USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Worcester > All Saints church, Worcester, Massachusetts ; a centennial history, 1835-1935 > Part 2
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Among the causes of failure must be mentioned the prob- able dismay of Congregationalists, or other evangelicals, at so much active participation in the service as our ritual demanded.
The worthy bishop's comments on this failure have not been preserved. All due care had been taken to make the first Worcester mission successful; newspaper publicity had been secured, and incorporators designated, as shown herewith:
On December 16 the Worcester Palladium printed the following notice:
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"EPISCOPAL MEETING
"We are requested to state that religious services have been commenced, and will be hereafter regularly held on the Sabbath, in the Room over the Town Hall by the Rev. Mr. Vail of the Protestant Episcopal Church."
And the legal document:
"An Act to incorporate the Proprietors of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Worcester.
Be it enacted by the Senate and the House of Representa- tives, in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:
"Thomas H. Vail, Ira Barton and Edward F. Dixie, their associates and successors, are hereby made a corporation, by the name of the Proprietors of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Worcester, with power to hold real and personal estate to an amount not exceeding twenty thousand dollars; provided, that the same be appropriated exclusively to parochial purposes.
"Approved by the Governor April 8th, 1836.
EDWARD EVERETT"
Among the cherished archives of this Parish is a century- old little red notebook containing the fifty names, with comments, of Reverend Mr. Vail's Episcopalian "pros- pects." Following is the list:
"LIST OF THOSE UPON WHOM I AM TO CALL
Dr. Barton
Harvey Blashfield (Epis.)
Samuel Jennison (Epis.)
Gardiner Payne
Edward F. Dixie (Epis.)
Wolstan Dixie (Epis.)
Theophilus B. Western (Kind)
John H. Gamble
Nathan Blackman (Epis.)
Isaac Hager (Epis.)
James N. Munro (Favorable)
Albion P. Peck
John R. Nickels
Joseph W. Wilder
Charles Hardy
Ovin Rawson A. A. Stone David Pike
Francis Blake
(very much interested)
William C. Barbour
William Coe
Theophilus Brown
Rev. Aldrich (Cong.)
Rev. Bowie (Meth.) Rector of the First Church
Samuel M. Burnside (Unit.) Favorable
David F. Brigham
Major Simeon Burt (Favorable)
Hon. Ira M. Barton (Epis.)
Oliver H. Blood, M. D. (Favorable)
Rev. Aaron Bancroft, D. D.
Deacon Benjamin Butman (Kind)
Mrs. Blake (Kind)
Deacon John Cox (Kind)
Alfred D. Foster (Cong.) Kind
Elder Goddard (Bapt.)
Perley Goddard (Kind)
Reverend Hill (Unit.)
Hon. Thomas Kinnicutt (Unit.) Kind
Rev. Rodney A. Miller (Cong.)
Mrs. McCarty (Favorable)
Rev. David Peabody
Judge Nathaniel Paine (Unit.) Kind
Frederick W. Paine
Gardiner Paine
Dr. Park
George T. Rice (Unit.) Favorable and very kind
William M. Towne Kind. Very Kind
George A. Trumbull Kind
B. F. Thomas Kind
Mrs. Frances S. Vose (Afterwards very nice)"
A confusion in the early records of All Saints Parish, com- plained of by a former historian, is illustrated from this list, in which the last name, Mrs. Frances S. Vose, on one tran- script carries the comment "afterwards very nice," and on another, "afterwards my wife!"
Of the three "incorporators" of this parish Hon. Ira M. Barton, born in Oxford, 1796, a successful lawyer and judge of probate in Worcester for several years, is much the best
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known to us of All Saints. How devoted he was to the Episcopal Communion is indicated by two of his letters of 1835, printed fifty-three years later, in the St. John's Echo of February, 1888:
"PORTIONS OF LETTERS FROM THE HON. IRA M. BARTON OF WORCESTER, TO THE REV. LOT JONES,1 D.D., OF NEW YORK
Worcester, Mass., Oct. 2, 1835
"Since you were here, I have become acquainted with Dr. Wainwright,? to whom I found you were formerly known. The object of his visit at Worcester was to make some en- quiries into the practicability and expediency of establishing a church here. I introduced him to our clergyman, and to such others as would be likely to take an interest in the object of his visit. He was kindly received and an appoint- ment was made for the Dr. to have services in the Central Church. I was mortified that these services were not had, on account of some misunderstanding between the trustees of the church and Mr. Dixey, who was to make the neces- sary arrangements for the use of it on the occasion. The Dr. understood the matter, and said he did not find in it any- thing to discourage him in the prosecution of his object. There are quite a number of persons in the place who would prefer attending the Church. Some such have come to my knowledge since Dr. Wainwright was here. But the diffi- culty in the way is, we want persons of substance to sustain the burden which must be incidental to the establishment of a church. No such persons have yet offered themselves. Dr. W., in the abundance of his generosity, seemed half disposed to obviate the objection by drawing from his own means and the means of his friends. But that is what the people in this place have no right to expect. For although those who would at present resort to a church here are not rich, they are not fairly objects of charity. At any rate, their claims may, perhaps, well be postponed to the stronger and more urgent claims which are now almost everywhere made upon all the funds that Christian benevolence can supply."
