Chapter IX: Part II: The Bi-Centennial Exercises (3)

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

“A burning desire to deliver a living message is one landmark in the evangelism of the fathers of our church. The age of our town is nearly four times as great as the years of Methodism’s church edifice in our village; more than twice the years of Methodism in the present confines of our town; one hundred twenty-seven years greater than Methodism in the State; thirty-seven years greater than Methodism’s first Conference. Indeed, John Wesley, its founder, was but four years old, in June of the year, when John Noble, New Milford’s first settler, penetrated these forests primeval. Our fathers came not as a colony, but as evangelists, impelled by a vital experience. They believed that sin separated from God, that only by salvation, through the atonement of the Redeemer, could sinners be in harmony with the Father, that personal righteousness and the witness of God’s indwelling Spirit were results of redemption, and that the redeemed were to go on unto the likeness of Jesus. Without ignoring other elements in their belief, the stress laid upon personal experience and its intensity led them far and wide. That they did not thrust an alien graft upon New England religious stock is seen in one instance, at least, by the demands of Jonathan Edwards for personal righteousness, and for conversion as a requirement for all seeking the communion of the Lord’s Supper; and the sad rejection from his pulpit. Infidelity, imported with the teaching of the French revolutionists, was alarmingly on the increase. The custom of discussing metaphysical subjects and of weaving fine-spun doctrines was spreading more or less throughout Christendom; to so large an extent had London been infected, that Blackstone, the famous law commentator, in visiting every church of note in that city, said he did not hear one sermon that had more of Christianity than had the writings of Cicero, and that they could not have been called Christian sermons. The revival-stirring sermons of Wesley and Whitefield were permeating through and upward from the masses of the people. And the reception given to this message, so ardently delivered, assures conclusively the need that had been unsatisfied. So, then, the fathers of our Church entered this field with the ringing word of God in their hearts as their warrant.

“Faithful sowing and careful husbanding of the harvest constituted another landmark. When, in 1789, Jesse Lee was appointed to Stamford, he had neither preaching place nor congregation as a rallying point; not even a member in all New England to greet him. He entered with a ‘roving commission.’ True enough, Methodism had been presented by some of the most prominent evangelical preachers since the visit of Charles Wesley, nearly sixty years prior to Lee, and including Whitefield, Boardman, and Garretson, within a short time of the more concentrated mission in 1789. Lee’s fine appearance, his massive frame, his weight being about three hundred pounds, his wit and good humor, his wisdom and judgment of human nature, his knowledge of the Bible, and his depth of consecration gave him an entry. The labors of Lee extended, during his first year, from Norwalk along the Sound coast, and upward to Ridgefield and Danbury. These pioneers approached our town from the south, reaching the part now separated into the town of Bridgewater, about 1800; they came from the Hudson River in the north to Gaylordsville in 1813, and to Northville in 1816; from the southwest to Lanesville, then called Pleasant Valley, in 1815. These activities from all directions soon resulted in the erection of church buildings at all of these points. The care of the preachers was constant to train the converts enlisted. They visited and revisited, at heavy privations and difficulties, to make sure of the standing of even one or two new members.

“The essential coworking of the laymen is another landmark. Methodism, from its inception, would have been incomplete without the largest degree of co-operation on the part of the laity. It has been a layman’s movement, under the direction of ordained leaders. As soon as two or more were converted at a place, one of the number was delegated as leader for the others, thus forming classes for religious culture. Awaiting the visits of the preacher in charge, these classes were hives of industry, and seminaries of learning, and communions for worship in charge of one of their own number, the class leader. Those more qualified by nature and grace were called for special activity as local preachers, and they went from place to place, preaching to other congregations, alternating with the ordained preachers and under their direction. These meetings were in homes, at times the choicest in the center of the town, or at others, far in the fastness of the forest within the rude log cabin, or at others, in God’s open temple with the swaying branches of the trees as their rafters. The time of worship might be at any hour from sunrise until midnight, and on any day during the week. The congregation was called from the home, the shop, the store, and the field, not by the chime of the church bell, but by the volume of hearty singing; the numbers might be confined to one beside the preacher, or mount upwards to more than twenty thousand. The immediate results of these preaching visits were to be cultivated by the resident laymen. And nobly did they keep the faith. Exhortation, rebuke, counsel, encouragement, forbearance, and brotherly love must come by means of fellow laymen, in many cases but little older in the faith than the new recruits.

“Zeal in building up the local church was another landmark. Within a few years after the introduction of Methodism, church buildings were erected at Gaylordsville, at a cost of eight hundred dollars; at Northville, on ground of Harvey Benson, at a cost of six hundred dollars, beside labor and material contributed; and at Lanesville, at a cost of three thousand dollars. This indicates considerable sacrifice on the part of the members, and interest in the community. In 1849, after considerable discussion, the members of the different churches, so close in location, agreed upon the village as a central point, and our present edifice was built. Since 1833, when its name had first appeared in the conference minutes, it has been known as the New Milford charge. Before that it had been part of the Stratford circuit, which, in 1822, when our town first had a permanent preaching place on the circuit, had only three church edifices; while to-day this range contains church property, including parsonages, worth nearly a million dollars, has several thousand members, and gives for benevolent purposes, outside its own borders, more money every year by far than the total amount contributed for all causes at that time.

