USA > Alabama > History of the Protestant Episcopal church in Alabama, 1763-1891 > Part 14
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with missionary spirit; but as the records of convoca- tional work were carelessly kept, easily misplaced, and soon lost, and the Deans themselves made only oral reports to the Convention, our knowledge of the specific undertakings of convocations is meager, be- ing limited, in fact, to one item: That the Birming- ham (formerly the Tuskaloosa) Convocation * had determined to concentrate its efforts upon Gadsden. It may be stated comprehensively that some of the clergy gave a few services when called upon, that the Convocations occasionally held sessions, that the work was done almost exclusively by the Deans, that the Deans aroused their own congregations and others to give more freely to diocesan missions, and that the burden of securing not only the missionaries, but also ' their stipends, was lifted as to its latter part from the Bishop's shoulders.
Meanwhile no little energy was manifested in other lines of work. The Rev. Robert Jope's Boys' School at Summerville, Mobile, had a brief existence. The Orphans' Home at Huntsville, for which a fund was accumulating year after year, never materialized. The Rev. J. F. Smith's attempts at Autaugaville and Snowdoun, at the latter place of which a building fund of twelve hundred dollars was once in hand, were the beginning of a long series of dissolving views wherein faithful work was so often annihilated, as to corporate continuance, by the removal of all the congregation to other places. The same failure seemed to attend many of the efforts in East Ala-
* The change of name was made in 1$85.
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bima, where services were undertaken at Mount Meigs, Chunnanuggee, Oswichee, Seale, Cross Keys, Tallassee, and Auburn. At some of these points church buildings were erected, for a time occupied, and finally deserted and uncared for till they either were removed or rotted down. After twenty years new congregations appeared at Auburn and Mount Meigs; over the others death still reigns. But in this period were born the congregations at Birmingham, Talladega, Decatur, Union Springs, and Evergreen; while Montgomery (St. John's), Selma, Opelika, Greensboro, Demopolis, Hayneville, and Montevallo, were building themselves houses of worship, noble or simple, ornate or unpretending, according to their worldly circumstances.
The outlook was encouraging. Two thousand six hundred communicants were enrolled on parish and missionary registers. The annual confirmations aver- aged three hundred and fifty. At Selma alone, with a communicant list of barely more than one hundred, fifty-six persons were confirmed in a single year. Three thousand five hundred dollars was given for diocesan missions. The churches at Montgomery, Mobile, Huntsville, Selma, Tuskaloosa, Union Springs, Greenville, Livingston, Eutaw, and Seale felt so comfortable financially that they voluntarily increased their assessments so that the Bishop's salary might be increased from four thousand to four thou- sand five hundred dollars .* It was now, when every
'Some conception of prevalent financial conditions can be formed from knowledge of the assessments then levied (and
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one had a mind to work, and when the whole diocesan edifice was progressing most favorably, that the panic of 1873 came, disorganizing all diocesan and parochial undertakings, crippling the larger congregations, and well-nigh threatening extinction to the missionary operations.
The first blow came in the reduction by the Domes- tic Board of Missions of its allowance to Alabama. A few years previously the Board's appropriation had been three thousand dollars. After one year this had been reduced to eighteen hundred dollars. And now a further reduction was made to one thousand dollars. This action was taken two years before the storm burst and was consequent upon the first turn of the thumb-screw.
At the same time missionary offerings within the diocese showed a sharp decline, the decline in a single year being one thousand dollars. This decrease was due in part to the general stringency, but chiefly to local demands for church buildings and other paro- chial enterprises which the largest contributors to dio- cesan missions-Mobile, Montgomery, Selma, and Huntsville-had begun and were forced to complete.
The third blow was consequent upon the first two. Within a twelve-month the net decrease in the clerical force, which had largely recovered from the imme- diately post-bellum depletion, was six, and many church doors throughout the diocese were not opened
paid). The largest were : Montgomery (St. John's) $1,000 ; Mobile (Christ Church) $880 ; Mobile (Trinity) $605 ; Hunts- ville $550 ; Selma $500 ; Mobile (St. John's) $300.
