Jacob was flattered, but he “viewed the ministry as a great and difficult work; I was but a poor speaker; and on the whole, I shrunk away from the work”—sentiments that he had expressed repeatedly over the past several years. Despite these protestations, Green did feel the pull of the ministry and what he termed “following the calls of Providence.” If God wanted him to serve, this Calvinist would. He would not stand in God’s way. Characteristically, though, Jacob needed reassurance from others that he was cut out for the ministry. So Green consulted with several ministers, pouring out his numerous doubts to them. They urged him to accept, warning that it was “the design of Satan to keep me out of the ministry.” Jacob, however, still hesitated, and he even went so far as to put all of his objections on paper. He showed the paper to Burr, who “read it through deliberately, and then put it into the fire before my eyes, and talked to me in a very friendly and encouraging manner.”62
Burr’s confidence in him, as well as Dickinson’s plans for him as an ally in the New York Presbytery, at last succeeded. Green agreed to become a minister, and he received his license to preach in September 1745. His first assignment was ministering to a struggling congregation in a Presbyterian redoubt in the mountains of northwestern New Jersey. Green had likely never heard of the place. With curiosity, and with some foreboding, he set out to see what he had gotten himself into.
The Loyalist Down the Road:
Thomas Bradbury Chandler, New Englander
The mind of America’s fiercest loyalist was cultivated in the soils of republican New England.
Like Jacob Green, Thomas Bradbury Chandler was descended from good Puritan stock and was raised in a Congregational village. The gulf between the two families was wide, however, for the Chandlers possessed wealth and prestige; the Greens did not. Heirs of William and Annis Chandler, who came to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1637 as part of the Great Migration that brought the first Puritans to the New World, the family was talented, hardworking, pious, and rich. As leading citizens of Woodstock, Connecticut, about one hundred miles west of Malden, where Jacob Green lived, their names could be found sprinkled liberally throughout the minutes of the various town and church boards that dominated village life. Indeed, the Chandler men were all known by their titles—Deacon John, Judge John, Captain William, among others.
Captain William Chandler was the third born of the Honorable John Chandler, Esquire, who served on the town committee, represented Woodstock at the General Court, was chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas, and owned the most prestigious pew (the one next to the pulpit stairs) in the Congregational meetinghouse. Upon his death in 1743, John left behind extensive landholdings and an estate valued at nearly 8,700 pounds. The sixth child, Samuel, inherited the family seat “In Consideration of his great Prudence, Industry and Dutiful Behaviour and application in my Business.” William was barely mentioned in the will. No matter. He was prosperous in his own right, the owner of a thousand-acre estate known as Chandler Hill. William’s plantation hugged the town line to the east and was high enough (597 feet above sea level, according to one modern reckoning) that it afforded the Chandlers a lordly view over the surrounding countryside.
Fortune thus smiled on Thomas Bradbury Chandler, as he entered the world on April 26, 1726, when Jacob Green was four and about to embark on a vagabond existence as a fatherless child. From his father Thomas inherited the gift of command (both were physically imposing men) and from his mother his formidable intellect and piety. Jemima was a remarkable woman—she was both talented and wealthy in her own right. Her father, Thomas Bradbury of Salisbury, Massachusetts, bequeathed to her nearly his entire estate—an unusual gesture in an age when land typically went to the patriarch’s sons. But it was Jemima’s intellect that was most noteworthy. One family chronicler approvingly recalled her “superior natural and acquired abilities and power of mind.” Jemima was literate and a strong student; she excelled at natural philosophy, geography, and, of course, religion. She was, according to a Chandler family historian, “of unaffected piety, exemplary in all her paths.”
Her eldest son would disappoint neither mother nor father; at Chandler Hill, as Thomas grew into manhood, he began cultivating the mind that would thrill loyalists of the king and infuriate supporters of American independence. Thomas, it seems, was destined for big things.63
Grand, it was not. Tucked away on nearly four acres along the Whippanong River, Hanover’s Presbyterian meetinghouse looked more like a failing country store than a hieratic shrine to the Lord. A dilapidated, oblong structure built of logs, the two-story church lacked the crowning grace of a cupola or spire. Worshipers wanting to sit in the gallery had to mount stairs from the outside (fig. 2). The pulpit consisted of a carpenter’s bench, the pews of crude benches. Constructed in 1718, the church was falling apart when Jacob Green arrived in late 1745, but congregation members had been unable to agree on the location for a replacement or how to pay for it. For Jacob, more discomforting than the meetinghouse’s sad state was the congregation’s history. The presbytery had dismissed Green’s two predecessors following, in Jacob’s typically understated words, “uneasiness” between the minister and his people.1
As dolorous as all this was, Jacob’s prospects upon his arrival were not hopeless. Hanover represented the oldest and most settled township in the newly formed county of Morris, serving as the jumping-off point for the settlement of land west and north of the village. Moreover, its abundant natural resources held the promise of economic growth. The numerous rivers enticed settlers to the area and became home to forges and mills. Of greater significance to Jacob was Hanover’s stature as the center of Presbyterianism in northwestern New Jersey; his congregation was the mother church that sired numerous offspring in the years before the American Revolution, meaning that his appointment as Hanover’s interim pastor instantly made him the leader of Presbyterianism in the region.2
The timing of his arrival was also auspicious. The New York Synod, which oversaw Hanover, had held its first session on September 19, 1745. Led by Jonathan Dickinson and Aaron Burr, and dominated by New Siders, the synod was seeking to spread its New England brand of Presbyterianism in New Jersey and elsewhere. Dickinson and Burr viewed Jacob as an important recruit in this missionary effort. The troubles of Green’s predecessor, John Nutman, presented them with the opportunity to place an ally in an important congregation in East Jersey. Jacob Green would serve as a foot soldier in the New Siders’ fight for evangelism and revivalism.3
Jacob was flattered by the attention. Still unsure about his suitability for the ministry, he needed the encouragement from Dickinson and Burr, whom he held in “great regard.” Dickinson and the young Jacob Green likely saw each other as kindred spirits; although both men supported the Great Awakening, Dickinson and Green rejected the excessive emotionalism and divisiveness that accompanied it. Dickinson, who came to Elizabeth Town in 1708, was a leading Presbyterian in the middle colonies and a moderate New Sider who sought a middle ground on the raging controversies of the day, including the dual threats of Arminianism