“Within a few years of the building of the present edifice a parsonage was erected. Every year additional money was laid out on the property; principally in 1869 in the pastorate of the Rev. W. R. Webster, and in 1891, when the church was remodeled and enlarged, at a cost of several thousand dollars, in the pastorate of the Rev. R. T. Cooper.... In the long line of preachers, whose counsel and administration have cheered and molded many lives, was the Rev. William T. Gilbert, one of a great class graduated from Yale University, who, with earnest manner and finely wrought sermon, built deeply and broad; and, after laying aside his pastoral duties, he re-entered the ranks, working faithfully along different ways in the activities of the laymen. The Rev. George Lansing Taylor, D. D., L. H. D., ended a life of great intellectual power and moral grandeur, while your pastor. For breadth in learning, strength of thought, independence for truth, tenacity to purpose, and conscientious following after his Master, he was notable. His pastorate will long be memorable in the history of this church, and be felt in the lives of its members, among the younger especially, as they were marked by his striking personality.”

BY REV. ORVILLE VAN KEUREN

IN THE GAYLORDSVILLE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH

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

“Rev. Cyrus Silliman, of the New York Conference, came to visit a cousin, Mrs. David Sterling, who lived one and a half miles below the village, in the town of Sherman. While there, he made an appointment for a week-evening service at the Strait district schoolhouse. The attendance was so large and the interest so marked that he continued the meetings four evenings, and then returned to his charge in the State of New York.

“The people, however, continued the meetings for several weeks, holding them in private houses. Rev. Andrew Elliot, the pastor of the Congregational Church at New Milford, learning of the revival, came up several times and visited the families.

“The following year, as a result of these meetings, twenty-six persons joined the Congregational Church, nineteen formed a Methodist class at Gaylordsville, and others joined the Baptist Church. A subscription was started to build a union church at Gaylordsville, which was built in 1826. Rev. Aaron Hunt, a Methodist preacher from the State of New York, preached the first sermon in the new church, which was used jointly by the Methodists, Congregationalists, and Baptists up to about 1854. This church stood on the east side of the river, just back of the store now occupied by A. H. Barlow. It was afterward sold to Peter Gaylord, who removed it to his premises and converted it into a barn. At a quarterly meeting, held in that church, Rev. Edmund Storer Janes, D. D., LL. D., afterward a bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, received his license as a local preacher.

“In 1854, under the pastorate of Rev. David Nash, the present church edifice was erected, upon a site given by the Rev. John Henry Gaylord, who also raised by subscription about $2800 toward the cost of the new church. The parsonage, which adjoins the church, was purchased in 1884, during the pastorate of Rev. M. M. Curtis.

“In 1827 Rev. Josiah L. Dickerson settled here, built a house, and engaged in making brick. As a local preacher, he filled some of the appointments on the circuit up to about 1834, when he joined the New York Conference, and continued in the regular work of the ministry until retired by reason of age. He died in 1862, and is buried in the Gaylordsville cemetery.

“Methodism was introduced into Sherman Center, under the pastorate of Rev. Alonzo Selleck, in 1838, under the following circumstances:

“A few years before the Congregational Church of Sherman became divided over the building of a new house of worship, or, rather, the location of the building. A majority of the society decided it should be built about a mile north of the Center, where the present church stands. A minority, living at the Center and in the southern part of the town, built a church at the Center, and called it a union church. Rev. Selleck was preacher in charge of New Milford circuit, which, at that time, included the following appointments: Pleasant Plains, Iron Works, Newtown, Merryall, Hawleyville, Northville, Kent Mountain, Gaylordsville, Bull’s Bridge, and Long Mountain. There were but three churches on the circuit. The other preaching places were schoolhouses or private dwellings.

“Following a revival service held at the Leach Hollow schoolhouse in the fall of 1837, the Center people invited Rev. Selleck to come up and preach in the new church, which was not entirely furnished at that time. The first service was held on New Year’s Eve, as a watch night service. The church was filled to overflowing, and, at that service, seventy-five persons came forward as seekers of religion. The meetings were continued several weeks, Rev. H. Ames, a retired preacher residing in the town, assisting much in the work. About two hundred fifty persons professed religion during this revival. Of that number, seventy joined the Methodist Church, while many joined the Congregational Church, of which Rev. Mr. Gilson was then pastor.

“A few years later Sherman was made the center of a circuit, separate from New Milford, taking in the appointments in the northern part of the town. From 1826 to 1848 this circuit was connected with the New York Conference. At the session of the General Conference in 1872 it was again transferred to the New York Conference, where it still remains. When the transfer was made in 1872, the records for the charge showed a membership of seventy-three, the Sherman Society having at that time but thirteen members.

