USA > Connecticut > The story of the Diocese of Connecticut : a new branch of the vine (Espiscopal Church) > Part 34
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Vermont is a convincing example of the dominant influence of Connecticut emigrants. In the 1790's the slopes of the Green Mountains were dotted with parishes in towns bearing Connecticut names. The roll of lay delegates to the state convention in 1790 abounds in Connecticut men. Also from Connecticut were the two clerical leaders, James Nichols and Daniel Barber; likewise at least four of the clergy and many lay delegates in the diocesan Convention of 1832, which welcomed the state's first bishop, John Henry Hopkins.
The Diocese of Maine was deeply influenced by Connecti- cut in its formative and later years. The first convention, in 1820,
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requested Bishop Alexander Viets Griswold to extend his care over the state. He practically refounded the Episcopal Church through- out Northeastern New England as bishop of the Eastern Diocese, organized in 1810 and comprising the five states outside Connecti- cut. His evangelizing zeal was so effective that before 1850 all the states had become dioceses with bishops.
The latest of the succession was Maine. Its first bishop, elected in 1847, was George Burgess, called from the rectorship of Christ Church in Hartford. One of his first enterprises was a visit to Augusta to persuade the reluctant legislature to grant an act of incorporation to the Trustees of Diocesan Funds. At its centennial the diocese remembered his calm judgment at a time of high parti- san feeling. "The atmosphere of Connecticut churchmanship could not fail to influence Burgess in his outlook upon the burning ecclesiastical questions of his time, helping to steady him, and to modify ... his attitude towards that evangelical school in the Church to which his training and his disposition inclined him."3
The celebration of the anniversary took place in the historic parish of Gardiner. Old St. Ann's there was designed in the Gothic style in 1819 by the Rev. Samuel Farmer Jarvis, son of Bishop Jarvis of Connecticut. He came from Boston to deliver the ser- mon, when Bishop Griswold consecrated the church in October, 1820. Presiding at the centennial celebration was the fourth Bishop of Maine, Benjamin Brewster. The bishop was a younger brother of Bishop Chauncey B. Brewster of Connecticut, and was born in New Haven in 1860, when his father was the rector of Christ Church. He prepared for college at the Hopkins Grammar School and was graduated from Yale in 1882. He was elected by the Dio- cese of Maine in 1916, while serving as the Missionary Bishop of Western Colorado. Among his clergy were several Connecticut men, and before 1920 at least twenty-two served in the diocese. Among them were three bishops: Alexander Burgess of Quincy, Illinois; Benjamin H. Paddock of Massachusetts; and William Woodruff Niles of New Hampshire.
NEW YORK STATE
In Upstate New York, now comprising four large dioceses, emigrants from Connecticut made a unique contribution. Through- out the Church's long depression after the Revolution, the region
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was one of the few bright spots. It received solid financial aid from the property of New York City's Trinity Church, which Bishop Provoost saved from confiscation. The human strength often was supplied by devout Connecticut laymen who organized parishes and read services. They came when migration weakened or broke religious loyalties and opened minds to the appeal of the Episcopal Church.
The Diocese of Albany inherited Connecticut's steadfast doctrine from many laymen who read services in their pioneer homes. Outstanding among them were Elnathan Noble and Icha- bod Palmer of Butternuts, in the southern part of Otsego County. Eliakim Warren from Norwalk founded St. Paul's Church in Troy and was helped by Lemuel Hawley. Samuel Gunn, a native of Waterbury, laid the foundations of Trinity Parish at Windham in Greene County, and in 1805 moved to Portsmouth, Ohio, where he founded All Saints' Church. Connecticut laymen also established strong missionary centers at Fairfield, in Herkimer County, at St. Peter's Church in Hobart, Delaware County, and in nearby Stamford.
More than half of the earliest clergy in the Diocese of Al- bany were of Connecticut origin, and were generally educated at Yale or the Episcopal Academy in Cheshire. Virgil H. Barber, a brilliant scholar, was rector and principal of the academy in Fair- field, and in 1817 became one of the earliest American Episco- palians to enter the Roman Church. Joseph Perry exerted a wide influence as pastor of several parishes in Greene County, and as rector of Christ Church, Ballston. Daniel Burhans founded the church in New Lebanon. Gamaliel Thatcher performed an amaz- ing missionary work in Ballston, Schenectady, Johnstown, Still- water, Schaghticoke, Litchfield, Milton, and Utica.
