USA > Massachusetts > History of the Diocese of Massachusetts, 1810-1872 > Part 10
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Berkshire from Boston was apparent to a dweller in Stockbridge, who wrote in 1844, 'Till recently it [Berkshire] has, from its sequestered position, remained in obscuri- ty. Its communication with its own capital, even, has been impeded by the high and rugged hills that inclose it. But now [with the opening of the Western Railroad] the hills are brought low, and the rough places are made smooth.' Catharine M. Sedgwick, 'Berkshire', Graham's American Monthly Magazine, XXVI, no. 1 ( July 1844), p. 6.
8. The other important industry was mining of marble and iron. Josiah G. Hol- land, History of Western Massachusetts (Springfield, 1855, 2 vols.), I, 361; II, 558- 560. English-born Arthur Scholfield made woolen broadcloth at Pittsfield in 1804. J. E. A. Smith, The History of Pittsfield, (Berkshire County), Massachusetts, from the Year 1734 to the Year 1800 (Boston, 1869), II, 162, 170.
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shire, and Hampden Counties, bisected by the Connecticut River. 9 The outstanding parish in Franklin County was St. James', Green- field. In 1835 Henry Wells Clapp, a goldsmith and a jeweler who had been in business in New York City, settled in Greenfield. Through his devotion to St. James' Church, and by his civic and industrial interests, especially in connection with railroad build- ing, he was to do much for the Episcopal Church.1ยบ Griswold re- ported in 1842 of St. James' and its rector, Titus Strong, that 'we still find that happy union and active zeal, of minister and people, which, for almost thirty years, has been, without interruption, continued'. 11
In Hampshire there was but a single parish, St. John's, North- ampton. Bishop Griswold's son, the Rev. George Griswold, had been the first minister in this parish, but had served only one year because of incipient tuberculosis.12 Round Hill School had failed in 1833, its headmaster, Joseph Green Cogswell, accepting a teach- ing position under Bishop Ives at Raleigh, North Carolina.13 This school's closing materially injured the Church. St. John's numbered only sixteen communicants in 1838, but in 1842 ten candidates for confirmation presented themselves before Bishop Griswold. At the same time the bishop stated that, 'By the exertions of their minis- ter, the Rev. Dr. [Orange] Clark, and the aid of some gentlemen from Boston and New York, their house is at length nearly freed from debt.'14
9. At the time of Bishop Griswold's con- secration, Hampshire County comprised both Franklin and Hampden Counties. The latter two were set apart from Hamp- shire and incorporated in 1811 and 1812, respectively. Historical Data Relating to Counties, Cities and Towns in Massachu- setts, prepared by Frederic W. Cook, Sec- retary of the Commonwealth ([Boston,] 1948), p. 7.
10. Francis M. Thompson, History of Greenfield (Greenfield, Mass., 1904, 2 vols.), II, 847.
11. JED, 1842, p. 18. The other par- ishes in Franklin were Montague and Ashfield, both small.
12. George Griswold had taken over at St. Paul's, Boston, until Alonzo Potter was named rector in 1826; he died in 1829. Stone, Griswold, p. 541.
13. John Spencer Bassett, 'The Round Hill School', Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, New Series, XXVII (April 1917), 53.
