Ohio History Journal

VIRGINIA E. and ROBERT W. McCORMICK

 

Episcopal Versus Methodist:                             Religious

Competition in Frontier Worthington

 

 

 

One hundred hearty souls were spending their first winter in crude log

homes in a wilderness clearing when James Kilbourn wrote Ohio Senator

Thomas Worthington, "We have formed a regular Society for religious pur-

poses & have Divine Service performed every Sunday in public." 1 It was not

unusual for westward immigrants to be religious people, or for several fami-

lies of similar belief to migrate together, but forming an organized congrega-

tion with regular services within weeks of their arrival was highly unusual.

One missionary to the Western Reserve several years later found that many of

the New Englanders there had come from "a land of bibles and Sabbaths and

ministers and churches," but "now they act like freed prisoners.^"2

James Kilbourn, however, was an ordained deacon in the Episcopal Church,

a convert from his family's Congregational faith, and an ardent believer who

sought like-minded men to form the Scioto Company for westward migra-

tion.³ Not all of these men from the Farmington River valley of Connecticut

and Massachusetts were Episcopalians, but all wanted the town they founded

to have a religious presence. They agreed that a one-and-a-half-acre lot facing

the public square would be reserved for the use of the church and one hundred

acres of farmland would be set aside as rental property for its support, the

same for a subscription school.

Actually, the articles of agreement for ST. JOHN'S CHURCH IN

WORTHINGTON AND PARTS ADJACENT were executed February 6,

1804, the day before Kilbourn wrote so proudly to Worthington.⁴ Those who

signed the document signified that they agreed "in Sentiment with the Faith,

 

 

Virginia and Robert McCormick are both retired faculty from The Ohio State University.

Portions of this article appear in their current book New Englanders on the Ohio Frontier;

Migration and Settlement of Worthington, Ohio published by the Kent State University Press,

1998.

 

1. Letter from James Kilbourn, Worthington to Thomas Worthington, Washington, February

7, 1804, Thomas Worthington Papers, Ohio Historical Society, MIC 91, Roll 3, Box 2, Folder 6.

At this time Kilbourn spelled his name without the final e he began using late in life after his

son did so. The authors have used the original spelling.

2. Quoted in William Warren Sweet, Men of Zeal: The Romance of American Methodist

Beginnings (New York, 1935), 195.

3. The Scioto Company was organized May 5, 1802 in Granby, Connecticut, and its Minute

Book is at the Ohio Historical Society, MSS VOL 40.

4. "St. John's Church," Old Northwest Genealogical Quarterly, 6 (Oct., 1903), 147-49.

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6                                                         OHIO HISTORY

 

Worship, and principal Doctrines, of the Protestant Episcopal Church." It was

wording that reflected some degree of openness to persons of other faiths who

were present in the frontier community, and the "parts adjacent" specified

membership availability to persons within a five-mile radius of the village

and indicated the number of Sundays persons in more distant settlements

would be entitled to receive services, "according to their numbers and contri-

butions."

Appropriately for a frontier community, this was a document designed to

accommodate growth, but it was an unusual charter in several respects.

Freedom of religion had been guaranteed in the Bill of Rights to the United

States Constitution, but as a converted Episcopalian Kilbourn had absorbed

the prejudices this denomination experienced a generation earlier during the

Revolutionary War, when significant numbers of their clergy and members

supported the Tory cause.⁵ Although it was no longer legal for any church to

be supported by public taxes, the founders of Worthington were Episcopalian

and the donation of property demonstrated that they meant for this denomina-

tion to have a dominant role in the new community.

Those who signed the agreement indicated their intention of seeking incor-

poration by the Ohio General Assembly, and as the keynote speaker for the

church's sesquicentennial celebration later noted, the original articles of

agreement had a strange duality.⁶ They established a temporal society respon-

sible to the state, to be administered by a moderator, a recording clerk, three

trustees and a treasurer. At the same time the agreement created an ecclesias-

tical establishment with two church wardens, a reading clerk, a tithing man,

and "sufficient choristers." The word "parish" did not appear in this document,

and the brief mention of "the Clergyman or other officiating person" did not

describe this position or its duties. The pioneer congregation evidently as-

sumed that as an ordained deacon, James Kilbourn would conduct services

when he was available and a lay reader would serve in his absence.

Twenty-eight men were listed as charter members when St. John's Church

was incorporated by the legislature January 27, 1807.7 Officers were elected

annually on the first Monday after Easter, but it was notable that Nathan

Stewart and William Thompson, two of the original trustees in 1804,

Nathaniel Little, the first treasurer, and William Little, the first tithing-man,

 

 

 

5. Kilbourn studied with Alexander Viets Griswold, later an Episcopal Bishop and namesake

of Reverend Viets, who fled to Canada during the war. See John S. Stone, Memoir of the Life

of the Rt. Reverend Alexander Viets Griswold, D.D., Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church

in the Eastern Diocese (Philadelphia, 1844).

