The following passages are excerpted from Ellsworth: A Gossip
About a Country Parish of the Hills and its People. Written in
1900, a century after the “birth” of Ellsworth, by Pastor
G.F. Goodenough of the Ellsworth Congregational church, the history
of Ellsworth contains good factual documentation on early Ellsworth.
Including chapters on the history of the Ellsworth Society, a
description of the Academy in Ellsworth, the Sunday School and
the Choir, the book also has a section on “Family Records.”
An original copy of the book may be viewed at the Historical Society,
and unbound copies may be purchased from the Society for $8.00.
Call Liz at (860) 364-5688 or e-mail to sharon.historical@snet.net
for order information.
ELLSWORTH TO STRANGERS
In the northwestern corner of Connecticut there is a triangle of which the Housatonic River is the hypotenuse, the Massachusetts line the base and the New York line the other side. The towns of Salisbury and Sharon form the bulk of the area, while a portion of the apex is set off to the town of Kent. Ellsworth is in this apex and takes a trapezoidal chunk from Sharon and Kent, from the Housatonic River to its largest western branch, the Oblong or Ten-Mile Creek. Thus having strategic command of these valleys and their railroads, formerly called Housatonic and Harlem, we find this plateau set up on rough peaks, containing many little sub-valleys with fertile slopes. Nature set it off by itself, for to reach it from anywhere but the sky you must rise. We, the Taconic range, overlook all Dutchess County and see the entire ridge of the Catskill Mountains on the west and Goshen and Warren ridges on the east. The named peaks are Sharon Mountain, Silver Hill, Buck Hill, Church Hill and Skiff Mountain. Others might be named Hippogriff’s Back, Lot Mountain, Dean Hill, One-tree Hill and Jorey Hill, but have as yet been nameless. For the last hundred years this region has been inhabited by somewhere from two hundred and fifty to five hundred souls, rarely less than the one or more than the other. Here the sections have had their designation. Ellsworth proper consists of the upper street, lower street and east street, or Abel street as it was once called. Then come West Woods, Handlin Town, Sharon Mountain, the lower end of White Hollow, now called the Hall district, down by the river where the four bridges of West Cornwall, Cornwall Bridge and Swift’s Bridge, and North Kent entice our own across; Guinea, Buck Hill, Skiff Mountain, and the upper end of Nodine Hollow complete our cycle. So our inhabitants have seven post-offices for their mail and seven religious denominations have houses of worship near enough for their convenience. It is hard to establish a center for an ellipse, although we have foci in the Congregational and Methodist Churches a mile apart. The winter problem complicates the communication with their foci by blocking all east and west roads, and making the north and south ones difficult. The transition from locomotion by horseback to four-wheeled and two-runnered vehicles has not been a good one for church attendance in our peculiar conformation of topography. There was a freedom and pleasure in the old mode of locomotion that has never been replaced by the new. It is nearly ten miles on the long diameter and almost six on the short one, from one bound to another, so the facilities by the valley roads and by the fiat of selectmen as to the best kept roads also have their bearing on Ellsworth’s unity and centrifugal activity.
A BIT FROM ELLSWORTH’S HISTORY
At the earliest of all town meetings, when the subject of an appropriate site for a meeting-house came up, it was decided so far northwest of the center of the town that it was even then supposed that sooner or later the southeasterly portion would object. The neighboring town of Kent had a similar problem with a meeting place too far south. Northern Kent joined Southeastern Sharon in her agitation and kept up that agitation, until a petition duly rendered at New Haven Sept. 11, 1793. Another and personal factor of delay entered. Rev. Cotton Mather Smith, D.D., came to Sharon and was settled in 1754. He proved to be a man of broad sympathies and a consecrated common sense, with his excellent education. Being for fair play, he met the complaint on the mountain halfway and continued to hold extra meetings in the house of Timothy St. John, now occupied by Deacon C.C. Dean, throughout his long pastorate and prove his interest in his hill parishioners. During the years when he was active and able there was little need of reopening the question, and it lay quiescent. But in 1793, as age began to tell upon him, the outlook for the future of Ellsworth under a successor, much more apt in that Edwardsean epoch of Congregationalism to be a representative of acute reason warmed over, than of breathing spiritual life, was not encouraging. Again our neighborhood was led to the onset by such redoubted fighters as Joel Chaffee and the St. Johns. Meeting together they began by planning a meeting-house, and where could it be better built, according to the ideals of the time, than near the cemetery?
THE ELLSWORTH CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH
But to return to those whose minds were intent
upon building a second church in the town of Sharon of Congregational
polity and Presbyterian creed. Meeting at the house of Capt. Thomas
St. John, they drew up a deed of purchase for five pounds from
Lemuel Youngs of land opposite the new cemetery, about where the
wagon-house of Mrs. Everett Dunbar now stands....A temporary building
was soon erected (1793) and occasionally they negotiated with
some young man to supply their pulpit; but as they could not legally
form another church they applied to the legislature for permission
to form themselves into a separate Ecclesiastical Society with
right to tax for ministerial support independently of Sharon Street.
April 27, 1797, sees an agreement with Kent and the
Legislature memorialized. Silas St. John of Ellsworth and Jehiel
Church of Kent presented the petition, Sept. 17, 1799; acted upon
Oct., 1799, by appointment of Com., consisting of Aaron Austin,
Julius Deming and David Smith, Esq. It passed through in May,
1800. Then, bringing it home in triumph, they appointed July 3,
1800, for the day to meet and ratify the action of the dilatory
Legislature of the State of Connecticut. From that day to this
there has been preaching and all other church functions in Ellsworth,
although on account of delays in settling a pastor it was not
thought best to formally break old church ties until March 15,
1802, when a definite hope of such a settled minister began to
brighten our horizon.
[The well known Connecticut minister Daniel Parker, of Yale College, was installed as the first minister of the Ellsworth Society in 1802. He was pastor for eleven years, but remained in Ellsworth, teaching “his great school” for three years afterwards.]
THE REVEREND DANIEL PARKER
Daniel Parker was a hearty man with a good education
and abundant energy. He was young with a small and growing family.
His power to preach was equaled by few in the county and excelled
only by Lyman Beecher, Father Samuel J. Mills and Mr. Crossman,
tradition tells us. In 1804-5, the Church not yet out of the woods,
contracted a debt of two hundred dollars which had two effects.
The Legislature was petitioned for permission to hold a lottery
and the question of a school to eke out his modest salary was
brought forcibly to Mr. Parker’s attention.
The lottery, although duly authorized, did not have
any permanent effect, the school did. (June 21, 1805, was the
date of the lottery vote.) Daniel Parker’s school was a remarkable
one. From Ohio to the seaboard, from Maine to Virginia, men sent
their children to him for instruction. He was obliged to seek
helpers, four of them, for his growing school, to say nothing
of new buildings. The quick growth of the school to two hundred
in three years and the consequent necessity to enter into the
business and financial world overbalanced the usual good sense
of Mr. Parker, until he began to promote schemes not so well founded;
and to encourage men with capital in Ellsworth by example and
precept to embark with him.