West Harwich Whigs: The Baptist Church And The Patriot Cause

Part One

The following is excerpted from a book scheduled to appear next year titled “The Revolution on Cape Cod and the Islands: Antecedents, Conflict, Aftermath,” to be edited by David Martin and published in West Barnstable by the Cape and Islands Historical Association.

It is a timely item, given the two-year struggle to save the West Harwich Baptist Church. So often we drive by familiar structures without giving much thought about their origin, meaning, or contemporary significance. Most people don’t really consider that this part of town was settled in the 1630s and has archeological evidence of continuous human habitation reaching back a thousand years before the Egyptian pyramids were built. This deep heritage is a uniquely valuable community asset, and Harwich would do well to help each village capture and celebrate its particular voice in the ancient medley we are part of — even if we don’t hear it. What follows is a single slice from one generation that adds a distinctive pitch to the voice of West Harwich.

Driving from Dennis toward Chatham on Route 28, one passes, usually without noticing, a veritable museum of American residential architecture in the one-mile stretch just past Dennisport. This corner of West Harwich has been known as Captains’ Row for about a century largely because of the emergence of a first coastal, then an international, maritime commerce launched and serviced at the Herring River.

Comprised of handsome Colonial and Federal era dwellings, modest half- and full-Cape houses, Greek Revival homes, Italianate Villas, Queen Anne and Shingle Style residences — as well as a few interesting early 20th century specimens — one is excused for missing them because an ugly envelope of neglect and disrepair makes it easy to ignore. Slow down and one can appreciate just how utterly beautiful this little time capsule of early Harwich really is.

The geographic, topographic, and spiritual center of this stretch occurs at the apex of an ancient curve: the West Harwich Baptist Church. Few now think of this building as having any wider importance than as the decaying container of a now-lost congregation. What follows is an effort to correct this blithe dismissal and look afresh at this beautiful landmark and its fascinating origins in the 20 years prior to the American Revolution.

We are, witting or not, products of our education. The Revolution is frequently presented as a military reaction to the failure of political means in the redress of injustices. This oversimplification perhaps offends less than the old “taxation without representation” chestnut, but it still misses the mark in terms of seeing that vast event from the ground up.

The benefit of a local, granular focus is that it admits fresh, vivid, and perhaps unfamiliar motivations for the emergence of revolutionary fervor in different parts of the country. One vital factor, often overlooked, is the matter of religious observance and how it supported action in other spheres of life.

In addition to interpreting historical events through often rigid disciplinary boundaries, we also tend to impose our own protocols of secular rationality on an often-recalcitrant past. I imagine few people today would be so moved by doctrinal matters as to enlist in the armed forces!

But that, indeed, was the case all over New England, and an exemplary instance occurred in the town of Harwich in the bumptious, early years of the Baptist congregation that was established here in 1757. This story was first sketched out in the congregation’s Organization of the First Baptist Church in Harwich (1889) and later in far more granular detail in Chapter 37 of Josiah Paine’s History of Harwich (1937).

The congregation’s pre-history begins in 1744 with the appearance in town of one Elisha Paine and his report that, “the pine woods in Harwich ring hallelujahs and hosannas, even from babes; I never heard the like before; from little ones from 6 years old and upwards… God is bringing them in from the hedges.” Born in Eastham, Paine was raised in Connecticut and became an adherent of a group of “separatists” who called themselves New Lights; they desired separation from the established church — what has been recently called “imperial Protestantism”— because they believed that by admitting only those who could manifest a soulful rebirth they were adhering more faithfully, more deeply, and more completely to Christ’s commands for worship than was the Standing Order. In this way, Harwich’s Separates were exhibiting the same kind of defiance of authority that resulted in the banning of Baptists from the Massachusetts Bay Colony as early as 1645.

Half a decade later a Harwich Separatist congregation was formed and led by one Joshua Nickerson. Almost immediately the congregants were persecuted for their beliefs, being both fined and targeted for the collection of ministerial taxes. However, instead of dissuading neighbors, this action contributed to the contrarian appeal of the Separates. The imprisonment of William Eldridge, Isaac Eldridge, and Reuben Eldridge for failing to pay the tax to support Mr. Pell’s South Parish ministry (Harwich Center today) was critical in raising awareness that a state-supported church was contrary to human liberty on both social and on individual levels. As the 1889 West Harwich Baptist history notes, “a number of individual members were put in jail and the estates of others were seized without mercy.” This is entirely consistent with the view that “these Separate Baptists experienced harsh persecution at the hands of the local colonial governments.”

In a nutshell, the appeal of mid-eighteenth-century Baptists was not only that they were dedicated to salvation of the individual human soul but also bound to celebrate the innate value of the individual human conscience and, as such, vehemently opposed to the state-imposed payments for state-sanctioned religious practices that contradicted one’s deepest beliefs. It was a double-edged sword blending conscience with capital. Combined, these two issues rendered Baptists “the ultimate religious outsiders” and a lightning rod for individualists of all stripes.

Just two years after the Nickerson and Eldridge affairs, in the western part of Harwich, a new congregation formed about the activity of one Richard Chase (1714-1794). It would be another six years before this group was established specifically as a Baptist congregation and a solid account of this story — replete with small town infighting, theological confusion, and personal strife — is to be savored in Paine’s history. What is especially notable about the Harwich Baptists is they seemed to have been simultaneously energized by faith, lucky with the people they attracted, and capable of spinning off new congregations across the Cape for decades.

In next week’s edition, Berry explores the role of Harwich Baptists in the run-up to the Revolution. His original work contains scholarly references that are omitted here for sake of space.

Duncan Berry is a twelfth-generation Cape Codder who, along with his wife Kristen, are the fifth consecutive generation to live in the family home on Captains’ Row. His eighth-great grandfather farmed Bell’s Neck and signed Harwich's charter of incorporation in 1694. Berry currently serves Harwich as chair of the planning board and vice president of the Harwich Historical Society. He relishes the fact that his family tree contains scoundrels, sea captains, farmers, military men, corporate types, and an amazing line of heroic women.