Life and Letters of Rev. Aratus Kent

Introduction

The Reverend Aratus Kent was just one of a tide of Connecticut Yankees who went west in the early decades of the 19th century. Today, Kent’s name is recognized only among a small circle. His enduring influence is difficult to measure precisely, but it is surely considerable. His personal ethic of selflessness, so often espoused from his pulpit, was for him a way of life. His good works were performed in anonymity whenever possible. And, out of humility, he burned most of his letters and journals shortly before his death.[1] This act of destruction was one that his conscience approved, but was a deed to be profoundly lamented by students of the social and religious history of pioneer Northern Illinois. “I have an invincible dread of such notoriety,” is how Kent himself once expressed his passion for obscurity.

The material artifacts of Kent’s memory include a little stone church, a weathered tombstone, a small assortment of brief recollections of those who knew him, some letters preserved by the American Home Missionary Society, and a few other scattered documents. A little hamlet in Stephenson County, Illinois, is named for Kent - a fifty year resident of Kent was recently queried as to the origin of the name of the town. “Named for an old preacher boy from the horse and buggy days,” was the pithy reply.

If the presence of a man’s spirit can be sensed in the places where he labored, then Aratus Kent remains among all of us in Northern Illinois. Kent long served the American Home Missionary Society; first as its charter Northern Illinois missionary; and then as its first agent for that state’s northern three tiers of counties. Before there were stage roads, he traveled the Indian traces and along the rivers on horseback and on foot. When the stage roads came into existence, he traveled them all in his buggy, wearing out many beasts and machines in the process, but never exhausting his own ecclesiastical energy. He rode “the cars” of the rail roads from their inception, stopping at the little depots to “prospect” for spirituality among the new populations. If he missed the “cars,” he “jumped” the freights (charming the stern train superintendents into looking the other way at his “bending” of the rules).

When an image of the weary traveling frontier preacher is conjured, Methodism is the stamp that comes immediately to mind. Aratus Kent was Presbyterian to his marrow. He frequently chided the missionaries in his charge to live amongst their flocks, not at a distance. Yet he himself was prone to itinerate, sometimes to the consternation of his superiors in New York. He always kept Galena as his home, but his letters were post-marked from Lodi, Haldane, Nora, Garden Prairie, Orangeville, Wayne, Little Fort, Crete, and Chicago, to name just a few of the hundreds of places where he preached and proselytized for the American Home Missionary Society. Doubtless there is not a single spot in Northern Illinois where Aratus Kent did not pass within a few miles.

His forty years of vigorous life in Northern Illinois encompassed two wars, many draughts and blizzards, and several economic cycles. Yet, human nature was his greatest adversary. He agonized over the indiscretions of his fellow clergyman, and he was tormented by “sectarian strife,” even though he himself contributed some to it.

He never really understood the power that the anti-slavery issue exerted amongst many of his fellow Christians. He certainly was not pro-slavery, as some of his contemporaries accused him. But he displayed none of the firey abolitionism that characterized the ministries of many of his fellow New Englanders.

His contributions to education, from Sunday schools to colleges, were manifold and lasting in their influence.

How many roads must a man walk down before they call him a man? Perhaps, just as the popular ballad proclaims, the exact answer is blowing in the wind. Whatever the precise quantity, Reverend Aratus Kent’s travels in quest of salvation for his fellow man far exceed the minimum requirement. Even at the age of 65, though crippled with rheumatism, he often trudged alone 10 or 15 miles at a time across the treeless prairies in mid-February so that some destitute congregation would not miss a sermon on the Sabbath. The “Apostle of Northern Illinois” deserves a prominent place in the annals of the Prairie State.

Ancestry and Early Life

Aratus Kent sprang from the cradle of American academics & clerics: Connecticut. In Illinois, the phrase “Connecticut man” was one of grudging respect given to the generally shrewd and learned sons of the Nutmeg State. One of Kent’s Galena, Illinois, townsmen, U.S. Grant, once remarked that “it would not take a Connecticut man” to discern that Grant had been bested in his first horse trade.[2] Many, perhaps even most, of the first doctors, lawyers, teachers, and clergy of the old Northwest were Connecticut’s expatriates.

Captain John Kent (1855-1827), Aratus’ father,, was a well-to-do merchant-farmer of Suffield, Connecticut, a town 16 miles north of Hartford, and 10 miles south of Springfield, Massachusetts, on the west side of the Connecticut River. Aratus was born there on the 17th day of January, 1794. He was joined to the same branch of the family from whence Chancellor James Kent of New York came.[3] And he was a distant relation of Connecticut’s most notable figure of the age: Timothy Dwight. Aratus’ mother, Sarah Smith, died in 1813 at the age of 49.[4] Aratus had an older brother, Germanicus, who became another important figure in Northern Illinois history by founding the City of Rockford. He also had an older sister Sally, and a younger sister Cecelia.[5]

Aratus' great grandfather, Samuel, was a representative to the Great and General Court or Assembly of Massachusetts from Suffield from 1742 to 1747. Samuel had married one of the twin daughters of Nathanial Dwight of Northampton.[6] Nathaniel Dwight was also the grandfather of Timothy;Timothy Dwight, President of Yale.[7] Of course, Timothy Dwight's other grandfather was the great, if controversial, Calvinist Jonathan Edwards.

Jeddidiah Morse’s Gazetteer of 1821 put population at 2680.[8] Aratus Kent was not the town’s only peripatetic son: in 1853 the population was only 2962.[9] Suffields’ best known son of the 19th century was probably Dr. Sylvester Graham. He introduced the Graham system of dietetics based on unbolted flour, and thus the “Graham Cracker”.[10]

Suffield had three churches in Aratus' time there: two Congregational and one Baptist. This, coupled with the strong Calvinistic environment that had always surrounded the Kent family, molded his early years, but did little to foster any ecumenical ideas in Aratus' young mind.

Suffield was one of the northern border towns of Connecticut that was originally included in the grant made by the Massachusetts Bay Colony to the Springfield patentees. This was long a source of complaint from Connecticut, because the original survey that created the boundary was grossly in error. In 1700 Connecticut attempted to obtain an amicable settlement of the difficulties, and two years later appointed commissioners, who by actual surveys ascertained that the line should be a considerable distance north of the former limits. The Bay Colony dissented from this report, and in 1708 Connecticut appointed commissioners with full powers to establish the boundaries, and if Massachusetts would not unite to complete the transaction, an appeal to the Crown was threatened. The dispute was settled, but not finally until 1826, about the same time that the border between Wisconsin and Illinois was fixed.[11]

When Aratus Kent arrived in Galena, Illinois, in 1829 a similar border dispute was in progress. Some felt that Galena was within the territorial boundaries of Wisconsin, and not within the State of Illinois. The Galena miners became suddenly and particularly knowledgeable about geography when the Illinois tax authorities came calling. When their geographical argument failed, with typical frontier brashness, some 120 residents of Galena and surrounding territory petitioned Congress on November 29, 1828, to form a new territory called “Huron”. This territory would encompass all of northern Illinois and most of the present states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa. Naturally, in their memorial the petitioners humbly suggested that Galena be named the capital of their new territory. The memorial was “Read, and laid upon the table...” of Congress on December 29, 1828. Apparently its repose upon that table was never disturbed.[12]

Aratus was fitted for college at the academy at nearby Westfield, Massachusetts, (where the only church was Congregational) At Westfield Aratus studied under the Rev. Ralph Emerson, a member of a family of ministers with whom Kent would have many associations.[13] Ralph was only seven years older than Aratus Kent, but young men frequently taught school to support themselves while they pursued higher education. Ralph Emerson also became a Yale Graduate (1811), and he ended his days in Rockford, Illinois.[14]

Education at Yale

At the age of nineteen Aratus entered the Sophomore Class at Yale College. College life at Yale in Kent’s years had improved considerably under President Theodore Dwight's “parental” system of discipline. However, some of the old pranks and frolics were beyond the control even of Dwight. One such custom Dwight never quite quelled was the traditional freshman-sophomore "push." This had been going on since time immemorial. ''Much as when a new cow is put along with a herd of others," each year, after the freshmen came, the sophomores put the strangers to the test.

Emerging from Chapel after evening prayers, the second-year men stopped on the porch and tried their strength at keeping the freshmen back. If they conducted the ceremony with the proper verve, individuals caught in the center found themselves raised high from the floor and had visions of being squeezed to death. The Faculty, convinced that the experience offered nothing beneficial, strove as strenuously to eliminate the rite. Sometimes by suspending two or three who had been "forward" in it, they broke it up for a year. But the effect was only temporary. The same mystic compulsion impelled successive classes to repeat the ritual, so strong is ancient custom.[15] Aratus Kent, by entering Yale as a sophomore, avoided being the victim of the traditional "fagging" of freshmen. But Aratus did not totally avoid discomfiture at the hands of his classmates. The boys, true to all ages, gave him a nick name, and called him “Ratty.” The name so displeased him that he would never allow any of the twelve children whom he and Mrs. Kent took into their home to call each other by any nick names.[16]

The Freshman, Sophomore and Junior classes were split into two divisions, each being assigned to its own tutor, who instructed them in all subjects. The tutor was often himself a student studying for an advanced degree in law or theology. One of Kent’s own tutors, Dr. Emerson, influenced Kent’s choice of the ministry for a career, and provided a son himself for the frontier ministry. Kent recalled the encounter:

“I remember with ineffaceable impressions some things in relation to Tutor Emerson, one of which is my visit to his room near the close of my college life to consult with him in relation to my future course.

This question rested with tremendous pressure upon my mind at that time whether I should become a minister and whether I did right or wrong, you must bear the responsibility of having encouraged me to go forward.”[17]

The tutor commonly carried the same group through their second and third years. There was little variation in the fields covered, and the demand for pedagogical specialization was only beginning to be felt.

Another of Kent’s tutors was Chauncey Allen Goodrich. The son-in-law of Noah Webster, Goodrich became an accomplished lexicographer himself, working on many editions of the famous Dictionary. “His labours with me in the revival of 1815 were among the links which composed the change of influence which led me to consecrate myself to God and to the ministry,” is how Kent recalled his tutor’s influence.[18]

Usually to the same tutor, sophomores like Aratus Kent recited:

Horace

Collectanea Graeca Majora, Volume I

Morse's Geography, Volume II

Webber's Mathematics, Volume II

Euclid's Elements

English Grammar (Lindley Murray's was the text)

Tytler's Elements of History

This took care of the requirement in the college laws that second year students be taught Geography, the "Elements of Chronology and History," Algebra, and Plane Geometry. From this, they advanced, in their junior year, to:

Tacitus (History)

Collectanea Graeca Majora, Volume Il

William Enfield's Natural Philosophy

Enfield's Astronomy

Chemistry

Vince's Fluxions

And, if the faculty lived up to the laws, English Grammar, Trigonometry, Navigation, Surveying, and "other branches of the Mathematics" were not neglected.

All students, regardless of class, were required, in daily rotation, to "exhibit" compositions of various kinds, and submit them to the instructor's criticism. About four at a time, they declaimed, publicly and privately, on Tuesdays and Fridays, in English, Latin, Greek, or Hebrew, as directed; and, whenever required, each had to hand in a copy of his declamation "fairly written." Seniors and juniors also disputed forensically before the class, twice a week, on a question approved by the instructor; when the disputants had fired their bolts, the instructor discussed the matter "at length," giving his own views of the problem and of the arguments used by both sides. Dwight considered it "an exercise, not inferior in its advantages to any other;" and one student assured his parents that all these disputes and compositions required "a great deal of hard thinking and close application."[19]

With tutors performing the more mundane tasks, not unlike today’s graduate assistants, the professors could concentrate on a more detailed instruction in their specialties. Students were required to attend lectures with a notebook to record the principal points. At every tests were given on the preceding lecture. Dwight thus introduced the “daily quiz” into American education, and held the method as superior to the Old World methods. "This responsibility, so far as I am informed, is rarely a part of an European system of Education." In addition to these daily quizzes, all the students in the seminary were "publicly" examined twice a year in their several studies. Those discovered to be deficient were liable to "degradation" to a lower class or dismissal. A very laborious fortnight was devoted to this gruesome business of “semester finals”.

The seniors attended seminars given by the learned President himself, where Dwight encouraged open discussions. The topics covered are as germane today as they were in Kent’s time:

Ought capital punishments ever to be inflicted?

Ought Foreign Immigration to be encouraged?

Does the Mind always Think?

Which have the greatest influence in forming a National Character: Moral or Physical Causes?

Is a Lie ever justifiable?

Ought Anonymous Publications to be suppressed?

Ought Religious Tests to be required of Civil Officers?

Are all mankind descended from one pair?

Ought Representatives to be bound by the will of their Constituents?

Is a Savage State preferable to a Civilized?

Do Spectres appear?

Does Temptation diminish the turpitude of a Crime?

Is Privateering justifiable?

Is man advancing to a state of Perfectibility?

When the subject before them was peculiarly provocative the students entered the classroom after prolonged preparation. Young Benjamin Silliman became so stirred over the question, "Whether the mental abilities of the females are equal to those of the males," that he worked one evening until ten-thirty (which was late when you had to leave your bed at five in the morning), and all the next forenoon, on an affirmative answer. He believed that the apparent difference between the feminine and masculine mind “is owing entirely to neglect of the education of females, which is a shame to man, and ought to be remedied.”

The problem “was warmly contested at the eleven o'clock recitation, and decided in favor of the females, after a debate of more than two hours.” Such discussions as these must have influenced Aratus Kent. Certainly Kent's pivotal role in the establishment of the Rockford Female Seminary indicates that he and the great chemist Silliman were of one mind when it came to equal educational opportunities for females. Indeed, the charter of Rockford College, largely crafted by Kent, insisted that the Rockford school be of the same caliber as its brother institution for men at nearby Beloit, Wisconsin.

During debate Dwight sometimes interjected pertinent remarks, and after the students had finished their arguments, he gave his own. This might take thirty minutes or several recitations, according to the importance of the topic. The majority of the class brought notebooks to record even his most casual comments. Regrettably, none of Kent’s survive. Whatever the question, Dwight examined it from all angles, and, by close reasoning, found an unhesitating answer.[20]

Aratus Kent united with the church under President Dwight August 15, 1815, and was graduated in 1816. The Providence that Kent always relied upon had been especially benevolent to him in permitting him to enjoy the tutelage of the greatest theologian and pedagogue of his era. Timothy Dwight was dying of a painful bladder cancer during Kent’s senior year, and he passed to his reward in the fall of 1816. Kent never left the watchful eye of Timothy Dwight, for he kept Dwight’s portrait hanging on the wall of his Galena study.[21]

Calvinism, Presbyterianism, and Congregationalism in Aratus Kent’s Time

If Timothy Dwight was instrumental in shaping the attitudes of Aratus Kent, he was equally instrumental in shaping Kent's theology, and in creating the institutions that permitted Kent to embark upon his life's work. The grandson of Jonathan Edwards has not been classed with the first group of Calvinistic interpreters of the Scriptures. Yet more than that of any contemporary, his common sense “New Divinity” theology was accepted and promulgated. Dwight, unlike his famous grandfather, took no great delight in controversy. Being a practical man, he sought to narrow differences between sects. His recognition of the necessity to compromise was emulated by Aratus Kent. And, except when it came to the issue of slavery,[22] this conciliatory theological attitude served Kent well.

Timothy Dwight’s Calvinism was of a kinder and gentler cast than that of his grandfather. His enormously popular and widely read treatise, Theology, Explained and Defended,[23] (Kent distributed many copies to ministers on the frontier) focused as much on the duties of a Christian life as on Calvinistic doctrine. Indeed, Dwight as much as any man directed the Second Great Awakening that swept the country during the first half of the 19th century to a much less strident course than the first. No burning of witches was required, or even desired by Dwight. Infidels were to be debated with Christian zeal, not burned at the stake. In this regard, Dwight himself was perhaps un-Calvinistic.

Dwight let his close friend and associate Jeddidiah Morse carry much of the burden in the debate with the unorthodox. Morse bitterly opposed the elevation of the Unitarian Henry Ware to the Hollis Professorship of Divinity at Harvard (a battle Morse ultimately lost).[24] The issue of slavery was also a powerful wedge that drove apart the orthodox Presbyterians and Congregationalists of New York and Connecticut from the Boston and Cambridge Unitarians and unorthodox Congregationalists. Aratus Kent fought that battle on the frontier, where he devoted more energy to opposing Unitarians, “Ultra-abolitionists”[25] Congregationalists, and “Old School” Presbyterians than to competing with the Methodists, Baptists, and Catholics.

Before the Revolution, Edwardian Congregationalists in Connecticut and western Massachusetts, and Presbyterians in the middle colonies had been drawing together. The New England clergy were then eager to secure united opposition to the threatened establishment of an Anglican episcopate in America. They differed from Presbyterians mainly in organization structure. Presbyterians organized their church government by an orderly system. The presbytery, consisting of the ministers and one lay elder from each church in a certain area, exercised local authority. Over the presbytery stood the synod, and over the synod stood the national body, the General Assembly.

In Connecticut the Congregationalists had a similar, if looser, organization of "consociations" and associations. Aratus Kent, like his mentor Dwight, always considered this “Connecticut Congregationalism” to be so close to Presbyterianism as to warrant no distinction. However, the unorthodox, Boston influenced “Western Congregationalism” that Kent watched evolve in Illinois was another matter altogether. This movement he considered “unscriptural” and far too independent in its polity.[26]

Where the Presbyterians dominated, the consociations and associations exercised a much more powerful and binding influence, somewhat in the manner of the Presbyterian ruling councils. In Northern Connecticut near New York, where the Presbyterians were strong, Congregationalism was particularly akin to Presbyterianism.. Dwight himself leaned decidedly in that direction. When, in his Statistical Account of the City of New Haven, he listed the churches to be found in that town, he made no distinction between "Congregational" and "Presbyterian" but seems regularly to have used the terms more or less interchangeably. The three nominally Congregational Churches in Aratus Kent’s native Suffield probably fit this mold also.

Presbyterianism also was strengthened by the fact that the last great wave of immigration to the Colonies before the War for Independence was from Northern Ireland. Most of these Ulster Irishmen were Scotch by bloodline and religious tradition, and thus were Presbyterians.[27] The Scotch-Irish element, however, introduced an element into American Presbyterianism that would prove difficult to alloy.

Following the war several motives favored a closer connection between the Presbyterians and Congregationalists. Congregational leaders in Connecticut, for the most part, sided with the Federalist view in favor of a strong national government. For them Jeffersonian democracy meant mob rule, and the excesses of the French Revolution strengthened their fears. Jeffersonian Deism and even atheism were growing threats. These two movements were easily seen as enemies, but a more subtle but equally powerful shift was occurring within the church itself in the form of a rising, if vague, "liberalism," that gradually evolved into Unitarianism. Here was a heresy that threatened the very foundations of the faith. The orthodox saw that a successful defense against Unitarianism required setting aside “minor” sectarian differences.

With a Presbyterian government it would be possible to erect creeds and enforce strict adherence to them. They could supervise more efficiently the training and licensing of candidates for the ministry, and make certain that only reliable pastors were ordained over the churches. The line between orthodox and unorthodox must be drawn sharply so that friend and foe might be unmistakably identified. All this would be difficult, if not impossible, under a purely congregational organization which permitted each church to be independent. The cause was impelling. Hence it was that Dwight and his confreres looked favorably upon Presbyterianism.

As more and more immigrants moved west to the frontier the need for churches there became more pressing. To theologically conservative Congregationalists, Presbyterianism seemed a more effective method of protecting these infant institutions against the perils confronting them. In the newer thinly settled regions like northern Illinois it took time for recently arrived inhabitants to become acquainted and accustomed to working together. Meanwhile, ministers of doubtful character might easily impose dangerous doctrines upon the unsuspecting. To churchmen of the older settlements in the East the evangelization of the West was a matter of supreme importance. Many believed that the Presbyterian organizational structure would best serve to preserve orthodoxy.

The friendly relations which Dwight helped establish led to the "Plan of Union," an agreement made in l80l between the Presbyterians and Congregationalists in order to avoid conflict in their missionary activity. A problem arose from the fact that among the new settlers who were continually pouring into the West, some were Presbyterian and some were Congregational. Division seemed undesirable in the small, frontier settlements, and so the Connecticut General Association and the Presbyterian General Assembly agreed upon the Plan of Union as a modus vivendi to promote harmony and a more uniform system of church government among Christians in the struggling young communities on the frontier. It was a compromise intended to be fair to all, but in actual practice it operated, at least initially ,in favor of the Presbyterians. Friction developed, and later doctrinal controversies widened the split until the “Old School” Presbyterians finally repudiated the agreement in 1837.[28]

If Dwight had grave concern for the souls of the pioneers, he seemed to care little for their persons. He said of them: “They are impatient of the restraints of law, religion and morality; grumble about taxes by which school masters are supported, and complain incessantly ...of the extortions of mechanics, merchants, and physicians, to whom they are always indebted. At the same time they are usually possessed, in their own view, of uncommon wisdom, and understand medical science, politics and religion better than those who have studied them through life. In mercy, therefore, to the sober, industrious, and well disposed inhabitants, Providence has opened in the vast western wilderness a retreat, sufficiently alluring to draw them away from the land of their nativity. We have many troubles even now; but we should have many more if this body of foresters had remained at home.”[29]

Out of this cauldron of theological ferment, Aratus Kent emerged with a strong, yet pragmatic, faith. Like most men, he had his share of difficulties reconciling the values of his formative years with fast evolving frontier conditions. His destiny was to minister to the “foresters” of the “vast western wilderness.” But first there was need for more preparation.

Preparation for the Frontier Ministry

Kent spent the years from 1816 to 1820 in theological studies in the city of New York under the experienced pastors Romeyn and Mason.[30] John Brodhead Romeyn was one of the most popular preachers of his day, and an able theologian. He was originally licensed to preach in the Dutch Reformed Church, but he ultimately accepted charge of the Cedar Street Presbyterian Church in New York City. Romeyn was one of the founders of Princeton Theological Seminary and was a trustee of Princeton College. He was also Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in 1820. Romeyn’s interest in education and church polity undoubtedly served to inspire Aratus Kent’s similar life long interests. Romeyn also cemented Kent’s identity as a Presbyterian.[31]

Kent’s other mentor, John Mitchell Mason, had few equals as a pulpit orator. Mason believed in frequent communion, and had issued a pamphlet on the subject as early as 1789. Aratus Kent’s Eucharistic enthusiasm can be traced to Mason. Although educated in Edinburgh himself, Mason came to believe that foreign dependence in the education of the clergy was undesirable. He thus began a movement that resulted in the formation of the Union Theological Seminary. Mason only became officially a Presbyterian late in life, but his theology was thoroughly Calvinistic.[32]

Kent was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of New York on the 20th day of April, 1820. After being licensed, he spent one year, 1821, as a missionary in what was the then wilds of Ohio, possibly near Greenville in central Ohio.[33] Kent’s next pulpit was in Blanford, Massachusetts, a rural township fifteen miles northwest of Springfield with a population of about 1000 souls. An extensive revival is said to have been taken place there during his year long tenure.[34] From November 21, 1822, until April 11, l823, he was a regular student of the Theological Seminary at Princeton. Again the influence of Romeyn is discernible.

Next Kent was called to the Presbyterian Church in Lockport, New York, and was there ordained on January 26, 1825. The three years spent there in the mid 1820’s must have given Kent a sense of the power of the magnet that was drawing the populace ever west. For Lockport is that point on the Erie Canal where the water descends from the level of Lake Erie to that of the Genesee, by ten double combined locks of massive masonry. Of course, the Erie Canal was under construction until 1824, but even before completion it became the main artery of commerce that opened up the Northwest Territory to old New England. Kent was present in Lockport to witness the ever rising tide of immigrants heading west to places like the wilds of Northern Illinois.

He then spent a year with his aged and dying father back in Suffield. After John Kent died, Aratus attended to placing “suitable monuments” on his parents graves, and looked for new opportunities to serve. He took up home missionary work, first going to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. In a letter to the A.H.M.S., Kent displayed the zeal that was to characterize his later career. In addition to teaching, preaching, and making pastoral visits in New Hampshire, Kent expected to itinerate into Canada.[35] After leaving New Hampshire Kent took temporary charge of a church in Bradford, Mass., a town 32 miles north of Boston and home to two celebrated academies, One for boys and one for girls.[36] This separate but equal educational model was later adopted by Kent for the Beloit College and the Rockford Female Seminary.

Fate then called Kent to the Allen Street Presbyterian Church in New York,[37] probably as a temporary supply. While in New York he became acquainted with Rev. Absalom Peters,[38] Secretary of the American Home Missionary Society. Peters convinced Kent that he could be the most useful as a missionary on the frontier. Kent liked the idea, partly because his already weak and failing vision made the more traditional role of a well read scholar-preacher impossible. Legand holds that he said to the officers of the Society: “Send me to a place so hard that no one else will take it.”

The American Home Missionary Society and Its Rivals

If religion was to gain a foot hold on the vast frontier, a coordinated effort was required. The American Home Missionary Society was formed on May 12, 1826, at a meeting in the Brick Presbyterian Church in New York through a union of several Congregational and Presbyterian societies. The A.H.M.S. became the first such society organized on a national scale, and by the end of its first year it had 169 missionaries in the field, most of whom were inherited from the pre-existing societies.

Some 5000[39] letters of application or missionary reports per year were received by the Society’s secretaries, and these letter provide a window on the moral, social, and economic conditions of every frontier region. Many of these letters, including several from Aratus Kent, were published in The Home Missionary and American Pastor’s Journal, which Kent always called the Home Miss.

The A.H.M.S. was the center of controversy from its inception. Its original benefactors were primarily affluent Presbyterian Churches. A parallel society, The American Board of Missions, was also primarily Presbyterian. Efforts to merge these two home missionary agencies repeatedly failed, and partisan supporters of one board quickly and publicly began attacking the other. One Cincinnati Presbyterian preacher went so far as to accuse the A.H.M.S. of “attempting to overthrow the Presbyterian Church.”[40] The A.H.M.S. great need for man power made it seem lax as to qualifications of its missionaries, at least in the eyes of some. Indeed, the Society freely assigned Congregationalist ministers to nominally Presbyterian churches.

Strife and criticism notwithstanding, the Society had 463 missionaries in the field by 1831. But the Society also became identified as more theologically liberal than some Presbyterians liked, and Society supporters began to become known as “New School Presbyterians.” Aratus Kent was certainly no liberal, but he loyally defended the A.H.M.S. through his entire career against attacks from the theological right and left.

What alarmed the “Old School” Presbyterian ministry was that heretical New England Congregationalists were beginning to infiltrate the A.H.M.S.

During the years in which the great Congregational stream was flowing westward into Presbyterianism, New England Calvinism was undergoing what seemed to the stiff-backed Presbyterian, a radical and dangerous modification. Indeed this modification had been in process for many years and what was known as Hopkinsianism, the school of thought farthest removed from strict Calvinism, was widely accepted. Timothy Dwight, the President of Yale College from 1795 to 1817, and Aratus Kent’s mentor, was a New Divinity man, and the numerous other young Yale graduates coming into the West during those years were thoroughly imbued with Dwight’s system of Divinity.

The bitter controversy with Unitarianism in the early part of the nineteenth century had served to emphasize New England orthodoxy, and gave country-wide distinction to such defenders as Lyman Beecher, more or less obscuring the fact that many of the so-called defenders of orthodoxy were themselves far from traditional Calvinism. The new revivalism that swept through New England and New York in the early years of the nineteenth century was the result of the New Divinity teaching, with its larger emphasis upon human responsibility. There was also much opposition to the "New Measures" fathered by Charles Gradison Finney and his associates, in the New York revivals. Thus there came to be a feeling among the full-fledged Presbyterians that the New England stream was tainted with heresy.[41]

In Illinois, this conflict surfaced early when, in 1833, Edward Beecher and two Illinois College professors were brought before the Illinois Presbytery of charges of preaching the New Haven doctrine. They were acquitted, but the battle lines were formed that resulted in the eventual division of the Presbyterian church after 1837 into “New School” and “Old School”.

The A.H.M.S. survived, though in a weakened condition, the split of the Presbyterian church over what were basically theological issues. And the split resulted in rival Old School missionaries entering into Kent’s Northern Illinois field as competition. But another powerful force was threatening the tear the Society to pieces: abolitionism.

Lewis and Arthur Tappan, brothers and wealthy New York mechants, were major contributors to Presbyterian church causes. In concert with William Lloyd Garrison, they founded the American Anti-slavery Society in 1822 (though they soon broke with the more radical Garrison). The Tappans’ philanthropy caused the Lane Theological Seminary to be created in Cincinnati in 1832. Quickly, the student body, led by Theodore Dwight Weld, formed an anti-slavery society. Small at first, it soon swelled to include a sizable minority of the student body. While President Lyman Beecher was away, the anti-slavery students revolted against the trustees’ prohibition of anti-slavery activity.

Those students and faculty members who could not countenance the Lane policies moved almost en mass to Oberlin College, where Charles Gradison Finney became Professor of Theology in 1835, and which quickly received the largess of Arthur Tappan. Ironically for Aratus Kent, “New Schoolers” were the supporters of the new college. Kent clearly agreed with Lyman Beecher’s assessment of the “Oberlinites”: “He goat men who think they do God a service by butting everything in the line of their march which does not fall or get out of their way.”[42]

Never having remotely approached a pro-slavery position, the A.H.M. Society’s failure to openly adopt a strong anti-slavery stance (at least until 1856), enabled several new missionary agencies to arise. The Society also sent missionaries to the Choctaw Indians, though the tribe held slaves. And it failed to prohibit slave holders from being members of churches it supported. As a result, The Amistad Committee, The Union Missionary Society, The Western Evangelical Missionary Society, and others formed.

Chief among the new anti-slavery societies was the American Missionary Society. Founded in 1846, its treasurer was one of the ubiquitous Tappans (Lewis). Soon many other societies merged with the A.M.A.. Northern Illinois churches that leaned toward abolitionism had an alternative source for funds after 1846, and many weak and fledgling churches were divided. To further complicate matters, the Congregationalists tended to be more prominent in the A.M.A.[43]

Flanked by the Old School on the right over theological differences, and by the A.M.A. on the left over slavery, Aratus Kent had a narrow path to follow while seeking to establish churches and raise funds for the A.H.M.S to support them. To further complicate matters, the Free Presbyterian Synod of Cincinnati was formed in 1846 which lured Presbyterian pastors and congregations away from both the Old and the New School Presbyteries. And such Free Presbyterians found the ample purse of the A.M.A. opened to them. All these developments, of course, lay in Aratus Kent’s future.

