Dislodging Deacon Worth
- Alisa Kline
- Nov 22, 2024
- 9 min read
Until the arrival of Elder Wheat in 1813, Canaan longed in vain for a settled minister. Every plan to acquire preaching fell apart except for Thomas Baldwin. I wanted to write about this turmoil and thought the key to untangling it would be to pay attention to the details and doctrinal differences that kept these men and women at one another’s throats for years.
I now know a lot more about religions practices in colonial America, but when I turned my attention back to Wallace’s pages, doctrine seems not to have been the real problem. The real problem was money, power, and personal jealousy. It's a topic Wallace returns to again and again.
Canaan's early settlers were men of great faith but little learning. As Wallace put it:
Page 166
Each man was his own expounder of the faith and doctrine he held to. They were all more or less given to expressing their views on Sundays, and having once announced their beliefs, they were not inclined to modify them, however they might differ from received opinions.
In other words, there might be differences in how one sect or another interprets this or that bible passage, but it didn’t matter to these men of faith. They believed in God, as they understood Him. And that was enough.
There were strong voiced persons among them, who gradually monopolized the time, and at length crowded out the feeble. These men and women were never favorable to being taxed to pay for preaching, because they considered themselves qualified to preach for nothing.
A few of the old farmers had voices stronger than their brothers and these strong talkers had begun monopolizing the service. A paid minister would displace them. They reminded their neighbors that it was foolish to pay for what was freely on offer. Each time a minister was identified, some group rose up to complain and the deal fell apart.
It is this political gamesmanship, rather than issues of doctrine that Wallace focuses on in his writing about the establishment of the Baptist church in Canaan. The only doctrinal difference that Wallace pays any attention to was singing, but it wasn’t singing as we think of it, and it, too, was about status and power. More in a moment.
The conflict over preaching had a seven-year hiatus when Thomas Baldwin, a local boy, became Canaan’s first settled minister. He began his ministry in 1783 and by 1790, was on to better things. His talents were such that he was called to three different congregations, choosing one in Boston. He went on to an illustrious career that included founding Waterville College in Maine. In the years after Baldwin’s departure, Canaan fell back into her old ways.
Page 173
During the year 1794, but little effort was made to procure preaching. The good people lamented the sad state into which they had fallen. They talked of one another as being obstinate and by their prejudices as being stumbling blocks to Christian progress. Each one asked the other to yield, but declined to give up his own preferences. It was a condition of society which has had its counterpart many times since.
As Wallace’s narrative on the Canaan’s search for preaching crosses into the 1800s, we run into people Wallace actually knew. The person Wallace begins to focus on in these years is Deacon John Worth.
Page 174
Whenever a religious meeting was held, Dea. Richard Clark, Dea. John Worth, or Mrs. Miriam Harris would seize the opportunity to deliver their melancholy rhapsodies to an impatient audience, and this had got to be so severe a trial, that they at last resolved to form a society upon the “principles of equality,” as they termed it.
The “they” referred to in the last paragraph was everyone not one of the three talkers or their friends. They were Baptists, Congregationalists, Methodists and Universalists and they wanted a real minster. They wanted real services. And they really, really wanted the singing to stop. You see, it wasn’t singing. It was psalmody.
Psalmody was invented by the puritans as a way to include singing without raising anyone’s spirits. In psalmody, the texts of the psalms were set to a sort of musical intonation. The idea is that the only words in church were those of the bible, so everyone sang the bible. But most couldn’t read. So the deacon of the church (in Canaan’s case, Deacon John Worth) would read each line aloud, then sing that line so everyone had the tune, and then the congregation would sing the line back. Besides being incredibly tedious, from contemporary accounts, this singing included simultaneously a variety of melodies in a variety of voices ranging from possibly musical to considerably less so.
In other words, it was torture. But this torture was presided over by men who commanded the church and these men were not going to give up their hold on the institution without a fight.
In 1797 Canaan had the potential to hire a proper preacher, Ezra Wilmarth. Early negotiations had gone well, but everyone knew what the stumbling block would be. So they called a meeting
Page 175
To give the movement greater force a legal meeting was called, on the 28th of August, 1797. At this meeting the opponents of the society were so demonstrative, as nearly to break it up. After severe discussion, the house was divided, when it was found that the disorganizers were few in numbers but large in noise.
In other words, John Worth and his crew made a big ruckus, but when they took a vote, it turned out no one really sided with them. So it was decided to come to a written agreement in which each side would promise to work together and hire Wilmarth.
Then Jehu Jones, Joseph Wadley and Richard Whittier were elected a committee to confer with a like committee appointed from the church, consisting of John Worth, William Richardson and Deacon Welch, who were to report a constitution for the society at an adjourned meeting.
On the 4th of September, the committee made their report, which was accepted by the town. It was signed by a large number of men in columns according to their belief.
The town took the bull by the horns. They negotiated an agreement with John Worth and the church talkers. Wallace goes on to include the entire report, which reads much the way you might expect such a report. It was issued on December 4, 1797.
