Address at the Centenary of St. Paul's Church, Norwalk, Conn.

4 k ' ... ' '.r« * .S'. ' • I ^ : v rrsuifa - » ADDRESS ReY, CHARGES M, SRIMCK, A, M, -AT THE— NORWALK, CONN., JULY 15, 1886, ■ NkC /i\ sr o< APR V) 1887 NORWALK ; THE HOUR PRINTING OFFICE, Copyrighted 1887, by Charles M. Selleck. All rights reserved. > \ -'£> X IZ6S DESCRIPTION OF THE CUT. It should he remembered that the engraving on the opposite page represents the old churchyard. Disc No. 1, Goold Hoyt’s sepulcher. “ “ 2, Captain Benjamin Isaacs’ tablet. “ “ 3, Mrs. Ann Kemper’s monument. “ “4, The Cannon vault. “ “ 5, The St. John vault. “ “ 6, The Isaacs vault. “ “ 7, The Belden vault. The mound under the central tree (front) should stand close to the walk and at figure 4. Discs 5 and 7 should be nearer together. The Jarvis tomb is near the (former and present) chancel. / TO THE MEMORY OF WILLIAM COOFER MEAD; D. D., LL. D. HISTORICAL ADDRESS. H|HERE are, we presume, none who belong to this parish whom wthe services to-day fail to interest; but any record which is the exhibit of efforts made and achievements won at the cost of pains and privations, contains an element of interest to which the stranger can hardly listen with indifference. It is felt, therefore, that no apology is needed for asking the attention of all here as- sembled to the recital of the doings of this ancient church organ- ization during the one hundred years this month elapsed. That when the sun had ended its duty on that memorable day in our local annals in July, 1779, night should have mantled so few of the home domiciles which the morning had saluted, is but another way of saying that our fathers, at that juncture, were in dire straits. With hearthstones in ashes and storehouses burn- ed and crops destroyed and business broken up, the situation was a trying one and the spectacle calculated to excite emotion : still, while men of stern courage may not feel disposed to speak in jest of scars, neither are they the ones to court condolence. To have made proffer of this to such an heroic one as he,* who, offi- ciating on the third Sunday after the declaration of American in- dependence, not within but just outside of what was once con- sidered the jurisdiction of this parish,! and who, proceeding with the service in the face of armed men who had followed him into the sanctuary, would and did not close his prayer-book until ap- proached and compelled to desist ; or to have offered sympathy in the day of faith’s trial to such a loyal one as he,| who, born here in 1720, and dying in 1786, left a rich legacy to a church folk, the income from which is to this hour enjoyed, but by none of our communion ; to assure of sympathy such fearless and filial sons of the church as were some who have left us, would be to call forth the valorous response, “our greatest regret, many times over, is that will and wealth are so much less than are op- portunities for employing the same. ” *The Rev. Epenetus Townsend. “Mr. Townsend with all his family (wife and five children) were lost in a ship which sunk in its passage to Halifax.” Propagation Society abstracts for 1779. As quoted by Rev. Robert Bolton. tLower Salem, Westchester county, New York. JJames Brown, Esq. 8 Between the fathers of the last century and their fathers fifty years before, there was a marked family resemblance. They were not of the smart and rattling order, perhaps, nevertheless their story is fresh and vigorous, and their example a wholesome one. They were earnest men. The Beldens and the Bettses and the Boutons, the Camps and the Cannons and the Churches, the Hoyts and the Isaacs and the Jarvises, the Nashes and the Reeds and the Warrens of 1779-90 were no negatives. Like the John Beldens and the Jonathan Camps and the William Jar- vises of the previous generation they said and they did in no equivocal way ; they believed in the church of which they were members ; their creed was a positive quantity, and it might without any strain upon the truth be asserted, possibly of all of them, that they were endowed with the belief of every syllable of it. And they did earnest work, as we might expect such men would do. Their ancestors held a meeting in 1742* and deter- mined, before the parish was six years old, to erect a new edifice — the one that was burned. And even the diction of their vote was energetic, “that said building be forthwith carried on.” And it is creditable to