The Congregationalists

In England, there was one official church, The Church of England, and you belonged by virtue of having been born in England. This church was supported by a general tax that more or less everyone had to pay. The passengers aboard the Mayflower were on that ship because they didn’t want to belong to the Church of England, which they saw as corrupt. They were separatists, and persecuted for their heresy.

With these men and women as our forebears, worshiping how you wanted was a big thing in the early years of our country. It was the underpinning of life in the North. This was less the case in the South, where they were building an aristocracy of enslavers, but they, too, were committed to worshiping exactly as they wished. When our founders declared that there would be no state religion in this country as there was in England (separation of church and state), it was not to make room for non-believers. It was to put to an end the squabbling over which was the only correct way to worship.

Old North Church, Gary Hamel, 2024

When the land grants that formed Canaan were issued by King George, there was a provision made for the Church. In England, there was always land reserved for the benefit of the church. That’s one of the ways the church got its money. Some of Canaan’s land rights belonged to the Church. Which Church wasn’t specified. These rights were called glebe rights. There is no point in telling you this except I love that word. Glebe. A glebe, is a piece of land serving as part of a clergyman’s benefice and providing income. So who was to benefit, now that there was no official church in Canaan, from this pre-existing glebe right?

The only way to get a preacher was to pay him and the only way to get money was through the town, either as an expense or as an award of that glebe right. And that required a vote and an agreement on who to hire. And to complicate matters, there were a number of local residents who were more than happy to preach for free. In fact, they insisted on it.

Baptists were most prevalent in Canaan and they were the first to get around the public funding of religion problem. They formed a private society, licensed by the state, to collect and disburse funds. This way, they could all chip in and hire a preacher of their own. Which is what they did. We met Elder Wheat, the first Baptist minster a few weeks ago, and spent some time with our home-grown Baptist preaching before that.

This week, we are going to meet the Congregationalists.

In my mind, this is the beginning of the story of Noyes Academy. The men who formed the Congregationalist church were the same men who both formed and destroyed Noyes Academy. We will get to that soon, but here is where the names that will become central to that story begin to emerge as significant players in Canaan.

The Congregational Church was the mainline church in Connecticut, where many of the original grantees of Canaan were from. It was the church of the Puritans who arrived on the Mayflower. It was the church of a million and one rules that inspired at least one of Canaan’s original settlers, Thomas Miner, to leave Connecticut. He wanted to live where he could kiss his wife on Sunday.

Most of Canaan in the early years was Baptist. The Baptists were, as their name implies, very invested in baptism as a profession of faith and, at least the Canaan branch, were not particularly invested in fancy theology. The bible was enough. Congregationalist ministers were steeped in theology and were also in possession of a variety of certifications and degrees. They were men of learning and as such, expected a salary. Canaan was allergic to paying for preaching.

Untitled, Gary Hamel, 2024

Canaan, in the early years, was determined not to pay a man for simply talking and Congregationalist ministers got paid. The good citizens of Canaan ran off a host of preachers during the years before the society got set up. The first Congregationalist minister driven from Canaan was Ezra Wilmarth. He was followed out the door in 1799 by Aaron Cleveland, a Congregationalist minister who was offered the paltry sum of $100 annually to remain in Canaan. He politely declined.

From 1800 until 1819, Congregationalists in Canaan were served by ministers passing through, or by ministers from near-by Congregationalist Churches on loan to Canaan. Canaan was served by a Congregationalist missionary society. We were a charity case.

By 1819, the Congregationalist presence in Canaan had grown sufficient to incorporate as a society, as the Baptists had done some years prior. This allowed them to raise money privately to hire preaching. But they didn’t have much luck at first. Partly, this was because they had very little money to offer.

The society’s first minster was Charles Calkins. You have to feel sorry for this guy. A gifted diplomat would have faced challenges in Canaan as an educated Congegationalist among fervent Baptists. A sturdy disposition would have been helpful. As Wallace writes, Calkins had neither. He also had terrible luck:

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Rev. Charles Calkins came in 1820, he had been preaching in Salisbury; Mrs. Hubbard Harris, his cousin, heard him there in 1819 on her wedding journey; he was a son of John P. Calkins, one of the early settlers on South Road. He was not a great man and was too much afflicted with nerves to be successful as a teacher and evangelist.