A Place So Hard No One Else Will Take It[44]

“They would come with a tolerable education, and a smattering knowledge of the old Calvinistic system of theology. They were generally tolerably well furnished with old manuscript sermons, that had been preached, or written, perhaps a hundred years before. Some of these sermons they had memorized, but in general they read them to the people. This way of reading sermons was out of fashion altogether in this Western world, and of course they produced no good effect among the people. The great mass of our Western people wanted a preacher that could mount a stump, a block, or old log, or stand in the bed of a wagon, and without note or manuscript, quote, expound, and apply the work of God to the hearts and consciences of the people. The result of the efforts of these Eastern preachers was not very flattering.”[45]

So wrote the legendary pioneer Methodist circuit rider, Peter Cartwright. If Timothy Dwight had been pleased to see disgruntled New Englanders depart for the frontier, the predominantly Upland South bred residents of Illinois in the 1820’s were not necessary pleased by the arrival of these displaced Yankees. Aratus Kent, one of Cartwright’s scorned “Eastern Preachers,” found his impressive academic and theological credentials, initially at least, almost superfluous.

Peter Cartwright and Aratus Kent personify the cultural collision that occurred when Connecticut met Virginia in Northern Illinois. Cartwright came to Illinois from Virginia via Kentucky. Only nine years Kent’s senior, Cartwright knew no formal education. Cartwright’s fame exceeds Kent’s not because he was a more tireless worker, but because he ran for Congress against Abraham Lincoln, and because he left an autobiography, two activities completely foreign to Aratus Kent’s character.

Ten years before Kent arrived in Galena, Timothy Flint, another frontier missionary commented on what he perceived to be the reasons behind the frontiersman’s half hearted plea for religion: “Why did they invite me here? A minister:a church:a school:are words to flourish in an advertisement to sell lots.”[46]

The following brief statement summarizes the noble motivations and religious pragmatism that united to create the American Home Missionary Society:

“The strength of the nation lies beyond the Allegheny. The center of dominion is fast moving in that direction. The ruler of this country is growing up in the great valley: leave him without the gospel and he will be a ruffian giant who will regard neither the decencies of civilization nor the charities of religion.... When we place ourselves on the top of the Alleghenies, survey the immense valley beyond it and consider that the character of its eighty or one hundred million inhabitants a century hence will depend upon the direction and impulse given it now in its forming state; must not every Christian feel disposed to forgo every party consideration, and cordially unite with his fellow Christians to furnish them those means of intellectual and moral cultivation of which they now stand in need; and for which they are constantly sending us their importunate petitions.... And what we do, we must do quickly. The tide of emigration will not wait until we have settled every metaphysical point of theology and every canon of church government. While we are deliberating the mighty swell is rising higher and higher on the side of the mountains.”[47]

What was the population of Northwestern Illinois like when Kent arrived? The first settlers into Northern Illinois were Southerners from Kentucky and Tennessee. Charles Latrobe described their circumstances:

“From Peoria to Galena the road leads over vast prairies, as yet very rarely broken by cultivation.... The farm houses generally lay on the edge of some rich piece of forested land, on the margin of one of the numerous creeks or rivers, and were usually built in the southern style . . . namely, two square log-apartments divided by a covered passage, while the kitchen premises lay without. The upper loft was almost always unfinished; and the floors covered with rough planks hewn by the axe. The furniture was necessarily scanty, comprising besides the beds in the corners, a table, a few tools or a bench, a chest or two containing the family clothing, and a shelf with a few papers and books. A few bottles of powerful medicine hung on one nail, and on another the trusty skin-pouch and powder horn, and a charger made of an alligator's tooth. One or two rifles were always to be seen in a dry corner. In these crowded apartments we were frequently obliged to stow ourselves away at night pell-mell with the family.... You may imagine a crowded area of twelve or fourteen feet square, furnishing the bed-chamber of as many people. In the corners the travelers were allowed to stow themselves away enveloped in their clothes and blanket-coats on the low plank erections which might pass for bedsteads. The floor at one end would be occupied by the driver, the squatter, and another, side by side under the same rug before the fire, and at the other extremity a huge flock sack, laid upon the planks, served as the family bed. The mother and eldest daughter would lie down on it at opposite ends, so that each other's feet and head would be in contact, were it not for the little children, whom, to the number of three or four, we have seen stowed in... “like mortar between the stones,’ to keep all tight.”[48]

Governor Thomas Ford described the pioneers from Kentucky and other upland southern states as being the “poor white man” of the South who had fled to avoid slavery. This class of people were said to be “a very good, honest, kind, hospitable people, unambitious of wealth, and great lovers of ease and social enjoyment” although Ford noted that many Northerners regarded this type of emigrant as “a long, lank, lean, lazy, and ignorant animal, but little in advance of the savage state; one who was content to squat in a log-cabin, with a large family of ill-fed and ill-clothed, idle, ignorant children.”[49]

This latter point of view was held by Eliza W. Farhnam, that aristocratic New Englander with the “great lady” complex:

“His [the Sucker’s] aspirations are equally stationary in the more important particular of educating his children. He ''reckons'' they should know how to write their names, and "allows it's a right smart thing to be able to read when you want to." He ''expects" his sons may make stump speeches if they live; but he don't "calculate that books and the sciences will do as much good for a man in these matters as a handy use of the rifle." . . . As for teaching ''that's one thing he allows the Yankees are just fit for;'' he does not hesitate to confess, that they are a ''power smarter" at that than the western boys. But they can't hold a rifle nor ride at wolf hunt with 'em; and he reckons, after all, these are the great tests of merit.

With all these peculiarities, and this ignorance of what is esteemed essential in a cultivated society, these people have strong intellects, bold and vigorous ideas, and possess a vast fund of knowledge, drawn from sources with which a more artificial society is too little acquainted. They have an order of eloquence peculiar to themselves, rough, bold, and strong, and glowing with illustrations drawn from nature as they know her, and from other sources familiar to their minds.”[50]

Mrs. Farnham, who lived near Peoria and made an extended visit to the Rock River Country of Northwest Illinois in the late thirties, in writing of the morals of these Southerners stated:

“They are too magnanimous to be often mean, too free from avarice to be often dishonest. A little fraud or shrewd trick played upon a Yankee they consider a commendable evidence of superior sagacity; a thing to be exulted in rather than repented of. Their passion in trade is for the never-sufficiently-to-be-prized horse, and a considerable part of their petty litigation grows out of this class of transactions. Indolence is one of their worse vices; for it leads to many others. This, however, I am bound to say is confined to the male sex.... The male population may be pronounced unequivocally indolent. On a bright day they mount their horses and throng the little towns in the vicinity of their homes, drinking and trading horses until late in the evening. It is not extraordinary to see two or more come to blows before these festival days end.”[51]

Reverend Cartwright, himself a product of the frontier, was much more sympathetic in his description of the early pioneers of northwestern Illinois. After picturing a great district north of Quincy where new settlements were formed and forming, hard long rides, cabin parlors, straw beds, and bedsteads made out of barked saplings and puncheon bedcords, he described the settlers as follows:

“The people were kind and clever, proverbially so; showing the real pioneer or frontier hospitality. The men were a hardy, industrious, enterprising, game catching, and Indian driving set of men.

The women were also hardy; they would think no hardship of turning out and helping their husbands raise their cabins, if need be; they would mount a horse and trot ten or fifteen miles to meeting, or to see the sick and minister to them, and home again the same day.”[52]

From the very first some Yankees had come to the Rock River Country to settle alongside the more numerous emigrants from the South. The news accounts of the Black Hawk War and Black Hawk's later triumphal tour of the East, after his short confinement in Fort Monroe, made him and the Rock River Country a topic of conversation throughout the East.

Levi Warner, writing to his nephew in the East on June 25,1833, described the Rock River Country in this way:

“The country is good and healthy. I should be highly gratified if some of you Green Mountain boys who have to toil, dig and sweat among the rocks and hills to gain sustenance in life . . . would take it in your heads to abandon those doleful sterile places of servitude calculated to wear out or destroy the youthful or most vigorous part of your lives allotted you to no other purpose but to keep you in poverty and want, depriving you of the means of accumulating property for your future benefit and enjoyment.... Penetrate between the vast region that lies between you and this place until you arrive at the desired haven, the flower of the World, the Garden of Eden, a land flowing with milk and honey.

Already I anticipate the time when Myriads of Green Mountain boys shall make their way to the land of Promise in order to locate themselves a residence where they may enjoy the pleasing satisfaction of reaping the benefits of their labor.

But to the point - this country far excels yours and happy are they who make the exchange.”[53]

This land of milk and honey was sure to fill up fast. To counter the heathen influence of the first wave of rustics, religion was needed. At least the eastern religious establishment prayed that such a need would be recognized.

Religion Arrives at the Mines

The first public religious services known to be held in the Galena mines occurred in 1827, conducted by Rev. Revis Cormac.[54] It is said, however, that an Episcopal Clergyman, a chaplain of the Hudson Bay Co. at York Factory,[55] was weather bound in Galena in 1826, and preached on Sunday in a log tavern then just built opposite the present site of DeSoto House.[56]

“In 1828, the Catholic Reverend Vincent Badin... visited the Catholics of Galena and the surrounding country; but the Mission was only of a few days' duration, and left not the slightest trace of the formation of a parish.” This is how Father Mazzuchelli described the advent of Catholic services in Galena.[57]

The first regularly appointed preacher in Galena is a matter of some dispute. The History of Jo Daviess County states that “Mr. Kent arrived on the First of April, 1829, and Mr. Dew [a Methodist] one week later.” Actually, Kent put the date of his own arrival at April 19.[58] Mr. Dew had visited the year before, but the letter of 1869 in the Galena Gazette that is the source for this earlier visit is also the source for the claim that Dew returned permanently one week later than Kent in the spring of 1829. “Reverend” Rivers Cormack is listed as one of the charter members of Dew’s first Methodist “class,” thus Cormac was probably not an ordained minister.

What was Galena itself like when Aratus Kent accepted his assignment there? C.R. Robert[59] who was sent to survey the ground being offered to Kent described it this way:

Galena is situated on the west bank of Fever River (proper name River au Fevre) three miles east of the Mississippi between 42 30' and 43 latitude. It has not yet be determined whether it is just without the northern border of Illinois or not. It is not however far from the line. The number of inhabitants is estimated to be from 1200 to 1500 : the former is probably the most accurate, It is supposed two thirds of which have emigrated hither from various parts of the U.S. and the remainder from Ireland. The last are mostly Catholic. The rest who profess to anything are various but it is thought that a majority of them would prefer a clergyman of the Presbyterian denomination.

The place derives its importance entirely from the extensive & rich mines of lead ore in the vicinity. The U.S. agent, I am informed, reported the quantity of lead made at the different smelting establishments situated within 20 miles of this village at 5,000,000 lbs, most, if not all of which was shipped from here & the value of which was not less than $200000. It is estimated that the quantity this year will be nearly doubled. The diggings or mines are scattered over the whole country & from 1 to 40 miles distant from this & in which are employed from 6 to 7000 persons. Every steam boat brings larger numbers and it is thought by the month of July the number will increased to near, if not quite, 10000.

There are none of the external or public means of grace here either in town or country. There was at one period a catholic priest here, and last summer a Methodist clergyman [Rev. Dew] for a short time. I have been much occupied since my arrival and have not yet been out in the country and but little about the town. But you can readily imagine what the situation of the people is in a moral & religious point of view from what I have said. The Sabbath is not much regarded in the village. The miners do not generally work on that day, I fear not out of regard to it.

The number of families in the village is estimated at 100 to 150, the number of children is smaller in proportion : I am told not exceeding 50. There is no school here apparently. There was one last summer of about 30 scholars.

I am informed there are a number of professors in the village who are desirous of having a clergyman settle here. There is not any place of public worship erected. The subject, I am informed, of erecting one has been in agitation for some time. No measures have yet been taken to accomplish it. There are some few pious persons in the place and a number of others friendly to religion who I have no doubt if they had a sensible judicious clergyman to advise & instruct them could be disposed to cooperate in any measures calculated to improve the condition of the people. A short time since a person showed me a Sub[scription] for the purpose of raising funds for the support of a clergyman: when I saw it there were $125 sub. by the names as far as I am able to judge there will be enough since to support a man for a year at least.

There would be a difficulty in obtaining a proper place in which to hold worship as the houses are most of them built of logs and very small. But some persons with whom I have conversed on this subject think this difficulty could be overcome by erecting a temporary structure: which could be done in a short time.... I presume I need say nothing to impress upon your mind the importance of the field offered here to preach the Gospel & the present population is very small to what it will be in a few years. The whole country east of the Miss from the mouth of the Rock River to the Ouisconsin is full of lead ore & from what I learn the incarnation here has scarcely begun. You can form some idea of the rapid growth of this country from one fact: two years since the population of this place did not exceed 50 souls.... The climate in the country is healthy, the village cannot be called as far as I am informed unhealthy : but like most newly settled places subject to fever and ague and bilious fever in the fall.

If at least some residents of Galena wanted preaching, what qualities did they seek in their preacher? Again, C.R. Robert had an opinion:

In the sub[scription] above named nothing is said as to the denomination, but it is supposed that the Presbyterian is to be preferred. I am young in Christian life and have but little experience & I am diffident in expressing an opinion as to the requisite qualifications of the person whom it would be best to send here but from what I have already said regarding the population it would not be good picking to send hither a young & inexperienced man. A parson in residing here would undergo much frustration for a few years or until the country becomes more settled. His fare would be plain, much of the time salt provisions & few or none of the leisures of life.[60]

Several years earlier Dr. Horatio Newhall, Kent’s longtime parishioner, friend, physician, and associate in many endeavors, writing back home to Massachusetts had this opinion on what was required in an Illinois preacher:

In order to be useful among us we think a minister should be eminently pious and philanthropic; should be decidedly evangelical in his sentiments, and of a mild & conciliating disposition. He should be sociable & unostentatious, willing to visit & converse with his flock. He should possess a good share of confidence or assurance as modesty is unfashionable in this [western] country. He should be eloquent or at least fluent in extemporaneous discourses, and he must come prepared to live and fare like a missionary in an uncivilized country .... You will probably infer that we are prepared to offer him a handsome salary. But ... this is far from being the case.[61]

The man Newhall sought was preparing for Galena.. On June 4th, 1828, Kent wrote: “Having closed up my accounts and seen some suitable monuments erected over the graves of my parents, I bade adieu to the place of my fathers’ sepulchers and immediately after dinner, mounted my horse and turned my face to the north. But my heart was heavy and my countenance sad, for I was like unto Abraham who went forth not knowing whither he went.”[62] In 1828 the “whither” was Bradford, but the missionary labors there “were not congenial to him,” and he soon was back in New York City.

Galena Pastoral Duties: The Early Years

“Going to New York City, 1829, under great depression and sore trial of mind which had continued long to oppress me, while in Bradford, in reference to a field of labor at the West, by which I thought only of Niagara County, New York, I must needs [sic] call on Dr. A. Peters, Secretary of the A.H.M.S., and inquire after a field of missionary labor. He proposed the lead mines of the upper Mississippi, of which I knew nothing before, but where there were several thousand souls with no preaching. I go, Sir, was my prompt reply.”[63]

Kent’s commission was dated March 21st, 1829. Kent did not wait. He gave his horse to the American Tract Society, and on April 3rd, he wrote: “I am as one that dreams, with my paper on a trunk and my pen trembling with the jarring of the steam boat contending with the strong current of the Mississippi, I am urging my way up the great valley to the lead mines, not knowing the thing that shall befall me there.”[64]

The trip to Galena from New York was not an easy one, and it was punctuated by frequent stops. Kent even visited Hannibal, the eventual home of Sam Clemons. Several years later Mark Twain could not help poking fun at the “tract scattering preachers” like Kent, as an illustration from his Life on the Mississippi depicts. Kent felt an obligation to make the trip a working missionary expedition, and described his activities for Dr. Peters:

By the Kind Providence of God I was kept in safety amidst the dangers incident to a journey of 2000 miles, and after a quick passage of 18 1/2 days, exclusive of 8 days during which I lingered in Missouri, I arrived in this place on the 19th of April and felt that I had more than ordinary occasion for devout thanksgiving to the Preserver of men.

I sent you a line from St. Louis [not located] and after leaving that place I considered myself as having entered into my own broad Diocese and felt it my duty there to get all the information possible and form acquaintance with all the various people within my reach; since there is not any clergyman of any denomination, to my knowledge, on the Mississippi above that city.

I should think that Pike County, Missouri, is an important location for a Missionary. At Clarksville, a little village 110 miles above St. Louis, I called upon Mr. Warren Swain. They are intelligent eastern[65] people and seem anxious to have preaching. They gave a flattering report of the Sab. School which they established last summer. I thought proper to promise them the Home Missionary for one year on condition that he would pay the postage and circulate it.

At Louisiana, a larger village 10 miles above, I called and left some tracts. Pike county is said to be very good land, to be settling fast, and to contain 2 or 3000 inhabitants.

I cannot however give you definite information for I felt it my duty to proceed as fast as possible to the place of my destination.

Twenty or 30 miles above are 2 other villages: Hannibal[66] and Palmyra. The latter is two miles off the River, to which I forwarded some tracts by a citizen. From information I thought it might be well to forward the Home Missionary to Henry Snow or William Porter who live at Quincy, Adams County, Illinois, and who were represented to me as intelligent Presbyterian professors.

At Rock Island, 100 miles below this place (at the foot of the upper Rapids), are stationed two companies of soldiers. I was informed that Dr. Sprague, the surgeon, and his family are Presbyterian professors.

Were it not for the tax on my time and purse I have thought it might be well to attend the Indiana Synod which meets at Shoal Creek, Greenville 50 miles east of St. Louis in Oct., visiting these and other places in my route.

During my journey I did not lose sight of the object of my mission, and, though the people of these Western Waters are generally disinclined to reading or religious conversation, yet I kept some little volumes in my berth which were read to some extent. I also circulated 3000 pages of tracts among the passengers, including those that I left at the various stopping places or sent ashore by persons proper.

The vices of Sabbath breaking, Profane swearing, the free use of strong drink, and the practice of Gambling everywhere prevalent at least beyond anything I ever saw. But I have not thought it my duty to make a direct attack upon them from a persuasion that if they were not restrained from respect to the Ministerial presence, nothing would be gained by incurring their displeasure, which by wearing an affable demeanor and impressing their minds with the conviction that I feel the importance of religion, and am tenderly alive to their spiritual welfare, I should take a sure method of securing their esteem and of recommending the Religion I profess to love. And having a passage of 4 or 5 days I found opportunities to converse with many individuals on the subject of personal piety, the result of which eternity discloses.

Kent abhorred the breaking of the Sabbath, and he campaigned vigorously on the issue of “keeping the Sabbath.” A certain irony exists in the fact that he himself traveled on a “Sabbath breaking” steamboat to get to Galena. This small hypocrisy was probably not lost on Kent. One biographer of Kent made a careful point of claiming (erroneously) that Kent had actually arrived in Galena on Saturday the 18th.[67] Kent’s arrival and initial impressions are recorded in his own words:

On Sabbath morning I stepped ashore at this place, presented the letters kindly furnished me at St. Louis, procured a place and preached at 3 o’clock PM to about 50 persons.[68] And I ought to say that I have received many tokens of kindness and approbation from the people both of St. Louis and this place. This village of 200 houses, very compactly built on two streets or benches, one about 20 or 30 feet above the other, closely copying the circular direction of Fever River in front and a high bluff of 100 feet immediately in the rear. The hum of business is heard on the margins of the River while abundant scope is afforded for the display of taste in the little yards and gardens which seem already to be creeping up the steep ascent of the surrounding hills.

Here are thrown together like the tenants of the grave yard without any order, people of every country and every race, and you may see in one day Indians, French, Irish, English, Germans, Swiss and Americans, and such a variety of national customs and costumes as are rarely to be met within any other place. I have been out in the country as far as Dodgeville which is 50 miles distant and 12 miles from the Ouisconsin. I preached in 5 different nights to assemblies ranging from 2 to 150 of whom 3/4 were males.

Out of 24 Prof. of Dif. Denom. that I have discovered in this village one half are in the not known at all, or known only as Backsliders, thus they remind one of the 10 virgins. They are of different denominations and may be adverted as a beacon to warn the churches to examine whether their Religion is such as will live only in the mansions they now occupy, or whether they could still flourish if transplanted to some lonely distant and deprived of all moral culture.

A combination of unpropitious circumstances have already produced & sustain still greater embarrassments in this place and the adjoining country. The present regulations of Government are oppressive. I shall not take it upon me to say that they require too great a proportion of the lead, but the requisition that those who live 50 miles out should deliver their tithes here, and the restrictions by which people are prevented from cultivating the soil and are thus made to depend on markets 1000 miles distant are oppressive beyond endurance. The merchants and smelters have sold their goods on credit to such an unwarrantable extent that the country is becoming bankrupt. The price of lead is so low that under present disadvantages it will scarcely pay for digging, smelting, & conveying to market.

The waters of the Mississippi are so low as to threaten a famine both because of the difficulty with which provisions are brought to us and because the lead with which they are purchased cannot be transported at least without great additional expense. In addition to this, the Capitalists who sustain him at a distance are taking the alarm and using oppressive measures to call in their funds. The consequence of all this is that the people are already fast retreating and the present prospect is that but few comparatively will remain here though the winter.

The state of things is untimely & is regretted for this is a good country, a land of hills and valleys and brooks of water, a land promising great fertility of soil & salubrity of air and a land of immeasurable beauty of appearance, and multitudes would gladly live and die here, if dire necessity did not drive them away. If encouragement were afforded them to open farms and raise their own provisions, this land would then supply them with cash while at the same time permanent residence in the country would greatly check the prevalence of the fires and thus promote the growth of timbers.

Kent was cordially received and made a good initial impression, as Mr. Robert reported to New York:

On my arrival I was much gratified to find that he was very popular and I think he still continues to be so : as far as I am competent to judge, he possesses that kind of manner and tact which will enable him to do his duty as a faithful servant of his Lord & master without giving offense. He will tell them their duty in such a way that they cannot help but see it : very probably they may like the admonition or reproof : yet they cannot take exception to the germ of it : I think him an excellent judge of character and of human nature generally. These with the qualifications I have not mentioned are frequently necessary for a man to possess who comes to preach the gospel to this people. Mr. K informed me that he likes the place and inhabitants full as well as he expected from the account I gave him. I am pleased that he does so, as I was unwilling to have him get a more favorable impression from me than he would realize. He does not let these people know that I was in the least instrumental (if I was) in getting him here. If they thought I had anything to do with it would in a measure destroy his popularity and impair his usefulness. You must not think me uncharitable when I say that there are some here who from their conduct appear to think that a man who makes a profession of Religion must never ask for what justly is his own. I therefore advise and consult with Mr. K when he wishes to the best of my ability but take no active part in these measures for erecting a church, for I feel sensible that my doing should be an injury as I fear there are some who would throw obstacles in the way of an object which they thought I was desirous of attaining.[69]

Just where Kent preached his first Galena sermon is a bit uncertain. Dr. Newhall gave the following account:

“Mr. William Watson was building a frame house on Bench Street two lots south of the present Young Ladies' school house.[70] The house was enclosed but no floors laid. A few enterprising young men laid some boards upon the sleepers at one end of the building on which was placed a borrowed pine table and after considerable search a Bible and Watts' Hymn Book were found. Notice was given in the Miner's Journal of the 9th of May that Mr. Kent would preach the next day, Sunday 10. The congregation was composed wholly of young people; there were no old ones here, occupying the sleepers for seats, very conveniently resting their feet upon the ground, there being no cellar under the house. The whole congregation sung the good old tunes of St. Martin's, Mear, and Old Hundred. Here was preached Mr. Kent's first sermon.”

But Kent himself reported that he had preached “to about 50 persons” on April 19th. He may have utilized a log building just opposite the DeSoto Hotel, for that long extinct structure was often given in early accounts as the site for sporadic religious activities. Chapin wrote “the largest dining hall in the place” was the site of Kent’s inaugural sermon.[71] Unfortunately, although the pious Dr. Newhall recalled the songs, the text of Kent’s sermon escaped his recollection.

Kent wrote his impression: “Here is opened a great and effectual door to preach the gospel. I have long desired to know what was the will of God, and if I have found my place, I hope now that amid all discouragement’s, I may remember that I said I was willing to go to the world’s end, if I could but be in the place that God designed I should occupy.”[72]

By mid summer Kent gave some evidence of loneliness and isolation when he reported to Dr. Peters: “I have felt at times as inclination to accompany [C.R. Roberts back to St. Louis], but then the question had occurred ‘With whom will thou have those few sheep in the wilderness’.” Kent had identified about 40 persons of varying denominations who exhibited “a spark of grace.” To minister to this scattered flock required a hundred miles of travel and fifteen preaching sites. He told Peters he intended to make this circuit once in four weeks and hoped that Peters would approve of the scheme “...as long as Galena is supplied on the Sabbath.”

Kent also had a confession for Dr. Peters: “I reproach myself for having so little regard for these sheep. Oh what feelings must it occasion a minister of Christ to hear him saying, “the diseased ye have not strengthened neither have you healed that which was sick, neither have you bound up that which is broken, neither have you brought back that which was driven away.’ A passage this which needs to be often considered by one that occupies such a post as I now do.”

Although Kent was a thirty-five year old veteran preacher, he may have been naively optimistic about his Galena prospects. Three months after his arrival he reported: “My hopes of forming a church and of erecting a house for divine worship have been disappointed.”

The problem of monetary support was ever present for frontier missionaries, and Kent was no exception: “I shall be under the necessity of drawing on you for money and, indeed, I think if I get through the year on the sum allowed I shall deserve some credit for economy.”

Although he had been only resident in Galena for about four months, Kent felt compelled to attend the Synod meeting held at Greenville, Bond County, Illinois, about fifty miles east of St. Louis. Initially he reported: “I shall not feel much inclination to go by water to attend Synod if the river continues so low as to make the passage of 20 or 30 days.”[73] A restless spirit compelled him to change his mind and he convinced himself that it was his duty to attend.[74] Kent’s travel report, lifted from his diary, is a scarce contemporaneous description of early Illinois. He made the trip on horseback due to the low state of the Mississippi.

Being provided with money and tracts and letters and with blankets where the former could be of no use, I left Galena Sept 29. I rode to Apple River,[75] 15 miles, where I have often preached, then to Plumb River,[76] 12 miles, where are 3 families.

Sept 30 : In company with two guides whom Providence furnished me when I had lost my way, I rode 40 miles to the first house, 2 miles above the first of the upper Rapids of the Mississippi.

Oct 1st: Rode to Farnamsburgh[77] (18 miles) opposite Rock Island Fort and 2 miles from the juncture of Rock & Mississippi Rivers. Fifty families have settled along the river here within 15 months. Visited 6 families and distributed tracts.

Oct 2nd: Preached a funeral Sermon and made appointments for the Sabbath.

4th: Preached on Rock Island to a very attentive congregation of about 75 including officers and soldiers & at 3 pm on the Illinois shore to about 40. This is a post that merits attention from the Home Miss. So. for several reasons: 1) There are about 150 souls connected with the fort and including 6 families quite respectable and anxious to have preaching. 2) The Island and the Illinois shore present most beautiful, healthy, and commanding situations which in a few years will grow in importance. 3) This point of land between Mississippi and Rock Rivers has now come into market and will settle rapidly.[78] It is very healthy and has an excellent soil and an unusual supply of timber. The settlers will find markets for their produce from this proximity & the fort and the lead mines. Coal is found on both these rivers near this spot and in case timbers for smelting runs out the mineral might be floated down and smelted with coal. Dr. Sprague, a Presbyterian & Surgeon of the Fort remarked; “There will be a large population here in five years.” 4) They say they would build a church if they had a preacher, and I think they would give him near half his support immediately, for they offered 5 dol a Sabbath to a Methodist preacher to supply them and could not obtain him as he was engaged in piloting boats over the rapids. They would as soon have a Presbyterian.

Oct 5th: Rode 40 miles to Henderson River, no house on the way...having seen neither quadruped nor biped during the day.

6th: Followed up the forks of the River 5 miles, gave notice, and preached to about twenty five, though the day was very wet.

7th: Went down the river about 18 miles collected about 20 persons...and preached apparently with great acceptance. Proceeded to the mouth of the River to preach again but my appointment did not reach and I could not tarry without losing company that I could have next day. Between 60 & 80 families have moved in to this River, all within 18 months. No Presbyterian Preacher has visited them before. They were ready for a tract society.

8th:Rode 35 miles and preached in the evening to about 15 souls.

9th: Proceeded to the head of the lower rapids (Hancock Co.) 10 miles and preached to about 20 souls. It was a very rainy day. They urged to stay and spend the Sabbath : about 20 families destitute of preaching.

10th: Rode 32 miles and passed Fort Edwards at the foot of the lower Rapids. South of which houses are to be found every few miles to St. Louis.

11th: Crossed Bear Creek at the peril of my life and rode 10 miles to the settlement, called and preached at the house of the Methodist preacher... Congregation about 40: this settlement is increasing rapidly.

12th: Proceeded to Quincy (Adams Co.) 8 miles, preached in the evening to 60 persons, this is destined soon to be a very important place. They were circulating a paper to raise 100 dollars to encourage a Presbyterian by the name of Porter to preach to them.

13: Rode in the company of Mr. Porter to Mill Creek 10 miles and preached to about 40

14- Rode to Atlas (Pike County) 30 miles and preached to about 50 souls. This is a post that deserves attention.

15: Preceded to Coles Grove (Calhoun County) 35 miles & collected a congregation of 40.

16: Crossed over to St. Charles and lodged with Mr. Lindsey. On my arrival at St. Louis on the 17th and found I had been misinformed concerning the time of the meeting of Synod, but could not regret my tour which was one of more than ordinary interest to me.

21: Arrived at Carrolton (Green Co.) and spent Sab. Religion very destitute in this region.

26: Went on my way to Jacksonville.[79]

27: Walked out to the elegant site of Illinois College. Called on Mrs. Ellis and rode to Springfield spent the night with Mr. Bergen, and having got necessary information I kept on the east side of the Ill. River until I arrived, Sabbath, Nov. 1 at Union Grove 10 miles below the foot of the Rapids, where is a Presbyterian settlement. They seem quite spirited to have preaching and I preached the first sermon in the first meeting house north of the Sangamon River which they have just built. This settlement will await immediate attention. About 70 families have moved into this region in a little time and being near the route of the canal it will settle rapidly. I think I may say that the population between Sangamon River and the Miss. will double every year for some time. I am gratified to hear that seven young men are coming out but shall soon need seventy times seven, or a great many more. Illinois is indeed in its infancy but this infant will soon become a giant, and if the infant has imbibed the spirit of infidelity : the giant will defend it with the strength of manhood and the deep depravity which “Pride and fullness of brass and abundance of idleness” will generate. We should be behind, if we should tell the eastern people how easy it is to raise provisions here, but I fear this will prove them injury. What eastern Christians do for us then must be done quickly.

