Asa Turner : a home missionary patriarch and his times

Front matter

nfiraRi

IS d

LIBRARY

Introduction

Death is not a rare visitor. He comes often, and takes our greatest and best, as well as the unknown, unloved, and unmissed. But not often does he bear away a man like Asa Turner. This world of the dying has few such men to lose. When such a man is taken, the Christian brotherhood is left vastly the poorer. It is therefore a sacred duty to keep fragrant and influential, so long as it may be kept, a memory so precious. Only those who have tried it can know how hard a task it is — not simply to record the outward events of a long and busy life, but — to reproduce, for those who never saw him, the man, his personality, his work, his spirit, his influence on the churches, the ministers, the denomination that he loved, and on the great states into whose early material and spiritual development he put so strong a hand, so wise and wide a mind, and so warm a heart. But the friends of Father Turner have in this been greatly favored. The task of painting his picture for the instruction and cheer of those who come after has fallen to friends and brethren with whom it is a labor of love. Few men knew Father Turner longer or more intimately than did he who has borne the chief responsibility of this memoir; and fewer still wield pens that could so deftly outline his strong, marked, forceful, well-nigh unique character. But other friends, well fitted for the work, have lovingly brought in their lights and shadows, till here in bold relief stand out — as vividly as the engraved portrait gives the lineaments of his face— the intellectual and spiritual features of the man as they knew him well, at home, in the pulpit, the parish, the multifarious fields of humane, educational, reformatory, moral, and Christian effort, filling to the brim a life of more than fourscore years.

6 INTBODUCTION.

There can come only good from sending forth and from reading this volume. Students of the history of our Western states may see here what manner of men they were who laid in self-denial, faith, and prayer the deep and sure foundations of those wonderful empires. Aspiring teachers, eager to hand down their names in honorable connection with some permanent institution of learning, may see the cost at which that distinction is to be honestly won. Young ministers and candidates for that sacred calling may learn reverence for the men to whose patient toil, sanctified common-sense, far-seeing wisdom, and faith, are due, under God, the existence and glorious history of the more than twenty-three hundred Congregational churches now blessing, and in coming years to bless more and more, those wide realms that in Father Turner's youth were only known as a waste, howling wilderness. And every one who loves to see an honest, singleminded, earnest, sincere man, a hater of shams, one who values life for its opportunities to work for Christ and his fellow-men ; who consecrates to that end all his time, native gifts, acquisitions, personal, social, and official influence ; who sees no other use for strength, learning, wit, friendship, or deepest sacred experience — may look into this book and find just that man. And having found him, he will not wonder that all who knew Asa Turner intimately — and even we who knew him only from too infrequent but unforgotten meetings — loved him so well, and count it as one of the bright attractions of heaven that we trust to meet him there with the Saviour whom he here served with unstinted

devotion.

A. H. CLAPP.

Bible House, New York,

Preface

A first object in this piece of biography has been to set forth the subject of it as "himself and not another." If his Christian individuality had not been deemed by many worthy of a memorial, it would not have been prepared. Another purpose has been to sketch the story in connection with two imperial states of the Interior in so far as he early bore in them a noble part. At least the materials of this record, now fast passing out of remembrance, it was thought should be preserved.

That a patriarchal home missionary of a simple but unique character forms here the central figure is not altogether due to an observance of Macaulay's suggestion to write history biographically. It came to be so by the necessity of the case. Christian men who give their lives from youth on to the development of such marvelous American commonwealths as have emerged from the wilderness in the past fifty years, and are now emerging, can not help becoming historical persons, if they would.

When the book was first undertaken the materials for even a personal sketch seemed to be scanty. Like the patriarchs of old, "Father Turner" kept no diary, nor copies of his own letters, nor, generally, those received from his friends. Much time and inquiry brought little return. But when the surrounding facts began to be gathered about his life an opposite embarrassment arose. A great deal more has been left than is embraced in these pages. And the drawing of sharp lines — local, chronological, ecclesiastical, and other— has continually been needful.

