USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Waterbury > A narrative and documentary history of St. John's Protestant Episcopal Church (formerly St. James) of Waterbury, Connecticut > Part 4
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"December 29, 1807. Voted to send Mr. Justus Warner to the town of Claremont, N. H., to know the reason of Mr. Barber's not returning to this town, and to give Mr. Warner $14. for his expenses."
30
THE PARISH OF ST. JAMES AND OF ST. JOHN.
There were no telegraphs, and letters had evidently failed. We know that Mr. Barber came back, but why not sooner remains a mystery. He left here to become principal of an academy at Fairfield, N. Y., but two years later (in 1816) became a Roman Catholic, and, placing his wife and children in a convent, went, July, 1817, to Rome, and after a period of study became a priest in the Society of Jesuits. A clergyman who had known him here visited him in Rome, and found him an inmate of a Jesuit college under the name of Signor Barberini, clothed in the habit, and practicing the austerities which belong to the order. After his return from Rome he went in 1822, by direction of his superior, to Claremont, where he established a Roman Catholic church. Later he was sent on a mission to the Indian tribes in Maine and to various towns in that state where there were Roman Catholic residents without pastors. He was afterward assigned to duty in Maryland and that vicinity. He died at Georgetown, D. C., March 27, 1847.
The Rev. Daniel Barber, the father of Virgil H. Barber, was a native of Simsbury, and was born October 2, 1756. In 1827, when he was seventy- one years old, he published, at Washington, D. C., a pamphlet entitled “His- tory of My Own Times," which is of considerable value as a picture of the period. He was a soldier in the Revolution and kept a diary, portions of which are contained in his pamphlet and are also copied in the sketch of Sims- bury in Barber's Historical Collections of Connecticut. The Barbers seem to have been an independent family, much given to speculative theology (the main source of recreation for thinking people in those times), and always having the courage of their convictions, if not a little to spare. Daniel's father and mother each had their own views and stood by them. "They could never agree," says Daniel, "as to their points of faith." When Daniel was twenty- seven years old he became an Episcopalian, at thirty an Episcopal clergyman and at sixty-two a Roman Catholic. This was in 1818, when he publicly announced his change and left his church in Claremont. There seems to be some discrepancy in the several biographical statements as to whether the father or son first entered the Roman Catholic church. The probability is that the father started first, but the son outstripped him in the race. It is a sad story throughout, such a spirit of self-sacrifice and such a lack of sense. When Virgil H. Barber made up his mind to become a Roman Catholic priest he was thirty-four years old and his wife twenty-eight, and they had five children and no means of support. The mother and children were placed in a convent, and the father went to Rome to study. All became prominent in
31
HISTORY OF ST. JOHN'S CHURCH.
the church of their choice. Mrs. Barber was known "in religion" as Sister Mary Augustine (or as it was frequently written, Austin). She died at George- town, D. C., January 1, 1860. Their son, Samuel Joseph, became a priest of the order of Jesuits, and died in Charles county, Md., February 23, 1864. The youngest and last surviving member of the family, Sister Mary Josephine, died at the Convent of the Visitation in St. Louis (about 1892 or 3.) The fol- lowing sketch is taken from a St. Louis paper:
THE FIRST NOVICE.
DEATH OF AN HISTORICAL SISTER AT THE VISITATION.
Sister Mary Josephine Barber died at the Visitation Convent on Cass avenue on Wednes- day night at 11 o'clock. She had been a sufferer from cancer for two years. Her name is famous in the annals of the Catholic Church of America, and she herself had been, for over a half century, a member of the order. Her grandfather, Rev. Daniel Barber, a native of Connecticut, was a minister of the Episcopal Church, but became a convert to Catholicity. In 1807 be baptized Fanny Allen, daughter of Gen. Ethan Allen, who is known in Catholic history as "the first American nun." Her father, Rev. Virgil Horace Barber, was also an Episcopalian minister, and he too was converted to Catholicity. He became a Jesuit, and his wife, Jerusha Barber, became a Visitandine nun, under the name of Sister Mary Augus- tine. Besides his son, Samuel Barber, joined the Jesuit order. Four daughters became Ursuline nuns. They died in Canadian convents. Sister Mary Josephine, the Visitandine, was the last survivor of this religious family.
