Rev. Joel Mann and a Letter About Religious Revivals

by Jeffrey Bingham Mead
Greenwich Time. Looking Back: December 1, 1996

This is the parsonage of the Second Congregational Church, Greenwich. Rev. Joel Mann lived here.

From 1830 through 1836, the Rev. Joel Mann served parishioners of Greenwich's Second Congregational Church, and he lived in the white clapboard Federalist parsonage opposite the Civil War Soldiers Monument. 

In August 1831 the people of the Second Congregational Church made him an honorary member of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.

While occupied with research on Greenwich missionaries here in Hawaii, I stumbled upon a published letter written by Mann, dated Feb. 1, 1834. 

It was featured in a weekly news magazine of the time titled The Religious Intelligencer, published every Saturday in New Haven by Deacon Nathan Whiting. Mann's letter was originally published in The New York Evangelist, and it details a revival during that period of history known as the Second Great Awakening, which dominated the 19th century American landscape.

Second Congregational Church, Greenwich. Mary Mason. Watercolor: Greenwich Historical Society. 

"The accounts of protracted meetings and the revivals connected with them, which have recently appeared in The Evangelist," Mann wrote, "have been truly refreshing… I send you the following account of what has recently transpired among my own people."

"A protracted meeting commenced on Monday, the 18th of last November. We wished in the first place to secure the presence and help of the Lord by previously preparing the way for him in our hearts… This, however, was but imperfectly done… it was found necessary to bestow much of the labor of the meeting on the church. Consequently, opportunities for laboring directly for the conversion of sinners were greatly diminished."

"On the second day of the meeting," Mann continued, "our beloved brother Norton came from the city and performed all the preaching until Thursday night; on that evening, agreeable to previous arrangement, he preached to young men. The body of pews of the church reserved for this interesting class of persons, and at the appointed hour were completely filled. It was indeed a pleasing and affecting site."

"At the close of the service," he continued, "all who were willing to make their salvation the subject of immediate attention, and to yield to the claims of the Savior, were requested to repair to the Academy."

"We had meetings for the awakened that we might ascertain their state of feeling and adapt divine instruction to the spiritual state of each individual… we requested them to signify their desires and intentions by taking particular seats and sometimes by rising up."

Mann had use similar measures before in Bristol, Rhode Island, where he had been pastor in 1829 for 11 years.

What were the results?

"There has been the professed conversion of about thirty individuals. We did hope that far greater effects would have attended the efforts that were made… The church was in a degree revived, and harmony promoted," Mann wrote. 

He ended his letter by concluding that "vigorous measures are indispensable to rouse a slumbering world, and that when professed believers came down from their pride and worldliness to do their duty, God was ready to bless them."

Jeffrey Bingham Mead it is a freelance writer and a direct descendent of one of the towns founding families. He grew up in backcountry Greenwich.