Ohio History Journal

PAUL C. BOWERS, JR.

GOODWIN F. BERQUIST, JR.

 

Worthington, Ohio: James Kilbourn's

Episcopal Haven on the Western

Frontier

 

 

One of the most significant developments to occur in this country in

the aftermath of the American Revolution was the settlement of the

old Northwest Territory beyond the Ohio River. Families from the

Atlantic states streamed west in ever-increasing droves, establishing

countless new communities in the region now occupied by the states

of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois. Among these new towns and

villages was Worthington, Ohio, an Episcopal haven founded by

James Kilbourn on the western frontier.

On the morning of September 23, 1786, a fifteen-year-old boy

walked away from his father's farm in the bleak "dead swamp

woods" section of central Connecticut hard by the east side of

Farmington Mountain. James Kilbourn's father, Josiah, had suffered

severe financial losses during the American Revolution.¹ Economic

dislocation brought on by the events of eight years of war was

exacerbated by soil exhaustion and, in the case of Kilbourn, a

burgeoning family of seven children, six of whom lived at home.² In

 

 

 

 

1. James Shepard, History of St. Mark's Church (New Britain, Connecticut, 1907),

183.

2. Oscar Zeichner states that a "very high birth rate increased the population by

more than fifty thousand between 1762 and 1774, and made Connecticut the second

most densely populated colony in New England on the eve of the Revolution. At the

same time thousands of its inhabitants moved out of the colony at a phenomenal pace

in the hope of finding more and better land in other provinces." Oscar Zeichner, Con-

necticut's Years of Controversy, 1750-1776 (Chapel Hill, 1949), 144. Albert Laverne

Olson, Agricultural Economy and the Population in Eighteenth-Century Connecticut,

Tercentenary Commission of the State of Connecticut, Committee on Historical Publi-

cations XL (New Haven, 1935), 7-31; William T. Utter, Granville: The Story of an Ohio

Village (Granville, 1956), 23-25; The Heritage of Granby, 1786-1965: Its Founding and

History (n.p.: The Salmon Brook Historical Society, 1967), 161; Transactions of the

Society for Promoting Agriculture in the State of Connecticut, American Imprint

Series, Second Series, Evans no. 2081 (New Haven, 1802). In his diary, Joel Buttles, a

nigrant to Worthington in 1804 and an ardent student of agriculture, observed that in

he Granby, Connecticut area "the whole country is poor land, always poor but in

addition to that it has been worn out long ago"; The Papers of Joel Buttles, Archives of

he Trinity Episcopal Church, Columbus, Ohio.

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248                                            OHIO HISTORY

April 1783 Josiah Kilbourn moved his family for the third time in ten years. Each move was to a smaller, poorer parcel of land, undertaken always in the hope that things would soon be better. Instead conditions worsened until at last in September of 1786, Kilbourr advised his son to leave home and make his own way in the world. In his autobiography, James Kilbourn later recalled how utterly hopeless his plight appeared: "In the autumn of 1786, by my father's suggestion I left home to assume self-direction, poorly clad fo summer and no winter clothing, illiterate, reading only tolerably without practice in spelling or any knowledge of grammar, or o writing that could be read." As he wandered some thirty mile northward, Kilbourn reflected upon his "gloomy prospects." "I cam to the conclusion that two things in particular were indispensable fo me, viz., to establish the reputation of a first-rate hand to work, wit perfect integrity in every trust, and to get learning. For the latter had neither money nor time, during the hours of labor and chore doing. It must therefore be acquired by my own application, an

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Worthington, Ohio                                                 249

 

mainly while others slept."³ Kilbourn's memory may have been

colored by the eminent success he had gained by the time he wrote

his autobiography, but the young man's career following that long

walk attests to his energy, ingenuity, and determination. Hard work,

integrity, and dedication to education, combined with a later

commitment to the Protestant Episcopal Church, were the principal

guidelines of his life and ultimately enabled him to conceive and carry

out his dream of a new community in the West, a haven for

Episcopalians in the "howling wilderness" of the Ohio country.⁴

On the second day after he left his father's home, Kilbourn was

hired as a summer field hand.⁵ Soon after, he bound himself out for

four years as an apprentice clothier at Tariffville, a village nearby on

the Farmington River. His duties involved assisting his employer in

the dyeing of linen and cotton cloth. A newspaper advertisement for a

position like his, printed in the Hartford Courant about that time,

stressed "an Active Boy of good reputation, about 12 to 14 years of

age."⁶ For five months of the year thereafter, Kilbourn "earned for

himself such wages as he could" on the Simsbury farm of Elisha

Griswold; in the remaining seven months he worked as an apprentice,

receiving no compensation other than board and the opportunity to

learn a trade.⁷

The three years Kilbourn spent with the Griswolds were immensely

important in his development from a virtually illiterate farm hand to a

rising business and community leader. Kilbourn was greatly fortunate

in forming a close friendship with Alexander Viets Griswold, the

second son of his employer, who was four years his senior. Tutored

by his uncle, the Reverend Roger Viets, one of the most energetic and

able Episcopal clergymen in the state, Alexander Griswold himself

became a champion of the Episcopal Church after 1795 and

 

 

 

3. James Kilbourn, "Autobiography of Col. James Kilbourn of Worthington, Ohio,"

The Old Northwest Genealogical Quarterly, VI (October 1903), 111-12. Kilbourn's

name is variously spelled in both printed and manuscript sources. As he himself usually

spelled it "Kilbourn" that is the form used in the text of this article. Variant spellings

will be retained in all citations.

