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HISTORY 
 
 BEDFORD CHURCH 
 
 WxStOXLXSt 
 
 Delivered at the Celebration of the Two Hundredth 
 
 Anniversary of the Founding of the 
 
 Presbyterian Church of Bedford 
 
 Westchester Co., New York 
 
 March 22D, i88i 
 
 CHARLES W. BAIRD, D.D. 
 
 ly/T// AN ACCOUNT OF THE PROCEEDINGS 
 ON THA T OCCASION 
 
 
 NEW YORK •' itjjg ^^- \ 
 
 DODD, MEAD & C O M P AN Y ,' ^,^V-^'^ I 
 
 
Copyright, 
 
 1881, 
 
 By CHARLES W. BAIRD. 
 
 
 
 
 '^'6\ 
 
 '^('/(n..:.. ...,mK^:^U-,' 
 
 
The Presbyterian Church of Bedford is the old- 
 est of the churches under the care of the Presby- 
 tery of Westchester (Synod of New York). In 
 anticipation of the two hundredth anniversary of 
 its foundation, the Session of the church invited 
 the Rev. Charles W. Baird, D.D., historian of the 
 Presbytery, to deliver a historical discourse upon 
 that occasion. The Presbytery approved the 
 appointment, and resolved to meet in Bedford 
 at the time of the celebration. The discourse, 
 considerably enlarged, together with an account 
 of the other proceedings, is now published — by 
 order of the church Session — at the request of the 
 congregation and of many others who participated 
 in the bi-centenary celebration. 
 
 James H. Hoyt, Pastor. 
 
 John G. Clark, 
 
 St. John Owen, 
 
 Daniel B. Finch, , p., 
 
 David Travis, 
 
 James H. Trowbridge^ 
 
 Albert Williamson, 
 
 Bedford. Westchester County, N. Y., 
 December ist, 1881. 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Discourse 7 
 
 List of the Ministers of Bedford Church 102 
 
 List of Ruling Elders of Bedford Church . . ; 103 
 
 Proceedings at the Bi-centenary Celebration 105 
 
 Index 135 
 
DISCOURSE, 
 
 There is a singular fascination about those 
 employments of the mind in which we seek to 
 recall and to reconstruct the past ; whether by the 
 play of the imagination, the effort of memory, or 
 the wider sweep and severer exercise of thought 
 in gathering and comparing testimony concerning 
 past events. The charm is one that many feel 
 most powerfully, and yield to most readily, when 
 imagination leads the way, and the wand of the 
 poet or the novelist evokes the semblance of 
 things that have been. It is a charm acknowl- 
 edged by others, to whom verse and story have 
 little attraction, yet whose sober thoughts recur, 
 with an interest that grows stronger as the years 
 go by, to the days of their youth, and to the olden 
 times of which they have heard with their ears, of 
 which their fathers have told them. But unques- 
 tionably the chief satisfaction of the mind in deal- 
 ing with the past is found in those labours, and in 
 the fruits of those labours, by which the facts of 
 the past are ascertained, and its lessons are brought 
 to view. Difficult, often baffling, often disappoint- 
 
8 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 ing, this study is one of which we never weary, 
 and which never utterly fails to reward us. To 
 tempt us on, as by means of the slender records 
 that remain, and the faint traditions that have 
 come down, we seek to live over the past and to 
 reproduce it for others — to tempt us, and to help 
 us on, there are the immutable things of nature ; 
 the scenery of the drama of human life that has 
 been acted beneath these arching skies ; the hills, 
 the streams, the fields, the paths that were traced 
 through the wilderness in the early settlement, and 
 that have been trodden these two hundred years ; 
 the sites, if not the very dwellings, where the 
 fathers lived. " One generation passeth away, and 
 another generation cometh, but the earth abideth 
 forever." Man himself, through these succeeding 
 generations, has remained greatly the same. The 
 joys and the troubles, the loves and the animosi- 
 ties, the toils and the sufferings, that break up 
 this little life of ours, have been known from age to 
 age. And in so far as the times and^ihe men haVe 
 changed, the change has been significant of prog- 
 ress. Humanity has been keeping step with the 
 march of the centuries. If life, in some of its 
 aspects, is an unvarying round of occurrences — 
 " that which was is that which shall be, and there 
 is nothing new under the sun " — in another and 
 a nobler aspect, life is an onward movement, an 
 unfolding of a plan of God. This thought, above 
 all other thoughts, is engaging and helpful to the 
 student of history. It is, I am sure, the impres- 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 9 
 
 sion under which we meet here to-day to celebrate 
 the completion of two centuries in the history of 
 this town and of this church. Here, in the quiet 
 country, as in the great world beyond, the steady 
 working out of a divine plan has taken place, the 
 vigil of an unslumbering Providence has been kept, 
 the kingdom of God has been advancing. 
 
 Let us go back then, two hundred years, to the 
 twenty-second day of March, in the year of our 
 Lord sixteen hundred and eighty-one. It is a 
 strange and an eventful time. Charles the Second 
 is on the throne of England. A reign marked by 
 disasters and disgraces, and stained by every kind 
 of vice and meanness, is approaching its end. 21 March. 
 Yesterday the king summoned his last parliament, 
 which he will dissolve within a week, to reign after 
 that without a parliament until his death, four 
 years hence. Meanwhile, in the struggle that is 
 going on for civil and religious freedom, it is the 
 cause of despotism that seems to be everywhere in 
 the ascendant. The Nonconformists of England, 
 and the Presbyterians of the North, are suffering 
 restraint or persecution. Richard Baxter is preach- 
 ing by stealth in the neighbourhood of London ; 
 and in that Bedford from which our town is to 
 take its name, and in whose jail, ten years ago, he 
 wrote " The Pilgrim's Progress," John Bunyan is 
 allowed to pursue his lowly ministry. But in the 
 moors and mountain fastnesses of Scotland, the 
 Covenanters are hiding from the troops of Claver- 
 house, or expiating the crime of fidelity to Christ, 
 
lO HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 by the penalty of torture and of death. Thousands 
 of Scottish Presbyterians are this moment planning 
 to fly their country and emigrate to America. In 
 France, Louis the Fourteenth, now at the summit 
 of his power, " the arbiter of Europe," is listening 
 to secret proposals from the English King, and 
 promising help in the effort to crush out the liber- 
 ties of his subjects; while at the same time giving 
 orders, this very month, to try the experiment of 
 the " dragonnades " on the inoffensive Huguenots 
 in his own realm. It is a dark and dreary day in 
 the history of the nations. 
 
 On this side of the ocean, English colonists are 
 breathing a purer and a freer air : but they are still 
 
 «mber. few, and weak, and poor. Sixty years have elapsed 
 since the landing of tiie Mayflower; fifty years 
 since the arrival of Winthrop's company at Salem, 
 and the planting of the colony of Massachusetts 
 
 jine. Bay. Two generations of hardy, resolute men 
 have lived through the stern New England winters, 
 and urged their progress into the wilderness. At 
 present, Plymouth and Massachusetts are slowly 
 recovering from the impoverishment produced by 
 Philip's war. Connecticut alone, of all the New 
 England colonies, is quiet and in a measure pros- 
 perous. " A community of farmers," with little 
 trade, and small increase from immigration, there 
 is general comfort, and scarcely any po^er^y within 
 its borders. There are but few servants and fewer 
 slaves. The population is homogeneous. " So few 
 English, Scotch, or Irish come in, that we can give 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. n 
 
 no account of them." * The country is peopling i^si 
 with a sturdy and frugal race, who, left greatly to 
 govern themselves, are working out in their town 
 organizations, and in their political assemblies, a 
 system that anticipates and prepares the way for 
 the free institutions of a coming age. They are a 
 people who^prize learning. Every town is required 
 by law to support a school, and nearly all the chil- 
 dren in the colony attend the schools. They are a 
 religious people. Of the outward forms of religion, 
 none could be more rigidly observant. The Sab- 
 bath is kept, public worship is frequented, the 
 Christian ministry f is honoured, the Bible is read, 
 immorality and false doctrine are denounced uni- 
 versally. And while doubtless there are some for 
 whom religion consists only in these outward forms, 
 there are many more, we have good reason to be- 
 lieve, who are leading quiet and peaceable lives, in 
 all godliness and honesty, in the land where they 
 have sought freedom to worship God. 
 
 We are in Connecticut. The boundary line be- 
 tween this colony and the province of New York, 
 has not yet been ascertained, and will not be for 
 these two years. Just now, it is supposed to run 
 
 * Report of the Governor to the Lords of Trade, 15 July, 1680. 
 Public Records of Connecticut, Vol. III., p. 298. 
 
 f " They have ... a scholar to their minister in every town or 
 village." Transactions of the Commissioners in New England, 
 1665. Paper relating to the colony of Connecticut. Calendar of 
 State Papers, Colonial Series, 1661-1668, preserved in Her Majes- 
 ty's Public Record Office, page 341. 
 
12 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 somewhere to the west of this spot, nearer the 
 Hudson river. We are in Stamford. The terri- 
 iViy- tory of the town of Stamford, as purchased from 
 the Indians, stretches northward from the sea-coast 
 about sixteen miles, and includes the south-eastern 
 quarter of the future town of Bedford. As yet, 
 however, no inland settlement has been effected. 
 Like Asher of old, the people " continue on the 
 sea-shore, and abide in their creeks." From the 
 Housatonic to the Hudson, the whole interior is a 
 wilderness. East of the Housatonic even, and as 
 far as the Connecticut valley, there are but two in- 
 land plantations.* With the exception of these 
 two, the twenty-six towns of the colony lie scat- 
 tered along the Connecticut river and the Sound. 
 It was not long after the arrival of Winthrop's 
 company at Salem, in 1630, that some of the Mas- 
 sachusetts colonists, in search of a more fertile 
 region, found their way to the Connecticut river, 
 and established themselves at Hartford, Windsor, 
 and Wethersfield. The settlement of Wethersfield 
 was made by certain immigrants who had first sat 
 down at Watertown, near Boston. They soon fell 
 into disputes and contentions among themselves. 
 At the end of five years the contending parties 
 agreed to separate. A number of families, with 
 their minister, the Reverend Richard Denton, left 
 Wethersfield, and came down to the southern 
 shore of Connecticut, where several plantations 
 
 * Woodbury and Waterbury. 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 13 
 
 had lately been commenced at Milford, Stratford, ^^_ 
 Fairfield, and Greenwich. Here they founded the 
 town of Stamford.* 
 
 This was forty years ago. And now a band of 
 Stamford men, twenty-four in number,-|- have made 
 
 * Called at first Rippovvam, or the Wethersfield Men's Plantation. 
 — History of Stamford, Conn., by the Rev. E. B. Huntington, j^. 17. 
 — History of the Town of Greenwich, Conn., by D. M. Mead, p. 27. 
 
 \ Namely : — Richard Ambler, Abraham Ambler, Joseph Theale. 
 Daniel Weed, Eleazar Slawson, John Wescot, Jonathan Pettit, 
 John Cross, John Miller, Nicholas Webster, Richard Ayres, Jonas 
 Seely, Joseph Stevens, Daniel Jones, Thomas Pennoyer, John 
 Holmes, Benjamin Stevens, John Green, senior, David Water- 
 bury, Samuel Weed, Jonathan Kilborn, John Bates, Nathaniel 
 Cross, William Clark. Richard Ambler lived until 1699. Abraham, 
 his only surviving son, was born 22 Sept., 1642; married Mary 
 Bates, 25 Dec, 1662. Joseph Theale, son of Nicholas, of Water- 
 town, was born 24 Oct., 1640. Daniel and Samuel Weed were 
 sons of Jonas, of Watertown. Eleazar Slawson was the son of 
 George, of Lynn, in 1637. John Wescot, son of Richard, of 
 Wethersfield. John (son-in-law of Robert Bates), and Nathaniel 
 Cross, brothers, were of Windsor. John Miller, son of John, of 
 Wethersfield. Nicholas Webster, of Stamford, had married Sarah, 
 dau. of John Waterbury. Richard Ayres was of Stamford. Jonas 
 Seely, son of Obadiah, and grandson of Robert, of Watertown in 
 1630. Joseph and Benjamin Stevens, sons of Thomas, of Stam- 
 ford. Daniel Jones, son of Cornelius, of Stamford. Thomas 
 Pennoyer, bom in 1658, son of Robert, of Stamford. John Holmes, 
 born in Beverly, Yorkshire, Eng., died in 1729, aged ninety. 
 John Green was of Stamford, in 1657. David Waterbury, son or 
 grandson of John, of Waterbury. Jonathan Kilborn, probably of 
 Wethersfield. John Bates, son of Robert, of Wetherifield. 
 William Clark, probably a son of Samuel, of Wethersfield, one of 
 the earliest settlers of Stamford. (Huntington, History of Stam- 
 ford. Savage, Geneal. Dictionary, passim. List of the names of 
 the persons within the district of the town of Bedford, 5 Sept., 
 1698. MSS. in ofBce of Secretary of State, Albany, N. Y.) 
 
14 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 jfarch. thci'' way to this spot in the remote northern 
 limits of their town. They have followed, we may 
 suppose, the Indian path leading up from the 
 shore to this inland clearing, and so have reached 
 "the bend of the Mahanas River," where they 
 propose to build their homes. The Town Spot, 
 for which they have obtained a grant from Stam- 
 ford, is a tract of land nine square miles in extent. 
 It will be known in future as The First Purchase, 
 or Bedford Three Miles Square.* At present, it 
 is known as The Hop Ground. 
 
 Large portions of this tract have been under 
 cultivation by the Indians. It was here f — so the 
 tradition runs — that the savages whom Underbill 
 surprised in the year 1644, % raised their crops of 
 corn. Yonder, on the south side of the hill known 
 as Indian Farm, stood their village, with its three 
 rows of huts, sheltered from the northwest wind. 
 The level lands along the bend of the Mahanas, 
 stretching northward toward Aspetong, invite the 
 
 * " After the Town had got a grant for 6 miles, they proposed 
 to purchase from the Indians a Town Spot of 3 miles Square. 
 The Old Purchase was generally called the three Mile Square. 
 They had a place called the 3 miles round about, which lay 
 near the head of Mehanas. The main of the Settlements were 
 where the river runs east. Cortlandts line came to the south- 
 ward of the northwest corner of the old purchase of Bedford.' 
 (Testimony in suit for ejectment, Anderson vs. Rushton, 16 April, 
 1733. — ^Jay Papers, MSS.) 
 
 f History of the County of Westchester, N. Y., by Roberl 
 Bolton, vol. I., p. 7. (Revised edition.) 
 
 % History of New Netherland, by E. B. O'Callaghan, M.D. 
 Vol. I., pp. 300, 301. 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 15 
 
 settlers' choice, and promise abundant room for 
 their meadows and plantations. Here then they 
 will lay out their " house lots " and " field lots," 
 reserving a central space for the village green or 
 common. And here, fronting on the common, at 
 the foot of the rock or crag to be known hence- 
 forth as Bates' hill, the Puritan Meeting-house 
 shall be erected. 
 
 Not content with a grant of this tract from the 
 town of Stamford, within whose bounds it lies, 
 our settlers, in accordance with the honest usage 
 of Connecticut, have purchased the land from its ^^ DeMmber. 
 Indian claimants. The bargain with the " heathen " 
 was sealed at Stamford, last December ; the price 
 paid being thirty-eight pounds and fifteen shil- 
 lings.* Before the closing oT the contract, John 
 Cross, one of the purchasers, went up with the 
 Indians to inspect the land.f His name will be 
 associated hereafter with the stream at the north- 
 eastern angle of the Hop Ground, called by the 
 Indians Peppeneghek, and by the white men Cross 
 River.:]: 
 
 Our settlers, nearly all, are the sons of English 
 Puritans, founders of the colony of Massachusetts 
 Bay. We recognize the names of Wescot, Miller, 
 
 * The Record Book of ye Proprietors of Bedford : anno 1683. 
 
 f "John Cross was sent with the Indians." (Testimony in suit 
 for ejectment.) 
 
 \ The same name was also given to a tract of land in the north- 
 em part of the town, known as Cross's Vineyard, now included in 
 the Jay estate. 
 
1 6 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 1681. Kilborn, Clark, and Bates, as names of " Wethers- 
 field men." John and Nathaniel Cross are the 
 sons of a Windsor settler. Other names, as Theale, 
 Weed, and Seely, are to be traced back to the 
 earlier settlement at Watertown. In only one 
 case can we refer to the place where the settler's 
 family originated in England. John Holmes is a 
 native of Beverly, Yorkshire, and came to this 
 country some twenty years ago, when just of age.* 
 The little company has its leader and patriarch 
 in Richard Ambler, now seventy years old, a repre- 
 sentative of the first generation of New England 
 men. He was of Watertown as early as the year 
 1637. His only son, Abraham Ambler, accom- 
 panies the expedition, of which, indeed, he is one 
 of the most influential members. The men thus 
 associated are not only from the same town, and 
 the same religious society, but there are ties also 
 of kinship and intermarriage uniting them. Daniel 
 and Samuel Weed are brothers. So are John and 
 Nathaniel Cross, and Joseph and Benjamin Stevens. 
 John Miller and Jonas Seely are half-brothers ; 
 while Abraham Ambler and John Bates, John 
 Cross and John Bates, Nicholas Webster and 
 David Waterbury are brothers-in-law. It will cer- 
 
 * The family represented among the first settlers of Bedford by 
 John Holmes, senior, and John Holmes, junior, appears to have 
 been entirely distinct from the family of the same name among the 
 early settlers of Stamford. John Holmes, senior, is said to have 
 come from England to New York. He first settled in Greenwich, 
 and thence removed to Bedford. (Mead's Hist, of Greenwich, 
 Conn., p. 313.) 
 
HISTORY OF BRDEORD CHURCH. 
 
 17 
 
 tainly be strange, if, sustaining these relations, 
 our settlers shall fail to make it appear how good 
 and how pleasant it is for brethren to' dwell to- 
 gether in unity. 
 
 Before the end of the first year, the proprietors 
 had admitted three additional members* to their 
 body, making the entire number twenty-seven ; 
 and they had also agreed " to receive eleven inhab- 
 itants into the Hop Ground in order to the settle- 
 ment of a town." f Under the laws of Connecticut 
 it was necessary that a plantation should consist of 
 a sufficient body of freeholders, in order to be dig- 
 nified by the name and be admitted to the rights 
 of a town. It was not until this had been accom- 
 plished, that Bedford obtained its present designa- 
 tion. The General Court at Hartford now granted 
 the petition of " the people of the Hop Ground," 
 giving them the " privilege of a plantation," and 
 ordering " that the name be henceforth called Bed- le^May. 
 ford." X 
 
 * Cornelius Seely, brother of Jonas ; John Miller, junior (per- 
 haps " the good and pious Deacon Miller " mentioned further on); 
 and John Slawson, brother of Eleazar. 
 
 f The persons so received were Thos. Wyat, Samuel Burrett, 
 Zachariah Roberts, Joshua Webb, Wm. Sturdevant, Stephen 
 Clason, Thos. Canfield, Theoph. Balden, Thos. Wilman, Joseph 
 Green, Daniel Simkins. 
 
 \ May 16, 1682. — Vpon the petition of the people of Hop 
 Ground, This Court doth grant them the priviledg of a plantation, 
 and doe order that the name of the towne be hencefort called Bed- 
 ford. And this Court doe appoynt Joseph Theale to be the present 
 cheife military officer for the Train Band of sayd Bedford ; and 
 Abram Ambler is impowered by this Court to grant warrants, to 
 
1 8 HISTORY OF BEDFOSD CHURCH. 
 
 Why the former name should have been adopted, 
 and why the latter should now be conferred, we 
 do not know. The one, " The Hop Ground," may 
 have been suggested by the profusion of the plant 
 referred to, growing wild, as we learn, in this 
 region at the time of the settlement.* The other, 
 Bedford, was given, most probably, by the General 
 Court, in accordance with a principle adopted many 
 1658. years before, " intending," as they quaintly ex- 
 pressed it, " thereby to keep and leave to posterity 
 the memorial of several places of note in our dear 
 native country of England." f There is no ground 
 for supposing that the first settlers of this town 
 came from Bedford in England. 
 
 Together with its new name, the plantation re- 
 ceived the usual outfit of an orderly New England 
 community. Joseph Theale was appointed chief- 
 officer of the train band. Abraham Ambler was 
 empowered to grant warrants, administer the oath, 
 and join persons in marriage. The same impor- 
 tant person was chosen by his fellow-settlers as 
 town clerk and recorder of lands. But there were 
 two offices in the gift of the people, for the filling 
 of which they had not waited to be formally con- 
 swear officers and witnesses, and to joyne persons in marriage ac- 
 cording to law : and they doe free the sayd towne of Bedford from 
 the country rates for the space of three yeares next ensneing. (Co- 
 lonial Records of Connecticut.) 
 
 * " Hop-meadow" was the name given by the early settlers of 
 Simsbuiy, Conn., to a part of their plantation. (History of Sims- 
 bury, Granby, and Canton, by Noah A. Phelps.) 
 \ Colonial Records of Connecticut, 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. ig 
 
 stituted a town. At one and the same meeting, ^ Defemt„ 
 the proprietors received Joshua Webb as an inhab- 
 itant to be their miller, and called a Minister. 
 
 The settlement of a Minister was always the fore- 
 most care of a New England plantation. Doubt- 
 less the founders of this town were disposed so to 
 recognize it. But they had already been remind- 
 ed of their duty by the General Court of the col- 
 ony. The very first order of the Court, relating to i/mLV. 
 this settlement, required that provision be made 
 for the " first Minister of the place," and for his 
 successors in office " forever." * 
 
 I have dwelt thus at length upon the period and 
 the circumstances of the early settlement, because 
 it has appeared to me that these facts might justly 
 affect our understanding of the character and the 
 history of this town. It is surely not without sig- 
 nificance that this latest plantation of Connecticut, 
 projected like a vein of finer metal into the meta- 
 
 * May ig, 1681. — This Court being moved to grant liberty to 
 erect a plantation upon the Hopp Ground and adjacent lands, 
 about 12 miles to the northwards of Standford, doe grant their re- 
 quest, and appoy nt Capf" Richard Olmsteed, Lnt Jonath. Bell and 
 Lnt Ji)nath. Lockwood and Mr. Joseph Theale, to be a commit- 
 tee to entertein such persons as shall plant there, and to manage, 
 order and disspose of the affayres of that plantation, according to 
 their best skill and so as may best advance the welfare and growth 
 of the sayd plantation ; and that they are to take care that there be 
 a suitable lott layd out for the first minister of the place, and a 
 lott for the ministry, to be and belong to the ministry for ever. — 
 Conn. Records. 
 
 A certified copy of the above order, taken 21 Jan., 1696, is in the 
 possession of Mrs. JohnC. Holmes, Lewisboro'. 
 
20 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 1681. morphic mass of our New York population, while 
 yet the Puritan fervour lasted, and just at the time 
 when this province was taking its permanent shape, 
 bore so close and so demonstrable a relation to the 
 great civil and religious movement that formed 
 New England. I do not insist that this vein was one 
 of pure gold. Inferior elements mingled, we know, 
 from the first, with the better materials of the New 
 England colonization.* Doubtless there were such 
 elements here. But we have ample evidence that 
 the founders of this town were for the most part 
 upright and God-fearing men. Some of them, as 
 John Holmes, Abraham Ambler, John Wescot, 
 Zachariah Roberts, Cornelius Seely, and Daniel 
 Jones, were active Christian men — "gifted 
 brethren," to use the phrase of that dayf — to 
 whom, in the absence of a Minister, the commu- 
 nity looked as competent to guide and edify them 
 in their religious life. Such a man, too, was " the 
 pious and good Deacon Miller " — so styled in a 
 legal document relating to those early times, as 
 one whose testimony should be held sufficient to 
 establish a controverted fact. % 
 
 * Many of the young men were " wild enough," says Bradford: 
 History of Plymouth Plantation, p. 106. 
 
 f " They . . . are so poor that they are not able to maintain 
 scholars for their ministers, but are necessitated to make use of a 
 gifted brother in some places." (Transactions of the Commission- 
 ers in New England, 1665. Paper relating to the colony of New 
 Plymouth. Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, i66t-i568, 
 page 344.) 
 
 \ Testimony in suit for ejectment. 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 2 1 
 
 These are matters of record. I have no doubt 
 that there are traditions which confirm the record ; 
 that among the descendants of these men there 
 linger memories of their simple manners and their 
 antique virtues, their love of truth and honesty, 
 their reverence for the Sabbath, and their strong 
 faith in the teachings of God's word. And if 
 something of all this remains with their children, 
 it is meet and right that we should give credit for 
 it to the fathers. It is right that we should recall 
 the early times in which principles were tested, and 
 -character was formed; remembering "in what a 
 forge and what a heat " the institutions we now 
 possess were long ago cast and fashioned. 
 
 The action we commemorate to-day, as taken 
 two hundred years ago, relates to the location of the 
 " Meeting-house " or church of the first settlers. 
 Twelve days before, the proprietors of the Hop i^'Mj^ch 
 Ground, still residing in Stamford, had appointed 
 five of their number* "to lay out the Town Plot 
 both for situation and also to lay out the house 
 lots, and one lotment in the field on the east side 
 of the plaine to every proprietor." A " convenient 
 lot " was also to be left in the Town Plot, and a 
 lot in the field, " proportionable with the others," 
 for the use of the town. The committee thus ap- 
 pointed made report that they had fulfilled their ^ 'fiSi. 
 task, laying out the street, and designating the 
 
 * Joseph Theale, Abraham Ambler, John Miller, Daniel Jones, 
 John Cross. 
 
22 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 1681. house lots of three acres each, the choice of which 
 was made as usual by casting the lot. On the 
 twenty-second of March, 1681, the proprietors 
 met, and approved the report of the " layers out." * 
 It was resolved "the town common" be reserved 
 in the place that had been determined upon, "arid 
 the Meeting-house shall be set upon the common 
 so layd out namely the rock called Bates his Hill." 
 The Town Common of the first settlers, was un- 
 questionably the spot now known as the Village 
 Green. Originally, it would seem, covering three 
 acres, f it has been gradually diminished by suc- 
 cessive encroachments: but as recently embel- 
 lished and enclosed, it forms the central attraction 
 of this beautiful village. On the west side of the 
 little park rises the singular eminence formerly 
 known as Bates' Hill. Here, at the foot of the 
 steep cliff, lies the ancient graveyard, where Thomas 
 Denham, the first Minister of Bedford, and many 
 of his parishioners, the " forefathers of the hamlet," 
 sleep. And here, adjoining the burying-ground. 
 
 * " 22d March i6|^ the propriators agree that w' [whatj the co- 
 mittee had done in laying out y= town plot and the house lots 
 shall stand, and the place they reserued for the town comon and 
 the town lot to be as they laid it out and the meeting house shall 
 be set upon the common so layd out namly the rock called Bates 
 his Hill." 
 
 f The " lot for the use of the town " in the town plot was prob- 
 ably of the same size with the other house lots, which were to be 
 not less than three acres in extent. The lot reserved in the field 
 for the same use was to be " proportionable with the other lots " in 
 that locality. 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 23 
 
 and fronting on the Common, stood the first house '^S'- 
 of worship erected in this place, upon the present 
 site of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Bedford 
 village. It has been supposed hitherto that this 
 first house of worship was identical with the build- 
 ing destroyed a hundred years later, in the course 
 of the Revolutionary war ; and that it stood at the 
 foot of the hill, near the head of the village street, 
 a few rods east of the site of the church recently 
 abandoned for the present one. I am indebted to 
 Mr. James Wood, President of the Westchester 
 County Historical Society, for the suggestion of 
 the site mentioned above : and upon further ex- 
 amination I have been enabled to identify " the 
 rock called Bates his Hill " with the eminence 
 north of the Methodist Church. The town records 
 show that in 1787 the trustees of the Presbyterian 
 Church sold to Enoch Hall a certain piece of vacant 
 land on the south side of Bates' Hill, " reserving a 
 drift way next to the Grave Yard and so next 
 to the Hill for the Inhabitance to draw stones." 
 Enoch Hall's blacksmith shop stood " where the 
 Methodist Church now stands, just south of the 
 old grave-yard." * A curious indication of the 
 "historic continuity" maintained in this ancient 
 village, is to be seen in the fact that the same stipu- 
 lation — "reserving liberty for the town to fetch 
 stones " — is found a hundred years before, 22 
 March, 1 681, when the proprietors give David 
 
 * Information from Mr. Albert Williamson, Bedford. 
 
24 
 
 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 1681. 
 
 Waterbury permission " to rune his home-lot fence 
 to the rock commonly called Bates his Hill." 
 
 Although the action that determined the site 
 was taken thus early, some years elapsed before the 
 Meeting-house was built. As ultimately erected, 
 it was a structure of respectable size, twenty-two 
 feet in width, by forty feet in depth, and " ten feet 
 and a half between joints." It was no rude log- 
 cabin, as some of the first habitations doubtless 
 were, but a frame building, "clap-boarded and 
 shingled," the whole work done " in a town way," 
 at public expense, and under the supervision of 
 persons duly chosen at the town meeting.* 
 
 How long this first building may have stood', we 
 do not know. In process of time — perTiaps in the 
 early part of the next century — the primitive sanct- 
 uary waxing old and decaying, a new one was 
 erected, and in a different locality. As the popu- 
 lation increased, and farms were laid out in the un- 
 divided lands west and north of the settlement, 
 
 * " October 15th, 1689 : At a town meeting, the town doth agree 
 to build Mr. Abraham Ambler, senor, a frame fortye foots long & 
 twenty two foots wide and to set it up fit for clabording & shing- 
 ling and to rais it up by the last of March to come after the date 
 hereof, & the house above mentioned is to be teen foots & a half 
 between ioynts and this frame above mentioned is to- be set up 
 upon the consideration that Mr. Abraham Ambler, senor will com 
 up as often as he can conveniantly to cary on the Lord's day 
 amongst us one year yt he may settle with us.'' 
 
