Celebrating Charlton-Freehold's Two Hundred Years of Service to Jesus Christ by James Hall, church historian. May 18, 1986. Messenger Press, Ballston Spa, N.Y. Bicentennial Theme: "Crown Him the Lord of Peace"
Bicentennial Committee: Carol Bennett; Bob Bunnell; Marilyn Gray; James Hall; Ruth Hall; Janet Moffat; Florence Robinson; Carol Smith (Mrs. Berb); Shirley Roman.
Bicentennial Anniversary Letter from the Pastor Rev. Robert Bunnell
Dear Friends of Charlton Freehold:
On behalf of the Session and our Anniversary Committee, I welcome you to our celebrations on May 18 and again on Founder's Day, June 1, 1986.
This booklet and the various displays in the Academy are the work of our able church historian, James Hall. He has devoted many hours of research to this project, and we are very much in his debt.
Two hundred years ago the Presbyterian Church was deeply involved in helping a struggling new nation to design a system of government which safeguarded the religious and civil liberties of all persons. In the Historic Principles of Church Order, we said in 1788:
"God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in anything contrary to his Word, or beside it, in matters of faith and worship."
"Therefore we consider the rights of private judgment, in all matters that respect religion, as universal and unalienable: We do not even wish to see any religious constitutions aided by the civil power, further than may be necessary for protection and security, and at the same time, be equal and common to all others."
This opposition of government preference for one religion over another remains an enduring contribution of the Presbyterian Church to the Common life of our nation.
In 1986 the Presbyterian Church is making another major contribution by our ministry of peacemaking. As we affirmed in our Confession of 1967, "God's reconciliation in Jesus Christ is the ground of the peace, justice, and freedom among nations which all powers of government are called to serve and defend." Therefore, our theme for our Bicentennial is "Crown Him the Lord of Peace."
Robert Bunnell, May 1986
"A Brief History of the Church"
Old Tennent Church -- New Jersey
During the 17th Century, the King of England and his ministers spent years trying to force the ritual of the Church of England upon the Scottish people, many of whom were of Presbyterian Faith. Those who defied the Crown were imprisoned, some were killed, others exiled to the New World. There, some of them were indentured as servants to the English and Dutch farmers around Perth Amboy and Freehold to pay their passage from England. Though persecuted and reduced to being hired servants, their faith in God remained unbroken. This staunch faith drew these people together in a little group on the Lord's Day. Walter Kerr, one of the Scottish exiles, was chiefly instrumental in forming the group into a congregation. His activities were so profound in organizing this early church that he was later called "The Father of Old Tennent." As early as 1692, this group began to worship in a log meetinghouse at a place now known as "Old Scots Burying Ground," near Wickatunk, about five miles northeast of the present Old Tennent Church.
In this log church, in 1706, the First Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church in America held its first recorded session. In 1730, the congregation elected to build a new meetinghouse. The first services were held in that building April 18, 1731; the Rev. John Tennent was pastor. Upon John's death, his brother, William Tennent Jr., assumed the pastorate. The two brothers had been educated in the Latin School at Neshaminy, Pennsylvania, founded by their father, Rev. William Tennent Sr. This school was called "The Log College" and is considered the virtual beginning of Princeton University.
Three churches -- the Presbyterian Churches in the towns of Freehold and Englishtown and in the village of Manalapan -- may be said to be direct offshoots of Old Tennent; besides aiding others as in the case of the Charlton Presbyterian Church, Saratoga County, New York, in 1786.
New Freehold -- Charlton, New York
A group of residents of Monmouth County, New Jersey, petitioned John Cavert to explore for land in the Kayaderosseras Patent, suitable to start a settlement for them. No reason has been found why these New Jersey freeholders wished to venture to the wilderness, but possibly the activities of the War of the Revolution in their county was of such severe nature that they wished to be away. In the fall of 1773, John Cavert traveled by boat, on the Hudson River, to Fort Orange (now Albany) and from there continued to Schenectady. Leaving Schenectady, Cavert braved the wilderness, proceeded northward, and found a site located at the east end of what is now Charlton. For support and a weapon to ward off roaming animals, Cavert used a staff cut from a clump of willows. When he reached his destination, he was awed by the beauty of the country. He plunged his staff into the damp earth, and he proclaimed that spot for himself. When he returned in 1786 to claim his land, the willow staff had become a tree.
Cavert returned to Monmouth to report his findings. The following spring, Thomas Sweetman who was accompanied by his brother-in-law, David Maxwell, arrived there in early May. Sweetman and Maxwell married sisters, Sarah and Ursula Kerr, who were descendants of Walter Kerr, who because of his religious principles (he being a Scotch Covenanter) was perpetually banished from his native land in 1765, during the reign of Charles II. Walter Kerr settled in Monmouth County, New Jersey, and was prominent among those who erected the famous Tennent Church in that county. Michael Sweetman, father of Thomas, emigrated from Ireland, about the year 1700, because of religious persecution, and settled in New Jersey.
