USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > Historical review of Chicago and Cook county and selected biography, Volume I > Part 18
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Palais was succeeded by Rt. Rev. William Quarter, Chicago's first Catholic bishop, who died April 10, 1848.
Under Bishop Quarter the growth of Catholicism in the diocese was remarkable. When he arrived in Chicago it contained but one church and two priests; two years later, at the first diocesan synod, thirty-two priests were in attendance and nine were unable to be present. In 1846 three Catholic churches were also erected-St. Patrick's, St. Peter's and St. Joseph's-the last two for German com- municants, St. Peter's being on the south side and St. Joseph's on the north side. The University of St. Mary's of the Lake is also to be credited to Bishop Quarter, a charter for the college being granted in December, 1844 (the year of his coming to Chicago). The uni- versity building, with seminary attachment, was opened to the Cath- olic world July 4, 1845, and was the first institution of higher learn- ing in the city. He also instituted the first community of Sisters of Mercy in 1846, and among the organizations of a less denominational nature which he founded may be mentioned the Chicago Hibernian Benevolent Emigrant Society, having for its object the protection of Irish immigrants. According to his desire, the remains of the re- vered bishop were deposited in St. Mary's cathedral, which he him- self had consecrated less than three years before.
In 1850 the French Catholics again separated from the mother church to form St. Louis Society, and worshiped for about two years in the old St. Mary's church, which then stood at the rear of the cathedral and was used as a convent by the Sisters of Mercy. A faction of St. Joseph's church formed a new organization, St. Mi- chael's, and erected another house of worship on the north side, and in the following year St. Francis separated from St. Peter's to ac- commodate the German Catholics of the southwestern section of thie city.
The nucleus of the Cathedral of the Holy Name, at State and Superior streets, one of the most magnificent religious edifices of the
HOLY NAME west, was a small room fitted up in the old College
of St. Mary's of the Lake, in 18.46, to serve as head-
CATHEDRAL. quarters of the north side parish placed in charge of the priests of that institution. In 1848 a building was erected on the southwest corner of the college grounds, corner of Rush and Supe-
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rior streets, and was opened for services in November, 1849. It was known as the Church of the Holy Name and was erected under the auspices of Rev. Jeremiah A. Kinsella, rector of St. Mary's College, who, in 1851, also built a small church at the corner of State and Superior streets. The erection of these houses of worship gave so decided an impetus to the settlement of Catholics on the north side that Bishop Van de Velde assented to the building of a large brick church at the latter location, which should be used as the cathedral of the diocese. The substantial church, of Milwaukee cream brick, was opened for the celebration of its first mass on Christmas day of 1854. The fire of 1871 reduced this fine edifice to ashes, but it was replaced by the present stone cathedral, with its magnificent high altar of marble, and its architectural magnificence, which stamp it as one of the noteworthy religious edifices in America. The total cost of its construction and reconstruction (1891-93) was a quarter of a million dollars and the completed structure was dedicated No- vember 17, 1876. While it was in process of construction-that is, for three years-the headquarters of the bishopric were transferred to St. Mary's parish on the south side. That church had also been destroyed by the fire, but Bishop Foley had purchased the Plymouth Congregational edifice, on the corner of Wabash avenue and Eld- redge court. Mass was first celebrated therein October 6, 1873, and from that time until the completion of the cathedral of the Holy Name it was used as a pro-cathedral. That year and event are also . significant of the permanent transfer of centralized Catholicism from the south to the north side, but, although St. Mary's is somewhat shorn of its ecclesiastical dignity, around it cluster all the tender memories of the early times and it stands as the only outward evi- dence of the continuous life of the Roman Catholic church as an or- ganized body in Chicago. Its noteworthy history embraces the es- tablishment of the first Catholic church for colored people in the city and one of the first in the north, the faithful of that race meeting in the basement of St. Mary's for their initial services in 1881. After Bishop Foley's death in 1879 the strong standing of Chicago in the Roman Catholic church was recognized by raising it to the dig- nity of a metropolitan see and appointing Rev. Patrick A. Feehan (former bishop of Nashville) as its first archbishop.