 It is evident from the dimensions given in these specifications 
 that the house thus described could not have been intended for a 
 dwelling, and must have been the Meeting House, the building of 
 which had been urged upon the settlers by Mr. Ambler of Stamford. 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 25 
 
 the inhabitants living at a distance would naturally 
 demand that the church should be brought nearer 
 to their own homes. Another site may therefore 
 have been chosen as a compromise between con- 
 flicting claims. The second church was built about 
 one hundred rods north-west of the first one, at 
 the foot of the hill upon which the third edifice — 
 lately abandoned for the present sanctuary — was 
 built after the Revolution. 
 
 Early in the following winter a Minister was ^ u^cember 
 called.* It has been stated that John Prudden 
 came to Bedford and preached here for some time.f 
 This, however, is a mistake. Mr. Prudden, of 
 Jamaica, continued the Minister of that town for 
 ten full years from the date of his call in 1676.:]: 
 Later, he became pastor of the Presbyterian 
 church of Newark, New Jersey, where he died in 
 the year 1725, in a good old age. § Bedford re- 
 mained for three years without a resident Minis- 
 
 * "At a meeting at ye hop ground the proprietors . . . agree to 
 give Mr Priddon of Gemeco [Jamaica] a call to be a minester in 
 this place. Joseph Theale is chosen to goe to Mr. Priddon to de- 
 clare theire mind in order to his coming among them as above ; 
 and Abra. Ambler is desired to write to Mr. Pridon in theire 
 name and behalf." (Town Records.) 
 
 f Bolton, History of Westchester Co., vol. I., p. 21. A Brief 
 History of the Presbyterian Church at Bedford, N. Y., by Rev. P. 
 B. Heroy, New York : 1874, p. 2. 
 
 X Documentary History of New York, Vol. III., p. 196. 
 
 § Two Centuries in the History of the Presbyterian Churchy- 
 Jamaica, L. I., by James M. Macdonald, D.D., New York : 1862, 
 pp. 70, 80. 
 
 2 
 
26 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 ^f^ ter. We are not to infer that the people during 
 '^^■i- this time were as sheep having no shepherd. 
 Though formed into a separate town, they still 
 belonged to the parish of Stamford. John Bishop, 
 the second pastor of the church in Stamford, was 
 still living.* Our settlers, nearly all, had grown to 
 man's estate under his care and teaching. Mr. 
 Bishop had once walked all the way from Boston, 
 with staff and Bible in hand, when called to the 
 field where he laboured for fifty years ; and though 
 now an old man, he was still in active service. 
 No doubt his voice was heard, from time to time, 
 in the new settlement at Bedford ; and no doubt, 
 on the high days of the Puritan year — the Fast 
 day, Thanksgiving day, and especially the sacra- 
 ment Sabbath^not a few of these dwellers in the 
 remote part of the parish would make their appear- 
 ance in the stone " meeting-house " at Stamford, 
 which they themselves had helped to build ten 
 years before coming to this place. \ 
 ,684. Tlie first Minister actually settled in Bedford 
 
 was the Reverend Thomas Denham. A man of 
 advanced years, he came to this place to spend his 
 last days, and to find a resting-place in the ceme- 
 tery under Bates' Hill. Mr. Denham had been 
 
 * John Bishop, perhaps Irom Dorchester, Mass. , was at Taun- 
 ton in 1640, and at Boston in 1644. In that year he came to 
 Stamford, where he preached for fifty years, and died, probably in 
 November or December, :i694. (Savage, Gen. Diet., s. v. Col- 
 lections of Mass. Hist. Society, VIII., Fourth series, pp. 298.) 
 
 \ Huntington, History of Stamford, Conn., pp. 123, 4, 6. 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 27 
 
 living for some years in Rye. Little is known 
 about him previous to his stay there. The Minis- 
 ters of Fairfield and Stamford had recommended 
 him upon his coming to Rye as a suitable person 
 for the work, and the General Court at Hartford 
 had encouraged his settlement.* It is thought 
 that he was the son of John Dunham \ of Ply- 
 mouth, Massachusetts, and that he was living in 
 Sheepscott, Maine, at the time of the outbreak of 
 King Philip's war. % It seems probable that Mr. ,f^^^^. 
 Bishop, who was instrumental in his settlement at 
 Rye, may have induced him to remove to Bedford 
 to minister to a portion of his own flock. Mr. 
 Denham's pastorate here lasted about five years — 
 from 1684 to i689.§ In addition to his stipend 
 of twenty pounds a year, the Minister was pro- 
 vided with a house and a home lot, and received a 
 share in the successive divisions of the common 
 
 * Public Records of Conn., Vol. II., pp. 321, 322. 
 
 f The name is written indifferently Dunham and Denham. 
 
 \ History of Rye, Westchester Co., N. Y., pp. 278, 285, note. 
 
 § Mr. Denham is believed to have left Rye in 1684 (Hist, of 
 Rye, u. s.), and to have come at that time to Bedford. 
 
 At a town meeting, 28 January, 168^, collectors were chosen 
 to gather Mr. Denham's rate for this year, and were also empow- 
 ered " to gather the remainder that is behind of the former years, 
 and make payment of it to Mr. Denham." The town appointed a 
 committee, 22 June, 1688, to see to the finishing of Mr. Dunham's 
 house. December 13, 1688, five pounds were appropriated to Mr. 
 Dunham " upon the account of his chimblyes." His will (see His- 
 toi-y of Rye, N. Y., p. 280), is dated May 2d, 1688. He was 
 probably deceased by October, 1689, when Mr. Abraham Ambler 
 was invited " to carry on the Lord's day." 
 
28 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 '*^9- lands. His rights as a proprietor, both in Bedford 
 and in Rye, descended to his eldest son, Isaac 
 Denham, who became one of the leading men in 
 the latter place. His " Library of Bookes," in- 
 cluding a " Commentary upon the Revelations," 
 and another " Upon the Romans," was valued at 
 six pounds in the appraisement of his effects. In 
 curious apposition with these treasures his will 
 makes mention of his " white horse," his " mus- 
 quett and longe gun," and his " two-edged sword," 
 the indispensable equipments of the pioneer pastor 
 in those rude and anxious times.* 
 
 For twenty years after the settlement of the 
 town, Bedford continued to regard itself as an 
 integral part of New England. It is true, that, in 
 24 NoTC^mber. the year 1683, New York and Connecticut agreed 
 upon that zigzag boundary line, which, beginning 
 at the mouth of the Byram River, ran first to the 
 north-west, and then to the north-east, in such a 
 manner as to shut out Rye and Bedford, both of 
 them Connecticut plantations, from that colony 
 into the province of New York. But Rye and 
 Bedford were no parties to this contract, which 
 they ignored practically, and at last repudiated 
 openly. Connecticut, itself, unwillingly consented 
 to the surrender of these towns, secretly hoping 
 that the agreement for their cession, having failed 
 
 * The General Court of Hartford granted him the sura of ten 
 pounds " in regard to liis late loss by the war." (Public Recordsl 
 of Conn., Vol. II., pp. 321, 322.) His will mentions his " Estate 
 in Sheep's Gutt.'' 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH, 
 
 29 
 
 to receive the royal sanction, would never be car- 
 ried into effect. For twenty years, then, the peo- 
 ple remained in a state of chronic uneasiness and 
 disaffection. It was not only that their sympa- 
 thies, social and religious, leaned toward Connecti- 
 cut, but their material interests were in jeopardy. 
 Under the chartered government of the colony, 
 they were secured in the possession of their lands, 
 which they had honestly bought from the Indians, 
 and diligently improved. But no sopner had their 
 town been annexed to New York, than notice 
 came to them from the sheriff of Westchester 
 County, bidding them show what right and title 
 they had to their lands. Instead of obeying this 
 summons, the inhabitants applied to Connecticut 
 for a patent confirming their territory to them 
 under the laws of that colony. The patent, how- 
 ever, was not obtained until January, 1697, when 
 the General Court at Hartford openly received the 
 towns of Rye and Bedford, and " undertook their 
 protection " as members of that commonwealth. 
 Three years later, the question in dispute was set- 
 tled by an order of the king in council, remanding 
 these towns to the jurisdiction of New York. 
 
 All this while, Bedford continued without a 
 Minister, except during Mr. Denham's pastorate 
 (1684-1689). Meantime, however, the interests of 
 religion were not neglected. The town itself looked 
 after them : the calling of a Minister, the providing 
 for his support, the ordering of public worship in 
 his absence, being as much the care of the civil 
 
 1685. 
 
 4 June. 
 
 1697. 
 19 January. 
 
 1700. 
 29 March. 
 
30 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 authority, as the laying out of the common lands, 
 or the gathering of taxes. The town appoints one 
 and another to " carry on the Lord's day," or con- 
 duct the simple services of prayer, exhortation, 
 and praise. The town appoints David Mead to 
 beat the drum — the primitive substitute for the 
 church-going bell. The town, by a major vote, 
 orders that there shall be a request made to the 
 Ministers of the county — meaning Fairfield County, 
 Connecticut, — " to inquire for us, and to acquaint 
 /^Mry. "^ where we may be likely to attaine to a Minister : 
 and for his encouragement we doe agree upon 
 serious consideration for his encouragement to 
 give him a home lot and forty acres of land and 
 meadow, and thirty pounds a year in current pro- 
 vision pay."* In those early times, when, of all 
 the perils of the wilderness to which a community 
 was exposed, the " dreadful tendency to barba- 
 rism "f was felt to be the greatest dangej, it was 
 seen, at least in New England, that religion was 
 vital to public order and health, and that nothing 
 else more nearly concerned the citizen and the 
 State. 
 
 Coming at length under the government of New 
 
 * " Provision fay." " Until the first issue of paper money by 
 the colony in 170'g, nearly all payments were made in provisions. . . 
 From the fitst settlement to the French war of 1745, there was 
 hardly any specie in circulation," — [History of Simsbury, p. 56.) 
 
 f Historical Discourse, delivered at Norwich, June 23, 1859, be- 
 fore the General Association of Connecticut, at the celebration of 
 its 150th anniversary. By Leonard Bacon, D.D., p. 47 (in Contri- 
 butions to the Ecclesiastical History of Connecticut). 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 31 
 
 York, Bedford found itself transposed from the 
 parish of Stamford to the parish of Rye. The 
 Provincial Assembly of New York had passed, 
 eight years before, an " Act for Settling a Ministry i, September. 
 in the City and County of New York," and in 
 three adjacent counties.* Four " parishes " were 
 created by this Act, one of which included Rye, 
 Mamaroneck, and Bedford. No mention was made 
 in this law of any particular religious denomina- 
 tion. The people of the province were " generally 
 ; dissenters," and the Assembly, which contained at 
 the time but a single member of the Church of 
 England, had certainly no intention of establish- 
 ing Episcopacy in any town or county of the 
 province. But the governor, a zealous and un- 
 scrupulous partisan of that Church, was bent upon 
 such a construction of the Act : and he and his 
 
 * Laws of New York, Vol. I., pp. 18-20. It is to be regretted 
 that the revised edition of the History of Westchester County 
 should contain the two-fold misstatement, that "Under the Act 
 of l5g3, the Church of England . . . was settled throughout the 
 Province." — (Vol. I., p. 59.) The title of the Act expressly limits 
 its operation to the four counties above named, and, moreover, it 
 makes no mention of the Church of England. The Assembly 
 which passed it represented a population of " dissenters .... 
 averse to the Church of England." "The people," said Lewis 
 Morris, "who never could be brought to settle an Episcopal min- 
 istry in direct terms, fancied they had made an effectual provision 
 for ministers of their own persuasion by this Act. " — (See Work an d 
 Materials for American History, by Geo. H. Moore, LL.D., in 
 the Historical Magazine, Vols. I., IL Also, Civil Status of the 
 Presbyterians in the Province of New York, in the Magazine of 
 American History, Oct., 1879.) 
 
32 
 
 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 successors, down to the period of the Revolution,^ 
 insisted upon its enforcement for the sole benefitJ 
 of the Anglican clergy, Bedford was one of the 
 towns mentioned in the Act of 1693, and Colonel 
 Fletcher was only waiting for the arrival of a mis- 
 sionary, a clergyman of that Church, to induct j 
 him as Minister of the parish. But Bedford had 
 now secured a Minister of its own ; the church 
 lands, by act of the town, were in his possession, 
 and Lord Cornbury found no opportunity, under 
 pretext of a vacancy, to foist a stranger upon an 
 unwilling people. 
 Joseph Morgan,* your second pastor, was 
 26 Derember. Called by the town in December, 1699. The Min- 
 isters of Fairfield County ordained him in the fol- 
 lowing year. About the same time the people 
 of East Chester, New York, sought his services, 
 and petitioned the governor of the province to ap- 
 point him as their Minister.f He appears to have 
 officiated in both places — over thirty miles apart 
 — for the first two years, after which he confined 
 his labours to East Chester. The people of Bed- 
 ford had hoped that their young pastor would 
 . i 
 
 * Bom in New London, Conn., Nov. 6, 1674; licensed, 1697; 
 preaclied in Greenwich, Conn, (first chnrch), 1697—1700 ; ordained, 
 1700; preached in Bedford and East Chester, N. Y., 1700-1704; 
 settled in Greenwich (second church), 1705— 1708 ; settled in Free- 
 hold, N. J., 1 709-1 728; preached in Maidenhead [Lawrenceville], 
 N. J., and in Hopewell [Pennington], N. J., for some years ; died 
 in, or after, 1740. 
 
 f History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the County of 
 Westchester [N. Y.], by Robert Bolton, p. 364. 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH, ■ 33 
 "live and die with" them, and had taken meas- n°°- 
 
 ' 13 June. 
 
 ures to have him inducted by the Governor,* but, 
 for some reason whicTi does not appear, his stay 
 here was short. It was the beginning, however, 
 of a long and fruitful ministry, the greater part 
 of which was spent in New Jersey, and was at- 
 tended with large success. Morgan was a fluent 
 and forcible speaker, and wrote much for the 
 press. Cotton Mather was his friend and corre- 
 spondent, and Franklin printed one of his ser_ 
 mons. His writings are characterised, as his 
 preaching doubtless was also, by an impetuosity 
 bordering on extravagance ; f but there is reason 
 to believe, that, in spite of marked foibles and some 
 serious faults, he was a sincere and a useful man. 
 
 He was followed at Bedford by the Reverend 
 John Jones. X The very curious correspondence 
 
 * History of the Presbyterian Church in America, by the Rev. 
 Richard Webster, p. 335. A misprint (indicted for inducted), in 
 Dr. Webster's statement, has given rise to the impression that 
 Morgan, while in Bedford, was accused of some penal offence, and 
 was i dieted and tried, " but acquitted." (A Brief History, etc., by 
 Rev. P. B. Heroy, p. 7.) There is no evidence of any such trial. 
 
 f I found a strange rhapsodical letter from Morgan, dated March 
 23, 1719, at Freehold, N. J., in one of the letter-books of the 
 Gospel Propagation Society, London. 
 
 X A son of William Jones, of New Haven ; born Oct. 4th, 1667 ; 
 graduated at Harvard College, 1690. Subsequent to his ministry 
 in Bedford, he preached in Greenwich, Conn., " a year and a. 
 half," says Savage (Gen. Diet, of First Settlers ofN. E., vol. II., 
 p. 563), but certainly longer, and probably from 1710 till 1714. 
 (Historical Discourse, by Rev. J. H. Lindsley, D.D., Greenwich, 
 Conn., pp. 22, 23.) "He was drowned in the harbour, 28 Jan., 
 1719, by breaking through the ice." (Gen. Diet., u. s.) 
 2* 
 
34 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH 
 
 7 DecSber. between this Minister and the inhabitants at the 
 time of his call, * shows that he hesitated to settle 
 here, because uncertain whether the government 
 would allow and approve his ministry " free from 
 impositions " which he could not comply with. 
 His fears on this score were not groundless, as the 
 event proved, for a Church of England mission- 
 ary had now been appointed in charge of Rye and 
 Apni. Bedford ; and in due time there came an order for 
 his induction. Rye, just then, had neither Minis- 
 ter nor house of worship; and the inhabitants, by 
 the special efforts of their rich neighbour Colonel 
 Heathcote, were persuaded for a while to submit 
 to the new order of things. But it was otherwise 
 with Bedford. The people were now alive to the 
 danger of losing their religious rights. Two years 
 before this, both Bedford and East Chester,! while 
 under Mr. Morgan's ministry, had sought to be re- 
 leased from the operations of the Act of 1693, and 
 left free to support a Minister of their own choice. 
 Bedford showed special earnestness in pressing 
 October. ^^^ request. The people, assembled in their town 
 meeting, declared it to be their desire " that they 
 may be by themselves [so] as to maintain one 
 
 * Originally published by Mr. Heroy, in his Historical Discourse, 
 and reprinted in the revised edition of the History of Westchester 
 County, by the late Rev. Robert Bolton, vol. I., pp. 46, 47. 
 
 f " Eastchester, having an Independent minister, endeavoured at 
 my coming to make themselves a distinct parish." — Mr. Bartow to 
 the G. P. S., May 25, 1703. (History of the Prot. Episc. Church 
 in Westchester Co., p. Z2.) 
 
HISTORY OP BEDFORD CHURCH. 35 
 
 among themselves : and their desire is that they 
 may be clear from ye former act of ye assembly of 
 being joyned to Rye and Memeriuock ; and the 
 town doth desire Mr. Jacobus van Cortlandt to 
 present their desire and pertision to the Generall 
 Assembly and ye town is willing to satisfie sd 
 Cortland for his trouble."* These efforts had 
 been vain. The shrewd rector of Westchester 
 wrote home to England : " There have been great 
 endeavours made this session to annul that Act ; 
 but we are safe as long as my Lord Cornbury is 
 governor." f Bedford was destined to remain a 
 part of the parish of Rye until the Revolution. 
 The people, however, found it difficult to accept 
 the situation gracefully. Upon the arrival of Mr. Ap^a.' 
 Pritchard,:]: to "take possession of this portion 
 of his benefice," § they displayed a stubborn and 
 unmanageable spirit truly astounding. Young 
 Benjamin Wright, and Mr. John Thomson, gentle- 
 man, of London, lately removed from Stamford 
 into this place, testify under oath, that all their 
 endeavours to prevail with the inhabitants to en. 
 courage Mr. Pritchard have been fruitless. Zach- 
 ariah Roberts, the justice of the peace, is es 
 
 * Town Records of Bedford. 
 
 f History of the Prot. Episc. Church in Westchester Co., p. 13 
 
 X The Rev. Thomas Pritchard was sent in 1704, by the Society 
 for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, to be its mis. 
 sionary at Rye, Westchester Co., N. Y. His brief ministry ended 
 deplorably in March or April of the next year. (Bolton, History 
 of the P. E. Church in Westchester Co., p. 146.) 
 
 § Id., p. 619. 
 
36 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 ■7°5- pecially violent in his opposition. He refuses to 
 take any affidavits in behalf of the Church of Eng- 
 land, the Queen, and the government of New 
 York. He has procured the passage of an act, at 
 the town meeting, enjoining upon the people not 
 to pay Mr. Pritchard anything. As for Mr. Jones, 
 he preaches Avith great bitterness, referring in 
 terms far from complimentary to the Church of 
 England, and the government of New York ; and 
 winding up his diatribe by saying to his congrega- 
 tion, " Ye may tell'em so at York, for that he 
 did not care for my Lord the Governor." As for 
 the people, the greatest part of them are ripe for 
 rebellion.* All this was very disturbing ; and we 
 
 * The affidavits of Benjamin Wright and John Thomson are 
 printed in the Documentary History of New York, vol. III., pp. 
 933. 4. 5- Fo"" 'I'E following papers, not before published, from 
 the Colonial Manuscripts in the office of the Secretary of Slate, 
 Albany, I am indebted to the accomplished and obliging curator, 
 Mr. Berthold Fernow. 
 
 John Tomson and Benjamin Wright both of Cottipetent Age Tes- 
 tify that they have been sore oppressed with the continuall reflec- 
 tions of Mr. John Jones in his Preaching in Bedford Continually 
 reflecting against the Church of England's present Government that 
 he cares not for the said Church nor my Lord that he cares not for 
 anything but to get away what they have for taxes ye said Jones and 
 Robarts are very dangerous men Against the Church and Govern- 
 ment and that the said Jones do persist in Continuall reflections as 
 aforesaid Saying Come out of her my people least ye partake of 
 her plaiiges With Continuall reflections against the Church of 
 England . . . that they are in a dangerous Government where 
 they do not pray nor serve God and that the said Jones do 
 and won'd Preach Reprobation in defiance of Principalities and 
 Powers that they should tell them at Yorke that he wou'd do so 
 and that he wou'd burne the [books of the] Church of England 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 37 
 
 are not surprised to learn that the offending jus- g'JJ|- 
 tice and Minister were called to account for their 
 conduct before the governor and council. Mr. 
 Jones was required to give surety for his appear- 
 ance, and Zachariah Roberts was remanded into 
 the custody of the sheriff of the city, till the next 
 session of the Supreme Court of the province. f 
 
 Especially those that was brought from Colonel Heathcote and 
 that the friends of the Church wou'd desire the Reverend Mr. 
 Pritchard to come there to preach but cannot prevaile whereby 
 some of them are forced to quitt the place for feare of damage to 
 their Bodys being made so vnhappy and vneasy thereby, that the 
 greatest parte of the Inhabitants are ripe or ready for Rebellion 
 abundantly more than is here Expressed. John Thomson. 
 
 Benjamin Wright. 
 (N. Y. Colonial MSS., vol. L, f. 75.) 
 f The Dapositions of John Thompson and Benjamin Wright of 
 Bedford agt one John Jones a Dissenting Minister of Bedford for 
 speaking severall Irreverant Words ag' the Church of England and 
 many seditious words ag' the Government being read, the sd Jones 
 was Cilled into the Councill Chamber and the said Depositions be- 
 ing likewise read to him and he not having given sufficient satisfac. 
 tion thereon to this Board it is Ordered that the tA Jn" Jones w'li 
 sufficient sureties enter into recognizance for £,2<,. — . — • to appear 
 at the next Supreame Court to lie held for the Province to answer such 
 things as shall be alleged in behalf of her Majtie. 
 
 The depositions of the ^^ Thompson and Wright agt Zachariah 
 Roberts of the same place a Justice of y« Peace for severall illegall 
 and unwarrantable practices being read and the sd Roberts being 
 Called in to the Councill Chamber to whom the s^ Depositions 
 were likewise read and he having given no satisfactory answers 
 thereon to this Board it is ordered, that the s^ Zachariah Roberts 
 remain in the hands of the Sherriffe of the Citty and County of New 
 Yorke till the next Supream Court to be held for the Piovince 
 there to answer such things as shall be brought and objected 
 ag' him in behalfe of Our Sovereigne Lady ye Queen. 
 (Council Minutes, ix., p. 518 (May 8th, 1705). 
 
38 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 ''°s- His apprehensions of interference on the part of 
 
 the government fully realized, Mr. Jones left Bed- 
 ford in 1705.* And now the people, perhaps hop- 
 ing to be allowed the exercise of their right under 
 the Act of 1693, applied to the governor for leave 
 to settle a Minister of their own choosing.f Lord 
 Cornbury delayed answering the petition until he 
 could consult the new missionary at Rye, as incum- 
 bent of the parish that included Bedford. This 
 was Mr. Muirson % — " an abdicated Scotch Jaco- 
 bite parson," as a writer of the period styles him 
 — " obtruded upon " the Bedford people, and " that 
 insults intolerably over them."§ Mr. Muirson's 
 opinion of the Bedford people was not more flat- 
 22'MaV. tering than this opinion of him. " Every fourth 
 Sunday I preach at Bedford," he writes home to 
 the Gospel Propagation Society, " and I am afraid 
 without success, for they are a very wilful, stub- 
 born people."! Each of these statements, how- 
 
 * " Lately an Independent minister hath removed out of it." 
 (Rev. George Muirson, 21 Nov., 1705. Bolton, History of the T. 
 E. Church in Westchester Co., p. 151.) 
 
 f Webster, History of the Presb. Church in America, p. 335. 
 
 \ The Rev. George Muirson was sent over in 1705 to succeed 
 Mr. Pritchard at Rye. He died there, 12 Oct., 1708. 
 
 § " The late petition of Bedford for calling a Minister, is not yet 
 answered, until an abdicated Scotch Jacobite Parson, obtruded 
 upon them, that insults intollerably over them, is consulted with." 
 — A Narrative of a New and Unusual Imprisonment of Two Pres- 
 byterian Ministers, and Prosecution of Mr. Francis Makemie, for 
 preaching One Sermon in the City of New York. — Epistle to the 
 Reader. 
 
 II Bolton, History of the P. E. Church in Westchester Co., p. 166. 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 39 
 
 ever, must be taken with some allowance. Mr. '7°^- 
 Muirson was really a laborious and self-sacrificing 
 Minister, faithful to his convictions of duty; whose 
 death, at the early age of thirty-three, was has- 
 tened by his fatigues and privations in his Master's 
 service. And the Bedford people may certainly 
 be pardoned for some degree of " stubbornness " 
 at the time. Dissatisfied with their recent change 
 of government, and chafing under Lord Cornbury's 
 brutal rule, they could have been in no mood to 
 submit to that which they regarded as an unwar- 
 rantable intrusion upon their rights of conscience. 
 Nor do they seem to have flinched in after days 
 from the decided stand thus taken. A quarter of '/s'. 
 a century later, they still had the name of being 
 " the most rigid and severe of all the Dissenters,"* 
 in this region of so-called Dissent. The fact is, 
 they were simply very thorough and inveterate 
 Presbyterians. 
 
 They were Presbyterians, that is, in the larger 
 sense in which that name was used from the begin- 
 ning among the Connecticut churches. No pres- 
 bytery, indeed, had yet been organized in America, 
 at the time when this town was founded. But the 
 ecclesiastical system that prevailed in Connecticut 
 was one that bore a close affinity with the Presby- 
 terian order, and that was frequently designated, 
 even at a very early day, as Presbyterian. 
 
 The commissioners sent by Charles II. to Con- 
 necticut were instructed to inform themselves of 
 
 * Bolton, History of the P. E. Church in Westchester Co., p. 256. 
 
40 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 ^a^ApHi. the full difference between the people of that 
 colony and those of Massachusetts ; the king con- 
 ceiving " those of Conecticott to contrive them- 
 selves under the most rigid Presbiterian Govern- 
 ment."* The commissioners' report confirmed this 
 
 14 Dewmber. imprcssion. " For the most part they are rigid 
 Presbyterians." f The principal friends and 
 patrons of this colony in England, from the be- 
 ginning, and many of those who came over to 
 settle here, were avowed Presbyterians.:]: A tend- 
 ency that became more and more pronounced, 
 and that resulted in the formation and adoption of 
 the Saybrook Platform, was apparent at a very 
 early day.§ 
 
 20 Scpttmber. Under the Saybrook Platform, which, according 
 to Dr. Hodge, comes very little short of Presby-, 
 terianism, the Consociation " possessed substan- 
 tially the same authority as Presbytery." The 
 fundamental principle by which Congregationalism 
 is distinguished from Presbyterianism, is " that 
 every local congregation of believers . . . is a com- 
 plete church, and not to be subject in government 
 
 * Documents relating to the Colonial History of the State of New- 
 York, Vol. III., p. 55. 
 
 f Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, 1661-1668 ; p. 341. 
 
 \ The Constitutional History of the Presbyterian Church in the 
 United States of America, by Charles Hodge, D.D., part I., pp. 
 31. 34- 
 
 g Historical Discourse, etc., by Leonard Bacon, D.D., pp. 15, 
 seq. — " Most of the Puritans who went over to New England were 
 attached to a species of Presbyterianism, rather than to Independ- 
 ency."— Orme's Life of Owen ; quoted in the " Presbyterian Quar- 
 terly Review," vol. VII., p. 433, note. 
 
'HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 41 
 
 to any ecclesiastical authority outside of itself."* ^'°^' 
 Clearly recognizing this principle, the Hartford . 
 North Association, comprising some of the lead- 
 ing Ministers of Connecticut, declared in 1799, 
 "that the constitution of the churches" in that 
 State, " founded on the common usages, and the 
 Confession of Faith, Heads of Agreement, and 
 Articles of Church Discipline, adopted at the ear- 
 liest period of the settlement of that State, is not 
 Congregational,^ but contains the essentials of the 
 government of the Chiirch of Scotland, or Presby- 
 terian Church in America, particularly as it gives 
 a decisive power to ecclesiastical councils ; and a 
 Consociation, consisting of Ministers and messen- 
 gers, or a lay representative from the churches, is 
 possessed of substantially the same authority as 
 Presbytery. if . . . The churches therefore in Con- 
 
 * Rev. A. S. Quint, D.D., in Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, 
 and Ecclesiastical Literature, vol. II., p. 475. 
 
