USA > Alabama > History of the Protestant Episcopal church in Alabama, 1763-1891 > Part 6
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In Carlowville, on May 9, 1846, during a recess of the Convention, these last named organized the "Society for the Relief of Disabled Clergy and the
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Widows and Orphans of Deceased Clergy." Mr. L. E. Dawson, of Carlowville, was elected President; Judge E. W. Peck, of Tuskaloosa, Vice-President; and Mr. Henry A. Tayloe, of Gallion, Secretary and Treasurer. Its Standing Committee consisted of the Rev. Messrs. F. B. Lee and N. P. Knapp, and Messrs. H. L. Alison, John Ellerbee and John Simpson. All clergymen were members; laymen became members without benefit upon payment of the annual dues of
five dollars. A simple but inadequate Constitution was set forth at the primary meeting. It was of no practical importance, for the Society was not incor- porated, and for the next seven years had no autono- mous existence, being merged, at its own request, into the Convention, which appointed its officers, passed upon all applications, and generally discharged the Society's functions .*
In 1853 the Convention restored the Society to the autonomy of its original organization; whereupon the Society instantly adopted a new Constitution, and was incorporated by special act of Legislature in February, 1854, thus being put beyond the possibility of further control by the Convention.
The new Constitution of 1853 was an elaborate affair, modeled after that of a like society in the diocese of Maryland. It provided that a layman could become an annual member, always without benefit, on pay- ment of five dollars, but that the clergy must pay ten, twenty, thirty, or forty dollars, yearly, according to the amount of benefit that they desired. When a cler-
* See Journal of IS48, page 24.
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gyman married more than once he was fined one extra yearly assessment in the year of every such marriage. These assessments were to be the basis of computation for annuities to widows and orphans. Five annual payments entitled them to an annuity three times the amount of the yearly payment, from five to ten annual payments entitled them to an annuity four times the amount of the yearly payment, and so on. The highest annuity was to be that of a member who had made twenty-five annual payments and whose income would thus be eight times his yearly payment of ten, twenty, thirty, or forty dollars-that is, eighty, one hundred and sixty, two hundred and forty, or three hundred and twenty dollars. To the Society's assets-$1,470- all subsequent donations were to be added, and a special fund created and maintained, apart from the mutual insurance scheme, for the benefit of needy diocesan clergy, whether members or not. Such aid was to be given as the Society might deem proper, but no por- tion of the Society's special fund was to be expended " for the relief of any person whomsoever until it should reach the sum of five thousand dollars, and under no circumstances should the total appropriations of any year exceed the income for the same year. *
Under this last provision the Society was unable to render aid to any one until 1858, when its capital crossed the line and amounted to $5,238. Meanwhile it was compelled to deny several applications, nota- bly the application in behalf of the children of Dr. S. S. Lewis. To some these refusals appeared heart-
* Journal of 1853, pages 45-48.
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less, but they were rendered necessary by the fact that the Society had started without any funds, and there- fore must build up an endowment which should en- sure the permanency of the work. After an exist- ence of three years the Society had, in 1849, a capital of $37.16, and its gross income for the entire period had been only $165. But, following in a small way the plan that its Treasurer, Mr. Tayloe, had adopted to build up the Episcopal endowment two years before, it succeeded in getting several notes signed; and these increased the capital to $511. Three years later its assets were less than one thousand dollars. There- after for several years the growth of the principal though slow was constantly accelerated, the increase being $400 in 1855, $700 in 1856, and $900 in 1857. In the last named year Mr. Tayloe declined longer to act as Treasurer, an office which, in conjunction with that of Secretary, he had held from the Society's or- ganization. The Society divided the two offices, and, leaving Mr. Tayloe Secretary, elected Mr. George P. Beirne, of Huntsville, Treasurer.
