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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
3 1833 03545 2256
Gc 976.1 W58h Whitaker, W. C. 1867-1938 History of the Protestant Episcopal church in Alabama, 1763-1891
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016
https://archive.org/details/historyofprotest00whit 1
HISTORY
OF THE
PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL
Church in Alabama
1763-1891
BY WALTER C. WHITAKER Rector of Christ Church, Tuskaloosa, Ala.
" Look unto the rock whence ye are hewn."-Isaiah 51:1. "To stir you up by putting you in remembrance." -I St. Peter 1: 13.
BIRMINGHAM, ALA. ROBERTS & SON 1898
er Street 70 e, IN 46801-2270
J
COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY WALTER C. WHITAKER.
/
ء
TO THE CHURCHMEN OF ALABAMA.
r 1808 68479
PREFACE.
T HE author has no apology to make for writing and publishing this history. He feels that an excuse must, from its very nature, be either in vain or unnecessary. The book itself must be his justifica- tion or his condemnation.
He has of course written, as every man must write, from his own point of view. While claiming that it is his right to do this, he is not unaware that there are other points of view, and to their occupants he cheer- fully concedes the right to criticise his sense of pro- portion.
It should be borne in mind that this is a history, not of bishops, priests, or parishes, but of a diocesan Church. Hence only those personal and parochial records appear that set forward the author's purpose. Matters of detail have been unhesitatingly sacrificed to comprehensiveness of statement.
To those who have furnished much interesting in- formation and many valuable documents, especially
6
CHURCH IN ALABAMA.
to BISHOP WILMER and the REV. R. H. COBBS, D. D., the author thus publicly expresses his appreciation of their kindness.
TUSKALOOSA, ALA., Easter Monday, 1898.
CONTENTS.
PART FIRST.
THE ACEPHALOUS CHURCH.
CHAP.
PAGE.
I.
Potest Tolerari
II
II. Organization
17
III. A Headless Body
24
PART SECOND.
THE EPISCOPATE OF BISHOP COBBS.
I. Bishop Cobbs' Early Life
43
II. Missionary Character of the Diocese
49
III. Missionary Sowings
53
IV. Difficulties and Discouragements
57
V. With Loins Begirt
64
VI. The Church Building Era
70
VII. Congregational Growth
75
VIII. The Church's Slave Children
80
IX. Endowment of the Episcopate
84
X. The Diocesan Missionary Society
93
XI. The Relief of the Clergy
99
XII. Church Schools
105
XIII. Personnel of the Clergy
II3
8
CHURCH IN ALABAMA.
CHAP.
PAGE.
XIV. The Theological Tone. 123
XV. Parish Life 132
XVI. Last Days of Bishop Cobbs
14I
PART THIRD.
THE EPISCOPATE OF BISHOP WILMER.
I. A Confederate Diocese
153
II. Bishop Wilmer's Early Life
158
III. War Times
164
IV. The Bishop and General Orders
171
V. The Bishop and the General Convention
188
VI. Decay of the Negro Work
195
VII. Ethiopia's Uplifted Hands
206
VIII. The Orphans' Home
213
IX.
The Case of Hamner Hall
219
X. Edification and Demolition
233
XI. The Revolution of Boom Times
248
XII.
The Diocesan Missionary Society
257
XIII.
The Golden Age
270
XIV.
Looking Backward
284
XV. Aaron's Sons and Hur's
294
XVI. Prospective
303
PART FIRST.
THE ACEPHALOUS CHURCH.
-- 2
HISTORY
OF THE
CHURCH IN ALABAMA.
CHAPTER I.
POTEST TOLERARI.
T HE beginning of the record carries us down to the waters of the Gulf and back to the sixth decade of the last century.
The French and Indian War had just ceased, and in the ensuing division of territory France had ceded to England the fort and village of Mobile. The settle- ment here was sixty years old. Except the garrison few Englishmen ever came to the village, and they that did come fell under the dominant French influ- ence.
The Governor, Robert Farmer, a man whose range of reading was so great that he could compare Pontiac with Mithridates, and refresh himself in hours of weariness with Montesquieu, and who, in his corres- pondence with the French governor of New Orleans, evinced thorough familiarity with both the Salic Law and Magna Charta, was withal a notoriously dissolute man. His strong mentality and weak morality yielded
I2
HISTORY OF THE
their accustomed fruits in his subordinates, and the few villagers and more numerous soldiery, copying the weaker traits of their commander, were strangers to virtue and familiars of dissipation and debauchery.
