Primary Source Activity at Lighthouse Point

1. Which Day is the Seventh?

3. “ The people indicated by the above heading are a small division of the great Baptist family , in these United States, differing only from their brethren in the observance of Saturday instead of Sunday as the Christian Sabbath.” “In every way, secular, social and religious, this practice is an immense inconvenience and disadvantage ; a costly sacrifice to the rulings of conscience.... That two consecutive Sabbaths are a serious misfortune is doubtless felt by all, and equally on both sides of this question. It must greatly impair the sacredness of both days...” Excerpted from the Stonington Mirror

4. “The truth is the Seventh Day Baptists, at Westerly, for generations back, as now, have been an evangelical and moral leaven in the community-- blessing themselves , but blessing others more , and while nourishing their own faith and caring diligently for their own interests, imparting vitality and strength and numbers even to the various orders of Sunday churches around them ; preaching for tem and laboring with them... with a breadth of charity and singleness of zeal, worthy of all admiration and praise .” Excerpted from the Stonington Mirror, August 22, 1878

5. “ There is a story of a certain captain who, knowing the urgency of getting a load of lumber to the Greenman yard, hurried his ship along and had the misfortune to arrive on a Sabbath [Saturday] morning…. In the Greenman yard there was no sign of life. When he implored the watchmen to rustle up an unloading crew, the watchman explained that the Greenmans were Seventh Day Baptists and no work was permitted in the yard on Saturday…. Much as they had needed the lumber, this was the Sabbath and it could not be unloaded. Next morning the unloading crew arrived, with horses and heavy chains, all set for the unloading. There were no signs of life on the ship at all…. At last a figure appeared on deck and motioned silence. The captain, he said, was holding divine services for the crew. [The Greenmans] pleaded with him to begin the unloading, the lumber was urgently needed. He was adamant…. ‘ I ain’t kept Sunday for forty years,’ he said, ‘but damned if I ain’t going to keep this one.’ And he did.” The memory of Harriet Edith Greenman Stillman, as related to researcher MacDonald Steers, 1954 Greenmanville Church, 1889