THE FIRST FOUR PASTORS OF THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF COVENTRY 
BY Dr. Sherrod Soule

(Written for the 225th Anniversary Celebration, Sept. 19, 1937)

Some years ago a beloved professor of mine in Amherst College visited me in search of information on what, were the religious conditions in the early days and what the ancient divines thought and preached about. He suspected that doctrine was the chief element of discussion and imagined that most ministers believed that the large portion of the people were pointed toward perdition.

On this occasion it seemed profitable and pleasurable to portray pen- portraits of your first four pastors whose periods of service pract­ically covered almost completely the first century of this church. Per­haps by this we can secure somewhat of a personal acquaintance and gain a human contact and learn what manner of men they were. We can realize the foundations they laid, on which the long line of successors have builded and appreciate the heritage handed down which we should preserve and promote.

I. Your first pastor was REV. JOSEPH MEACHAM.  He was a native of Enfield this state (1685) and a graduate of Harvard (1710) for at that time Yale had hardly got into her stride. His lineage and early life are unrecorded. This must have been his first pastorate, for with an allow­ance of an interim period of time to study divinity we find him ordained and settled here in 1714. The inference clearly shows that he was a man of ability both faithful and consecrated. He served 30 and 8 years and fell on sleep at the not advanced age of 67. He rests in the God's Acre of this town and a portion of his epitaph reads: "A faithful and painful pastor" You can put your interpretation on the puzzling word but I suggest pains-taking as a synonym. But it adds:"He was a man of God fervent in prayer zealous and plain in preaching, sincere in reproving, holy and prudent in conversation, a kind husband, tender father, sincere friend, a lover of souls.   Fired with ye labor of ye Word, his ardent soul bent its flight to Jesus and dropped ye body to rest here till Jesus come, in the 67th yr. of his age.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about him is the time of his marriage and the maiden he married. We must make a detour in our route via Deerfield, Mass. and it even carries up into Canada.

Many of you if not most are more or less familiar with the features of the Deerfield capture and massacre. Rev. John Williams was the pastor and in 1704 a force of 300 French and Indians, largely the latter, attacked the town and the home of Dr. Williams. He was bound with strong cords and two of his children and a negro domestic were murdered before his own eyes. The rest of the family, save the eldest son, Eleazar who was away to school or college spared to serve 32 years as first pastor of the church in Mansfield (1710-1742)… The rest, as I started to say, set out on that long laborious march of 300 miles to Canada. Mrs. Williams, who had become a mother a few days previously, fell and unable to proceed was dispatched by the single blow of an Indian Tomahawk. Twenty other prisoners were likewise served. It is comforting to state that on reaching Canada Mr. Williams and the survivors of his family were treated with courtesy and consideration. Strenuous efforts were made by his Indian captor to convert him to Roman­ism and in his seal as a missionary he threatened death by tomahawk if Mr. Williams would not cross himself and kiss the crucifix. He did not deny his faith and the threat was not carried out.

There were two daughters, Eunice and Esther, the former was at the tender age of eight and was converted to Romanism, adopted into the tribe, wore the Indian garb, forgot the English language and married an Indian. She refused to return and remain in civilization saying that she might lapse into Protestantism and endanger her immortal soul.

Esther the other sister was older (15 years) and she was grounded in the faith of her fathers. She was carried to Quebec and educated there possibly in a Convent but not converted to its faith.  She returned to New England and married your first minister and bore him eight children and died two years before her husband. What tales she could and may have told to the growing, group of olive plants around the hearth!

During the latter period of Mr. Meacham's pastorate the whole colony was distracted and divided by the excesses following the preaching of Whitefield and the enmities resulting from the split of the Separatists. Additions to the church in those times were dependent largely upon reviv­als for Bushnell with his remarkable volume "Christian Nurture" was far in the future. But to the credit of Pastor Meacham he instituted the study of the Catechism in the common schools and it continued for a century.

In 1735 there was "a season of refreshing from on high” as then called. Its effect I happened to find in an ancient volume published a century ago and quoting an item reported even a century earlier. It was an account of Revivals in Connecticut written by the famous Jonathan Edwards. I have the courage to quote at my own risk:

"There was also the last Spring and Summer (1735) a wonderful work of God carried on at Coventry under the ministry of Rev. Mr. Meacham. I had opportunity to converse with some of the Coventry people who gave me a very remarkable account of the surprising change that appeared in the most rude and vicious persons there."

This must be received as second hand testimony, not of your minister but from those of your own household. In that day the dividing line be­tween the sheep and the goats was distinctly determined. I rather question whether the depravity was quite as total as this indicates.

