Brief speeches, replete with sentiment and reminiscence, were made by

Rev. George S. Bennitt, D. D., of Jersey City; Hon. Henry C. Sanford, of

Bridgewater (formerly a part of New Milford); Boardman Wright and

Timothy Dwight Merwin, New York lawyers; Rev. John T. Huntington, of

Hartford, and Edwin W. Marsh, a Bridgeport banker--all members of

families which have been closely identified with New Milford interests

for several generations.

The Chairman read the following poem, written for the occasion by Mary

Murdoch Mason, daughter of a former pastor of the Congregational

Church:

“HOME

“Born on these hills, or in this happy vale,

Our feet turn swiftly toward the well-known trail:

At all great moments, when the heart is stirred,

The exile’s soul spreads wings like homing bird.

“’Tis in this village church our knees are bent,

When, ’neath cathedral dome or tropic tent,

We hear the burial service for the dead,

’Tis in the old home pew our prayers are said.

“No brilliant light in bold, bright city street

Can dazzle, eyes accustom-ed to greet

That golden splash and sparkle where the sun

Kisses our River’s curve ere day is done.

You know the spot. We see it from Town-Hill;

It stirs our hearts and makes old memories thrill.

“In Switzerland, the snow-capped heights grow dim,

Mt. Tom appears, and Guardian Mount with him.

Rigi’s a dream, and even Jungfrau pales,

While Alpine glow lights up New England dales.

“Old Ocean’s storms and winds for us grow calm,

The while we dream of Housatonic’s charm:

And we forget the harbor at Trieste

To float upon Lake Waramaug’s dear breast.

“No bells that ring from far-famed distant towers

Are half so sweet as those ‘First Bells’ of ours.

And songs that thrill the world were never sung

As noble as those hymns we loved when young.

“On London ’bus, or in Pall-Mall’s vast crowd,

Sudden we’re walking through a field fresh plowed:

Upon the steamer’s deck far out at sea,

We hear a robin sing in Main Street tree.

“In wind-swept wastes, we’re filled with joy, not gloom,

Because at home th’ arbutus is in bloom.

And when June comes, and roses blow, we say:

‘Oh, for those roses round our porch to-day!’

“But ’tis at night beneath the heavens we cry:

‘These same kind stars with ever-friendly eye

Upon our well-beloved graves look down,

Far, far away, in dear New Milford town.’”

Charles N. Hall, Secretary of the General Bi-Centennial Committee, read

the following cablegram:

“London, England, June 15, 1907.

“Success to the Bi-Centennial and best wishes for the dear old town!

Deeply regret my absence.

FRANK HINE.”

He also read the following letter, explaining that, although addressed

to the Committee, it belonged to all New Milford, since it came straight

from the heart of one whom all New Milford loves:

“New York, June 11, 1907.

“CHARLES N. HALL, Esq., Secretary of the Bi-Centennial Association of

New Milford,

“_Dear Sir_:--

“Owing to a severe and unexpected attack of illness I am reluctantly

compelled, acting under the imperative orders of my physician, Dr. Allan

McLane Hamilton, of New York, to relinquish any participation in the

Bi-Centennial ceremonies, and I, therefore, request that arrangements be

made to have my duties assumed by the officers upon whom they will

devolve.

“It is impossible for me to express my deep regret at the necessity of

giving up any part in these exercises, to which I have looked forward

with so much pleasure and pride, and my profound appreciation of the

high honor conferred on me by the people of New Milford in electing me

President of this Association.

“I desire to extend to them all, through you, my sincere and heartfelt

thanks; and to all guests and friends who honor us with their presence

on this glad and memorable occasion, and whom I hoped to meet

personally, I extend a warm welcome and a hearty greeting.

“Very truly yours,

“HENRY S. MYGATT.”

Before and after the exercises of the evening, much informal sociability

was indulged in, in the course of which many stories of old times were

exchanged and many old friendships renewed. The occasion was a highly

enjoyable one, especially to those who had come from a distance after an

absence of many years. It was an “old home gathering” in the best and

fullest acceptation of the term.

OUR FOREFATHERS

WRITTEN FOR BI-CENTENNIAL SUNDAY BY CHARLES N. HALL

Lord of the Pilgrims; they who came

Far over-seas to praise Thy name;

Braving the wave, the wilderness,

Firm in their faith that Thou wouldst bless;

Planting upon a new world’s shore

Thy name, their faith, forevermore--

Grant us, their children, thus to be

Persistent in our faith in Thee.

Dark seemed the way; grim forests frowned,

Hunger and cold crouched close around

That Pilgrim band; while wintry seas

Rolled wide, ’twixt English homes and these,

Who, faithful still, to doubt unknown,

Laid here the Nation’s cornerstone.

Grant us, their children, thus to be

Unfaltering in our faith in Thee.

Bitter their sufferings and tears;

Hardship and toil marked all the years;

But through it all Thy saving hand

Guided and held the chosen band;

Leading them safely home at last,

All hardship done, all trials passed.

Grant us, their children, thus to be

Guided, sustained, brought home, by Thee.

THE SUNDAY EXERCISES

Sermons appropriate to the occasion were preached to large

congregations in all the churches Sunday morning. These sermons, in

so far as they were historical, are reproduced herewith:

BY REV. FRANK A. JOHNSON

IN THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH

“...In the summer of 1707, an eagle, poised on extended pinions over

the Housatonic Valley, would have looked down upon a scene of singular

beauty. He would have beheld a wilderness; but has not a wilderness a

beauty unsurpassed by the artificial works of man? Mountain, hill and

valley were clothed with magnificent forests of oak, chestnut and ash.

The river, then a clear mountain stream, weaving its way among the

hills, added to the sylvan beauty of the scene. There was no sign of the

presence, or even existence of man, save possibly the thin smoke from

the camp-fire of some peaceful Indian, who loved these hills, the home

of his fathers.

“Into this trackless wilderness, from the then far-away north-land of

Massachusetts, came John Noble and his little eight-year-old daughter.

Do we, who know this lovely valley so well, wonder that he built his

simple home here, and that his descendants have remained here ever

since? His house was for some time the last house this side of Albany.

“After a short time, a company from Milford, on Long Island Sound, took

up much of the land here, and naturally gave the name New Milford to the

new settlement. These men were of a sturdy race, strong in body,

courageous, believers in God and His righteousness. Just think of the

task that confronted them! The great forests, which would be a better

possession than a gold mine now, were an encumbrance then. The

traditions of these fathers tell us nothing of enervating club life, or

midday siestas; the daily rule of life for man

[Illustration: SOME NEW MILFORD CHURCHES]

Methodist Episcopal Baptist, Northville

Methodist, Gaylordsville Saint Francis Xavier]

and woman then was work, work, work, that we might enter into the goodly

heritage we now enjoy. Among the early settlers was Mr. John Read, who

built a primitive house at the upper end of “The Green,” near Mr.

Frederic Knapp’s house. Mr. Read, at one time, intended to enter the

ministry. He preached the first sermon here in his own house. The

founders of our State and town believed in God, and delighted in his

worship. They were assured that God could manifest himself in the wild

woods, or in some log cabin as well as in a stately cathedral. And so,

before their families were fairly settled, they provided some place for

the stated worship of Almighty God.

“So, here, after Mr. Read left the town, the people continued to use his

simple home as their place of worship. I quote from our church manual:

‘These people held their religious services in what was called Mr.

Read’s house, which has been described as probably built of logs, one

story high, and had but one window, and was not very commodious nor an

ornamental place of worship. The first vote to build a regular

meeting-house was passed in 1716, and, then, so many difficulties were

encountered, and so limited were the resources of the people, that the

building does not seem to have been completely finished and furnished

till 1731--though it was probably occupied for worship in its unfinished

condition as early as 1720. This building stood on Town Hill, on the

upper side of the present “Green.” In 1754 a new and more commodious

meeting-house was erected upon the village “Green,” nearly opposite the

present residence of Mrs. Henry E. Bostwick. This building was used as a

house of worship for seventy-nine years, during the pastorates of Revs.

Taylor, Griswold and Elliot. During the pastorate of the Rev. Mr. Rood

in 1833, the present edifice was erected. In 1860, it was completely

renovated.’

“In 1892 it was again renovated and a considerable addition made to this

audience room, and the chapel, parlor and class rooms were added to the

main building. In 1902 the present parsonage was built, and the ample

grounds about it were laid out. In 1904 the organ was presented by one

of our members....

“They were a godly people who settled in this valley; a people who

believed in the Sabbath as a day of rest and worship, and we may be sure

that some kind of religious service was held here from the beginning of

the settlement, but a regular church was not organized until 1716. Eight

female and five male members were formally recognized as a church by

council on November 21 of that year. It was a Congregational Church of

the ‘Standing Order,’ and all the early inhabitants seem to have been in

sympathy with it. It has continued an unbroken organization to this day.

It has always been influential in the moral and religious movements of

the community; and we are proud of its history, and are glad that we are

members of it in this later day.

“We are so firmly convinced of the wisdom of the separation of Church

and State, that it is hard for us to appreciate that our own church,

through much of its history, was rigidly united with the State. For

thirty-four years after the organization of the church, the

Ecclesiastical Society and the town were practically the same thing. The

larger part of the business of town meetings was the consideration of

religious affairs. The town called the minister, provided for the

expenses of the church, cared for the building; in fact did about

everything that the church and society would do now. It was a town

meeting that voted the size of the shingles and clapboards to be placed

on the church building. Some of you, not very old, can remember when the

town voted in the basement of this building. If there is any virtue in a

union of Church and State, this church must have received the full

measure. Until 1819 this Society had the legal right to tax all the

inhabitants for its own support; but naturally, other denominations,

which had arisen within the town, would object to this, and, as a matter

of fact, this right was not insisted upon. The only relic of this

incongruous relation of Church and State, according to American

standards, is the Ecclesiastical Society; and, in the formation of new

churches, this is generally done away with, the church feeling

abundantly able to take care of its own affairs.

“During the one hundred and ninety-one years of its history this church

has been served by ten settled pastors, and by several ministers who

acted as pastors for limited periods. All of these ministers were men of

power and influence, and have left their mark upon both church and town.

From the organization of the church in 1716 to the end of the eighteenth

century the church was served by only two pastors--the Rev. Daniel

Boardman, and the Rev. Nathaniel Taylor. They were strong men and did

much for the religious development of western Connecticut. Their

descendants are still influential residents of our town. The third

pastor was the Rev. Stanley Griswold, a man of strong personality and

pronounced ability. After leaving New Milford he retired from the

ministry, and, entering upon political life, became Secretary of

Michigan Territory, and afterwards one of the first United States

Senators from the State of Michigan. Later, he was Chief Justice of the

Northwest Territory. The Revs. Andrew Elliot and Herman Rood were strong

men, leaving the impress of their labors upon the life of the church.

The sixth pastor was the Rev. Noah Porter. He was a faithful worker

here, and his work was greatly blessed. He afterwards became known to

all the world of scholars as the distinguished President, for many

years, of Yale College. The Rev. John Greenwood was a pastor greatly

beloved. After a period of absence from the town, he returned to spend

his latter days with the church he loved. The eighth pastor was the Rev.

David Murdock, Jr. He was a forcible preacher, and many of the present

membership were received into the church during his fruitful ministry.

He was pastor during the exciting days of the Civil War, and his

stirring, patriotic addresses never left any doubt of the position of

this church in the days which tried men’s souls. The last three

ministers, the Revs. James B. Bonar, George S. Thrall, and Timothy J.

Lee, were the friends and pastors of a large part of the present

congregation. Many of the older members were welcomed into the

fellowship of the church during their ministries. Not only here, but in

other fields of labor, they gave good proof of their ministry. Of all

this list of former ministers, only one is living to-day, the Rev.

Timothy J. Lee, the immediate predecessor of the present pastor.

“These ministers were advised and assisted by a consecrated band of

deacons; men chosen for their piety and interest in the affairs of the

church. The New England Congregational deacon has always filled a large

place in the moral development of a community; and so these men have

done their part in promoting the better life of this town. It would be

impossible to write a true history of the town without giving their

names a prominent place. The name of one of their number, also sometime

clerk of our Society, is written high in the annals of his country, the

distinguished patriot and statesman, Roger Sherman, associate of Thomas

Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Robert R. Livingston, on

the committee of five which prepared the immortal Declaration of

Independence. His colleague, Thomas Jefferson, said of him, he was ‘a

man who never said a foolish thing’; and the noted Senator Macon

declared, ‘He had more common sense than any man I have ever known.’ At

this anniversary time, we are happy to recall the name of such a man as

a citizen of our town, and a member and officer in our church....

The following hymn, written for the occasion by Charlotte B. Bennett,

was sung in the Congregational Church in the course of the service at

which the above sermon was preached.

BI-CENTENNIAL HYMN

“God of our fathers, in whose sight

The centuries are but as days,

We ask, as those of old, Thy light;

We bring, like them, our gift of praise.

“We bless Thee for the fathers’ love;

They made the rough way smooth, that we

Might safer walk. O, may it prove

The path of peace that leads to Thee.

“We reach across the vanished years

And touch their holy lives to-day,

They kept the faith through toils and fears;

Grant healing in the touch, we pray.

“If mists of time have dimmed our sight,

And faith has faltered on the way,

May clearer vision in the light

Of holy memories, crown this day.

“Alike to Thee are new and old;

Thy care through ages is the same;

Thy love links with a chain of gold

The centuries, in one dear Name.

“Keep in the hollow of Thy hand

This hallowed place, while years shall last;

For righteousness still may it stand,

Till days and ages are all past.”

BY REV. SAMUEL HART, D. D.

OF MIDDLETOWN, CONNECTICUT, IN SAINT JOHN’S CHURCH, ALL SAINTS’

CONGREGATION UNITING

“It happened, as men say, that the beginning of the settlement of this

town fell in the year which saw the organization of the first parish of

the Church of England in Connecticut; the bi-centenary of New Milford is

also the bi-centenary of the Diocese of Connecticut. It is but natural,

therefore, that one who is called to speak to-day as to that part which

this parish has borne in the history of the town, should recur to the

origin of the Church in this Colony, and should have in his mind the

inspiration of last week’s commemoration in Stratford; we cannot but

look back from the time when the Church’s ministrations were first held

here, to the earlier ministrations on the shores of the Sound. But we

have a stronger reason to-day for turning to the beginnings; for the two

clergymen who first officiated here, at the request of a few adherents

of the Church of England, were Dr. Johnson, missionary and rector at

Stratford, ‘the father of the Church in Connecticut,’ and Mr. John

Beach, of Stratford birth, Dr. Johnson’s pupil in theology, in charge of

congregations in Redding and Newtown. But, as it appears, we can go

still further back; for one of the first settlers here, of whom indeed

it is said that he claimed the land by title from the Indians, was John

Read, who, at the time when the church services were first held by a

clergyman in Stratford, was ministering to the Congregational society

there, and presently connected himself with the newly formed

congregation of Churchmen; indeed, we are told that at one time he had

it in mind to go to England and ask for ordination at the hands of a

bishop. Whatever his plans in this matter, they were not carried out;

for he removed to this place, granted the use of a house which he built

as a place of meeting for public worship, and occasionally preached to

those who assembled there. He became a lawyer and Queen’s attorney, and

removed to Boston, where he was a communicant in King’s Chapel. His son

John was one of the first settlers of Reading (Redding) and named the

town for his father. Thus there was here, from the very first, a little

Church of England leaven.

“But we are told of no formal church services here for twenty-two years,

and of no separate congregation until 1743. At this time, Dr. Johnson,

that man of great learning and prudence and missionary zeal, had been

ministering for twenty years in Stratford, extending his journeys to

places adjacent and remote in the Colony, and exercising a strong and

healthful influence on behalf of the Church. Among the young men whom he

trained in the Church’s ways and in her theology, his pupils and members

of his family, was John Beach, for eight years Congregational minister

at Newtown, ‘a popular and insinuating young man,’ as was testified of

him, who after ordination in England came back to his former field of

labor and began a wonderful work there and in Redding, with a small

congregation of five families. These two men came hither at

[Illustration: ST. JOHN’S CHURCH]

the request of a few Church people, of whom Mr. Beach wrote in 1743

there were about twenty families in New Milford and New Fairfield, who

frequently attended church at Newtown, and to whom he ministered at

their homes as he was able, but rarely on the Lord’s Day. The town,

presently, on the petition of twelve men, granted them a piece of land

in the street at its south end, ‘near where the old pound used to

stand,’ forty feet by sixty, ‘in order to build a Church of England

upon;’ and the building seems to have been erected in 1744....

“Under Mr. Beach’s care many in this part of the colony--for he had a

wide circuit for visitations and services--accepted the Church’s ways;

and thus was the Church established in the faith and increasing in

number, as in the primitive times. When at last he asked to be relieved

from the care of the congregations and scattered communicants in

Litchfield County, the Rev. Solomon Palmer took charge of the Churchmen

in this neighborhood, and became the first clergyman resident here.

