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Chapter 2

THE BRIMFIELD "CALL"

THE BULKY, rather stilted, autonomous ordination processes of a Congregational church were first officially applied in the career of Charles McEwen Hyde upon his receiving the call to his first full pastorate at Brimfield, Massachusetts. This call in the words of his son, ". . . came to him largely through the influence of his uncle William at Ware, who was well and favorably known by the Brookfield conference of churches.

"The church in Brimfield [the Brimfield Church and Society] had a long history back of it, having been organized in 1724 when the township included parts of what are now Palmer, Monson, Warren, Holland and Wales.

"Beginning at a time of close union between church and state when none but church members could vote at town elections, when the bounds of parish and town were co-terminal, and when the population was equally taxed for the support of both, it had exercised a most important influence in the town's history."¹

This beautiful New England town, founded in 1731, is somewhat off the mainstream of traffic and is therefore preserved esthetically and culturally today, in the same appearance and with the same town manners as in 1862.

Henry Hyde goes on about the town and its people:

The town itself was one of the oldest in Western Massachusetts and though not large, possessed a number of families of good New England stock, in many cases the descendants of the first settlers. Nestling peacefully among the hills, the lack of water-power had fortunately prevented the desecration of its natural beauty by the erection of mills and factories. The railroads too had passed it by and so, larger than many New England rural communities, it had retained the characteristics of the best stage of development of such towns.

Almost entirely agricultural in its interests the town has ever maintained an active interest in church and educational work, thus living up to its best inherited traditions. The men enjoyed discussions of knotty religious problems and the women planned for the aid of religious enterprises far removed from their own borders: a people hard to move, not given to outward manifestations of enthusiasm, yet possessed of the saving characteristics of honesty and common-sense, not treating the deep things of life lightly but according them the reverence they deserved. . .A rural community like this, somewhat removed from direct contact with the larger movements of the world, naturally becomes more or less self-centered and the harmless gossip of the neighborhood relieves the pressure of isolation. As when the New England farmer makes a new clearing and starts to cultivate the land before given to forest growth, he finds the soil strong; so, when the New Englander's reserve is cleared away and the man himself is subjected to the mellowing influences of high and Christian ideals, we find him ready and responsive to them—a strong man—strong in his individuality and determination.²

The origins and political processes of a New England town are quaintly and tidily illustrated in the Brimfield Town Meeting Records:

RECORD OF THE FIRST TOWN-MEETING

Att an annull meeting holden att the meeting hous in Brimfield, to Elect town officers for the town by order of the General Court, march 16: 1731 First Robert Moulton Choos moderator the meeting and work of the day.³

Another item gives homely evidence of the interlaced routine of town and church:

PETITION FOR PRIVILEGE TO ERECT A PEW.

Brimfield March 12th 1759

We the Petitioners Do Send Greeting &c to the Honourable town for Several Reasons, Do humbly Beg leave of your honours that you would give us the place over y° woemens Stairs to build a pew upon our own Cost, one reason we give is that we are soe Crouded at Sundry times that we cant hardly get a seat to sit in, & the other Reasons is, that whereas there is a pew on the other Side, we Reasonably think that it will beautifie the house.⁴

Towns in New England were strong elements in colonial government. Examples of this close participation abound in Brimfield's town records:

REVOLUTIONARY WAR.

At a meeting of the town of Brimfield, January 14, 1773. To act on the following, viz.:

"To see if the Town will take into consideration the matter of Grievance that are supposed to be brought upon by certain acts of Parliment, and if they think proper to choose a committee or committees to confer with other Towns on Matters of Grievance, and in every respect to act upon it as they may think proper."⁵

Town meetings were conducted "in his Majestie's Name," the last of which (under that name) was held March 12, 1776. The following year meetings were called in the name of the "Government and People of Massachusetts Bay" and in 1783 in the name of the "Commonwealth of Massachusetts."

The Rev. Mr. Hyde details the wars and connected events supported by Brimfield town: Revolutionary War, Provincial Congress, Massachusetts Convention on the Constitution, Shay's Rebellion, War of 1812 and the Civil War. It was this last which was engaging the thoughts and energies of Brimfield citizens when he arrived. They were in the midst of enrolling another military company and loading wagons with beef. He was ordained amidst this excitement of war preparations.

The Brimfield Congregational Ecclesiastical Council was called and organized August 19, 1862. Seventeen ministers and deacons from Brimfield and surrounding villages found that Hyde had received a unanimous call, that he had his certificate of church membership, and his license to preach. The group, which included the Rev. Dr. Mark Hopkins (he had horsebacked all the way from Williamstown), examined him respecting his views of theology, his religious experience and his motives for entering the ministry. Satisfied, the council voted unanimously to proceed to ordination. The Rev. Dr. Hopkins preached in the ordination exercises.