14. JM, 1840, p. 62; JED, 1842, p. 18. There were 515 members in the First Church, of which Jonathan Edwards had been pastor, in 1843. The other churches in Northampton, in 1843, which had a population of some 3750 in 1840, were, in addition to St. John's, the Unitarian (1825), the Baptist Church (1828), the Edwards
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Hampden County had two Episcopal societies, Christ Church in Springfield, and a kind of stepchild, St. Mark's, Blandford. When woolgrowing was an important industry in western Massachusetts, towns like Blandford were relatively prosperous.15 Dissatisfied by their minister's preaching of the 'doctrine of unconditional elec- tion', a part of the congregation started a new church, 'after the form of the Church of England'. 16 The new society built St. Mark's Church in 1830 and apparently had an endowment fund to pay for a preacher.17 The number of members was in single figures, how- ever, and the society became inactive. 18 Bishop Griswold valued the small rural parishes equally with the larger urban parishes. During only one year, he preached five times in Ashfield, six times in Otis, and seven times in Blandford.19 He realized that the Episcopal Church could draw and hold churchgoers, who had drifted away from the Church Establishment in Massachusetts, only by the reg- ularity of weekly services. He urged, 'that a minister should offici- ate constantly in one place, then in two or more'.20 The Diocese of Massachusetts did not, and could not, provide full-time ministers for parishes having but two or three score communicants. Another factor in the weakness of rural parishes was the want of knowledge of the Book of Common Prayer. Persons who gathered together to form an Episcopal society, did so primarily to listen to preaching which would be neither Calvinistic, controversial, nor revival, but which would be, to them, Orthodox, i.e., preaching the gospel.21 The prayer book with its fixed, though varying, orders of worship,
Church (1832), the Methodist Episcopal Church (1843). A Roman Catholic church was built about 1845. William Allen, D.D., An Address Delivered at Northampton Mass., on the Evening of October 29, 1854, in Commemoration of the Close of the Second Century Since the Settlement of the Town (Northampton, 1855), p. 54.
15. Blandford had in 1846 more sheep than inhabitants, besides a factory for mak- ing woolen cloth. John Hayward, Gazetteer of Massachusetts, etc. (Boston, 1849 [1846]), p. 38.
16. Holland, Western Massachusetts, II, 13.
17. William H. Gibbs, An Address De- livered Before The Literary Association, Blandford, Mass., September 21st, 1850 Upon the History of That Town (Spring- field, 1850), pp. 42-43.
18. JM, 1839, p. 43.
19. JED, 1835, p. 13.
20. JED, 1836, p. 11.
21. Bishop Griswold wrote, 'There is no other preaching, that will be so successful in changing the heart and turning men to God, as preaching the word in plainness and sincerity ... [and] by preaching the Cross of Christ.' Stone, Griswold, p. 566.
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and its forms for the administration of the sacraments was far too little known, and seldom appreciated. The parochial demand and supply for prayer books was steady, but awareness and study of its inspirational values did not inevitably follow. 22
Christ Church in Springfield after 1821 caused the diocese some anxiety as the population of Springfield made it one of the first ten towns or cities in the Commonwealth, and the number of Episco- palians was too few in number and means to build a church'.23 Christ Church parish was finally established in 1839. Bishop Gris- wold dedicated the church building 1 April 1840, with Henry W. Lee, rector.24 This church subsequently became the Cathedral, and Springfield the see city, of the Diocese of Western Massachusetts. The great fact about Christ Church was the nearly thirty-year rec- torship (1878-1907) of John Cotton Brooks, brother of Phillips Brooks. 25 At Bishop Griswold's death there were eighty-three com- municants of this church. 26
In Worcester County, the cotton and woolen industry were closely allied to the only two Episcopal societies in the county. The younger parish, St. John's, Wilkinsonville (a village of Sutton), appeared to Bishop Griswold to be a model one, especially in re- gard to music and congregational responses in the services. The number of communicants at St. John's was eighty-five. 27 Christ Church, Clappville (Leicester), suffered from the closing down of the factories, and until they 'shall again be in operation, our church there must continue in a feeble state'. 28 The sons of Samuel Slater practically endowed the church at Wilkinsonville.29 Clappville's
22. JM, 1842, p. 55. The situation today is much the same.
23. Hayward, Gazetteer, pp. 321-329; JED, 1836, p. 11. The population of Springfield was 6784 in 1830, and 10,985 in 1840.
24. Henry W. Lee was the son of Lt. Col. Roswell Lee, who as Commandant of the U. S. Armory, in 1815, gathered a few families together in the Armory hall for Episcopal services conducted by Titus Strong. JED, 1840, p. 13; James C. Sharp, John Cotton Brooks (Cambridge, 1909),
pp. 44-47.
25. Sharp, Brooks, pp. 48, 184.
26. JM, 1843, p. 94; Christ Church was one of at least twelve churches in Spring- field including one Unitarian and one Ro- man Catholic, in 1847. Holland, Massachu- setts, II, 118-126.