Wallace’s comment that Calkins was “not a great man” resonates with me because Wallace, in his History, focuses on the men he did consider great. Wallace, looking back on his childhood home, believed that it was a place of significance where men of consequence lived. He revered the rugged among them.

The old Baptists of Canaan were not men of refinement, nor were they apt to choose soft words in reference to rival ministers. As a class they saw no good in anything but baptism, all other isms were to be talked about and treated with contempt.

They never missed an occasion to speak sharp words of Mr. Calkins and his church, thus engendering annoyance and ill-feeling. Mr. Calkins remained about four years, bearing as he thought a heavy burden all the time.[…]

In 1823 he decided that preaching was not his strong point, and his relations with the church were brought to a close without regret on either side. For several months after this event there was no Congregational preaching in Canaan.

The Boys Are Back in Town, articulated figures, Gary Hamel, 2025

And now we meet Jacob Trussell again. He was the miller in Canaan and one of the original organizers of the Congregationalist Society that hired Mr. Calkins. He will become the moving force behind the destruction of Noyes Academy. But that will be more than ten years in the future.

Mr. Calkins engaged Mr. Trussell to go with him to Waterbury, Vt., and build a sawmill, the pay being contingent upon the success of the mill. When it was completed and ready to operate there came a great rain, the swollen river crowded against the mill and carried it off.

This catastrophe, Mr. Calkins received as a demonstration of God’s anger for abandoning His peculiar service. He returned for a time to New Hampshire and preached in Boscawen, but he was unsuccessful there also.

He had evidently mistaken his calling, and discouraged by his continued ill-success, started out upon what was then a perilous undertaking, a journey into the unsettled West. He reached western Pennsylvania and there we lose all trace of him.

That wistful, he had evidently mistaken his calling, is also strangely resonant with me. I have known people who seem to have mistaken their calling. It is not a recipe for happiness. I’m also slightly perplexed by Wallace’s noting that Calkins went to the perilous and unsettled western Pennsylvania. I think that might be a joke. When I checked, Pittsburgh was well established by the time the hapless and timid Reverend Calkin disappeared near it.

But here’s where Canaan’s fortunes take a turn for the better, at least in Wallace’s view. Enter the sainted Amos Foster.

We will spend more time with Reverend Foster next week. But for now, I want to include excerpts from the letter Amos Foster sent to the Congregationalist Committee accepting their offer to become minister here in Canaan. The letter is dated January 28, 1825. Reverend Foster is a young man just graduated from divinity school. Canaan would be his first ministry. He is very devoted to flowery language and seems to see himself as the player in a grand drama about faith and God.

Below are excerpts from the letter he wrote to the Canaan Congregationalist society accepting their offer to become the Congregationalist minister in Canaan.

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Dear Brethren and Friends:

[…] it pleased God to introduce me into the Work of the Holy Ministry, I endeavored to give myself up to the leadings of divine providence; that He, who orders all things rightly and well, might make such a disposition of myself and my services as should most subserve the promotion of His own Glory and the interests of his kingdom. Nor do I now wish to call back the surrender I then made. If I do not greatly mistake my feelings, and the motives by which I am governed, it is my great wish to pursue the path of duty, without being governed by selfish or interested feelings — Wherever the voice of providence calls, that voice I wish to obey.

Amos Foster seems in love with large and extra words. But what he is saying above and below is that he pledged to follow wherever God sent him and, OMG, God seems to want him in backwards little Canaan

In relation to the event in which my coming among you has resulted, I have only to remark, that it is one of which I had not the most distant thought. Of the wisdom of that providence however, which has directed to that event, we must not have the presumption to entertain a doubt. He, who orders all things after the counsel of his own will, knows what is best, — and if he gives direction to all events, if the minutest occurrences do not take place but by his permission, and if not a sparrow falls to the ground, without his notice, then it is a fact that all those circumstances that have contributed to bring about this event, are under the immediate government and direction of an all wise and over-ruling hand.

