Life and Letters of Rev. Aratus Kent Introduction

Far fall thirty years has Barney Norris rang that old church bell, calling together the faithful flock to hear their honored shepherd read from Holy Writ, and in strains of eloquence divine soothe their sad and anguished hearts. Full many a bereaved heart-a mother or a daughter, or perhaps a father or a son, has found hope and consolation there where Barney rings the bell. Yes, full thirty years has the faithful Barney tolled the bell for some loved one who has gone, never more to return.” Hist. Jo Daviess, p.

 

“Silence whilst he marks the hour

By the bell of yonder tower.”

 

Many whose willing feet have hastened to the House of God when Barney rang the bell, have gone to the higher house above. Some who have occupied that pulpit have gone to their reward; Others to other fields of labor; but Barney still remains faithful at his post, in sunshine or storm, opening the doors of God”s house alike to rich and poor, neglecting no duty, and beloved by all. No Galenian will ever forget him. He still lives among us, hale and hearty, although the frosts of many winters rest upon his faithful head. "Faithful to duty" has been his motto ever, and ever will be, until he tolls that bell no more.

261^[261] Ralph Ware and Thomas Ware were both early elders of the Presbyterian Church at Granville. Records of Olden Time. p. 280.

262^[262] “Mr. O. Parker” may refer to Rev. Theodore Parker, a Unitarian Minister and powerful worker against slavery.

263^[263] Charles Grandison Finney, born in Litchfield, Conn. in 1792, was licensed to preach in the Prebyterian Church in 1824. He was perhaps the greatest revivalist of his day. He joined the “unorthodox” Oberlin group, and became Professor of Theology there in 1835. Aratus Kent clearly was antagonistic to this Oberlin movement, as he alludes to it in a disparaging manner in several letters. see: Appleton”s, vol. II, p. 461-2. McLoughlin, W.G.: The Meaning of Henry Ward Beecher. New York, 1970. p. 178. Ironically, Finney moved away from the abolitionist movement and toward Aratus Kent”s position that if the population were converted to the gospel, slavery would die a natural death.

264^[264] George Frederic Magoun was born in 1821 Bath, Maine, where his grandfather was a shipbuilder, and his father a well to do merchant and banker (and an author of the first of the famous Maine prohibition laws). George graduated from the Bath Academy in 1837 and then graduated from Bowdoin in 1841. He studied theology at Andover and Yale. In 1844, he went to Galena, Ill. to serve as the principal of an academy, and then was the principal of the Academy at nearby Platteville, Wisc., in 45-46. He then returned to Andover to complete his theological training. He was ordained Jan. 24, 1858, at Shullsburg, Wisc., where he founded a Home Mission Congregational Church. He then served for three years (48-51) as the Pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church of Galena. Though he left Galena under a cloud, he served five years each the Congregational Churches at Davenport and Lyons. Between 1851 and 1856 he also studied and practiced law. In 1862 he was appointed President of Iowa College, later merged with Grinnell. He served in this capacity for 20 years. Magoun was known to have something of a combative personality, and was staunchly in the anti-slavery camp. He somehow merited inclusion in the DAB, while Aratus Kent did not. [DAB]

265^[265] 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 femal 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 Catharine 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 homestaed in far western New York, and began to teach. During vaacations she attended Albion Femalse Seminary, where she untimately 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 moter] 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 fried who was an A.H.M.S. minister in Racine, Wisconsin, [Hiram Foote] she wrote:

“I have thought perhasp 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 litle 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. Loos offered no promises, no salary, and only could hold forth the rent freee 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 prominant male educator from the east.

But Anna Sill built the Rockford Female Seminary into a successful institution. Once Aratus Kent became satisfied of Miss Sill”s piety and evagelistic 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 Miss. Sill. Others might criticize her for her blunt asssertiveness, but he always referred to her as “the excellent principal.”

see: Townsend, Lucy Forsyth: The Best Helpers of One Another: Anna Peck Sill and the Struggle for Women”s Education. Dekalb: Department of Leadership and Educational Policy Studies, Northern Illinois University, in cooperation with Educational Studies Press, 1988. Ms. Forsyth found Joseph Emerson”s statment that Aratus Kent was “the man to whom, more than any other man, the enterprise owed its inceptions and all its developments” erroneous. She apparently felt the satement was intended as a slight to Anna Sill. Yet the double use of the word “man” leaves room for other interpretations. Certainly no other male did more to create the institution, and there is some doubt that Miss Sill would have survived a Board of Trustees headed by a less sympathetic man than Kent. Joespeh Emerson, Quarter Centennial Address.”, in Sill Scrapbook, p. 84-5. RCA.

