City of Springdale History On-Line

Many of the Springfield settlers came from the "Scottish Plains," of New Jersey, the counties of Somerset, Sussex and Essex, areas in which a harsh puritanical Calvinism still dominated. They brought their Presbyterian faith with them to the wilderness and for some it served as a bulwark. For others an unemotional Calvinism could not offer the support needed to brave the frontier.

At first, however, Presbyterianism offered the only certainty in an uncertain world. When the Springfield pioneers cut their way through the forest, gouged out a clearing and huddled together in clusters of two or three cabins, they faced an uncertain future. The threat of Indian attacks and deadly disease haunted them. But this fragile hold on life was only the most dramatic cause of uncertainty. When the settlers moved to Springfield, they had also loosened family and community ties. Now they faced remaking their lives and creating a new community hundreds of miles away in an unforgiving wilderness.

Like so many other new settlements, establishing a church assumed paramount importance. In 1792, even before they felt free to leave the stockade at Pleasant Valley Station, the faithful conducted religious services. The Presbytery of Kentucky responded by sending Reverend James Kemper, a newly ordained pastor, to minister to the needs of the Pleasant Ridge and Springfield Presbyterian churches. Mindful of the dangers of travel, "a detail of riflemen went down below the Kentucky River to bring him safely to his new field."

Once in Springfield, Kemper directed the members of his new flock to bring their rifles with them to services and to have them ready for use if necessary.

In 1796 the need for a meeting house led to a subscription:

Others heeded the call and the congregation moved into a log meeting house in 1798. With the Treaty of Greenville in 1794 came a new security regarding Native Americans, in fact the Indians now became the object of the Springfield church's missionary efforts. The church struggled in the early years in its effort to find a full-time pastor. Archibald Steele preached for a few months, followed by Reverend John E. Finley who filled in briefly, and on October 7, 1800, John Brown, a man "noted for the independence of his views," began his ministry which "did not succeed so much." "Unfavorable reports as to his moral character" sealed his fate.

By 1801, however, the future of the church brightened. James McCormick, brother of Springfield trustee John McCormick, permitted the building of a church and a cemetery on two and one-half acres of his land west of the Great Road. The new church was a two-story frame building, "nearly square with galleries on the three sides and a pulpit on the north end." Construction of the church was completed in 1803, although the congregation put the building into use in 1802 although it was not finished until the following year.

A fine new church required a permanent, ordained minister. The elders had been impressed with the preaching of John Thompson when he visited the church in the summer of 1801. In October, William Preston applied to the presbytery to have Thompson ordained as the minister of the Springfield church and on November 11, Bishop Kemper ordained him, beginning a thirty-three year relationship that was alternately close, stormy and highly eventful.

Thompson proved to be a dedicated, selfless individual. Preaching in the little unfinished church, Thompson spoke to the spiritual yearnings of his flock which grew steadily. On the last Sabbath in May 1802, seventy-one took part in the first communion. On April 9, 1803 Thompson held a highly successful revival. In the first twenty-two months of his pastorate Thompson baptized seventy-seven children and six adults. As the church thrived it prepared the way for the village that would soon develop around it.

Yet, from the time of Thompson's ordination, questions arose about his doctrinal purity. Rumors circulated that he had been infected by the radical doctrines taught at Cabin Creek, Cane Ridge and Red River, Kentucky. These areas were the hotbeds of the evangelical revivalism that spread like wildfire through the Kentucky and Tennessee frontier.

Periods of evangelistic religious fervor have been characteristic of America. Some of the Springfield residents may have had fathers who had experienced the revivalist atmosphere of the first Great Awakening in the 1760s in which preachers had alternately thrilled and terrorized their listeners with their "fire and brimstone sermons." Since then, however, the churches had refocused their attentions on questions of theology and Christian conduct. Such cold Calvinism could not satisfy the needs of the pioneers.

Camp meetings offered spiritual sustenance, and also met the need of the settlers for entertainment and sociability. Ordinarily, six or seven preachers would clear a spot in the forest for their outdoor cathedral. Somehow word would spread. Soon entire families would begin arriving, their wagons loaded down with enough provisions to last a full two weeks. And then the excitement began.

Later in his life, Reverend James Finley described the impact of the Cane Ridge camp meeting he attended as a youth of twenty:

Could John Thompson, who was having such success at the Springfield Presbyterian Church, possibly be like one of these preachers?