4. A contemporary reference to Ohio as a "howling wilderness" appears in a letter

from Lucy Fitch, Kilbourn's mother-in-law, to Kilbourn and his wife; see Mrs. Lucy

Fitch to James and Lucy Kilbourn, Hartland, May 9, 1804, The Papers of James Kil-

bourn, The Ohio Historical Society. "A hideous, howling wilderness" was also the first

known description of Kent in the northwest corner of Connecticut in 1694. Charles S.

Grant, Democracy in the Connecticut Frontier Town of Kent (New York, 1961), 3.

5. Worthington historian Frank Corbin states that Kilbourn was initially employed as

a laborer on the farm of Eli Young of Granby; Frank Corbin, "The Birth of Our

Town," The Worthington News, May 22, 1975, IB.

6. Hartford Courant, February 16, 1789.

7. Shepard, History of St. Mark's Church 183

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250                                                      OHIO HISTORY

 

eventually served as Chancellor of Brown University and Presiding

Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States.

Observing Kilbourn's off-hours struggle at self-education, young

Griswold offered his services in the project to "get learning."

Together the two "appropriated invariably half of every night to that

object."⁸ Griswold tutored Kilbourn in Latin, Greek, English

grammar, arithmetic, and other branches of "useful knowledge."

These productive learning sessions and the generosity of Griswold

made a deep and lasting impression on Kilbourn. Nothing, he later

wrote in his autobiography, "gives me greater pleasure than

occurences which render it suitable for me to declare this debt of

gratitude which I owed to that great and excellent man while living,

nor less to his memory, now that he has gone to the bosom of his

God; a debt I can never pay but in the heart's warm devotion."⁹

James Kilbourn's resolution to better himself was not confined to

the sphere of education. His driving ambition and industry soon

launched him on a remarkable business career. He did not, in fact,

complete his apprenticeship at the Tariffville clothier's. Rather, when

his employer became over-burdened with work in October 1789,

Kilbourn took "full charge" of the establishment.10 Confident now of

a comfortable future, he married Lucy Fitch, daughter of John Fitch,

inventor of the steamboat. The ceremony took place at St. Andrew's

Episcopal Church, Bloomfield. Within three years Kilbourn owned

three clothing works, the one at Tariffville and two new ones at

Granby and Avon. With some of his profits, Kilbourn re-purchased

the Farmington homestead his struggling parents had recently

mortgaged.11

In 1793 Kilbourn became seriously ill from inhaling the fumes of

poisonous dyes. He moved from Simsbury to Farmington and for

 

 

8. Griswold "read everything within reach, and when his days were crowded with

toil, from a very early age he would pass the great part of the night in reading, while the

rest of the family slept." Julia C. Emery, "Alexander Viets Griswold and the Eastern

Diocese," Soldier and Servant Series (Hartford, n.d.), 7.

9. The Heritage of Granby, 164; Kilbourn, "Autobiography," 112-13.

10. In all likelihood Kilbourn received his apprenticeship with the Tariffville clothier

through the influence of the Griswold family. Roger Griswold, Alexander's brother,

constructed the mill at Tariffville in which members of the Griswold family "were heav-

ily interested financially." Glenn E. Griswold, comp., The Griswold Family:

England-America (Rutland, Vermont, 1943), 106. The clothing establishment was one

of several industries at the mill.

11. Albert C. Bates, comp., "Records of the Rev. Roger Viets, Rector of St. An-

drews, Simsbury, Ct., and Missionary from the Society for the Propagation of the Gos-

pel in Foreign Parts, 1763-1800," Early Anglicanism in Connecticut: Materials on the

Missionary Career of Roger Viets, Samuel Seabury's Communion Office, and Aids for

Scholarly Research, ed. by Kenneth W. Cameron (Hartford, 1962), passim; Kilbourn,

"Autobiography," 113-14.

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Worthington, Ohio                                                 251

 

eighteen months was able to get about only on crutches. A less

determined man might well have faltered, but not Kilbourn. In 1795

he sold his clothing works and turned to new fields. After trying

farming for a year (he found he "could not stand the labor and

exposure"), he began a second, even more prosperous business

career. 12

About 1797 Kilbourn moved to Granby, a new town formerly part

of north Simsbury. Here he established a store, and, soon after, a

tavern similar to one his brother Lemuel had owned in the area in

1775. James Kilbourn continued to expand his enterprises by the

purchase of a saw mill and four new farms for rental income. By the

year 1800, he had become, in his own words, "what in Granby was

deemed wealthy."¹³

Kilbourn's reputation for industry and integrity manifested itself in

other ways. For example, he "originated and successfully carried

through the turnpike road from Hartford to Albany . . . formed and

conducted two literary societies; established a public library; was

assessor of town taxes" and was frequently asked to speak to adult

study groups. Yet even these varied activities were insufficient to

keep him occupied. As he later reflected, "I had declined all the little

offices that were offered, except the management of the fiscal

concerns in the Episcopal Church and lister and assessor of taxable

property."14

James Kilbourn's conversion to the Protestant Episcopal faith had

a major impact upon his life and, as shall later be shown, upon the

settlement of frontier Worthington. Apparently he gained his first

knowledge of the Episcopal Church through Alexander Griswold.

