Hartford Baptist Church
The Hartford Baptist Church is built of brick church with a high wooden steeple . It is located on Main Street, ( Washington County Route 23) in Hartford , New York , United States. It was built at the end of the 19th century on the same site as the parish church, originally built in 1789, making it the fourth church building on the property provided by DeWitt Clinton . Designed by Benjamin Price of Philadelphia, it is the only Victorian Gothic church in the city and one of the few in the county . Adjacent to the church is a cemetery whose graves span nearly two centuries, including the graves of early Hartford settlers and some veterans of the American Revolutionary War .
The parishioners were involved in some social conflicts in the 19th century. They passed some anti-freemasonry resolutions in the 1820s and 1830s , recruited soldiers for the Union Army out of flaming abolitionism in the Civil War and later had to accept that their third church was set on fire because of their advocacy for the abstinence movement and local prohibition laws . In 2004 the church and cemetery were added to the National Register of Historic Places .
estate
The church and graveyard are in 1.58 acres on the east side of Main Street at the north end of central Hartford. A short row of trees separates the area from the houses to the north. On the other side of the street is the 157 m high Christian Hill. The property on which the church and cemetery are located slopes gently to the east. The cemetery is to the south and east of the church building, and to the north and west are the remains of an earlier, larger church on the site.
church
Two crossing gable wings form the main part of the church building. The foundation is raised and consists of rubble and dolerite and sits on partially visible rock ( clay slate ). The brick-built masonry façades extend to the roof, which is covered with slate broken in Granville and is 15 m high at the ridge. Two bell towers rise on both sides of the front facade on the west side, the higher of which measures 26 m and carries a weather vane and a 412 kg Meneely bell . Are located on all sides lancet , where tracery and tracery were combined.
The entrances in the towers lead to vestibules , while the main entrance leads to a space in between. The sanctuary measures 10 m by 45 m and the original pews from White Oak with ornaments, wooden American bird cherry facing north instead of east and reflects the influence of the tradition of church assembly rooms of New England resist. These seats are arranged in a semicircle. The floor rises from the sanctuary by 2.5 cm per 60 cm, so that the last row is about 45 cm higher than the sanctuary. The pews are attached to six-centimeter-thick maple floorboards , which are put together using tongue and groove technology and nailed directly to the floor joists.
Overall, the wood interior follows the Eastlake style . However, the chancel corresponds more to the neo-renaissance . He is in walnut executed with walnut burl wood - veneer on the raised arch panels and a serrated shape bar at the top graduation. The sanctuary is located on an 80 cm high platform that emerges from a seven meter high arch from the wall behind and is bordered by a balustrade . The baptismal font is behind it and is separated by a large roller door. The floor consists of wide pine planks connected by tongue and groove with a simple baluster . The brick cistern in the baptistery extends to the floor of the cellar.
The walls are made of cement, the window frames and panels are made of pine wood, and the doors are made of cypress wood. The walls lead up to 8.8 m high ceiling with local spruce wood - paneling . The ceiling is supported by four trusses .
The rear wing was originally just a study, but was later converted into a kitchen and meeting room. It is connected to the interior of the church by a double swing door. A ramp for wheelchair users was installed under an archway at the rear.
graveyard
The earliest documented burial in the cemetery was that of Abraham Downs, one of the first settlers in the area, in 1792. The text of the deed of foundation for the church refers to the fact that the area was a cemetery, which suggests the possibility that graves have been found here earlier. Other notable funerals from the early days include those of 19 men who fought in the American Revolutionary War , including Col. John Buck, Hartford's first European resident. He served three years as a teenager under George Washington and was involved in the battles of Bunker Hill and Groton Heights as well as surviving the difficult winter at Valley Forge . At the age of 83, he was given the honor of unveiling the inscription on the memorial at Concord , Massachusetts. Also among veterans of the Revolutionary War is the grave of Reverend Amasa Brown, the first pastor to serve in the Church.
The last burial in the cemetery took place in 1989, after which the cemetery was closed for further burials. In addition to the veterans from the War of Independence, there are also participants in the French and Indian Wars , the Civil War , and the two world wars .
The tombstones erected in the late 18th and early 19th centuries bear witness to the transition in cemetery art from the shape brought by early New England residents to a local variant. The cemetery also features an unusual barrow , erected in honor of the Civil War veterans , which is rare, if not unique, to the area. It was erected the day before Memorial Day, 1879, when townspeople found other communities erecting elaborate monuments to commemorate their fallen and veterans. Hartford did not have the money for a stone memorial and so the burial mound was built within a day.
history
In the course of history there have been four churches and two changes at the site. In the 19th century, the Church was embroiled in a number of important national issues, including the slavery debate in the United States which culminated in the Civil War.
1787-1850
The congregation was organized as the Westfield Baptist Society in 1787. Westfield was one of the original towns in New York and included both what is now Hartford and the neighboring Fort Ann (the name Westfield now refers to the Town of Westfield in Chautauqua County ). After the end of the War of Independence, settlement of the region continued because the end of the French and Indian Wars enabled the settlers to return safely. Many of the settlers came from central Connecticut , which led to the name of the city after its capital .
