The life of Edmund S. Janes ...

Contents

Birth at Sheffield, Mass. — Ancestry — William Janes, of Essex, England — Benjamin and Sally Janes — A religious and heroic stock ■ — New England influence — The Housatonic Valley — Childhood and youth — School — The mother — Early manhood — Teaches school — Awakened, converted, and joins the Methodist Episcopal Church Page n

Reads law while teaching — Removes to Bloomfield, N. J, — Licensed to preach — Admitted "on trial " in the Philadelphia Conference, and appointed to Elizabethtown — The Rev. Thomas B. Sargent, D.D. — Preaches at the session of the Conference at Wilmington, Del. — Early promise — Orange, N. J. — Bloomfield and Orange — Rules adopted for his conduct — Financial Agent for Dickinson College — Addresses the Pennsylvania Legislature — Preaches and speaks in New Yoi-k city — Makes the acquaintance of Miss Charlotte Thibou — Miss Thibou's characteristics — Marriage — Letters of Miss Thibou 27

Stationed at Fifth-street Church, Philadelphia — The Nazareth Charge — Physical disadvantages — A glimpse of the young pastor, by Dr. J. S. Porter — First missionary zeal — Speech on missions — Studies medicine — Invited to Mulberry-street Church, New York — Success — Adaptation to young people — The blessedness of giving — Elected Financial Secretary of the American Bible Society — Reasons for accepting the position — Activity in it 45

Chapter I. 1 807-1 829

Birth — Ancestry — Early Manhood — Conversion.

FOR full forty years there moved a man through the land, touching well-nigh every part of it with a personal force which was recognized and felt by all whom he met. The impulse which his presence imparted gently quickened the best sentiments in his fellow-beings, and left lingering in their hearts purposes and plans for nobler things. As to and from the great commercial metropolis he passed every-where, answering incessant claims, his course was not marked by the noise of the politician, the clatter of trade, or the parade of the warrior ; simply and quietly, as a man and a minister of the Prince of peace, he came and went.

His work lay in the sphere of morals and religion. His zeal was for the highest good of the race. While possessed of a certain ascendency over men, he used its privileges only that he might bear witness to the truth, and be servant of all.

It shall be my aim in these pages to give some account of this man. The Church at large, as well as his own denomination, knew Bishop Janes in his official work. Beneath the high and useful public career there was a heart the full insight of which but few had while he lived, and the revealing of which, even very partially, cannot fail to lead to a higher estimate of his worth.

There is an instinctive desire in mankind to come near to a benefactor, to ascertain whence the streams of influence which have so refreshed them flowed, and to see how far the man whom they have looked at in the distance is like themselves in those things in which a nature common to their own shows itself. If much of the privacy of the life I shall seek to portray be presented, this, then, is my apology : " We know the Bishop ; let us also know the man."

Edmund Storer Janes was born in the town of Sheffield, Berkshire County, Massachusetts, on the 27th of April, 1807. He was the son of Benjamin and Sally Janes, respectable and industrious people, who raised to maturity a family of eight children, five sons and three daughters. The Janes family trace their origin, in this country, as far as to William Janes, who was born in Essex, England, during the reign of James I., about the year 1610. The family name, Janes, is evidently the same as De Janes or De Jeanes, and is of Norman or French origin. It is still found in Kirtling, county of Cam-

Birth — Ancestry. 13

bridge, connected with the estates once belonging to Geoffrey de Janes about 1200 or 1204. This Geoffrey de Janes was a crusader, and helped to make Baldwin, count of Flanders, king of Jerusalem. While the genealogical links between the noted crusader and William Janes cannot be traced, it is well ascertained that William was of the Kirtling family, and that with the John Davenport colony he came out to this country. The colony at first landed in Massachusetts, in or near Boston, remained there eight months, and then, sailing for New Haven, Conn., their chosen abode, they there made their final settlement in 1637. These colonists, in common with many others, had fled from the persecutions of Archbishop Laud, to seek religious freedom in the American wilderness.

