Category Archives: Sense of place

“And only four kids came…”

Maggi Peirce gave a talk today at the church about how she and some others started a folk music coffee house in New Bedford in 1967. They had programming every Friday and Saturday evening, to provide a safe place for teenagers during that era of youth unrest. After starting off with a bang in May, 1967, they began having increasing difficulty finding adult volunteers, until things reached a crisis point in July. Here’s how Maggi told the story this afternoon:

“Every time that I would ask for people to help, they sort of faded like snow off a ditch. And then there was one famous night where I had to take care of Friday night. And I turned up, and wonderful Joe Cardoza. We loved Joe Cardoza. He always did the door. He was our doorkeeper, and he was from Pilgrim Church [the UCC church here in New Bedford]. The salt of the earth! And there was another woman there called Florrie; and then Ellen; they worked in the kitchen.

“And when this happened, I arrived on the Friday, but nobody else did. Joe was on the door. And there wasn’t even any coffee that night. And only four kids came. And one of them was P—— and he was from Fairhaven. And he said to me — he had a guitar with him; he didn’t play very well [laughter] — and he said, ‘Is nothing happening tonight?’

“And I said, ‘There is always something happening at Tryworks.’

“And he looked at me, and he said, ‘You know, Maggi, this is sort of typical of New Bedford. Everything starts with a big article in the newspaper, and a big hoopla.’ He said, ‘Remember that first night in May, when we opened?’ And this was about July [1967]. He said, ‘Everybody starts with a terrific hope, and everybody’s going to help, and then it all fizzles out within six weeks.’

“And I said, ‘P——, I promise you. Tryworks will not fizzle out in six weeks.’  ”

Well, to make a long story short, Maggi kept that promise. Tryworks coffee house did not fizzle out in six weeks. Maggi became the first director of Tryworks coffeehouse and ran it for twenty years. After she stepped down, it continued for another fifteen years, and when it finally closed for good in 2003 it was the longest-running folk music coffee house in the United States. More importantly, in those thirty-five years Tryworks made a huge impact on the lives of hundreds of young people.

I guess the moral of the story is this: If only four kids show up for your youth program, don’t give up.

More on North Unitarian Church in New Bedford, Mass.

North Unitarian Church in New Bedford began as a mission to the immigrant communities in the North End of New Bedford in 1894, had a separate institutional existence as a church 1917-1923, returned to its status as a settlement house, reorganized as a separate church in 1944, and finally consolidated with First Unitarian c. 1971. I’ve just put together a page on North Unitarian’s history, summarizing my research to date.

Sources on North Unitarian Church | Unity Home begins with a concise summary of major institutional events. From there, you can drown in excerpts from far too many primary and secondary sources. You have been warned.

An eco-universalist prayer

Yesterday’s post has the story of how the great Universalist Hosea Ballou did a preaching tour of the New Bedford region in May, 1820 — including an anecdote of how Rev. Le Baron of Mattapoisett unsuccessfully tried to keep Ballou from preaching. Never one to miss out on provoking a good controversy, Ballou wrote a letter to Le Baron the next day, which apparently had some kind of wider distribution. This letter is probably the first Universalist tract ever written in the New Bedford area.

Ballou’s letter contains one almost poetic passage, which could almost be a proto-eco-universalist prayer. I added snippets from elsewhere in the letter to make conclusion for it, and here it is:

 

     Does not the sun shine universally,
     and the moon likewise?

     Do not the clouds give rain to all,
     and the fruits of the earth grow
     for the benefit of all?

     Is not the vital air for the life of all;
     and are not all equally entitled to the waters?

     All people, every person,
     and the whole world are universal.
     This testimony, I believe, is Universalism.

 

For those of you who love to watch early 19th C. Universalists picking fights, I’ve included the full text of the letter below. Continue reading →

Hosea Ballou in New Bedford

I’ve been tracing out the history of Universalist preaching in New Bedford, and finally tracked down the date when Hosea Ballou, the greatest of the early Universalist preachers, visited here — it’s in the second volume of Thomas Whittemore’s sprawling 1854/5 biography of Ballou. Ballou did a tour of the region, preaching at New Bedford, Fairhaven, Mattapoisett (then part of Rochester), Acushnet and Long Plains (then parts of Fairhaven).

Whittemore includes an anecdote of one of Ballou’s encounters with more orthodox clergy. It is such a classic story that I have included it in its entirety, along with the entire story of Ballou’s preaching tour in this area. (I’ve added a few numbered footnotes; Whittemore’s own footnote is marked with an asterisk.)

