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1976

Radio Script #1076

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Little Talks on Common Things
February 8, 1976

On previous broadcasts I have told that the Revolutionary War was disastrous for the Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase, the land company that brought settlers to the Kennebec Valley in the middle of the 18th century. Because the shareholders were so severely divided between Whigs and Tories, the old names for the supporters of American independence on the one hand, and supporters of the King on the other, their financial affairs were badly confused, to say nothing of inability to get settlers during wartime.

Today I will tell you about another difficulty that disrupted the company – the ugly controversy over religion. With the establishment of the settlements at Salem and Boston in 1629 and 1630, determination to be free from the control of the Church of England, the state episcopal church of the mother country, had been a prevailing motive.

In New England, there was established what became known as the Congregational polity, that is every individual church having its own independent control. Ironically, by the middle of the 18th century, when the Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase became organized, the Congregational churches were independent more in theory than in fact. Though having no bishop, no synod, no presbytery, they like the Church of England from which they had escaped, had come under control of the state, so that the Congregational was actually the state church of the province of Massachusetts Bay.

However, as time went on, some of the more prosperous immigrants, especially the merchants, continued their allegiance to the Church of England. Even before the middle of the 18th century, the Episcopalians, though still a minority were numerous and influential enough to press claims for recognition. But it was not until 1758, nearly a decade after the formation of the Kennebec Proprietors, that the issue came to a heated head. In that year the Archbishop of Canterbury announced that he was sending an Episcopal minister to settle at the company’s new town of Frankfort on the Kennebec.

That German settlement at what is now Dresden had already welcomed one minister, William MacClenachan, a Presbyterian from Ulster, who seems to have been acceptable to the Congregationalist-dominated government in Boston. When he left Frankfort in 1758, the vacancy caused tension among the proprietors. Already the newly formed London Episcopal group called the Society for Propagation of the Gospel in America was causing anxiety to the Congregationalists, who were anxious to see that society get no foothold in New England.

The Congregationalists among the Proprietors were quite aware that Sylvester Gardiner, Benjamin Hallowell, Florentius Vassall and several other large shareholders were Episcopalians, but the opponents of Episcopalianism were not themselves without influence in the Company. James Bowdoin, John Hancock, James Pitts and William Brattle were determined to put up a fight. But, before they could act, the Archbishop in England had sent the Rev. Jacob Bailey as a missionary to the Kennebec, and the minister had been eagerly welcomed at Frankfort.

In 1773, after Bailey had been there more than ten years and Frankfort had become Pownalborough, county seat of the new Lincoln County, John Hancock learned that a few Congregationalists at Pownalborough were trying to organize their own church in opposition to Bailey’s Episcopal services. Hancock made an offer of assistance, the details of which are not clear, because that offer was never carried through. But the mere fact of its being made stirred the Pownalborough Episcopalians to angry remonstrance. Wingate Weeks, the Episcopal minister at Marblehead, wrote to Parson Bailey: “As to Hancock’s bounty no remonstrance could be too severe. It is just a piece with the whole conduct of the dissenters, who, if they had the power, would tolerate no religious sect but their own.”

Religious center of the Boston Congregationalists was the Brattle Street Church, while the Anglican centered at King’s Chapel. In 1771, the latter boasted that two-thirds of its numbers held substantial property. Prominent among them were several Kennebec Proprietors, who could be seen every Sunday in the most expensive pews. Besides Sylvester Gardiner, those regular attendants at Episcopal service included V;a_$$cllsy Taylors, Tyngs r and, of course Governor Shirley.

One of the wealthiest proprietors was Charles Apthorp, paymaster of the British armed forces in America. In 1747, he had been the largest subscriber to the building of King’s Chapel. His son, recently returned from England in 1771, had been set up by the Society for Propagation of the Gospel as a missionary in Cambridge, with instruction to pave the way for an American bishop. When the rumor spread that young Apthorp himself would be the first New England Episcopal bishop, the Congregationalists were deeply disturbed. They feared that this would pave the way for their beloved Harvard College to fall into Episcopal hands. When young Apthorp built a handsome house in Camoridge, the Congregationalists derisively called it “the Bishop’s Palace.” Feeling was so intense that Apthorp gave up and returned to England.

The Congregationalists had earlier received a serious blow by the defection of Jacob Bailey. A graduate of Harvard, Bailey had in 1759 renounced his Congregational faith and became an Episcopalian. Attracted to this young man, Sylvester Gardiner saw the chance to get an Episcopal minister installed at the Frankfort settlement which he had done so much to establish. With the backing of the Episcopalians in the Kennebec company, Bailey went to England, where he was ordained in the Church of England priesthood in February 1760, and was immediately appointed a missionary by the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel.

