Appendix A.

These men communicated with Mr. Pigot, for he soon made record "of his expectations of a glorious revolution of the ecclesiastics of this country." He doubtless gave the enquirers practical advice, but they probably worked their way to their conclusions by their own reading and discussions.

At Commencement in the autumn of 1722, Connecticut was startled in a way which we can hardly describe too strongly, with the announcement that Cutler, Johnson, Browne, Wetmore, and perhaps others, had declared for Episcopacy.

President Woolsey said that "greater alarm would scarcely be awakened now if the Theological Faculty of the College were to

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declare for the Church of Rome, avow their belief in transubstantiation and pray to the Virgin Mary."

Quincy, in his "History of Harvard University," writes: "This event shook Congregationalism throughout New England like an earthquake, and filled all its friends with terror and apprehension." Dr. Mather in his prayer spoke of "the Connecticut apostacie."

There were conferences in the college library under the direction of Governor Saltonstall, who was counted well versed in the matter. Cutler, Johnson, Browne, Wetmore, persisted in their decision. Eliot, Hart, Whittlesey went no further. The Puritan historian represents them as convinced of the validity of their ordination by the arguments of the Governor. The decision of the four first named, to seek ordination in the Church of England, gave the Episcopal Church an assured place in the colony. The news must have been more than the scattered Churchmen could readily believe. The decision meant for the four men great sacrifice, and must have the sincere respect of the right-minded.

Two of these men were from the village of West Haven,-Johnson, the minister; Browne, the college tutor, graduate of Yale in the class of 1714, as was also Wetmore. Johnson was from 1716 to 1719 a tutor of three lower classes, and Browne was associated with him as a tutor for one year.

In 1715 the long-continued efforts of "the Westsiders," so called, or "West-farmers," had been successful, and permission of the First Ecclesiastical society of New Haven, to form the West Haven Congregational parish, had been obtained. Up to that time the New Haven people had been unwilling to have "the Westsiders" leave them. In 1719 the Congregational society was duly incorporated, and Johnson became the first minister.

Near the college, he remained a diligent student in its library. The friendship between Johnson and Browne must have been very close. Together they sailed for England in November, 1722, and together they were ordained deacons and priests, March, 1723, in the old church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, which looked down over what has been long known as Trafalgar square.

Two weeks from the day of his ordination to the priesthood, Browne died of smallpox. He was buried in the church of St. Dunstan-in-the-West, the old church near where the Strand takes the name of Fleet street. So a man from whom much was reasonably hoped, a man whose name ought ever to be remembered with reverence in West Haven, was lost to the Church on the earth. Johnson wrote of him in his diary: "I have lost the best friend in

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the world,-a fine scholar and a brave Christian." President Stiles, writing of Browne, Johnson, Cutler and Wetmore, says that Browne was "a gentleman of the most superior sense and learning of the four."

It is my hope that some day in this church there may be a memorial tablet for Rev. Daniel Browne, who was so early lost to the Church on the earth. He died a stranger in a strange land, and his body was laid under the church of St. Dunstan-in-the-West, where the never-ending crowd is passing between St. Paul's cathedral and Temple Bar through London's busiest street. I could find no memorial of him there. He died before he could use among his own people here in West Haven the ministry which it had cost him so much hardship and sacrifice to obtain. It becomes us to see to it that in his own parish and in the Diocese which reasonably expected so much from him, he is reverently remembered. Perhaps from Dr. Johnson's words concerning his "best friend in the world," a sentence for that memorial tablet may be taken: "A fine scholar and a brave Christian."

Returning, Cutler went to Boston to spend his whole ministry, to 1765, Wetmore to Rye, to 1760, Johnson to Stratford, Pigot having gone on to Providence. Johnson officiated at West Haven regularly, although not very frequently.

