Wilmot Brookings Mitchell

Harpswell, Maine, is a seaboard, almost a sea-girt, town. It is made up of a long, narrow neck of land and forty islands, some containing hundreds of acres, others almost entirely covered by the tide. Indenting the shore of this peninsula and the larger islands are sheltered inlets of deep water well suited to the building and harboring of ships. Hither came, during the first half of the eighteenth century, from Boston, Scituate, York, and other settlements, men and women of Puritan stock and Puritan ways of thinking; and here grew up large families, hardy and God-fearing, some farmers, but most of them fishermen, sailors, and ship-builders.

Elijah Kellogg could not long attend Bowdoin College, only a few miles distant, without being attracted to these sea-going people of Harpswell; for Kellogg was born with webbed feet. When hardly out of the cradle, family tradition has it, he went to sail in Back Cove, Portland, with a sugar-box for a boat and his shirt for a sail. As a youngster he would often steal to the Fore Street wharves to watch the ships, and he was never so happy as when listening to the yarns which the sailors spun. He says of himself, “At ten years of age I began to climb the rigging, and at fifteen went to sea.” His years in the “fo’c’sle,” with all their perilous and disagreeable tasks, only intensified his love for the water. As a Freshman he took supreme delight in sailing with a good comrade, on a Saturday afternoon, in his little cat-rigged boat, the Cadet, among the islands of Casco Bay.

One of these half-holiday expeditions affected, as it happened, his whole after-life. The Cadet, belated by wind and tide, ran ashore on Birch Island, and “Captain” Kellogg and crew, supperless and weary, sought shelter at the house of Captain John Skolfield. Mr. Kellogg never forgot how cosily the light from the house that evening shone through the hop vines growing over and around the windows. The hospitable islander gave the wayfarers a warm welcome and a plentiful supper; for which hospitality, before the evening ended, Kellogg, full of stories of college and the sea, made his host feel well repaid. Thus began his acquaintance with the Birch Islanders,—the Skolfields, Curtises, and Merrimans,—an acquaintance which was to ripen into a life-long friendship. The men on this island, hardy, powerful, and fearless, at once became heroes in the admiring eyes of this venture-loving student. After this he spent many happy hours building boats, gunning and fishing with Captain John, or spinning yarns and reading aloud with “Uncle Joe” Curtis,—a man who read every book he could get hold of and who remembered everything he read.

From Birch Island to Harpswell Neck, where Eaton’s store and the church were located, is but a short row; there Kellogg often went to buy something for his boat, or to worship on the Sabbath. Before long he had many friends and admirers upon the mainland; for these people had but to see the sharp-eyed, brown, wiry “colleger,” and hear his stories, or listen to his earnest and eloquent exhortations in the prayer-meeting, in order to love him. It was with them, as well as with him, love at first sight; and by the time he was a Sophomore they had plighted troth. Learning that he was to study for the ministry, they must have him for their preacher; and he, half jokingly perhaps, told them if he lived to get through the seminary and they built a new church, he would come to preach for them.

After graduation at Bowdoin, Kellogg began the study of theology at Andover. When his course at the seminary was near its close, Professor Thomas C. Upham, who had been so stanch a friend of the Harpswell church that Mr. Kellogg once said it owed its very existence to him, came to Andover with a message from the Harpswell people that the timber for the new church was on the spot, and they still wanted him for a preacher. The bearer of the message evidently saw in the young preacher the salvation of the Harpswell church; for he reËnforced this reminder of the promise Kellogg had made in his student days by the emphatic prophecy that God would curse him as long as he lived if he did not go. Influenced somewhat by these prophetic words, but probably much more by his love for the place and the people and the opportunity he saw of doing good, he turned away from a call to a much larger church and went to Harpswell, where, as he said many years later, he found that “obedience is sweet and not servitude.”

Although Mr. Kellogg, in response to this informal invitation, began at once to supply the pulpit in the old church, a formal call to settle as pastor was not extended to him until the next year. The reason for this becomes apparent upon an examination of the church records.

The original Harpswell church and parish were at this time passing through a transition period. Formed in 1751, the parish was at first identical with the town. The preacher’s salary and other church expenses were assessed by the town officers as taxes. But later, other churches having been built and other denominations having sprung up, many citizens objected to being taxed for the support of the minister, and some absolutely refused to pay such taxes. A troublesome question concerning the control and ownership of the first church building also arose between the town and the parish. Accordingly the supporters of the Congregational church organized a new society and erected a new church building.

This church was dedicated September 28, 1843. For this dedication the following poem was written by Mr. Kellogg:—

The records show that on April 25, 1844, with Professor Upham as moderator, it was “moved and voted that the church of the Centre Congregational Society in Harpswell do hereby invite and call Mr. Elijah Kellogg to settle with them as their pastor in the Gospel ministry and [do agree] to pay [him] by subscription $300 a year for four years from the first day of June, 1844.” This call to what proved to be a long and fruitful pastorate Mr. Kellogg, on May 4, 1844, accepted in these simple and earnest words: “Brethren and Beloved: I have considered your call to settle with you as a minister of the New Testament. It appears to me to be the will of God pointed out by his providence that I comply with your invitation, which I accordingly do, praying that it may be a connection full of blessed fruits both to pastor and people.”

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]”

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.”