1785, COLIN FERGUSON was the only one not of Connecticut. He came
from Maryland, and the testimonials recommending him were signed
by the Rev. Dr. William Smith, afterwards president of the House
of Deputies, and others of that State. He was born in Kent County,
and was the son of a Scotsman who emigrated to this country and
maintained a respectable character but never rose to affluent
circumstances. An opportunity occurred for the youth to accompany
a Scottish schoolmaster about to return to Edinburgh, and he
gladly availed himself of it and thus obtained a classical
education without expense to his father. After several years spent
at the University of Edinburgh, he came back to America with a
good reputation for scholarship, but it does not appear that he
had the ministry in mind so early as this. He found employment as
an instructor, and upon the establishment of Washington College,
Chestertown, Md., in 1782, he was chosen a professor in it, and
held the place until Dr. Smith, the president or principal,
returned to Philadelphia, when he was promoted to the headship of
the institution. It was under the direction of Dr. Smith that he
studied theology, and his ministerial labors were chiefly limited
to St. Paul's Parish, Kent County, of which for sometime he had
the charge in addition to his college duties. The degree of Doctor
of Divinity was conferred upon him shortly after his ordination by
the institution with which he was connected, and was a deserved
honor on the score of learning. He was a member of the August
General Convention of 1789, and signed as one of the delegation
from Maryland the "Resolves" of that body which led to the final
union and settlement of the Church in all the States.
About the year 1804, the Legislature of Maryland passed enactments
which deprived the college of the means of a liberal support, and
Dr. Ferguson thereupon resigned his office and "retired to his
farm in the vicinity of Georgetown Cross Roads, where he spent the
remainder of his life." He died of paralysis on the 10th of March,
1806, in the 55th year of his age.
"As a preacher," says one [Footnote: P. Worth, in Sprague's
_Annals of the American Episcopal Pulpit_, p. 344.] who was
his pupil for seven years and had constant opportunities to make
observations upon his character, "I cannot say he possessed any
remarkable power. His sermons, as specimens of composition, were
of a high order, creditable to him as a scholar and a writer, but
they were not strongly marked by an evangelical tone. Perhaps
I should not do him injustice, if I was to say that his sermons,
in this respect, were not very unlike those of the celebrated Dr.
Hugh Blair."
I take the names of the candidates in the order in which they lie
in the Registry Book of Bishop Seabury--not that this order
determines the actual order of ordination, for I am confident it
does not.
HENRY VAN DYCK was born in the city of New York in 1744, and was
the only son of his parents. He graduated from King's (now
Columbia) College in 1761, when the institution was in charge of
its first president, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Johnson. After
graduating, he studied law and located himself in Stratford,
Conn., whither the family had removed and become settled. He
married Huldah Lewis of that place, August 9, 1767, and on the
sixth day of the ensuing month, he and his wife were admitted as
communicants in Christ Church, which was then under the rectorship
of Dr. Johnson for the second time, he having resigned the college
and returned to Stratford.
It does not appear that he had much success in the legal
profession, and he wrote his discouragements to William Samuel
Johnson, special colonial agent from Connecticut, then in London,
who confided in his integrity and had entrusted him with the
collection of some debts that were his due. In his reply, Johnson
said: "It gives me concern to find that you have not met with that
obliging behaviour from the profession which you expected; those
men at the bar have, I believe, most of them experienced the
friendly assistance of those who have gone before them, and should
not therefore in point of gratitude refuse it to help those who
are coming forward and to succeed them, not to mention that it is
exceedingly ungenerous and illiberal to endeavour to cramp rising
genius, or use any attempts to monopolize a profession which
should be ever open to men of merit, and especially those who
enter into it in the regular methods of education. You will find,
however, that nothing will so effectually overcome any difficulties,
prejudices, or inconveniences of this nature as the course
you say you are in, and in which therefore you will by all
means persevere, of an assiduous, careful attention to your
business and an upright, diligent conduct in every branch of your
profession. This will secure you in the possession of the business
you have, and increase it, enable you to transact it with ease and
honor, and by degrees enforce the complaisance at least, if not
the esteem, of those who by some slights and little negligences
wished to have depressed you, and by that means perhaps secured to
themselves a greater proportion of business.