After five years he removed to Litchfield; and to him succeeded, in

1762, as by a kind of exchange, the Rev. Thomas Davies, whose

grandfather and father, faithful laymen, had founded the parishes in

Litchfield and Washington. His whole span of life was but thirty years,

and he ministered here but four years; but he left a record for untiring

labor, constant pastoral labor, persuasive eloquence, and godly living,

which has not been effaced by time, and the results of which, we cannot

but believe, still remain in this community. Even when there was talk of

a division of his work, he proposed to retain the towns of New Milford,

Woodbury, Kent, and New Fairfield as his mission, leaving Litchfield,

Cornwall and Sharon, with a few Churchmen in nine other towns, to the

care of another clergyman. During his ministry, a second house of

worship was built, the old church being too small for the congregation;

it stood in part on the street, some twenty or thirty rods north of the

former site. After Mr. Davies, followed the Rev. Richard (or Richard

Samuel) Clarke, the twenty years of whose ministry included the cloudy

days that preceded the Revolution and the stormy times of the Revolution

itself. He was a Tory in political convictions and, after the war,

removed to Nova Scotia, where he died in 1824 at the age of 87, the

oldest missionary in the Colonies.

“It would be ungracious to dwell now on the opposition, for the most

part conscientious, and nearly always quite in accordance with law,

which the early Churchmen experienced. It is pleasanter to note that

their neighbors and the Colonial authorities extended to them what was

for the times, a generous toleration as to ‘sober dissenters,’ and

allowed them, if they actually attended church, to turn their ‘church

rates’ to the support of their own clergymen. And this parish had the

special favor, shared with but two others, of a special act of the

General Assembly, which practically put it before the law in the full

status of a society of the standing Congregational order. Even the hard

feelings of Revolutionary days, almost excusable at the time, soon

passed away. The Church of England in Connecticut, under the nominal

care of the Bishop of London, became the Church of the Diocese of

Connecticut, under the care of her own Bishop, and presently a

constituent part of the Church in the United States, loyally maintaining

the Commonwealth and the Republic, actually guiding the organization of

the State, and moulding a large part of the people in the ways of

soberness, righteousness, and godliness.

“In all this time, the parish of St. John’s, New Milford, was a true

center of missionary work. We wonder when we read of Dr. Johnson from

Stratford extending his journeys to Newtown and Middletown and New

London; of Mr. Beach from Newtown visiting New Milford and other places,

really caring for a whole county with ‘parts adjacent’; of Mr. Davies

from New Milford going about in circuit, preaching and baptizing in

Roxbury, and New Preston, and Salisbury, and Litchfield, and Sharon, and

divers other places in the Colony, and crossing the line into Great

Barrington, where he found difficulties incident to another government,

but where a church was built under his care; and how he, in his turn,

directed to that place the steps of Gideon Bostwick, who ministered for

more than twenty years in Berkshire, in the southern part of Vermont,

and in the eastern part of New York. Moreover, there came in 1769, to

the clergy of Connecticut, assembled in Convocation in New Milford, a

memorial from the few Churchmen in the new settlement of Claremont, in

New Hampshire, asking that their case might be presented to the

Venerable Society in England, with the hope that they would be allowed

at least a catechist and schoolteacher, until (as they said) they should

have passed ‘the first difficulties and hardships of a wild,

uncultivated country.’ Such a man was commissioned, and did good work as

an unordained missionary; while a clergyman was presently sent to make a

personal exploration of the northern provinces. It is apart from our

immediate topic; but we can never think of the religious history of New

Milford without being reminded of that remarkable man, Count Zinzendorf,

who held the episcopate among the Moravians, and for a while ministered

to the aborigines in this very place--one of the few places in which the

Indians remained, and in which they were affected by the preaching of

Christianity. There were others also here whose very presence was a

challenge to the teaching of the Church at one time or another--Separatists,

and Quakers, and Jemimaites, and Glassites. Among them all, the Church

held her place, and guided the life of no small part of the whole community.

“For the last ten years of the eighteenth century the Rev. Truman Marsh

was rector of New Milford, with New Preston and Roxbury. In 1793 the

Church, already occupied for eight and twenty years, was formally

consecrated by Bishop Seabury, eight of the clergy being present for a

Convocation. It had been long in an unfinished state, as we gather from

the frequent entries in the parish records, which refer to the work yet

to be done. Only two years before the consecration it was voted, ‘To go

on and finish the Pulpit, Reading Desk, Clark’s pew, and Gallery’; and

in the next year a vote was passed as to the assignment of seats; and,

the front seat in the gallery being reserved for singers, and the back

seat there for blacks, it was commendably voted, ‘That People of any

Denomination that Wish a Seat Shall have one.’ This edifice, repaired

from time to time, served the purposes of the congregation until 1837;

and the third Church was in turn replaced by the present beautiful and

enduring building, on a new but adjacent site, twenty-four years ago, in

1883. There must have been of old a glebe lot here, though we do not

find early notice of it; it lay on the west side of the Main Street,

and, in Mr. Marsh’s day, it had a house and barn upon it; there is a

tradition that it was secured in part from the sale of a piece of land

which the parish owned at a still earlier day and in part from the

parish’s share of the avails from undivided land in the highway; at any

rate, it was sold long ago.

“The history of post-Revolutionary times must be rapidly passed over.

Mr. Benjamin Benham began here as a lay-reader, and, having been

ordained in 1808, was rector for nearly twenty years, having duties also

at New Preston, Roxbury, Bridgewater, and Brookfield; then, for another

score of years the Rev. Enoch Huntington ministered to the congregation,

and, after an interval, another twenty years of your records is covered

by the rectorship of the Rev. Charles G. Acly, in whose time a rectory

was secured.

“This brings us down to a date but little more than thirty years ago,

well within the memory of many in this congregation; and the last twelve

of these years belong to the present rectorship, as to which we may well

hope, both for the rector’s sake and for the people’s, that it is much

nearer its beginning than its end.

“A few figures will show the remarkable growth of the parish, noticeable

even among the thriving country parishes of Connecticut. A hundred years

ago, already a century after the first settlement, there were

seventy-four communicants in the cure of New Milford, New Preston, and

Roxbury; fifty years ago, St. John’s Church, New Milford, reported one

hundred and twenty-five communicants and one hundred Sunday scholars; in

1885, not quite thirty years later, the number of communicants had

increased to two hundred and eighty-nine, and the number of Sunday

scholars was one hundred sixty-four. In the last named year, the new

congregation of All Saints’ Memorial Church was canonically organized,

its beautiful place of worship being consecrated in a subsequent year,

and a rectory being added some twelve years ago. The result of this

increase of the provision for the worship of the Church and for its

varied ministrations in this town has been a growth, under all the

circumstances, more remarkable than that of former times; in twenty-one

years the number of communicants has increased from two hundred

eighty-nine to five hundred forty-nine--four hundred five in the older

parish and one hundred forty-four in the younger; and where there were

one hundred sixty-four scholars in one Sunday school, there are now two

hundred fifty-eight in two schools, of which the mother parish has two

hundred nine....”

BY REV. S. D. WOODS

IN THE BAPTIST CHURCH AT NORTHVILLE

“Our best authority tells us that while Baptists were not very numerous

in the early days of the town’s history, yet a decade or more before the

close of its first century there was a sufficient number to warrant the

carrying on of services at varying places--Bridgewater, Warren, and

Gaylord’s Bridge. These were kept up for twenty-five years, when, on

Jan. 7, 1814, a meeting was held at the residence of Asahel Baldwin, at

which time it was voted: ‘1st, To organize ourselves into a society to

be known as the “New Milford Baptist Church.” 2d, To invite a council

from sister churches to meet with us on Feb. 9, to consider the

propriety of recognizing us as a regular Baptist Church.’ This council

met as planned, and after a proper examination of ‘their Articles of

Faith and their Covenant,’ voted, unanimously, ‘to recognize them as a

sister church in the Lord.’

“By this act twenty-two believers became a recognized body of

worshipers, who, ten days later, voted to license Eleazer Beecher as

pastor. He was ordained Sept. 15, 1814, at the residence of Abel

Canfield on Long Mountain. The services were conducted in the open air.

“This first pastorate continued for seven years, when Rev. Seth Higby

assumed charge for one momentous year, as it witnessed the beginning of

this present house of worship; and the following year, 1822, saw its

completion, when Elder Higby resigned, and Elder Beecher was again

installed, serving the church for ten years more. He was succeeded by

Rev. Nathan Benedict in a two years’ pastorate, and he, in turn, by Rev.

Elijah Baldwin, who remained until 1840. For ten years the church was

without a settled pastor, though the pulpit was supplied by various

non-resident clergymen.

“From 1850 to 1866 but little growth is recorded; they were years of

struggles and trials. There was a succession of pastors, Revs. H. M.

Barlow, J. F. Jones, and J. Hepburn, serving as under shepherds.

“In 1868 the Rev. C. W. Potter was called, and his three years of

service witnessed a gracious revival and added ten to the church roll.

With the resignation of Elder Potter, the church experienced five years

of pastorless existence, though being supplied occasionally by Rev.

Arthur Day. With the settlement of Rev. Edwin Beardsley, in 1875, the

church entered upon a new era of growth and activity. The records show

that two are still members who came in during that time. The succeeding

pastor was Rev. J. P. Cotney, who remained about three years, adding two

by baptism. He was succeeded by Rev. F. P. Braman, in 1887, who remained

two years, baptizing six into fellowship. In 1889 the Rev. Frederick

Kratz was installed, to be succeeded within two years by Rev. John

Scott, during whose ministry of two years the parsonage was well-nigh

completed and three members added to the church roll. This pastorate

also saw the church made a corporate body. In 1893 Rev. F. D. Luddington

was called, and remained three years, baptizing twenty-eight into church

fellowship. In July, 1896, Rev. Charles I. Ramsey assumed the pastorate,

and for nearly five years continued the good work already begun, by

adding ten by baptism. The Rev. A. H. Manee began his pastoral labors in

August, 1901, closing his labors in October, 1904, baptizing one into

fellowship.

“From November, 1904, until April, 1905, the pulpit was supplied by

various clergymen, when Rev. S. D. Woods became pastor, and continues in

that office at the present time. Thus far there have been nineteen

baptisms, and the church shows the largest membership in its history.

“All told, there have been two hundred and sixty-nine baptisms. The

present membership is seventy....

BY REV. HARRIS K. SMITH

IN THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH

_“Text--Proverbs 22:28. ‘Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy

fathers have set.’_

“A burning desire to deliver a living message is one landmark in the

evangelism of the fathers of our church. The age of our town is nearly

four times as great as the years of Methodism’s church edifice in our

village; more than twice the years of Methodism in the present confines

of our town; one hundred twenty-seven years greater than Methodism in

the State; thirty-seven years greater than Methodism’s first Conference.

Indeed, John Wesley, its founder, was but four years old, in June of the

year, when John Noble, New Milford’s first settler, penetrated these

forests primeval. Our fathers came not as a colony, but as evangelists,

impelled by a vital experience. They believed that sin separated from

God, that only by salvation, through the atonement of the Redeemer,

could sinners be in harmony with the Father, that personal righteousness

and the witness of God’s indwelling Spirit were results of redemption,

and that the redeemed were to go on unto the likeness of Jesus. Without

ignoring other elements in their belief, the stress laid upon personal

experience and its intensity led them far and wide. That they did not

thrust an alien graft upon New England religious stock is seen in one

instance, at least, by the demands of Jonathan Edwards for personal

righteousness, and for conversion as a requirement for all seeking the

communion of the Lord’s Supper; and the sad rejection from his pulpit.

Infidelity, imported with the teaching of the French revolutionists, was

alarmingly on the increase. The custom of discussing metaphysical

subjects and of weaving fine-spun doctrines was spreading more or less

throughout Christendom; to so large an extent had London been infected,

that Blackstone, the famous law commentator, in visiting every church of

note in that city, said he did not hear one sermon that had more of

Christianity than had the writings of Cicero, and that they could not

have been called Christian sermons. The revival-stirring sermons of

Wesley and Whitefield were permeating through and upward from the masses

of the people. And the reception given to this message, so ardently

delivered, assures conclusively the need that had been unsatisfied. So,

then, the fathers of our Church entered this field with the ringing word

of God in their hearts as their warrant.

“Faithful sowing and careful husbanding of the harvest constituted

another landmark. When, in 1789, Jesse Lee was appointed to Stamford, he

had neither preaching place nor congregation as a rallying point; not

even a member in all New England to greet him. He entered with a ‘roving

commission.’ True enough, Methodism had been presented by some of the

most prominent evangelical preachers since the visit of Charles Wesley,

nearly sixty years prior to Lee, and including Whitefield, Boardman, and

Garretson, within a short time of the more concentrated mission in 1789.

Lee’s fine appearance, his massive frame, his weight being about three

hundred pounds, his wit and good humor, his wisdom and judgment of human

nature, his knowledge of the Bible, and his depth of consecration gave

him an entry. The labors of Lee extended, during his first year, from

Norwalk along the Sound coast, and upward to Ridgefield and Danbury.

These pioneers approached our town from the south, reaching the part now

separated into the town of Bridgewater, about 1800; they came from the

Hudson River in the north to Gaylordsville in 1813, and to Northville in

1816; from the southwest to Lanesville, then called Pleasant Valley, in

1815. These activities from all directions soon resulted in the

erection of church buildings at all of these points. The care of the

preachers was constant to train the converts enlisted. They visited and

revisited, at heavy privations and difficulties, to make sure of the

standing of even one or two new members.

“The essential coworking of the laymen is another landmark. Methodism,

from its inception, would have been incomplete without the largest

degree of co-operation on the part of the laity. It has been a layman’s

movement, under the direction of ordained leaders. As soon as two or

more were converted at a place, one of the number was delegated as

leader for the others, thus forming classes for religious culture.

Awaiting the visits of the preacher in charge, these classes were hives

of industry, and seminaries of learning, and communions for worship in

charge of one of their own number, the class leader. Those more

qualified by nature and grace were called for special activity as local

preachers, and they went from place to place, preaching to other

congregations, alternating with the ordained preachers and under their

direction. These meetings were in homes, at times the choicest in the

center of the town, or at others, far in the fastness of the forest

within the rude log cabin, or at others, in God’s open temple with the

swaying branches of the trees as their rafters. The time of worship

might be at any hour from sunrise until midnight, and on any day during

the week. The congregation was called from the home, the shop, the

store, and the field, not by the chime of the church bell, but by the

volume of hearty singing; the numbers might be confined to one beside

the preacher, or mount upwards to more than twenty thousand. The

immediate results of these preaching visits were to be cultivated by the

resident laymen. And nobly did they keep the faith. Exhortation, rebuke,

counsel, encouragement, forbearance, and brotherly love must come by

means of fellow laymen, in many cases but little older in the faith than

the new recruits.

“Zeal in building up the local church was another landmark. Within a few

years after the introduction of Methodism, church buildings were

erected at Gaylordsville, at a cost of eight hundred dollars; at

Northville, on ground of Harvey Benson, at a cost of six hundred

dollars, beside labor and material contributed; and at Lanesville, at a

cost of three thousand dollars. This indicates considerable sacrifice on

the part of the members, and interest in the community. In 1849, after

considerable discussion, the members of the different churches, so close

in location, agreed upon the village as a central point, and our present

edifice was built. Since 1833, when its name had first appeared in the

conference minutes, it has been known as the New Milford charge. Before

that it had been part of the Stratford circuit, which, in 1822, when our

town first had a permanent preaching place on the circuit, had only

three church edifices; while to-day this range contains church property,

including parsonages, worth nearly a million dollars, has several

thousand members, and gives for benevolent purposes, outside its own

borders, more money every year by far than the total amount contributed

for all causes at that time.

“Within a few years of the building of the present edifice a parsonage

was erected. Every year additional money was laid out on the property;

principally in 1869 in the pastorate of the Rev. W. R. Webster, and in

1891, when the church was remodeled and enlarged, at a cost of several

thousand dollars, in the pastorate of the Rev. R. T. Cooper.... In the

long line of preachers, whose counsel and administration have cheered

and molded many lives, was the Rev. William T. Gilbert, one of a great

class graduated from Yale University, who, with earnest manner and

finely wrought sermon, built deeply and broad; and, after laying aside

his pastoral duties, he re-entered the ranks, working faithfully along

different ways in the activities of the laymen. The Rev. George Lansing

Taylor, D. D., L. H. D., ended a life of great intellectual power and

moral grandeur, while your pastor. For breadth in learning, strength of

thought, independence for truth, tenacity to purpose, and conscientious

following after his Master, he was notable. His pastorate will long be

memorable in the history of this church, and be felt in the lives of

its members, among the younger especially, as they were marked by his

striking personality.”

