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Chapter 3

THE HAVERHILL PASTORATE

CHARLES HYDE officially ended his work at Brimfield May 31, 1870. Even before his resignation the Mount Vernon Congregational Church of Boston had a committee in Brimfield checking his fitness to undertake an associate ministry with the famous Rev. Edward Morris Kirk, D.D. Hyde had actually preached from the Mount Vernon pulpit on at least two occasions and had made a favorable enough impression to warrant the committee's trip to Brimfield.

The committee could find nobody in Brimfield who would be critical of his ability, work habits and leadership. One man thought his walk was peculiar, as it was, in a sense; Hyde bounced each step as if on a miniature spring board.

But the committee upon reporting back found that Dr. Kirk had already blocked the possible call. He did not want an associate—any associate. So the search died there and then.

Shortly after the door closed at Mount Vernon, the congregation of the Centre Congregational Church at Haverhill, Mass., opened its door. Either Boston's Mount Vernon or Haverhill's Centre would have been an excellent church for him.

Haverhill, some 60 miles north of Boston, was a bustling town on important land and water highways. Son Henry describes this town:

Fairly homogeneous in population, its inhabitants principally engaged in the manufacture of shoes, it had not then passed into a position of such commanding importance in that line of industry as it now occupies, nor had it then been made the battleground for the fierce conflicts between capital and organized labor of later years. Many of the operatives at this period were still of native stock, the influx of French Canadians then having hardly begun. The congregation of the Centre Church was in part made up of the better class of these operatives, cutters for example, whose work demanded sufficient intelligence to gain for them good wages.¹

The record book of Centre Church contains the minutes of the Ecclesiastical Council called for the examination and installation of the Rev. Mr. Hyde:

Pursuant to letters missive from the Centre Congregational Church, Haverhill, an Ecclesiastical Council was convened at the vestry of that church, November 15, 1870 to assist in the examination, and if thought advisable, the installation of Rev. Charles M. Hyde as Pastor of said church. . . . .

After prayer by the moderator, the Council listened to the reading of the documents relative to the dismissal of the Pastor elect from his former charge, the call of the Centre Congregational Church to become their Pastor, and his acceptance of the same. The Council then proceeded to the examination of the candidate, first as to his Doctrinal belief and then as to his religious experience; at the close of which it was voted that the Council "be by themselves." The Council being by themselves, it was voted that the examination "be deemed satisfactory and that we proceed to the Installation of the candidate in the P.M."²

After installation he plunged not only into the problems of the church but also lined up with educational forces in the community. "Dr. Hyde, for so he was familiarly known in the later years of his life, possessed the happy faculty of original suggestion. . . to comparatively few is it given to see passing events in their true perspective and seize on those worthy of distinction."³

The Haverhill pastorate, in and of itself, was an effective crusade for Christ, deeply appreciated by a grateful following, but for purposes of narrative, relatively unexciting. Attention is therefore given in this Haverhill period to other services he rendered.

He was Haverhill's most community spirited leader in efforts involving education and charity. He engaged in a broad sweep of town interests—the rehearsal for an incomparable drama of acts and scenes that he would later stage in Hawaii.

Temperance does not classify strictly as either a church or community activity. It is a combination of both, and unlike either is an activity where the zeal of the crusader is the indispensable ingredient for success. The Rev. Mr. Hyde had not mixed in temperance causes until he reached Haverhill. Likely enough he had never witnessed drinking or its effects comparable to what he was now seeing. The problem was acute in this manufacturing area; but with the intuitive touch of the crusader he became highly successful in fashioning approaches and solutions in the best temperance tradition.

The Monday Evening Club of Haverhill had been formed about the time Hyde was at Princeton Seminary. Shortly after his arrival in Haverhill he was tapped for membership.⁴ Usually composed of 20 men, intellectual lights, it met monthly with programs composed of impromptu comments on the current social science scene climaxed with a major paper or essay. This latter item was usually a carefully prepared literary effort of the membership, each one taking his monthly turn.

A club of this nature could be found in many towns throughout New England, but was certainly a traditional adjunct of Massachusetts towns. Hyde had formed a club akin to this in Brimfield—a Book Club where the men met and discussed literature of all ages. To accept membership in the Haverhill Monday Evening Club was like transferring from one club to another. The whole exposure to this idea would later find him restless in Honolulu until he could round up a small group of reasonably compatible individuals and start another Monday Evening Club under the name of the Social Science Association.