“The church has had a long list of pastors, who served in the following order: Revs. John Reynolds, William Jewett, Fitch Reed, Samuel Cochran, Seth W. Scofield, A. S. Hill, Francis Donelly, the exact dates of whose pastorates we cannot give; 1837, Alonzo Selleck and Asahel Brownson; 1838, Alonzo Selleck and Samuel Weeks; 1844-5, Gad S. Gilbert; 1846-7, Elias Gilbert; 1848-9, Justus O. Worth; 1850, Thomas B. Treadwell; 1851, William Wake; 1852, Alexander McAllester; 1853, Gilbert Hubbell; 1854-5, David Nash; 1856-7, William H. Stebbins; 1858-9, Thomas D. Littlewood; 1860-2, John H. Gaylord; 1863, William Ross; 1864, John Henry Gaylord (during his pastorate the church sheds were built); 1865-6, Benjamin A. Gilman; 1867-8, F. W. Lockwood; 1869-70, Sherman D. Barnes; 1871, Frank F. Jordan; 1872-3, B. M. Genung; 1874-5, Uriah Symonds; 1876, W. A. Dalton; 1877-9, R. F. Elsden; 1880-1, Robert Kay; 1882-4, M. M. Curtis (during his pastorate twenty-six joined the church, two of whom entered the ministry--Rev. Henry Hoag, a member of the Conference, and Mark B. Howland, a local preacher); 1885, Gustave Lass; 1886-7, E. H. Powell; 1888-92, W. H. Peters (under whose pastorate the church was thoroughly repaired and refurnished); 1893-4, I. H. Keep; 1895-7, John Henry Lane; 1899, C. B. Conro; 1900-1, E. H. Roys; 1902, Robert F. Elsden; 1903-6, Edmund T. Byles; 1907, O. Van Keuren, the present pastor.

“In 1898 the charge was left to be supplied. The Rev. M. M. Curtis, then superannuated, filled the pulpit for a few weeks. When, by reason of failing health, he was obliged to discontinue the work, the Rev. James A. Hurn, who has since united with the Conference, supplied for the rest of the year.

“During the pastorate of E. T. Byles the church property was greatly improved by the addition of well-appointed church parlors, equipped with all modern conveniences, the entire expense being provided for before the work was begun.

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

“Others have labored, and we have entered into their labors, while they, in continuous procession, have passed on to receive the reward of the faithful.

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

BY REV. ELISHA J. ELLIS, OF DANBURY

IN THE ADVENT CHRISTIAN CHURCH

“Early in the history of the movement which resulted in the formation of the Advent Christian denomination, the seed of the doctrines which distinguished this people were sown here by pioneer hands. So far as ascertained, the first preachers to arrive on the field were Elders Ira Morgan and Samuel G. Mathewson, about 1844. Quite a number of conversions followed, and Elder Mathewson baptized quite a number in the stream which flows near the present church site. Rufus Way, Horace Gregory, and Richard Heacock were converts about this time--also A. S. Calkins, who afterwards became a talented preacher in the West.

“Joshua V. Hines preached here in 1846 or 1847. Afterwards, in the sixties and seventies, representative men like

Miles Grant, Horace L. Hastings, I. B. Potter, Peter and Samuel Patro labored here; also H. K. and A. D. Flagg.

“Under the labors of Rev. A. D. Flagg, in 1870, the pastor of this church, at the age of eighteen, found Christ in personal salvation, and, with his grandfather, was immersed in Still River near Lanesville. Over thirty-five years ago, Stephen Heacock first commenced to publicly work for the Master, and for years conducted a mission in the Town Hall building.

“Between eleven and twelve years ago the speaker had the pleasure of introducing him to the Advent Christian Connecticut Conference, and on November 11th, 1897, in the Town Hall, Stephen Heacock was publicly ordained to the gospel ministry, by the speaker and his associates of the Ministerial Board of the Conference. While others have labored hard toward the spread of the Adventual faith in this section, I think, all present--yea, the entire community--will agree that largely to the self-sacrificing, heroic efforts of this man, and his wife, the success of our cause is due in this section....

“Not fulsome eulogy, but well-deserved words of praise, have I spoken here, because, from personal observation and connection, I have closely followed, and have been somewhat conversant with its history. On February 20, 1900, while President of the State Conference, I was summoned here to set this church apart in gospel order. On March 6, 1900 (in the hall on Bank Street), the church organization was duly incorporated, and, on August 6, 1901, we were present, with other clergymen, at the laying of the cornerstone. On November 14, 1901, the church was formally dedicated to the worship of God and the work of soul-winning, Rev. Henry Stone, of Wallingford, preaching the dedication sermon....

“It will, doubtless, be interesting to present a few statistics furnished us by the pastor in charge: The Advent Christian Church of New Milford was organized February 20, 1900, with thirty-two charter members. Forty members have been received since organization to date. Four deaths and two withdrawals leave the present membership sixty-six persons. The pastor, since his ordination, has celebrated nine marriages, officiated at thirty-six funerals, and baptized forty-eight persons. The total number of baptisms in this faith by various clergymen in this vicinity would aggregate one hundred fifty. Elder Heacock has preached in seventy-five different places during his ministry here, and has spoken, by invitation, in Baptist, Methodist, Congregational, and in union churches, in this vicinity. As a result of this outside work, fifty or more conversions have resulted; and, during the years in which he labored in the Gospel temperance work, prior to the establishment of the Advent Christian Mission, many people were induced to abandon the drink habit, and stand for God and the right. Only eternity will rightfully exhibit the definite results of this work in and about this village.

“Before we close the historical part of this discourse, let me call your attention to a highly interesting feature of this edifice--the church bell.

