Talk about a link with the past. This one connects a SouthCoast village, its church and church founder with people and places in Genesis, the first book of the Bible.
Lusty people. Enchanting places.
To appease his troubled spouse, Rebekah, "disgusted with life because of the Hittite women," Isaac sent their son, Jacob, to the distant home of an uncle, there to choose a wife.
So it was that the much-blessed Jacob left home with an extravagant blessing from his father, Isaac. And he began his journey to the home of his uncle, where he would find employment and not one wife, but two; cousins both. And their consorts, to boot.
The scene of these unions, at once amorous and arduous, was a place called Paddan-aram. The uncle's name was Laban. This stirring account, often employed by young scholars as an excuse for reading the Bible, is from the Book of Genesis, Chapters 28 and 29.
Fast-forward now to 1802 A.D., to a new-world Padanaram, so named by a new-world Laban.
Though some say the naming is attributable to similar circumstances in the rich lives of Laban Thacher of Cape Cod and Dartmouth and Laban of Paddan-aram, it would seem that the coincidence of names, along with the rising in one place and going off to another, was reason enough.
Still, it must be said that the new-world Padanaram Laban, like the Old Testament Laban, was an adventurous and enterprising fellow. And mindful of his God.
He purchased 42 acres of Dartmouth land on the gentle rise east of and hard by the shores of Apponagansett Bay, where he established a shipyard.
The enterprise flourished and in 1807 Laban was joined by six other men to found the Congregational Church of Christ in Padanaram Village, Dartmouth. In the decade that followed, wartime fires (1812) and storm-lashed tidal waves ravaged the village. The new congregation met for worship in one another's homes and the schoolhouse at High and School streets.
Construction on the Middle Street church began in 1817. The next year, Laban conveyed the church plot and adjacent land to the congregation. The structure then looked a lot like the church of today -- on its exterior. Most of the transformations have been inside. Much of the maintenance, however, has been outside, where the weather is.
Which brings us to renovation project 1997, surpassing in size and cost those of 1922 (addition and repairs), 1930 (fire damage repairs), 1956 (expansion for Sunday School) and 1985 (repairs to tower, steeple and other parts). Unfolding each day for passersby to witness, the current project ("restoration and update of the entire structure," according to committee member Cheryl Engle-Belknap) is being financed by contributions from church and community members.
To date, pledges of support, most for a three-year period, amount to about $200,000, which will cover the critical renovation work, in the view of committee leader Eric Lindell. But the group's wish-list goes beyond the basics, so their over-arching wish is for follow-up donations to cover "the little but still important things."
The church has been a community and seafaring landmark from its very beginnings. A special bond developed between the church and the village firehouse. In the early 1920s, the Dartmouth Fire Association installed its fire signal in the church belfry. In the fire of 1930, firemen not only contained the damage to the church but opened their firehouse doors to the congregation for Sunday services.
One of eight churches erected in Padanaram before the Civil War, the Congregational Church alone survives today as a house of worship, according to Ms. Engle-Belknap of Dartmouth. In a memorably felicitous letter to the editor of The Standard-Times, she captured and shared the following sentiments:
"A building may appear a shell, created of dead materials. Yet we've all been in 'living' structures, places made mystical by the fullness of shared human experience. These 'living' structures are places where people gather to share good times and hard times, to grow and learn, to die, to remember."
She marks her church as such a place and its repair as "a worthy cause for the entire community to support." Signifying agreement, church members, with some outside help, have rallied to the cause. Mr. Lindell said church participation in financial support has been "close to 100 percent."
Among the 400-member congregation, many have offered "leadership gifts" of amounts up to $20,000, said Mr. Lindell, who lives in New Bedford. And a few, like architect Deborah Durland, have contributed professional service as well as financial support, he noted.
The first phase of the three-year project, now underway, focuses on major repairs to the exterior. There have been some rain delays of late, said Ms. Durland, but overall "we've confronted fewer underlying problems than we might have expected." She and the contractor, the Perry Company of Dartmouth, are hopeful of completing this phase in October.
She expects the winter months to be devoted to definitive planning for interior work, which will include painting the sanctuary and entry, and upgrading the heating system.
Besides a new look, the village church of Padanaram features a new pastor. The Rev. Robert Spaulding of West Barnstable arrived on the scene Aug. 1 as interim minister, just in time to confront the dirt and noise of the renovation project. Prior to this appointment, he served in the same capacity at First Congregational Church of Bristol, R.I.
Now that we're reminded of the church's telling links with a biblical and distant past, courtesy of church historian Sally Cunningham and project leaders, we can look forward with Pastor Spaulding and his crew to the forging of similar links with a wide-open future in storied Padanaram.
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