———

[p. 101] “In May, 1820, he [Ballou] made a journey to New Bedford, at the call of a few friends there, and preached the word of the Lord, as he understood it, at a private house, [1] there being, as he said, ‘no meeting-house in the town whose owners were willing to have the doctrine of God’s universal, impartial, unchangeable goodness preached within its consecrated walls.’ Thence he crossed the river to Fairhaven, where he addressed an assembly in the academy, and also at the head of the river, so called, in the meeting-house formerly occupied by the memorable Dr. West. [2] In the precinct called Mattapoiset, in the town of Rochester, he was invited to preach, by a physician, who was a large owner in the meeting-house. The house was opened by proper authority; but when Mr. B. came to the door, he was confronted by the settled pastor, Rev. Lemuel Le Baron, who forbid his going into the house. Mr. Ballou was very sorry to wound the feelings of the gentleman; but the house had been opened by proper authority, and there was no good reason why the people who had assembled should be disappointed. The principal reason assigned by Mr. Le Baron for his opposition was, that Mr. Ballou was a Universalist, and that Universalism was subversive of Christianity. Mr. B. invited the clergyman to go in with him, and hear what he had to deliver, and then he [p. 102] could the better judge whether the doctrine preached was the truth or not. But Mr. Le Baron refused to do this, and insisted that he had a right to control the pulpit, and to say who should preach in it. Mr. B. told him that the gentlemen who had given their consent for him to preach in the house were of respectable standing, and proprietors of the house; and, if they had violated his privileges, they must be accountable. He further added, that, however Mr. Le Baron might think it his duty to forbid his preaching, he himself could not see how a man who did not own the house could prevent those from the free use of it who did own it, when they desired to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences. [3] Mr. B. accordingly passed in, and ‘a goodly number (said he) attended to the word.’ * He preached again in the same place in the evening. Before leaving the place, he addressed Mr. Le Baron a long letter, in which he called on him to show wherein Universalism was subversive of Christianity. Mr. B. quoted many passages from the Scriptures, and then wished his antagonist to show either that these passages did not prove Universalism, or else show how they were subversive of Christianity. This being done, Mr. B. proceeded to a meetinghouse at Long Plains, at the upper part of Fairhaven, where he preached, after which he returned home.”

Footnotes:

* “On Mr. Le Baron being told that Mr. Ballou was going to preach in the house, he said to one of his friends, ‘Had I not better go into the house, and be sacrificed at the foot of the pulpit-stairs?’ On the remark being repeated to Mr. Ballou, he asked, ‘Who did the poor man think was going to harm him?'”

[1] According to the 1869 History of Churches in New Bedford, this “private house” was Dudley Davenport’s carpenter’s shop.

[2] Dr. Samuel West was the liberal minister of the congregation which in 1795 moved to the growing Bedford Precinct, later New Bedford; that congregation became First Congregational Society of New Bedford (Unitarian), now First Unitarian Church in New Bedford.

[3] The argument between Ballou and Le Baron turns on a touchy point. In 1820, most Massachusetts churches were composed of two somewhat separate organizations, the church and the society. The division of responsibilities was something like this: the church, controlled by the minister and the deacons, was the arbiter of who would be admitted as a full church member, such admission possibly including doctrinal tests; — the society, controlled by the proprietors (that is, those who provided the funding to build and maintain the meetinghouse), owned the building and most of the furnishings. Thus both Ballou and Le Baron had compelling arguemnts — Ballou arguing that the proprietors had the right to decide who got access to the building; Le Baron arguing that Ballou would injure the doctrinal purity of the church.

Reference: Life of Rev. Hosea Ballou: With Accounts of His Writings, and Biographical Sketches of His Seniors and Contemporaries in the Universalist Ministry by Thomas Whittemore, Boston: James M. Usher, 1854, vol II., pp. 101-102.

Adventures with “Big Bertha”

When I was a year out of college, I bought my parent’s old ’78 Chevy Impala station wagon, a huge green boat of a car with a 305 small block V8 engine. My mother, who liked to name cars, called it “Big Bertha,” or “Bert” for short; when she didn’t like the car she called it “The Big Green Monster.” I think it was the biggest car she ever drove. I don’t think she ever liked it much, but I was happy to buy it, because it was the only car I could afford.

I bought it in the summer of 1984 and drove it down to Philadelphia where I had been living. I loaded everything I owned into the back, and started driving home. I was on the northeast extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike when the tractor-trailer rig in front of me blew a retread off one of its eighteen wheels. All I saw was this huge black writhing piece of rubber flying down the highway directly at me and, Wham! it hit the underside of the car, and suddenly the muffler was dragging on the highway and making a horrible noise. I limped along to the next exit, pulled into a gas station and was told they couldn’t fix the car until the next day. I must have looked pretty sick — I didn’t have the money to stay in a motel — so this friendly guy went out, crawled under the car with me, and showed me how to wire the muffler up so I could drive the rest of the way home.

