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Unity Church History

The event in North Easton the past week was the dedication of the new church erected by Hon. Oliver Ames and presented by him to the Unitarian Society as a free gift. It occupies a conspicuous site on the grounds adjoining Mr. Ames’s estate on the north and with its beautiful surroundings and its elegant style of architecture in which it is constructed gives an exceedingly pleasing impression to all who behold it. 

The following description of the edifice in the Boston Journal will give a good idea of the pains which have been taken in its construction and of the value of the gift to the place as a public ornament and as a temple of worship. “The church was designed by John Ames Mitchell, a nephew of the donor and as far as personal supervision and generous expenditure could secure it, every part of the work has been done in the most thorough and finished manner, and is a specimen of ecclesiastical architecture upon which all concerned may be heartily congratulated. 

The building includes a chapel which would alone make an elegant church, as well as a church proper which would be an ornament in any of our large cities. The extremely handsome tower and spire finished entirely in stone give to the exterior of the structure an aspect of graceful strength which only noble art can procure. It is surmounted by a stone cross in which a circle obliterates the hard outlines of the Latin cross. The walls over which it mounts so high lack no feature of strong and handsome construction. Within, no pains have been spared to give to the eye a satisfaction which will grow rich and sacred with the lapse of time. All the woodwork of the interior is richly executed and the walls and panels of the high arched roof are beautifully frescoed. But it is in the windows especially, that lavish art has been shown.

High up behind the pulpit shines down from a small round window, the symbolic dove set in a gold cloud and surrounded by a design in varied color. At the other end of the church a large circular window gives a most effective setting to the heads of the six Apostles in a circle about the head of Christ in the center. Below this in four narrow openings are represented four figures of angels with instruments of music. At either side of this window are large pictures painted on the wall., one representing the Good Samaritan, and the other Christ talking with the woman as he “sat weary on the well.” It is to the large transcept windows however, that the eye of the observer will be most drawn. The west window is brilliantly illuminated with designs both striking and easy of comprehension. Midway of the two side parts of the window are represented angels, each bearing a scroll, and the two scrolls together giving the inscription, “Holy, Alleluia.” Across the top in the three parts of the window, appear the anchor of hope, the cross and crown of struggle and victory, and the star of promise. The large central compartment contains a spiritual design from John Bunyan’s “Holy War.” 

The execution of the east window is extremely fine and the effect one of rich and varied beauty. But all the details are subordinated to the figure which forms the centre of the picture, the splendid figure of the first of the arch angels, the highest created intelligence, St. Michael. The figure of the archangel as the design presents it gets the stature not from the height of the body which is that of a modest youth, but from the splendid wings which reach far up as if rich with the colors of heaven, they would take hold on eternity. The symbolism as well as the colors of the figure is profoundly impressive and beautiful. It is genuine art turned to a thoroughly religious use. The spirit of it grows upon the beholder and its beauty deepens the more it is seen. the window is inscribed: “St Michael” “In Memory of Oakes Ames” and is a contribution of his sons in testimony of the sacredness of their father’s memory. 

Beneath the church are parlors fitted up for the convenience of the society on all festive occasions, and all the modern appliances of a thoroughly organized society. 

The seating capacity of the church is about 300 but it contained on the day of the dedication upward of 500. It has a rich toned organ and a bell of great weight is suspended in the tower. The cost of the edifice is not far from $75,000. all of which has been disbursed by the generous and public spirited donor.” 

The services of dedication were of a very interesting character and called together a large audience of citizens and strangers prominent among the latter being Ex. Gov. Talbot, President Stearns of the Old Colony Railroad, Charles F. Choate, Esq., Royal Turner Turner of Randolph, and others. The services opened by a voluntary on the organ by T.P.Ryder following which was the anthem, “Praise the Lord,” by a quartette consisting of Miss Ruth Holbrook of Weymouth, Mrs. Ashmead of Philadelphia, and Messrs. Willis and Russell of North Easton. 

An invocation was offered by the pastor, Rev. William Chaffin, and scriptural selections were read by Rev. John Snyder of S t. Louis. After the singing of a hymn, the service of dedication took place in which the pastor and congregation united, standing and reading the public declaration of their consecration of the edifice to purposes of divine worship. The sermon was by Rev. R.R. Shippen of Boston in the latter part of which tender allusion was made to the memory of Oliver Ames, Senior founder of the society and of the industry which has built up the village and to his son, Honorable Oakes Ames, its liberal patron and always the friend of the people; the preach also in a few well chosen words, extended the thanks of the community to the benevolent donor of the edifice for his elegant and munificent gift. 