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for months. Miss Catherine Wolfe, of New York, did much to relieve the ecclesiastical distress all over the country ; in Alabama alone she eased the situation materially by a gift of two thousand dollars. The missionaries had for a short period before this been re- ceiving a minimum stipend of one thousand dollars, but now their uncertain incomes were but a fraction of this amount, and what they received came irregu- larly. Those that were temporally and spiritually able remained at their posts ; some because they could not better their condition by moving away, most be- cause they were not hirelings.
The passing of the crest in 1873 was the beginning of a time of long and anxious watching and waiting. Every financial and industrial collapse is followed by social and individual restlessness. New fields are tried by those who, not anchored by sheer inability to move, feel that they are at the storm center and that conditions elsewhere are surely more favorable. It was so in Alabama. The restlessness engendered by the Civil War had not passed when this new occasion brought on a more extensive running-to-and-fro than ever before. The ecclesiastical and spiritual injury would have been serious enough had these removals been only from place to place within the state. But unfortunately for Alabama it was at this time that hope was looking towards the setting sun and the stream of Western immigration was flowing level with its banks. Five thousand souls had been confirmed in the thirteen years of Bishop Wilmer's episcopate, yet scarcely more than three thousand communicants
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remained in the diocese. The whole state was suffer- ing from depletion of population. Its mineral wealth was almost untouched. Its vast timber resources were undeveloped. Its manufactories were in the womb of time. Its strength lay in its cultivated fields. And its fields were wearing out under the negligent hus- , bandry of white owner and black tenant. In not a few- portions of the state the original forest was begin- ning to encroach upon the once cultivated fields and to resume its primeval sway-parabolic of the condi- tion of the Church.
Patiently and hopefully had Bishop Wilmer worked, thus far, but when in 1874 the Board of Missions re- duced its apportionment to Alabama from one thousand dollars to a sum too insignificant to be mentioned, he gave measured expression to the indignation that such folly, whether partisan or but short-sighted, aroused within him: "In the midst of our peculiar depression I had indulged the hope that the General Missionary Board would come to the aid of the Church in the Southern Dioceses. It would have been a reasonable hope. We might have been pardoned for supposing that the wise admonition of the Apostle would have been heeded-' As we have opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them which are of the household of faith.' I wish to say no word in disparagement of any effort that looks to the weal of any class of men. I recognize fully the claims of the barbarian. But it strikes me that, for every reason, it is the wise policy aad stern duty of the Church to abandon no position that has been already
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gained, and to lose no ground that has been once occupied. If the Church in this country is to play the important part in the evangelization of the world that she is fitted for, then she is but poorly preparing herself for the mighty work in hand by allowing large areas of territory, now occupied by Anglo-Saxon people, to lie neglected, and (which is sadder still) to + permit churches already established to perish for want of aid during a period of peculiar distress and im- poverishment."
CHAPTER XI. THE REVOLUTION OF BOOM TIMES.
T HE low-water record of diocesan life was made in 1875. In the following year improvement be- gan; for ten years it was constant; at no time was it remarkable. It was a decade of strong heart-throb and steady pulse-beat, of dawning consciousness of power and increasing determination to do and dare for Christ and His Kingdom.
It was a period of rooting and transplanting. Growth along the Selma, Rome & Dalton Railroad from Selma to Cross Plains * was especially notable. In the Tennessee Valley the prospect became less discouraging. In the Gulf Coast missions results were at last perceptible. In the Black Belt almost every available point was occupied that had not long ago been tried and dropped.
In the Mineral Region alone there was, at first, no progress, and no apparent hope of progress. A single parish, the Church of the Advent, had been organized at Birmingham, two miles northeast of Elyton, as early as 1872;j it was first served by an eloquent preacher and faithful pastor, the Rev. Philip A.
* Now Piedmont.
t At this time Elyton had a population of 700 souls, and was the county seat. Birmingham had been incorporated the preceding year, the first house having been built August 29, 1871, and was already a town of 2,000 inhabitants.
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Fitts, who had abandoned a successful career at the bar that he might bear witness of the truth; but its growth was slow, and nine years elapsed before an- other congregation was organized in that region.