"I sincerely give you and Mrs. Van Dyck joy upon your marriage,
and hope you will long, very long, enjoy all the blessings of the
connubial state, which I have ever esteemed essential to human
happiness. It would have given me an additional pleasure to have
known that your father had consented to it, and though it seems he
would not, I still hope he may yet see such happy effects of the
measure as to approve it and be convinced by its consequences that
he ought not to have been so inflexibly averse to it." [Footnote:
Ms. Letter, November 23, 1767.]
Mr. Van Dyck continued the practice of law until about the time of
the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. He was brought forward as a
lay-reader under the auspices of the Rev. Ebenezer Kneeland,
successor in the Church at Stratford to the Rev. Dr. Johnson whose
granddaughter, Charity, he had married. From the records of the
Episcopal Church in the adjoining town of Milford, it appears that
at a vestry meeting, held April 17, 1776, after electing wardens
and vestrymen, Mr. Kneeland being present, it was "voted that Mr.
Henry Van Dyke be desired to read prayers on such Sundays as Dr.
Kneeland shall be absent, and that we will see him rewarded for
his trouble." This was done with entire unanimity by the advice
and consent of Mr. Kneeland. An item in a publication of the time,
under date of August, 1779, though incorrect in reporting him as a
clergyman, gives evidence that he had ceased to pursue the legal
profession: "The _Rev._ Henry Van Dyke is at Norwalk, and
wants to go to Long Island with his family."
After the independence of the colonies had been declared, the full
use of the liturgy of the Church of England was no longer
tolerated, and for ten years there was seldom any assembling for
prayers or preaching or any new choice of officers in the Church
at Milford. But in January, 1786, Mr. Van Dyck, being then in Holy
Orders, proposed to take the care of the churches in Milford and
West Haven, and his proposition was acceded to at a salary of 90
pounds per annum; Milford agreeing to pay two-thirds of it and
West Haven the remainder. He removed with his family to Milford in
the May following, and the church thought itself happily provided
with a "pasture" for life.
In this, however, there was disappointment, for in February, 1787,
"the appearance of a committee from Poughkeepsie" to secure him as
rector in that place and Fishkill, made the people of Milford and
West Haven somewhat indignant. They claimed that his engagement
with them was for a longer period, while he affirmed that it
terminated at the end of the year. He had been in treaty with the
Church at Poughkeepsie for some time, and visited and officiated
in it before he was in Holy Orders. The records show that he
conducted divine service in Christ Church as early as June, 1784,
and that the congregation desired the vestry to adopt such
measures in conjunction with their brethren of Trinity Church,
Fishkill, as might be proper for the settlement of Mr. Van Dyck.
The arrangement was completed by offering him as compensation the
use of the glebe, containing more than two hundred and fifty
acres, and, 80 pounds New York currency from the parish in
Poughkeepsie and 40 pounds from Fishkill. They wished him to come
whether in orders or not, but nothing more was heard of him till
he addressed a letter dated Stratford, May 22, 1785, to the vestry
of Christ Church, requesting certificates and testimonials which
would entitle him to ordination by Bishop Seabury who was already
in Nova Scotia and "momentarily expected" in Connecticut.
"Our ordination," he said, "will take place immediately on his
arrival, for which we are making all possible preparation, after
which we shall repair to our several congregations as soon as we
can." The preparation was probably under the direction and
oversight of the Rev. Mr. Learning, the first choice of the clergy
of Connecticut for bishop.
