Article Contributed on: 6/19/2009 5:08:25 PM
When Golden was founded 150 years ago its people brought faith with them, which was a vital commodity in the wild and dangerous frontier. Within days, at most ten, after the city's founding our first worship service took place, inside the large gambling saloon tent pitched at today's northwest corner of 12th and Ford Streets. It's proprietors, the Ford brothers, during the gold rush liked to offer their tent, the biggest enclosed space in town, to any minister who wanted to preach there, promising all gambling and saloon activity would cease as long as the service was taking place. The Presbyterian minister
Lewis Hamilton took them up on their offer, and held Golden's first church service 150 years ago on June 19 or 26, 1859.
George West, a town and newspaper founder, remembered the service well, offering in later years his memories of it:
We well remember the first religious meeting that was held upon the ground now occupied by the City of Golden. It was on the first or second Sabbath after the arrival of the Johnson family and was held in a large tent located near the spot that afterwards became their home and used for gambling purposes. This tent had been tendered by its proprietors - Hi. and Billy Ford, Ed. Chase and Ed. McClintock - to good old father Hamilton, (who afterwards served faithfully through the war as chaplain of the 2nd Colorado Cavalry,) for the service he desired to hold. There in front of a gaily painted roulette table which served for the pulpit, sat Mrs. Johnson, Mrs. T.P. Boyd, Mrs. Eli Carter, Mrs. J.M. Ferrill, Mrs. W.J. McKay and one or two other ladies upon improvised seats comprising nail keys, whiskey kegs, champaign boxes and the like, and surrounded by a motley crowd of pistol-bedecked men. In the utter absence of hymn-books the preacher gave out the name of a hymn that he said he felt all would remember, and those good ladies sang loud and clear to the music of a violin and flute furnished by the gamblers' orchestra,
"A charge to keep I have, A God to glorify, A never dying soul to save And fit it for the skies."
The beautiful hymn was rendered by the ladies entire, accompanied after the first line or two by that whole congregation of roughly attired miners and plainsmen. From that time on the influence of those sweet ladies for good in our camp was far-reaching and undeniable, making one of the most orderly of all the camps in this whole mountain region.
That hymn which
Calista Johnson, Mary Boyd, Jane Carter, Jeanette Ferrell, Sarah McKay and the other ladies sang was "A Charge To Keep I have" by Charles Wesley, who may be best known for the holiday favorite, "Hark The Herald Angels Sing", which no doubt was sung at Golden's first Christmas. Soon others would come to preach in town, and in less than a month found our first church. Rev. Hamilton later quite likely presided over the funeral of Golden's first soldier to fall in combat,
Daniel Miffitt, who died in 1864 at the 2nd Battle of Newtonia while serving with the 2nd Colorado Volunteers.