elected a member of the school committee, on which he served several
years. That he sought to do his duty on the school board faithfully
is attested by the resolution--heroic it will seem to some--which he
recorded on December 8, 1844. “Having never till this time been fully
convinced of the importance of mathematics in strengthening the mind
and preparing it to investigate truth, and never having been able to
conquer my dislike for them till led to them by the study of philosophy
and an impression of the interdependence of all philosophy and all
science, I now begin at the bottom and determine to push my researches
as far as possible and to set down whatever may be worthy of note. I
this day commenced Emerson’s Arithmetic in order to be prepared to
do my duty thoroughly as one of the superintending committee.” As
committeeman, he did more than make a perfunctory visit twice a term.
He kept his eyes open for the alert, promising, studious lad. Such a
boy he encouraged, advised concerning his studies, and often urged to
go to Master Swallow’s school in Brunswick and fit for college. These
boys he picked carefully, for he didn’t believe in “wasting nails by
driving them into rotten wood.”
From the first of his ministry to the very end, Mr. Kellogg showed an
instinctive knowledge of boys, and originality in dealing with them.
Any just estimate of his work and character must rate high his tact in
handling and influencing boys. Wherever he preached, boys were quick to
see that he was their friend, a man after their own heart. They soon
found that this unconventional, simple, eloquent little man, who had a
way of throwing his arm over a boy’s shoulder and walking home from
the evening meeting with him, was more than an ordinary preacher. They
found that he could understand them. They could tell him their jokes
and their serious plans, and he could see through their eyes and hear
through their ears. They found that he, more perhaps than any other man
they had ever known, was all the time at heart a boy himself; that he
was interested in them not simply as a professional duty, but because
he couldn’t help it. He loved boys, was happy in their companionship,
and delighted to talk of his own boyhood and college days,--of the
time when the frogs by croaking “K’logg, K’logg,” called him away from
school, or when he in recitation informed his dignified professor that
Polycarp was one of the _many_ daughters of Mr. Carp. He would swim and
sail and farm and fish with the boys in his parish, and then, at an
unexpected moment, but in a manner not repellent, he would kneel down
in their boat or in the field by the side of a cock of hay or a shock
of corn and pray with them.
Many men to-day who were born and bred in Harpswell like to tell of
the way he won and kept their friendship. Here, for example, was a
boy whom he was taking to Portland in his boat; the youngster felt
very proud, for his grandmother had intrusted to him her eggs to take
to market. But alas! in disembarking he dropped the basket, and the
eggs were smashed. The boy’s extremity, however, was the preacher’s
opportunity. By paying for those eggs from his own pocketbook, he saved
the young marketman no end of humiliation, and bound him to his soul
with a hoop of steel.
If one may judge by his journal and correspondence, no work that Mr.
Kellogg did during his long life afforded him greater satisfaction or
yielded larger returns in affection and gratitude and right living than
his work with boys. When, for instance, he had been on Harpswell Neck
less than a year, he heard that a schooner had put into Potts’s Point,
some ten miles below his home, with a boy on board who had broken his
leg. He knew that this boy on a small schooner in a strange place would
need sadly the comforts of home. He hastened to him, brought him to
his boarding-place, put him in his own bed, and nursed him as he would
have nursed a son. When the boy was able to go to sea again, having no
money, he could repay his benefactor for all the trouble and expense he
had been, only with words of kindness and gratitude. Years afterwards,
however, when Mr. Kellogg was preaching in Boston, a well-dressed man
and woman came into the sailors’ church, and appeared much interested
in the sermon. At the close of the service they came forward and spoke
to the preacher. The boy had now become a man--the mate of a large
ship. The bread which the young minister had cast upon the waters
now returned to him after twenty years, in the words of affection
and encouragement with which this man and his wife expressed their
gratitude, also in the $50 which, as they bade him good-by, they left
in his hand.
For some years Bowdoin College, recognizing Mr. Kellogg’s power in
getting at the heart of boys, had the custom of sending to him some
of the students whom it rusticated; and his strong, manly character
brought more than one boy to his better self. That his treatment of
these boys was not exactly that of Squeers, this instance will show.