Rev. C.H. Brigham of Ann Arbor, Michigan followed in a brief address in which he spoke in terms of high praise of the filial reverence and regard which had prompted the son to build this structure in memory and to the honor of a noble father, and of the wisdom which had also planned it for the benefit of the living. It stands as a worthy companion gift to the elegant school house presented to the village by the same family ten years ago. The singing of a hymn and the benediction by the pastor concluded the services.

The Parish Ministers of

the Unitarian Society of North Easton (1855)

and Unity Church of North Easton (1875)

 

F. Jay Deacon	2007- 2008   (Interim Minister)
Therese Baumberger	2008 -

“Say not thou that the former days were better than these.”

 The thought which I propose to emphasize is suggested by the telling words of the text, ”Say not thou that the former days were better than these.”

Some persons are in the habit of saying just these forbidden words,-of speaking of the “good old times,” the days of sounder doctrines, of purer morals, devouter worship, and better social and public life.

 Perhaps there is some ground for thinking that the first generation of our Puritan and Pilgrim fathers was entitled to this credit, but our own local history begins with another generation, our first settlers coming here not until just after 1690. Those settlements were in what is now South Easton and in the southwest part of our territory. This territory once belonged to the famous Indian Chief Massasoit and his famous son, King Philip.

The Baptist Church would seem to have flourished wonderfully, but the town soon voted that only those who were in “covenant relations” with that church would be exempt from the tax. The action caused the “Bap” to be dropped from the tax lists, showing that the claim to be Baptists was in most cases a dodge to escape an unjust tax.

 This sorry condition did not cease until in 1792 the church by an act of incorporation, became independent of the town, its affairs no longer being subject to the action of town meetings, the parish thereafter managing its own concerns. 

But instead of securing Unity, that system as we now have seen kept the town in perfect turmoil, simply because men and women were compelled to worship together in one spot, whether they wished to or not.

 Peace and kindly feeling came as soon as they were permitted to worship where they wanted and as they wanted to. The era of charity and good feeling dawned in Massachusetts when compulsory outward union gave place to free diversity of belief and worship.

 In fact it split the society in twain. The malcontents, seeing nothing wicked in this prayer meeting affair, and under the lead of their pastor, formed a Presbyterian Society.

 The town church people finding that the Presbyterians were about to build a meetinghouse, appealed to the General Court. The Court voted to send out a committee “to view the situation.” But Mr. Prentice declared that if this committee came on his land where they were already building the Presbyterian Church he would, to use his own forcible language, “break their heads,” and “split their brains out.”

A great controversy between the two parties followed.

 It lasted twelve years of bitter and angry strife. The controversy was not doctrinal; it certainly was not religious; it grew out of the compulsory church system legalized in these early days. 

Let us not blame religion for it. Men will fight for whatever they are heartily interested in, and the bitterness of their fight is a measure of their interest. 

I have heard it said and it may be true that Easton in its first century did more church fighting than any other town in Massachusetts. I am sorry to dwell upon these miserable quarrels, but without it I should not do justice to my subject. 

I will, however spare you a detailed description of two other conflicts, the first one over the question: where shall the new meeting house stand? 

 The first meeting house, probably a log house, was built about 1713 on the east side of the oldest cemetery, near the Green. But the west enders felt it a hardship to have to go so far to attend worship, and they petitioned the General Court to order the second meeting house to be erected at or near the center of town, and although a spirited controversy arose over this question, it was not settled for thirty-seven years, and when the church was built, Mr. Prentice refused to preach in it, preaching in dwelling houses and in the unfinished Presbyterian meeting house at the Green as soon as the roof was on it.

Still another contest, and one causing much hard feeling and legal contentions occupied six years from 1832 to 1838. Rev. Luther Sheldon was settled in 1810. During his ministry a decided change was taking place in the theological opinions of the Congregational body in New England.

 Mr. Sheldon was a conservative and after about twenty years he found that some of the neighboring congregational ministers had become so called liberals. He therefore, refused to exchange with them which angered the majority of the parish and a controversy ensued about which I only need to say that it ended in a division of the parish.

 There are various improvements in public worship since early times. I have heard persons say that we cannot have too much of a good thing. Now, sincere prayer is a good thing. But Rev. Thomas Smith of Falmouth, (now Portland) under date of April 13, 1738, makes this entry in his diary, of which I own a printed copy: 

"Public Fast", I had extraordinary assistance: was an hour and a half in prayer, AM and about an hour PM. 

This forenoon prayer would cover the entire time of our church service in these days. I wonder if the listeners did not feel like the lady who, after a long prayer, had the courage to say to her minister, 
"Sir, you prayed me into a good frame, and then you prayed me out of it"

 There is a lady in the congregation this morning, who when a girl, stood in a church in Newburyport for three quarters of an hour while the minister prayed. 