the men of 1779 and a triumph of their energy and faith that, before the next twelve month had perform- ed its abdication, they had held a meetingt and called a clergy- man and resolved to build, and albeit so greatly reduced, had generously subscribed for, their third habitation in forty- three years for the Lord God of Hosts. It is a no mean com- mentary this. The men of ’86, a century ago, did nobly, and it is right on this occasion to recollect what they did. We proceed to particularize concerning them ; remarking that our notice of them constitutes, unavoidably, a string of sketches rather than a logi- cally connected recital, and speaking first of the clergy of the past one hundred years. Jeremiah Learning, D. D.,{ having in the orderings of God’s providence vacated St. Paul’s in 1779, it was for some four and one half years afterwards ministered to at intervals by the rector of the neighboring parish of St. John’s, Stamford. § This vener- ♦November 30th, at the house of Capt. Joseph Ketchum,on the Jarvis corner. tOctober 27th, 1780, at the house of Thomas Bolden, on the Governor Bissell corner. tBorn in Middletown, Yale graduate, class of 1745 ; sailed for England, and there received Holy Orders in 1747 ; died September 15th, 1804, at the age of 87, and buried in New Haven. §Ebenezer Dibble, D. D., oldest son of Wakefield Dibble, of Danbury ; Yale graduate, class of 1734 ; degrees of A. M., and S. T. D., from Yale, degree of D. D. from Columbia College, 1793. Went in 1747 to England for Holy Or- ders. Is described — see Bolton’s Westchester County, Vol. I, page 744 — as a venerable man of dignified appearance, his long white locks flowing grace- fully over his shoulders. 9 able man of seventy- three began work in that parish in 1 748, di- viding his labors between it and Norwalk and Ridgefield and the north-eastern portion of Westchester county in the colony of New York. At the close of the revolutionary war he settled per- manently in Stamford, where his many excellencies of brain and heart were recognized, and he was revered and beloved until his death in 1799.* It was during his incumbency of that important cure that he remembered us in the days of the burning, and in the words of a another “often officiated for us.”+ In 1774 the Rev. John Bowden} was called at a salary of £85 per annum to the rectorship, and the parish was fortunate enough to secure the acceptance of the call. Dr. Bowden was not a half- learned writer, neither a speaker wdiose flow of words was in ad- vance of a flow of thought, but a man of rare parts, and even at the age of thirty-five a ripe scholar. He was accomplished in morals and philosophy as well as theology, and the pulpit under his occupancy of it was the vehicle of vivid expositions of truth. At the same time, while he was of striking intellect, yet was he gifted with a remarkable share of common sense, and into no better hands could the parish have committed its new enter- prise. Within a few months after his arrival the vote was passed to build of the dimensions of the former church, and a committee of nine appointed and allowed eighteen days wherein to report. The work was pushed ; two were added to the committee, and although it was winter yet the forests must have been searched and sills, posts, joists and plates selected and hewn and drawn, as the ac- tion of March 28th, that coming spring, ran “that the carpenters begin the framing of the church on Monday next, the weather permitting.” Dr. Bowden saw the structure, a goodly one for the day, completed and consecrated. He saw set out these trees which to-day wave so proudly over the spot ; and he remained here, not in the indulgence of lettered tastes which to no man of that time would have been more of a delight, but in planting and preaching and ministering and laboring, until 1789, in the autumn of which year, worn and in need of rest, he sailed for the island of St. Croix, and upon his return to this country opened at Strat- *Thursday, May 9th : funeral attended by a large concourse of people. tHe had four children. Ebenezer, the oldest, was born in 1737, and Frederick the youngest in 1753. Frederick graduated at Kings, now Colum- bia College, and removing after the revolution to New Brunswick became rector of Woodstock. He died in 1838 in Woodstock, aged 83, leaving seven sons and six daughters. {Formerly assistant minister in Trinity Church, New York city. 10