USA > Kentucky > Jefferson County > Louisville > An historical sketch of St. Paul's church, Louisville, Ky > Part 2
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Alleghany Mountains. Connolly took sides with the mother country, and being detected in a scheme to unite the Indians and Tories against the Colonies, he was arrested and thrown into a prison from which he did not emerge until near the close of the Revolution. While Connolly was in prison all his schemes for the great western colony vanished, and his projected town at the Falls of the Ohio languished. It required other men to make a permanent settlement at the Falls of the Ohio, but the Revolution soon raised them to the front as it had sunk Connolly to the rear.
Connolly's Title Forfeited.
Connolly, having taken the British side in the Revolution, his lands at the Falls of the Ohio were confiscated. They were taken from him by the act of the Virginia Legislature establishing the town of Louisville at the Falls in 1780, and also by the verdict of an escheating jury, which was impan- eled the same year by George May, the surveyor. This act of the Virginia Legislature and this verdict of the escheat- ing jury were strangely coincident, happening as they did five hundred miles apart, and with no actor in one of the scenes cognizant of what was going on in the other. The act of the Virginia Legislature, although it took effect as of the Ist of May by a parliamentary rule which made all acts passed at a session bear date as of the first day of the term, did not really receive the official signatures until the Ist of July, 1780; and on this very Ist of July, 1780, the escheat-
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ing jury sat in Fayette County, with Daniel Boone as one of the panel, and by their verdict made a double confiscation of the Connolly lands.
First Settlement on Corn Island.
On the 27th of May, 1778, Gen. George Rogers Clark, on his way to the conquest of the Illinois country, landed his volunteers on Corn Island, then a considerable body of land in the Ohio River, in front of the present city of Louisville. Some emigrant families accompanied the troops from Pitts- burgh, and these being also landed on the island, became the founders of Louisville. The site of Louisville was con- tinuously occupied by our forefathers after the landing on Corn Island, May 27, 1778. It had thus taken the Virgin- ians about one hundred and seventy years from their first settlement at Jamestown to carry civilization beyond the Alleghanies and plant it upon the shores of the Ohio.
The Town of Louisville.
Only the upper half of the Connolly two thousand acres was appropriated to the town of Louisville by the Virginia act of 1780. The outlines of this one thousand acres began near the old mouth of Beargrass Creek, then between the present Third and Fourth streets, on the Ohio River, and followed the meanders of the river to the foot of the present Twelfth Street; thence took a southwestwardly course to the intersec-
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tion of the present Broadway and Nineteenth streets; thence eastwardly to the intersection of the present Broadway and Shelby streets, and thence northwestwardly to the begin- ning. The trustees of Louisville now having become the proprietors of this one thousand acres, embracing the site of St. Paul's, the next thing to do was to lay it off for a town and people it. The first attempts at a plan and map of the town were crude. John Corbly tried it in the spring of 1779, and so did William Bard, but their plans only extended to one street, straggling along the river front from the present First to Twelfth Street. When Gen. Clark returned from the Illinois conquest in the autumn of 1779 he made a plan and map of the town, which were the best ever designed. All the land between the present Main Street and the river, the whole length of the city, was to be a public park, and another strip, one square in width, was to extend the city's length, south of Jefferson Street, as a central park. Had this plan been adopted Louisville would have been the hand- somest city on the continent, with its river park and central park bringing down to our times the grand old forest trees which nature had planted here, and the lot on which St. Paul's stands would have fronted on this central park. Our trustees, however, could not see the beauty of Gen. Clark's plan, and there was no want of wiseacres to furnish them with other plans. George May, the first county surveyor, made a map of the town in 1781, William Pope another in 1783, William Shannon another in 1785, William Peyton an- other in 1786, Alexander Woodrow another in 1802, and
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Jared Brooks another in 1812. All of these maps have dis- appeared from the city records, and are only known now by copies in the hands of private individuals.
The Here Lots of Louisville.
