USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Christ Church, Salem Street, Boston : the Old North Church of Paul Revere fame : historical sketches, Colonial period, 1723-1775 > Part 3
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I could not, would not put . .. land to such use, first be- cause I would not set up, that wch ye People of N. E. came over to avoid.
Later he commented on his refusal by specifying, “such things as the cross in baptism and Holy Dayes,"-rather lamely adding that, anyway, "the land was entailed." It was the high-handed Governor Andros who at last took land from a corner of the Burying Ground, and there the chapel was built in 1689 and replaced in 1749 by the present building.
For years, Judge Sewall had made such caustic Christ- mas Day entries as this :
1685 Xr 25. Friday. Carts come to Town and Shops open as is usual; some somehow observe ye day, but are vex'd. I believe that ye Body of ye People profane it, and blessed be God no authority yet to compell them to keep it.
With what poor grace he must have noted on Thursday, May 24th, 1688-
Bell is rung for a meeting of ye Chh of Engld men, being in yt language Ascension Day.
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Now in 1722, the King's Chapel hive showed definite signs that it was about to swarm; but the Boston public, having tolerated Episcopalians, Baptists and Quakers for more than a generation, viewed with apparent unconcern the plan for building a second Church of England.
In the Christ Church records there is found a copy of a paper, presumably from the King's Chapel records, which states the method of raising the money to build the new church :
Laus Deo : Boston, New England.
The second day of September, 1722. At the request of Severall Gentlemen, who had purchased a peice of Ground at the North End of Boston to build a church on, The Reverend Mr Samuel Myles ordered his Clerk to give Notice to his Congregation That all those who were willing to Contribute towards Erecting another Church at the North end of Boston were desired to meet at King's Chappel the Wednesday following.
Agreeable to which Notification Severall Persons assembled, and Chose Mr John Barnes Treasurer ; Thomas Graves, Esq"., Messrs. George Cradock, Anthony Blount, John Gibbons, Thomas Selbey, and George Monk a Committee to receive subscriptions and build a Church on Said Ground at the North end of Boston.
The Preamble to the Subscription.1
Whereas, the Church of England at the South part of Boston is not large enough to contain all the People that would come to it; and Severall well disposed Persons having already bought a piece of ground at the North part of said Town to build a Church on, ----
We, the Subscribers, being willing to forward so good a Work, do accordingly affix to our Names what each of Us will Chearfully Contribute.
Sewall, whose diary reflects not only the temper of the times but his own temper as well, made without comment this entry on September 7, 1722:
Mr Airs shows me a piece of Ground bought to build a new Chh of England .:
1 See Appendix for Subscription List.
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THE OLD NORTH END
In the north end of the town, called North Boston for many years, the scene of this story lies. Then as now, it was well-churched and populous. The Second Church, built in 1650 in North Square, was burned to ashes in the great fire of 1676 but immediately rebuilt, its founders little dreaming that in the course of events it would become firewood for British redcoats, invalided home in 1776. From it, had sprung two offshoots: the New North in 1712, which, rebuilt in 1804, is now St. Stephen's Roman Catholic Church; and in 1722, the New Brick, more pretentious, of which nothing now remains but one of Deacon Shem Drowne's masterpieces, the belligerent weathercock on the spire of the First Congregational Church in Harvard Square, Cambridge. Off Stillman Street overhanging the Mill Pond, Baptists from Charles- town had succeeded in so camouflaging the meetinghouse they erected in 1680 as to deceive the authorities to whom "Anabaptists " were anathema. In 1722 these were all flourishing parishes.
Not all the North-Enders, however, were Puritans or Baptists. Many, especially the sea captains in constant communication with the Mother Country, preferred the Prayer Book service of worship. They and their families loved the festival seasons of Mother Church -Christ- mas, Easter, Whitsuntide-and clung to their observance. So up the narrow, winding streets and alleys, they plodded on Sundays to worship at the King's Chapel where many of them owned pews. This was the oldest Church of England building in all New England and now this, too, was overcrowded. Very quietly, in 1722, a group of parishioners and Church of England sympathizers, with the approval of the venerable Samuel Myles, the rector, began to gather subscriptions for a second Church of England building and were casting about for a suitable site.
