Читать книгу The Inventive Life of Charles Hill Morgan: The Power of Improvement In Industry, Education and Civic Life - Allison Chisolm - Страница 13

The southernmost neighborhood in the sprawling town of Lancaster, Clintonville in the 1840s had “no fire department, no police, no cemetery, no poor-house,” recounted Dr. George M. Morse, Clinton’s first physician. And no mail service, as it was still officially part of Lancaster. A stagecoach would bring the mail from Shirley to L.F. Bancroft’s store for local collection.

“If people were in a hurry for their mail, they would drive over to Lancaster for it,” said Morse. By 1847, John C. Stiles had begun offering a twice-daily coach trip to Worcester’s Foster Street station. Railway service arrived in July 1848 with the Worcester & Nashua Railroad running through to Ayer, adding service to Worcester the following year.

There were only two direct roads out of town, one south to West Boylston and the other north to Lancaster. The other roads meandered around farms or were cart-paths. At the time of Clinton’s formal incorporation, on March 14, 1850, there were just four public streets, all others having been privately constructed. The following year, town records show J.B. Parker was paid $71 to build additional roads. He must have had a profitable business, as a $71 project then would cost about $1,630 in today’s dollars. The average annual income for manufacturing workers in rural New England was just over $300 in that period.

Life in Clintonville didn’t require many roads, however, since people tended to stay close to home. As Morse noted:

...amusements of all kinds were generally frowned upon and considered frivolous and non-edifying. Occasionally a tea party was given... The women generally did their own housework, and stayed at home and took care of their children. There was but little money, and people had little time to spend in mere amusement.

Clintonville didn’t have churches either. In the early 1840s, residents would make weekly omnibus trips to churches in Lancaster, but soon decided they preferred their own house of worship.

Most people attended the Congregational church, known at the time as orthodox Evangelical Congregational. While Massachusetts residents were no longer taxed to support it, what had been the state church until 1833 retained local loyalty. The Congregational church also retained local prominence, as Ingalls noted:

The social, educational and religious, as well as political interests were largely associated with the vestry of that church; there they held the first town meetings. It was open to all gatherings calculated to benefit the people.

Clintonville’s first “independent religious society,” as it was later described, was founded in June of 1844. Hiram Morgan helped establish what became the Second Evangelical Church of Lancaster that September, as he worked together with Joseph B. Parker and three others “to draw up a form of covenant, confession of faith and articles of discipline” to meet the spiritual needs of the growing population.

By November 1844, some 51 people had pledged to join from towns as close as West Boylston (Hiram and Lucina among those) and as far as Providence, Rhode Island, and the church at Andover Theological Seminary. Parker was named one of two deacons the following January, and continued to serve as superintendent of the “Sabbath School,” which had started well before the new church. Horatio Bigelow became the church’s choir director, and “when he was in town,” Ford noted, his brother Erastus would play the violin.

The congregation began meeting in Clintonville, in a chapel that seated 200. Quickly outgrowing that space, however, they sold the building on Main Street and built a new one on Walnut Street in 1847, known familiarly as “the Lord’s Barn,” due to its plain architecture.

In November 1848, Hiram Morgan was elected to the leadership position of Deacon, which he held until 1860. The church’s first pastor, Rev. Joseph M.R. Eaton, later described both Deacon Morgan and his wife Lucina as “devout...lights that did not become dim. Necessarily employed in the labors of the day, early and late, by careful planning and strict economy of time, the family Bible and the altar of prayer and thanksgiving were not forgotten.” Lucina Morgan was named the third president of the church’s Congregational Benevolent Society, succeeding the pastor’s wife in the position. An historic accounting of the church’s early years also includes C.H. Morgan on the list of members “most prominent for service.”

Charles thus grew up in an atmosphere of pious living coupled with the strong example of how to start a new church organization outside the established order. The church soon attracted lecturers on burning issues of the day—the abolition of slavery and temperance. One early speaker was temperance activist John B. Gough, just beginning his lifelong career of speaking out against the evils of drink across the nation. About sixty years later, Charles Hill Morgan would buy Gough’s estate “Hillside” in nearby Boylston.