Church extension in the Mineral Region began with the founding of Grace Church, Anniston, in 1881. This Church was one of the first fruits of the rapidly approaching Boom Times. Birmingham had already heralded forth her mineral wealth and industrial pos- sibilities, and people were already coming in, a few from the country at large, the majority from the agri- cultural regions and commercial centers of our own state. What the Elyton Land Company was to Bir- mingham, that the Woodstock Iron Company was to Anniston. Each company developed its own city, but better preparation was made in Anniston than in Birmingham for the expected population. Before the city was thrown open to the world by the customary auction day of building lots, which is the birthday of all premeditated booms, the streets were macadamized and lighted, water mains were laid, and a sewerage system was completed. Chief among the promoters were the Nobles and Tylers, staunch and zealous Churchmen. These and a few others living in Annis- ton had been receiving regular ministrations from the Rev. J. F. Smith as far back as 1875, but no parochial organization had been attempted, and later on the services were intermittent; but now these persons, out of the wealth already coming to them, built at a cost of thirty thousand dollars a chaste and beautiful Gothic structure of gray stone, with inside furnish- -17
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ings of cedar and brass. The only defect of this church was its diminutiveness. The seating capacity was only two hundred and fifty, and was monopolized by the wealthier parishioners. There was no room for the poor. This defect was in part met by the erection at Glen Addie of a chapel for the poor; unfor- tunately many of the poor lived elsewhere. The re- sult was that Grace Church never became a large parish, and that its work among the poorest has been comparatively unimportant.
Meanwhile the Church of the Advent, Birmingham, working in and from a small frame building intended for a village congregation, was growing rapidly. In two years it doubled in size, and year by year its de- velopment registered the growth of the city. Bir- mingham was leaving Anniston behind. They who were making haste to become rich cared more for op- portunities than for improvements. Anniston gave the latter, Birmingham the former. Anniston had iron ore in abundance, and fully equal in quality to that of Birmingham ; but Birmingham had what An- niston did not have-coal ; and this one consideration turned the main current of immigration into the Bir- mingham district, leaving but a modicum for Annis- ton.
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The speculative fever, the boom-specter that will not down, was soon rising, and as its opportunity was greatest in the vicinity of Birmingham so there it reached a higher temperature than elsewhere. It was not long ere metropolitan prices were paid per front foot. Every corner lot was a gold-mine. It mattered
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not that the frontage was on the primeval forest, and that the sanguine purchaser who dallied after night- fall upon his newly acquired property experienced no small difficulty in finding his way out of. the woods and back to inhabited avenues and streets. If there were no houses in the neighborhood, that was only because purchasers found it more profitable to sell un- improved property on a rising market ; the houses would come when the lots could remain in one man's hands long enough for the mason and the carpenter, whose operations were slower than those of aerial builders. If there was no rapid transit, that was not needed yet ; it would come as soon as the street began to build up ; meanwhile dotted lines served at public auction and private sale to show the projected railway and street car systems.
It was an exciting game, that of trying who could blow the bubble largest; and while it lasted fortunes were made, invested in other speculative enterprises- and ultimately lost. A single lot would often change hands a half-score times between day-dawn and mid- night, every purchaser selling it at a profit, and the same speculator buying and selling it more than once. It is easily seen that each inflation was a greater strain upon the existence of the bubble, increasing its tenuity, and bringing the day of bursting a step nearer. Gen- erally part payment was made for each purchase, and notes were given for the balance due. Thus was formed an ever growing chain of debtor-creditors, the failure of any one of whom to meet his obligations would be disastrous to all, and the danger of the ina-
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bility of some one increasing with every transaction.
However, the time of settlement was not yet at hand. The fever spread throughout Alabama, en- suring a long procession of men bringing with them more breath, more lung power, and more bubble- mixture. After a little these newcomers were starting new bubbles of their own in the vicinity of the center of activity. No pent-up Birmingham could contract their powers. Thus Woodlawn and Avondale, and, on a larger scale, Bessemer, were created. Bessemer, indeed, would fain have been the compeer of Birming- ham, but in her adventurous ambition succeeded only in giving new point to the ancient fable of the frog and the ox. In all these places Churchmen were found and congregations established. The Rev. Thomas J. Beard, who had become rector of the Church of the Advent, Birmingham, and the Rev. J. A. Van Hoose, a deacon whose injured eyesight had prevented him from pressing on to Priest's Orders, and who had become a prosperous business man, labored independently and indefatigably to meet the demands of the new-born conditions. In Birmingham alone from fifty to one hundred and fifty new commu- nicants were enrolled annually; how many came and went without making themselves known cannot be estimated.