 + Dr. Bellamy (1744) held that a church receiving the Saybrook 
 Platform departed from Congregational principles. — (Bellamy 
 Papers, MS.). 
 
 X The following illustrations may be given, from the minutes of 
 the Eastern Consociation of Fairfield County : — In 1746, the Conso- 
 ciation "pronounce the awful sentenceof Excommunication "upon 
 a member of a church under their care. In 1759, at the desire of 
 " a considerable number of y= society," they dismiss the pastor of 
 a congregation. In 1763, the church in Danbury dissenting from 
 the Saybrook Platform, declaring itself a Congregational church, 
 and refusing to submit to the jurisdiction of any Consociated au- 
 thority, the Consociation resolve that they have the right of jurisdic. 
 tion, notwithstanding the doings and votes of said church. Occa- 
 sionally the Consociation is designated in these minutes, as "the 
 Presbytery." 
 
42 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCB. 
 
 ■Lidi. necticut at large, and in our district in particular, 
 are not now, and never were, from the earliest 
 period of our settlement. Congregational churches, 
 according to the ideas and forms of church order 
 contained in the Book of Discipline called the Cam- 
 bridge Platform. There are, however, scattered 
 ' over the State, perhaps ten or twelve churches 
 [unconsociated] which are properly called Con- 
 gregational." 
 
 Thus there was much to justify the usage in 
 accordance with which, from early times, and 
 down to a period comparatively recent, the 
 churches of Connecticut have been familiarly 
 styled Presbyterian. Such, at all events, was 
 the designation of the Bedford church from the 
 beginning.* It is to be presumed that under the 
 Saybrook Platform this congregation came under 
 the care of the Association of Fairfield County; 
 for though in a political sense ceded to the prov- 
 ince of New York, Bedford continued until about 
 the year 1720 to be regarded from the Connecti- 
 cut point of view as belonging, ecclesiastically, to 
 the parish of Stamford ;f and it is reasonable to 
 
 * " There is a Presbyterian preacher at Bedford " (Rev. Robert 
 Jenney, of Rye : 1722). " There are three meeting honses in the 
 parish, one at Bedford, built for, and used by the Presbyterians." 
 "At Bedford they have had a Presbyterian minister'' (Rev. James 
 Wetmore, of Rye : 1728). Bolton, History of the P. E. Church 
 in Westchester Co. , pp. 222, 249. 
 
 f Huntington, History of Stamford, Conn., p. 145. The records 
 of Fairfield County Association, for this period, unfortunately, do 
 not exist. 
 
_^ HI STORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 43 
 
 suppose that during the long period of destitution 
 that intervened, the Ministers at Stamford offici- 
 ated, at least occasionally, in the " meeting house " 
 at Bedford. 
 
 For fifteen years after the removal of Mr. Jones '705 
 from Bedford, the town was without a resident '7=°- 
 Minister. Failing in their appeal to the Assembly, 
 and finding resistance to the governor's arbitrary 
 rule useless, the people gave up the struggle, and 
 submitted to a wrong which was not to be re- 
 dressed while the colonial government lasted. 
 They were taxed year by year for the support of 
 the Church of England missionary at Rye, twenty 
 miles off; the constable of the town being required 
 to collect the quota assessed upon this part of the 
 missionary's "parish," and pay the amount in half- 
 yearly instalments to the church-wardens. Occa- 
 sionally, too, a special assessment was added for 
 the completion of the church at Rye, and the re- 
 pair of the Minister's house.* Compelled to carry 
 this load, the people of Bedford appear to have 
 felt for several years that it would be impossible to 
 bear the expense of supporting also a ministry of 
 
 * The Records of the Vestry show that from the year 171 1 — 
 when the Records begin — to the year 1719, the average yearly 
 amount levied upon the town of Bedford, as its quota toward the 
 salary of the missionary at Rye, and other expenses of the parish 
 (including "Beating the Drum") was £11., 8, i. From 1722 to 
 to 1731 the average amount was ;£'i3, 6, ii. From 1732 to 1740, 
 ;^14, 12, I. From 1741 to 1750, £20, 10, 8. From 1750 to 1760, 
 £fl2., 2, 7. From 1760 to 177Q, ;^47, 5, 9. From 1770 to 1776, 
 /gg, 18, II. 
 
44 
 
 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 their own.* Perhaps they may have been sustained 
 by the hope that an opportunity to escape from 
 this oppressive yoke might present itself. Such 
 an opportunity came at last, as they thought, in 
 the year 1719, upon the death of Mr. Bridge,t the 
 i7j^- third rector of Rye. A vacancy of three years fol- 
 lowed. During this vacancy the " Minister's rate " 
 remained ungathered throughout the parish ; and 
 the inhabitants of Rye, " being for the most part 
 such as were desirous of having a dissenting 
 teacher settled " there,:|: took occasion, in the ex- 
 ercise of their supposed rights, to invite a Pres- 
 byterian Minister to their church. This Minister 
 was the Reverend Stephen Buckingham, who was 
 called to Rye early in the year i720,§and remained 
 for more than two years.] It was at the same 
 
 * " The people there are very poor, and incapable to maintain two 
 differing ministers." This was said in 1722 of the people of Rye : 
 it was doubtless equally true of the people of Bedfoird. (Bolton, 
 History of the Prot. Episc. Church in Westchester Co., p. 214.) 
 
 f The Rev. Christopher Bridge was inducted Rector of the 
 Parish of Rye, 17 October, 1710, and died in that office 22 May, 
 1719. 
 
 X History of the Prot. Episc. Church in Westchester Co., p. 221. 
 
 § " They have resolved to call one Mr. Buckingham, a Dissenting 
 minister, and have accordingly sent to acquaint him with it." — Mr. 
 Poyer to the G. P. Society, 11 Feb., 1719-20. (Id., p. 212.) 
 
 \ " The want of a missionary so long at Rye has introduced a 
 dissenter to build his nest there." Mr. Thomas to the G. P. So- 
 ciety, 20 April, 1722. " There is a Presbyterian preacher at Bed- 
 ford, and there was another at Rye, when I came here." Mr. 
 Jenney to the G. P. Society, 15 Dec, 1722. (Id., pp. 213, 222.) 
 The Rev. Robert Jenney, Mr. Bridge's successor, came to Rye in 
 June, 1722. 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 45 
 
 time, and by concert of action, doubtless, with the 
 people of Rye, that the inhabitants of Bedford 
 called to their town that eminent man whose name 
 is intimately associated with the early history of 
 Presbyterianism and of evangelical religion in this 
 country, the Reverend William Tennent* 
 
 It was probably under Mr. Tennent's ministry 1720 
 that this church came for the first time under the 17=7. 
 care of a Presbytery. A clergyman of the Irish 
 Episcopal Church, he had removed to America 
 less than two years before, and had joined the 
 Synod of Philadelphia, upon giving his reasons 
 for dissenting from the doctrines and practices of 
 prelacy. After preaching for eighteen months in 
 East Chester, New York, he came to Bedford. He 3 'Say. 
 was now forty-eight years old ; and his four sons, 
 Gilbert, William, John, and Charles, were youths 
 nine to seventeen years of age. Bedford has no 
 
 * Born in Ireland about 1672. Ordained deacon i July, 1704, 
 and priest 22 Sept., 1706, by the Bishop of Down. Married in the 
 County of Down, Ireland, 15 May, 1702, to Catharine, daughter of 
 Rev. Gilbert Kennedy, of Ayrshire, Scotland. Arrived in Phila- 
 delphia 6 Sept., 1718. Admitted a member of the Synod of Phila- 
 delphia 17 Sept., 1718. Settled in the parish of East Chester, N. 
 Y., 22 Nov., 1718. Removed to Bedford, N. Y., 3 May, 1720. Re- 
 moved to Neshaminy, Bucks Co., Penn., in 1726 or 1727. Continued 
 pastor of the church in that place until 1742. Died in Neshaminy, 
 6 May, 1745. His widow died in Philadelphia, 7 May, 1753, aged 
 seventy years. " His tombstone, in the graveyard of Neshaminy 
 Church, incorrectly gives the date of his death as May 6, 1746. It 
 should be 1745." History of Neshaminy Presbyterian Church of 
 Warwick, Hartsville, Bucks County, Pa., 1726-1876. By Rev. D. 
 K. Turner. Philadelphia : 1876. Page 65. 
 
46 
 
 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 more interesting association than that of the pres- 
 ence of this remarkable family within its precincts. 
 Their home was in the northeastern part of the 
 town, at " Cantito," the region since illustrated by 
 the residence of the honoured John Jay. Here a 
 farm was laid out for the new Minister, at the time 
 of his coming, in the common lands between the 
 Cisco and Cross fivers ; and an additional tract of 
 twenty-three acres on the eastern side of the 
 " former bounds " was given him five years later. 
 We follow in imagination the 'father and the sons 
 in their labours upon this rude farm, their wan- 
 derings through the forest in pursuit of the game 
 with which the region still abounded, and their 
 Sabbath day's journey of five miles to the " meet- 
 ing house " on tlie village greeu, 
 
 Mr. Tennent's stay in Bedford has been hitherto 
 represented as very brief — covering a few months, 
 or at the most, a year.* But from the references 
 to his ministry which I have discovered in the 
 records of this town, as well as in those of the 
 adjoining town of Stamford, f I am able to 
 
 * The General Assembly's Missionary Magazine, May, 1805 (vol. 
 II.) — Biographical Sketches of the Founder and Principal Alumni 
 of the Log College. Collected and edited by A. Alexander, D.D., 
 Princeton, N. J., 1845, pp. 20, 22. — Annals of the American Pulpit, 
 vol. III., p. 24. 
 
 f At a Town meeting in Stamford, Conn., 25 Dec, 172Z, "the 
 request of James White of y= Long Ridg and y= rest of his neigh- 
 bours concerning their minister's rate Desiring the Liberty of pay- 
 ing so much money as they are obliged to pay to ye minister's rate 
 in this town, to y« minister in Bedford" was granted " to y"i and 
 y= Inhabitants of ye Chestnut Ridg namely Dibble Conkling and 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 47 
 
 show that he continued to be the pastor of this 
 church for more than six years — from the 
 first of May, 1720, at least to the latter part of 
 August, 1726. 
 
 Our information regarding the early years of 
 Tennent's ministry in America is very scanty and 
 unsatisfactory. The dates of his arrival in Phila- 
 delphia, his settlement in East Chester, New York, 
 and his removal to Bedford, are known.* It has 
 been generally supposed that from Bedford he went 
 in 1721 or 1722 to Bensalem, in Pennsylvania, 
 where he continued until the year 1726. During 
 this time, however, he was almost uniformly absent 
 from the sessions of the Synod of Philadelphia, 
 sometimes sending by letter reasons for his ab- 
 sence, which were sustained. This fact would 
 seem inexplicable, upon the hypothesis that Ten- 
 nent was then preaching in Bensalem, within twenty 
 miles of Philadelphia.f It is now certain that he 
 
 Corey upon this consideration that they bring a note from under 
 y= hand of y= Reverend Mr. Tenants, that they have paid the same 
 to him before y= next town meeting." At a Town meeting, ii 
 Dec, 1723, the town " grants y= same liberty to y^ inhabitants of 
 y= Long Ridg and ye Chestnut Ridg of paying their ministers rate 
 to Bedford as was granted y= last year they bringing from under 
 M'' Tenants hand that they have paid ye s"! taxes to Bedford." 
 (Town Records of Stamford, Conn., Book No. 2, pp. 141, 142.) 
 The same permission was given in December, 1724 and 1725. 
 
 * Memoranda in the hand- writing of Mr. Tennent, quoted by Dr. 
 Alexander, Log College, pp. 248, 249, note. 
 
 \"\\. is not probable that the History of Log College is cor- 
 rect in stating that Mr. Tennent was in Bensalem from 1721 to 
 1726, for during that time a pastor of another name, a Dutch min- 
 
48 
 
 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 remained in Bedford until the latter part of 
 August, 1726: and it would seem probable that 
 his removal to Neshaminy may not have occurred 
 before the following spring or summer* 
 
 The references to Mr. Tennent in the town 
 records of Bedford are numerous, and their tone 
 implies that he was held in very high considera- 
 tion. It is evident from the action taken by the 
 people on several occasions that they were exceed- 
 ingly anxious to retain him as their Minister. Be- 
 sides his salary of forty pounds, made up by volun- 
 tary contributions, and collected by a committee 
 of the " society," he received repeated grants of 
 land, amounting in all to several hundred acres. 
 But the support was meagre, at best ; and with a 
 
 ister, had charge of the Bensalem Church, at least two or three 
 years. At what time exactly Mr. Teutient came to Neshaminy is 
 doubtful ; but his absence from the Synod at Philadelphia seven 
 years out of eight, from 1719 to 1727, being present only in 1721, 
 would indicate that he did not reside in Pennsylvania ; for from 
 1727 to 1741, when he left the Synod and joined the New Bruns- 
 wick Presbytery, he was present at the meetings of Synod every year 
 but one. He was absent in 1735. It is probable, therefore; that he 
 did not come to Pennsylvania to reside permanently till 1726, when 
 he came to Neshaminy." — History of Neshaminy Presbyterian 
 Church, page 11, note. 
 
 * That Mr. Tennent's removal from Bedford to Neshaminy may 
 not have occurred before the spring of 1727, would appear probable, 
 from the fact that he was still absent from the Synod of Philadelphia 
 in September, 1726; from the allusion to his departure, in the cor- 
 respondence of the Rev. James Wetraore, of Rye, in 1728, as of re- 
 cent occurrence; and from the date (1727) of the erection of the 
 first house of worship in Neshaminy. (History of Neshaminy 
 Church, page 13.) 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD church: ■ aq 
 
 large family to provide for, he found it necessary „ ,, '7^5 
 
 111 T^»t ■'8 November. 
 
 at length to depart. Perhaps the last appropria- 
 tion of land to Mr. Tennent, in November, 1725, 
 may have been made with the hope of altering his 
 determination. What the result might have been, 
 if this eminent servant of God could have remained 
 with his attached people, and if from this centre the 
 ^ Gospel as preached by him and by his gifted sons 
 could have sounded out through this region, it is in- 
 teresting to conjecture. But the oppressive course 
 of the colonial government, in taxing the town for 
 the benefit of the Church of England, prevented 
 the people from adequately supporting the minis- 
 try of their own choice. During the latter years 
 of Mr. Tennent's stay in Bedford, this " precinct " 
 of the "parish of Rye " was again assessed for the 
 salary of the Anglican missionary in that place. 
 If they had hoped for relief from this exaction 
 after Mr. Bridge's death, in 1719, the people were 
 soon to be disappointed. In 1722, the Justices 
 and Vestry were required by the new rector * to 
 raise the money due for the past three years, and 
 pay it over to the church wardens. Upon their 
 refusal, Mr. Jenney procured a writ of mandamus 
 to compel payment. The following receipt, which 
 has been preserved by one of the old families of the 
 
 * The Rev. Robert Jenney was appointed in 1722 by the Gospel 
 Propagation Society to beits Missionaryat Rye. In 1726 he removed 
 to Hempstead, L. I., and thence in 1742 to Philadelphia, where he 
 was for twenty years rector of Christ Church. He died 5 Jan., 
 1762, aged seventy-five years. 
 3 
 
CO HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 17=6. town,* relates to the period of Mr. Tennent's min- 
 istry, and testifies to one of the grievances under 
 which the Presbyterians of Bedford suffered during 
 the colonial times : 
 
 "Rec"^ y' first of Aprill 1726 from Richard 
 Holmes Constable of Bedford for 1724, Eleven 
 pounds Sixteen shilling with his Collection for -f 
 Ministrs Rate that year, in full of his warrant I 
 say Re"* p' me. JOHN HORTON."t 
 
 As every trace of Mr. Tennent's residence in 
 Bedford must be of interest to the members of 
 this church, I transcribe here from the records of 
 the town the grants of land made to him, together 
 with the conveyances which he executed upon his 
 departure from the place. 
 
 We whose names are under written being Inhabitants 
 of y^ Town of Bedford in Westchester County in y' 
 province of New York & being y= propriators of old 
 purchas and Cohomong purchas in y"= Township aforesd 
 doe give grant alienate & make over unto y° Rei* 
 M"^ William Tenant his heirs & assignes for ever all that 
 fourteen acres of land in the East field on y= north side 
 
 * The family of the late John C. Holmes. 
 
 fjohn Horton was one of the church-wardens of the parish 
 church of Rye, in 1724. — The constables did not always perform 
 this function of their office with a good grace. In 1730, the Justices 
 and Vestry of Rye ordered and empowered the church-wardens " to 
 prosecute immediately the Constables of Bedford and of the Man- 
 nour of Scarsdale, who are behind of paying in y= parish Rate." 
 (Records of Vestry.) 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 51 
 
 of a way & joyning to y= land of Thomas Chambers east 
 & north the said. M"' Tennant relinquishing his right to 
 fourteen acres of land that is to be laid out in y= first 
 hundred acres to be laid out to him by virtue of a grant 
 from Joseph Holmes & Jonathan Miller juner &c as 
 witness our hands this first day of March annoq= 172^ 
 Jonathan Miller Cornelius Seely Joshua Jones Thomas 
 Wescot Daniel Holly Nathan Clark Hezekiah Roberts 
 Richard Waring Zaci" Mills Jonathan Miller Stephen 
 Miller Jonathan Holmes Joseph Holmes James Chambers 
 David Holmes 
 
 At a Town meeting held at Bedford this 4"" day of 
 April 1 72 1 this above subscription voted & confirmed 
 Recorded by me Zac'' Mills Cler 
 
 At a meeting of y= propriators of y' old & Cohomong 
 purchases in y= Township of Bedford voted that ye Rever- 
 end M'' William Tenant shall have his hundred acres of 
 land y° remainder of land mentioned in his deed laid out 
 forthwith by y° Towns Comittee not exceeding two 
 peices voted this 21=' day of February 1721 
 Recorded p'^ Zaci" Mills Cler 
 
 The Comitee appointed by y= Sosiaty of Bedford for 
 y^ measuring of lands appertaining to y^ abovsd Town 
 have measured and laid out the subsequent parcel of land 
 in favours of y= Reve'^ William Tennant in Bedford in 
 maner following — The norwest corner by y= road to y= 
 fishing pools bounded by a red oak tree upon y= old 
 purchas line runing southerly 24 rods to a black oak tree 
 upon Joshua Hills bounds marked with a heap of stones 
 about it from thence runing easterly 56 rods to a white 
 oak tree upon Joshua Hills northeast bounds marked 
 thence northerly by y° space of 16 rodds to a white oak 
 tree marked upon y« old purchase bounds thence runing 
 
52 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 "''"■ westerly 56 rodds to y= first tree from y= white oak upon 
 y= old purchas line above specified runing ea-sterly 168 
 rodd [to ? ] a swamp white oak marked upon y' old 
 purchas bounds thence runing westerly 1 20 rodds to red 
 oak marked thence runing northerly 216 rods to a white 
 oak tree at Joshua Hills northeast corner thence to y= 
 place of begining 16 rods from y= above mentioned swamp 
 white oak tree at y^ swamps side runing westerly 40 rodds 
 to a white oake tree marked thence northerly to a walnut 
 stadle w' a heap of stones about it thence easterly 40 
 rodds y° contents of w*^ is 80 [acres ?] Signed by us 
 March y= 20* annodom 172^^ John Miller Joseph Holmes 
 Jonathan Miller 
 
 Recorded April y= 20''' 1722 p'' Zac^ Mills Cler 
 The Commitee "appointed by y"= socity of Bedford for 
 y= measuring of lands appertaining to y° abovsd Town 
 have measured and laid y' following peice' of land for y' 
 Reverend William Tennant in Bedford as below specified 
 y' norwest corner bounded by a black oak tree extending 
 easterly 40 rodds to a white oak tree upon y= old purchas 
 bounds thence runing sutherly 93 rodds to a drie white 
 oak tree thence westerly 39 rodds to a chesnut tree marked 
 thence northerly 100 rodd to y= place of begining y= con- 
 tents of which is 20 acres Signed by us April y^ 13* 
 annoq dom 1722 John Miller Zac"* Mills Joseph Holmes 
 Jonathan Miller 
 
 Recorded Aprill y= 20* 1722 p'^ Zac** Mills Cler 
 Bedford November y'' 8* 1725 Then laid out to y' 
 Reverend M"' William Tenant 2^^ acres of land sised 
 [sized] for 18 acres begining at y= southeast corner of sd 
 M"" Tenents fence at Cantito thence to run easterly 32 
 rods to y" edge of a swamp thence northerly 26 r6ds to 
 a stake being William Hills northwest corner bounds 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 53 
 
 thence easterly 28 rod to a stake being William Hills '7=s- 
 northeast corner bounds thence along y= rode northerly 
 to a white oak tree marked 3; thence westerly 74 rods to 
 y= corner of sd fence thence south to y= place of begin- 
 ing & also three acres to y^ southward of y"= land [of] 
 Benjamin Kellum adjoyning to his own land begining at 
 a white oak stadle marked being sd M' Tenants former 
 bounds thence running northerly to a walnut stadle 
 marked 20 rods thence westeily 24 rods to -a red oak 
 stadle marked thence southerly 24 rods to a stake thence 
 easterly 24 rods to y= place of begining laid out by us 
 Joseph Holmes Zac'' Mills Comitee 
 
 Recorded y= date abovsd p"" Zac'' Mills Cler 
 This Indenture made this sixteenth day of August in 
 y= thirteenth year of y= reign of our sovereign lord George 
 by y= grace of God of Great Brittain France and Ireland 
 King defender of y= faith &c and in y= year of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ one thousand seven hundred twenty & six 
 & between the Reverend M"' William Tenant of Bedford 
 in Westchester County in y= Colony of New York of y'' 
 one part and Isaac Quintard of Stanford in Fairfield 
 County in ye Colony of Conecticut merchant of y* other 
 part witnesseth that y= abovsd William Tenant for & in 
 consideration of y= sum of forty pounds currant money 
 of New York to him in hand paid by y= abovsd Isaac 
 Quintard. . . . have sold. . . unto ye abovsd Isaac 
 Quintard. . . one parcel or lot of land at a place called 
 Bateses Ridg containing by estimation thirteen acres 
 .... and also three acres of land adjoyning to said 
 land . . . and also one other parcel of land at a place 
 called Kellums Ridg containing by estimation twenty 
 acres. ... To have and to hold [etc.] 
 
 William Tenant. 
 
54 
 
 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 >726. This Indenture made this twenty-third day of August 
 
 .... in y° year of our Lord Christ one thousand 
 seven hundred twenty & six & between y<= Reverend 
 M"' William Tenant of Bedford in Westchester County in 
 y= Colony of New York of y= one part and Hezekiah 
 Roberts & Theophilus Kellum of y= abovsd town, County 
 & Colony yeo" of y= other part witnesseth that y* abovsd 
 William Tennant for & in consideration of the sum of 
 one hundred twenty & two pounds currant money of New 
 
 York. . . have sold unto y= abovsd Theophilus 
 
 Kellum & Hezekiah Roberts. . . all these several parcels 
 of land hereafter exprest in y= bounds of y= abovsd Bed-, 
 ford at a place called Cantito & bounded as foUoweth one 
 lot is bounded ye northwest cprner by y= rode to y' fishing 
 falls. . . . and also one other peice of land, . . . laid 
 out for eighty acres. . . and also one other peice of land 
 laid out for forty-three acres. . . and a'so one other peice 
 of land laid out for three acres. ... To have and to hold 
 [etc.] Signed & sealed in the presence of us Will Bradford 
 Gilbert Tennant 
 
 William Tennant. 
 
 These presents witnesseth that M" Cathrin Tenant wife 
 to y= within M"" William Tennant doth. . . . make over 
 all her right title interest claim or demand to y within 
 devised premises. . . to y= abovsd Hezekiah Roberts & 
 Theophilus Kellum [etc.] Sealed & delivered in presence 
 of Zach Mills John Tennant. * 
 
 * Town Records of Bedford, vol. II., pp. 6g, 73, 95, 116, 105. 
 
 Other parcels of land, which remained in Mr. Tennent's posses- 
 sion, were after his decease conveyed by his son Gilbert to the 
 trustees of the Presbyterian Church of Bedford. 
 
 May 16, 1749. Gilbert Tennent of Philadelphia in the Colony 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 55 
 
 It is with no small satisfaction that I adducethis 
 evidence, to establish the fact that Bedford was for 
 so long a period the home and parish of William 
 Tennent. " The Presbyterian Church," says Dr. 
 Alexander, " is probably not more indebted for her 
 prosperity, and for the evangelical spirit which has 
 generally pervaded her body, to any individual, 
 than to the elder Tennent." We cannot doubt 
 that his preaching and holy living, and the examples 
 of piety furnished by his family, made an abiding 
 impression upon this community. The dates given 
 in the scanty traditional accounts of Tennent's life 
 and the lives of his sons, are so confusing, that v/e 
 cannot speak positively of the events that may 
 have occurred within these seven years spent in 
 Bedford. But it seems highly probable that dur- 
 ing this period, Gilbert, the elder son, pursued his 
 
 of Pennsylvania, Gentleman : Son of and heir at law unto Rev. 
 William Tennent formerly of Bedford in Westchester County in 
 the Colony of New York, but lately of Neshamina in the Colony 
 of Pensilvania, Deceased, for the promoting and supporting of [he 
 gospel of Jesus Christ according and under the Presbyterian Dis- 
 cipline in the above said Bedford — gave to John Holmes, John 
 Miller and Zebediah Mills, trustees, and their successors, several 
 pieces of land, formerly possessed by his Reverend Father, for the 
 
 use and support of the ministry viz., one house and home 
 
 lot containing by estimation about ten acres : two lots in the east 
 field containing eight acres each : one piece on the south side of 
 Mahanus River, containing by estimation twelve acres ; three acres 
 on a plain called South Plain : one acre and a quarter in a meadow 
 called Theal's meadow: one and a half acre in a meadow called 
 David's Hill meadow : two acres and a half in a meadow called 
 the great meadow, &c. , &c. 
 
56 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 studies for the holy ministry under his father's care, 
 and began to preach the Gospel ; that William, 
 the second son, while visiting his brother Gilbert in 
 New Brunswick, had that marvellous trance^ the 
 recollection of which lives in the Christian mind 
 to this day : and that John, the third son, passed 
 through the remarkable religious experiences of 
 which his brother has left us so graphic an ac- 
 count.* 
 itA. " At Bedford they have had a Presbyterian min- 
 
 » February, , ,, , tutitt' r t\ i 
 
 ister, writes Mr. Wetmore of Rye, not long after 
 Mr. Tennent's departure. "They gave him a 
 house and farm to work upon, and forty pounds 
 per annum. But finding it not sufficient to sup- 
 port him with a numerous family, he has left them, 
 and they are now settled with another young man, 
 to whom they give the same allowance,"t This 
 young man, Tennent'= successor, was Henry 
 Baldwin, the son of Barnabas Baldwin, of Mil- 
 ford, Connecticut.:]: He was graduated at Yale 
 College, in I726,§ and came to Bedford soon after 
 
 * Biographical Sketches of the Founder and Principal Alnrani 
 of the Log College. Together with an Account of the Revivals of 
 Religion under their Ministry. Collected and Edited by A. Alex- 
 ander, D.D. — Princeton, N. J., 1845 ; pp. 129- 133. 
 
 \ History of the Prot. Episc. Church in Westchester Co., N.Y., 
 by R. Bolton, p. 249. 
 
 \ Baptized 14 June, 1702. — The Baldwin Genealfgy from 1500 
 to 1881. By Charles Candee Baldwin, M. A.— Cleveland, O..1881. 
 
 § It can scarcely be doubted that this Henry Baldwin is the per-' 
 son so named in Yale College Catalogue ; though, if our presump- 
 tion be correct, the Catalogue is in error in giving the date of his 
 decease as 1727. 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 57 
 
 Tennent's removal.* The following minute, which ,7j^u\ry. 
 has just come to light, contains the only trace of 
 his ministry here that we have been able to dis- 
 cover, in confirmation of Mr. Wetmore's state- 
 ment: 
 
 " Att a Sociaty meeting Aprill ye seventh in 
 ye year of our Lord Christ one thousand seven 
 Hundred and twenty eight then was chose by said 
 Sociaty Vincent Simkins and Richard Holms in 
 order for ye collecting and gathering of ye salary of 
 Mr Henry Baldwin wich is Raised by said sociaty 
 and payable ye seventeentli^f January next after 
 ye date here of and only for this year above said 
 collected by them."f 
 
 It is not known how long Mr. Baldwin contin- 
 ued in this charge. He died before May, 1740, 
 leaving no issue.:}: His successor was ROBERT 
 Sturgeon, a native of Scotland, who is said to 
 have been settled here for twelve years.§ He had 
 been Minister of the church in Wilton, Connecti- 
 cut, from 1726 to 1732,! and he probably came to 
 
 * The minute cited above intimates that the year for which the 
 salary was due would terminate 17 Jan., 1729. It commenced 
 therefore in 1728. 
 
 f The original of this interesting document is in the possession 
 of Mrs. John C. Holmes, who has kindly communicated it to me : 
 thus enabling me to supply another link in the succession of the 
 Bedford ministry. 
 
 \ Baldwin Genealogy. 
 
