When about twenty years of age, she listened to a discourse delivered by a preacher of some eminence, which was praised by all who heard it. After returning home, for her own benefit and that of others, she wrote down the sermon as nearly as possible as it was delivered, which was read by many. Fifty years afterwards, Mr. Charles Johnson, President of the Norwich Bank, formerly a resident of the town of Griswold, in which she resided at the time, spoke of it to us with fresh admiration, saying, “Every word of the sermon was written to a dot.” Afterwards she married and lived in Hampton for several years, where her excellence of character won for her hosts of friends. Although a Baptist by profession, she uniformly partook of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper with the Congregational Church on Hampton Hill, no Baptist meeting being within several miles of that place, for which she received no censure from the church to which she belonged, to their praise be it spoken. Goodness and love overshadowed all distinction. We should remember that the robe of Christ was seamless. Having so beautifully served her day and generation, she still lives, though her obsequies were celebrated at the Congregational church at Hampton seventy years ago. We never heard an unpleasant word spoken to or by the subject of this memoir. She kept a diary. When eleven years of age, we cast a glance upon one of its pages and read these words: “What shall I do to glorify Thee this day?” This awakened in me a little surprise at the time, wondering what a person in so small a sphere could do to glorify the great God of the universe. But we have long since found that the smallest offerings are acceptable to Him who makes his abode with the humble and the contrite.
The list of persons of Rogerene descent might be much enlarged, even within the limits of New London. Outside of this city, it might be almost indefinitely extended. But we have here given enough, we think, to show that Mr. McEwen’s words, “a small remnant,” were not well chosen.
It is surprising to note how many of the dwellers on State Street, in New London, have been, and are, of Rogerene descent. Even the agent from Washington employed by the government to select a lot on that street for the new postoffice, and other public uses, was a descendant of John Rogers.
Instead of a “small remnant,” the words of Scripture would be much more appropriate:—
“There shall be a handful of corn in the earth, on the top of the mountain, and the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon.”
Here the writer may be indulged in a little pleasantry, and hopes the reader will not regard it as ungermane to the subject.
As we throw our searchlights upon the past, we are pleased to note that the lot on which the First Congregational Church now stands was formerly owned by Stephen Bolles (grandson of John Bolles) and then called Bolles Hill.[[26]] It was purchased from him in the year 1786, by “The First Church of Christ,” and a meeting-house built thereon; Stephen Bolles contributing one-third of the price of the lot towards its erection. At and after this period, it would seem that the church was more lenient toward the Rogerenes; although they were not permitted to enter into full enjoyment of equal religious liberty until 1818, when the New Constitution spread its broad ægis over all alike, to the consummation of which glorious end, the descendants of the pioneers in the Rogers movement acted such an efficient part.
Thus, the First Congregational Church, leaving the spot where had been enacted so much injustice towards the dissenters, planted itself on Bolles Hill, where the fresh breezes of liberty seemed to give it a higher and a purer life, reminding us of the old saying, “If the mountain will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the mountain.”
A fine granite structure now stands upon the old hill. May all its future utterances be worthy of its foundation. Long may it live to make the amende honorable, till the brightness of its future glory shall hide the shadows of the past. None will be more ready to publish its praises than the numerous posterity of the persecuted Rogerenes, remembering the motto, “To err is human, to forgive divine.”
We will close this chapter with a poem by Mary L. Bolles Branch, one of her earlier productions which has been widely circulated in this and other countries. Is not the same oftentimes true of character; hidden long in obscurity under masses of prejudice and scorn, yet destined, some day, to be presented, in all its lines of beauty, to the gaze of men?