The same influence penetrated Western New York, some- times through the toilsome apostolate of the same priests. Again they were preceded by pioneer lay-readers. Hugh White brought his large family from Middletown in 1784, by way of the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers, and founded Whitestown in the wilderness of Oneida County. Robert Griffith Wetmore, the first missionary in Western New York (1796-1797), was welcomed at Canandaigua by Judge Moses Atwater and the Sanborn family. Connecticut names abound among the early vestrymen of the region's oldest
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parish, founded in 1797 at Paris Hill. A small band of Connecticut families established the second permanent church of the old Diocese of Western New York - St. Luke's in Broome County.
In county after county the story is repeated. Typical is the origin of the parish at Danby, started by Alva Finch, Isaac Jen- nings, and Walker Bennett, who read services for his family and neighbors. Another stout layman was Samuel James Andrews, the eldest son of the Rev. Samuel Andrews of Wallingford. After graduation from Yale in 1785, he prospered as a West India mer- chant in Derby until the war of 1812 practically bankrupted him. In 1815 he migrated to his estate at the Falls of the Genesee River, where he became a pioneer of Rochester. He was a founder of St. Luke's, the first Episcopal parish, also of St. Paul's, whose church was built of stone given by him. Charles Wells Hayes's history of the Diocese of Western New York names many Connecticut lay- readers, founders and builders of churches.
A list of the clergy of this diocese, from 1797 to 1838, is thickly starred by Connecticut names. One of the most effective missionaries was Davenport Phelps, born at Hebron. After service as a Revolutionary soldier, he became a merchant in Hartford and a lawyer and magistrate in New Hampshire. In Niagara, Canada, he was a lawyer, printer, merchant, and farmer, and later was or- dained through the influence of his lifelong friend, the Mohawk chief, Joseph Brant. Bishop Moore appointed him as a missionary to Western New York and the Canadian Indians. He knew Jona- than Judd, who traveled all over the region, ministering especially at Chenango, Paris, Camden, Utica, Redfield, Lowville, Onondaga, and Norwich.
A valiant evangelist was Alanson W. Welton of Honeoye, who served also at St. John's, Canandaigua, and later pressed on to establish the Church in Detroit. The Rev. Daniel Nash served for many years in Otsego and Chenango Counties, and Amos Par- dee in Skaneateles and Marcellus. Nathan B. Burgess, ordained in Connecticut, was a widely known missionary after 1835. The genial Amos B. and Alfred B. Beach, sons of the Rev. Stephen Beach of East Haddam, were successively rectors of St. John's, Canandaigua. Amos remained in Central and Western New York until his death.
One of the most impressive missionary exploits was per- formed by the three Clark brothers - William Atwater, Orin, and
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John Alonzo. They were sons of John Clark and grandsons of Reu- ben and Mary Clark, who moved from Connecticut to Western Massachusetts, and from there to Western New York. William and Orin were trained for college at the Episcopal Academy in Che- shire. They were ordained in the period 1810-1826, became doctors of divinity, and were widely known as pastors of superior spiritual quality. William ministered in Auburn, Manlius, and other com- munities of Onondaga and Cayuga Counties, and in Buffalo. Orin served in Ontario and Genesee Counties, and at Geneva, where he was a founder of Hobart College. John studied at Geneva and Gen- eral Theological Seminary, and ministered in Western New York.
The zeal of such men accounts for the astonishingly rapid rise of the Episcopal Church west of Albany. The Diocese of New York became too great a burden for one bishop, before Bishop Hobart's death in 1830. In 1838 the western portion was erected into the Diocese of Western New York, under the care of William Heathcote Delancey. He was succeeded (1865-1896) by Arthur Cleveland Coxe, who had been rector of St. John's Church in Hartford, and was partly of Connecticut ancestry through the Clevelands and the Hydes of Hartford and Norwich.
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For many Connecticut emigrants, New York was a stage on their way to Ohio. They settled thickly around Columbus and along the shore of Lake Erie in Connecticut's Western Reserve. The Reserve became so thoroughly distinguished by their peculiar culture that it was called "New Connecticut." The Rev. Timothy Flint, a New England missionary, found the settlers "exceedingly like the parent people from which they sprung."4 The migration continued for many years, and by 1850 there were 23,000 Con- necticut natives in Ohio.
The first seeds of the Episcopal Church there were planted in the southern counties. Among the pioneers was Connecticut's Revolutionary hero, Colonel Israel Putnam, who lived after 1795 at Belpre on the Ohio River. When there was no minister he read sermons and the Book of Common Prayer. Samuel Gunn came from near Waterbury in 1805 and bought a farm near Portsmouth, where he read the Sunday services for his family. Later he settled in the town and became a founder of All Saints' parish.