 Consider too, that these long prayers and equally lengthy sermons were, in the early times, inflicted upon congregations in churches into which the profane luxury of stoves had not been introduced, and which in winter were sometimes freezing cold. People dressed for the emergency of course. 

 The minister was sometimes compelled to wear his great coat in the pulpit, his fur hat and gloves, the right forefinger of the latter being slit to allow him the free use of his finger to turn the leaves of his sermon.

 Sometimes he stopped awhile in the middle of the sermon, or even of the prayer to allow the shivering worshippers to thrash their arms about or knock their feet together to warm them; and sometimes they did this while prayer or sermon was in progress. 

 Judge Sewall relates that one very cold Sunday the communion bread froze, "and rattled sadly in the plate" as he passed it around. Permission was sometimes given to bring dogs to meeting, which lying at the feet of master or mistress, proved a source of grateful warmth, and for this privilege a tax of six pence was commonly paid.

  Our Easton church did not introduce a stove into their audience room until 1822, so long did it take our forefathers to discover that there was nothing irreligious in being comfortable. In the early days the men and women sat apart, the men on one side of the meeting house, the women on the other. 

 Those of you who do not yet know it will be surprised to learn that the reading of the Bible formed no part of the church service. In the old Dorchester meetinghouse, for example, it was not introduced until 1752, and in the Third Parish in Newbury in 1760.

 There was no instrumental music in church services, and its introduction here in our town church only a century ago excited anything but Christian feelings. When, for the first time a Bass-viol was brought into the Washington Street Methodist Meeting, some of the members were greatly scandalized, and when the bow was first drawn across the strings they hurried out and they said, "If they begin by fiddling, they'll be dancing soon." 

 We can well imagine that with no musical accompaniment the singing must have excited more merriment than devotion. Judge Sewall relates in his diary that once in starting the tune, he pitched it too high for the congregation to climb up to, and then he tried again and he pitched the tune too low, and the attempt to sing was a dismal failure.

 Long metrical psalms were slowly sung, and where hymn books were scarce, they would be "lined off." as it was called, the leader reading two lines which all sang, and then two more lines and so on until the end -and the end was sometime long in coming. 

 One old time minister found that he had left his sermon at home, a quarter mile from the meeting house, whereupon he gave out a long psalm and then doing some lively sprinting he ran home, got his sermon and was back in season to catch his breath just as the last line of the psalm was reached. 

 It is also noteworthy that in very early times, no religious services were held at funerals in New England, and the ministers were not always present. 

 One thing further on this subject of churches-It is a common impression that the old time ministers were looked upon with exceptional reverence and were treated with great deference. I do not know that Easton was an exceptional town in this regard but there is no evidence of such special deference paid the clergy here. 

 On the contrary, the town in its earlier days treated some of them with scant courtesy, failing to fill its contracts with them so that at least three of them, prior to 1800 had to sue the town for the payment of their salaries. Easton was never priest ridden nor in the least afraid of its ministers, however it is a much more comfortable town for ministers to live in than in its earlier days. 

 There is no more striking evidence of the improvement of our town from the beginning than is furnished by the history of its public schools. I assume that the children of the ministers of Easton have been and are as well educated as the average. What then must have been the condition of things in our early days? when three of the children of Rev. Matthew Short, our first settled minister were unable to write even their names when "far along in their teens," a fact I discovered in the probate records at Taunton. 

 Our town records however furnish evidence of the most complete disregard of education in the early days. When the General Court passed the Act of Incorporation of the Town of Easton, section 2 of that act required that the inhabitants should within six months "procure and maintain a schoolmaster to instruct their youth in writing and reading."

  This was Dec. 21, 1725. No attention was paid to this requirement for fifteen months, but then it was felt that something must be done, and the following action was taken in town meeting: A motion for twenty pounds was defeated; also for ten pounds; also for five pounds, all defeated. Then the following vote was passed: 6th voted and agreed to give three pounds to a schoolmaster for one year to teach youths to read and to write, and to keep it at his own house and to find himself "diete." 

 He certainly needed a good deal of dieting to live on that salary. Yet this vote of a salary of three pounds, (an equivalent of fifteen dollars if pounds were at par) for the schoolmaster who must use his own house, and board himself was the most liberal school appropriation made in Easton for thirteen years; in fact, it was the only one. 

 This was in March, but this extravagance caused much excitement and in November the town "voted and dismissed paying the schoolmaster," and so Thomas Pratt, Jr., the first schoolmaster dropped the birch rod and quietly accepted the situation. 

