Organization of Trinity Parish
There are few records left us of the actual beginning of the first Episcopal Church in New Haven. A parish had been organized in West Haven and a church built in 1745, and services were held in private houses from time to time in New Haven.
As early as 1732 Samuel Johnson writes of preaching in New Haven and states that after the service one hundred pounds were pledged for the building of a new church.
Another record still in existence is a certified copy of an act of the General Assembly in 1756 making valid some irregularities in the deed of a piece of land on Church Street. This land was sold to Enos Alling and Isaac Doolittle in 1752 for two hundred pounds and was purchased for the purpose of building the first church.
The land was a short distance from the corner of Chapel and Church, streets, about where the present clothing store of C. E. Longley Co. now stands.
It is of interest to note that this small lot of about 50 feet front was sold for $1,000, while thirteen years later, on the opposite side of the street, a lot of one and one-half acres covering the corner of Church and Chapel streets was sold to Trinity Parish for $1,355.
The Rev. Ebenezer Punderson moved to New Haven in the latter part of 1752 as missionary and rector of the Parish in New Haven. The church must therefore have been built in 1753 to 1754.
Mr. Punderson remained here until 1762. He was followed by Rev. Solomon Palmer, who remained in charge of the church until 1765 when he returned to Litchfield, his former home. Among other things he states that he could not support his family in the "expensive town of New Haven."
In 1767 Rev. Bela Hubbard became rector of the church and remained here 45 years.
At this time Dr. Hubbard began a record of all his official acts which was kept with great accuracy and is still in good condition.
[12] A cut of the first church is given to which may be added a brief description. President Stiles writes that he measured it himself and that it was 58 by 38 feet. It had the first church spire in the city and on top of the spire was a gilded crown, which was afterwards removed. It was twice enlarged and a gallery was added. According to the custom of the time the pews were sold outright. The record of September 30, 1788, shows that there were 50 pews and those sold belonged to the following people:
No. 1 Richard Tritton
2 1/2 Richard Cutler 1/2 Mrs Mary Hillhouse
3 Stephen Bradley
5 1/2 Edmund French 1/4 Caleb Trowbridge 1/4 Elihu Hall
6 Heirs of Capt. Punchard.
7 1/2 Widow and Heirs of James Bishop. 1/2 Samuel Tuttle
9 Mary Kilby and heirs of Christo Kilby
10 The Church for Mr. Hubbard's Family
11 Isaac Doolittle Sr.
12 Gad Wells
13 Elija Austin
14 Ezra Lines
17 William Venter
18 Samuel Gibbs
19 Samuel Nesbit
20 Richard Eld
21 1/2 Joseph Drake 1/2 John Nicoll
22 Heirs of John Rhodes
23 Thomas Green
24 Joseph Bradley
27 Heirs of Old Peter Bonticue
28 Heirs of Stephen Mansfield
29 Widow Allen
34 Ben Sanford
35 Thomas Davis
The Parish of Trinity Church has owned real estate on Church and Chapel streets since 1765.
The way in which the parish came into possession of the so-called Gregson land has been much misunderstood. Thomas Gregson, one of the original settlers of New Haven, was allotted a homestead on the south side of Chapel Street. Mr. Gregson [12/13] was a man of importance in New Haven, and was in 1645 appointed agent to procure a patent for the Colony. In 1647 Mr. Gregson sailed for England on a ship in which many of the hopes of the New Haven colonists were centered. This ship was never seen again after it left the New Haven harbor. Rev. James Pierpont wrote to the Rev. Cotton Mather that "credible judicious and curious surviving observers" saw an apparition of this ship in the air in the following June. Longfellow tells this story in his poem the Phantom Ship.
Mr. Gregson left a wife and children but no will. We need not recount the complicated settlement of his estate; suffice it to say that William Gregson of England, his grandson, believed that he still owned his share of the estate in 1736 and attempted to give it to the Episcopal Church in New Haven. A deed beautifully written on parchment is still in the possession of the parish.