The usual information given in this place, that the subject of the biography speaks for himself, wherever this has been possible, is quite superfluous. Readers will soon discover it for themselves.

The book is most of all indebted for what it contains to his family friends, and next after them — among too many to name — to Rev. Julius A. Reed, of Davenport (from 1855 to 1860 the writer's "parishioner" there), whose unusual fulness of infor-

8 PREFACE.

mation and accuracy as to the past need no certificate in Iowa. Some of the best materials here used, and a good part of the stimulus to weave them into one fabric, have been derived from his printed reminiscences, private letters, and personal conversation— an open and generous store.

The life that has occasioned these pages was that of one who became a good man under the predominance, early in this century, of a denomination whose polity he accepted, but whose creed he did not. He became an apostolic laborer in a wide region under the predominance of another with whose evangelical faith he sympathized, but with whose church government he did not. A magnanimous Christian liberality, joined with very clear and distinctive convictions, was one result; large reverence and love from good men was another.

The pleasant labor concluding with these lines has given a new revelation of a marked personal character and caused proportionate delight in it. The writer dearly loved the patriarch when he began, and counted the confidence and affection received from him for forty years one of his most precious possessions. But he lays down the pen with his filial feeling and veneration so increased that he seems to have had little before. To live with him again, as it were, for many months has been a cherished privilege. How much greater will be the privilege of meeting such a servant of Christ at the Master's feet !

Contents

PAGE

I. A New England Birthplace 11

II. A New England Boy 19

I. A New England Birthplace

Templeton, Massachusetts, is one of the rocky and hilly towns in the north-west of Worcester County. It tis twenty-six miles from the city of Worcester at the south-east, and a little shorter distance west of Fitchburg. It is just west of a line drawn through the highlands from Mount Wachusett in the town of Princeton to Mount Monadnock in the town of Jaffrey, New Hampshire. On a fair day the summits of these mountains are clearly seen at the north and the south-east from the country roads. Templeton is picturesque and olden ; abounding in evergreen forests and heavy stone fences of the primitive New England sort, in square old houses, built for large families, with a single stout chimney in the center, and in great and aged elms along the roadways. The soil is variable in quality, much of it being valuable only for the trees it bears ; there are blueberries and blackberries in the woods ; the climate is such that " plants that are hardy only a few miles distant fail to survive the winter " ; hay and potatoes are the chief crops, though apples also are raised. The people are not altogether farmers. It is impossible on their rough acres to make a living without some outside labor. A visitor will notice the wives and daughters weaving cane backs and seats of chairs for the factories at Gardner, the next town east. Two generations or more ago a family which bought a farm of two hundred acres, including rocks, was forty years paying for it, meeting the interest on the purchase and the taxes b}^ boarding successive teachers of the district school. It boasted eleven children, who, at six years of age, " as soon as they could sit on the bench," began seating chairs.

The town is now about a hundred and fifty years old, though incorporated as " Templetown," July 22, 1761, in the second calendar year of the reign of King George III. It had been known for some years as " Narraganset, No. 6," one of the seven townships granted by uthe Great and General Court of Massachusetts Bay " to soldiers of the Narraganset War and their descendants. In 1727 two townships of six miles square had been given them; and in 1733 five more added, as eight hundred and fifty names had been entered — "each propriety or township to be held and enjoyed by one hundred and twenty of the grantees." Of these seven "Narraganset" townships,1 " No. 1 " and " No. 7 " became Buxton and Gorham, Maine ; two others were in that part of New Hampshire then claimed by Massachusetts, namely, u No. 3 " and " No. 5," now Amherst and Bedford, N. H. ; " No. 2 " became Westminster, Mass. ; and " No. 4 " was near Hatfield. The proprietors of " No. 6," Templetown, or Templeton, were mostly, says Rev. E. G. Adams in his

1 An earlier grant had been made in 1685 of eight miles square " in the Nipmug country" for services "in the late Indian Warr" to men of Lynn, Reading, Beverly, and Hingham. — Hist. Wore. Co. 2: 389.