At this time North Alabama was developing rap- idly, and its chief railroad, the Memphis and Charles- ton, in which was incorporated the old Tuscumbia and Decatur, offered a good field for investment to those on the ground. Mr. Beirne immediately lent the whole of the Society's available assets-$5,038-to the Memphis and Charleston Railroad Company, at eight per cent. For three years he operated in in- vestments in this road, and then, in 1860, was able to announce that the Society's assets had grown to $14,-
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123, of which $6,262 were the profits of the past year. This growth was so remarkable that it merits closer examination:
In 1857 Mr. Beirne purchased $1,000 worth of stock in the road for $750; on this stock a sixty per cent. dividend was declared on December 1-a clear profit of $850 on an investment of $750 in less than one year. Mr. Beirne had previously added to his origi- nal loan to the road, which now owed him $6,300; this loan was next exchanged for bonds of the value of $7,000, and these bonds were shortly exchanged for stock of the same face value. All these transactions were completed before December 1, 1859, and the stock thus secured received the same sixty per cent. dividend that the former block received-a clear profit of $4,900 on an investment of $6,300 in less than one year. The remaining increase of $512 was an addi- tional four per cent. dividend on the Society's five hundred and twelve shares of Memphis and Charles- ton stock.
In another year the assets were $16,901.57. Suc- cess always brings greater success. So soon as a fund begins to grow people are more liberal to it than when it is a puny infant. So soon as fortunate in- vestments sent the Society's income bounding up- ward enthusiasm became contagious. Annual con- tributors increased in one year from twenty-nine to fifty-two, and the year after to sixty-seven. St. Paul's, Carlowville, took the initiative when, in 1857, the parish gave the Society five hundred dollars. At the instance of the Rev. Henry C. Lay, the Society at once
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resolved that the heirs of the rector of that parish, the Rev. F. B. Lee, should at his death "be entitled to receive the largest annuity allowed to a member of the forty-dollar class "-i. e., $320. In-1860 Mr. N. H. R. Dawson, who had in the preceding year been elected President, on Bishop Cobbs' declination to serve longer, made the Society another payment of five hundred dollars to its insurance department, specifying as beneficiaries of this sum for nine years each in the ten-dollar class the Rev. Messrs. F. B. Lee, J. M. Mitchell, G. F. Cushman, J. H. Ticknor, and William A. Stickney.
So at the beginning of the Civil War the Society was in a condition to relieve the clergy of much anxiety and their families of more distress. .
CHAPTER XII. CHURCH SCHOOLS.
F "OR nothing else did Bishop Cobbs so earnestly plead and work throughout his episcopate as for a diocesan institution wherein the future mothers of the diocese might, together with their secular educa- tion, drink in the principles of Church teaching and Christian living. In nothing else were his attempts so long frustrated and his hopes so often dashed. Not till three years before his death was the final and suc- cessful movement set on foot. Not till three months before his death did he see of the travail of his soul.
The first attempt was made in 1845, and Tuska- loosa, the capital of the state and the residence of the Bishop, was the field chosen. In October of this year the Rev. Aristides S. Smith, an old friend of the Bishop's in the days of his Virginia ministry, was in- duced by the Bishop to establish a Girls' School in Tuskaloosa, and in addition to become assistant to the Bishop, who had become rector of the parish in the summer of that year. At the Bishop's earnest sug- gestion the Convention of 1846 appointed a Board of Trustees of a "Female Institute," to be under the control of the Church in Alabama. While the Con- vention did not in so many words undertake to erect Mr. Smith's school, a private venture, into a diocesan institution, yet the personnel of the Board of Trus- tees-all the appointees, Judge E. W. Peck, H. A. -8 105
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Snow, C. M. Foster, E. F. Comegys, Charles Snow, A. Lynch, and Dr. S. G. Leach, being residents of Tuskaloosa-slows conclusively that such was its in- tention. But Mr. Smith's sojourn in Alabama was too short to get a diocesan institution into working order. After two years he moved on to Columbus, Miss., whence after four years he returned to Vir- ginia. After his departure no attempt was made to keep the school open.
A diocesan school for boys, which should be a nurs- ery for the Ministry of the next generation, was Bish- op Cobbs' next attempt. An opportunity presented itself in 1847. Some of the Bishop's friends in the neighborhood of Greene Springs made him the very liberal proposition to purchase and present to him the Greene Springs property (subsequently famous as Prof. Tutwiler's Greene Springs Academy), the only condition being that the Bishop should establish him- self there and give the school his personal supervision in the intervals of his Episcopal visitations. The proposition was the more liberal in that they who made it were not Churchinen. The Bishop, however, felt that it would be imprudent for him to remove from the capital and obligate himself to personal con- duct of the school, and regretfully declined the prop- osition.