By 1887 the parish of the Advent numbered eleven hundred souls. Many of the congregation had re- moved to the South Highlands, and a new parish was a manifest necessity. At first the Rev. Mr. Beard re- tained charge of his old parishioners in the new parish
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of St. Mary's, but soon a neat frame building was erected and a rector was in charge-the Rev. L. W. Rose. A few years later this church was burned, Mr. Rose went back to Virginia, a stone church was built on the plan of the former structure but on a better site, and the Rev. Owen P. Fitzsimmons, recently a Pres- byterian minister, became rector. The congregation increased rapidly, its greatest growth being due to re- movals of the wealthier members of the Advent to the church which was nearest their new mansions on the Highlands. The parish church of the Advent was wofully inadequate to its needs, not more than two hundred persons being able to gain admission at the public services. A subscription paper was circu- lated, and enough money was raised, on paper, to build the present costly edifice. The cash, however, was not forthcoming, and when the church was finally completed (which was not until 1894) it was strug- gling under a mortgage debt of twenty-three thousand dollars.
Not merely in the immediate vicinity of Birming- ham and Anniston but all through the hill country of Alabama prospectors and developers were at work, and workmen and speculators were multiplying. To catalogue these places would be foreign to the purpose of this record. Suffice it to say that to greater or less extent all of them demanded the ministrations of the Church. Whether the new comers were Alabamians or aliens, as Churchmen they had right to expect nur- ture from the Church in Alabama. Where, but a few years earlier, a single missionary with his headquar-
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ters at Talladega, fifty miles away, sufficed for the score of communicants in this district, and found a horse and gig a sufficiently rapid means of locomotion, now ten clergymen were unequal to the demands and opportunities. Avondale, Bessemer, Blocton, Bloss- burg, Bridgeport, Coalburg, Fort Payne, Pratt City, and Woodlawn were a few of the new congregations. Twenty new parishes and missions were established in five years (1885-1890), and in the same length of time the missionary force increased front seven to thirteen.
The social and industrial revolution wrought by the development of the Mineral Regions had thus its coun- terpart in the congestion of the body ecclesiastical. There was engorgement of the large arteries, and the chill of death at the extremities .* The drain on the rural and village congregations was unprecedented. In five years Greensboro, Tuskaloosa, and Union- town lost one-third of their communicants; Union Springs lost two-thirds of hers; Livingston was almost obliterated, losing more communicants than were en- rolled in 1885. Of the larger non-boom places Selma lost nearly, and Montgomery more than, one hundred communicants, and Mobile more than two hundred. Hundreds of those who remained in their old homes brought themselves to sore straits to get money for "investment" in "good bargains" and "sure things." Joint stock concerns bought up old fields in all possible and impossible locations, and received
* See Bishop Wilmer's Council Address for ISS7.
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for shares much of the money that had been going into the parochial and missionary treasuries.
Had the removal of the fortune-seekers been merely a transfer of strength to newly-formed congregations the upheaval might have been of immediate, positive benefit to the diocese. But with comparatively few exceptions the removal of a communicant into the boom district was a distinct loss of financial strength to the diocese, of personal service to the parish, and of true religion to the pilgrim. The men that made haste to be rich fell into divers temptations, and the glamour of gold concealed the evil of lowered stand- ards. They invested all their cash, and frequently discounted their incomes for months and years, in getting "a good start," and after paying their house- hold, office, and personal expenses, had but little left with which to pay their spiritual taxes. With the bursting of the bubble disappeared their capital, their employment, and their income.
But they, and the congregations that they formed, did not disappear. Not one of the newly formed par- ishes and missions was annihilated. The wave that brought them there left them there. During the boom they had needed aid; after its collapse their need increased. Their formation into parishes had been effected with meteoric rapidity; their financial impoverishment followed with even greater celerity. Three years after its organization Trinity Church, Bessemer, was paying its rector a salary of twelve hundred dollars; two years later it was conjoined with
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Avondale and Woodlawn, and was paying only two hundred dollars toward the missionary's support.