A NEW ENGLAND BIBTHPLACE. 13

Centennial Discourse, "from Concord, Groton, Lancaster, Bolton, Littleton, Westford, Chelmsford, Stowe, Marlboro', Billerica, and Woburn." The Massachusetts and Maine Historical Collections add Lexington, Farmington, Shelburne, Stoneham, and Southboro'.

On Boston Common, June, 1732, the Narraganset claimants all drew lots for townships. A hundred and twenty of them drew land " west of Penacook and Suncook." This was afterwards judicially found to fall within " Captain Mason's grant," * and exchanged for a township " on the back of Rutland," Worcester County. From not knowing of this exchange a writer in the Maine Historical Collections is perplexed. This Templeton township "back of Rutland " comprised, according to the History of Worcester County, 23,440 acres ; " 23,040 for the six miles square, 300 for the Mine Farm [so called], and 100 for a pond." From this and Athol, Gerry was taken, 1774, and incorporated as Phillipston, 1786.2 From its eastern side 3 something was taken in 1785 for the town of Gardner.

It was required by the General Court of those who secured one of these townships that they should " pass such rules and orders as shall effectually oblige them to settle sixty families at least within said township, with a learned Orthodox minister, within seven years from date of grant." It is said of the Templeton proprietors 4 that the four great "things they were determined to have, whatever else they might go without, were roads, mills, schools, and church institutions."

At Concord, in 1733, they first met as incorporated

1 Now Concord and Pembroke, N. H.

2 " West Parish " or " Second Precinct."

3 The land taken was a tract of twelve or fifteen hundred acres. The whole region is now Ailed with prosperous towns and villages.

4 Centennial Discourse.

proprietors, and sent men " into the woods " to explore and survey. But for fifteen years French and Indian hostilities prevented a settlement upon their lands. There was great deliberation, also, after the original fashion of the New England fathers, as to those allowed to come in. In 1734-5 " the best of the upland " was divided into house-lots, forty acres each, a hundred and twenty-three in all. Lots for the future school, meeting-house, and minister were also set apart. It was not till 1751 that the first house was erected.

The next year fifteen or eighteen families had come together in the wilderness. The proprietors that year " granted a tax of four shillings on each right of land " to provide preaching for the ensuing winter. This operation they repeated the next year, and there being now twenty families, they determined to build a meeting-house, fifty feet by forty.1 The chestnut timbers of the frame were cut upon the common, at one side of which it stood. On this common, even after the first minister was settled, a child straying on Sabbath from meeting was lost in the woods, and "the whole congregation turned out to search for it."

Two years after this building was erected, the first church was organized, 1755, though for half a dozen years there was no town incorporation. This was, and still is, the First Church of Christ in Templeton. A minister was then ordained, the Rev. David Pond. In 1762, when the town was incorporated, a second minister2 had been settled three months, and the people numbered about three hundred souls.

1 The building was Town House as well as place of worship.

2 Coming from Rutland on horseback to his " parish," this minister lost the road, then indicated in a western fashion " by marked trees." Night coming on, he fastened his horse to a tree and trod a circle about him all night. One born in the town a generation later was to be wonted to similar clerical experiences in Illinois and Iowa.

A NEW ENGLAND BIRTHPLACE. 15

In this primitive town, so fashioned a century after the Pilgrims, and half a century before the Revolution, between Wasett Ridge and the Connecticut Valley, Edward Turner, of Walpole, Norfolk County, Mass., bought land in 1768, and made a home. At that time " the frontier towns of the white man were Brookfield, Lancaster, and Lunenburg; then [came] the wilderness unsettled to Northfield, Deerfield, and Hadley."

He was the second son of Joseph Turner, of Walpole, one of fourteen children, of whom the first, Joseph, removed to South Dedham and Keene, N. H., and the seventh, Reuben, to Farmington, Maine. The fifth son, Ebenezer, born in the new home, Templeton, 1772, lived at Dedham and Farmington in his youth with relatives, and at the age of fifty-nine emigrated to Adams County, Illinois, where his nephew, the subject of this volume, had been a home missionary a year or more. This Ebenezer Turner, in 1849, at the age of seventy-seven, drew up a genealogy in which he records : —

"My father . . . cleared a small farm, and, we suppose, lived prosperously till the commencement of the war of the Revolution, when he engaged in the army.1 Was at Bunker Hill ; 2 thence to Saratoga ; and in December, 1777, died at Halfmoon, near Albany, of the small-pox, having never been wounded.3 My mother was left with seven children, Adam, Lewis, Asa, Ellis, Ebenezer (the writer), Polly, and Amasa."

