catechism into the children and made Connecticut 
 the birthplace of clockmakers and theologians? 
 What a roll, the two Edwardses, Hopkins, Bellamy, 
 Beecher, Bushnell and Seth Thomas. Those clear- 
 sighted women found time to give a touch of beauty 
 to the humble home; they trained the sweet honey- 
 suckle about the door, they planted the brilliant 
 hollyhock. Said an orator, "Who were last at the 
 Cross and first at the tomb? Ladies." So in our 
 history, first and last in loving service. Whose
 
 42 
 
 pleasant voices mingled with the rumble and roar of 
 their brothers and lifted old Antioch to the rafters 
 and with glancing eyes from their high post beckoned 
 diffident youths toward Heaven? When the saints 
 sat in zero meeting houses and swallowed frozen 
 chunks of theology or patiently watched "ninthly" 
 and "tenthly" pour forth from the lips of the parson in 
 frosty outline, who helped the tithingman quiet 
 restive children and awakened the husband who was 
 freezing to death; whose flying fingers had knit the 
 many socks and mittens and made the warm coats? 
 Who fed the parson in his pastoral round and cheered 
 his drooping spirits with a good square meal? 
 
 Then the sewing circle. The tongue of an angel 
 were needed to sing its praise. Woman was the 
 queen of that kingdom of work and recreation. It 
 was newspaper, theater, lyceum, debating club, 
 business enterprise, market place, all in one. It 
 relieved the monotony of a hard grind, scattered the 
 blues, promoted sociability and made matches. How 
 could the church exist without it? When a carpet 
 is needed for the meetinghouse the modern Paul 
 looks to Dorcas, the president of the Ladies' Aid. 
 When hymnbooks are required for the upper room or 
 the parish expenses overlap the income the beloved 
 Persis knows how to pry open the masculine pocket- 
 book with a bean pod or an oyster shell. Glorious 
 is chicken pie. Magnificent are baked beans. Mag- 
 ical is the pumpkin pie. Pleasant as heavenly manna 
 are jelly and doughnuts. We have heard of a church 
 built of onions. Many a chapel has been decorated 
 with scalloped oysters and pink tea. People must
 
 43 
 
 have recreation and before the gentle game of football 
 arose there were huskings. But what were they 
 without pretty girls? And what were a red ear 
 without a pair of ruby lips to match it ? 
 
 Good cheer, courage, faith and love spring up like 
 flowers in the footsteps of the unremembered women. 
 Rare is the life sublime, uninspired by a good woman. 
 We celebrate the prayer meeting at the famous hay- 
 stack, but who taught those college boys to pray? 
 The invalid wife of Wendell Phillips would say to 
 the silver tongued orator as he shrank from a severe 
 encounter, "Wendell, don't shally." So the women 
 in the homes of obscurity equipped their sons for 
 occasions which demanded manhood, strength and 
 courage. More precious than rubies in the story of 
 this ancient and noble Church is the memory of the 
 unremembered.
 
 44 
 
 ADDRESS BY 
 
 MR. EDWARD W. HOOKER 
 
 OF HARTFORD. 
 
 THE TRUE USE OF ANCESTORS. 
 
 It is eminently fitting that the First Church of 
 Hartford should be represented on this occasion and 
 the man who ought to be here and speak for the 
 church is its present pastor. 
 
 There is, however, some doubt as to the wisdom 
 and safety of letting him come here, because a former 
 minister of the church preached his last sermon on 
 earth here about two hundred and fifty years ago, 
 and after preaching for your people he went home, 
 was taken sick and died in eighteen days. With 
 this in mind, it has seemed best to send a member of 
 the congregation to speak a word for the Hartford 
 Church and should he survive and not only return 
 home safely, but keep well for a few days, then you 
 may expect to see and hear from our Mr. Potter, but 
 we hesitate about risking him at first, for we dare 
 not run the chance of losing him, as we did our first 
 pastor. 
 
 Besides all this, Mr. Potter is very busy at present 
 studying the ancient history of this Church and of 
 the First Church in Hartford, for one of the arguments 
 we used to get him to come to Hartford, was, that 
 he was coming to the oldest church in Connecticut,
 
 and now he is suspicious of having caught us in a lie 
 and if it had not been for this celebration of yours, 
 we never would have been found out. When he 
 gets here next Sunday, that is if he finds it safe and 
 all right to come, he may surprise you with proving 
 that your Church was not founded in 1630, but sev- 
 eral years later or what would do just as well, he 
 may prove that the Hartford church dates back to 
 1629. He has got to do something of this kind, or 
 give up his pet statement that he is "the youngest 
 minister of the oldest church in the State of Connect- 
 cut." 
 
 This kind of foolish talk brings me right up 
 to my subject or perhaps to the very opposite of 
 my real subject, which is "The True Use of Ancestors" ; 
 and it is a mighty good subject too, for it was chosen 
 by your minister and he knows what ought to be 
 spoken about here. The true use of ancestors is 
 what has been given me to try to point out, and here 
 at the very start I have been giving you an illustration 
 of the most senseless and foolish use of a noble inher- 
 itance, that is a pride in our past, simply because it 
 is old, without any thought or reference to its value 
 in any way. 
 
 When I was a boy in the Hartford High School, I 
 knew a Chinaman who told me in all solemnity about 
 his family ; it was a great family in China ; he had in 
 his home a complete genealogy for 3,500 years with 
 the names of all his ancestors preserved on stone tab- 
 lets, but not one of the men ever did anything to 
 record or to improve the next generation ; they were 
 as useless in helping towards any real progress as the
 
 46 
 
 tombstones of our ancestors, and yet my friend had 
 a great pride in age, just because it was old. Why, 
 one good strong, honest man in Windsor or Hartford 
 has done more in a single life time to benefit the world 
 than all of the dead Chinamen during 3,500 years, 
 most of whom were born dead so far as any idea of 
 noble achievement was concerned. 
 
 How easy it is for all of us to fall into this pride of 
 age, to rejoice because we can belong to any one of 
 the patriotic or hereditary societies, to go to a dinner 
 of the Colonial Wars Society or to a tea of the Colo- 
 nial Dames and while eating and drinking too much 
 for our own good, to feel a vast superiority over the 
 descendants of good and worthy people who happened 
 to come to this country only a little later than our 
 emigrant ancestors arrived. 
 
 Let us for a moment try to figure up the size of 
 the subject given me by looking at the number of 
 our ancestors in this country; we all had one father 
 and one mother, then came four grandparents, 
 sixteen great-grandparents, in the generation before 
 this there were so many that I can't figure it up alone 
 but from a careful calculation made for me by an 
 insurance actuary, there must be about three thou- 
 sand ancestors if we go back nine generations and 
 some of us can claim as many as five thousand an- 
 cestors in America. It will evidently be impossible 
 to take up all of these people one by one and by 
 examining them in various ways, find out their true 
 use for today and as most of them have been dead 
 for at least a century we can hardly expect to put 
 them to any material use at present. In thinking
 
 47 
 
 of our ancestors we usually go back as far as we can 
 and jump over all who were near to us as of less 
 consequence than the pioneers who first came to 
 this country and founded our State and established 
 our Church. 
 
 These first settlers were men and women of strong 
 religious convictions, who were willing to endure 
 much of hardship and danger for conscience sake, 
 theirs was a God of anger and they were afraid of 
 him and seemed to think that God hated the men he 
 had made. 
 