BY REV. ORVILLE VAN KEUREN

IN THE GAYLORDSVILLE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH

“Methodism was established in Gaylordsville in 1825, under the following

circumstances:

“Rev. Cyrus Silliman, of the New York Conference, came to visit a

cousin, Mrs. David Sterling, who lived one and a half miles below the

village, in the town of Sherman. While there, he made an appointment for

a week-evening service at the Strait district schoolhouse. The

attendance was so large and the interest so marked that he continued the

meetings four evenings, and then returned to his charge in the State of

New York.

“The people, however, continued the meetings for several weeks, holding

them in private houses. Rev. Andrew Elliot, the pastor of the

Congregational Church at New Milford, learning of the revival, came up

several times and visited the families.

“The following year, as a result of these meetings, twenty-six persons

joined the Congregational Church, nineteen formed a Methodist class at

Gaylordsville, and others joined the Baptist Church. A subscription was

started to build a union church at Gaylordsville, which was built in

1826. Rev. Aaron Hunt, a Methodist preacher from the State of New York,

preached the first sermon in the new church, which was used jointly by

the Methodists, Congregationalists, and Baptists up to about 1854. This

church stood on the east side of the river, just back of the store now

occupied by A. H. Barlow. It was afterward sold to Peter Gaylord, who

removed it to his premises and converted it into a barn. At a quarterly

meeting, held in that church, Rev. Edmund Storer Janes, D. D., LL. D.,

afterward a bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, received his

license as a local preacher.

“In 1854, under the pastorate of Rev. David Nash, the present church

edifice was erected, upon a site given by the Rev. John Henry Gaylord,

who also raised by subscription about $2800 toward the cost of the new

church. The parsonage, which adjoins the church, was purchased in 1884,

during the pastorate of Rev. M. M. Curtis.

“In 1827 Rev. Josiah L. Dickerson settled here, built a house, and

engaged in making brick. As a local preacher, he filled some of the

appointments on the circuit up to about 1834, when he joined the New

York Conference, and continued in the regular work of the ministry until

retired by reason of age. He died in 1862, and is buried in the

Gaylordsville cemetery.

“Methodism was introduced into Sherman Center, under the pastorate of

Rev. Alonzo Selleck, in 1838, under the following circumstances:

“A few years before the Congregational Church of Sherman became divided

over the building of a new house of worship, or, rather, the location of

the building. A majority of the society decided it should be built about

a mile north of the Center, where the present church stands. A minority,

living at the Center and in the southern part of the town, built a

church at the Center, and called it a union church. Rev. Selleck was

preacher in charge of New Milford circuit, which, at that time, included

the following appointments: Pleasant Plains, Iron Works, Newtown,

Merryall, Hawleyville, Northville, Kent Mountain, Gaylordsville, Bull’s

Bridge, and Long Mountain. There were but three churches on the circuit.

The other preaching places were schoolhouses or private dwellings.

“Following a revival service held at the Leach Hollow schoolhouse in the

fall of 1837, the Center people invited Rev. Selleck to come up and

preach in the new church, which was not entirely furnished at that time.

The first service was held on New Year’s Eve, as a watch night service.

The church was filled to overflowing, and, at that service, seventy-five

persons came forward as seekers of religion. The meetings were

continued several weeks, Rev. H. Ames, a retired preacher residing in

the town, assisting much in the work. About two hundred fifty persons

professed religion during this revival. Of that number, seventy joined

the Methodist Church, while many joined the Congregational Church, of

which Rev. Mr. Gilson was then pastor.

“A few years later Sherman was made the center of a circuit, separate

from New Milford, taking in the appointments in the northern part of the

town. From 1826 to 1848 this circuit was connected with the New York

Conference. At the session of the General Conference in 1872 it was

again transferred to the New York Conference, where it still remains.

When the transfer was made in 1872, the records for the charge showed a

membership of seventy-three, the Sherman Society having at that time but

thirteen members.

“The church has had a long list of pastors, who served in the following

order: Revs. John Reynolds, William Jewett, Fitch Reed, Samuel Cochran,

Seth W. Scofield, A. S. Hill, Francis Donelly, the exact dates of whose

pastorates we cannot give; 1837, Alonzo Selleck and Asahel Brownson;

1838, Alonzo Selleck and Samuel Weeks; 1844-5, Gad S. Gilbert; 1846-7,

Elias Gilbert; 1848-9, Justus O. Worth; 1850, Thomas B. Treadwell; 1851,

William Wake; 1852, Alexander McAllester; 1853, Gilbert Hubbell; 1854-5,

David Nash; 1856-7, William H. Stebbins; 1858-9, Thomas D. Littlewood;

1860-2, John H. Gaylord; 1863, William Ross; 1864, John Henry Gaylord

(during his pastorate the church sheds were built); 1865-6, Benjamin A.

Gilman; 1867-8, F. W. Lockwood; 1869-70, Sherman D. Barnes; 1871, Frank

F. Jordan; 1872-3, B. M. Genung; 1874-5, Uriah Symonds; 1876, W. A.

Dalton; 1877-9, R. F. Elsden; 1880-1, Robert Kay; 1882-4, M. M. Curtis

(during his pastorate twenty-six joined the church, two of whom entered

the ministry--Rev. Henry Hoag, a member of the Conference, and Mark B.

Howland, a local preacher); 1885, Gustave Lass; 1886-7, E. H. Powell;

1888-92, W. H. Peters (under whose pastorate the church was thoroughly

repaired and refurnished); 1893-4, I. H. Keep; 1895-7, John Henry Lane;

1899, C. B. Conro; 1900-1, E. H. Roys; 1902, Robert F. Elsden; 1903-6,

Edmund T. Byles; 1907, O. Van Keuren, the present pastor.

“In 1898 the charge was left to be supplied. The Rev. M. M. Curtis, then

superannuated, filled the pulpit for a few weeks. When, by reason of

failing health, he was obliged to discontinue the work, the Rev. James

A. Hurn, who has since united with the Conference, supplied for the rest

of the year.

“During the pastorate of E. T. Byles the church property was greatly

improved by the addition of well-appointed church parlors, equipped with

all modern conveniences, the entire expense being provided for before

the work was begun.

“The membership, though small, is thoroughly united and intensely loyal.

“Others have labored, and we have entered into their labors, while they,

in continuous procession, have passed on to receive the reward of the

faithful.

“The present membership of the church is eighty-eight.”

BY REV. ELISHA J. ELLIS, OF DANBURY

IN THE ADVENT CHRISTIAN CHURCH

“Early in the history of the movement which resulted in the formation of

the Advent Christian denomination, the seed of the doctrines which

distinguished this people were sown here by pioneer hands. So far as

ascertained, the first preachers to arrive on the field were Elders Ira

Morgan and Samuel G. Mathewson, about 1844. Quite a number of

conversions followed, and Elder Mathewson baptized quite a number in the

stream which flows near the present church site. Rufus Way, Horace

Gregory, and Richard Heacock were converts about this time--also A. S.

Calkins, who afterwards became a talented preacher in the West.

“Joshua V. Hines preached here in 1846 or 1847. Afterwards, in the

sixties and seventies, representative men like

[Illustration: ADVENT CHRISTIAN CHURCH]

Miles Grant, Horace L. Hastings, I. B. Potter, Peter and Samuel Patro

labored here; also H. K. and A. D. Flagg.

“Under the labors of Rev. A. D. Flagg, in 1870, the pastor of this

church, at the age of eighteen, found Christ in personal salvation, and,

with his grandfather, was immersed in Still River near Lanesville. Over

thirty-five years ago, Stephen Heacock first commenced to publicly work

for the Master, and for years conducted a mission in the Town Hall

building.

“Between eleven and twelve years ago the speaker had the pleasure of

introducing him to the Advent Christian Connecticut Conference, and on

November 11th, 1897, in the Town Hall, Stephen Heacock was publicly

ordained to the gospel ministry, by the speaker and his associates of

the Ministerial Board of the Conference. While others have labored hard

toward the spread of the Adventual faith in this section, I think, all

present--yea, the entire community--will agree that largely to the

self-sacrificing, heroic efforts of this man, and his wife, the success

of our cause is due in this section....

“Not fulsome eulogy, but well-deserved words of praise, have I spoken

here, because, from personal observation and connection, I have closely

followed, and have been somewhat conversant with its history. On

February 20, 1900, while President of the State Conference, I was

summoned here to set this church apart in gospel order. On March 6, 1900

(in the hall on Bank Street), the church organization was duly

incorporated, and, on August 6, 1901, we were present, with other

clergymen, at the laying of the cornerstone. On November 14, 1901, the

church was formally dedicated to the worship of God and the work of

soul-winning, Rev. Henry Stone, of Wallingford, preaching the dedication

sermon....

“It will, doubtless, be interesting to present a few statistics

furnished us by the pastor in charge: The Advent Christian Church of New

Milford was organized February 20, 1900, with thirty-two charter

members. Forty members have been received since organization to date.

Four deaths and two withdrawals leave the present membership sixty-six

persons. The pastor, since his ordination, has celebrated nine

marriages, officiated at thirty-six funerals, and baptized forty-eight

persons. The total number of baptisms in this faith by various clergymen

in this vicinity would aggregate one hundred fifty. Elder Heacock has

preached in seventy-five different places during his ministry here, and

has spoken, by invitation, in Baptist, Methodist, Congregational, and in

union churches, in this vicinity. As a result of this outside work,

fifty or more conversions have resulted; and, during the years in which

he labored in the Gospel temperance work, prior to the establishment of

the Advent Christian Mission, many people were induced to abandon the

drink habit, and stand for God and the right. Only eternity will

rightfully exhibit the definite results of this work in and about this

village.

“Before we close the historical part of this discourse, let me call your

attention to a highly interesting feature of this edifice--the church

bell.

“Not only the church people, who worship here, but all the citizens of

New Milford must be specially interested in the bell, which swings in

this church tower, and whose presentation to this church is designed to

perpetuate some facts of general interest.... Partridge Thatcher, of New

Milford, was moderator of an assembly of landed proprietors, who, with

himself, had been granted lands in the wilderness of Vermont. These

proprietors held their first meeting in this town on May 10, 1770, at

the home of Colonel Samuel Canfield, and Thatcher, acting for these men,

made the first survey of Waterbury, Vt., in 1782. A lineal descendant of

Samuel Canfield--in the person of Lawrence Northrop--belongs to the

present membership of this church. Waterbury, Vt., stands on the banks

of the Winooski River, and, on a branch of that river, named (after the

original surveyor) ‘Thatcher’s Branch,’ stands the Advent Christian

Church of Waterbury. In this town of Waterbury, lives an Indian

gentleman, Agamenticus, or Joshua Merimam by name.... The blood of the

aboriginal inhabitants--the North American Indians--flows in the veins

of this beloved pastor and his wife (the former descended from the

tribe of the Narragansetts, and the wife, from the warlike clan of the

Pequots), and also in the veins of many of the church members who

worship here. These facts came in some way to the knowledge of this Mr.

Merimam, and he, in connection and with the aid of the town clerks of

Waterbury, Duxbury, Middlesex, and Moretown, Vt. (adjacent communities

on the banks of the Winooski River), and a Mr. Shonio, conceived the

idea of presenting this church in New Milford a bell, which should not

only keep green in memory the fact I have already stated, but also the

memory of a historic and tragic incident of the old French and Indian

War ... times, which I will now narrate.

“Over two hundred years ago, the French Catholics of Montreal erected a

church for their Indian converts, and imported a bell from France, which

they hung in this church tower. Soon after this, the English Colonists

raided Montreal, plundered the church, seized the bell, and carried it,

with many French and Indian prisoners, down the St. Lawrence River,

thence _via_ the ocean to the mouth of the Connecticut River to

Deerfield, Mass., where the Indians were sold into slavery, and the bell

hung in Rev. John Williams’ local church. At a point of the Winooski

Valley, where are now located the four towns I have just mentioned,

there was a neutral council-ground, called the Moheagans, where the

Indians of the New Milford section, the Indians of Massachusetts, and

the Northern tribes met annually to discuss matters of mutual interest.

At one of these gatherings, the Northern Indians learned the fate of

their comrades, and laid plans for a rescue. Early in 1704 three hundred

Indians and a few Frenchmen, under the noted French priest, Hextel de

Rouville, as leader, made a raid on Deerfield--going and coming through

Waterbury, Vt. Those familiar with early Colonial history will recall

what followed: the burning of Deerfield, Mass., the massacre of many of

the whites, the rescue of the old bell and of the Indian captives, and

the capture of more than a hundred prisoners of war. On the return

march, at the junction of the Winooski River with Lake Champlain, they

hid the bell till a more favorable moment. Returning in May, with one

black ox, driven by a negro, one white ox, driven by a white man, and

one red ox, driven by an Indian, the drivers and oxen garlanded with

festoons of wild flowers, they carried the bell home to Montreal with

great rejoicing, where yet it swings, so far as we know, in the same old

tower as of yore. In memory of this incident, and of the friendship of

the New Milford Indians, to their Northern brethren in the old Colonial

days, Agamenticus of Waterbury, Vt., with his friends, the white town

fathers of the old Vermont towns surveyed by the New Milford Thatcher,

gave this bell to the Advent Christian church of New Milford, Conn., and

christened it ‘_Sansaman_’ in honor of the first Indian Christian

Missionary of New England, killed by King Philip of the Wampanoags in

1675....”

BY REV. JOSEPH RYAN

IN ST. FRANCIS XAVIER’S CHURCH

“To-day, my dear friends, the celebration of an important and certainly

noteworthy event is taking place in this town of New Milford. With

pageantry and music and speech, in gayety and festivity, with reunions

of old friends and neighbors, the historic happening is receiving ample

recognition and celebration. And they do well, the people of New

Milford, proud of their town and its history, to recognize on such a

splendid scale its two hundredth birthday. With all their ceremonies of

civic and social celebration, the religious side of their town’s history

has been given equal attention. Almighty God has not been forgotten--He

who is the Creator and Supreme Ruler of the Universe, from whom comes

all that we are and all that we have, who holds in the palm of His hand

the destiny of the world and the fate of its people.

“To-day, in her different houses of worship, special religious exercises

appropriate to the occasion are being held. This morning, in particular,

sermons are preached of the history of her different churches.

“I need not tell you the history of your church; you all know it. It is

the common history of the Roman Catholic Church the world over. It

cannot well or easily be separated from that magnificent general history

stretching back through the ages nineteen hundred seven years to that

ever memorable first Christmas morn when Jesus Christ, the Son of God,

taking flesh of the Virgin Mary, was born in Bethlehem’s stable. And, in

that wonderful stretch of history, two hundred years are as a drop in

the bucket, as a sand on the seashore. From the days when the Holy

Sacrifice of the mass was first offered up in the home of Matthew Dunn

near the railroad station, or in Wright’s Hall on Main Street, or in the

residence of Edmond Finn, to this very day, Roman Catholic history in

New Milford has been the same as it has been the world over--a history

of early trials and sufferings and labor, all of which have gradually

and surely melted away before the grand old faith of the ages. The loyal

Catholics first in New Milford, though their future looked dark and

stormy, clung to the faith richly planted in their noble hearts, and put

their trust in the words of Him who first established their Church upon

this earth, ‘Thou art Peter and on this rock I will build my church and

the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.’ And they did well to

put their trust in Him who had also promised, ‘Behold I am with you all

days even to the consummation of the world.’ In the language of St.

Paul, those pioneers of the Roman Catholic Church in New Milford have

fought the good fight, they have saved the faith, and they have gone to

receive from their Divine Master the crown of eternal glory....

“They knew well the truth of their Holy Religion, yes, and its value. No

mess of pottage, however alluring, be it greater position in society, or

greater financial considerations, could tempt them to part with their

Divinely given birthright of Catholic faith. They were in Peter’s boat

and well they knew it, and, better still, they showed it by their lives

of rugged righteousness.

“The fair name and fame of the Divinely built ship that has ridden over

the waves and through the storms of nineteen centuries was safe in

their keeping, for not only did they love their religion, but they also

lived it. You, their descendants and successors, to-day, I would say to

you, in the words of your Divine Master, ‘Go you and do likewise.’”

THE UNION MEETING

At three o’clock in the afternoon, a union open-air service of all the

churches in the town was held upon “The Green.” Three thousand people,

it is estimated, were present. A chorus of one hundred voices, conducted

by Prof. Clemence and accompanied by the band, rendered the “Gloria in

Excelsis” and “The Heavens Are Telling” in a highly effective manner,

and led the audience in a number of familiar hymns. Rev. F. A. Johnson

of the First Congregational Church presided. Rev. J. F. Plumb of St.

John’s Church, Rev. S. D. Woods of the Baptist Church, and Rev. H. K.

Smith of the Methodist Church offered prayer, and Rev. Stephen Heacock

of the Advent Christian Church read the Scripture. The addresses were by

Rev. Frederick A. Wright, D. D., of New York City, a former New Milford

boy, and by Rev. Charles J. Ryder, D. D., of New York City,

Corresponding Secretary of the American Missionary Association, who,

although not himself a native of New Milford, is connected with a family

formerly prominent in the affairs of the town.