The little town was thoroughly patriotic. It sustained by corporate action in 1772 Boston's defence of charter rights against the king ; sent two years later its only representative to a General Court called by royal order ; obliged the

1 " An officer of some sort." — Letter of Prof. J. B. Turner.

2 " Commanded his company in the battle." — Ibid.

3 His age at death was thirty -eight.

16 ASA TUENEB.

same year a Tory to recant ; voted not to use tea or aity goods subject to duty ; and provided pay for its soldiers. Throughout the Revolution it had committees of correspondence. In 1779 it raised prices twentyfold and paid them : meat, 4s. a pound (Continental currency) ; and judged "too low in proportion to salt and rum" (!); good common dinner, 14s. ; New England flip or toddy, 15s. per mug or " bowl " ; carpenter's or mason's work, X3 to <£3, 6s. per day ; shirts, <£4, 16s. apiece ("good tow cloth") ; wheat, c£8 per bushel; oats, X2 per bushel.

This revolutionary soldier's widow is said to have relied upon pea soup for her family of eight. "I can readily believe," writes a descendant, "that she lived on vegetables, as you have heard, or on nothing ; utterly destitute of every thing except their cabin and their little clearing in the forests, [left] to struggle alternately with poverty, the wild beasts, and the Indians, none of which did she fear. I never heard her utter a word of complaint about personal hardships or struggles in life."

Among her seven children of those revolutionary days, Asa, perhaps born at Walpole, remained upon the homestead at Templeton, was four years — from 1802 on — elected one of the selectmen of the town, a civil office of more honor then than now, and was called " Captain Asa." His son Asa, one of eight children, and known West and East, till his father's death in 1856, as Rev. Asa Turner, Jr., is the subject of this volume. In an autobiography written for his children in his eightieth year, he says : —

" I was born June 11, 1799, in Templeton, Worcester County, Mass. My father's name was Asa. My mother's name was Abigail Baldwin.1 My grandfather's name was

1 His mother's name also had strong patriotic associations. Jonathan Baldwin was the last town representative to a General Court convoked by Gage, royal

A NEW ENGLAND BIRTHPLACE. 17

Edward. My grandmother's name was Hannah Fisher ["daughter of William Fisher of Walpole," genealogy quoted above]. They were natives of Walpole. My great-grandfather was Joseph Turner, of Walpole. He was son of Eben Turner, of Medfield, about twenty miles from Boston. My grandfather was a soldier in the Revolutionary War and participated in the battle of Bunker Hill. He was also present at the surrender of Burgoyne. He died from small-pox while the Federal army was encamped in winter quarters near Albany. This is as far as I can trace my ancestry."

The line of descent then is this : — 1, Ebenezer Turner of Medfield ; 2, Joseph of Walpole ; 3, Edward of Walpole and Templeton ; 4, Asa of Templeton ; 5, Asa, Jr., of Templeton.

The descendants of the fifth generation were born on the homestead farm, some two miles southward from the center of the old town of Templeton, which has now three villages or post-office stations : the Center, East Templeton, Otter River village, and Baldwins ville (at the crossing of the Fitchburg and Ware River railroads). At the Center, on the west side of the old common, stands the primitive-looking two-story sanctuary of the First Church, with a large brick school-house and a lecture-room. At the east, near the corner of the common, stand the Orthodox Church and the Boynton Library. Pleasant roadways run among the hills and woods to the

governor, to meet, 1774, at Salem (which adjourned to Concord as a " Provincial Congress "), was sent to the two Congresses of 1775 at Cambridge and Watertown, and to the General Court of that year at Watertown after Governor Gage and other royal machinery had disappeared. Mrs. Asa Turner named her sixth son, Jonathan Baldwin. That was the name of one of her brothers, probably older in the family; "a family" (writes this son) "of much more wealth and inherited social position than fell to my father's lot. Of grandfather Baldwin I do not recall even the given name. My father was familiarly called ' the old Captain,' earlier than I can remember. Where he got the title, whether in Shays' Rebellion [1786-87, Worcester, Springfield, Petersham J, or from the militia, I can not tell."

