In The Beginning || Waterbury || Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts || The Episcopal Church in Connecticut
The Episcopal Church is a part of the one church begun some two thousand years ago when Christ commissioned his Apostles to go into all the world under the guiding power of the Holy Spirit. As early as the third century, Christianity was in Britain. By the sixth century, invading tribes of Angles and Saxons had almost extinguished the British church, but a remnant survived. However, joined by a mission from Rome, the church gradually converted the barbarian invaders. Thus began the church in England through which the Episcopal Church came to America. [The Episcopal Church, Forward Movement Publications, (Cincinnati, Ohio), p. 2.]
In 1534, the Christian church in England separated itself from the jurisdiction of the pope in Rome, and Parliament named King Henry VIII “the only supreme head of the Church of England”. This separation was not intended to be a departure in faith or practice from the Roman church, but internal divisions over whether the church would remain Catholic in essence or become Protestant caused turmoil for many decades.
The Book of Common Prayer was first composed in 1549 by Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer.
When English colonists came to what is now the United States they brought the church with them and organized its temporal affairs at the same time that the government was taking form. [Ibid., p. 4.] In 1607 the Church of England was the first Protestant denomination in the British colonies of North America. There was a chaplain at the Jamestown (Virginia) settlement as early as 1607.
Adriaen Block, a Dutch navigator, in 1614 was the first European to explore Connecticut, sailing up the Connecticut River. He sailed through Long Island Sound, and it is said that he discovered the Connecticut river, and ascended it as far as Hartford. [Anderson, Joseph D. D., The Town and City of Waterbury, Vol. I, p. 78.]
Connecticut’s first European settlements took shape along the Connecticut River, which the Indians called the Quinnehtukqut, or “long tidal river.” The Dutch settled Kievit’s Hoeck — now Old Saybrook — in 1623, Windsor was founded in 1633 as an English trading post and Wethersfield followed in 1634. The three river towns banded together in 1639 to adopt the “Fundamental Orders of Connecticut”, which asserted that “the Foundation of authority is in the free consent of the people”. Often cited as the basis of the U. S. Constitution, the document gives Connecticut its nickname, “The Constitution State.” Meanwhile, the English Puritan Colony of New Haven adopted its “Fundamental Agreement,” proclaiming the Scriptures to be the supreme law in civil affairs. The first permanent settlements in Connecticut were established in 1633. The Dutch built Fort Good Hope, a trading post, along the Connecticut River at the site which would become Hartford and the English (from Massachusetts) established a post at Windsor. In 1636, the Rev. Thomas Hooker led about 100 people from Massachusetts south along the Connecticut River. They established the first organized English communities in Connecticut, near those of the Dutch, in the three river towns of Hartford, Windsor and Wethersfield.
A Connecticut law of 1644 decreed a compulsory town tax to support the town’s minister. [Nelson Rollin Burr Ph.D. The Story of the Diocese of Connecticut (Hartford: Church Missions Publishing Company, 1962), p. 7.]
A 1657 Connecticut law forbade any church organization without the permission of the neighboring churches and the General Court. [Ibid.]
As late as 1675 there were less that fifty Episcopal priests in the continental colonies, and no Episcopal Church existed in New England. [Ibid., p. 12.]
In 1687, Sir Edmund Andros, governor of New York, was appointed governor general of the dominion of New England; all previous charters were declared void. When ordered to surrender their charter, Hartford partisans put out the candles in the meeting place, stole the document and allegedly hid it in what became known as the Charter Oak. Andros ruled until the accession of William III in 1689, when the New England charters were again deemed valid.” [AAA Road Atlas, pp. 25-26.]
Circa 1700, “For seventy years the only form of church government known in the colony of Connecticut was the Congregational. The Congregational churches constituted in fact, if not theory, an “establishment” . . . In various places, however, there were persons of good repute who had been educated in the Church of England, and who had little sympathy with the rigid doctrines and discipline of the New England churches.” [Joseph Anderson, S.T.D (ed.), The Churches of Mattatuck: A Record of a Bi-Centennial Celebration at Waterbury, Connecticut, November 4th and 5th, 1891 (New Haven: The Price Lee and Adkins Co., 1892), p. 44.]
In 1657, Waterbury was known to the Indians as “Matetacoke” (land without trees). The site of the Waterbury settlement was first deeded at this time by the Indians to white men.
In 1677 a new settlement on east side of river became the present city of Waterbury.
They estimated their new home was capable of providing for 30 families at most but didn’t stay long enough to test that theory; fear of Indians drove them back home for a year or two.
When they returned in 1677, the white settlers made peace with the natives long enough to purchase a huge swath of land for 38 English pounds. The new territory ranged from southernmost Naugatuck to northernmost Thomaston and covered 128 square miles. Much of it was poorly suited to farming, and by 1780, an aide to the Marquis de Lafayette summed up the century-old community this way: “The village is frightful and without resources.”
