Tower dedicated at Trinity Episcopal Church

1. Children and grandchildren of the founders of Trinity Parish attended the ceremony.
2. During the dedication of the memorial tablet, the doors of the church were left open in order that the congregation could hear what was being said.

Some of the details of the event came from an article published the day before the dedicatory ceremony.

1. Yesterday, the Courant published an article that included a reproduction of the memorial tablet, which noted that the tower was constructed in “grateful commemoration of the founders and first members of this parish.” Today, Chauncey Brewster remarked in his sermon that the tower “should stand as a memorial to the founders and first members and generous benefactors.”
2. Brewster also declared that the founders et al. had done their job so well that Trinity Episcopal Church had “come to be in some respects the foremost parish of this diocese.”

From Brewster’s sermon: 

• “In the true thought of things it is not a waste of material to build this structure. While commerce rears its buildings of ten, twenty or thirty stories, the church may well build its towers toward heaven to bear witness to an imperishable home and to proclaim that man doth not live by bread alone and that his choices here are not limited to this lower world.”
• “The memory of the just is blessed. This tower will have an added value and preciousness from its association with them who are gone.”
• “It is an instinct of the heart to remember in our prayers them who have left us here on the hither-side of the bank of the river of death. There is little, however, we may do for the dead, but there is much the thought of them may do fur us.”

1. Chauncey Brewster was the official celebrant for the dedicatory service.
2. The church wardens were G. P. Davis and Charles H. Lawrence
3. The vestrymen were L.P. Waldo Marvin, Henry E. Rees, Charles A. Goodwin, Richard J. Goodman, J. Humphrey Greene; Robert W. Huntington Jr., Frank E. Johnson, Elijah C. Johnson, M. Lewin Hewes, Edward B. Hatch, and Frederic B. Wright.
4. The clergy were R. Elliot Marshall, Cranston Brenton, Francis Goodwin, Ernest deF. Miel, and Chauncy B. Brewster
5. The names inscribed on the tablet were

• Samuel H. Huntington
• Edward Goodman
• James Dixon
• Aaron Keney
• Hezekiah Huntington
• Francis J. Huntington
• Henry Corning
• Elisha Johnson
• John S. Gray
• Henry A. Welton
• John Hatfield
• William T. Hallett
• Frederick P. LePard
• Thomas T. Fisher
• Henry K. Morgan
• James Bolter
• Samuel Alexander
• George B. Barnes
• Henry Britten
• George Affleck
• And Of All Others

Unattributed.  “Bishop speaks at tower dedication,” Hartford Courant, January 8, 1912, page 6.

Unattributed.  “Trinity Church’s tower completed,” Hartford Courant, January 6, 1912, page 6.