On the second Sunday after his ordination, in fulfilment of a
promise which he had made, the Rev. Mr. Van Dyck visited the
church in Fishkill, but he was only a bird of passage in doing
this. His private affairs were in the way. He had become indebted
to a gentleman in New York to the amount of L125, and under the
trespass law of the State, if he entered it and remained, he was
liable to arrest and imprisonment. The Legislature, by vote,
permitted him to return, and finally an amicable adjustment was
effected with the creditor through the agency of the vestry in
Poughkeepsie, and he was established as rector of Christ Church,
Whitsunday, May 27, 1787, and continued in charge till 1791. He
then removed to New Jersey and became rector of St. Peter's
Church, Amboy, and Christ Church, New Brunswick; but in July,
1793, he accepted the rectorship of St. Mary's, Burlington, which
he held for three years. His residence in this place was saddened
by painful domestic afflictions. The death of his widowed mother,
who had been an inmate of his family for many years, followed by
that of two of his daughters under peculiarly sorrowful
circumstances, must have made him quite willing to leave
Burlington, and assume, in 1797, the charge of St. James's Church,
Newtown, L. I. Here he continued to officiate for five years, and
he is said to have been the first clergyman who devoted his entire
services to that parish. This was his last and longest rectorship,
for he left Newtown in 1802, and on the 12th of September in that
year he conducted the services in Grace Church, Jamaica, then
vacant, "and offered to officiate further."
Davis [Footnote: John Davis, _Travels of four Years and a half
in the United States_ (1798-1802), p. 155.], in his travels in
the United States, speaks thus vividly of a visit he made to
Newtown, and of his entertainment in the place: "I was fortunate
enough to procure lodgings at Newtown under the roof of the
Episcopal minister, Mr. Vandyke. The parsonage-house was not
unpleasantly situated. The porch was shaded by a couple of huge
locust trees, and accommodated with a long bench. Here I often sat
with my host, who like Parson Adams always wore the cassock; but
he did not read AEschylus. Mr. Vandyke was at least sixty; yet if
a colt, a pig, or any other quadruped entered his paddock, he
sprang from his seat with more than youthful agility, and
vociferously chased the intruder from his domain. I could not but
smile to behold the parson running after a pig and mingling his
cries with those of the animal."
The New York Evening _Post_ of September 17, 1804, contained
this obituary: "Died early this morning, the Rev. Henry Van Dyck,
aged sixty, one of the clergy of the Protestant Episcopal Church,
and formerly rector of St. James's Church, Newtown. He was
possessed of an affectionate heart and excellent understanding. He
discharged with zeal, fidelity, and ability, the duties of his
calling. In private life he was esteemed by all to whom he was
known. Funeral this afternoon at five o'clock from his house, No.
4 Cedar street, New York, where his friends and acquaintances are
invited to attend."
It is stated in the Rev. Dr. Hills's _History of the Church in
Burlington_, p. 339, that two children survived him--"a son and
a daughter; Richard Vandyke married, had a large family, and lived
to a good old age. He died in 1856." The death of the daughter,
who never married, occurred thirty years earlier.
ASHBEL BALDWIN was born in a farm-house on the hills of
Litchfield, Connecticut, March 7, 1757. His father, Isaac Baldwin,
was a graduate of Yale College in the class of 1735, and an older
brother, who bore the paternal name, was graduated in 1774. Ashbel
was later, graduating in 1776, the year of the Declaration of
American Independence. Isaac Baldwin the senior, on leaving
college, began the study of theology and was licensed as a
Congregational minister, and preached for a time in what is now
the town of Washington, Conn. [Footnote: Dexter's _Yale
Biographies and Annals_, 1701-1745; p. 523.] But he soon
relinquished the study, and turned his attention to agricultural
pursuits, settling upon a farm in Litchfield, and becoming an
eminently useful official in the public affairs of the town and
county.
His son Ashbel contracted a lameness in boyhood by going into the
water and imprudently exposing himself to a cold, which stiffened
and shortened one of his limbs and made his gait ever afterward
unequal and limping. He had not relinquished his attachment to the
Congregational order when he graduated and subsequently took a
temporary tutorship in a Church family in New York. Stanch
churchmen in those days, if for any cause the parish church was
closed on Sunday, turned their parlors into chapels, and had in
private the full morning service. Mr. Baldwin, being the educated
member of the household, was required to act as lay-reader, and
not knowing how to use the Prayer-Book, and yet ashamed to confess
his ignorance to the head of the family, he sought the assistance
and friendship of the gardener, who gave him the necessary
instructions, and very soon love and admiration of the Liturgy and
conversion to the Church followed. How long he continued in his
private tutorship is unknown.
