History | Stained-Glass

HISTORY OF FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
STILLWATER, MINNESOTA

It was 1849—the year of the Gold rush further West. Congress had created the Territory of Minnesota that year, and just to the east Wisconsin had marked its first year of statehood. Steamboats were bringing pioneers into the St. Croix Valley where the pine forests had attracted the new settlers and already lumbering was an established industry in the area. Stillwater was a budding community and numbered among its residents a physician, a blacksmith, and an attorney. There was a hotel, a general store, a clothing store, a paint shop, a meat market, a saloon and a post office. A building for public entertainment and a courthouse had been erected, as well as a comfortable schoolhouse. The town had been designated as the location for a prison, and it wouldn’t be long until the institution would be erected on the historic site of a bloody battle between the Sioux and Chippewa Indians. A daily stagecoach operated between Stillwater and St. Paul.

Religious leaders of various denominations were finding fertile ground and ready seed for the establishment of churches. Rev. William T. Boutwell had been the precursor of the Christian effort in the Valley. In the summer of 1844 this explorer-missionary had added new dimension to the life of the villagers when he conducted a Sunday service in the dining room of the Cornelius Lyman boarding house. It has been recorded as the first sermon ever delivered in Stillwater but “THE HISTORY OF ST. CROIX VALLEY”, published in 1909, refutes that claim. In that book an interview with Mrs. Lydia A. Carli, first white woman in Stillwater, indicates that in 1842 services were held in her home, Tamarack House. At any rate the need for Christian emphasis must have been evident to Rev. Boutwell when he and his wife and family arrived in the Valley. They had left their mission post with the Ojibway Indians at Leach Lake because of hostilities. It is felt they likely came toward Stillwater desiring to be nearer civilization.

The Rev. Boutwell had received his education in the eastern colleges of Exeter and Dartmouth, and he had graduated from Andover Theological Seminary. Mrs. Boutwell (Hester Crooks) was the granddaughter of an Indian chieftain; her father was a fur trader for John Jacob Astor. She had been educated at Machinaw Mission and in France, and was reputedly the earliest “Home Economist” in Minnesota. During their ministry with the Indians they had written an Ojibway Grammar—they were true educators. Likely their own education plus the many years of work with Indians, teaching them to read and sing, had their influence on the early Presbyterian Church.

Rev. Boutwell preached alternate Sundays in Stillwater and in Marine at the Lumber Store. He worked in the logging camps and was a strong crusader against liquor. He was to become a familiar figure, walking the streets of Stillwater, swinging a dinner bell as a call to worship. (That bell is now kept at the Washington County Historical Museum in Stillwater).

When Rev. Joseph C. Whitney arrived in Stillwater on October 4, 1849, Presbyterians secured a foothold. Rival religious leaders were already in the St. Croix Valley, but the Rev. Mr. Whitney supposedly won the majority of the people by his calm, Christian personality. With Rev. Boutwell and a Rev. Edward Neill assisting him, the organization of the first Presbyterian congregation became a reality on December 8, 1849, in the home of Rev. and Mrs. Whitney on the corner of Second and Chestnut Streets. As noted in the Centennial booklet, ONE HUNDRED YEARS, “At the suggestion of Rev. W.T. Boutwell it was unanimously voted that the church be called the ‘First Presbyterian Church of Stillwater’. Rev. E.D. Neill was the moderator. The names of the seven charter members as given in the old records are: Wi