PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

OF BARNET

Church History

Center Church

The Center Building of the Presbyterian Church of Barnet

This building was built in 1849. The first sermon was preached in this building on July 22, 1849. The lumber was milled or hand hewn in Barnet. The pews face forward, a fashion of that time. It was heated by stoves and lighted by lamps until 1911.

There were three earlier buildings on this site. The first was a log “Meeting House” built before 1784. The second was a wooden building built in 1788, and moved to make room for the brick Meeting House. This was built in 1829 and burned down in 1849. These Meeting Houses were used for town business as well as for Church Services.

The first funeral held in this building was during the Civil War “when the body of a soldier was brought home.” Scottish Presbyterians did not hold funerals in Church. The big granite steps in front of the Church Ryegate. They were the steps for the brick Meeting House, 1829.

The Presbyterian Congregation called its first minister, Rev. David Goodwillie in 1790. The town had voted in 1784 to accept the Presbyterian form of church government. Many of the earliest settlers were from Scotland.

In 1994 the Barnet Center Presbyterian Church merged with the West Barnet Presbyterian Church to for the Presbyterian Church of Barnet. Summer Services, Christmas Eve and Easter Services are still held here. Winter services are held at the West Barnet Church. Vacation Bible School and Retreats are held at the Center Church.

Now in the summer of 1999 the two churches work together as one serving the Lord in this part of His Kingdom. Recently the foundation supports below the building were rebuilt, the roof as been painted, and the windows have been replaced with the original type windows.

There have been numerous Ministers of the Gospel who have served the churches. These are listed on the Plaque of Ministers at the front of the Church. In June of 1998 the Rev. John C. Sanderson and his wife Hannah were called to serve the Presbyterian Church of Barnet.

This is a very brief History of this building, and the treasured History serves as a foundation for the Christian work in this Community which looks to a future of service to our Lord.

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West Church

The roots of this church are in Ryegate some twenty years after the American Revolution (1798), when the Reformed Presbyterian Church was formed there. It was also called the Covenanter Church then, for some of its Scottish doctrine. Congregations soon split off for Craftsbury and Topsham, and around 1829 the original group came under the care of the Rev. James Milligan, an energetic preacher who would soon begin a crusade to modify the local level of alcohol consumption.

During Mr. Milligan’s pastorate, probably around 1831, a new meetinghouse was added in Barnet, just north of the Ryegate town line. This is the Walter Harvey Meetinghouse, and one minister served both congregations. In 1851 a committee from Barnet met o create a new church, an independent congregation associated with the Reformed Presbyterian (General Synod) group. By 1859 they were eager for their own building, and organized the West Barnet Meetinghouse Association. Within that year, land was bought and the building constructed. The church originally had no basement, no front portico, and only two stained glass windows, the ones without pictures, which were then on the sides of the church. Additions and renovations in the first years of the 1900s were rooted in changes that took place in the congregation, and are described along with the windows that hold the memory of the early churchgoers. (See window descriptions.)

After those early 20th century changes, little was altered in the building besides routine updates to the bathroom and kitchen. But toward the end of the 20th century, in 1994, the congregation changed as the First Presbyterian Church of West Barnet merged with the Barnet Center Presbyterian Church, whose lovely buildings were used by a very small congregation at the time. Since then, both locations have housed the congregation, which alternates use of them seasonally (usually the West Barnet location in the cooler seasons and the Barnet Center one, which has only wood heat, in summer and for Christmas and for Easter Sunrise Service).

This merger of congregations, coupled with a generous legacy from West Barnet resident Karlene Exley intended to help improve access to the site and a community project called the Memory Tree, resulted in changes to the building again beginning in the year 2000, enlarging the bathroom and kitchen and creating a wider downstairs entrance and lift facilities for those who prefer less physically challenging entrance to the sanctuary.

Note the small shed north of the building. It is the old horse shed, a reminder of the days when people arrived via horse or horse-drawn carriage and expected to spend much of their Sunday in church. Shelter for the animals was a necessity. Also look for the wellhead near the front door, accompanied by its garden memorial to Lynwood ("Buddy") McLam, who upheld the church through much of the 20th century with his patient and creative plumbing and electrical work as well as with his deep, joyful singing voice.

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West Church Windows

Window 1 Flowered Cross

In loving memory of William and Abigail Warden and family.

William was born August 11, 1802, and was the grandson of the William Warden who came from Scotland in 1784. Our William here originally farmed at the John McNab farm, later called the William Lindsey place on the hill; he sold it and moved to West Barnet, where he was an elder in this church until his death on May 6, 1881. His wife Abigail was the daughter of Jonathan Wallace. Together they had seven children—one of them married a Harvey, as in Harvey’s Lake and Walter Harvey Meeting House. In 1860-61 William was a town representative. He was also a justice of the peace and a captain in the militia, and people usually called him Captain Warden.

