Charles Babbidge was born into a prosperous maritime family in Salem, Massachusetts, on October 28, 1806. His father, shipbuilder John Babbidge, served aboard the Massachusetts sloop Race Horse during the Revolution, contributing to the fight for independence.[1] In 1769, John Babbidge married Sarah Beckett. Her father, Captain John Beckett, was likewise a prominent shipbuilder in Salem. Both families were heavily involved in the war effort against the British.
In 1773, tragedy struck the Beckett family. Mother Sara (Browne) Beckett drowned when a boat she was traveling in capsized off Marblehead. One-year-old Sarah Beckett and her two-year-old brother were left in the care of their father. Tragedy struck the family again years later when Sarah’s brother, John, met an end similar to his mother’s by falling victim to the sea.
Charles Babbidge attended private schools before enrolling at Harvard College, where he graduated in 1828 and finished Divinity School in 1831.[2] Two years later, he started his work as a senior minister at the First Parish Unitarian Church in Pepperell, Massachusetts, following an 1832 split in the congregation that saw Reverend James Howe and a group of adherents break away and form the Evangelical Congregational Church. At the time, many believed Howe and his followers felt excluded by the Unitarian majority.[3]
This split mirrored broader theological tensions in 19th-century New England, where Congregationalists divided into progressive Unitarians and Calvinist Evangelicals. The theological gulf between the groups had grown too wide, and their relationship would never be bridged.[4] Babbidge’s church aligned with the Unitarians, believing they championed reason and personal scripture interpretation over oppressive and outdated dogmas. First Parish officially ordained Babbidge on February 13, 1833. He wrote that he hoped “the rising generation among us will never permit a human and ever-changing creed to stand between them and God’s Holy Word—since to do so is virtually a rejection of both God and His Son.”[5]
A vocal advocate for progressive theology, Babbidge frequently criticized “the rival Evangelical Church and its membership.”[6] His vitriol caused quite a stir in stuffy and polite Pepperell. Nevertheless, Babbidge’s congregants revered him for his compassion and care. His 1847 centennial address, The Claims of Congregational Churches, marked the 100th anniversary of the First Church of Christ in Pepperell. Babbidge described his sermon as both a commemoration and a defense of core principles, declaring, “To commemorate the deeds and experiences of our ancestors is, at the same time, a duty and a pleasure.”[7]
He criticized sectarianism, asserting, “We assume only to be the First Church of Christ in Pepperell, without assuming to know whether there are one or a dozen churches besides us.”[8] The sermon embodied Babbidge’s dedication to “the truth as it is in Jesus.”[9] Fiery as ever when preaching, Babbidge continued, “The lamps of Augustine and Chrysostom, of Calvin and Luther, have paled and almost gone out, beside that brighter light which is destined ultimately to enlighten the world.”[10] We found our claim upon the unshackled and progressive spirit and character of our religion.”[11]
Reverend Babbidge became Chaplain Babbidge of the 6th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment on April 22, 1861.[12] He was “the first clergyman who was called into actual service to suppress the rebellion, as he was also the first graduate of Harvard University to enter the service.”[13] Three days earlier, the regiment had been ambushed by Confederate sympathizers on Pratt Street in Baltimore, Maryland, as it passed through on its way to Washington, D.C. The 6th Massachusetts spilled the first blood of the Civil War.
Luther Crawford Ladd, a seventeen-year-old mechanic living in Lowell, was among the first volunteers to answer Lincoln’s call for three months’ volunteers, even though his friends begged him not to go. In his Historical Sketch of the Old Sixth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, John W. Hanson shares that when Ladd fell mortally wounded in a Baltimore street, his final words were, “All hail to the Stars and Stripes.”[14] This might seem like a bit of propaganda to modern readers. Still, Hanson reports on the killer receiving his just desserts, writing, “The murdered of Ladd was probably a drunken, dissolute wretch, residing in Williamsport, Md., named Wrench. He afterwards often boasted of the deed, and rejoiced in having killed that “boy soldier who shouted for the Stars and Stripes when he fell.”[15] Eventually, Wretch was shot through the heart and killed when his poor aim gave a man he intended to kill an unexpected opportunity for survival[SR6] .
The revelation of mixed allegiances in Baltimore caused Union leadership to occupy the city. Following the riot, the 6th Regiment was sent on to defend Washington, D.C., and connect with their much-needed, newly assigned spiritual leader, Charles Babbidge. Hanson informs that upon their arrival in Washington following the ambush on Pratt Street, Col. Jones of the 6th Regiment “became anxious for the preservation of the flag placed in his care by Gov. Andrew; and he entrusted it to the custody of Chaplain Babbidge, with orders to keep it about his person.”[16] Babbidge was honored. “The chaplain folded it carefully, and buttoned it across his breast, beneath his coat, saying occasionally to himself, “I hope, if I’m hit, it will be in the breast, and that the old flag will stop the ball.”[17]
The 6th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment mustered out of service on August 2, 1861. They were among the first to respond when Lincoln asked for seventy-five thousand volunteers. Many of the regiment’s officers and enlisted men decided to continue their service together. Babbidge was part of this group. Just twenty-six days after leaving the Union Army, they formed the 26th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment under their leader from the 6th Regiment, Col. Edward F. Jones, a self-made man from Utica, N.Y., who would later serve as his state’s lieutenant governor.