In the spring of 1803 word came that charges had been brought against Richard McNemar, Thompson's intimate friend and associate. In April, the presbytery met at the Springfield church to try McNemar on the charges of preaching abstract free-will doctrine which was grounds for excommunication. Persons unknown presented a petition to have both McNemar and Thompson examined for free-will doctrines which, of course, contradicted Presbyterian beliefs that the individual was predestined for salvation or damnation. After a marathon church trial which lasted from Wednesday through Sunday, the vote was three to two against excommunication. The people of Springfield knew their pastor and they knew him as a force for good. His preaching strengthened them more than any abstract doctrine ever could.

The Presbyterian Synod of Kentucky, however, did care about abstract doctrine. In the summer it reversed its decision and dispatched William Robinson to the Springfield church to inform Thompson and the congregation of this new position. Anticipating the synod's move, Thompson, McNemar and a third associate, John Dunlevy, seceded, and formed a new Presbytery of Springfield. Thompson was officially suspended on October 5, 1803.

Although a majority of the Springfield congregation supported Thompson, McCormick, who had never actually deeded the meeting-house grounds, remained loyal to orthodoxy. So Thompson and his followers built a New Light church "a stone's throw from the old," that met at exactly the same time. They acquired the name "New Light" because Thompson claimed that God made his will known by an inward light in the heart of those individuals who honestly sought him. On June 28, 1804 the new Presbytery of Springfield dissolved itself as a governing body to make way for the Second Coming of Christ. In preparation Thompson and his followers wrote a document called the "last will and testament," in which they rejected the Presbyterian Confession of Faith and all other creeds but the New Testament. The logical next step was the abolition of the institutional church, including even the elders. The church members would choose their own preachers and support them through their own free will offerings.

When Christ did not arrive immediately, Thompson continued to preach his New Light gospel in preparation for the eventual day of judgment. Over the next few years thousands journeyed to Springfield to hear his sermons. He continued the practice which he had originated at a Cane Ridge revival of dancing when the Holy Spirit moved him. The congregation soon joined in. The church could not accommodate the enormous crowds so in the summer it met outdoors in the forest later to be known as Hilts' woods.

As the day wore into evening the preachers became hoarse from exhorting their listeners to repent. The darkened forest made it easy to imagine the lake of fire and brimstone that awaited the unrepentant sinner. The women in front began to tremble and shake. Soon the enormous crowd would roll in ecstasy from side to side, catching at the saplings. Some worshipers barked at the trees because, as they said, they had the "devil treed." Others shouted and danced and spoke in tongues. Some fell onto the ground, completely unconscious. In the words of Reverend George Bergen, a minister in Springfield in the 1850s and an historian of the church:

The New Light movement in Springfield grew for three more years.

Only five or six families stayed faithful to the original Presbyterian church. These stalwart supporters included the families of James McCormick, Benjamin Perlee, Michael Long and James Vance. Reverend James Kemper drove out often from his home in Walnut Hills to help the troubled Church. Many years later, the respected Springfield Presbyterian Church elder, C.A.B. Kemper, told his daughter Helen stories of those frightening trips through the woods when he was just six-years old. He made the trip sitting in a little chair at the feet of his parents.

At the end of the first year, in October 1804, Matthew G. Wallace began an unsuccessful stint as the minister. He was dismissed in 1807. Joshua Wilson and Daniel Hayden served occasionally during 1808 and 1809. The church clung to its existence by a thread.

Meanwhile, divisions appeared within the ranks of the New Light movement. McNemar insisted that shaking should occur only when the spirit was present. Thompson disagreed. A far more serious rupture occurred shortly thereafter. The followers of Sister Ann May, founder of the Shakers, sent missionaries from New Lebanon, New York into the Ohio valley. The Shakers, officially known as the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Coming, wished to withdraw from society completely in order to await the Second Coming. In the meantime they established a new society in which they donated their worldly goods to the community and dedicated themselves to an austere life of worship and hard work. In some of their forms of worship, the New Light movement and the Shakers were similar, especially the shaking and the speaking in tongues. The Shakers, however, created radical new communities which separated the sexes, forbade sexual intercourse and supplanted their number through adoption.

In some ways it must have seemed a logical extension of the New Light movement. In any event, McNemar became a believer as did Dunlevy. Thompson, on the other hand, was alarmed and denounced the Shakers as the Antichrist, saying "I see the mark of the beast on that church as plain as I see the paper I write, and I know I see it by the light of God." The Shakers moved on and established Union Shaker Village near Lebanon, Ohio. Most of the converts to Shakers were from the New Lights. Shaker missionaries proselytized in New Light communities. Thompson, appalled at what he considered to be the excess of the Shakers and feeling responsible for it, fought it with all his energy. McNemar interpreted Thompson's opposition as a concern to protect private property. Together with other Springfield, men Thompson went to Turtle Creek where McNemar was holding a camp meeting. Interrupting the meeting, Thompson mounted the stand to tell the audience that the Shakers were liars and deceivers who only wanted to take their property.

