You might ask, “How does Granby relate to the first amendment of the United States Constitution?” The first amendment prohibits government from establishing any religion or abridging speech, the press, or peaceable assembly. This is Part one of a five-part series covering 50 years of religious and other historical tensions to answer that question. We’ll travel from Granby’s historical roots in Part one, to the Great Awakening (Part two), the formation of the Bible Belt down south (Part three), religious persecution in Virginia (Part four), to the First Constitutional Amendment (Part five). The trail may cause one to consider the context of religious influence and even surprise one about the role of religious people defending the freedoms we enjoy.
We start in Granby to set the context of when government was thought to be divinely guided, also known as a theocracy. In the 1670s, Major Talcott was the commander of the militia during the King Philips War with the Indian tribes of Connecticut and Massachusetts. He had a plan for a buffer zone to protect the Simsbury Ecclesiastical Society from the area Indians. The fertile fields at Salmon Brook would support a buffer settlement. The only problem, which lasted for years, was the lack of volunteers. Ultimately, Talcott and the society had to settle for various less desirable folks, including religious dissenters such as Anglicans, for their buffer.
Over time these outlanders chaffed with the proprietors from Simsbury for several reasons. The outlanders felt entitled to their land as freeholders trying to eke out a living. They argued their case because the Salmon Brook grants required improvements such as “mansion” houses or fences at the outlanders’ expense.
Church membership was the key that opened other rights in the community: the right to vote in matters of hiring/firing of pastors, taxation, education and church meetinghouse maintenance because the meeting house also served as the town hall.
Central control of religion became more important as the church’s influence was in a period of decline. An example was the liberalization of membership via the halfway covenant practice. This allowed adults without specific conversion experiences (which was the norm) to get their infants baptized with limited church membership privileges. In Massachusetts, a law was passed to lock meetinghouse doors during sermons to prevent early exits. Dissenters (non-Puritan Congregationalists) were allowed to exist if they swore an oath of allegiance to England. All this was administered by county church boards to oversee preaching, membership and pastor selection.
Outlanders, including dissenters who had no voice in the societies’ governance, paid taxes. David Dewey, a Baptist minister (dissenter), lived in the Bushy Hill area and preached in the surrounding country and was also engaged in farming. He didn’t want to pay taxes to the British government, so his cow was taken from him by the society and sold for that purpose. There were also class tensions between the outlanders and the Hopmeadow proprietors regarding land grants. They sought more land for their families as their families and ensuing generations grew. The affluent who controlled the land lived in the Hopmeadow area and had more influence than the poorer outlanders.
Finally, the distance the outlanders traveled to church in Simsbury was akin to driving to Danbury in today’s world. The local church was also the local meeting house where business was conducted. Trying to move the Hopmeadow meeting house closer to the outlanders was contentious. The outlanders wanted to have their own say in government by having their own ecclesiastical society and meeting house. It was also questioned whether they could afford to support a pastor. Tax collection was already a problem in the society as Pastor Timothy Woodbridge would go for three years with no salary.
The issue of local control was further compounded as the Simsbury Society was comprised of multiple locations. We know them as Salmon Brook (Granby), Turkey Hills (East Granby), Wintonbury and Hopmeadow (Simsbury) and The Falls (Tariffville), all of which were finally established as four separate societies in 1740.
The Puritan-controlled Congregational churches of the day were a God-fearing people. What did a typical Sunday sabbath rest look like? Church attendance was required for two Sunday services, where two-hour sermons were the norm, so the average church goer listened to 7,000 sermons or 150,000 hours in a lifetime.
Prayer time would be an hour with the congregation standing. The drive to Hopmeadow center was five to seven miles over the ridge, maybe across the river in a territory with possibly unfriendly Indians. There also were militia exercises on Sunday after services. And farm chores were still a part of the day’s responsibilities, even on the Sabbath. You could be a dissenter (typically Baptist or Anglican) only if you proved you really attended elsewhere and that you could support your own pastor. Otherwise, taxes were the Congregational church’s money as they controlled all the activities in the society. The church was their social life, political life and spiritual life, but Sunday was anything but a day of rest.
Next month’s article describes, the Great Awakening that happened in the Connecticut River Valley adds to the mix of religious tensions and changes life in Salmon Brook. Credit for much of the information in this installment goes to Mark Williams and his book Tempest in a Small Town. It is a delightful read and available at the Granby Public Library.
Editor’s note: Skip (Walter) Mission, a lifelong Granby resident, has taught Bible classes in Granby and elsewhere for several years at various venues.