“Snapshots of Blandford’s First Century” delivered by Rev. Sumner G. Wood at the Congregational Church,
Blandford, Massachusetts, July 7, 1935
Blandford, Massachusetts, July 7, 1935
"This address was delivered in the Congregational church, at Blandford, Mass., July 7 (Sunday - at 2:30 p.m.) on the occasion of the bicentennial celebration of the founding of the town.
The church well filled, and a crowd outside listened by means of amplifiers."
Sumner G. Wood
The church well filled, and a crowd outside listened by means of amplifiers."
Sumner G. Wood
I deeply appreciate the privilege and the honor which I now have in addressing you, Blandford citizens and friends, I cannot claim to have been born to this greatness, nor that I have achieved it. It rather has been thrust upon me. I am neither a native nor a descendant of this town. But I remember with tenderness the ten years of my pastorate here, and I have been led captive by Blandford's unique story. This happens to be the first time when the meeting house has proved to be not big enough to accommodate my listeners. I mean, as of old, to hew to the line, let the chips fly where they may.
The pioneers of Blandford were churchmen. For this very purpose, just before starting, they were organized as a church. They came over "the devil's stairs," rightly so called--the hardest possible way to come; but they knew no other. None of you came by that way, but by a way so disguised and ironed out, on cushions of air, that you hardly knew it to be a hill at all. In those primitive times they had to blow a horn to warn anybody coming from the opposite direction. If the devil built those stairs, or owned them, he was unable to keep them out, or to prevent the big timbers of the first meeting house here from being dragged over them from Southampton.
When that meeting house was set up, where the marker now stands, the pioneers worshipped in it through thirteen long, cold, windy winters--before the days of glass windows--sitting on loose, backless benches, their feet resting on the icy rock, or perchance a few loose boards, heavily coated and mittened, hatted and booted, listening to a preacher wrapped up in like manner, whose pulpit was a packing box and whose sermon was as long as my speech is going to be.
They came as a Presbyterian church of the Scottish order and tradition, born of Calvin's Institutes, suckled at the hard breasts of the Westminster Confession and Longer Catechism, disciplined and inspired by the inimitable John Knox. David Boies' "Covenant with God" written just after his arrival here was born of that spirit. If I should read it to you, you would squirm in your seats, and some of you would rise up and go out. Yet it was a living, throbbing embodiment of Scotch Presbyterianism. Anthony Froude, himself no lover of Calvinism, yet averred it had "attracted to its ranks almost every man in Western Europe that hated a lie." By admission of historians generally, democracy came out of it, for it set every man alone before the living God, to answer each for himself. Would to God more of our politicians had got that vision! Isaac Watts was just then passing off the earthly stage, and Presbyterians were then singing his hymns - among them this: -
"Conceived in sin, Oh woeful state!
Before we draw our breath
The first young pulse begins to beat
Iniquity and death."
We don't sing that any more. Rather, such verses as this, of George Matheson: -
"O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give Thee back the life I owe,
That in Thine ocean depths its flow
May richer fuller be."
That last represented in spirit the theology of the Rev. James Morton, of whom I shall presently speak.
It was a church quarrel which brought these first settlers up here from Hopkinton, in Middlesex County, and they were the party of the first part in it. (Robert Louis Stevenson, himself, you know, a Scot, wrote concerning the Scottish sects, "They can hear each other singing across the street; there is but a street between them, but a shadow between them in principle; and yet, there they sit, enchanted, and in damnatory accents pray for each other's growth in grace.") The church there in Hopkinton, of which a number of themselves had been founders, voted itself Congregational. That was enough. Because of that, and that only, they sold the farms their own hands had cleared. They closed the comfortable frame houses which they themselves had built. I have seen some of them; have seen one undergoing changes for an up-to- date modern residence. They had lost out when they had confidently hoped to win. The Yankee settlers had outnumbered and outvoted them. (Brought to book for forsaking communion, Robert Cook, to take but one representative instance - I am now quoting from the church records - answered thus: - "He thought their church disorderly, and that the church I should not rule over him, and that he desired no dismission from Ye Church, but that Ye Church ought to ask dismission from them.").
Historians, of whom Mr. James Truslow Adams is a distinguished example, have stoutly claimed that a people will not emigrate to a difficult land for religious conviction alone, or chiefly. I submit, here is a contradiction in overt fact. These men and women were not persecuted in Hopkinton, whatever may be said of old Ireland. They were not ill treated. They had their due share of honors, both municipal and churchly. They lost out by a fair and square vote - that was all. Their cherished Presbyterian ideal was knocked in the head. So up here they came into the primeval forest, to set up a church of their own, and rear their children under its nurture, albeit in a wilderness filled with everything which challenged both safety and comfort, for their IDEAL, their FAITH. I have been immensely instructed by the historian whom I have just named. But when he wrote of the famous migration of 1718 and the years following as of "the misguided Scotch-Irish", I beg leave respectfully to claim that that was a "misguided" sentiment. The town of Blandford has proved otherwise, not to mention others.
These hardy people hesitated not to meet the frightful wolfpack, the skulking bear and the screaming bobcat. Children had to be huddled into the house at dusk. Never could husband and father move far out without gun and powder and bullets. They went to their outfarms by two and two, or three, for mutual protection. Daily they went to work with pick and shovel to subdue a home lot covered with stones and filled with stumps. They set up smithy and loom. They built fort and watchtower, and near to where we are now met, they set up a "swival-gun," the gift of the Province. Regiments of soldiers were passing through for years and years. I show you a one-pounder ball picked up in this town.
Did you ever see a Blandford pioneer's stable fork? I am showing you one-John Knox's - the Blandford John - deeply rusted and devoid of handle, this fragment weighing three pounds and some ounces, was of course forged out by a local smith; it is made of two pieces of iron; one bent into the form of a hollow square, each side eight inches long, the ends drawn to a point. The central piece, also drawn to a point at each end, is eighteen inches long, welded in the middle to the horizontal top of the fork, the welding flattened out to the breadth of two inches, the marks of the hammer plainly visible on it. Near the top is a small hole through which a prong, two inches long, is still hanging. This pierced the handle, which latter must have been as big as a muscular hand could grasp.
Here is a brickbat, which I shall not throw at you, but show to you. It is nearly three inches thick, this fragment being six inches long, weighing fully four pounds. It is made of the native clay soil of the farm, all peppered through with pebbles varying in size from that of a pea to the diameter of an inch. It was built into the chimney of a house. And where did they get the plaster? Well, there is not a lime- stone ledge anywhere in town. But over yonder, in the west part, Dame Nature in the ice age had dropped out of her big apron a generous swath of lime- stone boulders. These canny Scotch, not learned in the sciences, discovered them and burned them right there into lime. I show you a picture of one of these rude kilns - just a heap of stones. The lime thus obtained held together the stones of their chimneys - for the earliest chimneys were built of stones, topped off above the ridgepole with brick. Such a chimney required the work of one man and a pair of oxen two full months to construct. Then the house was built around the chimney. I aver that I stand more in reverence before this broken brick than before any splendid building in our national capital constructed of Blandford modern white kaolin.
From the inner doors of a tumbling house in Peebles Hollow, I once pulled two delicate hooks, shaped much after the pattern of a bush scythe. They are an inch and a half long. The upturned little hook at the bottom is an inch in length, gently curving upward. The top of the main shaft is bent back at right angles, doubtless originally pointed. A little below that, on the back side, is a prong an inch long welded to the main staff, the little and larger prongs designed to be driven strongly into the door. The contraption was designed for the man of the house to hang his hat on, or the housewife her apron. The smith who hammered that delicate implement on his anvil, with the long prong attached to it, was an artist. He could do whatever he wanted to do at his forge, suitable to the nature of the raw material. Such smiths made all the paraphernalia of the open fireplace: - the crane and its hinges, the pot-hooks and trammels, the slice and andirons, the hinges and doorlatches in the house, and many another article. Even the nails were shaped, headed and pointed by hand from imported strips of iron. The kitchen fireplace in the old house I referred to measured a full nine feet in width.
Now I maintain that a people who could do such things could do anything they tried to do, from the twenty-five-cent spit-box which Gurdon Rowley made for Nathaniel Cannon Jr. in the early nineteenth century to the elegant furnishings which this same joiner made on order for Samuel Knox, Esq., namely:- a mahogany table, a high-post bedstead table, a dressing table, two turn-up stands, a wash stand and a dressing stand, all for the squire's "beloved daughter," probably on the eve of her marriage; or that large, splendid sideboard even now adorning an old home in this village, or the nearly 150 coffins this artificer made for local burials, some lined and adorned with fine cloths woven in local mills in the period.
A towel of exquisite fine white linen woven in a sort of basket pattern, probably more than a century old. was spun and woven in a home hereabout, the flax being a Beech Hill product. In these days a prospective bride was expected to fill a pillow slip with stockings of her own knitting, and to have laid away a chestful of bed linen, all bleached at home until it seemed "a veritable snowdrift on the short grass," as it lay out in the sun to whiten. Tradition definitely has it that Blandford brides had done that sort of thing.