I had been unable to find a job in Philly, but within a month of moving back to Massachusetts I had several job offers. I went to work full time at the lumberyard where I had worked summers, and pretty soon took a room in a shared house that was close enough to the lumberyard that I could walk to work. The big green station wagon sat in the driveway most of the week; by now it had rust spots showing through the green paint. Once or twice a week, I would drive it in to the Boston Museum School to take art classes. At first I was terrified to drive into Boston in rush hour traffic, but I soon learned that other drivers were wary of a huge green rusty station wagon driven by a long-haired, wild-eyed kid. Then one night after class, I walked out to where I had parked the car along the Fenway, and it was gone — stolen. I went back into the school (this was before cell phones, remember) and called the Boston police, who told me that the Fenway was covered by Metropolitan District Commission Police; I called them and they told me I would have to appear in person at their station up near the Charles River dam. So I walked all the way up there, and the cop on duty, being a Boston cop, was rude and unhelpful and did everything he could to keep from having to write up a report of the theft. At last he wrote it up, and I managed to catch the midnight train from North Station back home. Two days later, the cops called me at work: they had found the car where it had been abandoned by some joyriders. I went in to pick up the car at the tow company lot, paid their criminally high towing and storage fees. The inside of the car was trashed, but all the joyriders (or it could have been the tow company) really stole was an axe I had left in the back of the car. When I got back to the lumberyard, one of the guys I worked with showed me how easy it was to pop the locks in a Chevy Impala of that vintage — all you needed was a teaspoon, and it was actually easier to unlock the car with a teaspoon than with the key.

My buddy Will and I loved that car for driving up to the White Mountains for a backpacking trip. There was lots of room for our packs, it was easy to steer, and that V8 engine went up the steepest grades as if nothing was there. On one trip, the car broke down when we were a hundred and fifty-five miles from home. One hundred and fifty miles was the distance Triple-A would tow my car, so we walked to a phone, got a local tow company to tow us five miles down the road, paid them off, then called Triple-A, and waited a few hours for them to come out to tow us home. The tow truck driver was a friendly guy with a French Canadian accent, and he hooked the rear of my car up, and then we crammed ourselves into the cab of the tow truck, along with him and his girlfriend. He revved up the tow truck’s engine, and drove across the median strip of the highway — I looked out the back window to watch my station wagon bumping and dragging along through the grass behind us. We had a companionable ride home, talking cheerfully with the driver and his girlfriend. So ended that backpacking trip.

The station wagon got rustier and rustier. One spring day, I was driving home from somewhere, and I got to the traffic light that was two tenths of a mile from our house. The light turned green, and as I accelerated the car gave a sort of lurch, the front end dropped down, and the steering wheel pulled madly to the left. I managed to get the car home, driving pretty slowly. Late that night, when there was no traffic on the road, I drove the car over to the garage, with my dad following behind in his car in case anything happened. The next day, the garage called with the bad news — the whole front part of the car was so rusted that they didn’t think they could repair it. I asked around at work, and one of the guys knew someone who owned a garage that did welding work, but when he called them, they told him that if the car had a 305 V8 it wasn’t worth fixing, because those 305 V8 engines gave out at a hundred and five thousand miles. I always wondered if the front end had been weakened by the way that crazy tow truck driver dragged my car across the median strip; but it didn’t really matter, because the engine probably would have gone a few months later.

So after having driven it for about four years, I junked the car. Even though I didn’t know how I was going to afford a new car, I felt a sense of relief — when you get to the point where a car is an adventure rather than a means of transportation, it’s time to let it go.

Unitarian minister fired for promoting basketball (1922)

When you do research in local history, sometimes you turn up fascinating little local dramas. Like the newspaper story I found today about Unitarian minister Samuel L. Elberfeld, who lost his job in part because he coached a church basketball team for teenagers. This is a story that appeared on the front page of the New Bedford Standard for 18 November 1922, above the fold.

Sports fans will have fun reading how Elberfeld believed sports and religion could not be separated — and they will have less fun reading how he got fired for so believing. Aficionados of dirty church politics will revel in the stratagems used by church members to promote minority rule. Church polity geeks will want to puzzle out the complicated matter of why a church rooted in congregational polity would ever delegate responsibility of firing their minister to another church (quick answer — that other church provided the money to pay the minister’s salary).