“The community’s origins are anything but distinguished. The first European settlers arrived on the inhospitable slopes of the Naugatuck River in 1674. They came from distant Farmington, today a 20-minute ride on the expressway but then a rugged woodland away. [Report of the Regional/Urban Design Assistance Team of the American Institute of Architects, (Waterbury, Connecticut, October 4, 1993), pp. 3, 9.]
“The question of immediate water supply determined the site of all or nearly all early homesteads. We find that through the acres, about seventy-five in number, that comprised the second town plot, four streams coursed their way. Great Brook and Little Brook passed through the house lots that lined the east side of Bank and North Main streets. The West Main street habitations were supplied by the considerable rivulet that came down from the northern highlands east of present Central avenue, and by another stream that come westward. Both streams crossed West Main street near the site of St. John’s Church, uniting on its southern side. From that point the brook flowed westward through several house lots on it way, by meadow and cove, to the Great River. The chosen spot was sufficiently well watered to supply to the town even its name “Watterbury” [Anderson, The Town and City of Waterbury, Vol. II, 1896, pp. 145-146.]
“The central fact of the early New England village, was its green plain. Around it and along its very borders the town plot was laid out. Its surrounding house lots were narrow and deep. The green plain of Mattatuck, the eastern portion of which is now called, sometimes the Green, and sometimes Centre Square, was at the time of the settlement but little more than the marshy result of a former swamp. It has required time and much labor to evolve it into its present form of beauty.” [Anderson, The Town and City of Waterbury, Vol. I, p. 161.]
The following is an inscription from a prayerbook copied by Abi Welton: “This book was first the property of my great-grandfather, Richard Welton (born March 1680), who was the first male child born of English parents in Waterbury and one of the first Episcopalians in said town. At his decease it became the property of my grandfather, Richard Welton, Jr., and at his decease it became my property. I gave it to William S. H. Welton, the oldest son of my nephew, the Rev. Alanson W. Welton, deceased. Said Samuel is the fifth generation from the original proprietor of this book and the sixth from the only man of this name that was ever known to cross the Atlantic and settle in these British Colonies.” [Frederick John Kingsbury, L.L.D., A Narrative and Documentary History of St. John’s Protestant Episcopal Church (formerly St. James) or Waterbury, Connecticut, (New Haven: The Price Lee & Adkins Co., 1907), p. xi.]
The claim of the Welton family that Richard Welton was the first child born of English parents in Waterbury in disputed by The History of Waterbury: “Our town record states that this child was born in Waterbury, sometime in March 1680. Assuming that the public record is a true one, Richard Welton seems to have two competitors for the honor. One of them is little John Warner, who by record was Ôborn in Waterbury, March 6, 1680; the other is Abraham Andrews, the next door neighbor of young Richard. The record of Abraham Andrews’ children does not say that this Abraham was born in Waterbury, but, as one of the requirements was that the proprietors should be personally living with their families at Mattatuck by May 1680, and other men have been complained of because they were not here at that time, and Abraham has escaped all censure, we infer that he was living here in his own house when this child was born. Based upon the above as a conclusion, the birth of this young Abraham Andrews antedates that of Richard Welton and John Warner by five months.” [Anderson, The Town and City of Waterbury. Vol. I, p. 167.]
The Mattatuck grant of 1686, incorporated Waterbury as a town after being separated from the town of Farmington.
“The small lot of only three-quarters of an acre, on which young Thomas Judd will live when he becomes of age to receive lands . . . We find John Scovill in possession (late Judge Bronson’s homestead), the allotments having been conferred upon him by the committee. John Scovill’s house is without a chimney . . . Accordingly, chimneys were built of wood, laid up log-house fashion and lined with clay. Of course the clay was continually coming off and the houses taking fire . . . Waterbury built stone chimneys, laid in clay, at a very early date, and there is reason to think that the houses of the first settlers were constructed with stone chimneys. The late Johnson house, that was built before 1723, by a son of John Scovil, the planter had a stone chimney laid in clay.” [Anderson, The Town and City of Waterbury, Vol. I, pp. 168-169.]
“It will be recollected that at this time (1741), and for years afterwards, this town embraced in addition to its present limits, Watertown, Middlebury, Plymouth, Naugatuck, Prospect, and Wolcott.” [Consecration of St. John’s Church, Waterbury American, January 15, 1848.]
“By the turn of the century, however, Waterbury’s potential as a manufacturing site and a distribution center was beginning to be realized. For half a century, Waterburians had been making buttons locally, and in 1802, ambitious manufacturers began turning them out in brass. The partnership then would eventually become the Scovill Manufacturing conglomerate (St. John’s first resident rector James Scovil’s family).
This historic downtown was compact and filled with intense activity from the busy rail station on the west, around the historic Green, to the East Main Street entrance to the Scovill mill. Today, much of the bustle is history with the closing of the mills and much of the downtown commercial and office activity dispersed to the suburbs.” [Report of the Regional/Urban Design Assistance Team of the American Institute of Architects, pp. 3, 9.]