The controversy aroused over this deed of Mr. Gregson was prolonged and bitter. Mr. Arnold, the clergyman who obtained the deed from Mr. Gregson in England, wrote back that when his servants attempted to plow the land he was "mobbed off by 150 people." A long correspondence between William Gregson and various people in New Haven Colony is still in existence. The Mayor of London was appealed to, the General Assembly listened to the case, land records were searched and charges made that they had been tampered with or destroyed, with no satisfactory settlement.
Enos Alling, a zealous member of Trinity Church, inherited a small part of the original Gregson property by direct descent. Whereupon he evidently purchased the rest of the property and obtained a quit claim from all the Gregson heirs and so established a clear title. In 1765 he sold this land to the Wardens for "two hundred and seventy one pounds five shillings lawful money received to my full satisfaction of Timo. Bonticue and Isaac Doolittle Church Wardens & Christopher Kelby & Stephen Mansfield Vestrymen of Trinity Church in said New Haven and the rest of the members of the said Episcopal Church . . . a certain piece or parcel of land containing one Acre & half more or less . . . Scituate & Lying at a place Called Gregson Corner in the Town platt in said New Haven bounded Northerly on the Market place or highway Eastwardly on highway or town Street Southerly by land in possession of Saml. [14/15] Cook & Westwardly by land in possession of Ralph Isaacs together with the dwelling house barn & other buildings thereon."
This land was held for nearly one hundred years with little or no return from it, as an endowment for the church. How far it was from being a free gift anyone who will compute the compound interest upon $1,355 for one hundred years at 7 or 8 per cent. can easily determine. And also how much wisdom and self sacrifice was called for in holding this property. The old leases show some return but nothing to justify the expenditure.
Through the kindness of E. S. Nettleton an accurate map of this property is given.
NOTE.—It is interesting to notice that Center Church was also given a similar "Home Lot" on the corner of Chapel and College Sts. by the Rev. William Hook. This lot was alienated in 1721 by a perpetual lease.
One Hundred and Twenty-six Consecutive Years
OF SERVICE BY THREE RECTORS
DOCTOR HUBBARD, DOCTOR CROSWELL, DOCTOR HARWOOD
The year 1767, in which Rev. Bela Hubbard became rector, marks the beginning of the period of continuity in the life of our parish.
From this time for more than a century and a quarter the rectorship of Trinity Parish was held by three men in unbroken succession, except for a period of two years following the death of Dr. Hubbard. [There is no record of Henry Whitlock's election as rector, although he is called rector by courtesy.]
This is a circumstance unparalleled in the history of the Diocese of Connecticut and of the first significance in the history of our parish.
What were the characters of the three men who guided it during 126 of its 163 years of organic life?
Drs. Hubbard, Croswell and Harwood were men of diverse gifts of mind and character. All possessed a nobility of character and loftiness of ideals which, apart from their intellectual qualities, secured to them inevitably a position of leadership in the community, and each was a striking example of single-hearted devotion to the service of Christ through the instrumentality of the Episcopal Church; but each served Christ and the Church in different fashions, and according to those powers which constituted his own strongly marked personal character.
Dr. Hubbard's pastorate covered the troublesome times of the Revolutionary War, when the Episcopal Clergy were objects of dislike and suspicion on account of their almost unanimous allegiance to the Crown.
The lapse of a century furnishes hardly too long a period to see their attitude in its proper perspective. They had all been ordained in England and as part of their ordination vows had [19/20] taken a solemn oath of allegiance to the King, and generally they held that the revolt of the colonies did not absolve them from this oath; but many of them by lack of discretion made themselves flagrantly obnoxious to their fellow citizens—as for example the "Noble Confessor," as he was styled, John Beach of Newtown, who declared that he would pray for the King "until the rebels cut his tongue out."
DOCTOR HUBBARD
Dr. Hubbard was of a different temper. Though bound in conscience by his vows, his tact and discretion enabled him to adhere to them without arousing violent opposition, and when it was decided that as prayers for the King could not be used it was best to discontinue the use of the Prayer Book rather than mutilate the service, Dr. Hubbard cheerfully acquiesced. [The following interesting document was found not many years ago among the papers of Rev. Wm. Clark, Rector of St. Paul's Church, Dedham, Mass. "At a Convention of the clergy of the Chh of England in the Colony of Connectucut, at the house of Mr. Hubbard in New Haven, on Tuesday, the 23d of July in the year 1776. It was voted, that the following mode of public worship should be carried out in their respective churches. 1st Singing. 2dly a chapter out of the old Testament. 3rdly Psalms of the Day, out of the Old Testament. 4thly Some Commentary—5thly a Psalm, 6thly a Sermon, and lastly, Part of the 6th Chap'r of St. Math'w, ending with the Lord's Prayer all kneeling.—The Blessing."]