“Not only the church people, who worship here, but all the citizens of New Milford must be specially interested in the bell, which swings in this church tower, and whose presentation to this church is designed to perpetuate some facts of general interest.... Partridge Thatcher, of New Milford, was moderator of an assembly of landed proprietors, who, with himself, had been granted lands in the wilderness of Vermont. These proprietors held their first meeting in this town on May 10, 1770, at the home of Colonel Samuel Canfield, and Thatcher, acting for these men, made the first survey of Waterbury, Vt., in 1782. A lineal descendant of Samuel Canfield--in the person of Lawrence Northrop--belongs to the present membership of this church. Waterbury, Vt., stands on the banks of the Winooski River, and, on a branch of that river, named (after the original surveyor) ‘Thatcher’s Branch,’ stands the Advent Christian Church of Waterbury. In this town of Waterbury, lives an Indian gentleman, Agamenticus, or Joshua Merimam by name.... The blood of the aboriginal inhabitants--the North American Indians--flows in the veins of this beloved pastor and his wife (the former descended from the tribe of the Narragansetts, and the wife, from the warlike clan of the Pequots), and also in the veins of many of the church members who worship here. These facts came in some way to the knowledge of this Mr. Merimam, and he, in connection and with the aid of the town clerks of Waterbury, Duxbury, Middlesex, and Moretown, Vt. (adjacent communities on the banks of the Winooski River), and a Mr. Shonio, conceived the idea of presenting this church in New Milford a bell, which should not only keep green in memory the fact I have already stated, but also the memory of a historic and tragic incident of the old French and Indian War ... times, which I will now narrate.

“Over two hundred years ago, the French Catholics of Montreal erected a church for their Indian converts, and imported a bell from France, which they hung in this church tower. Soon after this, the English Colonists raided Montreal, plundered the church, seized the bell, and carried it, with many French and Indian prisoners, down the St. Lawrence River, thence _via_ the ocean to the mouth of the Connecticut River to Deerfield, Mass., where the Indians were sold into slavery, and the bell hung in Rev. John Williams’ local church. At a point of the Winooski Valley, where are now located the four towns I have just mentioned, there was a neutral council-ground, called the Moheagans, where the Indians of the New Milford section, the Indians of Massachusetts, and the Northern tribes met annually to discuss matters of mutual interest. At one of these gatherings, the Northern Indians learned the fate of their comrades, and laid plans for a rescue. Early in 1704 three hundred Indians and a few Frenchmen, under the noted French priest, Hextel de Rouville, as leader, made a raid on Deerfield--going and coming through Waterbury, Vt. Those familiar with early Colonial history will recall what followed: the burning of Deerfield, Mass., the massacre of many of the whites, the rescue of the old bell and of the Indian captives, and the capture of more than a hundred prisoners of war. On the return march, at the junction of the Winooski River with Lake Champlain, they hid the bell till a more favorable moment. Returning in May, with one black ox, driven by a negro, one white ox, driven by a white man, and one red ox, driven by an Indian, the drivers and oxen garlanded with festoons of wild flowers, they carried the bell home to Montreal with great rejoicing, where yet it swings, so far as we know, in the same old tower as of yore. In memory of this incident, and of the friendship of the New Milford Indians, to their Northern brethren in the old Colonial days, Agamenticus of Waterbury, Vt., with his friends, the white town fathers of the old Vermont towns surveyed by the New Milford Thatcher, gave this bell to the Advent Christian church of New Milford, Conn., and christened it ‘_Sansaman_’ in honor of the first Indian Christian Missionary of New England, killed by King Philip of the Wampanoags in 1675....”

BY REV. JOSEPH RYAN

IN ST. FRANCIS XAVIER’S CHURCH

“To-day, my dear friends, the celebration of an important and certainly noteworthy event is taking place in this town of New Milford. With pageantry and music and speech, in gayety and festivity, with reunions of old friends and neighbors, the historic happening is receiving ample recognition and celebration. And they do well, the people of New Milford, proud of their town and its history, to recognize on such a splendid scale its two hundredth birthday. With all their ceremonies of civic and social celebration, the religious side of their town’s history has been given equal attention. Almighty God has not been forgotten--He who is the Creator and Supreme Ruler of the Universe, from whom comes all that we are and all that we have, who holds in the palm of His hand the destiny of the world and the fate of its people.

“To-day, in her different houses of worship, special religious exercises appropriate to the occasion are being held. This morning, in particular, sermons are preached of the history of her different churches.

“I need not tell you the history of your church; you all know it. It is the common history of the Roman Catholic Church the world over. It cannot well or easily be separated from that magnificent general history stretching back through the ages nineteen hundred seven years to that ever memorable first Christmas morn when Jesus Christ, the Son of God, taking flesh of the Virgin Mary, was born in Bethlehem’s stable. And, in that wonderful stretch of history, two hundred years are as a drop in the bucket, as a sand on the seashore. From the days when the Holy Sacrifice of the mass was first offered up in the home of Matthew Dunn near the railroad station, or in Wright’s Hall on Main Street, or in the residence of Edmond Finn, to this very day, Roman Catholic history in New Milford has been the same as it has been the world over--a history of early trials and sufferings and labor, all of which have gradually and surely melted away before the grand old faith of the ages. The loyal Catholics first in New Milford, though their future looked dark and stormy, clung to the faith richly planted in their noble hearts, and put their trust in the words of Him who first established their Church upon this earth, ‘Thou art Peter and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.’ And they did well to put their trust in Him who had also promised, ‘Behold I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world.’ In the language of St. Paul, those pioneers of the Roman Catholic Church in New Milford have fought the good fight, they have saved the faith, and they have gone to receive from their Divine Master the crown of eternal glory....