II. After the death of Mr. Meacham seven years elapsed before you settled your second minister, REV. OLIVER NOBLE.  His stay was short, scarcely two years and I cannot learn the why and the wherefore. He was born in nearby Hebron, 1730. Graduated from Yale at the age of twenty-four and two years later was ordained here.

Surely he did not lack academic and theological preparation. Possibly his twenty-six years was too contrasting to the ripe age of sixty-seven of his predecessor. His later life revealed a minister of ability and acceptability for he held two excellent pastorates in Mass. and N. H. covering thirty years, twenty-one in one and nine in the other when he died at the age of fifty-eight. Three able discourses of his were published on subjects of note.

Now when we come to the next two on our list we confront doctrinal and theological differences.

III. The  third pastor, JOSEPH HUNTINGTON D.D., was the most notable of the quartette. He came from a distinguished family and there was an aris­tocratic caste in the Congregational Clergy of Conn, and he enhanced the same and his children carried on.

He was born in the town of Windham in the parish of Scotland (which has since become a town) in 1735. There were some eight or ten children more or less in the family and the father, a farmer and clothier, was put to it to render support. He was religious and rigid in parental authority and the boys had to wait until their majority to secure a liberal education by their own efforts.

An older son than Joseph," by name Samuel, was apprenticed in the trade of a cooper but his "brilliant mind went beyond barrels and by self study became a lawyer of distinction and Judge of Superior and Supreme Courts of Conn., Lieut. Governor and Governor twelve years, delegate to the Con­tinental Congress and President of the same and was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Four brothers became clergymen and  served their calling all their lives in their own respective par­ishes and three of the same were Yale graduates.

Joseph, the subject of this sketch, was demanded "by his father to follow the paternal trade of clothier and he had to do so until he was twenty-one. But his pastor, the Rev. Ebenezer Devotion, discerned that he was a lad of parts and instructed him in academic and theological studies and encouraged him, though advanced in age, to attend Yale College and he entered at an advanced standing and graduated with high honors in 1762. (27 yrs old).

In less than a year he was ordained and installed over this church (June 29, 1765).  He soon took for his bride the daughter of his beloved pastor Rev. Mr. Devotion and with whom he had been brought up as boy and girl together, after seven years of happy wedded life she died leaving him with three children and by his second wife nine children were born, an even dozen.

It was no easy matter to keep such a quiver full of arrows comfort­ably barbed and feathered. His brother, Samuel, just noted, had married also a daughter of Rev. Mr. Devotion but no children had blessed the union and they asked in pity and petition for a son and daughter of the first marriage to solace their childless state. As their fathers were brothers and the mothers sisters it was a happy agreement. The son a graduate of Yale migrated westward where he became Justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio and Governor of the State. The daughter married Rev. Dr. Edward Dorr Griffin, Prof, in Andover Theological Seminary, Pastor of Park Church, Boston, and the distinguished President of Williams College 1821-37.

So much for the Huntington line and lineage and only a tithe has been told.  Joseph Huntington who served here 31 years was an able preacher and an excellent scholar, greatly beloved. He adorned his profession and took a prominent position in consociation, County and commonwealth.

When Rev. Dr. Eleazar Wheelock took his school from Columbia (then called Lebanon Crank) to New Hampshire and founded Dartmouth College and its first President died, Mr. Huntington was favored as his successor and seemed the most likely candidate. The college made overtures to him for the office but for some reason unknown did not result in his election. The institution out of respect, and possibly as a substitute for his dis­appointment, conferred upon him the deserved degree of Doctor of Divinity and elected him as trustee of the college.

When he came to this pastorate things material and spiritual were at low ebb. The ancient meeting house was in sad shape and the member­ship meager.   His ordination service was held out of doors, but whether the sanctuary was too small to accommodate the congregation or too dilapidated to be safe is not known.

Early he urged with earnestness the project of a new sanctuary and the parishioners responded generously and heartily and soon a new church edifice was erected at no small cost and it was one of the best houses of public worship in the state.

Religion was in a sad state. The leaven of the Whitefield preaching and the clash with the Separatists lingered and now was added the infidelic influence of the French Revolution which seeped or swept through this country. In spite of the ability of Dr. Huntington there were no revivals and few accessions during his ministry, and the membership at its close numbered but 51.  It has been diagnosed as either his reaction against revivals or the influence of his doctrinal beliefs not then discovered. We find four records of infant baptism, not a few in number, revealing that he believed in the Covenant of Christian Nurture.

Eight discourses on notable occasions found their way into print. Sometime near his close of life he wrote an article "Calvinism Improved”. It needed improvement and since [then] it has been done, but then the system was like Uzzahs Ark, dangerous to touch. This article he kept from the eye of the world during his life and it was brought to light after his death. It contained a vigorous defense of the doctrine of Universal Sal­vation. The treatise was afterward published and occasioned great sur­prise and received various public protests among whom was a pamphlet from the pen of Dr. Nathan Strong, pastor of the Center Church in Hartford, a native of this town by the way. Mr. Huntington held for the most part to the system of Calvinism but maintained that the atonement of Christ was not only sufficient but efficient for all mankind.