In later years when Sill struggled to raise Rockford to collegiate status, Sill invoked the memory of Kent:

“Let Beloit College steadily pursue its course; it is the Yale of the West. Can it not afford to be the gallant brother to defend and aid the younger sister. I write eith conviction that good Father Kent, if alive would say, “This lket us do, ye, and to this end Brethren let us pray.” He used to tell me that “of the two institutions, the Seminary was his pet.” SIll to Emerson, 3 July 1879. RCA.

266^[266] Kent was not the only Galena Minister who suffered the pain of having to renounce a close associate. Rev. John Mitchell, the Methodist, went to Chicago from Galena in 1835, Mitchell”s presiding elder was Wilder B. Mack. No sooner had Mitchell arived than Rev. Mack was caught in an adulterous relationship with Mrs. Whitney, the wife of another Methodist minister, Rev. S.F. Whitney. The other Methodist ministers were so incensed that they voted to give an account of the matter to the newspapers. Magoun apparently escaped that humiliation. Log Cabins to Steeples, p. 73.

267^[267] Probably another offer to assume the Presidency of Rockford Female Seminary.

268^[268]This is a reference to Kent's journey to Galena in 1832 with his new wife.

269^[269] A gold coin of the United States of the value of $10- from the eagle on the reverse.

270^[270] John Huy Addams emigrated to Illinois in 1844 where he became a propserous miller, banker, and community leader. He served eight terms as state senator, first as a Whig and later as a Republican. A friend and admirer of Lincoln, he was a vigorous abolitionist. His daughter Jane joined the Presbyterian Church in Cedarville in 1885. Kent touched the Jane Addams through his role as the founder of Rockford College, where Jane graduated at the head of her class in 1881. Noteable American Women. Cambridge, 1971. Vol. I, p. 16.

271^[271] Sill reported to Chapin that Kent was considering the Rockford job and looked “at the whole subject in a more favorable light” than before. But she corrected predicted Kent would decline but wrote Chapin; “I would suggest that you write him, bringing forth your strong resons, ere he makes a final decision.” Sill to Chapin 16 Aug. 1856. Rockford College Archives.

272^[272] Seth Williston was, like Kent, from Suffield, Ct. He was born in 1770 and died in 1851. He was a well known Presbyterian evangelist in the State of New York, where undoubtedly Kent either knew him or knew of him. Appletons, Vol. 6, p. 541-2.

273^[273] Kent here refers to Horace Bushnell who held views of the Trinity that were deemed heretical by some Congregational clergymen. He was brought before the Association but sucessfully defended himself. The conservative Kent probably was not a friend to “liberal” Congregationalists. Appletons, Vol. I, p. 475.

274^[274] Very shortly there after Rev. North became “deranged” and was forced to return home to Berlin, Ct. See letter of his brother to Dr. Badger.

275^[275] “June 3, 1858, the wife and seven children of Rev. Mr. Illsley, pastor of the Congregational Church, were killed or drowned. In building the Madison branch of the Chicago and Galena Rail Road, a high embankment had been thrown up at the crossing of the creek about half a mile above the village. The culvert was too small for the volume of water, and up to the afternoon of the sad and awful catastrophe, a pond two miles long, a half a mile in width, and from 25 to 30 feet in depth had formed behind the embankment. About midnight the culvert caved in, the embankment gave way, and the water rushed down in one mighty torrent, carrying away several houses in its maddened rush, among which was the brick house occupied by Mr. Illsley and family, which toppled over and buried beneath its ruins the mother and seven children. Mr. Illsley, who had lost a leg and was comparatively helpless, was carried by the flood nearly down to Rock River, where he caught in a tree and held on until he was found by L.C. Richardson, who waded in and carried him out. In the Roscoe Cemetery, near the northeast corner, the eight bodies of one family, who had not all been united for some time until the day on which their death came, were buried in one day.” History of Winnebago County, Ill. Chicago, H.F. Kett, 1877. p. 451.

276^[276] Chauncey Allen Goodrich died on Feb. 25, 1860. He graduated from Yale in 1810 and was a tutor there from 1812-14. He was Professor or Rhetoric and Oratory at Yale from 1817 to 1839. His father in law was Noah Webster, and he worked extensively on many editions of his dictionary. Appleton”s, Vol. II, p. 681.

277^[277] A P.O. in McHenry County established in 1845, changed to Ringwood in 1878. Ill. PLace Names, p. 488.

278^[278] Kent had two sisters: Sally, born Dec. 24th, 1786; and Cecelia, born Sept. 13, 1797.

279^[279] Reverend Arthur Swazey, who was pastor of the Galena 2nd Presbyterian Church from 1856 until 1860, when the 2nd reunited with the First Presb. Church. Kett, p. 504.

280^[280] Roy, J.E. to Sec. of AHMS, Feb. 23, 1866.