She was born in 1817, and was educated at the convent in Georgetown, D. C., where her mother was a nun. In 1833 a colony of eight sisters was sent to Kaskaskia, Ill., to found a convent, and she, then Miss Barber, accompanied them. They arrived at Kaskas- kia on May 31, and she entered the novitiate in the summer of that year. She was professed by Bishop Rosati. In 1836 her mother was sent to the house, and remained there till the spring of 1844. The high water of that year compelled the removal of the convent to St. Louis, and mother and daughter were in the immigrating party. They continued to enjoy each other's company until 1848, when Sister Mary Augustine was sent to Mobile. She died in 1860.
Except a little while that she spent beside the death-bed of her mother, Sister Mary Josephine was employed since 1844 as a teacher at the St. Louis Convent. She excelled especially in poetry, music and painting. She had some of the most distinguished ladies in the country as pupils, among them Mrs. Hancock, wife of the late Gen. Hancock. She was of a most amiable disposition, very modest in speaking of herself. Two years ago she was induced to write a history of her family for the "Catholic Memoirs of Vermont and New Hampshire," but tells little of herself. Some of the passages, however, are most affecting, as, for instance, her description of being taken to the Georgetown Convent when 2 years old and refusing to go to her inother, as she did not recognize her. She states that the five children were present when father and mother made their vows in the George- town. Convent Chapel, she as a Visitation nun, he as a Jesuit. When she was 15 years old she made her confession to her father, and afterwards, she says, "I went back to the parlor, and my father, who seemed more delighted than I was myself, took me up under the arms and jumped me several times half way to the ceiling, exclaiming 'My babyl my baby!'"'
Besides the "History of My Own Times" Daniel Barber wrote "Catholic Worship and Piety explained and recommended to a very near Friend and Others,"-a pamphlet, Washington, 1821. See also "Catholic Memoirs of Vermont and New Hampshire," by Bishop Goesbriand, Burlington, Vt., 1886, and Griffin's Journal, Philadelphia, June 1, 1894.
32
THE PARISH OF ST. JAMES AND OF ST. JOHN.
In September, 1814, the Rev. Alpheus Geer was invited to become rector, at a salary of $600. "provided Gunntown will pay one-third for his services one-third of the time." Gunntown it will be understood was the Episcopal church in the second (Salem) Society, now Naugatuck, the church there being in the Gunn- town district. The vote as finally passed was to pay him $400 for two-thirds of his time, leaving Mr. Geer and Gunntown to settle for the remainder.
Alpheus Geer was born at Kent, August 7, 1788, graduated at Union col- lege in 1813, was ordained deacon by Bishop Hobart in New York city, June 12, 1814, and priest by Bishop Griswold at Middletown, early in 1815. He remained in Waterbury nearly sixteen years from the fall of 1814 to the spring of 1830. He went from here to Hebron, where he remained about fourteen years, and afterwards preached at East Haddam, North Guilford, Bakerville and Harwinton. He died at Norwich, February 3, 1866. While here he lived first on South Main street, and later in the Judge Hopkins place, on West Main street. His wife was Miss Sarah W. Marshall of Torrington, married November 29, 1815. She died September 11, 1886. The period of Mr. Geer's pastorate was one of quiet and moderate prosperity. There was not at that time much growth in the town, and as a semi-farmer clergyman, who was expected to live to some extent off the product of his glebe, he was a very fair representative of the country clergy of his time. On Sunday, Octo- ber 20, 1816, he presented to Bishop Hobart of New York, then acting as bishop in this diocese, which was temporarily without a bishop, a class of two hundred and twenty-six for confirmation, being the largest class ever con- firmed by Bishop Hobart. The manuscript from which the information in this sketch was in part obtained, adds: "It is thought the largest ever pre- sented to any bishop in this country." The writer was not aware of the class of two hundred and fifty-six confirmed by Bishop Seabury in the same place thirty years before, but these two classes, both of them in this parish, have seldom been exceeded in numbers. Mr. Geer's second son, the Rev. George Jarvis Geer, D. D. (Trinity, 1842), was for many years a successful clergyman in the city of New York, and his grandson, the Rev. William Montague Geer, is one of the assistant ministers of Trinity parish in that city.