Ten or fifteen families conformed to the Church of England, and the organization of the parish ought to date from 1723. Johnson was the only Church clergyman in the colony, and West Haven could claim little of his time. But there was from 1723 a considerable number of staunch Church people in West Haven. They were compelled to wait for a clergyman until they could get Johnson's successor in the West Haven Congregational Church, Rev. Jonathan Arnold.

He was a native of Haddam and graduate of the college in 1723. Early in 1725 he was ordained pastor of the Congregational church in West Haven, the people stipulating that if he should, like his predecessor, Samuel Johnson, embrace Episcopacy, the money paid to him as a settlement should be refunded.

A fear of the influence of the Episcopal Church succeeded contempt for it. The college guarded against the repetition of the experience of 1722, when they excused "Rev. Mr. Cutler from all further service as rector of Yale college," by providing that all future rectors and tutors should, before their appointment was complete, declare to the trustees, "their assent to the confession of faith owned and consented to at Saybrook, September 9, 1708, and shall

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particularly give satisfaction to them of the soundness of their faith in opposition to Arminian and prelated corruptions, or any other of dangerous consequence to the parity and peace of our churches." I believe that this statute was not repealed until the end of the century.

Parishes, like that of West Haven, appear to have guarded themselves against the loss of money paid in the settlement of a minister. It proved a wise precaution, for in 1733 Johnson could write to the Bishop of London that Arnold was likely soon to declare for the Church of England. He received the Communion at Stratford Easter Day, 1734, was dismissed from his pastoral charge in West Haven in May or June, and in 1735 went to England for holy orders. West Haven is very likely exceptional in having the first two ministers of the Congregational church the first two ministers of the Episcopal church.

It is quite certain that Johnson, in his occasional services at West Haven, saw and influenced Arnold. Mr. Arnold returned in mid-summer, 1736, with the appointment as itinerant missionary for Connecticut of the S. P. G., with residence at West Haven, and a salary of £30 a year. He had some private means and desired no more.

Of the course of events in the West Haven Church, while they looked to Johnson for occasional services (1723-1736), or while Mr. Arnold was in residence (1736-1740), not very much can be said. Mr. Johnson's letters were filled with accounts of work in Fairfield County. The reception of the Church in Huntington, Newtown, Redding, and especially Fairfield was remarkable. To Fairfield churchmen the honor belongs of influencing the Assembly to permit churchmen to pay their money for the support of their own churches, rather than for the support of the established order. The statute of 1727 did not, however, bring as much relief as was expected, as it was apparently interpreted in favor alone of churchmen living within one mile of the church.

In 1728 Johnson wrote that those living near the parish churches were exempted from paying to the Congregational ministers, but that those scattered through the country were treated as badly as ever. In the same letter he adds that he has lately been preaching at New Haven where the college is, and has had a considerable congregation, and among them several of the scholars, who were very inquisitive about the principles of the Church. Ten churchmen offered £100 towards the building of a church. But nearly a generation was to pass before Johnson's hope of seeing a church in New Haven proper was realized.

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He had the opinion that great pains were taken in New Haven to hinder people from coming to church. It was natural that the college should remember Johnson and use influence in the town to prevent the teaching of dangerous prelatical opinions. Yale College was, however, doing good work for the Episcopal Church, giving a succession of educated men to her ministry,-Pierson, Palmer, Browne from the class of 1729. Later in the year of 1728, Johnson writes that he continues to preach with success at New Haven, but that the people will neither give nor sell them a piece of land to build a church on.

It is plain that Johnson kept a watchful eye upon Yale College, for in 1730 he writes that he has very considerable influence in it, and that a love of the Church gains greatly therein. Several graduates and some young ministers have been prevailed upon to read and are well disposed.

In a letter written by Johnson in 1731 we have a special interest because of what is said of Isaac Browne, a brother of Daniel Browne of West Haven, who died in England of smallpox immediately after his ordination. Isaac Browne graduated at Yale college, as already stated, in 1729. He was under Johnson, a teacher at Setauket, across the Sound, after graduation. He went to England for holy orders in 1733. He ministered in New Jersey until the American Revolution, and thereafter removed to Nova Scotia, where he died in 1787 in the midst of poverty and affliction. As a West Haven man, he is to be especially remembered here.