While recuperating from his long illness, Kilbourn "found time to

prosecute his researches after truth and knowledge, giving no small

share of attention to theology and ecclesiastical history." Able to

travel at last, he made several visits to Griswold's first parish, some

 

 

 

 

12. Shepard, History of St. Mark's Church, 184-85; Kilbourn, "Autobiography,"

113.

13. Kilbourn's name first appears in the town records of Granby, December 1797.

Granby Town Records, Town Meetings, vol. I, 50, Granby Town Hall, Granby, Con-

necticut. Kilbourn, "Autobiography," 114; The Heritage of Granby, 141-52; Deed of

Sale, from Amasa Kilbourn to James Kilbourn, May 6, 1801, Granby Town Records,

Book of Deeds, vol. V, 53, Granby Town Hall, Granby, Connecticut.

14. Shepard, History of St. Mark's Church, 185; Kilbourn, "Autobiography," 114.

According to Granby town records for the period 1797 to 1800, major offices were held

by a few families. Kilbourn himself was not a member of the ruling clique despite his

prosperity. Between 1797 and 1800 the only town offices he held were tax assessor and

grandjuryman. Granby Town Records, Town Meetings, vol. I, passim.

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252                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

twenty-five miles west of his parents' home at Farmington. The

former relationship of teacher and pupil was readily renewed.¹⁵

Episcopal church records reveal that Kilbourn was serving as an

alternate preacher and lay reader at Christ Church, Newington, as

early as December 1800. His parish was known as Wethersfield and

Worthington and served Episcopalians in the Berlin-Farmington

area.¹⁶ Simultaneously he served as church treasurer for St. Peter's

mission church in Granby. On January 24, 1802, James Kilbourn was

officially inducted into the Episcopal Church as a deacon.

Customarily a period of at least two years' candidacy precedes such

office; therefore it seems likely Kilbourn's initial experience as a lay

reader began about January 1800.17

Kilbourn's Berlin congregation liked him. In a letter addressed to

Bishop Abraham Jarvis at Cheshire December 7, 1801, church leaders

urged his retention: "We recommend unto thee the very amiable and

pious Mr. James Kilbourn who has preached with us alternately for

the year passed, to the universal satisfaction of his hearers." The

request that Kilbourn be allowed to continue his work in the parish

was termed the "unanimous view" of the congregation. Eighteen

months later the same leaders pleaded for the Bishop's permission to

allow Kilbourn "to take a journey into the northwestern terri-

tory . . . We could all wish to be sure Mr. Kilbourn did not wish to

take this journey, but inasmuch as he does we ought to and do hereby

certify that it is no more than agreed upon at the time we made our

contract with him which on the part of Mr. Kilbourn has been

observed with honor."18

 

 

 

 

15. Shepard, History of St. Mark's Church, 185. According to Kenneth W. Came-

ron, Archivist and Historiographer of the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut, confirma-

tion in the Episcopal Church in America prior to 1789 was impossible for most Ameri-

cans because they had no access to a bishop. This condition explains why no record

exists of the precise date when Kilbourn joined the Protestant Episcopal Church. Had

he become a convert prior to 1789, there would probably be no record of confirmation.

Kenneth W. Cameron to Goodwin F. Berquist, Jr., November 10, 1975.

16. It would be tempting to conclude that Worthington, Ohio, was named after Kil-

bourn's first parish. However, in a letter he wrote in 1804, James Kilbourn makes it

clear that the new Ohio settlement was named in honor of Colonel Thomas Worth-

ington of Chillicothe. James Kilbourn to Thomas Worthington, February 7, 1804, Kil-

bourn Papers.

17. Shepard, History of St. Mark's Church, 186; George Burgess, ed., "List of Per-

sons Admitted to the Order of Deacons of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the

United States of America from A.D. 1785 to A.D. 1837, Both Inclusive," Early

Anglicanism in Connecticut, 6; Daniel B. Stevick, Canon Law, A Handbook (New

York, 1965), 180-95; Kilbourn, "Autobiography," 114.

18. John Goodrich, Jonathan Gilbert et al. to Right Rev'd Abraham Jarvis D.D.,

Bishop of Connecticut, December 7, 1801, John Goodrich and Jonathan Gilbert to

Right Rev'd. [Abraham] Jarvis, July 29, 1802, Kilbourn Papers.