Probably his doctrine today would not ruffle or roil the rivers of religion. Many of us do indulge in what Cannan Farrar called the-"larger hope". We hope if not here but hereafter all hearts- even if they have to pass through punishment and probation- will turn to God and He like the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son will welcome them home. We, or at least myself, do not believe that God will destroy the freedom of the will in man and compel his conversion if his soul is set against Salvation and "sold into sin". But I believe God will save all who are worth saving and willing to be saved. We do not make it the sole and special doctrine of our denomination yet we do not define so distinctly the hereafter nor localize Hades nor gauge its temperature as being as torrid as of yore.

The article aforementioned did not have a wide circulation, for the majority of the copies came into the possession of a loving daughter who consigned them to the flames, who evidently preferred Calvinism pure and simple to "Calvinism Improved".

He is buried in the God’s Acre of this parish, falling on sleep in the 60th year of his age and the 32nd year of his ministry. There is an item in Barber’s Connecticut Historical Collections which has a saving sense of humor reprinted from the American Murcury [sic] May 2nd 1785.

"By authentic information from Connecticut, we learn that a few weeks since, a person on his travels through the town of Coventry in that state, stopped on a Saturday at the house of Rev. Joseph Huntington, D.D. and acquainted the Doctor that he had been preaching at Susquehannah for a considerable time, was so unfortunate as to be driven from his possessions there by the Indians - that his property was destroyed by them - that he was then bound for the state of Massachusetts, where he had some friends residing, and at the same time begged charity. The Doctor, who is by no means a stranger to acts of hospitality, was very liberal and charitable to the clergyman, invited him to stay and spend the Sabbath, as there would be an impropriety in his traveling the succeeding day: which invitation the stranger accepted. The Doctor then requested his brother clergyman to assist him in the duties of his function; but he objected, and said that his clothes were not suffic­iently decent to appear in the pulpit.  In order to obviate this diff­iculty, the Doctor offered him a suit of clothes which he had not long since received from the tailor, and desired him to try them on, which he did, and found they suited very well. The objection then being removed, the clergyman accordingly agreed to assist the Doctor the succeeding day, and desired to be by himself that evening to study his discourse.  A fire was then made in his bed chamber, where he repaired with his new garb, at the same time acquainting the Doctor that he must study until late at night, and hoped no noise he made would disturb the repose of the family. Sunday morning came, the adroit clergy­man was sent for the breakfast; but to the great surprise of the family, he was not to be found; for during the night the lad taken his exit, not forgetting the garment so well suited to

his clerical dignity, and leaving behind him the following select and well adapted text, prefixed at the top of the paper intended for his sermon: "Ye shall seek me and shall not find me, and where I am, thither ye can­not come." - John 7:34."

The epitaph on Dr. Huntington monument where he now rests with many of his flock reads as follows: "He was an eminent divine and laborious minister; an affectionate pastor and friend.  He was considered in the churches as a pattern of learning and illustrious example of extensive charity and was much improved as a councillor [sic] and peacemaker. Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called Children of God"

IV. In less than a year the church called the comparitively [sic] young theologue of 30 years ABIEL ABBOT later adorned with the degree of D.D. He was born in Wilton, N.H. of fine parents who were of the strictest sect of Calvinism and brought up their children in the nurture of the same. After a course in Phillips Academy he entered Harvard, graduating at the age of nineteen with high reputation, without incurring a fine or censure as to character and with an excellent record as a finished class­ical scholar. He studied divinity under an old school minister and his theological studies were of the conservative sort. Previously he had been a tutor in his Alma Mater and Assistant Principal of his own Phillips Academy. After his licensure, the following five years he was a bird of passage preaching in fifteen places either as a supply or a candidate sometimes called but declined. He was a home missionary in Maine for five months.

In January 1795 he came here by invitation as a candidate and served eight Sabbaths and was requested to continue. But being of a liberal temperament he was influenced by the Unitarian thought and movement then rife in and about Boston. While here he attended a ministers meeting in Marlborough and discovered that the prevalent attitude of the pastors disclosed a doctrinal atmosphere too conservative and stifling for his own comfort.  He first declined the call to this parish and a few months later was supplying a pulpit in Lexington, Mass. and Judge Ripley on the committee of this church rode out from Boston where he was on business to hear him preach and he earnestly requested Mr. Abbot to return to Coventry. He consented and three months later received an unanimous call to this church. He hesitated because he feared his liberal beliefs would impair a peaceful pastorate. He dodged the doc­trinal danger by making his refusal on the ground that the salary of $500 would be inadequate to sustain a family comfortably. He was then a bachelor but evidently looked forward of being “a bishop with one wife." He had however captured the hearts of the people and a private additional subscription of $250 was speedily raised to increase his salary.  The ground was thus cut under his feet and he accepted.