27. JED, 1842, p. 17; JM, 1843, p. 94. 28. JED, 1840, pp. 12-13.
29. Historical Notes Relating to St. John's Church, Wilkinsonville, Mass., compiled by the Rev. Samuel Hodgkiss (n.p., 1900), p. 9.
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THE DIOCESE OF MASSACHUSETTS
parish remained small and was of little importance in the diocese, apart from its being the first in Worcester County. Rightly judging what was to be the future importance of the town of Worcester, Thomas March Clark, in 1839, told the annual Massachusetts con- vention, 'that it becomes the Episcopal Church to let its doctrines and services be made known there very speedily'.30 Bishop Gris- wold, likewise, had already asserted, in 1834, that Worcester was "one of the places where we ought long since to have had a Church well established'.31 Just a month before he died, he preached twice at Worcester, and confirmed five persons. 32 In April 1844 the small Episcopal society in Worcester organized itself into All Saints' Church, and as usual held services in a hall, while churchmen of Boston and Worcester raised funds for a church building. 33
West of the eastern boundary of Worcester County the Diocese of Massachusetts numbered, then, in 1843, fifteen parishes. 34
Of the nine counties in Massachusetts situated generally east of Worcester County, Barnstable and Dukes had no Episcopal par- ishes. In Middlesex County, St. Paul's parish, Hopkinton, repre- sented the survival of a mid-eighteenth-century parish into the first quarter of the nineteenth century, with litigation involving the glebe lands. The outcome of this leasing of lands belonging to the Church through a committee of the trustees of donations, composed of Dudley A. Tyng and Shubael Bell, to a lessee named Samuel Valentine, Jr., was a small new St. Paul's Church in Hopkinton with a two-hundred-dollar bell. Financial difficulties prevented the church from remaining open after Bishop Griswold consecrated it in October 1818, and it was only open occasionally during the bal- ance of his episcopate. 35 The eighteenth-century romance, culmi-
30. JM, 1839, p. 17.
31. JED, 1834, p. 11.
32. JM, 1843, p. 24. Griswold visited Worcester on 15 Jan. 1843.
33. JM, 1845, p. 77.
34. JM, 1843, p. 94. The number of communicants based on the figures avail- able was 676, or 1 out of 346.35 persons based on the population figures for 1840. Four other centers of interest in the Epis-
copal Church noted by Bishop Griswold were New Boston (Tolland), North Adams, Southwick, and 'a new parish' in Webster. JED, 1830, p. 10; 1835, pp. 12, 13.
35. The troublesome, but from a dioce- san standpoint unimportant, history of St. Paul's appears in Abstract of Trustees of Donations, pp. 31-32, 40, 52-54, 77-81, 86-87. The Rev. A. L. Baury of Newton Lower Falls finally recovered the whole
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nating in marriage, of Sir Charles Henry Frankland and Agnes Surriage of Marblehead, sets the Episcopal society at Hopkinton apart in a unique way for students of American literature of the nineteenth century.36
Lowell and Cambridge shared honors as the leading parishes in Middlesex, with Lowell's St. Anne's parish gaining ground steadily under the long rectorship of Theodore Edson. Christ Church in Cambridge, a carry-over from a Society for the Propagation of the Gospel foundation, received the benefit of a thoroughgoing dioce- san survey and help, but only took front rank under the long ten- ure of Nicholas Hoppin of Brown University, who was its minister and rector from 1839 to 1874.37 Both St. Anne's, Lowell, and Christ Church had members who found it more convenient to worship not in the parish church. Thus grew up St. Luke's, Lowell, and St. Peter's, Cambridgeport. St. Luke's parish set an example for the diocese by the manner in which its members established it. The new society sprang from the peaceful setting off of a number of families from the old parish [St. Anne's ] to be the nucleus of a new one'.38 This division did not result in loss of numbers from the older parish, as Griswold found that the 'pews vacated in the old church are already occupied by new members'.39 He laid the cor- nerstone of St. Luke's in August 1842, and during two visits to Lowell this same year he confirmed 156 persons.40 A writer in 1846, when Lowell had been a city for ten years, described it as "this large manufacturing city [which] has arisen from an Indian fishing station . . . [and] was commenced, continued, and is sus- tained solely by the wisdom, energy, industry, and wealth of Mas- sachusetts people .. . '.41 The writer could have added that the
property for the parish; he also preached occasionally at St. Paul's. JM, 1871, pp. 63-65.