other villages and the surrounding towns. A hotel facing the common on the south makes a quiet summer resort. In 1854 Dr. George Shattuck gave the town five shares in the Boston Athenaeum. In 1858 an agricultural society was incorporated, and the late David Whitcomb, of Worcester, founded the Boynton Library, named for his old partner in business at Templeton. At one time they had sixty peddlers traveling for them. The handsome fire-proof building dates from 1885. Mr. Whitcomb gave $9,000, to which the town added 12,000. Mr. Boynton gave $100,000 to the Institute of Technology at Worcester. When "Asa Turner, Jr.," was born, there were at the Center simply a rough, wooden school-house and the first meeting-house of 1753, nearly square, and then recently painted for the first time. In this a town committee " dignified the seats ' below from time to time,1 the three galleries being filled with free seats. As this continued till 1797 perhaps he witnessed like archaic formalities, and received impressions of a certain plain and unaffected dignity of the old New England style, which he never lost. The edifice had doors on three sides, was without spire or bell, and was never warmed in any way in the coldest winter. The Turner farm contained about a hundred and sixty acres. It is still a good Worcester County farm, though there are dense woods where was a field in former years. The dwelling looks off eastward to the hills and homes of Gardner, a good farm-house still, though shortened fifteen feet by a later occupant who found it too large. A tall evergreen at the south end was planted by the sixth son of " old Captain" Asa in his youth.

1 " The seats of most dignity, or those considered most eligible, were assigned to the largest tax-payers, and so on graduated throughout." — Cent. Disc. By order in town meeting, 1765, the whole congregation waited till the minister had not only left the pulpit, but the house, and then moved out " according to the dignity of the seats, one seat at a time." This continued through all the ministry of the second pastor till the early years of this century.

Turner Place, Templeton, Mass. See page 18.

II. A New England Boy

In his autobiography, Asa Turner, Jr., wrote : " My father was a hard-working man, supporting his family of eight children on a little rock-bound farm." He had long been familiar, when he wrote, with much larger and more fertile Western farms, and had, as a village pastor, owned one of three hundred acres.

The " eight " children were : — (1) Sylvia, who became Mrs. Marshall Alden ; (2) Dulcinah, Mrs. William Whitney ; (3) Avery ; (4) Asa ; (5) Nabby (named for her mother), Mrs. Benjamin Day ; (6) Jonathan Baldwin ; (Betsey, who died in infancy) ; (7) Hannah Fisher (named for her grandmother), Mrs. Luke Manning ; (8) Edward L.

The last died at Lacon, 111. ; Avery, at Quincy ; Mrs. Manning died in 1887, at the East ; and Mrs. Whitney, in 1884 ; Mrs. Alden and Mrs. Day, years before. Jonathan Baldwin, of Jacksonville, 111., is now the sole survivor, in his eighty-fourth year.

On the rock-bound farm they were all taught habits of industry, prudence, respect for right and rights, the keeping of the Sabbath, integrity, kindness, conscientiousness, and devotion. It is said of the town planters : " They expected to work hard; they and their families."1 Of two of these eight children it was said to the writer in 1886 by their surviving sister: "Asa was stronger than Avery; a good worker on the farm, and enjoyed work.

1 Cent. Disc. p. 9.

I have heard him say that after working all day he had driven an ox-team loaded with lumber to Shrewsbury, twenty miles or more, by night, and reached there by the opening of business in the morning. Probably he had aided in cutting and hauling to mill the logs from which the lumber was sawed. This training gave him a strong constitution which enabled him to survive his neglect of the laws of health while in college." l His frame was comparatively large and strong. Activity was constitutional, and through life down to advanced age to be doing nothing was among the severest of trials. One of the two younger brothers was more vigorous still. He writes me of their father, that he was " a man of great strength and untiring industry.