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The thrilling story of the Church's pioneers in Ohio repeats the pattern of lay missionary enterprise. The eastern dioceses awakened very tardily to appeals from the frontier for ministers. But the challenge was accepted by laymen like Judge Turhand Kirtland of Poland and Joseph Platt of Boardman in the Reserve. Platt began house services in 1808 and next year the judge, a zeal- ous land company agent, presided at the organization of a parish composed of families in Boardman, Canfield, and Poland.
A typical lay missionary was Judge Solomon Griswold of Windsor, a cousin of Bishop Alexander Viets Griswold of Massa- chusetts. He warmly greeted Bishop Philander Chase on his first visit, saying "I am overjoyed to see a Church clergyman, one who is duly authorized to administer the sacraments. I have read pray- ers here in the woods for several years. The scattered flock of Christ have been thus kept mindful that there is a fold.""
Episcopal pioneers pressed into the western part of the Re- serve, the "Firelands," intended to compensate Connecticut people for property burned by raiders in the Revolution. Platt Benedict named a town for his native Norwalk and made the Episcopal Church the first on the ground, by reading services in his "shanty."
Another early Episcopal stronghold was Worthington, north of Columbus, founded in 1803 by Episcopalians from Connecticut and Massachusetts. The first settler was Ezra Griswold, a brother of Bishop Griswold. He assisted in establishing St. John's parish in 1804. During the War of 1812 there was neither pastor nor service, but in 1815 Captain Chester Griswold revived the parish. A fascinating account of his Episcopalian village in the forest ap- pears in the diary of Joel Buttles, who came there as a boy. Deer, wolves, and Indians roamed in the woods, and at first the farmers had to travel almost fifty miles to have their wheat ground. They lived in log houses and used the same building as church, school, town hall, and ball-room. The makeshift Church was even cruder at Columbia, where Seba Bronson and his sons read services in a blacksmith shop with a bark floor.
Sometimes the dispersed laymen did not see an Episcopal clergyman for years at a time. Wilderness hardship attracted only the bolder men and they were often compelled to adopt secular vocations. A typical example is the businesslike promoter, James Kilbourne, a farmer's son from New Britain. Soon after his ordi-
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nation as a deacon by Bishop Jarvis, he visited Ohio as agent for a colonizing company composed mostly of Episcopalians in Sims- bury and Granby. He selected a large tract north of Columbus and returned to Connecticut to lead the settlers. They cleared the site of Worthington, erected a log church, and next year organized the first Episcopal parish in Ohio, with Kilbourne as pastor. The pro- moter got the better of the minister and he became a state legis- lator, a Congressman, and president of the trustees of Worthington College.
A similar career was that of Seth Hart, who combined his clerical ministry with surveying. He superintended the surveyors in 1796 when Moses Cleveland from Windham County located the site of the city that bears his name. Having been ordained as a deacon by Bishop Seabury, he read the first religious services in that part of Ohio.
The most heroic early missionary was Roger Searle. He died at fifty-one, worn out by hardships, sickness and privations, and was buried in Ashtabula. After experience as a Methodist circuit rider in Connecticut, Searle was ordained as a priest by Bishop Jarvis. He became a highly successful pastor in St. Peter's and St. Matthew's parishes, Plymouth, presenting large confirmation classes and receiving many invitations to preach elsewhere.
Ohio attracted many of his families, who begged him to visit them. Urged by several bishops and eminent priests, he set out in February, 1817, skimming over the deep snow of Upstate New York in a sleigh. He was warmly greeted by his former parishion- ers in Ashtabula, who had promised to support him. His letters of recommendation made him an unofficial representative of the east- ern churches, and he intended to organize the Church in Ohio with Worthington as its center. He immediately began a long mis- sionary tour, establishing churches in Cleveland, Ashtabula, Liver- pool, Columbia, Ravenna, Boardman, Windsor, and Medina, where he settled in 1818. Everywhere he was joyfully welcomed by Connecticut people. At Windsor, on March 31, 1817, he met the Rev. Philander Chase, who had recently come from Christ Church, Hartford.
That encounter had momentous consequences for the Church in Ohio and throughout the Old Northwest. Searle had persuaded parishes to elect delegates to a convention to organize a diocese
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and elect a bishop. In May he traveled eastward to present to the General Convention a petition from Ohio's nineteen parishes. They requested help and permission to form a diocese and have a bishop.