36. Elias Nason, Sir Charles Henry Frankland, Bart. (Albany, 1865); E. L. Bynner, Agnes Surriage (Boston, 1887); O. W. Holmes, 'Agnes', Complete Poetical Works (Cambridge ed., Boston and New York, 1895). Frankland's diary is at the Massachusetts Historical Society.
37. JM, 1840, pp. 33-34; 1874, p. 97. 38. JED, 1840, p. 12.
39. Ibid.
40. JED, 1842, pp. 16-17; JM, 1843, pp. 20-21.
41. Lowell's population in 1840 was 20,796; in 1844 it was 25,163. Hayward, Gazetteer, pp. 187, 190, 325. The parish of St. Anne's purchased their church build- ing for $12,000 from the Merrimack Co.
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THE DIOCESE OF MASSACHUSETTS
Episcopal societies in Lowell were continued and are sustained largely by the wisdom and energy of Theodore Edson.
Christ Church, Cambridge, remained small, and even grew smaller, when a number of families transferred their membership in it to St. Peter's, Cambridgeport, in 1842. Unlike the Church of England practice of establishing chapels of ease-Trinity Church parish in New York City contained a number of such chapels- Episcopal societies in the Diocese of Massachusetts, which gathered together a group in the same town, formed independent parishes. 42 These new parishes almost invariably commenced their worship in a rented hall, and looked to the diocese for help, not to the parent society. There was an element of Congregationalism in this desire to identify a parish only with the building in which it worshipped. From a financial standpoint, however, the parishes of Massachu- setts received support only for their own clergy and church build- ing within the society, and for missions and missionary work with- out the parish, bestowed either directly or through the diocese. St. Peter's, organized in October 1842 for those thirty-five families "living nearer' Cambridgeport, received from Richard H. Dana of Boston, 'the generous donation of a valuable piece of land in Cam- bridgeport .. . [which] will be of great service to the interests of the Church'.43 Bishop Griswold celebrated what was to be his last Christmas by preaching twice at Cambridgeport and there admin- istering Holy Communion. 44
Next to Lowell in population, Charlestown did not gather an Episcopal society until 1840.45 Griswold pointed out this year that it was 'discreditable to our zeal, as Churchmen, that the attempt has been so long neglected'. This neglect centered in the lack of understanding of persons favoring the Episcopal Church of its Book of Common Prayer. Many churchgoers attending an Episco- pal service were more alert to resemblances than to differences in
on 1 March 1843, which sum, reported the Rev. Mr. Edson, was 'raised among our- selves'. JM, 1843, p. 69.
42. Rev. William Berrian, D.D., An His- torical Sketch of Trinity Church, New York was 11,484.
(New York, 1847), pp. 77-83, 134.
43. JM, 1843, pp. 67-68.
44. JM, 1843, p. 23.
45. Charlestown's population in 1840
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that worship and other Protestant forms of worship. Bishop Gris- wold consecrated St. John's Church, Charlestown, on 10 Novem- ber 1841. He confirmed thirty-one candidates, and might have con- firmed 'many others [who] were desirous to be confirmed, but it was thought expedient that they should wait for further instruc- tions in the doctrines and usages of the Episcopal Church'. 46 Prior to the organization of St. John's, some Charlestown families had been members of Grace Church, Boston. 47
The other parish in Middlesex County was St. Mary's, Newton Lower Falls. This parish, 'as in times past', Bishop Griswold found, "continues ... united and increasing'.48 Its great rector, Alfred Louis Baury, also served the diocese greatly.