1 In 1830, rector of Christ Church, Clappville (now Rochdale).
2 Rt. Reverend Jonathan M. Wainwright, for several years secretary to the House of Bishops.
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"Worcester, Mass., December 15*, 1835
"Regular Church services were, for the first time held in Worcester to-day. You know the object has been long agitated. We have heretofore acted with more consideration than decision. But recent negotiations with Dr. Wainwright and others have resulted in a determination to try the experi- ments of planting Episcopacy in Worcester. Will it grow here? Time must answer the question. I guess it will. We have fitted up one of the large rooms over our Town Hall for the purpose of holding our meetings,-quite pleas- ant and convenient-and to my surprise, I found in it to-day some sixty people, a considerable part of whom appeared to come, not as people go to a theatre to see an actor, but to join in worship. I repeat I was most happily disappointed both at the number and character of the attendants. There was hardly any public notice of services, and I really flatter myself that when such notice shall be given, we shall have quite a pleasant little congregation. The young man who preached, and who is to continue to preach to us, is from your Theological Seminary, by the name of Vail. He is highly recommended, reads and preaches well. I am not over sanguine in my expectations of anything, but I really must think good is to come of this business. Our Episcopal friends abroad have other designs in relation to our place than the establishment of a church here. Much, you know, has been said of a Theological Seminary for New England, and our friends have an eye on this place and have made some overtures for procuring my establishment for that purpose. I have told them I will part with it, and I am daily expecting a committee from Boston to negotiate with me on the subject. What all this business will end in I do not know. Knowing the interest you take in the church affairs of our region, as well as in our own affairs, I thought I ought to advise you what is going on. I shall be very happy in receiv- ing your counsel on the subject. The peculiar relation in which I stand here, humble as I am, devolves upon me a responsibility I hardly know how to discharge. I have been cautious about holding out encouragement to our friends abroad, lest they should be disappointed in their plans in relation to this place. But I cannot conceal from myself, and perhaps I ought not to conceal from them, that we have now some reason to believe that the interests of the Church
*Should read December 13.
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will not be regarded with indifference in Worcester. I hope we shall be wise enough to ask direction in the business from an Unerring Source. "
The second "incorporator," our missionary, Reverend Thomas Hubbard Vail, though he found the Worcester field so arid and stony that he gave it up as a failure after a year's trial, was actually a man of parts. Born in Richmond, in 1812, of New England parents, he graduated from the Gen- eral Seminary in 1835, and, according to one authority, was sent here by Dr. Wainwright (while rector of St. Paul's, Boston) to organize All Saints Parish. After filling several pulpits for short periods, he served fourteen years at West- erly, Rhode Island, and in 1864 was chosen first bishop of Kansas. This post he held during twenty-five years, till his death in 1889.
Edward F. Dixie (usually printed "Dixey" in church reports), the third member of this first All Saints trium- virate, apparently trod a humbler path in life. The Wor- cester Village Directory during the forties and fifties rates him variously as wrench-manufacturer or grocer, doing business on Main, High, and State streets successively; in the issue for 1842-43 he shares half an advertising page with Charles S. Ellis (to be heard from later) as grocer and dealer in "W. I. goods."
For the comfort of those tender souls who shudder at the thought of many of our early institutions (ecclesiastical included) having been founded on the proceeds of lotteries and the sale of West India rum, it should be noted that sugar and molasses were also classed as W. I. goods, and that the popular intoxicant completing this triad of necessaries was not always preponderant in sales.