The diamond jubilee of St. Mary's church, celebrated June 14-19,
1
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1908, occasioned a grand outpouring of Catholics, one of the oldest, most noted and most faithful of them, Hon. William J. Onahan, de- livering the chief address relating directly to the church. As he had attended his first mass in it as early as 1855, his interesting and tender narrative came from the lips of an authority. "In the year 1903," said Mr. Onahan, "the charge of the church and parish was given over by Archbishop Quigley to the Paulist fathers, who were cordially welcomed to Chicago by priests and people. The parish house has since been the headquarters of the missionary band of the Paulist fathers for the west. It is scarcely necessary to dwell here on the services of these fathers in the special line of mission duty to which they are given. Their wonderful zeal and power, especially in the field of conversion, has passed into a proverb. The missions given to non-Catholics have been rewarded by the happiest results.
"Old St. Mary's means something greater and more significant than merely a church and parish. St. Mary's was the mother church -- the creator, it may be said-from which sprang the subsequent marvelous spread of Catholicity in Chicago, and from Chicago through Illinois and the west in general. How wonderful has been the growth of religious activity from this fountain source is seen today. The statistics alone demonstrate how unequaled, how unexampled has been its progress. Think of it! In Chicago, in 1833, a single priest and an humble little frame chapel, where now, in 1908, we have an archbishop, several auxiliary bishops, four hundred priests, nearly two hundred churches, schools, colleges, innumerable convents and religious houses, noble hospitals and multiplied institutions of mer- cy and charity, and institutions for the care and mitigation of every form of human infirmity. All this wonderful exhibit is not of con- cern alone to Catholics. It is, indeed, to their glory and credit ; but it concerns the entire community. What we have done has not been for Catholics only-it has been for all, since all have shared in the benefits-the city, society, humanity, have all been gainers."
The expansion of Catholicism in the west division of Chicago showed marked activity after the fire, which had little immediate ef- fect upon that section of the city other than to draw the attention of thousands of homeless people to its ample acres as available for resi- dence sites. Long before, several notable institutions of the faith had been created in this section of Chicago, among others that of the
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Church of the Holy Family, under the care of the Jesuit priesthood. In 1857 Bishop O'Regan invited Father Arnold Damen, of the Mis- souri diocese, and a member of the Society of Jesus, to take charge of the Cathedral of the Holy Name, but the latter, after local investiga- tion, decided that his duties lay on the west side of the river, and even in what was then a sparsely settled section of it south of Van Buren street. The result was the purchase of the block between Eleventh and Twelfth streets, fronting on May, and the erection of a large wooden chapel, which was occupied as the Church of the Holy Fam- ily in July of that year. In the face of a financial panic and depress- ing times, funds were raised for the grand edifice which was dedi- cated in 1860, which passed almost unscathed through the great fire, and which still stands. In 1862 a clergy house was erected and in 1870 St. Ignatius College was opened-an institution which has sent out numerous bright young men who have been making history for Chicago and the country. Father Damen, pioneer of his order in Chicago, has the love and veneration of thousands, and the parish of the Holy Family church is now one of the most numerous and united in the country.
The old St. Louis church, established in 1850, for the separate worship of French Catholics, passed through much stress and storm caused by disagreements between their bishop and their pastor and the income of a strong element of Irish Catholics. The original building was consumed in the great fire, but the French Catholics had again come into their own by the formation of the parish of Notre Dame de Chicago and the completion of a church for them in 1865, located on the west side, corner of Halsted and Congress. The site of the church has been shifted three quarters of a mile to the southwest, but the French are still in the ascendancy. The growth of the western division of the city has resulted since in the founding of such fine and substantial edifices as the massive, two- spired Church of Our Lady of Sorrows on West Jackson boulevard, near Kedzie street, and the buildings of St. Mel's parish on Wash- ington boulevard, at the corner of Forty-third street.