“They knew well the truth of their Holy Religion, yes, and its value. No mess of pottage, however alluring, be it greater position in society, or greater financial considerations, could tempt them to part with their Divinely given birthright of Catholic faith. They were in Peter’s boat and well they knew it, and, better still, they showed it by their lives of rugged righteousness.

“The fair name and fame of the Divinely built ship that has ridden over the waves and through the storms of nineteen centuries was safe in their keeping, for not only did they love their religion, but they also lived it. You, their descendants and successors, to-day, I would say to you, in the words of your Divine Master, ‘Go you and do likewise.’”

THE UNION MEETING

At three o’clock in the afternoon, a union open-air service of all the churches in the town was held upon “The Green.” Three thousand people, it is estimated, were present. A chorus of one hundred voices, conducted by Prof. Clemence and accompanied by the band, rendered the “Gloria in Excelsis” and “The Heavens Are Telling” in a highly effective manner, and led the audience in a number of familiar hymns. Rev. F. A. Johnson of the First Congregational Church presided. Rev. J. F. Plumb of St. John’s Church, Rev. S. D. Woods of the Baptist Church, and Rev. H. K. Smith of the Methodist Church offered prayer, and Rev. Stephen Heacock of the Advent Christian Church read the Scripture. The addresses were by Rev. Frederick A. Wright, D. D., of New York City, a former New Milford boy, and by Rev. Charles J. Ryder, D. D., of New York City, Corresponding Secretary of the American Missionary Association, who, although not himself a native of New Milford, is connected with a family formerly prominent in the affairs of the town.

Dr. Wright said:

“It is a pleasure to me to address you, both because I count it an honor to speak to this audience, and because I feel it a privilege to speak on this occasion, and in this place. My ancestors, both on my mother’s side and on my father’s, have been identified with this town for six generations, so that I feel a sort of intimate kinship with the very fields and mountains; and this soil is in a double sense my ‘mother earth.’ And, just as Antæus, the child of earth, gained tenfold strength every time he stretched his length upon the grass, so, wearied with the rush and crowding of the city, and the sorrows of its poor,

Rev. Frank B. Draper
Professor of Mathematics
and Chaplain, Ingleside
School

Rev. Marmaduke Hare
Rector All Saints Memorial
Church

Rev. Father John J. Burke
Curate of Roman Catholic
Church

Rev. Timothy J. Lee
Former Pastor of First
Congregational Church

Rev. Frank A. Johnson
Pastor of First Congregational
Church and the
Chairman of Religious
Committee of the Bi-Centennial

Rev. Solomon D. Woods
Pastor Baptist Church
Northville Society

Rev. Harris K. Smith
Pastor of the Methodist
Episcopal Church

Rev. John F. Plumb
Arch Deacon and Rector
of St. John’s Episcopal
Church

Rev. Stephen Heacock
Pastor of Advent Christian
Church
]

and the ‘weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin,’ I come here and find refreshment and repose. The large city has certain great attractions, and, in some respects, life in it is far broader and greater than it can be elsewhere. That is the reason I went to New York. But the town, and the _small city_, have other advantages, and it is by those that my love of this place is kindled. And so, on this birthday of New Milford, I want to speak of those qualities which I prize so highly in this place.

“And, first on the list, comes personal freedom. Thackeray said that England had fifty million people in it, mostly fools. Well, when you have an enormously big city, there are so many fools gathered together there, that it is not feasible and practicable for the sensible people to be free. You must not carry a pistol, because there are so many ‘gumps’ that cannot be trusted with firearms. You cannot let people walk on the grass, or they will destroy the foliage. It is all paternalism. The law is taking care of you. You cannot let people take their children into the park on a sled. They might get hurt. A cordon of police guard the ice on the part of the lake that is not safe. If they did not, some idiot would skate into the water. Now, I resent being protected from myself. I feel like Ben. Franklin, ‘Where freedom is, there is my country.’

“Another good treasure you have is simplicity. Life here is less complex. There are so many things in city life that demand attention that our energies get scattered, and our attention diverted, and our ways conventional and artificial. It is hard to express just what I mean; but life up here is less confused and more elemental and natural and real. That is a good thing. Then, you have the sunshine and the air and the open fields. You have what people who come up here from the Bowery call ‘_loneliness_.’ It is aloofness. One can withdraw here, can get away, can get out of sight, can hear that still small voice which speaks only through the peace of nature--can ‘flee as a bird to the mountains.’ One idea of holiness is that which is set apart. Your landscape has a holiness which is not shared by shaven lawns punctuated by statuary. Our national emblem is the eagle, and there is an eagle spirit in the American people which likes the cliffs and the forests better than the boulevards and the parks.

“Then, there are not so many of you but that you can know each other and be interested in each other and help each other. The so-called philanthropy, which is more interested in institutions than it is in individuals, is a bad thing. What this world, with its suffering and sin and error, needs, is not more brown-stone laboratories and patent book-shelves and institutes for the uplift of the masses and the glorification of the millionaire rascals that endowed them; what the world needs is men that are interested in the individuals that surround them. I have not twenty-five thousand dollars to give away; but, if I had, I would pick out a worthy family that needed it and give it to them. I would endow a trades_man_ and not a trade _school_. Now, conditions here are good, because of the human interest you take in each other. If there were five hundred thousand of you, such personal interest would be impossible. Try to take a _personal_ interest in one hundred thousand people. You cannot do it. The personal relations of employer and employed, of neighbors and friends, in a village are a priceless blessing.