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THE OLD NORTH END Burgis-Price View, 1723 Later corrected to show Shem Drowne's weathervane on the spire erected in 1740
Posle Sicil. "Thomas Crown s and Anthony About the Sum.
in bounds -in full of all du. A
found to this 29. of march 1926
Pho Tippin The Bonnott
SIGNATURES OF THE MASTER BUILDERS THOMAS TIPPIN AND THOMAS BENNETT March 29, 1726
12:17
The Gewer A Jam & Myles Cucompany with the Best of King's Chapel laid the first Stone In Christ Church, Jauing thereward Vish Abay the Gates of Hell, never prevail agaming
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FRANCIS BETEILHE'S RECORD of the Laying of the Cornerstone
The North End, a sea-washed peninsula, was the home of merchant princes, sea captains and prosperous shop- keepers. There was pasture land around the Burying Ground on the summit of Copp's Hill and it was for sale. To Anthony Blount, senior warden of King's Chapel, by trade a soap maker and chandler, was en- trusted the task of finding land on which to build the proposed church. By a strange perversity of fate, his choice fell on a part of Henchman's pasture in the old Mill Field, near the upper end of Salem Street -long known as Green Lane, directly opposite the twenty-two- rod opening of Hull Street.
Here was an ideal situation for a second Episcopal church, far enough removed from the center of the town to embrace another parish. Shut off by the Mill Pond (covered now by the North Station and adjacent build- ings), everything was here to make a town within a town. Besides the great business done at the wharves, necessitating shops of many kinds, there were spacious homes with ample grounds and gardens, comfortable inns, taverns, a windmill, pasture land for cattle, even a quiet City of the Dead-the second Burying Place in Boston, atop Copp's Hill, many feet higher than at present. It was truly a happy choice by the committee, of the quiet "Street of Peace," and there were eager hearts and loosened purse strings to forward the great adventure.
The efforts of the committee, supplemented by the many " well-disposed persons," extended late into the summer of 1723, resulting in the tidy sum of 2184 pounds, 16 shillings, in sums ranging from 90 pounds from the Earl of Thanet to 10 shillings from Captain Armstrong. The subscription list now printed for the first time,1 had evidently been compiled after most of the subscriptions were paid. John Barnes, an eminent merchant of Boston,
1 See Appendix for Subscription List.
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was the treasurer, an office he frequently filled in similar semi-public undertakings.
The first expenditure from the fund was one hundred pounds paid to Anthony Blount for the plot of land, part of Nathaniel Henchman's pasture in the old Mill Field, bought for the committee. The deed called for a lot measuring 591/2 feet on Salem Street, tapering to 58 feet in the rear, 121 feet on the north side, and III feet on the south. On this irregular shaped plot, the brick church, 70 feet long, 51 feet wide and 42 feet high, was built.
The land covered by Christ Church is therefore virgin soil, no other work of man's hands has ever stood there, unless it might be some Red Man's wigwam before the White Man drove him away. So, too, across the roadway there is virgin soil, for Hull Street, deeded in 17011 to the Town of Boston, was part of John Hull's pasture opened for a public highway as an approach to the North Burying Ground. Little did Chief Justice Samuel Sewall foresee, when he and his wife, Hannah Hull, the Mint- master's daughter, stipulated in their deed of gift that the new street should be called "Hull street forever," that they had, all unwittingly, provided an equally enduring setting for another church like King's Chapel, for which Judge Sewall had scornfully refused to sell land on Cotton Hill, a church which kept holy days and used the cross in baptism!
The lot was enlarged in 1737 by the' purchase of an additional strip, twenty feet wide, from John Baker at what seems the exorbitant price of seven pounds, ten shillings per foot, making the price one hundred and fifty pounds, two-thirds the cost of the first land purchase. Later, ten feet of this strip was advertised for sale at auction but the sale never seems to have been consum- mated. In 1753, a lot, forty feet by eighty-four feet,
1 Suffolk Deeds, Lib. 20, Fol. 263.
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was bought from Thomas Greenough1 for eighty-six pounds, thirteen shillings, fourpence, which was advertised for sale as part of the church pasture in 1789, and sold at auction in 1801 to Arthur M. Walter2 for $925, to raise money toward payment of the church debts. In 1806, Jonathan Merry was erecting on the lot a dwelling which was torn down in 1918 when the Chapel of St. Francis of Assisi was built. On the north side, the Salem Street Academy was built in 1810, and torn down in 1850. Two houses were then built, the rectory on the site of the Academy and the sexton's house in the rear, the latter razed in 1945.