Now we will proceed to put Mother before the fireplace of which I have spoken, in a sweet glimpse of her, written by the facile pen of the Rev. Dr. Daniel Butler of distinguished memory. He spent his boyhood on Beech Hill in the very early years of the nineteenth century in a house much older than of the time when the family moved into it. He is speaking of his mother. "She was fond of hymns," he wrote, "and committed them to memory, and it lightened her task while she was at work to repeat them in a low tone. I have heard her do this by the hour, apparently forgetting the labor of her hands in the rest of her spirit. When the labors of the day were finished, she would take her seat in front of the oven, with her back to the fire, her knitting work in hand, and a book from our scanty store, or possibly one borrowed from Hartford (they had lived in Hartford) on the stand before her. In this place we always left her when we retired, and she usually remained there for hours alone. I never spoke to her in the night when she did not instantly reply, so that it seemed to us children as if she never slept."
Let us imagine ourselves on South Street some Sunday morning a few years before the Revolution, and see the thrifty family of Silas Noble getting ready for church. I draw out my story from the detailed inventory of the estate after the death of its male head, who was one of the minutemen in the Revolution, and the first of them to fall in that strife. He was an ardent churchman. On that Sunday morning, the barn chores finished, and the mistress having cleared the breakfast table, Silas leads up to the doorway the two "maers" bridled and saddled - probably of Blandford tanned leather and cordwainer's skill. First, the madam mounts by his help to the side saddle of her "maer." Pillions were common in those days, but not side saddles. Silas had one. Then he hands up the baby, Silas Jr., the boy who later enlisted in Capt. Sloper's mounted company, June 12, 1782. to suppress rioting in Northampton. Next, himself adorned by his periwig - for he certainly had one, and where should he wear it if not to meeting? mounts the other "nagg," and on they ride to the meeting house two and one-half miles away. The horses were hitched to the pines close to the meeting house, where in the course of the years the rings and staples became wholly encased in the tree trunks.
As I have with great fullness written the story of the French and Indian wars, I am skipping all that. One of the very worst physical obstacles these emigrants encountered was the second-division road. It looked fine on paper - rectangular, level, neighborly; unique and distinctive, in fact; but insanely fatuous and practically next to impossible. It was laid out for them, not by them. They took it because they had to. It was all wrong and crazy like that proprietor - never a citizen who vainly tried to make the Provincial legislature think that a surveyed town plot of forty-nine square miles look like only thirty six. Long, long ago that crazy road went back to nature, with only here and there a section or two in actual use. I know, for I have actually traversed its whole insane length of gigantic jig-saw elevations and depressions of four miles. Once, disregarding the cautions and gentle counsel of an old inhabitant, I rashly took my horse and buggy down its very worst pitch. Successive avalanches had made hob of its pristine layout. Fearing lest any moment my buggy would careen over on its side and disturb the tender nerves of my mare, I slid out, took the mare by the bits, and cautiously back-stepped, left her for a dangerous moment, snapped her picture in the midst, then resumed the perilous creep. I wish you could see that picture, and observe the looks of dismay and scorn written all over her dumb face. But I rejoice in the memory of it. "Horse and buggy days" were not so bad as they have been painted. That insane road must have encouraged migrations. For a fact it did witness an elopement westward from the old Mitchel, or Cochran house overlooking the little millpond.
The religious life of the people was just as rough as the roads were. Let me present to you the Rev. James Morton, pastor here during the deadly French and Indian wars. Of Irish birth, well educated, ordained here, liberal in theology and temper, to the unceasing scandal of half his flock. He was a true preacher of God's loving purpose to save the whole sinful world, as a manuscript sermon of his in my possession, worn and stained and worm-eaten, abundantly proves. Genial and affectionate, he was on occasion even jovial; lovable, but ill balanced, apt to allow emotion to over-rule his judgement. He was a man of versatile talent, his pitiful salary obliging him to resort to a large variety of sundry businesses at home and abroad, such as those disturbed years afforded, all of which ceaselessly and violently scandalized half his parish; forever getting into trouble; sensitive yet forgiving; somewhat muddy in style and awkward in manner.
He was repeatedly halted for alleged heresy-"haracy", they called it- so that his ministry was a series of intermittent storm and brief calm, like the times. Ecclesiastical judicatures, habitually appealed to, sat in judgement, embracing some of the most eminent theologians in the land, which sometimes cautioned him, or even rebuked him, but on the whole defended him. Driven to the desperation in the midst he was visited by that good man, Silas Noble and others, going "to Mr Morton to confer with him about a certain 'Just Cause of offence."" as they deemed it, but quoting their complaint to an ecclesiastical council, "got no Satisfaction & without the Least Provocation, abused us telling us it was the Devil sent us there to Disturb him." A councilman wrote underneath, the words, "ill advised, unguarded". The whole story is most pitifully absorbing.
If you want to know what "haracy" was in the eyes of the orthodox up here in those troubled times, give heed. Mr. Morton had said in a sermon that "sincerity was that which above all else adorned the soul most." I am quoting verbatim. That was "haracy." He forever insisted that every soul of man might possibly be saved. Life was a race, and a perilous one. If, quoth he, one should try hard, but fall short a bit, Jesus Christ, who "was judge of the race," would reach out his arm and save him. That, too, was "haracy". For my part, I am no admirer of that famous and embittered old cynic, Dean Swift. But I am ready to aver my opinion that he had considerable warrant for his satirical lines on the prevailing theology of his day, to wit: -
"We are God's chosen few, bar
All others will be damned;
There is no place in heaven for you,
We don't want heaven jammed."
There was at least this wholesome discipline. (They were sharpening each other's wits, jolting awake each other's judgements, working out slowly and painfully the philosophy of life. In the midst, two of these men, of the orthodox party, drew up together a long, long thesis which was so acute and forceful that, taking their clerical judges on a pinch of argument, they routed them, horse, foot and dragons, forcing a reversal of the clerical decision.) But time waited for the storm to break out into wide revolt.
Following the Revolution, the Rev. Joseph Badger was ordained pastor here, and remained to the end of the century, a man of sturdy character and marvelously varied talents, though not at his best until the great West invited him. He was a high Calvinist, and sat down hard and long on the theological lid. A ministerial critic who had listened to one of his sermons said of him that he was reminded of a certain other preacher who laid down three propositions:-"1- I shall tell you something that I know about, and you know nothing about. 2- I shall allude to something that I know about, and you know nothing about. 3- I shall speak of what we don't any of us know anything about."
In those days discussions were rife about what were called "natural ability and inability," and "moral ability and inability." And in sooth there is much in it. A certain first citizen of Blandford, for example, in Parson Badger's time, was commanded to make a public confession in meeting "for wrongfully saying that Mrs. D. Lloyd quarreled with all her neighbors" - which obviously couldn't be true! This first citizen certainly had the natural ability to hold his tongue; but it appeared he had not the moral ability to do it, at least until he had been disciplined for the misuse of that member. The subject may easily get beyond one's depth. It bulked large in religious teachings then and long afterward. It has been wittily and not altogether unjustly caricatured in the rather undevout doggerel lines, which I quote from memory:-
"You shall and you shan't,
You can and you can't,
You will and you won't,
You'll be damned if you don't."
Don't think I am wandering far afield. All this is bone and sinew of Blandford's story. These were days of tremendous yeasting in the whole civilised world, days of the French Revolution followed by the Napoleonic wars; days of unbelief and apostasy; wars of the flesh and of the spirit, and they all had their repercussions here.
The old church in Blandford turned a complete somersault in 1805. Congregationalism, which had been anathema, they now deliberately adopted. Even Scots do change their minds - sometimes. It took five years of backing and filling to bring it about, to be sure. Then came John Keep, who refused to come except on condition they make the change. And John Keep did for Blandford what no one else ever did. The old church was threatened with a wide-open split, and it was John Keep who saved the day. The liberals had no shift whatsover. They were all staying out of the church just at that juncture when Baptists, Episcopalians and Methodists were flooding the town.
Meantime a brilliant galaxy of talented youth who had been doing their own thinking and marking out their own careers were saved, along with many of their fathers and mothers, influential malcontents, to the following of that church which has survived the whole bicentenial era. These youths were seeking college training, at Williams, at Yale, or even ending their schooling with what Blandford alone was giving, though not by any means ending their study and thinking therein. They were carrying on a local lyceum, debating questions of the day, writing theses, looking out on wide horizons and putting on the armor of full- disciplined manhood.
There was Levi Pease, commissioned while in Blandford an adjudant in the Revolution, bearer of vital dispatches and of bags of money, of which he never lost a penny nor the dot of an "i." He used to cross Lake Champlain by night, lying flat in his boat when it was moonlight, and paddling with his hands. He was a blacksmith by trade, a prophet by instinct, in foresight a statesman, by deserved national reputation known as the father of the stage coach; full-orbed enough to scorn the scorn of men who called him crazy, courageous enough to drive his stage repeatedly between Boston and New York without a single passenger, while people laughed; a real pioneer of modern travel on and through all the natural elements of space. A gentle soul he was, homely and genial. In his old age he would sit by the fireside with his devoted wife, they eating apples together, always divided between them.
Then other wheels began turning:-of family wagons; of shops and mills, all over town. People were mixing together as never before. Wealth accumulated even on the farms. Elijah Gibbs and his runaway bride, daughter of Rev. Mr. Morton, had eight sons and three daughters, up on the heights around Long Pond. To his sons, as they married, he gave to each a farm and a thousand dollars, and patrimonies to his daughters. One of the Lloyds had a hundred cattle and twenty horses at a time. Men were coming up here from the cities, opening stores, running mills and speculating in land. Blandford sons and daughters were making their mark.
