Woodstock: An historical sketchBowen, Clarence Winthrop
History
Woodstock: An historical sketch
Bowen, Clarence Winthrop
Woodstock (Conn. : Town) -- History
They were willing to give up all idea of a town of
their own. This modified request was now made to the town[67] and to
the General Court.[68] The General Court complied by passing an act in
1743,[69] incorporating the district as "The West Parish of Woodstock."
A meeting was at once held,[70] at which it was determined to survey
the line dividing the two portions of the town. West Parish was now
called by the old name of New Roxbury. These acts were afterwards
approved by the General Assembly of Connecticut when Woodstock withdrew
from under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts.[71] In 1747 Rev. Stephen
Williams was ordained pastor.
The church[72] on the Hill was under the pastorate of Rev. Abel S.
Stiles, who had been ordained in 1737.[73] But the fact that Mr.
Stiles was a graduate of Yale College[74] instead of Harvard, as his
two predecessors had been, and his family connections[75] were all
with Connecticut, his parishioners were led to believe that he would
favor the "Saybrook Platform" of faith, rather than the "Cambridge
Platform," and if there was one thing our ancestors abhorred quite as
much as Episcopacy or popery it was the "Saybrook Platform." To be
tainted with that form of faith, as was the case with Mr. Stiles after
his settlement in Woodstock, was heresy indeed, and Woodstock was
determined, according to her grant of 1683, to have none other but an
"able, orthodox, godly minister." Instead of attending the Association
of Ministers in Massachusetts, Mr. Stiles preferred the meetings of the
Windham County Association in Connecticut, and when Woodstock became a
part of Connecticut the troubles with Mr. Stiles increased. Councils
were held. Pastor and parishioners tried to discipline each other.
The General Assembly of Connecticut was appealed to. Threats--even
violence was resorted to. But without going into the details of this
long-protracted struggle, let it be said that there were two parties
in the controversy, one side sympathizing with Mr. Stiles in his more
liberal theological views, and the other side at first insisting
on a minister who should conform in all respects to the "Standing
Order," and afterwards opposed to Mr. Stiles personally as well as
theologically. The Stiles party had favored, while the anti-Stiles
party had opposed, the annexation of Woodstock to Connecticut. The
result of the quarrel was a break in the church in 1760. The North
Society was constituted by act[76] of the General Assembly, and Mr.
Stiles and his followers went to Muddy Brook. Thus was formed the Third
Congregational Church of Woodstock, and here Mr. Stiles continued to
preach until his death in 1783.[77] When it was determined in 1831,
by the church in East Woodstock, to build a new meeting-house on the
spot of the old one erected in 1767, the people in Village Corners
objected to the location and formed a society of their own--the Fourth
Congregational Church of Woodstock.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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