Windham-Union Association Meeting

At the moment, I am sitting in the Dummerston Congregational Church, Waiting for the Association meeting to begin at 3p.m. Here is the sanctuary:

There will hopedfully be about a dozen churches represented here today, celebrating the 225th Anniversary of the formation of the Association back in 1797, an event which took place in this very church. I will be giving a talk about the history behind that event, something which I researched back in 1997 when I was writing the history of the Guilford Church and ran across a copy of the minutes of that first organizational meeting, tucked into an old Guilford Church record book - the only copy in existence, to my knowledge. If I hadn't found it, we wouldn't know the details about that first meeting. LATER It was a good meeting. We had the dozen churches, and 21 people - one more than needed for a quorum! Not a huge turnout, but a very appreciative one. Our quartet (Ellen, ELiza, Shawn and myself, did a stirring rendition of AFRICA, a shape-note hymn by Issac Watts (words) and William Billings (music), and I was able to tell the story of Elijah Wollage, the Guilford Church, and the formation of the Consociation of the Churches of Christ of Windham County, Oct. 3, 1797 - the first organization of churches in the state of Vermont. People were very engaged and I got a huge positive response.

Giving my talk at the Association Meeting.

The quartet singing AFRICA. I know, there are only three of us in this photo. Shawn Bracebridge is off-camera to the left.**************************** Here is the story of the formation of the Windham Consociation: ELIJAH WOLLAGE AND THE FORMATION OF THE WINDHAM CONSOCIATION We. are celebrating today the 225th anniversary of the formation of this Association which took place in the Dummerston Congregational Church on October 3, 1797. It was not called the Windham-Union Association at that time. It was called the Consociation of the Churches of Christ in Windham County. That organization later became the Windham-Union Association when churches in southern Windsor County were added - churches such as Springfield, Weathersfield, Perkinsville, Ludlow and Tyson were added to those in Windham County. Unfortunately, at this moment, I do not know exactly when that happened. We need to realize that in 1797 there were no County or State organizations of churches in Vermont as such. A Ministerial Association had been formed in Windham County as early as October, 1775 - the first such organization in the state, and then, 20 years later, on August 27, 1795, the General Convention of Ministers in the State of Vermont was formed in the study of the President of Dartmouth College, Ebenezer Wheelock. Membership in that ministerial Convention was opened to laymen in 1823. and the Vermont Domestic Missionary Society was formed in 1823 as well. In 1841, the General Convention of Ministers changed its name to become the Convention of Ministers and Churches. So a State Conference sort of evolved over time. But the Consociation of the Churches of Christ in Windham County.was the first organization of Churches in the state of Vermont. I think we can take some note of that, and we might ask, why was this Association (Or Consociation, as it was called) why was it formed at that time? We can begin to find an answer to that question, I think, in the minutes of the founding meeting and the By-laws of the newly formed consociation contained in them. We are very fortunate to actually have these minutes and by-laws. I believe I am right in saying that they were not preserved in the records of the Association, the State Conference Archives, or even in the Congregational Library in Boston. But someone had slipped a loose copy of these minutes - actually a transcript of the original which no longer exists - into the oldest record book of the Guilford Congregational Church (a.k.a. the Guilford Community Church) and that is where I found them back in 1997 when I was researching my history of the Guilford Church, titled Safe Thus Far, which was published in 1999. And when I studied them, and took note of the timing of the formation of the Consociation, and correlated that date with what was happening in the Guilford Church at that time, I fashioned a theory as to why the Consociation was formed - it was formed, I believe, in response to what was regarded as an unfortunate occurrence in the relationship between the Guilford Church and its pastor, the Rev. Elijah Wollage. Elijah Wollage came to the Guilford Church officially in 1793, but had been preaching there for some time before. He had been born in nearby Bernardston, MA, and thus undoubtedly knew of the Guilford Church and may have been known by the Guilford Church for some time. He had graduated from Dartmouth College in 1791 at age 22 - and might have started preaching soon after his graduation. He was probably also newly married, having married Sally Babcock of Westmoreland, N.H. The records state that on the same day, March 12th, 1793, the church met to call Wollage as a settled pastor, and an Ecclesiastical Council met immediately after that meeting to confirm that call. Then, the very next day, Wollage was ordained! That was what we today would call a rush job! It was also a bit cozy: Ministers from Bernardston, his home town, and Westmoreland, his wife's home town, sat on his Ecclesiastical Council, and the ordination sermon was given by his wife's home pastor, the Rev. Ethan Pratt. Wollage had a very active pastoral ministry in his first 2-3 years at the Guilford Church. The church records show that he baptized 79 infants and adults, admitted 35 new members, performed 35 marriages, and presided over 27 funerals, including 13 infants and children and seven young women! But that activity slacked off rapidly a year or so before he suddenly left the church. Something led to a hastily called and improper dismissal of Wollage on April 11, 1797, four years after his arrival.. David Stowell, deacon and clerk, wrote at that time in the record that a meeting was held in the home of Doctor Deeney Hyde with the Rev. Bunker Gay, pastor of the church in “Hinds Dale” (N.H.) serving as Moderator, at which it was agreed unanimously by both Wollage and the Church that he be dismissed and that “his Relation of Pastor of the Aforesaid Church and Society is from this time henceforth and forever to be Considered as Void and of none Effect.” Sort of an extreme way of putting a dismissal. What was going on? The church records are silent as to reasons, but we have another source! A prominent citizen of Guilford at that time was the honorable Royall Tyler, a jurist who would later become the Chief Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court, and