6. Dr. Richard G. Salomon, professor of history at Kenyon College, delivered this address

January 3, 1954. Much of it was published in Richard G. Salomon, "St. John's Parish,

Worthington and the Beginnings of the Episcopal Church in Ohio," Ohio Historical Quarterly,

64 (Jan., 1955), 55-76.

7. Laws of Ohio, Ohio Historical Society, FLM 249, 5:56-60.

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Religious Competition in Frontier Worthington                             7

 

were no longer members by 1807. One had left and two were preparing to

leave the community, and Thompson and Kilbourn were at odds over the lat-

ter's plan for a property tax to support an academy building.⁸     Before it

reached its third anniversary as a congregation or its official incorporation by

the state, the church was experiencing serious dissent.

Church services were at first held in a double-log cabin constructed for a

school, and then in the brick academy building which replaced it in 1808.

This was the only building in the community large enough to accommodate a

group, and the Episcopal congregation was at that time the only church in the

community. Although Kilbourn was an ordained deacon, he was frequently

absent from the community on business affairs and the congregation desper-

ately wanted a regular minister. As early as 1810, trustees Ezra Griswold,

John Goodrich, and Alexander Morrison solicited the assistance of the na-

tional Episcopal convention to attract an ordained rector. They were assured

that "every Member expressed an anxious desire that some person would visit

you: but the distance and the difficulties attending such an undertaking, pre-

vented the few Clergymen unemployed in this State [Connecticut] from ac-

cepting your proposals."⁹ The Episcopal Church was not strong enough to

place a high priority on western missionaries.

The Methodist Episcopal Church shared the same theological roots, and its

founder, John Wesley, never, in fact, left his position as a minister in the

Anglican church. But the Methodists had adapted to the new country and were

defying the Anglican culture of patriarchalism.l0   Methodist circuit riders

served frontier families from an early day, the first in Worthington being a

man recorded only as Mr. Martin who, in 1808, preached to a group in the

home of Samuel Beach south of the village, and later in barns or groves of

trees as the season permitted and the size of the crowd demanded.11 Samuel

Beach was the treasurer of the Episcopal denomination when it was incorpo-

rated a year earlier, so his hosting a Methodist circuit rider could be interpreted

as a personal shift in allegiance and a definite challenge to the established

Episcopal organization.

 

 

 

 

8. All of these men were from Blandford, Massachusetts, and had been substantial

landowners in the company. Thompson's dispute with Kilbourn is described in a letter from

him to Representative [Michael] Baldwin at Chillicothe, January 4, 1808, Griswold Family

Papers, Ohio Historical Society, MSS 193, Box 1, Folder 1.

9. Letter from Reverend Ashbel Baldwin, Stratford, Connecticut, to Ezra Griswold. John

Goodrich, Alex'r Morrison, Worthington, August 20, 1810, Griswold Papers, 1810-1820,

Worthington Historical Society.

10. See Russell E. Richey, Early American Methodism (Bloomington, Indiana, 1991).

11. Louise Heath Wright, "The Methodist Episcopal Church of Worthington, Ohio," Old

Northwest Genealogical Quarterly, 7 (Jan., 1904), 28-32; "Methodist Church History to 1900,"

Worthington News, February 12, 1942; John Young, ed., Exploring Our Roots: A Story of the

Worthington United Methodist Church, 1808-1986 (Worthington, 1986), 7-9.

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8                                                         OHIO HISTORY

 

Methodism was well suited to the frontier, with revivals offering salvation

to everyone who sought atonement. God was not an unreachable abstraction,

but a real presence even to the lowliest of persons.¹²  In a time and place

when life was drab, harsh, and fraught with uncertainties, an assurance that

everyone was equally worthy of salvation was incredibly appealing. When

itinerant preachers held revival meetings on the east bank of the Whetstone

River south of Worthington in the summer of 1811, in the words of one local

historian, "things began to heat up." Over the course of several days a suffi-

cient number of persons were converted to warrant the formation of a "class

meeting" with local resident Joab Hoyt as the leader. Such groups for reli-

gious study were a popular form of Methodist organization on the frontier,

and evidence of their continued prosperity in the Worthington area was an

1812 advertisement that the Methodists's regular quarterly meeting would be

held a half-mile west of town Friday evening "at early candle lighting."13

Worthington reflected a Methodist movement which was growing at a phe-

nomenal pace nationwide, taking advantage of the "free space" created by the

abolition of state-sponsored religion after the American Revolution. John H.

Wigger describes fewer than one in eight hundred persons as Methodist in

1775, but by 1812 one in thirty-six identified themselves as Methodist.¹⁴ No

wonder Worthington Episcopalians felt threatened.

Historians have noted the unifying effect of revival meetings which fre-

quently brought converts to all local religious societies, but the more

churches there were in a community, the greater the social cleavage. 15 There

is ample evidence that this was true in Worthington. An upsurge of demo-

cratic hope among ordinary people made congregations such as the Methodists

very popular.¹⁶   Competition, and even hard feelings, developed as the

Methodist congregation grew quite rapidly in the years following the war of

1812. This growth was accentuated by several families who had been active

in the formation of the Episcopal Church, but transferred their membership.