The 26th Massachusetts served primarily in the Gulf Coast region during the war. Babbidge and the holdovers from the 6th spent nearly three and a half years in dangerous situations. In April 1862, the 26th joined General Benjamin Butler’s capture of New Orleans, an essential port and the largest city in the Confederacy. After this early strategic victory, the regiment was among the first Union troops to occupy the city. Outside Louisiana, the 26th fought on the Red River in Texas and assisted in capturing Mobile, Alabama, one of the last major Confederate ports on the Gulf Coast. Later, they returned to Louisiana and participated in the successful assault on Port Hudson following the Confederate surrender of Vicksburg on July 4, 1863, which gave the Union control of the entire Mississippi River.
Babbidge mustered out of the Army for the last time when he was nearing sixty. He returned home to their two surviving children and his wife of twenty-five years, Eliza Ann Bancroft, a daughter of the American Revolution through her grandfather, Benjamin Fletcher, who “served as a lieutenant in the Rhode Island campaign, 1778 and 1780 commanded a company of Middlesex county militia.”[18] Bancroft’s great-grandfather, Edmund Bancroft, “was a Committee of Safety of Pepperell. At his house, distinguished British officers, prisoners of war, were quartered after the surrender of Burgoyne.”[19]
These were patriotic and prominent citizens. Babbidge is mentioned multiple times in Abram English Brown’s 1897 book, Beside Old Hearth-Stones. Brown writes, “In addition to all the ecclesiastical functions of a faithful pastor, Rev. Mr. Babbidge has never allowed the fire of patriotism to go out on the altar.”[20] Brown wonders if this is because of Pepperell’s role in the Battle of Bunker Hill, which took place thirty miles away. Col. Prescott, commander of the American forces during the battle, was from Pepperell, as were many veterans who Babbidge “ministered until they joined their comrades.”[21] Babbidge spoke reverently of his early congregants, asking, “Did not my heart burn within me as I walked and talked with them by the way, and as they opened to me the secrets of their lives?”[22]
Babbidge served as pastor of First Parish for more than sixty years. When he retired in 1886, his church named him Pastor Emeritus. Babbidge was ninety-one when he died. His wife of fifty-four years had preceded him in death four years earlier. Two daughters survived them.
[1] National Society Sons of the American Revolution, XVII, No. 2, October 1922, 102, www.sar.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/XVII-NO-2_OCTOBER-1922.pdf.
[2] I have not yet figured out which schools he went to before Harvard. I am hoping I find that in his boxes.
[3] Nashoba Valley Voice, “Community Church Steeple,” Nashoba Valley Voice, July 18, 2008. www.nashobavalleyvoice.com/2008/07/18/community-church-steeple-2/. And, Commemorating 100 Years, “Community Church of Pepperell.” Wsimg.com. Accessed October 31, 2024.
[4] Do I have this schism correct?
[5] “Community Church of Pepperell.”
[6] Community Church of Pepperell.” Accessed October 31, 2024. nebula.wsimg.com/8518c76619212d4799aec3d02cad735b?AccessKeyId=96213D21CEB52C723AE1&disposition=0&alloworigin=1.
[7] “Community Church of Pepperell.”
[8] “Community Church of Pepperell.”
[9] Charles Babbidge, The Claims of Congregational Churches: A Centennial Address; Being a Plea in Vindication of the Rights of the First Church of Christ in Pepperell, Mass.: Delivered Feb. 9 (Boston: Wm. Crosby and H.P. Nichols, 1847), [insert page number], www.loc.gov/item/06015340.
[10] Babbidge, Claims of Congregational Churches, 32.
[11] Babbidge, Claims of Congregational Churches, 32.
[12] Here is where I need some love. The Philips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum houses Babbidge’s papers. I requested a quote on some scanned pages containing his first accounts of battles, but they have not yet responded. I would like to integrate that information later for Harvard Square.
[13] John W. Hanson, Historical Sketch of the Old Sixth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, During Its Three Campaigns in 1861, 1862, 1863, and 1864. Containing the History of the Several Companies Previous to 1861, and the Name and Military Record of Each Man Connected with the Regiment During the War (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1866), accessed December 3, 2024, 87. babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924030905776&seq=1.
[14] Hanson, Historical Sketch of the Old Sixth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, 1866, 47.
[15] Hanson, Historical Sketch of the Old Sixth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, 1866, 48.
[16] Hanson, Historical Sketch of the Old Sixth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, 1866, 59.
[17] Hanson, Historical Sketch of the Old Sixth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, 1866, 59.
[18] Daughters of the American Revolution, Lineage Book: NSDAR: Volume 20, 1897, entry for Eliza Ann Bancroft, North America, Family Histories, 1500–2000, accessed via Ancestry.com, 303.
[19] DAR, Lineage Book: NSDAR: Volume 20, 1897, entry for Eliza Ann Bancroft, accessed via Ancestry.com, 303.
[20] Abram English Brown, Beside Old Hearth-Stones (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1897), 33, accessed December 3, 2024, archive.org/details/besideoldhearths01brow.
[21] Brown, Beside Old Hearth-Stones, 34.
[22] Brown, Beside Old Hearth-Stones, 33.