One such was Eli P. Ashmun, son of Justus and Keziah, brought up in the corner tavern. Erecting his little law office in his front yard, teaching law to young men, carrying hundreds of cases up to Jedediah Smith - another remarkable man - Eli P. Ashmun was pleading before the Supreme Court of Massachusetts by 1813, entering the United States Senate a little later. He became father of a still more famous man, George Ashmun, of whom you will hear this evening. Eli's other son, John Hooker Ashmun, graduate of Williams, became Royall Professor of Law in the Dane School of Law in Harvard University, where death overtook him four short years later, to the grief and despair of that institution, which knew not where to look for his equal; a man of superb ability, searching intellect, utterly loyal to truth and an inspiration to youth.
Then there was Patrick Boise, son of Reuben, graduate of Williams in 1808; impulsive and excitable, eloquent, gifted with a high sense of justice, a power with juries and arbitrators, witty and quick at repartee, and immensely popular. A certain prisoner from Tolland, who had been adjudged guilty of murder, a verdict generally esteemed too harsh, refused, however, to plead for commutation of his sentence to life imprisonment. After much urging, he said to his counsel, "Squire Boise, what sort of place is state prison to live in?" Instantly the squire replied, "A great deal better than any place you ever lived in, in Tolland!"
Gen. Alanson Knox succeeded Eli P. Ashmun in ownership and occupancy of the little law office on the street. There he educated a half-dozen law students at a time. He had only the education of the schools of this village, supplemented, however, by wide and studious reading. He became close friend of Daniel Webster, and was a striking figure among the aristocracy of his home town. Ministers, teachers, doctors, in creditable numbers sprang up on Blandford soil in this period, men and women too in unofficial positions establishing homes and businesses all over this wide land.
You may have observed that I have given scant attention to the great War of the Revolution. A couple of years ago, I put out one of the most unpopular books ever written, entitled "The Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolution from Blandford, Mass." It catalogues more than 300 men in that great strife, whither they were sent, and for how long. It will tell you far more than I can here and now.
One day on the eve of the war Samuel Boies Jr. induced Elihu Miller to go to Sloper's store for him, to do some purchasing. Young Boises was a bashful youth of seventeen, and just about that time the banns of marriage between himself and Elizabeth Black of Murrayfield were bawled out in church. Elihu bought for his young friend two and a quarter yards of "Paper Hangings," something just coming into style. That measure was just about enough to cover the chimney front over the fireplace where Samuel and Elizabeth might sit together before the fire holding hands. Elihu further bought for this prospective groom, a pair of "gartors," and one and one-eighth yards of "figgered gauzes." The garters would be a fitting adornment to Samuel's knee breeches; and as for the "figgered gauzes," a good guess would be that they were to be a wedding present to his fiance.
As for Elihu, in that same year, he bought for himself a pair of knee buckles, a pair of stockings at six shillings nine pence, a pair of "Britches," at the extraordinary price of one pound twelve shillings, a pair of silk mitts at six shillings six pence, altogether a parcel of goods befitting a matrimonial occasion both for bride and groom. He settled the whole account by farm produce, mending a chain, and by a set of plow irons, for he seemed to be both farmer and blacksmith. This all happened on the eve of the Revolution, remember. Can't you see these young fellows sharing their love affairs, mutually admiring their hard- earned treasures, to brighten two new homes and lend a distinguished air to two bridal couples?
But hold! The fate of the country has a portentous look. Soon two continents are to be shaken by devastating war. And war takes young men from home. Presently off go the minutemen from the training ground trampled by the feet of Blandford youths. What would these Benedicts do about it? Elihu and Samuel were hanging back when the minutemen went out. The conflict was becoming intense. The whole black prospect of colonial bondage loomed. These young fellows could hardly go to the store or tavern without having to hear what made their ears tingle. At home they would talk it all over with their young spouses. Finally Elihu kissed his wife and marched off to Ticonderoga in the spring of '76. Perhaps his friend Samuel also went, for tradition has it so. Then Sloper himself went, first as lieutenant, then captain, again and again. And so it went until new issues took the place of old ones. We pass again to the time of Mr. Badger.
If I were asked, as I have been asked once and again, what was the origin of Blandford Episcopacy, I should unhesitatingly say, the Rev. Joseph Badger. The proprietors' school house on the common was their place of meeting. The incoming Methodists met there also, for neither of them had weekly meetings. Baptists swept in beside, but their early history is too recondite for our present rehearsal. It should be remembered, however, that they came. Beech Hill was the great stamping ground of the Methodists, but they really swept the whole town. They had outposts at the Shepard place where Pixley had run his famous tavern; in the Dayton and Rowley neighborhood; in the schoolhouse on meeting-house hill; and now and then at the Taggart school, where they received hospitality from the Bartholomews - adherents of the old church, along with hostility, hardly veiled, from Deacon David Boies, near by. Giles Dayton, Gurdon Rowley and King Solomon Hastings all blossomed out into preachers of differing grades, the last named finally going over to some variety of Adventism. Giles Dayton was honored with a layman's encomium that he would make a good preacher because he had already "made a damned good rake." Methodist emotionalism endured some curbing, but they were encouraged to sing in the Congregational prayer meetings, and Pastor Keep was scrupulous about inviting one of that faith who might be present, to offer prayer. Rowley exhibited the forthright courage of the naked truth. He officiated, for example, at the funeral of one Cyrus Cowel. Said he, "We have assembled here, my friends, to pay our last respects to our fellow townsman, Cyrus Cowel. He was not one of the great ones of the earth, a king, or potentate, but just simply Cyrus Cowel. He never did much of any harm, and he did mighty little good." Psychological differences between the old guard and the new were striking. To cite a single example, the old church member was apt not to know that he was saved, he only hoped. The Methodist Episcopal convert knew that he was saved, albeit he must concede that he might "fall from grace." The extreme liberal needed no saving. The circuit riders were desperately poor, but they were eloquent, devoted and outspoken. Aunt Amy Barnes came into meeting late. The preacher paused, and said to her, "Sister, late to church, late to heaven!" And she was, for the pearly gates swung open to her not until she was nearly a century old.
The Episcopalians organized with an imposing number of signers. But a mass raid was made upon them about as soon as they got their charter. Col. James Kilbourne, of Granby, Conn., president of Scioto Company just forming an Ohio Land and Settlement project, secured eight of the very foremost leaders of the local Episcopal church for his enterprise. Of the 37 signers of this stock company, these eight men (with their families, of course), took out almost one-third of the entire stock. They contributed more in men and in stock than any other town, and - except Kilbourne himself - became head and shoulders of the whole concern. One of them, Nathaniel W. Little, a local storekeeper, was Kilbourne's lieutenant, and did the prospecting with him. His report, the whole of which I have read, is of absorbing interest. Russell Atwater (the leading business man in town), subscribed heavily, but sent a substitute, himself leaving town as a large promoter of settlements in New York. It amounted almost to a decapitation of local Episcopacy. They never got over it. Capt. Jonas Johnson (a power in this movement), was left, but he too, soon went elsewhere. Later, Squire Samuel Knox added a thousand dollars to the Episcopal fund, but it failed to save the day.
The movement was primarily liberal, and secondarily Episcopalian. But the Scioto men were Episcopalian to the core. Without any doubt, the local church preferred an Episcopal ministry and organization. But any liberal preacher was acceptable. When the old church society (1st Congregational), about to rebuild, tried hard and long to bring about a coalition, the whole attempt split on this rock:- the Episcopalians refused to confine themselves, for their turn, to any single denomination for a preacher, or even to any two, and they would pledge nothing for the upkeep of the property. They leaned on their inadequate fund for everything, refusing once and again to spend a dollar on their own building until it finally fell to pieces. They tried free will offerings once or twice, then gave it up. Their charter allowed them to assess for church taxes, but they never did it. Perhaps they recalled how a sheriff had once led off John Osborn's last cow to pay for his lapsed pew rent to the old church. Anyway, it looked like sheer discouragement. Their own church building was of the old style Puritan architecture. In their written records they always called their supply their "minister," never "rector," and their minister's house "the parsonage," never "the rectory." The real glory of Blandford Episcopacy was transferred to Worthington, Ohio, which the Scioto families from Blandford did so much to establish:-their Episcopal church, still existing, their Episcopal schools, their charitable institutions, their civic spirit. Their men out there were instantly promoted to church offices, their blood went into Ohio society, their family names survive thereabout to this day, and their town rose in the early years to compete for the location there of the state capital.
It is of interest to learn that when the great Granville colony went out from our neighboring town and its church, they went as an organized Congregational church, gathering an unknown number of people from this town of Blandford, giving the name of the home town to their Ohio settlement, and that it was this same Col. Kilbourne who also started and led that emigration.
