Page 191 - Cornelius Hedges Story

For This And Succeeding Generations Gardiner 178

Early Reminiscences

“In undertaking to write a sketch of the First Presbyterian Church
of Helena for the Twenty-fifth Anniversary, after much research
among my diaries and all accessible means for reliable information
possessing sufficient definiteness and accuracy to deserve the name
of history, I find myself incapable of doing the subject justice, and
had I realized my ignorance sooner, should have declined the task.
I am not an original Presbyterian. I was reared a Congregationalist,
and my first church connection was with the college at New Haven,
and next in my native town of Westfield, Massachusetts, where all my
ancestors and relatives were Congregationalists. For a time in Iowa,
before coming to Montana, I was connected with a Presbyterian
Church at Independence, but later resumed connection with the
Congregational Church in Southington, Connecticut, my wife's
native town, and it continued until 1873, after the organization of the
Helena church. So I am not one of the first members of this church,
and others still living and present with us can tell you more of its
beginning. I have lived in Helena about from its first settlement,
arriving here in January, 1865, with Brother Wilcox, when Helena
was only a mining camp, without a school or church of any kind, and
when Sunday was distinguished from other days chiefly by greater
activity in business and amusements of decidedly nonorthodox
kinds.

The first attempt at anything like religious observance of
the Sabbath was on Sunday, March 26th, 1865, when a few were
assembled on a vacant lot on the corner of Bridge and West Main
streets, where there was a large pile of logs intended for the erection
of another gambling house. Rev. E. T. McLaughlin preached a short
sermon and brother Wilcox and Justice Miles led the singing. Brother
McLaughlin was a Methodist, but church connections went for little
then and all contributed to build him a church. It was of logs and
stood on the corner of Joliet and Cutler streets. Sawed lumber then
was worth 20 cents a foot. Everything about the church was home-
made, but was considered fine in those days. It was Rev. McLaughlin
who officiated as chaplain at the first execution by the Vigilance
Committee when one gambler was hung on the old pine tree for
shooting another. The preference of the condemned for spiritual
influence of another kind on that occasion led to a suspension of the
benefit of clergy in subsequent executions. In that first log house I
had a bible class till I went to United states in the fall of 1866, and
after my return with my family in the early summer of 1867, we