We may believe that if Johnson was able to preach only once a quarter in West Haven, he still kept close knowledge of his old people. Although the upper road was the most direct for him in his journeys to New Haven, he would naturally turn aside to see the Church people in West Haven. New Haven was ecclesiastically attached to West Haven.

No sooner was Mr. Arnold in residence in West Haven than he began to officiate in neighboring towns. In September, 1736, he was at Milford and he appears to think that the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments, and reading the Scripture in Divine Service without comment, were never known there before. He had a "numerous auditory, most attentive and desirous to be instructed in the worship of the Church of England," but from among the poorer of the people.

In 1737 Mr. Arnold visited Waterbury and Derby, administering the Sacraments, preaching and encouraging the Church families. In Derby, in 1738, the deed of the lot upon which the church was to be

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built was made in his name. So from West Haven the missionary of the Church went to lay foundations in towns destined to be much larger than his own. This little church is in a sense the mother-church in New Haven County and to be associated with Stratford in the affection of Connecticut churchmen.

The most dramatic incident, in what must have been the rather prosaic life of Mr. Arnold, was his attempt to assert his claim, for the Church in New Haven, to the so-called Gregson land opposite the New Haven public Green. He had obtained the title to it as he supposed, when in England, by a deed given by William Gregson to himself. The land was given for the erection of an Episcopal church, and as glebe land for a minister. Mr. Arnold undertook to plough this land in the autumn of 1738, and so to assert his right. The established order regarded Mr. Arnold's title as imperfect and plainly had no desire to see an Episcopal church built facing the New Haven town Green. "Arnold's attempt was resisted by a mob of students and townpeople." Mr. Arnold, his servants, and his oxen are reported to have been beaten and driven from the field.

Mr. Arnold was not the most discreet of men, and possibly began his undertaking in the wrong way. The Connecticut clergy sent to England an account of the way in which the people, in a riotous and tumultuous manner, beat his cattle and abused his servants, threatening both his and their lives to that degree, that he was obliged to quit the field. One would like to have seen a New Haven mob in 1738 with Yale students as the leaders, when Dr. Mansfield, Gov. Livingston, Dr. Hopkins, author of the Hopkinsian theology, General David Wooster, etc., were undergraduates.

Mr. Arnold left West Haven in 1740 and went to Staten Island. His ministry was not altogether peaceful. He lacked stability and discretion and his last days were not his best. The common statement that he lost his life on his way to England seems unwarranted.

His successor at West Haven in 1740 was Rev. Theophilus Morris, an Englishman by birth, unable to adapt himself fully to his new surroundings. He gives a good account of his parishioners. They received him with great pleasure, fearing that they were to be left without a missionary. He adds "I must further say of them, that they are the most versed in casuistry of any people I ever met, I mean of those that can only read English. The Archbishop of Canterbury's treatise on Church government, and the late Archbishop of Dublin's Collection of Cases, with several other books, have been read here to good purpose; and what they are further to be valued for is, that their conforming to the Church has exposed them to many inconveniences and oppressions."

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Casuistry would appear to have been then a subject of more popular interest than in more recent times. Mr. Morris thought his parish large enough for a diocese. He went up the valley of the Naugatuck, as his predecessor, Arnold, had done. He laid foundations at North Haven and Wallingford and at Simsbury. Ebenezer Thompson of West Haven, Yale 1733, afterwards 1743, ordained in England and for more than thirty years the Church clergyman at Scituate, Mass., assisted Mr. Morris in his missions as lay reader.

Mr. Morris remained in West Haven and in the colony but two years. He placed himself in opposition to the New England clergy in their desire to have Johnson made the Bishop of London's Commissary for the sake of order and discipline. He could not enter into the life of the people as the ministers born in the colony could. But in his short ministry here the little church was built and carried far towards completion.