At the Council for ordination care was taken to omit two neighboring ministers known to be vigorous for the Augustinian Calvinistic faith and Rev. Abel Fiske of Wilton, N.H. his boyhood and long time pastor and Rev. Professor Tappan of Harvard College were substituted to secure a favorable verdict.

Three prominent families in the parish invited him to make his bachelor quarters with them, possibly because they had marriageable daugh­ters. Perhaps he did not find it quite comfortable "to board around the district” when he accepted an invitation from Major Hale and stayed a year and a half  of "boarding around”.  However in a year he was a married man taking as "safety first" a wife from far off Andover, Mass. a woman of fine personal qualities.

The rest is soon told- He grew more Unitarian in belief and was doubtless influenced by the career of Rev. John Sherman a grandson of Roger Sherman who signed the Declaration of Independence and the Federal Constitution now in the limelight. Mr. Sherman evidently wanted to shift the church at Mansfield over to Unitarianism and nearly did so and was dismissed to finish his ministry in that faith. Mr. Abbot saw “the hand­writing on the wall” and to secure a dismission that would save his face asked for an increase of $100 to his salary which was first denied and expecting its refusal he would have reason for his resignation which he at once presented.

The parish at once refused to accept his resignation and voted the $100 desired. To the honor of Mr. Abbot he requested the society not to pay this extra emolument for the times were financially straitened and he wished to share the depression with his flock but it was nearly if not in full made up by voluntary subscription the chief part by the women in a donation party.

But the trouble that had begun to brew, doctors of divinity could not subdue. There were meetings of the church called by the constituency of those who were "defenders of the faith once delivered to the saints”. The church asked the advice of the local Association and it dodged the res­ponsibility by referring it to the Consociation of Tolland County, an auxiliary of the late Saybrook Platform.  An ecclesiastical Council was proposed by the church refused as denying the authority of both the Consociation and a Council.  The church asserted its Congregational heritage of Independence.

Perhaps Mr. Abbot recalled the warning of the Savior to His dis­ciples that their enemies would "deliver them up to Councils”. But the Consociation deposed him on the ground of his heretical views and though the church and its pastor denied its authority, in the interests of peace Mr. Abbot requested dismission and the pastoral relation was dissolved reluctantly by the church.

After 16 years of service he departed, became Principal of that

ancient and honorable Dummer Academy in Byfield, Mass. for seven and a

half years. Then he became a farmer for five years and supplied churches not a few.  In 1827 at the age of sixty-two he was settled in his second pastorate in Peterborough, N.H. and brought forth fruit in his old age serving twenty-one years happily and successfully though arriving at his four score years and one "the infirmities flesh is heir to" burdened him. Still he continued to serve occasionally, but being many years a widower and only one of his three daughters surviving he made his home with his son-in-law, Rev. Samuel Abbot Smith of Cambridge, Mass.  It is recorded that he lived as the "patriarch of his neighborhood, admired for his cultivated intellect, his bland manners and his genial and philanthropic spirit. He died at the age of ninety-four and at the time of his death was the oldest graduate of Harvard College which had honored him with the degree of Doctor of Divinity.

In spite of his able and fine qualities it cannot be denied that his pastoral experience here was not fruitful for this church.  At his depar­ture there were only 29 members, 8 men and 21 women about one-half the number when Dr. Huntington fell on sleep in 1795.

But apart from the doctrinal disturbance the early years of 1800 found the cause of religion in Connecticut at its lowest ebb, such are the "good old times." Meeting houses stood unused, pulpits were vacant and recruits for the ministry sadly lacking.  But close-corporation-copper-riveted-Calvinism held the fort by its faithful defenders.

Mr. Abbot today would not have been written down as a dangerous heretic. Unitarianism has not inherited the earth but the old tri-godded theology has about disappeared. We do not consider the Trinity as containing three insulated deities with contrasting natures and conflicting claims- We feel that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are the most reasonable expressions of the nature of the One God.

Heresy trials today are the birds I am thankful to say, and never altogether profitable to the truth of the Gospel for “where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty" and  "to have the mind of Christ" is paramount. We need to recall the reply of the Master when his disciples brought the report that they found a person casting out demons in the name of Jesus and he would not come into their company and conform to their code and they denounced him hotly to his face and denied him practice. Jesus calmly answered;  “Forbid him not for he who is not against me is for me."