From first to last the Catholic church in Chicago, as everywhere else, has been zealous, not only in the establishment of its own pa- rochial schools and institutions of higher learning, but in the founding and maintenance of hospitals, which, as far as aid to the sick and
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injured is concerned, have been conducted along uisectarian Fines. But interesting as is the development of all the local activities of the church, it is impossible to present more than the general features; and the same may be said of all denominations.
Although the Catholics, Presbyterians and Baptists all preceded the Methodists in the formation of regular churches in Chicago, it METHOD- ISM. is generally admitted that the Methodists were the first Protestants to secure a firm foothold in the community, through the faithful labors of Jesse Walker and Stephen R. Beggs. The nature of those labors, as well as the building of the first church on the north side of the river and its removal to the corner of Clark and Washington, in 1838, has already been described. Two years before, the society (known as the Clark Street M. E. church) had been stricken from the list of missions and recognized as an independent organization. It had been incorporated in 1835 as the Methodist Episcopal Church of Chicago, and it was not until 1857 that the name was formally changed, by legislative act of reincorporation, to the First Methodist Episcopal church. This organization has been the mother of Methodism in Chicago, and holds that relation to the local faith even more dis- tinctively than St. Mary's does to Catholicism. In 1845 the growth of the society made necessary the erection of a brick church and in 1858 this was displaced by what, for those days, was an elegant mar- ble structure, four stories high. The lower, or main floor, was given up to stores, the second to offices, and the two upper stories to re- ligious purposes. Prior to 1850 the Canal Street Methodist and the State Street Methodist churches had been founded by colonies from the mother body and through her financial assistance, and the Welsh and German residents of the city, also received substantial support in the formation of pioneer churches on the west and north sides. The First Swedish Methodist Episcopal church was organized as the Scandinavian Mission early in 1853 and in the following year a building was erected on Illinois street near Market, north side. As illustrative of this faith in the good missionary offices of the First church, is the fact that, in 1865, an appeal was made by the West Indiana Street church for pecuniary aid, and a resolution was prompt- ly passed that this application should be first on the list-after the lot on Indiana avenue, which was being purchased for what is now
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Trinity Methodist church, had been paid for. In fact, nearly every Methodist church in the city, which has found itself in any special straits, has received assistance from the First Methodist church, which, before the great fire, had given away $70,000. The fine mar- ble block which it had erected was ruined by the conflagration, but by the fall of 1872 the present building was standing on its site, and the generosity of the First Methodist church has since in no wise abated.
The Methodist Church block, now in the business heart of the city, is still the heart of Chicago Methodism, and in a large measure that of the west. It has been the scene of many notable denomina- tional gatherings and none which caused a more profound sensation in the home church than that which assembled to try Dr. Hiram W. Thomas on the question of his orthodoxy. The trial of Dr. Thomas
DR. H. W. opened in the lecture room of the First church on
Thursday, September 21, 1881, the judge of the
THOMAS. ecclesiastical court before which his case was brought being the presiding elder of the Chicago district, Rock River Conference, of the Methodist Episcopal church. The result, both of his trial and the appeal to the conference jury, which was decided two years afterward, was to expel Dr. Thomas from the ministry and membership of the church. The groundwork of the accusations was laid while he was pastor of the Centenary Methodist church, on the west side, from 1877 to 1880, although his pulpit utterances had given rise to much criticism by the orthodox members of the church during the three years (1872-75) that he occupied the pulpit of the First church. His early theological studies had been under Charles Elliott, president of the Iowa Wesleyan University, and when little more than eighteen he commenced to preach. In 1856 he joined the Iowa Methodist conference, filled numerous appointments throughout the state and also served as chaplain of the state penitentiary, and in 1869 came to Chicago to fill the pulpit of the Park Avenue Meth- odist church. While preaching in Iowa his liberality had occasioned comment, but not until he commenced his pastorate of the First Meth- odist church of Chicago did it cause general criticism. The climax was reached at the delivery of his sermon in 1874 on the trial of Dr. Swing for heresy, in which he took exception to the doctrines of foreordination and perdition. In the fall of 1875 the orthodox op-
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position resulted in his transfer to Aurora, and at the Methodist con- ference of 1878 his utterances were discussed and he was asked to give assurances that his objectionable teachings would be discontin- ued, or that he retire from the Methodist pulpit. Although he de- clined to do either, but stated that he would continue to do the best he could as a Christian minister, he continued his pastorate at the Centenary church, with the result that he was expelled from the de- nomination.