 § President Stiles' Papers ; quoted by Webster, Histor)' of the 
 Presbyterian Church in America, p. 492. 
 
 I Contributions to the Eccl. History of Conn., p. 508. 
 
58 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 '73''- Bedford directly after leaving that place. On the 
 twenty-fifth day of March, 1736, Jonathan Miller, 
 of Bedford, sold to Robert Sturgeon, clerk, of the 
 same place, ten acres of land in Bedford, for the 
 sum of fifty pounds.* 
 
 1743. Sturgeon was followed in 1743 by SAMUEL 
 
 Sacket, a laborious and successful Minister, whose 
 pastorate continued for ten years. His successor 
 was EUPHALET Ball, who was installed on the 
 second day of January, 1754, and remained in office 
 fourteen years. After him came Samuel Mills, 
 installed in December, 1769, and released from his 
 charge in May, 1786. 
 
 The period covered by these long pastorates, was 
 one of agitation and disorder, both in Church and in 
 State. We shall have space only to glance at the 
 times and the men. SAMUEL SACKEXf entered the 
 ministry at the moment when the great religious 
 awakening that accompanied Whitefield's labours 
 had reached its height. He was ordained by the 
 I'resbytery of New Brunswick, of which William 
 Tennent and his sons were now the leading spirits. 
 The Presbytery sent him into Westchester Coun- 
 ty to perform a missionary work, for which he was 
 
 * Town Records of Bedford, No. 2, p. 137. 
 
 f Born in Newtown, L. I., in 1712. Married Hannah, daughter 
 of Natlianael Hazard, of New York, 6 April, 1732. Ordained by 
 New Brunswick Presbytery, 13 Oct., 1741, and sent to preach in 
 Westchester Co., N. Y., at Crompond — now Yorlctown — ind Cort- 
 land Manor. Installed pastor of Bedford Church, 12 Oct., 1743. 
 Called in 1753 to Hanover or Crompond, where he died 5 June, 
 1784, aged seventy-two years. 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 59 
 
 well fitted. He was a man of burning zeal — 
 "one of the most enthusiastic Methodists," an un- 
 friendly witness calls him.* It was the period 
 of the division of the Presbyterian Church — the 
 "schism " of 1741. Sacket took sides with the ex- 
 treme left — to use a modern phrase — the progres- 
 sives, the " new lights," as they were then termed. 
 The preaching of these men was earnest, evangeli- 
 cal, but too often bitter and denunciatory. In 
 Connecticut they met with little favour. It was a 
 time of great religious torpor throughout New Eng- 
 land. Those who sympathized with the revival, 
 dissatisfied with this pervading apathy, separated, 
 in many cases, from the Consociated churches, 
 and formed distinct congregations. Such a move- 
 ment had occurred in Bedford, greatly weakening 
 the church, during the early years of Sacket's pas- 
 torate. He succeeded in drawing back a number 
 of the Separatists ; and the church appears to have 
 enjoyed seasons of religious refreshment under his 
 ministry. But the people were conservative, dis- 
 trustful of new measures, attached to the "half- 
 way covenant ;" the zeal and the strictness of 
 their " New Light " Minister displeased them ; 
 and they asked to have the pastoral relation dis- '^Sjj 
 solved. 
 
 His successor, Eliphalet BALL,f was a man of 
 
 * History of ihe Prot. Episc. Church in Westchester Co., N. Y., 
 by R. Bolton, p. 621. 
 
 f A native of New Haven, Conn. Graduated at Yale College in 
 1748, and ordained probably by one of the Connecticut Associa- 
 
6o HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 2ja"£r kindred spirit. Like Sacket, he held with Ed- 
 wards and Bellamy in his theology, and in his 
 views of experimental religion ; and like Sacket he 
 met with opposition on the part of the " Old Side " 
 members of his congregation. In 1756 he wrote 
 to Bellamy, begging him to come and preach in 
 his parish, and promising to spend a week with him 
 in visiting the regions round about. His " natural 
 turn " led him sometimes into hasty and arbitrary 
 action ; and the help of the Presbytery was repeat- 
 edly invoked,* to settle difificulties between the 
 pastor and the Session.f In 1763, " understanding 
 that the Church, in Bedford laboured under great 
 Difficulties, as well by the Death of one of their 
 Elders, as from the withdrawing of another, one 
 Mr Daniel Haight, who had turn'd Anabaptist, 
 whereby the Church was left without a proper 
 Number of Elders, and could not be prevailed with 
 at present to chuse any more," the Presbytery ap- 
 
 lions. Installed Pastor of Bedford Church, 2 Jan., 1754. Dis- 
 missed 21 Dec, 1768. Removed to " the Five Mile Square "—novf 
 Ballston, Saratoga County, Nevyr York — in 1770. Died there in 
 1797. He is said to have been distantly related to General Wash- 
 ington. 
 
 * Some of these charges are recited by Webster, Hist, of the 
 Presb. Church in America, p. 657 ; but inasmuch as the Presbytery 
 found the complaints to be groundless, they are unworthy of the 
 prominence that has been given to them. 
 
 \ The Elders representing Bedford Church in the Presbytery of 
 Dutchess County, from the date of the formation of that Presbytery, 
 27 October, 1762, until the close of Mr. Ball's pastorate, 21 De- 
 cember, 1768, vi'ere Ebenezer Miller, John Lav^rrence, and Joshua 
 Ambler. 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 6l 
 
 pointed a committee to consider the state of things, ^''^'" 
 and make report at their next meeting. In 1764, 
 Mr. Ball and his Elder referred to the Presbytery 
 a case " touching the Interest of some Monies, 
 arising from the sale of some Parsonage Lands, 
 sold before Mr Ball's settlement in this Place," 
 which the Elder refused to pay. In 1766, a peti- 
 tion was offered "by a Number of Persons belong- 
 ing to the Church and Congregation in Bedford, 
 desiring that the Revd M"" Ball, their present Pas- 
 tor, might be dismissed from his Pastoral Relation 
 to that Church and people ; at the same time al- 
 ledging nothing against Mr Ball's moral Character, 
 only, representing that there were some particular 
 uneasinesses existing among them, which rendered 
 the success of his Ministry dubious among that 
 People." Finding, however, that " a Majority of 
 the People were yet for his Continuance, and ob- 
 serving the Christian Tenderness that appeared 
 between the parties," the Presbytery was of opin- 
 ion that " some healing Measures should yet be 
 pursued to make up their present unhappy 
 Breach," and advised the pastor to call the con- 
 gregation together to consult and act with refer- 
 ence to their condition. In 1767, a minority of 
 the congregation complained that the Church Ses- 
 sion had dismissed two of the Elders from office. 
 The Presbytery judged that "a Church Session had 
 power to purge its own Body," yet advised that 
 this action be reconsidered, and that if it should 
 appear upon the whole to be for the best, the EI- 
 
62 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 ''^'- ders be restored. This course did not satisfy the 
 complainants, who appealed to the Synod. At the 
 next meeting of the Synod of Philadelphia, 27th 
 May, 1767, the complaint was presented by Mr. 
 John Lawrence, Elder: but was dismissed as 
 trivial, and the conduct of the dissatisfied party, 
 " in absenting themselves from public worship, on 
 so slender a foundation," was pronounced unjusti- 
 fiable. The difficulties which had been pending so 
 • long, culminated however in the following year, 
 21 De'clmber. when the Presbytery met at Bedford. " A Petition 
 was prefer'd by Mr Ball, requesting a Dismission 
 from his pastoral Relation." After duly consid- 
 ering the reasons for and against granting this 
 request, the Presbytery "judged it most for the 
 Glory of God, the Interest of Religion, and best 
 Good of that Church and people that the pastoral 
 Relation be dissolved, and do dissolve it accord- 
 ingly." Mr. Ball was recommended as a Minister 
 of the Gospel in good standing to the churches 
 wherever God in His providence might call him ; 
 and the Presbytery " being sensible of the broken 
 and melancholly Circumstances of the Church and 
 Congregation in this place," did " earnestly recom- 
 mend to every one of them to forget and forgive 
 all former Broils and Disputes, and unitedly join 
 to seek and pursue the Things which make for 
 Peace." 
 
 Our accounts of Eliphalet Ball, after his resigna- 
 tion of this pastoral charge, have hitherto been sin- 
 gularly confused and inaccurate. It has been rep- 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 63 
 
 resented* that he came back to Bedford in T772, '7^° 
 and resumed the care of this Church, in the ab- ''''• 
 sence of Mr. Mills, who had succeeded him in the 
 pastoral office; that he remained here until 1784, 
 and after spending four years in Woodbridge, Con- 
 necticut, removed in 1788 with a part of the Bed- 
 ford congregation to Saratoga County, in this 
 State. The truth is, however, that this removal 
 occurred nearly twenty years earlier, and very soon 
 after Mr. Ball's departure from Bedford ; and that 
 he never returned to this Church. t It was in the 
 year 1770 that with his family he went from this 
 region to the locality which became known by his 
 name, as Ball's Town, or Ballston. Here a settle- 
 ment had been recently commenced by two broth- 
 ers, Michael and Nicholas McDonald. From 
 these proprietors, Mr. Ball received the appropri- 
 ation of a tract of four hundred acres of land, as an 
 inducement to come and bring with him a com- 
 pany of his former parishioners. Among the early 
 settlers of Ballston, we iind the names of John 
 Holmes, Dr. Elisha Miller, Beriah Palmer, David 
 
 * Webster, History of the Presb. Church in America, p. 658. — 
 Gillett, History of the Preab. Church in the U. S., Vol. I., p. 151. 
 — Bolton, History of Westchester Co., N. Y., revised edition, Vol. 
 I., p. 51. 
 
 f The impression that he did return may have arisen from a. 
 mistaken reading of an entry in the minutes of the Presbytery of 
 Dutchess County, 8 Oct., 1783, when the people of Bedford made 
 representations to the Presbytery regarding " Mr. Mills' [not Mr. 
 Ball's] return to them j" Mr. Mills having been absent from Bed- 
 ford since the burning of the Church and parsonage, 2 July, 1779. 
 
64 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 'J75 Clark, Samuel Wood, Isaac How, John Bell, Uriah 
 '"'• Benedict, Nathan Raymond, Stephen and Epenetus 
 White, Nathanael Weed, and others, who probably 
 belonged to this company of emigrants from Bed- 
 ford.* On the twenty-second day of September, 
 177s, the inhabitants of Ballston met, and united 
 in a church relation, under the ministry of Mr. 
 Ball, and upon the basis of the standards of the 
 Church of Scotland.f A house of worship was 
 built upon the southwest corner of the Minister's 
 farm, and here he preached for several years. His 
 pastorate, however, had terminated in April, 1783, 
 when he was succeeded by the Reverend Ebenezer 
 Martin. At this period Mr. Ball removed from 
 Ballston — perhaps leaving his family there — and 
 came to Woodbridge, Connecticut, where he offici- 
 ated as Minister of the Congregational Church in 
 that place from December, 1783, until the year 
 lygo.X He then returned to Ballston, and re- 
 mained there until his death in 1797; but he did 
 not resume the pastoral charge of the Church, al- 
 though his name appears occasionally as moderator 
 during vacancies in the pastorate. He continued 
 a member of the Presbytery of Dutchess Coun- 
 ty, although never present at its sessions until 
 
 * History of Saratoga County, New York, by N. B. Sylvester, 
 Philadelphia : 1878. Town of Ballston, pp. 246, 250. 
 
 f An Historical Sketch of the Presbyterian Church of Ballston 
 Centre, N. Y. By the Pastor, Alex. S. Hoyt, Ballston, N. Y., 
 1876. 
 
 J Contributions to the Eccl. History of Conn., p. 514. 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 65 
 
 May, 1786. In 1776, his absence from the autumn 
 meeting of the Presbytery was excused, in view of 
 " the Circumstances of that part of the Country 
 where Mr Ball Dwells, and the difficulties of the 
 present times." While in Woodbridge, he con- 
 nected himself with the New Haven Association. 
 
 Mr. Ball was a man of indomitable energy, and 
 as a leader both in civil and in ecclesiastical mat- 
 ters was highly esteemed in the community to 
 which he gave his name. His children, like him- 
 self, were pronounced patriots, one of his sons 
 serving during the war of the Revolution as a 
 colonel in the army.* 
 
 Samuel Mills, the ninth Minister of this church, »?^ 
 was the son f of the Reverend Jedidiah Mills, for 
 fifty-seven years pastor of Ripton — now Hunting- 
 ton — Connecticut. He was graduated at Yale 
 College in 1765, and was licensed by Fairfield East 
 Association on the thirty-first of May, 1768. The 
 Presbytery of Dutchess County, upon dissolving 
 
 * Mr. Ball's sons were John, Stephen, and Flamen. His wife's 
 name was Elizabeth. His daughter, Mary, became the wife of 
 General James Gordon. John was a colonel in the army, and was 
 ' in active service. " He was in the relief party under General 
 Arnold, that marched to the aid of Fort Stanwix." Flamen, the 
 youngest son, was graduated at Yale College in 1787, and became 
 a lawyer in the city of New York, where he died. His son, Flamen, 
 of Cincinnati, formerly law partner of Chief Justice Chase, and 
 United States District Attorney under President Lincoln's admin- 
 istration, is still living, at the age of seventy-two. — The Balhton 
 Journal, I Oct., 1881. 
 
 + " Son to the Revd M' Mills of Ripton in Connecticut." 
 Records of the Presbytery of Dutchess County, p. 48. 
 4 
 
66 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 the pastoral relation between Eliphalet Ball and 
 the people of Bedford, advised them to apply for 
 the services of Mr. Mills, who accepted their call, 
 13 i)e«mber. and was duly ordained by the Presbytery, con- 
 jointly with a council of the Ministers of Fairfield 
 County. During the first years of Mr. Mill's pas- 
 torate, the church appears to have recovered in a 
 measure from the "broken and melancholy " con- 
 dition in which he had found it. He had been 
 , the unanimous choice of the people, and their at- 
 tachment to him seems to have been unwavering 
 to the last. But the outbreak of the Revolution 
 made it exceedingly difficult for the Ministers of 
 the Gospel, in this exposed region, to pursue their 
 work. The records of the Presbytery, however, 
 show that in spite of these difficulties, the pastor of 
 Bedford Church was present at its sessions with an 
 Elder, almost invariably, for nine successive years — 
 from December, 1769, to November, 1778.* For the 
 next two years and a half, the meetings of that body 
 were interrupted by the war. Meanwhile Mr. Mills 
 had been forced to remove from Bedford tempor- 
 arily. His removal probably occurred at the time 
 
 * The Elders from Bedford Church, who appeared in Presby- 
 tery from 1770 to 1778, were Joshua Ambler, Jacob Smith, Eben- 
 ezer Miller, Jolin Lawrence, and Stephen Cle.k. Of these, the 
 first was the most frequently present. May gth, 1770, " M' Am- 
 bler, being an Elder in the Church at Bedford, yet living much 
 nearer to Poundridge, his Circumstances being somewhat Critical, 
 and he in Doubt where to join, begs the Advice of the Presbytery ; 
 who having consider'd the Matter, advise him, upcc the whole, to 
 continue where he is.'' 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. ^y 
 
 when the church and parsonage, together with '?J' 
 nearly the whole village of Bedford, were burned ''*■*• 
 by Tarleton's troops, on the night of the second of 
 July, 1779. 
 
 In October, 1782, Bedford was reported as ■' des- 
 titute." For some months prior to the meeting of 
 the Presbytery in October, 1783, Mr. Mills had been 
 preaching to the congregation in " Fredericksburg 
 North Society," now Patterson, Putnam County, 
 New York. This congregation now requested the 
 Presbytery to " set him over them in the work of the 
 Gospel Ministry." The request was opposed by 
 Jacob Smith, " Eider in the church at Bedford, from 
 which Place M^ Mills was Driven by the distressing 
 Circumstances into which they were cast by y« late 
 war, and from which Church and Congregation he 
 has been compelled to be absent ye main part of ye 
 Time for years past; "urging "that Presbytery 
 would not Liberate Mr Mills from his Pastoral Re- 
 lation to ye Church in Bedford till they may have 
 opportunity to represent their Case and signify their 
 mind with respect to Mr. Mills's return to them." 
 The Presbytery was greatly embarrassed by these 
 conflicting applications. Three adjourned meet- 
 ings were held before a decision could be reached. 
 At one of these meetings, the people of Bedford 
 were represented by a committee, consisting of 
 James Raymond, Joseph Holmes, and Moses St. 
 John. Finally, at a meeting held on the seventeenth 
 of March, 1784, the Presbytery conclude that " they 
 do not find reasons to advise Mr Mills to return 
 
68 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 '789. to Bedford." The pastoral relation, however, 
 continued for two years longer, until the installa- 
 tion of his successor. He reniained at Fredericks- 
 burg until 1789, when, his views upon the subject 
 of infant baptism having been changed, he left the 
 Presbyterian Church and avowed himself a Baptist.* 
 
 * The change appears to have occurred in the course of the win- 
 ter of 1788-9. The Presbytery learned, May 6, 1789, that Mr. 
 Mills had "joined the denomination of the Anabaptists since our 
 last session" (16 Oct., 1788). His connection with the Presbytery 
 was severed 14 Oct., 1789. I have been favoured by the Rev. 
 Samuel J. Mills, of Nevada, Iowa — a grandson of Samuel Mills — 
 with some interesting particulars regarding his grandfather, and 
 his descendants. " I have learned from my father, deceased in 
 1844, that my grandfather became much exercised on the subject 
 of baptism ; shut himself up for six weeks in his study ; and then 
 at great personal sacrifice announced to his people his change of 
 views, which severed his connection with the church and the Pres- 
 bytery. It was the greatest trial of his life." He removed, 
 about the year 1797, to " the Genesee country," and settled " in the 
 vicinity of the Wadsworths, at what was then Williamsburg, mid- 
 way between Mount' Morris and Geneseo.'' He had four sons : 
 Alexander, Lewis Frederick, Philo, and William A. He died 
 near Geneseo, Livingston County, New York, in 1813 (not 1815, 
 as stated in the Yale College Catalogue). " His memory was long 
 cherished " in that locality, for his worth and devoted piety. His 
 widow, a second wife, was a sister of Colonel David Humphreys, 
 one of Washington's aides-de-camp ; and after her husband's death, 
 returned to Connecticut. Samuel Mills' youngest son, William A. 
 (born in Bedford, 27 May, 1 777), was a man of great enterprise, 
 prominent among the early settlers of Livingston County, and an 
 active member of the Presbyterian Church. A sketch of his life is 
 published in the History of the Early Settlers of that County. His 
 son, Samuel J. Mills, was graduated at Yale College in 1S37, was 
 admitted to the bar in Albany, 1841, but engaged in business for 
 some years, and finally devoted himself to the Ministry, and was 
 licensed in 1859 to preach the Gospel. 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 69 
 
 Up to this time, he had been an active member ''''• 
 of .the Presbytery, and the records of that body 
 confirm the impression received from traditional 
 accounts, that he was an able and a devoted Min- 
 ister of the Gospel. 
 
 It is indeed not a little remarkable that during 
 this early period in the history of our land, when 
 our Church was in its infancy, and when the num- 
 ber of trained and faithful men in the service of 
 the Gospel was very small, Bedford should have 
 been favoured with the ministrations of such de- 
 voted and gifted Ministers of the Word as Morgan, 
 Tennent, Sacket, Ball, and Mills. The humble 
 " meeting-house," the site of which, at the foot of 
 Bates' Hill, was chosen this day two hundred years 
 ago ; and the second house of worship, which, 
 some time in the early part of the last century, 
 took its place, resounded with voices as earnest and 
 eloquent and loyal to the truth as were heard in 
 the land. The waves of the great tide of religious 
 life came sweeping again and again over this peo- 
 ple, in the days of the Great Awakening. Here 
 Tennent preached in his power — Tennent, the 
 friend and the peer of Whitefield, the founder of 
 the Log College, and the father of those "four 
 gracious sons," of whom Whitefield wrote, and who 
 were destined to shine as lights amid the darkness 
 and destitution of the age. And it is reasonable 
 to believe that the teachings and the lives of these 
 able and godly men must have exerted a powerful 
 and an abiding influence upon this community. 
 
70 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 We have but scanty accounts of the state of re- 
 . ligion here during the period immediately preced- 
 ing the Revolution. In the disturbed condition 
 of the country, there was doubtless much to im- 
 pede the usefulness of the ministry, and to draw 
 the attention of the people away from sacred truths 
 and duties. Tradition, however, testifies to the 
 fact, that religion pure and undefiled was illus- 
 trated here by many a consistent Christian charac- 
 ter, and that the doctrines of grace, so earnestly 
 proclaimed from the pulpit, were cherished in the 
 hearts of your forefathers, and bore fruit in hum- 
 ble, blameless and useful lives, whose record is on 
 high. 
 
 Bedford, during the greater part of the seven 
 years' war of the Revolution, was protected by 
 the proximity of the American forces, and suffered 
 less from incursions of the British troops than did 
 the places west and south of this, in the region 
 known as the Neutral Ground. It was, however, 
 exposed at all times, but especially in the earlier 
 years of the war, to the depredations of the ma- 
 rauding cow boys : and more than once, the fly- 
 ing visits of the enemy brought fire and slaughter 
 to the homes of its people. Upon one of these 
 1779- occasions, the meeting house and nearly every 
 
 2 July. , 
 
 dwelling in the village were burned.* It is sup- 
 posed that the records of the church, preserved in 
 the minister's house, were destroyed in this con- 
 flagration. 
 
 * Magazine of American History, vol. III., p. 685 (Nov., 1879). 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCIT. 71 
 
 Soon after the close of the war, the congrega- '''3- 
 tion undertook to rebuild their sanctuary. A site 
 was chosen, on the hill overlooking the village, 
 about twenty rods west of the spot where the 
 former house of worship had stood. The ground 
 was given by Captain Lewis McDonald.* The 
 
 * To all Christian People to whom these Presents shall come 
 Greeting know ye that I Lewis McDonald formerly of Bedford in 
 Westchester County State of New York but Now a Resident of 
 Long Island for certain Causes me thereunto moving and out of 
 love and affection for the Encouragement of Virtue and the Propi- 
 gation of the Gospel Do hereby Bequeath and give unto the Presby- 
 terian Society of Bedford in the County and State above said and 
 to their Heirs and Successors forever as long as they shall Remain 
 a Society and as long as they shall stand in Want of a House of 
 Publick Worship or a spot of Ground to Erect a House of Worship 
 thereon ONE half acre of Land situate lying and being in the 
 Township of Bedford in the County and State aforesaid Bounded 
 (as follows Lying on an Eminence above the spot of Ground wheie 
 the former Meeting House stood) Easterly by the Road that Runs 
 from the Town of Cantito Westerly Northerly and Southerly by 
 my own Land which land was a purchase of John Elliott Reference 
 being had to the Original Conveyance to have and to hold the 
 Above Bequeathed and Given spot of Land with all and singular 
 the Rights and Privileges thereunto Belonging to the above men- 
 tioned Society to their Heirs and Successors agreeable to the above 
 Mentioned Terms and Conditions and also I the said Lewis Mc- 
 Donald do for myself my Heirs and Assigns Covenant with the 
 said Society their Heirs and Successors that ^t and until the En- 
 sealing of these Presents I am well seised of the J'remises as a 
 Good Indefeasable Estate in fee Simple and have Good Rights to 
 Dispose of the same in manner and form above written and the 
 same is free from all Incumberances Whatsoever and furthermore I 
 the said Lewis McDonald do by these Presents bind myself my 
 Heirs to Warrant and Defend to the above Covenanted Premises 
 to the said Society their Heirs and Successors Against all Claims 
 
72 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 i7f3- churcli was probably erected in the autumn of the 
 year 1783.* A number of years, however, elapsed, 
 before the people were in a condition to complete 
 it. A stranger who visited the place in 1795, has 
 left us a graphic description of its forlorn appear- 
 ance. " Bedford had been a frontier town during 
 the Revolutionary war, and had suffered from the 
 depredations of both parties. Houses scattered 
 here and there, many of them in a decayed state, 
 
 I79S- led me to apprehend that the situation could not 
 be very eligible to me or my family. The church, 
 built of wood, and unstained by a single brush of 
 paint, presented -an appearance of desolation ex- 
 ceedingly affecting. If I had been surprised, at 
 a passing glance, at the exterior of the building, I 
 was much more so on beholding its interior, where 
 was neither plaster, pew, nor gallery. The Minis- 
 ter indeed was accommodated with a pulpit, while 
 
 and Demands Whatsoever In Testimony and Confirmation of 
 wiiich I have hereunto set my hand and Seal this Sixth Day of 
 August in the year of our LORD Christ one Thousand Seven 
 Hundred and Eighty and three and in the Seventh year of our 
 Independence 
 
 Lewis McDonald 
 In Presence of 
 Stephen Cornwell \ 
 Mary Cornwell ) (Town Records of Bedford.) 
 
 * The deed of gift, from Lev^is McDonald to the Presbyterian 
 Society of Bedford, is dated the sixth day of August, 17S3. The 
 Town Records show that the town meeting in May, 1784, was 
 held in the " meeting house,'' which must therefore have been 
 erected between these dates. 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 73 
 
 his hearers sat on slabs, supported by two legs at '"5. 
 each end, and two in the middle." * 
 
 But the sanctuary, in its forlorn condition, was 
 only a type of the pervading desolation. Every- 
 where the traces of the long, weary, exhausting 
 struggle were to be seen. Its most disastrous 
 effects appeared, here as elsewhere, in the moral 
 and religious state of the population. Religious 
 worship interrupted for years, education neg- 
 lected, families broken up, young men called away 
 to the exposure and suffering of military service, 
 and to the demoralizing associations of camp life ; 
 all the hardening and depressing influences of war 
 experienced for so long a time : — it is not surprising 
 to find that the work of recuperation in the church, 
 as in society at large, was slow and difficult. 
 
 At Bedford, however, this work was undertaken 
 with a promptness and an energy which proved that 
 the interest of the community in its own religious 
 welfare had not died out. The congregation, 
 shortly after the declaration of peace, became in- 
 corporated, under the law of the State of New 
 York. The name and style of the ecclesiastical '7^s- 
 corporation was, The Presbyterian Church and 
 Congregation of Bedford, to be governed in Dis- 
 cipline and Worship according to the Directory of 
 the now established Church of Scotland. The 
 first trustees elected were Zebadiah Mills, Israel 
 Lyon, and Joseph Owen. 
 
 *The Blatchford Memorial, New York, 1871, pp. 32, 25. 
 
74 
 
 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 The next year, a Minister was called. John 
 Davenport* came of a long line of eminent New 
 England Ministers. His father was the famous 
 James Davenport, one of the most erratic of the 
 " New Light " preachers, the friend of Whitefield, 
 Davies, and the Tennents. John was born on the 
 eleventh day of August, 1752, in Philippi — now 
 Carmel, Putnam County, New York — where his 
 father was settled for a time.f 
 li^uky. The Presbytery of Dutchess County met in Bed- 
 ford, at the request of the congregation, "with a 
 view to the Instalment of the Reverend John 
 Davenport." Solomon Mead, of Salem, at whose 
 ordination, thirty-four years before, the father of the 
 candidate had been present, preached the sermon. 
 
 * Born in Philippi, or Carmel, N. Y., ir Aug., 1752. Gradu- 
 ated at tlie College of New Jersey in 1769. Ordained by Suffolk 
 Presbytery in 1775. Stated Supply at Southold, L. I., for two 
 years. Settled in Bedford, 18 May, 1786. Resigned 4 May, 1791. 
 Dismissed, 18 Sept., 1793, to the Presbytery of Long Island. Set- 
 tled, 12 Aug., 1795, in Deerfield, N. J., where he remained for ten 
 years. He afterwards laboured as home missionary in Western 
 New York, and died in Lysander, N. Y., 13 July, 1821, aged sixty- 
 nine years. 
 
 + Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit, vol. III., p. 8g. Dr. 
 Sprague puts Philippi in ^ew Jersey. That the place designated 
 was no other than Philippi in Dutchess County. New York (now 
 Carmel, Putnam Co., N. Y.), is shown by the records of the neigh- 
 bouring church of South Salem, Westchester Co., from which it ap- 
 pears that James Davenport was present at the ordination of Solo- 
 mon Mead, the first pastor of that congregation, 19 May, 1752, and 
 " gave a word of exhortation." I find no evidence that there was 
 any place in New Jersey named Philippi. 
 
'HISTORY OF BEDFORD CtlURCH. 
 
 75 
 
 on Hebrews, twelfth chapter and first verse. The 
 pastoral relation which still subsisted in name be- 
 tween this church and the Rev. Samuel Mills was 
 now at length dissolved. And the Presbytery then 
 proceeded to install Mr. Davenport as pastor of 
 Bedford Church. 
 
 Under Mr. Davenport's leadership, the Session* 
 of this Church engaged vigorously in the work be- 
 fore them — the exercise of discipline, and the en- 
 deavour to promote piety and spirituality among 
 the people. Measures were taken for the more 
 frequent and regular administration of the Holy 
 Communion. A monthly prayer meeting was in- 
 stituted. Quarterly collections for the relief of the 
 poor were appointed. " These regulations show," 
 as Mr. Heroy has well observed, " that there were 
 many here at that early day who loved the purity 
 of the Church, and were anxious for its greater ef- 
 ficiency for good in the world." They testify also 
 to the zeal and faithfulness of the pastor — the first 
 Minister of this people after the Revolution. 
 