Thus does a Congregational preacher advance into acceptance by the congregation that calls him. The church records start the 30-year-old Rev. Hyde on his ministerial path at the first business meeting September 4, 1862, in a fast roundup of assignments prophetic of the pace he would be setting for himself for the rest of his life. These are the items approved that day: "Hyde was received as a member of the Church upon the recommendation from the Congregational Church in Sheffield. . .chosen Moderator and Clerk of the Church. . . chosen member of the Standing Committee. . .received on behalf of the Ladies Benevolent Association a new communion service."⁶

The Rev. Mr. Hyde signed the minutes which he had written of this, his first meeting. He was to write in his beautiful longhand all the minutes throughout his pastorate. Actually, this was presageful, for his usual role in many of the churches, community agencies and business enterprises with which he would later be connected would be that of secretary or recorder. His handwriting for public review was carefully and meticulously done. His handwriting in personal correspondence was something else again.

The Rev. Mr. Hyde had been preaching at the Brimfield church since the first of April; he was called May 22 and ordained August 19, all in 1862. He was therefore prepared to comment on most of 1862 in his first annual report. Aside from the usual listing of church events, the report covers fully the church participation in the Civil War:

Our Church has supported the government in its defense work. The Ladies have labored with commendable diligence in furnishing the M.S. [Massachusetts State] Sanitary Commission such articles as might be of comfort to the suffering soldiers. The Young Men have volunteered at the call of our constituted authorities and left home and friends and peaceful occupations for the hardships of the Camp and the exposures of a soldier's life. This church has parted with some of its members thus for a reason and some have been brought back to find a resting place by the side of their departed kindred.⁷

His second year was reported largely in terms of the spiritual fervency of his church members and the moral support accorded the government in the war. A kind of stylized dissatisfaction marked the reference to the one while an obvious vein of righteousness in official government warfare characterized the other. Both comments are reproduced for their value as clues to Hyde thinking:

In the view of our religious history for the past year while we have occasion for devout Thanksgiving to God for the mercies we have received, we cannot but lament that we have made no better improvement of Divine favors. While we may not have been guilty of positive worldliness, preferring earthly things to spiritual, there has been too little appreciation of the supreme importance of eternal realities. Undoubtedly engaged as we have been so much of this past year on the outward business of the house of God, the attention of the people has been necessarily, in a measure, diverted from higher objects.

While mercifully spared the sight and experience of the horrors of civil war, we have not been uninterested in the contest, or, regardless of the principles of moral right and political justice, involved in it. Many prayers have been put up to the God of battles that He would prosper our righteous cause. The fourth Sabbath of the month has usually been observed as a concert of prayer for this object, and the appointments by the National and State authorities of Public Thanksgiving and Praise or Humiliation and Prayer, have been publicly observed.⁸

The Rev. Mr. Hyde was elected a trustee of the Hitchcock School December 13, 1862. This was a private school endowed by a benefactor who himself possessed no schooling, Samuel Austin Hitchcock.⁹

This man supplies a remarkable parallel to Charles Reed Bishop, banker and philanthropist, who was to be a close Hyde associate in charitable and cultural interests some years later in Hawaii. The parallel is significant in that both were self-made merchandisers and generous donors to churches, schools, and other community enterprises. His father was a hatter and a tailor; but he and two partners opened the first dry goods commission house in New England. Then he became the prime mover in the Hamilton Woollen Co., retiring in poor health to Brimfield.

His charities and grants were enormous for his day; $175,000 to Amherst College, $120,000 to Andover Theological Seminary, $5000 to Hyde's church in Brimfield as a "fund to aid in support of an Evangelical Calvinistic Orthodox Trinitarian Congregational Minister," $90,000 to found the Hitchcock Free High School, and many others.

Hyde was chosen for the school's Prudential Committee which regulated the employment of teachers and handled the building program. He was re-elected each year until his resignation from the Brimfield church in 1870. But the need of his counsel followed him to his next parish at Haverhill, as in 1875 the legislature added four nonresident trustees to the board, and among them was named "the Rev. C. M. Hyde of Haverhill."¹⁰

There is a record of brief war service in the Hyde file. In 1864 the students learned he was going into the army as chaplain and asked him to defer his going to give them some of his time for religious exercises. A modest postponement seemingly caused no problem with army authorities—his work could be undertaken at will—so he conducted the exercises requested. As a result, fifteen students united with the church.

He then left for the service which took him away from Brimfield for seven weeks. His duty was in a field hospital at City Point, Virginia. No description of this service has been found.

But the greatest event in 1864 was the marriage of Mary Thirza Knight and Charles McEwen Hyde. She was a graduate of the first class of Hitchcock Free School and a native of Brimfield, born there August 6, 1840. She was further educated at Mrs. Willard's Seminary, Troy, N. Y., and at Oberlin College. "Disregarding the old advice," wrote Henry Hyde, "never to marry in one's own congregation he wooed and won Mary, the youngest daughter of Dr. Ebenezer Knight, the village physician. Unlike in many ways, each seemed to possess in part what the other lacked and no better argument was ever made for the marriage of opposites than their long and happy married life, in which a common ideal of consecration and service dominated the minor differences of thought and temperament."¹¹

They were married October 10, 1864 in their Brimfield church. Mary Hyde entered immediately with zest into the role of minister's wife. She achieved great praise as a religious leader among women.