Most left without official comment, but Samuel Beach, Jr., expressed "my

duty to turn away from all such as practice breaking any of the precepts of the

bible, and to join such as come nearest to making the bible the rule of their

faith & practice."¹⁷ This was obviously directed toward Kilbourn's leader-

 

 

12. Charles C. Cole, Jr., Lion of the Forest: James B. Finley, Frontier Reformer (Lexington,

Kentucky, 1994), 15-25; Jean V. Matthews, Toward a New Society: American Thought and

Culture, 1800-1830 (Boston, 1991).

13. [Worthington] Western Intelligencer, 17 July 1812.

14. John H. Wigger, "Taking Heaven by Storm: Enthusiasm and Early American Methodism,

1770-1820," Journal of the Early Republic, 14 (Summer, 1994), 167-94.

15. Robert V. Hine, Community on the American Frontier (Norman, Oklahoma, 1980), 145.

16. Nathan C. Hatch, "The Democratization of Christianity and the Character of American

Politics," in Mark A. Nell, ed., Religion and American Politics (New York, 1990), 92-120.

17. St. John's Episcopal Church, First Record Book, 31-32, St. John's Church Records, Ohio

Historical Society, MSS 943, Box 38, Folder 3.

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Religious Competition in Frontier Worthington              9

ship as deacon and his business affairs as a tavern owner and with the highly leveraged Worthington Manufacturing Company. This cluster of manufactur- ing operations included a woolen mill and a chain of retail stores which at- tracted a number of newcomers to Worthington between its organization in 1812 and its demise in the economic collapse of 1819. While the Methodists thrived on the influx of new settlers, the Episcopalians were still attempting to attract an ordained rector. In 1816, James Kilbourn and Joseph Dodridge, an Episcopal minister in western Virginia who also served at Steubenville, Ohio, made the bold move of invit- ing delegates from all Episcopal congregations west of the Alleghenies to convene at Worthington "for the purpose of constituting a regular diocese in the western country and selecting a suitable personality for the bishop thereof."18 Although some forty persons arrived for the preaching, Kilbourn and Dodridge were the only clergymen, and they restricted themselves to an- other appeal to eastern bishops for rectors to serve congregations in the west. The following spring Reverend Roger Searle, an Episcopal clergyman on     18. [Columbus] Ohio Monitor, September 10, 1816, advertisement announcing the conven- tion for October 20, 1816.

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10                                                           OHIO HISTORY

 

the Western Reserve, carried a request from Kilbourn to the general conven-

tion.  This was a passionate plea comparing the status of the Episcopal

church in Ohio to the western country itself, "a soil rich and luxuriant in nat-

ural productions ... yet a wilderness and in that state incapable of sustaining

our people." Kilbourn described the opportunity for Christian ministers in the

west as being "the space for action like the Country is wide and ample, but

like the Wilderness unproductive until it shall be rendered productive by his

own exertions."l⁹

A clergyman was, however, already on the way. Perhaps he had been at-

tracted by Kilbourn and Dodridge's attempt to organize a western diocese and

select a bishop. In any event, Reverend Philander Chase visited Ohio that

spring and preached at several locations on the Western Reserve and at

Zanesville. The first Sunday in June 1817, he preached at Worthington and

was soon persuaded to become the rector of St. John's parish in Worthington,

the Trinity Episcopal congregation in Columbus, and St. Peter's in

Delaware.²⁰ There was no salary attached to the rector's position, although

donations were undoubtedly contributed by members of these congregations

and fees were collected for services such as marriages and baptisms.  Chase

expected to earn a living from his concurrent appointment as principal of the

Worthington Academy, a subscription school which had been operative for

several years and which Chase hoped to elevate to a college for the preparation

of ministers, and from the farm he purchased south of town which he expected

to operate with hired help.

A year later, in convention at the Worthington Academy in June 1818, five

Episcopal ministers and lay delegates formed the Episcopal diocese of Ohio

and elected  Reverend   Chase   as their Bishop.²¹     This   action  placed

Worthington at the center of the Ohio Episcopal organization and made it the

convention site for the diocese during the first six years of its existence.

Attracting a rector, particularly one who was quickly elected Bishop of the

western diocese, no doubt did much for the esteem of local Episcopalians, but

the Methodists were not impressed. Amos Hawley, for example, related the

discussion of a Methodist class meeting and challenged the Episcopalians, "as

 

 

19. Typescript photocopy of letter from James Kilbourn to the Bishops, Clerical and Lay

Delegates of the Episcopal Church meeting in convention at New York City, 1 May 1817,

Worthington Historical Society; original in the archives of the Episcopal Diocese of Ohio at

Cleveland.

20. Philander Chase, Bishop Chase's Reminiscences: An Autobiography (Boston, 1848),

1:127-34.

