Footprints of the Pioneers

Chapter 11—The Large Unfinished Chamber

Stephen Belden

IT WAS in the spring of 1848, the welcome spring of Maine, and in a room of the ample house in Topsham a young woman sat patching her husband’s overcoat. He was stowing their few belongings into their hair cloth trunk. They had not much to pack; their furniture, their dishes, had been borrowed, and would go back to the owners; their little clothing, the slender wardrobe of their babe, their few books-these were all. Pilgrims they were about to become, going from place to place in response to a call from heaven. FOPI 98.4

A conference of Sabbath keepers had been called at the home of Albert Belden, two miles from the village of Rocky Hill, and eight miles from Middletown, Connecticut. Could they go? If they could get the money. James White put away his ax, settled with his employer, received ten dollars. Five dollars of this went for necessary clothing. The overcoat would do, must do, though the patched sleeves must be patched upon the patches-James coat of many colors. The remaining five dollars would take them toward Connecticut. FOPI 98.5

Carrying their babe of seven months, the precious babe whose life had been spared on the condition of their pilgrimage, they took the train to Dorchester, Massachusetts, and went to Otis Nichols. As they left this friendly home, Mrs. Nichols handed Elder White another five dollars. Four-fifty to Middletown; no one met them; and but fifty cents left. What should they do? Where should they go? What should they do with their trunk? There was no checking system then; you claimed your baggage, and you looked out for it. FOPI 100.1

James White tossed the trunk upon a convenient pile of lumber, and they walked on, searching for the house of E. L. H. Chamberlain, who had invited them but who did not know the time of their arrival. Middletown was not so large then but what a few inquiries served their purpose. Welcomed by the Chamberlain family, their trunk soon recovered, they awaited the arrival of Belden’s two-horse rig, which took them and the few brethren of Middletown out to his farm. Four in the afternoon, April 20. In a few minutes in came Joseph Bates and Heman Gurney, seemingly having “missed the bus” at Middletown and having walked out. Fifteen people met that evening; the number swelled next day to fifty. The conference “was held in the large unfinished chamber of Brother Albert Belden’s house.” ⁷¹ FOPI 101.1

So, a hundred years later lacking eighteen months, we followed on the trail of the brethren at the first Sabbath conference the first of six notable conferences that year, in Connecticut, New York, Maine, and Massachusetts, which welded the little company together. At this first conference Joseph Bates and James White were the principal teachers, the former taking the Sabbath as his subject, the latter the third angel’s message, which included the sanctuary and the Spirit of prophecy. Those two subjects included all they had then. Not all of the fifty were fully in harmony, but these studies served to “establish those already in the truth and awaken those who were not fully decided.” ⁷² FOPI 101.2

There is a more recent and better road that leads from Middletown to Rocky Hill, Highway 9; but we took the old road, covered by the present Highways 72 and 3, winding and hilly. Over this the brethren traveled then in their two-horse wagon; and over it, the next year, James White trudged on foot to get his proof sheets of the first paper, and triumphantly at last in Albert Belden’s buckboard to bear the first issue home. FOPI 101.3

Seven miles out we turned to the left on a surfaced lane, and shortly were at Albert Belden’s. But were we? The little house, photographed, photoengraved, and published in some of our books as the house with the large unfinished chamber seemed too small. We were graciously received by the present owners, Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Kantz, who came from Austria thirty-six years ago, and bought it. They assured us that James White and wife lived in the upper part of their house, long ago; but this tradition, naturally, they have received, since 19 10, from Adventist visitors. We went up and measured that “upper chamber”-9 by 14 feet; and if we should remove the partition that passes by the central chimney, it could never have been more than 14 by 15 feet, scarcely a “1arge unfinished chamber.” There are but four rooms below, originally three. FOPI 102.1