David Maxwell remaining with his brother-in-law Thomas Sweetman, until the fall of 1774, helping about the clearing of the land and building a log cabin house and barn. He returned in the spring of 1775, and was accompanied by John Taylor, Joseph LaRue, James Valentine, William Chambers, John McKnight and others. Also with members are the names of Jesse Conde settling in 1774, and one of the first settlers of Charlton, a Joseph Gonzales in 1770. These people called their new settlement "New Freehold."
The Church Building
The New Freeholders organized the Freehold Presbyterian Church on January 3, 1786. In the fall of 1786 the first building for worship was constructed. No exact description of this first church is recorded, except that it had no lath-and-plaster walls.
The congregation members of Charlton put themselves under the Presbytery of New York. Some time after this, the Rev. William Schenck, having been dismissed from his pastoral charge at Pitsgrove, New Jersey, received a call for settlement from the congregation of Ballston. According to the import of this call, only two-thirds of his time was to be devoted to the work of the ministry in Ballston. When this call was made, the congregation of Charlton requested Mr. Schenck to preach for them as a stated supply the remaining part of his time. Mr. Schenck having declared his acceptance of this call, moved to Ballston, and on August 11, 1786, took pastoral charge of that congregation and began to preach at the same time as a stated supply to the congregation of Charlton.
It seems that Mr. Sturges wrote his record from items and facts remembered by the congregation in the belief that no other records existed. In 1959, however, the original handwritten records of the first two years of church life, 1786-1788, turned up in the rear of the first volume of sessional records belonging to the Ballston Center Church. Eleven handwritten pages appeared in a small parchment-bound volume with the first entry by Mr. Schenck dated November 10, 1786. There follows this list of first members: Eli Northrup, Abigail Northrup, Obadiah Wood, Anne Wood, John Helms, Thomas Brown, John Rogers, Agnes Rogers, and Jesse Spalding.
At that November meeting, the following were admitted to membership by letters of transfer: Joseph Baker, Sarah Baker, Jesse Conde; and upon confession of faith: Zophar Wicks, Ruth Helms, Jane Wicks, Caleb Helms, Abraham Northrup, William Clark, Anne Northrup, James Benjamine, altogether twenty persons in the original congregation at this first meeting. This was a good beginning. The last entry in these eleven handwritten pages, dated June 27, 1788, shows a total of forty persons.
The first elders were elected April 26, 1786: John Holms, John Rogers, and Joel Smith. Thomas Brown and Eli Northrup were named deacons. Two years later, due to the removal of Joel Smith, one Thomas Brown was elected elder and William Clark, deacon. Two other deacons were elected in 1796: Otis Bartlett and Noah Hoyt. There is no record of others in this office again until 1957. Apparently the session also performed the work of diaconate.
William Schenck, whose early training had been under William Tennent, left Ballston and Charlton in 1793 to return south. In addition to the supply of William Schenck, others from the Albany Presbytery supplied the pulpit as well: Reverends Hosack, Ripley and Sturges.
Samuel Sturges was given a call in 1793. The records describe him as a probationer for the ministry under the care of the Western Association of Fairfield County, in Connecticut; but then under the care of the Albany Presbytery. Having accepted the call, he was ordained and installed pastor of the Church of Charlton, June 26, 1793.
At a meeting of the Presbytery in April, 1797, the Rev. Samuel Sturges was dismissed from his charge of the congregation in Charlton. The reasons for this dismissal are not stated, although he continued to supply churches for several years afterward, and was finally dismissed to the Fairfield Association, Connecticut. There are no recordsfor the years 1797-1800 -- during which time the church was without a pastor -- until September 17, 1800, when Dr. Joseph Sweetman, who was baptized in the New Jersey Freehold Church, was ordained and installed as pastor.
The first building erected in the fall of the year 1786 was financed by subscription and by the early custom of pew rentals. Unfortunately, no description of this first place of worship is available. It apparently had no lath-and-plaster walls inside. Only one service was held during the winter season, because of the lack of heating, but two Sunday services were held the rest of the year. When the second church was erected, the first church building was sold.
With the ordination and installation of Joseph Sweetman (1800), an unusual period of growth and prosperity within the church began.
Joseph Sweetman was born in 1774, at Freehold, New Jersey. He was the son of Thomas Sweetman and Sarah Kerr. Thomas Sweetman moved to Charlton when his son was three months old, and Joseph spent his boyhood and youth in the wilderness. Having a great zeal for learning, he attended the Academy in Schenectady, after which he entered Union College at its founding in 1795. He and two other men formed the first graduating class of 1797. He was the first candidate licensed by the Albany Presbytery. After about one year of frontier missionary work, he accepted a call to Charlton, and remained here as pastor until he was forced by ill health to resign in 1817.