In the colony at New Haven William Janes was a prominent person. For about seventeen years he was a teacher of the rudiments of education and of the doctrines of the Bible, imparting to the children of the colonists the best intellectual and religious culture which their- limited facilities allowed. " Vigorous, systematic, resolute, and true to every instinct of manhood, he was beloved and respected by all who knew him." *

* " The Janes Family. A Genealogy and Brief History of the Descendants of William Janes, the Emigrant Ancestor of 1637," by the Rev. Frederic Janes. New York : John H. Dingman. 1868. From this work these family references are taken.

William Janes subsequently, about 1656, removed, in company with other " pioneers of liberty," to Northampton, Mass., in the Connecticut valley. Here he was recorder of deeds and a teaching elder, and, in the absence of the minister, conducted the religious service of the Sabbath. " Some seventeen years later, when another new colony was started by the people of Northampton and Hadley, for some untried section farther up the valley, they proposed to William Janes to go, with his influence, his talents, and his property, and to be their religious teacher and counselor in their expected perils. He consented, as he loved his mission of doing good and planting religion in every part of the new country so soon to be settled." When they had reached the spot, Squawkeague, afterward known as Northfield, " he preached his first sermon on the Sabbath after their arrival under the spreading branches of a large oak-tree."

The colonists, however, on the outbreak of Philip's War, were driven away by the Indians, and, after losing some of their number, fell back to the settlement at Northampton. Among those slain were Ebenezer and Jonathan Janes, sons of William, lads of about seventeen and eighteen years of age. Another attempt was made at the settlement of this spot about ten years afterward which was even more disastrous. From this time until his death William lived at Northampton. He died

Birth— Ancestry 15

September 20, 1690, " leaving behind a name revered, untarnished, and imperishable."

This original William Janes was the great-great-great-grandfather of Edmund Storer. Of the intervening paternal ancestors, the great-great-grandfather William, and the great-grandfather Michael, little is known. Thomas Janes, the grandfather, was a soldier in the War of the Revolution, his name being found upon the roll of a Connecticut regiment of infantry, under Colonel Moses Thayer, from January 1, 1777, to January, 1.782. After escaping all the perils of the war he was accidentally killed by the overturning of a loaded cart while he was engaged at work on his farm in Wallingford, Conn. He left a widow with a young family, the oldest of whom, Benjamin, was but twelve years of age. Thus the father of Edmund Storer was obliged, when only a lad, to become the main-stay of his mother and younger brothers and sisters. He learned the trade of carpenter and joiner, and early formed industrious habits. Benjamin Janes married Miss Sally- Wood, of Chatham, N. Y., and removed when quite young to Sheffield, Mass. Here, as I have stated, Edmund Storer was born, being the seventh generation from the great emigrant and pioneer.

It will thus be seen that our subject was well descended. He was born of a religious and heroic race. He was heir to the grandest ideas and traditions which ever fell to a human being. His direct ancestry stood not alone, but were of the company of noble confessors who contended for the maintenance of the political and religious principles which have since shaped American institutions, and are now molding the character and directing the destinies of all civilized nations. The two forces of civilization, Guizot tells us, are what the individual gets from the thoughts and spirit of society, and what society derives from the discoveries and enterprise of the individual. It is consequently of advantage to a person to be born in a community which is fraught with great and good principles and which is controlled by just and wise laws.

"There is a country accent," says La Rochefoucauld, " not in speech only, but in thought, conduct, character, and manner of existing, which never forsakes a man. ... A country where the entire people is, or even once has been, laid hold of — filled to the heart — with an infinite religious idea, has ' made a step from which it cannot retrograde.' Thought, conscience, the sense that man is denizen of a universe, creature of an eternity, has penetrated to the remotest cottage, to the simplest heart. There is an inspiration in such a people :

one may say in a more special sense, the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding. Honor to all the brave and true ; everlasting honor to brave old Knox, (one of the truest of the true !)

