The Reverend Ichabod Nichols

The History of the First Parish
in Portland, Maine

In October 1775, before the start of the Revolutionary War, the British Royal Navy under the command of Captain Henry Mowatt bombed and destroyed the town of Falmouth. During this attack, a cannon ball crashed into the walls of “Old Jerusalem”; today this 12-pound cannonball proudly hangs at the base of the chain of the impressive chandelier in the First Parish Meeting House.

Though Deane moved to Gorham for the duration of the Revolutionary War, he often rode into Falmouth to conduct services. After bombing Falmouth once, the British never returned to Falmouth. However the Quakers caused Deane grief by sitting through his services with their hats on and then standing and haranguing his congregation. Despite this, in 1782 he moved back to Falmouth fulltime.

Following the war, a section of Falmouth called “The Neck” developed as a commercial port and began to grow rapidly as a shipping center. In 1786, the citizens of Falmouth formed a separate town in Falmouth Neck and named it “Portland.” This area included the First Parish Meeting House and parsonage.

Apart from his pastoral duties, Samuel Deane was fascinated by science and agriculture. He was an habitual observer of the weather and an innovative experimenter in agriculture.

It was noted that he had “far more success cultivating his garden, nursery, and orchard than with converting sinners.” He compiled the first encyclopedia of agriculture ever published in America; it remained the standard work on agriculture in New England for many years. When Brown University gave him a degree in 1790 it was suggested that, “since it could not have been for his theology, it must have been for his agricultural fame.

In this same era, Rev. Deane served Bowdoin College as a trustee and vice-president for 20 years and in 1801 declined its presidency. He did, however, accept the presidency of the Portland Benevolent Society and of the Maine Bible Society. Failing health and a thriving parish prompted him to ask for a colleague pastor in 1809. After considerable searching, a liberal candidate was found in the person of the Reverend Ichabod Nichols. Persistent illness prevented Deane from assisting his colleague to any great extent. He died November 12, 1814, aged 81, in the 50th year of his ministry.

The 19th Century

The ordination of the Reverend Ichabod Nichols on June 7, 1809 created something of a stir among Portland’s Congregational clergy. His Unitarian leanings prompted the Reverend Edward Payson of Portland’s Second Parish to refuse to participate. Within the same year, the First Parish congregation formally recognized its liberal traditions by becoming Unitarian, and Reverend Nichols soon became one of the most beloved pastors ever to serve the First Parish.

While exercising the routine duties of a pastor at First Parish, he continued the study of theology and science. He was deeply interested in the cause of temperance, the Bible societies, the Sunday school movement, and also served as the second president of the American Unitarian Association from 1837 to 1844. His contemporaries described him as a ripe scholar and a sincerely spiritual man. In 1831 Harvard College awarded him the degree of D.D. as Bowdoin had done in 1821.

Momentous changes happened during Nichols’s pastorate. In 1819, Maine’s constitution was memorably drafted in the First Parish Meeting House. In 1820, the state of Maine became the 23rd state of the United States as part of the Missouri Compromise, which Congress designed to preserve the equality of slave and free states in the U.S. Senate by allowing Missouri to enter as a slave state and Maine as a free one.

Due to growth of the parish, in 1824 members voted to build a new church once again despite considerable opposition. In 1825, construction began on the second granite church in Maine. The completed church was dedicated in February 1826 at a final cost of $18,389.14.

The tower clock, bell, and Simon Willard gallery clock were transferred to the new church. The Drowne weathervane was also salvaged and installed atop the new steeple. A group of nine parishioners purchased the magnificent 600 pound cut-glass chandelier which still hangs in the Meeting House complete with the requisite cannonball. In 1822 the first organ was installed; and two precious volumes of pulpit bibles which sit on the pulpit to this day were given to First Parish by Madam Dorcas Deering.

The First Parish Church was the site of two events of significance to the anti-slavery movement in Maine. The first was the speech made by William Lloyd Garrison at the conclusion of his eight-day tour of Maine in the fall of 1832. Prominent local attorney and member of First Parish, General Samuel Fessenden was converted to the doctrine of “immediate emancipation without compensation” by Garrison’s fateful speech. “Immediate emancipation without compensation” was the idea that slave owners were compensated by centuries of unpaid wages from their slaves and required no further monies to free their slaves.

Anti-Slavery

Fessenden went on to found the Maine Anti-Slavery Society along with Prentiss Mellon, who was the Maine Anti-Slavery Society’s first president (there is a memorial plaque in First Parish for Prentiss Mellon) and Nathan Winslow, a Quaker merchant who lived next door to First Parish.

The other event of importance is the 1842 riot outside the meetinghouse by pro-slavery supporters who attempted to prevent the militant anti-slavery speakers Stephen Symonds Foster and John Murray Spear from speaking. Stephen Symonds Foster suffered twenty blows to the head and had his coat torn in half. Luckily, he escaped out a back window (where the door to the Parish Hall is now located) assisted by the women of the Portland Anti-Slavery Society, including two members of First Parish Church, Elizabeth Widgery Thomas and her daughter, Charlotte, as well as Lydia Neal Dennett and Comfort Hussey Winslow. After the women led Foster safely next door, Universalist minister John Murray Spear attempted to leave by the front door believing the mob had spent its fury on Foster. Unfortunately, the mob’s fury was not spent, and he was beaten almost to death on the steps of the meeting house. His body was carried to the home of Oliver and Lydia Neal Dennett on Spring Street, where he recuperated for six weeks.

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