By Drum and Horn and Shell.
At about nine o'clock on the Sabbath morning the Puritan colonists
assembled for the first public service of the holy day; they were gathered
together by various warning sounds. The Haverhill settlers listened for the
ringing toot of Abraham Tyler's horn. The Montague and South Hadley people
were notified that the hour of assembling had arrived by the loud blowing
of a conch-shell. John Lane, a resident of the latter town, was engaged
in 1750 to "blow the Cunk" on the Sabbath as "a sign for meeting." In
Stockbridge a strong-lunged "praying" Indian blew the enormous shell, which
was safely preserved until modern times, and which, when relieved from
Sunday use, was for many years sounded as a week-day signal in the
hay-field. Even a conch-shell was enough of an expense to the poor colonial
churches. The Montague people in 1759 paid £1 10s. for their "conk," and
also on the purchase year gave Joseph Root 20 shillings for blowing the new
shell. In 1785 the Whately church voted that "we will not improve anybody
to blow the conch," and so the church-attendants straggled to Whately
meeting each at his own time and pleasure.
In East Hadley the inhabitant who "blew the kunk" (as phonetic East
Hadleyites spelt it) and swept out the meeting-house was paid annually the
munificent sum of three dollars for his services. Conch-blowing was not
so difficult and consequently not so highly-paid an accomplishment as
drum-beating. A verse of a simple old-fashioned hymn tells thus of the
gathering of the Puritan saints:--
"New England's Sabbath day
Is heaven-like still and pure,
When Israel walks the way
Up to the temple's door.
The time we tell
When there to come
By beat of drum
Or sounding shell."
The drum, as highly suitable for such a military people, was often used as
a signal for gathering for public worship, and was plainly the favorite
means of notification. In 1678 Robert Stuard, of Norwalk, "ingages yt his
son James shall beate the Drumb, on the Sabbath and other ocations," and in
Norwalk the "drumb," the "drumne," the "drumme," and at last the drum was
beaten until 1704, when the Church got a bell. And the "Drumber" was paid,
and well paid too for his "Cervices," fourteen shillings a year of the
town's money, and he was furnished a "new strong drumme;" and the town
supplied to him also the flax for the drum-cords which he wore out in the
service of God. Johnson, in his "Wonder Working Providence," tells of the
Cambridge Church: "Hearing the sound of a drum he was directed toward it by
a broade beaten way; following this rode he demands of the next man he met
what the signall of the drum ment; the reply was made they had as yet no
Bell to call men to meeting and therefore made use of the drum." In 1638
a platform was made upon the top of the Windsor meeting-house "from the
Lanthornc to the ridge to walk conveniently to sound a trumpet or a drum to
give warning to meeting."
Sometimes three guns were fired as a signal for "church-time." The signal
for religious gathering, and the signal for battle were always markedly
different, in order to avoid unnecessary fright.
In 1647 Robert Basset was appointed in New Haven to drum "twice upon Lordes
Dayes and Lecture Dayes upon the meeting house that soe those who live farr
off may heare the more distinkly." Robert may have been a good drummer, but
he proved to be a most reprehensible and disreputable citizen; in the local
Court Records of August 1, 1648, we find a full report of an astounding
occurrence in which he played an important part. Ten men, who Avere nearly
all sea-faring men,--gay, rollicking sailors,--went to Bassctt's house and
asked for strong drink. The magistrates had endeavored zealously, and in
the main successfully, to prevent all intoxication in the community,
and had forbidden the sale of liquor save in very small quantities. The
church-drummer, however, wickedly unmindful of his honored calling,
furnished to the sailors six quarts of strong liquor, with which they all,
host and visitors, got prodigiously drunk and correspondingly noisy. The
Court Record says: "The miscarriage continued till betwixt tenn and eleven
of the clock, to the great provocation of God, disturbance of the peace,
and to such a height of disorder that strangers wondered at it." In the
midst of the carousal the master of the pinnace called the boatswain
"Brother Loggerheads." This must have been a particularly insulting
epithet, which no respectable boatswain could have been expected quietly to
endure, for "at once the two men fell fast to wrestling, then to blowes and
theirin grew to that feircnes that the master of the pinnace thought the
boatswain would have puled out his eies; and they toumbled on the ground
down the hill into the creeke and mire shamefully wallowing theirin."
