Part 4

The new pastor was ordained on June 18, 1844. He entered with enthusiasm into his work. Among these rugged farmers, fishermen, and sailors, he sought in all ways to expound and exemplify the teachings of Him who many years before taught the fishermen of Galilee. On the Sabbath he preached sermons so interesting and eloquent that people came in boat loads from the islands to hear his words; and he entered familiarly and sympathetically into the home life of his parishioners. “His little boat might be seen in all weathers flitting to and fro between mainland and islands as he made the circuit of his watery parish in visits of friendship or of consolation, to officiate at a marriage or a funeral. He was heartily welcome in every home, for he knew their domestic life, and seemed to be a part of it; and he talked of the sea and of Him who made it in a way that brought him close to the hearts of his people, and made religion seem a natural and practical and important part of daily life. He rebuked wrong-doing, recognized and applauded every good act or effort, composed differences between neighbors, helped in manual toil, comforted the afflicted, gave to the poor,--and all in such a simple, unconventional, and genuine fashion, that his people felt that he was one of them, only better than the rest.[1]”

[1] From an address by Professor Henry L. Chapman, delivered at the Maine State Congregational Conference, September, 1901.

The pastor of the early forties was often formal, arbitrary, and autocratic, seeking to drive rather than to lead his flock. Between pastor and people there was too often a great gulf fixed. But this humorous, unpretentious, sincere man did not hold himself as of finer clay than his people. He liked to plant and reap with his parishioners. To pull rockweed and pitch hay and chop wood, to swing the flail and hold the plough, were not beneath his dignity.

One Sunday during these first years of his pastorate, just after reading the usual notices, he said: “Widow Jones’s grass, I see, needs mowing. I shall be in her field to-morrow morning at half-past four with scythe, rake, and pitch-fork. I shall be glad to see all of you there who wish to come and help me.” The next morning found a good crew of men and boys in the field ready for work. Among them was a man six feet two in his stocking-feet and weighing some 250 pounds. Captain Griggs we will call him. As they were working up the field near each other, the captain said, “Parson, I am going to cut your corners this morning.” The little wiry parson, who had served a good apprenticeship upon his uncle’s farm in Gorham, whet his scythe and kept his counsel. The big captain didn’t cut any of his corners that day. Indeed, the story goes that before noon the man who thought that he could mow around the parson, dropped under a tree, exhausted by the terrific pace that Kellogg set.

Before he had completed the first year of his ministry, Mr. Kellogg was elected a member of the school committee, on which he served several years. That he sought to do his duty on the school board faithfully is attested by the resolution--heroic it will seem to some--which he recorded on December 8, 1844. “Having never till this time been fully convinced of the importance of mathematics in strengthening the mind and preparing it to investigate truth, and never having been able to conquer my dislike for them till led to them by the study of philosophy and an impression of the interdependence of all philosophy and all science, I now begin at the bottom and determine to push my researches as far as possible and to set down whatever may be worthy of note. I this day commenced Emerson’s Arithmetic in order to be prepared to do my duty thoroughly as one of the superintending committee.” As committeeman, he did more than make a perfunctory visit twice a term. He kept his eyes open for the alert, promising, studious lad. Such a boy he encouraged, advised concerning his studies, and often urged to go to Master Swallow’s school in Brunswick and fit for college. These boys he picked carefully, for he didn’t believe in “wasting nails by driving them into rotten wood.”

From the first of his ministry to the very end, Mr. Kellogg showed an instinctive knowledge of boys, and originality in dealing with them. Any just estimate of his work and character must rate high his tact in handling and influencing boys. Wherever he preached, boys were quick to see that he was their friend, a man after their own heart. They soon found that this unconventional, simple, eloquent little man, who had a way of throwing his arm over a boy’s shoulder and walking home from the evening meeting with him, was more than an ordinary preacher. They found that he could understand them. They could tell him their jokes and their serious plans, and he could see through their eyes and hear through their ears. They found that he, more perhaps than any other man they had ever known, was all the time at heart a boy himself; that he was interested in them not simply as a professional duty, but because he couldn’t help it. He loved boys, was happy in their companionship, and delighted to talk of his own boyhood and college days,--of the time when the frogs by croaking “K’logg, K’logg,” called him away from school, or when he in recitation informed his dignified professor that Polycarp was one of the _many_ daughters of Mr. Carp. He would swim and sail and farm and fish with the boys in his parish, and then, at an unexpected moment, but in a manner not repellent, he would kneel down in their boat or in the field by the side of a cock of hay or a shock of corn and pray with them.