Less than two years later, on January 2, 1849, the project became an attractive but evanescent reality in the foundation at Tuskaloosa of a "Classical Insti- tute and Mission School" for boys and young men. The plan on which the school was to be conducted
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had been carefully digested, and, could it have been carried out, would have worked an almost miraculous change in the missionary operations and parochial life of the diocese.
It seems to have been suggested by the recent suc- cess of James Lloyd Breck's venture at Nashotah, and, with allowance for schools of Churchmanship, was projected on parallel lines. A classical and a theo- logical department were organized. Theological stu- dents could pay their expenses by teaching in the classical department a few hours each day. Pupils were regarded not merely as seekers after secular knowledge, but as catechumens preparing for Con- firmation and strong, healthy Christian living. The Prayer Book was a daily text-book. Daily Morning and Evening Prayer were said, and the entire school attended divine services whenever the parish church was opened. The faculty and theological students acted as missionaries in the ecclesiastically destitute regions that extended nearly forty miles in every direction. The Bishop was assisted in this under- taking by the principal and wheel-horse, the Rev. Charles F. Peake, and by the ushers, Mr. George F. Cushman, a candidate for Orders, and Mr. George W. Stickney, who entered the Ministry a few years later. Two theological students and twenty-two classical pupils made up the first year's enrollment. Tuition fees amounting to-about four hundred dollars, and a subscription of one hundred and fifty dollars from a few Northern friends of the project, made up the income, which was applied to fitting up the school
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building-the famous old " Mansion House," now the parish rectory. The boarding department was to be limited to twenty-five boys. Charges for tuition and board were to be kept at a level with necessary ex- penses and to be reduced whenever a reduction should be found practicable. It was held that this was a mis- sionary school, conducted by missionaries, intended to do a missionary work, and that under no circumstances should the ideal be prostituted to lower ends. A few laymen of Tuskaloosa gave the buildings free of rent the first year, and, the Capitol having been changed to Montgomery, the old State House was offered rent- free for the ensuing year. The prospect was most encouraging, when, in July of the same year, after only six months' operation, the school was closed by the death of the burden-bearer, Mr. Peake. Another Peake has never arisen in Alabama.
In the summer of 1850 the project of a diocesan Girls' School in Tuskaloosa was revived. The Rev. William Johnson, a man of fierce, unyielding temper, was chosen as principal, and the school was opened in September. The patronage of the school not yield- ing Mr. Johnson an adequate support, Bishop Cobbs resigned the rectorship of the parish, to which, on his recommendation, Mr. Johnson was elected. At first the Bishop gave the school strong endorsement, and for a time it grew in numbers and reputation. But soon dissensions arose between principal and pupils, and then between rector and vestry. The Bishop ceased to refer to the school in any public manner. In June, 1854, the vestry requested Mr. Johnson to
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resign the rectorship of the parish. He refused. The vestry promptly dismissed him, and, after one disor- derly public service at which Mr. Johnson aired his personal grievances from the chancel floor and was immediately rebuked by several prominent parishion- ers, nailed up the church doors against him. The vestry's action in ousting the rector was uncanonical, but the rector's precedent action had been unwise, and the action of the former was, in December, ratified by the Bishop on the ground that reconciliation had proven impossible. A portion of the congregation followed Mr. Johnson for a few months to the old State Capitol, three blocks from the church, and sub- sequently to a chapel which he erected five miles east of Tuskaloosa, where he continued public services about six months longer. But without his salary as rector, and with school patronage much injured by the parochial contention, Mr. Johnson was unable to continue operations, and the end of his rectorship was virtually the extinction of the school.
The Bishop was still unwilling to confess that Ala- bama could not support a Church school for Church girls. After waiting two years he again reverted to this fond desire, and in his Convention address of 1857 urged the Convention to give it prompt and ef- ficient attention. This request was referred to a com- mittee consisting of the Rev. Messrs. J. M. Banister and F. R. Hanson, of the clergy, and Messrs. Charles T. Pollard, A. W. Ellerbee, and A. R. Bell, of the laity. The committee reported favorably upon the
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Bishop's communication, and suggested that a com- mittee be appointed with power to act as they deemed most expedient to further the establishment of a diocesan seminary. This committee, on whom de- volved all the preliminary labors, consisted of the Bishop, as Chairman; the Rev. J. M. Mitchell, and Messrs. Samuel G. Jones and Thomas B. Taylor-all of Montgomery.