In the meantime his stanchest friends, who had foreseen the result of the trial, had organized the People's church, the pulpit of which
PEOPLE'S Dr. Thomas occupied from the time of his trial and
CHURCH. withdrawal from the Centenary church, until 1901. or for two decades. Services were first held in Hooley's theater, then in the Chicago Opera House, and finally at McVicker's theater, the People's church growing continu- ally in numbers and influence until Dr. Thomas' advancing years and declining strength made it necessary for him to drop his heaviest phy- sical burdens. Those who have ever come under his kindly and mag- netic spell and his broad fraternalism are still under their influence, and will recall with gratitude the words of the Northwestern Chris- tian Advocate, published soon after his expulsion from the church, in 1881: "Now that the struggle is past, we say cordially that Dr. Thomas is in a position (we wish it had been voluntary on his part ) where every Methodist can, without embarrassment, give him all kindness and brotherly love. He can think, say, write and urge all that is nearest his heart, without a word of Methodist criticism as to himself personally. He is now in the ranks of, or near to, those from whom Methodists can receive criticism and antagonism without flinching. We congratulate the non-Methodist public in having a preacher who is far more evangelical than the average independent teachers. He has brains and reading and attractiveness. We sin- cerely hope and pray he may have thousands of disciples and con- verts, and that he may live many years and do a hundred times more good than even he had hoped to do. The world needs earnest teach- ing, and we shall be glad to know that the People's church is gather- ing heavy sheaves."
One of the most vigorous offshoots from the First M. E. church in the city was what has developed into the Grace church, LaSalle
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avenue and Locust street, north side. In 1847, when the mother church had been located on the south side of the river for some years, various citizens of the north side desired to have a place of worship nearer their homes and organized the Indiana Street chapel, with headquarters in a little frame building on the south side of that thor- oughfare between Clark and Dearborn. The society grew rapidly, and, in 1863, with the spread of population north, erected a substan- tial building on the site of the "Moody church," Chicago and La- Salle avenues. This was burned in the fire of 1871 and the parish threw up a temporary chapel on its site which became noted as "the first church after the fire." The lot was purchased by Dwight L. Moody's supporters, however, and the magnificent Grace church of the present was completed in 1873, at LaSalle avenue and Locust street. It represents one of the strongest Methodist organizations in the country and has itself been the founder of numerous missions, several of which have developed into independent congregations, no- tably Wesley, Elsmere and Christ churches.
