Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1897-02-09
OLD BEECHER STOVE.
CElEBRATeD CHURCH WAR RECALL
 ED BY ITS DISCOVERY.

The Antiatove People Much Wrought Up
 by Its Appearance In the Sacred Edi-
 nee-It wilI Bo Presented to Histor-
 teal Society.
 Henry T. Middleton, a New York an tiquarian, has found at the home of Ja- son Aldrich farmor living near East Cornwall, Conn, the old box stove which was the innocent cause of Litoh- fields celebrated stove war in the Sab bath day houso on Litohfeld green dur ing tbe ministry of the Rev. Lyman Bcecher, and has carried it off to New York in triumph. He had been in search of tho stove for several months. Aldrioh had owned the stovo for years, having bought it at m auction.
 The stove is box shaped affair, stand ing on slender wrought iron legs more than 18 inches long. It is 8 wood burner and will take in sticks feet long and 19 inches through. The door is at the front, and the pipe is at tho back.
 Fhefe are still 6 number of Litohfield people who remember the story of the stove war. Lyman Beecher, tho Cengre- l gationalist, preached in tho Sabbath day house from 1910 to 1896, and 1t was during his term of service there that the trouble occurred. Henry Ward Beecher, his sen, was born in this historic town, and moro than once referred to the mat ter in his after life as 0 good story illus trativo of the difficulties encountered by progressive church people ill the carly days.
 The box stove had already invaded the sacred but frigid precincts of num- bor of churches in Connecticut. Some of tho most influential persons among the Litchfeld Congregationalists deter mined to get one to sec what 1t would do toward tempcring tho frost fingered gales which howl in the winter across the bleak Litchfeld hills An unexpect- edly determined opposition was imme- diately encountered in the church. how | ever, and force war was waged against the stove, the principal grounds for which wero that it would deseerate the house of God that if would promote disease by rendering the members of the congregation pnduIy sensitive to cold, and. still further, that the auditors ought to be so imbued with tho fire and glow of religion as to pass unnotieed the rigors of winter during the delivery by the preacher of tho two long midday diseourses, which were then the inyari- able rule on Sunday
 I tho matter-the stove party and the antistove party-and for several weeks the stove was the topic of the hour. The deaeons of tho church were besought and buttonholed and the members were ar rayed individually on ono side or the oth- CT The women were especially active, many of the older ones who had hovered shivoringly over foot stoves in the old church for years being most pronounced Ill tho1r condemnauon or Tne lnnoyauon as an invention of the evil one.
 At length tho.stove party triemphed in so far that they were permitted to place Q stove and pipe in the church on trial, and one Saturday afternoon in November tho stove was put in place. It was set well into tho room, very near to the tenor gallery. Tho members of the stove committee were early at church on the following day to see how the much hated, new tangled production was received.
 As tho congregation came in the an- tisto7eitos noticeably turned their steps as far away as possible, and ono of their number, elderly Mrs. Peck, as soon as she reached her pew. flirted open large fan and began using it vigorously, de claring that the heart of the stove made her faint. At length aho created oonsid- erable oommotion in the church by throwing mp her hands and apparently swooning. Sho recovered. Then Deacon i Thomas Frowbridge came in. He was very venerable and ono of the simplest and most worthy of men, who had been l induced not to oppose the introduction of tho stove Ho walked up past the of lending article in question, shaking his head doubtingly as he reached out his hand and felt the heat from it, and he gathered up tho skirts of his groatooat l tremblingly as he took his seat at the 1 head of the broad aisle. Next entered Uncle Noah Stowe, a wealthy farmer of tho west end. who was rank anti stoyeito, and scowled at the detested stove which he had been bitterly de- nouncing for weeks Hezekiah Marsh, another farmer and also an antistove man. advanced nearly half way into the room before he saw the stove, and then he turned on his heel and walked out, the maddes5 man i'll Litchfield.
 All this seemed to strike the stove committee as ridiculous, and when they saw Editor Buneo of the village news paper como ill and, walking up to the stove, warm his hands over 1t in a thor oughly satisfied manner, rubbing them in evident onjoymont, they came near bringing down reproof upon them- selves i'll consequence of their unseemly levity.
 R,7t tbe oti7,aax cos,,a xx,ho,, AT~e pealx