“All these things are characteristics of this place.

“Besides this, it has its own history, its beautiful street, its scenery so exceptionally sweet and lovely--it is for these things that we celebrate its birthday.”

Dr. Ryder’s address was entitled “THE VILLAGE AND THE NATION.” He spoke as follows:

“In this picturesque, beautiful and impressive Celebration, the Bi-Centennial of the settlement of this region, thought is naturally turned to the village of New Milford and the community life gradually developed here. There were certain fundamental characteristics of this village life which you, who were a part of it in later days, appreciate much better than your speaker. And yet even a superficial knowledge of what was here begun and has been gradually developed impresses these fundamental characteristics.

“This was a simple and natural life. The speaker preceding me has developed eloquently this fact. Artificiality had not yet crept into the social conditions of this life. The value of a man was not estimated by his heredity nor his wealth. It was a pure, clean democracy where every man was a man in privilege and opportunity ‘for a’ that, and a’ that.’

“But another element of this village life was also evident from the first. This was the articulation of the community. Everyone knew every other one within the confines of the settlement, although stretching along the edges of the beautiful rivers, down the valleys and plains, and up the slope of the stately old mountains. When Mary Jones’ husband died and left her with a brood of little children, every man and woman in the community knew it, and most of them called upon Mary Jones with their burden of food or clothing or wood-shed supplies. It was the articulation of one life into another life, and of each life into the whole, that made the village of New Milford and every village in New England so strong and safe and efficient.

“But, little by little, these villagers in New Milford and other communities round about felt the need of the articulation of community interest into a larger whole. And so the community of associated responsibility and help took in Waterbury, Norwalk, Bridgeport, Hartford, and New Haven and other villages and towns scattered over this general region. This articulated the separate communities into a larger whole and the commonwealth was created. It was not a formal government so much as a community of interest and sympathy and love and organized efficiency. These several communities became a commonwealth for protection and development. Self-control was the basis of governmental control. The village was strong and vigorous in so far as the individual man and woman were strong and vigorous. The commonwealth developed these qualities of influence and strength only as the village developed them. And so this simple, this articulate life of the village became the life of the commonwealth.

“Then a new condition arose. King George came across the water, established his forts, anchored his fleet in the harbor of another community that began as a village in the neighboring colony of Massachusetts. There was need of protection and safeguard in a larger way than the group of communities or villages furnished. So there came the articulation of the commonwealth with that of other commonwealths, and the united colonial power came into being. This afterwards became, as we all know so well, the United States.

“So, in constructive analysis, beginning with the unit of governmental power and influence, we find the village. No fairer or better or cleaner or more dignified than this village of New Milford existed in all the group of villages amid all the clustered commonwealths. A son of some Pilgrims from New Milford, who drifted into northern Ohio, who is your speaker at this moment, rejoices with you who have dwelt here in the East, in this magnificent and imposing Celebration of the founding of New Milford.

“But a larger view than this must be taken if we would estimate the importance and meaning of this village Celebration. The articulation of interests in the life of our nation as it exists to-day is much more difficult than it was when these villages grew by natural processes into the early national life. Multitudinous and heterogeneous masses are mingled in our body politic to-day, coming from nations that know nothing about the traditions of Puritan, or Pilgrim, or Dutch, or Cavalier. In many of these nations from which these peoples come and mingle in our life, the only thought of government is that of power, of police force, or suppression. Danger threatens us as we attempt to assimilate into our own national life these heterogeneous masses. It is not that they are bad, but that they come to us with no such conceptions of the simplicity and articulation of life and government as our fathers possessed who established the villages of New England. Our responsibility is to spread everywhere the great principles that lay at the foundations of village life in early New England. It is not from northern Europe that immigrants come who are a menace to these institutions that have made the United States what they are to-day. The real problem is the assimilation of unassociated races who are making a large portion of our body politic. Twenty million of the eighty million who are citizens of the United States are of the brown-skinned, undeveloped races. They represent fundamentally different ideals from those that made New England and the southern colonial States the power they were. It is for us in this generation to stimulate in these brown-skinned people the higher conceptions and loftier ideals represented in these villages that furnished the unit of development in the early years of the nation. There are two United States to-day, and we cannot neglect either of them with safety. There is Continental United States, the familiar old stretch of territory from ocean to ocean and from gulf to northern Alaska. This furnishes problems enough for the children of the Pilgrims to meet and solve. But another United States has been added in these later years, and that is Insular United States. They were brought to us through the arbitrament of war. We did not seek them; we perhaps are the poorer for their possession. But the great problem that God in His providence has put upon us to-day is the elevation and redemption of the masses of these island peoples. They have no village traditions or life to look back to. They have no intelligent conception of freedom. Morality is almost an unknown quality as we use the term. One great problem before Americans to-day, therefore, is the Americanizing and Christianizing of these masses that have become a part of our body politic, and whose future will largely determine the future of our entire nation.

“The village ideal, the simple, natural life that the smaller communities illustrated, the articulation of interests into one common and homogeneous whole, is what is demanded to-day, and what we must struggle for and achieve if the nation remains in its integrity and strength and dignity.