 Today we think of a God of love and our theology 
 is much pleasanter and easier than was that of the 
 early days in New England, but is not God the same 
 now as he was three hundred years ago? We are 
 apt to forget that God hates sin today as much as he 
 ever did. The old mistake was in thinking that God 
 hated men, when it was sin and evil in men that were 
 abhorrent to him ; the new mistake today is in making 
 the love of God so large as to include not only men 
 but the evil in men as well. We acknowledge freely 
 that our pioneer ancestors had a pretty hard time 
 here in many ways but we have harder matters at 
 hand today if we do our full duty as Christian citizens. 
 At first there were only two kinds of people in Con- 
 necticut, Congregationalists and Heathen; and it 
 was only a little while before the Heathen were all 
 gone, it was comparatively easy for our first settlers 
 to go out with a gun in one hand and a Bible in the 
 other and either kill or convert the savages, but now 
 we can not use this method to improve the people of 
 this town or state and yet it is more important today
 
 48 
 
 than ever before, not only to preach but to live the 
 truths in the gospel of Jesus Christ so that men will 
 believe in them and be made truly better and nobler. 
 
 Religious thought and feeling were the most 
 noticeable characteristics of these first settlers, a 
 hundred years later patriotism was developed. A 
 new nation had grown up and men were ready and 
 willing to fight for the country that they loved. 
 The old country was forgotten by the men of this 
 generation and they were proud to be called rebels 
 and traitors to their king, for they were true to the 
 only country that they acknowledged as their own. 
 It was easy for them to rush into battle ; it has always 
 been easier to follow a great leader to victory, than 
 to do the small, disagreeable duty that brings no 
 glory, no distinction and has small visible reward. 
 We have no opportunity to offer our lives for our 
 country but we all have a chance to do the small 
 and disagreeable duty for our town or state or country 
 and we are all needed right here at home to see that 
 good and honest men are put in office and that the 
 affairs nearest to us are honestly and ably ad- 
 ministered. 
 
 Religion and patrotism filled the lives of these 
 generations; in quieter times men had an opportun- 
 ity to turn their thoughts to what seems less impor- 
 tant; to the home and to education, but is not this 
 the most important of all? From the home and 
 school influence most of us are what we are today 
 and the lives of the next generation are today being 
 influenced and guided by the kind of homes and 
 schools that our children are in now. The foundations
 
 49 
 
 for the future can only be firmly established if the 
 children grow up with a respect and love for the 
 religion and patrotism of their fathers and mothers, 
 for before they are old enough to appreciate the 
 history of the founding of our country, their lives 
 are strongly influenced for either good or bad and 
 so on us is placed the responsibility for the future. 
 
 A few days ago I read "I am my own ancestor" 
 and it did not mean much to me, but it continued "I 
 am, what I am today, because of what I was yester- 
 day." This expresses in a personal way the true use 
 of an inheritance, we build for the future on our 
 experience of the past, not only by reviewing the 
 achievements of our ancestors but also we get strength 
 for tomorrow by what we are doing today and from 
 what we were and from what we did yesterday. 
 
 Religion, patrotism and a pure home are our in- 
 heritance from the past; for the future and to make 
 a true use of our ancestors, we must have a beautiful 
 spirit of discontent with ourselves and with what 
 we have done. Then each day will be better than 
 the one before and we can feel sure of the future 
 when built on such a foundation.
 
 50 
 
 THURSDAY EVENING, NOV. 23. 
 
 9Jn jEetttoriam, 
 
 Rev. GOWEN C WILSON. 
 
 [The son of Ira and Mary Wilson was born in Booth- 
 bay, Maine, February 8, 1833. He was graduated from 
 Colby College in 1857. After teaching High School for a 
 short time in Hallowell, he entered the Bangor Theological 
 Seminary, where he graduated in 1861. He was settled in 
 his first pastorate at Winterport where he remained five 
 years. His pastorate in Windsor began March 2, 1866 and 
 ended in November, 1891. Subsequently for two years he 
 served the Maine Missionary Society as General Superinten- 
 dent for the western part of the State, when he was chosen 
 to the Superintendency of the Maine Bible Society, which 
 position he held till his death, April 26, 1905. He was buried 
 in the old Windsor cemetery.] 
 
 The service was opened with Scripture and prayer 
 by Rev. F. W. Harriman, D. D. The hymn. "Peace, 
 perfect peace in this dark world of sin?" was sung. 
 
 Addresses were made by Rev. Evarts W. Pond 
 and Rev. Edwin P. Parker, D. D. Before intro- 
 ducing these brethren the pastor spoke briefly, as 
 follows : 
 Dear Brethren and Friends : 
 
 The purpose of our coming together this evening 
 is one that strongly appeals to many people in this 
 parish and community, and indeed to all who had 
 any acquaintance with our beloved Mr. Wilson,
 
 REV. GOWEN C. WILSON.
 
 51 
 
 whom we meet to honor. When we began to con- 
 template having some special services commemora- 
 ting the Two Hundred and Seventy-fifth Anniversary 
 of the Church, the suggestion instantly came to my 
 mind that one feature of the program should be such 
 a service as we have provided for this evening. It 
 seemed natural, one might almost say, necessary to 
 plan for some public expression, further than had 
 been made, of the affection and loyalty which exist 
 in many hearts toward Mr. Wilson. 
 
 I have had opportunity for some thirteen years 
 to observe the quality of this man's character, as 
 well as his ministry here, in the thought and feeling 
 of his old parishoners regarding him, and I can 
 testify that what I have observed has been something 
 altogether fine to behold. His living monument is 
 the people to whom he gave himself in the ministry of 
 the Gospel. Neither his influence nor the people's re- 
 gard for him has faded out. In many cases both 
 have grown stronger with years. In fact, through the 
 knowledge gained from those whom he always insisted 
 on calling "my people", along with several oppor- 
 tunities for personal acquaintance both here and at 
 his home in Portland, I came myself to have a good 
 share in his people's esteem for him and to reckon him 
 my pastor as well as theirs. 
 
 If we try to analyze the regard in which Mr. Wilson 
 was held, we find of how many strains it was made 
 up. No one word comprehends it. There is first 
 of all at the basis of it a thoroughgoing respect. 
 How utterly we respected him! He was so entirely 
 genuine. There was not a thread of shoddy in his
 
 52 
 
 make up; not an accent of cant in his beautiful 
 piety. There was not an atom of sham in his 
 thinking or his spirituality. 
 
 There also mingled in our regard for him a strong 
 admiration. He was a brave and heroic man to the 
 very end. While a wasting disease was sapping his 
 physical energies he kept on with his usual work with 
 unfailing cheerfulness by the sheer force of will and 
 courage. The fifth Sunday before his death he kept 
 a preaching engagement which involved a considerable 
 railroad journey, and for some weeks longer continued 
 to go to his office in Portland, though his physical 
 strength was almost utterly exhausted. A char- 
 acteristic remark of his, when the progress of the 
 disease seemed to prevail over his determination to 
 keep about his work, was this: "I had thought to 
 die like a man." His physician, to whom this remark 
 was repeated, said very truly, "He has lived like a 
 man and he will die like a hero." And so he did. 
 
 But deeper than all there is in the regard of his 
 people whom he served, both here and in Maine, 
 what we try to express in a little word of four letters, 
 Love. He made us love him because he loved us. 
 He used to say, "I'm in heaven now. How shall I 
 ever get into heaven unless I carry heaven along 
 with me?" He was a man who had already passed 
 from death unto life "because he loved the brethren."
 
 ADDRESS BY 
 
 REV. EVARTS W. POND 
 
 OF WINDSOR LOCKS. 
 
 I esteem it a great privilege to add my tribute to 
 the memory of my beloved friend and councilor, 
 Rev. Gowen C. Wilson. My association with him 
 was not long, but the circumstances which brought 
 us together and the work in which we were engaged 
 was of such an unusual character that the impression 
 his beautiful spirit made upon me I shall never forget 
 and his wise council I shall always recall. 
 
 Possibly I may be allowed to state that the in- 
 genious explanation which I chanced to overhear one 
 of you giving, namely, that Evarts Wilson Pond 
 was evidently a relative of Mr. Wilson and is therefore 
 asked to speak on the occasion, is quite untrue. I 
 have been asked to speak on this occasion because 
 it chanced that I was associated with Mr. Wilson in 
 his work in Maine after he had closed his long pasto- 
 rate with you and had taken up his work in the Pine 
 Tree State. 
 