I believe that the title to the land where the church stands, and where for many generations the dead were buried, was taken in his name. The original subscription list, carefully preserved, with the statements of the amounts of rum, molasses, mutton, etc., required at the various stages of building, is remarkable. If the tower of the church, the chancel, the side aisle and about one-fourth of the west end of the nave were taken away, the church would stand in its original form.

It remains the oldest of our church buildings in the Diocese, and it is to be hoped that it will no longer stand to remind churchmen of the time in which the fathers bore their testimony and laid the foundations upon which the Church in Connecticut rests.

To build even this small structure must have cost the little company of West Haven Church people much in the way of self-sacrifice. When it stood ready for use for worship in the old way, there must have been as great thankfulness here as when any of the nobler churches of the Diocese have been finished. When a grander church stands here in the great suburb of the great city, let men take away, if they will, tower, chancel, side aisle, but let the church as it stood in the beginning remain. Connecticut people are not as a rule overcharged with sentiment, but Connecticut churchmen ought to retain some sentiment in regard to this old church in the mother parish of New Haven County.

In this year of 1742, the clergy, in petitioning the Bishop of London to appoint Johnson as his commissary, reported fourteen churches built or building, seven clergy within the colony and more daily called for, about 2,000 adult Church people, and five or six thousand young

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and old. We reach here the time of great religious excitement. The revival associated with the great name of Jonathan Edwards, six or seven years before, had reached far beyond Northampton. But it had subsided and religious indifference again prevailed. But now in 1741-42 there came a revival which was without precedent-the great awakening in New England. It is associated with the name of Whitefield above all others. But the country was filled with exhorters and enthusiasts, and there was extravagance and excitement almost beyond belief. It was the reaction from the spiritual deadness of sixty years. The Puritan churches were thrown into controversy and discord. The old conservative people tried vainly to withstand the new enthusiasm. The "old lights" disliked the "new lights" more than they disliked the Episcopal Church, which is saying a good deal. There is no time here to speak of the wild extravagance of some of these traveling preachers, going up and down telling the clergy that they had never been converted and that they were leading their congregations straight down to hell. The outcries and bodily manifestations, as the result of the new preaching, were almost incredible. Meanwhile the Church went on her way quietly, unmoved by the excitement. She became a refuge for those who were wearied by the religious turmoil and controversy. It was the time of lengthening cords and strengthening stakes, and it was entirely creditable to her.

It must have been a blessed thing in New England between 1740 and 1750 that there was in the Episcopal Church a place where the Gospel was simply preached and the Christian life nourished. I have the impression that in these years of turmoil and confusion our Church gained greatly and took a position which would have been commanding, but for the ruin which came with the war of Independence. The Church was commending herself more and more to Connecticut people. Connecticut clergy understood their own people and were gaining a larger hearing.

Permit a reference to what happened in the West Haven Congregational church in this year of 1742. Rev. Timothy Allen was settled in 1738, a fair financial penalty for "conforming to Episcopacy" very likely being determined. He did not go that way, but being, says Dr. Trumbull, an able and zealous Calvinistic preacher, he was not pleasing to the conservative clergy of the New Haven consociation. Mr. Allen had made the imprudent remark "that the reading of the Scriptures without the concurring influence of the Spirit of God will no more convert a sinner than the reading of an old almanac." Mr. Allen regretted the ill-judged remark and offered

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his confession to the association. But they would not receive it, and dismissed him with the remark that they had blown out one new light and that they would blow them all out. Mr. Allen's new light shone no more in West Haven, but fifty-eight years after, in the year 1800, in Chesterfield, Mass., and even to the age of eighty-nine years, his light was shining.

Rev. Nathan Birdseye was settled in the West Haven Congregational church in October, 1742, and remained until 1758. He had twelve children and a small salary. It is not known that he was ever disposed to enter the Episcopal Church and so forfeit any money paid at his settlement. But other mercies than admission to the ministry of this Church were granted him. For in Northern Stratford, whither he retired, he lived to the age of 103 years and 6 months, dying in 1818, and leaving 258 descendants. It is the longest life of a Yale man as far as known.