a playwright, author of The Contrast, considered the first comedy written in the U.S. His wife, Mary, would write a memoir, Grandmother Tyler's Book, and that memoir is full of information, one might even say gossip, about none other than -- Elijah Wollage! One has to take Mary Tyler's account with a grain of salt, but the substance is undoubtedly accurate. Elijah Wollage's wife, according to Mary, was very unhappy because the church did not pay him enough. He was paid in both cash and produce, a notoriously problematic procedure. Mary Tyler quotes Sally Wollage as saying to her, “When (Royall) comes home he brings you pretty things and gets money; but we delve and delve, and find it hard work to get our four hundred dollars at last, although we have to take it in anything, at their own prices. Oh, you can’t tell how trying it is.” If Mary Tyler is to be believed, Sally pressured her husband to find a more remunerative career, and at some point he gave in and secretly went to Royall Tyler and began reading for the law. This probably explains the rapid drop in his pastoral ministry - he was busy studying to be a lawyer! And his wife couldn't keep her mouth shut, and word got out, the congregation was incensed, and he was summarily dismissed. - His departure rivals and perhaps exceeds the questions about a lack of proper procedure that his hurried call and ordination raised. With Wollage in mind, certain sections of the Consociation minutes jump off the page. Take section 7: "vii. As a means of preventing hasty and premature proceedings among ourselves; of obviating those suspicions & jealousies of misconduct, which might otherwise arise in the minds of sister churches; & to convince them them that we mean to walk orderly, as the disciples of Christ, that our mutual fellowship may not be broken; we will not consent to the dismission of any Minister who has been regularly settled among us, without calling an ecclesiastical council to advise & assist us in a matter so weighty, in which the edification of particular churches, & the interest of religion in general are so deeply interested. "- So, in other words, a church could not dismiss their minister without the Churches of the Association. coming together, looking into the situation, and giving their approval! Or this: vi. As it appears from the directions given to Timothy and Titus that they hath made his Ministers judges of the qualifications of those who are to be introduced into the work of the gospel ministry (2 Timothy 2.2 Titus 1, etc.) & as we wish not to encourage any who go not forth orderly to the work, therefore when destitute of settled Pastors we will not employ any candidate for the gospel Ministry but such as come recommended from some known body of Ministers. " Clearly, the ministers and laymen gathered on October 3, 1797, just six months after Wollage's dismissal, were concerned about church-minister relations, and believed that the churches, though the structure and procedures of a Consociation, had the right and duty to provide oversight in both the call and dismissal of a minister. I just can't help but think they when they wrote these by-laws, they had Elijah Wollage in mind. If we had the time, it would be interesting to have a discussion about how we feel about all this oversight. Maybe at some future time we can do that. I don't know whether, as time went on, the Association actually put these principles into practice. We actually need a history of the Association. But whoever attempted to write such a history would face a daunting task - finding records. Some early ones are in the Congregational Library. But many, perhaps most, are missing. The Association has seemed never to have had a central and safe archive for its records. It has never, to my knowledge, faithfully preserved its records. So let me end with a plea: I think we should make a concerted effort to find and preserve all Association records we can still lay our hands on. Start with what all known Moderators and Registrars/Scribes still living might still have in their homes or on their computers. Perhaps we should even ask the children of those who are no longer living what they might have.. Perhaps there are local Church records which have Association records tucked in with them - like the Guilford Church had the minutes of that first meeting tucked into an old record book. I think those records are worth saving, and someone, someday, may surface who will be inspired to write a history of the Windham-Union Association. the first organization of churches in the state of Vermont. Let me add a P.S., an epilog. Elijah Wollage came back to Guilford. Seven years later, Jan 4, 1804, “at the request of Mr. Elijah Wollage . . . now attorney at Law, the Church and Society met at the house of Dr. Dana Hyde in Guilford when the said Mr. Wollage appeared and verbally confessed many imprudences in his conduct towards said Chh. & Society in special his great precipitancy in asking a dismission and hastily quitting them to their Damage & asked their forgiveness when that of the Chh. present retired by themselves. Voted to forgive said Mr. Wollage as a Brother & member of said Church.” Then a year later, he showed up again and asked the church to request the Association to call an Ecclesiastical Council to redo his dismissal in a regular way, which it eventually did in 1805. But even that isn't the end. Wollage gave up his trial career as a lawyer, and came back to Guilford in 1811 after the ministry of Jason Chamberlain and resumed his role as pastor, though not as an officially settled minister. Two things happened during that second ministry which must have been discouraging for Wollage:- a church was built in East Guilford which eventually became the first Episcopal Church in Vermont, Christ Church, and drew ten members away from the Congregational Church in Guilford Center. And then in 1818, his twelve-year-old son George drowned after diving into Broad Brook. Wollage left Guilford later that year he went to Rockingham and was pastor for three years there, and then he went to Western New York, where he worked at various positions, and during which time his daughter, Cerintha, married Joel Pratt. He died in 1847, and is buried in Rock Stream, NY in Yates County, just a few miles from where I lived in the late 1960's, when I was on the faculty of Keuka College. And in 1998 I found two descendants of his, George C. Pratt in East Norwich, NY and, amazingly, Elijah Wollage Pratt in Salt Lake City, Such are the fascinations and rewards of being a church historian. Thank you.

Judge George C. Pratt, retired federal judge in the 2nd District; a descendant of the Rev. Elijah Wollage.