For two or three years during the Revolutionary War he held the
appointment of a quartermaster in the Continental army, and was
stationed for a time at Litchfield, where there was a large
depository of military stores, "principally taken at the surrender
of General Burgoyne," and guarded by a considerable detachment of
soldiers. For his services in this capacity he received a pension
from government, which became his principal means of support in
the last year of his life.
Upon the cessation of hostilities and the acknowledgment of
Independence, he applied himself to theological studies, and
though but a candidate for Holy Orders, he was an interested
spectator at the meeting of the clergy in Woodbury on the Feast of
the Annunciation, 1783, when choice was made of the first bishop
of Connecticut.
On Monday, June 20, 1785, Bishop Seabury arrived at Newport, R.I.,
after a voyage from London of three months, including his stay in
Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and reaching his future home in
Connecticut a week later, preparations were immediately begun to
meet his clergy and hold his first ordination. Of the four
candidates admitted by him to the diaconate in this city a century
ago to-day, Van Dyck, Baldwin, and Shelton belonged to Connecticut,
and were recommended by its clergy, of whom in convention
assembled the Rev. Jeremiah Leaming was president. Mr. Baldwin
was sent at once to his native place, and continued in charge
of St. Michael's Church, Litchfield, till 1793, when he resigned
and accepted the rectorship of the venerable parish at Stratford.
He was instrumental in awakening the zeal of the Episcopalians
of Litchfield county, and leading them to re-open their
churches after the desolations of the war as well as to
project new ones. His recognized position in the diocese was early
one of influence and responsibility, and his energy and facility
in the dispatch of business made him especially useful in the
deliberative and legislative assemblies of the Church. He was
chosen Secretary of the Convention of the Diocese of Connecticut
in 1796, and continued to discharge the duties of that office for
a period of nearly thirty years. He was a deputy to the General
Convention for an equally long period, and held the office of
Secretary in the House of Deputies, from which he retired in 1823
with the thanks of that body "for his long and faithful services."
As the General Convention of 1799 was the first which Mr. Baldwin
attended in the capacity of a deputy, so that of 1823 was the
last. He was conspicuous in that council for remarkable self-
possession, and promptness and facility in giving expression to
his opinions. The type of his theology led him to take the "old
paths," and reverence for the memory of the bishop who ordained
him held him up to a high standard of legislation for the Church.
He would have her doctrines and discipline well defined and
guarded, and his first action in the House of Deputies was to move
a resolution to take into consideration the propriety of framing
Articles of Religion. He lived at a period when Puritanism was
rife in New England, especially in Connecticut, and while it was
his policy to avoid being drawn into controversy, his devotion to
the interests of the Episcopal Church never faltered or became
doubtful under any pressure of circumstances. He was a parson
without the smallest trace of bigotry, and attracted and retained
the affections of all who was privileged to know him well in his
private and official capacity. He was a good reader of the
Liturgy, an instructive, if not a learned preacher, and had a
clear, sonorous voice, and a persuasive manner which rendered his
discourses acceptable to all classes of people. His best and
happiest days were passed in Stratford, where for over thirty
years he held the rectorship of the parish which had been served
by those two eminent divines, Johnson and Leaming.
For a portion of the time he had this parish in connection with
the neighboring one at Tashua, ministering to the latter every
third Sunday, and holding frequent services in school-houses and
private dwellings. His mode of travelling was in a chaise, and on
one occasion he drove up rather hurriedly to meet an appointment
at a house where the people had already assembled, and stepping
nimbly down from his seat he was accosted by the host who was not
a churchman: "I suppose, Mr. Baldwin, as it is the season of Lent,
you will not take any refreshments before beginning the service."
"No, nothing for me," was the reply; "but my horse is a
Presbyterian; he must be fed."
Mr. Baldwin was a man of keen discernment, quick apprehensions,
and ready retort. In social intercourse he had wonderful powers of
adapting himself to circumstances, and was alike an acceptable
visitor in the families of the wealthy and refined, the humble and
the uneducated, and a welcome guest at their tables. It was his
practice, as it was the practice of many of the clergy in that
day, to administer baptism in private houses, using the occasion
of a lecture to make the office a public one. Very often whole
households were baptized in this way, and sometimes their
connection with the Church was afterwards unfortunately lost
through neglect to exercise a proper degree of vigilance and care.