In a survey of the seven parishes in Essex County in 1842-43, St. Paul's, Newburyport, stood as a strong outpost of the diocese together with its daughter parish, St. James', Amesbury, across the Merrimack River. The smallness of St. James' Church building regrettably kept the parish small.49 Salem's St. Peter's led the Es- sex churches in number of members. At the close of his rectorship at St. Peter's, Bishop Griswold consecrated its 'new stone church', and in 1837 he instituted the Rev. Charles Mason as rector.50 St. Michael's, Marblehead, had claimed Bishop Griswold's close sup- ervision at least since 1821. In that year the 'decayed parish' of St. Michael's was willing to sell its land and church building to a young Congregational society. Asserting the strength, and to his mind the rightness, of the episcopal form of church government, Bishop Griswold urged that Congregational societies with their inefficient system' could not save the parish.51 Despite the com- ings and goings of seven ministers, in twenty years, from 1832 St. Michael's appeared to be on a solid footing. 52 Christ Church, An-
46. JED, 1842, pp. 15-16.
47. JM, 1840, p. 24.
48. JED, 1842, p. 17.
49. JED, 1842, p. 16.
50. JED, 1836, p. 9; 1837, p. 7. The Rev. Charles Mason, son of the Hon. Jere- miah Mason, married Susan Lawrence in 1838; she was a sister of Amos Adams Lawrence. The results of this marriage
had some influence on the diocese after Griswold's death. William Lawrence, Life of Amos A. Lawrence, etc. (Boston and New York, 1888), passim. See below. St. Peter's reported 142 communicants in 1843. JM, 1843, p. 94.
51. Stone, Griswold, pp. 269-271.
52. Batchelder, Eastern Diocese, 1, 479- 480; JED, 1832, p. 8; 1842, p. 16.
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THE DIOCESE OF MASSACHUSETTS
dover, organized and built by an Englishman and a member of the Church of England, and his son-in-law, was just emerging as a church which was to have 'some of the most honored and influen- tial names of Andover citizens' for its parishioners. 53 The pattern used in establishing Christ Church, Andover, bettered the earlier method at Lowell, Clappville, and Wilkinsonville. The two remain- ing parishes in Essex, Ipswich, and Lynn, relied largely on the diocesan Board of Missions for their support. Christ Church par- ish, Ipswich, gave up holding services late in 1840 on account of a division of opinion among 'the few active men of our society', joined with the fact of the scantiness of our missionary funds . . . '.54 Christ Church, Lynn, was consecrated by Bishop Griswold on 20 July 1837; its location on Lynn Common provided Episcopal serv- ices for summer residents of Nahant and Swampscott.55 The debt of the parish incurred through buying land and building a church could not be paid off. In 1841 the diocese decided 'for the present to relinquish that [parish] as a missionary station', and the parish- ioners temporarily scattered. 56
Of the seven parishes in Suffolk County, Boston's Trinity and St. Paul's had about the same number of communicants.57 After the disturbed years of G. W. Doane's rectorship at Trinity, and a short period under Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright, the assistant minister, the Rev. John L. Watson gave the 'large and prosperous' parish a peaceful and an able ministry.58 The Rev. Alexander Hamilton
53. Griswold consecrated Christ Church on 31 Oct. 1837. The founder of the par- ish was Abraham Marland, of the Marland Mfg. Co. at Andover. His son-in-law was Benjamin H. Punchard. JED, 1838, pp. 15-16; Sarah Loring Bailey, Historical Sketches of Andover (Boston, 1880), pp. 489-492. The founders of Christ Church were a group of men of enough wealth and of sufficient numbers to assure the main- tenance of this Episcopal society.
54. JM, 1841, p. 36; JED, 1841, pp. 18- 19. The Rev. F. A. Wadleigh reported in 1840, 'The attempt to establish the serv- ices of the Church has been made among a people hitherto almost wholly unacquaint-
ed with the book of Common Prayer, and in a village of inconsiderable magnitude.' JM, 1840, p. 32.
