Radio Script #654

Little Talks on Common Things

May 23, 1965

Between the close of the American Revolution and the time when Maine became a state — that is, between 1781 and 1820 — the itinerant preacher, going from town to town, from hamlet to hamlet, was a common sight allover Maine. The two sects that most heavily supported these roving ministers were Methodists and Baptists. The former were slower to found individual churches, preferring to set up what were called Methodist classes in the communities, until several of those classes became strong enough to organize a church and erect a meeting house. The Baptists, who called their wandering preachers missionaries, sought on the other hand to gather a few people in each community into an organized church.

The most noted evangelist on the Maine scene at the turn into the nineteenth century was the Rev. Isaac Case. He was born in Rehoboth, Massachusetts in 1761, and became an itinerant preacher at the age of 19, doing his first preaching from village to village on Cape Cod. In 1783 he toured the Vermont towns, where he baptized more than 200 converts. Not until he had been a traveling evangelist for four years was he finally ordained into the Baptist ministry.

In the summer of 1784 Case started on what he called his journey to the eastward. He preached in Berwick, Saco, Stroudwater, Gorham, Brunswick, Harpswell, Bowdoinham and Bath. In January he crossed the Kennebec on the ice to Woolwich. On he went, preaching in all the villages, through Newcastle and Damariscotta, down the Bristol peninsula to the Pemaquid settlements, then to Waldoboro and Thomaston.

He was so successful at Thomaston that the people asked him to settle there as their permanent pastor. Case agreed, on the provision that he should be permitted occasional leaves to pursue what he called “missionary journeys into the wilderness”. The claims of Thomaston upon him were increased by his marriage to a Thomaston girl.

After five years at Thomaston, right at the dawn of the new century, Isaac Case decided, as he put it, “to carry the gospel to the destitute regions in the District of Maine”. But for two years more he retained his residence in Thomaston, leaving his family there while he evangelized the wilderness.

In 1792 he set out for a missionary tour of Oxford County. On his way he stopped at Readfield, where he found a few families already of the Baptist faith. At their request he stayed for six weeks, preaching and performing baptisms. He organized a church of 20 members, then went on to work in a dozen Oxford County towns. On his way home Case stopped again at Readfield, and found the people so urgent in their demand that he become their regular pastor, that he agreed. He returned to Thomaston just long enough to settle his affairs there, preach a farewell sermon, and move his family to Readfield.

But Isaac Case was no man to settle down anywhere. He had to be constantly on the go. Though for many years he made Readfield his home, where his wife and children were seen daily by the neighbors, he himself was seldom there. He had been in Readfield less than six months when he set out on a missionary tour of Maine’s Far East. From Eastport he wrote his wife: “After crossing the Penobscot I came into very destitute country. The only settled minister between Blue Hill and Eastport is the Rev. Harry Steel at Machias.”

Isaac Case was not content even to remain on the mainland. In 1804 he wrote: “Within fourteen months I have baptized more than 150 persons upon the islands of the sea and in the towns adjoining.”

The reason why we know so much about Isaac Case’s missionary journeys is that he and his wife were careful savers of letters and documents. A great mass of those papers, more than a thousand in number, are now preserved in the Colbiana Collection at Colby College. Most important of all the items is a diary that Case kept for more than forty years.

Case went literally allover the State of Maine. One spring he was in the Sandy River towns, and the same autumn found him in the scattered settlements up the Penobscot above Bangor, the tract that would soon become the original land grant to Colby College. Another year he was in the scanty settlements of Farmington, New Vineyard and Kingfield — then off to Franklin, Cherryfield and Jonesboro.

Between 1800 and 1810 he organized 32 Baptist churches. In 1806 he crossed the line from the U.S. into Canada, and stirred the people of New Brunswick by his missionary zeal. The following year he crossed the Bay of Fundy into Nova Scotia. As early as 1802 Isaac Case had organized support for his missionary enterprises.