Although the Moody church on Chicago avenue and the numerous Christian movements inspired and forwarded by the great evangelist were non-sectarian, his work was largely supported
DWIGHT L. MOODY. by the Methodists, and his earlier labors in the establishment of the Young Men's Christian As- sociation were centralized in the rooms of the Methodist Church block, corner of Clark and Washington streets. He was a Massa- chusetts man, and commenced his active life in Boston, as a successful salesman, his energy, tact and attractiveness making business success assured, had he elected to follow it. Joining the Congregational church in his twentieth year, his early attempts in Boston and Chicago to address prayer meetings were such failures as to prompt his friends to advise him to serve the cause in some other way. Fol- lowing that advice, for the time, he took a Sunday school class at the First Methodist church and was soon an active promoter of a small mission. He also became interested in the work of the Bethel Home, and while distributing religious literature among the sailors, met a Presbyterian elder from Rochester, likewise engaged, and the two worked together for a number of months. Near the north side market he further collected a motley crowd of juveniles in a deserted saloon, and instructed them in morality with such
CHICAGO AND COOK COUNTY
hearty good will that the school was removed, as a large establish- ment, to North Market Hall and was there maintained for six years, afterward being installed in a saloon which he rented for the purpose. He soon determined to devote his entire time to the work With re- gard to his first labors in Chicago Mr. Moody once said: "When I began my Christian course I tried to work in the churches of Chicago and I was told I had better not speak. I went into the dark lanes and got meetings there. I kept my mouth shut. I did not let the church close it. Take a bold stand for Christ. You will never be good for much for God's service until the world calls you crazy. If the world has nothing to say against you, you are not much of a Christian." Mr. Moody's great power as an evangelist was finally proven in his work for the Young Men's Christian Association, which had been. organized in 1858, largely through Cyrus Bentley and John V. Farwell, but which so languished during its early infancy as to be on the verge of complete prostration. When the young man Moody, who had already been recognized by the First church as a good mission Sunday school worker, entered the ranks of the asso- ciation, he at once connected himself with its practical measures of relief, and as chairman of the committee to visit the poor and sick he found broad scope for his broad and tender ministrations. His absolute sincerity and infectious earnestness within the succeed- ing few years also brought him into the class of effective speakers, and his power and eloquence as an orator increased continually with the vastness of his practical Christian works, until the truth became recognized that he was one of the greatest Christian agents of his time. At the breaking out of the war he was chairman of the devotional committee of the association, and active throughout the period of hostilities in connection with the Christian and Sanitary Commission, being president of the executive branch of the latter for Chicago. Locally his labors were chiefly centered in Camp Douglas, where he erected the first camp chapel of all time, and afterward organized prayer meetings and revivals attended by thousands of soldiers, by wearers of both the blue and gray. In 1865 an employ- ment bureau was established, largely through Mr. Moody, and two years afterward Farwell Hall was completed and occupied by the association. It was burned in the following year, rebuilt in 1868-9. and again destroyed in the great fire. In the meantime his purely
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evangelical labors had found a home in the famous Moody Taber- nacle, corner of Illinois street and La Salle avenue, but the 1871 fire made a clean sweep of this, as well as of his house and furniture. He saved nothing but his bible from his household effects. Within thirty days a low wooden building had been erected at Ontario and Wells streets and became known as the North Side Tabernacle, where his congregation was accommodated until the basement of the new structure on Chicago avenue was completed. After the fire Mr. Moody carried his work abroad as an evangelist, and, with the assist- ance of his co-worker, the lamented Sankey, preached Christianity and himself into the hearts of British and Americans alike. From that time until his death in 1894 the Chicago avenue church was supplied with resident pastors of marked ability and Christian virtues.
Presbyterianism in Chicago was perhaps more strongly affected by the slavery question than any other denomination, although in its early period its experience was uniform with that of the other sects, the division and subdivision of its members into organizations being mainly determined by the growth and shiftings of population. In some instances the dividing line was also determined by Old and New School predilections, in which case, as in that where slavery caused the rupture, the newly formed
R. W. PATTERSON.
church usually joined the standard of Congrega- tionalism. In 1842 the First Presbyterian church became so over- crowded that a number of its members formed another organization and under a young Cincinnati minister, Rev. Robert. W. Patterson, inaugurated the Second church. Services were first held in the Saloon building, one of the finest public halls in those days, the Unitarians throwing their church open to the new society on Sunday afternoons. Under Dr. Patterson's pastorate the church waxed strong and dedi- cated a house of its own in 1851. The material of the edifice was a soft, bituminous limestone, and, with the sun and general exposure, the petroleum was gradually drawn to the surface, giving the building the name of the "spotted church," which, as the years passed, became the "old spotted church." It stood at Washington street and Wabash avenue, and was considered a handsome building, notwithstanding its odd appearance, at the time of its destruction by the great fire. Dr. Patterson occupied the pulpit of the Second Presbyterian church the
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