Mr. Dixie, however, served his church before the founding of All Saints, as we find him recorded, in 1830, as a delegate to a Diocesan Convention from old Christ Church, Clapp- ville.
Let not the reader harbor the mistaken impression, how- ever, that Mr. Dixie belonged to the proletariat. He was,
on the contrary, a member of the Worcester Fire Society, which, for a common grocer to enter, was about as easy as the passage of the Biblical camel through the Needle's Eye. To the late Charles A. Chase we are indebted for the follow- ing sketch of Mr. Dixie, appearing in the sixth series of the invaluable necrologies of that august local institution:
"Those members of our Society who were in Worcester in the 'forties' and early 'fifties' will remember Mr. Edmund Freeman Dixie, a portly gentleman of affable and courteous manner, who doubtless contributed much to the social side of the Society meetings, and as to the literary part was, what is prized by orators and poets, 'a good listener.'
'Mr. Dixie was born in Marblehead in 1795, the son of Captain John Dixie and Tabitha Abraham. His early busi- ness training was in a West India goods importing house on Long Wharf in Boston. In 1833 he came to Worcester and opened a grocery store on the present site of Grout's block. He catered to the best class of customers, but it is my impres- sion that those who wished for choice wines or liquors would have to cross the street and patronize that other fine old gentleman, Deacon Benjamin Butman. At this last place they would be sure to find what they wanted.
"In 1847 Mr. Dixie changed his business to the sale of hardware and the manufacture of some specialties in that line, but returned to the grocery business for a while, and in 1857 removed to Keokuk, Iowa, where he engaged in the same trade, in which he continued until his death."
Although Mr. Dixie was neither an Englishman nor a manufacturer, the fact remains that our Church owes much to these alert and brainy Englishmen who settled near some waterpower in various parts of New England, bringing with them their love of the Mother Church, which frequently they made corporeal in the building of many an Episcopal edifice. Of this worthy class the late Matthew J. Whittall is a shining example.
Before leaving the story of the "first settlement" of our Parish, let us turn to the Reverend Mr. Vail's missionary report of 1836, the true incunabula or cradle-document of All Saints Church. It may be read in the Journal of that year's Convention.
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"Missionary Report, Worcester
"Divine service was commenced in Worcester, on Sunday, December 13th, 1835, and has been continued regularly, with the intermission of only one Sunday. There are now about twelve families attached to our services, and a very good congregation, varying from one to two hundred per- sons, attends on our Sunday exercises. The occasional serv- ices have not been so well attended, on account of the other engagements of our people.
We number from 15 to 20 communicants; I adult has been confirmed; I adult and 2 infants baptized; I death, 2 burials. There is evidence that God has blessed the word spoken to the sanctification of some.
"A strong desire is manifested by members of all the reli- gious societies in the town, that an Episcopal Church may be built, and six thousand dollars have been subscribed for this object; a large part of this sum by those not connected with the Episcopal Church. It is thought, however, by nearly all the subscribers that $10,000 is the minimum upon which such an undertaking may be started, as the land and its preparation will cost not far from $2,000, leaving but a small amount for the building. It is thought, too, that the present summer will determine whether the Episcopal Church shall be established in Worcester, at present. If the services can be maintained in the town for some time to come, until a building can be put up, and if some tempo- rary aid can be rendered to the infant congregation for some months after such a building is completed, there is every prospect of abundant success to our Church, and of useful- ness to the cause of piety, and of benefit to souls.
THOMAS H. VAIL, Missionary"
Following Mr. Vail's last sentence, one may readily note the parallel with "Greenland's Icy Mountains " and "India's Coral Strand" where "every prospect" pleases, and only man is vile! In December of 1835 every prospect looked pleasant to Messrs. Vail, Barton, and Dixie, but by January, 1837, the traditional vileness of man had been strongly evi- denced by a sad depletion in the ranks of worshipers at All Saints mission; the Church's representative had departed from our midst in sorrow and depression of spirit, while a Sahara of seven lean years of inertia stretched out before our grandfathers.
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At this point the final report (from the Convention Journal of 1837) on this first Worcester mission, as presented by Reverend Mr. Vail, then rector of Christ Church, Cam- bridge, should be inserted.
"At the meeting of the last Convention the Minister reporting was officiating in the Town of Worcester as a Mis- sionary under the direction of the Bishop. At that time the Society in Worcester was desirous of erecting a house for public worship, as they felt that their prosperity depended very much upon accomplishing this desire.