The Massachusetts Baptist Missionary Society appointed him its traveling evangelist. Among the Case papers preserved at Colby is a letter of credentials which Isaac Case was authorized to show wherever he journeyed. This is what the letter said: “To our Christian brethren and friends whose lot is cast in the wilderness remote from the stated ministry of word and ordinances:

“We are united into a society for the purpose of sending the gospel into the new settlements on the frontiers of these states, and we have appointed Rev. Isaac Case to visit and preach within the settlements. We therefore commend him to you as one whom we judge faithful. Receive him therefore in the Lord, and see whether the things which he may preach to you from time to time are not according to the Oracle of Truth.” The letter was signed by four members of the society’s executive committee, including the Rev. Thomas Baldwin, who a quarter of a century later would become the most prominent Massachusetts trustee of the new Baptist college in Waterville.

While on his missionary journeys Isaac Case wrote long letters to his wife back in Readfield. They are for the most part couched in the elaborate, pious language of the time, but occasionally they reveal an interest in worldly affairs. In 1823, for instance. he wrote from Eastport: “Tell Betsy to write me a letter directed here. I want to know all about her family and whether Amos and Elisha get along in their business without me. If they can spare me, I shall spend some time on my way home between Eastport and the Penobscot River, for the people there are destitute of preaching. For more than eighty miles there is only one Baptist minister and very few of any denomination.”

In the same letter Case tells about successful meetings he had held in Penflamaquan. That is the ancient name for Pembroke. Case ended his letter with news about his next destination: “We have spoken for our passage and expect to sail for Nova Scotia today, if the wind should be favorable.”

Of course Isaac Case traveled many miles on horseback. On one occasion, breaking in a new horse, he wrote to his wife: “The farther I rode the colt, the steadier he grew. He stood the journey very well, in fact much better than his rider, for I have developed a cough.”

In 1830 Case made a return journey to Nova Scotia. Let us hear about it in his own words: “Eastport, July 7, 1830. Having returned to this place yesterday, I want to give you an account of my journey. I got on board a vessel bound to Annapolis, Nova Scotia. We made a harbor that night. We went out early the next morning, but were becalmed all day until 8 p.m., when a small breeze sprang up. The next forenoon we got to the mouth of the Annapolis River,but the tide was running out very rapidly, as it does all along the Bay of Fundy, and we had to wait for it to turn. We got to the wharf at Annapolis aboilt’3 p.m. I hired an Indian to carry my saddlebags to Brother Houghton’s, where I took supper. I asked him for a horse to get me to the Association meeting, about 40 miles distant. He said he had been hunting for his horse since morning and could not find him. But while we were talking and I smoking my pipe, the horse was brought to the door by a neighbor who had found him in his own barn. It was then so late that Brother Houghton persuaded me to stay at his house overnight, but the next morning he loaned me the horse to go eight miles, where a young man picked me up in a carriage and carried me 17 miles to the house of a Baptist who received me kindly, and with him I spent the next night. The next morning another carriage took me to the Association. It had been seven years since I had last met with these people, and they received me with joy.”

The letter continues: “A number of young men of Nova Scotia are drawn to preaching. I heard one of them by the name of Burton, who was born on Cape Breton and never heard a sermon until he was 18 years of age.

“I left five days after the Association and got on board a vessel about daybreak to cross the Bay of Fundy. I arrived at St. John that same night. A brother took me to his house for a meeting of the New Brunswick Association. Yesterday morning I boarded a steamboat and was favored with a pleasant passage to Eastport, arriving there at 6 in the evening.”

Now that last sentence is interesting. The year 1830 was early for a steamboat to be plying our eastern coats. It shows how rapidly steam navigation developed after Robert Fulton’s successful experiment on the Hudson. It also shows how slowly the early steamboats traveled. It took Isaac Case’s steamer all day to go from St. John to Eastport.

Case closed that long 1830 letter to his wife with a melancholy note, followed by his immediate plans. He said: “I shall tarry here at Eastport over the Lord’s Day. Religion is very low in this place. The Baptists have had no preaching in their meeting house for six months. I expect to go to Pennamaquan next Monday and then get on my way to Orland, where I expect to spend several weeks. Write me a long letter to Orland, and let me know as much as you can about your temporal concerns. I hope Elisha will not go to haying till the weather is dry and hot.”

Year: 1965