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Worthington, Ohio                                                  253

 

Being an Episcopalian in Connecticut in 1800 meant being part of a

small band of religious dissenters.19 Until 1727, Connecticut law

stipulated that all citizens, whatever their religious preference, must

pay taxes to support the established state church. In this case, that

meant the Congregational Church. Initially, Episcopalians were

consigned to second-class citizenship because the political affairs of

the state were tightly controlled by the Congregational majority. By

the middle of the eighteenth century, however, "Anglicans

theretofore mere voters entered Connecticut's active political

community as holders of public office." But not every office was

open to them. Anglicans were "rarely or never" elected by the

General Assembly to the colony's "higher administrative, judicial,

and military" offices.²⁰ Where they did achieve success was in offices

determined by election in the local communities.²1 This explains the

"little offices" Kilbourn was offered. From the moment he declared

himself a member of the Protestant Episcopal Church until he later

removed to Ohio, he was exiled from the main stream of Connecticut

public life.²²

A further consequence of Kilbourn's conversion from

Congregationalism, the religion of his parents, to Episcopalianism

involved the question of loyalty. The Peace of Paris that ended the

American War for Independence in 1783 by no means ended the

bitterness that existed between patriot and loyalist. One church

historian in Ohio reported that as late as the 1820s when Kenyon

College was being built by the Episcopalians at Gambier, "a farmer in

the neighborhood refused to believe that this huge pile was not a

British fortress built to subdue Ohio to the king, that Bishop Chase

 

 

 

 

19. Bruce E. Steiner, "Anglican Office-Holding in Pre-Revolutionary Connecticut:

The Parameters of New England Community," The William and Mary Quarterly, Third

Series, XXXI (January 1974), 370.

20. Ibid., 378.

21. Ibid., 379.

22. Congregational control of Connecticut politics was finally broken by a coalition

of non-conforming Republicans in 1817. Richard J. Purcell, Connecticut in Transition:

1775-1818 (Washington, 1918), 46-92; Origen Storrs Seymour, The Beginnings of the

Episcopal Church in Connecticut, Tercentenary Commission of the State of Connec-

ticut, Committee on Historical Publications XXX (New Haven, 1934), 13-26; Abraham

Bishop, Connecticut Republicanism: An Oration on the Event and Power of Political

Delusion, American Imprint Series, First Series, Evans no. 198 (Albany, 1801), 1;

Church and State, A Political Union, Formed by the Enemies of Both, American Im-

print Series, Second Series, Evans no. 2036 (n.p., 1802), 41-54. In "An Address to the

Independent Electors of Franklinton, Columbus, and Townships Adjacent," given on

October 12, 1812, Kilbourn asserted: "I have ever been, and am, a decided Republican

...." See Correspondence of the Late James Kilbourn, Founder of the Church in

Ohio, the Scioto Purchase, and the Homestead Bill (Columbus, 1913), 13.

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254                                                       OHIO HISTORY

 

was not a secret agent of the English crown, and that Kenyon

students were not British soldiers in disguise."²³ After all, in the first

fifty years of its existence as a nation, the United States had fought

two wars with Great Britain,

As adherents to the Church of England, Episcopalians were usually

sympathetic to the crown, even if they refrained from outright aid to

the enemy.²⁴ As Roger Viets wrote officials of the London-based

Society which sponsored him, during the tumultuous days following

the Stamp Act crisis, "the authorities of old England, I doubt not,

have found and will find Episcopalians in New England their most

zealous defenders."25

The history of the parish in which James Kilbourn was married

mirrors Connecticut attitudes toward Episcopalians. In 1744 St. An-

drew's Church in Bloomfield (a nearby village southeast of Simsbury)

was founded. Early church members were disgruntled Con-

gregationalists who refused to contribute to the construction of a new

Congregational church removed from their place of residence. St.

Andrew's first rector was the Reverend William Gibbs, sent to the

parish from London by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel

in Foreign Parts. In the absence of an American bishop, the Society

served as the Church of England's link to mission parishes in the

colonies. In 1749 Gibbs was arrested for refusing to pay court costs in

a test case involving support of Congregational clergymen. Ap-

prehended in his home parish, Gibbs was publicly humiliated by being

transported to the Hartford jail thrown over the back of a horse with

his hands and feet tied beneath the body of the animal.²⁶

In June 1763 a Yale graduate originally destined for the Congrega-

tional ministry but later converted to the Episcopal faith became the

new rector of St. Andrew's. Ordained in England less than a year

earlier, the Reverend Roger Viets was the brother-in-law of Elisha

 

 

 

 

 

23. Richard G. Salomon, "St. John's Parish, Worthington, and the Beginnings of the

Episcopal Church in Ohio," The Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly,

LXIV (January 1955), 61.

24. Zeichner, Connecticut's Years of Controversy, 233-34.

25. Roger Viets to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, London,

November 22, 1766, Kenneth W. Cameron, ed., "Manuscript Journal of Roger Viets,"

Early Anglicanism in Connecticut, 5. For a detailed account of Anglican missionary

activities in the colony, see Maud O'Neil, "A Struggle for Religious Liberty: An

Analysis of the Work of the S.P.G. in Connecticut," Historical Magazine of the Pro-

testant Episcopal Church, XX (1951), 173-89.

26. William Gibbs to Reverend Dr. Bearcroft, December 28, 1749, Documents Relat-

ing to St. Andrew's Church, Simsbury (now in Bloomfield) and St. Ann's Church,

Granby, Connecticut 1744-1785 (Hartford, 1943); photostat copy in Connecticut State

Library.