Dr. Wright said:

“It is a pleasure to me to address you, both because I count it an honor

to speak to this audience, and because I feel it a privilege to speak on

this occasion, and in this place. My ancestors, both on my mother’s side

and on my father’s, have been identified with this town for six

generations, so that I feel a sort of intimate kinship with the very

fields and mountains; and this soil is in a double sense my ‘mother

earth.’ And, just as Antæus, the child of earth, gained tenfold strength

every time he stretched his length upon the grass, so, wearied with the

rush and crowding of the city, and the sorrows of its poor,

[Illustration: NEW MILFORD PASTORS

Rev. Frank B. Draper

Professor of Mathematics

and Chaplain, Ingleside

School

Rev. Marmaduke Hare

Rector All Saints Memorial

Church

Rev. Father John J. Burke

Curate of Roman Catholic

Church

Rev. Timothy J. Lee

Former Pastor of First

Congregational Church

Rev. Frank A. Johnson

Pastor of First Congregational

Church and the

Chairman of Religious

Committee of the Bi-Centennial

Rev. Solomon D. Woods

Pastor Baptist Church

Northville Society

Rev. Harris K. Smith

Pastor of the Methodist

Episcopal Church

Rev. John F. Plumb

Arch Deacon and Rector

of St. John’s Episcopal

Church

Rev. Stephen Heacock

Pastor of Advent Christian

Church

]

and the ‘weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin,’ I come here

and find refreshment and repose. The large city has certain great

attractions, and, in some respects, life in it is far broader and

greater than it can be elsewhere. That is the reason I went to New York.

But the town, and the _small city_, have other advantages, and it is by

those that my love of this place is kindled. And so, on this birthday of

New Milford, I want to speak of those qualities which I prize so highly

in this place.

“And, first on the list, comes personal freedom. Thackeray said that

England had fifty million people in it, mostly fools. Well, when you

have an enormously big city, there are so many fools gathered together

there, that it is not feasible and practicable for the sensible people

to be free. You must not carry a pistol, because there are so many

‘gumps’ that cannot be trusted with firearms. You cannot let people walk

on the grass, or they will destroy the foliage. It is all paternalism.

The law is taking care of you. You cannot let people take their children

into the park on a sled. They might get hurt. A cordon of police guard

the ice on the part of the lake that is not safe. If they did not, some

idiot would skate into the water. Now, I resent being protected from

myself. I feel like Ben. Franklin, ‘Where freedom is, there is my

country.’

“Another good treasure you have is simplicity. Life here is less

complex. There are so many things in city life that demand attention

that our energies get scattered, and our attention diverted, and our

ways conventional and artificial. It is hard to express just what I

mean; but life up here is less confused and more elemental and natural

and real. That is a good thing. Then, you have the sunshine and the air

and the open fields. You have what people who come up here from the

Bowery call ‘_loneliness_.’ It is aloofness. One can withdraw here, can

get away, can get out of sight, can hear that still small voice which

speaks only through the peace of nature--can ‘flee as a bird to the

mountains.’ One idea of holiness is that which is set apart. Your

landscape has a holiness which is not shared by shaven lawns punctuated

by statuary. Our national emblem is the eagle, and there is an eagle

spirit in the American people which likes the cliffs and the forests

better than the boulevards and the parks.

“Then, there are not so many of you but that you can know each other and

be interested in each other and help each other. The so-called

philanthropy, which is more interested in institutions than it is in

individuals, is a bad thing. What this world, with its suffering and sin

and error, needs, is not more brown-stone laboratories and patent

book-shelves and institutes for the uplift of the masses and the

glorification of the millionaire rascals that endowed them; what the

world needs is men that are interested in the individuals that surround

them. I have not twenty-five thousand dollars to give away; but, if I

had, I would pick out a worthy family that needed it and give it to

them. I would endow a trades_man_ and not a trade _school_. Now,

conditions here are good, because of the human interest you take in each

other. If there were five hundred thousand of you, such personal

interest would be impossible. Try to take a _personal_ interest in one

hundred thousand people. You cannot do it. The personal relations of

employer and employed, of neighbors and friends, in a village are a

priceless blessing.

“All these things are characteristics of this place.

“Besides this, it has its own history, its beautiful street, its scenery

so exceptionally sweet and lovely--it is for these things that we

celebrate its birthday.”

Dr. Ryder’s address was entitled “THE VILLAGE AND THE NATION.” He spoke

as follows:

“In this picturesque, beautiful and impressive Celebration, the

Bi-Centennial of the settlement of this region, thought is naturally

turned to the village of New Milford and the community life gradually

developed here. There were certain fundamental characteristics of this

village life which you, who were a part of it in later days, appreciate

much better than your speaker. And yet even a superficial knowledge of

what was here begun and has been gradually developed impresses these

fundamental characteristics.

“This was a simple and natural life. The speaker preceding me has

developed eloquently this fact. Artificiality had not yet crept into the

social conditions of this life. The value of a man was not estimated by

his heredity nor his wealth. It was a pure, clean democracy where every

man was a man in privilege and opportunity ‘for a’ that, and a’ that.’

“But another element of this village life was also evident from the

first. This was the articulation of the community. Everyone knew every

other one within the confines of the settlement, although stretching

along the edges of the beautiful rivers, down the valleys and plains,

and up the slope of the stately old mountains. When Mary Jones’ husband

died and left her with a brood of little children, every man and woman

in the community knew it, and most of them called upon Mary Jones with

their burden of food or clothing or wood-shed supplies. It was the

articulation of one life into another life, and of each life into the

whole, that made the village of New Milford and every village in New

England so strong and safe and efficient.

“But, little by little, these villagers in New Milford and other

communities round about felt the need of the articulation of community

interest into a larger whole. And so the community of associated

responsibility and help took in Waterbury, Norwalk, Bridgeport,

Hartford, and New Haven and other villages and towns scattered over this

general region. This articulated the separate communities into a larger

whole and the commonwealth was created. It was not a formal government

so much as a community of interest and sympathy and love and organized

efficiency. These several communities became a commonwealth for

protection and development. Self-control was the basis of governmental

control. The village was strong and vigorous in so far as the individual

man and woman were strong and vigorous. The commonwealth developed these

qualities of influence and strength only as the village developed them.

And so this simple, this articulate life of the village became the life

of the commonwealth.

“Then a new condition arose. King George came across the water,

established his forts, anchored his fleet in the harbor of another

community that began as a village in the neighboring colony of

Massachusetts. There was need of protection and safeguard in a larger

way than the group of communities or villages furnished. So there came

the articulation of the commonwealth with that of other commonwealths,

and the united colonial power came into being. This afterwards became,

as we all know so well, the United States.

“So, in constructive analysis, beginning with the unit of governmental

power and influence, we find the village. No fairer or better or cleaner

or more dignified than this village of New Milford existed in all the

group of villages amid all the clustered commonwealths. A son of some

Pilgrims from New Milford, who drifted into northern Ohio, who is your

speaker at this moment, rejoices with you who have dwelt here in the

East, in this magnificent and imposing Celebration of the founding of

New Milford.

“But a larger view than this must be taken if we would estimate the

importance and meaning of this village Celebration. The articulation of

interests in the life of our nation as it exists to-day is much more

difficult than it was when these villages grew by natural processes into

the early national life. Multitudinous and heterogeneous masses are

mingled in our body politic to-day, coming from nations that know

nothing about the traditions of Puritan, or Pilgrim, or Dutch, or

Cavalier. In many of these nations from which these peoples come and

mingle in our life, the only thought of government is that of power, of

police force, or suppression. Danger threatens us as we attempt to

assimilate into our own national life these heterogeneous masses. It is

not that they are bad, but that they come to us with no such conceptions

of the simplicity and articulation of life and government as our fathers

possessed who established the villages of New England. Our

responsibility is to spread everywhere the great principles that lay at

the foundations of village life in early New England. It is not from

northern Europe that immigrants come who are a menace to these

institutions that have made the United States what they are to-day. The

real problem is the assimilation of unassociated races who are making a

large portion of our body politic. Twenty million of the eighty million

who are citizens of the United States are of the brown-skinned,

undeveloped races. They represent fundamentally different ideals from

those that made New England and the southern colonial States the power

they were. It is for us in this generation to stimulate in these

brown-skinned people the higher conceptions and loftier ideals

represented in these villages that furnished the unit of development in

the early years of the nation. There are two United States to-day, and

we cannot neglect either of them with safety. There is Continental

United States, the familiar old stretch of territory from ocean to ocean

and from gulf to northern Alaska. This furnishes problems enough for the

children of the Pilgrims to meet and solve. But another United States

has been added in these later years, and that is Insular United States.

They were brought to us through the arbitrament of war. We did not seek

them; we perhaps are the poorer for their possession. But the great

problem that God in His providence has put upon us to-day is the

elevation and redemption of the masses of these island peoples. They

have no village traditions or life to look back to. They have no

intelligent conception of freedom. Morality is almost an unknown quality

as we use the term. One great problem before Americans to-day,

therefore, is the Americanizing and Christianizing of these masses that

have become a part of our body politic, and whose future will largely

determine the future of our entire nation.

“The village ideal, the simple, natural life that the smaller

communities illustrated, the articulation of interests into one common

and homogeneous whole, is what is demanded to-day, and what we must

struggle for and achieve if the nation remains in its integrity and

strength and dignity.

“When we analyze back to the village, we only go a part of the way. The

unit after all was the home. One home articulated with other homes was

the final analysis of strength and safety. It is the home, and not the

church or the school, that holds men and women to that which is best and

noblest. It was the home in the villages of New England, it was the

home in New Milford, that determined its value and contributed to its

beauty of community life. We have got to create in these masses that are

coming among us the desire for the best, purest, noblest Christian home,

or our entire civilization is in danger. If this Bi-Centennial of New

Milford shall stir the hearts of the descendants of the brave men and

women who established this village with a great passionate desire and an

overmastering determination to perpetuate these great ideals and visions

which the fathers held and nourished in their homes and united in their

community life, then this Bi-Centennial were indeed an occasion of

deepest rejoicing and abiding value.”

SUNDAY EVENING

At five o’clock a service was held in All Saints’ Memorial Church (St.

John’s Congregation uniting), which was attended by pastors of the

churches of several denominations--another illustration of that fine

Christian fellowship prevailing in New Milford which the Union Meeting

on “The Green” had signally exemplified. The rector, Rev. Marmaduke

Hare, preached an eloquent and profound sermon, in which he claimed that

the master-force in the growth of mankind in all the higher qualities

has been the truth and hope of the Gospel, and protested against

imputing to nature, reason, science, philosophy, commerce, and politics

what belongs to Christianity. “Ethical societies,” he said, “may preach

ideals, parliaments prescribe methods, literature describe the movements

and processes of civilization, but the Church of the living God supplies

the moral dynamic which makes possible all the rest.”

At seven o’clock historical addresses were delivered at the

Congregational Church and Saint John’s Church, by Rev. Charles J. Ryder,

D. D., of New York, and Rev. George S. Bennitt, D. D., of Jersey City,

respectively. Dr. Ryder’s subject was “PILGRIMS FROM NEW MILFORD.” He

said:

“Western Connecticut and Massachusetts contributed more

[Illustration: MEMORIAL BUILDING AND PUBLIC LIBRARY]

[Illustration: ALL SAINTS’ MEMORIAL CHURCH]

to the early settlement of northern Ohio probably than any other section

of the country. Pilgrims from this portion of New England began early to

find their way westward. Along the fertile valley of the Mohawk, on the

edge of the great inland seas, these settlers planted their homes. You

can easily trace the line of their march in the intelligence and dignity

of character that their descendants possess to-day in these regions. New

Milford contributed to this body of Pilgrims that followed the sun

toward its setting. As they went out, they left that which has been so

eloquently set forth in various public addresses during the progress of

this Bi-Centennial of New Milford. The beautiful valleys and imposing

mountains, the clear rivers and foaming brooks, the marvelous,

picturesque beauty of New Milford and its environment, they left behind

them. They did not find these, as they planted their tents in the great

forests of northern Ohio. How often have I heard one of these Pilgrims

from New Milford describe her homesickness as she looked out upon the

almost flat country, which the local clearing had revealed, into the

dense forests that shut down upon the edge of this clearing on every

side! Turbid streams, muddy roads, wooden sidewalks, the plain and

unattractive natural scenery, and the rough conditions of pioneer life

were vastly different from the beautiful landscape and refined

conditions of this home town from which they went out.

“But they did not leave all, nor the best, of that which they had

gathered in the life in New Milford, as they left its borders and went

overland by their own conveyance into Ohio. They took with them three

fundamental conceptions of life. First, that of the Christian home;

second, that of the public school; third, that of the Christian church.

To these ideals, planted in the hearts of these early Pilgrims, may be

traced the fruitage of the strong intellectual and moral life which has

developed in the citizenship of northern Ohio.

“These Pilgrims from New England found chiefly an opportunity. The

physical conditions were depressing and hard. The problem of life was

serious and difficult, the hardships encountered were rigorous and

persistent; but wherever these Pilgrims planted a colony in the Western

Reserve, or New Connecticut, as it was called, they established the

Christian home, the public school, and the Christian church.

“Philo Penfield Stewart, a Pilgrim from the neighboring town of Sherman,

illustrates the character and purposes of these early settlers. He went

into Ohio in 1832, and, even before his weary body could have rested

from the long and tedious journey, he began at once, in connection with

Rev. J. R. Shipherd of Elyria, plans for the establishment of a college

and colony at Oberlin. It is possible, as history hints, that the first

white pioneer into Ohio was Ferdinand De Soto, who possibly pushed his

way into the region of this great central State as early as 1539. It is

most fortunate, however, that not the descendants of De Soto, but the

Pilgrims from New England and their descendants, gave the ideals and

formative influences to this new commonwealth. That there should be the

least percentage of illiteracy in the northern counties of Ohio, known

still as the Western Reserve, of any part of the tabulated world, is not

an accident. The schoolhouse was as much a part of their essential

requirements as the barn or the shop. When in the height of his

wide-reaching influence, Dr. Joseph Cook went once to Cleveland; he

carefully studied the conditions of the public schools of the Forest

City. He afterwards bore testimony that ‘in coming from Boston,

Massachusetts, to Cleveland, Ohio, he came _up_ in the character of the

appointments and work in the public schools, and not down’; that ‘the

educational system of Cleveland was better than the educational system

of Boston.’ Your speaker having had somewhat intimate acquaintance with

both systems, would speak an humble word of endorsement to this

testimony of Dr. Cook. These Pilgrims from New Milford found mud,

homeliness, forest, hardships, toil and privation. But they found

opportunity. This opportunity they improved to the best of their ability

or of any ability that human beings could command. They planted churches

and worshiped within their sacred precincts with loving reverence; they

built their schoolhouses and had no lack of teachers, for many of their

wives and daughters had been teachers in Old Connecticut. They sent

their children to school, sparing them from needed work on the farm or

in the shop or store. They did this, because they were building life,

character; were establishing a Christian civilization to outlast them

and their immediate descendants. They did it, because they believed in

God and man and in making the most of life. Better than all, they

gathered in their homes around the clear-swept hearth of their open

fireplaces, in love, peace, and confidence. Often the crackling fire on

the open hearth was the only light that the home possessed for the

evening. Sometimes, as we learn from their records, they put melted

tallow in a tin basin and hung a bit of cotton wicking over the side to

light their humble homes. ‘Two such lanterns,’ they tell us, ‘were

sufficient to light up the church for evening service.’ It was almost

reverting to the type of the lamp used in early Jewish history, and

quite to the profound Hebrew reverence. But whatever artificial light

these Pilgrims had, they saw clearly the great purposes of existence,

and read with undimmed vision ‘their title clear’ to the best that

devotion and energy and faith and courage could achieve.

“When the great agitation came in favor of freedom, as against chattel

slavery, the descendants of the New Milford Pilgrims in northern Ohio

did not flinch nor hesitate. Professor Hart, in his recent volume on

‘Slavery and Abolition,’ says:[17] ‘One reason for the force which

abolition early acquired in Ohio was the fallow field waiting for it in

the Western Reserve. This region, settled by Connecticut people between

1790 and 1820, was still a little New England, its churches, schools,

and local government closely modeled on those of Connecticut.’ Nor did

this ‘fallow field’ among the Pilgrims from New Milford prove

unproductive. Rustic lads, whom Dr. James Harris Fairchild, President of

Oberlin College for many potential years, represented, bearing his

testimony to these hard, early conditions, waded through the snow

barefooted in order to attend school. Such lads could not be kept away

from the privileges of higher training. Colleges were immediately

necessary. Such institutions were established, buildings erected,

faculties gathered, lecture and class rooms crowded with eager pupils,

as by the magic wand of some scholastic magician. Within a few months

of its establishment, Oberlin College had hundreds of pupils. They had

brought together a faculty perhaps unequaled, man for man, in the

faculty of any institution ever founded. They were giants,

intellectually and morally. Their names to-day are wrought not alone in

the intellectual and educational history, but into the very warp and

woof of our national life. Ohio, the great West, the South, and the

nation could hardly have been the great, united nation that it is, had

it not been for these Pilgrims from New Milford and their descendants,

who stood with heroic courage for the highest ideals, and strove to

attain them at tremendous sacrifice and suffering.