But the qualities of his character that made his influence powerful in his parish and the community were preeminently those of charity and human sympathy, which made him the friend of every man regardless of creed or race, expressed by a lifelong, assiduous devotion to the needs of his parishioners.
When the yellow fever visited New Haven as a fearful scourge in 1795 and many fled to escape it, Dr. Hubbard's ministrations to the sick were fearless and unceasing. "The noble disinterestedness, the perfectly self-sacrificing spirit which he manifested during that scene of distress and desolation, rendered his name fragrant with other denominations beside his own. His remarkably benevolent face was only a faithful reflection [20/21] of the qualities of his heart. Though not greatly distinguished as a preacher his sermons were well wrought and commonly devoted to the inculcation of some moral duty. In his manner there was a solemnity and earnestness of manner which certified to everyone that his heart was in every word that he uttered. Not a brilliant man, he was distinguished for sound judgment and a sober view of things."
In these sentences from the pen of a classmate and lifelong friend we have a clear picture of the first of these three church worthies.
In 1811 the first assistant minister of Trinity Parish was appointed, Rev. Henry Whitlock, to, supplement the failing strength of Dr. Hubbard, who, however, continued to officiate in the pulpit until the illness preceding his death, December 6, 1812.
Mr. Whitlock was a man highly esteemed as pastor and an eloquent preacher. He, however, withdrew because of ill health in less than two years and died at the, age of 37.
At the beginning of Dr. Hubbard's ministry there were about 100 persons in Trinity Parish out of a population of 1,500. At its close the parish is estimated at 130 families comprising perhaps 500 persons of a population of 7,000.
Their house of worship was still the original building on Church street below Chapel, capable of seating, as originally planned, 150 and with the side galleries (built about 1798), perhaps 250.
An estimate of the character and influence of Dr. Hubbard is based on scanty material. The bare records of the parish register, which begin at Easter, 1777, an eloquent funeral sermon by Mr. Whitlock and a page of personal recollections in the "Annals of the American Pulpit," from which we have quoted, together with a few scattering notices, comprise the list.
Scarcely a line from his own pen, nor any of his sermons, are extant.
DOCTOR CROSWELL
With Dr. Croswell it is far different. Obituaries in sermons and newspapers are full and contemporary records are abundant, but chiefly his diary, extending from 1821 to 1858 and amounting to nearly 5,000 pages of manuscript, affords material for a picture of his character such as can be had of few other men.
[23] He was preeminently a man of affairs, not given to introspection, but such a record necessarily contains frequent bits of self-revelation of the frankest kind. To form a just estimate of him in comparison with other men, we should remember this difference between external and internal evidence. The diary has never been published. It came into the possession of the late Edward C. Beecher, and was by him given to Yale University with the proviso that it should be open to inspection only by special permission. Professor F. B. Dexter by his own statement is the only person living who has ever read it through, and he has transcribed parts of it and in January of this year presented a paper to the New Haven Historical Society which, when published, will be the only record of it accessible to the public.
It was evidently undertaken as a record of Dr. Croswell's daily round of parish duty. It reveals him as a man of strenuous and incessant activity, a strong intellect which made him influential in the affairs of the Church outside the parish, given to hasty judgments sometimes harshly expressed, but without either prejudice or pride of intellect and ready to retract an erroneous opinion. Possessed of a saving sense of humor, he never took himself or his achievements too seriously. In fact he was oblivious of himself to a degree which can only be accounted for by innate modesty and utter absorption in his pastoral work. As an example his diary contains an account of the Commencement at Trinity, then Washington College, in 1831 without any allusion to the fact that he then and there received the degree of Doctor of Divinity.