In 1803, a meeting of the congregation was held to undertake the construction of a new church. The plan for this church forms the first entry in the book kept by the Board of Trustees. It was resolved at this meeting that, first: preparations be made for building a church, and that it be built in the year 1804; second: the church will stand on the lot where the old church stood; third: a committee be appointed to plan and oversee the work; fourth: this committee to consist of John Taylor, David Hubbell, John Brown, Andrew Rickey, Simon Van Patten.
It was decided that the building would be forty-six by sixty feet, with twenty-six-foot posts, and that it would cost $2,750. This expense was largely covered by pew rentals. This building was larger than the present one, and was set slightly farther back from the road. In the front the belfry tower projected out and in its three sides were the entrances. Within was a vestibule, on either side of which ran stairs up to the gallery. There was one door from the vestibule into the church, opening into an aisle set crosswise, from which three aisles ran to the pulpit end. The woodwork of the church was white, inside and out, and the ceiling plastered. Along either side were square pews, while the seats in the central parts were slip style, as at present. The square pews had seats running on three sides, so that some occupants sat with their backs toward the preacher. The gallery was supported on large pillars and ran along both sides and across the back.
The most imposing part of the church, however, was the pulpit. It was very high, and was reached by a long and very steep flight of steps, at the top of which a small door opened inward to the pulpit itself. The desk of the pulpit was small and circular, and over the head of the speaker was a large sounding board, painted blue on its lower side, and supported by two posts.
After examination of the 1804 structure in 1852, the church was found in such disrepair that it was decided to build another -- the third church building. Plans took shape at the January 29, 1852, meeting of the congregation; Elder John B. Packer, presiding. A subscribed sum of $2,000 was announced. It was resolved to use as much timber as possible from the old building and that the dimensions of the new church should be 40 by 60 feet. The building committee consisted of John B. Packer, N.M. Brown, J.B. Heaton, Amzi Davenport, J.M. Marvin, Garrett L. Cavert, and Elias H. Smith. The church was built in the years 1852-1853. In January, 1853, the committee reported that the cost of the building would be about $3,600, of which $1,000 was taken from the funds of the church, and the remainder assessed on the pews. It was voted at this meeting that thereafter a majority of the pewholders might authorize the trustees to alter or repair the church, and assess the cost on the pews.
The new building was considerably smaller than the earlier one, and had far fewer seating accommodations. There was a gallery only at the south end, and there were two aisles instead of three. To make room for its location nearer the street, it became necessary to remove many of the graves and gravestones from the old burying ground, and re-inter them in the Pine Grove Cemetery southeast of the village. We find no record of the exact date in 1853 when the building was first used or dedicated.
The Academy
In 1859, through the efforts of Rev. James Crocker, the original Academy was built. Today we call the attached wing on the church the Academy, but the original one was a separate building on the east side of the church, with the main door facing the church.
In 1856, 133 books were purchased by the church members for a church library. Reverend Crocker was asked by some area families to teach school so the children wouldn't have to go so far away from home to attend school. Reverend Crocker white washed the old abandoned sessions room which was over the horse-shed. The response to the school was great and the school had a flourishing start. For two years the minister of the church held classes in this makeshift room. Finally he demanded that a school building be built by the community. Reverend Crocker raised $1,000 and Daniel Teller was the carpenter. The entire cost of the original academy was $1,475, and was mostly paid for by the efforts of the minister. About forty students attended the Academy where English, Latin and other subjects were taught.
The Academy was closed in 1913, but during its serving years it attracted and educated many young people -- as a high school and finishing school -- who went on to college and became professional people. The original Academy building burned down in April, 1946. The new Memorial Academy that we use today was officially opened in 1949 with a service of dedication.
The Manse
In 1896 the manse was destroyed by fire. A building committee was made up of men in the church to work out the problem of what to do about housing for the pastor of the church. At this time the church had a total budget of $1,200, and the church managed $500 extra to go toward building a new manse. Mr. Sweetman, Alexander Crane, T.H. Cunningham, Walter Cavert and Frank L. Smith were appointed to serve on the building committee. These men gave a building contract to John Kernan, and a new manse was built in 1904.
The church was in a high point in 1904. Not only was a new manse built, but the church membership reached the 200 mark, as did the Sunday school.
The church at this time raised money by pew rent, the pastor at this time was Rev. James, and he proposed doing away with pew rent and having "free seats." The trustees and congregation did not like this, but Rev. James could not always raise enough money to operate the church; so in 1903 offerings were made for the first time, during each worship. The collection method increased the budget money by $800 that year, and pew rent was never used again. With the large membership and extra money at this time, it was possible to build the new Manse.