One young fellow whom the college sent him was especially rebellious
at first. Through cheap story papers he had come cheek by jowl with
old Sleuth and his boon companions, and he sought to emulate them
by carrying a revolver and a dirk knife. Mr. Kellogg told him that
as he would not find any Indians or many wild beasts down there, he
had better surrender his weapons. This the young man did after much
reluctance. During the first day, Mr. Kellogg left him to himself, as
he was inclined to sulk. In the evening he began to talk to the boy
indifferently at first, afterwards kindly. All the time--lover-like--he
kept edging up nearer to him on the big sofa, and finally in his
genuine, whole-souled way, put his hand affectionately on the lad’s
shoulder. To such treatment the young fellow was not accustomed. It was
so different from his over-stern father’s that it threw him entirely
off his guard. He could not withstand the man’s kindly interest and
genuine manner. His rebellious spirit was broken. The boy dreaded his
father’s rebuke, and the next day, unknown to him, Mr. Kellogg wrote
to his mother, telling all about her son and urging that the father
write to him kindly and not sternly. A few days after this the young
fellow was surprised and delighted to receive from home a letter of
forgiveness and encouragement.
On July 4, there was to be a celebration in Portland. The boy wished
but did not expect to go. “Well,” said Mr. Kellogg one day after they
had been speaking of the matter, “I am afraid you can’t go. I have
no authority to let you. But, then, I really want to attend that
celebration myself, and I can’t be expected to leave you at home
alone.” When the day of celebration came, the student and the preacher
could have been seen tramping the streets of Portland, both, no doubt,
having a right royal good time.
A few years ago, the heart of the aged minister was uplifted by the
assurance that he had dealt aright with this high-spirited lad.
A successful business man, the vice-president of a large western
railroad, came many miles to look again into his kindly face and to
tell him that those weeks of companionship full of honest counsel
marked the turning-point in his life.
For the first five years of his life in Harpswell, Mr. Kellogg boarded
at the home of one of his parishioners, Mr. Joseph Eaton. Here his
mother spent the summers with him, his father having died in 1843. In
1849 he bought a farm of thirty-five acres at North Harpswell, and at
once began to build a house that he might provide a suitable home for
his lame and aged mother. The location of this house is an attractive
one. It is on the western side of Harpswell Neck, a half-mile or so
from the main-travelled road. From it the land slopes gently an eighth
of a mile, perhaps, to the shore of Middle Bay. From the windows of the
house which he here built, one peeping through the oaks and spruces on
a summer’s day may see to the west, across the sparkling water of the
channel, the green sloping bank of Simpson’s Point, or to the south
Birch and Scrag islands and several of the other 363 which dot the
waters of Casco Bay. The house itself is a wooden, two-story, L-shaped
farm-house facing the west, bespeaking nothing of luxury, but large
enough to be airy in the summer, and in the winter a good place, as
Captain Rhines would say, in which to ride out the storm.
Much of the material of which the house is made Mr. Kellogg brought
here from different parts of his parish; some strong timbers from
Ragged Island, three miles out at sea, fine sand for his mortar from
Sand Island, and the door-stone from Birch. Nearly all of the larger
timbers in his house this preacher cut and hauled himself. And when
they were on the spot, seventy-five of his friends and neighbors,
giving him a good surprise, as did those of Lion Ben in the Elm Island
stories, came and hewed the timbers and framed his house. Little
wonder is it that this house, with its attractive surroundings and its
pleasant associations, was ever to him the most beautiful place on
earth.
He lived here with his mother and housekeeper until 1852, when his
mother died. This bereavement took a strong influence out of his
life; for the tactful, firm-willed mother had played a large part in
moulding the character of her impetuous, venturesome son. In 1854 he
married Miss Hannah Pearson Pomeroy, daughter of Rev. Thaddeus Pomeroy
of Syracuse, New York, previously pastor of the Congregational church
of Gorham, Maine. Three children were born to them: a son who died
in infancy; Frank Gilman, at present in business in Boston; and Mary
Catherine, the wife of Mr. Harry Batchelder of Melrose Highlands,
Massachusetts.
The circumstances of Mr. Kellogg’s marriage are characteristic. While
he always maintained a due respect for women, he was preeminently a
man’s man or perhaps better a boy’s man. It is not surprising, then,
to be told that his wife was “recommended to him.” A friend of his
at Gorham, rallying him a bit on his bachelorhood, asked why in the
world he did not marry. “Oh,” said he, “I can find no one to have me.”