In short, he was intensely human, and this combination of qualities supported by a vigorous intellect made him inevitably a power in the community. If he had a trait which should be set down as a radical fault it was a conservatism which made him distrustful of almost every movement of progress in society and intolerant of all forms of doctrine and worship other than the Episcopal. He commits to his diary the most unreserved disapproval of movements for promotion of foreign missions, the Bible Society, total abstinence, the rights of Indians and the abolition of slavery; in which last, it may be noted, he agreed with his nearest clerical neighbor, Dr. Leonard Bacon.
[25] This attitude of mind is explained in part by the fact that the age was conservative. All these movements made their way by the efforts of a few enthusiasts against the judgment of the community. It is also explained in Dr. Croswell's case by his utter absorption in his work as a parish priest. Anything which did not bear on that did not interest him and anything that interfered with it was an abomination to him. When the idea of a school conducted on Sunday for the religious instruction of the children of the parish presented itself to him, he put it in operation at once and the Sunday School of Trinity Parish was among the earliest in the country. Though he was fond of society and mingled freely with his parishioners, any formal entertainment or public function not of a religious nature he- abhorred as taking him from his parish work. Witness such entries as this: "Spent the evening at Mrs. ——. Pleasant enough, but the time thrown away." "Oct. 9, 1821, the day of the Annual Fair and Cattle Show. Was asked to join in the procession and attend on the Exercises at the meeting house and afterward to dine with the Society. It was a great sacrifice of feeling and convenience but I attended."
This jealousy of any distraction from parochial duties rendered him impatient of the labor of sermon writing though he wrote with force and elegance as his diary testifies; and as he was unwilling to deliver anything imperfect in form and therefore never preached extemporaneously, he often adapted old sermons to new uses with great ingenuity and success. For example:
"Friday, December 4, 1829. Tried, in vain, to set myself about sermons—but finally was obliged to select two from my old stock, of which the number is so large, and embracing so many topics, that I find it difficult to strike out a new one."
"Saturday, February 25, 1832. Not having time to finish a sermon, resorted to my pigeon-holes, and found a substantial old sermon, which had not been preached in eight years. Let them remember this, if they can."
"Saturday, May 5, 1832. Went to work in the morning, and took an old sermon, and ripped off the collar and wristbands; that is, rigged it out with a new text, introduction and conclusion, and intend to try it to-morrow:"
[27] Dr. Croswell's parochial labors, which filled his life, deserve more extended notice than the limits of this article permit. The records of individual days present a monotonous regularity but taken by thousands they form a monument of imposing dimensions. It was his custom to rise at 4 o'clock and the ordinary business hours of every day were available and uniformly used for ministering to the sick and afflicted. His home was open at all times to his parishioners and they resorted to it habitually and in great numbers. He was not only the minister of religion in their homes but their trusted adviser on practical matters of all sorts. "He was often called on, for instance," says Mr. Dexter, "as the diary testifies, to draft a new will, to write a troublesome business letter, to make peace with an unruly servant, to plan a new house, or church, or to make a refractory chimney draw. In his conception of the Christian ministry, here lay his strength and his especial call to service. To this work he consecrated in a characteristically matter-of-fact way all his powers of mind and body; he had no ambition for place or power in any wider sphere; but in his own province he brooked no interference and. allowed no rival."
He died in harness, after a few days' illness, March 13, 1858, in his 80th year, deeply lamented by all the community, irrespective of creed.
He was installed on Sunday, January 1, 1815, and during his ministry of 43 years the parish increased more rapidly than at any period: before or since, rising from about 130 families in 1815 to nearly 800 in 1845, when St. Paul's became a separate parish.
DOCTOR HARWOOD
In contrast to Dr. Croswell, the man of affairs, his successor, Dr. Edwin Harwood, was the scholar, exemplifying more perfectly than almost any of his contemporaries in the Church the qualities of the philosophical mind.
He came to the rectorship of Trinity in 1859, at the age of 37, in the full maturity of his remarkable mental powers, which ripened early as is shown by the fact that he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in his native city at the age of 18.
[28] He was particularly fortunate in the wise range of his intellectual opportunities, in all of which his active mind found benefit and pleasure.