A person calling himself a clergyman of the Church of England lounged about the place and occasionally held public services. The people seriously questioned his ordination, of which he gave no proof. His charac- ter, however, they did not question. Asa good priest is the best of men, so a bad priest is the worst of men; and this reputed clergyman, drifting among the out- posts of civilization, was so horribly ungodly and lascivious that even the hardened soldiers and camp- followers of Mobile held him in detestation.
It was to this morally desolate place that the Rev. Samuel Hart, of Charleston, S. C., received license to minister in 1764. The missionary spirit was none too active in those days, even among the missionaries themselves, and Mr. Hart's zeal was not kindled when he found the field so sterile and the society so uncon- genial. He soon determined to return to more civil- ized regions.
But before his departure he took occasion, at a general congress held with the Indians, to preach them a lengthy and quite dogmatic sermon, which the interpreter explained sentence by sentence. The Indian chief was very attentive. After dinner he asked Mr. Hart whereabouts lived the Great Warrior, God Almighty, of whom he talked so much, and desired to know if He were a friend of "Brother George " across the water. This question started Mr.
13
CHURCH IN ALABAMA.
Hart into another long discourse, wherein he expa- tiated on God's being and attributes, and sought to enlighten the dusky warrior on the divine transcend- ence and immanence; but he was utterly unable to impart any idea of his subject-matter to his hearer. Finally his verbosity wearied the chief, who solemnly took him by the hand, and, filling a glass with rum, concluded the interview much to his own satisfaction, by saying: "Beloved man, I will always think well of this friend of ours, God Almighty, of whom you tell me so much; and so let us drink his health." Then he drank the rum and went back to his native forests.
After a sojourn in Mobile of about a year Mr. Hart saw the growth of the village seriously retarded and its very existence rendered problematic by a fearful scourge introduced from Jamaica by a British regi- ment, and nourished by the dissolute habits of the population; and, in 1765, he returned to Charleston.
After this no attempt was made to plant the Church in Alabama until 1826; a single service held in Flor- ence two years before by the Rev. William Wall not being followed up by either the clergyman or the people.
In the intervening sixty years Alabama's popula- tion had grown to three hundred thousand. The dig- nity of statehood had been conferred on the territory. Material prosperity had greatly increased. Manners and morals, subject to new influences, showed marked improvement. But nowhere was the Church visible in diocese, parish, or mission. Methodist and Bap-
14
HISTORY OF THE
tist houses of worship appeared, and here and there Presbyterian, but the Church of Apostolic Succession . was without a single minister or congregation in the entire state.
It would be idle to say that no blame attaches to the Bishops, clergy and laity in the established dio- ceses of the older states; and yet these do not deserve the entire burden of censure heaped upon them even by the Churchfolk of today. The bulk of population in the Tennessee Valley came down from Tennessee and Kentucky wherein Churchmen were few and far between. In Middle Alabama a considerable propor- tion were Churchmen; and so in Mobile. But for thirty years (1783-1813) South Alabama was in the hands of the Spanish, who allowed no public re- ligious exercises other than those of the Holy Roman Church. In this district Anglican Christianity was not permitted to show its head. Then, when in 1813 the territory passed back into the hands of English- speaking people and was for the first time incorpor- ated in the United States, the Church had to contend, not only in Alabama, but all through the Union, with an unfavorable popular prejudice, of which not suffi- cient account is ordinarily taken by those who com- ment on her present numerical weakness in this country.
Down to the Revolutionary War the Church in the colonies was distinctly Anglican in its customs and in its constitution. Every American clergyman was or- dained in England, and the majority were born there; so that, though living in America, their sympathies
15
CHURCH IN ALABAMA.
were naturally with the mother in her disputes with the daughter. Although their sense of justice caused many of them to side with the rebelling colonies in the struggle for independence and induced well-nigh all to cast in their fortunes with the new-born nation when the war was over, yet they were regarded with suspicion. It was well known that the Protestant Episcopal Church was an offshoot of the Church of England. Practically the Church of England was the English people and the English Government. An organic body in this country that derived its authority from England, and that had been, through its chief official representatives in England, in hostil- ity towards a national uprising, was entirely out of touch with American ideals and institutions, and de- served to be cast out and trodden under foot. It is true that some of the leading patriots were members of this despised body-George Washington, Patrick Henry, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Peyton Ran- dolph, Robert Morris, Alexander Hamilton, Madison, Monroe, and Francis Scott Key, not to mention hun- dreds of others-but their membership was held to be an idiosyncracy for which, in the light of their many virtues, they should not be too severely censured.