Whereupon his friend replied, “There is your old schoolmate, Hannah
Pomeroy of Syracuse, a minister’s daughter, well educated, a good
school-teacher, and smart as a whip; just the woman for a minister’s
wife.” What had been the preacher’s previous plans concerning matrimony
is not known, but before long he took a trip to Syracuse, and when
he returned, the bargain was practically made. Though apparently so
businesslike a transaction, this proved to be for more than forty
years a happy union. His friend spoke truly. Had Mr. Kellogg searched
many years, he could not have found a better helpmate than Hannah
Pomeroy. Attractive, sincere, energetic, practical, she was a prudent,
encouraging wife and a wise, loving mother.
[Illustration: HANNAH PEARSON POMEROY KELLOGG.
Wife of Elijah Kellogg.]
The folk-lore of Harpswell contains many stories of this minister’s
daring on sea and land and of his original ways in dealing with both
saints and sinners; so original, indeed, that one rough old admirer
on Ragged Island, whom Mr. Kellogg had influenced for good in a way
that no other minister had ever thought of doing, said that when
Parson Kellogg died, he was going to carve upon his tombstone three
letters--”D. F. M.” The last two were to stand for “Funny Minister.”
This daring parson had upon his farm a bull that rendered himself
extremely obnoxious to visitors who found it convenient to reach
his house by crossing the pasture. The bull, therefore, must be
disciplined. The preacher first harnessed Mr. Taurus to the front
wheels of a heavy cart, preparatory to putting him over the road and
showing him who was master. But before the guiding ropes had been
adequately arranged, the bull on a mad rush took to the woods, leaving
in his trail fragments of cart-wheels and harness. The little minister,
however, was not thus to be outdone. The next day, at flood-tide, with
tempting fodder he allured the bull to the end of the wharf and in an
unguarded moment shoved him into the bay. An excellent swimmer, he
then quickly jumped astride the bull’s back. By grasping his horns and
intermittently thrusting his head under water, with a prowess which a
“broncho-buster” might well envy, he conquered his steed. Thus, as all
stories rightly end, they lived happily together ever afterwards.
Of this pastor’s unconventional methods in accepting and dispensing
gifts of charity, the following are illustrative. One afternoon, just
before tea, he happened into the house of a master ship-builder in
his parish, a man of property and influence. The old gentleman was on
the best of terms with the young preacher, and after passing the time
of day, began to banter him on the condition of his boots, which were
muddy and somewhat the worse for wear. “Parson, what makes you wear
such disreputable-looking foot-gear?” he said. “Throw those boots away
and let me get you a new pair.” The parson waited till later before
he fired the return shot. After all were comfortably seated at the
tea-table and he had said grace, he asked to be excused for a moment
and went to the sitting room. There a good fire was blazing upon the
hearth, and near by were the master-builder’s best shoes. Quickly came
off the parson’s old boots, and into the fire they went; and as quickly
went on to stay the master-builder’s best calfskins.
One winter day while on Orr’s Island, he got an inkling that a family
there was in distress. By skilful inquiry he learned that the father
had been drinking badly, and the mother and children needed food and
fuel. Something must be done at once to relieve them. Going to the
house of a well-to-do parishioner, he requested the use of his horse
and sled for an hour or two. When they were ready, he quickly drove up
to the man’s woodpile and loaded the sled generously, while the owner
stood by in wonderment. The only explanation given was: “That family
down there need fuel badly. You’ve got a plenty, and I’m going to haul
them down a good load.” And that was explanation enough, for Parson
Kellogg offered it.
Although so familiar and informal in his social and pastoral relations,
as a preacher he never hesitated to point out to his people their
duty in language that was unmistakable. Soon after the new church was
built, for example, he told them that increased privilege means ever
increased responsibility. “God has given you,” he said, “a commodious
and elegant place of worship. Why? That you might sit down and admire
it and be proud of it? Do that, and He will wither you to the root. Do
it, and He will send leanness into your souls. My dear friends, we had
better, like our Puritan forefathers on the coast of Holland, kneel
down among the rocks and seaweed in the cold winter to pray to God with
the humble spirit with which they prayed than to worship Him here in
peace and comfort, surrounded with tasteful decorations, without that
humility. You have heard of congratulation and praise as much as you
ought to hear. I wish you to look at your increased responsibility. As
God has made you first in point of privilege, be not by abusing those
privileges the last to attain salvation.”