There are three deeds 3 of record covering the original purchase: the first, dated September 12, 1722, from Nathaniel Henchman to Anthony Blount (Suffolk Deeds, Lib. 36, Fol. 105) ; the second, dated July 30, 1725, from Anthony Blount to John Barnes et al., Barnes being treasurer of the building fund (Suffolk Deeds, Lib. 39, Fol. 255) ; the third and final deed, from the Committee to the Rector, Wardens and Vestry of Christ Church, dated November 15, 1725 (Suffolk Deeds, Lib. 40, Fol. 58).
BUILDING THE CHURCH
It had been an open spring. Torrential rains and high tides in February 1723, had made it possible to "sail in the street from the South Battery to the Rise of the Ground in King [State] Street" and almost to the Meet- ng House in North Square. "After dinner I looked upon the terrible Flood," so Judge Sewall notes on February 24, but four days later it was " a very fair day."
The land having been paid for, the next expenditures were for lumber and bricks. That same September, Captain Samuel Came was dispatched to York, the great
1 Suffolk Deeds, Lib. 82, p. 86.
' Suffolk Deeds, Lib. 199, p. 219.
' See Appendix for Deeds.
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e at m et
Royal Reserve of forest from which came the masts for the King's Navy, to select lumber "to be delivered next spring "; and the brick kilns of Medford got to work on the first consignment of 15,000 of the 513,654 bricks 1 which went into the wall of the new church, two feet thick in the main building and three feet thick in the tower. The committee now had to await only the advent of suitable weather for the digging and levelling of the lot.
After twelve days' labor by John Russell, Thomas Brown, and George Barker, in “diggin, levelling and carrying off the durt" at five shillings per day divided among the three laborers, the foundations of the church could be begun.
The wages of 18th century workmen always included beer 2 and in the building of Christ Church the amount consumed varied with the weather. Most of it was supplied by Llewelyn James and other noted maltsters of the town. Men worked from sunrise to sunset and wages 3 included free beer, a practice followed for many centuries in England and continued, of course, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, an English possession. The common laborer, such as one John Hill, got two shillings
1 Many writers have said that Christ Church was built of imported bricks. The bills of Peter Seccomb of Medford are authority for the handmade domestic brick that went into Christ Church. The bricks are laid in English bond. Peter Seccomb is referred to in Medford archives as "a rich Medford Merchant" who left a comfortable fortune. His son Thomas left to the Town of Medford a sum of money for the " use of the poor " after his wife's death. She turned over the Fund to the Town and it still exists as the Seccomb Fund to which additional bequests have been made. Another son, John, became a minister of the First Church in Harvard, Massachusetts. The Seccomb family was connected with William Patton, Jr., whose name appears on the Seccomb bills to Christ Church.
2 Bill for " Beer at the Plaistering " £1-11-6 Paid February 28, 1725.
3 All wages were abnormally high, owing to inflation, which later forced Dr. Cutler to ask for an addition to his stipend. Thus on Clough and Varney's bill, one pound and seven shillings was paid to five men for one day's work. All this greatly increased the cost of building Christ Church. The total cost of digging and levelling the cellar amounted to three pounds, seven shillings and six pence.
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for eight days' work, "Digin & Leveling the Durt," and one man put in eight days " wheeling the durt." Hench- man's pasture was, like all pasture land, probably covered with scrubby growth which accounts for the time spent in levelling.
The master builders, Thomas Tippin1 and Thomas Bennett,2 who were to do the interior woodwork, and Ebenezer Clough and James Varney,1 the brick and stone masons, had presented their estimates for material needed. Captain Samuel Came had carried out his com- mission of the previous autumn and great pine and oak timbers from York were ready for the workmen in the shed provided by the carpenters. Daniel Crockford's rumbling carts, toiling up Fleet Street from Scarletts' Wharf, had already dumped their heaps of stones and thousands of bricks. By mid-April, all was ready for the ceremony of laying the first stone. .
Easter Monday, April 15, 1723. Two processions traversed the narrow, winding streets of Boston's North End this day; one, attended by a "vast concourse of people of the best fashion," wound its way from a house in Fleet Street to the new part of the North Burying Ground on Copp's Hill, following the " decent but not pompous" bier of John Frizell, Merchant, as he was carried to his last resting place. His life and virtues were extolled in many columns of the newspapers; his death noted by every diarist.
The other procession was composed of a little group of Churchmen whose destination, only a few rods from
1 See Appendix.
^ Thomas Bennett. Prominent member of King's Chapel, pew owner in 1737 and contributor to the rebuilding (1749) on which he labored. Nothing is known of the place of origin of either Thomas Tippin or Thomas Bennett. They were presumably from London and it is hoped sometime that it may be discovered where they learned their trade.