Birth — Ancestry. 17

that in the moment while he and his cause, amid civil broils, in convulsion and confusion, were still but struggling for life, he sent the school-master forth to all corners, and said, ' Let the people be taught :' . His message, in its true compass, was, < Let men know that they are men ; created by God, responsible to God ; who work in any merest moment of time what will last through eternity ! ' "

What the great seer of Chelsea, whose last wail over the falseness of the world has only so recently fallen upon our ear, wrote of Presbyterian Scotland, may be with equal truth written of Calvinistic New England. In this New Scotland of religious faith and practice, of political liberty and order, of public schools and colleges, of thrift and enterprise, young Janes had his first and forming years. As naturally as the air from the Berkshire hills streamed into his lungs did the moral life of his native State insinuate itself into his soul. Nor can I overlook nor lessen, for the mere uses of illustration, the physical surroundings upon which he first gazed and in the midst of which he was reared.

Berkshire County is noted for its picturesque scenery. There is not to be found in any land a more beautiful valley than that of the Housatonic, stretching from the town of Lenox, Mass., on the north, to that of Salisbury, Conn., on the south. In the distance northward can be seen the Saddle-back Mountains, reaching their highest point in old Gray Lock, whence they fall away in all directions in^ gentle undulations. Near by the hills rise in sufficiently varying heights to impart a sense of grandeur, while the river winds and rushes in its gravelly bed through meadows studded with the graceful elm, and of glossy smoothness. This valley has ever been the favorite resort and home of poets and orators, and of people of culture and leisure. Here Miss Catherine Sedgwick was born and lived ; here also William Cullen Bryant spent his early manhood ; here Orville Dewey, the famous Unitarian preacher, whose lectures on " Beauty " were rapturously received, loved to linger through the long summer days; here, too, the intellectual T. F- R. Mercein, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, whose marvelous promise as theologian and preacher was cut short by death in the very town where young Janes was born, conceived some of his most suggestive theories.

Mr. Bryant, referring to his reminiscences of this region, says : " It was on the third of October, in the year I have mentioned, (1816,) that I made the journey thither from Cummington. The woods were in all the glory of autumn, and I well remember, as I passed through Stockbridge, how much I was struck by the beauty of the smooth green meadows on the banks of a lovely river which winds near the Sedgwick mansion, the Housatonic, and whose gently-flowing waters seemed tinged with the gold and crimson of the trees that overhung them.

Boyhood. 19

I admired no less the contrast between this soft scene and the steep, craggy hills that overlooked them, clothed with their many-colored forests. I had never before seen the southern part of Berkshire, and congratulated myself on becoming an inhabitant of so picturesque a region."

Amid these scenes of natural beauty the boy Edmund grew up. While he was quite young his father moved a little way down the valley to the town of Salisbury, Conn., where he added to his trade of carpenter the peaceful pursuit of farmer. Here Edmund's youth was spent, alternating in attendance upon the district school and in wholesome work upon the farm. In the one he laid the foundation of his after mental culture, and on the other, in tough encounter with the soil, the foundation of the sinewy and elastic body which became subsequently the physical basis of well-nigh superhuman tasks. Long years subsequently, when on a visit to the scenes of his boyhood, he wrote to his own son : " I saw the stone-wall ( fence ) which I helped to build when I was a lad." In these rough, homely pursuits the physical culture received, while important, was not the highest benefit arising ; he was trained in habits of self-help. He learned to wait on himself, to be mindful of others, and thoughtful in little things. There is no evidence at hand that his schooling went further than was afforded by the facilities of the neighborhood.

But to have had the education of a godly, frugal, and industrious New England home, associated and interwoven with his knowledge of plain English, was a good starting-point for a youth of those days. He needed only the mastership of a district school to put him forward on the high road to professional studies ; and that, too, soon came.