 It came about in this wise. In the summer of 
 1894, being then a student in Yale Divinity School, 
 I received a four months' appointment to the church 
 in Albany, Me. The appointment came through the 
 Maine Missionary Society of which Dr. J. E. Adams,
 
 54 
 
 of blessed memory was the secretary and Rev. 
 Gowen C. Wilson was the newly appointed mis- 
 sionary-at-large for western Maine. I remember 
 well the letter appointing me to this Albany church 
 for the summer. Secretary Adams was a classmate 
 of my father and a life-long friend of our family and 
 he stated in his letter that if I was of good health 
 and good courage I might include in my parish East 
 Stoneham, which lies in the valley to the west. 
 "That town," he added, "is at present the Sodom 
 of Maine; if you can do anything there I will have 
 our Mr. Wilson put in as much of his time as possible 
 with you." I had the health, and a courage born of 
 inexperience and soon I invaded the Sodom of Maine 
 and later was joined by Mr. Wilson. 
 
 Now if I take a few moments to describe this people 
 and this work I do it because I assume that you are 
 interested to know something of the life to which 
 Mr. Wilson devoted himself at this time. I know 
 nothing of the circumstances which led to his ac- 
 cepting this most arduous task. I only know that 
 the search for such a man had been long on the part 
 of the Maine Missionary Society and that his advent 
 as missionary-at-large into that region was a great 
 and lasting blessing to a very large number of people 
 who came to know and love him. 
 
 East Stoneham, the scene of our labors, is fifteen 
 miles from the railroad; isolation always tends to 
 produce degradation, whether that isolation is caused 
 by the encircling expanse of water as in the islands 
 of the southern sea or by the encircling vastness of 
 the forest. For generations the isolation of the forest
 
 55 
 
 had been producing degradation in this region. It 
 was not only an absolutely churchless, and an equally 
 Sunday less community, as we hold Sunday, but it 
 was openly and shamelessly immoral. The business 
 of the community was, of course, lumber. The Maine 
 settlement at East Stoneham was a center from 
 which, like the fingers of a hand, the roads reached 
 back north and west further into the woods. At 
 the end of the road were the lumber camps and here 
 "Ralph Connor" conditions prevailed. Add to 
 these conditions the fact that Maine's famous pro- 
 hibition law is always powerless to enforce itself, and 
 there was no one there enforcing it, I can leave to 
 your imagination the state of affairs with which we 
 were confronted. 
 
 It is impossible for me to tell you the story of the 
 next two years save in briefest outline. To show 
 you how absolutely dependent upon the visits of 
 Mr. Wilson I was, I need only ask you to imagine 
 this situation: After my second visit to the town at 
 the close of a preaching service in the town hall I 
 asked all interested in establishing a Sunday school 
 to remain. About 125 remained, but no one would 
 or could teach a class. Ultimately it was arranged 
 that the lesson should be taught at a mid-week service 
 to a dozen teachers who were to take charge of the 
 classes on Sunday. 
 
 Mr. Wilson's mature wisdom was invaluable that 
 first summer. He could not be there all the time, 
 but he kept closely in touch with me wherever he 
 was. He advised that the chief reliance be laid upon 
 personal visitation in the homes of the people and
 
 56 
 
 when he could be there we visited these homes togeth- 
 er. You, whose pastor he was for so many years 
 know how great was his sympathy, how tender and 
 tactful, yet how compelling, was his word. We 
 saluted no man by the way. Ours was the message 
 of the gospel. 
 
 A theological seminary course consists of a three 
 year course of study. The two long summer vaca- 
 tions are usually spent by the student in some prac- 
 tical work. Happy is that student whose privilege 
 it is to see the gospel do its work in the hearts of men, 
 and thrice happy is he whose lot it is to be taught 
 pastoral visitation by such a master as was Mr. Wilson. 
 Often times I have recalled some of those visits 
 when I have read the fourth chapter of John, for as 
 Jesus spake the truth to the women at Sychar's well, 
 so directly, yet kindly and tenderly, did Mr. Wilson 
 face the truth and reach results. The church which 
 now stands in that community has many members 
 whose knowledge of Christ came to them through his 
 ministration. 
 
 That first summer from which time the good people 
 of Stoneham date the birth of what they term New 
 Stoneham, that first summer had its humorous side 
 also. I hope I shall not appear to be wandering 
 from my theme if I speak of the way in which Mr. 
 Wilson by the exercise of his rare tact overcame a 
 difficulty which threatened for the moment to make 
 further progress impossible. We learned after three 
 weeks' labor in this region that an Advent church 
 in a town some eight miles distant regarded this as 
 their territory. It is doubtful if the Advents ever
 
 57 
 
 would have gone near the region again had they not 
 heard that the Congregationalists had come in and 
 were beginning a work. They had recently hired a 
 man who chanced to be passing that way and made 
 him their minister. This man they sent over to 
 Stoneham. He was looking for trouble. Mr. Wilson 
 and I chanced to meet him on the occasion of his 
 second visit to the town. We were walking along 
 a woody road making our visits. The man who met 
 us was driving a broken down rig typical of the region. 
 He introduced himself and made known his errand 
 and was beginning to give us his opinion of us when 
 Mr. Wilson took the conversation into his own hands. 
 We spent over an hour talking together. Time was 
 precious, but still that hour was well spent. Did 
 time permit I could tell you of that interview and 
 you would, I doubt not, recognize the tactful, genial, 
 conciliating spirit which must have characterized his 
 long pastorate in your midst. Mr. Wilson easily 
 persuaded his Advent preacher to talk about himself 
 and his own affairs. His salary it appeared was 87 
 cents a day and his potatoes. The stipulation was 
 in this unique form (I afterward learned) in order 
 that at sundown of any day the brethren saw fit 
 the relationship of pastor and people might cease. 
 The man was woefully ignorant and somewhat broken 
 in mind. Mr. Wilson made a friend of him and 
 though we saw something of him later our work was 
 unhindered by him. Indeed this man afforded us 
 an unfailing source of amusement by the ostenta- 
 tious welcome which on all public occasions he gave 
 us into his territory.
 
 58 
 
 During the second summer Mr. Wilson visited me 
 less frequently, but as the work began to material- 
 ize into tangible form I found myself relying upon 
 his good judgment more and more. I had interested 
 New Haven people during the year in that destitute 
 region and during this second summer a church was 
 organized and a building built, furnished and dedi- 
 cated free of debt, and twenty-six members were 
 baptized. Taken up as was my time with details of 
 the work of building and the raising of funds, I came 
 to look forward to Mr. Wilson's visits. They were 
 the moments of rest when I could pause and think 
 what we really were doing. I have spent a little time 
 in this region since those student days and I find that 
 Mr. Wilson's words had sunk deep into the hearts of 
 these people. Had it been possible for all who loved 
 him in western Maine for his ministry in their midst 
 to have sent some token of their love at the time of his 
 burial here you all would have seen how faithful had 
 been his service, how blessed had been his efforts 
 and how great his reward. 
 
 My last word must be a personal one. The day of 
 the dedication of the church in Stoneham was a great 
 day for the town and for those who had entered the 
 Christian life. Two days following the new members 
 of the church were baptised. Some of them preferred 
 the method of immersion. Of course I complied with 
 their wishes, but a two mile ride in late September 
 weather before dry clothes were available resulted in 
 a serious illness. It was again Mr. Wilson who ap- 
 peared. He took me to his home in Woodfords and 
 ultimately sent me on to New Haven. This was the
 
 59 
 
 last time I saw Mr. Wilson, ten years ago this fall. I 
 had associated him entirely with Maine and had for- 
 gotten if I ever knew he had lived in Windsor. It was 
 thus with a real sense of grief and disappointment 
 when I learned on the day after his burial that my 
 good friend and councilor, my associate and my 
 teacher, had been laid to rest in Windsor. Gladly 
 would I have paid this tribute at that time and I es- 
 teem it a privilege that at this time I could bear this 
 testimony to his gracious memory.
 