Article One states that they all agree that they want to hire preaching. Article Two states that they all agree to pay for it. Everything sounds pretty standard until we get to Article Five. That one was a surprise:
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Fifth, That it is the privilege of the minister and the church to lead in the worship, but if the society take the singing from the church, we will not contend so as to make a disturbance in the meeting, but will endeavor patiently to bear it as a trial.
Doesn’t that sound awfully specific? “we will not contend so as to make a disturbance in the meeting, but will endeavor patiently to bear it as a trial.” Who was this “we” everyone was so concerned about? It was of course John Worth. It turned out, his agreement to "bear it as a trial," had a statute of limitations of just about one year.
John Worth signed the document. A year went by during which housing for the new minister and arrangements for moving his family were made. But Wilmarth never got settled here. The "society" did what they threatened and stopped the singing. Deacon Worth took his revenge.
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On the 17th of December [1798] the town voted to settle Mr. Wilmarth, agreeably to the conditions reported by the committee and which had been, assented to by all parties.
Previous to this date, several persons who disliked Deacon Worth’s hum-drum music, astonished that worthy man by taking the wind out of his mouth without asking his consent. It was an insult he would not forgive. They might as well stop his praying and exhorting as his singing. So he rallied his forces, and called upon the church to rise up and vote a rebuke of this audacious outrage.
He got himself appointed the avenger of the church and issued the stately document which follows:
The church in Canaan hereby inform the town that in consequence of their assuming the authority of governing the singing in a way that they knew was disagreeable to the Church without any condescension or regard to them in the matter […] therefore they have withdrawn their call of Elder Wilmarth till the town shall satisfy them on the above particulars.
John Worth,
By order of the Church.
Dec. 1st. 1798.
N. B. That although we agreed to bear a trial for one year we do not feel willing always to bear it.
Worth’s referring to himself as “The church in Canaan,” was a bit much and Wallace points that out by referring to Worth snarkily as an “avenger of the church” and the screed Worth produced as “stately.”
The problem of John Worth sorted itself out, eventually.
Page 184
The preaching by the resident orators was little attended to and the candidates for the favor of the church and people gave no satisfaction. They just appeared above the religious horizon and vanished like a summer cloud.
The singing, then as now, was a fruitful theme of irritation. Benjamin Trussell, a musician of more than ordinary ability, a good singer, and performer upon the violoncello, had moved into town and was invited to contribute his part in the devotional exercises of the people. Like a true musician, Mr. Trussell believed that singing is only another form of praising God, and that the more sweet sounds he brought to his aid, the greater was God’s pleasure. He took his violoncello into the seats, and tuned it before the congregation.
Deacon Worth, who was counted as one of the guardians of all the proprieties in the church, and a leader of the singers, was more shocked than he had been on the occasion of the call of Mr. Wilmarth. That was simply a vocal interruption, but this was an invasion of the house of God, with the strains that the devil used to tempt young people to dance.
A few other impulsive enthusiasts joined the deacon in denouncing the “devil music,” and threatened to call a meeting of the church and expel the offender. They talked a good deal of nonsense, and some of the old singers, with Deacon Worth at their head threatened to leave the choir, and not sing any more, only that this was just what the other party wanted, and they would not afford them that gratification.
Please stop with me a moment and admire a master of snark plying his trade. They “threatened to not sing any more, only that this was just what the other party wanted, and they would not afford them that gratification.” And Wallace isn’t finished hanging Worth out to dry. There's a poem.
The gentle spirit of Christian forbearance had nearly fled from the church, when good old Samuel Meacham, an early and devout Methodist, raised his hands in the midst of the half angry company and quietly remarked:
“Brethren, let us pray,” and then, “We pray thee, good God, turn the thoughts of these wrangling singers from themselves unto Thee! Fill their hearts with harmony and love, and if there be a single chord of music in Brother Trussell’s bass-viol, that will tend to increase our devotions to Thee, let us have it in all its fullness, and, Lord, forbid that we should ever cast away any good or pleasant thing that falls across our lives, and now give us thy blessing, and send us courage to clear out the angry thoughts that have invaded our hearts, and when we meet again, may it be in love and affection. Amen.”
And Caleb Seabury and Moses Dole responded “So mote it be.” And the singing after the mutual jealousies had become self-exhausted settled itself.
John Worth died in 1845 at the age of 70. Wallace, who was born in 1815 surely knew Deacon Worth. I don’t know if it was Wallace’s love of music, especially church music, or if the animosity was personal, but Wallace seems to have held John Worth in very low regard. Wallace went out of his way to hold Deacon Worth up to even further ridicule, in his own words, no less, by including one of Worth’s poems in his History. Brace yourself.
Page 180
Dea. John Worth, who lived across the Pond on the Landon place, was a poet, also, but the productions of his genius, like his dust, have long since mingled and become a part of the common things of this life. All that has survived of his wonderful poetic talents are the following lines, addressed to “Pride”:
Pride, don’t come on!
Thou hast undone,
Many a son.
Pride, don’t come arter!
Thou hast undone
Many a darter!
Mission accomplished. Deacon Worth dislodged.
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