Shall the motions of this hand be disregarded? Shall those circumstances be attributed to the capricious operations of chance? Or shall man presume to say that he can advise to a safer and better course than here seems to be pointed out? If duty can be learned from the leadings of providence in any cases, perhaps, it may be discovered in this instance before us. I should not dare to oppose my judgment against what here seems to be the plain and obvious dictates of the divine hand.

I imagine that living in the shadow of the men who created a country with high-flying language about freedom and equal rights made a man in 1823 (fifty years after the founding documents) believe that his every move too was part of a great and noble plan. The self-regard is to modern ears, cringeworthy. He goes on to note how incredibly backwards Canaan was. This may have been simply “how people talked” back then. But his laying on about  how benighted Canaan was rankled me, and I just arrived here three years ago! Emphasis in the next few paragraphs is provided by me and not in the original text. I wasn't sure anyone would actually wade through all the words and I wanted the ones dragging Canaan to be noticed.

Another consideration has operated powerfully on my own mind in relation to the subject of your communication, which is, the high importance, that every town should enjoy the stated and regular means of grace, and the necessity of making strenuous exertions to supply destitute towns with these means.

To the lovers of vital godliness it must be delightful to discover the increasing interest that is felt for the general prosperity of Religion. A deep sense of the condition of millions of our race, who are destitute of a knowledge of the Savior, seems to have been awakened; and altho’ the means brought into operation for the general diffusion of Christian light thro the world, are very inadequate to the object to be accomplished, yet laudable efforts have been made; and, that these efforts may be continued, extended and increased, till the whole world shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, must be the spontaneous effusion of every pious heart.

But while it is a matter of joy, that so much is done for the advancement of religion abroad, still it must be obvious that the claims of the destitute at home, should by no means be overlooked. Those even in Christian lands, without the means of grace, without repentance and faith, are in a condition equally as deplorable as those who inhabit the deepest shades of heathenish darkness. To cast an eye over the dreary wastes of our own domestic Zion, and view the moral desolations, which sin has produced, must excite an anxious sympathy for the inhabitants of those places.

[…] Let me entreat you to remember, that he, whom you have invited to be your spiritual guide, is a frail, unworthy, sinful worm of the dust.

Perhaps running down Canaan was simply a mode of speech common in the day of this frail, unworthy sinful worm of the dust. But I think he was speaking somewhat accurately. Canaan was not prosperous and Foster’s salary was never paid solely by the Congregationalist Society of Canaan. It was alway supplemented by the Missionary Society of New Hampshire.

Destitute and backwards, it was here, that a scant nine years later, the nascent abolitionist movement would try to establish a beachhead, an institute of higher learning to rival anything ever seen in this country. One of the themes in Wallace's book is how much was lost when Noyes Academy was destroyed.

We live with the consequences of extraordinary growth. We push up against the limits of what our society and even our planet can provide. Wallace lived in a time that was almost our opposite. He was not present for the birth of our country, but he lived through its teenage years, when it kept outgrowing its clothing. Cities that weren’t thought of in his youth were thriving metropolises by the time he was writing.

For Wallace, America was a seed that grew beneath him. He left Canaan at 15, five years after the arrival of Amos Foster. He returned to a town that didn’t become something amazing, despite his boyhood dreams. Noyes Academy and the dream of what it might have become haunted Wallace.

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New England at that time was degenerated into guilty and dastardly servility to the South. She was enslaved by her prejudices until she trampled her own laws and peace under

foot. The descendants of the founders of Puritan Seminaries broke up the free school. And such a school! Had it been undisturbed it would have taken the lead of all others in the country, and enjoyed patronage unknown to any other. Abolitionists everywhere would have sent their sons and daughters, animated by the high toned principle and lofty purpose that distinguished them from their abusers. The flower of the colored youth would have found their way to it from every part of the country. God would have blessed it with his abundant favor. Its break- ing up and dispersion left the quiet and beautiful village to the bats and owls. The stillness of the desert succeeded.

Untitled, Gary Hamel, 2024