Copyright © 2000 Beth Dugger.

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Window 2 Lilac and Celtic Knot

In memoriam/1804 Walter Brock 1885/1807 Margaret Whitelaw Brock 1886

Our Walter was the grandson of Walter Brock who came from Glasgow, Scotland, in 1775. Grandfather Brock was generally called Esquire Brock, and for many years he kept the only tavern in the West Barnet area. His grandson, our Walter, was a farmer here. When he married Margaret Whitelaw in 1828, they bought land, cleared it, and built a house that they gradually completed as their family of twelve children grew. Their first son, Joel, died young, and the third son received the same name. He would become an early settler in Iowa. The second son, Henry, served in the Civil War in Vermont’s Company C, Third Vermont. Walter also had a brother named Joel, who, like the Wardens, married a Harvey. Just before the Civil War that brother also moved to Iowa, where his nephew Joel was a settler. Another of our Walter’s children, Caroline, the second daughter, would marry John Ward. Mr. Ward, an Englishman by birth, owned a factory in Barnet where he made woolen blankets.

Window 3 Crown of Glory

Memorial to John Carter and Susan Hopkins Carter

John Carter was born in 1800. His father’s name was Orlando Carter. Orlando was famous for having built his home with 40,000 bricks, all from Morse’s Mill. Orlando pulled the loads of bricks with 3-year-old steers, and he accomplished this, according to Barnet history, while living on only bean porridge to eat! Young John’s life was easier than his father’s. He married Susan Hopkins of Peacham in 1824, and he had his own woolen mill in West Barnet. Unfortunately, the dam for the mill washed out around 1867. By then several of his sons were well settled in the woolen trade anyway, in Lowell, Massachusetts. Of John and Susan’s ten children, two stayed in the Barnet area to marry and have children; the ninth child was Stephen, who married Julia Gilfillan, served in the Civil War in the 11th Vermont, and perhaps named a son for a hero in the war: Charles Sherman.

Window 4 Jesus and Lambs

In memory of Rev. John Bole, born 1821, died 1906
Beloved pastor of this church from 1869 to 1886

The Rev. John Bole was a Scotsman, an only child whose parents both died when he was about ten or twelve years old. The orphan received a university education in Glasgow, and trained at the Reformed Presbyterian Seminary under the famous professor Andrew Symington. He married his professor’s niece Marion Brown in 1853, and ten days later the young couple sailed for America. it took them six months to reach South Ryegate, where John Bole became the pastor. By 1861 he had put together a small book of sermons, which he published. In 1862, in spite of a successful pastorate, he resigned to go back to Scotland and then lived in Belfast, Ireland. But in 1869, after the Civil War was well over, he returned to Vermont and settled here is West Barnet as pastor for seventeen years. Even after he officially retired, he gave occasional sermons. He was an avid writer and speaker and was considered very genial. He and Marion had seven children, four of them born in Ryegate, one in Glasgow, and two in Belfast. The first child, John, died in childhood; the others were all educated at Peacham Academy, and two entered the newspaper publishing business out West in St. Paul, Minnesota, where William McClure Bole became editor and Andrew Symington Bole publisher. Their friend from Barnet Oliver Sherman Warden was the manager. But young Andrew, named for his father’s theology professor, seemed to have a strong streak of the church in him. In 1895 he entered Bangor Theological Seminary in Maine, and served as a Congregational minister, first in Turner, Maine, then in Coventry, Vermont, and finally in East Hardwick.

The bell was added to the church during John Bole’s pastorate. After he left the church, it took ten years to find a settled pastor. On May 5, 1896, the Rev. Stephen P. Brownell was ordained and installed. He stayed for seventeen year, and during this time the manse was built in West Barnet. In 1906, halfway through Brownell’s pastorate, a corporation was formed to take over the church property, which has been held by the West Barnet Meeting House Association since its formation in 1859. This was part of a realignment of church affiliation. The very next year big changes took place in the building: out went the square pews, and in went modern ones. This is when the church stopped charging money for the sale or rent of pews. It is also the time when people gave the memorial windows described here, in memory of people who had played prominent roles in the early years of the church. At the end of 1907, the congregation voted to separate from the New York Presbytery of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, instead joining the Boston Presbytery of the General Assembly, a process that concluded in early 1908. About 170 names were on the membership by then, with forty regular attendees—and that grew to eighty by 1920, when the building was again enlarged and remodeled, adding the basement vestry by lifting up the church. The front portico was added then, too.

And we look back to Window 1 here, because five thousand dollars of the nine thousand dollars needed for those changes came from a legacy left by Miss Janet Warden, unmarried daughter of William and Abigail Warden, in whose memory Window 1 was given.