In his pulpit, with plain-spoken words such as these, and with quaint
phrases, and apt illustrations drawn from the farm, the forest, and
the sea, this preacher quickened the conscience, and broadened the
sympathies, and strengthened the faith of the farmers, fishermen, and
sailors, who heard him gladly. As a preacher, “he seemed,” says one
who knew him well, “a prophet in the authority with which he spoke, an
evangelist in the tenderness with which he appealed to the conscience
and set forth the promises of the Gospel, a poet often in the simple
beauty and grace with which he portrayed the conditions of human life,
and discoursed of the deep things of God.”
THE SEAMAN’S FRIEND
GEORGE KIMBALL
At its annual meeting, May 17, 1854, the Boston Seaman’s Friend
Society accepted the resignation of Rev. George W. Bourne, pastor of
the Mariners’ Church and chaplain of the Sailors’ Home. The board of
managers then began the search for “a suitable man” for the vacant
position, and their choice fell upon Rev. Elijah Kellogg of Harpswell,
Maine.
Mr. Kellogg began his duties in September of that year, with his
accustomed earnestness, and under his ministry the attendance at the
church increased, and a new impulse was given to the society’s work.
He first appeared before the society at its twenty-seventh anniversary,
held in Tremont Temple, May 30, 1855. A large audience was assembled.
President Alpheus Hardy introduced him in complimentary terms, and he
made an eloquent address. His “suitability” as the seaman’s friend and
pastor is shown in these extracts: “The greater portion of my life has
been spent among seamen, either at sea or on shore. The first personal
effort, to any extent, I made for the salvation of souls was while
teaching among a community of sailors. The first sermon I preached
was to sailors. The first couple I united in marriage were a sailor
and his bride. The first child I baptized was a sailor’s child. The
first burial service I performed was over the body of a seaman. The
society with which I have been connected during the last eleven years
is with scarcely an exception composed of sailors and their families.
There is not a house in the parish in which the roar of the surf may
not be heard, and in many of them the Atlantic flings its spray upon
the door-stone.... The men who interest seamen and do them good have
not any recipe for it; neither can they impart it to others. It is all
instinctive. They love the webbed feet, and the webbed feet love them.”
Mr. Kellogg was at this time forty-one years old. His pleasing personal
appearance and his hearty, rugged, forceful utterance made a favorable
impression upon his hearers.
The task he had undertaken was by no means an easy one. It involved
hard and constant work, often of a kind little, if at all, like that
of the average clergyman. On the Sabbath there were in the Mariners’
Church three services for public worship, and the Sunday-school. In
addition to this work upon the Sabbath, Mr. Kellogg conducted a social
religious meeting in the reading room of the Sailors’ Home upon one
evening of each week, and in the winter lectured occasionally in the
church upon topics of vital interest. He visited sailors upon shipboard
and in hospital, offered the comforts of religion to the sick and
dying, and often communicated to loved ones the parting message they
would never otherwise have received. For this work the salary was
necessarily small, and the material equipment not of the best; but Mr.
Kellogg did not hesitate. He threw himself into the work with zeal and
enthusiasm.
From the establishment of the Seaman’s Friend Society in 1827 to July
12, 1852, religious services were held at the Sailors’ Home, but upon
the latter date the building was burned. The church at the corner of
Summer and Sea streets, which had formerly been owned and used by
the Christian Baptists, was soon after purchased, and on December 30,
1852, was dedicated to the work for sailors. A church building, in
these days, like the modest bethel in Summer Street would be regarded
as quaint in appearance and ill-adapted to its uses. It was inferior,
in many ways, even to other churches of its day, but it was easily
accessible to those to whom it especially ministered (wharves to the
south were then much more fully utilized by shipping than they now
are), and was in the centre of a favorite residential district; for
Fort Hill and surrounding streets were at that time mainly occupied by
pretentious dwellings.
The Sailors’ Home, when rebuilt, was a large brick structure upon the
eastern slope of Fort Hill, at 99 Purchase Street. Here, with Mr. John
O. Chaney as its superintendent, many of the brave carriers of the
commerce of the world were comfortably housed and cared for. The Home
had a large reading room and library, and besides providing good board
and home comforts, it did much from time to time for the relief of
shipwrecked and destitute sailors. Often hundreds of sailors were here.