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts
“Missionaries sent by the English Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts were responsible for much of the work of the church in the colonies. The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, to use its former name, which held its first General Convention in Philadelphia in 1785.” [The Episcopal Church, p. 4.] “In 1701 The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts”, an English Missionary society, was formed by the Church of England to have charge of their church work in this country. Until the time of the Revolution the “Society” appointed clergy, received their reports and paid all or part of their wages. [Kingsbury, op. cit., p. ix.]
The Episcopal Church in Connecticut
The first Episcopal Church in Connecticut was established in Stratford in 1707. [Burr, op. cit., p. 18.]
On September 13, 1722, rumors of meetings by Congregational ministers to discuss the Episcopal Church at Yale College prompted the trustees to request that the ministers present a written declaration of their views. “They were deeply shocked when (Timothy) Cutler (rector of Yale College) read the statement. John Hart of East Guilford (Madison) and Samuel Whittelsey of Wallingford doubted the validity of Presbyterian ordination. Jared Eliot of Killingworth and James Wetmore of North Haven admitted the desirability of episcopal government. Cutler, (Samuel) Johnson, and (Daniel) Brown frankly favored episcopal ordination.” [Burr, op. cit., p. 25.] Later that year, Cutler, Johnson, and Brown sailed for England to be ordained.
In Waterbury the prime mover of the movement to secure missionaries was James Brown, who came from West Haven in 1722 (was then 38 years old). He was a cousin of the Rev. Daniel Brown, one of the Yale converts of that year who died in England on his ordination journey. James was so zealous that his neighbors called him “Bishop“. [Burr, op. cit., p. 79.] He is said to have been the first Episcopalian in Waterbury. There were, however, doubtless a few persons already here who knew something of the Episcopal Church and were well disposed toward it.
The movement which terminated in the formation of an Episcopal church and society in Waterbury commenced at an early period, when there were but a few Churchmen and three or four congregations in the Colony. It is stated that James Brown, who came from West Haven, in 1722, who had probably heard the preaching of Dr. Johnson of that place, a distinguished convert to Episcopacy, was the first of that persuasion in Waterbury. At what time Brown, profanely called Bishop Brown, was converted to the English church is not known. Probably it was not till after his removal from West Haven. [Henry Bronson, MD, The History of Waterbury, Connecticut, (Waterbury: Bronson Brothers, 1958), pp. 292-293.]
The Rev. Samuel Johnson, who was then the Rector in Stratford, ascended the Valley of the Naugatuck as far as Waterbury and baptized an infant son of Nathaniel Gunn in 1734. “This was undoubtedly the first instance in that town of the dedication of a child to God, by our office and ministry, and the first occasion on which the forms of the liturgy were used by a clergyman of the Church of England.” [E. Edwards Beardsley, D. D., The History of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut, (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1883), Vol. I, p. 92.]
A letter written September 1735 was sent to England “Particularly requesting that Mr. Jonathan Arnold (former Congregational minister) ye bearer hereof may be admitted to holy Orders, and receive Your Lordships License that he may become ye regular Pastor of their Souls” to “. . . a considerable Number of well-disposed people, living remote from any Church in the Towns of New Haven, Darby, Milford & Waterbury, whose case we think very pitiable.” (Taken from a letter sent to England with Arnold and signed by Samuel Seabury, Samuel Johnson, J. Wetmore, etc.) [Diocese of Connecticut Archives.]
“While Episcopalians were joining in the struggle for liberty, they were becoming far too numerous and influential to be ignored. A religious census in 1774, even with some large towns omitted, revealed at least 10,000 Churchmen in a population of less than 175,000. They steadily assumed a larger share in social and political life, appearing in the General Assembly and on the judge’s bench. As some of the clergy wrote to the S. P. G., the name of “Churchman” was ceasing to be pronounced with a hiss. The struggle for freedom of worship had taught Episcopalians charity and cooperation with others. The Church in old England bore an unenviable reputation for persecuting, and they had to bear the ironic twist of fate that made them mere Ôsober DissentersÕ, fighting for bare legal recognition. The grim humor of history chose as their allies the very sectarians whom the privileged Church of England despised. The staid Churchman with his gilt-letted Prayer Book became the political bedfellow of Baptists, Quakers, Methodists, and the half-literate exhorters of the Separatist conventicle. That experience was a necessary lesson in tolerance and ecumenical fellowship. It gradually drove home the idea that an episcopal church could prosper without legal establishment, and with a purely spiritual bishop who would have no court, no coach, and no comfortable seat in Parliament.” [Burr, op. cit., p. 45-46.]
“Churchmen were a numerous minority, causing jealousies and fears which manifested, among other things, a growing hostility over school districts. A vote was passed in 1775 dividing the school district of Farmington and Wallingford Road into two, one for Presbyterians, the other for Anglicans.” [Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, (Vol. IX, #4).]
Episcopalians never really felt free until the present constitution of Connecticut, adopted in 1818, made all religious associations purely voluntary. [Burr, op. cit., p. 8.]