Rev. Joseph Badger was one of the foremost of the Ohio pioneers. He cut the first road from Buffalo to the New Connecticut. His real genius needed the larger, newer area for its development. His was a remarkable career out there. He helped mightily in taming the savage Indians, saving them from the curse of drink, helping in bringing about treaties of peace with them, establishing some of the earliest Christian churches, promoting education and the arts of peace, and in so building his abilities and character into the life of the territory that his name is a fragrant memory in Ohio to this day. Even long years before this, a continuous stream of immigration from this town began covering that territory, and later the still greater areas of the West, carrying the genius of New England. To list their number, names and locations would take the time of my whole address. It covered a full half-century, and is a thrilling story. The Whites scattered everywhere, and many another family.
How did they go? In covered wagons, drawn by oxen largely. The journey occupied many weeks. Some walked, as did one young woman, all the way to Ohio, alongside the wagon which conveyed an invalid sister. Some walked back and forth, and that repeatedly. "Did you see that hundred-legged caterpillar?" one such man overheard a bystander ask of his companion.
To those who were left behind, what did it all mean? I will tell you. A quarter of a century ago or more a friend of mine, born and bred in this town, impressively said to me that there was at that time but one inhabited house in his neighborhood, while three other houses were going to ruin to join fifteen open or grass-grown cellar holes of so many homes. Out there in the great beyond, the goers-out established businesses, erected churches, built schools and colleges, sat in state councils, healed the sick, spread the gospel, and still remembered the home land where they had fished, where they had spun and woven, where they had "stubbed off toe nails driving cows to pasture" to quote from a letter-where they had seen visions and dreamed dreams.
Or look across to that domelike elevation known as Tarrot Hill, only woodland now and for generations past. Of old it had been covered with fields of wheat. Roads had carved it into farmsteads where men and women toiled and children played, then by singles and in groups they silently folded their tents and moved out to the setting sun. Their homes went to decay and fell into the cellars. A forest slowly arose over that entire sweep of hill, was felled and grew again, and yet again. The roads returned to nature, the outward traces of them vanishing except to the trained eye of the oldest inhabitant of that region, the late Mr. Gordon Rowley, who passed on recently, nearly a hundred years old. He averred that he alone knew the hidden secrets of the hill, and warned me not to seek them out lest I should get lost. Remembering the second division road, I meekly heeded his solemn warning.
From close by there, at the foot of Birch Hill, the vision glorious came to Cushing Eells, son of one of the poorer farmers and licensed storemen, seemingly an unpromising lad. Bashful, reticent, one day when he saw his minister, Rev. Dorus Clarke, enter his house by the front door, he escaped by the back door and disappeared. A boyhood mate who was going to Williams, dropped a seed into Cushing's soul that to learn, and do, and be, might be noble. Then he decided that he too must go. Meantime Pastor Clarke dropped the seeds of the Kingdom of God in his soul. That boy often covered the sixty miles be tween his home and college hall on foot, cherished and nourished his great ideals, graduated, married, was ordained, and, as you will hear a little later, built himself into the heart of the Pacific coast and of all America, along with Marcus Whitman.
I want to try, before I close, to draw an outline picture of this old Blandford street of about a century ago. The population ranged from 1700 to 1600. This, the “great street" of the fathers, was well lined with fine homes, upstanding barns, numerous taverns, stores, shops and schools. There were two hat shops, several blacksmith shops, a clocksmith, a goldsmith, cardboard shops, and one for window shades. Below Sunset Hill, houses, mills and shops almost crowded each other; a dozen or so of mills, lanes connecting Potash Brook and the street, clattering merrily; saw and grist mills, fulling and clothiers' mills a shingle mill or two, a cordwainer's Dayton's rake factory. Rowley's furniture shop, besides a toll gate.
House yards were fenced to protect gardens and walks from wandering pigs all “ringed and yoked" according to law. Loaded wagons or sleds in season, largely ox-drawn, were hauling goods to market or returning with city bought stuff. Men and women riding horses; two competing lines of stages announcing their approach by tally-ho; groups of villagers and of strangers at post office, store, tavern, chatting, news-mongering, joking. A covered wagon goes lumbering through, packed to capacity, heading for the far country, with shoutings of good bye and good luck, a cloud of dust-then silence. At appropriate times you would see sundry groups gathering: young folks at the parsonage for literary talks; young men going to the lyceum of an evening; law students leaving the law office; men gathering at the stores to smoke and discuss the universe.
Truth to tell, there were other things. Over yonder you might see. probably at dusk, an excited crowd gathering, and it had an ugly look. It was a fight, and men were getting hurt, and women hysterical. Who were they? Well, as likely as not, the leader was one of the town doctors of the upper part of the street, who according to court records was a chief brawler. In a day or two you might see attorney, sheriff, witnesses and others, the lawyers with well- stuffed saddlebags, starting out for Beech Hill, to Judge Jedediah Smith's. Who was he? An old Revolutionary soldier, self- made as the phrase goes, farmer, barterer quid nunc, man of resource, and judge. A characteristic notation in his ledger has this note concerning James Lloyd: "Detained me at home to Do business and did not Come, & agreed to give me fifty cents". His voluminous court records, both civil and criminal, lay open to this day the sorry story of debt, poverty, violence, crime of every variety, the shady side of country life; drunken brawls, assaults, threats, passions let loose and all their sequels. I myself copied a series of civil suits covering just about a twelve-month period in the years 1810-1811: 76 civil suits, all but two or three involving Blandford citizens. The majority look like spite-suits to recover a dollar or two, seldom much more, the court charges usually much greater than the amount in the suit. One turns from it all sick at heart, just in time to see another covered wagon starting for Ohio, containing a whole family fleeing Blandford for no other reason than just these things-to save the boys. This also is of record.
If you were on the street on the training day, you would see and hear unusual sights and sounds: gaiety, hilarity, the whole town out, and by evening men reeling about the street, soldiers and officers beastly drunk. Pastor Keep was chaplain. On Sunday, to use his own phraseology, he gave them a terrific cannonading on intemperance. The house was crowded, and the chief officers were generous enough to commend the chaplain's courage and fidelity. On another and similar occasion, Col. Lloyd, of this town, called his lieutenant to his side, pointed to the scene of drunkenness, whereupon the two officers solemnly pledged each other that they would forever cease from the use of intoxicating drink. They were the only officers in the regiment who did not die drunkards. I have these statements in a personal letter from the late Rev. Dr. Wm. A. Lloyd, of Chicago.
In the town at large, the country dances were centers of demoralization. Pastor Keep strove mightily to break them up, and with large success. Were you there, you might have seen of a certain evening a scattering procession proceeding down Tannery Hill to the Bunnell's mills neighborhood to make merry. Presently the drinks were passed, of course. Then they wanted to dance, but they had no fiddle. So they dispatched young Nathaniel across lots over South Street way, to borrow Granger's fiddle. It was quite a trip, and lonely. Going over, young Nat got along all right. But returning, recalling the minister's counsel, he began to be a bit nervous. Conscience and imagination set up a gruesome drama within him, when he came to the frog pond. Passing it, he heard one of the peepers call out, "Who goes there? Who goes there?" Startled by this gossipy intrusion, he was the more shocked to hear another peeper answer, "Nathaniel Bunnell! Nathaniel Bunnell!" By this time the whole pool was on the qui vive, and a third shrill voice asked, "What's he got? What's he got?" And the answer was shot out, "Granger's fiddle! Granger's fiddle!" Frozen to a standstill by this time, there came to Nathaniel's ears in basso profundo an old croaker's verdict, "The devil have him! The devil have him!" Whereupon Nathaniel dropped the fiddle and put for home on the run. It was a good sign. The leaven was working.
Working indeed it was. The Methodist classes and circuit riders vigorously entered into the campaign, the country wide Washingtonian movement was gripping the whole land, and a local temperance society swept the town. Hundreds joined it, working zealously, even converting some of the licensed dealers, who voluntarily gave up their licenses. The women of course were a power. I had it from the lips of an old lady of my own time here, whose husband had driven a stage coach and four. She remembered back into the thirties of the last century, and told me that when her husband came home drunk, as he sometimes did, she would steal into his bedroom, snatch his nether garment, and throw it out the window. Ashamed to go out after it the next morning, a soberer man was procured to hold the lines that day.
The effective power in all this was the church of God. Conscience and good sense got on top, and the town was redeemed. Imperfect as the church is and always must be, it is here pertinent to ask, "What is the church for? To level down the living of mankind, or to level it up?" Spite of all mistakes, the church of Blandford did level up, and mightily so. It might sometimes make religion too hard. On occasion it made it too easy. Again, it let loose rather wild emotions; or it was too little careful about stirring up sectarian strife. But it vitally helped to make bad men good and good men better.
In the early nineteenth century, men of character and brains, Christian men, entered the town and mightily helped to greaten its power. Amos Collins came from Connecticut and introduced a new feature in dairying. He imported new stock, taught the farmer's families to make cheese-opened new vistas of thrift and self respect, became an ardent churchman withal, and staunch colleague of Pastor Keep, an upbuilder of home life, initiator of a new financial and social era here, finally removing to Hart- ford, where he is remembered with honor to this day. Following him came Orrin Sage, from Middletown. He continued the promotion of the already thriving cheese business, became storekeeper, and most genial landlord, and was immensely successful and popular. He richly endowed the old church and Williams College, whither so many of Blandford's sons were going. A man of modest and winning manners, unpretending, keenly intelligent, he was free from bitterness and guile, and constant in friendship. He was senator. postmaster, representative, Angel of mercy, at last he left Blandford hill, to bless another community.