 60 
 
 ADDRESS BY 
 
 REV. EDWIN P. PARKER, D.D. 
 
 OF HARTFORD. 
 
 By the invitation of your pastor, I am here tonight 
 to say a few words, in all simplicity and sincerity, 
 concerning your former pastor, Mr. Wilson, who was 
 worthy of your affectionate remembrance and grateful 
 commemoration. My invitation was owing to the 
 fact that between Mr. Wilson and myself there 
 existed somewhat intimate relations of personal 
 friendship through many years. The same was true 
 of Mr. Wilson and my honored father. They were 
 for some years near neighbors in the gospel ministry 
 in Maine, and they sustained relations of mutual 
 esteem, confidence and affection. This was known 
 to me, and when Brother Wilson came from Maine 
 to minister in this church so near to my own field of 
 labor, my heart was at once opened to him in hospi- 
 tality. We met and cultivated each the other, as 
 perhaps, but for the reason now given, we might not 
 have done. 
 
 The man whom my father honored, trusted, and 
 loved, for his character and works' sake, was a man, 
 I knew, all worthy of my own confidence and affection. 
 So, upon personal acquaintance, I found him to be, 
 and more and more, on closer acquaintance. It is 
 possible that we were not always perfectly agreed in
 
 61 
 
 our views and opinions, but if we had any disagree- 
 ments they never disturbed our fellowship, and were 
 only like bubbles that break upon the surface of 
 still waters. For he was a most tolerant and chari- 
 table man, and ever minded the great things in which 
 we have agreement, and which are the basis of 
 fellowship, much more than the superficial things in 
 which differences subsist. He had his creed, but 
 never thought of misusing it as a cudgel for com- 
 pulsion or as a bar for exclusion. Christianity was 
 to him a law of the spirit of life, and character was 
 more than creed. 
 
 One does not quite like to dissect the character of 
 a friend, but I may specify some other qualities 
 characteristic of him as a man and minister, some of 
 the chief ingredients of that goodness which we all 
 recognized and revered in him. He was a thoroughly 
 sincere and honest man, intellectually and morally. 
 He could not face two ways, nor be double- 
 minded. There was neither duplicity nor affectation 
 in him. He did not pretend to believe what he did 
 not believe. In thought and action he moved right 
 on. Therefore he secured the confidence and the 
 respect of all people with whom he had to do, and 
 was felt to be stable and trustworthy in all his ways. 
 
 He was a man of tender and broad sympathies. 
 He had a large and warm heart in his manly bosom. 
 This you knew by his cordial greetings, by the pressures 
 of his hand, by the tones of his voice, and by the 
 kindlings of his rugged countenance, all which things 
 carried in them the assurance of genuineness. But 
 you knew it best by intercourse with him, by his
 
 62 
 
 ministrations, by his habitual conduct. His was a 
 great human-heartedness and brotherly kindness. 
 Therefore people came to have an interest in him, 
 perceiving his interest in them and his sympathy 
 with them. 
 
 He was a faithful and devoted man who strove 
 diligently to be worthy of his high and holy calling. 
 He put his heart into his work; and his work, as he 
 conceived it to be, comprehended all that pertains 
 to the welfare of the community. While he was 
 here in Windsor, no church in this whole region had 
 a minister more consecrated to its service, and to 
 the service of the community, than he was. This 
 was the universal feeling concerning him among 
 us all who were his neighbors. He did not idle. 
 He did not fritter away his time. He did not in- 
 dulge himself in diversions. He labored indus- 
 triously in the Gospel for the welfare and peace 
 of the people committed to his charge. This was 
 especially true of him in his pastoral work. He 
 shepherded this flock, not driving them on before 
 him, but going before and leading them on. This is 
 my fragrant recollection of him in this parish. 
 
 He was a modest man, serving the Lord in humil- 
 ity of spirit. Of some persons we say, they are too 
 self-conscious. They seem too much aware of virtue 
 or ability and are incapable of self-forgetfulness. The 
 Ego is foremost with them. No one ever thought any 
 such thing of Mr. Wilson. It was his merit, perhaps, 
 that he was almost too modest in self -estimation, 
 too unforward and self-effacing. He seemed to think 
 chiefly of what it became him to do and to be, and
 
 63 
 
 to have no consciousness of how becoming he was, 
 or of the fine figure he made in what he did and was. 
 On this account, being also a man of singularly 
 sound judgment, whenever he was called up or forth 
 to speak or act, his words had weight, and what he 
 did was appreciated. Probably he might have 
 occupied positions of greater prominence in his 
 profession had he cared to be more aggressive in 
 his own behalf, but he had not the disposition so to 
 do, while anything savoring of an exhibition or 
 advertisement of himself would have been abhorrent 
 to his gentle nature. He may have under-estimated 
 his own abilities, but we all respected and loved him 
 the more on that account, especially as it was obvious 
 that he ever cherished a fine and manly self-respect. 
 He was a godly man, devout, reverent, spiritually- 
 minded, and in communication with divine things. 
 He was filial in spirit towards God, and so fraternal 
 in spirit among men. I have known few ministers 
 who seemed to me more deeply and truly religious 
 than he was. There was a certain sanctity in him 
 but not a trace of sanctimony. Therefore to be 
 in his company and atmosphere was profitable. 
 Unless I am mistaken, Mr. Wilson had not by nature 
 a joyous temperament, but was subject to infirmity 
 in depression of spirits, now and then, as many of 
 the saints of Puritan lineage have been, and yet I 
 recall how keenly he relished mirth and wit in their 
 place, and what a quiet humor he had, and how a 
 clever joke or bright anecdote amused him, and how 
 cheerful, on the whole, he ever was in our company. 
 He kept his troubles to himself, and lightened his
 
 64 
 
 own burdens by bearing those of others, and was 
 a helper and not in the least a discourager of others. 
 
 The book of Lamentations was not a favorite with 
 him. He was a reasonable optimist, as every Chris- 
 tian should be. He lived a plain, simple, honest, 
 righteous, godly and sober life. He exercised a 
 diligent, faithful ministry, in all humility, docility 
 and devotion of spirit. He never knew how much 
 he was esteemed and beloved, nor how much good he 
 did in the world. This Church and parish, may have 
 had, in the long course of their history, abler ministers 
 I know not about that but they have never had 
 and are never likely to have a better than he was. 
 
 It does not seem to me worth while to use more 
 time or words here concerning him. What I have 
 said already is enough, if true, and it is true. These 
 things I could have said in his own presence, except 
 that his beautiful modesty would have forbidden it. 
 I suppose he had some faults, but if I ever knew them 
 I do not recollect them. Like Enoch, he walked with 
 God, and was not, for God took him. But the fra- 
 grance of his life and memory and ministry is still 
 sweet among you and among all his brethren. It is 
 perhaps the highest tribute that we can or do give 
 him, that so often as we call him to remembrance, 
 it is with the wish in our hearts that we were more 
 like him in the essential things of spirit and of 
 character.
 
 65 
 
 SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 26. 
 
 Motto for the day: "Therefore let us also, seeing we are 
 compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside 
 every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let 
 us run with patience the race that is set before us." Heb. 12 : i. 
 
 MORINIING, 
 
 ORDER OF WORSHIP: 
 
 Prelude. 
 
 Doxology. 
 
 Invocation. 
 
 Anthem Te Deum in E flat, Buck. 
 
 Psalter. 
 
 Hymn 1288. 
 
 Scripture Lesson Eph., II. 
 
