Carleton’s biographer having
resigned the pastorate of Shawmut Church at the end
of 1892, the work was continued by the Rev. William
E. Barton, who had been called from Wellington, Ohio.
He began his ministrations March 1, 1893. As
so very many families forming the old church, and
who had grown up in it from early manhood, youth, or
even childhood, had removed from the neighborhood,
it was necessary to reorganize to a certain extent.
The great changes which had come over the South End,
and the drift of population to the more attractive
neighborhoods in the Back Bay, Brookline, Dorchester,
Newton, Allston, and other beautiful suburbs of Boston,
caused much derangement of previously existing conditions.
The tremendous development of the means of transportation
by the steam, horse or electric railways, to say
nothing of the bicycle, had caused a marvellous bloom
of new life and flush of vigor among the suburban
churches, while those in the older parts of the city
suffered corresponding decline. The Shawmut Church,
like the Mount Vernon, the Pine Street, and others,
had to pass through experiences which make a familiar
story to those who know Philadelphia, New York, and
London. The work of the old city churches had
been to train up and graduate sons and daughters with
noble Christian principles and character, to build
up the waste places and the newer societies.
Like bees, the new swarms out from the old hives were
called to gather fresh honey.
The exodus from rural New England
and from Canada enlarged Boston, and caused the building
up and amazing development of Brookline. With
such powerful magnets drawing away the old residents,
together with the multiplication of a new and largely
non-American and Roman Catholic population into the
district lying east of Washington Street, the older
congregations of the South End had, by 1890, been vastly
changed. Several had been so depleted in their
old supporters, that churches moved in a body to new
edifices on the streets and avenues lying westward.
In others the burdens of support fell upon a decreasing
number of faithful men and women. Where once were
not enough church edifices to accommodate the people
who would worship in them, was now a redundancy.
In the city where a Roman Catholic church was once
a curiosity are now nearly fifty churches that acknowledge
the Pope’s supremacy.
These things are stated with some
detail, in order to show the character of Charles
Carleton Coffin in its true light. After a laborious
life, having borne the heat and burden of the day in
the churches where his lot was cast, withal, having
passed his three score and ten years, one would naturally
expect this veteran to seek repose. Not a few
of his friends looked to see him set himself down in
some one of the luxurious new church edifices, amid
congenial social surroundings and material comforts.
Carleton sought not his own comfort.
When the new pastor and the old guard, left in Shawmut
Church to “hold the fort,” took counsel
together as to the future, they waited with some anxiety
to hear what choice and decision Mr. Coffin would
make. He had already selected the ground and
was making plans for building his new home, “Alwington,”
at N Shailer Street, Brookline, several
miles away from his old residence in Dartmouth Street.
It was naturally thought that he would ally himself
with a wealthy old church elsewhere, and bid farewell,
as so many had done, to their old church home, taking
no new burdens, risks, or responsibilities. During
the conference in the Shawmut prayer-room, Carleton
rose and, with a smiling face and his usual impressive
manner, stated that he should give his hopes and prayers,
his sympathy and work, his gifts and influence to Shawmut
Church; and, for the present at least, without dictating
the future, would cast in his lot with the Shawmut
people. A thrill of delight, unbidden tears of
joy, and a new warmth of heart came to those who heard.
As time went on he so adjusted himself to the change,
and found Dr. Barton such a stimulating preacher,
that any thought of sacrifice entirely vanished.
When the first Congregational Church
of Christ in Ithaca, N. Y., the city named
by Simeon DeWitt after his Ulysses-like wanderings
were over, sent out its “letter missive”
to the churches of the Central Association of New
York State, and to Shawmut Church in Boston, the latter
responded. It was voted to send, as their messengers,
the pastor, Rev. Dr. Barton, and Mr. Coffin; Mrs.
Barton and Mrs. Coffin accompanied them. These
four came on to the Forest City and its university
“far above Cayuga’s waters.”
With the delight of a boy Carleton enjoyed the marvellously
lovely scenery, the hills robed in colors as many
as though they had borrowed Joseph’s robe, and
Cayuga, the queen of the waters in New York’s
beautiful lake region. Most of all he visited
with delight that typical American university which,
Christian in spirit, neither propagates nor attacks
the creed of any sect.
With its stately edifices for culture,
training, research, and religion, it had risen like
a new city on the farm of Ezra Cornell. This
far-seeing man, like Mr. Coffin, had, when so many
others were blind, discerned in the new force, electricity,
the vast future benefits to commerce, science, and
civilization. Ezra Cornell had helped powerfully
to develop its application by his thought, his money,
and his personal influence. Ezra Cornell, in Irish
phrase, “invented telegraph poles.”
Moses Farmer, the electrician, invented the lineman’s
spurred irons by which to climb them.
Besides attending the Church Council
in the afternoon, Carleton made an address in the
evening that was to one flattering and to many inspiring.
Later on, the same night, he attended the reception
given to the Faculty and new students at the house
of President J. G. Schurman. He was delighted
in seeing the young president, with whose power as
a thinker and writer he had already acquainted himself.
Carleton’s last and chief literary
work, done in his old home on Dartmouth Street, was
to link together in the form of story the Revolutionary
lore which he had gathered up from talks with participators
in “the time that tried men’s souls.”
From boyhood’s memories, from long and wide
reading in original monographs, from topographical
acquaintance, he planned to write a trio or quartet
of stories of American history. He wished to
present the scenes of the Revolution as in the bright
colors of reality, in the dark shadows which should
recall sacrifice, and with that graphic detail and
power to turn the past into the present, of which
he was a master.