When the railroads were born, this town with wide-open eyes tried its best to have them climb Blandford hill, but in vain. Yet even so, it lived on.
Always our story is of creation, or what is close to it, transformation. It began with a wilderness. By and by the wilderness blossomed as the rose. It did not do so of itself. Whether here or there, then or now, to cause such blossoming is to do well. And other transformations wait for accomplishment.
"Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll.
Leave thy low-vaulted past.
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea."
The pioneers of Blandford were churchmen. For this very purpose, just before starting, they were organized as a church. They came over "the devil's stairs," rightly so called--the hardest possible way to come; but they knew no other. None of you came by that way, but by a way so disguised and ironed out, on cushions of air, that you hardly knew it to be a hill at all. In those primitive times they had to blow a horn to warn anybody coming from the opposite direction. If the devil built those stairs, or owned them, he was unable to keep them out, or to prevent the big timbers of the first meeting house here from being dragged over them from Southampton.
When that meeting house was set up, where the marker now stands, the pioneers worshipped in it through thirteen long, cold, windy winters--before the days of glass windows--sitting on loose, backless benches, their feet resting on the icy rock, or perchance a few loose boards, heavily coated and mittened, hatted and booted, listening to a preacher wrapped up in like manner, whose pulpit was a packing box and whose sermon was as long as my speech is going to be.
They came as a Presbyterian church of the Scottish order and tradition, born of Calvin's Institutes, suckled at the hard breasts of the Westminster Confession and Longer Catechism, disciplined and inspired by the inimitable John Knox. David Boies' "Covenant with God" written just after his arrival here was born of that spirit. If I should read it to you, you would squirm in your seats, and some of you would rise up and go out. Yet it was a living, throbbing embodiment of Scotch Presbyterianism. Anthony Froude, himself no lover of Calvinism, yet averred it had "attracted to its ranks almost every man in Western Europe that hated a lie." By admission of historians generally, democracy came out of it, for it set every man alone before the living God, to answer each for himself. Would to God more of our politicians had got that vision! Isaac Watts was just then passing off the earthly stage, and Presbyterians were then singing his hymns - among them this: -
"Conceived in sin, Oh woeful state!
Before we draw our breath
The first young pulse begins to beat
Iniquity and death."
We don't sing that any more. Rather, such verses as this, of George Matheson: -
"O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give Thee back the life I owe,
That in Thine ocean depths its flow
May richer fuller be."
That last represented in spirit the theology of the Rev. James Morton, of whom I shall presently speak.
It was a church quarrel which brought these first settlers up here from Hopkinton, in Middlesex County, and they were the party of the first part in it. (Robert Louis Stevenson, himself, you know, a Scot, wrote concerning the Scottish sects, "They can hear each other singing across the street; there is but a street between them, but a shadow between them in principle; and yet, there they sit, enchanted, and in damnatory accents pray for each other's growth in grace.") The church there in Hopkinton, of which a number of themselves had been founders, voted itself Congregational. That was enough. Because of that, and that only, they sold the farms their own hands had cleared. They closed the comfortable frame houses which they themselves had built. I have seen some of them; have seen one undergoing changes for an up-to- date modern residence. They had lost out when they had confidently hoped to win. The Yankee settlers had outnumbered and outvoted them. (Brought to book for forsaking communion, Robert Cook, to take but one representative instance - I am now quoting from the church records - answered thus: - "He thought their church disorderly, and that the church I should not rule over him, and that he desired no dismission from Ye Church, but that Ye Church ought to ask dismission from them.").
Historians, of whom Mr. James Truslow Adams is a distinguished example, have stoutly claimed that a people will not emigrate to a difficult land for religious conviction alone, or chiefly. I submit, here is a contradiction in overt fact. These men and women were not persecuted in Hopkinton, whatever may be said of old Ireland. They were not ill treated. They had their due share of honors, both municipal and churchly. They lost out by a fair and square vote - that was all. Their cherished Presbyterian ideal was knocked in the head. So up here they came into the primeval forest, to set up a church of their own, and rear their children under its nurture, albeit in a wilderness filled with everything which challenged both safety and comfort, for their IDEAL, their FAITH. I have been immensely instructed by the historian whom I have just named. But when he wrote of the famous migration of 1718 and the years following as of "the misguided Scotch-Irish", I beg leave respectfully to claim that that was a "misguided" sentiment. The town of Blandford has proved otherwise, not to mention others.
These hardy people hesitated not to meet the frightful wolfpack, the skulking bear and the screaming bobcat. Children had to be huddled into the house at dusk. Never could husband and father move far out without gun and powder and bullets. They went to their outfarms by two and two, or three, for mutual protection. Daily they went to work with pick and shovel to subdue a home lot covered with stones and filled with stumps. They set up smithy and loom. They built fort and watchtower, and near to where we are now met, they set up a "swival-gun," the gift of the Province. Regiments of soldiers were passing through for years and years. I show you a one-pounder ball picked up in this town.
Did you ever see a Blandford pioneer's stable fork? I am showing you one-John Knox's - the Blandford John - deeply rusted and devoid of handle, this fragment weighing three pounds and some ounces, was of course forged out by a local smith; it is made of two pieces of iron; one bent into the form of a hollow square, each side eight inches long, the ends drawn to a point. The central piece, also drawn to a point at each end, is eighteen inches long, welded in the middle to the horizontal top of the fork, the welding flattened out to the breadth of two inches, the marks of the hammer plainly visible on it. Near the top is a small hole through which a prong, two inches long, is still hanging. This pierced the handle, which latter must have been as big as a muscular hand could grasp.
Here is a brickbat, which I shall not throw at you, but show to you. It is nearly three inches thick, this fragment being six inches long, weighing fully four pounds. It is made of the native clay soil of the farm, all peppered through with pebbles varying in size from that of a pea to the diameter of an inch. It was built into the chimney of a house. And where did they get the plaster? Well, there is not a lime- stone ledge anywhere in town. But over yonder, in the west part, Dame Nature in the ice age had dropped out of her big apron a generous swath of lime- stone boulders. These canny Scotch, not learned in the sciences, discovered them and burned them right there into lime. I show you a picture of one of these rude kilns - just a heap of stones. The lime thus obtained held together the stones of their chimneys - for the earliest chimneys were built of stones, topped off above the ridgepole with brick. Such a chimney required the work of one man and a pair of oxen two full months to construct. Then the house was built around the chimney. I aver that I stand more in reverence before this broken brick than before any splendid building in our national capital constructed of Blandford modern white kaolin.
From the inner doors of a tumbling house in Peebles Hollow, I once pulled two delicate hooks, shaped much after the pattern of a bush scythe. They are an inch and a half long. The upturned little hook at the bottom is an inch in length, gently curving upward. The top of the main shaft is bent back at right angles, doubtless originally pointed. A little below that, on the back side, is a prong an inch long welded to the main staff, the little and larger prongs designed to be driven strongly into the door. The contraption was designed for the man of the house to hang his hat on, or the housewife her apron. The smith who hammered that delicate implement on his anvil, with the long prong attached to it, was an artist. He could do whatever he wanted to do at his forge, suitable to the nature of the raw material. Such smiths made all the paraphernalia of the open fireplace: - the crane and its hinges, the pot-hooks and trammels, the slice and andirons, the hinges and doorlatches in the house, and many another article. Even the nails were shaped, headed and pointed by hand from imported strips of iron. The kitchen fireplace in the old house I referred to measured a full nine feet in width.
Now I maintain that a people who could do such things could do anything they tried to do, from the twenty-five-cent spit-box which Gurdon Rowley made for Nathaniel Cannon Jr. in the early nineteenth century to the elegant furnishings which this same joiner made on order for Samuel Knox, Esq., namely:- a mahogany table, a high-post bedstead table, a dressing table, two turn-up stands, a wash stand and a dressing stand, all for the squire's "beloved daughter," probably on the eve of her marriage; or that large, splendid sideboard even now adorning an old home in this village, or the nearly 150 coffins this artificer made for local burials, some lined and adorned with fine cloths woven in local mills in the period.
A towel of exquisite fine white linen woven in a sort of basket pattern, probably more than a century old. was spun and woven in a home hereabout, the flax being a Beech Hill product. In these days a prospective bride was expected to fill a pillow slip with stockings of her own knitting, and to have laid away a chestful of bed linen, all bleached at home until it seemed "a veritable snowdrift on the short grass," as it lay out in the sun to whiten. Tradition definitely has it that Blandford brides had done that sort of thing.
Now we will proceed to put Mother before the fireplace of which I have spoken, in a sweet glimpse of her, written by the facile pen of the Rev. Dr. Daniel Butler of distinguished memory. He spent his boyhood on Beech Hill in the very early years of the nineteenth century in a house much older than of the time when the family moved into it. He is speaking of his mother. "She was fond of hymns," he wrote, "and committed them to memory, and it lightened her task while she was at work to repeat them in a low tone. I have heard her do this by the hour, apparently forgetting the labor of her hands in the rest of her spirit. When the labors of the day were finished, she would take her seat in front of the oven, with her back to the fire, her knitting work in hand, and a book from our scanty store, or possibly one borrowed from Hartford (they had lived in Hartford) on the stand before her. In this place we always left her when we retired, and she usually remained there for hours alone. I never spoke to her in the night when she did not instantly reply, so that it seemed to us children as if she never slept."