 Prayer by the Pastor. 
 
 Hymn 1172. 
 
 Offering. 
 
 Sermon by Prof. Clark S. Beardslee, D. D. 
 
 Subject, "The Church To-day." 
 Anthem Rejoice with Jerusalem, Page. 
 
 Prayer and benediction.
 
 66 
 
 SERMON BY 
 
 PROF. CLARK S. BEARDSLEE, D.D. 
 
 OF WINDSOR. 
 
 THE CHURCH TODAY. 
 
 Here is a vast theme; voices of many ages and 
 climes clamor to be heard; the moments at our 
 command are hung on flitting wings; and speech is 
 a clumsy instrument. All of you who are posed for 
 listening need to lend a lively and far-ranging imag- 
 ination to abundantly supplement what any speaker 
 can avail to say. As at once an atmosphere, and a 
 background and an outline of thought, let us employ 
 this ancient lyric of Hebrew praise, the forty-eighth 
 Psalm. Here are the essential marks of the church 
 today, though nicely phrased to portray the Zion 
 of the far-ancient Hebrew past. 
 Jehovah is majestic, and hallelujahs become him 
 
 well, 
 
 In the city of our God, the mountain of his holiness, 
 Fair for elevation, the delight of the whole earth 
 Mount Zion, the headland of the North, the city of 
 
 the great king. 
 
 In her palaces God is known for a refuge. 
 For lo, the kings are assembled; they pass along 
 
 together ; 
 
 They look; so they wonder; they fear; they fly. 
 Terror grapples them there; writhing as of a trav- 
 ailing woman.
 
 67 
 
 By the east wind thou shatterest merchantmen of 
 
 Tarshish. 
 As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the 
 
 Lord of hosts, in the city of our God. 
 God is confirming her forever. 
 We ponder, O God, thy loving-kindness in the midst 
 
 of thy temple. 
 As thy name, O God, so are thy hallelujahs at the ends 
 
 of the earth. 
 
 Thy right hand is filled with righteousness. 
 Mount Zion is glad; the daughters of Judah exult 
 
 because of thy judgments. 
 Walk about Zion, and encircle her; 
 Make a list of her majestic towers ; 
 Consider attentively her resources ; 
 Distinguish her palaces ; 
 
 That ye may recite it to the generation following. 
 For this God is our God forever and ever. 
 He will be our guide at death. 
 
 Here is something commanding our eye at the very 
 start. The church today and the Zion of the Psalm- 
 ist are deeply one. The glory of each is flashed from 
 a single poetic strain ; the music of each alike is fully 
 resonant from the same lyric of religious praise. 
 The songs in which our hearts unite in this anniver- 
 sary time, even though our share therein is limited 
 to a single fleeting hour, are mellow and sacred with 
 a hoary age. This Psalm outdates the Odes of 
 Pindar; it antedates the Parthenon. Its lambent 
 eye surveyed the career of Alexander. It has seen 
 all the power and splendor and pride of mighty Rome 
 swell and fail. When the Crusades flashed out in 
 their surrounding night, this Psalm had been shining 
 evenly for more than a millennium. The arching 
 history of this fair ode to Zion overspreads the whole
 
 68 
 
 career of Christendom. And still its tuneful strains 
 are congenial melodies everywhere among the choicest 
 harmonies of worshipping Christianity. This shows 
 the church today to be no parvenu, no boastful, 
 unapproved pretender. She has a goodly lineage. 
 She is freighted with a priceless heritage, accumu- 
 lated and cherished out of teeming centuries of human 
 life. The church today stands tested and approved. 
 She has weathered every sort of storm, outlived 
 every kind of warfare, silenced every type of chal- 
 lenge, and stands today under the unflecked banner 
 of this goodly, ancient Psalm, with the very beauty 
 of heaven upon her open brow, and the song of 
 perennial rejoicing in her indomitable and kindly 
 heart. This choice truth we may lodge and cherish 
 in our thought: all the goodly record of our two 
 hundred and seventy-five years, with all its stimu- 
 lation of our grateful pride, is literally but a single 
 tithe of the far ampler record of that larger fellow- 
 ship in the Zion of God in which we may have free 
 share. This precious truth this precious Psalm 
 distinctly attests 
 
 Herein stands forth to view the Church's unity. 
 Zion is forever one. One Israel, one Jehovah, one 
 Jerusalem, one Temple, one Psalter of praise. Such 
 is Zion, and forever and unchangeably the same is 
 the Church of Christ. It is not the Church of Luther. 
 It is not the Church of Wesley. It is not the Church 
 of Rome. It is not the Established; nor is it the 
 Nonconformed. This Church in which our names 
 are registered is not a sect. It is Zion, the City of 
 the Great King. Men forever and everywhere
 
 voice complaints against the Church, meaning, as a 
 rule, some limited sect of some local, mortal group of 
 men. But all such jibes are misdirected; and they 
 always miss the mark. We who live and cluster in 
 our narrow time and sphere within these sheltering 
 walls are not the Zion of God. Our lives are flecked 
 with humbling blemishes. But the Church is all- 
 glorious. The marks of Zion are the glorious traits 
 of God; and so through all the changing centuries, 
 embracing all our sects and purging all our sins, 
 Zion stands undivided and undimmed, the fair and 
 complete reflection of the holy unity of God. In 
 the light of these reflections consider the intrinsic 
 characteristics of the Church today. 
 
 1. Zion stands for Rectitude. The right hand 
 of our God, so this Psalm proclaims, is full of right- 
 eousness. "Full of righteousness." Here is some- 
 thing for all humanity to observe. Here is no 
 flinching. This is no note of easy, ethical indifference. 
 It is a sovereign, outright note, ancient and 
 enduring as the sun, at once an ideal, an order, 
 a standard, a warning, and an award. As solid as 
 is equity, so solid is Zion. As beautiful as is fidelity, 
 so beautiful is Zion. As unanswerable as is truth, 
 so unanswerable is Zion. As sovereign as is justice, 
 so sovereign is Zion. As prevailing as is sincerity, 
 so prevailing is Zion. Her King's right hand is full 
 of righteousness. This means the proposition of 
 even honor everywhere. Children must be filial, 
 brothers must be fraternal, neighbors must be 
 obliging, women must be pure, men must have 
 honor, courts must be fair, markets must be frank,
 
 70 
 
 commerce must be humane, altars must be holy, 
 beneficiaries must be thankful, subjects must be 
 humble, all men must always be true. 
 
 Conversely, unrighteousness will be omnipotently 
 rebuked. Pretense and hypocrisy and lies shall be 
 uncovered. Greed and extortion and theft shall 
 irresistibly be brought home. Disobedience and 
 ingratitude and pride shall be smitten full in the 
 face. False judgment and false weights and false 
 speech must all be made good. Men must be honest. 
 Boys must be fair. Cheating is wrong. Cruelty 
 must stop. Blasphemy is a sin. All iniquity is a 
 disgrace. Wrongs must be set right. 
 
 These are the declarations of Zion. clear as a bell 
 every one, insistent, robust. She is a tireless, eternal, 
 invincible herald of honesty. She is replete with 
 righteousness. 
 
 2. Zion keeps bright the testimonials of Jehovah's 
 loving-kindness. "We have thought of thy loving- 
 kindness, O God, in the midst of thy temple." Zion 
 keeps fragrant among men the memories of the good- 
 ness of God. Every year (this is her published 
 ideal) she stands among God's harvest fields, offering 
 up to the all-pitying Father the first-fruits of the 
 fields, in appealing summons to all dependent men 
 to unite as a race in thank-offering and praise to God. 
 Zion, in her daily prayer keeps green upon the earth 
 the precious facts of the heavenly Father's daily care. 
 Every altar and sacrifice of Zion is an eloquent 
 report to human ears of the redeeming mercy of the 
 Lord. It is in Zion that all the power of the all- 
 embracing love of God in Jesus Christ is unveiled.
 
