Caledonia

CHENEY, Moses

Vermont Historical Magazine, No XI, October 1867, pp 419-423 [This biography 
of Moses CHENEY, authored by S. P. CHENEY, was taken from a section on the 
history of Sheffield, Caledonia County, Vermont.]

Moses CHENEY was born 15 December 1776 in Haverhill [Essex County], 
Massachusetts, in an old "garrison house" still standing. Mrs. Hannah 
DUSTIN, famous in our history for having killed the ten Indians that captured 
and carried her from Haverhill up the Merrimac River to where Concord 
[Merrimack County], New Hampshire now is, was his great grandmother. When he 
was five years old, the family moved to Sanbornton [Belknap County], New 
Hampshire, where his father purchased sixty acres of wild land, and with much 
hard work reared a family of nine children. Moses was the second child, a 
weakly boy; kept indoors pretty much in childhood. He sat on the split 
basswood floor by the side of his mother, and learned to read of [from] her 
while she spun linen. Their library consisted of the English Primer, Watts' 
Psalms and Hymns, and the Bible. The first he committed to memory and much 
of the New Testament, which he retained through life.

The family was emphatically poor. Moses never had clothes proper to wear 
from home until after he was thirteen. That spring, in imitation of his 
father and brother who were making sugar, he split troughs and dug them out, 
tapped several trees, obtained sap, and after the others were done boiling 
and retired to rest, and he could have the kettles, in the dead hours of the 
night, boiled his sap alone. He made wooden "clappers" for shoes, drove 
nails through the bottoms to keep them from slipping on the crust, and with 
some rags wound about his feet for stockings and the clappers on, he was able 
to brush about and do his work. With his sugar he bought eight yards of tow 
cloth, which was colored black with white maple bark, all but enough for a 
shirt, which was bleached as white as snow, and made up by his mother, who 
also made his whole suit; and when it was completed he put in on, and went 
into the field to show his father and Daniel [his brother]. When his father 
saw him coming he exclaimed, "There comes our clergyman; see there, Daniel, I 
guess our Moses will make a minister." It is to be borne in mind that only 
clergymen wore black in those days.

Now, them, he would go to church, and for the first time. He had even then, 
as ever after, a great taste for sabbath day meetings. He went to school a 
few days at different times, but it all amounted to pretty nearly nothing. 
At the age of seventeen, when he had grown tall and had better health, his 
father gave him his time, and he went out to work on a farm. At about the 
age of eighteen he had an encounter with a cross bull, which so well sets 
forth his physical powers, and so well proves that the DUSTIN blood was 
"strong blood" even to the fourth generation, we give a description of it in 
his own words: "I was requested by my employer to go to a certain pasture 
and drive said animal to the barn. I had heard, by the by, that he was 
cross, and drove his owner out of his barnyard only a few days before. I did 
not wish to discover cowardice, so not a word was to be said, but out into 
the large pasture I went in pursuit of the chap. But by the way, it looked 
proper enough to furnish myself with a tough beech sprout about six feet 
long. I thought it best to go at him as one having authority. At first he 
seemed to consider me so, and started off very peaceably, but suddenly, as we 
were rising a steep bank, he whirled and came at me with great fury. I 
voided out of his way, and flew to a large clump of bass bushes that 
surrounded a great stump. Round the bushes I went, and he after me, on the 
clean jump. I soon overtook him, and put on the cudgel the whole length of 
his back. Then he whirled again after me, and I after him, and as often as I 
overtook him he took six feet of beech. In this way we played circus until 
my antagonist gave a frightful roar, and took off for the barn. I was still 
at his heels laying on the beech, until I saw the battle was won. That was a 
terrible fight! It was both furious and long. I was very warm and rather 
short for breath, and as for curl-head, if he did not puff and blow and 
sweat, no matter!"

At twenty he went to learn the joiner's trade, and the next year, attended 
school during the winter, kept by Elder John DREW, as also to singing school, 
by Mr. William FENNEY, of Goffstown [Hillsborough County], New Hampshire. At 
the close of these two schools, his teachers gave him the credit of having 
done very well, and the latter, as was his custom, to his best scholar, at 
the close of a winter's school, "gave Moses CHENEY his pitch pipe and singing 
book." He was now a healthy and powerful man, stood six feet and an inch in 
his boots, broad-shouldered, with long and strong arms. He was a great 
chopper, and at one time, felled two acres of trees of heavy growth in two 
days, finishing the second day when the sun was two hours high. Moreover, he 
was not only strong, but remarkably quick, and could leap a line that he 
could walk erectly under with his hat on.

At the age of twenty-four he [Moses CHENEY] married [Miss] Abigail LEAVITT, 
eldest daughter of Moses LEAVITT, of Sanbornton [Belknap County], New 
Hampshire, and pursued his trade with much ambition. But at the close of 
about three years of excessive labor, his health was gone, and in addition to 
this, within six months they lost their two little children. In his own 
words, he was "at that time brought to a childless, healthless, comfortless, 
hopeless, sinful state, a state of condemnation." He also adds, "When the 
breath left the body of our little boy, I lifted my right hand and said, I 
have now done with the happiness of this world, unless I find it in God."