Let us imagine ourselves on South Street some Sunday morning a few years before the Revolution, and see the thrifty family of Silas Noble getting ready for church. I draw out my story from the detailed inventory of the estate after the death of its male head, who was one of the minutemen in the Revolution, and the first of them to fall in that strife. He was an ardent churchman. On that Sunday morning, the barn chores finished, and the mistress having cleared the breakfast table, Silas leads up to the doorway the two "maers" bridled and saddled - probably of Blandford tanned leather and cordwainer's skill. First, the madam mounts by his help to the side saddle of her "maer." Pillions were common in those days, but not side saddles. Silas had one. Then he hands up the baby, Silas Jr., the boy who later enlisted in Capt. Sloper's mounted company, June 12, 1782. to suppress rioting in Northampton. Next, himself adorned by his periwig - for he certainly had one, and where should he wear it if not to meeting? mounts the other "nagg," and on they ride to the meeting house two and one-half miles away. The horses were hitched to the pines close to the meeting house, where in the course of the years the rings and staples became wholly encased in the tree trunks.
As I have with great fullness written the story of the French and Indian wars, I am skipping all that. One of the very worst physical obstacles these emigrants encountered was the second-division road. It looked fine on paper - rectangular, level, neighborly; unique and distinctive, in fact; but insanely fatuous and practically next to impossible. It was laid out for them, not by them. They took it because they had to. It was all wrong and crazy like that proprietor - never a citizen who vainly tried to make the Provincial legislature think that a surveyed town plot of forty-nine square miles look like only thirty six. Long, long ago that crazy road went back to nature, with only here and there a section or two in actual use. I know, for I have actually traversed its whole insane length of gigantic jig-saw elevations and depressions of four miles. Once, disregarding the cautions and gentle counsel of an old inhabitant, I rashly took my horse and buggy down its very worst pitch. Successive avalanches had made hob of its pristine layout. Fearing lest any moment my buggy would careen over on its side and disturb the tender nerves of my mare, I slid out, took the mare by the bits, and cautiously back-stepped, left her for a dangerous moment, snapped her picture in the midst, then resumed the perilous creep. I wish you could see that picture, and observe the looks of dismay and scorn written all over her dumb face. But I rejoice in the memory of it. "Horse and buggy days" were not so bad as they have been painted. That insane road must have encouraged migrations. For a fact it did witness an elopement westward from the old Mitchel, or Cochran house overlooking the little millpond.
The religious life of the people was just as rough as the roads were. Let me present to you the Rev. James Morton, pastor here during the deadly French and Indian wars. Of Irish birth, well educated, ordained here, liberal in theology and temper, to the unceasing scandal of half his flock. He was a true preacher of God's loving purpose to save the whole sinful world, as a manuscript sermon of his in my possession, worn and stained and worm-eaten, abundantly proves. Genial and affectionate, he was on occasion even jovial; lovable, but ill balanced, apt to allow emotion to over-rule his judgement. He was a man of versatile talent, his pitiful salary obliging him to resort to a large variety of sundry businesses at home and abroad, such as those disturbed years afforded, all of which ceaselessly and violently scandalized half his parish; forever getting into trouble; sensitive yet forgiving; somewhat muddy in style and awkward in manner.
He was repeatedly halted for alleged heresy-"haracy", they called it- so that his ministry was a series of intermittent storm and brief calm, like the times. Ecclesiastical judicatures, habitually appealed to, sat in judgement, embracing some of the most eminent theologians in the land, which sometimes cautioned him, or even rebuked him, but on the whole defended him. Driven to the desperation in the midst he was visited by that good man, Silas Noble and others, going "to Mr Morton to confer with him about a certain 'Just Cause of offence."" as they deemed it, but quoting their complaint to an ecclesiastical council, "got no Satisfaction & without the Least Provocation, abused us telling us it was the Devil sent us there to Disturb him." A councilman wrote underneath, the words, "ill advised, unguarded". The whole story is most pitifully absorbing.
If you want to know what "haracy" was in the eyes of the orthodox up here in those troubled times, give heed. Mr. Morton had said in a sermon that "sincerity was that which above all else adorned the soul most." I am quoting verbatim. That was "haracy." He forever insisted that every soul of man might possibly be saved. Life was a race, and a perilous one. If, quoth he, one should try hard, but fall short a bit, Jesus Christ, who "was judge of the race," would reach out his arm and save him. That, too, was "haracy". For my part, I am no admirer of that famous and embittered old cynic, Dean Swift. But I am ready to aver my opinion that he had considerable warrant for his satirical lines on the prevailing theology of his day, to wit: -
"We are God's chosen few, bar
All others will be damned;
There is no place in heaven for you,
We don't want heaven jammed."
There was at least this wholesome discipline. (They were sharpening each other's wits, jolting awake each other's judgements, working out slowly and painfully the philosophy of life. In the midst, two of these men, of the orthodox party, drew up together a long, long thesis which was so acute and forceful that, taking their clerical judges on a pinch of argument, they routed them, horse, foot and dragons, forcing a reversal of the clerical decision.) But time waited for the storm to break out into wide revolt.
Following the Revolution, the Rev. Joseph Badger was ordained pastor here, and remained to the end of the century, a man of sturdy character and marvelously varied talents, though not at his best until the great West invited him. He was a high Calvinist, and sat down hard and long on the theological lid. A ministerial critic who had listened to one of his sermons said of him that he was reminded of a certain other preacher who laid down three propositions:-"1- I shall tell you something that I know about, and you know nothing about. 2- I shall allude to something that I know about, and you know nothing about. 3- I shall speak of what we don't any of us know anything about."
In those days discussions were rife about what were called "natural ability and inability," and "moral ability and inability." And in sooth there is much in it. A certain first citizen of Blandford, for example, in Parson Badger's time, was commanded to make a public confession in meeting "for wrongfully saying that Mrs. D. Lloyd quarreled with all her neighbors" - which obviously couldn't be true! This first citizen certainly had the natural ability to hold his tongue; but it appeared he had not the moral ability to do it, at least until he had been disciplined for the misuse of that member. The subject may easily get beyond one's depth. It bulked large in religious teachings then and long afterward. It has been wittily and not altogether unjustly caricatured in the rather undevout doggerel lines, which I quote from memory:-
"You shall and you shan't,
You can and you can't,
You will and you won't,
You'll be damned if you don't."
Don't think I am wandering far afield. All this is bone and sinew of Blandford's story. These were days of tremendous yeasting in the whole civilised world, days of the French Revolution followed by the Napoleonic wars; days of unbelief and apostasy; wars of the flesh and of the spirit, and they all had their repercussions here.
The old church in Blandford turned a complete somersault in 1805. Congregationalism, which had been anathema, they now deliberately adopted. Even Scots do change their minds - sometimes. It took five years of backing and filling to bring it about, to be sure. Then came John Keep, who refused to come except on condition they make the change. And John Keep did for Blandford what no one else ever did. The old church was threatened with a wide-open split, and it was John Keep who saved the day. The liberals had no shift whatsover. They were all staying out of the church just at that juncture when Baptists, Episcopalians and Methodists were flooding the town.
Meantime a brilliant galaxy of talented youth who had been doing their own thinking and marking out their own careers were saved, along with many of their fathers and mothers, influential malcontents, to the following of that church which has survived the whole bicentenial era. These youths were seeking college training, at Williams, at Yale, or even ending their schooling with what Blandford alone was giving, though not by any means ending their study and thinking therein. They were carrying on a local lyceum, debating questions of the day, writing theses, looking out on wide horizons and putting on the armor of full- disciplined manhood.
There was Levi Pease, commissioned while in Blandford an adjudant in the Revolution, bearer of vital dispatches and of bags of money, of which he never lost a penny nor the dot of an "i." He used to cross Lake Champlain by night, lying flat in his boat when it was moonlight, and paddling with his hands. He was a blacksmith by trade, a prophet by instinct, in foresight a statesman, by deserved national reputation known as the father of the stage coach; full-orbed enough to scorn the scorn of men who called him crazy, courageous enough to drive his stage repeatedly between Boston and New York without a single passenger, while people laughed; a real pioneer of modern travel on and through all the natural elements of space. A gentle soul he was, homely and genial. In his old age he would sit by the fireside with his devoted wife, they eating apples together, always divided between them.
Then other wheels began turning:-of family wagons; of shops and mills, all over town. People were mixing together as never before. Wealth accumulated even on the farms. Elijah Gibbs and his runaway bride, daughter of Rev. Mr. Morton, had eight sons and three daughters, up on the heights around Long Pond. To his sons, as they married, he gave to each a farm and a thousand dollars, and patrimonies to his daughters. One of the Lloyds had a hundred cattle and twenty horses at a time. Men were coming up here from the cities, opening stores, running mills and speculating in land. Blandford sons and daughters were making their mark.