Let me now follow the story of the West Haven church a little further. Rev. James Lyons had charge of the parish and of part of the work begun by Arnold and Morris. He was an Irishman and he found a prejudice against foreigners. His ministry was not altogether successful, and he was disposed to complain of the treatment received. Other towns were going before West Haven in importance, and the little parish must be content to be overshadowed by its children. The ministries of Dr. Mansfield, Punderson and Palmer, bring the history down to 1767.

During the long ministry of Dr. Bela Hubbard, from 1767 to 1812, West Haven made with New Haven one cure. Dr. Mansfield resided at Derby and gave to the West Haven parish a part-it is said one-third-of his time. Rev. Mr. Punderson and Rev. Mr. Palmer lived in New Haven, but for many years the importance of West Haven was relatively much greater than one would at first think. It proved very hard to establish the Episcopal Church under the shadow of Yale College. In less important towns all about the colony a foothold, and indeed, considerable strength, were earlier gained. Dr. Beardsley writes, "more than twenty churches had been built in different parts of the colony before a spade was taken to dig for the foundations of an Episcopal House of Worship in New Haven, a town, then as now, leading all others in the number of its inhabitants."

When Arnold's attempt to possess the Gregson land as the first step towards building thereon was resisted, when New Haven and Yale College combined routed him, his servants and yoke of West Haven oxen after a pitched battle, the determination to build the

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little West Haven church was made. Yet Johnson writes that at the Yale commencement in 1748 nine of our clergy were together and consulted the best things for the interest of the Church. Among the candidates for degrees that year no less than ten belonged to the Episcopal Church. Among the masters were Sturges, Leaming and Chandler. Among the bachelors, Johnson's own son, Ogilvie, and Seabury, the future Bishop. This letter has the following reference to the first Bishop of Connecticut: "Seabury" (of New London, the elder Seabury) "has a promising son, and as he designs him for the Society's service, he desires me to mention what I know of him; and as he has lived four years much under my eye, I can truly testify of him that he is a solid, sensible, virtuous youth, and I doubt not, may in due time, do good service."

It was in 1752 that the formal beginnings of the Church in New Haven proper were made. In the winter before timber was prepared to build a church 60 x 40 feet opposite the Gregson land of still disputed title, on what is now Church street, on the east side, a short distance south of Chapel street. Rev. Mr. Punderson, up to this time an itinerant missionary in Eastern Connecticut, came to take charge of the new work in New Haven and of West Haven in 1752 or 1753, and the organization of Trinity parish dates from this time. We must not suppose that Church services in New Haven before 1752 and Mr. Punderson's coming into residence were unknown. For in 1749 Johnson had written that the Church was considerably increasing in New Haven and a considerable sum had been subscribed to build a church. He doubted not that between New Haven and West Haven, a village within four miles, where already there is a neat church, there will soon be thirty or forty, or fifty families. He adds: "My younger son has read all the last fall and winter, chiefly at West Haven, and sometimes at Branford and Guilford, as well as at Ripton, but as he lives at the college, the chief place of his usefulness is there, and at West Haven." The son referred to was Samuel, who died in 1756, and not the distinguished son, William Samuel, Yale 1744, who lived until 1817. Mr. Punderson, while an itinerant missionary, writes that in September, 1750, the Sunday after Commencement, he preached in New Haven, his native town, in the State House, to a numerous assembly, notwithstanding Brother Thompson preached the same day in the church at West Haven. But Mr. Punderson was not altogether successful at New Haven. Johnson wrote of him: "Mr. Punderson seems a very honest and laborious man, yet the Church at New Haven appears uneasy and rather declining under his ministry, occasioned, I believe, partly by

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his want of politeness, and partly by his being absent so much, having five or six places under his care. I wish he was again at Groton and some politer person in his place, and another at Guilford and Branford."