“Professor Hart is responsible for the following bit of history: ‘When

Harriet Martineau attended an anti-slavery meeting, she found that she

had given offense to the best society in Boston. Theodore Parker found

his clerical brethren refusing to exchange pulpits with him; “My life

seems to me a complete failure socially; here I am as much an outcast

from society as though I were a convicted pirate.” The eastern colleges,

almost without exception, were strongholds of pro-slavery feeling.... In

1848, Charles Sumner, a graduate of Harvard, spoke to the students of

the college. Longfellow said: “The shouts and the hisses and the vulgar

interruptions grated on our ears. I was glad to get away!”’

“But such a spirit of cowardice and weak surrender to the financial and

social influence of the South as was manifested by many eastern

colleges, was not that of the western colleges planted in the clearing

of the great forests of the New Connecticut largely by the Pilgrims of

New Milford. They spoke out steady and strong against the ‘twin relic of

barbarism.’ Professor Seabert, in his history of the ‘underground

railway,’ bears testimony that through the Western Reserve almost every

line of secret escape for the slave running toward the north star

passed. At Oberlin, where the Pilgrims in whom your speaker is most

profoundly interested had their home, eleven underground railroads

passed. They radiated as many as the ten fingers of the two hands, and

one hand had an extra finger. It was the boast of these brave men

and women, and the boast was proven by the fact, that no negro

was ever taken back to slavery who reached the Western Reserve.

How well I remember those early incidents in my boyhood home! The

Oberlin-Wellington rescue case is written in the history of the nation.

How the excitement and agitation of that New England village in Ohio

come to me as I think of it! It was but a few months after the death of

my father, Oliver Roberts Ryder, a Pilgrim from Danbury to this same

Western Reserve. A negro boy, John Price by name, had escaped from

slavery. He had been a resident for some time in Oberlin. Through the

intrigue of a pro-slavery countryman near the village, he was waylaid,

captured by a band of slave-holders, bound and gagged, thrown into a

wagon, and hurried off to a railroad station on the railroad leading

into the South. The descendants of our Connecticut Pilgrims of the town

heard of it. Prayer was offered first, for faith in God was the very

threshold over which they passed to the accomplishment of any brave

purpose. Wagons were hastily gathered, firearms piled into them, and

away the Oberlin rescuers went to win this black boy, rather worthless

fellow in himself, to personal freedom. This was his constitutional

right under the Declaration of Independence, for he surely was born to

be ‘free and equal’ in privilege. He was rescued from the slave-holders,

although they were armed to the teeth and displayed their guns, but did

not dare to use them. The faculty, the Sunday school superintendent, the

leading business men were in this band of rescuers, and were afterwards

thrown into prison for the technical crime of their acts. Here again the

splendid traditions which these Pilgrims brought from their eastern home

came in play. Obey the law they must. They could do it by not breaking

it, or by submitting to the penalty. They chose the latter, and no one

made the slightest effort to escape, but submitted without a moment’s

hesitation to the processes of the law, and stood before the jury. They

were not subpæna jumpers, and in this showed that they were not criminal

in intent, as those who seek to escape the processes of the law always

are.

“No, be it said to the glorious memory of the Pilgrims of New Milford

and Western New England, they did not follow in the wake of many of the

larger institutions in the East, and cringe and whimper and grovel under

the crack of the whip of the slave-holding aristocracy. Open and free

and manly, they stood out for the defense of freedom, whether applied to

the person of black man or white man. It was the highest type of

educational training which any institution can furnish. It was not

tamely to learn axioms or to demonstrate mathematical problems, but to

know, to believe, to defend that which was best and truest. These worthy

Pilgrims who went out in the early part of the nineteenth century into

this western forest, stood for this with all the sturdy strength of

these mighty trees that shadowed their homes. It is because they went,

and others like them, that the Buckeye State has risen to and maintained

her dominant influence in the nation’s life. It is due to these

Pilgrims, more than to any other one force, that the whole Northwest was

from the first saved the disgrace of slavery. Institutions of learning

in which women as well as men had the right to the best education were

planted. They maintained the school, the church, the home in every

hamlet and city and village; and, to-day, this region they settled

presents the finest, largest, and most comprehensive type of Christian

civilization that the earth affords. All glory, then, to these Pilgrims

from New Milford! They, like one of old, ‘went out not knowing whither

they went.’ They dared and suffered and died, but always achieved. Well

may this village, a beautiful gem set in the midst of these rolling

hills, rejoice in its own noble development and progress and prosperity.

Your life here is almost ideal. The conditions are as fine as the world

affords. But, as you rejoice in this Bi-Centennial of your own founding,

forget not, O brave and true men and women of this generation; forget

not, O Christians of these churches; forget not, O patrons of this

redeemed nation, that the Pilgrims that went out from your firesides and

homes into the great West inaugurated the tremendous forces that have

moved on in increasing power and breadth until the whole nation has been

made the richer by their mighty power.”

Dr. Bennitt’s address at Saint John’s Church was as follows:

“...Religious matters, during our beginnings, did not run very

smoothly. The desire for greater religious freedom caused a considerable

falling away of sundry church members to Quakerism in 1731 and 1732.

There were also families who had come into the town, and brought with

them an affection for their old Church in England; and, as the English

Church had been established in Stratford in 1707, and in Newtown in

1732, only fifteen miles away, the influence of this Church began to

exert itself here. When the Rev. John Beach ... established the services

of the Church of England in Newtown, the Churchmen of New Milford

journeyed on Saturdays to Newtown, carrying their own provisions, and

the Churchmen there gave them their lodgings. He baptized their

children, and came here to officiate at a marriage in 1739. He began

services here about 1742. He sent Mr. Barzilla Dean here as a lay

reader, services being rendered in one of the houses of a Church family.

“It is stated that certain Churchmen in New Milford were fined for

refusing to attend the meetings of the Established Church. These fines

were, by recommendation of the Rev. Mr. Beach, paid, and copies of the

proceedings taken to be forwarded to the King and Council. The fact

becoming known, the authorities refunded the money, and granted

permission to build a church which before had been refused.... In 1745-6

materials were gathered, and the English Church in New Milford erected.

“Let us glance for a few moments at the village street at this time. The

early settlers had laid out their town plot, because of a beautiful

spring of water, at the head of the street, nearly in front of Ingleside

School, and about under the present sidewalk. The water from this spring

meandered its way down through the village street, _bowing_ from the

spring to the south end of the street, where it formed a small pond,

which was called ‘The Goose Pond.’ This accounts for the east side of

Main Street _bowing_, while the west side is straight, and the street

opening out considerably wider at the south end, on account of ‘The

Goose Pond.’ This spring was there in my boyhood days, although an open

ditch had been constructed through the middle of ‘The Green,’ in which

the stream flowed. Since the construction of the water works, however,

and the laying of pipes through the street, both the spring and the

stream have disappeared.

“The First Established Church stood near the head of Main Street, near

the spring, and the land granted for the Church of England was in the

street, east of Mr. Samuel Prindle’s house, near where the old pound

used to stand, at the south end of Main Street, therefore, and in the

middle of the street. Here they built the first Church of England in New

Milford.... It was a frame building, forty feet by thirty. It had two

rows of windows, one above the other, and presented the appearance of a

two-story house, and the door was in the side. It was surmounted by a

turret in the center of the building, and stood ends to the east and

west. The door was on the south side, and within, on the north side,

stood the pulpit. It was not until 1756 that the building was finished,

when, upon the building of the second meeting-house, it was voted to

give three-quarters of the body seats and two pews in the old

meeting-house to the Church of England. Then, the church was furnished

with the square box seats, and the pulpit stood aloft, beneath which was

the reading desk for the prayers, and, beneath that, the pew for the

clerk, to lead in the responses, and to tune the Psalms. A curtain

across the corner, served as a robing-room for the vesting of the

clergymen, and, around little tables which were placed in the middle of

the square box seats, gathered the families of the Churchmen of that

early time. And on account of the love and affection they bore to the

Rev. John Beach, of Newtown, who first planted the church in their

midst, they named it ‘Saint John’s Church’; and it has borne that name

ever since.

“The Rev. Solomon Palmer, a Congregational minister of Cornwall,

dissatisfied with his orders, conformed to the Church, and went to

England for ordination. After that, he returned here, and became the

first Church of England minister who resided here, from 1754 to

1760.... He was succeeded by the Rev. Thomas Davies in 1761. He was a

missionary sent by the ‘Venerable Society for the Propagation of the

Gospel in Foreign Parts.’ ... a graduate of Yale College, a man who had

become a minister of the church, from conviction, a gentleman and a

scholar, a reader of the service, and preacher of the highest order....

Under this man of God the Church outgrew its small building, and entered

upon the construction of a new, more commodious, and churchly edifice.

“I have a copy of the diary of the Rev. Thomas Davies, containing most

of his ministerial acts, and some of these shed considerable light on

the old times. He records, on November 15, 1764: ‘On St. Pumpion’s

(Pumpkin’s) Day, I baptized at Ethel Stone’s, Martha, Ester and Edmond,

children of Ethel Stone, Hannah of Gad Sperry, Joseph and Hulda of

Samuel Peet, and David Smith of David Smith.’

“He alludes to St. Pumpion’s Day in other records, which leads us to

suppose that this was a colloquial term in those days for designating

the annual New England Thanksgiving, which was celebrated by an

abundance of pumpkin pies.

“I have a manuscript sermon of the Rev. Thomas Davies, preached at New

Milford, written in the finest hand, showing clearness of thought, a

fine choice of language, and rising to eloquence, in pressing home to

the hearts of his hearers the word of God.

“The Rev. Mr. Davies was succeeded by the Rev. Richard Clark from

Milford, who remained here until 1787. He was here during the

Revolution. The church begun by Mr. Davies was completed sufficiently to

begin services therein, and the old church was sold to the town for a

town house. This was removed to the head of Main Street and used for

several years.

“The second Church of England, begun under Rev. Mr. Davies, had

Partridge Thatcher for its architect, but was modeled after the church

at Stratford, but somewhat plainer in its ornamentation.

“It stood, facing the road towards Butter Brook, a few rods north of the

first church, had a steeple which projected out in front of the

building, and long windows round at the top. Within, it had the high

pulpit with circular stairs; its reading desk and clerk’s pew beneath,

making what was called a three-decker. A communion table was in front of

all, and the whole was surrounded by a communion rail. A gallery was

across the south end; and a curtain across the corner, served again as a

robing-room. The service of that day had its peculiar features. The

clergyman was robed in a long surplice and black scarf. He wore a white

wig, to give age and dignity to his ministrations. The surplice was

exchanged for a black silk gown and bands before the sermon, the

congregation all knelt for the prayers, and, in doing so, turned around

and knelt to the seats. The clerk (or clark, as the people called him)

doled out a line of the old Metrical Psalms, and the congregation sang

it, and waited for another line. There was no fire in the church, and,

in winter, the women carried their foot stoves to keep their feet warm.

“The Revolution, however, gave great discouragement to the Church of

England people, for everything English was hated by the inhabitants, and

the Rev. Mr. Clark, after ten years of struggle, gave up and fled to

Nova Scotia in 1787, and the church was closed.

“The kind of Church people that were made in the Colonial days of the

Church in Connecticut may be illustrated by the name of Samuel Peet, a

devout Churchman from Stratford, who came to settle in the New Milford

North Purchase, in the vicinity of Rock Cobble, west of Peet Hill. He

selected a site for his future home near a great rock, which, by some

convulsion of nature, had been rent asunder, leaving a portion like an

altar between, with two natural steps to ascend it. Here, Samuel Peet,

the Hermit, knelt day by day to worship his God, and the holes he

chiseled out for his knees on the top of that altar are to be seen to

this day. He erected his house just west of the altar, and here reared

his family, desiring to be buried between the rocks, but, as it was

found they came together just below the surface of the ground, he was

buried on the east side of the altar rocks, in one of the most romantic

burying-places of this town. Now, in 1789, when the Rev. Mr. Clark had

fled to Nova Scotia, and the church in New Preston was boarded up to

save its windows from being destroyed, Samuel Peet was on his death-bed,

desiring to receive the Holy Communion. He sent a messenger away down to

one of the churches nearer the Sound, for a priest. It was in March, and

the roads were very heavy, and a prolonged time was required.

“Meanwhile, Samuel Peet was nearing his end. He asked that bread and

wine be prepared and placed on a table beside his bed, that no time be

lost when the priest of the Church arrived. Again and again, he sent out

to see if the messenger and the priest might be seen coming in the

distance; and, as the end grew nearer, and the priest had not arrived,

Samuel Peet said, ‘Let us pray,’ and, when all had knelt around his bed,

he prayed: ‘O Blessed Jesus, Our great High Priest, come down and

consecrate this Bread and this Wine to be Thy Body and Blood.’ And,

after silence had been kept for a space, he reached out his trembling

hand and communicated himself, after which he soon fell asleep in Jesus.

Who shall say that was not a valid consecration!

“The priest of the Church arrived that night, and remained to commit his

body to the earth, looking for the general resurrection in the Last

Day....

“It is a tradition that some of the rectors of the Church of England had

a habit of talking to themselves, and, behind the curtain while they

were robing, would often repeat over the notices to be given out, the

most interesting being the publishing of the banns of matrimony, which

was the custom in those days. On one occasion the banns were published

between Orin Marsh and Maria Hill, who lived upon the plains. Now, there

were in the Church, Orman Marsh of Boardman’s Bridge, and Maria Hill, of

Aspetuck, whom the congregation thought were the parties published,

greatly to their confusion. That day, the second-named began their

acquaintance, suggested by the banns, and, in due time, their banns

were likewise published.

“The Rev. Enoch Huntington, who entered upon the rectorship in 1827,

began parish records, and, upon the first page, states that there was a

congregation of about thirty. No Sunday school, and no music. Also the

church was in need of repair, but he concluded not to spend much upon

it, but later to build a new church, the third one of the society. The

new rector soon gained the love and esteem of the people in general, and

the attendance of young people became a prominent feature in his

ministry. So devoted were his people, that they are spoken of, when the

church roof was old and leaky, as sitting in their pews during a shower,

with their umbrellas up, listening to the preaching of the word of God.

A bell was placed in this old church steeple, the first one the church

possessed. In 1837 a new church was erected on the east side of Main

Street at the corner of what is now called Church Street. This church

was a frame building, with long windows, square at the top. It had a

square tower upon it, and, within, a gallery around three sides, a

massive mahogany pulpit, reading desk below, and a small mahogany

communion table in front, with two mahogany chairs on either side, a

communion rail enclosing them. A vestry-room was built in the rear, and

the rector entered the pulpit from stairs in the vestry-room, and

appeared through a door cut in the wall behind the pulpit.

“The pulpit and reading desk were covered with cushions of black silk

velvet, with heavy silk-corded fringe across the front, and large silk

tassels suspended at the corners. There was a sofa seat behind the

reading desk attached to the pulpit.

“The pews had doors with large black tin plates attached with numbers

on. This church was considered very handsome in its furnishings, and was

the pride of both rector and people. It was furnished with a new bell,

and into this came the first organ owned by Saint John’s Church. Rev.

Mr. Huntington resigned in 1848, and, after his decease several years

later, was brought here and buried in the village cemetery, having this

honorable record--of being the rector of Saint John’s Parish longer than

any other clergyman from its beginning to the present day....

“During the incumbency of Rev. William H. Reese, I was baptized in that

old church, out of the silver bowl placed on the communion table. When I

was a little child, I well remember how Bishop Brownell catechised the

children, standing about the chancel rail, but, perhaps, as I grew

older, the most vivid impression made upon me was the preparation for,

and attendance upon, the old-time Christmas Eve service. Evergreens were

gathered upon the Plains, and the people assembled at Mr. George

McMahon’s to tie them. They were gathered in Aspetuck, and the people

assembled at Mr. Marshall Hill’s or Mr. Stephen Morehouse’s. They were

gathered at the village, and the people assembled at the house of my

father, Noble S. Bennitt, on Bennitt Street. The refreshments consisted

of a pan of doughnuts, round and sugared. The cracking fire on the

hearth consumed the broken branches, and the young people remained for a

social time after their elders had departed. Such large ropes of

evergreens were tied, and afterwards suspended from corner to corner of

the church, and all around the walls, and in front of the gallery!