The house was doubtless owned by Albert Belden; for it is on one of his three farms, and tradition makes it his. But he had several successive homes, perhaps giving the older ones to his sons. The land records in Rocky Hill were too indefinite for me to determine the exact houses. However, in 1935, W. C. White, visiting here, decided that this could not have been the house where his parents lived; and he fixed upon another which had burned down the year before he went there, the foundations still remaining. This house was next door, a few rods beyond the Kantz house. Kantz took us over there, but the site had been obliterated, the foundation removed, the basement filled, and the field plowed, now luxuriating in a crop of pig weed. FOPI 103.1

However, information given us now, brought this house also in question. The Kantzes were well acquainted with it, having lived in their home twenty-four years before they saw this neighbor house burn down. By their testimony and that of others, we learned it had on the first story but three rooms and a pantry. The upstairs could have been unfinished in 1848 and 1849, but never very large at that. The crowning blow to its claim, however, came when we interviewed an old gentleman in Rocky Hill, Mr. Edward J. Stevens, who informed us that his maternal grandfather Pasco bought that house from Albert Belden in 1845. This information he had from his mother, who was born in 1840, and came with her parents to Rocky Hill when she was four or five years old, when her father bought from Belden. Therefore Albert Belden could not have been living in this house in 1848. FOPI 103.2

Mr. Stevens told us that when Albert Belden sold, he went to live in the house beyond. Perhaps he built it at that time for his residence; for all three houses were on his farm. If he did then build and occupy it, it is understandable that the upstairs may have been one “1arge unfinished chamber” in 1848. This house appears to fit the specifications best of all. It is comparatively a large house, the main part 20 by 30, with two full stories, besides a rear addition 18 by 20, and a story-and-half ell 20 by 30. That gives it ten rooms below, and there are now four rooms above in the upright, partitioned off but still partially unfinished; that is, the rafters still show. There are, besides, living quarters above in the ell, which, however, gives evidence of having been built later. FOPI 103.3

While the present occupant, Mr. Johnny Cuper, whose wife recently hired the property from her father, Jacob Krasawa, could tell us nothing of its early history, it seems to me that this must be the house of Albert Belden in which was the “large unfinished chamber”; first, because it agrees in date; second, because it alone is large enough. If this is correct, a much disputed identification is established. FOPI 104.1

Here the first Sabbath conference was held, in April, 1848. There followed for the Whites a journey through northern New York, to which they were called by Hiram Edson. How could they go? No one to pay their fare; and though food and lodging for the most part were supplied by the hospitable friends of those frontier times, they must have money for traveling. Hiram Edson wrote that the brethren in New York were very poor, but they would help all they could. FOPI 105.1

James White looked around, and behold, there was work to do, for the wages of that day. Below them on the creek bottom lay 1800 acres of hay land, ⁷³ some of this belonging to Albert Belden, some to others. A contract was taken to mow a hundred-acre field of this, by James White, John Belden (a son of Albert), and George W. Holt, a Middletown believer who was henceforth for a dozen years to be one of the foremost of the pioneering preachers. They mowed it by hand, for the horse drawn mower had not yet been invented; and they were paid 87V2 cents an acre. James White received for his part forty dollars. ⁷⁴ FOPI 105.2

With this they ventured into New York, leaving their child with Miss Clarissa Bonfoey at Middletown. That they were helped by others on the way is apparent in the incident of the packet on the canal, when Joseph Bates paid their fare. Hiram Edson and his “very poor” brethren must have helped some, too. They returned to Connecticut, received little Henry from Miss Bonfoey, and went on to Maine. When they set out again, they left the child with the Howlands, where he remained for the next five years. FOPI 105.3

They were in Topsham, Maine, in the spring of 1849, when invitations came both from Connecticut and from New York for them to labor there. In perplexity they decided to respond to the call from Utica, New York, but Mrs. White did not feel clear, so she and her husband knelt and prayed for clear light. The next day’s mail brought a letter from. Albert Belden, of Rocky Hill, with a pressing invitation and an enclosure of money sufficient to move them to that place. In this they saw the providence of God, and to Middletown and Rocky Hill they went. This was in June, 1849. FOPI 105.4