 Mr. Davenport's pastorate ended on the fourth 
 of May, 1791. His successor was IdAAC FOSTER, 
 who remained only a short time. He had been ^^'^^1;^^^ 
 pastor of the Congregational church in West Staf- 
 ford, Connecticut, but having departed in his 
 preaching from some of the fundamental doctrines 
 of the Gospel, he was tried for heresy and deposed 
 
 * The Elders who re[5resented Bedford Church in Presbytery 
 during Mr. Davenport's ministry, were Jacob Smith, Moses St. 
 John, and Eli Tyler. 
 
76 
 
 HISTORY OF BEDFOR'D CHURCH. 
 
 from the Ministry by Hartford North Association 
 in 1781.* The seeds of Universalism and infidel- 
 ity which -he sowed in that church produced, it is 
 said, an abundant harvest. Bedford could not tol- 
 erate his teachings ; he left after two years, and 
 died in 1807. 
 
 Anticipating a fashion of our own times, tTiis 
 Church next called a Minister from across the 
 water. This Minister was the excellent Samuel 
 Blatchford, then pastor of a Presbyterian Congre-" 
 gation in Topsham, Devonshire, England. I am 
 strongly tempted to linger here, and speak to you 
 freely of the life and character of this remarkable 
 man. The materials for a full and graphic sketch 
 are abundant, in the memorial volume prepared by 
 one of his descendants, and in the extensive no- 
 tices of him contained in Dr. Sprague's Annals of 
 the American Pulpit. But I forbear, inasmuch as 
 Mr. Blatchford spent only six or eight months in 
 Bedford, supplying this pulpit and that of Pound- 
 ridge Church on alternate Sabbaths during the fall 
 and winter of the year 1795 ; and I must proceed to 
 notice the longer pastorates that came after. Mr. 
 Blatchford was called from Bedford in April, 1796, 
 to Greenfield, Connecticut, where he succeeded 
 President Dwight ; thence after a year's service he 
 went to -Stratfield ; and in 1804 he took charge 
 of the Presbyterian churches of Lansingburg and 
 Waterford, New York, and died 17th March, 1828. 
 
 * Contributions to the Eccl. History of Conn., p. 304. 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 77 
 
 He was followed by JosiAH Henderson, a ^. November 
 native of Bedford, Massachusetts, whose pastorate, ^3'° 
 though short, " left a favourable impression upon 3 November. 
 the church, and a good name among the people." 
 Mr. Henderson went from this place to Virginia, 
 and ministered for fourteen years to a congrega- 
 tion in Culpepper County. He afterwards took 
 charge of a church in Tisbury, on the island of 
 Martha's Vineyard, where he is still remembered 
 as " a ready, fluent speaker, and a man of rare 
 pulpit gifts, whom the people thronged to hear." 
 He was a physician, as well as a Minister of the 
 Gospel ; and while settled in Tisbury, his " medi- 
 cal practice extended over the whole island." His 
 last days were spent in Farmington, Maine.* 
 
 His successor was Ebenezer GRANT, a gradu- e'""*- 
 
 ' «* 2o September. 
 
 ate of Queen's, now Rutgers College. He was or- 
 dained to the Gospel Ministry by the Presbytery 
 of New Brunswick, on the nineteenth of Novem- 
 ber, i8oo,*at Shrewsbury, New Jersey, and for the 
 next four years supplied the church in that place, 
 and several neighbouring congregations. Mr. Grant 
 came to Bedford in 1804, at the age of thirty-one, 
 and here laboured for seventeen years, fulfilling 
 his course and resting from his work on the sixth 
 day of September, 1821. He was universally be- 
 
 * Communicated by Richard I,. Pease, Esq., of Edgartown, 
 Mass. Mr. Henderson was married twice, fie had several chil- 
 dren, one of whom, Jophanus, became a physician. The Elders 
 during Mr. Henderson's pastorate wer^ Moses St. John, Justus Har- 
 ris, Eli Tyler, Peter Fleming, Joseph Owen, and Stephen Benedict. 
 
78 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 1821. loved, and his removal, in the prime of life, and 
 in the midst of a useful ministry, was greatly de- 
 plored throughout this community. He was the 
 first Minister since Thomas Denham, a century and 
 a third before, who died while pastor of this church, 
 and was buried among his people. " His remains 
 lie," says Mr. Heroy, "beneath the green sward 
 under the cliff, where the ground is terraced gradu- 
 ally up to the overhanging rocks." 
 
 It was during Mr. Grant's ministry, in the year 
 1807, that the Bedford Academy was founded. 
 This institution, though not of a denominational 
 character, owed its existence largely to the Pres- 
 byterian Church of Bedford, whose pastor was the 
 first president of the Board of Proprietors, and 
 whose trustees gave the land upon which the 
 building was erected.* Its first Principal was the 
 Reverend Daniel Crocker, a Presbyterian clergy- 
 man. Governor Jay was one of the original sub- 
 scribers. Time will not permit me to mention 
 even the more salient names in the long list of 
 those who have been connected with your acad- 
 emy as instructors, and the longer list of those 
 who have pursued their studies within its walls- 
 many of whom have attained distinction as profes- 
 
 * " Januaiy 19th, 1807. At a meeting of the Presbyterian 
 Society of the Town of Bedford," it was voted that a lot be 
 given, " fifty feet in front and one hundred feet in rear of the west 
 corner of the parsonage meadow, fronting the green, and adjoining 
 Coll. Holly's garden, for the express purpose of building an acad- 
 emy thereon, and to be used for no other purpose whatever." 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 79 
 
 sional and business men.* The establishment of "^°^' 
 such a seat of learning, early in the present cen- 
 tury — five years before the common school system 
 of this State was adopted — testifies to the intelli- 
 gence and public spirit of this community. Dr. 
 Dwight, in 1813, made exception in favour of Bed- 
 ford, and two other localities, when he says of 
 Westchester County, " Neither Learning nor Re- 
 ligion has within my knowledge flourished to any 
 great extent among the inhabitants." f 
 
 We come now to a period in the history of the 
 church, over which the recollections of not a few 
 of those here present extend, a period the tradi- 
 tions of which indeed are doubtless fresh and clear 
 in the memories of all. And here the historian 
 must descend from his vantage-ground, as one con- 
 versant with things remote, beyond the ken of his 
 hearers, to speak with modesty, in the presence of 
 those more familiar than himself with the men and 
 the times that are to pass under review. The 
 sixty years that have elapsed since the death of 
 Ebenezer Grant, in 182 1, cover the pastorates of 
 four Ministers of the Gospel, whose names you 
 hold in deserved esteem and reverence : — Jacob 
 Green, David Inglis, David C. Lyon, Peter B. 
 Heroy. 
 
 The first of these was the grandson and the 
 namesake of a very remarkable man. JACOB 
 
 * History of Bedford Academy , read at the Annual Closing 
 Exercises, June 28, 1877, pp. 1-5. 
 
 t Travels in Nevif England, vol. III., p. 490. 
 
So HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 m 
 
 Green, pastor of the ■Presbyterian Church of Han- 
 * over, in Morris county, New Jersey, from 1745 till 
 
 his death in 1 790, was one of the most influen- 
 tial Ministers of his day. A pronounced patriot, 
 he did good service in his country's cause, from 
 the outbreak of the Revolution. A valiant soldier 
 of Christ, he was successful in winning many souls 
 to his Master. Distressed in view of the religious 
 destitutions of the land, he originated a plan for 
 the speedier preparation of teachers and Ministers 
 to supply those destitutions. The Associated 
 Presbyteries, which accomplished a good work, 
 though in an irregular way, in the closing years of 
 the last century, and the beginning of the present 
 one, grew out of this plan. It is a curious fact, 
 that the grandson and namesake was destined to 
 spend his best years in destroying and burying 
 out of sight the system which his eminent grand- 
 father had created. Jacob Green of Hanover had 
 ten children. One of them was the celebrated 
 Ashbel Green, eighth president of Princeton Col- 
 lege. Another son, who remained in Hanover, 
 and followed a farmer's life, was the father of 
 I790- your pastor, -who was born in that place in the 
 year 1 790, a few weeks after his grandfather's 
 death. 
 
 Mr. Green pursued his studies for the ministry 
 at Rutgers College and at the Theological Semi- 
 nary in Princeton. He was a member of the first 
 class graduated from that institution. After his 
 licensure, he was sent by the Presbytery upon a 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. gl 
 
 * 
 
 mission to the destitute places in the western parts 
 of Virginia and Pennsylvania. On his return, he 
 was appointed to supply a small church at Succa- 
 sunna Plain, near Morristown. There he remained 
 nearly five years. The congregation had existed 
 for over seventy years, but had long been without 
 a settled ministry. While Mr. Green was with 
 them, they repaired the old church, which until 
 then had had neither ceiling nor plastered walls ; 
 and obtained new strength and vitality. At the 
 urgent solicitation of some of his brethren, and 
 particularly of the late Dr. Johnston, of Newburg, 
 Mr. Green came to this region in the spring of 
 1822, intending to preach in the village of Fishkill. 
 On his way to that place, he was induced to spend 
 a Sabbath in Bedford, where the people were still 
 in deep sorrow over the recent loss of their Minis- 
 ter. He did so : fulfilled his appointment at Fish- 
 kill; and, on his return, preached again in Bedford, 
 when to his surprise a call was extended to him to 
 become the pastor. 
 
 At the time of Mr. Green's coming, the church jg^Aprii 
 numbered one hundred and nine members. The 
 elders were devout and good men, who longed to 
 see a time of greater prosperity. A cordial wel- 
 come was given to the new Minister ; and soon 
 there were evidences of increased spiritual life 
 among the people. For several years, not a com- 
 munion season passed without some additions to 
 the membership of the church. From the first, 
 Mr. Green endeavoured-to awaken the interest of 
 s 
 
82 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 '^' the congregation in the cause of foreign missions. 
 
 1848. -pjjjg object was engaging the attention of Chris- 
 tians throughout the country as never before ; and 
 in connection with the extensive revivals of reh'g- 
 ion that visited the churches at this period, a mis- 
 sionary spirit manifested itself. Bedford Church 
 partook largely of this spirit ; and to the zeal and 
 the unwearied efforts of Mr. Green to produce and 
 to cherish it, this fact is greatly due. Missionary 
 prayer-meetings were held with frequency in dif- 
 ferent parts of the parish. A " Ladies' Missionary 
 Society," which still exists, was formed in the 
 second year of Mr. Green's pastorate. The con- 
 tributions of the people for the enterprise of mis- 
 sions were large and generous. For many years, 
 Bedford Church ranked foremost in this region 
 among the supporters of that cause. Mr. Green's 
 own interest in the work led him, not only to ac- 
 quaint himself with its progress, but also to culti- 
 vate a warm personal friendship for many who en- 
 gaged in its promotion. His home and pulpit were 
 always open to them ; and many a returned mis- 
 sionary visited Bedford, quickening the zeal of 
 pastor and people by fresh accounts from the har- 
 vest field. In yet another way he accomplished 
 much for this important cause. The parsonage 
 offered a home to more than one young man who 
 was seeking with straitened means to gain an edu- 
 cation at the Academy near by. Among the stu- 
 dents who thus came under the care and influence 
 of the earnest pastor, was Joseph Owen, a native 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 83 
 
 of this place, who went from Bedford in 1832 to '«" 
 Princeton, and after completing his studies at the '^48. 
 college and the seniinary, engaged in the service 
 of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. 
 Dr. Owen was one of the ablest and most devoted 
 of our missionaries in Northern India. He finished 
 his course after thirty years of fruitful labour, 
 dying at Edinburgh in Scotland, on the fourth day 
 of December, 1870, at the age of fifty-six. I am 
 told that he has been heard to say, that if he was 
 of any use in the world, he had reason to thank Mr. 
 Green for it. 
 
 It was during this pastorate — in 1829 — that the 
 Presbytery, taking its name from this town, the 
 Presbytery of Bedford, was formed. Though Pres- 
 byterian from the beginning, your church had 
 passed under the watch and care of several differ- 
 ent ecclesiastical bodies. In the old colony times, 
 before the framing of the Saybrook Platform, 
 the Ministers of Fairfield County had the over- 
 sight of the little flock in the remote bounds of 
 Stamford. After the year 1708, the Association 
 of Fairfield County assumed this duty. Under 
 William Tennant's ministry, the church was con- 
 nected with the Presbytery of Philadelphia. Dur- 
 ing Robert Sturgeon's pastorate, its relations were 
 with the Presbytery of New York ; and during 
 Samuel Sacket's ministry, with the Presbytery of 
 Long Island. But in 1762, a Presbytery was 
 formed, designed to include all the Ministers and 
 churches in this region, and to be known by the 
 
84 
 
 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 '^o' name of Dutchess County Presbytery. Bedford 
 '^■•^- Church came under the care of this new body, and 
 so continued until transferred in 1795 to Hudson 
 Presbytery; from whose jurisdiction it passed in 
 1819 under that of the Presbytery of North River. 
 Through all the changes it remained Presbyteriatii 
 Meanwhile, nearly every other church within these 
 bounds had fallen away from a strictly Presby- 
 terial connection. The Associated Presbytery of 
 Westchester, an organization Congregational rather 
 than Presbyterian, had drawn from the Presbytery 
 of Dutchess County every flock under its care save 
 Bedford^ South Salem, Patterson and South East. 
 Bedford, the eldest of these churches, and the 
 strongest, was now the standard-bearer of ortho- 
 doxy. Jacob Green, from the time of his coming 
 here, devoted himself to the work of recovering 
 and rebuilding the decayed and almost extinct 
 churches of Westchester and Putnam Counties. 
 These churches were now to be gathered under 
 one ecclesiastical control ; and with great pro- 
 priety the new organization was called, in honour 
 of the foremost and the staunchest representative 
 of Presbyterian doctrine and order in this region, 
 the Presbytery of Bedford. 
 
 Our Church was then drifting toward the great 
 catastrophe of the year 1 837 — the division of the 
 one body into the sections known as Old School 
 and New School. Mr. Green's sympathies were all 
 with the Old School party. If Samuel Sacket, a 
 hundred years before, took sides with the " ex- 
 
fflSTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 85 
 
 treme left," the progressives, the men of new views 'tl^ 
 and new measures, Jacob Green may certainly be '^'*'' 
 classed with the extreme right — the eminently 
 conservative, in doctrine and in practice. " He 
 was known," says one well qualified to speak of 
 him and for him, " as strictly orthodox in his views 
 and perfectly reliable as to his knowledge of church 
 order and discipline. And in those days.when the 
 whole Church " — meaning the Old School body — 
 " was wide awake, in guarding against New School 
 and Hopkinsian errors, he was much consulted, 
 much trusted, and sometimes blamed ; and as New 
 Haven divinity was much to be guarded against, 
 I iised to think that many were glad to have him 
 placed, as a sort of sentinel of the Church, on the 
 borders of Connecticut." In process of time, how- 
 ever, as the angry passions and the harsh judg- 
 ments of the period of controversy were moderat- 
 ing, some became restless under a preaching that 
 lost nothing of its polemic character. It was 
 in view of the manifestation of this uneasiness, 
 that Mr. Green resigned his charge. The pastoral 1848. 
 
 25 January, 
 
 relation was dissolved by the Presbytery. It had 
 lasted twenty-six years — longer than any other 
 pastorate in the history of this people. 
 
 Mr. Green possessed, and retained to the last, 
 the thorough respect and confidence of this entire 
 community. He was an able and earnest preacher 
 of the Gospel of the Son of God. He was a man 
 of strong faith, pure intentions, and a diligent and 
 blameless life. Fully persuaded in his own mind, 
 
86 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 he was not greatly disturbed or easily moved by 
 to^ the differing opinions of others. He was a pattern 
 of punctuality and regularity in his habits. He en- 
 joyed unbroken health until the short illness which 
 closed his life. In his excellent wife, who is still 
 living, he had a faithful and efficient coadjutor: 
 and it is from this aged lady that I have learned 
 the particulars with which I close this notice of 
 your old pastor. Mr. Green removed from Bed- 
 ford to Sing Sing, having received an appointment 
 to the office of chaplain in the State prison. He 
 died on the twenty-fifth day of October, 1851, 
 from typhus fever, taken while visiting a sick per- 
 son. Two or three days before his death, he called 
 his wife to his bedside, and said to her, "You 
 know that I am not superstitious ; but I have had 
 such wonderful views, that I felt that I must tell 
 you." Then raising his eyes as if looking toward 
 some distant scene, he proceeded to say, " Oh, 
 such brightness! it is wonderful! wonderful!" 
 These words he repeated several times, with 
 solemn energy ; and then closing his eyes, and 
 letting his hands drop, he said, in a natural, con- 
 versational tone, but with great solemnity : " Bow, 
 and tremble, and adore." 
 
 Mr. Green's successor was David Inglis, a 
 young man, twenty-four years of age. He was the 
 son of a well-known and highly esteemed Minister 
 in the south of Scotland, where for more than 
 thirty years the father was pastor of a United Pres- 
 byterian congregation. David from his boyhood 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 87 
 
 cherished the hope of entering the holy ministry. 
 He pursued his studies at the University of Edin- 
 burgh, and was h'censed to preach when in his twen- 
 tieth year. Very soon afterwards he came to Amer- 
 ica, whither, while yet a student, he had looked as 
 the desired field of his life's labours. He travelled 
 for a short time in the West ; and then after supply- 
 ing a church on Washington Heights, New York, 
 for a few months, he was ordained and installed as ^^ ocMber. 
 pastor of this congregation. Dr. Ormiston, in a 
 notice of him, observes with truth, " His brief 
 ministry of four years " in Bedford " was as grate- 
 ful to himself as it was delightful to his people, 
 and the memory of the youthful Scottish preacher, 
 so fervid and so faithful, is still fresh and fragrant 
 in that neighbourhood." He was a man, says one 
 of his friends in this place, most cordial in manner 
 and expression. " His kindly greeting and hearty 
 grasp of the hand, his fluent and cheerful conver- 
 .sation, put every one at his ease in his presence. 
 But though so genial and sometimes mirthful in 
 his intercourse with friends, in the pulpit he was 
 intensely earnest and impressive. His preaching 
 was in demonstration of the spirit and of power. 
 It might be said truly of him, if of any man, Christ 
 and His cross was all his theme. Seldom if ever 
 did he close his sermon without a pressing exhor- 
 tation to the unconverted to come to Christ and 
 be saved. Multitudes far and near were attracted 
 to his preaching: the church was filled Sabbath 
 after Sabbath with attentive listeners ; numbers 
 
June. 
 
 88 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 were brought into the fold, of such as will be stars 
 in his crown of rejoicing in the great day." 
 
 Of the subsequent career of this devoted servant 
 of God, I shall only remind you briefly. Called 
 1852. from this church to the pastorate of a congrega- 
 tion in Montreal, he had scarcely commenced his 
 labours there, when an overwhelming affliction 
 desolated his home. In one short week his wife 
 and three little children were taken from him. 
 His health seriously affected by grief under this 
 great loss, he was led to accept a call to another 
 field of labour. For seventeen years he was the 
 busy and successful pastor of a church in Hamil- 
 ton, Canada. In 1871 he was chosen to the chair 
 of Systematic Theology in Knox College, Toronto, 
 but in the following year he resigned that position 
 to become pastor of the Church on the Heights, in 
 Brooklyn. In the midst of the work he loved, and 
 in the prime of his powers, he was stricken down, 
 and died after a brief illness, on the fifteenth day 
 of December, 1877. 
 
 Dr. Inglis was " a man of high natural endow- 
 ments ; a scholar of varied and extensive attain- 
 ments ; a Christian of strong convictions and pro- 
 found experience ; a preacher of eminent ability 
 and great acceptance ; a pastor of rare wisdom 
 and tender sympathy ; a theologian of decided 
 views and large charity; a citizen of generous 
 spirit and unswerving loyalty ; a friend of unwaver- 
 ing steadfastness and loving forbearance." No- 
 where, I am assured, will these felicitous words of 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 89 
 
 Dr. Ormiston find a readier response than in the 
 hearts of the people of this his first charge. 
 
 Soon after the close of this pastorate a second 
 Presbyterian Church was organized within the 13'juL. 
 limits of this town, at Mount Kisco, where a thriv- 
 ing village had sprung up, on the line of the Har- 
 lem Railroad. Seventeen members of this church* 
 were dismissed to form the new colony ; and a 
 house of worship was erected in the course of the 
 same year. The enterprise has long since proved to 
 be one of assured success ; and to-day the daughter 
 is not far behind the mother church in strength 
 and activity. The Ministers of Mount Kisco 
 Church have been : The Rev. Andrew Shiland, 
 who was installed 14 June, 1854, and resigned in 
 April, 1870; the Rev. John Hancock, installed 16 
 Oct., 1870, resigned i Sept., 1876; the Rev. John 
 H. Frazee, installed 20th June, 1877, resigned 1st 
 Nov., 1879; and' the Rev. James W. Johnston, 
 present incumbent, installed 29th June, 1880. 
 
 Your next pastor was David C. Lyon, installed 
 on the first day of December, 1852, and released 
 from office in May, 1857. With the exception of 
 this brief term of four years and a half, Mr. Lyon's 
 ministerial life has been spent in the West, and 
 chiefly in connection with the work of Home Mis- 
 
 * These were Whiting Raymond, Lucretia Raymond, Holly 
 Benedict, Deborah Benedict, Edward Banks, Clarissa Banks, Ed- 
 ward Banks, jr. , Samuel Knapp, Elizabeth ICnapp, Phoebe Haight, 
 Jesse Barrett, Margaret A. Barrett, Nancy Louiisbery, Emeline 
 Benedict, Elizabeth Merritt, Mary A. Sarles, Jeremiah Banks. 
 
go HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 1852 sions. Coming to you fresh from that work, to 
 1857. which he afterwards, returned, he was while here 
 the earnest advocate of the cause he loved ; losing 
 no opportunity to press its claims,' and the claims 
 of other benevolent objects as well, upon the 
 sympathy and liberality of God's people. He was 
 also a devoted pastor, and an able Minister of the 
 Word. For many years the Synodical Missionary of 
 the Synod of Minnesota, Mr. Lyon has been one 
 of the most laborious and useful servants of the 
 church, and Bedford may well cherish the memory 
 of his sojourn here. 
 
 The roll of your Ministers, preceding the present 
 pastor, closes with the name of PETER Badeau 
 Heroy, He was of Huguenot descent, and was 
 born on the sixteenth -day of July, 18 15, in the 
 neighbourhood of Red Mills, or Mahopac Falls, in 
 Putnam County in this State. His ancestors, 
 driven by persecution to England, from their 
 home on the island of R6, near Rochelle, in 
 France, found their way across the ocean, about 
 the middle of the last century, to New Rochelle in 
 this county, and a little while before the Revolu- 
 tion removed to the place then known as Red 
 Mills. Mr. Heroy pursued his academic studies 
 at La Fayette College, and obtained his prepara- 
 tion for the ministry at Princeton Seminary. Be- 
 fore his settlement here, he had been settled in 
 Delhi, Delaware County, and in Highlands, Orange 
 County, New York. His ministry here lasted for 
 twenty-one years. He was installed pastor of this 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 91 
 
 church on the twenty-ninth day of October, 1857, 1837 
 and continued in office until his death, on the six- 1878. 
 teenth day of October, 1878. The Synod of New 
 York, in session at the time of his decease, gave 
 expression to the high esteem and cordial affection 
 .in which he was held by its members. His un- 
 affected piety, his zeal for the purity of the church, 
 his deep concern for the salvation of souls, his 
 fidelity as a preacher of the Gospel, his kindliness 
 and gentleness toward all men, and especially his 
 warm sympathy for the suffering and the troubled, 
 justly endeared him to this people. The grief of 
 an affectionate flock for a Minister whom they 
 trusted and loved, is yet fresh, and is felt amid the 
 festivities of this celebration. 
 
 A third Presbyterian Church was organized 
 within the bounds of this town, during Mr. Heroy's 
 pastorate, at Katonah, a station of the Harlem ^^ November. 
 Railroad. The Reverend John H. Eastman, the 
 first and present pastor of Katonah Church, was 
 ordained and installed by the Presbytery of West- 
 chester,. on the eighth day of July, 1875. 
 
 Mr. Heroy's pastorate was illustrated by an 
 event which would be memorable in the history 
 of any congregation and community : the building 
 of a house of worship, the free will offering of in- 
 dividual piety and benevolence. Descended from 
 that Ephraim Palmer, who was of Greenwich, in 
 1672, and was admitted an inhabitant of this town 
 in January, 1702, the generous giver of this beau- 
 tiful sanctuary was prompted by a natural love for 
 
92 
 
 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 the home of his fathers and the place of his birth, 
 as well as by a noble zeal for the honour of relig- 
 ion. The formal presentation of this building to 
 1872- the Trustees of the congregation, on the day of the 
 
 15 August. . a a J 
 
 \ dedication, was accompanied with these words from 
 the donor : 
 
 " Christian Brethren : This house of wor- 
 ship, now completed, has been erected for your 
 use as the Presbyterian Church of the village of 
 Bedford, Westchester County, New York; and my 
 wife and myself desire formally to present it to 
 you, with the following statement and conditions: 
 
 " We have had no desire, in this undertaking, to 
 have our names inscribed in your place of worship, 
 but have been actuated by gratitude to Almighty 
 God for the blessings He has conferred upon us, 
 and especially for His exceeding grace in giving us 
 the hope of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ 
 the Lord, our Saviour. 
 
 " We do not feel that we can make any recom- 
 pence to God for His mercy, but, constrained by 
 His love, we desire to honour an.d serve Him. 
 
 " Another motive influencing us has been our 
 interest in this community, in the midst of which 
 we have had our summer home for many years, and 
 in this church as a Christian congregation with 
 whom we have been privileged so often to worship. 
 
 " This, as you know, is the place of my birth and 
 the home of my kindred, and with the services of 
 this church my earliest religious impressions are 
 associated. 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 03 
 
 " We desire to testify our sympathy, and to aid 187a. 
 in the work of the Master here, of helping to main- 
 tain His service, and in bringing souls to Christ. 
 
 " In the conception and prosecution of this en- 
 terprise, my wife has been intimately associated 
 with me — indeed, it has been with her a cherished 
 wish for years ; and with this, as so much else of my 
 life, she has been, under God, an inspiration of good. 
 
 " The best artists, workmen, and materials have 
 been employed in the construction and furnishing 
 of this building, and I do not know of anything 
 which remains to be added to render it ready for 
 use. I have used every exertion to make it suit- 
 able and convenient for your purposes, religious 
 and social, as a church and congregation. 
 
 " And now, in presenting to you this house of 
 worship, we desire to submit the following condi- 
 tions, upon which, we understand, our views are in 
 harmony : 
 
 " 1st. The church is to be a free church, as this 
 phrase is generally accepted ; the pews are to be 
 free, so that all who choose to come to worship 
 God here will feel at liberty to do so. The current 
 expenses of the church and congregation to be met 
 by subscription on the part of those interested in 
 its maintenance, or by any. plan of systematic con- 
 tribution the congregation may deem proper to 
 adopt. 
 
 " 2d. The congregation obligates itself to keep 
 the property in good and necessary repair, and to 
 preserve and perpetuate in it religious services. 
 
94 
 
 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 1872. " Your acceptance of the property will be under- 
 
 stood as the acceptance also of the conditions be- 
 fore expressed. 
 
 " Thankful for the ability to make the offering, 
 we now, through this letter, make over to you, the 
 Bedford Presbyterian Church and Society, all our 
 interest and right in the building we have erected, 
 praying also that the Master will mercifully accept 
 and grant that in it His people may be comforted 
 and strengthened, and many souls ' added to the 
 church daily of such as shall be saved.' " 
 
 For eight years and more you have possessed 
 and enjoyed this pleasant sanctuary, and the high 
 purpose of the giver has been attained so far, in 
 the comfort and convenience of the worshipping 
 people, in the orderly ministration of Divine ser- 
 vice, in the attraction of some, we may hope, not 
 only to the courts of the Lord's house, but also to 
 Him who is the glory of the house. And yet, on 
 this occasion, and in this sacred building, I am 
 tempted to say of our honoured friend, 
 
 " He builded better than he knew." 
 
 There was needed, against this day, completing 
 two centuries since the order was given for the 
 location of the first house of worship erected here, 
 there was needed a monument, a suitable and an 
 abiding memorial. Our friend has anticipated the 
 need. 
 
