This is the sixth of twelve monthly articles celebrating our region’s first church from 1766 to 2016. "Lively Stones" is hot off the press, co-authored by Chip Griffin, Sarah Foulger, Bob Dent, and Jack Bauman. "Lively Stones" is the first history book of our Boothbay Region community from its founding in over a century and is available at Sherman’s, the church office, online, and in the Boothbay Harbor and Southport libraries.

By Sarah Foulger

Priorities and theology changed the Boothbay Harbor Congregational Church in significant ways between 1870 and 1892. Existentialism gained momentum even as Protestant scholars earnestly engaged the scientific findings of Charles Darwin. Notably, Congregational churches made a theological departure from Calvinism and predestination. Locally, a new version of our local church’s Articles of Faith and Covenant was published. As a result of the heated prohibitionist debate a sentence was added, calling church members to "abstain from… all intoxicating drinks as a beverage." This addition was removed within a few short years, undoubtedly by those who did not wish to abstain.

Late in the 19th Century, the missionary movement expanded dramatically, particularly in fields of education and medicine. Turkey became the mission field of the Shepard family of Boothbay Harbor, led by patriarch and matriarch, Dr. Frederick and Mrs. Fanny Shepard, both Congregational medical missionaries who, on horseback, treated Turks, Kurds, and Armenians, founding the American hospital in Gaziantep in 1884. In addition to Ottoman countries like Turkey and Bulgaria, Congregational missionaries focused attention in China, Japan, and India.

In the Boothbay region, tourism, fueled before the Civil War by people drawn to the sublime scenery of coastal Maine, intensified after the war. Admirers of the region’s scenery built cottages and camps. As local historian Francis Greene put it, “No town in Maine of equal population and valuation enjoyed a greater degree of prosperity than Boothbay during the period from 1866 to 1878.” Construction supplies and workers were in demand as the number of houses and businesses increased. Shipbuilding and fishing industries remained strong although the dangers of overfishing became apparent. By the 1890s, the ice trade peaked with 650 men employed on local ponds. Tourism likewise grew dramatically, filling new resorts and hotels and bringing both visitors and celebrated guest preachers to the Congregational Church.

The church enjoyed this steady period of growth, upgrading its building with a more steeply pitched roof, a forward shift of the bell tower, and additions of a chancel area, vestibule, chapel, and wood-burning furnace in 1881. Straight-backed numbered pews with doors were replaced by the elegant curved numberless pews that remain today. The raised singing gallery at the back of the sanctuary was removed. The women of the church stitched a red carpet into place, red remaining the color of the floor covering ever since.

The church was blessed to have two musical ministers in a row from Wales. Richard Jenkins worked the Welsh coal mines as a boy, moving to the United States in 1869. Sensing a call to ministry, he travelled to Maine to preach among Welsh iron workers in South Portland, eventually receiving a degree from Bangor Theological Seminary. In 1878, when Jenkins began his ministry in Boothbay Harbor, deaconesses were, for the first time, elected to serve the congregation, the first two being Susan Wells Lewis and Antoinette Eliza Kenniston. The latter was the granddaughter of Rev. Jonathan Adams, former minister of the church and part of the Adams family, founders of both the church and the town. The movement to place women in leadership roles was mounting in congregational churches across the nation. Jenkins was clearly a supportive influence.

Before departing Boothbay Harbor, Jenkins passed the mantle of ministry to his friend, Lewis Evans, who had also grown up working Welsh coal mines. Like Jenkins, Evans moved to Maine and studied at Bangor Seminary. Evans’ Welsh soul was steeped in music. In 1885, he enthusiastically formed two lively church choirs. In 1888, the church women purchased an organ and hired a boy to pump it each Sunday for 25 cents. The first paid organist was Elizabeth Fullerton Blair, mother of future church historian, Elizabeth Reed.

On November 2, 1886, there was a devastating fire in Boothbay Harbor, causing what Greene called, “the severest blow to business the village had ever experienced.” Fire ravaged the business district, skyrocketing insurance rates. A heated struggle ensued between business owners in favor of a water plan and longstanding families of the area who were vehemently opposed to costly change. Church members participated from both sides of the question, but many if not most of the vocal pro-water proponents were church members and leaders. The rancorous battle for water quickly led to the division of Boothbay into two towns, Boothbay Harbor becoming its own municipality in 1889.

The Congregational Church effectively navigated shifting cultural currents, embracing the pipe organ, electricity and modern heating, and welcoming war veterans and women into leadership. It became a popular Sunday morning tourist destination with established choirs and Sunday School. Encountering challenging waves of theological change, social upheaval, and unremitting conflict, the church remained buoyant in the grace of God and ready for the next chapter, which we have titled, “Charting the Course.”