The plan with which we are most interested in what is to be said of St Paul's, was that of William Shannon in 1785. Shannon laid off that portion of the town south of Green Street into five, ten, and twenty-acre lots, the five-acre lots lying between Green and Walnut streets, the ten-acre lots between Walnut and Chestnut, and the twenty-acre lots be- tween Chestnut and Broadway. All these lots were duly num- bered, and the five-acre lot extending north and south from Grayson Street to Walnut, and east and west from Center Street to half way between Sixth and Seventh, which was numbered " 10," is the one with which we are immediately concerned as containing the site of St. Paul's Church.
First Owner of the St. Paul's Lot.
This five-acre lot, No. 10, was sold by the Trustees of Lou- isville, October 8, 1785, to Samuel Kirby for $18.3313. Mr. Kirby was one of the pioneers of Louisville, and as a mer- chant in partnership with Benjamin Earickson accumulated a handsome property for his times. He has descendants yet among us in the persons of Judge Emmet Field and the wife of John Roberts, a distinguished member of the Louisville
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bar. He died in 1795, having willed his five-acre lot to his only son James and his only daughter Nellie. His son James died intestate, and the entire lot passed to his daughter Nellie, who afterward married Dr. Henry Young. In 1810 Young and his wife sold this lot to John Gwathmey for $500.
Other Owners of the St. Paul's Lot.
John Gwathmey was a Virginian by birth, and came to Louisville at the beginning of the present century. He was a merchant and manufacturer in the early years of the cen- tury, and later was proprietor of the celebrated Indian Queen Hotel. He built the house known as the Grayson residence, which yet stands on the lot immediately north of the church, the oldest brick residence in the city of Louisville. Here five of his children were born, who lie buried beneath the walls of St. Paul's, the site of the church then being the family burying-ground, as it had been a place of sepulture for the Mound-builders uncounted years before. One of his children, Mrs. Samuel H Hillman, born in this house in 1812, and who was present at the consecration October 6, 1839, yet survives and dwells with her son in Cincinnati. This historic mansion, built in 1810, on the margin of a beautiful lake shaded by native forest trees, was something in which the city took pride, and it remains solid to-day, a noble representative of what our architecture had accom- plished seventy-nine years ago.
In 1816 Mr. Gwathmey sold this five-acre lot, with other
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property, to David L. Ward for $20,600. It is not possible, at this late day, to determine what Mr. Ward paid for this five-acre lot, blended as it was with other property in the sale. Mr. Ward bought it as a wedding present for his daughter Sarah, who became the wife of Frederick W. Grayson, and in 1823 made a formal deed of it to trustees for her separate use and benefit. Mrs. Grayson was a member of St. Paul's from the 25th of July, 1839, until her death, only a few years ago, and occupied this house from its purchase by her father until her death. Nothing pleased the good old lady better than to talk of her early years, when her pleasure-boat was upon the beautiful lake in front of her residence, and her rooms filled with visiting friends. Until she became the owner of this lot it had always changed hands in its full quantity of five acres, just as it had first passed from the trustees of Louisville. In 1830 she began dividing the lot by selling seventy-one feet on Walnut Street by a depth of two hundred and four feet to Logue & Clark. The follow- ing year she sold seventy-six feet front on Walnut street by two hundred and four feet in depth to Edward Shippen, the cashier of the branch of the United States Bank in Louisville, who had purchased the adjacent seventy-one feet of Logue & Clark. Shippen died in 1832, leaving this property to his mother, Eliza J. Shippen, who, while she held it, followed the example of previous owners and made no improvement of any kind upon it. It remained through all these transfers a vacant lot, just as it had come from the Trustees of Louisville in 1785-just as the Mound-builder and the Indian had left it.
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St. Paul's Trustees Secure the Lot.
In 1834 Mrs. Shippen conveyed the lot, 147 by 204 feet, to D. S. Chambers, Samuel Gwathmey, L. D. Addison, Robert N. Miller, and William F. Pettet, who purchased as trustees of the then contemplated St. Paul's Church. The price paid by these trustees for the one hundred and forty-seven feet front on Sixth Street by a depth of two hundred and four feet was $7.500. The ground thus purchased for St. Paul's did not remain as it had come from Mrs. Shippen. There were subsequent purchases and sales and exchanges, some of which were intricate, and which it would be tedious here to detail. An abstract of the title to the St. Paul's lot, kindly furnished by the Kentucky Title Company as their contri- bution to this semi-centennial celebration, shows that there were no less than twenty-eight of these purchases and re- purchases, sales and resales, exchanges, etc., after the Ship- pen purchase, all of which resulted in leaving St. Paul's lot as it is to-day, fronting one hundred and eighty-one feet on Sixth Street by a depth of one hundred and forty-four feet.