21. Salomon, "Sesquicentennial Address," 1954, and "St. John's Church," Old Northwest

Genealogical Quarterly, 6 (Oct., 1903), 152. See also William Stevens Perry, ed., Journals of

the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church, U.S.A. (Claremont, New

Hampshire, 1874), Vol. II, 1823-1835, reports of Ohio Diocese. The eastern leadership of the

Episcopal Church delayed in accepting this decision voted by western clergymen, but eventu-

ally ordained Reverend Chase as bishop in Philadelphia the following winter.

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Religious Competition in Frontier Worthington                         11

 

you make So much Boast of your Authority and line of Sucession handed

down from the Apostols, I think that it is high time that you bring forward

your witnesses and prove your Claim ... if I am rightly informed it has been

peased patched and vampt over & over very much like my Great Grandfathers

Jack knife which had a number of new blades & handles added and yet it was

my great Grandfathers knife."²²

Such folk wisdom illustrated the early Methodist belief that preaching, es-

pecially to a frontier congregation, did not require a theological education to

be effective. One Methodist minister wrote in 1821, "We believe it to be a

universal principle, that people adhere more to the man who teaches from his

own experience and knowledge of things, than he who attempts to teach from

books only or the experience of others."²³  Even such a noted Methodist

cleric as Bishop Francis Asbury reportedly said, "I presume a simple man can

speak and write for simple, plain people, upon simple truths."²⁴ By carving

a life from the wilderness, western pioneers gained great confidence in their

personal abilities, and many of them trusted their own common sense to de-

termine the difference between right and wrong.       Early Worthington

Methodists disdained anyone ordained to preach the word of God who did not

practice a lifestyle consistent with their own interpretation of the Bible.

Deacon Kilbourn's business affairs were of less concern to Episcopalians

after he was relieved of preaching responsibilities by Chase's arrival. The

Worthington congregation were justifiably proud of their rector's theological

training in New England, but his responsibilities as bishop caused Reverend

Chase to be absent more often than present for services in Worthington.

When present, his sermons were a memorable experience. Elnathan Maynard,

son of one of the church leaders during Chase's tenure, recalled the room on

the second floor of the academy where services were held as, "very plainly

furnished. I think the seats were only boards or slabs." A morning service at

ten-thirty and an afternoon service at one o'clock were separated by an hour at

noon which the Maynard family frequently spent at the Chase home where,

"No luncheon was served, but sling (whiskey and water sweetened) was

passed."²⁵ This was a standard courtesy of the day which Maynard compared

to offering someone a chair.26

 

 

22. Letter from Amos Hawley to Ezra Griswold, August 12, 1818, Griswold Family Papers,

Ohio Historical Society. MSS 193, Box 15, Folder 7. Ironically, Hawley was married to widow

Sarah Phelps Buttles whose sons Joel and Arora Buttles were leaders in the Columbus and

Worthington Episcopal congregations. Sarah's position in this dispute is unknown.

23. Thomas Hine, Methodist Magazine, 4 (June, 1821), 228, quoted in Cole, Lion, of the

Forest, 20-21.

24.  T. Scott Miyakawa,  Protestants  and Pioneers: Individualism and Conformity on the

American Frontier (Chicago, 1964), 90-91.

25. Elhathan Maynard, "A Few Personal Recollections of Bishop Chase," St. John's Banner,

1 (July, 1900), 16-19.

26. Jack Larkin, The Reshaping of Everyday Life, 1790-1840 (New York, 1988), 285, con-

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12                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

Chase initially found the Worthington residents, "remarkable for civil and

moral deportment." His tenure in Worthington might have been quite different

had his wife Mary Fay Chase not succumbed to tuberculosis within a year of

her arrival. It was Mary Chase who wrote the constitution and opened her

home for the organizational meeting of the Worthington Female Tract

Society.²⁷ Such groups were formed in a number of places at this time to

provide Christian readings, usually reprinted from other publications, as tree

pamphlets for local families. Cynthia Kilbourn was the first president and

Ruth Griswold the vice-president of the Worthington group.  Dues were

twenty-five cents annually, and former teacher Clarissa Thompson was trea-

surer for twenty-four years. The group's first pamphlet was a reprint of an

old English bishop's "Rules for Christian Children and Youth." Sometimes

the women met for prayers and read potential materials for publication, while

at other times they met for work such as to "repair garments for indigent chil-

dren who could not attend Sunday school for want of decent clothing." The

Worthington Female Tract Society was a classic example of the moral role

assigned to nineteenth-century women to develop and maintain the moral val-

ues of the family, and through it those of the society.

The death of Mary Chase and Reverend Chase's travels relating to his re-

sponsibilities as bishop coincided with the economic depression of 1819,

which doomed both the Worthington Manufacturing Company and the pro-

jected evolution of the Worthington Academy into Worthington College.