Solomon Palmer succeeded Mr. Punderson and was quite ready to criticize his work, while not doing, I judge, much better. Bela Hubbard came to New Haven in 1767, and while West Haven mde a part of his cure, references to the little parish are not frequent. Other parishes have become more important and claim larger notice.

In 1771 Mr. Hubbard writes: "I have been able, thank God, with little or no interruption, to perform my Sunday duty (besides occasional week-day lectures) to a decent and sober congregation, both at New Haven and West Haven, which people, even in the opinion of dissenters, are a sober, regular and good sort of people, steady and exemplary in their attendance upon public worship, and I trust most of them make a regular progress in their holy profession. The number of families in New Haven are now, I believe, nearly one hundred, and in the parish of West Haven about thirty-five." In 1772 Mr. Hubbard wrote that he was pleased and happy in his situation, that many of dissenters came occasionally to church, that his congregation in less than five years increased one-third. "The souls, white and black, belonging to the Church in New Haven are 503, and in my church at West Haven there are 220."

Mr. Hubbard officiated regularly in West Haven, but with decreasing frequency in the latter part of his ministry, from 1791 to 1812. Services were plainly provided at times in connection with other parishes and by many clergymen. Mr. Chapin mentions the services of Rev. Mr. Beldon of Milford, 1788-9; Rev. Mr. Blakeslee of Derby, 1797. The parish records show payments for services to Bishop Jarvis in 1802-3-4. In 1805 Rev. C. White of Derby officiated one-fifth, and in 1806 one-fourth of the time. In Dr. Sprague's annals I read that "Andrew Fowler, a native of Guilford, graduated at Yale college 1783, during the last two years he was in college read prayers two Sundays in five at New Haven and the remaining three Sundays at West Haven, by request of the rector, Dr. Hubbard, and by permission of the president, Dr. Stiles." In the same volume in the sketch of Dr. Hubbard it is said that until the Revolution he divided his time equally between New Haven and West Haven. After that time until 1791 he gave but one-fourth of his time to West Haven. From 1791 his services were confined almost entirely to New Haven.

Dr. Beardsley has written: "Trinity church, New Haven, in voting a salary to the rector at the Easter meeting of 1797, allowed him

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leave of absence seven Sundays in the year, that he might officiate in West Have, on condition, however, that the church in that place pay to the vestry of Trinity parish the sum of fifty dollars for his services. This arrangement continued for quite a period, but as the vote shows, the leave of absence was not so much for the benefit of the rector as for the relief of the parish in New Haven." It is to be added, however, in regard to Dr. Hubbard, "Though his salary was for many years small" after the war cut off the stipend from England, "the liberality of his parishioners and the exemplary economy of his wife still rendered him comfortable." I suppose it impossible to determine the names of all the clergy and lay readers who maintained services in West Haven in the nearly half century that the parish made with Trinity church a cure under Dr. Hubbard. A convocation of the clergy was held in 1799 at Oyster River, a part of the parish where many Church families, especially of the name of Clarke, lived in former times. I have not been able to find record of what was done at that meeting, but one member of an old West Haven and, I judge, Oyster River Church family ought to be remembered. Rev. Richard Samuel Clarke, son of Samuel Clarke, was born in West Haven in 1737, graduated at Yale college in 1762, ordained in England in 1766. He was the Church missionary at New Milford until 1786, when with many loyalists he withdrew to New Brunswick. A ministry of twenty-five years at Gagetown and thirteen at St. Stephen, brought him to the end of his life in 1824, the oldest missionary at the time in the British (American) colonies.

During the last century the history of the West Haven parish has been marked by little that is noteworthy. From the death of Dr. Hubbard, 1812, West Haven was separated from New Haven. Mr. Chapin says that Dr. William Smith had charge of the parish until 1820 in connection with his work at Milford, but I am not quite satisfied with the statement. For in 1817 Dr. Smith was living in retirement at Norwalk, according to Dr. Beardsley, "spending his time in writing treatises on chanting and Church psalmody." Henry Ward represented the parish at Diocesan conventions in October, 1814, and June, 1816, and Major Oliver Clark at the convention in 1819, which elected Bishop Brownell. From 1820 to 1824 the church, then called Trinity, was united with East Haven and part of the time with North Haven, under Rev. Joseph Perry.