Before the end of the month he was on his way back to America. By July, he was in residence at his assigned post on the Kennebec. Bailey found at Pownalborough, a mixture of religious beliefs. The few old New Englanders from the Boston area were staunch Congregationalists, the Scots-Irish from Ulster were Presbyterians; a group of Irish were Roman Catholics, and the Germans were Lutherans, and Dr. Gardiner had seen to it that there were enough Anglicans at the new settlement to push that cause. Those Episcopalians were able to get the Lutherans and the Catholics to agree to accept Jacob Bailey, and that coalition formed the majority of his congregation. Language differences added to the dissension. The Presbyterians and Congregationalists strongly objected to Bailey as the one settlement preacher. Temper got so hot that the Proprietors denied all responsibility, even refusing to follow the usual practice of the two reserved church lots.

James Bowdoin proposed that the Congregationalists set up their own society for propagation of the gospel, and he led a petition to the Legislature for incorporation of such a society. Others from the Brattle Street church who signed it were William Brattle, James Pitts, and Thomas Hancock.

Before the Revolution the Massachusetts Provincial Legislature lacked complete authority on legislation. Every enactment had to be approved in England. Although Bowdoin’s resolution passed the legislature easily, the Church of England forces in Boston saw to it that the authorities in London, of course firmly tied to that church, overturned the Mass. vote. It meant failure to establish the proposed society.

The Congregationalists among the Kennebec Proprietors were now faced with the possibility of rapid spread of Anglicanism in the Kennebec Valley. Indeed, it was not long before Sylvester Gardiner himself had set up an Episcopal church in his new community of Gardiner on the Cobbossee. About all the Congregationalist proprietors could do was to harrass unmercifully, Parson Bailey and the other Episcopal priests.

Bailey did not makes things easier by taking Dr. Gardiner’s side publicly and vigorously in the lawsuits in which Gardiner became involved with settlers and with minor proprietors. Dissension reached its height when John Hancock sued Sylvester Gardiner, and Bailey was a willing witness for the doctor. What made the rift in the proprietorship even worse was that Anglicanism and Toryism went hand in hand. The Episcopalians were ardent supporters of the King and strenuously opposed those who demanded American independence. Just as Sylvester Gardiner fled early to England, before the Revolution was over, Parson Bailey had fled to Nova Scotia, never to return.

The supporters of Bailey at Pownalborough also faced difficulties. In 1777, the then prevailing Congregationalists denied any Episcopalians at Pownalboro the right to vote in towu meeting. Since 1776, the Pownalborough Anglicans had been forced to pay taxes to support a Congregationalist church in the town. The aggrieved Episcopalians appealed to the Mass. Legislature for redress. The Legislature decided to hear the petitioners’ evidence. Spokesmen for the accused Congregationalist majority claimed that Parson Bailey was party to a conspiracy plotted by Dr. Gardiner, who by that time
had become a Tory refugee. They further charged that Bailey and Episcopal leaders like Samuel Goodwin had “seduced the good people of Pownalboro to denounce the pure and undefiled religion of the Province and instead embrace Episcopacy.” Their final argument was that many of the signers of the petition were not true Anglicans, but just folks who jumped on the bandwagon in the hope of avoiding taxes.

By the time of the Revolution, the Mass. Legislature had learned that any religious issue was a hot potato to be avoided. So they took no action to satisfy either side. They did not need to, for it was then that Bailey, the unrepentant Tory, gave up and went to Canada.

The outcome was disastrous for the Kennebec Proprietors, but they should have foreseen the conflict long before it reached a crisis. Even though Congregationalists outnumbered Episcopalians in New England at least thirty to one, those Congregationalists could not forget how they had been persecuted, or at least their ancestors had, in the mother country. The long-standing hatred between Episcopalians and dissenters in England quite naturally followed the two sects to America. The Episcopalians, greatly in the minority in New England, naturally turned to the King for protection. In the same
way, the Congregationalist majority was gradually but persistently drawn to support the cause of American independence.

Thus the religious controversy became involved in the political controversy, and the result had to be disaster for the Kennebec Proprietors. Although they kept going, through and after the Revolution, and although some of the Tories, including Dr. Gardiner’s heirs, saw their confiscated estates restored, they were never able to carry out the ambitious projects envisioned in 1750. Before Maine became a separate state, the Kennebec Proprietors had already dissolved.

Year: 1976

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