In his pain and terror the master called out, "Hoe, the Watch! Hoe, the
Watch!" "The Watch made hast and for the present stopped the disorder, but
in his rage and distemper the boatswaine fell a-swearinge Wounds and Hart
as if he were not only angry with men but would provoke the high
and blessed God." The master of the pinnace, being freed from his
fellow-combatant, returned to Basset's house--perhaps to tell his tale
of woe, perhaps to get more liquor--and was assailed by the drummer with
amazing words of "anger and distemper used by drunken companions;" in
short, he was "verey offensive, his noyes and oathes being hearde to
the other side of the creeke." For aiding and abetting this noisy and
disgraceful spree, and also for partaking in it, Drummer Basset was fined
£5, which must have been more than his yearly salary, and in disgrace, and
possibly in disgust, quitted drumming the New Haven good people to meeting
and moved his residence to Stamford, doubtless to the relief and delight of
both magistrates and people of the former town.
Another means of notification of the hour for religious service was by the
use of a flag, often in addition to the sound of the drum or bell. Thus in
Plymouth, in 1697, the selectmen were ordered to "procure a flagg to be put
out at the ringing of the first bell, and taken in when the last bell was
rung." In Sutherland also a flag was used as a means of announcement of
"meeting-time," and an old goody was paid ten shillings a year for "tending
the flagg."
Mr. Gosse, in his "Early Bells of Massachusetts," gives a full and
interesting account of the church-bells of the first colonial towns in that
State. Lechford, in his "Plaine Dealing," wrote in 1641 that they came
together in Boston on the Lord's Day by "the wringing of a bell," and it is
thought that that bell was a hand-bell. The first bells, for the lack
of bell-towers, were sometimes hung on trees by the side of the
meeting-houses, to the great amazement and distress of the Indians, who
regarded them with superstitious dread, thinking--to paraphrase Herbert's
beautiful line--"when the bell did chime 't was devils' music;" but more
frequently the bells were hung in a belfry or bell-turret or "bellcony,"
and from this belfry depended a long bell-rope quite to the floor; and thus
in the very centre of the church the sexton stood when he rung the summons
for lire or for meeting. This rope was of course directly in front of the
pulpit; and Jonathan Edwards, who was devoid of gestures and looked always
straight before him when preaching, was jokingly said to have "looked-off"
the bell-rope, when it fell with a crash in the middle of his church.
At the first sound of the drum or horn or bell the town inhabitants issued
from their houses in "desent order," man and wife walking first, and the
children in quiet procession after them. Often a man-servant and a maid
walked on either side of the heads of the family. In some communities the
congregation waited outside the church door until the minister and his wife
arrived and passed into the house; then the church-attendants followed, the
loitering boys always contriving to scuffle noisily in from the horse-sheds
at the last moment, making much scraping and clatter with their heavy boots
on the sanded floor, and tumbling clumsily up the uucarpeted, creaking
stairs.
In other churches the members of the congregation seated themselves in
their pews upon their arrival, but rose reverently when the parson, dressed
in black skull-cap and Geneva cloak, entered the door; and they stood, in
token of respect, until after he entered the pulpit and was seated.
It was also the honor-giving and deferential custom in many New England
churches, in the eighteenth century, for the entire congregation to remain
respectfully standing within the pews at the end of the serice until the
minister had descended from his lofty pulpit, opened the door of his wife's
pew, and led her with stately dignity to the church-porch, where, were he
and she genial and neighborly minded souls, they in turn stood and greeted
with carefully adjusted degrees of warmth, interest, respect, or patronage,
the different members of the congregation as they slowly passed out.