The Rev. Mr. Hyde reviewed 1865 much as he wrote of 1863:

Never before has the general health of the community been better, never before has there been much greater deadness in spiritual things. The outward business of the house of God was never in better condition, but the spiritual condition of the church has been far below the apostolic standard of holy living.

The year has been one of great public excitement. The closing scenes of the Slaveholders' Rebellion, the assassination of Pres. Lincoln, the entrance of a new President and Congress upon the conduct of national affairs in a most critical juncture in the nation's history, have demanded appropriate notice in the exercises of public meetings.

This generation can never forget the Sabbath which followed the murder of the President, the deep feelings of sorrow and horror it occasioned, and yet also the calm trust which the people evinced in the God who delights to exercise loving kindness, righteousness, and judgement in the earth.

With the return of peace, with a government now free from complicity with the iniquitous system of negro slavery, with indications on every hand of unprecedented prosperity, we need now to feel more than ever our dependency on the blessing of God for any real permanent good. In the privileges and opportunities with which we are in these days favored, we have high incitements to duty. God is calling his church in this nation to earnest endeavor. Let us consecrate ourselves anew and certainly to the will of God, the service of Christ, to the spread of holiness, with fidelity, love and zeal.¹²

In the next year's report he noted with no great joy the completion of a chapel by the Adventists at nearby East Corner. This kind of "invasion" usually bothered him as a disturbing factor in his church territory and it was to happen again and again. Opposing Protestant denominations had little sensitivity for territorial jurisdiction. This feeling was deep in the Rev. Mr. Hyde's mind because his church was the town church, well established in its historic beginnings and, as far as he was concerned, effectively filling the Brimfield needs.

Young and restless he organized the Pastor's Bible Class. This he taught on Monday evenings and attendance quickly soared to the point where it became a major item in his Brimfield program.¹³

In analyzing the Scriptures he had to prepare his own curriculum and regularly outlined the material on a blackboard. He was developing a formal instructional approach which would reach its most effective employment in Hawaii. His role was to be chiefly that of teacher.

In 1869 he translated into action his earnest annual complaint, of spiritual matters being secondary in growth and purpose to material affairs. This was a great revival undertaken in January, February and

March. It was most satisfactory to him. With the enlistment of the greater number of the business leaders, the revival was well planned and almost the entire town came into the fold.

In the summer of 1869, the Rev. Mr. Hyde and his church played host to the fiftieth anniversary party of the Sunday Schools of the Brookfield Association (23 churches). He gave the historical address. He had an innate sense of history which was hand-to-hand with his sense of mission to teach.¹⁴

But Brimfield, although a major parish, was not an important religious goal. The time to consider a larger church had come. In undergoing the resignation process he found it as complicated as the summons to the position, only in reverse:

At the close of the afternoon service, the Pastor announced his resignation of the pastoral office, and asked the Church and Society to unite with him in calling an Ecclesiastical Council that the pastoral relation might be duly dissolved, according to the forms and usages of our denomination.

A meeting of the church was called and the resignation accepted. This was communicated to the Parish and invitations to be represented at an Ecclesiastical Council were announced.

The Ecclesiastical Council was convened May 21, 1870: Minutes of the Ecclesiastical Council called in accordance with the tenor of the letter of invitation, copied above to consider the expediency of dismissing Rev. C. M. Hyde.

We cordially commend Bro. Hyde to the churches as a sound and effective preacher of the Gospel. He is regarded by his brethren in the ministry as a scholar of rare attainments, able in his presentation of truth, wise in counsel, devoted and faithful in his work as a pastor.

Reasons for his resignation have to be advanced and accepted. The reason stated in this Ecclesiastical Council Minutes, ". . .the want of generous support, which since the Society has such ability, we regard as sufficient. . ."¹⁵

Either a friendly naivete was being employed by the Council members to ease Charles Hyde's determination to move to a larger church or if he placed great stress on this point himself he was the one being naive for the "want of a generous support" was to haunt him all the days of his life. The real motivation was simple. He was seeking new vistas, new fields to apply his restless energy—and climb another step up the ecclesiastical stairs. He was "dismissed" to Centre Church in Haverhill, Massachusetts, November 1870, with "recommendations."

NOTES

1. Henry K. Hyde, Charles McEwen Hyde, a Memorial, pp. 15-17.

2. Ibid.

3. Charles M. Hyde, History of Brimfield, (Springfield, Mass., Bryan Printers, 1879), Appendix, p. 287.

4. Ibid., Appendix, p. 307.

5. Ibid.

6. Brimfield Congregational Church, Records of the Clerk, Sept. 4, 1862.

7. Ibid., Annual Report, 1862, Jan. 1, 1863.

8. Ibid., 1863, Jan. 1, 1864.

9. Charles M. Hyde, Samuel Austin Hitchcock (Boston, Alfred Mudge & Son, 1874), pamphlet.

10. Ibid.

11. Henry Knight Hyde, op. cit., pp. 19-20.

12. Brimfield Congregational Church, op. cit., 1864, Jan. 1, 1865.

13. Ibid., 1865, Jan. 4, 1866.

14. Ibid., 1869, Jan. 1, 1870.

15. Ibid., May 21.