“When we analyze back to the village, we only go a part of the way. The unit after all was the home. One home articulated with other homes was the final analysis of strength and safety. It is the home, and not the church or the school, that holds men and women to that which is best and noblest. It was the home in the villages of New England, it was the home in New Milford, that determined its value and contributed to its beauty of community life. We have got to create in these masses that are coming among us the desire for the best, purest, noblest Christian home, or our entire civilization is in danger. If this Bi-Centennial of New Milford shall stir the hearts of the descendants of the brave men and women who established this village with a great passionate desire and an overmastering determination to perpetuate these great ideals and visions which the fathers held and nourished in their homes and united in their community life, then this Bi-Centennial were indeed an occasion of deepest rejoicing and abiding value.”

SUNDAY EVENING

At five o’clock a service was held in All Saints’ Memorial Church (St. John’s Congregation uniting), which was attended by pastors of the churches of several denominations--another illustration of that fine Christian fellowship prevailing in New Milford which the Union Meeting on “The Green” had signally exemplified. The rector, Rev. Marmaduke Hare, preached an eloquent and profound sermon, in which he claimed that the master-force in the growth of mankind in all the higher qualities has been the truth and hope of the Gospel, and protested against imputing to nature, reason, science, philosophy, commerce, and politics what belongs to Christianity. “Ethical societies,” he said, “may preach ideals, parliaments prescribe methods, literature describe the movements and processes of civilization, but the Church of the living God supplies the moral dynamic which makes possible all the rest.”

At seven o’clock historical addresses were delivered at the Congregational Church and Saint John’s Church, by Rev. Charles J. Ryder, D. D., of New York, and Rev. George S. Bennitt, D. D., of Jersey City, respectively. Dr. Ryder’s subject was “PILGRIMS FROM NEW MILFORD.” He said:

“Western Connecticut and Massachusetts contributed more

to the early settlement of northern Ohio probably than any other section of the country. Pilgrims from this portion of New England began early to find their way westward. Along the fertile valley of the Mohawk, on the edge of the great inland seas, these settlers planted their homes. You can easily trace the line of their march in the intelligence and dignity of character that their descendants possess to-day in these regions. New Milford contributed to this body of Pilgrims that followed the sun toward its setting. As they went out, they left that which has been so eloquently set forth in various public addresses during the progress of this Bi-Centennial of New Milford. The beautiful valleys and imposing mountains, the clear rivers and foaming brooks, the marvelous, picturesque beauty of New Milford and its environment, they left behind them. They did not find these, as they planted their tents in the great forests of northern Ohio. How often have I heard one of these Pilgrims from New Milford describe her homesickness as she looked out upon the almost flat country, which the local clearing had revealed, into the dense forests that shut down upon the edge of this clearing on every side! Turbid streams, muddy roads, wooden sidewalks, the plain and unattractive natural scenery, and the rough conditions of pioneer life were vastly different from the beautiful landscape and refined conditions of this home town from which they went out.

“But they did not leave all, nor the best, of that which they had gathered in the life in New Milford, as they left its borders and went overland by their own conveyance into Ohio. They took with them three fundamental conceptions of life. First, that of the Christian home; second, that of the public school; third, that of the Christian church. To these ideals, planted in the hearts of these early Pilgrims, may be traced the fruitage of the strong intellectual and moral life which has developed in the citizenship of northern Ohio.

“These Pilgrims from New England found chiefly an opportunity. The physical conditions were depressing and hard. The problem of life was serious and difficult, the hardships encountered were rigorous and persistent; but wherever these Pilgrims planted a colony in the Western Reserve, or New Connecticut, as it was called, they established the Christian home, the public school, and the Christian church.

“Philo Penfield Stewart, a Pilgrim from the neighboring town of Sherman, illustrates the character and purposes of these early settlers. He went into Ohio in 1832, and, even before his weary body could have rested from the long and tedious journey, he began at once, in connection with Rev. J. R. Shipherd of Elyria, plans for the establishment of a college and colony at Oberlin. It is possible, as history hints, that the first white pioneer into Ohio was Ferdinand De Soto, who possibly pushed his way into the region of this great central State as early as 1539. It is most fortunate, however, that not the descendants of De Soto, but the Pilgrims from New England and their descendants, gave the ideals and formative influences to this new commonwealth. That there should be the least percentage of illiteracy in the northern counties of Ohio, known still as the Western Reserve, of any part of the tabulated world, is not an accident. The schoolhouse was as much a part of their essential requirements as the barn or the shop. When in the height of his wide-reaching influence, Dr. Joseph Cook went once to Cleveland; he carefully studied the conditions of the public schools of the Forest City. He afterwards bore testimony that ‘in coming from Boston, Massachusetts, to Cleveland, Ohio, he came _up_ in the character of the appointments and work in the public schools, and not down’; that ‘the educational system of Cleveland was better than the educational system of Boston.’ Your speaker having had somewhat intimate acquaintance with both systems, would speak an humble word of endorsement to this testimony of Dr. Cook. These Pilgrims from New Milford found mud, homeliness, forest, hardships, toil and privation. But they found opportunity. This opportunity they improved to the best of their ability or of any ability that human beings could command. They planted churches and worshiped within their sacred precincts with loving reverence; they built their schoolhouses and had no lack of teachers, for many of their wives and daughters had been teachers in Old Connecticut. They sent their children to school, sparing them from needed work on the farm or in the shop or store. They did this, because they were building life, character; were establishing a Christian civilization to outlast them and their immediate descendants. They did it, because they believed in God and man and in making the most of life. Better than all, they gathered in their homes around the clear-swept hearth of their open fireplaces, in love, peace, and confidence. Often the crackling fire on the open hearth was the only light that the home possessed for the evening. Sometimes, as we learn from their records, they put melted tallow in a tin basin and hung a bit of cotton wicking over the side to light their humble homes. ‘Two such lanterns,’ they tell us, ‘were sufficient to light up the church for evening service.’ It was almost reverting to the type of the lamp used in early Jewish history, and quite to the profound Hebrew reverence. But whatever artificial light these Pilgrims had, they saw clearly the great purposes of existence, and read with undimmed vision ‘their title clear’ to the best that devotion and energy and faith and courage could achieve.