On July 19, 1830, the Rev. William Barlow was invited to become rector. He remained here about two years and a half. At a meeting of the parish in October, 1832, it was voted to give him a leave of absence during the winter (he being obliged to go south on account of his wife's health), and this seems virtually to have closed his connection with the parish. He was a man of
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.
HISTORY OF ST. JOHN'S CHURCH.
dignified manner and refined and rather scholarly tastes. While here he took an active interest in schools and in a public library. The library continued to exist in a feeble way for many years after he left. Some of the books went into the Young Men's Institute and finally into the Bronson library. One of Mr. Bar- low's contemporaries speaks of him as a "smart but erratic man." He was ordained deacon by Bishop Hobart, December 28, 1819, and died in Chicago February 24, 1850. He occupied while here the house on Grand street which had been occupied by the Rev. Dr. Bronson and the Rev. Mr. Barber .*
From Dr. James H. Canfield, librarian of Columbia University, I get the following:
Rev. William Barlow.
1819. Ordained deacon, Dec. 28, by Bishop Hobart.
1819-21.
At St. John's Church, Canandaigua, N. Y.
1820. Ordained priest, October 22 or 29, by Bishop Hobart.
1824-26. At Claremont Church, Charleston, S. C.
1829. Agent and Corr. Sec. of Church Scholarship Society, Hart-
ford, Conn.
1830-32. At St. John's Church, Waterbury, Conn.
1834-35. At St. Matthew's Church, Wilton, Conn.
1836-40. At St. John's Church, Ogdensburg, N. Y.
1840-42. Address given at Flatbush, N. Y.
1842.
Instructor in St. Thomas' Hall, Flushing.
1834-47.
Address given at Peekskill, N. Y.
1848-50. At Trinity Church, Chicago, Ill.
He is also mentioned as having been at St. Paul's Church, Syracuse, N. Y., before he was at Ogdensburg.
He was author of several printed letters and pamphlets which are preserved in the library of Columbia University.
*Somewhere about 1830, I have not the precise date, the church was struck by a very heavy bolt of lightning, which broke a large part of the glass in the windows; and the lightning rod, which was of iron and nearly an inch in diameter, was rendered so brittle that it was readily broken by the hands.
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CHAPTER III.
THE NEW ERA.
I HAVE called the preceding chapter the transitional period. Mr. Geer was the last of the Waterbury clergymen who joined the care of some other parish to his ministerial work here. This is also approximately the epoch which marks the trans- ition in Connecticut from an agricultural condition to one in which manufactures became the dominant interest, and Mr. Geer was the last minister of St. John's parish who depended on the cultivation of land for a portion of his income. The cultivation of the glebe land and of their own land by the early New England clergy afforded an important part of their support. A settlement was regarded as for life, and a grant of land was usually part of the settlement. In many cases the clergy were considerable land- holders and successful cultivators. This condition of things continued in some towns to a later date, and possibly there are lingering cases still, but the year 1830 is as near the turning point as any that could be selected .*
1964015
On February 20, 1833, it was voted to alter and repair the church. This was accomplished some time afterward, and the changes consisted principally in taking out the square pews and substituting those of the present style, then known as "slips." By this the seating capacity of the church was considerably in- creased.
On April 8, 1833, it was voted to make a contract with the Rev. Allen C. Morgan, either party to be at liberty to terminate the engagement on giving six months' notice. Mr. Morgan began
*If the people of to-day can imagine the rector of St. John's in "shirt sleeves," working in a mild spring rain to turn the water through sluices into his grass land (as I have seen Mr. Geer doing), or can imagine the pastor of the First church with a very broad brimmed straw hat and a calico dressing gown, carrying a rake across his shoulder and following a load of hay from the "little pasture" through the main street of the town (as I have seen Mr. Arnold doing), it will help them to understand some of the changes which seventy-five years have brought about, both in the sources of income and in the customs of life.
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HISTORY OF ST. JOHN'S CHURCH.
his service here as a deacon about the time that Mr. Barlow left, and was ordained a priest January 17, 1833. He remained here until the fall of 1836, and left to take charge of the Cheshire academy. After a brief but very successful career as a teacher he died suddenly in New York City, October 12, 1838. During the short period of his ministry here he had become so much attached to the place and people that he wished to regard it as his home. He was buried here, and his old parishioners erected a monument to his memory in the Grand Street Cemetery, which was afterward removed to Riverside.