While on this journey on one of the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi and the prairies on either side, Kent alighted from his horse and proclaimed aloud: “I take possession of this land for Christ.”[80] No matter that he was jumping the claim of Father Marquette. Even as he claimed for his King a vast nation, he failed miserably in nurturing himself with the company of his fellow missionaries. As he noted, he had been “misinformed” as to the dates of the Synod and arrived a week after it was over. He had written Dr. Peters that he had intended to return “through the interior,” but he did not. On his return trip he visited Saukenuk, and the wigwam of Black Hawk.[81]

As his first Galena winter approached he wrote to Dr. Peters: “I have nothing of special interest to relate concerning this place, except that I have been chased until I have purchased a house for Sab. school and Public worship on my own responsibility and drawn on J.W. & B. Levitt for funds. My limits will not allow of further particulars at present...I am more than ever impressed with the importance of this post notwithstanding the embarrassments under which I labor, and only wish to stay here until you can send a better man and give me a humbler home in the same state.”

Not everyone was pleased with their station in Galena. Newspaper man Hooper Warren, destined to be an important Illinois abolitionist, wrote of his impressions of Galena that winter.: “Thank God, the winter is almost over; and I hope it is the last I shall ever spend in Galena, unless I am better prepared. Since the commencement of cold weather there has been nothing here but balls, parties, gambling, and frolicking. Men who can not pay a cent of their just debts, find no difficulty in spending $20 or $30 a week in these amusements. These parties are general in this place, the exceptions but very few. I am sorry to say that my partners come in for a large share of this description.”[82] One of those newspaper partners was Aratus Kent’s pious friend, Dr. Horatio Newhall.

The winter of 29-30 was one of discontent for Aratus Kent. He suffered “rebuke” from the civil authorities of Galena over a beating suffered at the hand of an associate in the secular “day” school Kent had founded (more on this later), and his pastoral success was limited. He reported to Dr. Peters:

When I returned from my late tour to St. Louis I found the weather extremely cold.[83] I had no room, no place for public worship and the Sabbath school. And I seemed to have little or no prospects for doing good and secretly wished to be a part of the time at some other place, but I found your “instructions” were to persevere and to confine myself to Galena. Thus I was exceedingly strengthened and thrown upon my own resources. I formed a plan which I have strictly pursued apparently with success.

I purchased the house in which we had worshipped[84] and issued a subscription paper to solicit aid to repair it (being determined to try whether they felt interest in me or my work, as I had heretofore been unable to ascertain what their feelings were toward me). In four weeks time $200 were raised and paid out for completing the repairs on my house (as they understood it to be) Public worship and Sabbath school were resumed under circumstances of increasing interest and much greater promise. A singing society having much the aspect of a moral society of 25 male members started in to being of itself; and a day school of 60 scholars was commenced and has been conducted with great prosperity until the recent occurrence.

I have a bible class 5 days in the week and following the lesson in order I did them (23 in number) away to Mount Sinai and then there expounded the law of the Lord. It is also my frequent practice to make the whole school repeat after me the ten commandments with an occasional short and familiar exposition of one.

Sabbath morning will average about 60 of the most respectable people. The merchants are disposed to shut their shops and come to meeting and teamsters come in and find it difficult to do business as usual on the Sabbath. In the evening, i.e. at 6 pm, I have about as many of another descript who will not attend the day. So that there are at the 2 services and the Sabbath School about 150 under religious influence every Sabbath. I have also a weekly prayer meeting and Sunday School concert. And though we mourn that we have none inquiring after Salvation yet impressions are made as you will discover by the spirit of the proceedings with which I commenced.

But all this labor is too much for my two eyes and they are failing me so that I tremble but I shall be desist [sic] and again have recourse to travelling. If i can hold out 4 weeks I think of attending Presbytery at Springfield which I deem very important and which will permit me the necessary traveling and enable me again to visit Rock I[sland] and U[nion] Grove...

You will appreciate this when I tell you that about 1/3 of the Catholics, most of those that have any influence attend service occasionally. Many of their children are in the day school and several are in the Sabbath school : confidential.

We have an average of 2 balls a week this winter : card parties abound and other vices.

I had liked to have forgotten that I have no money to pay my board, and must ask you to send me one hundred dollars.

Believing as I do that the soil, the minerals, the salubrity and the waters afford a combination of inducements to setters unequalled in the U.S. as will soon render it a prosperous district. I am extremely anxious that laborers should take the field in time and not linger until the weeds or error and vice shall (like those in the bottoms) get over our heads....I consider that among all this population there are not materials enough to organize one Protestant Church. My feelings would prompt me to raise my voice till it should reverberate among the hill-tops of my much loved New England, saying “Brethren come over to Mississippi and help us.”

And so Reverend Kent spent his first industrious, if stressful, winter in Galena. Kent’s failing eyesight was a source of constant worry. His restless spirit, and his need to “itinerate” seemed to be a merger precipitated by his vision trouble. He could ride into the face of a blizzard, and his blurred vision served him adequately. But to study scriptures or to correspond was too taxing for his weak eyes.

By Spring, 1830, Kent, like Hooper Warren, was having financial trouble due to the lack of promised financial support of his sponsors: "Poverty and insolvency constitute a serious difficulty. I requested 100 dollars 3 month since but have not received it (as I hoped accompanied by some words of advice) and I fear it has miscarried."[85] To make matters worse, Kent was in trouble with the authorities again, this time for failing to serve on a jury: "I was yesterday fined $5 Dol. for not serving on the petty jury. But the judge[86] spoke kindly to me and said: 'We make it up the money ourselves.' He is a worthy man and attends church regularly...You will conclude that my spirits are depraved but I hope I shall feel better next time I write."[87]

The summer brought Kent an unusual invitation: "I started July 5th for Prairie du Chien by request of Genl. Street, Indian Agent, fulfilled several appointments in my circuitous route, and after great fatigue arrived in time to meet my engagement to Preach there on the 11th at the meeting of the Council with the Indians of whom 800 of different tribes were present. My congregation of 200 presented as great a variety of the human family as was perhaps ever assembled at the same time by an ambassador of Christ."[88]

At Prairie du Chien Kent rubbed elbows with some celebrated men, but the mosquitoes had a larger and more lasting effect on him. The post surgeon was a fellow son of Connecticut, William Beaumont, and with him was his famous fistulous patient, Alexis St. Martin. Indeed, Beaumont was in the midst of performing the experiments on gastric physiology that would immortalize him and his subject. William Clark was there from St. Louis in his role as Indian Agent, along with several young army officers who would later rise to prominence, including Zachary Taylor, Robert Anderson, and James Kearny. Just as Kent was constantly bothered by his "weak eyes," Beaumont was afflicted with near deafness, and also a tendency towards Jeffersonian Deism. If the Doctor did not attend (and perhaps he did) Kent's sermon, the more orthodox Deborah Beaumont did.[89]

The summer was a particularly unhealthy one in Prairie du Chien, for the mosquitoes breeding conditions were ideal. Beaumont wrote a paper on the resulting malaria epidemic: The History of the Intermittent Fever as it Prevailed at Prairie du Chien in the Summer and Fall of 1830. The prevalent fever that Beaumont described was not confined to Prairie du Chien. Kent's layman’s description from Galena was similar:[90]

"God has scourged this sinful place with a distressing sickness and every family and about every person has been brought low with it. I have visited 30 or 40 in a day before I was taken down myself. But the affliction has been mingled with mercy for amidst the general prevalence of disease there have been but two deaths that can be traced to the vicinity of the Mississippi and the bottom lands which are inundated when this Jordan overflows its banks.

I was attacked by a bilious fever[91] on the 6th of Sept since which I have been unable to preach nor yet now am I able, though it is more than 9 weeks that I have been laid aside. I attempted it once about three weeks since but my strength entirely failed and I was compelled to sit down before I was half through my discourse and the congregation was a fever and ague of which I had been forewarned that it would most likely follow that with which I was first attacked. It seems very difficult and a very hard process to recover one’s strength after being sick in this country.

I thought to promote the restoration of my health by going into the country and at the same time to do good by riding extensively and visiting those scattered inhabitants who are so disposed that they cannot be collected for preaching, but I soon got quite down again and returned to Galena miserable enough., but I am now recovering and hope to be able to preach in a few days."

The winter of 1830-1 was not much better than the preceding one for spiritual efforts, and the blizzards were the stuff of legends. Kent complained:

"The people of this country are mainly a floating population and vast numbers left us last season on account of the pressure of the times, and the congregation is small, nor can we expect much good will be accomplished until the land is offered for sale and permanent improvements encouraged. During the winter the snow has been unusually abundant and the winter remarkably cold. Several men have been frozen to death though they were generally intemperate and it is at the peril of life to ride over these prairies without a tree or a house to break the force of the wind for many miles."[92]

Two of Kent's comments that winter were: "I have been prevented by the depth of snow from executing my purpose of visiting Prairie du Chien (90 miles)... The traveling this winter is such that nearly all communication with the civilized world is cut off..."[93] But Kent's Yale colleagues to the south at Jacksonville were in even more dire straits. "The situation of the people," wrote Dr. Sturtevant, "was alarming. It was not at first apparent that sufficient food and fuel could be got to keep everybody from starving or freezing."[94] The floods the following spring lead to many drownings in the swollen streams and rivers. Only the powerful arms of young Abe Lincoln saved two men from drowning in the Sangamon River in April.[95]

Dangerous streams notwithstanding, Kent spent the spring prospecting for souls. "I visited Rock Island (the seat of war at this moment)[96] on the first of may and spent a Sabbath there. [While there Kent was one of 38 signers of a petition to Gov. Reynolds complaining about Black Hawk’s presence east of the Mississippi.][97] And I spent a Sabbath at Prairie du Chien in March where I was received with utmost cordiality. They are exceedingly anxious that I should spend a part of my time with them or that you should send another laborer and they gave me substantial proof of it by contributing $13.37/100. I have been desirous of visiting them & other military posts around here, vis that at Chicago and Fort Winnebago (at the portage between Wisconsin and Fox Rivers) and the Fort at St. Peters. but it has not been convenient. I have been several times to Mineral Point, 37 miles north, and the next Sabbath I am to preach on the Pekatonica (30 miles east), agreeably to my plans of itinerating for the present every third Sabbath. These as preaching posts are important, but it embarrasses the Galena Sabbath School to have the Superintendent absent so often."[98]

Local financial support continued to be wanting. A promise to circulate a subscription for the year had been made, but not accomplished by June.[99] A bell for the meeting house had been ordered, and it consumed an alarming proportion of the available funds. Kent's letters made many references to the perplexing bell, and to the difficulties he had in getting the materials and labor to install it. By late summer Kent feared that his commission would not be renewed: "It does not appear (by the Home Miss.) that my request for reappointment has been granted, and perhaps your esteemed Committee have become discouraged by the prospect of this barren fruit, or are waiting for some evidence of good accomplishment."[100]

His commission was renewed in spite of the fact that he was the penman of a protest over a general salary reduction imposed on Illinois missionaries. He assured the Secretaries that "...such a measure would never have originated with me," and that he had merely been the recording clerk. He also assured his superiors that he would not need more than $200 for the coming year from them. Then he announced a milestone: "You will be pleased to learn that on Sabbath Oct. 29 a Presbyterian Church of 6 members was organized in this place and the Lords supper administered in this village."[101]

Kent's moral presence was beginning to affect the town's character: "In brackets I would mention some tokens of improvement. Such a little increase of seriousness: a total silence about those winter amusements which have usually prevailed. The success of the Grand Jury in breaking up and banishing the house of ill-fame. And the circulation of a paper pledging abstinence from “brag-playing” which was commenced last week." Prostitutes and Presbyterians would henceforth not cohabitate Galena.[102]

Kent was always interested in Temperance, and he was making good progress on that front, too. “The Moral Association (Alias, Temperance So.) at a late meeting resolved to hold meetings in the country for the purpose of extending a knowledge and influence on the subject. They voted to recommend to their members to abstain from the use of wine and appointed a Committee of 5 (Sab. School Teachers) to invite the youth to enlist in this work of reform and to aid them in organizing a Juvenile Temperance Society, which will be formed next week.”[103]

Sabbath breaking was a constant source of irritation to Kent: “It is due to the citizens of this village to say that the more intelligent and influential part of the people manifest a disposition to observe the Sabbath. But the embarrassments that they constantly meet with from extraneous causes are too great to be encountered by men who are not yet brought under the influence of an inflexible religious principle. These embarrassments are the arrival and departure of the mail, of steam boats, and of teams with lead which must be weighed...The multitudes of strangers who visit us and leave on the Sabbath and the practice of miners and smelters of coming in to do business on that day. All these causes combined operate to prevent a due observance of the Sabbath and constitute an annoyance which is greatly to be deprecated.”[104]

The ever vigilant Rev. Kent found an opportunity to strike a blow to the evil of wagering, and he moved on several fronts.

“Perhaps it will amuse and perhaps inform you of the character of this country to note some things in relation to gambling. The two Methodist ministers and myself are enrolled on the list of Grand Jurors for the avowed purpose of putting a check upon this vice which has rapidly become flagrant. But another method has been adopted. It was taken up among themselves and agreeably to public notion a “Benevolent Society” was formed and 24 subscribers obtained upon the spot to pledge of entire abstinence from gambling. I would state further (enter not)[105] one man refused to sign the paper because the pledge was not restricted to Galena and its vicinity, another because it was contrary to his profession, asserting he could see but 2 or 3 in the room which whom he had not played.”[106]

Kent gave examples of how advanced the crisis had become:

“A laboring man as he laid down his dollar said that was the last of 183 which he had spent through this winter. Another sold his “lead”, i.e. his mineral grant for 150 dollars to have a “spree” : came to Galena, returned penniless and had well-nigh died from the excruciating disease brought on by his excesses. He now promises to be temperate. The vice had become so public that the boys were enlisting extensively, and perhaps the credit of the reformation should be awarded to a Negro who established a Faro Bank. This created alarm among the gentlemen for they saw their craft was in danger of falling into disrepute.”[107]

Illinois had outlawed most forms of gambling as early as its third session of the legislature, when it was decreed: "If any person shall hereafter bring in the State...or shall sell or offer for sale any pack of playing cards, or any dice, billiard balls, or any other device of thing intended, or made for the purpose of being used at any game; shall on conviction shall be fined in the sum not exceeding $25."[108] But even Kent's Presbyterian zeal coupled with the law of the land were insufficient forces to put a total end to gaming.

Kent had been a lonely bachelor in Galena for three years. Now he planned a trip back to the east, and its purpose was matrimony. He must have known Caroline Corning of Hartford, Conn., from some association, but details of their courtship are lacking. Kent’s weak eyes hampered his missive campaign, but he must have had assurances that his trip east would be productive. Kent's stated purpose for making the trip was truthful, if a trifle too broad: "...to persuade good people to come west."

Charles Fenno Hoffman, a New York journalist who visited Galena about then, explained the real reason for Kent's trip. “...There is another defect in the place [Galena], and, indeed, in almost all western towns where you get so far beyond the mountains, that is not so easily got over, and that is, the want of female society. The number of males in proportion to females on the frontiers is as least five to one; and girls of fifteen (I might say twelve), or widows of fifty, are alike snapped up with avidity by the disconsolate bachelors...I was told by an old borderer, he had traveled twenty miles only to get a look at a petticoat, where it was rumored that there was actually one in the neighborhood... Even now they talk seriously in Galena of getting up an importation of ladies, for the especial amelioration and adornment of the place.”[109] Kent brought three specimens of the rare creature back with him.

By June Kent was in New York City, and he wrote to the Secretaries that he needed more missionaries. He incorrectly assured them that the threat of serious Indian hostilities was exaggerated, though he accurately predicted a swift resolution of any disturbance.[110]

“Allow me again to direct your attention to the Northwestern territory as an important field for a missionary from your Society. And here I may be met by the arguing are not the Indians over running the country. They are at this moment creating great alarm and confusion, but from my knowledge of their movements for 2 years past I am well satisfied that they are instigated by one restless spirit (Black Hawk) and that the result of their disturbance will be the adoption of a train of measures which will secure the inhabitants from apprehensions in future. So that these various alarms some of which are greatly exaggerated should have no influence on any plans of operation which are to take effect 6 or 9 months hence.”

Kent took great pains to paint the picture of the frontier life of the missionary, for he wanted only “good soldiers.”[111]

“But we want a man who can endure hardship as a good soldier, : A man who can face prairie winds in winter and swim the swollen creeks in spring, and eat what is set before him asking no questions and making no invidious allusions to other days; : A man who can sleep sweetly on the “soft side” of an oak plank or on the green sod of Mother earth with no covering but his blanket and no company but his horse, or perchance a passing wolf or a benighted whip-poor-will, and in the mean time can preach with apostolic zeal whenever he can collect a dozen precious souls to listen. Oh and he must have patience withal, to delay his journey an hour or two while they are collecting, though it should subject him to inconvenience of riding in the night and the danger of loosing his trail which conducts him to the next cabin. You will be surprised if I say at the next breath that we want a man of easy manner, but this is always important, especially in one who would expect any considerable influence on the officers of those Forts [Crawford, Snelling, Armstrong, Winnebago] of which mention was made. Perhaps you would inquire what “school” he should belong to. By all means let us have one that has been taught in the school of Christ and one who had made such proficiency in the lesson of self-denial that he can be cheerful under the regimen prescribed above and account himself honored in being permitted to serve the Lord Christ in a post of so much distinction.”

On September 4th, 1832, Aratus Kent and thirty year old Caroline Corning were married in Hartford. Of Caroline's life before her marriage nothing is known. That she was possessed of a good education cannot be doubted. She immediately served as a teacher in the Sabbath school, and often acted as scribe for her husband during periods when his chronic ocular affliction flared.

Aratus Kent's career was frequently a contradiction to the conventional wisdom. His marriage was no exception. One of Kent's colleagues wrote to Reverend Peters: “...if an eastern minister comes here with a wife she will be discontented, and casue him to return. If he comes here without a wife he will probably go to the east for one and we shall see no more of him before there is no chance of keeping him, unless he marry in this country.”[112] If Caroline Kent had any qualms about her life in the west, she kept them to herself.

An account of the return trip of Kent's party was recorded years after the fact by Caroline Thompson, who later married Rev. Phelps, the long time Home Missionary at Lee Center, Lee County, Illinois.[113]

AN EARLY DAY JOURNEY

The Story of a Trip from New York City to Galena Taken

by Caroline Thompson afterwards Caroline Phelps,

when a Girl, as Told by Herself

Early in September 1832 I left New York for Galena with Uncle and Aunt Kent, my parents expecting me to return by the first safe opportunity after a year had passed.

We left by boat for Hartford where we spent a few days with Corning relatives. Next we went to Suffield, Conn., Uncle Kent's birthplace and home, a typical New England home. Then we went by stage to Enfield to take up Miss Clarissa Pierce who wanted to go west to teach and help in mission work Then next to Blanford, Mass., by stage to pick up Eli Edwin Hall, a young man of 19, who was to finish fitting for college with Uncle Kent and later enter Illinois College at Jacksonville, Ill., in preparation for Home Mission work. Then by stage, our party of five came to the Hudson River, took boat for Albany, then across New York State via Erie Canal to Buffalo. From Buffalo to Niagara Falls where we spent two days with a friend of Uncle Kent. From Buffalo again we took stage for Wheeling, Va., where we took steamboat for Cincinnati to "spend the Sabbath" as Uncle Kent would not travel on Sunday.

Sickness of some of our party delayed us in Cincinnati for four weeks. We then took boat for Maysville, Kentucky, where we waited several days for the boat for St. Louis in which place we finally arrived about the middle of October, the time set for our arrival in Galena. We were delayed in St. Louis by trouble with Uncle's eyes and it was nearly the end of November before we could go on. We then took the night and day stage for Springfield, Ill., and learning to our dismay on arriving that the stage was then laid off for the winter and only a horseback mail once a week sent to Galena. But it was decided to push on at all risks. The whole country from points not far north of Springfield has been devastated in the summer and autumn by the Black Hawk war and was still unsettled, Indians roaming about, and but few of the white settlers who had fled had returned. man and beast were most uncertain and we were assured that after the first night north house or cabin would not be seen more than once in forty miles.

However, Uncle bought a span of stout horses, blankets robes, feed and other supplies, with a large sack of crackers and a ham of smoked beef for provisions. With five people and three trunks that wagon was filled to capacity. The weather was mild for December but the ground was frozen and traveling rough. First night out was spent in Hennepin. We set out next morning on a forty mile stretch of prairie for Daddy Chambers' cabin. We dined on crackers and dried beef and drank water from the streams we crossed, reaching Chambers' mansion at night fall. Daddy and Ma'am Chambers gave us a warm welcome. The cabin was log with mud floor and a "stick and daub chimney" and a swing window, a mere board shutter on leather hinges. Daddy and Ma'am had formerly kept a tavern for the stage route but the Indians had burned the house. They had in this cabin, formerly the kitchen, a few chairs, a home made bedstead, trundle bed, a small table and a few dishes, coffee pot and an iron three legged bake oven with iron cover, the only cooking utensils they had. After a supper of biscuit and bacon I slept with Miss Pierce in the root house made of sod while the others were stowed in the cabin, Mr. Hall sleeping in the wagon.[114]

After a breakfast of soggy biscuit and bacon we started at daylight for a forty mile stretch to Dixon's ferry. Late in the afternoon we reached Daddy Joe's cabin, some ten miles from Dixon's Ferry; but a peril lay before us in the Winnebago Swamp, three miles from Dixon's Ferry which must be crossed.

After the "howdye" and preliminary greeting Uncle Kent asked him for directions to the swamp and the safe crossing but Daddy Joe advised waiting until the next day as night might overtake us before we got through and that it was dangerous except in the light. Uncle Kent being very desirous of completing the journey, decided to risk the crossing and with careful directions given by Daddy Joe we pushed on. The horses made the best progress possible but it was dark by the time we reached the swamp. After a time the trail seemed to fade out and the crossing hard to find. Finally following what seemed to be the crossing the horses were turned down a bank only to land in a mire at the bottom so deep it reached the bed of the wagon. In vain the horses tried to pull the wagon out and after working for two hours one of them got down and only with difficulty were they unhitched so they could reach the bank. We were taken from the wagon by means of some sapling poles placed so as to make a kind of a bridge.

After rubbing most of the thick mud from the horses with the coarse prairie grass, robes were put on the horses and the two women placed thereon and we walked the three miles to the Ferry. On reaching the Dixon home we found between two and three thousand Indian warriors encamped prepared to sign a treaty of peace with the U. S. Government whose interests were represented by U. S. troops. We were given the comforts of home in the Dixon house and we were given a glad welcome by Mrs. Dixon and her daughter. It was long past midnight before we got to bed. Early the next morning Uncle Kent and Mr. Hall assisted by the Dixon men took horses with them and went back to where the wagon was still mired and after a time succeeded in pulling it out. In the meantime I had opportunity to go out among the Indians. I had not a particular of fear of them, I hardly know why. The chiefs were in a large tent and I went about among them to see their gay feathers, blankets and moccasins. Their leggings and earrings looked so queer to me. Some of them took me on their knees and touched my cheeks and called me brave squaw because I did not turn pale as they laughed and chatted together.

After an early and very good dinner we were again on our way. Mr. Dixon and his sons went with us to the ferry which consisted of a flat bottomed boat with pulleys to haul us across the Rock River. The horses objected to going on the boat and with difficulty were finally persuaded to go aboard. Mr. Dixon had given us minute directions as to finding our lodging place for the night, a lone house on the stage road. Snow had fallen and as dusk approached and made it impossible to follow the grass-overgrown stage road. The night shut down upon us lost upon the trackless prairie without even a star for guidance. There was nothing to do but halt, unhitch, make the best camp we could and wait for morning. No fire could be kindled for fear of attracting some wandering Indians. We did the best we could to keep warm but little sleep was had that night. The next morning we discovered a column of smoke about half a mile away and no time as lost in breaking camp and getting to the house where we were most hospitably welcomed, warmed and fed and started on the last stage of the journey. It was Saturday and we must reach Galena by the night of December 13th our jaded horses pulled us into Galena. Our trip from New York ended in the deep clay mire of Main St., Galena, before one of the warehouses near the levee. Uncle Kent left us there, the wagon wheels nearly up to the hubs in mud, while he hastened to the home of Reuben Brush on Bench St. He soon returned with Mr. Brush and we were given a warm welcome by his good wife and most hospitably entertained, giving us a good supper which we ate like wolves for we had eaten nothing but a noonday lunch of crackers and dried beef. We stayed with the Brush family until a house could be procured and furnished. The only shelter that could be found was a little frame house on Bench street, next door to the corner of Hill street, which Uncle Kent purchased of John Delany later, that was the family home for so many years.

The John Delany corner, he lived in a house with a big stone chimney, had been used for the block house, a palisade fort of hewn logs set upright, close together, and banked with earth. It had a rough roof and many portholes for firing guns in case of attack by Indians. Hither the people hastened from all parts of the region round about in times of alarm.

The only stove that could be procured for heating and cooking was a tiny Franklin. It had a tin reflector to set upon its hearth, wherein to bake. An old log hut stood in the rear of the house, called a kitchen, with a roofed space between called a porch. This little hut had a small swing window of four panes, a mud and stick chimney for a fireplace. It had a puncheon floor and here a ' bunk" was put for Miss Pierce and me.

When we landed in Galena, Mr. Delaney had begun to turn the fort into a dwelling and Uncle Kent bought the corner and the side hill back of it, employing Mr. Delaney to finish it as soon as possible; meanwhile Mr. Hall had his bed in a corner of the old court house (with jail under it) partitioned for a study for uncle.

The court house he had bought a year or two before and had it for a church and school room, first occupied by Deacon Wood.

Caroline T. Phelps[115]

The Kent party was detained in Cincinnati at “...great expense of time and money” due to an exacerbation of Kent's chronic ocular inflammation. By the time they reached St. Louis all the steamboats had ceased running for the season, and they were obliged to travel overland “...along a road but ill provided with accommodations, and embarrassed with unbridged water courses. Our family being not yet inured to the hardships incident to a new country and my own eyes so weak that we were in constant apprehension of snow which would have prevented our traveling across the prairies. This last consideration forbade the employment of any conveyance which we could not control. We therefore purchased horses and a covered waggon which served us for parlor, dining hall and sanctuary not to say ferry boat and lodging place which lastly was true in one instance.”[116] In 1858, Kent recalled the 1832 trip to Galena this way:[117]

There is an Old School Ch. at Union Grove, whose large and overgrown house of worship has been a bone of contention for many years. I recall some pleasing reminiscences in reference to my first visit there in 29 or 30. Several pious families has some in from Bond Co. (or there abouts) and I preached the first sermon in the little log church as yet had neither bottom door nor puncheon floor. But there was a sweet harmony and brotherly love such as the wide house with strife cannot contain. But my third visit there in Dec. 32 affords more pleasure in the review than we found in the bitter experience of our journey. On my return from a tour to the East to persuade good people to come West, I was accompanied by Mrs. Kent, Miss Pierce, a truly missionary spirit, E.E. Hall a youth of 17, now preaching at Rome or Paris, and a child of 9, now Rev. Mrs. Phelps of Lee Center. We were detained by sickness on the rivers until they were frozen and we were obliged to travel from St. Louis by land and from Springfield by means of a big waggon which providence furnished and I purchased. And as we proceeded our weary way we reached this grove at evening and finding no one to entertain us, we kindled a fire and made a kettle of mush with which we welcomed the return of the family. And if you will allow the interpolation of some “Prairie Missionary” adventures to these dry statistics you may follow the big waggon and listen to our songs and our prayers, for we had some good singing and some precious prayer meetings. While Rev. E.E. Hall acted alternatively as Postillion or officiated as chaplain. Having crossed the Ill. River and arrived late in the evening we found ourselves in a “muddy run” with 10 high banks that our high and powerful horses could not get out. But we left the vehicle and rode as best we could to Dixon, where we were kindly entertained by Mrs. Dixon amidst a group of Indians stretched out before the fire. There was but one house and that a log cabin. The next morning we went back 3 miles and “took up our carriages” and passed on to Chambers Grove, where a part of our company were lodged in the root house, the Indians having burned their cabin during the summer. Two days later we were overtaken by night and bewildered by a snow storm., but the big waggon served us for a lodging place and the next day (13th) we reached Galena and if ever we knew how to be thankful for domestic comforts it was in our own limed log house with one room and a shed and a small Franklin stove.

Lest it be suspected that the danger of travel across Northern Illinois was exaggerated by Miss. Thompson and Rev. Kent, remember that the Black Hawk War was then over by only a couple of months. Two of Kent's ministerial colleagues were murdered during the hostilities. A newly married Methodist minister and his bride died a horrible death in Bureau County that summer, if the following lurid tale is to be believed.[118]

The Indians bound their victims with strong cords, put them on their own horses, and carried them back to camp. On arriving at camp, the warriors held a council over their prisoners, and it was decided, in order to avenge their dead comrade, they should be burned at the stake. Sample was well acquainted with one of his captors, Girty,[119] a renegade half breed, having met him a number of times on Bureau, while on his ministerial excursions. Sample offered Girty all he possessed as a ransom for the life of himself and wife. But all to no purpose, nothing but revenge could satisfy this blood-thirsty savage.

Divested of all their clothing, bound hand and foot to a tree, the Samples stood waiting their doom. A fire of dry limbs was kindled around them, while the Indians stripped themselves of their clothing, with their faces painted red, in preparation for a dance. Everything being now ready for the execution, Girty took his long knife and scalped the prisoners, saving the scalps as a trophy of war. Taking the scalp of Mrs. Sample, and tying the long hair around his neck, leaving the bloody scalp to hang on his breast. In this way, Girty, assisted by the other Indians, danced around their victims, jumping up and down, and yelling like demons.

Mr. and Mrs. Sample were bound to the tree, surrounded by burning fagots, their scalps taken off, with the blood running down over their faces, and covering their naked bodies with gore. Soon the flames began to take effect on the victims, and in their agony they besought the Indians to shoot or tomahawk them, and thereby terminate their sufferings. But their appeals were in vain; with fiendish laugh the Indians flourished their tomahawks over their heads, dancing and yelling in mockery of their sufferings. Mrs. Sample, whose youth and innocence ought to have moved the hardest heart, appealed to Girty, for the sake of humanity, to save her from this terrible death. But her appeals were without effect; nothing could change the purpose, or soften the heart of this devil incarnate.