Many men to-day who were born and bred in Harpswell like to tell of the way he won and kept their friendship. Here, for example, was a boy whom he was taking to Portland in his boat; the youngster felt very proud, for his grandmother had intrusted to him her eggs to take to market. But alas! in disembarking he dropped the basket, and the eggs were smashed. The boy’s extremity, however, was the preacher’s opportunity. By paying for those eggs from his own pocketbook, he saved the young marketman no end of humiliation, and bound him to his soul with a hoop of steel.

If one may judge by his journal and correspondence, no work that Mr. Kellogg did during his long life afforded him greater satisfaction or yielded larger returns in affection and gratitude and right living than his work with boys. When, for instance, he had been on Harpswell Neck less than a year, he heard that a schooner had put into Potts’s Point, some ten miles below his home, with a boy on board who had broken his leg. He knew that this boy on a small schooner in a strange place would need sadly the comforts of home. He hastened to him, brought him to his boarding-place, put him in his own bed, and nursed him as he would have nursed a son. When the boy was able to go to sea again, having no money, he could repay his benefactor for all the trouble and expense he had been, only with words of kindness and gratitude. Years afterwards, however, when Mr. Kellogg was preaching in Boston, a well-dressed man and woman came into the sailors’ church, and appeared much interested in the sermon. At the close of the service they came forward and spoke to the preacher. The boy had now become a man--the mate of a large ship. The bread which the young minister had cast upon the waters now returned to him after twenty years, in the words of affection and encouragement with which this man and his wife expressed their gratitude, also in the $50 which, as they bade him good-by, they left in his hand.

For some years Bowdoin College, recognizing Mr. Kellogg’s power in getting at the heart of boys, had the custom of sending to him some of the students whom it rusticated; and his strong, manly character brought more than one boy to his better self. That his treatment of these boys was not exactly that of Squeers, this instance will show. One young fellow whom the college sent him was especially rebellious at first. Through cheap story papers he had come cheek by jowl with old Sleuth and his boon companions, and he sought to emulate them by carrying a revolver and a dirk knife. Mr. Kellogg told him that as he would not find any Indians or many wild beasts down there, he had better surrender his weapons. This the young man did after much reluctance. During the first day, Mr. Kellogg left him to himself, as he was inclined to sulk. In the evening he began to talk to the boy indifferently at first, afterwards kindly. All the time--lover-like--he kept edging up nearer to him on the big sofa, and finally in his genuine, whole-souled way, put his hand affectionately on the lad’s shoulder. To such treatment the young fellow was not accustomed. It was so different from his over-stern father’s that it threw him entirely off his guard. He could not withstand the man’s kindly interest and genuine manner. His rebellious spirit was broken. The boy dreaded his father’s rebuke, and the next day, unknown to him, Mr. Kellogg wrote to his mother, telling all about her son and urging that the father write to him kindly and not sternly. A few days after this the young fellow was surprised and delighted to receive from home a letter of forgiveness and encouragement.

On July 4, there was to be a celebration in Portland. The boy wished but did not expect to go. “Well,” said Mr. Kellogg one day after they had been speaking of the matter, “I am afraid you can’t go. I have no authority to let you. But, then, I really want to attend that celebration myself, and I can’t be expected to leave you at home alone.” When the day of celebration came, the student and the preacher could have been seen tramping the streets of Portland, both, no doubt, having a right royal good time.

A few years ago, the heart of the aged minister was uplifted by the assurance that he had dealt aright with this high-spirited lad. A successful business man, the vice-president of a large western railroad, came many miles to look again into his kindly face and to tell him that those weeks of companionship full of honest counsel marked the turning-point in his life.

For the first five years of his life in Harpswell, Mr. Kellogg boarded at the home of one of his parishioners, Mr. Joseph Eaton. Here his mother spent the summers with him, his father having died in 1843. In 1849 he bought a farm of thirty-five acres at North Harpswell, and at once began to build a house that he might provide a suitable home for his lame and aged mother. The location of this house is an attractive one. It is on the western side of Harpswell Neck, a half-mile or so from the main-travelled road. From it the land slopes gently an eighth of a mile, perhaps, to the shore of Middle Bay. From the windows of the house which he here built, one peeping through the oaks and spruces on a summer’s day may see to the west, across the sparkling water of the channel, the green sloping bank of Simpson’s Point, or to the south Birch and Scrag islands and several of the other 363 which dot the waters of Casco Bay. The house itself is a wooden, two-story, L-shaped farm-house facing the west, bespeaking nothing of luxury, but large enough to be airy in the summer, and in the winter a good place, as Captain Rhines would say, in which to ride out the storm.

Much of the material of which the house is made Mr. Kellogg brought here from different parts of his parish; some strong timbers from Ragged Island, three miles out at sea, fine sand for his mortar from Sand Island, and the door-stone from Birch. Nearly all of the larger timbers in his house this preacher cut and hauled himself. And when they were on the spot, seventy-five of his friends and neighbors, giving him a good surprise, as did those of Lion Ben in the Elm Island stories, came and hewed the timbers and framed his house. Little wonder is it that this house, with its attractive surroundings and its pleasant associations, was ever to him the most beautiful place on earth.