The committee went vigorously to work, and re- turned to the next Convention with a report which the Finance Committee endorsed and the Convention adopted by unanimous vote. Feeling that the pre- ceding failures to establish permanently a girls' school had been due largely to the smallness of, the popula- tion from which day-pupils could be drawn, the Com- mittee had decided that the school must be located in a larger place than Tuskaloosa, and they had settled upon Montgomery. There, just beyond the corporate limits, west of the town, they had purchased a grove of nearly ten acres, at a cost of six thousand dollars. Nearly the whole of this amount they had already raised in Montgomery by popular subscription, and they expected to raise there fully ten thousand dollars. They called on the remainder of the diocese for twenty thousand dollars more, with which to erect suitable buildings. They expected to lay the foundations and press forward the work so soon as the funds in hand should warrant a beginning. They recommended that, in order to secure a competent principal at the outset, the school be leased free of charge to the mnost
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worthy applicant, the Board of Trustees to determine availability.
The following year the committee were able to report that Montgomery had raised not ten, but fifteen thousand dollars, and they promised that this should be increased to twenty thousand dollars if the remain- der of the diocese would raise the same amount. Already the Rev. J. Avery Shepherd had opened a girls' school in Montgomery, and was holding himself in readiness to accept the principalship of the " Dio- cesan Female Seminary."
All preliminary work having been done, the Con- vention discharged the committee and elected as Trustees of the school Dr. T. B. Taylor, Mr. Charles T. Pollard, Mr. Samuel G. Jones, and the Rev. J. M. Mitchell, their terms of office being respectively one, two, three, and four years, and each trustee's suc- cessor to be elected for a term of four years. By in- struction of the Convention these Trustees proceeded to make themselves a body corporate.
By the articles of subscription the Trustees were directed to make the first lease of the school for two years, and free of rent. Under this agreement the school was opened by the Rev. Mr. Shepherd, in Oc- tober, 1860. The unsettled condition of the country had caused delay in the erection of the contemplated buildings, but a commodious dwelling-house was rented for the boarding department and an adjoining house for school purposes. The first day's enroll- ment was good, and the number of pupils increased
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so rapidly that by the middle of the scholastic year both the day-school and the boarding department had reached their utmost limit. The necessarily heavy expenses of the first year were fully covered by the income. The school was a success.
.CHAPTER XIII.
PERSONNEL OF THE CLERGY.
T
HERE were giants in the earth in those days.
It were the part of unwisdom to say that those old times were better than these; but it were also the error of dim vision to ascribe the ante-bellum develop- ment of the Church in Alabama to Bishop Cobbs alone. The greatest of generals can do nothing if he head a mob of weaklings and cowards. The most devoted of Bishops is powerless without the support of loyal and able clergy to do the parochial work which, in the sum total, constitutes the work of the diocese.
A review of the early history of the diocese dis- closes a galaxy of clerical strength out of all propor- tion to the diocesan firmament, and the strongest tes- timony to the mental vigor and spiritual force and theological acuteness of the Bishop is that he so promptly asserted and so increasingly manifested his ability to lead such men and was so lovingly followed by them. Young men the great majority of them were, and, the few patriarchs excepted, their average age was less than thirty-five years. But Lewis, Knapp, Hanson, Lay, Lee, Pierce, Massey, Cushman, Ingraham, Mitchell, and Stickney, were a company of clergy that any prelate might well feel honored to lead. If, as we call the roll, the names of some are strange to our ears, it is only because no historian has
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arisen to declare what they dared and did. Others were springing into prominence-Banister, Nevius, S. U. and J. F. Smith, Cobbs, and Everhart-but their best work belongs to a later period, and may not now be described.
Two of the clergy were elevated to the Episcopal bench-Henry C. Lay and Henry N. Pierce. Of these two it is proper to speak first.