His participation with these twenty "social scientists" in the pursuit of literary and cultural objects illustrates his widening intellectual curiosity. A list of his impromptu Five Minute Talks excerpted from the minutes clearly pictures his mind at work:

The French cession of Alsace and Lorraine to Germany

A recent will provides for the ringing of a bell periodically for all time

Dr. Bacon's article on Railway Legislation

Affairs in Japan

New discoveries in the Polar Sea by Captains Olaf and Johnson

Bulgarian visitor's description of wine culture

Philosophy of Herbert Spencer

Fascination of the scenery of the St. Lawrence and its rapids

Pulmonary subjects find relief in Colorado parks

Accuracy of engineering in the Hoosic Tunnel

Life of Powers the sculptor

Dr. Schleimann at the site of ancient Troy

Attachment of Fitz Greene Halleck for a Quaker lady

"Et tu Brute" not historical but original with Shakespeare

Wide differentiation and variety mark this list which is far from complete. Even this sample shows a remarkable range of human interests.

In the essays (called Exhibits in the minutes) Hyde donned a cloak of hard dry fabric. He prepared two essays in his six years at Haverhill and in these treated controversial subjects head on. In the Darwinian Theory of the Origin of Species, he contended that the hypothesis quite failed to establish its own obligations or to explain conflicting phenomena and was on the whole quite unable to withstand a careful criticism. This essay roused animated discussion!

The other essay dealt with the "Nature of Suffrage, its rightful qualifications and practice and the Safeguard of Popular Government." Here was Hyde the teacher using the blackboard to develop his theme graphically. His unsurprising conclusion was that "hope for good government lay in selecting upright nominees."

Aside from any other benefits, this Monday Evening Club was a totally different pulpit than the one at Centre Church. Here he could maintain a layman's dialogue with his fellow townsmen on nonreligious subjects.

Public education was another interest. He was a member of the Haverhill School Committee for 1872 and 1873 representing Ward 4. "During his term of office, the Committee decided to vacate the Old Haverhill Academy Building that had been used as a high school since 1837 and to build. The new building, 'the long-looked for Canaan,' was occupied in 1874."⁵ Generally the Committee was concerned about the qualifications of teachers and examinations of pupils. The Rev. Mr. Hyde was a "visiting" committee member, stopping in at schools and classes with some regularity.

A private school, Bradford Academy, appointed him to its Board of Visitors, a group formed in 1863 to take over from the trustees the annual check on student progress. This school stood on the other side of Haverhill's Merrimack River, away from the town proper. His first appointment was at the bottom of the roster in 1872. He moved rapidly to the top of the list. In his last year in this assignment, 1876-1877, his residence was listed from Boston.

"The Board of Trustees were overly conservative . . . apathetic . . . elected for life . . ."⁶ The School, founded in 1803 was, despite its trustees, a strong academic force in the Haverhill area. On one occasion, he reported he "had never seen more thorough work in Latin at any school or college."

The public library drew his attention also. He rejoiced in successful overtures to obtain a $30,000 grant for a new free public library from the Hon. E. J. M. Hale. He reported on this gift to the Monday Evening Club and covered it in his announcements from the pulpit. He urged his parishioners to support the project.

On one occasion, in company with Dr. Seeley, a local fellow preacher, he started a movement to establish a "Women's Union for Good Works."

He had ever had a dedication to the field of foreign missions, a feeling nurtured by exposure to discussions in early family years, the seminary and the pastorate. Suddenly, through an incident connected with his School Committee role, the light of the mission field was turned on for him.

The school authorities wanted the site on which the old Atwood house was standing for a new high school building and the City of Haverhill purchased it for that purpose. Harriet Atwood, the third of nine children born there, had died at the age of 19, just as she arrived in India as a missionary. She was one of the many young people who thronged to the mission fields under the authority and guidance of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.⁷

The Rev. Dr. Hyde, filled with the message as he related it at the memorial service and subsequently wrote it out for publication, found the poignant trail beckoning to him. Dr. Rufus Anderson of the Prudential Committee of the American Board heard of Hyde's recital of this touching tragedy and of course had followed his highly successful work in the Haverhill pastorate and the earlier Brimfield charge. A ministry school in Hawaii for natives was in need of resuscitation and Anderson began to feel that Hyde might be the one for the job. It was not in response to the "beckoning" however, that termination of his services was, shortly after that memorial service, recorded in the Haverhill church minutes. He had no immediate mission plans:

. . . The five years of pastoral labor which I shall have completed tomorrow in connection with this Centre Congregational Church and Society have been to me a busy and blessed period of service . . .