These would seem to have been troubles enough for Chase's ministry in

Worthington, but serious animosity developed within the Episcopal congrega-

tion between Chase and Kilbourn. Both were men with substantial leadership

qualities, but both had large egos and were accustomed to having things done

their way. Chase won many friends outside his immediate circle, but those

who worked directly with him were regularly alienated by his dictatorial man-

ner and his inclination to identify Philander Chase's views with God's will.²⁸

It was a rift which weakened the Episcopal congregation at the very time they

were experiencing defections to the local Methodists.

The Ohio diocese, under Chase's leadership, adopted a canon at its 1819

convention that a clergyman could be brought to trial for, "disorderly and

immoral conduct, neglect of duty, disregard to the Constitution and Canons of

the Church, or disseminating, or countenancing opinions which are contrary

to its doctrines."²⁹ This was apparently directed specifically toward Deacon

 

 

tends that failure to offer visitors liquor was a breach of hospitality.

27. Salomon, "Sesquicentennial Address," 1954, quoting from the volume of handwritten

records of the Worthington Female Tract Society, which in 1832 became the Female

Missionary Society, diocesan archives in Cleveland.

28. Salomon, "Sesquicentennial Address," 1954, 20.

29. The First Ten Years of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Ohio, 1818-1827

(Columbus, 1853).

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Religious Competition in Frontier Worthington                         13

 

Kilbourn who had evidently clashed with Chase over his business and politi-

cal affairs. The following year, Kilbourn was requested to appear before the

diocese for a trial, "on charges affecting his moral conduct."30  Chase made a

scathing address at the 1820 convention, which Kilbourn attended as a deacon,

regarding proper and improper ministerial behavior. There were others in the

St. John's congregation who shared his concern such as Chester Griswold

who, embittered by Kilbourn's faulty management of the manufacturing

company which resulted in lawsuits against everything Griswold owned, was

an elected St. John's trustee and a delegate to the 1821 convention.  But

friends apparently persuaded Kilbourn to avoid a trial by resigning as deacon.

On June 6, 1821, Bishop Chase informed the delegates he had received a letter

from James Kilbourn which "declared his intention no longer to be a minister

of the Church of Christ." Chase indicated, "I have agreeably to the aforesaid

Canon displaced him from the ministry."³¹

It was a sad conclusion, but in truth Kilbourn had neither the theological

training nor the time free from business affairs to devote himself to a ministe-

rial role. There were some in the congregation, like William Thompson,

whom Kilbourn had alienated at least a decade earlier, and others, like the

Beaches and Bristols, who had pointedly left the Episcopal Church for the

Methodist congregation. But Reverend Chase was not the man to unite the

troubled congregation either. He was rarely in Worthington after 1820, and in

his absence entrusted his preaching responsibilities to his son Philander, Jr.,

and later to some of his theological students.³²

Although Worthington College was incorporated by the Ohio Legislature

in 1819, the collapse of the economy that year doomed Chase's dream of a

seminary in the west and he accepted a teaching position in Cincinnati in

1822. But this, too, failed to offer an opportunity for a seminary and he trav-

eled to England the following year to seek funding. To attract financial sup-

port in England he offered to donate his Worthington farm as the seminary

site provided he and his family could retain occupancy of the "mansion house"

as part of his salary as superintendent of the school.³³

Although neither Chase nor the Ohio diocese were satisfied with

Worthington as a site for this seminary, he began to offer instruction at his

 

 

30. Philander Chase to Joseph Dodridge, November 16, 1820, in The Reverend Joseph

Dodridge Memoirs, Letters, and Papers, typescript manuscript in the archives of the Pittsburgh

Diocese, quoted in Goodwin Berquist and Paul C. Bowers, The New Eden: James Kilbourne

and the Development of Ohio (Lanham, Maryland, 1983), 178-83. Their account gives the

most complete description of this incident.

31. The First Ten Years, 54. This convention, like all between 1818 and 1823, was held at the

Worthington Academy.

32. Salomon, "Sesquicentennial Address," 22. Worthington was served primarily by Intrepid

Morse and William Sparrow.

33. Bishop Chase "Deed of Gift," November 27, 1823, in George Franklin Smythe, Kenryon

College (New Haven, 1924), 305-09.

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14                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

home in 1824, and had as many as fifty students there before moving to es-

tablish Kenyon College at Gambier, Ohio. It is noteworthy that during this

time Chase had no association with the Worthington College facility.

Chase's haughty attitude and extended absences had alienated Worthington

leaders and he was now very pleased to leave the community. He described

himself as being particularly happy that his second wife, Sophia, would no

longer be disturbed by "the viper-like hissing of envy and toad-like croakings

of malice and atheism."³⁴ Although Chase's early supporters were deceased,

removed from the community, or estranged, his departure did reduce

Worthington's significance in the Episcopal hierarchy.

