Herald and news. [volume] (West Randolph, Vt.) 1878-1943, 1889-10-10
CHELSEA CHURCH CENTENNIAL.
HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL
NOTES.

READ AT THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRA-
TIoN OF THE CONGREGATIONAL
CHURCH IN CHELSEA, BY JoHN NJ.
CoMsToCK.
We have come together to-day to
celebrate the first century of the life of
this church, to speak of its beginnings,
of its progress, of the work its divine
Master has wrought in and through il,
OF its hopes for the future,-to speak
Of these, not with boasting, not with
self-confdence, but with deep thankful
ness for the past, and deyout trust for
the time that is to come. / have tried
to gather up and will seek to set before
you some of the few remaining frag-
ments of the earliest things, of those
facts of our remote history which are
fast disappearing in the irrevocable past.
Let us go back a hundred years, and
consider the state of matters in town
and county. Chelsea had been till
1884 an unbroken wilderness. There
is no ground for belief that even unciv-
;lized man had made even temporary
residence within our limits, and our
valley, remote from the usual routes of
hunting and war, never, so far as his
tory or tradition goes, felt the foot of
the savage save only in that tragedy OF
1880, known in local history as the
''Burning of Royalton." The towns
on the Connecticut were first taken for
settlement; Newbury, first opened in
1862, was for years the most northerly
outpost in the colonies; Bradford and
Thetford were soon after occupied. The
interior towns came next, but our own
town was one of the last to hear the
stroke of the pioneers AK.
1t was only in the fall of 1874, that
the historic Moore brothers, with Asa
Bond, brother-in-law to Samuel Moore,
having bought of the grantees large
tract of land, covering the part of the
valley where the village now stands and
the adjoining hills, came up from VIM
chester, n. H., TO take possession of
their purchase and TO found their new
homes. They were in the vigor of
youth, Thomas Moore 2S, Samuel
younger, Bond %. Thomas built his
rude cabin IN the north of the valley,
near where his mortal part has long
since mingled with the soil, and the
others to the south, just north of \. G.
Moore's present location. They return
ed to Winchester for the winter, and in
the following spring came back to stay,
each with his wife and children, three
of Thomas Moore's, two of Samuefs,
and two of Bonds. At about the same
time the four Wills brothers from Wind
ham, Conn, had come into the west
part of the town by way of Brookfeld,
and without knowledge of the Moores
had begun an Independent settlement
near where G. H. Hardy now lives.
The settlement once begun, other set
tiers came in rapidly. BY the spring
of '69, there seem TO haye been 35 or
40 families in town, scattered widely,
but finding a common center where it
was clear that the village was to be.
The first census, two years later, show
ed a population of 239. In the previ- |
Gus year, 1888, the organization of the
town had been effected under the char
ter name of Turnersburgh, which name
he legislature of the same year altered
% Chelsea. There is no doubt that this
name was chosen in honor of the parish
# Chelsea in Norwich, Conn.,, now
InoNn as the Second Parish in Nor