Then there was the case of Rev. Adam Payne. Payne was ordained an Elder in the Christian church, then called “New Lights,” but who preached independently in Northern Illinois. Payne left Chicago in May of 1832, and reached Plainfield, where he stayed with the Methodist Minister, Rev. S.R. Beggs. Rev. Beggs cabin was surrounded with pickets, and was referred to as “Fort Beggs.” The Plainfield settlers were about to abandon their homes and flee to Fort Dearborn for safety. They urged Rev. Payne to accompany them. Payne had preached to the Indians, and he believed they would not harm him. He set out for his brother’s (Aaron, who also was wounded during the War and treated by Dr, Beaumont at Prairie du Chien) in Putnam County. Payne was attacked near Holderman’s Grove, and murdered. His head was placed on a pole and used in an ugly celebration by the Indians.[120]

By the spring of 1833 Kent's vision and spirits were clear enough for him to begin traveling again. This time he headed east to visit the shores of Lake Michigan. He visited Putnum County and followed up the Illinois River to explore.

He was pleased to find fellow Presbyterian Rev. Jeremiah Porter at Chicago and, Kent had “... rarely addressed a more attractive and apparently pious congregation than that which I met on Sabbath morning in the Garrison [Fort Dearborn], and which combining the people of the village and gentlemen of the army constituted a large assembly for this country.” On Sunday, May 26th, 1833, Kent preached the second known Presbyterian Sermon in Chicago history (Porter had preached the first the Sunday before). Kent’s “excellent sermon” was from Hebrew, xi, 24-46.[121]

Kent hoped Porter would remain at Chicago, and predicted that “...if the pier now commencing should be permanent and the harbor a safe one, Chicago will undoubtedly grow as rapidly as any village in the western country.”

Kent described the return trip to Galena:

On my return I preached at Fountaindale,[122] so called from the numerous springs of pure water which form the DuPage one of the head waters of the Illinois River. Here I found a large settlement of eastern emigrants but lately come in and about 20 professors of religion of our denomination. They will soon be able to support a preacher. Br. Porter will spend the next Sabbath with them. From this grove, 30 miles west of Chicago, I came home in 3 days following the trail of Gen Scott’s army, and was obliged to “camp out” but one night. The whole distance by that route could not be more than 175 miles. And my way lay through a tract of country possessing many advantages which will give it the preference over the lower parts of Illinois in the estimations of emigrants from New England.[123]

This “Army Trail” was the route taken by General Scott’s army the summer before to reach the front during the Black Hawk War. (Scott traveled the more conventional southern route through Dixon). The Army Trail was cut through the prairies by a train of fifty wagons and the remnants of Scott's army so recently decimated by cholera. They crossed the Des Plains River near its headwaters, and the Fox between Elgin and St. Charles, thence on to Genoa and Belvidere. The trail was originally an old Indian trace between Chicago and Beloit, the site of a large Winnebago village. The Army Trail became an artery for immigration and commerce immediately following the Black Hawk War. Kent's trip in May of 1833 would have been among the first, however.[124]

Aratus and Caroline toured to Fort Winnebago at the Portage between the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers during the summer of 1833. Kent “...was persuaded to linger there 2 Sabbaths and was treated with such marked attention and politeness as in a good degree obliterated the impression of the perils attending such a journey. I received 32 1/2 dollars from individuals unsolicited but in as much as I have received nothing from the people for about 10 months and my tour to Chicago was at an expense of 13 dollars (not to mention $500 expense in getting here last fall) I concluded to with hold any acknowledgment of that very liberal contribution.”[125] Julia Kinzie, the refined and literate wife of the Indian Agent, recalled the visit as “...being the first occasion on which the Gospel according to the Protestant faith, was preached at Fort Wiinebago.”[126] In March of that year Jefferson Davis, stationed at Fort Winnebago, had been promoted to first lieutenant. He may have been one of the polite and generous acquaintances made by Kent.

Cholera remained as a legacy of the Black Hawk War of the previous summer. Kent recounted: “It should be noted that during the prevalence of Cholera about 25 deaths occurred, among these was the Catholic priest [Rev. J. McMahon], a man of full habit (& said to be fond of strong drink).”[127] With a touch of envy he also reported: “The Methodists have succeeded through the kindness of a merchant in completing a neat little chapel which was dedicated last Sabbath. But up to that time they have had the gratuitous occupancy of the house of worship belonging to the Presbyterians [i.e., the house that Kent purchased] every other Sabbath when their own minister was absent by harmonious arrangement.”[128] Kent no sooner related the bad news about the cholera when he was laid low himself by a recrudescence of the malarial fever of the year before. This time he was stricken while traveling with Caroline to synod, and he was forced to spend 3 weeks “...under Brother Watson’s hospitable roof”at Jacksonville.[129]

By New Year, 1834, Kent could “...see but little evidence of good done, except I admit to the mischief resulting from 8 or 9 months absence. I can see that great evil attended that period of time in which the people were destitute of Gospel ordinances... It was remarked to me recently that the influx of vice during that period (which included the Indian war) had thrown us back 2 years in moral improvement. This is especially true of the vices of gaming, intemperance and Sabbath breaking. The temperance cause has not prospered and I attribute its want of success to the cholera during the prevalence of which the members thought it necessary to use brandy, but chiefly to the unfortunate defect in the pledge, for they are not required to abstain from the traffic, hence many merchants belong to the society and continue to sell spirits. But I hope we shall be able ere long to new model the constitution. We have just forwarded money to obtain 45 copies of the American Temp. Pledge, and I hope that this measure will give us a new impulse.”[130]

Kent’s pessimism about the prospects of religion were not unique. His fellow A.H.M.S. missionary, Lucien Farnam, wrote from Princeton, Illinois, in the same period: “Among us, it is now what I should call a time of stupidity, in respect to religion. Not that we have any neglect of the means of grace. Meetings are well attended:on the Sabbath out house is generally filled:people listen with attention:but no sinners are converted. The word is heard but not obeyed. To human view the prospect is dark.”[131] And Princeton was primarily a settlement of “devout” New Englanders, not the rag tag mixture of humanity that comprised Galena’s more cosmopolitan population.

Kent felt he must justify to New York the large “family” he was now supporting: “If my family is expensive, it is also useful, furnishing 4 teachers for the Sabbath School, an infant school teacher and is the main support of the female prayer meeting and a weekly benevolent society. Besides great assistance is realized in visiting the people and conversing on religious subjects.”[132]

Clearly Kent was anticipating becoming independent from the financial support of the A.H.M.S., but in March of 1835 he was forced to apply for renewed aid. He reported on conditions:

But we have much to contend with in this village. There are at least 25 places where ardent spirits are sold. Our temperance society is reduced to about 30. We have found it necessary to alter the constitution so as to exclude wine and the traffic in spirits which furnished some hope that we shall succeed better than heretofore.... Sabbath breaking prevails woefully. There are several Faro banks or other gaming houses one of which has declared a net profit of $15,000 this winter. The fashionable amusements have prevailed more and religious meetings have been frequented less than during one or two winters previous. And the church, though increased in numbers and containing some very excellent persons both male and female has not been so zealous and so efficient as at some former times. There is appearance of seriousness in a few of late and some desire to prepare for a protracted visit from Dr. Nelson & Mr. Turner in May. We can boast of entire harmony among ourselves and great unanimity with those of other sects. My Methodist Brother (minister) and myself have commenced a new plan which is to visit together from house to house exhorting and praying and urging attendance or preaching.[133]

Competition was formidable from the Methodists, and Rev. Alfred Brunson gave a somewhat partisan account of Methodist supremacy in Galena: “In the course of the day I viewed the place & found some acquaintances, one of which was with Rev. Mr. Kent of the Presbyterian church. He is the only preacher of his order in the mining country. He is very catholic & friendly in his views & feelings, & evinces a great warmth of piety. I preached for him at night, to a less congregation than we had, the night before, in our own church. Our respective churches are about of a size, say 30 members each, but his includes all the members of his church in the mines, while ours extends but little out of the town.”[134]

Methodists were not Kent’s only competitors: “A pamphlet has recently been published here that renounces the scriptures and the being of God and places Jesus Christ between Mahomat and Jo. Smith & Co. (leaders of the Mormons, I suppose).”

During the middle years of the 1830’s Kent concentrated his efforts in Galena to build up his church. He organized several revival meetings with the help of members of the “Yale Band” from Jacksonville, including Dr. Nelson, Rev. Edward Beecher, Rev. Asa Turners and others. Moneys were being husbanded to raise $7500 to construct a church building of brick or stone. Some representative reports to New York in this time include:[135]

It gives me pain to think that I have been so long in the field without witnessing more cheering results because I believe that it is to be attributed to my own unfaithfulness. I do not doubt but that good is done by my instrumentality and that is well worth all the expense by which this mission has been sustained but I am perfectly certain that I have not accomplished what even I might have done if I possessed more of a self-denying spirit.

In visiting the sick I meet with two very interesting cases last week : they are included in the 11 married women in the village and 5 in the vicinity who have died within six months : of these Mrs. Strother (the wife of a man who has purchased 7/8 of a steam boat and who will command it himself and observe the Sabbath strictly) was very satisfactory. She seemed as tranquil as if going to yield herself to the influence of an ordinary sleep.

I think myself happy if I can assist in smoothing the dying pillow of a saint.

But I cannot pass over the case of this excellent Brother of the Episcopal church. He is a Virginian of noble blood If I may judge of the blood from the disposition for uncompromising obedience which he evidences. I regard his purpose to run a Sabbath keeping boat on the Mississippi as one of the boldest and most important adventures that individual enterprise could attempt.[136]

We have no arrivals and no conversions of late but we have the promise of arrival in less than a year according to the fruits of one of our visits in the country. The church seems to possess more of the elements of efficiency, for they are disposed to work in the Lord’s vineyard. We have a monthly concert, and a good collection as you will see by the amount $45 of which was contributed by the Female Bible Society. We observe the Sabbath school concert. We have also commenced the monthly distribution of tracts in the village and vicinity and we have adopted a method which promises what I have long desired but have never been able to accomplish before a more familiar acquaintance of the members with each other which is ordinarily attended with difficulty is a village like this.

At our Sat night prayer meeting of the church it is presumed that the absentees necessarily are detained and accordingly the role is called and those who are present volunteer to visit one and another of the absentees, until we have a promise that each one will be visited during the coming week. And we cannot doubt but that such a plan adopted by the churches in your city with some little variation would be attended with most beneficial results.

Our Sabbath School continues to be very interesting and we hope in a few (5) years to have 10 young men preparing for the ministry. We think this a spiritual and very important movement. Please charge me one dollar and give credit to A.G. Hawthorne for the Home Miss.

During the year our church has recruited by certificate 4 by conversion 4 and now numbers 45: 1 Sab Sc, 75 scholars... the new members of the Church have subscribed over 1000 dollars toward the church.

This country will grow with rapidity. We shall need greatly a preacher for Cassville or whatever place is made the seat of territorial government, and one more south to visit the settlements on Rock River and its tributaries.

Our population and my domestic cares are increasing and render it every year more difficult for me to be absent itinerating as formerly. Few ministers ever probably have more company than we and love to “use hospitality” but it is a tax upon the weak vessel.[137]

There is hardly a day passes but we have calls or visits from persons from New England who dislike the confused state and Sabbath breaking of the public houses and they are not infrequently persons who broke the Sabbath on their journey hither.

The prospect of gaining ground by the conversion of sinners in Galena becomes only more dark but there are other ways in which good may be done.

The wheels of the temperance car are clogged by the men of influence who are engaged in the traffic. We have had monthly meetings but these men will not attend or if they do attend it is only to return to their [evil?] course. Mr. A Turner has been with us, and after lecturing 3 evenings he obtained 72 names to his tee-total pledge, but this makes no perceptible impression on the drunkenness of Galena.

I also accompanied this indefatigable agent in a visit to the principle places in the country. At Dubuque I preached in the day time and he lectured in the evening of the Sab. and obtained 30 names. We hope this minister will speedily return and have the pleasure of organizing a church there for the religious aspect of that village is brightening. Being disappointed by the Sab. keeping. Steamboat is going to Rock Island to spend the last Sabbath in June as I had proposed.

I went to Belleview a little village scarcely six months old on the west bank of the Mississippi about 12 miles before Galena. The back country is settling rapidly by agriculturalists: I had a large congregation most of whom had been there but a few weeks. They were the first sermons ever preached in that place.

I suggested a Sab. School; three apparently efficient teachers volunteered. I proposed if they would raise 5 dollars I would furnish $10 worth of books. They immediately collected $11.50 and paid over and I have forwarded a library. They urged me to come again. But there are 6 or 8 places on this side equally important that I have not visited for many months.

There are 20 places around me where a Sab. School of 20 or 25 scholars might be secured if but one pious family would come and settle down in each neighborhood and take hold of this work but for the want of them these children are growing up in ignorance.

Our Sabbath School is increasing in numbers and interest. Our celebration on the 4th was attended by 130 children. They were furnished by their teachers with an address and each a good piece of cake, a bunch of raisins and a flagon of water.

The Captain of the Sabbath Keeping boat has succeeded so well that he has bought another and employed as captain and clerk 2 of the best men in our church, who are determined to keep holy the Sabbath. Would that the friends of Zion would pray over this experiment for it involves the last hope of the west and of the world.

Kent kept up a grueling pace of itineration, He travelled with Rev. Hale into Wisconsin and Hale reported the results to Dr. Peters:

My journey was principally in the lead mine district & east of the Mississippi River. Br. Kent & myself visited the principal villages & settlements. We found no ministers of our denomination & very few of any other. Indeed, we have no missionaries N. West of Rock River except Br. Kent, at Galena, & Br. Watson, who I suppose has returned to DuBuque. In the Wisconsin Terr. with a population 25,000 of there are not more than 4 Or 5 ministers of all denominations i.e. not more than that number that we could hear of- Br. Kent has long been calling for aid, & if men of the right sort can be had, his call ought to be immediately attended to. The population of the Terr. is somewhat peculiar. A far greater portion of them are foreigners, than of the people of Illinois. They are as a body more intelligent. There is more open wickedness, such as intemperance & gambling, &c., more infidelity, or rather it is more bold & open, & there is more money. We need immediately, two Missionaries to plant within 40 miles of Galena- but they must be men-men of sound minds & warm hearts -men who can meet opposition & bear insults, & are willing to labor hard & bear reproach for Christ, men who might do well in many parts of this state, I am persuaded could not succeed there. I hope you will be on the lookout & as soon as you can find the men send them to Br. Kent & he will go with them to their places of destination. It must not be forgotten that churches in Wisconsin are as scarce as ministers -all is new- a few professors of religion scattered over the field panting for the bread & water of life & a large number who once were enrolled among the people of God & are now twice dead & among the most formidable obstacles to the progress of religion.[138]

The year 1837 brought finacial collapse to the western frontier. The period of wild land speculation and soft money culminated when “The whole financial system of the country has fallen to the ground,” as The Cincinnati Daily Gazette put it in May of 1837.[139] Certainly the mechantile and banking interests of Galena were not immune to the effects of the national calamity.

None the less, by early 1837, Kent was ready to sever his financial ties with New York:

I have been seven years a recipient if the bounty of your society and am deeply and painfully conscious of the Christian and ministerial unfaithfulness. But I have had difficulties to grapple with and burdens to bear which cannot be well be estimated by those who have occupied a more highly cultivated field. For more than two years I laboured alone, without Christians enough to form a church or to maintain a prayer meeting.

Our church now numbers 63. We have morning and evening meetings for prayer, a formal Benevolent Soc., a Maternal Association, and prayer meeting. The monthly distribution of tracts has been in successful operation for a year. We have commenced a house for public worship and have $4000 subscribed.[140] We have good schools taught by members of our church.

We have had during the whole time an interesting Sabbath School and men are now scattered over the country who were once under our influence. Last fall I met in one day at a distance of 300 miles 3 of its earliest pupils, two were merchants, and one a mechanic, 2 hope they are Christians and all, so far as I can learn, sustain a good moral character amidst the crowds of vicious people with whom they are in daily and hourly mingling.

In taking my leave of your society[141] I must express my grateful acknowledgments for the promptness with which every wish has been met and my growing conviction that your society is performing a service for the West and for our country, and for the church which none can so well appreciate as those who witness its happy results.[142]

_{Secular Public Education}

Aratus Kent's contributions to education were numerous, and he made his mark on institutions at all instructional levels and in many geographic localities. Ironically, his first endeavor in education, shortly after his arrival in Galena, almost caused him to be run out of town. Winter in remote frontier out posts was often a contentious time. Certainly the records of the military at places like Mackinac, Green Bay and Prairie du Chien are replete with Court Martial proceedings over seemingly trivial disputes. Civilian populations also found that the familiarity forced by isolation bred contempt. He told the story to his mentor, Dr. Peters:[143]

"I had looked forward for some time to the last Sat. when I hoped to have leisure to write you somewhat that would be cheering, but alas! It was a day of sorrow and “rebuke”. And furnished occasion to those who have been seeking occasion against me. An although this event, as well as the report that I have been caught at card playing, may be construed as a token for good and as evidence that the adversary is alarmed, yet the immediate effect will be to fix odium on me that will not soon be forgotten.

My associate[144] in the day school and I were summoned by warrant before the magistrate for “assault and battery” on the body of a child, and tho we were acquitted yet it appeared in evidence that the chastisement was too severe and some marks were left on the child. The crime was telling a lie, and the occasion was whispering in time of prayer. And the severity resulted from the passiveness of the child, which led my companion to strike harder than he ought from the impression that the force of the blows were broken by a jacket or corset intervening. And although we were perfectly dispassionate, and entirely innocent, yet you can easily imagine what will be made of it by such men as would draw up a caricature and send off for the clergyman to come in great haste to the man in his dying moments. True the messenger was arrested before he reached me, but he set out on that errand and the circumstance was quite recent.

In relation to this last affray the parents are very sorry, hence sent their children to school again, and state that the child is remarkable for insensibility under the rod and that they should not have taken such a course but they were urged on by others.

The people of intelligence and influence manifest a great deal of sympathy for me. And I can forgive and pity and forget for those that have injured me, but I cannot help feeling keenly when I think that ever after my name must be associated with the ideas of barbarity and tyranny.

From the testimony given in, I supposed there were some 10 or 15 marks 12 inches long, but my companion called 30 hours after the punishment was inflicted and found 3 marks 1 1/2 inches long. And by the time such a story has traveled 100 miles the child’s back will be all skinned."

In spite of his fears, Kent's reputation survived his brush with the authorities over his role in the punishment of the young girl. Many years later Henry Boss reported in his History of Ogle County: "As evidence that the former animosities have died away, Mr. K. says that he was recently called upon to perform the marriage ceremony for the same girl and her lover."[145] The irony of this affair is that Aratus Kent contributed more to female education that any other man of his generation in Northern Illinois, as will be seen later. Kent's sense of personal guilt stemming from this episode could not have detracted from his later zeal in the pursuit of female education.

Kent continued to be a strict disciplinarian, even after the experience of being indicted for child abuse. His Puritan heritage thoroughly embraced the traditional Presbyterian antipathy for foolishness, such as card playing, and proudly he reported to New York: "...playing cards are a contraband article in our day and Sabbath schools!"[146]

Kent explained his reasons for engaging in the school business to his superiors in New York:

"My reasons for engaging in this school were: 1) the great need for such a school; 2) there seemed to be little encouragement to itinerate during the winter months; 3) I wished to gain access to a mass of people that were inaccessible at all other points; 4) I thought by this measure I should eventually promote the Sabbath school; 5) I wished to establish a precedent for introducing the scriptures and prayer into the school. "[147]

He also explained something of his pedagogical technique, and offered an explanation for his association with a Baptist in the enterprise:

"I found that the school were miserable spellers and had no ambition to excel. I offered as premium to those who were at the head at night an apple or tract (an apple costs 2 cents here). They all prefer the tract and then I send out 2 tracts a day under most favorable circumstances (besides a tract to each scholar once in 4 weeks). My companion is a Baptist but a young man of great worth and coincides with me in everything. Are not my reasons for the day school satisfactory? It was a popular measure to offer to teach gratuitously."[148]

While contributing “gratuitously” his own time to the day school, just a few months later he was complaining about the lack of promised support for his associate, Samuel Smith: "I am owing about 130 dol. for board and horse keeping which are cash accounts, but the school keeper can get no cash for his winter's work... I assist in opening the school daily and hear the class in Testament and preach little sermons to them frequently. There is but little to encourage one here except this interesting group of youth." Yet keeping company with this Samuel Smith and his brother Orrin was an early source of moral sustenance for Kent, as when his weekly prayer meeting was "...attended by the teacher, his brother and 2 little boys of 5 and 8 years. It was a pleasant evening and we a good meeting."[149]

By July, 1830, Kent came to realize that he could not continue to devote so much time to the actual running of the day school, and still accomplish his holy mission, even though such a course might provide for his living. He wrote to Dr. Peters: "I could get through the coming year by devoting myself 5 days out of 7 to a school with comparatively little expense but I presume that if you were here to judge of the case in all its bearings you would not advise that course."[150]

Kent’s faith in education and its connection to his evangelical mission were summarized in a letter to Dr. Badger in 1845: “If we look only at the salvation of the present generation the preaching of the gospel is the great means on which, under God, we should rely. But when we look to ultimate and far reaching results the great desideratum toward which we should bend our utmost efforts is to establish and sustain a system of thorough Christian Education, and render it acceptable to all. And to effect this, we must have local agents stationed at all points in the great field. But all history shows that there are no agents so efficient in promoting Christian educations as Evangelical Ministers. Hence, we are conducted obviously to the conclusion that Home Missionaries should be multiplied to meet the demand. And perhaps in the Western country where so little interest is felt in the cause, they should be especially instructed to carry this point but using every means within their reach : such as lecturing in education, visiting schools, procuring competent teachers, and using their influence to establish primary schools and academies.”[151]

Kent participated, if indirectly, in the establishment of several “academies,” such as the one at Henry, Illinois, by defending the role of the missionaries who devoted time and energy to secular education. Again, Kent supported female education:

“Br. Pendleton's achievements astonish me. I spent 3 days with him and looked carefully into his operations. How one little man & poor and withal a missionary preaching every Sabbath and providing for a family could within 2 years have projected, gathered on a naked prairie all the materials and all the labourers and finished a tasteful & commodious building 40 feet square and containing 21 rooms all well arranged and could have more over filled it in every nook and corner with the sons & daughters and serve at an expense of $3000 is to me a mystery."

Kent assured the Secretaries in New York that he was ensuring that Pendleton did not shirk his pastoral responsibilities:

"I had much pleasant conversation and endeavored to be faithful in guarding him against worldly mindedness. The church at Milo is small and poor and can raise bit $25 and he hopes to receive the same amount from individuals at Henry. And he asks 250 (i.e. 125 for Milo and 125 for preaching at the Academy.) His school of 60 together with those that come from the village make a congregation of 75. He has a very pleasant chapel and recitation room in the attic and a more interesting congregation than usually falls to the lot of Home Miss. to address. Nor is his preaching without effect for he reckons 10 as the converts of last winter, several of whom incidentally came in my way.”

Rev. H.G. Pendleton was a graduate of the Lane Theological Seminary who became the preacher of the Granville Presbyterian Church at its inception in 1839. In August, 1844, a resolution of the Church was as follows: “Resolved, That Br. H.G. Pendleton having served four years as stated supply, and at the end of the fourth year it was decided by a large majority that he was not satisfactory to the Church on account of his pro-slavery sentiments,[152] a portion of the church deeply sympathize with him, and he had proved himself a laborious and faithful minister.” Pendleton served other churches in the same central Illinois region, for example he was at Henry and Providence in 1848. The Henry Female Seminary was founded on the efforts of Rev. Pendleton, and Kent was very impressed with Pendleton’s energy. Teachers for the Seminary were brought west from the Holyoke (Mass.) Female Seminary. The Henry school flourished until the financial collapse of 1857, after which the rise of public education supplanted the need for such schools.[153]

Kent played at least a permissive role in the rapid establishment of sound schools in DuPage County, Illinois, where the A.H.M.S. missionary Rev. Hope Brown was for many years (1849-1856) superintendent of schools. Kent encouraged Brown’s work, and supported his applications for continued missionary aid.[154] Kent proudly reported in 1858: “It [Dupage County] has been a small territory. In it there are 66 school districts, of 60 have builded [sic] good houses of brick or stone and employ good teachers. This result has been reached in part at least by means of earnest efforts of Br. H. Brown, who was for several years the County Superintendent.”[155]

_{Sabbath Schools}

In 1828 Rev. Lyman Beecher asked, through a series of articles, whether the salvation of children should not be the concern of all good Calvinists.[156] Yale's Nathaniel Taylor, an influential Calvinist revisionist of the 1820s and 1830s, modified the doctrine of sin in general to accommodate a more benevolent view of unregenerate children's sinfulness. Taylor, who served as President of the Connecticut Sunday School Union during the 1820s, believed that individuals sinned only when they voluntarily committed sinful acts. Orthodox Calvinism held that whenever they did anything while they remained unregenerate, they sinned. Taylor's theology assumed that as long as children remained without a sense of right or wrong, God did not hold them accountable for their acts. Once in possession of a moral sense, however, children were inclined by nature to sin (because they possessed the depraved nature common to all descendants of Adam) and needed regeneration.[157]

Taylor's revisionist ideas, like Beecher's liberal views, generated controversy within the Presbyterian church, and played a role in its split into Old and New School factions. In 1833 the Old School Presbyterian minister Gardiner Spring attacked Taylor for his "novel speculations" and "errors" regarding the doctrine of human depravity. Defending the view that sin was an "inclination of the mind" as well as a characteristic of individual acts, Spring stated that the child was a sinner from birth, "the perfect miniature of fallen, sinning man," and "a moral and accountable being."

Distinguishing between the intellectual and moral faculties of the soul, Spring argued that original sin tainted children's moral dispositions (their "hearts") just as it did adults'; one needed only look for evidence of children's "moral depravity" in their "impatience, obstinacy, pride, self will." He went on to ask: "Where do you discover that supreme selfishness, which is the essence and substance of all sin, if not in a little child?" Despite their disagreements, Taylor's and Spring's arguments led in the same direction: toward early religious education. Without early training, in Spring's view, children would grow up “slave[s] of ignorance and passion," unaware of their alienation from God. If Taylor saw religious education as a means of shortening the period during which children were alienated from God, Spring saw it as a way of making them aware how deep that alienation was. Either way, children needed early and regular training.[158]

Just where Kent stood in this ideological controversy, he did not record. But he wasted no time. A scant four months after his arrival, Kent reported: "The most interesting fact is the present appearance of our embryo Sabbath School..."[159] Pragmatist that he was, he often collaborated with his Baptist and Methodist brethren in the formation of Sabbath schools. But the responsibility was taxing for a young minister working in isolation. He reported: "The Sabbath School is very laborious under our embarrassing circumstances. And I have been sick these 2 weeks past."[160] A few months later, the situation had not improved: "The Sabbath school maintains its onward way and numbers 67 but it is burdensome for want of help in teaching which prevents all efforts to enlarge it, for those who attend sometimes go away without being taught. Last Sabbath was our first public examination when we gave out 52 books (bibles, testaments, tracts & hymn books) and took up a collection of $5 from scholars & teachers & $6 from spectators. Our library of 130 vol. and tracts doing their work."[161] A year later, progress in establishing Christian education could be reported: "We have two Sabbath Schools with libraries in the country and the school in Galena is still prosperous and exacting a healthful influence on society."[162]

Kent's pedagogical technique was simple, but he reported that it was successful: "Allow me to remark on the plan of rewarding children for Committing scriptures. In my next tour I expect to hear from 40 or 50 repeating the 23 psalm. And I must be permitted to express the opinion that it is one of the happiest methods of doing good in such fields of labor. Every child who commits the 10 commandments becomes a preacher to the whole family, for they are brought under a necessity to hear the law of God daily rehearsed in their ears. This exercise brings the child to maturity...."[163]

Kent must have felt the part of a one armed paper hanger. As he scurried about the country side giving birth to churches and nurturing fledgling flocks, some of his earlier hard won gains began to unravel. In 1834 he noted: "Since I have spent every third Sabbath in the country I have been obliged to give up the superintendency of the Sabbath school, and it has declined until it was almost broken up. I felt it my duty to resume the place I had occupied, and judged myself to be here every Sabbath this Winter, and now our Sabbath School is a very pleasant one and numbers 50 besides 25 drawn off to the Methodist School... If my family is expensive, it is also useful, furnishing 4 teachers for the Sabbath School, an infant school teacher, and is the main support of the female prayer meeting, and a weekly benevolent society. Besides great assistance is realized in visiting the people and conversing on religious subjects."[164] He thus personally addressed the manpower shortage by marrying Caroline Corning, who became a legendary Galena Sunday School teacher, and bringing other young people from the east to live in what he always called his "family."

"He has also taken a deep interest in the Children, and has established Sabbath Schools in different parts of the district. The school at Galena consists of twelve teachers & eighty scholars," is how Dr. Horatio Newhall described Brother Kent's ministerial efforts in 1836.[165] "Our Sabbath School is increasing in numbers and interest. Our celebration on the 4th was attended by 130 children. They were furnished by their teachers with an address and each a good piece of cake, a bunch of raisins and a flagon of water," is how Kent described the July 4th festivities that year.[166]

Chicagoan Edwin O. Gale recalled his brief tenure at a Northern Illinois evangelical Calvinist Sabbath School during the 1830s. His jaundiced adult eye visualized "those small religious books of early days, with water paper covers of somber hue," [as he remembered their contents_"most melancholy biographies of inconceivably goody goody boys" who invariably died young. Gale could not connect "those sickly examples" with the "robust, rollicking, roguish little rascal full of animal spirits" that he had been. However he felt in later life, it was clear that the books and the lessons they represented had had their effect on him in childhood. The Sunday school, he remembered, "made a painful impression upon my sensitive nature. My frightened, rather than guilty, conscience left no doubt in my mind that I was in danger of . . . terrible doom." Sundays "became days of torture" to him as he returned home with "red, swollen eyes and [a] dejected countenance." Eventually his father, a Unitarian, forbade his further attendance, and young Edwin returned to Sunday school only when a Unitarian school was established. Like Gale's father, evangelical parents also objected on occasion to the methods employed in Sunday schools.[167]

By early 1837 Kent summarized his 7 year career as a Home Missionary (his support would thereafter come wholly from the First Presbyterian Church of Galena), and he found the Sabbath School a highlight: "We have had during the whole time an interesting Sabbath School and men are now scattered over the country who were once under our influence. Last fall I met in one day at a distance of 300 miles 3 of its earliest pupils, two were merchants, and one a mechanic, 2 hope they are Christians and all, so far as I can learn, sustain a good moral character amidst the crowds of vicious people with whom they are in daily and hourly mingling."[168] He never ceased to emphasize the importance of Sabbath schools when he later became the agent of the A.H.M.S. In 1854 alone, Kent visited 110 Sabbath Schools in his role as agent.[169]

Higher Education

Higher education actually preceded the establishment of a system of lower schools in Illinois. The early stream of settlement into southern and central Illinois came mainly from the southeast and south by way of the Ohio, Mississippi, and Illinois rivers. These pioneers, bred in the tidewater tradition that education was a personal and not a public affair, evidenced little interest in the establishment of a common school system, or even in the creation of institutions of higher education. Not until long after Illinois had attained statehood was a system of public schools formed, and then the impetus came from the influx of New Englanders who arrived via the lakes and the Erie Canal which opened in 1825.