 71 
 
 Zion alone hath salvation. In Zion only hath an 
 availing Saviour appeared. Jesus Christ is Zion's 
 true-born King. By him the paralytic is healed, 
 and the harlot and publican and thief accompanied 
 into Paradise. In the midst of the temple of Zion 
 alone, but in the midst of the temple of Zion forever- 
 more, is this transcendent verity kept resounding in 
 the earth. The altar of Zion has become a throne, 
 where saving mercy reigns supreme. The Church 
 today is keeping alive in earth an everlasting memorial 
 of the redeeming love of God. 
 
 3. Zion has a reverend Majesty. It is the city 
 of a King. It stands in all the earth supreme. Its 
 ascendency is unapproachable. Other majesties have 
 often dared to challenge the majesty of God, parading 
 before the walls of Jerusalem with their proudest 
 combination of power and glory and renown. "Kings 
 passed by." But he who rides upon the clouds, and 
 circumscribes the seas, and marshalls forth the stars, 
 eclipses all their brightness easily. "They saw, they 
 marvelled, they fled." Zion's righteousness and 
 grace, the twin virtues of the infinite and holy God, 
 outrank, overtop, and out-last all rivals. And being 
 the city of such a King, Zion is a home of palaces. 
 All her citizens are of royal blood. "Consider her 
 palaces." Mark that plural. The followers of Christ 
 sit upon thrones. The faithful among his stewards 
 are stationed over cities. Here is the true cosmopo- 
 lis. Its one scepter of righteousness, its one altar 
 of world-saving mercy, its throne of Jehovah com- 
 bine to constitute it irrepealably sovereign. Thus 
 Zion hath an irreducible majesty. Her inwrought,
 
 72 
 
 agelong plea for righteousness, and her proffer of 
 saving grace have contributed to her an intrinsic 
 dignity with which no other dignity on earth can 
 ever compare. 
 
 4. Zion has free share in God's Invincibility. 
 God's fellowship within her walls imparts to her being 
 his immortality. He "establishes her forever." 
 He is "her God forever and ever." The home of His 
 righteousness and the object of His love, she can never 
 pass under the sway of death. Citizens of such a 
 city carry an impenetrable shield. Walls built from 
 quarries of truth are impregnable. There is no dis- 
 lodging such as find refuge in God, though they be 
 the least of earth's little ones. Truth and grace are 
 royal, dominant, eternal, beyond all reach of humil- 
 iation or decay. Nations rise and perish, sects 
 emerge and disappear, synagogues and altars crumble 
 into dust; but Zion holds together and holds on, 
 imperishable and intact, safe in an indefeasible cov- 
 enant with a faithful God. 
 
 Such is the certain sentiment of this undying 
 Psalm; and such is our assured, inwrought convic- 
 tion here today. This has been our fathers' church; 
 and it shall indubitably be our children's sanctuary, 
 and the open gate to Heaven for all who duly respect 
 the majesty and equity and mercy of our God, till 
 time shall fail. The righteousness with which God's 
 hand is full, and to which our faith adheres, shall 
 surely outlast these pillars and walls and even these 
 surrounding hills. And so with His love in Christ; 
 that love is not a force that wearies and wanes. It 
 flows even and forever, more reliable in its upbearing
 
 73 
 
 power than any ocean tide. These are "bulwarks" 
 that never crumble. 
 
 5. In Zion are melodious Hallelujahs. She en- 
 folds one lasting, uplifting theme of praise. "Great 
 is the Lord, and greatly to be praised." Here virile 
 hallelujahs are in place, by reason of the towering 
 grandeur of the King. Here are upspringing, uni- 
 versal motives for genuine jubilation. God is the 
 "joy of the whole earth." Given such an indwelling 
 God, there will be such outpouring praise. The glory 
 of God and the hallelujahs of men will find an equi- 
 librium. "According to thy name so is thy praise." 
 For very welling gladness choral bands will form 
 spontaneously, and the daughters of Judah in light, 
 exultant movements of visible, ordered harmony will 
 set in outer form the inner rhythms of religious joy. 
 Get in tune and swing with the stately melody of this 
 Psalm. Bring your heart to beat in harmony with 
 all these Psalms in joyful turn. What a splendid 
 burst of praise they have opened and upheld upon 
 the earth. And then all other hymns and melodies 
 of holy praise lend to each a listening hour and a 
 listening ear when would you ever tire ? and when 
 would you ever end? Explore but one that grand 
 historic ode in solemn praise of the blessed God 
 Te Deum Laudamus. What a worldfilling new 
 wealth of pure and wholesome feeling that single 
 hymn has poured through the open souls of men up 
 to God! There is power and value in that one sal- 
 utation to Jehovah to unify and satisfy all the human 
 race. And nowhere could that uplifting song, so 
 seemly and so superb, have been engendered and
 
 74 
 
 arranged, but in the teeming bosom of the Church 
 of God. Here is one of the fairest features of this 
 fairest fellowship of men. Zion is the original and 
 eternal home of holy song. 
 
 Such are the marks of Zion, outstanding, enduring, 
 unfading, as they stand and shine and chant their 
 message in this most elegant handiwork of most 
 ancient art. Two concluding remarks must be made. 
 
 Zion deserves examination. Such a city may not 
 be lightly disregarded and passed by. They who 
 assume to pour scorn upon her might more wisely 
 scorn the sky. She should rather be studied with 
 eager, reverent attention. "Walk about Zion, and 
 go round about her. Tell the towers thereof. Mark 
 ye well her bulwarks, Consider her palaces." Such 
 is the earnest, world-appealing challenge of this 
 Psalm. Zion is worthy of the study of the keenest 
 eyes of able, honest men; and of the deepest intui- 
 tion of ardent, eager women. This is a proposition 
 that no true soul can prudently disdain. Here are 
 dignities and strongholds and resources, here are 
 towers and vantages and outlooks, here are chorals 
 and melodies and benedictions, here are equities and 
 mercies and judgments fit to fix and reward any 
 mind's minute, long-drawn examination. Here are 
 stores of interior wealth that no man may afford to 
 leave unexplored. They ought to be soberly con- 
 sidered. 
 
 Zion deserves to be commended. "Tell it to the 
 generation following." Here is a supreme and con- 
 cluding test. How do you rate your own children? 
 Let every man reply. Having in view the future of
 
 75 
 
 your own offspring, what will you ultimately recom- 
 mend? Zion proffers a precious answer to such a 
 sobering inquiry as that. Tell your little ones of 
 God, of Zion, of a refuge in Jehovah, of even right- 
 eousness, of heavenly goodness, of saving love, of 
 things deathlessly invincible, of joys that never stale, 
 of Psalms in which a world may fitly join. Here is a 
 lesson for fathers and mothers of every day. Zion 
 should be their foremost pride. To her palaces they 
 should frequently and statedly resort, with all their 
 children in their train, for study, prayer and praise. 
 An ancient Jewish proverb says: "Count no man 
 happy until he dies; for a man becomes known in 
 his children." Let prayerless, songless, deceitful 
 and unmerciful parents pause right here and forecast 
 the products of their lives in the sensitive soil of their 
 own children's lives. Oh, that all parents would so 
 behave toward Zion as to win instinctively to those 
 goodly palaces the hearty homage of their children 
 and their children's children unto the remotest 
 generation. 
 
 Then Zion, the city of God will be to us at once a 
 most precious Dowry and a most arousing Ideal. 
 Then our souls may be happily engaged at once in 
 grateful memories and in confident prophecies. 
 Then out of a cherished History will stand forth the 
 goodly stature of a cherished Hope. Thus with 
 due respect to all the days now past and keen antici- 
 pation of all the days to come we may most properly 
 honor this notable Anniversary Day as it passes by
 
 SUNDAY EVENING, NOV. 26. 
 