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John Frizell's tomb, was a vacant lot on Salem Street. There the venerable Samuel Myles,1 rector of King's Chapel, laid the first stone of the second Episcopal church in Boston.2 No newspaper commented on this ceremony ; only Jeremiah Bumstead, a Boston carpenter, jotted down in his diary :
Mr. Miles ye church minister laid the first stone att ye new north church of England.
" Fifteen shillings paid to John Low for a stone laid by Mr. Myles," thus reads the expense record of June 12, 1723. What kind of a stone was it which cost as much as the day's wage of the half dozen laborers who helped set it in place ? In which corner was it put? Why has it never been found? From time to time, someone comes forward with a story that someone has told someone else that he or she has seen the stone. But that can be ex- plained, perhaps, by remembering that during the rector- ate of the Reverend William Croswell a new vestry was built (1836), which was removed in 1912, thus possibly exposing a cornerstone of some kind. It must also be remembered that for ten years the Christ Church records were kept in what the Vestry called an "irregular order in keeping the accounts of our Meetings," and only properly entered in books in 1733 by Francis Beteilhe, the clerk appointed for that very reason. He put into concrete form, in his beautiful handwriting, the very atmosphere surrounding the event .: -
Aprill ye 15th A. D. 1723.
The Reverd Mr Sam"] Myles accompany'd with the Gent. of King's Chapel laid the first Stone In Christ Church, Saying these words Viz.
MAY THE GATES OF HELL NEVER PREVAIL AGAINST IT
1 March 1, 1728. Friday night, "Revd Mr Samuel Miles dies after long indisposition." (Sewall's Diary)
2 Christ Church is now the oldest Episcopal church building in Boston, as King's Chapel became Unitarian after the Revolution and the present building was not erected until 1749.
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L
7
15 Holtan t.
NORTH SIDE OF CHRIST CHURCH FROM CHARTER STREET AS IT WAS 1724-1740 Composite drawing based on Christ Church records and contemporary maps by Ethel Stanwood Bolton
f
E
THE FIRST KING'S CHAPEL 1689-1749 From Price's View of Boston, 1743 Drawing by Ethel Stanwood Bolton
Over this, many have puzzled; but perhaps the clue lies in a similar ceremony performed when the first stone of the present King's Chapel was laid in 1749, as told in the King's Chapel records :
Into a trench about eight feet deep the Governor, flanked by the clergy of the Chapel, descended by a ladder where, in the north-east corner lay a stone, its Latin superscription face upward. The stone was then turned face downward tapped with a mason's trowel by the Governor, and the whole party remounted the ladder and entered the Chapel to listen to a sermon by Dr. Caner the rector. A caustic and libelous newspaper account of the day's event asserts that "some devout Expressions were dropt by the Chaplin but it is not yet determined what his Excellency dropt besides a blessing for the workmen."
(Governor Shirley had left £20 for the workmen to drink his health.)
With this hypothetical solution of the position of John Low's fifteen shilling stone, we may assume that the laying of the cellar wall was pushed to completion.
The measurements as submitted by Clough and Varney 1 are as follows :
feet inch The Chancell end 60 feet long & II feet deep makes 660 The Steeple end 44 feet 8 inch long & 7 feet 8 inch deep is 334 - 6
The 2 sides 71 feet each is 142 feet long & 81/2 feet deep makes 1207
The Surface of the whole 2201 - 6
The 2 Sides of the Steeple is 39 feet 4 inches long
The uper end 15 feet 7 inches long
54 -: 11 Long and 71/2 feet deep is 409 -
As soon as the bricklaying began, huge timbers called " put-logs " were put into position as supports for scaffold- ing. These were removed when the work was finished and " stopping up the put-log holes " was a sure sign that the carpenter work was well in hand.
1 See Clough and Varney's bill in the Appendix.
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All through the summer of 1723, the bills show ship- ments of bricks, lumber, lime and sand. Following the bills in chronological order, we find that the beams were raised May 16th, 1723, and on July 6th is the charge for "turpentinering the Beams" and "raising the gal- leries." The gallery construction has been pointed out by no less an authority than the late Norman Morrison Isham, the noted architect, as differing from the con- struction of the London church long supposed to be the one plans for which served the Christ Church builders. Christ Church, Boston, and Trinity Church, Newport, Rhode Island, are the only churches in America with superimposed piers, a construction familiar to Christopher Wren. In American churches, the usual procedure is a supporting pier or pillar rising directly from the floor to the roof.
