CHAPTER LVm 



EAELY IMPBESSIONS-1832-1851 



&quot;VTTHEN the colonists from New England came into 

 Y T central and western New York, at the end of the 

 eighteenth century, they wrote their main ideas large 

 upon the towns they founded. Especially was this evi 

 dent at my birthplace on the head waters of the Susque- 

 hanna. In the heart of the little village they laid out, 

 largely and liberally, &quot;the Green 7 ; across the middle of 

 this there gradually rose a line of wooden structures as 

 stately as they knew how to make them, the orthodox 

 .Congregational church standing at the center; close be 

 side this church stood the &quot; academy &quot;; and then, on 

 either side, the churches of the Baptists, Methodists, and 

 Episcopalians. Thus were represented religion, educa 

 tion, and church equality. 



The Episcopal church, as belonging to the least numer 

 ous congregation, was at the extreme left, and the smallest 

 building of all. It was easily recognized. All the others 

 were in a sort of quasi-Italian style of the seventeenth 

 century, like those commonly found in New England ; but 

 this was in a kind of &quot;carpenter s Gothic&quot; which had 

 grown out of vague recollections of the mother-country. 

 To this building I was taken for baptism, and with it are 

 connected my first recollections of public worship. My 

 parents were very devoted members of the Protestant 

 Episcopal Church. With a small number of others of like 

 mind, they had taken refuge in it from the storms of 

 fanaticism which swept through western New York dur- 



H.--33 513 