 A congregation of about 350 completely filled the 
 Parish House for the closing service. The Scripture 
 was read and prayer offered by Rev. Edward O. 
 Grisbrook of Poquonock. The choir repeated the 
 two old anthems which had been sung the previous 
 Sunday morning, "Jerusalem My Glorious Home," 
 and "Sound the Loud Timbrel." The preacher was 
 the Rev. Rockwell Harmon Potter, Pastor of the 
 First Church, Hartford. An incomplete report of 
 the sermon follows :
 
 77 
 
 SERMON BY 
 
 REV. ROCKWELL HARMON POTTER, 
 
 OF HARTFORD. 
 
 THE APOSTLE'S HOPE 
 FOR A CHURCH WITH A HISTORY. 
 
 By way of introduction, Mr. Potter said that the 
 question as to the oldest church did not cause his con- 
 gregation any difficulty as the church in Hartford had 
 long recognized the claims of the Windsor congrega- 
 tion and he brought greetings from the First Church 
 of Christ in Hartford to her elder sister in Windsor. 
 His text was from Hebrews VI:12, "That ye be not 
 sluggish but imitators of those who through faith 
 and patience inherit the promises." 
 
 Mr. Potter said that the words expressed the 
 hope of the apostle for a church with a history. 
 He was addressing a Christian congregation of the 
 first century that had lived a little more than a gen- 
 eration in the new faith. He reviews with sadness 
 and shame their present condition, observing that 
 now, when they ought to have learned the larger 
 truths of Christianity and ought to be sturdy repre- 
 sentatives of an intellectual and spiritual faith, able 
 to follow and apprehend and to be inspired by the 
 loftiest Christian teaching, they are in an attitude
 
 78 
 
 of indifference, dulled in spiritual sense, making it 
 necessary for their teacher to repeat with wearisome 
 iteration the first truths of the faith. Their intel- 
 lects lack the fine edge and discernment and the 
 broad and clear interpretative power with which, 
 alone, the truth is to be apprehended and utilized. 
 
 It is against the background of the dangers of a 
 church with a history, that he gives expression to 
 his hope for such a church. Following his example 
 it is well to look for a moment at those dangers. The 
 church with a history is in danger of substituting 
 formalism for faith. In a church which has existed 
 for nine generations in practically one place, in which 
 generation has succeeded generation in the same 
 practises of the faith, there is grave peril, even though 
 that church is a Puritan church, lest formalism be 
 substituted for faith as the years add themselves to 
 the reckoning. 
 
 There is no danger that the technical perils of 
 ritualism and sacramentalism will corrupt the order 
 of worship or the manner of prayer and praise but, 
 rather, that the old way of doing things, however 
 simple once, may become stereotyped so that a man 
 does what his father did, not because he finds what 
 his father found, but because it is proper that a respect- 
 able family practice should not be discontinued. 
 When the services of the church, the reading of the 
 Bible, and the place and time of prayer begin to be 
 insulated from the habits of a man's living so that 
 his idea of God today is no larger than it was yester- 
 day and his conception of faith is no clearer than it 
 was five years ago it is evident that his mind has
 
 79 
 
 become dulled and sluggish in spiritual things and is 
 in peril of that stagnation which precedes death. 
 
 There is also a stagnation or dulness that imperils 
 a church with a history when it shows indifference 
 to the needs of men and a neglect of those gracious 
 ministries of the faith which the church is set in this 
 world to give. In the great eras of the church it has 
 been alert, agile, and observant of opportunities for 
 service. It has been responsive to human needs and 
 distress. The peril of a church with a history is that, 
 as the years move on, she may become blind to the 
 needs of men about her, insensible to conditions that 
 call for her ministry, self -satisfied, indolent, lethargic, 
 sleepy, disregarding the demands upon her energies. 
 In such peril she stands when pews are well filled, 
 her services well attended, her treasury well provided 
 for. Let her be careful then lest she forget the poor, 
 the stranger, the immigrant, the defective and the 
 delinquent classes. Among these she should find 
 her highest mission. If she fails in this work she 
 proves a traitor to her Lord. 
 
 The church with a history should also be careful 
 lest the moral fiber of her members become flabby 
 and weak, lest the ethical sense of her people be 
 blinded through long familiarity with the commands 
 of the Scriptures and inadequately interpret the gos- 
 pel. The sons of men whose ethical sense was un- 
 erring and whose moral fiber was of the stuff of which 
 heroes are made will sometimes be found using their 
 heritage of Christian liberty as a cheap license to 
 dally with sin, to palliate it in others and to excuse 
 it in themselves. They become blind as bats upon
 
 80 
 
 matters of personal morality and are unable to see 
 that fine drawn line of fire which God draws in every 
 human life. 
 
 The speaker said that in dwelling so long upon the 
 perils of a church with a history, he had followed 
 the example of the author of the text. It was the 
 hope of the apostle that those whom he addressed 
 would throw off their sluggishness and become wor- 
 thy successors, not only of the first Christians but 
 also of the earlier heroes of Israel. 
 
 We have large ground for hope for a church which 
 has endured for so many years. The record of 275 
 years is eloquent with the faith and virtue of the men, 
 who, in this fellowship, offered prayer and praise and 
 is redolent with the tenderness and grace of those, who 
 with their lives here, adorned the doctrine of our Lord. 
 The hope for the church is that its members will prove 
 worthy successors to those who, through faith and 
 patience, have inherited the promises of God. Con- 
 necticut's history during this generation will call for 
 men of as clear vision of the things of the faith, of as 
 ready sympathy for practical service and of as clear 
 ethical insight as has any preceding one. The speaker 
 said that he hoped the Church of Christ in Windsor 
 would contribute to the solution of Twentieth Cen- 
 tury problems men of the sterling integrity, the 
 broad sympathies and the generous purposes of those 
 who laid the foundations of this their earthly Zion.
 
 81 
 
 AS TO ORIGIN AND EARLY 
 MIGRATIONS. 
 
 In the preface of the History of the Town of Dor- 
 chester, published in 1859, by a committee of the 
 Dorchester Antiquarian and Historical Society, it 
 is stated that when "a large number of the prominent 
 men of the first settlers" removed to Connecticut, 
 they took with them the church records; and that 
 "the present town record book probably commenced 
 with the settlement in 1630, but the first two leaves, 
 containing four pages, which may be supposed 
 to have been the record of the first transactions of 
 the plantation, are wanting." 
 
 Thus the records of the genesis and first years of 
 the Windsor Church may have started from Dor- 
 chester, but so far as appears, no one has ever seen 
 them since. 
 
 In the absence of these records, we must be con- 
 tent to remain in ignorance upon many details of 
 that early history. What was the method of pro- 
 cedure on that eventful day in Plymouth? Was 
 a creed adopted? and if so, what were its articles? 
 What was the form of church covenant used? How 
 was the fitness of persons for church membership de- 
 termined? These and other like questions would, 
 no doubt, be answered by these lost memorials;
 
 82 
 
 and yet, without them the salient facts of the church's 
 origin and early movements have come down to us 
 in other writings. 
 
 The source of our knowledge of the beginnings of 
 the church in England is mainly a little book written 
 by Roger Clap, the quaint title page of which is as 
 follows: "Memoirs of Capt. Roger Clap. Relating 
 some of God's Remarkable Providences to Him, in 
 bringing him into New-England; and some of the 
 Straits and Afflictions, the Good People met with 
 here in their Beginnings. And instructing, Counsel- 
 ling, Directing and Commanding his Children and 
 Children's Children, and Household, to serve the Lord 
 in their Generations to the latest Posterity. Boston 
 in New- England. Printed by B. Green, 1731." 
 
 Other editions were printed in 1844 and 1854. 
 