In the Providence of God, however, consideration of personal duty in reference to the present conditions of affairs in this Church and Society, have convinced me that I ought to ask your consent, as I do herewith, to the termination of my pastoral relations to you, in order that I may be free to enter into other engagements, in another field of labor.⁸

When this letter was read, a committee was appointed to wait on the Rev. Dr. Hyde to express regret and ask that he withdraw his resignation. He thought this over and two weeks later the clerk read his reply:

The request of the church that I would, if consistent with my views of duty, withdraw my resignation, I cannot but regard as a gratifying testimonial of persistent confidence and affection . . .

But to those who would thus interpose what they may consider a needless and unaccountable termination of a five year pastorate of harmony and prosperity, I must say that I have not acted unadvisedly. I cannot see it to be my duty to withdraw my letter of resignation and I reiterate the request I have made.⁹

Following essential Congregational landmarks an Ecclesiastical Council was convened December 15, 1875 at the vestry to listen to Dr. Hyde. After hearing his explanation the Council deliberated in secret for half an hour:

. . . After listening to the presentation of all the facts in the case it was unanimously resolved that it is expedient that the Pastoral Relations now existing between Rev. Charles M. Hyde D. D. and the Centre Church and Society be dissolved at the close of the year 1875 . . . We are surprised and pained to learn of the Existence of a state of things in this Church and Society which makes it seem to Rev. Dr. Hyde to be his duty to withdraw from a position which he has so ably and successfully filled. We are happy to make special note of the Ministry of Rev. Dr. Hyde in this place, as having been attended with the blessing of God in the Conversion of Souls; in the quickening and enlargement of the Church; and in the compacting of this Religious Society and we do most heartily commend our Brother to the Confidence of our Churches as an able Preacher, a tender and faithful Pastor, and a Christian man, whose character is a recommendation of the Doctrines he has taught and a pillar of strength to any cause . . .¹⁰

All in all this was a strange termination. No record shows or will ever show the convincing testimony he must have presented. Thus, irrevocably, the pastorate at Haverhill was ended. In retrospect, a famous theologian, the Rev. Dr. Charles M. Clark, commented on how the Hyde-Haverhill record was of such quality that it seemed providence had shaped his path to Hawaii:

Mr. Hyde was a man of fine presence, urbane manners, genial spirit, "a loving pastor, devoted to his flock, and greatly beloved in the houses of those whose hearts were pressed by want, or anguished in grief." Like his two predecessors, he was a man of unusually scholarly tastes and abilities. Even while here he was greatly interested in education. He was also greatly interested in missions. To his scholarly tastes and ability he added a quite uncommon executive capacity, the ability to conceive large plans and to move strongly and wisely and successfully for their accomplishment. It was not strange, therefore, that he was chosen to lead in a new educational institution, under the American Board in Honolulu, for the training of a native ministry, and that he became a foremost factor in all educational work in the Hawaiian Islands from his arrival there in 1877, till his death in 1899. In Dr. Hyde there was embodied in peculiar degree the instinct of New England Congregationalism for education, and the capacity of the Congregational ministry to lead in educational work. Dr. Hosford was pre-eminently a pastor; Dr. Munger, a preacher; but Dr. Hyde . . . a teacher and educator.¹¹

Eighteen seventy-six turned out to be a year of the unexpected. Charles Hyde's sudden conclusion of the Haverhill pastorate temporarily made him a free lance. His visits to the old home towns of Brimfield and Lee stimulated invitations to write their town histories. By coincidence, but for different reasons, each town was ready for a celebration and a publication.

The town of Lee was observing the centennial of its founding in 1877 and because the Hyde families had been long and favorably associated there, and one member of a Hyde family had achieved renown throughout New England as a scholar and a preacher, it was decided to ask this man to deliver the Centennial Address and prepare a history for publication—the Rev. Dr. Charles McEwen Hyde.