The manse was built on the same spot as the one that had burned down. The congregation was proud of the new building, which had four large rooms downstairs, with four large rooms upstairs, and was said to have a spacious attic. The total cost of building the new manse was $1,617.
The manse was given a new coat of paint in 1913, and the improvement of hardwood floors was made. The new barn was built, also, at a cost of $385.60. The manse was not used between 1916-1925. There were four ministers who served during this time. Money was short and the Depression of 1929 found our church looking at possible financially-difficult times. At times the ministers of the church boarded with a Miss Mary Callaghan, across the road from the church.
For a long time before the Depression the church found itself in money troubles most of the time, but the 1930's found the church's finances in good order again. In 1930 the manse was furnished with electricity, and a furnace and a water system were put in. At this time colored glass windows in the church were installed.
The Charlton Freehold Presbyterian Church has supplied housing to its ministers for many years, as this has been the custom of the church and many churches in the area. In the past two hundred years many changes have taken place, but the custom of providing the manse has survived.
Freehold Churchyard-Cemetery
Our church years ago did have a cemetery. It was a quiet little cemetery situated about where the new Memorial Academy sits today. A child of John Helms was the first to be buried there. When our church was built in 1853, it became necessary to remove many of the graves and gravestones from the old burying ground and re-inter them in the Pine Grove Cemetery, southeast of the village. In 1878, Hiram Morehouse was appointed by the Church Trustees to purchase a lot in the Pine Grove Cemetery for the new cemetery of the church. In 1877 the Trustees of the church voted that they had the right to move the graves situated in the churchyard, but the reason for this vote was not stated.
One stone in this old cemetery had a lengthy epitaph on it, and read as follows, "Sacred to the memory of John Taylor, Esq. who died April 26, O.S. 1829 in the 80th year of his age. He was born in the county of Monmouth, New Jersey, August 26, O.S. 1749, and was the third lineal descendant from Edward Taylor of England, one of the emigrants for civil and religious liberty in the reign of James II. He settled in this town before the War of the Revolution. He was a successful farmer and upright magistrate, and for 30 years a member of the Presbyterian Church in this place. He saw his children's children to the third generation and died without a struggle or a groan in full possession of his mental faculties and in firm faith of a glorious resurrection." All that on one stone!
One-hundredth Anniversary
The one-hundredth anniversary of the founding of Freehold Presbyterian Church was observed on January 3, 1886. Evergreen decorations filled the church building. Over the pulpit were the text "The Lord Will Not Forsake His People," the word "Centennial" and the motto "Rock of Ages" 1786-1886 -- all worked in evergreen. An historical sermon was preached in the morning by the Rev. Stearns, followed by an address by the Rev. Crocker, who also delivered the evening sermon that day. A booklet, in the form of an historical sketch of the church, was also published in commemoration. A few copies of the 1886 booklet can still be found today.
On January 3, 1961 was noted the 175th anniversary of the founding of the Freehold Church, and with it a change of pastors. The Rev. Meissner accepted a call to Lakewood, Ohio, in September; he was succeeded in December by the Rev. Harold D. Hayward, Th.D., from Northville, New York, who at the time was the Moderator of the Presbytery in Albany.
On January 3, 1986, the Rev. Robert Bunnell was the pastor of the church, during the Bicentennial anniversary year.
May 18, 1986, is the day on which the Charlton Freehold Church will celebrate the bicentennial of the church. The day will begin with the Festival of the Banners service at 10:30 AM. There will be an Ecumenical service at 4:00 PM, with former members and ministers present. A supper will follow at 5:30 with a special program scheduled for 7:00 PM
The pastors who have served the Charlton Freehold Church 1786-1986
1. Samuel Sturges 1793-1797
2. Joseph Sweetman, D.D. 1800-1817
3. Isaac Watts Platt 1820-1825
4. John Clancy 1825-1845
5. Richard Halloway Steele, D.D. 1847-1850
6. George Ira Taylor 1851-1854
7. James N. Crocker 1855-1867
8. John Ruthven Sanson 1869-1875
9. Clarence Walworth Backus, D.D. 1876-1882
10. Raymond Hoyt Stearns 1883-1892
11. Walter Alexander Hitchock 1893-1900
12. Edward R. James 1901-1907
13. Wesley Walter Cole 1908-1911
14. Raymond Clarence Hoag 1911-1916
15. George H. Douglas 1917-1920
16. Reuben H. Douglas 1921-1923
17. Theodore DeVries 1927-1935
18. Frederick A. Schimmer 1935-1944
19. George P. Morgan 1945-1947
20. John M. Van Tilburg 1948-1956
21. Arthur Meissner 1958-1961
22. Harold D. Hayward, Th.D. 1961-1970
23. Robert E. Bunnell 1971-present