In Illinois, schools and colleges were established on a hit or miss basis according to the wishes of local groups, sometimes in opposition to the opinion of most of the inhabitants of the state, but more often with the majority indifferent to things educational. Such was not the case in the lake states whose early settlers came directly from New England. There an educational system was set up at once. In Michigan the territorial legislature had provided for an institution of higher learning. Upon attaining statehood, the legislature provided in its first session for a unified public school system with a state university as its capstone, and all private colleges were prohibited. Similar action was taken in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

The impulse leading to the founding of colleges in Illinois came from organized religion. Ministers and laymen were concerned over the future of their respective denominations, and to each group it seemed that part of the answer was to set up a center of learning. So it was that the Methodists established a seminary at Lebanon in 1828. In March, 1830, the name was changed from Lebanon Seminary to McKendree College, though instruction of a collegiate grade was not offered until 1835, and no degrees were granted before 1841.[170] Even before the seminary was established at Lebanon, the Baptists had started a school at Rock Spring in 1827. Discontinued in 1832, a successor was founded at Upper Alton. Instruction there on the college level began in 1833. The first students were graduated in 1837.[171]

The Reverend John Millot Ellis proposed that the Presbyterians establish a college, and succeeded in interesting a group of seven Congregational theological students at Yale in the project. This alliance resulted in the foundation of Illinois College in 1829. Actual instruction began in January, 1830. Since none of the students were sufficiently prepared for college level study, instruction on a collegiate level did not begin until 1831, and the first class graduated in 1835.[172] Aratus Kent was an early visitor to Jacksonville, and he became acquainted with the founders of Illinois College, since they were fellow graduates of Yale.[173] On October 26, 1829, Kent, while on his way back from Synod..."Walked out to the elegant site of Illinois College. Called on Mrs. Ellis and rode to Springfield [and] spent the night."

A few years later Kent again visited Jacksonville and sought the advice of the faculty on educational issues:"My visit to Jacksonville was very pleasant and I obtained a promise of a visit this fall from Prof. [Edward] Beecher [Lyman Beecher’s brother] and also from Mr. Baldwin to attend a protracted meeting and to inquire into the prospects of education."[174]

The early colleges faced an up hill battle in securing charters from the state legislature. The legislature was suspicious of the college movement. One legislator proudly proclaimed he was "born in a briar thicket, rocked in a hog trough and had never had his genius cramped by the pestilential air of a college."[175] As a result, it was only after considerable effort and difficulty that the first college charters were secured on February 19, 1835. By this act, McKendree, Shurtleff, and Illinois Colleges were granted legal recognition simultaneously. Three stringent restrictions in the charters showed the fears of the legislature. The establishment of theological departments was prohibited, no college was to be permitted to hold more than 640 acres of land, and the profession of any particular religious faith could not be required for admission. The first two named provisions were repealed on February 26, 1841.[176]

McDonough College, located at Macomb, (the town was named for the army commander of the victorious War of 1812 American forces at Plattsburgh, and the college named for the spectacularly successful naval commander on adjacent Lake Champlain) was incorporated by interested citizens in 1836. Instruction began on a preparatory level in 1837, but a full college course was not given until 1851. The Presbyterians were solicited to take the sponsorship of the college, but when this did not materialize, the local Masonic lodge purchased it in conformity with a plan to establish an Illinois Masonic College. The Grand Lodge of Illinois declined the offer, and it then became a high school under direction of the Schuyler Presbytery. A new charter was secured, and collegiate instruction began in 1851, but the college was closed in 1855 due to a lack of the expected support from the Presbyterian church.[177]

Most interesting of the non surviving institutions was Jubilee College, located near Peoria. Here Bishop Philander Chase had been planning for the college through the late Thirties. The first class was graduated in 1847, and the charter was secured in January of the same year.[178]

The colleges that survived and grew were not only related to some religious organization, but also had associated with them one or more strong personalities to carry them through the trying formative years. Aratus Kent was one of those strong personalities, and he carried Beloit College and Rockford Female Seminary (ultimately Rockford College) to stable maturity. He could not know that his casual acquaintance, John Addams, of nearby Cedarville, would send a promising daughter, Jane (who wanted to go east to Smith), to Rockford Female Seminary, and that she would become a world renowned humanitarian and sociologist.[179]

Not surprisingly, the most important of the questions that were faced by the founders of these early lllinois colleges was that of finance. In the case of each of the surviving institutions, the first step was to circulate a local subscription list. As a rule very little cash was pledged; land, labor, and materials formed the bulk of the donations. Funds for the actual operation were expected from the East until the West could become self-supporting. A common procedure was to elect a president who then journeyed to Illinois to look over the scene of his future labors, and returned to the seaboard to seek funds from friends and religious philanthropists. This is illustrated by a letter from John Mason Peck, financial agent of Shurtleff, written to Dr. Haskell, treasurer of the college in Alton, in the fall of 1835, announcing that he had succeeded in raising more money in Boston than Edward Beecher, president of Illinois College, who was in the city at the same time on the same mission.[180] By 1843 the pleas for funds from the East became so numerous that the Society for the Promotion of Collegiate and Theological Education at the West was organized to co-ordinate the fund drives of those institutions having a Presbyterian or Congregational background.

Aratus Kent, like Beecher and Peck, did his share of Eastern fund raising. He reported to the Secretaries, in apology for a short trip away from his post: "I accomplished something for the time I was out of my field being but 2 Sabbaths out of the State, having obtained subscriptions to Rockford Female Sem. to a considerable amount."[181]

The men (and women, in the case of Rockford) who comprised the faculties of those early colleges were devoted to the cause of education. They survived on small salaries, and even those were usually in arrears. At Illinois College in 1837, President Edward Beecher received $1,100 and quarters, Julian M. Sturtevant, first instructor, $750 and quarters, while two others were paid $900, but had to supply their own houses. One professor received $1,000 without housing, but in 1840 all but one were raised to $1,100.[182] At McKendree College the president's salary in 1834 was $600, although in that year it was raised to $700.[183] With all the difficulties which they faced, they had need of the strong religious convictions which sustained them through the painful and poverty-stricken years. In each of the early institutions the majority of the faculty was composed of ordained ministers, or men who were using teaching as a stopping point on the way toward ordination. As might have been expected, most of these came from New England.[184] The faculties were small, and their personalities had a deep influence on the students entrusted to their care. William H. Herndon (Lincoln's law partner), for example, infected by the virus of antislavery at Illinois College, was withdrawn by his father for this reason.[185]

Commencement was the high point of the college year for both students and faculty. Originally this was held late in the summer, but by the early Forties all these colleges had changed to June. The exercises were all-day affairs. Each member of the graduating class delivered an oration and suitable musical numbers were rendered. Prizes and honors were conferred. As though there had not been enough speaking, members of the lower classes were often placed on the program for additional orations and essays. Not only was this a gala day for the graduates but also for the community. People came from miles around to spend the entire day, or, if from a distance, to spend the nights before and after, in the college town.[186] Kent enjoyed attending these affairs, as he reported in 1855.

“But we have much also to be thankful for. God has prospered the feeble efforts put forth to plant and sustain literary and religious institutions. Last evening I listened with interest to a solemn and searching address to the Society of Inquiry on Missions in Rockford Female Sem. by Rev. Mr. Colis 1st graduate of Beloit College, preaching the duty of entire consecration to Christ. Tomorrow is commencement here.”[187]

Slavery must be mentioned when the early Illinois colleges are discussed, for it was a pressing issue. Going from southern to northern Illinois, abolitionist sentiment increased. McKendree, at Lebanon, was less antislavery than the others. Two years after the death of the A.H.M.S. missionary Elijah Lovejoy, her board took formal action demanding that persons expressing abolition sentiments sever their connection with the college. Shurtleff, at Alton (where Lovejoy was martyred), was also anti abolitionist in order to keep her connections with possible students from Missouri. Illinois College, at Jacksonville near Springfield, never took a formal stand as a college but the faculty, including President Edward Beecher, who had unsuccessfully helped to guard Lovejoy's press, were outstanding abolitionists, and were so known throughout the state. Knox, at Galesburg, and its President Blanchard, were out-and-out abolitionist. With the characters of the founders, and their previous connections, none of the colleges could have stood otherwise than they did. Founded, nurtured, and molded as they were by men of strong character and public spirit, the question remained one of the engrossing subjects of discussion, as well as action, until it was settled by the tragedy of war.

In June 1844, the lake steamer Chesapeake, churned westward through the waters of Lake Erie from Cleveland, Ohio, carrying seven men home from the Western Convention of Presbyterian and Congregational Ministers. There three hundred delegates from eleven states had met to discuss the religious needs of the Mississippi Valley. They had heard an appeal for church unity, and they made resolutions against the evils of dancing and slavery. But what had seized their imaginations was the announcement of a voluntary agency called the Western Educational Society. According to its secretary, the Reverend Theron Baldwin, the newly-established society had been formed so that struggling collegiate institutions on the frontier would not have to compete in their bids for financial aid from the East. The society would endorse and even raise money for a limited number of fledgling western colleges.[188]

In a narrow stateroom seven delegates discussed the possibility of establishing colleges in Wisconsin and northern Illinois. Among them was Theron Baldwin. His friend, the Reverend Stephen Peet,[189] was the Wisconsin agent for the American Home Missionary Society. Lying ill on a berth, Peet was nevertheless full of enthusiasm. For years he had been dreaming of founding a Christian college.

In 1839 Peet had toured nearly 575 miles of territory south of the Wisconsin River. He found rapidly growing settlements but only one minister within 150 miles. To the secretary of the Society he wrote, "Send us ministers-send us good ministers- send them now." The problem was that most ministers were trained in the East, and the ones who volunteered for frontier missionary service often were restless, inefficient, or unable to endure hardships. As agent, Peet, Like Arartus Kent, was responsible for organizing churches, helping them secure pastors, advising missionaries arriving in the field, raising money and keeping alive interest in missions. Repeatedly he urged (again like Kent) the Society secretaries not to make Wisconsin a dumping ground for inept ministers (in return, Peet was undeservedly dumped by the Society.) He was sure that a college planted in southern Wisconsin would solve the problem. Young men who studied there would be accustomed to frontier conditions and would understand the people.[190]

A college would bring other benefits as well. An educational institution established early would draw "the kind of population most desirable who are intelligent and willing to patronise [sic] and support such institutions." Religion would be promoted as a collateral benefit. "I have never seen good order and well-regulated society to exist," he wrote, "without the influence of religion." A college would also provide many needed teachers for the common schools, a goal dear to the hearts of both Peet and Arartus Kent.[191]

Doubtless, Peet expressed these cherished ideas to the men crowded together on the Chesapeake. Theron Baldwin repeated the promise given at the convention, that "a hand from the East" would "be stretched out to help on the establishment of genuine Christian colleges, judiciously located here and there in the West." Standing nearby was the Reverend A. L. Chapin a Yale and Union Theological Seminary graduate returning to his Milwaukee pastorate. More than twenty-five years later he recalled,

"Peet seizes on the gleam of encouragement, his uttered thoughts kindle enthusiasm and hope in the rest. There is an earnest consultation- there is a fervent prayer- there is a settled purpose and Beloit College is a living conception."[192]

From this shipboard meeting emerged three collegiate institutions in three midwestern states. Yet the man who would lead the group toward a broader, more liberal educational plan was not on board the Chesapeake. He was the Reverend Aratus Kent, often called the "Father of Rockford Female Seminary." On 6th, August 1844, a little more than a decade after Rockford had been founded by Aratus Kent's brother Germanicus, among others, fifty-four church leaders from three states traveled to a convention in Beloit, a tiny village on the southern edge of Wisconsin. Their meeting place was an imposing Congregational church, one of the first three Protestant church buildings in the territory. From its tower hung the first bell in the Rock River Valley, and in its basement the Beloit Seminary met for instruction.[193]

The group called themselves "friends of Christian education in Northern Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa." They asked Aratus Kent to preside. For two days they prayed, argued and planned. A.L. Chapin, long time President of Beloit College, recalled Aratus Kent's contribution.

"Beloit College like every good enterprise, owes its birth and nurture to a few men of foresight, broad views and earnest self sacrificing devotion. Among these few men, a prominent place must be assigned to the Rev. Aratus Kent. He was a member of each and was made chairman of the first, of the four conventions of the friends of Christian education, whose deliberations determined the time and place and character of the College. The last convention appointed him one of its original trustees. He continued a member of the board to the time of his death, being very rarely absent from its meetings till the infirmities of old age began to lay some check upon his activity. He was elected the first president of the Board of trustees and by successive elections was kept in that position for nearly three years, till on the appointment of a President of the College, the two offices were merged. Thenceforward, he was, each year, regularly and unanimously elected vice president. of the board. His interests, and counsels, and prayers have thus been from the outset, identified with the institution, and he has from time to time made liberal contributions to its resources. It is appropriate therefore, that the pages of the Monthly should present some fit memorial of what this man, so near and dear to us, did in this and other relations of life, and of what he really was."[194]

Chapin and Kent shared a long association. When Chapin was inducted into the Presidency of the newly formed Beloit College on July 24, 1850, it was Kent who gave the discourse.[195]

When Lord Nelson would electrify his soldiers [sic], in the hour of battle, he exclaimed, "England expects every man to do his duty." Sir, Yale, expects every man to do his duty. You and I, brother, as sons of Yale, have enjoyed singular advantages, and it behooves us to do what we can to transmit these blessings to succeeding generations...The College, the Female Seminary, and the rail car:the progress of science and society will not wait for the plodding course of older institutions.

You and I are sons of Yale, and I know not how better to magnetize you to a high standard of excellence than to point to the portraiture of your old President and mine. As I sat musing in my study, anticipating the exercises of this say, my eye met the searching glance of the venerable ex-president Day and the sainted Dwight. They seemed to be looking down from the wall where they hung and came to my aid, just in time to administer the oath of office..."

The convention passed two proposals: to establish a "Collegiate Institution for Iowa"; and to establish a "Collegiate and Female Seminary of highest order, one in northern Illinois near Wisconsin and the other in Wisconsin close to Illinois." To clarify their educational priorities to the churches represented, they also resolved:

1. that fundamental to the evangelization of the West is the establishment of collegiate and theological institutions where "orthodox" and "pious" ministers might be trained;

2. that parents should consecrate their sons to the ministry;

3. that churches should help promising young men educate themselves for the ministry;

4. that the churchmen of the West should cooperate with the Western Education Society; and

5. that "permanent Female Seminaries of the highest order for the education of American women should have a prominent place in our educational system."[196]

The fifth proposal was novel. Women's education had not, until then, been even a low priority : it had no priority at all. Aratus Kent was became its champion. A charter for the Female Seminary was granted by the State of Illinois on Feb. 25, 1847, but that was the easiest part.[197] Twenty-five years later, a Rockford Female Seminary board member, and Kent's long time friend, Rev. Joseph Emerson recalled:

"He [Kent] was there to plead for the education of women.... As he went up and down sowing the word of life upon the prairies, the conviction deepened more and more in his soul that this great inland had no greater need than that of educated and sanctified womanhood in the school and in the house."[198]

Kent’s practical nature is exemplified by his plan of action for founding the Female Seminary. He indicated his willingness to sell the “prize” to this highest bidding community.

"It sees to me that in view of the present posture of affairs and indeed in view of our own past action, we are compelled to throw our Female Seminary into the market and to give it to the highest bidder.

There are, it is true, some restrictions. Its location must be in Ill., and it must be contiguous to the state line, and it should be in a healthy atmosphere both physical and moral. We ought (other things being equal) to prefer a location where we have reason to believe that it would be not only patronized by the community, but where there is that high tone of moral and religious influence which would satisfy the most scrupulous parent.

Considerations of this kind should not be lost sight of nor should we disregard the anticipations cherished by Rockford people, nor the noble efforts of those at Rockton. But after all, I think there is no way for us to get out of the labyrinth of difficulties which beset is on every hand but to make the whole thing turn upon the largest and best subscription. We are more completely tied up to this now at this second effort then we were at first."[199]

Despite the promises of the “Western Society,” funding from the east was not forthcoming. Yet Aratus Kent was determined to pursue the project. He wrote: “....the committee ought to act and act promptly if there no prospect of light from the east, as we had anticipated....In fact, we cannot foresee what and how many and how great rivals may appear on the field of honorable competition for the tempting prize.”[200]

Kent drafted a request for proposals and caused it to be circulated:[201]

Comm. of Trustees of Beloit College

Feb. 7, 1850

The undersigned as a committee of the Board of Trustees of Beloit College are instructed to receive propositions for the location of a Female Seminary in Northern Illinois according to the original understanding upon which the college was founded.

They accordingly invite proposals upon the following basis:

I. That the Board of Trustees of the Seminary will be legally & perhaps in part personally distinct from that of Beloit College.

II. That the seminary shall be under the immediate charge of an Executive Committee residing principally in the vicinity of the institution.

III. That this committee do not feel authorized to determine details as to permanent plan of management, precise site, or any other matters which can remain open for consideration of the trustees of the Seminary though the establishment of the school upon a temporary basis is contemplated as soon as practical after determining the location.

IV. That subscriptions to be applied to the erection of buildings & other expenses necessarily incidental to the commencement of the undertaking be made in the form of promissory notes, made payable in such installments that the necessary buildings shall be ready for use by the first of Sept. , 1852.

The committee deem it proper for them to state that after taking into account religious, moral & social influences their recommendation to the board will depend principally upon the position of places which may compete as being central, healthful, accessible & pleasant.-

And especially- upon the amount of subscriptions. This is regarded as important not only as furnishing means for the commencement of the enterprise but ever more so, as indicating the interest of the people in the plan and in order to meet the just expectations and claim the support of other places of the object in other quarters.

The committee understand that the desire and to the extent of their ability the purpose of the originators of this two fold enterprise is that the contemplated institution shall not be inferior in grade, importance or usefulness to the college.

Propositions addressed to Rev. A.L. Chapin, President of Beloit College will be received until the first of June next.

A. Kent

Wait Talcott

R.M. Pearson

Joseph Emerson

Almost from the beginning, Kent was pressured to assume personal direction of the Female Seminary and move his family to Rockford:

At Rockford I spent a day on business pertaining to the Female Sem. located there, and was urged by the other members of the Ex. Comm. to remove my family to Rockford. I have been so officious from the first in gathering up that Institution that they seem determined to put me on all the business committees. The gentlemen composing that Comm. stated distinctly they did not intend to throw the labour on me, but they wished me nearer for consultation. It would be vastly better to be at R. as a center of Home Miss. operations, provided that I should be continued in that service. But then on the other hand, I feel no little reluctance at leaving “my old stamping ground”, and I have no idea at present what decision will be arrived at on the subject. But I allude to it that my counselors at 150 Nassau St. may express their wishes, if they choose. There is a good deal of variety (which is “the spice of life”) in my present employment and I often think of Paul’s experience and moral elevation. Phil. 4:11-13. But amidst the storms and sloughs, the diurnal and nocturnal annoyances incident to constant traveling, my heavenly father affords me many soft Indian Summer days, many smooth roads and enchanting passages and in his Providence gives me an introduction to many excellent families, where I have every substantial comfort that the most princely hospitality could furnish and what is more than all, I am daily thrown into circumstances the very best I could have to exert a personal influence in favor of the Religion I profess to love.[202]

Clearly, Kent was a bit tempted to assume the superintendency. But he was interested only if he could do the job on the side, while continuing as agent for the A.H.M.S. He probably correctly sensed that if he moved to Rockford he would be consumed by the needs of the Seminary. Fortunately for Kent, fate (through the offices of his colleague Rev. Loss) brought Kent just the person he needed to save himself from a job he knew he was not equipped to perform. That person, Anna Peck Sill, was perfectly suited to the task, if she had some one like the practical and tolerant Kent to lean upon.

Anna Peck Sill arrived in Rockford in the spring of 1849 to teach school. She began in an abandoned court house and finished her Rockford career by pushing the Rockford Female Seminary into the ranks of the nations colleges. Few such frontier female seminaries survived even a few decades, and almost none provided the nidus for the formation of a college. Anna’s grandfather, Jedidiah Peck was a farmer, preacher, carpenter, mill builder, and judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Otsego Township on the frontier of Western New York. He served in the New York State house and senate, where he introduced bills to abolish slavery. Perhaps his greatest contributions came as a champion of public education. Anna received a public education, and was an avid reader.

Following the dictums of Catherine Beecher, a champion of the concept that single women should take up the profession of teaching, Anna went in 1836 to live with her brother on his homestead in far western New York, and began to teach. During vacations she attended Albion Female Seminary, where she ultimately became a teacher for several years.

She remained single, and her views of marriage are perhaps best revealed during a conversation with a student’s mother:

[The student’s mother], as happily married women often are, was concerned about Miss Sill’s spinster state, and said to her with some feeling, “Anna Sill, you should marry. Your should accept one of these good chances.”

Quickly as a flash came the answer, “Emily Robinson, I’m not looking for a chance, I’m looking for an opportunity.”

But Anna did not wait for opportunity, she seized it. To a family friend who was an A.H.M.S. minister in Racine, Wisconsin, [Hiram Foote] she wrote:

I have thought perhaps I might be useful as a teacher and if possibly establish a female seminary in some of the western states. Pecuniary considerations would have but little influence on such an undertaking. My principal object is to do good.

From Rev. L.H. Loss Anna learned that Aratus Kent and others were interested in establishing a college at Beloit and a female seminary in northern Illinois. Loss offered no promises, no salary, and only could hold forth the rent free use of an abandoned court house as a inducement for Anna to head west. It was enough.

Sill had a long battle to become principal. Twice the Executive Committee of the trustees, with Kent as chairman, recommended Sill’s appointment, but the board was slow to act. They still hoped to recruit a prominent male educator from the east.

But Anna Sill built the Rockford Female Seminary into a successful institution. Once Aratus Kent became satisfied of Ms. Sill’s piety and evangelistic zeal, he gave her great freedom in running the school. He attended board meetings regularly, and most of the important ceremonial occasions, but he remained a strong back ground support for Ms. Sill. Others might criticize her for her blunt assertiveness, but he always referred to her as “the excellent principal.”[203]

To Kent, Sill was principal almost immediately. For example, as early as 1851 he wrote to the Secretaries: "In a recent conversation with our excellent and devoted Principal of the “Rockford Female Seminary” Miss Anna P. Sill, she expressed a wish that she might have the “Home Missionary” to use in her monthly missionary meeting. I said certainly you shall have it.[204] A bit latter he acknowledged Ms. Sill's Presidency, when he wrote: “Miss Anna P. Sill, President of the Rockford Female Sem., expressed a wish that a set of Dwight Theology might be given to their library to stand by the side of Channings works. I though that if you would give men the name of the donors I would write them on the subject.”[205] Kent’s philanthropy was not confined to raising funds from others. In one year alone he donated 1/4 of his total salary to the cause when he turned “...$150 over to Rockford Female Sem to meet a larger subscription which I made to provoke others to good works[206]

For years after Ms. Sill’s arrival, pressure was kept on Kent to assume a more direct role in overseeing the Rockford Female Seminary. Anna Sill even went herself to Galena to urge Kent to come to Rockford. In 1856, he wrote:

Accompanying this you will see the action of a Com. consisting of Br. A.L. Chapin of Beloit, Wm. H. Brown of Chicago and T.D. Robertson of Rockford, appointed to inquire into the expediency of creating a new office and to define the duties of the incumbent.

The committee are to report at an adjourned meeting to be held on the 14th of Oct. or immediately after the meeting of Synod.

Having been repeatedly solicited before I have some reason to presume the Board of Trustees will adopt this report, if they have any reason to expect that it will open a way for relief from their pecuniary embarrassments which are very serious, and yet the institution has acquired a high character and is doing great good. The principal reports 25 hopeful conversions this year.

I have never given them any encouragement for a consciousness of my utter incompetency has led me to shrink from it. But the matter is pressed upon me now in a way that I cannot dismiss it without consideration.

It is true that I am in one corner of my field and obliged to be absent from home much longer at a time than if I resided in some more central position.

And such are now the facilities for rapid traveling that an agent of your society could occupy the whole state as his field without being absent more than 2 or 3 weeks at a time. And there are parts of the state which (unless another agent is employed) will suffer unless you have an efficient agent who possesses a sort of ubiquity which at my age I do not feel willing to assume.

The field I occupy is now better supplied than it was 10 years ago and to a considerable extent, things have assumed their type and an exploring agent for this district is not as much needed as formerly. But on the other hand, I have a great repugnance to undertake that difficult work of Superintendent of Rockford Female Sem.,[207] and am not adapted to any part of it, while I am familiar with Home Miss. Agency. Old men do not easily adapt themselves to new business. We do not feel disposed to exchange Galena for a new home and we think that our extensive acquaintance affords us some facilities for usefulness that we should forfeit by a removal. I have thus spread out this matter before you, for I did not feel at liberty to move on it without your knowledge. Please return this paper soon.

Please return the enclosed document soon, as it is the property of Miss Sill who has been spending some days with us, according to the request of Br. Chapin.

Kent never had any major differences with Ms. Sill (though she had her share of strife with J. Emerson and others), but he had major concerns over the direction that Beloit College was headed. He worried that Beloit was going over too far in the direction of Congregationalism, and that the result would be the necessity for the Presbyterians to form their own institution

It was stated at the meeting of the directors (of which I am one, because I did not feel at liberty to decline) that all the colleges in this vicinity are under Cong. influence. With regard to Beloit it is maintained that while half the directors are nominally Presb. yet the Ex. Com. all sympathize with Cong. The resident professors are all Congregationals. The (and the students with few exceptions) attend the Cong. Ch., i.e., that the Home Influence are all on one side and that there is more danger in College than in the Seminary of their being biased because in the latter they have more maturity and are prepared to examine for themselves. Hence the conclusion was reached that we must have a College too or lose our students in these says of sectarian strife.[208]

President Chapin penned a very long and detailed response to Kent’s concerns. Chapin reassured Kent that he personally was committed to preventing any sectarian strife within the Beloit faculty or trustees, and defended past actions.[209]

I can sympathize with you fully in the feeling you express respecting your position between Presbyterianism & Congregationalism, those forces once accordant & cooperative now bristling with a show at least of antagonism towards each other...The feeling is a real one with me personally & stronger still in my identification with the College. My chief anxiety respecting this institution come from the fact that the partisan leaders seem to mining off with Congregationalists & Presbyterians & leaving us who cannot follow such lead either way to feel deserted.

Kent was almost apologetic in his inquiries of Chapin, but his concern was rising, as was his frustration over his position with the A.H.M.S., as that organization steadily fell from favor in northern Illinois.[210]

I have ever been treated by you and your coadjutors with great kindness and consideration and you may well suppose that after our long and very pleasant intercourse it was exceedingly painful to give you pain by seeming to take a position adverse to Beloit. I have not taken that position. But I am in the predicament of Orphan & Ruth : a position in which I shall be obliged to take sides or be left alone. I have ever maintained the doctrine of cooperation and I take to myself none of the guilt of “causing divisions”. But such is the excitement now that I see not what can be done by N.S. Presb. but quietly to go by ourselves or cease to be. I have looked on for many months (and even for a year or two) and altogether held my peace while the O.S. Presb. and the Cong. are absorbing us, and we have been trying to cooperate and I have an array of facts on my own to field to confirm this statement.

I am greatly troubled and have been for a long time. I cannot be a Cong. of the type it is assuming at the West (as I understand it), I could get along well with Connecticut Cong., but absolute independency is unscriptural and intolerable (to my mind.) Give me your views on that subject and in addition to the questions asked in my former letter, I will ask one other, Is it desirable that the N[ew].S[chool]. Presb. Ch. should be obliterated or have they a distinct mission to fulfill?

I write with great freedom to you as to an old friend but I do not want this correspondence to be published to the world, for I have an invincible dread of such notoriety.

By 1857, the Rockford Female Seminary had 330 young ladies enrolled. They came mostly from northern Illinois, southern Wisconsin and eastern Iowa, but some came from as far away as New York and Vermont. Tuition was $6 per quarter of 10 weeks, but there was a $7 fee for oil painting and $8 for “music on the piano, melodian or guitar.” Board was $70 per school year of 40 weeks. [211] Kent’s adopted daughter, Mary King, was in the preparatory class that year.

The Galena Theological Seminary

The occasion of the controversy with Chapin was the movement by the New School Presbyterian Church (which referred to itself as the “Constitutional Presbyterian Church”) to establish its own Theological Seminary in the Northwest. Kent called the proposition “no child of mine.” Probably because so many of his closest friends and old time associates were supporters of the plan, he did not feel willing to divorce himself entirely from it. Local pride may also have played a role, for Kent allowed that “Perhaps Galena is as good a point all things considered as any other” for the new seminary’s location.[212] He did decline to be named the financial agent.[213] The stipulation that the Seminary would not commence until it had $30,000 in capital reflects Kent’s fiscal conservatism, but may also have been Kent’s subtle way of decreasing the probability of success. He displayed less conservatism when the Rockford enterprise was begun on a shoestring. Kent also believed that the seminary should not be part of a college, probably to protect the fledgling institutions at Beloit and Rockford from damaging competition. The following letter to the Secretaries of the A.H.M.S. was perhaps not the child of Kent, but it was in his hand.[214]

The subject upon which we address you, is that of a Theological Seminary proposed to be located in this city, under the auspices of the Constitutional Presbyterian Church. The subject is not altogether a new one. It has for some time past been under serious and prayerful consideration by some of the friends of Christ's kingdom, both at the West and at the East. Fully persuaded as we are in our own minds, of the expediency, necessity, and feasibility, of establishing such an Institution we are unwilling to put forth any positive efforts for the accomplishment of the object, until we shall have asked counsel of those at a distance, in whose wisdom and judgment we can confide, and whose paramount regard for the Church of Christ we cannot question.

With a map of our country before you; you will at once observe that this vast region of the Northwest is, to some extent, an isolated district, separated from the East by distance and our inland seas, and from the more central Southern portions of our country, by distance also, and non-commercial intercourse. This region embraces Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri and what is soon to be the Territory of Nebraska. Scattered over this vast territory, is already a population amounting to about two millions of souls. This number is rapidly increasing. Especially is there an increasing tide of population pouring into the fertile and healthy region of the Upper Mississippi. Missouri, Minnesota and Iowa will soon number their Millions of people. Illinois has already a million.