The Church Records.
In thus tracing the title to the lot on which St. Paul's church-building stands, the first steps in the inauguration of the church itself have been, to some extent, anticipated. The church records have, unfortunately, been very imper- fectly kept, but fragmentary as they are they preserve inter-
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esting facts and incidents of the church history. I now propose to go over these records and produce from them such facts as they contain touching the origin, progress, and present condition of the church.
First Meeting in Behalf of St. Paul's.
The first minute-book, mostly signed by Secretary James B. Huie, but sometimes by B. O. Davis, H. Griswood, or A. Y. Claggett, begins the record of the church on the 28th of September, 1834. On that day twelve citizens, in pursuance of a call published in the newspapers of the city, met at the Louisville Hotel for the purpose of establishing an Episcopal Church in the lower section of the city. The gentlemen
who attended this meeting were Rev. D. C. Page, who was made chairman ; James B. Huie, who acted as secretary ; B. R. McIlvaine, Samuel Gwathmey, John P. Smith, William F. Pettet, Dr. James C. Johnston, Richard Barnes, Dr. J. T. Maddox, John W. Jones, William Wenzel, and Thomas Row- land. After fully discussing the nece sity and possibility of another Episcopal Church, they appointed a committee to solicit subscriptions, and adjourned to meet again "Saturday evening next, 4 o'clock P. M." As the day of the week was not given in the minutes of the first meeting, it was difficult to ascertain to what day of the month this second meeting was adjourned. Upon examining an old almanac for 1834 it was found that the first meeting, September 28, 1834, was on Sunday, and that the next Saturday, fixed for the second meeting, was October 4, 1834.
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Of the twelve citizens who thus connected their names with the movement to inaugurate St. Paul's Church, but few occupied such positions as to secure them places in the annals of their times. Most of them were good men and true in the humble walks of life, whose history went down with them to their silent graves. Promoters as they were of the church, whose history I am attempting to sketch, a few words about each of them are demanded by the occasion. They will be noticed in the order in which their names appear in the record.
Rev. D. C. Page.
Rev. D. C. Page, at the date of this meeting, was rector of Christ Church, in Louisville. Born of English parents, his education had been in the traditional faith of the church whose early minister he became. He married Miss Eliza Ormsby, niece of Robert Ormsby, and was thus associated with the most prominent families of the diocese. In the midst of his usefulness as rector of Christ Church, he was induced by Bishop Otey to go to Natchez to take charge of a church there, made vacant by the rector, Dr. Connelly, going over to the Catholics. His eloquence and zeal saved the Natchez church from any of its members following their former pastor into forbidden paths. While at Natchez he could have been made Bishop of Mississippi, but for spells of religious depression to which he was subject. The clergy were in favor of his being made bishop, but the laity objected on account of these melancholy aberrations. He moved from
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Natchez to Memphis, and then returned to Louisville, where it was expected that he would again become rector of one of the Louisville churches, but finally he went to Pittsburgh, where he died about the beginning of the late war between the Northern and Southern States. He was a man of cul- ture and eloquence, and as a reader of the Church Service had few superiors. His melancholy spells, however, greatly impaired his usefulness as years gathered upon him.
James B. Huie.
James B. Huie, the secretary of the first meeting in behalf of St. Paul's, was a grocery and commission merchant on Wall Street, since known as Fourth Avenue. He was a man of strict business habits and an ardent politician, not for the love of office, but for the excitement of political associations. His political ardor led him to join in the late Rebellion at an advanced age. He was a pronounced church- man, and neglected few opportunities of being in his pew or at his post in business meetings of the church. He died here in 1881, in his eighty-second year.
B. R. Mellvaine.
B. R. McIlvaine was a native of New Jersey, and a brother of Bishop McIlvaine, of Ohio. He was an early merchant of Louisville, and had the misfortune to have the walls of his store fall while overloaded with heavy merchandise. His clerk was killed in the fall, and Mr. McIlvaine himself nar-
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rowly escaped. He married a sister of Henry A. Dumesnil, of this city, and resided here until about IS50, when he moved to New York. He died in New York about the beginning of the Rebellion.