“When the great agitation came in favor of freedom, as against chattel slavery, the descendants of the New Milford Pilgrims in northern Ohio did not flinch nor hesitate. Professor Hart, in his recent volume on ‘Slavery and Abolition,’ says:[17] ‘One reason for the force which abolition early acquired in Ohio was the fallow field waiting for it in the Western Reserve. This region, settled by Connecticut people between 1790 and 1820, was still a little New England, its churches, schools, and local government closely modeled on those of Connecticut.’ Nor did this ‘fallow field’ among the Pilgrims from New Milford prove unproductive. Rustic lads, whom Dr. James Harris Fairchild, President of Oberlin College for many potential years, represented, bearing his testimony to these hard, early conditions, waded through the snow barefooted in order to attend school. Such lads could not be kept away from the privileges of higher training. Colleges were immediately necessary. Such institutions were established, buildings erected, faculties gathered, lecture and class rooms crowded with eager pupils, as by the magic wand of some scholastic magician. Within a few months of its establishment, Oberlin College had hundreds of pupils. They had brought together a faculty perhaps unequaled, man for man, in the faculty of any institution ever founded. They were giants, intellectually and morally. Their names to-day are wrought not alone in the intellectual and educational history, but into the very warp and woof of our national life. Ohio, the great West, the South, and the nation could hardly have been the great, united nation that it is, had it not been for these Pilgrims from New Milford and their descendants, who stood with heroic courage for the highest ideals, and strove to attain them at tremendous sacrifice and suffering.

“Professor Hart is responsible for the following bit of history: ‘When Harriet Martineau attended an anti-slavery meeting, she found that she had given offense to the best society in Boston. Theodore Parker found his clerical brethren refusing to exchange pulpits with him; “My life seems to me a complete failure socially; here I am as much an outcast from society as though I were a convicted pirate.” The eastern colleges, almost without exception, were strongholds of pro-slavery feeling.... In 1848, Charles Sumner, a graduate of Harvard, spoke to the students of the college. Longfellow said: “The shouts and the hisses and the vulgar interruptions grated on our ears. I was glad to get away!”’

“But such a spirit of cowardice and weak surrender to the financial and social influence of the South as was manifested by many eastern colleges, was not that of the western colleges planted in the clearing of the great forests of the New Connecticut largely by the Pilgrims of New Milford. They spoke out steady and strong against the ‘twin relic of barbarism.’ Professor Seabert, in his history of the ‘underground railway,’ bears testimony that through the Western Reserve almost every line of secret escape for the slave running toward the north star passed. At Oberlin, where the Pilgrims in whom your speaker is most profoundly interested had their home, eleven underground railroads passed. They radiated as many as the ten fingers of the two hands, and one hand had an extra finger. It was the boast of these brave men and women, and the boast was proven by the fact, that no negro was ever taken back to slavery who reached the Western Reserve. How well I remember those early incidents in my boyhood home! The Oberlin-Wellington rescue case is written in the history of the nation. How the excitement and agitation of that New England village in Ohio come to me as I think of it! It was but a few months after the death of my father, Oliver Roberts Ryder, a Pilgrim from Danbury to this same Western Reserve. A negro boy, John Price by name, had escaped from slavery. He had been a resident for some time in Oberlin. Through the intrigue of a pro-slavery countryman near the village, he was waylaid, captured by a band of slave-holders, bound and gagged, thrown into a wagon, and hurried off to a railroad station on the railroad leading into the South. The descendants of our Connecticut Pilgrims of the town heard of it. Prayer was offered first, for faith in God was the very threshold over which they passed to the accomplishment of any brave purpose. Wagons were hastily gathered, firearms piled into them, and away the Oberlin rescuers went to win this black boy, rather worthless fellow in himself, to personal freedom. This was his constitutional right under the Declaration of Independence, for he surely was born to be ‘free and equal’ in privilege. He was rescued from the slave-holders, although they were armed to the teeth and displayed their guns, but did not dare to use them. The faculty, the Sunday school superintendent, the leading business men were in this band of rescuers, and were afterwards thrown into prison for the technical crime of their acts. Here again the splendid traditions which these Pilgrims brought from their eastern home came in play. Obey the law they must. They could do it by not breaking it, or by submitting to the penalty. They chose the latter, and no one made the slightest effort to escape, but submitted without a moment’s hesitation to the processes of the law, and stood before the jury. They were not subpæna jumpers, and in this showed that they were not criminal in intent, as those who seek to escape the processes of the law always are.