During all these days of spelling-book and grammar there was at work upon young Janes's heart the genial and plastic influence of a wise and devout mother. Of her we know but little, yet her character is easy to learn, not only from what he became, but also from his private references to her piety and the high estimate and tender regard he ever manifested for woman's nurture and a mother's influence. In an old manuscript on " Female Education " — one of his very earliest, judging from the rough, yellow, torn paper and the neat chirography — speaking of the mother, he says : " The empire of the mind is equally subject to her sway. The mother is the first book the child ever reads. Her loving smile, her actions, her accents, compose the first alphabet the child ever learns. It is an alphabet of hieroglyphics — every sign stands for a separate idea. Corresponding to their nature and influence will be the character and direction of the shooting ideas. How important, then, that this first book be a good one. . . . The peculiar character of the mother gives her great

Early Manhood. 21

fitness to attain and maintain ascendency over the child. In her tenderness the child always finds sympathy ; in her goodness the child always finds a disposition to relieve and bless ; and in her maternal affection one who is interested in its happiness. Her versatility of character enables her to accommodate herself to all the calls and circumstances of her offspring, and her patience enables her to bear with all its perverseness and weakness and wants." Such language shows he was speaking from experience, and that likely the original of the picture was his own mother.

It appears that Mr. Janes began his first efforts at teaching when about seventeen years of age. Mr. Ludlow E. Lapham, of Penn Yan, N. Y., says in a letter of March 5, 1878 :

In the summer of 1824 Mr. Janes taught a district school at Ancram Furnace, in Livingston s Manor, Columbia County, N. Y It was my fortune to succeed him the following winter. He was then a youth just budding into manhood. He was very successful in the calling, and in gaining the good-will and esteem of scholars and patrons. He infused the sweet and lovely charm among scholars, patrons, and the neighborhood that I have ever found following him in his subsequent history. Later in life we met at the Conference in this place, where we talked of the old school district and the families, namely, Judge Tremain's, John S. Harris's, J. A. Coon's, and Allen Sheldon's. I think he told me he was

converted at that school-house, but I am not sure. Revs. Miller and Lovejoy were the circuit preachers, and held their meetings there. Again I met him in the streets of New York, and our conversation would revert to the early school-house ; he seemed to fix it as the beginning of his Christian life.

Mr. Janes continued to teach in different districts in his native region for about five years. One of the schools was near Dover Plains, in Dutchess County, N. Y. The Rev. Elbert Osborn, late of the New York Conference, speaking of the dedication of the church in this village, which occurred in 1854 or 1855, says : " Our host was a young convert who had been once a pupil of Mr. Janes's before he entered the ministry and when he was teaching a district school in that vicinity, It was very pleasant to both of them to call up the incidents of former days. The good brother took us in his conveyance to the school-house where the Bishop had formerly taught, and there we looked at the place where he used to study his Bible in the intervals of teaching."

The date of Mr. Janes's conversion cannot be definitely fixed. It was evidently at some time during the five years that he was engaged in teaching in some one of these district schools. Previous to his conversion he had been somewhat skeptical, and when converted he did not unite with the Church until careful inquiry into its doctrines and discipline. As the itinerant preachers passed his school-house door in their rounds upon the circuit, he would stop them and ply them with questions, thus early showing his desire for knowledge and his love

Conversion. 23

of accuracy. The Rev. Phineas Cook, an aged preacher, is said to have mentioned the incident that when on one occasion he was going by the school-house Mr. Janes came out with the Methodist Discipline in hand, with his finger upon the word " preventing," in the Eighth Article, (on Freewill,) and asked its meaning in that relation. The preacher requested him to bring his dictionary, and then showed him the different senses in which the term was used, and explained its fitness in the relation in which it appeared in the Discipline.