He lived here with his mother and housekeeper until 1852, when his mother died. This bereavement took a strong influence out of his life; for the tactful, firm-willed mother had played a large part in moulding the character of her impetuous, venturesome son. In 1854 he married Miss Hannah Pearson Pomeroy, daughter of Rev. Thaddeus Pomeroy of Syracuse, New York, previously pastor of the Congregational church of Gorham, Maine. Three children were born to them: a son who died in infancy; Frank Gilman, at present in business in Boston; and Mary Catherine, the wife of Mr. Harry Batchelder of Melrose Highlands, Massachusetts.

The circumstances of Mr. Kellogg’s marriage are characteristic. While he always maintained a due respect for women, he was preeminently a man’s man or perhaps better a boy’s man. It is not surprising, then, to be told that his wife was “recommended to him.” A friend of his at Gorham, rallying him a bit on his bachelorhood, asked why in the world he did not marry. “Oh,” said he, “I can find no one to have me.” Whereupon his friend replied, “There is your old schoolmate, Hannah Pomeroy of Syracuse, a minister’s daughter, well educated, a good school-teacher, and smart as a whip; just the woman for a minister’s wife.” What had been the preacher’s previous plans concerning matrimony is not known, but before long he took a trip to Syracuse, and when he returned, the bargain was practically made. Though apparently so businesslike a transaction, this proved to be for more than forty years a happy union. His friend spoke truly. Had Mr. Kellogg searched many years, he could not have found a better helpmate than Hannah Pomeroy. Attractive, sincere, energetic, practical, she was a prudent, encouraging wife and a wise, loving mother.

The folk-lore of Harpswell contains many stories of this minister’s daring on sea and land and of his original ways in dealing with both saints and sinners; so original, indeed, that one rough old admirer on Ragged Island, whom Mr. Kellogg had influenced for good in a way that no other minister had ever thought of doing, said that when Parson Kellogg died, he was going to carve upon his tombstone three letters--”D. F. M.” The last two were to stand for “Funny Minister.”

This daring parson had upon his farm a bull that rendered himself extremely obnoxious to visitors who found it convenient to reach his house by crossing the pasture. The bull, therefore, must be disciplined. The preacher first harnessed Mr. Taurus to the front wheels of a heavy cart, preparatory to putting him over the road and showing him who was master. But before the guiding ropes had been adequately arranged, the bull on a mad rush took to the woods, leaving in his trail fragments of cart-wheels and harness. The little minister, however, was not thus to be outdone. The next day, at flood-tide, with tempting fodder he allured the bull to the end of the wharf and in an unguarded moment shoved him into the bay. An excellent swimmer, he then quickly jumped astride the bull’s back. By grasping his horns and intermittently thrusting his head under water, with a prowess which a “broncho-buster” might well envy, he conquered his steed. Thus, as all stories rightly end, they lived happily together ever afterwards.

Of this pastor’s unconventional methods in accepting and dispensing gifts of charity, the following are illustrative. One afternoon, just before tea, he happened into the house of a master ship-builder in his parish, a man of property and influence. The old gentleman was on the best of terms with the young preacher, and after passing the time of day, began to banter him on the condition of his boots, which were muddy and somewhat the worse for wear. “Parson, what makes you wear such disreputable-looking foot-gear?” he said. “Throw those boots away and let me get you a new pair.” The parson waited till later before he fired the return shot. After all were comfortably seated at the tea-table and he had said grace, he asked to be excused for a moment and went to the sitting room. There a good fire was blazing upon the hearth, and near by were the master-builder’s best shoes. Quickly came off the parson’s old boots, and into the fire they went; and as quickly went on to stay the master-builder’s best calfskins.

One winter day while on Orr’s Island, he got an inkling that a family there was in distress. By skilful inquiry he learned that the father had been drinking badly, and the mother and children needed food and fuel. Something must be done at once to relieve them. Going to the house of a well-to-do parishioner, he requested the use of his horse and sled for an hour or two. When they were ready, he quickly drove up to the man’s woodpile and loaded the sled generously, while the owner stood by in wonderment. The only explanation given was: “That family down there need fuel badly. You’ve got a plenty, and I’m going to haul them down a good load.” And that was explanation enough, for Parson Kellogg offered it.

