The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-08-19
CENTENNIAL ANNIVERSARY
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 brought The same sun, to be sure, shone on them as shines on us, and a weather record kept at that time in forms us that the day. was pleasant But in the things under the sun there was great difference. George Wash ington was president of the United States and Samuel Huntingdon was governor of Connecticut. Eli Whitney had just invented the cotton sin. The few people who gathered on that 1Sth of August on Hamden Plain, we may be very sure, did mot travel to or fro on electric cars and have their five cent fares rung up on an indicator. Even wagons were comparatively rare, and wagon roads were not as plentiful as now. New Haven's only weekly news paper Qhere were no daiies them, we find, contains that week am advertise ment of a new line of stages from New Haven to Hartford, through Hamden and Cheshire. This old Cheshire road is spoken of as the nearest and much the best road, and 1t Is added that no more than eight seats would be taken in one carriage without consent of the passengers. Railroads of amy sort were not heard of in Connecticut for forty years after, and the face of the country was not disfigured by unsightly tele- graph poles. The population of Con necticut was then only about 250,OO0 and New Haven was "a scattered village of a little over 5000 inhabitants, less than the town of Hamden has now. The public square that has been so long the pride of the city was unfenced and crossed and recrossed by wagon ruts, and overgrown with brushes and weeds The most elegant part of the city was at the edge of the harbor.
 Having now gotten ourselves a little accustomed to their surroundings. we may look in upon the fathers as they were founding our church. An ecclesi- astical council was in session, having adjourned from the 9th of August tC give the people time to get their letters of dismission from the churches tC which they had belonged and now they were forming them into new church of Christ among the sisterhood oi churches. And now we need to look back a little into what was then history | to them, for our history strikes it's roots | into the past. In doing So we shall see | as the first characteristic of this church | that it was a legitimate heir in a line l of struggles for religious liberty. Tho l fathers who founded New Haven colony were in quest of religious liberty, bu | they, in turn, became intolerant of thost | who did not agree with them. Down tC 1742 there wasbut the one church in New | Haven, established by law and sup ported by town taxes. Then came tht so-caIled Great Awakening" the resul
 of the preaching of George Whitefield- a great religious excitement throughou New England. It met with very grea
 and severe opposition from the ruling | powers, both In church and state. I reformed the lives of multitudes, bu divided many churches, those going of | being called New Lights It had tha effect in New Haven. The pastor O I the first and only church and a major l ity of the church and society were op | posed to this new preaching. Thos' who favored the revival and were call ed ''New Lights seeded and formed what was called the White HaveY church. But the "old Lights" were il majority in the first church, and they | had the law to help them, which pro vided that there could be no preaching in the town except by the permission of the established church or it's pastor and they used the law to embarrass arC suppress them. Rev Dr. Finley, wht was afterwards president of Princeton college, was arrested and punished fo
 preaching to the White Haven church so bitter was the feeling against tn, New Lights" But 1t could be only { metter of time when they should ge l their liberty and after few year they were established and recognized as a, separate society. But after abou | thirty years number of their members for some reason which does mot appea Git may have been for the sake of great CT lberty) seeded and formed wha was known as the Fair Haven church
 which had its house of worship wher the United church now stands. Now this was the church which Is referred t in the first records of this church Q being the one to which must of ou original members had belonged. Righ here should come in the story of severa pages of interesting church records which have just been found amon some of the old papers of Rev. Abraham filling in the possessions of his descend ants in another town, and which az
 pear to be in his handwriting. Fror
 them it would appear that our father
 in Hamden had a struggle for thei
 separate church privileges and tha their parent churches were in their tur,
 unyielding. These records tell us tha
 an ecclesiastical council convened on tn
 8th of March, 1791 at the house of Car
 tain Caleb Mix in Hamden, "by desir
 of a number of the inhabitants of tha
 place in order to give them advice an
 assistance in forming them into par
 ticular church." There "were presen
 Rev. Benjamin Beech from Derby, Rev
 John Lewis from Salem, and Messrs Josiah Turrel and Matthias Hitchcoc
 from Salem, and Levi Tomlinson fror
 Derby, delegates" Rev. John Levi