The history of Lee, as prepared by Hyde, is a massive compendium of war, rebellion, and peace. It takes in town meetings, industries, institutions, crises, biographies, roads and trails, rivers and mountains. The research led Hyde across the breadth of Massachusetts.¹²

The Brimfield history was not based on its own centennial but was rather a spontaneous response to a joint resolution of Congress. The United States was due for its centennial shortly. For an account of the project and Hyde's involvement in it we turn to the book of Brimfield history as he organized it:

Be it resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That it be, and is hereby recommended . . . to the people of the several states, that they assemble in their several counties or towns on the approaching Centennial anniversary of our National Independence, and that they cause to have delivered on such day an historical sketch of said county or town from its formation . . . and [a] . . . copy in print or manuscript, be filed in the office of the Librarian of Congress.

By vote of the Legislature of Massachusetts, a copy of this resolution was transmitted June 13, to the clerks of each of the cities and towns of the Commonwealth.

On receipt of this communication Mr. Henry F. Brown, the town clerk of Brimfield, presented the matter to a few of the citizens, who, while approving of the object, thought it desirable to postpone the matter to a later date than the one named in the Resolution of Congress, and on Sunday, August 27, a notice was read in church inviting all persons interested in securing as many of the facts of the settlement and early history of the town as might be done by a Historical Address and other means, to meet at the Selectmen's room the following evening. At this meeting . . . Rev. Dr. G. M. Hyde was selected to prepare and deliver the Address.

Wednesday, October 11, dawned one of Autumn's brightest, and at an early hour the roads from every direction were thronged with teams and foot passengers, all eager to be on hand for Brimfield's grandest and proudest occasion . . .

[a] procession marched to the church, where it arrived about 11 o'clock, and which was filled to overflowing before but a small part of the people had been admitted. Prayer was offered by Rev. M. L. Richardson of Sturbridge, after which the president delivered the address of welcome, introducing the orator of the day, Rev. G. M. Hyde, D. D.

. . . it was voted "that the Rev. G. M. Hyde, D. D., be requested to write out for publication, with such additional facts as he may wish to incorporate, his historical address on the early history of Brimfield delivered October 11, 1876."¹³

Carefully and thoroughly he assembled thick files of notes, and was preparing the manuscripts when the interrupting hand of providence was laid on his head; now, his destiny was in Hawaii. He could not deliver the Lee Centennial Address, nor could he finish the town's history. He turned over the completion of the task to his uncle Alexander; with the work so far advanced, he was credited with the authorship. The Brimfield book was also given over to other hands, but again, because the notes, statistics, and genealogies had been largely completed, Hyde was designated author. This history was published in 1879, the Lee history in 1878.

He was hard at work on the research and text of the histories when an inquiry from the American Board of his possible interest in the mission position in Hawaii reached him. This was in November 1876.

His life was confusion in the agonizing weeks of consideration until January 16, 1877 when the clouds lifted and he could see his way clear to a new horizon, the Hawaiian Islands.

NOTES

1. Henry Knight Hyde, op. cit., pp. 23-24.

2. Centre Congregational Church Records, 1856-1886.

3. Henry Knight Hyde, op. cit., pp. 21-22.

4. Monday Evening Club of Haverhill, Minutes. "December 12, 1870. Rev. C. M. Hyde nominated for membership . . . January 61, 1871. Rev. G. M. Hyde ballotted on and the result was unanimous."

5. Letter Donald C. Freeman to author, Jan. 6, 1970.

6. Jean S. Pond and Dale Mitchell, Bradford, A New England School (Haverhill, 1954).

7. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions of Boston was largely a non-denominational effort. In this book it is referred to as the American Board, ABCFM, or simply, Boston.

8. Centre Congregational Church Records, 1856-1886, Nov. 18, 1875.

9. Ibid., Dec. 1.

10. Ibid., Dec. 15.

11. The Rev. Charles M. Clark, Historical Sermon given at the 75th Anniversary exercises of Centre Church Oct. 11-12, 1908. Clark was The Waldo Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Bangor Theological Seminary.

12. Charles M. Hyde, Lee, A Centennial and a History (Springfield, Mass., Clark W. Bryan & Co., 1878), pp. 352.

13. Charles M. Hyde, History of Brimfield, Historical Celebration of the Town of Brimfield (Springfield, Mass., Clark W. Bryan & Co., 1879).