The Rev. J. K. Peck, of Wyoming Conference, in a paper on Bishop Janes, read at a district meeting in Guilford, N. Y., November, 1876, states, upon the authority of Mrs. George Devine, residing in Susquehanna County, Pa., who was a companion of Mr. Janes in his early life, that during most of those years in which he taught school " he was known by his intimate friends as an unbeliever in the Christian religion, and that he regarded himself as somewhat of a poet." Mr. Peck further states : " I have in my possession two manuscript poems written by him in the year 1827. They are written upon coarse paper, the size of foolscap, without any sign of ruling either stamped or with pencil, yet the lines are remarkably regular and straight, and of uniform distance apart. I received them from

Mrs. George Devine. . . She had preserved them very carefully through all these years. They, of course, became the more valued after her former young friend became a D. D. and a Bishop."

These manuscripts lie before me. The longer one is headed thus : " Lines composed extempore at a youth's (carried on exclusively by young converts,) June 10, 1827, Canaan," in which the author aimed at nothing more than to express in poetic form their sentiments as advanced, and as nearly as practicable in the speakers' own language, merely to aid his memory in retaining them and their influence on his own mind.

Mr. Peck also says : " The young man who was able to reason away the truths that came from learned ministers and to ward off conviction, was compelled to own ' religion true ' while viewing such a scene." I incline to the opinion that it was soon after this time his conversion took place. It is quite clear from the testimony of Mrs. Devine, and also from the fact that Mr. Phineas Cook traveled Salisbury Circuit in 1826 and 1827, that it was in 1827 that he united with the Methodist Episcopal Church, though he may have been the subject of religious conviction before this. When about twenty years of age, and he was anticipating entering upon the practice of the law, for which he had been preparing, " God's solemn providence struck down suddenly his intended partner in business." Like Luther, whose companion was smitten by lightning by his side when on a

Mental Traits. 25

journey, he was greatly alarmed. " This note of conscious warning turned his attention from secular to spiritual things, and determined his future plans

for life." *

The manuscripts of these verses are of importance simply as showing his mental aptitudes and habits. Of the longer one Mr. Peck states : " There is one blot on the paper about the size of the letter 0 in writing, showing that a drop of ink had fallen from his pen upon the paper while he was writing, and an effort made to brush it off had only enlarged it. But how any one could write extempore verses in such a noisy meeting with pen and ink, and have every thing so perfect and correct, is a mystery. There is not a word or letter scratched, and only one word left out, and that is the word ' meeting ' in the heading. The commas and periods and semicolons are all in their proper places, and the i's are dotted and the t's crossed, and the lines are as straight as most of us write when our paper is ruled. The faculty that he there displayed of being composed and correct in confusion and excitement has been of great help to him, especially when presiding in stormy Conferences."

Thus it appears that, like most young people of a studious turn of mind, Mr. Janes tried his wing at poesy. Afterward, also, in maturer years he occasionally composed verses. Some of these possess

* " The Janes Family."

the merit of a smooth and an easy rhythm, and contain just and devout sentiments, but none can properly claim to be entitled poetry. Though from youth rich in fancy and endowed with a keen susceptibility to beauty, yet he seems to have lacked the original power of interpreting the poetical element of nature. Wisely, therefore, it will be seen, he confined himself to prose. He was born an orator, not a poet ; and he was so sagacious as to recognize and cultivate his true gift, and not to waste his efforts upon an art in which he could never have excelled. Nothing was more characteristic of him than a sound and sober estimate of his own talents, and the good sense with which he applied himself in the direction of his natural genius must certainly be commended.

School Teacher. 27

Chapter II. 1829 -1836

Teacher — Itinerant Preacher — College Agent — Marriage.

