Memorial service for James L. Howard

1. The choir was under the direction of Herman Bolles.
2. Attendees included:

• Members of the Howard family
• Personal friends and admirers
• Members of the “office force” and workmen of James L. Howard & Company.

3. At some point during the service, the choir sang the hymns “While Thee I seek, Protecting Power,” “How Firm a Foundation,” and Blest Be the Tie that Binds.”

The reporting on the specific course the service followed is somewhat haphazard.  The details provided represent my best guess.

1. The funeral of James Howard took place on May 3, 1906.
2. A regular weekly prayer meeting at First Baptist Church on May 10, 1906, focused on tributes to the life of James Howard.

1. “The address by the pastor, one of Mr. Howard’s closest friends, was particularly appealing and affecting and there were many wet eyes while Mr. Pattison was speaking.”
2. From Pattison’s remarks:

• “Mr. Howard’s father served the churches as a minister for more than fifty years. The son has given as noble and as necessary a service to this church as a Christian layman for an even longer period.  Nay the service of the son was but a lengthening of the service of the father.  The one has given us cause to honor the ministry, the other to honor ministers’ sons.”
• “He gave to this church his love as well as his money: here he worked and worshipped.  Because he was a gentleman it was always a pleasure to ask him for money, and because he was a Christian he gave as graciously of his time and strength.”
• “On the night before Mr. Howard passed away the coachman had been dismissed for the day and he had been assured that there would be no need of his returning until the next morning. But early in the evening he quietly entered the house and stole to his master’s room.  And there later they found him watching sorrowfully his dying master.”
• “He never resented your differing from him. He loved young men and some of that love I shared.  He was in sympathy with all that in the best sense made for free thought and new thought.  He had his own convictions and he believed that other men should have theirs.  He never became too old to think or to be interested in the life of today.”

1. Harold Pattison was the pastor at First Baptist Church.
2. George M. Stone was pastor at Asylum Avenue Baptist Church.
3. Herman Bolles was the organist at First Baptist Church.
4. Henry Roberts was governor of Connecticut.
5. Henry L. Morehouse was corresponding secretary of the American Baptist Mission Society.
6. Carnot O. Spencer was a member of the school fund commission and president of the Connecticut Baptist State Convention.
7. Edward Judson was pastor of the Judson Memorial Baptist Church in New York.
8. Howard’s coachman was James Murphy

Unattributed.  “Tributes to Hon. James L. Howard,” Hartford Courant, May 14, 1906, page 12.