Thompson's responsibility for the persecutions that followed is unclear. The Western Star, a Lebanon newspaper, had already stirred up hate with its distorted depiction of Shaker practices. The Shakers themselves felt the Springfield "schismatics" shared the responsibility.

The first mob arrived at Union Village on August 27, 1810. Reportedly the Springfield Light-Horse brigade was on hand and "many more of the baser sort from Springfield." In the melee that followed the crowd destroyed the Shakers' orchards and burned their buildings. Jealousy may have played a part in the violence. The Shakers were excellent farmers and received higher prices for their products than the farmers in neighboring regions. Mobs attacked Union Village again in 1812, 1813 and 1817. By that time, however, the Springfield New Light movement was defunct and, disillusioned, John Thompson had returned to the Presbyterian fold.

On October 9, 1811 Thompson asked the synod to restore him to the ministry and it granted his request "upon [his] bare confession alone" on November 22, 1811. Remarkably, the following year the Springfield Presbyterian Church welcomed back its minister. According to Bergen, not a Sunday went by that Reverend Thompson did not mention the "last will and testament" and admit that he was more ashamed of his part than anything he had ever done. Thompson led the church for the next twenty years. The congregation tried to avoid the painful subject of the schism with little success. Not only did Thompson bring up the "last will," but one elderly Springfield woman always forget herself and behaved in an embarrassing New Light manner. During Thompson's sermons she would "shriek and rush to the pastor where she fell prostrate before the pulpit." In that way she was his special cross to bear.

II

The New Light movement swept across Springfield with great intensity. Just as quickly it burned out, though not without dividing the community and leaving a legacy of religious bigotry and violence against the Shakers. But a mere account of this fascinating story does little to help understand the success of the New Light Movement in Springfield. Other areas succumbed to the second Great Awakening with its numerous sects and movements but not all frontier settlements responded as intensely as Springfield. Almost a century later, Judge Charles Hoffman, the historian of the church, indicated that it was

simply a matter of wicked people, saying "there is no doubt that there was much unbelief, and sinful living in the country around Springfield in the first years of the nineteenth century." William Henry Harrison, referring to the same time period, spoke of the general immorality all around Cincinnati.

The new religion emphasized the personal relationship between the sinner and God. While human beings had a tendency towards sin they also had the ability to choose God through his or her own self-induced spiritual awakening. Salvation, therefore, while ultimately a gift from God, was a gift chosen freely by the individual. Settlers who carved a place out of the wilderness also carved out a religion that fit the American cultural emphasis on individualism.

New Light preachers also de-emphasized learning. Again, notice the leveling tendency of this religion. Bergen commented that many of the New Light followers had not been members of the Presbyterian congregation. Perhaps they had not been because of the stringent code of conduct and moral behavior such membership demanded. Small children and women took an active role in the revival outbursts. Bergen speaks of boys not older than twelve or thirteen preaching with all the "authority of the apostles." If indeed, part of the great response to the New Lights reflected a rejection of a socially stratified society, the movement allowed heretofore silent groups to challenge authority. In his most telling remark, Bergen commented that he believed the more unconventional forms of worship were "all highly calculated to shock the staid and the sober-minded." His comments are particularly fascinating because he wrote while Thompson was still living, and he had the opportunity to speak with the elderly Springfield residents who had lived through the village's own great schism.

Unquestionably, the dangers and isolation of life on the frontier created a desire for a religion that spoke more directly to the emotions than did the existing Calvinistic Presbyterianism. But the full explanation of the popularity of revivalism is far more complex, involving the structural nature of a new, developing community. The evangelicals rejected any sort of hierarchical structure. In the established church, the main authority came from the elders, who were also often the more prosperous members of the community. A good example is the group in Springfield who remained loyal to the established church throughout the schism, staid farmers like McCormick and Perlee who had cleared large farms that were productive. These were men of strong influence. Conflicts arose as newcomers sought to establish businesses that catered to a transient population traveling Springfield Pike. These businesses often promoted drinking, dancing and card playing, all of which appalled the austere elders. Still, when travelers left their money at the taverns and the inns, it benefited the entire economy and many in the village, who may not have approved of these practices themselves, resented the pronouncements of wealthy farmers who could better afford to be pious.