“White covers of bleached muslin covered the pulpit and reading desk, to

which were attached fringes made of the needles of the pine, by Miss

Bostwick, afterwards Mrs. Leroy Buck. Mottoes of evergreen on white

cloth were put up on the walls, and candelabra, of five candles each,

across the ends of the pulpit and desk cushions. Miss Cornelia Boardman

brought a large fluid lamp with a glass globe and put it on the

communion table. The people reserved their whitest and purest tallow to

make dipped candles to hang up in tin back candlesticks under the

gallery, while Edgar and Henry Wells made a great star of five points,

covered it with evergreens, and suspended it from the ceiling in the

middle of the church, containing as many candles as it was the year of

the century. This was the only time in the year that the church was

lighted up, and the people of the town turned out and filled the church

and its galleries to overflowing. The good old Christmas Eve service of

the old times, who that was then alive shall ever forget it!

“But the solemnity of the old-time Sunday comes up with all its hallowed

associations. The Sunday church bells, with the orderly ringing and

tolling of their first bells and last bells; with their solemn tolling

for a death--nine for a man, seven for a woman, five for a boy, three

for a girl!

“The sleigh bells, too, bass ones and tenor ones, jingling all the week

in the winter time, but no sleigh bells on Sunday! I well remember when

two young men, in their want of respect for the traditions of Sunday,

drove through the village street with sleigh bells on their horse on the

Lord’s Day, thereby shocking the sober-minded people of the churches and

the town.

“The social gatherings of the people come back to one, as he recalls the

old times, also. The annual donation parties given by the parishioners

to their parsons, when, it used to be said, ‘The people would bring all

kinds of good things to the parsonage, and then remain for a good social

time, spread all the good things brought for a feast, and then largely

consume them before they departed.’

“Other social gatherings had their attractions for the people, but I

recall _one_ which was to occur, but never took place.

“It was on the coldest day of February, 1860, when, in large sleighs, a

company of people set out for a dinner party to be given upon the

Plains. As they passed down the Main Street, the bell of Saint John’s

Church was tolling for a funeral about to be held within it. It was

thereupon agreed to stop and attend the services, warm themselves by the

fire, and then proceed on their journey.... The clergyman took for the

text of his funeral sermon, which in those days was a very dignified

discourse, ‘It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to

the house of feasting: for this is the end of all men, and the living

will lay it to heart.’ Consternation filled the hearts of all. The women

and the children remained in the church by the fire, and the men went to

the village cemetery to assist in the burial; after which all returned

to their homes. The effect of the sermon had been marvelous, and the

living had laid it to heart. The funeral was that of the widow of Dr.

Amaziah Wright.

“Rev. Charles G. Acly, who became the rector in 1856, wrought a good

work here, and, under him, the church was enlarged in the summer of

1860, by the nave being extended nearly twice its length. A recess

chancel was added, and a stained-glass chancel window given, as a

memorial of the Hon. Elijah and Mary Anna Boardman--the first

stained-glass window in the town. The old mahogany pulpit was made into

an altar. There was an altar cloth of red which served for the whole

year, a beautiful reading desk and pulpit combined, which stood outside

the chancel rail, and, in the center, before the altar, given by Mr.

Solomon E. Bostwick, a pedestal with a marble bowl for a font....

“In this church I began my first work in the Church of God by blowing

the first organ the church ever owned, and Miss Schroder, now Mrs.

George W. Wright, was the organist at that time. We sang the Metrical

Psalms and the few hymns then bound up with the Prayer Book. The _Te

Deum_ was generally read, but on high occasions we rendered Jackson’s

_Te Deum_. The old _Gloria in Excelsis_ was always sung at the end of

the Psalm for the Day in the afternoon, and sometimes Greatore’s _Bonum

est_ and _Benedicite_ after the Lesson. On Communion Day, once a month,

after sermon, the choir came down in the body of the church, and there

was no music. But Easter was distinguished by the choir remaining in the

gallery and singing the _Sanctus_. In that church, I was confirmed and

ordained to the holy ministry by Bishop John Williams, and, to that

church, I came afterwards to preach my first sermon in my native town.

One can hardly imagine my feelings, as I came to stand for the first

time before my elders, teachers, kindred, and those to whom I had looked

up from childhood. It was a trying moment. I preached a written sermon,

for fear I might be embarrassed. When it was all over, and some one in

the churchyard, during the noon hour, ventured to call it a good sermon,

one of the men spoke up and said, ‘_Yes, if he wrote it!_’ Surely, ‘A

prophet is not without honor, save in his own country, and among his own

kin.’ Stirred by this remark, which came to my knowledge, I preached

without notes that afternoon, and did the same upon every visit to New

Milford for many years following....

“The Rev. Mr. Acly was a good man, and a conscientious priest of the

Church of God; painstaking in his sermon preparation, a good reader and

preacher, while as a pastor he went in and out among his people for

twenty years beloved by them. He resigned in 1876, but continued to

reside here until his death in 1880, and he was buried in the village

cemetery, awaiting the resurrection of the just.

“He was succeeded by the Rev. Alfred S. Clark, who was rector from 1876

to 1879. While his stay was only four years, yet he is remembered with

much affection. The Rev. Edward L. Wells, D. D., became the next rector,

whose eloquence can never be forgotten, and by him was started the

project of building a new stone church for Saint John’s Parish. Plans

were drawn and accepted, but, in less than a year, he was removed by

death, in 1880.

“Rev. Edwin R. Browne succeeded him, and, as the contract for the new

church had already been made, he carefully attended to its erection.

This was carried forward for two years, and entirely paid for by the

congregation, so that on Thursday, the fifteenth day of March, 1883, we

all assembled to take part in its consecration.

“The Rt. Rev. John Williams, D. D., Bishop of Connecticut, the Rt. Rev.

Charles Quintard, D. D., Bishop of Tennessee, and thirty of the clergy

of this and other dioceses, met to put on their vestments in the old

church, before proceeding to the new. The emotions which filled my soul

on that day were many and varied. It was the last act to be performed in

the old Saint John’s Church. I went into our old family pew, where I had

grown up to manhood, and, _there_, I put on my vestments. I went up to

the chancel rail and, kneeling down, offered the last prayer in that old

church--where I had first heard the service of the Book of Common

Prayer, first listened to the preaching of the word of God,--whose

walls had witnessed my baptism, my confirmation, and my ordination to

the holy ministry--and I said, ‘Oh, to have enduring churches of stone,

where the holy associations of a lifetime may never be disturbed!’ It

was this thought which led me forth to assist in the services of the

consecration of the new Saint John’s Church of _stone_, where the

services might hereafter continue, undisturbed, from generation to

generation. The vested procession of bishops and clergy walked from the

old church to the new. The day was full of sunlight, and even the March

winds seemed to cease, so as to give us Heaven’s own benediction. We

entered this beautiful stone church, filled with a congregation which

occupied its whole capacity. Bishop Williams then consecrated this new

Saint John’s Church, and called upon me to read the sentence of

consecration.

“That day was the greatest red letter day this parish ever

saw--twenty-five years ago, on the fifteenth day of March next!

“The Rev. Mr. Browne continued his ministry here until 1890. He was a

most indefatigable parish visitor, and the sympathy of his people and

their prayers followed him, in the affliction which afterward came upon

him.

“He was followed by the Rev. E. T. Sanford, who was the rector from 1891

to 1895, a man of exceedingly lovable character, who endeared himself to

all.

“He was succeeded by the Rev. John F. Plumb in 1896, who after eleven

years still continues in the rectorship. His character and ability are

so well known among his people, that it would not become me to enter

into them here. Suffice it, then, to say, that he is held in such honor

and respect by his brethren of the clergy of his Diocese, that they

elected him Archdeacon of Litchfield County some years ago, which

position he now holds with honor to himself, and with appreciation by

his parish and friends. May he long continue to go in and out among you

as your rector, pastor, friend, and long continue to occupy his high and

honorable position, as the venerable Archdeacon of Litchfield County.”

THE AUTOMOBILE PARADE

No feature of the whole Bi-Centennial Celebration partook so much of the

nature of an experiment, perhaps, as the Automobile Parade of Monday,

which took place a little before noon. It was the first event of the

kind that had ever occurred in New Milford, and there were consequently

no precedents to go by. It was, however, an unqualified success. Fifteen

decorated autos, followed by nearly a score without decorations, were in

line. The owners of the decorated autos were:

Henry D. Hine, New Milford, Conn.

Geo. T. Soule, New Milford, Conn.

A. N. Trott, Waterbury, Conn.

H. L. Randall, New Milford, Conn.

Edward S. Hine, New Rochelle, N. Y.

Mrs. Isaac B. Bristol, New Milford, Conn.

Jas. S. Robertson, Pittsfield, Mass.

John Bauman, New Haven, Conn.

E. M. Watson, Sr., Jersey City.

C. F. Long, Jersey City.

Peter Peterson, New Milford, Conn.

C. W. Lines, New Britain, Conn.

J. E. Murphy, Southbury, Conn.

H. Lake, Brookfield, Conn.

Robert Dunlap, New Milford, Conn.

The judges were George B. Noble of Northampton, Mass., Mrs. Dr. Wallace

of Glen Ridge, N. J., and Miss Beatrice Fisher of Montreal, Canada.

The three prizes (silver cups) were awarded as follows: Henry D. Hine,

New Milford, first; A. N. Trott, Waterbury, Conn., second; Mrs. Isaac B.

Bristol, New Milford, third. Robert Dunlap was given a special honorable

mention.

The decoration of Mr. Henry Hine’s car was very dainty and elaborate. It

was done in white, pink, and purple. In front of the chauffeur was a

Cupid, driving three white doves with white and purple ribbons. Before

the machine were banners inscribed with the figures 1707-1907. The

tonneau was banked with evergreens and wild flowers. The rear tire on

the tonneau was covered with a wreath of evergreens, in the center of

which was suspended a Cupid with bow and arrow. The chauffeur and the

lady passengers wore white and pink.

Mr. Trott’s car bore a canopy of salmon pink, olive green, and white

_crêpe_ paper flowers, and carried as passengers Dr. and Mrs. Bragaw in

Colonial attire. The wheels and the back of the tonneau were similarly

decorated with _crêpe_ paper.

Mrs. Bristol’s car was decorated with laurel, ferns, and white daisies,

supplemented by yellow and white bunting, and carried several passengers

in white, with daisies in their hair.

Mr. Dunlap’s car was literally covered with grass-green and white

draperies and bore an arch of these colors. Its lady passengers wore

white gowns and white picture hats trimmed with green.

Mr. Peterson’s car, with a colossal figure of Uncle Sam, and Mr.

Randall’s with festoons of lemons, gave rise to much merriment. The

other cars were decorated with flags and bunting; Colonial blue and

yellow bunting; white and pale-green bunting; daisies and flags; peonies

and daisies. The party-colored cars presented a brilliant and beautiful

picture, as they coursed rapidly round and round “The Green,” and evoked

many outbursts of hearty applause.

THE HISTORICAL MEETING

The Historical Meeting of Monday afternoon, the next important event in

the Bi-Centennial Celebration, was presided over by Frederic M.

Williams. Mr. Williams, after a few genial words of greeting,

introduced, as the first speaker, Dr. Samuel Hart, President of the

Connecticut Historical Society, explaining, as he did so, that New

Milford welcomes her guests, not only with the best that she has, but

with the best that there is.

Dr. Hart spoke as follows:

“The recurring anniversaries of the towns of our ancient State are

bringing before us, as in a series of living pictures, the history

of the whole commonwealth and of all its parts. Beginning, within

the easy memory of many now living, with the quarter-millennials of

the first settled towns, Hartford and its sister towns on the Great

River, Saybrook at its mouth, New Haven on its fair harbor at the

mouth of the Quinnipiac, and then its allied towns, Guilford to the

east and Milford, your mother-city, to the west, we are passing now

to the bi-centennials of those, the history of which begins in the

opening years of the eighteenth century. Our origins have been

brought before us, and we have studied again the men and the times,

the founders of our first colonies and the foundations which they

laid, the early history of two differently ordered federations or

groups of organized communities, and their union into one

government under a charter from the English king which made them

almost independent of his authority. We are passing on now to

another period, when, under varied influences and in changed

circumstances, many of our most beautiful and prosperous towns were

founded. Two years ago Newtown, which once had part of its

boundary-line in common with you, observed its bi-centennial; and

the two-hundredth anniversaries of Derby and Woodbury and Waterbury

and Danbury--to mention only those in this neighborhood--were

earlier than that.

“There was a movement of life into this part of Connecticut, the

meaning and result of which will be brought before you by those who

have studied it in its details, and can describe it with local

color. Without repeating or anticipating their words, I may venture

to ask you to think of the difference which a little more than

seventy years had made in the motives that swayed men’s minds, and

the impressions that were made on them by the new lands which they

occupied. One thinks of the stern resolve, both political and

ecclesiastical, which sent Hooker and his company on their long

walk through the wilderness till they came to the river and crossed

it into a strange land, with a determination like that of the

father of the faithful when he crossed the great river of the

eastern world; and then one questions whether they admired the

beauty of the meadows, and one feels sure that when they climbed

the hills and looked down into the more beautiful valley of the

Tunxis, they were drawn by it to travel still further west. One

follows in mind the military instinct which saw the importance of

the control of the Connecticut River, and built a fort at its

mouth, and levied dues on traffic and transportation, and laid out

streets for the houses of people of quality who were expected to

come to dwell there. And one thinks of the surprises which befell

those who sailed slowly along the shore of the Sound, looking into

inlet and bay, and finding at the Fair Haven a place where they

might build a city after the pattern of the heavenly Jerusalem, and

in it dwell and get gain.

“In each of these early instances there was an element of romance,

of strong conviction of duty, mingled with an appreciation alike of

the beautiful and the practical, that combination which, as Horace

told us long ago, ‘carries every vote.’ To some extent this had

passed away two hundred years ago, when possession was taken of the

farming lands, and the fair, though rugged, hillsides enclosing the

river valley in which we now stand. The settlers, who came up into

the high grounds from the shores of the Sound, did not leave, for

the most part, on account of disagreement with their neighbors in

matters civil or ecclesiastical, nor with a special sense of divine

calling or mission. They were rather led by the Anglo-Saxon spirit

of colonization to settle on new soil, to extend former industries

or to undertake new ones, and to organize new units of life in the

body politic. Still, we cannot doubt that when they, too, looked

over the fields they saw more than the possibility of gathering

harvests and crops from them, and that when they followed the

water-courses they did more than estimate the use which they might

make of the force of the falling stream. They had something of the

enthusiasm of discovery, and something of the joy of those who

first turn nature’s forces to man’s account. It is worth our while,

as we go back in mind to these beginnings, to try to think as they

thought, who first looked upon the natural features of the

landscape, which it takes much more than two centuries materially

to change, and to see why they chose as they did, who fixed on this

spot as their home.

“In this regard, there is in all our settlements, early and late,

something that they have in common, which appeals more, I am

inclined to think, to the philosopher than to the historian.

Perhaps the student of history delights rather in noting the

differences in the plans and purposes of those who settled our

early towns, and in finding in each, as he readily may, some detail

of character or event which marks it with a special interest, and

almost always brings in the suggestion of a special romance. As

your early history is read before you to-day in detail, you are

reminded how it differs from the history of every other town in

Connecticut. At its beginning you hear of names which give it a

stamp peculiarly its own: that of the first minister, continued by

an honorable succession through all the generations to this day;

that of the early settler who lived here in a log hut on land which

he had bought of the Indians and lived to be Attorney General of

Massachusetts; somewhat later, that of the man who came here as a

shoemaker and removed hence as a judge, to become one of the few

leaders in the constitutional history of the land; and with them

the names of others which shed a special luster on your annals.

Again, the importance of the Indians in this neighborhood, both in

numbers and (as it would seem) in influence and character, suggests

an almost unique chapter of history, especially when we note that

it led to the sojourn of the remarkable man who led hither his band

of Moravian missionaries and labored not in vain among the

aborigines before he withdrew to make a permanent settlement in

another province, and later to return to his home in Europe. And,

if you care to boast of it, you share with but one or two other

towns the honor of having had congregations of the Glassites--who

under their name of Sandemanians will always be remembered for

having had in their eldership one of the greatest men of science of

a generation ago--and you have the exclusive honor of having been

the home of the Jemimaites. Certainly, no two communities are

exactly alike, and it is in the study of their differences that

much of our pleasure in the reading of their history consists.

“While I bring to you to-day, Mr. President, a greeting on behalf

of the Historical Society of the State, I venture to ask you and

all the citizens of this venerable town, and all who are interested

in her annals already written, and in the record which she is to

make in years to come, not to allow the interest of these memorial

days to pass away with the days themselves. This week is bringing

to the memory of some of you that which you have already heard with

your ears and your fathers have declared unto you, while it is

teaching many others, and in particular the youths and maidens,

their first lessons in the history of the community in which their

lot is cast. The story of the founders and those who carried on

their work, who they were and what they did, what New Milford was

in itself and what part it played in the State and the Republic,

told again now in greater detail than it has ever been told

before--do not let it be soon or readily forgotten. See to it that

the whole town becomes a sort of historical society, for the

appreciation and preservation of that which is old, for the

lending of a proper perspective to that which belongs to our own

day, for preparation rightly to understand and rightly to value and

use that which is coming. They best do the duties of the present,

they best provide for the future, who read and value the lessons of

the past.”