[The next paragraph is a lengthy account of how Moses CHENEY afterward 
sorrowed and withdrew from society, until after about a month again finding 
happiness, in what he believed was a call from God to preach. He] ran to 
neighbor COPP, who was mowing close by, and told him. He dropped his scythe 
and met him, and both rejoiced with great joy. "After the turn about in my 
mind," he writes, "I applied myself to the Bible, being unable to do any 
work. The word of God became my meat and drink. I attended all the meetings 
that I could, and I think I always had something given me to say."

The loss of his health brought him to think of the study of medicine, and the 
next spring he commenced it with Dr. Daniel JACOBS of Gilmanton Corners 
[Belknap County, New Hampshire, about fifteen miles northeast of Concord]. 
At the same time he entered the academy for one term, and it is said he went 
ahead in both. He also taught a singing school in the academy. After that 
he taught town schools, and pursued the medical study for a while, but at 
length gave that up and taught summer and winter for four years. But all 
this time he had "impressions" that he must preach.

He began preaching, and the first few years of his ministry he was with the 
Freewill Baptists, but a most singular vision caused him to leave them, and 
join the Calvinistic Baptists, to the principal doctrines of which sect he 
adhered through life. We cannot follow him through his long ministry, but it 
must be said that probably no man ever preached, prayed, and sang more for 
thirty years than "Old Elder Cheney." He was a great Bible student, prepared 
his sermons well, but never wrote them. He was a natural, spirited and 
gifted orator, always so plainly setting forth his ideas that all who heard 
understood and were pleased. His large, white head, and proportionately 
large Roman nose gave him a most dignified look. His voice was a pure 
tenor, and whether you heard him sing or preach, you could but feel that he 
possessed great vitality, and capability of most protracted vocal effort.

He was a man capable of the most deeply solemn feelings and looks, but he 
enjoyed a little fun at proper times, as well as any other man, and was 
capable of using sharp words, and was sometimes sarcastic, but never bitter. 
He used to say he was "sorry to have people laugh under his preaching, but 
they would sometimes." Yet tears were as common as smiles. A stranger to 
him once told it about right, when she said, "Father CHENEY, I heard you 
preach once, and I never laughed and cried so much in one sermon."

He was a most intense lover of music, and his musical talents were of great 
service to him. He imparted them to his children, all of whom could sing 
before they could remember. The family consisted of five sons and four 
daughters; four of the sons and one of the daughters were teachers of music, 
and at one time were known as the "Cheney Family." The whole nine are still 
living. [Counting the first two infants who died, mentioned before, then 
Moses CHENEY had eleven children: six sons, four daughters, and one sex 
unknown who died as a child.]

In the early years of his ministry he was accustomed a good deal of the time 
to go here and there, in a sort of missionary style, as he was invited, and 
so was from home a great deal. It was a singular fact, that if there was any 
trouble or sickness at home, he was informed of it, and that too, without any 
visible messenger, and many times he went home, when he had arranged far 
differently, because he "was impressed" to go; and sometimes he knew the 
precise nature of the cause that called him home. There is scarcely a town 
in all New Hampshire in which he has not preached, and ever after he was 
forty years old he was familiarly known as "Old Father Cheney," or "Old Elder 
Cheney," not because he was decrepit, for he had very little of that up to 
the last year of his life, but his hair was abundant and white at forty, 
having been red originally.

In the summer of 1823 he moved to the town of Derby [Essex County, Vermont], 
where he was the pastor of a church for several years. During his residence 
there, he occasionally accepted a call for a few weeks or months from towns 
in other parts of the state, and even in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, 
and spent one entire summer in the town of Littleton [Middlesex County], 
Massachusetts. He loved "the seaboard." He also preached in Beverly [Essex 
County, Massachusetts], and thirty years ago, he was well known in the towns 
and cities of Exeter, Portsmouth [both in Rockingham County, New Hampshire], 
Salem [Essex County, Massachusetts], Chelmsford, Lowell, and Groton [all in 
Middlesex County Massachusetts].

At length he sold out at Derby [Essex County, Vermont] and went back and 
lived and preached two or three years in Sanbornton, [Belknap County], New 
Hampshire, and towns around. In 1843 he finally moved to Sheffield 
[Caledonia County], Vermont, where he lived until his death, 09 August 1856. 
During these last thirteen years he had the charge of no church, but 
continued to preach until his last sickness. He was always, but particularly 
in his old age, much called upon to preach funeral sermons, and to officiate 
at weddings.

For twenty or more of the last years of his life, he was free from all 
sectarianism, and ceased to be interested in the new movements of the 
Baptists, or to attend their associations. While he was living in 
Sanbornton, the Meridith Association to which he had belonged, held a meeting 
at New Hampton, which was close by him. The association appointed a 
committee "to go and visit Father CHENEY and ascertain where he was." They 
called on him and made their business known. He told them, very pleasantly, 
that they "might return to the association, and tell them that Old Father 
CHENEY was away back behind, right in the middle of the road, with the good 
old Bible under his arm," and that was all they could get from him.

