The church have erected a comfortable brick house of worship, and until the present year have done all that has been done in support of the institutions of the gospel. The church has been favored with several revivals of religion, and has increased to about 90 members. Besides these churches, there is a small Presbyterian church at Woodville, on the north line of the county, and midway between its two extremes. The church contains some 30 or 40 members. By the aid of the A. H. M. S. they have sustained preaching for the last two years. They are erecting a neat brick house of worship at Chili, just in the borders of Hancock Co. adjoining on the north.

Ursa Presbyterian church lies nine miles north of Quincy, and was organized some two years since. It contains about 15 members. The members of this church are scattered among a population mostly connected with Campbellite and Antinomian Baptist churches. There is also a small Congregational church, six miles south of Mendon, of 12 or 15 members. Little ministerial labor has been bestowed upon the last two named. There are two Congregational churches also connected with "Mission Institute, No. 1 & 2."

Could the exact amount of contributions to benevolent objects in the churches above named be compared with the amount received in aid of supporting the institutions of religion, the cause of benevolence would be found to be a considerable gainer.

TORNADOES.

Home Missionary, Nov., 1844.

FROM REV. J. WILCOX, GENESEO, HENRY COUNTY, ILLINOIS.

In the early part of June, Sharon, the place where I have labored much and was then supplying occasionally was visited with a most fearful tornado that demolished and swept away from their foundations five dwelling houses and two large frame barns and nearly destroyed

eight other dwelling houses-burying their tenants in the ruins, or sweeping them away before its resistless power, bruised and crushed, leaving some of them mangled corpses amid the scene of desolation. Truly its wake bore the most impressive marks of Omnipotence riding forth upon the wings of the wind, making darkness his pavilion, shooting out his lightnings (three adults were struck dead in one house) and literally making bare the channels of waters at the blast of the breath of his nostrils. Nor was this all, for the same day, a few hours later, another entirely different tornado far more extensive and equally terrific and destructive, not twenty miles south, swept over a large range of country in which lives and property were destroyed and swallowed up as in a moment, in a whirlpool of ruins. And since then two more instances of this desolating war of the elements have visited my own parish, one of which nearly demolished the walls of our new brick edifice, a building forty by fifty, that we have been for the last two years. toiling to erect for our high school, and to answer for the present as a house of worship, and which had been completed the very night of the fearful tempest that beat it to the earth a mingled mass of ruins, and thus all our cheering hopes were blighted in a moment, and the people's hearts are faint within them. Still we question not the wisdom and goodness of our Heavenly Father in this, to us, sore chastisement. Though clouds and darkness are around about Him, we doubt not that justice and judgment are the habitation of His Throne.

1

1 PIONEER CONGREGATIONAL MINISTERS IN

ILLINOIS.

2 THE KIND OF MEN THEY WERE, AND THE WORK THEY DID.

Fully to answer the question, who were the Pioneer Congregational Ministers of Illinois, and what the work which they did, would require a volume rather than a half-hour paper.

In the time allotted me, I can only make brief and imperfect mention of some of the representative men who may properly be classified as pioneers, or of their characteristics and the enterprises which they inaugurated. I shall limit myself to those who lived and labored in the State previous to 1850, a period earlier than the existence of the first Congregational church in Chicago.

The work of the Pioneer Congregational ministers in Illinois antedated several years the organization of any Congregational churches in the State.

It is a unique fact in ecclesiastical history that for years the labors and contributions of one denomination of Christians should result only in the organization of churches of another denomination.

Yet it is true, that the first Pioneer Congregational ministers sent out and sustained by the Congregationalists of New England, planted only Presbyterian churches, and these largely made up of Congregational material.

1 At the suggestion of Dr. Noble, Rev. G. S. F. Savage, D. D., prepared this paper for the Union Park Congregational Church Monthly Concert, and by request it was afterwards read before the Chicago Ministers' Union and printed by their direction.

2 An exhaustive article entitled Puritan Influence in Illinois before 1860, by Carrie Prudence Kofoid, was published in Ilinois State Historical Library, publication No. 10, Transactions for 1906.