Allen C. Morgan was born at Norwich, January 7, 1802. His father removed soon after to Greenfield, Mass. Being desirous of obtaining a classi- cal education, and dependent on his own exertions, he early engaged in teach- ing. While thus occupied, the Rev. Dr. Wheaton, then Rector of Christ Church, Hartford, offered to assist him in his education. The offer was accepted, and he graduated with distinction at Yale college in 1826. He taught for a while at Norwalk, and then at Ulster, N. Y., until the autumn of 1831, when he returned to Hartford and was ordained deacon, November 27. He officiated for a few months at Plymouth and Bristol, and then came here. He was a man of dignified appeareance, rather stout for his years and slow in his motions, but of an active mind and finished scholarship. He was a faithful pastor and a sympathetic friend. He never married.
It was during Mr. Morgan's rectorship, December 10, 1835, that a committee was appointed to purchase an organ and make the necessary alterations in the galleries for its reception. This was the first church organ in Waterbury, and it was for many years the only one. The organist was St. John Rowley, an Englishman employed in Beecher's woollen mill.
On January 28, 1837, it was voted that the society's committee be authorized to correspond with the Rev. J. L. Clark on the sub- ject of becoming rector, and to offer him $750 a year. He ac- cepted the offer, and on the second Sunday after Easter began his long service here.
Jacob Lyman Clark was the son of Jacob and Susannah (Bangs) Clark, and was born at Westhampton, Mass., September 19, 1807. Previous to his fifteenth year he lived for some time with a married sister, Mrs. Harriet King, working with her husband on his farm. In 1822 he went to Cambridge to study with his brother, Orange Clark, afterward the Rev. Orange Clark, D. D., who after many years of service in this vicinity spent the closing years of his
36
11375 -
Endo Albatterie
J. J. dework
THE NEW ERA.
life in California, but who was at this time a student in Harvard college. He remained in Cambridge about two years, when he went with his brother to assist him in a school at Portsmouth, N. H., teaching also, during a portion of the time, the children of the officers at the navy yard at Kittery. He also taught a public school at Beverly, Mass., somewhere about this time, having sailors and sailor boys for pupils. He entered Trinity (then Washington) college in 1827, and graduated in 1831. His father was a farmer of moderate means and the sons were mainly dependent on their own exertions for such educational advantages as they obtained, a statement which would probably be true of nine-tenths of the New England boys of that period who rose to distinction. While at college he taught in the family of William H. Imlay, and in the long vacations visited his brother, then in orders, at Delhi, and at Rochester, N, Y., and while at the former place he read the service in the neigh- boring villages. He seems not to have had the ministry in view at first, as he became a communicant of the church while at college, and it has been said that until after he was twenty years old he had never seen the inside of an Episcopal church .*
He studied three years at the General Theological seminary in New York, and was ordained deacon by Bishop Brownell, at St. Mark's, New Canaan, June 29, 1835. He supplied that parish and Ridgefield until he came to Waterbury, the second Sunday after Easter, 1837. Here he labored with great success for almost forty years, until his death, January 26, 1877.
During this long period the history of his life is substantially the history of the parish. His success here, however, was so marked, his power of administration so evident and the con- tributions of the parish under his guidance so liberal to the general work of the church that it could not fail to attract attention, and few parishes in the country were better known or more highly esteemed than St. John's, Waterbury, and few clergymen better known or more highly esteemed than its rector. The mission- aries and the missionary bishops found in him an unfailing friend. In 1854, feeling somewhat overworked, he sent in his resignation, but the parish declined to receive it and proposed to give him six months' leave of absence. He decided to take this and by way of light recreation did six months' canvassing for the Board of Missions. This seemed to be just what he needed, and he came back to his work greatly refreshed. The society for the Increase of the Ministry might be said to be of his creation, and for one
*This may not be strictly correct, but there was no such church in his native town and the family were staunch Congregationalists.
37
.
HISTORY OF ST. JOHN'S CHURCH.
year (1859) he gave up a large part of his parochial work to act as its agent.