The very year Mr. Kellogg began his work it sheltered 2458, and during
his chaplaincy of nearly eleven years 25,358 were beneath its roof.
In urging the need and importance of such an institution as a haven of
rest, a “port in a storm,” Mr. Kellogg once said: “Suppose twenty-five
seamen from Calcutta, with beard and hair of 130 days’ growth,
hammocks, canvas bags, sheath knives, chests lashed up with tarred
rigging, redolent of bilge water, with a monkey or two, and three or
four parrots, should drive up to the Revere House in a North End wagon,
and say, ’We want to stop here; our money is as good as anybody’s,’
would they stop there? Would their money be as good as anybody’s? I
trow not. Let them, repulsed from the Revere, go to the Marlboro,--a
temperance, pious house, prayers night and morning,--and tell the
proprietor if he does not take them in they must go to a place that
leads to a drunkard’s grave and the drunkard’s hell, would they be
taken in there, think you? This shows the need of a Sailors’ Home, does
it not?”
When Mr. Kellogg had been at work awhile, Captain Andrew Bartlett of
Plymouth, a retired ship-master, was employed by the society as a
missionary helper. Always faithful and zealous, as “a lieutenant to Mr.
Kellogg,”--so he styled himself,--Captain Bartlett proved of valuable
assistance. With his aid libraries were placed upon shipboard to be
managed by Christian sailors, and the minor details of the work went
forward successfully.
Another fruitful source of increased life and enthusiasm in the work
came early in Mr. Kellogg’s pastorate. It was a body of young men
drawn by the personal magnetism of the popular preacher, inspired by
his earnestness and devotion, and moved by their own desire to be of
service in the good cause. He issued no special call, made no urgent
appeal, for these helpers. One by one they came, impelled by the
promptings of the Holy Spirit. They rallied like a forlorn hope in a
desperate encounter, each feeling that his services were needed. They
were ready for any service their Divine Guide and their beloved leader
might require of them, should it carry them even to “moving accidents
by flood and field.” They had heard the “still, small voice,” and had
responded, “Here am I; send me.”
Captain Bartlett early reported: “The young men of the church are Mr.
Kellogg’s body-guard. They are a sort of flying artillery. They visit
the receiving-ship, the Marine Hospital, and other places. They hold
meetings, and talk with sailors.”
Mr. Kellogg in an annual address before the society said: “An army
of young men are putting their strength to the wheel of a difficult
and hitherto well-nigh discouraging work. It was feared by many, when
these efforts began, that they were the outgrowth of romance and the
love of novelty, and would be of transient duration; but they have
assumed the same enduring character as the other departments of labor.
At the hospital, on board the receiving-ship, at the Mariners’ Church
on Sabbath evenings, they have entered heart and hand into this work,
and, from their very youth, adapted to the impulsive nature of seamen,
they have been in the hands of God a most efficient instrumentality for
good.”
This army of young men grew very rapidly during the revival of 1858,
and by the beginning of the Civil War was of creditable size. At the
Sunday evening prayer-meetings it made itself especially felt. On these
occasions the church was always crowded. Ministers of the Gospel,
merchants, young people, and captains of ships sat side by side with
men whom every wind had blown upon, from the equator to the pole,
all uniting in fervent prayer to the same great Father, all striving
to bring each other to a knowledge of the truth. Not an evangelical
denomination in the city was unrepresented, and it is impossible to
form even an approximate estimate of the amount of good accomplished,
for these meetings were exceptional both in number of attendants and in
interest shown.
[Illustration: ELIJAH KELLOGG AT FORTY-THREE. 1856.]
But war came, and it found the Mariners’ Church patriotic to the very
core. Mr. Kellogg had to report that sixty-eight of his“body-guard”
had enlisted to fight for the preservation of the Union, sixteen of
them teachers in the Sunday-school. In 1864, in his address before the
society, he said: “At the beginning of the war there were connected
with the Mariners’ Church a body of young men, landsmen, who were
deeply interested in the conversion of sailors and enjoyed their
confidence and affection. They, with a single exception, entered the
army. Poor and without patronage, they enlisted as privates. Five of
them have been promoted.”