204 



CIVIL HISTORY OF VERMONT. 



Fart II. 



FANATICAL SECTS. 



NEW LIGHTS OR HOLY ROLLERS. 



chief speaker among- them was a fellow 

 by the name of Cummings. He would 

 sometimes attempt to defend their peculi- 

 arities by arguing with those whom curi- 

 osity had brought to tliem. At such times 

 the Prophet would listen with stern and 

 mute attention to the discussion, and 

 wlienever he discovered that his champi- 

 on was likely to be worsted, he at once 

 secured a victory by a peculiar tap of his 

 staff, which instantly raised such a howl- 

 ing and groaning among his followers as 

 put an effectual end to the argument. 



After nearly exhausting tjieir means of 

 subsistence at Woodstock, they crossed 

 the Green Mountains and stopped for a 

 while in Bennington county. Here they 

 received some accessions to their number 

 and then proceeded to the west in quest 

 of an unknown region which their leader 

 designated as the " Promised Land." 

 With a wagon to carry their baggage, 

 they travelled on foot, procuring most of 

 their subsistence by begging from house 

 to house. When they reached a point on 

 the Ohio river near Cincinnati their num- 

 ber was augmented to y or 3 hundred. 

 There they sold their wagon, took boats, 

 and proceeded down the river, and a more 

 filthy, lousy squalid and miserable set of 

 beings tjie world never saw. From this 

 time their number rapidly diminished. 

 Many died by sickness produced by hard- 

 shi)) and privation, and otiiers abandoned 

 the company to avoid the same catastro- 

 phe. Their final stopping place was at 

 New Madrid, 75 miles below the mouth of 

 the Ohio. At this place Peter and Jo- 

 seph Ball left Ihem with the surviving 

 members of their families, and from tliis 

 time we have no knowledge of tlie move- 

 ments or fate of the impostor, or those who 

 adhered to him, but there can be little 

 doubt that they miserably perislied. Of 

 those who went from Vermont a few beg- 

 ged their way back, but far the greater 

 part were either ashamed, or too poor and 

 feeble, to return. 



Keic Liirlits. — This is a name assumed 

 by a small band of fanatics, who com- 

 menced a brief career in the town of Hard- 

 wick in the early, part of 1S37. Their 

 leader, whose name was Bridgeman, had 

 been a professed Universalist, but having 

 his mind discomposed by frequent atten- 

 dance upon prayer meetings in his neigh- 

 borhood, and becoming, as some thought, 

 partially deranged, he professed to be in- 

 spired from on high, and was not long in 

 enlisting several followers. They com- 

 menced their career by interrupting the 

 regular exercises of the religious meet- 

 inos of the neighborhood, by occasionally 

 uttering in a tremendous sing-song scream 



or yell, passages or parts of passages of 

 scripture, pretending to act under the in- 

 fluence and guidance of the Holy Spirit. 

 Soon they become tiie chief actors in these 

 meetings, and such numbers began to be 

 drawn together to hear and see their 

 strange doings, that it was found incon- 

 venient to hold their meetings in private 

 houses, and they therefore held them for 

 a while in a school house. But this pro- 

 ving too small for the multitudes that 

 came together, they went into the south 

 meeting house in Hardwick, which had 

 been built some years before by a private 

 individual, with the nothing-arian motto, 

 Liberty of Conscicnce,\\\scx\hed^ on its front. 

 They also changed their time of holding 

 meetings from the evening of a week day 

 to the Sabbath ; and there, Sabbath after 

 Sabbath, for several months, the spacious 

 house was crowded with a niotly and tu- 

 multuous assemblage from that and the 

 neighboring towns. Tlie exercises con- 

 sisted of the most ludicrous and foolish 

 performances, such as frightful yellings, 

 barking in imitation of dogs, foxes and 

 cuckoos, jumping, swinging the arms and 

 rolling on tlie floor. From this last cir- 

 cumstance they were sometimes called 

 holy rollers. The leader in this drollery, 

 as it was called, professed to have had it 

 revealed to him that the men should not 

 shave ; they accordingly suffered their 

 beards to grow for several months, and 

 thereby acquired the appellation of the 

 long beards. At length it was revealed 

 to another of their number that they must 

 all be shaved, and it was done. 



Although no more than six or eight 

 persons took a very active part in these 

 meetings, still they were countenanced 

 and encouraged by large numbers of the 

 inhabitants of Hardwick and the neigh- 

 boring towns. Many of these were ig- 

 norant and weak minded persons who 

 were deluded and led astray, but the 

 greater part were the idle and irreligious, 

 who were better pleased to spend the 

 the Sabbath in attendance upon what was 

 denominated the Hardwick Theatre, than 

 with those who were engaged in rational 

 religious worship. But, as happens to 

 ipost fanatics, their career was short. The 

 publication of a discourse, in the summer 

 of 1838, leveled at their absurdities, by the 

 late Rev. Chester Wright, at that time 

 minister of Hardwick, and the imprison- 

 ment of some of their number for the dis- 

 turbance of religious worship, soon put a 

 stop to their droll meetings, and for the 

 honor of our common nature, and of the 

 state of Vermont, and of our holy religion, 

 it is hoped that such disgraceful proceed- 

 ings will not be repeated within our state. 