One such was Eli P. Ashmun, son of Justus and Keziah, brought up in the corner tavern. Erecting his little law office in his front yard, teaching law to young men, carrying hundreds of cases up to Jedediah Smith - another remarkable man - Eli P. Ashmun was pleading before the Supreme Court of Massachusetts by 1813, entering the United States Senate a little later. He became father of a still more famous man, George Ashmun, of whom you will hear this evening. Eli's other son, John Hooker Ashmun, graduate of Williams, became Royall Professor of Law in the Dane School of Law in Harvard University, where death overtook him four short years later, to the grief and despair of that institution, which knew not where to look for his equal; a man of superb ability, searching intellect, utterly loyal to truth and an inspiration to youth.
Then there was Patrick Boise, son of Reuben, graduate of Williams in 1808; impulsive and excitable, eloquent, gifted with a high sense of justice, a power with juries and arbitrators, witty and quick at repartee, and immensely popular. A certain prisoner from Tolland, who had been adjudged guilty of murder, a verdict generally esteemed too harsh, refused, however, to plead for commutation of his sentence to life imprisonment. After much urging, he said to his counsel, "Squire Boise, what sort of place is state prison to live in?" Instantly the squire replied, "A great deal better than any place you ever lived in, in Tolland!"
Gen. Alanson Knox succeeded Eli P. Ashmun in ownership and occupancy of the little law office on the street. There he educated a half-dozen law students at a time. He had only the education of the schools of this village, supplemented, however, by wide and studious reading. He became close friend of Daniel Webster, and was a striking figure among the aristocracy of his home town. Ministers, teachers, doctors, in creditable numbers sprang up on Blandford soil in this period, men and women too in unofficial positions establishing homes and businesses all over this wide land.
You may have observed that I have given scant attention to the great War of the Revolution. A couple of years ago, I put out one of the most unpopular books ever written, entitled "The Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolution from Blandford, Mass." It catalogues more than 300 men in that great strife, whither they were sent, and for how long. It will tell you far more than I can here and now.
One day on the eve of the war Samuel Boies Jr. induced Elihu Miller to go to Sloper's store for him, to do some purchasing. Young Boises was a bashful youth of seventeen, and just about that time the banns of marriage between himself and Elizabeth Black of Murrayfield were bawled out in church. Elihu bought for his young friend two and a quarter yards of "Paper Hangings," something just coming into style. That measure was just about enough to cover the chimney front over the fireplace where Samuel and Elizabeth might sit together before the fire holding hands. Elihu further bought for this prospective groom, a pair of "gartors," and one and one-eighth yards of "figgered gauzes." The garters would be a fitting adornment to Samuel's knee breeches; and as for the "figgered gauzes," a good guess would be that they were to be a wedding present to his fiance.
As for Elihu, in that same year, he bought for himself a pair of knee buckles, a pair of stockings at six shillings nine pence, a pair of "Britches," at the extraordinary price of one pound twelve shillings, a pair of silk mitts at six shillings six pence, altogether a parcel of goods befitting a matrimonial occasion both for bride and groom. He settled the whole account by farm produce, mending a chain, and by a set of plow irons, for he seemed to be both farmer and blacksmith. This all happened on the eve of the Revolution, remember. Can't you see these young fellows sharing their love affairs, mutually admiring their hard- earned treasures, to brighten two new homes and lend a distinguished air to two bridal couples?
But hold! The fate of the country has a portentous look. Soon two continents are to be shaken by devastating war. And war takes young men from home. Presently off go the minutemen from the training ground trampled by the feet of Blandford youths. What would these Benedicts do about it? Elihu and Samuel were hanging back when the minutemen went out. The conflict was becoming intense. The whole black prospect of colonial bondage loomed. These young fellows could hardly go to the store or tavern without having to hear what made their ears tingle. At home they would talk it all over with their young spouses. Finally Elihu kissed his wife and marched off to Ticonderoga in the spring of '76. Perhaps his friend Samuel also went, for tradition has it so. Then Sloper himself went, first as lieutenant, then captain, again and again. And so it went until new issues took the place of old ones. We pass again to the time of Mr. Badger.
If I were asked, as I have been asked once and again, what was the origin of Blandford Episcopacy, I should unhesitatingly say, the Rev. Joseph Badger. The proprietors' school house on the common was their place of meeting. The incoming Methodists met there also, for neither of them had weekly meetings. Baptists swept in beside, but their early history is too recondite for our present rehearsal. It should be remembered, however, that they came. Beech Hill was the great stamping ground of the Methodists, but they really swept the whole town. They had outposts at the Shepard place where Pixley had run his famous tavern; in the Dayton and Rowley neighborhood; in the schoolhouse on meeting-house hill; and now and then at the Taggart school, where they received hospitality from the Bartholomews - adherents of the old church, along with hostility, hardly veiled, from Deacon David Boies, near by. Giles Dayton, Gurdon Rowley and King Solomon Hastings all blossomed out into preachers of differing grades, the last named finally going over to some variety of Adventism. Giles Dayton was honored with a layman's encomium that he would make a good preacher because he had already "made a damned good rake." Methodist emotionalism endured some curbing, but they were encouraged to sing in the Congregational prayer meetings, and Pastor Keep was scrupulous about inviting one of that faith who might be present, to offer prayer. Rowley exhibited the forthright courage of the naked truth. He officiated, for example, at the funeral of one Cyrus Cowel. Said he, "We have assembled here, my friends, to pay our last respects to our fellow townsman, Cyrus Cowel. He was not one of the great ones of the earth, a king, or potentate, but just simply Cyrus Cowel. He never did much of any harm, and he did mighty little good." Psychological differences between the old guard and the new were striking. To cite a single example, the old church member was apt not to know that he was saved, he only hoped. The Methodist Episcopal convert knew that he was saved, albeit he must concede that he might "fall from grace." The extreme liberal needed no saving. The circuit riders were desperately poor, but they were eloquent, devoted and outspoken. Aunt Amy Barnes came into meeting late. The preacher paused, and said to her, "Sister, late to church, late to heaven!" And she was, for the pearly gates swung open to her not until she was nearly a century old.
The Episcopalians organized with an imposing number of signers. But a mass raid was made upon them about as soon as they got their charter. Col. James Kilbourne, of Granby, Conn., president of Scioto Company just forming an Ohio Land and Settlement project, secured eight of the very foremost leaders of the local Episcopal church for his enterprise. Of the 37 signers of this stock company, these eight men (with their families, of course), took out almost one-third of the entire stock. They contributed more in men and in stock than any other town, and - except Kilbourne himself - became head and shoulders of the whole concern. One of them, Nathaniel W. Little, a local storekeeper, was Kilbourne's lieutenant, and did the prospecting with him. His report, the whole of which I have read, is of absorbing interest. Russell Atwater (the leading business man in town), subscribed heavily, but sent a substitute, himself leaving town as a large promoter of settlements in New York. It amounted almost to a decapitation of local Episcopacy. They never got over it. Capt. Jonas Johnson (a power in this movement), was left, but he too, soon went elsewhere. Later, Squire Samuel Knox added a thousand dollars to the Episcopal fund, but it failed to save the day.
The movement was primarily liberal, and secondarily Episcopalian. But the Scioto men were Episcopalian to the core. Without any doubt, the local church preferred an Episcopal ministry and organization. But any liberal preacher was acceptable. When the old church society (1st Congregational), about to rebuild, tried hard and long to bring about a coalition, the whole attempt split on this rock:- the Episcopalians refused to confine themselves, for their turn, to any single denomination for a preacher, or even to any two, and they would pledge nothing for the upkeep of the property. They leaned on their inadequate fund for everything, refusing once and again to spend a dollar on their own building until it finally fell to pieces. They tried free will offerings once or twice, then gave it up. Their charter allowed them to assess for church taxes, but they never did it. Perhaps they recalled how a sheriff had once led off John Osborn's last cow to pay for his lapsed pew rent to the old church. Anyway, it looked like sheer discouragement. Their own church building was of the old style Puritan architecture. In their written records they always called their supply their "minister," never "rector," and their minister's house "the parsonage," never "the rectory." The real glory of Blandford Episcopacy was transferred to Worthington, Ohio, which the Scioto families from Blandford did so much to establish:-their Episcopal church, still existing, their Episcopal schools, their charitable institutions, their civic spirit. Their men out there were instantly promoted to church offices, their blood went into Ohio society, their family names survive thereabout to this day, and their town rose in the early years to compete for the location there of the state capital.
It is of interest to learn that when the great Granville colony went out from our neighboring town and its church, they went as an organized Congregational church, gathering an unknown number of people from this town of Blandford, giving the name of the home town to their Ohio settlement, and that it was this same Col. Kilbourne who also started and led that emigration.
Rev. Joseph Badger was one of the foremost of the Ohio pioneers. He cut the first road from Buffalo to the New Connecticut. His real genius needed the larger, newer area for its development. His was a remarkable career out there. He helped mightily in taming the savage Indians, saving them from the curse of drink, helping in bringing about treaties of peace with them, establishing some of the earliest Christian churches, promoting education and the arts of peace, and in so building his abilities and character into the life of the territory that his name is a fragrant memory in Ohio to this day. Even long years before this, a continuous stream of immigration from this town began covering that territory, and later the still greater areas of the West, carrying the genius of New England. To list their number, names and locations would take the time of my whole address. It covered a full half-century, and is a thrilling story. The Whites scattered everywhere, and many another family.