Here it might be well to describe the style of archi- tecture employed in Christ Church. I quote directly from Mr. Isham's book, Trinity Church in Newport, Rhode Island:
In plan, both churches [Christ Church, Boston, and Trinity Church, Newport, Rhode Island] are basilican, that is, they have a nave and two aisles which are separated from the nave by a row, not of columns but of square piers. Each has five bays, or spaces between the piers.
The elliptical barrel roof, flattened and not rounded, detracts from the impression of height which appears in pointed roof construction.
Not until August 3, 1723, did the glass for the windows1 and the "petitions" and "barrs" arrive,
1 Sandford & Lowe's bill of August 3, 1723, calls for "2100 feet of cassell Sqrs "; the word ' Cassell ' is the contractor's misspelling of 'castle glass' often called casell squares which was a common word in con- nection with 'imported Newcastle crown glass.' In the early 18th century, the Boston Gazette speaks many times of 'casell' window glass and ' casell ' squares. Thomas Sandford, of Sandford & Lowe, was Mr. Thomas Sandford, " Merchant in London," who was London agent for King's Chapel as well as Christ Church.
Letter from John P. Brown, architect
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shipped on the Mary, Captain Lithered, master - goods perhaps ordered by Dr. Cutler, then in London. It will be noted that the window panes have never been diamond shape as they were in other examples of 18th century architecture. The windows vary in size; the great or east window has 118 panes; in all there are 1564 panes of clear glass, exclusive of the round windows. Whether any of the original panes remain is improbable. The "barrs"1 were evidently for protection, as we must remember that Christ Church was very much exposed with only low one-and-one-half story buildings around it.
Other bills show how the work progressed as Dr. Cutler's imminent arrival was an incentive. This happened in the week of September 23rd to 30th. 1425891
Although Christ Church was sufficiently finished to permit holding the first service on the last Sunday of the year, December 29th, 1723, it was a rather bare and makeshift interior into which devout and curious were ushered that day. Much was temporary,2 pulpit, com- munion table and box pews of varying sizes and shapes, the galleries without pews, only one flight of stairs raised, no organ, no lighting, and of course no heat except from the little foot stoves 3 which could not have been very effective in a Boston December. In the box- like interior, the walls broken only by great windows of clear glass, there was nothing to lift the eye upward as the floor was all on a level, and only later was the chancel raised above the floor level.
There being no bishop in the Colonies, the missionary simply took possession of his mission without ceremony. In the case of Christ Church, which had been built for
1 It took for the East Window called the Great Window in the bills: "barrs for arch & the great Window 8sh 14 ft. large barr to ye great window 14sh "
2 Outside there was no towering spire nor would there be for seven- teen years.
3 A foot stove belonging to Christ Church is now one of its treasured possessions.
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for
Ind
Timothy Cutler, the subscribers being largely from King's Chapel, we have reason to suppose that some of them were present, but there are no records except casual local references.1
Although bare and unfinished, the commanding figure in the high pulpit uttered a prophetic message to posterity, for the text of Dr. Cutler's sermon from Isaiah was
FOR MINE HOUSE SHALL BE CALLED AN HOUSE OF PRAYER FOR ALL PEOPLE.
For twenty-one more long years the sound of hammer and saw and the slap of paint brush were to be heard at intervals until, just half of his long rectorate over, Dr. Cutler could announce to the S. P. G., in 1744, that through the heroic efforts of his own people and the gifts of well-disposed persons of every creed, Christ Church was now finished.
Ten years from the time of Dr. Cutler's death in 1765, the signal lanterns of Paul Revere brought Christ Church into the picture as an historic monument for all time. Today, in the 20th century, it is indeed "an house of prayer for all people" with congregations coming from the ends of the earth.
One clause in the final deed has, I think, never been commented on. It reads as follows :
Also in consideration that the said land was purchased by the said Anthony Blount with the Intent to build & there is now actually built upon the Same an Edifice or Building for the Publick wor- ship of God According to the Rites & Ceremonies of the Church of England by the Voluntary Subscriptions and Donations of Divers well disposed persons. And the said Church and land ought to be secured and always set apart for the Publick Worship of God aforesd. to the Congregations or Church that now do or hereafter from time to time forever may meet & assemble therein to worship God as Aforesaid & ought not to be converted used
1 December 29, 1723. Their first meeting att Mr. Cutler's new church, at ye north. A great appearance, said to be.
Jeremiah Bumstead's Diary.
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or Applyed to any other use End purpose or designe whatever have given, granted, etc. to
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