Clarissa Bonfoey’s mother had recently died and left household furnishings sufficient for a small family. She proposed to join them, giving the use of her goods and doing their work, so that they might be free for public labors and writing. This offer they accepted, and with Miss Bonfoey set up housekeeping in “a part of Brother Belden’s house at Rocky Hill.” ⁷⁵ She does not say that this included the “1arge unfinished chamber,” but considering the plan of the house, it likely did; and either before or when they took over, the big room was doubtless partitioned. We were therefore, in the upper story of this house, probably looking upon the living quarters as they were then. FOPI 106.1

In the meeting at Topsham, Maine, the fifth of the “Sabbath Conferences,” October 20 to 22, 1848, the brethren had discussed the publication of a periodical to present their views; but the means to do this not appearing, no action was decided upon. The sixth conference was held November 18, in Dorchester, Massachusetts, where Otis Nichols lived. Here Mrs. White received a remarkable vision, in which the future of a great work was opened in symbol, and the message was impressed which she gave to her husband immediately: “You must begin to print a little paper and send it out to the people. Let it be small at first; but as the people read, they will send you means with which to print, and it will be a success from the first. From this small beginning it was shown to me to be like streams of light that went clear round the world.” ⁷⁶ FOPI 106.2

The next summer, settled at Rocky Hill, James White stepped out by faith and prepared the copy for Present Truth, our first periodical. He hired it printed in Middletown by Charles Hamlin Pelton, whose third-floor print-shop location is well identified. It has passed through several hands since then, and has been used for various purposes. When we were there, it had been occupied for three or four months by the local headquarters of Jehovah’s Witnesses, though none were at hand when we called, and the door was locked. But the place was long ago identified as the shop site; and also, we found in Hartford a granddaughter, Mrs. Frances Pelton Robinson, who verified the location. FOPI 106.3

Here, then, on this pleasant September day of 1946, we traced the footsteps of that dauntless man of God, James White, as he limped on his lame foot the eight long miles from Rocky Hill to Middletown and back, time and again, to make the arrangements for printing and to read the proofs; and we noted the final triumphant day when with Belden’s horse and buggy he brought the thousand copies of Volume 1, Number 1, out to this house of Albert Belden’s at Rocky Hill. FOPI 107.1

I suppose that his wife and the Beldens came out to greet him, and to help him in with the packages, of the flat sheets of the eight-page paper. There may have been Albert Belden and his wife, perhaps John Belden, and perhaps young Stephen Belden, who afterward married Sarah Harmon, Ellen’s sister, and who was to end his life with his mission in the ‘ ‘South Seas’. He could not see, on that prophetic day, the far reaches to which the message would sweep, and he on the tide, with hundreds of others, in a foreign but welcoming land. “Like streams of light that went clear round the world.” FOPI 107.2

Whoever they were, they gathered in the house, probably in the Belden’s parlor, or else the kitchen, that being usually the largest room in the old houses. They may, however, have taken the papers to the quarters that had been the “large unfinished chamber.” They spread them out upon the floor, and then they knelt around them and prayed, with humble hearts and many tears, that the Lord would let His blessing rest upon these printed messengers of truth. Then they folded them, with that unaccustomed but soon skilled sweep of hand and arm. They wrapped them, and they addressed them to all who they thought would read them. And then James White, on foot, carried them in a carpetbag to the post office in Middletown. ⁷⁷ FOPI 107.3

Scene of historic, humble glory! Beginning of the worldwide sweep of our literature, falling in a thousand languages over the world like the leaves of autumn. Food for our thought, our fond memories, our earnest resolutions, as we stand upon this walled and sodded terrace, in front of the house in Rocky Hill where was the start of our publishing work, in the large unfinished chamber. FOPI 108.1