Samuel Gruathmey.
Samuel Gwathmey was a native of Virginia, and came to Louisville in ISO1. When the United States Land Office was established at Jeffersonville, Ind., he was appointed Reg- ister, and held the office until removed by President Jackson, to whom he was politically opposed. He then came to Louis- ville and opened a flour store, which he conducted until he was made president of the Mechanics and Savings Bank. He was devotedly attached to the Episcopal Church, and always gave freely of his means in the cause of charity and religion. He died at the residence of his daughter, Mrs. Henry Tyler, in 1850, aged seventy-two.
John P. Smith.
John P. Smith was a Virginian by birth, and came to Louisville in the early 'thirties. He at first engaged in the retail dry goods business, but was not successful as a mer- chant, and afterward became an educator. He taught school in the Cane Run precinct of Jefferson County, whence, through rain or sunshine, he regularly came to the Epis- copal Church in the city-first to Christ Church, and then to St. Paul's after it was established. He died in 1859.
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William F. Pettet. 1
William F. Pettet was a native of England, where he was born in 1794. He came to Louisville in 1815, when the na- tive forest trees and original ponds were the most conspicu- ous features of the town. He thought he saw in the unsightly place the elements of progress, and he determined to make a beginning and rise with the town. He opened a retail drug store on Market Street, and with his business habits, industry, and economy advanced until he became a member of the celebrated wholesale drug store of Wilson, Pettet & Smith, on Main Street. His success in business brought him an ample fortune, which he used for the benefit of others as well as himself. His bequest of $5,000 as a trust fund to the Virginia Theological Seminary, the interest of which was to go forever to the education of poor young men for the ministry of the Episcopal Church, has already yielded rich returns, and will go on and on doing its good work and connecting the name of the donor with it when monuments of brass and stone have crumbled to dust. There are to-day six young men in the ministry who were beneficiaries of this fund. He was not only one of those who attended the first meeting for the inauguration of St. Paul's Church, but kept full to the front in all that was afterward done until the ground was purchased and the building erected. . He died in 1871, and was buried in the old graveyard on Jefferson, between Sixteenth and Eighteenth streets, among the pio- neer dead of the city.
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Dr. James C. Johnston.
Dr. James C. Johnston, a son of William Johnston, the first Surveyor of Customs at the port of Louisville, and second clerk of the Jefferson County Court, was born here in 1787. He was a graduate of the New Jersey College, at Princeton, and of the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania. He began the practice of medicine in Louisville in 1810, and but few men in his day went to the practice better equipped with professional learning and accomplishments. Had he been poor and compelled to work for his living, there was no height in the profession to which he might not have attained. But the large estate he inherited from his father demanded much of his attention, and he soon gave up his profession for its management. He was a man not only of deep and broad professional learning, but of general reading and more than ordinary knowledge upon almost every subject. He was also a man of exquisite taste, and his judgment upon the merit of a work of art was generally accepted among those who knew him. He was fond of agricultural pursuits, and in the ab- sence of a farm on which to display his care he laid out gardens in which he took constant delight in the growth of shrubbery and flowers. He died in 1864, at the advanced age of seventy-eight, lamented not only by his family, where his excellent qualities of husband and father made him almost worshiped, but by a community who remembered his sterling qualities of neighbor and friend.
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Richard Barnes.
Richard Barnes, a native of Maryland, was one of the early merchants of Louisville. He was always an ardent churchman, and was one of those who in 1822 inaugurated Christ Church in Louisville. Again he appears as one of the twelve who set in motion the movement for St. Paul's in 1834. He died in 1861, after having spent an honorable and consistent life in the cause of the Protestant Episcopal Church.
Dr. J. T. Maddox appears among the twelve promoters of St. Paul's, and but little outside of the meager church minutes is remembered concerning him. There was in Louisville about this time a physician put down in the early directories as "J. J. N. Maddox," with his office on Second Street, between Main and Market, in. 1832, and on Main, between Fifth and Bullitt, in 1836, who was probably the same physician. He returned to Maryland, his native State, about 1838, and thereafter disappeared from our local records.