Meanwhile, in contrast, the Methodists had experienced rapid growth with

the influx of workers at the Worthington Manufacturing Company site south

of the village from 1812 to 1819. This congregation erected the first church

building in Worthington in 1823. It was an unpretentious brick building at

the southeastern corner of the village, facing south toward the barns and the

groves of trees that had sheltered the infant congregation. There were two

large doors in the front of this church, one for women and the other for men,

and between them a large pulpit, rounded like a bowl, which had the words

"Preach Christ" painted inside. Light came from four windows on either side,

another above the pulpit, and two at the opposite end. When needed, this was

supplemented by candles in tin sconces between the side windows and four oil

lamps which hung from the ceiling. Two aisles led from the front doors, and

each had a large tin-plate stove approximately one-third of the way back

which was surrounded by wood in season.    Women occupied the middle

benches and men the sides.³⁵ Such separate entrances and seating for men and

women was a common pattern in pioneer communities.³⁶

Because the Episcopalians had the use of the academy building, they were

slower to build a house of worship, but they were beginning to see the need,

as evidenced by a comment of Reverend William Sparrow, who had studied

theology with Bishop Chase and assumed the role of minister in Chase's ab-

sence. Sparrow looked apprehensively at other local congregations and com-

plained, "Our people seem very dead. You seldom find a truly zealous man

among them. They will talk about the Church and about the dissenters; of

churches, wood, brick, and stone, of pulpits, desks, chairs and organs, of

 

 

 

 

34. Salomon. "Sesquicentennial Address," 19, quoting Bishop Chase's Reminiscences. It is

worth noting that Chase would within a few years leave the Kenyon College presidency in a

remarkably similar embittered fashion.

35. Wright, "The Methodist Episcopal Church of Worthington, Ohio," 28-32; C.J. Cummins,

Methodism in Worthington (Worthington, 1953), 5: Young, Exploring Our Roots, 10-11. All of

these rely on Louise Wright's account, which was based upon her personal memories as the

daughter of Reverend Uriah Heath who served this church for several years.

36. John Mack Faragher, Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Prairie (New Haven. 1986), 168.

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Religious Competition in Frontier Worthington              15

Methodists and Presbyterians, but have not a word to say about religion. May the Lord open their eyes."37 These very people, whom Reverend Sparrow found apathetic and concerned only with their physical surroundings, soon began constructing the church building which allowed them to remove their services from the college premises and gave them a congregational focus. As with earlier public build- ings in the village, the erection of St. John's Episcopal Church required con- tributions of materials and labor. Arora Buttles, George H. Griswold, and Stephan Maynard, Jr., were the trustees in 1830 who sold the church-owned twenty-acre woodlot, presumably to raise funds to build a church. Griswold hauled stone for the foundation; Maynard, together with his brother Elnathan, cut walnut trees on their farm, dragged the logs to the sawmill, and had them sawed into lumber for the pews; Buttles, the only mason in town who is known to have mastered Flemish-bond construction, undoubtedly laid the     37. Salomon, "Sesquicentennial Address," 22. By 1829, Reverend Sparrow was listed by the Ohio Diocese as the professor of languages at Kenyon College, a position he held for many years.

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16                                                           OHIO HISTORY

 

brick. By 1829, Reverend William Preston was able to report to the conven-

tion that workers had "completed the outside of a beautiful brick church," but

progress was slow and the first service in the new building was not held until

January 23, 1831.38

Although St. John's Episcopal Church was the third building for worship

to be constructed in Worthington, it had an elegance of design and construc-

tion which surpassed and outlived the other two.³⁹ Its Gothic Revival style

was accented by a pointed arch entry and windows, a stepped gable facade, and

a square tower with the belfry topped by a balustrade and finials. One senses

that the Episcopal congregation was presenting a visible answer to the com-

petition they were feeling. Also, they were using their church building to de-

fine themselves as people of refinement as New Englanders had done a century

earlier.⁴⁰

The Methodists, in the meantime, were unable to support a minister until

well after they had completed their church. Like all congregations in small

western villages, the Worthington Methodists were part of a circuit and en-

joyed regular visits from a circuit-riding preacher. These circuits were united

in an Ohio conference which in 1816 resolved "That it is inexpedient and im-

prudent for a traveling Preacher to dishonor himself by associating with the

Free Masons in their Lodges.^"41      This was yet another wedge between

Methodist beliefs and those of the Worthington Episcopalian leaders who had

obtained a charter from the Connecticut Masonic Lodge before leaving New

England and had constructed a Masonic Lodge in Worthington in 1820 before

erecting a church building.⁴² In 1817, the Methodist conference strengthened

its stand, declaring "We are decidedly & sentimentally opposed to the practice

[Masonic] & are determined . . . to set our Faces & lift our hands against

it."⁴³ This position directly opposed that of Masonic leaders such as James

Kilbourn, John Snow, and Thomas Webb, who were active in the manage-

ment of the Worthington Manufacturing Company at the same time that

 

 

 

38. National Historic Register, St. John's Episcopal Church. Worthington, Ohio, FRA-2170-

A, 1 July 1975; 1829 convention report, St. John's Church Records, Ohio Historical Society,

MSS 943, Box 17; Richard N. Campen, Ohio, An Architectural Portrait (Chagrin Falls, 1973),

206.