His mission was the ultimate result of an informal confer- ence at Wellsburg in September, 1816, in the home of the Rev. Joseph Doddridge, a Pennsylvanian. James Kilbourne attended with other Connecticut men, and at his desire the first convention was called to meet in October at St. John's, Worthington. The next Convention met in April, 1817, at the home of Solomon Gris- wold in Windsor, and consisted of delegates from five parishes organized by Searle in the Reserve. The meeting elected him to preach and preside, thanked him for his work, and invited other parishes to send delegates to Columbus in January, 1818, to organize a diocese.
Philander Chase attended the meetings and deeply impressed the delegates by his zeal and rugged force of character. In June, 1818 the convention elected him as the first Bishop of Ohio. The gathering consisted mostly of Connecticut laymen and priests, in- cluding a recent arrival, the Rev. Samuel Johnston, born in Middle- town. Johnston had studied at Union College in Schenectady and after ordination by Bishop Hobart became a missionary in Western New York, and later the rector of Christ Church, Cincinnati.
The newly-elected bishop was well known to the Con- necticut men through his service as rector of Christ Church in Hartford. His family had migrated from Massachusetts to the New Hampshire frontier. Chase attended Dartmouth College and con- verted himself and the family by studying the Prayer Book. After serving as a missionary in Upstate New York and as rector at Poughkeepsie and Fishkill, he founded the first parish in New Orleans. Growing restless in Hartford, he bought a farm at Worth- ington and spent his time in farming, preaching, and superin- tending the academy.
The Ohio frontier was no novel experience and Chase's rustic and roving character made him the ideal man for a strenuous assignment, which would have defeated a man of less durable fibre. Before his resignation from the bishopric of Ohio, in 1831, he traveled thousands of miles, founded and personally governed Kenyon College, and left a diocese with forty-three parishes and nineteen clergymen. After a few years of retirement, at the age of
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sixty he became Bishop of Illinois and in 1843 succeeded as Presiding Bishop.
Throughout his episcopate in Ohio, Chase was assisted by numerous Connecticut Churchmen. His election had been warmly recommended by Colonel Daniel Putnam of Brooklyn, and by the wardens and vestrymen of Christ Church, Hartford. When seeking funds in England for Kenyon College, he was introduced to church leaders by the Rev. Nathaniel Sheldon Wheaton of Hartford. An- other helper was the Rev. Norman Nash, an eccentric missionary and amateur architect from Ellington, Connecticut. Nash promoted the revival of Gothic Church architecture and in 1826 drew the original Gothic design of the building now known as "Old Kenyon". Chase was delighted and characteristically defended it with great warmth against the slightest criticism.
Connecticut Churchmen cherished an interest in the Diocese of Ohio long after it was well established. The Episcopal Watchman published news of its parishes, with encouraging comment. Visit- ing eastern clergymen always recognized the strong vein of Con- necticut piety in Ohio. Jackson Kemper in 1814 found the New England accent everywhere, morning and evening family prayers, and - the ultimate Yankeeism - "pie at tea." Jacob Morgan Douglas of Pennsylvania in 1816 wrote to Jackson Kemper: "I was delighted with the Yankees. They performed their parts in the service so well & sang so elegantly; that I imagined myself in Philadelphia."6 He discovered that they were "High" Churchmen of the old-fashioned Johnson and Seabury school.
THE LAKE STATES
The same type penetrated the other Lake States. Following the depression of 1819, Connecticut emigrants filtered into Indiana. After 1830 they settled in the northern counties, and southward along the eastern boundary, but sparsely in the center of the state. After 1820 many went to Illinois because Southerners favored slave- holding Missouri and left northern Illinois to the Yankees and "Yorkers." Chicago attracted many Connecticut professional and business men. Connecticut men became influential in Michigan Territory, and within a few years "it seemed as if all New England were coming."7 Many pioneers came from such strong Episcopal towns as Norwich, Stamford, and New Milford. By 1850 there were
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more than 20,000 Connecticut natives in Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
The three dioceses in Michigan originated in the seed planted at Detroit in 1821 by a Connecticut Churchman, the Rev. Alanson W. Welton. He had been a pupil of Bishop Hobart and served as a missionary in Western New York. With his family he arrived after more than a month's journey, including a shipwreck on the shore of Lake Erie. He assumed charge of a rather feeble "Protestant Society" and taught the Episcopal catechism in the day school. His ministry was brief for he died in September, 1822.
While Welton's influence slowly built up a parish in French Detroit, the Church was brought to Wisconsin by the roving mis- sionary and Gothicist, Norman Nash. The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society sent him in 1825 to the Episcopalian Oneida Indian reservation near Green Bay. The tribe had migrated from New York State, led by their picturesque white chief, Eleazer Williams, who enjoyed playing the role of heir to the throne of France. The chief begged the Society for aid and was delighted when Nash built a little Gothic church, and opened a school in the Indian agency building. Nash soon grew restless and returned to his travels and hobbies.