Although so familiar and informal in his social and pastoral relations, as a preacher he never hesitated to point out to his people their duty in language that was unmistakable. Soon after the new church was built, for example, he told them that increased privilege means ever increased responsibility. “God has given you,” he said, “a commodious and elegant place of worship. Why? That you might sit down and admire it and be proud of it? Do that, and He will wither you to the root. Do it, and He will send leanness into your souls. My dear friends, we had better, like our Puritan forefathers on the coast of Holland, kneel down among the rocks and seaweed in the cold winter to pray to God with the humble spirit with which they prayed than to worship Him here in peace and comfort, surrounded with tasteful decorations, without that humility. You have heard of congratulation and praise as much as you ought to hear. I wish you to look at your increased responsibility. As God has made you first in point of privilege, be not by abusing those privileges the last to attain salvation.”

In his pulpit, with plain-spoken words such as these, and with quaint phrases, and apt illustrations drawn from the farm, the forest, and the sea, this preacher quickened the conscience, and broadened the sympathies, and strengthened the faith of the farmers, fishermen, and sailors, who heard him gladly. As a preacher, “he seemed,” says one who knew him well, “a prophet in the authority with which he spoke, an evangelist in the tenderness with which he appealed to the conscience and set forth the promises of the Gospel, a poet often in the simple beauty and grace with which he portrayed the conditions of human life, and discoursed of the deep things of God.”

THE SEAMAN’S FRIEND

GEORGE KIMBALL

At its annual meeting, May 17, 1854, the Boston Seaman’s Friend Society accepted the resignation of Rev. George W. Bourne, pastor of the Mariners’ Church and chaplain of the Sailors’ Home. The board of managers then began the search for “a suitable man” for the vacant position, and their choice fell upon Rev. Elijah Kellogg of Harpswell, Maine.

Mr. Kellogg began his duties in September of that year, with his accustomed earnestness, and under his ministry the attendance at the church increased, and a new impulse was given to the society’s work.

He first appeared before the society at its twenty-seventh anniversary, held in Tremont Temple, May 30, 1855. A large audience was assembled. President Alpheus Hardy introduced him in complimentary terms, and he made an eloquent address. His “suitability” as the seaman’s friend and pastor is shown in these extracts: “The greater portion of my life has been spent among seamen, either at sea or on shore. The first personal effort, to any extent, I made for the salvation of souls was while teaching among a community of sailors. The first sermon I preached was to sailors. The first couple I united in marriage were a sailor and his bride. The first child I baptized was a sailor’s child. The first burial service I performed was over the body of a seaman. The society with which I have been connected during the last eleven years is with scarcely an exception composed of sailors and their families. There is not a house in the parish in which the roar of the surf may not be heard, and in many of them the Atlantic flings its spray upon the door-stone.... The men who interest seamen and do them good have not any recipe for it; neither can they impart it to others. It is all instinctive. They love the webbed feet, and the webbed feet love them.”

Mr. Kellogg was at this time forty-one years old. His pleasing personal appearance and his hearty, rugged, forceful utterance made a favorable impression upon his hearers.

The task he had undertaken was by no means an easy one. It involved hard and constant work, often of a kind little, if at all, like that of the average clergyman. On the Sabbath there were in the Mariners’ Church three services for public worship, and the Sunday-school. In addition to this work upon the Sabbath, Mr. Kellogg conducted a social religious meeting in the reading room of the Sailors’ Home upon one evening of each week, and in the winter lectured occasionally in the church upon topics of vital interest. He visited sailors upon shipboard and in hospital, offered the comforts of religion to the sick and dying, and often communicated to loved ones the parting message they would never otherwise have received. For this work the salary was necessarily small, and the material equipment not of the best; but Mr. Kellogg did not hesitate. He threw himself into the work with zeal and enthusiasm.

From the establishment of the Seaman’s Friend Society in 1827 to July 12, 1852, religious services were held at the Sailors’ Home, but upon the latter date the building was burned. The church at the corner of Summer and Sea streets, which had formerly been owned and used by the Christian Baptists, was soon after purchased, and on December 30, 1852, was dedicated to the work for sailors. A church building, in these days, like the modest bethel in Summer Street would be regarded as quaint in appearance and ill-adapted to its uses. It was inferior, in many ways, even to other churches of its day, but it was easily accessible to those to whom it especially ministered (wharves to the south were then much more fully utilized by shipping than they now are), and was in the centre of a favorite residential district; for Fort Hill and surrounding streets were at that time mainly occupied by pretentious dwellings.

The Sailors’ Home, when rebuilt, was a large brick structure upon the eastern slope of Fort Hill, at 99 Purchase Street. Here, with Mr. John O. Chaney as its superintendent, many of the brave carriers of the commerce of the world were comfortably housed and cared for. The Home had a large reading room and library, and besides providing good board and home comforts, it did much from time to time for the relief of shipwrecked and destitute sailors. Often hundreds of sailors were here. The very year Mr. Kellogg began his work it sheltered 2458, and during his chaplaincy of nearly eleven years 25,358 were beneath its roof.