These settlers brought with them the Baptist and Congregationalist faith . A farmhouse near today's church was used to hold services in the early days. Two years later, in 1789, the first church was built as a log house. It was named First Church of Westfield and was located directly south of the present church. When the Town of Hartford was created in 1793, the church changed its name.
Among the first to settle was David Austin, a property manager working for DeWitt Clinton . Clinton had bought several large pieces of land in the area. After his election to the New York Senate in 1798 , Clinton donated two acres of land to the community for the payment of a penny . The deed of foundation relates to the church and the cemetery, from which it can be concluded that the church was already using the land for this purpose at that time. It was not until 1932 that this foundation was entered in the land register in the Washington County's Courthouse in Hudson Falls .
The foundation deeds names the pastor of the church, Amasa Brown. Under his leadership of the community, the number of members nearly tripled by 1806. Due to this growth of the community, a new church building became necessary in 1805. Brown was a veteran of the Revolutionary War. He was also the military chaplain of the local regiment in the war of 1812 when it was deployed in northern New York. After his return he supervised the construction of the new church in 1815/1816, which offered space for 700 believers. Six years later the growth of the parish slowed and due to fundamental differences of opinion he was fired in 1821. When he died in 1830, he found his grave in the churchyard of the church he helped build.
In the following decade, differences of opinion on social issues at the time led to rifts in the community. The members passed three verbose resolutions against Freemasons . However, some of the most prominent members of the congregation were Freemasons themselves, including the pastor. In the same year that Brown died, 80 parishioners resigned and began a second parish. They built a new church building in 1833.
Ten years later, the two parish pastors reunited their parishes. The second church, which was built directly across from the cemetery, was sold to the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1844 and still serves as a meeting place for this denomination. The reunited Church, now united with other parishes in the county in the Washington Union Baptist Association, quickly found other contentious issues. In 1850 the congregation decided that no pastor was allowed to own slaves and declared that slave owners were undesirable at the sacrament table.
1850 until today
When the Civil War broke out a decade later, the parish supported the Union. Abolitionist rallies in the church prompted participating young men to cross the street and enroll in the armed forces at Elisha Straight's home . After four such rallies, 65 men had committed themselves, more than the quota to which the city was committed. They stopped in the church their farewell speeches, marched to the lawn, where today is the war memorial, and migrated to a final blessing to Salem , to climb the train to Washington, where they together with young men from the neighboring Town of Hebron , the Company E of the 123rd New York Regiment.
After the Civil War, in 1870, the parish again decided to expand the church. The basement was dug and the room was enlarged so that a thousand people could be seated in the church. A dispute over the new baptistery led to a new division in the congregation. However, this split did not last as long as that between 1830 and 1843 and did not result in the formal establishment of a new church.
Parishioners' dispute continued at the end of the 19th century when the abstinence movement gained social and political momentum. This movement was particularly strong in central Washington County, where the Prohibition Party began running regular candidates for the New York State Legislature . In 1887 local anti-alcoholics were successful when they managed to turn Hartford and other towns into dry towns . Some of the female parishioners immediately formed the local chapter of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union . The community itself remained divided on this issue. On a Sunday morning in the spring of 1890, shortly before the service, the church building burned to the ground. A local newspaper, the Granville Sentinel , reported that the fire was started because someone was upset about recent convictions of unlicensed liquor sellers.
The altar, church record and some of the furniture were saved, but the building was not fire insured and the cost of rebuilding was enormous. The entire Hartford parish took part in collecting the necessary money. Troy businessman William Rowe , who was from Hartford, generously contributed to the construction costs and encouraged others in the region who had made their money in the south to participate. He is believed to be responsible for getting Benjamin Price, who ran a thriving mail order company, involved.
The fundraising campaign was so successful that the total cost of $ 9,000 ($ 260,000 in today's dollars ) was paid for by the time the church was completed. Another benefactor, James Northup - a wealthy potato farmer and former member of the State Assembly - provided an additional $ 1,000 so that the bell, cast by the Meneely Bell Foundry in 1892, could be hung.
The new church was much smaller than the one it had replaced and had less than a third of the seats. The area's population was declining, and this trend continued into the early 20th century. It was therefore not necessary to expand the church building, as was necessary with the previous buildings. The only changes since then have been the fire of the original rectory in 1922 and the demolition of the back shed in 1955. By then, the parishioners had declined to such an extent that Hartford shared the pastor with another parish.
See also
Supporting documents and comments
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Joseph Cutshall-King: National Register of Historic Places nomination, Hartford Baptist Church and Cemetery ( English ) New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation . Archived from the original on September 18, 2012. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved April 15, 2010.
- ↑ The county seat was later moved to Fort Edward .
- ↑ In Argyle , south of Hartford, alcohol is still banned today. ( Memento of the original from March 26, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF, English).
Coordinates: 43 ° 21 '52 " N , 73 ° 23' 35" W.