A far steadier and more effective character was Connecticut's Timothy Wilcoxson, a native of Stratford, who carried the Prayer Book into the prairies and forests of Minnesota. In 1850 he ac- companied the enthusiastic James Lloyd Breck by canoe up the Mississippi to St. Paul. There they lived at first in a tent, and cele- brated their first service under a huge oak on an eminence over- looking the valley. Breck soon departed to the Chippeway country but Wilcoxson stayed until 1882, when he retired to serve the little parish in Harwinton, Connecticut.
His mission was among the bravest and most arduous in the West, although he was never in robust health. For a few years Wilcoxson was rector of Christ Church in St. Paul, and of St. Luke's in Hastings. But he loved the roving mission and traveled from La Crosse up the Mississippi, St. Croix and Minnesota Rivers. There was scarcely a village that did not know him, and in the earlier years he trudged hundreds of miles, sometimes through deep snow.
Wilcoxson ministered to everybody - Indians, Norwegians,
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Swedes, and Yankees. His reports to the magazine, The Spirit of Missions, are among the most fascinating in its files. After a visit to the St. Columba Indian mission on Gull Lake, he wrote: "It was indeed cheering, after a long, lonely journey, to find in the midst of a native forest a Christian community. .. I attended an evening service in their neat and comfortable log church, then adorned with boughs from the pine and evergreen trees .. . "8
The missionary kept in touch with Connecticut Churchmen, who sent him funds - once including three dollars collected by a small boy of St. Peter's parish, Cheshire. Wilcoxson was constantly reminded of his native soil by the names of his mission stations - Lakeville, Northfield, Farmington. He participated in founding the Seabury Divinity School at Faribault, named for Connecticut's first bishop.
THE WEST
The scattered missions west of Ohio needed an organizer. The right man was Jackson Kemper, consecrated in 1835 as the first missionary bishop of the Northwest. He was deeply influenced by Connecticut through his education at the Cheshire Academy and his service as rector of St. Paul's, Norwalk, and carried Con- necticut doctrine from Ohio to the Great Plains. He traveled on crowded river steamboats and rode over the prairies in rude wagons with his trunk for a seat. When on horseback, he carried his vest- ments, Communion service, Bible and Prayer Book in saddle bags. His bed often was the floor, covered with woolen or India-rubber blankets, and his food consisted of coffee and corn-dodgers. He suffered terribly in the prairie winters, and often woke to find the water frozen, and shoveled through snow to feed his horse. But he declined to leave the missionary field when Maryland called him to be its bishop.
Before he settled down in 1854 as Bishop of Wisconsin, Kemper organized six dioceses: Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, and Iowa. During his episcopate he con- secrated nearly one hundred churches, ordained over two hundred priests and deacons, and confirmed almost ten thousand persons. Everywhere he could depend upon help from Connecticut men. Among the most remarkable was the Rev. Melancthon Hoyt, a graduate of Yale. He was ordained by Bishop Brownell and
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ministered at Indianapolis and Crawfordsville. In Iowa and Nebraska Kemper worked with Henry Washington Lee, born in Hamden, and consecrated as the first Bishop of Iowa in 1854. Lee and Kemper rode together over the prairies in 1856 to visit Trinity Church in Omaha, Nebraska's first Episcopal parish.
Connecticut influence later crossed the plains and the Rockies to the New Northwest. It attained its most striking expression in John Adams Paddock, the first missionary bishop of Washington Territory, who was consecrated in 1880. He was the son of a Con- necticut priest, the Rev. Seth B. Paddock, and was born in Norwich. He prepared at Trinity College for the General Theological Semi- nary and was ordained as a priest by Bishop Brownell. In Pad- dock's episcopate of about thirteen years, the Episcopal Church in Washington outstripped the growth of population and ringed Puget Sound with flourishing parishes.
THE SOUTH
The South generally remained outside the main stream of Yankee migration, but one is surprised at the many evidences of Connecticut influence in planting the Episcopal Church from North Carolina to Texas. The Rev. Bethel Judd (Yale, 1797) was rector of St. John's in Fayetteville, North Carolina. He presided over the convention which reorganized the diocese in 1817. The first bishop, John Stark Ravenscroft, was a Churchman of the Sea- bury school and welcomed Bishop Brownell on his Southern tour in 1830. The second bishop, Levi Silliman Ives, was born in Meri- den and also was an old-fashioned High Churchman.
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