"They had then just failed in their first attempt. After- wards in September and October an effort was made to raise the means of building a small, simple and very cheap Church. But in this likewise,«through Providential causes, they were disappointed. The Services were still continued, however, until the 15th of January, 1837, when, by the advice and consent of the Bishop, and the Board of Missions, they were finally suspended. It is but justice to the membership of that Society to state that the inconveniences of the place where they were accustomed to worship (an upper hall in the Town House) made a Church absolutely indispensable to their permanent success."
Mr. Vail closes his report with the expression of a hope, destined to find late fulfillment, "that the seed sown in Worcester may not be eventually or utterly lost."
As two such intercalary periods of stagnation have already been noted in this chronicle, this third one also, in view of our Church's instability, will not appear too surprising. In 1838 no mention is made of Worcester in the Convention Journal, but the next year, Reverend Thomas H. Clark, sec- retary of the diocesan Board of Missions, reports as follows:
"Charlestown and Worcester are towns of so wide extent, and so rapid in their growth, that it becomes the Episcopal Church to let its doctrines and services be made known there very speedily. Other denominations have taken precedence of us, but it is not too late to establish flourishing churches in these prosperous towns."
In 1840, Reverend William Croswell, succeeding Reverend Mr. Clark as missionary secretary, declared thus emphat- ically:
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"It is a reproach to the Church that in so large and wealthy and rapidly increasing a town as Worcester, year after year is suffered to pass away without any vigorous or sustained effort to introduce its services. It is hoped that the example of our friends in Charlestown will not be lost on those who are most interested in its being followed in Worcester."
Two years more of inaction followed, however, but on Sunday, Christmas day of 1842, Reverend Fernando C. Putnam held services in the chapel of Central Church on Thomas Street, since which date they have continued regularly.
Another account states that this chapel was the property of Hon. Daniel Waldo, and was used also by the Calvinist Society. After a few months' stay in Worcester, Reverend Mr. Putnam removed to the Diocese of New Jersey, where he remained for many years. Christened Fernando Cortez, he was born in Marshfield, Vermont, May 19, 1816, and was living in Woodbury, Vermont, in 1895.
In May of the next year (1843) Reverend Henry Black- aller came to take charge of our still struggling mission, and two months later organized this Parish under the laws of the Commonwealth and the canons of the Diocese of Massa- chusetts. On July 21, 1843, a meeting was held (pursuant to a warrant issued by a justice of the peace) at the house of Dr. Seth P. Miller. "On motion of Henry K. Newcomb it was voted that the new church be called All Saints Church." Two wardens, 9 vestrymen, a clerk, and 22 communicants, representing 24 families, comprised the personnel of the Parish at this time of its formal organization. Reverend Mr. Blackaller remained at All Saints about a year.
This clergyman was born in England in 1798, came to St. John's, Newfoundland, was graduated from Williams College in 1829, and was ordained in the Episcopal Church the same year. From 1834 to 1838 he was rector of Christ Church, Clappville (Rochdale). In 1837 he reported that bodily infirmities required him to quit his post, but in 1838 we find him installed at Trinity, Bridgewater, where he remained until he came to Worcester. Upon leaving our
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Parish in 1844, he went to Zion Church at Manchester, Vermont, which he left in 1851 for Mansfield, Ohio. After presiding over several Ohio parishes, he retired in 1863, and died at Gallipolis, Ohio, June 21, 1867.
The first recorded wardens were Thomas Bottomly and Charles S. Ellis; the latter's services as warden continued till 1851, and Bottomly's for still another decade beyond. Rated as umbrella-maker and later as keeper of a toyshop, Ellis drops out of the local directory after 1852. His adver- tisement from the issue of 1842 proclaims that, in addition to umbrella-making, he deals in " all kinds of musical instru- ments, fancy goods, baskets, boxes," etc. He dates back to the first Worcester Village Directory of 1829.
Thomas Bottomly was one of the most zealous supporters of the early church. Senior warden from 1843 to 1861, he gave the second largest amount ($300) to the first Church Building Fund, and served on many important committees. He was a native of Yorkshire, England, came to Leicester in 1820, and through his activities in woolen manufacturing, was really the founder of Cherry Valley as a manufacturing village. He was active in the Church at Rochdale, from which Reverend Mr. Blackaller was called, and died in 1865, leaving sons in Leicester to carry on his factories.