39. St. John's Episcopal Church stands on the present Worthington Village Green. The

tower was changed for safety reasons after the Civil War, but restored to its original form prior

to the building's 1931 centennial. The first Worthington Methodist Church was replaced in

1864. The first Presbyterian Church was completed in 1830, remodeled and enlarged in 1842,

and replaced in 1927.

40. Richard L. Bushman, The Refinement of America; Persons, Houses, Cities (New York,

1992), 169-80.

41. Cole, Lion of the Forest, 113.

42. G.W. Aldrich, "New England Lodge No. 4," Worthington News, October 25, &

November 1, 1945. The construction contract for the lodge dated June 3, 1820, is now in the

archives of the Ohio Masonic Museum in this building.

43. Cole, Lion of the Forest, 13.

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Religious Competition in Frontier Worthington                        17

 

many of its employees were becoming involved in Methodist revivals and

class meetings. Historians have identified both religious and political roots

in the anti-Masonic movement of the 1820s and 1830s, but in Worthington it

furnished additional evidence of the social cleavage between Episcopalians and

Methodists.⁴⁴

Some people consciously attempted to maintain ties with both.  At his

death in 1827, Asa Gillet's will "bequeathed two hundred and fifty dollars to

the Episcopal Society in this town, the same amount to the Methodist." This

was actually a codicil to the will written on his deathbed two weeks earlier,

which originally gave the entire five hundred dollars to the Methodists.⁴⁵

Either Gillet had second thoughts or someone persuaded him that the division

was more appropriate. Since he was deceased, it could not be interpreted as a

move to earn favor for himself from either group. Thus it appears likely that

Gillet was raised in the Episcopal faith and converted to, or was at least at-

tending, the Methodist congregation prior to his death.

The early nineteenth century was a period of intense religious fervor. One

local citizen reported in 1828 that the Methodists, Universalists, and

Presbyterians were all having camp meetings "every day for about two weeks,

sometimes seven meetings a day."⁴⁶ Those who publicly committed them-

selves as "saved" expected their church to dictate the morality of their behav-

ior. Emily Maynard reported to her sister that "brother Darius has become se-

rious with regard to religion insomuch that he has refrained from swearing.^"47

Pledging to reform behavior was the most visible method of demonstrating a

spiritual change, and such change was the primary goal of camp meetings and

revivals.

At the same time there was a growing temperance reform movement that

was closely associated with the religious revivals and took its methods from

their success. Leaders of this movement believed that intemperance marked

persons as unfit for salvation, and that it was immoral for church members to

derive profits from the liquor trade. Such themes were the new gospel of re-

form.⁴⁸

The Episcopalians traditionally had no objection to the consumption of al-

coholic beverages, and it was not uncommon for taverns to be located directly

across the street from a church, as they were in Worthington after the con-

 

 

44. Jean V. Matthews, Toward a New Society: American Thought and Culture, 1800-l830

(Boston, 1991).

45. Dearing Cowles to Whitfield Cowles, February 24, 1827, R.W. Cowles Papers, Ohio

Historical Society, VFM 2015, Cowles was a witness to the will and executor of the estate; Asa

Gillet Will, Franklin Co. Will Record A: 181-184.

46. Quoted in Julia L. Nelson, "The Presbyterian Church of Worthington, Ohio," Old

Northwest Genealogical Quarterly, 7 (Jan., 1904), 33-35.

47. Letter from Emilia Maynard to Dorcas Carey, March 23, 1826, John Carey Papers, Ohio

Historical Society, VFM 4610.

48. John Allen Krout, The Origins of Prohibition (New York, 1925), 113-16.

• 13
 

18                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

struction of the Episcopal church building. Such juxtaposition had been true

from colonial days. The early years of the nineteenth century, however, saw

an alarming rise in the consumption of alcoholic beverages and undesirable

changes in drinking habits. Between 1805 and 1830, annual alcoholic con-

sumption peaked at approximately nine gallons of liquor, thirty gallons of

cider, and one quart of wine per person age fifteen and older.⁴⁹  During the

colonial era in the east, alcoholic beverages had commonly been consumed in

small amounts in the home throughout the day, and in communal binges on

such occasions as Fourth of July celebrations, election days, and militia

musters. By the 1820s, there was a marked rise in both communal and soli-

tary binges, and much the same was true of Worthington between 1804 and

1830.⁵⁰

Alcoholic beverages were part of everyday life in early Worthington. It was

expected that officers would buy the whiskey for militia muster day and candi-

dates would provide a keg on election day. The Fourth of July celebration

regularly included twenty or thirty toasts, and Reverend Chase offered mem-

bers of his flock sling between sermons. Doctors prescribed whiskey for var-

ious ailments, and children were given diluted alcoholic beverages to drink as

being more healthy than river or rain water. Whiskey and cider were cheap

and plentiful, and they were a tasty accompaniment to diets heavy on fatty

meats and bland corn breads and puddings. One observer described drinking as

"sort of a panacea for all ills, a crowning sheaf to all blessings."⁵1

New England churches considered the use of liquor legitimate and healthy as

long as it did not visibly impair the drinker's ability to think and act ratio-

nally.⁵² The Worthington Episcopalians and Reverend Chase evidently es-

poused such a position of temperate consumption. Chase's account at Ezra

Griswold's tavern from the time he arrived in Worthington until he moved to

his own farm in early December 1817 shows that he regularly purchased a

quart of whiskey for thirty-one and a half cents approximately once a week,

and from time to time purchased some gin or cider.53 From the Puritans on,

no one had seriously objected to the temperate use of alcoholic beverages.

