A BIT OF CHURCH HISTORY
It is a subject of hope that someone—perhaps he is already cooing in his cradle and smiling in response to the wondering faces that bend over him—will be inspired to embody in imperishable epic, the adventurous deeds of the Puritan and Pilgrim Fathers in the New World. He must be a child of the Muses. He must have insight to sound the deeper currents of human motive and action, the instinct for dramatic situations, a feeling for the concrete in choice and act, and for the individual man. When that epic appears some cantos of it will relate to the settlements of the Connecticut valley, and among these old Windsor, to the ancient church in which place this brief article relates.
We are fortunate in having a memoir of Captain Roger Clapp, a young man of the company, written expressly for his own descendants, with glowing religious purpose, but in more than one particular illuminating upon the history and spirit of that early enterprise. Mr. Clapp’s own case is a fine exhibition of the process of selection and unification by which a party was made up of such as were fitted to undertake together the peculiar task of making a new community in the wilderness. One would readily guess that the relations of the individuals of such a company must be somewhat other than those secured by formal agreements and contracts on paper. They must be bound together by the finest of affinities, by mutual esteem, by the strength of commanding leadership. Add to this, of course, a rugged sense of the call and providence of God. Something of this sort would be essential to business success, not to say social happiness in the communal life of a new settlement; and if what Mr. Clapp says of himself is at all representative, such was actually the case. When a youth, evidently wishing to be self-supporting, he asked leave of his father to live “abroad,” and went to live on trial, three miles from Exeter (England). In his own language: “We went every Lord’s-Day into the City, where were many famous preachers of the Word of God. I then took such a liking unto the Revd. Mr. John Warham, that I did desire to live near him: So I removed (with my Father’s consent) into the city, and lived with one Mr. Mossiour, as famous a Family for Religion as ever I knew; ... I never so much as heard of New England until I heard of many godly Persons that were going there, and that Mr. Warham was to go also.”
Through Mr. Clapp’s personal history we can see in his account of the organization of the church, how here and there the preparatory process had been going on in individual lives, and often unconsciously to themselves men had been getting ready for this joint venture into the New World. I give his account of the organization somewhat fully: “I came out of Plymouth in Devon, the 20th of March, and arrived at Nantasket the 30th of May 1630. Now this is further to inform you, that there came Many Godly Families in that ship: We were of Passengers many in Number (besides Sea-men) of good Rank: Two of our Magistrates come with us, viz., Mr. Rossiter and Mr. Ludlow. These godly People resolved to live together; and therefore as they had made choice of these two Revd. Servants of God, Mr. John Warham and Mr. John Maverick to be their Ministers, so they kept a solemn Day of Fasting in the New Hospital in Plymouth in England, spending it in Preaching and Praying: where that worthy Man of God, Mr. John White of Dorchester in Dorset was present, and Preached unto us the Word of God, in the forepart of the Day, and in the latter part of the Day, as the People did solemnly make choice of, and call those godly Ministers to be their Officers, so also the Revd. Mr. Warham and Mr. Maverick did accept thereof, and expressed the same. So we came, by the good Hand of the Lord, through the Deeps comfortably; having Preaching or Expounding of the Word of God every Day for Ten Weeks together, by our Ministers.”
This little Israel, which came over the waters, one hundred and forty strong, in the good ship Mary and John, a craft of 400 tons, were forced by Capt. Squeb, contrary to his agreement, to disembark in a forlorn place on Nantasket Point. A place of settlement was soon selected and named Dorchester. Attracted by the rich Connecticut meadows, five years later Mr. Warham and the larger portion of his flock made the difficult overland journey thither, and settled in the beautiful region which was afterwards called Windsor by “order of the court.” Thus the First Church of Christ in Windsor goes back beyond Dorchester to Plymouth in Old England, and has had a continuous existence from March 20, 1630, to the present as a Congregational Church of what may be called, for lack of a better term, the orthodox or Trinitarian variety—a fact that can be affirmed of no other Congregational Church on the American Continent.
To speak of the members of this church and their numerous descendants, would take us beyond the limits of this article. A few names will suggest the significance of this body of Christians on the banks of the Connecticut, in the life of the nation. Matthew Grant, the clerk of the church and the town, whose fine records are now in the town clerk’s office, was the ancestor of Gen. U. S. Grant and the numerous clans of the Grant family in this country. The hero of Manila Bay is a descendant of Thomas Dewey, of the old Windsor church. Henry Wolcott, a man of wealth and social importance in old England, was the ancestor of the famous Wolcott family, which included two Connecticut governors and men of note in every generation to the present day. Roger Ludlow, the lawyer of the settlement, gave legal shape to the democracy of Thomas Hooker in the Constitution of Connecticut, the first written instrument of the kind on record. Captain John Mason led the federated colonists to the number of eighty men against the Pequots, and by no means least, Esther Warham, the youngest daughter of the minister, a woman of rare charm and remarkable gifts, was the mother of a mighty race, which has been distinguished by many illustrious names, chief among whom must be named her grandson, Jonathan Edwards. Two other men of national renown in quite different directions are Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth and Edward Rowland Sill. Ellsworth was born in Windsor, lived here practically his whole life save, of course, when he was away on public business, and his home still remains, now the property of the Connecticut Society of the D. A. R. He was a devoted member of the church and chairman of the building committee in charge of the erection of the new house of worship in 1794, which still remains in excellent condition. The book containing, among many others, Mr. Ellsworth’s subscription of 100 pounds, with that for like amounts by Dr. Chaffee and Jerijah Barber, is in possession of the present treasurer. Edward Rowland Sill, the rare quality of whose poetic genius has won increasing recognition ever since his early death, was a descendant of Rev. David Rowland, one of the old Windsor pastors, and was, by immediate family connections as well as the associations of his own boyhood, a child of the Windsor church, though he spent the larger part of his mature life elsewhere.
Roscoe Nelson.
Windsor, Conn.
CORNER OF SAULT AU MATELOT AND ST. JAMES STREETS.
Tablet placed by the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec, 1904.
(The second barricade was across Sous Le Cap Street, behind where figure stands.)