 The passage in this book which bears upon the 
 origin of the church is here quoted entire: 
 
 "I gave you a hint towards the beginning, that I 
 came out of Plymouth in Devon, the 20th of March, 
 and arrived at Nantasket (now Hull) the 30th of 
 May, 1630. Now this is further to inform you, that 
 there came many Godly Families in that Ship. We 
 were of Passengers many in Number (besides Sea- 
 men) of good Rank. Two of our Magistrates came 
 with us, viz: Mr. Rossiter and Mr. Ludlow. These 
 godly People resolved to live together; and therefore 
 as they had made choice of those two Revd. Servants 
 of God, Mr. John Warham and Mr. John Maverick 
 to be their ministers, so they kept a solemn Day of 
 Fasting in New Hospital in Plymouth in England, 
 spending it in Preaching and Praying: where that
 
 83 
 
 worthy Man of God, Mr. John White of Dorchester 
 in Dorset was present, and Preached unto us the Word 
 of God, in 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 Revd. Mr. Warhawt and Mr. 
 Maverick did accept thereof, and expressed the same. 
 So we came, by the good Hand of the Lord, through 
 the Deeps comfortably; having Preaching or Ex- 
 pounding of the Word of God every Day for Ten Weeks 
 together, by our Ministers. When we came to 
 Nantasket, Capt. Squeb, who was Captain of that 
 great Ship of Four Hundred Tons, would not bring 
 us into Charles River, as he was bound to do; but, 
 put us ashore and our Goods on Nantasket Point, and 
 left us to shift for ourselves in a forlorn Place in this 
 Wilderness. But as it pleased God, we got a Boat 
 of some old Planters, and laded her with Goods, and 
 some able Men well Armed went in her unto Charles- 
 town : where we found some Wigwams and one House, 
 and in the House there was a Man which had a boiled 
 Bass, but no Bread that we see ; but we did eat of his 
 Bass, and then went up Charles River, until the River 
 grew narrow and shallow, and there we landed our 
 Goods with much Labour and Toil, the Bank being 
 steep. And Night coming on, we were informed that 
 there were hard by us Three Hundred Indians: One 
 English Man that could speak the Indian Language 
 (an old Planter) went to them and advised them not 
 to come near us in the Night; and they harkened to 
 his Counsel, and came not. I myself was one of the 
 Centinels that first Night; Our Captain was a Low
 
 84 
 
 Country Souldier, one Mr. Southcot, a brave Souldier. 
 In the Morning some of the Indians came and stood 
 at a distance off, looking at us, but came not near 
 us : but when they had been a while in view, some of 
 them came and held out a great Bass toward us; 
 so we sent a Man with a Bisket, and changed the 
 Cake for the Bass. Afterwards they supplied us with 
 Bass, exchanging a Bass for a Bisket Cake, and were 
 very friendly unto us." 
 
 Touching the migration of the church from Dor- 
 chester to Windsor several statements from early 
 sources are brought together here. The people who 
 came in the Mary and John had been increased by 
 a considerable number of later arrivals, so that, when 
 the Windsor emigrants came away, enough were left 
 of the original settlers, with the new comers, to form 
 a new church in Dorchester. The Rev. Richard 
 Mather was prevailed upon to be the minister of 
 this new foundation. 
 
 Winthrop's Journal, vol. I, p. 183, 1636, says: 
 
 "Mr. Mather and others, of Dorchester, intending to 
 begin a new church there (a great part of the old one 
 being gone to Connecticut), desired the approbation 
 of the other churches and the magistrates." 
 
 A council was convened April 1, 1636, for the pur- 
 pose of organizing this new church and of settling 
 Mr. Mather into the office of minister. 
 
 But when the prospective members, in the words 
 of Winthrop, proceeded "to manifest the work of 
 God's grace in themselves, the churches, by their 
 elders, and the magistrates, etc., thought them not 
 meet, at present, to be the foundation of a church
 
 85 
 
 and thereupon they were content to forbear to join 
 till further consideration." 
 
 One member of this council was the Rev. Thomas 
 Shepherd of Newtown, now Cambridge. He took 
 a leading part in the council, and, after returning 
 home, wrote a letter to Mr. Mather assuring him of 
 his friendliness and endeavoring to console him upon 
 the failure to secure the approbation of the magis- 
 trates and neighboring churches. To this letter Mr. 
 Mather replied, stating his regret that "stones so 
 unhammered and unhewn" had been brought for 
 the new structure. This paragraph from Mr. 
 Mather's letter bears upon the removal of the old 
 church to Windsor. "But you will say, why, then, 
 did you present yourself with the people before the 
 Lord and the churches? I will tell you the truth 
 therein. They pressed me into it with much impor- 
 tunity, and so did others also, till I was ashamed to 
 deny any longer, and laid it on me as a thing to which 
 I was bound in conscience to assent; because, if I 
 yielded not to join, there would be, said they, no 
 church at all in this place, and so a tribe, as it were, 
 should perish out of Israel, and all through my de- 
 fault." (Albro's Life of Shepherd, p. 219). 
 
 "Unhammered and unhewn" though the stones 
 may have been, the first of April, a few months seem 
 to have been sufficient, with the zeal of the people 
 and their eagerness for church privileges, to shape 
 them for their places in the temple. For a second 
 council was called the 23rd of August, the same 
 year, and on that day the new church in Dorchester 
 was constituted with the same Richard Mather for 
 its minister.
 
 86 
 
 Increase Mather, son of Richard, says: "The church 
 which was first planted in that place, being removed 
 with the Reverend Mr. Warham to Connecticut, 
 there was an Essay towards Gathering a Church 
 April 1, 1636." (Life and Death of Rev. Richard 
 Mather, edition of 1850, p. 73). 
 
 Cotton Mather, son of Increase, passes on the same 
 testimony: "The church formerly planted there 
 being transplanted with Mr. Warham to Connecticut, 
 another church was now gathered here Aug. 23, 1636, 
 by whose choice Mr. Mather was now become their 
 teacher." (Magnalia, vol. I, p. 450.) 
 
 These citations are sufficient to show, beyond any 
 reasonable doubt, that the original church came to 
 Windsor with Mr. Warham previous to April 1, 1636, 
 the date on which the council met to institute a new 
 church in Dorchester. A considerable proportion of 
 the original settlers remained in Dorchester, but if the 
 church in the judgment of the people of the Bay had re- 
 mained there, what possible need of a council to organ- 
 ize a new one ? All references to the matter agree that 
 the church over which Richard Mather was set, Aug. 
 23, 1636, was a new foundation. A new creed was 
 adopted that day. 
 
 Thus the church which had been in Dorchester 
 for six years as an organized institution disappeared 
 as such from that place. What became of it? Did 
 it remove, in the capacity of an organized society, 
 to Windsor? That it did so, a careful reading of the 
 foregoing citations would seem to be convincing. 
 If further evidence were needed the facts relating 
 to the settlement of the church here would be con-
 
 87 
 
 elusive. Mr. Warham and his people, beyond doubt, 
 assumed that when they arrived here they were a 
 church. They undertook the functions of a church at 
 once. So far as is known, no one ever thought of 
 such a thing as "gathering" a new church, or of re- 
 constituting the old one, in this new location. In 
 the assumption of the people themselves, unques- 
 tioned, so far as known, by neighboring churches, 
 magistrates, or any others in their generation, they 
 were in regular church estate when they came 
 through the wilderness and at the moment they 
 pitched camp by the Connecticut River. In the 
 light of such considerations the claim that the Windsor 
 Church is the original Dorchester church transplanted 
 becomes one of the certainties of history. 
 
 A good discussion of the subject here touched upon 
 may be found in the Historical Address of Rev. G. 
 C. Wilson, delivered on the occasion of the Quarter 
 Millennial of the church in 1880, and printed in the 
 record of that celebration: Also in the papers and 
 addresses of the late Dea. Jabez H. Hay den. [R. N.]