But in Worthington in the 1820s, as elsewhere, problems from excessive

consumption of alcohol were rising. There is no record of the cause of deaths

in the community from 1803 until 1825 when George Griswold was ap-

pointed sexton of St. John's cemetery. Although his records did not include

 

 

 

49. W.J. Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition (New York, 1979),

233. This equated to about seven gallons of absolute alcohol.

50. Ibid, 149-69.

51. Henry Howe, quoted in Cole, Lion of the Forest, 116-18.

52. James Russell Rohrer, "Battling the Master Vice: The Evangelical War Against

Intemperance in Ohio, 1800-1832" (MA Thesis, Ohio State University. 1985), 66.

53. Reverend P. Chase account, July 30, to December 25, 1817, Griswold Papers, 1810-

1820, Worthington Historical Society.

• 14
 

Religious Competition in Frontier Worthington                  19

the cause of every death, from 1825 to 1835 there were four deaths attributed to intemperance. Griswold noted on May 21, 1827, John Sherman, "about 35 or 36 years old ... his death was occasioned by intemperance"; I.P. Case died September 22, 1832, of "intemperance"; Dr. Wyley "died in a drunken fit"; and a "drunken man died at Kilbourns," perhaps a traveling man who was not well known in the community.54 In a community of less than five hun- dred persons, four deaths from intemperance in less than a decade were suffi- cient to be alarming.         54. Transcription by Virginia E. and Robert W. McCormick, "George H. Griswold Sexton Records, 1825-1843, St. John's Episcopal Cemetery," Ohio Genealogical Society Report, 30 (Winter, 1990), 193-204.

• 15
 

20                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

It was no coincidence that evangelists began viewing intemperance as a

wicked depravity and preached sobriety as a requisite step for conversion.

Rowdy young men who interrupted camp meetings while under the influence

of alcohol were a visible demonstration of the need for reform. However,

most religious denominations developed their positions supporting temper-

ance gradually. In 1816, the Methodist conference barred ministers from dis-

tilling or selling liquor, in 1828 it praised the temperance movement, and by

1832 it urged total abstinence.55 This was a position Presbyterians shared,

but not Episcopalians.

As the temperance movement progressed from "temperate" usage to volun-

tary total abstinence, its popularity grew rapidly and some members of local

churches promoted the formation of a temperance society in Worthington. A

general meeting was called February 25, 1834, to discuss the reasons for join-

ing, and the objections to joining, a temperance society, and to circulate a pa-

per for membership. The only surviving record of this meeting is George

Griswold's notes on sixteen objections to such a society, perhaps a reflection

of his own opinion as a tavern owner.⁵⁶

Among those objecting, Mr. Lazelle undoubtedly spoke for many when he

said, "I can drink or not as I please and control myself without any special

pledge." Mr. Spencer and Mr. Comstock each indicated "I can't carry on my

business effectively without ardent spirits." Dr. Morrow objected to the cur-

tailment of personal liberties which such societies imposed, maintaining that

"This is a free country and I have a right to drink." Mr. Jackson expressed

publicly what more than one person undoubtedly felt privately, "I will not

join the Temperance Society because I love to drink." It was another divisive

issue between Methodists and Episcopalians and the key tavern owners were

Episcopalian.

The primary issues which divided Episcopalians and Methodists during the

early years of these congregations in Worthington were their differing views

on theological training for the clergy, participation in Masonic lodges, and

the consumption of alcoholic beverages.   The missionary zeal of the

Methodist organization was best suited to the conditions of frontier life, and

the growth of this congregation was exacerbated by the conflict within the

Episcopal Church between James Kilbourn and Philander Chase.

The founders of Worthington had sown the seeds of conflict by establishing

what they perceived to be a community church, and when it failed to satisfy

the spiritual needs of all citizens they viewed the growing competition as a

threat. The concept of religious exclusion has destroyed communities and

countries throughout history and continues to do so today, but the carefully

 

 

55. Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic, 207-09.

56. "Objections to Temperance Society to be answered at general Meeting," February 25,

1834, Griswold Family Papers, Ohio Historical Society, MSS 193, Box 1, Folder 3.

• 16
 

Religious Competition in Frontier Worthington                    21

 

defined American freedom of religion was tested in this frontier community

and diversity survived.  By mid-nineteenth century the Episcopalians,

Methodists, and Presbyterians had built churches in Worthington, attracted

full-time ministers, and were working cooperatively on moral issues such as

temperance and the abolition of slavery.

• 17