Mr. Lay, Virginia-born, had been a deacon only six months when, in 1847, he came to Alabama, and at the age of twenty-three was placed by the Bishop in charge of the Church of the Nativity, Huntsville. His attainments are attested by the sources of his doctor- ates, both Hobart College and William and Mary conferring D.D. on him, in 1857 and 1873 respect- ively, and Cambridge University LL. D. in 1867. His whole priestly life until October 23, 1859, when he was consecrated Missionary Bishop of Arkansas and Indian Territory, was spent in Huntsville. He found that parish with nineteen communicants, and left it twelve years later with ninety-one. He found a four- thousand-dollar church building, and left a beauti- ful structure costing thirty-five thousand dollars. Throughout his rectorship he regularly catechized the children in public, and preached to them twice in the month. Every Sunday night he preached to a large congregation of slaves. He made Huntsville a cen- ter of missionary activity from which, with the assist- ance of two resident clergymen, a priest and a deacon, he provided for services in the counties of Madison, Limestone, Jackson, and Morgan. He was, as we
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have seen*, appointed second canvasser for the in- crease of the Episcopal endowment, and in a single year raised about twelve thousand dollars. In dio- cesan Conventions he was a prominent figure, being generally chairman of the Committee on the State of the Church, a committee that had not then been robbed of its importance by the creation of a Com- mittee on Parochial Reports. In respect of concise- ness, force, and freedom from vague generalities, his reports are worthy of imitation. The following pas- sage, taken from his report of 1857, in which he is pleading for diocesan esprit du corps, is a fair example of his style: "The blessed sunshine itself illumines all the world, and yet spends itself chiefly on those ob- jects nearest and most exposed thereto. So must we concentrate our energies and our affections on that which is peculiarly our own work. Could each min- ister love his parish with that exclusive affection which a good man entertains for his wife-could we have in each diocese something corresponding to what is so well known in the world as ' State Pride '-could our people, not despising the day of small things, take a lively interest in all things diocesan, merely because they are diocesan-we should be a Macedo- nian phalanx, hard to be broken and formidable in its aggressions."
The other presbyter of this period who was elevated to the Episcopate was the present Bishop of Arkansas, the Rt. Rev. Henry N. Pierce, who, though a Rhode Islander, exercised nearly his whole ministry in the
* Page 90.
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South. He came to Alabama, and to St. John's Church, Mobile, in 1857, and remained rector of that parish eleven years. Only three of these years are within our present purview, but in that short period St. John's made great strides. Not only the commu- nicants increased from ninety to one hundred and thirty-four, and the yearly baptisms from twenty-eight to seventy-seven, but the debt on the rectory was paid, the average income rose to more than five thousand dollars, the church building was enlarged to a total seating capacity of eight hundred, and five thousand dollars was raised for the founding of the Church Home for Orphans in Mobile. Mr. Pierce did not become a prominent figure in diocesan consultations- indeed, men whose recreation is to work in Calculus seldom do-but he expended all of his great energy upon the absorbing work of his developing parish. The University of Alabama conferred D. D. on him in 1862.
Though mentioned first these future Bishops were neither first in point of time nor pre-eminent in point of ability among the old-time worthies .* Samuel Smith Lewis was the first in time, and remained until his death senior presbyter and "Father of the Dio- cese." Born in Vermont in 1805, and educated at Washington (now Trinity ) College, Hartford, Conn., he entered upon his first charge, Christ Church, Tus-
* It is very comforting to the clergy that have not become Bishops to think that the Episcopate does not monopolize clerical ability. Elections by diocesan conventions mean sometimes this and sometimes that.
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kaloosa, in 1832. His work here, he confessed, was eminently unsatisfactory, seventeen of the twenty- eight communicants removing to other places within a few months. He went so far as to suggest to the vestry the advisability of abandoning the attempt to establish a congregation, but the vestry refused to entertain such a proposition and insisted that the parish would soon come upon brighter days. Mr. Lewis' discouragement would probably not have been so great but for deep-seated lung-trouble which had already declared itself. For nearly three years he fought it, and then, in the summer of 1835, he gladly accepted a call to Christ Church, Mobile. Here he remained until 1846, when his rapidly failing health compelled him to desist from all active work. During the Church's acephalous period Mr. Lewis was always . President of the Diocesan Conventions, until at the last, the Convention of 1844, when he felt physically unable to perform the duties of the office. Until 1846 he was constantly President of the Standing Com- mittee. Missionary work he felt unable to do. He refused to leave his parish " for any purpose save the reinstatement of his health," but in his parish, which though of moderate size in comparison with present day parishes in Alabama, was the largest in the dio- cese, his single-hearted devotedness was unsparing of bodily ease, and he was eager to spend and to be spent in the service of his flock. His duties were performed with burning zeal and wasting application. His con- scientiousness led him into a prodigal expenditure of his strength, shortening his life, and bringing him to
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