Now, that this wide-spread territory of the Northwest, and its teeming population, should be supplied with an adequate ministry from the East, is, in our opinion, out of the question. Indeed, Such a supply cannot even now be had. Many of our most thriving villages and most populous agricultural districts, are without a Presbyterian or Congregational ministry, nor can our young men go to the East for theological instruction. The distance and the expense are alike too great. Had we a Theological Seminary here at the present time, it is believed that young men would be found in it, many of whom must relinquish the hope of entering the sacred office, by reason of the want of such an Institution. We are furthermore persuaded, that other things being equal, it is far better that the men who are to labor in this Western field, should be trained upon Western ground. The reasons for this are obvious.

As has been intimated already, it is proposed that this Seminary shall be founded and conducted under the auspices of the Constitutional Presbyterian Church. We are fully persuaded that while this branch of the Church is unimpeachable in the soundness of its faith, its polity is most happily adapted to the prevailing qualities of Western mind and Western society, and that under its energetic and plastic influence, the most salutary and desirable type will be given the ecclesiastical character of this region. By the foregoing observations, we do not mean that the Seminary shall be purely and exclusively of a denominational character. We mean simply this, that while in matters of Church polity, the largest freedom of opinion shall be allowed, the Institution shall be under the immediate supervision of the Presbyteries of the Northwest, its Board of Trustees being chosen from those Presbyteries, and that its Professors shall be connected with the Constitutional General Assembly.

The location proposed for this Institution is the city of Galena. The advantages of this location are numerous and obvious. Galena, including its suburbs, already numbers more than six thousand inhabitants. It is destined unquestionably to be the largest city of the Northwest, Chicago excepted. It is to be the great depot of the Upper Mississippi. It is a healthy city. It is central to the region proposed to be supplied with a ministry by the Seminary in question. It is central also to a vast and fertile agricultural region, to whose sons we are to look for the future ministers of the Northwest, and for missionaries to the territories lying still farther West. It is very soon to be connected by rail-road with Chicago, and eventually with the head-waters of the Missouri. It is the principal port of the Upper Mississippi, and at every point of the compass is connected with thousands of miles of water communication. The expense of living here, is as cheap as in any other city of the Union. This city is already possessed of great wealth, and that wealth is on the increase. It is central to the mining region, where thousands arc to be employed in the production of lead, and among whom the students of the Seminary might be usefully employed as transient missionaries. Indeed, with a map of the Northwest before you, you cannot fail to see at once the advantages of this location for such an Institution as that proposed.

The plan contemplated for the establishment of the Seminary is this: To raise ten thousand dollars on the field designed more immediately to be benefited by it, for the purchase of the necessary grounds, and for the erection of suitable buildings. We have encouragement to believe this can be done. The grounds and buildings being thus provided for, it is proposed to raise twenty thousand dollars elsewhere, for the endowment of two professorships. It is further proposed that the Seminary shall not go into operation until the thirty thousand dollars shall have been actually realized and appropriated as above. In this way, all embarrassment from debt will be forestalled.

Such is a brief outline of the plan proposed for the establishment of a School of the Prophets for the North. west. To us it appears not only exceedingly desirable, but a matter of inevitable necessity, that such an Institution should be founded either at this city or at some other point, for the region of the Upper Mississippi, and for the regions beyond. Our Seminary at Cincinnati, from its remoteness, and its geographic location, cannot meet the wants of this field. It is less accessible to us than New York or Andover. Moreover, the students going from that Seminary, are wanted for Ohio, Indiana, and the Southern States. The Northwest alone is not provided for. Aside from Lane Seminary, we have no theological school West of the Alleghenies.

Now, sir, with the map of this country before you, we ask you to give the subject of this communication your prayerful and candid consideration. In proposing it, we assure you we are not actuated by motives of mere local benefit. We look simply to the future welfare of this vast region, so soon to be the dwelling place of millions of men. Do you, all things considered, think it advisable to make an effort for the establishment of such an Institution as that above contemplated, and at this city? Do you think the plan a feasible one ? And shall it have your hearty co-operation? An answer at your earliest convenience is solicited.

Yours in the bonds of the Gospel,

S. G. SPEES,

A. KENT,

E. D. NEILL,

W. C. BOSTWICK,

C. S. HEMPSTEAD,

H. NEWELL,

GEO. W. CAMPBELL,

JAMES SPARE,

WM. H. BRADLEY.

The Galena Theological Seminary never got from paper to reality. Nothing in Kent’s correspondence indicates that he was disappointed.

Perhaps more important than all his organizational and philanthropic efforts, Kent served as a stellar role model. The son of one of Kent’s associates recorded the following observations in his diary: “Mr. Kent[was] here today. Mr. Kent is a good man. He seems to show a regard and feeling in every one. He is perfectly plain spoken and open hearted. He treats me with much respect and fatherly (it might be called) feeling. I like such a character. Nothing stuck up. Nothing impulsive, with true heartedness. All goodness. Such as draws the hearts of the young to one. Ask God may I be such a one.”[215]

In at least one way, Aratus Kent’s involvement in higher education was no different than any other parent’s: “My Lewis and Mary [two of his adopted children] were waiting my return for money to go back, the one to Beloit Col. and the other to Rockford. Sem.”[216]

Aratus Kent, The A.H.M.S., and the Slavery Issue in Northern Illinois

Personally for Aratus Kent, slavery was a most vexing issue. His eulogizers, many years after his death, recalled Kent as an ardent anti-slavery man.”Father Kent was very much opposed to Slavery in the Northwest. There were slaves in Galena in the early days. Their shacks still stand. The records of the Presbyterian minutes abound with Father Kent’s deep and profound aversion to slavery. He preached against it wherever opportunity afforded. Any who practices it “should not be invited to our pulpits for the fellowship of our chgurches.’ He said in 1849 that “the holding and treating of human beings as chattels is a sin directly opposed to the gospel and to the Law and Prophets as interpreted by our Lord Jesus Christ.’”[217] Sadly, none of Kent’s sermons demonstrating his “deep and profound aversion” survive.

In point of fact, Kent was even viewed as a “pro-slavery” man by some, a reality that Kent acknowledged.[218] Nothing in Kent’s correspondance suggests that he supported slavery, but he certainly could be counted among the main stream conservatives. Kent’s luke warm anti-slavery position was not shared by many of his Home Missionary Brethren. Of course, Rev. Elijah Lovejoy was martyred, and his brother, Rev. Owen Lovejoy, was elected to the U.S. Congress by virtue of their abolitionist views. Rev. Asa Turner was chairman at Alton in 1836 of the meeting that led to the formation of the first Anti-Slavery Society in Illinois.[219] Edward Beecher also attended that meeting. Later when Turner crossed the Mississippi to Iowa, his church at Denmark was also a station on the underground railroad. All these men were Home Missionaries, just like Kent. Beecher and Turner had preached in the mining country, the former assisting Kent in protracted revivials in 1837, 40, 41, 41 and 44 when 226 new members were received ino the church.[220]

Ironically, one of Illinois’ leading abolitionist journalists, Hooper Warren, arrived in Galena almost the same time as Aratus Kent in 1829. Kent and Warren did not find in each other kindred spirits, though Warren was later a close associate of the great Baptist Missionary John Mason Peck.

Galena was in many ways more akin to Cairo than Chicago during the decades that preceeded the Civil War. The settlement of Galena took place via the Mississippi, making its cultural connections decidedly southern, pointing toward St. Louis and Kentucky. There were 175 “colored people” out of a total population was 5600 living in Galena in the late 40’s.[221] In 1840, Jo Daviess County had a white population of 6386 and 125 “colored” persons. In 1845 the numbers were 12,220 and 205.[222] Chicago in 1844 had a total population of 7580, of whom only 65 were blacks.[223]

Negro slavery existed in the mines for some years. Many of the early miners were from slave-holding states, and brought their slaves with them. In 1823, when Captain Harris arrived, there were from 100 to 150 blacks there. Under the ordinance of 1787, slavery was forever prohibited in the Northwestern Territory, but Illinois sought to evade this organic law by the enactment of statutes by which these slaves could be held as “indentured” or “registered servants.” These statutes were known as the Black Laws. As late as March 10, 1829, the commissioners of Jo Daviess County ordered a tax of one half per cent to be levied and collected on “town lots, slaves, indentured or registered servants,.” etc. (Slavery existed in the mines until after this date, and was not abolished until about 1840.)

There was in 1878 living in Galena a venerable old black man, Swanzy Adams, born a slave, in Virginia, in April, 1796, who moved to Kentucky, and thence, in April, 1827, to Fever River, as the slave of James A. Duncan, on the old steamer “Shamrock.” His master “hired him” to Captain Comstock, for whom he worked as a miner. He subsequently bought himself for $1,500 (although he quaintly claimed that he had paid too much for himself: “good boys like me could be bought in Kentuck for $350”). “Old Swanzy,” as he is familiarly called, was the last survivor in Galena of the slaves held under the Black Laws of Illinois.[224]

Aratus Kent’s own brother, Germanicus, another prominant Northern Illinois pioneer, was the founder of Rockford and a member of the Illinois legislature. He also brought a slave with him when he came to Northern Illinois via Virginia (where he returned a few years later).

So Aratus Kent was surrounded by forces at least sympathetic to the “peculiar institution.” In addition, his affiliation with the nationally oriented A.H.M.S. required a certain tolerance, regardless of what his own personal convictions might have been.

The Illinois Legislature, at its first session after the admission of the State, re-enacted, with all their severity the “Black Laws” which had been in force in the territory. Those laws were originally largely copied from the slave codes of the states of Kentucky and Virginia, and under these a black person, free or slave, was practically without protection. If free, unless he could present a certificate of freedom from a court of record, he was liable to arrest and imprisonment, and to be sold to service by the sheriff of the county for a period of one year. If he sought employment he was in constant danger of being kidnapped by the desperadoes who infested the country, and sold “down the river.”[225]

Blacks in Illinois did not enjoy the legal presumption of freedom until Abraham Lincoln successfully appealed the case of Cromwell vs. Bailey to the Illinois Supreme Court in 1839. This decision held, contrary to the established rule in many southern states, that the presumption in Illinois was that a black was free and not subject to sale. Not until 1845 in Jarrot vs. Jarrot did the Illinois Supreme Court finally recognize the tenets of Article VI of the Ordinance of 1787. This decison effectively “repealed” Illinois’ infamous “Black Laws”.[226]

The statute referred to is the one under which American Home Missionary Owen Lovejoy was indicted at the May term, 1843, of the circuit court of Bureau county, and tried before a jury. Lovejoy was acquitted on the seventh day of October of the same year.

Owen Lovejoy was the Congregational minister at Princeton, Illinois. Like many Home Missionaries, he was a “conductor” on the underground railroad. The indictment contained two counts. The first count charged him with harboring a Negro slave named Agnes; the second with harboring a Negro slave named Nancy. Owing to the prominence of the defendant, the trial excited great interest throughout the State and the nation, and, as Mr. Lovejoy was viewed as a abolitionist. The acquittal of Mr. Lovejoy was considered a great triumph by the anti-slavery forces .

Prior to the trial a pro-slavery man approached Prosecutor Fridley and offered him a handsome fee if he would “send that abolition preacher to the penitentiary.” Mr. Fridley declined the fee, as it was his official duty to prosecute the case, and remarked to the zealous pro-slavery men that “the prosecution of Lovejoy was a good deal more likely to result in sending him to Congress than to the penitentiary,” a remark that proved prophetic.

Aratus Kent was not the only person credited with more anti-salvery zeal than he actually possessed. With the rapid growth of abolitionist sentiment during the pre-Civil War decade, a record of association with the antislavery movement in its earlier and less popular phases came to be considered a mark of distinction by many Northerners. Much of the bitterness and hostility toward Abolitionists which characterized the 1830’s had by that time disappeared, and in their place the popular mind had granted a somewhat heroic character to the early antislavery crusaders.

As sectional tensions heightened yearly after 1850 and as the antislavery movement attained political expression through the Republican Party, the once-hated Abolitionists began to achieve a measure of respect as spokesmen of the future. No individual personifies this historical rationalization than another Illinois missionary, John Mason Peck. With the help of journalist Hooper Warren, Peck tried to paint himself as a life long ardent abolitionist. In reality, Peck, like Kent, was a moderate on the slavery issue until such a moderate stance became unfashionable. Peck had stood with the conservatives in opposition to Elijah P. Lovejoy and other Abolitionists during the height of the controversy in the mid 1830's.[227] Unlike Peck, Kent was never so hypocritical as to claim for himself something that he had not been.

Abraham Lincoln, speaking in Galena in 1852, appreciated the work of Fathjer Kent. Charles Thomas, then a boy at his father’s house in Galena, heard Lincoln say to Rev. Aratus Kent, “We owe our recent victory to you, sir. The influence of you missionaries has been of great political value in our state.” Later, when Mr. Lincoln was President, Mr. Thomas called on him at Wahington and in the course of the conversation President Lincoln said to Mr. Thomas, “Do you remember a statement I once made to Mr. Kent at your father’s house?” “Yes,” said Mr. Thomas. “Well, I say now,” said Mr. Lincoln, “that to the labors of Home Missionaries like Mr. Kent, and other men like him, who started and fostered church and college in the Northwest, we owe the saving of the Northwest to the Union and the saving of the Union itself.”

Perhaps Lincoln included Rev. Elijah Lovejoy in his “other men like him” phrase, but he did not mention him by name. Curiously, few of the Home Missionaries mentioned the November 7, 1837 murder of their brother minister. Kent was no exception. Rev. Theron Baldwin, the Principle of the Montecello Female Academy in Upper Alton, wrote that the “mobites...had done more injury than Br. Lovejoy could have done by the publication of his paper for centuries.”[228] This hardly constituted a resounding endorsement of Lovejoy’s position on slavery.

Kent’s sometime partners in revivals, Rev. Asa Turner of Quincy and Rev. David Nelson were out spoken anti-slavery men, and as a result, Rev. Nelson’s college just east of Quincy was torched by a Missouri mob in 1843.[229] Two other A.H.M.S. missionaries, Samuel Wright and John Cross, were arrested for their alleged participation in the Underground Railroad, but their cases were nol prossed.[230]

The A.H.M.Society’s work in the South and among the slave holding Cherokess Indians quickly became a liability to the Society in Illinois. One of the Missionaries who resigned his commission was Oliver Emerson, of Iowa Territory.[231] Kent thought he had run accross this man, and did not hold a high opinion of him.[232] However, others thought Rev. Emerson a “lame but tireless...Apostle Paul.” Taken in the context of the lameness, Emerson’s request for horse and carriage does not seem as self indulgent as Kent painted it.

It is almost a year since I received a line from you respecting Mr. Emerson (whether it is the same as that man whose letter is published in the Home Miss. for Jan., I have no means of knowing but I suppose it is. He told me of another man of the same name who came out to Iowa, but he was then an open Baptist, who, I was informed, has since become Presbyterian.) I feel quite dissatisfied with him. And I will relate what has given me the dissatisfaction. He borrowed 10 dollars of me when he first came on, he has never come nigh me again, though he has been near Galena and I believe in town. I mentioned the circumstance to recently to Brother Dixon of Platteville. He had borrowed 10 dollars of him. He is but ill able to spare money to such men. He called on Brother Neill upon my introduction (about 12 miles out) and told such a pitiful tale that he promised and afterwards gave him a valuable horse, then Emerson had the meanness to say that he wished he had money to buy a carriage also for he did not know how much riding he might have to do and he wanted to be very choice of that horse! Putting these things together, and comparing them with what Brother Wright said who was in Lane Seminary with him, I have no expectation of any good report and I am afraid to have him enjoying your patronage ... I do not wish to burden you but I thought you ought to have the light you can get That Brother Wright is a Missionary near Knoxville, Ill. He could give you information about him while at Lane.[233]

Out of this growing dissatisfaction sprung the American Missionary Association in 1846. Treasurer of this new organization was one of the ubiquitous Tappan brothers, who happened to be a close friend of the Rev. Charles Grandison Finney, noted evangelist and a Professor at the new Oberlin College (an institution that also enjoyed Tappan largess.) Oberlin was created from an abolitionist splinter group broken off from the more conservative Lane Theological Smeinary in Cincinnatti. The “Oberlinites” were another group Kent instinctively distrusted, probably more over theological issues than on the slavery issue. None the less the wedge was being driven deeper between Kent and a growing number of his missionaries. Kent wrote to Dr. Badger:

I have written to Mr. Bowen[234] at Savanna the following this evening.

“Dear Sir I have just heard a rumor that your minister Calvin Gray is an open and strong advocate of the Oberlin Theology. If this is so I think that Christian candor should have constrained him to avow it as his as his letters recommendatory gave no hint of it and I thought it necessary to give you notice of the fact that such a rumor was afloat lest you should be induced in my recommendation to commit yourself further than you would...”[235]

Kent went on to have a long and stormy relationship with “Brother Gray,” but he relented on his early opposition to Gray after a meeting with him:

I wrote you as I thought I ought in regard to Br. Gray. Since that I have conversed with him and with Br. Eddy whose installation at Mineral Point I attended last week.

Br Gray satisfied me that though he dissented from the course professed by ministers and presbyters, yet he did not wish to advocate the peculiarities of Oberlin Theol. And he left the impression on my mind that he had now no inclination to agitate that subject. And it appears to me wrong to drive him from us by refusing him the aid he seeks.[236]

Finding a congruancy of views between congregations and pastors on the slavery issue was not easy. In 1848 Kent reported that Bother Norton at Sycamore had “left...their church which stands with only a roof to cover the timbers and yet it is the only church of our denomination in a county [DeKalb] of 6 or 7000 inhabitants...because he would not say Shibboleth to their antislavery creed.”[237]

By 1851 Kent was convinced that a formal declaration of opposition to Slavery was required if the A.H.M.S. was to retain any influence in Northern Illinois, but the political need, not the moral requirement, seemed to be his motivation..[238]

Rockford, July 12, 1851

Rev. Dr. Badger

Dear Br.,

At my request when met at the parsonage under the shadow of the old Oak Tree in Beloit at 5 am on Thursday last. 4 of the devoted friends of the A.H.M.S. solicited Brs. Clary (mine host) Pearson, Savage and Kent to review the actions of the Missionary Convention at Chicago on the 20th ult.

These Brethren (all present at that meeting except Br. Pearson) expressed their regret that one of the secretaries was not at Chicago (though your explanation was satisfactory) and they all saving myself were disappointed in the action or the body as having come short of that progress which they had hoped it would reach.

The remark of Dr. E. Beecher was quoted that the question before them was one of time. The time will come when the A. H. M. S. must take the stand that they will not commission men to labour in slaveholding churches. These brethren (or 2 of them Brs. Clary and Savage) thought the resolution adopted did not meet the views of the Convention and that if another had been thrown in desiring the Society to announce that they would not here after commission men to churches that tolerate salve holders (excepting those who are already on the list of beneficiaries) that such a resolution would have been adopted by the Convention and approved by the great body of our western churches.

It seemed to me therefore that these views should be communicated to your Committee and we agreed each in his own way to express his views to our Brothers in New York.

Much as I may be stigmatised as a Proslavery man, I still am constrained to say that whenever your Committee feel prepared to take that stand, they may count on me as one who would welcome the announcement. And if the distant echo of so feeble a voice should contribute anything to hasten such a result, I am quite ready to give utterance to it either in the closet or on the house top.

I have however more confidence in the judgement of your committee than in my own, and I consider that if the opinion I have expressed be an embodiment of western sentiment it may not be so of the churches at the east, and that constitutes another reason why I should rest satisfied with your course, whatever it may be.

Affectionately yours,

A. Kent

_________________________

It gives me pain to think that I have been so long in the field without witnessing more cheering results because I believe that it is to be attributed to my own unfaithfulness. I do not doubt but that good is done by my instrumentality and that is well worth all the expense by which this mission has been sustained but I am perfectly certain that I have not accomplished what even I might have done if I possessed more of a self-denying spirit.

In visiting the sick I meet with two very interesting cases last week : they are included in the 11 married women in the village and 5 in the vicinity who have died within six months : of these Mrs. Strother (the wife of a man who has purchased 7/8 of a steam boat and who will command it himself and observe the Sabbath strictly) was very satisfactory. She seemed as tranquil as if going to yield herself to the influence of an ordinary sleep.

I think myself happy if I can assist in smoothing the dying pillow of a saint.

But I cannot pass over the case of this excellent Brother of the Episcopal church. He is a Virginian of noble blood If I may judge of the blood from the disposition for uncompromising obedience which he evidences. I regard his purpose to run a Sabbath keeping boat on the Mississippi as one of the boldest and most important adventures that individual enterprise could attempt.[239]

We have no arrivals and no conversions of late but we have the promise of arrival in less than a year according to the fruits of one of our visits in the country. The church seems to possess more of the elements of efficiency, for they are disposed to work in the Lord’s vineyard. We have a monthly concert, and a good collection as you will see by the amount $45 of which was contributed by the Female Bible Society. We observe the Sabbath school concert. We have also commenced the monthly distribution of tracts in the village and vicinity and we have adopted a method which promises what I have long desired but have never been able to accomplish before a more familiar acquaintance of the members with each other which is ordinarily attended with difficulty is a village like this.

At our Sat night prayer meeting of the church it is presumed that the absentees necessarily are detained and accordingly the role is called and those who are present volunteer to visit one and another of the absentees, until we have a promise that each one will be visited during the coming week. And we cannot doubt but that such a plan adopted by the churches in your city with some little variation would be attended with most beneficial results.

Our Sabbath School continues to be very interesting and we hope in a few (5) years to have 10 young men preparing for the ministry. We think this a spiritual and very important movement. Please charge me one dollar and give credit to A.G. Hawthorne for the Home Miss.

During the year our church has recruited by certificate 4 by conversion 4 and now numbers 45: 1 Sab Sc, 75 scholars... the new members of the Church have subscribed over 1000 dollars toward the church.

This country will grow with rapidity. We shall need greatly a preacher for Cassville or whatever place is made the seat of territorial government, and one more south to visit the settlements on Rock River and its tributaries.

With much esteem I am yours in the bonds of the gospel

Aratus Kent

________

Galena, Ill., July 6, 1836

Rev & Dear Sir,

The time is past when I am required to give an account of my stewardship to your committee and the time may be very near when I shall be required to give an account to God, in view of which I contemplate my labours here with very little self complacency.

Our population and my domestic cares are increasing and render it every year more difficult for me to be absent itinerating as formerly. Few ministers ever probably have more company than we and love to “use hospitality” but it is a tax upon the weak vessel.

There is hardly a day passes but we have calls or visits from persons from New England who dislike the confused state and Sabbath breaking of the public houses and they are not infrequently persons who broke the Sabbath on their journey hither.

The prospect of gaining ground by the conversion of sinners in Galena becomes only more dark but there are other ways in which good may be done.

The wheels of the temperance car are clogged by the men of influence who are engaged in the traffic. We have had monthly meetings but these men will not attend or if they do attend it is only to return to their ???? course. Mr. A Turner has been with us, and after lecturing 3 evenings he obtained 72 names to his tee-total pledge, but this makes no perceptible impression on the drunkenness of Galena.

I also accompanied this indefatigable agent in a visit to the principle places in the country. At Dubuque I preached in the day time and he lectured in the evening of the Sab. and obtained 30 names. We hope this minister will speedily return and have the pleasure of organizing a church there for the religious aspect of that village is brightening. Being disappointed by the Sab. keeping. Steamboat is going to Rock Island to spend the last Sabbath in June as I had proposed.

I went to Belleview a little village scarcely six months old on the west bank of the Mississippi about 12 miles before Galena. The back country is settling rapidly by agriculturalists: I had a large congregation most of whom had been there but a few weeks. They were the first sermons ever preached in that place.

I suggested a Sab. School; three apparently efficient teachers volunteered. I proposed if they would raise 5 dollars I would furnish $10 worth of books. They immediately collected $11.50 and paid over and I have forwarded a library. They urged me to come again. But there are 6 or 8 places on this side equally important that I have not visited for many months.

There are 20 places around me where a Sab. School of 20 or 25 scholars might be secured if but one pious family would come and settle down in each neighborhood and take hold of this work but for the want of them these children are growing up in ignorance.

I have little charity for those professing Christians who profess to come to this country to do good, but who say “Be ye ...[last two lines illegible].

Your brother in the bonds of Gospel,

Aratus Kent

[on the address leaf]

Our Sabbath School is increasing in numbers and interest. Our celebration on the 4th was attended by 130 children. They were furnished by their teachers with an address and each a good piece of cake, a bunch of raisins and a flagon of water.

The Captain of the Sabbath Keeping boat has succeeded so well that he has bought another and employed as captain and clerk 2 of the best men in our church, who are determined to keep holy the Sabbath. Would that the friends of Zion would pray over this experiment for it involves the last hope of the west and of the world.

______

Galena, Ill., Aug. 2, 1836

Rev. & Dear Sir,

As I know not who is the agent in New York, I request you sir to pay over to the agent for the A.B.C.F.M. one hundred and thirteen 50/100 Dollars being the amount of our collection at monthly concert for the last 14 months and charge the same to my account. To accommodate a fried I gave him an order on you a few days since for 5 1/2 dollars.

Rev. Albert Hale is with us and tomorrow we go on an exploring tour in the Wisconsin Ter. of which he will give some account perhaps in due time.

Yours with best bonds,

Aratus Kent

_________

Dubuque, Aug. 9, 1836

Rev. O. Watson

My Dear Brother,

I have sat myself down at Mr. Lockwood’s table (While Mrs. L and Rev. A. Hale are conversing) to tell you 2 or 3 things.

Brother H and myself have just returned to Galena from a tour in Wisconsin as far as Helena and finding our Sabbath Keeping Olive Branch in part, we have come over to your parish and have had the happiness to see a Presbyterian Church laid up of rock as far as the middle of the basement story windows. And the contractor said that the walls would be finished up by the first week in September. These facts will doubtless gratify you as they did us and you will also be pleased to learn that there is a prospect of having materials to organize a small church. I have no doubt but it is the duty of some body at the East to give you a 1000 dollars for building the church. And you are authorized to receive collections.

Brother Hall will spend 4 weeks in exploring and visit Galena again in Dec.

Mr. Lockwood's family are well and indeed the whole village seems to be enjoying health except some cases of measles and a few of scarlet fever.

My own family and people are blessed in like manner and we hope that the effort at Dubuque will provoke us to emulation in building a house for the Lord.

Dear Brother hasten back. Brother Hale preaches there on the next Sabbath.

Yours affectionately,

A. Kent

Rev. A. Peters

Dear Sir,

Fearing that this would not overtake Brother W in Connecticut I thought good to forward it to you. And I wish also to state that 3 days ago I visited a German Mr. John Messersmith Iowa Co. Wisconsin Ter who in conversation concerning Der Raush insisted that a German could not write so well in English but I assured him it was his own language and promised to ascertain by writing if he would pay the postage.

I could wish Der ???? would write to him in German giving a brief history of himself, inquiring about the Germans....

In Haste Yours,

A. Kent

_______

Galena, Ill., Oct. 4, 1836

Rev. & Dear Sir,

The flight of time admonishes me that another report is due, but I seem to myself to have little else to communicate except it be the echo of the former statements, presenting nothing to animate or encourage.

I have been long in the field and still it seems the aspect of the vineyard of the slothful for it is all grown over with thorns and nettles have covered the face thereof. We have an increase of people but there is no apparent increase of worshippers on the Sabbath and we have more professors of religion but no evidence of increasing spirituality and the preacher apprehends that he is becoming every year more faithless and discouraged. The Spirit of worship overpowers every good influence and as a community we are hurrying fast to distraction without the least prospect of escape unless we receive special aid from above.

The Sabbath School presents a brightening prospect and affords a ground of hope in future years.

After 6 months of apathy we have waked up again to the effort of building a house for God. We expect to obtain in Galena 4,500 and our house 20 by 40 with a basement of stone and a superstructure of brick will not cost less than $7500 but we think we have now a reasonable prospect of making up the deficiency. There is a great opening for good by men of Academics in Galena and the Territory north, and some intent awakened in their behalf. There is a considerable Catholic influence and we wish to preoccupy the ground. There is great room for labour in the Territory but I cannot bestow that labour without neglecting my work at home. Brother Hale has spent several weeks in exploring and he concurs with me in opinion that a preacher or two are greatly needed in the Mining country. As one illustration we visited one neighborhood 50 miles from Galena where we had a congregation of 50 including 8 or 10 Presbyterians who had not heard a sermon since I visited them about a year before

_______

Springfield, Ill., Oct. 29 [1836]

For the purpose of attending Synod I left Galena in the Sabbath Keeping:anti-gambling temperance boat for St. Louis. We had a quiet and pleasant passage with the privilege of family worship daily and daily in the Ladies cabin. The Captain said he enjoyed it much and I am sure it was refreshing to my own soul. On Sabbath I heard the Senior and Junior ??? preached myself and visited 3 Sabbath Schools including a German school of 75-150 learning English in which I was greatly interested.

The meeting of Synod was : one of which I shall not now speak particularly: My visit to Jacksonville was very pleasant and I obtained a promise of a visit this fall from Prof. Beecher and also from Mr. Baldwin to attend a protracted meeting and to inquire into the prospects of education.

I have forwarded a draft for monies due on the missionary year now closed. I have increased my expenses this year by building a small house of 2 rooms for female schools. The schools in our village are now encouraging.

Yours,

Aratus Kent

________

[January (?)] 17, 1837

[first page missing from microfilm]

...A plan has been formed to have protracted meeting this spring at Buffalo Grove and Rockford on Rock River (in Ill.) and at Elk Grove (Wisconsin) and Brother Gridley has been invited to come with the Big Tent and labour at these meetings and we expect at that time that 2 or 3 churches will be formed. But alas what avail the labours of 1 or 2 missionaries among so many. We want at least 2 on this side and as many on the west side of the Mississippi. Brother P. will go home soon and he thinks of returning in the fall. His eye is fixed on Mineral Point 40 miles north wither he has gone exploring and in the neighborhood lives Mrs. Rey whose exercises have excited attention in this region. It is more than 2 1/2 years since she said to me there would be a great revival in all this country to begin at Galena in the winter of 1837.

There have been during this year 17 added by letter and 6 by profession and we calculate on about 10 more at the next communion by profession : 15 converts 100 Sabbath scholars : 7 converts among S Scholars of whom 3 united with the church.

We have raised for foreign mission $112 at monthly con. : for the bible society 42 and for the tract soc 40 for supplying the Boats with bound vols.

My people think they can support me in future and a committee is appointed to write a letter of thanks to your society and it seems due from me also to review the past.

I have been seven years a recipient if the bounty of your society and am deeply and painfully conscious of the Christian and ministerial unfaithfulness. But I have had difficulties to grapple with and burdens to bear which cannot be well be estimated by those who have occupied a more highly cultivated field. For more than two years I laboured alone, without Christians enough to form a church or to maintain a prayer meeting.