This prejudice, ignorant as is all prejudice, arose and flourished long before the open hostilities of the War of the Revolution began. By the end of the en- suing thirty years of peace with England it had begun to diminish, but the second conflict, the War of 1812, fanned it into brighter flame than ever. The utmost that zealous Americanism would grant the Church
-
16
CHURCH IN ALABAMA.
was "Potest Tolerari." Those men were our grand- fathers. Their bitter prejudice still washes at our feet after two generations.
So the Church had to await her time and opportu- nity. Here and there, throughout the territory of Alabama, a few Church families, emigrants from the states, were thrown together, and irregularly held lay-services, supplemented at long intervals by the chance visit of some clerical relative, friend, or itiner- ant. Many of these early Churchmen became dis- couraged at the apparent forgetfulness of their Mother and united themselves with sectarian bodies, chiefly Methodist and Baptist, whose noble, self-sacrificing preachers kept in the vanguard of civilization, along- side, and sometimes ahead of, the gambling-den and the whisky-hell. But here and there were forming nuclei of the large congregations that are now found in Mobile, Montgomery, Selma, Birmingham, and Huntsville, and of parishes elsewhere that are only awaiting an uncrystalized material on which to work.
CHAPTER II.
ORGANIZATION.
S UCH was the condition of affairs when in Novem- ber, 1826, the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Church, then five years old, directed the Rev. Robert Davis " to visit the State of Alabama and advance the interests of the Society and religion " there. Shortly after his appointment Mr. Davis set out on what was then a long and tedious journey; but being detained on his way by illness he did not reachı Tuskaloosa, his objective point, till the winter of 1827.
Tuskaloosa was then a small village, eight years of age, and with a population of not more than five or six hundred souls. But within the past year it had been made the State capital, and a considerable popu- lation was certain in the near future. At any rate, Mr. Davis thought that with the capital as his center of operations he could the better extend the influence and ministrations of the Church into other villages and hamlets of the interior. Here, therefore, he re- mained several months, ministering constantly to the half-dozen Church families that had moved in, but apparently making no missionary excursions. On January 7, 1828, Christ Church parish was organized, and the building of a parish church undertaken.
Whether Mr. Davis had any idea of remaining in
17
IS
HISTORY OF THE
Tuskaloosa is doubtful. He was not sent out to do missionary work, but was simply a collecting agent of the Missionary Society, working on a commission of ten per cent. of his gross collections. He left Tuska- loosa on March 25th of this year, 1828; and his subsequent demand on the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society for his commission on the sev- enteen hundred dollars subscribed towards the parish church explains in part the zeal that he manifested for the erection of a house of worship.
Mr. Davis' departure was followed by cessation of effort on the part of the newly-organized parish; but in February, 1829, a newly-appointed missionary, the Rev. William H. Judd, arrived from New York, and infused new life into the project. Mr. Judd lived only six months after he came to Alabama, but his success was marked, the church building being almost com- pleted at the time of his death. He left the congre- gation in a flourishing condition, and not only flour- ishing but united-a fact worthy of note, for there were not thirty communicants in the parish.
Meanwhile another clergyman was working in Ala- bama. Three weeks before Mr. Davis had reached Tuskaloosa, the Rev. Henry A. Shaw had taken. charge of the church families in Mobile. Here in 1822 a few Churchmen had built the first non-Roman- ist place of worship in the entire district wrested from the Spanish nine years before. For three years union services were held in this building, ministers being engaged without reference to denomination. In 1825 this arrangement ceased, and the Churchmen organ-
19
CHURCH IN ALABAMA.
ized Christ Church parish. A Presbyterian minister, the Rev. Murdoch Murphy, continued to officiate as the parish minister until Mr. Shaw's arrival in De- cember, 1827. The original Christ Church must have been a very small, cheap, and unsubstantial structure, for in 1834 the rector complained that it was "too small and very old," although the parish numbered only twenty-eight communicants, and the building had been used only twelve years.
In 1830 the Church in Alabama, and especially the parish of Mobile, received some encouragement from a visit of the Rt. Rev. Thomas C. Brownell, Bishop of Connecticut. Dr. Brownell had been requested by the Domestic Missionary Board to make a visita- tion to all the Southern States not then organized into dioceses, and in pursuance of this request he visited Mobile in January, 1830.