 Si monumentum requiris, circumspice. 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 95 
 
 This church, the gift of Francis Asbury is?^. 
 Palmer and Susanna Palmer, his wife, is the 
 fourth edifice occupied by the Presbyterian congre- 
 gation of Bedford.* The first, erected about the 
 year i68 1 , was situated, as we have seen, on the town 
 common, at the foot of the hill known as Bates's hill. 
 It was called the " Meeting-house," your Puritan 
 forefathers choosing to reserve the word church, 
 according to New Testament usage, for the body of 
 believers, the spiritual church. The Meeting-House 
 was used not only for the Sabbath and other re- 
 ligious services, but also for the town assemblies ; 
 though as early as the year 1702 we read of a Town 
 House, in which the town meetings were held, and 
 which being occupied in part at least as a dwell- 
 ing, may have been a distinct building. In process 
 of time, doubtless, it was enlarged, to accommodate 
 the growing population of the town. The second 
 house of worship, built probably in the early part 
 of the last century, stood at the foot of the hill 
 upon the summit of which the third church — lately 
 abandoned for the present one — was erected after 
 the Revolution. This edifice — the fourth — has 
 
 * The present pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Bedford, the 
 Reverend James Howard Hoyt, is a native of Milton, Saratoga 
 County, New York. He viras graduated in 1873 at Union College, 
 and in 1876 at Union Theological Seminary, New York. He was 
 licensed by the Presbytery of New York, and ordained by the 
 Classis of Westchester, 27 June, 1876, and at the same time was 
 installed pastor of the Reformed Church at Greenburg, Westches- 
 ter Co., N. Y. He was installed pastor of this Church, 17 Jan., 
 1880. 
 
g6 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 been placed upon a part of the ground laid out, it 
 is believed, at the beginning of the settlement, for 
 the use of the ministry.* Situated here in the 
 centre of your beautiful village, on the broad street 
 which public taste and enterprise have cared for so 
 judiciously — may it stand until a third century 
 shall end ; and may the glory of this house be 
 greater than of any of the former three ! 
 
 As we began, so let us close, devoutly acknowl- 
 edging the goodness and wisdom of the Divine Pro- 
 vidence, as viewed in the history of this commu- 
 nity and of this people. Among the towns of our 
 County, Bedford has been singularly favoured in 
 many ways ; and first, in the composition of its orig- 
 inal settlement. A recent English writer has called 
 attention to the superior character of the founders 
 of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, as differing 
 from the earlier settlers in Maryland or Virginia, and 
 even from those who ventured across the Atlantic 
 in the Mayflower. They were men of substance ; 
 most of them of the middle class in England, and 
 they left its shores, not under pressure of want, or 
 because tired of their country, but driven by un- 
 bearable persecution to this wilderness ; men " who 
 
 * " 1694. The town by vote doth agree that as much land and 
 medow as can be spaired and not predigous [prejudicial] to high- 
 ways y' lyeth on the norwest side of whiping post broock shall be 
 keept for a minestar and to be disposed to no man els but to a min- 
 ister." — " Whipping Post Brook " is believed to be the stream run- 
 ning in the rear of the present parsonage grounds. 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. gy 
 
 were as truly and loyally English as any that ever 
 heard the lark carol."* These were the men whose 
 sons planted this town. And in tracing the his- 
 tory of this town and church for two centuries, I 
 have been led to think that the character given to 
 this community by its founders, has been lasting ; 
 that the institutions of morality and religion, that 
 were ordered and settled by their endeavours upon 
 the best and surest foundations, have continued 
 through these succeeding generations ; and that 
 hence peace and happiness, truth and justice, 
 religion and piety, have so greatly flourished 
 here. 
 
 I remark, secondly, that Bedford has been favour- 
 ed in the preservation of its territory. Through 
 early changes in the colonial government, through 
 subsequent proprietary disputes, and through the 
 more recent geographical arrangements by which, 
 after the Revolution, our County was unwisely cut 
 up into a number of petty townships, your town has 
 remained intact, and still, after two centuries, lies 
 four-square, very much as obtained by early pur- 
 chases from the savages, and as described in its 
 first charter from the government of Connecticut 
 in 1697. 
 
 I mention as a third advantage the fact that Bed- 
 ford has been exceptionally free, for these two 
 centuries, from religious contentions. For the 
 first hundred years, Presbyterianism occupied the 
 
 * Alfred Rimmer, in ".Belgravia." 
 
98 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 ground almost exclusively.* And during the sec- 
 ond hundred years, in which other Christian de- 
 nominations have taken part in the common work, 
 there has been a remarkable harmony between 
 those of differing views and practices. For this 
 harmony, I cannot but think you have been greatly 
 indebted to the personal influence of that eminent 
 man, whose name, second only to that of Wash- 
 ington in our national history, is pleasantly asso- 
 ciated with this spot ; coming, as he did, in the be- 
 ginning of the present century to make the home 
 of his honoured old age in Bedford. JOHN jAY 
 was a devoted son of the Protestant Episcopal 
 Church. But he was none the less a lover of true 
 religion as represented in other branches of the 
 Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. " Finding, on 
 his removal to Bedford, no Episcopal church in 
 the vicinity, he constantly attended," says his dis- 
 tinguished son and biographer, " the one belong- 
 ing to the Presbyterians ; nor did he scruple to 
 
 * In 1725, Mr. Wetmore reported " at Bedford about eight or 
 ten families of the Church" — i. e., the Church of England. The 
 Anglican missionaries at Rye oflficiated occasionally or statedly — 
 once in two or three months — at Bedford, until the period of the 
 Revolution, and sometimes reported a. large attendance upon the 
 services. Where these services were held we do not learn. In 
 1762, " there appears to have been several families, professors of 
 the Church of Englan ." (Bolton, History of the Prot. Episc. 
 Church in Westchester Co., page 623.) The rest of the " four 
 hundred families belonging to the cure " were Presbyterians; There 
 was no resident Minister of the Church of England in Bedford be 
 fore the Revolution ; nor do we find mention of any house of wor- 
 ship prior to the erection of St. Matthew's Church in 1807. 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. gg 
 
 unitfe with his fellow-christians of that persuasion 
 in commemorating the passion of their common 
 Lord." His interest in the welfare of the various 
 evangelical denominations did not cease, when in 
 1807, through his instrumentality, St. Matthew's 
 Church was erected. To the last " he rejoiced in 
 the increase and prosperity of them all." * 
 
 The pastors of this congregation found in him a 
 kind and wise friend. His spirit has rested upon 
 those who have come after him, and has been large- 
 ly diffused throughout this community ; and to-day 
 the pleasure of your celebration is marred by no 
 remembrance of sectarian feuds in the past, no 
 consciousness of sectarian rancours cherished in 
 the present. So may it be unto the latest' gene- 
 rations I f 
 
 * The Life of John Jay. By his son, William Jay, New York : 
 1833, Vol. I., pp. 434. 461. 
 
 f Among the communications read by the Pastor of this Church, 
 upon the occasion of the Bi-centenary Celebration, 22 March, 1881, 
 was a letter from the Honorable John Jay, of which we are permit- 
 ted to quote the following sentences. Alluding to " the goodfeel- 
 ing between the two parishes" in Bedford, Mr. Jay remarks: "I 
 well remember that as a boy on each third Sunday, when our Epis- 
 copal pastor, the late Reverend Samuel Nichols, D.D., offic^iated at 
 North Salem, I accompanied my father and his family to the Pres- 
 byterian Church at Bedford, where I am told that to the last our 
 pew continned to be known as ' The Governor's Pew.' I may per- 
 haps add too without impropriety, as entitling me to a personal in- 
 terest in this occasion, that when I first attended Mr. Holmes' Acad- 
 emy, I had the good fortune to live in the family of your predecessor 
 the Reverend Jacob Green, and his excellent wife, of whose kind- 
 ness I retain the most pleasant recollections." 
 
lOO HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 As I bring this address to an end, I feel howvain 
 after all is the attempt to live over and to picture 
 the events of the past. In the strongest light that 
 history can cast upon them, they stand forth, clear, 
 it may be, well defined, but colourless and still. As 
 masses of foliage outlined against the sky, when 
 the sun has set, the shapes are there, but how in- 
 animate and how far away ! We live only in the 
 present; and only the interests of the present can 
 be revealed in living freshness and correct perspec- 
 tive. Yet is it well sometimes to sit as in the twi- 
 light, and watch the scenes over which the shadows 
 of evening are stretched out, and take in the sug- 
 gestions of the thoughtful hour. While reviewing 
 the past, recounting its mercies, and. seeking to 
 gather up its lessons ; while recognizing the bless- 
 ings and the obligations of the present, it is our 
 privilege to look forward into the future, as men 
 that watch for the morning — to look toward the 
 great consummation, for which these centuries of 
 Christian work have been preparing ; for which the 
 holy men of old have been labouring; for which 
 the generations of godly people who have gone be- 
 fore us have been praying and waiting. " When told 
 one day in his old age that some of his friends had 
 asked how it was possible for him to occupy his 
 mind at Bedford, Jay replied with a smile, ' I have 
 a long life to look back upon, and an eternity to 
 look forward to.' " In that kingdom of God whose 
 dawn we are permitted to behold ; in that city 
 which lieth four-square, there await us the faithful 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. loi 
 
 Ministers, the humble believers, the patient suffer- 
 ers, the witnesses for Christ, who have gone before 
 us. Let it be our care to follow them as they fol- 
 lowed Him. Let it be our joy to remember, that 
 though the workmen die, the work goes on 1 
 
MINISTERS OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 Rev. 
 
 Thomas Denham, 
 
 1684-1689. 
 
 Died 
 
 1689. 
 
 Joseph Morgan, 
 
 1699-1702. 
 
 Died after 
 
 • 1740. 
 
 John Jones, 
 
 1702-1705. 
 
 Died 
 
 1719. 
 
 William Tennent, 
 
 , 1720-1727. 
 
 Died 
 
 1745- 
 
 Henry Baldwin, 
 
 1728. 
 
 Died bef. 
 
 1740. 
 
 Robert Sturgeon, 
 
 I 732-1 743. 
 
 Died after 
 
 1750. 
 
 Samuel Sacket, 
 
 1743-1753- 
 
 Died 
 
 1784. 
 
 Eliphalet Ball, 
 
 1754-1768. 
 
 Died 
 
 1797- 
 
 Samuel Mills, 
 
 1 769-1786. 
 
 Died 
 
 1813. 
 
 John Davenport, 
 
 1786-1791. 
 
 Died 
 
 1821. 
 
 Isaac Foster, 
 
 1792-1794. 
 
 Died 
 
 1807. 
 
 Samuel Blatchford.iygS- 
 
 Died 
 
 1828. 
 
 Josiah Henderson 
 
 ,1798-1803. 
 
 Died after 1822. 
 
 Ebenerer Grant, 
 
 1804-1821. 
 
 Died 
 
 1821. 
 
 Jacob Green, 
 
 1822-1848. 
 
 Died 
 
 1851. 
 
 David Inglis, 
 
 1848-1852. 
 
 Died 
 
 1877. 
 
 David C. Lyon, 
 
 1852-1857. 
 
 
 
 Peter B. Heroy, 
 
 1857-1878. 
 
 Died 
 
 1878. 
 
 James H. Hoyt, 
 
 1880. 
 
 
 
 102 
 
RULING ELDERS OF BEDFORD CHURCH, 
 
 SINCE THE ORGANIZATION OP THE PRESBYTERY OF DUTCHESS 
 COUNTY, IN 1762. 
 
 1763. Ebenezer Miller. 
 
 1765. John Lawrence. 
 
 1768. Joshua Ambler. 
 
 1772. Jacob Smith. 
 
 1775. Stephen Clerk. 
 
 1784. Alexander Kidd. 
 
 1786. Moses St. John, ordained 5 Nov. Died 8 April, 1822, 
 
 1789. Eli Tyler, ordained 13 Dec. Died 10 Oct., 1828. 
 
 1789. Justus Harris, ordained 13 Dec. 
 
 1791. Simeon Rider. 
 
 1800. Peter Fleming. Died 31 Jan., 1823. 
 
 iSoo. Joseph Owen. 
 
 1800. Stephen Benedict. 
 
 1815. Aaron Read, ordained 19 Mar. Died g Sept., 1854. 
 
 1815. Seth Lyon, ordained 19 Mar. Died 31 Jan., 1878. 
 
 1820. Elias Hait, ordained — Oct. 
 
 1825. Joseph Silliman, ordained 11 Sept. Died 28 Sept., 1829. 
 
 1825. John Clark, ordained 11 Sept. Died 30 Aug, 1863. 
 
 1835. David Miller, ordained 2 Jan. Died 14 May, 1858. 
 
 1850. Alvah Howe, ordained — April. Died 3 Oct., 1874. 
 
 1850. Phineas Lounsbery, ordained April. Died 26 Dec, 1878. 
 
 1865. Edward Raymond, ordained 5 Nov. Died 7 Mar., 1873. 
 
 1865. Solomon R.Lyon, ordained 5 Nov. Died ig Mar., 1868. 
 
 1865. John G. Clark, ordained 5 Nov. 
 
 1865. St. John Owen, inducted 5 Nov. 
 
 1875. Daniel B. Finch, ordained 28 Feb. 
 
 1875. James H. Trowbridge, ordained 28 Feb. 
 
 103 
 
I04 
 
 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 1875. David Travis, ordained 28 Feb. 
 1875. Albert Williamson, ordained 28 Feb. 
 
 *^* The early records of the Church having disappeared — de- 
 stroyed, it is supposed, by fire, in 1779 — "" I'St of Elders can be 
 given for the period prior to the organization of the Presbytery of 
 Dutchess County. The first six names in the above list are taken 
 from the records of that Presbytery: and the dates prefixed lo 
 them indicate the years in which the Elders named first appeared in 
 Presbytery as delegates from Bedford Church. 
 
ACCOUNT OF THE PROCEEDINGS 
 
 AT THE 
 
 BLCENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF BEDFORD, N. Y. 
 
 The services were held in the Church, at half-past one 
 o'clock in the afternoon, and at seven o'clock in the even- 
 ing, of Tuesday, the twenty-second day of March, 1881. 
 The building was tastefully decorated, and on either side 
 of the pulpit the names of the successive Ministers of the 
 parish were inscribed. A large congregation, including 
 many persons who had come from distant parts of the 
 county, participated in the celebration. The service of 
 song was conducted by a large and well-trained choir. 
 
 The afternoon service was opened with the Anthem, 
 Benedic anima mea. 
 
 The Prayer of Invocation was then oiTered by the Pastor, 
 and the Reverend C. W. Adams, D.D., read a portion of 
 Holy Scripture. 
 
 The following Address was made by the Reverend Sam- 
 uel Irenseus Prime, D.D. : 
 
 105 
 
I06 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 It is with peculiar enjoyment, although at some sacri- 
 fice of feeling, that I have come to be with you. A train 
 of most interesting associations is awakened by the occa- 
 sion, and it is only because for a single hour in the course 
 of these two hundred years my history touched yours, 
 that I have been invited to participate in these services. It 
 is now nearly fifty years since I preached my first sermon 
 in the Bedford Presbyterian Church. 
 
 In the autumn of the year 1833, I was licensed to 
 preach the Gospel by the Presbytery of Bedford, then in 
 session. 
 
 Among the Ministers of the Presbytery at that time was 
 the Rev. Jacob Green, who was your Pastor from iSzz 
 to 1848. 
 
 Before we separated he was kind enough to ask me to 
 come to Bedford and preach the same sermon on the next 
 Sabbath day. The same sermon was the only sermon that 
 I had, and therefore it must be that sermon or none. 
 
 It was the more encouraging and comforting to me to 
 receive this invitation from Mr. Green, because he was es- 
 timated to be one of the ablest, soundest, and most learned 
 men of the Presbytery. Mr. Green was intensely orthodox. 
 He was the nephew of Dr. Ashbel Green, a very distin- 
 guished champion of orthodoxy in the Presbyterian Church, 
 and formerly the President of Princeton College — one of 
 the master minds in the Church ; and it was pleasantly re- 
 marked of Jacob Green that he inherited from his uncle 
 the legacy of orthodoxy, and felt religiously bound to 
 " defend the trust ; " and he was abundantly able to do it. 
 He had all the tenacity of the soundest and ablest 
 divines of that day, and of any day, and he was ready to 
 "fight the fight '' and to "keep the faith." When you bear 
 in mind that Mr. Green did not ask me to come and preach 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 107 
 
 until he first heard the sermon, you will admire his cour- 
 age as well as his kindness, while you will see that I had 
 the more reason to be gratified. The sermon was the fruit 
 of more labour, prayer, and care than' any discourse I have 
 ever prepared since. 
 
 The text was not of my own choosing, but it was as- 
 signed to me by the Presbytery, and yet it was one of a 
 class of passages which of all in the Bible I would have 
 preferred, had the selection been left to me ; but I thought 
 it then, and still think it, one of the most comprehensive 
 texts in the word of God to men, and I count it no small 
 pleasure to be able to say, that when one of your members 
 met me at the station this morning, and asked me to ride 
 up here, he told me that he remembered hearing me 
 preach, and he told me what the text was. Now I would 
 like to know how many of you remember the text of a 
 sermon that you heard forty years ago ? 
 
 The text has an extent and depth of meaning that no 
 human mind can grasp, and it contains all that men may 
 need to know and believe in order to inherit eternal life, 
 
 I have that sermon in my hand. If you will' bear with 
 me for an hour or two I will read it to you. . . . But 
 I do not perceive any encouraging response, and therefore 
 I will content myself with simply saying that it is marked 
 in the corner " No. i., Bedford, New York, Oct. 6th, 1833," 
 and it has been lying in my study ever since. And if my 
 health should be spared two years and a half longer it 
 would give me great pleasure if you will give me the use of 
 this church to come here and preach a sermon, the theme 
 of which shall be "The past fifty years of the Presbyterian 
 Church." I shall be glad to make such a review and make 
 it on the spot where I began my ministry of the word of 
 God. I remember that a criticism was made in the Presby- 
 
I08 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 tery on the sermon by one of the members, who said, 
 ' ' The young man has tried to get the whole plan of salva- 
 tion into the sermon, and has left nothing for him to say 
 afterwards." The first sentence of the sermon is the whole 
 Gospel plan of salvation. 
 
 "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, 
 even so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whosoever 
 believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life." 
 
 And I have tried since never to preach a sermon without 
 getting so much of the Gospel into it as to enable one who 
 heard it to be saved thefeby if he would. And that I think 
 ought to be the desire of every man who undertakes to 
 preach the word. And if I had another fifty years of preach- 
 ing to do, beginning again with this text, I would preach 
 "Christ and him crucified." Christ lifted up for men. 
 And I, would keep right on with that one great truth, in 
 all its fulness and power, preaching it to the young and old, 
 the learned and the unlearned, the rich and the poor ; the 
 "great salvation" the "same yesterday, to-day and forever." 
 Other men preach philosophy ; I will preach the Gospel. 
 Other men may preach morality ; I will tell of salvation by 
 faith in Christ. Others may tell- the worid that all men 
 will finally be saved; but I will say that 'whosoever be- 
 lieveth in Christ shall not perish but have eternal life " — 
 and they shall perish if they do not believe. 
 
 This is not the same house in which I, a beardless boy, 
 less than twenty-one years old, began my services in the 
 ministry. I congratulate you on this beautiful sanctuary in 
 which you celebrate j-our two hundredth anniversary. I 
 honour and thank him to whose munificence you owe this 
 beautiful structure, and I pray God that while in circum- 
 stances of so much encouragement and enjoyment you 
 gather in these courts to hold this anniversary, you may be- 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. jog 
 
 gin a new era in the service of God. I pray that you may 
 to-day consecrate yourselves, your children, your property 
 anew to the service of Christ, and that generations yet un- 
 born may here gather and celebrate that great sacrifice 
 which God Himself made when .He gave His Son for 
 your salvation." 
 
 I pray that this pulpit may never give forth any un- 
 certain sound in regard to the truths of the Christian re- 
 ligion ; that here the honour of God may be sought in the 
 promotion of His word, and that it may be said hereafter, 
 as it has been said of the former house and of the various 
 churches which have existed here, that this and that 
 man, yea, that many were born here into the kingdom of 
 God. 
 
 Let us pray. 
 
 "Almighty and most merciful God, our Father who 
 art in Heaven, we thank Thee for the great privilege we 
 enjoy of coming together in the courts of Thy house this 
 day to record with gratitude all Thy blessings toward us, 
 to rehearse the history of the past, to strengthen our hearts 
 and minds by reviewing the dealings of God's love toward 
 us and toward our fathers before us from generation to gen- 
 eration. We thank Thee that Thou hast here established a 
 church, that in its infancy and through all the years of its 
 history Thou hast been with it. We bless Thee for this long 
 line of faithful men who have here preached the Gospel of 
 Jesus Christ in sincerity and power. We thank Thee for 
 a godly ancestry. We thank Thee for the institutions of 
 religion, for all the means of grace which we enjoy ; and 
 for the power which this church has exerted upon this 
 community. And we pray that Thou wouldst continue 
 to be with this church and people. May Thy servant, the 
 present Pastor, derive strength from Thee, and may he go 
 
no HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 forward in the great work to which he is called, and may 
 his labors be crowned with abundant success. 
 
 " We pray for the Elders, that they may be men fearing 
 God and rejoicing in the truth. 
 
 "We pray for the children of this church, that they 
 may all be brought up in the fear of God, and learn the 
 way of righteousness. And we beseech Thee, O God, that 
 for ages to come this nation may be that happy people 
 whose God is the Lord, erecting institutions of religion, 
 preserving the truth in its purity, and rejoicing in the ser- 
 vice of God ; and may Thy blessing come down upon the 
 Church of Christ universal. Revive religion throughout 
 our country ; fill all our churches with the glory of Thy 
 grace, and may this people consecrate itself to Thee, that 
 from our land may go forth into all lands the light of civil 
 and of religious liberty and the glorious light of the Gospel 
 of Thy Son until all the kingdoms of this world shall be- 
 come the kingdoms of Our Lord .and Saviour Jesus Christ. 
 Be with us in all the services that are before us. Clothe 
 with power Thy servants who shall now address us in re- 
 gard to the times that are past, and tell the way in which 
 the Lord hath led this people ; and may all who speak to 
 us to-day and this evening have help from on high, that 
 this may be a great and good occasion, long to be remem- 
 bered by those who are present. 
 
 " Hear us in these our prayers. Graciously answer and 
 bless us, and finally save us all in that temple where we shall 
 forever sing Thy praise, through Jesus Christ, our Lord 
 and Redeemer. Amen." 
 
 The first hymn, "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Al- 
 mighty," was then sung; and the Historical Discourse 
 was delivered by Rev. Charles W. Baird, D.D. (See pre- 
 ceding pages. ) 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. m 
 
 The discourse was followed by the singing of the hymn 
 "Nearer, tny God, to Thee." 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Rev. WILSON PHRANER, D.D., 
 Minister of the Presbyterian Church of Sing Sing, N. V. 
 
 I HAVE always been accustomed to hear Bedford spoken 
 of as a very retired and quiet country town. So far as my ■ 
 own personal knowledge and observation go, however, it 
 would seem to be one of the liveliest and most enterpris- 
 ing of places ; for whenever it has been my good fortune to 
 be here there has always been some great event on hand 
 — such as the laying of a corner-stone, or the dedication 
 of a church, or the installation of a pastor. To-day we 
 have the most unique and peculiar occasion of all, and one 
 which seems most appropriately to have stirred the whole 
 town from centre to circumference — namely, the celebra- 
 tion of the bi-centennial of this Christian church — a grand 
 occasion indeed, and one upon which I am glad to be 
 with you, and in the public services of which I count it an 
 honour and a privilege to participate. 
 
 As I was listening to the admirable historical address of 
 Dr. Baird, it occurred to me that there was perhaps a 
 special" propriety in my being present here to-day. This 
 is not the first bi-centennial celebration which I have 
 attended. Nineteen years ago, in the year 1862, it was 
 my privilege to be present at a service similar to this in 
 the dear old church of Jamaica, L. L, to .which your 
 historian has made reference — the church in which I was 
 born and with which I united in my childhood, and which 
 
112 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 claims the proud distinction of being the oldest Presby- 
 terian church in the United States. I cannot but recall to- 
 day those former bi-centennial services in which I took part 
 as a son of the church, one of the thirteen who had gone 
 forth from that congregation into the Christian ministr)'. 
 My special mission here to-day is to bear to you, my 
 brethren, the cordial salutations and sincere and heartfelt 
 congratulations of the Presbytery of Westches".er, with 
 which this church is connected. But before proceeding 
 to speak as a representative of Presbytery, may I not extend 
 to you the congratulations of the grand old Presbyterian 
 church of Jamaica — that mother of churches and that 
 fountain of supply for the Christian ministry. I am sure I 
 shall be authorized and justified by that church in speak- 
 ing in her behalf, and not only in conveying to you her 
 salutations, but also in welcoming you to a share in the 
 honour and distinction of being among the very earliest 
 organized Presbyterian churches in the land. 
 
 If you will indulge me, I will make another personal 
 allusion just here. I was touched by the reference of your 
 historian to the last four Pastors who have occupied this 
 pulpit — Green, Inglis, Lyon, Heroy — I knew them all. 
 When, thirty years ago, I went to Sing Sing to enter upon 
 my work there, I found the excellent Jacob Green and his 
 wife in my congregation at Sing Sing, and received from 
 them a very kind and cordial welcome, and though it was 
 but a short time previous to his death, yet I learned 
 greatly to respect and love him before he was called hence. 
 It was my privilege to be with him in his last sickness, and 
 to hear from his lips those very words which Dr. Baird has 
 just quoted .in connection with that wonderful vision, or 
 revelation as he called it, of the future. It was mine to 
 close his eyes in death, and to attend his funeral services 
 
HISTORY OF BEDI-ORD CHURCH. 
 
 "3 
 
 at the church on the morning of the very day on which I 
 was there installed Pastor, in the afternoon. His body 
 was the first interred in our new cemetery, which was thus 
 consecrated by being made the resting-place of the dust of 
 so devout and excellent a man. Never shall I forget the 
 impressive address of Dr. Spring as we stood around 
 the open grave, and with that voice of unequalled beauty 
 and power, he gave utterance to these words : " One goeth 
 and another cometh." That dear old man finished his 
 ministry just as I was about to enter upon mine, and thus 
 has it ever been, " one goeth and another cometh. " The 
 time for individual labour and service is short — but, blessed 
 be God, "though the workmen die, yet the work goes 
 on ; " when one lays down the armour another takes it up. 
 
 But I have, as I have said, a special errand here to-day, 
 and that is to bear to you the congratulations of the Pres- 
 bytery with which you are connected. We have little 
 perhaps to be proud of in our churches, but we have at 
 least this distinction, of having a church which has com- 
 pleted two hundred years of its history. In that history 
 we rejoice with you to-day. We hail you as the "very 
 ewel and crown of our Presbytery. We heartly congratu- 
 late you upon the distinction whereunto you have attained, 
 and we come with gratitude and thankfulness to unite 
 with you in the special and interesting services of this 
 occasion. 
 
 As I have been sitting here I have been thinking of the 
 dignity and value of a Christian church — God's own ordi- 
 nance. With all its imperfections, it is about the grandest 
 thing in this poor sinful world of ours. A Christian 
 church two hundred yetvrs old 1 Just think of it ! Why, 
 this church is the only living organization, yea, it is the 
 only living thing, in this whole town of Bedford, which 
 7 
 
1 14 HISTOR Y OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 has reached such an age. A tree or an edifice two hundred 
 years old would have some interest for us, especially in 
 this new country of ours ; we would turn aside to see 
 it, and would look upon it with reverence. How much 
 more, then, should we come up hither to celebrate the 
 bi-centennial of this church of Jesus Christ ! Two hun- 
 dred years of history, two hundred years of Christian 
 experience and of Christian testimony, two hundred 
 years of faith, two hundred years of prayer, two hundred 
 years of instruction and of witness-bearing for God and 
 His blessed Gospel ! No insignificant matter this. True, 
 we have no means by which we can accurately measure 
 the influence of this church in all these passing years, 
 and yet we feel sure that that influence has been great 
 for good, and for the enriching and blessing of this whole 
 people. May I not assume that this church has been 
 a leading element or factor in shaping and determining ■ 
 the character of this community? Suppose you could de- 
 stroy to-day the aggregate influence of the Christian church 
 for these two hundred years, and what desolation would 
 be evident ! Take out of your individual life the -health- 
 ful and helping influences which come to you by your 
 relations to and association with the church of Christ, the 
 influence of her instruction, of her worship, of her social 
 gatherings, her prayers, her sacred communion and fellow- 
 ship — take out of your life and mine, I say, all these, and 
 what would there be left to make life worth the having ? 
 You will agree with me, I am sure, when I say that the 
 . richest and purest joys of our life are those which we find 
 in connection with the sacred and precious hours which we 
 spend in the sanctuary of God, and in our association 
 with His people. And so the influence and power of this 
 church have been no mean factors in the education and 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 115 
 
 instruction of this people, contributing largely to make 
 them what they are, and to lift them to that position of 
 honour and excellence in which they rejoice to-day ; and 
 thus, also, as to its influence, not only for instruction, but for 
 comfort and for consolation, for blessing in various forms. 
 Ah, what precious associations stand connected with the 
 church of Christ ! How precious and dear is she to our 
 hearts I And so has it been throughout the whole his 
 tor}' of this church and congregation, in the midst of which 
 God's mercy and grace have been so often revealed and 
 enjoyed in their preciousness and power. How many have 
 here heard the word which has made them wise unto sal- 
 vation ! Truly of ' ' this and of that man " it may be said, 
 he was born here, born to a new and better life, and to a 
 nobler and grander destiny and hope than he had ever 
 known before. 
 
 How long has the Gospel been here earnestly preached 
 by that long list of faithful servants of the Master, all but 
 one of whom have now gone to their reward ! What power 
 has that word had for instruction and comfort, for reproof 
 and for salvation ! Well may we rejoice and give thanks 
 in the review of the good work accomplished by this 
 church of Christ through all these passing years and centu- 
 ries. You do well, my brethren, to observe this occasion. 
 It is becoming thus to look backward over the past, and 
 recall the mercies which have distinguished and marked 
 our experience and history, in order that our gratitude 
 may be awakened and our heartfelt thanksgivings go up to 
 Him who is the Author of all our good. 
 