 For the next nine years nothing was done toward maintaining a school in Easton. Then in 1736 fearing that a legal fine would be imposed for such neglect, it was voted that the town should have a schoolmaster. But no appropriation was made to pay his salary, and as no one volunteered to teach for nothing, and board himself out of the proceeds, there was no public school for four years. 

 But in 1740 forty pounds was appropriated to support a school. Two years later, however, the town voted "not to raise any money to support school." This remissness of the town was reported to the Bristol County Court of Common Pleas and an action was begun against the town. A town meeting was hurriedly called, money raised, a schoolmaster hired, and then Benjamin Drake, one of the selectmen hurried to the court, and assuming an innocent air, stated that Easton has a schoolmaster and is going to pay him and so the fine for neglect was remitted. 

But then the town made a remarkable discovery, viz: that it was actually cheaper to pay the fine for having no school, than to pay the salary of the schoolmaster. This wretched scheme, however did not work very well and prosecutions were brought against the town in 1747, 1750, and 1756. 

 These are melancholy facts and I may be blamed for publishing them, but truth seems to be better than flattery. I have mentioned these things to illustrate my text, "Say not that the former days were better than these," Soon after the times I have spoken of the town somehow got converted. Four school districts were formed and besides this, a grammar school was provided at which even Latin and Greek might be studied. The town voted four shillings for a horse to carry the Grammar School Master to meeting. 

 It was not the Golden Age for school teachers. Solomon Randall, for example in 1776 taught school at six dollars a month and boarded himself. In 1808 the pay of a lady teacher was a dollar and a quarter a week and her board was paid at seventy-five cents a week, a weekly salary of two dollars.

 I need not go into any detail to draw a contrast between the educational advantages of the present in our town and the condition of things I have noted in former times. The liberal means applicable to educational purposes provided by the town and largely increased by private beneficence, the admirable accommodations of our exceptionally fine school buildings, the variety of instruction whereby pupils are fitted for important vocations, and the intelligent supervision guiding the school work, and the advantages of a splendid public library make the town of Easton a children's paradise, so far as education is concerned. 

 Although I have already exceeded the ordinary limits of a modern sermon, I trust I shall be pardoned for briefly alluding to two other illustrations of my theme. The first is the more civilized and reverent care of our cemeteries compared with that of former days. 

 In 1885 my wife and I made a careful examination of our thirty-two cemeteries, copying every inscription from all the gravestones in order to have them on record, for many were disappearing. We had occasion then to notice the painful neglect of family lots and individual graves. In two cases the gravestones had been smashed to atoms by ruthless vandals, so that in the Bay Road Graveyard, once known as the Crookhorn Plain Burial Ground, only one stone stood in place, although I have the names of seventeen persons, some of them prominent citizens buried there.

 But largely owing, I think to Memorial Day influences, a great improvement is made in the care of our cemeteries, everyone knowing that the graves will come under inspection once a year. Instead of being as in former days the most desolate and forsaken places, they are fast becoming beautiful and attractive, indicating a change for the better in the sentiments of the people on this subject. 

 Just one thing more. The real growth of the temperance sentiment in this country is less than a century old. Previous to that time it was considered proper to furnish liquor on all social occasions, for festivities, for ordinations and church raisings, and even for funerals.

 My dear old friend, Samuel Simpson told us that when a boy he was a bearer at the funeral of a little girl, daughter of a prominent citizen of South Easton (it was in September 1818) and the young bearers were taken upstairs by the person in charge and were shown a table with decanters of various kinds of liquor. This person no doubt thought he was taking quite radical temperance ground when he offered this caution: "Now boys, I would advise you not to take anything stronger than wine." No person lost cast in the old days by being occasionally "a little the worse for liquor." 

Rev. Mr. Prentice was thought to be happier on a training day than could be accounted for except by his too free use of rum. The wife of Reverend Mr. Campbell, Easton's fourth minister was so free with the bottle as to create scandal. An Easton resident writing more than a hundred years ago from Sutton says that there was an exchange of ministers there and "at noon the preacher's wife, as was the custom set some spirits before the minister for the day, of which he drank so freely that he could not preach in the afternoon and the people had to go home." 

 Temperance reform was late in coming. It was not until about 1826 that Rev. Luther Sheldon, Oliver Ames Sr. and Jr. decided not to furnish liquor to their farm hands and workmen, the cost of the liquor being added to their wages. Oliver Ames Jr. and E.J.W.Morse were the first persons in town to take the pledge. 

From that time to this the temperance sentiment has gained sway, so that in this matter as for other reasons I have mentioned we may confidently assert the truth suggested by our text: "Say not thou that the former days were better than these."

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06/18/2009