The Recruit: Parentage, Early Life

“I praise Thee, while Thy providence
In childhood’s home I trace,
For blessings given ere dawning sense
Could seek or scan Thy grace.”

Who John E. Vassar was, and what, thousands knew, and they will not be likely quickly to forget. Whence he came, and what were the moulding influences of early days, are less familiar facts, which it may be well to trace and briefly tell. In character, as in creation, what is visible is often the effect of causes working and shaping far away.

The Vassar family was French. About the beginning of the eighteenth century some of its members crossed the English Channel, and in the rich agricultural county of Norfolk found a home. Here at wool-growing and farming three generations lived, and mainly died. Here Thomas Vassar, the father of John E., was born, and spent nearly forty years.

But he and his brothers were Dissenters, of the Baptist faith, and like other nonconformists winced under the oppressions and exactions and disabilities imposed by the wedded Church and State. Hundreds whose love of native land was sincere and fervent were driven abroad, to gain the religious liberty which a country made cruel by its fears denied.

It was in this exodus that Thomas Vassar, then unmarried, and his younger brother James — the father of Matthew — started across the Atlantic, not so much in quest of fame or fortune as “freedom to worship God.”

One October day of 1796 the good ship “Criterion,” with the emigrants on board, sailed up New York Bay. The following spring they settled near Poughkeepsie on the Hudson, then a village of some four or five hundred souls. For some time the brothers carried on farming operations together, Thomas meanwhile returning to their native land for implements and seeds. Several years later he established the well-known brickyard on the Dutchess Turnpike, a mile or two out of town.

He had previously married Joanna Ellison of Flatbush, Long Island, whose father kept a somewhat noted academy there. The wife was by twenty years the husband’s junior, and one of those unselfish souls whose life, spent in bearing others’ burdens, is in the home or the community a benediction. Letters written by her when she was seventy-five years of age are models of penmanship and good terse English, and reveal a heart as tender as a child’s.

The husband was a sunny, cheery, lively man, full of pleasant stories picked up beyond the sea, fuller still of Scripture, which seemed to be always dropping from his lips, busy as a bee, honest to the core, ready for every neighborly act or office, and never happier than when, with children or grandchildren on his knee, he talked of the dear old home beyond the deep, or the one holier and fairer far, eternal in the heavens. To their memory he stands out still as one who needed to lay little off to fit him for companionship with the saints in light. From his nineteenth to his ninety-third year he walked with God, and then, while his hands were uplifted in blessing and on his lips lingered some of the great apostle’s sweetest words, he found himself suddenly and safely landed on the shores of immortality.

Of these parents, John Ellison Vassar, the fourth child in a family of six, was born on the 13th day of January, 1813. He was named after Dr. John Ellison, his mother’s only brother, who, after studying medicine abroad, settled near Paris, practised successfully at his profession, and died there while his namesake was yet young.

The earlier years of childhood are commonly like the leaves which, left blank, are bound up next to the covers of a book. They may not be absolutely characterless, but little is stamped thereon which can afterward be read. Of the boy John Vassar, not much can be remembered now. He was wide-awake, impulsive, affectionate, quick-tempered, and rapidly despatched what was given him to do. All this those who knew him say. Had they not said it, so much might have been inferred. Nature never pieces together contradictions. Out of a calm, cool, easy-going boy your man of red-hot earnestness cannot come.

The lad had for three winters the advantages of an ordinary district school. These did not amount to much in those days. The father and mother, both of whom were better educated than the average teacher then, directed some further studies in the home. He was not a remarkable scholar, however, and it is doubtful whether he would have been even with larger opportunities. He had a bright, active mind, but patient, rigid application to books would never have suited him so well as hard, heavy work. To that he early bent his back. At twelve years old he is in the brickyard. His body is little, but it is sturdy, and his spirit is plucky; so while scarcely more than a child he is said to have filled a man’s place. While thus employed, and somewhere about his twentieth year, an accident befell him, from the effects of which he was never altogether free. In hurrying across a rude logbridge which spanned a creek near the house, one leg somehow slipped through, and was so badly broken as to leave him thereafter with a limping limb.

Laid aside for many weeks, it was the hope and prayer of his parents that the misfortune might bring seriousness and salvation to their child. But trouble does not always work that way. It is one thing to worry over calamity; it is another to weep over sin — how far another many a soul could testify. Recovery came, but not conversion. The ripple of uneasiness settled down. The old life of profanity and prayerlessness came rushing back, and along the old channels it pushed its way. God “THE RECRUIT”

was forgotten. Eternity faded from the thoughts like a passing dream.

So time ran on till he had begun his twenty-fifth year. Then he married, and moving into Poughkeepsie commenced housekeeping, and working in the malt-house or brewery there. The wife chosen was one Mary Lee. Like himself, she had been blest with praying parents. Like him, she had not yet learned to pray. He is now started out in life. His home is pleasant; his health is perfect; his prospects fair. What more can be asked .^ Nothing, if this world were all. Nothing, if there were not a soul which came from God, and can never rest till it comes to God again. So far John Vassar has kept himself an alien from the commonwealth of Israel. He stands on the side that is not the Lord’s. And he tries, as many are trying still, to be happy there. But this smooth complacency or self-satisfaction is about to be broken up. Infinite Love will not suffer a soul to content itself always with the getting and keeping and minding of earthly things. The time has come for him to listen to God’s call and throw himself entirely and eternally into the Saviour’s ranks.

To this we pass. So far we have seen the stuff of which the recruit was made.