Our church now numbers 63. We have morning and evening meetings for prayer, a formal Benevolent Soc., a Maternal Association, and prayer meeting. The monthly distribution of tracts has been in successful operation for a year. We have commenced a house for public worship and have $4000 subscribed.[240] We have good schools taught by members of our church.

We have had during the whole time an interesting Sabbath School and man are now scattered over the country who were once under our influence. Last fall I met in one day at a distance of 300 miles 3 of its earliest pupils, two were merchants, and one a mechanic, 2 hope they are Christians and all, so far as I can learn, sustain a good moral character amidst the crowds of vicious people with whom they are in daily and hourly mingling.

In taking my leave of your society[241] I must express my grateful acknowledgments for the promptness with which every wish has been met and my growing conviction that your society is performing a service for the West and for our country, and for the church which none can so well appreciate as those who witness its happy results.

Yours in the fellowship of the Gospel,

A. Kent

______

[Extract from a letter by A. Hale to Absalom Peters. Jacksonville, Illinois, September 27, 1836.]

My journey was principally in the lead mine district & east of the Mississippi River. Br. Kent & myself visited the principal villages & settlements. We found no ministers of our denomination & very few of any other. Indeed, we have no missionaries N. West of Rock River except Br. Kent, at Galena, & Br. Watson, who I suppose has returned to DuBuque. In the Wisconsin Terr. with a population 25,000 of there are not more than 4 Or 5 ministers of all denominations i.e. not more than that number that we could hear of- Br. Kent has long been calling for aid, & if men of the right sort can be had his call ought to be immediately attended to. The population of the Terr. is somewhat peculiar. A far greater portion of them are foreigners, than of the people of Illinois. They are as a body more intelligent. There is more open wickedness, such as intemperance & gambling, &c., more infidelity, or rather it is more bold & open, & there is more money. We need immediately, two Missionaries to plant within 40 miles of Galena- but they must be men-men of sound minds & warm hearts -men who can meet opposition & bear insults, & are willing to labor hard & bear reproach for Christ, men who might do well in many parts of this state, I am persuaded could not succeed there. I hope you will be on the lookout & as soon as you can find the men send them to Br. Kent & he will go with them to their places of destination. It must not be forgotten that churches in Wisconsin are as scarce as ministers -all is new- a few professors of religion scattered over the field panting for the bread & water of life & a large number who once were enrolled among the people of God & are now twice dead & among the most formidable obstacles to the progress of religion.[242]

_______

Office of the A. H. M. S. 150 Nassau St[243]

New York Jun 20th 1837

Rev. J. G. Simrall

Carlinville, Ill.

Dear Sir, . . . You speak of a renewal of your commission for the current yr. It is in accordance with our rules, that there should be an application from the people in order to have the request come regularly before us. If your people are really needy, I doubt not our committee would readily comply with their request in extending to them continued aid. But we cannot forbear to express the hope that they will find their own resources, the current year, adequate to their necessities- We cherish this hope from the very liberal collections they have made the last year to benevolent Societies the amount they have raised for their house of worship, and the amount they have pledged for the Theological Seminary.

Those nearer by can judge of the circumstances in the case better than we can & our committee have referred the matter to our agency at Jacksonville, Ill. If your people will forward their application to Rev. Albert Hale at that place it will receive the action of that Board & we shall then be prepared to act intelligently & rightly, I trust, in regard to it....

MILTON BADGER

Asso. Sec. A. H. M.S.

-----------

Carlinville, Ill.

July 7th I837_

Rev. Dr Peters

Dear Sir,

I received on yesterday the letter of your Assistant Secretary in relation to my commission for this year. I am glad you have not sent it as I should have had the trouble to return it. I determined after seeing the proceedings of the Convention and Assembly to have nothing more to do with your Society, and informed my church here to that account. I have received a commission from the Assembly board. You need not therefore consider me in any way connected with your Institution, although I believe it has done much good - yet under all the Circumstances - and in view of the Sate of our Church at large - I am satisfied with my present views I cannot again sustain it.

Yours respectfully,

Jn. G. Simrall

_______

Galena, Feb. 11, 1842

Dear Sir,

It is almost a year since I received a line from you respecting Mr. Emerson (whether it is the same as that man whose letter is published in the Home Miss. for Jan., I have no means of knowing but I suppose it is. He told me of another man of the same name who came out to Iowa, but he was then an open Baptist, who, I was informed, has since become Presbyterian.) I feel quite dissatisfied with him. And I will relate what has given me the dissatisfaction. He borrowed 10 dollars of me when he first came on, he has never come nigh me again, though he has been near Galena and I believe in town. I mentioned the circumstance to recently to Brother Dixon of Platteville. He had borrowed 10 dollars of him. He is but ill able to spare money to such men. He called on Brother K?? upon my introduction (about 12 miles out) and told such a pitiful tale that he promised and afterwards gave him a valuable horse, then Emerson had the meanness to say that he wished he had money to buy a carriage also for he did not know how much riding he might have to do and he wanted to be very choice of that horse! Putting these things together, and comparing them with what Brother Wright said who was in Lane Seminary with him, I have no expectation of any good report and I am afraid to have him enjoying your patronage ... I do not wish to burden you but I thought you ought to have the light you can get That Brother Wright is a Missionary near Knoxville, Ill. He could give you information about him while at Lane.[244]

We, Bros. Farnam, Bascom,[245] & myself tried to get Brother Wright to come up as a Missionary between Rock & Miss. River. we offered him 500, he seemed inclined to come and I found a Brother Graham in our Church about 20 miles south east (a central point, a bachelor who was to furnish his family a good house and abundant provisions if he should only burse his board. But alas we found the people cling to him and he could not get away. I have communicated to Dr. Hawes appealing to the ministers of my native state for help and to Andover stating to them that I am alone in a distant country of 20,000 inhabitants.

I have written to Brother Peet in relation to Fair Play and Potosi 30 miles north and he has written back that he came 10 miles this side of Rock River (half way I should think) and turned back for fear that the snow would [envelop him] in the mean time. I left my people to visit each of those places twice this winter, next week I have to go 20 miles south to preach a formal sermon. It is hard to see a harvest lost for want of labourors and I sometimes want...[to travel] trough this whole country and preach on the duty of the churches to raise ministers in despair of getting any from the East.

Yours Truly,

Aratus Kent

________

Galena, Jan. 24, 1843

Rev & Dear Sir,

You have doubtless been apprised by Mr. Ripley that we have taken up a collection for the A.H.M.S. to the amount of $40. To this you may add $50 which is deposited with Dr. H. Newhall subject to your order, contributed by A. Kent.

If an angel should be deputed to write the history of our country, some 20 tears hence, I have no doubt that he would place your society in the foreground among the agencies Providence employed to elevate the moral character of the Western States.

Among the missionaries you are helping sustain in this vicinity there are some choice spirits who count not their lives dear unto them that they may finish their lives does not undo them, that they may finish the course with joy and the ministry of the Lord Jesus. Two of whom have recently called on me and refreshed my bonds with the Lord, and one of them so awakened the sympathies of our brethren that unsolicited they furnished him with an overcoat, pantaloons and buffalo overshoes. But his dress was not the only thing that reminded us of John Baptist for he too is preaching in the Wilderness and preparing the way of the Lord. I have had such accounts of a third (Holbeck) to think that perhaps God was preparing him for an Evangelist. He was to be installed to day but the weather and the state of the River is such that I presume there will be no meeting of Convention.

Concerning a fourth, (Dipow) I have had such representation from his physician of his arduous labours and enfeebled health as to induce me to write recommending him to desist for a time from preaching.

You will rejoice with me that Dr. Waterbury has planted himself at that very point where we sat down together to mourn over the desolations of Zion and devise ways & means for her relief.

I am impatient to find a suitable man for the region south of us in this country : It is a hand full. And it is hard because it has been so long neglected.

I have been appointed commissioner to Gen Assembly. It will be 11 years since we were at the East. But it seems very desirable that this people should have a supply and I see not how it shall be affected. I have though that if some good brother near New York would exchange with me for 2 or 3 months in would be a great accommodation and I have thought of Brother Hat field because he has been here before.

It may seem presumptuous in me to make such a proposition but I think the reasons are plausible.

1) Our Synod have requested that our ministry brethren at the East should visit us. 2) They need such a tour for their information and health. 3) They are in the habit of leaving the city in summer and such an exchange would afford them more leisure. 4) If they wish to find an important point where they may labour with great good effect, this city affords ample scope. 5) no man can appreciate this country til he sees it, and a trip by Cincinnati, St. Louis, Galena, Chicago, and Buffalo may now be made in 20 days time and with 100 dol. expense. And, if not as fashionable, it be as useful as the tour of Europe. 6) We need the counsel of the fathers. I think I could urge reasons why either of the following clergymen would do well to take that tour and be made welcome Dr. McAnly, Dr. Spring, Dr. Patton, or Dr. Peters.

It would greatly facilitate my plans if they could secure a supply and allow me to plead there for the west. I have but little hope that any one will volunteer, but I thought it a duty to make the suggestion to you and hope you will have the goodness to drop me a line as soon as convenient.

I remain yours affectionately,

A. Kent

_______

Galena, Ill., Aug. 30, 1843

Dear Brethren,

I hope to see Mr. Lewis next month prepared for a campaign on Apple River, and I have written by advice of Brother Dixon to persuade Brother Hicks (now supplying Br. Bascom) to come to Fair Play & New Diggings and require answer soon. And I thought I should write to a young Licentiate Calvin Terry of Enfield visiting a little for Br. Peet & see what he is doing to supply the little churches north. Now I have concluded with your approbation to write to Br. A. Pomeroy[246] once a labouror on the Ill. River. He is said to be very useful and efficient in Con. as an Evangelist, tho Br. Hale said he was not quite the thing in Ill. Having been for the time rather worldly minded. He took me aside at the Con, Association and said he was ready to go [to] Ill. if duty called (his wife is very feeble). I thought from all that I could learn that he would be an asset: could adapt to this region particularly to the mining region. And if he was commissioned to come to labour in different places at his and our discretion he might be very useful in promoting revivals organizing churches and doing that preparatory work necessary to our calling and settling of ministers. But I distrust my own judgement and hope that you have means of knowing him better than I do.

I commit the accompanying letter to you to forward or not at your discretion.

Brother, I remain your affectionately,

A. Kent

Brother Norton is about to leave Rockford, I know no good reason.

Galena, Aug. 30, 1843

Br. A. Pomeroy,

Dear Brother, I have reached home in safety after an absence of near 4 months in which I have experienced many miseries, found my family well except the death of a child of 14, given to us : a pious child of great promise. I have been pressed with cares and calls and greetings and have had no time to survey the field, but am well persuaded there is an opening around me for you to labour with great prospects of success in gathering congregations, organizing churches and promoting revivals and preparing the way for introducing young ministers...According to your own suggestion I now invite you to come on and “occupy”.: Come this fall as soon as you can: by the northern route, from Albany to Buffalo 25 hours & 10 dollars: from B. to Detroit, 30 hours and 7 dollars, from D. to Chicago 39 hours $8.50, from Chicago to Galena 48 hours & 8 dollars.

If you will come and labour for 2 years, I think I may venture to say that we can raise you 200 a year on the ground and the Home Miss. will do the rest. And I think that in 2 years time you may do great good and be ready to stay permanently. There [are] many things of interest in this region and I have come to the conclusion that you are ??? to this country.

Please to give me a definite answer as soon as convenient.

Yours etc. A. Kent

________

Galena, Ill., May 14, 1844

Rev. M. Badger[247]

Dear Brother,

Brother Holbrook requests me to write to you and state the situation and wants of this region the probability of his usefulness in the field which he contemplates the views of our church and what they will do etc., and ask you whether you will become responsible for $400 per an. on condition that he raises what he can where he labours (say $100 perhaps less) his commission being to act as your agent in Western Wiskonsan, Northwestern Ill. and Northern Iowa and labouring as an Evangelist and supplying destitute places at his discretion, it being understood that he preach in Galena 1/4 of the time while I labour among the destitute as far as possible. He wishes you to reply as soon as maybe that it may reach here by the 2nd Tuesday of June when this convention meets at Platteville.

This plan falls in with what I have contemplated as far as giving me a little breathing time. My weekly preparation which is now burdensome in connection with its pressure of other duties. My work is increasing amazingly aside from pastoral duties, my correspondence is becoming formidable. I can also occasionally preach about the country where I have extensive acquaintance. One of us will be always on the ground to supply the calls in Galena. He will need as a young preacher time for rest and for study but will feel it no burden to preach on the Sabbath.

Our people have become greatly attached to him and he certainly possesses some peculiar talents for an evangelist and when I proposed that he should ask in that capacity and in that of an H.M. agent and locate in Galena and supply them 1/4 of his time they voted unanimously to invite him and to be responsible for 200 dollars - which together with what you will give will make him 600 and in my opinion that is not too much but perhaps you will think me extravagant and I shall submit my opinion to yours.

I hoped to have seen Br Waterbury this week but shall be disappointed (not going to Rockford until next week) I believe he fully approves of our plan. We think that Tom Peet’s field is too large and he neglects western W[isconsin] and I think that Br. Holbrook has marked out too much ground. I should have preferred that he be restricted to the east side of the Mississippi, i.e., unless Br. Peet should prefer to continue to take charge of Wisconsin. My opinion has been that your agents should be multiplied so as to make them less riding and to do more work. I am obliged to write in great haste: if you should commission him he wished that two laymen together with Br. Holbrook and myself might be a committee through whom all applications for aid shall come. And I would suggest Dr. Horatio Newhall and Edwin Ripley as suitable men.

All which is respectfully submitted.

Yours,

A Kent

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Galena, Ill., Aug. 14, 1844

Dear Brother,

It is not an urgent case the settlement on Apple River is 10 years in advance of the other settlements in Northern Il. It is within the mining district and for 15 years I have preached there occasionally. About 6 years ago 100 dollars was raised and appropriated for the support of a Missionary there but it has never been used.

More recently the flourishing village of Elizabeth has sprung up around which there is a settlement of farmers & I have been told that 600 miners are now digging within 4 miles and the amount of lead raised there this year 2,000,000.

The returns from the late election in the village gives 598 votes in that precinct and it is safe to reckon the population within a Sabbath days journey as exceeding 2000.

There is a little church in the village and they need a minister : a minister of some moral power and some moral courage for it is a hard field and no suitable man has yet been found willing to engage. Such men seem to shun the place. I took a journey of 80 miles last week to obtain a missionary for them but he preferred locating in a new village of New England people in the midst of a sparse settlement (the whole number perhaps 400.) I came home to sympathize with a lay brother on the ground who has sustained a larger Sabbath School single-handed & alone for 5 or 6 years and who told me some weeks since that he was quite distressed.

I have spread the case before our church and they will meet tomorrow morning at the rising of the sun to pray that God will send a minister to Elizabeth and I propose to carry in this letter and like Hezekiah spread it before the Lord:

There are 2 ways of showing the power of the Gospel and the influence of your society.

One is to look at the prevalence of infidelity & vice where no effort is made and the other is to mark the progress of truth the march of improvement & the triumph of benevolence where a judicious expenditure of your funds is made.

Br Lewis entered a field as hard as this one year since...already he has secured the confidence of the people, the Sabbath is recognized, a nice house of worship is being built, a church is organized and some young men have been hopefully converted & have joined ...to the lord.

I doubt not that if an efficient man had been sent to Apple River 5 years ago and 500 dollars expended in his support he would now be well sustained, a large church gathered and they propose to send back 100 dollars a year in aid of the destitute : such is the economy of your system.

This church was for several years dependent on your bounty, and yesterday we sent off 180 dollars to your society and 24 dollars in aid of an academy being built to prepare ministers & teachers for the west by another church dependent on your funds & this in appendix to considerable contribution the same day for the suffered on the American Bottom.

Now if you will find the suitable man we will find within the country 400 dollars for his support for one year....

Yours affectionately, A. Kent

We do not want a lame duck for that field nor a broken winded animal that has been 1/2 dos times run off the track.

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Galena, Nov. 21, 1844

Dear Brother,

I received your letter Monday and went the same day to fill an appointment I had made on the waters of Apple R. because Mr. Littlefield’s labours were not acceptable in that neighborhood. There is was confirmed in my opinion that he is very unacceptable as a preacher and several Presbyterian families were mentioned who did not desire the continuance of his labours among them. Mr. John Strong who was his main support and with whom he boarded has fallen out with him and is making efforts in connection with some others to get an old school man I understand. I have ever felt that it was most unfortunate for this country that he returned to it. But I have wounded the good mans feelings by expressing my opinion. I think I cannot do the cause of A better service than to recommend that further aid be with held for other men are prevented from taking the ground while he occupies it. I have no doubt of his superiority to me in personal piety but he is doing no good as far as I can judge. I think if he would return to Indiana or engage in other employment it would be well. You will understand that the region about Elizabeth and I used to designate as Apple River is 10 miles from Mr. Littlefield’s location, which he now calls Apple River Church. Mr. Graham of Elizabeth a judicious young Irish man and Christian has told him that he cannot do any thing there.

I was disappointed that our project of building a 2nd church had not made so much impression upon your minds as it does upon ours who see it in all its bearings. We think that there is a great opening for a new effort and we apprehend that if we do not move soon an Old School Br will and we do not wish that issue to be introduced into Galena. Mr. Seely of Bristol, Con., who preached here one Sab. has been sounded a little and the response was rather favorable and another letter will probably be sent soon. I have never seen him and it seems like a marriage on a short acquaintance. My back aches literally and if it did not my cares and responsibilities are enough to make it ache.

I should not be ashamed of this letter if you could know the circumstances under which it is written.

Our excellent friends the Ripleys have been greatly afflicted in the death of Lucy, aged 15:

Yours, etc., A. Kent

Write immediately if you can give us any light in regard to a man to build a 2nd church here. Nov. 23 Our movement as yet are in conclave (session) but that they are in concert you judge when they talked of raising 500 for the first year beside 200 from A.H.M.S.

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Galena, Ill., Oct. 2, 1844

Dear Brother,

With no ordinary anxiety and I trust sincere prayer we have ventured to agitate the question of communing a new congregation in this city. It is agitated by the session in conclave, It involved a responsibility we fear to assume and which we dare not longer postpone. Three questions have come up: Whence shall we find a house? Whence find the man to undertake it? And, whence find the “vara avis” to lead the enterprise? The first we can secure by renting a public room in the heart of the city. The second: we have marked off the names of about 15 whom we shall recommend and invite others to volunteer. And now comes the third. Where is the man suitable for the most inviting but very arduous field of ministerial labour?

Who is there like yourself that has the whole country before him and is accustomed to judge of the mental and moral power of clergymen and who better than yourself knows whether the suitable man would consent to enter upon this new and deeply responsible achievement.

Brother Badger will you come. I know your answer. I would gladly undertake it, if other duties would permit. Will you look about and send an answer as soon as convenient. We think that this operation ought not be delayed. All this by way of preface.

Yours, A. Kent

And here I introduce you to my excellent Brother Campbell

Rev. Mr. Badger

Dear Sir,

I write by direction of the session of Mr. Kent’s church to urge upon your attention our want of a minister to supply a second Pres. Church now in contemplation. Our new stone church is full : The revival last winter brought into our church a great many young men whose spirit and good requires that they should be set upon some new effort for the extension of the Redeemers Kingdom. There is a large class in this community who do not attend church at all. Clearly all of the legal profession : many of the physicians & more of the merchants are of this class. Now sir if you can inform us how & where we can find the man of some experience who can interest such a class & with the help of the old church & a few working men & women can build up a second church you will materially aid the cause.

A Mr. Eaton, a graduate of the Union Theo Sem & now if we are rightly informed labouring in some church in N. York city has been mentioned to us. Do you know him? Is he the Man? Can he be obtained? About a year last summer a young man by the name of Seely or Ceilly, a native of Ridgefield Conn also a graduate of Union Theo Sem (if I recollect right) spent a Sabbath here with whom we were much pleased. Do you know him? Is he such a man as we want? Can he be had?

I am also directed to inquire if the new congregation can obtain aid from the Home Missionary Soc for a time. The persons who will compose the new church will be mostly young men : mechanics and journeymen of limited means who will hardly be able to sustain the effort without aid. We hope to hear from you as soon as you can give us the requisite information. we have delayed this effort too long I fear. To delay longer seems to us after prayerful deliberation on the subject to be only giving the ground of which we may now take easy possession up to the Universalists: The Campbellites: or somebody worse.

Respectfully yours on behalf of the session,

A.B. Campbell

___________

Dear Brother,

I have written to Mr. Bowen[248] at Savanna the following this evening.

“Dear Sir I have just heard a rumor that your minister Calvin Gray is and open and strong advocate of the Oberlin Theology. If this is so I think that Christian candor should have constrained him to avow it as his as his letters recommendatory gave no hint of it and I thought it necessary to give you notice of the fact that such a rumor was afloat lest you should be induced in my recommendation to commit yourself further than you would.

I am sure our Presbytery would not receive such a member. You will please to show him this and assure him of my high esteem of him as a man and my great grief at this rumor and my earnest desire that he may feel entirely free to contradict it.” Yours etc. A. Kent”

The information I received from Br. Eddy of Mineral Point who has a commission from you. He says his (Buffalo) presbytery would not give such a man a letter as Geneva Presb has done. I thought it right to inform you immediately as it may influence your action if you have not acted already.

Yours, etc.,

A. Kent

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Galena, Ill., Feb. 17, 1845

Dear Brother,

I wrote you as I thought I ought in regard to Br. Gray.

Since that I have conversed with him and with Br. Eddy whose installation at Mineral Point I attended last week.

Br Gray satisfied me that though he dissented from the course professed by ministers and presbyters, yet he did not wish to advocate the peculiarities of Oberlin Theol. And he left the impression on my mind that he had now no inclination to agitate that subject. And it appears to me wrong to drive him from us by refusing him the aid he seeks.

Br. Eddy after conversation with me thinks he ought to be commissioned and Mr. Bowen in his answer received this morning says Mr. Gray has made a very favorable impression on the whole community and to a much greater extent with some of our hard-hearted tight-fisted anti-religious people than I supposed and good Christian could.

I do therefore renew my recommendation that he be commissioned.

I have signified to Br. Lewis that if he is about to draw on you for money I can furnish him $100.

Yours, etc.,

A. Kent

_________

Galena, March 7, 1845

Rev. & Dear Brother,

Your letter is before me and was long in coming. But I hasten to answer it as soon as I have my instructions. Our Session met last evening and I laid it before them.

We are well pleased with Mr. D. on paper and should like to see him on the ground. But we are embarrassed and hardly know how to act. The Session are unanimous but we have not yet breached the subject to the church. And we anticipate some difference of opinion about the propriety of the movement but think that they will come into our views when fully explained. We have corresponded with Mr. Seely of Bristol, Conn., (who spent a Sabbath here once) he has declined coming. I received a letter this day from Rev. T. Castleton of Syracuse offering to come, having succeeded in gathering a Church in that village within the last year, but I showed it to some of my brethren who thought he was rather “green”. We expect very soon to lay this object before the church. We have been rather private about it lest agitation should arouse other elements by which we might be circumvented.

There are Brethren in and out of the church who would prefer an Old School minister, which we fear would make disturbances in our harmonious community. We want greatly to see Mr. Downes, but how is it to be done? After long consultation we have concluded to request that he be appointed missionary within the bounds and under direction of the Galena Presbytery, with a view to his labouring at Elizabeth which would bring him under the observation of this church and enable them to act understandably. There seemed to be entire unanimity on the part of those 4 who were present.

Let me then show reasons why he should come to Elizabeth. It is becoming the most densely populated spot in the missionary district except our city and 2 or 3 villages. I judge there are 2000 souls within 2 or 3 miles of that village (perhaps 3000). It is an old settlement I have preached there occasionally for 15 years. I have tried in vain to get some man that is willing to go and labour there. Mr. Lewis you will recollect was destined for that field but was prevented by another having stepped in before him. Mr. Langdown from Hartford came this winter, but a letter from him today states that he prefers to remain where he now is near Chicago It is an exceedingly hard and wicked field and therefore just what Mr. D has been seeking for. “I choose to go where help is needed most and obtained with most difficulty” : It is an “Old Waste” and “a settled region which has hitherto been without spiritual cultivation.”. It is however no worse than New Diggings was 1 1/2 years ago but under Br Lewis’s transforming influence it has become greatly changed. Indeed no where have I seen faithful labour so uniformly and largely blessed as in this sinner Mining Country. I would not exchange it as a field of ministerial labour for any other spot under the sun.

It would be exceedingly interesting to read a history of some 20 men I could name as disciples of Christ who were once among the hardest cases. Several are now members of our church and 4 or 5 have been just received at Mineral Point. I have conversed today with 2 excellent brethren who are talking about removing to Elizabeth I am very sanguine in the belief that within 2 years Br. Downes would build a good church : gather a large congregation, and witness a revival that bring in great numbers who are now wretchedly depraved, and obtain his entire support from the people and it seems to me it ought not be neglected any longer. It is a healthy place beyond doubt.

There is no question but that our Presbytery would most earnestly request this appointment if it were suggested to them, but it will be impracticable to have any Presbyterial action until they meet in May.

I hope you will understand our views from what I have now put down. We want to bring Mr. D. before this community without seeming to be officious. We think it immeasurably important to commence another church and know not how to effect our object. The city is steadily growing and is destined to grow and if we do not multiply ourselves other sects will as certainly as like causes will produce similar effects. It is impossible for one man to do the work that is accumulating here.

Yours Affectionately, A. Kent

P.S. It is the wish of the session that Mr. D. be commissioned and sent out as soon as he can come and we shall strive to make him welcome.

Mr. L. Eddy who has just settled at Mineral Point and has a powerful revival. Said he had written a Brother to come visit here who is equal to any. Do you know him? Br. Lindsay also has written and thinks he should like to come west. Confidential. [marginal note]

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Galena, Ill., April 8, 1845

Dear Brother,

Br. Lewis to whom I sent word that I had money he might have has made no reply and I have spent most of the money appropriated to his use 50 of which I paid to Mr. Gray which will be put to the credit of your society if he is commissioned. Perhaps I shall be able to furnish Br. Lewis 50 in the course of the summer.

It will not be thought strange that we should attach importance to what is going on around us when intelligent Christians at the East and in Europe are watching our movements with intense interest.

If we look only at the salvation of the present generation the preaching of the gospel is the great means on which, under God, we should rely. But when we look to ultimate and far reaching results the great desideratum toward which we should bend our utmost efforts is to establish and sustain a system of thorough Christian Education, and render it acceptable to all. And to effect this, and to effect this we must have local agents stationed at all points in the great field. But all history shows that there are no agents so efficient in promoting Christian educations as Evangelical Ministers. Hence, we are conducted obviously to the conclusion that Home Missionaries should be multiplied to meet the demand. And perhaps in the Western country where so little interest is felt in the cause, they should be especially instructed to carry this point but using every means within their reach: such as lecturing in education, visiting schools, procuring competent teachers, and using their influence to establish primary schools and academies.

We want also a few general agents like your late superintendent at the East who shall who shall travel from county to county delivering lectures on education and diffusing information on the subject. Have you not a few educated, accomplished, eloquent, splendid men who have enough if Howard’s spirit to devote 10 years or a life to an untiring effort to raise to a pitch of educational enthusiasm that they would be honored throughout the state in all time as highly as St. Patrick is in Ireland. Could not something be done also toward furnishing libraries like those in N.Y. State schools on specific conditions.

Your anniversary is approaching, It is a fit occasion to inquire, Is anything accomplished? It might be said in reply that we cannot count up the results of moral as we can those of Military achievement. When the soldier kills his man, he is there until he is counted, but the soldier of the cross cannot tell how many under his preaching have been slain by the law and made alive by Christ. Especially is this true among the roaming population of a newly settled country.

But it would be ungrateful to God not to acknowledge what he has permitted us to witness with our own eyes.

Without any forecast on mine I was sent to this place 16 years ago. I remember the Sab. morning I walked over the ground and for the want of a better plan for retirement and there pleaded with my master his own promise Lo I am with you always & before I went into the bar room to magnify his office and asset his claims to this service. I remember too that on one of my preaching tours I ascended a high ridge over looking the Mississippi for many miles. It was a magnificent sight. And I made my reflections audible: Lord Jesus I take possession of this while land for thee and if Father Hennipin had previously claimed it for the Virgin Mary, it was a usurpation which had long ??? given up for there was no one in all the region to defend his claim.

Now if we take the log cabin which served me 10 years for a church as the center of a circle whose radius measures 200 miles, that circle 16 years ago would enclose not another clergyman either Catholic or Protestant devoted exclusively to the cure of souls as far as I can recollect.

Now if we should reckon up only the Presbyterian & Congregational Ministers we should doubtless find on that area from 1 to 200 and these intelligent self denying me 9/10 of whom have been or are now sustained by your society and that to at less expense than the Florida War I trust moreover in the eternal result that more souls will be saved than there were Seminoles killed. It is the more economical investment!

In this mining country we have had a reinforcement of Missionaries within a few months which has made our hearts glad (though we need more) and a work of grace has followed this labour in 4 or 5 places. At Mineral Point God has wrought wondered for his name sake and in looking over the country I cannot but admire the triumphs of divine grace in the recovery of some who were among the most hopeless cases in our early history. From this meagre outline of what God has done in our little corner of your great field, should not the friends of the missions thank God and take courage.

Yours, etc.,

A. Kent

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Galena, Ill., Aug. 8, 1845

Dear Br.,

I have just had an interview with another student of the Mission Institute whose judgement I respect. I inquired respecting Mr. W. Nichols. He said the Big Platte church where he belongs were about to employ him, but he made inquiries concerning his success where he had laboured (at Columbus) and found that he was very unacceptable. He was consulted by Mr. Nichols about coming up here and he did not encourage it. Mr. Marks observed that his own report would exhibit him as the most useful man in Presbytery. c.c. He has too high an idea of his own usefulness. He does not doubt but that he is a good man.

I thought that this information might be seasonable is he should apply. But I shall expect that he will come up here first : perhaps :

Mr. Parks babe is dead & we are well as usual:

Yours, etc.,

A. Kent

I think there is a disposition in our session to move toward colonizing - and that Mr. Marks has made a favorable impression. Have you or Br. Badger a better man in your view for this post{?}

_________

Galena, Ill., Sept. 15, 45

Dear Br.,

According to your request I give my opinion in the negative (see 873 case of Mr Warner.)

I have not heard much said about his labours at Mount Carroll. But I understand that he was doing nothing and from all who know of his past efforts I have heard but one opinion that is entirely inefficient. He said to me last time I saw him that he thought of quitting the ministry on account of his health and I encouraged the idea as far as he gave me the opportunity. Br Peet wrote me & expressed the wish that he would resign the ministry or take admission to some other body.

Yours etc., A. Kent

N.B. I have heard that Br. Gray has preached at Mt Carroll but a letter from his wife recently states that she was recovering and that he was quite sick with fever.