On the 25th day of that month he presided over the Primary Convention, at which the diocese was organized. According to Bishop Brownell's report the convention was composed of "the principal Epis- copalians of the city and from other parts of the state." But the delegates from outside the place of meeting were few. The state was very deficient in transport- ation facilities. More than a month was required to make the journey by water from Demopolis or Mont- gomery to Mobile and return, and so miserable were the few rough country roads that penetrated the vast stretches of pine forests and the dangerous morasses of the Mobile river and its tributaries that few cared to use them. Therefore the Primary Convention was slimly attended. Besides the Bishop, the local min-
20
HISTORY OF THE
ister (the Rev. Henry Shaw), and the Rev. William Richmond, a New York clergyinan, the only other cleric present was the Rev. Albert A. Muller, who had recently been transferred from Mississippi and was stationed at Tuskaloosa. Ten or twelve laymen were in attendance, the majority from Mobile. The parishes of Mobile and Tuskaloosa, and the congrega- tion at Greensboro, which had just been organized by Mr. Muller, were represented. A constitution was adopted, a Standing Committee was appointed, and steps were taken to secure a union with the diocese of Mississippi and the congregations of Louisiana. The Convention then adjourned to meet again in Mo- bile on May 12 of the same year.
At the time set lay delegates appeared from the same three congregations as before, but Mr. Shaw was the only clergyman present, Mr. Muller appar- ently not caring to spend two months of the same year on the Warrior and Tombigbee rivers. The Convention, without transacting any business, ad- journed to meet at Tuskaloosa on January 3, 1831, hopeful that the accessibility of that place would allow a full attendance.
The hope was not disappointed. Although Mr. . Muller sat in solitary clerical state, Mr. Shaw this time absenting himself, delegates from Mobile were present. Deputations attended also from Greensboro, and from Huntsville, whither a few Churchmen had removed. Ten souls constituted this Convention- a small number absolutely, but relatively six times larger than any Diocesan Council of the last decade.
21
CHURCH IN ALABAMA.
A communication was received from the diocese of Mississippi asking the appointment of a committee of six, to meet the same number each fromn Mississippi and Louisiana, with a view to the formation out of the three bodies of "The Southwestern Diocese." As this request was the outcome of a resolution adopted at the Primary Convention of Alabama the year before, it was granted. The committee appointed consisted of the two clergy resident in the state, Chief Justice Abner S. Lipscomb and Mr. John Eliott of Mobile, and Messrs. J. M. Davenport and A. P. Bald- win of Tuskaloosa. Bishop Brownell was requested to continue in charge of the Church in Alabama, and to render such Episcopal service as might be required. A set of four canons was adopted by this Convention -probably the shortest code of laws ever in force in an American diocese.
We have seen that at this time parishes were estab- lished and organized in Mobile and Tuskaloosa, the metropolis and the capital, and that congregations had been gathered at Greensboro and Huntsville. A year or two later, Bishop Brownell made a journey of in- spection through the state, and held services at Selma, Montgomery and Florence. These places were all sinall villages, but the Bishop deemed them favorable missionary soil.
No other congregations than these existed in Ala- bama when the General Convention of 1832 recog- nized Alabama as an autonomous diocese, and the weakness of the Church was so great that many deemed it idle that such action should have been taken.
22
HISTORY OF THE
There was little or no community of interest between the two clergymen. The Rev. Norman Pinney had succeeded the Rev. Mr. Shaw as rector of Christ Church, Mobile, but he was so much engrossed with his own parochial affairs that he did not appear at a Convention of the diocese till more than three years later.
Only Mr. Muller and nine laymen composed the Convention of 1832, one-half of whose membership was from Tuskaloosa, where the Convention was held. It was not an over-cheerful Convention. Earnest appeals to the Domestic and Foreign Missionary So- ciety were not heeded, though the Society was mean- while supporting missionaries in Greece, where an orthodox branch of the Holy Catholic Church was already established. Pecuniary reasons influenced Mr. Muller, after two years of faithful service, to dis- continue his monthly visits to Greensboro-a seri- ous discouragement to this congregation, which had secured a lot and raised a considerable sum of money towards the erection of a church building. Hunts- ville was despondent at her failure to secure outside aid in building a house of worship. Liberality towards the Church did not keep pace with the increase of Churchmen's bank accounts.