The old established congregations, with reduced numerical and financial strength, had not only to bear their own burdens, but also to help bear the burdens of the new weaklings. And right nobly did they rise to their new responsibility. When the boom began only twenty-two congregations in the diocese were helping the weaker congregations, and these gave only eighteen hundred dollars. When the boom collapsed thirty-three congregations were contributing thirty-five hundred dollars a year to the work. It is worthy of remark that with the exception of what was given by the Church of the Advent, Birmingham, and Grace Church, Anniston, every cent of this came from the congregations outside the boom districts.
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CHAPTER XII.
THE DIOCESAN MISSIONARY SOCIETY.
(THE difficulty of raising such small sums as we
"THE are speaking of-a few thousand dollars for mission and parish work-is not so much in the hard- ness of the times as in the want of system. We South- ern people are proverbially unsystematic. There are peoples with half our resources who accomplish double results. Practically, a very few of the people do the work of the Church ; and it falls heavily and unequal- ly upon the few. The great majority of our people stand aloof from active co-operation, and, I am satis- fied, not entirely from want of interest, but from the absence of a well-digested plan, by which each one shall be pledged to do regularly and systematically what he can afford to do."
Bishop Wilmer was very urgent when he wrote these words in 1873. The general and increasing financial stringency of the last few years had aroused murmuring and restlessness in many parishes. Some had complained outright that the assessment laid upon them for "Conventional expenses"-which were chiefly the Bishop's salary-was unbearable. Others had indirectly made the same complaint in their plea for "a more equitable adjustment " of assessments. Many had thought it hard that, with their limited re- sources, they should, after contributing liberally to- ward the Bishop's salary, be continually exhorted to
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give as liberally to aid the missionary work. This feeling was not quieted by the Convention's unpremedi- tated and impulsive increase of the Bishop's salary, in a year of so great distress, to $4,500 .* With the dio- cesan assessment now twice as great as the amount contributed towards the support of the entire mission- ary staff, it was inevitable that individual parishes would understand the Convention to say, in effect: " We have placed a positive obligation upon you, and you must meet it. Your contribution to missionary operations is a voluntary contribution. We desire that you give to that cause as liberally as you can ; but before all else you must pay your debt to the Bishop." Likewise it was inevitable that, with a given amount raisable in each parish and with ex- clusion from the Convention as penalty for non- . payment of the diocesan assessment, the parishes would pay their assessments and let the missionary work remain a stunted growth.
What ought to have been done was one thing; what was done was another. For years the Bishop and others had been publishing tables of figures to prove that it was the easiest thing in the world for the diocese to raise from twenty to fifty thousand dollars a year for Conventional and Missionary purposes. "A dime
* The Bishop's salary remained at $4,5co until 1879 when, at the Bishop's request it was reduced to $4,000. A still further reduction, with the same initiative, was made in 1892, when it was demonstrated after a year's trial that Alabama was unable to pay $7,000 a year for Episcopal service. Each Bishop has since then received a salary of $3,000.
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a week from every communicant"-so ran the formula. But the communicants did not consist of wheat only. In neither diocesan nor parochial churches will the time ever come when every communicant will give a dime a week, or any other sum regularly, to the sup- port and extension of the Kingdom of God.
Yet the Bishop's contention that many stood aloof from financial co-operation in Church work because of lack of system in the doing of Church work was, in the main, correct. The missionary operations of the diocese had come to that point where well-digested, thoroughly worked system was essential to further development. He that sets ten men to work does better than he that does the work of ten men. He that sets ten men to give does better than he that gives as much as ten men. These were, in effect, the principles on which Bishop Wilmer was working. He had set forth his ideas as soon as the subsiding ground swell from the Civil War allowed the consid- eration of aggressive work to come to the front. He had made many suggestions to the more prominent Churchmen as they gathered to the Conventions from year to year, and the clearness of his views and the force with which he expressed them stirred Conven- tion after Convention to interest, enthusiasm, and the passing of earnest resolutions. But when the Con- vention adjourned, and they returned home to confront the same old parochial trials and discouragements which had for a time passed from memory, the temper- ature of these good men fell very rapidly-a phenome- non not unknown in more recent days. For example:
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