_________

Galena, Oct. 17, 45

Dear Br.,

Having returned in safety after a fortnight absence in company with Br. Downes to attend Presbytery & Synod I will make a record of matters & things.

Presbytery met at Shannon we spent the Sabbath & Saturday previous there by request of Br. Bliss but he was sick and his wife very sick and the whole settlement sick so that we could gather scarcely a score to preach to. Br. B. brought a letter signed in due form by Elders & Trustees requesting that he might be commissioned again. But a request came soon after by one of the signers that we would not act until further instructions. We then (cc Br. Downs has been added to the Com.) made some inquiries and ascertained that he was not acceptable as a preacher. And the testimony was uniform both there and at Moline.

We had very small meetings both at P. & Synod at Galesburg. Sickness has prevailed to an unusual extent in this region particularly about the water courses. It has been excessively hot and dry i.e., the showers have been sufficient to keep the surface moist but the little streams are low and many entirely dry.. I saw in my journey several old settlers sick who never had been sick before.

On our return we came to Rock Island and there followed up the River. Dined with C. Spring who was sick called on Mr. Hickcock at Moline who is well and from all that appears was doing well. Called on Br. Jessup who with his family are well though every family in town is sick.

Spent a night in Savannah : All sick there : Br. Gray and wife & child are sick and have been for 2 or 3 months. A child to be buried was brought to the house for religious services, he spoke for 5 minutes and was exhausted. He has begun to build a house and had moved into it, but they were obliged to be removed to the neighbors, for they could not take care of themselves and others could not leave home to take care of them. So now they stay a few days in a place. He had tried to work at his house until the Doctor has forbidden it., He cannot finish it and the neighbors cannot help him. I believe that if some of our good people at the East knew his situation, they would sent him 50 Dollars extra to finish his house for he cannot finish it himself and he cannot do without it. The people there and at Mt. Carroll are anxiously waiting to have him resume his preaching. He seems to have made a good impression where ever he has gone. I have felt it my duty to make this representation.

But I have another statement to make as one of a Com. on Home Missions.

The subject was brought up in Synod and we are unanimous in the opinion that Agencies for Home Missions are too large, and that if 4 or 5 were sustained in Ill., it would be a measure of economy. We have therefore resolved to petition that the territory which is covered by our Synod be divided from North to South and that Br. S.G. Wright be our Missionary agent and his labours be confined to that district, and that another man be sent into his present field of labour. We think that he will prepare the way of the Lord for introducing other labourers and that our church will contribute towards his support.

The other members of the Com will report officially as soon as they have corresponded with the Congre[ga]-tional bodies.

A remark was made in my hearing that Br. Badger sympathized strongly with Congregationalists and in conformation it was said that he is endeavoring to give circulation to the Puritan. I replied that I had never seen nor heard any thing of the kind. But I may observe here that I do not think the Puritan is calculated to promote harmony, unless is changed from what my limited reading has conceived.

Next week I propose Deo Volente to go in company with Br. Powell to Beloit to attend another Col. Convention. Br. P. has preached here 2 Sabbaths during my absence with great acceptance.

I was asked if he could not be had for the winter to supply our new Church until they can have Mr. Marks of Quincy in the spring. I should regret having his mind diverted from his other field and I regret that they should think of drawing Br. M. away.

Yours truly, A. Kent

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[Galena] Oct 12, 1846

At a meeting of Synod held at Belvidere, Boone Co., a committee consisting of Brethren Kent, Bascom, Kellog, and Pendleton[249] were instructed to renew the application made at their last meeting to H. Miss. Society to appoint 3 agents in place of one for our state.

We think that our State is large enough and sufficiently populated to afford work for 3 efficient men and that one man labours to a great disadvantage in travelling over so large a field without affording time to labour in any one place long enough to secure the object.

We think that each of the districts contemplated contains a multitude of churches and settlements just in that condition as to need attention and that the labours of a judicious agent would develop resources which would ultimately refund all that is now required for their support.

All of our experience proves that delays are prejudicial on account of the growing influence of error and sectarianism and that it would be a saving of labour to furnish those agents while these young communities are in the forming state.

A. Kent, Chairman of Comm.

The Brethren have left without aiding me much in preparing this communication. But Br. Kellog expresses his opinion decidedly that Br. Crane is needed here more than in his present field of labour.

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Galena, Ill., Oct. 19, 1846

Dear Brother,

I have been appointed a committee to request your committee that your agent Rev. S. Peet be allowed to devote 2 months this winter in aid of “The Beloit College”. The facts stated in Br. Hale’s letter have induced us to think that we ought to move with accelerated velocity towards the commencement of a regular College course. And the trustees with much anxiety and trembling have resolved by the blessing of God that they will commence next year. We hope therefore you will see the propriety of granting our request. Br. Eaton preached once for me yesterday and is gone this morning to visit his Brethren Downes, Powell and Lewis.

Yours in bonds of the gospel, A. Kent

_____

[Chapin papers- Beloit College]

Galena, Ill., Ap. 14, 1847

Dear Brother,

The Ex. Com. of Beloit College have requested me to call a special meeting of the Board of Trustees at Beloit on the 8th of June at 7 p.m. to be present at the laying the corner stone and to attend to such other business as may come before them.

They also request me to suggest that the meeting on the 4 Monday will not be necessary and I shall dispense with it so far at least as to stay away myself.

The reasons assigned are that they will not be ready sooner and they look for better attendance.

They have appointed Mr. Hinman financial agent and Superintendent of building.

Yours affectionately,

A. Kent

___________

Freeport, April 23, 1847

Dear Brother,

There is no little suffering endured by some of our Brethren in consequence of not receiving the aid which they have anticipated from your society. Brethren Gray and Powell are among the sufferers the latter you will hear from in 2 or 3 weeks, the former must be heard now. He made application in due manner and time to receive an appropriation of 200 dollars from you commencing with the 3rd of November, and has come to the conclusion that you did not intend to grant his request for he thinks from a clause in some letter he has received that he has evidence that you have received his application but we presume that his letter has never reached you.

We think therefore that we should urge you to grant his request and forward the money immediately as he has been compelled to leave his appropriate work and labour with his hands 6 days in the week. We have entire confidence in this Brother’s ability and acceptableness and should be grieved if his wants were not relieved without further delay. We have experienced much difficulty in consequence of applications for aid being sent to individual members of the Com. without their having opportunity to consider with their coadjutators or to get additional light by seeing some person resident in the neighborhood.

To remedy that evil we have requested their applications to be handed into us at the stated meeting of Presb.

A. Kent

John Downer

C. Waterbury

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[Chapin Papers- Beloit College]

Galena, May 5/47

Dear Br.,

It is my official duty at the request of the Ex. Com. to inform the Trustees of the Beloit College that the meeting of the board will be postponed again from the 8th to the 22nd of June.

They seem to have some to that decision reluctantly for reasons which they deem sufficient. Great questions in their estimation will come up.

Yours in the best bonds,

A. Kent[250]

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[Chapin Papers- Beloit College]

Galena 29 June 47

Dear Br.,

After spending the Sabbath at Winslow to supply Br. Hazzard’s lack of service, I reached home and had a long conversation with Br. Spees, which I though worthy of reporting.

He manifested a lively interest in the west and the College effort. And in answer to his enquiries I stated to him confidentially of whom we had spoken for president and professors that I might avail myself of his knowledge and judgement.

He rather gave preference to Dr. Riddle and at my particular request he expressed his opinion that Dr. William Adams of the Brown St. Church New York would be the best man in the U.S. for that office. He named Brainard of Philadelphia.

In the course of conversation he indicated that he was disposed to some to the west as the field of greater usefulness. That he had looked forward to a professorship of Languages (and had been shaping his studies for it) if he could be situated as to go out and preaching on the Sabbath and that he would be willing to take that office in our college with the understanding that he should first spend a year in obtaining funds while his services might not be needed in the institution. For this I should think him particularly fitted on several accounts.

I thought it important that this should be known to my coadjutors and that it might influence their movements in another direction.

For qualifications he referred me to Dr. Nott and Professor Yates of Union Col., Dr. White and Dr. Adams of New York,, Hon. Willard Hall of Delaware.

Dr. White might be consulted as to the expediency of appointing Dr. Adams and the probability of his accepting.

Brother Chapin, what think you of these suggestions? I thought I would whisper them to you and if it should meet your views you may name it to our secretary.

Br. Spees is going to St. Louis - his address is Cincinnati.

Yours in haste for I have piles of letters to answer.

A. Kent

____

[Chapin Papers- Beloit College]

Galena July 28, 1847

Dear Br.,

I send this to you as one of the Committee of Correspondence and you can bring it up at our next meeting.

I received your letter in reply to my former letter and am not disposed to dissent from the views you expressed, but we must endeavor to get all the light we can obtain and we shall have enough of darkness to wade through even then.

It is very likely that after our utmost care a few years will reveal many mistakes that will admit of no cure and will only tax our patience.

Yours truly,

A. Kent

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Galena, Ill., Sept. 10, 1847

Dear Brother,

Your letter is before me, and it must be answered. I have revolved the subject over and over and regard it a very responsible agency.

I have not felt at liberty to answer in the affirmative but I should mistake the favorable opinion of men whom I respect for the will of Him who placed me here and who only is authorized to remove me. I am afraid to answer in the negative lest I should seem to be more concerned for my personal comfort than for Zion’s prosperity.

There are difficulties that weigh with me and I will state them and wait for further light.

I am settled down comfortably in one extreme corner of the field and cannot transfer my family to a central frontier. My wife is reluctant to remove and is feeble and not likely to enjoy good health soon. My position therefore will render it necessary that my expenses should be greater and my periods of absence longer than if Galena were more central.

I do not covet notoriety but on the contrary shrink from those sever strictures which such men are obliged to endure.

I am not adapted to the work. It requires a man of great fenestrations and I am not quick in any pleasing human character. It is the business of your agent to find the man and adapt them to the field, for to go over the ground and report the distributions will avail nothing. You have already more vacancies than you can supply. Am I not right in saying that the apportionment of ministers at the West is so unequal to that in the Eastern States that we should be justified in taking almost any man from his post at the East because they can easily obtain another to fill his place. An agent then should explore his field and having ascertained its wants, should go to the East and not only visit the Seminaries to obtain young men but should be justified in persuading the best pastors to leave their work where they are restricted to township limits and come West where they can mould the character of whole counties whose population is doubling every 5 years- justified in saying to such men the “Lord hath need of thee” But I am not eloquent in that line. It demands the soul of Peter and the energies of Cornelius or Evarts to plead for the west and persuade them to the self-denial of such a removal.

You have misjudged in respect to my acquaintance and influence. I am known is 2 counties in Wisconsin and 3 or 4 in Ill. You think I should be acceptable to the people generally. The Congregationalists will suspect me of favoring the Presbyterians and the strong abolitionists would turn cold shoulder, I have read over what is said of the duties of an agent but yet on a closer inspection of the office I am at a loss to know how to act without more specific instructions and if my own mind was satisfied it would still be a problem whether I could satisfy the people.

My theory has ever been to go where Providence shall direct but it is not easy to distinguish between the leadings of Providence and the bias of my own mind.

I shall hope to hear further from you and myself to be guided aright.

Yours as ever,

A. Kent

There are many beautiful localities in this Prairie-land but there is one spot that I have always admired. It is a ridge of prairie which puts into Elk Grove from the north and from which you look off upon the 3 Platte mounds that lift their bald fronts to a southern exposure. The landscape exceeds in beauty any I ever saw, At that point, when a missionary of your society, I once alighted from the fatigues of my journey to spend the night on the log tavern. I was annoyed with the practices which prevailed and I succeeded in persuading the proprietor to abandon the traffic in ardent spirit and afterwards as I occasionally preached in the Grove I regretted that so delightful a spot should be wholly devoid of any good moral influence and that its leading men stand aloof.

Years rolled away and 2 days since I again visited Elk Grove, and entered that log-house. The tavern has become a sanctuary and its whitened walls and temporary accommodations presented an aid and comfort.

It was an Ecclesiastic meeting, Six of your missionaries were there and 4 of them have the prospect of being soon installed as pastors. Twelve or fourteen churches represented there were organized by their instrumentality and all within the district which once constituted my missionary field. It was then a moral waste, for we could gather at that time from the whole area but six individuals to organize The First Presbyterian Church.

It was a Communion season. They had come together to break bread. The company of disciples were enlivened by the return from his journey of the Pastor of this church and 2 of those leading men who once stood aloof were office bearers in the church and brought in the sacramental elements.

My eyes affect my heart and when called to administer at the Lord’s table I could not but exclaim, What hath God Wrought.

The labours of your missionaries have, with God’s blessing, produced these results; and that it is a genuine work of God’s spirit I will cite another incident to prove.

At the house where I spent the night found one of those converts in alot of pain and distress. She had suffered long, but she was cheerful. I saw her sometime since when she was full of apprehension that she might be deceived. But now her doubts were all removed and she had no choice whether to live or to die. Her feelings were similar to those of a coloured woman who said to me last week on her sick bed: “If my Lord would but come for me, I would hardly look back to see whether earth’s iron gate were shut after me.”

If there be one of your patrons who doubts whether his contributions to Home Missionary Society are well appropriated I would that he could have been at that communion table. For myself I can say that the most splendid Gothic structure with it marble and cushioned seats and curtained pulpit and silver toned organ could never yield me the exquisite please I enjoyed in one hour spent in that sanctified tavern.

A. Kent

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Galena, Ill., Oct. 23, 1847

Dear Br.,

I have just returned from another tour (to Beloit & to Stephenson Co. where our Presbytery met) and was disappointed at getting no answer to my letter of enquiry which I perceive you have had published (and in which there is a typographical error- “If my Lord would come for me”- makes the sentiment beautiful- “comfort me” spoil the sentence.) I think if your mind laboured as mine has done with the question which you have sprung upon me you would not long delay an answer.

We have dismissed from our Presbytery Brs. Norton and Waterbury. And we have need that God should strengthen the things that remain and are ready to die.

Br Henry[?] was with me 2 weeks since. He has been very ill for 2 months, and I suppose from fear of giving others trouble - I have urged him to stay with me but he declines. One night he went went, after preaching, to find a lodging with his brother and at the lights went out he laid him down on a pile of manure (supposing it hay) and from the dampness he caught cold which brought on the sickness and has prostrated for the time his iron frame. I have urged him to come over and explore this region where I suspect he could accomplish more than at Dubuque, but he fears to do so without your direction. Please advise him if you judge best to spend some weeks exploring Northern Ill. and perhaps some in Wisconsin.

Yours affectionately,

A. Kent

[Margin] I regret that I cannot copy and remodel this whole communication.

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Galena, Nov. 17, 1847

Rev. & Dear Brother,

The subject of our correspondence has been long now before my mind to demand of me a definite reply. After vacillating from one side to the other according as various reasons and influences have operated I have gradually inclined to one side until the conclusion has been reached that the providence of God seems to me to foresee my acceptance of this agency, which in flattering terms you have repeatedly pushed upon me.

At the same time I regard it in light of an experiment and consent to spend 3/4 of the time for one year, reserving 1/4 to serve my own people, because they utterly refuse an immediate divorce, in the present internal posture of our affairs. Our church having been greatly reduced by the diversion of members not only to the 2 churches in town but also by great numbers having gone to churches which have started into being within 2 or 3 years in this vicinity.

The project they have hit upon is to employ a young man as an assistant for the present and Mr. Neil has already been informally invited to serve them and he has taken it into consideration, which will [put] Elizabeth in a state of destitution, which must be supplied to quiet Br Downer.

I have come to this decision under the full view of responses to which I shall be subjected.......[a long passage is illegible due to faded ink]

[On verso] I break the seal to say that Br. Neil has refused to preach for us and I know not how long I may struggle to supply our people.

A. Kent

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Galena, Feb. 14, 1848

Dear Br.

A considerable time has elapsed since I wrote signifying my decision to engage in the work which you suggested and I have also declared the decision to my people, and this situation is one of no little embarrassment in the struggle it will involve to sustain 3 Presb. Churches. They depend in me for present supply and I cannot break away from them without some previous notice. It seems to me therefore important that I should understand the views of your Committee more in detail that I may have time to make arrangements without unnecessarily prejudice to other interests.

I should not however have written you but I thought possibly my letter has not been received or had been overlooked amidst the many letters you receive, for I believe that it is some three months since I wrote.

Yours, etc.,

A. Kent

_________

Galena, March 16/48

Dear Brother,

I have received your letter requesting me to give some account of Northern Ill. with a view to publication. But I cannot think that I ought to attempt any such thing short of a year from this time. It would certainly be out of place for me to appear in your report again until I have something to say.

I feel greatly embarrassed also from the position in which I have been left for some months.

I was requested by Br. Badger to accept an agency for your society and assumed that when I has consented to serve, the further preliminaries would be settled. I examined the question of duty and decided to engage in your service and was obliged of course to notify my people of the fact and since that time hence waited for a commission, until my friends here as well as myself are wondering but what is the cause of the delay. I anticipate a good many unpleasant things in such an agency and not the least that some will be willing enough to say ye take too much upon you ye sons of Levi, especially if I begin to move before I have a formal commission. I have had one such rebuff already which is quite enough to serve me for some time.

I wrote on the 14 of Feb. to remind Br. Badger of my embarrassment but as yet have heard no response, and began to think that perhaps objections has come in from some of the Br. on the field, which led your committee to hesitate about the expediency of the measure. And I travelled over the ground last fall in order to give the Brethren the fullest opportunity to object of they should see cause. And if such objections exist I have a little field, formerly occupied by Br. Littlefield which I have been cultivatng this winter and to which I can retreat with the hope of being both useful and happy.

But a decision I must be allowed to insist on as soon as shall comport with the convenience of your respected Committee.

The people here will depend on me as long as they can and that without the prospect of pay or usefulness or at least the prospect is but dim.

I have written in great haste but hope that amidst the press of business you will not over look their considerations.

Yours affectionately, A. Kent

P.S. I thank you for naming Mr. Atterbury. I hope you will continue to think of us. Dr. Newhall’s wife was buried today and I have not communicated with him.

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Galena, Ill., April 8/48

Dear Br.

We seem not to understand one and oother and I will explain.

In the first letter of Br. B. I was told that if I would consent to asct as your agent, the details would be made satisfactory afterwards and in his second letter the same thing was repeated. I offered my consent to the society in reply to which I heard nothing more until I received your last inviting me to provide something for your annual report, and in that you gave me no details except some suggestions about the limits of my field to the south.

I then wrote espressing my surprise and embarrassment that I had waited 3 or 4 months and had received no details and no commission, expressing my unwillingness to act until I received a formal commission, and giving (hastily indeed) some reasons for this unwillingness.

In your last of March 22 you supposed I have received all the necessary details and then add, “Please to make then (i.e., other details) the subject of special inquiry and we will do our best to answer them.”

Now I begin to see where the misunderstanding is you have taken for granted that I understand fully the very thing and the only thing on which my mind laboured. I have no trouble about raising collections for your society, for I feel willing to preach on that subject whenever it seems to me to be a duty, and I think I can raise enough or nearly so to pay the agent.

I have no trouble about the salary for if you give me too much I can refund it and if you give me too little for the support of my family (which you will not be apt to do being yourselves dependent on the same means of support) I can fall back upon the income of my patrimony which is devoted to purposes of general benevolence and which you will not feel at liberty to draw upon, and here I might throw in a few words to show that our accustomed economy will not sustain us when I am away from home more of the time.

I have a sick wife and 5 children to provide for at an expensive age, one 22, one 18, one 14, one 13, one 10 and one 8 years old, and within 24 hours this week I had 5 of your missionaries together with 3 of their wives, along with 3 horses. I have to practice hospitalityand make no complaint, and only glance at other things to show that my expenses will not be lessened by the agency. But I am entitled to a living while I labour for H[ome Missionary Society] and if it is not furnished by H. Society, it will still be within my reach.

I have but little trouble about the limits of the field, though I still think that I can do more good by confining my labours to the 14 northern counties. But I do not intend to be obstinate. But the one thing that bothers me is that you do not define my position further. The details I expect were in your report on the duties of an agent. I supposed that in my commission you would instruct your agent to do certain things, so that when he was thought to be taking too much upon himself he might produce his credentials. I have read over the duties of an agent in your last report, but I imagined that the details to which you refer would be a more particular enumeration of an agent’s duties.

I would gladly be excused from giving an opinion of Br. Gilbert's probable usefulness. He is a good Br., so dar as I know, and I know nothing to his prejudice, but a lamentable destitution of energy. He can preach well and I should think that if he were to fall in with a substantial working church who would stand by and encourage him, he might yet do well. But he is not fitted to guide a ship in a storm, and hence is nothing else at Buffalo Grove. You may smile at my illustration, but if we could place him under an exhausted excercise and supply him with pure oxigen [sic] or let him breathe ether, he would become efficient.

Agents duties: Let me explain my embarrassment by an illustration. In approving a missionary's application I suggested that he should visit some out-posts more and rewrite his report and give you a more detailed account. He was quite displeased and intimated that I was wanting in sympathy for poor missionaries. The only thing I dread is this treading on the toes of good men, and I thought it would aid me to have instructions as much in detail as might be.

A reason (which you perhaps do not appreciate but which has greatly influenced my judgement) for confining my labours to the 14 northtern counties is that the rail road and canal going through them will occasion a rush to northern Ill. for the next five years. This will require attention of an agent to take advantage of circumstances and act promptly. Dear Br., I hope I have given you a clear view of my difficulties and embarrassments.

Yours affectionately,

A. Kent

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Galena, May 29, 1848

Rev. & Dear Sir:

I have just reached home after an absence of 19 days and while I regret having taxed your patience with writing so long a communication I am happy to say that it is quite satisfactory, for it gives me the authority to which I can appeal and upon which I can fall back when I have occasion to say things to missionaries and churches which they will not like to hear. Indeed the suggestions will be of great use in guiding my agency.

In respect to salary, $500 will be sufficient to cover our annual expenditures (for we mean to practice economy as a virtue), and I do not wish anything more than a support. My eyes are very weak and I cannot write or read much at present. I am apprehensive that I shall not be able to cover much during the long hot days of summer, for several days past I have rode from 5 to 9 and laid by during the middle of the day.

I have made you some trouble in removing my embarrassments, but I will give you a brief summary from my journal as a specimen of my way [of] operating.

I have travelled during the last 19 days 300 miles (98 of which was along the banks of Rock River), visited 32 families and 8 ministers, preached 10 times to 7 different congregations destitute of the regular administration of Presbyterian preaching, distributed a respectable quantity of tracts and bound volumes, and engaged 4 or 5 persons to undertake the work of systematic monthly tract distribution in the country which will serve 100 families. I have also visited the 2 departments of the high school at Geneseo and addressed the pupils and prayed with them. I have moreover spent 2 days at Beloit, during which time we appointed 2 professors for the College and took measures to move forward boldly in the great and responsive effort of establishing that infant institution on a permanent basis.

You will not expect so minute a report ordinarily, but I thought you would be interested in what has greatly interested me.

I obtained one subscription for the “Home Missionary”. His address is Dea. J. Powers, Gap Grove, Ill., and the dollar which he paid I expended in paying my expenses at the tavern in Dixon, Lee. Co., whence I spent Sabbath (May 21), and I accomplished something for I not only preached twice in the Methodist Church, but I shamed some of the people and obtained a standing invitation to partake of the hospitality of God : and that may be of use to me as I pass the river at that point in future journeys. That 120 cents, together with 20 cents for toll there, was all that I expended during the trip including 4 times crossing Rock River. If you will therefore send the Dea. your paper for one year without charge to me, I will charge nothing for expenses on my first trip as your agent.

Yours, etc.,

A. Kent

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[Freeport, Ill., July 26, 1848]

[Salutation missing]

There is a beautiful spot in the prairie on the side of a grove, where a discreet and devoted missionary of good abilities may find a home and a hearty welcome. It is in the immediate vicinity of 2 intelligent families who know the heart of a stranger and who will not suffer him to want any good thing. It is an eminently healthy situation and one to be desired for its prospective natural advantages. It is presumed from present appearances that the population on that prairie will increase 50 per cent annually, and the assurance is boldly given that such a preacher will secure a congregation of 150 at his regular Sabbath appointment. Where is the hardship of Home Miss. life when such a fields lie neglected for want of labourers?

There is another center of 5 or 6 miles distance where a Presb. Church is organized, and where such a minister might gather another congregation equally large in the afternoon of the same Sabbath, and where he might obtain 50 or 100 Dollars for his services. Such a minister might reasonably expect, with God’s blessing, in 5 or 10 years to build two strong churches where is chaos, (or at least at one of those points).

Should the missionary be a single man, one family offers to furnish board and a study without charge.

I dare not mention the locality lest it should induce men to throw churches in there who cannot find a support at the East, and who come out to this country without commission as encouragement from your committee.

We wish all who come to fall in with existing ecclesiastical organizations, whether Congregational or Presbyterian, and not disturb the peace of the churches and wound the feelings of the old settlers by requiring us to conform to their views.

The field I have described is Waddam’s Grove[251] 15 miles west of Freeport and 35 miles east of Galena, and, next to Freeport, is the most populous precinct in this populous and wealthy county. Its county (not Freeport) is building 100 brick houses this year.

If Mr. Geo. Clark is still in the city, Mr. Hallock will be pleased to show this to him. If not, I shall have relieved my own mind by making this statement.

Yours truly,

A.K.

________

[Not in Kent's hand]

Galena, Aug. 14, 1848

To the Secretaries of the Am. Home Miss. Soc., New York

Dear Brethren,

The Rev. Charles A. Behrends, an ordained minister of the German Reformed Church, having lately come among us to labor at Galena & other places on the vicinity among our German population & there being a necessity of obtaining some missionary aid in order that he may be sustained in his work. We wish to make a few statements in respect to his mission here to the Executive Comm. of the A. H. Miss. Soc. through you.

There must be in this city between five & six hundred Germans. It is proposed that Bro. Behrends also labor at “Small Pox” - a precinct eight miles east & at Tete de Mort in Iowa, six miles west, where Bro. Henry has heretofore preached, coming a distance of sixteen miles. At Small Pox there are two hundred Germans & at Tete de Mort about a hundred more. This excludes the Catholic Germans. Altogether about a thousand Germans can be reached, more or less, directly by this Mission. The prospect is, too, that Tete De Mort will be exclusively settled by Germans ere long.

Many of these Germans at all these points have been connected hitherto with the “Reformed” & “Lutheran” Churches. They will probably unite as in other places in an “Evangelical” Church : to induce those who give satisfactory evidence of piety : to unite in a church organization & there is a disposition to do so.

The congregations at all these points are very encouraging. Sixty attended on the first Sabb. Bro. B. preached here : and eighty the next. Bro. Henry has had here in the winter season : as many as a hundred & forty & a hundred & fifty. At Small Pox Bro. B. had sixty yesterday : and at Tete de Mort : Bro. Henry had a congregation of seventy or eighty before the Bishop forbade the Catholics to attend & now has forty or fifty. Many more will attend these places when the appointments become settled & regular.

Yesterday Bro. Behrends requested a subscription to be taken up by those willing to sustain Evangelical preaching : $43 was subscribed in the city congregation & $24 at Small Pox. At Tete de Mort nearly $50 was subscribed for Br. Henry. Altogether something on $100 will be raised in the three places. In a year or two they will do a great deal better. The last year & present are difficult years in respect to raising subscriptions among an emigrant population owing to lands coming into market, etc. etc.

Bro. Behrends comes to us from Pennsylvania having been ordained by Lebanon Classes of the Ger. Ref. Church at Palmyra 13th of May. His theological studies during the past year have been persued at Mercersburg, but previously at Arnhem in Holland in a theological school which grew out of the ejection of certain ministers by the National Synod in 1834. We have confidence in him as an Evangelical, pious, & devoted minister of Christ. He has commenced his work energetically in this city & his prospects of usefulness are promising. The Germans have hitherto been almost entirely neglected, and as their number and importance increases, it is very important that they be supplied with suitable ministers. We think Bro. B. such a one & calculated to do a work exceedingly needed among them. In additon to his Sabbath labors here in the forenoon & at Small Pox in the aft, he has commenced a Wednesday evening prayer meeting & a friday evening lecture. At the latter service some infidels attend.

Now : Brethren: can you not pledge to this Misision $300 for the coming year? You know something of the importance of this point as a commercial city rapidly increasing in population, wealth, etc., etc. The Germans form a doubly interesting & exceedingly important portion of our population. They are in the main industrious, prudent, orderly artisans & offer peculiar opportunities of usefulness to a faithful minister of Christ. We are persuaded that upon no field in this vicinity occupied either by American or foreign emigrants could your liberality be more wisely bestowed & we hope that this earnest appeal may not be in vain,

Geo. Magoun (2nd chh.)

F. Henry (Dubuque)

Monday afternoon. I concur fully with the views expressed and had previously arrived at the same conclusions with respect to the man and the field so far as opportunity had been afforded me but I thought better to defer action for 2 or 3 weeks that we might know more of the man and he more of the public and their ability and had made provision to supply him in certain necessities (He has a wife and 4 little boys). I know no reason however to defer action.

Yours, A. Kent

p.s.: I has a long conversation upon his religious views and regard him truly pious.

[not in Kent’s hand]

As Bro. Henry happened to be present coincidentally we have requested him to join us in this testimony & recommendation. He will write further on the subject in his next report.

Bro. Behrends commenced his labor July 30th, a commission had better last from that time or the first Sabbath in August.

I think it proper to say further that Bro. Behrends does not share at all in the speculative High Churchism which as is very well known prevails at Mercersburg to some degree. He was advised by Don Schass not to apply for aid to the A. H. M. Soc. : but he choose to do so from a liberal evangelical sympathy with the denominations who sustain the Soc. He is in the New England sense an evangelical man.

G. M.

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Napiersville, Aug. 29, 1848

Dear Br.

On my return from Chicago I wish to say things which I shall be in danger of forgetting if they are not passed on.

I spent a Sabbath at Byron in exchange with Br. Gemmel who had engaged to explore for me, Como, a village springing up below Dixon on Rock River. The people ar Byron say in exculpation of their continuing to ask aid :they are poor: they have been building a church and they intend to reduce their draft 50 dollars a year.

Being obliged to return by that route to get a lame horse, I made an opportunity to spend a Sabbath at Sycamore 30 miles east where Br. Norton preached. He has left because he could not say Shibboleth to their antislavery creed. A minority are greatly grieved and all are quite discouraged about finishing their church which stands with only a roof to cover the timbers, and yet that is the only church of our denomination in a county (Dekalb) of 6 or 700 inhabitants.

I thought it would be opportune to spend a Sabbath there and attend their church meeting the day before.

I called on Br. Savage and spent a night with Br. Sikes and reached Chicago next day and preached on Home Missions to the 1st and 2nd Churches.