He was a member of the General Conventions of 1850, 1862, 1865, 1868 and 1874, and a prominent member of the General Board of Missions. At the General Convention of 1856 he was nominated by the House of Bishops to the Episcopate of Nebraska and Kansas, but the lower house did not think the time had come to establish that jurisdiction. In 1859 the convention elected him Bishop of Kansas and the Northwest, but he declined, feeling doubtless that he was more in the line of his special work in his own parish. The reason he usually gave when asked, was that he was not sufficiently learned to be a bishop. He was doubtless quite sincere, too, in this estimate of himself. He was not a scholar. He never gave himself the slightest trouble about vexed questions of theology or metaphysics. He was a Christian worker, a servant of Christ and his church. It was for that church to point out the way, and for him to follow in it. Never- theless in all practical questions, intimately related as they fre- quently were to matters of theological doctrine, his shrewd com- mon sense and sound business judgment made him a leader and a guide. In 1848 he became a member of the standing committee of the diocese of Connecticut, and was annually re-elected for the next twenty-three years, after which he declined a re-election. In the Diocesan Convention he was"a leading member and con- tinually served on many important committees, but he never spent his own time or that of the convention in discussions about anything except the most practical questions, and then in the most practical way. He received the degree of D.D. from his Alma Mater in 1853, and in 1862 was made a member of the college corporation, which place he retained until his death.
His life had few salient points for biographical purposes. He will be remembered in the church, outside of his parish by his earnest labor in missionary work and his singlehearted zeal for all that was good.
Dr. Clark had not in any great degree what is usually called a knowledge of men but he had a wonderful knowledge of the indi- viduals composing his own parish. He knew every man, woman
38
THE NEW ERA.
and child. He never met one of them on the street without recognition. He seldom entered a house without inquiring for every member of the family, from the eldest to the youngest. He knew all the intricate relationships of the various families, their descents and intermarriages. He knew enough of their affairs to know their ability to assist him in his parish work. He knew when to ask for money, and also how, and for how much; for he was apt to be very definite in those matters. There were men in his parish who did not take much interest in church or charitable work, from whom nevertheless, he could get sums of from one dollar to ten dollars whenever he saw fit to ask. He was seldom, perhaps never, refused. He had completely sub- jugated himself to his work. Always and everywhere he was the clergyman, and the black cane which he carried seemed an official staff. When he came to Waterbury he was thirty years old. Tall, erect, of spare figure, his resolute, straight-forward walk was altogether characteristic of the man; one saw at once that he was going to a specific place for a specific purpose, and felt pretty sure that, whatever it was, he would carry it out. You would not say of him, as of some men, that he forgot himself, but rather that he never thought of himself. He was the man to lead a forlorn hope, or, with equal readiness, to follow another man if it seemed his business to follow rather than to lead. He was by nature and by early training a Puritan, but not in theory an ascetic. He was fond of social intercourse, intensely enjoying the companionship and conversation of his brethren in the minis- try. He had, too, a good sense of humor, but it was strictly of the clerical kind. His manner was cheerful and genial and the tones of his voice hearty and inspiring, though upon occasion he could be very stern.
He never attempted eloquence or strove for well-turned sen- tences, but there were times when the importance of the theme and his own intense earnestness gave his utterances much power, and in presenting the importance and the needs of Christian enterprises he had a business-like directness which seldom failed to produce substantial results. He had an indomitable will. All that persistence and perseverance to the verge of obstinacy
39
1
HISTORY OF ST. JOHN'S CHURCH.
could accomplish he would do. He had not great talent for organizing. He did not lay out or discuss his plans beforehand to any great extent, or work on methods and with subordinates. When anything was to be done he called on all to help; then, while he supervised the labor, he put his own shoulder to the wheel, quietly filled the gaps, and the result was success.
He was not a student. He read few books and few newspapers. What was happening in the diocese and in the church at large, so far as it affected him as a clergyman, or his work, or the welfare of the church, he generally contrived to find out, and those who came in contact with him knew very well that he had his opinions and maintained them against all comers; but he had no time to waste on speculative questions. Probably he never read a novel or a work of speculative thought, or a philosophical history or a book of poetry except the Hymn Book. He knew nothing about modern science and whenever he had occasion to allude to it in his sermons he always spoke of it as "science falsely so called," which covered the whole ground with him. With the sick and the poor his presence was ubiquitous, his patience unwearied, his labors unceasing, his charity unfailing. Fuel, food, medicine, clothes, money for rent, to see that no one should lack these was his daily and nightly business. His life in the parish might be summed up in that royal sentence, "He went about doing good."
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