He grew up under the influence of Bishop White, "the Legislator and Sage of the Church," prepared for college under a teacher of rare enthusiasm and ability in the classics, studied in college under Henry Reed, a brilliant disciple of Wordsworth, and entered Andover Theological Seminary with the intention of preparing for the Presbyterian ministry. Andover was then at the summit of its great reputation and its pupils were as remarkable as its teachers, and both teachers and pupils stimulated the sensitive mind of Harwood to a high degree.
He soon became interested in the great controversies of the Oxford Movement and the Tübingen School which then were ushering in a new era of thought in Europe, and he now began the study of German philosophy and theology, which he was among the first in this country to take up and which he prosecuted zealously for the remainder of his life. In two years his studies produced a radical change in his theological opinions. He removed to the Union Seminary in New York and on graduation in 1844 was ordained deacon of the Episcopal Church. From this time on, a succession of events offered unusual opportunities for intellectual development, from all of which he profited to the full. These included the rectorship of the Church of the Incarnation in New York, where he enjoyed the intimate friendship of Dr. Muhlenberg, called the greatest presbyter of the Episcopal Church, and a year in Italy which roused him to a passion of enthusiasm for its classical literature and art. Returning, he served for five years as professor of New Testament and Mediaeval Church History in the Divinity School at Middletown, years which were filled with unremitting study and made him a profound and erudite scholar of Mediaeval Church History.
When he came from Middletown to New Haven in 1859 he had few equals among the clergy of the Episcopal Church, whether in vigor of intellect, scholarship or breadth of vision.
He was profoundly interested in questions of church policy and took a position of leadership in the councils of the Church during a period when wise leadership was sorely needed. At the meeting of the Evangelical Alliance in New York in 1873, the attitude of Bishop Cummings of Kentucky gave rise to a [28/29] controversy which bade fair to cause serious calamity to the Church. In this crisis it was proposed by Dr. Harwood that a Congress of the Episcopal Church be formed for the discussion of questions of church policy, somewhat similar to the Evangelical Alliance, which was an interdenominational gathering of theologians and scholars from Europe and America. From Dr. Harwood's proposition arose the Church Congress whose first meeting effected an amicable settlement of the controversy over Bishop Cummings and whose biennial meetings since then have become landmarks of the progress of the Church. From that time the Church recognized in Harwood and Washburn the leading Broad Churchmen of the country.
The habits of philosophical study and the attention given to the broad interests of the Church made the routine of sermon writing distasteful to Dr. Harwood, as it was for a different reason to his predecessor. He met the difficulty, not by revisions and adaptation, but by extempore preaching—of a kind, sometimes, which Dr. Croswell would have characterized as slovenly, but into these addresses there would often come an allusion which revealed like a lightning flash a broad landscape of history; or if his theme suggested it he would launch, without premeditation, into a disquisition which eclipsed his text and revealed to those who could appreciate it his breadth of scholarship and depth of philosophic thought.
Such preoccupations with scholarship and absorption in questions of statesmanship were evidently incompatible with the minute discharge of the duties of the parochial office, nor could the needs of a city parish with a mixed population be met in the same way that Dr. Croswell met the needs of a homogeneous people in a small town. These new conditions have been met by the wise choice of assistants to the rector and by the development of the Parish House as the center of Church life. During the latter part of Dr. Harwood's rectorship the work of the parish was taken up with such enthusiasm by the Rev. Harry Nichols that the rector was freed from a burden which both advancing years and his temperament made too heavy for him. The affection of their parishioners for both men was sincere and enduring but it rested on different grounds. While for the younger man it was based on intimate personal relations, for the elder it rested on the appreciation of his services to the Church as a scholar [29/30] and statesman, of his catholic spirit and of the moral elevation of his character; and it was strengthened in his later years by sympathy for his suffering in the death of all his six children and his wife, and admiration for the serenity and fortitude with which he endured these crushing bereavements.
But with all the frankness and cordiality of his relations to his parishioners there were few with whom he was on terms of intimate friendship. In the deep things of the soul he had the reserve of a sensitive and introspective spirit, and intellectually he had the aloofness attendant on the habit of intense concentration of thought upon great themes—the loneliness of the philosophic mind.