He believed, and made known his belief, that the Baptists had ceased to be 
the spiritual people they were when he joined them, and were "too much 
conformed to his world." He believed that a man, to be a true and genuine 
preacher of the Gospel, must verily "be called of the Spirit to preach," and 
when he was so called, "must go to preaching, and not to a theological 
seminary to learn to preach. He must preach and study, and study and preach, 
and God would take care of him." He claimed that the Scriptures sustained 
him in this belief, and could we, in this brief sketch, lay before the reader 
the thrilling accounts he has left on record of the numerous revivals of 
religion that followed his preaching, and the numerous churches that were 
built up from them, he might see other reasons why he should believe as he 
did. In politics he was a thorough-going, old-fashioned Jeffersonian 
Democrat from first to last.

He abhorred dishonesty in any man, and hated above all things to be cheated. 
We give an anecdote to illustrate this: The Baptist Society in Derby, on a 
certain time thought they ought to do more than they were doing for the 
Elder, so they appointed a committee to purchase a cow and present her to 
him. They did so, and he was grateful. But upon trial, the milk of the cow 
was found to be skimmed milk, and that continually. She was faithfully tried 
for one week, during which time the Elder ascertained that the committee had 
bought her of a man who had once made him 'pay for a pair of blinders twice,' 
and that, together with the fact that there was "no cream in the joke," 
determined the Elder to return the cow. So one morning he called one of his 
boys to him, and said: "Here, P., take this whip and drive that cow back to 
where she came from, and tell Deacon CARPENTER that your father says he will 
stand a law suit before he will take the gift of her." It was done as he 
commanded, as the writer of this personally knows, and that was the last of 
"the present" on both sides. He was a high-tempered man, but usually kept 
that temper under his control, or as he used to say, he "kept down the DUSTIN 
blood." He was not in the habit of doing things hastily, but when it was 
necessary for any work of severity to be done, he was not the man to flinch.

Among other peculiar things in his history we may mention his numerous 
escapes with his life, where there seemed but a step between him and death. 
He was once drowned until he "lay still." Once barely escaped from freezing, 
having fallen into the water on a very cold day, and having miles to go 
before he could reach a house. At two different times it was thought he must 
die with fever. His life was despaired of when he had the measles, and he 
was once thrown from a carriage and his neck nearly broken. [Submitter 
wonders if Moses CHENEY might not have had, at some time in his life, a "life 
after death" experience. Such an experience seems to often leave a person 
with the ability to know at times what should be unknowable, such as when 
something is wrong concerning others at home. After such an experience, it 
is difficult for such a person to live among those with a value system more 
rooted in this world, and such a person often returns with the knowledge a 
task must be performed here before returning to what is really home. Such a 
person lives as if stuck between the two worlds. Living in Massachusetts, 
not far removed from the witch trials and superstition of an earlier age, 
submitter doubts that if Mr. CHENEY had a life after death experience, that 
he would have widely related it, and would have tended to keep any 
"unnatural" abilities generally to himself.]

Thus we have briefly considered a few of the leading incidents in the life of 
this singular, but natural and noble-hearted man. At no period of his life 
was he more interesting as a man and a Christian than during his last 
illness. Through all that long and terrible ordeal of more than three months 
of suffering, he was never known to be impatient for a moment, nor breathe a 
word of regret. At one time, he said to his daughter, who was constantly 
with him, "If you see any symptoms of impatience about me at any time, tell 
me, and may God forbid that one who has tried to preach his word for half a 
century should murmur at his will at last."

His disease was dropsy of the chest [pulmonary effusion; probably the result 
of congestive heart failure], but all its pains could not exclude him from 
moments of most ecstatic joy, and even at times he would wish he could be out 
of doors, that he might have more room to praise in. A brother minister 
asked him if he was happy, and he replied, "Yes, but not all of the time. 
Sometimes there is a cloud in the way, but I know who is behind the cloud." 
[Note Mr. CHENEY did not say he "believed he knew" or that "he had faith" who 
was behind the cloud, but that he "knew." This could be taken as further 
evidence that he had a "life after death" experience at some point earlier in 
his life; at the least, it's an interesting hypothesis. Knowing what he knew 
would certainly help make him the logical choice for speaking at funerals, 
since he would not at all feel uncomfortable about death.]

A few hours before he expired (his speech having been many days gone) his son 
Moses sang a portion of the "Dying Christian," commencing with "The world 
recedes and disappears." Instantly his dying father seemed to be inspired; 
he had known the music and words long before the son was born, and when he 
came to the line, "Lend, lend your wings, I mount I fly," he raised both 
hands, neither of which he had been able to move for more than a week, and 
beat the time throughout to the end, and when the last words, "Oh death where 
is thy sting" were sung, shouted a loud and exulting "Amen!" That was his 
last loud word; he expired without a struggle, and, as we trust, is now 
reaping the rewards of a long, thoughtful, and active Christian life.

Submitted by Cathy Kubly