Morning journal and courier., 1890-04-25
OUR RACE.
Hts Origin and Its Destiny.

Hts Origin and Its Destiny. Extracts from lecture by Lieutenant Totten.l Iu view of your invitation to lecture here tonight upon the subject of our ancestry, had occasion last Monday to glance over the New Haven city directory, and particularly at the officers and organization of the Hum- phrey street Congregational church.
 While so doing l was deeply struck, and in much the same manner that St. Paul was, when in Athens he observed "an altar to the unknown God"
 Yet, after all, it was but modern thing that held my attention so especially.
 noticed in the enumeration of the church officials of this congregation three whom you called "tythingmen, adhering to quaint old English orthography. and peraistently pre- serving here upon the distant shores of the new world links in the chain of genealogical evidence which bind you not only to the mother country but reach unerringly back to an elder and patriarchal one.
 This church and the First Congregational church are the only ones who elect and pre- serve these ancient Hebrew officers, for they are of pure and direct Hebrew origin and can be traced in the annuls of our own past generations back to the days of Nehemiah (xii, 44) and beyond.
 In the famous words of St. Paul, then spoken upon Mars Hill and Intentionally paraphrassd to suit this modern occasion, let me say that: Whom therefore ye, with your tythingmen, ignorantly .perpetuate. Them declare unto you; and that you should seek for them and find them, though the way marks be not far from every one of us-for from them VIC live and move and have our earthly being. as certain of your own poets have said: "For we are also their oGspring;" or as another of our poets has announced: "I, too, am of Arcadia"
 In Israel and among the earliest Anglo Saxons, of whom we have any positive rec ords, "tithing" was . number or company of ten householders who, dwelling near each other, were sureties or free pledges to the king for the good behavior of each other, a dscsnnsry; and "tithingman" was the the tens," into which "Israe" has always been divided. At the beginning of his History of the English People," Green gives an account of the Anglo-Saxon inva- sion of England, and particularly of the so- called Teutonic tribe of "Angles," from
  In decribing thelr political system, con- taining many democratic clements, he speaks of the different officers of their government and administration; and, among others, speaks of an official of theirs, regularly elected from time to time, and called by them "tything. man."
 He was an officer of petty police of in- ferior rank, the head of a"tythe" and in a general way had such powers as our own constables and policemen have, including the powers to make arrests.
 We have in Connecticut, and have always had, such an officer bearing this same name And, down to 1666, "tythingmen" were regularly and annually chosen in the town meeting by the town men or freeholders, just as they were in the most ancient England of Europe.
 They were sworn officers of a religious character. Their duties were to inquire after and make due presentment of all violations of the act, for tho duo observance of the Lords day, and to apprehend and carry be- fore the justice of the peace all persons vio- lating that act, to be dealt with according to law, provided they ware taken on sight CT on immediate information of others. Substantially. their powers were limited to the preservation of oxder in the churches, and did not include the general powers of arrest for other violations of the law. In the year 1866 the power of slecting Cu6m Whn Vbkou IEOIu t00 GOWuH ana GrAQ6- ferred back to the church societies, where it originally seems to have belonged and where it still remains.
 These "tithing mem" with their peculiarly religious functions, came with our ancestors into New England across the sea from Old England, and into Old England across the channel with their ancestors, the Teutonic "Angles" or ''Emgles;" and again with their ancestors, across the continent via "the Cri- mean peninsulas," via "the passes of the Caucasus," via the "narrow passages of the river Euphrates," in aye earlier. grandsr yet via the ''fords of the river Jordan" with their ancestors, where with Ephraim in a van, whose name s'a heifer" is "Anige. ha" or .'enge-ha. in the Hebrew, they went out of ''the land of lofty origines" to be lost, as God says, for purpose in the wilder. ness.
 To be lost! but note this, also to be 'found again." and found as the dominant people of the latter days.
 In the very last chapter of the Old Testa- , ment-the iv of 1alaohi, prophet whe