John W. Jones.
John W. Jones, the tenth name in the list of promoters, is the only one of the twelve now living. He was born in Virginia, and came to Louisville in the 'twenties. He was first engaged in the' shoe business with J. M. Weaver, and afterward with William H. Everett in the hardware busi- ness. About 1842 he returned to Virginia, and now resides
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at Buchannon, in Botetourt County. He has a son, E. Val- entine Jones, an Episcopalian minister, who is put down in Dashiell's Digest as rector of Trinity Parish, Huntington County, in 1873. He had a brother, Gabriel S. Jones, who was deputy sheriff of Jefferson County, Ky., and a nephew, Gabriel I. Jones, who is now a citizen of Louisville. Mr. Jones was one of the early merchants of Louisville who made an effort to establish special lines of merchandise in one store, instead of every kind of goods in one stock. In the pioneer stores of Louisville axes and calico, nails and silks, sugar and laces, pills and log chains, flour and raccoon skins, and indeed every thing that was sold at all, were sold over the same counter. The tendency of modern times in such establishments as the Bon Marche, Paris, and Stewart's, New York, is to return to the pioneer fashion of every thing in one store.
William Wenzel.
William Wenzel was a German by birth, and among the early emigrants from the fatherland. He was a musician by profession, but at an early day became an agent for Mrs. Preston in the sale of lots in Preston's enlargement of the city. He made money both for himself and his patroness, and in the course of time acquired quite a fortune, with which he returned to his native land. Wenzel Street, at the upper end of the city, is named after him, and thus by the recognition of Mrs. Preston his name will be forever connected with the first great enlargement of Louisville.
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Thomas Rowland.
Thomas Rowland, the last in the list of the twelve promoters, was the Thomas W. Rowland, of the firm of Rowland, Smith & Co., wholesale grocery and commission merchants, on Main Street. At the date of this meeting he was a single man, and may have been inclined to the Episcopal Church. He afterward married Miss Mary E. Young, of Trimble County, Ky., who was a Catholic, and with whom he went to the Catholic Church. At all events he never became a communicant of St. Paul's. 3 In later life he moved from Louisville to Trimble County, where he died about ten years ago.
I have thus sketched the twelve promoters of St. Paul's Church, believing that this tribute was due to their mem- ories on this .occasion. I now proceed with the church records.
Organization of St. Paul's Parish.
The second meeting recorded in the minute book in behalf of St. Paul's was on the Ist of November, 1834. The following gentlemen were present: James B. Huie, William L. Thompson, F. T. Thompson, Daniel Brewer, Edward Warren, and Samuel Nock. These gentlemen formally organized the new parish, gave it the name of St. Paul's, made W. L. Thompson, F. T. Thompson, Daniel Brewer, and Samuel Nock vestrymen, and James B. Huie and Edward Warren wardens. For some unknown reason
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these proceedings were abrogated or superseded by a sub- sequent meeting on the 30th of May, 1836. At this last meeting the following organic document was adopted and signed by the parties present, it being in the same words as the one adopted at the Ist of November meeting :
" We, whose names are hereto affixed, deeply impressed with the im- portance of the Christian religion, and wishing to promote its influence in the he irts and lives of our families, ourselves, and neighbors, do hereby associate ourselves together under the name and style of St. Paul's Church, of the city of Louisville, county of Jefferson, and State of Kentucky; and by so doing do adopt the Constitution and Canons of the Protestant Epis- copal Church in the Diocese of Kentucky, in common with the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. Done this day and date as above written." (Signed) B. O. Peers, Richard Barnes, B. O. Davis, James B. Huie, John P. Smith, Joseph Martin, jr., J. T. Maddox, A. Y. Claggett, and Robert C. Thompson.
First Subscriptions to St. Paul's.
Immediately after the meeting of November 1, 1834, appears, without date, a list of subscribers to the church. One half of these subscriptions was to go to the purchase of a lot, and the other to the building of the church. And if any subscriber should desire a pew in the church after it was ready for use, he could have his subscription credited by the price to be paid for the pew. The following is the list of subscribers and the sums they contributed :
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