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Worthington, Ohio                                                  255

 

Griswold of Simsbury.²⁷ An intelligent, articulate, and energetic man,

Viets ministered to thirty-three mission churches in Connecticut, nine

in Massachusetts, and two in New York while at the same time pres-

iding over the affairs of his home church.²⁸ Roger Viets undoubtedly

exercised great influence over his fellow Anglicans in Connecticut.

He was also a loyalist, as was every other Society missionary in the

colony.²⁹ Viets' parishioners were pro-British, and many suffered

persecution as he did.

Viets' loyalty to the crown is apparent in the following passage

from a letter he wrote to London, November 22, 1766:

When the Stamp duty was promulgated in America, the Episcopalians of

Connecticut, in general, (without a reprehensible officiousness) paid such a

proper deference of submission, as we supposed ought to be paid to an Act of

Parliament, at the same time bearing testimony against the riotous, not to say

rebellious proceedings of our neighbours; for which decent and loyal conduct

we are still treated with unusual cruelty. Indeed I at first feared a demolition

of our Churches and dwelling houses. This calamity we happily escaped, but

have been deprived of almost every one of the few public offices we had

enjoyed before, and have been constantly pointed at as the worst of traitors

to our country, and betrayers of her most essential interests and

liberties   .. . 30

Viets' loyalism ultimately got him into serious trouble during the

Revolution. A college historian at Yale provides one version of what

happened: "In the period of the Revolution, he [Viets] was under-

stood to sympathize with England, and as punishment for assisting

two British officers to escape from prison, and for traitorous corres-

pondence with the enemy, he was fined by the Superior Court of the

County in January, 1777, £ 20, and condemned to be imprisoned in

the Hartford jail for one year.^"31

 

 

 

27. Heritage of Granby, 164.

28. In the following twenty-four years Viets baptized 1869 persons, married 176

couples, officiated at the burial of 219 of his flock, and increased family membership

from seventy-five to 280. By 1774, his far-flung parish was among the most populous in

the Connecticut colony. Roger Viets, A Serious Address and Farewell Charge to the

Members of the Church of England in Simsbury and Adjacent Parts (Hartford, 1787),

3. F. B. Dexter, "Roger Viets, Yale Graduate," Biographical Sketches of the

Graduates of Yale College with Annals of the College in Early Anglicanism in Connec-

ticut, 1-2.

29. "When the fighting began, every one of the twenty S.P.G. missionaries in Con-

necticut supported the Tory cause." Glenn Weaver, "Anglican-Congregationalist Ten-

sions in Pre-Revolutionary Connecticut," Historical Magazine of the Protestant Epis-

copal Church, XXVI (September 1957), 285.

30. Roger Viets to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, London,

November 22, 1766, Cameron, ed., "Manuscript Journal of Roger Viets," 5, in Early

Anglicanism in Connecticut.

31. Dexter, "Roger Viets, Yale Graduate," 3-5, in Early Anglicanism in Connec-

ticut.

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256                                           OHIO HISTORY

A second version of what happened appears in the Viets family genealogy: "During the Revolution Roger Viets was suspected of sympathizing with the loyalists. He was on one occasion arrested and placed in the county jail at Hartford for giving comfort to a company of Tories. In answering the charge he replied that he could not refrain from giving food and shelter to men who came destitute to his house."32 Whichever story is correct, the state historian later re- ported, "the patriot sentiment was so strong that loyalists from other colonies were sent to Connecticut where it was believed they would have no influence."33 James Kilbourn was only seven years old when Roger Viets was imprisoned, but the cumulative experiences of Viets and his followers during the Revolution constituted a legacy of suppression that Kil- bourn and the other Worthington pioneers inherited. Roger Viets was the mentor of Kilbourn's good friend and tutor Alexander Griswold. Moreover he served as the parish minister for most of Worthington's first families: Pinneys, Toppings, Cases,       32. Francis Hubbard Viets, comp., A Genealogy of the Viets Family with Biographi- cal Sketches (Hartford, 1902), 32. 33. Encyclopedia Britannica, 1955, s.v. "Connecticut," by James Brewster.

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Worthington, Ohio                                              257

 

Beaches, Griswolds, and, of course, Kilbourns.³⁴ The Simsbury-

based parish of Roger Viets encompassed the entire Connecticut-

Massachusetts region from which the first Worthington settlers would

later come. Given these facts, it seems inevitable that Connecticut

Episcopalians, even those who joined the Church after Viets was

transferred to Nova Scotia, were well aware of the harassment and

persecution suffered by their co-religionists during and after the con-

flict with England.