" Having, as he thought, somewhat more of his natural strength and endurance than his other boys, he early planned to keep me at home with him, by giving a deed and title to all his property on certain conditions before I was of age, and let Asa go from home to school, simply because he was never so robust as I was, and the younger son, Edward, was comparatively feebler still.

" Asa always liked to drive horses at the top of their speed ; I always liked to see them walk and enjoy themselves. That was our difference in temperament. In every game of mere physical strength and endurance he was aware, though the older, that he was but a child in my hands, while I was then equally convinced of his intellectual and moral superiority and longed to participate in it, but saw no way to do it.

" I do not remember to have seen my father strike or in any way punish a child, scarcely an ox or a horse ; though I have seen him throw an offensive man over the fence and into the street in utter silence, as though he

IMS. Sketch, by Rev. Julius A. Reed.

A NEW ENGLAND BOY. 21

had done nothing. He had almost no schooling, but a splendid education ; for I never knew a man that doubted either his word or his honesty." 1

There will be some readers who will think of u heredity " here, and say, u In our Father Turner ' old Captain Asa ' re-appeared." At the risk of anticipating what is to come concerning their spiritual relations let us hear the younger son again as to the father : —

" I never heard my father make any appeal to us on the personal ground that he was our father, ' Moses-fashion ' ; it was always on the higher ground, ' Christ-fashion ' : ' Jonathan, do you think that is right ? ' That was a most terrible reproof or appeal from one I so dearly loved, and therefore so deeply feared to offend ; for the tone and manner lodged the appeal far above all earthly fathers, Christ-wise, before the Father of all in heaven." 2

The second Asa was ethically the son of his father, though in Christian experience the first Asa was the son of the second, as we shall see. " Asa was always telling," said Mrs. Manning, " what was right or not." It became "a habit among the children" to defer to his moral judgment in cases they could not decide. " What Asa said, was right : they rather went by him." He was affectionate and persuasive among them, as he was docile and obedient to his parents, and diligent in all things. Any one can credit this who knew the winning patriarchal grace that came to him in after years. He led naturally without effort or apparent consciousness of it. " No domineering ; always the same ; no wild tricks ; no trouble with him for any body." He went with the rest to the district school, over Mine Hill about a mile (the " Old Red School-house " is gone), to East Templeton about two miles. At eighteen

1 MS. Letter of Prof. J. B. Turner.

2 Ibid.

he began to do military duty under state law, whether eagerly from inherited patriotism or reluctantly from constitutional love of peace, we are not told. This sister did her part by " rubbing the buttons ' of her brothers. Some other traits that descended to him may be traced in what is said of his paternal grandmother : — " She was the strongest, the most resolute, prompt, and fearless woman I ever saw, and I do not believe she ever knew what fear was. After my mother came [to the home farm as a bride], some Indians began to talk saucily to my mother, supposing she was alone. Grandmother, overhearing this, rushed into the room, seized the great iron fire-shovel, and drove them out-of-doors in a hurry." Indians always were good judges of some traits of character. " If she thought any one was scheming to wrong any one of us, she would soon be ' the lioness in front of all the whelps,' and I have thought that she did more to give a sort of natural tone and character to our family than any other one in it. Perhaps she exhibited in this way a spirit of unselfishness and mutual self-sacrifice for all within the charmed circle and of justice to all outside. . . . Among seven or eight children my father was her pet. She could not conceive that he could do any thing wrong or unwise, and ever held herself ready to sacrifice ease or pleasure, or life itself, in defence of him and his. He, as well as all the rest of us, intensely reciprocated such whole-souled self-devotion. She lived, I think, to her ninety-sixth year, in almost uninterrupted health ; and then, as our most beloved family physician. Dr. Osgood, told me, • She did not die, but simply expired,' laid down quietly and breathed her last, without a pain