The second speaker, Chief Justice Baldwin, was presented to the audience

by Mr. Williams with these words: “New Milford has had many notable and

useful citizens during her two centuries of existence, but she has had

none as illustrious as Roger Sherman. We have with us to-day one of his

descendants, Simeon E. Baldwin, LL. D., Ex-President of the American Bar

Association, Ex-President of the American Historical Society,

Ex-President of the International Law Association, and Chief Justice of

Connecticut, who will now address you.

* * * * *

Chief Justice Baldwin then delivered the following address on “ROGER

SHERMAN”:

“The rarest and most ill-defined class of human beings is that of

great men. Only those belong to it who have done a great work in a

great way. The ‘mute, inglorious Milton’ is not to be reckoned

among them. They number none, however great their natural gifts or

acquired attainments, who have not made for themselves, by their

own merits, a place in the history of their times. It is from their

lives, indeed, that history gains its color and its inspiration.

“It was the good fortune of New Milford to be the home of such a

man in the middle of her first century of existence.

“It was a hundred and sixty-four years ago, this very month that a

tall and well-set young fellow of two and twenty ended in this town

a toilsome journey, taken on foot from the neighborhood of Boston.

He had come to make New Milford his home, bringing on his back the

tools of his trade--that of a shoemaker--and with their aid he here

gained for a year or two an honest livelihood.

“A shoemaker and the son of a shoemaker, he had, and felt he had,

capabilities for a larger work. His mind was already

[Illustration: HONORABLE SIMEON E. BALDWIN

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Connecticut]

set on that of a surveyor. For this, too, he fitted himself well;

but there was that before him of which he did not think. He was to

fill a long succession of official trusts, affecting all the

Colonies and the States which succeeded them, to be bestowed upon

him at a time of great events, and to be so well discharged as to

make him one of the great figures of American history.

“When Connecticut, a few years ago, was called upon by the nation

to choose the two of her sons whose statues should be set in the

Capitol at Washington, there could be no question as to one. The

land of steady habits must, at all events, be represented in that

place by Jonathan Trumbull, the War Governor of the

Revolution,--the Brother Jonathan who typified to the nation the

rugged virtues and hard good sense of the New England character.

“The other statue also must belong to the same great era, the era

which began with the struggle for independence, and closed with the

attainment of settled constitutional government. Our heroes must be

taken from that which above all others was our heroic age. Should

we thus commemorate the impetuous gallantry of Putnam, the noble

death of Hale, the courtly eloquence of Johnson, the judicial power

of Ellsworth? All these were sons of Connecticut, born upon her

soil. No. She chose one born and bred to manhood in another State;

not trained at her college, nor at her schools; not at any schools.

She sought to put the form and features of Roger Sherman into

marble, to show to all time what qualities and achievements the

people of Connecticut hold in most honor. This man, without

eloquence, with no advantages of education, with no grace of

manner, was her choice--taken from many, for solid qualities, not

shining ones; for a life-long love of liberty, but only as it was

regulated by law; for steadfast devotion to duty; for practical

sagacity; for calm, and sound judgment in things both small and

great. Such a character wears well. It is men of this stamp that

have made Connecticut what she is.

“Roger Sherman was born to a great opportunity. So was every child

born in the American colonies during the years between 1720 and

1760. Those colonies were then assuming proportions inconsistent

with the long maintenance of British dominion over a territory so

distant and a people so enterprising and intelligent. The day was

soon to come when they would strike for liberty. Who were to be the

leaders, then?

“Massachusetts was to furnish her full share, and two of them grew

up, in neighboring towns, to begin life as apprentices and end it

as statesmen.

“Franklin was already at work in a Boston printing office, when

Sherman, in 1721, was born in Newton. Neither had any advantages of

education. Franklin’s schooling ended when he was about ten, and

Sherman was apprenticed to a shoemaker and began to learn his trade

at an age not much greater. He had hardly acquired it when his

father, then living at Stoughton, Massachusetts, died, and he

found, at the age of nineteen, that the main charge of a numerous

family of younger brothers and sisters, as well as of his mother,

must thenceforward rest upon his shoulders. Three years of struggle

upon the small farm, which his father left, satisfied him that to

support this load he must seek some more remunerative employment.

“An elder brother had previously removed to this town, then a

frontier settlement. Connecticut was the West of that day to the

towns of eastern Massachusetts. It was the place for more than a

century where many of the most active and enterprising sons of the

older colony had gone to found new homes and breathe a freer air.

Connecticut, it will be recollected, had preserved her charter and

elected her own governors. Massachusetts, for half a century, had

received hers from the crown.

“Sherman resolved to join his brother, and the whole family were

united in New Milford in 1743. From the early years of his

apprenticeship he had been in the habit, as he bent over his last,

of keeping a book open on his bench, to the study of which he gave

what moments he could occasionally snatch from his work. In this

way, and in his hours of leisure, he had been able to pick up the

elements of a good English education, and to make considerable

attainments in mathematics and plane geometry. One object of his

removal to Connecticut had been to put this knowledge to practical

use by engaging in the business of a surveyor.

“Those were days when the quick division of land, from the great

blocks included in colonial patents granted for the formation of a

new township, into numerous small farms, called far more frequently

than now for the services of men who could run a line with

precision and describe it in the proper terms of art. Within two

years from his arrival at New Milford, he had fitted himself to

engage in this business, and received from the General Assembly the

appointment of a Surveyor of Lands for the County of New Haven; for

New Milford was then a part of that county, Litchfield County not

having been created until 1751.

“This office of County Surveyor was a responsible one. Whoever held

it took an oath, prescribed by statute, to discharge its duties

‘without Favour or Respect to Persons,’ and, if he had occasion to

employ chainmen for his assistance, was to administer to each of

them an oath, adjuring them ‘by the ever living God’ to keep and

render a true account of whatever lines and measures they might

take.[18]

“That there is an ever living God, who is the supreme authority on

earth as in heaven, has always been the faith of Connecticut, and

shines through all her statute books. From 1640 down to the present

hour it has been part of the solemn ceremonial--solemn to those who

stop to think of what it is and what it means--of admission to the

privileges of a freeman or elector, that every man shall with

uplifted hand swear that with God’s help, whenever he shall be

called to give his vote, he will give it as he shall judge will

conduce to the best good of the commonwealth, without respect of

persons or favor of any man. How many of us, on each election day,

bethink ourselves of the high obligation to which we have thus

pledged ourselves, and ask the help we have invoked to act our part

as voters ‘without respect of persons or favor of any man’?

“I doubt if Roger Sherman, as a County Surveyor, needed the weight

of an official oath to bind him to his duty, but I doubt not that

his sense of duty was bottomed on a sense of God, and that honesty

and Christianity were to him, from boyhood on, one and inseparable.

“He had joined the Stoughton church a few weeks before he came of

age. It was a time, in the year 1742, in which were gathered in the

fruits of religious awakening in New England. Our churches had

lapsed into formalism; and dogmatic belief had been accorded a

prominence which threw Christian conduct into the background.

Seventeen hundred forty-two was a marked year in the course of the

returning tide towards better things.

“In 1749 Sherman used his mathematical attainments for a new

purpose. He prepared an almanac for 1750, which was published in

New York, and was the first of a series which he put out during a

considerable period of years.

“By this time he had saved some money, and, in 1750, we find him

putting part of his capital, in partnership with his elder brother,

into a country store. This was a business in which he was

interested first at New Milford, and then at New Haven, with a

branch at Wallingford, for more than twenty years.

“The country store then, as now in the more thinly settled

communities, was in miniature the department store of our modern

cities. There were few of them, and their customers came from a

wide circuit of country. The trade was largely one of barter. The

farmer’s wife drove in with her cheese and butter, and might go

back with stuff for a dress, a box of needles, a new coffee-pot, a

bottle of salts, a loaf of sugar, a quintal of codfish, and perhaps

a volume of sermons. The store was not daily visited by drummers.

The proprietor went himself every few months to Boston or Newport,

New York or Philadelphia, to replenish his stock, and with every

such journey found his mental horizon broadened, and felt better

acquainted with the great world of men and things that lay beyond

the limits of his own neighborhood.

“Sherman, from the first, made the most of these glimpses of a

larger life. If he rode down to New Haven to buy West India

molasses, he would visit the college to ask President Clap’s

opinion about the probable course of an expected comet.[19] If he

went to New York to correct the proofs of his almanac, he would

take the opportunity to find a publisher for some pamphlet he had

written on the financial errors in the legislation of the day.

“Sherman, by this time, had acquired the faculty, rarer, perhaps,

then than now, of expressing his thoughts in writing, in a fashion

that was simple, clear, and straightforward. An artificial,

overwrought, and overladen style of composition, if not the

prevailing one, was certainly not uncommon among Americans during

the middle of the eighteenth century. He wrote, as Franklin did, in

the plain language of familiar conversation, with no straining

after effect. I do not mean that he wrote as well as Franklin.

There was a long, long interval between them; but they were of the

same school. Both were men who thought more of what they had to say

than of how they said it; of communicating facts or ideas, rather

than of seeking to make them attractive by ornament.

“Sherman’s reading was of a kind that both strengthened and

disciplined the mind. The first President Dwight, in summing up his

character, emphasized ‘his attachment to books of real use,’ adding

that he ‘was, what very few men unacquainted with the learned

languages are, accurately skilled in the grammar of his own

language.’[20]

“It is probable, however, that in paying this tribute to an old

friend who had passed away, President Dwight had in mind Sherman’s

style of written composition, rather than his ordinary manner of

speech. It is seldom that one born to poverty and denied the common

advantages of education, escapes a certain rusticity, to say the

least, not only in his choice of words in conversation, but in

their arrangement and pronunciation.

“A franker, and I dare say juster, portrait of the man as he

appeared in public discussions and debate is given in a series of

rough notes of the doings of the Convention of 1787 which framed

our national Constitution, made by one of the Southern delegates,

William Pierce of Georgia.

“‘Mr. Sherman,’ he writes, ‘exhibits the oddest shaped character I

ever remember to have met with. He is awkward, un-meaning, and

unaccountably strange in his manner. But in his train of thinking

there is something regular, deep, and comprehensive; yet the oddity

of his address, the vulgarisms that accompany his public speaking,

and that strange New England cant which runs through his public as

well as his private speaking make everything that is connected with

him grotesque and laughable;--and yet he deserves infinite

praise,--no Man has a better Heart or a clearer Head. If he cannot

embellish he can furnish thoughts that are wise and useful. He is

an able politician, and extremely artful in accomplishing any

particular object; it is remarked that he seldom fails. I am told

he sits on the Bench in Connecticut, and is very correct in the

discharge of his Judicial functions. In the early part of his life

he was a Shoe-maker; but, despising the lowness of his condition,

he turned Almanack maker, and so progressed upwards to a Judge. He

has been several years a Member of Congress, and discharged the

duties of his Office with honor and credit to himself, and

advantage to the State he represented. He is about 60.’

“Silas Deane, his colleague in the Continental Congress, in a frank

letter to his wife, thus paints Sherman, as he appeared at a New

York dinner party:

“‘Mr. Sherman is clever in private, but I will only say he is as

badly calculated to appear in such a Company as a chestnut-burr is

for an eye-stone. He occasioned some shrewd countenances among the

company, and not a few oaths, by the odd questions he asked, and

the very odd and countrified cadence with which he speaks; but he

was, and did, as well as I expected.’[21]

“In the same letter Deane shows his vexation at Sherman’s views

regarding traveling on Sunday:

“‘Mr. Sherman (would to Heaven he were well at New Haven,) is

against our sending our carriages over the ferry this evening,

because it is Sunday; so we shall have a scorching sun to drive

forty miles in, to-morrow. I wish I could send you his picture, and

make it speak, and in the background paint the observations made on

him here. But enough of this at present. I will have him drawn in

Philadelphia, if it can be done at any reasonable rate.’[22]

“To judge these criticisms fairly we must remember that Deane was a

man of fashion and of the world, while Sherman was neither. A plain

country lad, a hardworking journeyman at his trade, a busy

surveyor, a sagacious selectman, a shrewd store-keeper, a

hard-headed lawyer, an industrious judge, he had qualities not of a

kind that shine in polite society, but of a kind nevertheless that

count in life, in every position which a man may be called to fill.

He would have made a better figure with better manners. But a

rusticity that would have ruined the advance of most men was

everywhere tolerated in Sherman, because there was felt everywhere

an admiration for his mind and heart,--his solid sense, wise

forecast, and practical wisdom.

“While living in this town, Sherman was asked one day by a

neighbor, the next time he went to the county seat, to retain

counsel for him to bring a petition to court in a matter connected

with the settlement of an estate. He noted down the facts which he

thought it would be necessary to state in the papers prepared for

such a proceeding, and the lawyer whom he consulted was so much

impressed with the clearness and precision of the memorandum that

he strongly advised him to adopt the legal profession.

“There were then no American, and, indeed, no English law schools.

An education for the bar was commonly gained by studying the works

of some of the English judges of former generations, under the

advice of a local practitioner, but with little other assistance

from him. The system of justice administered in Connecticut was

rough and unhewn, and not a few of the judges of the highest courts

had never followed the profession of the law.

“Sherman began to read law, in consequence of the incident to

which I have alluded, when he was about thirty years of age, and

was admitted to the bar in Litchfield County in 1754. There were

then few lawyers in the colony who gained the whole of their

livelihood from their profession. Many were also farmers. Sherman

retained his interest in the New Milford store.

“Meanwhile he had been sent to the General Assembly, and made first

a justice of the peace, and then a side judge of the County Court.

“The record of one of the early justice suits tried before him well

illustrates the difference in political ideas between those times

and ours. It shows the conviction and fine of one of his

fellow-townsmen for a violation of the Colony statute in not

attending public worship in any congregation allowed by law on

January 29, 1758, nor on any Sunday in the month next preceding.

“‘Squire’ Sherman, as he was now called, brought to his new

profession the strong common sense and good business judgment which

had served to advance him in his previous employments, and which,

if added to sound learning, will always assure success at the bar.

“The late President Porter, who, in early life, was settled as a

minister at New Milford, once told me of a story which he heard

here of some wise words uttered by Sherman at this period in his

history. ‘Squire Sherman,’ said one of his neighbors to him, one

day, ‘tell me, are most controversies that come before Judges in

lawsuits decided justly or unjustly?’ ‘Sir,’ was the reply, ‘it’s

not the point whether they are decided justly or unjustly: they are

decided, and made an end of.’ And in truth it is perhaps the best

office of courts of justice that, however often they may err in

their processes, they certainly bring every human controversy that

is within their reach to a final stop. The conclusion may be right

or wrong; but a conclusion it is.

“Sherman was a deacon of the New Milford Church, the clerk and

treasurer of the society, and one of the school committee. At the

age of forty, he removed to New Haven, and connected himself with

the White Haven Church, one of the two original bodies out of which

grew the United Society and the United Church. Here again the

records show his faithful work on committees and as collector of

the rates imposed by the society.

“Five years later he was appointed a Judge of the Superior Court, a

position which he continued to hold for nearly a quarter of a

century.

“The British legislation culminating in the Stamp Act had now begun

to arouse the spirit of independence in the American colonies.

Sherman was one of those who took the most advanced ground. He

maintained that Parliament had no jurisdiction over them whatever.

“Connecticut sent him as one of her delegates to the first

Continental Congress, in 1774, and there he maintained this

doctrine with all his power. John Adams reports him as declaring

upon the floor that there was no legislative power superior to the

Colonial Assemblies, and that Americans had adopted the common law

of England, not as the common law, but as the highest reason.

“It was his thorough-going republicanism, indeed, which had carried

him into public life, and put him in a leading place among the

legislators of his State. He had been first elected to the

Governor’s Council or upper house of the General Assembly in 1766.

The Stamp Act had brought the ‘Sons of Liberty’ into existence.

They had forced, under threat of death, Jared Ingersoll, who, under

the advice of Franklin had accepted the position of stampmaster for

Connecticut, to resign the office. Governor Fitch, though with

reluctance, had taken the official oath which the obnoxious Act

required. It cost him his place, William Pitkin being elected his

successor a year later. With him went out of office four of his

Council who sympathized with his deference to parliamentary

authority; dropped by the people to make room for others who were

regarded as more fully Americans in spirit and doctrine.

“No one was then eligible for a seat on the Council-board who had

not been officially nominated in the previous year. Twenty

nominations were annually made for the twelve places, and the

election was so managed that the twelve in office always headed the

list and were voted on first. A majority was not required for an

election. To be once nominated for the upper house was in this way

a substantial assurance of an ultimate election, and to be once

elected was a substantial assurance of an annual re-election for

life.

“Sherman, in 1766, had been on the waiting list for five years. A

political whirlwind, unexampled in our Colonial annals, then made

five vacancies, and death a sixth. He went in with five other new

men, and remained a member until after the close of the Revolution.