 I bring to you then, my brethren, not only personally 
 and as a neighbouring pastor interested in your history and 
 welfare, but on behalf of the Presbytery which I represent 
 and to which you belong, I bring you sincere congratula- 
 
Il6 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 tions. I congratulate you upon the glorious past, the 
 record of which has been set before us to-day. With all 
 my heart I thank my brother for the care and fidelity with 
 which he has done his work as historian, for the fulness of 
 his investigations, and the clearness with which he has set 
 before us the history of this church during these two hundred 
 years which are now gone by — a history signally marked 
 with blessing, and in the remembrance of which you may 
 well rejoice and give thanks. 
 
 But I feel, brethren, that I may congratulate you upon 
 the preseni as well as upon the past. In the possession of 
 this beautiful edifice for Christian worship, in the enjoy- 
 ment of all the appointed means and ordinances of grace 
 in connection with the ministrations of an earnest and 
 faithful pastor, what more do you need ? what more can 
 you ask ? The struggles and trials, the wrongs and tears 
 of which we have heard the record to-day, are, happily, 
 matters of the past. There is now " none to molest or 
 make you afraid," or in any way interfere with your full 
 enjoyment of your Christian liberty. Thus equipped for 
 usefulness and service, and thus enriched with all the privi- 
 leges of theGoSpel in the ordinances of God and His sanc- 
 tuary, I congratulate you, brethren, upon the present. 
 Using well your means of good, what measure of satisfac- 
 tion and blessing are in store for you ! 
 
 But not merely in view of the past and present, but more 
 , than all I am moved to congratulate you upon the prospects 
 of the future. Whatever may be true of the past and the 
 present, the future is certainly full of brightness and of 
 promise to you as a church of our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
 Christ. Your history as a Christian church has not closed. 
 Indeed, as you enter upon this new centur)-, you enter, I 
 trust, upon a new era of yet wider usefulness, and nobler ser- 
 
IIISTOHY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 117 
 
 vice for the Master. Individual men live their brief three 
 score years and ten, or if by reason of strength it be four- 
 score years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow, and it is 
 soon cut off and they fly away. But not so with a Christian 
 church. Even two hundred years do not here imply in- 
 firmity or decrepitude, but rather vigour and increasing 
 strength. This church has but just reached the prime of 
 its manhood, with the prospect and promise of a future yet 
 more glorious than the past. Whatever the past may have 
 been, or whatever the present may be, yet "there is more 
 to follow!' Thus even with our best things and the bless- 
 ings of our spiritual life, the future is always bright with 
 glorious . promise and hope. We, my hearers, will soon 
 have passed from these earthly scenes, but this church of 
 Christ will remain and live, I trust, a thousand years — yea 
 to the end of time, from generation to generation, multi- 
 plying its agencies, and extending its influences for good. 
 And if indeed it be true, that the blessed company of God's 
 faithful ones, as they go hence to heaven, still have cogni- 
 zance of affairs upon the earth, then as the centuries pass, 
 and this Christian church and congregation shall from time 
 to time gather to celebrate the love of God and His kindly 
 dealings, may it not be that we, together with the vast 
 company who have gone up before us from this place, and 
 who, though invisible to our mortal eyes, yet look down 
 upon us to-day — may it not be, I say, when the three 
 hundredth anniversary of this church shall occur, and God's 
 people be here gathered to recount His mercies and record 
 His love, that with those who are thus present with us to- 
 day, and constituting a part of the general assembly and 
 church of the first-born in heaven, we too shall look down 
 upon the assembled congregation, and that not merely as 
 interested spectators or witnesses, but as sharers with them 
 
Il8 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 of their joy ? Brethren, we shall not soon forget the scenes 
 through which we are passing to-da)'. We ought not to do 
 so, but rather to cherish them in our memories, even as we 
 shall doubtless retain an interest in what concerns this be- 
 loved church of Christ as we go hence to the eternal world. 
 
 Yet one other thought and I conclude. It is sometimes 
 customary in connection with great and joyful occasions 
 like this, to manifest our interest by gifts and oflferings. 
 What offering, my Christian brethren, will you make ? What 
 gift will you bring to-day in testimony of your appreciation 
 of the peculiar love and mercy which have followed you as 
 a church in all those years of the past — ^that favour of heaven 
 which crowns the present with so much of blessing, and the 
 future with so much of hope ? What so appropriate as a 
 new consecration of yourselves unto God and to His service 
 here — all th^t you are and all that you have ? Are you not 
 indebted to God for all, and will you not give Him of His 
 own, and that by way of acknowledging your obligations 
 and expressing your gratitude for the peculiar mercies of 
 the past, the precious blessings of the present, and the glo- 
 rious hopes which take hold upon the future which opens 
 before you ? Brethren, the time for Christian labour, and 
 service, and suffering here, is short. Let us seek to be 
 found earnest and diligent and faithful in all the work to 
 which God calls us here, even till He shall summon us to 
 the rest and glory" of His heayenly kingdom. 
 
 Anthem : " Seek ye the Lord." 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. i ig 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Rev. JAMES W. JOHNSTON, 
 Minister of the Presbyterian Church of Mount Kisco. N. Y. 
 
 It is a pleasure to me to stand here to-day and perform 
 the duty that has fallen to my lot. I am not here to de- 
 liver an address, nor to make a speech, but simply to con- 
 vey the kindly, filial greetings of the daughter to the 
 mother. As bone of your bone, and flesh of your flesh, we 
 claim a place in your history and a share in your glory. 
 They tell us you were not organized originally as a P^-es- 
 byterian church. We care nothing for that. It was a vine 
 of the Lord's planting, and we together now enjoy its 
 fruits and rejoice in its shadow. We celebrate to-day no 
 feat of arms, no achievement of science, no wonder of dis- 
 covery, no triumph of art. Our work has not been a 
 worldly work ; our glory is not an earthly glory. Our re- 
 joicing is that we have been an ins.ruraent in God's hand 
 — -3. channel for God's love. The vital forces in nature 
 are, at the same time, the mightiest and the gentlest. The 
 least objective and imposing to the senses, they are the 
 grandest in the results which they bring. The thunder- 
 bolt is terrific in its crash, but it leaves only death and 
 ashes in its pathway. As it rends the royal oak, it de- 
 stroys, in the twinkle of an eye, a century of life's work. 
 But it is always grander to build than to destroy, to pro- 
 duce than to consume. The warrior who is bedecked with 
 the stars of worldly honour, and the splendor of whose 
 deeds dazzles the eye of ambition, is, among the habita- 
 tions of men, what the thunderbolt is in nature. He is 
 grand in the pa:th of destruction. Such work may, at 
 
I20 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 times, be needed, but it is always sad to be the instrument 
 in the ministration of death. The ministration of life is 
 rather glorious. And where does earth find the ministra- 
 tion of life? Who- builds the waste places.? What force 
 heals the bleeding wounds of humanity 1 What power 
 restores the desolations of mighty havoc? What balm, 
 other than the breath of God, in the Gospel of Jesus, has 
 ever suflBced to heal the iniquity of the souls of men, to 
 check the wastes of life, and to build up a pure and spirit- 
 ualized, a strong and beautiful manhood ? In the Church 
 of Christ are treasured the forces which must overmaster 
 death, and give life, by the- vital touch of God. As the 
 unseen and noiseless energies of nature, without any throb 
 of struggling effort, or tremor of labour — without any proc- 
 lamation of greatness, or declaration of power — daily and 
 nightly build the products of the cultivated fields and the 
 meadows, the beauty of the flowers and the majesty of the 
 forest, so God, by the still, small voice of the Gospel, that 
 comes like the dew, distilled in the silence of the night, 
 and through the instrumentality of the weak things of the 
 world, restores a lost race, and garners a rich harvest of 
 souls. The most God-like, and so the grandest, force that 
 earth has seen, is the power of the Gospel. It is a grand 
 effort in nature that produces a tree, but it is a grander 
 effort from above nature that refashions a sinful soul, and 
 clothes it in the beauty of holiness. To be the receivers 
 and guardians, the legatees and the trustees of such spirit- 
 ual resources, is an honour higher and more enduring than 
 to lead the armies of a Caesar, and to startle and dazzle the 
 world with the brilliant exploits of a Napoleon. I would 
 rather have been a deacon in the little church in the 
 wilderness of Bedford, holding the lamp of God to light 
 the way to heaven, than an Alexander, or a Nelson, or 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 121 
 
 even a Franklin. How many streams of spiriiual influence 
 have started here, how widely they have spread, what rich 
 soul-treasures they have borne and are now bearing from 
 country and from city, from east and "from west, from 
 Christian lands and from heathen lands, on to the heaven- 
 land above, God only knows. We gather around the old 
 church homestead to-day to bear kindly greetings to the 
 spiritual household mother, not in her to glory, but with 
 her to glory in the cross of Christ ; not in her to joy, but 
 with her 10 rejoice in the Lord ; not to her to bring thanks- 
 giving and praise, but with her to give thanks unto the 
 Most High, and praise the name of Him who hath estab- 
 lished us in righteousness. The memories of the past 
 goodness of our God we gather with grateful recollection, 
 and.with hearts of tender, tearful thankfulness, we weave 
 them into a love-token wreath with which to garland the 
 cross of Christ our Saviour. 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Rev. JOHN H. EASTMAN, 
 Minister of .the Presbyterian Church of Katonah, N. Y. 
 
 I WOULD ask the kind patience of the audience for a 
 moment, assuring them that they are no more uncomfort- 
 able than I am, and that I shall not keep myself or them 
 very long. On the seventeenth day of November, 1872, 
 the 3d Presbyterian Church in the town of Bedford was 
 organized by a committee of the Presbytery of Westchester. 
 The pastor and an elder of the church at Mt. Kisco were 
 laigely instrumental in the organization of that church, and 
 five of the original members of the church were dismissed 
 
122 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCIh 
 
 by letter from the church at Mt. Kisco. It was my lot to 
 be the pastor of that church, so I come here to-day as the 
 representative of the grandchild of the Bedford Church to 
 bear to our grandmother our greetings and ou r good wishes , 
 
 Ever since I have been a resident of the town of Bed- 
 ford,— and I might say that during the first few months of ray 
 pastorate I was a resident of the town of I^ewisboro, just 
 across the line, but discovering that fact and hearing so 
 much, although Lewisboro was a very good town, [ felt I 
 must move over into Bedford, — ever s nee then I h^ve 
 constantly been learning more and more of the glorious 
 history of the town of Bedford, and the giand position 
 which it occupies in this world of ours. So that I have 
 become a very loyal and devoted citizen of that town, and I 
 think I have fully as much pride to-day in her history as 
 any old resident of the town, although born here and 
 whose family for generations has lived here. But it seems 
 to me that to-day, as I have sat here and have been drink- 
 ing in these facts of the last two centuries of its histoy, as 
 they have been so admiiably presented to us by our his- 
 torian, it seems to me my gratitude has been growing 
 s ronger and stronger all the time, and more than that I am 
 happy to say thai I am Pas or of the church whose grand- 
 mother has had such a long and such a glorious history. 
 
 And I am sure I shall go back to my work in connec- 
 tion with the grandchild of this church with new inspira- 
 tion, feeling that having such an ancestry as this, that we 
 shall be true to the ancestry from which we have sprung. 
 This is the wish that I bring, that you and we and the 
 church at Mt. Kisco, in this town of Bedford, that we, 
 representing this form of faith, may be enabled of God to 
 go forward, faithful to do the work that He has for us to do 
 in this part of His vineyard. 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 123 
 
 The one hundred and seventy-eighth hymn — "Jehovah 
 reigns ! He dwells in light" — was then sung, and the ser- 
 vice was closed wiih the 
 
 Benediction. 
 
 The evening service commenced with the Reading of 
 the Holy Scriptures, by Rev. Geo. W. F. Birch. 
 
 Prayer was then offered by Rev. Edgar L. Heermance. 
 
 The Hymn, "Glorious things of thee are spoken," was 
 sung. 
 
 Rev. J. H. Hoyt then read several communications from 
 persons unable to be present on this occasion. He added : 
 "I have now the pleasure of introducing to you Mr. Fran- 
 cis A. Palmer, whose largeness of heart gave us this beau- 
 tiful sanctuary.'' 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 FRANCIS A. PALMER, Esq. 
 
 I APPEAR before you this evening, my friends, not from 
 any desire on my part, but by particular request on the part 
 of the friends here. 
 
 As one of the sons of the fathers, I rejoice in the oppor- 
 tunity of mingling my sympathies and joys with you, and 
 especially in the services which have taken place thus far 
 this day. The occasion carries me back to the ministry of 
 Mr. Grant. I recall his pastoral visits to my father's house. 
 How acceptable they always were ! A man thoroughly 
 
124 
 
 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 devoted to his work ; a man of God ; a man whom we 
 were always glad to see ; who had a kind word for every 
 one, young and old. 
 
 I remember when Ebenezer Howe — some of you will 
 recollect him, father of Alva Howe — came through ihe 
 neighbourhood telling us we had a new Minister, and Mr. 
 Grant would preach the following Sabbath. We were re- 
 joiced to know that we had a pastor again. I recollect his 
 preaching here without interruption until the summer of 
 1 83 1, and I look back to see who were the fathers in this 
 church at that time. I have a little memorandum here. 
 I find here the names of Ebenezer Howe, Samuel Barry, 
 his sons Joseph Barry and Frederick Barry, and their sons. 
 I find here Capt. David Miller, a pillar in thechurch until 
 the day of his death, and one of the officers. I find here 
 a little later, John Todd, always present and, an oflScer in 
 the church until he died. His sons are with you. I find 
 here the name of Judge Read. I do not know that I ever 
 came to this church when a boy without seeing Judge 
 Read. He was always a member of the committee ; when- 
 ever any one was called upon to come before the commit- 
 tee here, he was always present. I find the name of Cap- 
 tain James Raymond, who was always present. I find 
 Stephen Lounsbury, whose descendants of the third and 
 fourth generations are here with us to-day. I find the 
 name of Palmer Lyon and his son Seth Lyon, and then 
 his son Solomon Lyon, who was a schoolmate of mine, 
 who joined the church the same hour that I did. Then I 
 find Mrs. Samuel Trowbridge, who was always here with 
 her family, seven or eight sons, all of whom grew up in the 
 church, and I never knew of one of these people who 
 departed from the faith. They were brought up in the 
 church; they were constant attendants here, and this 
 
m STORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 125 
 
 church held up the Bible, and old Mr. Green always used 
 to preach the Bible. These were the descendants of our 
 forefathers. What men were they ? We find in the history 
 of Stamford that seven families came there in 1640. They 
 came together and built themselves huts, and they went to 
 work and built up a meeting house. They had no minis- 
 ter. Well the history of it was that two out of seven of the 
 brethren started for Boston to find a minister. They went 
 to Boston, ihey obtained a minister, but they had no Bible. 
 Bibles were not so plenty then as now, and they brought a 
 Bible in their arms back to Stamford. It took them six 
 weeks to make that trip to Boston and back again. Now 
 that is what has kept my dear friends from that day to this, 
 that is what has kept this people here sound in the faith. 
 It is the original teaching of this blessed word. 
 
 In 183 1 we had here what was called a "a four days' 
 meeting." Some of the friends here will remember it. 
 Mr. Green commenced, and he preached here four days. 
 The last day he had a little assistance from Mr. Sander- 
 son, from South Salem. I recollect his preaching, and I 
 know that, at that time, it created quite an interest here. 
 I remember that, on the first Sunday in October, 1831, 
 there were forty who joined the church, and I think the 
 record shows that in January there were some seventy- 
 five mor^. I have thought, sometimes, that we are not 
 living up to our privileges. We have had the lives of 
 these good men before us, they have lived here for gener- 
 ations ; yes, for six or seven generations. We have their 
 example, and we have had their prayers, and we are debt- 
 ors to these good men who lived before us, and I think 
 we ought all to be much better than we are. We ought 
 to be better Christians, we ought to live nearer the cross 
 of Christ, and I would to God that we might renew our 
 
126 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 covenant with Him to-day on this two-hundredth anniver- 
 
 sary. 
 
 An Address was then made by 
 
 JAMES WOOD, Esq., 
 
 President of the Westchester County Historical Society. 
 
 Anthem : "Show me Thy way, O Lord." 
 
 The Rev. J. Aspinwall Hodge, D.D., Minister of the 
 Presbyterian Church of Hartford, Gonn., then spoke : 
 
 I trust your patience is not exhausted, for, with Dr. 
 Phraner, I was appointed to bear to you the congratula- 
 tions of the Presbytery of Westchester. It is not neces- 
 sary for me to repeat what he has so fully expressed. 
 From Dr. Baird's historical address, I infer that I was 
 chosen as representing Connecticut, from which the 
 colony to Bedford was sent, and Hartford, where the 
 charter was obtained and the name of your town was 
 bestowed. It is difficult, however, to know where I stand 
 in relation to you. We have heard to-day much about 
 the mother, daughter, and granddaughter ; but what can 
 be said of the State and churches of Connecticut who 
 produced, sent forth, and nurtured this colony in the 
 wilderness ? Poor Connecticut ! despoiled of her territory, 
 separated from her offspring, the last tie, the ecclesias- 
 tical, so long ago broken as to be forgotten. What is her 
 relation to the church of Bedford ? Like the mother of 
 Moses, who, when unacknowledged in her real relation, 
 accepted a place as hired nurse to her child, so I, for 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 127 
 
 Connecticut, will take any position, even the humblest, 
 in this household, and, as one with you, join in your 
 grand celebration. 
 
 Receive then, our salutation, to this old church of Bed- 
 ford. Yes, old! Not using the word as generally applied 
 to fallen man, groaning under the curse of sin, worn out 
 by the labours and sorrows of earth, hastening to the 
 grave, like a palace deserted of power and mirth, left in 
 silence and falling into ruins. But old, in the true, sanc- 
 tified meaning of the word, as often used in the Scriptures ; 
 old, passing through a development ; obtaining strength, 
 experience, wisdom, and manifold graces, and still in- 
 creasing towards perfection. The aged should be rever- 
 enced. "Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and 
 honour the face of the old man." No reference is made to 
 increasing infirmities, a second childhood, and approach- 
 ing dissolution, for these effects of sin are in the church 
 counteracted by redemption. Like Moses, when the old 
 man went up Pisgah, "his eye was not dim, nor his nat- 
 ural force abated," he had seen God, as one talketh with 
 his friend, and the skin of his face shone with the glory 
 of the Lord. He was made like unto the Ancient of 
 Days, who is described in the Revelation with "His 
 head and hair white as wool, as white as snow, and His 
 eyes as a flame of fire." We greet you, old Bedford, en- 
 riched with reverence, experience, wealth, ability, and 
 wisdom, and with all the eternity of age still before you. 
 We congratulate you as you "renew your strength, 
 mount up with wings as eagles ; run, and are not weary ; 
 and walk, and are not faint." 
 
 Do you realize how old you are ? Nearly twice as old 
 as our national institutions. You were active in your 
 grand work of forming political character, declaring the 
 
128 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 true principles of government, and publishing peace on 
 earth and good will to men, almost one hundred years 
 before our new-born nation was rocked in the cradle of 
 liberty. As you think of these labours, which are still 
 continued, you may feel the dignity of your long service, 
 but you can perceive no weariness nor decline of energy. 
 In this new building, under your young pastor, with re- 
 vived activity of the people rebiptized by the Holy Spirit, 
 you are conscious of a preparation and zeal for greater 
 efforts. There is an inspiration in age. See this list 
 of Ministers who have here laboured and prayed, and 
 preached the Gospel. I would that their names were en- 
 graven on the walls, that, when your pastor comes into 
 this cjjurch trembling under responsibility, and anxious 
 concerning the effects of his message, he may realize that 
 he has entered into their labours to reap what they have 
 sown, to receive the answer to their prayers, that he can- 
 not labour in vain, that he is not to declare some new 
 gospel, a cunningly devised fable, but the truth received 
 from God, declared for two centuries to this people, and 
 proved to be "the power of God and the wisdom of God 
 unto salvation," an eternal benediction. Who would not 
 feel encouraged and strengthened by such a sight ? Of 
 these, I knew personally only Peter Heroy, the last of the 
 honoured pastors, who was one of the first to welcome me 
 into the Presbytery. I saw enough of his Christlike spirit 
 and faithful labours to congratulate most heartily the man 
 who has taken up the mantle that fell from him, and has 
 received' a double portion of his spirit 
 
 The question has been asked to-day, How is it that this 
 church has attained to the age of two hundred years ? The 
 full answer is given in the opening chapters of the Book of 
 Revelation. The Lord Jesus Christ is described as walk- 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. X2Q 
 
 ing among the candlesticks. He recalls the past history of 
 each church ; speaks in detail of its labours and varied expe- 
 riences. His reproofs and warnings are because of neglect 
 or denial of His name and truth, and the adoption of some 
 other doctrine. His approbation and promise of continu- 
 ance are connected with the keeping of His word, the hold- 
 ing and obeying of His doctrine. This church has not had 
 its candlestick removed, because it has taught the truth as 
 it is in Jesus — the old doctrine of salvation by grace, taught 
 under all dispensations. There can be no change in this 
 plan of God, this eternal truth. There is change in our 
 comprehension of it. The sun is the same to-day as it was 
 centuries ago, but we know more about it. Its rays are 
 the same as when, on the vanishing flood, it painted the 
 rairibow ; but we are learning how its rays are separated 
 into the marvellous colors. It brings returning spring, and 
 draws from the earth beauty and fruitfulness, as when God 
 first bade the grass and plants to put forth abundantly • 
 but we have been able to comprehend something, though 
 comparatively little, of the great mystery of life. So the 
 Gospel taught in the old Bible is the same doctrine of ever- 
 lasting and unchangeable truth. It is the same because 
 devised, revealed, made efficient by God. We understand 
 the doctrine better, but cannot improve it. We know it 
 only in part. Like the prophets of old, we desire to know 
 " what the Spirit did signify when He testified of the suffer- 
 ings of Christ and the glory that should follow." There- 
 fore the lesson, which your history teaches with peculiar 
 emphasis, is that which was urged by Mr. Palmer — the 
 existence as well as the prosperity of a church, depends 
 upon its fidelity to this dear old Bible, and to the vener- 
 able and precious doctrine contained therein. Turn not 
 aside from the truth ; adopt no new-fangled notions ; do 
 8 
 
I30 
 
 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 not hesitate to maintain that which you have received, and 
 which has made this church a birthplace of souls and a 
 blessing unto all. " Hold that fast which thou hast, that 
 no man take thy crown." 
 
 Rev. J. H. Hoyt : The Rev. Dr. Adams is here, and 
 has had this occasion on his memory for a year. I 
 think it hardly fair that the time should all be taken up 
 and not give him an opportunity to say a word to-night. 
 
 Rev. Dr. Adams : I could hardly refuse when asked to say 
 a single word upon this occasion, because my heart is here. 
 
 We have been on high places here to-day, my dear 
 friends. We have heard of great and of illustrious names, 
 names not known largely, it may be, in the history of the 
 world, but names written in the Lamb's Book of Life, and 
 they are shining on this night of this two hundredth anni- 
 versary, in the heavens above. 
 
 Now what shall be the thought that we shall take away 
 with us from these high and delightful places into which 
 God has this day called us } For a moment I have been 
 thinking of that mount of vision where Moses and Elias 
 and our Lord met together, where the face of the dear 
 Lord shone with the very brightness of Heaven, and when 
 their eyes were opened they beheld "Jesus only." And 
 with all the pleasures of this occasion, and all its delight- 
 ful moments and recollections, let us take with us this one 
 bought, "Jesus only," so that the inspiration of our lives 
 in the future, and the best we have, shall be laid upon His 
 altar. 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 131 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Rev. JAMES D. WILSON, D.D., 
 Minister of the Central Presbyterian Church, of New York. 
 
 Dear Friends : — I feel at home among you to-night as 
 I felt at home among you this afternoon. There are two 
 links that bind me to this church, though I never looked 
 on the village of Bedford until noon to-day. 
 
 You have already heard from the churches around about, 
 the children and the grandchildren. You have heard from 
 the Presbytery which has brought its congratulations here 
 through Dr. Phraner and Dr. Hodge. Now theTresbyteries 
 standing side by side, form a Synod ; and the Synod of New 
 York covers the whole of New England. It runs up to 
 Poughkeepsie, and in my poor way as an ofl&cer of the 
 Synod I am here to-night to bring you the congratulations 
 of the Synod of New York. We are' proud of this, the 
 oldest church in the Synod ; and I am sure there is not 
 one of the brethren within the bounds of the Synod from 
 Boston on the one side to Port Jervis on the other, but 
 will feel a throb of gratitude when he reads the record of 
 this day. It has been a splendid record. There is another 
 tie that binds me to this church, and it is a valued tie. I 
 do not want to speak much about it because I am a young 
 man. I have had the pleasure of being the pastor of your 
 pastor and his wife. How well I remember that bright 
 June day, now nearly five years ago, when these two serv- 
 ants of the Master, amid the June roses, in that historic 
 ground just this side of the Hudson near Tarrytown, joined 
 their right hands to walk together in the pathway of this 
 
132 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 mortal life, and I felt then that in the beauty of that 
 bright summer's day, and amid the beauty of the surround- 
 ing's, there was an indication of joy and happiness to come, 
 and I thank God that I have lived to see it realized in 
 some measure this hour. It is a great thing to be the 
 pastor of a church two hundred years old, that has lived 
 such a life and has left the record which belongs to this 
 church to-day. 
 
 I think we ought to be devoutly thankful for that histori- 
 cal record which we heard this afternoon. It was not only 
 admirable, to my judgment, it was almost faultless. It is 
 worth while holding a two hundredth anniversary just for 
 the pleasure of listening to and having in one's possession 
 such a paper as that. 
 
 Then it ought to be a source of joy to see the interest 
 that this community have shown to-day in such an anni- 
 versary. Dr. Prime said to me, "I have just been out 
 counting the wagons, and it brought to my mind in a 
 fresh sense that passage in the Old Testament where we 
 read that Jacob's heart revived within him when he saw 
 the wagons ; " and I think every man and woman's heart 
 should revive within them when they see such an interest 
 manifested in an occasion like this. 
 
 Christianity is older than two hundred years. Infidelity 
 is older than two hundred years. Have you ever read of 
 the two hundredth anniversary of any infidel institution ? 
 There have been infidel associations. Whoever attended 
 a fiftieth anniversary of one of them ? What is the differ- 
 ence ? Just the difference between nothing and the Lord 
 Almighty. Infidelity has no power because it has no 
 God. Christianity is stronger than the hills, because it 
 has the heart-beat of the Almighty in it. There are other 
 things for which we are taught to be thankful to day. We 
 
HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 133 
 
 all ought to be grateful for having been born in the coun- 
 try. I look at my children, and I look upon them with 
 commiseration because they happened to be born in New 
 York. Why, think of it. When a boy or girl is born in the 
 city, what have they to remember ? Stone paved streets 
 all alike. Brick walls for the most part all alike. Moving 
 every three or four years from house to house. How 
 different with the child born in the country where every 
 tree, every turn in the road, every bird on the trees, every 
 crossing of the way has a sweet and precious memory. 
 
 The unwritten history of this church — who shall speak 
 it .' who shall understand it ? How many a man has stood 
 in the bright summer sun, holding the plough in the 
 valley beyond, and his heart has been heavy. He has 
 thought of his troubles ; troubles at home, troubles in 
 business, — and then he has remembered what some man 
 of God said to him last Sunday, and he has taken hold 
 of the plough handles with a firmer grasp, and spoken to 
 his team with a ' ' cheerier " word, and gone on to turn the 
 furrow with a braver heart. 
 
 How many a mother in the lonely hours of the night 
 has watched over the cradle of her sick child thinking of 
 the shadow that was to come, thinking of the little mound 
 that might be ere long down in the cemetery; then she 
 remembered some hymn of heaven that last Sunday was 
 chanted in the house of God, and out of the bosom of 
 that hymn as upon golden wings consolation was carried 
 down into that aching heart. O the unwritten history of 
 the old Bedford Church 1 
 
 How many a man in the city of New York, troubled, 
 perplexed, worried almost beyond endurance with anxiety, 
 has thought of the dear old home in Bedford, of father 
 and mo.her who are thinking of him there, and praying 
 
134 HISTORY OF BEDFORD CHURCH. 
 
 for htm there, and has said, Now I will be brave, I will 
 be patient for that dear old home's sake up in Westchester 
 County. Let us see to it that we do the work which we 
 have to do. If we have farms to till, let us till them with 
 the utmost possible skill ; if we have shops to care for, let 
 us see that we are the best mechanics in the whole country ; 
 if we have stores, let us see to it that we remember that 
 there are always two persons to a bargain, the one that 
 buys and the one that sells ; and then though we know 
 nothing of what will be in the world or what will come to 
 pass in the next two hundred years from this time, we do 
 know that if our duty has been well done those that will 
 come after us will rise up to call us blessed. And may 
 the blessing of God, the Father Almighty, and Christ our 
 only Lord and Saviour, and the Holy Spirit our Comforter 
 be with, us alway. Amen. 
 