Journalism fans will notice how the reporter uses “it is said” instead of directly quoting someone, or attributing facts or opinions to an actual person — a delightful use of the passive voice to promote innuendo — but this was a different era of journalism, with different standards. Note too how a daily city newspaper chose to report such a story on the front page — for it is exactly the kind of juicy rumor-laden story that we all love to read in local newspapers, notwithstanding the obvious pain this particular story caused to Samuel Elberfedl, as revealed in his quoted remarks in the story; and no doubt the article was also very painful to members of the congregation. Which is why newspapers stopped carrying stories like this one, and which why we now read blogs, because the newspapers have gotten so boring.

So here is the story, blazing headlines and all (with an epilogue at the end telling what happened afterwards):

26 VOTED FOR
   DISMISSAL OF
      MR. ELBERFELD

Meeting Held in Unity Home
   Last Evening Acts
      Against Pastor

ONLY 36 PRESENT
      OF 135 MEMBERS

Final Action in North Unita-
   rian Church Up to
      Center Committee

At a meeting of members of the North Unitarian Church held in Unity Home, Tallman street, last night, a vote was taken on the dismissal of the Rev. Samuel L. Elberfeld, pastor of the church. There were 36 members present, and the voted was 26 for dismissal, and three for his retention. There were seven blanks cast.

According to previous announcements, the meeting was called for the purpose of discussing the future policy of the church, bearing on the question of whether the social and athletic activities are to be carried on as extensively as they are at present, or whether they are to be made subservient to the work of the church proper.

The meeting resolved itself into a discussion of the dismissal of the pastor. The vote it is said did not represent the sentiment of the full church body for the reason that there are at least 125 accredited members of the parish, and that our of this number only 36 were present. Of the 36 who attended, it was pointed out that the majority was entirely out of sympathy with the pastor. Members of this majority, it is said, were the instigators in the removal proceedings that were first brought to light as a result of a meeting a week ago. It

(Continued on Page 2.) Continue reading →

I had a lunch meeting today at the Unitarian Universalist church in Fairhaven, and since it’s only two miles away I decided to walk. Just as I was setting out, I happened to run into Carol, and asked if she wanted to walk over with me. We talked the whole way, about people we know, about our work, about local politics. The walk seemed to go very quickly, and before I knew it we were in front of the Fairhaven church and we had to stop talking for the moment. Carol walked back home, and I walked into the meeting. After my meeting was over, I walked back home. The sun was shining and it was a beautiful late winter day and I noticed things I didn’t notice on the walk over: the skim of ice on sheltered parts of the harbor because the water is still freezing cold even if the air temperature was above freezing; the bright new gray-and-white plumage of the Ring-billed Gulls; , but this time the walk seemed to take much longer than it did while I was talking with Carol.

A second half-century of Universalist preaching in New Bedford: 1875-1825

Part one, 1825-1875.

After William Bell preached his sermon excoriating Christianity in December, 1874, First Universalist Church in New Bedford called an experienced minister. Rev. Jeremy Hoadly Farnsworth had been a Universalist minister for 30 years when he arrived in New Bedford, having served congregations in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maine, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Iowa. He supported various reform movements, including temperance, women’s rights, and peace; before becoming a minister, he had worked in a cotton mill, and he was said to support workers’ rights. His obituary in the 1900 edition of the Universalist Register stated: “His home was happy. His churches peaceful and prosperous”; but there was no mention of the quality of his preaching.

Farnsworth was followed by Rev. William Curtis Stiles, who preached from 1878 to 1880. After the Pocasset Tragedy of 1879, where two parents murdered their child in an act of religious fanaticism while trying to re-enact the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac, Stiles had a brief moment of fame. His sermon on the subject was published in a booklet titled History of the Pocasset Tragedy, with Three Sermons Preached in New Bedford. One of the other sermons was by William Potter, the older and better-known minister of the Unitarian church in New Bedford.

After having served two years as the Universalist minister in New Bedford, Stiles renounced Universalism; he was converted to orthodox Congregationalism by Rev. A. H. Heath, the minister of the North Congregational Church. Stiles left New Bedford to become the pastor of the East End Congregational Church in Brooklyn. Stiles apparently left some turmoil behind him in the Universalist church, for the church did not call a new settled minister for two years. During that time, Rev. Charles Rockwell Tenney, the minister of the Mattapoisett Universalist church, traveled each week to New Bedford as a supply preacher. Continue reading →

Sunny and warm

Most of the week we have been here in San Francisco, it has been quite cool, and it has rained most days. This is our last morning here, and of course today it is warmer and sunny. Isn’t that always the way….