Spiritual parsimony was most marked in the Ten- nessee Valley, which was now making great indus- trial progress. Here, in 1832, money enough was found to build, in Madison County, Alabama's first cotton factory, and to construct from Tuscumbia to Decatur the state's first railroad. Churchmen built
:
23
CHURCH IN ALABAMA.
for themselves houses of cedar, while yet not even a tabernacle was erected to the glory of God.
In 1833 the Church's most faithful children were so disheartened that they did not even attempt to hold the Convention, which was to have met at Tus- kaloosa. Mr. Muller had left this place because of very scandalous lapses from religion and morality that subsequently resulted in his deposition from the sacred ministry, and the congregation which he left behind him was gradually and surely melting away. Only at Mobile, throughout this dark biennium, did any vigor remain, and even there the communicants were a mere handful.
CHAPTER III. A HEADLESS BODY.
T HE General Convention of 1832, which admitted the diocese of Alabama into union with itself, took other action which served to arouse Alabama Churchmen from their apathy by giving them some- thing to do, to think of, and to hope for. A special canon was enacted allowing the dioceses of Alabama and Mississippi and the churches in Louisiana to pro- ceed to the formation of that "Southwestern Diocese," which the Churchmen of the three states deemed the only practicable scheme for ensuring constant Epis- copal oversight.
Then the general Board of Missions determined to send a missionary to Alabama. The selection of the Rev. Caleb S. Ives was providential. He knew where to take hold, and how to inspire hope and en- thusiasm. His first work was to gather together the congregational fragments in what are now Greene, Hale, and Marengo counties. At Greensboro the congregation, which had been organized by Mr. Muller on March 14, 1830, and had scattered, sheep' without a shepherd, now numbered six families. But as the mighty influence of Bethlehem Ephrata de- pended not on its numerical strength, so again, on Christmas Eve, this time in Alabama, was born a Christ-spirit; and on December 24, 1833, the little congregation, stirred by Mr. Ives' zeal, aroused itself
24
25
CHURCH IN ALABAMA.
from sleep, formed the parish of "St. Paul's," and went to work in the Master's vineyard. The mis- sionary seed dropped that Christmas Eve has borne fruit a hundred-fold, and today Greensboro is a chief center of missionary activity in the diocese.
But not even in Greensboro was it plain sailing for the Church in those days. If Mr. Ives encouraged others he often faced difficulties and met with disap- pointments. "The doctrines and services of the Church," he wrote from Greensboro, in 1835, "so far as can be ascertained, are favorably received; and the prospects for building up the Church here are as flattering as could be expected under existing circum- stances. The place has been too long neglected, which, together with the abortive attempt once made. to establish the Church here, requires much labor, fidelity, and perseverance to place her even on an equal footing with the other denominations."
On Sunday, December 15, 1833, a week after the first service that he had held at Greensboro, Mr. Ives officiated at Demopolis, where he found a few Church families. This was the first Church service ever held at Demopolis. In the following month Mr. Ives re- turned to Demopolis, and on January 31, 1834, or- ganized Trinity parish. In this month also he gath- ered a congregation at a point nine miles southwest of Greensboro and on the road to Demopolis, and here, on April 19, 1834, organized the parish of "St. John's in the Prairies."*
*This parish has been defunct since 1865, when the remnant of the congregation connected itself with St. Paul's, Greens- -- 3
26
HISTORY OF THE
In the following September, at Prairieville* he es- tablished a congregation. Constantly did his field of labor broaden. Thoroughly did he cultivate all his rich territory. Abundantly did it respond to his en- deavors.
The outlook was now becoming brighter for the whole diocese-what there was of it-and at the Con- vention which met in Mobile in January, 1835, Bishop Brownell, all three of the diocesan clergy, and dele- gates from Mobile, Tuskaloosa, Greensboro, and Demopolis, were in attendance. This Convention recommended to the next annual Convention a revised constitution, somewhat fuller and more explicit than its predecessor, and adopted a body of canons provid- ing for the composition and guidance of subsequent Conventions and for the reception of clergymen into canonical residence in a parish. Through a fatal de- fect in the third canon it became possible for unbap- tized men to sit in the diocesan Convention, and it was not necessary that a delegate to the General Con- vention, the highest deliberative and legislative body in the Church, should have received the Laying on of Hands. The clergy and six laymen were ap- pointed deputies to the Convention soon to meet in New Orleans for the purpose of organizing the South- western Diocese.
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