As he had repeatedly written the story
of the great Civil War from the point of view of a
war correspondent actually on the ground, so would
he tell the story of the Revolution as if he had been
a living and breathing witness of what went on from
day to day, enjoying and suffering those hopes and
fears which delight and torment the soul when the
veil of the future still hangs opaque before the mind.
His first instalment, “The Daughters
of the Revolution,” was published by Messrs.
Houghton, Mifflin & Co., in a comely and well-illustrated
volume. It deals with that opening history of
the eight years’ war with Great Britain which
at the beginning had Boston for its centre and in
which New England especially took part.
In his other books, “Building
the Nation,” “Boys of ’76,”
and “Old Times in the Colonies,” Carleton
had not ignored the work and influence of the “home
guard” composed of mothers, daughters, aunts,
cousins, and grandmothers; but in this story of the
“Daughters” he gave special prominence
to what our female ancestors did to make the country
free, and to hand down in safeguarded forms that which
had been outraged by King and Parliament.
How widely popular this volume may
have been, the writer cannot say, but he knows that
one little maiden whom he sees every day has re-read
the work several times.
In a subsequent volume of the series,
Carleton proposed to repicture the splendid achievements
of the colonial army in northeastern New York.
Here, from Lake Champlain to Sandy Hook, is a “great
rift valley” which lies upon the earth’s
scarred and diversified surface like a mighty trough.
It corresponds to that larger and grander rift valley
from Lebanon to Zanzibar, through Galilee and the Jordan,
the Red Sea, and the great Nyanzas, or Lakes of Africa.
As in the oldest gash on the earth’s face lies
the scene of a long procession of events, so, of all
places on the American continent, probably, no line
of territory has witnessed such a succession of dramatic,
brilliant, and decisive events, both in unrecorded
time and in historic days, from Champlain and Henry
Hudson to the era of Fulton, Morse, and Edison.
In the Revolution, the Green Mountain
boys, and the New York and New England militia under
Schuyler and Gates, had made this region the scene
of one of the decisive campaigns of the world.
Yet, in the background and at home, the heroines did
their noble part in working for that consummation
at Saratoga which won the recognition and material
aid of France for the United States of America.
Besides Lafayette, came also the lilies of France,
alongside the stars and stripes. The white uniforms
were set in battle array with the buff and blue against
the red coats, and herein Carleton saw visions and
dreamed dreams, which his pen, like the camera which
chains the light, was to photograph in words.
He had made his preliminary studies, readings, personal
interviews, and reexamination of the region, and had
written four or five chapters, when the call of the
Captain to another detail of service came to him.
Life is worth living as long as one
is interested in other lives than one’s own.
“Dando conservat” is the motto of
a famous Dutch-American family. So Carleton,
by giving, preserved. In the summer of 1895,
after Japan had startled the world by her military
prowess, Carleton went down to Nantucket Island, and
there at a great celebration delivered a fine historical
address, closing with these words:
“Thus it came to pass that he who guides the sparrow in its
flight saw fit to use the sailors of Nantucket, by shipwreck and imprisonment,
as his agents to bring about the resurrection of the millions of Japan from the
grave of a dead past to a new and vigorous life. Thus it is that Nantucket
occupies an exalted position in connection with the history of our country.”
Of this he wrote me in one of his
last letters, February 27, 1896:
“I have read ‘Townsend
Harris’ with unspeakable delight. I love
to think of the resurrection of Japan in connection
with the Puritans of Massachusetts, the
original movement culminating in Perry’s expedition
having its origin in the shipwrecking of Nantucket
sailors on the shores of that empire.”
Mr. Coffin brought out this idea in his earlier and
later address which he gave at Nantucket.
Having lived over thirteen years,
from 1877 to 1895, at N Dartmouth Street, and
feeling now the need for a little more quiet from
the rumble of the trolley-car, for more light and room,
for house space, for the accommodation of friends
who loved to make their home with a genial host and
his loving companion, and to indulge in that hospitality
which was a lifelong trait, Mr. and Mrs. Coffin began
looking for a site whereon to build in Brookline.
No yokefellows were ever more truly one in spirit
than “Uncle Charles and Aunt Sally.”
Providence having denied them the children for whom
they had yearned, both delighted in a constant stream
of young people and friends. Blessed by divine
liberality in the form of nephews and nieces, rich
in the gifts of nature, culture, and grace, neither
Carleton nor his wife was often left lonely.
The new house was built after his
suggestions and under his own personal oversight,
the outdoor tasks and journeys thus necessitated making
a variety rather pleasant than otherwise. Here,
in this new home, his golden wedding was to be celebrated,
February 18, 1896. The house was in modern style,
with all the comforts and conveniences which science
and applied art could suggest. While comparatively
modest and simple in general plan and equipment, it
had open fireplaces, electric lights, a spacious porch,
roomy hallways, and plenty of windows. It was
N Shailer Street, and named Alwington, after the
ancestral home in Devonshire, England.
Mr. Coffin’s study room was
upon the northeast, where, with plenty of light and
the morning sun, he could sit at his desk looking out
upon Harvard Street, and over towards Beacon Street;
the opposite side of the street, fortunately, not
being occupied by buildings to obscure his view.
At first he was often allured from his work for many
minutes, and even for a half hour at a time, by a majestic
elm-tree so rich in foliage and comely in form that
he looked upon it with ravished eyes. It was
in this room that he wrote the chapters for his second
book, which was to show especially the part which American
women had played in the making of their country.