" I "HE years during which Mr. Janes taught in -*• the district schools were eventful years to him. While he was training youth in the rudiments of an English education, he was training himself, not only in the art of instruction, but also in the elements of law and theology. Like many another before and since, he found his university in the simple, rude district school. There, in the intervals of hard work, he snatched moments for the side studies which prepared him for speedy and solid advancement. In these later times he would likely have gone from rudimentary teaching to the seminary and college ; but then colleges were few, and among the Methodists there were none. There was scarcely a seminary of a high grade. He could only do the next best thing. Having formed his purpose to become a lawyer, he procured books and advice from a neighboring attorney, and commenced the study of the law in connection with his employment as teacher. Just how long he read law, or when he finally abandoned the purpose of adopting it as a profession, does not appear. Undoubtedly he would have made an able lawyer, and might have risen to the highest attainments and honors in the profession : still the time spent in this study, and the discipline and knowledge acquired, failed not to stamp his mind with an eminently judicial character, and thus he was all the more thoroughly fitted for the responsible career which afterward opened to him.

In 1829 he was led to make a change of residence. The following letter indicates his direction. It is addressed to Israel Crane, Esq., Bloomfield, Essex County, N. J. :

"Salisbury, April 20, 1829.

Dear Sir : The bearer, Mr. Edmund S. Janes, has expressed to me a wish to be employed as an instructor of an English school in some part of your State. I have taken the liberty to mention to him yourself, as a gentleman to whom I would advise him to apply for assistance should he happen to visit your neighborhood. Mr. Janes is a young gentleman with whom I have been much acquainted ; he has for many seasons been employed in this town and vicinity as an instructor of youth with very great credit to himself and advantage to his employers. He sustains a moral and religious character which has endeared him to his friends here, and should he find employment in his profession in your vicinity, I am confident he would not disappoint the hopes of his friends.

To this is added a note from Mr. Crane :

Mr. Samuel I. Riker:

Sir : Samuel Church, Esq., is a respectable gentleman of my acquaintance in the State of Connecticut. I should con-

Preacher on Trial. 29

fide in his recommendation of the bearer, Mr. Janes. If there be any vacancy in the school in your neighborhood, and you should introduce this gentleman as teacher I doubt not he would meet your expectations.

" April 22, 1829."

While Mr. Janes was teaching in New Jersey he became convinced of his duty to preach the Gospel, and he was accordingly licensed as a local preacher by the Quarterly Conference of Belleville Circuit, of which the Rev. Isaac Winner was preacher in charge and the Rev. Joseph Lybrand presiding elder. By the same Quarterly Conference he was recommended to the Philadelphia Annual Conference for the regular ministry, and was received "on trial" by that body, April, 1830, in the city of Philadelphia. His name in the General Minutes stands eleventh in a class of fifteen. Among his classmates was the brilliant James Nicols, of the Eastern Shore of Maryland. The Rev. John Leonard Gilder is the only classmate who survives. The Philadelphia Conference at that time included a large portion of eastern Pennsylvania ; the peninsula lying between the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays, comprising the State of Delaware, the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and the Eastern Shore of Virginia ; and also the whole of the State of New Jersey. In the same territory there are now the Philadelphia, Wilmington, New Jersey, and Newark Conferences. Among the

young preachers of the Conference were Charles 2*

Pitman, John Kennaday, John S. Porter, R. M. Greenbank, Levi Scott, George G. Cookman, Francis Hodgson, and Joseph Holdich. I doubt if any Conference in the land possessed a nobler corps of young men, and yet even among these Mr. Janes almost immediately became distinguished.

The year in which Mr. Janes was admitted on trial in the " traveling connection," the Church with which he was henceforth to be so closely identified had but 1 8 Annual Conferences, 4 Bishops, 476,153 members, and 1,900 traveling preachers. He was to live to see it greatly extended and to have no small share in its extension.

The first appointment of Mr. Janes was Elizabethtown, N. J., with Rev. Thomas Morrell, supernumerary, in charge. Mr. Morrell was one of the wisest and most highly esteemed ministers of the Conference. It was fortunate for the young inexperienced preacher to have so devout and judicious a guide in his first beginning. The well-nigh universal arrangement of earlier Methodism, whereby a novitiate in the ministry was associated with an older and more experienced person, contributed not a little to its rapid success and thorough conservation. Zeal and sagacity were happily united, the dash and enterprise of youth being tempered by the moderation and caution of age.