The Simsbury parish was poor, scattered, and frequently without

benefit of clergy. In 1764, Roger Viets noted that "the good people of

St. Ann's Church, Salmonbrook [the church that preceded St. Peter's

in Granby] proceed toward the completing of their little church, as

fast as their poverty and other difficulties will admit." Prayer books

and religious tracts "are uncommonly necessary in my mission,"

Viets wrote Society officials, "being 35 miles from any other Epis-

copal minister." In 1765 he reported to London that about half the

Episcopal churches in New England were without pastors. In 1776

this entry appears in Society records: "many of my Episcopal

parishioners remove their habitations into places far distant from all

Episcopal churches, and thereby are lost to our Church." Children of

Episcopal parents often become Congregationalists, Viets com-

plained, because the dissenters have many ministers, "all the power

and influence of civil government for support," strong religious edu-

cation programs, wealth, and superiority in numbers.³⁵

The London records of the Society for the Propagation of the Gos-

pel indicate that after the Declaration of Independence was signed in

1776, all Episcopal churches except ones in Rhode Island and Con-

necticut were closed. Not until five years later do we again encounter

reports of Church activities in New England. From Simsbury in 1784,

Roger Viets wrote that the losses in his congregation "by deaths,

emigration &c." were "pretty nearly balanced by the accession of the

new Conformists."³⁶ What were not balanced were church budgets.

All support for American missions from abroad was now withdrawn.

 

 

 

34. This assertion is based upon a comparison of Worthington's first settlers with the

family names listed in Roger Viets' Record Book. See Frank Corbin, A Walking Tour

of Old Worthington (Worthington, 1969), passim; Scioto Company Minute Book,

1802-1806, Ohio Historical Society, 34-35; Bates, comp., "Records of the Rev. Roger

Viets," passim, in Early Anglicanism in Connecticut.

35. Roger Viets to the Society for Propagation of the Gospel, June 23, 1764, June 25,

1765, June 25, 1766; Cameron, ed., "Manuscript Journal of Roger Viets," 3-5, in Early

Anglicanism in Connecticut.

36. C. F. Pascoe, Two Hundred Years of the S.P.G.: An Historical Account of the

Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, 1701-1900, 2 vols. (Lon-

don, 1901), I, 51.

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258                                                OHIO HISTORY

 

Henceforth, American adherents to the Church of England must fend

for themselves.

The London Society had not forgotten their loyal servant Roger

Viets, however, and in 1787 he was offered the pulpit of Digby in

Nova Scotia. He removed there to start a new life at the age of fifty.

The decision of the Viets family to emigrate to Canada was one many

American loyalists embraced. Others sought to start again in the West

Indies or in England itself.³⁷ In any case, the Anglican experience in

the Revolution certainly contributed to the flow of migration from

Connecticut during the postwar era.

Roger Viets' departure from Connecticut produced a leadership

vacuum for many of the faithful left behind. The economic prosperity

farmers hoped for after the Revolution failed to materialize for many,

as Josiah Kilbourn knew all too well. Growing families engaged in

occasional lumbering and subsistence agriculture began to consider

seriously the possibility of moving elsewhere. Unlike some of their

co-religionists, most of Roger Viets' old flock did not choose to leave

the country. But with Viets in Nova Scotia, and with Alexander

Griswold deeply involved in establishing the Protestant Episcopal

Church in America, it fell to James Kilbourn to provide the vision,

leadership, and organizational skill necessary to plan and launch a

project for an American haven for New England Episcopalians. It

may be said that Viets, by precept and example, prepared the way,

but it was Kilbourn who became both the cohesive and propulsive

force that drew together and launched many of Viets' old flock on a

venture into the wilderness.

Just prior to 1800 James Kilbourn made two exploratory trips to

western New York, whether out of personal curiosity or as land agent

for some unnamed settlement company is not known. What is known

is that Kilbourn's father-in-law, John Fitch, was fascinated with the

future promise of the Northwest Territory. It was Fitch in fact who

drew one of the earliest maps of lands west of the Ohio.³⁸

In the postwar era, the Connecticut valley buzzed with rumors of

cheap, rich land beyond the mountains. Rufus Putman of Rutland,

Massachusetts, and Manaseh Cutler of Killingly, Connecticut

founded Marietta, Ohio's first white community, April 7, 1788. Within

 

 

 

37. Bates, comp., "Records of the Rev. Roger Viets," 2, in Early Anglicanism in

Connecticut; Dexter, "Roger Viets, Yale Graduate," 4-5, in Early Anglicanism in Con-

necticut; Wallace Brown, The Good Americans: The Loyalists in the American Revolu-

tion (New York, 1969), 192-213, 216-21.

38. Shepard, History of St. Mark's Church, 186; Mira Clarke Parsons, "John Fitch,

Inventor of Steamboats," The Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly,

VIII (1900), 400.

• 12
 

Worthington, Ohio                                              259

 

two years, four other companies of New England settlers joined

them. In 1795 the Treaty of Greene Ville was signed, essentially

guaranteeing security from Indian attack for Ohio's incoming settlers.

Of particular interest to beleagured Espiscopalians was the first arti-

cle of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 guaranteeing that no person

would be "molested on account of his mode of worship or religious

sentiments, in the said territory."39

Perhaps Ohio was the place to go, and it was James Kilbourn,

prosperous, energetic, and resourceful, who could translate the vague

hopes of glorious opportunities in the West into reality. For Episcopa-

lians in the depressed Granby area, Kilbourn must have seemed like

the answer to a prayer. Best of all, he was a minister of their own

faith: what more could a group of religious pioneers intent on estab-

lishing a new community in the wilderness hope for in a leader?