A history which must be understood if we would rightly appreciate the mission and growth of Congregational churches in this State and in the West, and with which the Congregationalists of to-day should be familiar.

Organized Congregationalism in Illinois dates only from 1833, but the missionary labors of Congregational ministers, under Congregational auspices, began much earlier.

The first of these explorers was Rev. Samuel J. Mills (the leader of the five students in Williams College, who behind the historical haystack, in 1808, prayed the American Board into existence two years later), a Congregational minister from Connecticut, who, in 1812, made a tour through the West and Southwest, in behalf of the Connecticut Missionary Society, and reported that in all the territory of Illinois there was not a Congregational or Presbyterian minister.

In 1816, Rev. Salmon Giddings, another Congregational minister from Andover, Mass., came to this territory, but located at St. Louis. He labored, however, as a missionary, both in Illinois and Missouri, gathering and organizing eight churches in Illinois and six in Missouri. But they were all organized as Presbyterian churches.

Later, and previous to the formation of the American Home Missionary Society in 1826, the Connecticut Missionary Society, commissioned Rev. Orin Fowler to labor in Indiana and Illinois, and Rev. Edward Hollister and Daniel Gould to labor in Illinois and Missouri. Their commissions covered two States, neither State being regarded as a large enough field for one man to occupy.

In 1824, Rev. John M. Ellis and Rev. E. G. Howe, both Congregational ministers, came as missionaries to Illinois, the State then having a population of 70,000, which was located mostly in the central and southern parts of the State. They gathered churches, but as was the practice of the times under the working of the Plan of Union

of 1801, all these churches were organized as Presbyterian, though they were the fruits of the labors of Congregational ministers.3

In 1828, came three other Congregational ministers from Connecticut to Illinois, viz.: Rev. Thomas Lippincott, Cyrus L. Watson and Aratus Kent; the last named asked the American Home Missionary Society to send him to a place which was so hard that no one else would take it. He was the first minister at Galena, and his

3 This Plan of Union was entered into between the General Assembly of the Presbyterian church and the General Association of Connecticut, with the design of securing union and co-operation between the two denominations in planting churches in the new settlements of the country.

But in its practical workings it resulted largely in Congregational ministers uniting with Presbyteries, and the organizing of Presbyterian churches, or of Congregational churches under care of Presbytery. Dr. Patton says that it has been stated on high Presbyterian authority that not less than 1,500 of their churches are essentially Congregational in their origin; and Mitchell says that it is computed that 400 churches, or more, have been gathered in the West, for the Presbyterian church, by the benevolence of Connecticut, alone.

Congregational missionaries who sought to establish Congregational churches and associations, were hampered and ostracized. Efforts were made to have such churches and ministers discredited and disfellowshipped at the East. This state of things awakened much dissatisfaction. It led to the calling of the Albany Convention of 1852, in which the question of abolishing the Plan of Union, was the leading feature. A committee of one from each State represented in the Convention, was appointed to report upon the subject. As a delegate from the Illinois State Association, it was my privilege to be a member of that committee. Dr. Humphrey, President of Amherst College, was chairman. He had up to that time been an earnest advocate of the Plan of Union, writing and speaking in its defense. But as fact after fact was brought out before the committee, showing how wholly unfair and one-sided was its practical working, he became intensely interested and his countenance evinced great surprise. As a result, he wrote a report recommending the abolishment of the Plan, which was unanimously adopted, and went into the Convention and made a forcible and effective speech in support of the recommendation. He was bitterly attacked afterwards for his change of opinion, and when asked how he could have been induced to do it, he replied: "Those Western boys ran away with me, with their facts."

Six years before the Albany Convention, the Western Congregational Convention, held in Michigan City, reported it, "as their unwavering opinion, that the placing of Congregationalists in fair and friendly relations with Christians of all denominations; the restoration of freedom of action in our own churches, and harmony between us and the Presbyterians; the maintenance of Congregational institutions; and, in short, the best interests of religion and its professors in every view, require that the special union between Congregationalists and Presbyterians should be abandoned."