How did they go? In covered wagons, drawn by oxen largely. The journey occupied many weeks. Some walked, as did one young woman, all the way to Ohio, alongside the wagon which conveyed an invalid sister. Some walked back and forth, and that repeatedly. "Did you see that hundred-legged caterpillar?" one such man overheard a bystander ask of his companion.
To those who were left behind, what did it all mean? I will tell you. A quarter of a century ago or more a friend of mine, born and bred in this town, impressively said to me that there was at that time but one inhabited house in his neighborhood, while three other houses were going to ruin to join fifteen open or grass-grown cellar holes of so many homes. Out there in the great beyond, the goers-out established businesses, erected churches, built schools and colleges, sat in state councils, healed the sick, spread the gospel, and still remembered the home land where they had fished, where they had spun and woven, where they had "stubbed off toe nails driving cows to pasture" to quote from a letter-where they had seen visions and dreamed dreams.
Or look across to that domelike elevation known as Tarrot Hill, only woodland now and for generations past. Of old it had been covered with fields of wheat. Roads had carved it into farmsteads where men and women toiled and children played, then by singles and in groups they silently folded their tents and moved out to the setting sun. Their homes went to decay and fell into the cellars. A forest slowly arose over that entire sweep of hill, was felled and grew again, and yet again. The roads returned to nature, the outward traces of them vanishing except to the trained eye of the oldest inhabitant of that region, the late Mr. Gordon Rowley, who passed on recently, nearly a hundred years old. He averred that he alone knew the hidden secrets of the hill, and warned me not to seek them out lest I should get lost. Remembering the second division road, I meekly heeded his solemn warning.
From close by there, at the foot of Birch Hill, the vision glorious came to Cushing Eells, son of one of the poorer farmers and licensed storemen, seemingly an unpromising lad. Bashful, reticent, one day when he saw his minister, Rev. Dorus Clarke, enter his house by the front door, he escaped by the back door and disappeared. A boyhood mate who was going to Williams, dropped a seed into Cushing's soul that to learn, and do, and be, might be noble. Then he decided that he too must go. Meantime Pastor Clarke dropped the seeds of the Kingdom of God in his soul. That boy often covered the sixty miles be tween his home and college hall on foot, cherished and nourished his great ideals, graduated, married, was ordained, and, as you will hear a little later, built himself into the heart of the Pacific coast and of all America, along with Marcus Whitman.
I want to try, before I close, to draw an outline picture of this old Blandford street of about a century ago. The population ranged from 1700 to 1600. This, the “great street" of the fathers, was well lined with fine homes, upstanding barns, numerous taverns, stores, shops and schools. There were two hat shops, several blacksmith shops, a clocksmith, a goldsmith, cardboard shops, and one for window shades. Below Sunset Hill, houses, mills and shops almost crowded each other; a dozen or so of mills, lanes connecting Potash Brook and the street, clattering merrily; saw and grist mills, fulling and clothiers' mills a shingle mill or two, a cordwainer's Dayton's rake factory. Rowley's furniture shop, besides a toll gate.
House yards were fenced to protect gardens and walks from wandering pigs all “ringed and yoked" according to law. Loaded wagons or sleds in season, largely ox-drawn, were hauling goods to market or returning with city bought stuff. Men and women riding horses; two competing lines of stages announcing their approach by tally-ho; groups of villagers and of strangers at post office, store, tavern, chatting, news-mongering, joking. A covered wagon goes lumbering through, packed to capacity, heading for the far country, with shoutings of good bye and good luck, a cloud of dust-then silence. At appropriate times you would see sundry groups gathering: young folks at the parsonage for literary talks; young men going to the lyceum of an evening; law students leaving the law office; men gathering at the stores to smoke and discuss the universe.
Truth to tell, there were other things. Over yonder you might see. probably at dusk, an excited crowd gathering, and it had an ugly look. It was a fight, and men were getting hurt, and women hysterical. Who were they? Well, as likely as not, the leader was one of the town doctors of the upper part of the street, who according to court records was a chief brawler. In a day or two you might see attorney, sheriff, witnesses and others, the lawyers with well- stuffed saddlebags, starting out for Beech Hill, to Judge Jedediah Smith's. Who was he? An old Revolutionary soldier, self- made as the phrase goes, farmer, barterer quid nunc, man of resource, and judge. A characteristic notation in his ledger has this note concerning James Lloyd: "Detained me at home to Do business and did not Come, & agreed to give me fifty cents". His voluminous court records, both civil and criminal, lay open to this day the sorry story of debt, poverty, violence, crime of every variety, the shady side of country life; drunken brawls, assaults, threats, passions let loose and all their sequels. I myself copied a series of civil suits covering just about a twelve-month period in the years 1810-1811: 76 civil suits, all but two or three involving Blandford citizens. The majority look like spite-suits to recover a dollar or two, seldom much more, the court charges usually much greater than the amount in the suit. One turns from it all sick at heart, just in time to see another covered wagon starting for Ohio, containing a whole family fleeing Blandford for no other reason than just these things-to save the boys. This also is of record.
If you were on the street on the training day, you would see and hear unusual sights and sounds: gaiety, hilarity, the whole town out, and by evening men reeling about the street, soldiers and officers beastly drunk. Pastor Keep was chaplain. On Sunday, to use his own phraseology, he gave them a terrific cannonading on intemperance. The house was crowded, and the chief officers were generous enough to commend the chaplain's courage and fidelity. On another and similar occasion, Col. Lloyd, of this town, called his lieutenant to his side, pointed to the scene of drunkenness, whereupon the two officers solemnly pledged each other that they would forever cease from the use of intoxicating drink. They were the only officers in the regiment who did not die drunkards. I have these statements in a personal letter from the late Rev. Dr. Wm. A. Lloyd, of Chicago.
In the town at large, the country dances were centers of demoralization. Pastor Keep strove mightily to break them up, and with large success. Were you there, you might have seen of a certain evening a scattering procession proceeding down Tannery Hill to the Bunnell's mills neighborhood to make merry. Presently the drinks were passed, of course. Then they wanted to dance, but they had no fiddle. So they dispatched young Nathaniel across lots over South Street way, to borrow Granger's fiddle. It was quite a trip, and lonely. Going over, young Nat got along all right. But returning, recalling the minister's counsel, he began to be a bit nervous. Conscience and imagination set up a gruesome drama within him, when he came to the frog pond. Passing it, he heard one of the peepers call out, "Who goes there? Who goes there?" Startled by this gossipy intrusion, he was the more shocked to hear another peeper answer, "Nathaniel Bunnell! Nathaniel Bunnell!" By this time the whole pool was on the qui vive, and a third shrill voice asked, "What's he got? What's he got?" And the answer was shot out, "Granger's fiddle! Granger's fiddle!" Frozen to a standstill by this time, there came to Nathaniel's ears in basso profundo an old croaker's verdict, "The devil have him! The devil have him!" Whereupon Nathaniel dropped the fiddle and put for home on the run. It was a good sign. The leaven was working.
Working indeed it was. The Methodist classes and circuit riders vigorously entered into the campaign, the country wide Washingtonian movement was gripping the whole land, and a local temperance society swept the town. Hundreds joined it, working zealously, even converting some of the licensed dealers, who voluntarily gave up their licenses. The women of course were a power. I had it from the lips of an old lady of my own time here, whose husband had driven a stage coach and four. She remembered back into the thirties of the last century, and told me that when her husband came home drunk, as he sometimes did, she would steal into his bedroom, snatch his nether garment, and throw it out the window. Ashamed to go out after it the next morning, a soberer man was procured to hold the lines that day.
The effective power in all this was the church of God. Conscience and good sense got on top, and the town was redeemed. Imperfect as the church is and always must be, it is here pertinent to ask, "What is the church for? To level down the living of mankind, or to level it up?" Spite of all mistakes, the church of Blandford did level up, and mightily so. It might sometimes make religion too hard. On occasion it made it too easy. Again, it let loose rather wild emotions; or it was too little careful about stirring up sectarian strife. But it vitally helped to make bad men good and good men better.
In the early nineteenth century, men of character and brains, Christian men, entered the town and mightily helped to greaten its power. Amos Collins came from Connecticut and introduced a new feature in dairying. He imported new stock, taught the farmer's families to make cheese-opened new vistas of thrift and self respect, became an ardent churchman withal, and staunch colleague of Pastor Keep, an upbuilder of home life, initiator of a new financial and social era here, finally removing to Hart- ford, where he is remembered with honor to this day. Following him came Orrin Sage, from Middletown. He continued the promotion of the already thriving cheese business, became storekeeper, and most genial landlord, and was immensely successful and popular. He richly endowed the old church and Williams College, whither so many of Blandford's sons were going. A man of modest and winning manners, unpretending, keenly intelligent, he was free from bitterness and guile, and constant in friendship. He was senator. postmaster, representative, Angel of mercy, at last he left Blandford hill, to bless another community.
When the railroads were born, this town with wide-open eyes tried its best to have them climb Blandford hill, but in vain. Yet even so, it lived on.
Always our story is of creation, or what is close to it, transformation. It began with a wilderness. By and by the wilderness blossomed as the rose. It did not do so of itself. Whether here or there, then or now, to cause such blossoming is to do well. And other transformations wait for accomplishment.
"Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll.
Leave thy low-vaulted past.
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea."