55. JED, 1837, p. 8.
56. JED, 1841, p. 18; JM, 1845, p. 65.
57. The figures reported for June 1843 were Trinity 350, St. Paul's 350, Grace 321, Christ Church 241. JM, 1843, p. 94.
58. Mayhew resigned in 1838. Watson had come in 1836, transferred from the Diocese of New York. JED, 1836, p. 7; 1838, p. 17. Trinity might have continued satisfactorily for several years without a rector, had there been a diocesan fund for supporting a bishop.
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Vinton, instituted 11 May 1842 at St. Paul's, was creating ties in Boston which were to be lifelong. Bishop Griswold found Grace and Christ Churches doing well.59 St. Matthew's Church, South Boston, felt the effects of an unusually large number of death and removals', but increase in attendance at, and interest in, the church offset these losses. 60 The Free Church of the Episcopal City Mission Society provided three services each Sunday, and other missionary work for children and adults in Boston. The final parish in Suffolk, Mount Zion Church, Chelsea, met the needs of a 'little flock', gath- ered in that rapidly growing town. The wardens of this church, re- porting to the diocese in 1842, indirectly attributed the origin of the parish to 'the ferry, which now connects it [Chelsea] with the city of Boston . . . '. 61
Norfolk County numbered four parishes. Christ Church, Quin- cy, in 1842, was in a 'desponding state'. The number of communi- cants revealed no permanent growth; also, reported their rector, the Rev. John P. Robinson, 'the means of the people are very lim- ited'. 62 The survival of the parish, after the Society for the Propa- gation of the Gospel withdrew its annual contribution of sixty pounds sterling in 1777, rested on 'a moderate amount of landed property', valued in 1764 at $1250.63 The Revolution awoke 'those party views and feelings . .. of gentle excitement', which forbade 'the hope of much religious improvement'.64 No marked change occurred until after the Civil War. Although the date of the organi- zation of Christ Church is given as 1704, to the rector of that parish
59. JED, 1842, p. 15.
60. JM, 1842, p. 31; 1843, p. 58.
61. JED, 1842, p. 16; JM, 1842, pp. 33- 34. The wardens of Mt. Zion Church, Rug- gles Slack and Samuel Cleland, stated that Chelsea 'now [1842] contains from 2000 to 2500 inhabitants, which has increased from about fifty, since July 1833 when the ferry ... was opened'. Hayward's Gazet- teer, p. 327, gives Chelsea's population as 771 in 1830, and 2390 in 1840. The num- ber of communicants in Suffolk County was 1425, of whom 1386 belonged to par- ishes in Boston. JM, 1843, p. 94.
62. JM, 1843, pp. 60, 61. Bishop Gris- wold did not visit Quincy in 1842. He dedicated Christ Church on 27 Nov. 1832. JED, 1842, p. 14; 1833, p. 13.
63. The rent from 'a house and glebe' provided by the subscription of $1246.67 kept the church building in repair, 'and afforded the occasional services of clergy- men'. Benjamin C. Cutler, A Sermon Preached in Christ Church, Quincy, ... on Christmas Day, 1827 (Cambridge, 1828), p. 23, n. 2, p. 24.
64. Cutler, Sermon, p. 18; JM, 1869, p. 10 3.
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in 1827 it was a 'new church'. 65 The Episcopal society at Dedham, another one of the 'glorious fourteen' pre-Revolutionary parishes, had a resident minister only from the end of 1821. First known as Christ Church (1795), later (1813) as St. Paul's, it had not only a very small parish but a poor and mean church building.66 What maintained the parish at all was landed property, gifts of money, and the ministry at St. Paul's of Samuel Brazier Babcock from the time of his student years in theology until his death some forty years later.67 The post-Revolutionary parish of St. James', Rox- bury, was established in 1833; land was obtained as 'near the house of Robert Auchmuty, Esq., as shall be thought needful or proper for such a building', and the beautiful stone Church' was conse- crated by Bishop Griswold in 1834.68 The Rev. Mark A. DeWolfe Howe served as rector of this parish from 1837 to 1847, but he also ministered in it for its two first years.69 Bishop Griswold urged the support of this parish, and with 'the liberal aid' provided by Boston friends, the parish grew. Howe returned as rector in 1837, and de-
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