Perhaps Roger Viets captured the thoughts of Worthington immi-

grants as well as anyone in the last sermon he preached at St. Peter's

Episcopal Church, Granby, June 29, 1800. Although Viets had in

mind his own final visit with his Connecticut flock, the words he

spoke expressed the religious ideals which later guided Worthington

settlers. The principles of unity, virtue, charity, and a firm adherence

to the doctrines of the Christian faith that Viets extolled were clearly

manifested in Kilbourn's Worthington settlement.

The first great, material and indispensable support of the Christian cause is

a constant and serious attendance on public worship: The neglect of which is

a most heinous sin, provoking to God and scandalous to the gospel. The next

duty conducive to the same purpose is unity among yourselves. A kingdom or

a community divided within itself will inevitably fall to ruin. A wrangling,

contending family will most certainly come to shame and destruction; so will

a church or congregation. Exert yourselves in acts of liberality to support the

church and the clergy. I cannot be suspected of giving this advice with a view

of self-interest as my stay among you is, alas, so short. Be kind and charitable

to the poor and distressed-Be patient, forbearing and forgiving to each

other-Do to all men as you would, they should do unto you-Perform your

duty to God, your neighbours and yourselves with all punctuality and

uniformity-not only with zeal and constancy hold fast the great, essential

doctrines of the Christian faith, but carefully adorn the profession of the gos-

pel, by honest, holy and pious conversation.⁴⁰

Three years before, in his Serious Address, Viets had painted a

glowing picture of the new community of Episcopalians at Digby.

 

 

39. The Northwest Ordinance is in Clarence Edwin Carter and John Porter Bloom,

eds., The Territorial Papers of the United States, 27 vols. (Washington, 1934-1969), II,

46.

40. Roger Viets, A Sermon Preached in St. Peter's Church, Granby, Formerly

Simsbury, in Connecticut, New England, on the 29th Day of June 1800 (Hartford,

1800), 14-15.

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260                                                           OHIO HISTORY

 

Perhaps he hoped to encourage some of his former parishioners to

leave Connecticut and join him in British Nova Scotia. His words

may also have helped to confirm James Kilbourn in his own plan of

emigration and settlement. In his autobiography written in 1845 Kil-

bourn summarized the process of emigration this way: "About this

time, commencement of 1800, conceived the plan of forming an emi-

gration company to the then N. Western Territory. It took about one

year (1800) to make my friends believe me serious in the proposition;

the next (1801) to satisfy them that I was not insane; the third (1802)

to explore the country, complete the Scioto Company of forty mem-

bers and prepare for operations, and the fourth (1803) to commence

improvements, and near the end of the year to conduct the families to

the purchase, all of which devolved on me."41

Kilbourn's innate skill as a persuasive speaker manifested itself in a

variety of other ways as well. We know he was an effective lay

preacher in Connecticut. Later he was to demonstrate his rhetorical

ability in Congress as originator of the Homestead Act and as a skill-

ful advocate of the interests of settlers in the old Northwest Territory.

Newspaper publisher, land company agent, founder of the Worth-

ington Manufacturing Company with branches at Steubenville and

Columbus as well as Worthington, Kilbourn was a natural leader of

men in all kinds of enterprises.⁴²

 

 

 

 

41. Kilbourn, "Autobiography," 114. Kilbourn's description of cheap arable land in

Ohio was highly persuasive to thrifty New England farmers. The Scioto Company ac-

tually purchased its land at $1.25 per acre while good farm land in Connecticut com-

manded a price of $50 per acre. See "Scioto Company: Abstract of Articles of Agree-

ment, 14 December 1802," The Old Northwest Genealogical Quarterly, VI (July 1903),

84. For an account of prices for good land in Connecticut, see Transactions of the

Society for Promoting Agriculture in the State of Connecticut, 14.

42. James Kilbourn fit the role of a land company organizer perfectly. Indeed, Daniel

Boorstin might almost have had him in mind when he described this critical leadership

role: "Out of the vast American spaces and from the need to travel in groups came the

power of the organizer. Men living beyond the jurisdiction of government, away from

the places and customs of their fathers had to be persuaded to do their jobs. Here was a

new demand for that special combination of qualities that enabled a man to persuade or

cajole others to do their share for the group. Without the power of tradition or prestige

of an army commander, the leader of a traveling community had to be able to get things

done. He had to create an esprit de corps quickly and preserve it among a miscellane-

ous crowd in the face of thirst, hunger, and disease, discouragement, mortal danger,

and death. A host of factors combined to give the organizer a power he had seldom

before held outside of military life or civil government. In traditional, settled com-

munities, many qualities-noble ancestry, landed property, wealth, bravery, military

prowess, learning, shrewdness, or elequence-might make a man a leader; among the

transients in sparsely settled America, the leader was the persuader and the organizer."

Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans: The National Experience (New York, 1965), 57-58.

Shepard, History of St. Mark's Church, 189-91; Ann Natalie Hansen, "James Kil-

bourn, Ohio Pioneer" (M.A. thesis, Ohio State University, 1950), 84-85.

