Mason Grosvenor, D.D.
Background on a character in my Knowlton biography
One of the first interesting personalities I discovered when I first began reading in the archives of the Ashfield (Massachusetts) Historical Society was a Congregationalist minister named Mason Grosvenor. I was originally looking for information regarding Dr. Charles Knowlton and his infamous birth control book, The Fruits of Philosophy, which he published in 1831. Grosvenor was Knowlton's most outspoken antagonist for several years, so I was very interested in understanding who he was and why he hated Knowlton.
Grosvenor was born in Pomfret, Connecticut in April 1800. His father, Nathan E. Grosvenor, was a minister and when his turn came, Mason attended Yale College, graduating in 1827. Grosvenor spent the next three years in Yale's Theological Seminary and is credited with developing the idea and "suggested the outline of a plan" which led to the formation in 1829 of "The Illinois Band" that evangelized in the new state under the direction of the American Home Missionary Society. Six of Grosvenor's fellow seminary students signed the founding document with him. Although Mason became ill and was unable to move to the wilderness, he is remembered as "one of the original movers in that grand home missionary work, which gave to the Congregational churches the Illinois Band, and Illinois College."(The Home Missionary, April 1900.
According to a "Necrological Sketch" published in the Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the General Association of the Congregational Churches and Ministers of New York in 1886, Grosvenor "was ordained as an evangelist at Guilford, Conn., March 22, 1831, and after a year and a half of brief engagements with various churches in Connecticut and Massachusetts, undertook to raise funds for the Illinois College. After a few months, illness put a stop to any present plans of removal to the west. When able to preach, he was settled (May 15, 1833) over the Congregational Church in Ashfield, Mass, from which he was dismissed at his own request in July, 1835." In 1833, recovered from his illness, Grosvenor accepted a call to take over the pulpit at the Ashfield Congregational Church. This was in the final years of the old "Puritan" denomination's dominance of Massachusetts. The church was finally disestablished on the first of January 1834, at the height of the controversy Grosvenor caused in Ashfield.
When he arrived in Ashfield, Grosvenor wasted no time aligning himself with the most conservative elements in the community. Ashfield had been the site of religious controversy before. In the years before the American Revolution, the town's original (Baptist) congregation had been forced to petition King George III's Privy Council for redress against the Congregationalists when the new church took 400 acres including the Baptist burying ground in lieu of the church "tax" the Baptists had declined to pay. In addition to persecuting "infidelity and licentiousness" represented by Knowlton, Grosvenor's evangelism in Ashfield focused on trying to continue enforcing the "tax" on congregants, despite the fact that forced attendance and financial support became illegal with disestablishment. One of the targets of Grosvenor's campaign was an old farmer named Nathaniel Clark, who had spoken up against the persecution of Knowlton in the local tavern. Another was Samuel Ranney, whose response will be the topic of an upcoming post. For now it will be enough to say that the imperiousness of Grosvenor's approach was extremely divisive. The town was split and the congregation lost moire than half its members between Grosvenor's arrival and departure.
After leaving Ashfield "at his own request" in 1835, Grosvenor "then supplied the pulpit in Chester and Saybrook, Conn., and on Sept. 28, 1836, was installed over the Congregational Church in Sharon, Conn. He left Sharon at his own request, June 28, 1839, and in the fall of 1840 settled in Hudson, Ohio, where he established a female seminary in Hudson, with which he was connected four years. From 1847 to 1853 he served as an agent of the Western College Society, with his residence in Springfield, Mass., and New Haven, Conn. He then, at the solicitation of President Sturtevant [another of the original signers of the Illinois evangelical plan] , served for one year as teacher of Mathematics in Illinois College, and for part of the next year, filled a like position in Beloit College. In 1855 he returned to Northern Ohio, making his home principally at Hudson, and being employed more or less steadily in the supply of vacant churches, until 1863, when he devoted a year to an agency for the Ohio Female College. In March, 1864, he became the general agent in Cincinnati for the Aetna Life Insurance Company, of Hartford, Conn.; and in 1869 or 1870 removed to Jacksonville as Professor of Moral Philosophy and the Evidences of Christianity in Illinois College. He retired from this post about 1880, and spent the rest of his life at the home of his elder surviving son in Englewood, N.J., where he died March 27, 1886, in his 86th year. He married, June 18, 1833, Miss Ester D. Scarborough of Brooklyn, Conn., who died April 6, 1846, having borne five children, of whom only two survived her. He next married, April 25, 1849, Miss Lucy P. Tappan, of Geneva, N.Y." (“Necrological Sketch”)
Very interesting article, Dan. I am intrigued by the fact such a conservative minister set up a seminary for women in the 19th century, and by how many times he relocated. Also, I wonder if the many moves were normal for a Congregationalist minister or, rather, were a result of his, what seems to me, abrasive character?
“Professor of Moral Philosophy and the Evidences of Christianity”…no questions about that role. 😉