“Religion in those days, so far as form at least was concerned, was

a part of politics. There was a religious establishment in

Connecticut. It put the church beside the schoolhouse on the

village green. It made Church and State largely one.

“Sherman was not wiser than his generation in regard to matters of

religion. His reading had been mainly in English history and law;

but the subject next most interesting to him was theology. He

accepted Calvinism. He believed in the Puritans. He distrusted and

feared the Church of England. It was the day when so tolerant and

fair-minded a man as President Stiles could record as among the

fourteen trials and difficulties of this life: ‘Concern for the

Congregational churches, & prevalence of Episcopacy &

Wickedness.’[23]

“When, therefore, about the middle of the eighteenth century, the

Episcopalians, who were especially strong in Connecticut, began to

push for the appointment of one or more American bishops, it is not

surprising that Sherman’s voice was raised in opposition.

“A long letter on this subject, written in 1768, which, it is

believed, came from his pen, is among the files of the New Haven

East Association, to which his church belonged. In this it is urged

that if Parliament provides for American bishops, they might bring

here all the functions and authority of those of England, and hold

ecclesiastical courts like those of Laud, from which our fathers

fled into the wilderness.

“There was this piece of solid ground under Sherman’s argument.

Grant the power of Parliament to establish an American episcopate,

and a new point was made in favor of the general right of

Parliament to legislate as to all American affairs. This

consideration, no doubt, greatly influenced his course; and it was

sufficient to defeat the consecration of any bishop for America

until that of Dr. Seabury, which followed closely after the

Revolution.

“The Wyoming controversy between Connecticut and Pennsylvania was

one in which Sherman took an active part.

“Our charter bounded us ‘on the North by the line of the

Massachusetts Plantation; and on the South by the Sea; and in

Longitude as the Line of the Massachusetts Colony, running from

East to West, _That is to say_, From the said Narragansett Bay on

the East to the South Sea on the West part, with the Islands

thereto Adjoining.’ This gave us a paper title to a swath of North

America sixty miles wide, at least, running from Rhode Island to

the Pacific, and taking in what are now the sites of Wilkesbarre,

Cleveland, Chicago, and Omaha. Our people, as early as 1762, began

to make settlements in that part of it in western Pennsylvania

known as the Wyoming Valley. The General Assembly made it a county

in 1776, styling it Westmoreland County, and it furnished the

Twenty-fourth Connecticut Regiment in the Continental Army.

“Sherman was one of a committee appointed by the legislature in

1774 to report upon measures to support the title of the Wyoming

settlers, which Pennsylvania now disputed, under a later and

conflicting grant from the Crown. Energetic measures were

recommended and adopted, and, knowing the power of the newspapers,

Sherman shortly afterwards followed up the report by a clear and

full statement of the position of Connecticut, in a letter to the

Connecticut _Journal_ of New Haven. Public sentiment, here, was

much divided. There were many who thought that such an ‘expansion’

threatened the safety of our liberties. Sherman proposed that the

colony should secure a determination of its bounds from the King in

Council. Such a law suit, said those who were for letting Wyoming

go, would be slow and costly; and, even if we should win it, what

then? A defeat, Mr. Ingersoll had declared in another newspaper

article, ‘would be very detrimental, but a victory must be absolute

ruin.’ ‘But,’ replied Sherman, ‘he gives no reason for his opinion.

And can his bare assertion make the people of this colony, who are

a company of farmers, believe that to be quieted in their claim to

a large tract of valuable land would ruin them?’

“The Revolution transferred the judicial decision of this

controversy from the King in Council to the Congress of the United

States. A Court of Commissioners was organized to try the issue,

and, in 1782, judgment was rendered against us.

“The Commissioners had prudently determined, before hearing the

case, to give no reasons for their decision, whatever it might be.

That they were not of the strongest may be inferred from the fact

that four years later Congress accepted from Connecticut a

relinquishment of the rest of her Western title, with an express

reservation of a large strip of northern Ohio. This is still known

as the Western Reserve. We soon sold it, and the proceeds

constituted our State School fund of $2,000,000.

“The services rendered by Sherman to the United States outshine

those which he rendered to Connecticut; but it is only because the

field was larger, and the circumstances more striking.

“Three are commemorated upon a mural tablet erected to his memory

in the church of which he was a member in New Haven. This states

that he was ‘one of the committee which drew the Declaration of

Independence, of that which reported the Articles of Confederation,

of the Convention that framed the national Constitution, and a

Signer of these three Charters of American liberty.’

“To no other man came the good fortune to set his hand to these

three great State papers. One marked the birth of the nation. The

next was its first attempt to agree on a constitution of

government--a necessary compromise, and temporary as compromises

always are. The last was what has made the United States the

greatest, richest, freest country that the sun shines upon to-day;

and it was in that, that the work of Sherman told most.

“He was among the leading members of the Convention from whose

hands it came. Connecticut was wise enough to send to it her

strongest men. Our delegates were William Samuel Johnson, Oliver

Ellsworth, and Roger Sherman.

“Johnson was the representative in his generation of the family in

the State most distinguished for public services and personal

attainments. He had ably represented our interests abroad, in

important matters, and twenty years before had received the degree

of Doctor of Civil Law from Oxford University. The Convention made

him head of the committee to put the measures which it adopted in

proper form and style. Oliver Ellsworth, who had been the foremost

lawyer at our bar, was then an associate of Sherman on the bench of

the Supreme Court, and was soon to be Chief Justice of the United

States. But Sherman had a truer sense than either of his colleagues

of what must be the nature and soul of the new government. He felt

that it must stand upon a double foundation, that of the States,

acting each for itself, and that of the people of all the States,

acting for all together.[24]

“He felt, too, that it must stand for human liberty.

“Our State was then a slave-holding State, but he was one of those

who were determined that the word slave should not stain the pages

of the Constitution of the United States. Later, when he was a

member of the first Congress, one of the representatives from

Virginia (for Virginia statesmen were then looking to the gradual

abolition of slavery) proposed to put into the tariff not a duty of

ten dollars on each _slave_ imported. Sherman opposed it. He could

not, he said, reconcile himself to the insertion of human beings as

an article of duty, among goods, wares, and merchandise; and, when

it was replied that the doctrine of the Declaration of Independence

required the endeavor to wipe off the stigma of slavery from the

American government, his reply was that the principles of the

motion and the principles of the bill were inconsistent: the

principle of the bill was to raise revenue, and the principle of

the motion was to correct a moral evil. These few and well put

words illustrate that strong sense of proportion and relation which

gave Sherman such weight in every deliberative assembly.

“In the Convention which framed the Constitution, he was the author

of the compromise by which, in Congress, the Senate represents the

States and the House, the people.

“Afterwards, when Congress was engaged in formulating the first ten

amendments of the Constitution, which serve as a bill of rights for

the people and for the States, it was he who gave the final shape

to the last and most important.

“This (originally the Twelfth, for Congress proposed twelve of

which ten only were ratified by the States), as reported by the

committee, read thus: ‘The powers not delegated to the United

States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are

reserved to the States respectively.’ Sherman moved, and the House

voted to add the words, ‘or to the people.’

“He knew, as a lawyer, that when anything is reserved in a grant it

is reserved by and for the maker of the grant. Who made this grant?

From what authority did the Constitution proceed? Was it from the

States, and were the powers reserved to be reserved to them and

each of them? This was said, or implied, in the original draft of

the amendment. Sherman’s addition recognized the principle,

afterwards affirmed by Chief Justice Marshall, that the people also

had a share in ordaining this Constitution for themselves and their

posterity.

“It is also worthy of remark, that he was careful to follow the

phrase used in the preceding amendment (the Ninth) in which it is

declared that the enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights

shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the

people. What people is thus meant? Is it the people of each State,

regarded state-wise, or the whole people of the United States

regarded nation-wise? That was a question on which public opinion

had been divided, and which it remained for the Civil War to settle

by force of arms.

“Sherman did not seek to precipitate this issue. The framers of the

Constitution of the Southern Confederacy met the same question and

decided it. By the article of that document (the Sixth) which

corresponds to the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the

United States, the powers not delegated to the Confederate States

were ‘reserved to the States respectively, or to the people

thereof.’[25] Here is the doctrine of States Rights, clear and

unmistakable. It is not improbable that Sherman would have

preferred the use of similar language by the First Congress, in

drafting the Tenth Amendment. The interest of his State lay or

seemed to lie in that direction. But he had been willing, as a

political necessity, to build the Constitution on pillars of

compromise, and this was one of them. He was content to use words

of comprehension, which the adherents of each school of American

politics could read in their own sense, and to leave it to another

generation to determine which should prevail.

“Another service of importance rendered by Sherman in the First

Congress was to bring the cent into actual use in the financial

system of the United States.

“The revenue measure for the collection by the United States of

customs duties on imported goods, which Congress had urged upon the

States in 1783 as an amendment to the Articles of Confederation,

had stated the proposed duties in dollars and ninetieths of a

dollar. Thus, on rum of Jamaica proof, the rate fixed was four

ninetieths of a dollar, and upon all other spirituous liquors three

ninetieths.[26] This mode of reckoning fractions of a dollar

continued to be that pursued in government accounts down to the

close of the Confederation.[27] In 1786, Congress had, indeed,

provided for the coinage of both cents and half-cents.[28] The next

year a contract was made with James Jarvis of New Haven to strike

off three hundred tons of these coins.[29] This contract was

fulfilled at least in part, and many of the cents struck under it

are to be found in the cabinets of collectors. They bear the legend

_Fugio_, and the date 1787. The work was done at New Haven;

Connecticut being then the great copper-producing State.

“It is probable, however, that these New Haven cents had a very

limited circulation. Hildreth says that but a few tons were issued,

and it is certain that in New York the old plan of reckoning by

ninetieths of dollars remained in use for several years more.

“In 1789 Madison reported a tariff bill to the First Congress under

our present Constitution. The rates of duty were left blank.

Sherman, who had been chairman of a committee appointed by the

General Assembly of Connecticut to supervise the coinage of copper

coins under State authority,[30] took an early opportunity to

propose that in filling the blanks that Madison had left, they

should begin with rum, and tax it fifteen cents a gallon. He

preferred, he said, to use the term cent, for its convenience, as

ten made a dime, and ten dimes, a dollar.[31] This explanation was

evidently necessary to make the House understand what a cent was.

They approved his suggestion, and the bill when passed stated all

duties in dollars and cents. It was thus that the inconvenient and

senseless division of the dollar into ninetieths never afterwards

obtained recognition on the statute books of the United States.

“At the close of the Revolution Connecticut found herself a

tributary State to her neighbors on each side. Her citizens were

buying heavily from New York, Newport, and Boston importers, and

thus paying duties for the benefit of New York, Rhode Island, and

Massachusetts. Connecticut consumed, according to an estimate by

Chief Justice Ellsworth, as late as 1787, about a third of all the

goods entered at the New York custom house, and paid in that way

for New York customs something like twenty thousand pounds a

year[32]--a vast sum for those early days.

“It was thought that if New Haven were made a free port, and

special encouragement offered to merchants to settle there in

business, we might be able to import what we wanted for ourselves.

“Our first city charter was thereupon issued, and New Haven became

a city in 1784, with all the privileges of a free port for seven

years. Her city seal devised by President Stiles still bears the

legend, _Mare liberum_.

“Roger Sherman was elected its first mayor. The charter made the

term of office during good behavior, and he remained the mayor

until his death.

“Sherman was fond of studying problems of controversial theology.

The first President Dwight, in summing up his character, described

him as a ‘profound logician, statesman, lawyer, and

theologian.’[33]

“Religion is the philosophy of life, and theology is, or ought to

be, the philosophy of religion. No thoughtful man can avoid

occasional reflection on these high themes. It is our good fortune

to study them in the light of sciences unknown to him. Put any

doctrinal discussion of the eighteenth century by the side of those

of our day, directed and controlled as ours must be by the truths

of biology, the discoveries of archæologists, and the principles of

evolution, and the older statements seem unreal and unsubstantial.

“Sherman’s thought, however, in theology, as in everything else,

was clear and plain. In 1789, he published, in New Haven, a sermon

of his own composition. A year later he exchanged several long

letters with Rev. Dr. Samuel Hopkins of Newport, in which he

attacked that divine’s peculiar doctrine that a man ought to be

willing to suffer eternal damnation, if need be, for the glory of

God. Calvin was quoted as an authority for this, by the advocates

of “Hopkinsianism.’ ‘Calvinists,’ replied Sherman, ‘do not found

their faith on the authority of his opinions: that would be to

entertain an opinion contrary to his, viz., that the word of God is

the only rule of faith in matters of religion.’

“In 1765 Sherman accepted the position of Treasurer of Yale

College, filling it until 1776, when the cause of American

independence demanded all his energies. He came to this office

during the last years of President Clap’s administration, and held

it through most of the long _interregnum_ during which Professor

Daggett was acting President. It was, as I have said, a dark time

for the College; a day of small things. Daggett and Sherman were

for some years the only permanent officers. The means of the

institution were slender, and the utmost economy was necessary to

secure its maintenance. Sherman’s prudence and business judgment

were here of substantial service, though the struggle of the

College then was more to live than to grow.

“He was also in a position to befriend it, where it then much

needed support, before the Legislature. There was a long and strong

effort during the last half of the eighteenth century to bring it

under State control. Here, writes President Stiles in his Literary

Diary, he was ‘ever a friend to its interests, and to its being and

continuing in the hands of the clergy, whom he judged the most

proper to have the superintendency of a _religious_, as well as a

_scientific_, college.’[34]

“In 1792, while he was a Senator in Congress (to which position he

had been elected the year before), that controversy came to a

peaceful close. The General Assembly offered the College a grant of

what was estimated to be worth about thirty thousand dollars,

provided it would admit the Governor and Lieutenant Governor and

the six senior assistants as, for all time, Fellows of the

Corporation. This left the clergy still in full control, for they

held twelve seats, and could dictate the election of the President

to occupy another. Nevertheless, the clerical Fellows were divided

in opinion, as to the policy of agreeing to this friendly overture.

One of them, Rev. Nathaniel Taylor of this town, was especially

reluctant to take this step. He consulted Sherman, whose pastor he

had formerly been, and by his advice yielded to the rest, and so

made the vote of acceptance an unanimous one.[35]

“This was almost Sherman’s last service to Yale. In the next year,

under date of July 23, in Stiles’ Diary, we find this entry:

“‘About VII^h, or about sunsetting, a bright Luminary set in New

Haven: the Hon. Roger Sherman, Esqr. died æt. 72¼, mayor of the

city & Senator in Congress.’[36]

“He died at his residence on Chapel Street, which is still standing

opposite Vanderbilt Hall, and, on July 25, his funeral was attended

from the North (now the United) Church. President Stiles was one of

the officiating clergyman, and the students and tutors of the

college headed the procession to the grave.[37] His pastor, the

Rev. Dr. Jonathan Edwards, preached the funeral sermon. Edwards was

a metaphysical theologian. One of the audience wrote of this

sermon, a few days later, to a friend in a neighboring town: ‘To do

the Doctor justice he preached better than I expected to hear him,

and seemed to keep almost free from _moral obligation, cause and

effect_, etc.’[38]

“The discourse is in print, and a few of the personal touches in it

may give a clearer idea of how Sherman appeared to his friends and

fellow-townsmen at home.

“‘I need not inform you,’ said Dr. Edwards, ‘that his person was

tall, unusually erect and well proportioned, and his countenance

agreeable and manly.... As he was a professor of religion, so he

was not ashamed to befriend it, to appear openly on the Lord’s

side, or to avow and defend the peculiar doctrines of grace.... In

private life, though he was naturally reserved and of few words,

yet in conversation on matters of importance, he was free and

communicative.’

“The theology of the day appeared in the concluding observations,

in which the preacher referred to the loss they had sustained by

this bereavement as a token of ‘divine displeasure.’

“President Stiles, during the same week, records his estimate of

Sherman in these terms:

* * * * *

“‘He was formed for _Think^{g} & Acting, but Law & Politics_ were

peculiarly adapted to his Genius. He was an admirer of Vattells

Laws of Nature & Nations.... He was exemplary for Piety & serious

Religion, was a good Divine; once printed a well & judiciously

written Sermon of his own Composition, tho’ never preached. He was

far from all Enthusiasm. He was calm sedate & ever discerning &

judicious. He went thro’ all the Grades of public Life, & grew in

them all & filled every Office with Propriety, Ability, & tho’ not

with showy Brilliancy, yet with that Dignity which arises from

doing every Thing perfectly right. In no part of his Employments

has he displayed his intrinsic Merit and acquired that Glory, so

much as in Congress. He there became almost oracular for the deep

Sagacity, Wisdom & Weight of his Counsels. Tho’ of no Elocution, he

was respected & listened to with great Attention; and was

successful in carrying the Points he laboured. He was an

extraord^{y} Man--a venerable uncorrupted Patriot!’[39]