• 14
 

Worthington, Ohio                                              261

 

Kilbourn and Nathaniel Little made an exploratory trip to central

Ohio on behalf of the Scioto Company of Granby in 1802. Their origi-

nal plan was to settle on a tract of land along Big Walnut Creek in

what is now Columbus, but swamp fever or malaria, from which

many settlers died, was deemed too great a risk. Consequently a site

on high land east of the Olentangy River some nine miles north was

selected instead. An advance work party of nine, including the family

of Lemuel Kilbourn, James' older brother, came west in the spring of

1803 to plant corn, erect a saw mill, and build cabins. By the follow-

ing December one hundred settlers, including children, had arrived to

claim their property on the Company's purchase.⁴³

One of the first decisions of the Scioto Company proprietors,

agreed upon in Connecticut in 1802, was that a town lot and a

hundred-acre farm lot should be set aside for a school and church.

The church specified in the Company Minute Book was the Protes-

tant Episcopal.⁴⁴ Worthington's sister village, Granville, established

in 1804 some twenty-seven miles to the east, was in many ways simi-

lar. Granville settlers came from the same region of Connecticut and

Massachusetts as those in Worthington. James Kilbourn was well

known to Granvillites and Levi Buttles of Worthington served as the

Granville town surveyor. But in one important particular the two set-

tlements differed. While Granville provided free land for its "future

village churches," the Scioto Company proprietors of Worthington

thought only in terms of a Protestant Episcopal Church.⁴⁵

By the middle of 1804 Worthingtonites had established a school and

library, along with an Episcopal society, and a large log cabin for

public meetings of all sorts, including religious services. In a letter to

Thomas Worthington, written four months after the establishment of

the town, Kilbourn emphasized the religious nature of the new com-

munity. "We have formed," he reported, "a regular society for Re-

ligious purposes, have Divine Service performed every Sunday in

Public."⁴⁶ Later on Kilbourn established an Indian trading post and

 

 

43. Nathaniel Little, "Journal of Nathaniel Little," The Old Northwest Genealogical

Quarterly, X (July 1907), 237-45; James Kilbourn, "Report of James Kilbourn, Agent for

the Scioto Company for Spring-Autumn 1802," The Old Northwest Genealogical Quar-

terly, VI (July 1903), 71-82; "Report of James Kilbourn, Agent of the Scioto Company

for Summer of 1803," Ibid., 87-91. Frank Corbin describes the process by which Kil-

bourn and the Scioto Company purchased 16,000 acres in central Ohio from Dr. Jonas

Stanberry and General Jonathan Dayton. See Frank Corbin, "The Birth of Our Town,"

The Worthington News, September 11, 1975, I, 10.

44. Scioto Company Minute Book, 1802-1806, 31.

45. Utter, Granville, 44.

46. James Kilbourn to Thomas Worthington, February 7, 1804, The Papers of

Thomas Worthington, Ohio Historical Society. See also Salomon, "St. John's Parish,"

63.

• 15
 

262                                                OHIO HISTORY

 

the first Masonic lodge in Ohio. A medical college and female semi-

nary would follow. From such beginnings Worthington became a kind

of frontier cultural center.

As for James Kilbourn,,he achieved in Ohio recognition far beyond

the "little offices" offered to him in Connecticut: congressman, pres-

idential elector, mayor, college trustee, and college president. Small

wonder Joel Buttles who married Kilbourn's step-daughter described

him as "the principal sachem of the tribe."⁴⁷

Hundreds of other towns were being organized in the new state of

Ohio, but in one respect Worthington differed from all the rest. From

the beginning it was designed as a haven for Episcopalians. In the

West generally, the Episcopal Church "made little impression in the

years before 1815. It had a rigid organization and formalism which

ill-fitted it for the extraordinary measures needed to carry the mes-

sage of the church into the frontier regions. In 1820 there were no

Episcopalian ministers in Indiana, Illinois, or Tennessee and only ten

in Ohio and Kentucky."⁴⁸ But Worthington was an exception to the

rule. The Reverend James Kilbourn was the first Episcopal clergyman

to cross the Appalachians and take up residence in Ohio; indeed, Kil-

bourn was the only minister of his faith to live in the state for the first

twelve years of its existence. St. John's, the church he founded in

Worthington, was the first Episcopal parish west of the Alleghenies.

After the War of 1812 Worthington became the center of church activ-

ity for the entire state. On October 20, 1816, the first diocese west of

the Ohio River was established there. Philander Chase, Kilbourn's

successor at St. John's, was chosen Ohio's first bishop. At Worth-

ington, too, Kenyon College was founded as a seminary for the train-

ing of Episcopal clergy. Although Presbyterians and Methodists later

made their homes in Worthington, the community achieved its dis-

tinctive goal: to provide a comfortable haven for Episcopalians on the

western frontier.⁴⁹

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

47. Joel Buttles, Extracts from the Diary of Joel Buttles (Newport, 1889), 23; Salo-

mon, "St. John's Parish," 62-63; Kilbourn, "Autobiography," 115-20.

48. Reginald Horsman, The Frontier in the Formative Years: 1783-1815 (New York,

n.d.), 129.

49. Salomon, "St. John's Parish," 64-65, 67-74.

• 16