 The one hundred and twenty-fourth hymn — 
 
 " From all that dwell below the skies 
 Let the Creator's praise arise," 
 
 was then sung, with the Doxology, and the Benediction 
 was pronounced by the Pastor. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Academy, Bedford, 78, 79, 82, 99. 
 
 Act for settling a Minister, 31, 34, 35, 38. 
 
 Adams, Carson W., 105, 130. 
 
 Albany, N. Y., 68. 
 
 Alexander, Archibald, 46, 47, 55, 56. 
 
 Ambler, Abraham, 13, i6, 17, 18, 20, 21, 24, 27. 
 
 Ambler, Joshua, 60, 66, 103. 
 
 Ambler, Richard, 13, 16. 
 
 "Anabaptists," 60, 68. 
 
 Anderson vs. Rushton, 14. 
 
 Annals of the American Pulpit, 46, 74, 76. 
 
 Anniversary, Bi-centennial, proceedings at the, 105-134. 
 
 Arnold, Benedict, 65. 
 
 Aspetong, 14. , 
 
 Assembly, General, of the province of New York, 31, 35. 
 
 Associated Presbyteries, 80, 84. 
 
 Associated Presbytery of Westchester, 84. 
 
 Association, Hartford North, 41, 76. 
 
 Association, New Haven, 65. 
 
 Association of Fairfield Co., 42, 65, 83. 
 
 Associations, Ct., 59. 
 
 Awakening, the great, 58, 69. 
 
 Ayres, Richard, 13. 
 
 A)rrshire, Scotland, 45. 
 
 Bacon, Leonard, 30, 40. 
 
 Balden, Theophilus, 17. 
 
 Baldwin, Barnabas, 56. 
 
 Baldwin, Charles C, 56, 57- 
 
 135 
 
136 INDEX. 
 
 Baldwin, Henry, 56, 57. 
 
 Ball, Eliphalet, 58-65, 69, 102. 
 
 Ball, Elizabeth, 65. 
 
 Ball, Flamen, 65 ; John, 65 ; Mary, 65 ; Stephen, 65. 
 
 Ball's Town [Ballston], N. Y., 60, 63, 64. 
 
 Banks, Clarissa, 89 ; Edward, 89 ; Jeremiah, 89. 
 
 Barbarism, tendency to, 30. 
 
 Barrett, Jesse, 89; Margaret A., 8g. 
 
 Barry, Frederick, 124 ; Joseph, 124 ; Samuel, 124. 
 
 Bartow, John, 34, 35. 
 
 Bates' Hill, 15, 22, 23, 24, 26, 69, 95. 
 
 Bates' Ridge, 53. 
 
 Bates, John, 13 ; Mary, 13 ;■ Robert, 13, 16. 
 
 Baxter, Richard, g. 
 
 Bedford, Mass., 77. 
 
 Bedford, N. Y., settlement of, 12, 13, 14 ; proprietors of, 13, 15, 16, 
 
 17, 21 ; officers of, 18, ig ; character of first settlers of, 20, 
 
 21, g6, 97. 
 Bedford, N. Y. , claimed by Connecticut, 28, 29 ; annexed to New 
 
 York, 29 ; provision for support of religion in, 2g ; seeks 
 
 relief from the Act of 1693, 34 ; its territory preserved intact, 
 
 97- 
 
 Bedford, N. Y., Methodist Episcopal Church of, 23. 
 
 Bedford, N. Y., Presbyterian Church of, its founders, 20 ; its Minis- 
 ters, see Ministers of Bedford Church ; supplied by Ministers 
 of Fairfield Co., 26, 42, 83 ; under care of Fairfield Co. 
 Association, 42 ; comes under care of Presbytery, 45 ; 
 " broken condition " of, 62 ; revivals of religion in, 59 ; 
 schism in, 5g ; its records burned, 70, loi. 
 
 Bedford, N. Y., St. Matthew's Church in, g8, gg. 
 
 Bell, John, 64 ; Jonathan, Ig. 
 
 Bellamy, Joseph, 41, 60. 
 
 Bellamy Papers, 41. 
 
 " Bend of the Mahanas," 14. 
 
 Benedict, Deborah, 8g ; Emeline, 89 ; Holly, 89 ; Stephen, 77, 103 
 Uriah, 64. 
 
 Bensalem, Pa., 47, 48. 
 
 Beverly, England, 13, 16. 
 
 Birch, Geo. W. F., 123. 
 
INDEX. 137 
 
 Bishop, John, 26, 27. 
 
 Blatchford Memorial, 73, 76. 
 
 Blatchford, Samuel, 76. 
 
 Bolton, Robert, 14, 25, 32, 34, 35, 38, 42, 44, 56, 59, 63, 98. 
 
 Boston, Mass., 12, 26. 
 
 Boundary Line between N. Y. and Ct., 11, I2, 28, 29. 
 
 Bradford, William, 20, 54. 
 
 Bridge, Christopher, 44, 49. 
 
 Buckingham, Stephen, 44. 
 
 Bucks Co., Pa., 45. 
 
 Bunyan, John, g. 
 
 Burrett, Samuel, 17. 
 
 Byram River, 28. 
 
 Calendar of British State Papers, 11, 20. 
 
 Cambridge Platform, 42. 
 
 Canfield, Thomas, 17. 
 
 Cantito, 46, 52, 54, 71. 
 
 Canton, Ct., 18. 
 
 Carmel, N. Y., 74. 
 
 " Carrying on the Lord's Day," 24, 27, 30. 
 
 Cemetery, 22, 23, 78. 
 
 Chambers, James, 51 ; Thomas, 51. 
 
 Charles II., 9, 39, 40. 
 
 Chase, Chief Justice, 65. 
 
 Chestnut Ridge, 46, 47. 
 
 Church of England, attempt to establish the, in the province of 
 
 N. Y., 31, 32, 34, 35, 36 ; members of the, in Bidford, 98. 
 Church of England Missionaries at Rye : 
 
 Thomas Pritchard, 35. 
 
 George Muirson, 38. 
 
 Christopher Bridge, 44. 
 
 Robert Jenney, 49. 
 
 James Wetmore, 42. 
 Church of Scotland, 41, 64, 73. 
 Cisco River, 46. 
 Clark, David, 64 ; John, 103 ; John G., 3, 103 ; Nathan, 51 ; Samuel, 
 
 13, 16 ; William, 13. 
 Clason, Stephen, 17. 
 
138 INDEX. 
 
 Classis of Westchester, 95. 
 
 Claverhouse, 9. 
 
 Clerk, Stephen, 66, 103. 
 
 Cohomong purchase, 50. 
 
 Common, the town, 22. 
 
 Congregationalism, 40, 41, 42. 
 
 Conkling, Timothy, 46. 
 
 Connecticut, consociated churches of, 39, 59. 
 
 Connecticut, 10, 11, 12, 39,46, 41, 59, 63, 64, 75, 76, 85. 
 
 Consociation and Presbytery, 39-42. 
 
 Consociation, Eastern, of Fairfield Co., 41. 
 
 Constable, Minister's rate collected by the, 50. 
 
 Corey, Thomas, 47. 
 
 Combury, Governor, 32, 33, 35, 36, 38, 39. 
 
 Cornwell, Mary, 72 ; Stephen, 72. 
 
 Cortlandt, Jacobus van, 35. 
 
 Cortlandt's Line, 14. 
 
 Cortland Manor, N. Y., 58. 
 
 C-ountry rates, 18. 
 
 Covenanters, 9. 
 
 Cow boys, 70. 
 
 Crocker, Daniel, 78. 
 
 Crompond [Yorktown], N. Y., 58. 
 
 Cross, John, 13, 15, 16, 21 ; Nathanael, 13. 
 
 Cross River, 15, 46. 
 
 Cross's Vineyard, 15. 
 
 Culpepper Co., Va., 77. 
 
 Danbury, Ct., 41. 
 
 Davenport, James, 74 ; John, 74, 75. 
 
 David's hill meadow, 55. 
 
 Davies, Samuel, 74. 
 
 Deerfield, N. J., 74. 
 
 Delaware Co., N. Y., 90. 
 
 Delhi, N. Y., 90. 
 
 Denham, Isaac, 28. 
 
 Denham, Thomas, 22, 26, 27, 29, 78. 
 
 Denton, Richard, 12. 
 
 Devonshire, England, 76. 
 
INDEX. 139 
 
 Dibble, George, 46. 
 
 Dorchester, Mass., 26. 
 
 Down, Co. of, Ireland, 45 ; bishop of, 45. 
 
 Dragonnades, the, 10. 
 
 Drum, beating the, 30, 43. 
 
 Dunham, John, 27. See Denham. 
 
 Dutchess Co., N. Y., 63, 64, 65. 
 
 Dwight, Timothy, 76, 79. 
 
 East Chester, N. Y., 32, 34, 45, 47. 
 
 Eastman, John H., 91, 121. 
 
 Edgartown, Mass., 77. 
 
 Edinburgh, Scotland, 83, 87. 
 
 Edwards, Jonathan, 60. 
 
 Elders, Ruling, of Bedford Church, 60, 61, 66, 67, 75, 77, 103, 104. 
 
 Elliott, John, 71. 
 
 Fairfield, Ct., 13, 27. 
 
 Fairfield Co., Association of, 42, 65. 
 
 Farmington, Me., 77. 
 
 Fernow, Berthold, 36. 
 
 Finch, Daniel B., 3, 103. 
 
 Fishkill, N. Y., 81. 
 
 " Five Mile Square " [Ballston], N. Y., 60. 
 
 Fleming, Peter, 77, 103. 
 
 Fletcher, Governor, 31, 32. 
 
 Foster, Isaac, 75. 
 
 Franklin, Benjamin, 33. 
 
 Frazee, John H., 89. 
 
 Fredericksburg [Patterson], N. Y., 67, 68. 
 
 Freehold, N. J., 32, 33. 
 
 French War, 30. 
 
 General Court of Ct., 17, 18, 19, 27, 28. 
 
 Genesee country, the, 68. 
 
 Geneseo, N. Y., 68. 
 
 "Gifted brethren," 20. 
 
 Gillett, E. H., 63. 
 
 Gordon, James, 65. 
 
I40 INDEX, 
 
 Gospel, Society for the Propagation of the, in Foreign Parts, 33, 34, 
 
 35, 38, 44. 49- 
 Granby, Ct., 18. 
 
 Grant, Ebenezer, 77, 78, 79, 124. 
 Green, Ashbel, 80, 106. ' 
 
 Green, Jacob, 79-86, 99, 106, 112, 125. 
 Green, John, 13 : Joseph, 17. 
 Green, Mrs. Mary H., 85, 86, 99, 112. 
 Greenburg, N. V., 95. 
 Greenfield, Ct., 76. 
 Greenwich, Ct., 13, 16, 32, 33, gi. 
 
 Haight, Daniel, 60 ; Phoebe, 89. 
 
 Hait, Elias, 103. 
 
 Hamilton, Canada, 83. 
 
 " Half-way covenant," 59. 
 
 Hall, Enoch, 23. 
 
 Hancock, John, 8g. 
 
 Hanover, N. J., 80. 
 
 Hanover [Yorktown], N. Y., 58. 
 
 Harris, Justus, 77, 103. 
 
 Hartford, Ct., 12, 27, 28. ^ 
 
 Hartford North Association, 41. 
 
 Hartsville, Pa., 45. 
 
 Harvard College, 33. 
 
 Hazard, Hannah, 58 ; Nathanael, 58. 
 
 Heathcote, Caleb, 34, 37. 
 
 Heermance, Edgar L., 123. 
 
 Henderson, Josiah, 77 ; Jophanus, 77. 
 
 Hempstead, L. I., 49. 
 
 Heroy, Peter B., 25, 33, 34, 78, 79, 90, 91. 
 
 Highlands, N. Y., 90. 
 
 Hill, Joshua, 51, 52 ; William, 52, 53. 
 
 Hodge, Charles, 40. 
 
 Hodge, J. Aspinwall, 126. 
 
 Holly, Daniel, 51 ; Col., 78. 
 
 Holmes, David, 51 ; John, 13, 16, 20, 55, 63 ; John C, 50 ; Mrs. 
 
 John C, 19, 57; Jonathan, 51 ; Joseph, 51, 52, 67; Richard, 
 
 50, 57; Samuel L., 99. 
 
INDEX. 141 
 
 Hop Ground, the [Bedford], 14, 15, 17, i8, 19, 21. 
 
 Hop Meadow, 18. 
 
 Hopewell [Pennington], N. J., 32. 
 
 Hopkinsianism, 85. 
 
 Horton, John, 50. 
 
 Housatonic river, 12. 
 
 How, Isaac, 64. 
 
 Howe, Alvah, 103, 124 ; Ebenezer, 124. 
 
 Hoyt, Alexander S., 64. 
 
 Hoyt, James H,, 3, 95. 
 
 Hudson river, 12. 
 
 Humphreys, David, 68. 
 
 Huntington, Ct., 65. 
 
 Huntington, E. B., 13, 26, 42. 
 
 India, northern, 83. 
 
 Indian Farm, 14. 
 
 Indian purchase, 15. 
 
 Induction by the Governor of the province, 32, 33, 34. 
 
 Inglis, David, 79, 86, 87. 
 
 Irish Episcopal church, 45. 
 
 Jamaica, L. I., 25, iii. 
 
 Jay, John, 46, 78, 98, 99, 100. 
 
 Jay, William, 99, 
 
 Jay Papers, 14. 
 
 Jenney, Robert, 42, 44, 49. 
 
 Johnston, James W., 89, iig. 
 
 Johnston, John, 81. 
 
 Jones, Cornelius, 13 ; Daniel, 13, 20, 21 ; Joshua, 51. 
 
 Jones, John, 33, 36, 37, 38, 43. 
 
 Katonah, N. v., Presbyterian Church of, 91, 121. 
 
 Kellum, Benjamin, 53 ; Theophilus, 54. 
 
 Kellum's Ridge, 53. 
 
 Kennedy, Gilbert, 45. 
 
 Kidd, Alexander, 103. 
 
 Kilborn, Jonathan, 13, 16. 
 
 Knapp, Elizabeth, 89 ; Samuel, 89. 
 
142 INDEX. 
 
 Knox College, Toronto, 88. 
 
 Ladies' Missionary Society of Bedford Church, 83. 
 
 Lafayette College, 90. 
 
 Lansingburg, N. Y,, 76. 
 
 Lawrence, John, 60, 62, 66, 103. 
 
 Lawrenceville, N. J., 32. 
 
 Lewisboro, N. Y., ig, 122. 
 
 Lincoln, President, 65. 
 
 Lindsley, J. H., 33. 
 
 Livingston Co., N, Y., 68. 
 
 Lockwood, Jonathan, 19. 
 
 Log College, the, 46, 47, 69. 
 
 London, England, 35. 
 
 Long Island, 71, 74. 
 
 Long Ridge, 46, 47. 
 
 Louis XIV,, 10. 
 
 Lounsbery, Phineas, 103 ; Stephen, 124 ; Nancy, 89. 
 
 Lynn, Mass., 13. 
 
 Lyon, David C, 79, 89, 90. 
 
 Lyon, Israel, 73 ; Palmer, 124 ; Seth, 103, 124 ; Solomon, 124 ; 
 
 Solomon R., 103. 
 Lysander, N. Y., 74. 
 
 Macdonald, James M., 25. 
 
 Mahanas River, 14, 55. 
 
 Mahopac Falls, N. Y., go. 
 
 Maidenhead [Lawrenceville], N. J., 32. 
 
 Mamaroneck, N. Y., 31, 35, 
 
 Makemie, Francis, 38. 
 
 Martha's Vineyard, Mass., 77. 
 
 Martin, Ebenezer, 64. 
 
 Massachusetts, 10, 12, 15, 77. 
 
 Massachusetts Bay, colony of, character of the founders of the, 96. 
 
 Mather, Cotton, 33. 
 
 Mayflower, the, 10, 96. 
 
 McDonald, Lewis, 71, 72 ; Michael, 63 ; Nicholas, 63. 
 
 Mead, David, 30 ; D. M., 13, 16. 
 
 Mead, Solomon, 74. 
 
INDEX. 143 
 
 "Meeting House," location of the, 15, 21, 23, 24, 95. 
 
 Merritt, Elizabeth, 89. 
 
 Methodist Episcopal Church, Bedford, 23. 
 
 Milford, Ct., 13, 56. 
 
 Miller, David, 103, 124 ; Ebenezer, 60, 66, 103 ; Elisha, 63 ; John, 
 
 13,15, 17,20,21, 52, 55, ; Jonathan, 51,52, 58; Stephen, 51. 
 Mills, Samuel, 58, 63, 65-69, 75. 
 Mills, Alexander, 68; Lewis F., 68; Philo, 68; Samuel J., 68; 
 
 William A., 68. 
 Mills, Jedidiah, 65; Zachariah, 51, 52, 53, 54; Zebadiah, 55, 73. 
 Milton, N, v., 95. 
 
 Minister's lands, the, ig, 27, 48, 50-54, 61, 78. 
 " Minister's Rate," the, 44, 46, 47. 
 Minister's stipend, 27, 30, 48. 
 Ministers of Bedford Church, 102. 
 
 Thomas Denham, 26. 
 
 Joseph Morgan, 32. 
 
 John Jones, 33. 
 
 William Tennent, 45. 
 
 Henry Baldwin, 56. 
 
 Robert Sturgeon, 57. 
 
 Samuel Sacket, 58. 
 
 Eliphalet Ball, 59. 
 
 Samuel Mills, 65. 
 
 John Davenport, 74. 
 
 Isaac Foster, 75. 
 
 Samuel Blatchford, 76, 
 
 Josiah Henderson, 77. 
 
 Ebenezer Grant, 77. 
 
 Jacob Green, 80. 
 
 David Inglis, 86. 
 
 David C. Lyon, 89. 
 
 Peter B. Heroy, go. 
 
 James H. Hoyt, g5. 
 Ministers of Fairfield Co., Ct., 30, 32, 83. 
 Ministry, the Christian, in Ct., 11. 
 Minnesota, go. 
 Montreal, Canada, 88. 
 Moore, George H., 31. 
 
144 INDEX. 
 
 Morgan, Joseph, 32, 33, 34, 6g. 
 
 Morris, Lewis, 31. 
 
 Morris Co., N. J., 80. 
 
 Morristown, N. J., 81. 
 
 Mount Kisco, Presbyterian Church of, 89, 119. 
 
 Mount Morris, N. Y., 68. 
 
 Muirson, George, 38, 39. 
 
 Neshaminy, Pa., 45, 48,55. 
 Neutral Ground, the, 70. 
 ■ Nevada, Iowa, 68. 
 Newark, N. J., 25. 
 Newburg, N. V., 81. 
 New Haven Association, 65. 
 " New Haven Divinity," 85. 
 New Jersey, College of, 74, 80, 83, 106. 
 " New Lights," the, 59, 74. 
 New London, Ct., 32. 
 "NewSchool," the, 85. 
 New York, province of, 11, 31. 
 Nichols, Samuel, 99. 
 Nomenclature of Connecticut towns, 28. 
 Nonconformists, English, 9. 
 North Salem, N. Y., 99. 
 Norwich, Ct., 30. 
 
 O'Callaghan, E. B., 14. 
 Old Purchase, Bedford, 14, 50. 
 " Old School," the, 85. 
 " Old Side," the, 60. 
 Olmstead, Richard, 19. 
 Orange Co., N. Y., 90. 
 Ormiston, William, 87. 
 Owen, John, life of, 40. 
 Owen, Joseph, 73, 77, 82, 83, 103. 
 Owen, St. John, 3, 103. 
 
 Palmer, Beriah, 63 ; Ephraim, 91. 
 Palmer, Francis A., 91-95, 123-126, 
 
INDEX. 145 
 
 Palmer, Susanna, 95. 
 
 Parsonage lands sold, 61. 
 
 Patterson, N. Y., 67, 68, 84. 
 
 Pease, Richard L., 77. 
 
 Pennoyer, Robert, 13 ; Thomas, 13. 
 
 Peppeneghek [Cross River], 15. 
 
 Persecution of Covenanters, g; of Huguenots, 10. 
 
 Pettit, Jonathan, 13. 
 
 Phelps, Noah H., 18. 
 
 Philadelphia, Pa. , 45, 49, 54, 62. 
 
 Philip's War, 10, 27. 
 
 Philippi [Carmel], N. Y., 74. 
 
 Phraner, Wilson, III. 
 
 Pilgrim's Progress, 9. 
 
 Plymouth Plantation, 10, 20, 27. 
 
 Poundridge, N. Y., 66, 76. 
 
 Poyer, Thomas, 44. 
 
 Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, 83. 
 
 Presbyterian Church, Bedford, 23, 24, 25, 39, 55 ; burning of the, 
 
 63, 67. 70; rebuilt, 71, 72; incorporated, 73; ecclesiastical 
 
 connection of, 83, 84. 
 Presbyterian, the Connecticut churches called, 39, 40, 41. 
 Presbyterians of Scotland, 9, 10. 
 Presbytery of Bedford, 83, 84, 85, 106. 
 Presbytery of Dutchess Co., 63-68, 74, 75, 84. 
 Presbytery of Hudson, 84. 
 Presbytery of Long Island, 74, 83. 
 Presbytery of New Brunswick, 48, 58, 77, 80. 
 Presbytery of New York, 83, 95. 
 Presbytery of North River, 84. 
 Presbytery of Philadelphia, 83. 
 Presbytery of Suffolk, 74. 
 
 Presbytery of Westchester, 3, 91, 112, 113, 115, 121, 126. 
 Prime, Samuel Irenseus, 105, log. 
 Princeton College, see New Jersey, College of. 
 Princeton Theological Seminary, 80, 83, go. 
 Pritchard, Thomas, 35-37. 
 Provision pay, 30. 
 Prudden, John, 25. 
 9 
 
146 INDEX. 
 
 Puritans, the. lO, II, 12, 15, 20, 26, 40. 
 Putnam Co., N. Y., 67, 74, 84, 90. 
 
 queen's [Rutgers] College, 77. 
 Quint, A.- S., 41. 
 Quintard, Isaac, 53. 
 
 Raymond, Edward, 103 ; James, 67, 124 ; Lucretia, 89 ; Nathan, 64 ; 
 
 Whiting, 89. 
 Re, island of, 90. 
 Read, Aaron, 103, 124. 
 Red Mills [Mahopac Falls], N. Y., 90. 
 Religious liberty infringed, 9, ID, 31, 32, 34, 35, 43, 44, 49. 
 Revival of Religion in 1741, 59, 69 ; under Sacket's ministry, 59. 
 Revolution, war of the, 66, 67, 70, 73, 80. 
 Rider, Simeon, 103. 
 Rimmer, Alfred, 97. 
 Rippowam [Stamford, Ct.], 13. 
 Ripton [Huntington, Ct.], 65. 
 
 Roberts, Hezekiah, 51. 54; Zachariah, 17, 20, 35, 37. 
 Rochelle, France, go. 
 Rutgers College, 77, 90. 
 Rye, N. Y., 27, 28, 34, 35, 45, 49. 
 Rye, Parish of, 31, 34, 35, 38, 43, 44, 49. 
 
 Sacket, Samuel, 58, 59, 60, 69, 83. 
 
 St. John, Moses, 67, 75, 77, 103. 
 
 St. Matthew's Church, Bedford, 98, 99. 
 
 Salem, Mass., 10, 12. 
 
 Salem, N. Y. See South Salem. 
 
 Sanderson, 125. 
 
 Saratoga Co. , N. Y. , 60, 63, 64, 95. 
 
 Sarles, Mary A., 89. 
 
 Savage, James, 13, 26, 33. 
 
 Saybrook Platform, 40, 41, 42, 83. 
 
 Scarsdale, N. Y., 50. 
 
 " Schism" of 1741, 59. 
 
 Schools in Connecticut, ii. 
 
 Scotland, persecution in, 9, 10. 
 
INDEX. 147 
 
 Seely, Cornelius, 17, 20, 51 ; Jonas, 13, i6 ; Obadiah, 13 • Robert 
 13, i6. ^ - , 
 
 Separatists in Bedford, 59. 
 
 Session of Bedford Church, 3, 60, 61, 67, 75, 77, 81. 
 
 Sheepscott, Me., 27, 28. 
 
 Shiland, Andrew, 89. 
 
 Shrewsbury, N. J., 77. 
 
 Silliman, Joseph, 103. 
 
 Simkins, Daniel, 17 ; Vincent, 57. 
 
 Simsbury, Ct., 18, 30. 
 
 Sing Sing, N. Y.,86, iii. 
 
 Slawson, Eleazar, 13 ; George, 13 ; John, 17. 
 
 Smith, Jacob, 66, 67, 75, 103. 
 
 South East, N. Y., 84. 
 
 Southold, L. I., 74. 
 
 South Plain, 55. 
 
 South Salem, N. Y. , 74, 84, 125. 
 
 Sprague, Wm. B., 46, 74, 76. 
 
 Spring, Gardiner, 113. 
 
 Stamford, Ct., 12-16, 19, 21, 24, 26, 27, 42, 43, 46, 47, 53, 83, 125. 
 
 Stamford, parish of, 26, 31, 42. 
 
 Stanwix, Fort, 65. 
 
 Stevens, Benjamin, 13, 16 ; Joseph, 13, 16 ; Thomas, 13. 
 
 Stiles, President, 57. 
 
 Stratfield, Ct., 76. 
 
 Stratford, Ct., 13. 
 
 Sturdevant, William, 17. 
 
 Sturgeon, Robert, 57, 58, 83. 
 
 Succasunna, N. J., 81. 
 
 Sylvester, N. B., 64. 
 
 Synod of Minnesota, go. 
 
 Synod of New York, 3, 91, 131. 
 
 Synod of Philadelphia, 45, 47, 48, 62. 
 
 Tarleton, Lt. Col. B., 67. 
 
 Taunton, Mass. , 26. 
 
 Taxation for the support of tlje rector of Rye, 43. 
 
 Tennent, William, 45-56, 69, 74, 83. 
 
 Tennent, Catharine, 45, 54. 
 
148 INDEX. 
 
 I 
 Tennent, Charles, 45 ; Gilbert, 45, 54, 55 ; John, 45, 54, 56 ; Wm., 
 
 jr., 45, 56. 
 Theale, Joseph, 13, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 25 ; Nicholas, 13. 
 Theale's Meadow, 55. 
 Thomas, John, 44. 
 Thomson, John, 35, 36, 37. 
 Three Miles Square, Bedford, 14. 
 Tisbury, Mass., 77. 
 Todd, John, 124. 
 Topsham, Eng., 76. 
 Toronto, Canada, 88. 
 Town offices, 18. 
 Town house, 95. 
 Ti)wn Spot, Bedford, 14, 21. 
 Train band of Bedford, 17, 18. 
 Travis, David, 3, 104. 
 
 Trowbridge, James H., 3, 103 ; Samuel, 125. 
 Trustees of Bedford Church, 73, 78, 92. 
 Turner, Douglas K., 45. 
 Tyler, Eli, 75, 77, I03- 
 
 Underhill, Captain John, 14. 
 
 Union College, 95. 
 
 Union Theological Seminary, New York, 95. 
 
 Vestry of Rye, 43, 49, 50. 
 
 Wadsworth, James, 68. 
 
 Waring, Richard, 51. 
 
 Warwick, Pa., 45. 
 
 Washington, General, 60, 68. 
 
 Washington Heights, N. Y., 87. 
 
 Waterbury, David, 13, 16, 24 ; Sarah, 13. 
 
 Waterford, N. Y., 76. 
 
 Watertown, Mass., 12, 13, 16. 
 
 Webb, Joshua, 17, 19. 
 
 Webster, Nicholas, 13, 16 ; Richard, 33, 38, 57, 60, 63. 
 
 Weed, Daniel, 13 : Jonas, 13, 16 ; Nathanael, 64 ; Samuel, 13, 
 
 Wescot, John, 13-20; Richard, 13; Thomas, 51, 
 
INDEX. 149 
 
 Westchester, N. Y., 35. 
 
 Westchester Co., N. Y., 58, 74, 79, 84, 95. 
 
 Westchester Co. Historical Society, 23, 126. 
 
 Westchester, Presbytery of. See Presbytery. 
 
 Westchester, Classis of, 95. 
 
 Westchester, Associated Presbytery of, 84. 
 
 West Stafford, Ct., 75. 
 
 Wethersfield, Cl., 12, 13. 
 
 " Wethersfield Men," the, 13, 16. 
 
 Wetmore, James, 42, 48, 56, 57, 98. 
 
 Whipping-post Brook, 96. 
 
 White, Epenetus, 64 ; James, 46 ; Stephen, 64. 
 
 Whitefield, George, 58, 69, 74. 
 
 Williamsburg, N. Y., 68. 
 
 Williamson, Albert, 3, 23, 104. 
 
 Wilman, Thomas, 17. 
 
 Wilson, James D., 131-134. 
 
 Wilton, Ct., 57. 
 
 Windsor, Ct., 12, 13, 16. 
 
 Winthrop, John, 10, 12. 
 
 Wood, James, 23, 126. 
 
 Wood, Samuel, 64. 
 
 Woodbridge, Ct., 63, 64, 65. 
 
 Wright, Benjamin, 35, 36, 37. 
 
 Wyat, Thomas, 17. 
 
 Yale College. 56, 59, 65, 68. 
 Yorkshire, England, 13, 16. 
 Yorktown, N. Y., 58. 
 

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