Among the staunchest friends of early All Saints, and closely associated with the building of the Pearl Street Church, was Henry Knox Newcomb (1796-1868) who shared with Sumner Pratt the honor of first representing All Saints as lay delegate at a Diocesan Convention (1845). Born at Greenfield, the son of Hon. Richard E. Newcomb, judge of probate, he served for some years in the Boston Custom House, and moved to Worcester in early middle life, to act as crier of courts and secretary of the Worcester Mutual Fire Insurance Company. In 1814 he served, as a youth, at Dorchester under Captain Strickland, in the second war against Great Britain.
Sumner Pratt (1809-1887), introduced in the previous paragraph, was a pioneer textile manufacturer and dealer in mill supplies, a vestryman and warden of All Saints for many
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GEORGE T. CHAPMAN Rector 1844-1846
years, whose loyalty and devotion to the church have been efficiently transmitted now to the third generation. Sketches in plenty of Mr. Pratt's enviable career may be found in our local biographies.
While in biographical mood, let us pass on to Reverend Mr. Blackaller's successor, Dr. George Thomas Chapman, under whom the first All Saints was built. He was born at Pilton, in Devonshire, England, September 21, 1786, so that in 1844, he arrived in Worcester as a seasoned pastor and expert theologian of fifty-eight. As he came to this country at the age of nine, his whole environment, outside of imme- diate parental influence, was American. Graduating from Dartmouth in 1804, he first embraced the law as a profession, but presently felt a call to our ministry. Having married an Alice Buck of Bucksport, Maine, he was ordained deacon in the Episcopal Church in 1816, and presbyter two years later.
After about twenty years in the ministry, he was forced to suspend his work owing to the presence of cataracts, which, however, were fortunately removed by Dr. J. K. Rogers of New York. Worcester was his first parish after the recovery of his eyesight. He remained here about two years from Easter, 1844.
St. Stephen's, Pittsfield, was his next parish, on leaving All Saints; for several years he is listed as "non-parochial" among the diocesan clergy. His death occurred in New- buryport, at the age of 86. Those interested in homiletics, ninety years ago, may read in Smalley's Worcester Pulpit (1851) an entire sermon of Dr. Chapman, preached in All Saints Church: "Ascent to Heaven Difficult; Descent to Hell Facile."
The steps leading to the erection of our first church build- ing (on Pearl Street just below Plymouth Church) must now be traced, the initiative being a letter from Bishop Eastburn (then at the beginning of his episcopate) to Mr. Newcomb, a member of the vestry :
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"Boston, Mass. Dec. 7, 1843
"Henry K. Newcomb, Esq., Worcester, Massachusetts
"MY DEAR SIR:
"You will have received, before this, a communication from Mr. Mason, informing you of the grant of the Board of Missions to Worcester. My object in writing you at this time is to desire, through you, the active membership of your Church at Worcester, not to harbour for a moment the idea that there is, or has been, any want of warm interest on the part of our Board, in regard to the sweep of your plans. On the contrary, the feelings of all are most ardent on the sub- ject. It must be borne in mind, however, that the Board is much straitened by the poverty of their resources, and are constantly compelled to decline doing what they fain would do. I suppose the present grant will meet your views, and be sufficient to sustain Mr. Blackaller during the time that he may continue in Worcester.
"In the meantime, let me express the ardent hope that you will all push the matter of securing and paying for the lot of ground. This is a highly important thing, and will do a great deal to inspire mutual confidence among yourselves, and confidence on the part of the surrounding community. You may count upon me as a contributor to that object of the sum which is mentioned to you at our last interview. And it is not unprobable that something, in God's provi- dence, may take place to carry forward your endeavors to a successful issue. Let us all do what we can, and leave the cause in God's hands; not giving way to despondency, but confiding in that divine promise of Him Who has said that He will be with His Church to the end of the world.
"I have often proposed in Boston the raising of a large sum, say $1000. annually, to the support of a Clergyman at Worcester, but one great obstacle is the fact of many Churches being in debt around us which need prompt and immediate aid. But of this more when I see you.
"With kind regards to all friends,
Sincerely yours, MANTON EASTBURN, Bishop"
On November 25, 1843, our little group of church people had removed to Brinley Hall (where the State Mutual Build-
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ing now stands) as their place of worship. The expense of hiring a hall for services had increased; it was therefore hoped that this move to Brinley Hall would lessen this expense, as the owner had at one time offered its use free of charge.
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