Mr. Baldwin married Miss Clarissa Johnson of Guilford, a grand-
niece of his predecessor in Stratford, the Rev. Dr. Samuel
Johnson. She died childless many years before him, and he never
married again. He was in the full possession of his mental
faculties and blessed with a fair degree of health when he
resigned, in 1824, the Rectorship of Christ Church. For a time he
lingered in the neighborhood of Stratford, but could not be idle,
and was soon in charge of the parish in Meriden, and afterwards
officiated in several places, as Tashua, Wallingford, North Haven,
Oxford, and Quakers' Farms. Ten years were thus passed, doing what
he could for the Church which he had served so faithfully and
loved so much; but in 1834 failure of eyesight and other
infirmities obliged him to cease from all public service and go
into retirement. It was natural for him to dwell for the rest of
his days among or near his old parishioners, and for many years,
as it suited his convenience, he resided at New Haven, Bridgeport,
and Stratford. He was at the latter place in 1837, when he
addressed a letter to Bishop Brownell, taking an affectionate
leave of the Diocesan Convention then sitting in New Haven, and
resigning the only office of trust in its gift which he had
continued to hold.
The letter was characteristic of the man, chaste and beautiful in
its style, and pathetic in its allusions. The concluding paragraph
read:
"My dear Sir, when I first entered the Church her condition was
not very flattering. Surrounded by enemies on every side, and
opposed with much virulence, her safety and even her very
existence were at times somewhat questionable; but by the united
and zealous exertions of the clergy, attended by the blessings of
her great Founder, she has been preserved in safety through every
storm, and now presents herself with astonishment to every
beholder, not as a grain of mustard seed, but as a beautiful tree,
spreading its salubrious branches over our whole country. The
Church, by a strict adherence to its ancient landmarks, its
priesthood, its liturgy, and its government, has been preserved
from those schisms which seem to threaten the peace of a very
respectable body of Christians in our country. May the same
unanimity and zeal which animated our fathers, still be preserved
in the Church. My days of pilgrimage, I know, are almost closed,
and I can do no more than to be in readiness, by the grace of God,
to leave the Church militant in peace. May I be permitted, Sir, to
ask the prayers of my bishop and his clergy, that my last days may
be happy."
Mr. Baldwin went to Rochester, N.Y., a few years later, and became
an inmate in the family of one who had removed thither from
Connecticut, and who was under special obligations to him for
kindness and care bestowed in previous years. He died in that city
on Sunday, February 8, 1846, lacking twenty-seven days to complete
his eighty-ninth year. There is a memorial window erected to him
in the chancel of Grace Church, Long Hill, Conn., which occupies
ground included in the scene of his early ministration.
PHILO SHELTON was a grandson of Daniel Shelton, the founder of the
New England branch of the Shelton family in America. He was one of
a family of fourteen children, and was born in Ripton (now
Huntington) on the 7th of May, 1754. He received a classical
education, and was the first alumnus of Yale College who bore the
name of Shelton. He graduated in 1775, just after the outbreak of
the Revolutionary war, and soon, as a candidate for Holy Orders,
he acted in the capacity of a lay-reader in several places until
his ordination. When a British expedition under the command of
Gen. Tryon was fitted out at New York in 1779, to subdue the
shore-towns of Connecticut, Fairfield was one of the places
invaded, the torch was applied to the dwellings of the rich and
the poor, and the Episcopal church there, the parsonage, and other
property belonging to the parish were consumed in the general
conflagration. This destruction impoverished and depressed the
people as a whole, and many of them fled; but the few churchmen
who remained rallied from all discouragement, rebuilt their
houses, and met in them on Sundays to worship God according to the
forms of the old liturgy, Philo Shelton having been secured for a
lay-reader. He read at the same time for the Episcopalians at
Stratfield, where a wooden church was built as early as 1748, and
also for those in Weston, where the flock had not been broken up
by the disasters of the Revolution.