Little Falls Many Years Ago

From the Cooney Files – Little Falls Historical Society

July 3, 1886

And now, I want to speak of the old Octagon church, on church hill, then the only church in the village, and occupied by the Presbyterians. Many young years I attended church there, carrying the old family umbrella and a little foot-stove for my grandmother, to listen to our minister, Rev. Mr. Burritt, a brother of the celebrated Elihu Burritt, the “learned blacksmith.” He was a man of novel appearance, and one never to be forgotten for his amiable Christian virtues and excellencies. I can see him now, perfectly, as he used to enter the church with his meek, subdued Christian appearance, and ascend the winding pulpit stairs into the little round barrel pulpit. There were a number of years when there was no stove in the church, and the cold winds of autumn and winter would blow and make the old church and every window shake and rattle and the people shivered with cold, bearing it, however, as best they could. The old families that attended and supported the church were: Judge Lansing, one of the noblest and best of men—he and his family; the Smiths all three families—the doctors, Samuel and Thomas Smith; Esquire Dygert and family, Dr. Hamilton, Daniel McIntosh, Wm. Hamill, the Lockwoods, Bennetts, and many others. There also were our Sunday school teachers, who I attended many years in the old stone schoolhouse, where my father for so many years kept school.

And now I will tell of a fearful thing that occurred at this famous old church. A revival meeting had been going on there for many weeks. It was about ten o’clock of a bright, starry winter night. People had got weary of the meeting, for there was great excitement and some fearful dogmas preached and fearful scenes enacted. So a certain Dr. Parks, an Englishman, made a heavy sky-rocket, and two of the meanest men in Little Falls volunteered to fire the rocket at the church. The church was full of excited people, praying and terrified, and shouting and groaning. The rocket was fired close by the old schoolhouse and went like a bolt of lightning. It struck the side of the old church, tore its way through, and went straight over the people’s heads, and as the Lord’s mercy would have it, toward the pulpit. The pastor saw it coming and stooped quickly, and thus saved his life; for the rocket knocked off a pitcher of water into a hundred pieces, and went whirling over the people’s heads, spiriting tornadoes of fire and smoke till exhausted. Men stood aghast; women screamed and fainted. Some shouted that the day of judgement had come in the night, etc. If the rocket had struck the church almost any other way than it did, it would have killed and wounded a score of persons, as it was not a soul was hurt, but it broke up the meeting effectively and ended the revival. It was well known who did that infamous act, but nothing could be proved, and so the matter ended. Tom W——d and Bill B—-lend were the men, the last of whom was, by nature, especially despicable. His descendants, if any, can have no reason to feel proud of such an ancestor.