The ministry of Rev. William T. Potter followed, combinations being made in the next few years with East Haven, Hamden, Branford, Milford. There was some strength in the parish in this second decade of the century. Bishop Brownell confirmed twenty-seven

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persons April 27, 1821; four in 1825; twenty-one October 29, 1827. In 1827 there were fifty-three families, sixty-seven communicants and forty-five Sunday school scholars. But in 1830 the condition of the parish was very depressing. Death and removal had diminished numbers and sea-faring men were away from home so much that interest was broken. The little parish had come to its evil days. Services were no longer regularly maintained. The church was closed for a time and it fell into decay.

To Rev. Stephen Jewett, living at Westville, the credit of resuming the services belongs, and the date is Whit-Sunday, 1837. Mr. Jewett remained a good friend of the parish and had much to do with the restoration of the church. There was a short rectorship of Rev. Servilius Stocking, and in 1839 Rev. A. B. Chapin came to remain for ten years. He gave the parish the feeling of permanence and gradually built up its strength. In 1841, Mr. Chapin reported that the church had been repaired at an expense of about $900, making it one of "the neatest wood churches in the diocese." In 1842 Bishop Brownell says in his annual address: "The edifice called Christ Church at West Haven was erected 103 years ago, but never consecrated. Its frame work being perfectly sound, it has recently been thoroughly repaired and renovated in a very neat manner, and was duly consecrated on the 19th of May."

In 1844 Mr. Chapin reported the purchase of an organ, the church debt paid, the number of communicants doubled, and divine service celebrated on all Sundays. The parochial reports during Mr. Chapin's ministry are very full, showing the editorial instinct. They are, as a rule, hopeful although be ever recognized the limitations of the parish in respect of growth. Rev. Dr. Richardson and Rev. Mr. Whitesides had brief ministries in the parish and Rev. Henry Zell was rector from 1853-63. Then come rectorships of one or two years only, Rev. Mr. Lumsdem, Rev. Dr. Gurdon S. Coit, Rev. O. S. Prescott, Rev. Dr. J. B. Flagg, Rev. Mr. Loop, Rev. C. C. Adams. The writer was rector from 1874 to 1879-five and one-half years. Rev. E. W. Worthington was rector until 1882, Rev. Jacob Streibert until 1885. Rev. A. E. Beeman was here one year, and from 1886 to 1895, under Rev. H. B. Whitney, the parish saw large measure of prosperity. The church adorned, the new organ, the improved heating and lighting, the vested choir, the beautiful rectory, the Parish house, made this rectorship memorable. Rev. R. H. Gessner was rector from 1895 to 1900, and Rev. A. J. Gammack accepted the rectorship in 1900. The latter days of this no longer little parish are its best. Surely the hearts of many who labored here in

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the day of small things, when there was much to discourage, would rejoice if they could see what our eyes see to-day.

But my own thoughts have gone back, especially to the early days of the parish when it was the mother of many parishes. I have asked your attention to the days when a place for the Church in the Connecticut colony was made by faithful men into whose places we have come. I could hope to do no more than repeat an old story, perhaps refresh the memories of some here present. But I will hope that I have led some to feel the value and dignity of our inheritance as Connecticut churchmen. New questions and movements in theology and Church life arise to claim our attention, but we shall be poorer for forgetting the times and the work of our fathers in the Church in Connecticut. There are traditions out of that old time to be preserved. There lessons to be learned. Ours is a wider outlook, a more hopeful time in which to work. But the self-sacrifice, the diligence, the patience of Connecticut churchmen a century and one-half ago, give this church to-day her position in Connecticut.