Window 5 Lamp of the Spirit

In memory of Robert and Agnes Smith

Robert Smith, born in 1809 in Scotland, came here in 1854, working as a carpenter for Smith and Galbraith in Passumpsic. Passumpsic was largely Baptist even then, and business was dominated by the Ide family and by the river mills. Robert Smith’s Scottish wife Agnes came with him, and three years later the couple moved to West Barnet, where they probably felt more at home with the Scottish-bred Presbyterian neighbors. They had eight children, most of them staying in this area but with relatively few children of their own. The oldest son, Hugh Smith, became a second lieutenant during the Civil War; he served with the 33rd Massachusetts regiment. Eventually he joined the Westward movement, ending up in Idaho.

Robert’s brother Hugh, uncle of young Hugh, was the Smith of Smith and Galbraith in Passumpsic. The factory made furniture, coffins, rakes, ax handles, and other wooden items for forty years, until the shop burned down. Hugh and his wife Elizabeth were members of the Center Church, where Hugh served as an elder for more than thirty years, dying in 1900.

Window 6 Harp

Memorial to Captain William Stuart and Jane Whitelaw Start

William Stuart was born in 1792. His father James had been a captain in the militia, and then a colonel. But James dies when young William was only nine years old, in a tragic accident. Captain James and his brother, Dr. William, a surgeon from Scotland who had settled in Jamaica, decided to go visit friends in Bath, New Hampshire. To get there, they had to cross the Connecticut River on a ferry boat at McIndoes. In mid river, one of the horses put a foot through the bottom of the boat. The boat sank, drowning both of the older Stuart men. They were buried in the cemetery in West Barnet, which became a family burying ground. The boy William would care for it all his life, to his death in 1879. An association was eventually formed to take care of the cemetery, and it became the final resting place of many a Stuart, Harvey, Brock, Abbott, and the Rev. John Bole and his wife. Claudius Stuart, young William’s grandfather, is also buried here. Grandfather Claudius, a veteran of the Scottish battle of Culloden Moor under Bonnie Prince Charlie, had been one of Barnet’s earliest settlers and lived to a hundred years of age.

Young Captain William married Jane Whitelaw in 1822, thus attaching the family to Ryegate. Among their seven children were three farmers and the notable Marion Stuart, who became a teacher, first near home and then among the freedmen in the South. Hers was a life of travel and commitment to helping others.

Captain William is also remembered for his efforts to help the poor. Before 1839, if a person became to poor to manage, that person was "set up at auction." At the auction, people would say how much money they could offer to support the poor person. The lowest bidder became the supporter. In 1839, Captain William, David Gibson, and William Harvey were chosen as a committee to buy a "poor farm" instead, and a year later the town began taking its paupers to the farm. Years later, when there were no longer enough poor people to keep up the farm, the town changed its welfare plan again. The farm was sold, and the few people who couldn’t take care of themselves were boarded out.

Window 7 Sheaves of Wheat

In memory of Hon. Peter Buchanan and Family

There were several Buchanan families who settled in this area, and all came from Stirlingshire. The Buchanan clan traces back to the 13th century and lived in those days to the north of Loch Lomond. There are two Peter Buchanans buried at the Center Church. One was born in 1801 and was a farmer on Joe’s Brook. He was the son of Alexander, who had come from Scotland. The other Peter Buchanan, born in 1808, is the one the window referds to. He was prominent in town, serving as representative and twice assistant judge of Caledonia County. He lived to a ripe old age, nearly seventy-eight, retiring to McIndoe Falls. He outlived two wives and had seven children. We find his name among the first association of the Reformed Presbyterians in West Barnet, and he was ordained as a ruling elder from the start in 1851. The association met at the Harvey Meeting House and at the West Barnet Schoolhouse. It took another eight years for the group to decide to buy land and put up a union meetinghouse in West Barnet, this one. Money was raised by selling the right to sit in the pews, subsidized also by a legacy from Matthew Thompson.

This church group strictly enforced discipline, and would call in an errant member before the Session, asking him to show why he had "neglected the ordinances of God’s house." Their first settled pastor was the Rev. W. H. Reid, who received the generous salary of four hundred dollars per year. Compare this to the salary of the sexton, whose job was to sweep and dust the meetinghouse and build the fire for one year, and whose total pay was three dollars and sixty-two cents.

In 1868, Mr. Reid left his pastorate, and in that year Peter Buchanan sold his farm to Andrew Lackie, an active member of the Center Church. Peter Buchanan moved to McIndoe Falls, where he spent the rest of his life. His memorial window with its sheaf of wheat seems fitting to both his farming career and the rich harvest of service that he gave to the first years of this church.

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